CHAPTER THREE
The bump she heard made Betsy think she had hit a sheep on the dark country road she had been negotiating for over an hour already. A torrential downpour had come out of nowhere in the last ten minutes and visibility was low. She stopped the car and a familiar feeling came over her. The pit of her stomach went tight, she felt light-headed. It always happened to her that way. To her right, directly outside the driver seat window, just inches away from her cheek, she saw something in the corner of her eye. She didn't want to look. Didn't want to see it. She never did. But the same thing always happened and she knew she had to.
Ignore at your peril.
She turned her head and the haunted, distraught, shocked eyes peered at her through the window of her tiny 1990 Fiat Uno. Although separated by glass, the face was still so close; she jumped in her seat. The young man was naked in the lashing rain, at least from the waist up. She was pretty sure he would be naked from the waist down as well, if she had the courage to take a better look.
The boy looked directly at her. He was exactly 19 years of age, his birthday was yesterday. It was hard to tell if he was crying with so much wind and rain but his expression said it all. Betsy didn't say a word. She couldn't. One part of her wished he would go away, but another part, the maternal part, the grandmother part wanted to take him inside the car and away from the rain and cold.
There was blood running down the window panes of her vehicle although she couldn't see where it was coming from. There was blood running down the boy's neck, spilling over the swirling tattoos and open wounds on his shoulders and splashing in the hard rain.
Betsy's stomach ached and her knuckles locked to the steering wheel. She had had experiences like this before but never so close to home, never so personal.
The boy broke his gaze, turned away and the old lady let out a gasp. There was a large diamond shaped swathe of flesh missing from his back. The open expanse of skin where his trapezius muscle was had been neatly, surgically removed. The boy's shoulders hung heavily down in its absence.
He began to melt away into the rain, but not before he reached up with one weakened limp arm and pointed to something on the back of his neck. Betsy squinted her eyes and in the dark and rain, through the oblique glow of her headlights made out a crude picture of an eye on the back of his neck
She found her tongue at last.
"Come back."
She reached down, struggled with the window handle, clumsily tried to roll it down. It was unresponsive at the best of times and failed her now. Fumbling with her seatbelt she eventually freed herself and stepped outside the car into the rain.
"Rocco! Rocco! Come back, it's me, it's alright. Please come back honey, it's alright."
The rain had washed away any trace of blood from the car and from the ground. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had appeared. She peered into the humid inky blackness but already in her mid seventies she couldn't attempt to follow him. Anyway, the boy was gone now and she knew she wouldn't see him again, at least not in this world.
She noticed the headlights behind her now. A man came through the shadows and the final drops of rain.
"What's going on? Is something wrong?"
"Did you see that?" Betsy asked.
"What? The animal? The deer? What about it? Did you hit it?"
Betsy ignored him and got back into her car. She took a few minutes to compose herself, wiped the rain and tears away from her face. She put her old car in gear and ground away at a snail's pace into the blackness of the night.