Eighty-Sixed: Chapter 17 - Hatchback

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“She’s not answering,” Frankie said.

Tabitha was behind the wheel, her hands were set firmly at ten and two o’clock.  Sam and Drake were crammed into the back bucket seat of Tabitha’s small, practical hatchback.  Sam was moaning.

“How’s this possible?” Sam said, now sounding as Frankie had earlier in the night when he first approached their table at Jameson’s Tavern.  “Howssh thish possible?”  

His eyes were closed as he pressed his face against the cool glass of the tiny triangular window next to him.

“Don’t vomit in my car,” Tabitha admonished him.

“It says she read it, but she’s not answering,” Frankie said as he scrolled through the countless messages she ignored over the past weeks.

“Text her again,” Tabitha suggested.

“She’s maaakin’ a tiime macchine,” Sam slurred.  “Wee’ve hepped her maaake a tiime macchine.”

Frankie tapped at his phone, each poke of his index finger like he was squashing an ant, precise and deliberate, one letter at a time.

“She’s not gonna answer,” Frankie said.  “She never does.  Especially when she’s up to something.”

“Oh, shhee’s up to shumthin,” Sam groaned.

A few seconds later, “She read that one, too,” Frankie said.  “But see, she’s not typing back.”

“Call her again,” Drake said from the backseat.  His left arm was thrust straight out to his side, holding Sam up by his shoulder to prevent his co-worker and roommate from flopping over and passing out in his lap.

“She’s not gonna answer that, either,” Frankie said, but he dialed anyway.  “I’m telling you. This woman?  She’s something.”

“Shhee’s shumthin,” Sam agreed from the backseat, nodding overenthusiastically.

“Try anyway,” Tabitha said.  

Frankie held his phone tightly against one ear while he put a finger in his other.  He listened intently as the phone tried to connect.

“It’s all static,” Frankie said.  He pulled the phone away to look at it, then put it back against his ear.  “It sounded like I got half a ring and then it went static.  Cell phones don’t go static, do they?”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Tabitha said.  She pushed down on the gas and accelerated. In the back seat, Sam whimpered as his stomach churned.

“Whaat haf we donne?” he slurred.

“Wait!” Frankie said, after seeing an animated ellipsis in a word balloon appear on the small cell phone screen. “She’s typing. That’s what the three dots mean, right?  That she’s typing?”

“What’s she say?” Tabitha asked.

“She tole me to maaake shuure we aull staayed out until morrrning,” Sam slurred.

“She said what?” Tabitha asked.

“This is for you, Frankie,” Frankie said, reading his screen.

“What?”

“She wrote, ‘This is for you, Frankie.’”

“What the hell does that mean?” Drake asked.

“It meanss,” Sam said.  “It meanns, thiss is for him.  For her hussband.  This guy here.”  Sam reached forward and slapped Frankie on the shoulder.

“Just shut up, Sam,” Drake said.

“Now,” Tabitha said.  “Tell her you’re on the way to ENH.”

Frankie slowly typed the response.

“Sam, what did she say?” Tabitha asked again.  “Before.  What did Becca tell you?”

“Shee said it would be a loong night. To haff some fuun,” he answered. “To keeep everyone out until…until tomorrow.  Wait.  Today?  No.  Tomoorrrow.”

Sam’s head slumped over against the window again and closed his eyes.  Drake released the bracing hold he had on Sam’s shoulder.

“No offense, but I hate your wife,” Tabitha said.

Frankie kept staring at his screen.  There were no more ellipses, no more three dots.  Nothing more from Becca.

“Does it really matter?” Frankie finally asked.

“Well, maybe I don’t hate her, exactly,” Tabitha said.  “But I am not at all surprised she’s been planning this all along.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Frankie said.  “Us rushing there now.  Why the conflict?  Why the race?  There’s nothing saying she’s doing anything tonight.  She could still be years away from a breakthrough.”

“Sam just said she wanted us to stay out.”

“To have fun,” Frankie said.

“Do you honestly believe that?” Tabitha asked.  “Does that at all sound like your wife?”

“Well, no,” Frankie admitted.  “But listen.  We’ve all had a bit to drink today.”

“Not me,” Tabitha interrupted.  

“Well, maybe not you,” Frankie said.  “But certainly I have, and Sam here obviously has.  And what about you, fella?”

“Drake,” Drake said from the back seat.

“Yeah, Drake, sorry.  You had a few, eh?”

“Comparatively, not so much, I’d say.”

“I’m just saying, maybe our imaginations have gotten the better of us,” Frankie said.  “All of the sudden I’m not feeling right about this for some reason.”

“Too late now,” Tabitha said as she pulled up to the main security gate outside of ENH’s sprawling campus.  “We’re already here.”

“What the hell?” Drake said from the back seat.

“What the hell, indeed,” Tabitha echoed. She crouched over the steering wheel, peering upwards out the windshield.

Every light on all ten stories of ENH’s building was not only on, but was blazing bright white as blinding as a lightning bolt.  As the light intensified, a solid heavy cadence thudded from the building like a drumbeat quickly growing in volume.

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Frankie suddenly slapped his right cheek, grabbing hold of his jaw.

“Bloody hell!” he cried out.  His face was a grimace of pain.  He moved a hand up to his mouth and spit out a tooth, a stream of blood and spit stretching from his lips to his palm.

“What is that?” Tabitha asked, horrified.

“My metal filling just popped out,” Frankie said, sticking a finger in his mouth.  “Do you feel that?”

“My glasses just fell off,” Drake said.

“What?” Frankie asked.  “My ears are ringing.”

“My glasses,” Drake repeated.  “They just fell right off my face.”  

Across the parking lot, the entirety of the main building glowed in a terrible pulsing that caused their eyes to blur.

“I… can hardly see straight,” Tabitha said.    

Sam groaned again from the back seat.

“Stopp that noiisse!” he yelled.

The pulse’s heavy bass cadence deepened and quickened, the beats growing closer while the pitch simultaneously increased.  The sound transformed from an ominous drumbeat to the piercing sound of nails on a chalkboard.  The sound surrounded them from all directions as the light from the building magnified and spread outward.  

Tabitha frantically typed her entry code at the unmanned security gate.  

“I don’t think it’s working!” she called out.

“What?” Drake yelled.  Frankie still had a finger stuck in his mouth as he marveled at the hole now in his gums.

“The gate won’t open!” Tabitha said again.

“Run through the damn thing!” Frankie yelled.

“Dear Lord, she’s doing it, isn’t she?” Tabitha asked.

Drake pulled himself upright in the back seat and immediately shielded his eyes with both hands to dampen the brightness emanating from the entirety of the ENH building as it drew closer to the car.

“Now?” Drake asked.  “Like, now?  She’s doing it now?”

Frankie and Tabitha threw open their doors in tandem and got out of their seats.  Immediately, the hair stuck out at the back of Frankie’s neck, sending a chill throughout his body.  

The July air, which earlier had been hot and humid and brimming with mosquitos, was now dry and crackling, almost tangibly static and voltaic.  The screech continued to emanate out from the building as if the entire edifice had been transformed into a monstrous stereoscopic amplifier.    

“Can we stop it?” Frankie called over the unceasing vibrating tremble.

Before she could answer, Tabitha screamed, startled as her car suddenly moved as if of its own volition.  She at first thought she hadn’t put it in park, but then realized the wheels weren’t even spinning as the car moved.  The hatchback was being dragged, pulled toward the building like a magic trick.

“My car!” Tabitha yelled and jumped sideways just as the back driver’s side tire nearly ran over her right foot.

Inside, Sam and Drake were still in the backseat, trapped without an immediate door from which to escape.

“We can’t get out!” Drake screamed as he frantically tried to find the latch to flip up the front passenger seat.

Sam’s eyes were now open again as he looked around in horror, trying to process what he saw, attempting to separate reality from his drunken stupor. 

As Drake attempted to extricate himself from between the bucket seats of the hatchback, the small car continued to be pulled toward the building.  It moved inch by inch until it pushed against the chain link guard fence where it came to a temporary stop. But before Sam and Drake could get out, the fence buckled, tilting toward the blindingly bright building.  Within seconds, it gave way entirely and began sliding toward the light, and the tiny car with it.  

“Get us out of here!” Sam screamed as Drake struggled to squeeze through the gap between the front seats.   

Frankie stepped further back from the car in near disbelief as it slid away.  Around them, the other sections of the gate that surrounded ENH’s perimeter buckled and fell.  All of it, along with Tabitha’s car, slid more and more rapidly toward the building. 

“What have you done, Rebecca?” Frankie said and shook his head.  “What have you done?”

Tabitha’s car moved faster, inextricably pulled toward the building, the smell of burning rubber from the screeching tires now faintly in the air.

Over the terrible high-pitched squeal that was everywhere, Frankie and Tabitha could still hear Sam and Drake crying out in panic from inside the vehicle.

Then, as if it was nothing more than pollen being carried on the current of a swift breeze, the hatchback suddenly lifted right off the ground and was hurled toward the ENH building.  As the tires left the earth, every window on all sides of the building shattered.  Rather than blowing outward, toward the parking lot where Frankie and Tabitha now stood, the shards of glass were sucked inward instead.  The blinding light of the building then went completely black, snuffed out like a candle, leaving a retinal burned image of ENH in Frankie and Tabitha’s eyes.

“Drake!” Tabitha screamed as she squinted to see through the sudden darkness.  Her car, with Sam and Drake in it, was there one moment.  Now it had disappeared into a thick pulsing blackness that had appeared out of nothingness and completely engulfed the building.  

Tabitha scrambled backward and tripped, scraping her hands on the asphalt as she landed with a thud.  Frankie took a hobbled step forward.

“Frankie get back!” Tabitha called out.  Tears welled down her cheeks.  “Get back!”

“She did it,” Frankie said, taking another step.  “The lunatic actually did it.”

The gravitational mass pulsed, continuing to emanate that deafening, buzzing hum that screeched out in a vibrating explosion of horrific noise.  

Tabitha lifted herself up to her feet and tried to move away from the building.  Her legs felt like she was walking through glue, and after no more than five labored steps, her arms were pulled backward as her legs froze momentarily in place.  Then like the car, and Sam, and Drake, and the fence, Tabitha was lifted from the ground and pulled now not towards the light, but the darkness that was swallowing everything.

“Oh Becca,” Frankie said as the mass of blackness continued to pull back on itself and swelled in size with each passing second.  His own feet now left the ground.  

“You’ve destroyed everything, my love,” he said.  “You’ve killed us all for good.”

End Part 1

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