For a while, I drove in silence, assuming that Varo would eventually fall asleep.
“How’d you become a PI?”
“I went to college for criminal justice…I’ve always been interested in that kind of stuff,” I said simply. “After school, I decided to pursue a career as a private investigator. Learning the truth about things has always been important to me.”
I was careful not to elaborate too much.
He nodded. “Did you study in Arizona?”
“No,” I said. “I actually lived in Denver for a while before I moved to Phoenix.”
“Why did you move?”
I hesitated before saying, “I had an…abnormal childhood. I don’t remember much of it…the doctors say it was amnesia. I moved to Denver as soon as I was old enough to leave foster care. After Denver, I found Phoenix, and I guess I’ve been there ever since.”
Varo said nothing for a long time. I wondered if I had over-shared. Most people didn’t want to hear about foster care and childhood amnesia. It was really a bit of a mood killer.
“That sounds like a difficult childhood,” he said at last. I could feel his eyes on me as I drove.
“Yeah,” I admitted. It was weird how the night could make you admit things you would never say in the day. “If I couldn’t know the truth about what happened to me, then I wanted to at least help others know the truth.”
“So, you really don’t remember your childhood?”
“Not before the age of about fifteen,” I said. “At first, they told me my memories would resurface, but at this point, it’s been too long. I don’t think I’ll ever remember who I was…where I was raised.”
Typically, when I thought of the lost time, I felt very little at all. It was so long ago, I often couldn’t bring myself to grieve my memories. However, in the dim light of the car, I felt an unfamiliar pressure behind my eyes.
It was as if the highway was hypnotizing me to feel. I said nothing more about my past to Varo that night. And he didn’t ask anything more.
The sun was just a spark on the eastern horizon by the time we made it to the exit for Judgment. So far, Varo was right about western Texas; there wasn’t much to see.
For the most part, it looked similar to eastern New Mexico, an expanse of rugged hills. Small brush covered the ground in many areas, providing cover for all manner of desert wildlife. In the distance, mountains guarded the horizon.
The exit leading off the interstate was hardly an exit at all. The mile-marker sign had been run over. I only knew where to turn off because of the GPS I had programmed with Lu’s last known coordinates.
I followed the directions off the interstate and onto what looked to be a county road. However, much like the exit, it was unmarked. If this were a red flag, I wouldn’t have known it at the time. I was too busy feeling an overwhelming sense of indigestion, or at least that’s what I thought it was.
My stomach churned as sweat began to drip down my back.
“I…I need to pull over,” I said suddenly.
I swerved onto the shoulder of the road. Before Varo had a chance to respond, I put the car in park and practically launched myself out of my seat.
I vomited on the side of the road, grasping the car’s bumper for support. When I had finished, I found that Varo had gotten out of the car to check on me. He hesitated with a disgusted look on his face.
“What’s wrong?” He asked.
“I…” Again, I threw up.
For once, I was thankful for the desolate nature of the desert. No one drove by as the contents of my stomach were emptied onto the dusty road.
Without a word, Varo handed me a napkin. I accepted it with a nod of thanks and cleaned myself up.
“I’ll drive for a little while,” he said as he walked to the driver’s side and sat down. “Judgment isn’t far. Do you think you’ll be alright until we stop again?”
“Yeah,” I said as I collapsed into the passenger seat. “That was weird. I’ve never been sick like that from driving–it must have been the food.”
Gas station food didn’t exactly have the best rap. Likely, the burrito I had grabbed from our last stop had gone bad.
Varo pulled the car back onto the road without a word.
“Sorry about that,” I said. It was hard not to be embarrassed.
“Don’t be,” he said. “It could be the elevation. Drink some water.”
The elevation didn’t seem like it would have changed much since Las Cruces. If anything, it would have made more sense for it to go down. However, I did as Varo suggested.
“If this town is as small as it seems, we shouldn’t have a problem finding your sister,” I said.
“How small did it say it was?”
“That’s what’s weird…it doesn’t look like there’s a town out here at all. I mean, it’s not listed on Google Maps.”
“Then how do you know it’s here?”
I gave a small laugh. “Yellow pages. I looked up the number Lu had called and traced it to a towing company called Judgment Auto and Towing. They had nothing listed online other than their number. So, I ended up searching for anything with the name ‘Judgment’ from around this area, that’s when I found it listed as a town.”
“That’s strange,” he said. His dark eyes were glued to the distant mountain on the horizon. “It must be really small.”
I shrugged. “I guess. Or maybe it’s a bit of a ghost town.”
“It could happen. A lot of towns were built off of mining, but when gold couldn’t be found, they sorta just…faded.”
I nodded. I knew all about ghost towns. Anyone who spent any time in the southwestern United States had heard about them. It wasn’t a stretch to say that Judgment was likely dying, if not nearly dead. Possibly, there weren’t even enough people who lived there to warrant listing it as a true town.
“At the very least,” I began. “It will be a place to start.”
I stared at the dusty landscape and found it hard to think about a young woman willingly staying out there. What was Lu doing in a landscape like this? Would there even be a hotel to stay in?
I wondered about what I would find when we reached Judgment as I gazed out my window. After leaving the interstate, we had been steadily climbing in elevation. We were by no means in the mountains, but the elevation had been increasing slightly throughout the drive. It was possible that Varo was right and my sickness was caused by the climb.
The road was windy, but seemingly for no reason other than to be confusing. It wasn’t long before I found myself disoriented. Were we going north? South? I was typically skilled with directions, but the sky had turned a hazy shade of white, and I could no longer see the sun.
After about a half hour of driving, I saw a giant rock formation on the horizon. It wasn’t a mountain or a mesa, but rather a large monolith-like structure that rose from the earth like a finger pointed up. It was white instead of the sandy color of the earth.
I felt an odd sensation in my chest, and suddenly, I was overcome with a memory so vivid it felt like it was happening right then and there.
I saw the light of day, but it was just a sliver.
On my hands and knees, I crawled toward the narrow exit of the coven. Rocks scraped my bare skin, but I was determined to make it out. I had to make it out. Behind me, the cave echoed with a noise that made me sick, a dull clicking sound.
I crawled until I could pull myself out of the cave. My knees were bloody and bruised, but I pushed on. The hole up ahead was barely large enough for me to fit through. Despite this, I stretched through it, shimmying and crawling like an animal in a trap.
At last, I managed to get free. My palms were slick with blood as I pulled myself out of the hole in the earth and into the scorching bright light of day. A sob overtook me as I collapsed onto the ground.
I gazed up at the giant monument that now towered over me.
I came back to reality with a jolt, realizing that tears had been streaming down my face. The car was pulled off on the side of the road, and Varo was staring at me with a strange expression. Worry creased between his brows as he watched me.
“Are you alright? What the hell happened?” He asked.
“I don’t know,” I said as I breathed heavily. “I had…a memory.”
I stared ahead at the giant stone monolith that took over the horizon. Deep dread settled in my chest.
“Are you…good?” He raised an eyebrow.
I must have looked like a mess. A few minutes ago, I was puking up my guts on the side of the road; now I was sobbing in the passenger seat. Some investigator I am, I thought.
“Yeah,” I said. “I…I think I’ve been here before.”
A dark expression crossed Varo’s face. “If you want, I can turn around and drop you off at the nearest town.”
“No, no,” I said, coming back to reality even further. I shook off the strange sensations. “The nearest town is over an hour away. We’re so close. I…I think I might just be confused.”
With a bit of hesitation, Varo pulled back out onto the county road. I stared ahead.
“What is that thing up there?”
“A rock formation,” Varo said with a dismissive shrug.
Despite his calm demeanor, I was drawn to his hands. They grasped the steering wheel with intensity. His tan skin looked white from the death-grip he had on the car.
I noticed that the road we were on was headed directly towards the monolithic stone. Varo could have been right. It could have just been a rock formation. However, I had seen Arches National Park and Monument Valley.
While the giant stone ahead of us could have easily been a similar formation, there were no others around it. It was a lone rock, jutting into the skies. Its white stone looked unnatural against the dusty, tan landscape.
Despite the nausea in my gut and the strange memory I had, I told myself it was nothing. There was no possible way that I had been here before. This was far from where I had been found on the side of the road. I had never set foot in Texas, let alone a strange, desolate town called Judgment.
But I was wrong.
Read Chapter Three
Wow! Visceral and really good.