Quartz Hill, California didn’t seem to want to draw attention to itself.
You’d ask somebody where Quartz Hill was and chances are they’d swear it was up by Sacramento or outside San Jose. Rarely would anyone know.
The snowboarder in the shotgun seat of the 1963 Studebaker Avanti turned around.
There wasn’t much of a view outside the back window, but enough to see snakebit ghosts swirling behind them. Snarling spirits floated over both lanes, highballing down the highway, slashing through desert darkness like a fevered big rig.
He shivered and turned back around to look through the windshield.
Up ahead he thought he saw blood dripping from taillights and poison pumped out of exhaust pipes.
For the first time since he’d been released from the state hospital, he thought he might be slipping back. Whatever had taken hold of him before, had sunk its chops back in.
He hadn’t seen the hellhound on his trail for the past two days, not since he’d hooked up with her back in Bishop.
Now she would be picking up the tab for a tomahawk at the Broken Bit. The problem was he couldn’t reconcile her kindness, the safety she provided, with the dangers out on the highway.
Earlier that day she tossed a fat wallet on his lap and asked him to count the bills.
Three hundred and seventy dollars. She scoffed.
She told him that’s why she used the borrowed ATM card to withdraw five hundred right away. Extra cash before that nervous little man who smoked French cigarettes could report it stolen.
The snowboarder struggled. At the hospital they’d told him he was saddled with troubles not easily shaken.
On the bleak outskirts of Quartz Hill, California, the snowboarder sidestepped his dark thoughts and looked forward to a tomahawk steak at the Broken Bit Steakhouse.
