Castle for Rent

Twenty Pennsylvania Turnpike, Near Bedford

“You up?” Trent asked.

Incarnadine touched the control button, and the leather bucket seat tilted up. “I am now.” He rubbed his eyes. “What’s that infernal buzzing?”

“Just a danger signal.”

“Oh.” Incarnadine looked back through the rear window. “Nothing but a trailer truck, it looks like, back about half a mile.”

“That must be it. We’re coming to a three-mile downgrade. If he’s going to make his move, it’ll be when we’re going down this mountain.”

“You seem fairly sure. It could just be a trailer truck.”

Trent shook his head. “My spells rarely fail me. Get that gun out and get ready.”

“Will do.”

Trent increased speed. The cold rural night howled by, whistling through the car’s air vents and a hairline fresh-air crack that Incarnadine had left between the window glass and the weather stripping on the door on his side.

A pair of bright headlights grew in the rear window. Trent’s eyes shifted between the road and the rearview mirror. Incarnadine watched out of the mirror on his side. The truck drew up to the Mercedes, headlights glaring, its huge engine revved to a frenzy. It hung there a moment, then suddenly swerved into the passing lane. It went thundering by, plunging down the steep hill, a leviathan of the night, its flanks glittering with dozens of tiny red and yellow lights.

“What was that about fail-safe spells?”

Trent seemed discomfited. “Something may be up ahead, waiting for us. The car we saw back at the Burger King, maybe.”

They drove on for several uneventful minutes. The road was dark in both directions.

“Are you sure your Earth magic is all it’s cracked up to be?” Incarnadine asked.

Trent gave his head a quick shake. “Can’t figure it.”

Like the sudden deadly blooming of a nuclear fireball, the crest of the hill behind them lit up in a blaze of light. Something big topped the rise and rolled down the hill, approaching with unbelievable speed.

“I take it back,” Incarnadine said. “Your lookout spell isn’t fooling.”

“Interesting,” Trent observed. “What do you make of it?”

“Not your average tractor-semitrailer.”

The thing behind them was twice as big as any conventional vehicle, its array of headlights like a blinding galaxy of suns. The windshield and windows glowed strangely blue, and yellow flames shot out of twin exhaust stacks at either side of the cab. Swooping down the hill at breakneck speed, the spectral truck howled like a psychotic beast chained in the fires of Hell.

Trent floored the accelerator and wheeled the Mercedes around a bend to the right as the road continued down the side of the mountain. The speedometer crept past 80 mph, edging into the red.

“Got your seat belt on?” Trent asked casually.

“When did they start putting these things in automobiles?”

Trent didn’t answer as he mashed the accelerator into the floorboard. The thing behind them was still gaining.

“We’ll never outrun it,” Incarnadine said.

“You’re right. I wonder if he means to crowd us off the road, or simply run over us.”

“It looks quite capable of either tactic.”

“Inky?”

“Yes, Trent?”

“I think we’ve had it.”

The monster vehicle closed steadily. Trent began swerving between lanes, and the demonic semi followed suit. There was very little room for maneuvering; the right shoulder was narrow, edging an almost vertical wall of blasted rock. An aluminum barrier ran between the roadways. There was no emergency lane and no place to pull off.

Ghastly blue light flooded the interior of the Mercedes as the truck drew close. An ear-splitting horn blast rent the night, and gouts of flame belched from the twin exhaust stacks. The truck’s contoured windshield looked like a phantasmal roaming eye, radiating otherworldly light. The truck tried to pass, and Trent blocked its path, eliciting another angry blast of the demonic horn. Incarnadine thought his ears would burst. The truck swerved right, and Trent dodged back into the right lane.

“Watch it,” Incarnadine said.

“I can’t let it get abreast of us.”

The truck stopped weaving and crept closer to the rear of the Mercedes.

“You can’t let it —” Incarnadine began to say.

The truck bumped into the rear of the Mercedes and backed off; then, engine yowling, it sprang forward and slammed into the car, its huge burnished grille looking like a shark’s mouth, huge and hungry and slavering for the kill.

Another impact came, and the Mercedes began to fishtail. Trent countersteered and straightened out. Again, the demon semi lunged forward, but this time Trent whipped extra power out of the car’s already overtaxed engine and pulled away.

“Steer for me, Inky!” Trent shouted. “I have to have my arms free!”

Incarnadine leaned over and grabbed the wheel with both hands. The car swerved just as he took control, and he fought to bring it back into line. At his left ear he heard Trent chanting a complex and mostly unintelligible incantation. Trent’s fingers worked off to either side, moving in precise patterns.

The road underwent a sudden and quite unexplainable transformation. It changed color, from murky, half-seen gray to bright yellow. It also widened considerably, somehow acquiring a multicolored canopy like the roof of a tunnel. Streamers of color flowed past, along with geometrical shapes and strange designs.

Trent laughed triumphantly, taking back the steering wheel. “Shades of Stanley Kubrick!”

“Who?”

Incarnadine craned his neck and looked out the rear window. The truck was still tailing but had dropped back. As he watched, it continued to fall behind. Wherever the Mercedes was going, the truck either could not or did not want to follow.

Incarnadine looked ahead and whistled his admiration. “Neat trick, little brother. What do you call this?”

Trent flipped a palm over. “A shortcut. The tricky part is getting back to normal reality.”

“Are we ready to do that yet?”

“Not quite. Enjoy the show.”

Incarnadine sat back and watched the play of light, color, and pattern. Brilliant shapes raced out at them from an incandescent night, flowing past with ever-increasing speed. There was no longer a road now, just a long tunnel of reticulated luminescence. At its distant vanishing point, somewhere out near infinity where all the glowing lines converged, a brilliant starburst of light coalesced. It grew and increased in intensity. Incarnadine got the impression that it was getting closer.

“See that light?”

“Yes,” Incarnadine said. “What is it?”

“I’ve never driven long enough to find out. Want to?”

“I would, under other circumstances.”

“Right. Where’s the demonic eighteen-wheeler?”

Incarnadine looked. “Nowhere in sight.”

“Okay, hang on.”

The tunnel of light faded gradually until at last the mundane turnpike again rolled under the wheels of the Mercedes. The terrain had flattened out somewhat. Clearly they were on a different section of the road.

“Good job, Trent. I liked your shortcut.”

“And here’s the exit. State Route 711, right?”

“I’m not sure I like the numerological implications.”

Trent turned off the highway, gradually slowing on the long, curving exit ramp. The toll booths lay up ahead, on the other side of the overpass.

“There it is,” Trent said, looking to the left.

The monster semi rolled by on the highway beneath, screeching its frustration. Incarnadine watched it come out the other side of the underpass and go hurtling down the road, a shiny black juggernaut trimmed in glistening chrome.

It rolled about a thousand feet down the turnpike before vanishing in a burst of crimson flame.