Halloween - One For The Road continued by Nicholas Boldock Continued from  Previous page..

It wasn't a major disaster - he would have to come off at the next junction and double back on himself, is all - but it would add another twenty or thirty minutes on to the journey and he was keen to get back as soon as possible. How he had managed to miss his turn-off he didn't know. He must not have been concentrating on his way around the roundabout, and instead of taking the third exit, he had taken the one after it and ended up back on the motorway he had just left. Jason sped along the road - there were still no more than a handful of cars sharing the motorway with him - past the lush green landscapes of South East England. There was a forest off to the left which stood looking over the relief like an elder statesman, nostalgic for a time when the land was untouched by scars of grey tarmac. The green trees stretched to the horizon.

He was pulling up closer to the car in front, a little blue hatchback, so he pulled out into the middle lane and started to overtake. As he drew alongside the hatchback - a tired looking Fiesta, it turned out - Jason glanced at the slower car. A man with long white hair sat hunched over the wheel, eyes fixed to the road ahead. And in the back, a woman who appeared to be asleep, head lolling back against the seat. And something under her nose, a reddish-black streak that could've been blood but probably wasn't. Jason was past the car and pulling back in front of it before he could get a proper look at the woman in the back. It was probably nothing. Dirt on her face, or a birthmark, something like that. I hardly saw her. He checked the time on the dashboard clock. It said 16:20. Earlier than last time he had looked. He tapped at the clock with one finger, but still it read 16:20. He checked his wristwatch, which displayed the same time as the digital display on the dash. Twenty past four. His first thought was that the digital clock must have been wrong the first time, and somehow righted itself. He hadn't checked his watch that time. It couldn't be correct now though, because Jason hadn't left work until four-thirty. According to the car's clock and to Jason's watch, that was still ten minutes away. He searched for another way to check the time - he didn't think the radio would be working. The mobile phone - that had a clock on it. Jason grabbed it from the dash, and there in the corner of the LCD display was the time - 16:22. Not identical but near enough. It was only twenty past four. It had to be. All three clocks that were available to him said the same time. There was a Psion organiser in his briefcase with the time on it, only that was in the boot of the car, and besides, Jason had an idea what time would be showing on that, too.

He must have left work early by mistake. He tried to remember how closely he had looked at the clock before leaving. Had it said three-thirty, not four-thirty? He supposed it could have done. Which is all well and good, he thought, except everybody else left at the same time you did. The whole office cleared out, just like always, and it was four-thirty. It was.

The only conclusion he could come to therefore, was that not only was the clock on the dashboard wrong, but his watch and mobile phone were also wrong. Unlikely maybe, but the only explanation possible. He tried to work out how far it was to the next junction. Not much further, he didn't think. He had passed the forest now, though it was still visible in the wing mirror. Now there were single trees scattered at random, not as green as those in the forest. In fact most of them had no leaves at all, just bare branches reaching out into the air. After a while Jason started to wonder if he had missed the turn-off. He should have reached it ages ago by his calculations, but he had kept on going along uninterrupted motorway. No junctions, no slip roads, no roundabouts, nothing. Just a handful of fellow drivers and more sorry-looking bare trees. He overtook another car, a large saloon this time, and for no reason he could figure, felt a sense of relief when he saw that the rear of the car was empty. continued below.

Halloween - One For The Road continued by Nicholas Boldock

The radio came on. Jason hadn't touched it, but all the same it came to life. When he heard what was coming out of the speakers, he jumped in his seat and almost sent the car veering across the carriageway. The car was filled with the sound of screaming, the sound of a whole crowd of people screaming in terror, overlaid with a crackle of feedback. The terrible noise blared from the speakers, flooding the inside of the car. Jason lunged for the front of the stereo and jabbed it off, the screaming sounds cut dead instantly.

"Jesus!" Jason said to the empty car. He had no idea what the screaming on the radio was all about, but he knew it had sounded very real and truly frightening. The screaming on the radio had sounded like the screaming he imagined would have come from the gas chambers at Auschwitz as the Zyklon B began to seep in through the shower heads. The sound of human beings staring mortality in the face. He tried the mobile phone again but still it was useless. Beginning to worry now, he could see only straight road ahead of him, no junction, even though he should have reached the turn-off a long time ago. The more he drove, the further away from home he got. Claire and Natalie smiled up at him from the photograph. He looked at the clock. He had been trying to avoid looking at it, afraid of what it might say. It proudly proclaimed the time to be 16:02. He checked his watch and phone. They agreed with the clock. I must be near an electrical storm or something, he thought, and it's messing with the equipment in here. He wasn't convinced, though. Outside it looked as if the sky were blue for miles around, notwithstanding the brutal belt of rain he'd passed through earlier. The landscape around him seemed to be completely barren now. He hadn't noticed how even those balding trees had disappeared until now, and when he looked left and right it was as if he were staring out at some vast African plain. There was nothing visible for miles, just flat, dusty brown earth that had no place being there at all.

Jason had got lost somehow, he must have done, which explained why he hadn't come to the turn off when he'd expected to. But it doesn't explain why there's nothing here. There's nowhere in the whole country that looks like this, probably nowhere outside of Africa. Panic was starting to edge its way into his mind. He fought it back but it stayed hanging around on the periphery, waiting for a chance to break in.

He would pull onto the hard shoulder and use the emergency telephone. He knew that was wrong, that you were only supposed to go onto the hard shoulder when you had serious car trouble, but he had lost all sense of direction and he could feel himself becoming over-anxious. He could see a couple of cars in the distance as he indicated left and pulled onto the hard shoulder. He eased onto the brake to slow the car down. The needle stayed on eighty. Jason depressed the brake pedal harder, but the car would not slow. He pumped the pedal and felt no power in it, and the car kept going at the same speed. He pointed the car back on to the main carriageway, still pumping the brake pedal and feeling it lifeless beneath his foot. He was more than anxious now, he was scared, very scared, and when he glanced at the dashboard hoping the photo of him with Claire and Natalie would reassure him, calm him down, it was gone. He looked down at the floor, certain it must have fallen off, but he couldn't see the photograph anywhere. It had just disappeared. Like the rain. And the junction. And the -

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