The Hell Season by Ray Wallace Read Free Book Online Page A

interstate entrance ramp just beyond. As he drove he thought of Dana and Gerald, of the terrible things he’d done and might have done. Gripping the steering wheel tightly, he tried to banish the mental images only to have them return more vividly, haunting him like a vengeful spirit from some Shakespearean tragedy. As he neared the mall, the road widened enough to allow him to increase his speed a bit. Then he was passing the entrance to the mall’s vast parking area, preparing to change lanes in order to make his way up the entrance ramp to the interstate which would take him out of town...
    And then came a profound sense of disorientation. Pain blossomed behind his eyes and a feeling of nausea took hold deep down in his gut. It was immediately apparent that he had somehow turned himself around, was now heading back in the opposite direction from which he’d just been traveling. All thoughts of Dana and Gerald were forgotten for the time being as he stopped the car, took in deep breaths, and looked around a bit wildly trying to figure out what had just happened. Unable to come up with an explanation, he did the only thing he could think of and turned the vehicle around, tried to approach the interstate again. With the exact same results. A brief moment of disorientation, further physical discomfort, and he was driving back into town, away from the on ramp and the hope of escape that it had come to represent in his mind.
    “What the hell?”
    He stopped the car again, this time put it in park, got out and stood in the warm evening air, waiting for the sick feeling to pass. When his stomach had settled a bit he walked toward the area where his progress had been halted, hands out in front of him as if he expected to bump into something that wasn’t there. After a couple dozen steps he did feel something, a thickening of the air like he was pushing into a nearly liquid or gel-like substance. He made his way forward slowly then held his breath and stepped all the way into the field of resistance or whatever it was that was blocking his way. What he had experienced so quickly in the car took much longer this time. He felt as though he was being spun around and around, impossibly fast, like the world had fallen away beneath him and he might be sucked out into the cold, unforgiving depths of deep space at any moment. Instead he found himself falling to the pavement, vomiting what little there was in his stomach onto the roadway’s black surface. He stayed down on his hands and knees for a time, breathing deeply once again. Eventually he was able to climb a bit unsteadily to his feet, to turn and stare back through the barrier that he could not see but knew all too well was there. It was completely invisible. The road continued on beyond it. He could clearly see the interstate overpass. Cars were scattered there much as they were along the roads throughout the town behind him. No people at all. It looked to Thomas like a movie set waiting for the actors to show up, for the director to shout “Action!” through a megaphone from his vantage point atop a crane ten feet up in the air.
    Is that what this is? Thomas couldn’t help but wonder. Some sort of movie set? Maybe Julia and the kids and Dana’s family weren’t the ones who’d disappeared. Maybe it was he and Dana and Gerald and whoever else was here, trapped in this town, who’d been taken away, brought here to this reproduction of the place where he’d raised his children these past several years, recreated down to the smallest detail. But who could do such a thing? And why? To what end? It didn’t make any sense.
    You’re losing it, man. Losing your mind. Right here. Right now. Who could blame him, really? It was all so damned crazy. He couldn’t get his head around any of it. A movie set, though? What was he thinking? Just another half-baked explanation that made as much—or as little—sense as any other.
    He let loose with a wordless cry of frustration,