The starter motor turns several times before, with some hesitation, the Ford’s engine stutters back to life.
Thomas Furman revs the engine several times until the motor is running much sweeter.
With limited vision supplied by the inadequate headlights reflecting off the rain slick road surface, he begins to slowly edge the car forward. Realising that any sudden movement with the roads in this condition could see the car amongst the trees.
It takes a while a nightmare journey fraught with the threats of flood and storm debris threatening disaster at any moment, combined with the idea that the dark wind whipped woods on either side of you may contain an unknown danger from which the now sleeping girl had been fleeing. Every flash of lightning causes your blood to pound – is this ‘the light’ she was babbling about?
About two miles from where you had found the girl, the small township of Orchard Run suddenly appears ahead. First little more than blurred lights on the windshield, they soon become solidified as a collection of three buildings off the main highway.
Two of the buildings are brightly lit and from signs you can see they are a gas station and a diner. As you look you can see that a flat bed cattle truck has been slewed across the road at an angle where clearly it has skidded to a halt in the mud, seemingly abandoned, its driver’s cab door is left open to the elements.
The truck almost, but not quite, blocks the road to Bolton. Its wheels rest half sunk into the thick, wet mud.
There is a single, two-seater Ford roadster parked out in front of the diner and another, older Packard lodged by the gas station office. No other vehicles are evident.
Through the rain blurred widows of the brightly lit diner you notice the shapes of people. The gas station looks empty, closed up…
We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.
- Anais Nin
