It was early evening on a summer day, and the road was nearly deserted—which seemed strange, since it was a major east-west interstate. Nonetheless, she saw few vehicles, only—now and then—large trucks. As the sun was setting behind the mountains, the light hardened to a deep orange, then dimmed into a purple twilight. This part of the country had deep folds in the land, which would continue until it flattened out near Amarillo, her immediate, but not final, destination; she did not remember it taking this long to reach the town after crossing into Texas, but she now realized she probably wouldn't make it before dark. Just before she turned on the headlights, something crossed the road in front of her, some unknown creature that seemed almost to float like a wisp of smoke, not identifiable by any means of locomotion she had ever seen. A roadrunner?
Gradually, the land smoothed out, and she recognized a gas station, calculating she was perhaps 30 minutes from the outskirts of Amarillo. She was tired but alert and saw nothing else moving through the dry landscape except for other vehicles, the occasional RV or truck, on the road itself. As she neared the city limit, the wind picked up, and in the rear-view mirror, she saw that what had looked like a distant mountain range was actually an enormous steel-gray cloud encroaching over the desert and emitting an occasional flash of lightning. It was still some miles away.
She had no hotel reservation, had not eaten since breakfast, and knew nothing of Amarillo except for the long strip of hotels along the interstate corridor. She needed to find an ATM, a gas station, some food, and a place to stay, which seemed a reasonable plan until the wind turned cyclonic once she left the highway to look for an ATM. It whistled around her head while she punched buttons at the bank machine and steadily rose in volume as she dashed through the drive-through at Wendy’s, starting to feel somewhat frantic. The wind was actually shrieking as she made her way back to the interstate and attempted to navigate an access road that led first to a dead-end field, where the grass lay nearly sideways in the wind, and then to an expensive hotel that she could not afford. Coming out of the parking lot, she saw the familiar logo of a moderately-priced chain a mile down the road and sped toward it, expecting to spot a tornado at any moment.
The hotel was new and clean and had vacancies. The deep purple color scheme and Pierrot-inspired decor had a curiously deadening effect, but she just shrugged. Probably designed by a committee. There was even an available luggage cart on which she piled her suitcases, fearful that her car might be destroyed overnight in the cyclone. In the elevator, her breathing began to slow to a more normal level as the sounds of the wind were muted, but when she stepped into her room, the full force of the storm made itself felt once more, a giant body-slamming the building. She looked out the window before closing the curtains and saw an enormous sea of darkness next to the hotel, as if the building were perched on the edge of a deep canyon. With a small shudder, she turned away. Her Wendy’s had gone cold, but she ate it anyway while watching an episode of Fixer Upper that she had already seen. Despite the ferocity of the storm, the nearly constant lightning and pounding hail, the lights never flickered until she turned off the TV and pulled back the bed covers. Then all the lights went out at once.
This won’t last, she told herself. The hotel is bound to have a back-up generator. She walked over to the door, checking to make sure it was locked before lying down. It was only then, with the TV silenced, that she noticed a repetitive sound coming from outside her window, the sound of one hard object pounding another. Fearing that an adjacent window shutter had come loose and was about to crash through her window, she risked a quick peek and found herself face to face with a human-sized winged creature, with red eyes, gray skin, and sharp claws. Although she had difficulty processing what she was seeing, she had no trouble realizing that the creature was trying to open her window from the outside.
Stay calm, she said to herself, amazed that somehow her mind had switched to an automatic pilot mode. She reached around in the dark for something to use as a weapon, picking up a wooden chair just as the window latch came open and the creature put one wrinkled foot over the ledge. She pushed at it with all her might, using the chair to throw it off balance, so that it had to scrabble with one claw to maintain a hold. The coffeemaker on the desk was full of boiled water from the hot tea she’d forgotten to make; she grabbed the pot and threw the contents into the creature’s face. With a piercing cry, it let go of the ledge and fell into the darkness of the chasm.
In shock, the coffeepot still in her hand, she noticed that the wind was much less desperate-sounding than it had been a few minutes ago; then the lights came back on. How long had they been off? Two minutes? Five? The curtains blew in toward her along with some cold rain. Numbly, she latched and locked the window, which was completely intact; stumbling away from it, she hit the TV remote with her hand, and HGTV switched on to a discussion of shiplap and the choice of a door for an excited couple’s walk-in pantry, followed by a commercial for Lowe’s summer sale. It was incredible that even in the face of an incursion of the fantastic, the rational part of her brain could still take in details about custom doors and tile choices, could still tell her to straighten the chair and return the coffeepot, now empty, to its place. It was as if nothing had happened, as if she had just awakened from a nightmare without realizing she had ever gone to sleep.
Maybe that’s it, she told herself. I’m overwrought, I fell sleep while watching TV. It's all this pressure from the sales meeting. This will all fade to nothing in the morning. Still, she decided to leave a couple of lights and the TV on before lying down. To her surprise, she was suddenly exhausted and fell asleep with no difficulty, though she woke several times during the night. In the morning, she awoke to a bright daylight seeping through the curtains. All seemed normal, except for the damp places in the carpet near the window.
When the pleasant middle-aged woman at the reception desk asked if everything had been alright with her room, she took a deep breath and asked if the woman was aware of any large birds native to the area, really large, like a condor or possibly a harpy, that might have been noted around the hotel. The woman frowned with thought, as if contemplating an unexpected but pleasant puzzle, before saying no, not that she was aware of. “Although I’m not from around here,” she added, handing Cass’s receipt to her. “I’ve only been here for about six months. Why do you ask?”
“I just thought I saw a really big bird outside last night. But the storm was so wild, I probably imagined it.” Cass made a mental note that this was now the official story she would take with her from the incident, when anyone from the office asked about her trip.
Once she was behind the wheel of her car, she sat for a moment, thinking of the many miles she still had ahead of her. She still needed gas. She tried not to look toward the chasm at the rear of the hotel as she pulled onto the street. Everything looked ordinary in the morning light, which helped quell the unease that lingered in her mind. It simply had to have been a dream.
She filled up at the gas station and went inside to pay. The gas station did not serve breakfast, so she grabbed a package of crumb cakes and a bottled tea before going to the counter. She was the only customer. The clerk had the radio on to a morning news show; a stack of newspapers sat on the counter with a photo of a presidential candidate in a headlined story. Morning in America.
She had paid the clerk, taken back her change, and was saying thank you before she noticed how ashen the clerk’s face was. When he nodded to her thanks, his movements were stiff, and there was fear in the glance he flicked at her. The inside of the gas station was as conventional as could be, but somehow the slant of light wasn’t quite as it should be. It was as if he knew, as if she was marked in some way. She had never seen him before. Still, that look.
As she walked slowly out to her car, the miles and miles ahead of her seeming to stretch into infinity, she began to wonder for the first time, strangely, if she would ever make it home.
