Chapter 21
The next morning, Van awoke to find Andie missing. Her body had left a worn impression on the aged comforter and except for that, it was as if she hadn't been there at all. Van stretched her arms over her head, cracked her knuckles, and got up. Her body was tired from the long drive and her mind was exhausted from the encounter with Andie. She walked towards the bathroom and cringed when she saw the yellowing soap scum ridden bathtub and made a mental note to shower in flip-flops. She then habitually checked under the beds, in the albeit small closet, and found nothing. Making one last round of the room, she pulled her duffel and plopped it on top of her bed. She unzipped it and checked its contents. Her jacket, her wallet, even her father's journal were in their respective places, and when she flipped on the television set, she noticed that the room key wasn't in the glass ashtray that was situated to the right of the old Panasonic. She looked over her shoulder at the motel door and frowned,
"Explains the lock," she meandered her way towards the door and slid the chain back on.
A slight niggling in her stomach tugged at her, but fleeted, perhaps Andie's presence was more than a nuisance. Then again, she thought to herself, having acne as a teen was a nuisance and she felt nothing but utter joy when she outgrew that stage in development. This time, though, she didn't feel elated that Andie was gone. She felt used; she felt alone.
Sighing she rummaged through her duffel, pulled out a faded Rolling Stone's tee, the once blood red tongue had now faded to a lackluster faded smudge of lipstick red. She felt around for her worn jeans, with the shredded knees, and declared this morning, a throwback to vintage. Van shuffled to the bathroom, cursed aloud, and yanked a pair of flip-flops she had bought for a day at the beach, cursed again, because she had yet to make it to one, and entered the dank bathroom.
Van turned on the hot water faucet of the bathtub and allowed the room to fill with pore cleansing steam. She watched as her nude figure fogged over in the mirror and that's when she noticed it; a handwritten note on the mirror, visible only because of the steam.
Coffee run- bet I left, huh?
A demented smiley face and Andie's surname, Morgan was scrawled at the bottom of the mirror. Van swiped at the mirror in frustration, opened the bathroom door, and stomped back towards the door she had just locked.
"Actually," Van murmured in annoyance but let the sentiment fade. She did, however, feel the red in her cheeks, as she found herself clothed only in a towel, unlocking a door for a girl she hardly knew. She also thought to herself that she was somewhat happy that Andie didn't just leave her in the middle of a night. That's one pro she had checked off mentally, unlike Dean, who wouldn't have thought twice to leave a message. In hindsight, it had been forever since Van managed to keep anyone around. Either she was too carefree with her heart or she managed to keep everyone she met at arm's length. She refused to have anyone die because of the life she led. Frustrated, she pushed Dean and the morbid thoughts of death from her mind, and reentered the bathroom to take a well-deserved shower.
After her shower, Van picked up her father's journal and skimmed over it, trying to pick up a viable clue as to where she should continue her journey in hunting the Shadow Walkers. Finding herself rereading the same entry, not once, but twice, she slammed down the journal and pried open her laptop.
"Weather patterns for Nebraska, area code," she typed in the numerals six, eight, one, five, and seven, into the web browser, and waited for the maps to pop up on her screen. In total, she was looking at roughly fifteen maps, all containing local, and satellite readings. The sound of keys jingling in the doorknob caught her attention, but what really caused her to look in the direction of the door, was the smell of freshly brewed coffee, wafting into the claustrophobic room.
"Get my message?" Andie smirked noting Van's wet waves of hair.
"Utter brilliance," Van rolled her eyes, "what if I didn't?" she countered Andie, waiting for a smart-ass remark.
"You did," Andie pointed to her hair, "and my nose thanks you," she scrunched her nostrils, "you smelled like ass and whiskey."
"Better than a wet dog rollin' in feces," Van raised an eyebrow and pointed to the bathroom, "it's all yours if you want it."
"Touché," Andie deadpanned and informed Van that she had found a mechanic in town who was willing to repair her sliced tires, but he couldn't get the supplies in until the end of the week, Andie looked over at Van.
"So, you're saying we're stuck with one another," Van noted.
"If you'll have me," Andie tossed her a Boston cream donut and Van caught it with a flick of her wrist.
"You're not that bad," Van humored her and Andie sat cross-legged on the bed parallel to Van's. Andie pointed to the screen on her laptop and noticed the satellite imaging of what she could only assume was Omaha, Nebraska.
"Fweak letrical thorms," Andie tapped the blinking bubbles of information, not bothering to swallow the chocolate glazed she was currently hoovering into her mouth.
"I don't know what's worse," Van couldn't stifle a laugh, "the fact that you chew like a cow or that I totally understood you."
Andie swallowed the chocolately goodness dramatically, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and smiled broadly, bits of chocolate stuck in her teeth, "C'mon you know you secretly love me deep down in that cold heart of yours."
"Love you?" Van threw a pillow at Andie, knocking her in the face, "Girl you're not even likable."
Andie feigned shock and retaliated by throwing the pillow back, her hands and fingers outstretched and she aimed them at Van, who went somersaulting backwards off the bed, onto her haunches.
"What the hell, was that?" she raised her hands at Andie, miming her actions with her own hands.
"Shit," Andie scrambled across the room and helped Van up to her feet, "sometimes when I least expect it, I go and toss someone across a room."
"Wait," Van dusted herself off, "you really did that, just now, didn't you?"
"Yeah," Andie nodded, "I'm a freak, what can I say."
"How do you do it," Van peppered her for information, "mind control," she flicked a finger, counting to one, "the force," she put air quotes around it, "or are you telekinetic?"
"Why I would love it if I was some sort of distant relative of Obi Wan," Andie smirked, "let's just say I can move things with my mind."
"I can't believe it," Van's eyes were wide in admiration, "I am so jealous."
"Don't be," Andie dismissed her, "it has a mind of its own," she rolled her eyes, "it's attached to my emotions," Andie said it as if it were the plague, "which as you can see, aren't quite normal."
"Still," Van cracked her neck, rubbing the back of it with her hand, as she tried to piece all this information together, "it must have its perks." Van raised an eyebrow and Andie nodded,
"I just love-tapped ya," she grinned, "imagine if I hated your guts."
"Morgan," Van handed her a napkin, and indicated that she had a donut mustache, "this looks like the beginning of a freaky friendship."
"Sounds kinky," Andie winked and positioned herself next to Van on the bed, and together they scoured the web and satellite imaging for the next possible location of the German sons of bitches, The Shadow Walkers.
Andie hopped off the bed and dug into her hunter green duffel bag. In one hand, she had multiple pieces of paper and the other, a leather journal similar to Van's. Van eyed it and thought to herself, "Wonder if it's a hunter staple?"
"Look at these," Andie handed the papers to Van, "what do you make of 'em?"
Van flipped through the multiple charcoal sketches, all similar in subject, smoky edges, barely visible limbs, beady red eyes, like flames, and she stopped at the last drawing. It's apparent to her that a child has drawn this one; the rough lines, the empty eyes, she scans the drawing and stumbles upon letters at the bottom. There's an A, inverted, lowercases N and D, and she stops to look up at Andie.
"You," she holds up the drawings, "drew all of these?"
"Yeah," Andie fidgets with the hem in her shirt and bites her lower lip, "they sort of stuck with me all these years."
"You had to have been like, what?" Van asks her, "Five at the time?"
"Six," Andie corrects her, "they took Emma."
Van waits for her to continue, not sure whether she should pry or not, but then Andie shrugs her shoulders, "We were chums, you know," Andie smiles woefully, "didn't have many growing up, but Emma, she was fierce."
Van hesitated and looked skeptically at Andie, who in turn shook her head, "I know what you're thinking, and you're wrong."
"Emma wasn't afraid of shit," Andie informed her, "she had this knowledge for things that went bump in the night, she had this thirst, which no one could fill."
"We'd tell ghost stories, stay over one another's houses, she refused to keep a night light on, the flashlights just happened to be running low on battery life, anything to keep us in the dark."
"I begged her one night, literally in tears, for her to turn on the light," Andie stared at her hands, and picked at her cuticles, that were already raw, "something wasn't right in that house that night." She stopped for a minute to compose herself, "One minute Emma was crawling out of the bed and making her way to the light switch, and the next," Andie shudders, "the next minute she was being dragged across the floor, her screams were deafening."
"Her father came rushing into the room," Andie looked up at Van, whose eyes were round in fright, "he flicked on the light, and she was gone." He searched the whole house, not hearing me, not wanting to believe me."
"He thought she was playing one of her pranks," she scoffed, "they blamed me, you know, for her disappearance."
"Said I was trouble, that I came from a long line of troubled women," Andie's voice grew darker, almost hateful.
"It took me years of nightmares to put the pieces together, that what I saw that night wasn't normal, but it was hell'a real."
"It's not going to take that long to destroy these bitches," Van turned the monitor of her laptop towards Andie, to show her the latest development.
"Is that what I think it is?" Andie's mood began to lighten and Van saw hope in her eyes; or was it revenge?
"Shit yeah," Van double-clicked the location, tore a piece of paper from her journal, and scribbled down the coordinates.
"Hot spot is less than ten miles from here," she typed in the coordinates and pinpointed their location.
"You up for a drive?"
Andie didn't take long to shove her feet back into her shit kickers and throw her hair up into a messy bun. Van didn't waste any time either; she stuffed a few necessities into her duffel, put what Andie could only perceive as brass knuckles into her back pocket, and headed towards the door of the motel room. The door slammed behind them as they made way towards Van's emerald green Camaro.