If you’d care to start our story at the beginning:
Part One: Desert Stray
Part Two: Fragile Hosts
Part Three: The Final Ride Of Joe Pesci
Part Four: Hunter and Prey
Part Five: Low Voltage
Part Six: Fire and Smoke
Part Seven: Juggling Act
Part Eight: Kicked Into High Gear
* * * * *
J.J.’s Garage
4:30 p.m.
Jaedyn was immediately concerned when she didn’t see anyone on the drive. James not being around wouldn’t have been a big deal, par for the course, actually, but Jason or her mom should have been up front.
“Mom?” she called up to the office. No one responded.
She walked around to the back of the garage. Sometimes, like if they had a particularly busted down car come in or if one of her mom’s wealthier clients brought in a hot rod, everyone would gather in the lot behind the building.
It was then that Jaedyn saw blood pooled in front of James’ bay and on his workbench.
“Mom!” she screamed.
“Be. Quiet.” some woman Jaedyn didn’t know ordered at her from within an old Dodge van. “Get in here before I lock it again.”
Jaedyn quickly jumped in the through the open sliding side door just as the woman gently slid it shut behind her.
“What is going on?” Jaedyn asked. “What’s all that blood, and where is my mom?!”
The woman shushed her and looked out through the van’s back window into the garage.
“You’ve got to shut up,” she said. “He’ll hear us and come back.”
“Who?” Jaedyn looked out the window as well.
“The mechanic, Jason. He killed the other one with a car battery. A freakin’ car battery! Just lifted it and smashed his face.”
Jaedyn couldn’t make sense of any of the woman’s words.
“James is dead? Jason killed James? Where is my mom!”
A lug nut wrench busted into the side window of the van, causing both women to scream. Jason came running. He slammed into the van, rocking it roughly with his inhuman strength. Jaedyn looked at his face through the window. His eyes were purple where they should have been white, as though he’d burst every blood vessel in them.
“Little pigs, little pigs, let me in!”
J.J.’s Garage
Street
4:50 p.m.
Father John wasn’t sure why he was still standing in front of the garage. Worry, he knew, Jaedyn was fifteen minutes longer than she said she’d be, but something else kept him there as well.
Pickles was going crazy, clawing at the sidewalk to get away until his paws bled. Father John finally walked him over to the metal trash can across from J.J.’s and tied him there.
“It’s okay, boy,” he tried a soothing tone that he didn’t feel. “I’ll just be a minute.”
As though he remembered what Jaedyn had said before entering the garage, Pickles howled a mournful wail as Father John walked back across the street.
The front entrance to J.J.’s Garage stuck a little when Father John pushed it open. Likely everyone enters through the usually open front garage doors, he thought, as Jaedyn had mentioned.
“Hello?” he called out to the silent dark.
“Hello.” someone in the dark answered back. A cinder block caught Father John in the chest, breaking some of his ribs. Miraculously, he kept his footing.
“Our Father,” he gasped. Blood bubbled at his mouth. “Who art in heaven.”
J.J. stepped from out of the shadows, wild-eyed and coated in blood from what appeared to be a head wound.
“Go to sleep, Father,” she said. “It will all go much easier if you just pass out.”
Father John slid over, holding himself up on the front counter.
“Hallowed be thy n-name.”
“Suit yourself,” J.J. said, walking toward the holy man like a prey-cornering panther.
J.J.’s Garage
5:10 p.m.
Jason circled the van, hitting it with his fists every now and again on a pass.
Samantha was finding it hard to breathe in the confines of the terrorized van. She’d never had trouble with claustrophobia in her life, but she didn’t know what else this was. Maybe a panic attack.
She had plenty to be panicked about, after all.
Samantha looked at the phone in her hands, willing it to have bars.
“I think I can make it back outside” the young woman, J.J.’s daughter, said as she looked out the window of the van toward a side exit. “Get some help.”
“Don’t be stupid!” Samantha snapped. “You’d never make it.”
Jason banged into the van again.
“I’m going to go for it,” Jaedyn said. “When he’s at the front, I’m going out the back.”
“No, wait, I’ve got a signal!” Samantha shouted.
Before Samantha could protest Jaedyn’s plan further, Jaedyn was enacting it.
Jason slammed the hood of the Dodge, and that was Jaedyn’s cue. She flung the van’s back door open and sprinted across the garage, sparing a look back to see how close Jason was. The screaming was when it dawned on her what had happened. Jason didn’t pursue her.
He went after Samantha.
“Police! Help, I’m at J.J.’s Garage and–” Samantha pleaded.
Jaedyn looked in horror as Jason climbed into the back of the van. She saw him grab a handful of Samantha’s hair. Mercifully, the backseat of the van blocked the rest of the episode from Jaedyn’s view.
Sticking to her plan, she ran for outside. It was dark in the hallway that led out, but she could see the exit sign above the door.
She was going to make it.
But then the exit door swung open and Father John was standing there. He seemed to be having some trouble standing upright, but there he was.
“My girl, even with these busted ribs I feel great!” he exclaimed. “Try it!”
A heavy gear flew from Father John’s hand, smashing Jaedyn in the face so hard that the entirety of her facial bones collapsed like eggshell.
“Oh my,” Father John said. “I suppose that was much too hard.”
It was the last thing Jaedyn ever heard.