It Ended Under the Stars

Carrey stared out the window in the backseat of the well loved sedan her dad had bought twenty years prior. She’d never liked the car- the leg space was too cramped since she’d shot up to her Dad’s height almost overnight, it seemed. Like a bean sprout, her aunty loved to remind her. The air conditioner sputtered and was temperamental and there was the lingering smell of burnt popcorn and the windows rattled when she wound them down. Not that Carrey would ever admit it to her hardworking parents, but it was an embarrassing old bomb compared to the sleek silver cars her friend’s parents paraded.

However none of these trivialities bothered Carrey tonight as she watched the sky before her. The stars blurred across the glass, carving ribbons of silvers and whites against the velvet black sky. She marvelled at their beauty. Despite being opposed to the trip at first, she admitted to herself that the world was much more beautiful and, well bigger than she had ever allowed herself to believe back in the city.

More Than A Feeling, that damn 80s song- or was it 70s?- Carrey wasn’t sure, was playing through the crackling speaker and her Mum hummed along in the front seat. Her hand, small, gentle, clicked into place in the darker hand of her Dad as he one handed steered down the empty highway.

“You always get the lyrics wrong.” Ben grumbled. A few years younger than Carrey, Ben’s attitude reached a ten at the same time his age had.

“That’s half the fun.” Alonso replied, smiling at his wife. Steph smiled back softly.

It was during this conversation that Carrey’s gaze flickered beyond the wedding ring upon her Mum’s finger, rebuffed recently in celebration of their twenty year anniversary, to the road ahead.

A slippery band of fluid smeared across the asphalt. Flashes of silver. Pointed edges.

“Dad!” Carrey shouted. Her warning was drowned in the panic that caught in Steph’s shout. She’d noticed it too. Alonso’s hand wrenched itself from the sanctitude of Steph’s hold and flew to the wheel.

Al’s eyes frantically searched for the safest viable path. On one side was the treacherously steep cliffs of the corroding mountainside. Unforgiving and brazenly perilous. The alternative was the other lane of potentially oncoming traffic. An unsteady truck driver perhaps, taking the speed limit too liberally. Al didn’t like his chances either way. Surely there was an option outside of the two evils.

Al was not usually a betting man but the highway had been a vacant runway for miles.

He slammed on the breaks and spun the steering wheel, vying for the opposite lane but his uncooperative old sedan denied his attempt. The tyres screeched in a faltering skid, spinning wildly in his attempt to swerve. Alonso braced himself as the car stayed true to its course.

Carrey gripped the passenger seat door handle and her arm flew across Ben’s body in protection.

The car shuddered across the bumpy terrain, veering sideways, perilously close to the jagged mountainside. Carrey jolted violently in her seat as the tyres hissed and seethed, buckling beneath them. Her seat belt whipped itself sharply against her chest. She continued gripping Ben’s hoodie as the force threw him forwards.

A shriek. A collective scream.

Then finally; an unsettling vibration resounded throughout the car as the tyres caught and tore like buttons popping off an old shirt.

The car decelerated. The declining speed felt like a collective exhale pooling between them.

Gripping the wheel with a white knuckled grasp, Alonso steered the car to the side of the road. The car rolled on through with the last breaths of air the tyres had to offer with a tired sputter as it sunk into the dirt and mud against the mountainside.

“Is everyone okay?” Steph asked immediately as she wrenched her seat belt off her body and addressed her children. She surveyed them for injuries.

Carrey wordlessly nodded, wide eyed. Her heartbeat still thudded wildly. Ben’s face was alight in terror.

“What was that?” Ben demanded, eyebrows knitted in fear. His body trembled from the shock.

“Al? Are you okay?” Steph turned to her husband. Alonso’s hands were still fastened to the wheel.

“Dad? What happened?” Ben’s voice was even more pinched in worry.

Alonso remained silent for a heavy moment, in frantic thought.

“I’m going to check the wheels. We’re going to need-,” Steph shakily began to formulate a plan.

“No.” The word ripped itself free from Carrey’s throat instinctively.

Steph swiveled in her seat and furrowed her eyebrows. “Are you okay, Car?”

Carrey couldn’t quite explain it but an ominous anxiety ploughed through her, seizing control of her airways her with a foreign terror.

“I’m going to-,” Steph tried again, more tentatively this time.

“Steph, stay in the car.” Alonso spoke, words leaden.

Steph glanced back at her children, at their wide-open vulnerable faces, stricken with worry, smarting with fear. She shrunk back in the car seat and looked to Alonso.

“Al?” Her voice was small, folding in on itself like origami..

“Everyone, quiet.” He spoke intensely, voice alive like oil slicked across a hot pan. He pressed the button on the side door.

Carrey watched the snib on her passenger door lower. Locked.

“Dad?” Ben whispered, wringing his hands. “You’re freaking me out, what’s-,”

“Al?” Steph asked. “What’s going on?”

“Kids, get down. Now.” His eyes were crowded with adrenaline.

 “Dad?” Ben repeated.

Carrey unbuckled her seat belt and dropped to the car floor. Her carefully folded body vanished into the shadows.

“Just do it, Ben.” She forcefully whispered at him.

Alonso reached under his seat and procured the crowbar he kept for ‘just in case’. He steadied his breathing, praying he wouldn’t have use of it.

“Why?” Ben insisted. His lack of understanding fuelled his panic.

Carrey felt a knot form inside of her. Despite it being a warm night she was ice cold. She knew why the tried and trusted old sedan had skidded so violently across the otherwise smooth road. There’d been a spill. She knew what she’d seen blanketing the road.

Nails. Hundreds of them.

“This wasn’t an accident.” Alonso spoke gravely.

Carrey felt her breath catch in her throat as she heard her Dad voice what she desperately needed to not be true.

“Someone laid those nails there.”

Ben shuddered. “B-but why?”

Carrey looked up through the darkness. Her brother, like her, had made himself as small as he possibly could. Carrey had never seen a person look quite so small, even when he was just a newborn in her arms. No, with his eyes glassing over in unknown terror, Carrey knew she’d never seen anyone being made to feel so small in the big, beautiful world they’d been exploring.

Alonso spoke again, gripping Steph’s hand. His words were like a rock in water.

“This was a trap.”

Steph swivelled in her seat, covering her children with the knitted blanket she’d made a tradition of taking on long car trips. Carrey and Ben’s fear stricken faces disappeared into the protective safety the shadows provided. Al’s words had struck a chord of terror in her.

Steph sat back in her seat, ears straining, eyes searching. There, in the rear view mirror. An abnormality moving from the shadows outside, beyond the tiny broken car. Steph’s heartbeat fastened. Her head and body were still spinning out of control.

“Al,” She whispered, head not daring to venture behind her.

Al nodded gravely and his grip tightened on the crow bar. He’d noticed.

From under the thin veil of blissful sanctitude the blanket offered, Carrey listened. The scratchy material itched her nose and the carpet dug into her skin. She could feel Ben’s body, overcome with anxiety, heaving beside her. The hatched fabric cocooned her in absolute darkness.  

“Kids, whatever you do…stay down, stay hidden.” It was her Mum’s voice, trebly with fright, steely with adrenaline.

Carrey held her breath like it was a ball of material, scrunched up tightly.

A sound sliced through the thick tension that swarmed her. A rhythmic pacing. The steady sound grew louder.

Closer.

The sound, discernible now as footsteps matched the thudding of Carrey’s heartbeat. The steps were loud enough to emit a crunching sound across the uneven gravel. It was so close now Carrey was sure she could reach out and her fingertips would brush the leg of the stranger should the passenger door swing open.

She felt Ben freeze beside her. He heard it too.

The deafening foot steps halted. Their stop was purposeful. Driven. Planned.

Carrey peeled the blanket back slightly. The only thing she could see through the darkness was the frozen forms of her parents, determined but terrified.

Without needing to say a word, the paralysed forms of her parents and their craned necks all looking towards her passenger door window told Carrey that the stranger had paused outside her door.

Her heart beat was an eagles cry ricocheting across an empty canyon.

The stars flickered above her, too far away but far closer than they’d ever been in the city. They winked, mocking how small and powerless she was. How small she’d always been.

Carrey reached underneath the seat of her Dad’s seat, slowly, carefully. Painstakingly slowly her outstretched fingers whispered against objects, searching and filtering for one thing. Shoulder straining, muscles pulling, she grasped it.

Her Dad’s pocket knife.

Carrey pulled it to her chest tightly, preparing herself. She pressed her body against the door and her hand crept towards the handle.

She would be small and powerless no longer.