Exit Number Six

My eyes snapped open. Hands still clutching the steering wheel, foot on the accelerator. Jesus Christ, Joe. How long were you asleep this time?

The car veered away from the motorway central barrier, speedometer needle nudging eighty miles an hour. It was dark and the motorway was empty. My dashboard clock read 1:54. A light rain fell and formed clouds of fine orange mist around the motorway lights.

This stretch heading north was always quiet, always empty at this time of night. My foot slowly squeezed down on the accelerator: eight-five, ninety. I clicked the window switch and it slid down halfway with an electronic hum. I expected the icy whip of night air across my face, to clear my head and rinse the soporific fog from the car, but the air outside was warm and still. The light rain was more of a low cloud. It was thick with humidity. It felt like I was moving through greasy water.

Still on the M90. The Kinross exit must be coming up soon. Exit number six. Come on, number six.

An orange glow painted the horizon ahead, casting the landscape of low hills and trees in black silhouette. The area beyond the motorway to the left and right was drowned by the darkness. My back felt numb all the way to the base of my spine.

That must be the lights of Kinross! I knew I was nearly there. Should be passing Loch Leven. That must have been why it was so bloody dark out there.

I shifted in my seat, trying to get comfortable, but my limbs were stiff and, every way I turned, the car seat jabbed into me.

Fiona would say, "You're getting old, Joe. Time for the pipe and slippers."

She would also tell me not to drive at night. She said it was dangerous and I might fall asleep at the wheel. No more dangerous than driving during rush hour when every other fucker's doing ninety. I'm not playing that lottery. No, at least there's no-one else to worry about at night. I'm never asleep for more than a couple of seconds anyway.

Ninety-two, ninety-three - a bit faster, nobody around.

There wasn't a car in sight, hadn't been for the last few miles. It wasn't far now. I would soon be curled up next to Fiona's warm body, well, after a quick nip of the fifteen-year-old MacAllan. Sleep was impossible without that one little taste of the sweet stuff.

The exit sign for Kinross appeared, rushing out of the amber haze of motorway lights. Sleep tugged at my stinging eyes with fingers of lead.

Exit number six. I drifted the car across the lanes and up the exit ramp, killing the speed to negotiate the upcoming roundabout. It was still much darker than usual. The lights of Kinross should have been flooding out from the east, but sleep gripped my entire body and I could only watch the next few metres of road. I thought of soft pillows and the sting of whiskey at the back of my throat.

I circled the roundabout, heading east, out along a quiet country lane. The tyres crunched on gravel. Trees folded overhead like giant twisted hands,

Something was wrong. I should have been on Station road. Had I taken the wrong exit?

I stamped on the brakes and stretched my head out of the window. Through the trees, somewhere just beyond the end of the lane, I could see the orange glow I had seen earlier. Behind me the motorway lights and concrete of the roundabout were still visible. I must have taken the wrong exit. That was the only explanation, although I couldn't recall any motorway exit around here that led straight onto a country lane like this.

I had driven these roads since I was a teenager. First, in my old red Renault Five, taking Janice Devine with her dyed blonde curls and incredible legs to the shores of Loch Leven at night.

Cans of Tennents lager and condoms on the floor of the car. Joe Drummond, good catholic boy, living the dream. Those were the days.

I looked down at the lane beneath me, at the gravel under the tyres. It was ivory white, jagged, like crushed bones.

From beyond the trees came a whisper, a low hiss, like air escaping from tyres.

Keep going. You're almost here. Join us.

A chill crept through me, making me suddenly aware that I was breathing with a ragged wheeze. Fluid bubbled at the base of my lungs.

They whispered my name.

Join us, Joe. Keep going. Join us.

I jammed the gear-stick into reverse and squashed the accelerator flat. The engine roared and the car screeched backwards – fuck this for a game of soldiers, I was getting out of there.

The car shot out onto the roundabout. I wrenched the handbrake and spun it around one hundred and eighty degrees. Banking left, I skidded onto the entry road and sped down onto the opposite side of the motorway, heading south.

The rushing lights of a truck filled my vision and blinded me. I dragged the steering wheel and swerved to the left. The car trembled beneath me.

The truck was a thundering monolith of steam and wheels, bellowing at me, making my bowels feel heavy and loose. Time slowed as it passed by. The air thickened with the sulphur stench of diesel. The truck was a slab of black metal, grinding, crushing, inches from my door.

"You're on the wrong fucking side of the motorway," I shouted. "Maniac!"

The truck raced into the distance, until it was just a couple of pinpricks of red and white light. Then it disappeared around a bend, back towards the orange glow on the horizon.

I pulled onto the hard shoulder and shut off the engine. The dashboard clock was stuck on 1:54. I tapped it with my fingers, and the numbers flickered off then on again. But it still displayed the same time.

What in God's name was going on? Was this what lack of sleep does to you? That must have been the wrong exit, what else could it have been? But I was damn sure that was the sign for Kinross.

Jesus Christ almighty, Joe. Get a grip.

That had been a close one with the truck. Too close. My old pal Davie Taylor used to drive a truck. He used to tell me about the hallucinations he had while driving the motorways at night, falling asleep for minutes at a time, seeing all manner of crazy things. He told me once that he heard voices; had seen things flying about in the lashing rain; and one time even seen himself, dangling in front of the windscreen like a hanged man caught in the glare of his own headlights, laughing and pointing.

I started the engine once again. It spat, rumbled, and the acrid smell of burning plastic tickled my nostrils - something in the air-conditioning? Bloody car had just had its MOT. Damn it all. That settled it; I was having a cigarette. Fiona would go mental when she smelled it, but I didn't care.

I thought about trying the previous exit--I could hop onto the B road through Gairney Bank and come at Kinross that way. It was only about four or five miles back down the motorway.

I climbed up through the gears, hitting eighty, eighty-five.

There was something about that truck, something wrong other than the fact it had been speeding the wrong way up the motorway. Something in its dazzling lights, in the warped reflections that snaked over the black metal of the drivers cab. Whatever it was it made me feel drowsy again - an insidious, nagging fatigue that grasped at me and pulled me down with poisonous hands.

I slapped myself in the face. Once. Twice. It was like slapping at mud, my face prickled with heat.

There was that orange glow again, blooming over the horizon ahead. There weren't any towns nearby, not in that direction. Well, it could be Cowdenbeath. But that was...

Oh God. No.

I slammed my foot down on the brake pedal and the tyres screamed. The rear end planed off to the left, skidding across the hard shoulder. I came to a stop directly under the sign for exit number six.

My head spun. My heart thumped at the back of my throat.

The car started moving before I was aware of what I was doing, and I found myself accelerating forward and driving onto the exit ramp. I circled the roundabout again and was swallowed by the darkness of the country lane. The orange glow pulsated behind the trees, drawing me in like blood along an artery.

There was the whisper again.

Almost there, Joe. Keep going. Join us.

I slowed the car down to a crawl. The bone-gravel crackled underneath. The trees extended their mangled branches overhead, forming a tunnel.

At the end of the tunnel, somewhere beyond my headlights, past the bend in the lane, I could hear a wet slapping noise, like a sodden rag whipped against stone. Something was moving towards me, slithering, flapping, hissing my name.

Joe. Join us, Joe. Don't go back to the motorway. Stay.

I paused there, rolling to a stop, remembering Janice Devine.

We were hurtling around the country lanes in my Renault, going far too fast, but god it was fun. What a rush. Swigging from a bottle of Autumn Gold cider, I had flicked the headlights off. We were soaring in outer space - look at the stars, Jan. Bloody gorgeous.

The stone wall had seemed to dive at us from nowhere, flailing out of the dark like the crack of a giant whip. Janice smashed straight through the windscreen, a bundle of arms and legs whirling into the dark, glass flying around her like rain - told you to wear a seatbelt, didn't I.

She survived by some miracle, spending months in traction and even longer in a wheelchair. She can even walk now, after years of physical therapy, just not too far at once. Her friend Anne told me that she doesn't blame me anymore. She said that she could feel the metal pins in her legs grinding together when she walked.

I had been lucky. Due to her non-fatal injuries I was only banned for two years with a stiff fine - God bless the British justice system. And all who sail in her.

Janice's father had lunged at me in the aisle of the courtroom. His face was contorted with fury when the baliffs yanked him away. "You fuckin' little shite! Have you no remorse! Look what you did to my wee girl! You'll burn in hell, you hear me, you bastard! Burn in hell!"

I was drawn again by the orange glow at the end of the lane. It grew in intensity and filled me with weariness, a dull inevitability like gravity. What goes up must come down.

"Not yet," I said. "I'm not joining you yet."

I reversed the car back to the roundabout. No panic this time, just a steady pace all the way to the southbound entry ramp, then a smooth glide back onto the motorway. Straight into the fast lane - why not? Nobody around.

I felt a searing heat across my cheeks. A sticky mass spread down my neck like hot jam.

Seventy, seventy-five.

Fiona said that I shouldn't drive at night. I might fall asleep at the wheel. I might have an accident.

Eighty, eighty-five.

My lungs bubbled, some kind of liquid, like boiling milk frothing up into my throat. Exit number six ahead; I let the car drift across the lanes. Sleep licked at me with tongues of flame and my eyes slid shut. All I could see was an orange glow, fire ripping through a metal chassis, my arm bent at an obscene angle. My skin peeled off in layers and shrivelled up like the pages of a burning book.

Ninety, ninety two.

Compared to Janice, I got off lightly that night, just a broken nose and bruising. I've had so many close calls, a bump here, a scrape there. The white Audi that clipped my wing mirror off on the M8 - bastard was racing me. The green Vauxhall that jumped the lights in Dunfermline - thank God my brakes worked.

Then there was that time on the M90, the time I fell asleep at the wheel and missed my exit.

Yes. That's right. I had woken up with the car drifting across from the fast lane. The Kinross exit approaching too fast - exit number six – about to fly past.

I could still make it, not too late.

The truck piled into the passenger door, metal crumpled like foil, gears squealed. It jack-knifed across the motorway, its brakes locked, shovelling me along like a snow-plough and ramming me into the central barrier. Everything collapsed around me. I heard a deep metallic groan and the fuel tank blew.

I was conscious when the flames tore through my vehicle; an orange and yellow wave broke over me, coursed through me, and carried me off.

Join us, Joe. You're almost there.

Joe.

My eyes snapped open. Hands still clutching the steering wheel, foot on the accelerator.

There has to be another exit around here somewhere. Just stay on the motorway a bit longer.

Back to: Vol 2, Issue 1