When the latest batch arrives, Dale is waiting for them. He watches through the cracked and filthy window of the station as the sedan crunches onto the battered pavement and squeaks to a halt in front of the pumps. There’s movement and muffled conversation among the passengers. Then the driver rolls down the window, pokes out his perfect blond head and calls, “Hey! Can we get some service?”
Dale takes his time. His bad leg won’t let him do otherwise. Two girls emerge from the back seat of the car, looking for a cell signal. They’re out of luck. They lean against the car, sun on their pouting faces. One is a tall white brunette, her hair whipping against her face in the wind so she’s constantly brushing it from her eyes. The other is petite and Black, her hair cropped short. They are young, vibrant, and they make Dale wistful in so many ways. He tries to sigh but it turns into a violent, wet cough. He spits and the girls slither back into the car. Just as well.
“Where’re you folk heading?” he asks, pushing the antique buttons and fitting the nozzle into the car. He pretends not to notice the discussion his question provokes. Finally the blond guy says, “Is this the road to Seton Village? We’re looking for a place called the Morley House.”
This time it’s a real sigh. “Only road there is. Seton’s at the end of it,” Dale says, tapping the button to top off the tank. “What do you want with Morley House?”
The young man in the front passenger seat says, “An orgy!” and does some dumb freak show laugh. The girls poke him and slap his shoulder, but they’re laughing, too. Dale doesn’t remember the last time he laughed.
The brunette stops first. “I’m doing a paper for school,” she says.
Dale nods. It doesn’t really matter. Story ends the same way every time. “That’ll be eighteen ninety-seven,” he says. “Cash only, ’m afraid.”
The blond fishes through his wallet and presses a crisp twenty into Dale’s hand. “Keep the change,” he says, rolling his window up tight before starting the car and pulling out of the station.
Dale watches the car disappear over the next ridge. The wind picks up again and pulls him back into his memories, like it does every damn time.
“Morley,” he says to himself, crushing the twenty with his gnarled fingers. “Damn you.”
In 1967, Seton Village had existed for exactly five years. The Morley family had recently transported from somewhere ill-defined and European their house, their family, and their incredible wealth. Seton Village grew around the promise of pedigree and, more important, jobs. It was that which attracted Dale, then nineteen and wandering in search of his own fortune.
Morley owned the filling station, like everything else in Seton. The old man himself interviewed Dale and hired him on the spot, proudly showing off the gleaming chrome pumps, bright lighting and pristine landscaping of the little place. “You have an important job, son,” Morley said, stroking his snow-white mustache. “This station is the first people will see of Seton Village. It is important that they get the right first impression.”
“Yes, sir,” Dale answered.
“Seton is a modern symbol of progress. But many will come here to know and understand the history of my family. You must be their guide. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, sir,” Dale said. Morley smiled and brushed Dale’s forehead quickly with his thumb. Just like that, he was installed.
The old man was right. Cars poured into Seton, bringing young men like himself, newly-married couples looking for a place to call home, even entire families enticed by the town’s reputation. Tourists came for the antiquing on Main Street or the occasional parade or festival. Dale would fill up their tanks, laugh with them about the weather or politics, hand out maps, and wish them safe driving.
One night a middle-aged tan station wagon drove up and a middle-aged man stepped out, wearing a brown corduroy jacket with leather patches at the elbows. “Can you give me directions to Morley House?” he asked.
This was the first and most specific request Dale’d had for directions. “In town for the parade?” he asked. “It’s something to see. They do it every year, and…”
“Just the house, please.”
Dale was deflated, but had his instructions. “Sure. Continue on the road another three miles; that’ll take you to town. Keep following until you can’t anymore, then turn left. Can’t miss it.”
The man thanked Dale and handed him a five-dollar bill.
“Fill up?” asked Dale, but his customer had already gotten back in his car and was pulling away. The encounter was unlike any before, and left Dale uneasy.
Morley himself came by three days later in his vintage black Packard. His dazzling wife (or daughter; Dale wasn’t sure and wouldn’t dare ask) sat beside him. Both were dressed in black, their fingers crusted with rings. Morley beckoned to Dale from the driver’s window.
“Thank you for assisting my good friend, Professor Singleton, in finding my residence,” said Morley.
Dale scrunched his brows together, then remembered the corduroy. “Sure thing,” he said. “Did the professor find you all right?”
“Oh, I assure you,” said Mrs. (Miss?) Morley in a voice like hot honey, “He found exactly what he was looking for.”
Morley laughed. “Anyone else comes looking, send them our way. We do so love company.”
The car pulled away without a fill. Dale scratched his head, shrugged, and moved to serve the next customer at the pump.
In 1975, Dale fell in love.
He was getting a sandwich out of the vending machine at the station when he heard the characteristic thump of a flat tire. A deep red roadster pulled in, its driver a deep brunette. She stepped out of the car in heels that matched it, wearing a light trench coat tickled at the shoulders by the flattering waves of her hair. She waved to Dale and he practically lept to assist her.
“Can I help you, Miss?” he said.
The driver’s mouth twisted into a sort of half-smile. “I got a flat, and I’m gonna be late for an appointment.”
“Got a spare?” he asked, distracted for a moment by her cool voice.
“In the trunk.”
“I’ll get the jack.”
Within minutes Dale had the tire off, spotting the nail protruding from the rubber. He mounted the spare and screwed on the lug nuts, keeping up his practiced banter. “What brings you to Seton?”
“I’m a reporter,” came the reply.
“With the Gazette?” The local paper was the only one Dale ever read, often because a customer threw it out. Seemed a fine paper for all that.
“Not exactly. I’m doing an interview for a piece… Say, do you know how to find the Morley House?”
Dale swore as the jack lowered the car too fast, scraping his hand. He didn’t answer, merely took up the wrench and tightened the spare into place. “If you wait, I can plug this leak.”
The reporter’s face fell. “I can’t be late.”
“All right,” he said, eager to make her smile again. “How about you ride the spare into town, do your interview, and when you come back I should have it ready. No charge.”
Her smile, when it came, was the most entrancing thing he’d ever seen. “Really? Thank you!”
He turned quickly to the garage to hide his blush. He didn’t want this beautiful lady thinking he didn’t take his job seriously. He slid the jack away and stood up. “All set.”
She released a mighty sigh. “You have no idea what a lifesaver you are…”
“Dale,” he supplied. “I’m just doing my job, miss.”
“Katie,” she said. They shook hands. “Katie Singleton.”
He dropped her hand so she wouldn’t notice how cold his got.
Perhaps it was too late. Her voice went low. “Can I ask you something, Dale?” They were alone in the station, but she looked around anyway. “My uncle, Professor John Singleton, came to Seton about eight years ago. He never came back. Do you remember if he stopped here? If he made it to town? Anything?”
Dale remembered. He remembered the black Packard and the contempt in Mrs. Morely’s voice. He shivered and wanted to retreat, but Katie looked at him so hopefully. “No,” he said. “I’m afraid I don’t remember anything about a professor either way.”
She nodded, biting her lip. “Well, thanks for fixing the tire. Really, you’ve been such a help. I’ve got to run.”
“Can I see you again?” He laughed, tried to make it sound like a joke, in case she was offended. “I mean, I will see you again, when you come for the tire.”
She rested a finger against her lip and looked him up and down. He braced himself for a slap, but instead she nodded her head and laughed. “I’m looking forward to it, Dale.”
Then she was in the car and on the road, left turn out of the station, on her way to Seton. Dale worked with a lightness he’d never had before, making the tire better than new. But as the sun crested in the sky and began to sink again, the roadster did not appear, nor its driver to claim it. He waited until dusk, until the stars came out, but Katie never came back.
By 1984, Dale began to warn people.
At first, he was subtle. If someone pulled up and wanted directions to Morley House, he would pretend to be confused, or not have heard of the place. Or he would give the wrong directions. This was hard; there was the one road that led into and out of Seton Village, and the Morley House was the largest and most famous building around. No one he steered wrong stayed that way. Eventually, every car full of teenagers, truck driven by rednecks and sedan carrying businessmen found their way to town. None who came seeking the Morley House ever returned. Dale knew this, because he was keeping a log of their license plate numbers.
He turned up the danger. He described previous disappearances, injecting his own imagined details into the stories. No one believed him. One particularly burly fellow took offense at the whole performance and tossed a bottle of beer at the station office window, which cracked right down the middle with a sharp ping.
The Gazette still landed in his garbage bin, and he read how the town prospered. The Morleys seldom received any ink, but every story had a stink about it, and he knew it was from them, just as he knew they were behind the cars that never left. He fumed and tore the paper to bits and filled tanks anyway, raging and powerless.
In 1992, Dale decided to leave.
He woke one morning on his squeaky cot, looked for the thousandth time at the cracked window he’d given up getting fixed, and walked out of the office. He turned right at the parking lot and put one foot in front of the other, following the road for as long as it would take him.
He made good progress. By his watch it had been an hour, by his instinct he had walked maybe three miles. But the sun grew large in the sky. He swallowed like sandpaper and wished he’d brought water with him. He kept walking. Another hour, and another, the sun burning hotter. Finally he spotted a filling station in the distance. He grinned despite himself. It was a little like coming home. He’d get a soda, maybe hitch a ride.
He jogged the last half mile, but as he closed the final few yards his feet became heavy. The station didn’t seem to be attended. He trudged up to the pumps and glanced at the office. A large crack sliced through the window, winking in the sun. He let himself in. There was his jacket. And his cot.
The next day he tried turning left, into town. He arrived back at the station in two hours. On his third try, he was back in one. He didn’t try again.
Some days later an SUV pulled up to the pump. A man lowered his window and waved for service while his wife hustled out two young kids to stretch their legs. Dale dutifully approached the pump.
“Can I get a fill up?” said the man through the window. Dale nodded and began pressing the buttons. “And do you know the best way to Morley House?”
Dale looked over at the mother and kids, now out of earshot, fascinated by a bug on the sidewalk. He turned to the customer and said, “You don’t want to go to Morley House. You want to turn around and go home.”
“What are you talking about?” the man asked.
Dale pumped the gas. “It’s dangerous. Bad things happen there.”
“Yeah, thanks for the warning, I guess, but we’re expected.” The window hummed as it rolled up. Dale moved his arm in to block it and winced as the glass squeezed his skin.
“Honey? Everything okay?” asked the mother, her look of concern divided between her husband and kids.
“I need a ride,” said Dale, the glass still pressing painfully on his arm. “Please, just drop me off a mile or so away, that’s all I need. Then if you want you can turn around, but it’s an emergency.” The man’s eyes were wide and scared. “I’ll give you the gas, no charge. But please, I have to get out of here. My wife…”
The lie seemed to wring some sympathy from the suburbanite, who rolled the window down and released Dale’s arm. “Okay,” he said. “A mile, then we turn back. Climb in the back seat.”
Dale finished pumping and quickly squeezed himself into the third row of the vehicle. The mother and kids climbed back into their seats, the parents having a hushed discussion while the children looked at Dale with a mix of curiosity and suspicion. He was used to it.
The father called for seatbelts, and they were off. The SUV turned right and Dale sighed. He watched the filling station disappear in the rear window, then closed his eyes while the shadows of passing trees fluttered over him. The kids played an intense game of putting their hands on each others’ seats, and he listened like he was at church.
“Hands to yourself!” shouted the father.
“But he’s touching me!”
“Knock it off!”
“Honey…” came the mother’s voice.
“I see the truck,” said the father. “There’s plenty of room.”
Dale opened his eyes in time to see the eighteen-wheeler bearing down on them, “WIDE LOAD” banner flapping crazily with the speed. The voices in the SUV raised as one before the vehicles collided. Gravity yanked from under them and spun in a loop until finally there was rest and silence.
When he awoke, Dale was in a hospital. His left leg was in a cast and steel spikes held his head steady. Beside him was Mr. Morley. The old man, wrinkled by decades but his mustache still trim and white, had a fountain pen in his hand and was drawing a complicated design on the cast.
“That was foolish of you, Dale, abandoning your post like that,” he said, focused on the ink swirling on the plaster. “That poor family, to say nothing of the other driver. What a horrible way to go.”
“Please.” Dale’s lips twitched against the bandages on his face. “Let me go.”
“Now, son, you know I can’t do that. Someone has to tend the station.”
“Find… someone else…”
“But you’ve been doing such a good job!” Morley locked eyes with Dale, the steel spikes keeping Dale from looking away. “I’m sure this was a simple mistake.” Morley capped his pen, slipped it into his jacket and said, “I think you’ll find you’re right as rain very soon.” He stood slowly, leaning on an elegant ebony cane and adjusting the drip with his free hand. Dale’s brain fogged. “Then it’s back to work, yes?”
Dale just felt the old man’s hand brush his forehead before slipping away.
When he awoke he was on his cot at the filling station, his cast was gone, and the first customer of the day was pulling up.
In 2004, Dale hanged himself with a jumper cable.
It didn’t take.
When Dale sees the black Packard pull into his station, he knows what he has to do. He grabs the tire iron and stalks outside. The window rolls down and he raises the iron above his head, but the voice that speaks is such a surprise his weapon falls clanging to the pavement.
“Hey,” says the Black girl with the short hair. “Think you can put some gas in this piece of junk?”
He would, if he could move. His jaw hanging like the station’s dilapidated sign, he takes in the bruises on her face and the blood… everywhere. Is it all hers? Is any of it hers?
“Hey, guy, come on!”
He recovers himself and starts pumping. The girl leans her head back and breathes like she just finished a marathon. Dale lets the pump work and asks, “Are you all right, Miss?”
She glares at him through the one eye that isn’t swollen. “They’re all dead back there. All the Morley bastards.” She licks her lips and coughs a laugh or a sob. “Want some advice, man? Get out of here.”
The pump clicks off and there is silence. The Morleys are dead. Dale rubs his forehead. Could he, finally, just leave? He replaces the nozzle, but the Packard sits still. Maybe she’s waiting for him. He could get in the car and just…
“No,” he says, the sound scratched and squeezed past his rough throat. He remembers the SUV. The kids. He can’t risk killing this girl who survived so much. “Someone has to tend the station.”
“Suit yourself,” she says, and peels out.
His days blur. There are hardly any cars anymore. The road is unmaintained and the station worse. Dale wonders if at last he will die, but he’s too chicken to try it himself again.
One morning, an expensive dark car pulls up to the pumps. It’s not the Packard, and Dale relaxes a little. The driver is a man in his twenties, hair cut to the same precision as his suit, rings on three of his fingers. “What can I do for you?” Dale rasps.
The driver doesn’t turn off the car, doesn’t make eye contact. “This the road to Morley House?” he asks.
Dale’s heart picks up its rhythm, and he’s afraid for it. “What do you want with Morley House?”
“Not that it’s your business, but I own it. I need to see if there’s anything left of my inheritance. Though if this station is any indication, it’ll be a pile of rubble.” The man holds up a hundred-dollar bill. “Put twenty’s worth in the tank, and make it quick.”
Dale takes the bill and stares at it like he’s never seen such a thing, because he hasn’t. “I’ll have to make change,” he says.
“Fine. Whatever.”
Dale limps back to the station office and cranks open the till. He lays the hundred on the counter and starts counting twenties.
“What’s taking so long?”
No more twenties. A ten and some fives, one after another.
“I got places to be, old man.”
The crack in the window bisects the customer’s head in a pleasing way. Dale feels the eighty dollars in one hand and looks longingly at the hundred on the counter. There’s a clunking sound outside as the man fiddles with the pump. He fills his car himself.
Dale puts the money, all of it, into his pocket. While the man holds on to the nozzle, Dale takes the wand from the bucket of dirty water and limply washes the windshield. He sees the keys in the car. The engine hums like a dream.
The gas stops and the man pulls out the nozzle. He barks, “Where the hell’s my change?”
But Dale has already opened the driver’s door, sunk into the creamy leather seat, and hit the gas. The car lurches a bit, which is fair. He hasn’t driven in ages. But the ride smooths out and soon he’s taking that right turn, away from the station and out to the highway. His customer yells and cusses and Dale feels a little bad about marooning him. But someone has to tend the station.
The radio of the car is playing oldies and that suits Dale fine. He opens the window, enjoying the breeze and the sun and the freedom. There’s nothing to stop him now.
At least, until he runs out of gas.
Jessica Lévai loves stories and has a PhD in Egyptology. Her first novella, The Night Library of Sternendach: A Vampire Opera in Verse, won the Lord Ruthven Award for Fiction. She dreams of one day collaborating on a graphic novel, and meeting Stephen Colbert. Visit her online at JessicaLevai.com
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