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It was like
someone calmly decided to park it there and leave.
    “ I don’t like this,” I
started but Dex quickly threw his arm back at me and held me in
place, finger to his lips. He stopped and peered intently at the
car. We were only a few feet away. I wanted to grab on to him for
dear life.
    I also wanted to ask him
what he was looking at but didn’t dare speak. Or
breathe.
    He took a tentative step
forward.
    Then I saw it.
    Something popped up in the
backseat and then disappeared. I didn’t know what it was but I can
tell you it wasn’t human.
    Dex slowly turned and
looked at me, the whites of his eyes glowing madly in the sparse
light.
    “ We better leave,” he said
quickly, turning around and yanking me towards our car.
    “ What is it?” I cried out,
still wanting to see despite the thick fear in my throat. I looked
back as Dex dragged me forward, his grip on my arm
strong.
    Something shadowy moved in
the backseat again. The car rocked back and forth for a few
seconds…
    The head of a coyote poked
out of the car. Seeing us, it jumped out of the backseat and onto
the road.
    I gasped. Dex turned to
look and stopped.
    The coyote held us in its
gaze, its eyes strangely familiar. I’d seen coyotes before; they
were a nuisance in the countryside around Portland. But there was
something strangely terrifying about this one. Maybe it was the
circumstances…had that coyote just eaten everyone in the
car?
    I couldn’t tear my eyes
away from it. It just stood there, as still as the air around us,
but I had this feeling like it already had its teeth in me. Its
eyes were the strangest green color. They sparked with
intelligence. Did coyotes even have green eyes?
    Suddenly, I felt a hard
pull on my arm again. Dex dragged me towards the Jeep. I looked
back and the coyote was gone.
    It was like some heavy fog
lifted from my eyes, as if the last few seconds had been a dream
and I was finally coming to. We quickly got in our vehicle and
without saying a word to me, he thrust it into gear and we sprinted
down the highway at an alarming speed.
    I stared at him. His hands
were back to holding the steering wheel with a Kung-Fu grip, his
mouth was set in a firm line and his eyes…well, his eyes weren’t
fearful but they were lost in thought.
    I wanted to ask him what
had just happened…where did the occupants of the car go? Why was
there a coyote in the car? Why did we have to leave so fast? But I
could see I wouldn’t be getting anything out of him tonight. I had
to come up with the answers by myself. I turned my attention to the
blackness sweeping past us, made more mysterious now knowing a
party of people could be out there, just wandering the
desert.
    I didn’t know what had
happened to the people in the car, but I knew they weren’t attacked
by a coyote. Coyotes wouldn’t dare attack a party of humans, no
matter how hungry they were. If anything, the car was abandoned and
the coyote was scavenging for any…leftovers. I shuddered at the
thought of rogue body parts in the backseat.
    I wasn’t quite satisfied
with that conclusion but it had to do for the remainder of the
drive. Within an hour we were pulling up to a nondescript motel
perched at the edge of a deadbeat town. We hadn’t said a word to
each other the whole time.
     
    ~~
     
    My room looked straight out
of a bad 70’s porn. The wallpaper was peeling in the corners, there
were nicotine stains on the walls, and the bed was one of those
coin-operated models. The only thing missing was the shag
carpeting.
    I plunked my bag on the
lone chair, not willing to trust the patchy ground, and carefully
sat on the corner of the bed. I had a bad experience with bedbugs
once and that was in a quality hotel. I didn’t want to think of
what could be hiding in the scratchy sheets here.
    I sighed and took stock.
Had my life really come to this? Staying in a gross motel in New
Mexico on some crazy ghost hunting expedition? Things always
sounded cooler before you actually