Riders on the storm (English version)



  Enzo D’Andrea

  RIDERS ON THE STORM

  Translation by Carmelo Massimo Tidona for

  Zed Lab

  www.quellidized.it

  Riders on the storm

  Copyright © 2013

  Zerounoundici Edizioni

  ISBN: 978-88-6578-240-8

  Cover Image: Shutterstock.com

  You want back choice, you want back control

  I want back my black wings, my cloak

  the key to happiness is

  disobedience in itself

  to what`s not there...

  (Afterhours, What’s not there, What’s not there, 2002)

  RIDERS ON THE STORM

  The engine vibrated with constant intensity, sufficiently uniform for its noise to be heard like a barely whispered lullaby. The black Ford Mustang was moving along Hazens Notch Road, on an old route across the woods of the Hazens Notch National Park, Vermont.

  The road wound between curves and sudden straight lines, flashing around the vehicle a diverse set of plant species. Trees, mostly maples, rich of a representation of yellow, ochre, orange and reddish-green leaves. Low and middle-height bushes. Lonely stretches in which it was the green grass to take over.

  In the sunset, already started and darkened by the clouds thickening in the sky, the vegetation was still clearly visible.

  Autumn had just begun. And now, as usual, it was bitterly cold.

  In that period, during the day, colours were lively.

  Sunny days alternated to gloomy rainy days.

  And it was raining that day. It was good it wasn’t snowing. The road would have been impassable, in that case.

  The view allowed him to see the white line on the blacktop as it was gradually swallowed by the front of the vehicle, in its constant movement towards its destination.

  The rain was coming down, at times determinedly at times lazily, in a succession of alternate phases of rage and calm, affecting the visibility and the mood of the driver. His name was William. William Wallace.

  His left hand was gripping the top of the steering wheel, his right leaning out of habit on the gear lever, in order to be ready for the constant gear shifts that the road required.

  A small pendant in the shape of an electric guitar hung from the rearview mirror.

  The notes of Riders on the Storm by The Doors were spreading inside the car. Ray Manzarek’s organ was the ideal background sound for the hypnotic voice of Jim Morrison.

  Jim sang "... Riders on the Storm / Into this house we're born / Into this world we're thrown / Like a dog without a bone / An actor out on loan / Riders on the storm..."1

  William hummed the words of the song, trying to imitate the voice of his idol. It was always like this when he was travelling alone. He freed himself from every bond, and he could do whatever was going through his mind, with no one there to get on his nerves.

  Although at the time, especially since he was alone, it was inevitable for his thoughts to go to Jasmine. Little Jasmine.

  She had been his girlfriend up to fifteen days earlier, when a car gone crazy had run her over near Montgomery, sweeping her orange 1990 Buick Century, which she loved so much.

  That car was the first thing she had been able to buy with her own money. One thousand and two hundred dollars, no more no less, for a car that was ten-years old car but seemed at worst half that age.

  Jasmine had put aside the money she got by working as a waitress in a hotel, along Route 118 for Hectorville. Hard work, but for a nineteen-year-old girl it was already a big satisfaction.

  But that day – as it happens it had been raining as well – the unexpected had happened. A car out of control had jumped out of its lane, invading the opposite one, on which Jasmine’s Buick was travelling. The girl hadn’t even had time to notice.

  The crash had been impressive. Afterward, there was nothing left to cry on except a pile of twisted metal. Jasmine was gone, passed away before help came. William had been informed only a few hours later.

  It had been impossible to find him earlier, because he was locked in the toilet of a fast-food, having sex with a blonde called Fairy, or something like that. He had met her a few hours earlier, during a student demonstration he had partaken. Even if he had never given a damn about protesting about anything. Impressed by the curves and the sensuality of the blonde, he had done his best to hit on her.

  When, after a few words, he had realized that the girl was game, it was done.

  And, shit, it was too late to feel guilty. Because, sure, he really loved Jasmine. It was just that when the lower half of the body set itself in motion, many men stop thinking with head and heart, and the sexual impulse wins.

  In fact, he wasn’t any different. And he had fallen for it.

  Looking back, though, he felt a surge of anger.

  The memory was too crisp, the fog of time hadn’t yet obscured the details of what had happened.

  He had wanted to know all about the facts, like they had been reconstructed on the basis of evidence, investigations and surveys carried out by the police.

  There were many unclear details. In particular, the thing that had prevented him from sleeping for a whole week was that, when the ambulance had arrived, they had found nobody in the killer car. No body.

  The driver had gone. Evaporated. As if there had been only a ghost driving the car. A shadow that had vanished in the darkness, under the heavy rain, without any human eye noticing anything.

  Remembering those moments, William moved his right hand away from the gear lever.

  In that moment he started gripping the steering wheel with both hands, until they became white. He felt a strong feeling of anger.

  Meanwhile the sky, already dark due to the rain clouds, had become even darker, because the darkness of the evening had fallen.

  With darkness, the visibility on the road was lost. And with it the apparent calm that William had had. The road, on top of that, wasn’t exactly the best in comfort, while being the shortest path to Lowell, where he lived.

  A strong feeling of discomfort was taking him over, appearing with drops of cold sweat beading his forehead and wetting the skin under his armpits, then slipping along his sides, making him shiver. But it wasn’t cold, it was anxiety. William had no explanation for it. He tried, however, to be rational. He was returning from Montgomery, where he worked as a carpenter. A job obtained with the help of his uncle Edgar, brother of Jasmine’s mother.

  He was a few miles from Lowell, where he was born twenty years ago, in a winter night. His mother had had to give him birth at home, because the snow had blocked all means of transport. Thanks heaven, that saint of Graceline Franklin, a retired midwife who had delivered almost all of the current inhabitants of Lowell, lived next door.

  William was going back home after a shitty day.

  Even work had been different than usual. In fact he had gotten a dislocation of his wrist. Something like that. Not anything to even talk about. A good bandage and, after a few days, he would be back in perfect shape. Meanwhile, however, he couldn’t work, and his mind would have no means of recreation.

  He would be back thinking over and over about that absurd tragedy.

  He felt strange.

  The memory of Jasmine and of what had happened fifteen days ago resurfaced strongly, like a sour regurgitation.

  And that made him feel suddenly sick, in the mood as well as in the body.

  In the meantime, he chose to listen once again to that piece by The Doors.

  "... There's a killer on the road / His brain is squirmin' like a toad / Take a long holiday / Let your children play / If you give this man a ride / Sweet family will
die / Killer on the road..."2

  He hoped that at least the music of his idols could help him remove that absurd feeling of discomfort and anxiety he felt on himself.

  The sky was occasionally lit by some electrical bolt of the storm that was coming closer and closer. Every now and then, even some timid snowflake peered out.

  A waterfall came down from the sky, washed the windshield and made the efforts of the wipers almost vain. The road, illuminated by the faint lights of the Ford, was as shiny as the skin of a black snake. It almost looked like a living thing, in the strange visual that William had from within the car.

  He was a few miles from Lowell by now. The stretch of road seemed more visible. The sense of anxiety that had gripped him until then was a bit loosened, but had not disappeared altogether.

  Suddenly, something indistinct seemed to move in the distance. Instinctively, William pressed his foot firmly on the brake. A calm mind would have thought about a wild animal, lost in a storm of rain and snow, trying to cross the road to hide and seek shelter in the surrounding woods.

  But William immediately had the feeling that it couldn’t be an animal. From what little he had seen, whatever it was, that being wasn’t that small.

  However, on the horizon and at the sides of the road, even proceeding more slowly, he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

  Just to be sure, William slowed down a little, until he stopped.

  The noise of the wind and rain had become more insistent. It didn’t allow to hear any other noise or sound coming from outside.

  And that sense of unease strongly returned, even heightened. "What a hell of