The car that she was driving down I-95 at just past three in the morning was starting to make strange noises, and the check engine light had come on, a brilliant and panicky yellow. “No, no, no,” she moaned, taking her foot off the gas and trying to let the car coast a little while before pressing the gas pedal again. The car was shaking now, vibrating as if someone had decided to turn it into a washer and set the cycle on “spin.” She heard grinding noises, too—and couldn’t imagine any way those noises could be just a passing thing. Something had gone very, very wrong. Caelyn wasn’t big on praying, but she started to pray now. She wiped her blonde hair away from her face, glancing at herself in the rearview mirror and being met by a pair of wide, frightened blue eyes and a pale complexion. There was nobody else on the road—she hadn’t seen a car in probably half an hour, when she’d passed the Charlton Plaza some miles back. There had been a few trucks and a couple of other lonely drivers then, but afterwards it was just her on this dark and lonely highway, her headlights sweeping out in front of her car as she tried desperately to outrun the pain and fear of what had happened to her just a couple of hours ago.
