Scott turned his attention back to the road in time to see a kitten dart onto the blacktop from the tall grass bordering the highway. Tail straight up, eyes flicking back an eerie red reflex in the glare of the headlights, its tawny body froze in the middle of the lane and waited for the killing impact. In a dangerous overreaction Scott veered hard right, plowing the offside wheels into the loose dirt of the shoulder, missing the terror stricken animal by yards. The dirt caught and held, tugging at the car like a giant hand.
The child’s head appeared first, popping out through the curtain of grass like the head of the world’s tiniest vaudeville performer. Her body followed, and then she was standing right there, not a dozen feet away, rigid with fear as the kitten had been only a heartbeat before. She wore a frilly white dress and polished white shoes and she couldn’t have been much older than ten. Her hair was like spun silver, riffling prettily in the breeze. Her eyes, round and terrified, locked on Scott’s in an unwavering death grip that burned with the same red fire as the kitten’s eyes had when it froze in the middle of the road. Pale in the glare of the headlights, she seemed somehow transparent, spectral, unreal.
But the sound she made when the Volkswagen scooped her up, a sound like hailstones pelting tin, was more than real.
It was mortal.
The Beetle’s low chrome bumper took her just above the knees, folding her onto the sloping hood like a well-hit bowling pin. Her head struck the hood with a metallic thunk and then she was rolling upward, slender legs pitched to the right, white arms pinwheeling in small, futile circles. Now her face was in front of Scott’s, bare inches away, glazed eyes still fixed on his even though she was almost certainly already dead.
Then her face struck the windshield with a sharp, wet splintering sound and glass was rocketing inward, glittering shards that stung like angry hornets. There followed an instant when it seemed she would hang there forever, lifeless eyes peering in at him accusingly.
Then she was gone, over the side and down into the pale, receding night…