When Neal could stand it no longer and finally looked over at her face, he jumped so violently that the car swerved to the left.
Natasha was looking at him, all right! Her eyes were open wide, her fuzzy little head turned in his direction, both her eyes blacker than the drizzly night. But that wasn’t what frightened him so much.
Her toothless, infantile mouth was twisted into a grin.
Neal tried to get the car under control, but it had already started skidding.
Then, to Neal’s absolute horror, Natasha spoke.
“Feeeeeeed meeeeeee!” she cried, in a high-pitched, scratchy voice. It sounded almost like that of an elderly woman, like Grammy Snell.
Neal screamed.
A second later, a horn was blaring in his ears. He realized that he was about to smash into a car that was in the left-hand lane.
Neal swerved his own car over to the right. This caused the back end to begin fishtailing, first to the left, then back around to the right...
“Feeeeeed meeeee, Neeeeeal! Feeeeeed meeeee!”
Hearing his name come out of the tiny, hideous mouth pushed Neal completely over the edge. He closed his eyes, no longer concerned with whom or what his car collided.
After another wide fishtail, the car began to skid sideways across the slick pavement. Neal was only dimly aware of the blaring horns of other cars, headlights in his face, and still more blaring horns, a SPEED LIMIT 40 sign that seemed to sweep within inches of his left-hand rear view mirror, and—
The car shuddered to a halt.
It took Neal only a fraction of a second to realize that it had somehow—miraculously—come to a stop on the shoulder of the road, positioned at a right angle to the traffic, without hitting anything.
He flung his door open and jumped out, shrinking back from the car, staring at Natasha.
She was still staring at him, her black eyes seeming even darker than before.
“Feeeeed meeee!” she shrieked.
“Holy mother of God!” Neal yelled.
Several cars slowed down almost to a stop, the drivers staring at him as they rolled past. One shouted something, but Neal was oblivious to all but the screaming monster inside his own car. He was standing smack in the middle of the right-hand lane of traffic. He didn’t know what to do.
“Get out of the road, you dumb-ass!” somebody else yelled. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
Neal turned around, only dimly aware of the pain in his left foot, squinting into the headlights of the oncoming cars, disoriented. He blinked once, then saw more lights. And blue flashes coming from somewhere.
He staggered backwards, looking across the street, then behind him, stumbling. He now saw that the blue flashes were coming from a police car—it was making a U-turn.
“Uh-oh,” he muttered. The sight of the law enforcement vehicle and its strobe lights had jolted him back to reality. He quickly got his bearings and hobbled back over to the driver’s door of his car.
The police cruiser rolled up and stopped.
There were two officers inside—a white male, at the wheel, and a black female in the passenger seat. The male officer opened the door and got out.
He approached Neal with professional caution, one hand resting on his gun.
“What’s going on here?”
