This is an extract from a short story called “The Winding Curve” which I co-wrote with Robert Starr, author of Creek Water and The Apple Lady. The full story appears in Rob’s 2008 collection Sophistry By Degrees.

A year after his wife’s death, Mike finds himself on the old coast road south of town, with his daughter in the back seat. They’ve lingered too long at the cemetery, and now they’re driving around because he can’t face taking her home to an empty house.

Isolated in the dark car, his pale knuckles glow in the light from the instrument panel, and his back’s wet and sticks to the seat.

Out here, his world narrows to the cat’s eyes on the road and the pulse of his daughter’s breathing.

Out here, the stars in the cavernous dark sky haunt him – stars that haven’t moved or changed since a boy on a stolen motorcycle killed his wife, Monica.

Out here, he’s acutely aware that the rubber and steel housing their fragile bodies might not be enough to keep them safe…

And then it starts to rain. Mike clamps his hands on the wheel and leans closer to the dashboard as the dusty wipers squeak across the first spots on the windshield. As if she senses his sudden tension, Faith stops clucking and mooing in the backseat. When he looks into the rear view mirror, he’s sees uncertainty in her wide two-year-old eyes.

And then behind her, he sees something that makes his blood run cold: a single headlight coming up fast through the back window.