OK, this is a smallish update, that will only cover a fraction of our last (and somewhat long ago) session, but at least it gets us out of the cliffhanger. And I'm winging it on exactly what happened -- it's been a little while.
The Circle K guy was not really a good driver -- in fact, he had never driven a stick at all. With a grinding crunch, the truck lurched and stopped. Ashen-faced and staring, he and the old lady watched as the luminiscent creature, like some blasphemous insect that dwells far from the wholesome light of the sun, passed slowly and silently through the windshield and entered the head of Damien. The other creature wandered around below, seeming to disappear from view.
With a heaving breath of panic, Circle K jumped out of the truck and began running as fast as he could up the ramp. But Damien woke up after just a few more seconds. He wasted no time in lurching like a trembling slug, to the door, vomiting outside loudly. After a moment, he seemed to be more or less recovered, although he had no immediate memory of what had happened. He drove slowly up the ramp, passing the running Circle K guy, who wouldn't get back in the truck with him for some reason.
At the top of the parking garage, there was an older car, and in the back seat was a faux fur jacket, pink, short and thick with the stink of stale vodka. A russian women, moderately attractive, although with much too much make-up, and an outfit reminiscent of costume design from Married with Children was heading towards it, cursing the man who had driven her here to begin with. Suddenly, a motorcycle flew past her, nearly clipping her. She turned and cursed at that driver too. Looking down the ramp, she could also see (and hear the rumbling diesel) that a large pick-up was also climbing. With with a jolt, each of the individuals in the garage felt that they were instantly somewhere else. Each of them relived intensely emotional and personal moments of their lives -- and then they each lived each other's highly personal and emotional moments. And then, the instant was gone, and everything was as it had been.
Outside, the world seemed sane again. Each of the individuals huddled together near the top of the garage. At this point, Damien finally learned the names of the small group.
The old lady was Jessica -- a mystery writer of some notable success, as it turns out.
The frumpy bookish sort was Ejner -- a Scandinavian native.
Circle K was Rob Miller, who still seemed somewhat panicked and unwilling to get too close to anyone else in the group.
The motorcycle driver was Matt -- the only one who seemed to hit it off with Rob at all.
And Lulu -- she had no interest in getting to know any of the others, and frankly was angrily suspicious that she had been the victim of some complex scam. Damien quickly lost patience with her emotional and completely unrational outbursts.
Within moments, a patrol car checked on the group. A barrage of confused and unusual stories assaulted his ears, and before long he was calling for back-up as the bodies of the two construction workers were discovered. (Rob spent most of this time hiding behind cars across the street -- he had some other motive for not wanting to be seen, apparently.) However, as our stories all corroborated each other's (when any sense could be made of them) we were only required to make a statement, Damien's pistol was appropriated, and we were told not to leave town for a few days.
Everyone more or less went their separate ways at that point, although the two or three individuals with actual vehicles ended up dropping the rest off at their various hotels, houses or trailer parks (in Lulu's case.)
But something else had happened too -- something that so far only Ejner and Damien seemed to feel. In the mind of each was a mountain -- a large mountain, and something was underneath it. Each succeeded in creeping out the others with their talk to each other: "We've got to find the mountain!" "The mountain, dammit, don't you understand?" "There's something there -- underneath the mountain."