Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 24

(1)

He still had his face buried in his arms, so Mike did not even know he was in mortal danger until the cruiser leapt over the crest of the hill and hurtled at him.

Then he heard it: a fierce and immediate bellow as the police car’s heavy engine revved to a screeching pitch. Mike jerked his head up and twisted around to see the white dragon’s eyes of the headlights not twenty yards away; the lights flared to high-beam brightness, piercing him like lasers.

“No,” Mike breathed. “Not now.”

The cruiser came barreling at him, and even though it was not the monstrous wrecker, Mike knew full well who it was. He instantly leapt off his bike and jumped down into the drainage gully, dragging the bike with him as the cruiser struck the empty air where he’d been—with such force that the vacuum sucked Mike off balance. He was showered with gravel and dirt as he fell into a heap at the bottom of the ditch.

Eddie slammed on the brakes, but it took fifty yards for the car to fishtail to a stop. He threw it into reverse, accelerated back to where the boy was scrambling up onto the field side of the ditch, skidded to a stop, slammed it into park, and was out of the car in an instant. He raced around the car and leapt the ditch. The boy was out of the ditch and running hard for the cornfield beyond. Eddie considered drawing his sidearm, but didn’t. Though the road was empty now, tourist cars would certainly be coming. Besides, it would be more holy to do this by hand. With the voice of God shouting in his head with every step, he ran after the boy.

Deep inside the cornfield Mike slowed from a run to a walk and then stopped, keeping his labored breathing as quiet as possible while he listened to the sounds. He could hear Tow-Truck Eddie crashing through the stalks about forty yards from him, going in the wrong direction. Despite everything Mike grinned. “Asshole.”

He crept back the way he came, shortening the route to try and find the path to the road. Halfway there he saw something up ahead that made him smile even more. There was a rusted red wheelbarrow standing in a lane between the rows. Inside was a spool of chicken wire, a pair of wire cutters, and four three-foot lengths of pine used for supporting damaged cornstalks.

Mike stuffed the cutters into his back pocket and hefted one of the staves. Not as long or as strong as the bokken, but better than nothing. He started to turn away when something—some instinct—made him turn back and take the spool of wire. It was the size of a big apple and fit into his jacket pocket.

Feeling marginally more confident, he started once more toward the road, trying not to do a comparison between his makeshift arsenal and the weapons the big man would have. Gun, nightstick, maybe a Taser. And about a hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and mass more than he had. Holding the stick like a sword, he crept back toward the road.

Eddie slowed to a stop and listened, straining his senses forward through the field to try and locate the Beast, but there was nothing, no sound.

The voice of God in his head hissed in inarticulate rage and Eddie could almost feel himself being spun around by invisible hands. Back! The single word was shouted in his head. The voice of God, so long absent, now roared at him, warning him of another mistake. Tow-Truck Eddie realized that he had been underestimating the Beast.

“The Father of Lies,” he murmured, and he ran back toward the road.

Mike was nearly to the edge of the field when he jolted to a stop, realizing with horror that he could no longer hear the distant thrashing of Tow-Truck Eddie deeper in the field.

Where was he? He turned in a slow circle, peering between the tightly planted rows of corn, but with the light breeze the stalks were constantly moving, the sun was just about to set, and the whole field was dissolving from red-gold sunset to the featureless purple of twilight.

Mike felt a hand close around his shoulder—he let out a shriek and spun around, swinging wildly with the stick—but there was no one there.

A shiver of dread passed through him. Mike could still feel the residual imprint of those fingers—icy and strong.

Then Tow-Truck Eddie stepped out of the corn, grinning.

“What’s wrong with you?” Mike screamed. “Why are you doing this?”

Eddie’s smile brightened into one of terrible joy. “Into my hands is delivered the Beast!” Mike had no idea what that meant and he tightened his grip on the stick, ready to fight.

“Leave me alone. I didn’t do anything!”

Eddie craned his head forward. “You exist! You are an abomination in the eyes of God.”

There was such a crushing weight of certainty in the cop’s voice that Mike took a single stunned step backward. It was everything he had ever feared, every doubt that had ever burned the inside of his mind put into words. The ugly secrets that Mr. Morse had told him flooded back into his consciousness and the weight of them almost buckled his knees.

“No…” he said, but his protest sounded weak and empty even to his own ears; the big man, hearing that single word, raised his hands to heaven.

“And through the lies of the Beast shall we know his face and know the truth! Praise God.”

“It’s not my fault,” Mike protested, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. “I didn’t mean to—”

Then a voice, as disembodied as the unseen hand, whispered a single word in his ear: “Run!”

It was as good as a slap in the face. Without understanding what ghostly hand had made him turn or who had spoken to him, Mike nonetheless spun and raced for the road.

Howling with glory, Tow-Truck Eddie ran after him.

(2)

The Bone Man stood in the cornfield and watched Tow-Truck Eddie, that monster of a man, one of the men who had beaten him to death all those years ago, chase down Mike Sweeney. Time was running out for them all, the Bone Man knew, just as he knew that this day was going to end badly.

(3)

Mike thought he was going to make it, that he was yards ahead, but just as he started to leap for the ditch Eddie’s hand closed around his jacket hem and jerked him violently backward. He hit the big man’s chest and it was like smashing into brick. Eddie spun him around and backhanded him to the ground. It wasn’t a hard blow—Mike was already moving away from it—but it brought him to his knees.

Mike didn’t wait for a harder blow. He rammed the stick backward into Eddie’s gut and was rewarded by a deep grunt of pain. Mike spun fast and brought the end of the stick around in a hard, tight arc like a soldier would do with the stock of his rifle and he caught Eddie under the chin. Blood sprayed from Eddie’s chin as he reeled back and went down hard on his rump.

Run! Again the voice screamed in Mike’s ear, but Mike didn’t run. Instead he stepped forward, and taking the stick in a two-handed grip, he swung it like a baseball bat, aiming for Eddie’s temple. All the fear from his fight with Vic, all the terrible awareness of what his mother had become, all of his own confusion and sense of abandonment by the whole world went into that swing and it was a killing blow.

But Eddie was just too damn quick. Despite the stars in his eyes, he brought up his hands and caught the stick in two callused palms. The abrupt stop to the swing sent shock waves up Mike’s arms and his hands spasmed open. Mike staggered sideways and went down to one knee.

With blood dripping freely onto his uniform shirt, Eddie got to his feet and loomed over Mike, hands clenching and reclenching, rehearsing the murder he ached to perform.

“I am the Sword of God,” he said in a voice that was eerily calm. He took the stick and broke it over his knee and tossed the jagged ends behind him.

He started to close in for the necessary kill when he saw something that jerked him to a stop as surely as his grab had stopped the boy a few seconds before. The boy was staring at him and as Eddie watched the child’s eyes changed. The pure and innocent blue darkened as red specks appeared and then instantly blossomed so that within the space of a few heartbeats those eyes were completely red. As red as hellfire and Satan himself glared out at Eddie through veils of blood.

Eddie gasped and any last shreds of doubt that had clung like cobwebs in his mind were blown clear. “You are the Beast of the Apocalypse!”

“Whatever,” Mike said and with one smooth movement he pulled the wire spool from his pocket and hurled it right at Eddie’s face; it struck square in the middle of his forehead and Eddie dropped like a felled oak.

Mike didn’t wait to see how badly the big son of a bitch was hurt; he just turned and ran.

(4)

Newton took Jonatha out to dinner, leaving the others behind in Weinstock’s office. For a while Weinstock himself went out, wanting to go down to the ICU to check on Terry. When he came back he was frowning deeply.

“I’m not sure if we should be happy about this or sad,” he said, “but the residents in ICU are all but throwing a party because of how well Terry’s doing. He’s still in a coma, but his bones are setting and his surgical scars are healing—all at remarkable rates.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Crow asked. “I mean…isn’t that some kind of sign that the bad times are passing.”

Val turned and stared at him. “Sometimes you’re even too much of a romantic fool for me, honeybunch.”

“What?”

“She’s right,” Weinstock agreed sourly. “Believe me when I say this, Crow, nobody heals that fast. Nobody. I ordered a full set of X-rays this morning and they show that his bones are nearly knitted. The femur, which was a compound fracture, looks like the tail-end of a healed hairline fracture. Two of the doctors are so pumped by this that they want to do a paper on it. They think this is an episode of House, but let me tell you, anyone who heals that fast is not doing so in a way covered by known science. End of story.”

Val touched her cross and closed her eyes.

After a moment, Crow said, “Sarah told you that she thought Terry was going to attack her. Then he throws himself out the window. Okay, benefit of the doubt, maybe Terry realized what was happening to him and tried to kill himself to save Sarah.”

“I can believe that,” Val said. “Terry loves her very much. Her and the kids.”

“Point is, Val, we have a victim of a you-know-what who has been having dreams of becoming a you-know-what who is now healing at an unnatural rate.”

“Then what do we do, Saul?” Val asked.

“I…” he hesitated. “Actually, I don’t know. He’s still in a coma, so we can’t mess with him too much or we could kill him. Comas are tricky.”

Crow looked past Saul at the door as if he could see all the way to the ICU. “What about when he wakes up?”

Weinstock shook his head. “As for that…I’m no longer sure that’s what I’m hoping for.”

(5)

Later Crow tried several times to get Mike on the phone. He called the store and got his own answering machine, then called a friend who had a shop near his, but was told that the Crow’s Nest had been closed all day. Strange. Finally Crow called Mike’s house, hoping to get the boy or, at worst, his mom, but Vic Wingate answered.

“Yeah.”

“Vic?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“It’s Crow. I’m looking for Mike. Just wanted to see if he was coming in to work tonight.”

“How the hell should I know?” Vic said, and hung up.

“Prick,” Crow mumbled. His next call was to BK to check on the security for the Festival.

“Everything’s fine, Crow,” BK assured him. “Stop acting like my Aunt Tessie. We got the whole thing under control.”

“Good…but listen to me for a minute here, okay? There’s a very, very remote chance that there might be some trouble this weekend. Not sure what, exactly, but tell your boys to stay on their toes. No one goofs off, no one slacks. Eyes open and combat ready.”

“Jeez, Crow, you getting twitchy in your old age or have you heard something?”

“Just a heads-up from local law enforcement,” Crow lied. “Been some sketchy characters in the area. You know how it is when there’s tourists.”

“Yep, it always draws the goon squad, too. Okay, chief, we’re on it. I got enough tough guys out there to kick any ass that needs kicking.”

“What I want to hear. Look, man, there’s one more thing. Big favor. I was supposed to host a dinner for the celebs, but with Val and all…. Can you and Billy cover for me?”

“Let me think…you got two gorgeous scream queens, movie stars, free food, and an open bar. Yeah, brother, I think things’ll go just fine. I’ll play host to them, but Billy’s gonna want a table all to himself with that Brinke Stevens and the other babe. He’s been talking about it all day.”

“Well, good luck to him. Just because they lose their clothes in the movies doesn’t mean they’re easy targets.”

“Have you met Billy? He could charm the britches off the Queen of England.”

“And on that truly, truly appalling thought, I’ll say goodbye.”

(6)

Mike Sweeney stood up from the weeds and scanned the road. No cars.

As soon as he’d fled from where he left Tow-Truck Eddie, he took a risk and went off the on the far side of the road just over the hill; it was lined with gravel and he would leave no tracks. There was a big Halloween display made from hay bales and a pair of scarecrows—male and female—holding a sign for the Haunted Hayride. Mike dragged his bike behind the bales and then flattened down to wait.

The cruiser came past slowly a few minutes later but didn’t even pause. Mike wasn’t fooled, though; he waited ten minutes and during that time the cruiser came past twice more. Finally it vanished over the hill and was gone, heading farther along A-32 toward the Black Marsh Bridge.

Mike was cold and scared, and his heart was a black ball of pain in his chest.

He looked up and down the road, weighing his options. There was no way he could risk going back to town, not even to try and find Crow. He wished he owned a cell phone. Tow-Truck Eddie knew where he worked and Mike didn’t think he’d be so lucky again if the maniac cornered him at the Crow’s Nest. Home was impossible. He knew he could never go there again.

Mom.

The thought of her was a knife in his gut. What had happened to her? There were words for what he had seen—after all Mike Sweeney lived in Pine Deep—but he could not bear to put those labels on his mother. Not now…not ever.

Mike wrenched his mind away from those thoughts as he turned and looked the other way. Black Marsh was just a couple of miles, but how could he reach the bridge without using A-32? Tow-Truck Eddie owned that road. Plus he was a cop. He could call for backup, make up some kind of story for the other cops. No, that way was closed to him, too. So, what did that leave?

He closed his eyes to try and orient himself, drawing a map in his mind. The Kroger farm was over the hill, and beyond that, on the left side of the road was the Guthrie place. On the same side as Kroger’s was the Carby place and the back roads that would take him to the fringes of the college campus.

“Mom,” he said aloud, without realizing the word was there.

He wrapped his arms around his chest and shivered, surprised at the loud sound his chattering teeth made. He didn’t even know he was that cold. His shirt was soaked with sweat and he zipped up his jacket and pulled the hood up, cinching it tight under his chin with the drawstring. He did not know enough about physiology to recognize the warning signs of shock, and simply cursed the cold air. Overhead, there was the long, drawn-out call of a nightbird.

“I’m gonna freeze,” he told himself. He bent to pick up his bike, and paused, cocking an ear to listen. “Oh, shit!” he said.

The breeze carried the distant drone of a car, still far away, coming closer.

Was it him?

He crouched down again and waited, but it was a tourist car. Another behind that, and another. Evening had fallen now and the tourists would be pouring in for the parties.

Still crouching, Mike turned and surveyed the field behind him, which was a pumpkin patch that lapped up against the wall of the State Forest. The black bumps of the pumpkins stretched away into infinite night, blending with the darkness of trees and hills and the lofty sky. The sky was marginally paler, washed to gray by the moon which, though not yet over the hill, still infected the whole of the sky with its own sickly pallor. It was too dark to ride fast without wrecking his bike, so Mike start walking slowly, heading into the field, aiming for the line of trees.

The road behind him was becoming a steady line of headlights and taillights with no way to identify one car from another. One of them was surely going to be the police car.

The exercise of walking warmed him marginally and he quickened his pace.

The cruiser came back and prowled the road again, but by the time Eddie’s searchlight washed across the Haunted Hayride sign Mike was more than a mile away, lost in darkness and distance, heading away from the road.

With every step the boy drew closer to Dark Hollow.