Dead Man's Song

Chapter 22

(1)

For a town like Pine Deep having Friday the 13th fall in October was a reason to celebrate. “Little Halloween,” they called it. Schools were let out at noon, special football games were scheduled, there was a major party planned for the Haunted Hayride, and the town got into the party mood. The Harvestman Inn ran a special for groups of employees who showed company ID: thirteen beers for thirteen bucks. Motley’s Steaks offered a special on thirteen-inch hoagies, and the Dead End Drive-In was advertising a thirteen-movie marathon of classic horror that kicked off with the entire Friday the 13th series, including a Jason Voorhees costume contest.

Tourists would be pouring in by noon, and by two o’clock there would be ten thousand people packing the streets and another five thousand at the Pinelands College stadium for the non-league game between the Scarecrows and the Temple Owls. Then the town proper would reverse course and start to empty as everyone cruised out to see Concrete Blonde or Los Straightjackets in concert at the Haunted Hayride, or went to the Drive-In, or crammed the bleachers for the Scarecrows-Owls game. The town bars would be full, of course, but shopping would drop off after five o’clock, which was fine since many of the vendors set up booths at the Hayride and in a carnival line around the campus parking lot. Little Halloween was planned for months, and never in Pine Deep’s history had the holiday been as important to the overall financial survival of the community as it was this year. Terry Wolfe had been working to find ways of including the farmers in the town’s nonagricultural activities so they could make a buck. Maybe a few bucks; enough to meet their mortgages and get through the rest of the season with their farm deeds still in their hands. For everyone it promised to be a great day in Pine Deep.

(2)

Propping himself up on one elbow and watching her sleep. Crow thought that he had never seen anyone or anything as beautiful as Val looked at that moment. There was just the faintest rosy glow of sunlight painting the window and the softness of it caressed her cheek and jaw. He wanted so much to touch her face, to trace the line of her cheek, but he didn’t want to wake her.

“I love you,” he whispered.

She opened one eye, surprising him. “Good morning to you, too.”

“Did I wake you, sweetie?”

“Just the frequent heavy sighs. You sound like you’re deflating.” She was smiling, though, and bent forward, kissing him on the nose. “I love you too, you goof.”

He leaned toward her and gathered her in his arms. She was soft and warm and real and he covered her face and throat with kisses.

“Hey, slow down, cowboy,” she said, coming up for air, “before you start something you don’t have time to finish. Don’t you have somewhere you have to be?”

Still nestled in her neck, he peered over her shoulder at the bedside clock.

“It’s not even six and I don’t have to meet Newt until seven-thirty. We got loads of time.” He made Groucho eyes at her.

Val affected a yawn. “I should try and get some more sleep. I have a long day ahead of me, too. I don’t know if I should fritter away the morning with the likes of you.”

“‘Fritter’! I’ll give you ‘fritter,’ you vixen!” He began to tickle her, or tried to, but she was quicker and jammed her fingers under his elbows and got his ribs, reducing him to helpless shrieks of laughter. He tried to get away, but she wasn’t having any of that and climbed astride him, tickling him all over. There was pain—in her shoulder, her head, his wrist, his hip—but neither of them cared. Some things matter more than pain.

One minute later they were wrapped in each other’s arms and though they were both smiling, neither was laughing.

(3)

Crow was half-dozing on the hood of his battered old Impala Missy, his back against the windshield and his hands folded around a cardboard cup of Irish cream coffee that rested on his stomach. He wore six-stitch boots, faded jeans, and an insulated denim vest over a bright-red plaid flannel shirt. Eight inches of frayed thermal undershirt hung down below the rolled cuffs of the shirt. He wore white plastic sunglasses with opaque black lenses and had a Phillies cap turned backward on his head. The mangled end of a brown coffee stirrer hung from the corner of his mouth like a pool-hall Jim’s matchstick.

At 7:35 Willard Fowler Newton’s ancient Civic rolled to a squeaky stop in front of the Crow’s Nest. Newton locked his Club snugly in place and got out, dressed in a blue Eddie Bauer padded jacket, 501 jeans, and Nike sneakers that had never seen the inside of a gym. Crow raised his sunglasses an inch and peered at him under the rims, one eyelid raised. “Did retro-Yuppie come back in and I miss the memo?” he asked.

Flushing a bit, Newton smoothed his jeans, and said, “Yeah, well you look like you’re in a Marlboro commercial.”

“I’m a manly man.”

“And the sunglasses?”

“Keeps me in touch with my counterculture youth.” Crow sat up and drained the last of the tepid coffee. He slid off the hood and did a hook shot that landed the cardboard container in the waste barrel that stood beside a streetlamp four feet away. “Yes! Two points, nothing but can.”

Newton applauded ironically. “Who’s driving?”

Crow looked pointedly at the squatty little Civic and then back at Missy. He said nothing. Newton fetched his gear, and they piled into the car and Crow popped a Flogging Molly CD into player. As Crow was pulling away from the curb and into the pre-business-hour flow of traffic, Newton said, “What about your store?”

“Mike’s due in at noon. He has keys. Most of the Little Halloween weirdness won’t get rolling until this afternoon, and we’ll back by then, and by tonight all the action’s going to be at the campus or the Hayride, and no one’ll be shopping. Everyone’ll be drunk. If we get delayed and the kid gets into a crunch, Val said she’d come down tonight and help with the rush.”

“Oh.” Newton opened a pack of Big Red gum and put a stick in his mouth. “I liked Val. She seemed nice.”

A smile curled the edges of Crow’s mouth as he drove. “She is.”

“She forgive me yet?”

“Time will tell,” Crow said mysteriously.

“Have you guys set a date yet?”

“We’re thinking maybe a Christmas wedding—next Christmas, I mean—but really we haven’t done that much planning yet. A bit too soon, you know?”

“I can understand that.”

The morning had dawned clear and blue and cloudless, and there was a mildly cool wind from the northeast. Crow had his window cracked and crisp air blew into the car and made their cheeks tingle. They headed down Corn Hill to A-32, turned left, and within minutes they were out in the farm country. Groves of carefully tended shade trees gave way to acre after acre of geometrically sown cornfields, many cut to stubble that late in the season, but some still swelling toward the last corn harvest in November. There were fewer houses to be seen, most of them tucked far back at the end of winding dirt roads. Here and there a roadside stand stood fully stocked and ready for the influx of Little Halloween tourists. Barrels of peaches and apples stood in ranks; tall stands of decorative cornstalks leaned in bunches, tied with lengths of hairy twine; Indian corn hung from the rafters of the stands, cheery in their browns and reds and oranges; buckets of mixed nuts stood by the cash registers near jugs of dark, rich cider; and row upon row of pumpkins waited in patient lines, some painted with spooky or cheerful faces, some precut, some untouched and pumpkin-pie ripe in the early sunlight.

“See those pumpkins?” Crow asked, pointing with his chin.

“Uh huh.”

“Imported. Most of them are from Berks County.”

“Because of the blight?”

“Yep. We can’t let it show, so on days like today—and really for the rest of the month—there has to be the appearance of prosperity and business-as-usual. Pestilence and hardship aren’t big draws for tourists.”

They drove on, heading south.

The Bone Man sat on a hay bale by the side of the road and watched the big brown Impala cruise by. All Crow and Newton saw was a line of hay bales stretching across the field, and on the one nearest to the road there were a dozen crows loitering in the morning breeze. The Bone Man knew the men couldn’t see him. He had his guitar across his lap and he strummed a few notes as the car passed. One of the birds opened its scarred and splotched beak and cawed softly.

“Mm-hm,” murmured the Bone Man, squinting in the sun’s glare. His eyes were colorless in that light. “It’s a bad business.” The crow cawed again and the Bone Man played a few more notes, clear and sweet and sad. “A very bad business. Shouldn’t be going out there, little Scarecrow. Nossir, not out there.”

In the distance, the Impala was just a fading dot.

They rolled past several signs advertising the Haunted Hayride.

PINE DEEP HAUNTED HAYRIDE

Biggest in the East Coast!

We’ll Scare you Silly!

Newton nodded to it as they passed. “The hayride? You helped design it, right?”

“Not initially, but I’ve done all the upgrades. I redid all of the traps—the spots where monsters jump out at you.”

“Thinking of putting in a Karl Ruger trap?” When he saw that Crow’s mouth had become a tight line, Newton winced, and said, “God! That was in poor taste, wasn’t it? Sorry.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you shouldn’t be allowed out in public?”

Newton sighed. “My editor tells me that all the time.”

Crow sucked his teeth and after half a mile said, “Skip it.”

They passed a wrecker. Crow tooted his horn, and the driver of the wrecker raised a single hand in response.

“Friend of yours?”

“Not really. Guy named Eddie Oswald. Everyone calls him Tow-Truck Eddie. He’s okay,” Crow said.

A couple of cars passed going the other way, including a Pine Deep police cruiser, and then Crow slowed and drifted onto the shoulder at a crossroads where a dirt road lead away from the highway, forming the division between a vast pumpkin patch to the left and on the right a cornfield that sped away into the distance seemingly without a break. The road was small, but it looked well traveled, and there were deep wheel-ruts trailing away into the distance until the road jagged left and out of sight. Crow pointed. “That cornfield is the outer edge of Val’s farm. Ruger’s car was wrecked just a half-mile down the road. This pumpkin patch over here belongs to another family, the Conleys. They’ve been hit pretty hard by the blight. Worse than just about anyone.”

“And the road?” Newton nodded down the winding dirt lane.

“This here leads down to Dark Hollow, or rather to the entrance to it. One entrance. At the top is our local Lovers’ Lane—we call it the Passion Pit. I don’t know how much love goes on down there, but I hear it gets pretty intense.”

“Gee,” Newton said dryly, “our first date and you’re taking me to Lovers’ Lane.”

“No, dipshit, I’m taking you through Lovers’ Lane. We’ll park there and then go over the pitch and down the hill to the Hollow. I looked at the old maps and the old road that used to go to Griswold’s place isn’t even marked anymore. Don’t know if it ever was, being a private road, but there’s no way I know of to get a car in there. Going over the pitch and down the slope is no picnic, but at least it’s a way that’ll get us there.” He nodded down the dirt road. “This is gonna get bumpy, so buckle up for safety, kids.” Crow put the car back into drive and steered his way carefully down the dusty dirt road. It seemed to be comprised entirely of potholes.

“Nice road,” stuttered Newton as his body fought to jump free from the seat belt.

“Thank God for shocks, huh?”

“This car has shocks?” Newton asked doubtfully.

Crow steered around a couple of sharp turns and then into a clearing that seemed to appear magically out of the dense green forest. He braked to a stop and as the dust settled, he switched off the engine. “Weeee’re hee-eere,” he said, the same way the little blond girl had said “They’re here!” in Poltergeist. Newton gave him half a smile.

The reporter looked around the clearing and frowned. “This is Dark Hollow? It doesn’t look like much.”

Jerking open the door, Crow stepped out, saying, “This is the Passion Pit I was telling you about. Yonder,” he said, pointing to the western edge of the clearing, where the pinelands were showing signs of recovering from an old forest fire, “is the pitch, and way down below is Dark Hollow. From here we walk.”

Newton had brought a small backpack filled with sandwiches, juice boxes, PowerBars, and gum; it had a water bottle strapped across the top. He also had a walking stick he’d bought at a Natural Wonders store ten years ago and had never used. Crow popped his trunk and reached inside for his gear, strapping on an army-surplus web belt—vintage Desert Storm—then hung an authentic Boy Scout canteen over his rump, clipped a long, broad-bladed machete in a flat canvas sheath on his left hip, and from his right hip he slung a holstered automatic pistol. Newton stared at it for a moment, then looked at Crow and arched an eyebrow.

“Are we invading Cuba today?”

Crow gave him a big grin.

“Are you licensed to carry that?” Newton asked, nodding at the pistol.

“Sure. Businessman’s privilege in this town.”

“Does it matter at all to you that you look completely ridiculous?”

“Who gives a shit?”

“I hadn’t looked at it from that perspective.”

Crow hung a Maglite and a small compass to the web belt.

“What, no antitank gun?” asked Newton. “No lightsaber?”

Crow gave him a raspberry. He removed two long coils of rope from the car and laid them on the hood. He fished under his backseat and came up with a pair of work gloves and a pair of fingerless weightlifting gloves.

“What about your toothbrush, a Scotch-tape dispenser, and a Mr. Coffee? You forgot those.”

“Keep it up, Jimmy Olsen.” Crow took his cell phone out and tossed it onto the front seat and locked the car.

“You take everything except a fax machine and you leave your cell phone behind?”

“No reception around here,” Crow said. “Check it out.”

Newton looked at his own phone and saw that there were no bars.

Crow nodded. “This whole area’s like that, and it’ll probably be even worse down at the bottom of the Hollow. The cellular relay tower is on the other side of these mountains. Plus, it’s rough terrain down there, so I’d rather leave my phone here than risk losing it.”

“Swell.” Newton patted himself down and tugged a small digital camera out of his jacket pocket. “For the article,” he said and took a shot of Crow in all his gear, then walked to the rim of the pitch and took four shots of the long fall into the shadows at the foot of the mountains. He lowered the camera. “Charming.”

“Cheer up, it gets worse. Come on.” The first thing Crow did was to tie one end of each of the two lengths of rope to sturdy trees. He tied a complex series of knots and then jerked on them with great force to make sure they weren’t going to slip

“Don’t tell me we’re rappelling? I failed the rope climb in gym class every year.”

“Not really, but that pitch is too steep for you, and I’m not as spry as I used to be, so I’d rather we had a line to steady us down and then help us get back up again. Use these,” he said, indicating the heavy canvas gloves that were old and stained with grease. He slipped his own hands into the weightlifting gloves and flexed them, adjusting the Velcro straps. He picked up the two coils of rope and hurled them out over the pitch, then took one rope, tested the tension again, and stepped to the edge of the pitch. Until now everything Crow did had cool efficiency about it, but now, poised—literally—on the brink of commission he finally paused and Newton could see strain showing in his face. His eyes were slightly squinted and he would look up at the blue sky and then down into the shadows of the Hollow and back up again, repeating the cycle every few seconds while balancing his weight against the pull of the rope. His mouth was tight, lips pinched, and he was breathing through flared nostrils.

Newton picked up the end of the second rope and came to stand by Crow, and for a moment they both looked down into the Hollow, then Newton glanced at Crow. “You okay?”

“Nope,” Crow said with a tight smile. “I’m scared out of my mind.”

“We can still bag it and go catch lunch at the Harvestman.”

“Can’t,” Crow said.

“Can’t—why? No one’s making us do this, man.”

Instead of answering, Crow started singing under his breath. Words that didn’t mean anything to Newton. “I got an ax-handled pistol on a graveyard frame that shoots tombstone bullets, wearin’ balls and chain. I’m drinking TNT, I’m smoking dynamite…I hope some screwball start a fight.”

“What’s that?”

Crow turned to him. “Old Muddy Waters song, ‘I’m Ready.’ Great song.”

“Okay. And—tell me again, why are we singing blues songs?” He grinned. “Hoping to channel the spirit of the Bone Man?”

“Keep it up, Newt, and I’ll use you like a snowboard and surf down the mountain.”

Newton was fishing for a snappy comeback when he paused, head cocked in an attitude of listening. For just a moment he thought he actually heard the chords of an actual blues guitar, impossible as that was, and he jerked his head around and looked over to the Passion Pit. The sound—just a couple of notes—was so clear, so strong, that he half-expected to see someone standing there with a guitar; but the clearing was empty except for Missy and the only sound was the murmur as the trees whispered secrets to one another and the crows chattered in the forests. When Newton turned back he saw that Crow was looking at him with dark eyes that glittered with amusement. A jumpy, corner-of-the-lip twitching amusement.

“You heard it,” Crow said, “didn’t you?”

“I heard…something.”

Crow tugged on the rope that held him, but his eyes were steady and intent. “Tell me what you heard.”

Newton just shook his head. “It was stupid. It was nothing.”

“Come on, Newt—tell me.”

Taking a breath and then huffing it out through his nose, Newton said all in a rush, “I thought I heard a guitar but it was nothing. Wind in the trees. Silly.”

The wind had time to rustle ten thousand leaves before Crow said, “I heard it, too.”

When Newton opened his mouth to say something else, Crow just shook his head and started down the hill. After a long stunned moment, Newton followed.

(4)

Jim Polk slowed his unit and pulled onto the verge, waiting until a few cars and a farm truck passed, and then put it in reverse and crunched along the gravel back to the crossroads. He stopped with his rear bumper just this side of the dirt side road, put it in park, and got out, walking quickly to the edge of a screen of bushes and then peering cautiously around. He could just make out the dust plume left behind by Crow’s car.

While the dust drifted on the breeze, Polk pulled his cell out of his uniform pants pocket, flipped it open, and speed dialed Vic Wingate.

“What?” Vic answered.

“It’s me. I’m out on A-32 where it crosses Dark Hollow Road. Guess who I just saw driving down there toward the Passion Pit?”

Vic Wingate put his cell phone back in his pocket and leaned against the wall of the grease pit. The wheel of the big Ford Explorer was inches away from his head and he caught the tread and idly turned the tire, his eyes distant and thoughtful. At least three full minutes passed while he thought about what Polk had just told him, and about what it might mean. Pursing his lips, Vic pulled the cell phone back out of his pocket and called his own private office number. He let it ring once, disconnected, and then dialed again. It was picked up on the third ring.

“Yeah?”

“I just had an interesting phone call about your dancing partner.”

“Crow…” it came out as a hiss.

“He’s heading out to Dark Hollow like you thought, but if he’s going all Sherlock Holmes on us then maybe it’s time to put your plan for the Guthrie bitch into action. Be a nice way of distracting Crow from anything he might discover down in the Hollow.”

There was a profound silence on the line. “It’s daytime,” Ruger said at last.

“No biggie—cloud cover’s moving in. I’ll pick you up in five minutes. Be ready.”

Ruger’s own laugh was low and jagged. “I’m ready now,” he said, and hung up.

(5)

The Bone Man was sitting on the hood of the Impala, his heels resting on the bumper, the guitar snugged against his belly. He had been playing some old songs, hoping Little Scarecrow would hear him, and not at all expecting him to. He’d heard Crow singing “I’m Ready,” that great old Willie Dixon song that Muddy Waters had cut way back in 1956, and hearing those lyrics had made him want to play the tune. He’d picked out just a few notes when that reporter fellow pricked up his ears and rubbernecked so fast it looked like his head was going to unscrew itself.

He had heard the music! Had actually heard it. The Bone Man sat there on the Impala’s hood and stared in total shocked amazement at the empty edge of the pitch.

(6)

Climbing down from the pitch was no picnic and within a dozen yards Newton was sweating badly and his breath was coming in gasps. The slope started at a forty-five-degree angle but went sheer to the point of a straight drop several times, and Newton was glad for the rope. His walking stick hung slantwise across his back, lashed in place, and was totally useless for the downhill journey. For the first fifty yards the incline was littered with discarded beer bottles and manfully crushed beer cans, dozens of old shriveled condoms and wrinkled condom wrappers, and scattered debris that was now so ancient and sun-faded that it was impossible to tell what it had originally been. Birds sang noisily in the trees and the last lumbering flies of the season floated heavily by seeking quiet places to die.

The side of the Hollow was composed of slate, sandstone, schist, chunks of granite, and lots of loose dirt and stone. A glacial mishmash of rock of every kind, most of it hardwired into the landscape by roots or packed in with hardened clay. No part of it was safe, even the stones that jutted out like sturdy steps, as Newton found out the first time he tried to stand on one to catch his breath. The stone was undercut and the loose soil gave way and Newton plunged down fifteen feet, the rope hissing and smoking through his hand and his limbs pinwheeling until Crow snaked out a strong hand and caught him under the armpit and then slammed him belly-flat against the pitch. Crow swung over and straddled Newton, the balls of his booted feet steadying him and his other hand wrapped turn-and-around with his own line.

“You okay there, Newt?” Crow asked, and Newton just flapped a hand. His heart was beating so loud he wondered it didn’t echo off the walls. “Catch your breath. We’ll go again when you’re ready.”

In a minute they started down again, going more slowly now with caution learned from the fall. Newton was not nearly as fit as Crow, not even as fit as a wounded and recovering Crow, and he had to stop several times. Once, he looked over his shoulder and down just as his rope swayed and he got a sickening rush of vertigo and had to close his eyes and clench his jaws to keep from gagging. When he had his gag reflex under control and the world had stopped spinning with such abandon, Newton braced his feet against a big rock and used his free hand to dust himself off. As he did he saw something in the dirt by his knee glint dully, and he bent picked it up, thumbing away the clots of dirt.

“What’s that?” Crow called from ten feet lower on the slope.

“Nothing. Just an old dime.” The dime was dated 1966 and had a crude hole punched through it.

“Let’s keep moving,” Crow said. “It’s not a treasure hunt.”

Newton nodded and made as if to throw the dime away but without realizing that he was doing it put it in his pocket instead. Later on he would remember that dime and for the rest of his life he would wear it on a string around his ankle as a reminder of why he survived the autumn of the Black Harvest. Why he had survived while so many others died.

Dark Hollow was a deep depression formed at the base of one medium-size mountain and two huge sidehills and their steep sides kept most of the hollow in shadows except at noon. Farther southwest the land flattened out and even opened up in spots so that a rare beam of sunlight could reach down to the floor of the hollow, but there were also spots that never saw the light and it was toward one of these spots that Crow and Newton descended yard by yard. There was a clear division line where the mountain crest blocked the sun from reaching any farther down into the valley. It took the climbers twenty careful minutes to reach that point, and as they crossed that division line from sunshine into shadow, Newton felt a chill pass through him. Certainly the air was colder without the touch of the sun, but to him it felt as if he had stepped into a freezer unit. He blew out his breath and was surprised to find that it did not steam the air; it felt cold enough by far. He glanced at Crow, to see if he felt it, too, but Crow was reacting in a starkly different way to the shadows of Dark Hollow. Despite his jaunty baseball cap and grunge-crowd sunglasses, despite the affected spring in his muscular step, he was sweating bullets. Perspiration beaded his face and trickled in icy threads down his face. Unnerved by the sight, Newton said nothing and they kept moving, heading deeper into the valley.

They climbed down without conversation, silent and alert to the deceptive irregularities of the slanting landscape. Newton became more and more aware of the ambience of Dark Hollow.

Crow removed his sunglasses and stowed them away in a pocket. “Black as pitch down here,” he said vaguely. “Come on.”

Ten minutes later they reached the floor of Dark Hollow.

At the bottom they stopped and stepped away from the slope, their legs wobbly, and when they pulled off their gloves, their hands were pink and puffy. Crow took both pairs of gloves, then wrapped several turns of both climbing ropes around them and tied it all off so that nothing would be lost, weighting the ends with rocks to mark the spot. As he did this, Newton unslung his walking stick and shrugged out of his backpack so he could get to his canteen. He took a long pull and handed it to Crow. Then Crow fished a PowerBar out of his pocket and split it between them. They stood in the gloom, chewing, looking around them. The place was a bleak nothing, cold and damp and utterly still.

Crow consulted his compass and pointed northeast. “Griswold’s farm is that way,” he said. “I think,”

“You…think?”

Crow shrugged as he put the last piece of the PowerBar into his mouth. “It’s not like I’ve been there before, dude. I found it on the county surveyor’s map. Its location is mentioned in some old borough zoning records.”

The way ahead looked choked with brush and stumpy scrub pines and Newton gave it a dubious stare. “Is there a path?”

Crow shook his head. “I doubt it. Come on.”

If there had ever been a path it was thirty years overgrown and as they went northeast they simply picked their way through the path of least resistance, and for an hour they crept forward with no feeling of having made any real progress. They clambered over rocks, crawled through coarse shrubs, slithered under fallen trees, and leapt gullies, feeling like they were running an obstacle course with no breaks in it at all. Newton’s legs felt leaden as he lumbered along behind Crow, and he struggled to draw chestfuls of air. He wanted to blame his breathlessness and tiredness on the sedentary life of a writer, or the arduous terrain, or the weight of his pack, but he was unable to manufacture any real belief in those fictions and tried to work it out logically, tried to pick apart his own nervous reactions and explain them away, using weather, lack of sleep, bad coffee, and cold air as culprits for each individual emotion. He tried, in short, to be a reporter and slant the story in a way that would favor a totally rational explanation for everything. For most of the trek he was happy with that, but as the shadows got deeper and the air got colder the farther into the Hollow they went he kept having to remind himself of his own logic. He really didn’t want to openly acknowledge the grim and oppressive atmosphere of Dark Hollow, because to allow it to be a fact, or even a possibility, would be to accept that the place itself possessed some kind of negative energy, and to him that was preposterous. Crow was the one who believed in this freaky shit, not him.

Eventually even Crow’s pace faltered and he stopped and leaned his back against a hemlock tree; he dragged his forearm across his face and examined the dark stains of perspiration on the sleeve. His chest was heaving, though he looked less like someone who was exhausted from exertion than someone from whom breath had been robbed by illness. His skin color was bad and his dark eyes looked faintly feverish as he sucked at the air like a gaffed fish.

“Jesus,” he breathed raggedly as he unclipped his canteen and took a long pull, “this is like fighting your way through a jungle. Never seen such dense brush.” Crow wiped his face again. “Man, I’m sweating like a pig.”

“Pigs don’t sweat,” said Newton distractedly as he looked around at the high walls of shadow that climbed the steep sides of the hill.

Crow shrugged. “They would if they were down here.”

There was a squawk from the branches of the hemlock and Crow looked up to be a half-dozen ragged black birds clutching to the bare branches. Mostly female crows with their blue, green, and purple iridescent wings, and one fat albino male that was a sickly ash-gray. The jury of birds watched them with black intelligent eyes, and the albino squawked again, softly.

“Tell me something,” said Newton, finally reaching for the canteen. “How come you never tried to come down here before? I mean…why now?”

Not taking his eyes off the birds, Crow said, “Thought about it a million times. Even drove out here twice, once got as far as the top of the pitch, and chickened out.”

“You looked like you wanted to bug out today, when we were about to start down.”

Crow looked at him, and though he laughed there was little humor in it. More of a nervous chuckle. “I came close, Newt. If I’d been alone—well, let’s just say that Mike could have used some help at the store and I would have been fine believing that’s why I turned around and went back to town.”

“But you didn’t. I find it hard to believe that you feel safer with me here.” Newton said, and when he saw Crow’s lip twitch, he said, “Yeah, it’s okay to laugh at that.”

“Nah, it’s not that I need someone to protect me and hold my hand…it’s just that I think I would have felt too ashamed to cop out with someone watching.”

“You hardly know me. What would it matter if I knew that you copped out?”

Crow flicked him an appraising glance. “It’s not that you specifically knew, it’s that anyone would know.” He sighed and took another hit from the canteen. “I’m the guy who killed Karl Ruger. I can’t pussy out of climbing down a hill to visit a haunted house.”

“Who’d think that?”

“Me. Oh, and don’t give me that look, buddy boy, ’cause it’s no great revelation that we have to believe in our own hype sometimes.” He nodded toward the northeast. “Let’s get moving.”

“Well…I’m no psychologist, that’s for sure,” Newton said after they’d gone a dozen yards, “but I think you’re being way too hard on yourself.”

“I have a lot of personal work to do regarding my feelings about the guy who used to live down here. I’ve got enough personal baggage to open a luggage store, believe me.”

“I know, you told—”

“Newt, ol’ buddy, I’ve only told you part of it, and I’ve got to work up the nerve to tell you the rest.” Crow gestured as if trying to grab the right words out of the air. “I’ve got to prove to myself that my fears and superstitions are as silly as Val insists they are. You see, she doesn’t believe most of the stuff I believe. Oh, don’t get me wrong, she believes that he was the killer all those years ago, but she thinks it ended there and then.”

“And you don’t?”

“And I don’t.” Crow shrugged. He tried to make it look lazy, offhand, even careless, and failed. “You see, it doesn’t matter which of us is right, it just matters that I get this shit sorted out up here.” He tapped his temple with a finger. “Besides, there’s this old samurai axiom about facing your fears. If you’re afraid of ghosts, sleep in a graveyard.”

“Very pithy. So, are you afraid of ghosts?”

“Mostly, no.” Sweat trickled down Crow’s cheeks. “Sometimes, yes.”

“One ghost in particular? Ubel Griswold’s ghost?” asked Newton.

Crow stopped and turned, but for a moment just looked up above Newton’s head at the leafless branches of the tall, black trees. “I would appreciate it,” he said with exaggerated calmness, “if you would refrain from using that name while we’re here.”

Newton laughed. “Oh, come on! You’re not going to tell me you’re afraid of saying his name?” The reporter studied him. “You’re…serious.”

“As a heart attack.”

“Then you’re scared, is that it? This isn’t just an AA self-realization exercise, is it?”

Crow looked all the way up to where sunlight dazzled the very tips of the trees, a pure light that did not have the reach to warm the shadow-darkened valley. “Newt, ol’ buddy, I am so freaking scared right now I could cry. For two pins I’d run all the way back up the hill, get back in my car, and drive to the first bar I could find and drink it dry. That’s how scared I am.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you.”

“Why not? I’m just an ordinary guy, you know, not Captain Amazing.”

“Even so…You took on Karl Ruger. You have all those black belts.”

“Doesn’t mean jack. Karl Ruger was just a man. This is…him, you dig? This is my nightmare for thirty years. This is the reason I started drinking, the reason I sometimes want a drink so bad I get the shivers and shakes and want to scream. This is the reason sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night so terrified that I want to eat my gun just to stop from seeing his face every time I close my eyes. You don’t understand, and I hope to God that you never do, but what’s out there, the thing that used to live out there, was a monster. Don’t you get that? It was a monster! Not a man, not even an animal, but something unnatural, something that killed my brother, man. It ripped his throat out and tore his head off and…and…” Crow stopped and turned away, breathing hard, fists clenched at his sides. He drew in a long, steadying breath and tried it again. “You’re right, I’m out here just to get some kind of Twelve Step closure. Newt, I’m out here to try and save my own sanity.”

“Crow, I—”

“Hush. Just listen, man,” Crow said and they started walking again, slowly, side by side. “I’m out here to try and exorcise some of my personal demons, and I have to admit that I brought you along as kind of a witness. Maybe I need to prove to myself that I really did this. Who knows, maybe it’ll make a good sidebar for your feature. Maybe when we get out there all we’ll find is some moldering sticks that used to be a house and nothing else. Man, that would be so nice! But I needed to come out here, out to his house, just to see where he lived, to walk the earth he walked on, to touch things that he might have touched.”

“But…why?”

Crow drew in a deep breath and held it and Newton could see that he was steeling himself for something. What he finally said was, “Because I think Ubel Griswold might still be here.”

“What?”

“Yeah. How crazy does that sound? Now, you want to hear the really crazy shit?”

“I’m thinking no.”

“Want to know what Karl Ruger said just before he died?”

“Not anymore. I think I’d rather climb back up that hill and find that bar you were talking about.”

Crow stepped close and Newton could smell his sweat. “Right before he died…with his last breath, Ruger pulled me close and whispered ‘Ubel Griswold sends his regards.’” He stepped back. “What do you think of that?”

Newton was very aware of the gun at Crow’s hip and the machete in its sheath. He was aware of the stories he heard about how tough and dangerous Crow was. He was aware of his own heart hammering away in his chest. He was wondering what his chances were if he just turned and ran. The black forest around him was immense.