Part I Down at the Crossroads

I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees I went to the crossroads, fell down on my knees Asked the Lord above, have mercy now, save poor Bob if you please.

Robert Johnson, “Crossroads Blues”

Out there at the crossroads, molding the Devil’s bullets.

Tom Waits and William Burroughs, “Crossroads”

Demons they are on my trail I’m standing at the crossroads of the hell I look to the left I look to the right There’re hands that grab me on every side.

Tracy Chapman, “Crossroads”


Chapter 1

Modern Day
(1)

Malcolm Crow pretended to be asleep because that was the only way he could get to see Val naked. He kept his breathing regular and his eyes shut until she got out of bed and headed into the bathroom. Then he opened his eyes just a fraction, until he could see her standing there at the sink, as naked and uninhibited as could be. If she knew he was watching she’d have put on a T-shirt or robe.

It drove him bonkers. She had no problem with nudity when they made love at night, where the shadows hid her — though she underestimated his night vision, which was excellent — but if they made love during the day, even here in her room, she always wore something, even if it was a camisole.

Crow couldn’t understand it. At forty Val was gorgeous, tall, tanned and toned from the daily rigors of farm life, even farm life from the point of view of the farm manager. She was strong and slim, with lovely breasts only lightly touched by the gravity of early middle age. Her belly was flat, her thighs, though not thin like a runway model’s, were slender and deceptively muscular. Her ass was, according to Crow’s intense lifelong study of these particular aesthetics, perfect. She had black hair that was just long enough for a bobbed ponytail, which she usually shoved through the back of a John Deere ball cap. Her pubic thatch was trimmed into a heart — a Valentine gift from earlier that year that Crow had begged her to maintain even though he only got glimpses of it in the dark. The only thing she was currently wearing was a small silver cross on a delicate chain.

There was nothing about Val Guthrie that wasn’t perfect, an assessment he reaffirmed as he watched her brushing her teeth, the motion of her arms making her breasts bounce a little and which in turn made Crow’s pulse quicken. He felt himself growing erect under the heaped quilts and hoped that he wouldn’t be pitching a visible tent, should she look.

Crow knew that Val was self-conscious about her scars, no matter how much Crow tried to convince her that, in the first place who cared? and in the second, he thought they were kind of sexy. Fifteen years ago Val had wrecked three motorcycles in as many years, each time taking some dents. She had a four-inch scar across her stomach, a few minor ones on knees and elbows, and a whole bunch of jagged little ones dotting the curved landscape of her left shoulder, left breast, and the upper ribs. Those scars were linked by a few patches of healed burns. The third and last crash had been bad and Val had given up on Harleys and moved on to the relative safety of four metal walls and a roof in the form of a Dodge Viper.

Val finished brushing, rinsed, spat, and then washed her face and hands in the basin. Crow was fully erect now and wished she would come back to bed so he could contrive to wake up out of an erotic dream of her, or something along those lines. He knew he had to wait until she was back in bed before he affected to awaken.

She switched off the bathroom light and paused there in the doorway, checking to see if Crow was still asleep before coming back into the room. Crow did some of his best acting during the next few moments as she assessed, decided the coast was clear, and quickly crossed the broad stretch of hardwood floor to the giant king-sized bed. With smooth and practiced efficiency she slipped under the covers, turned her back, and nestled back against him until her rump encountered his thighs.

And then stopped as she felt something other than the flaccid thigh muscles of a sleeping person.

Crow held his breath, waiting for her to tell him to go take a cold shower or, worse, to just ignore it and go back to sleep herself.

Without turning toward him Val said in a low voice, “Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” It was supposed to be à la Mae West but it sounded more like Minnie Pearl.

Crow pretended to wake up, but Val elbowed him lightly in the ribs.

“You’re a lousy actor, Crow.”

“Damn it, Jim, I’m a lover, not an actor.” He was convinced he sounded exactly like Dr. McCoy. He was equally mistaken.

Smiling, Val rolled over toward him and kissed him. Chastely. On the forehead. “You were spying, weren’t you?”

“Who?” he said. “Me?”

She reached down under the blankets and closed her hand around him. “This is an official lie detector.”

“Yikes…what’d you do, wash in cold water?”

“Aha! You were watching, you complete sneak!” She was smiling. Her eyes were a brilliant dark blue, darker now under the overhang of the covers. Behind the curtain windows dawn was brightening to a golden intensity and there were late-season birds singing. Crow could hear the rustle of the cornstalks in the fields beyond the window, and it sounded like waves rolling up onto the beach.

Val’s hand was still there.

“You caught me, Sheriff!” he confessed. “I throw myself on the mercy of the court.”

Val’s smile changed from sleepy to devilish. “Sorry, pal, but no mercy for the condemned in this court.” And she hooked a warm leg over him and climbed on top. Even then she had the presence of mind to pull a sheet up around her left shoulder.

“If you don’t come down for breakfast in the next minute I’m feeding this to the cows!” The voice boomed up from two flights below just as Crow was lacing up his sneakers. Val was still in the shower.

“Your dad’s calling,” he yelled in through the now closed bathroom door. “Again.”

“You go. I’ve got to dry my hair.”

“Love you, baby!”

“Love you, too!”

Grinning, Crow headed out of the bedroom and jogged down the stairs, humming Lightin’ Hopkins’s “Black Ghost Blues.” The song had been in his head for days now and he meant to see if he could download it off the Net later on.

Malcolm Crow was a compact man, only an inch taller than Val’s five-seven and built slim without being skinny. He had the springy step of a kid half his age, and when he played basketball he was up and down the court so fast he just wore out the bigger and better players. His black hair was as smooth and black as his namesake’s, and it gave him a Native American look that was at odds with his Scottish ancestry. Crow had a lot of white teeth and he smiled easily and often, as he was now as he bounded into the vast kitchen of the Guthrie house.

Henry Guthrie was at the stove using a spatula to stack slices of French toast onto a metal serving tray. Plates of bacon and sausage and a dish of scrambled eggs were already on the table.

“If you’re quite through being a bother and a burden to my daughter,” Guthrie said sternly, “then see if you have enough strength left to take this over to the table.”

“My strength comes from purity,” Crow said, hefting the plate. “As well you know.”

“Then you must be as weak as a kitten.”

“Ouch.” Crow thumped down the plate and slid onto one end of a hardwood bench at the far end of the massive oak table. There were enough plates and cups scattered around to show that several people had already eaten and left. Crow knew from long experience that the Guthrie kitchen was in nearly constant use by field foremen and supervisors, the Guthries themselves, and various other people who happened to be passing, from the seed merchant to the milkman. Despite Guthrie’s threat of giving the breakfast to the cows, they didn’t actually own any.

Guthrie poured coffee for Crow and then for himself and sat down in the big captain’s chair at the other end of the table.

“So, what’s on your agenda?” Guthrie asked. He checked the hall to make sure Val wasn’t looking before adding real sugar and half-and-half to his coffee instead of Splenda and skim milk.

With a mouthful of French toast, Crow said, “Got to go over to the hayride and do some work. Couple of the traps need some repairs.” Pine Deep boasted the largest Haunted Hayride in the country. It was owned by Crow’s friend, Terry Wolfe, but Crow was the one who designed it and kept it in top shape. He personally devised each of the “traps”—the spots where the monsters jumped out at the customers and scared the living hell out of them. Each of Crow’s traps was very elaborate. “After that,” he said, swallowing and reaching for the bacon, “I guess I’ll head into town to open up the shop.”

“Business okay?”

“Doing great.” Crow’s other concern was a small arts and crafts store on Main Street, where he sold art supplies, fancy paper for scrapbookers, even knitting yarn, but which turned into Halloween central this time of year. Even with the crop blight that was hitting the local farms, and the resulting economic slump, Halloween was still the number-one business in Pine Deep.

Munching bacon, Crow assessed Henry Guthrie. Val’s dad was getting up there now, and high-tech farming or not the fields took their toll. He looked every one of his sixty-four years, and perhaps a bit more. His bushy black eyebrows had become wilder and shot with silver, and since Val’s mother died two years ago, Guthrie’s head of hair had gone completely gray. Even so, his blueberry-blue eyes sparkled with youth and mischief.

“I’m thinking of taking Val to New Hope next weekend. Just to get away for a day or so. Can you spare her?”

“Well,” Guthrie said, considering, “without her the farm will collapse, I’ll be financially ruined and will have to live in a cardboard box under the overpass, but other than that I don’t see why you two shouldn’t have some time.”

“Cool.”

“Oh, I ran into your buddy — His Honor, I mean.”

“Terry? Where’d you trip over him?”

Guthrie almost said that they’d met in the waiting room of the psychiatrist they both shared — Henry for grief management and Terry for who knew what? — but shifted into a different lane when he realized he didn’t know if Crow knew that Terry Wolfe was in therapy at all. He said, “In town. I had a few errands to run.”

Crow grunted, eating more bacon.

“He doesn’t look too good these days,” Guthrie said.

“Yeah. He says he’s been having trouble sleeping. Nightmares, that sort of thing.” Crow wasn’t looking at Guthrie while he spoke. He was having some nightmares as well, and didn’t want Val’s very sharp and perceptive dad to see anything in his eyes.

“Well, I hope he takes care of himself. Terry always was a little high-strung.”

The batwing saloon doors that separated the kitchen from the main dining room creaked as Mark Guthrie, Val’s brother, pushed through. He was a few years younger than Val but was beefy and out of shape, and unlike his father Mark was starting to lose his hair. He wore a gray wool business suit and was reading the headlines of the Black Marsh Sentinel.

“Morning, Dad, morning, Crow.”

“Hey,” Crow said, waving at him with a forkful of sausage.

“It’s all on the table,” Guthrie said. “Sit down and let me pour you a cup.”

They sat there and ate, and Mark gently shifted the conversation to local business, discussing the financial crisis in town without actually mentioning the phrase “crop blight.” So far it hadn’t hit the Guthrie farm, but some of their neighbors had been devastated by it. Mark, who was a nice but rather pedantic guy, offered his views on how to solve everyone’s financial woes by the right investments. Guthrie nodded as if he agreed, which he didn’t, and Crow ate his way through a lot of the food. Val’s brother ran the student aid department of Pinelands College and therefore held himself up as an expert on anything dealing with finances.

Crow let him talk, grunting and nodding whenever there was a pause, and when there was an opening, he jumped in and said, “Well, fellas, much as I hate to eat and run…I’m going to anyway. Mark, see you around. Henry, I’ll probably see you later. Val said she’s going to make dinner for me tonight.”

Both of the Guthrie men stared at him as if he’d just said that blue ferrets were going to pop out of his ears.

“Val?” Guthrie said.

“Cook?” Mark said.

And they burst out laughing.

“If she hears you she will so kick both your asses,” said Crow, but they were right. In all the years Crow and Val had known each other she’d only cooked for him a few times and it had always ended badly.

They were still laughing as Crow jogged upstairs, gently pushed aside the hair dryer, kissed Val in a way that made them both tingle, and then ran downstairs again. Now Henry and Mark were exchanging horror stories about some of Val’s previous attempts at cooking. Mark was as red as a beet and slapping his palm on the table as they guffawed about something dealing with a pumpkin pie and a case of dysentery.

Whistling to himself, Crow strolled across the broad gravel driveway to where his old Chevy squatted under a beech tree. The song he was whistling was “Black Ghost Blues,” though he wasn’t consciously aware of it.

(2)

Terry Wolfe rolled over onto his side as if in sleep he was trying to turn away from his dream. It didn’t work. The dream pursued him, as determined this morning as it had been for the last ten nights. As cruelly persistent as it had been, off and on, since the season had begun. Since the blight had started.

His face and throat were slick with sweat. Beside him, Sarah moaned softly in her sleep, her dreams also troubled, but in a less specific way, as if the content of hidden dreams tainted hers, but somehow in her sleep she was only aware of a sense of threat rather than of the nature of it.

Terry’s hands gripped his pillow with ferocious force, his fingernails clawing at the thick cool cotton as he dreamed….

In dreams Terry was not Terry. In dreams, Terry was something else.

Some.

Thing.

Else.

In dreams, Terry did not lie sleeping next to his wife. In dreams, Terry always woke up and turned to Sarah and…

The part of Terry that was aware that he was dreaming cringed as he watched what the dreaming thing did. That part of Terry cringed and cried out and wept as he watched the thing pull back the covers from Sarah’s sleeping form and bend over her, dark eyes flashing as they drank in her curves and her softness and her vulnerability. The watching Terry tried to scream as the thing opened its mouth — and the sleeping body of Terry Wolfe actually opened his mouth, too — and leaned closer still to Sarah, teeth bared, mouth watering with an awful hunger.

No! the watching Terry screamed — but the scream only took the form of a choked growl.

It was enough, though. The tightening of his throat and the desperation of his need to cry out snapped the line that tethered him to the nightmare and he popped awake. He lay there, chest heaving, throat raw from the strangled cry, sweat soaking him.

Somewhere behind the curtains morning birds absurdly argued that it was a sunny, wonderful day and all was right with the world. Terry would gladly have taken a shotgun to them.

He sat up, his muscles aching from the long hours of dreaming tension. Sarah was still asleep, curled into a ball, her face buried in a spill of black hair and crumpled pillows. Standing, Terry looked down at her, at her lovely lines, smelling the faintness of her perfume in the bedroom air. He loved her so much that tears burned in his eyes and he wondered — not for the first time — if he should kill himself.

Every morning the idea had more appeal, and every morning it seemed like it would be the best thing he could ever do for her.

Terry wrenched himself away from staring at her and lumbered into the bathroom. He leaned both hands on the cool rim of the sink and stared at his reflection. Every day there was just a moment of dread when he brought his face to the mirror — wondering if today was the day he would see the beast and not the man, if today he would wear the face he wore in his dreams.

It was just his own face. Broad, square, with curly red hair, a short beard that was not as precisely trimmed as it once was. Bloodshot blue eyes that looked back at him, shifty and full of guilt for something he just could not name. He was five weeks shy of forty and normally looked five years younger than that. Now he looked fifty, or even sixty.

He opened the medicine cabinet and selected from among a dozen orange-brown prescription bottles until he found the clozapine, tipped one into his mouth, and washed it down with four glasses of water. The antipsychotic gave him terrible dry mouth. He put another of the pills into a small plastic pill case along with half a dozen Xanax and snapped it shut, feeling edgy and strangely guilty as he did so. He glanced up at the mirror again.

“Good morning, Mr. Mayor,” he said, hating the face he saw, and then he set about washing and brushing and constructing the face he needed everyone else in town to see.

(3)

Crow pulled out of the long Guthrie driveway and turned northeast along Interstate Extension A-32, heading to Old Mill Road and the Haunted Hayride that was nestled back in between the Pinelands College campus and the sprawling southern reach of the great Pine Deep State Forest. He had stopped whistling to himself and was now singing along badly to a Nick Cave CD. As his battered old Chevy, Missy, rolled up between corn farms and berry farms, Crow sang his way through the Bad Seeds’ raucous and obscene version of “Stagger Lee,” a song he could never play in anything like polite company. To Crow, there was nothing particularly strange about starting a lovely late September morning off with a ballad about mass murder and pederasty.

He sang badly and loud and the miles rolled away as the car took the hills and jags and twists of A-32 with practiced ease.

A busload of migrant day workers passed, heading for the Guthrie farm, and Crow tooted to Toby, the driver and crew boss. A few of the workers waved at him and he waved back. Most of them were Haitians and there were half a dozen among them that Henry Guthrie was considering taking on full-time.

Behind the bus were two cars — both with people Crow knew — and beyond them the first of the day’s school buses. It was just hitting 7:00 a.m. and already the town was up and about. Nobody sleeps late in farm country.

Crow’s cell phone beeped — the tune was “I Got My Mojo Working”—and he flipped it open. “Hello, Miss Beechum’s Country Dayschool,” he said.

“Hey there,” Val said. “I just had a very, very nice flashback.”

He turned down the CD player. “Yeah, baby…me too. You are the most delicious woman in the world, you know that?”

“Mmm,” she purred. “You may be a goofball, Mr. Crow, but the things you do to me. Wow.”

“Gotta say that it’s pretty darned mutual. Three times between eleven-thirty last night and six this morning. My oh my. It’s like being eighteen again.”

“I wanted you to know that I’ll be thinking of this morning for the rest of the day. Bye-bye,” she said, and disconnected.

As he drove, Crow’s grin was brighter than the sun that now shone above the distant waving fields of corn.

(4)

In his dreams he was always Iron Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil. In dreams he wasn’t fourteen — he was fully grown and packed with muscle head to toe. No one could possibly stand up to him, and no one dared attack him. He was the agent of Order pitted eternally against the nefarious forces of Chaos. He was the quiet stranger who came to troubled towns and brought rough justice with his lightning fists, flashing feet, and cleverly disguised array of ultra-high-tech weaponry. He was the immortal Soldier of Light who carried the torch of reason and understanding through the growing and malevolent shadows of night. Demons fled before him; vampires would wither into noxious clouds of dust as he turned his Solar Gaze on them. The androids of the Dark Order, powerful as they were, could never match the thunderstorm power in his hard-knuckled hands. Iron Mike was the single most powerful warrior this old world had ever seen.

Even now the Enemy of Evil was holding the Bridge of Gelderhaus against the forces of Prince Viktor and his slavering band of genetic freaks, each of them armed with laser swords and shock-rods.

The battle had raged all night but Iron Mike Sweeney was not tired. His sword arm was as strong and steady as it had been when he drew his titanium rune-blade and braced himself, legs wide, at the mouth of the bridge while behind him the citizens of Gelderhaus cowered. Wave after wave of the genetic Warhounds had come charging him, but time and again Iron Mike’s unbreakable sword had smashed them down and beaten them back. The gorge far below the bridge was choked with their corpses and the river ran red with their radioactive blood.

Now the Warhounds had fallen back and Prince Viktor himself was striding across the bridge, his sword Deathpall in his gauntleted hand. He stopped, just out of sword’s reach, his eyes blazing with hatred, his mouth trembling with frustrated rage.

“You shall not pass!” roared Iron Mike Sweeney in a voice that echoed from the walls on both sides of the gorge.

Hissing with fury, Prince Viktor raised his sword and cried—

“—get the fuck out of bed now or do you want me to come up there?”

The roar jolted Mike out of the dream and his body was obeying before his mind could even process what was going on.

“Do you fucking hear me?”

Mike was on his feet and he hurried to his bedroom door and pulled it open, crying, “I’m up, I’m up!”

At the foot of the stairs Vic Wingate — Mike’s stepfather — stood with a foot on the first step, his hard right hand gripping the banister. “You deaf or something? I have to call you three times before you even bother to acknowledge my existence? What am I — the fucking maid?”

Mike had to head this off at the pass before Vic really got worked up. Though morning beatings weren’t usually Vic’s thing, it didn’t take a whole lot to set him off.

“Sorry, Vic, I was on the toilet with the door closed.”

Vic looked up at him for a moment and the anger gradually turned to a nasty smirk. “Yeah, that figures…I always figured you were full of shit. Well, get your ass down here and have your breakfast. I don’t want to hear about you being late for school.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You have papers after school?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, get them done and get home. Don’t be late.” He leaned on those last three words.

“I won’t.”

Vic gave him a last perfunctory glare and marched off. Relieved, Mike sagged back against his door frame, exhaling the stale air that was pent up in his chest.

Downstairs he heard Vic yelling something at Mike’s mother, and then the door slamming as he left for work. Vic was the chief mechanic at Shanahan’s Garage in town and he was never later for work even though it didn’t matter what time he got there. Like most people, Shanahan was afraid of Vic and wouldn’t have dared risk pissing him off any more than Mike would.

“Eat shit and die,” Mike whispered to the closed door downstairs.

“Honey?” his mother’s voice called. It wasn’t seven o’clock yet and she already sounded half in the bag. Or maybe she hadn’t sobered up from last night. “Breakfast is on the table.”

“Yeah, I’m coming.” Breakfast would be a box of cereal and some orange juice. Mike went and sat down on the edge of the bed, fingers knotted together, shoulders hunched, staring at the patterns of sunlight on the gray indoor-outdoor carpet on his floor. He tried to remember his dream — something about a bridge — but it was gone. “Just another day,” he said aloud. He said it nearly every morning, usually in the same way, with the same total lack of enthusiasm.

This time, however, he was wrong.

(5)

Tow-Truck Eddie always started his day on his knees. As soon as he got out of bed, even if he had to go to the bathroom, he first dropped onto his knees, right on the cold wood floor, and prayed. He had a number of required prayers he had to say before he could start speaking directly to God, and he recited the Lord’s Prayer precisely fourteen times, which was twice seven — the number of God that was superior to six, the number of the Beast — and then said a rosary, a dozen Hail Marys. He crossed himself seven times, and then laid his head on the floor, his heavy brow pressed against the floorboards, until he heard the voice of God in his head.

Sometimes it would take an hour or more before God spoke to him, and by then his bladder would be screaming at him, but lately — just in the last few weeks — God spoke to him more quickly. Tow-Truck Eddie knew that this was a very good sign, and he suspected that it meant that God would soon be revealing his Holy Mission to him.

This morning his head had barely touched the cool wood when God’s voice thundered in his brain.

Today, my child! it said. The Voice of God was almost too loud to bear and Eddie’s head rang with it.

“Yes, my Lord. I am thy instrument. Command me to the holy purpose.”

You are my faithful servant, God said, and you are my holy instrument on earth. Do you know this?

“Yes, my Lord.”

You are the enemy of the Beast. Do you know this?

“Yes, my Lord.”

You are the Hand of Righteousness. Do you know this?

“Yes, my Lord.”

You are the Sword of God. Do you know this?

“Oh, yes, my Lord!”

When the Hand of Righteousness beholds the Beast, what is thy holy purpose?

“To destroy him, my Lord! I am the servant of God!”

And if the Beast should take another form?

“Satan is the Father of Lies. The Beast is the Father of Lies. With God as my Lord I shall see through his disguise and know the Beast — and knowing him I will destroy him, for such is the will of God.”

And if the Beast were to appear as an ordinary man?

“I would destroy him, for the Beast is the Father of Lies. Such is the will of God.”

And if the Beast were to appear as a woman?

“I would destroy him, for the Beast is the Father of Lies. Such is the will of God.”

And if the Beast were to appear as a child?

“I would destroy him, for the Beast is the Father of Lies. Such is the will of God.” This was an old litany between them, and only once, in the very beginning, had Tow-Truck Eddie hesitated — just for a moment — at this point, but not today. Now his voice was strong, filled with clarity and purpose.

And to this holy purpose do you dedicate yourself?

“I am the instrument of the Lord and his will is as my own. With my body, my heart, and my immortal soul shall I serve the will of the Lord.”

In my servant I am well pleased.

Gratitude flooded through Eddie and he wept, his head still pressed to the floor.

See this face. This is the face of the Beast that was.

A man’s face appeared in Eddie’s mind — a thin black man with blood on his clothes. Eddie knew him at once. This was the face that the Beast had worn thirty years ago — the face he’d worn when he had cut a bloody swatch through the town. Eddie knew that face, had confronted him and had given him a chance to confess his evils, but the man had lied again—the Beast is the Father of Lies—and Eddie had struck him down. Other men had been there to help, but Eddie had struck the most telling blow. The killing blow.

The Beast has returned and wears a new face.

Eddie jumped. Always before the litany had ended at this point, but this was new and his flush of gratitude changed, becoming an immediate charge of thrilling electricity. God’s voice was filled with rage and Eddie trembled.

This then is the new face of the Beast. Look upon the face of the Beast and behold his deceptions.

Tow-Truck Eddie raised his face an inch, two inches, then a foot, and stared into the empty air. Instantly there was an image there — not floating in the air or described in the grain of the boards — but burning in his mind. A figure, slight and shabby, in jeans and a baggy windbreaker. It was a young person, a boy of no more than thirteen or fourteen, with curly red hair and pale skin and dark blue eyes. He was riding a bicycle along the black wavering length of a road that Eddie knew only too well. A-32.

Behold the Beast! roared the voice of God with such thunder that Eddie’s nose began to bleed.

Eddie pawed the blood away, wiping it on his thigh as he stared at the image in his mind.

“I am the Sword of God,” he croaked through the agony in his skull. “I am the instrument of the Lord and his will is as my own. With my body, my heart, and my immortal soul shall I serve the will of the Lord.”

This is your holy task…this is the mission for which you were born unto the earth.”

Blood flowed freely now from both nostrils but Eddie didn’t care. Through a throat choked with blood and while tears streamed down his face, he said, “I am the Sword of God…thy will be done!”

(6)

“How was last night’s take?” Crow asked as he gassed up one of the hayride’s utility ATVs. Coop was sitting on the top step of the porch out in front of the souvenir shop. “Terry told me they were supposed to bus in some kids from Doylestown.”

“Yeah, they brought the whole senior class from the high school,” Coop said. He was Terry’s brother-in-law and though he was hardly the sharpest nail in the tool kit, Crow liked him. “We were up about eight percent of the daily average, which is what Terry’ll like to hear. Though I guess you’d be happy to know that three of the girls came close to getting hysterical from screaming.”

Crow grinned as he screwed on the cap. “We aim to please.”

“You think Terry’s ever gonna come out here and see what you’ve done to the place?”

The Pine Deep Haunted Hayride was the largest and most profitable such attraction in the country. Terry had a staff of over a hundred teenagers and adults, he charged a frightening fee for tickets, had an amazing concession stand that sold everything from pumpkin-flavored milkshakes to Ghoul Burgers, and he carted the cash to the bank more or less in a wheelbarrow. Every year the place made newspapers all up and down the East Coast, and every year the major TV stations from Philly, Harrisburg, and New York did special segments on it. Yet, he never went to his own hayride, not even to inspect it in daylight hours.

“Not a chance. You know Terry.”

Five years ago he’d paid Crow a fat piece of change to design it and had kept him on the payroll as a consultant. Except for counting the receipts and signing the paychecks of the staff, Terry otherwise ignored the hayride. Weird, Crow mused, then thought with wry amusement that Pine Deep was probably the only town in America where a healthy dis-interest in the macabre was considered strange. Very, very weird.

“I was over there for dinner the other night,” Coop mused, “and I asked him about it. Want to take a guess at what he said?”

“Shit, I can tell you his exact words. He dropped into an approximation of Terry’s voice and said, “That hayride’s just a cash cow for me.”

“Yep.”

“He says that about fifty times a season.”

“Yep.”

“I’m heading out to the Zombie graveyard,” Crow said, straddling the ATV. “I wanted to boost the smoke machine a bit and maybe repaint the blood on the crypt walls.”

“Well, don’t make it too real,” Coop said. “You’ll be giving these kids heart attacks.”

Crow shook his head. “My idea of the absolutely perfect version of this hayride is one where the tourists have to take out insurance beforehand and get CPR afterward. Then I’ll be happy.” He started the ATV and gunned the engine.

“Hell, you’re more’n halfway there now.”

“Not good enough!” Crow yelled, and headed out into the vast tract of corn and pumpkin fields that was home to his hayride. As he rode, even though it was drowned out by the roar of the engine, he started humming “Black Ghost Blues” again, totally unaware that he was doing it.

Chapter 2

(1)

That year the monsters came to town a whole month before Halloween. The monsters didn’t wear costumes. No Shreks or Jedi Knights, no Harry Potters or Orc Warriors, no Aragorns or Captain Jack Sparrows. These monsters weren’t white-sheeted ghosts peering hopefully out of eyeholes cut in old percale; they weren’t hockey-masked slaughterers of young virgins; they weren’t four-foot-high tottering Frankensteins with Kmart plastic faces. They didn’t caper from house to house with pumpkin-headed flashlights or ghostly green glow-sticks. None of them carried paper sacks filled with ghoulish gatherings of Snicker’s bars, sandwich bags full of pennies, apples, and snack-sized Three Musketeers.

They were monsters all the same.

They blew into town on a Halloween wind, coming into Pine Deep along the black length of Extension Route A-32, whisking over Black Marsh Bridge and through the cornfields. They came in a black car that had bloodstains on the door handles and the single unblinking black eye of a bullet hole on the driver’s door. The monsters came rushing into town like a storm wind, pushing cold air before them and dragging darkness behind.

There were three monsters in the car. Two of them sat in the front, a third crouched in the back. They all had their monster faces hunched low into the collars of their coats, hidden by the shadows of their hat brims. They were silently snarling, these three monsters. The monster in the backseat bared his teeth in desperation and fear; the monster behind the wheel bared his teeth in pain and hopelessness; but the monster in the front passenger seat bared his teeth in a grin of pernicious delight.

The black car flew with a raven’s speed along the dark road, but it did not fly with a raven’s precision: it veered and swayed and staggered from one side of the road to the other as if the monster who drove did not know how to control the machine. Yet it continued to drive fast for all its careening and swerving. In it the three silent, hungry monsters rolled into Pine Deep as night closed around the town like a fist.

But there were other monsters in Pine Deep that night. It was that kind of town.

These others did not need to come to town in a bloodstained black car; they were already there, had always been there. One drove through town every day in his own machine, a monstrous wrecker with a gleaming hook; another one labored all day repairing expensive cars and trucks, and labored all night to destroy precious hearts and souls; one walked around town and smiled at everyone and he never knew that a monster looked out of his laughing blue eyes, waiting, waiting…

One monster, the worst of all, waited in darkness under wormy dirt, awake now after a long, long sleep.

There were many other monsters in Pine Deep.

Waiting. All of them, waiting.

(2)

Lightning singed the edges of the dark thunderheads, but no rain fell; thunder rumbled distantly, shaking the trees and shaking thousands of soot-colored night birds into startled flight. They swarmed like locusts and then flew back toward the trees, believing themselves safe when the lightning flashed.

One night bird peeled off from the flock and soared through the raw air until it leveled off just above the tips of the corn, skimming along on the breeze, flapping its dark wings only occasionally. It was a ragged bird, its shape defined more by shadows than substance. The fields whisked along beneath it and when it reached the end of one farmer’s lot it veered left, drifting across the knobbed expanse of a pumpkin patch. All of the best pumpkins were already gone, picked and sold to supermarkets in Philadelphia and Doylestown, awaiting the jack-o’-lantern surgeons and the bakers of autumn pies. Only the ugly pumpkins remained, the pumpkins too gnarled and deformed for sale as decorations, too diseased to be welcome on any table.

This year there had been more diseased ones than the good kind; this year all across the township and its outlying farmlands hundreds of tons of pumpkins lay rotting, along with truckloads of fetid corn and wormy apples. It was a blighted year for Pine Deep, what the old folks called a Black Harvest, and they unearthed all the tales — short or tall — about the pestilential harvest of thirty years ago, of bad times come again.

The ugly pumpkins squatted in row after hideous row, or stood in huge mounds like heads piled high after a great battle. The night bird circled the biggest mound once, twice, and then veered off again, rediscovering the black road and following it up and over a series of small hills. More cornfields stretched away on either side of the road, and here and there darkened farmhouses began the ritual of turning on lights to combat the invasion of night shadows. The lights did not make the houses look safe and homey: they made them seem impossibly lonely, as if each house were the only house in the whole world, alone and lost in the eternal sea of dryly whispering corn.

The night bird uttered a strange, high shriek; not a caw, but a sound more like the wail of an abandoned and terrified child. The shrill sound floated through the night air, and the people inside the farmhouses, the ones who allowed themselves to hear it or could not block it out, shivered as if some dark and shambling thing were breathing its damp breath on their naked skin. None of them would forget to lock their doors that night, even if they were unaware of the subliminal dread that wail had sown in the soil of their hearts.

One farmhouse, older than the others, more battered by time and cold winds and disinterest, stood at the edge of a vast cornfield and overlooked a couple of acres of flat ground enclosed by a low stone wall. The ivy-covered stone wall embowered a small and disheveled cemetery in which the rows of shadow-painted tombstones stood in snarls of bracken and pernicious weeds. Wailing again, the night bird flew low over the cracked and wind-sanded headstones, circling and circling. No lights shone in the window of the old house. No lights had shone there in months, nor might ever show there again. Only shadows lived there, stirred now and again by the frigid breath of old ghosts. The night bird wailed yet again and flapped noisily toward a tree where it settled on a twisted and gnarled branch that reached out toward the tombstones. In daylight the fading colors of the leaves would have made the promise of beauty, but by starless night the leaves were a uniform and featureless black, forming nothing more than an amorphous bulk against which the night bird disappeared entirely.

The night bird turned a single black eye toward one headstone that leaned drunkenly just below the tree. It had been pushed off-balance by the roots of the tree but was held fast to the ground by one sunken corner and its own ponderous weight. It was a simple tombstone, blocky and gray and cheap, thirty years old and unkindly worn by each of those thirty winters. Chiseled into its face was a name: OREN MORSE.

Below that, a single word had been cut into the lifeless stone: REST. No date, no other inscription. The wind blew brambles and fallen leaves across the grave and one dry leaf, propelled by the vagaries of the breeze, skittered upward to the top of the gravestone and then tumbled over and off into the shadows beyond. Except for the murmuring wind and the whisper of the cornstalks, there was no sound. Even the night bird held its tongue.

Then a man was there.

He stepped out of a shadow and was abruptly there. The night bird let out a startled cry and fluttered its wings, but did not fly away. The man stood quietly looking down at the headstone, his gray lips moving as he read the name. He was scarecrow thin and dressed in a cheap black suit that was smeared with dirt. He wore no topcoat, no hat. His skin was as gray as the gravestones around him, but there was no moon now to shine on it. Still, that pale skin seemed to cast its own weird light. He held his hands loosely at his sides, and every once in a while those long fingers twitched and clutched as if grasping something, or desiring to.

Then he reached down into the shadows behind the tombstone and when he straightened he held the long neck of a battered old blues guitar in his hand. He looped the strap over his shoulder and drew his slender fingers along the silver strings. The friction made a sound like old door hinges creaking open.

Abruptly the whole graveyard was caught in the harsh white glare of headlights as a car crested one of the small hills and rushed down the other side toward the graveyard. The lights shimmered through the trees and danced along the tips of the corn, casting weird capering shadows. The gray man turned, watching as the car drew near, passed, and drove on. The car was moving very fast and swerving as if the driver was drunk. Three shadowy figures hunched in the car’s seats, two in the front, one in the back. Tires squealed as the car careered along the road, sashaying from one lane to the other and back, and then finally settling on a course dead center, as if the grill were devouring the single yellow line. The machine roared past a large billboard that read:

THREE MILES TO PINE DEEP, THE MOST HAUNTED TOWN IN AMERICA…WE’LL SCARE YOU SILLY!

If the men in the car noticed the sign, they gave no indication. Their shadowed heads didn’t turn as they passed the sign, the engine never slowed. The car clawed its way up the far hill, and in a few minutes the taillights were gone, fading first to tiny red dots, like rat’s eyes, and then vanishing altogether. A minute later the sound of the engine was gone as well.

The man in the graveyard stared into the distance, his eyes squinting as if he could still distantly see the car, though it was impossible in those deep shadows. His eyes lingered briefly on the billboard and the irony was not lost on him.

Again lightning flickered behind the clouds. In the tree, the night bird shivered its wings and uttered its strange wailing cry.

With a final lingering glance at the tombstone, the thin man tugged on the strap so that the guitar hung behind him, with the neck hanging down low behind his right hip; then he turned and began walking. He walked slowly and without haste, his long legs maintaining a steady, deliberate pace, like that of a pallbearer. He stepped onto the road and began walking in the direction taken by the car and its three passengers. His shoes made no sound on the blacktop. Lightning flashed again and again, a deception of a storm, but the storm was elsewhere. The lightning cast brief but bold shadows across the road, the wall of the graveyard, the gnarled tree, the night bird…everything starkly cast its shadow onto the blacktop. Everything except the man who walked without making a sound.

With slow and measured steps, he climbed the long hill and was soon lost in darkness. The night, and the night bird, followed after.

(3)

“Jesus Christ, Tony!” Boyd yelped, gripping the back of the driver’s seat with his one good hand. “Watch it!”

Tony Macchio wrestled the wheel and pulled the car back into the right-hand lane, missing the oncoming milk truck by inches. The car swayed drunkenly on its springs as Tony fought to steady it with clumsy hands. His fingers were caked with dried blood, and they felt cold and weak. He could barely even feel the knobbed arc of the steering wheel.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you?” snapped Boyd as the car finally settled into balance and began accelerating again, climbing a long hill.

Tony coughed once but didn’t say anything. His stomach felt hot and acidy, and he had too much phlegm in his throat. He just shook his head. Next to him, looking casual in spite of the wild ride, Karl Ruger watched Tony. Ruger’s eyes were cold slits, but he was smiling. The smile and the eyes seemed as if they belonged to two different faces: the smile seemed warm and pleasant and affable, but above the smile Ruger looked at Tony with the expressionless eyes of a reptile. Eyes the color of dusty slate, like a blackboard from which all the writing had been forcefully erased. Ruger had a long, thin nose that arced over the mouth like the blade of a very sharp knife, a pointed chin, and a sharp, strong jaw-line. His cheekbones hung like ledges over the concavity of hollow cheeks, and Ruger’s brow was high and clear but cut by the black dagger-point of a widow’s peak. He took off his hat and smoothed his greased hair flat against his skull. If he had had a kinder face, he could have looked like a stage magician, and he did have the air of magic about him; but it was a dark magic, and it clung to his soul and to his face, and to his fate. The dark magic was there in his long white fingers and in the shadows of his black, black heart.

Karl Ruger looked at Tony and smiled as he watched the man slowly die.

He found it fascinating to watch as Tony tried to cling to consciousness, tried to deny the coiled snake of pain in his gut where the Jamaican’s bullet had capped him. Gut shots were agonizing, Ruger knew, and he marveled at the manner in which Tony tried to bull his way through what must be searing pain. Idly, Ruger wondered if the loss of blood was providing Tony with some kind of insulation against the pain. God knows he’d lost a lot of it. Tony was sitting in a lake of it, and more of it was pooled around his feet. The fresh-cut copper smell of blood teased Ruger’s senses, and he wondered, not for the first time, why no one had ever made an aftershave that smelled like fresh blood.

The car rolled past a sign that read: WELCOME TO PINE DEEP! Ruger felt a cold wind blow through his chest. It was scary, but he liked it. He mouthed the name of the town, silently tasting it. Pine Deep. Yes. He closed his eyes and for just a moment he thought he heard a voice say: Ruger, you are my left hand. But no one had spoken. He opened his eyes and stared at the unfolding black road, feeling the prickle of expectant excitement in his chest, but at a loss to understand why it was there or what it meant.

Boyd asked again what the fuck was wrong with Tony, and Ruger watched as Tony tried to say something but only managed to blow a small bubble of viscous red between his purple lips. Ruger was fascinated by the bubble as it expanded, filled with Tony’s ragged breath, and then popped. A mist of tiny droplets dotted the windshield.

“Yo! Tony!” Boyd snapped.

“Shut up, Boyd,” whispered Ruger. He always spoke in a whisper. It was all he could manage since a spic in Holmesburg Prison had stabbed him in the throat during a small dispute between Ruger’s own Aryan Brotherhood and the brown-skinned critters on the Block. The spic had wanted to kill him so bad he had a hard-on, an actual hard-on, as he drove a sharpened spoon into Karl’s throat. Ruger could feel the hard length of the man’s dick when he had grabbed the spic’s groin and squeezed it. Makeshift knife in the throat or not, Ruger had all but ripped the man’s pecker off before one of the other Aryan Brothers had stepped in and cut the spic’s throat with a sliver of sheet metal that he’d stolen from the machine shop. The other Brother had taken the rap for the kill, which was fine for Ruger because he didn’t get any time added to his stretch. The spoon had not really done him much harm, just a nick on the larynx and a bit of pain. Big deal. Pain didn’t mean a goddamn thing to Ruger. Pain was just a “thing” that sometimes happened. And if his voice was now a hoarse and ghostly whisper, well, that was fine. It scared the shit out of a lot of people, and it made them listen closely to whatever he had to say.

“What the hell, Karl? He almost wrapped us around that truck!”

“He’s doing fine,” Ruger whispered. “Just fine.”

Tony turned and looked at Ruger for a moment, his brows knitted together and glistening with cold sweat.

“Fine, my ass!” Boyd said. “He took one back there.”

“So did you. So what?”

“Yeah, but I only got clipped and I ain’t driving the fucking car. Look at him, man! He’s halfway to being dead.”

More than halfway, Ruger thought. “He’s fine. Aren’t you, Tony?”

Tony glanced at him again, his eyes bright with fever but seeing only about half of the things he was looking at. He tried to speak, wanted to actually agree with Boyd, wanted to stop the car so one of them could drive. Boyd had only been shot through the left biceps; he could drive if he had to. Ruger hadn’t even been touched, but when he looked in Ruger’s eyes, into those icy reptilian eyes, Tony couldn’t find the courage to say anything. He felt trapped by that ophidian stare and by the bullet in his belly, completely unable to understand why Ruger was pushing him to drive. It didn’t make any sense to him. Ruger was a survivor type, so why would he risk dying in such a stupid and pointless way? Tony had never been able to figure Ruger out, and lately it had been even harder. He knew that Ruger was one evil son of a bitch, but now he thought that he was a little crazy, too.

Maybe more than a little.

Boyd had seen Ruger go crazy on the Jamaicans back at the warehouse. He’d shot nearly all of them himself and then instead of fleeing like anyone halfway sane, the crazy fuck had taken a shovel from the trunk and used the blade to chop them up. Boyd had thrown up watching it and when he’d tried to pull Ruger away, the psychopath had wheeled on him, his faced streaked with blood, and had given him a look that made Boyd want to piss his pants. He nearly did.

“Aren’t you, Tony?” Ruger asked again, leaning on the question and nudging the driver’s shoulder with the tip of a long white finger.

Tony nodded, just once, and then concentrated on the road. For a few minutes he managed to keep the car steady, but with each mile, each minute, it became harder to do. It was like trying to hold on to something from a dream.

Boyd shook his head disgustedly and sank back against the cushion. His arm hurt like all hell, but the bleeding had stopped. He had a towel wound around it, and kept it in place with steady pressure from his good hand. Tears burned in his eyes, but he turned his head and looked out at the night, hoping that Ruger hadn’t seen them.

Ruger, of course, had. His cold eyes missed very little. He saw Boyd’s tears just as clearly as he saw the blood and the life seeping out of Tony’s gut. He upped the wattage on his smile and chuckled low in his throat, too low to be heard over the roar of the engine.

Three minutes later, Tony crashed the car.

Chapter 3

(1)

“This place is a slaughterhouse.”

Detective Sergeant Frank Ferro nodded but said nothing. He and Detective Vince LaMastra stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway of the warehouse. Ferro was tall, his younger partner much taller, and their shadows stretched far across the bloody floor. There were corpses and spent shell casings everywhere. The stink of cordite hung like a pall in the close air of the warehouse, but beneath the gunpowder reek they could smell the blood, like freshly sheared copper.

Ferro tapped the shoulder of a uniformed officer who was busily sketching the scene in his notebook. “Al, who’s been called?”

The officer looked up. “Hey, Sarge. Some mess, huh?”

“Yeah. OK Corral. Who’s been called?” he asked again.

“M.E.’s on his way, and the photographer’s already around back taking some shots. A BOLO’s been sent out already for Ruger’s car.”

“You’re sure it was Ruger?” LaMastra asked, brightening.

“Yeah, the surveillance team got a positive on him and was about to make the call to you guys when this shit storm went down.”

“Where are they?”

“Northeastern Hospital. Ruger must have sniffed them ’cause he fired a clip into the van when he and the others took off.”

“Jim and Nelly hurt bad?”

Al snorted. “They’re lucky as shit. Cuts from glass and debris, but they hit the deck on the first shot and all the other rounds just tore up the can. Missed them completely.”

“What about Johnston?”

The officer shook his head. “He’s around back.”

Ferro’s lugubrious brown face tightened and he flicked a quick glance at LaMastra. A muscle was bunching and flexing in the younger man’s clamped jaw.

Al led them around back to where Johnston lay in a limp sprawl, arms flung out and legs wide in a red pool. The photographer moved around him and LaMastra as if they weren’t there, taking shot after shot.

“You almost done?” Ferro asked, and the photographer took another shot before answering.

“Yeah,” he said as let his camera hang from its strap. “I’m to do the inside now.”

Alone, Ferro and LaMastra looked down at the corpse.

“Jesus H. Christ,” LaMastra breathed.

They said nothing for a couple of minutes, letting time pass, sorting things out, keeping their cop faces intact despite what was going on behind their eyes.

“Ruger,” LaMastra said, needlessly.

“Yeah.”

“Bastard.”

“Yeah.”

“Now he’s killed a cop.”

“Yeah,” Ferro said in a dead voice.

LaMastra’s jaw muscles kept clenching.

A moment later a uniformed officer came sprinting around the corner of the warehouse. “Sarge!”

Ferro and LaMastra turned. “What is it?”

“It’s Ruger…he’s been spotted!”

(2)

Vic Wingate fell asleep in his Barcalounger in front of the TV, his feet up and ankles crossed, one hand closed limply around a long-necked bottle of beer that had gone tepid, the other lying palm down on his crotch. He wore a pair of faded blue boxers and a Pine Deep Softball T-shirt. He’d never played softball in his life; the shirt was a leftover from Lois’s first husband, Big John Sweeney.

Vic slept and dreamed and his faced was bathed with a greasy sheen of cool sweat. Behind his eyelids his eyes jumped and twitched and every once in a while his hand closed around his balls….

Vic stood in the forest, deep in the shadows in the bowels of Dark Hollow, the toes of his work boots sinking into the muddy fringe at the edge of the swamp as he leaned forward and whispered.

“It’s almost ready,” he hissed. “Everything’s just about in place.” There was silence except for the incessant drone of the mosquitoes and the hoot of a scraggly old owl in the branches of a blighted sycamore.

Vic knelt, almost losing his balance, and for a moment he windmilled his arms as he fought for balance. Much as he loved that which lay beneath the mud and muck, he did not want to touch it. It was not time for that kind of embrace.

“I’ve done everything you wanted,” Vic said as he crept farther back up the bank and onto firmer ground. He licked his lips and then smiled. “Everything…and a few more things. Stuff I thought up.”

A crow cawed loudly and flapped down through the branches and landed on the far side of the swamp. It cocked its head and fixed him with an eye that was as black and expressionless as a bead of polished onyx.

Vic stared at it for a moment and then dropped his eyes to the leaf-strewn surface of the swamp. He reached out a hand and just glided his fingers along the surface debris. “The world’s changed a lot,” he said. “There’s stuff I had to do that we hadn’t thought of before.”

The bird rustled its feathers and he looked hard at it, squinting in the gloom.

“A lot of things have changed.”

The bird stared back.

Vic looked back down at the mud. “I’ve taken care of everything.” He paused and a slow, cold smile wriggled onto his thin lips. “Everything.”

In his sleep, Vic shifted, a faint smile on his mouth. Beneath his hand he grew hard.

(3)

Ruger saw it happen just in time to save his own life. That he saved the others, too, was inconsequential to him. He saw it because he was waiting for it, because he wanted it to happen. He needed it to happen, knew it would happen. He’d know that ever since he’d seen the name of the town and heard the voice speaking in his head. He didn’t know exactly what would happen, in fact could never have predicted the exact event that caused the wreck, but he knew the wreck — or something like it — was inevitable.

For weeks now he had felt that Death was dogging his heels and that sooner or later it was going to jump him. That, or maybe he’d find some way to turn it around and spit in Death’s eye. He found himself taking outrageous risks lately, risks like letting a dying man drive his getaway car. Instead of dreading the nearness of death, Ruger had started to groove on it, getting an almost erotic high from the nearness to total blackness. It jazzed him higher than a spike in the vein, and he’d been running on that high for days now, first planning the drug scam with the Jamaican posse, then forcing the deal to go sour by mouthing off to the chief of the Jamaican crew, then the shoot-out at the warehouse, and now this doomed flight.

It had all been good, all been a wild high. He knew that it would somehow end in a fireball of some kind, and he was perched on the edge of his perception, waiting to take control of it, to force the events to bend to his will, as so many other events in his life had been twisted to his will. There was no rush like it. When Tony lost it, it would be up to Ruger to take Lady Death by the tits and give her a tweak. That’s how he saw it. Give Lady Death’s tits a good tweak. No, he thought in the split second before the car went out of control. Not fuck me, you cold bitch — fuck you.

If he lived through the wreck, it was because his will was strong enough, and that, he knew, would mean that he’d been right all along about something a Gypsy lady had told him: that he was “special,” that he was protected from ordinary death. Maybe even immortal, a concept he did not consider either outlandish or absurd. If he died…well then, he’d just go rushing into that great big blackness with a hard-on and a curse on his laughing lips and see if the darkness could hold him.

This is how the wreck happened. The black car rounded a bend in the road, leaving the canal behind, and zoomed onto a long stretch of straight highway that clove through seemingly endless cornfields. The ranks of dry corn stood at attention on either side of the car as it whisked along the blacktop, and the car’s slipstream made them sway and whisper. Tony’s hands gripped the wheel so tightly that his knuckles were bone white in the places where they weren’t stained with blood. He kept trying to grip harder just to be able to feel something, but the hands at the ends of his wrists were merely dead lumps abruptly ending in coldness. He could not feel any of his fingers or even his palms. He kept looking at the wheel just to make sure he was actually holding it.

They approached a crossroads where a farm road cut the highway and Tony was looking at his hands when the man walked out of the right-hand cornfield and stopped in the middle of the road. Tony looked up just in time to see the man stop dead in the spray of the headlights. Maybe it was a trick of the light, or maybe it was his own failing vision, but Tony thought the man — a tall, pale man with blond hair and heavy features — seemed only as substantial as mist, that the burning light of the headlights cut right through him and that he cast no shadow on the ground.

The man grinned nastily at the onrushing car. His skin was white as snow. Not merely pale, not even the white pink of an albino, but as white as the cocaine in the trunk, as white as Tony’s knuckles, as white as Ruger’s teeth when he smiled. The white man stood there, his blond hair fluttering in the storm breeze, his lips curled into a grin as evil and hungry as Ruger’s own.

Tony screamed, and then Ruger swiveled around from looking at the driver and saw the man loom in the headlights and just for a moment he felt a flash of recognition punch through his brain like a bullet.

“Ruger,” he thought he heard the man say in a heavily accented voice, but it was impossible at that distance and at that speed to have heard anything. “Ruger, you are my left hand.”

Time instantly slowed down.

The car seemed to almost freeze around him and Tony and Boyd were like mannequins, their mouths opened in comical parodies of screams. Only the man in the road seemed to exist in real time. He raised a hand and beckoned to Ruger.

Ruger’s mouth moved to form the name “Griswold” and the shape of it felt familiar on his lips and tongue.

The ghostly figure spoke. “Vic Wingate has been my John the Baptist…he has paved the way. But you, Karl…you will be my Peter, my rock, and on this rock I will build my church.” The voice echoing in Ruger’s head was heavy with mockery, but he liked the sound of it.

All at once time caught up to Ruger and the car hurtled at the man too fast to stop or even veer. Tony screamed again and the instant of contact (or had it been a hallucination brought on by stress?) was gone. Tony’s hands were moving all over the wheel and instantly Ruger knew what was about to happen. Tony swung the wheel to the right, trying to swerve around the apparition, but he was ham-fisted with blood loss and overdid the turn. The car lurched away from the man, missing him by less than a foot, and rocketed off the road out of all control. Ruger grabbed the wheel with both hands, shoving Tony against the door. He fought the wild turn, swerving into it with a gentle angularity, preventing it from becoming a tumble. The car jolted as the front wheels hit the edge of the drainage ditch forming a border between road and field. The car almost nose-dived into the ditch, but Ruger jerked hard on the wheel to correct the angle, and a microsecond later the back wheels slammed into the edge of the ditch. The impact slackened some of the car’s momentum, but Tony’s foot was still on the accelerator and the sedan plowed into the cornfield like a runaway train. Cornstalks whipped at the windows and died beneath the wheels in sharp crunches of agony.

“Get your fucking foot off the pedal!” Ruger hissed. When Tony didn’t, or couldn’t, Ruger cocked his arm and drove his elbow into Tony’s nose once, twice. The brittle cartilage in Tony’s nose crunched and blood exploded from his lacerated skin, pouring down over his mouth. Tony sagged against the door and his foot slid from the pedal. Thoroughly enjoying himself, Ruger grinned, shifted his hips, then reached over with his own left foot and stamped on the brakes. The car jerked and jolted, throwing Ruger against the dashboard and Boyd against the back of Tony’s seat. Tony’s seat buckled forward, and Tony’s right temple struck the steering wheel with a sharp crack.

A moment later there was a much louder crack! and then the car swayed drunkenly to the right, slowed abruptly, then stopped altogether.

The engine growled in confusion as it wound itself down.

Pushing himself away from the dashboard, Ruger reached over and shoved the automatic transmission into park, then switched off the engine. A tarpaulin of silence dropped over the car, broken only by small tinkling sounds from the now still engine and the far-off rumble of thunder.

Chapter 4

(1)

Long black lines of burned rubber marked where the car had gone off the road into the corn. The tall man with the blond hair stood at the outer curve of the skid mark and stared into the field for a long time, his mouth cut into a cruel smile of triumph. Despite the total cloud cover his skin and blond hair seemed to glimmer with a luminescence like cold moonlight.

He reached out his left hand, fingers splayed so that from his perspective his hand encompassed the whole of the car; then he closed his hand slowly, forming a knotted fist. A wind seemed to blow past him and into the cornfield.

Then his smile changed as he felt a presence behind him. He slowly lowered his arm and turned, his eyes both bright and dark in the strange light. Across the road, standing just at the edge of the forest, was a second man. His skin was gray as dust and he wore a black suit smeared with dirt. The blond man’s face twisted into a sneer.

The man in the black suit opened his mouth to speak, but though his lips formed words, there was no sound. His face registered alarm and then frustration. He tried again and the strain of his effort was clear on his face.

The blond man shook his head and laughed. “Pathetic,” he said in a voice that was the sound of icy wind blowing through the limbs of blighted trees.

Straining, the other man forced out two words—“…stop…you…”—but the effort drained him and his shoulders slumped. He mouthed bastard, but it had no sound and carried no force.

“You thought you had won, didn’t you?”

The other man could not make himself heard, his lips writhed without sound. Finally he stopped trying to talk and just stood there looking stricken.

“You have no idea what you did. You have no concept of how powerful you’ve made me.” He took another step closer and was now only a few feet away from the gray man. “So now…every drop of blood that falls will be on your head. Every. Single. Drop.”

Then his eyes flared from pale blue to a fiery red as hot and intense as the furnaces of hell.

In terror, the man in the dark suit fled into the shadows and was gone.

Lightning flashed in the sky, bathing the road with harsh white light; when the shadows returned, the road was empty.

(2)

Malcolm Crow held the severed arm in both of his hands and wondered what to do with it. Put it with the others? Or maybe hang it in the window.

He opted for the window.

Tossing it playfully up and down as he walked, he went to the long counter that formed the floor of the display window and peered at the tangle of skulls, rats, spiderwebs, tombstones, and necrobilia that lay strewn with artistic abandon in front of the thick plate glass. He pursed his lips, made a thoughtful decision, and then bent down to lay the severed arm in front of the largest tombstone, the one that read:

COUNT DRACULA

Born 1472

Died 1865

Died 1900

Died 1923

Died 1988

Died 2007

He checked to make sure the price tag was showing.

Whistling “Cemetery Blues” along with the CD player, he strolled back to his worktable and began opening a second box of gruesome goodies. Both cartons were stamped with the distinctive death’s-head label of Yorick’s Skull: Repulsive Replicas, Inc. He removed four more identical severed arms, tagged them with his price gun, and set them on a shelf next to the severed hands, human hearts, and glow-in-the-dark skulls. When the bell above the door tinkled he glanced over his shoulder to see a familiar burly, bearded figure amble in.

“Hey! Wolfman!” Crow said playfully, waving a rubber arm.

Terry Wolfe smiled back, his grin splitting the red beard with a flash of white. He was a big man, nearly six-five, with logger’s forearms and a huge barrel chest, but dressed with expensive good taste in a Giampaolo Desanti suit in dark blue wool with faint pinstripes, a pale blue shirt, and a tie that matched his suit. His shoes were buffed to a polished-coal sheen, and his red beard and curly hair were clipped short, though Crow noticed that Terry needed a haircut — he usually got one every week — and that his beard was a little uneven. Pretending not to look, Crow saw that Terry’s smile went no deeper than the surface of his face and that his eyes were bloodshot.

“Whatcha got there?” Terry asked as he stepped up and peered into the box. “Oh, yuck!” He reached in and fished out a huge black rat that lay crushed and sprawled in a congealed puddle of blood and gore.

“Cute, huh?” Crow said with a happy grin.

“Good God, what on earth are you going to do with this?”

“With ‘these,’” Crow corrected. “I have six of them.”

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“To sell ’em.”

“To whom?”

“Kids. I already sold out of the first lot. Roadkill Ratz are this year’s ‘thing.’” When you step on them they squeal. Kids snap them right up. And split skulls, severed limbs, popped-out eyes, eviscerated dogs, and even bug-eyed monster babies with bloody fangs.”

“When we were kids we used to have rubber chickens.”

“Dude, we grew up with Freddy, Jason, and Michael Myers.”

“Sounds like a law firm in hell.”

“The difference is that you never went to monster movies when we were kids, Wolfman, so you don’t remember all the good horror stuff from the seventies and eighties. Zombie flicks and slasher pics and the kids loved it all. But all that changed and now every couple of years they have to amp it up to keep kids interested. It’s harder to spook them, harder to gross them out. They want to push the envelope of nastiness.”

“To reiterate,” Terry sniffed with disdain, “‘yuck!’” He rubbed his tired eyes.

“Rough day at the office? Tired from sitting up all night counting all your millions?”

Terry yawned. “Don’t I wish? Do you want me to tell you what kind of week I’ve had so far?”

“Not really—”

“Since you ask — mostly it’s this bloody crop blight that is very likely going to put ten or fifteen farms out of business, and most of the rest of them will be mortgaged to the eyebrows to Pinelands Farm Bank. Gil Sanders told me just yesterday that his entire corn crop was diseased, all of it. They’re calling it Scandinavian leaf blight because they don’t know what else to call it. That’s twenty tons of corn that’ll have to be burned. He’s already talking of selling his farm to developers and getting out. A few others, too.”

“Like thirty years ago,” Crow murmured. “Like the Black Harvest.”

“God, don’t even say that!” Terry rubbed his face with both hands. “Hopefully this won’t be anywhere near as bad. We have two EPA guys here and the guy who teaches agriculture science at Pinelands College is taking samples all over. Maybe they’ll come up with something. And—” Terry began, then waved it off.

“What?”

Terry gave him a bleak smile. “I know it’s just stress and all that,” he said, “but I haven’t been able to sleep much. Can’t get to sleep for hours, and then when I do I have the weirdest dreams. I dunno, I guess you could even call them nightmares — if guys my age actually get nightmares.”

I sure as hell do, Crow thought, and was about to say it when a customer came in and Terry watched as Crow sold the kid a pair of vampire teeth and two tubes of fake blood. He gave the kid some advice on how to make the blood trickles on either side of his mouth look real rather than fake and the kid left happy. The intrusion broke the stream of their conversation.

Terry shook his red head sadly. “You are a sick little man, Malcolm Crow.”

“Hey, just call me ‘Mr. Halloween.’”

“Other names occur to me. What does Valerie think of all this…” He waved his hand around, at a loss for an adjective that precisely described the Crow’s Nest. “…stuff?”

Crow shrugged. “She thinks I’m a fruit ball.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“But,” Crow said, holding up a finger, “a lovable fruit ball and dead sexy.”

“Oh, I’m quite sure.” Terry snorted. “You’re way too far into this stuff, man. I mean, do you even get mail from the real world?”

“Not often.”

Most of the year, the Crow’s Nest Craft Shoppe was a respectable, upscale arts and crafts store that sold everything from make-your-own birdhouse kits to Elmer’s School Glue, but with the advent of cooler weather a darkness crept over the store, or at least so it seemed to Terry. The basic craft supplies were exiled to the racks in the back room, while the large main showroom of the shop became a place where monsters ruled. Row upon row of rubber horror masks lined the walls, and Terry was always amazed at the horrific detail of these masks. He would have expected the witches and werewolves and ghouls, but these were overshadowed by grinning freaks with bulging eyes and insanely smiling mouths; demons with flaring red eyes and open, running sores; sadomasochistic cenobites that sprouted grids of pins or exposed gray matter; serial killers with thin, loveless mouths and chiseled features; distorted ghost faces from the Scream trilogy; alien invaders with multifaceted bug eyes and whiplike antennae; huge dragon heads with horns and saurian scales and plates; leprous fiends with leering faces; undead zombies riddled with bullets holes; mummies whose bandages slipped to reveal monstrously deformed verminous eyes; and many more, each more horrific than the last.

Then there were the monster model kits, stacks and stacks of them, and apple barrels filled with nasty little trinkets: eyeball key chains and human thumb erasers, plastic vampire teeth and stick-on bullet holes, and scores of assorted insects and vermin. Costumes hung on hangers by a makeshift dressing room and accessories were lined up neatly on Peg-Boards. For a few dollars the local kids could walk away with plastic butcher knives, meat cleavers, Freddy Kruger gloves, Jason hockey masks, pitchforks, witches’ brooms, ball-and-chains, pirate hooks, headbands that made it look as if there were an arrow through their skull, and a variety of makeup in black and orange tubes, guaranteed to transform any ten-year-old into a demon from the outer darkness or a newly risen corpse. Crow loved it. The kids in town loved it. Terry Wolfe, however, hated all of it.

One small counter — Terry’s only haven in the store — was incongruously stocked with rows of beepers and cell phones. Being the local Cingular distributor paid the bills the rest of the year, Crow insisted. The business had its frustrations, though, because the cellular relay tower was on the blink as often as it was working, and no one could understand why; plus more than half the places around town were cell phone dead zones.

“Hey, that reminds me,” Terry said, drumming his fingers on a case of colorful cell phone covers, “while I’m here can I recharge?” He pulled his cell from its belt holster. “I’ve been on this thing all day and it’s dead as a doornail.” Crow took it and plugged it into a charger behind the counter and then went back to stocking the shelves, glancing covertly at Terry as he did so. He didn’t like the way Terry looked and wondered if he was having troubles with Sarah. That, on top of the town’s crop and financial problems, would be almost too much.

That, and the coming of Halloween. Terry never liked Halloween, as Crow knew all too well. It had always scared him dry-mouthed and spitless ever since he was ten. Back in the autumn of the Black Harvest when Terry had been so cruelly injured. That had been the worst time for all of them. Crow’s own brother, Billy, had been murdered by the same man who had killed Terry’s sister, Mandy, and had nearly killed Terry.

Terry and Crow were the only ones in town who had seen the face of the killer and survived — and both of them knew for damn sure it hadn’t been that migrant worker, Oren Morse. The one they’d nicknamed the Bone Man. The bluesman that the town had accused of committing the murders, and had killed.

Terry and Crow knew different, but not once in thirty years had they spoken to each other — or to anyone for that matter — about it, and that had been Terry’s choice. He’d taken his memories of that autumn and had boxed them up and stored them in a back closet of his mind, never to be opened. Crow, on the other hand, thought about that autumn almost every day of his life, and he’d taken the other routes to defuse the ticking time bombs of memories. First he tried to pickle the memories in bourbon, but that hadn’t really done the job, and had nearly ruined his life. Then he went the other route and made a joke out of them. He indulged them, made them a farce by selling monster masks and designing spooky traps for the hayride. Crow thought that doing that had more or less exorcised the demons of memory, but he couldn’t bring himself to talk it over with a shrink to find out.

The upshot was that Terry was afraid of the dark, and Crow was afraid of the light. If they could have compared notes, it might have been both funny and comforting to them.

Yet, despite their private terror, both Crow and Terry took a wry amusement at Terry’s being afraid of Halloween and at the same time being mayor of the town Time magazine had once dubbed “the Most Haunted Town in America.” Pine Deep was one of those peculiar little towns that seemed to foster a common belief in ghosts and ghostly happenings; not just among the town’s eccentrics, but in everyone from crossing guards to town selectmen. The haunted history stretched back to Colonial times when ghosts of slaughtered Lenni-Lenape were said to haunt the new European settlements, and the legends hadn’t dwindled with time but seemed to gather steam with each passing year. It was on this rather spooky foundation that the entire financial structure of the town was built.

Ever since the Black Harvest of thirty years ago when blight destroyed half the farms in the region, the town had begun to change. Developers had bought up the farms and built expensive houses and estates. Money moved in, as the town saying went, and with it came artists, writers, and craftspeople who bought stores and began shoveling in the tourist dollars. The writers wrote horror or gothic novels that made the best-seller lists, the artists painted moody pieces that became popular spooky posters, and the craftspeople made everything from miniature hand-sewn scarecrows to fabulously expensive jewelry like the Vampire’s Tears, a pair of bloodred ruby earrings that Anne Rice wore on the cover of Publisher’s Weekly. The mood and the history of the town seemed to inspire the darker thoughts of the artists, and the tourists loved everything they made.

Terry, always business smart, joined in with the group that capitalized on the haunted history of the town, and used that as gimmicks for advertising. Soon everyone up and down the eastern seaboard came to Pine Deep for the scary fun and games: the Halloween Parade, the Monster Mash dance-concert — once, years ago featuring, appropriately enough, The Smashing Pumpkins — and the seasonal shopping that attracted the most astute and discerning antiquarians. The whole town came totally alive at Halloween and the accounting ledgers of nearly every store went quickly and happily from red to black between September and Christmas, with the definite peak being the weeks leading up to trick-or-treat. Chills and shivers helped Pine Deep prosper as an increasingly upscale community. The fact that Terry Wolfe, with his secret fears, was mayor of “Spooksville,” as the Philadelphia Daily News recently called it, was truly ironic.

The topper of the whole strange pie was that, despite everything, Terry owned the Haunted Hayride.

Crow’s reverie was broken by the ringing of the phone and he leaned across the counter and picked it up. “Yeah…sure, he’s right here.” Smiling, he tossed the portable handset to Terry. “For you. Chief’s office.”

“Uh-oh!” Terry said in mock alarm as he reached out a hand to take the phone. Crow strolled a few paces away and began idly poking in his box of rubber vermin and body parts.

“Yeah, Gus, what is it?” Terry listened for a moment, then said, “No, my cell’s out of energy. What’s the hurry?” He listened for a while and then started saying “Jeez!” every couple of seconds. Terry was a man incapable of profanity and “Jeez” was about as close as he ever got to an expletive. Crow gave Terry an inquisitive look, but the mayor held up a finger and mouthed the word wait. Terry listened for over a minute, then said, “Jeez!” again. “Okay…what about the three gunmen?”

Crow arched his eyebrows and silently mouthed the word gunmen, and again Terry held up his hand. “Jeez-oh-man!” Terry said with feeling, and that was him at his most profane. “Okay, Gus, I’ll be there in a minute. Yeah. Bye.” He punched the Off button on the portable and stood there, chewing his lower lip and tapping the phone against his thigh. Crow cleared his throat; Terry looked sharply at him. “Man, the manure has really hit the fan now.”

“Why? What’s up?”

“You are not going to believe this one, man, but Gus got a call from the Philadelphia Police Department. They red-flagged all the jurisdictions from Philly to the state line because apparently three psychos shot a bunch of holes in some Jamaican druggies and made off with a bunch of drugs and money.”

“Cool!” Crow grinned in spite of himself.

“Yeah, well, the kicker is that they’ve been spotted a few times and for some reason I cannot even fathom, they’ve been heading this way. According to what Gus told me, they probably came through here half an hour ago. There were roadblocks set up. Gus had already been working with Crestville and Black Marsh since late this afternoon. Philly is sending a bunch of their ‘advisers’ up here to take over from Gus. He said he tried to beep me to let me know, but he couldn’t reach me and figured I’d wind up here. Anyway, Gus and the other chiefs arranged some sort of road-check system, some kind of observation-post setup, I don’t know. Anyway, there was supposed to be no way the psychos could get through it without at least being stopped.”

“Stopped?”

Terry snorted. “Yeah, supposedly Gus Bernhardt and his posse are going to try and apprehend a real criminal.”

“Be better to have the Marx Brothers try and arrest them. Gus is pretty good at parking tickets, though.”

“And not much else.” Terry rubbed his eyes.

Crow could see the pressure mounting in his friend’s face, which had gone from a haggard white to a dangerous red.

“So, basically all that the local boys were supposed to do was stop and detain and then turn the bad guys over to the Philly cops. Problem is…a good hour ago, the psychos blew past the Black Marsh checkpoint and crossed the bridge. Now here’s the fun part. The suspects never made it to the roadblock in Crestville.”

Crow said, “Oh,” in a very expressive voice. The town of Pine Deep was a comfortably wide spot in the road, a triangular wedge made up of upscale shops and lush farmland and bisected by Interstate Alternate Extension Route A-32, lying hard against the Delaware River that separated Pennsylvania from New Jersey and framed on all sides by streams and canals. A-32 wavered back and forth between the two states, across old iron bridges and up through farm country, and then plowed right through the town. Black Marsh was an even smaller burg just to the southeast, and miniscule Crestville was the next town heading north. A-32 was the only road that cut all the way through those three towns; the other roads were all small farm roads that led nowhere but to someone’s back forty or to the asymmetrical tangle of cobblestoned streets in Pine Deep’s trendy shopping and dining district. Any car heading to Crestville had to pass through Pine Deep.

“Are they sure they were on the route?”

“Yeah, a Black Marsh cycle cop spotted them. Everyone expected them to run into the roadblock in Crestville. There was a reception committee with eight or nine cars, barricades and shotguns…but they never made it.”

“Shit.”

“As you say. So, now we apparently have to stage a manhunt.”

Crow laughed. “You’re kidding, right? An actual manhunt? Like in the movies?”

“Just like in the movies. Richard Kimble and all that — though Gus Bernhardt is certainly no Lieutenant Gerard. I only hope the cops from Philly are.” Terry cocked his head and peered at Crow. “I wish you’d stop grinning. This is serious.”

But Crow just shook his head. “I doubt it, I really do. This is just Gus getting hysterical. Everyone’s going to run around like Chicken Little and then we’re going to hear that these three clowns are somewhere northwest of Scranton. Sorry, dude, but I just can’t take this seriously.”

“Well, I do,” Terry said, and there was enough asperity in his tone to dial down even Crow’s humor. “This isn’t just Gus this time. There really are detectives from Philadelphia here and they, at least, seem to be taking this seriously.”

“Jeez, Terry,” Crow said, holding his hands up. “Lighten up. Don’t get mad at me. I just know Gus a little better than you do, and until I see actual bad guys rolling down Corn Hill I’m going to find this hard to buy. That’s all.”

A nervous twitch had started at the corner of Terry’s right eye and he was starting to perspire. He mopped his face on his expensive sleeve, hesitated for a moment, and pasted on a bad attempt at an amiable smile, saying, “Okay, okay. Look, I gotta go but I need you to do a favor for me?”

“Sure, call it.”

“Go out to the hayride and let Coop know what’s coming down. Maybe even shut it down for the night. No, don’t give me that look. I think it’s the smart thing to do with all this stuff going on. The hayride’s on Old Mill, just off A-32, and with all the kids out there…well, you know what I mean.” Terry was attempting to sound offhand, but his words were coming out in nervous rapid-fire. “Try to call Coop first, but you know he won’t answer. He never does. He just lets the tape get it. Coop is a pain in my behind.”

“He’s Sarah’s cousin.”

“Nepotism is the only thing keeping him on the payroll. The man’s an idiot.”

Crow found nothing to contest in that statement. “Okay, I’ll button up the shop and head out there. I’m supposed to go over to Val’s anyway, and that’s more or less on the way.”

Terry looked a little relieved. “Thanks for playing errand boy. Oh, and, Crow?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Be extra careful. Don’t grin at me like that, you idiot, I’m serious.”

Crow smiled regardless and dropped into a Festus drawl. “Gee, Mayor Wolfe, does that mean I can bring along my trusty six-gun?”

With no trace of humor in his voice, Terry said, “Yes, it does.”

Crow blinked at him, waiting for the punch line. He said, “You serious?”

“As a heart attack.” Terry cleared his throat. “Look, Crow, all of the cops — local and otherwise — are going to be mustering at the station to coordinate this thing. If I could, I’d send one of them, not that any of them are worth the cost of a pack of Juicy-Fruit. Besides, you used to be a cop….”

“Christ, Terry, in this town nearly everyone except my grandmother has been a cop at one time or other. And she’d have taken the job if she hadn’t had the rhuematiz.”

“Yeah, well. Consider yourself temporarily reinstated.”

“As a cop? You can do that?”

“I’m the mayor, I can do anything.”

“That’s not what Sarah says.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. My wife thinks I’m Superman.” He mopped more sweat and then looked at his friend for a moment. “Look, Crow, just do this for me quick and safe, okay?”

Crow smiled but he could see that this matter really was troubling Terry, so he didn’t make another joke. “Sure, Terry. Whatever you want. And about this whole fugitive thing — don’t get too wired about it, ’cause about the last place three wanted criminals are going to want to go is to a haunted hayride packed with every teenager from the tristate area. Y’know, they got this whole thing about witnesses and such.”

Terry walked behind the counter and retrieved his cell phone, which was only partially recharged. “Yeah, well, just be careful anyway.”

“I promise that I will be very careful. The best man for this job is a smart coward, and damn it, Terry, I’m your man.” He sketched a salute.

Terry Wolfe shook his head, but then he stepped forward and thrust out his hand. “Thanks.”

Crow picked up a rubber severed arm and extended it to shake Terry’s hand. Terry batted it lightly aside and shook his head again, sadly this time. “You are very weird,” he said with a harried grin, and then left.

For a full minute, Crow just looked out through the broad glass window at the darkness, a lopsided smile on his face. He scratched his cheek with the rubber hand.

“Well, hell,” he said aloud. Then went into the back room and fetched his gun.

(3)

Seconds crawled over the car like army ants. Finally Boyd found his voice and croaked, “Tony? Ruger?”

Ruger just grunted at him. He quivered as adrenaline coursed through him. He could feel the hair standing up all over his body. His fingertips shook as he probed his cheek and forehead, which were puffing up and beginning to throb. There was no pain yet, but a growing tingle that forewarned him of it. It felt wonderful. Running his tongue over his gums, he could taste the hot, salty blood, and he drank it down hungrily.

“Is Tony okay?”

Annoyed by the fact that Boyd seemed to be relatively unhurt, Ruger looked at the driver, slumped motionlessly against the steering wheel. “Who cares?” Ruger said.

“What the hell happened?”

“Tony drove us over a ditch and into this fucking cornfield, whaddya think happened?”

“Shit!” Boyd said. “That’s just…shit.”

“Uh-huh.” Ruger was trying to recapture the image of the man in his mind, certain that he knew the man, but the harder he tried to grab at the memory, the more elusive it became until finally it was gone for good. He felt a pang at the loss.

Ruger, you are my left hand.

He jerked the passenger door handle, shoved the door open, and eased himself out of the car, listening to his body for signs of damage and finding nothing but a few blossoming bruises. He stood by the side of the car for a moment and then grabbed it as the cornfield swirled sickeningly around him. Closing his eyes, he fought for balance. It came reluctantly and slowly. He opened his eyes and looked around. The cornfield was still swaying, but now it was because of the wind. He wondered if he had a concussion. The last time he’d had one, it had felt like being buzzed on really good sour mash; a very nice feeling.

“Is the car okay?” Boyd asked as he popped open his door and crawled out.

Ruger studied it, lips pursed. “Nope.”

Boyd came unsteadily around the car and stood by Ruger. They looked down at the right front wheel, which lay almost flat under the weight of the car. The tire was intact, but the ball joint connecting the wheel to the axle had snapped and the whole wheel had just folded under the car.

“Well, shit,” Boyd said again.

“Yeah.”

“Never gonna fix that.”

“No kidding.”

“What’re we gonna do?”

Ruger barely glanced at him. “Your legs work, don’t they?”

Boyd gave him an incredulous stare and then flapped his good arm. “Oh, shit. Man, this is just the fucking top. Walk? Yeah, Ruger, that’s just great. Walk where? Back to Philly? Walk to New Hope? Maybe you want to take a country stroll to Lambertville, I hear they have a good brunch at the inn.” He shook his head. “Where the hell we gonna walk to?”

“Anywhere but here.”

“Yeah? Well, we’re in the middle of East Bumfuck, Pennsylvania. There ain’t nowhere around here to walk to!”

“Sure there is, Boyd,” Ruger said. “There’s always somewhere.”

“What are you, a freaking tour guide? Do you know where we’re gonna go? There ain’t nothing around here, man!”

“Hey, shit for brains…you think this corn planted itself? If there’s corn, there’s a farmhouse. Farmers own cars, even in East Bumfuck. Maybe if we ask real nice they’ll let us borrow one.” He grinned.

“Your mouth is bleeding.”

Ruger licked his teeth. “I know,” he said softly, smiling.

Boyd opened his mouth to speak and then snapped it shut again. He turned, bent, and peered into the car to look at Tony.

“Is he dead?” he asked.

“Ought to be, the stupid fuck.”

“Then why’d you let him drive?”

Ruger shrugged. “He got behind the wheel.”

“Yeah, but you said he was fine to drive.”

Ruger shrugged again.

“Maybe we should see if he’s, you know, still alive.” Boyd leaned farther into Karl’s side of the car. He reached out and nudged Tony’s sleeve. “Yo! Tony! You in there, man?”

No response.

“Let it go,” Ruger suggested.

Boyd tried again, shaking Tony by the sleeve. Nothing. He tried one last time, and this time Tony lifted his head and shook it slowly, trying to clear his eyes and his muzzy brain. The lower half of his face was smeared with blood and snot, and his nose was disgustingly askew.

“Yo, Tony! We thought we lost you, man?”

“B…Boyd?”

“Yeah, man.”

“Boyd?” Tony barely had a voice left, his words croaking out in a whisper not half as loud as Ruger’s slithery rasp, and lacking any trace of vitality. A voice muffled and warped by sinuses flooded with blood. “You gotta help me, man. I’m all fucked up.”

“Well, yeah, you got shot and then you wrecked the car. You ought to be fucked up,” Boyd said, and then his face softened. “Can you walk?”

“I don’t…know. I can’t feel my legs, man.”

Boyd looked over his shoulder at Ruger, who was lighting a Pall Mall. Thunder rumbled overhead, deep and sullen, and in the distance lightning flashed continuously.

“We might have to carry him, man,” Boyd said.

Ruger took a long drag on his cigarette and looked thoughtfully at Boyd, his cold eyes narrowed. “Tell me, Boyd,” he asked mildly, “do you really see either one of us carrying his sorry ass anywhere?”

“Huh?”

“What I said. Can you see us hauling his sorry ass out of that car and carrying it anywhere? Is that how you see things? ’Cause I sure as hell don’t. I see us taking the money and the coke and making ourselves scarce as shit, is what I see. I see us having enough troubles getting ourselves to some place safe without having to cart around a man that’s mostly dead anyway.”

Boyd straightened and faced Ruger, half smiling. “You’re out of your fucking mind, Karl. We can’t just leave him here!”

“Why not?”

“It ain’t right, man.”

Ruger took another long and thoughtful drag on his cigarette. Blue smoke leaked from his mouth and nostrils as he said, “‘Ain’t right’? Is that what you said, Boyd? It ‘ain’t right’? That’s precious, man. Now, why don’t you tell me what ‘right’ has to do with anything?”

“Hey, we’re a team, Ruger. We set this up together and we pulled it off together and we gotta stick together no matter what happens.”

“Is that right? Then I suppose we should have stayed behind to fetch Nicky and Lester just so we could give them a decent Christian burial. Wouldn’t that have been the ‘right’ thing to do?”

“Boyd…?” Tony asked weakly, but when Boyd looked inside the car, Tony’s eyes had drifted shut again. Boyd straightened and looked hard at Ruger.

“Tony’s still alive.”

“Not much, he ain’t.”

“He ain’t dead yet, Ruger, and we just can’t leave him.”

“What do you want to do? Wait here until he kicks? You know as well as I do he ain’t going to make it. He’s gut shot and busted up. It’s not like we can take him to a hospital or anything. There ain’t a hospital from here to Harrisburg that won’t be on the alert for us. Not that anybody’d keep shut about treating a gunshot wound anyway. So what do you suggest we do? Do you know how to treat a bullet wound? Since when are you Marcus-fucking-Welby?”

“We have to do something!”

“We have to save our own asses, Boyd, that’s all we have to do. Tony knew the risks, and if he hadn’t had his head stuck up his own ass he wouldn’t have taken one in the belly. But that’s too damned bad. I for one am not going to stand around here just to keep him comfortable till he dies. This is capital crime, my man, not male bonding, and Tony sure as hell ain’t family to either one of us.”

Boyd shook his head stubbornly. “We’ll find a doctor somewhere, force him to fix Tony. Or bribe him. Hell, we got enough dough.”

“If you think I’m going to waste any of my money on a dead man, then you are actually dumber than you look. I’m getting my money and my share of the coke and I’m getting the hell out of Dodge right now.”

Ruger began to turn away but stopped as Boyd opened his coat, revealing the mother-of-pearl grip of his old Colt Commander. Ruger looked at the gun for just a moment, then slowly raised his eyes to meet Boyd’s. There was no trace of fear in Ruger’s eyes. His flat reptilian stare burned into Boyd’s, and Ruger’s smile slowly blossomed.

“We have to do something about Tony,” Boyd said in a voice that betrayed far more emotion than he wanted.

Ruger nodded slowly. “Uh-huh. Okay, Boyd, we’ll play it that way.” He took a last slow drag on his cigarette and flicked the butt into the corn, then brushed past Boyd and bent down into the open passenger side of the car.

“Yo…Tony?” he asked.

Tony’s eyelids fluttered for a moment and then opened.

“Ruger? You gotta help me, Ruger. I’m hurt bad. You gotta help me.”

“Sure, Tony. Boyd and me, we’ll take good care of you.” Ruger drew his.32 snub-nose and buried the barrel against Tony’s blood-soaked gut, right next to the bullet wound. “Nice knowing you, Tony, but you’re a lousy fucking driver.” He fired a single shot.

The blast folded Tony in half. He caved over and crunched his face once more smashing against the steering wheel.

“Jesus!” Boyd howled and grabbed Ruger’s shoulder with his good arm and wrenched him back and spun him, then released his jacket and raised a balled fist; but Ruger went with the turn and stepped into Boyd, jamming the barrel of his gun hard under Boyd’s chin.

“Throw the punch or put it away,” Ruger said with his wicked grin.

Boyd froze.

“If you’re feeling froggy, then jump. Otherwise put that fist away. I’m not in the mood for this shit, Boyd, and we do not have all fucking night.” His voice didn’t rise above a slithery whisper.

Slowly, gingerly, Boyd lowered his fist, letting it drop limply at his side.

“Good. Now step off.”

Boyd moved back a few paces, and then turned and walked ten feet away. He stood facing the swaying corn, chest heaving, fighting for control. Into the waving rows of stalks he yelled, “Fuck!” at the top of his voice.

“See how considerate I am? Now we don’t have to carry his sorry ass anywhere,” Ruger said. “Well, now the split is two ways. Not five, not four, not three. Just the two of us. That’s half a mil each, Boyd, and enough dope to pretty much double that. That’ll buy a lot of sympathy cards for Tony’s wife and kids. It’ll sure as hell take the sting out of feeling like you’re feeling now. So, let’s just drop this Mother Teresa bullshit and get a move on.”

Boyd turned slowly to face Ruger. Boyd’s face was washed clean of any emotion, though something moved behind his eyes.

“You’re a total piece of shit, Ruger.”

Ruger shrugged. “And that’s a news flash to whom?”

Boyd spat on the ground between them and walked heavily to the car.

It took them five minutes to split the bundles of bloodstained money and the plastic bags of half-cut cocaine into two oversized backpacks. It was a very tight fit. Boyd tried to wipe away the blood that soaked the tightly wrapped bundles of used bills, but Ruger told him not to bother. “We don’t have time. It’s all stained. We’ll find a washing machine somewhere. I hear cold water’ll take the stains out.”

Boyd looked at him in amazement. Karl’s voice was so calm, so offhand that it chilled him.

Ruger winked. “Let’s do it.”

Ruger helped Boyd strap on one pack, buckling it carefully around the limp and useless arm; then he shrugged himself into his own pack and adjusted the straps. Without a single backward glance at the car or Tony’s slumped form, Ruger set off into the cornfield. Boyd tarried a moment longer, staring at the silent shape huddled over the steering wheel.

“Sorry, man,” he said softly, and then turned to follow Ruger.

The tall stalks of corn closed around them.

(4)

Long minutes passed with no sound except the dry rustle of the corn. Then softly, faintly, “Boyd…help me…”

Then silence.

Chapter 5

(1)

After Terry left, Crow stood looking at the closed door for several long minutes, processing everything that had just happened. In the space of a few minutes he’d been faced with the outrageous idea of armed gunmen in Pine Deep, been reinstated as a cop — although a very temporary one — and been assigned the job of closing down the hayride.

None of this exactly fit the way he’d planned to spend the rest of the evening. It was seven-thirty and he’d intended to close at eight, catch the AA meeting at the Methodist church — tonight was a fifth-step night — and then drive out to Val’s, sample her cooking — hoping that it wasn’t as bad as Mark and Henry predicted — and then at the earliest possible convenience bundle Val off to bed. Then he was going to spring the idea of a weekend at a New Hope bed-and-breakfast on her, which would in turn lead up to his master plan of finally proposing. He’d been working out the details of this plan for about five years and so far it involved a ring, dinner, and a hotel stay. He was hoping for some last-minute inspiration to make the event really memorable. It didn’t help any that everyone in town already assumed they would get married, so the proposal wouldn’t be much of a surprise. More than once, when he’d stopped by to take Val out to dinner somewhere particularly nice her father and brother had grinned and winked at him, assuming that he was going to propose. Even Mark’s wife, Connie, who was as dim as Coop, knew that Crow was going to ask her, which meant Val definitely knew.

So how to make it a surprise? That was the real puzzle, and so far he’d come up with exactly nothing; though a nice cozy dinner with her at her place, and an early bedtime, would give him time to probe for hints of what she would really like. Crow had already bought a ring — a 1.8-carat Asscher-cut diamond with smaller diamonds filling in a channel-cut platinum band. Crow knew that people considered him an affable goof, but no one could accuse him of being cheap. The question was how to present it. Val was not a flowers and candy sort of woman, and traditionally romantic gestures were somewhat lost on her. Crow needed something unique and very, very smart.

Instead…he now had to go fetch his gun and play cops and robbers again. Val would just love that.

Crow locked up the shop and switched off the lights, then went into the storeroom and through the doorway that led to his apartment. Like him the place was small and messy and filled with a lot of strange things. The front end of a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle (Crow’s very first car) had been converted into a jukebox and was parked in one corner of the living room. His coffee table was a snowboard on cinder blocks. His clock was a replica of Dali’s melted timepieces. Every inch of the walls was covered with head shots of Crow’s actor friends, interspersed with some very badly painted watercolors Val had done during one of her infrequent artistic phases.

His three cats, Pinetop, Muddy Whiskers, and Koko, flocked around him, rubbing against his legs and mewing for their supper.

“Hi, kids. Miss me?”

Pinetop made his usual, weird little ak-ak-ak-ak sound and walked significantly in the direction of the kitchen. Crow followed dutifully and popped open two cans of aromatic glop, divided it into three equal portions, and laid out their plates. The trio promptly ignored him and set to their feast.

Humming to himself, he wandered into the kitchen, drank a Yoo-Hoo by the open refrigerator door, peering pointlessly at the various Tupperware containers of mystery meat, mystery pasta, and mystery sauce that lurked on each shelf. One vaguely tumescent shape lay swaddled in Saran Wrap. Crow thought it might have been a zucchini, but he just wasn’t sure. He was afraid of it and didn’t want to touch it. He found a piece of celery that didn’t look too hideous and took it over to a large glass aquarium where a rather absurd-looking guinea pig named Professor Longhair sat meditating on a rock. Crow lifted the top and set the celery down next to the guinea pig, who opened one eye, regarded the limp celery with obvious disdain, and returned to his contemplations. Crow went back to the fridge and had another bottle of the chocolate drink, staring once more at the scientific wonders evolving in there among his bottles of Yoo-Hoo, Red Bull, and Gatorade. He shut the door and was wondering why he was stalling rather than getting his ass in gear when the phone rang.

Scooping up the receiver he said, “I’d like to order a large pizza, mushrooms and extra cheese, and an order of fries.”

“For God’s sake,” said a voice, soft, laughing.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, the person you have reached is not a normal person. Please hang up and try your call again.”

“Okay, fine. Bye.”

“No! Wait! Hey, baby.”

“Hello, idiot.”

“You always say the nicest things.”

“True,” Val agreed, “but not to you.”

“Mm. So…what’s cooking?”

“Me.”

“Don’t I know it?”

“No, I mean food. Supper. Turkey soup, to be precise. You are still coming over, aren’t you?” There was a brief moment of silence. “Don’t tell me you aren’t coming over, Malcolm Crow.”

“Well—”

“Damn it, Crow…”

“Hey, babe, duty calls.”

“Duty? What duty? Do you have a rush order for rubber vomit? Is there a desperate need for glow-in-the-dark dog poop?”

“No, nothing nearly as important as that. Just three psychos on a killing spree.”

“Seriously, why can’t you make it? I’ve been cooking since five o’clock. I have actually worked up a sweat.”

“Are you covered in turkey blood and gristle?”

“No, but I do have a spot of gravy on my good blue shirt.”

“You have to learn to control these domestic urges before they become an obsession.”

“Ha,” she said dryly, “ha, ha.”

Crow had a powerful visceral image of her standing in the bathroom that morning, naked and glorious.

“Actually, sweetie, I actually do have some important civic duties to perform.” Briefly, he told her about the manhunt and what Terry had asked of him. There was a considerable silence on the far end of the line. After a while Crow said, “Uh…Val?”

The silence positively oozed out of the phone. Finally, Val muttered, “So, you agreed to go gunslinging for Gus Bernhardt. Isn’t that special?”

“Well, not for Gus. Terry asked me, but it’s not like I’m actually going back on the department. Terry wouldn’t ask me to do anything like that. He just wants me to go close down the hayride for the night.”

“Carrying a gun.”

“Would you rather I went out there without a gun?”

“I’d rather you didn’t go out there at all.”

“Someone has to.”

“You know, there’s this marvelous new invention, maybe you’ve heard of it? Called a telephone?”

“We already tried calling Coop. No answer. He must be out with the kids, or walking the grounds, or maybe he really is too stupid to use a phone…and anyway I don’t want to leave that kind of a message on his answering machine. Can you imagine Coop trying to organize things all by himself?”

Val had to concede that point. George Cooper was pretty good at running the Haunted Hayride, but when it came time for any real decisive action, he was as useful as a freshly beheaded chicken. Terry had once said that Coop was the only guy who could cause a panic in an empty room. “Okay, so maybe someone does have to go. Why you, though?”

“I’m the only guy around. All the local blues are busy being actual cops for a change. Terry needed a gofer who didn’t have his head up his ass.”

“Again I ask, why you?”

“Oh, we’re just a laugh riot, aren’t we, Miss Guthrie?”

There was another silence, briefer, less bitter. “Okay, okay,” Val said softly, “but please be careful for a change?”

“Me? Careful? Hey, careful is my middle name.”

“I’m serious, Crow.”

He sobered. “Okay, okay, baby, I promise. No screwing around, and no heroics. And why? ’Cause there won’t be any need for heroics. Just there and back, lickety-split.”

“Good.”

“Okay.”

“Then you’ll come over here?”

“For leftovers?”

“No one has ever called me ‘leftovers,’ pal.”

“I was thinking of my belly, woman.”

“I was thinking of something just south of there.”

“Ah,” he said. “I see. Well then, I guess I had better get my ass in gear. Sooner I get those kids out of there—”

“…The sooner you get to come over here and taste my goodies.”

“Gad, woman, you are in a bold and licentious mood this evening!”

“Call it an incentive program to make sure you get here as safe and as soon as possible.”

“Whoosh. If you count to three and turn around I’ll probably be already there.”

She called him a nitwit and hung up on him. He looked at the phone for a moment, leaned over and lightly banged his head on the wall a couple of times, then slowly set the receiver down.

“Yes, well,” he said aloud as if to counter a return of his desire to stall rather than do what Terry wanted, “let us get a move on, then.”

He went into his bedroom, jerked open the closet door, and fished around on the top shelf until he found a heavy object wrapped in a towel. This he carried over to the bed and carefully unrolled it. Inside the towel was a second cloth smelling faintly of gun oil, and inside this was a Beretta 92F 9mm automatic pistol and several clips. Crow sat down on the side of the bed for a few moments, holding the gun in his right hand, turning it over, weighing it, considering it. He hadn’t worn the gun since he’d quit the department, and even though he’d gotten off the sauce long before he’d turned in his badge, just the sight of the pistol was a link to unhappier times. His drinking had been so bad that Val had broken up with him for two years and wouldn’t start dating him again until after he’d been well into his first year of sobriety. Crow wasn’t one to take a lot of pride in being sober — instead he remembered what it felt like to be a pathetic figure in the eyes of the town, and in Val’s eyes. He never wanted to let her down again, not in any way big or small, no matter how much he really wanted a drink.

Sighing, he hefted the gun and worked the slide, making sure the breech was clear. He located his box of shells in the closet and methodically loaded the clip. He never kept the clips loaded as the constant stress on the clip’s springs could fatigue the metal, and it had been a long time since he’d fired the thing. He slapped the clip into the grip and double-checked to make sure the safety was on.

“Yippee-yi-yo,” he said out loud as he stood and jammed the pistol into his waistband, then danced a little jig as the cold steel burned his skin like a block of ice. “Yikes!”

He pulled off his shirt, put on a T-shirt with an R. Crumb painting of Son House on it and tucked it in, then put the gun back into the waistband of his pants and pulled his flannel shirt over it.

At the door he paused and glanced at the three cats that were now performing their post-dinner ablutions, licking their paws and using them to wash their faces.

“Don’t stay up too late…and no more cable porn.” He wagged a finger.

Pinetop was the only one who looked at him, and his expression was pitying. Crow pulled the door closed and locked it.

(2)

Terry hurried up Corn Hill toward the chief’s office, which shared the first floor of the township building with the county court. As he walked briskly through each patch of brightness his shadow seemed to lunge and pounce, springing with lupine speed at his own heels and then vanishing as he moved into a different alignment of light and reflection.

Cars swept up and down the hill, gleaming with polished chrome and tinted glass, complicated antennae sprouting expensively as the cars braked and swept along the immaculate street. Terry glanced at a few of them, once or twice giving the driver a curt wave and nodding to others. He was usually expansive, ready to stop and talk, to shake hands and swap familiar jokes and discuss the day’s business, doing his mayor shtick with élan and a natural affability, but lately his good mood had begun to slip and any trace of good humor seen on his face was put there by effort and held in place by sheer will.

He felt as though the walls of his life were starting to crack and he was terrified of what would pour through once the cracks split wide enough. His depression and stress had begun at the end of summer, when the first traces of the crop blight had turned the summer wheat into rancid weeds that had to be burned. That hadn’t been too bad because wheat was not the town’s staple crop, and for a week or so everyone breathed sighs of relief when the corn crop had looked pretty healthy. Then the blight struck nine corn farms in two days, and since then more than half of the town’s corn crop was infected. The pumpkins were next to go, and they were hit even harder. Cabbages, apples, and berries, too.

That’s about when the dreams started.

Terry had always been prone to nightmares — ever since age ten, when he’d been in a coma for weeks following the death of his sister — but these dreams were new and they were maddeningly persistent. They took two forms, though there was one theme that overlapped them both. In the first set of dreams he was wandering through Pine Deep as it burned — moving past heaps of dead bodies, hearing explosions rip the night apart. Everywhere there was death and pain. Everyone he knew and loved lay strewn about, their throats savaged and bloody, their dead eyes staring accusingly at him, and as he staggered along he would occasionally catch glimpses of his own reflection in cracked store windows. The reflections always showed him not as himself — but as something twisted and bestial. When his dreaming self would try and look closer, as the image became clearer, Terry would come yelping out of the dream, sweating and panting and utterly terrified.

The second type of dream — and by far the most persistent — involved Terry lying in bed next to Sarah and feeling his body begin to change, to reshape, into something horrifying, but horrifying in a way that was not clear to Terry, and no matter how hard he tried he just couldn’t get any sense of what the dreams meant.

Sometimes he had the dreams two or three times a night, and he was feeling the drain on his system. He had told his psychiatrist about them, but the doctor had passed them off as stress-dreams inspired by the local ambience of spookiness and exacerbated by the growing financial troubles of the farmers. The psychiatrist also told Terry that, as mayor, he was taking on too much responsibility for things over which he had no control. Added to it were the constant demands on him by the business owners as the town geared up for its annual Halloween celebration, the biggest event in the year for Pine Deep. Terry was averaging fourteen-hour days at work, and cruising on about four or five good hours of sleep a night. Terry had listened to what the doctor had to say, and all the advice to find some way of calming down — meditation, yoga, anything — nodded his understanding, and then held his hand out for his prescriptions: antipsychotics and antidepressants and antiaxiomatics. The three staples of his current diet.

And now there was the phone call from Gus Bernhardt. That call had jolted him into an entirely different frame of mind.

Criminals?

In Pine Deep?

Half of him wanted to laugh out loud at the very thought, and the other half of him was already feeling moths fluttering in his stomach. Halloween less than a month away. Already a third of the stores in town had their windows done up for the coming season, and all of the plans for the costume parade had long ago been finalized. There were still a million details to see to. Terry had managed a magnificent coup of signing David Boreanez and James Marsters to be co — grand marshals of the parade for a lot less money than he was prepared to pay, and Good Morning America was going to do a Halloween morning broadcast from Town Hall. He was talking with Regis Philben’s people about doing a spot at the hayride. School buses were bringing hundreds of kids to the farms each week to visit with the pumpkin growers (though some of the farmers had actually had to import clean and nondiseased pumpkins from Crestville and Black Marsh to keep up appearances), and the Pine Deep Authentic Candy Corn was going to be dropped in half the trick-or-treaters’ bags from New York to Baltimore.

Despite the crop blight it was a busier year than most, and Terry was already feeling the pressure weighing him down as he balanced the financial crisis of the farmers with the amazing boom for the in-town businesses. Now this: a carload of big-city criminals with guns was something Terry Wolfe and his haunted little town did not need, thank you very much. The very thought of how this craziness might affect business had Terry grinding his teeth and sweating bullets at the same time. The more he thought about it, the faster he walked. His big fists were white-knuckled tight as he climbed the hill.

He crossed Wolfe Lane, glancing by reflex down the winding path to where his family had lived since Colonial times. Nearly one hundred and twenty years ago, Mordechai Wolfowitz had laid the cobbles on which the heels of Terry’s expensive Italian shoes clicked as he hurried to the chief’s office. Mordechai’s great-grandson, Aaron — the one who changed the family name to Wolfe — had planted the long line of brooding oaks that stood like dour sentinels along the south side of the street. As he stepped up on the far curb, Terry slowed his pace just a fraction, imagining as he often did that he could see his little sister, Mandy, running up the lane to meet him, her red curls bouncing as she ran, her green eyes alive with humor and mischief and laughter on her lips.

The memory was brief, as it always was; and it hurt, as it always did.

There were only empty shadows on Wolfe Lane, broken here and there by the glow drooping from antique lampposts and the lights of his house at the far end. Still, he could almost hear the small and gentle sound of Mandy’s laughter….

Then the edge of the first store on the next block obscured his vision, and the display window full of the confections of AHHHH — FUDGE! filled his awareness. His frown became a brief smile and then an acknowledging murmur as the owner waved a fudge-smeared spatula at him. Terry moved on up the hill, whisking through light and shadow, heading for the chief’s office. Behind him, the now forgotten darkness at the mouth of Wolfe Lane seemed to swirl and roil, becoming vaguely thicker. Nearby, Terry’s marmalade tabby, Party Cat, crouched by the roots of the lane’s first towering oak hunkered down over a dead starling; he pawed at the broken wings playfully and bent forward to bite — and abruptly froze, eyes snapping wide, hairs springing up straight along his spine. Party Cat stared at the boiling darkness, arching his back and laying his chest low to the ground as something slowly emerged from the blackness of the shadows. The cat’s throat vibrated with a feral growl, half of defiance and half of fear.

The shape seemed to be part of the shadows rather than merely in them, but as it moved it became defined, seeking form and structure as it stepped into the spill of pale streetlight. Party Cat hissed, baring his fangs, glaring up at the form with intense yellow eyes. The shape turned toward him, eyes meeting eyes. The cat’s wrinkled and snarling lips trembled, the intensity of the challenge ebbing, mouth becoming gradually relaxed, the furry lips sagging down over the fangs slowly and with uncertainty. The shape just stood there, green eyes watching the cat, making no move. Party Cat sniffed the air, searching for a scent, then meowed plaintively at the odor he smelled: staleness, an earthiness mixed with a sharp coppery tang.

The figure stirred, turned away from the cat, and stepped farther out of the shadows into the lamplight. It was a small shape, not even four feet tall. The chilly wind stirred the tatters of dark green cotton that hung vaguely in dress-shape disarray on the tiny form, and the wind teased and tossed the red curls that framed the pale, pale face. Pale except where streaks of dark red cut slashes through the purity of the flesh.

The figure watched Terry’s broad back retreating up the hill.

After a moment, it followed.

(3)

Iron Mike Sweeney was the Enemy of Evil.

It was an awesome responsibility for one his age, but it was his special secret that within that shell of a teenage human male dwelled the mind of a thousand warriors from all times and dimensions, drawn together and focused through him, through his perfectly developed muscles and sinews. He was the perfect weapon, the ultimate warrior.

He rode through the streets of Pine Deep on the War Machine, a device of such cunning design that to mortal eyes it appeared to be nothing more than a twelve-speed Huffy mountain bike. The glittering black tubes of its frame were crammed with cutting-edge microtechnology that channeled unbelievable power through the bike and into every cell of Iron Mike’s body, filling him with raw power and healing him when he was slashed or cut or burned in his deadly duels with the Agents of Destruction. The handlebars were tightly wrapped with antiradiation insulation simulating black electrical tape, and these power bars threw up crackling energy shields through which no amount of laser fire could ever hope to penetrate. The mother-box of twelve hyperaccelerating gears was fashioned from alien technology Iron Mike had salvaged from the wreck of an old spacecraft. When Iron Mike mounted the War Machine and gripped its handles, he became as one with the machine, and his cyborg system drew energy from it, just as his mind drew knowledge from its interface with the InfinityMind uplink he wore on his belt. Disguised as a mere Sony Walkman, the InfinityMind was simply the projection into this reality of an omnidimensional supercomputer built by the same race that had made the alien spacecraft. The InfinityMind shared its limitless data with Iron Mike, the Enemy of Evil, giving him specialized knowledge that had many times saved his life.

Iron Mike Sweeney was ready for the coming battle. He was more ready than he had ever been. His fighting skills had been refined by a thousand battles, and through the teachings of his Zen master, Shinobi, his mind was cool, detached, receptive.

Upon the War Machine he sat at the top of Corn Hill, watching the town below him. Night had come upon the town, and Iron Mike, Enemy of Evil, was ready. Energy hummed through the War Machine’s circuitry. Across Iron Mike’s chest was the strap supporting his satchel of fusion bombs. Each was rolled tightly to compress its charge, and bound with a single unbreakable strand of a rare natural material similar in appearance to rubber bands. Iron Mike had disguised the bombs to look like copies of the Evening Standard and Times. He smiled thinly, amused at his own cleverness. None of the Evil Ones would ever suspect that they were under attack. He would ride down among them, heaving fusion bombs onto their very doorsteps, and then he would go to warp drive and soar to a minimum safe distance of one thousand kilometers before he remote-detonated the bombs. Then the whole of Corn Hill, that wretched hive of scum and villainy, would become one huge mushroom cloud of cleansing nuclear fire. Not even the minions of the Evil One could survive that. Then the rest of Pine Deep could sleep in peace for another night, the lives and souls of all the true humans protected yet again by Iron Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil.

Perched atop the hill like a huge predator bird, he looked at his transtemporal chronometer strapped to his muscular wrist.

It was time.

Very carefully he removed his cerebral-interface from his pocket and placed it on his head, adjusting the earpieces so that the data flow would be perfect. Then he touched the keypad of the InfinityMind uplink. Immediately coded data flowed into him. The InfinityMind was in one of its playful moods, Iron Mike noticed with a wry smile; it fed him his battle data in a kind of strange musical encryption that, to anyone else but a cyborg warrior of justice, sounded much like the Beastie Boys.

“Let’s do it,” Iron Mike said with a cold voice. It was in fact what he always said right before battle.

He touched an invisible button on his handle-grips, releasing the engines from station-keeping. Another button put the battle engines online. They purred like great cats. With his thumb he activated the forward shields. He never used the aft shields. He was Iron Mike Sweeney: his back would never be toward the enemy. They would always see him coming right at them, cramming justice right down their throats!

“Let’s do it,” he said again, lips curling back into a warrior’s smile, revealing gritted teeth.

The War Machine leaped forward, accelerating smoothly as it shot down the steep decline of Corn Hill. As he swooped down toward the first of the Evil Ones’ lairs, Iron Mike thrust a hand into his satchel and gripped the first fusion bomb.

“Eat this, alien scum!” he snarled and threw the bomb with perfect precision. It cut through the black shadows and the miserable spray of light from the streetlight and arced over the hedges. Iron Mike knew that they weren’t really hedges but holographic projections designed to disguise the front of the alien encampment. He wasn’t fooled. The fusion bomb soared past the holograms and struck with a ringing thud on the red-painted front portal. The bomb dropped to the ground and lay there, destruction hidden in Iron Mike’s own deceptive covering.

The Evil Ones are going to get a lot of bad news tonight, he thought, and grinned wolfishly.

He sped on, zeroing in on his next target. Target acquired, he delivered his next “special edition” and rode on, laughing with righteous triumph. Above and beyond the town, dark clouds loomed and the gods threw lightning to mark his way.

Iron Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil, rained destruction as he soared down Corn Hill, the warp nacelles on the War Machine channeling limitless power into every atom of the attack craft.

The battle to save mankind had begun!

(4)

“Okay, gentlemen,” Terry said as he breezed into the office, “someone want to bring me up to speed?”

A dozen men and women were scattered around, standing, sitting backward on chairs, lounging against filing cabinets; some held cups of coffee in Pine Deep Police Department plastic mugs. A dozen heads turned in his direction; eight of them he recognized, the others were strangers. Of the first batch, Gus Bernhardt dominated the place, not with any sense or aura of command, but with sheer physical size. He was approximately the size of a panel truck, as bald as an egg, and as red as a twenty-dollar lobster. Chief Bernhardt was a massive, sloppy Buddha figure in an ill-fitting gray uniform that was all decked out with whipcord and buttons and polished fittings. His accoutrements were the only neat part of him; the rest of him looked like he’d spent the night in the backseat of his patrol car, which might have been a fair guess. Terry knew that Gus was a lousy chief, but he was related to practically everyone in town and no one else really wanted the job. To be fair, the job rarely entailed anything more capital than ticketing speeders on A-32, citing overtime parking, discouraging kids from shoplifting baseball cards from the drugstore, and rousting the teenagers who went out to Dark Hollow to get drunk and screw. Terry knew that Gus spent much of his shift time eating, reading old dog-eared Louis L’Amour paperbacks, and sleeping.

Gus’s crew of officers ranged from subpar to not bad. Jim Polk and Dixie MacVey were longtimers like Gus, career cops in a town that hadn’t much use for serious law enforcement. Shirley O’Keefe and Rhoda Thomas were law students from Pinelands State College who took part-time police coop jobs just to get some vague idea of what the whole cops and robbers thing was all about, though they had quickly discovered there were no robbers, as such, in Pine Deep, and the cops were not exactly NYPD Blue. The remaining three officers, Golub, Brayer, and Shanks, were local boys, fresh out of college, who took the job because it was a job and because they hadn’t had anything better lined up; but they were decent, intelligent, and conscientious young family men, and they worked their shifts with something approaching dedication if not actual competence. Terry nodded to a couple of them and shook Gus’s beefy mitt. The four strangers regarded him with neutral expressions, their faces registering nothing because he wasn’t in uniform and that meant that he was a civilian. The wall between the cops and the rest of the world was typically palpable.

Gus made the introductions, waving a hand at the closest of the four, a tall, middle-aged, balding black man with a lugubrious expression wearing a dark blue nylon windbreaker with POLICE stenciled on the breast and back in crisp white letters. Terry thought that he looked like Morgan Freeman without the sense of humor.

“Terry, this is Detective Sergeant Frank Ferro with the Philadelphia Narcotics Division. Detective, this is our mayor, Terry Wolfe.”

The narc’s eyes registered the information and his attitude softened just a little, accepting the mayor as more or less “one of us.” He extended a thin but surprisingly strong hand and they shook.

“A pleasure, sir. This is my partner, Detective Vince LaMastra.” A cheerful-looking and very tan young man with a buzzed head of blond hair extended his hand and gave Terry a wrestler’s handshake. He was one of those athletic types who are so superbly muscled that his tanned face looked like a leather bag full of walnuts with each angular muscle in cheek and jaw sharply defined, but the bright blue eyes and the youthful smile offset the effect. Like Ferro, he was wearing a blue windbreaker over a white shirt and dark tie. Having cast Ferro as Morgan Freeman in his mind, Terry cast LaMastra as Howie Long. Matching everyone he met to actors was a trick Terry had always used to remember people in business. It had long ago become automatic, though oddly he had never been able to figure out which actor could play him.

Gus nodded to the other two, both wearing ordinary police uniforms. “Officer Chremos down from Crestville,” Gus said, and Terry shook hands with a Greek-looking man in his midforties in starched black and white.

The last man stood and offered his hand before Gus could make the introduction. “Jimmy Castle.”

“One of Black Marsh’s finest,” Gus said wryly.

“Absolutely,” said Castle with a grin. He had sandy blond hair and freckles and an instantly engaging manner. The other Pine Deep cops just nodded and kept to the background, clearly intimidated by the big dogs from Philly.

“Okay then,” said Terry, looking around at the faces. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, where do we stand?”

Gus opened his mouth to speak, but Sergeant Ferro beat him to it. “If I may? Your Honor, the situation is this — we have three suspects, part of a small team that had worked out a drug buy with your generic Jamaican heavies. Nothing unusual, usually no hitches in an operation like this. A standard midvolume buy staged in an empty warehouse, happens all the time, every day of the week. These things generally don’t get messy because that interrupts the regular flow of trade. The product has to flow smoothly in order for everyone to get rich. It’s all business.”

“Okay, I’m with you so far,” Terry said as he settled his muscular rump on the corner of Gus’s desk and listened attentively. He composed his face into a stern, slightly superior frown but raised his eyebrows to show that he was ready to hear their report. It was a tactic that worked pretty well on the town council, and seemed to work well enough with Ferro. Inside, Terry’s heart was hammering against his chest, beating out a rhythm of excitement and apprehension. He just didn’t let it show.

The cop said, “The buy was set up in Philly, which is why Detective LaMastra and I were in on the case. Our narcotics unit is a division of East Detectives, and we sometimes work with state and federal narcotics offices to stop interstate flow of drugs. Now, since there was a shoot-out and one of our officers was killed, we would like to be actively involved in this investigation.” His eyes were hard as he said this and the room was very quiet. “I’ve asked Chief Bernhardt if he would mind if I called in some Philly blues with their units to help with the search. They’ll be here within the half hour. If…that is acceptable to you, sir.”

Terry almost asked if Pine Deep would have to foot the bill for the overtime the Philly cops would be working, but thought the questions would be both in poor taste and poorly timed. “Of course,” he said, softening his frown to a helpful smile. “Bring in the National Guard if it’ll help. Anything that’ll clean this up and get it off my streets.”

“Thank you, sir. Anyway, we weren’t expecting this to go down…it was pure coincidence that our team had this particular band of Jamaicans under surveillance for the last few months. I won’t bore you with all the details, but the Reader’s Digest version is this — we’ve been tracking a pipeline from the islands to Miami and from there to Philly. Coming up I-95 on what we call Cocaine Alley. They use family cars, you know, station wagons and such, driven by clean-cut regular-looking folks who pony the stuff to Philly, and then use the parking lots of strip malls just off the interstate to offload.”

Detective LaMastra spoke up for the first time. “We were backtracking from the street and thought we could tag a couple of the ponies.” He gave a fatalistic wave of his hands. “But that’s for shit now.”

Ferro nodded. “We had a team, just two guys in a van a block from the site, and another officer outside with a fiber-optic camera and portable recorder. We had audio and video plants in the warehouse where the buy was going down, but we didn’t have a full team there because we weren’t expecting to make any arrests. We just wanted pictures, data, hoping to tail some of the players back to whomever they worked for, going up the food chain. So our team was unprepared for what went down.”

Detective LaMastra snorted. “No shit.” Ferro shot him a brief look, which LaMastra appeared to ignore.

“In any case,” Ferro continued, “the buyers were a car full of local boys. Five South Philly thugs, low-level tough guys. I had a chance to look over the videotape with a couple of other detectives and we managed to ID all five. The odd thing was that these boys are not part of the drug game. They usually do roughhouse stuff, like collections for loan sharks and that sort of thing. The drug buy was a new career venture for them, and they completely screwed it up. The buy started to go down, business as usual, but then the South Philly boys pulled some guns and suddenly everyone was shooting.”

“You should have seen the video,” LaMastra said with a twisted smile. “Looked like a Quentin Tarantino film.”

“Jesus,” breathed one of the law students. Terry glanced at her. At twenty-one and five feet four, she looked like a scared kid dressed up for Halloween in a cop uniform and gun belt. He wondered if she had ever even fired the heavy automatic strapped to her young hip. He wondered if any of Gus’s people ever had.

Ferro pulled a notepad out of his pocket and consulted it. “The suspects were identified as follows. One Nicholas Scilini, thirty, and Lenny DiCavellio, twenty-eight, both dead of multiple gunshot wounds. The three that got away included Kenneth Boyd and Tony Macchio, both relatively small fish and barely worth the effort it would take to yank the switch on them.”

“And the third? You said there were three?”

Gus Bernhardt looked uneasily at Terry and then at Ferro, and the cop’s dour face looked even more mournful and even more like Morgan Freeman’s. The grimmer Morgan Freeman, circa Seven, not the older, jollier Freeman from Bruce Almighty. “The third gunman is the real problem, Mayor Wolfe. He is one of the reasons we are going to be handling this situation very, very carefully.”

Terry grinned. “Who is he? Jack the Ripper?”

No one laughed; no one else so much as smiled.

“We should be so lucky,” said Ferro.

“What does that mean?” Terry asked, losing his grin. He didn’t like the shifty, scared looks everyone was covertly exchanging, and it wasn’t helping his stress level one little bit. The hammering in his chest was turning into an improvisational drum solo. He hoped he wasn’t visibly sweating.

“His name,” continued Ferro, “is Karl Andermann Ruger.” He looked significantly at Terry, but he only shrugged and shook his head.

Gus bent over and said, softly, “Cape May Lighthouse. Last Summer.”

Terry stared at him and slowly, very slowly he felt the room turn as cold as a meat locker.

Everyone in the room looked either stricken, or scared.

“That’s who we think Karl Ruger is,” said Ferro quietly.

“Oh my God,” Terry whispered.

(5)

Val left the soup on the stove to simmer and went up to her room to take a nap. For the last two weeks she’d been extremely tired. Not just from managing the farm — she had plenty of help for that — but just plain exhausted. And then there was this morning. After Crow had gone downstairs to have breakfast, Val had thrown up.

It was the second time this week she’d done that and she was starting to worry. There was an EPT kit in her purse, but she hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to use it. She was on the pill, and she and Crow even used condoms. Surely she couldn’t be pregnant with that much birth control running interference.

She took off her jeans and shirt and slid into bed in bra, panties, and socks, pulling the big comforter up to her chin. Val lay there and listened to the wind stir the corn. A storm was coming and the wind had freshened and the illusion of sea surf that the blowing corn made was even more pronounced. The steady rhythm of it lulled her to sleep within minutes.

Her sleep was filled with dreams.

The first dream was sweet and did nothing more than replay what had happened last night when Crow came by. Every delicious detail was there, starting with the long walk they’d taken down the winding lanes of cornstalks, hand in hand, stopping now and then to kiss. About a mile from the house, deep in the fields, they’d stopped at their favorite spot, a small clearing by the rail fence where Val and her brother, Mark, had erected a scarecrow when they were kids. The clearing was the spot where Val and Crow had first kissed, and the spot where they’d first touched each other with trembling and uninitiated hands. Crow had brought a blanket, draping it over one shoulder, and last night, as he had on so many nights over the years, he’d spread it on the ground. Above them the stars painted them with pale silver light as they kissed and undressed each other and then lay down on the blanket. Some nights were slow and tender and patient, and some nights were all about urgency. Last night it was a hammering need in their blood and they dropped their clothes rather than hang them on the fence rails. Crow lay down and pulled her down onto him. She stretched out on him, nearly his match in height and certainly his match in heat and need. Their kisses were hot and breathless and there was no time for words. She reached down to find him hard and familiar and she took him and guided him into her body and they both gasped as he entered and found her very wet and ready.

A few minutes later she cried out as she came — a sound echoed strangely by a startled crow deep in the field — and then a few minutes after her he cried out as he rose to that crest where there is nowhere to go but over, and over he went, sailing into the golden intensity of his orgasm, and Val caught up and she came again.

After that it had been time for tenderness and softness and slow kisses and the dream faded out like a love scene in a movie, dimming to black and then silence, and for a while she just floated in the darkness of sleep.

Then she had the dream again.

The other one, the one she had been having for weeks now. In her dreams the pale man was always there. Val had dreamed about him for years, but now he was always there, waiting at the edge of sleep. Sometimes this dream was just a collection of quick flash images like unexpected lightning between longer and less frightening dreams; sometimes the dream was longer and complex, and when it was one of those kinds of dreams she felt panic because she didn’t think she would ever find her way out. On nights like that, waking up was like a reprieve from the electric chair.

Now, as evening settled over the farm, she had one of those darker and more complex dreams and its intensity washed away the happiness and tenderness of the previous dream.

First she dreamed of the tall man with black hair and pale skin and no features at all that she could make out, as if his face were a blur, as if someone had tried to take his picture and he’d turned away too fast, but as he moved through her dreams his face remained smeared like that. The only part of his face that she could see clearly was his mouth.

He had a red, smiling mouth and lots of jagged white teeth.

In that first dream she walked through the darkened rooms and hallways of her family’s big, rambling farmhouse. She was not fleeing through the rooms — not at first — but there was some indefinable sense of urgency. Every once in a while she’d look behind her and she’d see the tall pale man step back out of sight.

Then suddenly the dream changed and she was running through the cornfields as cold rain hammered down on her. She was naked and streaked with blood and mud and icy rainwater. In one hand she held a sodden fistful of twenty-dollar bills wrapped in bank tape. In her other hand she held a gun. The gun stank of cordite, the barrel still smoking.

She ran through the fields, vulnerable, helpless, and afraid. And the tall pale man followed her.

It was like one of those chase scenes in the old horror movies: she ran fast and ran well and the pale man walked with slow deliberate steps as if in time with a metronome, but somehow he still managed to keep up with her…and whenever she cast a terrified look over her shoulder he seemed to be catching up.

She ran and ran.

Once she stopped, spun around, and fired the gun at the man, squeezing the trigger and feeling the shock as the bullet exploded from the gun and her gun hand was jerked into the air. The bullets all hit the pale man.

She might as well have been throwing stones at a statue for all the good they did. The pale smiling man never slowed and he never stopped, and each time a bullet struck him — and passed straight through — his smile grew. It grew and grew until it was an alligator’s smile, huge and full of sharp teeth. The smiling mouth was absurd and too big for the rest of the face.

He came on through the rain and Val turned and ran on.

The smiling man kept walking but he got closer and closer and closer, and just as he was reaching out to close his bone-white fingers around her naked shoulder…

…Val woke up.

She shuddered and shook her head and crawled up until the knobs of her spine were pressed against the wooden headboard. Her face and throat and breasts were wet with sweat and for just a moment the sweat smelled like rainwater.

Chapter 6

(1)

Boyd!

The cry clawed its way out of the car and fled away across the tops of the corn. A few crows stirred and flapped uneasily, casting lifeless black eyes suspiciously around. They sat on the crossbar of a scarecrow perch, but there was no scarecrow here, just the faded old wood of the perch. The birds waited, listening.

There was silence, except for the swaying of the corn.

“Oh…Jesus…” A whisper now: pale and bloodless, too weak to even rustle the feathers of the crows.

Silence again. Longer this time. The birds fidgeted.

Then a new sound. A creak and then a mild protest of metal. The birds hopped and turned to look. The broken car squatted below them, half buried in toppled stalks of corn. The crumpled metal skin of the car looked like cloth thrown over a pile of rocks; there was no moon and no starlight to give it a metallic sheen. The car simply hunched there on its crippled wheel, abandoned and desolate.

The crows waited. They were hungry crows. They knew.

With ancient black eyes they watched as the door of the car was pushed slowly, heavily open. Its hinges squealed with piglike protest, but the door finally opened.

There was more of the expectant silence again. Nearly ten minutes passed before there were any further movements from within the car. The crows rustled their feathers and tried not to think about their empty bellies. One crow opened its beak as if to utter a loud cry, but closed it again without making a sound.

It was a hand that first appeared. Dark with blood, it reached out of the car and hooked trembling fingers over the frame. The fingers slipped on the smooth metal, but finally the tips caught in the depression of the rain gutter above the door. The hand curled, tensed, tried to be strong. Tendons stood taut on the back of the hand and in the wrist, the forearm muscles swelled with effort as the bloody hand tried to haul its body out of the car. It was a problem in physics, and it should have be an insoluble one; the arm should never have been able to collect enough strength to pull the body from its seat, there wasn’t enough blood or life in its veins to carry strength to its muscles. Even adrenaline should not have been enough to allow that engineering feat to come to fruition. But as the crows watched, Tony Macchio pulled himself slowly, carefully, and painfully out of the car.

The nearest crow squawked very quietly as if ironically cheering the performance. The other crows watched with more evident annoyance. Death was sometimes too slow, slowest when the belly was empty.

It took Tony all of five minutes to get himself into a reasonably upright position, but then he sagged into the V formed by the car and the open door. His legs refused to be part of this mad venture and simply buckled, but his arms spread and he hung in bleeding cruciform on the apex of the doorway. He coughed once, sharply, and then again more softly. His ruined nose was swollen and purple. Blood dottled his lips and dripped onto his chest, but each drop was lost against the immensity of the stain that drenched him from sternum to crotch. The two bullet holes in his gut leaked sluggishly, the flow diminishing from a simple lack of hydrostatic pressure. He was bled white and should by all accounts have been dead, but even though his body was dying it lingered at the point of death and life, sustained by a single thread. That thread was the wire of hatred sewn through Tony’s soul.

His bloody lips formed a single word.

“Karl!” He said it without sound, but it had all the force of a curse screamed at the top of furious lungs. Just saying the name funneled power into his dying muscles. It wasn’t a lot of power, but it was a cold and determined power. It made his legs assume the abandoned duty of supporting him, and with slow deliberation he pushed himself away from the door and stood. More or less. He had to grab the edge of the roof to keep from falling face-forward into the dirt. He couldn’t let that happen, he knew. If he fell, he would die. If he could stand, he could find Ruger. If he could find him, then he could kill the evil son of a bitch.

That was the plan and he reviewed it in his jumbled mind. It seemed like a good plan, it seemed like the only plan he would ever need. Simple, direct, and very satisfying. Find Karl Ruger and cut out his black heart. Maybe shoot his way up and down the man, like the Sicilians used to do: put one in each foot, then in each ankle, then through the knees, and keep working up. Firing his gun dry and reloading, making sure not to hit any arteries, keeping Ruger alive for a long time and making it last until Karl was begging and crying for one right through the brain. No…maybe Tony wouldn’t finish him off at all. Maybe he would just sit there and watch Ruger bleed, maybe have a race, just the two of them, to see which one died first. At that moment, despite the sea of blood that he had lost, Tony believed that he could outlast Ruger. It didn’t matter a damned bit if he died a single second later. That was fine. He’d chase Ruger all the way down to hell.

Rotten bastard!

Tony inched his way along the side of the car toward the trunk. He needed something to use as a bandage, something to keep the last little drops of blood within him until he could find Ruger. Maybe there was a towel or something in the trunk. Even a greasy one would be fine; Tony didn’t much care about infection. He knew he was going to die, but just needed to stay alive a little while longer. Just a little while longer.

His feet stumbled clumsily over the clots of dirt thrown by the car’s violent entry into the field, but he didn’t fall. Once or twice he staggered, but both times his hands had managed to find purchase on the car and pull him back to balance.

The trunk was open, and when Tony finally crept far enough along the side of the car to look inside, he could see that the big bags of coke and cash were gone. Well, what did he expect? Of course they would be gone. That’s why Ruger had shot him: to take his cut. Boyd must have been in on it, too.

Tony ground his teeth even as he felt tears well up in his eyes. Boyd was supposed to have been his friend, and yet he hadn’t done a fucking thing to stop Ruger. He just went along with it.

Well, Tony thought bitterly, we’ll just have to settle his hash, too. Yes, sir, settle Boyd’s fucking hash. Right along with Ruger’s. Shoot them both. Or maybe play Spartacus and give them knives and hold them at gunpoint while he made them fight it out. Fight to the death. That would be a real pisser. Fucking Spartacus. Thumbs down, fellows, thumbs-fucking-down.

He leaned on the edge of the trunk and peered in. The trunk light glimmered faintly off the metal edge of a jack handle, a can of Fix-a-Flat, the barrel of a shotgun, and…

…the edge of a twenty-dollar bill.

Tony grinned. The edge of the bill stuck out from under the cloth cover usually draped over the spare. Tony reached in and pulled away the cover. His grin widened.

Ruger had missed some.

Eight packs of twenties lay in a sprawl. Each pack was banded with paper and initialed by whoever had counted it. Each pack was badly stained with blood, but it was all good money. Well, well…what was this? Tony’s grin became even broader, stretching his bloodless skin over his yellow teeth. Dusted all around the money was a thick white powder. There was a lot of it, maybe as much as a pound. One of the glassine bags must have ruptured and a fine white snow had fallen in the trunk of the car.

Well, well…

Tony reached down into the trunk and lifted out one of the bundles of twenties, looking at it with fascination. If he could have seen his own eyes just then they would have frightened him. The lights that flickered in them were not fires so much as weird neon glowing and blinking and twisting to form bizarre shapes. Holding the bills up to his nose, he snorted some of the cocaine off them, drawing the white fire deep into his body. The anesthetic quality of the coke began to work its magic on him almost at once.

Continuing to grin, he pulled his sodden shirt open and slid the money down under his belt as a compress. The crisp bills brushed across the ragged edges of one of the bullet holes, but Tony was beyond normal pain. He took another stack of bills and roughly applied a five-hundred-dollar bandage to the second entry wound. The cocaine on the money would provide some mild topical anesthesia as well, should the pain come calling, but Tony really didn’t care. It tickled him to think about his expensive bandages. He adjusted his belt, drawing it tighter to hold the compresses firmly in place. He had begun to chuckle now, thinking about Boyd and Ruger slicing each other up as he watched, each of them hoping that the winner might be allowed to live. The chuckle was low, mean, and wet.

Again Tony reached into the trunk, but this time he pulled up a loose handful of cocaine. “Finest kind,” he said aloud, and then buried his snout in the snow and inhaled. The rush was incredible.

He coughed a little, gagging on the coke, but then the cough turned into another nasty chuckle. With a careless flick of his hand he let the rest of the coke flutter down to blanket the inside of the trunk.

Then he picked up the shotgun. He knew it was loaded, because he was the one who had carried it during the job. One shell in the pipe and four up the ass. His chuckle bubbled into a laugh as he pushed himself away from the open trunk and turned to begin his search for Ruger and Boyd.

“Wait for me, fellas,” he said jovially, “I’ll be right with you.”

He took one decisive step toward the cornfield and fell flat on his face. The shotgun discharged as his finger spasmodically jerked the trigger, and the blast swept the crossbar clear of crows. Black and bloody feathers swirled in the night air and then fluttered down to become lost in the ranks of corn.

Tony lay with mud in his nose and eyes and laughed until he vomited blood into the dirt.

He didn’t move at all until the beam of a flashlight suddenly seared into his eyes and he winced and turned away. He heard footsteps approaching slowly, and through the distorted dimness that settled over his brain, Tony thought he could hear the rumble of an engine somewhere off to his left, way over on the road. It took most of his remaining strength to open his eyes, and he could just make out the thick, hulking shape that towered over him. As he watched, the shape moved toward him, following the beam of the flashlight. It was a strange shape: man-shaped, but gnarled and apelike, too much bulk on the shoulders and arms, and a simian gait to the long, bowed legs.

The shape drew near and then squatted down next to him. Tony tried to see past the glare of the flashlight, but the shape held it so close that he couldn’t see anything.

“You’re hurt,” the shape said. The voice was flat. It was a statement, not a question.

“I…I’ve been…shot.”

The shape reached out one massively muscled arm, grasped Tony’s shoulder, and carefully rolled him onto his back; then the shape sat back again. Tony grunted and coughed more blood. He was amazed that he still had any left to lose.

“I’ve been shot,” he said again.

“Uh-huh. I can see that.”

“Could you…help me?”

The shape said nothing for a few seconds, then murmured, “I could. Sure, I could help you.” Still, he did not move. He just squatted there on his hams and appeared to wait.

It was getting very hard for Tony to think. Why did the guy just sit there? he wondered. “I need help,” he said again, raising a weak hand and trying to grab the man’s shirtfront. The strength in his arm failed and the hand fell away.

“Uh-huh.”

“Did you…” he began and then had to stop until another fierce coughing fit came and slowly passed. When he tried it again his voice was faint, even to his own ears, as if he were listening to it through an old plaster wall. “Did you come…to help me?”

“No,” said the shape, and reached for him.

(2)

Terry Wolfe stared at Ferro for a long time, trying to work out something to say. The mayor went to the coffee station and poured himself a cup, turning his back to give himself a moment to compose his face. He added sugar and cream, then sipped it to lubricate a throat that had gone completely dry. When he turned back to face the cops his face betrayed nothing, but he stared hard at Ferro for a long time.

Ferro waited it out, used to this kind of reaction, having already gotten it from Chief Bernhardt, his officers, and the two cops from the other towns. Everyone reacted like this: how could they not? The murders at the Cape May Lighthouse had made the papers across the country and throughout much of the world. Two books had already been written about them, and Jonathan Demme was already making a movie based on it starring Don Cheadle and Colin Farrell.

“How much of the story do you know?” asked Ferro, lighting up a Camel with a silver Zippo with the F.O.P. symbol engraved on it.

Terry’s throat was as dry as paste as he sipped the coffee. “Just what everyone else in the world knows,” he said. “Some madman tore up an entire group of senior citizens who were visiting the lighthouse in Cape May. Forced them all into the observation room of the lighthouse and then cut them to pieces and left bizarre messages on all the walls. Something like eighteen dead, though two were supposed to have actually been tortured to death before being cut to pieces.”

“That’s the gist of it.”

“I thought no one knew who did that. I mean…do you guys actually know who did that?”

Ferro looked grave and even a little secretive. “This is all South Jersey P.D. and the FBI, but some of it kind of spilled over into my backyard. I know that the investigative team has been looking at Karl Ruger for months now, but it’s one of those situations where they know more than they can prove. Most of it comes from hearsay — one ex-con said this and a hooker from Atlantic City said the other — but lately a lot of people seem to know that Ruger did the job. It isn’t known if he did it alone, or if he masterminded it, or what. One theory is that someone hired it done with Ruger as the hitter.”

Gus was appalled. “Why would anyone pay someone to do something like that?”

Ferro exhaled through his nose. “It’s complicated. I’m sure you’re aware of all the infighting among the families in Philly. The so-called don died of lung cancer nineteen months ago and, since he didn’t have any sons, everyone who thinks he has a claim to the title is vying for it. Well, to make a long story short—”

Terry held up a hand. “Detective Ferro, as fascinating as this all would be to another police officer, I personally don’t care even a little bit about the dynamics of Philadelphia criminal politics. Just tell me how this is going to impact my town.”

Ferro’s mouth snapped shut with a click and for the first time he looked off-balance. Terry could see that he was used to always being in charge and probably enjoyed the scope and drama of the ongoing battle between cops and robbers, but right now Terry’s head was pounding and listening to what amounted to a recap of the last four seasons of The Sopranos was not going to help any.

LaMastra stepped in and summed up: “We think Ruger was hired to do a hit on relatives of one of the crime lords, and he overdid it.”

“You don’t say,” Terry murmured. “So, Ruger gets the Hannibal Lecter award for head case of the decade. And…?”

Ferro pursed his lips, considering. “Well, the degree of rage demonstrated in those killings in Cape May, and what we saw on the surveillance video of the shoot-out earlier today, clearly paint Ruger as both extremely dangerous and completely unstable.”

“Mm, I’ve heard homicidal maniacs can be like that,” Terry said dryly.

Ignoring the mayor’s tone, Ferro said, “He’s on the run and under pressure and he has apparently stopped somewhere in your town. When he did the hit in New Jersey he killed a lot of innocent bystanders as well.”

Terry nodded. “I take your point. So why is this guy walking the streets at all?”

“As I said, more is known than can be proved. The killer left no useful clues, and he certainly didn’t leave any witnesses. Even so, people talk, and some of the talk has pointed the investigative team in the direction of Karl Ruger. It would be fair to say that an arrest would have been made within a week, two at the outside.”

“So, how the heck did a psycho hit man get involved in a drug heist?”

“Philly’s getting too hot,” said LaMastra. “Word started getting around that Karl was maybe the hitter, and that meant that sooner of later he’d end up in a field somewhere, hands tied behind his back with his cock cut off and stuffed in his—”

“I…uh…get the basic idea,” Terry said, cutting him off and shooting a significant glance at Shirley.

Ferro glared at his partner and LaMastra gave Terry and the officers an apologetic nod. “I think it’s a fair guess that not everyone knows it was him, or at least not the right ones. If they did, parts of him would be showing up in fifty different states. More likely it’s that no one knew it was him until just recently, probably as recently as last night or this morning. It was all breaking fast. The way we figure it is that when Ruger got wind of the rumors he immediately organized the drug hit to give him some traveling money. The fact that he was working with Boyd seems to bear that out.”

“Why’s that?”

“Boyd was a kind of small-time fixer. A travel agent,” said LaMastra. When Terry looked perplexed, he explained, “He gets people out of the country when things get hot. Fake IDs, passports, whatever. Because he’s good at it everyone leaves him alone.”

Sergeant Ferro nodded. “If they were working together, then it’s probably a good bet that Boyd was going to arrange to get Ruger out of the States. He stole a lot of money and that buys a lot of plastic surgery and false ID. There are places where a new face and new papers and a million dollars could get you lost in a big hurry.”

“So he split,” Terry said, “and now he’s running around loose in Pine Deep?”

Ferro and LaMastra both looked at him soberly. “Yes,” they agreed.

Terry looked at Gus, who shrugged and shook his head. “So, now what?”

Ferro pursed his lips. “Well, Your Honor, the rest of our boys should be here any time now. They have surveillance pictures of Ruger, Boyd, and Macchio that we’ll distribute. Since the road posts in Crestville failed to spot them, then we have to assume that they’ve stopped here and decided to hole up. That means we have to work out a search and detain program that will run them to ground.”

“Uh, Sergeant, this is not really the sort of thing that our chief’s department is used to handling,” said Gus diffidently. “I mean, we don’t really do manhunts….”

Ferro looked faintly amused. “Don’t worry, Chief, you’ll be getting a lot of help from my team. We can probably count on the state police and by tomorrow probably the FBI as well, not to mention some pinch hitters from the neighboring towns. We’re used to doing this sort of thing. I don’t mean to usurp any authority from you, sir, but we have a set way of handing these things, and if you’ll let us, we can run the show for you.” He glanced at Terry. “If that’s acceptable to you, sir?”

“Darn straight!” Terry said. “Like I said, I don’t care if you have to call in the National Guard, just do what you have to do. Chief Bernhardt will be more than happy to defer to your greater expertise.” He glanced at Gus, who, rather than looking offended at the loss of authority, appeared to be massively relieved. “You tell us what to do,” he concluded, “and we’ll give it a go.”

Ferro nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Mayor, Chief. Okay,” he said and clapped his hands, “let’s get to work.”

(3)

The wrecker was a gleaming, grotesque monstrosity. From the rat-eye red of its running lights to the shroud-black opacity of its tinted windows, it appeared every inch a pernicious and predatory thing, soaring along the road in a hideous silence. The split-rim hubcaps were polished to a spotless chrome finish, as was every cold metal accessory from the twin exhaust stacks to the guardrails that looked as if they had come from some ornate and disinterred coffin. The duel sets of rear wheels pushed the behemoth along the road at a ghastly speed, whipping along past harvested and unharvested fields, past whitewashed telephone poles that looked like old bones, past the bolted doors of night-darkened houses. Aside from the faint whine of the tire rubber on the macadam and the fainter growl of the perfectly tuned engine, the wrecker made no other sound; for all the noise it made it might have been a midnight wind.

In the cabin, Tow-Truck Eddie squatted in a repulsive tangle of ungainly muscularity, unnaturally disfigured by knots of muscles. Muscle upon muscle, tendons like bundles of piano wire, veins like high-pressure hoses. Even his face was hard with bulging muscles, bunching as the driver clenched and unclenched his jaw. He drove in complete silence, eyes fixed and staring, barely seeing the road as it unrolled itself before his headlights, big hands gripping the nubbed and leather-wrapped wheel with crushing force.

He made no sound, played no radio, listening instead with entranced delight to the voice in his head, the voice that whispered and whispered.

On his massive hands the blood still gleamed bright and fresh, lit by the dashboard display; in his mouth he could still taste the blood of the man he’d killed. His thick lips twisted and writhed in some semblance of a smile as he drove wildly through the night. The night that was now his.

He savored the taste of blood in his mouth, and he knew that it had made him pure, made him holy. It was the first time he’d ever really paid attention to the taste of blood. It was delicious, and he wondered if he would have more of it. Inside his head the voice of God told him that yes, he would. Soon.

As Tow-Truck Eddie drove, God whispered secrets to him, telling him of the glory that had been, and of the glory that was to come. God reminded him of his own holy purpose — that of finding the Beast and killing him.

You are the Sword of God.

It echoed like thunder in his head.

Somewhere, out there in the darkness, in some unknown spot on the black road, his destiny waited. Destiny in the form of the Beast — a creature of vast cunning and evil power that he must find, must oppose — must destroy—because he was the Sword of God, and it was his holy purpose to do God’s will here on earth. Now he knew that, after all his waiting, the Beast was out here on the road tonight, waiting for him to find it, to confront it, to begin the battle of Good against Evil, of heaven against hell. That was what the voice of God told him, pounding the words into his brain. Over and over again.

He laughed out loud, and his laugh was an explosion of righteous joy because his holy work was beginning. He had always known that someday God would set him on the right path. He’d prayed for this for years. His destiny had been clear to him since childhood. If he was who he thought he was — who he knew he was — then the voice that spoke so powerfully in his mind could belong to no one else but his own father. To God himself.

He laughed again and searched the roadside shadows for the Beast.

The wrecker cut through the night air like a butcher’s knife leaving a screaming darkness behind it.

(4)

“Jesus, Karl, wait for me, will you, for Chrissakes?”

Ruger said nothing and didn’t slow his pace a single bit. He plowed on through the corn, moving fast but seemingly not making as much sound as he ought to. He glided through the stalks like a snake.

The corn stood impossibly tall and it stretched outward on all sides in a forever of darkness. Boyd stumbled after Ruger, slapping the stalks aside, feeling the sharp sting of the razor-edged leaves nicking his hand and cheeks. The wind was icy and damp and his exposed skin burned from the raw cold. His lame left arm was tucked into his shirt, and the dead weight of it plus the lumpy burden of the backpack gave him an ungainly pace that consumed energy and cost effort. Despite the chilly air he was bathed in sweat and the backpack felt as if it were filled with rocks.

“Man, do you even know where we’re going?”

This time Ruger did stop. He turned and faced Boyd, his face completely in shadows. “Yeah, Boyd, sure I know where I’m going.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m going that way. Any more fucking questions?”

Boyd shut his mouth with a click, biting down on all the things he didn’t have the balls to say. They burned on his tongue like pepper seeds. With a grunt, a hearty expectoration, and a shadowy sneer, Ruger turned and plunged back into the corn. After a few seconds Boyd followed him. They trudged on in silence for just over a hundred yards before Boyd stepped into a gopher hole and neatly snapped both the tibia and fibula of his right leg.

He never saw the hole, and despite the dropping lunge and the sharp double snap of the bones, he couldn’t immediately understand what had happened. All he knew was that the cornfield suddenly rose up in front of him, the stalks seeming to launch themselves into the air, and then his face was rushing at the dirt. He tried to break his fall, but only one hand answered the summons and that was a second off the mark, so he took a cheekful of hard-packed dirt. His eyes jolted painfully in their sockets, he bit his tongue, and his brain felt jellied by the impact. He never even heard the double pop-pop of his leg bones as they broke, and at first all he felt was the pain in his face…and then the leg pain hit him. It hit him like a hurricane — blasting through every nerve ending he possessed, boiling up from the torn muscle and severed blood vessels all the way through the top of his head. He howled. He howled as loud as he could, and the shrill sound of it took flight and rose far above the waving corn. He drew in a single ragged breath and then opened his mouth to howl again, but the rough leather of Ruger’s glove, backed by bone and gristle and anger, struck him with such shocking force that the howl evaporated on his tongue and he gasped for a shocked breath, tears springing into his eyes. Ruger grabbed a fistful of his hair and jerked his head back and Boyd stared in mute awe at the single black metal eye that glared unwinkingly at him. The hard, cold silver that surrounded that black eye gleamed dully in the bad light.

“If you make one more fucking sound I’m going to blow your face all over this field.” The whisper was as cold as the metal of the gun barrel.

“My…leg…”

“You hear me, Boyd?”

“Jesus, Karl, I broke my fucking leg,” Boyd insisted, but in a low hiss, not a howl.

“No shit. Ain’t you the genius?”

“My fucking leg!”

Ruger pressed the barrel against Boyd’s forehead. “Shhhh. You’re getting loud again. Shhh, shhh now.”

“You gotta help me, Karl,” Boyd began, and then his eyes grew suddenly very wide. “Wait…Karl…don’t…!”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t do me, man. Don’t, okay? Don’t do me, please, man.”

Ruger actually managed to look hurt as he withdrew the gun. “Jeez, Boyd, what kind of guy do you think I am?” He released Boyd’s hair and even smoothed it with a caressing hand.

“Don’t do me, man….”

Ruger smiled. After a few seconds, he eased the hammer off cock and put his gun away. “Stop shitting your pants, you asshole. I’m not going to do anything to you unless you get loud again. I don’t go around killing everyone I meet, you know. I do have some scruples.”

Boyd didn’t dare make an answer to that. His terror of Ruger was even greater than the searing agony in his leg. With a sigh, Ruger stood and shrugged out of his pack, set it to one side, and then stood there, looking first at Boyd and then around at the rows of corn. A few yards away was the corner of a fence, and nailed to it was a tall wooden support for a scarecrow. The tattered guardian of the corn hung like a hobo Christ, arms outstretched and body slumped. The body was dressed in a cast-off old brown suit, frayed work gloves, and an old blue mechanic’s shirt. Instead of a burlap bag for a head, this scarecrow had been topped with a grinning jack-o’-lantern in an early nod to the coming Halloween season. Beyond the figure, the fence trailed away into shadows. Ruger pursed his lips in thought; then he turned back to Boyd.

“I think we’re near a farmhouse. See that fence? That looks like some kind of dividing line, maybe between this farm and the next. I’m going to follow it and see what I can see.”

“Jesus! You can’t just leave me here!” He hissed the words, his face screwed up with the unrelenting pain. Beads of sweat burst from every pore on his face.

“I sure as hell can’t carry you. You’re too goddamn big. Even if I could, I couldn’t lug you and both backpacks. No, m’man, I’ll get you set up here and then go get some kind of help.”

Boyd was almost weeping. “You’re going to run out on me, man. You’re gonna do me and take my share and bug the fuck out.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You’re gonna do me and just split—”

Ruger’s hand lashed out with appalling speed and slapped Boyd’s face hard to the left and then backhanded it to center position. He thrust a warning finger under Boyd’s nose, jabbing the air as he spoke. “Shut your fucking mouth, man. Shut it right now, or so help me God…” Ruger’s whispery voice trailed off, no reason to continue. Boyd shut up, but pain and fear crawled all over his face, twisting his lips and eyes and brows, wrinkling his features into a darkly comical mask. Ruger squatted down next to him, hooked a finger under his chin, and raised his face so that they were nose to nose, only inches apart. “Now you listen to me, Boyd. I said that I wasn’t going to hurt you, and I’m not going to. I got no reason to lie to you. If I wanted you dead, I’d cap you now and say-la-vee, but as it happens, I need your sorry ass. I can’t carry all that stuff myself, and even if I could, you have better connections for getting us out of the country than I do. I need you, Boyd, and that means you stay alive. You don’t have to believe me. In fact, I don’t give a rat’s ass either way, but there it is. I ain’t doing this out of brotherly love, so don’t think I’ve gone all soft on you. Keeping you alive will help keep me alive and out of the slam. Simple as that. No sentiment, no after-school special heartwarming stories, you dig? I need you, and you need me. Case closed. Now, I’m going to lug you over to the fence, right by that scarecrow. That way I’ll be able to find you again. I’ll set your leg best I can and you can snort all the girl you want to take the edge off the pain, and then I’m going on alone for a little while…but I will be back.” He jerked Boyd’s head on the point of his finger. “Do you have all that? Are we clear?”

Boyd searched Ruger’s eyes for the lie, for the cruel joke, but he found nothing more than the unemotional determination of a predator looking out for its own hide. He believed him. “Okay…okay, man.”

Ruger smiled that slithery smile of his.

“That’s my man. That’s my main man!” He winked and then reached for the buckle of Boyd’s pack. “Let’s lighten the load a little first.” That done, he stood and moved around behind Boyd, crouched, and caught him under the armpits. Before he lifted, he leaned so close that his lips brushed Boyd’s ear as he spoke. “I’m going to lift you out of that hole. If you dare scream, man, I’ll rip your throat out. Do you think I’m joking?”

“N…no…” Boyd whispered.

“Good. It’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker. Just take it, man. Just take it and screw that pain like you’d screw a little tight-snatch bitch. You hear me? Just screw the hell out of it.”

“Okay….”

“Okay. Here we go, buddy-boy.”

He hoisted Boyd up out of the hole.

Boyd didn’t scream. He almost did…Christ knows he wanted to, but instead he bit into his lip so hard that blood burst from it and ran hot and salty down his chin. The world took a sick and dizzying stagger and there was a dull roaring in Boyd’s ears as if he were standing too near to a raging waterfall. Nausea punched him in the pit of the stomach and slapped tears from his eyes. Ruger wasn’t gentle about it. He lifted the big, heavy Boyd as best he could, arms wrapped like iron bands around his thick chest, and dragged him to the fence. He squatted and lowered Boyd to the ground and more or less shoved him up against the rough wooden slats of the fence. He even tried to position him so that he had a modicum of comfort. The whole process, as Boyd saw it, took about a thousand years.

“Jesus Christ, man, how much do you friggin’ weigh?” Ruger said, sucking in great gulps of air. He walked around in a small circle, arching his back and stretching his arms over his head. Finally he walked away and returned lugging both backpacks. He crossed his ankles and lowered himself slowly to the ground, sitting Indian fashion in front of Boyd.

“G…gimme a cigarette,” Boyd wheezed, licking the blood from his lips. “Christ, I need a cigarette.”

Ruger slapped his pockets until he found his pack of Pall Malls, kissed one out of the pack, lighted it, and handed it to Boyd, who sucked it greedily. Boyd’s face was the color of sour milk and it glistened with greasy sweat.

“Ruger, my leg…”

“Yeah, yeah, your leg. Wait a minute. Here, toot some of this. Better than Novocain.” He held up one of the bulky Ziploc bags and a rolled-up ten-dollar bill. Boyd took the tube and bent toward the proffered coke; his inhalation was long and deep. “Ride ’em, cowboy!” said Ruger in real appreciation as Boyd took a second snort, and then a third.

“Oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man…” Boyd sighed, closing his eyes and leaning back against the fence.

Ruger beamed at him like a country doctor watching a kid swallow a spoonful of tonic and honey. “The breakfast of champions, m’man.”

“Oh man, that feels so much better.”

“Think so? Good, ’cause now I gotta set your leg.”

Boyd half shrugged. “With enough of this shit, you could cut the fucker right off.”

Grinning, Ruger fished in his pocket for a knife, found it, and flicked it open, a bone-handled Buck with a three-inch locking blade that was always sharp and well oiled. The keen edge sliced almost arrogantly through the tough black fabric of Boyd’s double-knits, gliding silently from cuff to midthigh. Ruger cut the pant-leg off and then tore the cloth into long strips, which he then set aside. Using his lighter he inspected the break. Both shinbones had broken a few inches below the knee, and they had broken in an ugly way. There were small mounds where the ends of the broken bones tented the skin, and the whole area was livid and swollen.

“Mm,” Ruger said. “Cute.”

“How’s it look?”

“Like shit.”

“Can you fix it?”

“I can set it, but I think you’re gonna need a doctor. You broke the hell out of it, Boyd. Man, when you break something, you break the ass off it.” He flicked off his lighter.

“I can’t feel it too bad. Just hurts a little.”

“Not for long. Go on, take another toot,” Ruger said, lightly grasping Boyd’s shin with both hands and placing his foot against Boyd’s chest.

“Gimme a sec…” Boyd said, diving nose-first into the bag of coke. Between toots he said, “Just let me know when you’re gonna do it, okay?”

Ruger did it right then. He shoved with his foot and threw all his weight back and away. The leg stretched in its tube of skin and muscle, the bones shifted, the ends scything through meat and muscle, and then he let it snap back into place.

“Now,” Ruger said, but Boyd had passed out. His eyes had rolled up in their sockets, his mouth dropped open in the beginnings of a scream, and then he fell over on his side. “You’re welcome,” Ruger said with a mean smile.

Ruger sat and finished his cigarette, then stubbed it out on the ground, watching with quiet amusement as Boyd slowly drifted back up out of the pool of painless sleep into the real world. He searched for that exact moment when the pain sensors in Boyd’s brain came online and connected his muzzy thoughts with all the jumbled stimuli from his leg. When Boyd’s eyes suddenly flared wide and he drew in a sharp, high hiss of agony, Ruger closed his eyes for a second, savoring that little moment. Rather tasty.

“Oh…Christ!” Boyd wailed, clawing at his leg with his good hand. His scrabbling fingers encountered strangeness in the form of wooden slats bound to the leg with strips of torn denim.

“Hi, Boyd,” Ruger said, “have a nice nap?”

“My leg…?”

“…Is set. More or less. Still have to get your ass to a doctor, but it’ll do for now, I guess. I splinted it, so you should be okay for a little while. I waited until you woke up before I took off to find Farmer John, or whoever owns all this friggin’ corn.”

“Man, you can’t just leave me—”

“Hey…hey! We’ve been through all that. I’m leaving you here, but I will be back. Just so you see that I’m not shitting you, I’m leaving all the stuff here. Cash, coke — the works. Now, you know I’m coming back for that, am I right?”

Boyd gave him a long, uncertain look, but finally he nodded.

Ruger popped a stick of Juicy-Fruit into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully for several seconds, his dark eyes ranging over Boyd’s face. “Okay then. End of discussion. You stay here and talk to Mr. Scarecrow, and I’ll go see what I can see. Maybe I’ll get a wheelbarrow or something. Wheel your ugly butt right the hell out of here. If we’re lucky I’ll find a nice nondescript set of wheels. Pickup or four-by-four…something we can use to go off-road to stay away from our buddies in blue.”

“Hurry, man.”

Ruger smiled disarmingly, white teeth gleaming. “Back before you even know it.” He stood up, stretched his aching muscles, and then did a slow turn, orienting himself. He sketched a little salute to Boyd, told him to be good, and strolled off, ignoring Boyd’s pleas to hurry. Within a few seconds he vanished around a bend and was gone.

Boyd stared after him, eyes awash with tears of pain. Above him the scarecrow’s loose clothing rustled quietly in the light, cold breeze. Boyd did not see the long scrambling line of beetles and roaches and worms and spiders that swarmed out of the fields, scurried up the fence posts, and scuttled up the pants-legs of the scarecrow. Not all of the rippling of the dummy’s clothing was caused by the breeze blowing past, yet all of it was caused by the night itself.

(5)

Iron Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil, looked at his chronometer. Nearly 1930 hours. He had half an hour to get home.

“Oh man,” he said in a low, terse whisper, “don’t let me be late.”

He was all the way out past the Guthrie farm, far down on A-32. Miles to go, and it would be hard enough on flat ground. He kicked the War Machine into action and pedaled like crazy.

“Crap,” he said aloud. He hadn’t meant to be late, but the papers that should have been dropped off before school was even out had come in an hour after Mike usually picked them up. He’d kicked ass dropping them off, saving the last ones for the long haul down A-32. Home was on the other side of town, and the miles between were mostly hills. No way to get there until sometime after eight.

Yeah, a belting for sure.

He zoomed down one hill and tried to use the momentum to get himself up the next one, but gravity began pulling at him and he had to pump his legs so that sweat popped out on his face and under his clothes. He kept his head down and pumped the pedals, thinking of home that lay one thousand and seven miles away. One million and seven. Where Mom and Vic were waiting for him. Mom sitting by the door with her hand clamped around a collins glass, looking out, waiting for him to come creeping into the yard, steeling herself to try and run some kind of interference for him; and Vic, sitting on the left-hand side of the couch, a Winston burning in one corner of his mouth, the remote-control dwarfed by his hand, clicking through channel after channel. Vic, with his hard mechanic’s hands and that little smile of his that he wore only when Mike did something wrong. Which, by Vic’s tally, was pretty often. Vic, who demanded to be called “sir” and had enforced his decree with his belt. Vic, who liked how hard his hands were, and how fast. Vic, who liked to use his hands, to hurt with his hands.

Mike looked down the long road and swore to himself that he would not cry. Not this time. Not now, and not after it was all over. No matter how bad it was, he wouldn’t let that prick see him cry. Even if it meant that Vic would try all the harder to wring the tears out of him.

After all, he was Iron Mike Sweeney. The Enemy of…

He felt the tears begin to well up and he swiped at them with pure anger.

“Damn you!” he suddenly yelled, his voice rising high and loud, bursting out of his troubled chest.

Then, with a snarl of pure rage, he thrust himself over the crest of the hill and plunged down the far side, his legs worked furiously, churning around and around as the bike accelerated smoothly; not to get home a moment faster, but to channel his fury and fear somewhere. The War Machine became a blur as it shot down the hill.

He saw the glow of the headlights just a split second before the vehicle crested the near hill. It bounded up over the knoll and swept down the other side, moving at incredible speed for so narrow a road. Mike was just beginning his climb up the hill, having taken the last four hills at a rapid clip.

The headlights dazzled him, and with his bright yellow and orange school jacket and white baseball cap, he fairly glowed in their brilliance. The vehicle — Mike still couldn’t tell what kind of car or truck it was — swooped straight down the hill at him, never veering to give him space. When he saw the red running lights, he knew it was a truck, and the wide set of the headlights confirmed this, but he couldn’t understand why it was driving so fast and why it wasn’t giving him any room. Didn’t it see him? It hogged the whole side of the road, cramming the shoulder, which was his only lane unless Mike decided to veer over to the other side. The truck sped on, and Mike was sure that the driver didn’t see him, despite the brightness of his clothes. In the few seconds he had left, he jagged sharply and quickly to his left and gave the truck as wide a berth as possible.

Those few seconds snapped away like firecrackers and then time seemed to accelerate as the headlights also shifted, and Mike stared in complete horror as he realized the truck was angling toward him. Crossing the yellow line and angling directly toward him!

Mike tried to wave the truck away, but the roar of the engine actually increased, and then suddenly everything in Mike’s world seemed to change, to become brighter as if there were spotlights on everything — and somehow he knew that this illumination was not coming from the headlights. It was as if some inner lights had flashed on, and at the same time everything abruptly slowed down. Mike was crouched over his handlebars, his face turned toward the oncoming truck. There was no sound. The truck’s wheels were angled and the chrome bumper was so close he could have reached out and touched it. Mike felt his hands jerk the handlebars sharply to one side — and that motion seemed the only thing that happened in real time — and then he threw his weight farther forward, adding his mass to the impetus from the fierce pumping of his legs. In a fragment of a second, as the truck rolled at him — murderously close and yet moving so impossibly slowly — Mike veered his bike at a crazy angle and slipped past the very corner of the big silver bumper.

Immediately he shot back into real time and with a deafening roar the tow-truck shot past him, the fenders and wheels inches from him, the slipstream ripping at him. The truck passed in a second and as it ripped past, Mike’s bike shot off the highway, crunched across the verge, and flew into black emptiness.

He had no time to scream, and no voice for it anyway. The War Machine hurtled off the edge of the drainage ditch and smashed down in the pumpkin patch that bordered the road. The front wheel hit the twisted vine spiraling out from the top of one large gourd and the bike stopped at all once. Mike kept going.

He passed over the handlebars, turned a neat somersault in the air, and almost — almost — rotated far enough forward for him to land on his feet. It would have been a wonderful accident worthy of a standing ovation, but as he passed over the bars his left sneaker toe caught the rippled rubber of the handgrip and spoiled the rotation. Mike’s heels hit first but lacking the right angle of momentum he fell backward instead of forward. His buttocks smashed down on a pumpkin and it burst under him, the stem giving his tailbone a painful jolt; then his back hit a scattering of underdeveloped pumpkins, each the size and approximate hardness of baseballs. He could feel one rib break with a searing detonation of red-hot pain that stole his breath, exploded his nerve endings, and closed a hot fist around his heart. His head flopped back and struck a stone.

Everything stopped. All sound and movement stopped and the only things he was aware of were blackness, searing pain, and the fireflies of head trauma.

Mike’s mouth worked like a fish, trying to gasp in air but finding none.

He lay there for thousands of years.

When his mind could function on a rudimentary level his first thought was: Oh, shit…I’m really going to be late now. Then, Oh my God, I think I’m dead.

Turning his head, he could see the receding taillights of the truck, could see that it was a tow-truck — lightning seemed to strike sparks from the massive gleaming hook. The engine roared as the truck picked up speed and downshifted to climb the hill.

Mike lay there, dazed, hurting, trying to survive the moment.

Once the truck had crested the hill and vanished, he stared up at the dark and featureless sky. The lightning flickered distantly and underlit the clouds with a dark red glow.

As the engine growl of the tow-truck dwindled into silence, Mike tried to make sense of things. He felt smashed and stupid and afraid. Amazed, too. That idiot in the tow-truck had actually tried to run him off the road! He had really tried, gone out of his way to do it, Mike was sure of it. He simply couldn’t understand it.

He tried to move, couldn’t, and lay there, focusing on thought rather than feeling.

Sure, he’d seen some people play chicken with cyclists, shifting a little closer just to spook them, but never like this. Never at night on a deserted road and at such high speeds, and with such a clear-cut intention of actually forcing him off the road. Or, he thought, maybe with the intention of hitting him. No, that’s dumb. Mike dismissed the idea as ridiculous.

His lungs started working better, taking in more air.

“Any minute now I’ll get up,” he said aloud, but he didn’t believe it.

I could be dead now, he thought in simple amazement. If I hadn’t moved so fast, I could be dead now. Just for a second his brain replayed that narrow escape. He recalled the eerie way in which time seemed to have slowed down as he veered his bike out of the way. It was so strange.

It was because of what he’d done that he was alive. He thought about that for a long time, replaying it in his head. Despite the pain, something like a smile formed on his lips. He was alive, he realized, because he had done exactly the right thing at the right time, and done it quickly, efficiently, and without hesitation. No playtime stuff. His own quick thinking had shown him the path and his own reflexes had taken him out of harm’s way. Iron Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil.

He tried to move again and a fireball the size of North Dakota exploded in his back.

Any minute now, he thought, I’ll get up and get the heck out of here. Any minute now.

If he’d tried to outrun the wrecker he knew he would have been ground under those big wheels. Mashed into goo. The thought that he’d escaped that fate did nothing to cheer him, because of the very real fact that the driver of that truck had meant to kill him.

The rib was really starting to scream at him. Moreover, time was passing, and Vic would be waiting, belt at the ready, hard hands fondling the remote, waiting for him, pleased with how very late it was. Mike’s feeling of pride vanished instantly. His dread of Vic was overwhelming.

Still, he lay a few moments longer, collecting himself, and thinking about that crucial moment when he’d left the road, remembering what it had felt like. At no time had it ever been panic; no, that particular emotion had not been a part of it at all. Instead, the feeling had been simpler, more profound. He had just done what had to be done, a cool, calculated move, and it had been the right thing. A minor victory, perhaps, on a world scale, but it had been everything to the life of Mike Sweeney.

Slowly and carefully, he made himself sit up. It actually helped the pain, and when he carefully turned to look down he realized that it was the twisted stem of a pumpkin that had been jabbing him in the back. Even though he was sure a rib or two were broken the pain was a lot more bearable sitting up. He took it as a good sign, though he was only partly relived and partly disappointed. Getting stabbed in the back by something would have meant a stay in the hospital, and that would have been at least one night away from Vic.

“Oh well,” he said, and got slowly and carefully to his feet. It took a lot of doing. Both of his ankles were sore though he didn’t think they were sprained, but one rib was definitely cracked. It glowed like a hot ember with every breath.

He limped over to his War Machine. It lay on its side, covered in mud and pumpkin mush. With infinite care, Mike squatted down and raised the bike onto its wheels. Half pulling it, half leaning on it, he walked back up to the road and examined it in the glow from the nearly continual lightning flashes. The frame was undamaged, and when he rolled it back and forth he was delighted to discover that the wheels spun true. How it had come through the crash undamaged was a mystery, but with the way his body was feeling he certainly didn’t want to look any gift horses in the mouth.

With a dreadful expectation of the pain, he mounted the bike and began riding away. The pain was exactly as bad as he expected it to be and for a while he thought that fireflies were swarming around him, but it was only more of the fireworks display of scotoma. It took a long time for his eyes to clear enough for him to ride, but even then there was a fringe of sparks at the edges of his vision and a peculiar tingling in the flesh around both eyes. He plodded on, pedaling slowly and with tremendous care, fearing the exertion of the hills, moving into the night until he had left the site of his calamity far behind, pedaling laboriously up and down the mountains, heading for home to accept his belting.

(6)

State Extension Route A-32 lead up from the center of Pine Deep, curved lazily around the twists in the canal, and then darted off at a right angle through the farmlands. It was the main artery along which the tourists flowed into town, and down which the semis loaded with corn, pumpkins, apples, and pears headed southeast toward Philadelphia. Slow-moving tractors, road graders, and harvesters chugged along it at modest speeds during the day, sometimes causing frustrating backups for the day-trippers from Philly, Doylestown, and Willow Grove who flocked to Pine Deep to shop the antique stores and galleries, dine at the four-and five-star restaurants, and sip expensive wines and rare drams of scotch at the sidewalk cafés. About ten miles out of the town proper was a small dirt road that cut away from A-32 at a sharp right angle. There was no official name for it, being actually a disused farm road, but everyone called it Dark Hollow Road because that’s where it lead. At night, carloads of teenagers thumped and bumped along its rutted length heading for the Passion Pit, so named in the forties and never changed, where they did some rutting of their own. Nearly every night the pale glow of taillights looked like fireflies through the trees, and here and there some young lover’s gasp of climactic delight drifted on the breeze blowing through the pines.

Though the whole area was commonly called Dark Hollow, the true hollow was a deep and narrow valley that wormed between the toes of three substantial hills. Halfway up the tallest hill was the flattened natural shelf that had been commandeered as the Passion Pit, and it was surrounded by snarls of undergrowth that were burned to gnarled skeletons three years ago by a thoughtlessly discarded cigarette butt. The trees were badly charred as well, but few had actually died. Pine trees endured forest fires heroically, though these looked desolate without their needles. Slowly, but surely, the land reclaimed its life and color, and here and there a new green sprig of spruce or Frazier pine could be found.

At night, especially an overcast and moody night like this, Dark Hollow was as dark as a tomb and as inviting as an open, beckoning grave; yet there were worse places in Pine Deep, places where the shadows were darker still and the air hummed with a malevolent tension. But these places were never named and they were never thought about by choice. Dark Hollow, a doorway to those other places, remained as the darkest place known consciously to the people of the town, and in its way, it was dark enough.

The last crickets of the season chanted a weak and dispirited chorus from the withered grass of the hollow, and in a half-burnt old oak, an owl demanded identification of all that moved in the night. All day the spot had been empty and then between one second and the next a man stood by the stump. A moment before he had been standing on the road and now he was here, and he looked as startled as the birds around him as if he didn’t understand it either.

His face looked strained and tense, but also sad. He looked around at the shadows that clung like webs around Dark Hollow, then down at the stump, and then slowly sat down. His pale skin glowed faintly in the darkness, and his deep-set eyes looked like the empty sockets in a skull. A guitar stood nearby, canted back to rest against the trunk of a scrub pine. Before him, on the ground, was the remains of an old campfire left behind months ago by hoboes. The wood was only half burned, but cold and damp.

There was a soft flutter in the air and the gray man looked up as the ragged night bird jumped from one branch to a lower one. It stood there on stick legs, head cocked to one side as it regarded him as if it knew him.

“Yeah, brother blackbird, you know me. And I know you.” Though his lips moved to form the words no sound came out. Even so, the bird rustled its wings and edged slightly closer. The man watched it for a long while and thought, You know the Bone Man. In his own ears his voice sounded sad. Yeah…everybody know the Bone Man and everybody know that he don’t amount to much.

He pulled his guitar around and strummed the strings. The sound was high and sweet, but distant, like something heard through a closed door.

“Are you cold?” the Bone Man asked the bird. “I’m cold as a motherfucker.”

The bird made a faint sound, like the squeak of a rusted hinge.

“I’m always cold.” The Bone Man looked back at the old fire logs. He said nothing else, even when the logs suddenly burst into flame. The bird flapped its wings and almost flew away. But didn’t. It remained there, watching the man, watching the waxing golden light, feeling the blossoming warmth. The logs caught and settled down into a cheerful, chuckling fire, so strange in that desolate place.

The Bone Man fished in his pocket for the sawed-off and polished neck of an old whiskey bottle. It fit on one finger of his left hand and he rested the fingers of his right hand across the strings, but he didn’t play quite yet. Instead he closed his eyes and hung his head as if in prayer and the woods grew still around him. Then slowly, barely touching the strings, he began to play an old blues song. “Black Ghost Blues” by Lightnin’ Hopkins. He played it through while the thunder rumbled overhead and the lightning slashed at the sky.

When the song ended he was a quiet for a while, listening to the storm; then he began playing a different tune. It was a sad song, one his grandfather had written a long time ago and called “Ghost Road Blues.”

Not far away, close enough for the Bone Man to feel it, down the long hill at the bottom of the hollow, was another place, a place that was far darker even than its name, a place of mold and decay, where seething insectoid life thrived in twisted vitality around a swamp that lay always hidden by shadows. The tall trees were clustered over it like mourners bowed over a coffin, the twisted bracken and shrubs that were tangled along the lumpy ground as thick as moss on a wet stone, bathing it forever in darkness despite the brightest summer sun; and now, with the swelling dark of autumn and the fading of Indian summer’s last shreds of warmth, the place was a temple to lightlessness, bitter cold and a pestilential silence.

The gray man finished his song and for a while he just sat on his log and felt the roiling darkness of that shunned and malevolent place lapping like black waves around him. He remembered that place; remembered it and feared it. In his memories he saw that place splattered with blood and rent by violence. Long ago, the Bone Man had thought — foolishly, naively — that the evil of that place had perished with the evil man who’d used the swamp as a fortress. He’d believed that when the man died his evil would die with him. Now, looking back down the littered corridor of empty years, he finally understood what that cold and evil man had told him. Evil never dies. It merely waits. And it grows stronger in the dark. Even now, thirty years later, he could still hear the harsh mockery in that man’s voice as he said those words. Evil never dies. It waits.

The man with graveyard dirt on his suit and the ragged night bird sat in their silence and watched the fire.

And it grows stronger in the dark.

Chapter 7

(1)

The road swept around a tight bend and then settled down into a long stretch of flat, straight highway. Mike pedaled laboriously, trying not to breathe too hard, yet feeling his lungs begging him for more air. The night had grown quiet and close around him, a gelid mass that was hard to move through with any kind of speed. He didn’t dare look at his watch. Already it had been nearly an hour since the maniac in the wrecker had driven him off the road, and Vic wasn’t going to be pleased at all. Mike wondered if a broken rib would exempt him from the usual belting, and decided that it probably wouldn’t. He could almost imagine how Vic would put it: “Your ass ain’t broken, boy, just bend over the chair and try for once to take it like a man.”

A man, he thought bitterly as he pumped the pedals, wouldn’t take it at all.

The tears wanted to come again, but he actually snarled out loud to drive them back. He would not — he absolutely would not ever cry because of that bastard Vic. Not ever again! His anger sent energy to his legs and for a while he pedaled on in furious silence, ignoring, even savoring the pain.

If I can take a broken rib, then I can take another belting.

He had gone almost three miles when a series of brilliant and lengthy lightning flashes drenched the road in revealing brilliance. Mike slowed his bike and stared. Just ahead of him, beginning a few inches beyond his front tire, were long black skid marks. They were so dark that Mike knew they were fresh, and they cut away to his right in a very tight arc, ending abruptly at the shoulder of the road. He gingerly got off his bike and walked the length of those skid marks, stopping on the verge with his heels on the blacktop and his sneakered toes hanging out over the deep ruts torn into the near edge of the big drainage ditch. He waited for the next lightning flash, and in its glow he could see where the ruts began again on the other side of the ditch; these ruts were deeper, more smashed in, and huge clods of mud had fallen away into the ditch. As bolt after bolt of lightning danced through the sky, he worked it out in pieces, seeing first the place where all four tires had cut furrows in the dirt as the car must have slewed sideways, then the gap-toothed hole in the otherwise orderly wall of cornstalks. The car must have plowed right into the field and kept on going. Mike crabbed sideways, trying to get a better angle of sight. One final flash of lightning was all he needed to see the gleam of metal many yards into the corn.

“Jeez!” he said aloud. Indecisively he looked back at his bike for a thoughtful second, and then into the corn again. He knew that the car crash must have happened only recently, because there hadn’t been any skid marks when he’d come out this way. Say two hours, tops.

The wrecker had come from this direction, he thought, and wondered if that crazy driver had driven this car off the road, too.

A horrible thought occurred to him. There could still be people in there. Trapped!

Mike could feel his pulse racing. The thought of people trapped in a wrecked car was one of the truly terrifying images for him. When his own father had fallen asleep at the wheel of his car while driving home from his nighttime job, the ambulance men had told Mike’s mom that he had probably been alive for as much as half an hour. Half an hour before the gasoline leaking from the ruptured tank had somehow found a way to ignite. Mike shuddered at the thought of someone else being trapped like that, being alone and afraid. Dying the way his dad had died. That was the stuff of his nightmares.

Before he was even conscious of his decision, he had taken a step off the blacktop and onto the top of the steep slope of the drainage ditch.

Then something truly amazing happened.

A deer stepped quietly out of the woods right in front of him, coming right out of the opening that had been smashed in the cornstalks. It stepped out boldly just as a bolt of lightning seared the whole world to whiteness all around him. Mike gasped and jolted to a stop, mindful of the pain in his ribs, but too surprised even to wince.

The deer was a big buck, maybe a twelve-pointer, and normally that alone would have been enough to stop him in his tracks, but that was nothing compared to the color of the thing. It was pure white. Not just pale but an unnatural white, like milk or a freshly whitewashed fence. Hard muscles rippled beneath the smooth hide as it walked slowly out of the cornfield and stood facing him across the few yards of the drainage ditch.

Mike marveled at it, smiling at the majesty of the animal without even being aware of it. For a while he totally forgot about his broken rib and about Vic’s hard hands waiting at home, he forgot about the skid marks and the wreck. He was filled with the beauty of the magnificent creature. It was easily the biggest deer he had ever seen, at least two hundred pounds, and stood tall and proud in the road before him; and it stood so close!

The deer looked at him with that quiet nobility and innate wisdom that some animals seem to possess. Not one trace of fear flickered in those large, dark eyes and it kept its eyes on him as the creature turned and paced halfway around him, edging slightly away.

“Wow…” Mike breathed, his voice as soft as the light breeze.

The buck’s eyes seemed unnaturally expressive and unusually intense. Mike felt as if they projected some kind of force that struck him between his own eyes. He tried to breathe and found that it was difficult to fill his lungs. The buck turned its majestically antlered head and looked at the cornfield behind him, then turned again to face Mike. Mike instantly remembered the wrecked car, and he was torn between his awe of this animal and the thought that someone might need his help. He took a small step toward the edge of the road. The deer lowered its head and shook its massive rack of razor-sharp horns, then raised its head and stared at him. Mike swallowed something the size of a cantaloupe. He waited for maybe thirty seconds and then dared another step. Through the tangle of smashed corn he could see the gleam of metal shimmering with every new bolt of lightning. He took a third step.

With a flash of white the deer leaped at him.

Mike cried out and staggered back as the front hooves of the deer struck the ground barely a foot from his toes. He fell backward and upward, landing hard with his rump on the blacktop and legs skidding on the mud of the ditch, and the pain from his cracked rib stabbed through him like a spear. Mike cried out and the deer sprang again, and as Mike fell back he looked up in wonder as the deer passed over him, landing with a skittering of hooves on the highway beyond him. The buck wheeled toward him, standing tall and powerful, fire seeming to dance along its antlers as the sky erupted again with white brilliance.

Gasping in shock and pain, Mike sat up, looking carefully over his shoulder, and then cautiously got to his feet. The world took a few dizzying spins but his rib actually hurt less now, as if falling flat on his back had pushed the jagged ends into place. The buck stood there, legs wide and braced, eyes burning black holes into him.

Uncertainly, Mike turned to look across the ditch, made a slight gesture toward it, then glanced back to see how the deer would react. The buck reared up and then slammed down with both front hooves. Perhaps it was only a coincidental crash of thunder, but Mike could have sworn that the earth shook when those hooves struck the ground.

“Damn!” Mike said and reeled back. He lost balance and tottered on the edge of the ditch, arms flailing, but finally caught himself and felt the road settle down under his feet. The exertion made the pain in his rib flare again, and he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to endure the screaming white-hot spears of pain in his side. It took the pain a long while to slide down to a level he could bear. He opened his eyes tentatively. The buck had moved a few feet closer to him. Mike could have reached out and touched its muscular front legs, but he dared not. Their eyes met, locked, held. Mike gasped again as he felt the power of that animal’s implacable stare. Something moved in those large, dark eyes. Something old and powerful and wildly beyond Mike’s comprehension. Mike was storm-tossed by terror, wonder, and confusion, but something…

Something passed between them. Some tiny bit of knowledge, some small breath of understanding.

And for a moment, a frozen fragment of a second, Mike was not on the road, not standing by his bike, not confronting a great white stag. For a splinter of time Mike Sweeney was in a dark swampy hollow. Everywhere he looked there were fires burning. In some places the bushes and trees were blazing, and in others it was bodies that were burning. Bodies that ran and capered and screamed as they burned. Mike looked down and saw that he held a samurai sword in his hands, the length of the blade covered in blood that was almost black in the firelight. Fire danced and flickered in the parts of the steel that weren’t smeared with blood.

Mike raised his head and looked around. Malcolm Crow, the guy who owned the hobby shop, lay on the ground near him. He wore a big tank on his back that had a long hose, which was still clutched in his hands. Crow’s eyes were closed and he reeked of gasoline. A line of fire was eating its watch across the grass toward him. There was blood on Crow’s face and his eyes were closed.

Near him were two men — a big white guy and an older black guy — both of them were soaked with blood and stared blankly at the sky.

Mike turned all the way around and he saw Val Guthrie, the woman who owned the big farm outside of town. The one who went out with Crow. She was on her knees, weeping, holding her father in her arms. Her father, Old Man Guthrie, looked dead.

Everywhere Mike looked he saw death, and where there wasn’t death there was pain. His mother was there, smiling at him with a mouth that was rimmed with blood. As she looked at him her eyes went from their familiar green to a bloody red and she stepped backward into flame-tinged shadows and disappeared.

A shadow passed over Mike and he turned again to see what had cast it. He turned and looked up…and up. It stood there, impossibly huge, monstrous, towering above the flames, laughing in a voice that rumbled like thunder.

“Mine!” the creature hissed, and reached for him.

And time caught up with him so fast and hard it was like a slap across the face. Mike staggered backward against his bike, knocking it over. The stag twitched, shaking its great rack of antlers again.

The image — dream, whatever it was — still burned in his mind, but already it was starting to fade. Mike tried to catch it, to remember it, knowing on a very deep level that it was important — though he couldn’t begin to guess why — but it faded almost instantly. Becoming fog and then blowing away, leaving only the faintest memory of fear behind like a bad but indefinable smell.

The deer backed away a few steps. It stood there, eying him, waiting for something; then it turned toward Mike’s War Machine and kicked it lightly with a sharp hoof. It kicked it again and looked at Mike. It took Mike a few seconds to understand. He got up very slowly — it was really all he could manage — and stood there, looking from the cornfield to the deer and back again. Another shake of the antlers. Mike advanced toward the bike, and the deer backed away, matching his pace. They never broke eye contact, even as Mike bent down to pick up his bike.

“What are y—” Mike began to ask, but stopped. The deer just looked at him with those wise old eyes, and to Mike it felt wrong to actually say anything. He got back on his bike, confused, amazed, even overwhelmed. It’s just a deer, he told himself, trying to make himself listen. Just a deer.

Yeah, he thought, right. Just a deer, my ass.

Slowly, and with great effort, he began to pedal away. He didn’t look over his shoulder again until he was at the bend at the far end of the straightaway. He paused and half turned to look back just in time to see the white deer leap gracefully across the ditch and walk slowly and purposefully into the field between the stalks of crushed and trampled corn.

“Man,” Mike said. “Man oh man oh man.”

He turned to the front again and tried to get his confused mind and battered body to solve the problem of getting home, trying not to think about the deer. Or about the wrecked car. Or about the tow-truck that had tried to run him down. Or about his battered body.

Or about Vic’s hard hands waiting for him at home.

He did not want to think of any of these things. All he wanted was to get home and go hide in his room. He struggled on, his legs already weary, his breathing forced. Around him, the night loomed with vast black shadows.

(2)

From the edge of the cornfield, hidden by the stalks of corn, the white buck watched Mike go. Then it, too, turned away, moving step by measured step on its four hard hooves. Lightning painted corn-shaped shadows on its white flanks. Between the bursts of light it seemed to vanish, reappearing again as the storm drew closer to Pine Deep and scattered its fireworks across the sky. The deer walked through a space of shadows and then as the next thread of lightning stitched the sky, the creature illuminated was not an albino buck with a massive rack of horns but a gray man in a black suit that was spattered with mud, a guitar slung across his shoulders. He moved just as slowly, along the same angle, and his footsteps began where the marks of the white deer ended.

The Bone Man stopped and looked back the way he’d come. He wore a crooked smile. “Let’s see Tommy Johnson do that,” he said in a voice like a faint wind. “Hell, let’s see Robert Johnson do that.”

He went to the top of a rise and watched as Mike labored over the farthest hill. The Bone Man’s mind burned with the image he’d seen in Mike’s mind. His gray lips formed a single silent word.

“Dhampyr.”

Overhead, thunder detonated with apocalyptic fury. The night birds took to the sky and uttered their plaintive ululations, like lost souls on the dark breeze. The moon was climbing into the sky, hiding like a criminal behind the storm clouds.

There were hours and hours until dawn, and the night still had work to do.

(3)

Crow rocketed along the twists and turns of A-32 at unsafe and irresponsible speeds. He found it relaxing. His car was one of those big Impalas from the early seventies: too much engine and about as long as an aircraft carrier. Crow claimed that you could land a plane on the hood and he wasn’t far wrong. It was Hershey Kiss brown except for the right front fender that was an improbable shade of greenish yellow. The interior roof lining sagged down like a windless parachute, constantly tousling Crow’s curly hair, and all of the seats had been patched with duct tape of various vintages. There was red reflector tape over some of the rear lights and one headlight shone askew, giving the car a cross-eyed look. Crow had found her squatting dispiritedly in a used car lot, bought her at once, and named her Missy after his first girlfriend who’d had the same cross-eyed beauty.

He tried never to drive Missy at anything less than a breakneck speed. Terry called Missy Crow’s “getaway car” because that’s how he drove it.

After Terry had left the store, Crow had been mildly amused at his “mission” and the novelty of having some big-city bad guys fleeing through Pine Deep. It was unreal enough to be funny, and it also tickled his curiosity, though not as much as it would have a few years ago. Back when he was a full-time cop Crow would have relished this kind of scene. Of course, back then there was even some talk about Crow running for Gus Bernhardt’s job. It was Terry’s opinion that he would have gotten the job if he’d taken even a halfhearted shot at it, and Terry’s opinion held enormous sway in town, but Crow had not wanted the job badly enough.

It had been a strange time in his life, full of extreme peaks and valleys. The first couple of years he’d worn the badge were definitely the valleys because he’d also been a drinker, and that had resulted in some bad scenes. He was drunk on the job a couple of times, and once even had a fender bender coming off a long speed trap shift where he’d whiled the hours away with a bottle of Knob Creek and a stack of blues tapes. A guy in a Crossfire had come bucketing down A-32 at ninety and Crow had peeled out after him. The guy saw the lights and heard the sirens and didn’t make a game of it, dropping his speed and pulling over onto the shoulder, but Crow was half in the bag and misjudged his own speed and had rear-ended the speeder to the tune of a grand’s worth of bodywork on the Crossfire and eight hundred on the cruiser.

Crow would have been fired for that, but Terry had intervened. Gus was purple with suppressed rage when he told Crow that he was only getting two weeks off without pay. During that week Terry had sat Crow down and leveled an ultimatum at him: dry out or lose him as a friend.

Crow’s first response was to spend the rest of the night getting totally wasted; and then after waking up in his own backyard, naked except for socks, and covered in vomit and bird shit, he’d decided that rock bottom was not much fun.

With shaking hands he poured all his booze down the drain and spent the rest of those two weeks developing an addiction to coffee, chain-smoking cigarettes, and bitching about life to anyone who would listen, which was a small community. He also started going to AA meetings, sometimes as often as three times a day. When he returned to the job after his suspension, he was ten pounds lighter, looked ten years older, had yellow skin, red eyes, a case of the shakes, and had been sober for twelve days.

Then his life slipped into low gear and climbed the long road out of the valleys, picking up a little speed as it went higher. Over the next year he picked up two citations for good conduct, never missed a single day of work, and started socking money away for the store he someday wanted to buy. In January of his second year of sobriety he started teaching jujitsu twice a week at the YMCA in Crestville, bought Missy and rehabilitated her, strengthened his friendship with Terry Wolfe and the rest of the world — except, perhaps, for Gus, Jim Polk, and Vic Wingate — and fell in love.

Then eight months before he quit the force he had a run-in with a handful of the Pine Barons, the local bike club that had gradually become a pain in the ass to everyone. That situation was one Crow regretted — not for his actions, which even he felt were warranted, if not as heroic as the press made them out to be, but because the whole Pine Barons thing had been vulgar and gaudy and badly misinterpreted by everyone.

The situation wasn’t really that much, as Crow saw it. He and a couple of other units — a total of three officers in three cars — were sent to roust six of the Barons from a truck stop by the canal bridge. It was part of a program to urge the gang to move on to other hunting grounds. Aside from the usual speeding, drinking, drugs, and brawling, a few of them had taken to harassing the girls from Pinelands High School, seducing a few and turning them on to poppers and speed and gang bangs, and pestering a few others in ways that would have shocked construction workers. There were several complaints filed and the talk of at least one rape that the girl in question refused to talk about, apparently too terrified and ashamed to file charges. The fact that the biker had walked away from all charges both enraged the townies and fueled the cockiness of the bikers.

The two other officers had arrived first and, despite being told to wait for backup, had gone into the diner, a move that spoke far more of balls than brains. By the time Crow pushed through the door, one cop — Jim Polk — had mouthed off to the bikers and tried to bully them out of there. Crow saw him lying on the floor clutching his balls, his face as red and pinched as a dried tomato. The other cop, Golub, was getting the tar kicked out of him by the whole gang.

Crow yelled to the counterman to call 911 and had just waded in. When he Monday-morning quarterbacked it he realized that he should have drawn his gun and ordered everyone down. Though he didn’t care much for Polk, he did like Golub — a part-time cop working on his prelaw degree at Pinelands. Crow jumped in and, as the counterman later described to the reporters, “black-belted the whole sorry bunch of them.” Three of the bikers landed in the hospital, two more were treated and released to police custody, and the sixth just ran and hid in the bathroom until the other units came and arrested him.

The newspapers had a field day with the story, and every single article emphasized Crow’s shortness and leanness, using all the purple prose superlatives in the dictionary to contrast him with the “monstrous bikers” whose “formidable” size and “animal ferocity” were a “deadly threat” to the safety of all in Pine Deep. The level of journalism in Pine Deep was about that of a high school paper. They made a big thing out of the fact that Crow had a black belt in jujitsu and kept using the term “chop-socky,” which irritated Crow to no end. The only moderately mature piece was printed in the Black Marsh Sentinel, which included a sidebar on jujitsu (which was spelled wrong) and segued into a short history of biker violence in Pennsylvania.

That incident became the stuff of local legends, and it was around that time that people started talking about Chief Crow as if his election was a foregone conclusion. Gus Bernhardt, who had not been able to do a single visible thing about the Barons during those few times the bikers had previously been in town, was beaten up by the press over and over again for his weak record. Even Crow, who didn’t like Gus, thought that was a little unfair. Except for the biker thing, there wasn’t enough crime in Pine Deep to allow anyone to establish a reputation. Gus used that same thought as a platform and took credit for the low crime as an example of how he protected “his” town. Crow hadn’t even decided to run against him and already Gus was making campaign speeches.

A few months later, when it was getting to the point where he would absolutely have to make a decision whether to run or not, Crow found a bank that liked the idea of an upscale craft store and was willing to front the money. Crow weighed the benefits of being a chief in a town where the usual breed of criminal was a jaywalker and those of being a happy store owner selling, as Val so kindly put it, rubber dog poop. It took him about forty seconds to make his decision. He handed Gus his notice — and tried not to take offense at the chief’s beaming smile of pure glee — hung up his uniform, wrapped his gun in oilcloth, and became a businessman.

So, he asked himself, what the hell am I doing tooling down the highway with a pistol in my belt and bad guys on the loose?

“I’ll be damned if I know,” he said aloud. The pistol felt like an anvil in his belt and he was way too aware of it. He drove five more miles trying to pretend it wasn’t there. Then, as he sailed past Millie and Gus’s big garlic farm, he said, “Oh…kiss my ass, Terry!” pulled up his shirt, and yanked out the gun. He bent, thumbed open the glove compartment, and shoved the gun out of sight. As soon as he slammed the little door shut he felt worlds better. He fished around on the passenger seat until he found the CD he wanted, slid it into the player, cranked the volume all the way up, and he and Howlin’ Wolf sang about going down Highway 41 as Missy tore through the night.

The twisted length of A-32 was busy with tourist cars heading into town, but was empty in his direction. Crow’s cell phone began its hysterical chirping, a sound he thought sounded like R2D2 being rogered by Jiminy Cricket. He squirmed around as he tugged it out of his pants pocket and saw that it was just a text message. He punched the buttons to bring up the message, which was just two digits: 69. Crow smiled. One of Val’s saucy little jokes. Perhaps an incentive. He saved the message and stuffed the phone into his shirt pocket. He’d call Val as soon as he finished at the hayride, which was ten minutes from now if Coop was in the office, maybe half an hour if he had to take an ATV into the park to find him. An hour tops with getting the kids out of there and shutting the whole thing down.

He conjured an image of Val in his mind, and for dreamy moments he saw her superimposed over the unwinding road. Her lithe body draped in shadows, glistening with passionate sweat, good muscles rippling under a smooth, tawny hide as she lay back on the blanket in the scarecrow clearing. Crow drummed on the steering wheel as he recalled every delicious inch of her. Maybe she’d want to go for another nice late-night stroll through the cornfields, even though there was no moon and a storm coming.

Smiling and drumming on the steering wheel, Crow barreled down A-32 out of town, soaring up hills and swooping down the other sides, taking the curves and bends sometimes on four wheels, sometimes on two. Missy, for all her bulk, was as agile as a circus acrobat.

In a few miles he’d turn off the extension and head west along Old Mill Road to the hayride, and after that he could backtrack and head over to Val’s. That made him smile. He began singing very loudly with the music, which had cycled onto the Wolf’s jumping version of “I Ain’t Superstitious.” He was yowling out the lyrics in a powerful and rather unpleasant tenor when he nearly ran over the kid on the bicycle.

(4)

Even with the rib more or less set and holding in place, Mike’s side still hurt like hell. It wasn’t too bad when the road was flat, but not much of Pine Deep was flat. The long black ribbon of A-32 climbed, dipped, and curved through miles of low hills. Before tonight Mike had always enjoyed the undulating curves of the road, loving the burn in his muscles as he powered up the demanding slopes, but tonight he hated every inch of it. Pedaling in low gear helped a little to ease the pain, but sheer exhaustion was making him pant and panting made his ribs feel as if some little devil were jabbing at him with a red-hot spear. His progress slowed to a crawl. Time had become a paradox: when calculated in terms of how long it would take him to get home at the rate he was going, the night was racing past him; when he tried to climb each new hill every minute was about two weeks long. At his best guess he wouldn’t get home until eleven.

Still, he thought with false cheer, that meant Vic’s beating would be that much delayed. Cold comfort, he mused, knowing that the longer Vic had to wait the angrier he would get. And like the Incredible Hulk, the madder Vic got the harder he hit.

A few cars passed him, and each time he saw the glow of headlights he tensed…but the tow-truck did not return and after a while Mike didn’t even bother to stop when he heard an engine or the whine of tires on the blacktop.

Mike had given up on his futile attempt of not thinking about everything that had happened to him. It was a stupid thought anyway. How can you not think about someone trying to kill you? Or about a deer that had done the things that big white one had done? So, instead of denial he decided to apply logic to the matter. It gave him something to think about other than the pain in his ribs or Vic’s impending fury. Mike was smart, he was very well read for his age, and he knew the rudiments of deduction, and as he labored up another of the long hills he tried to apply what he’d learned from Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, from Spenser and Elvis Cole. He remembered Holmes’s axiom that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth. The problem was that he had two inexplicable mysteries to unravel, and in neither case could he simply eliminate the impossible. The thing with the big white deer made no sense at all. He twisted that into all sorts of shapes in his mind and it just stayed as weird and impossible as it had been when it happened. A big deer had jumped out of the woods by the site of the car wreck and when Mike had tried to edge past it the deer had simply chased him off. There was no other way to look at that. The deer had frickin’ growled at him. Then it had run him off. Make something of that, Sherlock, he thought. Mike lived in Pine Deep. He’d seen a zillion deer, from little fawns to big bucks, seen them by ones and twos and seen them by the dozen, but never had he seen a pure white one, and never had he heard of one chasing anyone. It was always the other way around. Sure, he’d heard stories of a buck or doe chasing off a dog that was sniffing after a fawn…but this was completely different. This was a buck chasing a person off. From the scene of a car wreck. What the hell did that mean? His inner Sherlock Holmes was at a loss for words.

Then there was the tow-truck. That didn’t seem to make much sense either. After all, the driver of the tow-truck had tried to run him over, had swerved and gone out of his way to do so. Try as he might, Mike just could not see it any other way, but that was ridiculous. Why would someone do that? Not even Vic had ever tried to kill him and Vic really hated him.

Suddenly an icy hand closed around Mike’s heart and he stopped pedaling for a moment. He leaned over onto one foot, motionless by the side of the road, and stared into the darkness as he reviewed what he’d just thought. Vic really hated him. That was true enough. But how much did he hate him? Vic was a mechanic and he worked for Shanahan’s Auto. Shanahan probably owned a tow-truck. Mike swallowed a lump the size of a fist and turned back the way he’d come, looking at the stretch of road until it vanished into shadows behind him.

Had that been Vic in the tow-truck?

The late September wind blew cold across his face, chilling his sweat to ice. Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains must be the truth.

Could that have been Vic?

“Jesus Christ…” he said, and the wind snatched at his words, pulling them from his mouth like an Inquisitor pulling teeth. Terror welled up in him, and he wasn’t sure what scared him more: the thought that Vic might want him dead, or the fact that the concept didn’t really shock him. He turned to face the road ahead. Home lay at the end of that road. Home and a belting. Still, if Vic was the driver of that tow-truck, would that beating turn into something more? His stomach turned to greasy slush.

Mike licked his lips and got back on his bike, started to pedal slowly up the hill. His heart was hammering now and the sweat on his face turned to ice. The bike wobbled as the first wave of the shakes shuddered through him. Around him the comforting darkness — his longtime friend — seemed suddenly full of invisible threat. He looked at the rustling waves of corn that flanked the road for as far as the eye could see and had the sudden and irrational fear that they were watching him. The stalks swayed hypnotically in the breath of the storm, and when the lightning flashed overhead its white fire danced on the razor-edged leaves of each swaying stalk. He was surrounded by an army of shadowy creatures armed with knives and panic welled up in him. His legs pumped faster on the pedals and the War Machine gained speed up the hill.

He was nearing Shandy’s Curve, one of many hairpin turns on A-32, and he slowed because there was no light to see the road and he didn’t want to go sailing off the side down onto the rocks. Shandy’s Curve was the one place Mike hated to pass, especially when there was traffic, because the thick brush on either side of the curve hid the glow of oncoming headlights until way too late. If the local legends about ghosts haunting the site of fatal car crashes were true, then the area around the curve was populated by enough specters to fill a graveyard. Mike’s own father had died there, though Mike did not know that. John Sweeney had been coming home late from his second job and drowsed at the wheel at just the wrong place. He and his battered old Malibu had gone sailing off the edge and had fallen forty feet down into the gully between the Maplewhites’ cornfield and the lower thirty of the Andersens’ garlic farm. All Mike knew of his father was that he had died in a car crash.

Yet, even without that unsavory bit of knowledge, Mike still feared the curve, and with his terror already swollen with thoughts of Vic, the hairpin turn looked like the path to hell. He slowed even more, pedaling at little better than walking speed as he entered the far side of the curve, seeing only shadows, hearing nothing but the constant growl of thunder overhead. He thought he heard something behind him and flicked a glance over his shoulder, but the road vanished into total blackness behind him. He swung his head around as he reached the beginning of the sharpest point of the curve and suddenly intense bright whiteness stabbed his eyes and the world was filled with the roar of a big engine as something hurtled around the curve at him.

The tow-truck! Mike thought and froze…this time there was nowhere to dodge. Harsh light stabbed his eyes as gleaming metal came ripping around the curve right toward him.

(5)

Ruger wasn’t gone twenty minutes before Boyd began to shiver. He thought it was just the coolness of the breeze, but when he wiped his fingers absently across his forehead they came away glistening with sweat.

“Oh, shit,” he said.

As if on cue, a fresh wave of chills raced right through him, entering through his spine and seeming to wriggle up his neck and out his ears. Gooseflesh pebbled his arms. He didn’t know much about shock except that everybody always tried to loosen tight clothing and throw blankets on someone who was in shock. Was that what was happening to him? He didn’t know, but the thought scared the hell out of him. The only other thing he knew about shock was that it was dangerous. He didn’t know if it could kill, but it was supposed to be really bad for you. He loosened his belt and huddled deeper into his suit coat, which failed utterly to warm him. Boyd sat there, shivering and gradually becoming aware of the immensity of the terror that had built up inside him. He was alone out here…alone and abandoned. Ruger had left him for dead.

“Fucking bastard!” he yelled out loud. Then something caught his eye and he closed his mouth. Beside him were the knapsacks of coke and cash and he bit down on that fact. Karl couldn’t have just abandoned him. Not without the junk and the take. Karl wouldn’t double-cross him and leave him alive as a witness. Not Karl. Not Cape May Karl, who absolutely had to skip the country or wind up twenty kinds of dead. That thought made Boyd shiver even worse. Karl didn’t know that he knew about Cape May, but Boyd kept his ear pretty close to the ground and he was nearly certain that the rumors were true. He’d always known Karl was a sick bastard, but what had happened in Cape May was right out of a horror movie. If Boyd could have gotten to a phone before Karl had bundled him and the others into the car and headed off to the cluster fuck at the warehouse, Boyd would have made just one call and right now Karl would be screaming as Little Nicky cut pieces off him.

There hadn’t been time to make that call, and Karl absolutely had to get out of the country, and only Boyd could swing that for him. No, he thought, he’s not going to cap me.

That fact calmed him a little, but he was still afraid. Afraid of being abandoned. Afraid of what was happening in his own body. The gunshot wound to his left arm wasn’t bad, but it was probably a long way to being infected by now. Might have some bits of cloth from his sleeve in the wound. He wondered how long it took for a wounded arm to develop gangrene. It made Boyd physically sick to think about it and he nearly puked in his own lap.

He shivered again, the shudder actually making his body spasm. He felt as if his hair was standing on end, rustling and waving like the stalks of corn that stood tall and black around him.

Flutter.

The sound made Boyd jump, and he craned his head around so violently that it jolted his arm and his leg. The pain that welled up in that one instant didn’t give a fuck for the painkilling effects of cocaine; it kicked and clawed at him until he cried aloud. Blinking back tears, Boyd looked up, fully expecting to see Ruger standing there, grinning, and holding his gun out at arm’s length.

It took a lot for him to even look.

A ratty-looking crow stood on the fence, inches from his head. It was silhouetted against the corn, just a paleness glinting on its feathers to define its shape. It cawed very softly at him, cocking its head to one side as it stared at him. Boyd looked at the bird for a long time, and then laughed a little. It was a hollow, impotent little laugh, but it was better than the scream that had wanted to come out.

“Fucking bird,” Boyd said. The crow cawed again, just as softly as before. “Nevermore,” Boyd said mockingly, “never-fucking-more.”

The black eyes of the bird just watched him with the infinite patience of its kind.

Boyd felt warmth on his leg and he peered down. Fat droplets of blood hung pendulously from the slats of the splint, and as he watched, one broke loose and splashed onto the dirt.

“Oh, that’s just fucking great!” Boyd snarled. He probed the rough bandages Karl had wound around the shattered leg, and his fingers came away black with wetness. Boyd glared at his bloody fingers for a long time, seething one moment, shivering with fear and fever the next. He half turned and swung his good right arm at the crow. “See what you made me do, you worthless piece of shit!”

The crow shuffled sideways just a few inches and the blow missed cleanly. It fluttered its wings noiselessly and again uttered that strange muted cry.

Boyd leaned over as far as his leg would allow him and beat at the bird, but his fiercely scrabbling fingers were inches short of the mark. The bird watched him dispassionately. It was the ugliest bird Boyd had even seen: dirty and disheveled, with greasy wings that shone with oily scum. Boyd grabbed the rail and hoisted himself up, shifting his buttocks to his right just a couple of inches and then beat once more at the bird. The crow took another delicate sideways step, but this time, as Boyd’s fingers clawed at him, the bird darted its head forward and jabbed with its long, sharp beak.

“Ow! Shit!” Boyd howled, whipping his hand away and jamming his finger into his mouth. He could taste the salty blood, and when he held the finger out for inspection, he was appalled to see an inch-long gouge, quite deep and ragged, running from the outside of the nail down past the knuckle. Fresh blood welled from it and ran down between his fingers, onto his palm, and down his wrist.

Boyd turned and glared with naked hatred at the bird. “You motherfucker! I’ll fucking kill you, you shit-ass bitch! I’ll fucking bite your head off and piss down your neck, you little shit bag!”

Indifferent to the threats, the bird just watched him, swaying slightly with the vagaries of the wind.

A fresh wave of chills swept over Boyd, as if the wind itself had blown its cold breath on him. He shivered so violently that he could hear his teeth actually chatter. Forgetting the bird for the moment, Boyd tried to huddle into himself to keep warm. He yanked his left arm up and stuffed the dead hand into the opening of his jacket and then wrapped himself as best he could with his right. Blood continued to drip slowly and thickly from his torn shin, pooling briefly beneath his leg and then fading as the hungry soil sucked it down into darkness. More blood dripped from his torn finger, dotting his jacket with a decoration of gleaming black red and littering the ground with the salty seeds of his life.

The crow watched him for long minutes, but then slowly raised its head as the clouds overhead were clawed open and the accusing eye of the moon glared down at Boyd and the crow and the endless ranks of silent corn. Boyd became gradually aware of the change in light, and for a while he thought that he was becoming delirious. He remembered hearing someone once say that things got brighter when you were really losing it. Before he could work up a good terror over that thought, he saw the shadow stretched out before him on the ground.

The world once more froze into a microsecond of total terror. Boyd could see his own slumped shadow, etched in the dirt by the fresh moonlight — but above his shadow and spreading out beyond him was a second shape. A man, huge, looming, arms outstretched to seize him.

Boyd screamed and fell over, spinning as he did so to see who was lunging at him, his one arm raised in defense, his good leg curling for a kick.

Of course it was only the scarecrow.

It hung there, arms supported by the crossbar of the post, faded old work clothes fluttering and snapping in the freshening breeze, jack-o’-lantern head smiling emptily as it stared out over the field. The crow cawed ironically at him.

Boyd sprawled there in the dirt, bleeding, shivering, crippled. Laughing.

He felt it rising within his chest, and before he knew it, before he could stop it, the laughter bubbled up out of him. It erupted from his gut and spilled out like vomit, choking him, twisting his gut, and spasming his chest. It boiled quickly to the level of simple hysteria and flew upward from there. He laughed until tears welled from his eyes and snot bubbled in his nostrils and blood splattered the ground as he beat it with his fist. He shook and shivered and rocked from side to side as the blood erupted from his leg and soaked the greedy dirt.

He couldn’t stop laughing. He would look at the scarecrow and laugh; he would look at the crow and laugh. He wood look at the wide, flat disk of the moon and his lunatic laugh would soar up into the ether. Every once in a while the laughter would be punctuated with a snort, or more often, a sob.

He was laughing even when the scarecrow turned its lumpy head and grinned darkly at him.

Chapter 8

(1)

Crow was singing at the top of his lungs as he took the curve on two wheels, feeling Missy lift and tilt and hold in perfect balance, ball joints be damned. The Impala swept gracefully around the curve like a racing sloop rounding a point. Crow was alive with the feel of power and control as he let the steering wheel drift slowly, delicately through his fingers, paying her off into the end of the curve, getting ready for the drop down to all fours.

Which is when the kid on the bike appeared out of nowhere.

“Holy shit!”

The kid was just suddenly there, frozen like a startled deer in the splash of Missy’s headlights, and within the split part of a second he seemed to grow from half-sized to a dimension that filled the entire windshield. Screaming out a string of curses, Crow gave the pedal a hard stomp, steered small and fast so that the car heeled to the right just as he reached the boy, and then steered even smaller as he swerved to the left as he passed. The upraised tires swept along about a yard from the kid’s handlebars and then lunged down at the ground. Missy landed heavily and sped on for a hundred feet, and Crow was pumping the brakes even before the chassis had stopped bouncing.

Missy skidded to a halt on the verge as dust swept up around her flanks. Crow threw her into park, killed the engine, and leaped out and sprinted toward the kid.

The boy had barely moved, only turning to watch the car soar by.

“Jesus Christ, kid!” Crow yelled as he sprinted up. “That was the stupidest goddamn thing,” he bellowed, “that I’ve ever done!”

The kid blinked at him, half ready to stand up for himself when the words registered. He said, “Huh?”

“Christ, I’m sorry, kid,” Crow gasped. “Are you all right? Jesus, that was stupid! Damn, I’m sorry! What the hell was I thinking?”

“You…uh, what?” was all the kid could manage to get out.

Crow gripped the kid’s upper arms and peered at him. Both of them were shadows in the darkness, featureless in the blackness. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, kid, tell me you’re all right.”

“Uh, yeah,” the kid said. “Sure.”

“Oh, thank God!” Relief flooded up through Crow, nearly matching the towering level of his complete embarrassment and shame. He gave the kid a kind of reassuring shake and froze as the kid winced in real and obvious pain.

“Jeez…what’s wrong? Did I hurt you? Did the car—”

“No,” the kid hissed, gritting his teeth. “It wasn’t you. It was the tow-truck.”

Crow just looked at the boy’s shadow-shrouded face, trying to understand why the kid’s statement didn’t make any sense. Crow blinked a couple of times. “The, um…tow-truck?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Ah…and which tow-truck might that be, son?” Crow said, looking around briefly, assuring himself that no tow-truck loomed nearby.

“The one that tried to kill me,” said the boy.

“Oh,” Crow said with a vague smile, “that one. I see.” Kid’s in shock, he thought. Poor bugger.

They looked at each other’s silhouette for a moment, the conversation stalled by the complete lack of understanding on both parts. Above them, the moon peered out from behind a fence of clouds, bathing the kid’s face in a clear, revealing brightness.

“Mike!” Crow said with real astonishment.

“Crow…?”

“Well…shit!” Crow said, half smiling.

“Yeah,” agreed Iron Mike Sweeney.

(2)

The Bone Man walked out of Dark Hollow and stepped onto a hill on A-32, not three miles from where Crow and Mike stood. Walking slowly with a lanky gait that made his body look as if it were all bones and rags with no meat at all, he strolled to the center of the road and then stopped, turning to lift his face to the brilliant moonlight. Moonlight glittered on the strings and keys of his guitar. A cloud of bats whirled and danced above him, their tiny bodies looking like torn scraps of shadow in the flickering light from the distant storm. The Bone Man stood and watched them, absently reaching up a thin hand as if anxious to join their carefree gavotte. The bats knew him and did not fly away; all the things that moved in the night knew him, knew the pale shadow of a man who cast no shadow of his own.

All of them knew the Bone Man, the sad-eyed wanderer, the boneyard refugee. After a while the bats flitted off into the night and he stood alone in a cold wind.

Then a night bird with a bloody beak came flapping out of the east and circled him once, twice, three times before wheeling and flapping off into the west, where a lonely farmhouse stood amid a sea of corn. From where he stood on the hill, the Bone Man could see the tiny squares of yellow light dotting two sides of the distant house.

He considered the house, looking far and long and into it, reading its fortune in the call of the crickets and the rustle of the corn. He smelled blood on the wind, and some of it, he knew, was not yet spilled. There was still so much of this night left.

The Bone Man turned his rake-handle-thin body to the east and listened to the wind. There were sounds on it. Laughter, the cries and gasps of young lovers, the screech of tires, the lonely and distant drone of a tractor-trailer whining along the back stretch of the highway, the call of owls, the deep barking of a dog. The high, sharp wail of a man in absolute terror and unbearable pain, a sound that faded and then abruptly stopped with a wet, guttural gurgle.

Long and dark blew the night wind around and past and through the Bone Man.

His eyes glistened with anger and fear and frustration. The tide of the night was already strong, moving the flotsam around faster than he could keep up. The gray man felt a hopeless surge of sickness in his empty stomach as he sensed the thing in the swamp, the evil presence that he had slaughtered with his own hands and buried thirty years ago, stir and flex its power.

Such power…

The Bone Man stood for a long time in indecision. The calls of the night birds told him much that he needed to know, told him too much. Now he didn’t know which way to turn. Whose life mattered more? Which of the innocent ones needed him more than the others? Which innocents ones would he have to sacrifice to save the rest?

Thunder sniggered in the east.

The Bone Man turned north and began walking toward Pine Deep, his stick legs swishing, his stick arms swinging, and his white face gleaming like polished marble. In his eyes, cold storms raged.

(3)

“I thought you were making supper for Crow.”

Val didn’t look up from her crossword puzzle. Her father lifted the lid and stuck his whole face into the aromatic vapors and took a deep breath. “Smells pretty good.”

“Don’t sound so surprised. I can cook, you know.”

Guthrie didn’t choose to reply to that; instead he sniffed the soup again, amazed that it really smelled like soup and not sewage. Val’s previous attempts at cooking were spectacular disasters. Maybe she’d had a culinary epiphany. He found his mouth watering despite all of the warning klaxons ringing in his head.

“Leave it be,” Val said. “You had your dinner.”

“What is it?”

“Turkey soup and get your nose out of it, thank you very much.”

Henry Guthrie sighed and set the lid back on the pot. “There seems to be an awful lot of it for one skinny little fella like Crow.”

“I made enough for his lunch tomorrow.” Val finished a clue and then looked up. Her father was still loitering by the pot, trying to look earnest and hungry. She shook her head but she was smiling. “Pop, if you’re really that hungry, just take some. You go wandering all around a thing hoping it’ll jump at you.”

“Well,” Guthrie said with a smile, his curiosity getting the better of him, “maybe just a little. I wouldn’t want to steal food out of Crow’s mouth, you understand.”

“Uh-huh.”

He fetched a dish and a ladle and scooped a brimming bowlful, an amount that scarcely dipped the level in the heavy spotted black pot.

“There’s crackers in the cupboard.”

“No dumplings?”

“Pop…”

“Crackers it is, then.” Guthrie took down a box of saltines, rummaged in the fridge for a bottle of spring water, and sat down at the table across from his daughter. A discerning eye could see the kinship between them. She had his strong bones and dark hair, but her coloring and her laughing mouth were from her mother’s Irish stock, not her father’s brooding Scottish blood. The elder Guthrie had heavier features and his once jet-black hair had gone silver since Val’s mother had died two years before. His nose was hawked and beaky and he had a thick mustache that dipped into his spoonful of soup as he blew on it and sipped.

“How is it then?”

“Just like your mama’s.”

Val smiled. “Her recipe.”

Guthrie’s eyes crinkled into a warm grin that softened his dour face into an expression of great love and humor. Val loved him and he knew it, even if she sometimes nagged at him to eat right and take better care of himself. He had slipped a little after Margie had passed, but Val had hounded him until he had begun to take regular meals and even cut down on his drinking. Now she was trying to get him to switch to decaf, but she was going to have a damned hard fight of that. Unleaded coffee was obscene.

He ate the soup, which was thick with fresh turkey, corn, celery, potatoes, and green beans. He didn’t dare put salt in it: Val would never let him do it without a familiar and long-winded lecture on high blood pressure. Besides, the soup was good enough not to need it.

Val sat and watched her father eat, enjoying it. Playing the domestic role was new and somewhat out of character for her, but she did it now for her father with no regrets. Left to his own devices, her father would live on pizza and Glenlivet, black coffee and Big Macs. She couldn’t bear the sound of his arteries squeaking shut. Still, she was no kitchen girl, not like her sister-in-law, Connie, who seemed blissfully happy to cook, clean, and beam vapidly at her husband, Mark, Val’s only brother. Val worked on the farm, out in the field, driving the tractor, harvesting the corn, bartering with wholesalers, doing valve jobs on the Bronco. Connie had her little herb garden and made adorable little needlepoints with poignant scenes of kittens with balls of yarn that made Val want to vomit. Connie always wore a dress, even when weeding her prim little garden. Crow often whispered to Val that Connie was a Desperate Housewife waiting to pop, and that she had some deep dark secret; but after knowing her for years, Val still couldn’t see any trace of depth in her sister-in-law, just as she was totally unable to see what Mark saw in her beyond a purely superficial prettiness.

Watching her father eat his soup, Val felt a little wave of acceptable domesticity waft over her. Lately she’d been trying out that domestic angle on Crow, and she found she liked that, too. Of course, she planned to teach him how to cook because hausfrau was definitely not how she viewed herself. A dash of domesticity here and there was fine.

Guthrie dabbed a cracker in his soup and watched his daughter watching him. “Something on your mind, pumpkin?”

Val shrugged. “Not really.”

“Meaning there is.” Guthrie stifled a grin. “Not really” meant the same thing to Val as it had to her mother.

“Oh, it’s nothing…”

“Something with Crow? So…you guys have a fight? He seemed pretty chipper when he bounced out of here this morning. Whistling and grinning, and I won’t ask why.”

“Oh no, nothing like that. I’m just concerned about him, that’s all.”

He lowered his spoon. “In what way?

She drummed her fingers on top of the crossword puzzle for a moment, looking down, then glanced up at her father. “He’s doing something that might be very dangerous.”

“Oh? He’s not…?” Guthrie made a gesture as if he were knocking back a shot.

“Dad!”

“Just asking.”

“Crow doesn’t drink anymore.”

“Hey, don’t get me wrong — I care a lot for Crow, but alcoholism isn’t something you just grow out of.”

“Well, it’s not that,” she said with just a touch of frost. “It’s something he’s doing for Terry.” She explained what was happening and about Crow’s mission to shut down the hayride.

Guthrie ate a cracker, dry, munching thoughtfully. “Are you afraid he’s going to go back on the cops? Is that it?”

“Oh no…no, he would never do that.”

“Well then, don’t let it worry you. Terry has always had an annoying way of putting people on the spot, getting them to do things they don’t really want to do.”

“I know.”

“He and Crow have always been pretty tight, and you know how persuasive our dear mayor can be.”

“Mm.” Terry and Crow had been best friends since preschool, which meant that they’d known each other even longer than Val had known Crow. The boys had met Val in second grade, when they were all eight, and by the time of the Black Harvest two years later they were thick as thieves. Five of them — Val, Crow and his older brother, Billy, and Terry and his little sister, Mandy. By the end of that autumn two of them were dead — Billy and Mandy — victims of the Reaper, Terry was in a coma, and Crow and Val were clinging to each other, their worlds shattered.

The memory of that time flickered in Val’s eyes, and Guthrie could see it. He smoothly but quickly changed the subject. “Besides, you know Terry,” he said. “He likes to make everything seem dramatic. I think he imagines that being the mayor of a town this size actually means something.”

“Yeah, him and Rudy Giuliani.”

“Like that. He builds things up to be something they ain’t. Hell, he’s the kind that calls going over to Crestville for pizza and a movie a Regional Fine Dining and Cultural Arts Junket.”

Val smiled. “Yeah, I guess.”

“If there really is something going on around here, Terry’s not going to be doing much about it. You said that Crow told you there were some Philly cops coming in?”

“Uh-huh.”

“So Terry is going to be standing around looking important but not actually doing anything, and he’ll have Gus Bernhardt hustling around getting them coffee and asking to polish their badges. Terry’s one of those guys who needs to be in charge in some visible way, and he loves to give orders — and Crow happened to be there, and your boy can’t hardly say no to anybody.”

“Except me.”

Guthrie gave a comical snort. “Not so’s I noticed. He’ll be by here, you watch.”

“I shouldn’t have let him go at all.”

“Not yours to say, pumpkin. No more than it’s his to speak for you. This is the twenty-first century, my lass.” Guthrie took another mouthful of soup, winking at her as he did so. “Soup’s really good.”

“Don’t say it like you’re shocked.” Val crossed her arms. “Well, I just wish he wouldn’t jump whenever Terry says to.”

“You think it’s really that bad?”

She shook her head. “It’s just that he spends so much time with Terry, and Terry is such a pain in the ass.”

“You think he should stop hanging around with our fair mayor?”

“Mm.”

“Why is it you don’t like Terry? You never really have. Even as kids you two were always at each other’s throats.”

“I don’t know. Bad chemistry, I guess. There was just always something…off about him. I don’t know how to describe it. I just wish Crow wouldn’t hang out with him so much, that’s all.”

“Now, now, darlin’, don’t be trying to tell your young man who his friends should be.”

“Mm.”

“Just like your mom. One grunt is worth a thousand words.”

“Mm,” she said again, but smiled.

“Crow can take care of himself. Hell, we’ve all seen that.”

“I know, Daddy, but you know what it did to him. He probably wouldn’t have even started drinking if it hadn’t been for that job.”

“Yep, and I also know that he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and put his life back together—while he was still in that job. Not a lot of men could do that. He fixed himself, as my pappy would say. He saw that his life was broken, and he fixed himself.”

“Mm.”

“Will you stop that?”

“Mm-hm.”

He threw a cracker at her, which she surprised herself by catching. She ate the cracker and stuck a crumb-covered tongue at him.

Connie Guthrie whisked into the room, all fresh and cute in her floral-print dress, sensible pumps, bouncing blond curls, and brilliant smile. She favored them with an airy wave of her hand and then made a beeline for the stove.

“Ooo! We have soup!”

“It’s for Crow,” Guthrie said quickly as if he didn’t have a spoon halfway to his mouth.

“Well, you have some. Maybe I’ll just try a little.” She looked quickly at Val, as if for approval, but neither wanting nor expecting any. Without another word she took a bowl from the cupboard and began ladling soup into it. Guthrie gave Val an apologetic look, but she waved it off. “I didn’t even know you could cook.”

Connie had just finished arranging her side of the table with a frilly place mat, precisely folded napkin, soupspoon set just so, the soup bowl positioned perfectly in the center of the plate with five crackers laid out overlapping each other around the rim, when the doorbell rang.

“Ooo, there’s the door!” Connie said, as if that were a hilarious joke. “Just when I was sitting down.” Then she actually sat down. Val exchanged an amazed and exasperated look with her father.

“Shall I get that, then?” she asked dryly.

“Oh, would you, dear?” cooed Connie. “I wouldn’t want this fabulous soup of yours to get all cold and nasty.”

“Heaven forbid.” Val stood up, waving to her father to remain seated just as he began to rise. “I’m up, I’ll get it.”

She moved toward the door, crossing behind Connie, who was delicately blowing across the surface of her first spoonful. Val paused and mimed strangling Connie. Connie saw none of it, and Guthrie had to pretend to cough to hide his laughter. Sighing audibly, Val walked out of the kitchen, down the long hall, and into the living room. The visitor knocked again. A hard, insistent rap.

“I’m coming!” Val called as she reached for the knob, turned it, and opened the door.

A man stood there, tall and thin and pale of face. He had dark hair greased back from a widow’s peak, black eyes, and a wide, friendly smile. In his right hand he held a small, almost delicate-looking pistol. The barrel was pointed at Val’s stomach.

“Trick-or-treat,” whispered Karl Ruger, and pushed his way into the house.

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