THE ELECTRIFIED BOXING HOLLYWOOD COWBOY IN A GORILLA SUIT

JOHNNY HALLOWEEN

88 SINS

THE CUT MAN

DEAD CELEBS

’59 FRANKENSTEIN

CANDY BARS FOR ELVIS

STYX

WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD

GORILLA GUNSLINGER

DEAD MAN’S HAND

APOTROPAICS

SHE’S MY WITCH

BAD INTENTIONS

TYRANNOSAURUS

GUIGNOIR

STORY NOTES

This book is dedicated to my father

William Louis Partridge

1918-1976

You always said it, Dad:

“The gate opens in …”

THE ELECTRIFIED BOXING HOLLYWOOD COWBOY IN A GORILLA SUIT

or

NORM PARTRIDGE CUTS LOOSE

An introduction by

Joe R. Lansdale

-his ownself-

IN SOME WAYS I'm reluctant to write another introduction. I've written several, and though I've never written one that I didn't want to write, I have written enough of them that I fear readers might begin to think that I do them professionally and purely as a favor to the writer I'm addressing.

This isn't true. I like a lot of different kinds of writing, both in books and short stories and comics, and I've had a number of writers I've been excited about, and because of this, I was willing to write introductions to their work.

Still, I've written a lot of introductions, and that being the case, I give notice here that this is going to be the last intro I write for some time, and I also give notice that I think this one is one of the most important I've written.

By important, I don't mean my introduction. By important I mean the fact that I've been honored to write the introduction for Norm Partridge's work.

Before I continue with Norm, however, let me explain about the introductions I've written.

Sometimes these were written for writers I hardly knew, or knew not at all, but I knew and liked their work. Sometimes the writers were writers I knew well, and also liked their work.

In a couple of cases the introductions were written not so much because I thought the writer was breaking new ground or writing the best prose ever written, but because they had something that allowed me to enjoy their work and honestly endorse it to others.

In some cases, I thought the work was highly original, quirky, maybe not for everyone, but something that should be respected and examined.

There were a few others I wrote introductions for who I thought were original, quirky, enjoyable, and at the same time accessible, outstanding. Neal Barrett, Jr. comes to mind.

And so does Norm Partridge.

I'm not going to be formal here and refer to him as Mr. Partridge or Norman, because I know him as Norm, and I admit up front we are friends and perhaps that gives this introduction a certain prejudice.

But not much.

I admired Norm's work before I knew him. It was early work, but I could see where he was going even then. I will flatter myself by saying I saw echoes of my own work in his. Not necessarily meaning he was imitating me, but that both of us had obviously grown up on the same source material.

When I got to know Norm, this proved true. We both read comics, loved old films—noir, crime, mystery, horror, science fiction, all kinds of low budget trash—and we read or have read a lot of the same authors.

Norm is in many ways like me. I'm a little older than he—all right. I'm quite a bit older—but when I was becoming a writer I generally related better to the generation of writers ahead of me than those of my own generation. It was this older generation I had read and grown up on, and they, like me, had not just read the works of three years back. They had begun their reading with writers like Poe and Verne and Wells and Doyle and Shakespeare and Robert Louis Stevenson and... well, the list goes on and on.

Now, most writers, especially those who work in genres, have read the work of their contemporaries—their very immediate contemporaries—and little else. Actually, sad to say, a lot of them have read very little of anything. They've seen a lot of movies. That's good, but it's not enough.

Norm is an avid reader, and his tastes are varied. I have a feeling he's the kind of guy that reads the cereal box in the morning. Keeps a book on his nightstand, and maybe some kind of browsing reading in the bathroom, magazines on the coffee table. Goes to the dentist, nothing there but Ladies Home Journal, and he even reads it, or at least glances over it. You never know where something interesting might lie, where a potential idea might lurk.

This shows in his work.

He is so well read, so rounded, so enthusiastic, the electricity in his head leaps onto the page and into your eyes and finally your brain. His work has the energy of early and middle period Philip Jose Farmer. He's the kind of writer, even if the story doesn't entirely work for you, there's just something about it. It gives you ideas.

There are a number (not a lot) of writers who write good, unique stories, but there are some that have this strange sort of excitement about their work that goes beyond good and unique, and Norm is one of them, right in there with greats like Neal Barrett, Jr., Howard Waldrop, the aforementioned Philip Jose Farmer, Gerald Kersh, early Ray Bradbury and Charles Beaumont, to name a few.

What you have here is Norm's second collection, and his first mature gathering of stories. The range is phenomenal. His style is gradually becoming his own; in other words, he's finding his voice. Not as easy a thing for a writer as you might think.

This book is a milestone of imaginative literature. I think Norm Partridge will be one of the most important writers of the nineties, and beyond. He is certainly one of only a handful of fine writers of genre short stories (he's a good novelist, too, goddamn him) to come out of the nineties so far.

The seventies and the eighties were exciting times for genre fiction, especially in the areas of weird fantasy and horror and the blending of genres. I think that from the mid-seventies to the tail end of the eighties was for horror and weird fiction what the late sixties and early seventies were for science fiction's New Wave. The wave washed away, but it was an exciting time, and even though I was not that fond of most of the fiction, there was an attempt to expand the boundaries of what science fiction was about, and the best experiments still stand, or went on to influence better future writers. I don't know that I'm one of the better ones, but science fiction's New Wave, in retrospect, influenced me as a writer of weird and horror fiction, and finally in the field of crime, and I was, for better or worse, one of the exponents of weird fiction's New Wave during the eighties.

This is not to say that a group of us writing weird fiction and horror during this time got together and decided to write a certain way. We wrote all kinds of ways. But there did seem to be something in the air that leant itself to wild creation and sent us on paths different from those that preceded us.

Certainly a lot of standard horror and weird fiction was written during this time—especially in novels—and a lot of experiments failed or were just a mess, but there was a back beat of energy and strangeness to the best work of this period, which, though not as commercially viable as the more standard creations, was, and is, to my mind more memorable, and is likely to have more staying power than any number of books and stories written to fit into easy existing slots.

I think a writer like Norm, who already had a great literary background, and got involved in developing his talent during this fertile period of weird fiction's New Wave, came out on the other side and into the nineties armed with an arsenal of words and ideas that could not be denied.

If you look at the list of unique writers and stories from the seventies and eighties, there are quite a few. As we cruise into the nineties and take a look at the emerging writers of this period, the list of writers and stories grows short. Some of the writers who were the most exciting during the beginning of the nineties have already stagnated or burned themselves out.

An inventory of the better writers would be brief. I'm sure I'm missing a few, but generally speaking, the register would contain Nancy Collins, Poppy Brite, and Norm Partridge. There were a number of other writers, mostly associated with the small press, who looked to be comers, but most of them never made the jump to a bigger market, and soon stagnated by repeating the same themes, or by not enlarging the same themes. (Flannery O'Connor wrote about the same themes, but she was constantly growing, expanding those themes, so that every story she wrote was fresh as the last.)

I'm going to take a flyer here and say it right out. I think Norm Partridge may be the best of a small crew of important writers for the nineties. I'm not saying he is the best as compared to little competition. I'm saying he would have been first rate no matter what era he started writing. No matter how much competition he had.

He is outstanding.

He is original.

He's a writer that future generations of writers will be looking up to.

He is not tied merely to one genre. He is, in fact, a multigenre writer, sometimes all in one story.

He is exactly the kind of writer I admire.

Another thing. Norm isn't just a writer. His work does not have the stink of the library on it. The library is a source, but so is experience. This does not mean he's sailed around the world on a log or scaled Mt. Everest and skateboarded down the other side. It means that he isn't just tied to his desk and chair. His work has not only the feel of someone who loves books and words, but someone who has lived enough of life to have something to write about.

Norm doesn't just hang around with writers, pleasant as their company might be. His friends and associates include policemen, handymen and boxers. Norm is a boxer himself—not professionally, but in a sort of dedicated hobbyist way. He's more of the Hemingway school (without the ego and the macho posturing) than the bohemian coffee shop school.

Norm approaches his work as both artist and workman. He has a time to work, and he works. He doesn't wait for inspiration, he kicks inspiration in the ass. He knows writing is like lifting weights. The more you do it, the stronger you get; the easier it is to summon up inspiration.

He has a weird eye, the ability to look around corners and see things in his own singular way. Yet, when you read his stories, you can't help but feel his way is the correct way, and you wonder why you haven't seen it before.

I mean, really, this guy can write convincingly about gun-toting gorillas! I'm referring to his comics work here, "Gorilla Gunslinger," which you can find in Weird Business, a book of comic stories I co-edited with Rick Klaw, and you can read the script here, and if you're one of those that doesn't like the idea of reading scripts, toss that notion out the window, because this script is great! In fact, it's almost a movie, and I wish someone would pick it up for that. It would be a hoot!

All right. I'm wandering. It's a bad habit. It's how I am. My excitement gets the better of me. Back to the collection.

You ask, okay, besides the script, which stories in Bad Intentions should I read?

All of them.

Yeah, but which is the best?

Well, I like them all, and I'm sincere in that. I don't like to write introductions and give away too much about the stories. I think the reader should experience them for his or herself.

But I will tell you this. I'm partial to "Candy Bars For Elvis", but I also love "59 Frankenstein", which takes those old cheap-o movies of the fifties (I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, etc. ) and gives them a kind of alternate universe twist. That's not correct, but that's the best way I can describe it. Sometimes Norm's work can't be described. It can only be read.

"The Cut Man", mixing zombies and boxing is also a favorite of mine. I've written about both subjects, but never together, though I had planned to. Now Norm has beat me to the subject, did it better than I would have, so I've shelved my project of zombies during the Depression fighting in traveling rail cars. At least until I can get more distance between my story and Norm's and feel less depressed about the way I was doing mine, and not be tempted to steal Norm's better approach.

Hell, I'm getting wound up. I'll start listing all the stories if I do that. I'll rattle on longer than the collection, and will not have entertained you a fraction as much as the stories. So let's cut out this stupid delay. Hasten to the stories. You're in for a treat.

Really, they're that good. And really, this collection, Bad Intentions, will be one of the most important short story collections of the nineties.

I'm going to stop jumping up and waving my hands, and end this simply.

Nobody writes 'em like Norm Partridge.

I'm so glad that when he was a baby his mama dropped him on his head.

JOHNNY HALLOWEEN

I SHOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN THERE.

Number one: I was off duty. Number two: even though I’m the sheriff, I believe in letting my people earn their pay. In other words, I don’t follow them around with a big roll of toilet paper waiting to wipe their asses for them, even when it comes to murder cases. And number three: I’m a very sound sleeper—generally speaking, you’ve got a better chance of finding Elvis Presley alive than you’ve got of waking me between midnight and six.

But it was Halloween, and the kids next door were having a loud party, and I couldn’t sleep. Sure, I could have broken up the party, but I didn’t. I’m a good neighbor. I like to hear the sound of kids having fun, even if I think the music we listened to back in the fifties was a lot easier on the ears. So I’m not sour on teenagers, like some cops. Probably has something to do with the fact that Helen and I never had any kids of our own.

It just didn’t work out for us, is all. When Helen had the abortion, we were young and stupid and we figured we’d have plenty of chances later on. That wasn’t the way it worked out, though. I guess timing is everything. The moment passes, things change, and the life you thought you’d have isn’t there when you catch up to it.

What it is, is you get older. You change and you don’t even notice it. You think you’re making the decisions, but mostly life is making them for you. You’re just along for the ride. Reacting, not acting. Most of the time you’re just trying to make it through another day.

That’s how most cops see it. Like my deputies say: shit happens. And then we come along and clean up the mess.

I guess maybe I do carry around that big roll of toilet paper, after all.

So, anyway, Helen had asked me to get another six-pack and some chips. She does like her Doritos. It was hot, especially for late October, and a few more beers sounded like a good idea. I worry about Helen drinking so much, but it’s like the kid thing. We just don’t talk about it anymore. What I usually do is drink right along with her, and then I don’t feel so bad.

So I was headed up Canyon, fully intending to go to the Ralphs Supermarket on Arroyo, when I observed some suspicious activity at the old liquor store on the corner of Orchard and Canyon (if you want it in cop-ese).

Suspicious isn’t the word for it. A couple of Mexican girls were coming out of the place. One was balancing a stack of cigarette cartons that was so high she couldn’t see over it. The other had a couple of plastic sacks that looked to be filled with liquor bottles.

I pulled into the lot, tires squealing. The girl with the liquor bottles had pretty good instincts, because she dropped them and rabbited. The strong smell of tequila and rum hit me as I jumped out of the truck—a less sober-hearted man would have thought he’d died and gone to heaven. Me, I had other things on my mind.

The girl with the cigarettes hadn’t gotten too far. She didn’t want to give up her booty. Cartons were slipping and sliding and she looked like a drunken trapeze artist about to take the big dive, but she was holding tough.

Tackling her didn’t seem like the best idea, but I sure didn’t want to let her work up any steam. I’m not as fast as I used to be. So what I did was I grabbed for her hair, which was long enough to brush her ass when she wasn’t running and it wasn’t streaming out behind her. I got a good grip first try; her feet went out from under her, she shrieked like a starlet in a horror movie who’s about to taste chainsaw, the smokes went flying every which way, and it was just damn lucky for me that she wasn’t wearing a wig.

“It wasn’t me!” she said, trying to fight. “I didn’t do it! It was some guy wearing a mask!”

“Yeah, right. And you’ve got a receipt for these cigarettes in your back pocket. Sorry…got you red-handed, little miss.”

I hustled her across the lot, stomping cigarette cartons as I went. That gave me a kick. God, I hate smokers. We went inside the store, and that’s when I saw what she’d meant when she said she hadn’t done anything.

The kid was no more than twenty, and—like the old saying goes—he’d never see twenty-one. He lay on the floor, a pool of dark blood around the hole in his head.

“We saw the guy who did it,” the girl said, eager to please, real eager to get my fingers out of her hair. “He cleaned out the register. He was wearing a mask…”

Dead eyes stared up at me. My right boot toed the shore of a sea of blood. Already drying, going from red to a hard black on the yellow linoleum. Going down, the clerk had tripped over a stack of newspapers, and they were scattered everywhere. My face was on the front page of every paper, ten or twenty little faces, most of them splattered with blood.

“…a Halloween mask,” she continued. “A pumpkin with a big black grin. We weren’t with him. We pulled in after it was over, but we saw him leaving. I think he was driving an El Camino. It was silver, and it had those tires that have the chrome spokes. We were gonna call you before we left, honest. We figured the clerk was already dead, and that we’d just take what we wanted and—”

“Let it lay.” I finished it for her, and she had the common decency to keep her mouth shut.

I just stood there for a minute, looking at the dead kid. It was like looking at myself thirty years ago. Like that poem about roads not taken. I almost envied him. Then I couldn’t see him anymore—I saw myself at eighteen, so I looked away.

At the papers, at my smiling face.

At the headline: HERO RESCUES BABY FROM WELL.

Some hero. A grinning idiot with blood on his face.

The Mexican girl couldn’t wait anymore. She’d run out of common decency and was starting to worry about herself again.

She opened her mouth.

I slapped her before she could say anything stupid. My fingers striking hard against her tattooed tears.

“The other girl got away,” I said. “I’ll bet she had the gun. Long black hair, about five-six, maybe a hundred pounds. Maybe a little more…it’s hard to tell with those baggy jackets they wear. Anyway, she probably tossed the weapon. We’ll beat the bushes on Orchard. That can wait until tomorrow, though.”

Kat Gonzalez nodded, scribbling furiously. She was one of ten deputies who worked under me, and she was the best of the lot.

“I’m leaving this in your hands, Kat. I mean to tell you, I’m all in.” I wanted to take a six-pack from the cooler, but I resisted the temptation. “I’m going home.”

Kat stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. “Sheriff….Hell, Dutch, I know what happened here when you were a kid. This must feel pretty weird. But don’t let it eat at you. Don’t—”

I waved her off before she could get started. “I know.”

“If you need to talk—”

“Thanks.” I said it with my back to her, and the only reason it came out okay was that I was already out the door.

I stomped a few more cigarette cartons getting to my truck, but it didn’t make me feel any better. The night air was still heavy with the aroma of tequila and rum, only now it was mixed with other less appealing parking lot odors. Burnt motor oil. Dirt. Piss.

Even so, it didn’t smell bad, and that didn’t do me any good. Because it made me want something a hell of a lot stronger than beer.

I drove to Ralphs and bought the biggest bottle of tequila they had.

I was eighteen years old when I shot my first man.

Well, he wasn’t a man, exactly. He was seventeen. And he was my brother.

Willie died on Halloween night in 1959. He was wearing a rubber skull mask that glowed in the dark, and “Endless Sleep” was playing on the radio when I shot him. He’d shown up at the store on the corner of Canyon and Orchard—it was a little mom-and-pop joint back then. With him was another boy, Johnny Halowenski, also wearing a mask.

A pumpkin face with a big black grin.

They showed up on that warm night in 1959 wanting money. The store had been robbed three times in the last two months, each time during my shift. The boss had said I’d lose my job if it happened again. I’d hidden my dad’s .38 under the counter, and the two bandits didn’t know about it.

Skullface asked for the money. I shot him instead. I didn’t kill him, though. Not at first. He had enough spit left in him to come over the counter after me. I had to shoot him two more times before he dropped.

By then Pumpkinface had gotten away. I came out of the store just in time to see his Chevy burning rubber down Orchard, heading for the outskirts of town. There wasn’t any question about who he was. No question at all. I got off a couple more shots, but none of them were lucky.

I went inside and peeled off the dead bandit’s skull mask. I sat there stroking my brother’s hair, hating myself, crying.

Then I got myself together and called the sheriff’s office.

When the deputies arrived, I told them about Johnny Halowenski. I didn’t know what else to do. They recognized the name. L.A. juvie had warned them about him. Johnny had steered clear of trouble since moving to our town, and the deputies had been willing to go along with that and give him a break.

But trouble had caught up with Johnny Halowenski in a big way.

I knew that, and I laid it on. My dad had been a deputy before he got too friendly with the whiskey bottle, and I knew it was important to get things right, to make sure that Halowenski wouldn’t be able to get away with anything if the cops caught up to him.

I told the deputies that Halowenski was armed and dangerous.

I told the deputies that Halowenski took off his mask as he climbed into the Chevy, that there could be no mistake about his identity.

Everything I said ended up in the papers. There were headlines from Los Angeles to San Francisco about the Halloween murder/robbery at a liquor store near the border and the ensuing manhunt.

One paper mentioned that the suspect’s nickname was Johnny Halloween. After that I never saw it any other way. Almost every year I’d see it a few times. In FBI wanted posters. In cheap magazines that ran stories about unsolved crimes. And, on Halloween, I could always count on it turning up in the local papers.

Johnny Halloween. I leaned back against my brother’s granite tombstone and stared up at the night sky, trying to pick out the name in the bright stars above.

Drinking tequila, thinking how I’d never seen that name where I wanted to.

On a tombstone.

I knew he’d show up sooner or later, because we always met in the cemetery after the robberies.

Johnny came across the grass slow and easy, his pistol tucked under his belt, like the last thing in the world he wanted to do was startle me. I tossed him the bottle when he got near enough. “Let’s drink it down to the worm,” I said.

He didn’t take a drink, though. He would have had to lift his mask, and he didn’t seem to want to do that, either.

“Miss me?” he asked, laughing, and his laughter was bottled up inside the mask, like it couldn’t quite find its way out of him.

“It’s been a while,” I said. “But not long enough to suit me.”

He tossed me a thin bundle of bills. “Here’s your cut. It’s the usual third. I don’t figure you’ve still got my dough from the last job. If I could collect interest on it, it might amount to something.”

I didn’t say anything to that. I didn’t want to rise to the bait.

“Well, hell…it’s good to see you too, Dutch. The old town hasn’t changed all that much in thirty years. I went by my daddy’s house, and damned if he isn’t still driving that same old truck. Babyshit brown Ford with tires just as bald as he is. Seventy-five years old and still drives like a bat out of hell, I’ll bet. How about your daddy? He still alive?”

I pointed two graves over.

“Yeah, well…I bet you didn’t shed too many tears. The way he used to beat hell out of you and Willie, I’m here to tell you. Man could have earned money, throwin’ punches like those—”

That hit a nerve. “Just why are you here, Johnny?”

Again, the bottled-up laugh. “Johnny? Hell, that’s a kid’s name, Dutch. Nobody’s called me that in twenty-five years. These days I go by Jack.”

“Okay, Jack. I’ll stick with the same question, though.”

“Man, you’re still one cold-hearted son of a bitch. And I thought you’d gone and mellowed. Become a humanitarian. Do you know that your picture made the Mexico City dailies? Sheriff rescues baby from well. That took some kind of big brass cojones, I bet.”

My face had gone red, and I didn’t like it. “There wasn’t anything to it,” I said. “I found the baby. I’m the sheriff. What was I supposed to do?”

We were both quiet for a moment.

“Look, Johnny—Jack—I’m tired. I don’t mind telling you that the years have worn on me, and I don’t have much patience anymore. Why don’t you start by giving me your gun. I’m going to need it for evidence. I’ve already got one suspect in custody—nobody will ever connect what happened tonight to you. So you can figure you got your revenge, and you can tell me how much money you want, and we can get on with our lives.”

“You know,” he said, “I hadn’t thought about you for years and years. And then I saw that picture in the paper, and damned if I wasn’t surprised that you’d actually gone and become a cop. Man oh man, that idea took some getting used to. So I said to myself, Jack, now you’ve just got to go see old Dutch before you die, don’t you?”

He knelt before me, his blue eyes floating in the black triangles of that orange mask. “See, I wanted to thank you,” he said. “Going to Mexico was the best thing that ever happened to me. I made some money down there. Had a ball. They got lots of pretty boys down there, and I like ’em young and dark. Slim, too—you know, before all those frijoles and tortillas catch up to ’em. You never knew that about me, did you, Dutch? Your brother did, you know. I had a real hard-on for his young ass, but he only liked pussy. You remember how he liked his pussy? Man, how he used to talk about it. Non-fucking-stop! Truth be told, I think he maybe liked the talkin’ better than the doin’. And you so shy and all. Now that was funny. You two takin’ your squirts under the same skirt.”

“You got a point in here somewhere, or are you just trying to piss me off?”

“Yeah. I got a point, Dutch.”

Johnny Halloween took off the pumpkin mask, and suddenly I had the crazy idea that he was wearing Willie’s skull mask beneath it. His blue eyes were the same and his wild grin was the same, but the rest of his face was stripped down, as if someone had sucked all the juice out of him.

“It’s what you get when you play rough with pretty boys and don’t bother to wear a raincoat,” he said. “AIDS. The doctors say it ain’t even bad yet. I don’t want it to get bad, y’see.”

I stared at him. I couldn’t even blink.

He gave me the gun. “You ready to use it now?”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I was surprised to find that I really meant it.

“Let me help you out, Dutch.” That wild grin welded on Death’s own face. “See, there’s a reason it took me so long to get to the cemetery tonight. I had to swing past your place and talk to Helen. Did a little trick-or-treating and got me some Snickers. Nothing more, nothing less. And when I’d had my fill, I told her everything.”

There was nothing I could say….

“Now, I want you to do it right the first time, Dutch. Don’t drag it out.”

…so I obliged him.

It took two hours to get things done. First I heaved up as much tequila as I could. Then I drove ten miles into the desert and dumped Johnny Halloween’s corpse. Next I headed back to the cemetery, got in Johnny’s El Camino, and drove two miles north to a highway rest stop. There were four or five illegals standing around who looked like they had no place to go and no way to get there. I left the windows down and the keys in the ignition and I walked back to the cemetery, hoping for the best.

On the way home I swung down Orchard and tossed Johnny’s pistol into some oleander bushes three houses up from the liquor store.

My house was quiet. The lights were out. That was fine with me. I found Helen in the kitchen and untied her. I left the tape over her mouth until I said my piece.

I didn’t get through the whole thing, though. Toward the end I ran out of steam. I told her that Johnny and Willie and me had pulled the robberies because we hated being so damn poor. That it seemed easier to take the money than not to take it, with me being the clerk and such a good liar besides. I explained that the Halloween job was going to be my last. That I’d been saving those little scraps of money so we could elope, so our baby wouldn’t have to come into the world a bastard.

It hurt me, saying that word. I never have liked it. Just saying it in front of Helen is what made me start to crack.

My voice trembled with rage and I couldn’t control it anymore. “Johnny took me over to his house that day,” I said. “All the time laughing through that wild grin. He had me peek in the window…and I saw Willie on top of you…and I saw you smiling….”

I slapped Helen then, just the way I’d slapped the Mexican girl at the liquor store, like she didn’t mean anything to me at all.

“I was crazy.” I clenched my fists, fighting for control. “You know how I get…. Everything happened too damn fast. They came to the store that night, and I was still boiling. I planned to kill them both and say I hadn’t known it was them because of the masks, but it didn’t work out that way. Sure, I shot Willie. But I had to shoot him three times before he died. I wanted to kill Johnny, too, but he got away. So I changed the story I’d planned. I hid Willie’s skull mask, and I hid the gun and the money, and I said that Willie had been visiting me at the store when a lone bandit came in. That bandit was Johnny Halloween, and he’d done the shooting. And all the time that I was lying, I was praying that the cops wouldn’t catch him.”

I blew my nose and got control of myself. Helen’s eyes were wide in the dark, and there was a welt on her cheek, and she wasn’t moving. “I was young, Helen,” I told her. “I didn’t know what to do. It didn’t seem right—getting married, bringing a baby into the world when I couldn’t be sure that I was the father. I wanted everything to be just right, you know? It seemed like a good idea to use the money for an abortion instead of a wedding. I figured we’d just go down to Mexico, get things taken care of. I figured we’d have plenty of time for kids later on.”

That’s when I ran out of words. I took the tape off of Helen’s mouth, but she didn’t say anything. She just sat there.

I hadn’t said so much to Helen in years.

I handed her the tequila bottle. There was a lot left in it.

Her hands shook as she took it. The clear, clean liquor swirled. The worm did a little dance. I turned away and quit the room, but not fast enough to miss the gentle slosh as she tipped back the bottle.

I knew that worm didn’t stand a chance.

I don’t know why I went out to the garage. I had to go somewhere, and I guess that’s where a lot of men go when they want to be alone.

I shuffled some stuff around in my toolbox. Cleaned up the workbench. Changed the oil in the truck. Knowing that I should get rid of the pumpkin mask, but just puttering around instead.

All the time thinking. Questions spinning around in my head.

Wondering if Helen would talk.

Wondering if I’d really be able to pin the clerk’s murder on the Mexican girls. Not only if the charges would stick, but if I had enough left in me to go through with it.

Wondering if my deputies would find Johnny’s corpse, or his El Camino, or if he’d left any other surprises for me that I didn’t know about.

They were the kind of questions that had been eating at me for thirty years, and I was full up with them.

My breaths were coming hard and fast. I leaned against the workbench, staring down at the pumpkin mask. Didn’t even know I was crying until my tears fell on oily rubber.

It took me a while to settle down.

I got a .45 out of my tool chest. The silencer was in another drawer. I cleaned the gun, loaded it, and attached the silencer.

I stared at the door that led to the kitchen, and Helen. Those same old questions started spinning again. I closed my eyes and shut them out.

And suddenly I pictured Johnny Halloween down in Mexico, imagined all the fun he’d had over the years with his pretty boys and his money. Not my kind of fun, sure. But it must have been something.

I guess the other guy’s life always seems easier. Sometimes I think even Willie’s life was easier. I didn’t want to start thinking that way with a gun in my hands.

I opened my eyes.

I unwrapped a Snickers bar, opened the garage door. The air held the sweet night like a sponge. The sky was going from black to purple, and soon it would be blue. The world smelled clean and the streets were empty. The chocolate tasted good.

I unscrewed the silencer. Put it and the gun in the glove compartment along with the three hundred and fifteen bucks Johnny Halloween had stolen from the liquor store.

Covered all of it with the pumpkin mask.

I felt a little better, a little safer, just knowing it was there.

88 SINS

MITCHELL SPEKE TURNED HIS BACK on the ocean and watched the dog sprint toward the dirt path that snaked away from the beach. The path and the steep hillside beyond were a wet, rusty brown, the same color that had seemed red when he first glimpsed it from the plane and suddenly remembered all those C & H Sugar commercials that had brainwashed him into thinking that this place was an agricultural paradise populated by smiling, bronze-skinned beauties.

But Speke knew that his first impression had been an illusion, because now he saw the real color of the soil - the stratified swirls that looked like ribbons of blood, the flecks of white sand that glittered as brightly as gold dust. He'd read about that color in a travel book. The writer claimed that it was everywhere in the Islands, especially during afternoon showers when fat raindrops ricochetted off of dirty pavement and stained white pants cuffs and tennis shoes, angering the tourists and bringing the old joke about the haoles who went out for a picnic and forgot their toilet paper to the lips of the locals.

Speke stared at his spotless shoes, remembering the writer's description of persistent stains that mystified even the most experienced dry-cleaner. He was sure to dirty his shoes if he followed the dog, and he wondered if the old legend applied here. Take Madame Pele's treasure home, the legend said, steal any part of the volcano goddess's precious islands, and you'd be cursed for life. Just this afternoon, he'd heard a gaggle of little old ladies from Texas talking about the curse at the surprisingly good Japanese-Chinese restaurant where all the tour buses stopped for lunch. "Listen here, Elva. My sister Tammy Mae took a hunk of that lava back home to Nacogdoches to set out in her cactus garden and a week later she fell down and broke her leg in eight places and she mailed that rock right back to the park service people and healed up just fine and never fell again...."

Speke grinned, thinking about it. Should you leave your shoes behind once they'd been stained with Madame Pele's mud? Was that the wise thing to do? And what about your swimming suit? If a grain of sand remained in the lining, and if you brought that single grain home with you and it didn't come out until your washing machine hit the rinse cycle, would you fall down the stairs with your laundry basket in hand and break your leg in eight places?

Speke didn't know. Call them myths, call them religious parables, call them old wives' tales... to him, they had only been stories that hung like so many party costumes in the closet of his mind.

Until now.

He stared at his shoes and wondered.

The worst part of it was that almost anything seemed possible here. Belief systems by the hundreds had washed upon these shores, each leaving a mark, each fighting for territory with crablike tenacity. It had been Speke's duty to weave the whole mess into a tapestry that would satisfy a dozen audiences, each with its own particular agenda. His job had been to sway disparate opponents with a good empathic line, just as he had done in Mexico and the Caribbean.

But it was different here. Here, there was too much, too damn much, and now Speke was so full of it all that he wanted to sit down and decide what the truth was, and who had a lock on it, and who could suck all the extraneous crap out of his brain and make him feel clean and right again.

No. That was only wishful thinking. In this place a single truth was nothing more than a missionary's wet dream. Still, Mitchell Speke longed for one glowing truth, because he dreaded the other possibility. Because if all of it was true in one way or another, if everything here had some measure of validity, then there could be no peace, no guarantees....

The dog barked at him, sharp and insistent. Speke realized he would never have enough time to sort it out. He stared at the path beyond the white sand. The first step. It had to be. The beginning. Many years ago, Madame Pele had made a beginning in these islands. The soil was hers. Others had followed - Shingon Buddhists among them - creating their own beginnings. The path was theirs.

And now Speke would make it his.

With a single step.

Second day. Negotiation.

Speke faced off with the big Hawaiian. The dark-skinned man was sitting down and Speke was standing up, so Speke felt that the immediate advantage was his.

"We understand your position, Mr. Kanahele. It's unfortunate that we didn't discover the burial site until construction was well underway. But you must understand our predicament. We've made quite a commitment to the Shipkiller Beach Project. Not only our money but the money of many innocent investors is at stake — "

"I understand that... but this goes beyond money. Family is very important in our islands, and this is a matter of family."

Speke sat down in a chair facing Kanahele and leaned forward, almost conspiratorially. He spoke in the same practiced whisper he'd used to enchant students at the university before his talents were purchased by the corporation. "You know, I'm not really a businessman. I've spent most of my life on college campuses, teaching students about the folklore of different cultures. So I'm not going to toss a pile of charts in your face, and I'm not going to bore you with a bunch of employment statistics."

Kanahele nodded, his face an expressionless mask.

Speke continued. "What I can tell you, Mr. Kanahele, is that the people I work for care about Hawaii. One of the reasons they brought me in was to teach them about your culture. They want to make this resort a genuine Hawaiian experience, and it's my job to bring in local artists, storytellers, musicians, historians people who can make this a special place. It's a program that we've had great success with in Mexico and the Caribbean, and I can assure you that the director stands behind it one hundred percent."

Speke could see that he had Kanahele's full attention now, and he paused a moment before saying more. "I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. You recall the stories of the menehune, of course." Kanahele nodded. "Well, when I told our director about Hawaii's legendary builders, he was fascinated. Over dinner last night, I explained how the menehune only worked after dark, and how they could finish nearly any project in the course of one night despite their dwarfish stature. He took to the story immediately. In fact, this morning he put out a standing order: if any menehune applies for work on the Shipkiller Beach Project, he's to be hired on the spot."

Kanahele laughed.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is that this corporation is in for the long haul, and we want to be more than good neighbors. We want to become part of the community. Now, I have to be honest with you. If you want to stop the hotel, you're going to have one big, ugly fight on your hands. But if your concern centers on the burial site, I think I can sell the brass on a compromise that will please everyone... with your permission, of course. I'm positive that I can convince the director to retain the site as a historical monument. If we build around it—a museum, a visitors' center—we can bring the beliefs of your people to every guest who sets foot in the hotel."

Kanahele was wise enough to hold out for a few days, but when the director offered him a position as a permanent consultant in all matters concerning the burial site museum, things were settled. The director gave Speke a bonus and asked that he remain on site in case any other trouble arose that might require his unusual skills. Speke hopped an afternoon flight from Honolulu to Lihue. He stopped for dinner at Gaylord's, arrived at the corporate-owned condo around eight, and was walking on Shipkiller Beach near the job site when the sun dipped below the silver horizon and big waves began to break over the reef.

Speke sat at surf's edge and went to work on himself. Told himself that it was just another job, just like the jobs he'd done in Mexico and the Caribbean. The corporation was using his knowledge to deal with protesters the world over. Whenever anyone complained about "cold corporate identity" or "a lack of cultural understanding," Professor Speke appeared on the scene and calmed local fears. His smile said, "See, we do understand you, we really do and we want to help." The corporate bigwigs saw quickly enough that building a museum was a lot cheaper than fighting picketers, and a lot more appealing to the TV cameras, too. And the end result—a monument to the past, a boost in civic pride—provided Speke with a valuable justification. Without me, he told himself, the corporation wouldn't even do that much.

That first night on Shipkiller Beach, Speke upended his shoes and knocked sand out of them. He thought about Mr. Kanahele and Madame Pele and the tourist lady from Texas.

Then the dog trotted down the path. A coffee-brown mutt with a nub for a tail, it wandered across the sand and ducked its muzzle under Speke's hand and begged for attention. After a moment, it straightened as if it had heard something and returned to the path.

Speke followed, but the dog was too far ahead. Besides, the path was muddy, and he didn't want to ruin his new white shoes.

Ten steps along, the path disappeared beneath a web of bulldozer tracks. Speke found himself in a mire of blood-colored earth churned up by the corporation's equipment. He brushed mosquitos away from his face and stepped across the smallest puddle. Shifting his weight, he found solid ground on his second step. There was a sucking sound behind him as he pulled his back foot out of the mud, and he nearly lost his shoe because the shoelace had come untied. He bent low and retied it, staining his fingers the color of Madame Pele's earth in the process.

Ahead, the dog was drinking water from an old Yuban can filled with bird-of-paradise, edging the long-stemmed flowers to one side with its muzzle. Speke saw that there was a Folgers can beside it, also filled with flowers. He frowned. Randy Takagi had assured him that the shrine was abandoned, but how could it be abandoned if people were still leaving offerings?

Speke stepped past the coffee cans to a cement shrine that stood in the shade of a lichee tree. The shrine was in the shape of a small house with a sloping, peaked roof. There was an arching doorway at its center. Bending low, Speke peered inside the dollhouse-sized structure at a statue rimmed with Japanese characters.

The dog nipped at Speke's muddy heels, eager to continue. Speke took a charcoal briquet from his pocket and hastily dashed a large "1" on the roof of the cement shrine.

"Okay, boy," he whispered. "Show me the way."

Fourth day. Project inspection.

Randy Takagi was a thin-faced man with a smile that seemed impossibly wide. He gave Speke a tour of the site, injecting his patter with tips about restaurants, bars, and beaches. Randy was a native of Kauai who had been hired for the Shipkiller Beach Project as soon as the corporation discovered his background. The PR guys did it up big in the Hawaiian newspapers—"Local Architect Helps Design New Hotel," that kind of thing. The stories placated a good portion of the community, and Randy's appointment also served as an unexpected goodwill gesture to a Japanese fishing corporation that was eager for foreign investment but uncertain about the Shipkiller Beach Project.

"You'll never believe this," Randy Takagi said, "but that was the first damn resume I mailed after I graduated from U.C. Berkeley. Within a week I'm back home with a new job, studying blueprints on the same beach where I was a surf bum just six years ago. Jesus, can you believe it?"

Speke smiled. "Crazy world," he said.

Randy didn't see the light, but he was a bright kid when it came to design and a damn fast worker to boot, inspiring everyone from the corporate paper-pushers in Honolulu to the construction workers. Many of the nail-bangers were Randy's old high school buddies, and they worked under him with the intensity of the legendary menehune. Speke could see the respect Randy commanded while they toured the construction site, and he complimented the younger man as they stood on the balcony of an unfinished third-floor suite that would soon be a bone of contention among visiting executives.

Speke's gaze traveled the beach and lingered on a hillside dotted with gray cement houses. At first he was confused by the sight of a condo project on corporation property, but then his mind sliced through the haze of business lunch mai tais - drinks that certainly weren't the powerless fruit punch cocktails they seemed to be—and he realized that the whole thing was a trick of perspective.

Speke pointed to the miniature structures. "What's that?"

Randy picked up the concern in the older man's voice. "Don't worry, Mitch... we own it. It's an old shrine, built by Japanese immigrants. Shingon Buddhists, if I remember correctly. It's a copy of the Kobo Dai Ishi Shrine back in Japan. Maybe you've heard of it?"

Speke nodded. "Let's see... if memory serves, there are eighty-eight shrines along the path, each one representing a different sin, and the belief is that if you walk the path of the eighty-eight you'll never again be tempted by any of them." He lowered his voice to a well-practiced professional whisper. "Nobody told me, Randy. Have we had any complaints?"

Randy's smile refused to evaporate. "No. Not one. See, the caretaker died back in the forties, and no one has done much in the way of maintenance since then." He patted Speke's shoulder. "Don't worry, Prof. Don't sweat it."

Speke smiled. "Don't borrow trouble."

"Huh?"

"Just something my grandmother used to say."

"Oh."

"Look, Randy, does this bother you?"

"Hell, I'm Catholic, and lapsed at that." Randy laughed. "Seriously, Mitch, I know a lot of the locals are against this kind of thing. Development, I mean. But I know a lot of guys on this island who can't afford a house, can't afford to live where their families have lived for generations. Now, construction brings money. Hotels bring money. I happen to think that money is a damn good answer to problems. And if we have to bend a little, if I have to share my favorite surfing beach with a few sunburnt tourists, so be it."

Speke recognized the company line when he heard it. "Okay," he said. "I guess it's time to look at our real trouble-spot."

Speke scrawled a large "17" on the roof of a leaning shrine. He stared back at the hotel. It was deserted - all the construction crews had Sunday off- and he remembered how strangely quiet the cement shrines had seemed from the unfinished third-floor suite. A humid breeze ruffled his graying hair and he found himself wishing that the silent hotel was just an optical illusion, a miniature made large by the power of too many mai tais.

The dog barked, urging Speke onward. Beyond the twentieth shrine, the path was overgrown. There were two shrines above him on the hillside, both at the same level. Which was number twenty-one?

Speke scratched the dog's head. "C'mon, boy. Take me there."

The dog bounded through the tall grass and climbed to the shrine on the left. Speke followed.

Fourth afternoon. Networking.

Keleka Douglas grinned and set aside the chocolate bar she'd been nibbling. "Thanks for getting us back in business so quickly, Professor Speke."

The archaeologist wiped her hands on her jeans and exchanged handshakes with Speke; hers was very firm. "Make it Mitch," Speke said, and her grin became a smile. "Kelly," she replied. "Keleka translates better as Theresa, but I prefer Kelly. Makes me sound like a carefree Irish lassie."

Takagi had detailed Kelly Douglas's background. Yale-educated, graduate work in Israel, and, best of all (as far as the corporation was concerned), daughter of a Navy pilot and a native of Honolulu, Hawaii. She'd been working for the corporation for ten years. From the look of her, Speke decided that she found field work agreeable. She was deeply tanned, her dark hair was pulled back and braided, and her blue eyes shone with the enthusiasm of a true believer.

"Excuse the mess," she apologized. "I'm trying to do everything myself. Guess I'm a control freak. First off, there are about a dozen reporters who want to get in here, plus I've got osteologists clamoring to run tests on this stuff, and on top of all that a colleague I'm not too fond of is pushing to do his own paleodemographic reconstruction. I told the director that this is my baby, and it's going to remain a closed site if I'm going to have anything to do with it. Which means that I get dibs on all the good toys, at least for now."

"So you're the one the old man is running interference for."

"Not me. The find. It's really spectacular."

She pointed to a skull that lay on her desk. "Notice how the incisors are missing."

Speke laughed. "Too many chocolate bars?"

"Good one, Mitch," Kelly admitted. "Seriously, removal of the front teeth was an expression of grief in early Hawaiian society. Generally, it was done when an ali'i—a chief—died. That skull was one of the first things I saw here, and right away I knew we were dealing with a very significant burial site."

"So, you hit the jackpot."

"Hit it is an understatement—we clobbered the mother." Kelly stepped behind a long table. "These are the remains of a chiefess, found resting on a blanket of red sand. I was confused about that until I recalled that sometimes corpses were wrapped in barkcloth dyed with turmeric or ochre, which, quite naturally, decomposes." Kelly held up a rock oyster pendant strung on a necklace of braided human hair. "This is the finest lei niho palaoa I've come across. It's really remarkable, and a sure sign of an ali'i burial."

The archaeologist turned her attention to another skeleton. "We believe that this one was a chief. He was also buried with valuables, including these bone fishhooks. Human bone. The early Hawaiians believed that fishhooks made from human long bones would contain the mana, or power, of the deceased. That's one reason why this burial site was concealed, so that our chief's enemies wouldn't use his bones in the same way."

"Pretty exciting stuff," Speke examined one of the fishhooks. He turned it this way and that, and then he froze, the hook gripped so tightly in his hand that it nearly pierced his skin.

"Gently... gently," Kelly uncoiled his fingers and took the fishhook from him. "It's not one of those plastic tiki letter openers that they sell at all the tourist traps. And sorry, no souvenirs."

Speke was slightly embarrassed. Kelly laughed off his momentary case of chills, and Speke made her promise to buy him a tiki letter opener since he couldn't keep the fishhook.

They toured the burial site. Kelly explained that the mouth of the lava tube had been blocked with sand. The construction workers had unplugged the entrance to see if the tube would cause any problems with the hotel foundation. Deep inside, they had discovered a kapu marker—a warning fashioned from a large gourd—along with a stone that was covered with strands of human hair.

Another expression of mourning, Kelly explained.

They explored the lava tube. Kelly seemed a little tired of playing tour guide; she talked about the other projects she'd handled for the corporation. Speke discovered that Kelly Douglas had followed him both in Mexico and the Caribbean. She seemed to know quite a bit more about him than he knew about her. "You're a great advance man," she said. "Really, you've made my job very easy."

"My pleasure. I think that this is going to be another easy one. Kanahele's really come around, and the museum should be a proud accomplishment for everyone. I mean, it's a small price to pay-"

She raised her hand. "Spare me the corporate bullshit. I'm afraid I know it by heart."

Before he could reply, Kelly suggested that they start back. She lowered her flashlight and the beam caught a candy-bar wrapper.

Speke laughed. "Did they have Three Musketeers in ancient Hawaii?"

"I guess I'm getting sloppy in my old age," Kelly said. "It happens at almost every sight. You clean everything out, all the things that are so special, and then you're left with another hole in the ground. Just another empty place."

"I'm feeling kind of empty, but maybe I'm just hungry." Speke smiled. "Look, I know this is a little brisk, but there's a party in Honolulu tonight — "

"At Wong Jak Man's, thrown by our honorable director." She took his hand, gently this time, "I'll make it easy—I'm invited, I don't have a date, and I'd love to go with you."

Walking on air, Speke left the archaeologist's office. As Randy Takagi escorted him to his rented car, he told the younger man of his good fortune.

Immediately, he wished he hadn't.

Randy Takagi wasn't invited to the director's party.

The dog burrowed between two ferns that blocked the path. Speke put his hands in front of his face and followed, the silky leaves brushing his forearms.

An olive-drab plywood shed stood before him, half on solid ground, half hanging over the steep hillside. There were two open doorways, no doors, and the path led directly through the structure. Speke dropped to his knees and peered at the support beams that speared the hillside.

Rusty nails, rotten wood.

The dog walked through the dark shed, its toenails clicking over plywood. It turned to face Speke from a patch of yellow sunlight on the other side.

"You wouldn't trick me, would you, boy?" Speke asked.

The dog only panted.

Speke thought about dogs. They were loyal creatures in most folk tales, the forerunners of Rin Tin Tin and other heroic animals. But in Hawaiian lore the first dog had been created by Maui, who had transformed a prideful rival into a subservient animal.

Speke shook away the thought. "Man's best friend. Right, boy? And I need a friend right now."

Speke stepped forward, lightly. A second step and the floorboard -for the entire floor was just one large piece of weathered plywood- complained.

One more step and he'd be outside again.

A beam of sunlight angled through a hole in the rusty metal roof. Speke felt the warmth of it on his cheek. He glanced at a shadowy corner of the shed and saw a rake, a shovel, and a hoe, each implement rusty with age.

This was the caretaker's toolshed. Speke remembered what Randy Takagi had said: "The caretaker died back in the forties, and no one has done much in the way of maintenance since then."

The tools had rusted here, waiting for someone to put them to use. But no one had, and as time passed the shrine became a wild thing. Overgrown. Somehow lonely. Standing here in the caretaker's shed, Speke was suddenly sure that, more than anything, this place was lonely.

Hungry for companionship.

Starving for attention.

The support beams creaked below his feet. Speke grabbed the rusty hoe, stepped out of the shed, and followed the dog up the trail.

Fourth evening. Social obligations.

Wong Jak Man's was a four-story pagoda that had been a Honolulu landmark for nearly a century. Though the surrounding neighborhood had turned seedy long ago, Wong Jak Man's had somehow maintained its reputation as the finest Chinese restaurant east of Hong Kong. Each level was decorated with valuable antiques, and the fourth-floor banquet room was stunningly garish, decorated in red velvet and gold trim.

"It's an old Hong Kong custom," the director explained. "The bartender here introduced it to me many years ago."

Speke forced a smile. He wasn't overly fond of the director, because when he was in the man's presence he found it hard to justify what he did for a living. Worst of all, the director had made it perfectly obvious what he expected from Speke when he introduced him to the Japanese investors as "our little sheepskin diplomat."

The director was rattling on. "Mao Tai really is a wonderful beverage. And when you mix it with the custom of Yam Sing, you're in for a stimulating evening."

Speke arched his eyebrows. "Yam Sing?"

The director grinned. "I'm stunned. I've finally discovered a foreign custom of which our renowned cultural attache is unaware." He set two large glasses on the table, one filled with a colorless liquid, the other empty. "Yam Sing. A loose translation would be drink to the finish."

Speke had made it plain on many occasions that he wasn't much of a drinker, and he wasn't eager to sample anything exotic after his experience with the seemingly harmless mai tais. But that didn't stop the director; he was more than pleased with Speke's handling of Mr. Kanahele, and he was ready for a proper celebration. And though it was childish, Speke felt compelled to go along with the show because he didn't want to seem less than manly in front of Kelly Douglas. He didn't want to "lose face" in front of the Japanese investors, either.

The director divided the liquor evenly between the two glasses, handed one to Speke, then toasted Speke and threw back his drink.

Speke raised his glass and drank. A thunderbolt hit his belly. Tears came to his eyes. The red velvet wallpaper roiled for a moment, crawling with golden snakes.

The director laughed.

For the first time, Speke noticed that the five Japanese investors who stood behind his employer were actually standing in line. Each one held two glasses, one of which was filled with Mao Tai.

By the third toast, Speke's face felt numb. He searched desperately for an excuse to escape, but neither the director nor Kelly Douglas was anywhere in sight. Another drink appeared before him. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead as he tossed it back, and the tastes and smells of a traditional Chinese banquet, cigarettes, and a dozen expensive perfumes and colognes went down with it.

Another glass appeared on the table.

Speke lurched away from it.

Air. He needed air. He pushed through the crowd of partiers and made his way down a narrow stairway.

Flocked, peeling wallpaper. The smell of mildew, singed oil, and lemon chicken.

At the end of the stairway was a door, once white, now rutted with graffiti. Speke opened it, praying for fresh air.

The director stood there. Kelly Douglas was at his side.

"Oh no," she whispered.

Speke recognized the president of the Japanese fishing corporation. The old man was smiling, but not at Speke. A low, lacquered teak table sat before the businessman, and on the table was an open package nested in brandy-colored wrapping paper.

Inside the package was a fishhook made of human bone.

The director put his hand on Kelly's shoulder. "This one's yours, dear."

Kelly took Speke's hand. "Come on in, Mitch. Suddenly, we've got a lot to talk about."

Speke broke away and scrambled through the doorway.

He didn't remember anything else until the night air hit him.

Speke marked shrine number fifty-four.

He bent low and peered inside.

The gray statue was expressionless; it had been worn by wind and rain until its face was as smooth as an eggshell.

"Which sin are you?" Speke asked.

He reached inside the shrine, felt the cool figure. "Hypocrisy? That's a good one. Or maybe avarice. That's an old standby, found in many cultures. Very reliable."

Speke closed his eyes. It was as if he had his hand in a lion's mouth. He felt the hunger. He smelled the raw, feral breath. He sensed the cement jaws and wondered why they didn't snap closed.

C'mon, he thought. I'm willing. It's been a long time for you. I may not look like much of a meal, but there's a whole lot to me that doesn't meet the eye.

So many sins.

So many people he'd swayed with the power of his words.

But he hadn't believed those words. He hadn't known their power.

So he couldn't be responsible, could he?

Speke knew the answer to that. He jammed his fist against the statue.

Just take it away, he begged.

Fourth night. Separation.

Speke caught the last Honolulu-Lihue flight. It was a Pam Am dinosaur left over from the sixties, the kind with purple and orange psychedelic upholstery. The stewardess tried to sell him a bottled mai tai, but Speke wouldn't go for it.

The plane landed in a light rain. Speke rushed through the airport, past lei stands, past shops filled with plastic fetishes. He remembered the tiki letter opener that Kelly had joked about. She'd bought one for him at the Honolulu Airport. Speke pulled the thing out of his pocket, cringed at the sight of its glittering plastic eyes, and threw it into a trash can.

Speke got into his car, thinking about the letter opener, thinking about the fishhook and the way the old Japanese businessman had hovered over it, smiling.

Leering like a man half his age.

Speke drove out of Lihue. The storm grew worse as he passed through Koloa. When he got to the condo, the phone was ringing. The heavy rain made him hurry inside, but he didn't rush to the phone. He didn't want to answer it. He only wanted to pack his bags.

But it kept ringing, so he picked it up.

"I've never stolen anything," he said.

Kelly said, "I know that, Mitch."

"But you've stolen lots of things, haven't you? From the lava tube, and from the job sites in Mexico and the Caribbean."

The line buzzed softly. "Yes, I have," she admitted. "But we couldn't let those things gather dust in museums. Not when they have real power. You know that power, Mitch. It's in your stories. It sold your books for you. It cut your deal with Kanahele." She paused. "We're not really so different, are we, Mitch?"

"You're really saying this." Speke tried to laugh. "You can't be serious."

"It's really very simple. All we have to do is remember. There's power in that... in memory. People are willing to pay quite a bit for power. Maybe you can't believe that now, but you'll see in a few months. You'll see how much our Japanese friend's business improves now that he has that fishhook."

Speke didn't say anything.

"Wait for me?" Kelly asked. "The director has offered me his private jet. I can be there in an hour. We can—"

Speke hung up. He threw some things into his suitcase.

Outside, rain fell in waves of silver needles.

Speke closed his suitcase and turned off the lights. The light from the windows made everything look silver and black and wet, and Speke was reminded of the lava tube beneath Shipkiller Beach.

It was so empty, shorn of its treasures. Just another hole in the ground.

As empty as this room.

As empty as the unfinished hotel.

As empty as he wanted to be.

Speke spent the night alone in the unfinished third-floor suite. Everything came clear in his mind.

He knew that Keleka Douglas was right.

He knew other things, too, and he was beginning to believe them.

The shrine was still there. The corporation's bulldozers hadn't destroyed it. That meant it still had power. The power to suck away evil.

The shrine could eat temptation. It could free Mitchell Speke.

It was a lonely place. A few people remembered it. They left offerings of flowers. But Speke knew that they didn't walk the path, and he realized that walking the path was the only way to satisfy the place's hunger.

It was a hunger that he would gladly feed. The feeding would make him clean. No one would be able to touch him once he'd traveled the path of the eighty-eight - not the director, not Kelly Douglas. He'd leave this place then, go home with his shoes caked with Madame Tele's earth, and he didn't care what would happen to him for breaking the goddess's kapu, just as long as his journey on the path of the eighty-eight was successful.

The dog barked at him and he clambered over a cracked stone stairway. He marked "84" on a shrine to his left, then turned and charcoaled "85" on a shrine that leaned over the cliff to his right.

The dog crawled through a tangle of ferns at the top of the stairway.

Speke chopped at the ferns with the caretaker's hoe and followed.

He climbed to the top of the hill.

Tire tracks angled along a muddy road. At first it seemed that they had been left by two different vehicles because one set was deeper than the other, but then Speke saw that the tracks came together near the edge of the hillside.

The truck had come in light, gone out heavy.

The dog was sniffing a patch of weeds. Speke approached the animal.

There were three holes in the earth, like three bloody wounds.

In his mind they seemed as large as lunar craters.

The dog barked at the holes, confused. It jumped into the center hole and dug at the earth, then leaped into the hole nearest Speke and came out with something in its mouth.

A candy-bar wrapper.

Speke took the wrapper. Crushed it in his fist.

"It's okay, boy. It's okay."

He reached out to pat the dog, but it drew away from him, whining.

THE CUT MAN

I'D FORGOTTEN THAT THE KNOCKER on Torito's front door was shaped like a boxing glove. I tapped a flurry of jabs on the brass face-plate and waited, my heart thumping a staccato speed-bag rhythm, the desert emptiness swelling at my back. Why Torito lived in the middle of the desert instead of in Vegas was a mystery to me. The sleeping black sky stretching forever, dry sandpaper breezes scudding this way and that like indecisive ghosts, heat waves radiating from the highway in the middle of the night—it was creepy.

I knocked again and listened at the narrow stained-glass window to the right of the door. Just then a zombie opened up, the kind of zombie you see nearly everywhere these days—empty eyes, gray skin, skinny as a bantamweight. He stood there smiling at nothing, his teeth yellow-green from neglect or the weird glow of the halogen porch-light. Finally his eyes did a little focusing trick and he saw me.

"You ain't Willie," he rasped. "You bring Willie's heroin?"

I shook my head, thankful for the succinct way the zombie had explained the situation. "I guess Willie's gonna be a little late," I said, checking my disgust, hoping to keep the junkie calm. "I'm here to see Rosie."

A sharp click echoed in the entry way as a glinting blade disappeared into the hollow of the zombie's palm. He shrugged, turned, and shuffled to the base of a circular wrought-iron staircase. "Rosie!" he called, his raspy voice straining for volume. "It's for you!"

No answer from above. The zombie shot me another tired shrug and wandered away, into the shadows.

I stepped into the entryway, brushing past a withered fern that stood guard just inside the doorway. A chill rose from the marble floor that Torito had had installed after the Kalambay fight in Naples. Carrara marble. Michelangelo's favorite.

TV sounds bounced through the house and lingered over the smooth white rock. Pung pung pung. I guessed tennis. Then I heard the familiar voice of an ESPN announcer and knew that I was right. It was a safe bet that Torito wasn't watching TV—he hated tennis. Football, basketball, and baseball, too. He said they were kid games, games that you played, and Torito never played at anything. Fact is, you never hear about anyone "playing" boxing.

Someone whispered from above, "Willie? Is that you?"

A bronze foot appeared on the circular staircase, and then a shapely ankle, a gold bracelet shimmering around its delicate circumference. A perfect calf followed, and then a perfect thigh. Rosie's wispy lavender negligee came into view mid-thigh, but it hid nothing.

I swallowed hard.

Slivers of shadow melted across Rosie's face. Her strong Navajo features had shriveled on the bone. Her empty eyes blinked through a private haze, her eyelids too small and dark in deeply hollowed sockets. She smiled, leered really. A zombie smile.

"Richeeee," she said. "Thank God you came!"

"All the way from A.C.," I said, sounding like a happy uncle who'd come to visit. "I came as soon as I got your letter. My mail's not so good, you know. I move around too much. But your letter finally caught up to me at Caesars. The concierge from Trump Plaza sent it over. And I tried to call first, but no one's been answering your phone...."

She wasn't listening. We hugged. I felt too many bones, smelled greasy hair and too much Anne Klein II.

I followed her upstairs and down a long hallway. My shoes sank into thick mint-green carpet and I worried that I hadn't wiped them. Rosie was very proud of her carpets and her Italian marble. After growing up in a New Mexico hogan with nothing but dirt under her heels, I guess she had a thing about floors. In happier times, she'd sent her decorator after carpets that would match those at Caesars Tahoe. Drove the guy nuts. Torito had told me that the decorator finally bribed some maintenance guys at Caesars into stealing a couple hundred square yards of the stuff.

Better days, better ways, I thought.

I caught up to Rosie at the bedroom door. A framed poster from the Barkley fight hung to my left; blank wall stared at me from the right. While Rosie fumbled with the doorknob, I prayed that Torito wasn't saving that space for another poster. A comeback was the last thing I wanted to see. Two years ago he'd had nothing left; now he'd be worse.

Gus's voice: "They always come back. You know that, Richie. They say they won't, but they always do."

Rosie flipped on the light. Torito was sitting up in bed, staring at a big screen Mitsubishi that stood to the right of the door.

Dried blood on the padded leather headboard.

Spots of fresh blood on Torito's silk pajama top.

The stink of sweat and blood hit me as I stepped into the room. Heavy, worse than the stench of a slaughterhouse. Reflexively, my eyes darted from Torito to the spinach-green wallpaper above his bed; the flocked pattern squirmed like a tangle of snakes and I wiped my eyes and looked again. This time I saw a wooden crucifix nestled in the mossy velvet above Torito's head, the figure of Jesus red with paint or Torito's blood. A rusty nail had been hammered through Jesus' chest, pinning the crucifix to the wall, splitting the icon from breastbone to head, but the old wood scissored tightly around it as if clinging there.

Rosie took my hand. "Richie, you gotta make it okay again... I need you... Toro needs you...."

She kept talking, but I couldn't hear her over the blaring Mitsubishi. It shouted, "BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY!"

Torito looked at me through swollen eyes. "Help me, Richie," he said, his voice barely audible. "You gotta help me... I can't see the punches."

The ice in the bucket had melted in the Vegas heat, but the Enswell iron was still cold. Gus pressed it against Torito's swollen cheek and begged him to follow his jab with a doublehook to the body. "You can't stop Barkley unless you take his legs," he said.

I was working on the cuts. Torito was a mess. I've saved fights for lots of guys who had tender faces—Saad Muhammad and Antuofermo included— but Torito made those two look like they had skin of iron. After four rounds, he had deep slices over both eyes and the bridge of his nose. I mopped off the blood, pressed a Q-tip coated with adrenalin chloride 1-1000 into the cuts, and glopped vaseline over Torito's brow.

The ring doctor tried to elbow past Gus. "He's fine," Gus said, not giving an inch. "If you want to look at cuts, go check Barkley."

Gus was right. Iran "The Blade" Barkley's face was a mess, too.

The warning whistle sounded. Gus ducked between the ropes. I followed, pulling the stool as Torito rose. "Remember, Barkley's trying to take your title!" Gus yelled, as if Torito needed reminding.

Round five. Torito came out jabbing, driving his fist into Barkley's bloody nose. Barkley bent at the middle, but he was only ducking under the jabs, not going down, and then Torito pivoted and threw the money punch—a big left hook to the ribs. Again. The Blade spit blood and gasped, then came back with a two-handed body-attack that sent Torito into the ropes. Jabbing his way to the center of the ring, Torito bent and delivered another left hook, but Barkley's right was already on its way and it caught Torito high on the head. Blood geysered from Torito's brow and spattered the referee's white shirt, and as Torito stumbled backward Barkley nailed him with another chopping right that shattered his jaw and sent him to the canvas.

The referee didn't bother to count.

"You see why I asked you to come," Rosie said innocently. "I can't call anyone else. Not with him around... not the way I am."

That last part came in a whisper, like a confession. Turning away, I opened my snakeskin bag and set my gear on the walnut nightstand. Then I turned off the TV, my hands shaking.

"How can you let Torito watch that?" I asked.

"He makes Toro watch it all the time, because just watching it makes Toro bleed now. He says it's the only way he can find Toro's weak spots."

Junkie logic. I couldn't follow it, no more than I could imagine the zombie I'd met downstairs making Torito do anything. I asked Rosie if that's who she was talking about, but she ignored my question.

"You got to hurry," she said. "You got to fix Toro and then we got to get out of here before he comes back. He went looking for wood a couple hours ago. He probably won't be back 'til morning. That'll give us a head start. If we can get to New Mexico, to the reservation, my family will hide us."

"Rosie, who the hell are you talking about?"

"Ask Toro," she said, slipping through the doorway.

Torito's hand closed over mine. "I don't want to go to New Mexico," he whispered.

"Jesus, Torito, how could you get mixed up in this shit? Who did this to you? Do you owe money or — "

"It ain't like that. The horse, that's Rosie's thrill. I don't mess with it."

I stared at his swollen brow, trying to see his eyes, trying to see if he was lying.

Torito's grip tightened. "He wants to help me, Richie. Just like he said he would. You remember. A long time ago he told Gus that he'd help me when I was through... Gus told you about that, didn't he?"

I cleaned Torito's cuts and stitched his face together. I couldn't get a straight answer out of him, but I couldn't get him to shut up, either.

"You should have seen Gus the first time he met him." Torito laughed, his swollen lips twisting into a lumpy grin. "You know Gus, by the book and everything. Well, he had to get the devil to sign some papers — "

"The devil? Cut the bullshit, Torito. Tell me who did this to you."

Torito's voice was impatient: "That's what I'm doing."

I shook my head. "Whatever you say, Toro."

"Okay. I can't tell it like Gus, but let me try. See, when I was a boy, the devil lived in a little adobe shack behind our house. Even when my mother died and we moved away, he still lived there. He liked to carve; he could put the santeros to shame. Of course, the devil didn't make holy things. He made statues of demons, the death cart, coyotes... even La Llorona. He gave them to my brothers and me, but we didn't like to play with them, and we locked them in a footlocker at night.

"Anyway, Gus didn't want to make the trip because we had to drive all the way up to the Sangre de Cristos, but there was nothing else that he could do because he had to have the devil's signature before he could enter me in the Junior Olympics at Colorado Springs. You know Gus, he complained every inch of the way.

"It's early afternoon when we get to the old adobe, but the devil's already awake. He's sitting outside with a bucket at his feet and he's whittling away with a carving knife that he stole off a Penitente man. Anyway, I know better than to bother the devil while he's busy, but Gus up and asks him 'Whatcha makin'?' You know Gus—can't keep his mouth shut. So the devil holds out his hand, palm up. It's empty. Then he rolls it over and Gus can see how he'd carved his fingernails down to nothing.

"The devil shoves his bloody fingertips under Gus's nose. 'I'm making me,' he says.

"Gus almost threw up. He looked green enough. Then the devil pointed down at the bucket, at the little bits of fingernail floating in the pink water. Richie, you should have heard the devil laugh. And then he says, 'When you're done with my boy, bring him back and I'll fix him, too.'"

I was sweating. I didn't want to hear this kind of talk, and Torito could see that I thought he was crazy.

His eyes cut at me from beneath swollen brows. "You don't believe me, huh? You just look at that first contract, Richie. You'll see the bloodstains there."

Torito fell asleep. I checked his arms for tracks but didn't find any. There were three cherry-red scars in the hollow of his right elbow and another bunch on his left forearm, but they were about the size of thumbtacks—much too large for needle scars.

I packed my gear, trying to figure who'd done this to Torito. Maybe Rosie's heroin connection had gone sour; maybe Torito didn't want to admit that he'd been busted up by an ordinary finger-breaker. Then I remembered that the zombie was expecting a guy named Willie. And Rosie had mentioned Willie, too, so I doubted that there was a connection problem. That left the promoter and the cable TV people. Both had lost mucho dinero when Torito pulled out of the Barkley rematch. And they'd both made threats, admittedly the kind of tidy threats that you'd expect from incorporated organizations. But even tidy threats have a way of turning nasty in the boxing business.

I stepped into Torito's bathroom to wash my hands and almost slipped on the wet floor before I could turn on the lights. Blood was everywhere: smeared on the green tile, the mirror, and the counter. Antuofermo and Saad Muhammad could have gone a few rounds in the tiny room and it wouldn't have looked any worse.

But the mirror wasn't broken. And the bath towels hung neatly on lacquered teak racks. No sign of a struggle at all.

The pea-green basin was splattered with scarlet gore—thick, sticky blood dotted with little tan flecks. I pushed at the flecks with a toothbrush, not wanting to touch something that I couldn't identify. I remembered Torito's story about the devil and suddenly knew what I was looking at. Bits of wood, splinters and curls. And tiny chunks of flesh.

I tried to rinse the horror away, but the bloody water drained too slowly and the flecks of skin stuck to the green porcelain as if glued there. I wiped the faucet clean. My throat was gritty-dry but the thought of drinking from the tap revolted me.

I poked around the room. The bathtub was filled with wood. Kindling, really: broken survey stakes, greasewood twigs, stunted Joshua tree branches, and stubby bits of mesquite. On the floor behind the toilet, I found a claw hammer smeared with blood. Next to it was a tin can filled with rusty nails.

Suddenly I thought of Jesus on the bedroom wall, split down the middle.

I hefted the hammer. Had the blood spattered it? Or had Torito stood before the mirror, looking at himself like I was looking at myself now, hefting the tool, wondering what it would feel like crashing against his skull again and again?

The cuts healed, at least the ones that you could see. Torito looked fine, a hell of a lot better than Barkley. Even I'll admit that.

In training camp for the rematch, everybody else ignored the warning signs. When Torito refused to wear headgear in sparring, they said he wanted to be macho. Same story when he started hitting the heavy bag without handwraps. And when he ran eight miles instead of his usual four, everyone said that Torito only wanted to improve his endurance.

Early one morning, I learned the truth. Torito came limping back from a run, couldn't even make it past my cabin, which was on the edge of camp. He sat on the front steps and pulled off his shoes, not knowing that I was watching. His sockless feet were wet with blood. He upended his shoes and tapped the heels. Something red sprinkled over the dirt, and then Torito rose and limped away.

I stepped outside. Little red flecks, like bugs, dotted the ground. I scooped up a handful and blew away the dirt. The hard, bloodstained slivers of pine that remained felt warm in the palm of my hand.

I realized then that after a while pain is just pain, and there's nothing you can do to make it into glory ever again. I told Torito what I thought, and even though he denied trying to hurt himself, he decided to pull out of the rematch. Gus and the promoter and the TV people gave him a hell of an argument, but with Rosie's help Torito held firm.

My heart thundered. I looked at my reflection in the blood-streaked mirror and saw a sweaty old guy who was about to have a heart attack. I'd done that once already, and it hadn't been fun.

I sucked a deep breath. Okay, hot shot. You're out in the desert, surrounded by nothing but miles and miles of cactus and nasty reptiles. Maybe there's a sadistic mob-enforcer out there, too. And a candyman named Willie. Hell, maybe they're one in the same. For company you've got a couple of junkies and a masochistic former middleweight champion who's in presently undefinable deep-shit trouble.

What next?

Number one: Torito needed help, but he needed help that knew how to keep things quiet. Number two: Vegas wasn't my turf. In this case, one plus two equaled Gus. He'd spent lots of time in Vegas over the years. He wasn't a saint, but Torito was always "his boy." I fished through the business cards in my wallet and found his number in L.A.

It was quiet downstairs. No sign of Rosie or the zombie. I flipped on a light in the kitchen, lit a smoke to mask the stink of old grease and moldy Spanish rice, and dialed Gus's number.

"Whoever the hell this is had better be makin' me money, callin' at this time of the night."

"No money, Gus," I said. "It's me, Richie."

"The crazy Italian cut man! What's up, paisan?”

I sucked on my cigarette. Briefly, I explained what I'd found.

"Doesn't sound good."

"No shit. And it isn't over. Rosie says that someone's coming back to finish the job. She wants me to take Torito to New Mexico."

"What does Toro say?"

"Not much. At least, nothing that makes any sense."

Gus broke in with a few choice words. "Jesus, this is perfect fucking timing. Can you believe that I was talking to Barkley's people today? The crazy SOB's want to go pay-per-view. They're offering two mil for Toro on marquee value alone. I haven't even put the screws to 'em yet. I mean, if Duran and Hearns and Leonard can make five-ten mil, why not my boy?"

"Gus, there's no way. The kid is drowning. Something is very wrong here, and the last thing we can worry about is Toro climbing into the ring again. That's crazy. If you could see him — "

"Christ, it's that bad?" For the first time, he sounded truly worried.

"Yeah... can you get someone over here?"

"I'll see what I can do. I know some Italian boys over on the Strip. I'll give them a call, tell them a fellow spaghetti-bender is in trouble."

"Thanks," I said. "Gotta go."

"Richie?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't get all weepy on me. I need you strong, pal. I'm counting on you to protect my investment."

I started to curse him, but Rosie screamed, and I dropped the phone and headed into the dark hallway.

Bleached-out halogen light spilled through the open door, silhouetting Rosie and the zombie. A man came over the threshold, his moccasined feet silent on the Italian marble. He grabbed a handful of the zombie's hair and kicked his legs out from under him. The zombie went down hard.

"I told you not to come back here," the man said, kicking the zombie's stiletto across the floor.

The knife hit the wall and snicked open.

"You don't know nothing about blades," the man said. "You don't know nothing about my family, either." He drove the zombie's face against the cold Italian marble, shattering his front teeth. "You get out now, or I'm gonna teach you about blades."

Whimpering, the zombie crawled outside. The man slammed the door and scooped up the stiletto. "Sorry I'm late," he said, frowning at Rosie. "I met a guy named Willie down the road, and I had to straighten him out on a few things."

He stared at me then, and my chest tightened.

"Rosie," he whispered, "is this the man you told me about?"

Her eyes brimmed with tears. She looked at me. "I... I didn't tell."

"Just because you didn't say anything doesn't mean that you didn't tell." The man closed the blade and pocketed it. "Aren't you going to introduce us, then?"

"Richie, this is Toro's father."

I looked into the old man's eyes.

Something exploded in my chest.

I came to in a chair in Torito's bedroom. At first I thought the old man had shoved the stiletto into my heart. But the pain was familiar, something I'd felt before, and I tried to sneak careful breaths around it, tried to keep alive.

The old man bent over me. His hair was as white as the marble floor downstairs and his eyes were a polished, sparkling brown. "I think you're gonna make it," he pronounced, the cool scent of pinon on his breath. "I think you're gonna be fine."

He sat down on the foot of the bed, a carving knife in one hand, a fist-shaped piece of mesquite in the other. Torito watched him from behind, saying nothing. The old man whittled away, his blade whispering over the wood. Every now and then he looked up at me or stared over at the big Mitsubishi, which was again replaying Torito's fight with Iran Barkley.

"It's a funny thing," the old man said as Barkley trapped Torito against the ropes. "When wood is alive, it's strong. You can drive a nail into it... doesn't matter, it'll keep growing. But dead wood, wood that's seen too many seasons, that's different. Drive a nail too hard, dead wood splinters on you." He flicked shavings over my lap. "After awhile, you don't even have to use a nail. You just put that wood out into the sun, the sun that it's seen a million times before, and it rots and falls apart." He glanced at Torito, and then at me. "You understand."

The bell rang. Torito dropped onto his stool, his eyes closed, the cuts swelling. I watched myself working with adrenalin chloride 1-1000, with vaseline, blood smeared on my fingers.

"You understand."

I stared at the TV. Torito taking punches. I glanced at Torito, helpless in bed. A line of stitches split open on his brow and his cheek turned the color of a rotten plum.

The old man smiled. "You understand. The TV, it's like the sun."

The fist was taking shape. Thick at one end. Almost pointed at the other. The old man worked the knife like a gouge, carving a network of veins over the top.

The bell rang again. Torito rose from his stool. His face was lumpy-smooth, slick with vaseline.

In bed, Torito grunted and spat blood.

"You did good work," the old man said. "You know, you could have learned to carve."

I sucked a shallow breath. "Torito says that you're the devil."

Flick flick flick. The old man worked the knife like a sixth finger.

"Rosie says that you want to hurt your son."

He grinned. "She's wrong. She doesn't want me to help her... she doesn't want me to help my boy. She doesn't even know what he is."

The veins were finished now. The old man started on the fingers. But they were bent and arthritic, turning back on the hand, and each one ended at the first joint.

The crowd screamed, "BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY!"

"Rosie just wants the drugs," the old man said. "She's afraid of the things I can do for her... and for Torito." He looked at his son and smiled proudly. "Torito's not afraid, though. He's brave. He wants me here."

"BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY!" A left hook from Torito. "BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY!" Barkley's punch already on the way... "BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY, BARK-LEY!" Torito's blood geysering through the air....

Blood spattered the padded leather headboard.

Torito screamed.

A bitter metallic taste washed over my tongue. I clenched my teeth against the sour pain.

The old man watched his son go down. "He was beautiful when he was young. One day I took a burro and a cart, went up into the mountains. I found a big old tree up there with roots that ran so deep you wouldn't believe it. I burned it down, dug a trench around the stump, peeled it back and hauled the green core down the mountain. Let it season for five summers." He smiled. "Then I went to work. In another year I had my son."

I doubled over. My face came near the mesquite fist, and I saw that it wasn't a fist at all. It was covered with veins, but what I had taken for fingers were actually arteries.

The old man patted my shoulder. "You're lucky that I found this piece today. I don't think that anything else I have would've worked."

He passed a strong hand over the smooth wood, and the mesquite heart began to beat.

I awoke in another room. The old man stood over Rosie, who lay unconscious on a low couch. Soft light filtered through a heavy green lampshade to her right, bathing her sharp features in a liquid glow.

He moved away, wiping his bloody blade on a white handkerchief. Rosie's right arm was laid open to the bone. Blood dripped from what remained of her fingers and splattered on the heavy carpet, the Caesars Tahoe carpet, and on the smooth wooden arm that lay in the green shadows.

The old man saw that I was awake. "She'll be fine," he said. "I had to cut the poison out first, but soon she'll be ready to be whole again."

I looked away.

He ignored my disgust. "Feeling better now?" he asked.

I glared at him.

"Good. You can help me with Torito."

I climbed the stairs on my own. My chest still ached, but the pain had reduced to a dull throbbing and my heartbeat felt even and strong. I had no idea how long I'd been unconscious. I hoped it had been a very long time, because I figured the longer I'd been out, the sooner Gus's Vegas buddies would come to my rescue.

I didn't know what kind of trick the old man had pulled with the mesquite heart, but I was certain that what he'd done to Rosie wasn't an illusion. I followed him down the hall, my left hand sweaty on the grip of my snakeskin bag. Inside was a straight razor. It was too late to help Rosie, but I was going to make damn sure that the old man didn't try the same thing on Torito. I dipped into the bag with my right hand and came out with the razor. One quick slice across the jugular and it would be over.

I followed the old man into the bedroom.

A pistol came down hard on my wrist and I dropped the razor.

Another pistol poked under my chin, prodding my gaze to the ceiling.

Footsteps whispered across the carpet. I smelled expensive cologne.

"Well, well, this must be Richie." A deep voice, with just the slightest hint of an Italian accent. "Gus has told me all about you."

He was a thickset man with a fresh haircut and fashionably graying temples. He introduced himself as Jimmy Gemignani.

"So my friend Gus calls me," Gemignani said. "'Jimmy,' he says, 'we've got trouble out at Torito's. A good friend of mine is over there, and he's got the wrong idea. I'm afraid that someone might get hurt.'"

I started to rise from my seat, but Gemignani's two toughs dropped big hands on my shoulders and stopped me. "Look," I said. "I don't know what you know, but if you go downstairs and take a look at Torito's wife you'll see that you're roughing up the wrong guy." I pointed at the old man, who was examining Torito's swollen brow. "Get him away from Torito. Please."

Torito's father seemed amused by my concern. "Don't listen to him. He doesn't understand yet."

Gemignani nodded. "Then make him understand. I don't have a lot of time, and neither does Gus. He needs Torito for a press conference next week." Gemignani's lips curled in disgust. "And we can't use Toro like this."

The old man shook his head. "That wasn't the deal. I got a contract. It's very specific. Besides, nobody's paid me yet."

"You'll get your money," Gemignani said shortly. "Now, make him understand. If this thing's going to work, we're going to need his full cooperation."

Torito's father put the straight razor in my right hand, and then he raised my left and placed it over my heart. I felt it beating...

...pounding a staccato speed-bag rhythm. I felt the sleeping black sky stretching forever, dry sandpaper breezes scudding this way and that like indecisive ghosts, heat waves radiating from the highway in the middle of the night. The old man in the desert picking up a piece of mesquite, me knocking at Torito's door. The old man grinning. Me closing Torito's wounds. The old man carving. Flick flick flick.

I concentrated on the sound of the knife. In a few moments my heartbeat was even, steady.

I looked at Torito's ruined face. He tried to grin. "C'mon, Richie," he said. "It's the only way. You got to help me." He stared at the TV, watched himself fall under Barkley's fists. "I can't go out like that."

Gemignani's toughs moved away. Gemignani himself handed me my snakeskin bag.

"I guess everybody wants it," I said, as if I'd forgotten all about Rosie.

"He understands now." The old man winked at me. "We got a deal, you and me. We're in this together. That's the way it's got to be."

"Okay," Gemignani said. “Let's do what needs to be d one."

A smiling bellboy opened the limo door and Gemignani handed him my bag and a ten-dollar bill. The bellboy scurried away, whistling, his polished black shoes silent on red carpet. He slapped the marble knee of a statue of Hercules and disappeared through a revolving door. For a moment I heard the jingling music of slot machines, but then the door's rubber seals caught and I heard nothing.

Vegas. When it was quiet, it was nothing more than a piece of the desert.

Gemignani patted my knee. I could feel his wedding ring through my thin slacks. I wanted to shove his hand away, but I knew that would be a mistake.

"I never saw anything like that before," he said, a whisper of admiration in his voice. "I never did."

I got a cigarette out of my jacket pocket and planted it between my lips.

"We don't have a reservation in your name," Gemignani said. "Just tell the desk clerk that Jimmy G sent you. Torito's press conference is gonna be on Wednesday at noon—that'll give you three days to rest up. Check with the concierge on Wednesday morning and he'll give you the details."

Another pat, and then Gemignani's hand slipped away. "You do good work, Richie. I'm glad you're part of the team."

I climbed out of the limo and closed the door too hard; the slam sounded like a hammer blow. My lips quivered and I almost lost my cigarette. I waited for a scream of pain, but it didn't come.

I patted my pockets, searching for a match. Gemignani's driver offered a lighter, but I was shaking so badly that I could barely catch the flame.

The driver flicked his fingers against my chest. "Don't get too close. A man in your condition shouldn't play with fire."

I blew smoke in his face.

He looked hurt. "Just a piece of friendly advice," he said, handing me a thick envelope. "Here's some more: stay away from the roulette wheel, and never hit when the dealer is showing a six no matter what you've got in your hand."

I took the envelope and started up the red-carpeted stairway. Hercules stared down at me, a hunk of dead marble.

I thought about wood, dead and seasoned, smelling of muscle and blood. Claw hammers and carving knives stolen from Penitente men, adrenalin chloride 1-1000 and Enswell irons and vaseline. All the rotten pieces of Torito that the old man cut away and flushed down the toilet. All the surgical thread and bloodstained sandpaper and rusty nails. Rusty nailheads fading to cherry-red scars. Avitene and thrombin, whittled survey-stake ankles and knuckles made of ironwood. Slivers and shavings that writhed and died like worms on the green tiled floor; my cramping fingers fighting to grip a surgical needle slick with blood. I thought about wood that splits, and men with knives, and men who never see the punches coming.

And then I didn't want to think anymore.

My heartbeat was strong and even—mesquite is a damn tough wood—and I knew how to keep it that way.

The desert whispered behind me, but inside the hotel there'd be noise. I ditched the cigarette. Opened the envelope. I had three days of nothing, money to burn, and a new ticker that could keep the pace.

The rest I'd learn to live with.

I wasn't going to worry about the scars.

DEAD CELEBS

THE WOMAN WHO ANSWERED THE DOOR had on a wispy chiffon dress that reminded Ray of the gowns those busty bitches wore in those old Hammer horror movies. Ray loved all that stuff—big breasts and Hammer horror movies and women with chiffon dresses and pinched British accents—and he would have been really excited but for a couple of things that didn't seem right.

The woman's skin was blue.

The dress was cinched around her middle with a rope of seaweed.

Her blond hair was soaking wet and a dead crab was tangled in it.

And worse than all that, she didn't have an accent. She greeted Ray in a flat, whiny voice that reminded him of the time he'd spent the night in a Sioux City bus station.

"What kind of wood doesn't float?" she asked.

Ray's eyebrows squirmed like two perplexed caterpillars. "Huh?"

She looked hurt. "You don't get it."

"Guess I don't."

"Natalie Wood. I'm Natalie Wood." She sighed. "Now do you get it?"

Ray squinted at her. This was some strange shit. This bitch wasn't Natalie Wood. Why, Natalie Wood was the wife of that guy who played that real cool TV crook who worked for the government. Ray remembered that, because that show was one of his rerun favorites, one of the best things to come off the Universal backlot in the sixties. And Natalie Wood had drowned years ago....

Ray laughed and tugged the rope of seaweed. "Natalie Wood!" He howled. "Shit. I get it! What kind of wood doesn't float!"

She looked him over, and it was her turn to look confused. "Who are you supposed to be?"

"Ray," he said, and he shifted the hatbox he was holding from right hand to left and shook her blue hand. "Raymond Meleski."

"Oh yeah?"

"No one told me it was a costume party. Really. I'm here to see the man of the house."

She rolled her eyes. "C'mon in, Ray Meleski."

Ray followed her down a hallway decorated with posters from silent movies. Excellent color, no fading, only the slightest hint of age. Some of the damn things were worth a good piece of change. Ray made a mental note to ask Cardell's friend if he wanted to unload any of them, because Ray was acquainted with a collector out in Thousand Oaks who would go apeshit over a couple of the Charlie Chaplin posters.

At the end of the hallway, Natalie brushed past a potted fern that was big enough to be used for a prop in a jungle picture. Before Ray could follow, a fat guy stepped in front of him.

It was Elvis Presley.

Well, it wasn't Elvis. But the guy was done up just like the King circa 1976, long after Big E had discovered carbohydrates. Big pillow for a gut. Bushy sideburns. White jumpsuit.

The zipper of the jumpsuit was lowered to the man's solar plexus, and there was a fake autopsy incision glued to his sternum. It was a good makeup job, and Ray wondered if Cardell had done it. If he had, Ray would bust the big soul brother a hard one.

Ray had grown up in Memphis.

"That's sacrilegious," he said.

The man thumbed the gash. "The record shows, I took the blows," he sang, waddling up a staircase to the right. "The record shows, I'll snort some blow, and snort it myyyyyy wayyyyy...."

From the spacious living room, Natalie gave Ray the old come-hither with her index finger. "Everyone's out on the pier," she said.

She opened a smoked-glass door and slipped outside.

Ray shifted the hatbox back to his right hand. The prize that he had brought for the man of the house rolled around inside.

Probably should have bought some of that popcorn stuff to keep it from getting messed up, he thought.

But there hadn't been enough time. The meet had been arranged at the last minute, and that was okay with Ray because he wanted to get the damn thing out of his apartment, out of his life. The sooner, the better.

Ray thought about money and he thought about Cardell.

"Nobody told me it was a costume party," he said.

Cardell called them fartlicks, though he didn't know why. They were easy for Cardell, hard for Ray, and a daily ritual for both on the beach near Cardell's apartment.

Run from one end of the beach to the other, like a sprinter. Then walk back. Then sprint again, then walk again. Basically, that's all there was to the fartlick game. Ray didn't much care for the whole thing, but he knew that he had to keep trim if he ever wanted to break into the movies, and he didn't like the idea of giving up desserts.

Ray Meleski had met Cardell Word on a construction job, and they'd hit it off right away because they both collected movie memorabilia. Cardell wanted to get into the movie business too, but he wanted to work behind the scenes. Makeup. FX. All that gooshy stuff you see in horror pictures. His dad was a successful mortician back in Chicago, and Cardell had developed his skills the hard way, reassembling faces that had been battered against car windows, plugging bullet holes with mortician's wax, and worse.

Ray moved in with Cardell when housing starts took a downturn and Ray got laid off, and he hadn't forgotten Cardell's generosity during that tough time. He got back on his feet with a union job as a gravedigger at a Hollywood cemetery, and he did well enough between that money and the money he earned selling memorabilia to get his own apartment again. He worked from four in the morning till noon, and spent his afternoons answering casting calls. After that, he ran fartlicks with Cardell, ate dinner, and crashed out until it was time for work.

Things were clicking right along. Then the cemetery pink-slipped him. Two weeks' notice.

Cardell was sympathetic. He could afford to be. He'd sold a fully articulated Ray Harryhausen dinosaur to a well-known horror movie producer, and he was negotiating with the guy to do the makeup, prosthetics, and radio-controlled mechanicals for a TV series featuring one of the few movie monsters that wasn't suffering from Creeping Sequelitis.

"You sure he's not just giving you a song-and-dance routine?" Ray asked as they walked on the beach.

"I don't know. The guy is nuts, though. Might do anything. So I'm gonna wait around and see. And my chances might improve if I can help him get a couple of things for his collection. I've been stringing the bastard along with some slightly illicit bait, and I think I might have him ready to bite, big time."

"Yeah? What's he looking for?"

Cardell stopped and gazed at the ocean. "Look, man, we can both make some money off this guy. You know that you can trust me, and if everything works out the deal might lead to some acting work for you. But I'll be straight with you, Raymond. We have to get this business done real soon, and if things go wrong, you'll be the one taking the heat."

"I don't much like the sound of that."

"Yeah. But how do you like the sound of five hundred grand, tax free?"

Ray stepped outside. Five hundred grand. Tax Free. And that's just my cut.

Ray walked across the deck. It was built to look like an old pier, real rustic, with lots of fishing nets and harpoons and petrified starfish and those glass floats used by Japanese fishermen. Beyond the pier, the sun was glinting off the waves. Ray reached into his pocket and got his sunglasses.

They were out here all right, just like Natalie had promised. Over by the railing, a blue-skinned Marilyn Monroe danced to a Jim Morrison tune with a man dressed in a Clark Gable Gone With the Wind outfit. Clark was pretending to have a heart attack at the very sight of her gyrations. Behind them, a guy in a Superman costume shimmied and shook with a battered Jayne Mansfield clone. Supes pulled a cap pistol from the band of his tights and gave himself a couple of good pops in the head.

Jesus. Cardell hadn't been kidding about the producer being a quart or two low. Ray could just imagine the party invitations; COME AS YOUR FAVORITE DEAD CELEBRITY. TASTEFUL RECREATIONS DISCOURAGED.

Ray got a beer from the bar and looked for Cardell, but his friend was nowhere in sight. He elbowed his way to the railing, set down the hatbox, and stared out at the surf. The tide was coming in. Not much beach left in sight.

Ray didn't know much about architecture—his construction experience was with hammers and heavy equipment, not blueprints—but he could see that the pier was more than just a clever decoration. It helped support the house. The entire structure was up on stilts, and at high tide the water was most likely directly underneath. It reminded Ray of a couple of restaurants he'd visited when he'd done a sportswear commercial up in Monterey.

He imagined the equipment they'd used to sink the big pilings. Must have been something to dig so many deep holes. And then he thought about the cemetery and all the goddamned holes he'd dug with the big yellow backhoe, and as he shook away the memory he knocked his beer off the railing.

It fell to the beach.

A wave kissed it.

Shit. At least it wasn't the hatbox.

Get a hold of yourself, Raymond.

Ray picked up the box and went for another drink.

At the bar, a guy wearing a pin-striped suit and a black fedora poured Stolichnaya into a tall glass jar. The jar contained a huge dildo, so long that it had been folded over in order to fit inside. He toasted Ray and took a big gulp of vodka.

Ray laughed. "John Dillinger, right?"

"On the first guess," the guy said.

Dillinger elbowed past a couple of guys disguised as the Kennedy Brothers. Shiny suits and lots of blood. Ray almost expected to see Cardell standing behind them, impersonating Martin Luther King.

But Cardell wasn't there.

Ray helped himself to a South Pacific Lager, found an opener, and popped the cap off the green glass bottle. He headed for the railing, then turned back when he realized he'd forgotten the hatbox.

Natalie had it. She saw him and dodged through the crowd and into the house.

Laughing.

"C'mon," Ray said. "Open the door. I really need to have my box back."

"What's the password?" Natalie giggled.

Ray shook his head. First Cardell, who'd obviously come to the party disguised as the Invisible Man. Now this shit.

She said, "You haven't gone away, have you?"

The door opened an inch, just enough so Ray could see her smile.

Just as he considered ramming the door, it opened a little wider.

Blue skin. Lots of it.

"You're not mad at me, are you?" She glanced at the hatbox which sat on the corner of the bed. "I mean, I had to lure you up here somehow."

Ray smiled. Sky-blue breasts. Navy-blue nipples. Hell, even her trim was dyed as blue as a sapphire.

"Everyone's out on the pier," she said, stepping back from the door.

Ray moved forward and cupped a breast with his left hand.

Cardell wasn't around.

The hatbox was safe.

Hell, it was a party.

Tenderly, he took the dead crab out of her hair.

It wasn't until she had him on the bed, pants down around his ankles, that he looked up and spotted the Vampire hovering at the window.

Ray tried getting up from the chair, but James Dean whacked him real good with a steering wheel.

The Vampire laughed.

Ray glared at James Dean. What a sick fuck. He wore pigskin racing gloves and his long, bony fingers were wrapped around a twisted steering wheel that belonged in a junkyard. His blond hair spiked up from his skull, which was cracked on the right side, revealing a runny gob of brain matter that stained the collar of his red windbreaker. The rest of his face was like a weird jigsaw puzzle—torn, bloody, and missing a piece or two.

And the bastard seemed to enjoy his work. Ray started for him and got whacked again.

Steering Wheel Fu. Shit. Ray eased back in the chair.

"Ready to listen now?" the Vampire wanted to know.

Nodding, Ray looked at the producer's dead-white vampire face. Red lipstick had been applied to the man's generous lips with feminine care. He was gaunt in an androgynous kind of way, but the blue steel .45 that he held in his right hand went a long way toward defining his masculinity.

He stood before a wall that was cluttered with movie memorabilia; autographed stills, lobby cards, a pair of manacles hanging from a peg above a poster for Murders in the Rue Morgue. A mahogany armoire stood on the wall to his left. Masks and expensive Japanese monster models were housed in glass cases that lined a wall-length bookcase to his right. Ray saw that one of the cases contained a rubber bat, old and mostly rotted. In another case was a wooden stake, along with a brass plaque that read DRACULA 1931.

The producer undid the string that was tied around the hatbox.

Ray remembered his last shift as a gravedigger. Dark. Quiet. The kind of dark quiet that only comes at four o'clock in the morning.

The producer lifted the lid.

Ray heard the creaking sound the casket had made when he'd opened it, remembered placing the shovel blade against the neck of the dead actor resting inside. Remembered Cardell's words; "If things go wrong, you'll be the one taking the heat." Remembered feeling sick and ashamed, but excited too, thrilled by the prospect of a steady television job.

He remembered thinking about five hundred grand.

He remembered the pink slip.

He remembered his booted foot stomping down on the shovel.

The producer lifted the head of Hollywood's most famous blood-sucker out of the hatbox. He raked his fingers through the dead man's hair. "Thank you, Mr. Meleski," he said. "My collection is all the richer for your assistance."

"Great," Ray said. "Now if we can just take care of the remuneration end of things, I'll be on my way."

The producer grinned, a perfect imitation of the mirthless expression that had sent shivers up the spines of so many moviegoers. He raised the severed head to eye level and stared at the sunken eye-sockets. "There was a stake in his heart, wasn't there?"

Ray almost laughed.

The producer's eyes widened. "Dear Christ, you mean to say there wasn't a stake?" He tipped the Vampire's head back and glanced at the ruined neck. "And there's no garlic stuffed in the neck cavity!" He ran a finger between leathery lips, over the Vampire's yellow teeth. "Why, if the legends are true, he might just open his mouth and..."

"BITE!" The producer jerked his finger away from the Vampire's mouth and laughed hysterically. He pointed at James Dean, who had retreated to the door. "I had you going. Admit it, I had you going!"

James Dean lowered his battered head in shame.

The producer placed the severed head on a mahogany desk that matched the armoire in style and color. "So," he said, "we'd be in real good shape if not for one little thing."

Ray asked what that was.

"You chopped my beef, you little asshole!"

The producer nodded at James Dean.

The rim of the steering wheel smashed Ray's nose.

"No two-bit actor chops my beef and gets away with it!"

Ray's head lolled dizzily. He wanted to say that he'd only done what the producer wanted him to do. He'd chopped the dead guy's head off. That was all. But then he realized that the producer was talking about Natalie, and the funny thing was that he hadn't even chopped her, because she'd had his pants down around his ankles and her plum-colored lips around his...

Again, the producer nodded.

"I didn't know she was your girl," Ray began. "I thought it was just a party, y'know? Open season..."

James Dean hesitated.

The producer waved his .45. "By Christ, you'd better do it if you want to get paid!"

The steering wheel spun forward and split Ray's lower lip. Then the manacles came off the wall.

Ray cursed The Beach Boys. Such fucking liars. The California surf was nothing but cold. Miserable cold and advancing quickly, and there wasn't a resourceful surfer girl in sight.

Ray's mouth was full of blood. His feet were numb and his calves were cramping. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't straighten up. A wave threw him off balance and he butted the piling that stood before him. He swallowed hard and coughed against the gag jammed in his mouth.

Between waves, he could see the source of his predicament through the glassy, green-tinged water. There was a heavy eyebolt set in the base of the piling, and the chain that connected the manacles was looped through it. Ray could sit down, in which case the water rose to his Adam's apple when the waves washed in, or he could stand, hunched over, straining the muscles of his shoulders and lower back as he fought against the chain.

He settled on the latter. His head was clearing now, though his ears still rang from the beating he'd taken, and he used all his strength to pull at the eyebolt. But his feet sank into the sand, and the manacles cut his wrists, and the eyebolt didn't budge.

He could hear the party above. Music. Laughter. Dead Elvis, singing his special version of "My Way."

Another wave hit Ray, and a rope of seaweed lassoed his waist.

Stupid stupid stupid. Five hundred thousand bucks. There for the taking. Just like the fucking head was ripe for the plucking.

And he'd felt so bad about stealing it. Like a little baby. Jesus. What was his taking it next to what that sick fuck in the big house above was going to do with it? What was his momentary indiscretion next to the years of warped fun that that crazy shit was going to enjoy?

The producer made his own rules. That's how he'd got to where he was. Big house. Big deals. Ordering people around. He didn't give a shit about what anyone thought of him. He lived on his own terms.

Not like me, Ray thought. Not like a guy who gets laid off once, laid off twice, all the while scraping by like a bug because he doesn't have the guts to make the world give him what he wants. Doesn't have the stones to fuck people over, doesn't have the brains to realize that the absence of same is not an admirable trait in a town like Hollywood.

Maybe in Sioux City, but not here.

The tide washed forward. Even standing, straining for height, the waves were up to Ray's nipples.

Upstairs, someone turned off the music and Ray heard the distant breakers rolling in. Loud, pounding things. The party sounds waned and died. The light that broke through the slatted pier evaporated as the floodlights above were extinguished.

Now the waves were shoulder level. A good splash and Ray would get a mouthful of saltwater. And with the gag nearly jammed down his gullet, he'd be unable to spit out the water.

He could drown standing up.

Ray imagined he heard Natalie Wood's ghost laughing in the surf.

He strained against the manacles.

If I get out of this, I'll change. If I get out of this, I won't be a loser ever again.

A yellow circle bobbed between two pilings set high on the beach. A flashlight. Someone sloshed into the water and disappeared under a wave.

A jack handle scraped Ray's thigh.

The eyebolt was pried loose.

Ray raised his arms.

A ruined face appeared next to his own. "Man, your pecker really fucked us up this time, didn't it?"

The woman who answered the door screamed.

Ray stumbled forward, his eyes wild, seaweed coiled around his arms and waist. He grabbed Natalie by the hair and spun her against the wall, hard, but not so hard as to knock the expensive movie posters off their hooks.

She looked at him, her right eye bright and blue, her left eye swelled shut.

"I'm giving you a chance," he said. "Get gone."

He didn't have to tell her twice.

The producer was asleep in his bed. Without his vampire makeup, he looked much older, withered.

Like the severed head that lay on the pillow next to him.

Ray grabbed the collar of the man's silk pajamas and jerked him to a sitting position. The producer's heavy eyelids fluttered open, but not before Ray had wrapped the manacle chain around the bastard's scrawny neck.

"Christ, no! You're dead! You're drowned!"

Ray grinned. "You should have pounded a stake through my heart. Should have stuffed my mouth with garlic."

Ray tightened the chain. He nodded.

James Dean came forward.

The twisted steering wheel came down hard. Again, and again.

They were in the trophy room, filling pillowcases and boxes with memorabilia.

Cardell had peeled off his James Dean mask and his black gloves.

"Ray, man, I can't say how sorry I am. I hated to hit you like that, but the way things came down I would have earned a bullet if I hadn't done what he said."

"It's okay." Ray lowered the glass-encased rubber bat into a box. "We're going to make it worth our while. I bet we'll clear half a mil on this stuff, easy." He set the box aside and opened a pillowcase. "I only wish I'd have known it was you behind that makeup. Dressing like a honky teen idol—I'd have guessed that was against your general principles."

Cardell shook his head and flipped through a neat stack of hundred dollar bills. "I wanted to let you know it was me. I wanted to meet you downstairs when you came in, but the sick bastard wouldn't have any of it. I think he wanted to split us up, divide and conquer, save himself some money. So he jerked me around up here, showing off his private collection."

"Private collection?"

Cardell smiled. He stepped to the mahogany armoire, twisted two brass handles, and opened its doors.

The severed heads peered out at them.

Hers. Jaw crumbled. But hair still platinum blond.

His. Eyeless. But the moustache still black, still pencil thin.

Hers. Cracked. Broken and battered in a car crash. But still, hers.

His. The twisted lips. The bushy sideburns.

Thinking of money, Ray smiled.

A winner's smile.

’59 FRANKENSTEIN

ALL HE WANTED —the one and only thing he wanted, in fact—was to borrow the keys to the car.

But the doctor refused in that cool, condescending way of his, pointing out the error in his creation's logic as he packed the bowl of his pipe with cherry tobacco. "Now, my boy," he began as he always did, "I installed a perfectly serviceable brain in your cranium, and you're not using it. We both know it's not just a simple matter of your borrowing the car keys. That is only the surface question. Below that seemingly innocuous query lurk troubling subtexts. If you were to borrow the keys, I would be forced to assume that you'd like to go somewhere in the car. And if you were to go somewhere, people would, quite naturally, observe your movements. I'm sure you recall the unpleasantness during your previous excursion into the outside world. Certainly, I don't have to remind you of that. Do I, my boy?"

"That was your idea," the boy said, ashamed of the pitiful little voice that rose from his great chest. "I had to kill that kid. I had to have his face. I couldn't stand it anymore, being so..." His big hands wiped clean trails through the tobacco-stained air, groping for words.

The doctor chuckled, shaking his head, sucking on his vile pipe. "I do wish you'd develop your vocabulary, my boy. Any number of words will do— ugly, grotesque, hideous, repulsive." Again, the too-pleased-with-himself chuckle. "Monstrous, perhaps?"

"I'm not that way anymore." The young man smiled, touching the face that had been his for two years now, a handsome face that he had memorized in the small mirror the doctor had given him. "The things I did were ugly things... I did them because I was ugly. People were afraid of me. But that was before—they won't be afraid anymore. Now I look like everyone else. I'm different than I used to be."

"Yes, my boy. You're different. You wear a different face, a face that once belonged to someone else. Another boy. A boy who lived in this town, in fact. A boy with friends, teachers, family... a boy with a young sweetheart." The doctor sighed, a sure sign that the conversation was about to come to an abrupt end. "No, I'm afraid that you'd be recognized were you to venture forth from our comfortable abode, and that would bring questions, difficult questions. The time for answers has not yet arrived. We have more work to do. Our experiment has not yet concluded. Yes, we are finished with your face, and your arms and torso are certainly in fine shape, but that left leg of yours... that slightest of limps... and that unfortunate tattoo on your right hand... not to mention your eyes, my boy." The doctor shook his head. "I demand perfection before I reveal you to the world. And I assure you, my boy, when we arrive at perfection you will most assuredly long for the privacy of evenings such as these, when your world consisted of no more than a few rooms. But, I promise you this, I now and forever will be your protector. I only have your best interests at— "

Doctor Frankenstein didn't see it coming. His creation had moved behind him—ever so slowly, head down—as if he were accepting the inevitability of the doctor's arguments, and then the room went dark. Frankenstein was thinking that he should check the fuse box, but quite suddenly he realized that was an absurd idea because he was flat on his back, out of the comfortable recliner and on the rug in front of the fireplace, his pipe lying there on the floor, a smear of red smoldering tobacco charring the carpet.

His creation loomed over him, a smile on its face, a fireplace poker in its grip. The poker came down. Slashing. Crushing the doctor's cheek, but speeding on, completing its deadly arc.

Then starting back.

This time taking the doctor's right eye.

Frankenstein thought that he should scream. He knew exactly what was required to produce the desired result—synapses firing in his brain, muscles responding, the requisite amount of air expelled from his lungs, flowing over his vocal chords, and —

The poker came down again and speared his cheek, shattering teeth beneath. The hook buried itself between molars and wisdom teeth. The creature twisted the weapon, trying to free it, but it held firm. He yanked it sharply and it came loose quite suddenly, the hook pulling teeth and tearing flesh, ripping through cheek until it reached the startled curve of lip, shredding that too, creating a wet red wound that resembled the twisted smile of a clown.

Now the doctor did scream. He screamed as the monster took hold of his ankle and dragged him over the smoldering tobacco, across the living room, through the kitchen, and down the staircase that led to the basement laboratory. He screamed as his head slammed the first step, the second, the third... the fifth... the seventh... and then he was done screaming. Momentarily unconscious, his remaining eye rolled back in his head—eggshell white cracked with brilliant red veins beneath a fluttering pink lid. The right lid mimicked the action, smacking wetly as it fluttered over the empty scarlet socket.

A sharp exhalation puffed the doctor's torn mouth. Conscious once more, he reached out as the monster dragged him across the lab, made a desperate grab for the leg of the operating table. Missed badly. And then the room was behind him.

The monster pulled him into a narrow corridor, advancing at a pace most deliberate. Not too fast. Not too slow. A pace that would allow a wounded man time enough to contemplate what lay ahead of him, for the door at the end of the corridor opened onto a creaking plywood staircase cobbled together by the doctor himself (and while Doctor Frankenstein was many things, a carpenter he was not).

The stairway led to a single chamber. A pit where Frankenstein disposed of excess body parts in a most ingenious manner, erasing even the tiniest shred of evidence.

As the monster opened the door to the alligator pit, Doctor Frankenstein thought that he certainly had better do something—something now, something drastic—but then he was tumbling down the rickety staircase—plywood creaking, nails groaning—splashing finally into a shallow pool.

Something clattered down the stairway after him. Then Frankenstein heard his creation's footfalls on the floorboards above. Crossing the laboratory, then climbing the staircase that led to the kitchen, the living room. The doctor did not hear the front door open, only heard it slam closed...

Then there was silence, black as the water which pooled on the concrete floor of the pit... silence soon broken by the sound of a gator moving through shallow water.

The young man's heavy foot mashed the gas pedal and the Chevy roared backward, veering sharply as his big, mismatched hands twisted the steering wheel too far one way, then too far the other. The car jumped the curb of the brick driveway and trenched a wild brodie on the front lawn, finally launching the mailbox skyward as the rear bumper smacked the post that held it. The post itself was transformed into a hail of flying splinters as the car powered backward onto the two-lane country road.

Sweat beaded on the young man's forehead, but there was really no need to worry. The house was far from town, and there wasn't another soul on the road at this hour.

The boy raced into the night. First gear. Clutch in. Second gear. Clutch out. The big car stuttered and died, and Frankenstein's creation swore under his breath.

Clutch in. He restarted the engine, foot light on the gas pedal. Clutch out, slowly this time. First gear... clutch in... second gear... clutch out, slowly...

The boy knew the car inside and out. It was his creation. He had built it from a battered hulk Doctor Frankenstein had hauled home from a nearby junkyard. Chevy body, but parts from a couple dozen other vehicles as well. Chrome straight axle, steel-crank 375-horse 327, body as black and glossy as a Mamba's scales, aluminum dash so clean you could eat off of it. Building the car had been the doctor's idea of therapy, but it was his creation's vision of freedom.

But the being Frankenstein had constructed from pieces of teenaged athletes who had perished in a school bus accident did not know how to drive the cherry vehicle he had created. Oh, he knew in principle, well enough. But he had never had the opportunity to test those principles.

Until now.

Clutch in... third gear... clutch out... slowly, slowly.

Foot on the gas. Picking up real speed now. The road a taut whipcord bathed in headlight glow. The house of Frankenstein gone now, buried beneath the black shroud of a summer night. A vault of unkept promises abandoned in the darkness. If Frankenstein would have kept those promises, things might have ended differently. But the doctor was a liar, always talking of freedom, but never letting that magnificent word stand on its own. Chaining it to other words—patience, and perfection, words that stung his creation as surely as the inevitable, prying bite of the doctor's scalpel.

No one would cut on him ever again. The boy was certain of that. By now Frankenstein was dead, erased from the earth by the creature which dwelled in the dark waters beneath his house of pain. It was over.

And it was beginning. The boy longed to roll down the window, feel the summer wind on his face, hold a piece of the summer night in his lungs. He wanted to turn on the radio, search out something good. Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues." Gene Vincent's "Race With the Devil."

Time for all that later. Now he had to concentrate.

Clutch in. Fourth gear. Clutch out.

Good. Very good.

He kept his mismatched hands on the wheel, the bulldog tattooed between thumb and index finger on his right hand spreading its jaws as if ready to lock on black plastic. His eyes—one green and one blue—held the road. The speedometer needle speared sixty, then seventy.

A sign blurred by on the right. One mile to the main highway.

The boy smiled.

He rolled down the window.

He flipped on the radio.

Stared out at the straight and true whipcord road to freedom.

Saw the dog, trapped there in the unforgiving glow of his headlights, staring back.

The gator's jaws snapped closed, and twin canyons of pain trenched Frankenstein's left calf. The reptile pulled at him, slowly, an unconscious imitation of the deliberate manner in which Frankenstein's creation had dragged him through the basement laboratory, as if giving the good doctor time to realize just what was happening to him.

Frankenstein reached out, grabbing for the bottom stair. The massive reptile whipped its head to the side. Tendon and cartilage tore, and something crumpled in the doctor's knee. Tibia and fibula splintered simultaneously.

Frankenstein's hand snapped closed, but the stair was out of reach, and he was rewarded with nothing more than a handful of water. Only water, nothing more —

No. There was something in his hand. A metal shaft.

In a flash, he remembered tumbling down the staircase. Recalled the sound of something clattering down the stairs behind him.

The fireplace poker.

Frankenstein lashed backward, striking out as hard as he could.

He hit nothing but air.

The gator was gone.

So was the better part of the doctor's left leg.

Fat tires dug in as the boy hit the brakes.

The left front exploded in a shower of rubber. The car spun, and the boy could only sit there, mismatched hands knotted around the wheel, tattooed dog's jaws mangling a circular black bone, foot heavy on the brake. Link Wray's "Rumble" spilling staticky through the radio speaker, pounding in his ears. The Chevy completed one rotation. Started another, then drifted off the whipcord blacktop, kicking up hard fistfuls of dirt, scything a wide swatch through tangled skeletons of overgrown brush, tires grinding empty beer cans and decayed roadkill... glossy black body heaving through a chain-link fence, powering forward and up.

Then down. Both headlights exploded as the front bumper compacted the grille. The boy thought that he was going to die. Smash against something waiting in the blackness beyond the fence, smash it so hard that he would come apart at the seams and crumble into a hundred pieces. But the car only drifted to a stop and died, and the boy found himself staring through a cracked windshield snared by a net of chain link.

Link Wray's guitar drifted away, ice melting in the warm night. The boy turned off the radio. He tried to open the door, but it was wrapped tight by the same length of fence that blanketed the windshield. He kicked at the door until it gave, providing just enough room for him to slip out.

Heavy black boots skittered over gravel. He couldn't quite pick up his feet. Knees weak, legs shaky, he stumbled forward, limping worse than usual. He couldn't see much in the darkness, but he could hear just fine.

The dog he'd nearly pancaked growled at him, and he stopped dead in his tracks.

Frankenstein dropped the fireplace poker and unbuckled his belt, urgently dragging it free from his trousers.

Blood gushed from the doctor's left leg. A mauled, bloody stump ending just below the kneecap, which was now a slick hunk of useless bone suspended by a thread of ragged flesh.

The doctor had seen much while building his creation, but nothing could have prepared him for this. Because this was his leg, his knee, and he was thankful for the darkness, glad that only a slim tendon of light connected the alligator pit to the doorway above, for if he could see his ruined knee clearly, if he could see his severed leg in the grip of the gator's jaws...

No. He wouldn't think of such things. Not now. He threaded the belt through its buckle, lassoed his leg several inches above the wound. Tightened the loop, then threaded the end of the belt under and around the buckle—once, twice, three times—tying it off as best he could.

Just like tying off a sausage, he told himself. One of those nice plump bratwursts Mama used to make... If he had only listened to her. If he had never come to this accursed America... this land of greasy cheeseburgers, rock 'n' roll, and platinum blondes....

Gott in Himmel. This is a fine time for regrets. He shook away his thoughts, concentrating on nothing more than the present moment. There was still no sound from the gator, but the doctor knew that it was back there... waiting in the black shadows, the blacker water. Frankenstein snatched up the poker and eased backward, toward the staircase, eyes on the darkness. He didn't want to turn away from it, but he had to, and soon he had dragged himself onto the first step, pushing off on the slick, slime-coated floor of the pit with his remaining foot. He tucked the poker under one arm and turned, pulling with both hands now, but it seemed he weighed a thousand pounds. He prayed for an adrenaline rush of epic proportions, prayed to keep shock at bay, and he pulled for all he was worth. His body slick with sweat, his nerves tingling with desperation, he rose to the second step just as the water parted and the black wave broke behind him.

Reflexively, the doctor kicked back at the unseen attacker.

The gator's jaws slapped closed audibly, missing the doctor's right foot by inches. Desperately, he pulled himself up—his biceps burning, the muscles in his shoulders knotted with fear—and in an instant he was on the third step.

For just an instant.

Plywood creaked. Nails groaned.

The third step gave way.

The growling dog approached Frankenstein's creation, and the young man lurched backward. His hands were at his sides, muscles tensed, big fingers curled like the claws of a wild beast, a —

Monster. Suddenly, he remembered the boy whose face he now wore, recalled for the millionth time the cool blue terror freezing his victim's eyes as the hands of a monster closed around his neck and snapped it like a twig.

That wasn't me, he told himself. I'm not that way anymore.

The dog's bark slapped him through the silence. The young man had nearly run down the animal, and now it seemed intent on returning the favor.

The beast was certainly well-equipped for such a task. Its jaws were blunt and square, lined with yellow-white spikes that seemed to glow in the moonlight. Its head resembled nothing so much as a cartoon bear trap—a huge machine of a head on a body of compact muscle, balanced on legs that were extremely thick and extremely short. Frankenstein's creation knew that this dog had been bred for destruction, just as he had been bred for—

For what? His mismatched hands shook before him, ready to tear the beast to pieces. He could almost hear the tattooed dog on his right hand growling in anticipation.

"No," he said, and his hands dropped to his sides, and his fingers seemed to lengthen in the moonlight.

The dog's black ears perked.

Its nose wriggled.

It whined.

And then the dog moved forward, nudging the young man's right hand, sniffing it.

The beast's jaws widened. A curtain of black lips rose over twin rows of sharp teeth.

A pink tongue darted between the beast's teeth, licking the tattooed dog on the back of the young man's hand. He bent low, patted the animal's head. "It's okay, boy. We both had a scare, but we're okay."

The dog cocked its massive head to one side, as if considering the boy's words. Once again, it whined.

The boy looked around. His car was in bad shape, but it wasn't the only one. There were dozens of cars here, rusting hulks. Bent and twisted, some completely crushed. All silent and dead beneath the light of the August moon.

He turned and started toward the road. The dog followed, keeping to his right side, its nose not far from his tattooed hand. And then something smashed against the young man's skull, and he went down hard.

When he opened his eyes, a hard circle of light seemed to pin him to the ground. He blinked and found that he could see around the light, see the man standing there behind it, the dog at his side.

The man aimed the light at the face Frankenstein's creation had stolen from another, and then he redirected the beam, haloing the creature's right hand so that the tattooed dog seemed to glow like a tangle of electric blue veins on dead white skin.

"It ain't possible," the man said. "It just ain't."

The creature squinted up at the man—the harsh electric light in his grip, the cool circle of moon behind him. He saw nothing more than silhouette, but that was enough.

For Frankenstein's creation had a perfectly serviceable brain in his cranium, and he was using it.

Clearly, he could see that the man standing above him had only one arm.

The doctor tried to hold on, but he couldn't. He slipped sideways, dropping ass-first through the opening between the second and fourth stairs. The drop was only about a foot and a half, but he came down hard, on his tailbone, his body wedged between the stairs, his ass once more immersed in cold, black water.

He twisted to one side, his eye searching for the gator. It waited on the other side of the stairway, watching him.

An instant later, its reptile brain had made a decision. The gator darted forward, jaws snapping closed, and the first step splintered between its teeth. Frankenstein wriggled madly, his ass sliding easily on slime-slick concrete. His stump scraped against the brick wall, but the makeshift tourniquet held firm. Frankenstein managed to get what was left of his wounded leg into the gap between the stairs, and then his right leg followed suit, his face scraping the side of the fourth step as he dropped to the floor of the alligator pit.

A good half-dozen splinters speared his cheek. That was fine—not much of a price to pay for the barrier that protected him from the gator.

Right. Some protection. A veritable wall of Jericho. One termite-eaten plywood step, guaranteed to come tumbling down at the first snap of the reptile's slavering jaws. The doctor held his breath and stared, watching the step and the gator beyond, waiting... waiting...

The damn thing refused to move.

Frankenstein swallowed hard. Bait. That was what he needed. Something to spark that pea-brain into action. Gingerly, he reached out, and his left hand came to rest on the second step.

The gator charged forward, jaws snapping, but the doctor had already removed his hand from the step. But he did not shrink from the great beast. His right hand lashed out, between the stairs, and he drove the fireplace poker into the reptile's right eye.

Bone cracked in the hollow of the beast's eye socket. The creature exploded from the floor as if electrocuted, flopping wildly on its back, pus-yellow belly exposed now, bullet-head thrashing in the black water until the poker clattered loose.

But by the time that sound echoed through the pit, Frankenstein had pulled himself between the second and fourth steps, onto the fifth, the sixth, dragging his bloody stump behind him, ascending from the alligator pit with a singular determination not seen since Sir Edmund Hillary had conquered Everest.

The doctor squinted at the open doorway above as he pulled himself onto the seventh step. Soft white light bathed his anguished features, and he managed a slight smile.

Once more, the stairway creaked. Groaned.

Frankenstein closed his eyes, praying that the seventh stair would bear his weight.

Bear his weight it did, but that fact brought him little solace.

A timber cracked below.

The entire stairway swayed.

The one-armed man's name was Roy, and it wasn't until Roy shared that sliver of information that Frankenstein's creation realized that he had no name at all.

But he knew that he had many other things. The legs of a star running back... the torso of a center... a wide receiver's lungs... a right arm which had belonged to Roy in the days when Roy was an All-State quarterback.

The young man had told Roy the entire story from beginning to end, and it was obvious that Roy believed every word of it. Now he trailed behind Roy, limping worse than usual, following the one-armed man through the junkyard. Roy's dog kept to the boy's right, near the hand that had once belonged to his master. That made the young man feel especially guilty, even though Roy didn't seem to notice.

The young man said, "I thought you were dead. All of you. That's what the doctor told me."

"Maybe the doc was right." Roy didn't look back as he spoke. "Hell, maybe we all died that night. But maybe some of us just died a little more than others. Maybe they were the lucky ones."

Roy cut a path between a twisted Cadillac convertible and a rusted-out Hudson. The flashlight beam played over a squared-off metal box—yellow as cheddar, but alive with dead-white splotches that resembled mold. The beam settled into a straight line, tracing a row of hard black letters that ran beneath a dozen broken windows. BELTON SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL. HOME OF THE BULLDOGS.

Roy pointed at the stenciled words. "That explains the tattoo, at least."

The young man rubbed the bulldog tattoo on his right hand. "It explains a lot," he said. He reached out and touched the school bus, gently, as if he expected an electric shock.

Roy laughed. "Nothing to be afraid of. It ain't gonna bite or anything."

The young man turned towards him. "I'm sorry," he said. "I wish there was something that I could do. I wish — "

"Don't worry about it," Roy said. "It's not like it's your fault or anything." He set the flashlight on the hood of the bus, reached out with his left hand and squeezed the young man's right arm.

"Hell, at least you're taking good care of it for me. You must work out."

"Weights," the young man said. His hands were floating in the air before him, searching for an explanation. The second-string quarterback's left hand, Roy's right. "Bench press, mostly. I can press four hundred, even do reps with it. Curls are my favorite though. I have a preacher's bench, and— "

Roy's bitter laughter prickled over the young man's spine.

"You have to understand," the young man said. "I had no choice. It's not my fault... Well, that's a lie. My face. I'm responsible for that. Even then, the doctor maneuvered me into it. He made me ugly so I wouldn't disobey him. You see, he wanted me to kill that boy. He wanted me to steal his face. Frankenstein needed to own me with his silence."

"So how'd you get away?"

"It was simple," the young man said, his voice even, honest. "I hit the doctor over the head, and then I fed him to the alligator."

"Oh, Jesus." Roy laughed until tears spilled from his eyes. "Oh, Christ, that's a good one." He went on laughing, shaking like he was going to break.

Roy's laughter made the young man nervous. He hadn't said anything funny. More than anything, he wanted Roy to understand. "It's not a joke," he said. "I had no choice."

Roy's laughter evaporated. "I didn't have a hell of a lot of choice, either," he said. "That's the real joke. I mean, after the wreck I was alive and all, but without my arm... My arm was my ticket out of here. And now you've got it. As for your face, I never liked its previous owner much anyway. That's no skin off my butt. Tough world, and all that happy crap. Both for him and for me. But I don't hold a grudge. You only get what you can take—that's my motto, amigo."

"You can't mean that."

Roy laughed. "Hell if I can't. The world doesn't give you much, and what it gives you you have to work at keeping."

"You make it sound brutal."

"Brutal? You got that right. Look around, buddy. Is this how you'd like to end up? I mean, I don't have a whole bunch of prospects. Me, the guy who was going to break the family mold, get the hell out of this town. Football star. College bound. All that stuff. And here I am, stuck, just like my brothers."

"Were they in the bus accident, too?"

Roy shook his head. "No. Those two had a couple'a years on me. They went marching off to Korea. One didn't come back—he's planted in the cemetery just up the road, right next to the morgue your buddy the doc raided when he put you together. The other came back ruined. He was the smart one, too. A college man. A doctor, just like your buddy Frankenstein. He almost made it out of this pit, but his brain required some serious pickling after two years up to his knees in blood and guts as a MASH surgeon. He's been at the bottle since the day he returned to the good ol' U. S. of A."

The young man sighed.

"Don't say I'm sorry,” Roy said. "You get one shot at that, and that's it."

"I won't."

Roy nodded. "You just take care of that arm for me, amigo. You get on that highway, and you get the hell out of here, and you take care of my arm."

"I will," the young man said. "But my car — "

"You can take mine," Roy said. "It's parked out back, behind my trailer. It's got a fancy knob on the wheel for one-armed driving and everything, should you ever come up short."

"What about you?"

"I'll fix up your rig. New bumper, couple'a headlights, new windshield... Like the mad scientists say: Parts is parts." Roy chuckled. "To tell you the truth, I wasn't much of a mechanic even when I had two arms, but I get along. My brother helps me out. He's way too shaky for cutting on people, but cars are different. They don't scream."

Frankenstein's creation couldn't help but wince.

"Get gone, amigo," Roy said, tossing a set of keys.

Roy's right hand opened. The key ring disappeared between thumb and forefinger, into the bulldog's gaping mouth. Strong fingers snapped closed around the keys. The owner of Roy's arm slipped them into his pocket.

"Thanks," he said.

He patted the junkyard dog's head, one last time.

Then he was gone.

Frankenstein could hear nails tearing loose from warped plywood. Years of dry rot had finally taken their toll. One of the support timbers had crumbled, and now the stairway was pulling away from the brick wall of the pit.

Frankenstein dragged himself forward. Onto the eighth step. The ninth. Behind him, stairs collapsed like dominoes, splashing into the black water, but the doctor heard nothing but his own feverish breaths, his fingers scrabbling for purchase on the next step, and then the next.

He pulled himself into the hallway just as the staircase crumbled behind him. The lab lay before him. If he could get to it in time, there was a telephone. His house was far from town, but an ambulance could reach him in a matter of minutes.

If he could reach the phone.

He had to. He'd come this far. He had to make it, all the way.

The tile floor was slick, freshly waxed. It was hard going, but Frankenstein kept at it, ignoring the wet squeal of his bloody stump sliding across slick tile, instead imagining pleasant things. A nice, warm fire. A good brandy. A fragrant curl of smoke drifting from his pipe.

That was when he smelled the smoke. Not fragrant, but raw. With sudden clarity he remembered the monster striking him with the fireplace poker, the pipe flying from between his teeth. An image flashed in his memory, a smear of red smoldering tobacco on the living room carpet.

And now he could smell the smoke.

The phone. He had to get to it now, while the line still worked.

Urgently, he dragged himself across the lab. The desktop was out of reach, but he tugged at a length of black cord and the phone tumbled to the floor.

He snatched up the handset and dialed frantically.

All for nothing.

The phone was dead.

And, Frankenstein knew, so was he.

He lay back on the cool tile floor, waiting for the end.

The needle stabbed Frankenstein's arm. "Don't worry," the man said. "I'm a doctor."

Frankenstein stared at him. He blinked, but his vision refused to clear. Still, he did not need to see the man to form an impression, not when he could smell the whiskey on his breath.

Footsteps came from the hallway, along with laughter. "Jesus, the kid wasn't kidding." It was another voice, different from the first but somehow the same. "You should get a look at this. There really is an alligator down there."

"We gotta get out of here." The first voice again. The doctor.

"Sure. How about our buddy the mad scientist? I mean, I know his tap dancing days are history, but is he gonna make it?"

"Well, I topped him off with morphine. If he doesn't pull through, at least he'll die happy."

"We don't want that to happen."

"Well, sure. We gotta get him out of here. Hell, we gotta get us out of here. That fire up there isn't going to be very forgiving once it gets going good and proper."

"Don't worry, brother. Tonight's our night." The second man laughed, and the sound cut Frankenstein like a knife. "Jesus, we're lucky fellas. Driving around, looking for a secret laboratory, like we're really going to find it, even if it's out here in the middle of nowheresville. Thank God that kid couldn't drive worth beans. Thank God he smashed that mailbox but good. And that brodie he laid down on the front lawn, that was pure X marks the spot."

"But is it worth the risk, Roy? I mean, do you really think this guy can fix things for you?"

"He made a whole guy out of dead stuff. Compared to that, how tough can it be to fix me?"

"I guess you're right, but..."

Frankenstein couldn't follow the conversation. The voices were much too similar, and the men were talking fast. If only he could see clearly, see the two men... He reached up, fingers scrabbling over his numb cheek, and rubbed at his right eye. He couldn't feel a thing...

...but that was good, because there was nothing to feel.

Frankenstein jerked his hand away from his face.

He had no right eye. Only a raw red hole. Now he remembered. His right eye was upstairs, a fleshy smear on the carpet. The monster had taken it.

Gott in Himmel. The morphine. He was swimming in the stuff. He couldn't feel a thing.

A man loomed over him. Frankenstein blinked, left eye straining. For a moment his vision cleared, and he saw that the man who stood above him only had one arm.

It was difficult speaking through a torn mouth, but Frankenstein managed to ask, "Who... are you?"

"It's not who I am," the one-armed man said. "It's who I'm gonna be. See, I figure that you owe me a little favor, Doc. And when you deliver on that favor, I'm gonna be your new right-hand man. It's time someone put you on the straight-and-narrow, and I figure I'm just the guy to do it. You and me, we're going places, Doc. Just you wait and see."

"You only get what you can take," the other man said. "That's our motto, amigo."

The two strangers laughed at that.

And, laughing still, they dragged Frankenstein up the stairs, through infant flames, through dark rumors of smoke, conveying the good doctor into the night beyond, where waited the enduring embrace of captivity.

CANDY BARS FOR ELVIS

THIS GUY HAD THE SNEER, ALL RIGHT. It slithered like a pink snake around a little black cigar, the skinny kind He favored but never smoked in public.

I leaned against the wall of the recording studio that had once been a warehouse, just watching him. Then I got tired of watching and stepped from the shadows into the dim light, my motorcycle boots heavy on the wooden loading dock.

A startled little puff of smoke escaped from his nose. "You almost scared me to death," he said, and I smiled because he'd forgotten the accent.

He squinted. Like I said, there wasn't much light. Then he really saw me. My face, that is. "This some kind of a joke?" he wanted to know.

I stood there and let him sweat. I was a real piece of work. The Kentucky rain had sopped me pretty good, and I hadn't shaved since leaving Denver. The blade in the Schick injector that had seen me through Vietnam was so damn dull that it wasn't worth bothering with. And the way things were going money-wise, cheap burgers and jelly donuts were what my budget demanded, not little niceties like fresh toiletries.

"Okay. A joke's a joke." The sneering man flicked his cigar into a puddle and turned to the door.

Even with the rain, my mouth was as dry as a schoolmarm's cunt. I worked up some spit that got my tongue to tasting like burnt tinfoil and croaked, "I-I've been listening. You can still hit the high notes, and that's a fact."

He stopped cold. Maybe it was just the sound of my voice. Sometimes it can do that to folks. Or maybe it was what I said.

Or maybe he could smell the burnt tinfoil.

His hand slid off the knob. He spoke softly, remembering the accent this time. Even the little stutter. "I-I'm glad to see that you're a real fan."

I didn't want to scare him again, so I didn't say anything. Just nodded.

He looked me over, and his eyes froze when he saw my neck. "H-hard times, huh?"

Again, I nodded.

He fished a twenty from his pocket and filled my hand. "There's a store down the road. Little ol' mom-and-pop joint. How about you run down there and get me a couple'a candy bars? You can keep the change."

I heard him, but not real clearly — I was too busy looking at his hands.

He wore black gloves. A silver guitar was stitched on one, a musical note on the other. Rhinestones, or diamonds, outlined both.

I looked him in the eye, letting a sneer of my own raise one cheek, like I was smart enough to understand.

He nodded. "Gloves don't leave no fingerprints. Make sense, son?" He slapped my back with a big leather paw and sent me into the cold Kentucky rain. And then he hollered after me, "Most folks think I'm dead, remember?"

I sat in my car and stared at the twenty. I figured it'd buy a lot of cheeseburgers and a lot of jelly donuts. Even one of those cheap pizzas from that Domino's joint, though I didn't know how He felt about pizza.

I was tempted to stuff the money in my pocket and go.

I'd done worse. And skipping with the twenty wasn't anything next to what Black Gloves was doing. Raindrops tapped on the hood of my rusty old Cadillac and I thought about it. Andy Jackson stared up at me, anticipating my decision with appropriate solemnity.

Egypt wouldn't like me taking off, though. If I did that, it would mean we were quits, and I'd have to cross Denver off my road map. No more visits to her little place on South Clarkson. No more feeling her hands on me while I stared up at His black velvet portrait.

Egypt's voice came back to me: "I heard about this fella from a gal in one of the Kentucky fan clubs..."

Above me, on the bedroom wall, the velvet microphone in His hand. Run your fingers through my hair...

"This fella's been lettin' folks see him, playin' cat and mouse games..."

A knowing grin on His face. Cuddle me real tight...

"And he's actually makin' records. This fella wants to leech money from the true fans. Just like that writer who said He's still travelin' around the country, usin' that name from one of His movies..."

Egypt's fingers, traveling everywhere, real slow and nice.

I almost sang it. "I don't want to be your tiger, 'cause tigers play too rough." But I couldn't sing anymore, and it wasn't any good just saying it.

Besides, it would have been a lie. Egypt made me feel real good, and I would have done just about anything to keep it that way. So I just stared up at His face, thinking about her soft, black velvet touch.

Her fingers went everywhere. Everywhere but the scars on my neck.

No one touched those.

No one touched His sacred marks.

I looked away from the Cadillac as soon I stepped out of it. It was pretty-well rusted. The new paint job hadn't helped any, but that was my own fault. After my visit with the writer who had claimed He was still alive. I'd made the mistake of celebrating at a bar that was across the street from a paint store. I'm here to tell you: whatever the problem, pink Rustoleum isn't the solution.

Anyway, Black Gloves was right about one thing: the store was definitely a mom-and-pop operation. Tonight, Pop was working. He didn't pay me any mind, though. Monday night football.

I looked at the magazines, enjoying the fact that the old guy kept the place pretty toasty. I dried off a little, flipped plenty of pages, but nothing really interested me. The guys in the rock 'n' roll magazines had hair that was prettier than Egypt's. And that's saying something, because Egypt's hair is done up in one of those spider's nest bouffants. It's really something to see.

The donuts were next to the magazines. I got a box, then took a pint of milk from the fridge case. As the glass door whispered closed, I caught sight of my reflection.

Black sideburns. Thick whiskers between 'em.

Whiskers that didn't do a damn thing to hide the scars on my neck.

It always upsets me to see my neck. I eased down the far aisle, palmed a pack of razor blades, and tucked them into my jeans.

Like I said: I've done worse things.

I remembered the candy bars just as a commercial interrupted the game. Some jock pitching— you guessed it— razor blades. The old guy looked up from the register and saw me for the first time.

"Kiss my ass," he said. "You look just like Him."

Tinfoil sizzled underneath my tongue. "Don't sound like Him, though. Not anymore."

Pop looked away, his old lips sagging like he'd torn away Christmas wrap and found nothing but a big turd. I walked out— the plastic pack of razor blades jabbing my crotch, the familiar sneer spreading across my face— and climbed into the Caddy that was the color of an old scar.

The Caddy's worn wipers couldn't do much against the pouring rain. I popped a cassette into the tape deck. Gold Records Volume 4. "It Hurts Me."

I did pretty well after He died. I even had a manager. Smart little fellow I'd known since high school. He got me out of the Chicago legion halls and into the Vegas casinos, a move that made me feel like dreams could come true.

That was when things started to fall apart. I guess His songs say it all. "Girls! Girls! Girls!" and "Burning Love." And then, when things got weird and black, "Way Down."

I'm ashamed of the stuff I did in Vegas. But I never actually bought the drugs. And I swear that those women asked me to do those things to them. For the most part, they enjoyed every minute.

For the most part. That doesn't make it right, though.

Anyway, that's when the cancer came. The doctors burnt it out, of course. They said that I could live a full life. Just so long as I didn't mind the dry mouth, the taste of burnt tinfoil.

It's funny. Even then, I knew that the cancer was a sign. My own personal flaming star, sent directly from Him. You see. He didn't want me to end up the same way He had. It was a simple case of caring. Pure TCB.

Now, that's Love with a capital "L."

That's when I really changed. I couldn't perform, of course, but I still wanted to be like Him. The way He should have been. The way He was in those movies — pure and good and right like no other man could be.

I spent the next couple years working some of the same jobs He'd had in those movies. I was driving truck for a carnival, thinking of Roustabout, when I met Egypt. She was a dancer in counties where we couldn't buy the law and a stripper in counties where we could. Not young, not beautiful, but she knew how to use what she had and took good care of it. I laid eyes on her and it was love, just like the song says: I went and bought myself a ticket and I sat down in the very first row...

At first, she was drawn by my looks. But she didn't turn away when she saw my scars, and she didn't flinch when she heard my voice.

See, she understood His love better than I did.

We were happy for a while. Quit the carny life. I drove truck and she settled in Denver. Then things started happening that we didn't like. It seemed like every time we heard His name, someone was trying to make a fast buck.

They were turning Him into a joke.

We didn't think it was funny.

We followed His motto. TCB.

Takin' care of business.

"Took you long enough," Black Gloves said. "I'm damn near starvin'."

I handed over the candy bars. One of His songs ran through my head. "You're the Devil in Disguise." Suddenly, I felt kind of dizzy, like I might faint.

"Whoa, boy. Whoa." Black Gloves steadied me.

"H-hard times," I croaked.

Black Gloves patted my back and sent me into the Kentucky rain one last time. Just like I'd hoped, I heard the sound of paper tearing as he moved slowly through the darkness. I ran halfway across the parking lot before I turned and hollered. "I-I'll tell 'em that you're still around. I'll tell 'em you still care!"

Black Gloves had entered the building, and the door had almost closed, but I caught his wink, and his words.

"You do that. You tell 'em that they gotta believe."

Then he was gone. I stood in the rain and rubbed my whiskers, feeling like the dark gunslinger He'd played in Charm.

I thought of candy bars. Razor blades.

Little bits of nougat. Little bits of steel.

When you come right down to it, they couldn't taste any worse than burnt tinfoil.

I hurried away, laughing so I wouldn't hear Black Gloves hit the raw, red note that He never touched.

STYX

THERE HAD TO BE A PLACE where they could be alone, a quiet place where they could find an ending. A place empty of everything but shadow, where they could be together. The man behind the shuddering steering wheel of the old Dodge van, the broken doll of a woman hunched in the rear, the ghost of Buddy Holly whispering haunting promises of sweet kisses he'd miss.

Buddy's promises were cold and dead, but they kept coming, verse after verse, traveling from the afterlife via completely unsupernatural means—a Maxell cassette, a Panasonic boombox, and six fat Duracell batteries. The man behind the shuddering wheel drove on, his knuckles as large as mushrooms, as red as rare beef. The steering wheel was his tiller on this black Styx of a highway and the big Dodge van was his ferry. He held on, his grip vise-tight, his jaw clenched, his lips drawn back in the hideous grin of a man chewing his own heart.

Buddy Holly's song rode the icy wave of a big Hammond organ, a horribly steady drumbeat, a guitar line as pure and frightening as the night. Frightening. Because things waited for the man just beyond the Highway Styx. Exits. Service stations. Telephones. Desert casinos offering one last chance to those with no chance at all.

Most of all, other people waited beyond the road. People who would ask questions about a man driving too fast, a woman broken and battered.

Still, he had to take the chance. After all, the van required gas. The man required food. To obtain these things, he required money. The woman required... What? The man thought he knew the answer to that question, though he could not translate that answer into words, and that was why each stop was made quickly.

The woman remained in the van. Desperately injured, still unconscious. In the casino, the man focused on the ATM as if it were the most beautiful thing in the world. He didn't spare a glance for the slots or the thin-shadowed cocktail waitresses or the bullet-ridden car which rotated with macabre slowness in the center of the gambling pit, its shadow as heavy as Detroit steel. The man ignored these things because he knew that this was not a time to examine irony, which was a habit that had powered him forward for twenty years. His vision, his mission, was monastic in its purity. He hid his hands from the view of others and kept his eyes off the shadows that pooled at the ankles of the living. It wasn't hard. The people around him were either in a hurry to get to Vegas or glad to be free of it, and they weren't exactly observant.

Outside the casino, the man tossed the ATM card into the night, his right front pocket thick with twenties. He pulled into a service station, topped off twin tanks and attended to a parched radiator, gobbling a cheeseburger while he worked.

He returned to the safety of the Highway Styx. But even the safety of the highway was relative, for the night was so much more than one big shadow. In the heart of night, engines growled like hungry beasts and inquisitive hi-beams severed the fiber of midnight anonymity. A highway patrol cruiser hugged the shoulder just ahead. A black sedan with smoked windows passed on the right, then slowed. The man drove on, passing the cop, passing the sedan, passing other drivers lost in faint green rivers of dashboard light.

Vegas was still so close, just a U-turn and a couple hundred verses away (as the dead rockin' boppin' Texan sings)... An empty house stood in Vegas. And in that empty house, a man waited. Or what once had been a man. He waited in the dark, without a shadow. Soon daylight would come, and men would return to the empty house like vampires seeking shelter. They would find the man who had no shadow. And then others would travel the Highway Styx.

The driver palmed shadows from his raw knuckles, his face. Wiped his palms on his jeans, leaving dark stains, immediately regretting his stupidity. He could get rid of bloodstains—that was as simple as changing his clothes, which he'd done shortly after leaving the house in Vegas, but these were stains of another kind.

Buddy Holly sang about people who took things for a game, and people who didn't understand, and sweet lovin' that was better than a kiss, and the driver's eyes were no longer fixed on the highway with its hungry, growling cars or the things that waited beyond it.

The rearview mirror trapped his gaze—a slab of silver nailed to the night sky, containing the woman. And that was as sweet an illusion as could be imagined, because for the last twenty years the man had known that such a thing was impossible.

He had to be careful. The mirror was no more a cage than the van, or the highway. That was why he had to hurry. Get off it. Find a place where others wouldn't interfere.

The man reached for the mirror, but he couldn't change its angle, not when it held her reflection. He could only touch it, touch her... He could only listen.

Buddy Holly had changed his tune.

Just you know why... The man thought it, but he didn't dare say it, because the woman in the mirror was staring at him from behind a mask of bruises and blood, her lips puffy with a tortured smile that ran deeper than simple wounds of the flesh, and all the man could think of was that he had to drive faster because this road was so damn long, and he had to find the place where it came to an end, where there were no other cars or exits or people, where the van would be free of harsh white boundaries and tempting detours, where they could be alone.

An empty place.

He drove, faster now, the music his fuel.

The van's headlights washed a sign: NO SERVICES THIS EXIT.

"We've crossed the river," the man said, down-shifting, hugging the off-ramp.

The steering wheel shuddered. Much worse, the steering column rattling now, because the smooth black highway was gone.

But the man kept driving.

Into the night. Across the earth, the sand, the shadows.

To the place that waited for them.

It was obvious that the big Italian couldn't quite believe what he'd heard. "You expect me to pay him for what?"

The doctor, a florid-cheeked Irishman, blanched. "It's strictly legitimate, Carmine. The cops pay for Mr. Bramble's services. So do the feds, though you never read about it in the papers. That's a sizable plus." The doctor turned to Bramble. "That's correct, isn't it?"

Bramble smiled. "I'm discreet, if that's what you're trying to say."

Carmine Tonelli muttered a few words which were very indiscreet, eyeing the black man suspiciously. "Let me get this straight—you're telling us that you can find out who killed my brother by talking to his ghost?"

Bramble sighed. "It's not quite that simple, but— "

"Lew might buy this shit," Carmine said, thumbing the doctor's sunken chest, glaring at the little man. "But I didn't grow up in the Hamptons with a silver spoon and an antique Ouija board. Look, I got a dead brother upstairs... I need someone who can give me some real answers... I don't mean the cops... We don't handle things that way... We're— "

"Discreet?" Bramble offered.

And now Carmine's glare was all for him. "Don't get smart with me. You're not smart, you see? I been around. I heard some of this spookshow boogieman shit before. Maybe not your particular line, but my mama spent a goddamn fortune on palm readers. My idiot sister, too. I got a few gypsy pelts on my wall. I know the look of a bloodhound that's got the money scent. So don't try— "

Bramble held up a hand. "The price just doubled."

Lew gasped. "What?"

"I can ignore the canine reference, which might be purely coincidental, but the other..." Bramble shook his head. "Spookshow... boogieman? You want to talk like that, Mr. Tonelli, it's going to cost you."

Carmine's eyes narrowed. "What's this golden-tongued asshole doing in my house. Lew? Get this nig— "

"Tripled," Bramble said.

" —out of here!" Tonelli turned and started for the staircase.

Bramble watched the big man traverse a patch of morning sunlight that spilled from an upstairs window. Carmine's shade played out behind him. Thin for a fat man, dull and nearly brown—an ugly stain on the white carpet. The sunlight ate at the edges of the thing as if trying to eliminate it, until the mobster's shade trailed behind him like the tattered train of a whore's wedding dress.

Dreadful. Bramble had to look away. "Colon cancer, wasn't it?"

Carmine Tonelli stopped cold, but he didn't turn. "That was three years ago," he said. "The doctors got it. All of it. And you read about it in the National Enquirer."

"Don't be so sure." Bramble paused before continuing. "You don't sleep much anymore, do you, Mr. Tonelli? You see things in your dreams. Dead things, dead people. They aren't pretty and they never shut up, do they? You close your eyes and you go to sleep, and you find yourself among the long shadows, and there are nasty whispers under your pillow."

Carmine whirled. Now there was a gun in his hand, but Bramble's eyes stopped him cold. Something dangerous lurked in those brown-black pools... something that knew too much.

"It's a funny thing," Bramble said. "Some people are more dead than alive. They've got one foot planted in another world, and they could step over at any moment."

Carmine turned toward the bedroom at the top of the stairs. "Okay," he said. "Triple my original offer. Consider your pound of flesh extracted; consider my Eye-tie ass scared good and proper. Now get your African-American ass up here. I ain't leavin' my brother lookin' like this for long."

The abandoned motel fought the morning light. Peeling white paint caught the sunrise and sent it tumbling away in rippling heat waves that worried the net of yucca trees surrounding the property.

Dead leaves rattled and stuttered like wild castanets in the yucca forest. The man smiled. The trees didn't like the sunlight any better than he did.

He sat under a slight overhang that ran the length of the motel. The sunlight could not find him. He closed his eyes and tried to catch the yucca beat, strumming his guitar, picking out the heart of one Buddy Holly song or another with aching, swollen fingers.

"Peggy Sue" worked pretty well. The rattling leaves provided a driving, if erratic, beat.

"If you knew..." the guitar player said, and then he laughed as the memory of the man in the house in Vegas played through his head like a familiar riff.

That man hadn't known anything at all.

Vince was the man's name. The guitar player didn't know much about him, apart from the fact that Vince was connected to the woman and Vince was afraid of guns. Too bad on both counts, especially the latter. If Vince hadn't panicked at the sight of the gun, he might be okay right now, and the man with the guitar might still have some bullets in the pistol tucked beneath his belt.

He might never have felt the warm flecks of blood spraying his face as the pistol bucked in his hand and Vince's chest erupted in a half-dozen wounds. But Vince had mistaken the guitar player for a jealous husband or a knight in shining armor, and the man wasn't either of those things. Not at all. Hell, he was only a guitar player.

Dry heat killed the breeze and quieted the yucca trees. Tangled shadows stretched from countless trunks, shimmering, dancing on the sunbaked desert sand.

Scratch one rhythm section. The man's fingers traveled cool steel strings, all alone.

There were no shadows in music.

Not even when you played a dead man's songs.

"Is something wrong?" the doctor wanted to know.

Bramble ignored the question. "Tonelli, do you know who was with your brother last night?"

Carmine didn't take his eyes off the bullet-ridden corpse. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Vince not talkative, or what?"

Bramble knew the time had come to ignore sarcasm. "The more you can tell me, the more I'll know."

Carmine sighed heavily. "Like the old saw goes: I am not my baby brother's keeper. Get that straight. I can tell you that Vince wasn't particular about his women. Picked 'em up like most guys pick up a six-pack. Drained 'em and tossed 'em. That was Vince."

Drained 'em and tossed ’em. The words sent an unfamiliar shiver up Bramble's spine. He bent low, close to the corpse. Oyster-white flesh. Lips gone blue, going black. Bramble ignored these things, looking for shadows that most people couldn't see. Some called them ghosts, but Bramble didn't use that word. It wasn't quite accurate—after all, he could glance at Carmine Tonelli and see his "ghost," and Tonelli wasn't even dead. Not yet, anyway.

No. What Bramble could see was the essence that often remained even in the wake of death—the human soul, the human spirit. Or, as his mother had called it: the shade.

Some people took a long time to die. Like Carmine Tonelli, they lost their shades bit by bit, piece by piece. And if they lived an especially long time, they might leave behind nothing more than a few tatters, like pieces of a crazy quilt.

But this...

Vince Tonelli was much younger than Carmine. But on the floor, next to his corpse. Bramble saw nothing more than a narrow crescent moon of oily blackness—rich and heavy, but painfully thin.

The edges of the crescent moon were ragged.

Torn.

As if something had ripped the biggest part of Vince Tonelli's shade free.

Stolen it.

Bramble had never seen anything like it. Generally, it took hours, days, for a shade to overcome the trauma of death and move on, if indeed it moved on at all. To heaven, to hell... to somewhere. Bramble had no idea and cared less. Money over metaphysics any day, as far as he was concerned. But with so little of Vince Tonelli's shade remaining, Bramble didn't know how much he could learn.

"So," Carmine said, "who did it? Tell me, so I can kill the bastard."

"Give me a minute." Gingerly, Bramble stretched out a hand.

He touched Vincent Michael Tonelli's shade, expecting the familiar icy ripple to travel from his fingers to his brain, expecting the connection.

But the shade rippled and pulled away, up the corpse's arm.

And it was warm! Bramble stumbled back, wiping his fingers on his slacks, whimpering.

The corpse's eyes flashed open.

"Help me!" Vincent Michael Tonelli screeched. "Jesus God, help me!"

In this case, music didn't exactly soothe the savage breast. The man's fingers knotted in pain; even three chords could be hell when your knuckles were hamburger meat. And the desert air didn't help any. It was too dry—like sandpaper on his voice.

The man set the guitar aside. He rose and stepped away from the overhang, into the light.

The sunshine felt good on his knuckles. He opened the back of the van and took a cold cheeseburger and a can of beer from the ice chest. Funny, dipping his hands in the half-melted ice felt good, too.

He drank first, and his throat felt a little better. He figured he could make it feel better still. He drained the first beer, and then he got another. After his fourth beer, he remembered to eat the cheeseburger, even though he wasn't really hungry anymore.

Something to wash it down. That was what he needed. Another beer. A can crumpled in his powerful fist, which didn't hurt so much anymore. He stared down at his cowboy boots, wondering if Buddy Holly would have liked them. That made him giggle. He looked at his boots and the ground that surrounded him, twisting his neck this way and that like some crazy long-necked bird, and all he could see was sand bleached white by the unrelenting sunlight.

That made him laugh.

"Shadow-free, that's me." He hadn't cast a shadow in twenty years, since the night he first met the woman in a Lubbock honky-tonk. Back then he was a guitar player ripping through one Buddy Holly request after another for a drunken, sentimental crowd. Twenty years since she'd torn his living shade from his backside. And hardly anyone ever noticed, because guitar players, good ones, moved in the night.

He wasn't all that good, but he sure as hell had learned how to move.

Twenty years, and now he'd finally tracked her down.

He figured another beer would be pretty good about right now, but he didn't get one. Instead he wondered how many men she'd been with. Hey, scratch that, this was the nineties—how many people had she—SCRATCH THAT TOO—had it been with?

He wouldn't think of the battered thing in the motel room as a woman, because that was what had gotten him into trouble in the first place. Still, he wondered about other people who had crossed paths with that thing. He wondered how many—who couldn't see shadows the way he could—didn't even know that something was missing.

How many how many I wonder... but I really don't want to know.

Buddy Holly didn't do that one.

Singing it anyway, he stumbled to the door of room number 12.

He got it open. Spilled into the room with the morning light.

There she was, all bruised smirk, lips buttoned tight.

"Give it back," he said.

She didn't say anything.

He hit her again, flush, just the way he'd hit her—SCRATCH THAT, hit IT—at the house in Vegas before the guy with the torn shade got all stupid-brave and tried to attack him.

Her nose started bleeding.

"Don't pretend with me," he said. "Just you know why."

A wave of cold laughter shivered over him. "It's funny." A girlish voice just above a whisper. "I almost remember you."

He hit her and hit her, until she was gone and both eyes rolled up in the thing's head and thick shadows spilled from its lips.

Carmine was gasping for breath. "You think he's here?"

Bramble didn't spare Tonelli a glance. There were too many people in the casino, too many shades to watch. "I don't know," he said. "Your brother... the way he is... This isn't the way I usually work. Let's just say that I've picked up a scent. Someone connected with your brother's murder was here."

Tonelli's doctor hurried along behind the two men. "I still don't understand," he said. "About Vince, I mean. I examined him. Six bullets in his chest. He doesn't breathe. No heartbeat. He's dead."

"No he's not," Bramble said. "He can't die. Someone stole the part of him that would allow that to happen. And unless we can find a way to get it back, you're going to have to keep him locked in that basement for a long, long time."

The scent grew stronger. Close now. Bramble hurried past a thin-shadowed cocktail waitress, pushed through a tight knot of people.

He stopped short, a heavy shadow pooling at the tips of his shoes. A big car loomed before him, a relic from the days of the Depression-era bandits.

"Shit," Carmine said. "Bonnie & Clyde were killed in that car. It's a hook to attract the tourists. If this is what your nose has found us, you've screwed up bad, Bramble."

Bramble turned away from the car, as if drawn by a magnet. He spotted a bank of ATM machines along the far wall.

"Look at him," the doctor said. "He really sees something!"

Carmine didn't say a word.

Bramble grabbed the big man's elbow and hurried toward the ATM machines. "You had it right all along, Carmine. I am a bloodhound, and I'm about to pick up the scent of money."

Screaming shadows spilled from the thing's lips, and the man was awash in a flood of midnight.

The torrent pushed him backward, away from the thing with the girlish voice, and he grabbed at the casing of the door, but the flood was too strong. He couldn't hold it back.

The black stream boiled from the room, screaming still, and the man lost hold and swam in it, his head above the tide, washed in sunlight now, blinking tattered shadows from his eyes as the great black wave washed across the dry white sand. The man grabbed the base of a Yucca tree and the shadows washed over his head and dunked him once again, each shadow with a different voice, a different scream that could only be heard within the black grip of the onrushing tide, but none of the screams fit him, and he was once more sucked into the dead, swirling chorus.

How many how many I wonder...

He broke surface, gasping, thankful for nothing so much as the pure silence of the desert, and he fought the torrid stream, arms flailing, battered fingers grasping a branch, grasping handfuls of dry, prickly leaves, his palms pierced by them, his hands closing vise-tight around the tree as they had once closed around the steering wheel of a van that traveled a highway, a highway that was nothing out of mythology at all, nothing more than a ribbon of asphalt contained by painted threads.

But nothing could contain the shadows. Not the sun, not the earth. They spilled from the abandoned motel, an obsidian cascade a hundred times darker than any highway, cutting a path through the dry desert, shoveling trenching tearing into the earth, washing rock and sand and snake and lizard and yucca into the wide emptiness beyond.

They pulled to a stop behind the van and Carmine Tonelli burst from the rear of the car with a gun in his hand, but the man didn't even move. He just sat there on the van's rear bumper, a beer can in his hand, shade dripping from his body in fat droplets.

Bramble blinked. Blinked again.

Carmine didn't pause. He moved forward, all business, and pressed the barrel of his pistol to the man's temple, sparing a short glance for Bramble. "This the guy?" he asked.

The man wiped his lips, flicked shadedrops off of his fingers. He smiled at Carmine, and then at Bramble. An old rock 'n' roll song bounced around inside the van, trapped there. For the first time, Bramble noticed the van's personalized license plate: CHARON.

"Well?" Carmine prodded. "Give me an answer!"

"Wait a minute," Bramble said.

The man studied Bramble. More properly, he studied Bramble's shade. "You're one up on me," he said, chuckling.

"Shut up," Carmine said. "You don't talk."

The man stood up. Carmine's hand started to shake. The man stepped away from the gun, toward Bramble, and Bramble saw nothing but the pure white sand around the man's cowboy boots, no shade at all....

"I've wasted twenty years," the man said. "There's no finding it, because there are millions of 'em out there, all flowing God knows where. But let's go down to the river just the same, you and me... We can go swimmin'. Maybe we'll get—"

If he said anything else, the words were lost in the thunder of Carmine Tonelli's pistol.

The man fell. White dust puffed up around him.

And then, in the quiet of the desert, the men from Vegas heard the cool rushing of a river.

"It can't be," the doctor said.

Carmine dropped his pistol. Tatters of shade slipped away from his heels, trickling in weak rivulets across the sand.

Carmine slumped forward, into the doctor's arms.

"We've got to get out of here!" the doctor said. "Now!"

Bramble didn't move. He closed his eyes and listened. "Don't panic," he said. "It's only the wind... only the wind."

But Bramble knew these words were lies. Even as he spoke them, he heard the cool rush of shadows... the old music trapped in the van. Eyes closed, he heard the quiet movement of a man without a shadow rising from the hot sand... and the scream of a doctor who knew nothing... and the solitary footfalls of the man... cowboy boots digging tired ditches in the white sand....

Shadowstained fingers brushed Bramble's shoulder.

The man said, "Just you know why..."

WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD

SHE REMEMBERED THIS MUCH: her name was Helen and he'd picked her up in a Reno bar in 1946. It was autumn—maybe October or maybe November—but autumn for sure because he'd said that her strawberry blonde hair reminded him of the changing colors in the mountains.

Autumn, 1946. Reno, Nevada. About that much she was sure. And her name was Helen....

In 1946, Helen was employed as a cocktail waitress at the Prima Donna Casino. She made fairly decent money there thanks to an excellent memory that allowed her to sell more drinks than the other girls, but she'd been looking for an excuse to quit because her backside was a lot better looking than her front and her tips weren't exactly the greatest. Besides, working in spike heels was hell on her feet.

Helen was waiting for a girlfriend in a downtown bar when she spotted him. His name was Roy, and he was a war hero. He had a nice smile and a thick head of black hair just like Tyrone Power's, and Helen didn't mind too much that what he didn't have was a pair of legs.

"I'm just passin' through," he said in answer to her unspoken question. "I'm on my way to Hollywood. But I got time for dinner."

It wasn't like Helen, but she forgot all about her friend and accepted Roy's invitation. Over Bloody Marys and rare steaks at the Riverside, he told her about a best-seller-to-be he'd written about his wartime experiences, a book so hot that it had been picked up by Universal Studios after an eager producer had seen the galleys.

"That's great," said Helen. "Y'know, I was heading for Hollywood when I left Milwaukee, but I was stupid enough to think that I could beat the slots, and I lost my traveling money. That's the only reason I ended up staying in Reno. I think that's how a lot of people end up here."

"Coulda been worse. You coulda been stranded in Salt Lake City."

Helen laughed. "You're right about that. But Reno isn't really so bad— it's better than Milwaukee— and I don't think that I would have made it as an actress, anyway."

So it wasn't just the lure of the movies that drew Helen to Roy; she had outgrown her Hollywood dreams. And it wasn't the tragic war hero bit or the way he smiled, either, though Helen admitted that she found both qualities attractive. No, more important than the romantic stuff was Roy's genuine interest in her. Helen could tell that his attentiveness wasn't a con— she'd been around Reno long enough to recognize the kind of phony compassion that covered up sick wants and needs that she didn't want or need.

No, if anything, Roy was too sincere. There was something unusual about the way that he asked questions; he had a voracious hunger for even the most minor details of her past. Helen answered him automatically, patiently, abandoning the defensive shield that came from dealing with one drunken gambler after another.

After awhile Helen's voice started to crack, and she realized with a start that she'd spilled her life story in the time it took to drink a few Bloody Marys and eat a charbroiled Kansas City strip. She told Roy that her voice was going to give out if she kept gabbing, but he only smiled and flagged down their waiter. The little man returned momentarily with two ice-cream sundaes and a bottle of Remy Martin, a combination that promised to be the perfect balm for Helen's throat.

"God, you've got a fantastic memory," Roy said, and then he asked her one final question.

Suddenly speechless, she nodded her reply.

Hours later, when the morning sun climbed into the sky above the Biggest Little City in the World, Helen found herself laying with Roy in a honeymoon suite, smelling the Lucky Tiger in his hair and running her fingers over his muscular chest, and letting his big hands travel where they wanted because no one knew her like her new husband did.

That day was all room-service champagne and tender kisses. And that night, as Helen loaded her belongings into Roy's specially modified Hudson, she realized that everything was going to be wonderful because Roy already knew all her secrets. He said that he understood about the abortion. He knew that she had left Milwaukee in disgrace, couldn't ever go back home, and wasn't exactly proud of everything she'd done since.

"Honey, I'm so happy," she said.

A cool wind whispered off the mountains, leaving the Reno sky icy blue, perfect blue. Roy said that the moon was the color of rum, and Helen started singing "Rum & Coca Cola." She didn't think it strange when he pulled up to a pawnshop on North Virginia and bought a tenor saxophone that was hanging in the window. But back then, on the day after her wedding, she hadn't known about Don Bragonier.

"I didn't know that you played the sax," she said.

"I don't." Roy laughed. "But I'm gonna start learnin'."

Helen slid the battered alligator-skin case into the back seat, wedging the sax between two boxes filled with winter clothes. Suddenly she realized how little she knew about Roy. She stood on the grimy sidewalk, tottering in her spike heels, wondering if she should get into the same car with the man who was now her husband.

"C'mon," Roy shouted. "Hey, we got us a life to live."

Helen fingered her new diamond ring. She smiled. And then, blowing a final kiss at the Prima Donna, she kicked her uncomfortable heels into the gutter and hopped into the roomy Hudson.

Helen's feeling of unease didn't last long. Pulling into the mountains, Roy took a deep breath and said, "Now, let me tell you about myself."

Roy talked about the New York City gyms he'd frequented as a teenager, gray places where he'd spent countless hours sparring with kids who weren't half as talented as he was. He told Helen about the boxers he'd defeated at Madison Square Garden, and while she was sure that they were all famous men— contenders, Roy called them— she admitted that she hadn't heard of them. Helen had heard of Sugar Ray Robinson though, and she was disappointed to learn that Sugar Ray had KO'd Roy in three rounds on a hot August evening in 1943.

Helen blushed, realizing that her embarrassment for Roy could never match his own. "After the Robinson fight, I was too ashamed to go back to the neighborhood," he said. "I enlisted in the Marine Corps as soon as I healed up— Jesus, Ray's jab made a mess outta my eyes. Anyway, a few months later I was in the Pacific."

Roy described the savagery he'd seen at Bougainville and Iwo Jima, horrors that had never been printed in the newspapers. And when Helen gasped and said that war made good men into madmen, Roy explained that madness was the nature of war. He admitted that he had gone battle-crazy on Iwo, where he'd used his well-honed seven-inch K-bar to dig gold teeth out of the mouths of Japanese corpses.

Roy wasn't proud of that. Helen forgave him, her voice full of compassion, and for the first time she realized that her new husband needed her as much as she needed him.

The talk turned to happier subjects. Roy shared his wartime buddies with Helen, telling stories about Rod Markam, Sal Harbeck, Vinny Tocolli, Gary Van Bellen, and a dozen other guys. Helen could almost picture their young faces, and crossing into California she got the weird feeling that there were several extra passengers wedged between the tenor sax and the moving boxes in the back seat.

A chill scraped up her spine. It was a strange feeling, the same one she got when she heard the squeaking door on Inner Sanctum.

"Most of 'em are dead, of course. Never made it home." Roy brushed Helen's skirt away from her thigh, his fingers stroking her smooth, nyloned flesh. "I used to think they were lucky, but now my opinion's changed."

In Hollywood, Helen began to notice confusing variations in Roy's often told stories— especially his Iwo stories— variations that were more than simple exaggerations. The changes worried her.

Not that Roy was lying. Helen was sure that he wouldn't lie. Not to her, anyway. Not after he'd accepted so much truth from her lips.

But if not lies, then what?

Maybe boxing had made Roy a little punchy. That happened to fighters, didn't it? Or maybe Roy's forgetfulness was a way of dealing with the awful things that he had seen in the Pacific. Helen could understand that. She knew that the truth could be a painful thing.

Helen's mind had played tricks on her after the abortion. Night after night she had awakened sweaty and cold, thinking that she heard a baby crying. Each time she'd search her apartment, sure that in the next room, around the next corner, she'd find a screaming infant that was indeed her own.

Weird, remembering that.

But in the months to come, Helen decided that Roy's memory was exactly like the strange, waking dreams she'd had after the abortion, only he didn't seem to notice the changes. Some days it took Robinson six rounds to knock him out. Some days the fight went to a decision. And some days— usually rainy days when they were cooped up together in the cramped bungalow— Roy talked about Rod Markam, Sal Harbeck, Vinny Tocolli, and Gary Van Bellen as if they were still alive.

On days like that, Roy got out the tenor sax and told stories about Don Bragonier, a crazy guy he'd known on Iwo. Bragonier had been a jazz musician before the war, and he was the only guy in Roy's outfit who never talked about his hometown. He wouldn't even admit having one. "Man, I move. I'm from everywhere, like a gypsy." That was how Bragonier put it.

After taking a burst of machine-gun fire in his legs, Roy found himself on the same hospital plane as Don. He had watched Don die from head-wound complications (most of the time Don died on the plane, but occasionally he died in a Marianas hospital).

Roy always ended his Don Bragonier story by repeating his vow to master the sax in Bragonier's honor, but the awful squeals and squawks that came from the horn during the practice sessions that followed were enough to drive Helen outside into the rain.

"Babe, I hope you don't believe in ghosts," Roy would say, not noticing that the very mention of ghosts made Helen cringe. "'Cause my blowing could wake the dead."

Things didn't go so well in Hollywood. At first the producers kept Roy busy, arranging speaking dates for him, but soon it became apparent that the studio brass were hesitating. The producers told Roy not to worry. They promised that everything would change once his book came out.

Roy enjoyed himself while he waited. He drank a prodigious amount of rum and Coca Cola. He took Helen to fancy parties. Occasionally he played poker with Errol Flynn and his cronies, and he brought home famous people who behaved like old friends.

The publisher named Roy's book Marching Home. The reviews were good; the sales weren't. The conventional wisdom ran this way: too many people had lost sons and brothers in the Pacific, and no one really wanted to know what kind of hell the front-line grunts had faced.

The studio brass dropped the movie, and then a month later they dropped Roy. They claimed that Marching Home was too grim. Someone mentioned nihilism, but Roy wasn't even sure what that meant.

"You've got a great yarn," one producer admitted. "Maybe we can pick it up down the road. But there isn't a whole lot of compassion in the book... I'm not blaming you or anything, and it's not that we want to phony things up with a load of happy ending crap. But maybe you left that compassion back on Iwo Jima. Maybe you had to, just to survive."

What the producer didn't say, what he was afraid to say, was this: "Roy, maybe the war stole more than your legs. Maybe it stole your soul."

"I can get it back, Helen. You know I can."

Roy was getting worse. He talked about "getting it back" a lot lately. The producer's words haunted him; he wrote them down in a notebook and spent his mornings drinking coffee and staring at them. In the afternoon he sat in the backyard, rereading Marching Home. Helen watched Roy from the kitchenette window, shaking a little when he threw the book across the lawn, for that was how his reading sessions always ended.

One day when Roy was out playing poker, Helen sneaked a look at the book. She was shocked to discover that whole paragraphs had been crossed out and that the margins were full of tiny notes: Not the way this happened... Bragonier died in hospital, not on plane... Vinny killed at Bougainville, not Iwo... Rod is still alive and living in Laramie. His wife just had a baby... Rod is dead, died in hand-to-hand combat near Motoyama Village on February 28, 1945....

"Oh, babe, I can get it back."

Helen looked at Roy. He was the only good thing in her life. But he didn't smile anymore and —

"They lied. Those goddamn book people in New York. That goddamn ghostwriter that the editor brought in, just to 'tidy things up,' he said. See, I've been reading my book over and over, and you ain't gonna believe this, but the things they printed ain't the things that happened. That's why the movie fell through. That damned ghostwriter changed everything, and then the publisher still had the balls to put my name on the cover and my picture on the back...."

Roy wheeled toward her. His big hands closed around her fingers, which were slick with dishwashing soap. He unintentionally twisted her wedding ring, and the diamond bit into her middle finger.

Helen winced.

Roy's voice quavered. "Believe me, Helen. I know we can work it out. It's just kinda mixed up in my head right now, but I know how to fix it. I need you to help me; your memory's so good. And mine, well, I don't think I can trust it anymore. But I can trust you, can't I?"

At least he was admitting his problem. Helen was glad of that. She nodded automatically, and then felt her face go crimson because she wasn't sure that she could be trusted at all. Lately she'd been talking to a doctor at the VA hospital, a sincere young man who said that he'd helped other veterans like Roy.

Roy didn't notice her blush. "Good. I knew I could count on you, doll. I'll tell you everything, 'cause you won't get mixed up, and you can write it all down. Then we can go from there to get it back. You can keep track of all the things we find out. And when we're done I'll show those Hollywood bastards. I'll have my own book." He tapped the well-worn copy of Marching Home with a stubby finger. "Not like this load of crap. I'll have it. Written down in my wife's own hand."

Helen massaged her sore finger, twisting the ring that joined her to Roy. She wanted to understand, but Roy's words were hard to follow. She wanted to ask him what it was (His compassion? His faith?), but she was afraid that he might break down if she admitted that she didn't know what he was talking about.

"It'll be hard gettin' back to Iwo. It'll be even harder to find the guys. God, we dug so many graves. But there's gotta be a way that we can do it."

Helen leaned against the counter. No, Roy. Oh God, no.

Roy smiled. "That's my pretty girl. I knew you'd be on my side." He wheeled himself to the back door, a look of pure contentment on his face. "Lately, I've been hearing a lot from the guys. They want to give it back to me. They know they took it, and they know how bad we need it back. Even the guys who died on Iwo know that." His hands curled into fists. "God love 'em. Y'know, I think that those poor souls want to help us worst of all."

That night, Helen gave Roy some medication to help him sleep. Then she went next door and used the neighbor's telephone.

Three men from the VA hospital came for Roy the following morning.

In 1955, after seven years as a maid at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, Helen was appointed chief housekeeper. Her days off were Tuesday and Wednesday, and she spent them with Roy at the hospital.

In 1955, the doctors decided that Roy was ready to be released. Helen was against it, but there was no use arguing with the bureaucracy.

At first Roy seemed okay. He took the Hudson out of storage and overhauled the engine himself. He even got a bit part as a disabled vet in an Audie Murphy movie.

One day Helen came home from work and found Roy on the front porch, reading the afternoon paper. He looked up at her and said, "They're comin' home, Helen. The boys are comin' home."

Helen shivered as she read the article.

"Helen, if you put me back in the hospital I'll kill myself."

Helen dropped the paper. A hot wind carried it across the front lawn and it tumbled past the open, gaping trunk of the Hudson.

She realized that she was too tired to fight Roy this time.

In 1955, the dead of Iwo Jima were exhumed and returned to American soil.

The first time they did it, on a cold October night in a Nebraska churchyard, Helen had no idea what to expect. She wheeled Roy across a frosty lawn, searching for Gary Van Bellen's headstone. Roy was shivering, and her first thought was that he needed another blanket, but just then Roy spotted Van Bellen's grave, and his half-suppressed cry of joy convinced her that he'd been shivering with anticipation.

"Dig it up," Roy said, his fingers scratching the leather armrests of his wheelchair.

Helen almost refused. For one horrible moment she was afraid that Roy wanted her to rip open Gary Van Bellen's coffin and chop off the dead man's legs. She imagined Roy screaming, "He stole them, Helen. Stole my legs! And now I want them back!"

That's how it would have happened on Inner Sanctum. And that would have been the end of it. The cops would have arrived, stopped Roy, comforted Helen. But no cops arrived, and what might have been the end was only the beginning.

The digging wasn't bad. Helen had thought that coffins were buried six feet under, but that wasn't the case. Two feet down she hit the wooden cover of a coffin vault, which she pried opened with a jack-handle. A few feet below, in a shadowy hole that smelled like earthworms and dead flowers, lay Gary Van Bellen's coffin.

Roy handed Helen a crowbar, and she opened the pine box.

She didn't look down. Her mind warned her against that. But she smelled the rotten smell, and her mouth went instantly dry.

"Take it!" Roy insisted. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. His black hair was smeared sweatily across his forehead, and his once-tanned face was as pasty as moonlight.

Roy shoved an ear of sweet corn at Helen. Her fingers drifted over the wispy, tickling corn-silk and closed around the yellow ribbon that Roy had tied around the husk.

"Okay. Now put it in his hands."

Eyes closed, Helen bent down and let her fingers do the seeing.

"Gary," Roy whispered. "It's like a trade, see? Now you got to give me something back."

Helen's hands drifted over a tattered uniform.

"I know you don't need it anymore, Gary. I gotta have it again."

Helen's fingers brushed a cold metal bracelet and then found Gary Van Bellen's hands. Thin, shrunken fingers. So stiff. So dry.

"It's an offering, Gary. To show you that I remember. You told me all about the farm. It's to show you that I listened." Roy raised his lantern with one hand and flipped through a yellow notebook with the other. "See, here's your story. Helen wrote it down for me. All about your family. I'll read it to you."

Small hands. So cold. Helen raised them, just slightly, and something cracked as she slipped the ear of corn underneath.

An offering. That's what Roy had called it. And when they were safely back in the Hudson, heading for the Wyoming border, Helen was sure that Roy had made his peace and everything was going to be okay again.

Roy parked in the shadow of an abandoned farmhouse. He taped an old newspaper over the car windows, but even with the morning light blacked out he was too keyed up to sleep. Helen lay in the back seat, staring at a page of comic strips, listening to her husband talk. "Honey, I can feel it coming back. Gary really helped me. He always did come through, and this time wasn't any different. I told you that he didn't need it anymore. I knew he'd understand. God, he wanted to give it back so bad."

They crossed into Wyoming at dusk. Roy hadn't said anything about going home, but Helen just naturally assumed that they were heading for California since they were traveling west.

False assumption.

"God, I feel good. It's almost like gettin' my legs back. Like gettin' something back that's been missing so long you forget what it's like to have it." Roy's hand brushed Helen's muddy slacks, patting the smooth curve of her inner thigh. "That Gary. I knew he'd help me. I just hope Rod will understand too. It shouldn't take us long to get to Laramie."

Roy told Helen to get out another yellow notebook, and he repeated the same old stories, the stories he said he'd heard from Gary Van Bellen's dead lips. Stories about Bougainville and Iwo Jima and the night he battled Sugar Ray Robinson.

Soon the notebook was full.

They stopped to sleep for a few hours, and then crossed into Albany County at sunrise. "Not far to Laramie," Roy said. "God, I'll bet it'll look just like Rod said it would."

Roy never said as much, but it seemed fairly obvious to Helen that the offerings were tokens of memory, something tangible that tied Roy to each man's past. Gary Van Bellen's was easy to figure: an ear of corn for a corn farmer. Rod Markham's— a bouquet of Indian paintbrush, columbine, and forget-me-nots —was almost conventional. Except this bouquet was wrapped in a rusty tangle of barbed wire, probably because Rod had spent his teenaged years riding fence for a Wyoming rancher.

Helen didn't try to understand some of the offerings. In the Chicago grave of Vinny Tocolli, she buried a dented canteen filled with the gold teeth that Roy had taken from Japanese corpses on Iwo. In a sandy grave on the Northern California coast, she covered Sal Harbeck's corpse with four gleaming hubcaps stolen off a new Cadillac, and then watched Roy pour a bottle of champagne into the grave, listening to the bubbly liquid splatter over the drumlike metal discs. Moist, salty air clung to her lips that night, ruining the taste of the champagne that she downed just to get through the ordeal.

Most of Roy's buddies came from small towns, so finding their graves was as easy as finding the local cemetery. Searches were harder in the big cities — some had a dozen or more cemeteries — but Roy wouldn't let Helen contact the VA or Marine Corps for help. He didn't trust the government. He used the phone book instead, contacting relatives of the deceased. Sometimes he would visit their homes and stay for dinner like a favorite uncle.

They drove across the country, then back again, never traveling in a pattern that made any sense. Roy would cruise from New York to Miami and then decide that he had missed a stop in Virginia. After the first month Helen stopped looking at the odometer, because the enormous number she saw growing there frightened her.

In Santa Fe they buried a kite with a tail made from a prostitute's nylons. In Seattle they interred a set of cards backed with pictures of Gypsy Rose Lee. And in a grave in the middle of a dusty Texas boneyard, they placed a bible, a shotgun shell, and a hickory switch.

After every stop, Roy dictated the same old stories, sure that he was finally setting the record straight. Helen didn't have the heart to tell him that his memory was as inconsistent as ever. She began to hope that someone would catch them and bring Roy's twisted pilgrimage to an end.

Roy said it over and over. "God, if we could only find Don Bragonier. I got so much back from the other guys, but I gave the most to Don. He's the one I really need. If we don't find him... Well, we just gotta keep looking."

Between cemeteries, they lived hand to mouth. Roy had an uncanny knack for finding backroom poker games in which he usually did quite well. He'd learned a few tricks in Hollywood, and he cheated brazenly because he believed that no one would accuse a cripple of cheating, especially a cripple who told such great stories about boxing and war and Hollywood.

On a warm July night in the backroom of an upstate New York roadhouse, Roy met a gambler who had grown up with Don Bragonier.

And on the same night, kneeling on the oily pavement outside the Hudson, Helen prayed that their ordeal would finally be over.

The little old lady smiled warmly. "More coffee, Roy?"

Roy swallowed a bite of cherry pie. "Sure, Mrs. Bragonier. And thanks."

Mrs. Bragonier nodded at Helen, who waved a hand over her cup, refusing the silent offer. Helen asked, "Can I help you with the dishes?"

"No, dear," said Mrs. Bragonier, disappearing into the kitchen. "Guests aren't allowed to do dishes in this house."

They had arrived three hours earlier, three hours late according to Roy, who had become hopelessly lost in a maze of twisting Vermont roadways. He had insisted on contacting Don's family directly because that was the fastest way to find Don's grave, and although they hadn't phoned ahead, Mrs. Bragonier had welcomed them with open arms. The old woman recognized Roy from a wartime photo that her son had included in one of his many letters, and she seemed genuinely happy to have some company on a Fourth of July holiday that she would otherwise have spent alone. "Donald was my only child," she had explained. "And now that his father's gone, it's pretty lonely around here."

Helen had smiled through it all, but underneath she'd felt terribly out of place. After two years in the Hudson, she couldn't accustom herself to chatting in Mrs. Bragonier's dining room. The elegant Victorian furniture, the smell of freshly cut lilacs, and the seeming vastness of the room itself made Helen feel insignificant.

Mrs. Bragonier filled Roy's coffee cup and then sliced another piece of pie for him. Helen wished that he would get on with it, just find out where Don Bragonier was buried so they could leave the old woman's enormous house. But Roy was hesitating, she could tell, and she didn't know why.

Helen twisted her wedding ring. Had Roy realized that Don Bragonier was the last man on his list? Was he afraid that, after all his searching, the fabled Don Bragonier wouldn't be able to help him any more than the others had?

Roy patted Helen's knee and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Her hands drifted beneath the table and her fingers curled into the linen tablecloth.

"Donald mentioned you in his letters," said Mrs. Bragonier. "I know that you two were especially close, and I want to thank you for visiting."

It was a goodbye, but Helen could tell that Roy wasn't getting the message. A confused grin crossed his lips. "Donald? Oh, yeah— Don Bragonier. A great guy." Roy stared at Mrs. Bragonier and recognized something of Don in her face. "Ma'am, I don't mean to be rude, but when is Don going to get home? I really have to talk to him."

For a moment Helen expected Don Bragonier to come banging through the front door, a big, smiling hello on his lips. But then she saw Mrs. Bragonier redden, and she was out of her chair, trailing the old woman as she fled to the kitchen.

Helen caught Mrs. Bragonier's thin wrist. "I'm sorry. He forgets — "

Mrs. Bragonier whirled, but not in anger. She drew Helen into a warm embrace. "I understand," she whispered. "Donald's father was the same way. After the war ended, a day didn't go by without him asking when Donald was coming home. You see, he could never accept Donald's death. And your Roy, he's seen so much misery. He's suffered so. Believe me, I understand how it must be."

Helen smiled at that, and she wished, hugging Mrs. Bragonier, that the little old woman could truly understand.

Helen pushed Roy down a mossy gravel path, eager to find the grave. The soft glow of Roy's lantern revealed crooked headstones near the iron gate and then shone on straight, polished markers as they entered the newer section of the cemetery.

Donald Bragonier was buried near a birch grove. Helen slipped on a pair of leather gloves and set about her task.

A dull ache pulsed in her wrists as she worked the shovel into the hard soil. Her ragged breathing mixed with the summer wind, and she shuddered when she thought, for just an instant, that she heard a baby crying in the birches beyond the cemetery fence.

Helen ignored the sounds and opened the coffin. The familiar smell of rot and velvet poured over her.

"Take it. Take it."

Helen took the sax from Roy. Eyes shut, she eased the golden instrument into the coffin, heard its thin bamboo reed scrape the velvet lining.

She had no trouble closing the lid. There was plenty of room in the coffin for the sax, because there wasn't much left of Donald Bragonier

"Don, you're my last chance. C'mon, buddy."

Sweat poured down Helen's forehead. A familiar shiver scraped up her spine.

"C'mon, Don. I know that there's more. You're forgettin' something."

Helen's head came up. She stared at Roy, a big man weeping in a sagging wheelchair. He looked down and his hands closed over her reaching fingers.

"It ain't no use, Helen. It just ain't no use."

Helen crawled out of the grave. This was how it would end. All the traveling. All the horror and misery. And it would end the same way that it had begun.

Roy's arms curled around her waist and she kissed him. She made to wipe his tears away but was surprised to find that they were already gone.

Roy's eyes were alive again. Helen remembered a night in Reno, long ago, the way his eyes had sparkled at her, and she smiled.

Roy tugged the glove off Helen's left hand. "God, Helen. I know how to find the rest of it. It's been in front of me all along and I just didn't see...."

How long ago had it been? Helen shook her head. Funny to forget your own anniversary.

Roy slid the wedding ring off her sweaty finger. "Thanks, doll. It helps. I think I almost got it back now." He let her hand slip free of his grip.

Helen stared down at the pale skin circling her tanned ring finger. Something slipped away. Roy was talking again, but she couldn't quite hear him. The wind was whispering through the trees. A baby was crying in the woods.

"I knew I gave it to them," Roy whispered. "Me, I mean. I gave a lot of me to those guys in the war. But I forgot that I gave so much of me to you."

Helen's fingers were slivers of ice. She turned away from the sad man in the wheelchair, picked up the shovel, and began to fill the open grave with hard clumps of soil.

Something exploded in the distance; the night sky flushed red and pink. Fireworks. The Fourth of July. Helen stared up from her work and watched sparks shower over a lake that was miles away.

Roy's voice was almost lost in a booming explosion. "Just wait here, Helen. I'll be back. There's gotta be a way. Maybe I can get Don's letters from his mother. Maybe they'll fill in the blanks."

Helen watched as flowers bloomed in the icy blue sky — Indian paintbrush, columbine, and forget-me-nots. The colors melted away, and a faint glow spread over the woods surrounding the cemetery.

Something small and white crawled through the birch grove. Helen dropped the shovel. She turned away from the crawling thing and saw the man in the wheelchair shoving a battered alligator-skin case into the trunk of his car.

Why was he doing that? Why had he locked her baby inside that tiny suitcase?

The Hudson roared alive. Roy backed out of the cemetery and headed down the wrong side of the road. The Hudson's Drive-Master transmission rattled noisily as the big car accelerated.

"Wait," Helen cried. "Don't go. I gave something to you, too, and you've got to give it back."

Something rattled in the distance. Helen recognized the sound: gold teeth rattling inside a dented canteen.

The crying thing curled around the base of a tree. Helen ran to the cemetery fence. Her baby was going to catch its death.

Her baby. Roy's baby.

Helen wanted to yell at her child. Her mouth opened. She swallowed. Her hands closed around iron spikes and she laughed.

Strange not to remember her own baby's name.

Scarlet sparks erupted in the sky, silhouetting the treetops, and then darkness closed over the woods.

No wind. No crying. Silence.

Helen dropped to her knees. The grass was wet, shiny in the rum-colored moonlight. This odd place, with all its granite headstones. This was the place where her husband was buried.

But what was his name?

She hurried down the mossy path, reading headstones by the light of her lantern, but none of the chiseled names seemed familiar.

Skyrockets exploded overhead. People were cheering in the distance.

She closed her eyes. She remembered. Her name was Helen. He'd picked her up in a Reno bar in 1946. They'd moved to Hollywood and had the kid a year later. About that much she was sure.

No.

She tried again. Her name was Helen. He'd picked her up in a Reno bar in 1946. He'd taken her to the withered old abortionist. The butcher's sharp, rusty knives had made him laugh, and after it was over he'd poured Lucky Tiger on her wounds. About that much she was sure.

No.

Again. Her name was Helen. He'd picked her up in a Reno bar in 1946....

GORILLA GUNSLINGER

-comic script-

PAGE ONE

Four Panels

Panel One:

PICTURE POSTCARD PANORAMA. A desert vista, kind of a Monument Valley look with mesas and buttes. There's a rider on horseback approaching on the left, a buckboard wagon and a woman with a shovel on the right. Maybe we see these figures in silhouette. Either way, eventually we'll see that the woman, NEVADA PINE, is dressed in riding breeches and a cavalry shirt with captain's bars, and the rider on horseback is a very large gorilla, MONJO, done up in a duster and a dirty black hat that's pinned up in front, rough-rider style— he's a fellow with big, blocky shoulders that would make the Incredible Hulk nervous and a set of enormous paws on him that would make Jack Kirby bust his pencils in envy.

CAPTION

Arizona Territory, 1874

CAPTION/MONJO

The name's Kilimanjaro, though most folks in these parts know me as Monjo. I've been three years in America. Two of them with Mr. P. T. Barnum. One on my own... unless you want to count my horse, that is...

Panel Two:

MONJO ON HORSEBACK, only we can't tell he's a gorilla. We do know that he's plenty big— it takes an ex-circus Clydesdale to hold him, and even that huge animal looks small under his bulk. But his hat is pulled low on his head, and most of his face is covered by a bandana.

CAPTION/MONJO

...I come from an old land. Some folks call it the Dark Continent. Same dimwits who call this place the New Frontier...

Panel Three:

NEVADA PINE digging in the desert sand. She has unearthed part of a fossil, a dinosaur skull.

CAPTION/MONJO

...But even a chuckleheaded prairie dog can see that there ain't much new about this land at all...

Panel Four:

NEVADA PINE shields her eyes, looking up at the passing rider.

CAPTION/MONJO

...The land has always been here...

PAGE TWO

Six Panels

Panel One:

REAR ANGLE ON MONJO. He holds up a hand as he passes Nevada. Before him, we can see a wooden sign that looks like its been painted by someone who's half-blind and all shaky: SCORPION FLATS: TWO MILE, BE YOU VULTURE OR MAN.

CAPTION/MONJO

...We're the current tenants, sure...

Panel Two:

CLOSE-UP OF MONJO'S HAND, that big bad Jack Kirby gorilla paw. In the background, Nevada is doing a double take.

CAPTION/MONJO

...but the rent's past due...

Panel Three:

LOW ANGLE ON MONJO— high overhead, behind him, drifts in a colorful balloon (with gondola) bearing the name BARNUM in ornate letters.

CAPTION/MONJO

...And while I'd like to believe that there's room enough for all of us...

Panel Four:

REVERSE ANGLE from one of the sandstone buttes in the background— four men dressed in black coats and flat-brimmed preacher hats (just like Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter) are watching the balloon, the gorilla, and the woman. One of the men has a nautical-style telescope.

CAPTION/MONJO

...In the long run, I ain't sure any of it matters much...

Panel Five:

HIGH ANGLE on the dinosaur fossil. Nevada stands near it, watching Monjo go. Maybe we see the ominous shadow of the balloon on the ground behind her.

CAPTION/MONJO

...'Cause when the bullet leaves the chamber, we ain't much more than tomorrow's bones...

Panel Six:

THE BALLOON GONDOLA. The occupants: three clowns who look as crazy as shithouse rats, and they've got guns, bandoleers crisscrossing their chests, maybe a big Mexican sombrero or two, the works. These boys aren't headed for a Sunday school picnic, that's for sure.

CAPTION/MONJO

If we last that long, that is.

PAGE THREE

Five Panels

Panel One:

MONJO TYING HIS MOUNT TO A HITCHING POST in front of the Scorpion Flats Saloon. Scorpion Flats is your typical dusty Western town, Sergio Leone variety.

CAPTION/MONJO

I never planned on coming to Scorpion Flats, Arizona. It was just another stop on the way from the place I was running from to wherever it was I was running to.

Panel Two:

MONJO pushing through the swinging doors of the Scorpion Flats Saloon, the kind of place where the bartender's kept so busy you wouldn't be surprise to find cobwebs on him.

Panel Three:

THAT COBWEBBED BARTENDER, a tiny fellow. He's working at cleaning a glass. Behind him there's a painting of an African jungle scene— elephants, lions, three or four gorillas. Also a bunch of wanted posters.

BARTENDER

What'll it be, stranger?

Panel Four:

MONJO AND THE BARTENDER. Monjo lowers his bandana, and the half-pint bartender's jaw drops.

MONJO

Bucket of beer should about do me.

BARTENDER

Uh... we're fresh out of beer. That's a fact. And the other fact is we don't serve no—

Panel Five:

MONJO SMILING, and it's not a pretty sight.

MONJO

Africans?

PAGE FOUR

Five Panels

Panel One:

THE BARTENDER, withering. He's shooting a thumb over his shoulder at a gallery of wanted posters.

BARTENDER

No problem with Africans, friend. Fugitive desperadoes, now that's another story.

Panel Two:

CLOSE-UP OF THE WANTED POSTER. Something like:

WANTED

MONJO

aka PRINCE KILIMANJARO

MURDERER

HORSE-THIEF

$10,000 ALIVE

NOT ONE DAMN PENNY DEAD

Panel Three:

MONJO leaning forward on the bar.

MONJO

Buy me a beer and I'll explain everything...

Panel Four:

THE JUNGLE PAINTING behind the bar.

MONJO (OS)

It's a good story —

Panel Five:

FLASHBACK. A jungle scene, very similar to the one pictured in the barroom painting, but violent instead of pastoral. A group of men in khaki explorer outfits open fire on a band of gorillas.

MONJO (OS)

-all about a very unique tribe of gorillas who lived peacefully in an undiscovered valley that one day was invaded by plunderers —

PAGE FIVE

Five Panels

Panel One:

FLASHBACK. A couple of evil-looking clowns restraining the young gorilla. Monjo is swearing at the explorers, and they're wearing shocked expressions.

YOUNG MONJO

©#%&*!

CAPTION/MONJO (OS)

-who took a young prisoner, but didn't understand his value until they sold him to a circus and he swore at them in a language no human had ever heard —

Panel Two:

FLASHBACK. A circus handbill. Monjo, a bit older, dressed in a suit. The handbill reads: P. T. BARNUM PRESENTS! PRINCE KILIMANJARO, THE ELOQUENT APE!

CAPTION/MONJO (OS)

Of course, later on, he wished he'd kept his yap shut —

Panel Three:

FLASHBACK. Young Monjo, still dressed in the suit, though now it's in tatters. He looks terrified, and two clowns stand over him with whips.

CAPTION/MONJO (OS)

Out of the fryin' pan and straight into the fire, is how you might put it —

Panel Four:

FLASHBACK. Young Monjo standing over a couple of dead clowns, a smoking pistol gripped in his hand.

CAPTION/MONJO (OS)

But one day a couple of Bozos made a big mistake —

Panel Five:

FLASHBACK. Young Monjo riding away from a circus tent on a stolen show horse.

CAPTION/MONJO (OS)

— and the little monkey shined them on and made his exit.

PAGE SIX

Five Panels

Panel One:

MONJO. If it's a wide panel, we might see some menacing silhouetted clowns behind him.

MONJO

Like I say, it's a good story, and I've worked up a powerful —

GOBBO (OS)

We don't have time for fairy tales, banana-breath—

Panel Two:

THREE CLOWNS — Flemmo, Gobbo, and Hemmro — armed and dangerous.

FLEMMO

We've got a balloon outside.

GOBBO

C'mon, knuckle dragger.

HEMMRO

Mr. Barnum's gonna be real glad to see you again.

Panel Three:

MONJO easing open his duster.

MONJO

Well, Flemmo, Gobbo, and Hemmro. You boys look about as pert as three ruttin' bucks. I guess it would be kind of silly to tell you —

Panel Four:

THE GUN strapped to Monjo's leg. It's a rifle with a cut-down barrel and a large, looping lever-action big enough to accommodate Monjo's large hand, the whole rig secured in a snap-down holster. A fan of old TV Westerns would recognize it as a cross between Chuck Connors' Rifleman rifle and Steve McQueen's "mare's leg" from Wanted: Dead or Alive.

MONJO

— that I'm feelin' real peaceable today.

Panel Five:

GOBBO laughing.

GOBBO

HAH AH AHA! That would be silly, wouldn't it boys?

PAGE SEVEN

Five Panels

Panel One:

THE THREE CLOWNS, cocking their weapons, expressions serious.

FLEMMO

Damn silly.

HEMMRO

Too damn silly.

SFX (PISTOLS COCKING)

CLICK! CLICK! CLICK!

Panel Two:

MONJO eases the rifle into his hand.

MONJO

Now you boys shouldn't have gone and done that. Remember what they say —

Panel Three:

MONJO'S FACE, or maybe just his eyes.

MONJO

— monkey see, monkey do.

Panel Four:

GOBBO, same kind of shot as we've just had on Monjo.

GOBBO

Throw down, you flea-bitten banana-eatin' jungle —

NEVADA (OS)

Excuse me —

Panel Five:

NEVADA PINE, the woman archaeologist seen on pages one and two, standing between the clowns and Monjo. She looks amused and they look exasperated.

NEVADA

— do you gentlemen realize that you're about to gun down one of the greatest scientific marvels of the century?

PAGE EIGHT

Four Panels

Panel One:

THE CLOWNS.

FLEMMO

Well, I'll be dipped in greasepaint. If this don't beat all.

GOBBO

Lady, our boss owns the paper on this so-called "scientific marvel."

HEMMRO

Meaning the hairy sumbitch is our property.

Panel Two:

NEVADA BACKING TOWARD MONJO, her hand hovering over a Navy Colt in her gun belt.

NEVADA (A)

Sorry to hear you boys feel that way.

NEVADA (B)

I guess you really are as dumb as you look.

Panel Three:

MONJO.

MONJO

Uh... Ma'am? Meaning no disrespect, but don't you figure —

Panel Four:

THE CLOWNS opening fire.

GOBBO

Figure this, freak!

PAGE NINE

Five Panels

Panel One:

GOOD-SIZE PANEL OF MONJO AND NEVADA. Bullets are whizzing around them, and they're returning fire.

SFX (GUNSHOTS)

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Panel Two:

THE CLOWNS, shot up, dead or dying. Note: later, it's revealed that Hemmro survived the gunfight (barely).

Panel Three:

MONJO SMILES AT NEVADA, and she's smiling back.

MONJO

Crackerjack shooting... for a woman.

NEVADA

You do all right yourself. For an ape, I mean.

MONJO

Ouch.

Panel Four:

NEVADA.

NEVADA

My name's Nevada Pine... and my late husband was a cavalry captain. He taught me how to shoot. What's your story?

Panel Five:

MONJO pushing through the swinging doors, Nevada watching him go.

MONJO

No story at all. Gracias and adios about says it.

NEVADA

Wait!

PAGE TEN

Five Panels

Panel One:

MONJO AND NEVADA. He's standing beside her buckboard. She stands in the doorway of the saloon, and his back is to her. We can see the dinosaur skull in the back of the wagon, along with a bedroll and some books.

NEVADA

Don't you think you owe me that much?

MONJO

Lady, I figure you're the type knows my story —

Panel Two:

CLOSE SHOT OF THE BOOKS next to the dinosaur skull. There's a leather strap around them, but the title of the top book can be clearly seen. It's MAN'S LOST BROTHER by CHARLES DARWIN, and there's a picture of Monjo dressed in a suit on the cover.

MONJO (OS)

— chapter and verse.

Panel Three:

MONJO. THE BARNUM BALLOON is nearby, tied and staked in the street.

MONJO

Still, talking can't hurt much. Leastways, now that I've opened my big yap again.

Panel Four:

NEVADA AND MONJO. Nevada looks happy. Monjo looks resigned. Both are seen as through a telescopic lens.

Panel Five:

FOUR MEN ON HORSEBACK (THE SONS OF ADAM). They're wearing string ties cinched so tight it looks like they never have to breathe. Their clothes are immaculate despite the fact that they are on horseback— suits and wide-brimmed preacher hats black as midnight, shirts as white as hard-boiled eggs. The man who holds the telescope is taller, handsomer than the rest. He is BROTHER JOSHUA. The others are BROTHER TIM, BROTHER AMOS, and BROTHER FRED.

BROTHER AMOS

Even the whores of Babylon did not consort with jungle beasts.

BROTHER TIM

Hallelujah, Brother Amos.

BROTHER FRED

Is it time to be about the Lord's business. Brother Joshua?

BROTHER JOSHUA

Yes, Brother Fred. But first we've got to see a man about a gorilla.

PAGE ELEVEN

Six Panels

Panel One:

INT. BARROOM. The bartender is sweeping up the mess left from the gunfight. Behind him. Brother Joshua and his men push through the swinging doors. The bartender doesn't see who he's speaking to before he answers Brother Joshua's greeting.

BROTHER JOSHUA

A word with you, neighbor?

BARTENDER

Only words I got in me right now are damn, double damn, and God —

Panel Two:

BROTHER JOSHUA, who's drawn his pistol just that fast. We may not see this yet, but tattooed on the fingers of Joshua's right hand is the name ADAM (running pinkie to index finger); on his left, there is a serpent running the length of his index finger, and EVE is tattooed on the remaining fingers. NOTE: all of Brother Joshua's men bear these tattoos.

BROTHER JOSHUA

Neighbor, I'd let it rest right there if I were you.

SFX (PISTOL COCKING)

CLICK!

Panel Three:

THE BARTENDER, turning and looking plenty sheepish.

BARTENDER

Sorry, parson. It's been one hell of a... I mean to say —

BROTHER JOSHUA

Well, the Lord does test us, neighbor, and that's for certain. Why, I hear tell He tested you today with a beast of the jungle.

HEMMRO (OS)

Not just any beast. Was a flea-scratchin' —

Panel Four:

HEMMRO, shot up but not dead through.

HEMMRO

-banana-eatin' gunslingin' gorilla, was what it was.

Panel Five:

BROTHER JOSHUA HOVERING OVER HEMMRO.

BROTHER JOSHUA

Is it true what they say about this ape? Can it speak?

HEMMRO

Monjo can recite the Declaration of Independence. Sing "Yankee Doodle." Whistle "Dixie," too.

BROTHER JOSHUA

Then he is truly a devil to be expunged from God's earth.

Panel Six:

HEMMRO.

HEMMRO

He ain't no devil. Just a talking monkey. Ain't you boys read Professor Darwin's book? It explains the whole thing— lost valley in Africa, gorilla population cut off for centuries, parallel evolution —

PAGE TWELVE

Seven Panels

Panel One:

BROTHER JOSHUA AND HEMMRO. Brother Joshua has the Bible in his hands, and he looks more than a tad upset.

BROTHER JOSHUA

Don't speak that accursed word! We are the Sons of Adam, put on this here earth to save humanity from Darwin's obscene imaginings!

HEMMRO

I don't care if you boys are the Sons of Sitting Bull. Unless one of you is a doctor, that is.

Panel Two:

BROTHER JOSHUA, looking smug. The Bible is now open, and we can clearly see the tattoos on his fingers.

BROTHER JOSHUA

Too late for that, brother. You look about bled out. Now, tell me your Christian name, so that I may deliver your grinny-faced, buffoonish soul into our Lord's hands with a prayer.

Panel Three:

HEMMRO, looking pretty bad.

HEMMRO

My name's Hemmro.

Panel Four:

BROTHER JOSHUA, looking indignant.

BROTHER JOSHUA

I said your Christian name.

Panel Five:

HEMMRO, looking a tad pissed-off, for a shot-up clown.

HEMMRO

I'm a clown, goddammit! My goddamn name's Hemmro!

Panel Six:

THE GUNFIGHTING PREACHERS, opening fire.

BROTHER JOSHUA

The Lord shall not be mocked!

SFX (GUNSHOTS)

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Panel Seven:

HEMMRO AND THE SONS OF ADAM. Hemmro is pretty solidly dead. The gunfighters hover over him.

BROTHER TIM

I ain't never shot no man with a moniker like Hemmro.

BROTHER FRED

Or such big feet.

BROTHER AMOS

Or silk bloomers.

BROTHER JOSHUA

The Lord works in mysterious ways, brother, and He's always a-testin' us.

PAGE THIRTEEN

Five Panels

Panel One:

BROTHER JOSHUA EYEING THE BARTENDER, whose jaw is practically on the floor.

BROTHER JOSHUA

The Jezebel who left with the ape... where does she live?

BARTENDER

Town called Contrary, 'bout twenty miles north. Her sister's the schoolmarm. They live in a little place by the schoolhouse —

Panel Two:

THE BARTENDER.

BARTENDER

Both of 'em are wild women who don't know their place, if you ask me. Contrary's the only town in the state that would have 'em.

Panel Three:

THE GUNFIGHTING PREACHERS, leaving the bar.

BROTHER TIM

Hemmro... wasn't he the son of Noah?

BROTHER AMOS

Don't blaspheme, Brother Tim.

BROTHER FRED

What next, Brother Joshua?

BROTHER JOSHUA

We get to Contrary one step ahead of the monkey, and we bait a trap for his unholy behind.

Panel Four:

BROTHER FRED AND BROTHER JOSHUA, stepping into the street. Brother Joshua is holding up his index finger. The wind is kicking up.

BROTHER FRED

The ape and his gun-totin' Jezebel got a good half-hour lead on us. How can we beat 'em to Contrary?

BROTHER JOSHUA

Trust in the Lord, Brother Fred —

Panel Five:

THE BARNUM BALLOON, staked in the street.

BROTHER JOSHUA

— for He always provides.

PAGE FOURTEEN

Six Panels

Panel One:

MONJO AND NEVADA, riding in her wagon. Monjo's horse is tied behind, following along. In the distance, we can see the balloon.

NEVADA

I've corresponded with Professor Darwin concerning my own work. I'm sure if you were to seek him out —

MONJO

I met the man. Wanted to buy me for a university, as I understood it. Didn't seem much different from Barnum, if you ask me.

Panel Two:

SAME SHOT. The balloon is closer now.

NEVADA

That's where you're wrong —

MONJO

No. You're wrong. People look at me and they see a talking ape. They don't see past my mouth.

Panel Three:

SAME SHOT. The balloon is practically overhead.

MONJO

They don't see my brain. They don't figure maybe I want to think for myself.

NEVADA

Any woman who spends her life digging for dinosaur bones knows how that feels.

Panel Four:

REAR ANGLE ON THE WAGON. The balloon has passed them.

MONJO

Maybe... but most folks aren't trying to kill you for it.

NEVADA

You might be surprised.

MONJO

Lady, nothing surprises me.

Panel Five:

SAME REAR ANGLE SHOT. The balloon is further in the distance.

NEVADA

Not even that balloon?

MONJO

Especially not that balloon.

NEVADA

What should we do about it?

Panel Six:

MONJO.

MONJO

Slap the ribbons and lets get where we're going, 'cause it looks like trouble's gonna be waitin' for us when we get there.

PAGE FIFTEEN

Four Panels

Panel One:

Large panel. A one-room schoolhouse in the desert, ringed by mesas. A really peaceful scene, not a cloud in the sky, only the balloon hovering above the school.

Panel Two:

INT. SCHOOLHOUSE. The teacher, ARIZONA CARTER (Nevada's sister), has her back turned to the class. She's writing on the blackboard— the word EVOLUTION is clearly visible. There are drawings on the blackboard, too — maybe a dinosaur, a human skull, an ape, etc.

Panel Three:

THE KIDS IN THE CLASS. They're teenagers. A few are passing notes, cutting up. Behind the kids, through the window, we can see the balloon drifting behind a mesa.

Panel Four:

EXT. THE BALLOON has landed among the mesas. The Sons of Adam are staking it, tying it down.

PAGE SIXTEEN

Six Panels

Panel One:

BROTHER JOSHUA wears a sadistic smile.

BROTHER JOSHUA

Let's be about the Lord's business, brothers.

Panel Two:

BROTHER AMOS runs his thumb along the edge of a wicked Bowie knife. Maybe we just see the knife and a hand with tattooed fingers.

Panel Three:

BROTHER FRED feeds shells into a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun. Again, maybe we just see the open breech of the gun and his tattooed fingers holding shells.

Panel Four:

BROTHER TIM holds wrapped sticks of dynamite in each hand. Again, maybe we just see two tattooed hands, and the dynamite.

Panel Five:

BROTHER JOSHUA. His long black coat is pulled behind his holster, and his tattooed fingers hover over the butt of a large revolver.

Panel Six:

WIDE PANEL: THE SONS OF ADAM advance on the schoolhouse.

PAGE SEVENTEEN

Six Panels

Panel One:

BROTHER JOSHUA kicking in the schoolhouse door.

SFX (DOOR BREAKING)

WHACK!

Panel Two:

INT. SCHOOLROOM. A close-up of the teacher, Arizona Carter, a confused expression on her face.

Panel Three:

BROTHER JOSHUA, pistols blazing.

BROTHER JOSHUA

The Lord our God never made monkey a brother to man!

SFX (GUNSHOTS)

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Panel Four:

THE BLACKBOARD and the word EVOLUTION, riddled with bullet holes. Arizona is cowering next to it, but holding her ground.

ARIZONA

I m-might debate that...

Panel Five:

ARIZONA AND BROTHER JOSHUA. Arizona is holding a copy of ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES. Brother Joshua is almost nose to nose with her. He's holding his gun in one hand, the Bible in the other.

ARIZONA

It's all here, parson. Read it yourself.

BROTHER JOSHUA

But it ain't in here, little sister, and that's the only place that counts.

Panel Six:

ARIZONA.

ARIZONA

You can't hide from scientific fact.

PAGE EIGHTEEN

Seven Panels

Panel One:

BROTHER JOSHUA AND ARIZONA. Brother Joshua slaps the teacher's face with his Bible.

BROTHER JOSHUA

But we can banish evil from God's green earth!

SFX (SLAP)

WHAP!

Panel Two-Five:

A series of flip-card panels.

(2)

The pistol bucking in Brother Joshua's hand.

(3)

The kids in the class, horrified expressions as they watch their teacher being gunned down.

(4)

Brother Fred grinning like a rotten Jack O'Lantern.

(5)

The teacher slumped in her chair, dead. Six bullet holes in her torso form a cross.

SFX (across panels 2-5) (GUNSHOTS)

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Panel Six:

BROTHER JOSHUA shredding ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES.

BROTHER JOSHUA

The Lord has no truck with gorilla lovers!

Panel Seven:

ONE OF THE KIDS has slipped out of his seat and is running for the door.

PAGE NINETEEN

Five Panels

Panel One:

BROTHER AMOS AND THE KID. Amos catches the kid by the scruff of his shirt, holds his Bowie to the kid's throat.

BROTHER AMOS

What say you, Brother Joshua?

Panel Two:

BROTHER JOSHUA looking heavenward, his tattooed fingers interlocked in prayer.

BROTHER JOSHUA

What's it gonna be, Lord? Can these little lambs be saved? Or have their minds been forever sullied with the abomination of... EVIL-LUTION!!!

Panel Three:

BROTHER JOSHUA. Words (THE VOICE OF THE LORD?) are literally drifting around his head, as if he's made a holy connection.

VOICE OF THE LORD?

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...

BROTHER JOSHUA

I hear you talkin', Lord!

Panel Four:

BROTHER JOSHUA running for the door of the schoolhouse, the words drifting around him.

VOICE OF THE LORD?

...I will fear no evil...

BROTHER JOSHUA

I'm your servant, Lord! I hear you! I'ma-comin'!

Panel Five:

EXT. BROTHER JOSHUA throws open the schoolhouse door. Words still drift around him, but there's a shocked expression on his face.

VOICE OF THE LORD?

...For thou art with me...

PAGE TWENTY

Six Panels

Panel One:

MONJO holding a Bible.

MONJO (A)

...Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

MONJO (B)

Thou preparest a table before me, in the presence of mine enemies...

MONJO (C)

Afternoon, parson. Like to share in the scripture with me?

Panel Two:

BROTHER JOSHUA, NOW JOINED BY HIS MEN, all of them going for their guns, trying to light dynamite, whatever.

BROTHER JOSHUA

Blasphemer!

Panel Three:

MONJO AND NEVADA open fire.

SFX (GUNSHOTS)

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!

Panel Four:

THE SONS OF ADAM, so much Swiss Cheese, dead as dead can be.

Panel Five:

NEVADA AND MONJO.

NEVADA

Who were those idiots?

MONJO

Anti-evolutionist gunslinging evangelists. Call themselves the Sons of Adam. This must have been the Northern Arizona Chapter.

Panel Six:

MONJO STANDING OVER BROTHER JOSHUA.

MONJO

Hot-headed sons of bitches. They sure get some riled when I read from the good book.

PAGE TWENTY-ONE

Five Panels

Panel One:

NEVADA AND MONJO outside the schoolhouse, standing over a freshly mounded grave, hats clutched in their hands. A roughly carved tombstone bears the inscription ARIZONA CARTER 1851-1874.

CAPTION

Later...

MONJO

Would you like me to say a few words?

Panel Two:

NEVADA.

NEVADA

No. My sister wouldn't have wanted anything like that.

Panel Three:

MONJO.

MONJO

Well, I guess I'll be about my business then.

Panel Four:

ANOTHER ANGLE ON NEVADA AND MONJO.

NEVADA

Just what is your business, Monjo?

MONJO

Science, of course —

Panel Five:

THE REAR OF NEVADA'S BUCKBOARD WAGON. The bodies of the Sons of Adam are clearly visible, flies buzzing around them. Also clearly visible is the dinosaur skull, which is stained with their blood.

MONJO (OS)

— I deal in extinction.

DEAD MAN’S HAND

IN THE MIDNIGHT CANYONS OF THE AMERICAN WEST, when the full moon shines the color of George Armstrong Custer's shorn scalp, tales are told of a man whose skin is as black as a tarantula's pocket...

A man who swam the River Styx and saddled a demon. A man who slapped reins made from a hangman's noose as he rode the brimstone trail to Hell...

A man who tussled with Old Scratch himself. A man who knotted the Devil's tail to the burning gates of Hades... lopped off his Satanic Majesty's horns with a dehorn saw and branded his hairy ass with the sign of the cross, leaving the sour old bastard bellowing for mercy in his own sin-pit of sulfur and shadow...

But this man is no angel.

No. He is a man who walks the earth in a pair of magic boots fashioned by a sage from the Mysterious East... boots stitched from the hides of thirteen vampire bats... boots that scream... boots with teeth that slash like Jim Bowie's fabled blade...

He is a man who wears an oxblood Stetson and carries a Navy Colt scarred over with a private cemetery's worth of notches... A man with a barbed-wire backbone and a pair of haunted eyes that have seen too much and still have so much more to see...

He is a devil of a man, and in his veins flows the black blood of sorrow and suffering.

His fists are as heavy as brimstone.

And his name is STACKALEE...

PART ONE

THE HANGED MAN

The grower's name was Bill Fristo, and ol' Bill about had himself a conniption fit when he saw that someone had lynched a nigger in his apple orchard.

Not that Fristo had a problem with lynchings. Mostly, if someone wanted to string up a nigger, Bill would be the first to offer up a length of rope. Except on a Sunday, of course, 'cause Bill Fristo was nothing if not a God-fearing man.

So it wasn't the lynching itself that put the spurs to Bill's ire. What bothered Fristo was the simple fact that the nigger in question was hanging from a branch heavy with ripe red Fristo apples that'd put some change in Bill's pocket. And if that branch broke under the nigger's weight and gravity brought branch and nigger and fruit to ground, why then it stood to reason that Bill's pocket would be short that much more jingle, because there wasn't too many folks of Fristo's acquaintance who cottoned to beat-up apples, let alone beat-up apples that had dropped off a tree along with a dead nigger.

Fristo fretted over this realization for several minutes. Then he did what he usually did when an unexpected event buffaloed his everyday routine—he yelled at his Mexicans long and loud, instructing them how to go about setting things right.

When Fristo was done yelling, Gordito and Pablo did what they usually did—they looked at each other, not quite daring to smile or shake their heads, and then they set out in the direction of the trouble, thinking how best to take the long way around Bill Fristo's instructions.

Bill took a seat in a rocking chair on the front porch of his place, watching the Mexican's every step. You had to watch them or else nothing ever got done. It was nerve-wracking work, the watching was. Because Pablo was slower than a fat man on his way to a scale, and Gordito... hell, Gordito was a fat man.

Goddamn. Bill's heart was all aflutter. If things kept up like this—all manner of trouble busting out big as you please as soon as the rooster crowed—why then, it was bound to be one hell of a morning.

Fristo settled back to think on that as Conchita brought his breakfast. She set a tin plate on a little table in front of the rocker and studied the trouble with her own two eyes, not saying a blessed word about it.

Bill stared down at eggs and chorizo and fried onions and corn tortillas lathered with butter. But he couldn't eat now. The God's honest was that nigger in the tree had tightened the cinches on his appetite, and with good reason.

Why, if word got out about the nigger, Bill's entire season could come a cropper. Wouldn't make no difference that Fristo apples were famous from Stockton to Sacramento. Wouldn't make no difference that Mama Fristo's apple pies had won ribbons at the state fair fifteen years straight, right up until the year she died. Wagging tongues would brand Bill's orchard as a last stop for lynched niggers. If gossip like that had a chance to take off, no one who heard the story would want to close their choppers around a Fristo apple, even the fruit that hadn't hung from the same branch as the nigger. Hell, a wormy crop would be an easier sale. And there wasn't no way around it, either, because there wasn't no way on God's green that Fristo could prove which apples had come from the nigger tree and which hadn't.

Bill sure enough had to think this through, and think it through fast. First off, he'd have to get rid of the nigger... bury him someplace no one would notice. Out in the middle of the orchard maybe. And then he'd have to make sure Pablo and Gordito kept their lips buttoned. Conchita, too. That would take some doing, because those Mexicans liked to talk more than anything.

Bill was in one hell of a jackpot, all right. He got out his makings and tried to roll a cigarette, but his hands were fluttering worse than his heart, what with his personal reputation and immediate financial future suddenly at stake and all.

So he yelled at Conchita and told her what he wanted her to do. And, after two or three minutes lollygagging around, she got around to it and rolled Fristo's cigarette for him.

Then he sent her after his spyglass.

Because a situation like this one required close attention.

Right off, Pablo saw that it was a black man hanging from the tree. That's why he didn't rush. Because black men were most of the time even worse off than Mexicans. They didn't have anything worth stealing.

And a black man who'd been lynched... well, a negro cabron like that would most likely have even less than a black man who was still sucking air. Pablo knew down deep in his gut that this was the truth of the matter, the same way he knew that the sun would come up tomorrow and ripe apples would drop to the ground and rot if you didn't pick them and Senor Bill would never stop yelling.

Still, sometimes the world held back a surprise the way a gambler holds back an ace in the hole. Pablo hoped this might be the case as he neared the negro gringo.

Of one thing Pablo was absolutely sure—he had never seen a man quite like this one. Not living, and certainly not dead. The hanged man was tall and rangy, with the worn look of a dog-gnawed bone. Scars crisscrossed his face, purple-white ribbons of misery on polished ebony skin. And the man's tongue was caught between his teeth, trapped there all swollen-slick like a bulge of bellyguts poking through a knife wound.

Pablo knew what that looked like. He had carved the innards out of a man in San Francisco. In truth, Pablo was not entirely responsible for the man's death, for the man—a shameless drunk—had made a great show of flashing a thick roll of bills under Pablo's very nose, and Pablo was not one to stand firm in the face of temptation. He yielded to same without benefit of conscience and butchered the foolish gringo. That was the only reason he stayed on at Bill Fristo's place. The farm was a good piece out in the country. Besides that, no one in town much liked the apple grower. No one ever came around, not even the law.

The rope twisted in the morning breeze, and the lynched man rotated. Pablo wondered why the lynch mob hadn't tied the man's hands together, as was usually done. Then, glancing at the left sleeve of the stranger's tattered duster as it came into view, Pablo saw why.

The hanged man didn't have a left hand. Just a bloody stump that ended at his wrist.

Must have been whoever hanged the man had lopped off the hand in question. Pablo couldn't figure why someone would want to do that. It wasn't like you could keep a man's hand in your pocket as a good luck piece, the way you would a rabbit's foot. A man's hand was too big for that, and Pablo couldn't think of anyone who'd want to keep a dead man's hand so close to his own cojones, anyhow.

Pablo shivered at the obscene notion. Suddenly, he didn't want to think about the hanged man anymore. The man wasn't worth thinking about, anyway. Because when you cut the gristle off the bone, it appeared that this negro gringo had less than most anyone Pablo had ever seen. Pablo seriously doubted that there had ever been an ace in this sorrowful bastard's hole —

Until he took a closer look at the hanged man's footwear. At first glance it had appeared that his boots had been stitched together from mismatched bits of leather. Thick black hairs bristled from several patches, as if they'd been missed by a drunken cobbler's skinning knife. Other patches were as naked and smooth as a newborn babe's behind. But as Pablo drew nearer, he noticed weird bumps and bulges that couldn't be accounted for.

Perhaps the boots contained hidden pockets, filled with God knows what. Pablo came within reach. Now, in addition to the bumps and bulges, he noticed little holes ridged with ivory that gleamed in the morning sunlight —

Thoroughly amazed, Pablo sucked a short breath and hesitated. And then he realized that the ivory was not ivory at all, but razor-sharp teeth... the little holes... they were tiny mouths... and the mismatched bits of leather were fat mouselike torsos and wings ridged with bone....

Why, the boots were made from huge bats, the kind Pablo hadn't seen since he'd departed Mexico as a child of ten!

Pablo's jaw dropped. He had never in his life seen boots like these. He could not take his eyes off of them. So wonderful were they, so amazing...

And, by the look of them, the boots were exactly his size....

A cool breeze washed Pablo's shoulders and rustled the leaves of the apple tree. The hanged man swayed, and the branch creaked, and thick droplets of blood dripped from the man's wrist and pattered the moist earth.

Pablo reached out...

...but Gordito was faster. In his reverie, Pablo had all but forgotten his young partner. Now he was paying for that mistake. Gordito shouldered past Pablo, and Pablo could only watch as the other man's plump fingers closed around the negro cabron's wonderful boots.

And then the boots began to scream.

So did Gordito. The fat youngster whirled around, hands held high—hands minus half the fingers they'd had just a moment before, blood spurting everywhere.

Instantly, Gordito took off running in the direction of Bill Fristo's house. Pablo fell back, staring at the hanged man's boots, watching in horror as Gordito's plump fingers disappeared between the razor-sharp teeth of bats with eyes which were quite suddenly red and alive.

The wind picked up. The hanged man swayed, and the branch groaned once again...

No. Not the branch. The hanged man was groaning.

His scarred eyelids flashed open, and he sucked his swollen tongue into his mouth just the way a rattlesnake does, and his gaze trapped Pablo's.

Pablo was shaking from head to toe. With great effort, he managed to unfold the pocket knife which was sharp enough to open a man's belly. He did not know what good it would do to carve up a man who was hanged but not dead, but knew with great certainty that he had to do something.

Before he could move, a thunderclap sounded behind him.

A single gunshot.

A bullet slashed the hangman's rope.

The black man crashed to the ground.

Pablo turned to face the gunman.

Bill Fristo said, "He ain't dead through, is he?"

Stack wheezed a shallow breath and let it burn in his lungs.

The first breath that had passed his gullet in seven hours, at least. And now here he was, sucking air while down on his knees like a slave kissing the master's feet, but that was okay because at least he was breathing again.

It was a fine trick, and he had to admit it. Dead in a tree, and then his boots—cursed or charmed, take your pick—well, those boots taste blood, and that blood does the trick like water to the roots of a parched tree.

But blood or no blood—the gunfighter was still weak as a kicked pup. Plus he had one hell of a crick in his neck, and it felt like someone had carved his backside with a dull knife. Still, he knew that he had to get up his gumption. He had to move, and had to move now, because the white man had a gun and the Mexican had a knife.

Stack's left arm brushed his tattered duster, but he couldn't seem to get his coat out of the way... and he realized in a sparkling moment of unease that there wasn't a hand at the end of that left arm, and hence no fingers with which to pull back his coat, let alone find the Navy Colt holstered beneath it.

Short one gunhand. It was a hell of a problem for a gunfighter. Kind of stopped Stack cold.

Where in hell had his left hand got to, anyhow?

The white man said, "Jesus, Pablo. I can't believe you almost killed him."

"He's a devil!" The Mexican couldn't stop shaking. "His boots... they are cursed! They ate Gordito's fingers!"

"The hell they did. Clumsy bastard probably cut himself on the nigger's spurs."

"No! This devil belongs in hell! We got to kill him, Senor Bill!"

"Hell if we got to do anything of the sort." Bill unfolded a handbill and shoved it at Pablo. "I know you're too ignorant to read, but you take a look at this here picture and tell me if this ain't the same man on his goddamn knees before us."

Still shaking, Pablo examined the handbill. "Yes... it is the same man, but I do not see — "

"Open your eyes, Pablo. That's what I did, up there on the porch. I looked through my spyglass, saw this buck's face close up, a hangin' in the air. Right off I remembered them old wanted posters I keep out in the privy for comfort's sake. Sent Conchita runnin' for 'em and damn if my memory don't serve me. Turns out this here nigger is a wanted man. I'm just glad I didn't wipe my ass with his face days ago."

"He is not a man at all, senor! He is a monster! We should cut off his head and stuff it with garlic! We should drive a stake through his black heart!"

"We ain't killin' him, and that's final! This bastard's worth ten thousand dollars to the good folks of Fiddler, California! He done killed himself seventeen fellas down there!" Fristo snatched the wanted poster from the Mexican's hands. "But the son of a bitch has got to be alive, like the poster says! He ain't worth a plug nickel if he's dead!"

Stack listened without saying a word.

So the man with the pistol knew. Not everything. But enough.

The man with the pistol knew that Stack had cut a wide swatch of death through Fiddler all those years ago. And he knew about the price on the gunfighter's head. But he did not know the whole story. He did not know about the old Chinaman and his daughter. He did not know about the magic— curse or charm, take your pick.

Nor did the man with the pistol wish to know about these things, because he was the kind of man who could not see past a dollar sign.

The fat Mexican's blood pumped through the hanged man's veins. His head began to clear. Soon he would rise and face this man, draw his own pistol —

If he could only find his gunhand. He held his left arm before him, staring at puckered flesh and fresh scar tissue where his lifeline had once ended. Already, the stump had nearly healed over—that was part of the Chinaman's magic (curse or charm...). If nothing else. Stack was a very fast healer—but without the missing hand, he could be healthy as the proverbial horse and it wouldn't do him a damn bit of good.

But that was not straight thinking. Not at all, because an obvious fact suddenly occurred to the gunfighter—he had another hand. That other hand was attached to his right arm. Currently it was on the ground, long fingers splayed, helping him to keep his balance while he leaned forward on his knees like a slave before his master. But if he could stand up, just do something as simple as that, and if he could keep his balance, why then there was no reason why he couldn't reach across his body and yank the Navy Colt from its holster with his right hand.

And then he would kill the white man, because the white man had a gun. And if he had to, he would kill the Mexican. Not because the Mexican had a knife—a pocket knife was no match for a Navy Colt— but because the Mexican had seen too much. The Mexican, perhaps intelligent enough to be superstitious, might know ways to stop him that the white man would not.

But before he could do any of that, the gunfighter had to move.

He had to move, now.

Bill Fristo couldn't believe his eyes. The nigger straightened, got one skinny leg under him, and stood up.

He looked Bill dead in the eye, and Bill felt like someone had danced a jig on his grave. And then a hideous smile split the lynched man's scarred face, and he pawed at his duster with that stump of his, and he got the coat out of the way, and Bill saw for the first time that the buck was packing iron.

Once upon a time. Bill Fristo had been one hell of a shot. Still was, if you could judge by the way he'd split the hangman's rope with one bullet. But right now he was shaking as bad as the Mexican. The memory of Gordito running past him with bleeding fingers, and the things Pablo had said about the nigger being a demon, and the way the buck had come down out of that tree and looked Bill dead in the eye, well, all that made Bill's trigger finger itch worse than his hemorrhoids, and that was saying something.

Still, there was that ten thousand dollars to think about. No question Bill had to stop the nigger. Not kill him—that would sure as shit nix the bounty. Just stop him.

Bill squinted and jerked the trigger, firing twice.

Two cored apples dropped out of the tree.

"I still got three shots left," the white man said. "Those bullets can stay in my gun, or they can excavate a ditch in your brainpan. I don't want to do that, because I want the reward that's on your head. I figure I want that money same way you want to keep on breathing."

Stack held his duster away from his holster with the stump of his left arm, but his right hand did not reach for his Navy Colt. Dollars to doughnuts, the gun wasn't going to do him much good. Not with the white man holding down on him like he was, not with the way the bastard could shoot.

Stack's mouth, though... why, that was another story. His mouth might do him a whole heap of good.

"I'll be taking my leave," he said, and he began to back away, into the apple orchard.

The white man cocked the hammer and drew a bead on Stack. "Hold on, now."

The gunfighter grinned and kept on moving. "There's one thing in particular that I've learned in my travels," he said. "One thing you need to know right now."

"What's that?"

"If you're going to eat pie, amigo, the first thing you have to do is get to slicing."

Bill wondered what the crazy son of a bitch meant. He watched the nigger backing away, still gasping for breath, more skeleton than man. A bony nigger with a hangman's noose around his neck who was worth ten thousand dollars, and no way he could beat Fristo in a gunfight, not when he was short one gunhand.

Fristo glanced at the busted branch where the nigger had been lynched, then at the gunshot fruit on the ground below.

Fruit that maybe would have put pennies in his moth-eaten pocket.

Ten thousand dollars... pretty soon it would be his. Because there wasn't no man alive who'd take a bullet today when he might stand himself another chance tomorrow, no matter how slim that chance might be.

The nigger had to see that's how it was. Sure he did... but maybe Fristo still needed to clip him anyhow. Shoot him in the leg or something. That would sure enough start the bastard thinking straight.

Fristo said, "On your knees, you son of a bitch."

The nigger retreated another step. Looking past Bill now.

Like he was waiting for something that was bound to happen.

Bill couldn't figure out what.

Until Pablo buried his knife in Bill's back.

Time and time again.

And it occurred to Bill Fristo that he was being sliced up exactly like one of his mama's prize apple pies.

Pablo pitched a shovelful of dirt into the dead man's face. Things hadn't worked out the way he'd hoped. But the way his life had gone so far, and the way it seemed to be going, he was getting used to that.

"You think it's a deep enough hole?" Conchita asked. She was over by the mound of earth Pablo had shoveled from the grave, picking through the churned dirt with eager fingers.

"Any deeper and he'd be buried in China. What are you doing, anyway?"

"Looking for worms. If I find any. I'll toss them into the hole. Worms will get rid of Senor Bill's corpse that much quicker. Their bellies are skinny but also very long, and they are always hungry."

Pablo shivered and tossed another shovelful of dirt into the grave. "You think anyone will miss him?" Conchita asked, tossing a fat earthworm worm into the hole.

"No."

"You think anyone will come looking?"

"Maybe... but not for a while. I don't think he had too many friends."

"More worms than friends." Conchita laughed, tugging another writhing creature free from the moist earth.

“Madre de Dios. You are one strange woman."

"Not so strange as all that." Conchita looked to the horizon, where a one-handed black man with a rope around his neck rode Bill Fristo's horse along a trail which snaked toward the mountains. "Not so strange at all."

But Pablo knew that was a lie. This woman was strange. Talking only of worms, when anyone else would talk of the ten thousand dollars, and how the money had slipped through Pablo's fingers like so much water.

If he had only waited until Senor Bill got the gun away from the demon, everything would have been different. But that he had not done. Thinking of the reward, and how close Senor Bill was to having it, and knowing that Senor Bill would never share one thin dime of it, and hearing the negro cabron talk about slicing a pie... all those things added together had triggered a madness in Pablo—the same madness that had caused him to carve the belly of that man in San Francisco—and Pablo had buried his knife in Senor Bill time and time again until the old gringo was dead.

Doing that, Pablo had felt that the reward money was as good as his. But in the time it took Pablo to kill Senor Bill the demon had drawn his pistol with his right hand, and once that was accomplished there was nothing for Pablo to do at all, because a man with a pocket knife stood no chance against a man with a Navy Colt, especially a Colt scarred with so many notches,

Pablo wanted to speak of these things. But Senor Bill was dead, and Gordito was crying over his butchered fingers, and the hanged man was gone. There was only Conchita. And if Pablo knew one thing, it was that a man could not talk of such failings with a woman.

But he had to talk.

That was the true hell of it.

Pablo prattled on, but his complaints were only of his back and his toil. These Conchita had heard many times. She ignored him, picking at the harrowed earth like a hungry bird, but there were no more worms to be found. Besides, by now Pablo had nearly covered Senor Bill with a thick blanket of earth. All that could be seen was one bristling gray eyebrow flecked with little droplets of blood.

Conchita was a bit disappointed that Pablo was burying Sefior Bill face-up. Mostly because she could not see the knife that Pablo had buried between the corpse's skinny shoulders out of spite. She knew that the knife was there, of course. Just as she knew that Senor Bill was not coming out of that hole.

Resurrection was a rare thing. This she had learned from many a priest. She had witnessed only one resurrection in her lifetime, and she had seen it today. She didn't think she would see another anytime soon.

Still, the burial was fascinating. The sound of shovel biting earth, the dark dirt blanketing the shadows as it washed the grave, the pink worms writhing in the churned soil—Conchita thought that it was something worth seeing, even so.

Another shovelful of dirt splashed the hole. Senor Bill's bristling eyebrow was covered. Instantly, he was gone forever. And then the only thing to watch was Pablo's shovel above, and the burrowing worms below, and soon the worms were buried, as well.

It was then that Conchita turned and walked from the shadow-dappled orchard into the morning sunlight, thinking of the worms and Senor Bill.

She smiled, but only to herself.

"Where are you going?" Pablo asked.

"Senor Bill did not eat his breakfast this morning," Conchita said, "and suddenly I am very hungry."

PART TWO

THE WITCH

They called the outlaw Windy Jim for reasons which could not be discussed in polite company. Windy had ridden with Buck Barlowe's gang for nigh on four years. Four good years, as far as Windy was concerned. Because in the time it took for a city fella to get hisself a college education. Buck and his boys had raised themselves a whole lifetime's worth of hell—living high on the hog when they were flush, existing by guts and grit when they weren't.

During his tenure with Barlowe, Windy Jim had robbed stagecoaches, trains, and (on one desperate occasion) a traveling whorehouse situated in a particularly spacious Conestoga wagon. And, in the space of his many larcenous endeavors—with the notable exception of the traveling whorehouse—Windy's plunder had been of the spendable sort. Folding money, gold, and the like.

Which was why Windy was having trouble cinching his saddle to the way things were going of late. Ride out and rob a bank—he was used to that. Slap leather and corral a stagecoach carrying a Wells Fargo strongbox—he could pin back his ears and do 'er every day for a month of Sundays. But to lynch a flea-bitten black tramp and steal his bony left hand—no doubt about it, a deal like that made Windy as twitchy as a man wearing a pair of buggy underdrawers.

But that was the way things had been going since Buck Barlowe got hisself mixed up with the bruja from Arizona. A right sassy little dark-haired gal with eyes as golden-brown as good whiskey. At first Windy had figured her for a real goodtime Hannah. Until he saw the way she could twist up Buck's guts with the least little glance. Until the Mex outlaw named Jalisco explained exactly what a bruja was.

Was a goddamn witch, was what that little gal was. A witch with gleaming whiskey eyes, and hair the color of a moonless night's innards, and a Spanish tongue that could charm the devil into church on Easter Sunday.

Windy didn't like one little bit of it. And he was not alone in his displeasure—none of his saddle pals were exactly kicking up a shivaree over Buck Barlowe sharing his bed with a witch, either. To a man, they had turned downright trepedatious.

Jalisco had practically got himself religion—at least as much religion as you could steal. His lips were chapped from kissing a medal of the Holy Child, and he'd taken to wearing a scapular of Our Lady of Carmel that he'd swiped from the old mission in San Juan Bautista. But Jalisco wasn't the only one who'd taken to prayer—lately, O'Reilly was crossing himself so often that he had finger-sized bruises on his forehead and chest, and on more than one occasion Windy had caught the Irishman studying Jalisco's Holy Roman neckware with undisguised envy. Why, even Pueblo Jack, the goddamn heathen Injun, had offered Jalisco a good bit of jingle for his medal. Jack had himself a medicine bag he'd carried with him since he was a tot, but he said it couldn't hurt to cover as much of his plate as possible, spiritually speaking.

But those boys could go to hell in a hand basket as far as Windy Jim was concerned, because not a one of them had a worry to speak of compared to his.

It shook out like this—Windy was the only man in the gang who owned a Bowie knife. And, being the proud owner of such a fine weapon, the chore of severing the lynched tramp's gunhand had been Windy's and Windy's alone. Not to mention slicing a slab of fat off the tramp's backside. And that last task took some doing, 'cause the Buck had less meat on his bones than any prisoner of war who'd stumbled out of Andersonville after the Civil War.

Windy did not know why he had to do these things. He did them simply because Buck Barlowe ordered him to, as Buck wasn't one to go in much for parliamentary procedure let alone any back talk when it came to the doings of his outlaw gang.

Especially since he'd gotten that witchy gleam in his eyes.

But Windy sure enough wished he could get the memory of doing that carving out of his head. Same way he wished he could get the severed hand and the slab of fat out of his saddlebags.

Leastways, it wouldn't be long before the latter of those wishes came truer than true.

Because just ahead lay Black Pine Falls.

And just behind those falls was the cave entrance to the place Buck Barlowe had named Bandit's Notch.

Buck watched the lazy bastards come.

Four bedraggled men under the glow of a ripe apricot moon, every one of them slouching in the saddle, every one of them wet straight through and shivery from their ride through the cold waterfall.

Windy Jim led the pack, looking particularly noncombustible. Next came Jalisco, plump lips playing kissy with that damned papist neckware of his. Then O'Reilly, mick eyelids drooping like he hadn't slept a wink since riding out two days ago and might never sleep again. Last but not least was the Indian, Pueblo Jack, one hand fisted around that medicine bag of his.

Estrellita watched the men, too. She wasn't standing on the porch, of course. She was inside the cabin, tending to her potions. But she saw everything that Buck saw. She was perched right up there in his head, looking through his eyes, and when it came to Estrellita that kind of togetherness suited Buck just fine. Like he told her, he had himself a mucho grande head —hahaha—and there was plenty of room in there for the both of them.

Windy Jim's Appaloosa snorted as he drew rein. The outlaw dismounted, freed up his saddlebags as if he couldn't do the job quick enough, and tossed them Buck's way.

Buck opened his mouth, but it was Estrellita's question that crossed his lips. "Did everything go okay?"

"I don't have a goddamn idea of what okay should be on a job like this," Windy said. "But I did like I was told."

That didn't satisfy Estrellita. Once more, she spoke through Buck. "Are you certain that you got the right man?"

Windy snorted laughter. "Boss, this guy looked even worse than the way you described him. His eyes was more dead than alive, and I figure he had more scar on him than skin. Skin he did have looked like a slab of bacon that had tried to set up housekeepin' in a hell-hot skillet. Couldn't be two like him on earth, not unless dead folks have started bustin' out of hell."

"And you made sure that he was dead?"

"We left him swingin' from the branch of an apple tree, a rope around his neck, his tongue all purple and plumped between his lips like the biggest ol' blood-boil you ever did see. If that ain't what you'd call dead, I don't know what is."

Buck waited for Estrellita to ask another question, but it appeared that she was satisfied with Windy's report. "Well," Buck said finally, and all by his lonesome, "I guess you boys have earned yourselves some rest."

The horsemen exchanged troubled glances, as if they'd expected something more.

Buck figured he knew what it took to make his gang happy. "You boys look like you could stand to shake the chill out. There's a couple fresh bottles in the barn."

"Then we got nothin' to wait for," Windy said.

"Sure you do." Buck patted Windy's plunder. "Let me take this stuff inside, and I'll give you back your saddlebags."

Windy shook his head.

"Burn the damn things," he said as he gave his mount the spurs, and only a blind man could have missed the fire in his eyes.

Estrellita caressed the severed hand. In truth it was not much to look at, for the fingers were bony and the knuckles were knotted and the nails had been chewed down to the quick. Still, her heart thundered at the leathery feel of it.

The callused hand of a left-handed gunfighter who drew his powers from a deep well-spring of dark magic. This, along with the slab of fat carved from the gunman's backside, was what Estrellita Dolores Refugio Cavendish needed if her plans for Buck Barlowe's outlaw gang were to come to fruition.

Barlowe hovered over her shoulder, a hungry coyote circling dangerous prey. "Is it what you wanted, Estrellita?"

"Exactly, mi amor." She turned and kissed him. Just a short peck on the cheek as she placed the dead man's hand on the table and took Buck Barlowe's hand lightly in her own.

Of course. Buck's big paw did not excite her the way the hand of the dead gunfighter did. But Buck would never know this. He could not see into her heart the way she could see into his. When he looked at Estrellita, he saw nothing but the excited gleam in her eyes, and his mulish male self-assurance told him that he was the man who had put it there.

The silly gringo.

He said, "I'm glad it makes you happy, darlin'."

"Si, Buck. And soon it will make you happy, too."

"Well, I could just about stand that if what you say is true. But the boys... you can see that they's all tied up about this witchy stuff. They's gonna take some convincing. They's used to relying on guns, not black magic."

"Soon they will understand." Estrellita stared down at the gunfighter's hand—black skin tight around the severed wrist bones, dark fingers curled like the branches of a wind-twisted tree. "There are things more powerful than guns," she continued, "and things more deadly than bullets. These things have always remained in the shadows, the secrets of a chosen few. But the world is changing, Buck. It is time you and your men changed, as well. It is time the shadows washed away the light of day."

"It's sure hard to believe." Buck shook his head, staring at the severed hand. "Just looks like a dead nigger's hand to me."

"Just you wait," Estrellita whispered, and then she kissed Buck again and nibbled his earlobe for good measure. "After we rob the bank in San Jose without firing a single shot, mi amor... then you will see that I have been right all along. And so will your men."

"And everything will be different."

"Si." Estrellita smiled. "Everything."

Of course, Buck wanted to go at it right then and there, what with all that earlobe-nibbling. But Estrellita had work to do. She sent her outlaw to bed. It would be better to wait until the spell had been cast, after all. Then she would need a release as badly as Buck Barlowe.

Estrellita's black cat rubbed against her ankles, purring, begging attention, but the witch only shoed the animal outside. She needed to be alone. For the time had come for Estrellita Dolores Refugio Cavendish to recreate an old family recipe.

Her grandfather, a warlock, had brought the spell for the Hand of Glory from London to the shores of America, where he taught it to his seventh son. That son, a youth with wandering feet, had brought it in turn to Arizona, where he taught it to his wife, a lovely witch who had come north from Mexico.

His wife, of course, added a Southwestern touch to the spell. It was this strange hybrid which she passed on to her only daughter, Estrellita, who brought the spell to California.

Estrellita set the ingredients on the table before her. A bit of the Old World—pounded salt, peppercorns, and saltpeter—and a bit of the new—diced jalapenos, along with other peppers: de arbol, and pequin, and tepin.

The hot peppers accounted for the improvement over the Old World spell. They speeded the spell's progress, a good bit of which involved drying the hand. Traditionally, this meant pickling the hand for fifteen days, then drying it in the sun during the Dog Days of July and August. And if all that proved insufficient, the hand would be heated in an oven fed by bracken and verain.

But the fiery peppers dried the hand out quickly, shortening the time of preparation from weeks to days. And that was good, because the magic that the Hand of Glory would provide could not come quickly enough to suit Estrellita.

She took the dead gunfighter's hand in her own, squeezing it until the bones ground together and an awful rasping sound filled the cabin. A few droplets of blood pattered onto the table. Thick droplets, and very dark, which beaded like obsidian on scarred wood.

In the Old World the spell had required the hand of a hanged man. Any hanged man. But in the magic of Estrellita's mother, the strength of a spell grew in accordance to the strength of the ingredients. So Estrellita's mother had substituted the hand of a hanged gunfighter—preferably a left-handed gun—which increased the speed and potency of her magic.

Now Estrellita was going her mother one better. For she had much more than the hand of a left-handed gunfighter who had been hanged. She had the hand of a left-handed gunfighter whose veins had coursed with a dark magic all his own.

With all her might, she squeezed the gunfighter's fingers one by one, but not another drop of blood remained in the hand. She placed it on a piece of winding-sheet, then ground the salt, peppercorns, saltpeter, and Mexican peppers in an earthenware jar. To this she added a pickling sauce which she had mixed earlier in the day.

Estrellita folded the winding-sheet over the hand, saying a few words that had been spoken by her great-grandfather and her father and her mother as well, and then she eased the hand into the jar.

Now, she had done all she could do.

Now, she could only wait.

For what seemed like the hundredth time, Estrellita imagined how it was going to be. The Hand of Glory held in her own, a candle made from the gunfighter's fat nestled in the dead palm. With Buck and his men at her side, she would enter the largest bank in the town of San Jose. She would light the candle and the magic would strike like lightening. The occupants of the bank would be as stone—unable to move, speak, or cry out. Buck's men would dynamite the safe, and there would be money, money enough for forever, and no one would make a move to stop them, not as long as the candle made of dead man's fat burned.

Estrellita's breaths came short and fast. In the other room, Buck Barlowe tossed and turned in the little bed.

The witch licked her lips.

Quite soon, she would make Buck lie very still.

Estrellita was flying the eagle, riding Buck high and hard. He couldn't hardly move, because the little vixen was doing enough moving for the both of them.

"Everything go like it should?" he managed to ask.

"Si, Buck," she said. Not even looking at him. Looking at her reflection in the big mirror which hung behind the bed. One thing about Estrellita, she liked looking at herself as much as most men did. She'd made Buck buy the mirror at a bar way to hell and gone down in the San Joaquin valley. He'd had to hire a couple Mexicans to haul it all the way up to Bandit's Notch on their backs. 'Course he'd had to shoot them after they'd done all that hard work so they couldn't reveal the location of his hideout. But that was the way it was—he'd do anything for Estrellita.

Take any risk. Kill any man.

Still, he wasn't satisfied with her answer. He gasped a deep breath and put enough wind in his bellows to ask, "Did the spell work?"

"Patience, Buck."

"I mean... is the hand ready?"

"Shut up, Buck."

He couldn't hardly do anything else. The witch's hands dropped onto his chest like a couple of bricks, damn near knocked the wind out of him. The bed bounced and creaked. Something crashed to the floor and broke—sounded like it was all the way in the other room. Thank God it wasn't that damn mirror behind his head. That thing fell, it would cut the both of them to ribbons.

But Estrellita didn't seem to notice the sound. Her fingers fisted in Buck's chest hair and she kept on riding him hellbent for leather, not looking at him at all but never even closing those whiskey eyes of hers.

Buck had to close his. He twisted his head to the side, bit down on the pillow so hard that he got a mouthful of feathers for his trouble. A second later he groaned and blew those feathers against Estrellita's breasts.

And still she didn't let up. Lordy. Buck's fingers dug into the mattress. The bed creaked like a ship tossed by an angry sea.

Buck heard something else, too. A softer sound.

Scuttling. Like rats.

Instantly, a case of the willies raised Buck's hackles. Rats. He hated the damn things.

'"Lita," he said. "I hear something. Sounds like — "

"Silencio, my love." Estrellita slapped a hand over Buck's mouth. But that didn't do his ears any good. Because he could still hear the sound. Tiny tread on hardwood floor, then whispering over discarded clothes, scuttling onto the bed sheets.

Something scrabbled over Buck's left foot and took the inside track up his left leg.

Something big.

Buck twisted away from Estrellita's hand.

He screamed as that something took hold of him.

Lordy, he could almost see the rat down there, gnawing his jewels!

"'Lita!" Buck screeched, grabbing the witch by the shoulders and tossing her out of bed.

He had a clear view of the space between his legs, because Estrellita was on the floor and his erection was fading fast.

The nigger's severed hand was down there, fisted around his balls.

Buck gasped, pain crackling his nerve endings. Hot pain. Like horse liniment, only worse. He came out of bed lickety-split. Grabbed hold of the severed hand, but it wouldn't turn him loose. The dead man's fingernails dug in like hungry ticks, and fresh jolts of agony speared Buck's balls and razored his innards.

"Estrellita!"

The outlaw spun around, all crazy-legged, looking for her. She was on the other side of the room, over by his clothes. Down on her knees, one hand digging in his boot.

The right boot. The one with the hidden scabbard where he kept a throwing knife.

Christ! A knife!

A very sharp knife.

"Estrellita!" Buck stumbled backward, through the bedroom doorway. "POR FAVOR, DARLIN'! DON'T DO IT!"

Estrellita advanced, her whiskey eyes gleaming, the throwing knife held in her left hand.

She spit on the blade. Buck tried to move faster. But the nigger's hand was like a clamp, and Buck's balls had been dipped in flaming lava, and he could only shuffle like an old timer with the trots.

Estrellita clutched the tip of the blade between thumb and forefinger, raising it over her shoulder.

She said, “Sin Dios y sin Santa Maria.”

The knife flew threw the air.

Buck heard the awful sound of sharp metal spearing flesh as the blade sunk home.

And then he fainted dead away.

The witch's eyes were daggers. "You told me you killed the gunfighter."

"We hung him," Windy Jim said, refusing to meet her gaze. "We surprised him and strung his ass up before he could even yank his pistol. We watched him swing for a handful of minutes. At the end he wasn't movin' no more than a statue. That's when I chopped off his damn hand. No way a man could have lived through all that."

"You are wrong." Estrellita pointed to the writhing black hand speared to the floor by a throwing knife which glowed with eldritch fire. "If the gunfighter were dead, his hand would be dead as well. But his hand lives. And it fights. And it tries to — "

An anguished groan rose from Buck Barlowe. Estrellita shivered. The sight of the gunfighter's hand clenched around Buck's cojones was still fresh in her memory. If her aim had been off a fraction of an inch, if the knife had missed its target —

But it had not. Praise be to Satan.

Estrellita looked up from the hand, surprised to find that the outlaw called Windy Jim had worked up enough courage to look her in the eye.

"I'm tellin' you we hung the gunfighter," he said. "I'm tellin' you that as sure as I'm standin' here. So maybe it's you that's got the problem. Maybe it's your witchy ways done backfired on you." His eyes narrowed. "And just maybe, if that's so, then us boys have less to worry about than we first imagined."

They were all looking at her now. The stinking gringo called Windy Jim, and the Irishman, the Indian, and the Mexican, whose names she could not remember. An expectant silence hung in the air between them, soon muffled by the soft sound of Buck Barlowe's pitiful moans and the dull percussion of the gunfighter's callused fingers drumming hardwood floor as the severed hand tried to escape the bewitched knife.

Estrellita retreated a step.

The men came forward.

When they were two steps distant, the bruja's lips parted.

And her curses rained down.

Windy Jim did not much like having a bellyful of frogs.

He could hear the little devils makin' music down deep inside of him, like his guts were a goddamned pond on a warm spring evening. Bullfrogs and leopard frogs croaking to beat the band. Spring peepers and green frogs and pickerels adding rhythm and harmony.

Other sounds floated in the darkness, riding the nightwind like mournful ghosts. Jalisco and O'Reilly braying to the pope of Rome like billy goats that done seen the light. Pueblo Jack right alongside them, braying to God knows who, or what.

But Jim did not hazard a glance in his compadres' direction. He did not want to see what the witch had done to them, because that was not his problem. Instead, he sat in the shadows of an old pine, watching the cabin door.

Presently, the door creaked open on worn hinges. Estrellita stepped down from the porch, moving to a clearing where moonlight pooled.

Jim did not make a move toward her, though scant feet separated them. He leaned back against the tree, his belly a symphony of froggy delight, watching her.

A ripe moon reduced the shadows to frayed tatters. Windy figured that Estrellita had to see him, though she didn't let on that she did. But he could see her well enough, right down to a pair of eyes that gleamed in the moonlight. Not the whiskey eyes that had captivated Buck Barlowe, these were the green eyes of a cat....

Yeah, she could see him all right. With a pair of cat eyes in her head, she could see him clear as if it was high noon.

A pitiful mewing prickled Jim's spine in a way that the croaking of the frogs and the horrible lamentations of his compadres hadn't. He glanced to the open cabin door, saw the black cat stumbling about blindly as it advanced into the bright moonlight, a pair of empty red eye sockets in its black black face.

Estrellita turned and hissed at the cat. The animal didn't take another step.

The bruja stripped, left her satiny good-time gal dress heaped around her ankles. Even with those frogs making misery in his belly, Windy Jim hardened at the sight of her nakedness.

He watched as she filled her open palm with tart-scented oil from a little bottle. This she rubbed generously over her proud little teats, over ribs that stood out like rungs of a ladder, over a flat belly... and then through that dark tangle 'tween her legs and down along her flanks... Seeing this, Jim surely realized why Buck Barlowe hadn't stood one ghost of a chance against this little gal. No man would have—not if he still sucked air, anyway.

Estrellita stoppered the bottle. Said a few words in Spanish. And then a fireball bloomed above her head, and she stepped up into it, rising in the night sky until she was way up there with that ripe moon, flying fast beneath a blanket of stars.

Windy stood up. Frogs jostled in his belly, little ones complaining as big ones stampeded and hopped around. The ruckus sure enough didn't do much for a man's equilibrium—Windy felt suddenly seasick, and his bile rose but he choked it back down.

He took each step slow, hoping the frogs would settle down. But the noise they made didn't much matter. Because as Windy neared the cabin, he couldn't hardly hear the frogs at all—so loud and constant were Buck Barlowe's groans of misery.

Windy stepped across the threshold, his spurs ringing lightly on hardwood floor. The room was lit by a splatter of dying coals glowing in the stone fireplace. Orange light flickered every which way.

The blind black cat brushed Windy's ankles and started to purr, but Windy didn't stop to pet the critter. Didn't even look down.

He was too busy looking at the table where the witch kept her potions and her book of magic spells.

He was too busy looking at a pair of whiskey-colored eyes in a white china dish.

PART THREE

THREE FIRES AND A ROPE

Stack knew she would come. So when the fireball dropped from the sky, dancing over treetops and lighting at the edge of the clearing, he was not surprised at all.

Not surprised that she came, but he was surprised by the look of her. She was dark and beautiful, naked from head to toe, but her beauty wasn't so much in the way she looked or her nakedness, it resulted from the proud way she carried herself—the way she moved, the way her cat eyes flashed, the way she drew each breath and let it go. Every move she made said that she was alive, and that she knew it, and that her life was the thing that she loved.

She came to a stop in a patch of shadow just outside the glow of his campfire. He knew she could see every damn thing with those cat eyes of hers. She put them right to work, studying him head to toe. Especially toe—she smiled when she saw his boots.

"Where'd you get those things, gunfighter?"

"A Chinaman made 'em for me—a wizard from the Mysterious East."

"And what did you do for him in return?"

"Oh... a thing or two. For him, and for his daughter."

"So you aren't afraid of witches."

"I ain't afraid of much."

She came into the firelight. "Maybe I misjudged you, Mister..."

"You can call me Stack. And you can forget the soft soap. Or save it for your lover man. I imagine he needs it. Gonna take a whole lot of soap to wash that chili juice off his balls. I bet he's in a world of hurt."

"Yes. You certainly surprised the both of us. That was very clever of you."

"Clever don't pay the freight. And I only just got started. I'm here to tell you it's gonna get worse." Stack raised his stumpy wrist. "Unless you give me back what you stole, that is."

"I'm afraid I have great need of your hand, gunfighter. Otherwise, I wouldn't have taken it in the first place."

"I know what you're up to. I've heard tell of the Hand of Glory. That's why I know that my hand's no good to you. Not while I'm alive, anyway."

She nodded solemnly. "That's true. And that's my problem."

"You ain't gonna solve it by showin' up naked at my campfire. You ain't gonna climb up on my saddle and suck my juice into your rotten belly. I won't give you the chance. There's only one kind of dance we're gonna have together, you and me, and it's gonna be vertical."

"Oh? And just what kind of a dance is that, gunfighter?"

Stack stood up, his right hand fisted around the severed hangman's noose.

"I hear they hang witches," he said.

She started to laugh.

The rope danced in air as the gunman twirled it over his head.

An instant later, he launched it just the way a cowpuncher launches his riata.

The noose dropped over the witch's pretty black hair, and the gunfighter pulled it tight around her delicate throat. She fought him and his boots dug in. They stared at each other across the fire pit, neither one giving an inch.

The bruja tried to get some words out—"Sin Dios..." she whispered—but Stack pulled the noose tighter, cutting off her wind.

The bruja went blue in the face.

She stumbled toward him, into the fire.

His nostrils flared as he caught her scent. Her breath like funeral flowers, her body slick with some kind of scented oil.

Flames licked her legs. Caught that oil. Lit her up like a miner's tallow.

Only this wasn't witchfire. These flames were born of a simple wooden match, and they could hurt her.

She screamed like a stuck pig, and her long hair disappeared in an oily halo of blue flame, and her skin blackened, and her face blistered around a pair of cat eyes.

Another second and the hangman's rope was nothing but ash.

"...Y SIN SANTA MARIA," she screamed, finishing her incantation from depths of amber flame.

Witchfire bloomed around her, choking out the campfire flames. And then the bruja was gone in the night, an eldritch fireball crossing the waxy moon, and the whole world seemed to ring with the sound of her agony.

Stack didn't let it rile him any. He settled down. He had work to do.

Nothing ever seemed to come easy for him. No reason he should have expected things to go different this time. Something as simple as a rope wouldn't finish the job. Not with one as smart as her.

He unfolded his pocket knife and cut the stitchery around the topmost bat on his left boot. The creature flapped free and took to the air, following the witch's path.

Stack saddled Bill Fristo's horse and, earthbound, did the same.

Upon the occasion of her return to Bandit's Notch, the witch sure didn't make Windy Jim's pecker hard. All that pretty hair was burnt right off her noggin, and her skin was blacker than the fabled Hole of Calcut and all dry like a hunk of jerky besides. Her teats were burned down to nothing. Sharp ribs had carved through her leathery skin, flashing whiter than ivory in the moonlight. Onliest thing that looked the same were those cat eyes, still glowing green in the fading moonlight.

Windy wondered what the hell had happened to her. He expected she'd had a run-in with the not-so-dead gunfighter. If the bastard could survive a hanging, maybe he knew a magic spell or two of his own.

Not that Windy was going to stop and ask the witch about it.

And not that she was going to stop and tell. She stumbled across the porch and into the cabin, her skin crackling like dry corn husk with every move she made, not sparing a single glance for Windy and his companions even though they sat astride their mounts a scant twenty feet away.

Windy grinned. Things weren't going to get any better for the bruja behind that cabin door. He'd seen to that personally.

He'd hated killing Buck Barlowe. That was his one regret. Ol' Buck had taught him many a thing, and together they'd traveled many a trail. But Buck wouldn't listen to him, especially when it came to leaving the witch. All Buck could do was lie there and whine about how much he loved her, and how bad his balls burned, and how things would have gone if they'd gone just right. Windy couldn't much stand it—it was his considered opinion that, as curses went, Buck Barlowe's lovesick miseries made frogs in the belly look like the Good Lord's own blessing.

So the bruja was going to find Buck dead in the cabin. But it was what she wasn't going to find that would give her a case of the miseries that would make her forget all about her barbecued carcass.

Windy patted the saddlebags he'd taken from Buck Barlowe. One side held the witch's spell book. It was written in Mexican, but Windy had grown up south of the border. He could read Mexican as good as English.

The other saddlebag held the witch's powders and potions—the ones she'd been using earlier in the evening. But that wasn't all it held. Alongside those bottles and jars were the bruja's whiskey-colored eyes, wrapped up in a swatch torn from her satiny good-time gal dress.

Let her go around from here til doomsday with those cat eyes jammed in her blistered head. Windy Jim had to laugh at that. He laughed until his belly shook and all those frogs got to going again, and then he shut up.

The frogs didn't. Had to be there was a spell in the book to get rid of the bastards. Windy would have to find that one first, banish those ornery amphibians right off. Maybe while he was at it he could figure a way to reverse the spell the witch had cast on Jalisco and O'Reilly and Pueblo Jack. Windy was sure tired of hearing those boys bray. Besides, there wasn't no way they could wear their ten-gallon hats with those damn horns sprouting from their foreheads. And with the cloven hooves they'd sprouted, they couldn't even foot a stirrup. Damn boys more'n likely would slip right out of the saddle if they had to hit a gallop anytime soon.

At least the boys still had their own damn hands and could yank pistols if need be. Even so, Windy didn't much want to honcho a gang of billy goats. A job like that wasn't what you'd call dignified.

Windy sighed. He'd have to play it smart. Think things through.

So first off, he'd take care of the curses the witch had dropped on him and his boys. Then he'd backtrack to the spell the witch had been working on.

Windy had read up on it while snooping around the cabin. The Hand of Glory, it was called. Lop off the hand of a hanged gunfighter, sprinkle it with hot peppers and a bunch of other fixin's and do a little abracadabra over top of it, plus make a candle from the dead shootist's fat, and there you'd be, taking down banks without so much as a pea-shooter for protection. Anywhere, anytime. Just so long as you had a match to light that damn candle, because it would freeze anyone who stood in your way colder than a Yukon miner's ass.

Windy took one last look at the cabin. Everything dark, and still no sound at all. Maybe the bruja had tottered in there and died. Could be. That was what had happened to the witch in that story Windy's mama used to tell him. That fairy tale about Hansel & Gretel. Those two young 'uns had killed a witch by cookin' her up in her own oven, hadn't they? Maybe the gunfighter had taken a lesson from Hansel & Gretel. Maybe so.

But maybe not. Bar cookin', Windy knew by the scorched look of her that the bruja had stumbled across the wrong campfire at the very least. But he didn't much care how she'd come to meet her fate, not now that he had her spellbook and her potions and her peepers.

Hell, if only Buck Barlowe had gone for Windy's scheme. It sure made sense to Windy—why did you need yourself an actual witch when you had her secrets at your fingertips? No call to keep her around.

Damn, but it was too bad about old Buck. Some folks just wouldn't listen, though.

Windy put the spurs to his Appaloosa and the horse trotted forward. The frogs continued their musicale down there in his belly, but the critters didn't bother Windy near as much as they had an hour before.

The outlaw looked to the sky. Dawn was coming on quick, all rosy-fingered above the towering black pines, but he could still see the stars and the moon...

...and a bat flitting above the treetops, circling low.

Windy Jim didn't pay the little black devil no nevermind.

Bat couldn't do him no good, earthly or otherwise.

He didn't need no bat to make a Hand of Glory.

PART FOUR

THREE BILLY GOATS GRUFF

Stack coaxed Bill Fristo's old Paint up a rough switchback trail. The horse was just about done in—six miles this morning through the woods, then two more as they climbed above timberline, and the last two over busted shards of slip-sliding granite that would confound a mountain goat.

Stack was about done in, too. Especially his backside, where the lynch mob had carved that hunk of flesh off his slats. Sure, the wound had just about healed thanks to the Chinaman's magic, but still it was hard to sit a saddle with a slab of flesh missing from the tenderest part of your hindquarters.

But even under the best of circumstances it would be hard to sit a saddle on a day like this, what with the sun shining down through a cloudless sky and no cover anywhere on the side of the mountain, just those hunks of granite catching the heat and tossing it off in blistering waves that threatened to scorch anything that moved.

It was a place so quiet and empty that every crunch of the horse's hooves over pebbly granite was like a thunderbolt. Stack's breaths came raw and ragged. Trickles of sweat poured off of him and damned if he knew where it was coming from, because he didn't even have a canteen, hadn't had a drink since breaking camp in the woods that morning, and he felt drier than a temperance union social.

Hell, it could be worse. Could be he was a horse like the one between his legs, accustomed to shade and apple trees and days where he did nothing more than wander around a corral and drop dumplings for the Mexicans to muck up.

Or worse than that. Could be he was a witch who'd flared up like a hunk of fatty meat tossed on a campfire.

Stack had some sympathy for that feeling. He'd had something like that happen to him once upon a time, though he wasn't the kind to go picking at scabs. He didn't dwell on his past, especially the parts that had gone bad. And that part had been the worst. He still had the scars to show for it.

But he had scars aplenty. He'd earned each and every one of them by getting through one sort of trouble or another. But get through those troubles he always did. Just the way he would get through this.

Stack climbed down off the Paint and fed the animal a couple of apples he'd taken from Fristo's place. Had half an apple himself, standing there beneath the blazing sun, sucking every bit of juice from the fruit before he swallowed it, trying to convince himself that he could feel a cool breeze whispering down from someplace high and icy.

The fruit didn't sit easy in his belly the way it should have. Food never did anymore. Curse or charm, take your pick—it came with the territory. It was all part of the deal he'd made with the Chinaman.

Stack fed the other half of the apple to the Paint. Then he stepped in front of the animal and tugged the reins, leading it up one set of switchbacks, and then another.

Eight or ten more sets and it appeared he'd be at the top of the mountain.

He didn't know which way he'd be going after that.

But his boots knew. They were directing him, following the trail of the bat he'd cut loose the night before. When he got to the top of the mountain, the bats would tell him which way to go. Same way as they were telling him he had to hump that switchback trail right now.

Shards of granite crunched underfoot. Stack's feet ached. His boots didn't seem much happier—the bats began to make little squealing sounds, like rats caught in a trap.

Stack's boots were getting hungry.

And, he well knew, they weren't much on patience.

Goddamn, but it was hotter than Wild Bill Hickok's own pistol on top of that mountain. Not one bit of shade—no trees at all—nothing but rocks and more rocks.

Windy's lips were cracked and dry, and his nose felt like a potato that had baked too long at the edge of a campfire. The new leader of the Buck Barlowe gang couldn't hardly stand it, but he was saddlesore straight through and needed to rest for at least a minute or two.

While he was at it, he could stand a break from the frogs down there in his belly. The little bastards were kicking up a real ruckus.

Every inch as dry and miserable as Windy Jim was, that's how dry and miserable the frogs were, too. The frogs didn't much like being dry and miserable. But there wasn't too much Windy could do about that. The gang only had one full canteen left between them, and they were a long way from water. Still, with the frogs hopping and leaping and kicking at his guts, Jim could hardly think straight.

To hell with being noble. Windy just naturally had to drain half that canteen to earn himself a moment of peace. Fortunately, the other boys had gone wandering and weren't around to complain. Being half goat, they weren't having too much trouble traveling through the mountains, anyway. For one thing, they didn't have any frogs in their bellies. Just roots and branches and scrub. Hell, the boys had eaten half the vegetation on the mountainside on the way up, and Jim figured it would be the same on the way down.

The frogs quieted, sloshing about, settling down a bit. Jim opened his saddlebags and tried to concentrate on the witch's spellbook. He'd flipped through it three or four times the night before, but he hadn't found a single word about putting frogs in a fellow's belly, let alone any way to get rid of the damned amphibians once they'd made themselves t'home.

So he flipped to the part about the Hand of Glory. That one was spelled out real good. Maybe he and the boys would have to get that spell going first, rob themselves a bank or two. Then they could hire themselves a witch, a real professional who could take care of Windy's frogs and the boys' goaty troubles before you could say —

"Windy! It's the gunfighter!" Jalisco charged across the mountaintop, braying to beat the band. "The one we lynched! And he's coming this way!"

Windy slapped the spellbook closed. Every frog in his belly leaped in unison at the sound, but he didn't let that trouble him any. Right now it looked like his luck was about to change, what with a gunfighter practically falling into his lap and him needing a gunfighter's hand to get the spell going... as long as he killed the gunfighter right thoroughly this time.

Windy stood and looked Jalisco in the eye. "You sure it's the same fella?"

"Yeah." Jalisco nodded, so eager to please that he nearly speared Windy with his billy goat horns.

"He still have his right hand?"

"Yeah."

Windy smiled. "Then let's corral the sumbitch and get us the hell off this mountain."

Three or four more switchback twists and it looked like Stack would be done climbing.

He tugged the reins and Fristo's old Paint trudged after him, the horse's hooves crunching over rocks, Stack's feet doing the same. Step after step after step. Eyes locked on the trail, because he didn't want to lose his footing on this loose rock, didn't want to —

"Hold it, gunfighter."

Stack looked up, slowly. Saw a pair of cloven hooves jutting from broadcloth breeches first off, then a gun fisted in a dark brown hand, and finally a brown face, mostly human, but with a white billy goat beard and sparkling brown animal eyes and a pair of horns as sharp and dangerous as Satan's own.

There was something about that face. Something familiar.

"Stop your staring, boy."

Damn. Lose the whiskers and the horns, encircle that sparkling brown with a pair of human irises, and you'd have the face of one of the men who'd strung Stack up in Fristo's apple orchard.

The billy goat cocked his pistol. "I told you to stop staring. And hand over your pistol."

Stack let go of the reins. Fristo's horse whinnied and nudged his shoulder, but he ignored the animal, keeping his eyes trained on the billy-goat man.

"The gun. Now."

With his left hand missing, Stack had abandoned his holster. The scarred Navy Colt was tucked under his gunbelt so he could get to it with his right hand. He reached across his belly, his callused fingers brushing the cherrywood grip —

"Slow, boy," the billy goat brayed. "Take it real slow and easy — "

Stack yanked his Navy Colt. The billy goat fired his pistol. The first bullet whizzed over Stack's shoulder and slammed Bill Fristo's horse dead between the eyes, and then it was like someone had pulled a spigot in hell because hot blood geysered from the horse's wound and washed the back of Stack's neck as he worked the trigger of his Colt, standing his ground while the billy goat's second shot tore through the brim of his oxblood Stetson and then the billy goat jerked back, tottering on cloven hooves like a drunk, and Stack fired again, and the goatman pitched over the side of the trail just as Fristo's dead horse did the same, and they tumbled together through the granite heat, one slamming wet and broken and bloody over the other, tumbling over and over until they came to rest on a set of rocky switchbacks thirty feet below.

Stack whirled, staring at the mountainside—bleached rock and an ocean of blue sky above. Stack knew that his enemies were hiding among the rocks, but he couldn't see them, couldn't see anything because the afternoon sunlight burned down through that clear blue sky like God's own fire, glinting off the granite and blinding the gunfighter.

Stack squinted, but it was still too bright by half. Sweat trickled over his brow and burned his eyes. He blinked. Everything was blurry now, and —

He heard familiar crunching. Footsteps on granite, above and to the right. He cocked his pistol, trusting his ears, and turned.

Two goatmen ducked behind a man-sized boulder on the second switchback ridge above.

Stack stood in the blazing sunlight, waiting for the billy goats to come after him.

They didn't.

But the man-sized boulder did.

The billy goats grunted as they pushed the boulder over the side of the switchback trail.

Stack had plenty of time to get out of the way. Of the boulder, that is. But other rocks followed in its wake, dislodged by the first, and he couldn't dodge them all.

A rock as big as a man's head slammed Stack dead in the chest and stole his wind. Felt like it had made a hole straight through him and traveled on but he hadn't been that lucky. The rock took him with it, over the side of the switchback trail, and then he was sliding down, long legs tangling with his arms, his spine twisting this way and that like a circus contortionist's, open palm leaving fleshy trails on those hot white rocks and he tumbled down, down... other rocks racing him now, slamming his body like hard fists as they passed him by.

The sound in his head was like a thunderstorm that was never going to end. But it did. He slammed into something soft and blacked out for just a second or two, and when he came around the thunderstorm had reduced to a soft trickle, and soon it was nothing, the sound a final grain of sand makes as it whispers from an hourglass.

Stack winced. Everything hurt. Everything, except for his right cheek. It lay on a soft pillow.

Soft, and wet.

He got his eye open and saw that he'd landed face-first in the split belly of Bill Fristo's dead horse.

Hell of a way to end up. He wouldn't go out like this.

But damned if he could move.

And then he heard the busted granite sounds again. Not another rock slide. Footsteps. Or hoovesteps. The cloven hooves of the billy-goat men.

"We get him?"

"We got him!"

Once again. Stack tried to move, only to realize that his legs were pinned by a granite blanket. Big rocks and little rocks. He might be able to move some of them with his remaining hand, might be able to toss them off one at a time if he had an hour or two to spare. But he knew damn well that he didn't have more than a handful of minutes before the goatmen would be close enough to smell.

Concentrating, he tried moving his legs, hoping that he'd have some wiggle room. But all he could move was his left foot.

The gunfighter twisted, looked over one shoulder. A couple small rocks rolled away.

Stack strained, made it up onto his elbows. Now he had a better view. The toe of his left boot poked through one corner rock pile.

"The nigger's movin'!" one of the goatmen hollered. "He's still alive!"

"That's good, 'cause it would be a shame if he died from an avalanche. Windy Jim says we got to hang him for that spell to work."

"Okay then. Let's get him the hell off this mountain and string him up."

"Yeah. Afore he has a chance to die on us natural-like."

Stack strained against the rock pile, but all that heat and weight was too much—his elbows gave out and he sank against the horse's bloody belly. He didn't have one ounce of gumption left in him. He couldn't move at all.

But his left foot could. Not his foot proper, actually. What moved were the bats that made up his left boot.

He'd cut the stitching and freed one of the creatures the night before, sending it to track the witch. Now the other bats worked against that loose stitching, their leathery wings flapping, their razor-sharp teeth cutting —

Stack giggled. It kind of tickled, the bats squirming like that —

And then the first bat took wing... and the second flapped away... and the third —

The screams of the goatmen echoed through the valley below.

Windy Jim ran across the mountaintop as if Satan himself were hot on his heels.

But there was no way Windy could escape what he'd seen, no matter how fast he ran. His brain held onto that memory the way a desperate gambler holds onto his last poker chip.

Seeing Jalisco fall before the gunfighter's pistol was bad enough. But watching those damn bats descend on O'Reilly and Pueblo Jack had been worse. The creatures had ripped the two men to pieces. And while Windy had been able to look away from the blood, there was no way he could escape the sound of his compadres' screams.

He'd tried to outrun the sounds. That hadn't worked. He was running still. But even though his buddies were ten minutes dead, he could still hear them scream. The sound rattlesnaked through his memory and made him want to scream himself.

But that would be a mistake. The gunfighter would hear him. He had to run, had to hide before the black man could come after him.

No. That wouldn't happen. The gunfighter was buried under half a mountain. Bats or no bats, Windy didn't have to worry about him.

The outlaw stopped running. Dropped hands onto his knees, nearly wretched. The sun slapped his backside like a punishing whip. If only he had some water. If only he had a drink. But he'd dropped his canteen at the top of the switchback trail, and he wasn't going back for it now because he didn't want to see that black man ever again, be he buried or no —

He had to straighten up. Just a little bit further and he'd be on horseback again. He could see his mount fifty or sixty feet ahead, in the same spot where he'd left it. If he could just get that far —

His belly heaved. A lump rose in his throat. A lump that seemed to have a life of its own, with scrabbling legs, and Windy choked on that lump, gagged, heaved again, sicked up the lump and spat it out.

A puddle of bile splashed white rocks, followed by one frog, then another. The amphibians jumped over hot granite, and Windy's belly heaved again at the sight of them, and another frog kicked over his tongue and squeezed between his lips, and then another —

And then Windy heard the sound behind him. The crunch of a boot on granite. Then silence. Then the crunch of the boot —

The outlaw turned, eyes dancing wildly in his head. Saw the gunfighter, bats circling his oxblood Stetson hat, a couple of the creatures latched to his black neck as if they were drinking his blood...

...or feeding him the blood of O'Reilly and Pueblo Jack....

Windy couldn't move. Neither could he bear to watch the dark man come. He closed his eyes. But even in the darkness, he couldn't escape the sound of the bats cutting circles through the blistering air, and the dark man's strange tread... boot crunching gravel, then the tread of his naked foot, then boot crunching gravel...

Windy started to laugh. Remembered that snatch of nonsense his Mama used to sing, Diddle diddle dumpling my son John, one shoe off and one shoe on....

But this wasn't no time for nonsense. Windy's guts lurched again. A fat bullfrog bellied across his lips and bolted for freedom. He opened his eyes and watched the frog go, wishing he could join it.

All he had to do was get up his nerve. His horse was up there on that little rise, just fifty or sixty feet away, but he couldn't take a single step —

Crunch. Tread. Crunch. Tread.

The dark man's steps were even and slow. He closed on Windy.

Didn't blink. Didn't smile.

Windy's lips trembled. He stared at the bullfrog, marveling at the way the critter didn't stop for nothing. It just hopped and hopped and hopped.

But the amphibian had nowhere to go. Not a sliver of shade in which to hide. No water to cool its backside. Only a barren mountaintop where it would eventually die in the unrelenting sunshine, shriveled guts baking on a white granite skillet.

That didn't stop the little sucker moving, though.

The dark man's right hand closed around Windy's neck.

"Let me live," the outlaw begged.

"Until I find a rope," the dark man said. "And a branch strong enough to hold you."

And then the gunfighter grabbed Windy's shoulder and sent him walking toward the horse.

Frogs bounded at the outlaw's heels, traveling his shadow—leaping over hot rocks, croaking merrily—taking to the notion of freedom.

So great was their reverie that they hopped past the outlaw lickety-split, crossing hot rocks on their way to nowhere.

Windy Jim teared up and started to cry.

The little bastards didn't know what lay ahead of them.

They just didn't know at all.

PART FIVE

THE HAND OF GLORY

Estrellita had broken the mirror days ago.

She'd had no other choice—her cat-eyes were constantly drawn to her reflection, as if the looking glass were a magnet.

But even with the mirror broken, the bruja could not stop looking at herself—her burned skin, her hairless head, her beautiful green cat-eyes.

A hundred shards of glass blanketed the cabin floor.

A hundred horrible reflections.

A hundred places to look.

She snatched up a shard of broken glass. Plucked one cat eye from her head, and then the other. She placed them on the bare table which had once been home to her potions and powders, along with the book that held the secrets of her mother and grandfather and his father before him.

She held the broken glass in one hand, careful not to cut herself. Cupped her other hand around the eyes so they could not roll away.

The blind cat bolted through the open door.

Estrellita chopped and chopped and chopped.

The sound filled the cabin and the woods beyond. Even when Estrellita stopped her chopping, it seemed she still heard the sound, an echo traveling the dark pine forest.

An echo searching for another pair of ears.

So the mirror no longer mattered. For days Estrellita reveled in her blindness, happy to be spared the sight of her charred skin and the mirthless leer of white teeth glimpsed through a lipless mouth.

But she was not spared the smell of her seared flesh. Soon her nose burned with her own stench, and she began to imagine that the stink filled her belly.

She could almost taste herself. What was worse, she could almost taste the stink of Buck Barlowe, as well. His corpse still lay in their bed. And there it would stay, for Estrellita would not enter the bedroom. The floor was littered with broken glass. Her feet were already badly blistered. She could barely walk.

As if a few cuts could really make things worse than they already were.

But she would not take the risk. She would move away from these things. She would go outside, into the air. She would fill her lungs with the clean fragrance of a cool pine forest, and she would forget about Buck Barlowe, forget the things she had seen in the mirror.

Estrellita stepped onto the porch. The mountain air did smell good. Cool, and heavy with moisture, as if it carried the breath of the waterfall which hid this valley from the rest of the world.

The witch's skin crackled like old parchment as she sat down on the cabin steps. Slow, even breaths whistled through her lipless teeth, and soon the taste of dead flesh was washed from her mouth.

The horrible smells were gone.

Only to be replaced by a sound.

A persistent creaking, not too distant. Like branches worried by a heavy wind, but there was no wind at all.

Estrellita rose and moved toward the sound, hands held before her.

Careful steps. One after another.

The creaking sound seemed nearer now.

Her hands reached out...

And up...

Blistered fingers brushed something soft. Something that gave, then pushed back against her fingertips...

...and the creaking sound was louder now, just above Estrellita's head.

A branch creaking... and a rope twisting...

...and Estrellita almost laughed, because another sound solved the final mystery as she pushed against the soft thing with all her might.

Frogs sang in the lynched man's belly.

She reached for Windy Jim's left hand, found only a severed stump.

A final drop of blood dripped from the dead outlaw's wrist and buried itself in the pine needles at Estrellita's feet.

A wind rose from nowhere, lashing her face.

No. Not a wind. Cold air stirred by bat wings. Estrellita listened as the animals shrieked overhead, felt the tattoo of their leathery wings against her blistered forehead.

She turned, stumbling through her dark world. Tripped on the stairs. Crossed the porch. Stumbled inside the cabin and barred the door behind her.

The windows were already shuttered. The cabin only had one door. Estrellita stood behind it, completely silent, listening for anything that moved.

She heard only the soft insistent drumming of impatient fingers, for the black gunfighter's severed hand was still pinned to the cabin floor with Buck Barlowe's knife.

Estrellita stepped toward it, charred fingers groping before her. If she could find the gunfighter's hand, why then she could bargain... she could —

The gunfighter laughed, his icy breath washing her roasted cheek.

He had been there, all along....

Something scraped across Estrellita's ribs.

A brittle, hissing sound.

A single match flaring alive.

The mirror was broken, but there was plenty of glass, more than enough to make a circle of jagged shards on the little table.

The witch sat in a chair, not moving at all, staring down at the table with eyeless sockets.

Stack could fix that. He unwrapped the torn swatch of satin he'd found in Windy Jim's saddlebags, revealing a pair of whiskey colored eyes.

With some effort, he fit them into the witch's charred head. Not as gently as he might have liked. But the witch didn't complain any.

The gunfighter turned away. "It ain't really stealing," he said. "I'll just be taking what's mine."

He yanked the bewitched knife from the floor, freeing his severed hand. To tell the truth, it didn't look too much the worse for wear. But the gunfighter wasn't a judge of such matters. He slipped the hand into his saddlebags, hoping that the Chinaman was.

Stack took one last look at the witch, at those unblinking whiskey eyes locked in that shriveled black skull of hers, eyes staring down at a table covered with eight or ten slivers from a busted mirror.

The gunfighter said, "Maybe this'll help you to remember something I learned a long time ago."

The witch didn't say a word.

Stack kept quiet. He figured it wouldn't do any good to tell her, anyway. After all, he'd told the apple grower, and it hadn't done that fool one bit of good.

Stack opened the cabin door.

A cold breeze blew past him, tearing at his ankles, and his duster crackled like a mainsail in a storm.

The wind whipped through the room as if searching for something. It fanned the witch's naked brow, glided through chinks in the floorboards. Finally it did a little dance around the Hand of Glory the gunfighter had placed on the mantle above the fireplace, worrying the flame that rose from the candle born of Windy Jim's fat.

The flame guttered low and threatened to die.

The spell weakened, began to break.

The witch nearly screamed.

Nearly closed her eyes.

But the gunfighter cut the heart from that breeze, stepping outside and closing the cabin door behind him.

Instantly, the air in the cabin grew still.

The candle flared alive, continued to burn.

The witch did not scream.

Did not close her eyes.

She stared down at her reflection in that broken-glass pie, a human statue helpless before the power of the Hand of Glory.

A single drop of Windy Jim's fat drizzled down the side of the candle and hardened in the dead man's palm.

The flame lengthened, narrowed, riding the wick.

The candle burned.

It burned for a long, long time.

APOTROPAICS

I WAS HEADING FOR THE CREEK, whistling "Heartbreak Hotel" and minding my own business, when Ross caught up to me and told me about the vampire at Todd Palmer's house.

"Jason," he gasped, almost doubling over. "Man, we thought you'd never get home from vacation. Todd and Dave and me, we didn't know what to do. But now that you're back...."

He left the sentence unfinished. Suddenly, he wore the relieved look of a tired pitcher who'd just been pulled from a tough game. He straightened, still a head shorter than me even though we were both eleven, and shot the look my way one more time, just to be sure that I hadn't missed it.

I flicked his Brooklyn Dodgers cap off his head. "Pull the other one, Ross. You guys have probably been planning this for two weeks." I shook my head. "C'mon—Bela Lugosi in corn country? Is that the best you can do? Isn't it bad enough that my folks dragged me through twenty-two states in fourteen days? And, man, all I've got to show for it is this chintzy knife from Yosemite."

I pulled the knife fast enough to make Ross jump (he's a hopeless coward). It wasn't really chintzy, but it wasn't the one I had wanted, either. That one cost ten bucks and had an authentic ivory handle. My old man wouldn't go for it though, so I had to settle for the two buck special that had a genuine plastic handle featuring a hand-painted view of Half Dome.

Hand-painted in Taiwan, that is.

Ross stared at the knife. No, he did more than stare—his gaze was riveted on the shiny blade. "Oh, man," he said. "This is scary. I mean, you buying a knife. It's like you're psychic or something. I swear to God it is!"

"What're you talking about?"

"C'mon and I'll show you."

Ross scooped up his cap and we walked the short distance to Palmer's cornfield. We hopped the fence and blazed a trail between two rows of dead cornstalks. I was surprised that Mr. Palmer hadn't plowed the field and planted another crop. Todd's dad was usually real quick about that kind of stuff. My dad always said that Mr. Palmer was a hard man, a man who didn't brook nonsense. That was the way Todd's dad managed his farm, pushing its crop potential to the limit, and my dad seemed to think that was the way Mr. Palmer handled his kids, too.

But something had slowed Mr. Palmer's clockwork pace. Maybe for once he hadn't had enough time, or maybe he'd wanted a vacation of his own, or maybe...

Maybe anything. Who knows why things happen? I mean, really? People say things. They do things. But who ever knows? Really?

Ross pushed between two tall stalks that crackled like ancient parchment. I followed. We cut through a couple more rows and came to the center of the field.

And there it was.

A naked mound of dirt, dark clods dried gray and hard in the hot sun.

A grave, I thought, shivering. It wasn't an ordinary grave, either, and not just because it was in the middle of a cornfield. Imbedded in this grave, punched into it like it was some weird pin cushion, were dozens of stakes and knives, their hilts barely visible. Tent stakes, survey stakes. Boy Scout knives, ordinary silverware, putty knives, and fancy stuff that must have been pure silver.

Ross was talking again. "We had to steal some of 'em. Christ, my mom'll kill me if she finds out I took Aunt Alma's silver. But we had to, 'cause we can't let him come back. Oh, man, he'll be pissed if he comes back, and I don't want to think about what he'd do to Todd, and to me and Dave because we helped Todd." He bent low, touching knives and stakes, making sure that they were firmly planted in the hard ground. "So we stuck this stuff into the grave, and he can't get out without killing himself again. That makes sense, don't it, Jase? I mean, you know how this stuff works...."

Ross kept talking, the way he always does, but I wasn't listening.

It was my turn to stare.

My turn for riveted gazes.

The churned, dry dirt of the grave. The stakes, brown and hard and smooth, like weird roots. The silver knives, hilts glistening in the morning sunlight. The clumps of earth, like dead fists.

Not dead. Undead.

Because this was a vampire's grave.

Standing there surrounded by oak trees that were a good hundred years old, Todd's big house looked small. The Palmers had lived on the outskirts of Fiddler for three generations, and the house had stood the test of time. A couple coats of white paint every two years helped, and so did old man Palmer's skill as a carpenter, but I always thought that there was something about the way the house rested under those big trees that helped protect it.

Today it didn't look protected. It looked trapped, ensnared by a hundred gnarled arms, all twisting toward it and holding it down.

Todd answered our knock. He didn't look right. There was a deep green bruise on his jaw, and his eyes were red, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that he'd been crying.

Ross opened his trap and started to whisper too loudly, and Todd held a finger to his lips. "My folks are gone," Todd said. "They headed down to see Grandma in Earlimart. They don't think she's gonna make it this time, and she won't go back to the hospital. Sis is upstairs, sleeping again. That's all she does lately." He opened the screen door. "Come in, but be quiet."

We followed Todd through the living room. It was stark, like a room where no one lived at all. No television, no hi-fi, no coffee table, certainly no magazines or flowers. Just a worn rocker, a few chairs so stiff that even the doilies on their arms seemed out of place, and a big wrought iron cross hanging over the fireplace.

A cross that a hard man would appreciate, I thought, and then I felt kind of weird, because it was a thought my dad would have.

Anyway, Todd moved down the hallway, his right shoulder rubbing the flowery wallpaper. He came to a little table by the staircase and picked up the telephone.

He didn't have to dial. It was a party line, and Dave's mom was in the middle of a call. "I hate to interrupt, Mrs. Sanchez," Todd said, his voice quiet but firm. "Can I talk to Dave? It's kind of important."

Mrs. Sanchez must have agreed, because Todd didn't say anything else. In a town like Fiddler, where everybody thinks they know everybody else's business, a kid with a dying grandma can get away with anything.

We stood in the quiet hallway, waiting for Dave to come to the phone. I stepped to the foot of the staircase. A doorway stood open on the landing above. I saw a bed, and someone's arm dangling over the side. The person in the bed rolled over just as I started up the stairs, and I saw long blond hair and a white nightgown dipping low over a white shoulder.

Janet Palmer, Todd's sister.

Her eyes caught mine, but it was like they weren't quite focused. "Dave?" she whispered. "Is that you? I'm sorry, Dave. I'm so sorry."

I backed down the staircase, embarrassed, and didn't say a word.

Todd said a couple words to Dave, because that was all it took. Then he grabbed my shirttail, and I turned and saw those red eyes of his.

I couldn't read them at all.

Upstairs, Janet was crying.

"C'mon," Todd said. "Meeting time."

We sat under Todd's front porch. The air was still and cool. There was enough room for kids to sit comfortably, but not enough room for adults, so it was the perfect place to go when we didn't want to be bothered.

"Tell us what to do, Jase," Ross said. "Tell us if we done right. I mean, you know about this stuff. You read all those monster magazines and see all those movies."

"Yeah," I said. "You've said that about a jillion times today."

Dave laughed, twirled his drumsticks, and did a little drum roll on the rubber pad the band teacher had given him so he could practice over the summer. His folks weren't too well off and he couldn't afford a snare drum, let alone the fancy set he wanted.

Dave carried the practice pad everywhere. He put up with band, but he really wanted to rock 'n' roll. He said he was going to get out of Fiddler and tour with Ritchie Valens or somebody like that. Dave was the coolest kid I knew, the leader of our group, and I felt like he was about five years ahead of us in almost everything. Girls liked him, and he didn't put on a show with them or pretend that he minded their attention.

"So who's going to tell me what's going on?" I asked.

Ross started blabbing again, and I cut him off with a hard glance. Todd didn't look like he was up to talking. Dave shrugged and started in, setting his drumsticks aside.

"I guess I was the first one to figure out what was going on." He sighed, his shoulders slumping. "But I don't really want to talk about it. It was hard enough to tell Todd the first time, and to do it again..."

"You gotta tell," Ross put in, and then he buttoned up before anyone could punch him.

"Yeah, I gotta tell." Dave sighed again. "You know that we've got a party line with Todd's family. Well, I got so I would listen in every now and then. At first it was just for fun. One time, I heard Mr. Palmer cussing out some tractor salesman. And I heard Mrs. Palmer gossiping with Ross's mom almost every day." He paused, his eyes locked on his drumsticks as if he didn't dare look up at me and speak at the same time. "But, to tell you the truth, Janet's voice was the one I really wanted to hear when I picked up the phone."

I glanced at Todd. His eyes were glazed over, and he was rubbing the welt on his jaw. I knew then, even before Dave said what he was going to say, that Todd would rather get punched out than listen to Dave's story again.

Suddenly, I knew what kind of story it was going to be.

People say things. They do things.

And sometimes they even tell the truth.

Dave went on, still looking down at his drumsticks. "I know that she's six years older than me. I know that. But when I'd hear Janet talking to her girlfriends, I didn't miss a word. And when she wouldn't tell them the name of the guy she had a crush on, I'd imagine that she was talking about me. And when she told Ross's sister that she was in love with a guy who was in love with her, too, I imagined that she knew how I felt about her without me even saying, and that she felt exactly the same way about me."

"Without even saying," Todd whispered, still rubbing his jaw.

Dave nodded, still looking down.

"Tell him what happened next," Ross blurted. "Tell him about the vam—"

"Shut up, Ross," I said.

"Yeah, shut up," Dave said, but his voice didn't have any strength. He looked at me, and I knew that it took everything he had just to hold my gaze.

He didn't look like a leader anymore. He didn't look like a guy who had everything figured out. He looked like an eleven-year-old boy who'd been scared by an expert.

He kept talking. "It was two weeks ago, just about the time you left on vacation. I got up around midnight to get a drink of water. I don't know why, but I picked up the phone, even though it was late.

"I heard him then. I had to strain to understand him, because his voice was so quiet and smooth. Her voice sounded the same way. But I'd never heard Janet talk like that before. It made me feel sick, some of the things she said, and the hard way he laughed when she said them." Dave swallowed. "And I felt sick, too, because suddenly I knew she hadn't been talking about me when she talked to her girlfriends.

"I wanted to hang up, but I couldn't. And then came the worst part. He said, 'You think your little friend is listening? You think he's gettin' a thrill?', and she just laughed. I hung up then. I didn't even try to be sneaky. I'm sure they heard me.

"I tried to go to sleep, but all I could do was toss and turn. I knew that I'd never be able to look Janet in the eye again. And then, in the middle of the night, I heard a motorcycle out on the road, full open and racing fast. I got out of bed and ran to the window just in time to see Janet riding with him, her arms wrapped around his chest, her fingers digging into his leather jacket, her blond hair blowing in the wind. They headed up the road, toward wherever he was from, I guess, and they came back about an hour before dawn.

"That should have been the end of it. Even then, I thought it was spooky that they knew I was listening to them that night. I mean, I knew it was weird. Too weird." Dave's voice quavered with shame. "But I couldn't stop listening. I heard them every night. The things they said... some of them they said to me, because they knew I was listening. And I heard the motorcycle. Roaring out on the road, coming and going night after night. And then one day I heard Todd's mom talking to Ross's mom — "

"I heard it too," Ross said. "I mean. Mom told Dad about it. She said that an evil boy was sucking Janet Palmer dry, sucking the blood of Jesus right out of her and dragging her straight down to hell."

"Your mom is pretty wild with the fire and brimstone bit," I said. "She's said worse stuff about me, I'll bet."

"No way," Ross said. "She was serious. She knew that this guy was a vampire! She knew it! But she was afraid to say the word!"

Dave shook his head. "I don't know, Jase. Maybe you're right. But if you'd heard this guy. If you'd heard the things that he said — "

"Or if you'd seen what he did," Ross put in. "I didn't see it. Not myself. But Todd was there when it happened. Todd saw the whole thing."

Todd stopped rubbing his jaw. He started talking, but his voice was distant, like it wasn't a voice at all but a little machine that had clicked on inside of him. "We went to see Grandma. Mom and Dad and me. You guys know how sick she is. Janet didn't go. She said she wasn't feeling well. She whispered something to Mom about the way she felt, and Mom blushed and said it was okay for her to stay home.

"Grandma talked for a long time. It was fun to listen to her. She talked about her courting days, and how wonderful Grandpa was back then. It was like she wasn't sick at all. She fell asleep with a smile on her face.

"We got home late. Dad saw the motorcycle first. He stopped the car at the end of the driveway, got out, and started for the house. He was walking fast, but he didn't run. Mom just sat there in the front seat, not moving at all. I sat in the back, staring at her hair. It was all neat in a bun and it didn't move, either. It was like she was a department store dummy or something. I remember thinking that."

Todd lay back and closed his eyes. I couldn't decide if it helped him remember or if he wanted to hide from us. He said, "I heard Janet scream, and I scrambled out of the car. Mom was screaming at me, but I didn't stop running. I banged through the screen door and the screaming was really loud, like it was bottled up in the house.

"I almost stopped running when I got to the foot of the stairs, but it was too late. I took them three at a time and then I was in Janet's room. She was in the corner, all twisted up like she wanted to hide. She didn't have any clothes on and I saw the bruises on her neck where he'd... and there were bruises on her boobs, too." He sobbed. "And then I saw the blood. I saw where she was... bleeding. It was on her legs and... and..."

Todd was crying now, and there was no stopping his tears. "And there was blood on the sheets. Dad pinned the vampire to the floor with his knees, straddling him. The guy—the thing—it was real white. Its arms and legs were long and skinny, like it was a big spider. Dad had the wrought iron cross in his hands, and he bashed... and he hit the thing again and again, and the guy—the vampire—was twitching and Janet was crying and... its arms and legs were twitching... and the cross... it worked and..."

Dave's hand dropped onto Todd's shoulder. Todd stopped talking, but he couldn't stop sobbing.

"That was what happened," Dave said. "Todd's dad sent him to bed, hit him hard when Todd tried to go back to Janet's room. He told Todd that the guy was okay, that he'd only beat him up so he wouldn't come back and hurt Janet again. But Todd knew that wasn't true. He could see the cornfield from his bedroom window, and he saw his father go out there that night and dig a grave."

"But Mr. Palmer didn't put a stake in the vampire's heart," Ross said. "At least we don't think so. That's why we put the knives and stakes in the grave. 'Cause Todd saw Janet. He saw that blood. He knew what really happened."

"It really happened," I said. "Everything you told me. It really happened."

They nodded. No one said anything for a long time. Then Ross started in again. "It's just like they said. It's true, every word. I mean, the vampire only came at night. On the phone, he knew that Dave was listening. They can read minds, right? And the things it said to Janet, and the things it made her say. They can hypnotize people, y'know, make them say or do anything. And the blood. Todd saw the blood." Ross hugged himself and rocked back and forth. "It's scary. I mean, I found where Todd's dad hid the vampire's motorcycle. It's down by the creek. It's black. It's all busted up now, but it doesn't have any mirrors, and I think it never did. Understand? It doesn't have any mirrors!" He was rocking like crazy now. "I don't think the vampire can come back. We did the right thing, didn't we Jase? It can't come back, can it?"

I shook my head.

Dave picked up his drumsticks and thrummed them gently on the practice pad, but he couldn't find a beat. "It's hard," he said, and he almost sounded like Ross. "It's hard to know what we should do next."

I looked at them, and I was with them, and I wanted to help them.

I looked at Todd. He couldn't do it. He was the son of a hard man, and he'd been broken.

Dave couldn't do it. He was still in love. If he heard Janet say how sorry she was, he'd never forget it.

Ross couldn't do it. Not on his best day. Not ever.

"She won't get up," Todd said. "She won't eat...."

Dave started to cry.

Gently, I slid the drumsticks out of his hands.

I opened my new knife.

Sometimes people say things. Sometimes they do things.

But nobody said a word, and nobody moved, while I sharpened the stakes.

SHE’S MY WITCH

WE PARKED IN THE OLD CEMETERY THAT NIGHT, the Ford coupe I'd boosted up in Fresno wedged so tight between a couple of crumbling mausoleums that we could barely open one door. It seemed we'd spent the entire summer that way—sitting in one stolen car or another, talking or making out while we listened to the latest rhythm 'n' blues tunes on KTCB. Shari liked the old cemetery because it was real quiet. No one else ever came there, even in the daytime. As for me, I'd gotten used to the place.

I wasn't crazy about it, but I was crazy about Shari.

That summer it was like no one else existed. The rest of the world couldn't touch us.

"Tonight's no different," I said. "Whatever's gonna happen later... well, it's just gonna happen, however it does."

Shari's hand slipped out of mine, just seemed to melt away. Her gaze was welded to the dash, like if she squinted real hard she'd actually be able to see LaVern Baker through the radio.

She wouldn't look at me at all, and I don't think she really heard the music, either. "I don't know," was all she said. And then she shook her head, her dark hair washing over her face like a silent wave.

I couldn't see her face at all, and I couldn't stand to be apart from her that way. Sitting there in a stolen car with my girl, her hair as black as night, her dress just as black... and having her whisper those three words in the darkness, like she didn't have any faith in me—in us—at all.

Those three words parting the only lips I wanted to kiss. And Shari not even looking at me when she said them, afraid that I'd see her doubts hiding in her eyes.

My girl, sitting there in a boosted Ford parked in her favorite place in the world, trembling, like she'd rather be somewhere else. Anywhere else. And who could blame her? Christ, with the things she'd discovered that summer, she could have had anyone. Sticking with me was just crazy, just—

Unsure, I reached out, my hand barely brushing her bare shoulder, traveling that delicate ridge of collarbone, exploring her slender and perfect neck. My fingers drifted through her hair, my movements surer now—I gotta admit it did something to me, just like always. I found her chin and gently turned her head in my direction, brushing that midnight hair over one shoulder.

There were those beautiful eyes of hers, alive with mysteries she could never share. Those full lips, containing all those secrets that she would never speak. Like I said, it did something to me. Just like always. I moved in to kiss her, and she didn't move away. It didn't start out like much of a kiss, but it shook me up the way I hoped it would.

When it was over, I really had the itch. I wanted her more than ever.

One look, and I knew that she felt the same way. A tear ran down one smooth marble cheek. I wiped it away, and it smeared on my callused fingers, and I found myself wishing that I could crush it in my fist.

She said, "I just want everything to stay the way it is."

"Don't worry, little darlin'," I said, trying to sound more confident than I was. "Tonight it's you and me. Just like it's been all summer, ever since you and me became an us. Those jerks are in for a big surprise." I slipped one hand around the back of her neck, but not in a rough way, and with the other I twisted the rear-view in her direction. "Just look at you, Shari. You're not the same girl you were when school let out."

Shari stared at her reflection. She didn't blink once, and a shiver rocketed over my spine like someone was stepping on my grave.

"No," she said finally. "I'm not the same person. This place... and you... you've given me so much, Johnny."

She pushed the mirror away, looking at the cemetery through the mosaic of kamikaze bugs plastered to the old Ford's windshield. Low fog bathed the ring of tombstones where she'd danced a couple of nights back with nothing covering that beautiful marble skin of hers but the blood of a black cat. I wanted to tell her that everything was going to be okay, but I could see that she was spooked, just as spooked as the first time she visited the cemetery. That was back when she was just a scared kid in hand-me-downs who'd been broken by other kids because she couldn't bear to look anyone in the eye, before the black dress and the red lipstick, before I took to parking boosted cars in the long shadows between two jagged mausoleums, before all the secret kisses and all the things that went with them.

So much had passed between us that summer. We'd made a world of our own, and no one else knew anything about it. But with school ready to start up, our world was going to change. We'd have to face those other people again. I thought I had it all figured out. But with Shari so rattled and uncertain, I couldn't help but worry.

Her voice trembled. "Sometimes... this summer..." she began. "It just doesn't seem real. I keep thinking I'll wake up, and it will have all been a dream. I keep thinking that maybe I'm imagining you... I always had a crush on you, y'know? And I keep thinking that I'll wake up, and I'll be back in school with all those people, and you'll be here...."

I nodded. She took my hand then, her fingernails digging into my palm like little knives. I couldn't help but shiver; she couldn't seem to let go. Her face had disappeared in the darkness—there was just a little razor cut of a moon in the sky, and the night was coming on hard, clouds blanketing the stars.

"I keep staring at that moon," she said. "I keep thinking that it looks like a sickle."

She couldn't stop shaking. "I'm afraid the moon's going to slice down out of the sky, Johnny," she said, her fingers locked in mine. "I'm afraid it's going to cut us to pieces."

The carhop's roller skates made an icy little rumbling sound as she drifted across the parking lot, away from the stolen Ford.

When she was out of sight, I lifted the Coke off of the little metal tray and handed it to Shari. Then I reached under the seat and found the cardboard box. Inside was a Revell model kit that I'd swiped from a hobby shop in Fresno the same night I boosted the Ford. I slipped the lid off of the box, revealing a miniature '48 Chevy.

"Wow." Shari smiled. "It looks just like it."

"Yeah, I'm a real artist." I wasn't bragging. I'd done a good job. Customized it just right. Two-tone paint-job—turquoise and black. Every detail reproduced, right down to the miniature tornado swirling on the hood.

I handed the model to Shari, then rummaged through the unused parts in the bottom of the box until I found the decal sheet. I traded her the sheet for the Coke. She ran her fingers over the decals, whispering a few words.

I knew better than to listen. Instead I stared between a couple of dead moths splattered on the windshield, studying a turquoise-and-black '48 Chevy parked over by the bowling alley.

Shari dipped the decal sheet into the Coke. She let it sit for a minute, until the decals started to drift away from the backing.

There were two license plate decals. She attached one of them to a blank plastic plate glued to the trunk of the model.

The other floated on the surface of a Coca-Cola ice-floe. Shari stared down at it as she took the glass from my hand, then glanced over at the Chevy parked by the bowling alley.

"You promise not to blink, right?" she asked. "I mean, you're not going to get distracted by a carhop who's a dead ringer for Anita Ekberg or anything, are you?"

When the girl you love asks you something like that, you've got to laugh. "Baby, I'm just like The Flamingos," I said, and then I sang the rest of it—"I only have eyes for you."

Shari hustled on over there. My ears were treated to the sweet little staccato rhythm of her high heels on blacktop, but my eyes got the better part of the deal when she bent low behind the '48, her tight dress riding up over firm thighs.

The fingers of one hand dipped into the Coke. Then she reached out, kind of tenderly, the way she sometimes did when she ran a finger over my lips. But her finger only traveled the length of the Chevy's license plate, leaving behind a decal from a Revell model kit.

And then the two of them showed up, right on cue. Slammed out of the bowling alley like they owned the world, swaggered across the parking lot.

Shari barely had a chance to straighten up. They both saw her at the same time, saw that black dress hiked up to the limit, that red lipstick, saw everything through a testosterone haze.

Nick Bradley was the smarter of the two. He got his mouth open first, saying, "You like the ride, huh, honey? You maybe wanna go for a ride?"

"Course she wants to go for a ride." Marty Hyde's brain had finally kicked into gear. "But it's my ride, and I got the keys and the master switch." Marty jingled his car keys as punctuation, shoving Nick with one shoulder, Nick stumbling in spite of himself. "We don't have to make it a party," Marty added. "Unless you want it that way, angel."

Shari looked both of them dead in the eye. She refused to blink, and they... well. I'm sure the idiots wanted to blink, but they just couldn't.

Nick caught Shari's thought-wave first. He laughed, shaking his head. "Naw," he said. "Naw! It can't be!"

Marty caught up. "Sharon? Sharon Heep? Is that really you?"

Shari's eyes were daggers now. The corners of her mouth were playing with a smile, but just playing. And then she batted her eyelashes—a wicked twitch. Stirred the straw in the Coke and took a dainty sip....

"It is her!" Nick slapped Marty on the back. "It is the Heepster! Jesus, Marty, it looks like old Sharon's been to charm school this summer!"

"Slut school, more like it," Marty replied, ever the quick-wit. "Hey, c'mon Sharon. Let's go for a ride, just the three of us. Let's see what you've learned this summer."

I said, "You guys got room for one more?"

Nick and Marty whirled. They hadn't heard me coming.

Once again, Nick caught on first. "Johnny!" He gasped, a look of horror crossing his face. "No... it can't be — "

Marty cut in with the clincher: "Christ, Johnny... you're dead!"

I nodded, flicking open the switchblade that Nick had buried in my guts back in June.

They froze—eyeballing the knife, their faces pasty-white—so I decided to help them out. "Let me steer you fellas in the right direction," I offered. "This is the part where you're supposed to run for your lives."

"Don't confuse them, Johnny," Shari said. "Don't be so literal."

"Sorry, fellas." I snapped the blade closed. "I mean, you don't have to run run—you can take the car."

Nick and Marty just stood there, staring at us as we returned to the Ford.

"Man, can you believe that they're so stupid?" I said.

Shari took my hand. "Believe it, Daddy-o."

Behind us, the Chevy's engine finally rumbled alive.

Four new tires burned rubber.

Nick and Marty were gone.

Pretty soon, they'd be the gonest.

"What was that junk you put in the Coke?" the carhop wanted to know.

Shari laughed. I didn't do a very good job of keeping a straight face, myself. But I did manage to set the model car on the serving tray.

"Decals," Shari explained between giggles.

"Yeah," I said. "We're a couple of hobbyists. We get together and build model cars. I guess we got a little sloppy tonight."

"It could have been worse." Shari's voice was suddenly real serious. "I mean, we could have gotten glue all over the french fries, or paint in the cheeseburgers, or something."

The carhop didn't seem to catch on. She frowned as she set a fresh Coke next to the model car. "Well, just don't do it again. Those darn what-cha-ma-call-ems are stuck to the glass. I bet it's going to take a razor blade to get 'em off. I mean, only a gomer would want to drink Coke out of a glass that says Chevy."

"Sorry," Shari said, and deep down I'll bet she really was sorry for putting the carhop to all that trouble.

The carhop skated away. We dug into our cheeseburgers, which hadn't even had a chance to get cold. Shari said, "I didn't think I'd ever want to eat again."

"You were really nervous, huh?"

"Are you kidding?" She swallowed another bite. "And it isn't like we're out of the woods yet."

"Sure it is."

She sighed. "C'mon, Johnny. We still have to go back to school. We still have to face everyone else."

"So what?"

"I mean, all the stories and everything...."

I shook my head. "It's like I said: this one little step, and it's all over. Nick and Marty were the biggest, toughest monkeys in that damn zoo. With them gone, it'll be easy."

"But what about you? Nick and Marty talked, y'know. I mean, I never would have found your grave if I hadn't listened to all the stories that were going around. And there'll be lots of questions when you show up again. Think about it, Johnny. You're going to have to explain things. Your parents are going to want to know what happened — "

"Those rummies?" My lips twisted into a smirk. "They'll be sorry to see me walk through the door. My old man will worry that I'll cut into the beer budget or something. Maybe I'll just stay in the boneyard. It's gotten so I kind of like it there."

"But everyone else — "

"Screw everyone else. Screw their questions. Who's gonna have the guts to ask 'em, anyhow? Who's gonna come up to a guy who's supposed to be dead and buried in an unmarked grave in the old cemetery... especially when the studs who supposedly gutted him and put him six feet under turn up dead? Who's gonna say a thing to that guy when he comes waltzing into school with a girl on his arm?"

Shari nodded. "Not just any girl. A freak who believed in ghosts and witches and things that go bump in the night. A freak who everyone laughed at." She took my hand. "Until she found someone who taught her to believe in herself."

"Yeah," I said, "but you had to dig me up to do it."

"Sometimes you have to be real desperate before you can really believe." She kissed me, a sweet schoolgirl peck on the cheek. "And, anyway," she added slyly, "some things are worth a little digging, y'know?"

We finished the cheeseburgers and drove back to the old cemetery, parking the stolen Ford between the same two broken-down mausoleums. Like I said, there was barely enough room to get one door open, so we both slipped out the driver's side. I left the radio on, because Dinah Washington was singing "My Man's an Undertaker." Somehow, it seemed appropriate.

There was a marble slab a few feet off. Spider-webbed with cracks, but pretty much level. I set the Chevy model on top of it.

"I wonder where they are," Shari said.

"Let's find out." I knelt down, put my ear to the plastic hardtop and listened for a couple minutes while Shari paced back and forth between two granite tombstones.

"No clue where they are," I said finally, "but you should hear the idiots yelling at each other." I stood up, shaking my head, and winked at Shari. "I can't figure out what surprised them more—that I'd come back from the dead, or that you'd turned into such a dead solid knock-out."

"Real funny, Johnny."

"Yeah." I sat on the slab. "Sorry. But I gotta tell you, Shari—your legs really made an impression on them."

"Why, Johnny Benteen, you're such a card." She laughed. "I never would have guessed that a dead guy could possess such a lively sense of humor."

"Ouch. Score one for the sexpot sorceress."

"This is so weird."

"The weirdest."

"Let's get it over with."

"You want to do it?"

She turned away. "I don't even want to watch."

I slipped Nick's switchblade from my pocket. Flicked it open. Pressed the sharp metal point against the miniature tornado that swirled on the model's flimsy plastic hood.

"Look away, little darlin'," I said. "Look up at that pretty sickle of a moon."

BAD INTENTIONS

IN MY LINE OF WORK, you often make your entrance in the midst of tragedy. It's part of the job. Death, especially sudden death, is never easy. Oh, it's a blessing for the dearly departed — I truly believe that— but it's hell on the living.

Maybe you think that's cynical; I think it's realistic. Just the result of keeping an open mind about life's little patterns. To break it down for you — when you see more than your share of people who have been battered in death's wake, you begin to realize that death isn't the end for them. It's only the beginning. The beginning of sleepless nights filled with questions, most of which begin, "What if..." The beginning of guilt and loneliness and, yes, the beginning of fear. And sometimes, when it is especially cruel, death plants the seed of madness in the rich soil of grief.

And in I come, tromping through the flower bed. Into a house that holds the stink of death— the smell of the hospital, the florist's shop, and the cleaning lady, all in one. Someone is gone from that house forever, and there I am, acting like I own the place, asking too many impolite questions.

So I have to be able to put people at ease. There's no way around it. Just like the undertaker and the insurance man, I have to do my job without benefit of apology. I pay attention to everyone and everything in that completely inappropriate and unforgivably rude way, even though my behavior is sure to ruffle some feathers.

That doesn't mean that I have to be cruel about it. I try to avoid that. It's just something I have to do. I ask the tough questions and peek in closets and basements and rifle through drawers until I'm satisfied that I've seen everything. Maybe I find something and maybe I don't. Either way, I can't wear a chip on my shoulder or play it too rough. Not these days. All I can do is follow my instincts and hope that they're good. I tie everything up as neatly as possible, and then I move on.

I'm pretty good at it. But then, I've had a lot of practice.

Some parts are easy, once you get the knack. Face it, Beverly Hills is in many ways a small town. If you're smart you learn who's who pretty fast, even among the old-timers, and you don't hesitate to use that knowledge.

I like to think that I'm smart.

So when I turned onto the twisting drive that led to the Duncan home, I had it all planned out. First off. I'd express my condolences. And when we had dispensed with the preliminaries, I'd go for instant intimacy. I'd mention that Howard Duncan had been one of my favorite writers since I was thirteen. I'd tie it all up nice and pretty by saying that his stories could still keep me from a good night's sleep, and that it was just too damn bad we wouldn't be seeing any more of them.

That wasn't the usual disingenuous ice-breaker I'd be forced to invent. Not at all. Years ago, I'd bought a couple of Duncan's short story collections at a Sunday swap meet that my folks attended with completely secular fervor. Howard Duncan's stories were more than spooky. His tales of the darker side of human — and inhuman — nature scared my thirteen-year-old self so badly that I immediately traded them to a buddy for a deck of cards that featured photos of Hollywood starlets in the buff. Either way, the swap didn't do me much good. Even Jayne Mansfield's tits cozied up to the ace of hearts couldn't rescue my mind from the pit to which Howard Duncan had delivered it.

I'd edit that last part from my monologue, of course. No need to be quite so gauche, I decided as I pulled to a stop at the end of the brick driveway. Hopefully, a few well-chosen words would get the ball rolling. Then I'd toss a little extended silence into the mix. It always amazes me how much people will tell you if you just manage to keep your mouth shut. No one knows how to handle silence anymore. Sometimes people talk themselves into a corner, and you barely have to say a word. You get it all handed to you on a silver platter.

Other times, it's tougher. Things don't always go according to plan.

That's when you have to improvise.

The front door was a massive oak thing— no doubt one of a kind, custom-made. A gallery of expressive faces with the look of leprechauns and elves had been carved into the wood, creating a kind of mural.

That was all very impressive, but it was a much less dramatic sight that caught and ultimately held my attention. The drape covering the narrow window to the left of the door was pulled a half an inch to one side, just enough so someone could get a look at me.

I let them look. I picked some lint off of my slacks and made a show of pulling on my jacket. I took my time climbing the brick stairway. Make 'em wait and they'll talk even faster. That's the way it usually works.

The doorbell was set in the mouth of a brass dragon that snaked up the wall to the right of the door. I took a deep breath, counted to ten, and pressed the bell as I exhaled.

Regal chimes sounded. Faux Big Ben.

The door swung open. The lady who stood in the doorway was pushing ninety, at least. Overpowering sachet, blue hair, a flower-print dress that wasn't retro-sixties, it was authentic sixties... Add it all up, and it didn't take a detective to figure out that this woman was Howard Duncan's widow.

Her little claw of a hand was on my wrist just that fast. "I was expecting a man in uniform," she whispered.

"Sorry to disappoint," I said. Her grip was surprisingly strong, and she drew me into the foyer.

"Well, of course I was wrong." She laughed— a thin and delicate laugh that was completely captivating. "It's as plain as plain can be, if I'd taken the time to think it through. Only a patrolman would wear a uniform. Detectives wear nice clothes, like this fine jacket you have on. Italian, isn't it?"

I nodded.

"I know my clothes," she said. "That I do. I always selected my Howard's wardrobe. I packed his bags when he went on his book tours. I told him just what to wear to make a good impression at those silly conventions he so enjoyed. Left to his own devices, the man would have dressed like... like — " she made a great effort of selecting the correct description " — well, I could tell you stories about a certain science fiction author that would send you screaming into the night."

I traded a smile for the nod, and that seemed to please her. "My name is Jennifer Duncan," she said. "I'm Howard's widow..."

A stunning revelation, I thought.

"... and what shall I call you?" she asked.

"Raymond," I said.

She laughed. "Now, is that Detective Raymond, or simply Ray?"

I managed a polite chuckle, just the way Jack Webb would have done it. "Ray will be fine, ma'am."

"And you may call me Jenny." Her self-assured little grin told me that she deemed this a great privilege. "Well," she continued, "I never imagined that you would arrive so quickly."

"I don't waste time," I said. "But I don't want to step on any toes, either. I mean, the two of us having a private conversation might be seen as, well, slightly unseemly. Is your daughter at home?"

A look of pure horror crossed Mrs. Duncan's face. "Oh, Debbie is the last person you want to talk to. Not until you hear the entire tale from me. After all, it's Debbie that I called you about."

I was dying to ask a question, but restraint won out; I arched my eyebrows instead.

"Well..." The old lady looked a bit confused herself. "Don't you see... Debbie is the one who did it."

This was very interesting. I scratched my chin, wrinkled my brow.

"I explained all of this to your supervisor, on the phone," Jenny said, somewhat exasperated. Still, there was no fear in her voice, only righteous anger. "My daughter murdered my husband."

We were in the living room, and Jenny Duncan was into the sherry.

"It's a shame that you're on duty," she said. "Howard only bought the very best."

Judging from the decor of the living room, I didn't know if that was the conclusion I'd reach. The only thing that I knew for certain was that Howard Duncan had bought an awful lot, aesthetic appraisals aside. One of the walls was lined with bookcases— hardcovers only— each volume wearing a plastic jacket of the kind used by libraries. The other three walls were crammed with paintings, widely ranging in style. Some were good and some were perfectly atrocious, but the design of each work was identical— figures (in most cases ghouls and goblins and other creepy-crawlies that go bump in the night) dominated the lower half of each painting while the upper half was pretty much neutral, taken up by subtle renderings of sky, clouds, or stars.

Each painting had been commissioned as a book or magazine cover, that much was obvious. Right off I spotted the covers of the two collections I'd bought at that long-ago swap meet, and one of them sent a shiver up my spine. In it, the skeletal hand of a murdered cuckold was thrusting through a stone floor while his horrified widow and her lover watched from the basement staircase. Even though I'd only read the story once, and long ago, I remembered it vividly as one of Duncan's signature revenge pieces, the kind they were forever adapting on the old Boris Karloff Thriller television series. It was a sub-genre of horror which Duncan had pretty much single-handedly patented in the days of the pulps, a style still imitated today in short stories, comics, movies, and television. While the painting was awful — not only was it badly rendered, it gave away the ending of the story — it held my attention.

A bit too thoroughly. My hostess informed me of this with a gentle sigh. "I wish you'd come a week ago, when I first contacted your department. I wish the chief of detectives had taken me seriously from the start. But he took some convincing. Still, I'm glad to see that our little chat this morning finally convinced him that the matter warranted investigation."

"Things don't always happen as fast as they should."

"That's what worries me. Precious time has been wasted. Debbie already called in a cleaning service, you know. They cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. Especially in the kitchen." Jenny Duncan sipped sherry. "I'm afraid you won't find any bloodstains at all."

"Oh, you never know," I said, my gaze wandering. "It's amazing what we can find these days."

"Well, hadn't you better get started?" She was obviously impatient. "Not that I would attempt to tell you your business. But don't you need to sweep for fingerprints, and photograph the crime stage, and... well, don't you have just oodles of things to do?"

I nodded, keeping a smile on my face. That's another one of my discoveries — you can get away with saying almost anything if you're smiling. "Jenny," I said, "you should have been a detective."

She actually blushed under all that makeup. "I'm sorry if—"

"No." I cut her off. "I'm the one who's sorry. My equipment is out in the car. But let's save that for later. First off, let's have a little chat, just the two of us, before your daughter returns. I want you to tell me what happened to your husband, and I don't want you to leave anything out. Sometimes the smallest details are the most important."

She set the sherry aside and rose to her full five feet. "Don't worry about that, Detective Raymond." She sighed expansively. "Excuse me... Don't worry about that, Ray. You see, I do have a very good memory. And I witnessed the entire horrid exercise." She paused for dramatic effect. "I witnessed much more than a murder, Ray."

Now it was Jenny's turn to raise an eyebrow. She simply pointed, though with her twisted finger it was hard to decide just what I was supposed to be looking at.

"She killed him in the kitchen?" I asked.

"Not exactly." Again, the dramatic pause. "Come with me, and I'll show you."

I swear that when she spoke those words, there was a twinkle in her eyes.

Entering the kitchen was like stepping into another house. No spooks hung on the walls. Instead they were papered with the staring faces of seven men, each of them pituitarily challenged.

That wasn't the end of it. Above the stove, a large-eared plastic elephant with a pendulous swinging proboscis did double duty as a clock and an objet d'art; the breakfast table was covered with an Alice in Wonderland tablecloth and set with Mad Hatter cups and saucers; an electric blender covered with what appeared to be a hand-crocheted Donald Duck cozy sat on a counter top lined with plates featuring the faces of a dozen cartoon characters I couldn't put names too. Besides that, I spotted Chip 'n' Dale salt and pepper shakers, a Goofy cookie jar, and a telephone that was cradled in the unmoving grasp of a world famous four-fingered rodent wearing a pair of spotless white gloves.

Jenny's voice was a whisper. "This is where I made my calls to the chief." She stroked Mickey Mouse's gleaming plastic head, ran her fingers over his big black ears. "My husband and I so loved Mickey." She said it as if the three of them had been close personal friends. "Howard gave me this phone when they were first introduced. Oh, it used to make him laugh so, just to look at it."

At that moment I felt like I had something in common with Howard Duncan, because I was having a hard time choking back laughter myself. Not only did the image of this little old lady reporting a murder over a Mickey Mouse phone strike me as completely bizarre, there was the added knowledge that this room was some kind of crazy gold mine.

In case you don't know, there's an entire Disney memorabilia industry. The things people throw money at. Somehow, it always amazes me. But I didn't have time for it. I wasn't here to moon over Mickey waffle irons, or whatever.

Jenny Duncan opened a drawer and extracted a large, stainless steel butcher knife. "This is what Debbie used."

"She stabbed your husband?"

The old woman's painted lips trembled. "No. Debbie pushed him down the stairs." Suddenly, she dropped the knife into the sink and slouched against the counter, nearly toppling the Goofy cookie jar. I caught her — and it— just in time.

Jenny fought for control and lost the battle. She wept, her mascara streaming in black rivulets over her wrinkled cheeks. I pulled her close, her rouge and lipstick making a mess of my white shirt.

"It's okay, Jenny," I said. "It's okay."

"No... it's not," she whimpered. "Debbie murdered her father. And later she... she went to work with that butcher knife. She had a large box of freezer bags, and she... Oh, damn... she sold her own father, piece by piece!"

We were having a nice cup of tea from the Mad Hatter teapot. Jenny had wiped her face on a dalmatian-spotted towel. I have to say that she looked better without the makeup. For the first time, she seemed real to me.

But the things she was saying didn't seem real at all.

"You have to believe me, Detective Raymond... Damn, I mean you have to believe me, Ray.” She sighed. "I know I must seem like a senile old fool. I would have spoken up when it happened, but Debbie has had me on tranquilizers. She says that the doctor insisted. Hah!" Jenny downed her tea in one gulp. "But I showed her. On the night of the funeral, I hid the pills under my tongue... just like a character in one of my Howard's stories. And then I crept downstairs, ever so quietly. My poor Howard was laid out on the kitchen floor like a jigsaw puzzle... bits of him in clear plastic bags." She raised the butcher knife as if she were a lawyer presenting Exhibit A to a judge. "Each bag was sealed tight. You know— yellow plus blue makes green. My Howard, ziplocked as tight as tight could be.

"And Debbie was using the Mickey Mouse phone. That was the truly horrible part. I heard every word. She sold Howard's brain to a man in Germany. I think he was a scientist. Debbie called him a cyber-something-or-other, I remember that much. God knows what he'll do with it! And Howard's heart... his dear, dear heart went to a producer of the most base kind of horror film, a silly fellow who was always jealous of my Howard's wit and subtlety. Why, Debbie laughed so when she talked to him. You should have heard her! And each time she completed a call, she'd address another label and slap it onto one of the plastic bags."

"I'd like to believe you, Mrs. Duncan," I said, my hand on hers. "But you must know that your story sounds just slightly more than incredible."

"It happened!"

"I'm not saying that it didn't. But how did it happen? That's what I need to know. That's what will make me believe your story." I paused, looking for a way to get her back on track. "It's easy enough for me to believe that a murder occurred here. But the rest of it... For instance, how did Debbie manage to steal your husband's body? There was a funeral, an open casket, if I remember the newspaper accounts...."

"Nonsense! If you've ever read my Howard's stories, you know just what kind of unscrupulous scoundrels undertakers are!"

"Now, Jenny — "

"Debbie sold my husband! Her own father! Bit by bit! Everything except his right hand... his WRITING hand. She boiled that in a big pot until the flesh bubbled away, and she's hidden the bones down in the basement in a manuscript box. She's going to sell those bones, one by one." Her eyes were wild, but calculating. "Tell me. Detective, just how many bones are there in a HUMAN HAND!"

"I'm not quite sure — "

"Anything for a dollar! That's the way it is in the world today! Anything for a daughter... I mean... oh, damn... ANYTHING FOR A DOLLAR!"

Jenny Duncan had a tight grip on the butcher knife. She pounded the table. The Mad Hatter teacups danced toward the edge, and I didn't know whether to rescue them or run.

In a moment it became apparent that I didn't need to worry about the knife.

Debbie Duncan stepped into the kitchen, her arms cradling two grocery bags.

And Mother Duncan lunged.

Debbie was a large girl, but she managed to stumble out of harm's way.

Something had to give, but it was only the paper grocery bags. They tore as Debbie moved. Oranges bounced, sour cream splattered, beer bottles shattered. Jenny turned to make a second attack, slipped in a puddle of sour cream and beer, and stumbled forward.

The blade buried itself in the wall, bisecting the least intelligent of the Seven Dwarves, and Jenny fought to free the weapon while her daughter's eyes shot daggers in my direction.

I was about to say something when Jenny lurched away from the blade, defeated. Her flowery dress had slipped off of one knobby shoulder, but her blue hair was perfect. "It doesn't matter," she said, throwing up her hands. "It doesn't MATTER." She shook a finger at her daughter. "I've told this young man about your double-dealings, Debra. I've made him quite aware of just how you sold off your father, BIT BY BIT."

"Mother, why should I care what you've told this — " again the daggers slashed me " — this man.”

Jenny grinned. "He's a policeman, Debra. He's a detective! This is DETECTIVE Raymond, and he's going to take you to jail!"

Debbie laughed long and hard, and her mother turned to me.

I shrugged. "Jenny, I never actually said that I was a policeman... let alone a detective."

Debbie was howling now. Jenny rushed past her and grabbed the Mickey Mouse phone, but that only made Debbie laugh harder.

Jenny yanked the handset from Mickey's grip. "GET ME THE POLICE!" she screamed. "I MUST SPEAK TO THE CHIEF OF DETECTIVES!"

"Shouldn't we get that away from her?" I asked, but my words only brought tears to Debbie's eyes.

Jenny stabbed the telephone key-pad with arthritic fingers.

She punched O.

Mickey screeched, "Operator! Operator!"

She pressed 9.

Goofy chortled. "Number pleeeeze!'

She punched 1, again and again and again.

And Donald Duck hissed laughter for quite some time.

It wasn't easy for Debbie to get the pills down her mother's throat, but she managed it.

"Maybe you shouldn't give her anything," I said. "She had two glasses of sherry."

"Only two?" Debbie's voice dripped sarcasm.

We carried Jenny upstairs and put her to bed. I spotted a photo of Howard Duncan on her night table as I turned away, and I have to admit that it made me shiver.

I felt better when we were back in the kitchen. The tea was cold, but I helped myself to another cup.

"Make yourself right at home," Debbie said, still with the sarcasm.

I ignored her, staring at the knife embedded between Dopey's startled cartoon eyes. "And I thought your father was supposed to be the one with the wild imagination."

Debbie pulled the knife out of the wall and tossed it into the sink. "Oh, thank you for that, Mr. Meleski. Or should I say, Detective Raymond?"

"You're not going to hold a little play-acting against me, now are you?"

Debbie turned away. I got a dose of my own patented silence.

"C'mon, Debbie," I said. "No real damage, right? So I got here a little early. So I tried to do a little fishing with your mom. Nothing really came of it. No harm done, except to old Dopey over there on the wall, and he's still smiling... Hey, you should be happy to have me here. I've scoped things out. I think you'll find that when I crunch the numbers, my offer on the books and paintings in the living room alone is going to be more than generous."

She stood there at the sink for longer than I liked. When she turned to face me I could tell it was trouble, because she had the knife in her hands "No deal, Ray," she said. “Not after what you  just put me through. The problem with you is that you have no shame. You can go find yourself another hearse to chase. Writers and movie stars die all the time in this town."

I sighed. "Yeah, they die. Sometimes they even get murdered."

Something flashed in her eyes, but I don't know what it was. Guilt, or fear, or maybe even greed.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked.

"Just this— the human mind works in strange ways. Your mom's really mixed up right now. Talking to imaginary policemen on a toy phone." I shook my head. "Y'know, she actually convinced herself that you chopped your father into little pieces and sold him to collectors. Can you believe that?"

Debbie didn't say a word.

"It's a funny thing. The pills, the sherry... they've got your mom all mixed up. But dry her out and who knows what she might remember. She might recall that you made some phone calls inquiring as to the value of your father's memorabilia before he had his accident. Maybe those calls could be documented with your long-distance bills. And maybe those conversations were completely innocent, completely coincidental. Let's face it, old people tumble down staircases and die all the time. I'm not saying that a few phone bills could prove anything — "

"You're right about that."

"Maybe," I said. "But a stack of phone bills and an old lady's testimony would sure make things interesting in the courtroom, and in the newspapers."

Debbie stared at the knife for a long time.

I have to admit, it was a lot to absorb all at once.

Finally, Debbie started to cry.

"Does she really think..." she began, sobbing. "Does she really think... that I could cut up my own father?"

After we talked business, Debbie took some pills of her own and went to bed. I went out to my car and got my camera. I photographed the front door and the brass dragon doorbell — those items would stir some fierce bidding, I was sure, just as I was certain that Debbie would be perfectly happy with a completely ordinary front door from Home Depot. I photographed the paintings in the living room, and then I got a little nostalgic and sat down with a nice mint copy of that Howard Duncan collection, the one with the story about the murdered cuckold bursting through the basement floor.

Two hours later, I closed the book and a little chill crept up my spine. To think that I'd traded my copy for a dog-eared deck of cards. A Howard Duncan first edition, good for five hundred bucks on today's market.

I decided I'd hit the kitchen again and photograph the Disneyania. A little bit of silence-as-arm-twisting during our negotiations and I could probably get Debbie to throw in the whole shebang at a bargain price. It didn't take a head-shrinker to figure that the Mickey phone and all the rest of it would have more than a few negative connotations for Debbie in light of the afternoon's events.

I shot two rolls, thirty-six exposures each. Every now and then I went over to the Mickey phone, pressed a button, listened to Donald or Mickey or Goofy or Minnie, and laughed.

I figured I'd just about seen all of it when I heard a clock chime.

It wasn't Dumbo. I followed the noise. Twelve chimes, so I had plenty of time.

I discovered a little hallway that veered off from the blind side of the refrigerator.

There was a phone on the wall, but it was light that I wanted. I found the switch and flipped it on.

A wooden stairway descended into a basement.

And, yes, the basement had a stone floor.

My step was light as I moved across the cold stones. You see, I was expecting that patented Howard Duncan twist. But somehow I made it across the basement without rousing any vengeful corpses. The most dangerous thing I discovered was a spider web, and I was kind of distressed to find out that it, along with its occupant, were real.

The web was in my way. I slapped at it and stepped on the spider. It seemed that I was bound and determined to tempt fate.

That was how it seemed. Not how it was.

With the spider out of the way, I bent low and peered at several manuscript boxes stored on a series of low metal shelves. An old lady's voice unspooled in my memory.

"Debbie sold my husband! Her own father! Bit by bit! Everything except his right hand... his WRITING hand. She boiled that in a big pot until the flesh bubbled away..."

One by one I opened the boxes. My throat was dry; I was sweating.

"...and she's hidden the bones down in the basement in a manuscript box."

I found novel manuscripts, screenplays, unpublished short stories, not at all what I wanted.

And then my fingers closed around the final box, ever so gently.

I figured that I should savor the moment. I was going for broke, and it was wonderful.

"She's going to sell those bones, one by one."

I shook the box.

It was music — the sweetest rattling I had ever heard.

"Tell me, Detective, just how many bones are there in a HUMAN HAND!"

God, how I wanted to know the answer to that question.

I opened the box. Saw the straight white shafts, each one almost glowing under the fluorescent lights.

Each one a pencil.

"Damn you, Howard Duncan," I said.

And then, shivering in spite of myself, I started to laugh.

TYRANNOSAURUS

SHE SAT IN THE BACK OF THE POLICE CAR. The deputy sat up front, his face too white in the harsh glow of fire engine headlights. Her ex-husband's car stood in stark silhouette between the two county vehicles. With its trunk sprung open, the scorched Honda reminded her of a dinosaur skull.

Jaws open wide, ready to snap.

Tyrannosaurus, the killer dinosaur. That was the one it resembled.

"Can't we do this in the house?" she asked. "It was self-defense. You have to believe that. If I hadn't ended it tonight, he would have come back again."

"We have to get your story, Mrs. Rose."

"I changed my name after the divorce. It's Janet Perkins."

"Okay, Ms. Perkins."

"Can't we do this inside? I want to see my son."

"It won't take long. Really. Just a few questions. And it has to be done."

"Okay... okay. Let's get it over with."

"The man in the Honda is your ex-husband?"

"Right. I told your boss that the bastard would come after us. Parole. What a stupid idea. After what he did to Sean in that motel room, and the threats he made — "

"Sean? That's your boy's name?"

She nodded. "And I hate to admit it, but Jack Rose was Sean's father."

"You say that Rose made threats — "

"Not recently. A tabloid reporter got under his skin before the trial. Jack exploded—just verbally, but it was an explosion nonetheless. He wised up after that, especially when he went in front of the parole board. But how they could look at the pictures of Sean in the burn ward and let Jack out of jail, especially when he'd made those threats... It just doesn't make sense."

"Yeah. I remember the story. I followed it in the papers. How brave your boy was, undergoing all those skin graft operations. I want to tell you, that's real bravery."

"Thanks. He's a tough kid."

The deputy nodded. "Why don't you take me through what happened tonight, step by step, and then we'll see where we go from there."

She looked through the window. A light mounted on the fire engine scanned the gravel driveway. The tire still lay to one side of the charred Honda, half hidden by the tall weeds that bordered the driveway. The jack lay next to it. So did the empty gas can. Firemen scurried around, their faces masked against thick black smoke.

"I'm glad the windows are up," she said. "The smell must be-"

"Let's talk about tonight."

"Okay." She took a deep breath. "I finished work at seven. I'm a bartender at the Iron Horse, and the boss takes over for the night shift."

"That's a long commute. Why don't you live in town?"

"Part of the plan. First I changed my name, then I went rural. I figured it would be tougher for Jack to find us out here in the boonies. Besides, I like it here. We've got a few neighbors, and they watch out for us."

"But what about Sean? Didn't you worry about leaving him alone?"

"Sean's independent. I'm not raising him to hide like a bug under a rock. He doesn't want to live that way and neither do I, though sometimes I get so scared that I want to start running again." She sighed. "I just can't give in to that fear, though. It's hard enough on Sean—getting around in a wheelchair, looking the way he does—without me trying to mother-hen him."

"Yeah. I see what you mean."

"Anyway, it was almost dark by the time I got home. I saw Jack from the road. I blocked the driveway with my truck. Then I got my .38 out of the glove box and headed after him. I've got a permit for the gun."

"Where was he?"

"Let's see—I heard the Honda's trunk slam as I got out of the truck... Yeah. Jack was behind the Honda. He'd parked it on the far side of the barn so Sean couldn't see him from the house. I guess he'd just finished changing the tire, because I saw the flat lying in the weeds near the driveway. The jack was there, too. There was a gas can in between, with the lid still on it. It was just dumb luck. If Jack hadn't had the flat, he would have torched the house with Sean in it and been out of here before I showed up."

"Did Jack see you coming?"

"Yes, but I shot him before he could do anything. In the shoulder." She smiled. "I'm a good shot."

"Just wounded him?"

"Right. He got in the car and started the engine. That's when I shot the front tires. I hope I got the one he'd changed." She sighed. "Then I walked up to him, keeping the gun aimed at his head the whole time."

"How did he react?"

"He laughed. Called me Sigourney Weaver. Said that I might as well go call the cops. Then he started making promises again."

"More threats?"

She nodded. "He said that he'd be back, that they probably wouldn't even lock him up this time because he hadn't done anything but violate the restraining order. Then he got back to the old stuff. How he'd burn down the house some night while we were asleep. Look, I just couldn't take it anymore."

"That's when you shot him the second time?"

"Right. I'd rather not say where."

"We don't have to go into that right now."

"Good. Anyhow, I turned away, and when I saw that gas can lying there I really lost it. I grabbed it. Jack saw me coming and tried to get out of the car, but I shot through the door. Hit him again. I don't know where, but it hurt him bad, because he started to cough up blood." She shrugged. "That's when I heard the sirens—I guess someone reported the gunshots—but they didn't stop me. I opened the can and poured gas all over him. He just sat there, grinning that crazy grin of his. Look, I don't have to describe the rest of it, do I?"

"No." The deputy stared at the Honda.

She looked at it, too, but saw only tyrannosaurus jaws. "It was self-defense. He really would have come back."

The deputy nodded.

"Can we go inside now?"

"In a minute," the deputy said.

Outside, the night was alive with the sound of machinery. She watched as a fireman opened the dinosaur's brainpan with some kind of gas-powered saw. Her ex-husband was inside, burnt and shriveled. A man took photos of the corpse, then of the gas can and the tire. A van drifted by, long and white, silent and slow.

"Your ex-husband lied to you," the deputy said. "About not doing anything tonight, I mean."

She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry.

The deputy sighed. "The other time, the first time. Rose took Sean somewhere before he hurt him. A motel, you said. Right?"

She didn't answer.

"Those Japanese cars have awfully small trunks. The tire you saw—it wasn't flat. And the jack and the gas can—Rose wasn't using them. He had to get everything out of the trunk. He had to make room... for the wheelchair... for..."

The deputy's voice cracked.

Sean's mother started to cry.

"Near as we can tell, Sean was gagged. He couldn't cry out." The deputy couldn't look at her. "Rose lied to you, Ms. Perkins. Remember that. You couldn't have known."

Long and white, silent and slow, the coroner's van rolled past the police car.

But the monster's skull remained.

GUIGNOIR

"DON'T WORRY, ELLIE," the kid said, sparking his cigarette lighter. "He's afraid of fire."

Blue flame singed my cheek. I reached for the kid, my manacled wrists straining against steel chains anchored in the mildewed floor. I pawed the cobwebbed air just inches short of his face, the manacles chafing my skin, my hands wild wriggling things, like hungry green tarantulas.

I growled.

The kid's girlfriend jumped away. The back of her head struck the greystone wall, making a hollow sound like a cartoon echo.

The kid laughed. "Get a grip, Ellie. He really is afrai — "

I caught a handful of leather jacket. The kid leaped backward, but I held on until the chains whipped taut and the manacles pinched me to the bone.

Green scars peeled off my wrists. A line of blood welled up underneath.

The kid smirked at me, just out of reach.

"You little bastard," I whispered.

He backhanded me and my forehead caved in. "You ain't doin' it right," he said, his voice suddenly flat. "Frankenstein can't talk."

"That's right," his girlfriend agreed.

Again the kid backhanded me, and the monster mask slipped across my face. I couldn't see through the eye holes, but I could smell the sharp odor of melting rubber mixed with the animal scent of the kid’s leather jacket.

The girl laughed, then shouted, "Perry, watch out!"

Another cartoon echo. I tore off the melted remains of my mask. Perry slumped against the plywood wall, his eyes bulging; the Wolfman's fingers were clamped around his thick neck.

The girl jumped at the Wolfman, scratching for all she was worth. His furry mask came away in her hand and she squealed when she saw his face. Unbelieving, she looked at him, then looked at me. "Perry, they've got the same face!"

"Yeah," Perry said, glaring at my twin brother Larry. "Both of 'em are uglier than Frankenstein, but they don't scare me none."

That wasn't true. Neither part of it.

Larry's fingers dug in, thumbs squeezing hard, but the kid didn't squirm. "Tough boy," Larry said. "You ain't afraid of nothin', huh?" He eyed the girl. "Your boyfriend is awfully brave. How about you? Maybe the four of us can get together tonight and do something really scary. We'll go for a ride in the Death Car, just like old Hank Caul used to. How about that?"

Tears welled in the girl's eyes. Larry had struck a nerve. I unlocked the manacles and moved toward her, remembering her laughter.

"You pricks," Perry croaked. "Hank Caul got her sister, almost got her — "

Larry's werewolf fingers squeezed, cutting off Perry's words. My brother grinned at me then, and I grinned back.

I stroked the girl's blond hair and she turned away, sobbing. "Larry, I'd like you to meet Ellie," I said, and Larry nodded. I took Ellie by the shoulders and wiped away her tears, knowing that I'd terrified her simply by remembering her name.

Warm tears; I rubbed them between thumb and forefinger. I couldn't help asking. I had to know. "Ellie, did Hank Caul get your sister's skin? Is that why you're all shook up?"

She stared at me, speechless. Then she ran, her long hair spilling over her shoulders, blond hair flecked with blood from my wounded wrists.

I let her go.

Perry tried to break free. Larry wrenched something shiny out of the kid's hand, then marched him down the hall, past Count Dracula and the Phantom of the Opera. I followed, my heavy boots thudding over plywood floor that had been painted to look like mildewed stone. Though I was perfectly willing to share grins with Larry, I knew that Pa would hold both of us responsible for whatever happened to the kid. I hoped my twin wasn't going to go too far.

Larry slammed Perry against the Mummy's coffin. The midway lights angled through the doorway, slashing across the kid's face. Pasty, terrified. His lower lip quivered when Larry whispered in his ear, and then Larry shoved him down the stairs, into the crowd.

The kid hit the ground hard. Dust puffed up around him. His greasy D.A. was a mess. The gawkers gathered round as if a new attraction had been announced. Come one, come all. See the amazing crow-eating boy....

Larry's arm shot out, his fingers flexing stiff, and a bone-handled hunting knife jabbed the dirt between the kid's legs.

"That wasn't very smart," Larry said.

I saw Ellie elbowing into the crowd. Trying to hide. Larry saw her too.

"Girl, you come here."

God knows why, but she did.

Larry slipped two tickets into her hand. He grinned. "You and your boyfriend come see the Death Car. On me."

"I don't want to hear any excuses." Pa locked the battered suitcase and slapped the lid for emphasis. "Like I've told you boys a million times: what one does, both do. It's up to you two to watch out for each other."

I wanted to tell Pa that was exactly what we'd been doing, but his good eye cut me down before I could get my mouth working.

"No excuses," he repeated. "We've got to be careful in this town. Hank Caul did his dirty work right here, and lots of these folks don't see the entertainment value of our little tent show. Some of 'em had friends or relations who went for their last ride in the Death Car, and they sure don't like the idea of us makin' six bits from every gawker who wants to see it."

Again, Pa slapped the suitcase. Larry and I called it "Fort Knox," and I wondered for the millionth time how much money was squirreled inside. Maybe a lot, maybe nothing. The Death Car wasn't the attraction it had been five years ago when Caul's stab 'n' skin murder spree was still big news, and I felt sure that Pa had come back to the little town of Fiddler to stir up the pot, maybe get some national press about local outrage. It was worth a try. Lately Pa had tightened the purse strings, and I was getting pretty tired of working in the Castle of Horrors just to keep some change in my pocket.

"Pa, the kid pushed us," Larry began.

"Yeah, and you gave him free tickets," I chided.

"Not another word," Pa said. "You two let me do the thinking." He stared us down and made sure we had that straight. "I've arranged for the Ezell boys to take the rest of your shift at the Castle. In the meantime, you two can make yourself useful around here. I'm expectin' company, and I want the Death Car lookin' pretty as a hunert-dollar whore."

As usual, Larry couldn't keep his mouth shut. "It must be damned important company for you to close the show early," he said. "Is Ed Sullivan comin' to visit? He finally gonna put us on TV?"

"It ain't for you to worry about," Pa said humorlessly. "I got some phone calls to make. I'll be back in an hour. No funny stuff. Remember: what one does, both do."

Pa opened the trunk of the Death Car and placed the battered suitcase inside. "Safer than Fort Knox," he said.

Larry smiled. "Yep, no one wants to mess with the bogeyman's wheels."

"Yeah," I whispered, "isn't superstition a wonderful thing?"

The Death Car was a 1950 Nash Ambassador—hardly the stuff of legend. On the highway it didn't warrant a second glance. But inside the carnival tent, surrounded by poster-sized morgue photos and ringed above and below with a network of blood-red baby spots that had cost Pa a small fortune, the Nash became Hank Caul's Death Car, an abattoir on wheels, ladies and gentlemen, serviced by the devil himself.

The gawkers believed all that, of course. Some of them even believed that the Death Car ate flesh and drank blood, but I knew the truth: the Nash was indeed a monster, but a monster of a different kind—a giant leech that sucked Windex, paste wax and free time. My free time.

Larry misted the rear window and set to work with a squeegee. "I told the old bastard we should have skipped this town," he said. "Jesus, Hank Caul's stompin' grounds. It'll be a miracle if we get outta here alive."

I nodded. "Pa is up to something. That's why he came back to California. He wants to get the gawkers interested in Caul's car again." I worked a chamois over the trunk, admiring the dark cherry gleam. "Maybe we should hang around tonight, just to make sure that the old man isn't in over his head. That kid we rousted might show up with some friends. If Pa has a deal going, the kid could sour it real easy if he did something to the car."

"Frank, you know Pa won't go for it. Christ, he won't even let us count the daily receipts, let alone elbow in on one of his deals." Larry's voice dropped a gravelly octave in perfect imitation of the old man. "I'm the brain and you boys are the muscle, and muscle don't talk business."

We both laughed.

"Besides, we're busy tonight." Larry grinned lecherously. "On the way over here I met a young filly who thinks that twins are real interesting, especially twins who can kick ass."

I grinned, matching Larry's. Even though we were twins, I certainly couldn't call the grin mine. Larry was adventurous and outgoing; but he was also content with the seamy pleasures of the carny circuit. I was not. I longed for something better, bigger, something that went beyond rubber masks and stone walls made of plywood. The other stuff, the grinny stuff, made me feel like I wasn't much better than a gawker.

Still, I grinned. Larry's grin, but the old man's voice. "What one does...," I began in a gravelly rasp.

"... both do," Larry finished.

Her hair was stringy and thin. My fingers passed through it and away, into the soft, perfumed fur that rimmed her neck.

Larry brushed her mink coat away from her leg, his left hand playing itsy-bitsy-spider as it traveled the length of her thigh.

"That's good," she whispered. "When I heard what you boys did to Perry Martin, I just knew you'd be good. Not too many folks around here will stand up to that little rooster, him being the sheriff's son and all."

Larry's hand froze mid-thigh. We exchanged looks of dread. If Pa found out that we'd fucked with the local law, there would be hell to pay.

She giggled and encouraged the itsy-bitsy spider to continue on its way.

We were fifty-five feet above the midway, atop the Ezell boys' pride and joy: a revved-up Ferris wheel that the carny folks had named the Hammer in honor of Bud Ezell's wild method of operation. When Bud wasn't spinning the gawkers silly, he contented himself by trying to bounce them out of their seats. For this reason, the open cabs installed by the manufacturer in Jacksonville had been replaced by enclosed cabs that, coincidentally, provided a great deal of privacy. Bud took full advantage of this—he wasn't above taking bribes from gawkers eager to be "trapped" above the midway with their ladyfriends while the Hammer experienced sudden mechanical difficulties, and he was always willing to raise Larry and me into the heavens in the company of a young lady as long as we promised to share all the details over coffee the next morning.

The cab rocked. She clutched at the hem of her coat, her fists crossing. Black fur closed over her thighs and Larry's hand disappeared underneath. Her wet lips covered mine and I tasted cherry lipstick. My fingers slipped under the fur collar—soft silk lining, small breasts.

Already, I'd forgotten her name.

She moaned; her body stiffened. Then she pushed our hands away and opened her coat. Moonlight washed over her sweaty breasts. Nipples the color of olive meat, dappled with safety-cage shadow.

"Sweet Sunday," she said. "I've never done it on a Ferris Wheel before."

"Yeah?" Larry chuckled. "Well, I've never done it with a lady in mink."

She smiled dreamily. "Nice, isn't it? I got it in New York City. Daddy and I flew out last year for a mortician's convention." She paused a beat to gauge our reaction, and after deciding that we'd been suitably impressed, she added, "I'm the only girl in Fiddler who has one."

Far below, lights blinked out along the midway. Threading her fingers through the safety cage, she leaned forward. The cab tilted, giving us a better view of the carnival grounds.

"Guess traveling doesn't impress you boys. You've probably been most everywhere. It must be exciting, seeing so many different places."

"Not really," Larry said. "The midway looks the same everywhere."

I agreed. "We get tired of the carnival just like you get tired of Fiddler. To us, the Castle of Horrors is that church you're sick of going to every Sunday, and the Death Car is that old clunker you're tired of driving."

"You boys drive the Death Car?" She gasped, missing my point entirely.

Larry clapped his hands. "Do we drive the D.C.? Honey, we've turned that baby's odometer. When our daddy dies we'll be the sole owners of that miserable Nash."

Suddenly she was as interested as the most persistent gawker. "But isn't it haunted? Aren't the seat covers made of human skin, and isn't it painted with blood, and — "

The cab rocked with Larry's laughter.

She straightened indignantly. "Well, that's what people say," she whispered, her voice small and wounded.

I explained that the wild stories about Hank Caul's car increased our business. I told her what a boring bucket of bolts the Nash had been when Pa bought it at public auction, how we'd added the sand-colored upholstery and painted the body red, and how we'd started the stories about the car being haunted, and somehow alive. "Really, Hank Caul was just a sick little guy who had a thing about hunting knives," I said. "His car was just as boring as he was. Nobody's going to pay six bits to hear that, though, so we had to help things along. Luckily, Pa and I are both born storytellers."

"Well, I'm sorry," she began, "but you just don't know what you're talking about. It's a pure fact that Hank Caul skinned his daddy's corpse. And it's a fact that his mama was a witch, and slept with her own son, and made Hank wear his daddy's skin when they did it. That's why he killed all those people. Even my daddy says that's true."

Larry smirked. "The undertaker believes in witches?"

"And a lot more than that," she said. "Daddy says that people still see Hank Caul's ghost out on the back roads looking for his skin."

"His what?"

"His skin!" She sighed. "Don't you two know anything! Hank Caul skinned himself alive before cuttin' his own throat! It's a well-known fact! Why, just the other day I heard my daddy talking about it!"

Larry tickled her belly. "I'm glad Hank didn't get your pretty skin."

Color rose in her cheeks. Her fingers drifted over Larry's chest. She'd heard enough, said enough. She wasn't here for any of that.

We got back to what she was here for.

We rocked back and forth, listening to the rusty complaints of the cab. I noticed tiny scratches on her legs. Red skin. Razor burn. She'd been nervous or overeager about a big night out on the town. She wasn't beautiful and she wasn't young. I wondered how long she'd been waiting. In a place like Fiddler, she'd have to be very careful. She couldn't do it with just anyone, not if she wanted to keep her daddy happy.

I expect that I'd nearly ruined things for her. She didn't want to know about the carnival—gawkers never do. No, she wanted to believe the lies, wanted to lay two tough roustabouts who'd fucked with the local big shots.

Larry nuzzled her furry shoulder, making love to a coat, not even realizing what he was doing. The way he was going at it, I figured the least he could do was pay her six bits. Disgust churned in my belly, and then she was kissing me. She put a finger to my lips and promised that good things come to those who wait.

I stared through the safety-cage, up at the stars, promising myself that I wouldn't think anymore. I'd be like her, like Larry. Like all the others who believed in stories. I'd believe too, and then she'd be a lady in mink, an angel out of nowhere....

After a while she undid my belt. Her lips closed around me. I heard Pa laugh, saw him exchange handshakes with two men in front of the Death Car tent. One of the men—a skinny guy wearing a black suit—held Fort Knox. Pa held a black suitcase crisscrossed with white leather straps.

Then the cab rocked, and the stars came into full view, and I closed my eyes and squeezed a handful of mink.

The trailer door banged open. Pa came down the narrow hallway, the black suitcase in his hand bumping against the pine wallboard. I pulled a blanket over my head and pretended to snore.

Pa pulled back the blanket. "Hey, Sleepin' Beauties, I got somethin' to show — "

I squinted up at him. His good eye darted toward the empty bathroom, then back to me.

"Where's your brother?"

A chill ran over me, and not because I was missing the blanket. The other half of the bed was indeed empty. I thought back to the Hammer and the woman, half remembering Bud Ezell getting us down long after the night air had turned cold. Then an argument—Larry volunteering to take the mink lady for a ride in the Death Car, me saying she could get home on her own. Had he whispered something about wanting more? I couldn't recall.

"Hey, I asked you a question," Pa said.

"I don't know. He could be just about anywhere, I guess."

For once, Pa didn't seem to mind a less-than-straightforward answer. "We'll just have to celebrate twice, then," he said, setting the suitcase on the bed. "I got somethin' here that'll sure enough put us back in business."

I stretched. "Unless you've got Hank Caul's bones in there, I don't think — "

Pa's laughter cut me off. "Better than that. Last night I bought the motherfucker's skin."

A self-satisfied grin spread across the old man's face. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Pa's grin, more than the thought of the contents of the suitcase, made my skin crawl.

Pa unfastened the scuffed leather straps that crisscrossed the suitcase, keyed the lock, and opened it. I saw a hand, fleshy-brown and twisted like an old leather work-glove, and then a foot. A face, sagging and empty, scarred.

A neck dotted with a silver bolt.

Pa gasped. "Goddamn! This ain't what they showed me last night. I swear it ain't!"

I slipped the Frankenstein mask over my fingers and let it rest there. I remembered the mink lady's lips. Pa and the men standing below the Hammer. I remembered closing my eyes.

"Pa, how much did you pay them? Where's Fort Knox?"

Tears welled in the old man's eyes. "They got the whole damn stake!"

The trailer door banged again. A werewolf shouldered down the hallway.

"Larry, where in hell have you been?" Pa asked.

The werewolf pulled off his mask. Bud Ezell stood before us, sweaty and panting. "It's only me, Mr. McSwain. I ran all the way over here...."

"What is it, boy? Spit it out!"

"The Death Car," he said. "It's gone!"

I drove into Fiddler behind the wheel of Bud's piece-of-shit truck, just another farmhand passing through. Not that anyone would have noticed me even if I'd been driving the Death Car and wearing Hank Caul's skin—the valley fog that swam in the streets was that thick.

I passed the mortuary, a brick building cloaked in fog, then turned down a narrow access road that led to a ranch-style house hidden behind it. A black Cadillac was parked in a driveway lined with freshly planted bare-root roses, now little more than naked stems jutting from the dark soil like so many tiny bones. There was no sign of the Death Car.

Damn. This wasn't going to be easy. Larry wasn't inside sleeping it off, and I was sure that I'd have seen him if he'd been heading back to the carnival. Even in the fog, I wouldn't have missed the Death Car.

Leave it to Larry to put what remained of our business in danger. I didn't know which I should look for first, my brother or the Death Car.

Bud's truck coughed and complained as I down-shifted and pulled to the shoulder. Family first, I told myself, repeating another of Pa's favorite sayings. First Larry, then the car. And then we'd figure out what to do about Fort Knox.

I climbed out, stretched, and took a quick look around. No neighboring houses, and no one out for a morning stroll. I sauntered up the driveway, pausing only to touch the Caddy's hood. It was cold, still beaded with moisture. The Caddy hadn't moved today.

No one answered my knock. A spade was planted nearby in the flower bed—apparently the house's owner hadn't considered the black chuckles such an obvious symbol might elicit from people who knew his profession. Hiding in the porch shadows, I tromped the flimsy blade flat. Then I angled the tool against the front door molding and set to work.

The house was empty. No people, not much stuff. The first bedroom I came across belonged to a man who favored black suits and white shirts. A yellow notebook lay open on his mahogany desk, page after page filled with scribbles analyzing the wholesale prices of silk and velvet, charts that recorded seasonal flower prices, and notes about the best way to close a sale— the usual things you might expect a businessman to fret over.

The second bedroom—the master bedroom—belonged to a woman.

No one had slept in the mink lady's bed. I opened her closet. Satin dresses, lacy nightgowns, but no mink coat.

Silk blouses tickled my hand as I reached deeper, and then my fingers brushed something rough and heavy—a green coat with red leather sleeves. A Roman soldier, sword in hand, sneered at me from the back of the coat. Above him, large furry letters spelled FIDDLER SPARTANS.

I slipped the coat off its hanger. A name was stitched over the breast.

PERRY.

I stared down at the corpse. A farm woman, her skin wrinkled, her hands soft with powder, as if she'd been making biscuits when she keeled over and no one had bothered to dust the flour off her hard, plump fingers.

He approached me quietly, but not so quietly that I didn't hear his expensive Italian shoes whispering over the wool carpet. He stopped at arms length, just outside my field of vision, no doubt trying to decide why a mourner had appeared in work clothes and muddy boots.

I turned quickly and caught him shaking his head over the soiled carpet. His jaw dropped a bit in surprise—mine did too, in recognition—but he caught himself and smiled benignly, the way undertakers do.

"It's a shame," I said, remembering the Hammer and the skinny, black-suited man I'd seen holding Fort Knox.

"Yes," he agreed. "She was a fine woman."

He wiped away a tear.

God, I stared at that tear like a gawker with a hardon for the Death Car. The power to do that on cue. Amazing. Unnatural. Like slicing a monster mask and getting blood. Suddenly, a jolt of fear shot through my legs. Could it be that here, in this silly little town, I'd found an equal?

Maybe he knew. Of course he did. He'd have to know. After all, funerals were designed for gawkers, and to be in the funeral business you'd have to understand how their minds worked. You'd almost have to know, or else you couldn't make them happy.

The undertaker smeared the tear across his cheek. He blinked, and a drop of milky discharge oozed at the corner of his left eye. The bottom lid hung loose, away from the eyeball, and looking down at him I saw the rosy-pink rim of his inner flesh. I trembled with excitement, staring at tiny veins rimmed with old, rubbery flesh, but then he daubed his swollen eyelid with a soiled handkerchief and disappointment washed over me.

"Just an infection," he said, smiling feebly. "Nothing to worry about... nothing contagious." And then, "Did you know Mrs. Fleming? Are you a relative?"

"Where is your daughter?"

"Why, she's... I mean, she's not here. Do you know... my daughter?"

I grinned Larry's grin; it was as if the old bastard couldn't remember her name either. I grabbed his tie and pulled him close, staring into his red, basset hound eye. "I fucked your daughter last night. At the carnival. Up on the Ferris wheel. I saw some things going on down below in the dark."

A look of recognition bloomed on the undertaker's face as he detected something of Pa in mine. "It wasn't my idea. Willie—Sheriff Martin—he has the money. He said it was money made from Fiddler's grief, from us...."

I didn't want him to get started on excuses. I shook him and asked, "Where's Hank Caul's skin?"

"There isn't any such thing. I mean, of course there is, but it's buried, it's on his corpse up in Fiddler Cemetery in an unmarked grave. The business about his skin has been blown out of proportion over the years, just like all the other stories about Hank. It's an old wives' tale, like the stories about bloody footprints and hitchhiking ghosts." He wiped at his infected eye. "And Willie said that if we could get your father to believe a story like that... Look, if you don't hurt me I'll pay you what I can. I'm quite well-fixed for cash."

I pictured Pa salivating over a shadowy heap of rubber, Pa exhaling like a stunned gawker....

I slapped the undertaker, hard.

A tear spilled from his healthy eye. "God, you don't have my daughter, do you? I mean, you haven't hurt her, have you?"

I wiped his tear away, rubbed it into my thumb. I couldn't help asking. I had to know. "Did you know that your daughter fucks little boys?"

"Wait, now, there's no call — "

I slapped him again; his bad eye oozed. "Did you know that your daughter fucks Perry Martin?"

Whatever steel was left in the old man rose up. "You lying sonofabitch. My daughter wouldn't touch that little bastard."

He'd gone all white. He wasn't lying. He knew nothing about his daughter and Perry Martin. And he knew nothing about his daughter's whereabouts. That, along with the simple fact that he hadn't recognized me immediately, meant that he knew nothing about my twin brother, either.

"Your daughter is a very careful girl," I said. "I expect that there's a lot you don't know about her. But I'm not lying when I tell you that she's Perry Martin's tool." I grinned. "You should understand that. I believe you have the same relationship with Perry's father."

His head dropped in shame. He didn't even squirm.

I took hold of the undertaker's drooping eyelid. It felt like slick, oily rubber, the way a monster mask feels when it's brand-spanking-new.

"Old man," I whispered, "you've disappointed me."

And then I pulled.

I found the mink lady's address book in her bedroom, right next to a cute little princess phone. Both the phone and the address book were pink. There wasn't a listing for an Ellie, but there was an Ellen Baker. I dialed her number, knowing that she was the weakest link.

She answered on the fifth ring, laughing a laugh that I remembered. "This better be good," she said. "I'm washing my hair."

I wanted to ask her if she was getting the blood out, but I resisted the temptation. "Ellie, are you alone?"

"Of course I am, Perry. You know that Mom and Dad are — "

"Look out at the fog, Ellie. What do you see in the fog?"

"Hey, you're not Perry — "

"Hank Caul's out in the fog, Ellie."

Silence.

"Hank is looking for you. He wants your skin."

A pause. She was fighting the gawker inside her. "You're the guy from the carnival, aren't you?"

"Don't say that. Don't even remember that you went to the carnival. That's my advice, Ellie."

The telephone hum. The gawker taking hold.

"Ellie, I can stop Hank. I can keep him away from you. See, he's inside me. I guess I spent too much time driving his car. God, it's so hard to explain...."

I paused. Now that was a good story, and it had come bubbling out of nowhere. I let it sink in.

"That damned car," she whispered, giving in so easily.

"I don't want to hurt you, Ellie. But Hank does. Maybe if you help me I can make him leave you alone."

"I'll tell you anything... and I promise I won't tell anyone about you, only you have to promise that you won't hurt me."

"I can't promise, Ellie... but I'll try. I really will."

"They're up at Hank Caul's place. That's what you want to know, isn't it? They're going to bury your brother in Caul's old orange grove. After what your brother did to him, well, Perry got so crazy. And then when he told her about it... Mister, believe me, I didn't have anything to do with it. I didn't even want to watch. But Perry made me, and Mel —"

I hung up before she could finish saying the mink lady's name.

Melody. Melissa. Melinda. Melanie.

Nothing special there.

The Mink Lady.

That was a name the gawkers would appreciate.

I threw the address book into the closet, suddenly afraid that I'd see the Mink Lady's real name written inside.

There was no need to ruin a good story.

The suit was too tight in the shoulders, and the Caddy only made wide turns. Really, those were my only complaints.

Lights off, I edged the black car against the side of the weatherbeaten farmhouse. I got out and circled the property, telling myself that if just one house on earth was haunted, this would be the one. But I saw no sign of Hank Caul's ghost, heard no spectral whispers in the fog. And the only smell was the thick odor of moss and rot.

All I saw was an abandoned house. I couldn't make the gawker's leap of faith. I was incapable of such an act. The Death Car had taught me too much about mythology, not the kind that you find in books, but the kind that's worth six bits. Hank Caul's house only brought Pa-thoughts surging through my brain—buy this place real cheap... fix it up... one hell of a tourist trap.

Ghosts weren't real. Neither was fear. The cold truth was that they were things to be sold. Commodities. Only the gawkers believed otherwise.

I kicked in the back door and explored the house. It hadn't changed much in the five years since we'd bought the Death Car at public auction. Even then, the gawkers had been frightened by ghost stories. How else could you explain the fact that no one bid on the house that day, even though the hillside location of the Caul property offered one of the best views in the county?

The view couldn't be appreciated today, not even from the attic window. Fog pooled above the valley floor, suspended from the hills like a sagging spider-web. God, but it was a perfect place for stories. Maybe Pa had been thinking too small when he bought the Nash. Maybe we should have bid on the house.

The idea gnawed at me. For the second time in so many hours, I felt disappointment in someone I'd admired.

A car door slammed in the distance. I came across the sagging porch and spotted a glowing fire in the east orchard, a speck of orange nestled in a foggy blanket.

A spider lurked amid the fruit trees. I was sure of it. A big red spider with an engine of bone and seats of human flesh, or so the stories told. And somewhere near the spider, two little flies who believed.

I reached into my pocket, my fingers closing on five-o'clock-shadow stubble and bristly eyebrows. Starting down the muddy path that descended to the east orchard, I slipped the undertaker's face over my own.

No fruit hung from the gnarled branches. It was the wrong season. The oranges had fallen unpicked, and I had to watch my step, weaving a path through clumps of shriveled black fruit that reminded me of the rubber shrunken heads that hung in the Castle of Horrors.

I moved fast, noisily, waiting to be noticed.

The Mink Lady stood on the other side of the fire, daintily prodding Larry's clothes into the flames with a long stick. The Death Car was parked behind her; there was no sign of Perry Martin. A steamy sizzle rose from the blaze, and for a moment I imagined Larry's blood burning, but it was more likely that the wood was green.

She tossed Larry's boots into the flames. Oily smoke curled from the rubber soles; her eyes followed it up and she noticed me. "What are you doing here?" she asked, blinking as the smoke turned and wafted into her face.

I stopped short, safe in the fog. "Where's the suitcase?" I asked.

Her answer came fast. "What suitcase? What are you talking about?"

Beneath her father's face, I smiled. They were two of a kind, this pair; she knew nothing more of his activities than he'd known of hers.

Perry Martin came around the Death Car, a shovel gripped in his right hand. "What's going on?" he asked. "Who are you talking to?"

"Perry, it's my daddy!"

They stared at me, cringing like guilty children. Daddy wasn't supposed to know about his little girl and Perry-the-stud, let alone these goings on.

I waited for them to make a move. The fire crackled and hissed. Rubber dripped from Larry's boots; the laces burned like fuses. I daubed my left eye with a handkerchief. For now, I would stay in character.

She was the first to speak. "We have to tell him, Perry."

"No!"

"But he can help us, and I promise he won't tell."

I nodded.

A sheepish smile spread across Perry's face. He dropped the shovel and came through the smoke, stories pouring from his mouth. "It was a fair fight," he lied. "The guy was asking for it. He jumped me at the carnival — "

Fair. Yes. Larry was drunk. That made it fair.

" — really thought that he was hot shit — "

Fair. Fair to use your little whore to lure him into town.

"It was kind of an honor thing. I wanted to show him that — "

Fair to kill him in his own car, with his pants down around his ankles.

" — and strangers just can't walk into Fiddler and act like they own the place. We live here. We own it."

I sucked a deep, clean breath. My picture of Larry's death wasn't exaggeration. It wasn't imagination. It was the way it must have happened.

It was the death of a gawker.

Perry stopped short. He looked at my face. Closely.

"Jesus," he whispered. "You're a fuckin' dead man."

I stared at his terrified expression, realizing that revenge was a grinny thing. A gawker's itch. It couldn't be bothered with.

All the hate spilled out of me then. The shoulder seams of the undertaker's suit popped as my open palms hit Perry's chest; he whuffed a sharp exhalation and tripped into the fire.

The Mink Lady screamed. "Daddy! You're crazy!"

"I'm dead," I corrected.

Perry rolled away from the flames. I jumped over him and grabbed the shovel. Swinging hard, I belted him between his shoulderblades. He cried out and tried to rise, but my second blow landed lower, in a soft place, and Perry dropped, screaming something about his kidneys.

The Mink Lady slapped me and I pulled her close. I let her see my mask, and then I took it off and showed her who I was. She tried a half-hearted lie but gave it up the first time I shook my head. When I opened the trunk, I didn't have to tell her to climb inside.

Perry wasn't in a chatting mood, but his words were heartfelt. Between the fuck you's and the screw you's, he told me a lot about the Martin family. Unfortunately, he didn't have much respect for his father, let alone any involvement in the family business, and he certainly didn't know anything about Fort Knox.

Soon it dawned on Perry that I was interested in his old man. His eyes glimmered with hope. I guess he figured that he might get out of this alive.

Perry Martin was that stupid.

I hit him in the face until he was unconscious. He came to in the hole he'd been digging, face to face with Larry's naked corpse. He begged me to let him out, but a wave of the shovel told him that I wasn't having any of it. He still had his hunting knife, but he had no ideas about using it on me. I had to beg him to unsheathe it, and even then he thought I was trying to trick him.

He was right, of course. I made up a story about voodoo rites, rattling on about zombies and New Orleans. Then I told him the truth about his father and Fort Knox. I explained that we were going to be partners, at least for a while.

"Man, you're crazy," he said, but he did as he was told, and, truthfully, I believe he enjoyed the assignment I gave him.

I warmed my hands over the fire while Perry worked, wishing that I had his warm letterman's jacket. But it was up the hill, neatly folded on the Caddy's front seat, an expressionless Frankenstein mask in its pocket. Then I thought about Larry's dead face, lips so straight, ungrinning, looking like me, or at least the part of me that worried and scraped by, knowing that there was something better to be had from life. I wondered if his wearing that expression meant that Larry finally understood me. I hoped so. I hoped that in death my brother had lost the grinny madness that always held him back.

Held us back.

When the fire died down, I climbed into the Death Car and turned on the heater. Down in the hole, Perry was about half finished. In the trunk, the Mink Lady shifted, trying to get comfortable.

I found a fifth of bourbon in the glove compartment. I also found a box of fishhooks and a Mickey Spillane novel that Larry had been reading.

The book was called I, the Jury. I took a drink and turned to page one.

Three hours later, I cut through Caul's orange grove and worked my way back to the highway. If anything, the fog was thicker now, and I sniffed gas fumes long before I spotted the service station. Fact is, I nearly bumped into the attendant, a bent little man who smelled of Pennzoil.

"Got a pay phone?" I asked.

He pointed. I didn't like the way he looked at me. I didn't like his eyes.

"Where's yer car?"

"I don't need gas. I need some change... I've only got a five."

He grunted; you'd think I'd asked for the moon. Then he disappeared into the fog and returned with a greasy handful of bills and coins. "'S'pose you want me to dial yer number for ya, too," he said.

I turned away, cringing as if I'd been slapped.

"Willie Martin," the voice said.

"It's me, Willie. It's Hank Caul."

A barking laugh. "Oh, sure. Hank Caul. You just dig yourself out of the grave, Hank? You gonna move into town, or are you gonna spruce up the old homestead?"

"I've got Perry. I've got your son, Sheriff."

"Now wait one damn min—"

"I've been waiting, Sheriff. I'm done waiting. I guess I don't have to tell you that what you did the other night made me pretty mad. Pretending to sell my skin and all, I mean. Unless you bring me the money you stole. I'm going to carve your little Perry like a Halloween pumpkin."

"Listen to me, asshole. This is one of you carny assholes, isn't it? If you hurt my boy you're as good as dead."

"This is Hank Caul. I'm already dead, Sheriff. And I do have your boy."

Silence.

"Okay, then. Where do we stand?"

"Jed's Gas out on 198. Be here at midnight, alone, with the money. Wait for a sign."

"No soap. Let's do this thing right now."

"Midnight, Willie. One minute early and it's pumpkin-carving time. I won't be strong enough until midnight. I need the moonlight."

I looked into the fog, waiting for an answer. Pure bullshit, that moonlight stuff, but I could feel the gawker in him puzzling over it.

"Okay. Midnight."

He was lying. I could almost see him reaching for his car keys.

"You'd better be smart. Sheriff. You'd better know that I mean what I say."

"Sure."

"Don't lie, Willie. We've had enough of that between us, you and I. If you really want to do something right now, visit your local undertaker. You'll see just how serious I am."

A deep breath. Then, "You killed him?"

"I taught him what happens to people who fuck with my legend," I said, hanging up before Willie Martin could reply.

The attendant overheard the whole conversation. I palmed Perry's knife and shouldered out of the booth. Before the old man knew what hit him, the blade slipped between his jawbone and the flesh of his left cheek.

He didn't scream. He grunted. And then he pulled away, one eye dancing.

"You crazy sonofabitch," he said.

His eyes. The right one staring at me. The left one dead, bloody.

My legs went to jelly. Pa's eyes, shiny with loathing.

He held his slashed mask together with his right hand; blood coursed from the meaty wound beneath. I was about to apologize when a knife appeared in his left hand. "C'mon," he said. "If you got any balls, that is. No one robs Jed Davis."

So that was the way he planned it—a sucker play, and he expected me to fall for it like a gawker in the Castle of Horrors. Pathetic.

I shook my head. "You should have trusted me, Pa. I could have handled it." I pulled the undertaker's face out of my pocket and threw it on the ground. "You've got no secrets from me, so you can forget the act. It's small potatoes, just the kind of thing that's been holding us back all these years."

He stared at the face on the oily pavement and didn't say a word.

"It's the money, isn't it. Pa? That's all you want, only you don't want to share it with your own flesh-and-blood anymore."

"No." The old man waved his knife. "You're crazy. You ain't my son. Any money around here is mine."

"Wrong, Pa. Larry lost the car, but you lost the money. But what's worse is you lied. All that what-one-does-both-do stuff. Pure crap. Larry and I were different, Pa. We really were." I inched forward. "Larry was always a gawker. That was his great weakness, and he died for it." I tossed the knife from right hand to left. "Now you're a gawker too." My hand tightened around the bone hilt. "That's the truth, Pa. Any way you slice it."

"I don't know what you're talkin' about," he said, backing into a tire rack. "You're nuts."

"Maybe, but at least I never bought a suitcase full of rubber. I'm not a gawker, Pa. I never will be. I'm thinking big now. Big time. Big stories. I'm thinking we should have bought Hank Caul's house."

He nearly deflated. For just a moment he looked like a six-bit-a-head carny operator who'd just seen a profit sheet from Disneyland. I came at him then, almost sorry because he might have been something once. If he hadn't believed the stories, he might have made us rich. But he'd let a small-town sheriff take him for a ride, and he'd blown our stake.

And he'd kept me down for a damn long time.

I kicked the knife out of his hand.

His good eye danced, electric with fear.

"Take anything you want," he said. "There's money in the register."

I kept my head. I didn't want to get grinny. "Six bits is what I charge," I said, my voice strong and even. "Six bits a ticket. You know that, Pa."

"You gotta understand that I ain't your — "

Blood geysered into the air as I worked the knife through the old man's mask and face, slicing so fast that I couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.

At midnight I torched the Caddy. A great plume of orange fire roared into the sky, and I could only imagine the look on Willie Martin's face as he watched from Jed's Gas down in the valley.

As I climbed the stairs I heard Perry screaming about the abuse he was taking as my partner, but his protest had all the halfhearted enthusiasm of a cranky child fighting bedtime. When he finally stopped whining, I opened the closet door. He'd finished off the bourbon just like I'd hoped—I'd left one of his hands untied and the fifth in his pocket—and then he'd been too drunk to try to escape. He hadn't even thought to break the bottle and cut the ropes.

The ropes were tangled and the closet was dark, so to speed things up I broke apart the clothes rods and slipped the wood through the loops, ordering Perry to twist this way and that. When he was free, I fastened the manacles around his wrists and steered him out of the closet. Even drunk, he noticed the Frankenstein mask lying on the floor; light from the Caddy fire spilled through the moth-eaten drapes and swirled around it, orange light given physical presence by dust motes we'd kicked alive.

"Boy, Frankie's face looks so real” Perry said. "I bet it'd scare fucking Boris Karloff!"

I agreed. "Do you think it will scare your old man?"

Perry nodded vigorously, rattling his chains like the ghost of Christmas Past. I reminded him of the money we were going to make and made him repeat the plan that I had no intention of following. Then I lit a candle and burned a lock of Larry's hair, mumbling a phony voodoo chant for effect.

Perry swayed back and forth, buying the whole routine.

I slid the mask over his head.

Jerked the rubber bolts from side to side.

Two dozen fishhooks bit home.

I could barely hear him over Perry's screams, but I recognized the shouting voice as the one I'd heard over the telephone at Jed's Gas. "Frank McSwain!" he yelled. "That is your name, isn't it? This is Willie Martin. It's time to deal."

Perry writhed on the dusty floor. I stepped over him and broke the windowpane with my elbow, the leather sleeve of Perry's jacket protecting my arm.

I peered through the torn drapes. Willie Martin stood below in the light of the Caddy fire—Perry with twenty pounds and twenty years. An old man stood next to him. I got a brief look at his face, and then both men disappeared behind a cloud of smoke.

"I've got your father down here, McSwain. Maybe we can work out a trade."

I leaned into the shadows, biting back laughter. So Willie Martin wasn't a gawker after all. No, he was a showman, but his little drama was wasted on me—I'd left Pa cold dead and faceless in an orchard of rubber shrunken heads, and this old geezer didn't even have a good mask.

"Frank?" the old guy called. "Larry, are you up there too? Listen boys, they got us dead to rights, but they'll let us live if you turn over the kid."

I had to hand it to the sheriff. The old guy's voice was good. I pulled Perry to his feet, shoved him to the window, then yanked him away.

"Jesus, boys," the old guy in the mask growled. "This ain't the spook show. Use your brains. C'mon down or I'm a goner."

I flicked Perry's cigarette lighter and touched the flame to the drape.

The rest happened too fast. Fire crawled up the drape and skittered across dry wallpaper, reaching for the ceiling. I grabbed the steel chain and pulled Perry to his feet. Shouts rang out below. The front door banged open as I came down the stairs, dragging Perry behind me. A flashlight beam zigzagged across the sheet-shrouded furniture and froze on me, a tight circle illuminating the scowling Spartan on my jacket. I yanked the steel chain, spinning Perry into the light.

The cold beam haloed his blood-drenched mask.

A gun barrel sparked.

The mask sank away, into the dark.

Perry hit the floor.

Everything stopped.

The flashlight beam lingered on Perry for a moment, then cut to me.

I grinned at the man who'd turned my pa into a gawker.

"No," Willie Martin whispered. "Jesus, no."

His gun came up but his son's knife was already on its way, catching the sheriff just under the right collarbone. He staggered backward; I wrestled the gun out of his hand and pushed him toward his son's corpse.

I left him there, alone and staring.

The deputies were slow, and that was good, because Willie Martin's gun was almost empty. I shot three of them. If there were others, they disappeared into the fog.

The old man with the Pa mask couldn't run. He was shot up pretty bad, but he wasn't dead yet. Still, he wouldn't tell me where Fort Knox was, and he kept to his Pa act the whole time. I kind of admired him for that—somehow it made up for all the things I'd lost, including Fort Knox. I helped him into the back of Willie Martin's patrol car and left him there with the heater running.

I filled up the Nash at Jed's Gas, free of charge. I imagine a lot of other drivers did the same that night. I didn't want to waste money on the pay phone, so I went inside to make one last call.

She didn't answer for a long time, and when she did I could barely hear her voice.

"It's me," I said.

Silence.

"I just wanted to let you know that Hank won't be coming for you."

Silence.

"I think it's over. Maybe he's gone. The people he made me kill... Well, I can't believe what he made me do to them, but I think they might have deserved it." I paused. "Anyway, I think his spirit will rest in peace now."

"God, I hope so," she whispered.

I hung up, wondering who Ellie would call first. I wondered how many gawkers lived in Fiddler. How long would it take them to learn of Hank Caul's ghostly rampage? And once they'd found out, how soon would they forget that a carny roustabout had anything to do with it?

I drove south.

The fog cleared around Earlimart. I flipped on the radio and found a late night station out of Fresno. Between bursts of static, Bo Diddley asked the musical question, "Who do you love?"

I looked into the rearview mirror. Not a headlight in sight.

Bo Diddley sang about a house made of rattlesnake hide.

I liked that.

I don't know what kind of story I'll make up. I'll have to ditch the Death Car, of course, but I'm tired of that story anyway. It'll be nice to make a change.

It's funny. I started off wanting revenge, and then for a while I wanted money. Somewhere in there I even wanted Hank Caul's house. Now I only want a good story. That's all a guy like me really needs. Something new. Fresh. Something that will nail the gawkers to the wall.

I close my eyes, just for a second, and say goodbye to the Death Car story. Suddenly I hear screaming... an engine made of bone... but then I realize that it's only the woman in the trunk.

I hope that she's warm enough.

I open my eyes. Moonlight washes the cherry-red hood.

She can wear her mink coat. She can wear Larry's skin.

The gawkers will like that.

The Mink Lady story.

I press the gas pedal to the floor and the Nash roars forward.

The Mink Lady screams.

I remember her lips. They tasted of cherries.

I imagine a house made of rattlesnake hide.

A dynasty of fear.

I'm thinking big.

STORY NOTES

ONE THING I'M SURE ABOUT—I want my stories to speak for themselves. If I've got something to communicate through my fiction, I'm going to tell you about it while you're visiting that landscape. I'm not going to wait until you're safe and sound in the quiet parlor of the author's afterword. Such ramblings would be as useless as explaining a joke—if you have to do that, something was dead wrong with your joke to begin with.

Still, the publishers of this book wanted me to comment on the stories you've just read, and I'm happy to oblige. What I've chosen to write about is how the fiction in Bad Intentions helped me develop as a writer, some of the influences these stories sprang from, and projects they may inspire down the road. My aim is to have a nice chat with you, share a beer or a cup of coffee, just shoot the bull.

JOHNNY HALLOWEEN: Richard Chizmar was one of the first editors to encourage me as a writer. My first published story ("Save the Last Dance for Me") appeared in the second issue of Cemetery Dance, and to date I've been fortunate enough to make seven subsequent appearances in the pages of Rich's fine magazine. In fact, more than a few readers have told me that my Cemetery Dance stories started them searching for more Norm Partridge fiction.

While I'm at it. I'll mention that Rich also took a chance on my first novel, Slippin' into Darkness, publishing it under his CD Publications imprint when mainstream editors were turning it down as "too dark." It got so I heard that so many times, I began to think the only way I'd ever get that book into print was if I agreed to provide a bottle of Prozac with every copy. Anyway, the CD edition of Slippin' sold out in less than a month and received uniformly positive reviews from the mainstream critics, which made both publisher and author pretty damn happy.

Rich's acceptance of Slippin' illustrates the reason we hit it off as writer and editor—Rich seemed to like the dark stuff. Especially the noirish, non-supernatural style of fiction that I was drawn to. Not that he was adverse to publishing supernatural fiction in Cemetery Dance, it was just that he favored the under-your-skin-and-close-to-the-bone kind of stories that Jim Thompson and Dan J. Marlowe had penned in the fifties... the kind that were popping up in the anthologies of the late eighties and early nineties under the bylines of Joe R. Lansdale, David J. Schow, and Ed Gorman, to name a few. The kind of stories where dysfunctional humans prove more frightening than anything in fangs and a cape.

So when Rich called and asked me to try my hand at a Halloween tale for his fall '92 issue, my immediate inclination was to go noir. But with a monster mask, of course.

Rich liked the finished product. A couple months later, the fall issue of Cemetery Dance showed up in my mailbox, and I was simultaneously terrified and delighted to see my tale following a Stephen King story on the table of contents page. That was one of a handful of little moments which convinced me that I might be able to go somewhere with this writing thing, after all.

Thanks, Rich.

88 SINS: The shrine in this story actually exists. Or existed, anyway. My wife read about it in a travel book specializing in "off the beaten path" adventures, and we set out to find it on a trip to Kauai, an adventure that taught me one thing—ten feet off the road in Hawaii and you might as well be right in the middle of Tarzan's own jungle.

We did find the shrine, however. Unfortunately, we also found a bulldozer and several construction workers who were building a house for someone who had more money than sense... which is another way of saying that the shrine wasn't going to be anyone's preservation project.

Except mine. I came home and wrote this story. Of course, it reflects my feelings for the place I'd visited, but it also gave me a chance to tip my hat to Rod Serling, who did those "businessman with a troubled conscience" stories so well.

THE CUT MAN: Maybe this one had a little bit to do with Rod Serling, too. I've always loved Requiem for a Heavyweight, especially the original television version starring Jack Palance. And I've always enjoyed stories that mix boxing with the fantastic—Serling's "The Big Tall Wish" on Twilight Zone, Richard Matheson's "Steel," and especially Joe R. Lansdale's "The Pit," which goes further in explaining a particularly brutal (but certainly not uncommon) kind of fighterly motivation than any mainstream boxing tale I've ever read.

Boxing is the only sport I've ever been interested in. I've followed it since I was a kid, and while my interest wanes at times—I can't get used to the idea of multiple heavyweight champions and titles that don't mean a damn thing—I've never been able to give up on it entirely. One of the saddest things in the sport is a fighter past his prime who refuses to hang up the gloves. Not an uncommon theme in boxing fiction—in fact, it fits both the Serling stories mentioned above—but one I thought I could make fresh when I set out to write my own boxing-horror story.

DEAD CELEBS: One day Rich Chizmar called and suggested that I send a story to Joe R. Lansdale, hisownself, who was editing an anthology of "dark suspense" stories along with his wife, Karen. It sounded like a good idea to me—I'd always admired Joe's work, both the fiction itself and the way he handled his career. I almost always felt a strong connection when I read his stories, and I was interested to see what he'd have to say about one of mine.

The first story I submitted leaned a little too much toward the supernatural. Joe sent it back with a cordial note of rejection. He didn't exactly say that I should submit another piece, but he didn't say I shouldn't, either.

I went for a long walk. Along the way, I recalled reading an interview with Joe where he spoke about the early stages of his career, when he'd been so determined to make it as a professional writer that he'd literally turned out a story a day.

Well, I was determined, if nothing else. By the time I returned from my walk, the first section of "Dead Celebs" was in my head. By the time I went to bed that night, I'd typed "The End."

I also thought that I'd turned a corner as a writer. I was becoming more and more comfortable with the writer's voice I was developing. It seemed to me that it wasn't so much the stories I was telling as the way I was telling them, and the perspectives I was telling them from. I was gaining confidence, and suddenly I couldn't work fast enough to keep up with the many ideas I was having. While I never turned out a story a day, "Dead Celebs" marked the beginning of a creative period where I turned out two to four stories a month.

‘59 FRANKENSTEIN: I'm a big fan of fifties horror movies—give me teenage werewolves, amazing colossal insects, or teenagers from outer space and I'm happy. One day I got an idea for an anthology of stories that would pay tribute to those films. I told Ed Gorman about it, and he suggested that I pitch the idea to editor-extraordinaire Marty Greenberg. Marty liked it, sold the book to DAW, and, to make a long story short, the two of us got busy co-editing It Came From the Drive-In.

The contributors seemed to have fun with the premise. The postman filled my mailbox with stories of things from lover's lane, gigantic rabid jackalopes, headless bikers, and rampaging mole-folks that time forgot.

Much to my dismay, no one submitted a teenage monster picture with 'gators and hot rods. So I wrote one myself.

CANDY BARS FOR ELVIS: For me, the shorter the story, the harder it is too write. This piece was the exception. It came very fast. But, hey, it was about ELVIS. And, if you've read the piece (and—naughty-naughty—you shouldn't be reading these notes if you haven't), you'll realize that I've spent way too much time studying the man.

I'm not the only one. A bigga bigga hunka writers have done Elvis stories—there are even a couple anthologies composed of nothing but (and most anthologies with a rock 'n' roll theme are good for at least one story about the King).

Quite frankly, while reading those books I got the distinct impression that more than a few of the contributors were - to put it kindly- just phoning it in. Their stories kinda reminded me of the false start Elvis included on "Milkcow Blues Boogie" way back when at Sun Records - the sameold-sameold honky tonky rendition he cuts real short by saying, "Hold it fellas... that doesn't move me... let's get real real gone for a change."

And so he does.

Not that I'm saying a writer can hit it out of the park with each and every story—I've done some "theme anthology" work in my time that I view as professional but certainly not exceptional—but in the case of the Elvis anthologies it rubbed me the wrong way, because, hey... this was ELVIS. Anyway, it has always bothered me that I couldn't wrangle a slot in one of those books. Which means, sure, I've tasted sour grapes... but I'd like to add that they ain't regularly on the menu here at Casa Partridge.

While I'm at it—the narrator of "Candy Bars..." also appears in a recently completed suspense novel called Saguaro Riptide, due out next year from Berkley Books. He still has that scar-colored Caddy, only now he's planted roots in a little town in Arizona. But, like they say, that's another story....

STYX: I wrote this one for an anthology of ghost stories edited by Peter Straub. My goal was to build to the familiar shiver that climaxes a traditional ghost story, but to have that shiver come from an unexpected direction—a charge-ahead crime/suspense plot. Looking back on it now. I've got to admit to a soft spot for the descriptive passages here. I love writing about deserts... that's for sure. Sunsets, too.

For a while I thought "Styx" might be the first chapter of a novel. I think that the moment has passed, but you never know....

WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD: I did some writing in college, submitted several stories, but didn't sell a thing. I pretty much busted my pencils and gave it up when I graduated. I went to work in a public library and didn't write a word for nearly seven years. Then a couple things happened that got me started again—first, I got an Apple Macintosh computer, which meant that I could save mucho time by not having to retype draft after draft after draft of each story I did. Secondly, I discovered several small magazines such as The Horror Show, Noctulpa, Cemetery Dance, and Grue—all of which were publishing interesting fiction.

I got back to work and sold a few stories to those small magazines. But it was always my aim to break into the "professional" markets—which to me meant the anthologies which were published by the mainstream press.

One of my targets was Charles L. Grant's Shadows series. I'd been a fan of those books for years. See, while I'd given up writing for a while, I never gave up reading. Grant's anthologies were like textbooks to me—I devoured each new volume that the library received, caught up on the older volumes I'd missed through inter-library loan. Reading those books taught me a lot about how to put a story together. I remember one William F. Nolan piece in particular called "The Partnership" which marked a kind of epiphany for me. I suddenly understood how to create an effective plot twist after reading that story, something I'd been trying to figure out for ages.

So when I learned through a market listing magazine called Scavenger's Newsletter that the redoubtable Mr. Grant was reading for a final volume of Shadows, I knew I had to take a shot.

About three weeks after I submitted "Wrong Side of the Road," Charlie phoned to accept the story. I didn't take the call, however. My wife did. See, I was in the bathtub. But that didn't stop my bride. She dragged the phone into the bathroom—"Norman, it's Charles Grant!"—and handed it to me.

So I sat there buck naked and wet talking to the man viewed as one of the most influential horror editors of the eighties. I got the impression that Charlie was a little disappointed to discover that I wasn't a grizzled World War II vet like the main character in "Wrong Side..." But I think I made up for it by admitting where I was at the moment I made my first "pro" sale.

I just thank God that I didn't drop the phone and electrocute myself.

GORILLA GUNSLINGER: Joe Lansdale does the same thing each time he finishes editing a book—he swears that he'll never edit another. But it seems that a little time and a little distance, plus a fresh idea, have a way of changing his mind.

That's the way it was with Weird Business, an anthology of comic fiction (and we're not talking ha ha comics—we're talking "graphic novel" comics, or "illustrated fiction," if you prefer). Joe co-edited the book with a fellow named Rick Klaw, who had read and enjoyed my first short story collection, Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales.

Joe asked me to write a weird western, a genre we both enjoy. I put on my thinking cap. I'd loved comics for years—as a teenager in the seventies, I ran a mail-order business with a buddy of mine just to pay for my collecting habit—and I'd always wanted to try my hand at writing one.

This was a case where coming up with a title gave me just about everything I needed. First, "Gorilla with a Gun" popped into my head. I played around with that a little bit until it became "Gorilla Gunslinger." The plot came to me in a rush—a talking gorilla in a Sergio Leone landscape, Darwinian confusion, gunslinging antievolutionist preachers—and almost immediately I was ready to slap leather to the idea.

Then I got the chicken pox. Thirty-five years old, and I'm flat on my back. Still, I couldn't keep away from the story. Every day I dragged my sorry ass into the saddle and did a page or two, sweating calamine lotion. Maybe that accounts for the feverish pace.

Joe and Rick liked the finished script. Rick turned it over to a talented artist named John Garcia, whose realistic style complemented my story. Then, when all was said and done, Joe and Rick sat down with Ben Ostrander (the publisher of Mojo Press), and decided that "Gorilla Gunslinger" would be the lead story in Weird Business.

Hey, I was honored. Even more so when I had a chance to enjoy the wonderful stories that made up the finished product.

Reviewers and readers enjoyed the story, too. Ben and Rick—partners in Mojo Press—decided that maybe we were on to something. I felt the same way. Ben got together with my agent, Jimmy Vines, and hammered out a deal for a full-length graphic novel that's currently scheduled for early 1997 release. We're calling it Gorilla Gunslinger: The Good, the Bad... and the Gorilla, and I hope you'll strap on your six-guns and come along for the ride when the finished product lands in a comic shop near you.

DEAD MAN'S HAND: Another weird western, original to this volume. This piece features a gunfighter named Stackalee, loosely based on the character from African-American folklore (remember Lloyd Price's fifties hit song "Stagger Lee"?). Early on, I tried my hand at a horror story based on the legend ("Stackalee") which appeared in Cemetery Dance, but that didn't satisfy me. So I tried again a few years later with a novella called "The Bars on Satan's Jailhouse," which appeared as a chapbook published by Doug & Tomi Lewis's Roadkill Press, the fiction imprint of The Little Bookshop of Horrors in Arvada, Colorado. I liked that one a lot, and readers seemed to enjoy it, too, so I figured I'd take another crack at the character. This is Stack's second appearance, and I'm hoping it won't be his last.

APOTROPAICS: I'm always asked the same question about this story: "What does the title mean?" It seems the word is not included in most dictionaries, though it is included in a book called Vampires, Burial, & Death by Paul Barber, which is where I discovered it.

So, for the record, apotropaics can be defined as "methods of averting evil," referring in this case to the tools used in the destruction of a vampire.

Hey, Mr. Webster, don't cha think it's time?

SHE'S MY WITCH: Westerns, space operas, gangster stories, war stories—these are some of the more traditional genres available to storytellers. But scratch a little harder and you'll discover mythologies that haven't been quite so thoroughly explored.

Like for instance the rockin' rollin' juvenile delinquent, circa 1958. If you ask me, the fifties J.D. is an icon not unlike rougher versions of the American cowboy—independent, untamed, by definition going against the grain. I've wanted to write a J.D. horror story since reading Stephen King's "Sometimes They Come Back" in Night Shift many moons ago. Thinking about King's revenant greaser gang still makes me smile in admiration, as did the surprisingly good Made-for-TV movie that expanded the original story. Brimfire-spittin' street rods and cemetery rumbles... well, I'm a sucker for that kind of action. Double-bill that puppy with I Was a Teenage Werewolf and you've got an entertaining evening in store.

Of course, the J.D.'s in King's story weren't the good guys. But they were just as dead as Johnny Benteen....

BAD INTENTIONS: For the most part, I like book and memorabilia collectors. For the most part. Most collectors I've met are well-read and intelligent. Their passion makes their lives richer, and they haven't lost their sense of wonder—traits they share with writers of the fantastic.

But sometimes... Well, this one's for you, Uncle Forry.

TYRANNOSAURUS: This piece was written for an anthology of audio suspense stories which ultimately died on the vine. That's always been a regret, as I would have enjoyed hearing it performed by a talented actress—or perhaps an actor and an actress—seeing if it would work the way I'd hoped. I think my spare style would have complemented an aural presentation.

Another point I should mention—"Tyrannosaurus" is one of many stories set in the fictional San Joaquin Valley town of Fiddler, California (see "Apotropaics," "She's My Witch," and "Guignoir," also in this volume). Strange things happen in Fiddler. Sometimes supernatural, sometimes not. "Haunted" cars have been known to prowl the roads, jukeboxes play '50s songs about dead teenagers, and everybody thinks they know everybody else's business.

Kinda reminds me of home....

GUIGNOIR: Finishing this one, I felt for the first time that I'd hit on all cylinders, creatively speaking. Voice, plot, pacing—everything came together just the way I'd hoped in "Guignoir," and I felt that maybe I was beginning to carve out my own territory as a writer.

It wasn't so much that I thought I was reinventing the wheel or anything. I recognized the influences I was drawing upon, but I also felt that maybe I had a different way of combining those influences into a personal style that would work for me.

I'd learned about pace from writers who'd specialized in paperback originals in the good old days—guys like Dan J. Marlowe and John D. MacDonald and Elmore Leonard, who really moved a story along and made every word count. I learned how to set a scene and keep a reader guessing from writers as diverse as Peter Rabe, William Goldman, and Dennis Etchison. From Ray Bradbury and singer/songwriter Tom Waits, I learned how to make a metaphor original, how to make descriptive passages sparkle. And I learned how to make my own voice work—and how important it was to trust that voice—from Stephen King, Joe R. Lansdale, and David J. Schow.

The story was accepted by George Hatch for Noctulpa, a small but well-respected annual anthology that had caught the eye of several reviewers in the horror field. I’d submitted it under the title "Monster Masks," and George renamed it "Guignoir," a hybrid of "grand guignol" and "noir" which I thought suited the piece just fine. Upon publication, Ed Bryant had some nice things to say about the story in Locus, and it was eventually picked up for reprint in Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell's Best New Horror 3 and Robert Morrish and Peter Enfantino's Quick Chills II, receiving an honorable mention from Ellen Datlow in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror.

Looking back on "Guignoir" today, I see things I'd change if I had another shot at it. To me, the narrator's voice seems a little stiff at times, and at other times it's almost too polished. But making such revisions for this collection would be cheating in a way, because I still want the story to accurately reflect the place I was at and the things I was feeling when I wrote it.

Some of those feelings have changed as I've moved on, of course, but not all of them. One thing in particular hasn't changed—the comments the narrator makes about storytelling and modern mythology still ring true. "Guignoir" reflects my belief in the power of fiction more than any other story I've written. In some ways I look at it as my statement of purpose as a writer, and I hope I'll always have the creative enthusiasm that drove me to write it in the first place.

So far, so good. Like that last line says: "I'm thinking big." That hasn't changed, either.

You can bank on it.

About the Author

NORMAN PARTRIDGE'S first novel, Slippin' into Darkness, was called "a killer novel" by LOCUS and "easily the most auspicious genre debut of the year" by Stephen King. His first collection of short stories, Mr. Fox and other Feral Tales, won the Bram Stoker Award and was a World Fantasy Award nominee. In addition to more than fifty published short stories and several comic scripts, he co-edited It Came From the Drive-In, an anthology of stories inspired by the horror and science fiction films of the fifties.

A third-generation Californian, Partridge has worked in public libraries and steel mills. He enjoys rock 'n' roll music, cheeseburgers, and movies in which lots of things blow up.

Table of Contents

THE ELECTRIFIED BOXING HOLLYWOOD COWBOY IN A GORILLA SUIT

JOHNNY HALLOWEEN

88 SINS

THE CUT MAN

DEAD CELEBS

’59 FRANKENSTEIN

CANDY BARS FOR ELVIS

STYX

WRONG SIDE OF THE ROAD

GORILLA GUNSLINGER

DEAD MAN’S HAND

APOTROPAICS

SHE’S MY WITCH

BAD INTENTIONS

TYRANNOSAURUS

GUIGNOIR

STORY NOTES