A Host of Shadows

by Harry Shannon

Kindle Edition

Dark Regions Press

2010

KINDLE EDITION

Text © 2010 by Harry Shannon

Cover Art © 2010 by Yossi Sasson

This digital edition October 2010 © Dark Regions Press

Joe Morey, publisher

Norman L. Rubenstein, editor

Cover and interior design:

David G. Barnett/Fat Cat Graphic Design

www.fatcatgraphicdesign.com

Dark Regions Press

PO Box 1264

Colusa, CA 95932

www.darkregions.com

“Introduction” by Rick Hautala © 2010 Rick Huatala

“Blood and Burning Straw” (first published in Cemetery Dance magazine) © 2010 Harry Shannon

“The Easy Way” (first published in Cemetery Dance magazine) © 2010 Harry Shannon

“A Handful of Dust” (first published in Hardluck Stories) © 2010 Harry Shannon

“Lucky” (first published in Hardluck Stories) © 2010 Harry Shannon

“And the Worm Shall Feed” (first published in the anthology A Dark and Deadly Valley) © 2010 Harry Shannon

“Jailbreak” (with Steven W. Booth) (first published in the anthology Dead Set) © 2010 Harry Shannon & Steven W. Booth

“All the Dead Lie Down” (first published at Horror World) © 2010 Harry Shannon

“Thus Was His Death” (first published at Horror World) © 2010 Harry Shannon

“Violent Delights” (first published in the anthology The Fear Within) © 2010 Harry Shannon

“Mobius Dick” (with M. Stephen Lukac) © 2010 Harry Shannon & M. Stephen Lukac

“The Fever Called Living” (with dgk goldberg) (first published at Gothic.net) © 2010 Harry Shannon & dgk goldberg

“Another Hell” © 2010 Harry Shannon

“The Name of the Wicked” © 2010 Harry Shannon

“Night Nurse” (first published in Horror Drive-In) © 2010 Harry Shannon

“Tokens” (first published in Bare Bones) © 2010 Harry Shannon

“Darkness Comprehended” (with Gord Rollo) (first published in City Slab) © 2010 Harry Shannon & Gord Rollo

“In Darkness, Screaming” (with Jack Fisher) ((first published in Horror Garage) © 2010 Harry Shannon & Jack Fisher

“The Need for Illusion” (first published in Lennox Avenue) © 2010 Harry Shannon

“Concrete Gods” (with Kealan Patrick Burke) (first published as a chapbook) © 2010 Harry Shannon & Kealan Patrick Burke

“Blacktop” (first published in the anthology Tales from the Gorezone) © 2010 Harry Shannon

“Some are Born to Endless Night” © 2010 Harry Shannon

“The Place of Excrement” © 2010 Harry Shannon

“Araneida” (first published in Cemetery Dance) © 2010 Harry Shannon

“Suffer the Children” (first published in novella version in the anthology Brimstone Turnpike) © 2010 Harry Shannon

“A Host of Shadows” (first published in the anthology Dark Delicacies 2: Fear) © 2010 Harry Shannon

Table of Contents

Introduction by Rick Hautala

Blood and Burning Straw

The Easy Way

A Handful of Dust

Lucky

And the Worm Shall Feed

Jailbreak

All the Dead Lie Down

Thus Was His Death

Violent Delights

Mobius Dick (with M. Stephen Lukac)

The Fever Called Living (with dgk goldberg)

Another Hell

The Name of the Wicked

Night Nurse

Tokens

Darkness Comprehended (with Gord Rollo)

In Darkness, Screaming (with Jack Fisher)

The Need for Illusion

Concrete Gods (with Kealan Patrick Burke)

Blacktop

Some are Born to Endless Night

The Place of Excrement

Araneida

Suffer the Children

A Host of Shadows

A Few Notes

About the Author

Excerpt from PAIN a novella by Harry Shannon

Dark Regions Press Ad

For my daughter Paige and my Godson Alex. I’m looking forward to reading their stories someday.

“The individual has a host of shadows, all of whom resemble him and for the moment have an equal claim to authenticity.”

—Soren Kierkegaard

Two Kinds of Darkness

By Rick Hautala

While reading Harry Shannon’s collection, I realized something. Maybe it was something I knew all along, but I needed to be reminded, and it hit me hard and fast as I read these stories.

There are two distinct kinds of darkness we “horror writers” write about.

The first kind of darkness is the kind I (and a lot of other authors) explore. We have vivid imaginations to one degree or another, probably since childhood, that tend to focus on things on the dark, “spooky” side, and we “explore” this darkness with a sense of childlike wonder and shivery fun from the safety of our writing desks and reading chairs.

It’s easy, and it’s relatively safe…I say “relatively” because if paranoia or some other psychological aberration gets tossed into the mix, then all bets are off.

But there’s another kind of darkness—and it’s the one you’ll find here—which is the kind of darkness that can only be written about by someone who, for want of a better phrase, has been “in the shit”…someone who has lived in and struggled through and survived the darkness and all its attendant demons.

This second kind of darkness is much more dangerous because the person writing it hasn’t just “imagined” it or “played with the ideas,” like so many of us writing and reading in the “horror field.” This second kind of darkness comes from a life experience of walking on—and maybe even, at least for a while, living on—the dark side of life.

I won’t presume to guess what Harry Shannon’s demons are. He’s the psychological counselor, not me. I have no idea what he has seen and done and gone through in his life to gain the insights so obvious in these stories; but each and every story in this collection is a message, a report back from the front, if you will, to the rest of us who are safely cushioned in our cocoons of security and are willing to experience the second kind of darkness only from relative safety.

Every story you will encounter in this collection—and I use the word “encounter” rather than “read” because you will do more than simply “read” these stories; they will come at you like the flash of chain lightning or the speed of an oncoming freight train—will take you to places you don’t encounter often in life…and survive. From the darkest alleys of LA to the eerie emptiness of the Nevada desert, you will meet people who have—for one reason or another—experienced the darkness inside themselves or around them…people who are trying mightily to work through it and survive.

They don’t always win, but, hey, that’s life, isn’t it?

Jung talked about how we must “eat our shadow” before it eats us, and that’s exactly what these stories demonstrate. You will meet characters who are fighting to be good even as they are feeling weak and driven by the darkness that threatens to consume them. In trying to “own” or “work through” their dark side, they are in peril of having that dark side—the second kind of darkness…their own shadow—overwhelm and consume them once and for all.

And isn’t that what life really is, too?

Come on.

Admit it.

We all (or at least most of us—I do believe there are genuinely evil people in this world) struggle to live good lives and keep the shadows at bay. And from the fragile bubble of our homes and our religion and our thin veneer of “sanity,” we all know the shadows are waiting for us even as we pretend they’re not there.

It isn’t often you encounter a writer who doesn’t just “imagine” the dark things. I know Harry Shannon has seen them; he’s maybe even lived them; and he hopes he’s conquered them but knows they’re always lurking…waiting for him to succumb in a moment of weakness.

He’s come back with the scars…and the stories.

So don’t for one second think this is a “safe” book.

It isn’t.

You will get glimpses here into the darkest corners of humanity…glimpses that aren’t in any way comforting, much less “safe.”

And here’s the best part:

Harry Shannon’s stories do the two things I believe all writing must do to be successful. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The best fiction has to be both surprising and inevitable. If it’s too surprising, the reader has no idea what the hell is going on. If it’s too inevitable, then the reader is dissatisfied because they “saw it coming.”

Well, Harry Shannon’s stories are certainly both surprising and inevitable. They entertain and satisfy, and in some small way they may even make you grow as a person because of what they show you about the second type of darkness in the world, inside people…and inside yourself.

This book is filled with wonderful, dark surprises. I would conclude with the salutation: “Enjoy,” but you will do more than “enjoy” this collection. You’ll see the darkest side of things that not many people have seen…and lived to tell the tale.

Thank God, Harry Shannon has done both.

—Rick Hautala

Westbrook, Maine

January 8, 2010

Blood and Burning Straw

It’s always the same: The low, thumping twirl of the rotor blades spinning overhead; the thin squeak of metal strained at the rivets; the snickety-click of men obeying the order to “lock and load.” My sphincter puckers so tight you could carve washers off it. My mouth goes dry and my drooping cigarette tastes as foul as the newspaper at the bottom of a litter box.

The world tilts at a crazy angle. I study the reeking, greenish river of jungle as it flows by below the chopper and wait for the sickening lurch as the big Huey comes around for a landing. Marco Hernandez, a sweet-faced young kid from the barrios of Los Angeles who never grows old, hands me a fat joint and winks. I take a hit and pass it on to the next scared teenager, a freckled kid named Moloney, who drops it, steps on it and then eats the flattened roach. Suddenly we’re hovering a few feet off the ground, hearing Pop WHINE Crack! PopPopPoP and I know this is one hot fucking LZ.

“Let’s go, let’s go!”

And we’re all jumping out into the saw-sharp grass that is nearly bent horizontal by the prop wash. I trip on the edge of the goddamned ramp and fall out, ass over Adam’s apple, and I’m laying there looking up at my boot where it’s caught on the edge of something. The gunner looks down at me. He’s chewing tobacco and firing at the tree line, swearing like a motherfucker. He casually kicks my foot loose. He shrugs and smiles, like I’m looking pretty funny here and it’s all a joke. The chopper lifts up and away. I can hear it being hit and the sound is like fists full of BBs falling into a metal trash can.

I roll over and stare ahead. About every third man is already down and punched full of small, reddish holes. A couple of other boys are just dancing in mid-air, held aloft by bullets, already dead where they boogie. I look over to my left, and the whole tree line is sparkling with gunfire and writhing with dark shadows. I look to the right and a long, low rice paddy is crawling with little men in black pajamas. It’s an ambush.

I smell blood, and then for some strange reason the stink of burning straw. I hear something right behind me. I grunt and struggle to get up. I feel a bayonet enter my body like a burning spike, low and in the back near the kidneys. I try to scream for a Medic, but I can’t seem to make a sound…

It’s always the same dream.

I woke up knowing someone was on the other side of my wall. I rolled out of bed onto the floor and groped beneath the mattress for my .9mm Glock. I slammed in the magazine and tried to slow my breathing. For a long moment I thought it was just the damned nightmare, but then I heard the noise outside again. I slipped some tennis shoes onto my bare feet and crept down the hall, tugging my boxer shorts back where they belonged. I was vaguely aware of the thudding of a police chopper in the skies overhead; that sound must have prompted my nightmare. The fog started to clear. I remembered it was Saturday night and that my jungle war had been over for more than thirty years.

So who the hell was outside?

I never sleep well. Last night, I had done the better part of a fifth of Jack Daniel’s while watching some old, badly dubbed Italian vampire movie. I was still a little drunk. I clutched the Glock and eased into the kitchen, duck-walking towards the back door, staying below the window. I heard the sound again; the footsteps, someone walking through the brush near my fence. I flipped on the backyard floods, grabbed the back door and yanked it open. I aimed the 9mm.

“Right there, motherfucker!”

The figure immediately assumed the same position. I saw the business end of a .357 Magnum. I felt the hair on my neck raise up like a couple of dozen tiny little snakes. We were in a Mexican standoff: Two armed men, pumped full of adrenaline, drawing down on one another in the middle of the night. I was vaguely aware that the police chopper was moving away to the North.

“Vegas?”

No one had called me that in years. The voice sounded familiar, too. I shook my head and squinted into the brightness. I let out my breath and lowered my weapon. The other man did the same.

“That you, Cody?”

A chuckle, the sound of the hammer being gently replaced: “Yeah, it’s me. Just when did you become some fat, middle-aged guy, anyway?”

I snorted. “Happens to the best of us. Now, what the fuck are you doing in my backyard in the middle of the Goddamned night? I damned near shot you.”

Cody Burnside came closer. He was smiling, and he looked pretty good. In fact, the porch light washed all the wrinkles out and I had the eerie feeling he was exactly the same, just as he had been when he was a teenager in the ‘Nam. For some reason that scared me.

“Sorry, man, but I got to talk to you. Now.”

As he moved closer, I saw the receding hairline and slight paunch and some heavy bags under his reddened eyes. Eyes that were darting here and there, up and down, like maybe he’d been snorting some crystal meth or something. Except Cody wasn’t the worst druggie in our outfit. No, that distinction belonged to me. He was a pussy-hound for sure, but I had never known Cody Burnside to do more than the occasional beer.

I said: “Well, shit. You may as well come in.” We shook hands and hugged. “I’ve got a little bourbon left.”

He followed me into the small, filthy kitchen. I put my 9mm on the counter and locked the door behind us. I turned around. Cody stood near the icebox, in the corner by the telephone on the wall. He was trembling and shaking and he still held the 357. “Pull down those shades, man,” he said. “Pull ’em down. Just do it.”

And then he took the phone off the hook; laid it crossways on the top of the instrument. It got real quiet, and we both clearly heard the little beep-beep-beep start up. I kept my eyes on his gun. I stopped breathing. The recorded operator said: “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up” in a tinny, scratchy little voice. Cody acted like he wanted to smash the phone. He looked my way, and for the first time I wondered if he had come here to kill me.

“I said close the shades, man.”

I did as I was told. The one on the west side of the kitchen was over the sink. I looked out into the night, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. The east side, the back door itself, faced the fence. Nothing out there, either. The last one was right above my Glock, which was still resting on the counter. I moved my body in between Cody and that window and drew the shade. I palmed the weapon and took a deep breath, readying myself to spin and fire.

But then a chair scraped and Cody sat down. I heard his gun clatter down onto my kitchen table. He started to sob and talk to himself. I put the 9 mm Glock back on the counter, turned around. He was hunched over, head in cupped hands. I got the nearly empty bottle of Jack and a couple of dirty jelly glasses and set them on the table. I lowered myself into a chair, poured a couple of fingers for each of us. Then I heard it.

Cody Burnside was muttering in Vietnamese.

I never did get the hang of speaking Chink, mind you. I just remember a word or two here and there (mostly useless things like “blow job” or “how much”) and a smattering of the pigeon-French we used back then; “dinque” for crazy, or “beaucoup” for a lot.

“Here, man,” I said. “Have a drink.”

Cody took his hands away, and in the dim light of the overhead bulb he looked truly horrifying. His mouth hung open and thick spit was running out of one corner. His nose was running from crying, and his cheeks were smeared with snot. His eyes were little piggie eyes, small and red and bulging, like he’d been up for days. He looked like a fucking corpse. I shuddered and drank my whiskey.

Cody moved suddenly, grabbed the bottle and took a long pull. He put it back in the table and gagged. He closed his eyes, concentrated and managed to keep the booze down.

“I need to talk,” he said.

“You say so.” I shrugged. “We got all night. Is this about the war, man? That what you need to rap about?” I was good at listening. Lots of the guys have bad memories. Me, I just have a dream now and then.

Cody leaned forward, rocking the cheap table. “Yeah, but this ain’t some bullshit, VA hospital, group-therapy thing. Vegas, you got to listen to me all the way through without interrupting. I got to get this out. Deal?”

I nodded and poured myself another couple of fingers. The Jack went down easy, and I started to forget about my nightmare. I checked the clock to see how long it would be before the liquor store opened up again, but then remembered I had a second fifth in the cupboard. I relaxed. “Take your time, bro. I got nothing better to do.”

Cody took another pull from the bottle. He seemed to choose his words carefully, leaning heavily on each syllable. “Listen to me carefully, Vegas,” he said. “She’s back.”

I blinked and shook my head, honestly confused. “What the fuck do you mean, Cody? Who’s back?”

He squeezed his eyes shut and released a long, slow breath that reminded me of a death rattle. “She is. The girl.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. I wanted to buy some time, so I got up and got the second fifth and a carton of Camels out of the cupboard. I couldn’t find an ashtray, so I grabbed a coffee mug out of the sink and set it down in the middle of the table. I lit up, offered Cody one. He joined me.

“Cody, look, a lot of guys got ugly memories, man. Even really bad dreams. Just now, when you came through the back gate, I was hitting a hot LZ. You remember that time down near…”

“Shut up,” Cody hissed. “I mean it. Just shut the fuck up and listen.”

I felt a surge of irritation but held it back. This man was troubled, in deep shit. He was all drugged up, if not totally flipped out, and needed my help. I leaned back in my chair. It complained, but it held. I waited, expression pleasant, and settled in to let him talk things out.

“You remember that little tunnel rat with the ponytail? Name of Clegg, I think? We were in the Ia Drang Valley, over near to that shit hole called Hump Hollow. It was summer, maybe ’69 or ’70 I can’t remember now. Comin’ up on nightfall, and we were heading home. The kid walking point got nicked by a sniper hiding out in some pissant ville, so we all stormed the village while the civilians beat feet. You remember?”

I shook my head. I didn’t. “I was fucking high all the time, man.”

“Yeah,” Cody said. “You were smoking joints with Horse in ’em or something. It’s amazing you’re still alive.” He eyed the bottle. “I heard you were sober now.”

“Yeah. I was.”

Cody nodded in complete understanding, then continued, “Anyway, once we got into the ville we tied up a couple of civilians. It was dark. The Loot had us fire up a hooch to give us somethin’ to see by, and we went around looking for guns. Just like usual. Coop found a tunnel underneath some sacks of rice, hollered “fire in the hole” and dropped a grenade. Then the Loot ordered Clegg to go check out the tunnel.”

Bits and pieces were coming back to me now. I remembered something about the burning hut, and the wide-eyed fear in little Clegg’s eyes as he stuck the flashlight in his mouth, armed his .45 and dropped into that dark, dangerous hole in the ground. “Yeah,” I said. “I think I remember him going down.”

Cody sighed. “That boy, Clegg, he was gone a long time, man. The Loot knew something was wrong. We all started looking for the other end of the tunnel, just outside the ville, to stop any VC from getting away. Dumb shit split us up, Vegas. Shoulda never done that, especially after dark. I’m the one found Clegg’s body. Somebody had knifed him, cut him up bad.

“And it’s funny, but the second guy to vanish was the same one who had been walking point and got hit by the sniper. One minute he was standing there smoking and rubbing his neck wound, where he had a bit of blood, and then when I turned around again he was just…gone.”

I still couldn’t place things. “Where was I all this time, Cody?”

He shrugged. “You were ripped, man. I think you were just leaning against this pole the dinks had in the middle of that ville, half the fuck out of it, humming some Supremes tune. Loot had you guarding the one slope family that we managed to capture, some old farts and a young girl. You weren’t in any condition to help out beyond that.”

“Sounds like me.”

“When the third guy disappeared we all fucking freaked. Can’t recall now, but I think it might have been that black cat Quade. Dumb bastard goes off to take a leak and never comes back. The Loot, he takes his side arm and he puts it up to the male slope’s head. The old man doesn’t seem to give a shit. Loot asks where his men are. The old fuck doesn’t blink… So Loot shoots him.”

“You’re shitting me. I don’t remember this at all.”

“Oh, yeah. Brains splatter right up on the front of the old woman’s pajamas. She starts shrieking and kicking, so the Loot, he shoots her too…

And that leaves just the pretty young girl.”

My stomach flipped over. One memory came flooding back: The reed-thin, beautiful Vietnamese teenager was unusually tall. She had almost movie-star looks; a beautiful nose and gorgeous, almost Western brown eyes. When the old people were dead, she didn’t weep or wail. In fact, she eyed Lieutenant Porter with something like scorn. She was strong, willful, unafraid.

I suddenly needed another drink. I poured for the both of us, and Cody paused to light another cigarette. His cheeks reddened with shame as his eyes looked through the filthy kitchen wall and into the distant past.

“Loot radioed for reinforcements. Captain said no. He called for a dust off for the wounded, even though he didn’t know where the fuck they were, just to get somebody else in there. Sucker said no. Told us to stay right where we were, not to go back out into the dark. Told us to wait for morning. Too much going on over at Hump Hollow, he said. Shit, we could hear the small-arms fire from where we were. We knew Baker Company was in the shit.

“But we were all alone, and there was just a handful of us left. A bunch of scared fucking kids playing soldier. We got ourselves in a tight circle, you remember? With the girl in the middle?”

And now I did remember. In fact, it all came flooding back: Passing around a joint that was laced with heroin and God knows what else. Trying to be tough guys. Guys making cracks about the chickenshit dinks out there hiding in the night, and the slope cunt we had there with us, getting themselves all worked up. I closed my itchy eyes and swallowed again. I took another long pull on the bottle.

“Yeah. I remember some of it now.”

“We heard somebody in pain out there,” Cody said. His voice had gone low and soft and had a ragged edge to it. “Couldn’t even tell for sure if was one of our own, but it sounded like he could have been speaking English. That really got on my nerves, man. You must have felt it too, right? Somebody dying right under your nose, out there alone in the dark, and you can’t do nothing about it.”

“It was the Loot went first,” I said. “With the girl, I mean.”

Cody shook his head. “Loot tried to stop it, at least in the beginning.” He sighed. “It was me, actually. I was half out of my mind with fear, man. I had a boner the size of Florida in my pants. I slapped her and tore her bottoms off and rolled her over on her belly. Then I spit on my fingers and fucked her doggy style. I didn’t care who was watching, didn’t care if somebody shot me.”

Clenching buttocks by firelight, the pretty girl screaming, all the men grunting. I closed my eyes and willed the images away, but they stayed. I felt a wave of sadness wash over me. Oh, shit. What had Cody done?

“You okay?” Cody asked. He drank, eyes never leaving my face.

I nodded. “I’m okay,” I said. “You finish what you got to say.” Because I finally understood what was going on, now. I got it that Cody had carried this awful burden for more than thirty years, and it would kill him if he didn’t get it out, get it said, have it listened to. He’d come here for that. Confession was good for the soul. Hell, every therapist and priest in the world knew that.

Sooner or later, so did every vet.

Cody went on, his words stumbling over one another as if in a hurry to finish: “One by one, we had her, man. Jackson from behind, Kelly in front, two at a time. On and on. Even the Loot got into it after a while. Because we were tired and scared and pissed and horny and young and stupid. Watching somebody else with her would get another guy riled up again. I remember she finally stopped whining, stopped making any sound at all. She just laid there, tied up and bleeding, mumbling that phrase. Sometimes in Vietnamese and sometimes in English. Over and over. Always the same thing.”

I reached for a smoke. My hand was trembling. “Let me die,” I said.

“What?”

My voice broke. “She kept saying ‘let me die.’”

Cody nodded, and now he was crying too. “And round about when the sun was about to come up, when we were finally getting sober and knew we were going to get out of that fucking place alive, the Loot decides he wants one last blow job. He forces the girl up on her knees and takes out his dick. He’s really pissed, because at first he can’t get it up, so he chokes the chicken and finally he’s hard enough. She’s saying ‘let me die’ over and over, and we’re all starting to feel pretty bad about what we done, you know? But the Loot, he forces his cock in her mouth. He’s moving his ass around for a minute or two when he shrieks like a kid on a roller coaster.

“The girl bit down on his dick. Hard.

“The Loot tries to pull away, but now she’s chewing and grinding those teeth and he’s slapping at her head and screaming. Me, I’m just frozen there, I can’t even move. I look at you, Vegas, and you’re kind of nodding, but you’re awake, and you got this look. Like you stepped in dog shit or something.

“Huddleston, he tries to pull her off the Loot, but she seems out to bite his cock off. So quick as lightning, he takes his trench knife and he cuts her throat from fucking ear to ear.”

I remembered more, then. How I’d helped them move her ruined body. How we had stuffed all three corpses into some other hooch and set that one afire: Black smoke rising. The very air reeked from the stench of blood and burning straw.

Something broke open deep inside. I don’t know what strange compartment of my mind had held this sickening incident; how I had managed to keep it from myself for so long, but now that it was back I was heartbroken and disgusted with myself. I felt the catharsis too, a cleansing of guilt and shame and remorse that seemed to go along with genuine tears. And so the two of us sobbed and drank and sobbed and talked until the sun came up. It was a good thing.

Cody admitted he’d been thinking of shooting himself. He promised he wouldn’t do anything without calling me first.

He gave me his address and phone number and sketched a map, and I gave him the information on where I was working part-time and who my shrink was over at the VA. I felt proud to have helped him out.

“I got to sleep, Cody,” I finally slurred. “I just got to. You be okay now?”

Cody was hammered, too. He nodded. “Daylight is okay,” he said. “She can’t haunt my ass in the daytime.”

I walked him to the door, struggling for something profound to say. “We were kids,” I finally whispered. “Shit-terrified little boys with guns. It wasn’t us, it was the war.”

“Wherever she is, you think she knows that?”

I lied. “I’m sure she does.”

Cody stumbled down onto the grass, hit his knees. He got to his feet, weaving, and called back over his shoulder. “Then how come she keeps calling me, man? How come?”

I cleared my throat and coughed up smoker’s phlegm. “Say what?”

Cody was leaning on his car at this point, fumbling for his keys. He looked up, bewildered. “I told you, man. She’s back.”

“What the fuck you mean she’s back?”

He opened the car door, emitted a long belch. “She keeps on calling me, Vegas. Late at night, usually. First, I always smell that rank coppery smell, you know? And then something that stinks, kind of like a hooch on fire. The phone rings. But when I pick up the receiver, I just hear this whispering moan, like it comes from a lot further away than the ‘Nam. She always says ‘let me die’ and then hangs up.”

I shook my head. “Cody, it’s just your guilt. I’m no shrink, but believe me there is a rational explanation. Those are all just auditory and visual hallucinations, man. You’re feeling guilty and ashamed about what you did, and you needed to talk to somebody about it, that’s all. It’ll go away eventually.”

Sunrise was a red, brown and yellow smear on the horizon. “The Loot is dead, Vegas,” Cody said. “He got robbed outside a bar in Atlanta. Somebody cut his guts up and he died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Even though I didn’t much like the man.”

Cody shrugged. “Who did? Thing of it is, so is Huddleston. He said goodbye to his wife and went for a walk one night and then just up and vanished. They never found the body.”

A chill tickled my spine. “You’re not saying…”

Cody tried to light a smoke, but he was cross-eyed from the alcohol. It took him a moment to put flame to cigarette. Somehow I already knew what he was about to say. I waited for it anyway, hoping I was wrong.

“They’re all gone, Vegas,” Cody said. “Jackson, Kelly, everyone but us. Everyone from the squad except you and me is fucking history.”

I stared at him, my jaw loose and eyes all wide and stupid. “And you think it was the girl?”

“I know it was,” Cody said. “I’ve been seeing her for quite a while now, Vegas.”

“Aw, Cody, look…”

“Sometimes she’s walking down the street like any other American girl. Some nights she’s standing in my backyard just as naked as the day she was born. She’s all peeking in my windows, smiling with those little buck teeth.” Cody laughed bitterly. “But then, lately? She’s been calling me up at night, man. Just to whisper ‘let me die,’ first in slope and then in English. That’s how I know I’m next.”

I took an involuntary step backwards, turned and bent over. I vomited into the bushes by my porch. By the time I got hold of myself again, Cody had driven away. I leaned on the doorway and went back into the house. I locked my front door, tripped on the coffee table and passed out on the couch.

I slept most of the day. When I came out of it, I felt like a coroner was using his bone saw to take off the top of my skull. I downed some aspirins and coffee, took a long, cold shower and then called a shrink I know at the VA Hospital, Dr. Bellefontaine. I told him about Cody. Bellefontaine said about what I expected him to say, that Cody had bad PTSD and might need an anti-psychotic medication like Haldol if he’d been doing speed and staying up for days at a time. Bellefontaine asked if I’d try to get Cody to come in for an intake session. I said sure, but the truth is now I was feeling like I’d need to come along, for my own reasons.

By then it was early evening. I had another shot of Jack, just a hair of the dog that bit me, and went out into the night. I drove over to the San Fernando Valley and got off the freeway at Sepulveda Boulevard. I went north. The neighborhood was pretty bad and it steadily got worse. I pulled over from time to time to try to make sense of the scrawled map and printed address. Took me a couple of hours, overall, but I found the little duplex.

There was a crowd around the back unit. My skin twitched and I suddenly became aware of the low, thumping twirl of rotor blades overhead; another police chopper. In fact, the cops were everywhere. Their yellow crime-scene tape surrounded the rental unit.

And something bloody was being loaded into the back of an ambulance.

Shit

, Cody, why the hell didn’t you call me first, like you promised?

My friend’s guilt had taken him out anyway, despite my best efforts to help out. I got out of my car and stood there, in the dark, just outside the ring of lights and people. I didn’t want to go any closer. A cold, cutting wind roared up the street and moved some leaves with a sound like bacon frying in a pan. I didn’t feel much, just kind of empty inside. I guess I was all cried out.

“Poor bastard,” somebody said.

I jumped and spun around. It was a balding old man with missing teeth. He was in a robe and using a battered walker. I forced a laugh. “You scared the shit out of me, you old fart. What did you say?”

The old man chuckled. “I said the poor bastard.”

I edged closer, trying to act casual. “Do you know what happened?”

“Guy snapped,” he said. “I used to be on the job, see? I did twenty-five in LAPD Homicide. So when I saw some rookie leaning on a lamp post about to puke, I asked him what happened. Seems my crazy neighbor actually cut off his own Johnson and balls and then stuck a gun in his mouth to finish the job. Kid said it was a bloody scene in there, real bloody.”

I swallowed. “So it was suicide.”

The old cop smiled, revealing rotting gums. “Had to be. Everything locked up tight, the kid said. They found the guy with a razor and a gun and his sack of family jewels, right there in the armchair, pretty as you please. Fuck, that must have hurt.”

Jesus

, I thought. Poor Cody. What a horrible way to go. I decided to wait and page Dr. Bellefontaine in the morning to fill him in. I turned to leave.

“Probably over her,” the old man muttered.

My skin hopped and crawled and ice cubes formed in my sour stomach. “Over who?”

The old cop shrugged. “That gorgeous piece of Oriental pussy he had hanging around lately,” he said. “I saw her standing outside his window last night, naked as a baby bird. Great little ass. They must have been playing some kind of sex game or something, cause a second later she was gone. Hey! Where you going in such a hurry, son? What’s the matter?”

I don’t remember anything about the drive, or how I found my way back home. I don’t remember drinking the rest of the whiskey. Oh, but I do finally remember ‘Nam. Every fucking little piece of what I did back there. Now I clearly remember lying on top of that girl, trying to get off, looking down into her dark, cold eyes while she tried to bite my face.

Let me die…

So now I sit here with the shades drawn, spinning my .9mm Glock around in circles on the kitchen table. I’m waiting for the courage to do something besides shake. Do I shoot myself now, or try to last until morning? Should I page the shrink? Tell him about this waking nightmare, and what I can sense is just around the corner?

And then, quite suddenly, my nostrils fill with the stench of blood and burning straw.

And the telephone rings.

The Easy Way

A black-and-white slowly turned the corner up ahead, oversized tires hissing in the rain. The balding cop in the passenger seat opened the window to dump steaming hot coffee onto the asphalt. Tom Garrett flinched, acutely aware of the loaded Smith & Wesson .38 that was hidden in the pocket of his yellow raincoat. The cop looked up with tired, roadmap eyes as if sensing the reaction, and Garrett hunched his shoulders. He trotted towards a nearby liquor store with his head down and hands out of sight. He paused under the striped metal awning just as another wave of hail attacked like a horde of drunken Irish dancers.

A burst of static, two garbled voices. The siren howled anguish and the busy cops sped away. Garrett turned his back to the departing squad car and entered the nearly empty store, trembling right hand now caressing the gun. A motion detector pinged, the door closed behind him. Garrett could hear the faint sound of a classic rock station playing an early Eagles tune; the lyrics tugged at his ear, but he couldn’t place them.

Garrett took two steps forward, tennis shoes sucking the linoleum. He imagined how he’d look to someone else; a big, silver-haired man pushing sixty but still formidable if you knew what to look for. Old, I’ve gotten old…

The bored young guy behind the counter had a nose ring, some crude jailhouse tattoos and buzz-cut black hair. He picked imaginary lint from his tight black T-shirt before looking up and caught Garrett imagining him dead.

He saw Garrett’s surly face and one hand slid beneath the counter, probably to clutch his own weapon.

“Good evening.”

“Yo.” Warm breath born of frost, the ticking of a wall clock. The kid looked nervous, forehead abruptly shining with sweat. “You gonna buy something, ese? ‘Cause we ain’t running no homeless shelter.”

For one long moment, Garrett tried to do it, meant to do it; ordered himself to pull the .38 and punch this guy’s ticket, start a close-up, down and dirty fire fight. He fantasized about the mutually assured destruction and the way he and the kid would be photographed, sprawled out like fallen heroes in a western with huge, red stains splattered on their torn clothing. One move and it would be done.

Hell,

he thought with a mental sigh, that would be the easy way out. He loosened his fingers. It hurt.

“You hear me, pops?”

Garrett returned with one elastic, almost audible snap. “You got any beef jerky?”

“Right up here.” The kid still had his right hand below the counter. His deep eyes were a bit too red and the pupils were dilated from THC. Garrett opened his slick raincoat as he walked. Now his tennis shoes made a high pitch squeak on the damp linoleum floor. He stood at the counter and looked down on the kid and his wares. Several kinds of plain and spiced jerky were displayed on a wheel.

Ah, Christ…

A wave of blackness and grinding self-loathing made Garrett feel like picking on somebody. This cherry would do. He allowed his eyes to bore in and manufactured a bitter smile that stretched his weathered face in odd directions.

“Which one’s the best?”

Shoulders rolling: “I don’t know.”

“Pick one. Eat it.”

The clerk blanched and he moved back a couple of inches. “No way, dude. I never touch the stuff.”

“Relax,” Garrett offered. That cadaverous grin was still in place. “Anyone ever tell you that you need to work on your manners?”

Darting eyes. “Say what?”

“You heard me. You’re being rude to a paying customer.”

“Uh, sorry. So, you want jerky or not?”

“Not.”

“What’s up, then?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Garrett kept up the thousand yard stare until the spooked kid made a small, whining sound in the back of his throat. Said: “You know something? Forget the food.”

“What you want then?”

“Time.”

“Say what?”

“Never mind. Give me a pack of unfiltered smokes, whatever’s cheapest.”

The clerk found some generic cigarettes, slid them over and rang up the sale. The weird, plastic grin never left Garrett’s face. Money changed hands and so did a cheap pack of matches from a local strip bar, HOT GIRLS, LIVE ON STAGE. Silence fell hard, except for the distant, rattling gunfire of the rainstorm and the low moan of a grief-stricken wind.

“That’s it?”

Garrett blinked. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Okay, then.” The kid nodded, Adam’s apple bobbing like a cork.

“Thanks,” Garrett said. His weary voice had a faint scratch in it, like bony fingers on the velvet roof of a coffin. “Hey, you have a nice night.” He backed away, without turning his back. When he left the store he heard the kid sigh for the joy of breathing.

Time took a jump-cut. The next thing Garrett knew he was standing outside under the awning trying to mate flame to cigarette with hands that wouldn’t stop twitching. He managed to light up, started walking and took a deep, bitter drag. Since Garrett hadn’t smoked in years, the nicotine rush slapped him sideways. He leaned against the brick wall, his heart thudding like a primitive drum.

“Damn.”

The cigarette slipped from his fingers and showered blue smoke and orange sparks before the rain put it out. The world spun like a brightly-lit Ferris wheel. For a few seconds the idea of just letting go, slipping away into dark nothingness, felt welcome. Garrett knew what he was doing, did it anyway, even though it always brought back feelings from the war.

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine being dead and gone and his pulse quickened.

Garrett remembered reading somewhere that death was “the impossibility of further possibility.” That idea makes the human ego, which is an observer, go ‘tilt.’ It cannot see itself not being there, and thus the mind starts to gibber and shrivel. And yet we all have to die even if we can’t make peace with the idea. The world has hundreds of religions and philosophies, all claiming to have an answer that lies beyond answers in the undiscovered country. To be or not to be.

Garrett threw the pack of cigarettes into a trash can. The rancid odor beneath the lid abruptly made him think of his deceased father. He stuck his hands into his pockets and kept walking.

Tom Garrett was a country boy, born outside of Ely, Nevada. The land was hard then, those who lived there harder still. His mother died young and the old man, ‘Ace’ to his pals, found occasional work as a hired hand on different spreads, bailing hay and branding cattle. World War Two and the Pacific had gouged the warmth from his soul and left his dark eyes wary and haunted. He’d drink bathtub gin and mumble stories about humans flattened by tanks or fried crispy by flame throwers and endless rivers of dark, dried blood. Garrett and his brother rapidly learned not to hang around when the fists started flying, which was damned near every weekend.

Old Ace would sober up from time to time and drag the boys to the white clapboard church come Sunday morning. Kneeling beside him, they’d see swarthy, sweaty skin that stank of smoke and alcohol; powerful forearms and trembling hands that clutched a frayed black family Bible. Ace would close his eyes, struggling to believe, his quavering baritone tentatively joining in on the hymns he knew.

Old Ace died of liver disease the summer Garrett was drafted and left for Nam.

A car honked and Tom Garrett jumped sideways and back, into a puddle. A taxi almost clipped him and the driver gave him the finger. “Watch out, moron!”

Garrett shook his head and grunted. He felt grateful for the interruption because he didn’t want to think about Nam. His time there had been violent and chaotic, though blessedly brief. He’d been shot twice in the first four months; then halfway through his tour a mortar barrage that wiped out most of his platoon had given him his third wound and a ticket home.

He’d arrived in country as an invulnerable, immortal young soldier but arrived back in the world a bitter drug addict who was preoccupied with death and dying.

And now here he was, about to kill again.

A trident of blistered, white lightning pierced the western skyline and the deserted office buildings at the end of the street morphed into towering gargoyles. The air boiled with electricity, reeked of ozone. Garrett leaned his shoulders against the downpour and turned his collar up. His jeans and shoes were uncomfortable, soaked. His clothes made odd whooshing sounds as he picked up the pace. Low thunder rumbled hungrily in the mountains, rolled forward and prowled through the concrete canyons.

I could shoot myself too…

Garrett’s fingers clutched the cold metal of the weapon and immediately recoiled again. Maybe like the cops do it, he thought, grimly. Just eat the gun.

“Want to party?”

The voice startled Garrett and he stepped back. His left shoe landed in a puddle of rainwater where the gutter was clogged with autumn leaves. He lost his balance and moved away, left hand tunneling back into the pocket of his raincoat. Above him, some gang kid had shot out the streetlight, and the corner was a smear of shadow except for the pale rainbows of neon reflected from the slick city streets.

“I didn’t mean to scare you, pops.” The voice was female.

Garrett squinted. The skinny girl was maybe a yard deep into the alley. She took his silence for interest and glided forward through the mist like some eerie creature born without feet. “My name is Willow, and I can make you happy for fifty bucks.”

“That true?”

“For sure.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

The scantily clad Goth girl was clearly a junkie; anorexic-thin with small, circular bruises on her pale arms. She took in his size and the black tension in his face and hesitated, wary eyes darting up and down the residential street. Her exposed body was alive with crawling gooseflesh, trembling from the cold. Garrett could tell her nerves were shot.

“Okay, forty?”

Willow stayed put. Her harsh voice went up a notch on the second word and made it a pithy, desperate question.

“You’d sell yourself that cheap?”

“Huh?”

Garrett opened the raincoat and took out his wallet. Myriad expressions running from agony to relief to mistrust flowed over the girl’s face like melting wax. He counted out a twenty and two tens then took out a worn business card. Willow shook feverishly. She licked her lips and edged further into the light, but her eyes kept flicking back and forth between Garrett and her hiding place.

“I got a pimp,” she lied. “He’s right behind me.”

“Sure you do.” Garrett didn’t budge as the girl called Willow forced her painted mouth into a reasonable imitation of a leer.

“How do you want me to do you?”

“I don’t.” Garrett held out the cash. “Just take this.”

“Huh?”

“It’s on one condition, though. You’ve got to promise me something.”

Those skittish eyes widened. “What?”

“This business card is for a referral agency, Willow. Call that number. Get in a program, get clean. Do it now, while you’re young.”

She tried a sneer. “You some kind of ‘Captain Save a Whore’?”

“Nothing like that.”

“Forget it.” Her eyes moistened. “It’s too late for me.”

“No,” Garrett said, wearily. “I promise you it’s not. Just call that number.”

She was openly crying now. Her nose was running and she wiped it on her arm. “Maybe I’ll do that, okay? Maybe. I’ll think about it.”

He stepped closer and this time she didn’t flinch. Garrett pressed the bills and the card into her hand. “Do more than think about it. Think of me as your last chance. Life’s a bitch sometimes, but don’t take the easy way out.”

“Easy.” She repeated the word dully, without emphasis.

“Oh, and there’s one more thing.”

The girl cocked her head like a parrot and looked up expectantly, but Garrett wasn’t there. He was already moving away, towards the main drag. His deep voice echoed a bit.

“Tell them Hack sent you.”

More rain, less time. Tom Garrett hurried his pace. Sepulveda Boulevard had decayed more rapidly than most other areas of the San Fernando Valley. Anywhere much above Victory it was like a giant Monopoly board packed with sleazy liquor stores, vacant lots, crack houses and motels that promised twenty four-hour cable porn and mirrored ceilings. Garrett still felt at home on these blighted streets, still had some larceny in his soul. In fact, that’s why he’d chosen to leave his car several blocks away with mud smeared over the license plate.

Garrett looked up and down the street for cops. Finding it clear, he walked briskly through the rainy night. The gun still seemed heavy and awkward, like a tiny brick of well-oiled metal. He wondered again if he’d be able to go through with it. He had less than ten long blocks to decide.

I can do this…

Garrett stopped walking and stepped into an alley, out of the rain. Some overflowing boxes of trash were stacked haphazardly on a raised, slatted platform. Garrett stepped up onto the dry wood and leaned against the brick wall. He slid down into a sitting position, the yellow raincoat squealing in protest, wrapped his arms around his knees and closed his eyes again. The thoughts wouldn’t slow down or rearrange themselves to be any less disturbing, no matter how hard he tried to control them; they just played out like some movie in his woozy head.

Garrett had been in Tarzana for his second rehab, still just a tall bully who thought Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was a blank check to use drugs. The meetings were mandatory but he’d attended them sullenly, legs sprawled out to lay claim to alpha space, muscular arms crossed over his chest to keep arrogance intact. He’d already gotten in trouble for fighting and putting the moves on an actress who was in for her third DUI. He imagined himself there, and a smile curled his lips. What a damned fool…

A new guy led the meeting that night, a man nearly Garrett’s size with a shaved head and laser blue eyes. Hack looked maybe fifty, but nobody smart would have screwed with him anyway. He wore a blue work shirt with a cowboy string tie, a belt with a gold horse buckle and a pair of snakeskin boots. He talked about his time as a biker and said he’d done seven to ten upstate, but didn’t say why. He’d gone around the circle, made everybody speak up. When those eyes fixed on him, he’d felt his guts dive to the parking garage in a fast elevator. After the meeting, Hack had cornered him by the ashtray outside on the patio.

“You got a sponsor.”

“No,” Garrett mumbled. “I don’t.”

“That wasn’t a question,” Hack said. “I said you got a sponsor. Me. And I have a news flash. Your sponsor tells you what to do.”

“Okay.”

“Now, the first thing you’re going to do is take that chip of your shoulder before I knock the taste right out of your mouth.”

Garrett, sitting in the cold alley, felt his lips twitch into a smile. The memory of that moment still gave him the oddest mixture of amusement, respect and fear he’d ever experienced. He’d been sober ever since, and that was a lot of years. Most of that time had been at Hack’s side, first as a student, then as a good friend.

A passing car sent a tidal wave of filthy water into the alley. It rose up and over the wooden platform and splashed against his legs. Garrett swore under his breath and struggled back to his feet. He raised his illuminated watch.

No more time.

Garrett shook himself like a wet hound, stepped down and stumbled back out onto the empty sidewalk. A break in the rain let him complete the last, long block in relative comfort.

He had rehearsed this part several times, so his heart settled down and routine took over. He turned right and came to a muddy stretch of grass adjoining the nearly empty parking lot. Garrett stayed in the darkness, away from the lights; his eyes roamed the vehicles and the brightly lit lobby, searching for witnesses. Satisfied, he jogged across the grass, slid down the last row of cars and found the fire door. The pack of matches he’d left the night before was still there, propping the emergency exit open.

Tom Garrett slipped inside. He stood in the stairwell, took several deep breaths and then started up the metal stairs as silently as possible. His footfalls echoed in the gloom. An eerie calm overtook him, now that the moment was at hand. Three floors and time would run out. No more indecision. Death is coming…

Two floors, then one.

Garrett paused on the third floor to gather his thoughts and took another quick look at his glowing wristwatch. He was right on schedule. The overworked nurses would be completing their final rounds, now that visiting hours were officially over. The VA hospital was badly understaffed and many of the patients went unattended for long stretches, even after repeated attempts to summon help.

Garrett edged the door open and peered out into the dimly lit hallway. The green walls were spider-webbed with cracks, the paint faded and stained from cigarette smoke and the yellow linoleum was peeling at the edges. Garrett stepped out into the hall and gently closed the door. He licked his lips and looked both ways before striding forward. Soon he was proceeding briskly toward the next ward. The elevator pinged and Garrett slid into the shadows.

The doors opened and an octogenarian strapped to two different IV rigs came shuffling out into the hall, looking down at his paper shoes. His scalp was peeling and covered with sores. A chubby Hispanic orderly waited impatiently until certain the old man was headed the right direction, then punched another floor and left. Garrett let the patient pass before continuing on to Room 407.

Garrett paused outside the door, his mind racing, and nervously fondled the .38 in his pocket. I can do this…

The room stank of antiseptic and decay. Old Hack was sitting up in bed with his eyes shut. The big man, once so imposing, had been whittled down to bones and pale parchment skin. His jaws were clenched, grinding; knuckles white from enduring another bout of intense pain. Tom Garrett watched him drink some water and relax into the stained pillows. He fought off a sudden, almost overwhelming urge to turn his back, just run away. Then it was too late because Hack saw him and grinned toothlessly.

“Hi, kid.” Despite the agony, Hack’s eyes still burned brightly with the spirit of the vital man he’d been. His voice was brittle, frail but suffused with affection. “Damned good of you to come.”

“You know I had to.”

“Did anyone see you?”

Garrett shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Did you bring it?”

Lie to him. Just say no.

But Garrett couldn’t do that, take the easy way out. So he walked closer in his wet shoes and reached into the pocket of the raincoat with his gloved left hand.

“No fingerprints, no serial number,” Garrett said. Tom Garrett surprised himself by offering up the gun without hesitation and in one, smooth motion it was done. Hack took it without comment, wiped it on the bed sheet. He reached into a stack of thick books by his bedside and extracted one that was hollowed out and filled with some bills and a little spare change. He set the weapon inside and replaced the book.

“I’m obliged.”

The two men stared awkwardly at one another, their tired eyes reddening. Garrett broke contact to pick at his fingernails.

“Hell, I ain’t decided yet,” Hack said.

“I know.”

“I won’t do it unless things…unless it gets so bad I got nothing else left but the choice itself, you know?”

“I understand.”

“I appreciate you keeping your promise.”

“Sure.”

Hack contorted, moaned and a dark pink froth appeared on his lower lip. Clearly embarrassed, he wiped it away with a tissue. “Guess you got places to go, people to see.”

“Yeah. Maybe I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“You do that.”

The younger man backed away. He turned and looked down and to his left, both to find the doorknob and to hide his tears. “I’ll see you.”

“Not if I see you first.”

Garrett smiled in a minor key and went out into the hallway. The floor was as still and shadowed as before. He walked to the emergency exit, checked again and went out into the stairwell. As he trotted down the steps he surprised himself by emitting a barking sob. He gripped the railing and moved faster, though he could barely see. He paused at the foot of the steps to compose himself.

Outside, time expanded and briefly froze and cubed. The rain had stopped and the air was perfumed by renewal, the scent of things fresh and clean. The cosmogonic cycle was at work, and he was still alive. At once guilty and grateful, Garrett pictured the arriving multitude of brand-new children, tender plants and animals; all destined to come apart again in the harsh way of things. It seemed a miracle and a tragic paradox, both bitter and sweet, to be a human and alive.

When the metal door slammed behind him with a bang, he began to run.

A Handful of Dust

Pike had short brown hair speckled with grey. He wore blue Armani with a salmon tie. He rode down in the elevator alone, well after midnight, rolling a lightweight suitcase behind, crossed the loud, garishly furnished lobby and casino, bought a copy of the New York Times and carried it to a back table. He sat behind a potted plant and ate mozzarella with fresh tomatoes and a side of Canadian bacon. After two espressos and a cold bottle of mineral water from France, Pike called the valet to order up a brand-new rented mustang ragtop that had been charged to a fraudulent credit card. He tipped the sleepy carhop appropriately, without once meeting his eyes.

Pike drove away. He paused at the mouth of the driveway, in the neon glare of the massive, pyramid-shaped casino, and put some of his favorite music on the CD player; Hans Biber’s melancholy “Die Rosarie Sonaten.” He waited for some drunken tourists to pass, flipped on his headlights. He cruised down the strip to the freeway entrance and headed northeast.

Later, when the highway forked, Pike took the back road, a little-known ribbon of cracked asphalt that paralleled the main highway up to Elko and then Dry Wells. The desert night was chill and the indigo sky freckled with winking stars.

Pike knew his way around Nevada, but wasn’t terribly fond of the state. To him, the high desert was merely a cratered landscape littered with pale fists of bleached tumbleweed, devoid of charm and empty as the surface of the moon. Pike checked his platinum Rolex, activated the radar scanner and drove as fast as he dared. After four listens, he changed to Biber’s heartbreaking “Requiem,” but eventually even that familiar work began to grate on him. Pike tried to find a radio station, but he was already too far from civilization. He opted to avoid satellite systems for security reasons. He drove on in silence, mind empty and handsome face bland.

Before dawn, when the rising sun would smear red and orange chalk along the rocky peaks, Pike reached the city limits. To his left, in his headlights, stood a weather-beaten metal sign, chains squeaking in a light breeze, announcing “Historic” Dry Wells. Pike sniffed with disdain. In the dark, the battered wooden storefronts looked like some abandoned movie set. The cracked windows were streaked with dust, many were broken. This part of town seemed deserted.

Pike went to the right, past a closed gas station and liquor store, until he saw the small neon sign that read TAPS. He parked out of sight around the side, next to a dented white pickup truck, and got out for a stretch. A man in a black cowboy shirt sat in the cab, lighting what smelled like a decent cigar. He never looked up. Pike strolled to the front of the ramshackle building, past a bug zapper that was doing brisk business. He looked around carefully before entering through a squeaking pair of old wooden batwing doors.

Tap’s was furnished with card tables and folding chairs. A small, geriatric television set was mounted on the far wall. Despite the hour, it was tuned to a sports network and the sound was muted. Pike looked around, searching for surprise customers or hiding places. He found none, and as promised there seemed only one way in or out.

“Evening, Tap,” Pike ventured. He waved one hand in the air.

The bartender, a white-haired old-timer with long white hair in a pony-tail who’d been paid to stay open all night, wore a ripped, tie-dye wife-beater T-shirt and blue overalls. He was festooned with fading tattoos and sat clipping his toenails with grim resolve. His feet were filthy. He squinted at his handiwork before replying.

“Want a beer?”

“Do you have anything German?”

Tap squinted, shook his head. “Just the Coors. Want one or not?”

Pike nodded, enunciated carefully. “That would be nice.” He walked closer, annoyed that his new Gucci shoes were already coated with sawdust. The bar itself was made of long plywood sheeting nailed to a couple of sawhorses. Pike took the cold bottle of beer and backed away. He chose a table that would allow him to keep an eye on both the owner and the front door, took an unopened pack of cigarettes from his jacket and set it on the table. The desert night looked like a velvet drape. Insects droned.

Pike was on his second beer when yellow headlights splashed the dirty windows. Someone else was arriving. The engine sounded small, maybe Japanese. Pike glanced outside. The driver waited quite a while before stepping out into the graveled driveway, under the street lamp. He approached the door heavily, like a man on the way to the gallows. Pike reached around, under his shirt, to adjust the small .9 mm Firestar seated in the holster at the small of his back.

The batwing doors opened with a horror-film creak. From the voice on the phone, Pike half expected ‘Mr. Smith’ to be a jumpy little weasel. Pike was somewhat surprised to see a stocky, pleasant-looking, balding businessman perhaps fifty years old. Smith stepped into the room and did a pathetic job of acting casual. He smiled, asked for a can of soda. Tap was still occupied with his toenails. He looked up and offered a beer instead.

Moments later, Smith brought the unopened bottle to the table. Pike moved the pack of cigarettes to one side.

“Mind if I sit down?” Smith’s voice was higher than one would expect, and broke on the last syllable. “I’ve been driving all night.” That was definitely the voice Pike had heard on the phone. Smith swallowed nervously and positioned himself with his back to the room, another clear sign of an amateur. His eyes were pink spiderwebs. “Have you read anything by James Michener?”

“Only ‘The Source.’”

“You should really read ‘Hawaii,’ then.”

“I don’t get much time to read these days.”

With a look Pike pinned Smith to the chair, lowered his voice. “Now that we have that nonsense out of the way, why don’t you tell me why you dragged me up here to this God forsaken part of the country in the middle of the night?”

“Ah.” Smith swallowed again, Adam’s apple bobbing. “You chose the time and place, sir.”

“I know that,” Pike sighed. “I just don’t want to go through all this for nothing. Now, tell me who it is and why.”

“Why?” Smith seemed surprised. “I didn’t think you cared.”

“I don’t, except if I don’t know everything there may be some surprises that pop up along the way and put me in danger. You look like a businessman, I’m sure you can understand that.”

“Certainly,” Smith said. “Of course.” He glanced back at the indifferent, now dozing bartender. “Are you sure it’s safe to talk in here?”

“Don’t worry, Old Tap is nearly deaf. He’s also bought and paid for.”

“Are you satisfied you can trust me, sir?”

“Of course, Mr. Smith.” Pike leaned forward. “After all, Reggie himself vouched for you.” His elbows shifted the table and his empty beer bottle clanked against the ashtray. “So just briefly fill me in. The wife?”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s usually the wife.”

“No,” Smith said. He leaned closer. His eyes seemed glassy. He was perspiring heavily and his breath smelled like cinnamon breath mints. “It’s a business associate, actually. I’m trying to close the deal of a lifetime, and he’s in the way.”

“Do you have any special requirements?”

Smith cocked his head, bemused. “I don’t understand.”

“For example, does it matter to you if he suffers first?”

“No,” Smith blanched and shook his head rapidly. “No, it doesn’t matter at all.”

“Okay, good,” Pike said. “That keeps things simple.”

A long silence followed. The bug zapper on the porch snapped and crackled like distant thunder. Mr. Smith wiped his brow. “It’s really hot in here.” Pike sipped his beer without answering and Smith got the hint. “Okay, one question. How will you…do it?”

Pike shrugged. “That all depends. An accident is best. Maybe we cut his brake line before a trip, or arrange for a burglar to break in and shoot him. Sometimes I set up a fatal heart attack.”

“You can do that?”

“For the right amount of money, Mr. Smith, I can do anything.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Indulge me for a second,” Mr. Smith said, ignoring Pike’s response. He had abruptly stopped sweating, and his eyes were no longer shining. “How does somebody get into your line of work?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

“Perhaps, but I’d like an answer anyway.”

Pike decided to give him two more minutes. “If you know Reggie, then you know the Russians have moved into LA. I started running errands for them maybe ten years ago. I made myself useful and let them know I was a team player. A chance came along and I took it.”

“You eliminated someone they found troublesome.”

“Obviously.”

“Were you scared that first time?”

A burst of laughter, short and low as a lion’s cough. “I don’t scare very easy, Mr. Smith. If I did, I’d find myself another line of work.”

“I’ll accept that…but does it ever bother you?”

For some reason the question, routine and somewhat expected, made Pike feel unusually uncomfortable. “Not really, Mr. Smith. It’s just a job to me. I’m a professional.”

“You enjoy it, then.”

“I suppose you could say that.”

“Okay, then…” Smith lowered his voice even further. “I’ll return to the subject of fear. Do you ever take pleasure in making other people feel afraid, Mr. Pike?”

“I need to see the color of your money,” Pike said, briskly.

“I’m sorry, I have offended you.”

“Not really, but this has already taken too long.”

“You do. I knew you would.”

“Do what?

“Take pleasure in it.” Smith reached into his jacket, removed a thick packet wrapped in brown paper and twine. He held Pike’s eyes as he pried one end open, thumbed through the one hundred dollar bills. He set the money down on the table. “Half in advance, just the way Reggie said I should do it.”

Pike took the money without counting it and tucked it into his coat pocket. “Now give me the name and address, Mr. Smith, and we’re both out of here.”

“Fear is nothing more than adrenaline racing through the body.” Smith looked down and away, as if he’d just discovered something hiding on the sawdust floor. His voice went hollow. “And yet there is something about it that fascinates, don’t you agree? We have Halloween, Day of the Dead, horror films, books. All manner of murder mysteries and thrillers are always on the best-seller lists and doing well at the box office. For most of my childhood I avoided fear like the plague. Oh, I went on a roller coaster once. It was rather delicious, though I did wet myself.”

This guy’s demented,

Pike thought. He leaned back in his chair. “Mr. Smith, this is all too fascinating, but time is money.”

Smith seemed not to hear him. “My abusive stepfather introduced me to hunting when I was a teenager. He was a nasty, cruel person. Told my mother it would make a man of me. How cliché! Anyway, that frightened me too, at first, but eventually I got quite used to it.”

“Killing,” Pike said, “is something of an acquired taste. Not everyone enjoys it.”

Smith nodded and his mouth went thin. “I never did, to be honest. Oh, I came to quite like the hunt itself, but never the death.”

“Mr. Smith, I need that name.”

Smith looked up, and his eyes were suddenly wide with excitement. “What if I changed my mind, Mr. Pike? What if I said I really wanted that man to suffer? What could you do to him?”

Pike shrugged. “We could maybe cut him up first, smash his toes. Let him hurt a while and then torch his house while he’s still breathing. If the fire burns hot enough, no one would ever need to know how he died.”

“How would you prove it to me, what you did?”

“I can make a video if you’d like.” Pike yawned. “Or just tape the sound, if you don’t think you could sit through watching.”

“Isn’t that risky?”

“Once you’ve checked it out, I’ll destroy it so there’s no evidence.”

“Of course, of course. Is there anything else you could suggest?” Smith rubbed his palms together like a pervert at a peep show.

“To make it bad, really bad?”

“Yes…if I wanted to make it all very nasty.”

Pitt yawned. “We could burn his skin with drain cleaner. See, what you do is, you explain it all up front and then take him out bit by bit, even make him swallow some at the end.”

“Oh, God. That is truly horrific.”

“Yes.”

“And the target is always aware of what is going to come next. I’d guess that must engender the deepest fear of all.”

“It gets their attention.”

“Then that’s what I want.”

“Fine, Mr. Smith,” Pike said, briskly. He checked his watch. “There’s just one little problem. I have the deposit, but I still need the man’s name.”

Smith chuckled. He looked over his shoulder to make sure Tap was not paying attention. “Mr. Pike, I have a confession to make. I have brought you here under what might be considered false pretenses.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, I am still going to hire you, in a manner of speaking, but not in quite the way you’d imagined.”

Pike let his hand creep back toward the 9mm Firestar in his belt. “What exactly do you mean?”

“Well, the real reason I brought you here is because of my long obsession with fear.” Smith drank deeply from his beer, belched politely behind one hand. “As I said, it started when I was a child, and has continued to this very day. So when a friend of mine died under somewhat mysterious circumstances, and a professional hit was suspected, I decided to find out who’d done the job.”

Pike tensed, gripped his weapon. “You’re here because I did a friend of yours in?”

“Not exactly, Mr. Pike. Please relax. William wasn’t a friend, actually, although I was quite close to his wife, Jane. Very close, if you know what I mean. She was quite relieved to have him out of the way. In any event, it took me several weeks to retrace all the steps, but eventually they led me to our mutual acquaintance, Reggie.” Smith saw Pike’s eyes narrow. He held up his right hand, palm empty and asking for peace. “Please don’t be alarmed. Look, I must say that what you do for a living absolutely fascinates me.”

Pike showed him the gun. “You’re on real thin ice, here.”

“I know, I know.” Smith said weakly. “I just want to discuss something with you. You can keep the money.”

“You paid me thirty large just to talk? You must be a very rich man.”

“Oh, I am,” Smith said, “but I didn’t go to all that trouble just to talk. First, you must understand one fact. I have recently learned that I am terminally ill. It is a rare form of cancer, quite lethal. Oh, the pain is quite manageable with drugs, and I assure you that I have at least six months, so I’m certainly not asking for your pity.”

“What the hell are you asking for, then?”

“Well, I actually came to turn the tables, as it were. Now that I know who you are, and what you look like, my intention is to stalk you, Mr. Pike.”

Pike laughed. “What?”

“As already mentioned, I have hunted in my time, but never the most dangerous game of all, never man. I would like to experience that before I’m gone.”

“Okay, let me get this straight. You plan to hunt and kill me?”

“Just so.”

Pike sneered, shivered. “Oh, I’m so scared.”

“I know it sounds foolish at this point,” Smith said. “But I do so want you to feel those waves of intense dread and forbidding you have so frequently inflicted upon others, at least once in your life. It seems only fair.”

Pike set his gun sideways on the table, in plain view. He kept his finger on the trigger. “Like I said a few minutes ago, old Tap is pretty much deaf, and he’s nodding off over there. He’s also bought and paid for, so whatever happens next, he won’t be talking to the cops about it.”

Smith smiled. “You forget that I have finally come to quite enjoy the sensation of fear, Mr. Pike.”

“I hope for your sake that this is Reggie’s idea of a practical joke.”

“I’m sorry.” Smith pursed his lips. “Regretfully, our friend Reggie is dead. I shot him through the right eye with a .22 automatic. I have read in mystery novels that the shells rattle around better in the skull that way.”

“You’re nuts.”

“Perhaps I am.” Smith winked, lewdly. “Hey, don’t worry. I came here unarmed, just as I promised.”

Pike stared and then took out his cell phone with his free hand, hit autodial, waited. His stomach felt sour. After three rings Reggie answered. “Yeah?”

Pike felt relieved. “Reggie, it’s me, Pike.”

“I can’t talk right now,” Reggie said, briskly. “Call me later.” The line disconnected. Pike folded his cell phone and clipped it back on his belt. He considered the man before him. Meanwhile, Smith rubbed his temples like a man with a headache coming on. When he looked up, his expression was again timid and uncertain, like a man recovering from a hallucination. Pitt grimaced with frustration. Smith was clearly a full-on psychotic.

“Let’s take a walk.”

“Please, no.” Smith whimpered, shook his head. He looked pale. He kept his hands in plain sight. “I don’t want to go outside.”

“You’re really something,” Pike said, admiringly. “You’re probably a fruit loop, but I have to admit you’ve got guts.”

“Do you know Elliot?”

“Elliot who?”

“T.S. Thomas Stearns Eliot, Mr. Pike. Have you read him?”

“Some,” Pike said. He was now honestly baffled.

Mr. Smith closed his eyes and recited from memory. His tenor voice was clear and resonant and brought the poem alive. “You know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats and the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief. And the dry stone no sound of water. Only there is shadow under this red rock. Come in under the shadow of this red rock and I will show you something different from either… Your shadow at morning striding behind you, or your shadow at evening rising to meet you.” Smith opened his eyes. “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

Pike leaned down closer to the pack of smokes he’d placed on the table. “Willie, we’re on the way out.” He tucked the pack into his coat.

Smith blinked. He looked around the room as if bewildered. “Who were you talking to?”

Pike glanced at Tap, who had clearly fallen asleep. He aimed the gun at Smith’s head, but did not pull the trigger. He abruptly reached across the table, seized Smith by the thumb and painfully turned his wrist. The smaller man yelped and got to his feet, following Pike’s lead.

“Ouch, that hurts!”

“Keep it down, or I’ll do you right here and now.”

“Ow!”

Pike wrist-walked Smith to the door, the Firestar pointed down at the floor. He poked his head outside. There was no traffic on the highway, although he could see a pair of headlights in the distance, coming closer. He yanked Smith close and whispered in his ear. “You’ve stepped in it now, buddy.”

“Please,” Smith gasped. “It was a joke. I already said you can keep the money, just don’t hurt me, okay?” The reddened eyes had gone glassy again. He’s definitely on some kind of heavy medication.

“What were you thinking, pal?”

“I only wanted to see what a real hit man was like before I died, that’s all. I really am sick. It was just a bad joke. I made up all the rest of it on the spot, just to see what you’d do.”

“You’re a lying sack of…” Pike dragged him through the batwing doors and down the dusty wooden steps. The desert night was cool and crisp and huge stars speckled a deep, blue sky.

“No! I really wasn’t lying about being sick, just about the rest of it. I’ve been under psychiatric care, and they say I’m getting better.”

Pike released his wrist, kicked the seat of his pants. Smith was visibly trembling now. He began to sob. He stumbled around the side of Tap’s and closer to the pickup truck parked in the darkness. When he saw the broad-shouldered cowboy standing next to it holding a tire iron, he cried out again. “God, please don’t kill me!”

Pike kicked him again. “Did you think I’d be here alone? Willie’s worked with me for years. He’s got enough equipment in that truck to block any signal but our own, and enough firepower to take on the National Guard.”

“So this is the big man?” Willie uncrossed his massive arms. “He’s moving around a lot. You want I should kneecap him first?”

Pike briefly considered the idea, but shook his head. “Wait a second, Willie.” He walked back down the gravel driveway and peered into the night. The headlights up the road were almost upon them. Pike called out: “Lose the tire iron, we got company.”

Something clattered into a pile of trash at the back of the building. Willie puffed on his cigar again, the orange tip showering sparks. For a long moment, Smith’s pale and terrified face was visible, like a reflection of the full worm moon.

Pike saw the rack on the top of the Highway Patrol car and his stomach tightened. “Stand him up, Willie,” he said softly,” and pour some booze on him in case we need to knock him out.”

Pike slipped the 9mm in the back of his belt and walked back toward the porch. The patrol car pulled into the driveway, spraying gravel; faint but incessant radio chatter flooded the air. After a long moment, a bucolic looking young officer with short red hair and a gut slipped out of the driver’s door. He stood so that the vehicle remained between them and nodded.

“How y’all doing tonight?”

“Just fine, officer,” Pike said, pleasantly. “I was about to drive away when I remembered I hadn’t paid my tab.”

“Tap okay in there?”

“You know Tap.” Pike paused in the doorway and grinned. “He was sleeping two minutes ago.”

“Hang on there a second,” the young cop said. “Stay where you are.” He left the engine running and walked around the front of the car, hand on the butt of his Glock. His shadow spread a pool of ink on the cracked plaster wall. Pike froze, but subtly let his own fingers crabwalk back toward his own gun. The cop trudged up the steps. He shined his flashlight in Pike’s face. Blinded, Pike flinched and looked away.

“What’s your name, friend?”

“Gavin Hollenbeck,” Pike replied, using the name on his fake driver’s license and bogus credit card.

“What you doing out here, Mr. Hollenbeck?”

“Just passing through on my way down to Vegas to have some fun.”

“You call us about a broken down car?”

“No, I sure didn’t.”

“Maybe old Tap did it, then?”

“If he did, he didn’t say anything to me about it, officer.”

The cop peered over the top of the batwing doors. Pike considered dropping him on the spot, one quick shot to the back of the head, but before he could go for the Firestar the kid had changed position again. He turned off the flashlight. “Tap’s sleeping, all right. How much you owe him?”

Pike opened his wallet and produced a ten dollar bill. “Couple of beers and a tip, that’s all.”

Someone coughed by the side of the building. The cop stiffened and flicked the flashlight back on. “Who’s that, Mr. Hollenbeck?”

Pike took a deep breath. “I don’t know, just a couple of guys standing around having a beer, I’d expect. One of them has a big old cigar, and Tap doesn’t like smoke, right?”

The cop took two steps, froze. “I thought you said you were just passing through, Mr. Hollenbeck. You know old Tap?”

“I am just passing through,” Pike covered, and gently produced a pack of smokes. “He just said to go outside, that I couldn’t light up.”

“You there,” the cop called. The cop was tense again. His hand was back on his Glock. “Come on out in the light, where I can see you.”

Pike let himself drift back to the batwing doors. He wanted to be able to duck inside, if needed cover. Smith came over first, looking washed-out and disheveled. His hands were shaking and he now stank of whiskey. Willie appeared behind him, half in the gloom. Pike signaled with his eyes for Willie to keep calm until Pike could decide what to do. The cop looked Smith up and down and chuckled.

“What’s your story?”

The chastened Mr. Smith eyed the scene and shrugged. He clearly didn’t want to get caught in a shoot-out. “I only had a couple of drinks, officer,” he said. He belched and his face sagged. “I wasn’t feeling too good anyway, and after that I really got really sick.”

The cop stepped a couple of feet to his right, widening the distance. His eyes focused. “Who’s that with you?”

“Who?” Smith covered perfectly. “Oh, he’s just somebody who was helping me out. Man, the poor guy comes outside here for a peaceful smoke and I suddenly show up and start barfing.”

The silence mounted. The cop was clearly suspicious. One in the temple, hide the body out back. Pike came within inches of firing, but suddenly the patrolman relaxed. “Can you drive?”

Smith nodded a bit too enthusiastically and dug out his keys. “Sure can.”

“Then get on your way,” the cop said. “Beat it.”

Damn.

Pike and Willie watched helplessly as Smith jogged to a rented Pinto, slipped in and started the engine. He backed out onto the highway and vanished into the night. The cop strolled back to his patrol car. “You two gentlemen have a nice night.”

Pike clenched his teeth. “You too, officer.”

“And Mr. Hollenbeck?”

It took Pike a second to respond to the name. “Yes, sir?”

“Don’t you forget to give old Tap that ten bucks, okay?”

The cop peeled out and the night went silent, except for the sawing of crickets down near the creek bed. Willie walked a little closer, boots crunching in the gravel. He seemed worried. “What you want me to do, boss? Should I try to catch up to that crazy little prick?”

“Maybe.” Pike’s pulse was still racing. He considered it for a long beat, finally sighed. “No, let him go for now. We can track him down through Reggie when we get back home.”

“Man, that dude had one strange idea of a fun evening.”

“No kidding, Willie. And you can bet I’m going to have a long talk with Reggie about this.”

“You believe the nerve of some people?”

Pike barked a laugh. “Nerve is right. We’ve sure got to give him that.” He cracked his neck and hitched up his trousers. “Wait here, I need to use the john.”

Inside, Tap was facedown on the bar, snoring. Pike went into the single restroom, which stank of urine and disinfectant. He did his business, washed his hands. He blew out some breath and looked at himself in the cracked mirror. His eyes were clear. He raised his hand and held it out, palm flat. He was not trembling.

Gratified, Pike smiled at himself, splashed water on his face and went back out into the sawdust-filled room. Tap had apparently gone to bed; the bar was empty. Pike flipped his cell phone open and hit redial.

“Yeah?”

“God damn it, Reggie…”

“…right now, call me later.”

“Hello?”

Puzzled, Pike dialed again. The same thing happened. Pike scowled. Reggie’s answering machine was programmed to say: “Yeah? I can’t talk right now, call me later.” After that, it would disconnect.

Pike sat down slowly in a folding chair. He dialed another number. “Jake? It’s me. Don’t say anything. Have you seen Reggie tonight?” The color left his face. “No, I’m just asking.” He closed the phone, got unsteadily to his feet.

“Willie?”

No answer. Pike kicked the chair out of the way and strode outside. “Willie, where the hell are you?” He took out his Firestar and slid down the wall, weapon raised. Somehow he knew what he would find. Willie was behind the wheel of the truck with a tiny hole in his head and his chest wet and dark. The tires had been slashed, the keys were missing. Pike jogged over to his rented Mustang, also certain what he’d find. The distributor cap was missing and wires had been pulled. Pike screamed at the stars.

“Bastard!”

A thrumming insect flew past his ear. Something bit him. Pike growled and felt the side of his head. A small, fleshy part of his cheek was bleeding. He rolled across the wooden steps and down into the shadows beneath the porch. Another puff of dirt exploded near his legs, and this time he heard the faint echo of the shot.

“Smith, Goddamn you!”

Pike broke and ran, in a crossing pattern, through the sand and the skeletons of dead sage. He scrambled down into a gulley, his heart thudding in his chest. He knew he’d never make it out of Dry Wells, not wearing these expensive shoes. Another shot, a ricochet off a nearby flat rock that whined into the hard packed dirt. God, he’s got a night scope.

Pike went for the cell phone again, started to dial 911. Suddenly the phone and the tips of three fingers disappeared in a spray of blood freckled with shards of plastic and bone. Pike screamed like a woman dying in childbirth, ran as fast as he could, on and on through a vivid desert night that seemed to last forever. For the very first time he came to know the fear in a handful of dust.

Lucky

Joe Case slept sitting up for three nights running, long Henry rifle across his dirty knees. No fires. He ate dried beef and biscuits at dawn before urging the mare on through the rocks, always moving west. When he finally hit a sudden stretch of flat, grassy ground well before sunset it was a welcome change, but Case didn’t think of it as lucky. A man made his own luck. This was likely the edge of someone’s spread, and other folks generally meant trouble.

Case got to the edge of a thick clump of Cottonwoods. He stretched, turned in the saddle, and took one last look back at the jagged ridge line. The air smelled of burnt metal. A thin spider web of lightning tattooed darkening clouds. He saw no sign of the three angry cowboys who wanted him dead. Case had gunned down their friend after a drunken card game. He’d been on the run for more than a week, but the only thing following him now was a steadily weakening storm.

A few seconds later thunder growled and the sky spat. A few thick drops of rain drummed along the brim of his hat. Case rode on, and soon could hear the music of a nearby stream growing wider and deeper as the mountains overflowed. He licked his parched lips.

The mare whinnied softly, smelling that fresh water. Case stopped, patted her head, sat listening to faint wind in the trees, something furry rustling in the tall grass. A po’ will whistled from a clump of manzanita maybe a quarter mile below. Finally another horse answered the thirsty mare. Just one? Thirsty but cautious, Case loosened the Henry, left the tree line and let the mare walk.

The storm hung itself up in the hills like a drunken Mescalero, and for a time just kind of spun in a circle as if unable to decide which way to go. Case was happy to beat it down the hill. The creek was louder now, off to his right. He got to the edge of a thick orchard, dismounted and walked, with the horse as a shield. He looked around, squinted. The afternoon shadows were lengthening steadily, stroking the damp earth. Sunset was maybe an hour off, tops.

When he entered the darkening trees, Case felt his small hairs flutter, a gut instinct acquired after years of calculated risk. He knew there was no way the cowboys could have gotten around and so far in front of him. If this was a trap, it was someone else. Apache, maybe? Case fondled the rifle.

He found the other pony, a gaunt palomino, tied to a dead trunk. She nickered again. Could be she was thirsty. If so, she’d been tied up for a while. He knelt in the dirt and read the ground. Signs of some kind of struggle, boot heels mixed in with bare feet, hooves, some moccasin tracks here and there. No blood.

Case got up, went to the palomino. Eyes on the trees, he loosened the knot and let her go free. She trotted into the brush and he heard her crash down into the streambed to drink. Case let his own horse go next, and moved away and down. He went flat to have himself a look-see and edged into some mud, rifle ready. Peered over the edge of the bank, looked down.

To the northeast he saw a waterfall that pretty much sealed off that side of the mountain. Then the ridge line he’d come over some time before. Across the stream, woods. He looked south, scanning the banks as his vision shifted. More tracks, a lot of them going back and forth and in and out of the water on the opposite side, but hard to say how many horses from this far off. Case rose a bit, moved his head. Some motion caught his eye and he hunkered down again.

Closer to the bank, a young white woman stood knee-deep in the freezing water. Case couldn’t quite take it in at first, but then realized she was busily washing herself between the legs. He crawled closer. Her clothing was torn, and someone had bloodied her a tad. Even from yards away it was plain she had bruises and scrapes. Case watched her for a while. He wanted to be sure she was alone, that he hadn’t just stepped in a pile of shit. The sight was easy on his eyes, anyway. He hadn’t been with a woman in weeks, and this one had a nice, ripe body.

The horses drank their fill and clopped away to munch grass a bit further down the bank. The woman finally looked and saw her own mount moving, then looked again and jumped back at the sight of a second horse. Something seemed to fill her with terror. She stumbled through the water, sobbing, and moving faster than he would have dreamed possible, came right up the mud and ran into Case, who was just getting up off his knees.

“Easy, lady.” Case hadn’t said a thing for nearly a week, almost didn’t recognize that croak as the sound of his own voice.

The woman started flailing in desperation, not even bothering to scream, or maybe she was already all screamed out. She kicked and scratched, but Case wore trail gloves and long sleeves, so she couldn’t hurt him. Not until she went for his weathered face. Scratched him. Then Case wrapped her up and flung her down flat into the wet grass. He fell on top. That made her even crazier, and so Case figured he was going to have to knock her out, but then it hit him to just treat her like a scared animal. He backed away and made a show of lowering his long rifle.

“Ain’t fixing to hurt you.”

The young woman glared, her fine nostrils flaring. One plump breast peeked through that torn blouse like it wanted to say howdy. Case finally looked down and away. The girl shifted her clothes. He chewed his lip, drew the rifle close as a lover and lowered his voice to a whisper.

“Gone?”

She shook her head briskly, shrugged. I don’t know.

Case looked around again, listening and then looked back at the woman. Whispered: “Apache?” Case figured if it were Indians, they were likely still around, and then he had indeed stepped in it.

The woman just stared at him. She was panting for air. Case wasn’t much for being a gentleman, so he couldn’t help but notice again that she was a real looker. Her red-rimmed eyes were china blue. Finally, she answered in a voice probably gone hoarse from screaming.

“He raped me.”

“Who?”

“Chato. Our hired hand.”

“Just the one raped you?”

“That’s not enough?” She glared. “All you men can all go to hell.”

Case smiled, thinly. “Already been there, lady. And I only asked because of all the tracks.”

“My husband Robert was here…before it happened. We got in an argument and rode around in a circle yelling. We were both hopping mad.”

“He coming back, your husband? This Robert?”

Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. She nodded, briskly. “Any minute, and he’ll kill that bastard Chato sure as rain.” She was lying.

“Fair enough. You won’t be needing me, then.” He got up and went down to the water, drank greedily and filled his canteen. The woman moved around as if going toward her own pony. It was silent a full minute too long. Case looked up the bank. The woman was standing there, all alone, holding herself.

“Sir, could I impose on you to stay with me a spell? Just until my nerves settle down?”

Case washed his face and hands in the stream without answering and wondered at his fortune. He closed the canteen, went back up the bank, caught his horse and led it back. He took a bottle of whiskey from his saddle bag, wiped the top and offered her a drink. The woman refused at first, but then accepted. She drank, grimaced, shuddered but took a second pull. Case liked that about her, the toughness. He took a sip himself. The alcohol sparked in his gut.

“My name is Jackson,” Case said. The lie came easy.

“Muriel.” She licked her lips. “I thank you for the drink, and for your kindness.”

Case moved a bit closer, gauged her reaction. She accepted a third shot of whiskey, and by now her features were softening. A man makes his own luck. Case smiled, spoke gently.

“Muriel, how long has it been since he passed away?”

Her eyes filled. “I pray you will not hurt me for being honest with you, sir. My poor husband has been dead for nigh on half a year.”

“And this Chato, he worked for you?”

“Two years and a bit.”

“Well, then.” Wind made the nearby trees moan, and a burst of thunder shook the ground. The horses neighed. “Why don’t you tell me what really happened?”

Muriel looked away for a long moment. Thunder boomed in the foothills. “Chato tried a few times before. I always said no. He brought some Mexican boys here to help slaughter the lambs. They drank Mescal last night and well into the morning. I got scared and rode out thinking I’d go to town, stay with the preacher and his wife. They followed.”

Case watched her talk, the way her body moved. “Go on.”

“He raped me, sir. And did so in front of the others. I think it was only him, but I passed out after a while, so I can’t be sure. When I woke up they were gone. I was bound, but wiggled free just before you arrived.” She looked up and deep into his eyes. “Chato, he’ll be back soon for more, I can feel it. Please. Don’t let him touch me. Not again. Can you stay here, or maybe follow me into town? I can pay.”

Case shrugged. “No offense, Muriel, but this is your trouble, and this ain’t my business.”

She stepped back, trembling. Her eyes cut him into thin slices of jerky. “What kind of man are you?”

“A survivor.”

“A pig.”

Case sighed and made as if to leave. The woman said: “No.”

He looked at her. Muriel’s eyes glistened. “I have a good-sized ranch here, sir. And I can make it…worth your while.”

Did she mean what she seemed to mean? Case wasn’t sure, but his belly tingled. She started to speak again. Case waved his hand for silence. He listened intently. “Someone is coming, riding hard.”

“Please, help.” Muriel said again, even more urgently. “Stop him.”

Hooves. A rider appeared on the ridge line, turned sideways. A big man, hunched over in the saddle. He saw the two of them down below, stared long enough to take it all in and then began to whip his horse. Lightening creased the blue-black sky at his back.

Case weighed the distance to the trees, considered his chances. Meanwhile the rider raced down the slope, came closer and closer. Case felt his pulse quicken. He fondled the Henry, looked at the woman, then back at the approaching man.

“Help me!”

Case jumped back, startled. Muriel was now turning in circles, tearing at her clothes, shrieking in terror. “Help me, please! Kill him!” She glared at Case, then at the rider, back and forth.

The approaching rider drew a gun from his waist and fired. Dust rose not two feet away from Case’s left boot. He aimed the Henry without thinking and pulled the trigger. The big gun slammed back into his shoulder BOOM. The horse kept on coming, but now there was nothing but empty leather on his back. Behind him on the ground only dust rising and a pair of worn boots pointing up.

Muriel stopped screaming and sat down in the dirt as if stunned. Case shaded his eyes against the lowering sun to see if the rider was still moving. He wasn’t. The empty horse slowed down, cruised to the east and headed for the stream. The woman pointed at the body.

“Is he…dead?”

“Stay here.”

Case walked close enough to see the gaping hole in the rider’s chest. Gore covered his head and shoulders.

Case returned to the clearing and stared at the exhausted, nearly naked woman. He nodded. Something odd came over her. She seemed more aroused than shocked. Case read seduction in her eyes. He shook his head.

“What kind of a woman are you?”

“Grateful.”

She stared, one hand toying with the shredded blouse, as if daring him to take her right then and there, with a dead man cooling not thirty feet off. Case considered that idea, decided it had merit.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

He set the Henry down against a flat rock. What the hell, right? He undid his belt buckle, feeling a bit foolish, but fully aroused despite the circumstances. He got down on one knee, reached for her breast.

The first bullet missed his heart and took him in the left shoulder. The impact knocked Case backwards into the dirt. Then he heard the sound, loud and pretty close by. Case landed on his back with his pants half off and immediately went into shock. The world got silent and slowed down some. He watched Muriel. The woman was back on her feet, screaming again, pointing his way this time. Faint, from very far away, Case heard her saying shoot him Chato he killed my husband and raped me the murdering son of a bitch kill him Chato kill him please…

Case saw the squat Mexican now, the one called Chato, and hell, it was just some old man with silver hair. He came from the other side of the orchard, deftly riding bareback on a Palomino, aiming his long rifle right at Case’s chest. Chato wore moccasins. His brown face was tight as a fist, murderous rage dancing in those dark eyes. He was buying her whole story hook, line and sinker.

Case coughed, swallowed blood. She’d seen him coming from over a mile away, had plenty of time to work things out. He tried to speak, to warn the old man about her, because just before Chato blew his head off, it finally hit Case what kind of woman this Muriel was.

The kind who made her own luck.

And the Worm Shall Feed

Don’t mind saying we was scared shitless, but like Uncle Denny used to say, scared don’t ever help a God damned thing. Loading our asses up seemed to take forever. I had a worn book in my soggy backpack, but didn’t want to try reading by flashlight. I stood in the dark, shoulder to shoulder with the other kids.

We’d been standing in puke and piss for over an hour, pitching back and forth to the squeal of tortured metal, when dawn finally appeared on the horizon like a long, thin strip of bloody gauze. We could see several other landing craft circling the island, rising up in the nose before slamming down hard into warm saltwater and foam. A couple of minutes later the sun slapped our wan faces. Soaked uniforms began to steam and dry.

Red haired Eddie Boylan, a kid splattered with freckles, said jeez Louise, let’s go already; you’d think the brass wanted to give the Japs more time to aim.

Don’t be in such a hurry to die, someone else said. Then he laughed, trying to act tough, but we could all hear the scrape of sandpaper in his young voice. Gunny yelled to let go our dicks and grab the boat.

We turned toward the seawall and slammed into gear. Marines leaned back and gripped the metal walls. The coxswains tried to keep us in a straight line, spread out but timed to land at roughly the same time, so the Jap gunners wouldn’t have easy pickings. I shaded my eyes to catch a glimpse of the beach. They were firing. I couldn’t hear anything above the roar of the boats, but you could already see small puffs of smoke coming from the palm trees and dunes squatting maybe twenty yards above the sea wall. After a while we heard the thrumming bullets tap dance wildly along the outside of our Higgins Boat. My skin rippled and my flesh went cold. Someone wanted me dead. Me.

The Gunny called two minutes. Sarge whistled. Listen up, ladies, this is it. Weapons high and clear of the water, keep the sand out. Spread like Tijuana pussy and stay moving or you’re dead meat instead of live maggot.

We heard a BANG and then a WHOOSH and a big funnel of seawater shot up and gave us all a cold shower. I pushed my helmet back and peeked out again. One of the boats was flat fucking gone, and that part of the water was black with oil, red with blood and white in the wake of thrashing arms. A couple fellows sank while we stood watching. Their packs just dragged them down. Open mouths and scared eyes and seaweed and then an empty patch of stained, ice-cold ocean. I held onto the heavy BAR and prayed for the first time in my life, prayed hard to a God I didn’t put much stock in. Somebody once said there are no atheists in a foxhole.

Lou Rosenthal said, aw damn I crapped myself. He wasn’t kidding. I doubt he was the only one. I come from rednecks, but I have been a reader all my life, yet no book in the world could have prepared me for this. Somehow death and shit always seem to go together. Ever notice that?

It was time.

The ramp dropped with a CLANG like the bell of some old church and boys were falling all over themselves trying to get out of the wake of maybe a dozen chattering Nambu machine guns. People kind of hopped around or flew to pieces. I got out okay and fear gave me the strength to hold my rifle up out of the ocean. We waded in like that, just sitting ducks. A lot of boys died. Most of that landing cannonballs through my memory in snapshots: Red sea, uniforms and sweat, hot sand, a helmet rolling by and Jesus, the constant screaming. A severed pair of legs, still kicking on a beach gone crimson. Blue and purple guts festooned along the sea wall. Being so scared I couldn’t spit or swallow. Keeping my head down, knowing I was a craven coward for sure. Row after row of divots in the sand above me, as the machine guns raked us. Arnie Rosenthal lying dead, eyes wide, lower face gone.

And always poor Boylan, huddled up, shaking and crying like a little child. As if being near me was somehow a good thing.

Sarge organized things, got us to return fire, got Baxter and Kelly to flank the nest and lob a few grenades. They’d throw them in, the Japs would throw them back, but our boys wore them down and finally one went off, probably near their ammunition. The jungle turned orange and farted dense black smoke. I couldn’t hear for a good ten seconds.

Up, get the fuck up!

Sarge got to his feet and ordered us to follow him. We climbed up and over the sea wall, screaming and firing. The BAR suddenly didn’t weigh much. I aimed at muzzle flashes, got high on adrenaline, felt glad to be doing something, finally fighting back. The world blew up and knocked me flat and I went deaf for a couple of minutes. I got back to my feet, shook it off. Most of the guys were ahead of me by then. I stumbled and looked to my left.

It was sheer luck that I spotted a spider hole with a chubby Jap inside waiting to shoot at us from the rear. He saw me at the same time; our eyes met. His Nambu got tangled in sniper webbing. I raised the BAR. The younger soldier struggled to bring his sidearm out. I nailed him with the Browning, stitched him from prick to chin. Wondered how he got so fat; the Nips were supposed to be really low on food.

I looked back at the ocean and saw that we’d lost over half our landing force and the main ship. At least five boats had gone down; the poor guys probably drowned in maybe ten feet of water. Two snarling Zeros circled high over the sinking ships. We were ashore, but badly outnumbered. The assault was over, but our war was just beginning.

The survivors set up maybe a hundred yards from the beach, digging like crazy, made a kind of a U with the ocean at our backs. Our foxholes were shouting distance apart. The day went fast. Call signs were exchanged and some unlucky bastards posted in rabbit holes way up the sand to give the rest of us a bit of warning. Sarge ran some concertina wire for the lookouts to tug once for Japs; twice for I’m coming in fast, don’t shoot me. He told us to expect Banzai attacks. We knew all about them. Japs got bombed on rice wine and staged a suicide charge.

We curled up that first night, exhausted and cold and spooked out of our minds. Boylan still glued himself to my shoulder patch; followed me around and dug in with me, even shared my foxhole. I bitch about it, but I’d grown fond of him. I didn’t like it much because I had no interest in dying for my brother or anything else for that matter. Fuck Mom and apple pie, too. We were set up toward the curve of the U, up near the jungle. I didn’t cotton to the idea of the ocean behind me, with nowhere to run. I don’t know why I picked that side or that particular spot, guess I figured it didn’t much matter, that they’d probably come straight on in. Wet sand is wet sand.

The sun went down and some weird looking mosquitoes dined on our baked skin. Biggest fucking bugs I ever did see. Hungry as hell. I’d heard the Japs were eating bugs to stay alive. So now the bugs ate us. That’s the way of the world. Life eats itself and shits life out again. I swatted dozens to gory rubble and wiped them away. Ants promptly ate the remains. Everything gets used up and reused. Cold, clean and efficient.

The silence that fell on that little island was quick as hate and thick as mud. No light at first, just blackness and the stink of terrified men in wet uniforms. It got so quiet the sound of a guy drinking from his canteen twenty feet away seemed loud. Somebody got jumpy and fired at nothing. Sarge ordered them to knock it off and wait for his order. Eventually the stars peeked out, and then finally most of a pale, white moon. Huge moon. Lots of light. Now I could see Boylan’s face, looking over at me. He was holding the sentry wire in one hand, leaning on his rifle, lips on the barrel like a man kissing a rosary.

Oh, man. When you figure it’s gonna happen?

I don’t know. We’ll be ready, though. You want to catch some Zs?

Can’t. You go first.

I nodded and curled up around the BAR, pulled my helmet down. I didn’t really feel sleepy, but didn’t want to listen to Boylan whine. His fear felt like a virus I could catch. To my surprise, I did go under for a while. I don’t know for how long. But then I heard something high and soft, like a guitar string being tuned.

I opened my eyes and saw Boylan looking down in horror at the wire in his hands. It was trembling, sighing, carrying the word.

Japs.

Soon we could hear their boots splashing in the stream to the south. They weren’t trying all that hard to be quiet, jabbering on in that odd language of theirs. The air got thick like syrup. We gulped with trepidation. Boylan and I lined up our grenades in a row along the lip of the foxhole, like we’d been taught. Firing would give away our position. Grenades killed without a muzzle flash.

A man came hauling ass through the sand in our direction. Boylan aimed his rifle. I touched his arm and whispered that it was probably Kelly, from the forward outpost. Then I raised the BAR because probably doesn’t fucking mean definitely.

The moonlight was bright enough. It was indeed Kelly. He got to his feet the last few yards, sprinted our way. I waved so he’d see our hole. But then he threw his arms up like a man scoring a touchdown, grunted and pitched face forward in the sand. I didn’t even hear that first shot. The jungle exploded into shrieks and gunfire as the enemy charged from every side, all at once, screaming Banzai Banzai Banzai, you die, you die Maline, you die…

All the boys stayed quiet and tossed grenades. We blew the shit out of the enemy; bright flames everywhere, body parts flying. Eventually the night was bright enough that a muzzle flash didn’t matter. We started shooting back. I still can remember this part like it was last night. A kid name of Joe Donnelly got up out of his hole to get away from a Jap grenade. He ended up firing from one knee. One of the enemies appeared, ran him through with a bayonet. I guess Joe was out of ammo. Couple other guys I knew got blown right out of their boots by mortar shells.

The Nips overran our position in a few minutes. Way too many. Our flanks collapsed. Japs jumped over the foxholes and got into our middle, stabbing and discharging handguns. The guys on the other side turned and opened up to protect their backs, but now they were shooting right into us, so we fired back. The fields of fire just collapsed. We started killing each other. It was chaos. To be there was to die there. Rot there. Get eaten by the animals and shit out again as food for the flies. Fuck that. I started figuring on making a run for it.

Eventually the gunfire died down. Jap officers carried swords. Blades flashed in the moonlight. They cut up our wounded. All the boys were bayoneted, one kept screaming for Mommy, Mommy, Mommy. He stopped all of a sudden just as I saw what looked like Sarge go down under a pile of smaller forms. I was out of ammo. I dropped the BAR. Boylan sobbed. He was empty too. All we had was our knives. The kid looked at me, panting and panicked. The Japs were distracted by Sarge and the wounded, but they’d spot us in a minute or two.

I left Boylan, just decided to rabbit. I’m not proud of that, but there it is. I got my sorry ass up and made for the pitch black safety of that jungle. Boylan followed.

We went maybe two hundred yards up the slope, away from the beach, back into the trees and far from the fight. When we stopped and looked back, the noise had died down. A few fires flickered here and there. Nips were helping each other, binding wounds, sharing water. I couldn’t see that clear, but it looked like they had stacked the American dead in a tall pile. I saw those swords go up and down. The horrible screams had stopped—although they kept on echoing in my head—yet the swords kept right on flashing…

Boylan said, these savages don’t even respect the dead.

I said, from what I hear, a Jap doesn’t respect the living much, either.

We moved higher, found a small trail and put some mountain between us and the enemy. We stopped again to rest. Boylan was breathing too loud. I shook him. Calm down, don’t make so much noise, they’ll hear us. God damn it, he whispered, sounding a little surprised. I think I’m wounded. He held up his hands. The palms were black with blood.

Where?

Somewhere low, I think. It’s bleeding, starting to feel sore.

Stay calm.

His features writhed in shadow like melting wax. Oh, God damn it. What are we gonna do? We got no food, no water, no medicine, I’m hurt. We’re fucked.

No, we’re going to live.

How?

We can spear some fish or a monkey. Something. Might be fruit out here in the jungle. There is fresh water running in that stream. First thing, we’ve got to avoid capture, okay? Watch where we walk, so we don’t leave tracks. Cup your hands, try not to leave a blood trail. They don’t know how many of us were down there, they may not come looking if we don’t give them reason. Stay calm.

I’m so fucking scared.

Scared don’t help a thing, I muttered.

What?

Scared don’t ever help a God damned thing. My uncle used to say that.

Was he a nice guy?

Denny was a prick. You got scared of a rattler or tarantula something he’d slap the shit out of you. Said nothing was worth getting scared about and scared don’t help a thing.

Higher. Further. I figured we could stop for the night. Young Boylan was moaning now, and my heart was torn. I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for him or kill him for making so much noise.

Take your mind off being wounded, think of something else.

I’ll try. Where did you grow up?

A little town in the desert. You?

Alabama.

You don’t sound it.

I try not to. God, it hurts.

Lay down, then. Put your knees up.

He did, and reported it felt somewhat better. Get some sleep, Boylan. I’ll take first watch. Try to ease up, looks like we’re going to be here for a while.

Then I sat there in the dark. Dirty clouds covered the moon. Denny was a prick, all right, but he did teach me a few things. One of them was living off the land. Life eats itself. Show no mercy, don’t pity the animals. Fuck, they’d eat you raw, they had the chance. Anyhow, nothing gets destroyed, not really. It’s all reused somehow, some way. Over and over. Mother Nature at work.

I got very little sleep. Too tired.

They came looking for us in the morning. Don’t know if they spotted our trail, or just wanted to be sure none of the Americans had got away, but they came looking. Soon we could hear them searching for a sign, talking that shrill nonsense. The tall grass moved where they passed down below. I waited for silence, and to be sure they didn’t leave somebody behind. Then real quick we moved further up, into some pointy rocks. Now we were thirsty as hell, hungry, and the sun fried anything that wasn’t tucked away in shade. I knew I’d have to get some water soon. I watched the Japs search, studied how they moved, to see if I could outsmart the pattern.

In the daylight, Boylan stiffened until he seemed carved from ivory. His lips were blue and they trembled. That wound was already stinking something awful, and there was no way to clean it out. The sulfa bandages were in Jap hands, along with the rest of our gear.

Hey.

What, kid?

You ever wonder why we’re here.

On this island, or is this some kind of God talk?

It has to mean something, the boy whispered. I’m gonna die, then it has to mean something.

Life eats life, shits itself out again. I thought to myself, and that’s about all there is to it. Eating and shitting; molecules decaying and coming back together some other way again. Now, I didn’t say any of this aloud to the kid. I’m a sensitive man and he was clearly suffering. The end was coming on cloven hooves.

The morning became afternoon. The day inched along. Figured to get to the stream for water, bring some back if I could. My stomach rumbled with hunger. Boylan slipped into a restless sleep. My sweat stopped tasting salty and my head went light. I started hearing things, insects that weren’t there humming right by my ears.

The Japs rested for a bit and started for home. I got that they were making Z patterns in the high grass, half-heartedly sticking any large clumps of brush with their bayonets. I figured to take advantage of dusk. I’d slip on down behind the last row, get myself a drink, then hide in the grass until after they’d passed. They’d yet to double back so from there on it would likely be clear sailing back up to the cave. Boylan was out cold by then. Hopefully, he’d stay quiet.

I put my knife between my teeth and snaked my way out of the cave and down through the weeds. The island ground was sharp and rocky. My elbows and knees got sore. I rolled over onto my back, tore some of my shirt and wrapped my elbows and knees better because I didn’t want to accidentally leave some kind of blood trail of my own.

It was near dark when I got to the stream, right where it emptied out into the ocean. The tide was pretty high, but that would change overnight as the water went back to the bay.

The cold water tasted like liquid heaven. I couldn’t drink too much, didn’t want to get cramps, so I just ran it around in my mouth. I got on my back again, looked at the stars that were beginning to peek out and considered my options. It seemed wise to find another place to hide, just leave Boylan behind. Hell, he wouldn’t be alive much longer anyway. Could I live with that? I searched my gut for a trace of guilt, but all I felt right then is that I was really, really hungry. Maybe I could.

I heard something moving just upstream. I crawled into the weeds, knife in my teeth. My whole body tried to shrivel up and hide. Tan leggings appeared, not five feet away. A fucking Jap sentry. I stopped breathing as he got down on one knee to fill his canteen. He was a skinny bastard, with big glasses on a baby face, only a kid maybe sixteen years old. I stumbled on the way over and he tried to turn to bring up his weapon. I covered his mouth with one hand and stuck him good. The boy squealed softly and farted when I moved the knife around in his guts. I spun him around, kicked his legs out and cut his throat from behind, just to be sure. First man I’d ever killed that way but, to be honest, it was no big deal; just like gutting a deer, more or less.

A couple minutes later I had a canteen, a crappy medical kit, some white rice and what tasted like dried fish shit. I took his pistol. The Jap rifle was too much to carry crawling, and turns out the poor bastard didn’t have but a few rounds. Now I needed to get rid of the evidence. I tied the boy to a few pieces of wood, shoved him into the water, watched as he went floating out to sea on the night tide. Maybe I’d get lucky and be gone before the enemy figured anything out.

Or maybe he’d wash back in come morning and they’d be looking for real and very pissed off. I’d just have to take my chances.

Scared don’t help a thing.

I ate some of the fish stuff and started back. It was nearly dark. The Japs were marching closer to their camp, moving through that tall grass. It sounded like a few of them had already hit the booze. I backed up and scrambled along the sea wall, passed the rotting parts of dead guys still scattered along the sand, and a couple of times bumped into something that could have been an arm or a leg. It was pretty dark by then. Whatever it was it stank and felt mushy. I kept on moving.

I got bad stomach cramps. Emptied my bowels. When the pain passed I started to crawl again. Meanwhile, the Japs had themselves another party by a bonfire. They were talking real loud, some of them singing. I could see a few soldiers with sharpened sticks, cooking meat. My stomach moaned like a Gospel choir. The smell made my mouth water. Starving and eating bugs my ass. They had plenty of provisions. No wonder they taught us a lesson on that beach.

I ate the rest of the dried fish, despite the cramps, because I needed the energy and Boylan was dying. I’d be bringing a bit of water to ease his misery. He didn’t have to know about the food.

It was touch and go trying to figure out where they’d put their sentries, but the Japs were confident and had a smoke now and again. I got around them eventually. I made it up the hill a ways, into the rocks, but then got lost. It was way too dark. Had to give up on finding the cave before the sun came up.

The damned Japs ate so much that I heard a bunch of them puking their guts out down in the reeds.

After a couple of hours, the noise trailed off. Insects and a few, tiny nocturnal creatures felt brave enough to come out and look for food of their own. Not many. This island was remarkably silent.

I got cramps again all of a sudden. I dug a hole with my hands, pulled my pants down. That dried fish just went right on through me. I covered my waste, moved a few yards away and tried to rest.

I’d guess it was around three in the morning when I heard a man coming through the grass, singing in a low, rich baritone. I had a terrible taste in my mouth. A low wind was moving through the grass. The air stank of dead fires, scorched meat and vomit. I could even smell my own covered-up crap. Or maybe it was somebody else’s.

I backed into some dirt and brush, gripped the knife. The man was singing an American song in decent English, that one about not sitting under an apple tree with anyone else but me. He started one way, then turned around and came back. I figured maybe he was lost, too—except he was marching along like a man in no hurry at all.

The clouds parted. Bright moonlight revealed a long gulley that extended back to the beach. Way down below I could see orange embers, stacks of bodies and a lot of men lying around passed out. Reflected stars glittered like jewelry on the surface of the ocean. The singer stopped. He began panting, mumbling to himself. The grass rustled and twigs snapped nearby.

A Jap officer came out of the grass to stand maybe five feet from where I’d dumped and covered it up. He wore no cap, was bald with a droopy moustache and had a bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The tobacco smelled odd, and probably disguised a lot of other foul odors.

Keep going,

I thought, just go pass out somewhere else.

The Jap walked my way. I held my breath. I thought he would go by, but he stopped again. Then the dumb bastard took his dick out and started to piss right on me. Before I knew it I was up and at him, just like the sentry, covering his mouth and ripping at his guts with my knife. But the Jap had some kind of thick belt on, and the blade got stuck. I yanked it free, but he turned sideways as he realized what was happening, and I lost my grip on the knife. It hit the dirt near my boot. I slugged him but he didn’t go down.

The officer began to fight back in earnest. He tried to choke me. As we struggled silently, I wondered why he didn’t scream for help. Maybe he knew his buddies were passed out; maybe he was just too scared. Suddenly something hard struck the side of my head. It dazed me. The Jap hit me again, and I wound up on my knees. When I looked up, the Jap officer had a pistol pointed at my face.

You stop now, he said. In a calm, low voice.

Don’t.

He hawked and spat. Cocked his head like a parrot and said: You drink.

That officer surprised the hell out of me. He handed me the wine bottle, and sat down heavily a few feet away. I took a drink. Foul stuff, lighter fluid, but the alcohol set a friendly blaze. We stared, swallowed and caught our breath. Finally he spoke again.

You brave man. Last one? Alone?

He confused l’s and r’s but only just a little and was pretty easy to understand. I shrugged.

Far as I know.

Welcome to hell, Marine. He toasted me, chuckled in that low voice. Me, I am the boss of hell. What is your name?

I just looked at him. I could feel my own pistol at my belt, around the back and out of sight. The longer he talked the better my chances, although the sound of a gunshot meant company and running like mad up the slope in the dark. Very risky indeed.

The Jap belched. He raised the weapon, and his aim was steady. Name. You can tell me your name. Geneva say.

Boylan, I said. My name is Boylan.

And you lie to me just now. Not alone.

Yes and no. I have a friend still hiding up in the hills. He’s badly wounded and may be dead.

You take him water.

Yes.

Want food, too?

I blinked. Excuse me?

The Jap laughed. Several teeth were missing. No enemy in hell, Marine. Everything is karma, neh?

What?

I mean that in hell we are all the same. Karma. We do not be hungry. Have plenty food in camp. The Jap reached for his belt, opened a leather pocket. He held out a small piece of something. I could smell slightly burned meat. My dignity deserted me. I grabbed the food with both hands and savored every crunchy bite.

He got to his feet. Come. Get some and we go together, find your friend.

They told us you Japanese did not respect prisoners. I don’t understand this.

The officer smiled again. You are no prisoner. You are guest in my kingdom. Hell. Here, war is fool’s game.

He looked away for a long moment. I slid one hand behind my back, but he faced me again before I could grab the pistol. He eyeballed me, and then holstered his own gun. The Jap’s big eyes went bright and clear, and in them I saw those fading fires from the distant beach.

His English wasn’t this good, but here’s what he said; I am sincere, American. This is hell. You are as welcome to it as any man alive. He flipped my knife around and offered me the handle. I took it, tucked it back in my belt, bewildered.

The sun will rise soon. We should go.

I got to my feet. My knees popped. Gas suddenly expanded in my stomach and my bowels rumbled.

The Jap yawned. You are one of us, now. He drank deeply, finished the wine and tossed the empty bottle off into the grass. You pass first test. Your friend will be the second.

I still don’t understand.

He put his hands on his hips. American, this island is a useless hunk of volcanic rock, as empty as the surface of the moon. Some small animals, a few birds and insects, but the ones we have not killed are dying off. This is truly hell on earth. Even the fish know to stay away. And it has no real, strategic value. So we kill each other over sand. You understand?

Yes. I do.

Yet this place, it has taught me something very important. That there are those who survive and those who do not, and all the rest is nonsense. Patriotism, nationalism, heroism, racial purity, age, education, friendship; they all fade when confronted with the basic need to survive and the endless cycle.

He extended his arm. And now you will show me where your friend is hiding.

You said I passed the first test. What was it, fighting back?

That toothless grin. He winked at me, the expression so exaggerated and clownish in the moonlight. Then he roared with laughter. Karma, neh? Ha!

Rage blossomed. The fuck’s so funny, Jap?

He kept his hands at his sides, away from his gun, palms forward as if to say go ahead, I won’t do anything to stop you.

Damn you, I said what’s so funny?

My anger pleased him. I was pissed, but also feeling a creeping sense of dread. Why was he laughing? My stomach clenched and growled. So I asked him again. What was the first test?

The officer told me.

I grabbed my gun and shot him between the eyes. His forehead shattered and dark chunks of matter splattered the brush behind him. The Jap dropped to his knees and fell over sideways.

I bent over at the waist and puked. I heard a couple of men shout from somewhere far off, in response to the gunshot, but they weren’t showing much enthusiasm. No one answered. I ran. I ran harder than I’d ever run in my life; didn’t care about noise, leaving a trail, about anything but putting him as far behind me as possible. Meanwhile, the cruel sun rose slowly in a pool of crimson and blue.

I got lost again, but eventually made it back to the rocky point just as the sun was coming up. Poor Boylan was right where I’d left him, white as a piece of blank typing paper. His chest was moving, but just barely. He moaned. One tiny bubble of spit squatted on parched lips. I tried to get him to drink, but he wouldn’t. The day grew hot. The island stank and so did his wound. The damned Jap soldiers didn’t bother to come looking for me. I guess they didn’t much care for their commanding officer.

Time passed. Boylan held on. Suffered. I ran out of water again, but the idea of crawling back down the mountain filled me with terror even though scared don’t help a God damned thing. I held myself tightly and rocked back and forth. Everything was flies and stench and a numbing fear.

I talked to Boylan, tried to tell him what happened. What would happen when he was gone. What I now understood about the truth of things. Sometimes I believed he was listening, even answering in a frail voice but, thinking back, I doubt he ever woke up. At times I wondered if I was going mad. The sun came up and went down and came up in an endless cycle. Life killed and ate and shit and ate all around me. Things got quieter and quieter.

I came to believe that island was a living thing, an evil thing, and that it was enjoying snuffing itself out.

The Japs went mad one night and started shooting at each other, lighting up the beach with flashes of light and screams of pain. They went at it hard.

Boylan was gone by then, so the next morning I crawled back down the mountain. I was very weak, and had lost all track of time. When I got to the beach the Nips were dead. Every single one. Murder or suicide. Some shot, some stabbed, even a couple who looked strangled. A few officers had disemboweled themselves. At the center of their camp stood a huge pile of bones, some with scraps of flesh still attached.

Come on, Doc. You’ve figured it out by now, I know you have. They were down to killing and eating each other. And I guess that particular night things kind of got out of hand. Or maybe they’d had enough and just couldn’t stand it anymore.

It took some doing, but I lived off them for quite a long time.

I went through their supplies, stayed half drunk, figured out how to cure the meat and make jerky like Uncle Denny showed me, drying it on a rock so it would last. By the time the PT boat showed up, I had been there for I don’t know how long, just surviving and laughing and talking to Boylan, trying to explain what happened; why I ate him first and then all the others, telling him all about the meaning of life. Asking for his forgiveness.

Life eats itself and shits itself out again, Doc. It’s an endless cycle. Matter cannot be destroyed. It just reassembles itself into something else. Lives and dies, goes on and on and on. As the Jap officer said, this is karma, neh? And that’s why I do it.

Now do you see? Do you understand?

I have to cover myself in it. Have to. God, I hate when you stop me. Sedate me. I must do it whenever I get a chance, roll in my own shit, anyone’s shit. Because it’s where we begin, what we are, and what we’ll all become. It is both the beginning and the end of life and the only way to the truth.

I’m not crazy. I do it for Boylan, for that crazy Jap officer, for all the dead and dying boys everywhere who are out fighting and dying in these useless fucking wars.

I have to show them that they will be back.

_______________

“When my mouth shall be filled with dust, and the worm shall feed, and feed sweetly upon me…”

—John Donne

Jailbreak

with Steven W. Booth

“Say again?” Sheriff Miller slid worn boots from the edge of the desk, slammed them down on the messy floor. The antique office and jail were both in the middle of yet another round of remodeling. Paint cloth whispered. Dust rose, spread and slowly settled. The old style radio crackled with static. Outside, night was spreading like a dark blanket over the little town that crouched further down the road.

“I said he killed Miss Barbara by the library, Sheriff,” Deputy Bob Wells said. He spoke rapidly, baritone voice thick with panic. “He killed her with his bare hands, so I shot him.”

“Slow down. Shot who, damn it?”

A long pause. More static. “It was old man Grabowski, Sheriff. Sure as shit.”

“Lazlo Grabowski is dead, Bob.”

“I know.”

Sheriff Penny Miller blinked and straightened her long legs. She leaned forward over the desk, stomach tingling. “You okay, Bob? You been drinking?”

“I ain’t had a drop, Sheriff, I swear. It was the strangest damned thing I ever saw. Old Grabowski came out of the bushes while I was talking to Miss Barbara. Looked like shit, some sort of zombie. He tackled her and started... biting. I tried to pull him off her, but his arm came right out of his shoulder. Jesus, blood come out of her quick as a double-dicked bull pissing on a flat rock. Miss Barbara was screaming. He wouldn’t stop, so I shot him. He kept on biting anyway. I shot him again, in the head this time, and then he quit.”

“And Miss Barbara?”

“Bled out like a pig. Then I saw some more of ’em coming and I ran.”

“Some more of what?”

“Of them,” he repeated, as if that explained everything.

I’ve got a lunatic in uniform out on the township streets with a loaded gun, the Sheriff thought to herself. Great.

“Deputy Wells, where the hell are you?”

“I’m in the car, on the way back. Sheriff, this gets worse. All kinds of people are out on the street tonight, kind of stumbling around all drunk-looking. They look like…well, zombies. And, yeah, I do know how this sounds. I wouldn’t believe it either if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

“Zombies?” Sheriff Miller said. She sighed into the radio. “Come on, Wells, what’s really going on?” She stretched the microphone cord, went around her desk and stepped over some lumber to get her gun belt. She fastened it on as she spoke.

“I’m serious as liver cancer, Sheriff,” came the static-clouded voice through the speakers. “Dozens, maybe a hundred of them. A handful attacked Mrs. McCormick’s store, clawing and chewing. They flat-out ate her alive. I shot two or three with the Remington, but they just kept coming, so I had to light out for base.”

The sheriff heard Wells sounding panicked as hell, so she knew that whatever was happening, the deputy thought it was real enough. “What’s your position?”

“Like I said, in the cruiser. I’ll be back at the station in two minutes tops. Leave the prisoners locked up. We got to get out of here. Shit!” The radio popped. Wells stopped transmitting.

Miller wasn’t sure she bought the story. Maybe it was a prank, but that wasn’t like Wells at all. Big old serious redneck sonofabitch like him wasn’t prone to joking around. So something was going on out there, but freaking zombies? Whatever it was, Miller knew she had only a few minutes to prepare. She was the Sheriff and had her duty. She rounded the desk and grabbed her broad-brimmed hat off the rack. She jogged out of her office, past the construction mess and into the small, old-fashioned western jail. The big key turned smoothly in the brand new lock, the barred door swung open with a creak. The two prisoners looked up as she approached the cells.

“Get up,” Miller said.

“Time for my strip search, darlin’?” The closest prisoner swung his feet off the edge of his cot. Bowen was busily tattooed; a large biker with long, stringy hair, a scraggly beard and a darkened bandage on his head. He hefted his sweaty bulk off the cot and approached the steel bars. “I’m sure I’ve got something in here you’d like,” he said. He leered and began to paw at his crotch.

“Shut up.” Miller produced a pair of handcuffs. “That little thing wouldn’t scare a gnat into buying a diaphragm. Now get over here and put your hands through the slot.” She indicated the large rectangular hole in the barred door. “Move it. We got us somewhere to go.”

“Where?” the second prisoner, Stillman, asked. He was a tall, wiry, foul smelling man with a tattooed head and surprisingly delicate hands. He approached the door of his cell. If it weren’t for his weirdly tattooed head, Stillman could have passed for an accountant, rather than a Hell’s Angel. How he wound up in a motorcycle gang, Miller didn’t care to know.

“Sheriff, where we going?” he asked again.

Miller paused. She hadn’t yet considered that part of it. “We’re moving you to another facility,” she said. The lie didn’t come easy. She usually preferred to play it straight, even with the cons. “Come on, I don’t have all day.”

Bowen smelled trouble. “What’s the rush?”

Before the Sheriff could answer, Wells burst through the door. “They’re fucking everywhere, Sheriff!” The former high school athlete was out of breath, uniform dark with sweat; clearly sorry he had let his gut get the better of him. “I saw more coming out of the woods as I was pulling up. We ain’t got much time.”

“Who’s coming, a lynch mob? Are they coming for me?” demanded Stillman. He gripped the bars of the cell door, a sudden nervous tic making his face twitch. Sheriff Miller could smell the guilty sweat from two yards off. Stillman was accused of drugging and sodomizing a minor. His wide eyes gave him away.

“Never mind. Put your hands through the slot,” Miller commanded again. She was surprised by the strength in her voice. She didn’t feel very strong. Zombies? The hell?

“What’s going on, Sheriff?” Bowen spoke calmly. He stepped away from the door and crossed his arms. Stillman stepped back, a reluctant imitation of his leader. “We ain’t going nowhere ‘less you tell us the truth.”

Wells huffed with frustration and fear. “Sheriff, leave them. They’ll be safe in there.”

She stared at him.

“Probably,” he shrugged.

“I’m not leaving my prisoners,” Miller said bluntly. “We have our duty.”

“We don’t have time for this.” Wells turned his attention to the big motorcyclist and drew his club. “Okay, do what the Sheriff says, asshole, or I’ll come in there and crack your skull again. Then the zombies won’t have a problem getting at your shit-for-brains.”

“Zombies?” Bowen released a sharp laugh. “Oh, bullshit! What’s really going on? Some family members coming for my friend here?”

In his cell, Stillman wilted.

“What is going on,” Sheriff Miller said, “is that we need to get you two to safety. We don’t have time for any macho posturing. Now, present your hands.”

“Holy bat shit, Scratch.” Stillman muttered, peering out his small, high cell window. “You really got to check this out.”

Wells and Miller exchanged glances. “Get the shotguns ready,” she barked. Wells ran for the gun cabinet.

Meanwhile, Bowen stood on his own cot and looked through the barred window. “Whoa, what the fuck is that?”

“I told you,” said Wells from across the room. He was loading two shotguns as fast as possible. “Zombies.”

“Damn.” Bowen hopped down from his cot immediately. He slid his hands through the slot. “Move,” he ordered Stillman. “We gotta go.” Miller snapped the cuffs around each of their wrists. She opened the cell doors, ushering the two prisoners out. As they headed down the hallway, Wells jabbed Bowen with his stick. Bowen stumbled a bit.

“Watch it, dickhead, or I’ll turn around and break you in two,” snapped Bowen.

Wells raised his stick, ready to strike. The convict glared back like a pit bull.

“Wells!” The deputy turned to see Miller with genuine rage in her eyes. “They are our prisoners. Knock it off.”

Wells opened the door to the parking lot and stopped short. The last sunlight was fading out, a yellow ball dipping down into a huge pond of black ink.

“My God,” Wells gasped.

Miller swallowed. “We ain’t gonna make it to the cars.”

Bowen and Stillman stepped forward to look. It was a living nightmare. The things were everywhere, covering the blacktop around the isolated sheriff’s station. Feet shuffling, throats moaning. Features were distorted, clothing ripped. They could have been anybody; townspeople, tourists passing through, distant relatives. Tattered clothing, gaping wounds and blood splatters covered their bodies. Dozens of zombies with missing limbs staggered forward in broken formation. The moaning sound floated on a low breeze that carried the stench of rotting meat. The three men stared. Miller looked down at her hands. They were not trembling. Her mind plotted strategy. She looked up again. The closest zombies were perhaps twenty yards away.

Wells leveled the shotgun at a man in a dark suit. He fired, the noise making Stillman jump. The zombie fell heavily to the ground.

“Now, watch this,” said Wells. “It ain’t dead for real, not yet.”

Bowen snorted. “Hell he ain’t.”

After a moment, the creature picked itself up and began lumbering toward the station, dark intestines sliding from its gut.

“See what I mean, Sheriff?” Deputy Wells said, terror in his eyes. “I do believe we are in some pretty deep shit.”

“All right!” snapped Sheriff Miller. “Everyone back inside. Lock the door, Wells. I think we’re staying put.”

They locked up. She turned the lights on outside to give them better vision. Peering out through the window, Miller didn’t like what she saw. The army of creatures approached relentlessly from all sides, groaning with a terrible hunger. Miller rallied her deputy. They fired through windows and doors as best they could. Soon Miller wished she had put in earplugs when she’d had the chance. The steady gunfire hurt like hell.

“Aim for the head,” called Bowen. “It’s the only thing that works.”

“I am aiming for their heads, smartass,” shouted Wells.

They fired and fired. Meanwhile, Stillman sat handcuffed to a chair at Wells’ desk in the lobby, the receiver stuck between his ear and his shoulder. He dialed furiously. Prisoner Bowen had gone back into his cell for security. He was visibly shaking. His eyes were wide and white.

“They’re getting closer,” Wells hollered. “This keeps up, these motherfuckers might be yanking our zippers down pretty soon.” The bodies of several of the seemingly endless stream of undead were piled in a rough semicircle around his position at the barred back window. Wells paused for a moment to reload.

“Shit fire!” Bowen jumped back as a rotting, three-fingered hand appeared at the barred window, grasping at his head. “Holy damned Jesus Christ on a jet ski!” He stumbled backward off his cot, tripped on the toilet and banged his already bandaged head on the cinderblock walls of the small cell. “Ow!”

“Shut up,” said Miller. She peered though the smoke in Bowen’s general direction. “Bob, how are you holding up?”

Wells fired the shotgun again. Steel balls ripped the head off another zombie. A wide cloud of blood, brains and skull resulted. The zombie, a little girl in a puffy white dress, went over backwards, tumbling over other bodies. A moment later, an old man began clambering over the rapidly growing wall of undead. They kept coming. The floodlights threw long shadows past them, like long black ribbons running off into the desert.

“Not good, Sheriff.” Wells looked over his shoulder at Miller, then down at the growing pile of empty ammo boxes and shell casings. “Running low, here. Fact, I’m down to about three boxes of ammo, and there are more coming. Maybe we been et by a bitch wolf and shat over a thousand foot cliff.”

Miller began to worry, something she hadn’t done in a long time. She was doing only slightly better on ammo, but just because they had stocked more 30.06 than shotgun shells last month. Miller sighted another zombie, a decaying Mrs. McCormick, and fired. The right eye imploded, a reddish-grey cloud blooming at the back of its head. The woman fell forward, only to be replaced by another female limping behind her. Miller called to Stillman. “Any luck with the phones?”

“There’s a ring, but no one picks up. I’ve tried every number in your book, and a few of my own. I get a machine or one of those God-damned automatic messages every time.” He slammed his fist on the dusty drop cloth. Dust rose from Wells’ desk. “Whole world must be screwed up. Bet those Goddamned A-rab terrorists done this.”

“Man, we’re running out of time,” said Bowen. He paced to and fro in his cell, fondling the bandage on his head.

“If you have any brilliant ideas,” Miller said coolly, targeting the next zombie, “now’s the time to share.”

“Sure I got one. Let me and Stillman loose and give us a couple of them scatter guns.”

“Not a fucking chance!” Wells, reloading again, turned his weapon on Bowen. “We ain’t letting you anywhere near those weapons.”

“Bob,” said Miller quietly, without looking up, “cover your position and shut up.”

“You ain’t seriously thinking of arming this piece of shit, are you, Penny?”

Miller looked, turned her Remington rifle on him and screamed, “Duck!”

Wells dropped to the floor, scattering red plastic shells. Miller fired at the huge zombie, a tourist in Bermuda shorts, hitting it in the fat belly. The thing didn’t even notice it had been shot. It reached down to Wells and grabbed him by the shoulder. Wells brought the muzzle of his pump-action shotgun under the zombie’s chin and fired. The resulting boom was deafening. The zombie’s head exploded and the escaping shot shattered the window above. Glass fragments, splinters and vaporized brains showered down on Wells. On the edge of sanity, he giggled. His broad-rimmed hat protected his face from the fallout, but his uniform was red and soaking wet. Wells pushed the zombie out the window, out of sight.

Stillman suddenly shifted. “Behind you, Sheriff!”

In one smooth movement, Miller drew her pistol and stuck it in the mouth of a child zombie coming in through the window. She winced but pulled the trigger, and the dead boy—one she didn’t know, thankfully—slid below the windowsill with a hole in his brainstem.

Wells resumed his first position, firing madly to keep up with the ground he had lost.

“There are still more coming,” said Bowen, peering out his little cell window. His voice was high and tight with panic.

“We aren’t going to make it, are we?” Stillman looked ready to piss in his pants. A crashing sound erupted from Sheriff Miller’s office area. “What the fuck was that?”

Miller didn’t know if she should keep firing through the window or shift to deal with the new threat. Torn, the Sheriff tried to keep her eye on the window and her office simultaneously. “Fuck a duck!” she mumbled under her breath.

Suddenly the door to Miller’s office burst open. A zombie in full football gear emerged through the door, cleats clacking on the tile. The foul smell of decomposition flooded the room. Wells swung around and blasted at it, but only took off one shoulder pad. The shot came close enough to Stillman to cause him to jump. He was still handcuffed to the chair, and went over backwards. The zombie wore the number twelve and looked like a quarterback. It turned to Stillman. It was just shy of two yards away and moving closer. It fell on Stillman, biting off large chunks of the small man’s face. Stillman shrieked like a girl. Blood spouted and pooled around him.

Miller struggled to get a clean shot. Before she could fire, Wells made his own decision. He shot the quarterback, exploding his helmet and shearing off the top of the boy’s head. Sadly, half of Stillman’s face vanished as well.

Stillman lay still, mouth gaping wide. Blood pooled red around him.

“Needles!” Bowen stood at the cell door, gripping the bars. “Wells, you miserable fuck. You killed him.”

Wells shrugged. “Sucker was toast anyway.”

Another zombie in a filthy business suit emerged from the office. Miller fired, hitting the thing in the right arm to no effect. She shot it through the face and it dropped like something made of sticks and rags.

“Fall back!” Miller grabbed a box of ammo as she retreated. Wells scooped up two boxes of shells and followed the sheriff.

Miller dashed into the old cinderblock jailhouse, motioned Wells in and closed the door after him. She turned the key in the lock, and stepped back from the barred door. “At least that will keep them out for a while.”

“A while?” Bowen’s voice cracked. “That’s your master plan?”

Miller turned to confront Bowen, but she was cut off by a blast from Wells’ shotgun. The new zombie went down, but several of the shot ricocheted off the iron bars, some fragments narrowly missing Miller’s head.

“Knock that shit off,” Miller said. “They can’t get in here. And, yes, that’s my plan. Find a way to stay alive.”

“How are we supposed to get out?” whined Bowen. He seemed afraid, alone in his own little cell.

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up and let the lady think?” Wells raised his shotgun to his hip, aimed at Bowen.

Miller put her hand on the warm barrel. She shoved it down, hard. “Bob, we’ve got enough to worry about as it is. Besides, he’s my responsibility.”

“Give me two reasons not to blow his ass to hamburger,” snapped Wells, jerking the weapon out of her grasp.

Miller ignored Wells’ insubordination. A gore-splattered housewife was reaching through the jailhouse door. The moaning of the creatures outside the jailhouse door was constant and piteous, impossibly loud. Wells drew his sidearm and shot one, two, three times. They fell, piling in front of the barred door. Others tugged them aside and struggled to get in. The entrance was blocked for the time being. Those outside began to eat at the ones in the way. The beasts turned upon one another, biting and clawing.

She stood between Wells and the temporarily blocked door. “Listen up. We’re in deep shit. The rest of the guns and nearly all of the ammo are out there with them,” she said. “We have no food in here—it’s all in the galley. No one knows we’re here. That means we’re on our own. If we’re going to get through this, I can’t have you two at each other’s throats. We need to work together.”

Miller stepped up to the cell door where Bowen waited. She hesitated, reading his eyes, and then unlocked the door.

“Wait!” Deputy Wells put his hand on Miller’s. He had a look of real terror on his face. “You ain’t actually gonna trust that scum-sucking bastard, are you?”

“I don’t see we have any choice,” she replied. She turned the key in the lock, swung the door open. It squealed. “Come on out.”

Bowen stepped forward, bloody from the cut on his head. He smiled for the first time. Seeing that grin, Wells brought his shotgun up to his shoulder, aiming at Bowen’s head. Bowen stopped short and looked at the sheriff.

“Bob,” she said quietly, “until this shit storm is all over, he’s with us. Got it?”

Wells glared at Miller. He could see that she meant it. He lowered the shotgun.

“Scratch,” she said, using the prisoner’s gang name, “don’t make me regret this.” Miller unbuckled her gun belt and handed it over to Bowen. Disgusted, Wells turned away and spat on the floor.

“Thank you, Sheriff. That’s mighty decent of you.” Bowen buckled the belt around his hips like an old-style gunslinger. He quietly drew the handgun. Expertly, Bowen pulled the slide halfway back to make certain it was loaded. In one smooth movement, he raised the pistol and fired. Wells’ face collapsed into itself. His thick neck gushed; the lifeless body dropped heavily to the floor.

Instantly, Miller and Bowen both raised their weapons. They aimed at each other. Mexican standoff. The mob of creatures outside kept trying to push and shove their way into the jail.

“Drop it,” said Miller from the other end of her rifle. She was stunned to see her hands were still not trembling. They stared at one another in silence. On the floor, what was left of Wells farted noisily.

“Sorry, Sheriff,” said Bowen. He grinned. “That prick has been looking for a way to get shot since he cracked my skull. I was just, you know, helping out.”

“You’re still my prisoner, Scratch. Put down your weapon!”

“What, so you can lock me in that cell again to get eaten alive by them things?” He gestured toward the door behind her. “You saw what that son of a bitch did to Needles a minute ago. He flat out had that coming. Like you said, we got to work together. Now come on, they’ll be on us again soon enough.”

Miller applied a small amount of pressure to the trigger. The Remington seemed to vibrate. She was about to fire when she saw a hulking creature appear behind Bowen. Miller rapidly shifted her aim and shot the tall, thin zombie just before it bit down on Bowen’s neck. It flew backwards.

Bowen’s gun discharged. His shot was a half second behind hers. Miller found herself spinning; a pain in her left shoulder that bordered on unbearable. She went down hard, hitting the tiles. Her small body slid through slimy gore and entrails. She ended up several feet away, face down. She passed out.

Miller woke up to a buzzing sound. Her right eye wouldn’t open; it was crusted shut and covered with blood. Her left shoulder hurt like blazes. Someone was talking to her, but she couldn’t understand—the shooting had damaged her ears. She could feel pressure on her shoulder. She looked up to see Bowen kneeling over her.

“You awake, Sheriff?” she heard Bowen saying from a distance. “You’re one tough bitch, I’ll tell you that.”

“What happened?” she managed. Her voice sounded far away.

“We made it,” he announced. “I shored up the hole in the wall with some of the lumber, pumped a few rounds into some of those miserable fucks, and then they just kinda went away. Thought you died a couple of times, but sure as shit, you made it.”

He finished tying the bandage around her arm, stood, and picked up a shotgun.

“Now here’s the way this is going to work. I’m gonna get you outside, into your truck, and put the keys in your hand. Then I’m gonna hop on my ride and get the ever-lovin’ fuck out of here. After that, you’re on your own. Deal?”

“You killed Wells,” she protested, without much conviction.

“Come on, Sheriff. Let’s let bygones be bygones. He had it coming and you know it. Besides, what are you gonna do, arrest me?” He held the shotgun casually, and smiled.

“I saved your life.”

“Yes you did, much obliged. So now I’m gonna save yours, and we’ll be even.” He hefted her off the floor. “God, you are a sight, Sheriff. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you was one of them zombies.” Bowen slung a shotgun over his shoulder and carried her past the decomposing bodies. It was early morning outside. They went out the back door.

The dead lay everywhere. Wells had a hell of an aim, that was sure, because hardly one had its head anymore. The stench was unbearable, but Miller was too weak to vomit. The first hint of the sun peaked out over pines to the east, bringing a bone-chilling wind. She felt cold, colder than she’d ever been before. It was the loss of blood, she knew it, but she couldn’t do much of anything about it. Miller shivered.

Bowen opened the door to her cruiser, a worn brown-and-white Ford Blazer, and shoved Miller inside. He got her feet and hands situated on the pedals and wheel, took the keys from her gun belt. He inserted them into the ignition, started it up.

“There, I done what I promised. Good luck, and thanks for saving my ass.”

“Scratch,” she began, “I could die without your help.”

“Oh, quit bitchin’, Sheriff.”

He closed the door with a slam, strolled over to his impounded Harley. Her ears were still ringing. She watched Bowen through the windshield as he stepped on the starter, saw him gun the engine and shake a bit when it roared into life. A hulking zombie came out of nowhere. It jumped up behind Bowen, kind of like it was going for a joy ride, and then chomped down on his neck. Bowen’s eyes popped open, all funny and wide. Blood sprayed his face. The motorcycle went over sideways, taking Bowen and the huge zombie with it. His boots kicked. The motor kept roaring. She couldn’t hear if he screamed.

Moments later the zombie reappeared. It looked up at her, Bowen’s blood dripping from yellow, broken teeth. It rose up, lumbered towards her. Miller had a moment of clarity. Her adrenaline kicked in. She let her hand fall on the gearshift, slammed it into drive. The Blazer surged forward. The zombie didn’t flinch. It went ‘thump thump’ as she drove clean over it.

Swerving like a drunken teen on prom night, she made her way roughly out onto the open highway. Sheriff Miller didn’t know what she would find out there in what was left of the world, but she knew that she had a job to do.

And no fucking zombies were gonna stand in her way.

All the Dead Lie Down

The large Hollywood motor home/trailer squatted incongruously in a ragged patch of shade, wedged right between the red-streaked thighs of a long crack in the hardpan. This was in a remote part of a destitute county that tiptoed between Texas and Mexico. It was the perfect spot to do a quick rewrite of a western movie; a timeless, shimmering country freckled with scrub brush and gopher holes, ground parched and panting. The huge vehicle itself, on loan from the production company, wasn’t half bad either. Maggie had a DVD player, a Nintendo, books and some video games. And for Pete Collier, power for his laptop, a reliable air conditioning unit, and a comfortable bed with down pillows. They’d only planned on staying a few days, a week tops. Still, Maggie had just turned ten. She got bored easily. Normally, Pete would not have dragged her along at all, but…

Pete stopped typing as something like a breeze moved along the back of his neck and stroked a few hairs erect. He heard an eerie sound, something pressured and tiny, the amplified scream of a field mouse. His stomach flipped over. He spun around in the office chair.

Maggie, mute since the death of her mother in their car wreck a few months before, was standing slack-jawed and weak-kneed in the evening heat, pointing at the bookshelf. Poor little angel. She’d been struggling to scream.

“Sweetie, what is it? What’s wrong?”

Pete rushed to her side, his tired eyes searching the trailer. Maggie held on like a drowning child, little chest heaving. Pete felt tears moisten his shirt. Then he saw what had shocked her and sighed. He knelt down, brushed her blonde hair aside, felt the mournful gaze searching for answers.

“We talked about this, Maggie. He was old for a goldfish, you know?” Archie had been swimming upside down in the bowl for a couple of days. He’d had time to prepare Maggie. But still, with the death of her mother so fresh in her mind…

Just like you to do this, Gwen,

Pete thought. So I cheated a time or two, who doesn’t? But then you dump me for some no-talent TV director who’s rude to my kid, move to San Diego so I hardly know her anymore, rip me off for a fortune then let the asshole drive drunk on a rainy night. How much did she see of what happened? Did you bleed out in front of her? Did the poor baby have to watch his brains splatter on the windshield? Or did she just wake up in the backseat afterwards, and maybe catch it all under the emergency lights as they pried her squashed family out?

Fuck you, Gwen. I hope you’re burning in hell.

“Do you want to bury him?” Someone else’s voice from another dimension. Pete stuffed his ongoing rage into a mental dumpster. “Just like we planned?”

Maggie nodded. Pete kissed her forehead. He covered the fish bowl with his body, scooped the tiny fish out of the water and dropped it into a waiting sandwich bag.

“Come on.”

Outside, the sunset was fading, steadily crumbling into darker colors like a widening bruise. Greedy desert air sucked the moisture out of their clothing. Pete grabbed the flashlight and shovel and led Maggie a few yards into the gloom, where they’d already marked the spot with a bouquet of sage flowers. Maybe this will give her a bit of closure. If we do this thing right, perhaps she’ll come back into this world for a while, at least begin to speak… Her perpetually wounded presence had grown devastating to him, a brute silence that caused clocks to thump forward like slow blows to a body bag. One gasp could morph into the wail of a tormented prisoner. Please talk to me, Maggie. Say “Daddy” just one more time. Save me…

“You hold the flashlight,” Pete said.

Maggie obediently stepped back, leaving her father, the bagged goldfish and the small shovel trapped in a frail, wavering beam. Further away, the night slammed down hard, like the lid of a coffin. Pete dug, tossed a bit of dirt, dug deeper. “Think nice things, sweetie,” he said. “Think about your goldfish going to be with Mommy and Uncle Jack in heaven.”

He scooped, tossed. Scooped and tossed. But then the shovel clanked a bit, slid to the right, and after brief resistance crunched through something. Pete’s skin writhed. He knew this had turned bad, could sense that even before the sickly sweet odor assailed his nostrils. An insect distracted Maggie. She looked down and away. The beam of her flashlight crawled across the ground to reveal the face and shallow grave of a young woman with Latino features. Her eyes were open, lips parted slightly, mouth still dripping dirt. Reflected moonlight glinted from a cheap cross still dangling from her mottled neck.

Pete jumped back. He quickly angled his body so that Maggie’s view was obstructed, stuffed the baggie and fish into the dry brush and tamped the earth back into place.

He mumbled a simple prayer.

“Let’s go back inside.”

««—»»

Later, something nocturnal screeched high up in the rocks. Hazy stars speckled black velvet sky. Moonlight bore down, but was beaten back by harsh electric lights. The tall, slender Sheriff chewed on his wet cigar butt. His face had skin tight as saddle leather. He shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you. Sorry you caught such a fright, but as you can see, we dug things up pretty good.”

“I saw her,” Pete said. He still did. Something wet broke in his chest.

“Well,” The Sheriff watched his men turning out the lights, rounding up the electrical cord, the tarps and sheets of clear plastic. “People see things ‘round here.”

Pete hugged himself against a sudden chill. “What do you mean by that?”

Maggie was asleep inside, having bought his cover story that this was all about his next movie. The other lawmen tore down the yellow crime scene tape, walked back to the trucks as if more than a little pissed off.

“What do you mean, Sheriff, people see things?”

“Just that,” the Sheriff said.

Maybe you were right, Gwen. Maybe I have been steadily losing it.

“Look, you believed me when I called.”

“Sure did. You see that flat area behind you, goes off into the scrub? That fairly loose dirt? Wets get found there, from time to time.”

“Wets?” Pete thought he’d understood, knew the history of this area and spoke a bit of Spanish. He just wanted to be sure.

“Wetbacks coming across looking for work,” the Sheriff said. “You go a bit higher up the arroyo, you’ll find clumps of old running shoes, empty water bottles, torn clothes. If you search and dig, more than a handful of bones. Wets. Lot of ’em just die of thirst, but some get themselves murdered by coyotes. And I don’t mean the critter.”

“No,” Pete said. “The outlaws that bring them across.”

“Yup, those bastards. They’re called ‘coyotes,’ men that take money in exchange for a little hope. A few get ’em just about to or over the border, cut their throats or gun ’em down for the money and property. See, turns out some people just too damned lazy and dishonest to bother doin’ their jobs.”

“Sounds pretty awful.”

“You don’t know the half of it, mister. What it’s like to really find not one, but maybe a dirt field full of dead folks who just wanted a decent wage.” The Sheriff looked up at the merciless stars. He spat and turned to go. “Anyway, don’t surprise me at all people see a ghost ‘round here now and then.”

The cars drove away with a spray of sand and the rattle of pebbles and stone. The little clearing fell silent.

Pete stared into the gloom at that one patch of ground. He imagined the desperate terror of a young woman’s final moments, thought he heard a frail moan and a rattle of earth and pebbles on skin. Thought about Maggie. His miserable life. Damn I hate you, Gwen. He shivered and went back into the trailer for a strong drink.

Maggie was tucked in but restless, so Pete worked on the screenplay for a while, but he was pretty wiped out. His heart wasn’t in it. The trailer felt claustrophobic but he was afraid to go back outside. When he peered out the window the now unclean sand seemed to have been sketched with shadows wearing compasino white and faded straw hats, and among the boulders he saw beautiful young women with wet brown eyes and braided black hair. Enough. Pete had enough video, digital photographs and had taken copious notes. It was time to leave. They’d drive back to the set at first light.

Suddenly Maggie sat partway up, stiffened. Her lips moved, and for one suspended moment Pete thought she would speak to him from the depths of a bad dream, but then she slumped back down on the bed. Her eyes remained closed. Outside in the night a mournful wailing filled the hills, as real coyotes honored a full blood moon. Pete watched, heart aching with sadness for his daughter’s suffering. The familiar hatred returned. Fuck you, Gwen. Just fuck you for leaving us both. He sipped some scotch. Then dropped the glass on the carpet.

Maggie’s chest was still as stone. She was not breathing.

“Honey! Honey!” Pete rushed to her side, his heart thudding. Tried CPR, entered an almost comic state trying to both reach for the cell phone and continue to push and blow, wondered in the back of his mind if the law would come again, or simply consider him insane this time, and thus allow this sweet little girl to die.

He had punched in 9 and then 1 when she grunted and her eyes popped open. Her skin was pale as a church candle. She looked like an antique doll at a garage sale. Maggie moved her lips, tried to speak. Caught his eyes and held them tight like someone slipping from the ledge of a tall building.

“M..m..m…” Christ, she was going to talk!

“Thank you, God,” Pete wept. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry, but Mommy isn’t here. Mommy is gone.”

The little girl struggled, kept trying to speak. Suddenly, the trailer grew unbearably cold and unnaturally still. Hope soured and rapidly turned to dread. Pete felt sanity slip away.

“Mama?”

the girl cried out in a flawless Spanish accent, face twisted, eyes abruptly flat and dead. Then she laughed, high and shrill. “Mama me a mondato!”

Mother?

Mother sent me to find you.

_______________

“‘twas not death for I stood up

and all the dead lie down.”

—Emily Dickinson

Thus Was His Death

The three young soldiers used a standard issue metal battering ram to bust through a metal gate placed between the two, slightly off-center pillars of concrete; the ram going clang and again clang like some macabre church bell. The cement had obviously been cut with sand, because the wall rapidly exploded into fine, white dust and the gate collapsed with a low booming noise and fell flat into the patio. Eidson and Garcia went in first, night vision goggles on, fanning left and right, ready to spray the hell out of the premises at the slightest provocation. Hayden waited outside, throat dry and bowels loose. The garden wall was a good ten feet high, so Hayden felt his shoulders bunch up in a vain attempt to defend against enemy fire directed from above, but the anticipated ambush didn’t happen.

Eidson and Garcia made short work of the front door. Hayden heard them explode loudly into the building; shouting and stomping, hoping to terrify any occupants into submission.

“Clear!”

That was Rudy Garcia, moving right through the Hajji’s kitchen, wearing night vision goggles and a Chicano ‘tude. To the left, silence. Outside, Hayden swallowed dusty air, swept the street behind them with his burning eyes. Not a raghead in sight, but that didn’t prove anything. He had to go inside, orders were orders; so against his own better judgment, Hayden slipped through the gate, trotted heavily across the patio tiles and peered through the front door.

“Eidson?”

Hayden heard a thundering crash half a second later, followed by swearing in English. “I’m okay, I just tripped,” Eidson called. “Jesus, it stinks in here.” And then, after a few long seconds: “Guys, we got bodies.”

Hayden felt his skin tingle and his gut go hollow. Bodies?

Garcia, wire thin and gang tattooed, whipped by like someone on roller skates. Hayden held his position in the doorway, eyes awash in glowing green images, busily shifting to the street and back.

“Holy shit, ese,” Garcia said, “Come on, check it out.”

Tom Hayden squinted through his goggles. He’d been in combat for two days. They were forty miles west of Baghdad; ostensibly chasing an insurgent named Mahajan through the streets of Fallujah. This whole section of the grid was cemetery quiet, even though half the First Battalion had been raising holy hell from door-to-door all night.

They’d been lost since 0320.

“Man, this is gross. What do you figure happened?” Jack Eidson sounded genuinely disturbed, and he didn’t rattle easily. “Do you think these were hostages?”

“Bad Hajjis just behead their hostages,” Garcia said, quietly. “Dude, these folks look like they got skinned alive.”

“You got to be shitting me.”

The stench reached his nose. Don’t breathe it in. Curiosity got the better of Hayden. He eased through the opening and took a look into the large, empty bedroom. The world turned white and his eyes slammed shut.

“Ouch!”

“Sorry,” Eidson said. “Take off your goggles.” He’d already used his cigarette lighter and placed two candles in a niche in the wall, causing a bright flare in the NV gear. Hayden blinked rapidly, took in the room. He pinched his nose shut to protect against the odor. The windows had been boarded up, and the walls were covered with dark blood and viscera that seemed to have been applied with a paint gun. He looked down, caught a quick glimpse of raw torso, flayed cheeks and grinning skulls. Hayden grimaced, shook his head.

Eidson belched. “Oh, man. I thought I’d seen some bad shit, but…”

Garcia laughed. “Don’t blow chunks, dude, this is like a crime scene now. If you’re going to hurl, you got to do it outside.”

Eidson stepped carefully around his comrades and moved back through the living room. He went out into the night. Garcia and Hayden heard his vomit splattering through the dirt of the abandoned garden.

“We’d better tell Captain Walden.”

“Com is still down,” Garcia replied. He looked at his watch. “It’s near sunup. I say we secure this location until then and pop smoke to call a chopper. They can mark the spot and take us home.”

“You’ve got rank.” Hayden shrugged. He was still pinching his nose shut and covering his mouth. “I suppose that’s as good a plan as any. I sure as hell wasn’t looking forward to hitting ten more houses on our own. Hey, Eidson, you okay?”

They heard another coughing sound, and then some dry heaves.

Hayden coughed. “Come on Rudy, let’s go outside.”

“No, let’s have a look around,” Garcia said, quietly. “Just make sure you don’t touch anything.”

Hayden felt a flash of adrenaline that made his body twitch. On the whole, he’d rather have slipped the NV goggles back into place and trotted back outside looking for trouble. He didn’t care for being trapped inside with a stack of naked, mutilated bodies, but orders were orders. He lowered his laser-modified, silenced Heckler & Koch 9mm MP-5 and found the flashlight clipped to his utility belt. He stayed back, swept the beam along the cracked, mortar wall. He tried not to breathe too deeply.

“Garcia,” Hayden whispered, “what the fuck is that?”

Garcia moved closer. In the shadows, the putrid stench seemed to creep up his nostrils like twin tendrils of foul smoke. The wall was covered with what appeared to be writing, but this was no language Hayden—who’d had some college—had ever seen before. The weird symbols were boldly and broadly rendered; created in myriad, macabre ways. Some were smeared in human excrement, many garishly painted in dried blood; others had been carved into the wall before being stuffed with twigs and strips of human flesh. A large pattern cut into the brick resembled a pentagram.

“Some kind of cult shit, maybe?” Garcia, closest to the scene, seemed oblivious to the horror, merely fascinated by their macabre discovery.

“Looks that way,” Hayden said. He shifted further toward the doorway. He was determined to stay as far away from the evil markings as humanly possible. Besides, his night vision was beginning to return, and having his back to an opening made him nervous. “Rudy, we made a ton of noise coming in here.”

“We ain’t seen a Hajji for almost half an hour,” Garcia said. Then he abruptly leaned forward from the waist, like a conductor taking a bow, and examined one of the arcane patterns from only inches away. His nose wrinkled, but this time only half in disgust.

“Damn, I wish I had a camera. This is some wild shit, dude. Newsweek would pay a fortune for a story like this.”

“MI would never let us tell it.”

“You got that right. You pricks would censor the Pope. What do you figure happened here?”

Hayden shrugged. “Like you said, looks like some kind of cult thing. Some folks got a little carried away, and a few others met Allah a lot faster than they wanted to. Let’s get out of here.”

“Fucking towel heads are all maniacs.”

“You ever hear of anything like this in Islam before?”

Garcia shrugged. “What’s that supposed to mean, ese?”

“Any religion spawns cults and weird offshoots,” Hayden said, still easing away. He pinched his nose again and his voice sounded almost comical. “Remember the Spanish Inquisition? Those good Christians cheerfully tortured people and burned them at the stake in order to save their souls.”

Garcia took a deep breath. He swiveled his head rapidly, and in the rippling shadows his eyes burned like coals. “You defending these pricks?”

Hayden flinched involuntarily, took another quick step backwards. He held his breath, shifted the MP5 and clenched the stock in sweaty hands. “I’m not defending anybody. I’m just saying that’s all.”

“Look at this shit, man. Look around you.” And by now Garcia was moving in a slow, loping circle, still bent at the waist, those large orbs still glowing, reflecting yellow candlelight. The shifts in position made his voice seem to deepen and then echo off the stained floor tiles. He was now panting heavily. Hayden followed carefully, cautiously, with very tired eyes.

It was the room. The markings. There was something else here, something that writhed with a fetid evil. The place was alive, weighted; grim as a Chicago slaughterhouse.

Hayden stared. Two female bodies were missing breasts, hands and feet; one old man had been blinded and castrated; genitals protruded from his toothless mouth.

“Savages.” Garcia was still pacing, looking around, working himself up, swearing under his breath like a man possessed. His panting had intensified.

“Look.”

One giant Arab man was like some medical exhibit; perfectly skinned from the neck to the ankles, all bled out; bulging tendons and rigid musculature perfectly threaded with bluish veins. His face was covered with a white sheet that had been badly stained and splattered. His hands and feet were bound tight with wire that had cut deeply into the slender strips of untouched flesh.

“And check this out.” Garcia leaned over the corpse. He was breathing so heavily his breath rocketed long, twin plumes into the morning air. Garcia reached down with his trembling right hand and yanked the cloth away, revealing a face still contorted by agony beyond description. The screaming mouth had been gagged with what appeared to be a tennis ball pierced with twine.

Hayden said, “Jesus.”

“Jesus had nothing to do with this,” Garcia hissed. “You know what I say? Let’s go find us a Hajji family or two, right fucking now. We’ll bring them in here and give them some of their own.”

“What?

“I said we give them some of their own. What do you say?”

“I’m not following, Rudy.”

“Yes you are. Let’s get some. I mean then do all of them, bro, just like this. Men, women and children.”

Hayden had finally arrived at the doorway. He kept his weapon at port arms and called out. No answer. Hayden took one deep breath, then recoiled a bit. He let it out slowly.

Meanwhile, Rudy Garcia dropped his weapon and straightened up. For a moment his handsome face appeared normal, Hayden even fancied a bit of sanity had reasserted itself; it was as if Garcia were asking himself why he’d just said what he’d said, but then that wickedness returned and he flattened himself against the stained wall, sniffing deeply at the smeared shit like a wild animal tracking prey.

As he snorted, Hayden saw a long string of drool fall from his mouth, then ooze down one sleeve to the leg of his pants.

“Eidson?”

Hayden’s voice startled Garcia, who spun around and issued an odd, crisp laugh, almost like the bark of a dog. He was bent over again, now down and to one side. His raised, empty hands had become claws, tense lips pulled back from clenched, white teeth. He grinned.

“Meat,” Garcia said, quietly. He repeated himself, like a demented child determined to be understood. “Meat.”

He seemed to have forgotten about the rifle lying in the dust, near his boots.

“Yo.” It was Eidson, outside in the night, finally answering the call.

“Get your ass in here,” Hayden said, as calmly as he could. “I think we have ourselves a situation.”

Eidson edged away from his own pool of vomit. He gathered up his rifle and canteen; the metallic sounds clanged faintly off garden walls and barely reached the gory room where the two men stood, eye to eye.

“Rudy,” Hayden said, “I am going to move on outside, now.” He raised his MP-5 for emphasis. “Come with me.”

Garcia’s eyes went crafty. Hayden saw him gauge the time it would take to reach his own weapon, aim and fire.

“We leave this to my MI guys,” Hayden said. “You were right the first time. We go into the yard, and come morning we pop smoke and take a bird home.”

Garcia chuckled. “You can’t feel it.” The sentence seemed oddly garbled, half statement and half question. “You can’t feel it from over there.”

“Oh, I feel it,” Hayden said. “Let’s get out.”

Garcia leaned back against the wall. He took another deep breath from nose and mouth, like a man inhaling the finest possible tobacco. “God at work,” he whispered. “Flesh returning to the earth smells so…sweet.” Thick saliva was now pouring from his half open jaws.

Hayden nearly shot him between the eyes, then and there, but Eidson appeared behind him, in the dark living room.

“I’m sorry,” Eidson said. “I just…”

Hayden’s attention wandered for a dangerous half second. Sensing the change, Garcia threw himself flat on the flayed male body and grabbed for his rifle. Hayden swung his MP-5 around and up, but Garcia had already aimed his own weapon, so Hayden backed into the living room without firing just as Garcia released a short burst that struck the doorway and left divots in the splintering wood.

“Shit!” That was Eidson, who was now right behind Hayden, too damned close, and the two collided and fell backwards into the living room. Hayden floundered on top of his friend, tangled in gear, arms and legs akimbo. He rolled away to position his back to the corner, fought back up to his knees.

Garcia appeared in the doorway and by this point something about him was both below and beyond human. His face was suffused with blood and contorted with a consuming lust for pain. He held his weapon too high and slanted, like someone unfamiliar with its design. When he pulled the trigger the rifle kicked up. He lost control of it and peppered the floor.

Three rounds caught Eidson in the lower leg. He shrieked and writhed, his own weapon forgotten. Garcia cocked his head like a demented parrot. He seemed to have forgotten Hayden. He dropped his gun, pulled his trench knife and came forward. Hayden let him move well into the room, drop to his knees near Eidson, who was just beginning to make sense of the situation.

Hayden’s mind raced. He grimaced. Suddenly, he lowered his weapon.

Garcia stabbed at Eidson, who cried out with pain and bewilderment. The first try glanced off the body armor.

“Rudy, don’t!’ Edison tried to scramble backwards. Garcia followed. Another stab slipped under the side of the chest plate and went in deep. Hayden figured it had struck a lung, because red froth bubbled from Edison’s open mouth. Garcia moved even closer, pulled his friend’s hair back and cut his white throat. A pulse of thick fluid popped out, another and another.

Garcia let Eidson fall to the floor.

Hayden waited.

Garcia seemed to remember Hayden’s presence. His face turned puzzled, then ecstatic. He turned slowly, on bloody knees, knife held low and wide.

“You do feel it,” he said. He smiled fondly, father to child. “You do.”

“Yes,” Hayden said, quietly, and nodded. “I do.”

He had left the MP-5 on automatic; his one, long burst tore Garcia’s head, arms and lower legs into several wet pieces. Hayden sighed. He shook his head to clear the ringing from his ears, took a deep breath. Orders are orders.

That stench…

Hayden reached into his belt and produced the small cell phone he’d been issued. He punched in ‘send’ with no idea what number he’d reach. A brusque female voice answered at once.

“This is……”

The woman cut him off. “We know who you are, soldier.”

“We found the site.” Hayden glanced at his GPS and relayed some precise coordinates. “Whatever it is, this is some scary shit, lady, just like I was told.”

“You are…alone now?”

“It’s done.”

“Stay put, soldier. Smash that phone.”

“Affirmative. Out.”

Hayden dropped the cell phone and crushed it with the butt of his rifle. He backed into the corner and surveyed his handiwork. It would be clear to observers that Garcia had gone psycho at the crime scene, killed Eidson, and then forced Hayden to shoot him dead. Hayden felt reasonably satisfied there wouldn’t be any untoward complications. He didn’t know exactly what had happened to Garcia in there, and he didn’t want to know.

Orders are orders.

By dawn Hayden would be on his way back to Kuwait, and later in the day he’d make his private report to the Military Intelligence Officer who’d given him the assignment.

“Sorry,” Hayden whispered to his dead friends. But he didn’t actually mean it, not really, because in some strange way the whole bizarre experience had felt exciting, uplifting even; all in all, quite…exhilarating.

Hayden leaned back, deciding. Finally, he took one long, deep breath. And then another.

He began to gather weapons and ammo.

_______________

“Thus was his death

in keeping with his life.”

—Ovid

Violent Delights

Child, what

you fear will come to get you in the night, that’s right…

Jack had read that somewhere, perhaps in some piece of macabre modern fiction, maybe a horror tale. The kind of thing scathingly condemned in stuffy classrooms by pale professors—unpublished authors all—who secretly felt superior to Ambrose Bierce and Poe, never mind Stephen King. Or maybe Jack had written it himself, under some mass-market pen name, a dozen years ago. His mind was a junkyard these days.

A thought: I am afraid of dying.

The flesh twitched, felt pain. The comfort of oblivion was lifted.

Jack Kincaid smelled shit and knew it was his own. He cringed. A substantial part of his cheek seemed to be missing, or perhaps peeled back. He could taste blood. His bare teeth were pressing against something cold and dusty. Jack tried to lick his teeth but his tongue felt sticky and thick; it would not obey. His eyes were open wide, a fact which surprised him, because he saw nothing but darkness and what appeared to be a piece of splintered plywood with tools hanging on it; a rusty hammer, a screwdriver, some pliers and several small wrenches.

Where the fuck am I? What’s going on?

He could not move his head

I’m hurt. Something is horribly wrong.

There was no pain, not at first, just a burgeoning fist of icy fingers that slowly unclenched in his abdomen. Jack tried to move his legs, but nothing changed. He felt paralyzed. Suddenly Jack wondered if his penis was also dead, or even missing in action. The very idea made him sick to his stomach.

What happened to me?

Jack Kincaid remembered: He had been pounding on the door to the liquor store—it’s not even two o’clock yet you lazy asshole—glaring through the window in thirsty frustration. But the bored old man closed the blinds anyway and locked up for the night. Jack kicked the steel security door as hard as he could. The action made a booming sound not unlike the hovering thunder. The door didn’t budge, but now his wet toes hurt. He gathered his clothing around him. He cursed God and then cringed like a superstitious schoolboy when the heavy rainfall intensified.

There was nothing to be done. Nowhere to go. There came a clatter like nails pouring onto sheet metal as buckets of hail slammed down onto the awning. The racket was deafening. Jack stood in the doorway and sighed. Whatever happened to Jack Kincaid, once-published author of dark paperback fiction? Inquiring minds want to know! He fished through his empty pockets, feeling desperate. Found a Kool and lit up. The bitter smoke scorched his throat; the welcome kiss of nicotine fed his craving. He looked east and west but at 2:00 AM Sherman Way, now two feet deep in filthy rainwater, was devoid of traffic. He finished the cigarette and muttered lazy asshole under his breath.

Jack Kincaid stepped out onto the sidewalk. He was immediately soaked to the skin again. He hunched his shoulders forward and started walking. He had parked near a dumpster behind the Safeway Market, thinking their liquor department would remain open, but he’d been wrong. Now he had nearly four long blocks to walk. Jack had stashed a bottle of rotgut wine in the motel room for just such an emergency and now he was going to need it.

I’m toast. Done. I’ll never finish another book.

He looked up and down the boulevard and started into the crosswalk. I’m a fucking bum.

A car?

Jack Kincaid blinked and wiped water from his eyes. Twin headlights were coming, right down the middle of Sherman Way, as if the driver couldn’t make out the dotted dividing line because of the rain. Maybe a dark ragtop Mustang? The light turned red. Jack waved to the driver and continued on through the crosswalk, mumbling obscenities and pondering the cruel vagaries of life.

No!

The world slowed down, in that strange way it does when the body is afraid and the glands pump waves of adrenaline. Jack cried out “Wait!” He managed to turn his back partway to the hood and throw up an arm to defend his face just as the brakes squealed…

…and the Mustang hit him around waist level BOOM! Jack actually heard the bones in his hip crack. His nerves shrieked in agony and then everything went white and silent. He sailed through the air—somehow the Ford managed to knock him forward and up—as the car slowed. But the laws of physics decreed a second collision. As he came down he met the hood again. His spine crashed into the windshield and one of his legs extended through the broken safety glass. His lower back and legs went completely numb. A spray of sharp glass sandpapered his skin; nerves shrieked as facial tissue peeled away like a slice of ripe tomato. He passed out.

…And then woke up here, alone, looking at a bunch of tools turned orange with rust. Feeling numb and sleepy and in pain and like he was about to slip back into unconsciousness.

Jesus, no! I don’t want to die.

A sense of deep, immutable dread consumed Jack at the very thought of death. His heart stuttered. He shook off much of the physiological shock. His mind fed him an absurd tidbit; Woody Allen had once stated “I don’t mind dying; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Jack wrote noir fiction and taught droll classes on Existentialism; had often wittily discussed death anxiety with students, but never truly felt that terror until now. He forced himself to focus. He counted the wrenches, just to stay awake. I am in a shed of some kind, or perhaps somebody’s garage. What am I lying on?

He struggled to move. Agony lanced through his hips. He scratched with his fingernails and tapped. Some kind of metal, Oh Sweet Jesus. I am still lying on the hood of the car that hit me.

Jack Kincaid had been smashed enough times to know about driving in a blackout. He wondered if some drunk had hit him, then driven home and parked in his own garage. Would the man be up soon, respond to a vague memory and come out to check for damage to the vehicle? How long had he been here? Could it already be close to morning? Would someone find him in time?

I can’t die. I have a fucking novel to finish. I haven’t talked to my daughter in months and I owe my son that money I took from his college fund to cover my day trading losses. Oh fuck, I can’t die now. Not like this. Please…!

With considerable effort, he managed to move his head a bit and take in more of his surroundings. The garage was dark and he was indeed lying sideways on the hood of the car, halfway through the windshield, his lower body in the passenger seat, upper on the hood. A bit of light leaked through a vent, but it could have been anything; street lamp, porch light or the glint of early dawn. Two small concrete steps led up to a thick, unpainted wooden door that led into the house.

Jack ordered his hand to make a fist and failed. Tried again. The third time was the charm. He swallowed blood and tried to pound on the hood. His first attempt was too weak and his flesh just slid along the surface without making a sound. A twinge of pain shot down his back and caused a lumbar spasm. Agony made his teeth clench. His torn cheek flared white hot in response. He tried again, and this time succeeded in making some noise; a dull thud echoed through the garage. He pounded a few more times and then gave up. The effort exhausted Jack, and he closed his eyes. Help me, help me, don’t let me die like this, I’m afraid…

His heart fibrillated with excitement. Something had moved on the other side of the unpainted door. He heard some floorboards squeak. Jack managed one more thump and then tiny white dots sprinkled themselves over reality. He was close to passing out again. Jack was terrified he’d never wake up.

The floorboards creaked again, and then he heard some footsteps; moving down a hallway, probably, and heading for the garage.

Someone was coming! He fixed his eyes on the door and it seemed to enlarge in his vision, as if viewed through binoculars.

Thank you God, thank you…

The footsteps paused on the other side of the door. After a long moment, the door opened and a light came on. The naked bulb above him turned the garage a peculiar yellow. Jack had to close his eyes again. He forced himself to croak out some words: “Thank you, God.”

“Don’t make so much noise.”

What?

Jack opened his eyes and squinted. A young woman stood in the doorway. She was anorexic thin, pretty in her own way, with large blue eyes and long blonde hair tied up in a ponytail. She wore a tank top and torn blue-jean shorts and held a thick quart bottle of clear liquor in one dainty hand. Her voice was thin and petulant. She had a dark bruise below her right eye.

“Help me,” Jack whispered. “Please help me.”

The pretty girl sat down on the steps and hugged her bony knees. “I’d really like to,” she said, “but I can’t risk it. I’d be getting into trouble.”

Her boyfriend hit me and she’s terrified of him,

Jack thought miserably. He beats her. She won’t call the cops.

“Call 911,” he mumbled. “Get me an ambulance. Please.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Look, I know this sucks, but I have to consider my own position here, you know?”

“W-What?”

The girl was chewing gum. She blew a bubble that immediately popped and forced her to peel it away from her face. “Sorry. Ever since I quit smoking I have to chew gum to stay thin. I need to do something with my mouth, you know?” She took a sip of her liquor. He heard the contents sloshing.

Jack lay mute, pleading with his eyes. The girl peered at him, adopted a teenaged eeeewwww kind of expression and frowned. “You look really bad,” she said. She sniffed. “You stink, too.”

Improbably, Jack felt embarrassed by the stink of his own urine and excrement. He licked his lips and managed: “Sorry.”

“No,” the girl said sadly. “Don’t be. I’m sorry.”

“Huh?”

“I’m, like, so sorry I hit you.”

“Please. Call for help.”

“I can’t,” she said. She seemed genuinely upset. “Like I said, you have to understand my position.”

Jack raised his brows in a question. The effort hurt his ravaged cheek. The drying blood was stickier now and kept him halfway attached to the hood. A part of him still waited to hear about the abusive boyfriend, hoped he could convince her to call 911 and perhaps take herself to a safe house.

“My name is Honey,” she said. She smiled winningly. “I’m an actress, see? And I just got a part in this comedy pilot. It’s shooting tomorrow, as a matter of fact.” The grin grew wider. “This will get me into the Screen Actors Guild. I’m pretty excited.”

Jack lay still. He struggled to absorb her statement and finally croaked: “I…I don’t understand.”

She blushed scarlet. “I was really fucked up last night,” she said. “I hardly ever mix things, you know? But I had a ‘lude and some shots of tequila, and then tried to drive home. I feel like such an asshole. I barely remember hitting you, isn’t that weird? You took out the right side of my windshield, and I even bumped my head, but somehow I drove on home anyway. So here we are.”

“Help me,” Jack murmured. “Call an ambulance.”

She shrugged. “I wish I could.”

“Do something.”

“Oh, I want to. Really, I do. But if the news gets out I’d, like, totally lose this job and be back where I started from. Listen, you have to understand how hard it is to make it as an actor in this town.”

Jack stared at her. He was stunned. What you fear will come to get you in the night, that’s right… He felt a solitary drop of blood slip down his right nostril and exit towards the hood. Something thickened in his chest and he coughed up thumbtacks of pain. More blood. Fuck, I’m not going to make it.

“W-why won’t you help me?”

“Rehab,” she said.

Jack was fading in and out now, but she took his silence for an encouragement to continue. “I’ve always been afraid of rehab,” she continued chattily. “I know lots of big stars go there and everything, but I just can’t face life sober. That just terrifies the shit out of me, you know? Besides, a hit-and-run thing on my record, and I’m, like, totally fucked. So then I have to go into some low-budget rehab to avoid jail, and then when I finally get out I have no career on top of that? No way.”

“Please.” Use her name. Maybe it will make her feel more like you are a human being. “Please, Honey. It hurts.”

She nodded vigorously. “Oh, I can believe that, man. But the shock should settle in pretty soon, and then it won’t be so bad. I just looked up ‘shock’ on my computer, and frankly it’s kind of totally amazing that you’re awake at all.”

“This is murder,” Jack whispered. “You know that, don’t you?”

Honey blinked. Her face contracted and she sighed dramatically. “Don’t threaten me,” she said. “I was just about to offer you some water and a couple of Vicodins to take the edge off, okay? So you’d better fucking be nice.”

I’m in hell,

Jack thought suddenly. I’ve already died and this is hell. I will spend the rest of eternity lying in my own shit, talking to this narcissistic nutcase about personal responsibility, just because I fucked up during my time on earth.

“I don’t want to die, Honey. Not now, not like this.”

“I totally know what you mean,” she said. She sipped some liquor. “Dying scares the shit out of me, too!” She remembered his condition and blinked. “Sorry. No offense.”

Jack suddenly realized that his left hand was partly on the dash. He could feel plastic beneath those bloody fingers. He wondered if he could reach the horn and attract attention. He shifted his arm and groaned silently; got an immediate jolt of pain along the tendons.

His hand touched the steering wheel. Jack felt a glimmer of hope. He forced himself to speak again.

“Get me some water,” he croaked.

Honey scowled. “Not if you’re not going to ask nicely.”

I don’t believe this bitch.

“P-please.”

She smiled brightly. “Okay, then. Want to take a few Vicodin? It will make all this a lot easier on the both of us.”

“Sure,” Jack whispered. Forced out: “Thank you.”

Honey put her quart of booze down on the steps and got to her feet. She trotted back into the house, but left the door partway open. Jack took a deep breath and steeled himself. He grabbed the steering wheel and hauled his upper body to the left. He bit down and bloodied his tongue to hold back a wail of pure agony. The world tilted and rocked. After a long moment, he reached down again. The car was a relic of the cold war. The horn was easy to find. He pressed it.

HUWAAAAAAAH!

The racket was loud enough to hurt his ears. Morse code, right? He tried for SOS, three longs and three shorts. HUWAAA, HUWAAA, HUWAAA!

A deep breath, a ragged scream: “Help me! Please help me!”

The noise was thrilling, exciting, sure to bring help. Jack ignored the desperate complaints of his battered muscles, ribs, bones and nerve endings. He honked and he screamed and he honked.

She came through the door furious, with her pearly teeth bared and her eyes wide.

“You fucking bum!”

Jack honked and screamed. Honey grabbed a hammer from the rack. She leaned over the hood and slammed it down on his arm. Jack gagged. He jerked his hand away from the horn so violently it further broke one of his ribs. He felt something puncture his lung and his breathing became a watery rasp. Honey raised the hammer over his head. She concentrated, the tip of her pretty little tongue protruding from her mouth, as if trying to guess how to inflict damage that wouldn’t spell homicide.

“Don’t,” Jack whined. He heard the liquid, death rattle in his own voice. Fear froze him solid. I’m never going to be able to tell my children that I’m sorry, never going to write that novel, never going to repay those debts…

Honey cocked her head like a parrot. Her ponytail danced. She lowered the hammer and bent over to look deeply into his reddened eyes. For a horrible moment, Jack thought she was going to give him a kiss.

“You poor baby,” she said, tenderly. “It’s almost over, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said. “I think so.”

“Well that’s good, isn’t it?”

“Honey, they will find me,” Jack whispered.

She shook her pretty head. “Not here,” she said. “My boyfriend is a dealer, you know? He’s had…problems to dispose of before. When he gets back from Vegas, we’ll take you out to the dump, like in an old carpet or something, okay?”

“But…”

“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.”

She is out of her fucking mind.

Blood ran into Jack’s left eye and he wanted to wipe it away. He tried to move the hand she’d hammered. The pain was excruciating. Honey had broken the bone in his forearm. Suddenly Jack discovered a thick sliver of glass, square at the bottom but tapering to a point. He clenched his fist until he felt it enter the palm of his hand. He stopped struggling.

“Can you move it?” Honey asked sweetly.

“No,” Jack said. “I can’t.”

Jack Kincaid hadn’t been to mass in forty years, but he found himself praying Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee…

Honey dropped the hammer. It bounced off the hood and clattered onto the garage floor. She yawned. “I’m going back to bed,” she said. “Just let yourself go and totally get it over with. No offense, but it looks like you didn’t have much to live for anyway, right?”

“And you’re young. You’re going to be a star,” Jack said.

Honey searched his beaten face for sarcasm. Jack forced a nod. “I can understand that, Honey,” he said. “You’re probably right.”

“That’s so cool,” she said. “Good night, then.”

“Wait. Can I have the pain pills?”

Honey considered. Finally she shook her head and walked back to the steps. “You know what? I really need them for myself, to come down. I have to get some sleep.”

“Please. It hurts, Honey. Please.”

Honey hesitated. “All right,” she said. “I don’t want you to think I’m, like, heartless, or anything. You said you were thirsty. You can finish my tequila. Will that help?”

A harsh spasm rolled through him. For a moment Jack thought it was over, but the hurt subsided. “I’m thirsty,” he whispered. “Yes.”

Honey picked up the quart bottle. She approached, swinging her hips, bent over the hood and held it to his lips. Jack drank like an animal, ignoring the pain, until he felt the welcome heat of the alcohol hit his stomach. He put away enough to quench his thirst—and dull his agony for a while. He closed his eyes. Honey patted his head. She sounded like a vet about to put down an old dog.

“Good night sweet prince,” she said. Then added: “That’s Shakespeare.”

“Violent delights,” Jack whispered. It came out sounding like something else entirely, almost gibberish. He could feel himself slipping away, and his own fear lessened. Maybe dying isn’t so bad after all.

“What?” Honey said. He sensed her leaning closer, hoping to hear something profound. He whispered again, almost inaudibly.

“I can’t hear you,” Honey said, sadly.

Jack used his remaining strength to seize the ponytail with his right hand and the shard of broken glass with his left. He cut her scalp and blood spurted down her cheek. Honey screamed and struggled. Jack giggled. He felt something warm spurt from his nostrils. Honey was athletic and strong for her size. She struck his shoulder with the empty tequila bottle: Once, twice. Jack held on and then cut her scalp again. She howled with pain and fear as some tender flesh peeled away. The bottle slipped from her hand and clattered to the floor.

“No, don’t!” Honey cried.

Jack grunted with pleasure. He slammed her head down on the hood. Dazed, Honey looked up as if about to beg for mercy. She saw that the remainder of Jack’s cheek had been ripped completely away; his white skull and yellowed, grinning teeth were fully exposed. Honey, looking into his bulging, merciless eyes, shrieked like a young girl at a rock concert.

“Please don’t hurt me anymore!”

Jack giggled and heard that odd rattle again, deep in his chest. He took a deep breath. With his bloody left hand, he began to peel away the skin of her pretty, pretty face, all the while chanting aloud in a hoarse, cracked voice: “Child, what you fear will come to get you, in the night, that’s right…” He was halfway finished when he died.

Honey lived.

_______________

“These violent delights have violent ends.”

—Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet II, v, 9

Mobius Dick

with M. Stephen Lukac

I am seldom out and about. When I am, people stare. That is because of the way I look…and the way I look is because of the dreams.

My Aunt Harriet was a large woman with giant arms and a sunburned nose. When I was a boy, she would chop the head off a chicken, and then whistle as it ran aimlessly around the yard, decorating the dying grass with squirting gouts of blood. With a slack-jawed, Zen-like concentration, she would patiently pluck every single feather from its pimpled gray flesh, her plump tongue protruding obscenely from the corner of her mouth, with exclamations like “There! Good! Aha!” punctuating every extraction. I never knew what to make of her bucolic enthusiasm. I had nothing against the poor chicken, but she always made me stand and watch, as if the slaughter had an important lesson to impart.

I remember music on the radio, generally Merle Haggard or maybe old Hank Junior whining on about a girl with a cheating heart. Aunt Harriet would hold the pallid corpse up and examine it carefully. If it seemed clean enough for her, she’d take her knife and, with a deep grunt of satisfaction, slice it from neck to anus, allowing the smelly guts to fall out into the metal bucket waiting between her pink, chubby knees. Then she’d truss the chicken and toss it in a steaming pot to boil the flesh to bits. Naturally, these were my first steps on the road to vegetarianism.

To this day, country music makes me think about red blood, boiled white flesh and containers of blue-black entrails. The only thing missing from such horrific visions is the chicken. Allow me to explain.

First, I want you to picture a middle-aged man—and I use the term ‘man’ loosely—who is tall, wide and generally considered handsome in an arrogant sort of way. This man owns a large, brutal entertainment company called Ouroboros, whose logo is a bastardization of the fabled sign of a snake eating its tail, then contorted into a Mobius strip.

Our movie mogul dyes his graying hair monthly, and works out weekly at the local gym. He drives a burgundy BMW convertible, and lives in a rustic mansion in the Hollywood Hills. His home has all the Tinseltown basics: A plasma screen television with surround-sound and a top-notch DVD player, the ultimate stereo system with tiny but powerful speakers concealed throughout the house and surrounding property, and of course the requisite California hot tub. The owner has a taste for fine wine, expensive drugs and fresh lovers of all kinds…provided they are inexperienced and underage.

His name is Richard. And he is a ‘dick’ indeed.

Our Dick is obsessed with his quest for the ultimate sensual moment. His work as a player in the film industry is merely a way to make large amounts of money with little physical or mental effort. Power affords him his lifestyle and funds his pursuit, which is all that really matters. Dick believes that somewhere beyond the far horizons of legality and the current limits of pharmacology lays the penultimate orgasm. He is determined to find, capture and experience that.

In a cold, mental twilight, let us float above the rich and famous of Beverly Hills. We sail down Sunset Boulevard and into trendy Laurel Canyon just as the sun is setting. It is raining, and the city is white lights and pastel fluids. We pass the gauche Grecian columns of a lame condominium complex and skip like a stone into the rolling hills. A few blocks to our left, two to the right and there is Dick’s bachelor pad, nestled into the greenery and protected by a high metal fence topped with razor wire.

It takes more than money and imagination to feed Dick and his habits. On the heels of that thought, a dark limousine splashes through a puddle and enters the driveway, low rap music pounding four to the bar DUM DUM DUM DUM. The crude beat shocks mother birds out of their nests and into complex flight patterns designed to lure predators away from their young. Motion sensors activate as the car passes and mega-watt halogen lamps illuminate the path to the door as the wet gloom shrinks back on its haunches like a nervous panther.

The limo driver, tall and naturally lean, braves the rain and steps out of the car to open the rear door. He is a shy young man, uncomfortable with the moisture penetrating his black uniform but even more uncomfortable with the evening’s passengers.

The first passenger opens a Gucci umbrella as he exits the vehicle. He looks more like an attorney than a pimp; his mask is that effective. The man is white, short and round; he wears thick glasses now smoky from condensation. He carries a briefcase. He is dressed in a dark blue Armani suit. For a split second, we see a disapproving frown cross the driver’s face, but the ‘attorney’ doesn’t notice. For him, the driver is a feature of the car, worth no more attention than the power windows or wet bar. The attorney’s only concerns are his delivery and his payment for having made it.

The attorney reaches back into the car, and helps a stunning young girl slide out of the back seat. The second passenger belongs in middle school, not Dick’s driveway. If we were to scrub away the thick eye make-up and put her in blue jeans, she would look all of twelve years old.

Our Dick is a dick, remember?

We might expect the girl to hesitate at the car door, perhaps forcing the Doctor of Juris Pimpus to pull her into the freezing rain, but the young lady breezes past him. Gangly teenaged legs propel her away from the limo and up the stairs leading to the double mahogany doors. Her teased hair immediately collapses into wet string. The lawyer scratches his bald pate, puzzled by the ingénue’s sudden change of demeanor, but he shrugs and follows, annoyed to be getting his shoes wet.

Meanwhile, the disapproving limo driver re-enters the car, changes the radio station, lowers the volume, and settles in to wait. After a moment, the lights switch off again and he sits alone in the hungry dark, listening to the rain pound on the roof.

Now, pretend we can turn back the clock a few hours, before the sky darkened, and see the young girl as the attorney first saw her: Standing in the arrivals lounge of the Los Angeles Greyhound Terminal. Her lack of motion draws our eye as it did the lawyer’s—an island of inactivity surrounded by the bustle of passengers dashing to and from idling AmeriCruisers, a Laura Ingalls refugee thrust into a world of Britney and Ricky wannabes, paralyzed by SoCal frenzy and invisible to SoCal revelers.

The attorney’s radar finds her almost immediately. He notices her quivering lower lip. He notices her scared, darting glance as she surveys the concourse. He notes the fact that, except for the plastic purse clutched to her undeveloped bosom, the girl has no luggage.

The girl also has no ticket, but the attorney doesn’t know that. In our ethereal state, we witness what the attorney’s predatory senses miss: The girl lacks more than a ticket stub. One minute before the attorney’s arrival, the girl doesn’t exist at all. Indeed, the space she occupies when the attorney’s eye falls upon her is vacant during those seconds it takes him to cross the concourse. Somehow, what he needs to see is there only when he needs to see it.

His approach is practiced, methodical and ultimately successful, as he knows it will be before he begins. As the clouds gather and he commences his pitch, he’s mentally counting the zeroes on the cashier’s check he’ll receive as his finder’s fee. As lightning flashes and the girl resists his initial advance, he’s deciding between a table at Koi and a booth at Moonshadows. As distant thunder growls and the first drops strike the pavement, she takes his hand to follow him to the limo parked at the curb. Meanwhile, he’s mulling over swordfish or Black Angus. Other menus have already been set…

Now back at The House That Ouroboros Built, Dick’s dejuner d’jour marches up the front steps in the pouring rain, lays a freshly manicured hand on the door handle, and turns under the yellow porch light. The glow enhances her youth, yet she gives the attorney a very effective “are you coming or not” glare.

Stanley—although we never get a peek at the attorney’s curriculum vitae, I think we can agree that he looks like a Stanley—hesitates with one wet foot perched above the bottom stair. He feels a chill of foreboding. Because his predatory instincts served him so well earlier in the day, perhaps another, more primal warning sounds in his head as he regards the latest vestal virgin to be sacrificed in Dick’s quest for the Perfect O. But then he plants his Gucci loafer on the damp, polished marble tread, the line of zeroes pulls at his other leg and places the wet loafer’s mate on the next higher step. Gucci follows Gucci; the caveat goes unheeded. He’s thinking: May as well get out of the rain.

The attorney completes his soggy ascent. The young girl, oblivious to the downpour, opens the door for him. The attorney shakes his head and motions for her to cross the threshold first. Minos in Versace, meet Charon in Armani. Stanley chuckles to himself; any residual trepidation from his climb vanishes. He follows her through the door. The porch light goes off automatically, plunging the steps into printer’s ink. The relentless rain continues.

The foyer is huge, dominated by a grand staircase that sweeps up from the floor to clutch the second-story balcony that circles the perimeter. They stand and wait, wet and miserable. No butler rushes to welcome them; no maid offers them refreshment. Their only greeting is the noise of their heels clicking against the Italian marble floor.

Then Dick appears. He is a grinning shark in a leopard-print dressing gown, belt tied haphazardly across his belly. As he walks down the stairs, his bulk widens the gap in the robe, revealing matching boxer shorts. His torso has enough hair on it to qualify as a throw rug.

“Stanley!” he bellows as his bare feet slap against the polished steps. “Just what the doctor ordered.”

“Hello Dick,” the attorney replies. He lowers his eyes in feigned deference. Important clients require proper ass kissing, and Dick has a lot of ass to kiss. Stanley doesn’t mind; after all, the downward glance spares him the sight of his master’s girth bouncing down the stairs.

“And what do we have here?” Dick asks, crossing the foyer and circling the young girl. “Stanley, what delicacy have you brought me today?”

“One I trust you’ll find acceptable,” Stanley says in his best lackey tone. He is still watching the floor.

“That’s what you said last time, and I still haven’t completely forgiven you for that mistake.”

Stanley looks up, worried. “Dick, some things cannot be anticipated. He met all your specifications…”

“But,” Dick interrupts, tracing sweaty circles around the soggy ingénue, “he didn’t meet all of my needs, and that’s what counts, isn’t it Stanley?”

“Of course.”

Dick cups the young girl’s chin in a meaty paw. “He kept trying to talk with his mouth full.” He lifts her head, locking eyes with the girl. She does not look away, which excites him. Dick continues: “Hopefully, you’ve got better manners.”

The girl gently twists her chin out of Dick’s grip. She pulls her head back between hunched shoulders and bats her eyes: Message received.

“Is there somewhere I can freshen up?” she asks, her voice a symphony of innocence and naiveté. “It’s raining like hell out there, and I’m cold.”

Not as cold as you’re going to be

, the attorney thinks, a bit sadly. This kind of situation always ends the same way. Dick’s been a client for a long, long time.

“Use the can over there,” Dick waves to his left. “But don’t take all day.” The girl hurries away. Seconds later, they hear the click of a door latch.

“You better hope she’s better than the last one,” Dick growls. He picks a loose string from the end of his belt.

“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Stanley soothes.

“She’d better be. That little punk bit me.”

“He seemed compliant enough to me.”

“Yeah…well, you never know how compliant somebody is until they’ve got your cock in their mouth.

Stanley clears his throat. This is dangerous ground. “Did that new…cleaning service work out?”

“Well enough,” Dick acknowledges. “Do send my respects to Don Antonio and tell him I am grateful, as usual, for his assistance in an awkward situation.”

“I will.”

Dick leans in close. He stinks of cologne. “She’d better be good, Stanley.”

“She will be.”

“I’m paying you a lot of money to bring me the best.”

“I know.” The sound of plumbing echoes through the cavernous foyer. The attorney coughs into his hand. “Speaking of which.”

Dick reaches into the pocket of his robe and withdraws a folded cashier’s check. He places it in the attorney’s outstretched hand. “I’m heading out to the Jacuzzi. When the princess is done in there, show her the way and then get the fuck gone. I’ll let you know if you earned that.”

Dick walks away; we follow him down a long hallway, past the drawing room, the formal dining room and the caterer’s kitchen. He strolls through a sliding door and onto a flagstone patio lit by recessed, colored lighting. An oversized spa sits within an even larger gazebo. Hot steam rises to meet cold runoff from the roof, turning the air humid and reddish. Another motion detector senses Dick’s passage and flips on both the blue spa lights and some cheesy 1970s Barry White music.

Dick doffs his robe and the matching boxers, and we learn that there are sights far worse than the producer jogging down a staircase. With a contented sigh, he submerges himself, hippo-like, until the water reaches the level of his many chins. He floats in the bubbling jets of the Jacuzzi, beneath red and blue lights, listening to the rain slap the roof. He contemplates both his plans for the young girl and the area immediately around the spa.

Dick owns assorted dildoes, most phallic-shaped, but many sporting attachments and extensions that God never envisioned when designing the genuine article. Next to those lies a variety of restraints, from fur-lined handcuffs to blindfolds and ankle locks. There are custom-made wire ties, which are brilliantly designed to dissolve in hot water after a few hours of exposure. Next are riding crops, razor blades, clamps and smaller items whose purpose we dare not imagine.

The sound of the sliding door interrupts Dick’s gleeful rumination. He looks up to see the young girl, hands behind her back, pulling the door shut.

She is nude, and she steps out into the rain and twirls. A flash of lightning accents every delightful curve and crevice. We expect the girl’s nakedness to bother us, but the sight transfixes us. The promise of womanhood, once draped in Versace and hidden under layers of Este Lauder, stands before us in the flesh, and we realize a moment before Dick, that this is no young girl. This is Woman. Ageless. Defying definition. The epitome of the double-X chromosome.

As if sensing the complaint forming behind Dick’s lips, the woman steps out of the downpour. She approaches the spa, dips a toe into the frothing water, and holds a finger to her lips. “Shh,” she says, and Dick remains silent.

She eases down the hidden steps, aerated water splashing first against her ankles, then her thighs. Bubbles crash against the perfect curve of her hips, then fight for the privilege of caressing her flawless breasts. Dick watches her immersion, forgetting that, in some mystical way, Woman has abruptly replaced Girl. In his obsession, the allure of virginity pales; the glory of maturity beckons. But the difference between what was delivered and what has arrived never occurs to him.

This new creature sits opposite him. Beads of sweat cling to her shoulders. Dick leans away from the wall of the hot tub to reach for her, but she pushes him back with a gesture. He settles back against the jets. She fixes a lock of hair that has the audacity to fall across her brow.

“I want to put you in a movie,” he says breathlessly, almost believing his own bullshit for once.

She smiles coyly, licks her lips again.

“Where did Stanley find you?” he asks. His heart is racing.

She ignores the question, sucks a perfect finger in her perfect mouth. Her tongue moves around the digit, and Dick nearly swoons. Beneath the swirling surface, he is hard as iron, the skin of his groin stretched taut, as he’s bigger than he’s ever been.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

The woman sucks on her finger as she draws it out, then nibbles at the end. She smiles. “Just working myself up.”

He begins to speak again, but the woman is on him. She’s crossed the spa in the space between heartbeats, and molds herself to him, enfolding him in the silky smoothness of her bare skin. Dick’s senses are on fire, overwhelmed by the sensation of her touch. She kisses him with her entire body, every pore a blessed pair of lips that caress him to the point of insanity.

“Wait…”

“Shhh…”

She runs her hands up his outstretched arms and brushes her fingertips against his knuckles. Her hands leave him for a moment, and he cries out from the ache created by absence of her touch. Then her fingers return and he rejoices. Tears roll down his face. He surrenders to her ministrations. Dick is so happy that he doesn’t notice when the first strap tightens against his wrists. He’s so delirious with pleasure when one hand strokes his penis that he ignores the nylon binding she slips around his ankles with the other.

Nothing wrong with a little bondage, right?

When she takes his head in her hands, Dick opens his eyes, weeping like a baby, and gazes enraptured at the answer to his prayers. He whimpers as she draws him closer…

««—»»

The truth is that I cannot be certain precisely what happened inside Dick’s mansion that rainy day, although I was present when the attorney arrived with his offering. Also, I’m only guessing what conversation may have transpired between attorney and client, and have no knowledge of how they agreed on the exact number of zeroes on that cashier’s check. But one can speculate.

I also don’t know how long the screams lasted before the sound of human suffering drowned out the rolling thunder, pierced the tinted windows of the limousine and drew my attention away from the last chorus of a George Jones tune. I turned the radio down.

“Noooooo! Pleeeese…!”

I froze. Listened to water flowing down gutters and distant clouds coughing up rain. Relaxed…and then heard another scream.

The attorney told me that he wouldn’t be inside for long, but we all know about a lawyer’s promises, especially a lawyer whose specialty was pimping for the Hollywood elite. I stayed in that dark driveway while he took that poor girl into that awful house so now I told myself it was none of my business. I fiddled with the CD player and switched on the wipers to clear the windshield. I stole a sip from each of the crystal decanters in the passenger compartment. I did what limousine drivers do best: I waited for my tip and tried to see, hear and speak no evil. But my heart raced like a hare being hunted as guilt coursed through my veins.

I heard more awful, keening wails and then panicked. Enough! I decided to break through the front door and rescue the pitiful child who was being so horrifically tortured. I got out of the limo, opened the trunk and removed the tire iron to use as a weapon. What I was about to do would doubtless ruin my career and quite possibly cost me my life, but who could bear witness to this and do nothing? As I tested my grip on the lug wrench, the shrieking changed back to words: “Oh, please not again! No… NO!”

I paused, my heart in my throat. My will to be a hero completely disappeared. I dropped the tire iron and swallowed bile. The voice was not a woman’s at all.

It was a man’s.

Again, I told myself it was none of my business, and that limousine drivers weren’t paid well enough to put their lives on the line for sleazy clients. I had driven the attorney before, and while he wasn’t The Dick, he was a dick, and the only dick I was concerned with was my own. Fuck him. I dropped the wrench in the trunk, slammed it shut and got back into the car.

To be candid, I am now certain that both impulses, first to help the girl and then to abandon the producer, combined to save my life.

As I sat in the driver’s seat in the stormy weather, a foot on the pavement and a hand on the shift knob, listening, the screams decreased in frequency and pitch, changing from hysterical shrieks to ragged, weary moans and eventually to an eerie silence. Then just when I had almost convinced myself that I had imagined the entire thing, the front door opened and the porch lights flicked on. I don’t know who I expected to see walk out of that house and into the rain, but I never imagined I’d see the most beautiful woman in the world.

She was stark naked, but that had nothing to do with my assessment. Even if she had worn a green Hefty bag, her mythic exquisiteness would have struck me the same way. No woman I had ever known had even approached her elegance, and frankly, she’s been the basis for comparison for every woman I’ve known since. No one has even come close.

This siren walked down the stairs, her breasts bouncing gently, her wet flesh steaming. Stunned, I climbed out of the car and met her in the middle of the driveway, my rapidly soaking suit no hindrance to my approach.

“What…?” I began, but the beauty stepped up to me, placed a hand on the back of my neck and pulled me into the sweetest kiss I’ve ever experienced. My trousers tented, closing any gap remaining between us.

And that is when I noticed that this exquisite creature also had the foulest breath I had ever experienced—perhaps more animal than human.

The kiss ended. Her eyes glowed, and I entered some other dimension. She/it spoke to me, although not exactly in words. The creature informed my spirit; transmitted musical waves of energy, thought and effect. We melded there in the humid downpour, and I heard lurid tales from the dust of human antiquity; sensed a hunger for vengeance and a mission of divine retribution. The goddess sang of soulless monsters that fed upon the weak and the defenseless; people who thought themselves above the laws of man or God. She shared tales of predators and prey, and explained how the lines between them sometimes blurred, how the roles sometimes reversed in pursuit of justice.

And this is the most difficult thing to recount: While she communicated, there in the downpour, she…changed. It was as if each sentence came from a different pair of lips; each kernel of wisdom passed through a different mouth. A dire warning to man and men issued from a visage that morphed more and more rapidly as she spoke. But although she shifted with every remark, in another way she never altered at all. And when she finally finished, mere seconds or endless hours later, I could not recall a single word, though I knew exactly what she’d meant. I shook like a man poisoned.

She turned away from me, rippled like a mirage in the pounding, driving wetness and was gone.

For a long moment, I stood alone in the driveway of a millionaire, soaked to the skin—a dumb country boy with an erection in his pants and the macabre echo of ancient human screams ringing in my ears.

I ran for the house. I pushed through the front doors and promptly slipped on something. I thought it was rainwater, but it was a scarlet mess of entrails lying in the foyer. My shoes skidded through clotting blood and offal, and when my balance failed, I fell into the scattered remains of the attorney. Most of him now covered the floor and the walls of the entry. The bigger pieces still bore teeth marks. I gagged; then pulled myself from the lawyer frappe and followed the long hallway to the patio. The sliding door was open, but I never crossed that threshold. I couldn’t. It wasn’t necessary anyway.

I heard Merle and Ol’ Hank Junior singing in my memory, and saw Aunt Harriet standing in the dooryard, plucking poultry in hand and chanting: “There. Good! Aha!”

The hot tub still bubbled, but not because of the pressure jets. The whirlpool was silent; these bubbles traveled from the bottom of the spa and broke in crimson on the surface. Jacuzzi engineers had never designed their product to perform quite like this, but it certainly did the job. The contents of this pot were cooking, and cooking along quite well.

Dick’s skin was gone; a few tattered remnants illustrated that it had come off in strips. His exposed muscles twitched—I couldn’t tell if it was from the heat or from leftover neurological impulses. As the boiling water shifted him around, I saw that the submerged parts were a deeper red than those left exposed to the air, and again I thought of Aunt Harriet and her culinary endeavors.

A combination of muscle contraction and boiling liquid caused Dick to bob to the surface for a moment, and I saw the jagged hole where his groin should have been. The meat of his pelvis was torn away—ripped tendons and arteries flopping against his savaged abdomen like overcooked pasta—and I knew the reason for the woman’s extreme halitosis.

I cannot be certain, but also I tend to believe this when my hair went completely white.

Many years have passed since that stormy evening. Some nights I can sleep reasonably well without medication. My vegetarianism causes some small inconveniences; for example, it slows my ability to order from a drive-thru window, but I survive. I pursue my classical education and my little hobbies. I get by.

You see, once upon a time, I picked a stained cashier’s check with a lot of zeroes out of some bloody trash, and now, thanks to some careful investing, can live my life any way I want. I have learned that creepiness becomes charming eccentricity when backed by the right amount of money.

I still avoid country music and barbeques but, for the most part, I manage. Nevertheless, when the wind is right and the neighbors fire up the Weber grill, I might spend an hour talking to The Great God Ralph on the big white phone. I generally explain my dietary choices with the help of a lot of Eastern rhetoric, because it gets the job done; if all else fails, I even tell the story of Aunt Harriet and the chickens.

But trust me, I never mention Dick, or that sleazy attorney, or the most beautiful woman in the universe and how one amazing kiss was meaty enough to last me for the rest of my natural life.

The Fever Called Living

with dgk goldberg

Damn, Deputy Clemmons thought, poor Luanne Spivey lives her life so…alone.

His squad car rolled through potholes and mud and bounced to a stop near the filthy trailer. The chubby young officer wiped sweat from his sun-reddened face and waited for the dust to settle. Wayne Clemmons examined the papers on his clipboard for the third time. He knew he was stalling. It was kind of sad to be out here again.

Hell, everybody in Hemingway already knows Luanne is crazy. After all, her daddy was a drunk and her mama had bad nerves. She comes by it honestly

.

It was no surprise to Deputy Clemmons that he’d have to haul her off to Bull Street in Columbia again. Luanne’s husband Bobby done already took the kids over to his mama’s. Deputy Wayne didn’t give much thought to Bobby’s rambling about how he’d given up on Luanne ever keeping things clean. Hell, all of South Carolina was engaged in a constant battle against bugs; and right about now, mid-August, the insects generally won. So all those spiteful, mean comments in the statement about Luanne? Just custody battle stuff, that’s all. Wayne had heard it all before, knew he was bound to hear it again.

Poor Luanne was a card-carrying 10-74 most days, crazy as a rabid raccoon. But she wasn’t stupid. Wayne had driven her to the state hospital a couple of times before. Sadly, she never seemed to mind.

The trailer was pale blue, dented and rusty. It had shelves with dead flowers in small pots below the windows. Wayne knocked on the trailer door, stepped back so she could open it. “Luanne? You want to pack a few things. Magistrate says I got to carry you to the hospital in Columbia ‘cause your nerves are acting up again.”

A fat garden spider crawled out from underneath the door. Wayne grimaced, went to step on it and missed. It pranced away as if choreographed. “Luanne? Hurry it up. It’s hotter than hell out here, but my cruiser’s air conditioned.”

A slight woman with deep-set blue eyes and pale hair appeared. Luanne wore cheap lipstick and bright rouge. Her faded blue skirt was frayed from countless washings and her faded red blouse was unbuttoned to reveal the tops of small, wary breasts. She was so thin she slipped between the barely opened door and the doorframe. Before the metal door closed, Wayne saw what seemed to be a shiny, mottled patchwork quilt that rolled like waves on the lake. Must be a heat mirage; like when you see water on the asphalt far ahead and it ain’t rained for months.

“Hey, Wayne.” She batted her eyelashes at him. Her voice was soft as cotton candy but had a faint scratch to it, like a finger tapping on an emery board. “You got papers on me again? Seems like old Bobby been downtown.” A hint of a smile flickered across her wan face. “I guess I ain’t wanted nowhere there’s people.”

“Yeah, I got papers.” Wayne stepped back, out of the way. He felt slightly embarrassed to be taking her into custody again. It ain’t like Luanne is a bad crazy. She doesn’t make a lot of noise, or stop traffic, or shoot anybody.

“S’alright, Wayne,” she said, soothingly, as if reading his thoughts. “I can use a rest. Just so long as you stop along the way so I can get out of the car and smoke every so often.”

“No problem.”

Luanne placed a small, bony hand on his sleeve. She hung on him like a very old woman badly in need of love and daintily tottered on down the rickety stairs. Meanwhile, Deputy Wayne Clemmons wondered why she was wearing a pair of absurdly high dress heels in a darkened trailer in the daytime.

««—»»

Admitting Note:

The patient is a twenty-eight-year-old Caucasian married female with two children who has a history of three prior admissions. She is neatly although provocatively dressed in contrast to her rather reserved self-effacing manner. Sans makeup, she appears somewhat malnourished but does not manifest any symptoms of an eating disorder. She is oriented to time, place, person, and circumstance. Affect is appropriate to the content of her speech and she demonstrates no overt signs of psychosis or mood abnormalities. She reports that her husband petitioned for her involuntary commitment secondary to a custody dispute and further adds that she does not mind as she “can use a rest.” She reports that her need for a rest results from constantly attempting to keep her trailer clean. According to the patient, her husband actually left her because she failed as a housekeeper and the trailer is “just too filthy for words. That mess is sucking the life outta me.”

At the conclusion of the interview she asked when she might be allowed access to her cosmetics and cigarettes. “I don’t feel right without my make-up,” she commented, “my face hangs out in the world.” This struck me as oddly incongruent, because she also states: “I reckon I’m not wanted anywhere there’s people.”

««—»»

Visiting hours are over. The ward is still, yellowing floors as deserted as the lunar surface; silent, except for the snores of the patients and the squeaking of the tennis shoes worn by the night staff. Betty Nelson sets down the newspaper and pours a cup of sludgy coffee into her dirty mug. Something about the new patient on the unit keeps nagging at her. She keeps thinking about some research paper she read back in the eighties; something about patients from rural counties seeming psychotic and then clearing a few weeks after admission. Had it been an eventual diagnosis of nutritional deprivation from a diet consisting primarily of collards and yams?

Betty shakes her head. That can’t be right. The closer she gets to retirement the more obsessive she becomes; the more she recalls bits of this and that from years ago but it’s so difficult to apply the knowledge. Something about this new woman intrigues her.

And comes near to breaking Betty’s heart.

Betty walks down the hall toward the new patient’s room. She peers in the door and watches the delicate features twitch in the shadow and moonlight. All seems well. Betty turns to go. She steps forward and hears a sickening crunch from beneath her crepe-soled shoe. Something seems to scurry away.

She glances down the hall. A tube of mascara or something? The object seems to roll into the corner and disappear. Too many late nights.

««—»»

To: Janitorial

From: Nursing staff

Maintenance Request

URGENT! Ward B is infested with insects. The situation is so severe that we are in violation of JACO standards. Please deal with this immediately.

««—»»

Group Note 7/6/2001

Patient L. Spivey

Patient continues to resist disclosure to the group but seems to listen attentively when others speak. She refrains from making eye contact; sits immobile, facial expression seldom changing from one of polite interest. Today when another patient was disclosing a history of marital discord, patient commented that she and her spouse seldom have sex because she feels unattractive and unworthy and anyway she is too tired from constant housecleaning. Seems preoccupied with her failures as a traditional housekeeper and wife.

««—»»

Therapy Note 7/8/2001

Patient L. Spivey

Despite Ms. Spivey’s prior admissions she seems to have no awareness of how to use therapy. She is punctual, sits erect, refrains from eye contact, and attempts to have a “social conversation.” On this date she discussed her persistent feelings of worthlessness, her husband’s continuing infidelity, the family’s economic problems, and her desire to receive job training as a hairdresser.

Her affect was flat and her posture rigid. She denied any feelings of hostility regarding her husband’s behavior, adding that she did not know for a fact that he was unfaithful, simply that since their trailer had become infested with roaches he was short-tempered and seldom home.

She indicated that the couple had ceased martial relations some time ago.

Ms. Spivey commented that she felt like she was “all tangled up” with the house-cleaning problem, and she does seem somewhat obsessed, reporting that she spends most of her waking hours engaged in activity calculated toward that issue. In fact, house cleaning holds a kind of secondary gain for her in that it has come to provide a distraction from her buried feelings of abandonment and rage.

««—»»

“I have a case for you.”

Dr. Eugene Markoff smiles pleasantly enough, but his bright eyes contain a hint of professional condescension.

Markoff opens a file and hands it to Simmons, taps the summary page. He clears his throat. “You’ve been complaining about feeling underused since you returned from your…sabbatical.”

A fucking ‘sabbatical.’ What a nice way to describe a forced leave of absence due to post-divorce stress

. Dr. Markoff is being unctuous and pedantic. Kevin Simmons has slowly come to despise him.

“Excuse me, doctor,” Simmons says. “My mind wandered. You were saying?”

“I was saying that I think you’ll find this patient intriguing.”

After speed-reading the document, Simmons leans back in the chair. He is a big man, and the wood complains beneath him. “I don’t see a DSM IV diagnosis, Gene. Why is that?”

“Well, if you are going to be treating her, maybe it’s best if you do the full assessment.” Dr. Markoff’s voice holds a hint of pique; he dislikes it when juniors call him by his first name. “Even Medicaid allows us to defer diagnosis for thirty days. Besides, she’s not on involuntary anymore, read the chart. She agreed to hospitalization, says she wants a rest.”

“Did she mention anything else about why she might want to stay with us?” Simmons squints, grimaces. He can barely read Markoff’s handwriting.

Markoff sighs dramatically. “It’s in the chart. Something about the hospital being so clean, pleasant and cool… Oh, and she feels ‘a lot less lonesome for people’ in here.”

««—»»

Yet now Luanne seems to be isolated. She doesn’t care for the groups. She only leaves her room for mandatory treatment activities and the meals she seldom eats; or for quick, furtive trips to the smoking lounge. She only shows enthusiasm when standing silently on the edge of the crowd waiting her turn with the tech that lights the patient’s cigarettes. Betty also thinks Luanne is still far too thin.

Betty decides to look in on her. Poor little thing, bless her heart. To Betty, she is like a tiny, lost sparrow. Betty creeps down the hall to avoid waking Mr. Hamilton, who is paranoid and will shriek in terror if his nap is disturbed. As she approaches Luanne’s room she hears an odd rustling sound.

Good heavens…

Betty stops in the doorway. She hasn’t been this flabbergasted since the former medical director got arrested at Richland Mall for shop-lifting ladies underwear in a size suspiciously close to his own. Inside, Luanne stands in front of the mirror, painstakingly applying lip-liner. The girl is nude, naked as a jaybird…except for those ridiculously high heels.

Betty scurries off to make a chart note.

Luanne puts down her eyeliner and smiles at her face in the mirror. Then she walks carefully around the room in tiny little circles; tongue protruding slightly, squinting eyes riveted to the floor like a woman very concerned about stepping on something.

««—»»

Markoff is a putz

, Kevin Simmons grumbles. He pulls a renegade string from the worn cuff of his shirt. Silly men like Markoff inevitably miss what is really going on unless the patient presents a classic, textbook case or something generic. They have no imagination, no gift. Worse still, they lack compassion, empathy, and maybe even the ability to hear what anyone says. How can anyone be so completely blind? It is no wonder Luanne had been unable to confide in him! Christ, even his office is sterile, forbidding, cold.

Simmons rearranges the herbs in terracotta pots on his window and continues to stroke his own ego. I’ll break through to her, I promise you.

He crumples Markoff’s recent memo; drivel about forbidding personal objects in hospital space because patients might use picture frames and potted plants as weapons. How ludicrous! Simmons pops a CD into the player on his desk. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons fills the air, drowning out the medicated mumbling shuffle of his patients and the metallic squawk of loudspeakers. Vivaldi creates a lovely, calming white-noise barrier. This is a trick necessary for therapy the way he practices it; unlike that Freud-up-the-ass Markoff.

He senses, rather than hears, that Luanne is standing in the doorway. Running his fingers through his floppy bangs, Simmons looks up and smiles. “Please come in,” he intones, gently indicating the two chairs facing each other.

Luanne sits stiffly in one chair, her bony knees pressed chastely together; still-tangled hair veiling her face. She keeps her thin hands folded in her lap. Simmons is surprised to find himself more than a bit attracted to her.

“I am Dr. Simmons, Luanne. You can call me Kevin.”

No response. After a moment of consideration, he extends his hand for her to shake, but she doesn’t appear to notice. He pauses, licks his lips, and clears his throat. “Luanne, you’ll find that I operate differently from the way Dr. Markoff does. I believe that good therapy is both teamwork and a kind of disciplined love.”

Head down, she whispers the word. “Love.”

Simmons presses his point. “Indeed, therapy is not something I do to you; it’s a journey I take with you. We’re in this together.”

She looks up abruptly, as if someone has jabbed her in the back with a fork. Something brittle and edgy flashes through those empty eyes. She takes his measure with scorn curling her lips.

“Then why am I the one locked up?” she snaps.

Before he can label the response; find safety in a phrase like “projective identification” or “splitting,” or even the ever-popular “counter-transference,” her features go blank again.

“I don’t need your kind of love. Not anymore.”

“Excuse me?”

Simmons is too unsure of what he has seen to respond, and thus knows an opportunity has been lost. Luanne blushes and drops her head.

She does not speak again for the rest of the fifty-minute hour.

««—»»

7/15/01

Therapy Note

Patient: L. Spivey

Luanne came in and apologized for her behavior during our last session. I was encouraged that she even recalled her hostility. I then explained that the therapy time was her time, to use as she liked and that no apology was necessary. From her self-effacing manner I suspect that she has been the victim of long-term emotional abuse likely beginning in childhood. She seems to have multiple Adult Child issues and may possibly be a battered wife. She has no self-esteem.

She commented several times that her husband first became angry with her for the constant mess in the trailer. Her own goals seem to revolve around caricatures of typical female roles; she wants to keep the trailer spotless and to become a hairdresser; she’d like more and prettier clothing. It is obvious that this patient has never had the opportunity to consider choices beyond a traditional female paradigm; it seems that she has spent her entire life in a pink-collar ghetto.

««—»»

Case Note, in re: L. Spivey

Patient did not receive any visitors this date. She did not seem upset by this. She has had no visits from family members during this hospitalization. She has totally withdrawn from participation in this group. Muttered “they’re my only friends” or words to that effect.

««—»»

Therapy Note

7/23/01

L. Spivey

Today the patient had a real breakthrough and felt some resentment. She stated that she often wished that her husband would have helped her with the housework and cleaning and that she felt drained by her responsibilities. She stated that “I want my life back, I feel like it’s been hijacked or something.” After making this announcement she seemed frightened, became hypervigilant, tense and scanned the environment. I was struck by her close examination of all four sides of the room, also floors and ceilings and corners. In fact, I was reminded of a child terrified of facing the ‘boogeyman.’ I immediately intervened and reassured her that hers had been a healthy statement, that anger needs expression. I told her that it indicated she was getting better. She said, “Am I?” I reassured her that she was.

««—»»

Betty stands in the doorway of Simmons’ office. “Can you spare a minute?”

“I wish I could,” he replies, briskly. “But we’ve got a stupid chart review next week. You know, we treat paper, not people. Can’t it wait?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Betty says, quietly. “It’s about Luanne.” She clutches a mug of coffee. “I’d really like to talk about her.”

Simmons forces himself to disguise his growing annoyance. What part of ‘no’ does this woman not understand? Instead, he barks: “Shoot.”

“I’ll be brief,” Betty assures him. “I think the only thing wrong with this girl is that she needs to be let alone.”

Simmons sighs. He rubs his temples. He has often considered writing a scholarly paper on the irritation of ward staff as a frequent cause of headaches in overworked psychologists. Damn. Does everyone in the hospital have to approve every treatment plan? “I don’t agree.”

Betty seems too determined to let it go. “Doctor, what will be your criterion for approving a discharge in her case? What she needs is to know she’s wanted somewhere.”

Simmons does not allow himself to notice the genuine dismay her statement causes him. An uncomfortable silence follows.

“Doctor?”

“Betty, really,” Simmons replies, startled back to reality. His very tone and expression soothe; eyes warm, body leaning forward. “I appreciate your concern but I don’t have a minute free until a week from Wednesday.” Betty stares at him with ice in her look. It strikes Simmons she looks rather like a poker player with a full house. She nods blankly for a few seconds before spinning on one heel and thumping down on the hallway in those sensible shoes.

Simmons sticks out his tongue and crosses his eyes like a child. He realizes that he can’t wait for her to retire.

««—»»

Therapy

Therapy Notes on Lu...

Note…

Simmons stops scribbling. Even writing about Luanne suddenly seems a betrayal of sorts. He massages his temples and stares down at the desk. In the spiraling wood grain, he sees her fragile features; eyebrows arched like birds in flight, sharp cheekbones over alarmingly soft lips, soft hair spilling onto slim shoulders. She never wears a bra. At least he does not think so.

…Luanne arrived five minutes early for her session. She wilted into a chair and shivered as though feverish; a trembling he knew came from a struggle with some internal demon. “I really have to tell you what it’s like,” she’d said. Her head hung down, chin almost on chest; she twisted her cheap wedding band round and round on her slender finger. Simmons noted that it left a greenish stain. Luanne looked up and pinned his eyes with hers.

“I want to be free again,” she said. “I want to get close with people. I want to feel…love.”

“Good,” Simmons replied. “I think that’s good.”

“Only I saw a movie on television a while ago about these two girls who were planning a trip to Hawaii or somewhere like that and they decided to go to Thailand, I think that’s where it was instead. Anyway, they got there and it was real pretty but they didn’t have all that much money or something and one of them got hooked up with this real good-looking guy and instead of really liking her he used her to slip drugs in her suitcase and they both—both the girls—got locked up in this horrible jail.”

Luanne stopped long enough to breathe. Simmons, meanwhile, was struggling to follow her train of thought. He had begun to undress her without even realizing it. He kept his features blank: Shrink 101. Am I as desperate for love as she is?

“Anyway,” she continued. “The two girls went to jail and the good-looking guy left the country. It wasn’t like jail here. I had to go bail my old man out often enough so that I know what jail looks like. There was a nasty place with rotten food and nasty water and they had to do hard work all day.”

Simmons nodded. Thinking: She makes me feel like some dirty old man. He forced himself to focus. He was unsure of where she was going but certain that something important was taking place.

“When I saw that movie, I thought that is what my life is like. Somehow I got tricked into some kind of prison where I just do hard work all the time instead of being with people and my old man he just slips out and leaves me alone with them.”

Simmons makes a note: Them? Explore that reference.

“I mean, I know that no one is going to kill me for this or anything but I kind of really wish they would. See, I get up and try to clean and it doesn’t make any difference. The more laundry I do, the more laundry there is, it seems to grow like a great big old pile of some sour smelling something. And I scrub the sink and the shower but the mildew grows back before I’m done and even the dishes got weird old yellow and reddish stains on them and nothing I do seems to make any difference. And all of them itty bitty bugs…”

Luanne wrapped her arms around herself for comfort. She rocked back and forth in her chair. “The world is a dirty place,” she said, softly. Eyes down, twisting the wedding ring. “You know?”

“I think so,” Simmons ventured, motioning for her to continue. “Please go on.”

“Nothing I do makes a dent in anything. I just work all day and half the night and no one cares, no one appreciates me.” She looked up again. “In fact, no one but you even listens to me.”

Simmons felt his face redden and cursed his hormones. “I’m glad you feel safe here,” he said. “I certainly try to…”

She cut him off without realizing. “I know nothing could ever come of it. I mean, I don’t have any education. I’m married and all even though I’m gonna be divorced. But, it’s just when you listen to me I feel pretty. I don’t just feel pretty—I feel important.”

Simmons, like all therapists, had been through this sort of thing before. He knew that she should explain to Luanne, in simple words that she could understand, about transference. People often became confused about strong feelings for their therapists. But those feelings actually belonged to other people in their lives, sometimes from childhood. Simmons had the response down pat, actually; usually said the same thing each time. He often said people practiced relationship skills in therapy because it was safer than risking such fledging efforts in the real world. Safer because the therapist and the client were never allowed such personal contact in the so-called ‘real’ world.

He started to make that pitch, but waited for a fatal moment.

He knew he should say all that.

But he didn’t.

Luanne started crying. Gently, softly. This was not the hideous, sniffling, red-eyed and most unattractive wailing most patients did; her sobbing was more an infantile demand for love than a real expression of emotion. No, she was a lady. A few tears that simply drifted down her smooth, pale cheeks.

Luanne stopped hugging herself and grasped the arms of the chair. She was white-knuckled; a nervous, infrequent flyer on a jet for the first time. “You see,” she said, her gaze never leaving his, “when you listen to me, I feel like I exist. Most of the time I don’t even feel like I’m here, in the world with people. In fact, most of the time I feel like a shell, like everything has been sucked out of me. Like I ain’t even wanted anywhere there’s people.”

The bittersweet tears still spilled and ran. Simmons got up from his chair and knelt beside her, he wrapped his arms around her. She melted into his chest still crying softly. Simmons flashed on the last time he and his ex-wife had had sex. He felt himself harden. His heart kicked, rabbit fast, as he groped for something to offer besides his own errant member.

Finally, weakly, he merely reinterpreted her statement: “It sounds like you often feel invisible.”

Simmons, flushed with shame, hated himself for that lame verbal response more than anything that followed. He’d been confused, aroused, thrown off balance. Now, looking back, finding himself prepared to lie in his own notes, Simmons thought that maybe it was forgivable on his part. Maybe.

But stroking her silky hair was most certainly not. And when she kissed his cheek, he should have pulled away at once, but a wave of adrenaline had shot through him; an electrifyingly forbidden lust. He had allowed her to kiss him, even touched her breast with his trembling fingers. We all need love.

“Touch me,” Luanne had whispered. “Touch me. Make me belong somewhere.”

Voice thick with emotion, Simmons had finally begged: “Stop. Please.” The moment froze in time like a bug in amber.

After a few minutes, an eternity, a blink, Luanne had gotten to her feet. She’d stared down at him as he knelt there, disheveled, on the floor; her heartbroken eyes impossibly deep and melancholy. Her voice had been so weak, so breathless; he’d almost missed the word.

“You?”

And then she’d slowly turned and walked out of the room.

Simmons had gotten up, tucked in his shirt. He’d been surprised to find his knees shaking. He called after her, “Luanne?”

But she was gone.

…And now two long, terrifying days later, they will meet again. It is finally time for their next session. Time to follow up efficiently on the transference and counter-transference issues Simmons knows are ripe for examination. To explain why he can never become involved with her, under any circumstances, and that such a thing is absolutely forbidden by his professional code of ethics.

Simmons checks his watch. Luanne is scheduled for three. He has a duty to ensure that such an intimate moment never occurs again, regardless of his personal feelings. To be firm.

And he still doesn’t know if he can go through with it.

««—»»

TO: STAFF

FROM: R. COWAN

URGENT. AS OF THIS MORNING’S BED CHECK PLEASE BE ADVISED PATIENT LUANNE SPIVEY HAS NOT BEEN FOUND IN HER ROOM OR ON HOSPITAL GROUNDS. PATIENT ESCAPED USING A LONG SCREWDRIVER APPARENTLY STOLEN FROM GARDENERS’ SHACK. SPIVEY HAS JUST BEEN OFFICIALLY REPORTED TO LAW ENFORCEMENT AS MISSING AND POSSIBLY DANGEROUS TO HERSELF. PLEASE NOTE WHILE HER STATUS WAS THAT OF A VOLUNTARY PATIENT HER LEAVING WAS AGAINST MEDICAL ADVICE.

R. COWAN, M.D.

««—»»

A light mist of rain is warping the world. The winding dirt road runs past a patch filled with pale, baby watermelons; dangerously close to the edge of the swamp. Green tobacco whispers across the hard red clay. A fat, orange sun is squatting down at the far edge of the fence that’s been devoured by kudzu. The murky water ripples with silver dimes and quarters as the biggest fish come up for the final feed of the day.

The man knows he does not belong here.

Kudzu, brackish water, and blackberry brambles devour and cover unwanted intruders. The rain tap dances on the hood of his car.

He drives on.

Darkness crawls out from the water-soaked roots of the ancient trees and unrolls like a carpet across the shimmering surface of the still water. Meanwhile, the brand-new car, black as printers ink and dappled with raindrops, wobbles and weaves its way closer to the isolated property.

Simmons is sweating heavily despite the frigid blast of the BMW’s air conditioning. His windshield is already coated with suicidal insect life. He tries the wipers, smears the mess into something that looks a great deal like soggy pizza. He gives the glop more water, tries again. A clear patch appears. The car dips down into a pothole, struggles around a corner. Simmons stops. He can smell a growing stench; something that reeks of decay, but now can’t see more than ten feet in front. Frustrated, Simmons turns on his headlights.

And then he sees the trailer. It is a washed-out blue piece of junk, with several dents front and back. Someone has made weak, pathetic efforts to beautify it; empty flower pots adorn crooked little shelves below the windows. A wind chime shaped like a peacock hangs near the dim bulb that serves as a porch light.

Simmons parks, thinks for the hundredth time that he should not be doing this, should not be out here alone without a social worker or the law. He has no clear concept of what comes next. To his shock and dismay, his cloudy mind has constructed wild fantasies that range from running away with Luanne—marrying her and having children for Chrissakes!—to the more respectably scenario of persuading her to come back voluntarily for more treatment. In truth, he doesn’t know what he will say or do when the time comes. He only knows he had to come here. Had to see her again.

One crystal pitchfork of lightning crackles to the left; it is followed by a low, rumbling growl of thunder. Fat raindrops splat against the filthy windshield and begin to wash away the mess. The cloying scent of moist plant life and electricity somewhat covers the stench of decay that pervades the clearing. This poor woman, to live in such squalor…it’s obscene. Rusted cans and broken plastic toys litter the yard.

Simmons swallows his fear, opens the door and gets out into the fast-growing summer storm. He hunches his three hundred dollar jacket up over his head and trots through the burgeoning mud puddles until he is standing at the foot of her steps. He bangs on the trailer door. The porch light flickers on and off from the blow.

“Luanne?”

No response. The sky crackles and belches again; the downpour increases. Simmons looks down and sees he has virtually ruined his brand-new shoes. He swears softly and he pounds again, twice this time. It hurts his hand. The air smells of funeral wreaths.

The trailer remains still, calm, but within it something…moves.

“Don’t be afraid, Luanne. It’s me. It’s Dr. Simmons.”

Simmons flashes on one terrible possibility: The infuriated husband, pump shotgun in hand, kicks the door open and fires twice, so close Simmons’ jacket catches fire. The good doctor imagines his entrails dropping down into the widening puddles of mud. He trembles.

The sound again. What is it? Simmons needs to know it is not the husband, or Luanne hurting herself. Needs to know before he dares to touch the metal door or try the handle. His mind searches his memory bank, comes up with something odd. He thinks the sound is like…rustling paper. When he was a little boy, flying an oversized paper kite in the autumn breeze, the kite had made a sound much like this one; at once a rattle, a wheeze and a crackle.

“No. Go.”

“Luanne!” His heart leaps, thwacks his ribcage. Icy adrenaline floods his body with excitement, fear and a strange sense of dread. Something in her voice unnerves him, something Simmons cannot quite place. It sounds too deep, too thick with emotion or perhaps pain to be natural. He has heard this sound before, somewhere. His mind races again, searching for a connecting point, for something to ground this experience in reality.

He opens the door and steps into the trailer. The room is dark, but Simmons walks further in with his throat closing and his nostrils flared. He coughs and covers his mouth with a handkerchief. Simmons suddenly realizes that the oppressive odor originates here, not in the surrounding swamp.

“Go.”

“Luanne?”

And then he also identifies the weird quality in her voice, the one he finds so disturbing. It is a moaning, gasping burst of air, not a speaking voice. It is the sound a woman might make while being tortured to death, or perhaps in the throes of an overwhelming orgasm.

The leathery rustling comes again, like newspaper in the wind. Here within the trailer it seems impossibly loud, and it rapidly surrounds him. Within seconds it is behind him, like a huge sheet of newspaper blown up against the trailer door. The noise seems almost a separate entity, a presence that slithers up his pants leg with the stealth of a stalker.

Another thick vein of white lightning rips the sky wide open, snaps a picture through the windows and in the flashbulb bright of that moment, Simmons sees. He sees and screams, his horrified shriek easily overwhelmed by the nearby thunder and the primitive howl of the storm.

A mental photograph: Luanne is buck naked, up off the floor, her thin body pressed flat against the far wall. Her legs are crossed but her arms are stretched wide, she looks like virginal Madonna, crucified on a sheet of brown plastic. Her flesh is so pale it seems to glow against something dark and primal.

She is hanging sideways.

The room darkens again just as Simmons sees the living carpet of shiny black, grey and brown insects she rests on vibrate and stretch itself, abruptly changing shape like some obscure form of marine life. In darkness once again, he screams again, steps backward. But then the rustling behind him causes every small hair on his body to lift, strut and tremble. He is clearly trapped. Simmons struggles to stay calm, to form words. He fails.

Another flash of brightness, this one a wormhole that elongates time and space. As the image registers on Simmons, so does the harsh fact of his imminent death. He begins to weep uncontrollably.

…Because her mouth, that pretty little mouth, is stretched so impossibly wide open. And in it are scurrying, scuttling creatures; some shiny and some hideously hairy little red and black and brown things. And these things happily, busily remove little pieces of her insides and carry them up and out and into the greedy dark while they hold her there, pinned flat like a specimen. Whoever, whatever these things are they now move her limbs, form her words, carry her messages…

“They wanted me,” Luanne says, in that obscene and guttural moan. “They made me belong.” She tries to laugh and dislodges a baker’s cup of insects; they flow down over her chin and strike the floor like sentient paperclips. More cascade from her vagina. Simmons wails and tries to run.

By then it’s dark again.

And they come to love him, too.

_______________

“Thank heaven, the crisis

The danger is past

And the lingering illness

Is over at last

And the fever called “Living”

Is conquered at last.”

—Poe

Another Hell

“I’ve heard you fix things.”

Daisy Kendall was pretty, one of those ubiquitous beach bunnies who carried herself like a cringing fawn. She looked all of twenty-five years old, but I guessed early thirties. Huge breasts, gold hoop earrings, a blue halter top and white shorts a couple of sizes too small. I had a difficult time deciding where to focus, but finally decided on the bridge of her surgically sculpted nose.

“What does that mean?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said what does that mean. Fix things.”

Her lashes fluttered. “I’m sorry. Maybe I have the wrong person.”

I shaded my eyes against a sliver of reflected sunlight that bounced off the shiny bumper of her leased BMW. “Daisy, is it? Look, just tell me who sent you. Then we’ll take it from there.”

She cleared her throat nervously, made sure no one was near enough to overhear. It all came out in a rush. “I have this friend, name of Sandy and she’s real tall, with green eyes and red hair? Anyway, you helped her out once when her ex-husband got nasty. Something about it was…weird, she said. Supernatural?”

I just stared. Daisy kept going.

“Anyway she said you were great and didn’t even charge a lot. She said I could ask you to find some people for me and stop them from doing something. See, I need help because I have a big problem. I don’t know where else to go, so I’m praying maybe you can…fix it.”

We were standing in the parking lot near a high-end coffee shop in Studio City. I paused while a wan and wrinkled housewife strolled by, scolding the shrieking toddler in her shopping basket.

“You still haven’t explained what you mean by the word fix, Daisy.”

Her face reddened. “By that I mean that you should do, well, whatever needs doing, I guess.”

“You know what? It sounds like you think I’d agree to do something illegal, Daisy. I won’t. This conversation is over.”

I finished my espresso, tossed it to the trash can six feet away, nothing but net. I turned to go.

“P-p-p…”

Tears were streaming down her pretty face. I’ve never seen anundercover cop be that good an actress.

“Please. Please.” She kept stuttering on the P sounds. I put my arm around her, a bit clumsily. There was so much bare flesh it was difficult to comfort her and still be polite. Daisy seemed for real.

“Let’s sit over there.” We walked to the last table in the row. I waited while she blew her nose and calmed back down.

“I just got my sixty days in AA on the other side of the hill,” Daisy said, “at that church at Sunset and Bellflower.” She reached inside her purse and showed me the requisite plastic chip. “I catch the midnight meeting all the time. You meet the nicest people. That’s how I know Sandy, but maybe you guessed already.”

“Go on.”

“That’s really why I’m here, the drinking thing. It started getting out of hand right after I moved here from Omaha, I was so lonely and everyone on the set was doing it, you know? I’m an actress. Anyway, I was at a club in West Hollywood with a friend of mine, and I met these three men, and they seemed pretty nice. You know how it is.”

I nodded without speaking. I was listening to her, but another part of me was eyeing a sedan at the other end of the parking lot. Someone was sitting inside, in the heat, running the engine with the window rolled down. I wondered why. A moment later a hand came out, holding a thick cigar. Smoke flew out like a miniature twister. I relaxed again.

Daisy continued. “These three guys, they said they’d take us to an after-hours bar all the entertainment industry big shots go to, and we bought it. I was already pretty wasted by then. But my so-called friend went to the ladies room, ran into an old friend and never came back. They started talking about strange stuff, witchcraft and such. And that’s when I think these guys slipped something into my drink. It’s all bits and pieces from there.”

The tears were back, so was the embarrassment. Daisy looked down and away, like an abused animal. “You can imagine the rest.”

“You have to tell me everything,” I said. “Or I won’t be able to help.”

“They all three did me,” she said, with a rasp in her voice, “first one after the other and then all at once. Christ, I’d never even thought about doing something like that. I don’t remember very much, except that it wasn’t just sex. Things got really kinky. Fake blood, magic symbols, all kinds of S&M stuff.”

“Go to the police.”

“How can I?” she asked. “I don’t even know their names. Besides, I can’t prove anything. I woke up the next morning all sore and not even really sure what happened. The memories started coming back over the next couple of days. I felt so humiliated. I finally just decided maybe it was best to put it all behind me.”

“Well, maybe that’s the right thing to do.”

“I tried. Believe me. But I went on drinking.”

I blinked. “I thought you told me you had sixty days.”

“I do. All this happened around the first of the year.”

I shook my head. “Daisy, why did you wait so long to talk to somebody about this? You don’t even know their names, and it was all nearly a year ago? What do you expect me to do about it now?”

“Let me finish,” she said. Some steel crept into her voice. “So, a couple of months ago, I’m dating this lawyer, Kevin. He’s a really, really nice man, and he drops me, all of a sudden, with no warning. I get a little bombed and call him, just to make a fool of myself, and he levels with me. He says he dumped me for not telling him I’d done some porn and had a shady past. He felt really betrayed and lied to, he said, and then he hung up. He changed his home number after that.”

I stared. “I’m beginning to get your drift.”

Daisy nodded, eyes flashing. “Those bastards didn’t just drug and rape me, they taped it all. A kinky movie for all the snuff film freaks. And now it’s out there on DVD for the whole world to see. That’s when I stopped drinking, okay? And when I told my friend the story she said you might be willing to help me out.”

“I’m thinking about it.” I studied her face. “You’re leaving something out, Daisy. What else do you have to tell me?”

She sighed. “I met a new guy in AA, name of Jack Wade. We hit it off right away. He was in Afghanistan with the Special Forces. Jack is mostly sweet, but he’s got a real bad temper sometimes. Well, somehow he got a copy of the movie and flat wigged out on me. I told him the story. He got pissed and he slipped.”

“He got drunk again?”

“He said he’ll come back to meetings again, but if I don’t find some way to stop this thing on my own, I’m afraid he may freak out, go after these guys and get in a lot of trouble.”

“Let me think for a second.”

Daisy dug into her purse and produced an envelope. “There’s five thousand dollars here. Every cent I could raise.”

I looked at the envelope. I was starting to do a slow burn. Daisy seemed like a pretty nice kid.

“I’ll keep two thousand five for myself and return whatever I don’t need for expenses. Does that seem fair?”

She nodded briskly. I lifted the front of my loose t-shirt and slipped the envelope into the waistband of my jeans, next to the small Firestar .9mm. The Firestar may be known as a woman’s gun, but it’s small and reliable and one hell of a lot easier to hide than a Glock.

“Give me the last name.”

“Excuse me?”

“Kevin, the really, really nice lawyer you were dating.”

“Kramer.”

A few seconds later, Daisy was walking away, across the parking lot and over behind the bowling alley. A lot of male eyes followed her every step of the way. I went back to the coffee shop.

««—»»

“Does she have a sister?”

“We both wish.”

Detective Jon Kasper was a muscular guy of average height who looked like he could bench press a building. He was off duty that weekend, and every once in a while we’d meet to impress one another with basketball stats. I’d helped his brother out of a jam once so Jon also figured he owed me. Jon had an open mind. He helped me out on a lot of cases, both paranormal and ordinary. I’m not above asking for a favor now and then, especially from a cop, so we stay in touch. I told Jon I’d call him later.

Back at home, I checked on Daisy via the Internet Movie Database, and found she’d done bit parts here and there under the name Elizabeth Bath. Nothing else popped up. I located the attorney boyfriend through the California Bar Association. He even had one of those classy web sites that pegged him as a player. Kevin Kramer, Esq. had done me the extra favor of posting his photo. Expensive suit, but he looked like the kind of kid that would need a hair transplant by thirty. I located his office on Wilshire, watched him come and go for a couple of days and picked up on his routine. Like most young music attorneys he often worked as late as eight or nine. He tended to stop by the bar at the Sky Bar for a cocktail or two on his way home. I followed, sat across the room and watched him, just to be certain he generally left alone.

His pricey condo was off Melrose, not far from La Brea.

That night I was waiting in the bushes near his driveway when Kevin, Esq. pulled up, nicely toasted, and used the electronic opener. The gate slid sideways and he drove down the concrete ramp, into the lot below the building. I looked around carefully, rolled down behind his car, sprinted left and eased into the shadows near the elevators. I heard a shrill whoop as he locked the Benz. His footsteps echoed through the empty garage. He was whistling tunelessly.

I stepped out of the dark, my face covered by a Navy watch cap with eye holes cut into it. Kevin, Esq. almost wet himself. He began digging through his pockets, looking for money and credit cards.

“Just be quiet,” I said. I gave myself a pretty decent southern drawl. “I don’t want your money.”

So Kevin, Esq. held up his car keys. His hand was shaking pretty badly.

“I don’t want your car either. I’m going to ask you a couple of questions, and if you answer me straight, I’ll be gone before you get upstairs.”

He swallowed slowly. “What kind of questions?”

“Let’s talk about porn.”

“What?”

“Tell me what you’ve seen in the last few months.”

He shook his head at first, but then his eyes widened. “Christ, you mean that tape? A friend gave it to me after he recognized Daisy. He was trying to do me a favor.”

“Do you still have it?”

“No. Man, it was really sick stuff. That girl is twisted.”

“So you don’t have it.”

“It was a rental, dude. He recognized my girlfriend and thought he should let me know.”

“What was it called?”

Car headlights rolled past outside, illuminating things for a few seconds. Kevin Esq. stood trembling, briefcase in hand, awash in white light. “I’m telling you, it was one of those creepy things, man. I think it was called Rowdy Boyz 29; they spelled boys with a z. It was something like that anyway.”

“You sure it was 29?”

“I got my law degree on the 29th, so yeah. That kind of stung a little extra. And I was upset because I honestly thought I liked her.”

I didn’t explain or clarify anything, figured it was none of my business. Besides, it seemed to me Daisy could do a lot better. I held up a miniature tape recorder. Now Kevin Esq. looked completely baffled.

“Now, let’s get something clear. I haven’t laid a finger on you or threatened you in any way, have I, counselor?”

“No.”

I turned the tape recorder off. “I did trespass on private property by sneaking into your parking garage. I apologize. It won’t happen again. I’ll be going now.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it, as long as you forget this ever happened.”

“Done.”

“Okay, then. Have a nice evening.”

Kramer went into the elevator as if still half expecting to be beaten and robbed. I waited until the doors closed then slipped out through the side, past the trash cans, stripped off the mask and vanished into the night. He’d drop it. Hell, there was nothing worth reporting, to the law or anyone else.

I stopped at an unfamiliar video store on the way home paid twenty dollars cash for their only copy of that Rowdy Boyz DVD. The cover promised “hot action” and 29 was dedicated to fantasy snuff. I fast forwarded through some pretty badly shot and poorly lit scenes until I recognized Daisy. At first I could barely watch. It seemed morally repugnant to feel even the slightest bit of arousal at the sight of her nakedness. And even with the absurd faux gore and splatter, it was pretty hot stuff. However, viewing it soon replaced my animal sexuality with rage. Daisy seemed pretty out of it. Who wouldn’t be? I studied the men and committed their faces to memory. One was almost bald, with a heavily muscled frame and piercing blue eyes. One was a pedestrian blond surfer type, stoned out of his mind, barely able to keep it up. The third was a skinny Hispanic kid with a Go Army tat on his left bicep.

The three men had been reasonably careful about hiding their faces, but I was able to freeze and copy a few frames to DVD. From there it was a piece of cake to transfer them to my computer, use PhotoShop and clean them up a bit. Within an hour I had three pretty functional photographs. I printed copies of each, smashed the video and took a drive, tossing it into a trash bin behind a liquor store.

Rowdy Boyz was only one of the dozens of highly successful operations that pepper the San Fernando Valley, where pornography has become a billion dollar business. Two brothers, Eddie and Rob Martin, were CEO and CFO respectively. Corporate headquarters were located in a black office building just off Woodman Avenue, not far north of Moorpark. Then next morning, I left my car down the block a ways and walked in.

I half expected to find a gum-popping bimbo behind the reception desk, but the woman seated there wore well tailored business clothes and an efficient, no-nonsense attitude. If there was a security camera, it was well hidden.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Eddie.” I flashed my PI license. I was hoping she’d be impressed. She wasn’t.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I have you on the schedule.”

“You don’t.”

“Well, you’ll have to call us and set something up in advance.”

“Can you book something for me now?”

“I’m sorry, but everyone is at the convention. You’ll have to call on Monday, when he’s back in the office.”

I leaned over the desk. “Maybe you can help me. I’m representing someone who appears in one of your films.”

“Representing?”

“Let’s call it investigating, then.”

Her cool eyes appraised me. “And the point would be…?”

“She never gave her permission to be in that video. As a woman, I would imagine you’d understand that she’s pretty upset.”

The receptionist sighed. “That’s quite impossible. We have signed releases from everyone who appears in our amateur video series.”

“If I were to ask to see that document, you’d be able to produce it?”

“Of course we would, sir.” She smiled sweetly. “Why, the very minute we see a court order.”

Damned if she didn’t stare me down. I sighed. “Thanks for your help, miss.”

“You’re welcome.”

She turned her back. I left to the sound of her fingernails clacking away at the keyboard like a line of Irish dancers.

God bless search engines. I just typed in a few euphemisms for pornography, added Los Angeles and found what I was looking for immediately: The Southern California Adult Film Convention.

The location was packed with vendors, fans and porn stars, the majority of them affluent in appearance and manner. The main showroom had tall exhibit panels advertising various DVDs, appearances by individual performers and sex toy products. I didn’t want anyone thinking I was stalking somebody, so I slapped on a reasonably good fake moustache and cowboy hat, paid fifty dollars for a pass and wandered through the hall like someone out to do business.

Rowdy Boyz had a booth in the northern corner of the convention hall, below a twenty-foot-high cardboard cutout of two burly men pawing a beautiful peroxide blonde who had a bad nose job and the best jugs money can buy. I strolled by, examined their DVD products half-heartedly, and was about to move on when I got lucky. A metal door opened and a man stepped out of the corridor and into the hall, still wiping his hands from a restroom break. He was wearing sunglasses and a hair piece, but looked at lot like the bald guy from the tape that featured Daisy. I waited until he returned to the booth and removed the glasses, checked out those cold blue eyes.

He wasn’t as tall as I’d expected, but it was him.

I strolled closer and eyeballed some of the DVDs for sale. From what I gathered, old blue eyes used the stage name Dick Proud. He’d even starred in a couple of movies. I stared a bit too long because at one point he turned, glared back.

“You got a problem?”

Dick carried himself with a lot of preening, adolescent macho. If we’d been alone I would have rearranged his face so he’d drown in the rain. I didn’t deck him. I made myself grin like an enraptured fan. I held up a silly DVD called “The Odd Father Part 2.”

“Hey, Mr. Dick? If I buy this, can I have your autograph?”

I walked closer. He took it from me, ripped most of the plastic cover off and used a felt tip pen to scrawl something over a photo of his own engorged genitals. He waved for me to take it over to a female clerk in the string bikini and lost interest in my presence. I used the remaining plastic to hold the DVD, paid for it in cash and left the building. Within an hour I had dusted the DVD for prints, blown up a copy of the resulting image. I got Jon Kasper to pull his sheet.

Mr. Blue Eyes, also known as Dick Proud was really a kid from Oregon named Richard Lee Dover. He was forty years old. Mr. Dover had done a stretch at Humboldt for armed robbery. He’d also been hauled in for grand theft auto, but plea bargained that one down to joyriding. He was currently under investigation for drug trafficking, so Kasper easily scored a list of ‘known associates.’ By the next morning, I had names to go with the other two photographs.

Richard Lee Dover, age forty.

Patrick Wade Robbins, age thirty-four.

Timothy “Wild Man” Harris, age forty-one.

These were definitely not the kind of boyfriends you bring home to meet Daddy. All three had rap sheets and ongoing LAPD cases pending arrest warrants, which made them flight risks. Kasper made a couple of calls and found some bank accounts recently closed. Finally, a quick search of city records turned up a Limited Liability Corporation called Rowdy Boyz.

The Majority Partner was one Richard Lee Dover. Mr. Robbins and Mr. Harris were listed as being on the Board of Directors, although I’d bet neither one of them could read anything more complicated than a comic book.

I wasn’t sure what to do next, especially since they were all likely to beat feet out of town in the near future. My guess was they’d sell the existing film catalogue, forged personal releases and all, and set up shop again somewhere they could start over without having to answer too many questions. Perhaps Nevada. It also seemed likely they’d already suspect that the law was closing in, so I also didn’t have time to plan anything elaborate.

I called Daisy Kendall AKA Elizabeth from a pay phone. The cell line kicked over to an answering service. I didn’t leave a message. If this one suddenly went south, I didn’t want to leave a trail that could put Daisy in hot water. Right about then something began to percolate in the back of my mind, some kind of a hunch, but I couldn’t quite get a grip on it.

Later that night, I put on some jogging gear and parked in a shopping mall near an Italian restaurant, just a few blocks away from Mr. Dover’s last known address, a home in the trendy suburb of Calabasas. I looked around to make sure it was safe, then poured some bottled water over my head and ran briskly up the hill, arms pumping, like a man who’d already done a few miles. I passed one old coot out walking two dogs, but other than that the streets were empty.

Dover’s home was a rather nice blue and white colonial style, but then so was every other house on the block. I ran circles on the sidewalk, looked around again and then hopped the fence into the dark backyard. There I put on some surgical gloves and peered through a couple of windows. The place seemed quiet, although a TV set was flickering in the empty bedroom.

The punch pad for the alarm showed it wasn’t armed, so I just popped the latch on the back door and let myself in. I’m usually not inclined to commit a felony without thinking things through, but in this case I figured time was of the essence. I just wanted to get a handle on Dover’s racket and maybe a clue where he’d be going if he blew town.

I pulled the Navy watch cap down over my face and moved slowly through the living room, listening carefully. The television was tuned to a sports channel, and once inside the house the volume seemed way too loud. I peered into the kitchen, saw nothing went on down the hall.

There was a home office, a rather messy one. I poked around a bit, found an open pack of discs, backed up the entire computer and kept a copy. Then I went into the second bedroom, found a guest bed in messy condition and a few paperback books scattered about. Someone had used the shower recently. The sound of the television drew me into the master bedroom. The announcers were barking out football scores as if racing one another to a finish line. The bedding was a mess; the sheets and blankets were tangled and one pillow was half on the carpeted floor. There was a half-filled suitcase in the corner.

That’s when I noticed the odor. I edged along the wall and peered over the edge of the bed. My stomach rolled.

I blinked, looked again. A naked body lay on the carpet; a rather hairy body at that. I moved closer. The corpse had a pillow over its face, and right in the middle was a small hole with blackened edges. I checked more carefully. His throat had also been cut. A lot of dried blood darkened the beige carpeting, but less that you would expect. I lifted the edge of the pillow then replaced it. One shot, right through the forehead, with the pillow used as a silencer. But why cut his throat too?

“So long, Mr. Dover,” I whispered. “Say hello to hell for me.”

I backed away carefully, even bent down and used my gloved hands to make sure I didn’t leave any retrievable footprints. I got out of there faster than a corporate fat cat collecting on his golden parachute. Then I called Detective Kasper from a pay phone.

“You mean that guy Dover?”

“Yeah, like the white cliffs.”

“You sure he was dead, bro?”

“Deader than Custer’s nuts. One shot in the head, and a sliced neck to boot. I don’t know how you want to handle it, but I was never there.”

Kasper sighed. “Why do you keep dragging me back into this kind of shit?”

“I wouldn’t want you to get bored. Jon?”

“Yeah?”

“There are two partners, remember. One is Patrick Wade Robbins, and a guy named Timothy ‘Wild Man’ Harris.”

“Yeah, I already thought of that. You like one of them for this?”

“Seems likely, although beats me why he’d have to kill him twice. Besides, look at it this way, if they didn’t do Dover they’re probably next on the list for whoever did.”

“What’s your next move?”

“What do you think?”

Wild Man’s pad was closer, an apartment complex just off Reseda and Victory at the edge of the barrio. A fender bender had Victory looking like a row of crushed tin cans. I sped down side streets and through alleys to make better time. I pulled up in front of the apartment house just in time to see a body under a bloody sheet being loaded onto an ambulance. An emaciated speed freak with stringy hair and coke bottle glasses was holding up a street lamp, watching the rack of drugs in the EMT kit like it was a double cheeseburger. I pulled to the curb and rolled my window down.

“What happened?”

“A home invasion robbery or something,” she said. “I know the guy, can you believe it? I used to bump into him all the time at the liquor store. A cop said somebody broke in and sliced him up real bad. Then the motherfucker took a shower like it was nothing and left.”

“That’s sad.”

“Not really. He was a prick.”

“Who was he?” I asked, already anticipating the answer.

“Called himself Wild Man.”

My cell phone rang a couple of minutes later, as I was about to get on the 101. It was Kasper. I told him about the second killing. He swore, said: “That guy Robbins? His place was torched. There was a body inside, but the ID will have to wait for dental records. ME says it was a man for sure, though.”

“Somebody took out all three of them in one night.”

“It gets worse.”

“Worse?” I got on the freeway and started shifting to the faster lanes. “Jon, I have to figure out a way to keep my client out of this.”

“No, you have to figure out how to keep yourself out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Snitch dropped the proverbial dime on you. Jack Petersen already knows you were asking around about Dover, and says he has security camera footage of you at the porn convention wearing a moustache and a hat. What the hell were you thinking?”

Well, so much for my makeup skills. “Hell, I don’t know. Thought I was being clever. Damn, it has to be Petersen catching? He’s really got a hard for me.”

“That’s what you get for boning his kid sister.”

I got into the fast lane. “I’m the number one suspect then.”

“As of now, you are. Nobody knows your client from Britney Spears. Bro, Petersen is determined to get a warrant if you don’t come in for a chat.”

“I need one last favor first. Track down the whereabouts of a vet name of Jack Wade, 310 or 323 area code, used to be in Army Special Forces.”

“Wait one.” I heard his fingers tap dancing on a computer keyboard.

“How long will this take?”

“Not long for the basic information, but I may as well do a bit of research, too. Hang up. I’ll call you back in a few.”

A cop car showed up in my rear view mirror and my mouth went dry. I stayed in the second lane, right at the speed limit, and he passed me by. A few minutes later my cell rang, and Kasper gave me an address and phone number, a land line, but said the phone was disconnected.

“Petersen knows we’re friends, bro. He’s going to be on me soon. How do you want me to play this?”

I didn’t answer, just severed the connection. The more Kasper knew when Petersen grilled him, the more trouble he’d be in.

I wasn’t about to come in for a chat and let the trail go cold. I decided to gamble Petersen wouldn’t be able to pull a warrant until late the next day, and I figured to have it all wrapped up by then.

I took the San Diego freeway to the Wilshire exit and headed toward the VA Center. According to Kasper, Jack Wade went there for treatments, although a call to the shrink at home turned up that Wade had missed his last session. Also that he lived in a small, rent controlled studio apartment at the western edge of Santa Monica.

Frankly, I was hoping I wouldn’t find him dead. This whole situation was messy enough already.

The place was a real dump; barking dogs, cat urine and beer bottles in the planters—weird for such a nice part of town. The morbidly obese landlord answered after my third, fairly aggressive knock.

“Wade? He moved out, middle of the night, maybe a week ago. Nothing in the place but garbage, wet towels and a bunch of bloody sheets, you believe that? Prick still owes me a month’s rent.”

“What was he like?”

“Crazy as a bed bug, always carried a gun.”

“Any idea where he might have gone?”

“I did, I’d be chasing after my money, right?”

He slammed the door in my face.

There didn’t seem to be anything else. I called Kasper back and told him what I knew, asked him to play it safe and put out an APB on Jack Wade. Then I sat in the car for a while, thinking about what to do next. Closed my eyes and pondered. Then it hit me. I pulled my laptop from under the seat, hijacked some broadband and did a little extra research. And suddenly I knew what had been nagging me all along.

The church at Sunset and Bellflower has a large parking lot on the south side. A few cars were parked near the back of the building. I waited patiently for the occupants to return. Six men and three women came out at around 1:00 in the morning. One of the men was big, burly, but too young to be Wade. Two of the women stayed behind to chat. Finally the brunette got into her dented BMW and drove away. When the blonde opened her car door and slipped into the driver seat, I tapped on the passenger window.

“Jesus, you scared me!” Daisy Kendall opened the door for me to slide in. “Have you learned anything?”

“A lot.”

She caught the tension in my voice. “Is everything okay? What’s going on? Did you talk to Kevin?”

I nodded. “I did better than that. I tracked down the men who raped you, Daisy. They’re all dead.”

Her jaw dropped. “Dead?”

“They were murdered. So I got right on it, and traced the clues right back to your AA friend Jack Wade.”

“God. Poor Jack.”

“I don’t suppose he was here tonight?”

Daisy shook her head. “No, I told you, I haven’t seen him in days. Someone told me he was drinking again. Oh, my God, so now Jack is in serious trouble?”

I patted her hand gently, smiled. “No, Daisy. Elizabeth Bath. You’re in serious trouble.”

Her eyes went dark and feral. She almost had the .38 out of her purse before I could get the cuffs on her. I twisted her wrist and took the gun away. I dropped it into my coat pocket.

I shook my head. “They wouldn’t cut you in, would they?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let me go.”

“You weren’t raped; it was staged. You told me you were a good actress, and you are. Damned good.”

“What? Fuck you.”

She spat at me. I wiped my face with my sleeve and kept talking. “Here’s what I think. The Rowdy Boyz were really raking in the green on that video series. They had already milked it for a bundle, emptied their accounts, and now were about to split town without paying you the nice, fat percentage they’d promised. So you went after them, one by one, looking for their cash.”

She snorted. “If you think I’ll ever admit to any of this, you’re just spinning your wheels.”

“The thing is, after the first killing, you weren’t just rolling around in fake blood anymore. And now you had a taste for the real thing. I think you killed him in the nude, and cut his throat just to bathe in blood again, Elizabeth Bath.”

“Why do you keep using that name? I hardly ever go by that name.”

“Because Elizabeth Bathory was one of the most famous women in Eastern European vampire lore. She lived back in the 1500s, as you know perfectly well. A madwoman who murdered peasants to bathe in their blood, hoping doing so would help her to stay young.”

“Great.” She sneered. “So now you think I’m a vampire?”

I stared. “No, I don’t think you’re a vampire, Daisy. Believe me, they do exist and I’ve met the real thing. But I do believe you think you’re one. Or at least that Elizabeth Bathory was onto something back in the day.”

“Get out of my car.”

I ignored her. “You went to Dover’s first, and woke him up with the gun.” I tapped the .38 in my pocket. “Probably not this gun, although maybe you’re that stupid. Anyway, Dover told you that one of the other guys had the cash. Maybe he said something, pissed you off. So you stuck the pillow over his face and shot him. Then you tossed the house, just in case, which is why it was such a mess. After that, you wiped his blood on you, cleaned up the room and used the shower. Hell, maybe you got off for all I know.”

Daisy/Elizabeth snickered, fiddled with the cuffs and looked up at me. Those pretty eyes rolled. She looked kind of like a Great White too long on the Atkins Diet. “You done yet?”

“Wild Man was probably next, but he told you Robbins had it. You had nothing to lose by then, so you killed him, too. Bathed in blood. Again, you showered afterwards and cleaned up. But when Robbins didn’t have the money either, you went nuts and took him out. So you did three murders in one night, probably all for nothing. Am I right?”

“Think about it. Blood everywhere, all the supernatural shit? I’ll say I went temporarily insane after being raped,” Daisy said, coolly. “I’ll walk in a year or two.”

“Maybe. Daisy, what happened to the money? Did Jack Wade catch on to the scam and get there first? Or did you set him up for this from the start?”

Daisy didn’t answer.

“Is Wade dead, too?”

She sneered. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

I shrugged. “Me, I figure he’s dead, because you wanted me as an insurance policy. You knew where I’d go, so you called the police to report my actions as if you’d seen them to make it look like me on the vengeance trail on behalf of my sad little client. That way, if the cops didn’t buy that crazy Jack Wade did it, they’d likely come after my ass instead.”

The car went red, then white as the patrol car pulled in behind us. For the first time, Daisy Kendall looked concerned. Then her eyes filled up and her lower lip began to tremble. It was an Oscar-worthy performance. She was working up a damned good imitation of an upset victim.

“You’re good,” I said, then reached into my shirt pocket and produced my cell phone. I spoke into it. “Isn’t she, Jon? She’s really good.”

Kasper showed up in uniform, at the driver side window. He tapped on it. I reached over and opened the door while Daisy hissed like an angry cobra. Kasper mockingly held a phone pressed to his ear. “Good, but not good enough. I heard the whole thing.”

I smiled happily. “See? He heard the whole thing.”

Daisy started screaming and kicking and threatening to kill us, too. It took some backup to get her subdued and on the way to jail.

Kasper and I watched the second car drive away. I rubbed my sore nose, where Daisy had kicked me.

“You were right about Wade,” Kasper said. “We found him a couple of blocks from his place, wrists sliced wide open and all bled out. The girl tried hard to make it look like suicide, but added to everything else we’re probably going to get her for that one, too. Apparently he was found clinging to an empty suitcase.” He tapped the trunk of Daisy’s car. “So lay you ten to one we find the cash in here.”

“I figure that’s probably what set her off. Wade turned out to be a prick, just after the money. So he ripped off the Rowdy Boyz first. When Daisy caught wind, she went on a rampage, found out she liked blood for real instead of pretend. She wigged out completely, and now everyone ends up dead.”

“Everyone?”

“She’ll get the needle for sure.”

Jon nodded. “Yeah, probably. You look like you could use some coffee.”

I shook my head. “If that stunt got Petersen off my ass, I think I’ll just go on home to bed. I’ll come by in the morning and give you a statement.”

Kasper yawned. “Fair enough.”

I started toward my car. “You know, people like that make me wonder sometimes.”

“Wonder what?”

“If this world is another planet’s hell.”

Actually, I don’t wonder. I know.

_______________

“Maybe this world is another planet’s Hell.”

—Aldous Huxley

The Name of the Wicked

How magnificent is the desert sky! The icy, scattered stars are like teardrops of crystal in a calm, dark ocean. A harsh wind is coming from the east, off the dry salt flats; wheezing down the gully and into this small canyon. It sounds like a creature in pain. Time hangs suspended. This land could effortlessly move a hundred years forward or back, but this is the night of April 16th, 1892.

Pray for me. I may not live to see the morning.

It’s getting hard to think, much less write in this journal. I can no longer feel my legs and doubtless have lost a great deal of blood. I can’t smell anything but dust, cordite, my own stink and the acrid odor of lamp oil. Ominous shadows are dancing all around me, lurking just beyond a yellow smear of light, waiting for my lantern to go out.

When the glare no longer hurts their eyes they will attack.

I have no excuse for my conduct; I certainly cannot plead ignorance. I returned to Nevada already well-schooled in the history of the region. After all, my grandfather’s ranch, several miles south of Two Trees, overlapped much of what had been the land of the Horse Humans. I had heard the legends at the knee of Nelly Tall Bear, who watched over me, this both before and after my parents died of the fever.

Old Nelly was a large woman, jolly yet quite imposing. She wore pale deerskin and turquoise beads that were patiently threaded onto tiny strips of leather: Oiled hair, black as newspaper ink, pulled back tight and braided. It kept her aging face youthful. In fact, Nelly still looked girlish much later, in her coffin. She told me of that savage tribe; how the Horse Humans had sacrificed their own children and young girls to a demon called Orunde. They were the only known cannibals in the region and eventually their bloodlust all but wiped them from the face of the earth.

As for me, I would tremble in awe when told of these primitive, horrible beings, my little pulse racing with boyish delight. On occasion, my mother would overhear such a recitation, grow distraught and sternly admonish Nelly to ‘stop this nonsense for the sake of the child’s immortal soul.’ Mother was a saved Christian and a stern taskmaster. I respected her, certainly, but it was Nelly who I loved as my true mother. After such a scolding, Nelly would promise to refrain from speaking of the Horse Humans again, but before too long I would charm yet another tale from her reluctant lips.

On the other hand, my father was not a religious fellow. Indeed, he was known to enjoy the occasional card game, a cigar and some brandy. Father was a bald, round and bookish man given to wearing suspenders and wire-frame glasses. I think he found Nelly and her macabre fables quite amusing. In fact, he would argue to mother, ‘would you rather he read a Grimm Brothers fairy tale of a cannibal witch baking live children in her oven?’ Father reckoned that no harm could ever come to me merely from ‘the fevered imagination of a tribe of illiterate savages.’ Hogwash, he would sputter, is hogwash.

But Nelly swore that her own great-great-grandmother had been a Horse Human named Crow Wing. And that Crow Wing’s mother, fearing for her life, had sent her to the hills to live with the Cave People, because they worshipped the sky and seldom went to war. Then Crow Wing, knowing that the night of Orunde had come, sat high up in the mountains and watched the tiny fires in the valley. Only one child was to die, but this night the sacrifice spread like a blaze in dried sage; seeping out like blood upon the sand. The Horse Humans went berserk. Three children, four. Warrior turned on warrior. They skinned one another. More killed, more died. It was blood lust.

They say Crow Wing cried when she heard the final, tortured shrieks of the last remaining men, women and children. She vowed to tell the story; to pass it down from generation to generation, so that Orunde would never again successfully deceive a people. “Nelly, stop in the name of God!” Mother would cry. “Oh, hogwash!” Father would respond. “Let the boy be.”

As previously stated, I was told these tales many times. They kept me hushed under the itchy covers, quaking but still, very long into the night; which is what I suspect old Nelly Tall Bear had intended. They also thrilled and disturbed me, thus sparking an interest in anthropology, anthropophagy and my wish to study at the finest schools in Europe after my parents passed on. Indeed, I did my Ph.D. on the legend of the Horse Humans, but Nelly would have been shocked, for I held that they had never truly existed. My thesis was that the tale of Orunde was apocryphal.

Hush!

A few pebbles zing merrily down a rock face and sprinkle a flat rock like jacks. Something is inching closer, staying just beyond the blush of yellow light. Tears spring to my eyes as I ache for opportunities lost and roads not taken.

Sweet Jesus, I am running out of time. Must hurry, write faster…

I returned to America via New York at the beginning of this year, 1892. I traveled west on the Union Pacific Railway with my degree, boundless arrogance and a financial grant from the fine Territory of Nevada. I was determined to prove my thesis and write a scholarly book before achieving tenure at a suitably posh university.

In my arrogance, I had my life all mapped out. I returned to the Two Trees area via stage coach; I hired a digger, a merrily alcoholic sociopath named Abraham Lincoln Moon; and ventured out into the desert on horseback.

My deceased grandfather’s ranch had been sold whilst I was abroad, of course; various parcels had then been divided and auctioned away to pay taxes. I had not been home in many years, although I knew that the area I wanted to visit lay a few miles south. Research had revealed that the deed was held by one Samuel Moon, the uncle of my drunken assistant, a fact which explains the necessity of his foul presence. He sang, mumbled and was exceedingly flatulent the entire trip.

We rode further into the sage-freckled emptiness of the Nevada desert, until all signs of civilization vanished. No telephone poles, railway tracks, fences; not so much as a strand of barbed wire (as a child I had called the wickedly spun metal twine ‘bob wire’). The heat was as scorching as I remembered.

The day dragged by until finally a red sunset stained the horizon. We had ridden for several miles when we spotted some cow skulls and buzzard feathers near a huge mound of earth. Abe Lincoln took a long drink of whiskey, belched and shook his head. “There,” he said. “That was the Horse Human land.”

“And your Uncle Samuel lives there?”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“Not lives. He watches.”

“Watches what?”

Abe Lincoln Moon shrugged. “Just watches.”

We continued on. My buttocks and thighs ached mightily and it was dusk by the time we located the dilapidated wooden shack. It had splintered frame windows and a roof of dented sheet metal that arched like a rainbow in the pastel sunset. I squinted and made a note in this journal as Abe Lincoln Moon approached the house.

“Empty.”

I shivered. The night was cool; a dry breeze raised the small hairs on my neck. I took a drink of water and swatted a horse fly away from my reddened nose. “Perhaps he is sleeping,” I ventured.

Abe Lincoln scowled again. He grunted. “I doubt it.”

For some reason his stereotypical behavior annoyed me. I slid down from my mount and cringed. I was used to traveling in a buckboard or a carriage. My very testicles hurt. I had not ridden a horse in many a year. I massaged my muscles beneath my stiff new work pants.

“We’ll camp here,” I said, imperiously. “I don’t give a damn if your uncle is home or not. My buttocks are sore and I need something to eat. Build a fire.”

Abe Lincoln Moon said: “Build your own.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

He shook his head again. “I won’t,” he said. “Not on this ground. This ground is sacred.”

I squatted down and rubbed my eyes. I fear I was quite condescending. “Mr. Moon,” I said, “it’s getting late and I am weary. Now, first of all the entire Horse Human legend is just that, a legend. I have already told you that. There is nothing here that will harm us. Second, your uncle has built his home here, so quite obviously this place is safe. Third, if it is a question of money, I can…”

Moon snorted. “You think I am afraid because it is Horse Human land?” He slapped his own chest. “I have their blood in me.” I rolled my eyes, but he did not seem to notice. “But this is also where many white men are buried. That makes for too much magic.”

Moon now seemed totally sober and somewhat imposing. In fact, his doughy facial features had somehow hardened. He now reminded me of Nelly Tall Bear, my beloved childhood nanny. I swallowed and jumped to my feet. “White people?” I looked around, and my heart kicked in my chest. Even at dusk it became clear to me. I registered the scoured, white rock face and the Two Trees; the low creek bed and the gully coming in off the flats. “My God,” I said. “This was part of my grandfather’s property, Moon! I remember it from when I was a boy. Your uncle took some of the land nearest our spread.”

“Yes.”

“Members of my family were buried near here. How wonderful! In fact, I may see their graves again soon, after all this time!”

Moon was silent. I could see he was troubled, but I cared not. I twirled in circles, like a child in a circus tent for the very first time, eyeing the rock face above. “But where is the house my grandfather constructed?” I cried. “It was of a decent size, and mainly built of stone.”

Then I remembered the sadness of my parent’s passing, and that all those who had lived here were now passed away and gone. My enthusiasm waned. A long moment passed. I repeated myself: “Where is that house?”

“Torn down, brick by brick,” Moon said.

“No! But why?”

Moon spat onto the parched earth. “To calm the spirits,” he said. “You may think I’m foolish, but they wished things…repaired. Back the way they were before the white men came.”

A chill ran through me. “They wanted?”

Moon smiled white and wide, but now his eyes were flat, reptilian slits. “I don’t have an Uncle Samuel,” Moon said. “Not anymore. He died five winters ago.”

“But…”

Moon looked up and around. Shadows were streaming out of the mountains like stalks from a carnivorous plant. He casually pulled a long Army Colt pistol and aimed it at my lower belly. I am ashamed to say that my bladder released.

“Step back, sir,” Moon said. “Get away from the animal.”

I did as I was ordered.

In a flash, Moon was on his horse, clicking with his tongue and leading my mount away. I watched him go, my throat tight with terror. Fortunately, I had my canteen in one hand and my own handgun tucked into the back of my leather belt. I dared not draw it. Mr. Moon would have surely cut me down had I tried.

“Where are you going?” I cried weakly. “What shall become of me?”

“Truth is, I don’t know.”

Moon looked back over his shoulder only once, and again I was struck by how different he seemed. With the palate of sunset behind him he seemed like a brave warrior from bygone days. I half expected to see feathers in his hair.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because of your family, sir. Your family desecrated this ground,” Moon said. He spoke softly, yet my belly flooded with adrenaline. “And because the Horse Humans are buried here,” he continued. “Nothing personal, but they need to stay buried.”

“Moon!”

But at once my guide vanished over the horizon, horse hooves clopping on scattered rocks; my needed mount in tow. It was night. I was alone in the wilderness with a handgun, six bullets and half a canteen of water. I struggled to control my consternation. I circled the small area, looking for ideas. The shed was nearly worthless, but would serve as some kind of shelter were I to arrange the components properly. I found a lantern, a moldy box of matches and a small container of oil. I dragged the sheet metal over to a dead-end section of the gully and propped it up on opposite lips of sand. I braced it with timber and stepped back. Now I would have three sides blocked and only one open.

It was totally dark in the canyon and the wind was rising.

Something howled, and my skin crawled like a colony of black ants. Coyotes? Likely nothing to be afraid of, and yet I felt an atavistic dread beyond description. I wasted four of the precious matches before I succeeded in lighting the lamp. The yellowed expanse of brightness warmed my very soul. I paced the area, trying to hold the terrain in my mind. I am an anthropologist, and I know the deep and ghastly dread of the darkness that lives in the bravest of men. I wanted to defend myself with logic, awareness and perhaps even to sketch a small map so that I would be able to readily picture the area around me during the night. For a moment, I felt I had control of the situation.

There came a fiendish grunt. I froze and then spun around, holding up the lantern, gasping rapidly for air…nothing. But then I heard a liquid slurp, like a large beast slavering and sucking up its own drool. I drew my weapon. My hand trembled. I backed away, towards my cubby hole in the parched earth, my chest tight and my face slick with sweat.

The first one came from the south.

It shambled sideways, something like a sea crab. I cringed back and gasped. At first I thought it to be some prehistoric being returned from the bed of a dried-up sea. But it was worse than that, far worse. It was something that had once been human. The hair and nails were impossibly long, and rags still clung to the clicking bones. Some skin still stretched across the skull like yellowing parchment, and one cheek had been eaten away, likely by insects. The hideously grinning teeth shone through like yellowed piano keys. They opened and closed with an audible clack.

I fired, but it did not flinch. I fired two more times and it stopped. Then the thing emitted a small, high-pitched squeal and retreated into the darkness. I swallowed vomit and thanked God for my luck, for I must have struck some remaining vital area. I was down to three bullets. I backed away and started to duck down into my make-shift home at the foot of the gully. The creature scuttled forward again.

I heard a low, urgent moan of unholy desire from behind me, and knew there were others. I spun and fired twice, wasting more precious bullets. Then I crawled into my hole and curled up in a ball. To my utter horror I heard many more of the things approaching, and now from all directions. Whistles, shrieks and coughs ensured. They were dead, yet had voices of some kind, but from what soulless, fleshless orifice those sounds were created I do not know. I had but two bullets remaining in my side arm, and knew that my hubris was to cost me my life.

I drank some tepid water. I closed my eyes and prayed. When I opened them again, a thing beyond description faced me. It stood just at the edge of the light. He had long white hair and filthy nails; an eviscerated rodent hung from a clenched fist. His ravaged features were tilted to one side in a quizzical manner. A long, thin string of bloody drool hung from the jawbone and trailed off into the sand. He wore what remained of a black suit with tails.

Something happened inside me, something I cannot explain. In a flash I recalled my grandfather’s funeral, his distinguished body packed in ice for the wake, and the black suit with tails he had been buried in. Could such a thing be? I felt the strangest mixture of fascination and sickly dread. I raised the lantern and inched as close to the monster as I dared.

The grandfather thing retreated, and it was then I realized my bullets had been useless. However, they were afraid of the light! I moved forward, and after taking a deep breath, stepped out into the gully. The yellowish glow spread. It beat back the night. All around me, gnarled forms withdrew; hissing their disappointment.

“Grandfather?”

The thing cocked its head again, as if responding to my voice with invisible ears. I swallowed more bile and stepped forward. “Can you help me…?” And at once I heard movement behind me, as several of the things attempted to slip down into my shelter. I whirled around and fired without thinking.

One bullet left.

I raised the light. The creatures grumbled and stumbled; cawed, crawled and staggered away. Now I could see that some were male, some female; some large and some mere children. Many wore what had once been the clothing of white settlers. Some wore fragments of tribal garments or carried ancient weapons. In this horrid place, the dead continued on indefinitely.

My breath left me and the world fell away. “Help me, Jesus.”

I saw them clearly, a few yards off: The same long hair and nails; all bones and strips of filthy fabric. They were fighting, as usual, only now over something red and wet. My father, improbably wearing bent wire rim glasses and what remained of his gold suspenders, was snarling and clawing at a raw, purple-veined chunk of meat. Meanwhile, my mother tried to drive him off by striking him with her well-worn Bible. They had become a ghastly and grotesque parody of themselves. I lowered the lamp in disgust.

Movement behind me! My body was now blocking out the light. The grandfather thing lurched forward and teeth sank into my lower leg. The pain was excruciating and I made a sound so high and shrill it could have come from a woman. I kicked out and pulled away, but the predator would not release me.

“No!” I cried. “Let me go!” I twisted my damaged leg and yanked. A large chunk of my flesh remained in those macabre, gnashing teeth and blood spurted out onto the sand. The army of ghouls grunted with glee. They moved forward as one to enclose me.

I could not stop the bleeding with my bare hands. I had nowhere to go, and one bullet left. I inched back down into my shelter and used my belt to bind the wound. I began to write in this journal. At once, an ominous lethargy began to overtake me; a numbness that began with the aggrieved calf muscle, and then traveled both down and up that leg. As I write this now, I can no longer feel my lower body.

The lantern is flickering out.

I am spent. Soon will put the gun to my head. Pull trigger.

Can write no more. Take no more.

God help me Nelly Tall Bear is eating my foot…

_______________

“The memory of the just is blessed;

But the name of the wicked shall rot”

—Proverbs 10:7

Night Nurse

Bud was speeding down the Hollywood Freeway in the fast lane when the pain came. He knew what it was the second he felt it, a sharp blow to the solar plexus, quick as the kick of a mule. His upper gut contracted into a burning fist that wouldn’t, couldn’t relax. He groaned, doubled over, took his foot off the gas. The asshole behind him leaned on the horn. In agony, Bud managed to hit the turn signal. He forced himself to sit up a bit, checked the rearview mirror. Fortunately there was room in the lanes to his right. Everyone in LA was rushing to get home before dark.

Bud had already been hospitalized for stomach pain earlier that month, and the gastro guy assigned to him—a nice Indian fellow with a lilting accent and an irreverent attitude—suspected he’d passed a stone. Since the guy couldn’t prove it, they called it acute gastritis and sent him home.

Bud pulled off the freeway and headed for the same hospital, wondering if he’d throw up or pass out before reaching the ER. A friend had told Bud that this condition was kind of like having a baby, but worse. Maybe she was right.

Damn it to hell…

Sunset was an ugly orange and red smear of smog when Bud reached the hospital, pulled into the parking lot, found a space. He opened the door and promptly barfed on the pavement. Two PAs were outside smoking cigarettes. One sprinted for a wheelchair and the other rushed to Bud’s car. Bud realized he was shivering now, sweating up a storm. His shirt was soaked through, even his underwear felt damp. He was clearly running a high fever. The two men got him into a wheelchair, raced him across the pavement and through the sliding glass doors. The shopworn ER was packed, primarily with flu sufferers, many of them poor and likely uninsured. The walls were ogre green. The room smelled like a cattle car. Bud’s stomach rolled over, but there was nothing left to expel.

The PAs wheeled him to Admissions. The overweight female behind the desk appeared indifferent, or perhaps just burned out.

“I think it’s my gall bladder,” Bud wheezed. He gave his name, let them know he’d been in the hospital only a couple of weeks prior for the same condition. He told the woman that this experience was worse, far worse, than the last attack. She pulled his file, found the necessary insurance information. A male nurse, some kid festooned with tattoos, was asking a lot of questions. Bud heard himself answering as if from another dimension. His fever was rising steadily. He was drenched. Concerned about a heart attack, the overworked staff rushed him down the hall and onto a gurney. IVs were inserted, a blood pressure cuff attached. A balding man in white came in, scanned the file, ordered drugs and mentioned scheduling surgery once the fever had gone down.

“Can I have some water?”

“Nope, nothing at all right now,” the doctor said. “You’ll toss it back up. You have pancreatitis. That could kill a man your age.” He flashed a grin. “Hey, I promise I’ll keep you so high you won’t care.”

Whatever they put in the drip, it made the world turn even more surreal. Bud remembered test after test, different faces doing different things, but the doc was right, he didn’t much care. Well into the evening he was finally moved to a room. Saw the shadow of another man on the other side of a long white curtain. Someone who kept saying “I don’t want to die, God give me another chance,” in a low, raspy voice. The man’s desperation made Bud’s skin crawl, despite the heavy veil of medication. He closed his eyes wearily, fell asleep.

Pain woke him with a roar. His belly was on fire again. His right elbow hurt, too. Someone had strapped it down so he wouldn’t move the IV needles. Despite the discomfort, Bud dozed again, this time for quite a while. He opened his eyes to blackness, except for a bit of moon glow from the window. It was quiet. The door opened, a long corridor of light speared the darkness. A new nurse came in.

“Bud? How do you feel?”

Kindness. A personal touch. His first name. Bud tried to focus. The night nurse appeared to be close to his age, perhaps sixty. She moved slowly, a bit stiffly. Her brown hair was flecked with grey. She smiled. Bud thought she had the kindest, deepest brown eyes he’d ever seen. She came to the bed, leaned over. Her lips moved, asking if he was in pain. Bud nodded. She vanished to his right, doing something with the IV. He was grateful, but didn’t want to watch. Bud hated needles. Within thirty seconds another dose of narcotic flooded his system with warmth, and the world spun away.

An arrogant young surgeon visited him somewhere around dawn. Bud winced in the sunlight, cringed at the man’s tenor voice. Things seemed way too bright. His eyes hurt. Someone had removed the white curtain. Bud’s desperate, panicked bedmate was gone. He did not ask where or why. It would be good to have a private room. Later, someone else asked about insurance, if he had any family to notify. Bud was so stoned he told the woman his life story. How his bitch of an ex-wife had moved out of state, that he’d lost his job and had to COBRA the damned insurance, had nobody in the world left who gave a shit. On one level Bud knew the woman didn’t care; on another it felt good to complain to someone. Hell, even talk to someone.

He tried to watch TV, but couldn’t concentrate. He’d sleep for an hour or two and they’d come back to draw blood or poke him with something. His bladder filled urgently and often. The IV was flushing his system out. Unable to move, humiliated and scared, Bud peed in the plastic bottle. He got a shot every four hours. The drugs made it all tolerable, but just barely. As promised, they kept him stoned. Bud missed the night nurse. Nobody else bothered to use his first name.

She came again just as the pain returned, which was shortly after dinner. No one brought Bud anything, but he heard all the activity and smelled the hospital food. It made him queasy. The night nurse stepped into the darkness, left the door open a few inches, as if concerned not to blind him, for which Bud was grateful. She flowed into the room gracefully this time, carrying a plastic tray with bottles. She put a small bit of ice on his tongue. It was heaven. Bud hadn’t noticed the first time, but she was rather pretty for her age, and younger than he’d originally thought. Bud felt his body craving the drug and wondered if he’d leave the hospital with some kind of addiction. The gentle nurse wiped hot perspiration from his brow. He considered asking her out when all of this was over. Then slept.

They scheduled him for an operation, early morning of course, after one more day on fluids. The surgeon seemed concerned that Bud hadn’t tried to get up. Bud explained he felt weak. The surgeon showed him how to disconnect the IV rig and urged him to try to make it to the bathroom once in a while, to just keep moving, keep the circulation going. Later that afternoon, Bud dropped the gate on the side of his bed. He unplugged the IV, heard it beeping. He couldn’t believe how dizzy he became while struggling to stand. I’ve lost weight, I can feel it.

Bud limped into the bathroom, forced out a tiny, very weak stream of urine. As he turned to go back to bed, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Saw deep lines etched in his face, blue shadows under his eyes, pale skin sagging. Bud thought he looked like some kind of ghoul now, fucking death warmed over. This thing was really kicking his ass.

The staff brought him some chicken broth, but Bud couldn’t eat. The thought of surgery frightened him, being cut open like that. Naked in front of chattering strangers. The hours crawled by. He’d never felt so alone.

Soon it was dusk. The pain came on again, and Bud found himself staring at the door, willing her to come soon. At last the door slid open; a long, warm bar of light rolled across the linoleum and into the shadowy bathroom like a living thing.

Bud said, “Please.” It was someone else’s voice, very far away.

The nurse with the kind eyes nodded. She leaned over to kiss his forehead this time. She looked radiant. Bud had an erotic fantasy that surprised him, considering his pathetic condition. He didn’t know if he’d been hallucinating before or was imaging things now, but the kind nurse was quite pretty really; thirty at most, with ample breasts and thick black hair. He closed his eyes, waiting for the medication. The glow flooded through him. Bud felt his heart kick and then weaken. In fact, he suddenly felt panicked, knowing it wasn’t sleep he was dropping into, but something far more sinister…

And then suddenly it became difficult to breathe.

Help me!

Bud fought off the pleasant drowsiness, turned his head to tell her this was the wrong medication, that someone in the bowels of the hospital had made a terrible mistake…

The night nurse wasn’t there.

Confused, Bud rolled his head the other way. The IV was unplugged and beeping urgently.

The last thing Bud saw was the gorgeous young night nurse crouched over the hospital bed, dark eyes rolled back in her head. She was gently sucking on the tubes coming from his bruised and bloody arm.

Tokens

He did not really want to kill her, but to his utter dismay the fantasy had begun to cross his mind.

The road, like many in this part of Nevada, was bumpy and only partially paved. They roared to the top of the mountain recklessly; covered in dust, bobbing and bouncing to mediocre pop songs. After several false alarms, Jack Benton finally recognized the battered, metal mailbox and the wooden fence. He pulled the Jeep to the side of the road, willing himself to behave in a romantic fashion.

“Are you ready?” he asked. He took his young fiancée by the hand. “Some wishes do come true.”

Becky tapped her foot and rolled her blue eyes in an expression of contempt, a habit Jack found adolescent and infuriating. “I’m tired and I’m hot and I’m fucking thirsty,” she said, sneering. “Can we just get this over with?”

“Sure,” Jack said. He was determined to remain reasonable. “Whatever you say. But I promise you’re going to love this.”

Jack put the Jeep into drive and rounded the corner. He relaxed and released his breath. The grounds had been well kept, just as he’d been promised when he’d purchased the home. The plants and flowers were lovingly nurtured by the handyman and constantly watered by the icy, melting snow that ran down from the slopes of the nearby Sierras. The grass was green and verdant and smelled wonderful after the long, dirty drive. The cabin, a carefully designed mix of rustic and modern; of redwood, brick and pine, had been recently painted, as per the escrow agreement.

Jack was gratified to hear Becky grunt; an involuntary expression of approval. Now that they had crested the point, one could see that this was the only way up to the expensive getaway house. The other three slopes fell away into nothingness, and the view of the high desert below was nothing short of spectacular.

“It’s nice, Jack,” Becky said grudgingly. “What’s that?”

He followed her pointing finger. Perhaps fifty yards down the mountain sat a battered two-room shack and small tool shed, both just below a large septic tank. The shack seemed recently painted; it wasn’t quite finished, as though the painter had run out of leftovers. An ancient television antenna sagged like a weary phallus on the black, tarpaper roof.

“That’s where Luke lives,” he said.

She seemed pleased to have discovered something to complain about. “And just who the hell is Luke? I suppose now some toothless redneck in overalls is going to be peering in the window while we’re fucking or something?”

Jack winced. “Please watch your language,” he said. “You’re not attractive when you swear like a sailor.”

“You’re unbelievable, you know that? It’s like I’m engaged to a goddamned minister or something.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “Let’s not fight.”

After a pause, Becky relented. “You’re right,” she said, “like always.” She brightened. “It is beautiful here, Jack,” she said. “Let’s go look around.”

The property was remarkable, considering its location. Nevada’s high desert had trees and some greenery, but rarely did one see such beautiful, tall grass, lightly sprinkled with multicolored wildflowers.

“It’s like an oasis or something,” she said.

“The soil is exceptionally rich,” Jack said after a long moment. He decided to leave it at that.

Becky was already trotting towards the cabin like an excited child. At one time Jack might have tried to keep up, but he knew he couldn’t now. This was yet another way the differences in their ages had become problematic. He already endured hours each month having his hair and beard painstakingly dyed dark again, even hired a personal trainer, but nothing seemed to be working. After a scorching hot, delightfully secretive beginning to the affair, while Becky was still working in his antique warehouse, things had steadily worsened. She had begun to pull away. Oh, she still wore the classic, 19th century engagement ring occasionally, but he was losing her. Sometimes Jack caught her looking at younger men, and it shredded his heart. He wondered, at times, if her death might free him; a thought always followed by the most peculiar feeling, a mixture of guilt and a child-like fear of divine retribution.

Jack Benton wanted Becky’s hand more than he had ever wanted anything in his entire life, and he was not about to give up without a fight. Thus, an expensive vacation home and this trip: One final desperate attempt to put things right, to re-start the flame; to salvage his fading hopes and dreams.

Becky’s voice floated out of the living room, through the open door and back down the slope. “Jack, this is so fucking cool!” He sighed, went to the back of the vehicle and got their luggage: One small suitcase for him and three for Becky, she of the huge breasts, foul mouth and oh-so-talented tongue.

“Afternoon.”

Jack jumped back and dropped the cases in alarm. “Jesus, you scared me.”

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Luke drawled. He spat foul tobacco juice and shrugged. “Didn’t really mean to.” To Jack’s horror, the old man was indeed wearing tattered overalls and had a hopelessly gauche bandanna around his thick neck. Luke took care of the property, but he was a true character.

“The field looks magnificent,” Jack said. “You did a nice job, Luke.”

Luke squinted at the waves of bright flowers, pondering something. Finally he shrugged. “I didn’t want to.”

“I remember.”

“Went against what I been taught over the years.”

“I know.”

A long pause. “Still, I reckon you was right,” Luke said. “Me, I was sure it would raise holy hell. Tell you the damned truth, I had to get drunk to do the planting. But nothing bad ever happened. In fact, look at it. It all grew up and out real pretty.”

“You’re a little too fond of the firewater,” Jack said. He tried for a light, jocular tone. “Must be that Indian blood.”

Luke took him seriously. “Yeah, I’m half-breed all right. I surely got some Horse in me somewhere, “he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The tribe that lived here. Called themselves the Horse Humans. They worshipped Orunde. I’ve heard some stories about them that would curl your hair, Mr. Benton.”

“I’m sure you have,” Benton said politely. He already knew a lot about the history of this area. The brutal tribe had occupied the land for more than five hundred years before vanishing. He felt bored.

“I’m part Horse, sure enough,” Luke said. He pulled a large crucifix from under his sweat-stained blue work shirt, dangled it. “But me, I’m no heathen, sir. I’m a good Christian, now.” He put the cross away.

“Good for you.”

Luke nodded. “Anyway, it was just on my great-great-great Grandmother’s side, I think. Guess you could say they’re distant family.”

“Did you find any interesting antiques while you were out planting? I could use some new pieces for my store.”

Luke blinked. “Wouldn’t touch ’em if I did, Mr. Benton.”

“Why?”

“You may own the property, but things like that, they belong to dead folks. Stealing ain’t right.”

“Oh.”

At a loss for words, Jack dug into his trousers for a hundred. He held the bill out to Luke, whose eyes widened. “Here, take this,” Jack said. “Just a little something extra for indulging me about the flowers.”

“I couldn’t,” Luke said, but his wrinkled paw was already closing over the money. He examined the bill and grinned wolfishly. “Wow. Maybe I should reconsider my point of view.”

Benton grinned. “Maybe you should.”

“Thanks, Mr. Benton.”

“You’re welcome.” He turned to go. Luke touched his shoulder and then pointed up at the gorgeous, rainbow field.

“You know something? Now I really like those flowers.”

“Indeed.”

“Look at all those colors. Seems to make ’em happy after all these years of having nothing’ but a carpet of dirt over them.” The old man spat again and actually managed to look embarrassed. “Reckon that sounds foolish to a white man.”

Luke was likable, but Jack Benton thought him the strangest imaginable combination of redneck and Native American. He shook his head. “No, it doesn’t sound foolish,” he said. “I think it looks very nice, so why shouldn’t they?”

Luke jerked a thumb towards the cabin. “I live down there, remember,” he drawled. “You need something, you holler. Only reason I’m gone is to go to town for supplies, or maybe get dead drunk.”

“Luke, did I tell you why I came here?”

Luke nodded. “To get the young lady to give you her hand,” he said. He smiled, revealing rows of stained, chipped and wholly absent teeth. “So you’ll be wanting me to kind of stay out of the way, right?”

Relieved, Jack nodded. “Yes. Exactly. Thank you.”

“You need some help with those bags?”

Jack allowed himself a brief second to imagine Becky’s face when she finally met Luke. He shook his head rapidly. “I’ve got it. Heck, I can use the exercise.”

Five minutes later, as he stumbled through the door with all four cases, Jack Benton was cursing himself for not accepting the help. He kicked the door so that it closed behind him, sat on the largest bag and wiped the hot sweat from his brow.

“Honey? What do you want for dinner?”

No answer.

Jack got to his feet, puzzled. “Honey? Becky?”

He felt the short hairs on the back of his neck twitch. His mind flashed on a hideous scene, like something out of the novel “Deliverance,” with mindless hillbillies raping and murdering Becky while her aging, potbellied husband struggled up the slope with egregiously heavy baggage. What a sad joke that would be—to have some maniac kill the woman he was contemplating murdering. He turned and glanced at the shotgun mounted on the mantle above the fireplace.

“Sex.”

“Huh?” Jack spun around. Becky had already started drinking. She was naked, except for the thong underwear she insisted on calling “butt floss.” She knew it always turned him on. She was wearing the engagement ring. She did a slow pirouette in the doorway, held up a bottle of champagne, and flashed her plump, toned ass cheeks. He felt himself stir.

“What I want for dinner is sex, Jack. Is that okay with you?”

“Yes. Yes.”

A long time later, he woke up to a tapping sound, almost like someone knocking at the door. Jack tried to shake away the champagne fog and focus his mind. He felt the bed next to him, and found the round swell of a breast. Becky was passed out, breathing deeply. Had he imagined that noise? He glanced at his watch and saw that it was nearly midnight. A brisk wind had risen and was straining at the windows, trying to get inside.

Again, a tapping sound. Could Luke have gotten drunk and climbed the steep slope, looking for company or perhaps more alcohol? Jack slid out of bed, desperate to keep from waking Becky. He knew he couldn’t hide the handyman’s presence forever, but this first weekend was off to such a good start and he didn’t want to spoil things. He eased the bedroom door closed and started through the darkened living room.

But then it struck him that he and Becky were more than thirty miles out into the wilderness, all alone and unprotected; that compared to most folks who lived near Two Trees, Nevada he was rich. And that Becky was as much of a genetic celebrity as any movie star.

He groped for the light switch, found it, flipped. The lights did not come on. Relax, it’s just the wind. Jack swallowed bile and eased over towards the fireplace. The tapping sounded again, and some dim part of his brain began repeating those dread couplets from Poe: Came a tapping at my door… Quoth the raven, nevermore…

Jack fumbled with the shotgun, figured out how to slip it out of the rack. He broke it open and felt for the shells. It was empty. No murder on the agenda tonight and probably not much self-defense, either.

I’ll just ignore it and go back to sleep

, he thought. Who am I kidding? I’ve never fired a gun in my life. I can’t kill anybody. Besides, there’s nothing out there. It’s just the wind banging something against the door, that’s all.

Jack went back to bed, but he did not sleep.

In the morning, while Becky was still snoring, he crept back into the living room in his underwear. Jack, his thinning hair tousled and pudgy body sagging, hugged himself against the cold and eased the front door open. The hinges squeaked like something from a B-movie. Jack looked outside and saw nothing but an eloquent, desert sunrise. He chuckled at his own foolishness and started to close the door.

A stray gust of wind approached the cabin, and again he heard the tapping. Jack jumped. He glanced down at his feet and gasped.

A long, wooden arrow lay on the gently sloped cement porch, near the doorway. When the wind swirled, the metal tip rolled up against the wood a time or two, causing the sound. Then it would roll back down the gentle slope towards the grilled rain gutter.

Jack knelt to pick up the arrow. His knees popped. He stepped back inside, closed the door and locked it. He found his reading glasses and examined the find. It was definitely two, perhaps even three hundred years old. The tip was dark and ragged, probably made of iron now black with grime. The notches at the head had once held feathers. It was a fascinating antique. Luke must have found it in what was now the giant flower bed and dropped it off as a token of his appreciation for the extra hundred bucks. What a find.

Jack put the arrow on the mantle, below the shotgun, and went into the kitchen to make some coffee. He made it extra strong, the way Becky liked it, and added a touch of cinnamon. He found himself whistling and doing a dance step or two. Guess the old boy still has what it takes, he thought. It looked as if this trip would be a success. Jack felt greatly relieved. He determined he would find a romantic spot and propose all over again, ask for her hand in marriage as if he’d never asked before. Because women liked things like that, didn’t they? It gave them something to say that made all their girlfriends envious.

A shower, a shave, some clothes to cover up his less-than-perfect body and Jack was back in the kitchen. He poured a mug of potent coffee and stared out the window.

There was something on the sill.

Jack leaned close, pressed his nose up against the thick glass; it smeared his plump features like a kid at the candy store window. His jaw dropped with excitement. He hurriedly downed the coffee, grabbed his coat and rushed outside, almost slamming the door behind him. He stumbled through the tall grass and worked his way over to the outside of the kitchen window.

It was a fantastic piece, an ancient pistol, possibly of Spanish origin. The splintered handle was encased in engraved silver, now quite darkened and stained. The thin, steel loading rod was still in the barrel. This gun was precious enough to fetch thousands of dollars at auction. Jack felt a twinge of guilt. Luke had no idea how valuable these items were. He was giving away a fortune in exchange for a hundred-dollar bill.

Jack walked back towards the front of the house and looked down the slope towards the shack. The door was closed, the blinds drawn. Good, maybe he’s had a heart attack, Jack thought, and then cringed at his own lack of charity. Again, he was wishing death on someone. How shallow! In fact, Jack decided right then and there that old Luke deserved decent compensation for these items, perhaps a percentage of the net. He hurried back inside and rolled the two antiques into a bath towel, then placed them in the bottom of his largest suitcase.

Becky was stirring. He pulled his stomach in and went over to the side of the bed to kiss her. She pushed him away. “Don’t. I’ve got zoo breath.”

“It’s almost noon, and I thought we’d go for a picnic today,” he said with mustered enthusiasm. Jack also wanted to avoid having to introduce Luke for as long as possible. Once Becky got a look at that geriatric redneck, she’d probably demand to be flown home forthwith.

Jack felt another flash of shame. Here Luke was being so magnificently generous, and he was still wishing the poor old bastard weren’t around.

Becky was in a bitchy mood. Several aspirins and mugs of coffee later, she was finally able to take a shower and get dressed. They did not get started on the two-hour drive up the next mountain until nearly three o’clock, so the sun was in their eyes all the way. Becky started drinking again, right there in the car, even though she knew he hated breaking the law.

And the day went downhill from there. They got lost on the way to the cherry orchard. Luke had promised Jack that the picnic spot lay close to the mountain called Bear Claw, but although he found the dry creek bed, Jack couldn’t locate the orchard. So they ate their food in blistering, late-afternoon sunshine, rather than cool shade, and closer to the ratty outskirts of Two Trees than the whispering pines. Becky was withdrawn again, already a bit plastered, and he fancied she was overly focused on his bald spot. When the evening bugs came out, Jack summoned up his courage. He drank a second beer, kicked some rocks aside and went down on one knee.

“Oh, Jack,” she said, annoyed. “Don’t start.”

“May I ask for your hand in marriage, my lady?”

He searched her eyes for warmth and saw only irritation. “I’m hot, I’m hung-over and I think I’m fucking getting sunstroke. Not now, okay? Jesus, Jack, your timing just sucks.”

“I-I-I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I was trying to be romantic.”

She batted some insects away. “Romantic my ass. Let’s get the fuck out of here, okay? I’m being eaten alive.”

“Sure, honey,” he said, deeply disappointed. “Whatever you say.”

On the way back up their mountain, Jack gathered himself and said: “Honey? Did I mention that there was a guy who looks after the property for the owners?”

“What?” Becky mumbled. “What did you say?”

“Never mind.”

Jack glanced at her, and felt an abrupt and uncommon twinge of disgust for his fiancée’s drinking habits. The sunset was unusually yellowish, and it bleached her normally beautiful features and accented her newfound wrinkles. She was out again, mouth slightly open. A thin line of spittle rolled down her slightly plump cheeks. Becky had her arms crossed over her chest, and they looked slightly flabby. He had often wondered if her breasts were phony; now, suddenly, he felt sure of it. She was a little cheap and vulgar, a bit too practiced at oral sex for his liking… But Jack Benton still found her strangely beautiful.

In fact, he was crazy about her.

Damn

the bitch. She should die and disappear.

Jack drove back up the hill in silence, feeling defeated and annoyed with himself for being so abundantly pussy-whipped. He glanced over at Luke’s shack and was mildly surprised to see that it was still closed and shuttered. The codger was certainly staying out of the way, just as Jack had requested. Somehow that fact made Jack feel even worse.

And as for the woman, Jack cringed. For the first time, he allowed himself to ponder that the situation was hopeless. There’s no fool like an old fool, he thought, grimly. And I am certainly acting like an old fool. The sex is still good, even if she’s faking, but that’s all there is to it. She just doesn’t love me anymore…assuming she ever did.

Becky had to be pried out of the Jeep. Jack helped her up the walkway. His heart was aching, his soul already mourning the loss of her love. The idea of her legs wrapped around some other man made him feel…psychotic.

“Jack?”

“Yes, honey.”

“I don’t want to get married, Jack,” she mumbled. “I’m just too young for you, you know?”

“Honey, listen…”

“It’s been fun and everything, but enough is enough, okay? Take me home tomorrow, Jack. We’re done.”

“You don’t mean that, honey. I know you don’t.” But he knew she did, and the force of the thought nearly killed him. Especially when she took off the engagement ring. He watched it slip from her fingers, strike the floor like a tiny chime and roll off into the living room. It came to rest under the well-worn couch.

“Shit!”

Becky fell heavily against the front door. She had tripped over something. Jack caught her, opened the door, flipped on the lights and took her into the bedroom. He placed her flat on the bed and brought a cold wash cloth to cool her brow. He wanted to lie down, too, but then remembered that something was on the front porch. Perhaps Luke had brought another token of gratitude?

Somewhat excited, despite his aching heart, Jack turned out the bedroom light, closed the door and went back out onto the porch. The sun had dipped below the edge of the mountains, and it was already quite dark. He went back inside, found a flashlight and returned. He splashed the beam around the ground until he found it. His breath caught in his throat. A pair of leather boots, worn and rotted away, lay side by side on the doorstep. They had, at one time, been wonderful hand-tooled and lovingly designed with gold buckles. Now they were encrusted with dirt, held together by small, fraying strands of cowhide.

Where is he finding this stuff?

Jack wondered, as he bent over to examine the new gift. He turned one boot upside down and shook it. The bones of a human foot fell out with a clatter. Jack gasped in horror and dropped the flashlight. For a few agonizing moments, he sat there in the darkness, his heart hammering behind his ribcage. He swallowed, groped for the flashlight and turned it on again. Was this supposed to be funny? It wasn’t. Jack found it in very bad taste, not funny in the least.

I’m going to give that redneck a piece of my mind,

Jack thought. And he can forget about a percentage of the net. He started down the hill, promptly lost his footing and rolled over the rocky ground, finally landing in a heap near the malodorous septic tank. He looked up at the frigid, indifferent stars. They always seemed so much closer, and brighter, out in the wilderness. Jack grunted, groaned and sat up. He massaged his aching lower back. Was this karma for his evil thoughts?

“Luke? Are you in there?”

Jack wiped his nose. His hand came away bloody. He swore under his breath and got to his feet. He stumbled over to the shack and pounded on the splintering, well-weathered, wooden door. It opened.

“Luke?”

The shack was dark inside, and reeked of rotten meat. Jack did not allow his mind to examine that fact. He used the flashlight to search the room. Dirty dishes were piled in the tiny sink, and filthy laundry was piled into one corner. Jack saw some old paperback westerns stacked by the window. The beam passed over the cramped toilet and bathroom sink, and Jack noticed a number of pornographic magazines lay strewn about. So much for being born again, he thought, giddily.

His throat tightened as the beam found the boots and jeans of someone sitting in a rocking chair near the tiny metal fireplace. Somehow Jack knew what he would find. He slowly raised the beam and nearly passed out when he saw the sightless, bulging eyes and hideous snarl of terror frozen on the old man’s features. Luke still held his crucifix in one bony hand, as though warding off the demon that had come to claim his life. Jack forced himself to move closer.

The rigid extremities, now virtually bloodless, the rancid odor: This man had been dead for well over twenty-four hours.

Jack backed away slowly. He had a sudden, almost overpowering urge to wet his pants. His hand was trembling badly, giving the beam of the flashlight a strange strobe-like effect. In the yellowing flicker, Luke seemed about to rise up out of his chair to praise Jesus. One eye seemed to wink, as if to say: This all turned out really fucking funny didn’t it, Jack? Maybe not funny “ha ha,” but damn sure funny “peculiar.” What did you have in your sandwich today, Jack? Some nice red meat? Huh? MEAT? Jack felt his stomach do a yoga stretch and flip over, and lunch came back up, splattering his shoes.

The foul odor of his own vomit was the last straw, and he backed out of the shed retching and crying. He kept his eyes fixed on the doorway, half expecting Luke to come out all stiff-legged with his hands up, clutching that cross. There was a telephone in the cabin, thank God. He could call for an ambulance to take Luke away. In the back of his mind, Jack felt a final twinge of guilt. He hadn’t wanted to be bothered introducing Becky to the poor old fool, had even briefly wished him dead, and now he’d been spared that minor social inconvenience, almost as if by divine intervention.

His feet kept slipping in the slick grass, and his body now reeked of stomach fluids. Jack fought his way back up the hill at last, wiped the tears from his eyes and located the garden hose. He cleaned his boots as best he could and left them on the porch to dry out. The sight of them standing side-by-side with the antique boots filled with human bones made his poor stomach lurch sideways yet again.

“Honey? Becky?”

No answer.

Louder. “Becky? Answer me, honey!”

Someone he’d never heard from before entered his mind and started to heckle in a gravely voice: What if somebody murdered Luke, and while you were fucking around down there he got inside and raped and killed Becky? What now, hotshot? What you gonna do about it?

Because now they’re waiting for you.

Jack tried the light switch, and it worked. The lamp came on, and the living room instantly felt warmer and cozier. He realized he’d stopped breathing. Feeling foolish, he walked over to the shotgun and took it down. Better something to bluff with than nothing.

“Hello? Is anybody in there?”

This was just silly, nothing but neurotic anxiety. Jack knew that Becky had just passed out completely, perhaps with her head under a pillow. I could smother her with a pillow. No one would have to know. Would that be easier than losing her to someone else? Would it?

He knew he was being ridiculous. Nothing was wrong in there, and he was certainly not about to become a common murderer.

But as he approached the darkened bedroom, a macabre concept intruded in his weary mind, based on something Luke had said about those evil, barbaric Native Americans who called themselves the Horse Humans. Luke had said that perhaps they were grateful for the flowers…and the company. A sick, twisted thought occurred to Jack: Perhaps the antiques were not from Luke; after all, he’d been dead since some time last night. No, they were actually gifts from the rotting, wormy dead people lying in those ancient burial mounds.

And then it struck him that perhaps the horrified corpse sitting in Luke’s shack was also a kind of present from them, a small token of their appreciation.

Wishes do come true,

his mind sang madly. Some wishes do come true…

But he only knew for certain when he saw it lying there on the area rug; a carpet now splattered with wide rings of rust, totally soaked in human blood. It had the little, golden antique ring upon its dainty, pale finger and the nails were so perfectly painted; oh, yes, these creatures of the night had given him everything he’d wanted, literally everything he could have asked for…

Including her hand.

Darkness Comprehended

with Gord Rollo

“She’s turning Zom!” Kendall whispered. He had the reddened, richly veined nose of a heavy, lifelong drinker, even though he was still a few years shy of his thirtieth birthday. Zack Pitt stepped forward, heavy work boots crunching through the broken glass, and leaned down to have a look. Kendall raised his shotgun with trembling hands and pointed it at the dead woman.

“Put that thing down before you blow your dick off,” Pitt said. “Maybe she won’t make it all the way. Some don’t.”

They had entered the deserted supermarket in search of supplies. Pitt hadn’t seen her at first. The blonde, half-naked corpse lay beneath a huge pile of shelving and masonry, near some usable, if dented canned goods. Her breasts had flattened in death; her neck was broken, head lolling at an odd angle. At one time she’d probably been quite pretty. Pitt ordered the younger men to search for food while he guarded the entrance. He’d left Kendall to guard the body. Everything had been fine until she’d started moving again.

“Bart! Jon! You guys almost done back there?”

Muffled acknowledgements from the storeroom: Almost done, boss. Pitt wrinkled his nose. “Stinks in here.”

“Maybe it’s a fucking nest,” Kendall whispered.

Pitt grimaced and rubbed his face. The thought had crossed his mind. “Jesus, let’s hope not.” His vision swam out of focus, bursting into white dots before darkening. He lost his balance and stumbled a step forward.

“You okay, boss? You don’t look so good.”

Pitt shrugged and grabbed a plastic bottle from the shelf. He opened it and sipped some tepid water. “I’m just tired. Can’t seem to sleep through the night.”

Kendall’s eyes widened and he raised his weapon. “Damn!”

The dead woman was writhing in the rubble now, making eerily erotic sounds. Some plaster fell away, exposing her face. Rats had eaten away her nose and one blue eye was missing. Her teeth were pulled back in an involuntary snarl. Her dress was ripped and shredded. She was wearing sexy pink thong underwear.

Bart, a skinny teenager with long black hair that contrasted sharply with his pale white skin, came out of the back offices. He was lugging a canvas sack. Back before the world went to hell he would have been labeled a Goth, but now people belonged to only one of two groups: Us or Them. Bart said: “Scored some boxes of ammo, Mr. Pitt.” Then he saw the dead woman and cringed. “Shit, she’s turning.”

Kendall looked panicked. He started edging towards the door. “She’s almost all the way back, Pitt. For Chrissakes, do her!”

“No, the noise could bring more,” Pitt said. “Let’s just get the hell out.”

Just then the woman sat up, arms stiff at her sides. Her one remaining eye was spider-webbed with reddened veins. Her mouth opened impossibly wide and a sound like the distant shriek of a hurricane filled the market. Time seemed to elongate and slow. Pitt found himself frozen: I wonder what she’s feeling? Thinking?

Jon, a muscular black kid in his early twenties, came running into the market. He tripped over a box of cat food, regained his footing and closed the gap. “Shut her up!”

Kendall’s finger twitched. The shotgun roared. The top of the woman’s head vanished in a spray of blood, tissue and bone. Her body collapsed again and the room went silent. The four men froze in place and held their breath, listening with a desperation that transcended the senses. Their eyes met like football players in a huddle. They waited.

Bart was the first to speak. He brushed back his long dark hair and grinned. “I think we’re cool,” he said. He moved toward the plate glass window and peered out into the street. “Nothing happening outside.”

“It’ll be dark soon,” Kendall said. His face was pale, voice hoarse and crackled with tension. “We got a pretty good haul today, why push our luck?”

Pitt nodded and decided Kendall would be replaced on the next run. His nerves are shot. He’s losing it. “You’re right,” he said, soothingly. “Jon, Bart, you move those boxes. I’ll take point. Kendall, just cover the rear.”

Each man dropped into position, Kendall visibly relieved to not have point. Pitt turned too rapidly and endured another wave of dizziness. He stepped out into the middle of the street, rifle at port arms. Keep it together. He searched the alleys for movement and trotted through the trash and debris. Jon followed, wobbling along with a wheelbarrow full of dented soup cans; followed by Bart with three crates of powdered milk and a twelve-pack of cheap beer.

Kendall, still inside the nearly deserted market, turned his back to the street. He backed carefully towards the front door. He found himself humming tunelessly, some pop song from the Twentieth Century, baby, baby I think I love you… He froze as two things struck him simultaneously. First, that he had not reloaded the shotgun.

Second that a nearby pile of trash nearby had just…moved.

“Pitt?”

Pitt, across the street, stopped in his tracks and turned just in time to have another long, slow black-hole experience: Kendall fumbling through his suddenly bottomless pants pocket for some cold, tubular shells; meanwhile, a figure coming up and out of a huge stack of garbage, something that had once been a rent-a-cop. It still wore tattered strips of grey uniform and an absurdly comic hat with a shiny black bill. Then Kendall cracking open the weapon; the Zom on its feet and lurching forward while making that high keening a Zom makes when he’s starving; Kendall trying to load those shells with shaking fingers, dropping the first but getting the second; the Zom snarling and extending bloody fingers with yellowed and cracked nails, hungrily closing the gap.

“Get out of the way!” Pitt called.

They all wanted to shoot but couldn’t without hitting Kendall, and by the time the man tried to run he was toast. The Zom grabbed Kendall’s right arm and twisted it around and up so that it made a hideous craaaaking sound. Kendall grunted and spewed out a mouthful of thick, syrupy vomit. The Zom clawed at his guts with those Fu Manchu nails, trying to open his soft lower belly. Kendall dropped his hands to protect himself. It closed with him in an obscene parody of a slow dance and bit deeply into his neck, severing the carotid artery. Dark blood spurted with each desperate pump of his weakening heart, arcing high and away. Kendall kicked his legs like a man on the gallows and his eyes rolled back as he died.

Pitt crossed the deserted street, closed the distance. He watched as it fed. His skin tingled as he looked deep into the creature’s empty eyes for a long, dark moment. Where has your soul gone? Do you hate what you’re doing right now…or lust for it? Or is it both at once? What the fuck is going on in your head? Pitt shuddered, shook the cobwebs from his head.

“Mr. Pitt?”

It was his crew, awaiting orders. Pitt crossed himself, raised his weapon and barked. “Waste them both.”

The others came out of their trance to fire. The three continued firing, the barrage going on and on until the red, white and purple pieces that had been Kendall were indistinguishable from the remnants of the Zom. Silence, and the fading stench of cordite. “Their heads, too,” Pitt said sadly. “Make sure you destroy the brains.”

They jogged back to camp. Not for the first time, Pitt found it difficult to keep up. At forty, he was by far the oldest of the twenty-three ragtag survivors, many of whom were half his age. They followed him because he’d managed to keep them alive for the last few years. During that time, Pitt had lost his right eye to a Zom who got too close, and his hair had gone completely white. He wondered if his leadership went unchallenged because the others were afraid of him. In his own mind he was just a football player gone to seed; an ex-marine turned ex-bouncer.

They paused near some trashcans at the entrance and whistled sharply. The sun was sinking into the bloody red skyline and time was short. The guard whistled back and they jogged up to the next level of the airport parking lot without incident. The women greeted their men warmly and took the food to storage. Pitt went alone to the railing and looked down. The undead were already coming out to howl at the moon. Pitt shivered, although it was not yet cold, his weary mind still obsessed with questions. What are they thinking? Feeling? What would it have been like for Kendall if I had left him there, let him turn?

The others had opened the beer and had begun to celebrate. Pitt slid further into the shadows. He reached into his jacket, removed a tattered leather wallet and took out his last remaining picture of Maria. His features softened. It was a shot from their honeymoon. Maria was standing on the hotel steps. She had her hands on her skirted hips and was smiling sweetly into the camera; long black hair swept out to one side, held aloft by a sudden gust of wind. Pitt stared at the photograph for a very long time. He did not cry, not anymore. His tears had dried, turned to dust and blown away. In a way, the picture calmed him; reminded him of other lives in other times and places.

…Down at Waterfront Park walking hand in hand, because even with the trash and floating human waste it is their place, and they need to talk about the baby. Pitt scolds her, forces himself to ignore the hurt in her deep, brown eyes. “How could you have been so stupid, Maria? We can’t bring a poor innocent child into this crazy fucked up world.”

She states her case, and it is for life even in the face of death. Pitt weakens. Soon they are sitting on a wobbly bench on the outer edge of the park. Pitt is rubbing his hand over Maria’s swollen belly, feeling his child’s feeble kicks, when the group of undead swarms out of the old public washroom building. There are too many of them, no time to reload the rifle. The bench rests against a concrete wall. Pitt stands on the seat and scurries up for a quick drop to safety on the far side. He reaches, starts pulling Maria up out of harm’s way, but her hands are slippery from sweat. He loses her. She looks up at him, both terror and forgiveness in her beautiful eyes.

Zoms are on her, scratching, clawing, pulling his beloved Maria away from his outstretched, shaking hands. Pitt screams and without hesitation jumps back down to try to help her, pulling his back-up, a .9 mm Glock from his pants. He fires the moment his feet hit the grass. “Take me!” he cries. But they have no interest in him. They are rapidly backing away; content to protect the prize they already have in their filthy clutches.

Pitt uses all fifteen rounds, but only drops the Zoms on the outer fringes of the group. They are gone in a heartbeat, disappearing back into the bathroom, locking and barring the entrance behind them, Pitt still outside pounding on the door all alone with his tears and screams of hopeless rage as he hears Maria pleading…

“Mr. Pitt?”

Hands grabbed Pitt by the shoulders. He reacted violently, jumped to his feet ready to lash out. But it was only young Jon. “Sorry, we all know you need your rest, but you were screaming in your sleep. Keene asked me to check if you were okay.”

Pitt tried to get the world to stop spinning. Was I dreaming? He’d dozed off. “Fuck! What time is it? How long was I out?”

“It’s nearly midnight,” Jon said, gently. “You need more than five hours. Why don’t you try to go back to sleep?”

“I have to go,” Pitt said matter-of-factly. He gathered up his gun and ammo belt, headed for the door.

Jon followed, shifting from one foot to another, building up his nerve, finally saying: “You’ve got to stop doing this, Mr. Pitt. It’s killing you. You can search for her forever, but it won’t do any good. Accept it and get on with your life. The Zoms took her and she’s gone!”

Pitt turned in a flash. He tossed Jon against the concrete wall, clutched his throat, screamed into the ebony face just inches away, “Fuck you, you little punk. You don’t have the slightest clue what you’re talking about, so stay out of this, you hear me? Stay the fuck out of it!”

“Yes, sir,” Jon croaked. Pitt saw his own spittle on the boy’s cheek and felt a wave of shame heat his belly. But he could not bring himself to apologize.

Pitt released the young man and bolted out the door into the parking lot stairwell. He knew no one would follow, but he ran down the stairs two at a time anyway, not slowing his pace until he was out on the street and several blocks back into the dark, rotting belly of the city. Only then did he slow to a walk; raggedy breath sucking in and out of clenched, chipped teeth; heart pounding in its bone cage; pulse loud enough that he was sure any Zom within a mile radius could hear it. He could picture one suddenly sitting up, rotting ears turned to the wind, picking up the tiny thump-thumps, then lurching to its feet, greedily searching for him.

Bring it on,

Pitt thought. I don’t care anymore.

He held up his lantern. As if his thoughts had given substance to reality, three decaying females moved out of the shadows across the street, running in their broken high-heeled shoes and tattered fancy dresses. Pitt drew the Glock and put a blue-tinged hole in the center of the first two foreheads. They dropped instantly. But the third ducked at the right time and was on top of him before he could aim again.

She hissed and spat but she was weak, likely starving. Pitt was able to throw her roughly to the ground. He pinned her beneath his weight. She tried to claw and bite, but he used his knees to keep her helpless. He wanted to shoot her and get on with things, but he paused anyway. He needed to look into those wild, bloodshot eyes and ask her something very important.

“Do you remember your name?”

The Zom snarled and hawked an unmentionable fluid. Pitt slapped her, tried to hold her gaze. “Can you remember who you were? I need to know.”

She hissed again, spat a mouthful of blood at his face and started thrashing with all her might. Pitt felt an almost unbearable sadness take him. He jammed his gun into her gaping maw and pulled the trigger three times. The top of her skull exploded into a jigsaw puzzle; tiny pieces scattered across the cluttered street.

Pitt climbed to his feet and walked away. He moved further into the city. Three blocks later, his vision blurred and his equilibrium doing cartwheels again, he collapsed in a heap against the front window of a boarded up dry cleaning company. His consciousness drifted into a fugue state. He rested for several minutes, stomach queasy, until his head suddenly cleared again. He got to his feet.

Pitt pressed on. He was tired, angry and confused yet knew that he was only delaying the inevitable. He paused in a doorway, took a series of deep breaths to steel his nerves then picked up his pace. He headed straight for the old warehouse on the corner of Columbia and Market Streets, determined to finish things.

The warehouse was a plain old rectangular box, three stories high, spread out covering most of a city block. Pitt had no idea who had once owned the property. There was no logo anywhere on the building, only the sprayed graffiti of long-dead gang members. The warehouse belonged to Pitt now. He had claimed it weeks ago by chaining the rusty door shut and applying a sturdy lock.

Pitt unlocked the door, slipped quietly inside. Locked it behind himself.

It was still inside the building and much chillier than out on the street. Pitt stood, weaving in the darkness, eyes closed and fingers tightly gripping his gun. He listened for any movements in the gloom. Nothing. Wait…no, nothing.

Then he heard the scrape of a chain dragging across cold concrete. A nervous smile touched the corners of his mouth.

Thank God!

Pitt started the backup generator. He flicked the light switch. The dust-covered fluorescents cast a dull but adequate amount of light. Maria stood exactly where he’d left her, inside what had once been a small storage room. The walls, floor and ceiling were solid concrete. Pitt had hurriedly constructed a set of bars to seal off the front of the small room. She wasn’t going anywhere, but for safety he’d also fashioned a chain around her ankle and attached it to the rusty bed frame.

Pitt walked nearer to the bars. Maria hissed at him and tried to claw through the gate, but it was something of a reflexive gesture, with little real effort behind it. Pitt took that as a very good sign. She remembers me. She knows who I am! God, even turned, she’s still beautiful.

It had taken two seemingly endless, bloody nights to find her again—to battle his way into the tunnels under Waterfront Park where they were keeping Maria for extra food. She’d already been bitten several times and was well on her way to turning Zom, but Pitt hadn’t been able to shoot her. So he had brought her here, to this abandoned warehouse. He’d kept her existence secret from the group and continued the charade of searching for her night after night.

Pitt removed his coat and shirt. Maria growled and shuffled. Saliva drooled from her shattered lower teeth.

“I know, sweetheart,” Pitt said, kindly. “It won’t be long, now.”

He started to prepare the needle. Maria paced back and forth like an impatient panther. Pitt jabbed the large wooden needle into his left forearm, successfully hitting the vein on the first try. He quickly attached the hollow rubber flex-tube. He didn’t want to waste a precious drop. Maria grabbed the end of the tube that protruded into her cell. She sucked hungrily. Pitt groaned, a mixture of emotional pleasure and physical pain. She started to drain his life away and once again the loss of blood made his vision blur and his ears ring. Pitt clenched his jaw and pinched himself to stay conscious.

It’s for the baby. The baby.

Maria’s distended belly was huge now. Joy raced through Pitt as he imagined the baby as it kicked inside of her. I’ll make it up to you, honey, he thought. Thank God our baby’s still alive.

Pitt finally yanked the needle from his arm. He heard Maria growl at the abrupt end of her feast. Pitt debated returning to the parking garage, but sank to his knees. It’s over, he thought. I’m staying here with my family. Before he could change his mind, Pitt unbolted the door leading into the small concrete cell. He opened the door and collapsed.

Screaming…

A horrible keening sound made Pitt bolt upright; fireworks exploded in front of his eyes and a white-hot knife of pain shot down his spine. He nearly lost consciousness again but fought his way back. After a long moment, he remembered what he had done and adrenaline flooded his veins. He knew he was as good as dead. After a long moment, there came another shriek. Pitt opened his eyes.

The door to Maria’s cell was yawning open. She was no longer inside. A trail of clotted blood led out the door and past where he sat on the floor. With a supreme effort, Pitt managed to get to his feet to see where Maria had gone.

He found her curled in a ball over on the far side of the building. She was slowly rocking back and forth, keeping a watchful eye on her surroundings. It was early morning now, and pale light filtered through the skylights. Pitt could see that Maria was holding something in her arms. Something small that writhed.

Pitt staggered over. He simply had to see. Maria lurched to her feet and tentatively offered up the child. It was a dirty, blood-smeared, oddly deformed little boy; a darkling who was half-living, half-dead.

Pitt had never seen anything so beautiful.

Maria yanked on his left arm, pointing first to his many scabs and then to the baby’s mouth. She wants me to feed him. And Pitt fully comprehended the darkness at last. He closed his eyes, crossed himself and prayed. When he opened them again, Maria was snarling in hunger.

Zack Pitt looked down at where the needle lay on the filthy, concrete floor. He startled Maria by kicking it away toward the empty cell. He looked deep into her feral eyes, turned his head to the side and offered the baby his throat. The elongated, preternaturally sharp teeth quickly broke the skin…

And their child began to suckle.

_______________

“And the light shineth in darkness

Yet the darkness comprehended it not.”

—The Gospel According to St. John 1:5

In Darkness, Screaming

with Jack Fisher

There are reasons why there’s torture written on these walls…

The therapist repeats the phrase. “And this is…Razor Lady?”

Boy nods.

“With her scalpel mouth,” says Boy.

The office is all cherry oak and burnished gold. It smells like medicine. Both are sitting on leather, but the psychiatrist seems far more comfortable. His name is Dr. Bowden, and he is handball-handsome, maybe forty but already thinning on top. Boy thinks he looks a little full of it. The doctor twists his pen. His eyes roam up  and  down his notes, back and forth from patient to profile. Meanwhile, Shadow is behind him, licking his neck, pretending to jack himself off. Boy can’t help but grin.

“What is it?” the therapist asks. His heart kicks. This boy’s eyes are as clear and as sharp as icicles.

Behind Boy, in the corner, Mother sits in an extra chair, her chubby shoulders quaking. Shadow notices. He points at her and giggles. Your stepfather sticks it in her butt. Boy nods weakly.

“Who is she?” Dr. Bowden is still on Razor Lady. He thinks he’s so smart. “And what does she do?”

“She hurts. They say she can grab you and pull you in,” Boy says.

“Who is ‘they’ in this instance, son?”

“I’m not your son.”

Strained smile, covering irritation. “Of course you’re not. Excuse me.”

Boy relaxes. Who cares? “That’s okay.”

The doctor flips a page. “You say Razor Lady can grab and pull you—into where?” Trying to be subtle about it, he adjusts his back, cracks his neck.

Shadow’s head is rolling around like it’s full of lead pellets. He’s perched himself up on one of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves like a gargoyle. Boy tries to remember what the doctor just asked.

“Into the dark.”

There is madness on these winds

, Shadow whispers.

Boy adjusts himself in the chair, one leg under the other. The doctor sees that Boy is growing agitated so he relaxes his body language and puts away his notebook. Dr. Bowden assumes now that they’re getting close to something significant. Years of training kick in to manufacture a reasonable facsimile of sympathy. The kid is displaying some intense psychopathology. In fact, the kid’s hair is almost white, which is why the kids at school call him Ghost Boy.

“How are you sleeping?”

“Okay.”

“Any loss or increase in appetite to speak of? Irregular bowel movements, stomach pain, diarrhea?” Dr. Bowden is looking at Mother now, not Boy. He doesn’t wait for an answer. “Have you been experiencing any headaches? Vertigo or nausea? Blurred vision?”

“No,” she replies.

“Hair pulling? Temper tantrums? Hearing voices when nothing is there?”

“No!” Boy snaps.

“Are you getting along with your stepfather?”

Boy does not answer.

Tell him

, Shadow demands.

All these questions and the doctor doesn’t even notice that Boy is picking his cuticles until they bleed. Shadow is sniffing the blood on the air, and he’s roiling with anger. His spine is arched and his spindly limbs seem too long compared to his body. He leers and offers forth a long strand of drool that stretches to the floor like crystal ribbon. He points down to poor Mother.

Tell him how bad you want to fuck her.

“They get along just fine,” Mother interrupts. Her eyes are cat-wild and wavering. The doctor has struck a nerve. He diverts his stare back to Boy.

“Fine?” he asked.

Shadow leaps off the shelf. He gropes Mother’s tit, caterwauling. It’s all darkling and phantom-like to her; she feels nothing. Boy looked down at his trembling hands; they’re smeared with blood from picking. His mind plays like a slideshow: Stepfather has Mother by her hair, yanking her mouth over his meat.

Boy says: “Sure, whatever she says.”

“Therapists think in terms of message and meta-message,” says Dr. Bowden. He is being a patriarch, explaining carefully; a bit condescending to the both of them. “The message you’re giving me is that everything is…fine. The subtext, or meta-message, is louder than a fart at a church service.”

Mother’s eyes flutter and she grimaces. Shadow silently roars his own amusement, so Boy feels free to chuckle. Dr. Bowden nods sagely. He thinks he has somehow managed, by his calculated scatological reference, to ‘meet the kid on his own level.’ He has lowered himself to speak the child’s language. He couldn’t be more proud if he’d managed a speech in Swahili.

Dr. Bowden looks at Mother, looks down at her. “Perhaps it would be useful for your son and me to spend a few moments alone.”

He stares at her expectantly. Mother is slow to catch on. While she waits, mouth slightly agape, Shadow mimes feeding her his cock. Boy does not find it funny this time. His mother looks as though she’s taken a thousand beatings and recovered from them all.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mother says. “I’ll just sit right here. I won’t be a bother to anybody; I won’t say a word.”

“If you’ll excuse us…?” Dr. Bowden arches his eyebrows, communicates impatience and a hint of scorn. Boy thinks his eyebrows look like two caterpillars dying to hump.

Mother is irritated. “You really mean I should leave?”

She doesn’t want to—clearly doesn’t want to. But now the doctor’s facial expression speaks volumes—reminds her that she was originally supposed to leave at the start of the session, that she has overstayed her welcome. It also subtly hints that Boy’s problems might stem from her endless clinging and inappropriate intrusions into his psyche. Mother wilts as if he had raised his fist.

“Huh… I never…”

Boy can’t help but be a little impressed by the performance. This Dr. Bowden is an asshole, but he knows his stuff.

Shadow reacts instantly to that positive thought. His ears twitch like a cat’s and he flexes his talons. He flies into a jealous rage. As Mother lets herself dramatically out of the room by slamming the door, Shadow bounces from wall to wall like a monkey being tortured by electrical shock.

The whole while, Dr. Bowden calmly watches Boy as he follows Shadow around the room with startled eyes. Bowden is searching for clues to the source of the facial twitches, the obvious anhedonia the child carries like a quilted, black cloak.

“Do you feel…different with your mother out of the room?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

This kid is a ‘tween’: not fully in puberty but no longer a child. To be sure, the onslaught of sexual feelings can be overwhelming, but that alone can’t account for the obvious auditory and visual hallucinations his patient seemed to be experiencing. Bowden makes a note to find another way to explore drug use, particularly crystal meth. The case is beginning to look a lot like severe amphetamine psychosis. A highly sedating antipsychotic, probably Haldol, may be in order.

Unless, of course, the patient is defensively splitting; breaking down into multiple ego-aspects due to pressures from severe physical or sexual trauma. Dr. Bowden opts for further exploration.

“Do you have anything you want to say to me in confidence?” Bowden feels a slight twinge of guilt. Confidence won’t legally apply to every possible secret, but there will be time to explain that later if necessary.

“No-no.”

Oh, but maybe he can help you!

Shadow laughs and hurled himself up onto the doctor’s desk, his tail flapping like a dog’s. He pets Dr. Bowden’s scalp. He raises himself up slightly on his haunches, squats, and shits a steaming black pile onto the doctor’s case studies. When he’s done, he runs the palm of his hand up through the crack of his ass as he daintily parts what little remains of the doctor’s thinning hair.

Airborne again, he lands in Boy’s lap, his breath hot enough to burst ripe berries, his eyes licking fire.

Go on, tell him.

“What’s going on?” the doctor asks. “What are you seeing?”

The boy’s head is now twisting from side to side following something that isn’t there. He is mumbling, trying to answer but too afraid to form words…

Shadow straddles Boy in his chair. His black, indecipherable features singing of the blackest of legends, his airs smelling of lore.

I fucking own you, Boy. You’re mine. Say it now. Say it aloud.

“I’m all yours.”

Dr. Bowden cocks his head like a parrot and offers Boy another thoughtful, therapist smile.

“For the next few minutes, anyway.”

He belongs to the Razor Lady.

Boy slips out of his chair until he is down on his hands and knees. He starts shaking his head, no no no. Dr. Bowden stands, rubbing his palms together, looking around with growing anxiety.

“The Razor Lady,” Boy whimpers.

Tell him what you saw

, says Shadow. He runs a claw underneath Boy’s chin. Tell him everything.

Boy begins to sob. He falls face down on the carpet and rolls over onto his side. Dr. Bowden kneels next to him. He looks at the closed office door; he’s nervous, wondering what Boy’s mother will think if she barged back in. Should he move in? Back off? But Bowden is too enthralled to stay away.

Boy’s eyes are squeezed shut and he is trying to cover them with his palms.

Dr. Bowden’s professional voice is gentle: late night jazz program FM soothing. “What is it you don’t want to see?” Boy abruptly removes his hands and covers his ears instead. His eyes are still squeezed shut.

Listen…the fear will enchant you

, says Shadow.

“What’s going on, son? Where are you? What are you hearing?”

Answer him.

Boy forces a response. “I hear my sister screaming.”

Bowden’s eyes widen. Pay dirt. “Why is she screaming?”

Silence is a therapist’s best friend—it can cause emotions and memories to fester in the heart and blossom into abscess. Anything long buried, long avoided can enlarge, become overpowering and rush to the surface. Dr. Bowden leaves plenty of silence until Boy feels like he will implode. He grunts because of the ongoing inner war between the forbidden and the true.

Bowden waits, acumen and patience are a lethal combination. Five minutes in a therapist’s office can seem like five hours. Soon Boy is hyperventilating, turning pale, and Bowden finally feels pressured to speak, to intervene.

“Tell me what you see.”

“I can’t.”

Bowden risks a touch—two fingers on his patient’s trembling arm. Boy recoils. But Dr. Bowden leans closer, using that low and hypnotic voice to great effect.

“Listen to me, son. Whatever you are seeing has already happened. It feels powerfully scary like stepping off the ground and dropping into a deep, dark well, but those are just feelings, and feelings aren’t facts.”

Boy sobs, writhes, trembles.

“You are not alone. I’m here with you.”

Tell him

, Shadow cries.

Bowden continues: “The place you are in? We are just visiting, okay? We can leave any time we want, and we will be leaving soon. In just a few minutes. But I need you to tell me where you are and what you see first.”

The world expands into a clear bubble of possibility, pops and contracts into a black hole. The sound Boy now emits is deep and alien.

Things in the room change.

Dr. Bowden repeats his question, velvet soft. “What did you see that is causing you so much pain?”

“I see… I saw her take my sister—my sister,” Boy cries. For just a moment, Dr. Bowden’s chest tightens. He feels a twinge of pain. Probably from this revelation, but he doesn’t know for sure.

“Pulled her into the dark!” If Boy’s words were filth, Shadow would bathe himself in them chapter and verse—he is clapping, wringing his claws, flapping his tail. His body changes and seethes in madness.

Bowden probes deeper. “What happened to your sister?”

“They found her—” Boy chokes on his tears. “They found her a few weeks later in the bathroom at a bus station, tucked between the stall and toilet like an old doll. Her head was half shaved and she was dressed in rags.”

“I’m sorry,” Bowden offers, weakly. “That’s terrible.”

“She told us!” Boy screams. “My sister told us it was her!” He opens his eyes and beholds the demon. Shadow is shaking his head, smiling from ear-to-ear. He relishes human anguish, feeds on it like a pig in slop.

“Go on, son.”

Boy doesn’t notice the word son. It is all puking up out of him, now. He babbles. “Mother took her home, and she was good for a while until one night when she finally went to sleep. But in the next room, He was fucking her! Him! Doing Mother!” Boy beats his fist against the floor. His tears drop like diamonds on the throw rug, splatter on the hardwood flooring. “They f-f-found her in the morning—she choked on her tongue.”

Shadow hums tunelessly and begins to stroke himself erect at the sound of Boy’s anguish. That’s it, that’s it…

“And while they were doing that, she died. My sister died.”

The doctor’s arms are shaking. “I’m confused, son. Who took her?”

The Razor Lady

, Shadow whispers. He laughs as he spins cobwebs of ejaculate across the room. Wanted to cut her—wanted to slice her good. Would’ve sucked her bones dry, too when she was done if it weren’t for her getting away. Those dying little fuckers wriggle like earthworms.

Too much silence. Dr. Bowden asks again. “Who took her?”

“Razor Lady did!”

Boy rests his forehead against the hardwood floor and cries enough for one thousand funerals.

Now lay your head down to sleep

, Shadow sings as he fingers hexes across the walls in spittle and sperm. And ask the Lord your soul to keep.

“This… Razor lady.”

“Yes.”

“She’s not real,” said the doctor. “She’s…in your mind. She’s like a nightmare. I guarantee you, she did not take your sister.”

Shadow shakes his head as he continues to spell out curses on his dripping mural.

“Are you in a place where you can understand what I am saying right now? Can you hear me?”

Boy has curled into himself, sucking his thumb like a fetus. Every few seconds another wave of goose bumps paces his pale skin. The Boy is making small, soft whimpering sounds now; exquisitely high chirps that remind Dr. Bowden of a nest full of hungry little birds.

“Focus on my voice, okay? Just let go of the memories, the images that are so upsetting to you. A breeze is coming, hear it? Let those feelings just blow away like leaves in the wind.”

Another therapeutic touch, a palm on the child’s forehead. His breathing begins to slow and the noises drop in frequency and volume. Dr. Bowden swallows, keeps his own breathing slow and easy.

“See? It’s better now, isn’t it?”

“Y-Yes. A little.”

“We’ll have to stop soon. Our time is almost up.”

And just then the door bursts open, bangs against the wall. Boy’s mother walks in already talking, “—that’s been fifty minutes, and we should get going” then she stops. Shadow turns to greet her. He crab-walks over, sniffs her face, his fingers paper-sliced and dripping. Dr. Bowden stands; his face looks wan and worried. Boy sits up, his hair egg-beaten and greasy. His cheeks are soaked and his eyes bloodshot.

“What happened?” Mother manages to ask, although her eyes say she’s more angry than concerned. The meta-message.

“Your son is having a breakdown, or perhaps something of a breakthrough. He told me about his sister.” His face hardens. “He told me the rest, too.”

Boy’s mother winces and pinches off tears. Boy sees this and cries: “Mommy!” He reaches his hands out to her, desperate for contact, but she pulls away.

“His sister—” she stammers. “His sister?” She balls a fist, brings it up to her mouth and sobs silently. Boy goes over, hugs her. Shadow runs circles around the two, growling and spitting. Dr. Bowden lowers himself into his high-back chair. He is sweating from the session and his temples are pounding. He hasn’t worked this hard in years.

“Come on,” Mother says, and she ushers her son out of the office.

Dr. Bowden knows he should schedule another appointment if possible, but wisely says nothing, only watches them leave. He can call when things have calmed down. When they are gone, he opens his desk drawer and removes a pen and pad. He scrawls page after page of notes. Meanwhile, Shadow hoists himself back up onto the desk, bends until he is at eye level with the doctor, and growls a warning.

His mother, dear doctor, is the evil he speaks of. She is the thief.

Dr. Bowden licks his lips and continues to write, only occasionally looking up to recollect his thoughts.

It is she who wields the razor.

Dr. Bowden leans back in his chair and closes his eyes.

Shadow does a back flip, flattens wafer thin and slips out underneath the closed office door…

They are outside, on their way to the car, when Boy catches something out of the corner of his eye. Across the street there is a barren playground. The swings play tubular bells on strange winds—it is a sound only ghosts could interpret. On one end of the seesaw sits Shadow, bobbing up and down. He waves. Boy leaves the woman behind, walks over. Behind him he hears Mother call something, but he does not hear, doesn’t even turn around. He swings his leg over the other end of the seesaw and sits opposite his demon.

Shadow whispers again: Ashes to ashes, we all fall down…

They rock for a bit, and together they soon find a balance.

The Need for Illusion

Clyde Harrow was a gaunt broomstick of a man; rail thin, with long limbs and a splay-footed walk. He wore faded blue overalls that shined at the knees and torn sneakers stuffed with old newspapers. October evenings back in the 1950s generally found him on the porch of Sam Peterson’s General Store, sending smoke signals on a cheap corncob pipe; gossiping about crops or making highly suspect predictions about the weather.

“Naw, it ain’t just the bugs.” Harrow’s mouth was known to run, and this night was no exception. He had an incongruously deep and booming baritone voice, and it carried. “There’s something unholy going on at my place.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Said I got me some bugs, that’s true. But there’s something else going on, something that ain’t…natural.”

Julie Dawson and I were playing spin-the-bottle in the dark alley by Petersons Mercantile, halfway under the long wooden porch. I was just about to slide my sweaty right hand up under Julie’s flannel shirt when she grabbed me by the wrist.

“Stop,” she whispered. “Listen.”

Listening was not at all on my mind. She held me fast, suddenly powerful in that way only young women can be. I tuned in and just caught the last part of the conversation.

“Ain’t my imagination, damn it!” Clyde insisted. “And I ain’t crazy. I know what I saw.”

Mr. Peterson, a kindly man, tried to calm things. “Now, Clyde Harrow, I never said it was only your imagination. I just meant that imagination can add to events, twist them around a little and such. Go on.”

“You sure you want to hear this?” Clyde lowered his voice like a man confessing sins. Julie pushed me away. She leaned forward, romantic notions abruptly abandoned; something else only girls seem to be able to do. I eased the bulge in my pants to one side and settled in to wait. Maybe I’d get another shot if I was patient.

“I saw something walking at the edge of my land, Peterson. It weren’t no man, neither. It moved like it didn’t know how to use a human body.”

“Clyde, you’re spooking me.”

“It’s coming for me,” Clyde whispered. That’s what he said, word for word. “It’s coming for me.”

“Who, for Chrissakes?”

“I told you, it’s not a who,” Clyde said. He paused, and when he spoke again his voice cracked with fear. “It’s a what.”

Mr. Peterson sounded confused. “What are we talking about here?”

“A verdulac.”

“What?”

“My grandmother taught me that word. One of the undead. And I know that’s what it is ‘cause she said it always sends a bunch of bugs first, to prepare the way.”

“Clyde, you probably saw somebody walking home all liquored up. And like I said, maybe you’ve got roaches.”

“I’ve seen roaches, damn it. But what these bastards are is big. And I want ’em gone before they bring that bloodsucking sonofabitch right to my door.”

Mr. Peterson was silent for a moment, as if choosing his words very carefully. “Well then, for your garden variety roaches and such, make sure you don’t leave any food on the floor. Get yourself a couple of them roach motel ‘they check in but never fucking check out’ type things and put it in the corners. Why, I recall one time…”

“Damn you, Peterson,” Clyde exploded. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said! Look at me!”

Julie and I giggled when they heard some buttons popping and a zipper. Mr. Peterson was speechless. But we could no longer see them clearly, as it was now starting to get dark.

Julie looked like a woman in the throws of born-again rapture. “Clyde’s finally gone bat shit,” she giggled. “I do believe he’s wagging his weenie at Mr. Peterson! Wait till everybody hears about this.”

After a long pause so complete we could hear cicadas clicking in the brush two hundred yards away, Mr. Peterson said: “Good Lord.”

“Yeah,” Clyde said triumphantly. “You’re damn right.”

“Clyde,” Mr. Peterson said, his voice trembling, “you need to see Doc Burke about those bites.”

“My belly looks like a goddamned pizza, don’t it?”

“What the hell happened to you?”

“I got ’em all over my spread. Can’t hardly turn over the ground without a passel of ’em running out and shitting all over my boots.” His voice was tinged with exasperation at this point. “My grandma said they come to prepare the way for the undead.”

“Well, I’ll be damned…”

“No, I’m gonna be damned if I don’t do something soon. Now, you got any ideas for me? Any good poison?”

“Just what’s in the store.”

“Peterson, I need your help. I need something way strong, nasty enough to kick their little shiny black asses back down to hell.”

“You surely do. Let me think on it some.”

Clyde sounded mollified. “You do that,” he said. “But don’t think on it too long, or I may not be around to pay you.”

“Hush,” Mr. Peterson replied. “Don’t be talking that way.”

“You are looking at a frightened man, Peterson.” Clyde Harrow’s voice had gone flat and dead like the low, moaning wind creeping down a chimney. “I can’t hardly sleep since I saw that thing. Even had to ask my nephew Horace to come and watch over me. He says I’ve been tossing and turning nights, calling out to the Lord, and I ain’t done that since I was a little boy. My grandmother was from the old world. They knew about these creatures, the verdulac. She said that first they send bugs from the graveyard, sort of to soften you up. Then they come for your blood.”

“That’s just superstition,” Mr. Peterson sputtered. But he sounded like a scared kid listening to a campfire story. “You can’t possibly believe that.”

“I believe every word.”

“It’s nonsense!”

“Is it? Are you sure, Peterson?” And then Clyde Harrow giggled, totally out of the blue. Down under that porch, Julie and me, we looked at one another in pure amazement. Clyde sounded like a man one pubic hair away from insanity. He lowered his voice to an ominous whisper. “Why, I’ve been so spooked I finally built me a beware-man.”

“Beware man? You mean, like a scarecrow?”

“A beware-man is kind of like that, but different,” Clyde said. Warmth left his voice like the slamming of a coal grate. “Grandma called it something else but the closest thing in English would be ‘beware-man.’ It’s magic. She showed me what to do. How to chant over it. Taught me how to make a face and paint it up and then dress it in old clothes. She told me where to put the garlic, some chicken bones and a cross of sticks…and what to stuff it with.”

“That’s plain silly, Clyde.”

“All the same, I made me one, Peterson. And I put it up in my field last night, but it’s standing empty as of now. But once it’s done, I’ll be sleeping safe and sound. See, the secret is it’s all in how you fill them up.”

“Fill them up?”

“Grandma said the beware-man would protect a home. In the old days, it was supposed to keep the verdulac away. It’s all in how you fill it up, that’s the ticket.”

Harrow giggled again. “Anybody tries to get past that son of a bitch will have to deal with the spirit I called on to protect my land.”

Mr. Peterson sounded at once sad and condescending. “Why, Clyde Harrow you’re a good Christian man. I’m very disappointed. Shame on you for believing in such claptrap.”

“I know, I know. It sounds silly, huh? But what the hell else am I supposed to do, tell me that?”

“Aha!” Peterson said, after a long pause. “I know. We’ll call in the State boys.”

“No we won’t,” Clyde replied, almost triumphantly. “May as well ask for help from President Dwight D fucking Eisenhower his own self, because I ain’t paid my taxes in ages and I got a still on my property.”

“Oh.”

“Promise me you’ll just keep thinking on some way to kill them bugs. My beware-man will handle whatever sent them here after my country ass.”

“I will, Clyde. I’ll think on it.”

Clyde Harrow got to his feet and stumbled clumsily down the wooden steps. Julie and I could see him again in the streetlight. He turned in the road like a terrified animal.

“You know what’s really got me going?”

Mr. Peterson stared at him, prudish mouth slightly agape. Clyde Harrow looked sheepish. He smiled in a minor key. “I lay awake nights wondering what that creature looks like…up close. Now I got to go and fill the beware-man up before it’s too late. That’s the ticket.”

Peterson sighed. “Now, don’t you get yourself spooked. There’s a natural explanation for this, there surely is.”

“Yeah. Sure. Maybe. But in the meantime I’ll leave the beware-man out front just in case. A man has got to have something to believe in.”

“You get some sleep, Clyde.”

“Night, Peterson.”

A couple of minutes later Clyde fired up that beat-to-hell cherry red 1940 Ford he kept together with spit and baling wire. The engine coughed low as a sleepy lion, then roared to life and farted away down the asphalt.

Down below the porch, one gorgeous teenaged girl was twisting her frustrated lover’s shirt in her hands and gasping for breath because she was so excited. But it was the wrong kind of excited. Julie was a naughty girl by nature. I could see her eyes twirling like cherries in a slot machine. My stomach sank, because whenever Julie got this way there was bound to be trouble. If wanted a shot at some pussy tonight I’d have to do her some dumb-ass favor or another.

See, Clyde Harrow wasn’t too popular with the high school kids. He had fired buckshot at a few of us he caught skinny-dipping in his duck pond. I’d been one of those kids. So had Julie Dawson, whose already feeble reputation had seen further damage due to Clyde’s big mouth. Her father had grounded her for a month after slapping her silly. Now the grudge-prone girl saw her chance to get even.

“Honey?”

Woody softening, mood darkening. “What?”

Soft breath, taut breasts and pouting red lips. “Do you want me?”

“Julie, I know what you’re thinking.”

“Let’s pick up Little Stinky and go to Harrow’s farm,” she said, excitedly. “It’s trick or treat time, baby. Clyde’s half out of it already, and he’s got himself scared of the dark. Well, we’re going to pay him a visit and seriously fuck with his mind.”

Little Stinky Ragland was a pimple-skinned midget in blue jeans and a torn t-shirt. He ate moldy pizza from the trash and sniffed spray painted rags for kicks. Stinky, who was not only tiny but maybe two notches below stupid, also had a body odor that could peel wallpaper. I tolerated Stinky because Julie liked him. Julie liked him because he would do anything she wanted, whenever she wanted. Not that she had much trouble manipulating the boys. When Julie got an idea like this in her head there was no use arguing.

Little Stinky lived with his drunken father, who beat him regular and then passed out on the couch. We threw pebbles at his window until Stinky stuck his head out. And started singing a Buddy Holly song in his wimpy tenor, so his old man must have been out cold. Julie wiggled and whispered and in a big city minute Stinky had slithered down the tree to join us. Julie explained what the evening’s festivities were all about.

“Oh, cool,” Stinky said. His stoned pupils were little fecal pinpricks. “I’m in.”

I knew when to throw in the towel. “Okay, okay. I’ll drive.”

“He’ll hear us coming that way. We’ll walk it.”

“All three of us? It’s nigh on five miles, round trip!”

Stinky had already started walking. He looked like the kid in the Chaplin movies. I decided to dig in my heels.

“Screw it. I’m out.”

Julie took measure of my annoyance, saw that I was serious. She stroked my fly. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

Young fool that I was, I went for it. I pounced like a duck on a June bug. We got a six-pack of beer from the back of my truck and started walking. Stinky, he never even turned around—but he moved so slow we had no trouble catching up.

It had been raining on and off for a week. This was one of those odd fall evenings when the moon is a pocked piece of marble and gossamer clouds hang below it like a burial shroud. The air was thick with the smell of night blooming jasmine, enough to cover even Little Stinky’s BO, although all I really smelled was Julie’s perfume and my own frustrated sexuality.

We went through the thicket called Briar’s Wood, where the brush grew thick as fingers on a clenched fist, and then beyond it and into a patch of dead farmland. Now and again we would let Stinky wander ahead and stop to neck a bit. The rare, errant gust of wind stroked our hormone-addled flesh. Lightning spider-webbed the far horizon and a low rumble followed seconds later. The air felt electrically charged. Stinky started in singing the Buddy Holly song again, something about rocking and rolling around the clock. His thin voice echoed eerily through the empty field.

The three of us went across Parker’s meadow, cut around behind his horse barn and then followed the damp creek bed until we were at the cusp of Clyde Harrow’s property. Stinky seemed focused; I was less enthusiastic. But whenever my courage or energy would falter, Julie would undo my zipper and yank my crank a bit to get my head back into the game.

“Aw shit!”

Stinky tripped stepping over a raised up tree root and almost spilled one of the last cans of warm Natty Bo. In his haste to protect the brew he over-corrected himself and took a knee. His huge left calf went straight down into a cow paddy that was crusty like a Frisbee on the outside, juicy as pus in the center. Julie giggled herself foolish. By now, we were all already more than a little drunk. After a few seconds Stinky laughed too, a wheezing cough that didn’t carry far.

Another trident of lightning split the sky to the West. The horizon growled. We sat down to rest. Stinky found a thick twig by the sullen white moonlight and scraped the crap off his skinny leg. “Let’s take a breather,” I said, dropping where I stood. “And you tell us just what the hell it is you got in mind.”

“This old man has been a pain in the ass for too long, right? And hell, he’s already got himself spooked. He’s put up some dumb-ass scarecrow for Chrissakes, and now he’s going to fill it with God knows what.”

“The beware-man.”

“Right. So we’re going to play with him some. I figure maybe we crunch around his yard making noises to start with.”

“OooOOOOOooooohhhhh…” Stinky moaned, rehearsing an eerie Halloween voice. Actually, it wasn’t half bad. “I got to piss,” he announced. He bounced to his feet, turned his back and let fly a steaming yellow stream. Julie shook her head, grinned at me and held her pretty nose.

“That’s it?” I asked in a low voice. “Assuming the crazy old bastard doesn’t up and fill Little Stinky’s ass full of buckshot, what do we do after that?”

Julie looked down. I thought I’d never seen anything half as beautiful as her face in the moonlight. “I don’t know,” she said, weakly. “I thought maybe we’d make it up as we go. Maybe we stuff some cow shit in that thing.”

And then I got the idea that was to prove our undoing. I saw a chance to be her hero, and let my mind go racing. “We could tip things over in his barn,” I offered. “That would scare the crap out of him. One of us could keep an eye on the house, and if he comes outside toss a bucket into the hog pen to warn the others.”

Julie sat in my lap. She squirmed with delight. “I like it, I like it.” I nearly went crazy from the sensation. “Maybe Clyde will have himself a heart attack and die!” Right about then, I felt a slight twinge of guilt for upping the ante, but told myself I was only trying to get laid. Surely, God would understand.

Little Stinky zipped his fly and turned around. The moon sat behind his head like a pale halo and it was impossible to read his features. Getting into the spirit, he reached down the leg of his jeans and produced a wickedly gleaming, saw-toothed skinning knife. “How about I do one of his chickens and spread blood around the yard? Then when he comes out he’ll see the guts and feathers everywhere?”

“Oh, I like that!”

Julie bounced up and down again. I almost reached the heights. But she hopped to her feet too quickly and spun around like a ballerina. “He runs outside and sees blood and guts everywhere? I don’t just like it, I love it. Then we just sneak away.”

“Works for me,” Stinky said.

Her face went solemn. “And I want this to be our little secret, you hear? We never tell anyone we done it. None of us, never. You swear?”

Delirious with lust, I nodded swiftly. “Sure. I swear.”

Stinky surprised the both of us by slicing open his palm. A thin tendril of blood trickled down his flesh.

“Let’s make it a blood oath.”

“Oh, give me a break,” I replied, and laughed out loud. “Don’t tell me you believe in this kind of crap.”

“Everybody got to believe in something,” Stinky said, solemnly.

Julie was already nodding. “A blood oath.” She took the knife from Stinky and, to her credit, cut herself with very little flinching. I swallowed my natural response and stood up; reluctantly touched the blade to my palm. It cut through my flesh like it was warm butter; the wound was surprisingly painless.

The three of us clasped hands. Julie, her eyes wide with excitement and melodrama, pronounced the oath. “We’re going to bust our butts to drive old Clyde Harrow nuts, fuck with his beware-man thing, and then we’re gonna keep this a secret forever. I swear on my mother’s life. Agreed?”

“I swear,” Stinky said.

“I swear.” I pulled my hand away as rapidly as possible; wiped Stinky’s blood off on my pants. I could see the smear, black in the moonlight.

Julie looked at her two soldiers and smiled. “Let’s do it.” She marched ahead, swinging her arms, with me and Stinky following. Our feet made sucking noises in the thick, brown mud.

It started to rain again. As we crossed the field by moonlight, a thin cloud began to mist over us like the cool spray from a lawn sprinkler. I watched Julie’s butt cheeks rolling in her tight jeans and cursed myself for being such a horn dog. Truth be told, that blood oath business made me feel like I’d done something evil. I clutched my St. Christopher medal and asked for protection.

Julie had a way of getting a guy into truly deep shit.

When we got to the edge of Clyde Harrow’s property Stinky raised his fist for us to stop. He sank to one knee and motioned me forward. I flashed on a billion bad war films and giggled. The beer was getting to me. Stinky pointed with one trembling arm. Squinting, I followed a direct line of sight and gasped.

A huge man with a pitchfork was standing right in the middle of the barnyard. He was grinning with long, sharp teeth.

“Jeez!’ I hissed. “Lay down or he’ll see us!”

We dropped flat as pancakes on the spot. Julie was caught up in the moment and didn’t seem to mind the mud and cow shit covering her pretty white blouse.

“How’d he know we was coming?” Little Stinky whined. “It’s like he’s standing there waiting for us.”

I squinted. The rain was coming down a bit harder now, making it more difficult to see. I felt in the muck, grabbed a fair sized rock and heaved it at the figure in our way. The rock bounced into a nearby puddle, but the man didn’t move an inch. I chuckled. “That’s not Clyde. It’s that damned beware-man. The thing he put up and chanted over.”

“Huh? It’s a freakin’ scarecrow?” Stinky hadn’t been under the porch. He was lost. “This time of year?”

“It’s something he did to warn away these monsters he thinks drink human blood,” Julie said. She seemed to find the whole thing beyond funny. “Clyde told old Peterson his grandma told him how to make one and what to put inside of it. He said she called it a beware-man. They’re to scare off the monsters that send bugs or something… I don’t remember the word he used. It was something foreign.”

“Monsters?” Little Stinky grinned like a satisfied fox. “You mean like us?”

“Exactly like us,” Julie said. “That’s what we’re going to be tonight, too. Three scary monsters.”

The rain slapped our skin. We began to inch closer, foot by foot, on elbows and knees. The mud made obscene noises, almost as if it was lapping at our bloody hands. Awash with rain, the world turned opaque and distorted like a funhouse mirror. Still, we went on; slowly closed the gap, our excitement causing us to vacillate between trembling and giggling.

Soon the beware-man was towering over us; giant arms spread wide, tattered clothes flapping in the icy wind.

The horizon growled and lightning flared.

Looking up, I had a second moment of clarity that turned my bones to marshmallow. This huge beware-man’s eyes were made of tiny china saucers, with candles burned to blackened nubs bulging from their centers. In the flickering lightning those eyes burned bright and seemed to focus. Worse still, his long nose was a rotting sweet potato that angled down and away like an engorged penis. The hole below it—that hungry mouth—was a gaping maw made of two slatted, splintered boards pounded and packed full of roofing nails; the twin rows would have done a shark proud. The center of the beware-man was a large, completely hollow space, a pitch-black cavity the size of a small man. The clothing hung open; dank, filthy rags that slithered in the breeze and reeked of mildew and mold. Clyde Harrow had dressed the unfinished totem in a decaying business suit that might well have come directly from a fresh grave.

A moaning gust of wind hit the humanoid figure, causing the clothes to ripple around the hollow body and snap flat again. The empty crucified form tilted and the frame veered a few inches to the left, causing the macabre face to leer down; head cocked in curiosity.

“Oh,” Little Stinky mumbled. “Oh, my.”

“I think,” I said quietly, “that we should maybe just go home.”

But Julie had already slid to the side of the creature, her black eyes fixed on Clyde Harrow and his battered wooden shack. She hadn’t bothered to look up, hadn’t seen what Stinky and I had seen. She was going on, moving forward. As I contemplated cowardice, I watched her slither along through the muddy field like a guerilla warrior. Then I imagined myself trying to explain to the other guys on the football team why I chickened out. With a large sigh that sent a billow of mist forward, I flattened and followed.

The downpour pelted us now; liquid BBs thudding against our clothing and splattering into puddles cratered in grass, mud and animal droppings. I suddenly had an overpowering urge to urinate, but I kept my eyes on the soles of Julie’s tennis shoes; turned my mind off and counted each shift of left elbow/right elbow as one movement. Two, three, four. Twenty-three, four, five. Covering ground and trying not to think about where I was, where we were headed or what we were about to do. I lowered my eyes to the muck and moved relentlessly forward.

And ran into her leg.

“Shhh,” Julie hissed. “I thought I heard him moving around in there.”

The two of us were at the sagging front porch, only a few feet away from Clyde Harrow’s house. The building stank of rotting garbage cans and human excrement, likely from an overflowing septic tank.

“Damn, he’s a real pig.” Right then, something slithered along the edge of my arm. I looked down and saw a bunch of squirming insects. They were black and brown and one bit me. “Aw, shit!” I whispered.

Those bugs Harrow was complaining about? His filthy place was infested with them. The man had to have existed in total squalor for years to have a plague like this on his hands. How could anyone choose to live this way? And then a flash-forward movie suddenly ran through my head: Clyde Harrow bursting out of the house with a pump shotgun, screaming and yelling and firing the weapon; BOOM! watching part of Julie’s pretty head sail up and away like a soup of grey brains and white bone. I’m embarrassed to admit I wet myself, there in the filth and the stink and the relentless rain.

“This is a bad idea,” I whined, stating the obvious. “We could get shot.”

Julie saw a long pitchfork resting tines-down against the slatted wall. She tugged the prongs with her fingers and it fell down next to her. She clutched the weapon and grunted in satisfaction.

“Julie?”

She turned her pretty head, curled her lip and gave me a withering look of scorn. “Are you with me, or not?”

I started to say yes against my own better judgment but looked behind me and discovered that Stinky had vanished into the storm. A jolt of adrenaline ran through my body.

“Little Stinky is gone!”

Julie chose that moment to sneer: “You wimp.”

Right there and then, I realized that my dreams of getting laid were just that—dreams. I didn’t believe her anymore. The sense of having been ruthlessly manipulated by a prick tease made my face burn. There was only one dignified way out of a disaster like this. I nodded my filth-streaked head like a parrot and forced a smile. “Have a nice night.” I began to inch backwards, away from Harrow’s home.

Julie was beyond furious. Her upper body spun rapidly back and forth like a cobra as she realized she could not call out to stop me; and that Stinky really was no longer behind us. If she chose to go through with it, she would be alone from this point on.

Just then booted feet walked across the living room and out onto the porch as someone came outside to have a look around.

Julie squeezed down into the hungry mud, hugged the pitchfork tight and tried to be invisible. I was several yards away by now and did the same. I managed to turn my face and gasped. The man on the porch—Clyde?—had a trusty shotgun cradled under one arm. He walked in circles like he was really pissed off. I tried to make out the face, but couldn’t. The man froze and leaned forward like a stalking cat. He squinted and peered out into the sheet of rain that drenched the front porch steps. He raised the gun eagerly and sighted down the barrel.

Oh, Jesus

, I thought. He sees Little Stinky!

I trembled for a long moment. There was Julie with the pitchfork, safe beside the house. I was in the middle of the yard. It was only a matter of time before I was discovered. The man with the shotgun was probably about to blow away somebody who’d already had a pretty shitty life. I couldn’t think of a single acceptable alternative, so I chose the bravest.

“Over here, Clyde! Stinky, you run for it!”

I got to my feet and took off running. I slipped in the mud, got up and ran again. I crossed that soaking wet piece of exposed land waiting for the sound of the gun. When the booming sound finally did come, my sharpened instincts told me the gun was deliberately fired over my head, up into the air.

Maybe Harrow would be satisfied with driving us away.

I was now a few yards from the beware-man and right at the edge of the Harrow property, but I couldn’t run off like a chicken and leave a girl behind. So I reluctantly turned, crouched in a mud puddle and waited for Julie. Just then the rain suddenly slacked off a bit, and a pocket of moonlight lit the whole area. I could see Julie now as she stumbled toward me, dragging the pitchfork. I suppose she figured petty theft was better than no revenge at all.

I could see the man on the porch more clearly now. He fired another blast out into the frigid air. “You kids stay off this property,” he called. Hell, that didn’t sound like Clyde Harrow. In fact, the voice belonged to a much younger man. I heard something behind me, and that’s when the short hairs at the back my neck fluttered and came to attention.

“S-S-Stinky?”

No answer. I slowly sat up and raised my hands high in the air. I did not look back. “Mr. Harrow, I’m sorry about this. It was all supposed to be a joke.”

“You stay there, you little monster.” It was Clyde Harrow, sure enough, and his voice was low and hoarse and had the oddly whimsical lilt of a man who’d gone mental. He shouted at the house. “You can go back inside now, Horace!”

The guy on the porch was Horace, the nephew Harrow had told Mr. Peterson was staying with him! Horace waved and went back into the house. My hands were shaking from the cold and the fear.

“Don’t hurt us.”

“You just stay there,” Harrow chuckled. “You two have caused enough trouble for one night.”

Two?

Who did he mean? Had he missed Little Stinky, or Julie?

“Your friend is going to help me out. Maybe I can think of a use for you, too.”

Maybe he hadn’t seen Julie. I risked a peek and confirmed it. She was still coming, but now from slightly further to the right. Julie was on her feet and had the pitchfork gripped tightly with both hands. Harrow still hadn’t spotted her, likely because he was looking down. He began to caress the back of my head.

“Little monsters,” he giggled. “I got you both, now.”

“Back off, you old fuck.”

Harrow straightened up. There stood Julie, only a few feet away; eerily illuminated by a fresh bolt of lightning. She was holding the pitchfork waist high with the wicked prongs facing forward. After a long moment, I caught on that there must be a reason for such courage. I got slowly to my feet and turned, and sure enough Clyde Harrow wasn’t armed. Now I felt like a coward and a damned fool.

“Ah, shit.” I kicked the mud with my foot.

“Three little monsters,” Harrow chortled. He seemed disoriented. He turned in a small circle and then started to walk away from his house, past the hulking figure of the beware-man, toward the woods. “Wait till I tell your parents.”

“AAAAAAAAAAA!”

Julie screamed in outrage and slogged after Harrow, the pitchfork up and aimed for the small of his back. She meant to frog-gig the old bastard, once and for all. My head swiveled back and forth. She passed me, going for him. It came to me to just give her a little push. I was filled with fear and anger and shoved her harder than I’d meant to. Julie lost her balance and plunged the pitchfork into the towering figure of the beware-man.

“NO!”

Julie froze, obviously amazed at the transformation in Clyde. “What’s your problem, old man?”

‘Don’t hurt him.” Harrow sank to his knees, sobbing, head in his hands. He kept on repeating the word, “No, no, no.”

“Why, you superstitious old fart.” Julie giggled and stepped back. The pitchfork hung at a sideways angle from the beware-man. Chuckling, one eye on Harrow, she pulled it out and stabbed again. She put her upper body into the third time.

I heard what sounded like the rip of fabric and then something plopped down into the mud.

“You’ll hurt him!” Harrow wheezed. He stumbled forward to intervene, but fell on his face in the soaked earth…

Another flash of lightning illuminated the scene. I saw that things had gone terribly, terribly wrong; that they were far worse than my darkest nightmares. Harrow clasped his hands as if to pray. Julie’s mouth dropped open and vomit spewed forth. I didn’t want to look where she was looking…but I did.

Little Stinky had been tied up, gagged and stuffed into the hollow beware-man. His eyes were bulging bullfrog-wide. The pitchfork had opened his belly and what looked like a coil of long, blue and red ropes trailed down to his bound ankles. I backed away, clutching my St. Christopher and chanting a rosary. Julie started murmuring “it’s not my fault.” Meanwhile Clyde Harrow slipped into total madness. He hugged and rocked himself.

“Oh, dear,” he giggled, “now you’ve gone and done it. The spell only works when the offering is alive.”

Julie whimpered. “W-w-what happened?”

Me, I cried out to the indifferent stars. “Oh, God.”

Meanwhile Clyde just hugged his knees and rocked. “It’s the offering, you see, not the beware-man,” he said. “It’s how you fill them up. That’s the ticket.”

_______________

“A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance

When the need for illusion is deep.”

—Saul Bellow

Concrete Gods

with Kealan Patrick Burke

“Whoa! You’ve got to be kidding.”

Andy Scanlon closed his eyes and gripped the ropes holding the platform in place as the universe twitched and trembled. What the fuck was that, a gust of wind? He’d been washing windows for more than six months, but still hadn’t gotten used to the intense feeling of vulnerability. Andy’s cousin Barney seemed to love dangling twenty stories up, but then Barney was known to be a couple of cans short of a six-pack.

Andy swallowed his fear, forced his eyes open. If he squinted, he could see past the reflected sunlight and into the crowded office on the other side of the window. An obese woman wearing a telephone headset stared back at him; eyes popping, jaw dropping, chocolate pudding girth shaking uncontrollably. Christ, she felt it, too!

He shaded his eyes, peered inside. Several confused men wearing slacks and white short-sleeved shirts with cheap ties had dropped their stapled papers, manila files and Styrofoam cups of coffee to seek the perceived shelter of a doorway. Andy felt his bowels loosen. He reached for the pulley, saw that his hand was shaking badly. He started lowering the platform. The large plastic bucket of detergent began to slosh back and forth in bubbled waves.

The building rippled like a body in the throes of fever. He tried lowering himself a bit faster. He was one floor lower now and could see people screaming and struggling to make it to the exits, the stairwells, the elevators. Something popped and singed; a loose wire from the scaffolding.

Andy screamed, too.

The platform eased away from the office building, lazily twisted in the wind. Two of the support ropes hissed and began to unravel. Andy had just enough time to take a deep breath, then the scaffolding slammed back into the side of the building and dissolved into splintering pieces. His head burst open. His scalp ran red. Andy floated through the screeching atmosphere like a skydiver. The ground below seemed motionless, frozen for a few seconds and then it rushed at him—a hungry mouth with asphalt teeth and a sidewalk for a tongue.

Seconds later, he crashed into the cement, colliding with and killing numerous pedestrians who hadn’t thought to look up. What remained looked inhuman: multi-colored entrails festooning the sidewalk and pints of fresh blood flowing down the gutter and into the bowels of the city.

It was time.

««—»»

From restless dreams of smoke and shadow, it has awakened…

At first, confusion reigns. And then this new dawn sends rays of realization to stroke the stone walls of its domain.

Its skin.

It is alive again. Aware.

For decades it has lain still, pondering, growing hungry; weathering the repulsion that sends ripples through its mind. It despises the feel of those bags of skin and bone that traipse over its hide like fleas on a drowsy dog. Humans burst apart like fleas when bitten, and they are parasites who serve no greater purpose.

It bears its disgust well but unlike so many of its brethren, its patience has worn thin. It growls. Now and again a shudder escapes and those fleas panic, feeling the skin shift beneath their feet. This brings an inner smile to the city. It drinks down the blood and offal; an appetizer while it ponders its return.

And as it crouches and thinks (such a glorious novelty, this consciousness!), it determines it shall rid itself of the multitudinous parasites wearing tracks upon its nerves.

««—»»

Bo Whitley was savoring breakfast from a screw-top wine bottle when the alley began to tremble.

Any semblance of clarity had left his plagued mind hours ago, consciousness departing on a train reluctant to see another familiar station. For Bo, the soporific deadening of his schizophrenic mind was sheer bliss.

The trembling started in his weakened legs—a slight vibration in his bones that didn’t even warrant his attention at first. And when his shoes began to slip from his feet and a trashcan began a crazy, rattling dance near the mouth of the alley, Bo just smiled. He was accustomed to seeing a lot of remarkable things. But when the mouth of the alley bent into an arch as if the two buildings through which it ran were leaning over to study him, that smile faded. Shit!

Dust rained down on his forehead, coating his protruding tongue like cobweb-shrouded snowflakes. Bo coughed and pushed himself up from the comfort of a torn blue sleeping bag; but then the ground wavered, or else he did. Bo wasn’t certain. All he knew was it was no longer possible to stand.

Somewhere in another time and place, a woman screamed. Police sirens wailed. Horns honked. Cars screeched to a halt. The walls of the alley shimmied and boogied and chuckled like October dark.

And Christ, was that some shadowy eyeball forming on the side of the building in front of him?

Sure. Right.

That was, of course, impossible.

But there it was, blinking and shot through with gossamer veins. Bo knew it was a hallucination—punishment perhaps for his violation of countless oaths of abstinence—but it inspired him to try harder to stand. Eventually he turned his back on the eye, lowered his gaze and watched his torn tennis shoes as he wobbled toward the mouth of the alley. He was muttering, now; reassuring himself with phrases that would have made no sense to anyone else. Finally, he looked up.

Figures whipped past the alley entrance, moving too fast for his booze-heavy eyes to follow. He cursed the fleeing blurs. Another siren, close. Cops? Had he done something wrong lately that he should really try to remember? Those friggin pigs were always on his ass about something.

The earth rumbled, cracked, and heaved him toward the far wall. His palms slapped hard against the cold stone. The daylight narrowed to dusk, or was it just his rheumy eyes?

No.

What the hell?

He glanced over his shoulder and frowned. The alley was…closing. But how could that be?

I’m as drunk as a skunk

, he thought and chuckled, thin streams of drool dripping from the corners of his mouth. Man, I’d kill for a cheeseburger right about now.

The wall moved. Shifted. Rocked. Bo looked up and was struck with a vertiginous sense of dread.

The top of the frigging building was tipping its hat at him. Howdy, Bo!

He opened his mouth to moan in dismay, finally realizing that the drink was not to blame, not for this waking nightmare. In fact, now the alcohol was rapidly escaping from his body, soaking his legs as the hat tipped, slipped and a legion of falling slates increased Bo’s number a thousand-fold.

««—»»

Nearby, Alistair Corby saw the wino’s death but paused only momentarily to grimace before the tilting pavement propelled him onward. Like everyone else, he tried to run without knowing why or where.

What the hell is going on?

It was an earthquake. It had to be. But earthquakes were rare in Ohio, and one of this magnitude seemed impossible. Yet that was the only satisfactory explanation as to why the ground was heaving upwards, lifting cars on their rear wheels and rending the street apart.

Alistair ran, elbowing and jostling, cursing and hopping his way along, seeking the impossible…safety. The soundtrack of screams and car horns pierced both the air and his eardrums; he blocked them out, his maroon tie swung over his shoulder as if to watch the madness recede.

Someone screamed for help, somewhere up ahead. A quick scan of the sloping sidewalk showed a woman covered in blood, squatting on the curb, her hand outstretched. She didn’t seem aware that a chunk of masonry the size of a basketball had put a deep depression in the top of her oozing head. Alistair sidestepped the brisk fount of blood shooting from her wound. He kneed away her outstretched hand and wondered how she still clung to life, or what she thought was to be gained by survival now that the city had seen fit to disfigure her. He tried not to meet her one remaining eye, and did not heed her agonized scream as he passed.

Doppler bent her pathetic wails as Alistair rounded the corner of Sixth and Maple. He sighed, only vaguely aware of the sweat trickling like moist spiders from his hairy armpits.

And then he halted, stunned by the tableau of total devastation that was laid out before him.

The road had become a crater. Thick billowing smoke shielded him from the worst of the carnage: The bumpers and crumpled hoods of cars stuck up from the hole at odd angles like frozen shark fins, trailing thick black tendrils of oily smoke. Alistair saw a handful of panicked motorists who had somehow survived being abruptly dropped into the chasm in the earth. They now clambered atop their vehicles like shipwrecked sailors and waved their arms at the uncaring sky.

The pungent smell of gasoline stung his nose.

Overhead, the suspended traffic lights blinked green, but no one heeded their consent.

From where he stood, he could see where the pavement had collapsed into the gaping hole, leaving sharp, gray edges of broken stone behind in rows of jagged teeth. And then they moved.

It’s chewing

, Alistair thought, absurdly. He was struck then by an impossible sight which registered in the periphery of his vision.

Through the thickening plumes of foul-smelling smoke, as rubber melted and fire spread, he saw that the buildings comprising the unspectacular skyline were shifting. The swaying of these concrete and steel behemoths seemed almost choreographed. As Alistair watched, one of them took a bow and was abruptly obscured by a blossom of fire within the widening crater.

A hoarse cry ripped through the smoke, followed by a shrieking, blistered man wearing a coat of raging fire.

Alistair stepped back and tried to run, but he was not quick enough.

The burning man embraced him, as if afraid to face his fate alone.

««—»»

Catherine Banks whispered feverish prayers. Her husband drew her close against his chest. They were huddled in the basement, cold and afraid, with the groaning earth above them. Somewhere up there, little Perry was barking and whining. They could only imagine what the poor mutt was feeling.

“I should go get him,” Jack said, but all courage drained from his voice and fear left his teeth clicking in time with the tremors. “He shouldn’t be up there. Not alone.”

They had left the basement door open but Perry hadn’t followed. The dog had followed his instincts, barking and snarling in a reckless attempt to dissuade the threat that had engulfed them.

The chest freezer at their backs shuddered and died, the naked light bulb over their heads dancing between the oaken joists before it too, dimmed. They watched in fearful silence until it hummed and returned, re-washing the stone walls with warmth and shadow.

“It’s not safe. Try calling him again,” Catherine said. In truth, she was angry at her own selfishness. She didn’t want Jack to go up there, to leave her where all she would hear would be her own heartbeat and the distant cries of her neighbors. She loved Perry, considered him part of the family, but couldn’t bear the thought of being without Jack; being alone down here in the gloom.

Jack drew in a shaky breath and yelled for the dog. The barking stopped. Was he dead? Then they heard the scrabble of claws and a low whine. Then the barking recommenced, louder and more agitated than before. Jack cringed. “He’s always been terrified of the basement. We’ll have to drag him down here or he’ll get hurt.”

He made to move but Catherine pressed closer against him. She knew Jack loved Perry much more than she did but, for God’s sake, going back upstairs when the kitchen ceiling had suddenly, without warning, decided to come crashing down? It was sheer madness.

“You can’t leave me here,” she told him. Her hands, of their own accord, grabbed handfuls of his shirt. “Perry will be okay.”

Jack cleared his throat and ran a grimy hand through her hair. “No he won’t. He may be cute but he’s also dumb as a sack of hammers. I have to get him before something happens to him.”

Catherine held him where he was. “What about me?”

He gave her a weak smile. Stark terror and streaks of dirt added twenty years to his face. “It will only take a second.”

“Jack, please.”

A crackling noise, as if someone were walking on unstable ice. They froze. Listened.

Jack instinctively ducked his head, even though huddled beneath the archway beside the old boiler they were as low as they could get. The sound came again, and crouched within it was something like a low, coughing laugh. Catherine moaned.

“What is that?”

The sound seemed to surround them. The walls shook. The crunching and crackling rose in pitch and then faded, replaced by a hollow clunk and then silence. In a matter of seconds it was over.

“Jack?”

“I think the foundation is giving way.”

“Oh Jesus. What are we going to do?”

He swallowed and she heard the resulting click. “Well, we can’t stay here that’s for damned sure.”

“But this is supposed to be the safest place, isn’t it?”

“Not if the whole house is going to come crashing down on top of us. We have to get out before it buries us alive.”

“I’m scared, Jack.”

He rose to a stoop and guided her up with a hand on her elbow. “So am I, but I think coming down here was a big mistake. In fact I think we did exactly the opposite of what they tell you to do in situations like this. We need to get out of the house.”

“But what’s happening? Is it an earthquake?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been in one before. Sure feels like it.”

He stepped forward, their hands joined until Catherine pulled him back. “What is it?” he asked. The fear made the whites of his eyes seem almost luminous.

“Tell me we’re going to be all right, Jack. I need to hear you say it. Please.”

Jack nodded. “We’re…” He stopped, turned his head toward the old wooden stairwell. Catherine tugged on his hand, frightened. “What? What is it?”

“Perry. He’s stopped barking.”

Together they listened for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, Jack yelled for the dog. Silence.

“C’mon,” he said. The worry was evident in his tone.

Jack let go of her hand and batted away a veil of cobwebs that had draped itself over his face. Catherine looked around at the trembling walls.

Please, God, don’t let us die down here.

Jack moved slowly toward the stairs, eyes darting to trace the origin of the slightest sounds. The light flickered. Catherine felt gooseflesh tap dance across her cold skin.

“Hold my hand,” she whispered. Jack felt blindly for her and then a loud, resounding crack made them both cry out. The room shifted. Jack gasped and grunted as the stone surface upon which he stood separated, buckled and split.

“Oh Jesus,” he moaned. Planting a firm hand in the center of her chest, he pushed Catherine away. Another crack and then Jack dropped a notch. His arms and hands were now stretched out on both sides, as if he were walking a tightrope. “Shit Cathy, the floor’s giving way.”

Catherine began to weep. She jammed her knuckles into her mouth. She stepped forward and then back and then forward again, uncertain what to do but dreading the thought of watching him fall to his death before her eyes. “Oh God, Jack, what can I do?”

“N-nothing. Stay where you are. I’m going to try to make a jump for the steps.”

The seven wooden steps leading to the basement door were only a few feet away, yet circumstance made it seem an incredible distance.

Jack stood stock still, not breathing. He was little more than a silhouette framed by the lazy amber light drifting down to them from the bathroom beside the basement door. The floor had become a pane of ice, liable to break at the slightest move. Catherine’s eyes were fixed on Jack’s feet, willing them to float above the danger.

“Please be careful.”

She thought he might have nodded but couldn’t be sure.

“I’m going to go on the count of…”

The floor cracked again and this time a sliver of stone shot into the air and spanged! against the steaming boiler. Catherine ducked and wrapped her arms around her head. Jack yelped and tried to keep his balance.

“Oh shit…oh shit!”

“What can I do?” Catherine wailed; she was still dancing over and back, indecision tormenting her soul. “Please Jack, I have to do something.”

“No!” he yelled back. “Just stay there. If I can make the stairs, you’ll be able to jump across and I can help you from there. But for now, just stay still.”

The room seemed to draw away from her; the doorway and the trembling outline of her husband pulling back. Now it was nothing more than a scene from some terrible dream. Catherine heard a cry in the distance. No, not a cry. Sirens! Police?

A spark of hope ignited in her chest. She began to whisper another prayer, hoping it would be heard and that they would live through this madness.

Jack edged toward the stairs. Another crack. Another step.

“Oh, no.” A long breath.

And the floor caved in beneath him.

A startled cry, his body falling, here and then gone. Catherine rushing forward screaming, her caution forgotten. The floor rattled and jerked away from her. She slipped, wailing. The angry ground rose to collide with her face, shattering her nose and scissoring open her lips. Looking up from where she lay, she whimpered, confused, numb to the pain; tasting blood and dust. She saw her husband’s face, and time slowed with malicious glee.

She watched a pit of deeper darkness yawn wide beneath him; saw Jack reaching to grab onto the sides of the hole but slipping, slipping, then salvation wrenched away from him. She saw his eyes widen, mouth moving, struggling to form a scream as the edge of the hole leapt upward to meet him, his face twisted into that horrifying awareness that accompanies impending death after horrible agony; and then the ragged edge, joining flesh in a fixed battle for dominance. The bricks and stone shearing away the skin of his handsome face, her loving husband’s beautiful face, grinding through bone and shattering the very map upon which his beauty was drawn.

And finally the flutter of his hair as he sank below the edge, leaving a crimson signature on the concrete behind. A sobbing gurgle and nothing more. The ensuing silence was ephemeral; it lasted only long enough for realization to dawn on the bloodied, shocked woman lying on the floor, her fingertips inches away from the hole, that she was next.

The quiet—mere seconds—hurt her already pounding head. She deigned to break it with a scream of anguish that echoed off the still-quivering walls. They breathed a chuckle of dust in response.

“Why? Why is this happening?” she cried, weakening. She dropped into shock, her blood turning to smeared paste in the dirt.

The city answered in the only way it knew how.

Upstairs beneath the kitchen sink, Perry cowered and shook, deafened by the screams of an outraged deity.

The house swallowed itself.

««—»»

“Walt, are you seeing this?”

Inside the police cruiser, forced into stopping with the front wheels mounted on the curb, the real wheels garroted by broken glass, Brad Haines stared out the windscreen at the miasma Lake View Estates had become.

Beside him, his partner, Walt Greenwood, nodded silently. “I am, but I’m hoping any minute now you’re going to tell me I’m asleep.”

Lake View Estates: Stanchion of the wealthy, complete with private pool, was now nothing more than a mass of rubble and bodies. The two policemen had been forced to sit stunned as a buttress the size of an Oldsmobile toppled and crushed to death Senator Mayfield and his wife and daughter. What little water remained in the swimming pool was now crimson and host to innumerable floating corpses. The half-mile long semi-circle of three- and four-story houses now looked like a war zone, blood and smoke drifting into the breeze to summon flies.

The palaces of the rich were tumbling.

“What do we do?” Haines asked. His face was pale, mouth agape. His gaze was still glued to the apocalyptic scene beyond the windshield.

Greenwood had to struggle to keep his voice calm. “It doesn’t look like there’s much we can do, but getting our asses out of here sounds like a reasonable course of action at this point, wouldn’t you say?”

He moved his hand to the door handle but Haines stopped him. “Wait, what in God’s name is that?”

Haines was pointing up at the sky, over to their left where the horizon was reddened by fire and seething. Greenwood looked and his eyes went wide. The blood drained from his face, leaving nothing but the broken capillaries visible on his drinker’s nose.

“What the hell?” he gasped. “Is that a fucking octopus or something?”

Off in the distance, above the fires and toppled citadels of Delaware, enormous white tendrils reached far into the sky; writhing and snapping, forcing the smoke to shift to accommodate their very real presence. Chunks of stone and glass tumbled from one as it erupted to ricochet away as another appeared; each rose up as if greedily sniffing the filthy air.

Greenwood’s panicked mind managed to register that there were eight of them but then his partner’s fumbling hand on his shoulder, beckoning him to look in the opposite direction, immediately proved him wrong.

From the ruins of Lake View, three more of the creatures sprouted, sending debris flying in all directions, rising into the air and twitching…

“Oh my God, Walt. What are those things?”

Of course Greenwood had no idea, either. He doubted any sane person on the planet did. Up close, the things looked like oddly slimy, bleached redwoods without limbs; they were swaying liquidly to and fro, like something from a snake charmer’s darkest nightmare.

“Jesus, Walt. We have to get out of here.”

After a quick look in the rearview mirror confirmed his worst fears, Greenwood sighed and barked a nervous laugh. “Sure, but to where? The damn things are popping up all over the place. Where can we go?”

Eyes brimming with panic, Haines spun around and looked out the back window of the cruiser. More monstrously tall shadows were swaying at the end of the street.

“Oh, fuck me.”

“Somebody damned sure has.”

Greenwood stared at the shattered street in front of them and unclipped his holster. Haines’ frenetic flinching ceased for a moment as he watched his partner withdraw his gun.

“What are you doing?”

Greenwood shook his head, eyes watery, and nodded at Haines. “There’s no way out, buddy.”

As if on cue, the hollow in the road ahead of them, the road that had once led to a beautiful row of houses coughed smoke. The tip of something red-gray and slimy began to wriggle free of the debris. The ground rumbled, the police car squeaked and groaned. Greenwood shoved the barrel of the gun into his mouth.

“Oh Jesus, WALT!”

The bang deafened Haines. He already knew before he looked it was too late for his partner. The steady, dripping wetness on the side of his face told him. The car filled with the smell of copper, cordite and human waste.

Haines kicked open the door. He fell to his knees on the sidewalk. Warm vomit burst from his mouth. “Aw shit, Walt…” he began to cry but knew there was no time to grieve. A tremor pulsed through the ground. It knocked him over. He rolled onto his back, tears streaming from his eyes. Night had fallen without warning, the dim light stolen by an impossibly tall shadow looming over the squad car.

“You can have the fucking city then,” Haines mumbled. He spat bile and reached for his own gun.

««—»»

The weathered man named Kane grinned, but without mirth. Caressing his chin with a hairy forefinger, he raised an eyebrow at the sound of the gunshot down the street. She’s stripping them.

The room he and Isaac occupied was calm, steady and completely untouched by the chaos.

Across from the old man, on the other side of one of the small round tables taken from the stack propped up on the bar, Isaac was concentrating on a scarred pattern he’d engraved on the wood.

The bar was deserted, but for them and the dulcet tones of Frank Sinatra pouring softly from the radio behind the counter. Set ’em up and let’s drink to our friends…

“She’s just a baby,” Kane said. He shook his white head in amazement. Isaac picked up his pocketknife and, sweeping aside a bundle of wood shavings, carved a circle in the center of the intricate pattern. He dug the point of the knife into the shape and twisted it until a respectable hole was made before he answered.

“Yes. She’s one of the youngest. This city is an infant. That makes it much easier to get them to listen. The book says that the older ones will often prove more difficult.”

Kane nodded. “How soon?”

“By sundown she’ll be ready to break free of her moorings.”

“What about the survivors? The ones she doesn’t eat, I mean?”

Isaac gave him a wry smile. He nodded at the small holes in the center of the carving. “The Magroth Points inspire suicidal ideation. We don’t like to use that particular spell, but the damned survivors just migrate to other cities, other children, and infest them like ticks. So that just means more work next time around. And as for me, I’m getting too old for such concerns.”

Kane returned his smile. “Then it’s my turn.”

“Indeed,” Isaac said. “I think you’ve watched long enough. If you remember how long they’ve slept, and treat them like the cranky children they are, you’ll be fine. They were bred to guard this spinning rock until the Old Gods saw fit to return. Our responsibility is to guide them, to ensure the children don’t forget their place in the scheme of things.”

Kane nodded. He looked at the garish orange and red light flooding through the mullioned window of the bar. “Seems like an awful waste of life though. You’d imagine there’d be some use for the humans. I mean, considering the sheer number of them.”

When Isaac looked up, his eyes had reverted to their natural opaque luster, broken only by a vertical black slit in the middle. He glowered with impatience. Something harsh and inhuman infected Isaac’s voice and Kane trembled. “It’s thoughts like those that keep you in the position you hold now, Kane. There is no room for such specious considerations when dealing with something of such…immensity. The guise you hold now is that of a human. Imagine being confined to it, stripped of your power and a myriad of extra senses. Does such a primitive existence strike you as being of much use for anything?”

Kane shook his head. “No, of course not. Forgive me.”

Isaac returned to the engraving in the wood. He drew a crude ‘S’ shape in the center of the table and flicked the knife closed. Returning it to his inside pocket, he sighed. “Relax. You’ll understand eventually. There is no higher education than the one offered by the gods.” He took a moment to brush the shavings from his trouser legs then stood. “Come. The last of the restraints lies right beneath us. My human voice would seem far too loud and callous, now. I must speak her language if she is to hear me at all. Let us go outside and take in the majesty of her release.”

He held out what passed for a hand. Kane took it and they shared a smile as they walked outside and into the hot, suffering rubble.

««—»»

It is awake at last.

Its joints are young and underused. For too long it has served as a slave to humanity, crouched into submission while mankind treads a path of disrespect across its holy, asphalt flesh. The release takes longer this time, because the strength has been siphoned from its body; those human tunnels are like gaping wounds; buildings, statues and monuments are needles jabbed into its body.

The path to freedom brings agony, but this kind of pain is sweet. The sensation of their crude structures sliding from its back is blissful as it gathers its first breath, sucks the wind into its mud-choked lungs…and roars.

What is left of humanity is deafened by her bellowing birth. She raises her head to the sky, sees familiar faces. Her parents, brothers and sisters…smiling. And of course, Father of them all.

The Old Gods are pleased, for she is but the first.

_______________

“Birth and death are so closely related that one could not destroy either without destroying the other at the same time. It is extinction that makes creation possible.”

—Samuel Butler

Blacktop

This miserable world and Father Time have conspired to make me an old man who rocks all day in the shadow of the reaper. Most people talk down to me like I don’t know spit, but there’s a meat packing plant east of the home I’m in, and when the wind comes in off the plains it smells of dead things.

That’s what made me remember.

Sit down. The cancer is going to take me shortly, so I have a need to speak of this. It all happened one summer in the high desert, when the black two-lane highway was like a pool of melting tar. First, you got to picture this: A wicked white sunshine that is so blistering hot it smacks the parched earth like a fist; there ain’t a sound but the breathing of your horse and the demented buzzing of thirsty insects. Northern Nevada in 1942 was a quiet corner of the world where animals still did a lot of the hard labor, and thin, weathered old men could be seen around town wearing guns. FDR was President, that racial stuff hadn’t even got started down south, and most of the other boys were off fighting the second big war. Me, I was a little too young and, anyway, my left eye doesn’t work so well.

You can call me Zeke, but my given name is Ezekiel Collins. I was a skinny sixteen-year-old kid that year; working on my Grandpa’s cattle ranch, maybe twenty miles south of Dry Wells. It had been bleached  bone-dry and scorching hot all danged summer and that August day it was the worst I’d ever seen. It plumb squeezed the sweat out of a man, left you with an empty canteen and a mouth full of ashes. If you were smart, you carried a pinch of salt to avoid passing out and getting nasty headaches. I got headaches a lot, in part because of that bad eye.

My grandpa was in Ely on business that day. I was helping Injun Tom take twenty-odd head across the highway and up into the shade of some cherry trees at the foot of the mountains. A lot of this is a blur now, but as I recall it, Tom generally wore blue jeans with a vintage Colt tucked in the belt, boots stained with tobacco juice, a patched brown work shirt and a black cowboy hat with one forlorn eagle feather sticking up from the band. That feather had some kind of Indian meaning, but Tom would never say what. He had dark brown skin, some Negro in him for sure; white hair and crow’s feet deep as scarred claw marks. He was on Blackie, a talented gelding with a broad chest and a sorry attitude. I was riding little Blaze, my favorite palomino mare.

“Tom?”

He grunted, deep in his throat. Tom had a spooky way of talking without talking. I just went ahead and asked him anyway. “What’s your most favorite car?”

He considered. “Maybe that cherry red Ford from ‘39.”

“Why?”

“I got my reasons.”

“Because of how it drives?”

“Because of its soul.”

I turned sideways, which made the saddle squeak a bit. “Your people think cars have a soul?”

“Boy, around here the damned ground has a soul.”

“I don’t understand.”

Tom scowled and spat. He spoke with an edge, but not without kindness. “You gonna work, or jaw all day?”

“Sorry.”

“Anybody coming?” Injun Tom’s voice was also sandpaper hoarse, but in an oddly pleasant way. When he laughed, he sounded like Santa.

“Hang on.” I edged my mare forward.

I loved Grandpa Ben, but he was family and prone to using the back of his hand for discipline so I avoided him. Injun Tom was more of a mentor and, truth be told, he was one interesting hombre. He’d come to mean a lot to me. Tom had been born in the slums outside of Dry Wells God knows how many years before. His family had worked for my Grandpa for nearly fifty years, all told; bailing hay in the spring and both herding and slaughtering the cattle when the time came. When there was no work, they moved on. Tom, like them, would come and go with the seasons, as if in accordance with the workings of some inner mechanism. Because he’d never married he was the last of his line.

When working for Grandpa, Tom slept in the bunkhouse, which had an old wooden shit-shack out behind it, and bathed in the freezing cold water of the stream. No electricity or new-fangled radio programs for Tom. He hardly ever went to the picture show on Friday night. He was pretty set in his tribal ways. Some nights we could hear him chanting what sounded like death songs; he’d be sitting by a small fire, down by that bunkhouse, all alone. You’d know when he was gone again by the silence after dark.

He’d lived a hard life, but to the best of my recollection, he never once complained.

Now, Tom had no family left and didn’t seem to have a pot to piss in, but he had an amazing collection of used cars. He must have had thirty of them, every shape and size. My Grandpa let him park them out by the stinky animal graveyard, a bit north, on a hill just above the alfalfa field. Tom tinkered with them whenever he had the spare time.

He seemed to keep those cars running smooth as crap through a goose, but for some reason he never drove them anywhere.

Sometimes late in the afternoon, when the sunset hit them just right, the multi-colored vehicles seemed like a battlefield strewn with the dead and dented bodies of lost medieval knights.

Anyway, on this particular day, I was woozy from thirst, the heat and the glare of the midday sun. We’d already brought the cattle up to the long, bowed wooden gate. Tom stayed mounted, clicking softly. Meanwhile, Blackie instinctively kept the small herd in line as I slid to the ground, opened the huge gate and latched it back. I was a slim kid back then, with a full head of red hair; all in denim, wearing a white straw hat and a red bandana. I was constantly sunburned and peeling. Everybody called me Pinky.

That’s how I got the skin cancer that’s punching my ticket, actually. We didn’t know about such things back then. Anyway, I wiped my face on my sleeve, shaded my eyes and peered down the highway, into the omnipresent, shimmering mirage.

“Well?”

I squinted. “Hang on a second, Tom. I can’t see much of anything.”

“Herd’s gettin’ frisky,” Tom said. He sat up in the saddle, stretched and broke wind. “Gonna cross on their own soon, we don’t get started.”

My job was to spot any oncoming traffic and decide if it was smart to have the cattle plod across the highway. Cows are pretty damned stupid, and they tend to take their time doing something. We didn’t want to lose any cattle—or any drivers, either. Problem was, some folks went a little nutty in the middle of the wide, lonesome nowhere; a lot of tourists started speeding like demons, trying to make some sort of town before sunset. It didn’t help that the speed limit signs in this part of the state just said “be safe and reasonable.” If some dumb son of a bitch struck a prize Hereford going ninety miles an hour, well there’d be one hell of a lot of spare parts and raw hamburger on the blacktop.

“Yeah, somebody coming, Tom,” I hollered. Just the effort of shouting made my head hurt again. I’d already passed out once and I needed some more salt. My eyes were blurry, but I’d seen a small, shiny speck of something metal, gleaming at the end of the highway. It emerged from the mirage like an insect, and seemed to gather speed. My ears caught the vague whine of a straining engine. “I’d say he’s pushing that car pretty hard.”

“Then he don’t deserve it,” Tom said.

“Why?”

“Car’s got magic, boy. They’re special. Any asshole would whip a horse to death don’t deserve to own it, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Same goes for good cars.”

I peered down the road. “Well, then he’s an asshole for sure.”

“Slow him down.”

I waved. “I’m trying.”

“Aw, hell.”

I turned my head and felt dizzy again. One of the calves had stepped out onto the molten hot roadway. Her momma followed, and a few other heads just assumed it was time to go. Blackie tried to nose the little heifer back where she belonged, but the damage had been done. The cattle started milling around and within moments were partially blocking the road.

“Stop that dumb bastard, boy,” Injun Tom called. Then, to the cattle: “Yaw! Get back there, girl. Come on, move.” He made a piercing whistle with his tongue and teeth and kicked at the lead cow.

My stomach rolled, and I bent over to puke but nothing came up. I drank the last of my water and walked my horse maybe twenty yards down the highway; sat up in the saddle and commenced to waving my hat in the air. I felt so dizzy from dehydration and sunburn I almost passed out again. I shaded my eyes. The driver didn’t seem to see us.

“Tom, he ain’t slowing down!”

“He’d damned well better.”

I waved again. The car, which I could now see was a dark 1940 Ford with silver trim and big tits for headlights, came on straight as a bullet. Behind me, I could hear Injun Tom struggling to get the cattle across the road and out of the way.

I waved with both arms. Finally, the driver saw me in the roadway and hit the brakes. The screech was sudden and sharp; high-pitched as a woman giving birth. The ass-end of the Ford swerved from side to side, and behind it were twin black lines of burning rubber. It finally came to a complete stop maybe ten to twelve feet from my spooked horse. I could see him behind the windshield, red-faced and bug-eyed. He rolled the window down.

“Hey, kid! Get those walking steaks the fuck out of my way.”

I licked my parched lips. “Won’t be long, sir.” I wasn’t even certain I’d spoken the words aloud. I wobbled in the saddle and rubbed my dry eyes.

He cocked his porcine head. “You want I should drive right through you?”

That hit me wrong, but my natural tendency to defer to authority won out. “Like I said, we’ll only be a couple of minutes, mister. Cows took off on us.”

Pissed, the driver got out of the car and stepped out onto the blacktop. Now, I was a teenaged kid and this was a large, hulking man with a badly broken nose. His voice had an odd quality to it; a nasal snap. I didn’t know it at the time, but the rumpled suit, shoulder holster and bad attitude screamed of the powerful Italian mob that ten years hence would be running casinos all over the state. He tried to walk, but his leg didn’t work. He cursed softly and looked down.

One of his fancy dress shoes was sticking to a pool of melting tar.

“God fucking damn it!”

“Best wait in your car,” Injun Tom said, softly. “Must be maybe 105, 110 degrees out here, so the blacktop, it gets real sticky.”

The driver leaned against his car. An acidic smile writhed across his face. “I wasn’t talking to you, nigger.”

“My apologies.”

“Accepted.” The man snarled at me. “I said move those fucking cows. Now!”

I swallowed dust. I was weaving like a cobra in the saddle and my mouth tasted foul. “Like I said, we’re working on it.”

“You want I should shoot one?”

“No, sir.”

“You want I should shoot you?”

The air chilled, despite the weather. My stomach felt tight. I had a rifle with me, but knew I’d never get to it in time. I looked back over my shoulder; Old Injun Tom clicked his tongue and kept on moving the cattle, but his right hand drifted south and came to rest at the tip of his holstered 45.

“Hey,” the mobster called, “I changed my mind about that apology. Look at me when I’m talking to you, Tonto. Or are you a nigger?”

I pulled back slightly in the reins and eased the mare away from the Ford. The driver pointed a finger at me. He was shaking with rage. “Kid, stay right where you are.” He looked around, as if to make absolutely certain that he was in the middle of nowhere with no witnesses.

And then he pulled his gun.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a weapon that looked as big. It was like my mind did a motion picture close-up of that Colt. I edged my right hand around, but knew I was good as dead if I went for the carbine tied across the back of my saddle. I leaned forward, my vision going in and out of focus. Time just slid sideways and came to a halt. I was vaguely aware of the mare passing gas and dropping some road apples. I risked a peek back at Tom.

“The boy is sick,” Tom said.

The stranger seethed. “Who gives a shit? Now, get down from there.”

Injun Tom smiled. He kept his hands in plain sight. He spoke gently, firmly. “You’ve had yourself a pretty bad couple of days, haven’t you, mister.” It was not a question. “You lost your job or your woman, or maybe it was both. And now you want to take that out on somebody else.”

“Shut up,” the driver snarled. His voice blended with steam escaping from the strained radiator. His already wide, bloodshot eyes expanded a bit further. He didn’t like feeling naked, or maybe just so obvious.

“That your car?” When the mobster didn’t answer, Tom lightly kicked Blackie and moved a few feet closer, on my left side. His intentions were clear. He was trying to screen me off from the gun. “She’s beautiful.”

The mobster tracked him with the gun. “It’s a car.”

“No, sir, because you see, a man’s car, it’s sacred. Kind of like his horse used to be, back in the old days.”

“The fuck you talking about?”

“You’re not busted, son,” Tom said, soothingly. “You still have the most important thing in the world.”

“A car?” The driver’s eyebrows mated in puzzlement.

“It’s your steed and your prize possession,” Tom said. “And anything that carries a man through the desert deserves food, water and above all a little respect. You shouldn’t push her so hard.”

Blackie twitched his tail, and the mobster cocked his gun. “You know something?”

“No, sir. What?”

“I don’t really like niggers, or red Indians, either.” He looked at me and grinned nervously, like a possum eating red ants. “I also don’t like kids. So I’m gonna do the both of you. Now get down off those horses.”

Injun Tom nodded my way. I dismounted, but put the mare’s body in between me and this homicidal maniac. That allowed my right hand to slide to the butt of my rifle. I was almost too dizzy to stand, and sounds seemed far away. My heart was thumping in an irregular pattern and my stomach tightened into a knot. I wondered if I would have the time, or the balls, to try a sideways shot from such a bad angle and in such poor condition. I knew I’d have maybe one chance. If I blew it, Tom was likely dead.

But then, we seemed likely dead anyway.

The stranger seemed calm and in his element. He tracked us both well. “Come out from behind that horse, kid. Keep your hands in sight. Red man, you come down from there next.”

“Can’t do that, mister,” Tom said, quietly.

The stranger glared, narrowed his eyes. He raised the gun. “Then I’ll shoot you both dead from right here.”

“You don’t really want to do that,” Tom said. But Tom’s voice didn’t seem normal anymore. It felt like I was underwater in a hot spring or something.

The killer chuckled. His eyes narrowed. “Go fuck yourself.”

The man was going to fire. I swear to God. In fact, I’d about say he did, in that there was a spark of light and a puff of smoke, but something stayed his hand, or maybe replayed what happened and made it turn out some other way. I was damned sick from sunstroke, but that’s what I saw and heard. I don’t know what it was Injun Tom said next. The words were strange and so was the cadence, but it all sounded vaguely like the stuff we’d hear him chanting late at night, down by the bunk house. I sank to my knees and fell down sideways in the road. I may have passed out for a second. Someone was shrieking. I came to again.

The gun just…melted. The mobster screamed and dropped what had now become a mass of molten metal. It fell down onto that sticky, festering blacktop and vanished into it. I blinked rapidly, my eyes flickered up and down, trying to make sense of what I was seeing: The driver, staring in horror at his blistered fingers, the gun sinking down into what had now become a molten pocket of hot, black lava; then the mobster babbling again because down there by his ankles was…more blacktop.

He had no feet; they’d both dissolved.

I gagged and shook my head. My temples pounded and the world rolled like liquid. The mobster grabbed at his scorched flesh. His screams grew more frantic as he tried to extricate himself. The horses whinnied in terror and Injun Tom and I let them back away. I closed my eyes, knew I was hallucinating. I opened them again.

Now the man was in the bubbling blacktop up to his knees. I could smell roasting flesh and saw a glimpse or two of exposed bone. I looked at Injun Tom, but he sat impassively on the horse, watching the nightmare rapidly unfold. The Ford still sat firmly on the empty highway, somehow impervious to what was happening, perhaps because it was not cursed, nor flesh and blood. The driver grabbed for the door, hoping to pull himself back into the car. His legs sheared off at the thigh, leaving two raw stumps that were instantly cauterized.

More shrieking followed. I vomited bile near the mare’s right foot and passed out. I couldn’t keep my head up anymore. When things came back into focus, it looked like the man was into the molten black lava up to his chest. I heard an obscene, greedy slurp. The tar was sucking him down. He was pleading with his eyes and trying to use singed vocal chords that no longer had lungs to support them. The blacktop took one last gulp and he went under.

“Tom?”

“Hush,” Injun Tom said. “It’s not over.”

And a split second later the face emerged as the big man made one final attempt to escape. The flesh was pink and blistered and the eyeballs had been poached to a ghastly, empty white. One more hideous sucking sound…and then he was gone.

I passed out again, this time for what might have been minutes. When I woke up, Injun Tom was kneeling next to me in the shade of the mare. He raised his canteen. He drank deeply, handed it to me. “Easy, boy. Wash your mouth out and spit, then drink some.”

I did. “Tom, what the hell was that?”

He cocked his head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what the living hell just happened?”

He chuckled. “You passed out, that’s what happened.”

I tried to sit up, failed. “What ate that man, Tom?”

“What man? Take it easy, kid. You got yourself a bad case of sunstroke. You’re seeing things, that’s all.” Tom took his canteen back. “Can you handle the herd for a bit by your lonesome?”

“Uh, I guess.”

“Take Blackie, too. Lead them up there into the grass and let them all feed for a bit. I’ll catch up with you shortly.”

“But…”

He shot me a look that told me to shut up, just do what I was told. I grabbed Blackie’s reins and kneed my mare across the steaming hot highway, up onto dry land, without turning around. The horse followed without resistance, and so did the cattle. When we got to the edge of the grass below the grove of cherry trees, near the creek, I finally looked back. There was Injun Tom come walking back across that highway like he owned it. I sat in the shade and drank my fill. I had me a pinch of salt and the headache passed. Everything came into focus, and I began to figure I’d gone loco for a bit. Tom finally caught up to me. He buried his face in the cool, clear water. He murmured sweetly to Blackie and mounted up.

“Tom, did I…”

“What?”

“Did I just imagine all that about some man who pulled a gun on us and about how the highway…swallowed him up, somehow?”

He grinned. “I reckon you did. You feeling okay, now? Up to doing some work for a change?”

“I’m fine, Tom. Please, tell me what just happened.”

Tom shook with laughter. Then he looked at me with an odd mixture of pity and determination. “Nothing happened, boy. It was just the heat. You didn’t see anything, we never met anybody. Your mind made it up.”

“It seemed so real…”

“I’m sure it did. Now pull yourself together. Let me hear you say it.”

“It never happened. It was the heat.”

“Damn straight.” He didn’t offer up another word all day. We worked our asses off, got the herd into a wide corral and locked the gate, then ate some jerky and rode back down the mountain. We crossed the hot highway, and I half expected to see a dark Ford with silver trim, but there wasn’t a car in sight for miles in any direction. I knew I’d just gotten loopy from the heat, but to be honest I couldn’t help but watch the horse’s hooves anyhow every step of the way.

Grandpa got home after sundown. I’d cleaned up some but didn’t eat much supper. He commented on how poorly I was looking, and I told him I’d been sunstroked again during the drive. He chewed me out because I was all red and losing so much skin and then went off to bed.

That never happened, it was the heat.

Eventually, I opened the back door and stepped out onto the wooden porch. I could hear crickets sawing symphonies and some grasshoppers clicking down by the dried up streambed. Now, normally I loved the desert at night, but this time the sky was squid ink and the smattering of stars seemed swollen with pus.

I looked down the path that led to the bunkhouse, a million questions crowding my adolescent mind. Sparks flew high into the air like fireflies, and the faint sound of chanting stroked my ears.

That never happened. We never saw him. It was the heat, boy.

After a time, I went back inside and tried to rest. Sure enough, a good night’s sleep made the whole thing just a bad dream. The very next day, Grandpa set Injun Tom to bailing hay and me to gathering eggs, slopping the hogs and all the regular chores. I sat there milking the cows, my stomach still flipping around like a fish on the dock, and came to believe I’d imagined the whole thing. Heat does funny things to the mind.

Summer passed, and the season came to a close. It was time for me to go back down to Reno, where my no-account Daddy lived. I went looking for Tom to say good-bye, but he was nowhere to be found.

“Don’t worry on that,” Grandpa said. “He comes and goes when he feels like it. He’ll be here next year.”

But there never was a next year.

My Grandpa had a stroke that winter while trying to shovel snow. The county and the state came down hard on the family over back taxes, so they sold the ranch to the highest bidder. By spring, the land had been parceled off for smaller spreads and one of the largest cattle ranches in the state was gone.

I returned once, when I was in my mid-twenties. I was headed for Korea, and wanted to see what was left before shipping out. It was fall, and the climate was more hospitable.

It was hard to get there. I took a bus down from Salt Lake City, crossed the state line at Wendover, and hiked down into Dry Wells. I talked an old man with a battered truck into taking me down into Starr Valley. We arrived by the old place in a cloud of dust, and he waited for me, humming Hank Williams songs on the radio. I walked up the dirt road to what had been my Grandpa’s ranch.

Picture me there in my dress blues, white hat under my arm, a grown man. I walk down the trail. Grandpa’s house is still there. I don’t bother the family that lives in it. I find the old bunk house, and it’s all fallen in now; roof beams scorched from some long-ago fire. All along I’m hearing, it never happened.

The outhouse has completely collapsed. I pass it by, step around the fire pit Tom used to use. I kneel by the streambed, thinking of Tom and wondering whatever happened to him; wondering again about that hot summer day when I thought he’d saved my life. I raise my eyes up, and I’ll be damned if that automobile graveyard ain’t still there. I would have thought it would have been sold for parts by now. Maybe nobody has figured out yet who owned rights to the damned thing. I stretch and walk up the hill, my nostrils filled with the stench of buried animals. I stop in my tracks and a shudder runs through me.

For right down in front is that dark, dusty 1940 Ford with the silver trim.

Some Are Born To Endless Night

Sometimes at night, Carter heard voices. The old motel mumbled and groaned on its own, floorboards creaking and crusted pipes squeaking. But these sounds were different somehow. Not ambient noise at all, once you paid attention. That’s how Carter knew that, despite his exclusive lease, there were other people on the premises. They whispered a lot, tried and failed to disguise their presence. The occasional laugh gave them away. He’d paid three thousand dollars cash to have the place to himself, and it flat fucking pissed him off to be taken for a fool.

The bank had taken over the motel via a foreclosure proceeding, back in 2009 when the bottom had fallen out of Arizona real estate. Bad business, lots of folks out of work, dead lawns spray painted a vibrant green, half-empty swimming pools turning black with algae, giving birth to swarms of possibly dangerous mosquitoes. The Canyon Motel was just one of many casualties of the time. It squatted sullenly on a dead-end road at the edge of a town called Clearwater, one classic misnomer of a name. Eight small rooms, a parking lot and a coffee shop. Place had been out of business for four years, and it showed. Fortunately, the tiny figure-eight pool had been drained, eliminating any risk of West Nile virus.

Hell, no script was worth dying for.

Carter yawned and rubbed his eyes. He had a dozen index cards spread out on the worn, puke purple carpet, each with scene notes scribbled in pencil. For hours he’d walked in circles, sometimes changing the order, or just adding to the scope of the outline. No matter how hard he tried to focus on it, the story continued to resist. It was not that the plot was too complicated; it was distressingly simple. Without complexity, depth, the tale simply could not effectively stand up to the standard Aristotelian three-act structure. And that meant one of the twenty-something “suits” back in Hollywood was bound to notice it sagging in the middle. However, since the project was based on a true story, Carter’s hands were somewhat tied. He could combine characters, flex his muscles a bit, but had been constrained up front to “tell it as it happened.”

Something was missing. Something right smack dab in the middle. Carter knew it. The plot just wouldn’t work as currently envisioned.

Laughter. He grimaced and walked to the tattered curtains, peered out. All of the rooms were dark, no lights in the coffee shop or lobby, but he could still hear them faintly, those people. Probably playing a card game by candlelight. Or perhaps teens who broke in to smoke dope and get laid. Whoever it was, the sounds came nightly, and continued on and off until sunrise. Just enough to distract him, make it hard to work or sleep. Carter had gone outside with a flashlight numerous times, but never caught anyone on the premises. He’d avoided going in to any of the rooms, of course. They were dusty and filthy and empty save for the vibes. Almost palpable echoes of people passing through, souls come and gone for decades, fighting and fucking and snoring and dying.

He closed the drapes and went back to the cards. Once more through it all. The most recent owners of the motel, a survivalist and his family. The paranoia, the crystal methamphetamine lab, the tragic explosion that killed the man’s wife and baby. His suicide. The motel had sat empty for six months before being purchased by a young couple from Tuscon, who had run it for a few months before proclaiming it haunted. A TV show had been made, with the usual bullshit videotapes purporting to show ectoplasm and traces of supernatural events. A book on the motel had done quite well, especially when the young couple’s bodies were discovered on the premises. They had apparently left their new home in Phoenix, purchased with proceeds from their book and movie rights, driven all night to the little town where it had all taken place. They had broken in to the empty motel and hanged themselves in the so-called haunted room. Pure Hollywood gold.

The rights were sold and Carter was assigned to rush the screenplay for a B movie, all within a matter of weeks. The studio had arranged for Carter to stay on the premises, soak up the atmosphere, and bang out a first draft. Only problem was, they had a beginning and an ending, but no middle. One family, then another. But what had happened, and why? Even the book, a somewhat boring account of various eerie events, did not attempt to address that central question. And Carter did not believe in the supernatural. He wanted to write a story of psychological horror, of people who had gradually become obsessed with the history of the place, until it both became a gold mine and sealed their fate. Now that was a story worth telling. Only problem was, nothing much happened in it; nothing the camera could see.

A chill passed through the room. Carter rubbed his skin. There was a hole in the bathroom window, likely some kid with a .22 rifle fooling around. Sometimes a breeze moved in through the opening, abruptly dropping the temperature.

Carter backed up and looked at the beam for the hundredth time. Pictured the two ropes knotted, the authors’ faces dark and mottled, tongues protruding and eyes bulging. He imagined the smell of feces and urine and decaying flesh. The same breeze causing them to sway gently to and fro, perhaps with a squeaking sound similar to the one he heard the wood make when the building shifted. His stomach rolled a bit. Had he eaten dinner? Hell, lunch? Carter could not remember. He peered into the filthy mirror at his unshaven face. Damn, I’ve lost a lot of weight. Look like shit. Have to get this thing finished and e-mailed, get the hell home.

Something interesting struck him, drove Carter to an empty index card, pencil ready. He’d considered the idea before of course, hell there wasn’t one thing he hadn’t already tried and rejected, but what if the story began with the Sheriff discovering the bodies, then flashed back to the young couple buying the motel? Then slowly revealed the history, the survivalist and his family, so that the authors and the audience learned it at the same time? That could drop the first deaths right in the middle of the movie, to keep it from becoming boring…

God damn it!

That laughter again, louder than before. Carter lost his train of thought. The bank had promised total privacy, this was just outrageous. He’d already complained once, left a message on their machine. He paused. Last night? The night before? How long have I been here? Carter could not remember. It was impossible to sleep, the stress and the noises, plus the place was flat out creepy. Even to an atheist who didn’t believe in anything more supernatural than getting laid by an actress who thought the screenwriter actually had power.

Carter grunted. Annoyed, he searched for the flashlight. Found it on the bureau and went to the door. What time is it? His watch had stopped. One, two days ago. He opened his cell phone. It said 2:46 AM. Also said clear as day that there was no signal.

Strange. Carter could remember having called the bank. Or had he just thought about it? Dreamed it? He wasn’t really sure. Just tired and hungry and frazzled. And really, really pissed off by the distractions.

He went to the door, opened it and stepped outside. The night was bitter cold. Bright stars freckled the blackened sky. The moon hung like bruised flesh just above the shadowy mountains. A black ribbon of highway rolled off into nothingness, with the little town winking back from two miles away. Again, a woman laughed, and this time there was a harshness there, a sound he’d not detected previously. As if someone were doing an impression of the Wicked Witch, maybe, or telling a scary story. Goddamned kids. They probably built a fire in the lobby, could get us all killed.

Carter felt his blood rise. He was so tired, so frustrated, and now this. He walked towards the office, bare feet quietly slapping cold cement. His heart thudded heavily against his rib cage. The anger gave him a headache, pain gripped the back of his neck and squeezed. Carter sent the beam of light up and down the walkway, towards the office and lobby. No one moved and nothing was reflected. He assumed they had a lookout, someone to alert them when he came their way. Well, this time he was going to catch them and demand they leave. This time, he’d break into the lobby if necessary.

He paused, exhausted all over again. Carter suddenly could not remember exactly where he was going, nor why he’d left the motel room. He heard the mournful wail of a lone coyote somewhere up ahead in the rocks. Need to work smarter, not harder, he thought. Tired. Should lay down.

But he’d come outside for some purpose. What was it? Carter paused on the sidewalk, puzzled. Clouds crossed the moon then parted, revealing a stretch of cracked blacktop. His rental car was not where he’d left it. He turned in a full circle. The premises were deserted. No one there after all. Carter swallowed, stepped down from the sidewalk and walked out into the glowering moonlight. The small parking lot sat empty, mocking him. The rooms were all dark, as was the office window. The voices were gone.

Someone else ordered him to turn, to walk back to the motel, where only darkness waited. Slowly, the faint sound of his footsteps faded away to be replaced by silence. Something else made Carter step up onto the porch, shove the creaking, already open door. To enter the darkened room. Oddly, he was not even surprised to see the shadowy bodies, all three of them hanging there, swaying to and fro, one of them his own.

The Place of Excrement

Thomas Cutler sat motionless by the bed, holding Mother’s dry and motionless hand. The omnipresent machines did not beep so much as emit a hapless, chirping sound like a group of sightless baby birds left to starve in the nest. An overworked nurse came and went, dour in her rustling whites. The phone mocked him, refusing to ring. Outside, the afternoon sun laid siege to the tinted back window. The air was too warm and the small room fetid with sweat and the stinging scents of alcohol and floor cleanser.

Cutler looked down at her hand again, the tubing, the needle covered with tape. He studied the ropy blue veins and dirty nails. The relentless chirping continued.

I’m not sure what to do Mom, and this time you can’t tell me...

He’d been on the road selling when they’d called. Well, on the road drinking was more accurate. Going to barrooms and conventions with the usual group of mostly older men, laughing too loudly, sweating, bending arms at the bar in suits gone shiny at the elbows. Then the call. Cutler had never felt so abandoned. Oh, Mother’s ex-husband supposedly knew, Mr. Dick the Prick, but as expected hadn’t even bothered to check in. Nothing in it for him, not one red cent, they’d been divorced far too long. That left Cutler flying solo as usual, nursing another hangover and his sick mother, carrying the whole load again.

Mother had been okay lately, at least according to her neighbors, often outside in her housecoat and curlers, a bit too quick with that leer and a dirty joke. Normal, in other words. The Sunday paper hadn’t been collected, so on Monday her nemesis, the divorced bitch next door, had checked to see if Mother was dead. Peeked through the window, saw her sprawled on the kitchen floor, called 911 with an element of glee. Mother wasn’t dead, but she’d popped an aneurism the size of a grape, then somehow broken a rib or two while falling. She’d seemed a bit crazier than usual lately. What a mess. Fortunately her insurance was covering the hospital bills. Cutler had known her physician, Dr. Garris, all of his life. So that part was easy. Dr. Garris had admitted her, and a call had gone out. But now what?

That house. God, how could someone live like that? She wasn’t that old, more late middle age for Christ’s sake. Cutler had been disgusted as well as disturbed by the mess, walking slowly through the rooms, remembering his childhood. How he’d cowered in his room sometimes, listening to the bead squeaking and the men grunting, the whiskey bottles breaking. The slaps and the shouts get the fuck out of my house you cheap sonofabitch...

Somehow in her late forties Mother had become the archetypal cat lady. The house she’d inherited and owned since Cutler’s birth was now a cluttered place, filthy with animal droppings and piles of unwashed laundry and sticky dishes. At least it wasn’t the worst property on a good block. It ought to go for a decent price, even with the local economy in shambles. Somebody would want to buy it, fix it up and flip it. Cash him out.

Mother moaned. Probably the busted ribs. Her eyelids fluttered a bit and she seemed to clench his hand in her own. She was a stranger to him now, not some mythical figure from the mists of time, some creature who had damned him with her negligence. Just a helpless forty-seven year old woman, drugged up, far too deep in fevered dreams.

Cutler frowned. His eyes moistened. Mother was still pretty, and she looked so small. Helpless. After a lifetime of resentment, it was abruptly difficult not only to be angry, but even to remember why he’d been so hurt.

I’m young, but we’re all dying. I’ll be there too, soon enough,

Cutler mused. The thought of being this weak, and so alone, made his heart kick a bit. He shivered. His blood ran as cold as a mountain stream.

Mother...

In his mind she remained a giant, slapping his drunken stepfather before a dinner party, spanking Cutler with a hairbrush, red-faced and outraged to have caught him masturbating frantically in his room, as if her own sexual escapades were an entirely different matter. Down deep, Cutler knew she’d done her best, come to his plays in middle school, supported his activities. But Mother had always managed to drop something into the conversation after, something that would steal a smidgen of the credit, “he’s so talented, isn’t he? Got that from me, you know...” And so the hand that giveth, taketh away.

I’m thirty-one years old,

he thought. Am I ever going to stop whining?

“You okay in there?”

Cutler jumped a bit. His chair gave a squeak. The nurse was a stern woman with blonde hair pulled back into a high pony tail that was so tight it spread her features. She wore thick glasses over salmon eyes—too wide open, too far apart.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

The nurse wore a black name tag on her white breast, J. FLETCHER. She busied herself at his bedside for a moment, put down her small tray, read the chart, injected something into Mother’s IV line. Seemed unaware her ass end was almost in his face. Cutler had a brief erotic fantasy. His face reddened. Nurse Fletcher’s stomach gurgled. He looked down and away. Mother’s hand twitched as the new drugs hit her system.

“There you go,” Nurse Fletcher said, soothingly. Cutler assumed she’d just given something for pain. He couldn’t keep all the drugs straight. There were already so many, all for different reasons, some to preserve the integrity of her organs, some for the side effects created by all the others. The nurse left the room, the door swooshed closed behind her.

Cutler closed his eyes. He could almost envy Mother her blissful, stoned state. Wished he could get faded. At least he could be sure she wasn’t scared now, or even aware of the terrible events about to take place. When it’s your time, it’s your time, Mother used to say, puffing on her cigarettes, sipping cheap whiskey. Sanguine about death and dying, back when she’d believed herself to be a comfortable distance from eternal silence. Cutler wondered what she’d say now, if she were conscious. Would she beg him not to hasten the end? Probably. Hell, she’d ask for a smoke and a shot glass.

Dark soon. Shit. Have to decide.

He released her hand. It clawed at him as he rose. The chair squealed like a lanced pig, a sound high and shrill and obscenely loud. Cutler swallowed dryly. He backed away from Mother’s bed. Dusk was crawling across the grass outside, approaching the hospital. He did not turn his back until he reached the door to her room, then hurried out into the hall. The sudden brightness hurt his eyes. He shaded them and squinted. There was a soft drink machine.

Cutler walked briskly, worn shoes slapping the linoleum. A young Latino man pushing a food cart nearly collided with Nurse Fletcher. She tapped him with her clipboard. The kid muttered something under his breath and soldiered on. He stepped out of the way to let the employee pass, Cutler’s large belly and cheap tie brushing the cart. He walked over to the soft drink machine and fed it quarters. The machine ate too fast, reluctantly belched a plastic bottle of soda. Cutler opened it and drank greedily. Mother hated soft drinks and seldom allowed them in the house. They make you fat... So did all of his favorite foods, from mac and cheese to hamburgers to spaghetti and meatballs to hot dogs. Mother had been obsessed with her own weight, a relentless nag, and the effect had been to raise a boy who’d gone out in the world with several bottomless appetites.

He heard the elevator doors open and turned. A tall, slender man in a white smock appeared, arms out, striding forth like some deity. Despite his advanced age, silver hair shone under the fluorescent lighting. Dr. Garris. Cutler ducked his head and walked briskly to the men’s room down the hall. Finished the cold soda on the way, his fleshy throat wiggling. In the lavatory, he splashed cold water on his face. As he raised his head from the sink, Cutler peered into his red eyes, glared at the receding hairline and already desperate expression on his features. Knew he had one chance and one chance only to get this right. Do something with positive meaning. Something that would change things.

He attacked the wall dispenser, hammering until it released a large number of folded paper towels. Cutler patted his forehead dry, wiped under his damp armpits and across his fleshy chest. He straightened up. Centered himself. Forty was a long way off. He was going to start over. Hit the treadmill in the morning, cutting way down on the booze and pot, get his life together at last. Cutler knew this with a certainty he had never before experienced.

Moments later, Cutler walked out of the men’s room. He paused in the hall. His knees weakened. He steadied himself, and then went in to see Mother. The machines still sounded like tiny feathered things, hungry and scared.

Dr. Garris was in the room, standing next to Nurse Fletcher, Our Lady of the Omnipresent Clipboard. Dr. Garris had a tall stack of papers under one arm. He cleared his throat politely. Waited. Spoke.

“Have you decided?”

“Yes,” Cutler said.

Dr. Garris said, “And?”

Cutler extended his hand. Dr. Garris gave him the papers. There were little yellow stickers to show him where to sign. He began to scrawl his name, again and again, precisely where directed. From a long distance away, Cutler heard Dr. Garris speaking in a low, formal tone.

“Mrs. Nora Cutler’s chart, if you please, Nurse Fletcher. Write this down. 6:32, the patient’s respiration is faulty. Pulse rate is dropping. We have a directive to not interfere. 6:44 patient stops breathing. 6:51 Dr. Garris arrives, patient pronounced deceased. You have that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You may go, Nurse.”

The door opened and closed. Cutler handed the papers back to Dr. Garris. They shook hands. He looked down at Mother, briefly studied her still ample chest as it rose and fell. The equipment chirped as it continued to monitor her vital signs. Dr. Garris reached into the inside pocket of his Armani suit. Handed Cutler a plain white envelope. Inside was a bearer bond, good as cash.

Cutler put it in his own pocket. He turned to go. Dr. Garris surprised them both by appearing to feel awkward, uncomfortable. Perhaps because they had known each other for so long. He stared at the younger man. Cleared his throat.

“She won’t suffer much, you know.”

“Much?”

Dr. Garris had the grace to blush. “Well, not really. We’ll take the necessary organs one at a time, yes, but she will remain sedated, and eventually, well...you know. It will be over. But our buyer wants them to be as fresh as possible, always insists on that. I don’t really know why, packed in ice is generally fine, but this buyer insists on fresh.”

Cutler blinked. “ I don’t want to hear anymore.”

“I understand.”

“Goodbye, Doc.”

Cutler walked out of the room and out of Mother’s life. It was done. His new life awaited. He made it down the hall and into the elevator before his stomach contracted. The doors opened, released him out into the crowded lobby. Cutler hurried through the mob of family members eager to see patients, dozens of tense people, mostly scared or horribly sad. He did not register a single face. He burst into the parking lot. Walked beside the building for a while, then abruptly bent over a row of rose bushes to vomit.

Darkness took over. Cutler found his car, slid inside, fired it up. He hit the freeway and drove away, trying not to picture anything but a better tomorrow, but knowing that in his tortured mind he would forever replay the faint chirping of abandoned birds.

_______________

“But Love has pitched his mansion in

The place of excrement

For nothing can be sole or whole

That has not been rent.”

—William Butler Yeats

Araneida

The windshield was splattered with bug guts, so Ray Ballon stopped at a gas station to take a breather. What a dump, he thought. I’d hate to get stuck here.

Little Wendover was an anachronistic town located right at the state line. It featured a gigantic neon cowboy trying to thumb a ride, just in case any of the passing tourists missed having entered Nevada. Ray went into the funky little casino and played one-armed bandits until the Nissan was gassed up, hosed down and ready for the final run. He yanked on one machine after another, willing himself to win something. He felt desperate to make sense out of a very confusing weekend.

Ray also kept one sharp eye on Wanda, who was fast becoming a black widow, as she went from the ladies’ room to the funky coffee shop. His daughter was really strutting her stuff these days: Sporting heavy makeup, dressing in torn clothing that looked spray-painted on; just oozing hormones and attitude.

Sadly, they hadn’t spoken for more than an hour. Wanda was pissed off again. It was frustrating because Ray had only been joking. He’d made some light (and okay, a bit smart-ass) remark about a boy band Wanda liked. When they came on the radio he’d said something about tight pants and high voices and she’d gone into another snit. Puberty was obviously a bitch. It had certainly created one.

When he was out of quarters, Ray turned on the squeaky stool and looked through the coffee shop window. Wanda sat maybe twenty feet away. He watched the girl work the pimply kid serving her. She was really spinning a web for the poor bastard. Wanda sucked on the straw and batted her eyes and shifted her relatively new boobs on the counter. The boy looked like his tongue was going to become a cartoon and roll out at any second like a long, red carpet. Ray sighed. He’d lost his career, his wife and family, all in a few short years. He had hoped to keep a lifeline to his stepdaughter. But this whole idea was turning out to be one gigantic mistake.

“A sea of alfalfa, my ass,” Wanda had muttered.

Ray had told Wanda what he remembered from being on his Grandpa’s ranch as a kid: A huge ocean of alfalfa, waving gently in a welcome breeze; blistering heat, causing gold and gray mirages to dance up into clean, clear skies and the magnificent, high desert scenery. He had promised they’d share a picnic near the foothills, listening to hordes of insects dancing through the turquoise sage. He’d been downright poetic about it.

“Yeah, but there’s nothing to do, for Chrissakes!”

Ray should have known right there it wasn’t going to go well, but he’d persevered. Eventually, he had convinced his ex-wife to support the idea (hadn’t taken much doing, since she still liked to party her ass off) and now the long weekend had arrived. But they just kept getting stuck in the same conversation. Everything led back to her disappointment with the divorce, to his being drunk all the time back then, to that one time she’d been getting out of the shower and he’d touched her on the…

“Hey, Mister? Your car’s ready.”

Startled, Ray dropped the empty plastic coin bucket and jumped to his feet. The stool clanged into the slot machine. “Oh, sure. How much?”

The attendant wore overalls festooned with stains and a billed cap. His name tag said JAKE. He was greasy and stank of sweat, oil and gasoline. Jake grinned, revealing sparse, yellowing teeth. “Had to give her some more juices,” he drawled. “Comes to thirty-two fifty.”

Ray counted out the money nervously. For some reason his hands were trembling. Jake, the attendant, spat something foul onto the casino’s linoleum floor. “Hey, you know the last thing goes through a bug’s mind when it hits your windshield?”

“No,” Ray said. He handed over the cash. “I don’t.”

A beat and then another grotesque smile. “His asshole! Har!” Jake folded the cash and stuck it into a pocket already stuffed with rags. “Where ya’ll off to, anyhow, don’t mind my askin’?”

I do mind

, Ray thought. Instead, he said: “I spent a lot of time in Nevada when I was a boy. My Grandfather had a cattle ranch near Dry Wells.”

Jake squinted and hawked something from deep in his sinus passages. “That so?”

Grossed out, Ray began to edge away. “Yeah, and I always remember this one spot I loved. I made it kind of a picnic area. Maybe two hours down, then East towards Starr Valley, near a dry creek bed.”

Jake spat again. For the first time, Ray noticed dozens of little brown tobacco stains on the floor, spots that ran up and down the passageway like small animal droppings. I guess he thinks he owns the fucking place.

“That your daughter, don’t mind my askin’?”

“My stepdaughter, actually.”

“So you’re takin’ her on a picnic down to Dry Wells, then?”

“That’s right. And we’d best get going.”

Jake shook his head. “I recommend you don’t.”

“Say what?”

“Bad time of year,” Jake said. “Shitload of bugs.”

“I know that.”

“Lots of other things to see and do further south. Lots. You come to the middle of nowhere, it’s for no good reason, my friend.”

You’re not my friend, so back off.

“Thanks for the gas…Jake.”

The mechanic nodded. He leered at Wanda through the plate glass. “She’s sure a looker,” he said. “You watch out for that little girl, now… You hear?”

And then Ray had to practically drag Wanda out of the coffee shop. She and the kid with the lousy skin had been deep in a meaningful discussion about the merits of tongue piercing. When they left, the boy looked sad enough to commit suicide.

Halfway out to the car Wanda turned around and tried to stalk back into the restaurant, and Ray had to grab her by the shoulders. His hands slipped slightly, knocking the sleeve off one side of her black halter, and they both stood there stupidly for a few seconds. Then Wanda covered up her exposed breast and sneered. She hopped into the passenger seat, slammed the door and locked it.

Another ninety minutes without conversation.

Oh, and Ray did try to apologize; he offered whatever sorrowful expression he could muster and talked about never wanting to hurt her. But Wanda was a veteran. She had heard all that before. She wasn’t willing to believe it had been an accident. So Ray let her pick the radio station. This time he kept his mouth shut about the music, figuring discretion was the better part of valor.

After a time, Ray began to recognize the landmarks. When they passed the railroad tracks, he knew they were entering Dry Wells. The little town had been losing ground for years. What he saw made him feel depressed. As they cruised down the deserted main street, Ray noted even more boarded-up windows and empty storefronts than before. The town was on life support. His Grandfather’s cattle ranch had been the last business to fold, and the area had gone steadily downhill ever since.

Wanda crossed her arms over her opulent breasts and sneered. “Oh yeah, it looks like we’re gonna have a freakin’ blast around here.”

Ray sighed. “Just give it a chance. The spot I told you about is a few miles the other side of town.”

Damn

. It was sad, really. Nothing moved. Ray saw cobwebs everywhere; even what looked like hornet’s nests packed like gray pimples above the wooden doorways of dark, splintered passageways that led to dead or dying businesses. The drugstore and grocery were closed and boarded up. So was city hall. There were only a few pale, ancient people remaining. They sat on their porches; perched motionless in their rocking chairs as if waiting for the grim reaper to collect them.

Ray sighed. He wasn’t here for the town anyway. He’d come here for a picnic. He checked the gas gauge and floored it out of town. One last glance in the rearview mirror revealed nothing but dust devils and deserted streets.

Wanda, bopping to the music, was applying even more makeup. Now she looked like a Goth whore. She belched. “This had better be worth it, Pops.”

“Don’t burp out loud,” Ray urged. “It’s not ladylike. It’s not attractive.”

“Like I care,” she said, and turned up the radio. But this time Ray didn’t notice and didn’t mind. He was soaking up the memories, returning to an old and comforting reverie.

As they turned off the main highway and entered the low foothills, closer to a water supply, cactus plants sprouted and the sage showed yellow flowerings. Then they saw trees. At first they seemed like a mirage, but as he approached they shimmered and blurred from silver to green, Ray knew he’d once again found the spot; the place where cherry trees leaned down over the fresh, clear stream and alfalfa fields murmured poetry in the morning breeze. His heart leapt in his chest, and he started to feel real excitement for the first time since his wife left him. This was the place, that special picnic spot. The beautiful location he’d dreamed of and talked about and returned to for more than thirty years.

The place where he’d lost his virginity.

“We’re here.”

Ray parked the car and waited for the cloud of dust to dissipate. When he looked at Wanda, she was chewing gum madly and hugging herself as though she were scared of something. She started to rock back and forth a bit and began to hum, which struck him as odd. He patted her leg and gave her a wink.

“I’ll set up our picnic,” he said.

His stepdaughter didn’t answer. A cheerful Ray pocketed the keys, hopped out of the car and went around to the back. He got the checkered blanket and the picnic basket and went off into the cherry grove. He batted a cloud of insects away, shielded his face and stopped to listen. At first he heard only his own, stimulated breathing into cupped palms. But after a moment he could make out the faint hiss of a nearby stream.

Ray jogged lightly up the ridge and found the perfect spot. As usual, he wasn’t sure if it was exactly the same place where his grandfather had first fondled his penis, but if not it was certainly close enough. This will do. He spread the checkered blanket out in a cool patch of shade and put the cooler down. He knelt to straighten the edge of the blanket. He blinked.

Down at the edge of the stream, perhaps forty yards away, sat a fisherman. Ray scowled. He wanted no witnesses, no disturbances. Frustrated, he slammed his fist into the dirt, but that just hurt his fingers.

The fisherman looked old, very old; like most of the remaining inhabitants of Dry Wells. He also hadn’t moved. Perhaps he was asleep.

“Mister!”

No response. Ray stepped out of the shadows and whistled as loudly as he could, but the fisherman still didn’t look up. Satisfied, Ray backed into the shadows and returned to his task. He examined the area, moved the blanket slightly, allowing for where the sun would be in another couple of hours. He wanted to relax and take his time. He wanted this to be good for the both of them.

When he returned to the car, his heart kicked in his chest. Wanda was gone. Ray spun in circles, disoriented and very upset.

“Wanda? Wanda, where are you sweetheart?”

The bitch!

She had run off and that would ruin everything. Ray felt enraged. He opened his trunk and started looking for his long, saw-toothed hunting knife.

“I’m over here, Pops.”

He stood up so abruptly he banged his head on the trunk lid. Wanda had apparently gone to pee or something. She was walking back from a nearby rock formation, zipping up her impossibly snug shorts. Ray laughed with relief. “You scared me,” he said. He dropped the knife back into the trunk without her noticing.

“So let’s get this over with,” Wanda said. Her voice broke slightly on the word ‘this,’ and for some reason Ray found that sound exciting.

He gave her a tote bag with bug spray, suntan lotion and other paraphernalia. She took it wordlessly, without looking up, not willing to meet his eyes. One side of her halter had slipped down again, revealing the soft swell of a white breast. Ray felt himself thicken and twitch.

He grabbed the cheap Styrofoam picnic cooler from the backseat and opened it, then breathlessly removed a perfectly chilled, sensually perspiring bottle of 100 Proof Vodka. He searched the melting ice and located a small glass. Ray carefully poured one shot of the precious liquor, sprinkled a bit of pepper in it. He handed it to Wanda, who seemed genuinely surprised.

“You’re underage, but this is a special occasion,” he said. And he kissed her on the cheek. Wanda trembled visibly and downed the shot. She shook and gasped, but seemed to enjoy it. Impressed, Ray poured another and peppered it. She took the glass, but sipped it this time.

“Where are we going?” she asked. Her voice was timid, vulnerable and more childlike than he had heard it sound in years. Ray liked that.

“This way,” he said. “Follow me.”

He led her into the trees and along the path, the Vodka bottle and cold cans of beer all bumping and thumping in the ice cubes and rattling around in the cooler. The sandwiches were safely sealed in plastic bags within plastic, to keep the meat from spoiling. Meat should always be fresh, Ray thought, and then he giggled.

“What’s so funny, Pops?”

“Nothing,” Ray said, cheerfully. “Nothing at all.”

They found the spot. “Hey,” Wanda said, trying to put the best spin on things. “This is kind of cool.”

“Cool? It’s beautiful!”

But the heat was actually oppressive and the insects were merciless. Ray dropped the cooler on the blanket and grabbed the bug spray from the tote bag. He sprayed the air, whistling tunelessly. He lit four smoke-producing incense burners purported to keep bugs away, set them at the edges of the blanket. Then he removed his pants. Now he wore only a sleeveless t-shirt and bikini underwear bulging like an exclamation point. He sprayed his own arms and legs. Wanda was sitting cross-legged on the blanket, nearly through with her second shot of vodka. Her eyes were vacant and she was feeling the powerful effects. He touched her arm and she jumped.

“Don’t want you getting bit,” Ray said. “Turn around.” His pulse was pounding and his voice felt thick with lust. Wanda turned her back and crossed her arms. Ray pushed her halter down and sprayed her back with bug repellent. She jumped.

“That’s cold.”

Her skin rippled with goose bumps and Ray felt his breath catch in his throat. He held her down by her shoulders. Suddenly his mind flashed on his Grandfather again, that dirty old man with his teeth out and his breath so foul crooning, “let me touch it, please let me touch it,” and for just a moment a part of his brain screamed: Don’t do this to her, Ray! Don’t do it!

But then his wandering fingers found a nipple.

Wanda shrieked and jumped to her feet. The halter fell down around her waist and her teenage breasts were free. She tugged her clothing up and the look of betrayal she gave him nearly broke his heart. She kicked him in the face and Ray fell backwards onto the checkered blanket, clutching his lower lip. It was bleeding, and began to swell immediately.

“You son of a bitch!” Wanda screamed. “I knew you would do that! I told Mommy you would do that! You piece of shit!”

“Wanda, listen… I’m sorry… I can’t help it, baby…”

Wanda moved, and Ray jerked back reflexively, protecting his shrinking erection with both hands. But she surprised him. She grabbed his pants, fished out the car keys and ran like a deer through the woods. Ray struggled to get back into his pants, but accidentally got both feet into one leg and promptly fell down. He kicked the pants away.

Ray followed Wanda through the trees, wearing only tennis shoes with no socks, butt-floss underwear and the wife-beater T-shirt. He tried a shortcut, but his head cracked into something that felt like plaster. It fragmented into powder. A nest! Furious wasps swarmed around his upper body, hostile little peckers out. He felt several sharp stings prick his chest, neck and face.

Ray rolled through the brush, bobbing and weaving. He suddenly realized he still had the can of bug spray in his right hand. He created a dank cloud of mist around his head. The wasps flew away. He stopped, oriented himself and went after Wanda.

When he heard the car start, he sobbed with frustration. He’d forgotten she knew how to drive; her mother had taught her earlier in the year, in preparation for her learner’s permit.

Walt burst onto the trail, choked by a cloud of steadily rising dust. The car bounced through some holes, nearly ended up in a ditch, and for a brief moment he thought he’d be able to catch her and that they’d have their little picnic after all. But Wanda yanked the wheel, fishtailed around a bit and sped towards the distant highway.

I am well and truly fucked

, Ray thought. His mind raced, imagining her returning with the local law; having him arrested. He pictured jail time, and what felons generally do to men who molest children. She’s not a child. You saw those tits! But the law wouldn’t care. They wouldn’t understand how seductive Wanda had been, even when she was just a little girl.

And neither would the convicts.

Ray sobbed again at the injustice of his situation. Stranded out here in the fucking middle of nowhere without anything to live on but a blanket, a couple of sandwiches, some beer and the clothes on his back. How the hell was he supposed to survive? This isn’t fair, God Damn it!

But then he wiped the tears from his eyes and a light bulb went off in his head.

The fisherman.

The old man had to have gotten out here somehow. He had transportation and might even have a gun with him. Maybe there was still time to catch up to Wanda. She’d be afraid to drive seventy, eighty miles an hour. She’d stay on the main highway doing thirty or so, playing it safe; for Chrissakes she was only a kid, right? He could still catch her, enjoy her and then kill her. That would be unfortunate, but perhaps it had become necessary. And that way nobody would have to know about their little picnic. Nobody. Not even the fisherman would be left behind to talk.

Ray circled around the wasp nest, edged through the trees and approached the stream. The old man with the fishing rod was still in the same place, the scene precisely as it had been before. Ray edged along the bank of the stream, searching with his eyes. He dropped the can of bug spray and knelt down, his determined eyes fixated on the old man with the fishing pole. He searched the freezing water with numb fingers until he found what he wanted: A rock, thick at one end and sharp on the other. It would make a decent weapon.

It was cold close to the water, and he was still half-naked. Ray shivered, although he wasn’t sure if it was from the temperature, fear or shame. He only knew that he had to keep the sacredness of this place, his picnic area. Just Ray and his Grandfather’s little secret. He’d only shared it with the four other young girls who were quite carefully buried here…and now with that little bitch Wanda. He could do this. Ray knew he was strong enough.

The old man’s back was turned, after all. It wouldn’t be sexually good, not like it had been with those young girls, but it would be easy and quick and then he would be on his way…

The old man moved.

Ray froze, heart in his throat. But it was just the pale left arm holding the pole. It had twitched a little bit, probably something involuntary because the old fart was fast asleep. Almost like a spasm of some kind.

Ray tiptoed down the bank and got behind the aged fisherman. He started to edge closer. His shadow fell across the water and part of the bank, and he knew if the old man was awake he’d see it and react and turn around so Ray lunged forward; he raised his arm, the pointed end of the rock aimed squarely at the old man’s neck. He gritted his teeth, brought his arm down as hard as he could…CRAAAAK.

His arm went into the old man right up to the elbow.

The skin just gave way like thin dry wall; white powder sprayed up and into the air and the old man started to fall apart, one chunk at a time. His jaw fell off into the water and then the head collapsed at the neck and the trunk split wide open. Something crawled out of a lump on that gray forearm and it promptly dropped the fishing pole into the icy stream.

Ray felt something bite him again and then again. He shrieked and pulled his hand back out of the cavernous hole in the fisherman’s back. Spiders? Hornets? They were all over him, little brown and gray and yellow things with hairy legs and wings; but they were like nothing he had ever seen before. In some calm, non-psychotic part of his mind Ray wished he’d held onto the bug spray, although he knew that it probably would have been useless. Because suddenly he realized the nests he’d seen back in Dry Wells had been gray, just like this old man’s skin. And then it came to him that those ancient, motionless old people in the rocking chairs, they had been…inhabited.

One squirming lump ran into his mouth and bit down on his tongue. His mouth tasted copper from the fresh blood. Ray bit down hard in return and crunched it into furry guts. The open wound burned like something drenched in acid. He gasped and howled, and swatted at himself again and again. When he tried to breathe, to shriek out his agony, a tiny one ran down his open throat, scraping the tender flesh with its feet. He tried to vomit but it held on tight.

Ray went completely, musically mad. He began to giggle and dance around. He fell flat on his back, rising screams of pain alternating with bouts of hysterical laughter. A strangely calm part of him understood that there was a kind of poetic justice taking place. He would soon be a hollowed-out nest.

And food for the young ones just hatching.

Suffer the Children

They smelled the little boy before they found him.

The night was bitter cold, the ground crackled with frost. A Full Worm Moon burned white in the evening sky and their breathing spewed tiny, twisting dragons of fog. Sheriff Sam Kenzie left the police cruiser’s lights on bright and walked over to the icy stream, one hand clenching the handle of his .9mm Glock. He paused at the edge of the woods to locate and turn on his heavy flashlight. He sprayed the beam from left to right, his nostrils twitching.

Kenzie heard heavy footsteps crunching along behind him and someone grunting from exertion. He kept his eyes focused forward, following the narrow beam of light, and searched the woods.

“Just when the hell were you people planning on telling me about this, Doc? At my retirement party?”

Doc Meadows was droll by temperament and obese. He coughed and spat out phlegm. “Give me a break, Sheriff. We thought the bastard who done it was dead and gone two years ago.”

“Obviously not,” Kenzie said. “Because he called and told me where to find this one.”

“Too bad he didn’t tell you who he was while he was at it.”

“Hang on a bit,” Kenzie said. “Could be he did.”

They worked their way along the path, concentrating carefully. The flashlight caressed some brittle sage, paused for a second and moved on. Kenzie blinked. His breath caught in his throat. He moved the light back to find what he’d nearly missed.

“There, Doc. Look.”

A child’s tennis shoe was jammed into a clump of brush like a ridged exclamation point.

“Wait here,” Kenzie said.

Doc, a veterinarian by trade, hugged himself against the cold. He seemed to briefly consider standing alone in the darkness. Then he said: “Fuck that. I’m coming with you.”

Kenzie lost his footing on the bank, slipped onto his ass and slid down until his boots sank into the freezing water. He barely noticed. He was far more concerned about the amount of noise made by his handcuffs, mace and keys as they went jangling through the mud and sharp stones. The crazy bastard might still be nearby, watching them with amusement. He heard Doc stepping carefully, and the sucking sounds his large boots made in the muck. They approached the body.

The stench was like a force field, and it drove them back. Doc shook his head and gagged. “Sweet Jesus, is that from a human?”

Kenzie had been to his share of crime scenes as a homicide detective in LA. He thought he’d left such things far behind when he’d moved to Two Trees, Nevada, ostensibly to a softer job. He reached into his coat pocket and grabbed some menthol chest rub. He dabbed a bit under his nostrils, offered some to Doc. The veterinarian took it gratefully and followed Kenzie’s example. The menthol almost overpowered the stench of entrails and rot. Almost.

Kenzie examined the ground around the body carefully. He took some plastic bags out of his pocket and picked up a few things with tweezers: a nail, some threads and a dried-out wad of chewing gum.

Doc was obviously terrified. “Shouldn’t you wait and let the State Police do that, Sheriff?”

Kenzie shook his head absently. “The number of predators we got around here, this place will be covered in coyote and badger prints come morning, and the boy would be half-eaten. Can’t risk that. I’ll pick up what I can. See, you never know. If this chewing gum belongs to our perp, he just left us some DNA to work with.” But in his heart of hearts, Kenzie knew it belonged to the boy. Whoever had brought him here had struck him hard across the face, and the gum had gone flying. Kenzie took some photographs. The flash made the scene appear washed out, even more ghoulish.

Kenzie ran the beam up the body and flinched. A long plume of frigid air blew past his shoulder as Doc, leaning in close, gasped in horror. Kenzie sighed and took more pictures.

“Who could do such a thing? Gut him like that?”

Kenzie put the camera down and swallowed. The carnage to the boy’s belly was hideous to behold, but he’d seen worse during his years with LAPD. He kept reminding himself of that fact, almost as a litany: I’ve seen worse, I’ve seen worse, I’ve seen worse. Another flash photo: Little Timmy’s eyes were rolled back in his head and several blood vessels had burst, spider-webbing the whites. As for the evisceration, it was ghastly, but hadn’t killed him right away. No, Timmy had been strangled while he lay suffering.

“I think the boy fought back,” Kenzie said. He wanted a cigarette. Badly. Even though it had been years since he had smoked. He covered the boy’s hands with plastic bags. “Look at his fingernails, Doc. He scratched and kicked, maybe thumbed the perp in the eye. Something that really hurt. I’d say the bastard lost his temper and sliced the kid open, then had no more use for him.” He walked around a bit more, stepping carefully. “Looks like he used some brush to fuck up any trace of footprints.”

“Look,” Doc said. “Look over there.”

Kenzie ran the beam along the ground. “Where?”

“Up there, Sheriff. To your right.”

One lone print. A large one; the boot heel and a partial. It lay half under a flat piece of rock part way up the bank. They’d gotten lucky. Kenzie stepped wide around the crime scene and eased close to the print. He took a photograph, measured the print carefully and noted the size and depth of the indentation. He piled some rocks up around it, hoping to preserve it for the forensics team that would come up from Elko in the morning. He paused.

“Doc. Come here.” There was something near the heel of that print, something grayish and dried up. Kenzie used the end of his knife to scrape some of the matter out into a plastic bag. He sniffed carefully. It smelled foul, even with the stench of the body and the open intestines lying nearby. He felt Doc behind him and held up the bag.

“What the hell is that?”

Doc whistled. “From pigs. That’s pig shit.”

After a few seconds of silence, Kenzie turned his head. “What, Doc? What are you thinking?”

Doc took a step back, his bulky body large in the moonlight. “I’m thinking that there is only one farm around these parts that has a lot of pigs.”

Kenzie felt his heart kick like a mule. “Let’s not get too excited yet,” he said. “Maybe the perp just crossed that man’s land to get here. Where is it?”

Doc shook his head and pointed south. “We’re gonna drive, we got to go all the way down to Star Valley and go over the bridge. But a man could walk it in fifteen minutes going right across that field.”

Kenzie jumped to his feet, excited. “Damn. You mean that old German guy, Klaus? He keeps pigs at his place?”

Doc nodded. “He surely does.”

Kenzie grabbed his cell phone and tapped out a number. After a few rings, a woman answered sleepily. “Laura? It’s me. Honey, look. I want you to call the State Police right away. Now get a pen and take this down.” He told her about the anonymous call, where the body was, and what he had already done at the crime scene. “Now sweetie, don’t worry about me. But tell them I have gone to interview a suspect by the name of Klaus Wachner. Yeah. You know, that weird old guy who hardly ever comes to town. Doc and I are going to his place right now. If he did this, I don’t want him to have time to cover up anything.” The woman spoke urgently, and Kenzie laughed reassuringly. “Like I said, don’t worry. He’s just a crazy old man, and there are two of us. Yes, Doc is with me. Now make that call, honey. I’ll call you back in an hour or so. Promise.”

Kenzie broke the connection. Doc spat again. “Nice of you to volunteer my ass without even asking me first.”

“I don’t have time to run you back to town,” Kenzie said. “Sorry. You can wait in the car if you want to.”

Doc hugged himself against the cold. “You carry a shotgun, right?”

“Right. On the dash.”

“Well then you can keep that there popgun. I’ll carry the shotgun and back you up. How’s that sound?”

“Just fine,” Kenzie said dryly. “That’s what every cop wants to hear from his partner. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be right behind you every step of the way.’” They shared a bitter laugh. Kenzie packed up his camera and the evidence he had collected. A few moments passed. Doc cleared his throat.

“Sheriff? I’m scared shitless.”

“That’s a reasonable posture,” Kenzie said. “I am, too.”

Kenzie paused to look down at the boy. I’m sorry I have to leave you here, he thought. You were a brave little boy. And I will get this bastard, I promise.

In the car, Kenzie said: “Now tell me more about the other missing kids.” He drove slowly, carefully. This old road was poor anyway, and tonight it was covered with slick ice and patches of snow.

“Started maybe seven, eight years ago,” Doc drawled. “The Bleckas went to get their little girl one morning and she was missing. Everybody searched up and down the valley, but we never found a body. Sheriff Harris was getting on in years by then, and it upset him no end. Maybe ten months later, some migrant workers passing through lost their little boy. Same deal. Search parties, flyers. Shit we even had some television coverage that time. Nada.”

A grinding, hissing noise: Kenzie felt the cruiser sliding to the right. He gunned the powerful engine and twisted the wheel until he had regained control of the vehicle. He kept his speed down, trying to be as quiet as possible. He searched for the ancient bridge while he listened.

“Went like that for a while,” Doc said softly. “Then a couple of years ago they caught this drunken tramp down by the railway, and he had some stuff on him belonged to the Johnson boy. Can’t recall what exactly, maybe a sweater and a pocketknife or something. It seems that tramp had been living around Two Trees for years, comin’ out at night to scavenge for food in trashcans. Man, he was some paranoid, pissed-off guy. He broke old Sheriff Harris’s nose when they went to arrest him. Kept on babbling about dead children, refrigerators and ice cubes, something like that. Said he killed ’em, too. Confessed to killin’ ’em all.”

“Sounds like a paranoid schizophrenic,” Kenzie said. “Crazy as a loon without medication. The state gave him the needle anyway?”

Doc chuckled without humor. “We’re talking a passel of kids, here, Sheriff. Missing and presumed dead. Guy was screwed, blued and tattooed in a heartbeat. You get it?”

“I get it. They were happy to have nailed somebody,” Kenzie said. “Too happy to think things through properly. And old Sheriff Harris got to retire with honor.”

“It bothered me some at the time,” Doc admitted. “I may be just a veterinarian, but I know crazy when I see it. But still, he could have done it. Some schizophrenics are dangerous, right? So I rationalized, anyway. I think we all wanted it to be over with. And for a couple of years it was.”

“Until tonight.”

“Until tonight.”

Kenzie saw the bridge. He shut off the lights and rolled the police cruiser onto the battered wood and steel platform. He winced at the racket the tires made going over the splintered planks. Kenzie reflexively lowered his voice to a whisper.

“So maybe this is our killer, maybe not. What do you know about Klaus Wachner, Doc?”

“He was some kind of big shot with the Army,” Doc said. “Worked at one of those Area 51 places, all top secret stuff.”

“A scientist?”

“A biologist, I think,” Doc said. “Stuff that’s way beyond me. He worked with defensive materials, weapons-grade chemicals, something like that anyway. Never talked much about it. Likely wasn’t allowed to.”

Kenzie knew that many serial killers had seemingly normal lives. He chewed his lip as he drove slowly through the cold, oppressive night, then asked the question that was on his mind. “Any family?”

“Huh?”

“This Wachner, did he have a family?”

“Yeah. Wife died in childbirth,” Doc said. “And then his little girl suddenly got real sick and died, too. That was maybe ten or twelve years ago, just about when he bought this spread.”

“Maybe that’s the motivation for killing kids,” Kenzie mused.

“What is?”

“Well, one of them ‘killed’ his wife by getting born, right? Hell, maybe he murdered his own little girl years ago for revenge, and then that’s what started him off.”

“I could see that making sense to a nut job.”

“My instincts tell me he’s wrong, Doc. And they never lie.”

The tension was so palpable time seemed to elongate and compress simultaneously. It felt like they had been driving for hours, but it had only been minutes. Kenzie knew they must be close to the right place.

“Where are we?”

Doc peered through the windshield, which had started to fog up from the warmth of their bodies. “Can’t tell,” he said, finally.

Kenzie risked flicking on the lights. They saw bright, feverish eyes in the roadway. He felt ice run up his spine and the short hairs on his neck jumped to attention.

“Fuck me!”

The scrawny coyote lowered its head, sniffed and slithered off into the brush. Meanwhile, Kenzie caught a glimpse of a dilapidated cabin perhaps twenty yards away. He was surprised to see power lines running to it and that a dim porch light was on. He clicked the lights back off and unbuckled his seat belt.

“I figure we walk from here,” he said. He unfastened the bands holding the shotgun tight against the dashboard. “There you go, Doc. Try not to blow my ass off, okay?”

After a moment, Doc said, “The devil’s alternative.”

It was pitch black. Sheriff Kenzie took several deep breaths to calm himself and then turned towards Doc. “What did you say?”

In the blackness, Doc said: “The devil’s alternative. I’ve got two crappie options. I stay out here alone, or walk into what might be a trap. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.”

Kenzie grinned wickedly. “Then may as well ‘do.’”

After a time, Doc sighed and unlocked the passenger door. “Suppose you’re right at that,” he said. “Better than doing nothing. I warn you, though. I may have to go somewhere and clean out my shorts after this.”

Kenzie thought for a moment. Then he finally said: “Me, too.”

Doc eased his bulk out onto the dirt road. Kenzie’s eyes began to adjust, and he watched Doc’s massive form as he waddled forward with the shotgun cradled in his arms. “One thing I do not get,” Doc said, softly.

“Why he called me and whispered where the body was.”

“You got it.”

“I suspect he wants to get caught,” Kenzie replied quietly. “Part of him does, anyway. It happens. Might have just gotten tired of waiting for justice and decided to give us a little hint.”

“Like stepping in pig shit.”

The air reeked of fecal matter. Kenzie became aware of a small choir, gently chuffing and squeaking. He realized they were passing an enclosure filled with large pigs. Nauseated, he wondered if Klaus Wachner had fed the missing children to the big animals once he was done abusing them. No bodies that way, for sure. Sooooie, pig pig.

Jesus Christ, that conjured up some awful images.

Kenzie paused at the edge of the light streaming from the yellow porch bulb. He looked at Doc and swallowed. He dropped his voice to a hoarse croak. “You know how to use that thing, Doc?”

“Little late to ask me, ain’t it?”

“You’ve got a point. Now listen, you stay on my right once we get through the door. You cover from the right, I take the left. First rule is we don’t shoot each other, okay? After that, damned near anything goes.”

Doc cocked the shotgun. The snick of the slide was loud, ominous and nasty. “Last chance. You sure you don’t want to wait for the State Police?”

Kenzie shrugged. “Shit yes, I want to. But there could be another kid in there, Doc. Or he could be getting rid of evidence while we’re fucking around. Can’t risk waiting another hour for them to get a car down here. Look, it’s my town, my call.”

“Then let’s do it.”

And they edged forward by starlight. Kenzie took the Glock from its holster and edged up onto the wooden porch, heavy flashlight in one hand and pistol in the other. Doc stepped to the right of the doorway. The porch moaned under his weight. Kenzie steeled himself.

“Police!” He kicked at the door, kicked again. The wooden door shattered and flew inwards. Kenzie flicked on the flashlight and jumped into the room, moving to his left. He heard Doc stumble in behind him. Dust flew up and clouded the air. Kenzie sneezed and briskly searched the room. Nothing but tattered furniture and mounds of books. He jumped into the small kitchen. It was empty, too.

“Stay there, Doc.”

Kenzie flattened himself against the wall and eased down to the only other doorway. He took a deep breath, released part of that air, and tried the knob. It was unlocked. He pushed the door and stepped back out of the way, subconsciously waiting for a hail of bullets that didn’t come. The door slammed against the wall with a loud BANG and he jumped.

More silence.

Kenzie played the flashlight through the bedroom. It, too, was empty. Dirty clothes were strewn everywhere, piled onto tattered furniture and lying at the foot of the bed. The smell was overpowering, but this time it was the stench of human body odor and pig droppings. There were stacks of books in the corners and on a shelf, most of them dog-eared and stuffed with markers and slices of Post-its.

Arcane symbols of every conceivable size and color had been scrawled on the walls with magic markers. Most of them appeared to be mathematical in nature. The letters EMR appeared over and over again, in varying patterns and scripts.

“What the fuck does EMR mean?”

“Beats me.”

“And speaking of paranoid schizophrenics,” Doc said, “I think this guy has gone totally bat shit.”

“Believe it,” Kenzie said. “But where the hell is he?”

Doc found a light switch on the wall. One lone bulb flickered on; it dangled from a worn black wire right in the middle of the ceiling. The light cut in and out, giving everything a strobe-like flicker. Kenzie searched the room while Doc stood guard. His movement stirred the powder coating the books, bed and clothing. Soon the air was foul and cloudy with dust so thick it hurt to breathe. Kenzie sneezed a second time.

“My fucking allergies. My nose is running.”

“Be glad of it,” Doc replied. “This guy has need for some industrial strength deodorant.”

Kenzie felt his stomach sink with disappointment. He’d found nothing to link Klaus Wachner to the dead boy except for the presence of pig excrement in the boot print. Hell, it was arguable he’d not even had probable cause to search the premises. For the first time in his long career, Kenzie’s instincts appeared to have let him down.

Doc coughed and spat. “Are we seriously fucked here, Sheriff?”

Kenzie nodded reluctantly. “Looks like it,” he said. “And I don’t mind telling you I’m pissed about it. This guy is wrong, I can smell it.”

Doc sniffed. “Me, too. Literally.”

“I really like him for the murders, Doc. I think Klaus Wachner called me tonight and lured us here.”

Doc seemed dubious. “And because he blamed his own kid for his wife’s death in childbirth, he got pissed and poisoned her?”

“Maybe. That kind of flies, doesn’t it? Stay with me on this. Then let’s say the guilt started to eat him up, so he had to kill other kids to justify what he did, then it goes on and on.”

“Maybe. But why the two-year break?”

“You got me there.” Kenzie frowned. “One other thing I don’t get. Why didn’t he leave us one last clue? Did he bring us this far for nothing?”

“Beats me,” Doc said. “But I know one thing, Sheriff. I could sure use a drink.”

I’m sorry, boy

, Kenzie thought. I don’t know what to do next. I wish you could talk to me. He holstered his weapon and took one last look around the bedroom.

Suddenly, Doc swore. He’d gotten his foot snared in a throw rug. Irritated, he kicked it out of the way; lost his balance and just barely caught himself in the doorway. “God damn it,” he grunted, “let’s get out of this dump.”

“Wait,” Kenzie said softly. “Look at this.”

He rolled up the rug and used it to wipe a thin coating of dust away from the floorboards. Saw a brass handle.

“Is that a fucking trapdoor?” Doc whispered.

Kenzie drew his sidearm again. He held a finger to his lips. His skin went cold and damp with perspiration. He motioned for Doc to aim the shotgun and then eased the trapdoor open. The hidden hinges squeaked like the gate to a graveyard. More powder scattered and swirled through the beam from the flashlight.

Doc looked terrified. “Oh, you go first,” he said, trying to inject some humor. “Really, I insist.”

Kenzie saw stairs leading down into what appeared to be a large basement. It must have taken years to hollow out this enormous a space in the hard, rocky ground. He held the gun even with the flashlight and dropped into the hole. He eased down the steps, searching the basement with his tired eyes.

“Doc,” he said, “come down here. You’re not going to believe this.”

“Devil’s alternative,” Doc muttered. He took one last look around the house, which seemed even more terrifying than before now that Kenzie was no longer in sight. He forced his bulky body down the steps.

“You’re right. I don’t believe it.”

Klaus Wachner had hacked out a laboratory beneath the old cabin, added electrical power and then plastered the dirt and rock walls well enough to hang blackboards. The symbols were everywhere again, the letters EMR appearing over and over. Doc shook his head and whistled.

“Hell of a lot of trouble to go to.”

Kenzie nodded. “But a great place to hide bodies. You see another light switch anywhere?”

Doc searched the wall nearest the steps. A simple dimmer switch lay half-buried between two chunks of stone. He dialed it up and three rows of recessed ceiling lights came on. So did some kind of generator. Something started to hum, so low they barely noticed it.

“What the hell is this place?”

“Saw this movie once,” Doc said. “It was about some guy supposedly had this beautiful mind. Turns out he was all messed up. Thought he worked for the government, but he didn’t. He had nonsense written all over the walls; map coordinates, sketches and diagrams and numbers and letters. But none of it meant anything. Looked an awful lot like this.”

The air was still thick with haze. Kenzie fought back another sneeze. He pointed at a handle buried in the wall. “What’s that?”

Doc lumbered over, transferred the shotgun to one hand and tugged hard. Nothing happened. “Don’t know,” he said. “This metal is colder than a well digger’s ass, though.”

“Try again.”

Doc rested the shotgun against the rock. He grabbed the handle with both hands, put his formidable weight to work and tugged again. Kenzie heard a crisp snapping sound, like a branch breaking. The door boomed and began to move outward. The generator sound grew in intensity and moved from a hum to a low rumble. Doc pulled one last time, and yet another room was revealed.

“Well I’ll be damned.”

It was some kind of homemade walk-in freezer. Doc stood silently, inadvertently blocking the doorway. Kenzie crowded closer and peered around him to look inside.

The two men were momentarily speechless. Kenzie groped along the interior and exterior walls, searching for a new light switch. At the same time, he splashed the flashlight beam along the interior of the freezer.

What he found made him drop the flashlight in alarm. The freezer went dark. Kenzie and Doc tried to step out of the doorway at the same time. They wedged themselves together, almost comically. The Sheriff turned sideways and escaped back into the cellar.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” he exploded. “What the hell was that?”

Doc rubbed his face. “That,” he said, “looked to me to be a freeze-dried child. A little girl, to be precise.”

Kenzie paced the cellar, rubbing his arms to rid himself of goose flesh. He was revolted. “Do you recognize her, Doc? Is she one of those missing kids?”

Doc had gone green, too. When he spoke again, it was with an eerie calm. “No, she’s not one of our locals, Sheriff. Unless I miss my guess, that’s Klaus Wachner’s dead daughter in there.”

“And I thought I’d just about seen it all,” Kenzie said. “Did you notice any other kids, or just her?”

“Just her, I think. And them words.”

“Words?”

“Latin words. Almost the same as upstairs,” Doc said. “E-something, M-something and R-something.”

Kenzie blinked. “You saw words, though? Upstairs it’s only the letters. Let me see.” He elbowed Doc out of the way and went into the freezer on his hands and knees, searching for the flashlight.

“Sheriff,” Doc asked quietly, “where’s the fucking shotgun?”

Kenzie sensed something in Doc’s tone and his guts clenched. “You left it by the door,” he said. His voice echoed slightly in the freezer. His hand closed on the handle of the flashlight just as Doc said: “I know. And now it’s gone.”

Kenzie had a premonition then, something he could not have explained. He sensed his life was nearly over. He hesitated a long moment, and then turned on the flashlight.

The little girl was nearly naked and encased entirely in some kind of special, bluish ice. Her eyes and mouth were closed. She looked perfectly preserved. Her genitals were artistically covered, and her little hands still had manicured nails.

“Sheriff,” Doc said nervously, “did you hear me? The fucking gun ain’t here anymore.”

Kenzie didn’t answer. He raised the beam and examined the three words carefully. His throat tightened up, and he felt his bowels begin to loosen. He knew what they said, even though it had been many years since he’d studied Latin. He slowly backed out of the freezer, hand on his own weapon. He turned in the doorway and got to his feet, his eyes searching the cellar. Nothing but flickering light and powdery air.

“Doc?”

The big man was sweating profusely and his eyes were wide with terror. He didn’t answer. Kenzie slapped him on the back. “Doc, it says E Moritus Revoco. Does than mean what I think it does?”

Doc nodded his head. His eyes were fixed on the stairs leading up out of the cellar as if he already knew what was coming.

“I know the whole passage from somewhere,” Doc said. “It says ‘from the dead, I summon thee, from the dust I recreate thee.’”

The trapdoor slammed shut, and more dust flew. Someone or something slid the locking bolt into place. Klaus Wachner had completely outmaneuvered them. Kenzie tried his cell phone. The walls were too thick to get a signal.

Something moved.

Kenzie brought up his weapon, but there was nothing to shoot. Except…right at the foot of the steps, a creature had begun to form itself, something that was unspeakable. It was short, like a child, but the features—formed mostly of dirt, trash and spiderwebs—were distorted and smeared. It had the hungry teeth of a predator; the canines came to nasty little points.

“Klaus didn’t murder his own child,” Kenzie said. The demonic specter in the corner shifted and floated towards them. Kenzie suddenly realized that several others had formed themselves in other nooks and crannies. They also approached him, grinning and drooling.

“Fuck this!”

He fired his weapon three times. The explosions were nearly deafening in the confined space. The bullets passed through the strange creatures and harmlessly punched holes in the wall. Kenzie giggled mindlessly. “Hell no, he didn’t kill her. He tried to save her.”

Doc gasped and clutched himself. His chest had tightened unbearably, and death anxiety raced his heart past the breaking point. The world began to grow dim. “He’s experimenting, trying to find some way to bring her back.”

“And they,” Kenzie said in a broken voice, indicating the approaching ghouls, “are the practice runs.”

The lights went out and Kenzie was suddenly in darkness. Doc fell heavily to the floor, mercifully unconscious. Kenzie heard the sound of several children giggling, then the rustle of clothing and the smacking of their greedy little lips.

He knew that his backup would eventually arrive, but that they would be far too late. Kenzie put the gun in his mouth and gripped it as tightly as possible. He promised himself he would pull the trigger the second he could no longer stand the pain.

A Host of Shadows

“This may hurt a bit.” If Dr. Neumann is aware of the cliché, he hides it well.

The surgeon is a squat, balding gnome with yellowing, uneven teeth like chipped piano keys. The patient on the table is confused and frightened and does not remember anything except his name. Neumann turns from the table with busy, white-gloved hands. Meanwhile, the helpless man’s senses telescope as a wickedly long needle approaches and freshly starched medical greens whisper obscenities.

“Wait.” Quinn despises himself for sounding frail. “Not yet. What are you going to do to me?”

Neumann purses his ruined mouth, cocks his head. “Mr. Quinn, we have been over this a number of times.”

“I don’t remember.”

“This we know.”

“Are you comfortable?” There is a tall, coltish nurse, who would normally be considered attractive in a surfer-girl kind of way, but at the moment, standing in the corner, half covered in shadow, she most resembles a praying mantis. She is tactful, sotto voice; asking if Quinn needs more medication. He likes the hushed drug glow just fine, hell it’s better than a pitcher of martinis at Happy Hour, he’s nicely fucked up, but any more and he’s likely to fade out completely…and then what happens?

Quinn realizes he has waited far too long to answer. “No, I’m comfortable. I want to stay awake.”

“Remember, we can do this either way,” Dr. Neumann says, crisply. “But we must deal with your delusions once and for all.” He dons a thick pair of glasses, positions the needle sideways on a glittering silver tray. “It would certainly be helpful to have you cognitively present to contribute to this examination, but that is not absolutely essential to the success of the procedure.”

“Are you certain?” Convince them you’re fine.

“Excuse me?”

“Certain this is necessary, and that I am…hallucinating.”

Nurse Elizabeth glides spider-sideways out of the gloom, pats his arm just above the taped IV. “Be calm, sir.”

And Dr. Neumann says: “Oh, but you are already far more rational on the Haldol, yes? Mr. Quinn, one of the drugs you have received is a powerful anti-psychotic. You have been suffering from some quite spectacular delusions. You must allow us to help before it is too late.”

“What if I’m not crazy?” You’re not. Don’t let them do this to you.

“Excuse me?”

“Have you got the right guy? This could be a mistake. You did read my file, right? Jesus, you’re not about to operate on the wrong man are you? I’ve read about stuff like that, amputating a perfectly good leg.”

“Let me offer an example.” The good doctor leans down and Quinn can see himself reflected in large, oval lenses. “You told us that you believe you have seen some kind of an unknown parasite. You are convinced that it causes violent behavior in humans. Yes?”

“Yes. No. I’m not sure.”

“Well, my dear Mr. Quinn, I can assure you of one thing. That was not a delusion. In point of fact, such creatures do exist.”

Large rush of adrenaline, time slows like a drool of cold syrup. The man who knows himself as Quinn squints up at the surgeon, one eyebrow raised. Images appear. His tongue abruptly feels carpeted. “Parasites that cause violence?”

“Astrocytoma is a rare but efficient tumor in the frontal lobes, Mr. Quinn. As I’ve said, it can cause severe emotional disturbance, dizziness, mental confusion and both auditory and visual hallucinations. I believe you have such a tumor, and cancer may certainly be viewed as a parasite. All we need to do now is explore how to best attempt to remove the astrocytoma with a minimum of collateral damage.”

“Without turning me into a potted plant?”

No answer. The air thickens. Quinn swallows dryly, sleepily. “I just can’t believe it’s come to this. Someone I don’t know from beans is going to saw a hole in my skull and dig around in there with some shit that looks like an electric toothbrush and a tuning fork, and he says it’s going to hurt. God, why this is happening?”

“Now, now.” The nurse wipes Quinn’s feverish brow with a cool cloth. With economy of movement, Dr. Neumann busies himself with a tower of electronics that glitters like a blackened Christmas tree. He taps a monitor with two gloved fingers then slaps it with his palm. The screen flickers on, a blurry smear of color, and confirms that at least one of the probing devices will contain a miniature camera. Neumann keeps his back turned as he covertly tests something.

RRRRrrrrrrRRRRRrrr.

Quinn vaguely hears the nasty, tenor snarl of a small bone saw. He writhes, whimpers.

“I think… I’m going to be sick.”

“Now, now.” It’s Nurse Elizabeth, again wiping his moist brow. That’s her name, Elizabeth. Quinn thinks: This bitch is like one of those goddamned Disney robots. His fear is rapidly becoming palpable, stronger than the medication, and again all he wants to do is delay. Talk. Stall. “Did you read the report on me, Doc? All the way through, I mean?”

The surgeon is still turned away, hunched over, the bone saw growling again—RRRrrrrRRRR—even more aggressively this time. “We all did.”

Quinn goes blank. “Did what?”

The surgeon and the nurse exchange knowing glances. He says: “Read the report.”

“Wait! I remember now.” Quinn begins to babble. And in a way, he does remember. “I started getting these headaches, you know? Right smack in the middle of my forehead, where they used to say there was a third eye. Ha. Nobody could find anything wrong with me, though, not at first. They wired me up and stuck me with needles and did every test they could think of before saying it was all in my head. That’s one sick joke in itself, right? All in my head.”

“Now, now.” Female fingers on his temple.

“Stop saying that!” Quinn knows his voice has gone up an octave or two, kind of a soul scream, and he’s rambling now but can’t seem to stop talking. “It came out of nowhere. I was talking to one of the physicians, some specialist named Edison, a big guy with white hair. And he looked out the window and I saw something coming out of his right ear. It was kind of like a small earthworm, but with antennae, and all black and shiny. It wiggled for a second and then went right back in.”

“Just so.” Apparently satisfied, Dr. Neumann brings the small bone saw over to the silver tray. He sets it down on the table, next to the hideously long needle. “And obviously, something like that is illogical and absurd. Yes?”

“Perhaps, but…”

“You must not agitate yourself,” the surgeon offers, gently. “Staying calm is best. Your mind will produce less dissonance that way.”

“Doc, you don’t need to do this. I can get better on my own.” Again, Quinn hears the desperation, that frail voice. And again it shames him. Because Quinn does not know anything for certain, has begun to lose faith in his own sanity. But if I believe I’m crazy, I’m not crazy anymore, right? I read that somewhere.

“Now, now.”

Quinn moans. “Nurse, please, let me have some water.”

“We can’t do that,” she whispers, efficient as ever. “You might aspirate and strangle on your vomit. It won’t be long now.”

“Wait. Wait.” Now Quinn needs to finish the story. “I really do remember. I didn’t say anything at the time, I mean everyone would have thought I was crazy, but that weekend I was watching the basketball game and I changed back to the local news at halftime, and…”

Dr. Neumann raises the needle, caresses the plunger, a jet of clear liquid ejaculates into the frigid air. His huge glasses now reflect something or someone squatting behind Quinn’s head, in a clenched fist of darkness well behind the nurse, but a second later it is gone. Wait, who was that?

“…Anyway, the news said this doc named Edison had gone completely bonkers over the 4th of July weekend.”

The nurse feigns interest. “Really?”

Quinn pauses to breathe, his eyes crossing to focus on that freaking needle, willing it to freeze in space and time. “He poisoned his whole family. He put something medicinal in the party punch, related to curare, that ‘rendered them immobile,’ the news said. Something commonly used in surgeries, I think. And then he cut them up with scalpels while they were paralyzed but could still feel everything.”

“How ghastly. Did they ever catch him?” Dr. Neumann asks. It is clear he either does not care or already knows the answer. The long needle moves closer to the trembling flesh of Quinn’s exposed vein.

“No, he got away somehow.” No, don’t!

“Tragic.” Was that voice male or female? Actually, Quinn is not sure anyone spoke the word. Perhaps he imagined it.

“Amazing.” Who said that? Are there others in the operating room?

“So,” Neumann masks his lower face, reaches forward with the syringe, “and now we begin.”

“Wait!” Something else occurs to Quinn, something deeply disturbing. “Didn’t you just hit that dirty monitor with your fingers?”

The doctor shrugs. He examines the needle again, checking a second time for air bubbles. Satisfied, edging closer, he bends over and cloaks Quinn in velvet shadow. While groping for a vein, he finally responds. “The monitor can be uncooperative at times.”

“But that means your gloves aren’t sanitary anymore, doesn’t it?”

“No worries,” the doctor whispers, feigning a mediocre Aussie accent. The nurse clamps down on Quinn’s bare shoulder. Someone else is nearby. A male moans in a low voice, the sadist in sexual ecstasy.

“Wait, I mean, you’re about to fuck around with my brain for God’s sake! Wait. And what’s in that thing? What drug are you giving me?”

The needle penetrates and his entire body slides into a deep puddle of warm, loose mud. Now Quinn can recall having been worried about something recently, but he has no idea what; even when the saw roars to life, he remains calm and indifferent. A few more pinpricks render his face and forehead numb.

RRRrrrrRRRRRrrr.

He is neatly scalped and feels some tugging. The top of his skull is gently removed with a sticky pop. Quinn grunts; his eyes float lazily to the monitor and register pulsing red and blue patches and the tip of a long aluminum probe.

“Now, I need to know exactly what happens,” the good doctor whispers, “when I touch this…”

…He is thirsty beyond description. The heat slams down hard, splintering the rocks ahead into fragments that glow like gleaming shards of broken mirror. There is a miniscule pocket of shade lurking beneath the stunted row of browning tamarind trees over to his left. Quinn stumbles that way, licking dry lips, hoping to find water. The sun has been up for nearly two hours. He will have to rest. It is already too hot to make good time. Quinn makes for the shade and aims his deerskin boots at flat rocks to hide his tracks. He crawls under the half-naked trees, pulls dried sage over his body and covers his eyes. He wants to rest but he can still hear the tormented, feeble screams of that mule skinner the Apache roped to a wagon wheel, the one they are slowly roasting to death. Quinn cannot understand that need. Killing a man is one thing, necessary from time to time, but taking pleasure in his extended suffering…

Pebbles rattle in a nearby arroyo. His heart kicks hard. Quinn clings to the big-bore Hawken rifle and its nearly exhausted pouch of ammunition. On the other side of the slope the Mexican boy shrieks on and on without respite or release. Quinn’s hands are shaking as he brings the barrel to his own mouth. He swallows dry spit and resolves to shoot himself rather than be captured by the savages. He waits. Listens…

“Mr. Quinn?” Dr. Neumann seems irritated. “You must remain focused for this approach to be effective. What happened when I touched you there?”

“Bright light,” Quinn manages. Gags. “I was somewhere else.” He is very thirsty. “It was very hot, like a desert. I heard my feet moving in the dirt and a noise like someone screaming from far, far away.”

“Ah.” The doctor seems satisfied. “We have both light and sound, then. And we certainly all know who was screaming, now don’t we? Very good, thank you.”

The instrument teases new tissue. Its image on the monitor quivers, as if the probe were somehow aroused. “And what happens now?”

…The old man is looking down at withered arms and spotted hands that cling to a dented walker. His brown slippers whistle-thud along worn shag carpet streaked with sunshine and shadow. With every forced step, he grunts darkly. Some dim and still furious part of him remembers being young. He hates what his body has become. He wants to make it to the front window; wants to be looking out that window not trapped in his own shit and piss in the bed in the room with the others who have become as helpless as infants. He wants to drink fresh water. There is light outside, birds and colors and fresh, clean wind…

“Wind,” Quinn says in a voice startlingly loud. He thinks: Where was I just a moment ago? What was I dreaming?”

Dr. Neumann’s eyes crinkle slightly above the white mask, which bellows and sucks with increasingly rapid, very shallow breathing. He seems agitated, but also genuinely puzzled. “That one made you hear it as the wind? Odd.”

Quinn sees the monitor, struggles to make sense of it, starts to object but then comes another touch of the probe—again no immediate pain; in fact this time just a whirling dervish of color and sound…

…A sunny day but not a dry one

—he sees a stretch of damp, sparkling backyard grass and the twirling hiss of a lawn sprinkler. Quinn drops the shovel and blinks away sweat. Pleased, he watches a bronzed young woman with long, brown hair and almond eyes dancing through the cool spray. She wears a man’s white t-shirt, and the wet fabric flatters her body and reveals tantalizingly pert nipples and a wet triangle of her sex. She smiles broadly, winks and waves. He looks down, examines his hands and finds them calloused; his arms are strong and roped with a younger man’s muscle. She approaches, her hips swaying, and he moves to touch her but the world turns black and his hungry fingers touch empty space, and a bitter emptiness…

“Not that, not the emptiness,” Quinn cries. Her abrupt absence renders him inconsolable. I was really there that time, not imagining it. “Please no.” Take me back. He means to beg them for more but emits a sobbing cough instead. “I’m so thirsty.”

The nurse clucks her tongue and dabs his brow. She offers something likely intended to reassure Quinn. What emerges is a garbled drone. Time warps. The universe crackles like tin foil. Dr. Neumann adjusts the white mask. He scratches his face, shakes his head. “What emotion did you feel just then, Mr. Quinn?”

“Please don’t do that again,” Quinn gasps. Please, don’t bring me back here. Not to this room. Leave me with her.

“The…emptiness?”

“Not that.” Quinn cannot make them understand. He begins to cry. “The emptiness.”

Neumann chuckles. “I see. Well, obviously that place you call the emptiness has served to make you feel very, very sad.” He looks up and away as if playing to an invisible audience. “We are getting closer, yes?” He writes something down on a notepad.

Closer to what? Who else is here?

“Who are you people?” Quinn shouts. “What are you doing to me?” He is suddenly full of terror because the answer is abruptly coming to him, knowledge that has Quinn fearing his own swollen heart might burst. He begins to fight for his sanity, his life. He struggles, kicks.

The medical team chirps and sooths as the patient bucks mightily against frayed canvas restraints. The fresh flow of cold adrenaline helps bring clarity. Now the man called Quinn knows that he has not been ill at all, that he does not belong here and that this operation is a fraud. He’s being drugged, tortured. He bites down on his own cheek; hard, and again harder. The pain snaps him into focus.

There are secrets he must keep.

Then a jarring paradigm shift allows Quinn to take it all in; first a miasma of odors ranging from pungent disinfectant to urine and excrement, then the truth of his surroundings. The operating room is not pristine at all; it is a dusty basement or garage of some kind, filled with odd equipment gone orange with rust. The floor is concrete and stained with what appears to be dried blood. He has soiled himself repeatedly.

“Enough foreplay.” Someone offstage, addressing Neumann. “Let’s make the little traitor talk.”

Quinn stiffens himself. Now he has another, vital piece of the puzzle. He knows that voice, although he cannot place it right away. He tries mightily to concentrate and finally pictures an athlete gone to seed, a tall man wearing a uniform with the garish epaulets of the Secret Police, a Colonel.

Christ, my cover is blown, I’ve been captured. The patch must have held, so they’re trying to break me this way.

Dr. Neumann hurries closer. Is this real? The surgeon seems visibly afraid of the officers seated in the darkness as if picturing his own fate should he fail. Perhaps his assignment is to devise a way around implanted suggestions, programs that place a subject’s secrets beyond the reach of physical pain. If that’s true, the frantic surgeon must open the human lockbox prone on the gurney and retrieve the secrets buried there, or take Quinn’s place in a torture chamber.

Quinn gathers what saliva he can assemble and when Neumann bends closer, he spits in his face. “Fuck you!”

Dr. Neumann turns away, a little unnerved. “This one is strong.” He searches for more anesthetic. “We must calm him.”

“No. No more drugs.” The Colonel’s voice again. “We want him to suffer.”

Someone tightens the clamp on the vice holding Quinn’s head in place. It does not hurt, but he feels something in his skull crack and slide down and sideways a bit. He no longer fears death—just the long, nightmarish journey ahead.

Quinn hears the raspy scratch of a match and a few seconds later catches the scent of an expensive cigar. Everything is vivid, clear. Something in Neumann’s approach has worked, just not as they’d intended. Panicked, Quinn swims up as if from the bottom off a deep, cold well and remembers that his real name is Neil Cassidy, and the identities and locations of the others in his group, including his lover, Martine. No!

He is fully present in the torture chamber now, and that stark reality horrifies him. Within moments he will have no defense. Without the patch he is certain to break and give them everything they want.

He attempts to swallow his tongue. The nurse jams a stick in his mouth.

“Again.” The eager voice of the Colonel, followed by the wicked touch of that electric probe… Frozen water everywhere and Cassidy stands at the top of a crystal white mound, surrounded by pine trees bowed down, heavily weighted with fresh, sparkling snow. The boy whoops for sheer joy and watches as a long plume of dragon breath pops from his mouth to dissipate in the crisp morning air. He looks down the slope and his small hands, now gloved in blue wool, grip the sides of the sled. He kneels right at the edge of the slope, takes a deep breath and pushes himself over, roars down the chute like a cannonball. Then he becomes afraid of crashing into a tree, being seriously hurt, being crippled or killed. Now he hollers from fear, not excitement. His ears are so cold they hurt and the air screams defiance, a high-pitched wailing sound, or maybe it is not the air, maybe it is someone’s voice, maybe his own voice…?

“Give the gentleman some time,” the Colonel says, almost pleasantly. “I see no point in being rude.”

But this time Cassidy/Quinn cannot stop screaming. On and on, the ghastly sound continues unabated, as if wrung from the soul of a tormented Mexican roasting on a wagon wheel under the blistering Texas sun; or perhaps it’s the wail of a proud man rotting in the body of a stranger, or a good man torn from the embrace of his wife forever. No, it is the freezing wind in the ears of a small boy headed for a rendezvous with death. The awful shriek bounces off concrete walls and echoes across two hundred and fifty years before finally coming to rest beneath Cassidy/Quinn’s ragged, labored breathing.

“No more.” Who said that?

He will betray his friends, of this there is no doubt; babble and wail incoherently until he has spilled everything and anything to avoid what Neumann has been doing with that probe, those needles and the drugs. It must stop.

I was really there,

the prisoner thinks, frantically. I was not here; I was really there, back in that mound of snow. He swallows, forces words: “I’ll talk.”

A chair squeaks as the Colonel shifts around in the gloom. “But of course you will, Cassidy. Why not? Most of your friends already have.”

“Bullshit.”

“Give me their names.”

“Please. I can’t.”

“No?” The chair again, complaining. “Apparently you need more motivation. Neumann? We may as well give him that last one again.”

The prisoner suddenly comes to a decision. “Okay, okay” he cringes, “but please not the emptiness again. Not that. I can’t bear it.”

Dr. Neumann slows for a second, absorbing the content of the sentence. He quickly consults his notes, locates the area now specified as ’emptiness,’ and looks for permission to return to that particular section of exposed brain. Apparently the Colonel nods, for Neumann adjusts position and resumes probing.

The surgeon actually whispers “I’m sorry” as he presses down…a bronze young woman with long, brown hair and almond eyes is dancing through the cool spray of the backyard sprinkler, it is Martine and she wears a man’s white t-shirt, the wet fabric flatters her body and reveals tantalizingly pert nipples and a wet triangle of her sex…

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

…Martine smiles broadly and she winks and waves. Cassidy looks down to examine his hands and finds them calloused; his arms are strong and roped with a young man’s muscle…

“Answer me damn it, what’s wrong?”

…She approaches, her hips swaying, and he walks to meet her, and both space and time are standing still…

“Did you lose him?”

“I don’t know what happened.”

“Look at him. He’s a drooling vegetable, that’s what happened.”

“Some form of catatonia, perhaps?”

…The sun beats down on bare skin lathered with sweat and sunscreen and a body loosened by enjoyable physical labor…

“Idiot! He is of no use to me like this.”

“Doctor,” the nurse calls, urgently, “the patient is no longer breathing.”

“What?”

“Flatline.”

“Bring him back!”

“We are trying. Clear. Clear.”

“Doctor…?”

…It is a sunny day but not a dry one—Cassidy sees a stretch of damp, sparkling backyard grass and hears the twirling hiss of a lawn sprinkler. And then she is there again, smiling.

Martine.

Free. I am free…

Wait.

The patient opens his bloodshot eyes. The surgeon is a squat, balding gnome with teeth like chipped piano keys. Quinn is confused and frightened and does not remember anything, anything at all, except for his name.

The surgeon pats his hand in a macabre parody of bedside manner.

“This may hurt a bit.”

_______________

“The individual has a host of shadows, all of whom resemble him and for the moment have an equal claim to authenticity.”

—Soren Kierkegaard

A Few Notes

Okay, I told Dark Regions that I was somewhat ambivalent about doing this kind of stuff. Commenting on how stories came to be written and published. Not sure why, except I’m a bit leery of sounding pretentious. First, I don’t know how anyone else works, but I generally plan what I’m doing in advance. However, despite that tendency, short stories sometimes just happen to me. And I don’t know how or why. Secondly, I may be a better long distance runner than sprinter. Despite an abiding love for the form, I’m also more confident about the quality of my (recent) novels than any of my short fiction.

Having said all that, I’m now going to contradict myself and do it anyway. Just figure you guys who’ve laid out hard earned dollars for my work ought to have the option to know what’s behind all these stories if you want it. If you don’t, feel free to skip all this, and thanks for reading...

1. “Blood and Burning Straw.” Ever since “Apocalypse Now,” the Viet Nam War has been accompanied in the zeitgeist by the sound of helicopter blades. A police chopper went over our house one night, with a flood light searching a nearby street. The idea for the opening scene popped into my mind, along with the title. I sent the story to Robert Morrish and Rich Chizmar at Cemetery Dance, along with one called “Araneida.” To my delight, they bought both of them two or three months later.

2. “The Easy Way.” My good friend and AA sponsor Hal Cornelius, who passed away in 1991, once visited a friend in the hospital, a man in terrible pain. Hal asked me to promise to bring him a gun if that ever happened to him. Hal passed away suddenly from a heart attack. I never had to deliver. One day several years ago I began to wonder how it would feel to have to have kept such a terrible promise. After debating whether or not it would “fit” at Cemetery Dance, Bob Morrish and Rich Chizmar bought this one, too. It remains one of my favorites.

3. “A Handful of Dust.” Dave Zeltszerman is a solid crime writer. He used to edit the online ezine “Hardluck Stories.” Dave asked me for a tale. I love hitman pieces, though finding any kind of new twist on them is always a challenge. This was just a fun mental puzzle. The first ending seemed too obvious at first, so I went back and added a bit more misdirection.

4, “Lucky” was written for the great Ed Gorman, who was editing an issue of “Hardluck Stories” for Dave. He said he wanted noir stuff with an Old West setting. I thought the idea was fun, a new take on the trope of the guy with a criminal heart bested by the femme fatale. This one is scheduled to appear in a Cemetery Dance anthology called “On Deadly Ground” sometime in 2011.

5. “And the Worm Shall Feed.” Who could resist contributing to an anthology of horror stories set in World War II? “A Dark and Deadly Valley” was edited by Mike Heffernan and published by Silverthought Press. My conceit is the cosmogonic cycle, life devouring life, over and over again. I’d recently read a book about some US bomber pilots who’d been killed and eaten by the Japanese. The book explored the horror from both sides. That really disturbed me. Anyway, I wanted to catch something immediate and brutal, and I also got to try out a new writing style.

6. “Jailbreak.” Horror author and homicide cop (what a wonderful combo that is) Joe McKinney asked me to contribute to a zombie anthology, with proceeds quietly going to charity. I asked my friend Steven W. Booth, who’d been working on his first novel, if he wanted to collaborate. We emailed the story back and forth, with Steven generally doing the first pass on the next section. This one gives away how much I adore Joe R. Lansdale.

7. “All the Dead Lie Down.” Nanci Kalanta of Horror World was under the gun when someone failed to deliver a story as promised. I’d been somewhat creatively constipated, so I agreed to write one on a day or two’s notice. I wish the writing were a little tighter, but I do kind of like the directness of it.

8. “Thus Was His Death” was also sold to Horror World, I believe it was their first story published under Nanci, but at my age you forget some things and tend to make others up, so who knows? Anyway, I was just musing on war and some people’s worship of combat, and wondering what the government would do if it heard about an ancient weapon that would flat out drive troops batshit. Needless to say, I have no doubt they’d find it and use it, with disastrous results.

9. “Violent Delights” was written for a small press collection called “The Fear Within” published several years ago. I also read it at Horrorfind 2003. I’d just read the newspaper accounts of a woman who’d allowed a homeless man to die on the hood of her car because she was afraid of getting into trouble. It sounded to me like a young actress full of narcissism. Bingo. Anyway, I still haven’t seen the movie “Stuck,” which was no doubt inspired by the same article. At least one would hope.

10. “Mobius Dick.” Novelist Steve Lukac is a great guy. We collaborated on this weird point-of-view story several years ago, and both somehow forgot about it. There’s a twisted sense of humor in here that still entertains me, so we opted to use this anthology as an opportunity to get it into print. The title comes from something one of my clients, an attorney, once said about relationship issues. I used the example of the Mobius strip, something that has no beginning or end, and he abruptly offered his own profane definition of that phenomenon. The guy eventually gave me a baseball cap with a Mobius Dick on it.

11. “The Fever Called Living.” Kelly Goldberg was a talented author and dedicated Social Worker. She was a delightful human being with a marvelous, dry wit. We became online buddies and eventually met at World Horror Convention in Phoenix, Arizona. We wrote this story via email, and it was quickly published by Gothic.net. Sadly, Kelly died of cancer not long afterward. We’ve attempted to reach her husband with no success. I thought this story belonged back in print, as a tribute to Kelly, and we’re going to donate her share of any royalties to the American Cancer Society.

12. “Another Hell.” This one began as a detective yarn, but didn’t seem to come alive. It became a trunk story, and then one day I pulled it out and pondered a new ongoing character, a sort of Repairman Jack guy of the hardboiled variety. That gave me an angle to complete the telling, though as of this date haven’t done anything about bringing back the hero in another story. I just thought it was kind of fun.

13. “The Name of the Wicked.” I love a good zombie. I love the Wild West. Joe Lansdale’s stuff plays around with the two together, which happens all too seldom. This is one of those things that wrote itself from the first line, but I never submitted it. I think it was in the Delirium Books ultra-limited hardcover edition of “Night of the Daemon” as a bonus feature, but other than that hasn’t been published.

14. “Night Nurse.” This is comment on health care in America. In May of 2009, my sorry old Irish ass was hospitalized for severe stomach pains. Naturally the insurance company sent me home, calling it “acute gastritis,” although a friend of mine, a physician’s assistant named Frank Abt, warned me it was my gallbladder. Two weeks later I was back with pancreatitis and 102 degree fever in addition to even more agony from gallstones. They tried to send me home a second time, but I called them on it. I’d had enough, and I also didn’t want my little girl to have to go through seeing Dad in agony again. After a few days on IVs, pain medication and a meager liquid diet, I endured surgery on her 10th birthday. About a month later, Mark Sieber of Horror Drive-In asked me for a story. Gee, I thought, what can I think of that feels topical and scary...? Hmmm… The story won the Black Quill and was nominated for a Stoker, so something good came out of losing my gall bladder.

15. “Tokens” is just a fun ghost story. I’m addicted to desert settings, because of my boyhood in Nevada. The tale is several years old now, and if memory serves was first published in a little small press magazine called Bare Bones.

16. “Darkness Comprehended.” Gord Rollo has become a fine young novelist. He hit me up about collaborating a few years ago, and this story was promptly published by City Slab magazine. I seem to remember it being in a zombie anthology but can’t recall any royalty checks, so either the anthology never came out or the usual small press fiasco resulted. Believe me, we all do this more for love than money.

17. “In Darkness, Screaming.” Jack Fisher was publishing a magazine called “Flesh and Blood.” Jack’s a talented guy. He was working on a story and emailed me with questions about a therapist approaching such a patient, etc. I tried to answer simply at first, but things rapidly got complicated, so I ended up collaborating with him. I honestly love the ending, which is all Jack’s. For me, that last line really works. Anyway, Horror Garage picked it up. This anthology is the only other exposure it’s gotten.

18. “The Need for Illusion” was first published in an online magazine called Lennox Avenue. It’s another one that wrote itself. I had a vague idea about the atmosphere and setting, and a creepy farmer the kids wanted to torment, but no idea where it was going beyond that. The ending just wouldn’t come, so I went back to the top to polish it and on the third or fourth trip the plot solidified.

19. “Concrete Gods.” Editor/author Kealan Patrick Burke and I both planned to be at a Horrorfind Convention in Baltimore in the early 2000s, and Kealan wanted us to put together a limited chapbook to sign and give away. There were only 100 printed as I recall. He sent me the first couple of pages. I rewrote them, continued on a ways and fired it back. He did the same, and eventually gave it an ending. It was also published in the volume “In Delirium 2,” as a gift to Shane Staley of Delirium Books.

20. “Blacktop” was also written for Kealan Patrick Burke, who had volunteered to edit a book for the authors and fans who’d hung out at Gorezone, the precursor to the message board at Shocklines. The book was called “Tales from the Gorezone.” All proceeds went to a charity for the defense of sexually abused children. Once again, my fondness for the desert of my boyhood infects my perspective.

21. “Some are Born to Endless Night” has a simple conceit, an established trope, but one I’ve always enjoyed if handled delicately. I was sitting at the computer one night and heard some noises outside. Not much more to it; I just let that feeling nag me into finding the first line. The quotation came later, when I was searching for a title. This one is just for the collection.

22. “The Place of Excrement” is a brand new story written for this collection. Hospitals freak me out and, as stated earlier, so does the current state of our healthcare system. The first line came to me, and I just went with it. About four pages in, the point of the story emerged. It gave me a cornrow of goose bumps, so I made some notes and finished things up.

23. “Araenida” was picked up by Cemetery Dance at the same time as the first story in this collection. Child abuse really horrifies and bewilders me, so it tends to pop up in my fiction. If memory serves, I had the basic idea in my head first, and thought the young ones should be allowed to get even for a change.

25. “Suffer the Children” was a completed short story when Kealan Patrick Burke approached me about contributing a novella for a new Cemetery Dance anthology called Brimstone Turnpike. When he explained the basic idea, it crossed my mind to expand this one. I sent Kealan what I had with notes on how it could be lengthened, and he loved the idea. Incidentally, although I’m dying to try it again, novella length fiction turned out to be tough for me. Everything always felt either too long or a bit too short. I still want to try it another time or two, though. Anyway, I figured it might be fun to have the original short story that inspired “Behold the Child” out there, even if just for comparison.

25. “A Host of Shadows” was published in “Dark Delicacies 2, Fear” a couple of years ago. I had sent it out once before but it was rejected. Upon reflection, I could see why, so I completely changed the ending to make it a new beginning. Del Howison and Jeff Gelb snapped it up. It’s a complicated idea that grew out of reading an article on synesthesia and the latest brain research, so it kind of hops all over the place. Still, I like the quote from Kierkegaard and the subtext it carries, which is why it ended up being the title of this collection.

By the way, sometimes I go through Bartlett’s Quotations looking for inspiration, and that’s why you’ll see quotes at the end of some of the stories. In case you’re wondering, occasionally the quotation inspires the story, but often I’ll just use something as a title for a tale that already exists. There’s no set pattern, it’s just me looking for inspiration.

Okay, I want to thank Norm and Joe and the folks at Dark Regions for encouraging me to put this book together, and my wife and daughter for lighting up my life.

Hope you enjoyed this collection, and thanks for being there to support the genre.

Harry Shannon

Los Angeles, Calif.

October, 2009

About the Author

Harry Shannon has been an actor, a singer, an Emmy-nominated songwriter, a recording artist in Europe, a music publisher, a VP of Carolco Pictures (Terminator 2, Total Recall, Rambo), and worked as a free-lance Music Supervisor on films such as Basic Instinct and Universal Soldier. He holds an MA in Psychology and is currently a counselor in private practice. Harry has won the Tombstone, the Black Quill, and been nominated for the Stoker. Although primarily a novelist, the author has sold stories to a number of genre magazines including Cemetery Dance, Horror Garage, City Slab, Crime Spree and Gothic.net. He contributed to a Cemetery Dance Publications’ Brimstone Turnpike, as well as shorter fiction to several genre anthologies, among them Dead West, A Dark and Deadly Valley, Dead Set and In Delirium II.

Shannon's first signed limited edition short story collection Bad Seed debuted in June of 2001. His debut horror novel Night of the Beast—the first in a pulp trilogy set in northeastern Nevada—was released in 2002. The acclaimed Night of the Werewolf won the small-press Tombstone Award for Best Novel of 2003. The final book in the series, Night of the Demon, was released by Delirium Press in 2005. These 'Night' books are currently out of print, but may be back in 2010.

Harry Shannon's first noir effort, Memorial Day (A Mick Callahan Novel), takes place in fictional Dry Wells, Nevada. The sequel, Eye of the Burning Man, came out in November, 2005. A third Mick Callahan novel, One of the Wicked, will be released in fall of 2008.

Shannon's first thriller The Pressure of Darkness was released in November of 2006.

Visit him online at:

www.harryshannon.com

Here’s an excerpt from “PAIN,” a new novella by Harry Shannon from Dark  Regions Press. Sign up for our mailing list to hear  about new releases, contests, discounts and special offers at:

www.darkregions.com

_______________

8:27 PM

“Freeze…”

Low, hoarse whisper on a frosty night. Five soldiers smoothly drop to their knees, weapons raised and facing the woods in a lethal arc. Cap Rogers has commanded them since the beginning, all the way from Afghanistan into mercenary work for Blackwatch. His word is law. Sweat rapidly cools in a light breeze. Their NV goggles, silenced weapons and black clothing, all carefully cleared of battle rattle, make them look like a horde of giant insects. A full moon inches across the heavens, quietly slips behind a thick, brooding cloud. To these anxious men the entire world is flowing ink and bustling shadow. Down below, in the trees, something screams high and shrill. A grunting figure crashes through the brush, headed their way, but then veers south instead. Other things pursue it, shrieking with rage. A dozen or more pairs of feet crunch through leaves, twigs and half-frozen dirt.

“Hold your positions,” Cap whispers.

His tense men hear him grainy in their headsets, that deep voice thick with tension. They are on edge and itching to get home, but trust this man implicitly. Cap looks like a recruiting poster for Special Ops; big boned, buff and steely-eyed.

“Hang tough,” Cap says then. “When this bunch is past, we’ll make a break for the highway.”

The roaring mob arcs through the night, achingly slow, almost as if taunting the team. The piteous wailing intensifies. Whatever is being pursued has apparently been cornered. Animal noises echo through the woods; a grunting, ripping and after that the wet sound of flesh being torn asunder. One horrified voice, pitch driven higher and higher and higher by pain. On and on. The men wait with widened eyes. Finally, the agonized screaming stops. Silence drops like a thick, black curtain.

Cap whispers again, “Go.”

The squad turns, jogs downhill. Cap remains behind for a long count, his cool eyes sweeping the woods, then follows his men towards the distant highway. A full moon returns to stage-light the empty clearing. After a time one timid owl resumes hooting. A few nocturnal animals stir. The breeze dies, swirls leaves, bides its time.

To the men, their rapid passage through the forest seems loud and clumsy, although only an animal or a trained hunter would be able hear them pass. The team carefully but quickly avoids thickets and hops over twigs and fallen branches. They breathe slowly and deeply. These are men already used to long jogs through the night into morning. Their training never stops. But this time a creeping sense of dread fuels their bodies. To pause is to die, and die horribly. And so they trot on and on under an indifferent, star-speckled sky.

Cap Rogers can see the thick ribbon of empty mountain highway down below, knows the emergency roadblocks will re-route most traffic via a long detour to Interstate Five, but his hopes rest on a tourist or two having left prior to the Red Alert, someone with a vehicle large enough to carry his men. People still drive vans, SUVs. Trailers pulling horses are also common in this part of Nevada. If there are no vehicles, then a place to make a stand. Anywhere but here. A good officer has to cling to hope, think on the fly, improvise. The men depend on Cap’s instincts, his ability to make a quick decision. Tonight more than ever before.

“Stop and drop.”

The men kneel, then ease themselves down, still in a half-circle facing up the hill. They do not have to be told to keep their rifles in a wide field of fire. Cap stays on one knee. He glasses the woods, sees nothing, swallows dryly. Orders the men to take two sips of water. Then they will be back up and on the run in two minutes. They are not that tired, Cap knows, he just wants to listen. The things pursuing his short team seem to travel loudly, clumsily, and it bothers him that he’s not hearing a thing right now, nothing at all. The mountain creatures around them have gone to ground. If the group stops moving long enough, something should stir out there. Unless…

Walt Bowden touches Cap on the leg. Cap looks down, flips his microphone to one side. Walt does the same. “Jesus, Cap, I mean what the hell?”

“I know. How is your shoulder?”

“Fucked up, but if I dope it any more I’ll just slow you guys down.” Bowden’s eyes show that he understands what will likely happen should he be left behind.

In the earphone, Rivera, the acne-riddled ex-marine from East L.A. “Last clip. How many you figure are still out there?”

“I’m low, too,” whispers Travis.

“Zip it,” Cap orders. Something moved. Where?

Rivera moans, “Oh, fuck me.”

Flannigan starts shooting, screaming, “Left flank! Left flank!”

The enemy come from a copse of trees to the northwest. They are spread out like a line of screaming, desiccated Confederate soldiers, all bloody wounds, tattered rags and wild hair. No set formation, just a wave of predatory rage and hatred coming out of the hungry shadows into the pale moonlight. The short team fires, their silenced weapons burping and coughing and popping like corn in hot kettles.

Cap looks over his right shoulder, makes a quick decision, calls “Move, get your asses into the rocks.”

The highly disciplined team rises, continues firing, backs up towards a thick outcropping of boulders on higher ground. One giant rock at the back of the clump curves back and away, providing decent cover. The attackers come apart, limbs dissolving into mist or ripped away, chests blossoming red; but still they attack, fearless and determined, insane with hatred or perhaps something worse. The team reaches the rocks, sets up instantly. Cap ducks behind a boulder breathing a sigh of relief but then hears a terrible sound, the cry of another of his men.

“I’m hit!” Rivera, clutching at his stomach.

Cap grimaces, shakes his head. They are all wearing Kevlar, the enemy isn’t armed, so what the fuck? “How?”

“Must have been a ricochet,” Rivera cries, “a round got under my vest.”

Something comes flying from above them, one of the bastards coming the other way, launching like an RPG, slamming into Travis. A blur of motion, thumping sounds, Travis being beaten on the head with something small and thick, like a ball-peen hammer.

His skull cracks. Black fluid sprays up and away. Travis crumbles like an opened sack of grain. Cap fires and the attacker falls. The night stops like a clock frozen between seconds. They are alone again, Cap flying fucking near solo, with three men dead. His second in command Walt Bowden is badly wounded and clumsily tending to Rivera, who’s gut-shot and unlikely to last.

Cap makes another snap decision. Grabs his communications gear, makes a small adjustment. Whispers hoarsely.

“Central, this is Alpha Dog One…

8:38 PM

Eighteen miles down the mountain, near an emergency roadblock manned by armed guards, sat a large, green canvas tent surrounded by military vehicles. Inside, amid computers and screens and cables and desks, several weekend warriors hustled and bustled about, worn expressions either terrified, confused or bored according to their level of understanding. Some had gotten pulled out of bed by coded messages; they were the frightened ones. Others were National Guard troops yanked from fighting a nearby forest fire, bored and not sure what they’re supposed to be doing there, tonight of all nights.

One woman with an air of confidence manned an outsized stack of computerized gear parked smack in the middle of the tent. Major Leanne Davidson. She was just shy of thirty, a blonde with pleasant but unremarkable features, trained body lean and strong. For security reasons, Leanne was the only one who heard Cap Rogers in her headset.

“Alpha One to Command Central, do you read me?”

Leanne blinked, surprised. She felt gooseflesh rise. Typed fast, kept her voice low. “You are breaking radio silence, Alpha Dog One.”

“Yeah, well, you been watching this, Command Central? It’s a goddamned clusterfuck up here.”

“Clusterfuck isn’t a Sit Rep,” Leanne said. She could hear panic in the soldier’s voice, though Cap Rogers spoke carefully, like an airline pilot calling in a crash landing; cool and collected on the surface but way spooked out down in the gut. He said, “Three men walking, two wounded, one critical. Low on ammo, going to ground. Request extract ASAP.”

“Roger that.”

“Okay. Where are the bad guys?”

Leanne typed rapidly. Searched her screen. The satellite photos on the monitors above her computer glowed, morphed and formed several distinct shapes. A blob of red dots collected into a group. “Moving north,” Leanne said, briskly. “Away from your position. Gone for now.”

“Good. How soon for that evac?”

“Working on it.” And she was. Major Leanne Davidson was damned good at her job. She pulled up a map, judged distances in a New York heartbeat, typed as loud and fast as a line of Irish dancers, issued marching orders pending approval. Said, “Be advised, LZ is two miles down, a flat rocky area with one main building, an evacuated ER with a decent-sized parking area.”

“Two miles might take a while.”

“Maintain silence, just get in touch when you arrive. We’ll be waiting for word. Hang in there, soldier.”

“Yeah, right,” Cap Rogers said. She heard him spit something and grunt. Blood? “This shit had better be worth it.”

Leanne severed contact without responding. She rolled back in her chair, spun to the left and stared up at a tall, balding man leaning on the console. Colonel Anthony Sharpe was commanding her unit. Sharpe had caught the last part of the conversation. Sharpe was inches from retirement, a bulky soldier struggling to save a few wandering strands of white hair. He stood rigid, gripping a dead cigar with stained fingers.

“Well,” Leanne said. “Is it?”

“Is what?”

“Is this shit worth it?” Leanne stood up. “Is it worth what’s happening out there tonight?”

Sharpe shrugged. He waved the cold cigar in the air. Half the soldiers stopped, the rest don’t even notice. Sharpe cleared his throat. “Listen up, people.”

Leanne called, “Attention!”

That did it. The room snapped to and went perfectly still. Some low radio chatter continued. A hissing from some gear. Wind beyond the tent flap.

“Everybody get out,” Sharpe said. His eyes stayed on Leanne. His voice was thick with emotion. “Do it now.”

People began to mill about, collecting papers, turning off gear, performing assigned tasks in the assumption the assignment had ended. Exasperated, Sharpe went up a few DB. Addressing no one in particular, he screamed. “What fucking part of ‘now’ do you not understand?”

Thunderous creaks and thumps and the rustle of starched uniforms as the room emptied like a barracks in boot camp. Colonel Sharpe seemed more defeated than pleased, which Leanne found bothersome. She looked around the empty command tent, cocked her head to one side. “Okay, you did that because…”

“I’ve been relieved.” Sharpe produced a small metal flask and added a hefty shot of whiskey to his coffee. He popped a couple of pills, offered Leanne drugs and her own shot of booze. She shook her head warily. “I tried all that a couple of years back. My daughter stayed dead, and my ex went right on screwing his secretary.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t care as much.”

“Jesus, Tony,” Leanne said. She snapped the whip and he jumped. “What the hell is going on?”

Colonel Sharp went pale. “I’m out. The VP heard about the casualties. He’s pissed off and hands on.”

“Aw, shit.”

“Shit indeed. Deep shit. Anyway, Blackwatch Security took over as of five minutes ago.”

Leanne sat down heavily. Her chair squeaked. “No shit? I thought they were out of government contracts these days.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Major. These people are the government.” Sharpe finished his spiked coffee, popped a useless breath mint. He snuck a quick peek at his watch. Leanne knew him. She could see the fear crawling under his skin like a horde of tiny insects.

“I’m sorry, boss.” She stood up and began to gather her things.

“No, I’m sorry,” Sharpe said, with dark emotion. “Me, I’m retired. You don’t get off that easy.”

“I’m straight military. Says who?”

“Says the Veep and the DOD. You stay. Leanne, trust me on this. Don’t mouth off. In fact, don’t say anything, don’t see anything. Don’t even think real hard. And make sure to cover your butt at all times.”

“Get out.”

A baritone voice from just outside. Sharpe stiffened, turned on a dime and left the command tent as ordered. His bald pate faded into shadow as he left through the flap. Leanne was stunned. No goodbye, no eye contact. Nothing.

“You,” the voice said. “Stay.”

Leanne sat still, held back twenty questions and a lot of foul language. Then the tent flap snapped open. Time slowed and then stopped altogether. Her stomach went cold. A tall, slender man in a black suit stepped inside. Clean featured with a nose like a hatchet, dark hair combed straight back, thick eyebrows, right on the cusp of fifty. The man smiled. He had a thin slit of a mouth. Leanne took in the suit, the eighty-dollar haircut, no wedding ring, but as a woman found him unnerving, not at all attractive. He walked closer, taking his time. Leanne showed nothing and remained seated. Her clear insubordination seemed to amuse him.

“My name is Burkhalter,” the man said, pleasantly. “You work for me now.”

This e-book is from Dark Regions Press

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Table of Contents

Introduction by Rick Hautala

Blood and Burning Straw

The Easy Way

A Handful of Dust

Lucky

And the Worm Shall Feed

Jailbreak

All the Dead Lie Down

Thus Was His Death

Violent Delights

Mobius Dick

The Fever Called Living

Another Hell

The Name of the Wicked

Night Nurse

Tokens

Darkness Comprehended

In Darkness, Screaming

The Need for Illusion

Concrete Gods

Blacktop

Some are Born to Endless Night

The Place of Excrement

Araneida

Suffer the Children

A Host of Shadows

A Few Notes

About the Author

Excerpt from PAIN a novella by Harry Shannon

Dark Regions Press Ad

Table of Contents

Introduction by Rick Hautala

Blood and Burning Straw

The Easy Way

A Handful of Dust

Lucky

And the Worm Shall Feed

Jailbreak

All the Dead Lie Down

Thus Was His Death

Violent Delights

Mobius Dick

The Fever Called Living

Another Hell

The Name of the Wicked

Night Nurse

Tokens

Darkness Comprehended

In Darkness, Screaming

The Need for Illusion

Concrete Gods

Blacktop

Some are Born to Endless Night

The Place of Excrement

Araneida

Suffer the Children

A Host of Shadows

A Few Notes

About the Author

Excerpt from PAIN a novella by Harry Shannon

Dark Regions Press Ad