Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 7

He drifted through the forest on silent feet while above and around him the air was filled with the scream of crows. The ragged black birds carted and wheeled above the Bone Man’s head, sometimes landing in rows along the arthritic arms of trees, sometimes gathering in gossiping clusters on the ground. Several hundred more of the night birds lined a twisted path, standing like diners at a buffet to peck at the rotting remains of ten thousand squashed roaches—the debris from the hysterical flight of Crow and Newton the day before.

The Bone Man smiled at the birds. He liked them, they were his friends in this. His eyes, sometimes, his ears. Why these ragged carrion birds could see him when no one else could was something even he didn’t know. Maybe they were doomed, too. Henry Guthrie had seen him that night because Henry was knocking on Heaven’s door, but then a lot of people had seen him that first night. Henry’s little girl, Val. Li’l Miss Bosslady he used to call her. She’d seen him out there in the corn when Ruger was hunting for her. The boy, the dhampyr, had seen him on the road that night, but that was when the Bone Man was being a fool and using up the little power he’d brought from the grave, being stupid and wasteful, trying to be symbolic when straightforward would have worked better—showing himself as a white stag instead of just speaking to the kid. The Bone Man shook his head as he walked, torn by the opportunities missed.

Well it’s not like you gave me a goddamn handbook on this shit! he yelled at God.

He kept walking, heading deeper into the forest, thinking about the other times the boy saw him. He was sure the kid had seen him over and over again, but it was during those weird fugues that were changing Mike from what he was to what he was going to be and who the hell knows what the kid was aware of during those moments? The Bone Man guessed, but he didn’t know. Anymore than Griswold knew—or so he hoped.

And on that topic, he shouted in his soundless voice, where the hell are you—you cowardly piece of shit?

Griswold—his personality, his presence, whatever the hell you call it…the Bone Man hadn’t sensed him since late last night. Not since Val Guthrie had shot the living hell out of that son of a bitch Boyd. Griswold—the “Man” my ass, the Bone Man thought—had gotten his mouth slapped with that one, sure enough. He may have taken down Mark Guthrie, who was always a weak sister, but not Val.

The Bone Man was grinning about that when he reached the edge of the swamp. He stopped there and the crows flocked around him, settling in the trees, fluttering their oily wings, clicking their beaks in expectation. Despite the chill of mid-October, the swamp was always warm and wet. Flies as big as bees flew low and heavy across the rippled surface, sometimes getting caught in the pop of a bubble of sulfur or methane. There were snakes in the brown grass and worms as thick a child’s finger wriggling in the tangles of rotting vegetation that choked the edges of the slough. Even to a dead man the place was unnatural and vile, and the Bone Man winced at the stink of it.

He moved slowly to the edge of the mire and looked at it. Thirty years ago he and Griswold had fought here. Right here, down deep in the shadows of Dark Hollow, while beyond the mountains the moon was clawing its way into the sky. The Bone Man had gone hunting for the man, knowing—if no one else in town did—that Griswold was the murdering bastard behind the killings that had torn the heart out of Pine Deep. The Bone Man had stabbed him with the broken neck of his guitar and then dragged his body into that mud and pushed it down with a stick until Ubel Griswold had vanished forever beneath the sludge. After thirty years in that kind of muck there would be nothing left but some fragments of bones. The mud of that swamp was filled with worms and every other kind of thing that eats. Griswold was worm food long ago.

So where was he now? Why was there no sense of him around?

The Bone Man stood there, smiling darkly down at the swamp. “Maybe you’re off sulking, you cowardly piece of shit,” he shouted. The birds squawked their support like Baptists in a revival tent. “Val Guthrie handed your boy Boyd his ass. How d’you like that? You wanted her dead—something new for your collection. You already got Billy and you got Mandy. You probably got Terry Wolfe, ’cause he’s sinking low and maybe that’s where you are…down in the dark waiting for Terry to let go and stop fighting so you can take him. You tried to get Val and you tried to get Crow, but you ain’t got shit!” The Bone Man tried to summon up moisture so he could spit on the swampy grave, but there was just dust in his throat. He’d have loved to piss on the mud, but he couldn’t do that, either. He could laugh, though, and there was no bluesman who ever lived who didn’t know how to laugh at the craziness of life.

Now he was laughing at the foolishness of the dead.

“We quite a pair, ain’t we, Mr. Man? A ghost who don’t know how to be a ghost, and a bloodsucker with no teeth who can’t bite what he wants to bite. Must really piss you off. After being the cock of the walk all them years ago it must really bite your ass to be just a shadow in the back of sick minds like Wingate and Ruger’s.” He chuckled. “And they’re a half-step shy of being too stupid to wipe they own asses…couldn’t even kill Val Guthrie. Hell, much as it pains me to say it…you, at least, were dangerous. Now you got no teeth, no claws, and no dick, and you gotta watch these clowns try and do your screwin’ for you. That just makes me laugh!”

The Bone Man was bent over laughing, slapping his knees, shaking with it as if he really had a body, his eyes shut and his head shaking back and forth as he howled. The birds in the trees cackled with him.

Far beneath the surface of the swamp, lost in an infinity of verminous earth and polluted rainwater, Ubel Griswold listened to the sound of the Bone Man’s mocking laughter. His rage was terrible.