Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 14

(1)

Val was scheduled for more tests, so Crow headed out to run some errands. It was only four, but the day seemed in a hurry to end early. It depressed Crow. For about the zillionth day in a row it was mostly overcast and as the lights of Pine Deep came on they seemed distant and weak. The air was thick with humidity even though a frost was predicted; the wind felt raw and mean. Crow jammed his hands down into the pockets of his bomber jacket and hunched his shoulders to protect his ears as he walked to his car. Even the sounds of the tourist cars on Corn Hill and Main Street were muted, distorted as if more distant than they were. The tread of his sneakers made strange sucking sounds on the damp asphalt.

He unlocked his car, slid behind the wheel, and pulled the door shut, happy to be inside the familiar shell. Here were smells he knew—old vinyl, oil, the stale aroma of the pine tree deodorizer. Not pleasant smells, but familiar ones. He keyed the engine and as the car warmed up he pulled his cell phone out and punched in a number.

“Yo,” said a voice after the third ring.

“BK? It’s Crow.”

“Hey hey, man. I’ve been seeing you all over the news.

What the hell’s happening out there in the sticks?” BK was Bentley Kingsman, an old martial arts buddy of Crow’s. They had trained briefly under the same instructor back in the mid-1980s, and had crossed paths so often at tournaments that they’d become friends. Not that they’d ever faced each other on the mat—BK at six-four and built like a phone booth was roughly twice Crow’s size—but students of theirs had traded some kicks over the years. BK worked as a cooler, or head bouncer, at one of Philadelphia’s most popular strip bars.

“Yeah, things have been pretty crazy out here.” He gave BK the necessarily edited version of all that had happened.

“Damn, brother…that’s some rough shit. Give Val my best.”

“Will do. Look, BK, the reason I’m calling is that I’ve been asked to oversee our big Halloween Festival. You know the one.”

“Sure, the Hayride and all. It’s been in the papers, too.”

“Well, with everything that’s happened I’ve gotten a bit spooked, so I want to beef up security for Halloween, just to make sure everything’s cool.”

“Spooked…or you know something’s up?”

“Just spooked, but I could use some muscle for Mischief Night and Halloween. I’ve got twelve different venues to cover—the Hayride, three different movie marathons, a bunch of celebrity appearances, a parade, and a blues concert. Any chance you could help me out?”

“Volunteer or pay gig?”

“Definitely a pay gig, so I need top of the line.”

“I know some guys. Depends on what you need.”

Crow outlined his needs.

BK whistled. “That’s a lot of feet on the ground. I can probably get Jim Winterbottom and some of his JKD guys; maybe Rick Robinson—he has that big jujutsu school over in White Marsh. Dave Pantano and some of his Kenpo boys. Maybe a few off-duty cops, too, if you don’t mind paying them under the table. I assume you’re looking for guys who can keep it cool, right?”

“I want you there, too.”

“Jeez…Halloween’s a big night at the club.”

Crow said nothing, letting BK think about it.

“Yeah, okay, I’ll get someone to cover for me. I’ll be there, and I’ll bring Billy, too.” Billy Christmas was BK’s best friend, a fellow bouncer who looked like a male model but fought like a junkyard dog. They made a colorful team.

“Thanks, BK…I owe you one.”

“Hey, as long as the check clears you don’t owe me shit, brother.”

They sorted out a few details and then Crow hung up, feeling much more relieved. BK would put together a tight team for him, he knew that, and knowing it made the problem seem a lot less vast. He fished in the glove box and came out with Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater’s Reservation Blues and slid it into the player, and as the first cut “Winds of Change” began with its moody guitars and brooding horns, Crow put the car in gear and headed out of town.

He didn’t head home though, at least not yet. Instead he took the side road that led out of town and as soon as he cleared the jam of tourist cars he found himself out on the highway, rolling along the undulating black ribbon of A-32 out into the farmlands. A few fields were still thick with tall corn, the last of the season; but most had either been harvested down to brown stubble or razed and plowed under to try and halt the advance of the blight. Only a few of the roadside farm stands were open, the ones that could afford to import goods for resale. A few stayed open with their own products, but they were rare; among them, Guthrie Farm-goods, staffed by family members of farms that had been badly hit. More of Henry’s goodwill.

Crow brooded on that as he drove. Henry and Terry, the town’s two most successful men and the ones with the biggest hearts. One dead, the other dying as the Black Harvest ground along.

He passed Tow-Truck Eddie in his wrecker and tooted his horn, but Eddie either didn’t see him or didn’t recognize him and the big machine thundered past, heading toward town. Crow also passed Vic Wingate’s midnight-blue pickup truck. Behind the glare of the headlights he could see two shadowy silhouettes in the cab, but he couldn’t see their faces. Vic and some other asshole who apparently possessed the ability to tolerate Vic’s company. Crow didn’t toot or wave, but just drove on.

When he came to Val’s farm he saw that the police guard was no longer stationed at the entrance. No one and nothing left to protect. Crow’s mood soured even more as he made the left and crunched slowly up the gravel drive to the house. He switched off the lights and engine and sat there in the silence, watching the house. There were a few lights on, some cops probably not bothering to switch them off as they left. Those yellow rectangles of light usually looked so homey, but now they felt so remote, empty of all of their promise of warmth and acceptance. The whole house seemed drained, like a battery that’s almost run down—not quite dead—but with only enough energy to be frustrating, or a cheat.

He got out and walked to the back of his car, opened the trunk, took his Beretta out of a plastic tackle box, shrugged out of his jacket, slipped on the shoulder rig, hung the Beretta in the clamshell holster, and pulled the jacket back on. He didn’t ask himself why, with all the players off the board, he felt the need to wear the pistol; part of him didn’t want to delve that deeply. Not at the moment.

He crossed the driveway, then slowed to a stop as something far to his left caught his eye. Crow peered into the gloom, seeing what he first thought—bizarrely—were tendrils, like the waving arms of an octopus or squid, but then he grunted as he realized that he was seeing the torn ends of crime scene tape fluttering in the wind down by the barn. In the distance the tape seemed to move in eerie slow motion.

“Jeez,” he muttered and headed to the house, climbed the wide wooden steps where thirty years ago he and Boppin’ Bill, Val, Terry, and Mandy would all sit clustered around the Bone Man, listening to the blues, learning about life far beyond Pine Deep.

The front door was locked, but Crow had his own key and let himself in. There was no sound except the ticking of the big grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs and the muffled scrunch of his sneakers as he moved into the living room. He stopped, looking to his right, through the dining room and into the kitchen—Connie’s domain, where she’d happily cooked a thousand meals for the family with all of the charm of a TV housewife, maybe that redhead from Desperate Housewives. Everything always had to be perfect. Though nothing would be anymore.

To his left was the big office Henry had used to run the farm and his other holdings, and next to that Mark’s slightly smaller office. The doors to both stood ajar, left open by some cop, the lights on, the occupants never to return.

Crow headed upstairs, stepping lightly, keeping his back to the wall and his eyes cutting back and forth through the gloom of the second floor. At the end of the hallway was the master bedroom where Henry and Bess had slept for forty-six years of marriage. Bess had gone first two years ago, taken by cancer, and who would have thought cancer would be the kinder, gentler way out? Henry had gone down with Ruger’s bullet in his back and had died alone out in the rain.

Crow turned. At the other end of the hall was Mark and Connie’s bedroom.

Shaking his head Crow climbed the stairs to the big bedroom on the third floor where Val had lived her whole life; Crow knew that her old stuffed toys and dolls were all carefully packed away in one of the closets. He sat on the edge of the bed, running his palm over the comforter and finding precious little comfort. And yet this was the bed where he and Val had made love so many times, where they had almost certainly conceived their child.

“Val,” he whispered, and her name seemed to chase the shadows back like a talisman held in the face of some ancient evil. “Val.”

Crow sat for a long time, soaking up the energy of the room—the only vital energy left in the whole house. Up here he couldn’t hear the ticking of the clock, but there was the soft rustle of the damp October wind through the trees and the skitter of dry leaves on the shingled roof. He sighed heavily and got up, packed a big suitcase of clothes, toiletries, and makeup for Val, and went downstairs. No way was he going to bring Val back here when she was released from the hospital; he’d convince her to stay with him. Maybe even try to get her to consider selling the farm. There was nothing left there but ghosts anyway.

He turned off most of the lights and locked the door behind him and left that house of the dead.

(2)

In his dreams Terry Wolfe ran and ran and ran, and the beast ran after. Always following, never tiring, always getting closer. Hour by hour, minute by minute, the beast closed the distance between them as Terry ran through the lightless corridors of the oubliette. There was an infinity of hallways and passages, but no matter which one he chose his running feet—slapping bare on the clammy stone floor—would circle him back to the central chamber and there, bathed in the only light that shone in that forgotten place, his body lay on its hospital bed, surrounded by useless and incomprehensible machines. Each time he staggered out of a side tunnel and skidded to a terrified halt in front of his bed, in front of his own naked and battered body, he would pause just for a second—he couldn’t risk longer than that because the beast was always just around the last bend—and he could see that his body was dying.

And that it was changing.

As the life ebbed out of him, as the life force that made him who he was drained away, the meat and muscle and bone of that physical form in the bed changed. The nails were darker, thicker, longer. Just in the last few minutes his jaw had changed, elongated, stretching to allow more teeth. His forehead had become lumpy, thrusting out a heavy brow while the skull flattened above it, sloping back. There was more hair on the face, thicker hair on the chest and arms. Beneath the lids his eyes twitched and flicked.

“That’s not me!” Terry yelled as he turned and fled away down another hallway.

The echo that chased him repeated only the last word: “Me! Me! Me!”

Behind him, just past the pursuing wave of echoes, the beast growled in red fury.

(3)

Mike came to the hospital to see Val, but her room was empty and Crow was nowhere to found. A nurse told him that Val was expected back in twenty minutes or so and asked if he’d like to wait. He told her he’d be back and just wandered the halls for a while. It was visiting hours, so none of the nurses or doctors gave him so much as a glance, even when he went downstairs into the ICU wing, which smelled of disinfectant, sickness, and fear. Mike didn’t like the smell, or the way it made him feel, and he almost turned around, but something kept him moving down the hall, as if an invisible hand pushed him gently from behind.

There were twenty-four small bedroom units, each with a big glass window to allow for maximum visibility. Mike drifted along slowly, peering through the glass into each room. Most of the units were empty, a few had old people in them, most of whom already looked dead; one had a young Hispanic man who was bound up in a complicated series of harnesses. Mike wondered if that was José Ramos, the guy who worked for Val. The one who’d gotten his neck snapped by Boyd. The thought tumbled around in Mike’s brain for a bit, stirring up different emotions. At first he felt a wave of fear—Mike could imagine almost any kind of pain, having felt so much of it himself—then the fear congealed into sadness, and he crept away, hoping that Vic never went so far overboard that he broke his neck. To be helpless like that, just trapped in a dead body, totally vulnerable, unable to even lift a hand to block the slaps or punches, or to halt the other even more terrible things that Vic could do—that would be the worst thing. He didn’t want to look at that thought and moved quickly away from that room as if distance could keep him from the dreadful images that rose up in his mind.

The next unit was ICU #322 and the patient there was also heavily bandaged and had his limbs in casts supported by straps. Mike slowed to a stop, not sure why, and stared through the open doorway at the man. The air around him seemed to shimmer, but Mike’s whole concentration was focused on that patient.

He blinked his eyes once, twice, and suddenly he realized that he wasn’t in the doorway anymore. He had walked inside all the way to the foot of the bed without any conscious awareness of the action of the passage of time. Those seconds were just gone.

The patient’s head was heavily bandaged and the visible face was just bruised meat, the skin painted black and purple, the lips puffed, the swollen eyes closed. There was no trace of dreaming movement behind those lids. Despite the beeping of the machines Mike had to watch the man’s chest for a full minute to convince himself this person was even alive. Only his face, his throat, and his fingers were visible. The arm nearest him was raised, the white cast bent at the elbow, slings supporting it off the bed so that the fingers of that hand were inches from Mike’s face. Big fingers; a big man. Mike stared in fascination at the hand. The nails were neatly manicured, the fingers showing no calluses or scars; on the back of the hand there were curls of red hair. For no good reason he could think of, Mike raised his own hand and held it near to the man’s, comparing the hairs, which were a little darker than his own. The width of the palm, the shape of the knuckles, the proportionate length of the fingers, though, were very similar to his own. Mike had never known his father, Big John Sweeney, but he always imagined that he and his dad would look alike, and this man’s hand looked like it could be his own in twenty or thirty years. Big and strong, despite the injuries. The red hair gone darker with age.

FUGUE.

The face that had looked at him from the bathroom mirror in Crow’s store was an older version of himself, with a stronger jaw and gaunt skin stretched over sharply etched brow and cheekbones. Thin, hard lips in an unsmiling mouth. Dark red-brown hair. Strange eyes. Alien.

Mike almost reached out and touched this man’s eyelids to raise them, feeling a strange compulsion to see what color those eyes were. Would they be blue shot with red and ringed with fiery gold? Mike was afraid they would be.

He did not know that he was going to touch this man’s hand, would never have deliberately done so, but it was as if some unseen hand just nudged his forward. Without warning his fingers reached out and curled around the pinky and ring finger of the comatose man.

FUGUE.

Mike Sweeney, for all intents and purposes, evaporated into mist at the point of contact. The room in which he stood, the house around the room, the world around the hospital just melted into a featureless blur, faded to darkness, and then winked out.

FUGUE.

He was not Mike Sweeney anymore. He was…nothing. A shell casing where inside something that was not Mike Sweeney shifted and groaned. Time was meaningless. If there was air he did not breathe it, or could not feel himself inhale or exhale. If there was light, then either he was blind or could not process the concept of vision. He remained still, just a husk.

He heard another squelching sound and turned quickly, freezing at once into shocked immobility as a huge white stag paced around him in a wide, slow circle. It was snow white, with just a scattering of brick-red flecks on its haunches and eyes that burned with orange fire. The rack was huge, glistening with moisture from the damp air. It moved slowly, looking at him with calm intensity. Mike knew that animal, had seen it once before, that night on the road when it had stood between him and the section of cornfield where a car had gone off the road and plowed itself deep into the field. Mike had wanted to check it out, to see if anyone had been hurt, but this deer—an albino stag—had come out of the night and had stood between him and the wreck, barring his way. With all that had happened later that night, and all that had happened since, Mike had barely remembered the animal until now, and yet here it was.

But where was here?

Mike turned his head and saw that he stood on a gravel driveway leading up to the battered hulk of an abandoned house. Above the house the sky was bruise-blue fading to blackness in the distance. Lightning burning continuously around him, charging the air with ozone, but there was no thunder—just the constant strobe-flicker of lightning above and beyond the house. It was a house he knew, though when he had seen it the shutters had been freshly painted and secure, not hanging from rusted hinges; the windows had been whole, not yawning like jagged mouths, dusty gray on the outside of the each broken pane and ink black inside the maw. On this house the shingles had been shed like scabs from old wounds, and the door hung twisted, sagging down to a porch whose boards had all buckled and warped.

Aware that the stag was watching him, Mike turned away from the house, feeling and hating the deadness of the place. He looked down a wet farm road to where a barn had stood, but it was just a charred frame from which the last few tendrils of smoke curled without enthusiasm. Beside and beyond the burned-out barn were cornfields whose leaves were pot-holed by insects and whose corn hung fat and pendulous, swollen with disease and rippling with maggots. Strangely, the air around him suddenly felt calmer and he thought he heard the blend of musical notes as some unseen hand fanned down over the strings of a guitar. It came from behind him, where the stag had stood, and Mike turned quickly back, and his mouth opened in a soundless “O.” The stag was gone, antlers, dark spots, footprints, and all.

“You the one,” said a voice that seemed to come from the middle of the air. It was deep, soft, flavored with a Southern accent. “You the one we all got to pay close mind to now, you know that?”

Mike didn’t know where his mouth was or how to make thought into sound. He tried to move but felt himself frozen in place.

“Go ahead, son…you can speak.” The voice now came from behind him. He heard the sound of fingers lightly strumming guitar strings and the sound was so soothing, so…safe.

Just like that, Mike could. Cool air rushed into his mouth and down into his lungs. “What’s going on?” he blurted.

“You dreaming, young son. You lost in the dreamworld, just like me.”

Mike braced himself to fight the immobility, but when he tried to turn it was easy; all restrictions were gone. He turned to see a black man in a dirty suit sitting on the top step of a flight of wooden stairs that led to the big wooden porch of the old farmhouse. The man’s skin was dark but ashy-gray and his hair was styled in an old-fashioned Afro, nappy with dirt and rainwater. The man smiled at him, and though his face was kindly his eyes were unblinking and covered with a thin film of dust.

“What the hell’s going on?” Mike demanded, angry and confused. “Who are you?”

The man picked out a couple of notes with his long fingers; on the forefinger of his left hand was a glass slide made from the neck of a whiskey bottle, and he drew this down the neck of the guitar to turn the notes into a wail.

“Who are you?” Mike asked again, his tone wavering between demand and plea.

“I ain’t hardly nobody no more, but you can call me Mr. Morse.”

“I don’t understand this. I don’t understand what’s going on. How’d I get here? I was at the hospital…at least I think I was…”

“You was…and you still is. This ain’t real, Mike, this is all a dream.” Mr. Morse smiled at him. He had a nice smile, but he looked very sad and tired. “You know what a shaman is, boy?”

“Sure. It’s like an Indian medicine man or something.”

“Or something, yeah. Well, a shaman would call what we got here a vision, and you’re on a vision quest.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Yeah, you do, but you don’t know you do. Y’see, Mike, you been having visions for a good long time now.” He played a few notes, the break of an old Ida Cox tune. “You call ’em dreams, but they are bona fide visions.”

“How…?”

“You been dreaming about this town just burning itself up, burning down to the ground.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know,” said Mr. Morse. “And you been having dreams of him.”

“Who?”

“You know who. You may not know his name, but his blood screams in your veins, boy. His breath burns in your throat.” The man stopped playing and leaned forward. “Look here, boy, you got to listen to me real good, because a whole lotta folks are sitting right there on the edge of that knife blade. You go the wrong way, you make the wrong choice…or worse yet, you don’t do nothing, and they all gonna die.”

“No,” Mike insisted, shaking his head.

“We don’t have to like something to make it so. Believe me, I know. Hell, yes, old Oren Morse he knows.”

“I don’t want to be responsible for people dying. I don’t want that. That’s not fair.”

Mr. Morse sighed and gave a sorry shake of his head. “Fair got nothing to do with this. This is Heaven and Hell. This is the bad times come to Pine Deep and everybody here got to play their part.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Well,” Mr. Morse said, leaning back and picking out some more notes, “that’s your choice. Everybody got a choice, even them bad ones—even they got a choice. It’s what we do with our choices that makes us or breaks us. The whole world is spinning right now on the choice you got to make.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Well that’s as may be. But your father is about to do some bad shit here in town, and Crow and Val, strong as they is, ain’t enough to stop him. Not alone. Not without you. I can’t see everything that’s gonna happen—an’ maybe that’s a good thing an’ maybe it’s not—but I know this, Mike Sweeney—if you don’t make your choice, if you don’t take your stand, then the Red Wave is going to wash over this town. It’ll start here…it’ll start in Dark Hollow, and it’ll start at the hospital, right there in that bed with your daddy in it, and it’ll start right on Corn Hill. The Red Wave will start here and there all over this town, all at once, and it’ll gain momentum and force and it’ll get so strong the boundaries of water won’t stop it, and it’ll wash out across this whole country.”

“My dad’s dead. My dad is John Sweeney and he—”

“Boy, it breaks my heart to break your heart, but Big John, good man as he was, he wasn’t never your daddy. Big John didn’t know it, but another mule been kicking in his stall.”

“Stop saying that! You’re a liar!”

Mr. Morse set down his guitar and stood up. He towered over Mike, covering him with his shadow, and his eyes were fierce. He placed his hands on Mike’s shoulders and when Mike tried to turn away Mr. Morse held him fast. His gaze was as hot as a blowtorch. “Now you listen to me good, Mike, you listen like a man, not like a boy. You listen like what you hear and what you do about what you hear matters. Don’t turn away from me, son, and don’t you dare call me a liar. You don’t know who I am, boy, but I died for this goddamn town. I died for it and my memory’s been spit on for thirty years. You think a man can rest quiet in his grave when every time his name is spoke there’s a lie and a curse put to it?”

Mike stared at him, shocked to silence, confused, his mind reeling. Mr. Morse’s hands were like hot irons on his shoulders.

Mr. Morse never blinked. Not once, and his dusty eyes were filled with a weird light. “Boy, I want you to listen to me for your own soul’s sake, even though what I’m going to tell you might take away what little love for this world you got left. I know that pain, boy, and I lost my own love and most of my hope, but by God I’m standing right here. I made my choice, and I’ll take my stand, come Heaven or Hell. Now…you going to listen?”

Mike didn’t want to. He wanted to block his ears, he wanted to hit this man, to push him away, to turn and run. He didn’t want to hear anything this man had to say. Rage mingled with terror in his chest and it felt like his heart would burst. When he opened his mouth he wanted to scream at the man, to tell him to go away, to leave him be.

What he said was, “Okay.” Just that.

That agreement unmasked a terrible sadness in Mr. Morse’s face, and for a moment he lowered his head, murmuring, “I’m sorry, boy. Believe me when I tell you that I mean you no harm.”

“Okay,” Mike said again.

Mr. Morse told him everything. Mike listened, and he listened, and he listened, and then he screamed. Sometimes the truth doesn’t set you free.