Bad Moon Rising

Chapter 21

(1)

Crow said nothing as he drove. He just put a Solomon Burke disk in and headed north. The sunny morning had given way to a thin cloud cover that was starting to thicken as they drove. Val used her cell to fill Weinstock in on what they’d learned.

“She said that the psychic vampire is the root of the word nosferatu. It’s funny, after all those Dracula movies I thought that nosferatu meant ‘undead.’ I guess we can’t trust any of what’s in fiction.”

“So what does it mean?” Weinstock asked.

“Jonatha said that at least a third of the world’s folkloric vampires were bodiless and invisible spirits who spread disease. The Romanian word nosferatu actually translates as ‘plague carrier,’ which she thinks might explain our blight.”

“Swell.”

“The main thing is, if Griswold was one of the werewolf species from Belarus or Serbia, and if he was killed, as Crow suspects, by the Bone Man somewhere in Dark Hollow, then it’s likely he’s the one who somehow turned Boyd and the others into vampires.”

She told him the rest of it and then made arrangements to meet later on. For the next ten minutes of the drive north, Val stared out at the cars passing in the other direction, her fingers tracing the outline of the small silver cross she wore around her neck. Crow knew that she must be in hell. If Griswold’s spirit was lingering in town, then Mark and Connie might also be caught in the polluted etheric tidewaters of Pine Deep.

“Whatever it takes,” he said, giving her thigh a reassuring squeeze, “we’ll take care of Mark—”

“I want to go back to the farm,” Val interrupted. “Now. On the way back to town.”

Crow nodded. “Okay. Any particular reason?”

“Dad’s guns.”

He studied her face for a moment and then looked at the dark clouds building in the direction they were headed. “Works for me,” he said.

(2)

Newton used his credit card to pay for Jonatha’s room at the Harvestman Inn and trailed behind her as she opened her door and went in. Like all of the rooms at Pine Deep’s premier hotel, it was spacious, accented in autumn colors, and very expensive. The numbers on the bill caused Newton real pain.

“I’ll be back to pick you up at six,” he said, fidgeting in the doorway.

Jonatha turned around and sat down on the edge of the big queen bed that dominated the room. They had barely spoken a word since she dropped her bomb at the restaurant, and now she sat there and chewed her lip, giving him a long and thoughtful look.

“Tell me something, Newton.”

“Call me Newt. Everyone does.”

“Okay. Tell me…what are you and the others going to do now? With everything that’s happening, I mean?”

“I don’t know. I think Crow will want to go down to Dark Hollow again, to Griswold’s house.”

“Why? If he’s a ghost, or some kind of psychic vampire spirit, then what do you think you’ll be able to accomplish? You can’t shoot him and you can’t dig him up and run him out of town on a rail.”

“I don’t know what we can do. Spray garlic over his house, or set it on fire.”

“Was he buried there? At the house, I mean?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“Sure. What good would burning his house down do for us if he’s buried on the other side of town?”

Newton frowned. “Well…we told you what happened to us. The bugs and all. Something’s there. Crow saw that the doors were all locked from the inside. He figures Boyd was using it as a hideout. Maybe Griswold’s buried in the cellar or bricked up in a wall or something.”

“That would be very convenient, and if this was an Edgar Allan Poe story I’d even say likely…but something tells me it’s not going to be that easy.”

He gave her a tired smile. “This is Pine Deep…nothing here is ever easy.”

(3)

He wanted to do one thousand cuts and then go back inside and work the store, but he lost count somewhere in the three hundreds and that was forty minutes ago. The sword handle was starting to slip in his sweaty palms and Mike’s shoulders ached as he raised the wooden blade over his head and brought it down, over and over again. He strived for the rhythm that Crow always had when he used the bokken, the hardwood training sword, but knew that his blows were clumsier, rougher, driven more by rage than art. Each time the dull edge whacked the leather wrapping of the striking post the shock through his wrists and up his arms; the ache that had started early on had blossomed into burning bands of pain that tore across his chest with each blow. Lactic acid coursed through him; his blood was a hellish cocktail of adrenaline, endorphins, and pure hate.

His eyes had long ago turned from blue to red and black flowers seemed to bloom in his vision as he hit and hit and hit.

One blow was for Vic.

The next was for his father.

The next for Vic; the one after that for his father. Over and over again, as the minutes shattered into fragments under the blows, Mike’s face twitched and snarled as he struck. A hundred blows back his nose had started to bleed, and although Mike was aware of that on some level, he just didn’t give a shit. The rage felt good. The violence—however much a sham—felt good.

The burn in his muscles felt good. Felt great. Hate felt wonderful.

The sword rose and then slammed down, first on the right side of the post, then up and down on the left side. The leather was beaten black and then pale and finally it split. Threads of it jumped into the air with each blow.

His cuts had started sloppy, had been a child’s attempt to do a man’s cut. That was two or three thousand cuts ago. Now the sword rose and struck, rose, changed angle and struck; the wood was a blur, the rhythm far better than Mike thought it was. The timing and angle and efficiency of each cut was better than it should have been.

Far, far better.

If Crow had been there, if he could have seen the unrelenting frenzy of Mike’s attack on the forging post. If he had seen the demonic fury in Mike’s eyes and the sneering brutality on his face, he would have done anything he could to stop him. He would have seen the dhampyr crouching inside the boy, and the nameless other crouching inside the dhampyr. Had Crow seen that he would have been more than just terrified for Mike…he would have been terrified of him.

(4)

It wasn’t until they pulled into the parking lot of the hospital that Val broke the long silence that had endured while they’d gone to her house to get the weapons and ammunition that once belonged to Henry Guthrie. She rubbed her palms over her face, careful of her battered eye socket, then looked at her hands for a moment as if she expected to see something there.

“Where the hell are we?” she asked as Crow turned off the engine. “I mean…I don’t know about you but I’m ready to go on a bear hunt here, but how do you hunt a ghost?”

“Damn if I know, baby. This is new territory for me. I went down to Griswold’s place and got run off by cockroaches. That’s as much as I know about what he is and what he can do.”

“As frightening as that must have been, Griswold doesn’t seem to have had that much actual power. He dropped the porch and sent the bugs, but you and Newton escaped.”

“Seemed like a pretty big deal at the time. But I see your point. If he was all that strong, wouldn’t he have just snuffed me out like that?” He snapped his fingers. “The whole bug thing didn’t really do me that much harm. Mind you, I’ll have a case of the butt-rattling shivers forever, but it’s not like I lost a leg or anything.”

“When this is all over I’ll buy you some shares in Raid.”

“I’m a Black Flag man myself, ma’am.”

She gave him a spoonful of a smile, which was a larger portion than he’d seen since Mark’s death. “My point is, honey,” she said, “that I don’t know how much of a real threat Griswold is.”

“He made Boyd and Ruger into vampires. Jonatha said that psychic vampires can make ordinary humans into vampires.”

“True, but she didn’t know how that was done,” she said. “Maybe it involves actually going to that house or those woods. Maybe when Ruger was on the run after the fight at the farm he somehow found—or was drawn to—that place. Jonatha said that all it takes is for a person to die evil and unrepentant. Well if you wounded Ruger badly enough and he died there, then maybe that’s how it happened. If so…it’s the first time in what, thirty years?”

“But then Ruger probably bit Boyd and Boyd bit Cowan and Castle. It just takes one Typhoid Mary to start a plague.”

“Okay, so where are you going with this? Do we put up signs: No Trespassing—Danger of Vampire Infection—all over the Hollow?”

She shot him a look. “No, I’m saying that maybe what needs to happen is that we find some way to sterilize that place. Some kind of ritual, or something. Maybe find a way to bring a couple of pieces of heavy equipment and tear that house down, maybe a backhoe to dig up the swamp. Till the soil and plant garlic everywhere. Something like that.”

“I love you, Valerie Guthrie. I love your strength and I love your practical mind. Those are great ideas.”

“Great ideas, but not practical,” she said. “Getting the equipment down there will take some doing…but before we go in and bust everything up I think someone needs to go back to Griswold’s house and search it from top to bottom. If he’s buried there, then we can bury him with the rituals Jonatha talked about. If he’s not, maybe there’s something else of use. Evidence, books, I don’t know what, but we should find out.”

“Roaches?”

She waved a hand. “Insects can be dealt with, that’s not the main problem, Crow. Man power is. Literally man power. I can’t do it right now—between my head and the baby I wouldn’t be any use. Newt’s…well, he’s Newt, and I don’t think he should go down there again. I doubt Jonatha would go, and Weinstock’s not the backwoods type.”

“Who’s that leave other than me?”

Val shrugged. “I think it’s time we called the cops.”

(5)

The trees grew close and blocked the sunlight, keeping the Hollow in shadows. Not that it mattered. Only a few of them were vulnerable to sunlight, and any one of those would have gladly, gleefully ignited himself if he asked it of them.

All through the morning and into the afternoon they came to him. Creeping through the forest, picking their way through sticker bush and vines, hurrying to be in his presence. They clustered around the swamp in a loose circle, each one dropping to his or her knees as they came close, their eyes fluttering closed with ecstasy as he called them and whispered to them. There was a long, continuous moan as the faithful flocked to their master, and in ranks they swayed back and forth like cornstalks in the wind.

There were hundreds of them now.

Hundreds.

Ruger walked among them, his face protected from the direct sunlight by a broad-brimmed hat, his long white fingers snugged into leather gloves. The sun caused him pain but no damage. He was smiling as he walked the inner circle of the first ring of worshippers. He could feel their passion, could taste their bloody intensity on the air, and his own heart lifted in glory.

A murmur of delight suddenly went up and Ruger turned to see the surface of the swamp bulge upward, methane bubbles bursting, steam rising from the muck as the Man moved. Ruger was well pleased. He had worked hard for this, had made sure everything was done just right.

With every kill the Man’s army got stronger, but more than that—far, far more than that—with every kill the Man himself got stronger. The release of energy from fear and despair and the horror of death—all of that was channeled along unseen energy lines to this Hollow. As each of the faithful killed and fed on blood or flesh, the Man fed on the psychic energy, growing stronger minute by minute, forming, taking shape.

Becoming.

Ruger turned and surveyed the masses. “The Red Wave!” he yelled, and they screamed it back to him.

“The Red Wave!” Louder, his voice shaking the withered leaves on the trees.

They chorused it back to him, their voices shivering the bark from the trees.

He went on yelling it and they kept replying in the litany of the damned. Each time those words pummeled the clearing the great, shifting mass that was Ubel Griswold trembled with red joy.

It was near sunset on October 29. In two days the Red Wave would wash the town of Pine Deep in blood. In two days Ubel Griswold would rise. Pine Deep would die. The world would scream.