Dead Man's Song

Chapter 26

(1)

The first swarm of roaches swept toward them. Fifty yards away. Forty. The second swarm was still a hundred yards away but it was moving with incredible speed.

“Keep running!” Crow yelled and reached back to grab Newton’s shoulder. With a growl of fury he propelled the reporter forward and then ran a half pace behind him, ready to shove him again if he slowed. “Run!”

They ran toward the rough path Crow had hacked through the vines, but by the time they had taken twenty steps it was clear that the second swarm would cut them off long before they reached it. Crow grabbed Newton’s arm and they both skidded to a halt as around them the whole forest seemed to be rustling with the sound of a million tiny legs. Crow looked back toward the house and the field. There was still that one big patch of sunlight and there was the fact that the wave of roaches had split apart to avoid it.

“God, let me be right about this,” he said and quickly squatted down to make sure his trouser cuffs were tucked tightly inside his boots. “Newt, listen,” he said, rising and talking fast. “No questions, no arguments. Just follow me. Fast!”

With that he spun around and ran full tilt toward the field—straight at the oncoming mass of insects.

Newton goggled at him. “Are you crazy?” he screeched, but Crow was going at a dead run and within seconds had reached the wave of roaches and kept going. From twenty feet away Newton could hear the sound of Crow’s Timber-lines crunching on the shiny backs of the creatures, the carapaces cracking like pistachio shells. Crow ran fast, arms and legs pumping, heading deeper and deeper into the sea of bristling black bugs. Some of them turned to pursue him and collided with the wave of oncoming bugs, causing a rage of overlapping currents that bubbled up off the ground.

“RUN!” he heard Crow yell over his shoulder.

“Oh, Jesus,” Newton said as the leading edge of the swarm flew toward him, “don’t make me do this.” Then he was running, too, and with his first step his sneaker crunched down onto the shiny black shells and he could hear the bugs pop wetly. He ran as fast as he could, and he stared at Crow’s back twenty feet ahead of him. He fixed on that, not daring to look down, knowing without seeing that the roaches were milling in confusion as the leading edge of the wave was fighting to turn and follow while the main mass of them was still in motion forward. Their bodies boiled up around his ankles as he ran and he tried to pick up his knees so that his ankles would be as high off the ground as possible with each step. He was horribly aware of how low his sneaker tops were.

He ran and ran, and within a dozen steps his shoes were smeared with a sticky white-green goo of insect guts and still the roaches swarmed around him in their legions; the hiss of their bodies scraped against one another and the whisper of their legs over the rough ground was dreadful. He ran as the air burned in his lungs and pain blossomed in his chest like fireworks, all the time watching Crow’s back as the man pelted down the path back the way they had come. Crow was running faster, pulling ahead yard by yard.

We’re going to die! He thought as he ran. We’re going to die! It was the only clear thought he could manage.

Roaches leapt at him, clung to his clothes, crawled up his pants legs as he ran, and Newton was uttering a high-pitched continuous cry of total terror. The field was still a hundred yards ahead and now Crow was almost up to the back wall of the house. Newton saw this and a fresh wave of terror struck him as he suddenly remembered that whoever or whatever had locked itself in that house could use their keys to unlock the locks, and then those doors would open. Front door, back-door, cellar door. All of them would open, and what—dear sweet God, what?—would come howling out?

We’re going to die! He thought, but deep down another, far more horrible feeling was growing. It had no words, no specific shape, but Newton was gradually becoming aware of the possibility that there might be things in that house worse than roaches, perhaps worse than death.

“Newt!” Crow’s voice shook him into awareness and he turned away from the house and saw that ahead of him Crow had suddenly stopped running. Newton almost stopped as well, which would have been fatal because the roaches were gaining on him, coming at him from every direction, both swarms now joined into one vast bristling ocean, but Crow had stopped because he had reached the clear patch of sunlight. He whirled around, alternately brushing bugs off of his clothing and waving furiously to Newton. “Come on! Over here! In the light! Run, goddamn it, RUN!”

(2)

“He hates me,” Connie said hollowly, staring bleakly over the steam rising from her teacup. The kitchen was painted in shadows with only a single lamp on.

Val squeezed her shoulder. “No, he doesn’t. He’s just confused. I don’t think he’s gotten over Dad’s death yet. He’s rattled and upset and doesn’t know how to react.” She stroked Connie’s hair.

“But you yourself said—”

“I was mad at him,” she admitted, “and I was trying to shock him enough to snap him out of it. But…I seem to have only made him madder. We’d better give him time to cool down, sweetie. He’ll come around.” Her words did not match her thoughts, though. She prayed that Mark was out there now, wherever he was—sulking over a beer at the Harvestman, probably—thinking about those horrible things he had said and feeling bad about it. Maybe he’d come back soon, not crawling or abashed, but like a man, owning up to the things he’d said and done over these last couple of weeks, and ready to make things right. That would be great, but it was a bit too storybook and Val had her doubts. Maybe one day, but today didn’t feel like it was going to end with a Kodak moment.

They sat staring through the kitchen windows at the golden sunlight shining on the autumn-colored leaves of the big oak in the yard. All day it had been cloudy and now, just before sunset, the sun had drilled its way through the gray and the yard looked beautiful. It made her wonder what the forest was like down by Dark Hollow where Crow was. Was he seeing the same sunlight all the way down there? He could use it, she thought. Crow had been sweating his little hiking trip for days. Unconsciously she touched her stomach, and to the tiny baby just beginning to grow inside of her, she said, Your daddy’s a crazy man.

Connie said, “It’s not that I don’t want to…you know…do things with him. You know what I mean. In the bedroom and all—it’s just that I can’t. I just can’t.” Connie stared into the depths of her teacup as if there were answers down there. “Every time Mark tries to touch me, all I can feel is that man’s hands on me, and—and—”

“Whoa…shhhhh, girl,” Val said, reaching over to squeeze her hand. “Don’t go there. Try to let it be. I understand what you’re going through. I’m still going through some of it myself.”

Connie looked at her, surprised. “You?”

“Uh huh. Nearly every night I see him in my dreams. Sometimes I wake up and imagine I can see him standing at my window. Pale, like a ghost. Scares hell out of me.”

With a shudder and a nod, Connie said, “Yes! That’s how I see him!”

Val laughed. “God, will you listen to us? We’re worse than a couple of Girl Scouts around a campfire.”

Connie tried on a smile, but it was too weak to hold. “I know…but I can’t help it.”

“Yeah, me neither, but I do remind myself that it’s just dreams…and dreams can’t hurt us. At least we have the satisfaction of knowing he’s dead.” Val stood up and gave Connie a quick hug and repeated, “He can’t hurt us.” She stepped back and smoothed her jeans. “Come on. Let’s take a walk. I need to get out of the house for a few minutes, catch the last of the sunshine.”

Connie looked doubtfully at the silent phone. “What if Mark calls?”

“Then he can damn well leave a message. Come on.”

(3)

Tow-Truck Eddie cruised the black road from Corn Hill all the way down to the Black Marsh Bridge and didn’t see a single kid on a bike. There were plenty of kids out, but they were older, mostly college kids in crowded cars heading out to the campus for the Little Halloween parties. No child on a bike, no Beast.

At the bridge he turned around and headed back to town. His frustration level was mounting, but as he drove the slow miles the voice in his head kept whispering one immensely powerful word, over and over.

Tonight! it said. Eddie’s hands held the steering wheel with a strangler’s grip.

(4)

Newton ran. It felt like ten miles to the light, but he ran. The roaches—some of them were actually leaping up at him—were piling over themselves in front of him, layer upon layer of them, and he had to plow shin-deep through them. Roaches were swarming up his pants legs—outside and inside—and as he ran he started slapping them off his clothes. One crawled down out of his hair and Newton screamed as shrilly as a little girl as he swatted it off his cheek. Suddenly Crow was there and he was reaching out with both hands to grab Newton and drag him into the patch of sunlight. Then he, too, was swatting and pawing at Newton, brushing away dozens of gleaming black bugs, knocking them down to the ground where they twitched and fled toward the shadows that surrounded them.

“Pants…pants!” Newton was yelling as he shook and danced in place and Crow grabbed his belt buckle, yanked it open, and then grabbed his pockets and pulled, tearing the cloth but also dragging Newton’s jeans down to his ankles. His legs were covered with roaches and as the sunlight touched them they leaped off and raced for shadows, while others scuttled up under the hems of Newton’s boxer shorts. Newton screamed when he felt them begin to crawl over his scrotum and try to wriggle between his buttocks. He tore off his boxers and danced a frantic jig and within seconds all of the insects had fallen off or been swatted away by his desperate hands. His legs were covered with tiny red marks from where some of the roaches had tried to bite through his skin. None of the bites had broken the skin, however, though Newton shuddered at the thought of what would have happened had the creatures had more than just a few seconds to gnaw at him.

They froze there—Crow with his chest heaving, eyes bugged out in terror, pants smeared to the knees with a paste made of insect guts and crushed shell, Newton with his pants and undershorts around his ankles, face white with shock. Around them in a circle thirty feet across the sea of roaches had come to a complete stop. Only their antennae twitched, but they did not move, did not mill around. They stood in their endless ranks and watched hungrily.

Crow stared at the insects for a moment and then slowly looked up at the cloudy sky. There were three beams of sunlight angling down and as he watched, a fourth broke through and its light touched the upper near corner of Griswold’s old house. It was still gloomy but the false sunset was ebbing. Just a bit. He looked at his watch. Sunset—real night—was less than an hour from now. “Newt,” he whispered. “Get dressed. Hurry up.”

Tears ran down through the dust and grime on Newton’s cheeks. “Crow—what’s happening?” There was a hysterical edge to Newton’s voice.

“The sunlight’s keeping them back, so might have a chance here…but you gotta be ready.”

The reporter looked at Crow, and then at the ring of light around them. The clouds were thinning and the circle of sunshine started expanding outward. Suddenly the insects began hissing again as they drew back away from it. “See!” Crow yelled in a voice filled with fierce triumph. “They can’t stand the light.”

“But…roaches always run when you turn on the light.”

Crow shook his head. “That’s because they don’t want to get stepped on…this is different. I don’t think they can abide the light.” It was a strange word to use and it hung there in the air, both of them aware of it and of what it implied.

Newton looked up at the sky. There were a dozen beams of light—the pillars of heaven, he thought, remembering the phrase from an old book. The pillars of heaven, and these little monsters can’t abide them. “No,” he whispered, but he meant yes.

Around them the gloom was visibly diminishing as the clouds above burned away. Now there was a big central column—heaven’s mainstay, Newton thought—and its light washed across the entire field. The sunlight, cold and raw with the humidity of a lurking storm, was still rich and pure and it washed over them and over the sea of roaches that instantly turned and fled in a swarm back toward the house. In thirty seconds every one of them was gone except the bugs that lay smashed and dead in the line from where they had first been attacked. How many had they killed? A thousand? Five thousand? It hadn’t made even a dent in the ocean of them there had been.

Newton suddenly became entirely self-conscious about the fact that he was standing there with his pants down and turned with an absurd stab at modesty away from Crow and pulled up his boxers and jeans—checking to make sure there were no roaches hiding in the folds—and zipped and buckled. As he slipped his belt through the last loop a huge shiver of absolute disgust shook him from head to toes and he took a step away from Crow and vomited into the brush. While he spit and gagged the forest seemed to tilt and sway around him.

“We’ve got less than an hour before sunset, Newt,” Crow said urgently. “We have to make it to the pitch long before then.”

Newton straightened, his face green and his eyes runny with tears from straining to empty his gut, and he stared at Crow for a long second, then looked up at the sky. The light was slanting down from an extreme angle as the sun slid toward the southern treeline. They would be in darkness long before the sun actually set on the region.

“Little bastards must have gone back into the house…don’t ask me how. Or why. But if they’re regrouping or some shit then it’s our cue to haul ass.”

They started running toward the forest and this time Newton ran as fast as Crow.

(5)

Vic punched the dashboard lighter in and when it popped he lit his cigarette and then handed it to Ruger. They smoked in silence for a long time, watching as the sun slipped below the treeline. Vic’s pickup was tucked back into a copse of trees, safe within shadows as dense as the bottom of a well. They could see the sun, but the rays did not penetrate even as far as the truck’s hood. Ruger’s ski mask, hat, and gloves were on the backseat. He wouldn’t need them again tonight. Vic looked at his wristwatch. “Sun’ll be down in ten minutes.”

“Vic,” Ruger said softly, and when the man turned Ruger said, “You know that I know about the sunlight.” He smiled. “Don’t you?”

“I guessed.”

“Why the bullshit?”

Vic shrugged.

Ruger said, “It bothers me, but that’s it. I don’t turn into the Human Torch.”

“Some of your boys do.”

“Most don’t.”

“Well…we don’t know what we got all the time. It’s pretty clear that there are a lot of different kinds of you sonsabitches.”

Ruger said nothing.

“You got dead heads like Boyd. Like extras from Night of the Living Dead, Part Ten. I mean…are they even vampires?”

Ruger just looked at him.

“Then there’s your core group—you and Golub, Gaither Carby, the twins, those guys. There’s your true fang gang.”

“‘Fang Gang.’ That’s cute.”

“But in between you got a bunch of weird spins on this thing, some of them I never even heard of before. I know you’ve been reading my books. Do you have an answer?”

Ruger looked out the window at the fading light. Turned away so Vic couldn’t see his smile.

Vic waited for a moment, then gave it up. It’s something he would take up with the Man. Too much of what was happening was not part of the Plan, and that made Vic nervous. Even within the Plan itself there were variations popping up, and for the first time in his life he wondered how much control the Man had. Were there things he didn’t know, even about his own kind? Just thinking that made Vic’s stomach hurt.

To hide his discomfiture, he said, “Wonder how things are going down in the Hollow.”

“They’re still alive,” Ruger said, closing his eyes. His voice was tinged with surprise.

Vic stared at him, and the sickness in his stomach worsened. “Yeah, I can feel that, too. Son of a bitch!”

Ruger wore a knife-slit smile and was slowly nodding to himself. “I guess I’m not the only one who trips over bad luck when that asshole Crow is in the mix.”

Vic shot him a vicious glare. “You watch your mouth!”

“Oh, face it, Wingate,” Ruger snapped, “that little bastard has the luck of the devil, and you know it as well as I do. Even the Man couldn’t take him down on the first try. Don’t even try to tell me there isn’t something else at work here. It’s not just me.”

They smoked in silence as the sun continued to fall. Vic gave a sour grunt and said, “Yeah, maybe. But at least that bitch’ll be dead soon.”

“Recruited,” Ruger correctly mildly. “Dead’s just a by-product.”

“If Terry Wolfe hadn’t been going off his nut, I’d have popped Crow weeks ago,” Vic mused. “He’s always been a pain in the ass.”

“You think Wolfe would make it to Halloween if Crow was off the board?”

Vic shrugged. “The Man thinks so. He says he has the mayor on a leash, and maybe he is. Hard to say—talk around town is that he’s really starting to crack.”

“Crack or turn?”

“Not even the Man knows that for sure. Like I said, Wolfe’s a wild card.”

“Great,” Ruger said with a sneer, “we got a key player we can’t count on and a sawed-off prick who’s too damn lucky. We’re in clover here.”

“Shit,” Vic agreed and then peered up at the sky. The sun was almost gone. He said, “Luck doesn’t last forever.”

(6)

The Bone Man sat on a fallen log just at the point of the trail where it widened to spill out onto Griswold’s property, his guitar slung in front of him, his slender fingers moving with blurred speed over the strings, the bottleneck slide wailing up and down. The sound of furious, angry jailhouse blues filled the air around him. Birds shouted in the trees, lending a discordance that was somehow appropriate to the moment, and surrounding their noise and the music was a constant rising hiss from the tens of thousands of insects that clustered with fury before him.

The insects had swarmed back out of the house as soon as the sun began to edge toward the horizon, but at the first stroke of the Bone Man’s fingers over the strings they’d crowded to a stop inches from where he sat. They milled and leapt but not one of them could cross the line from field to forest. The rustle of the bugs and the murmur of the trees in the wind of the Hollow both carried a tone of absolute surprise and total outrage.

The Bone Man played as fast as he could, but his mind was reeling from this. When he had strummed his guitar the best he had hoped for was to spur Crow and his friend to run faster. He had never expected this, could never have imagined this.

He didn’t understand it, and even feared that it was all some kind of joke on Griswold’s part—a trick to raise hopes before he closed his fist around Crow for real—but as the minutes passed and the sound of running feet diminished behind him, the Bone Man slowly changed his view. This wasn’t any of Griswold’s doing, no sir. This was something else—the sign of someone else in the game.

Who or why didn’t matter right now. He played and played and prayed that whatever strange magic was at work here would last long enough.

(7)

“Hurry—hurry—hurry!” Newton chanted in a frenzied whisper as he ran; next to him Crow ran in silence. Above them the clouds melted away but the forest did not brighten. The sun hung low and swollen above the far treeline, its fiery corona just singeing the treetops. Night was falling and they were miles from the pitch, with the whole of Dark Hollow between them and safety, and the devil knew what lay behind or before them. By now neither Crow nor Newton was much counting on the world being sane and predictable. That moment seemed to have passed for them, forever perhaps, when they had crossed the line from sunlight to shadows back on the pitch, or perhaps it was when they had entered that marshy swamp. Perhaps both. Two steps into hell.

Newton turned to look back the way they had come, half expecting to see the tide of roaches sweeping back, but all he saw were shadows. More shadows than when he had looked back only a minute ago. Darker, thicker, closing in on them as the sun began its fatal fall beyond the forest uplands on the far side of Griswold’s farm. Newton could no longer see the farm, or the fields, or even the tall-tree line. He looked at his watch. 6:11. What had Crow told him? Sunset was at 6:24.

“The sun’s going down!” he shrieked, but Crow didn’t waste breath replying to that.

A tiny pain flared against Newton’s thigh and he stooped and began smacking hysterically at it, thinking that another of those bugs had crawled up his pants and bitten him, but this was different. A small burning spot three-quarters of the way up the top of his thigh, but when he dug into his pocket to see what he could feel all he brought out was the tarnished old dime with the hole cut through it. Newton peered at it as he ran, looking to see if there was a sharp edge or anything that could explain the sudden pain, but it was just an old dime. The burning in his thigh faded and he raised his arm to throw the dime away, but for the second time that day he made the decision to keep it. He put it back in his pocket and raced to catch up with Crow as the shadows coalesced behind him.

Fatigue was a huge fiery dragon that breathed hotly in their flushed faces, sat on their chests, and bit them in the sides. They slowed from a dead run to a staggering walk and Crow pulled the canteen from Newton’s pack, took a pull and handed it to the reporter. Newton opened his mouth to say something but Crow held up a hand to silence him and stood there, head cocked in an attitude of listening. He thought he had heard something impossible, something they had both heard before starting down the hill. Was it the ghost of an echo of music on the sluggish breeze?

“Is it the bugs?” Newton hissed.

Crow listened a moment longer and then shook his head. He let out a chestful of air. “No…I guess it’s nothing. I think we’re safe.” But doubt was evident in his voice. “Either way, I don’t want to wait around to find out.”

“Why didn’t they come after us again?”

“I don’t know. Come on, let’s keep moving.”

At a quick walk—both of them were now beyond running—they set out down the path, picking their way along by starlight, fleeing from the marsh with its methane vapors and stink of rot, far along the valley floor toward the foot of the pitch. It seemed to take hours, days. They didn’t stop again until they saw the great slab-sided slope rise before them, then they rested, drinking the last of their water. The climbing ropes were still there, leading up through shadows and becoming invisible in the gloom far above them.

Crow found his gloves where they had left them hours ago and slowly fitted them on as he studied the angle of the slope. He nodded to Newton with an uptic of his chin. “What shape are you in?”

“I’m a wreck.”

Crow gave Newton a reassuring slap on the back. It was going to be a total bitch of a climb, and Crow didn’t think he had enough left to manage it. He was certain Newton didn’t. He turned and looked back, scanning the forest, listening for the sound of skittering insect feet. Their absence should have been reassuring, but strangely it wasn’t.

“We’ll have to try and rest along the way up,” he said, knowing it sounded lame. Newton just nodded, his eyes glistening in the darkness and he turned away. Crow was sure he was crying. He pulled tension on his rope and raised his leg to brace it on a snarl of root a foot above the forest floor, then with a sigh that spoke of his sadness, his fear, and his exhaustion, he began to climb. Sniffing back his tears, Newton followed.

Dark Hollow had defeated them.