Ghost Road Blues

Chapter 20

Malcolm Crow was deep down in the darkness and for a long time he did not dream at all, not while they brought him into the E.R. and then up to surgery. He did not dream while they pumped him full of drugs and stitched and swabbed and bandaged his body. He did not dream while he lay in post-op, or for the first few hours after they brought him up to his room.

It was only later, as the last of the night was wearing thin and dawn was coloring the edges of the horizon, that his mind finally gave way and he dreamed…

…he was walking through the town and Pine Deep was burning. Many of the stores were blackened shells with their windows blown outward by the heat. Smoke curled upward from the open doorways. The pavement was littered with a smudged scattering of broken bricks, twisted metal awnings, and millions of shards of broken glass.

Crow walked down the center of Corn Hill. He was dressed in jeans and sneakers and a T-shirt and his clothes were torn and stained with grass and soot and blood. Some of the blood, he knew, was his own; most of it was not. Some of the blood was strangely dark and thick, and it smelled like rotting fish.

He carried a samurai sword in one hand; the blade was smeared with gore and bent in two places. The sword hung limply from his right hand, the blunted tip tracing a twisted line behind him in the ash that covered the street.

Above him the sky was as black and featureless as a tarp thrown across the top of the town, and yet he knew that above the black nothing of the clouds there was a moon as white and grim as a bleached skull.

As he walked down the street, weaving in and out between burning cars, Crow was drawn to the sweet sound of a blues guitar. He strained to hear the song and had to hum a few bars to lock it down. “Hellhound on My Trail.” The old Robert Johnson song but played with a different take on the refrain…less threatening, more wistful.

No, that wasn’t it. The sound wasn’t wistful, it was sad, like a lament, and as he walked Crow, sang the words.

“Blues falling down like hail, blues falling down like hail.

Mmm, blues falling down like hail, blues falling down like hail.

And the day keeps on remindin’ me, there’s a hellhound on my trail.

Hellhound on my trail, hellhound on my trail.”

The music played on and on until the song ended, but then the same song started up again. Crow walked all the way up to the top of Corn Hill and finally stopped at the entrance to the Pinelands College Teaching Hospital. The hospital parking lot was a shambles. Cars were on fire and overturned. An ambulance leaned on two wheels against a police car, crushing the car down onto flat tires. There were hundreds of bodies everywhere.

Crow looked at the bodies and his heart turned to stone in his chest.

He knew them.

He knew every one of them.

Henry Guthrie sat with his back to a crushed Ford Bronco, his chest peppered with red bullet holes. A few feet away Terry Wolfe lay facedown on a massive and ornately framed mirror, its surface cracked and distorted; none of the images reflected in the shards were of Terry’s face. The image the broken mirror fragments showed was the face of some huge dog. Across the entranceway from where he stood, Mike Sweeney, the kid who delivered his paper, lay with a samurai sword through his chest. Crow looked down at his hand and saw that the sword he carried was now gone. There were so many others he recognized. Friends from town…other store owners…farmers…teachers from the college…staff from the hospital…cops. He knew them all. Or, almost all. There were four bodies he couldn’t put names to, though he felt he ought to know their names. One was a short, chubby young guy who lay in cruciform, his legs straight and arms out to each side. In one hand he held a tape recorder and in the other he held a gun, but the gun was fake. Near him was a very tall black woman who must have once been beautiful but not anymore. She had been savaged by someone. Something. There was so little of her left. Sickened and sad, Crow looked away. Two men lay propped against the wheels of a police car. One was middle-aged and black, the other was younger and white. Both of them had badges looped around their necks on cords and both had guns lying near them. The right hand of the black man and the left hand of the white man were stretched out toward each other and clasped. To Crow it didn’t look like a romantic grasp, but more like the way soldiers might grip each other in the last moments of a firefight gone bad. Crow felt he should know them, and felt sad that they were dead, but he could find no names for them, and so he moved on through the debris and through the dead.

He looked around, looking for Val…needing to find her, but needing not to find her like this.

He walked to the entrance of the hospital and peered inside. There was blood everywhere, and bodies. The slaughter was too horrible to grasp and so Crow’s mind went a little numb and he stared through it, just needing to find Val.

He was about to step across the threshold when a voice behind him said, “Don’t do it, little Scarecrow.”

Crow turned, startled by the voice. No one had called him Scarecrow in years. Not since he’d been a little kid.

There was a man there. He sat on the hood of a burned-out Saab, his bony legs crossed and a guitar lying across his thighs. His face was the color of coffee with just a small drip of milk in it — and Crow knew that this was how the man once described himself — and he wore his hair in a late 1970s style Afro. The man wore brown work pants and a white cotton shirt unbuttoned halfway down his thin chest. There were small pink scars on the man’s chest and on his hands. His hands were very large for so thin a man.

Crow looked at him.

“You don’t want to go in there, Scarecrow,” said the man. He was smiling, but his smile was sad.

“I have to find Val,” Crow said.

“Yeah, you do,” agreed the man. “But you don’t want to go into that hospital. Val ain’t in there…and you don’t want to meet what is in there. Believe me when I tell you.” The guitar player had a strong Mississippi drawl, and it was deep and soft and Crow liked the sound of it.

“I know you, don’t I?” he said.

“Yeah, boy, you did. An’ I’m sorry as all hell to tell you that you’re probably gonna have to get to know me again.”

“Were we friends?” Crow said. His voice sounded dreamy and on some level he knew that meant that the dream was coming to an end.

“Yeah, little Scarecrow…I guess we was at that.”

“Do you know where Val is?”

“Yeah, I know, but she ain’t here, man. You gonna have to keep looking for her. You gotta find her, man, ’cause these is evil times and she’s the heart. You may be the fist, but she’s the heart. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Crow shook his head.

“Do you remember…a long time ago I told you something about good and evil?”

“I…don’t remember.”

“Don’t worry, you will. Now, listen close, little man,” the man said and leaned forward over his guitar, his voice dropping to a whisper, “you gotta know this.”

Crow leaned closer, too.

“Evil…it don’t never die,” the bluesman said and looked left and right before adding. “Evil don’t die. It just waits.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Yeah, you do, but you don’t want to understand.” The man leaned back and laughed. “Hell’s a-coming, little Scarecrow. Hell’s a-coming and we all gotta learn to play the blues. ’Cause you know…it’s all the blues, man.” He grinned and strummed his strings. “Everything’s always about the blues.”

Crow drifted on into another dreamless place, but the sound of the blues followed him.

Outside the hospital window the dawn had given way to brilliant sunshine and a warm breeze out of the southeast. The rain had scrubbed the air clean and standing in the window of Crow’s room, Terry could see for miles. He hardly remembered seeing a morning so clear. Birds were singing, the nurses who came and went were smiling, and everything had a veneer of freshness and vitality.

Terry loathed it. He personally felt dirty and grubby and old. His clothes were a mess, his hands shook, and when he’d gone into the little bathroom to throw water on his face his reflection looked like a street person. He popped a Xanax and shambled back into Crow’s room and sank down into the chair.

Crow had awakened around dawn and Terry had filled him in on most of the night’s events, but as he talked Crow’s eyes kept drifting shut and Terry had no idea how much of it his friend had absorbed. A nurse came in, woke Crow up, and then gave him a sedative — a hospital policy Terry had never quite grasped the logic of — and Terry sat by the bedside and watched Crow sleep, feeling wretchedly guilty.

He felt that by sending Crow to the hayride he’d somehow been party to Ruger’s attack on the Guthries. Maybe if Crow had just gone out to Val’s as he’d planned Henry would still be alive and the rest of the Guthrie family—and Crow — would not be in various rooms in this hospital. On the surface he knew that such thinking was absurd, that no one could really ascribe any of the blame to him, but his deeper self refused to let go of the notion, and for that reason he could not bring himself to leave Crow’s side.

As he sat there he wondered how long he would have to wait before he popped another Xanax. The first one was really not doing him much good and he was using every ounce of his willpower not to scream.

There was nothing rewarding about waking up, so Crow gave it up and passed out again. He slept for hours and dreamed that someone was sitting by his hospital bed, playing blues to him on a sweet-sounding old slide guitar.

A couple of hours later he gave it another try and opened his eyes. This time the pain in his head wasn’t quite so sharp, and the nausea seemed to have ebbed — but every other part of his body hurt like hell, and his entire waist felt constricted and on fire.

He jacked open one eye and peered around until he saw Terry Wolfe sprawled in an orange plastic chair a few feet away. Terry had his ankles crossed and propped up on a small table, thick arms folded across his chest. His tie hung limp, his red hair was badly combed, and he looked like he’d slept in his suit in an alleyway. He had a copy of the Black Marsh Sentinel folded on his lap. “Good morning,” he said.

“Ug,” Crow said with a dry throat. “You’re a picture to wake up to.”

Terry’s smile made him look old and thin and miserable. “How d’you feel?”

“Like shit.”

“That’s pretty much how you look.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost ten,” Terry said, then added, “In the morning.”

“You been here all night?”

“No,” Terry said, gesturing at his clothes, “as you see I went home and changed into my best dinner jacket.”

Crow licked his dry lips and Terry took the cup of ice water off the bedside table and held the straw up to him. Crow sipped, sighed, sipped again, and then nodded.

“Don’t get used to me waiting on you,” Terry said, replacing the cup. As he sat down again he peered assessingly at Crow. “You faded out on me earlier. Don’t know what you heard or didn’t hear.”

“About what happened? I dunno.” His faced clouded as he tried to think through the cobwebs. He gave a sad sigh as the pieces fell back into place. “Ah, jeez,” he murmured. “I know Henry’s dead. And Val, Mark, and Connie are all here in the hospital. Remind me again…does Val know about her dad?”

“Yeah,” Terry said. “I told her last night, but she was wired to the eyeballs with morphine, so I had to go through it again this morning. She took it as well as somebody can, but that isn’t saying much. She’s pretty torn up.”

“When will they let me in to see her?”

Terry shook his head. “I asked Saul Weinstock earlier, but he said that you shouldn’t get out of bed for at least a full day. Besides, they have her pretty heavily sedated. I think letting her rest would be a greater kindness, Crow.”

Crow nodded, but he didn’t like it. “I can’t believe that son of a bitch got away. This is too weird for me, man. I feel like I dreamed all this shit. When I woke up this morning — I think I must have been coming out of the recovery room — I thought I was back in my drinking days and waking up after a bender. I still feel like I’m half in the bag.” And, God, could I use a drink right now! he thought, aching for a Jack Daniel’s neat and an icy schooner of Sam Adams.

“Almost be nice if that’s all it was.”

“How’s that officer? The one who was shot? Rhoda?”

Terry frowned. “She’s alive, doing okay. They took a couple of slugs out of her, but she’s young and that’ll probably count for something.”

“What about Val’s family?”

Shadows drifted across Terry’s face and he rubbed his eyes. “Connie was roughed up pretty badly. Not raped, thank God, but smacked around and terrorized. They admitted her and she’s still under sedation. Mark’s here, too. He has a broken nose, lost two teeth, and is suffering from shock, but he’ll be fine.”

“Jesus. No trace at all of Ruger?”

Terry drew in a breath, held it, and then blew it out. He shook his head. “Nope. They didn’t find a single trace of him except some footprints that went nowhere and then vanished into some mud puddles and that was that. I mean, Val backed up your story that it was definitely Karl Ruger, which the cops are finding hard to take. They can’t wrap their minds around the idea that you were able to fight him, or that you shot him. As far as that goes, by the way, the general consensus is that either you missed, or that he was wearing a vest of some kind and all your shots did was bang him around a little and then drive him off.”

“That son of a bitch,” he said in a soft hiss. “I should have killed him with my hands. I should have made sure. It’s my fault that kid Rhoda got shot, and it’s my fault Henry’s dead. If I’d killed him, then we might have gotten to Henry in time.”

“Oh, give it a rest, Crow,” Terry said wearily. He rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. “Last night you did more than anyone else, so skip the what-ifs. Right now you have to focus on getting well and on being there for Val. She’s in pretty rocky shape.” He tried on a smile but it didn’t seem to fit. “Besides, you’ve survived two gunshots and lived to ride off into the sunset like a real hero.”

“Oh, big deal. A graze on one love handle and a bullet graze on my hip. Even the recovery room nurse told me it was nothing. Five measly stitches and a bone bruise.”

“For which you should thank your lucky stars. Couple inches over and it would have punched a big hole in your kidney. Plus you look like you’ve been mugged by a whole platoon of prizefighters.”

Crow gave a rueful smile. “Yeah, there’s that. Jeez-zus, but that son of a bitch could hit. Hardest fists I ever felt. Fast, too.”

“Don’t forget, you have another eight or nine stitches on your ugly mug, not counting those pansy little butterfly stitches. Your face looks like a tropical sunset. You’ll look great when the news guys come in to take your picture.”

“My picture? What for?”

“Dude, you’ve become quite the celebrity.”

“For what? Standing too close to a coupla bullets?”

“No, for kicking the bejesus out Karl Ruger.”

“As I remember, he kicked some of the bejesus out of me, too.”

“Mm-hm, but from what Val told us and the police were able to piece together from the crime scene, you danced Ruger real good.”

Crow just grunted. “He was choking Val, and I made the mistake of trying to hold him at gunpoint. He used her as a shield to knock the gun out of my hand. We tussled some, and I came out lucky. In a manner of speaking.”

Terry smiled and looked up at the heavens, reciting, “‘…We tussled some and I came out lucky.’ Dear me but those Philly cops are gonna love that.” He looked at Crow, his eyes amused but intense. “You have, I believe, the distinction of not only being the first person to kick his butt in a fight, but the only person he’s tried to kill who’s still sucking air.”

“Sucking it through a tube, mind you,” Crow said, tapping the line that fed cool oxygen into his nose.

“The point is,” Terry said, lacing his hands behind his head, “that you kicked his behind and the cops think you’re Superman.”

“So, what did I get shot with? A kryptonite bullet?”

“According to Detective Sergeant Ferro, you must have.”

“Great, when the nurse comes in I’ll check out her bod with my X-ray vision.”

“Go ahead, she looks like Steve Buscemi.”

“And…who is Detective Sergeant Ferrell, or whatever?”

“Philly cop,” Terry said and explained the interjurisdictional arrangement.

Crow leaned back and stared up at the ceiling for a long moment, overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. He ached to see Val, to hold her and do something to try and comfort her. “Jesus. One man did all this?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Um…weren’t there supposed to be three of them?”

Terry sucked his teeth. “‘Were’ is the operative word, boyo. One of them — Kenneth Boyd — is unaccounted for. Mark said that Ruger told them he had an injured buddy out in the fields, but he never showed up, and nobody’s been able to find him.”

“Maybe he took a hike when he heard all the sirens and stuff.”

“That’s the talk around the shop. Took the money and lit out for parts unknown. He was supposed to have a broken leg, but then we only have Ruger’s word for it, so take that for whatever it’s worth. Either way, the cops aren’t as worried about him as they are about Ruger.”

“What about the third guy?”

“He’s dead.”

“Cops get him?”

Terry hesitated briefly. “No. They think Karl Ruger killed him. Possibly over a dispute about the split, who knows? Point is, Ruger messed him up pretty bad.”

“What’s ‘pretty bad’ mean?”

“You don’t want to know.”

Crow saw the green creeping into Terry complexion, and realized that the mayor had seen the body. He didn’t pursue it. “So, then the manhunt is still on.”

“Uh-huh, and stronger than ever. We’re hip-deep in cops. We even reinstated a dozen locals boys.”

“Oh? Like who?”

Terry recited a list of names.

“Mm,” said Crow doubtfully. “I’d classify them more as ‘warm bodies’ than cops. Most of them aren’t much good for this sort of thing, wouldn’t you say?”

“I agree, but they know the turf, and they can drive a police car. A couple aren’t too bad. Jack Tunny’s okay. Eddie Oswald’s a stand-up guy, though.”

“For a Bible thumper.”

“He was a good officer and stayed by the book. And B.B. Harrison’s not too wretched. We’ve paired each of our locals with one of the cops from Philly, and we have a few loaners from Black Marsh and Crestville. The Philly cops were supposed to be meeting with some FBI types half an hour ago, so pretty soon we’ll have everyone but the National Guard on the job.”

“Wow. All trying to arrest one man.”

“Tell you the truth, I really don’t think anyone is really going to try too hard to arrest this Ruger character. I think this has gone all the way over into a ‘shoot on sight’ kind of thing. Or, rather, shoot to kill.”

Crow grunted. “Maybe they should drive a stake through his heart, too.”

“Maybe.” Terry rubbed his eyes again and sighed.

“You know, man, you look about as bad as I do.”

Terry smiled weakly. “Well, aside from the fact that I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks, the crop blight, Halloween, and Karl Ruger…I’m just peachy.”

“Yeah.” Crow studied Terry’s face. “Any troubles with you and Sarah?”

“Hm? Oh, heck no, nothing like that. Sarah’s the best. No, it’s just that I’ve been having really bad dreams lately. I told you about it yesterday. Very vivid, very intense.”

Crow frowned. “Hunh.”

“Whyfore the ‘hunh’?”

“I’ve been having nightmares, too. Real corkers.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and just as Terry was about to say something, the door opened and a nurse came in. Crow glanced at her. She did look like Steve Buscemi, but not as pretty. The nurse pointed a finger at Terry and said, “Out.”

Terry blinked in surprise. “Me?”

“You. Vamoose.”

“You do realize,” he said, “that I’m the mayor of this town.”

“I’ll faint later, but for right now get out.” She turned and glared at Crow. “It is time for your vitals.”

“But I—”

She gave him a stern glance, fiercer than anything Crow had seen on Ruger’s face. Terry and Crow exchanged a brief, helpless look, and Terry got up. Behind the nurse’s back, he raised his right hand and mouthed, “Sieg heil!” and then crept out. When Crow opened his mouth to say good-bye to his friend, the nurse stuck a thermometer in it.

No one laughed at the joke, so Dixie MacVey tried it again. “I said…you guys look like a police lineup.” He chuckled for them, hoping it would encourage them. It didn’t. The gathered officers just stared at him, unamused and unmoved. They all stood in a relatively straight line, their assorted uniforms a mix of local gray, big-city blue, and state-police black. “Get it? A police lineup.”

“We get it,” Officer Shanks said tiredly.

“Jeez, you guys got no sense of humor.”

Officer Jerry Head snorted. “You’re right, we all ought to be laughing our asses off. Everything is so carefree and funny.”

“Hoo-ha,” added Toombes. “I better watch so I don’t bust a gut.”

“Okay,” called Ferro as he rose from behind Gus Bernhardt’s desk, “knock it off and listen up.” The officers straightened up and MacVey, sulking, joined the line.

“Sorry we don’t have enough chairs for everyone,” Bernhardt said from where he sat by the door. The uniformed officers stood in their lineup, hands at their sides or clasped behind them in the manner of parade rest. Polk and MacVey sat on folding chairs and LaMastra sat on the ledge of the window bay. Ferro looked down the row, recognizing some of the faces from last night, but seeing plenty of new faces as well, more new ones than old ones.

“Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you all for being here. I know some of you are not actively working in the law enforcement field, but the fact that you were willing to be reactivated as part-time officers is commendable. Again, thanks.” The eighteen new recruits nodded. “All right, well, here’s the scoop. We were able to borrow some patrol cars from neighboring towns, so that means that most of you will be able to go right out and join in the search. After I take roll, you folks will get your unit assignments. I had a crate of Kevlar vests brought up from Philly, and I think there are enough to go around. Everyone who goes out wears one, is that clear? Good. Every officer is to have his or her sidearm cleaned and loaded. No mistakes, no heroics, and no sloppy police work. We are all professionals, and we don’t often have to prove how really good we can be. This, however, is one of those times. This is a very dangerous man. This man has killed without hesitation or remorse. He has gunned down innocent citizens, as well as law officers. Don’t take any chances. I don’t want you to investigate a cat up a tree without backup. Is that understood? Good. We have one officer down right now, as well as one reactivated officer. We’ve already seen what Karl Ruger is capable of doing to one of his own gang — imagine what he would be willing to do to one of you.”

The speech was more for the locals but Ferro’s hard stare ranged slowly over every face in the lineup, meeting each set of eyes in turn. The officers he’d brought with him from Philly each met his gaze, Head even nodded to him. Most of the local officers could only meet that glare for a few seconds before their eyes faltered and found something less intense to look at. One of the reactivated men, a big blond bruiser with a broad, almost simian face and long muscular arms, did meet his eyes, and returned intensity for intensity. Ferro thought he looked tough and clear-headed, and wondered if he’d been military, perhaps even M.P. “Any questions?”

No one moved for a few seconds; then the big blond officer held up his hand. “I have a question, sir.”

“Your name?”

“Edward Oswald, reactivated volunteer, sir.”

“Okay, what’s your question, Officer Oswald?”

“This man, this Karl Ruger…”

“Yes?”

“Well, sir, the rumors have been flying all over the station house about him. The others said that this man is supposed to be the Cape May Killer. Is that straight?”

Ferro pursed his lips. “It is a possibility, but no more than that.”

Oswald gave him a flat stare. “Sir, I don’t mean any disrespect, but if this fellow is the Cape May Killer, shouldn’t we know about it? I know we’re only temporary cops, but we’re still going to be the ones out there, the ones who might have to face him. Shouldn’t we know everything about who we might be up against?” There were some faint and discreet murmurs of agreement.

It took Ferro a long five seconds to make his decision. He looked at Gus, who just spread his hands. “Okay, that’s fair enough, but let me say this. You people took an oath, however temporary. You are bound by policies of confidentiality, and I want each of you to respect that. For the moment, we can’t allow the full facts about this case to come out. There are reasons. Are we clear about that?” They all thought about it, then nodded. “Right, then. Okay, Karl Ruger is wanted for questioning in the Cape May Lighthouse killings. He is not only the prime suspect, he is the only suspect. Am I going to come out and say that he is the Cape May Killer? No, but I would be one very surprised cop if it turned out to be anyone else. Does that answer your question, Officer Oswald?”

“Yes, sir, it surely does.”

“Okay then? Any further questions? No? Okay then, listen up for your names and patrol assignments,” Ferro said loudly. “Officer Burke…?”

All through the long night and longer day they gave her sedatives and each time she tried to fight the drugs, tried to fight the tentacled pull of sleep; and each time she finally lost the battle and was pulled beneath the surface. Val Guthrie didn’t want to be down there in the darkness. Time and again she would swim upward toward the faint and distant light; time and again she would lose her way and sink back into the darkness. It hurt less in the darkness, but she wanted the light.

There in the dark Karl Ruger smiled at her from out of the shadows. He chased her endlessly though the black stalks of corn, his eyes burning with a hellfire red and his wet teeth glistening and sharp. He chased her and reached for her with impossibly long arms, tore at her with improbably sharp fingers. And as she ran, she would stagger past the bleeding and dying body of her father. No matter which route she took, no matter how far she ran, she would always find him again, lying there, broken, bleeding, face streaked with tears and rain and mud and blood. Every time she stumbled past, her father would reach imploringly for her, his voice pleading with her to stop and help him, to save him. He begged her to get him out of the cold rain, called her name with a mouth that bubbled with fresh blood.

Always she ran on, knowing that Karl Ruger was right behind her.

When she managed to get to the light, to come awake for whatever period of time fatigue and morphine would allow, the specter of Karl Ruger lagged behind, losing her in the maze of cornfields. Yet when she felt herself falling away once more in the darkness, Karl Ruger would be waiting.

It was the chime of the distant bell on City Hall Tower that woke her, a sound she shouldn’t have been able to hear through the distance and the thickness of walls and windows. With each chime, she came one increment closer to the light, one increment further from the darkness and the pursuing monster.

At the tenth chime she was fully awake. The room around her became a realness of machines beeping, tubes dripping, metal gleaming, flowers scenting the air. The tenth chime seemed to echo in her head, and for a few moments she lay there, extending her senses into her corporeal body, feeling the damage and feeling thankful for its realness and weight up there in the light.

There was a soft knock on the door, and after a few tries she managed to find her voice, still weak and hoarse from the assault on her throat.

“Come in!”

She could barely turn her head with the cervical collar, but out of the corner of her eye she could see the door swing silently open, and on the other side of it she could hear the faint scuffling of footsteps. The dragging footsteps of someone, perhaps injured or sick. Immediately she knew who it was.

“Crow?”

The footsteps paused for just the briefest moment, and then resumed. She waited as Crow shuffled into the room, shuffled around the edge of the open door, shuffled into plain view.

Everything in the world froze into a moment of absolute horror.

It was not Crow.

It was Karl Ruger.

He stood there, grinning with wet teeth that were smeared with black mud and dark red blood, his eyes flickering as red as rat’s eyes, his hair in disarray, his skin bled white and crawling with grubs and maggots. He stood swaying at the foot of her bed, his rumpled clothes stained darkly with blood, dotted with bullet holes. With hands that were as white as headstone marble, fingernails that were curiously thick and sharp, Karl Ruger reached for her.

Val felt something heavy in her hand and looked down to see that she was holding Crow’s gun. It hadn’t been there a second ago but it didn’t matter. Fury welled up in her, matching and then overmatching her fear, and she raised the gun, holding it straight out, inches from Ruger’s chest.

“You killed my father!” she shrieked as she pulled the trigger. The bullet slammed into Ruger’s chest. She fired again and again, punching bullet after bullet through his black heart.

All he did was laugh, and when the gun was empty he lunged at her.

Val’s scream burned her damaged throat, and suddenly she was surrounded once again by the damp and swirling darkness. The darkness owned her, engulfed her, and she realized that she had never left the darkness at all, had never found the light. The darkness had simply learned how to fool her.

In the darkness, she tried to flee, but now the self that was in the darkness was as wounded and weak and helpless as the self who lay up there in the light, lay with tubes and drains and stitches.

Vic Wingate took an extended lunch break from the shop and was tooling down A-32, smoking a Hav-a-Tampa Jewel and listening to Travis Tritt as sunlight sparkled off the polished skin and chrome of his pickup. Vic felt pretty good. Last night he’d been in a foul mood because of the attention focused his way by the goddamn kid, but that matter was settled now. He had done his public duty and gone and fetched the little fucker from that faggoty hayride thing, and when he’d gotten the kid home Vic had eased his tensions by some recreation with the boy. Vic was pleased with the thought that he had “graduated” the kid from slaps and shoves to some real manly duking. It was about time, he thought. Kid had to learn sometime. But he wasn’t pleased about how the beating had ended. Just as he’d worked up a great sweat kicking the living shit out of the punk, something happened that had rattled Vic. The kid had suddenly smiled up at him, bloody lips, black eyes, bloody nose — and there he was smiling at the guy who’d just handed him the worst whipping in his life.

Not only had it taken the real pleasure out of the beating, robbing Vic of a serious high, that smile had been — weird.

He’d never seen the kid give him a look like that. It had damn near cut the legs out from under him because for a moment — just for one really twitchy moment — that smile made the kid look like…well, like Griswold. It was the way the Man used to smile after a kill. As a teenager Vic had seen that smile time and again, and he knew it well. He saw it in his dreams all the time.

He really didn’t like seeing that smile on Mike’s face, and he wanted to ask the Man about it. Frowning he stepped on the gas.

Several police cars whipped past Vic’s truck. Jim Polk was driving one and he waved to Vic, who nodded. Vic made a mental note to call Polk later on; there were some things that had to be taken care of, and Polk was a good gofer.

Four miles shy of the spot on the highway where the police had found the wrecked car, Vic made a sharp left along a narrow country lane. It was a farmer’s road and it cut through several of the major farms on the east side of town before finally branching off into the State Forest. At that point the macadam faded into gravel and then to dirt. The truck took the changes in stride; it was well used to this route.

Three miles into the woods, the road petered out and died. Vic rolled the truck to a stop and got out. Even though there was no one around, he scanned the dense forest and listened for human sounds, heard none, and nodded. He walked over to a thick clump of brush that stood in a gnarled tangle beside the end of the road. Vic looked around again, then squatted, took hold of a length of knotted rope that was cleverly hidden by weeds, and pulled on it as he stood. He backed up and a whole section of the shrubbery shifted with him, opening outward like a door and swinging on a pair of sturdy hinges. It took a lot of effort for Vic to shift the barrier, and as it moved the deception became obvious. The shrubs were actually seated in a long, low, flat-bottomed trough that was carefully camouflaged; from the outside the facade was perfect, from the inside it was clearly a kind of door. Vic pulled it wide, then got back in the truck and moved it twenty feet down the pathway revealed by the open barrier; then he went back and painstakingly pulled the foliage back into place. Anyone passing by would be fooled unless they knew exactly where to look and knew what they were looking for. Vic made sure that the shrubs were always overgrown and healthy, and he had chosen evergreens for the job because he wanted the deception to remain constant year-round, as it had for many, many years.

Back in the truck he drove a serpentine route that seemed composed of nothing but hairpin turns. The lane was just barely big enough for the truck to pass, and Vic liked it that way. Any larger and it would be too visible from the main road.

He drove for several miles, singing country along with the radio. Eventually, the tortuous route became wider as the hidden road joined with an actual lane, though one that had been left to grow wild decades ago. Vic kept it just trimmed enough to allow a clear passage for the truck, but that was it. The lane led him deep into the forest, past huge old oaks and maples, and then fed into an area that was populated with much younger trees, most of them less than thirty years old. He threaded his way through these until the lane brought him out into a field beside a deserted stone farmhouse. Vic drove up and parked outside the house.

As he killed the engine he caught movement out of the corner of his eyes.

He tensed for a second and then in the next moment he was out of the truck, a Remington.30–30 held at port arms. He dashed along the front of the house, following the hint of movement he’d seen, and then rounded the corner, bringing the rifle up and looking along the barrel. The figure continued to move away from him but then it seemed to sense him and stopped, turning slowly toward him. Vic studied it, his green eyes narrowed.

He lowered the rifle and looked back at the front porch. There were two dark bundles on the top step. Vic nodded to himself, understanding, then glanced back at the figure.

The figure stood there at the edge of the forest wall, nearly invisible against the tall weeds. Vic knew what it was, though he had never actually seen one before, except in the strange and wild dreams that the Man sometimes sent him. He knew that the thing was alive, in a manner of speaking. A homunculus. It stood in man-shape, but that shape twisted and fought to change, bound into that man-pattern by a will, Vic knew, greater than the sum of its parts. The homunculus wore shabby old clothes, rough canvas gloves, castoff shoes. The clothes were splashed with long streaks and splotches of old, dried blood. Less than a day old, Vic reflected. On its shoulder squatted a huge carved pumpkin — a jack-o’-lantern with a wicked grin. Vic thought it was a nice touch, and he grinned in return. Through all of the openings in the face, Vic could feel himself being watched by a thousand coal-black eyes. The carved smile seemed to Vic to be a reflection not of the things of which it was made, but of the mind that directed all such things in this place. He felt as if he was seeing the Man’s real smile this time — not the weird imitation of it he’d seen on Mike’s battered face last night — but a real reflection of the Man and his power.

He really missed the Man, missed being with him, running with him the way he had done thirty years ago.

A sound rent the air, and both Vic and the creature turned toward it, knowing the sound. Vic frowned. Dogs. Probably police dogs.

“Shit,” he said aloud. Now he wouldn’t be able to head down to the swamp and commune with the Man. That really blew.

The barking was a good mile off, but it was coming closer, probably following the blood scent clinging to the creature’s clothes. “We can’t let them find a scrap of anything around this place.”

The homunculus stood there amid the corn for a moment longer as if considering. It nodded its monstrous head just once. Then, as if a switch had been thrown or a door slammed shut, the power of will that held it in its parody of human form was abruptly withdrawn. In an instant it no longer had the strength to maintain that shape, even if it had wanted to. In that instant the body collapsed into tens of thousands of smaller shapes that wrestled and fought and fluttered and scurried to be free of the suffocating press and the closeness of the other shapes. The huge and misshapen jack-o’-lantern it had worn for disguise when it had come for Boyd and had gone in answer to Karl Ruger’s dark prayers wobbled and toppled and fell to the ground, exploding on impact into fragments of orange pulp, just as the man-shape exploded into rat-shape and roach-shape and worm-shape and mouse-shape and weevil-shape and beetle-shape, and poured outward among the weeds and tangled undergrowth.

The dogs were getting closer. Vic quickly gathered up the empty suit of clothes, shaking them to dislodge the last few spiders and roaches, then carried the rags to his truck and tossed them carelessly into the bed of the pickup.

Then he went back to the porch and examined the two bundles. They were backpacks, both of them sprinkled with blood, but both of them packed to bursting with bags of white powder and bundle after bundle of bloodstained money. A fortune. Vic’s mouth went dry as he looked at it.

“Well, fuck me.” He hefted the backpacks; each was a considerable burden, and a great avaricious smile carved itself onto Vic’s face as he realized what this unexpected treasure trove was. He had heard the news stories all night. “Well, fuck me blind and move the furniture.”

He put the backpacks on the front seat, humming happily to himself. Finding that took the sting out of not being able to visit Dark Hollow. Maybe he’d swing back around later.

Vic lingered at the house just long enough to take a considering look at the forest, the stretch of denser brush that led off into the woods at the foot of Dark Hollow.

“I’ll put this to good use,” he said to the woods. “Trust me.”

Then he got in his truck and left. By the time the first of the bloodhounds reached the spot, there was nothing left to find but a fractured jack-o’-lantern that still wore part of its twisted grin.

Iron Mike Sweeney lay on his bed and stared at the water stains on the ceiling. There was one stain that looked like a TIE fighter from Star Wars. The standard fighter, not the bombers or Darth Vader’s personal ship. Mike looked at it and tried to think about that rather than the pain. Sometimes he succeeded. All morning he’d tried most of his old tricks for shoving back the hurt, to force the pain back into its dark little box, to shoo the shame out the window. He’d recited bits of movie dialogue, did the alphabet based on the first letters of the titles of science fiction novels, cast fantasy remakes of classic sci-fi flicks with his favorite current actors. Usually he could get lost in those games, but not today. Today none of it worked. The memory of last night was too fresh, too sharply painful in every way. And too strange.

His revelation about Vic’s humanity was still with him, but as the aches and pains asserted themselves more with each hour since the beating, the wonder and delight of the epiphany diminished somewhat in grandeur. Yes, he’d outlast Vic. Sure, but how many beatings would there be between then and now?

Mike wasn’t sure how many more beatings like that he could take. There was no part of him that wasn’t sore or swollen. He had ice packs pressed against his mouth and cheeks. When he’d gone to the bathroom his pee had been bloody, which really scared him.

He could outlast Vic if he wanted to, but would he want to live through the years between now and then? Mike really wasn’t sure.

On the other hand…

The one thing that kept Mike from sliding right over the edge was what had happened at the end of the beating. The look in Vic’s face. It had only been there for a split second, but it had been there. Mike could not understand it, but for that second Vic had looked scared. Of him.

But — why? It made no sense. Vic had been in total charge. He’d beaten Mike to a pulp and Mike hadn’t been able to do so much as block a punch. It had all been Vic.

So, why had he stepped back like that at the end? What had happened? What had he seen, or had he thought he’d seen? Mike remembered smiling, but it had been involuntary. He had no idea why he had even done it.

And yet…it had stopped Vic cold.

Why?

With a hiss of pain he made himself sit up. He needed to get out of the house, to be out in the sunlight, to be away from here. He tottered into the bathroom to pee, and it was still coming out more red than yellow. Maybe I’ll get blood poisoning and die, he thought, and the idea comforted him. He opened the medicine chest and took down the oversized bottle of Advil. He went through a bottle that size every month. Mike shook four of the blue gelcaps into his palm, slapped them past his bruised lips, and washed them down with two glasses of water.

It took him a long time to put on a sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers. His ribs hurt, but not nearly as much as his face. When he looked in the mirror to comb his hair, the only thing he recognized were the blue eyes staring hopelessly out of the mask of purple and red. The eye that had puffed up last night had settled down now, thanks to ice packs, but there was a splash of yellow and dark brown bruising ringing both eyes.

He lowered his head. Vic’s face swam before his inner eye and he thought some of the blackest thoughts he owned. He wished he had a gun.

The image of Vic’s locked gun case popped into his head and he spent several minutes considering his options. Breaking into that case wouldn’t be difficult, not as long as it didn’t matter if Vic found out. Only stealth was difficult, but to smash the glass and take a hammer to the locks…that would be easy. Mike had never shot a gun, but TV was a pretty good teacher, and he figured he could load one, find the safety, point it, and shoot.

The question was — who would he shoot? Would he blow Vic’s head off his shoulders, or his own? Both options held a lot of appeal to him.

Real serious appeal.

He walked downstairs carefully and quietly, not wanting to be heard. He was pretty sure Vic was still at work, but he did sometimes come home for lunch. The house was quiet. Mom was asleep in front of the TV in her room, her teacup still smelling of gin and fresh lime even this early in the day. Mike was lucky: Vic was at work, and Mike hoped that a car would fall off the lift and crush him. The thought made him want to smile, but his face hurt too much to make him dare flex those pulped muscles.

As Mike fished in the closet for his nylon windbreaker, he heard the TV rattle on about some no-fly zone somewhere in a country he never heard of. He was at the door when he heard the words “Pine Deep.” Mike stopped in surprise and listened.

“…in Bucks County, where authorities are investigating a shoot-out that left at least one person dead and three wounded, including two police officers.”

Mike held his breath and strained to hear every word.

“According to Pine Deep Police Chief Gus Bernhardt, at about nine o’clock last night, an unknown assailant broke into the farmhouse of Henry Guthrie, one of the town’s most prosperous farmers, and attempted to rob Mr. Guthrie and his family. The police department has not released complete details yet, but what is known is that the intruder physically assaulted several members of the Guthrie household. When local officers arrived, the intruder opened fire. After a short but intense exchange of shots, the intruder fled, leaving behind a scene of devastation. Mr. Henry Guthrie, sixty-four, a well-respected member of the Pine Deep Growers Commission, was shot and killed.”

Mike gasped, clapping one hand to his bruised lips.

“Wounded in the exchange of shots were Officers Rhoda Thomas, twenty-six, a law student doing intern work with the Pine Deep Police Department, and Malcolm Crow, forty, a local businessman who had recently been reinstated as an officer. Ms. Thomas sustained two gunshot wounds and is listed in serious condition at County Hospital. Mr. Crow also sustained a pair of gunshot wounds, among other injuries, and is listed in stable condition. Also injured during the break-in were Mark Guthrie, thirty-six, son of Henry Guthrie, his wife, Connie, thirty-one, and Valerie Guthrie, forty. Ms. Guthrie, the daughter of the murdered man, is the fiancée of Officer Crow. Mark, Connie, and Valerie Guthrie are all listed in fair condition. Sources in the chief’s department claim that the intruder may have been seriously injured himself during the exchange of shots. Chief Gus Bernhardt is conducting a full investigation as well as a manhunt for the intruder who has brought such heartache and pain to the Guthrie family.

“In other news…”

“Crow…” Mike breathed. “Oh no!” He left the house as fast as his battered body could manage.

Crow stared up at the ceiling, trying to count the tiny holes in one selected panel of acoustic tile for want of something — anything — to do. He was well into triple digits when there was a tentative knock on the door. “Come in,” Crow called. “Please!”

The men who entered the room were total strangers to Crow, but he knew their type. They had the cop look, despite stubble-covered chins; eyes smudged with sleep deprivation, and badly combed hair. One man was tall, balding, and had the dour face of a mortician; his colleague was younger, bigger, brawnier, and looked more cheerful, though that was muted by a mask of weariness. The younger man had a blond buzz cut and a cold cigarette dangling limply from the corner of his mouth. Both men wore rumpled suits that looked as if hoboes had slept in them first.

“Mr. Crow?” asked the balding man with the mournful face.

“What’s left of him.”

“Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”

“Since I’m bored out of my mind, I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to sell me life insurance.”

The younger man grinned at that; the older one did not. They both pulled up orange plastic chairs of the type that had aluminum legs and looked like they had been designed for the sole purpose of making the user uncomfortable. Both men sat down, sighing in unison with obvious weariness.

Crow looked at them, half smiling. “Let me guess,” he said, “Philly cops?”

“Right the first time. I’m Vince LaMastra, and this is my partner, Detective Sergeant Frank Ferro.”

“Did I meet you guys last night?”

“Yes, sir. We were out at the house.”

Crow’s hands were bandaged, and one was hooked to an IV, so they just exchanged nods, and Crow was even careful about that. His head still felt as if it had been used in a soccer match.

“Mr. Crow,” began Ferro, “first, I want to say that on behalf of myself, my partner, and the other law-enforcement officers, I want to thank you and commend you for your bravery and resourcefulness last night.”

“Aw, shucks,” Crow drawled. “’Tweren’t nothing.”

“I’m serious, sir. You managed to save the lives of four people, not to mention yourself, and faced down a man who is widely regarded as extremely dangerous.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No joke, man,” LaMastra agreed, nodding vigorously. “You went up against Karl Ruger and whipped his ass.”

“Truth to tell,” Crow said, rubbing his jaw with a skinned knuckle, “it was kind of a mutual ass-whipping. And quite frankly — isn’t everyone making a bit too much out of that? Okay, so I won a fight. Considering everything else that’s going on, what’s the big deal?”

“Uh-huh,” said Ferro quietly. “Mr. Crow—”

“Look, if you would, just call me Crow. My old man was ‘Mr. Crow’ and he was kind of an asshole. I’m just Crow to everyone.”

“Tell me, Crow,” said Ferro, trying it on, “how is it that you are as dirty a fighter as Karl Ruger? You box?”

Crow shook his head. “Martial arts.”

“Karate?”

“Jujitsu.”

LaMastra brightened. “No kidding? I did some judo in college, and I—”

Ferro looked at him until he stopped talking, and then the detective turned back to Crow. “The mayor and quite a number of the town’s officers have been telling us stories of your exploits. Fighting biker gangs, that sort of thing,” Ferro said in a tone that suggested he didn’t believe much of what he’d heard.

Crow didn’t feel like making a case for himself, and besides, half of what the cop had been told probably was a pack of lies. “People love to exaggerate.”

“Frequently,” Ferro said quietly.

Was the cop baiting him? Crow wondered. “Tell you one thing, though, I never fought anyone tougher. Or faster. Son of a bitch was something else. You can’t imagine how cat-quick this guy is. He’s every bit as dangerous as everyone thinks he is. Maybe more. No remorse, either. He shot Rhoda Thomas and me without any hesitation.”

“He’s killed a lot of people,” LaMastra said. “It’s nothing new to him.”

“It’s nothing to him at all,” Ferro summed up. He tilted his head to one side, appraising Crow. “You know, despite how banged up you are, you’re lucky to be alive and in fairly good working condition.”

“Gosh, I feel like dancing.”

“No, seriously. Ruger has a habit of doing some rather horrible things to the people he doesn’t like.”

“I heard about the whole Cape May thing.”

“Ah. Well, that’s just part of it,” LaMastra said. “He also did a number on one of his buddies. Spoiled him. Tore him to—”

“I think Mr. Crow gets the point.”

“Yeah, Terry Wolfe said something,” Crow agreed. “So, why’d he do it?”

Ferro shrugged. “It’s possible there was a power struggle over who was going to lead the group and Ruger flipped out on his partner.”

“Sounds thin.”

“It is thin, and it’s just a guess. Another guess is that there was some kind of dispute over the money and drugs, which is an idea I can more easily live with. We’re talking about a lot of money, and a very large amount of very expensive cocaine. People have killed each other for just a snort of coke, let alone a fortune in it.”

Crow grunted and shook his head. He felt himself losing interest in the criminal aspect of the case. He believed — knew — that he’d shot Ruger and that the bastard was dead or next to it somewhere in the fields or in the forest just beyond the Guthrie farm. Probably the latter, and in that case his bones would turn to dust before anyone found him. The forest around Dark Hollow was dense, largely impassible, and it seldom gave up its dead. Just to be polite, he said, “So what’s next on the agenda for you guys?”

Ferro waved a hand. “Oh, the investigation is proceeding. We’re pursuing various leads. We have teams out checking all the likely routes of escape….”

“Meaning you have bubkes.”

“Meaning,” Ferro nodded slowly, “that we have bubkes.”

Crow sniffed. “You know you’re never going to find him.”

“Rest assured, sir,” added Ferro, “if Karl Ruger is still in Pine Deep — we will find him.”

Crow open his eyes and studied the cop. “There’s some bad woods out there, Mr. Ferro. You sure about that?”

LaMastra shifted uncomfortably in his seat, coughed, and brushed a fleck of lint from his mud-spattered cuffs. Ferro smiled thinly at Crow. “I am very damn sure about that, Mr. Crow.”

Crow closed his eyes, settled back against the pillow, looked up into his own interior darkness, and thought: Bullshit. You’re never going to find him.

Chapter 21

Dr. Saul Weinstock snapped the cuff of the latex glove against his wrist, adjusted his surgical mask, and strolled into the autopsy suite in the Pinelands Hospital morgue. The CD player was playing John Hammond’s “Wicked Grin,” which Weinstock always considered good cutting music. Also on the changer were two Elvis Costello albums, Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, and the second greatest hits album by the Eagles. It was going to be a long morning.

There were three autopsies stacked. One was a little girl from Crestville, almost certainly a SIDS case, and the other two were tied into what was going on in town. Poor Henry Guthrie, whom Weinstock was going to leave for a colleague to do. His family had been friends with the Guthries since his grandfather’s time, and Weinstock didn’t very much relish imposing the necessary indignities of an autopsy on a man he greatly admired. It felt ghoulish and rather rude.

The third case was before him on a stainless steel table, still in the dark gray zippered body bag, fresh from the crime scene on A-32.

Weinstock took the clipboard off the hook on the side of the table, switched on the tape recorder by stepping on the treadle positioned under one corner of the table.

“This examination is dated September thirtieth, beginning at 1035 hours. This autopsy is carried out by Saul Weinstock, M.D., deputy chief coroner for Bucks County and senior staff physician for Pinelands College Teaching Hospital, and performed under the authority of Judge Evan Doyle, justice of the peace for the Township of Pine Deep. The name of the decedent is believed to be…” He consulted the clipboard, “…one Anthony Michael Macchio, age thirty-seven, a resident of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”

That said, he pulled down the zipper and parted the plastic folds.

Saul Weinstock stood there and stared as the tape rolled on, beholding the handiwork of Tow-Truck Eddie, the Sword of God.

“Holy shit!” he said, and it forever became part of the permanent record of the case.

When Vic got back to Shanahan’s the place was deserted. There should have been five mechanics on shift, including himself. One was down with a cold, one had just not shown up that day, one, Sammy, was out road-testing a car and probably parked somewhere with a sandwich and a cold beer, and the other guy had been called in to the chief’s department for some kind of reinstatement bullshit. It pissed Wingate off, because there were four jobs that absolutely had to be done that day, and one was a valve job that was a real prick. Sammy should have been there working on it, not tooling around in Dr. Crenshaw’s BMW. Road test, my ass, thought Vic. He glanced at the wall clock. Half past two. Shit! There was no way that he was going to get out of there any earlier than six, and maybe not that early.

With the backpacks full of bloodstained cash still locked in his truck, he was uneasy. He wanted to get it home, clean it up, count it, and then start spreading it around where it would do the Man — and himself — the most good, but he couldn’t blow off his job because he absolutely did not want to do anything that would give him a high profile. His name had already been on the lips of the mayor and that jerk, Crow — all because of Mike — and he wanted to drop completely off the radar.

Grumbling, he snatched up the worksheet on the pissant little Saturn in bay two and glowered at it. Brake job. Well, that wasn’t too bad, time-consuming but easy. He found the keys in the office and moved the car onto the ramps of the lift, put on the emergency brake, and hopped out. The old hydraulics wheezed as they lifted the bright red car six and a half feet off the grease-spattered floor. Vic hooked a droplight on the chassis and set to work with an impact wrench. As he worked, he thought about the kid. Fucking kid. Fucking four-eyed little sissy piece of shit. Vic hated Mike, had hated him ever since he’d first seen him sucking on Lois’s tit. Scrawny little shit-heels. Vic found it nearly impossible to believe that Mike was actually the son of…well, the offspring of someone so powerful.

He wondered if the kid would have grown up different if he’d known who his dad really was, instead of growing up thinking he was the son of that jackass John Sweeney, the fucking loser Lois had married before. Maybe if the kid had known who his real father was he’d have grown up with some brick in his dick. But no…the Man didn’t want the kid to know. He wanted things kept quiet for reasons Vic could certainly understand, but it still rankled him. A kid should be brought up to respect the father. Honor the father. Someone like the Man deserved to be honored, especially by his own son. But no, the Man just wanted the kid raised and protected — at all costs protected. At least, Vic thought with grudging approval, the Man did not require a hands-off policy for the little shit. The Man couldn’t care less if Vic pounded the piss out of Mike morning, noon, and night as long as no life-threatening harm ever came to him. Personally Vic thought the Man worried too much about the kid. The no-balls little punk could never be a threat to the Plan. Never. Vic firmly believed that, no matter what the legends said. Kid was only a useless piece of meat. But…

He sighed, thinking about it, about the Man, about the Return, about the kid. It really torqued his ass that the kid always had his nose in a goddamn book. Thought he was so smart — but he didn’t know squat. Couldn’t even hold a football let alone throw one. Had posters of superheroes up all over his room. Vic shook his head. When he’d been fourteen, Vic had had posters of Farrah Fawcett and Barbara Carrera all over his room, not Green-fucking-Lantern and that faggy-looking Cyclops. Real women from the real world, not some dorky superjocks. When he’d been fourteen, he’d had a stack of Penthouse magazines a yard high in his closet. When he’d been fourteen he was buying a pack of Trojans every week or so. He doubted if that puke kid even knew how to put one on, let alone what to do with it afterward.

Goddamn! Why did the kid have to be such a pain in the ass? Why did he have to push it all the time? Like giving him that spooky smile last night. All it did was make more trouble for him, for Vic, who tried to set some kind of an example of how to grow up to be a man, even if the Man didn’t tell him to. The kid pushed it, though. He always pushed it; and when he pushed it, Vic just plain had to slap the kid back into place. How else was the little shit going to learn any damn thing about life? If the little idiot had any kind of brains, then maybe he’d understand that Vic was just trying to set him straight, make him tough, teach him to be strong. After all, he was the Man’s only human son. Vic just couldn’t stand to see his son grow up to be a wimp-ass piece of shit. Did the kid ever get it? Fuck no! All he did was cry like a little girl. Last night, well, that was the topper, wasn’t it? Having the fucking mayor call him and tell him to go pick the kid up, at the Haunted Hayride no less. God! Vic wondered if the kid still had any idea of how dangerous that had been. Probably not. How could he? He had no idea what was in the woods out beyond Dark Hollow.

Vic paused in his reflections and allowed himself a smile. Well, it wouldn’t be long before the kid did find out. Soon, they’d all find out.

Still smiling, he set about the brake job, pleased with the way the future was spreading out before him. Vic worked in silence, unaware of the bright blue sky beyond the half-closed garage doors, and the golden, enriching sunlight. Unaware, also, of the tall, gray-skinned phantom who stood across the road and watched him from the shadow of a skeletal old maple tree. The stiff breeze whipped at the Bone Man’s clothes and carried away flecks of dried graveyard mud.

Then abruptly Vic straightened and looked up — not across the street to where the image of the Bone Man was fading into illusion like a sun dog, but instead he looked inward, his head cocked as he listened.

Vic lowered his wrench and let it dangle from his greasy fingers as he heard the voice speak to him in a soft, secret whisper. Vic smiled a very ugly smile and set down his wrench. Screw the workload. He quickly cleaned his hands, shut off the lights, hung a CLOSED sign in the window, and locked the door on his way out. He climbed into his pickup and for the second time that day headed out of town toward the abandoned farm that bordered Dark Hollow. He never stopped smiling.

Terry hid in a bathroom stall for half an hour, fighting a case of the shakes that was so bad that he had uncontrollable diarrhea. Trousers down around his ankles, head bowed and held tightly in both hands, he waited it out until the Xanax finally kicked in. Each pill took longer to work and did less, but at least the shakes finally eased up.

When he was sure the bathroom was empty he left the stall, washed in the sink, combed his hair, and straightened his clothes as best he could. Then he went to meet Gus in the doctors’ lounge.

“Ah, there you are,” Gus Bernhardt said. He was sitting on the couch over by the coffee station.

Shit! Terry thought, the use of the expletive not even hitting a speed bump in his brain. For one crazy second he considered fleeing, but then he spotted Ferro and LaMastra as well, sitting in chairs that flanked the couch. Son of a bitch.

“Your Honor,” Ferro said mildly. “We were just discussing our options with the media. The chief here wants to go public with the story and my partner and I feel it would be best to keep things low-key. No sense exciting the citizens and drawing rubberneckers.”

“Yeah,” LaMastra agreed, “a manhunt is worse than a fire for bringing out every idiot with a video camera for fifty miles around.”

Still standing half in and half out of the door, Terry looked from one to the other and felt like screaming. Were they all crazy? Who the hell cared what the media thought? Or the tourists? Or any of this? He just wanted to get out — to crawl out of his own skin and just run. His best friend was in the hospital, along with every surviving member of his girlfriend’s family. Henry Guthrie, one of the most respected and influential farmers in the area, was dead. Madmen were having their way with the residents, and not twenty-four hours ago Terry’s little sister — his dead little sister — had called him up on the phone. He couldn’t give a rat’s ass for what did or did not make the papers.

But old habits die hard, so by reflex his face assumed an approximation of his Mr. Mayor facade and he cleared his throat, entered the room, and sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs.

“Let’s play it your way, Sergeant,” Terry said curtly. “I don’t want to have to go on TV and explain it fifty times. Not now.”

“I fully agree” Ferro began but Terry cut him off.

“In fact I don’t want to release anything to the press until we have actually accomplished something,” he said with a touch of asperity.

LaMastra gave a surreptitious little silent whistle and raised his eyes significantly to Ferro, whose face had become wooden.

“As you say, Your Honor.”

Terry rubbed his red-rimmed eyes and sighed. In the back of his mind Mandy’s voice was whispering to him over the phone. The force necessary to keep a bland smile on his face was immense.

Ferro opened his mouth and was about to add something else when the lounge door opened and a very weary-looking doctor came in, his green skullcap and surgical scrubs stained with unpleasant splotches of various colors and viscosities. He sketched a weary wave, lumbered bleary-eyed over to the coffee station, and poured himself a cup of very strong black coffee in a chipped ceramic mug that said: #1 DAD.

Sipping the coffee, he ambled over and sank wearily down onto the couch beside Gus. He crossed his ankles and rested them on the coffee table, and Terry could see that the soft paper scrub booties he wore over his shoes were spattered with dark drops of dried Betadine. The doctor looked bleakly at the gathered faces, sipped his coffee, and sighed.

“Doc, have you met Detective Sergeant Ferro and Detective LaMastra?” Terry said, and the doctor gave them small nods.

“Yeah, but last night things were a little too busy to be social.” The doctor toasted them with his mug. “Saul Weinstock.” He tugged the green skullcap off, stared for a moment at the sweat stains that darkened the soft papery material, and then tossed it onto the table. Weinstock was thirty-five, looked thirty, and had a face that looked remarkably like a younger, tougher Hal Linden. A chai on a gold chain glittered from within the tangle of curly black chest hair.

Terry said, “Dr. Weinstock is the administrator here at Regional, as well as the chief surgeon and county coroner.”

“In small towns we wear a lot of hats,” Weinstock said with a small grin. “I also double as the mailman and the fire chief.”

“Uh…really?” LaMastra asked.

“No,” said Weinstock.

“Oh.”

The doctor glanced at Terry. “Christ, you look like shit.”

“Been a long couple of days, Saul,” Terry said. “So, where do we stand?”

“Well, that’s a loaded question. Which do you want first, the good news, the so-so news, the bad news, or the really bad news?”

“How about in that order?”

“Okay, the good news.” Weinstock had a clipped but affable voice. “Officer Rhoda Thomas is an exceptionally hardy and fit young lady. We removed two 9-millimeter bullets from her last night, and she is doing very well. She’s conscious and aware.”

“Prognosis?” asked Ferro.

Weinstock shrugged. “She’ll be fine. No truly life-threatening damage, except for the collapsed lung, and we fixed that. She gets the right P.T. and she’ll be playing tennis in the spring, no problem. In a couple of months, you’ll have to be a damn close friend to even see the scars.”

“Good,” Terry said. “And Crow?”

“Oh, also good news there. I told him he ought to be ashamed of himself for taking up bed space. Pissant little wounds both of them. If he didn’t eat at McDonald’s so much he probably wouldn’t have had big enough love handles for the bullets to graze. He’ll be out of here tomorrow.”

“What about his face?”

“Jeez, have you seen it?” Weinstock asked with a malicious grin. “Looks like something out of a Frankenstein movie, but that’s just bruising, couple lacerations. Piddling stuff. He’ll have a couple of scars, sure, but nothing that will spoil his looks.”

“What about his girlfriend?” asked LaMastra.

“Val? Well, that’s the so-so news. She has a couple of cracked ribs, some torn cartilage, a helluva lot of facial bruising, and assorted minor lacerations. Her shoulder was wrenched, but that’s just a sprain, nothing to worry about. We shot her up with some cortisone, and I had our sports med guy take a look at her and he said she’d be doing cartwheels in a few weeks. In short, the body trauma is in no way debilitating, so all that will heal.” He blew across the surface of his cup and then took a careful sip. “The real issue is the emotional and psychological trauma. I mean, she was threatened by a madman, was injured while fighting for her life, she more or less saw her father get gunned down, and saw her boyfriend get shot. That’s one hell of a lot to take in one night.”

“Val’s as tough as iron, Saul,” said Terry.

The doctor nodded. “I agree. I’ve known Val forever. Hell, my uncle David delivered her…she used to babysit my sister and me. I know she’s tough, and I think if anyone could recover from the psychic trauma of this, then she’s the one. This morning I had a long talk with her, and she’s tearing herself up with guilt.”

“Guilt?” asked Gus. “For what?”

“For leaving her father to die out in the field while she went to help her brother and sister-in-law, then for being too traumatized to help him after all the fireworks were over. No, no, don’t say it. We all know that that’s just grief talking, but grief coupled with this kind of trauma can really do a number on a person. Seen it too many times.”

“So,” asked Terry slowly, “will she recover? I mean, in your medical opinion?”

Weinstock sipped the steaming coffee, then paused and stared into the middle distance. “It is my considered medical opinion that it beats the hell out of me. She’ll need a good therapist, probably.”

“Swell,” grunted Terry. “What about Connie?”

“Now we come to the bad news. She is physically unharmed. In fact, she is the only one that really went through this relatively unscathed. Some minor bruises from rough handling and from a few hard slaps, but none of the brutal bashing the others experienced. Nevertheless, her trauma is even deeper and more dangerous than that of Val Guthrie. She was nearly raped, but in her own mind she actually was raped. Or at least violated beyond her capacity to endure. You have to understand, gentlemen, that this is a very old-fashioned, very modest woman. Probably a little naive, too, one of those people who just isn’t prepared for this kind of visit to the real world. Her kind isn’t made for a night in the swamps with all the alligators. Will she snap out of it? Probably yes. In most ways, yes, but can she put the event behind her and not let it haunt her and warp her like it does to so many of the innocent ones?” He just shook his head. “I don’t know, fellows. I’m a doctor, not a shrink. And she is going to need a very good shrink.”

“So’s her husband,” said LaMastra. “I had a talk with him, or tried to, but he just keeps saying that he doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s on some kind of denial trip, thinks his father’s death is his fault somehow. He’s tearing himself to pieces because, while Ruger was ripping his wife’s clothes off and running his hands all over her, all young Mr. Guthrie could do was sit and watch and scream.”

Weinstock nodded. “Yeah, Ruger hurt him by making him watch. If the rape had actually happened, with Mark watching and unable to do anything…well, I don’t even want to speculate.”

LaMastra made a sour face. “I’ve seen cases like that. Poor bastard’s held down by one guy with a knife or gun or whatever, and has to watch the other guys take turns with his wife or girlfriend. What man could take that?”

“I sure as hell couldn’t,” Weinstock said grimly.

The room grew quiet as the men stared down at the floor and down at the dusty bottoms of their hearts, thinking of loved ones, trying to imagine what Mark Guthrie had felt, putting themselves in his place. It was a terrifying and sickening thought, as was the speculation, however distorted, of what it must have felt like for Connie Guthrie as well. It was harder for these men to relate to her trauma and her pain, but even from a distance, the feelings burned holes in each of them.

Gus blew out his cheeks. “Well, if that is the bad news, I just can’t wait to hear what the really bad news is.”

Weinstock sipped his coffee and considered the darkly rippling liquid for a long five seconds. “I just finished the postmortem on our friend Tony Macchio.” He heaved a long sigh. “You know, fellows, I never signed up to do this kind of shit. I’m essentially a country doctor. My patients are upscale suburbanites who get expensive conditions and rare and glamorous diseases. When they die, they die in bed of very old age, or they have heart attacks on the back nine, two under par, and still smiling when they’re wheeled into the morgue. But this crap…this body you brought me last night…ahh, I just don’t know. I mean, God knows I’ve been doing this long enough not to be squeamish from blood. I’ve pieced together high school kids after the paramedics peeled them out of wrecked Lexuses. That I can deal with, but this…man, this is nightmare stuff, you know?”

“We all saw the corpse, Saul,” said Terry quietly. “We know.”

“No,” Weinstock said emphatically, setting down his coffee cup with a thump. “No, you don’t know. You don’t even know the half of it.” He looked at them each for a moment, then said, “For starters, I pulled two slugs out of his abdomen, both of different calibers. One was a nine millimeter and the second bullet wound was a thirty-two caliber — delivered hours later from comparisons of bruising and clotting, but almost in the same spot.”

“He was shot at least once during the drug buy, in Philly,” said Ferro. “That was probably the nine, and Ruger has a thirty-two caliber belly gun. Raven Arms automatic.”

“Okay. The first shot was from a distance, the hole was clean and there were no powder burns, no tattooing, just a clean hole. But the other was a classic near-contact entry wound, possibly even on-contact, fired through clothes. The entry wound had a clear burn-rim, so your boy Ruger must have jammed that thirty-two-caliber pistol into his gut and popped him. Neither, gentlemen, was a fatal wound, and Mr. Macchio would have been far better off if it had been, but no. From the amount of bruising and so on I can make a good guess that he lived another half hour, maybe a little longer, and it’s what happened in that half hour that scares the hell out of me.”

“We know he was tortured, Dr. Weinstock,” said Ferro.

Weinstock tilted his head to one side. “Is torture the right word for it, I wonder? Torture almost seems, I don’t know, too clean a word for what happened. The perpetrator inserted something into Macchio’s two bullet wounds, possibly his own fingers, and literally tore the front of his stomach out. Then he pulled his intestines out, unraveling them like a tangled rope. Next, he…uh…bit the skin around the wound.”

“Bit?” Terry said softly, his face paling, and suddenly he was back thirty years and something big and powerful was clawing at him, biting his shoulder…. He had to shake himself to break free of the memory and stay focused.

“Bit. Chewed. Ate! We found clear impressions of teeth marks all around the wound. He bit the fingers, actually chewing off the man’s fingertips. He bit his face, tearing off most of the nose, the lips, the eyebrows, the ears…” The doctor’s eyes were glassy. “You all saw the dismembered hands? Well, at first we thought they had been hacked off crudely, perhaps with a small knife or dull hatchet, but when we examined the edges of the bones, we discovered that the hands had been bitten off, the muscle and bone chewed clean through by very strong, very sharp teeth.”

“Holy shit,” breathed Gus.

“We were able to lift saliva from the wounds and the lab is doing a workup on it now. There were bite marks on other parts of the body as well. Thighs, groin, neck, and, uh, so on. If you ever catch this guy I can guarantee you a perfect set of dental impressions.”

Ferro’s face was as drawn, and he mumbled, “Uh, well, thank you for your report.”

“There’s more,” Weinstock said quietly.

“More?”

“Yeah. From the amount of bleeding and the remaining lividity, I’ve been able to determine that somehow — and don’t ask me how — Tony Macchio was alive for almost all of this.” They all just stared at him. “So the actual cause of death was when this sick, murderous son of a bitch reached up into Macchio’s body and literally tore his heart out of his chest.”

The words battered them all into silence. After a while, Ferro asked quietly, “Is that even possible? To tear a man’s heart out?”

Weinstock looked at him. “If you had asked me that question this morning, I’d have laughed at you. The heart is pretty securely anchored in the chest. It has to be to do what it does. To actually rip it loose from all that internal structure…well, that’s a new one on me. Now, here’s one last little tidbit for you gentlemen.” They tensed, almost cringing, waiting. “Whoever did this…took the heart with him.”

The TV in Crow’s room didn’t work and he’d whiled away some of the interminable evening reading a seven-month-old copy of Good Housekeeping that a nurse had given him, it being the only thing on hand. Val was still sedated, they said, and couldn’t have visitors. There was a police guard outside his room, and that kept traffic to a crawl, but by ten o’clock he would have been ready to invite Ruger and his cronies in for a few hands of old maid just to keep from screaming. Partly it was the utter boredom — and Crow was never one of those types who could be quiet and alone and still for more than five minutes. He always had to have music playing, preferably very loud blues or some avante-garde stuff, like Tom Waits’s later albums, or the punk covers of Leonard Cohen. He loathed the echoes in his head, and the memories they provoked. And partly it was a gnawing need to see Val, to hold her hand, to be there for her the instant she woke up and had to face the towering grief.

On top of all that, he believed that at that moment he would have sold his soul to the devil for a drink. Or, maybe for a whole lot of drinks. He brooded over it for a while, wondering if maybe he should call his AA sponsor tomorrow. The ache for a drink was getting stronger the longer this craziness went on.

Even with those thoughts, the flaccid writing of the article on how to make centerpieces for the Easter dinner table worked on him like a dose of codeine and he drifted off. His eyelids slid down, his chin dropped onto his chest, and he began to snore like a tired bear as the shadows outside the hospital windows grew thicker and the wheel of night turned slowly.

He felt the hand on his shoulder. Light, tentative, gentle. A ghost of a touch, and in his sleep he smiled, knowing that the touch was Val’s. Crow was way down in the darkness and he moved upward against the current of his dreams, rising toward the touch, wanting to break the surface of sleep so he could open his eyes and see her. He rose, rose…

The hand touching his arm splayed its fingers and wrapped around his biceps. Firm, strong.

Crow, still more asleep than awake, felt a pang. What was wrong? Was Val hurt?

He moved faster through his dreams, upward to where she waited.

Then the grip changed again. The fingers flexed, contracted, tightened.

Pain instantly shot through Crow’s bruised arms and he sprang awake, his eyes snapped wide, gasping and calling out: “Val!”

And he stared straight into the black reptilian eyes of Karl Ruger!

The sight of the killer wrenched Crow’s mind into disjointed shapes. It was impossible. He couldn’t be here!

Ruger’s face was as white as moonlight and he was smiling a thin-lipped smile. Crow opened his mouth to yell, to call for the cop outside the door, but Ruger’s other hand shot out and clamped like an icy vise around Crow’s throat.

“Shhhhhh!” he said, leaning close to Crow to whisper. “You make a sound, hero, and I’ll rip your fucking throat out. You know I can do it, too…don’t you?”

The hands on his arm and throat were immensely powerful and as cold as death. Crow gripped the wrist of the hand holding his throat, but it was like clapping onto an iron bar. The cold flesh didn’t yield at all and the tendons and muscles beneath were like bridge cables.

Ruger leaned forward and pressed Crow back against his pillow, still leaning close so that his mouth was inches away. When he smiled Crow could see the jagged line of broken teeth — the teeth he’d kicked out after he’d driven Ruger headfirst into Missy’s fender. The man’s lips were so red they looked painted and his skin was colorless and smeared with drops of black muck. The worst part was Ruger’s breath…he reeked. Each exhale was like a damp wind blowing from a slaughterhouse. He smelled of spoiled meat and blood and feces.

“Don’t worry, stud,” Ruger whispered in his slithery voice. “It ain’t your time yet. Soon, mind you…but not now. I got better plans for you.” He chuckled. “No…because of you I lost everything. My money, my dope, and those two sweet sluts at that farmhouse. Was that broken-nosed bitch yours? Val? Was she yours?” He shook Crow by the throat, squeezing harder. Black poppies bloomed in Crow’s vision. “Listen to me now. You took everything away from me, so I’m going to return the favor. Everything you care about, every-one you love, everything you own…I’m going to take it away from you. How’s that sound?” He squeezed harder and Crow started beating at the wrist, smashing at it with his balled-up fist — but it was like hammering on a tree limb. “And then…when you are stripped down to nothing, when everything you love is either dead or in ashes, then I’m going to come for you, motherfucker.”

Crow struggled against the grip, but it was like fighting a statue. Ruger squeezed harder.

“And the real fun part is…I’m going to fuck that broke-nosed bitch so bad that she’ll beg for the bullet.” He pumped his choking hand with each word: “She’ll…fucking…beg…for…it!”

The pressure on Crow’s throat was robbing his arms and legs of strength. Blackness painted the edges of his vision and he could feel himself slipping away as the whole world became a huge black nothing.

He felt the hand on his shoulder. Light, tentative, gentle — and he came awake screaming, flailing with hands and legs, tangled in sheets and IV tubes.

Val screamed, too, and nearly fell off the side of the bed trying to avoid his swings.

“Crow!” she cried, and the voice coming from her bruised throat was a horribly feminine approximation of Ruger’s icy whisper. “Crow — stop it!”

Crow’s eyes snapped wide and sanity came back to him in a rush. This was no dream, no nightmare. It was real…and Val was there. Not Ruger…not some nightmare image of that murderous bastard…but Val. Right here. Warm and real.

He sat up and took her in his arms and held her as tightly as his bruises and hers would allow. “Oh my God!” he sobbed as he gave her hair and face and lips a thousand small quick kisses. “Jesus, baby! I’m sorry!”

Val hugged him back with her one good arm and for a long minute they just sat there, as connected to each other as will and closeness would allow. She wept against him, her tears hot on the side of his neck, and he wept, too. Her grief and pain were as real to him as if they were his own, and he did have his own. Henry Guthrie had been a far better father to him than his own had ever been and he still could not accept that he was gone. Just…gone. The loss of him left a huge hole through his chest.

Finally, slowly, and by degrees, their tears slowed and stopped and they released the dreadful intensity of their embrace. Val sniffed, got tissues for them both from the box on the bedside table, and sat back a bit. She wore a thin pink robe over a hospital gown. Her hair was unwashed and her left arm was in a sling. An IV port was taped to her right hand and Crow suspected that she had removed the tube and slipped out of her room without permission.

Val bent down and kissed Crow lightly on his torn lips and again on the forehead, closing her eyes and holding her soft lips there. He stroked her tangled hair and murmured soft words from their private language.

At length, she sat back again and looked at him with tear-bright eyes. Her face was bruised and scratched and puffy from unearned tears. Fatigue and grief had carved new lines around her mouth, and her beautiful face had a pinched quality that broke Crow’s heart.

“Daddy…” she began and then her face crumbled into a mask of overwhelming grief and she buried her head into his chest again.

“I know, baby,” Crow murmured, “I know.” Tears burned in his eyes, crested, and broke, spilling down his face and into her hair.

“Oh…Crow…why him?” She raised her head. “Why Daddy?”

He just shook his head.

“He never hurt anyone, Crow.” She screwed up her face and looked at him. “He made me run, he saved my life.”

“I know.”

“That man — that bastard! — he killed him because of me.”

“Hey…hey, now. Let’s not start thinking like that. There is no way that any of this was your fault.”

“Crow…I just ran away. I ran away and he shot Daddy…and I…and I—”

“Shhhh, shhhh. Listen to me, baby, just listen, okay? Okay? That was an evil man. Not just some ordinary crook, but a truly evil man. You have no idea how terribly evil he was. He would have killed all of you once he got all the things he needed. Your dad probably guessed that, and he did what he felt was the right thing. He chased you off into the corn and he ran to draw Ruger’s fire. He died to keep you and Mark and Connie alive. And it worked, baby. Don’t blame yourself, because if you do you’ll make your dad’s death pointless. It wasn’t pointless, was it?”

“N…no…” she said hesitantly.

“Your dad was a great man, and I loved him, too, you know. It took a lot of courage and a lot of love for him to have done what he did. That’s what you’ve got to hang on to. He made a heroic decision. Few men could have taken such a step. Few men would have had the depth of love for their children, or the sheer guts to do it. Are you listening?”

She nodded, eyes wide, tears still streaming, but the look in her eyes had changed. It was a look of innocent childlike wonder that was not in any way childish.

Crow kissed her hand again. “If you hadn’t run when you did, and as fast as you did, then Ruger would probably have killed both of you. Then he would have gone back to the house, attacked Connie, and killed her and Mark, too. But your dad screwed all that up. He helped you get away, and that left you free to go back and save Connie, and you kept that bastard busy long enough for me to arrive. Your dad bought us all that precious time.” He held her fingers to his lips as he spoke. “Your dad made his own choices, and he died a hero. That’s how you’ve got to think about it. Okay?”

“Oh, Crow…” she said, and her voice broke, but this time she didn’t descend into sobs or hysterics. This time there was just a hint of her old strength in her eyes and in the line of her jaw. Crow prayed that more of that strength would come back.

He touched the IV port taped to her wrist and smiled at her. “You snuck out of your room, you naughty girl.”

“They wouldn’t let me see you…and I had bad dreams.” A wince of disgust flickered over her face. “Horrible dreams.”

“Dreams?” he said hollowly, remembering the doozy of a nightmare he’d just had. “About…what?” he asked and immediately realized how stupid that question was.

Val shivered. “You know…about him.” Then the sobs came again and she wept quietly, slow tears carving warm trails across the battleground bruises of her cheeks. Crow held her hand to his own cheek, and he wept with her.

Tow-Truck Eddie lay on his back and looked up at the plain, unbroken expanse of the ceiling above his bed. Sunlight slanted through the windows, bisecting his recumbent nakedness. He had not moved so much as a finger since he’d come home from the orientation for his new part-time job. He’d just walked in, gone right upstairs, stripped, and lay down on the bed. Only his massive chest moved, rising and falling with deep regularity. Lying there felt good. A mild late afternoon breeze was wafting in through the open windows, the cool air murmuring over his bare skin, puckering his flesh into goose bumps that felt vaguely erotic. He felt his nipples harden, and then his…

“No!” he snapped, immediately angry with himself. With a grunt of self-disgust he rolled out of bed and went over to the closet, yanked the doors open, and stared inside. The clothes were all neatly folded and precisely stacked. He selected a pair of black sweats and pulled them on, hiding his nakedness, his hands jerking the clothes into place with ferocious shame. After he was dressed, he stood for a while and made himself calm down. The warmth of the cotton sweats changed the tightness of his skin, chasing away the gooseflesh and the shameful erection. He stood with his eyes closed, focusing inward on the events of last night. A smile slowly dawned on his face as the image of the dying man, the Baptizer as Eddie now thought of him, floated with bloody clarity in his mind. It steadied him to think of the Baptizer lying there, covered in blood, broken into all the ritual pieces, arranged in the correct way. Tow-Truck Eddie knew he had done it just right, had gone through the rite in exactly the correct way, and the knowledge of that chased away the baser thoughts of the flesh, of his own flesh.

He turned around and looked at the shrine that stood framed by shafts of rich golden sunlight. It was as if God had cast a spotlight on it, and it lifted Tow-Truck Eddie’s heart and made his soul soar with joy.

He crossed the room and knelt in front of the shrine, bowed his head, and prayed for a long time. His prayers were unformed, just random thoughts and images from deep within his being that he offered up to his Father. Outside, birds sang in the dogwood trees and Tow-Truck Eddie thought it was the sweetest thing he had ever heard, like the singing of angels.

He crossed himself and then reached down for the little mallet and struck the tiny Sanctus bell seven times, because seven was God’s number. The bell, though small, had a clear, high ring and the reverberations wandered gently around the room. Then he reached forward to the small ambry he’d made late last night. It was made from the knotty pine that had formerly been his entertainment center, but Tow-Truck Eddie’s skillful hands — the hands of a carpenter, he reminded himself — had taken that wood and reshaped it from something of pointless value to an object that was most holy. He pulled the doors open, reached inside, and removed the vessels of the Eucharist and placed them on the credence built onto the side of the ambry. He closed the doors and addressed the elements, again crossing himself. He took the paten and placed it on the top of the ambry, which was to be his altar. He had not had time to procure official vessels, and so his paten was a heavy white porcelain dinner plate that he had washed seven times before consecrating it with many prayers. His chalice was a thick pewter boxing trophy he’d won nearly twenty-five years ago. Into it he poured pure water from a bottle of Evian he’d bought at the Wawa for just this purpose; Tow-Truck Eddie did not believe in alcoholic spirits of any kind, not even wine. Finally he lifted the ciborium. It was only a Tupperware container, but it would have to do until he could obtain the real thing. He pried the lid off and removed the Eucharist, holding it in his hands, feeling its weight. He raised it to his nose and filled his nostrils with the scent. It was extraordinary.

He set it down on the paten and took the knife he had prepared specially for this moment. “When first I came among you,” he said aloud, addressing the whole world, “my blood was shed and my body broken by mine enemies. My blood became your wine and my body became your bread and each of you fed upon me to keep alive the New Covenant. Now I make with you a Final Covenant. No longer shall you drink of my blood or eat of my flesh, but of your blood shall I drink, and of your flesh shall I eat. In this way, the Son of Glory shall know his place, and in this way shall the righteous know their Lord. Today, in your hearing, I declare myself the Son of man, the Son of Heaven’s King, the righteous and unyielding Sword of God. Today, I accept the offering of this man who was beast and man, who was unholy and holy. Today is the first Holy Communion of the Final Covenant. All glory to God the most high!”

Tow-Truck Eddie carved a thin slice of the Eucharist and held it up even as he lowered his eyes in humility before his Father. He prayed for many long minutes, and then he raised his head and put the Eucharist into his mouth and ate it. When he had eaten, he took the cup, and after he had blessed it, he drank.

Instantly the power within him seemed to grow, to swell, to explode with the light of a thousand suns in his brain, and he cried out in sheer joy and wonder. Tears ran down his face and his face crumbled into a mask of sobs. He bent down and beat his head against the floor, thanking God.

It took a long time until he could even raise his head, so great was his joy, so overwhelming was the moment. When he did, he sat for a while and made himself calm down, breathing slowly in and out, sniffing back tears. Then he took a freshly laundered white towel and began cleaning the communion vessels. Last of all, he lifted the Eucharist and returned it to the container. Tow-Truck Eddie was surprised at how large it was, and how heavy, though it was a bit lighter since he had washed all of the Baptizer’s blood off it. He sealed the human heart in the container and returned it to the ambry, satisfied that there would be enough of it to last him for many days. He was not worried about it spoiling; if it came to that he would simply find another. There were always sinners out there.

After a while Tow-Truck Eddie got up and dressed for his part-time job.

The big cop looked mildly down at him, and then frowned when he saw the bruises on Mike’s face. “Did you get the number of the truck?”

Mike blinked. “What?”

“The Mack truck that did that to your face, kid.”

“Oh,” said Mike, and he forced a fake grin, “I, uh, fell off my bike. Rolled down a hill over some rocks.”

“And then what? A Mack truck fall on you?”

“It looks a lot worse than it feels,” Mike lied. “Hardly feel it.”

“Okay,” said the cop, a knowing skepticism in his eyes. He wore a glossy black nameplate that read GOLUB. “So what can I do for you?”

Mike nodded at the hospital entrance. “I just want to go in.”

“To see whom?”

“Huh?”

“Increased security, kiddo. Haven’t you been watching the news?”

“Oh. Yeah. Uh, I’m here to see Mr. Crow. Malcolm Crow.”

“What’s your name?”

“Mike Sweeney.”

Golub consulted a clipboard and then shook his head. “Nope. Not on the list, kiddo.”

“List? What list?”

“The list of people who are allowed to see Mr. Crow. You, my battered young friend, are not on the list. So, kindly go buzz off.” His smile was pleasant but unyielding.

“This is stupid. I just want to visit him.”

“What part of ‘nope’ was beyond your grasp?”

Mike peered up at him. “Are all cops this weird?”

“So I am reliably informed.”

“Shit.”

“Hey! Watch your mouth, youngster.”

“It’s not fair that I can’t get to see Crow. Can’t you just let me in? I’m not going to bother him or anything.”

“Well, Mike Sweeney, do you know how many people today have asked to get in to see Mr. Crow?”

“Uh, no.”

“Lots. Do you know how many of them swore that they wouldn’t bother Mr. Crow?”

“No.”

“All of them. Now, here’s the bonus question. Do you know how many of them I have admitted into this Hippocratic establishment?”

“No.”

“Exactly none,” said Golub. “See that guy over there on the bench? He’s a reporter…and I didn’t let him in either. Now, you seem like a nice kid, so I want you to continue to be nice and nicely buzz off.”

Mike trudged dispiritedly toward his bike and trying not to wince, he gingerly bent down to open the lock and pull the plastic-coated chain through the spokes. He was just coiling it around the frame below the seat when a shadow blocked the sunlight, and he looked up to see the small dumpy man Officer Golub had mentioned standing over him. The man looked a little like George, the bald guy from those Seinfeld reruns. A red PRESS card was clipped to his jacket lapel.

“Say, kid, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”

Mike slowly and carefully got to his feet, his defenses rising and snapping instantly into place. “What for?”

“I couldn’t help overhearing you talking with that Gestapo agent over there. My name’s Willard Fowler Newton, Black Marsh Sentinel.” He stuck out his hand, and Mike hesitated only for a second or two before accepting it. “I thought I heard you say your name was Mark Sweeney?”

“Mike Sweeney.”

“Mike, right, right. Well, listen, Mike, is it true that you know Malcolm Crow, the guy who was shot?”

“Sure. He’s a friend of mine. I go to his store all the time.”

“You mean the Crow’s Nest. Place that sells all that Halloween stuff? Well, the thing is, Mar…I mean Mike, I’m doing a story — well, I’m trying to do a story — on the shootings, and I need some background on Mr. Crow and the others. Do you think I could ask you a few questions?”

Mike hedged.

“I’ll buy dinner.”

Mike’s eyes narrowed suspiciously and he took a half step backward, flicking a glance over at the cop.

“Look, kid, I’m not a kidnapper or child molester. I really am a reporter.”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you don’t believe me, go and ask Officer Godzilla over there. He’ll tell you.”

“Look, I got to get home. It’s getting late.”

“Maybe I could drive you—”

“Yeah, right.”

“No! No, nothing like that,” Newton said quickly, holding his hands up, palms outward. He drew in a deep breath and tried again. “Look, kid, I need to get this story in by press time. So, whaddya say, Mike? Just fifteen minutes? We can sit right on that bench over there, in full view of the nice officer.”

Mike glanced over to the benches, three of which were unoccupied, and on the fourth, the town’s only homeless person, Mr. Pockets, was stretched out, asleep under tented newspapers. He still hedged. “I don’t know what more I can tell you than what the cops would have said. I mean, you already know who got shot and all that, and I guess that you already know that it was probably the Cape May Killer who did it, and—”

Newton’s hand suddenly closed on Mike’s bruised wrist with such force that Mike actually cried out in pain and jerked back. Officer Golub looked over at them, but Newton instantly let go and this time he backed up a step. While he was doing this his mouth went through a number of shapes and yet he wasn’t able to squeeze out a single word. He stopped, swallowed, licked his lips, and with a glaze in his eyes said, “Wait, wait, go back. What was that you said about the Cape May Killer?”

“Yeah,” Mike said, nodding, “I mean, I guess it was him. After what the mayor told Mr. Crow and all….”

Newton looked like he was about to cry. He placed both hands — lightly this time — on Mike’s shoulders. “Mike…has anyone ever told you that you were the greatest person to have ever walked the earth?”

Chapter 22

There are shunned places in this world where no one should ever go. Black places where the darkness clings to the sides of trees and the undersides of rocks, like lesions from some ancient disease.

These places are not consciously shunned; they don’t call enough attention to themselves for that. The oldest and most instinctive parts of our minds avoid them perhaps, just as the hummingbird abhors the dying flower and the bear eschews the diseased fish. Year after year, century after century, they endure. Sometimes they fade away to paleness like the dust on old bones, the malevolent fires banked, almost cold — but never, never going out. Sometimes that dark energy flares, stoked by the deliberately manufactured death of some innocent thing, or by the desire of some hateful heart.

Such a place can be infused with even greater darkness if enough deliberate evil is enacted there: the blood and tears, fear and malfeasance imprinting the soil and stone and trees, the corruption leaving a stain that no rain or hand can sponge away. There have been houses that have endured and witnessed such horrors that they have become like batteries storing up evil; some battlefields are like that, the blood-soaked soil still vibrating with the echoes of dying heartbeats, cold with the last pale breaths of fallen soldiers who lay and bled and begged for salvation and ultimately cursed God as they died. In a kinder world, such places would be locked away behind impenetrable forests, or buried unreachably deep beneath granite mountains, or lost in the sands of the most remote and forbidding desert. In a kinder world, such malignant places would be fewer and weaker and would not possess the power to reach out into the world of men and whisper the doctrine of darkness, to seduce minds hungry for some corrupt purpose, to inspire tainted hearts to apostolic devotion; but in this world the evidence that such things have happened time and again is all too clearly written in the book of human suffering. In a kinder world such places could be eradicated, made pure, washed clean. In a kinder world, but not this world. These shunned places endure, waiting, patient, and always hungry.

Black-hearted men who sense this are drawn to these places, and finding them is like coming home.

The town of Pine Deep lay nestled in the arms of the mountains, overlooking vast forestland and farmland, streams and brooks, the silvery thread of the river, hollows and marshes, and one dark, forgotten, shunned place. It lay southeast of the town, pushed down into the shadows of the three tall hills that stand over the narrow valley known as Dark Hollow.

There is a place, deep within the hollow, where the ground is always marshy with black mud, the air thick with blowflies and mosquitoes. The leaves and pine needles that lie like a blanket over the swampy ground turn black within seconds of landing there and they give off a stink like rotten eggs and spoiled meat. From beneath the carpet of leaves there is a darker ichor that bubbles up every once in a while and stains the banks of the marsh; the ichor smells like fresh blood but tastes like tears.

Thirty years ago there was a murder there at the edge of the swamp. A thin black man from the Mississippi Delta and a big white man from Germany, both of whom had traveled long and strange roads to get to that spot, and fought as night fell and the moon rose, and the black man had killed the white man. He beat him down and stabbed him with a stake made from the shattered neck of a blues guitar. The black man buried the white man in the swamp and an hour later he himself was dead, beaten to death by rednecks who thought he was the devil himself and not the man who had saved the whole town from a monster. It was the kind of thing that should have ended up in a song, maybe even a blues song, but no one ever knew about it and no song was ever written to tell about how the Bone Man killed the devil with a guitar.

For thirty years that swamp lay like a secret, its reality becoming something akin to rumor as the years passed. It was too difficult to get to except by intrepid hikers, and for some reason hikers never went that way. Only one person ever came there, but he came there not as a hiker but as a supplicant, kneeling to worship at the edge of the Dark Hollow swamp.

Vic Wingate’s soul and mind were as dark and rancid as the muck beneath the leafy covering of that swamp, and he had appointed himself to be the caretaker of that terrible grave. He knew its secrets — had known them since he’d coerced those other men into beating the Bone Man to death. At first he’d thought killing the Bone Man was just revenge, but now he knew that it was part of a master plan so comprehensive that it rolled forward like destiny. He was caught up in it, and he loved it.

Vic had been part of it even then. Even as a teenager he had belonged heart and soul to the fallen devil at whose graveside he worshiped. When Ubel Griswold had still lived in Pine Deep, Vic had become something between apprentice and lapdog, just as now he had become something between priest and general. As those long years had passed, Vic had labored to keep his secret safe and to prepare the way for those events that were foretold by the dark whispers of the buried dead; and for his labors the ancient voice of shadows told him many secrets, forcing Vic’s inner eyes to open wide and behold things that were only possible when love and compassion and restraint were abandoned. It spoke to him of a time when even the dreaming dead would awaken and then the whole world — not just the town of Pine Deep — would drown in a tidal wave of blood. In the unsanctified shadows of Dark Hollow the ghost of Ubel Griswold converted Vic Wingate into a believer in the glory of the Red Wave.

Vic had waited patiently as the years had passed, but over the last few days his heart beat faster, his breath came in short excited gasps because he knew that the waiting was almost over. It was Thursday the thirtieth of September, just one full day since Karl Ruger had come into town like a bad storm, bringing violence and death. In a few hours it would be October, and that was his month. The month of the sleeper beneath the swamp. By the end of October, Vic knew, for the people in Pine Deep, perhaps for all the people in the world, the sands of time would have run out. The first time he’d thought of that it sounded grandiose, but now he understood how it was going to work, and he believed—knew—that it would work. He would be at the Man’s right hand when it happened, a general with more power than kings.

During the days Vic worked on his cars in Shanahan’s Garage and he thought about that dark, shadowy place, about him who slept there, but who came awake now every night. He could feel the calls the Man sent out every night, the call to other darkly beating hearts, hearts like Vic’s own. Like Karl Ruger’s. Vic knew now that Ruger had been drawn to Pine Deep somehow; the Man had done that by some means that even Vic didn’t understand. Probably Boyd, too; after all, the Man had wanted him and had sent the construct out to fetch him from Guthrie’s farm. Vic knew that every night the dead thing in the swamp burdened the earth with its prophets, and they went forth through the forests and the fertile fields, spreading a perverted gospel to the damned. Vic loved it all, and he loved him — the Man—the sleeper on the threshold of awakening.

Now Vic waited for the Man to awaken him who would be his left hand. The other general in the army of the Red Wave. Vic understood some of it, but not all of it. For all of the darkness in his soul, he was still a creature of the light and could not fully grasp the subtleties of the world of night. He read a lot, though. He tried to fill himself with knowledge on everything that might pertain to the Man and his plan, but he was still human. Boyd no longer was. And Ruger…well, the Man had special plans for him.

Vic squatted at the edge of the swamp. It was getting late. In another hour the sun would be down. Lois was home, probably deep inside a bottle by now. That punk Mike had better be there, too. No matter how much his creepy smile had unnerved Vic last night, if that kid so much as stepped one cunt-hair’s width out of line Vic was going to break something this time. Maybe an arm bone. Maybe a collarbone. Something that would hurt so much Mike would not even think about giving him any kind of jerk-off smile. Fuck that. Vic would do what he had to do to show everyone who was the big dog.

He’d felt the Man call him to the hollow, and he’d come, but since he’d been there the Man had said nothing. There were whispers in his head; the only thoughts there were his own.

He lingered though, knowing that he wouldn’t have been called without a reason. So he hunkered down and watched with growing fascination as thousands of insects — beetles, roaches, ants, praying mantises, caterpillars — crawled out of the woods on all sides of him and threw themselves into the swamp. They vanished beneath the carpet of blackened leaves and there were small popping sounds as the bigger ones were yanked beneath the surface. The smaller ones didn’t make a sound as they were sucked beneath the surface. The Man was hungry, Vic thought, and he smiled. He used to love watching the Man eat back in the day. Sometimes he’d bring him tied-up rabbits and toss them into the swamp, watching as the Man’s black blood bubbled up around them and dragged them down.

A twig snapped behind him and Vic was instantly up and turned and there was a German Luger in his hand. The gun had once belonged to the Man and Vic had found it years ago, lying in the mud almost where he now stood facing the woods. It had been Vic’s most prized possession — the last thing the Man had touched before he died.

His finger had five pounds on an eight-pound trigger and Vic was a twitch away from killing something. His eyes cut back and forth across the wall of evergreens and shrubs. Then a tangle of vines parted and a figure stepped out into the gloom, and Vic lowered his gun, smiling thinly. He slid it back into the shoulder rig he wore beneath his windbreaker.

“’Bout fucking time you showed up,” he said, squatting down again. “You look like shit.”

The figure stared at him with fevered eyes. It stood swaying on dirt-streaked legs, its clothes in rags and showing skin that had been bleached white with blood loss. There was a brightness of sweat on the stranger’s face and his mouth hung open, lips slack, teeth clotted with blood and dirt. There were bullet holes in its chest and stomach; some of them still seeped blood and pus.

Vic cocked his head and peered up at him. “If you can hear me, then do what you came here to do. You’re on the edge now, and you gotta do this right — and right means right now.”

The figure took a single step forward and then fell to his knees. His eyes were demented but pleading as they locked on Vic’s, but the mechanic shook his head. “Uh-uh, chief. You gotta do it. It’s no good if I help you. Spoils the mojo.” He took a toothpick out of his pocket, tore off the plastic wrapper, and stuck it between his teeth. Mint. Very nice.

The dying stranger toppled forward onto his chest and lay there. Vic frowned at it for a moment, then relaxed when he saw that there was still a little movement of the chest. Still alive, but definitely on that edge. He idly chewed the toothpick from one side of his mouth to the other.

“Come on, sparky. You’re four feet away. If you want it that bad, crawl.”

The dying man did that. Slowly at first, just a faint flexing of white fingers in the dirt and a weak kick of the feet, and then the fingers dug into the mud and the toes of the shoes found purchase on a tangle of root, and the dying man began to crawl, wriggling like a misshapen snake through brown grass and mud.

Vic watched him, fascinated. He’d read about this in some of the books he’d found at the Man’s house, and on Web pages he’d prowled on the Net, but he’d never witnessed the process before. It was nothing like in the movies.

The man made it to the edge of the swamp and Vic felt a jolt of excitement shoot through him. This was it, he realized; the shit was really happening!

The dying man was at the end of his strength now, and with his very last effort he pulled himself over the bank and into the swampy mud. Blood still leaked from his wounds and it soaked into the black muck, becoming part of it. Vic could hear how hungrily the mud sucked at the wounds, drinking from them.

“Oh, hell yes,” he said softly.

“Yes…” This time it was the voice of the dying man. Faint but real, and it was full of joy as the swamp sucked the last blood out of him. “Oh…yes!”

Then there was a smell like sulfur and burned meat and gasses erupted from the swamp, curling up on either side of the dying man’s head. A moment later something black bubbled up all around him and Vic leaned close to see. It was thick, like blood, but it was the color of ink. Steam rose from it. It splashed all over the dying man and his face was completely covered in it. It pooled on the surface of the swamp and the biggest pool formed around the dying man’s head.

Vic waited for a moment to see what would happen next. The man looked dead; Vic could see no movement at all in his chest or back. And then he heard it…a faint sound. Like a baby nursing at a breast. A sucking sound.

Vic put his hands on the bank and lowered his head so that he could see the man’s mouth. Yeah, there it was. The man was drinking the black ichor of the swamp.

Smiling, Vic sat back on the bank and chewed his toothpick, feeling immensely pleased and powerful. It was a full ten minutes before the man raised his head from the surface of the swamp and sucked in a huge lungful of air. He turned with painful slowness and crawled back to the firm muddy ground and lay there, gasping, his eyes jumping with fever, his fingers twitching.

Vic tossed away the toothpick and took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. He smoked it all the way down, smoked another. It took about that long for the man just to sit up, and even then his head drooped down between his knees, muck and black goo dripping from his mouth and nose.

“How do you feel?” Vic asked sarcastically.

Karl Ruger just shook his head. A heavy barking cough spasmed through his chest and he vomited between his splayed legs. It was a mixture of red and black blood.

“I feel strange….”

“You don’t say,” Vic purred, enjoying this.

“My head…all fucked up…”

Vic snorted. “Pal, you don’t know the half of it.”

Ruger looked at him, his rheumy eyes sick but hostile. “Who the hell are you anyway?”

“Well, let me put it in words you might understand. I,” he said, “am the right hand of Ubel Griswold.”

The dying man’s eyes jumped.

Vic saw the words hit home and nodded. “Yeah, baby. Two dogs, one leash.” He bent forward, leaning his forearms on his thighs. “So listen close. My name’s Vic Wingate and the Man has work for both of us to do.”

Frowning, Ruger looked down at his chest, at the bullet holes that were not clogged with black goo.

“Good luck with that,” he rasped. “I’m fucking dying here.”

Vic shrugged. “Yeah, you are. But you’re one of his now, so pretty much Griswold will decide when and if you die — and what being dead will mean. It’s outta your hands as much as it’s outta God’s hands. New boss, new rules.”

Ruger coughed up a clot of blood. “You’re not making any sense. Christ, I’ve got four bullets in me.”

“Five, actually. But, lookee here — you ain’t dead yet. How about that?” He cocked his head to one side, considering. “Well…you ain’t completely dead. And you ain’t gonna really ever be dead until the Man wants you dead. Y’see, Ruger, ol’ buddy, you’ve got some work to do. I believe you have some unfinished business to attend to, old hoss.”

Some of the fire returned to Ruger’s cold eyes. “Fuck you, pal. If I’m going to do anything before I die it’s find that son of a bitch who shot me and tear his fucking throat out. And that broke-nose country bitch.”

Vic stood up, brushed the dirt off his pants. “I believe we’re on the same page here, so I want you to listen to me for a minute. Yeah, you gotta square things with a few people. The asshole that shot you is named Malcolm Crow. He’s that Guthrie bitch’s boyfriend. It serves what the Man wants that both of them should stop fucking up the works. The Man has an old score to settle with Crow and it would go a long way toward getting with the program if you were to rip that little prick a new one.”

Ruger’s laugh was cold and wet, but Vic’s own face was sober as he added: “Understand something, though, sport. Make sure that however you do it, it makes headlines. Let’s give this fucker a Hollywood ending. Big, noisy, and nasty. Go down in a blaze of glory with the sons a’ bitches who did this to you. Hell, everybody’d believe that story. And belief, my friend, is what we need.”

“Why?”

“Like I said, the Man has his reasons. And then there’s one more thing you gotta do, and it has to be tonight.”

“What?”

Vic told him. As he spoke, black goo oozed from Ruger’s smiling mouth. His tongue flicked past his shattered teeth and over his purple lips, lapping up the ichor. He coughed again, spitting up more blood and pus and mud, but each time his lungs sounded clearer, though his face was still a waxy white from all the blood he’d lost. The fever in his eyes danced brighter and brighter.

Vic smiled, too; he took a long draw and snorted smoke out through his nostrils. “I’ll be seeing you later.” With that he turned and walked the mile back to his truck. He was still grinning when he slid behind the wheel.

Chapter 23

He didn’t even notice her when he stepped into the elevator, a small figure standing silent as a ghost in one corner; all he saw were the images crashing together in his mind. Terry jabbed the button for the fourth floor and was sucking on a kiwi-flavored Lifesaver, thinking about Crow and Val, about Mark and Connie, and about Henry Guthrie dying alone out in the rain. He was close to overdosing on the Xanax, but he didn’t care. His plan was to go out, buy a bottle of something very strong — maybe bourbon, maybe scotch — bring it back, and sit vigil in the doctors’ lounge until they released Crow in the morning. He couldn’t make himself go home to Sarah, and he was too terrified to sleep.

Terry felt like he was a short step away from screaming. The effort of keeping a bland, normal expression on his face was driving him up a wall. Every time something else happened with this catastrophe he wanted to shout at everyone, to tell them to leave him alone; he felt constantly poised to run. Everything was starting to spin out of control, or slip like oily snakes between his fingers. Just in the last few weeks — since those awful nightmares had started, since a full night’s restorative sleep had become only a memory — it seemed as if each separate element of his life was becoming warped. The town was a mess. The crops were failing, the banks were going to have to foreclose on people Terry had grown up with, people who looked to him for answers because he was the mayor.

On top of that the town had become a battleground. Henry Guthrie was dead; Guthrie’s whole family was in the hospital. It was impossible to fit his mind around that. Crow had been shot! Police were swarming all over, taking control away from him. At home it was just as bad. Sarah wanted him to go back into therapy because of his dreams. Normally Terry liked the catharsis of therapy, but not lately — not with the kinds of dreams he’d been having. He did not want to be told that he was going crazy. It made him want to scream, because he thought he truly was losing his mind. Day by day, night by night, nightmare by nightmare. All he wanted from his shrink now was a fresh set of prescriptions. The antipsychotics and the antiaxiomatics weren’t doing their job, so he’d have to lean on Dr. Calder to prescribe something a whole lot stronger. Anything, as long as it took things down a notch and let him sleep without those dreams.

He stood there in the elevator, staring at his reflection in the polished steel of the elevator’s inner door; he stood there and looked at his face. No, not his face. The other face.

The face of…what? What was it? He didn’t even know what to call it.

It was the face of the thing that every night rose up and hunched over Sarah’s sleeping body, reaching for her with twisted hands, opening its mouth to reveal those huge…

He shuddered and closed his eyes, not even wanting to think about it, because every time his mind tried to put a name on the face reflected in the stainless steel door, his thoughts drifted immediately back in time, drifted thirty years back, revisiting the Pine Deep of his boyhood. The town had been so different then. It was a smaller place, and a darker place; darker without the merchandising and licensing of spooky things that now made the town rich, not the mildly scary darkness of Pine Deep, Bucks County’s Haunted Playground. Terry tried not to think about those days. He tried often and he tried hard, but he rarely succeeded, not when he looked in any reflecting surface and saw the daily changes that made his face less and less his own, and more and more the face of the nightmare beast. Those long-ago days had left their mark on him in more ways than one, scaring him body and soul, and snatching away from him the one thing he loved most in all the world. Mandy. Little red-haired Mandy. Three years his junior and more precious to him than most little sisters are to little boys. She was always happy, always smiling — something Terry as a child rarely was, and she always managed to find some way to trick him into laughing. But she was thirty years dead, lost to the darkness of those times.

“Terry?”

Terry Wolfe stiffened as he heard the tiny voice behind him in the elevator. His big body became suddenly rigid and he stared forward, instantly afraid to turn and look.

“Terry…?” asked the voice.

He stared at the closed door of the elevator, too terrified to even move. He knew he was alone in the car. This is it, he thought with something like resigned acceptance, this is the way it happens. First the dreams, then the hallucinations, and finally the voices. This is how people become insane. This is what it feels like when your mind dies. Oh God!

“Terry, please…”

“Go away!” he hissed between gritted teeth. He brushed a hand behind him as if shooing away a cat. “You’re not here!”

“Terry, please…look at me.”

“No,” he muttered, grinding his teeth. The elevator stopped at his floor, but the doors refused to open. He stabbed the buttons but they remained cold and dark.

“Just look at me…look what happened to me.”

Behind him she shifted and now he could see her hazy reflection in the stainless steel of the closed elevator door. A small, slim figure, girl-high and girl-shaped in a ragged and tattered green dress. Even though the reflection was smeared and distorted, he could see her face, see the slashes on it, the blood that welled from it that ran like rainwater down her dress and clung to the matted red curls.

“Oh…God…” he breathed and pressed his eyes shut against the sight; tears struggled out from under his eyelids and burned their way down his cheeks. “I’m so sorry…please…”

“Terry, I don’t want to make you cry.”

“Then go away!”

“I can’t, Terry. You know that.” The voice was a little girl’s voice, but the words and the manner of speech were far older than that.

“For the love of God, why can’t you leave me in peace?”

“God?” she echoed with soft mockery in her voice. “God didn’t save me, Terry. God didn’t save you, either. And God won’t save this town. Don’t you understand yet? He’s not dead, Terry.”

He almost turned, almost wheeled around to face her. “What? What did you say?”

“He’s not dead, Terry,” she said quietly, but there were echoes of sadness and of fear in her voice. “He’s still there, Terry. Still there after all these years.”

“No! That’s not true.”

“Yes, Terry. It is and you know it. He’s still there — still here! — and he is going to start it all over again.”

“No!”

“Yes. All of it, over again. All the hurting, all the dying. Can’t you smell the blood already? He’s coming back, Terry, but this time he’s different. He’s a lot stronger now. Being dead has made him so much stronger.” Her voice was so old now, ancient with cynical grief. “You thought he was a monster back then, Terry? He’s worse now. You know I’m right — you’ve seen it in your dreams. And you know what he wants from you, what he wants you to be. You see that, too. You see that every time you look in the mirror.”

“Shut up! Please!”

“You can stop him.”

“I can’t stop him! How could I ever stop him? I couldn’t stop him from…from…”

“From hurting me?” she offered. “I know, Terry, but you tried. You did try, and I love you for it. But he hurt me, and he hurt you, and then the Bone Man came and hurt him.”

“Killed him, you mean.”

“No, hurt him. Reduced him,” she said in her young-old voice. “Don’t you understand? Evil never dies…it just waits, and it gets stronger in the dark. He can’t die. He isn’t like other people. He isn’t real.”

“Neither are you!”

“I know,” she said in a sad whisper of a voice, “I know. That’s why it’s up to you, Terry. You have to fight him.”

“It’s you who doesn’t understand! How could I fight him, even if he was still alive?” There was a long silence, and then Terry felt her hand slip into his. Her fingers were small and cold and wet, and he almost jerked his own hand away — almost, but he didn’t.

“You know how to fight him, Terry.”

“Then how?” he suddenly snarled. “How am I supposed to fight someone like him? Fight — some-thing like him?”

“By coming with me. By not being like him.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not like him!”

Her silence answered him; then after a pause she said, “Terry, the only way to not be like him is to be like me.”

Now he did jerk his hand away. “What is that supposed to mean?” He wheeled at last and faced her, but she had vanished completely, leaving only the chill of her touch on his fingers. He looked at his hand, at each finger where she had touched him, and saw the tiny droplets of blood. “Mandy…” he whispered. Behind him the elevator doors opened and he spun and blundered out into the empty corridor.

Officer Jim Polk slipped the little pint bottle of apricot brandy into his hip pocket and tugged his uniform jacket down to cover the bulge. He felt tired, but now with an ass-pocketful of good times, he felt relaxed.

He was not a good-looking man by any stretch. He was average in height, weight, color, and build, but his whole appearance was spoiled by a shiftiness in his eyes that hinted at the avaricious pettiness of his soul. At fifty he looked like a seedy used car salesman in someone’s borrowed cop uniform. Out of uniform, no one would ever have guessed him to be a professional law enforcement officer with thirty-one years on the job. Not that he cared. If he had a bottle of something sweet, or maybe a good fifth of Wild Turkey for those really pissy days, then he was sitting pretty. The weight of the brandy bottle in his back pocket was a comfort to him, and it made him want to smile.

Across the street, his new temporary partner sat slumped behind the wheel of his unit, arms folded across her chest, head nodding. Polk grinned as he walked up to her side of the patrol car, and stood there for a moment, watching her sleep. Polk liked having a woman partner. He liked it a whole lot. He had never been paired with Rhoda Thomas or Shirley O’Keefe, and he had always wondered what it would be like to share job time with a chick. A chick with a shield and a gun. A chick who knew guns and could talk rough and act tough.

Polk thought it was just Jim-jumping-Dandy.

He conceded to himself that this one, Melanie White, was no Pamela Lee, but she had a good rack of bombs — he could tell that even with the Kevlar vest she wore. Despite the bagginess of her uniform trousers, she looked to have nice buns, too. Polk was pleased as punch. Her face wasn’t much, though, he decided, a little too rough, nose too long and bent, and her lips too thin. What the hell, he reminded himself, they all looked the same in the dark.

Still grinning, he tugged the Jacquins out of his pocket, broke the seal with a twist, and took a warming mouthful of the burning syrup. Licking his lips, he glanced quickly around as he replaced the cap and stowed the bottle once more out of sight. There was no one looking in his direction except the town tramp, Mr. Pockets, who was looking up from a trash can he’d been picking though. He favored Polk with a faint smile and went back to his explorations. Polk ignored him, still smiling, feeling very good.

Polk’s smile froze into a mask of semicurious delight. It occurred to him that if he leaned over until his forehead was pressed against the frame of the closed door, he could probably see down Melanie’s shirt. Hmm. His tongue searched for more of the brandy residue on his lips, and, once again checking the street, he eased himself forward. The cold metal of the door frame felt nice against his forehead, and as he shifted and squirmed for just the right angle, he could see the top inch of cleavage, caught in shadows cast by the vest and the folds of the shirt, but there sure as hell. Dotted with freckles, too, and Polk thought that was just the cat’s ass.

“Still going for the cheap shots, Jimmy?” a voice asked him.

Polk jerked erect and spun around, his heart suddenly hammering in his chest. A pickup truck that he hadn’t even heard drive up was idling five feet away. Vic Wingate leaned against the fender by the open door, arms folded across his chest, head cocked to one side, and a mean little smile on his face. Polk stared at him for a moment, flicked a guilty glance back at the quietly snoring Melanie White, then faced Vic again. He shrugged and walked over to Vic’s truck, lowering his voice. “My new partner.”

“No shit,” Vic said blandly. “You fuck her yet?”

“Shh! Christ, she’ll hear you!”

Vic chuckled. “Who cares? Ugly bitch anyway. Face like a stone wall.” He considered for a moment. “Nice jugs, though.”

Polk took an unconsciously covetous step to one side to block Vic’s view. “What’s going on, Vic? You want something?”

“Can’t a guy stop to say hi to one of his buddies?”

Polk made a face. “Yeah, right. You wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire, so don’t jerk me off, Vic. I’m on the clock here, so what do you want?”

Unfolding his arms, Vic turned, reached into the truck, fished around on the floor of the passenger side, and then turned back. He had an old grease-stained rag in his hands and he handed it to Polk, who took it with a puzzled frown, then felt the weight and shape of it. Polk almost unwrapped it, but Vic touched his hand and shook his head. Instead, Polk felt the shape of it again, judging it by its thickness. He looked at Vic with a face like an expectant schoolboy’s. “This is…”

“Yeah,” agreed Vic.

“But…wha….?”

Vic leaned close and spoke very quietly. “For services rendered.”

“For what? I don’t get it. I haven’t done anything for you since…”

“Let me put it another way. It’s for services about to be rendered.”

“About…?” Clouds formed slowly on Polk’s face and he stared through confusion for several minutes as traffic swept past the double-parked truck. Vic let him work it out. Finally, Polk’s face cleared of doubt and a mask of shock formed instead; his eyes grew very wide. He could actually feel his knees starting to tremble.

“Don’t even fuck around, Vic—”

“It’s no joke, Jimmy. You’ve known all along it was gonna start someday.”

“Oh, come on! That’s just crazy shit. It was a joke. Stuff we talked about when we got high back in school.” Polk was shaking his head back and forth.

“Jimmy…” Vic said softly, coaxing. “Don’t let’s play games. You know what we were talking about, and what it meant. Don’t play like it was all LSD trips. You know, man, you know!”

Polk looked at him for a minute, still shaking his head. He could feel a burning in the corners of his eyes and a tingling in his nose and realized with horror that he was about to cry. He made a face and started to turn away. “This is bullshit, Vic—”

Vic’s hand caught his shoulder in a grip so fast and hard that Polk was jerked back around to face the mechanic. The wrapped bundle of money fell to the ground. “Don’t you fucking walk away from me, Jimmy.” He leaned close and his voice was a whisper as cold and hard as the edge of a new razor blade. Polk didn’t want to look into Vic’s eyes, but they bored into him, the intensity compelling and unmanning at the same time. Polk was terrified, but he was trapped, too.

“You took money from me before, Jimmy. Hell, you took money from him! You think you can take the Man’s dime and not work for it?” He tightened his grip and pulled Polk even closer. Polk could smell cigarettes and something sour on Vic’s breath. “You took the man’s dime, Polk. You took your thirty pieces of silver, just like me, and that means the Man owns us! He owns us. You should be fucking filled with joy that someone like him counts us among his chosen few. That’s an honor, you shit bag, and don’t you ever forget it. Ever!” He released Polk with a small shove that knocked Polk against the door of Vic’s truck.

Polk caught his balance and quickly looked up and down the street to see if anyone had seen him get roughed up. His partner was still asleep in the front seat of their cruiser, and no one but the old tramp Mr. Pockets had seen anything. The hobo stared at him for a moment and then continued rooting in the trash.

“Now,” Vic said softly, “pick up that money.” His eyes were hard as fists.

Polk didn’t even try to stare him down; his eyes dropped and he bent over and picked up the bundle wrapped in the greasy rag.

You took your thirty pieces of silver, just like me.

Vic nodded his approval, and then suddenly smiled. “It’s gonna start happening soon. That’s your starting salary, man. It’s an advance, and there’s a shitload more where that came from. I’ll call you to tell you how to earn enough of it to let you buy all the broads and scotch whiskey in the world. I’ll call you soon.” He paused and pointed a hard finger at Polk’s face. “You be ready.”

With that, Vic turned and climbed back into his truck. He slammed the door, put it in gear, fought his way aggressively through the evening traffic, and vanished around a corner. Polk stood and watched him go, his eyes still wide, his heart hammering in his chest, and his mind reeling with the implications. Melanie slept through it all, waking only when she heard and felt the trunk slam shut. She raised sleepy eyes and looked at Polk as he climbed in beside her.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

You took your thirty pieces of silver, just like me, and that means the Man owns us! He owns us.

Polk dabbed at the sweat on his brow and upper lip. “No,” he said huskily. “I…uh, I suddenly don’t feel all that good.”

She shrugged, turned the key in the ignition, and eased the patrol car into the lane of traffic heading south.

“I gave her a sedative and she’ll sleep through,” Weinstock said as he settled into the bedside chair.

Crow nodded. About ten minutes after Val had snuck into his room, a tribe of nurses had come hustling in, scolding and clucking and scowling at Crow as if her elopement from her own room had somehow been his idea. They bundled her off to her room, shooting looks of disapproval over their shoulders as they went. A few minutes after that Saul Weinstock had come in.

“She tell you why she slipped out?”

Weinstock nodded. “Bad dreams. Who can blame her? I’m probably going to have my fair share of them tonight, too.”

“She only told me that she had a dream about that guy Ruger. No details.”

Weinstock sucked his teeth. “She said she saw Karl Ruger in her room. Oh, don’t look at me like that. With all that she’s been through I’d have been concerned for her sanity if she didn’t dream of that prick. But with the stuff we pumped her up with she’ll probably be dreaming of nothing more threatening than Santa Claus for the rest of the night.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“Look, Crow, I want to be serious for just a bit, okay? We both know how tough Val is, and believe me, when she’s in form I would never want to cross her. But with everything that’s happened she’s likely to be a little flaky. And you”—he reached over and tapped Crow’s knee with a thick finger—“have to be the stabilizing force in her life. You’re going to have to represent sense and order so she can get back to herself.”

“Sense and order? Me?”

“I know, it’s a stretch for you.”

“Eat me.”

“You’re not kosher.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m a doctor, I know everything.”

“Ah.”

“Anyway…she’s going to need time and a lot of love. And patience. This could take weeks or even months for her to get over. You up for all that?”

Crow laughed. “Can I share something with you, Saul?”

“Of course.”

“Last night I was going to ask Val to go away with me for a weekend to a nice bed-and-breakfast in New Hope. Over a nice dinner and a superb bottle of nonalcoholic wine I was going to pop the ol’ question.”

A great big grin broke out on Weinstock’s face. “Then I guess you’re all set for the long haul.”

“As the routine goes…in sickness and in health.”

Weinstock patted his leg and stood up. “Good man.”

Saul Weinstock closed the door but lingered for a moment outside Crow’s room, staring up the hallway to where Val lay asleep. A police officer paced the hallway between the two rooms, and when he saw Weinstock looking in his direction he blushed and dropped his eyes. The officer — Barry Whitsover — had snuck downstairs for a smoke, leaving both Val and Crow unprotected, and hadn’t been on post when Val had gone truant. Weinstock had taken him aside and had reamed him out so long and so hard that the man’s ears were still bright red. Weinstock told him that it was only his compassion for the mentally impaired that prevented him from reporting it to Chief Bernhardt. The officer had no defense and had slunk away, relieved but humiliated.

But Weinstock wasn’t staring at him at the moment. He was looking at the door to Val’s room and thinking about what Crow had just said about proposing to Val. He smiled. The timing couldn’t be better. First, it would probably give her something to feel joyful about when everything else around her was dragging her down. Optimism was the best drug in the world. And, more importantly, it was a damn good thing because, based on what Val had said — and the blood and urine tests done when Val was admitted — they were already a fair way to starting a family.

He wandered away to start his rounds, his happy whistle at odds with the pall of dread that hung over the town.

Chapter 24

As a quiet autumn darkness settled over Pine Deep, Vic Wingate pulled his truck right up to the edge of the drop-off at the Passion Pit, his bumper jutting out of the steep drop down to Dark Hollow. He killed the engine, fired up a cigarette, and settled back to wait. No radio, no sound.

He was in a happy mood. Everything was in motion and things were working well, just as the Man had assured him they would. And just as he, himself, had planned. Ruger had come to town, as the Man had foreseen, been stranded here, and had begun the Change. The Man had sicced Tow-Truck Eddie on Mike, which should efficiently take care of that problem — after all, considering what Mike was and how soon he might discover his own nature, it was best to get him off the board as soon as possible. Vic just wished that he could kill the little snot himself, but he knew the folklore and shared the Man’s dread of what would happen to their plans if Mike died by a corrupt hand. It had to be a clean hand, or the whole plan would fail — and whose hands were cleaner than Tow-Truck Eddie’s? The guy was a fucking saint. A major league fruitcake, to be sure, but as clean as a whistle when it came to matters of the spirit. That meant that Mike — and his potential — would be neutralized. With him out of the game the Red Wave could really work, and that jazzed Vic so much he actually got hard.

He smoked and considered the Ruger thing. There was still way too much heat around Ruger. Far too much for comfort. If that psychopath did what he was supposed to do, though, then the heat would be turned off. Vic wondered how Ruger would manage it, and what he’d do. Would he take his suggestion and take Crow and Val Guthrie with him, down in that blaze of glory? If so, that would simplify things, too, because the Man hated Crow. The “one that got away” all those years ago. Griswold had literally been a second away from tearing out Crow’s throat when that fucking Oren Morse had stepped in and saved the boy. That’s when things had gone wrong thirty years ago. Morse had saved young Crow, and had then managed to kill Griswold.

Vic shook his head in wonder. How that skinny guitar-strumming nigger had managed to kill the Man was beyond him, but then he smiled when he thought about how bad a move that had been for Morse. Not just because it gave Vic a reason to orchestrate his murder — which had been quite a lot of fun — but because it had started the Great Change for Griswold. Not even the Man knew about that. Vic had always thought dead was dead, and though he served Griswold back then, the Man had been more or less mortal. Yeah, a werewolf, but still alive and still mortal. Then he’d been killed and buried in the swamp. Not in hallowed ground; not blessed by clergy or read over; but stuffed down in the swamp just the way he had died: halfway between man and monster.

That’s when Vic had learned that evil never dies. It waits, it changes, and it always comes back. Unless its force is blocked by prayers and the proper burial rites, it always comes back — and it comes back far stronger, and in the Man’s case, different. Not a werewolf anymore, and certainly nothing human. Now the Man was evolving into something beyond anything the people in this town would understand. Nor was the Man becoming like Boyd or Ruger. Hell, once the Man finished manifesting his new body and rose from his swampy grave, garlic or stakes wouldn’t mean dick to him.

Vic broke off in his reverie and thought about that for a second. Garlic and stakes. He realized that he didn’t actually know if they would stop Boyd and Ruger, either. He’d have to find out. Not just so that he would always have an edge over them, but because he wanted to make sure they wouldn’t be stopped by some asshole who’d just had an Italian dinner and sneezed on them. Stakes he could experiment with to see if the legends held up, but if they did work, he knew that he wouldn’t be able to do much about it. Garlic, on the other hand, could be bought locally from growers, which meant that the supply had to be controlled. He made a mental note to work on that tomorrow.

His cigarette was low and he chain-lit another, but just as he rolled down the window to toss away the butt he heard the crack of a twig under a foot. Automatically he pulled the old Mauser C-96 Bolo short-barreled pistol from the shoulder rig he wore. The gun had been made in the 1920s and had belonged to Griswold, which made it sacred to Vic.

He laid the barrel on the frame of the open cab window and waited as someone thrashed his way up the sloop toward the parking area. If it was anyone else than the person the Man had sent him here to meet, he’d blow their head off. The Mauser was unregistered and untraceable. Vic had killed five women with it and three vagrants over the last thirty-five years, and every one had been a one-shot kill. You have to love efficiency of that kind.

The bushes at the top of the drop-off trembled, the dry leaves shivering and flickering with silver moonlight, and then a man stepped up onto the flat ground of the Passion Pit. He was covered with mud and blood and his right leg was twisted askew, though he walked with no flicker of pain on his mushroom-white face. The man’s eyes were dark, hostile pits and his mouth hung open, revealing teeth that were caked with blood and strings of raw meat. He saw Vic’s truck and snarled, baring those filthy teeth in a mask of pure hatred.

Vic relaxed and clicked the safety back on.

“Over here, asshole,” he said. “Get the fuck in, we’re wasting time.”

The snarl lost some of its venom as the man shambled toward the truck. Vic reached over and jerked the handle, pushing the door open so Kenneth Boyd could climb in.

“Jesus!” Terry’s eyes snapped wide as he jerked awake from his doze as if he’d been slapped. The abruptness of waking had thrust him forward and he crouched on the edge of his chair, gripping the armrests with spiked fingers, his big body leaning forward as if to vomit. Thunder boomed in his chest and lightning flashed in his eyes and his pores rained icy sweat. Around him, the doctors’ lounge was quiet, softened with evening shadows, and very still.

Terry looked around, trying to understand what had shocked him awake — but there was nothing. For one horrible moment he feared that his sister’s bloody ghost had returned to torment him with her desperate pleas. No. Nothing.

Nothing, except the vague and fading feeling that something horrible had just happened. A terrible feeling of dread seemed to be clustered around his heart, like moths around a light. The sensation, or awareness, or fading dream — whatever it was — eased gradually. His heart stopped hammering, the rhythm slowing as minutes passed.

He heard heels clicking along the floor outside, coming closer very quickly, and then the door opened. A nurse leaned into the room, her face wearing a quizzical smile.

“Sorry,” she said. “I thought I heard—”

Terry looked at her with his red-rimmed eyes, a false smile nailed to his rigid lips, his fingers clutching the arms of his chair.

“Is everything okay?” the nurse asked.

“Um…yes. Everything’s fine. I was, um, taking a nap.”

“Sorry to bother you, Mr. Wolfe. It’s just the strangest thing. I thought the TV was on.” She glanced at the dark screen. “Guess I’m hearing things.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

She laughed self-consciously. “You’ll think I’m a loony-tunes, but I thought — just for a moment — that I heard a…well, a roar.”

“A roar?” His voice was tight in his throat.

“Isn’t that silly? I thought I heard a roar. Like a lion, or a bear. Or something.”

“In here?”

“I know, I know…I’m too young for Alzheimer’s!” She laughed. “Sorry to have bothered you.” Her head vanished and she pulled the door shut.

Terry sat stock-still, staring at the door, feeling under his fingers the jagged tears in the leather upholstery. Stiffly, he bent forward and looked down, first at one arm of the chair and then the other. The tough leather was slashed in long lines, as if dull knives had been viciously racked across them. Several sets of tears, four lines to a set.

“God save me!” he whispered, and in the back of his mind he could hear Mandy’s voice whisper to him.

God didn’t save me, Terry.

“No!”

God didn’t save you, either. God won’t save this town, Terry.

“Get out of my head!” he cried, beating at his skull with both fists.

And you know what he wants from you. You see that, too. You see that every time you look in the mirror.

He bent forward and put his face in his hands and wept for his sanity, and his soul.

Officer Jim Polk lay on his back and blew cigarette smoke up at the ceiling. On the radio, Jerry Garcia was insisting that any friend of the devil was a friend of his. Beside him, Donna Karpinsky moaned softly in her sleep and turned away. Polk turned and looked at her back. She was a pretty girl, half his age, with lots of black hair, almost no ass, and eyes that were often pretty but could turn as hard as fists when she was in one of those moods. Polk understood the look. It was the whore look, old as time and as uncompromising as a hammer. She had given him that look when he had flagged her down two hours ago, thinking that he was rousting her or looking for a freebie, but the look had dissolved when he had waved a fistful of long green at her, and after that she got all dewy-eyed and as willing to please as a twice-kicked dog. Polk knew he could have gotten her to do him for free, just by flashing his badge, but it felt good to have her full and unreserved attention, with no resentment to spoil the mood.

He had given her two hundred bucks, which was four times the rate for a half-and-half, and he’d paid for the motel room and the bottle of Napoleon brandy that stood half-empty on the bedside table. Polk would have been happy just to have her be nice to him while they did it, but she must have been really psyched by the extra cash, and for over an hour they had made out like high school kids, kissing and touching and making it feel like something tender for a change. Then it had gotten down to business and she had properly hauled his ashes for him. Even so, he thought, she had been nice about that, too. She had made it seem like two people doing it, not just a half-drunk cop and a motel hooker.

Polk sucked on his cigarette and thought about the money that had bought him that evening’s pleasure. Vic’s money. Polk felt his insides twitch every time he thought about Vic and his money. In the past Polk had done a lot of things for Vic. Things that sometimes weren’t so bad, and sometimes made him sick to his stomach. Only once over those years had Polk ever tried to tell Vic that he wasn’t into it anymore. Only once, and then he had been out of work for four weeks because of the way Vic took the rebuff. Four weeks in which he pissed blood and tried not to breathe too deeply and had to eat only soft foods. He told Gus Bernhardt that he’d taken a bad tumble off his motorbike. No way Polk was ever going to tell Gus, or anyone else, that Vic had stomped him nearly unconscious and then stuffed a handful of dog shit in his mouth and held him at gunpoint until he’d swallowed it.

Lying there in bed, Polk thought back to that day, more than eighteen years ago, and the hand holding the cigarette began to shake.

He took three slow pulls on the cigarette to steady himself, and he blinked repeatedly until the tears of shame dried up. Eighteen years ago and it still felt the same. As Vic had stomped him, he had told Polk over and over again that he was getting off light. Polk believed him with a whole heart. Over the years, the little jobs for Vic had dwindled down to a trickle, just something here and there, usually for small change. But now he had a wad of bills so thick they wouldn’t even fit into his pants pocket.

What the fuck was Vic going to want him to do to earn that kind of scratch?

He had always been afraid that Vic would one day ask him to kill someone, and after that beating, Polk was not so sure that he wouldn’t do it. No devil in hell terrified Polk more than Vic Wingate, and no court or jail came close to intimidating him half as much.

It was a lot of money — a whole lot of money — and Vic always wanted every penny’s worth for his buck.

Please, God, Polk silently prayed. He coughed unexpectedly and sat up, his gut tightening as the spasm shook his whole body. He jammed a fist against his mouth to stifle the sound, and all Donna did was turn over and begin snoring. Polk felt a hot wetness on his hand and when he looked at it, he was confused and scared to see a splatter of dark droplets on his skin. It looked like tar, or like the black goo you find under compost heaps, but it smelled like…

He frowned, feeling sweat burst from his pores.

It smelled like blood.

Polk stared at it, absolutely unsure of what to do, say, or think next. He blinked a few times, and as he did so the light values in the room seemed to change. He angled his hand to let more light fall on the black goo, and suddenly it wasn’t black at all. That must have been the shadows cast by his own face as he bent down over it. No, this was clear, probably just spit, or…

He sniffed it again. A frown touched his mouth. He tasted it with his tongue, and his smile broadened. It wasn’t spit at all. It was brandy. Napoleon brandy. A short laugh bubbled from his throat as he licked up the brandy.

After a moment, Polk slowly lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, a contented smile on his face. When he had coughed, when he had seen the stain on his hand, not as brandy, but as some kind of black goo, the doubts and fears about what Vic was going to ask of him had vanished from his thoughts. Now all he thought about was the last few tasty drags of his cigarette and the sleeping girl next to him who was not going to be getting a full night’s sleep. Not with two hundred dollars to earn.

Iron Mike Sweeney was throwing up. With each spasm of his chest the broken rib exploded with agony, and fresh tears of pain sizzled in his eyes. He knelt by the side of the road, knees on the macadam, hands braced on the curb, head bowed, vomiting pints of a thick, black, viscous liquid into the gutter. It tasted hot and salty, like tears, or blood.

Mike had been halfway home from the hospital after his aborted attempt to visit Crow, and the ensuing lengthy third degree by that shrimpy little reporter, Mr. Newton. He was just crossing Mayfair Street when suddenly his stomach convulsed in such a powerful cramp that his knees had buckled and he’d slumped down over the handlebars of the War Machine and slowed to a stop hard against a curb. He stepped off the bike and let it fall into the street and then sagged against a parking meter, holding it with one hand and pressing his other hand to his stomach. His knees suddenly buckled and he sagged down to the pavement, sitting down onto the curb with a thump. The first spasm faded and for a moment his brain cleared of the greasy mist that had formed as soon as the sick wave of pain had hit, but then a second wave, bigger, darker, far more powerful slammed into him and he fell forward onto hands and knees and vomited into the street over the iron grill of a culvert. It was so sudden, and so unexpected, that it scared him, and when he saw what it was he was throwing up, the fear had blossomed into total terror.

He thought he was hemorrhaging, throwing up blood from some ruptured part of him. The thought that Vic had finally done it, finally beat him so bad that he was dying tumbled through his brain. The vomiting gradually stopped and he coughed and gagged and choked, eyes squeezed shut against the pain that twisted his guts and closed his throat. For almost two minutes he knelt there on the empty street, eyes still pressed shut, waiting for the spasms to start again. Gradually, very gradually, the awful tension in his stomach faded and went away. He could still feel the stricture in his throat and the searing pain of his rib, but his stomach no longer felt like a bubbling cauldron of sewage.

Slowly, afraid to look at the blood he’d puked out, he opened his eyes.

There was nothing in the gutter. Just a drop or two of spit glistening on the bars of the culvert grill. Nothing else.

Mike stared down, trying to understand. He had seen the blood, damn it, black as paint and as searing as raw whiskey. He had felt it as it flooded out of him. It had happened. Except — apparently, it hadn’t happened.

Mike Sweeney stared down at the gutter and felt a powerful wave of terror of some vast and unidentifiable kind sweep over him.

Officer Coralita Toombes and her temporary partner, Dixie MacVey, cruised along the winding stretch of A-32 under a haphazard scattering of stars overhead. The edges of the sky were black as a ring of cloud cover was moving in to cover the region again. The road shook itself out in front of them as they swept southeast toward the Pine Deep — Black Marsh border. By now it was a familiar circuit for Toombes and MacVey, one they’d been covering for nearly seven hours. They had a loop that started at the intersection of A-32 and Old Mill Road, dropped south as directly as the winding A-32 would allow, past the Guthrie farm, then down to the bridge that spanned the Delaware to Black Marsh in New Jersey, and there they would jag west on Peddler’s Trail, which looped past the rusty stretch of Swallow Hill Bridge and turned northeast again until it once more hit the Extension by Old Mill. The whole loop ate up an even thirty miles, though as a crow might fly it the trip could have been done in just over ten, but there wasn’t a straight road to be had anywhere in or around Pine Deep.

Toombes and MacVey drove in silence, partly from tiredness, partly from boredom, and partly because they couldn’t stand each other. From MacVey’s point of view, Toombes was a know-it-all big-city bitch cop who thought that she had seen it all, done it all, and had it all under control. MacVey saw Toombes as one of those cynical and dismissive types who had no time for small-town cops because they weren’t “real cops” and hadn’t tangled with “real criminals” and therefore didn’t rate much, if at all. MacVey was also clearly intimidated by Toombes for these very same reasons.

As Toombes saw it, MacVey was just another one of those NRA types who collected big guns because they were disappointed by the size of their own dicks, and had wet dreams about real honest-to-gosh shoot-outs with real honest-to-gosh criminals. The kind of small-town rube (though Toombes had to admit that there were plenty of them in the city, too) that had a yard-high stack of Soldier of Fortune and American Handgunner magazines next to his bed, watched every episode of COPS, and could recite the specs and stats of every high-caliber gun made since 1950. Toombes, in short, thought MacVey was an adolescent ass wearing a cop’s disguise, and having him as a partner made her miss Jerry Head, her own partner from back in the city, and it also made her uneasy, because one thing a cop needs for peace of mind is the knowledge that her backup is a professional and not likely to shoot her instead of the bad guy. Toombes figured that if push ever really came to shove, MacVey would probably shoot his own balls off while trying to remember how to get that monster Blackhawk.44 out its fancy breakaway holster.

As partnerships went, it was something less than a roaring success.

There is an old cop belief that under the right circumstances, given the proper negative stimulus, even the best law enforcement officer will sink to the level of an incompetent partner. Stupidity, as the saying goes, is catching. So is clumsiness. As they cruised along the road, they were both so caught up in mentally psychoanalyzing each other that they forgot to pay attention to what they were about. They forgot to look for Kenneth Boyd, who was walking alongside the road, knee deep in withered onion grass, heading in a straight line toward the Black Marsh Bridge.

If the officers had been driving more slowly, if they had been shining their spotlights along the side of the road, if they had not been fuming about being partnered with each other, then they would very probably have seen him, but they didn’t. Instead, they sped right past him, made the left that put them on Peddler’s Trail, and headed east. In minutes the unit was nearly lost in dust and distance, and then swallowed whole as they dropped over a hillock.

From his vantage point twenty yards up a darkened side road, Vic Wingate stared as the cruiser passed Boyd.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” he growled. “How thick can you get?” He fired up the truck and pulled out onto the road until he was just ahead of Boyd and then pulled to a stop in front of him.

“Get the fuck in!”

Boyd stopped and stared at him with intense hatred and naked hunger.

“I said get in! C’mon, we don’t have time to waste. And don’t get any maggots on the seat this time.”

The creature climbed in beside Vic and pulled the door shut.

“So much for getting a couple of trained observers to spot you leaving town. I mean, Jesus, how far up your own ass do you have to be not to spot an ugly fucked-up piece of shit like you right there by the side of the road? Maybe I should have put some neon friggin’ lights on you.”

Boyd just glared at him.

“Okay, new plan,” Vic said, putting the truck in gear. “I’m going to drive you over to Black Marsh and drop you off somewhere. Make sure you’re seen by at least two or three people. Make a scene…break a window or something — but don’t fucking bite anyone and don’t get fucking caught! You hear me? You have to be seen — clearly seen — but you have to get away. Do whatever you got to do to make it back across the river. Hide in the fields until you hear from me or the Man.” He reached over and smacked Boyd on the forehead. “Hey! You listening to me?”

Boyd’s eyes were red torches in the dark pits of his eye sockets. He opened his mouth, his gray tongue flicking over his lips. The hands in his lap twitched and spasmed, wanting to grab, to rend.

Vic pulled onto the bridge and the wooden beams rumbled beneath the wheels. Watching Boyd out of the corner of his eye, Vic said, “You’d just love to rip my throat out, wouldn’t you?” He laughed. “Go ahead and try it…and see what the Man will do to you. That’s providing I don’t kick your sorry dead ass first.”

The creature’s torn and bloodless lips formed a single word, Griswold, but there was no sound.

“That’s right — Griswold. You know you don’t want to fuck with the Man. Don’t think being dead would save you if you fucked with him. The Man would eat your soul!” Vic’s voice was thick and heavy and he leaned into the words, his smile gone now. Boyd’s hands gradually stopped their twitching. “Yeah, there are worse things than death, Boyd, and trust me when I say you don’t want to find out what they are.” There were fires in Vic’s eyes now, and Boyd slowly recoiled from them. “You don’t want to find out what they are,” he repeated softly as the truck rolled off the bridge and he headed southeast to Black Marsh.

Tow-Truck Eddie sat behind the wheel of his wrecker and felt something in his mouth. Frowning, he raised a huge hand to his lips and then looked at his fingers, surprised to see them glistening wetly, darkly. His frown deepened as he bent to sniff at the wetness. It had the sheared-copper smell of fresh blood. Tow-Truck Eddie touched his tongue-tip carefully to the viscous smear. It didn’t taste at all like blood. It tasted like tears. Nodding to himself in sudden understanding, Tow-Truck Eddie licked the black blood from his fingers and savored the taste.

A murder of night birds stood in a row along the branch of a fire-blackened tree on the edge of Dark Hollow. Seated on his log, the Bone Man stared into his lonely fire and read the secrets of the flames. The wind carried still more secrets to him, and he listened, hearing the echoes of distant, beating hearts. The Bone Man could still feel in his mouth the after-taste of the black blood that had burned so unexpectedly on his tongue. When he had first tasted it he had cried out in disgust and spat the ichor into the flames. The flames had burned it all up, but the sound it made was more like whispery laughter than the hiss of superheating moisture.

The north still blew its cold breath across the town, and the Bone Man shivered. He was always cold, even so near to the fire. Always cold. Now, sitting there, the taste of the black blood barely fading, the Bone Man read the winds and the fire and saw the days to come.

And he wept.

Chapter 25

Mike couldn’t get into the hospital but he was able to get through on the phone, though he had to claim to be Crow’s younger brother to bluff his way past the switchboard operator.

“Hello?”

“Crow?” Mike asked, not sure that the tired old man’s voice on the other end of the line was his friend’s.

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“It’s Mike. Mike Sweeney.”

“Hey, Iron Mike…how’re the ribs?”

In truth the ribs hurt less than the rest of him, so Mike said, “I’m cool. Question is…how are you? I mean…you got shot!”

“Twice. Both bullets right through the brain pan. Killed me deader than a doornail.”

Mike laughed. “How are you, or is that a stupid question?”

“I’m fine, bra. Just got caught in a drive-by while I was drinkin’ gin and juice with my homies.”

“Crow…I told you about the slang thing. It’s kind of sad when you try to be hip.”

“Sorry, kid, lost my head.”

“It’s okay, but don’t let it happen again.”

“Seriously, though, I’m okay. I’ll probably be getting out tomorrow or the day after.”

“Cool,” Mike said. “I tried to get in to see you but the cops stopped me. They’re not letting anyone in.”

Crow was quiet for a moment, then said, “Look, Mike, if I can swing it so they let you past the dragons, would you do me a big favor?”

“Sure. Anything.”

Crow told him what he wanted done.

“Oh, man! That’s so cool!”

“Will you do it?”

“Of course! I’m on my way right now!”

“Thanks, Mike. I’ll owe you a big one for this.”

Mike paused, then said, “Crow…you don’t owe me a thing.” And hung up. For the first time that day his bruised face wore a genuinely happy smile.

Detectives Frank Ferro and Vince LaMastra sat at a deuce in the lounge of the Harvestman Hotel. Ferro was taking thoughtful sips from a mug of Miller Genuine Draft and LaMastra was halfway through his fourth Pumpkin Ale. The storm clouds that had been lumped over the town the night they’d gotten there had blown away into someone else’s sky and the temperature had dropped so fast the news was warning of a possible frost. It was already a chilly forty outside and the moon was a sliver of ice in the total blackness of the evening sky.

They’d eaten chicken cheesesteaks and French fries, had listened to jukebox music, had eavesdropped on half a dozen ordinary conversations, but between them barely a half dozen words had passed in the two hours they’d been there. The report Dr. Weinstock had given had shaken them both and their shared frustration over the lack of progress in the case was running them down.

LaMastra looked up at the clock over the bar, watching the hand go from 11:58 to 11:59. He picked up his glass and drained the last of it in two big pulls, set it down, and shook off the bartender. Ferro just took another sip and stared moodily into the unhelpful amber depths of his glass.

Tomorrow they were scheduled to take a quick trip to Black Marsh. An hour ago they’d gotten reports from three separate eyewitnesses, including a USPS letter carrier, that someone closely resembling the posted description of Kenneth Boyd had been spotted. In all three reports, though, the suspect had been running or walking, and there was no visible evidence at all of the broken leg that Ruger had mentioned to the Guthries. Had Boyd been faking it to escape from Ruger? That seemed likely now, and the man was obviously doing everything he could to put as much distance as he could between his former partner and himself. If that was the case, then on one hand their immediate problems were cut in half, and on the other hand the scope of their manhunt just broadened. It was Ferro’s contention that Boyd was of so little importance in the scheme of things that going to Black Marsh was almost a waste of time, except for the chance that he might have some idea of where Ruger was or about how he planned to escape Pine Deep.

“Shit,” LaMastra said softly.

Ferro glanced at him, eyebrows raised in query.

Vince said, “It doesn’t add up. Boyd being see like that. By three witnesses…and then vanishing from the face of the earth as soon as the cruises show up. It’s a little much, don’t you think?”

Ferro pursed his lips but said nothing.

“I’m telling you, Frank, this whole fucking situation is wrong.”

“Of course it’s wrong.”

“No, I mean wrong. We’re not seeing something here, Frank. We’re not looking at this the right way.”

“How should we be looking at it?”

“Shit, I don’t even know anymore,” LaMastra said. “I know Crow claims that Ruger was shot…but I don’t know. This whole thing has me spooked.”

Ferro looked at him. “That’s an odd way to put it.”

LaMastra shrugged. “Yeah, well, I guess ‘odd’ is pretty much the best word to describe this whole thing. Pretty fucking odd.” He shook his head. “Screw this, I’m going up to my room to watch TV.”

He got up, tossed some bills on the bar, and shambled out. Ferro lingered for a while, still staring moodily into the uninformative depths of his beer.

Crow called the hospital security and put Mike’s name on the entry list and then made a few calls to friends who had sent flowers, assuring them that he was not at death’s door. They all asked him to pass along their concerns and condolences to Val, Mark, and Connie, which he promised to do. When he finished the obligation calls he then punched in Terry’s number. The cell rang and rang and Terry didn’t pick it up.

A small flicker of concern tickled the edges of his awareness. He asked his nurse if she’d seen him and was told that the mayor had left for a meeting, though he said he would be back. He didn’t say when.

Crow gave it a half hour and then called again. This time Terry picked up on the second ring.

“Yes?” His voice was harsh, abrupt.

“Terry…Crow. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

Terry gave a short laugh. “Anything after the doctor said ‘it’s a boy’ and smacked me on the ass would have been a bad time.”

“That bad, huh?” Crow was still processing the fact that Terry had just said “ass.” It was the first time he’d ever heard Terry use even so mild a curse.

“Bad? For the last hour I’ve been wrangling with the selectmen, trying to convince them that the whole town isn’t falling down around our ears. This after spending all day with the cops and listening to the autopsy report on one of Ruger’s chums. No sleep in going on forty-five hours now, and I’ve got a case of the shakes so bad that if someone gave me a pair of drumsticks I’d be able to do a jazz improvisation that would make Hal Roach look like a beginner.” Though he tried hard to make a joke, there was no humor in his voice.

“Hey, how about this? Go the hell home and get some sleep. The town will still be here in six or eight hours.”

“Yeah,” Terry said, “but will I?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, nothing. I’m rambling. Look, Crow, I have to go. I’ll drop by later and check in on you.”

“I’d rather you went home to bed.”

“See you later,” Terry said and disconnected.

Crow frowned at his cell phone for a while, unhappy with the tension he had heard in his friend’s voice. Terry saying “ass.” Sure, it was a small thing, but it spoke volumes to Crow about how out of character Terry was acting.

He was mulling this over when Officer Jerry Head walked into his room carrying a paper bag. He paused in the doorway for a second, rapping on the door with a knuckle.

“Mind if I come in?”

It took Crow a second to place him, and then he waved the man in, indicating a chair. The big Philly cop sat down gratefully, looking spent and tired. He still wore his uniform, but his tie was loosened and he had the “off-duty” air about him.

“Mr. Crow—” he began.

“Just Crow.”

“Cool. Crow — I only caught the tail end of what happened last night. I didn’t see you kick the shit out of Ruger, but I heard the details, and I did see you help that girl, Rhoda. You stood your ground, man, can’t nobody say otherwise.”

Crow didn’t know how to respond to that, so he just shrugged.

“So, I wanted to come in, see how you were doing, and…” Here he paused as if a little embarrassed.

“And what?”

“Well…I guess I just wanted to shake your hand.” He extended his hand to Crow, who stared at it for a second, and then, half smiling with his own embarrassment, he reached out and took it. Out of courtesy for the IV, Head had offered his left, and the cop’s hand was like a piece of unsanded wood — hard, dry, and rough. “And I also brought you something.” Head opened the paper bag. “I’ve spent my share of time in hospitals — two car wrecks, a couple of knee surgeries, and a knife wound on the job — so I know you must be climbing the walls by now.” Out of the bag he pulled two thick paperbacks — a Keith Ablow mystery and Dean Koontz’s latest in paperback — and three magazines. Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly, and the latest issue of Maxim with a lingerie pictorial featuring the women from Fox TV. Beneath the books there were two cans of cold Coke and a couple of packs of Tastykake chocolate cupcakes.

Crow was touched. “Jesus, man, you are a saint.”

“Least I could do,” Head said. “Even though it was just for a couple of hours, Rhoda was my partner last night.”

Crow nodded. “Sit down — sit down and keep me company. Open these cupcakes for me and let’s have a feast.”

They lapsed into a conversation about the job, Crow relating some stories about small-town police work and Head talking about the streets of Philadelphia. Their rhythm was almost immediately comfortable and friendly, and Crow found he liked the Philly cop quite a bit. He was touched by the big man’s thoughtfulness, and by his loyalty to Rhoda.

“So, where do you guys stand with all this?” Crow asked.

“Shit if I know.” He told Crow about Boyd being spotted. “So with Macchio dead, that just leaves Ruger.”

“Yeah.”

“Which kind of brings me to the other reason I wanted to talk with you.”

Crow nodded his encouragement.

Head said, “I was on the porch and just caught the tail end of the firefight between you and Ruger. As you may remember I fired off some rounds myself.”

“Vaguely remember something. I was pretty well out of it by then.”

“My question is — did you hit Ruger? I mean, are you sure you hit him?”

“Your boss, Ferro, asked me the same thing. So has everyone else, and I’ll tell you what I told them.”

“Which is?”

“I’m absolutely fucking positive I hit him. At least three times, and maybe as much as five times.”

“No doubts?”

“No doubts. I saw the impacts, saw his body jerk with each shot.”

“What about a vest? Could he have been wearing body armor?”

“No way in hell. I fought him hand to hand before that, Jerry, and I know damn well I was hitting meat and muscle, not Kevlar.”

Head nodded and sat back, sipping his Coke. “Yeah, that was my read on it, too. I saw you shoot him. I’m pretty sure I missed, but I’ll go before a judge and swear that I saw at least two or three of your shots nail him.”

They looked at each other in silence for a moment.

“You want to ask it, or shall I?” Crow said.

“You mean…with a hundred searchers and five teams of dogs, how did a man with five bullets in him disappear?”

“Yep.”

“Man, I don’t even know. Fucker’s painted with magic.”

“Yeah.”

At that point the door opened again and Mike Sweeney poked his head into the room. He saw the officer and stopped, silent.

“Come on in,” Head said, rising. “I’m leaving anyway.” He reached out again and shook Crow’s hand. “I hope your lady and her family come through this okay.”

“Thanks,” Crow said. “That means a lot.”

Head turned and as he passed Mike he gave the boy a quick appraising glance, taking in the bruises. He turned briefly to Crow, eyebrows raised significantly, and then left without comment.

Mike came over and sat down, dragging the chair closer to the bed.

“Dude!” Mike said. “Look at your face!”

“Yeah, well, look at yours, too. What the hell happened to you?” And as soon as he asked the question Crow wished he could take it back. He remember Barney’s account of how Vic had beaten Mike when he picked him up.

“I, uh…”

“Fell off your bike again?” Crow asked, one eyebrow raised.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Crow said, and then had to leave it there because Mike was clearly not going to go any more distance down that conversational street. He didn’t let it show on his face, but he made a mental note to look up Vic one of these days and find some way to kick the living shit out of him and yet not wind up in jail, or in court. That son of a bitch was way overdue for an attitude adjustment.

He sighed. “Thanks for coming, kiddo. Did you get the—”

Mike suddenly grinned and dug into his jacket pocket. “I got the key from the lady at the yarn shop. I fed the cats, too.”

“Oh, jeez, I totally forgot about them!”

“They peed on the rug.”

“Swell. It’s their way of expressing disapproval at my tardiness.”

“They peed on your coffee table, too. I had to throw out your magazines and some of the mail was wet. I put that in the sink.”

“Little furry bastards.”

“Anyway…I got the box you wanted.” He produced a small box that was an inch and a half square and covered with navy blue velvet. Crow took it carefully and opened it. The engagement ring fairly lit the room with its brilliance. The Asscher-cut stone was huge — nearly two carats — and according to the salesman, it was a nicely cut, G Color, VS1 clarity diamond — and it had put a serious dent in his savings, to which Crow did not even blink.

“Whaddya think?” he asked Mike.

“Is it real?”

“Duh!”

“Wow! Are you going to propose to her? I mean—here? In the hospital and all?”

Crow grinned. “Ever heard of distraction therapy?”

“No. But I get the idea.”

Crow closed the box and hid it in his bedside table. “Look, Mike, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

Mike tensed, and Crow could see it, but he gave the boy an affable smile. “Rumor has it that I’ve been shot. As a mortally wounded person I can’t be expected to manage the daily affairs of a business as critical and cutting edge as mine. I mean — if a kid needs a tube of vampire blood, how is someone in my condition supposed to get it for him? The whole industry would come crashing down.”

Grinning, Mike said, “Can’t have that.”

“So, as the proprietor of the town’s most prestigious boutique for the gruesome and horrific I thought it might be time to hire myself an Igor. You appear to have an appropriate hump…what do you say?”

Mike’s face beamed with happiness. “You’re offering me a job?”

“Well, if you can call hours of endless toil and drudgery for little pay and occasional scorn and derision from a heartless taskmaster a job, then yes.”

Mike jumped to his feet, then froze, wincing and gasping. “Ouch!” he said, standing hunched over in pain, then immediately followed it with, “I’m in! Oh my God! Thanks!”

Crow held up a cautionary finger. “I will have to call you Igor, though, you understand this?”

“I believe,” said Mike, laughing, “that it’s pronounced Eye-gor.”

Mayor Terry Wolfe sat in the doctors’ lounge drinking Glenkinchie from a Dixie cup, his elbows resting on his knees, the cup held lightly in his big hands. Head low between hunched shoulders, he stared moodily at the irregularities of the wax coating on the cup, breathing through his nose and sighing every eighth or ninth breath.

He had just spent an unproductive hour in a late meeting with the town selectmen, trying to calm them, cajole them, make them believe that everything was under control, when it was quite clear that not one damn thing was under control. Somehow during the last two days, Pine Deep had sunk up to its ass in shit. That’s how he thought about it. No more silly euphemisms for it, no more Sunday school expletives like “darn” or “heck.” Not today. Nope, not for Terry Wolfe. Not after that little elevator ride. Not after the things he’d seen last night. Not after the nurse hearing a roar coming from this very room while he was sleeping. Not after what happened to the arms of the leather chair.

Not after looking into the bathroom goddamn mirror again not five goddamn minutes ago.

Terry sipped the scotch and winced. He really loved scotch, but right now it tasted like boiled socks. On the way back to the hospital from the meeting he’d stopped in the liquor store and laid down forty-four bucks and change for the bottle and would normally had savored every sip. Now he just drank it and hoped that it would either flush out his brain or knock him blind and senseless. Either one would work. He had even held out the reasonable hope that the drug interaction between the scotch and the Xanax would do the trick, but it didn’t. He couldn’t even passively kill himself.

He had never felt so powerless in his life.

No. That wasn’t true.

Thirty years ago, almost to the day, he’d felt even more helpless, and that was a cold hard fact. That had been the day that Mandy had died and he had been nearly killed. He’d spent weeks in the hospital and even now, after cosmetic surgery and three decades, his chest and shoulder still looked like patchwork.

Thinking about that made drinking more urgent, so he swallowed the whole cup and refilled it. The bottle was down about a third and he could feel the paint peeling on the walls of his brain, but he was still way too sober and he was still alive.

He hefted the bottle and considered it, wondering how much of it he would have to drink before he succumbed to alcoholic poisoning, and then wondered if his system would rebel first and throw it up. Probably. His gut felt like an acid wash.

It was all falling apart. Everything. The cops and the feds pretended to defer to him as if he were a person of some actual importance, but he could see in their eyes that he was just a figurehead in a pissant little town where the worst and most typical crime was overtime parking, and the local idea of a crisis was rain on Sidewalk Sale Saturday. His best friend was in the hospital. The town’s most prosperous farmer was dead. The selectmen were in a panic. Every night he had those horrible dreams — dreams that were now intruding into his waking life.

And my little sister’s ghost wants me to kill myself.

He raised the refilled cup in a toast. “Here ya go, Mandy. Maybe this one will do it.” He closed his eyes, tossed back the shot, hissed as the gasses burned his throat, and then opened his eyes again. Nope. Still alive, damn it.

Terry closed his eyes for a moment, took in a deep steadying breath, held it for a moment, and then let it out as slowly as he could. Then he took his cell phone from his coat pocket and hit speed-dial. It rang four times before a woman answered. “Hello?”

“Hello, sweetheart,” Terry said in a softer tone than anything he’d managed for days.

“Terry?” His wife’s voice was instantly concerned. “Where are you? You haven’t called all day and I’ve left a dozen messages—”

“Sarah…things are really bad right now.”

She paused, then said, “Yes, I know. Rachel Weinstock called me and told me some of what was going on. She said Saul was pretty rattled about an autopsy he had to perform.”

“Pretty bad right now,” Terry said again. He could feel his eyes filling with tears.

“Are you okay, honey?”

God didn’t save you, either. God won’t save this town, Terry.

“I’m…”

And you know what he wants from you. You see that, too. You see that every time you look in the mirror.

“Terry?”

Terry, the only way to not be like him is to be like me.

“I’m just tired, Sarah.”

“Can you get away? Can you come home?”

Tears were running freely down his face now. He took the full bottle of Xanax from his pocket, popped the lid off with his thumb, and poured the pills out onto the table next to his chair. Twenty-two pills. More than enough.

“Terry,” she repeated, “can you get away?”

“I don’t know,” he answered softly. “Maybe. Maybe there’s a way I can get free.”

“Please come home, Terry,” Sarah begged. “You can’t run yourself into the ground like this.”

“No,” he said.

“Will you try?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll wait up.”

Terry squeezed his eyes shut against a wave of grief and pain. The image of Sarah’s face burned in his mind — dark eyes flashing, thick fall of straight black hair just touched by a few strands of gray, a laughing mouth — and he fought not to sob out loud.

Terry, the only way to not be like him is to be like me.

“Call you later, sweetheart,” he said, when he could master himself enough to keep everything out of his voice.

“I love you, Terry.”

“I love you, Sarah. With all my heart.”

He disconnected and dropped the phone on the floor. With a growl of mingled anger and fear and heartbreak he swept all the pills into his hand and held the closed fist above his upturned mouth.

His upraised fist trembled with a palsy born of a dreadful inner conflict and slowly, as if moving against an almost irresistible force, he lowered his hand down to the level of his lips…and then down farther, past chin and chest until the clenched fist lay in his lap. Tears ran down his cheeks and his lips trembled with sobs.

“No!” he said in a hoarse and alien voice that was filled with a rage of passion.

Sarah had said, Please come home, Terry.

He sat there for many minutes, still holding the Xanax, feeling them grind and crunch in his fist. Beside him the bottle wafted its own perfume of escape.

Please come home.

He struggled to his feet and shoved the fistful of Xanax deep into his jacket pocket. He almost — almost — went to the bathroom to flush their temptation away, but did not. Ultimately could not. In order not to embrace the option he needed to know it was still there. The same with the bottle. He capped it and put it in his briefcase. He did go to the bathroom, though, and there he ran cold water and splashed it on his face by the handful for over a minute, then patted his face dry. It was still clear that he’d been crying, but there was nothing more he could do to repair that.

Turning, he went back into the lounge and stopped still. There, by the chair in which he’d been sitting, stood Mandy. His face was still streaked with blood, but tears now ran down and cut paths through the caked red. She looked at him with a mixture of horror and reproach.

Terry stood there in the bathroom doorway, gripping the sides of the frame with both hands, his nails digging into the wood. What could he say? How could he defend against the accusation in her eyes?

“I can’t do it!” he hissed. “I can’t! I have Sarah! I have my friends…my town! You can’t ask this of me.”

Mandy lifted her eyes to his and the look in them changed from one of horror to a look of total hopeless defeat. She shook her head from side to side, closing her eyes and finally hanging her head.

“It will all be worse now,” she said, but her voice was a ghostly whisper that he could barely hear. Between one teary blink of his eyes and the next she was gone.

Terry stood there, unable to move, for a long time as his heart hammered in his chest and icy sweat pooled at the base of his spine. When he could finally make himself let go and walk out of the room and through the hospital hallways he moved with the unnatural stiffness of the condemned walking the ghost road to the chair.

Mike was nearly dancing with happiness when he left Crow’s room. All the way down the hall and in the elevator he kept breaking out into grins. Working for Crow at the Crow’s Nest would be the coolest! He could quit his paper route, which was okay money but a real pain in the ass, especially in bad weather. And he’d get his comics at a discount. Crow said that he could start at eight dollars an hour, which was huge! Anything he wanted to buy from the store would be at cost. Crow even said that they could maybe do a little jujitsu when things got slow. If Mike wasn’t in so much pain he would have thought he was dreaming.

His face was locked into a broad happy grin as he exited the elevator and headed across the broad hall to the exit doors, passing nurses who saw his smile and returned it automatically. Mike passed two police officers who were heading into the hospital — one medium-sized and skinny and one huge and muscular. The skinny one grinned at him, but the big one gave him a flat, wide-eyed stare and as Mike passed he craned his head all the way around to watch him go. Mike barely noticed the cop’s attention as he pushed through the doors and jog-limped over to his bike.

In the lobby, the cops stopped and the bigger officer stood staring with total intensity out through the glass.

His partner said, “What’s up? You know that kid?”

Temporary Officer Edward Oswald stared slack-jawed, not even hearing his partner. His heart had suddenly started hammering in his chest.

His partner, Norris Shanks, tapped him on the arm. “Yo! Tow-Truck. What the hell’s with you?”

Tow-Truck Eddie Oswald blinked, becoming aware of his partner. He cleared his throat and forced himself to turn away from the sight beyond the glass doors of the Beast — the very much alive Beast — unchaining his bike.

“No…” he said absently. Then recollecting himself, he said, “No. It’s nothing.”

Inside his brain the voice of God was telling him: Wait! Wait until you are alone!

“Yes,” he murmured.

“What?” asked Shanks.

“Nothing,” Tow-Truck Eddie said and moved on into the hospital.

Val was awake when Crow came in and she felt her heart lift when he poked his head through the doorway.

“You order a pizza?”

She held her good arm out to him. “Come here and kiss me this instant, you idiot.”

With as much consideration for their mutual injuries as he could manage, Crow gathered her in his arms and showered her face with kisses. Val could feel his heart beating against her chest as he held her close, and she leaned into him, kissing his neck, inhaling the scent of him — sweat, anesthetic, a hint of chocolate — and the reality and familiarity of him, even in so unfortunate a place as this hospital, made her feel more human than she had all day.

Val touched his hand, where the nub of the IV port was still taped to the skin. “You playing copycat?”

“Yep. I waited until they started a new IV bag, popped it out, tied a loop in the plastic thingee, and snuck out. The cop on duty is Norris Shanks and he’s an old bud. He played lookout for me while I snuck in. If we get caught, though, we have to say he was on a bathroom break.”

He settled himself on the side of the bed and his eyes were searching her face. “I’m okay,” she said, forcing a smile. “No more bad dreams.”

“Did you sleep much?”

“For a bit. They must have really knocked me out, because I don’t remember anything. If I dreamed it wasn’t—”

“It wasn’t about him?”

She nodded. “No, thank God.”

“Me neither. I had just that one about him sneaking into my room. I wonder if everyone who goes through stuff like this has these kinds of dreams.” He kissed her forehead. “Well, whether or no, I don’t think we’ll need to worry about him for real.”

He told her about his conversation with Head, and how the officer confirmed that he had seen Ruger take several hits.

“Most likely he’s dead out there in the fields, or at best made it across the road to the Passion Pit.”

Val’s eyes were hot but her voice arctic as he said, “I hope he fell over the edge of the pit all the way down into Dark Hollow and is lying down there in great pain, bleeding to death.”

The venom in her words did not shock Crow in the least; he couldn’t help but agree, but it was a conversation stopper and for a while they held each other and thought ugly thoughts of revenge as the bedside clock ticked closer to midnight. In half an hour it would be October 1. Maybe the season of bad luck would end with September and the Halloween winds would blow their usual good fortune into the town.

“I had a long talk with Saul,” Crow said at last. “He said that we could both get out of here tomorrow. Connie and Mark, too.”

Val nodded, said nothing. Crow could imagine how little she wanted to go back to that farmhouse now. The whole place would probably have the feel of violation and grief about it. While Val had slept Crow had called her farm foreman and instructed him to replace the front door — the one with the bullet holes was to be turned over to the cops if they wanted it or otherwise burned — and the living room put back to rights. Crow had been very clear when he said that there were to be no signs at all of the events of the night before, including the removal of all of the crime-scene tape and any mess left by the hordes of officers and lab technicians who had been swarming over the place all day. The foreman, a smart and capable fellow, had entirely agreed and said that he would see to everything.

Even so, Crow had no intention of taking Val there when they were released in the morning.

“I have a plan,” he said.

“Oh?”

“The cops say we can’t go back to the farm yet,” he lied. “So instead I’ve booked a room at the Harvestman for Mark and Connie. It’s where the cops are staying, so they’ll be safe, and it’ll be easier for them to come back here for treatment and, um…therapy.”

Val just nodded. Saul Weinstock had explained to her the kind of treatment Connie would need. Mark, too, in all probability.

“What about us?”

“We’ll be moving into the Pine Manor Inn for the next night or two.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Wow!”

“A little elegance won’t hurt us, baby. Sunken tub, Jacuzzi to massage away our aches and pains. Great food. A nice bottle of wine for you and an equally nice bottle of Pepsi for me.”

She closed her eyes and leaned against him. “God, it sounds wonderful, but—”

“No buts, sweetie. I ran it by Saul and he approved, so this is on the level of doctor’s orders.”

“But the Pine Manor costs an arm and a leg! That’s too much to—”

“Not at all, not at all,” he said smoothly. “Nothing’s too good for my fiancée.”

He felt her stiffen against his chest as she processed the words. Then she opened her eyes and raised her head, staring with puzzled uncertainly into his eyes. “What did you…?”

Then she saw what he had taken out of his bathrobe pocket while her eyes were closed. He held it flat in the palm of his hand. A square blue-velvet box.

Val’s eyes were as wide and huge as any painting by Keene, and her mouth formed a perfect O.

Since she had only one arm free, Crow opened the box for her and showed her the diamond ring.

“I wanted to do this over dinner at some fancy restaurant in New Hope, but things got a little crazy and…well…I want this whole thing to end on a happy note. For me it would be the happiest note of my life, Val, if you would agree to be my wife. I love you more than anything in the world and if you say yes I’ll be the happiest man who ever walked the planet.”

“Oh my God!” she said…and she said it several times.

“Can I take that as a yes?” He cleared his throat. “I…hope?”

Val’s eyes filled with tears and with her one good arm she clung to him with incredible strength, showering his battered faces with kisses by the dozen, saying, “Yes! Yes! Yes!” over and over again.

He steered through the deluge of kisses until he found her lips with his and then kissed her as deeply and as sweetly as he could, feeling his own tears flow and mingle with hers. He came up for air only long enough to slip the ring on her finger, and then pulled her close again.

“I love you!” they both said at the same time, speaking the words into each other’s panting mouth.

And at that moment all of the lights went out.

Chapter 26

“Crow! What’s happening?”

He pulled away from her, turning toward the open doorway, but all he could see through the darkness were vague forms hurrying about, sometimes colliding with one another.

“I don’t know,” he said, rising. “Power failure, maybe.” He moved to the window and parted the heavy curtains. “Lights are on in the parking lot.” He pulled the curtains back and faint light spilled into the room. “Must be a generator. The emergency lights should come on any second.”

A full minute passed and the backup lights did not so much as flicker.

“That’s weird,” Crow said. He was standing by the doorway looking at the confusion in the hall. He saw the police officer assigned to guard him standing by the nurses’ station and called out, “Norris! What’s happening?”

Norris Shanks turned around and shone a flashlight beam full in his eyes. “Crow? Go back into your room. We have a power outtage.”

“Really? Never would have guessed.” He went out into the hall.

“Hey, Shanks,” he said, batting the flashlight gently to one side. “You sure that’s all it is? I mean…aren’t the back-up lights on a different generator or something?”

He couldn’t read the cop’s face in the dark, but he saw Shanks stiffen for a second and then snatch the microphone from its clip on his shoulder.

“Base, this is Officer Shanks at Pinelands Hospital on guard duty with Crow and Val Guthrie.”

“What is it, Norris?” Ginny’s bored voice answered.

“We have a total lights-out here at the hospital. Mains and backup generator. Requesting backup.”

“All the lights?”

“Yes,” he snapped, and Crow could hear that Shanks was actually afraid. “This may not be a technical issue. Please roll all available units. Now.”

His tone was such that for once Ginny didn’t argue. “All units, this is Base. Officer needs assistance at Pinelands College Teaching Hospital. Hospital lights are out, repeat hospital lights — main and backup — are out. All units respond.”

There was a flurry of voices calling in to report their whereabouts and say they were on their way.

“That ought to do it,” Shanks said, sounding relieved.

“Yeah,” agreed Crow, but he didn’t relax. Patients were coming out of their rooms and demanding answers, nurses and orderlies were still colliding into one another, a few doctors were calling out orders that apparently no one was paying attention to.

Crow turned and called to Val’s room, “I’ll be right in, baby. We’re calling for backup.”

He started to turn back to Shanks and then paused, having not heard a reply. He took a step toward her room. “Val?”

Nothing.

Crow hurried over to the open door and peered into the gloom. Val was in bed, the sheets pulled up, turned away. Just a series of lumps in the darkness.

“Baby, you okay?” he asked as he entered the room.

She didn’t stir and he reached over to touch her shoulder and then he froze. Val was lying on her left side, turned away from him toward the window.

Her left side.

The injured side.

With a cry of terror bubbling on his lips he grabbed the sheet and pulled it down.

She turned toward him, her face and body edged with silver from the pale light from outside, and as she turned Crow felt his heart freeze in his chest and his guts turn to icy slush.

It was not Val at all.

The figure in the bed that grinned up at him with a jagged smile of broken teeth was Karl Ruger!

Detective Sergeant Frank Ferro had just finished brushing his teeth, had changed into pajama bottoms, and was about to sit down on the edge of his hotel bed when his cell phone rang. When you’re a cop, a call at midnight is never going to be good news. He picked his trousers off the bedside chair and pulled the cell from the belt clip.

“Ferro.”

“Frank?” It was his partner, Vince LaMastra, sounding tired but stressed. “Something’s happening at the hospital.”

“What?”

LaMastra told him.

“Shit,” Ferro said. “Lobby. Two minutes.”

He snapped the cover of his cell phone shut and reached for his pants.

“Jesus Christ,” he said.

Crow’s mind was frozen in a black hell of panic. Ruger lay there in Val’s bed — Val was nowhere to be seen — and none of it was possible.

“Surprise, surprise,” Ruger said, and then without a flicker of warning cocked his foot and kicked Crow in the chest with shocking force. Crow flew backward against the wall of the bathroom cubicle, striking the back of his head with a heavy thud. Fireworks exploded everywhere and he felt his knees starting to go.

In a flash Ruger leaped out of the bed and caught him before he could fall, taking two bunched fistfulls of Crow’s robe and hauling him back to his feet. He pulled him close and Crow’s nose was assaulted by the smell of Ruger’s breath — like rot and sewage. It was just the same as it was in the dream he’d had earlier.

“Bet you’re wondering where your little bitch is, aren’t you, boy?” Ruger banged him back against the wall again and again. Crow was more than half dazed and his mind was spinning with a nauseous vertigo.

“Val…” he gasped.

Ruger stopped banging him off the wall long enough to lean close to his ear and whisper, “The bitch is mine, asshole. I’m going to enjoy splitting her right up the middle.” He slammed him back again and held him there. “But you…I just wanted to introduce myself again before I ripped your fucking heart out.” He let go of Crow for a second but before Crow could fall, Ruger closed one hand around his throat and pinned him once again to the bathroom wall. He raised the other hand, holding it flat, and simply slapped Crow across the face.

It was the hardest blow he had ever felt. It was like getting hit by a piece of board or a slab of stone. Ruger’s hands were icy cold and immensely powerful. Crow’s head shot to one side and his face felt mashed. Ruger backhanded him, catching the corner of his mouth this time, and the blow ground lip against tooth so sharply that blood splashed from Crow’s face onto Ruger’s.

Ruger stopped hitting him as he opened his mouth and his tongue — gray and dry — quested out like a hungry worm and found the droplets. He licked each one into his mouth, his eyes fluttering half closed for a moment as he savored the taste.

“Oh my God…” he breathed and he looked like a man in the throes of an orgasm. “Oh my God…”

Crow struggled to make his senses work and he shook his head like a drunkard. Ruger’s eyes snapped open again and the look in them — the appearance of them — nearly stopped Crow’s heart in his chest. Ruger’s eyes had changed. They were no longer a brown so dark that they looked black — now they were as red as the blood he’d just licked off his own lips.

Even with a hand clamped around his throat, Crow screamed.

Ruger’s lips were peeled back like a feral dog’s as he leaned in toward Crow’s throat and they were less than an inch away when Norris Shanks yelled, “What the fuck are you doing?”

Hissing, Ruger turned toward the cop who stood in the doorway. Shanks held his flashlight to one side and was reaching for his handgun when Ruger grabbed Crow with both hands and threw him across the room. Yelling in pain and fear, Crow spun through the air and crashed into Shanks with a teeth-jarring impact that slammed them both against the far wall. Shanks slid to the floor and Crow landed hip-first in the officer’s lap, mashing his testicles and tearing loose all the stitches on both sides of his hips. Shanks shrieked with pain and Ruger took two quick strides toward him and kicked him in the forehead, knocking his head back with a crunch that silenced the scream at once.

Crow rolled off Shanks and spun around on his hands and knees. Despite the searing pain in both hips, with the hand removed from his throat Crow’s oxygen-deprived brain was working better now and adrenaline was starting to pump through his system.

“Cr…Crow…?”

He turned and saw Val’s head and shoulder appear from the far side of the bed, silhouetted against the window. She was alive!

Ruger reached for him but Crow launched himself forward, surprising the killer and driving his right fist into Ruger’s crotch; then as he bent over the pain Crow reached up with both hands, grabbed his hair, and yanked him downward. Ruger hit chest-down on the floor with a crash that sent a shock back up through Crow’s arms. Crow lifted his head and slammed it down again — and again. He could hear bones break.

He lifted a third time and Ruger’s icy hands shot out and caught his wrists like two vises. After those three blows it was an impossible move, something no man, not even Ruger, could have done. But there was no loss of strength in those hands and Ruger held them, pulling Crow’s fists away from his scalp so forcefully that Crow could feel hair and scalp tearing. He still held them as he rose to his feet while keeping Crow in a kneeling position, arms raised as if in surrender.

Crow looked up at Ruger and even in the darkness he could see those fiery red eyes — those impossible eyes — and see the cuts and lacerations on the killer’s face. Even the worst one barely bled a drop.

Crow knelt there, held by overwhelming strength, looking up at Ruger, trying to make sense out of what he was seeing. None of this was possible. Was he still dreaming? Was he lost somewhere in a nightmare? For one wild moment Crow wondered if he had really been shot worse than he thought back there on Val’s farm. Could everything that had happened since then be part of some trauma-induced coma?

Ruger’s fists were tightening and the pressure was making Crow’s arm bones grind together. He had to do something, dream or not, impossible or not.

Using Ruger’s iron grip as a support, Crow picked up both of his legs at once, poised for the split part of a second like a gymnast hanging from the rings, and then pulled his knees up to his chest so his feet could clear the floor as he brought them up and kicked out with every ounce of strength he could manage. He tried to break Ruger’s knees, but the angle was bad and instead his heels struck Ruger in the hard muscle of both thighs.

It was enough. Ruger howled in pain — the first concession to humanity that he had made — and dropped Crow. Ruger staggered back with bad balance and had to grab the footrest of the bed to keep from falling.

Instantly Crow made a dive for Shanks’s pistol and had it out when Ruger lunged at him again, howling with rage. Crow swung the gun up but Ruger swatted it out of his hand and the gun flew across the room where it struck the window, creating a vast spiderweb fracture. Ruger again reached down for Crow but Crow threw himself backward and kicked upward, catching Ruger under the chin. Once more Ruger was staggered backward, but again he somehow managed to shake it off.

“What’s going on?” someone yelled and Crow was vaguely aware of shapes in the doorway — nurses, patients.

“Get the cops!” Crow yelled, but he had no idea if anyone went to get help. Ruger reached over and swung the door shut with such force that Crow could hear cries of surprise and pain as it struck faces and hands.

Then Ruger turned and leered at Crow, showing the uneven row of teeth — the teeth Crow had shattered after they’d fought in the rain — and his grin looked like the mouth of a shark. All of those jagged teeth seemed unnaturally sharp and unnaturally long.

“I’m going to kill you and everything you love,” Ruger hissed. He was not even breathing hard as he closed in again, bone-white fingers reaching to grab.

Crow kicked up again and caught Ruger in the chest, but it was like kicking a tree trunk. It didn’t even slow him down. He tried it again and Ruger caught his ankle and dragged him forward like a fisherman reeling in a marlin. Crow tried every trick he knew to disengage his foot, but all he did was tear the skin on his ankle and twist his knee.

Ruger reached down to grab Crow’s throat again when the loudest sound Crow had ever heard seemed to rip the whole room apart. Ruger was knocked forward and almost fell, but took a broad step to clear Crow and somehow remained on his feet. He turned and Crow looked up and there was Val on her knees, leaning against the far corner of the bed, holding Shanks’s gun out as smoke curled up from the barrel.

With effort Ruger pulled himself erect and faced Val. He hissed at her like a snake and started to reach for her when she shot him again. The bullet caught him in the shoulder and spun him around. Crow covered his head with both arms and ducked out of the way as the bullet punched through Ruger’s upper chest and struck the TV mounted on brackets above the bed. Metal and glass fragments showered down on Ruger, but he did not fall.

“You killed my father!” Val was screaming over and over again. She fired again, catching Ruger on the other shoulder and he did a wild pirouette before careening off the bed.

Crow reached over to Shanks and frantically patted down his legs until he found the backup pistol in a small holster strapped to his ankle. Above him Val fired again and Ruger was slammed back against the wall.

“You fucking bitch!” he screamed, but still he didn’t go down.

Crow tore open the Velcro and clawed the pistol out of the holster. It was a.38 snub-nosed Smith and Wesson, and Crow rolled onto his back and raised the pistol with both hands and just as Val fired a shot into Ruger’s stomach Crow opened fire and hit him again and again and again.

Caught between two fires, Ruger was a puppet dancing in the darkness, being jerked back and forth, either unwilling or unable to fall as Val hit him in the stomach and chest and groin and Crow hit him in the back and kidneys and shoulders.

Crow fired five times and the hammer clicked dry on the sixth chamber, which had been left empty. Val fired twice more and then there was the audible metallic snap of the breech locking open.

Ruger was chest-forward to the wall, and as Crow watched his legs buckled and he slid slowly down to his knees, lingered there for a second, and then toppled over onto his back. Mouth slack, eyes shut, muscles slack.

As Val knelt there her arm sagged to the floor and she dropped the gun. “You killed my father, you son of a bitch.” She looked at Crow with dark and wild eyes and he could see the fresh dark bruise on her face where Ruger must have hit her when he’d slipped into the room during the blackout.

“Val…wait…I have to check.” Holding the gun high, ready to use it as a club, Crow wormed his way over and with his other hand felt for a pulse in Ruger’s throat. Nothing. He tried another spot. Absolutely nothing.

Crow bowed his head.

Karl Ruger was dead.

“Jesus Christ,” Crow said, and then he struggled to his knees and reached across the corner of the bed toward her just as her eyes lost their focus and rolled up in their sockets. With a soft sigh she passed out and sagged down on the bed. Whimpering in fear, Crow crawled over the bed to her and pressed his ear to her chest, not breathing at all until he heard the steady thump-thump-thump of her heart.

“Thank God!” he breathed and kissed her over her heart and then kissed her sweet face. “Thank God….”

Outside, there were yells and an official voice — Frank Ferro, Crow thought — was yelling, “Police! Police! Out of the way!” Footsteps were hurrying, getting louder, coming closer.

A hand clamped around his wrist with implacable force and Crow turned in absolute horror to see Karl Ruger leering up above the footrest, his eyes wide and red and hellish.

With irresistible force he pulled himself up and pulled Crow close and whispered in his graveyard voice, “Ubel Griswold sends his regards.” Then he laughed the coldest laugh Crow had ever heard and the red light went out of his eyes and Karl Ruger sank back to the floor.

Crow was frozen there, his eyes wide and unblinking, his heart beating painfully in his chest, mouth agape as the horror of those five words plunged his entire world into madness.