“SHOOT HIM!” screamed Val, struggling to sit up despite the searing pain in her spine; but Ferro was already bringing up the gun. It took only a second to snap it up to his shoulder and aim it, but in that second Mark slapped it out of Ferro’s hand with a savage blow, then Mark grabbed Ferro’s throat with both hands and began to to pull him toward his broken, gaping mouth.
Crow leapt at Mark, jumping into the air for a powerful kick that packed all of Crow’s weight and speed into it. The kick caught Mark on the side of the chest and knocked him back several feet, but he kept his hold on Ferro. Crow landed, spun, and kicked Mark in the knee, trying to cripple his leg, hoping for damage to do what mere pain could not. Mark’s leg twisted, but did not collapse despite the audible crunch of bone and cartilage. Before Crow could attack the same leg again, Mark snapped out with one hand and caught Crow by the shirtfront and slammed Ferro and Crow together once, twice, and then swept his hands apart, hurling them into opposite walls. Both men fell bonelessly to the floor.
Mark threw back his head and howled like a triumphant wolf, the sound of it making the whole room tremble, but the howl ended in a low, mean laugh. He took a menacing step forward toward Val, hands clutching the air between them with unholy need.
Val rose from behind the autopsy table and in her hands she held Ferro’s shotgun.
“God forgive me,” she whispered as she raised it to her shoulder and fired.
From four feet away the hard lead pellets and viscous garlic oil took the vampire full in the face and blew him back to Hell.
INTERLUDE
Final Fugue
Mike Sweeney squirmed out from beneath the hay and sat blank-eyed for an hour before he realized who he was and where he was. He zipped his jacket up to his chin and crept out of the barn into the frigid afternoon. Beyond the fields was the dark green wall of the state forest, so Mike went that way, heading in a wandering zigzag course through the woods until he stumbled to a stop at a drop-off that fell away into utter blackness. Going back was out of the question, going left would take him through a dozen farms and then back to town. If he went right he was pretty sure he could make it to Val Guthrie’s farm before full dark.
But he lingered for a while at the drop-off, staring down into the lightless void of Dark Hollow. He wondered what would happen if he just…stepped off? How far would he fall? Would it be a long enough drop so that the fall would kill him? That would be nice. A long drop down into nothingness and to become nothing at the end of it all.
“Mom…,” he said, and just saying it made the lure of the darkness all the stronger.
The air in front of him shimmered and Mike felt as if invisible hands were pushing on him. Not pushing him toward the long dark, but away from it.
A thought came into his head, and it was a strange one because it didn’t feel like one of his own thoughts, but there it was. The thought was if you take that step he’ll win.
He? Mike didn’t know if his inner voice meant Vic or Tow-Truck Eddie. Or did it mean his father?
Mike stood at the edge of the abyss and listened for more from that inner voice, but there was only silence inside. Every tree around him was filled with crows; they were invisible in the shadows, but Mike could hear the soft rustle of their wings.
If you take that step he’ll win.
The voice again, and now he realized that it was a voice, not a thought. It was the same voice that had warned him to run earlier. It was the voice of the man from his waking dream. Mr. Morse.
The crows cawed as if in chorus to that warning.
“You’re not real,” Mike said, addressing the voice in his head.
No. Not anymore.
“Why is this happening to me?” Mike pleaded. “Why me?”
Why not?
“That’s a stupid answer.”
It is what it is.
“I don’t want to be who I am,” Mike said.
Who do you think you are?
“I…I’m a monster. Isn’t that what Tow-Truck Eddie called me? The Beast?”
Damn, son, you can’t listen to what that fool says. His mind is on fire.
“So’s mine!” Mike pawed a tear out of his eye. “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be who I am. I don’t want that man to be my father.” A sob broke from his chest. “I want my mom!”
He fell to his knees but the edge of the drop-off crumbled under him, the soil washed out of the roots by all the recent rain. Mike cried out and spread his arms to catch the tangled weeds at the edge of death and the moment froze. Even the crows in the trees held their breath as natural erosion nearly did what Tow-Truck Eddie and Vic and all of Griswold’s armies could not do. Mike fought for balance and nearly—so nearly—fell.
But he didn’t fall. He heaved himself backward onto the grass and fell flat on his back, staring up through the spider-web tracery of the barren trees at the stars above.
It’s not your fault who your parents are, said Mr. Morse.
“It’s not fair.”
No, it ain’t.
“I don’t want to be like him. I can’t be like my father.”
Then don’t be.
Mike sat up slowly. “What?”
Don’t be like him. Don’t be like Vic. Don’t be like your mamma, either.
Mike said nothing, listening.
None of them know who you really are, Mike. They want you to be like them, but they’re afraid that you won’t be. You hear me, boy? They are afraid that you won’t be like them.
“Afraid? That’s stupid. Who would be afraid of me? I’m no one.”
In his mind Mr. Morse laughed, all the crows sent up a cackle. Who do you want to be?
“I…,” Mike’s voice failed. He had no idea how to answer that question. Instead he lay back and asked, “Why are they afraid of me?”
You know.
“No I don’t.”
Yes you do. Look inside, Mike. It’s gonna hurt—but they already done hurt you worse than anything else could do. You want to know why they’re afraid, just open up and look deep inside.
“I don’t know how.”
I can help you, if you let me. You got to trust me.
“I’m scared.”
So am I, son. So are we all.
Mike lay for a while and watched heaven spin on its axis. The birds rustled and whispered to one another; Mr. Morse held his tongue.
“Okay,” Mike said at last, and it took nearly everything he had to say that one word.
A sound rippled through the trees above him as if each of the thousand crows uttered a long sigh. Then, as the stars glittered and the crows held their breath, Mr. Morse—the Bone Man—fulfilled his mission on Earth and told Mike everything that he knew. He didn’t know all of it—there were such huge gaps in his own knowledge—but what he knew for sure hit the boy like a shotgun blast.
At first Mike listened in silent horror, and then he wept, and finally he screamed.
Down below, far down in the shadows of the Hollow, the swamp shuddered as things twitched in fury and fear beneath the mud.
When the telling was done, Mike Sweeney did not speak. He could not. He lay there with his eyes open, his lips parted in a soundless O of terrible surprise. His body was sprawled in a rough cruciform, arms out to either side, heels dangling over the edge of forever. His chest barely lifted with each breath, and deep inside his heart struggled for each next beat until, as the moon drifted behind a veil of clouds, his broken heart just did not take the next beat, and his lungs did not struggle to fill.
And Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil, died.
PART THREE
THE RED WAVE
October 30 (Mischief Night) to October 31 (Halloween)
And we all know death someday comes Life was never all that certain…
Harry Manx, “Weary When You Run”
With every weary step, you one step closer to the grave; With every single step, on every broken-hearted day you one step closer to the grave. Lay down and die and let the worms have their way.
Oren Morse, “Cemetery Blues”
Chapter 30
1
For twenty-four hours now Tow-Truck Eddie had been cruising the roads around Pine Deep. When his shift was over he swapped the cruiser for his wrecker and went back out on the road, but there was no sign at all of the Beast. As each moment passed he felt the twin fists of tension and despair beat at him.
He was failing in his Holy Mission. The Beast had actually been in his grasp and he’d lost him. Blood boiled in his veins, and he gripped the steering wheel of the wrecker with such force that the knobbed wheel was slowly being twisted out of shape. Hulking in the cab of the wrecker, he drove through the noisy crowds, praying for guidance, begging for the chance to let his work begin.
2
The official version that Ferro concocted was that a pair of criminals in ski masks broke into the morgue, ostensibly to steal medical supplies, and Val and Crow happened to be there discussing the release of her brother’s body with Dr. Weinstock. Ferro and LaMastra had come back up from Philly to interview Ms. Guthrie and officially close the Ruger/Boyd case. The morgue video cameras were still out of commission and the criminals turned off the lights and in the ensuing confusion shots were fired but luckily the only person struck was the already dead Mark Guthrie. However, in the darkness everyone was generally knocked about, and Dr. Weinstock was bitten by one of the assailants. The attackers fled and their identities were still unknown.
It was a load of horseshit, but they only had to sell it to Gus Bernhardt and he would buy swamp real estate from a guy in a shiny suit. Weinstock, injured as he was, was lucid enough to browbeat the hospital staff, and no one questioned Weinstock on anything anyway. Jonatha and Newton were too difficult to fit into the scenario, so they left before Weinstock called it in.
LaMastra was surprised that everyone seemed to buy the story, but Crow pointed out, “Dude, after everything that’s happened since Ruger came to town, this shit actually sounds reasonable.”
Weinstock was admitted into his own hospital. His shoulder needed twenty-two stitches, and he was scheduled for an MRI to see what kind of damage was done to the tendons. Even as he was being wheeled into the ER he was diagnosing himself, bullying the residents and nurses and generally making a pain in the ass of himself.
