“Shit.” Weinstock steeled himself and gripped one corner of the lid as Crow told hold of the other. “God help us if we’re wrong about this.”
But Crow shook his head. “God help us if we’re right.”
The lid resisted for a moment, but then it yielded to their combined strength and opened; they pulled it up and daylight splashed down on the silk-lined interior.
They stood there looking into the coffin for over a minute, saying nothing, lost in their own thoughts, each of their faces set into heavy frowns.
“Well,” Crow said. “Now we know.”
“Yeah,” Weinstock said hoarsely.
“What does it mean?”
The doctor shook his head. “As God is my witness, Crow, I honestly don’t know.”
Nels Cowan had been buried in his Pine Deep police uniform. His hands, bloated with decomposition, lay folded on his stomach with the brim of his uniform hat set between the thick, white fingers. The flesh of Cowan’s face was purplish, distended with gas.
“There’s no chance this is not him” Crow ventured.
“It’s him.” Even so he took a sample of skin tissue just in case they needed a DNA match.
Crow lowered the lid.
“So—what’s happening, Doc?” called the caretaker. He was wiping his hands with a rag as he strolled across the graves toward them. “Did he have something catching?”
Weinstock began tightening the wingnuts. “Apparently not,” he said.
“Well, hell,” Holliston said with a grin. “Guess we can all be happy about that. With all that’s happening ’round here we don’t need no new troubles, now do we?”
Weinstock wore a poker face as he tightened one nut and started on the next. “No, we don’t,” he said.
Across from him, Crow worked in silence.
When they were back in Weinstock’s car they sat for a while, sipping Starbucks coffee and staring out at the morning. The trees seemed unusually thick with crows and the birds sent up a continuous cackle. John Lee Hooker was singing “Boogie Chillen”—from the only blues CD Weinstock owned, a gift from Crow that only came out of the glove box when Crow was riding shotgun.
“I don’t know how to think about this, Crow. I mean…I know what I saw on those morgue tapes. I know I saw Castle and Cowan walking around after they were dead. I’m not hallucinating.”
“I believe you, Saul. You showed me the tapes. I know what you saw.”
“But that was definitely Cowan in that coffin, and he is in a state of decomposition consistent with having been dead for a couple of weeks.”
“Which means that he’s dead.”
“So what did I see on those tapes?”
“I don’t know…I believe you, of course, but I don’t know what it means. Maybe Ruger or Boyd tried to convert them into vampires and it worked for a while but somehow, and for some reason, they died again. Died for real.”
“Maybe. We don’t know enough about this stuff to understand if that’s even possible.”
“I know one thing, though,” Crow said and he pulled his sunglasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on.
“What’s that?”
“Before I move one inch toward believing that this whole thing is over I want to see Jimmy Castle’s body.”
Weinstock started the car. “Me, too, and I want to get that done while we still have daylight. I’m not going anywhere near his body at night.”
2
Mike worked at the store all day Sunday, gradually phasing in and out of lucidity. There was a steady stream of customers and Mike was able to wear a smiling face, answer their questions, fill their orders, and ring up their sales; but below the surface his mind was blank more than it was filled by thought. He knew it, too, but on some other level. It was like standing on a balcony and looking down on his life, and the feeling totally creeped him out.
“I’m really going crazy,” he said to the cash register at one point.
The customer he was ringing up—Brandon Strauss, a kid from Mike’s own class—said, “Mike…hello? Earth calling Mike.”
Mike blinked at Brandon. “Huh?” He realized that instead of bagging the Robert Jordan novel his friend had bought he was trying to stuff it into the drawer of the cash register.
“You bent the cover, man,” Brandon said.
“Um…sorry.”
“I’ll get another off the rack.” Brandon swapped the battered copy for a new one and peered at Mike while he finished ringing it up and bagging it. He held it out and Brandon plucked it from his fingers as if afraid Mike would mangle this one, too.
“Sorry,” Mike said.
Brandon paused, his scowl softening. “You okay, Mike? You sick or something?”
Mike pasted on a smile. “Sorry, I just started a new allergy medicine. Makes me kinda goofy for a bit.”
“You’re always goofy,” Brandon said, but he smiled back and shot Mike with his finger. “See you in school. Ms. Rainer’s subbing for Donaldson again. Woo-hoo!” Natalie Rainer was the favorite substitute teacher for all the boys in the county. She looked like Kate Beckinsale and always wore tight clothes. It didn’t matter that she taught math, no one’s favorite subject; she could have taught advanced calculus and not one of their friends would have missed her class.
Mike promised he’d be there and smiled as Brandon left. As soon as the door jingled shut, Mike leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. It was getting harder and harder to stay focused, to stay present.
“I really am going crazy,” he said aloud, and this time there was no one to comment on it, or to refute it.
3
“Father! Why have you forsaken me?”
The silent emptiness in Tow-Truck Eddie’s heart was enormous, vast. Tears streamed down his face as he drove down A-32 in his police cruiser. Yesterday he had gone into Crow’s store to confront—he thought—the Beast, but instead all he saw was a boy. Just an ordinary boy. Not the Beast, not evil incarnate, not the Antichrist. It didn’t make sense to him.
“I am still your Sword, Father. I am still the avenging lamb!” He cried out these words, but they lacked conviction, even to his own ears. “Please, Father, show me the way.”
The boy in the store—Eddie had not even been able to see him very clearly. The light must have been bad, or something. How different from the Beast: Eddie had always been able to see the Beast with total, holy clarity. When hunting for him on the road, or searching for him in the town, Eddie had never faltered in the purity or certainty of his sacred purpose. His Father had told him that this boy, the child in the store, was the Beast, but when Eddie looked at him he could not see the evil there.
Doubt was a thorn in his brain, a spike in his heart.
4
Weinstock got the call while he and Crow were heading back to the hospital. He listened for a minute, said, “Thanks, we’ll be right there!” and hung up.
“They found Boyd’s body. Turn around, it’s down by the Black Marsh Bridge.”
“Damn,” Crow said and spun the wheel.
5
She stood in the shadows near the foot of Terry’s bed for days. No one saw her. No one noticed her, even though her little dress was torn and her face and throat were streaked with blood. They walked right by her, and sometimes they walked right through her. When that happened, whoever did it—nurse, orderly, visitor, or doctor—would give a small involuntary shiver as if they had just caught an icy breath of wind on the vulnerable back of their neck. The feeling would be gone in less than a heartbeat and they would forget about it because there was nothing, and no one, in the room to take note of.
Since they had brought Terry in here in the evening of October thirteenth and hooked him up to all of the machines, Mandy Wolfe had been there, keeping her silent vigil. Sometimes she wept, and then the tears would flow and mingle with the blood, diluting it, turning it pink on her cheeks. Most of the time she just stood and watched her brother, aching with guilt and grief. Now that he had tried to do what she wanted, now that he had thrown himself out of his window but failed to kill himself, Mandy didn’t know what to do next. No one else could see her, no one else could hear her.
The fear that reared up in her was immense.
“Terry,” she said in a voice quieter than the soft rustle of dried leaves on the autumn trees outside his window. “Terry…I’m so sorry.”
Terry could not hear her. No one could. Except him. And as Mandy wept for her failure, Ubel Griswold listened, and laughed.
6
With the Sunday tourist traffic it was twenty minutes down to the Black Marsh Bridge and they could see the knot of police and crime scene vehicles as they crested one of the last hill. “Looks like a party,” Crow said.
Tow-Truck Eddie Oswald was directing traffic, his uniform uncharacteristically rumpled and his face haggard. Eddie was usually neat as a pin. Once he recognized them, he waved them through and told them where to park. As they got out they could see Chief Gus Bernhardt standing at the crest of the embankment that led down to the river and beyond him the near leg of the old iron Black Marsh Bridge. Smoke curled sluggishly up between Gus and the bridge. Crow shot a look at Weinstock, who shrugged, and they crunched over gravel to the grassy hill to join Gus, who was in animated conversation with a couple of firefighters.
“Hey, fellas,” Gus said as Crow and Weinstock joined him. “I hope you brought some weenies for roasting.” His pink face was alight with pleasure as he turned and swept an arm down the hill like an emcee introducing a headline act. “Voilà!”
“Holy jumping frog shit,” Crow said.
Gus clamped Crow on the shoulder. “I think we can pretty much close the file on Kenneth Boyd.”
At the base of the bridge support, tied to the concrete block that anchored the big steel leg, a body stood wreathed in wisps of smoke, the arms and legs twisted into dry sticks, the skin black and papery, the head nothing more than a leering skull covered in hot ash. A crudely lettered and soot-stained sign had been affixed to the support by bungee cords. It read: DON’T FUCK WITH PINE DEEP!