Vic picked a fleck of dried blood from his nostril and wiped it on the arm of his chair. “Yeah,” he said, “maybe. Maybe that’s the only way a pussy like him’d ever get a sly one in on me.”
“Good thing you didn’t cut him,” Ruger said, nodding to the knife on the coffee table. “If Lois hadn’t stepped in…”
“I wasn’t going to kill him, asshole…I was just going to carve my initials on his balls. Maybe take an ear off, or a finger. I wasn’t going to kill the little shit.”
“The Man’s going to really be pissed.” He gave Vic a wink and carried the girl upstairs. Vic and Polk stared at the ceiling for a long time. They could hear Ruger’s muffled voice and Lois’s scream, high and shrill. Polk cut his eyes toward Vic and saw an expression he didn’t expect to see: hurt. When Vic caught him watching he put on a poker-face scowl.
“We have to find the kid,” Vic said, “before Halloween.”
“I put Tow-Truck Eddie on it. He’ll catch him.”
Upstairs Lois gave another long scream, and this time it rose like a banshee wail, filled with such horror that Polk lowered his head and pressed his palms to his ears until it stopped. The scream rose and rose and then suddenly cut off. For a long while there was no sound at all except the vague creaking of the timbers and the twilight wind outside whispering through the slits in the shutters.
Polk rubbed his eyes. “This is getting to be too much,” he said. “I don’t know how much more I can take.”
Taking a long drag, Vic squinted at him through the blue smoke that filled the living room. “Yeah, well…it’ll all be over soon,” he said.
Those words tightened around Polk’s heart like a vise.
5
Iron Mike Sweeney was the Enemy of Evil.
At least, that was how he had once thought of himself, back when his inner fantasy life was a safe and exciting escape hatch from the real world. That was before, when evil was an abstract concept from comic books and TV and movies—granted a concept enhanced by the hard hands of his stepfather, but still abstract. That was before evil had become an actual thing, a presence, a force, a reality that chased him through the gloom of the cold October afternoon and the darkness of his cold, shrieking thoughts.
Now evil was a thing that drew a knife and came at him with burning eyes and a whispering voice. Now evil was a thing that roared at him with his mother’s mouth and a monster’s voice. Now evil was more than just real, it was unreal. Titanic, overwhelming, impossible—and he fled before it.
He tore along the roads, not aiming for any particular place. Just away. Away from town. Away from Vic. Away from home and from what that word no longer meant, and what it now meant.
The farthest away he had ever been by himself was the dark stretch of A-32, and so he went that way. Not because he chose to, but because the path was programmed into him and his mind was a small cringing thing that hid from conscious thought. Inside him the chrysalis writhed. Cracks appeared in the cocoon that was wrapped around his transforming soul.
Behind him, Mike felt the vastness of nowhere to go; back there was everything he had ever known and nowhere that he wanted to be. A sudden realization blindsided him with the force of a runaway train and he skidded and slewed his bike to a stop on the verge, kicking up gravel and a plume of dust.
He could never go home again.
Never.
Not just because of Vic, but because of Mom. Tears fell like hot rain and he bent forward over the pain, buried his face in his arms as he hunched down over the handlebars. His lips tried to speak, but they were twisted with weeping, streaked with phlegm. He managed only one word, but he said it over and over again, trying to rediscover its lost meaning.
“Mom!”
The gathering twilight painted him and the surrounding fields in shades of bloody red. He was still crying, oblivious to the rest of the world, when the police cruiser crested the hill behind him.
Chapter 24
1
He still had his face buried in his arms, so Mike did not even know he was in mortal danger until the cruiser leapt over the crest of the hill and hurtled at him.
Then he heard it: a fierce and immediate bellow as the police car’s heavy engine revved to a screeching pitch. Mike jerked his head up and twisted around to see the white dragon’s eyes of the headlights not twenty yards away; the lights flared to high-beam brightness, piercing him like lasers.
“No,” Mike breathed. “Not now.”
The cruiser came barreling at him, and even though it was not the monstrous wrecker, Mike knew full well who it was. He instantly leapt off his bike and jumped down into the drainage gully, dragging the bike with him as the cruiser struck the empty air where he’d been—with such force that the vacuum sucked Mike off balance. He was showered with gravel and dirt as he fell into a heap at the bottom of the ditch.
Eddie slammed on the brakes, but it took fifty yards for the car to fishtail to a stop. He threw it into reverse, accelerated back to where the boy was scrambling up onto the field side of the ditch, skidded to a stop, slammed it into park, and was out of the car in an instant. He raced around the car and leapt the ditch. The boy was out of the ditch and running hard for the cornfield beyond. Eddie considered drawing his sidearm, but didn’t. Though the road was empty now, tourist cars would certainly be coming. Besides, it would be more holy to do this by hand. With the voice of God shouting in his head with every step, he ran after the boy.
Deep inside the cornfield Mike slowed from a run to a walk and then stopped, keeping his labored breathing as quiet as possible while he listened to the sounds. He could hear Tow-Truck Eddie crashing through the stalks about forty yards from him, going in the wrong direction. Despite everything Mike grinned. “Asshole.”
He crept back the way he came, shortening the route to try and find the path to the road. Halfway there he saw something up ahead that made him smile even more. There was a rusted red wheelbarrow standing in a lane between the rows. Inside was a spool of chicken wire, a pair of wire cutters, and four three-foot lengths of pine used for supporting damaged cornstalks.
Mike stuffed the cutters into his back pocket and hefted one of the staves. Not as long or as strong as the bokken, but better than nothing. He started to turn away when something—some instinct—made him turn back and take the spool of wire. It was the size of a big apple and fit into his jacket pocket.
Feeling marginally more confident, he started once more toward the road, trying not to do a comparison between his makeshift arsenal and the weapons the big man would have. Gun, nightstick, maybe a Taser. And about a hundred and fifty pounds of muscle and mass more than he had. Holding the stick like a sword, he crept back toward the road.
Eddie slowed to a stop and listened, straining his senses forward through the field to try and locate the Beast, but there was nothing, no sound.
The voice of God in his head hissed in inarticulate rage and Eddie could almost feel himself being spun around by invisible hands. Back! The single word was shouted in his head. The voice of God, so long absent, now roared at him, warning him of another mistake. Tow-Truck Eddie realized that he had been underestimating the Beast.
“The Father of Lies,” he murmured, and he ran back toward the road.
Mike was nearly to the edge of the field when he jolted to a stop, realizing with horror that he could no longer hear the distant thrashing of Tow-Truck Eddie deeper in the field.
Where was he? He turned in a slow circle, peering between the tightly planted rows of corn, but with the light breeze the stalks were constantly moving, the sun was just about to set, and the whole field was dissolving from red-gold sunset to the featureless purple of twilight.
Mike felt a hand close around his shoulder—he let out a shriek and spun around, swinging wildly with the stick—but there was no one there.
A shiver of dread passed through him. Mike could still feel the residual imprint of those fingers—icy and strong.
Then Tow-Truck Eddie stepped out of the corn, grinning.
“What’s wrong with you?” Mike screamed. “Why are you doing this?”
Eddie’s smile brightened into one of terrible joy. “Into my hands is delivered the Beast!” Mike had no idea what that meant and he tightened his grip on the stick, ready to fight.
“Leave me alone. I didn’t do anything!”
Eddie craned his head forward. “You exist! You are an abomination in the eyes of God.”
There was such a crushing weight of certainty in the cop’s voice that Mike took a single stunned step backward. It was everything he had ever feared, every doubt that had ever burned the inside of his mind put into words. The ugly secrets that Mr. Morse had told him flooded back into his consciousness and the weight of them almost buckled his knees.
“No…” he said, but his protest sounded weak and empty even to his own ears; the big man, hearing that single word, raised his hands to heaven.
“And through the lies of the Beast shall we know his face and know the truth! Praise God.”
“It’s not my fault,” Mike protested, tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. “I didn’t mean to—”
Then a voice, as disembodied as the unseen hand, whispered a single word in his ear: “Run!”
It was as good as a slap in the face. Without understanding what ghostly hand had made him turn or who had spoken to him, Mike nonetheless spun and raced for the road.
Howling with glory, Tow-Truck Eddie ran after him.
2
The Bone Man stood in the cornfield and watched Tow-Truck Eddie, that monster of a man, one of the men who had beaten him to death all those years ago, chase down Mike Sweeney. Time was running out for them all, the Bone Man knew, just as he knew that this day was going to end badly.
3
Mike thought he was going to make it, that he was yards ahead, but just as he started to leap for the ditch Eddie’s hand closed around his jacket hem and jerked him violently backward. He hit the big man’s chest and it was like smashing into brick. Eddie spun him around and backhanded him to the ground. It wasn’t a hard blow—Mike was already moving away from it—but it brought him to his knees.