“They’re gassed and ready to go,” Crow said. He strapped the sprayer units to the back of each vehicle. Crow took his katana from his duffel, drew it from its sheath, fished a vial of garlic oil from his pocket, and smeared it all over the blade.
“Will that hurt the sword?” Ferro asked.
Crow shrugged. “At this point, who cares?”
Finished with the sword, Crow poured more of the oil into his palm and rubbed it all over his throat, wrists, and face. “Eau-de-stinko,” he said, holding up the vial and wiggling it in Ferro’s direction. “It’s what everybody’s wearing these days. Besides, I’m under orders from Val to come back alive.”
“Good idea,” Ferro said, taking it.
Crow went through the particulars of the ATV with Ferro; LaMastra needed no instruction, having owned motorcycles all through high school and college. They mounted, fired up the bikes, and tested them out by driving in and out of the parking lot for a few minutes; then they lined up behind Crow.
“Let’s kick some undead ass!” Crow yelled and gunned his engine. He went over the edge of the pitch, feeding it gas, zigzagging to keep ahead of the pull of gravity. The others followed, engines shattering the stillness of the morning. It was steep enough to terrify Ferro, and the path was littered with stones and potholes, but the big low-pressure tires of the ATVs seemed indifferent to the terrain. One by one they swept down the hill, speeding through the morning light toward the veil of shadows that marked the boundary of Dark Hollow.
At the top of the hill, a lonely figure stood and watched them go, his black funeral clothes flapping in the breeze.
“You go get them sonsabitches, Little Scarecrow!” he shouted, screaming it with all his might, yelling in a desperate voice; but only the crows in the nearby trees could hear him. The cry was stretched out onto the breeze and blown into silent fragments. “God keep you boys safe.”
2
Val wandered around the hospital for an hour, too nervous to just sit and watch Weinstock sleep. She went down to the cafeteria for a plate of eggs but ate less than half of them. Morning sickness wasn’t a severe problem for her, but it was there. Newton called on her cell. “Hey…how are you?” she asked.
“We spent the night throwing up,” the reporter said with a bitter laugh. “How about you?”
“Pretty much the same,” Val said, though she noted Newton’s use of “we.” “How’s Jonatha? I imagine she’s heading back to Philly after what happened.”
“Actually,” Newton said, “she’s not. She wants to stay and help me document this. Which is reporter geek-speak for saying that we both want to help, but not in any storming the castle sort of way. We can do research, help with intel, as they say in the military.”
“Were you in the military?” Val asked hopefully.
“No…I watch 24 and The Unit. Heading over to the hospital now. Jonatha’s getting dressed and we should be there in a few.”
“I don’t know what to say except…thanks. I know this must be terribly hard for you both. It’s not your fight—”
“We talked about that, Val, and we both pretty much agreed that it is our fight. It’s everyone’s fight.”
“Thanks, Newt. I’m sorry I was so hard on you before.”
“As it turns out, you had every right to be. See you soon.”
She bought a paper and a big decaf in a go-cup and carried it back up to Weinstock’s room and frowned when she saw that the door was ajar; she’d definitely closed it when she left and the nurse wasn’t due for her rounds until seven. Val hurried over and opened the door quietly to see a small, mud-splattered and disheveled figure standing over the sleeping doctor. Even though his back was to her, Val recognized him at once.
“Mike…?” she said.
3
Crow crouched above the seat as the ATV slammed into unseen potholes and jerked over unavoidable rocks. Far behind him he could hear Ferro cursing and yelping as his body thumped painfully over and over again onto the saddle.
At the base of the long hill Crow braked to a stop to let the others catch up. LaMastra was right behind him the whole way, but it took Ferro an additional couple of minutes to pick his way laboriously down the hill toward them. He looked exhausted and miserable and his crotch and tailbone hurt like hell from the bumpy ride. Crow suggested that he try standing up off the seat next time and Ferro told him what he could do with his belated suggestions.
Crow pointed. “See that path there, where the trees form a kind of archway? That’s where we’re going. Be prepared, because when Newt and I were here we got a really bad feeling as soon as we entered it.”
“Can’t be as bad as the way I felt when we crossed over from sunlight to shadows on that hill,” LaMastra said.
“He’s right,” Ferro agreed, “if I wasn’t already a believer that would have done it. It was stepping out of who I am and into being a frightened five-year-old kid. Very…basic emotions, a primitive fear. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, that says it.” Crow nodded along the path. “Down there…it gets worse.” He gunned his engine and took off.
LaMastra looked gloomily at Ferro. “Great pep talk.”
They followed, and as each of them motored down the path an identical feeling of unease and claustrophobia clutched at their hearts. Ferro found himself reaching back to touch his slung shotgun over and over again; LaMastra kept murmuring prayers to the Virgin Mary that he learned in Sunday school. The path was so narrow that dry branches whipped at them and plucked at their sleeves with skeletal fingers, but this eventually emptied out into a wide clearing and Crow stopped again. The others drew alongside, flanking him as he examined the terrain ahead.
“Holy Jesus,” gasped LaMastra, staring at the expanse of twisted and diseased trees and hairy vines that hung like loops of intestine from every branch. Leprous toadstools were littered across the mossy floor of the swamp, and the whole place smelled like rotten eggs and spoiled meat. The stench was overpowering. Gagging, Crow opened up his second vial of garlic extract and rubbed some on his upper lip. He passed the vial to Ferro and LaMastra, who copied this trick.
“What’s wrong with this place?” LaMastra asked, unknowingly repeating the question that Newton had asked two weeks before. Crow shook his head.
“Everything,” he said.
They rode on through the twisted woods for another half an hour and then suddenly the side of the old farmhouse loomed up before them, rising out of the shadows in tangles of diseased ivy. Crow felt his gut tighten at the sight of it. They all slowed as they emerged from the forest into the overgrown side yard and then stopped in a patch of sunlight in the front yard about eighty feet from the porch. They turned off their engines and the silence was immediate and enormous.
“Doesn’t look like much,” said LaMastra, examining the house through narrowed eyes.
Crow snorted, “It grows on you.”
The pile of debris on the porch made the house look deceptively frail and shabby, but Crow knew that the place was a near fortress of sturdy stones and seasoned timbers.
Ferro nodded. “I expected something a lot more rustic, you know? Older, deader, more like a haunted house from a scary movie.”
“You think this place doesn’t look haunted?” Crow asked, surprised.
“It’s not that…I expected it to be a dead old house. This place feels…alive.”
“Thanks,” LaMastra muttered, “’cause I wasn’t nearly scared enough before.”
He and Crow got off their ATVs, but Ferro lingered. “It’s a lot bigger than I expected, too. I’d guess fifteen, eighteen rooms.” Somewhere behind them a dozen crows sent up a cawing chatter. Ferro dismounted and unslung his shotgun. “We’re burning daylight, gentlemen. Let’s be about our business.”
They unstrapped one of the sprayer units and Ferro volunteered to carry it. “You two can provide cover.”
LaMastra raised his big shotgun and jacked the first round into the breech. The sound was startlingly loud. “Let’s get it done.”
With a grim smile, Crow bent to the duffel bag and removed the two pinch bars he’d brought along for just this purpose. He handed one to Vince. “Before we go in there, I’m for letting the sun shine in.”
“So am I,” agreed Ferro, “or I would be if there was any sun.” Above the clouds which had been gradually forming since late morning had coalesced into a gray-white ceiling. The small patch of daylight that shone down on their parked vehicles grew gradually fainter as the clouds draped the sun in gauzy layers.
“It doesn’t have to be actual sunlight, though, right?” LaMastra asked. “I mean…it’s still daytime, so these assholes are going to be sleeping. Right?”
Crow didn’t meet his gaze. “Yeah, well, Jonatha was a bit hazy on that point.”
“Terrific,” LaMastra said.
Crow stalked toward the porch, shotgun in one hand and pinch bar in the other. As he climbed the steps he carefully examined the debris, staring at every dark spot to see if it scuttled or moved, but there were no signs of cockroaches. Ferro stood on the top step of the porch and shined his flashlight into crevices and under shingles, following the light with the nozzle of the sprayer. Nothing moved.
“No creepy crawlies,” he said.
Crow braced his feet and drove the heavy claw of the pinch bar between plywood and brick wall and threw his weight against it; LaMastra went around to the left side of the house and attacked that panel. Soon the air was torn by the squeals of protesting nails and percussive grunts and curses as they pried the gleaming sixteen-penny nails out of the sheet of plywood; then suddenly there was a splintering crack and Crow’s panel slid straight down the wail, nail heads skittering on the brick like fingernails on a blackboard. It came down at an angle, struck the porch floor on one corner, stood on end for a moment, and then toppled backward onto the debris as Crow danced out of the way.