“I want you there, too.”
“Jeez…Halloween’s a big night at the club.”
Crow said nothing, letting BK think about it.
“Yeah, okay, I’ll get someone to cover for me. I’ll be there, and I’ll bring Billy, too.” Billy Christmas was BK’s best friend, a fellow bouncer who looked like a male model but fought like a junkyard dog. They made a colorful team.
“Thanks, BK…I owe you one.”
“Hey, as long as the check clears you don’t owe me shit, brother.”
They sorted out a few details and then Crow hung up, feeling much more relieved. BK would put together a tight team for him, he knew that, and knowing it made the problem seem a lot less vast. He fished in the glove box and came out with Eddy “The Chief” Clearwater’s Reservation Blues and slid it into the player, and as the first cut “Winds of Change” began with its moody guitars and brooding horns, Crow put the car in gear and headed out of town.
He didn’t head home though, at least not yet. Instead he took the side road that led out of town and as soon as he cleared the jam of tourist cars he found himself out on the highway, rolling along the undulating black ribbon of A-32 out into the farmlands. A few fields were still thick with tall corn, the last of the season; but most had either been harvested down to brown stubble or razed and plowed under to try and halt the advance of the blight. Only a few of the roadside farm stands were open, the ones that could afford to import goods for resale. A few stayed open with their own products, but they were rare; among them, Guthrie Farm-goods, staffed by family members of farms that had been badly hit. More of Henry’s goodwill.
Crow brooded on that as he drove. Henry and Terry, the town’s two most successful men and the ones with the biggest hearts. One dead, the other dying as the Black Harvest ground along.
He passed Tow-Truck Eddie in his wrecker and tooted his horn, but Eddie either didn’t see him or didn’t recognize him and the big machine thundered past, heading toward town. Crow also passed Vic Wingate’s midnight-blue pickup truck. Behind the glare of the headlights he could see two shadowy silhouettes in the cab, but he couldn’t see their faces. Vic and some other asshole who apparently possessed the ability to tolerate Vic’s company. Crow didn’t toot or wave, but just drove on.
When he came to Val’s farm he saw that the police guard was no longer stationed at the entrance. No one and nothing left to protect. Crow’s mood soured even more as he made the left and crunched slowly up the gravel drive to the house. He switched off the lights and engine and sat there in the silence, watching the house. There were a few lights on, some cops probably not bothering to switch them off as they left. Those yellow rectangles of light usually looked so homey, but now they felt so remote, empty of all of their promise of warmth and acceptance. The whole house seemed drained, like a battery that’s almost run down—not quite dead—but with only enough energy to be frustrating, or a cheat.
He got out and walked to the back of his car, opened the trunk, took his Beretta out of a plastic tackle box, shrugged out of his jacket, slipped on the shoulder rig, hung the Beretta in the clamshell holster, and pulled the jacket back on. He didn’t ask himself why, with all the players off the board, he felt the need to wear the pistol; part of him didn’t want to delve that deeply. Not at the moment.
He crossed the driveway, then slowed to a stop as something far to his left caught his eye. Crow peered into the gloom, seeing what he first thought—bizarrely—were tendrils, like the waving arms of an octopus or squid, but then he grunted as he realized that he was seeing the torn ends of crime scene tape fluttering in the wind down by the barn. In the distance the tape seemed to move in eerie slow motion.
“Jeez,” he muttered and headed to the house, climbed the wide wooden steps where thirty years ago he and Boppin’ Bill, Val, Terry, and Mandy would all sit clustered around the Bone Man, listening to the blues, learning about life far beyond Pine Deep.
The front door was locked, but Crow had his own key and let himself in. There was no sound except the ticking of the big grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs and the muffled scrunch of his sneakers as he moved into the living room. He stopped, looking to his right, through the dining room and into the kitchen—Connie’s domain, where she’d happily cooked a thousand meals for the family with all of the charm of a TV housewife, maybe that redhead from Desperate Housewives. Everything always had to be perfect. Though nothing would be anymore.
To his left was the big office Henry had used to run the farm and his other holdings, and next to that Mark’s slightly smaller office. The doors to both stood ajar, left open by some cop, the lights on, the occupants never to return.Crow headed upstairs, stepping lightly, keeping his back to the wall and his eyes cutting back and forth through the gloom of the second floor. At the end of the hallway was the master bedroom where Henry and Bess had slept for forty-six years of marriage. Bess had gone first two years ago, taken by cancer, and who would have thought cancer would be the kinder, gentler way out? Henry had gone down with Ruger’s bullet in his back and had died alone out in the rain.
Crow turned. At the other end of the hall was Mark and Connie’s bedroom.
Shaking his head Crow climbed the stairs to the big bedroom on the third floor where Val had lived her whole life; Crow knew that her old stuffed toys and dolls were all carefully packed away in one of the closets. He sat on the edge of the bed, running his palm over the comforter and finding precious little comfort. And yet this was the bed where he and Val had made love so many times, where they had almost certainly conceived their child.
“Val,” he whispered, and her name seemed to chase the shadows back like a talisman held in the face of some ancient evil. “Val.”
Crow sat for a long time, soaking up the energy of the room—the only vital energy left in the whole house. Up here he couldn’t hear the ticking of the clock, but there was the soft rustle of the damp October wind through the trees and the skitter of dry leaves on the shingled roof. He sighed heavily and got up, packed a big suitcase of clothes, toiletries, and makeup for Val, and went downstairs. No way was he going to bring Val back here when she was released from the hospital; he’d convince her to stay with him. Maybe even try to get her to consider selling the farm. There was nothing left there but ghosts anyway.
He turned off most of the lights and locked the door behind him and left that house of the dead.
2
In his dreams Terry Wolfe ran and ran and ran, and the beast ran after. Always following, never tiring, always getting closer. Hour by hour, minute by minute, the beast closed the distance between them as Terry ran through the lightless corridors of the oubliette. There was an infinity of hallways and passages, but no matter which one he chose his running feet—slapping bare on the clammy stone floor—would circle him back to the central chamber and there, bathed in the only light that shone in that forgotten place, his body lay on its hospital bed, surrounded by useless and incomprehensible machines. Each time he staggered out of a side tunnel and skidded to a terrified halt in front of his bed, in front of his own naked and battered body, he would pause just for a second—he couldn’t risk longer than that because the beast was always just around the last bend—and he could see that his body was dying.
And that it was changing.
As the life ebbed out of him, as the life force that made him who he was drained away, the meat and muscle and bone of that physical form in the bed changed. The nails were darker, thicker, longer. Just in the last few minutes his jaw had changed, elongated, stretching to allow more teeth. His forehead had become lumpy, thrusting out a heavy brow while the skull flattened above it, sloping back. There was more hair on the face, thicker hair on the chest and arms. Beneath the lids his eyes twitched and flicked.
“That’s not me!” Terry yelled as he turned and fled away down another hallway.
The echo that chased him repeated only the last word: “Me! Me! Me!”
Behind him, just past the pursuing wave of echoes, the beast growled in red fury.
3
Mike came to the hospital to see Val, but her room was empty and Crow was nowhere to found. A nurse told him that Val was expected back in twenty minutes or so and asked if he’d like to wait. He told her he’d be back and just wandered the halls for a while. It was visiting hours, so none of the nurses or doctors gave him so much as a glance, even when he went downstairs into the ICU wing, which smelled of disinfectant, sickness, and fear. Mike didn’t like the smell, or the way it made him feel, and he almost turned around, but something kept him moving down the hall, as if an invisible hand pushed him gently from behind.
There were twenty-four small bedroom units, each with a big glass window to allow for maximum visibility. Mike drifted along slowly, peering through the glass into each room. Most of the units were empty, a few had old people in them, most of whom already looked dead; one had a young Hispanic man who was bound up in a complicated series of harnesses. Mike wondered if that was José Ramos, the guy who worked for Val. The one who’d gotten his neck snapped by Boyd. The thought tumbled around in Mike’s brain for a bit, stirring up different emotions. At first he felt a wave of fear—Mike could imagine almost any kind of pain, having felt so much of it himself—then the fear congealed into sadness, and he crept away, hoping that Vic never went so far overboard that he broke his neck. To be helpless like that, just trapped in a dead body, totally vulnerable, unable to even lift a hand to block the slaps or punches, or to halt the other even more terrible things that Vic could do—that would be the worst thing. He didn’t want to look at that thought and moved quickly away from that room as if distance could keep him from the dreadful images that rose up in his mind.
The next unit was ICU #322 and the patient there was also heavily bandaged and had his limbs in casts supported by straps. Mike slowed to a stop, not sure why, and stared through the open doorway at the man. The air around him seemed to shimmer, but Mike’s whole concentration was focused on that patient.