“So they were alive?” he asked.
“To this day, I don’t rightly know,” the old man replied, in a voice so low and hushed, he was almost whispering.
“They came for us,” he said, his hands clenched in his lap, “so I screamed, and I tried to run—but Izzy had his fist clamped like iron around my wrist. He wouldn’t stand up, and he wouldn’t let go. Just sat there, with his glasses off, his mouth scowlin’ like he knew what was comin’ up on us, and how horrible they were, but he wasn’t about to leave. God still had a plan for him, and that plan included me. And as those things came into the light of our little fire, I prepared myself for something awful to happen. I didn’t know what, but those things were so evil—you could feel the air turn cold as they got closer—I was sure in my heart that I wouldn’t live through the night.”
Grover had said it in the beginning: he was not a credulous man. And what he was hearing now definitely stretched the boundaries of believability to the breaking point. But there was nothing about Bobby Jay that seemed out of sorts. The man actually seemed more clear-eyed and composed than he had at any point since Grover had stared down the barrels of that shotgun. The old man absolutely believed what he was saying, and the conviction in the old man’s voice was almost overwhelmingly compelling.
Grover forced himself to keep writing.
“You obviously did live,” Grover said. “Did the things attack? Or did you ward them off? What happened next?”
“There were a hundred, at least. Probably more. Pale as corpses. And the smell… more rotten than a dead steer that’s been left in the sun for a week. When that stench hit me, I hate to say it, son, but that’s when I lost my supper. I doubled over on hands and knees and coughed up every last drop that was in my stomach. Somehow, Izzy wasn’t bothered by it—though I can’t say why. I’m told a blind man’s sense of smell is better than a normal man’s, and Izzy didn’t flinch once. He just kept his hand wrapped around my arm.”
“So what happened, since he’s—”
“Shut up, boy, and let me finish. We was surrounded. There was no way out. And the fire was dying. I was certain once the last lick of flame left us, those things were going to move in. I started blowing on the coals, and tossing on wet leaves. But the things… they just went right on past us. As if Izzy didn’t exist. And as if I didn’t exist, so long as Izzy had hold of me. I watched them go for many minutes, all of them coming up out of the cave and spreading into the blackness of the night. Until something else came up out of that cave, too. And this most definitely was a man. Though I’m pretty sure he’d been dead a long time. What little was left of his uniform hung on his black bones like the tatters of a flag, and he had a rusted Confederate officer’s saber in one of his bony hands. The orbs in his bony sockets were like red marbles, and they gave off their own light—hot coals. He felt even more wrong than any of the fish-things before him, and when his skeleton’s face turned our way, I was sure I was looking at one of the devil’s lieutenants, come straight from Hell.”
“What did you do? What did Isaiah do??”
“We sat in stone-cold silence, watching this black-boned hellspawn walk past us, the leather on his boots flaking off and falling to the earth. Then Izzy was yanking me to my feet, and this time it was him leading me by the rope around our waists. I don’t know how he could see in the dark, but he told me we had to follow the things, and especially follow their leader. Something still hadn’t happened yet, and Izzy had to be there when it did, or all Hell was literally going to come loose on us. So I just stumbled along, keeping my feet as best as I could, scared plumb out of my gourd. We went like that for who knows how long, until suddenly we hit the edge of the old war cemetery—that’s about two miles from the cave, and a mile outside town. With the moon down, it was still pitch black, but when we got to the cemetery, it was like the air itself started shinin’ with its own light. A strange, cold light. The things were linin’ up along either side of the graves, and they was makin’ a terrible moanin’ sound—with that black-skeleton feller standin’ at the head of them all, his saber raised high. Like he was callin’ the troops to order, or somethin’. And then, up out of the earth, the dead actually came! Men who hadn’t walked the land in sixty years, rose up—as if the Lord Himself had commanded it. But it was plain obvious to even Blind Izzy that none o’ this had anything to do with the Lord.”
Grover waited, as the old man bowed his chin to his chest, and seemed to be catching his breath.
“What did Isaiah do?” Grover asked quietly.
“Izzy swung that damned diddley bow around on its rope, until it was on his stomach, and he started playing.”
“He played the instrument?”
“And sang! Like he was back on his crate in front of the flying crow. Those things stood there, with fish-mouths going yawp-yawp-yawp, and the dead were coming up out of the land by the hundreds, and when Izzy began his tune, they all froze in place. And before long, they was swayin’ back and forth, almost like you see them snake charmers make the cobras do, in the movies. Back, and forth, back, and forth.”
Grover continued to experience a disconnect—between what he was being told, and what he could see in the old man’s eyes. Grover had known liars before. In some cases, fantastic, world-class liars. The kind of people who spun fantastic webs of falsehood, for fun, and for profit. But he detected not a single hint of deception in Bobby Jay’s words. The man believed absolutely every syllable that he was saying. And Grover had no choice other than to believe with him.
It seemed like the oil in the lamps was waning. Not much, but enough so that the light was beginning to soften, and the shadows around the cabin—single room, from what Grover could tell—began to deepen.
“Well,” the old man said, “that black-skeletoned officer didn’t take too kindly to Izzy putting a song-spell on the officer’s hellspawn army, so he came for us. And when he raised up that saber to strike, I pulled out my pistol and started shooting. Six shots, three of them to the head. The black skeleton went down, but he didn’t stop coming. I yanked on the rope to try to get Izzy to run with me, but discovered that Izzy had untied the damned rope, and was actually beginning to walk back the way we’d come!”
“You mean, toward the cave?”
“Yes! And he was singin’ so loud, he was almost hollerin’, and he was playin’ that diddley bow the whole time, rubbing the glass bottle neck up and down, gettin’ the strongest sound he could get out of that old cigar box. And the fish-things, with the dead, they followed Izzy. And no matter what that black-skeletoned officer did, he couldn’t make them turn away. While he was tryin’ to get back up, I dumped out my revolver and put in fresh shells, and went to work on him again. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I blew out one of his hips, so he wound up dragging himself along, using the saber as a crutch. And when it snapped, he went along on hands and knees, his bones making the most awful sound as they knocked and rattled together. It was like he didn’t care about me. He only cared about Izzy’s playin’ and how the rest were followin’ Izzy back to the cave.”
“What happened then?”
“I shouted for Izzy. I asked him what’n hell he thought he was going to do, with that horrible host behind him. He shouted that he was going to lead them back to where they should be in the first place—under the ground. Hopefully, to rest for good. I shouted that he was crazy, and that he’d get himself killed, or worse. That’s when he said the last words he ever said to me: ‘The Lord provideth.’ And then he and that host of undead things were moving too quickly for me to keep up. I tried to run, but I wound up putting my head straight into a tree branch, just outside the cemetery border. Next thing I knew, I was rolling over onto my knees, and there was dried blood down my face, and the light of the morning was coming up.”
“Did you go back to the cave?”
“I tried to walk a few paces, and fell flat on my ass. Concussion, the nurse told me later. Of course, by that point, I was too exhausted to do much
more than crawl back toward town, where the sheriff picked me up.”
Bobby Jay stared down at his arms, which he’d folded tightly over his chest.
“And you never saw Isaiah again?” Grover asked gently.
“Nobody ever saw Izzy again. Not his family, not his friends, not none of us, you understand? I told the sheriff everything, of course. Knowing I’d sound like a damned fool. But what else could I do?”
“Surely there was some proof left behind. What about this… this skeleton officer you talked about?”
“When I took the sheriff back to the old war cemetery, we found the graves empty alright, and the broken saber. But no bones. Not even footsteps in the dirt. All those terrible undead things, shambling along, and not a single one of them left a print! There was just me and Izzy and the marks our boots had left. And me sitting in the sheriff’s office for a whole day, trying to convince them not to lock me up, and not to put me in an asylum either. Since there weren’t no body to be found, they couldn’t rightly charge me with anything. They did take my pistol though, as evidence. Never got that back. It’s still locked up in the county courthouse, I imagine.”
“There was a trial?”
“Of sorts,” Bobby Jay said. “Judge threw the book at me. For the unlawful disturbing of the war cemetery.”
“Didn’t they wonder what actually happened to the bodies? Didn’t anyone ever go to investigate the cave?”
“I’ve been in that cave myself, since,” Bobby Jay admitted. “More’n once. Just long enough to convince myself that however far Izzy went—leading those fish-things, and the dead who’d risen to walk beside them—he went deeper than I had the courage to explore. Izzy’s probably still down there with them. And his diddley bow too. I sure hope to hell he was right. That the Lord did, in fact, provide. Taken up, like they say happened to righteous people in the Bible. Before it was too late. Anyhow, I always wondered what would have happened if the hellspawn had reached town.”
***
The car ride was a silent one. Grover’s wrist watch said that it was past three in the morning. If the moon had been out before, it was gone now. Only Grover’s headlights showed him the road ahead. And every once in awhile, he thought he saw something lurking just at the road’s shoulder. Which was nonsense, of course. Barring a few deer that might leap across his path, there wasn’t anything to menace him on the highway. Nevertheless, Grover couldn’t shake the sense that Robert Jackson Lee Hill’s story wasn’t yet entirely over. That somewhere, out there, Isaiah Washington’s diddley bow was still playing. And that if it ever stopped playing… the creatures that inhabited that world—between the living and the dead—would stir again.
AT THE HIGHWAYS OF MADNESS
David J. West
That is not dead which can eternally drive
And with strange eons even death may not arrive
1. Midnight Rider
It was just past midnight when our—well he ain’t exactly a hero, a man called The Squid—pulled off the highway in Wendover to get himself some coffee and diesel. His big black Mack truck rumbled into the Flying K with all the subtlety that a pair of brass knuckles has for a glass jaw. The anthropomorphic chrome octopus hood ornament on his truck held a deck of cards in one hand and a mud flap girl in the other. It’s an awful strange ornament, but then The Squid is one strange dude, and the ornament was probably how he got his handle ’cause he sure wasn’t in the Navy, leastways that I know of. Despite his being a long-haired weirdo outta Shakey City—that’s Los Angeles for those of you that don’t speak Trucker—The Squid’s a pretty congenial fellow. He’s forty-something and dresses for comfort in shorts and rock-&-roll T-shirts along with a favorite cardigan sweater from his longtime girl, Jeanie. The Squid’s a generous tipper, he picks up hitchhikers and ain’t afeared to give anyone that Nazareth or Deep Purple T-shirt off his back. Quick with a joke or a song, he’s the kind of guy that always gets free pie and an extra smile from the waitresses, but he never lets it go to his head neither. Always on time with his loads, The Squid is always “Truckin it up.” That’s just the kind of trucker he is. You’d like The Squid, he’s good people.
Anywho, it fell on April 30th or Walpurgis Nacht—that’s “Witches Night” for a quick translation—back in 1986 that The Squid and his good buddy Ogre got themselves into a bizarre mess of trouble with a heap of near-impossible-to-believe repercussions, and this time it weren’t The Squid’s fault neither. You see, when he stopped off at that Flying K, he had no idea what was heading his way from so far off, and a man can sometimes get mighty surprised. But I’ll take a step back now and just let the story unfold for you in its own way.
After fueling up, The Squid went inside the diner and sat himself down on a ripped vinyl stool at the counter. A waitress in a teal uniform with shockingly red hair looked him up and down. “What can I do you for, hun?” A lit cigarette dangled from her lips with a long cherry of ash teasing that it was about to drop.
“Java, darlin’. I gotta get to Denver by tomorrow afternoon.”
She winked and poured him a cup. The fading cherry from her cigarette fell into the steaming black coffee. The Squid’s eyebrows raised. She turned to walk away.
“Uh, ma’am? I’m gonna need a fresh cup.”
“What, ‘tain’t good enough for ya, sugar?” she asked with a red-stained smile.
The Squid squinted, wondering at her teeth and deciding it must be lipstick. “No, I mean, yes. I need a fresh cup; your ash went right in the java. I don’t mean to be picky, but come on.”
“So?”
“So? So, I need fresh java. Come on, I got a long way to go and a short time to get there.”
“Uh huh.” She pushed the soiled cup a couple spaces down the counter and grabbed another from somewhere beneath. The Squid peered inside to inspect the potential lack of cleanliness as she poured it full. “Here you go, Your Majesty.”
“Thanks, Toots.”
She snorted at that and walked away.
Ogre, a tall beer-bellied trucker with a Dixie-flag ball cap, walked in, slapped The Squid on the shoulder and sat beside him. “You made her mad. Gotta watch out how you treat people, Squid. You can’t go getting personal about how people run their business.” He grinned wide, his smile framed with a Fu-Manchu mustache beneath tinted aviator shades that he never took off.
The Squid turned and shook Ogre’s hand, answering, “The thought did occur to me, but I wasn’t gonna drink that.”
Ogre laughed, reached for the tainted cup and swallowed it, ash and all, then loudly belched.
A full body shiver wracked The Squid. “You’re a sick man.”
“Like Sun Tzu said, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.’”
The Squid shook his head, “Never mind, I ain’t even gonna try and correct that.”
“How’s the highway been treating you?”
“Good, good. I gotta burn rubber to Denver and then pick up a load and get it to Tucson.” He leaned up off his stool looking for the vanished waitress. “Where’d she go? Fix her weave? I need to order some grub.”
Ogre nodded. “You catch more flies with honey than liquor, Squid. Plato said that.”
“You have got to get your white-trash facts straight, my friend.”
Indignant, Ogre spouted, “White-trash facts? Squid, I am the most well-read trucker on these highways. Don’t make me draw you a picture.”
The waitress returned and Ogre smiled at her. “Evening, ma’am. I’d like a dozen eggs and a side of bacon and do you have any…” Ogre glanced out the window and noticed the flagpole. His demeanor darkened. “Squid, do you see that?” He pointed an accusing finger outside.
“What?”
Ogre grimaced and sputtered, “Out there is a gold-fringed flag on that flagpole! That is the flag of an Admiralty Court and here we are in god-fearing, five-wife-loving Utah!”
“Nevada,” corrected the waitress, with the cigarette stuck to her heavy lipstick.
&
nbsp; Ogre frothed, standing up and shouting loud enough for the handful of other patrons inside to pause and look their way. “Last time I checked this was still America! Not a U.N. Charter stop-and-shop. Take that flag down now!”
The Squid put a hand on Ogre’s shoulder. “You can’t go getting personal about how people run their business. It’s still an American flag. He’s had a long day,” he directed the last sentence at the waitress.
Ogre slammed the counter shouting, “No, this will not stand. I’m gonna give my diesel back! I’m taking my business elsewhere! You Commie sons of bitches!”
“Ogre, calm down.”
“Am I wrong here?” asked Ogre, his breath coming in angry spurts.
Dark as it was outside, a bright flaring light arced overhead accompanied by a wretched grating noise akin to colossal nails on a titanic chalkboard. It turned everyone’s attention away from Ogre’s tirade. Appearing to be some type of rocket or craft, it tumbled violently in a downward spiral through the night sky. Green and orange flames backlit the grey smoke trailing behind like a twisted comet. The waitress’s cigarette fell from her slack-jawed mouth.
Holding fingers in their ears, The Squid, Ogre and others stepped out the café doors to watch. The weird light sparkled and fizzed, turning a variety of colors as it cascaded eastward. It looked like it would hit just a couple miles away. Then there was a thunderclap and blast of brilliant green light. Dust fell from the eaves as tremors rippled through the truck stop.
Ogre slapped The Squid on the back. “That’s right down I-80! Let’s go take a look!”
The Squid glanced back to see the waitress picking her nose while pouring another cup of coffee. “All right, let’s go look. We’ll find somewhere else to eat.”
2. Highway Star
Roaring down the highway, the Mack and Peterbilt headlights were weak compared to the twisting green fire that had beckoned in the distance. It seemed to The Squid that out here on the edge of the desert there were no stars, just a blackness hanging overhead like a bad dream. He had a bad feeling about all of this, but had to try and keep Ogre out of trouble. You gotta do what you can for good friends. But the boisterous redneck was driving as fast as his rig could go and The Squid had to stay above eighty to catch him.
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