The Revenant Road

by Michael Boatman

  Kowalski blew out a stream of smoke and pointed his crossbow at the sanctuary. “The same squatter that’s waiting for us in that church.” He shrugged. “I feel shitty for not tellin’ you earlier. I wasn’t sure you were...Well, I wasn’t sure.”

  Kowalski reached into the silver golf bag and handed me a quiver filled with iron-headed bolts. His eyes held a deep wellspring of sympathy. But his voice was as rough as stone. “Welcome to the club.”

  With that, Kowalski turned and headed into the parking lot. As I watched him disappear into the shadows, I heard the bars of a prison cell slam shut behind me.

  They say that Destiny has a way of closing around you like a spider’s web: The more you struggle, trying to escape, the more the web binds you, limits your choices.

  As Kowalski strode off like a knight in some deeply fucked-up fairy tale, my destiny wrapped me in its web and pulled the strands tight.

  I picked up my golf bag and started walking.

  They say that God is in the details. I didn’t believe in God, but I would learn one thing that night: God may not be in the details but Death is, and she ain’t lookin’ for a roommate.

  I went after Kowalski.

  32

  Special. Weapons. and. Terror.

  We crouched behind a parked minivan long enough for Kowalski to give me a primer on crossbow etiquette. “Pearl” had thoughtfully provided me with a “self-cocker,” a weapon that only required the user to turn a small ratchet to retract the fiberglass bow, set the iron-tipped bolt to the nylon string, select a target, aim and fire.

  By Zippo-light, Kowalski demonstrated the maneuver. The Seward had a “draw weight” of 175 lbs. It could propel a twenty-inch arrow through the air at 345 feet per second to deliver 107 pounds of force: Power enough to stop a horny bull moose in its tracks. The iron-infused broadhead bolts looked like miniature harpoons. They were designed to slice through tough hide on impact and shred the vulnerable organs beneath.

  After Kowalski had assured himself that I could load and fire the Seward, we continued.

  The church was an architectural mongrel, part Asian pagoda, part Anglo-European cathedral. Its stained glass windows hung in jagged shards like parti-colored stalactites. Its doors had been bolted and chained shut.

  The fire-gutted sanctuary stood slightly off center, like a wounded mastodon leaning toward the nearest tar pit. The ancient timbers groaned, overburdened by the effort of supporting the pagoda’s carcass.

  Kowalski gestured and vanished up a dark walkway between the pagoda and the wall of the overpass.

  “Wait,” I hissed.

  I followed him around to the back. It was so dark in the passageway between the church and the concrete wall of the overpass that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

  I cleared my throat nervously. In the oppressive silence, the bubbling rustle of phlegm reverberated like an elephant’s death rattle. “Kowalski?”

  Someone grabbed me. I snatched in enough breath to scream and my attacker clapped his hand over my mouth and hissed mint Altoid fury into my face-“Shut...the fuck...up.”

  Kowalski.

  I struggled in his grip (He was surprisingly strong for a toothless old coot) until he released me.

  “Rear entrances are chained shut,” he whispered. “Find another way in. I’ll try to jimmy the locks.”

  I nodded, turned away.

  “And for the love of Christ, be quiet.”

  I indicated my understanding. Then we separated.

  My heart slammed itself against my ribcage as I crept along the back wall of the church searching for another entry point. The ground level windows had been boarded up. All of them were nailed shut, impossible to see through.

  Except for one.

  A window on the far side of the church had been blocked by three long wooden slats. The glass had been smashed. I could peek through the open space between two of the slats and into the basement, but in the dim light of the cloud-shrouded moon I couldn’t see more than a few inches beyond the window.

  “Good work.”

  Despite myself, I jumped.

  “Will you stop doing that?”

  “Shhhhh,” Kowalski hissed.

  He laid his crossbow on the concrete and grabbed one of the boards. Following his lead, I grabbed the lower board and began to push. It was painstaking work, trying to pry the boards loose without making a racket. Kowalski was disturbingly adept, though. Working together, we were able to push the middle slat out of the window frame without waking up the whole neighborhood. I laid the board gingerly down on the concrete, taking great care not to drop it.

  The upper and lower boards however, proved immovable. Even with both of us pressing as hard as we could, we were unable to budge them.

  Kowalski waved me away from the window. Then he stuck his head in between the two boards. A moment later, his torso and legs disappeared between the two slats. With alarming dexterity for a man of his age, he dropped to the basement floor, landing quietly on the balls of his feet.

  Kowalski gestured for me to follow.

  I handed the golf bags through the slats to Kowalski.

  Then it was my turn. I squeezed my arms, head and shoulders between the upper and lower slats. My upper torso slid through easily, followed by my ribcage and mid-section; I was almost through...

  I stopped.

  “What are you doing?” Kowalski hissed.

  I tried to move forward; couldn’t.

  “I’m stuck,” I hissed back.

  I tried to squeeze out the way I’d come in; couldn’t.

  “I’m stuck,” I said, louder.

  “Don’t panic,” Kowalski grated.

  Cold fury sharpened my reply: “I’m not panicking.”

  Starting to panic.

  I shot my hips forward, trying to force my way through the opening. Something ripped loudly in the gloom: Whatever it was, it only made my situation worse. The more I struggled the more hung up I became.

  Then I realized what it was.

  “My belt,” I said. “It’s caught on something.”

  My goddamned Kenneth Cole black calf’s leather belt. The one with the silver buckle. I’d chosen it because the buckle stood out against a fantastic pair of black flat-fronts I’d picked up at the Barney’s Yearly Sales Event during my last trip to LA.

  The big silver buckle was stuck on a nail.

  “It’s my belt,” I groaned.

  “Shhhh!” Kowalski said.

  “Goddamn Kenneth Cole!”

  “Quiet!”

  Kowalski was furious, his face glowing, apoplectic in the moonlight. He eyed the shadows warily.

  “Grab my arms,” I said, the prospect of being gutted because of a two-hundred-dollar fashion accessory looming large in my consciousness.

  “Pull me out!”

  Kowalski flapped his arms like a dope fiend waving down a speeding crack dealer—

  “Shut...

  —and my pants ripped.

  I fell through the window and landed on top of a child’s desk. The desk broke apart under my weight and I fell off, knocking over a chest-high stack of similar desks on the way down. I crashed to the wooden floor with a noise like a race riot in a Burmese drum shop.

  Kowalski was there instantly. He grabbed me by the lapels, hauled me to my feet and whisper/screamed into my face, “SHUT UP!”

  Behind us, the two slats fell out of the window with a clatter of splitting timber and broken glass.

  Above us, something howled like a damned soul.

  Kowalski glared at me, the promise of murder writ large across his face.

  “Sorry.”

  Kowalski snatched the crossbow out of the silver golf bag and began to load it.

  “Shut your mouth and listen!” he snapped, “I’ll take the point. Back me up. You see anything weird, sing out. You hear anything, yell. Most importantly if you see a monster lookin’ to chomp my guts start shootin,’ but you make damn sure I’m not in your line of
fire, comprende?

  I nodded. “Yeah...Yes...I...”

  Whatever had howled a moment earlier, howled again.

  “Oh my fucking God.”

  Kowalski thrust the crossbow at me.

  “Alright,” he said. “Pull your head out of your ass and pay attention.”

  Something big ghosted through the rafters overhead.

  “What was that?” I said.

  “School’s in session, Junior,” Kowalski said. “Let’s go.”

  We ran toward a wide staircase and headed upstairs toward the chapel. I flipped the safety switch to the “Off” position as Kowalski had shown me earlier, stumbled, and nearly dropped the silver crossbow.

  “Goddammit, Grudge,” Kowalski said. “Keep it together.”

  “You keep it together,” I said. “I’m fucking terrified.”

  Something moved in the corner near the top of the staircase. I whirled. A dark silhouette rose, head and shoulders shrouded in the silver moonlight shining through a shattered window.

  “Look out!” I cried.

  I lifted the crossbow and fired. Half a second later I heard the satisfying thunk as the iron-headed bolt struck its target.

  “I got it,” I rasped. “I got the son-of-a bitch!”

  Then my eyes adjusted to the moonlight and I saw the thing that I’d hit.

  In the corner, one half of a silken curtain flapped in the cold draft that flowed in through the broken window. The other half was pinned to a wooden bust of a smiling Asian dignitary with thick glasses.

  My aim was true: My bolt had struck the bust in the center of its breast.

  “Jesus,” Kowalski groaned. “You sure Marcus Drudge was your real father?”

  An inhuman scream cut him off. I whirled as the scream was repeated. It was coming from the chapel.

  “Holy shit.”

  Across a small ocean of charred furniture and crumbled plaster and wood, a makeshift altar stood at the front of the chapel.

  The altar had been formed from human bodies.

  A pile of corpses and pieces of corpses nearly nine feet high stood at the front of the chapel. Whoever had built the altar had constructed a gruesome stepladder, using the corpses to reach his most recent acquisition.

  There was a woman dangling above the altar.

  She hung suspended from a rope that had been tied to her wrists. The other end of the rope had been hung over a jagged spar of blackened timber twenty feet above the chapel floor.

  The woman was alive. When her eyes met mine she began to kick weakly, her bare feet brushing the top of the corpse altar below her.

  “Fuck,” Kowalski growled. ”She’s a Witness.”

  “A what?”

  Kowalski cursed and scanned the rafters overhead.

  “A witness,” he hissed. “She’s been placed at the top of the corpse heap in order to act as a repository, a vessel for all the torture and misery she’s seen. When her mind breaks (if it hasn’t already) whatever set this whole goddamn thing in motion will slip past the barriers and into our world, using her as a conduit.”

  Jesus,” I rasped. “That’s the shittiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  I began to pick my way across the ruined floor.

  Kowalski said, “Leave her.”

  “What?!?”

  “We don’t have time.”

  “We can’t leave her there like…”

  Kowalski moved toward me, his eyes roving around the room, lingering on the rafters overhead. “We got a squatter somewhere on the premises,” he growled. “We can’t afford the distraction. Leave her.”

  The outrage I’d nursed since meeting Kowalski began to churn in my gut. I bit back a shout, forced calmness into my voice.

  “I’m not leaving her hanging there so that thing can butcher her.”

  I was fed up with Kowalski, fed up with the suffering of innocents: I was hacked off enough to chew Death a new Asshole.

  Kowalski spoke through gritted teeth.

  “Listen, shit fer brains...”

  “No you listen,” I said. “I’ve had it with you. You’ve been nothing but demeaning and abusive since this whole thing started.”

  “Grudge...”

  “I’m taking her down,” I said. “If you don’t like it, go hunt Bigfoot yourself, Shit for brains.”

  I made my way to the altar. But even a cursory glance was enough to inform me that I wasn’t going to make it: Arrayed across the makeshift shrine was a display of butchery that would have made Vlad the Impaler look like the official spokesperson for Amnesty International.

  Whoever had murdered these people had torn them limb from limb. Severed arms, legs, heads, entrails and a variety of organ meats adorned the pile. Many of the bodies displayed obvious bite wounds.

  The bound woman’s eyes drew my focus away from the atrocities before me. She’d been gagged with some filthy strip of cloth that reduced her cries to muffled grunts. Even beneath the blood and filth that covered her face I could see her exhaustion. And her terror.

  What would Marcus do?

  But she was still alive.

  What would Kevin Doyle do?

  I knew the answer. I bit back the geyser of vomit that pummeled up my esophagus and climbed onto the corpse pile. Above me, the bound woman’s struggles grew more frantic. My foot slipped in something wet: I looked down and discovered that I’d stepped on someone’s exposed spinal column.

  Meanwhile, Kowalski was quietly suppressing a shit-fit. Finally, he broke. “Of all the stupid, unprofessional, sentimental horse hockey you’ve pulled,” he hissed. “This has to take the goddamn cake.”

  I reached the top of the corpse pile and climbed onto the broad back of a very fat, very dead white matron. I stood up, somewhat woozily, and came face to face with the bound woman.

  “Mmmmmmphhh!” she said.

  “Wait,” I replied. I removed the gag.

  “He... He’s... It’s...”

  “Calm down,” I said. “You’re safe.”

  “No no no...!”

  “We don’t have time for this,” Kowalski said.

  “Shut up,” I hissed.

  “He’s... he’s...”

  “Easy now,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “Sandra,” she said breathlessly, “Sandra Woo. But...”

  “Grudge…”

  “SHUT UP, KOWALSKI!”

  “You’re gonna blow the whole goddamn scenario!”

  Suddenly Sandra Woo’s eyes went as wide as white saucers. She pointed at the chapel floor. I looked down. Something, a dark shape, rose up behind Kowalski, its outline hunched and tremendous.

  “It’s...it’s...!”

  “Oh quiet down, lady,” Kowalski snapped. “You know, I told him. I told Marcus you didn’t have the stones to do the job right.”

  “Neville...” I said, my lips numb with horror.

  “I quit drinkin,’ cold turkey,” Kowaslski raged. “I’ve killed blood-skates, were-tigers, three different varieties mind you...”

  “Kowalski...

  “Once, I staked a Walpurgi Death Lord to the roof of a moving fucking hearse while fighting off a defensive Familiar and a fucking Half-dead man-servant, single-handed!”

  “Kowalski...”

  “But in all that time I’ve never wanted to take a fucking drink like I do right... fucking... now!”

  Behind him, the squatter grinned and raised its claws.

  I let Sandra Woo go, raised my cross-bow and screamed—

  “Kowalski, behind you!”

  —as Woo pinwheeled her arms and tumbled off the corpse shrine. Kowalski spun, too late, and saw what was standing behind him.

  The Yeren was huge, black-furred. Its eyes shone fever-bright in the shadows. Its arms hung to its knees, massive hands tipped with black talons as long as daggers.

  Kowalski froze. “Jesus Holy...”

  The rest of his oath was drowned out as the Yeren screamed, a blast of sound that shattered the remaining windows ins
ide the chapel. The force of the scream slammed Kowalski like a battering ram. He staggered backward, dropped his crossbow and fell to his knees.

  “Kowalski get down!” I screamed.

  Kowalski dove onto his face and I fired.

  The iron-headed bolt flew across the chapel and slammed into the Yeren’s shoulder. The squatter screamed and wheeled on Kowalski who was scrambling to reach his cross-bow where it lay beneath a demolished pew.

  The Yeren leapt. This time, however, Kowalski was prepared. He came up with the Colby and fired.

  The Yeren was faster. It spun away, became a blur of motion. Kowalski’s bolt shot through the empty space it had filled a moment earlier. Kowalski notched another bolt and lifted the crossbow, too late: The Yeren slapped the weapon out of his hands. The crossbow flew across the chapel.

  I was still struggling to reload another bolt into the Seward. My frantic movements upset the corpse shrine and I tumbled off the fat lady’s back. I landed ass-first on the hardwood floor behind the shrine next to Sandra Woo. She crouched there with her hands over her ears.

  “Stay here,” I said.

  “Grudge!” Kowalski cried.

  I grabbed my crossbow and dove out from behind the shrine as the sound of gunfire peppered the night with explosions. Kowalski had both automatics out, firing them simultaneously. He struck with deadly accuracy, each shot sending bright spatters of blood across the floor. The Yeren staggered, hurt by the iron bullets.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  I notched my second bolt, aimed and pulled the trigger.

  The bolt struck the Yeren high on the right side of its chest. The creature shrieked, grasped my arrow and snapped it in half. But the iron head was still buried in its flesh.

  The Yeren turned, fixed me with a glare of amber-eyed malice, and my testicles retreated into the safety of my lower G.I. tract.

  “Catch!” Kowalski screamed.

  A second later, his silver automatic sailed toward me. I caught it while managing to hold onto the crossbow.

  Kowalski swept in and rammed a long-bladed knife into the Yeren’s back. The Yeren whirled and launched a backhanded blow at Kowalski’s head. Kowalski raised his arms to absorb the brunt of the Yeren’s attack. Even so, the power of the squatter’s blow batted him away.

  I dropped the crossbow, lifted the Sig Sauer and fired. A red rose sprouted in the black center of the Yeren’s chest. The monster screamed and leapt straight up, nearly twenty feet straight up, and vanished among the rafters.