Mike had given up on his futile attempt of not thinking about everything that had happened to him. It was a stupid thought anyway. How can you not think about someone trying to kill you? Or about a deer that had done the things that big white one had done? So, instead of denial he decided to apply logic to the matter. It gave him something to think about other than the pain in his ribs or Vic’s impending fury. Mike was smart, he was very well read for his age, and he knew the rudiments of deduction, and as he labored up another of the long hills he tried to apply what he’d learned from Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, from Spenser and Elvis Cole. He remembered Holmes’s axiom that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth. The problem was that he had two inexplicable mysteries to unravel, and in neither case could he simply eliminate the impossible. The thing with the big white deer made no sense at all. He twisted that into all sorts of shapes in his mind and it just stayed as weird and impossible as it had been when it happened. A big deer had jumped out of the woods by the site of the car wreck and when Mike had tried to edge past it the deer had simply chased him off. There was no other way to look at that. The deer had frickin’ growled at him. Then it had run him off. Make something of that, Sherlock, he thought. Mike lived in Pine Deep. He’d seen a zillion deer, from little fawns to big bucks, seen them by ones and twos and seen them by the dozen, but never had he seen a pure white one, and never had he heard of one chasing anyone. It was always the other way around. Sure, he’d heard stories of a buck or doe chasing off a dog that was sniffing after a fawn…but this was completely different. This was a buck chasing a person off. From the scene of a car wreck. What the hell did that mean? His inner Sherlock Holmes was at a loss for words.
Then there was the tow-truck. That didn’t seem to make much sense either. After all, the driver of the tow-truck had tried to run him over, had swerved and gone out of his way to do so. Try as he might, Mike just could not see it any other way, but that was ridiculous. Why would someone do that? Not even Vic had ever tried to kill him and Vic really hated him.
Suddenly an icy hand closed around Mike’s heart and he stopped pedaling for a moment. He leaned over onto one foot, motionless by the side of the road, and stared into the darkness as he reviewed what he’d just thought. Vic really hated him. That was true enough. But how much did he hate him? Vic was a mechanic and he worked for Shanahan’s Auto. Shanahan probably owned a tow-truck. Mike swallowed a lump the size of a fist and turned back the way he’d come, looking at the stretch of road until it vanished into shadows behind him.
Had that been Vic in the tow-truck?
The late September wind blew cold across his face, chilling his sweat to ice. Eliminate the impossible and whatever remains must be the truth.
Could that have been Vic?
“Jesus Christ…” he said, and the wind snatched at his words, pulling them from his mouth like an Inquisitor pulling teeth. Terror welled up in him, and he wasn’t sure what scared him more: the thought that Vic might want him dead, or the fact that the concept didn’t really shock him. He turned to face the road ahead. Home lay at the end of that road. Home and a belting. Still, if Vic was the driver of that tow-truck, would that beating turn into something more? His stomach turned to greasy slush.
Mike licked his lips and got back on his bike, started to pedal slowly up the hill. His heart was hammering now and the sweat on his face turned to ice. The bike wobbled as the first wave of the shakes shuddered through him. Around him the comforting darkness — his longtime friend — seemed suddenly full of invisible threat. He looked at the rustling waves of corn that flanked the road for as far as the eye could see and had the sudden and irrational fear that they were watching him. The stalks swayed hypnotically in the breath of the storm, and when the lightning flashed overhead its white fire danced on the razor-edged leaves of each swaying stalk. He was surrounded by an army of shadowy creatures armed with knives and panic welled up in him. His legs pumped faster on the pedals and the War Machine gained speed up the hill.
He was nearing Shandy’s Curve, one of many hairpin turns on A-32, and he slowed because there was no light to see the road and he didn’t want to go sailing off the side down onto the rocks. Shandy’s Curve was the one place Mike hated to pass, especially when there was traffic, because the thick brush on either side of the curve hid the glow of oncoming headlights until way too late. If the local legends about ghosts haunting the site of fatal car crashes were true, then the area around the curve was populated by enough specters to fill a graveyard. Mike’s own father had died there, though Mike did not know that. John Sweeney had been coming home late from his second job and drowsed at the wheel at just the wrong place. He and his battered old Malibu had gone sailing off the edge and had fallen forty feet down into the gully between the Maplewhites’ cornfield and the lower thirty of the Andersens’ garlic farm. All Mike knew of his father was that he had died in a car crash.
Yet, even without that unsavory bit of knowledge, Mike still feared the curve, and with his terror already swollen with thoughts of Vic, the hairpin turn looked like the path to hell. He slowed even more, pedaling at little better than walking speed as he entered the far side of the curve, seeing only shadows, hearing nothing but the constant growl of thunder overhead. He thought he heard something behind him and flicked a glance over his shoulder, but the road vanished into total blackness behind him. He swung his head around as he reached the beginning of the sharpest point of the curve and suddenly intense bright whiteness stabbed his eyes and the world was filled with the roar of a big engine as something hurtled around the curve at him.
The tow-truck! Mike thought and froze…this time there was nowhere to dodge. Harsh light stabbed his eyes as gleaming metal came ripping around the curve right toward him.
(5)
Ruger wasn’t gone twenty minutes before Boyd began to shiver. He thought it was just the coolness of the breeze, but when he wiped his fingers absently across his forehead they came away glistening with sweat.
“Oh, shit,” he said.
As if on cue, a fresh wave of chills raced right through him, entering through his spine and seeming to wriggle up his neck and out his ears. Gooseflesh pebbled his arms. He didn’t know much about shock except that everybody always tried to loosen tight clothing and throw blankets on someone who was in shock. Was that what was happening to him? He didn’t know, but the thought scared the hell out of him. The only other thing he knew about shock was that it was dangerous. He didn’t know if it could kill, but it was supposed to be really bad for you. He loosened his belt and huddled deeper into his suit coat, which failed utterly to warm him. Boyd sat there, shivering and gradually becoming aware of the immensity of the terror that had built up inside him. He was alone out here…alone and abandoned. Ruger had left him for dead.
“Fucking bastard!” he yelled out loud. Then something caught his eye and he closed his mouth. Beside him were the knapsacks of coke and cash and he bit down on that fact. Karl couldn’t have just abandoned him. Not without the junk and the take. Karl wouldn’t double-cross him and leave him alive as a witness. Not Karl. Not Cape May Karl, who absolutely had to skip the country or wind up twenty kinds of dead. That thought made Boyd shiver even worse. Karl didn’t know that he knew about Cape May, but Boyd kept his ear pretty close to the ground and he was nearly certain that the rumors were true. He’d always known Karl was a sick bastard, but what had happened in Cape May was right out of a horror movie. If Boyd could have gotten to a phone before Karl had bundled him and the others into the car and headed off to the cluster fuck at the warehouse, Boyd would have made just one call and right now Karl would be screaming as Little Nicky cut pieces off him.
There hadn’t been time to make that call, and Karl absolutely had to get out of the country, and only Boyd could swing that for him. No, he thought, he’s not going to cap me.
That fact calmed him a little, but he was still afraid. Afraid of being abandoned. Afr
aid of what was happening in his own body. The gunshot wound to his left arm wasn’t bad, but it was probably a long way to being infected by now. Might have some bits of cloth from his sleeve in the wound. He wondered how long it took for a wounded arm to develop gangrene. It made Boyd physically sick to think about it and he nearly puked in his own lap.
He shivered again, the shudder actually making his body spasm. He felt as if his hair was standing on end, rustling and waving like the stalks of corn that stood tall and black around him.
Flutter.
The sound made Boyd jump, and he craned his head around so violently that it jolted his arm and his leg. The pain that welled up in that one instant didn’t give a fuck for the painkilling effects of cocaine; it kicked and clawed at him until he cried aloud. Blinking back tears, Boyd looked up, fully expecting to see Ruger standing there, grinning, and holding his gun out at arm’s length.
It took a lot for him to even look.
A ratty-looking crow stood on the fence, inches from his head. It was silhouetted against the corn, just a paleness glinting on its feathers to define its shape. It cawed very softly at him, cocking its head to one side as it stared at him. Boyd looked at the bird for a long time, and then laughed a little. It was a hollow, impotent little laugh, but it was better than the scream that had wanted to come out.
“Fucking bird,” Boyd said. The crow cawed again, just as softly as before. “Nevermore,” Boyd said mockingly, “never-fucking-more.”
The black eyes of the bird just watched him with the infinite patience of its kind.
Boyd felt warmth on his leg and he peered down. Fat droplets of blood hung pendulously from the slats of the splint, and as he watched, one broke loose and splashed onto the dirt.
“Oh, that’s just fucking great!” Boyd snarled. He probed the rough bandages Karl had wound around the shattered leg, and his fingers came away black with wetness. Boyd glared at his bloody fingers for a long time, seething one moment, shivering with fear and fever the next. He half turned and swung his good right arm at the crow. “See what you made me do, you worthless piece of shit!”
The crow shuffled sideways just a few inches and the blow missed cleanly. It fluttered its wings noiselessly and again uttered that strange muted cry.
Boyd leaned over as far as his leg would allow him and beat at the bird, but his fiercely scrabbling fingers were inches short of the mark. The bird watched him dispassionately. It was the ugliest bird Boyd had even seen: dirty and disheveled, with greasy wings that shone with oily scum. Boyd grabbed the rail and hoisted himself up, shifting his buttocks to his right just a couple of inches and then beat once more at the bird. The crow took another delicate sideways step, but this time, as Boyd’s fingers clawed at him, the bird darted its head forward and jabbed with its long, sharp beak.
“Ow! Shit!” Boyd howled, whipping his hand away and jamming his finger into his mouth. He could taste the salty blood, and when he held the finger out for inspection, he was appalled to see an inch-long gouge, quite deep and ragged, running from the outside of the nail down past the knuckle. Fresh blood welled from it and ran down between his fingers, onto his palm, and down his wrist.
Boyd turned and glared with naked hatred at the bird. “You motherfucker! I’ll fucking kill you, you shit-ass bitch! I’ll fucking bite your head off and piss down your neck, you little shit bag!”
Indifferent to the threats, the bird just watched him, swaying slightly with the vagaries of the wind.
A fresh wave of chills swept over Boyd, as if the wind itself had blown its cold breath on him. He shivered so violently that he could hear his teeth actually chatter. Forgetting the bird for the moment, Boyd tried to huddle into himself to keep warm. He yanked his left arm up and stuffed the dead hand into the opening of his jacket and then wrapped himself as best he could with his right. Blood continued to drip slowly and thickly from his torn shin, pooling briefly beneath his leg and then fading as the hungry soil sucked it down into darkness. More blood dripped from his torn finger, dotting his jacket with a decoration of gleaming black red and littering the ground with the salty seeds of his life.
The crow watched him for long minutes, but then slowly raised its head as the clouds overhead were clawed open and the accusing eye of the moon glared down at Boyd and the crow and the endless ranks of silent corn. Boyd became gradually aware of the change in light, and for a while he thought that he was becoming delirious. He remembered hearing someone once say that things got brighter when you were really losing it. Before he could work up a good terror over that thought, he saw the shadow stretched out before him on the ground.
The world once more froze into a microsecond of total terror. Boyd could see his own slumped shadow, etched in the dirt by the fresh moonlight — but above his shadow and spreading out beyond him was a second shape. A man, huge, looming, arms outstretched to seize him.
Boyd screamed and fell over, spinning as he did so to see who was lunging at him, his one arm raised in defense, his good leg curling for a kick.
Of course it was only the scarecrow.
It hung there, arms supported by the crossbar of the post, faded old work clothes fluttering and snapping in the freshening breeze, jack-o’-lantern head smiling emptily as it stared out over the field. The crow cawed ironically at him.
Boyd sprawled there in the dirt, bleeding, shivering, crippled. Laughing.
He felt it rising within his chest, and before he knew it, before he could stop it, the laughter bubbled up out of him. It erupted from his gut and spilled out like vomit, choking him, twisting his gut, and spasming his chest. It boiled quickly to the level of simple hysteria and flew upward from there. He laughed until tears welled from his eyes and snot bubbled in his nostrils and blood splattered the ground as he beat it with his fist. He shook and shivered and rocked from side to side as the blood erupted from his leg and soaked the greedy dirt.
He couldn’t stop laughing. He would look at the scarecrow and laugh; he would look at the crow and laugh. He wood look at the wide, flat disk of the moon and his lunatic laugh would soar up into the ether. Every once in a while the laughter would be punctuated with a snort, or more often, a sob.
He was laughing even when the scarecrow turned its lumpy head and grinned darkly at him.
Chapter 8
(1)
Crow was singing at the top of his lungs as he took the curve on two wheels, feeling Missy lift and tilt and hold in perfect balance, ball joints be damned. The Impala swept gracefully around the curve like a racing sloop rounding a point. Crow was alive with the feel of power and control as he let the steering wheel drift slowly, delicately through his fingers, paying her off into the end of the curve, getting ready for the drop down to all fours.
Which is when the kid on the bike appeared out of nowhere.
“Holy shit!”
The kid was just suddenly there, frozen like a startled deer in the splash of Missy’s headlights, and within the split part of a second he seemed to grow from half-sized to a dimension that filled the entire windshield. Screaming out a string of curses, Crow gave the pedal a hard stomp, steered small and fast so that the car heeled to the right just as he reached the boy, and then steered even smaller as he swerved to the left as he passed. The upraised tires swept along about a yard from the kid’s handlebars and then lunged down at the ground. Missy landed heavily and sped on for a hundred feet, and Crow was pumping the brakes even before the chassis had stopped bouncing.
Missy skidded to a halt on the verge as dust swept up around her flanks. Crow threw her into park, killed the engine, and leaped out and sprinted toward the kid.
The boy had barely moved, only turning to watch the car soar by.
“Jesus Christ, kid!” Crow yelled as he sprinted up. “That was the stupidest goddamn thing,” he bellowed, “that I’ve ever done!”
The kid blinked at him, half ready to stand up for himself when the words registered. He said, “Huh?”
“Christ, I’m so
rry, kid,” Crow gasped. “Are you all right? Jesus, that was stupid! Damn, I’m sorry! What the hell was I thinking?”
“You…uh, what?” was all the kid could manage to get out.
Crow gripped the kid’s upper arms and peered at him. Both of them were shadows in the darkness, featureless in the blackness. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, kid, tell me you’re all right.”
“Uh, yeah,” the kid said. “Sure.”
“Oh, thank God!” Relief flooded up through Crow, nearly matching the towering level of his complete embarrassment and shame. He gave the kid a kind of reassuring shake and froze as the kid winced in real and obvious pain.
“Jeez…what’s wrong? Did I hurt you? Did the car—”
“No,” the kid hissed, gritting his teeth. “It wasn’t you. It was the tow-truck.”
Crow just looked at the boy’s shadow-shrouded face, trying to understand why the kid’s statement didn’t make any sense. Crow blinked a couple of times. “The, um…tow-truck?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Ah…and which tow-truck might that be, son?” Crow said, looking around briefly, assuring himself that no tow-truck loomed nearby.
“The one that tried to kill me,” said the boy.
“Oh,” Crow said with a vague smile, “that one. I see.” Kid’s in shock, he thought. Poor bugger.
They looked at each other’s silhouette for a moment, the conversation stalled by the complete lack of understanding on both parts. Above them, the moon peered out from behind a fence of clouds, bathing the kid’s face in a clear, revealing brightness.
“Mike!” Crow said with real astonishment.
“Crow…?”
“Well…shit!” Crow said, half smiling.
“Yeah,” agreed Iron Mike Sweeney.
Ghost Road Blues pd-1 Page 16
