High above, a crow cried out with a call that was so plaintive, so desperately sad that the smile bled away from Donny’s features. With the distortion of distance and wind, it sounded like the scream of a baby. Or the banshee wail of a woman kneeling over the body of a dead child.
Donny had seen that image, heard that sound too many times. In Iraq, in Afghanistan.
He touched his shirt over the scars, remembering pain. Remembering all the dying that went on over there.
But it went on here, too.
While he was gone, his town died, too.
Except for the one car that crossed the bridge, there hadn’t been a single vehicle on the road. A tractor in a field hardly counted. And only two old sonsabitches at the Guthrie place. All of the other fields and the whole length of Route A32 were empty. It was Halloween. The road should have been packed with cars. Jeez...had the Trouble totally killed the town’s tourism economy? That would seriously blow. Just about every family in town had their income either tied to farming stuff like Indian corn and pumpkins or to attractions like the Haunted Hayride, the Haunted House, the Dead-end Drive-in, and other seasonal things. Had the Halloween Festival been revived? Could he have been wrong about the town starting to come back from the Trouble?
It was weird.
Donny felt suddenly scared. Where was everyone else?
Had the town died for real?
Had he come home—come all these miles—to a ghost town?
High above the far row of mountains he saw a white cloud float between him and the sun. Its vast purple shadow covered most of the horizon line and as it sailed across the sky toward him, it dragged its dark shadow below, sweeping the land, brushing away details with a broom of darkness.
The belly of the cloud thickened, turned bruised and was suddenly veined with red lightning.
A storm was coming.
He hadn’t noticed it building, but at the rate it was growing it was going to catch him out here on the road.
He suddenly wondered if that’s what the old guy on the ladder was trying to say.
Gonna be dark soon.
He looked over his shoulder at the road he’d walked. It was a black ribbon fading out of sight as the shadows covered it. Up ahead was eight miles of hills between him and a bar or a Motel 6. He chewed his lip as he debated his options. The breeze was stiffening and it was wet. It was going to rain hard and cold. And soon.
Maybe he could go back and ask one of the guys at the Guthrie place for a ride into town. Or a dry spot on a porch to wait it all out.
He could have done that.
Didn’t.
Instead he let his gaze drift over to the thick wall of oaks and pines beyond the closest field. He could haul ass over there and stay dry under the thick canopy of leaves. Yeah, sure, you weren’t supposed to stand under trees in a lightning storm, but you weren’t supposed to stand out in a cold rain and catch pneumonia either.
Thunder snarled at him to make up his mind. The first big raindrops splatted on the blacktop.
He cut and ran for the trees.
-4-
As he ran he thought he saw the car again. The Jeep Grand Cherokee that looked like Jim’s. It bumped along the rutted length of Dark Hollow Road, a dozen yards to his right, beyond the shrubs and wind-bent pines.
The car was heading the same way he was. Going away from the main road, following an unpaved lane that only went to one spot. The Passion Pit that had long ago been carved out of the woods by generations of hot-blooded teenagers so they could try and solve the mysteries that burned under their skin. Donny had lost his cherry there. So did most of the guys and girls he grew up with. Getting popped at the Pit was a thing, one of those rite of passage things. It was cool. It was part of being from this town. It was what people did.
That car, though, why was it heading here right now? Wrong time of day for anything but a quickie. Wrong weather for anything at all. No tree cover over the Pit. Rain would sound like forty monkeys with hammers on the roof of an SUV like that.
The car kept on the road, going slow like it was keeping pace with him.
Eventually it would reach the Passion Pit, and so would he.
How would that play out?
If it was a couple looking for privacy, they weren’t going to be happy to see him. But, Donny thought, if it was someone who took a wrong turn in a heavy rain, then maybe he could leverage a ride in exchange for directions.
Worth a shot.
But the car pulled out ahead of him, bouncing and flouncing over the ruts, splashing mud high enough to paint its own windows brown. Donny watched it go.
“Nowhere to go, brother,” he told the unseen driver.
Donny angled toward the road, thinking that if the car was going to turn around at the Pit then he wanted to be where he’d be seen.
He jogged through the woods, staying under the thickest part of the leafy canopy, sometimes having to feel his way through rain-black shadows.
When he got to the edge of the clearing he jerked to a stop.
The car was there.
Except that it wasn’t.
It was the wrong car.
Same make, same model. Same color. The muddy tire tracks curved off the road and ended right there. Those ruts were only just now filling with rainwater.
But it had to be the wrong car.
Had to be.
“What the fuck...?” Donny said aloud.
The car sat there at the edge of the Pit.
Maybe not “sat.” Hunched. Lay. Something like that. Donny stared at it with a face as slack as if he’d been slapped silly.
The car was old. Rusted.
Dead.
The tires were nothing but rags, the rims flecked with red rust. There were dents and deep gouges in the faded paintwork. Spider-web cracks clouded the windshield. The side windows were busted out; leaving only jagged teeth in black mouths. Creeper vines snaked along the length of the SUV and coiled around the bars of the roof rack.
The car was dead.
Dead.
Cold and rusted and motherfucking dead.
He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to think about something like this. His mind kept lunging at shreds of plausibility and reason, but they were too thin and slippery to grab. This made no sense.
No goddamn sense.
He stood just inside the wall of the forest. It was thinner here and rain popped down on him. Hitting his shoulders and chest and forehead like a big wet finger jabbing him every time he tried to concoct an explanation for it.
He turned and looked at the curving tire tracks. No chance at all that they belonged to any other car than this. He looked at the car. No way it had driven past him. He looked at the road. There was nowhere else to go. The Pit was the only destination on that road. The Pit was the only place wide enough to turn around and go back, and besides, Donny had been close enough to the road to have definitely seen something go past him.
It made no sense.
No sense.
No sense.
Donny didn’t realize that he was crying until the tears curled past his lips and he tasted salt.
“Oh, man,” he said as he sagged down into a squat, buttocks on heels, palms over his face, shoulders twitching with tears that wanted to break like a tide from his chest. His voice sounded thin, like it was made out of cracked glass. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.”
“Yeah,” said a voice behind him. “It’s all total shit.”
Donny almost jumped out of his skin. He whirled, rose to his feet, fists balled, heart hammering, ready to yell or fight or run.
Instead he froze right there, half up, bent over, mouth open, heart nearly jerking to a halt in his chest.
A figure stood fifteen feet away. He’d managed to come this close without making a sound. Tall, thin, dressed in a Pine Deep Scarecrows football shirt. The shirt was torn, with ragged cloth drooping down to expose pale skin beneath; the material darkened as if by oil or chocolate, or...
/>
Donny felt his own mouth fall open.
The world seemed to fall over sideways.
The figure had a big shit-eating grin on his face.
“Hey, Donny,” said Jim.
-5-
“What the fuck?”
It was all Donny said, and he said it five or six times.
Jim laughed.
“No,” growled Donny, “I mean what the fuck?”
“Guess you’re the fuck,” said Jim. “Christ on a stick, you should see the look on your face.”
“You can’t,” began Donny. “I mean...you just can’t. You can’t...”
“Yeah,” agreed Jim. “But I guess I can.”
“No.”
“So can you.”
“Can what, man?” screamed Donny. “This is crazy. This is totally fucked.”
Jim spread his hands in a “what can I say” gesture.
Donny pointed an accusing finger at him. “You died, you stupid shit. You died!”
A shadow seemed to pass over Jim’s face and his smile faded a bit. Not completely, but enough.
Enough to let Donny know that Jim didn’t really find this funny.
Somehow, in a way Donny couldn’t quite identify, that realization was worse.
Tears burned on Donny’s face. It felt like acid on his skin.
Jim stepped closer, and with each step his smile faded a little more. He stopped a few feet away, the smile gone now. Donny saw that Jim’s face was streaked with mud. His skin gleamed as white as milk through the grime.
“You died,” Donny said again, his voice less strident but no less hurt.
“Yeah,” said Jim, “I did. Kind of blew, too.”
Donny said, “What...?”
“The whole death thing? Blows elephant dick.”
“What are you...?”
“For one thing, it hurt like a bitch.” Tommy touched his throat. “Nothing ever hurt that much before. Not even when I busted my leg when I fell off the ropes in gym class and the bone was sticking out. Jeez, remember that? You almost hurled chunks.”
Donny said nothing. He wasn’t sure he could.
“They had to carry me out of school. I was crying and shit ’cause it hurt so bad.”
“That was when we were kids,” said Donny weakly. “Fourth grade.”
“Yeah,” agreed Donny. “Long time ago. Lot of ships have sailed since then, huh?”
Donny just looked at him.
“But the day I died? Man...that was something else. The pain was red hot. I mean red fucking hot. And all the time it was happening I kept trying to scream.” His voice was thin, almost hollow, and Jim’s eyes drifted away to look at something only he could see. Memories flashing on the inside walls of his mind. It was something Donny understood, even if he could understand nothing else that was happening.
“Help me out here, Jim,” said Donny slowly. “You remember...dying?”
“Sure.”
“How?”
Jim gave him a half-smile. “I was there, dude. I was paying attention to that shit.”
“No, assface, how do you remember dying? How can you remember dying? I mean, how’s that even possible?”
Jim shrugged. “I just remember. The pain in my throat. How hard it was to try and breathe. The air in my lungs feeling like it was catching fire. Shit, there’s no part of that I’ll ever forget.” He glanced at Donny and then away again. More furtive this time. “I remember how scared I was. I pissed my pants. Imagine that, man. Me dying and pissing my pants and even with all that pain I think I felt worse ’cause I gave myself a golden shower. Isn’t that fucked up? I mean, how pathetic is that? I’m dying, some motherhumper is tearing my throat out with his teeth, and I’m worried about what people will think when they find out I juiced my shorts.”
Donny looked at Jim. At his neck.
“That’s not how you died,” he said.
“What?” asked Jim.
“That’s not how you died. That’s not what happened.”
“Yeah,” said Jim, “it is.”
“The hell it is. I read about it in the papers, saw it on the Net. Heard about it from people in town who lived through that shit, the Trouble. Some drugged-out farmer stabbed you in the chest.”
Donny jabbed Jim in the chest with a finger, right over the place where his friend’s shirt was torn. He jabbed hard. Twice.
“Right there, man. They said you got stabbed with a big piece of wood right there.”
Jim stepped back out of poking distance. There was a look on his face that Donny couldn’t quite read. Annoyance? Anger? And what else? Shame?
“Oh,” said Jim. “Yeah, well, there was that.”
“That’s how you—”
“No,” Donny said, cutting him off. “It’s not how I died.”
“But...”
“When that happened,” continued Donny, “I was already dead.”
-6-
Donny said, “What?”
Jim touched the spot on his chest where he’d been poked. He tried to push the torn material back into place to cover it, but the shirt was too ragged.
“Um,” he said, and strung that word out for as long as he could.
“What the hell are you trying to say?” demanded Donny. “You got to start making sense out of this shit.”
“Sense? Damn, man, you don’t ask for much.” Jim shook his head. “I was killed, man, but not by that ass pirate with the stake.”
“’Stake,’” said Donny, tasting the word and not liking it one bit.
“It’s all part of the way they look at us. They think that stakes and all that shit really works.”
“W-what?”
“Stakes. It’s just bullshit man.”
“What are you talking about? C’mon man, don’t do this to me,” pleaded Donny.
“Dude,” said Jim sadly, “it’s already done. I died when I got bit. I was already dead when I got staked.”
“Already dead...?”
Jim nodded.
Donny stared at him, his mouth forming words, trying to shape sounds out of broken echoes of what Jim had just said.
“You got...bit?”
“Bit, yeah.”
“By...what?”
“The fuck do you think bit me? The tooth fairy?”
“But are you trying to say that you were killed by a...a...?”
“Go on, man, nut-up and say it. Put it the hell out there.”
Donny licked his lips and tried it, forced the word out of his gut, up through his lungs, and out into the world. As he struggled to say it, Jim said it with him.
“A vampire.”
“Yeah,” said Jim, “I got bit by a goddamn vampire. How totally fucked up is that?”
They stood there staring at each other as the heavens wept and the trees shivered.
“Before you totally lose it,” said Jim, “just think about it. All those stories about the Trouble? All that wild shit everyone was saying about how when everyone got stoned from the drugs the militiamen put in the water they started seeing werewolves and ghosts and vampires. You read about that, right?”
Donny said nothing.
“Well, there really wasn’t any white militia...not like the papers said. There was a jackass who was a racist prick, but he was working for someone.”
“Who?” asked Donny in a ragged voice.
Jim shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. A big bad mothergrabber from Europe somewhere.”
“A vampire?”
“Oh yeah. He started killing people, turning ’em into vampires and shit. Then there was a big-ass fight and people started killing each other, killing the vampires, vampires killing civilians. It was totally fucked up.”
“And...you?”
“Oh, they got me like ten days before the shit hit the fan. I was home on leave and I was on the way over to Jessie Clover’s place. You remember her from school? Brunette with the ass? I started banging her the day I got home and I was tapping that every night. I was on my way t
o her place for some pussy when someone grabbed me and dragged me over a hedge.”
“A vampire?” asked Donny.
“Shit yeah it was a vampire, but here’s the nut-twister...the vampire was that kid, Brandon Strauss. You know him, fourteen or fifteen, something like that. Hung out with Mike Sweeney all the time.”
Donny nodded numbly.
“Kid’s half my size, but he’s got all these vampire super powers and shit,” said Jim. “I tried to beat the shit out of him, and I got some good shots in, too, but...like I said, he’s got that strength and speed. That part of the vampire legend is true. Speed, strength. Hard to hurt. Hard to kill. And...always hungry.”
Donny took an immediate step backward.
“Hey,” said Jim, “no, man...don’t be like that. You’re my road dog. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“You’re a fucking vampire, man,” said Donny.
“Yeah, well, that part sucks.”
They stood there, cold and awkward as the rain fell. Donny pointed to his friend’s chest.
“You did get stabbed though, right?”
“Yeah, and that hurt, too. Hurt like a bastard. That’s the thing...even being, um, like dead and all? We still feel pain. And that hurt. Not as much as Brandon killing me, but it was bad.”
“What happened?”
Jim’s eyes darted away again. “He was alive,” he said. “Even though he was looped on drugs from the water, he was alive. I was hurt...and I was hungry.”
“Oh, shit...”
“Yeah,” said Jim. “It kind of blows. I mean...it’s evil and all that, but for some reason I don’t really seem to give much of a shit about that. It’s nasty. It’s messy, and even though I have to kill, I really can’t stand the fucking screaming. Oh, man, you think it’s bad when you’re like at a concert and everyone’s yelling? For me, it’s like that but like ten times worse. All that heightened sense of hearing crap...it sounds good, it sounds like superhero shit, but then when you actually hear a full-throat, balls-to-the-wall death scream, you go about half deaf. Your head wants to explode and the pain drives you bat shit.”