“I can’t believe I’m hearing this from you.”

“Why not? I’m just an ordinary guy, you know, not Captain Amazing.”

“Even so…You took on Karl Ruger. You have all those black belts.”

“Doesn’t mean jack. Karl Ruger was just a man. This is…him, you dig? This is my nightmare for thirty years. This is the reason I started drinking, the reason I sometimes want a drink so bad I get the shivers and shakes and want to scream. This is the reason sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night so terrified that I want to eat my gun just to stop from seeing his face every time I close my eyes. You don’t understand, and I hope to God that you never do, but what’s out there, the thing that used to live out there, was a monster. Don’t you get that? It was a monster! Not a man, not even an animal, but something unnatural, something that killed my brother, man. It ripped his throat out and tore his head off and…and…” Crow stopped and turned away, breathing hard, fists clenched at his sides. He drew in a long, steadying breath and tried it again. “You’re right, I’m out here just to get some kind of Twelve Step closure. Newt, I’m out here to try and save my own sanity.”

“Crow, I—”

“Hush. Just listen, man,” Crow said and they started walking again, slowly, side by side. “I’m out here to try and exorcise some of my personal demons, and I have to admit that I brought you along as kind of a witness. Maybe I need to prove to myself that I really did this. Who knows, maybe it’ll make a good sidebar for your feature. Maybe when we get out there all we’ll find is some moldering sticks that used to be a house and nothing else. Man, that would be so nice! But I needed to come out here, out to his house, just to see where he lived, to walk the earth he walked on, to touch things that he might have touched.”

“But…why?”

Crow drew in a deep breath and held it and Newton could see that he was steeling himself for something. What he finally said was, “Because I think Ubel Griswold might still be here.”

“What?”

“Yeah. How crazy does that sound? Now, you want to hear the really crazy shit?”

“I’m thinking no.”

“Want to know what Karl Ruger said just before he died?”

“Not anymore. I think I’d rather climb back up that hill and find that bar you were talking about.”

Crow stepped close and Newton could smell his sweat. “Right before he died…with his last breath, Ruger pulled me close and whispered ‘Ubel Griswold sends his regards.’” He stepped back. “What do you think of that?”

Newton was very aware of the gun at Crow’s hip and the machete in its sheath. He was aware of the stories he heard about how tough and dangerous Crow was. He was aware of his own heart hammering away in his chest. He was wondering what his chances were if he just turned and ran. The black forest around him was immense.

Chapter 23

(1)

“Hand me that trowel, honey?” Connie asked, holding out a gloved hand. She was kneeling on a rubber garden pad, her rump in the air, with her blond hair pushed up under a straw hat and a decorative smudge of potting soil on her cheek. Val handed her the trowel and watched as Connie set to work digging holes for some gardenias she’d had delivered from a greenhouse in Warrington. It was the first time since coming home that Connie had shown any real interest in doing something creative, and Val was taking it as a good sign. Last night Crow had arranged for Mark and Connie to go out for dinner and a show, and when they had gotten home there was just the faintest hint of something akin to romance between the two of them. Val thought that was even more hopeful. Maybe that was what it was going to take—real-world, ordinary stuff.

However, Connie wasn’t entirely rational. Val had patiently explained that this was the middle of October and that there was likely to be a frost soon and besides it was way too late in the year to be planting flowers, but Connie had patted her hand—actually patted her hand—and told her that whereas Val may known how to grow crops she didn’t really understand pretty stuff like flowers. Val had wisely shut up. It was better to sacrifice the gardenias than the moment. So far they had planted four trays of gardenias and three of marigolds. Val was amazed they had even found them this time of year, greenhouse or no. Connie was surrounding the front porch with colorful flowers and she was going about it with the single-minded relentlessness of a fanatic.

Diego had come up while they were still in the marigold phase and had even opened his mouth to say something, but Val had waved him off. Not wanting to call his boss crazy, Diego had just touched the brim of his hat, smiled, and melted back into the fields. The last of the late-season corn was being harvested and whole sections of the Guthrie farm were now bare.

“Is Mark going to be home for dinner tonight?” Val asked, trying to make it sound casual, but she could see the trowel falter for a moment.

“I think so,” Connie said with only the slightest hesitation and her trowel chopped into the dirt with a bit more force. “He has a Moose luncheon thingee and then he’ll be home.”

“Okay,” Val said. “Shall I cook?”

Connie laughed at that as if Val had just made a great joke, and Val had to grudgingly give her that point. Though she could rebuild the magneto on her 1973 FLH 1200 Electraglide Custom motorcycle or do a tranny job on John Deere 8030, she was no wizard in the kitchen. All thumbs and no sense of what went where. There were family stories about some of her classic dinners, including a brisket that everyone thought was tofu and pizza with cold tomato sauce and a runny crust. Val sighed.

When her cell phone rang she was delighted. It wouldn’t have mattered if it had been a telemarketer.

“Val? It’s Terry—is Crow there?”

“No, he’s out for the day,” she said as she stood up and dusted off the knees of her jeans and strolled out onto the front lawn.

“Val—he didn’t really go out there, did he?”

She turned and looked back at the house, saw that Connie, still on hands and knees, was staring off in the direction of the stand of trees near the barn. Val glanced that way, saw nothing, and didn’t think much about it. She often found Connie standing still, staring out a window or whatever. God only knew what she was seeing. What had Saul called it? Dissociative behavior?

“Val?”

“Yes,” she said at last. “They left a couple of hours ago.”

“Damn it!” Terry snapped, and abruptly hung up. Shocked, Val stared at the phone for several seconds before finally folding down the lid and putting it back into her pocket. “Asshole,” she murmured, and then remembered her promise to Sarah that she would bury the hatchet, but the memory of his rudeness stung her again and she repeated her comment. Frowning, she strolled back to the porch. Connie was standing now, her face still turned toward the barn.

“What’s up, Con? Is that fox back?”

At the sound of her voice Connie jumped, turned, and for a moment looked at Val as if she didn’t know who she was. Then she blinked and smiled self-consciously.

“My…I was a million miles away.” She glanced again at the barn. “I just saw the strangest thing….”

Val stiffened. “What?”

“You’ll think I’m crazy, but…I just saw a snow-white deer. A buck. You know, with all the horns? White as snow.”

Val took a few steps toward the barn, but there was nothing to see and the trees were too thin to hide a full-grown deer. She looked back at Connie.

“Isn’t that just strange?” Connie asked with an enigmatic smile.

“Yeah,” Val agreed. “Strange.”

(2)

It looked like a nest, with the bodies of the creatures tangled and clustered together with no thought of comfort. There were fourteen of them now, all pale and bloated, gorged and somnolent, huddled in the darkness of the basement, secure in the shadows. An onlooker would have thought they were all dead, a mass of murder victims whose bodies had been carelessly disposed of out of sight in that forgotten, half-collapsed house, but every once in a while one of the bloated bodies would turn or shift, the movement inspired by some red dream.

Last night there had only been nine of them, but the number had grown, as it would continue to grow; just as it grew for each of the nests scattered throughout the town. Last week there had been two, but now Adrian and Darien lay sprawled there in the secret, silent darkness, wrapped in each other’s arms, clutched together against the sleeping back of Dave Golub.

The bodies all slept on throughout the burning day. Once, just before noon, a bold and foolish rat scuttled into the basement, following the scent of spoiled meat and fresh blood. It minced down through the spiderwebs and shadows, driven by the nearness of food, hungry beyond caution. In its daring and hunger it came close to Adrian’s outflung hand. The fingers looked fat and pale and full of meat, and the sleeper looked oblivious. The rat considered for a moment and almost fled out of natural fear, but the demands of its belly overrode the logic of its instinct. It darted in toward the little finger, its yellow teeth bared for the bite…but the white hand flashed so fast the rat was a broken-necked corpse before it was even aware that it was in threat. It twitched once, twice, and then lay eternally still in the killing grip of the boy. Adrian’s eyelids never twitched, never opened, but he pulled the corpse close to his chest the way he once would have held a stuffed bear. Beyond the speed of his hand he made no other move. As the hours of the day wore on, he lay there with the dead rat clutched in his hand and a smile of hungry joy on his innocent face.

(3)

“Crow…you’re scaring the crap out of me, here. Why the hell didn’t you tell me this stuff before?”

“Would you have come down here if I had?”

“Hell, no! And I want to turn around and go back right now.”

“Why, do you think I lured you down here for some nefarious purpose?” Crow was smiling when he said it, then his smile faded. “Jesus Christ—you do think I lured you—”