Dead Man's Song (24 page)

He was mortally afraid; and the thing that had really driven a wire right into Weinstock’s brain—and that had moved him from coffee to Scotch—was the lab report on the scrapings taken from beneath Nels Cowan’s fingernails. Apparently the officer had fought back pretty hard, and during that struggle he’d raked his fingernails across his attacker’s exposed skin. Weinstock had gotten good scrapings, more than enough for lab purposes. The report on them had come back with a handwritten note from Dr. Ito, the senior technician, paperclipped to it:

There hadn’t been any prankster. Weinstock had taken those samples himself, and had personally dropped them off at Ito’s lab. He sipped his Scotch and picked up the lab report on the skin samples, reading and rereading the line that was already burned into his eyes. “The tissue samples are in an advanced state of necrosis consistent with decomposition of 48 to 72 hours duration.” Nineteen little words that had hammered a crack in Saul Weinstock’s version of the world. It made LaMastra’s comment about how Boyd looked on the video echo like thunder in his head.

Weinstock went back to the morgue and took a fresh set of samples from under each man’s fingernails, and walked them again to Ito’s office. Ito was out, but his assistant promised to have the new set of labs back tomorrow. Until then, Saul Weinstock could do nothing, so he walked thoughtfully back to his office. He closed the door and walked to the window. It was already dark and he felt a cold itch at the base of his spine.

“You’re being childish,” he told himself, saying it out loud in hopes it sounded better. It didn’t. He looked down at the parking lot, at the long shadows cast by cars and SUVs, calculating how long it would take him to get from the lighted entrance of the hospital to his car. How long it would take him to unlock the doors, get in, reset the locks, start up, and get the hell out of the shadowy lot. “Now that’s just silly,” he breathed. His workday was over, he should be heading home to Rachel and the kids.

Instead he drew the blinds, turned on the desk lamp as well to add more light to his already bright office, and then took the Scotch bottle from his desk drawer and poured two fingers into his coffee cup. He wondered how much Scotch he’d have to drink before he felt brave enough to simply walk out of the hospital and get into his car. He hated himself for his cowardice because none of what he was thinking about the physical evidence of the case could be right. He had to be reading it wrong. Too much work, not enough sleep, and the stress of so much violence in town. Just a stress thing, that’s all.

Weinstock sipped his Scotch and in his mind the seeds of some very dreadful thoughts were beginning to take root.

(5)

Through the window they could see the stars shimmering like embers. The fingers of an old tree scratched the attic shingles. Pale clouds drifted like faint ghosts across the sky, sometimes covering everything with darkness, sometimes invisible, always riding the easterly wind. It was October 5 and midnight was newly laid to rest. Everything looked and felt the way it should in October—blustery and mysterious. With the storm shutters thrown wide and the curtains pegged back, Crow and Val could see the night sky from her bed. She lay with her head on his chest, and he had his arms around her, and around them both was a thick patchwork quilt her mother had made years ago.

“You sure everything’s locked up?” she asked, and Crow nodded.

“Did I hear you on the phone when I was downstairs?”

“Uh-huh. I called Connie.”

“Ah. How’d that go? How is she?”

“She’s still mostly out of it, but at least she’s talking now. Just a bit. Girl stuff, mostly. And about Mark.” She sighed. “Mark’s still being so mean to her.”

“I know.”

“He’s not like Dad at all. I mean…there is a good heart there, but he’s always so afraid of things. Never takes risks, never looks outside the box. Right now he could make a hero out of himself if he just stopped trying to lay blame on Connie. Or on himself. It solves nothing. It’s stupid for him to feel bad because he couldn’t stop Ruger.”

She snuggled against him. “I wonder what makes a man like Ruger tick. What makes him so…
evil
.”

Crow just shook his head, not wanting to share his thoughts.
Ubel Griswold sends his regards.
He hadn’t told Val about that yet—neither those words nor the change he had seen come over Ruger at the hospital—and wasn’t sure he ever would. Those red eyes. Those teeth. If Val hadn’t found Shank’s pistol—if they both hadn’t managed to empty two guns into Ruger—would that change have continued? Would Ruger have become the same kind of monster as Griswold? He didn’t think so—and what he had seen in the hospital argued against it—but if not the same kind of thing, then what was Ruger becoming? What would he have become if they hadn’t killed him? Crow thought he knew; there was a word for it, but he resisted any attempt by his conscious mind to acknowledge that word. He shoved it away, terrified of its implications.

“Baby,” he said gently, “I don’t know about you, but this is not a conversation I want to have before going to bed.”

She smiled, kissing him again. “Yes, doctor.”

Outside the wind was blowing the trees and the bushes and whistling through the ironwork of the weathervane.

Twice that night Crow tried to initiate lovemaking with her, and twice he failed. Both times it started well, with tenderness and slowness and care, not just for their mutual injuries, but for the hurts inside; but each time as Crow had moved to be on top of her, as he nestled down between her warm, soft thighs, for just a moment Crow’s face had been replaced in Val’s mind by the grinning face of Karl Ruger. The first time she had yelped—nearly a scream—and Crow had moved off her, confused and hurt, instantly embarrassed by his nakedness, wondering what he had done wrong, if he had moved the wrong way. It had taken a long time for her to articulate enough of what she was feeling for him to get it, and the process had to work its way through the thicket of insecurity and rejection that such a reaction had inspired in him.

The second time was over an hour later, after they had talked about it and then lapsed into quiet they began light touching, gentle kissing, and ultimately circled back to the same moment. She didn’t yelp this time; she didn’t scream—instead Val’s entire body went tight and rigid and the sweet kisses turned to sourness on her lips. Crow’s caresses changed from sensual to harsh. It was as if she could actually feel the calluses of Ruger’s brutal hands on her thighs and breasts, and Crow could see the revulsion ripple in waves across her face.

There were a number of ways Crow could have handled it. Frustration, cajoling, anger, peevishness, but Crow understood what it felt like to be invaded by darkness, to be polluted by it. The abuse he had suffered from his own father had been comprehensive. To have done anything forceful or insistent at that moment would have been the same as doing actual harm, so instead Crow settled himself gingerly down onto his back, curled his arm around her with just the barest hint of pressure. Not a trap, but an open door. He said nothing, did nothing. When she finally settled against him, stiff as wood, he kissed her hair and stroked her arm, letting stillness settle over them. For a long time Val’s muscles were as unyielding as rock, her lips compressed in a tight line against her teeth. One of the candles guttered out and Crow made no move to relight it. When she still held rigid, he said, very softly, “It’s okay. It’s too soon.”

She could not even speak past the stricture in her throat and Crow didn’t try to urge her because he knew that to try would be to force her to rasp out something harsh. Silence was good. After a while Crow leaned his head against hers, smelling perfume and shampoo and wood smoke in her hair. Long minutes later Val found his hand in the dark and closed her fingers around it with all her strength. “I’m sorry!” she whispered desperately.

“No,” he murmured, “no, sweetheart…there’s nothing for you to ever be sorry about. This is all
his
fault.” He couldn’t say Ruger’s name in that sacred space. “Let’s just lie here and listen to the wind over the corn. Hear it? It sounds like the ocean.”

He held her close, not daring to make a single move except to kiss her hair and hold her hand. It took her hours to relax, to completely settle back against him. They spoke little, and only at first; after a while it was the silence between them and the wind over the stiff corn that wrapped her fears back in their box and shoved them out of sight. In the end, somewhere well after midnight, it was she who rekindled it between them. The last candle had guttered out and he was on the soft edge of sleep when her fingers relaxed their hold on his. They drifted across to his chest and he held his breath for a moment as she pressed her hand flat as if trying to feel his heartbeat through her palm. Then he heard her release a pent-up breath, which at first he thought was another sigh of sadness and frustration, then she shifted and turned more toward him in the dark, bending to kiss him. First his chest, right over his heart, then in a slow line up his chest to his throat and over his chin to his mouth. The kiss was so soft that it was like a warm vapor on his lips.

Crow did not move. He sensed that if he moved, if he did anything to exert any control over the moment, even something as simple as acknowledging it with words or a murmur, she would flee back down into her personal darkness. All he did was to respond to her kisses, letting her set the level of intensity, to decide how much or how little they kissed. After a long time she propped herself on her good hand and swung one thigh over him; he still did not move to help her. She reached down and took him in her hands and guided his hardness into her and she was wet and hot—feverishly hot—and as she sat down on him he filled her. He heard her hiss but he made no sound. Not even when a single scalding tear dropped from her cheek and burned onto his chest.

Her thighs hurt him, brushing the bandages over his injuries, but he didn’t care, didn’t dare let it show, forced himself not to flinch, and accepted what was happening with careful joy. His heart was hammering so forcefully that he thought she must hear it. Val sat astride him, her palms flat on his hard stomach, and for a while she was motionless, though he could feel her trembling; then slowly, tentatively, she began moving her hips. He wanted to cry out, to express what he was feeling, but he forced himself to be silent, to merely accept this gift, this sharing, knowing how difficult it was for her to open herself in all these different ways. She did not come quickly, and almost didn’t come at all. Crow’s mind was in such a different frame than simple physical need that he also kept on this side of that precipice for longer than he ever had before with her. Then with a gasp and a small cry the orgasm blossomed inside her like a white starburst; it flooded him with heat and need and he came with her, and at that moment he, too, cried out.

Val collapsed down on him, weeping, kissing him with a hundred quick kisses. Crow wrapped his arms around her to hold her close, and the night and the darkness went away.

(1)

He sat cross-legged on the roof of the farmhouse, his bony knees jutting out on each side of the corner. Above him the moon was a swollen pustule on the face of the bruise-black sky, and the stars with their cleaner light seemed to shrink back from it as it hung in bloated display above the swaying corn. Below him was an attic filled with old memories and dead spiders, and below that was Val’s room where she and Crow lay asleep. For hours both of them had been dreaming, and for hours the Bone Man had sat there playing the blues, doing what he could to chase away the monsters in their minds.

(2)

In his dream Little Scarecrow fled through a distorted landscape, running as hard as nine-year-old legs could run, his heart hammering in his chest, his mind numb with fear. Behind him
it
pursued. Little Scarecrow could not see what it was; he almost never saw it until the very last moment, but he knew it was there, could hear its shambling bulk as it smashed through the weirdly twisted hedges, could hear the click and scratch of its claws on the pavement as it chased him down the length of Corn Hill. The street was impossibly long and oddly narrow, all the buildings loomed tall and crooked above him as he ran. The ground glistened with rain that smelled of diesel oil and rotten eggs; the clouds above were backlit with odd purple-red lights as if the whole town was inside a swollen body and Little Scarecrow was seeing the light of the world outside through veins, blood, and muscle tissue.

The beast followed him, its claws tearing chunks out of the street as it ran, its breath like the cough of a steam engine. Little Scarecrow wanted to turn, to see it, to know the shape and form of the monster. Maybe that would help contain it, maybe that would dwindle it down to something that could be identified and understood instead of a formless, measureless, dark malevolence. He wanted to look, but he did not dare. He tried to dodge in and out of alleyways and other people’s front yards, and sometimes he thought he’d lost the thing, that he was safe, then he would hear the gruff snarl of its voice, hear the clickety-clack of its nails, feel the trembling echoes of its vast bulk as it ran after him. He thought he could feel the heat of its stare on his back, and sometimes he staggered under the weight of its hate and hunger.

In his dreams, even though it was always the same dream, he felt confused about which way to go, which direction to take. He wasted precious seconds in indecision at every turn, and each time the beast gained on him. Finally, inevitably, he would choose the back streets that led in a circuitous route toward his own yard. He would scamper through the hedges into the half-lighted quarter-acre behind his house, race past the long rows of unkempt rosebushes, weave in and out of the scattered lawn tools that his father had left to rust, past the lawn chair where his father sat and drank beer and watched with cold, drunken eyes as his youngest son fled for his life and the only thing he would do was lift the sweating can to his lips and drink. Little Scarecrow ignored his father, making sure even in his panic to steer out of the reach of any casual swipe or kick. He tore along toward the rickety old set of swings. As always his brother, Boppin’ Billy, would be there, and as always Little Scarecrow’s heart would leap in his chest. Billy was older, tougher, smarter. Billy knew how to wrestle and he could thread a needle with a football pass, and Billy knew everything that was important to know. With the last bits of his failing strength, Little Scarecrow ran toward Billy, calling his brother’s name, confident that if anyone in the world could save him, then Billy certainly would.

Billy turned, smiling, confident. His grin was lopsided, but his eyes were sharp and as hard as baseballs. Little Scarecrow ran to him and skidded to a stop, aware that the beast was dangerously close, that it was coming closer with horrible speed.

“Billy! He’ll get me!” Little Scarecrow wailed.

Billy gave him a confident wink and opened his mouth to say something, but from his mouth spewed a torrent of dark blood that was as black as oil in the moonlight. The blood splashed Little Scarecrow’s face and chest and hands.

“NOOOOO!” he screamed as Billy’s eyes rolled high and white and he sagged backward. His head lolled on a loose neck and then the flesh tore completely and fell away from his body before Billy’s corpse fell forward in a limp sprawl.

Little Scarecrow screamed and screamed. He felt the claws of the beast as it seized the shoulder of his jacket and spun him around. Little Scarecrow stared up in terror at the face—at that horrible, impossible face! Red eyes flared at him, eyes filled with hate, with hunger, and with triumph. A long muzzle wrinkled back to reveal rows of dripping teeth like racks of knives. Little Scarecrow stared into the black depths of the mouth, he felt the heat of its breath, smelled the carrion stink as the muscles of the beast bunched, tensed—and then it lunged at him…

…And he woke up, as he always did, just as he felt the claws tear through his flesh. Even a marginally kinder universe would have let him wake up a moment sooner.

Crow sat up in bed, clamping a hand over his mouth to stifle the scream that was bubbling there behind his tongue. He turned and shot a worried, desperate glance at Val, but she was still deep in sleep, her face slack and painted blue-white by the starlight.

He closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose, deflating the scream and calming the spasms in his chest. His heart was fluttering inside him like a baseball card stuck in bicycle spokes. Then with the soothing clarity of a breeze blowing over hot skin he heard another sound. It may have been another dream, or it might have been a peculiarity of the wind as it whistled through the drains and pipes that clung to the side of the hospital walls, but as he lay there Crow thought he heard—faintly, just a whisper—the sound of a guitar played far away. Soft, sad music. Mississippi blues played by a deft hand—one that knew how make the strings weep and moan. Like the way the Bone Man played all those years ago. The sound could not be there on the wind, it was so ghostly and thin that it was probably not there, even though when Crow strained to hear it he believed he actually did. The music—sad as it was—was a comfort to him. Listening to it, Crow drifted back into sleep. This time he didn’t dream at all, which was a blessing.

(3)

It was the dream about the Change. Terry lay there, aware that he was dreaming, which made it worse, because Sarah was really there beside him just as she was in the dream. In both worlds her warm reality was pressed up against him, back and buttocks and feet all snugged in, her breathing steady and deep, her vulnerability absolute.

He could feel her heat, smell the fragrance of her shampoo and the faintest traces of fabric softener from the pillow under her head. Terry drew in those smells and found that he was becoming aware of other smells, smaller ones, subtler ones. Smells he would never have noticed before or perhaps never have been able to detect before, but that were now distinct and unique. Perfumes in their bottles on the bureau across the room. He’d never noticed those before. Dust bunnies under the bed. A whiff of cedar from the closet. The Desenex in his gym shoes. Potpourri in a bowl in the hallway. The lingering smell of the salmon they’d had for dinner. The detergent from the dishwasher downstairs. He could smell everything, and not just smell it—he knew what each smell
was
. Each one was separate, distinct; he could catalog them all.

It was the same with sounds. Party Cat’s breathing was as loud as if he’d fallen asleep in front of a microphone, but he was in the twins’ room all the way down the hall, and though Terry’s own bedroom door was closed he could hear the kids breathing as they slept. He could hear dry leaves skittering along the shingles on the roof, and he could hear when the sound changed as the leaves fell into the rain gutter and slithered along the metal. He could hear cars on Corn Hill, but he could also hear the growl of a truck way out on A-32. Somewhere way out on the breeze he could hear the sound of someone playing blues on an acoustic guitar—something sad and sweet. He could hear the blood racing through the big veins in Sarah’s sweet, soft throat. Terry could hear all of these things, just as he could hear the slow grinding mumble of his bones as they began to shift and change under his skin. His skin moved with a sound like someone stretching wet leather. Why could Sarah not hear that? It was so loud.

Then the pain started. First it was a dull ache in his bones, an almost indefinable throb of the kind his Gram used to call growing pains. An ache that seemed to hover around each bone rather than actually be a part of them, a throbbing that made him want to move, to shift, to find a new position in which to lie, but he knew that he couldn’t shift away from what was happening in his bones and cartilage. Then his skin began to hurt as it stretched over the new bone-shapes. He’d felt an ache like that once before when he’d broken his ankle while hiking and the whole joint had swelled inside his boots, and then continued to swell when he’d managed to pull the boot off, swelling until it seemed like the skin itself would have to split. Back then the skin hadn’t split—though Terry had gone through long hours where he perversely wanted to take a pin and pop the swelling to see if his ankle would explode. Now that same feeling of swelling-to-bursting was blossoming in every joint, not just his ankles but his knees and hips, his elbows and wrists, each separate joint of his fingers. It was like someone was pouring gallons of hot blood into him, pumping it under his skin.

He wanted to scream, needed to scream,
had
to scream, but he bit it back—literally bit down, plunging his teeth into his lips, aware that the skin was tearing, aware—oh God how aware—of the delicious salty blood that was filling his mouth. His teeth, those biting teeth, felt huge and so, so
wrong
. He clenched his hands—swollen and misshapen as they had become—and dug his nails into his palms until there, too, blood welled hot and sweet-smelling.

Beside him Sarah stirred in her sleep and wriggled tighter against him. He almost did it then. Right then. He almost reached for her with hands and with mouth, with hunger and with
teeth
. Almost. After a moment Sarah drifted back into her dreams, sliding deeper beneath the surface and was unaware of anything but his warmth and nearness while Terry ate his screams.

The night boiled around him and gradually, with infinite and perverse slowness, the urge retreated, leaving Terry sweating and trembling, lips and palms slick red, breath hissing in and out of his flaring nostrils. Again the awareness of every sound, every smell came flooding back and Terry’s senses filled him with an animal keenness. He lay awake, terrified of that dream, of the nightmare he had just escaped, dreading the thought of going back to sleep for fear that the dream would start again and that this time he would not be able to shake himself awake from it.

Terry was very much mistaken about that. He had not been asleep for hours. He had not been dreaming at all.

(4)

Barney caught Weinstock just as the doctor was about to open his office door. “This just came,” he said and handed over a large envelope.

Weinstock looked at the label. The second set of lab reports on Cowan and Castle. Barney was still standing there, visibly fidgeting. “Is there a problem, Barney?”

“This is more about those cops,” the nurse said quietly, glancing around to make sure no one else was in earshot. “Isn’t it?”

Weinstock gave him a long, steady look. “I thought we had an agreement about this, Barney,” he said.

“I…”

“I’m doing some follow-up work,” Weinstock said evenly. “Do you feel that you need to say something about this matter?”

Barney stiffened. “No, Dr. Weinstock.” He opened his mouth to add something, thought better of it, and clamped his jaw shut.

“Have a good evening, Barney,” Weinstock said, and he kept his gaze steady as the nurse turned walked down the hall, back rigid. When Barney turned the corner, Weinstock quickly opened his office door, hurried inside, locked it, and began tearing at the envelope. His fingers trembled and fumbled as he tore it open and pulled out the sheaf of papers from the lab. For a slow five-count he closed his eyes, not wanting to see what was written there and bracing himself for the worst. If they matched the first report he didn’t know what he would do. Weinstock had checked the staff schedule to make sure that his request for new labs would not go to Don Ito—Ito had the day off and another and more junior tech had processed the samples. That was good because until he was sure what was going on he wanted to keep the whole thing off the radar. He opened his eyes and began to read, first the reports on Cowan’s blood and tissue work, and then Castle’s; then he read through them both again.

“Almighty God…” he breathed. The shadows in his office suddenly seemed to loom up around him and never in his life had Saul Weinstock been as deeply terrified as he was at that moment.

(5)

Mike Sweeney drifted between three dreams. First it was the nightmare of the burning town and the death of everyone he knew and that melted into the dream where the Wrecker chased him and ran him down, grinding him to red paste on the black highway. The third dream—the
new
one—that was the worst by far. It always started out okay, with him feeling immensely powerful, pedaling his bike faster than the wind, swooping down the long hill to the Hollow at the base of the mountains, skidding to a stop amid the flame and the hordes of murdering monsters. He would leap off, dragging his sword out of its sheath, the blade bright with mirrored flame, launching himself into a murderous attack. It was the kill that thrilled him most, and he was good at it. Naturally, easily, gleefully good at it. His sword would flick and dance, seeding the air with scarlet droplets of blood. He would dodge and twist, too fast to catch, too strong to overwhelm, too powerful to be stopped. His enemies would fall around him, unable to stand before his fury.