Dead Man's Song

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.



Chapter 14



(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.