Ghost Road Blues

Chapter 19



1



He lay dying in the dark.



The blood wormed its way out of him, soaking through his clothes, seeking the earth below his back, letting the hungry soil feed on him. Overhead the moon looked down at him with typical cold intensity, and stars littered the fringes of the sky. A night bird cawed plaintively somewhere in the corn; other sounds troubled the darkness: sirens, men shouting, car engines roaring as vehicles came and left.



He knew he was still too close to the house, safe only with the cover of darkness and the fact that they didn’t know in which direction he’d gone. He couldn’t linger here. Soon they would be finished with those assholes back at the house. Soon they would be after him with flashlights and maybe even with dogs.



“Fuck!” he growled softly.



He had to get up, he knew that.



But lying there was better for now.



It wasn’t the pain that kept him from rising: Karl Ruger knew everything there was to know about pain, and he’d kicked pain’s sorry ass too many times to sweat that now.



No, it was the hate. Hate had put the steel in his legs that let him stagger away from that mean little bastard he’d gone toe-​to-​toe with, bullet holes and all. Hate had driven him at least this far away from the cops and all the activity. Hate had kept him awake when the damage and the spigot-​flow of blood wanted to lull him down into a drowse that he knew would kill him.



Hate made him patient, too.



The hate wanted him to live, not die. The hate wanted him to find some way of staying awake, staying strong, staying alive long enough to get help, to force help. It was only hate that had given him the patience to stuff his torn shirt into the bullet holes, and kept him from screaming while he did so. That hadn’t stopped the flow of blood, but it had slowed it.



The hate was wise, too. It knew that if he didn’t rest, just for a while, then he would die on his feet and the bastards would win. The bastards would prove that they were stronger than he was. There was no way in hell that Karl Ruger was going to let that happen. His hate was the power that had always kept his black heart beating. It was what kept the vinegar that pumped through his veins cold and fast. It was what made his mouth smile and his tongue water whenever he saw the fear of him that was always there in other people’s eyes. The hate was Ruger’s secret self, defining him, completing him. Now it protected him, teaching him the secret of how to survive this long and nasty bitch of a night.



More than all of this, his hate was his one and only god. A dark god that nightly listened to his blasphemous prayers, offering not absolution, but permission, encouragement, enticement.



Lying there, dying, bleeding, trying to gather together the power to rise once more and move, he prayed in his own way for strength.



He prayed for the strength to live long enough to find that little bastard and kill him. Slowly, painfully. Artfully. He prayed for the strength to find that broken-​nose country bitch and teach her some big-​city manners. His own kind of manners. He prayed for the strength to hurt them all. Hurt them so bad and so deep that even if they did somehow live past his revenge, they would beg for no new tomorrows. He prayed for the strength to find Boyd, and his money, and to make Boyd sorry that his father had ever fucked his mother. To make him sorry that the thought of betraying Karl Ruger had ever wormed its way into his tiny brain. To make Boyd sorry that he hadn’t been simply killed during the drug buy back in Philly.



He prayed for the strength to be all things in all ways to them that were as dark as the utter darkness in his heart.



Above him the cloud-​free sky rumbled with improbable thunder, like an old echo of the storm come rolling round again.



Ruger, you are my left hand.



The words rang suddenly in his head, clear and strong as if someone had spoken them aloud.



Karl Ruger lay there in the cornfield, feeding the soil with his life and his hate and his black prayers.



In the vastness of the night that overhung the cornfields, something stirred. Something that heard Ruger’s secret murmurings and the rage-​filled screaming of his soul; something that had been given life by the same force that had crash-​landed Karl Ruger in Pine Deep. The thing rose from where it had crouched, dragging horror with it, and slouched through the fields toward the place where Ruger lay, a missionary of hell coming in answer to those prayers.



2



Where was Val? Hadn’t she been there a while ago? Henry thought she had, but now he couldn’t remember. Maybe it had been a dream.



Where was Mark? Mark would help him. Mark was strong, he could carry him back to the house, get an ambulance for him.



Mark…? he thought he called out, but the word echoed only in his head and he knew that he hadn’t found the power to say his son’s name out loud.



Henry Guthrie closed his eyes again, the lids pressing tears out from under the lashes.



Please, God , he prayed. Please, God …



He wanted to say the words out loud. Maybe they would have more power that way, but he was slipping away from that, or any other, ability, sliding down into a long and formless darkness. He tried to conjure images of Val and Mark and Connie, but his mind was going blank, and it broke his heart.



Please, God, he begged. Help them.



Something rustled the corn near where he lay, and Guthrie managed to open his eyes; it was like jacking up a truck. He searched the shadows with his failing vision, hoping, hoping…



But it was not Val come back to help him; it wasn’t Mark. It was a stranger. The man walked slowly toward him and stopped, standing over him. He had a face as gray as the mist that was starting to form in among the cornstalks. His cheap suit was soaked and rainwater glittered like diamonds in his kinky hair.



Guthrie tried to speak, and found he could manage, just a single word: “Who…?”



The man lowered himself slowly to the ground, sitting cross-​legged by Guthrie’s side.



“I won’t hurt you, Henry,” said the gray man.



“…who?” Guthrie croaked.



“Just an old friend. I just come to wait with you awhile.”



“…need…help…”



The Bone Man shook his head sadly. “No, Henry, no. It’s too late for that. I’m sorry.”



Guthrie closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the emptiness overwhelm him.



When he opened his eyes, he expected the man to be gone, a phantom conjured by his dying brain. The gray man sat there still.



“Val…?” Guthrie forced the word out past all weakness. He needed to know, but dreaded the answer.



“She’s alive.”



“Mark?”



“Mark, too. And Connie. All of them. Alive.”



“Thank…” Guthrie began, but it took him a long time to finish. “…God.”



The Bone Man had no response to that, but his face looked so much sadder. He pulled his guitar around and laid it across his thighs.



Guthrie tried to raise a hand, tried to touch this man. Seeing the feeble attempt, the gray man took his hand and held it. His long fingers were even colder than Guthrie’s numb and bloodless skin.



“Who…are…you…?” Guthrie asked. “Do I…do I know…you?”



A small sad smile drifted across the Bone Man’s lips. “You did. A long, long time ago,” he said in a distant voice. “You were kind to me once. You were kind to me when no one else was.”



“I…don’t remember…”



“Maybe you will. Soon. But right now, just rest, Henry.” The gray man’s face looked so sad, and a single silver tear gathered in the corner of his eyes. “It’s time to sleep now. Just let it all be. You’re done with it now. Just go to sleep, Henry. Just go to sleep.”



Guthrie’s eyes had been drifting shut and his hand sagged loosely in the Bone Man’s grip. Guthrie seemed to sigh and then he settled back against the ground, the tension of fighting for words and breath easing.



The Bone Man sat with him for a while, still holding the slack hand. Then he bent forward and kissed Henry Guthrie on the forehead. The tear that had gathered in his eye spilled and a single silvery drop splashed down on Guthrie’s face. The Bone Man touched the spot where the tear had landed and then he picked up his guitar and began to play softly.



“Good night, Henry,” he whispered as the long, cold wind of the void blew past them both and lifted the sound of the blues up to heaven.



3



Karl Ruger felt the darkness closing in, and he cursed it.



But this darkness wasn’t to be cursed; it was the answer to the curses his soul and his hate and his rage had invoked.



The darkness was not formless. It shambled out of the shadows and stood over him, looking down on him, immensely powerful against the distant moon.



Ruger gasped as he looked up at the thing, trying to calculate its outline, silhouetted against moon and stars. Arms, legs, the body of a man—but the head was all wrong. The head had nightmare proportions, and as the thing bent toward him, Ruger could see it had a long and crooked mouth, a mouth that smiled and smiled. It was the misshapen head of a jack-​o’-lantern, carved with a wicked grin and burning eyes.



Ruger looked into the eyes that he could finally see: eyes that burned like coals, eyes that knew things. The creature reached for him, clamping iron fingers around Ruger’s arms and lifting him bodily off the ground. Pain shot through him, but Ruger didn’t care, didn’t even notice. His whole mind was fixed on the face of horror that leered at him out of the darkness, the face of horror that bent close to his own until he could feel the hot breath of hell blown sourly into his own mouth, up his nose. The thing’s body seemed to writhe and ripple, the clothes bulging and stirring. As Ruger watched, a few insects crept out from between folds of the old suit, and then scuttled back inside. The hands that held him did not feel like human fingers: they were strong, but something was wrong with them. They also rippled in a way Ruger could not understand, as if what was inside was not skin and bone but was instead composed of thousands of separate parts that writhed and scuttled under the cloth. Even he—dissipated, dying, and evil as he was—shuddered at the creature’s touch.