by

Gary A. Braunbeck

In the Midnight Museum

“Each thing we see hides something else we want to see.”

—René Magritte

Okay, technically, it was not so much the nuthouse as it was the pre-nuthouse holding facility.

Its official title—which was too much of a mouthful for most people to want to deal with—was: The Cedar Hill Mental Health Association Emergency Stabilization Center. It was attached to the nuthouse (actually, it was attached to Cedar Hill Memorial Hospital, the 7^th floor of which housed the Psychiatric Unit, the accept-no-imitators official nuthouse) but served a different and more pressing function: to temporarily house and treat those individuals who were—as the admission literature phrased it— “... in a state of extreme psychological and emotional distress that has rendered them a danger to themselves and/or others.”

The staff referred to the place as simply “The Center”, but its nickname among clients (that’s what you were called here, a “client”, not a “patient”) was “Buzzland”—a moniker that even staffers would have admitted appropriate, considering how stoned most people were kept during their stay.

Some clients were transferred to the Psychiatric Unit once stabilized; some were released to the care of friends or family members; but the majority of them—most of whom had neither insurance nor much money to call their own—were simply shown the door, given a week’s worth of medications to keep them on an even keel, and sent on their way with well-wishes that never sounded as optimistic or heartfelt as the words themselves would lead you to believe.

In short: if you seriously cracked up, flipped out, or melted down, they put you in there for X-amount of days (no fewer than 2, no more than 10), snowed you with enough sedatives, tranquilizers, and anti-depressants to stop a charging rhino, then—once you were deemed stable—turned you loose; a treatment affectionately known as the Buzzland Shuffle, mental health’s equivalent of fast-food service, where everything went smoothly as long as you held fast and true to the rule of the 3Ds: Drag ‘em in, Dope ‘em up, Dump ‘em out.

Despite the system’s being far from perfect (not to mention looked down upon and criticized; after all, only the dregs of humanity wound up in Buzzland, everyone knew that), it had saved many lives over the years; and in the case of anyone who found him- or herself becoming a client, it was the only place they had to go when the darkest hour of their life got the upper hand and would have otherwise destroyed them, or those around them, or both.

It was not a place in which Martin Tyler ever expected to find himself; but, then, nothing about the past few years of his life had gone as expected, so it really didn’t come as all that much of a surprise, considering.

It happened like this:

At 9:45 p.m. three days before Hallowe’en, already partially shiny from ingesting the first batch of various prescription medications but deciding he didn’t want to finish the job at home (or, rather, the apartment where he lived; home was both a word and a concept now meaningless to him), Martin got into his car and drove downtown to the Marriott Hotel, intending to get a room, but discovered that none were available because of the Auto Show in town. (Maybe it was just his current state of mind, but it seemed the desk clerk was suspicious of his having only a brown paper grocery bag for his luggage, which made him wonder if she hadn’t maybe lied to him about there being no rooms, but he didn’t have the time or energy to argue.) He politely thanked the clerk, left, and drove toward 5^th Street, intending to get on the freeway into Heath and try the Holiday Inn, but the downtown square was swarming with cars, some of which were driving so fast Martin was shocked there were no collisions—classic cars, modified roadsters, tricked-out lowriders, antique Tuckers, Model-Ts, Edsels, Stutz Bearcats, a Speed Six Bentley like that guy on The Avengers used to drive . . . he lost track of the number and makes of cars—so he was forced to drive around the square, which is how he found himself at the stoplight on all-but-deserted West Church Street.

This particular area of downtown Cedar Hill had once been the most thriving quarter of the shopping district, but after the last two recessions, several plant closings, and the opening of the Indian Mound Mall, more and more businesses were either closing their doors permanently or relocating to higher-traffic areas; as a result, this strip of buildings on West Church had very few active businesses remaining, save for a paint store, a bakery, a pawnshop, and a Tae Kwon Do studio that had replaced DeVito’s Books a few years back after John DeVito, the owner and proprietor, had died. A brass plaque in front of the Tae Kwon Do studio commemorated the site’s former owner.

Martin found himself looking at the place he’d always think of as the bookstore, remembering the hours he’d spent alone browsing inside, always finding an interesting book or three to purchase, picturing the way Mr. DeVito would wrap the book in brown butcher’s paper and tape it closed—an old-school bookseller, was Mr. D—and for the first time in months, felt a strangely comforting pang of nostalgia; hell, his parents used to bring him here as a child to buy his school supplies. This building had been an important part of his life for . . . well, most of his life.

Digging into his grocery bag, Martin removed a matted watercolor painting that he’d bought off some old street dude for fifty dollars a few years back. It was a painting of the front of this very building, only instead of the Tae Kwon Do studio, DeVito’s Books was still there. The artist had done a really good job of capturing not only the look of the bookstore and building, but the feeling you got about the place, as well; everything was very warm, very inviting: this was a place where you could relax and enjoy yourself, have a good conversation with Mr. D, find some terrific reading, put your troubles on hold for a while. The old dude who’d painted it had done dozens of similar watercolors for other businesses all over downtown—Martin had recognized the man’s work almost at once—and had told Martin that part of how he supported himself was by painting watercolors of local homes and businesses. Martin guessed the old guy was either homeless or lived in a grubby room in the Taft Hotel; he didn’t really ask. The guy was really grateful for the fifty bucks, and Martin had a terrific painting of the bookstore.

He’d decided that this watercolor was the thing he wanted to be looking at while he fell asleep for the very last time. Good books, good conversation, good memories, good-night.

He looked from the watercolor back to the building, just to compare the two one final—

—something moved on the roof.

Looking back to make sure none of the cruising cars had decided to come this way (the square proper seemed the only place anyone wanted to be), Martin rolled down his window and leaned out, craning his head for a better look.

Whatever was on the roof was moving again, albeit slowly and with a great deal of odd noise; metallic clicks and scrapes, underscored with something like a wet fluttering sound.

The light changed to green. Martin checked behind him again—still no cars coming—then decided he didn’t give a shit if anyone drove down this way or not; he had about half an hour before the second and more serious dose of meds needed to be ingested, so why not take a few minutes for a last little adventure?

Climbing out and leaving the door open, he walked around to the front of his car, then into the middle of the street to see if it afforded him a better view. At first he thought that he’d either moved too far toward the opposite side of the street or that whatever was up there had backed away from the edge of the roof, because all he saw was the front of the building—countless broken or boarded-up windows of the empty apartments, the upper floors of the building having been closed off several years ago.

Then something moved again above one of the windows near the rusted fire escape, this time stepping directly into the semi-foggy but nonetheless bright glow of a nearby streetlight.

Wow, thought Martin. I didn’t think I was this fractured yet.

At first he thought the thing was some kind of old-fashioned box camera, the kind used back at the turn of the last century; its head was box-shaped and shone with a deep, hand-rubbed rosewood finish, and that wasn’t really so odd—

—until you saw the long, sharp beak protruding from the place in front where the lens should have been; on each side of the of the box was a hand-sized half-sphere of brass that looked like the bulging eyes of a toad; a thin iron rod like a neck connected the box-head to a wider, longer box that looked like a small child’s coffin standing on end, held upright by a pair of thick, powerful, furry legs, each ending in a wide wolf’s paw, claws extended to give it purchase and balance.

So this is what going round the bend feels like. Somehow, I’d thought there’d be more screaming and drooling involved.

A set of membranous wings unfurled from the back of the lower box, and with another series of metallic clicks and scrapes the creature began to move back and forth across the roof, bending its legs at the knees and hopping forward while its wings fluttered with a furious speed to rival that of a moth’s.

As Martin let fly with one brief, barking laugh, the creature on the roof came to an abrupt halt, its beak opening and closing as if it were trying to either speak or snap a bug out of the air. Spatters of wet, dark blood spilled from the tip of its beak. Perhaps it had been snacking on a stray mouse, bird, or rat.

It bent forward, blood spattering against the fire escape railing and splashing down onto the sidewalk, its beak rapidly opening and closing with intense determination, and as Martin watched, mesmerized, he heard a child’s voice reciting a bit of Keats, one of his favorite poets:

“Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful death,

Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever it seems rich to die,

To cease upon the midnight with no pain . . .”

He shook his head, remembering what the suicide handbook had said about things like this (though the book never once used the term “suicide”, opting instead for the more overly-poetic “self-deliverance”; it was all tomato-tomahto as far as he was concerned): “Visual and aural hallucinations are not uncommon once you have begun the process of self-deliverance. Just accept that these are merely products of your subconscious mind clearing away the detritus. Do not be afraid. Do not doubt your eyes, your ears, or your sanity. Many of these phantasms are said to be lovely, sometimes even funny. Enjoy these last gifts your mind gives to your soul before the two part ways.”

Martin almost didn’t want to look away from the creature—how the hell had his brain come up with something like this, anyway?—but he had to stick to the schedule.

“Did I get it right?”

Startled, Martin spun around, but saw no one; it wasn’t until he felt a small hand tug on the bottom of his coat that he looked down and saw the little boy standing there.

“Did I get it right?” asked the boy. “The poem? You do remember that poem, right?”

“Uh . . . yeah . . . I remember that one . . . and, yes, you did get it right.” Martin stared at the child. “What’d you mean, did I remember that poem?—never mind, scratch that, moving on: Who are you?”

The child shook its head, giggling. “Dumb-bunny. You know.”

Of course he recognized the little boy—how couldn’t he? Even with the better part of four decades separating them, Martin at once knew he was looking at the six-year-old child he’d once been.

“So,” said the little boy, “you’re me, huh?”

Martin shrugged. “Not really, not so much . . . I guess I’m . . . what became of you.”

The boy tightened his lips and narrowed his eyes, considering it, then said: “Same thing. Y’know, Mom and Dad are gonna be real mad at you.”

“They’re both dead.”

“Dumb bunny—I know that. But they’re still gonna be so mad.” Then, switching gears and the subject, as six-year-old boys are wont to do, he pointed toward the roof. “Do you think it can fly?”

Martin looked up. “I don’t know.”

“I think it’d be cool to be able to fly. I wanna be an astronaut.”

“You never really got over that.” Martin looked back down. The boy was gone.

Nice seeing you again, as well.

“Hey, you!”

The boy now stood on the roof, next to the camera creature, waving both his hands; the creature was hopping up and down, its wings fluttering—which, Martin supposed, might have been its way of waving. Martin raised up a hand, bending the fingers down, then up again. “I’m gonna learn to fly someday,” shouted the boy. Martin whispered, “Sure you will.”

Time to go.

Oh, yeah . . . the first batch of pills was really starting to kick in, and if he wanted to do this right, if it was to be timed correctly so that he didn’t end up just puking his guts out or merely brain-dead, Martin knew he had to find a room and take the next batch before 10:30 rolled in and—had he remembered to bring the pudding cups? . . . the pudding cups were important. Did he remember? . . . Yes, yes he had. You had to grind the pills into powder and mix them in the pudding and then chow down. Coated your stomach so you didn’t throw up.

Ah . . . but did you bring a spoon?

Busy, busy, busy, so many details and other things to keep track of.

He opened his eyes, checked his coat pockets, found a bunch of plastic spoons he’d secured together with a rubber band, and smiled at his being so well-organized.

Looking back up to the roof, it didn’t surprise him that the creature and little boy were no longer there. Still, he was grateful for the gift, for having been allowed to see them.

Lowering his head, Martin saw that only one building had any lights on at this hour, and most of those were restricted to a few rooms on the ground floor. He would later wonder if he hadn’t subconsciously driven this way on purpose; there were, after all, at least three other routes he could have taken to get on the freeway from downtown. But then he’d have missed the Great Rooftop Detritus Dance of the Hopping Beaked Camera. Sounded like an attraction P.T. Barnum would have hawked, back in the day.

It occurred to Martin that he’d never been to a circus. Oh, well . . . .

He stared at the lighted office window, realized what it was, and began moving toward it, stopping only long enough to grab the grocery bag and watercolor from the front seat of his car. As for the car itself—fuck it. He had the keys in his pocket, zippadee-doo-dah. The bag was the important thing. And the yummy pudding. And the spoons. Mustn’t forget about the spoons.

He tried to remember the last time he’d tasted cotton candy, or eaten a funnel cake, wondered where in hell that thought had come from, then decided it didn’t matter.

Entering the small building that housed the offices of the Cedar Hill Crisis Center, he stood quietly at the front desk while the receptionist directed a phone call to one of the counselors elsewhere on the floor. When she finished transferring the call, she began turning toward the other woman sitting farther back at another computer console, but that woman shook her head and pointed toward Martin, who the receptionist hadn’t noticed.

“Yes?” said the receptionist. Not Good evening or May I help you?; just a simply, weary, wary “Yes?”

Martin considered just turning around and leaving—the receptionist seemed like she didn’t want to be bothered—but he was suddenly so tired, from the top of his head all the way down to the ground tired, he just needed to stand still for a few moments, and since he was already standing here he might as well say something, right? It seemed the polite thing.

“‘I have been half in love with . . .’” He couldn’t seem to

(You do remember that poem, right?) recall the rest of it. The receptionist scooted her chair back ever so slightly. “I beg your pardon, sir?” “I suddenly have no idea why I came in here. I’m sorry. Is this a bad time?”

Jesus! Was it hot in here? He could feel the sweat rolling down his face. He tried lifting one of his hands to wipe it away but neither of his arms would respond to his brain’s commands. Maybe his body had turned into a camera box and he didn’t have arms any more. Did that mean he had wolf’s feet and wings? Maybe he could fly if he gave it a shot. Cool beans. He could go to a circus now—hell, he could probably join a circus, get in on some of that cotton candy and funnel cake action.

He blinked, looked at the woman in front of him, and said, “Yes . . . ?”

The receptionist tilted her head slightly, looking between Martin and the other woman as she spoke. “Look, we, uh . . . we don’t really deal with walk-ins here. If . . . uh, if you want, I can give you our call-in number . . . there’s a pay-phone right across the street, or if you have a cell—”

“—I haven’t had any phone calls or messages for five days,” he replied. “Not since I started my vacation from work. I know that doesn’t constitute much of a crisis, but it got me to thinking . . .” He finally managed to get one of his arms to respond, and reached up toward the sweat on his face. “. . . got me to wondering how long I’d be missing before anyone took serious notice. This wasn’t self-pity, you understand? It was just . . . y’know, a question. One of those dumb little weird little silly little questions that crosses your mind sometimes.” It hadn’t been self-pity, that was true; it was, rather, one of those dazzlingly dreary moments of clarity wherein you realize that just maybe you’ve been skimming across the surface of life, leaving barely a ripple in your wake, because to do otherwise would mean opening yourself up to the kind of genuine human intimacy that you profess to long for but that secretly scares you to death; so one day you wake up and realize that you’ve seen a lot of good movies and read a lot of dandy books and listened to a lot of sock-o music and it all amounts to zilch because, ultimately, none of those things are real, they exist only to help with the delusion that the time you spend apart from the rest of the human race is being used wisely and well; after all, you’re reading, you’re watching, you’re listening, you’re enjoying, right? That gives a life meaning, right? So what if you don’t have anyone to share it with at the end of the day because you’ve been too much of a coward to make an honest or lasting connection with anyone; at least it all helped fill the time. That ought to count for something.

“See, the thing is,” he continued, “I . . . uh . . . I wanted to call someone, I really did, but there’s nobody home anymore . . . and DeVito’s is gone . . . .”

The receptionist was no longer looking at him but staring dead-on at the other woman. Martin noted this but thought nothing of it. At last his hand reached his face to wipe away the sweat, but his forehead was dry, so were his temples and the bridge of his nose, so that must mean that he was . . . what? . . . crying?

Odd; he didn’t feel like he was crying. Huh. Wasn’t that interesting? Live and

He was awakened at eight a.m. when a burly attendant did not so much knock on as pummel his door, shove it open, flip on the too-bright overhead lights, and bellow in a sing-song yet impatient voice, “Time to get up, come on, breakfast in five minutes,” before walking on to repeat the ritual elsewhere.

Martin swung his feet down onto the floor, and for a moment sat staring at the light-colored tile there. Hadn’t he read something once about how places like this used neutral-to-soothing colors? Nothing that would agitate someone? Bland but not boring. And why was he pissing away brain cells pondering the decorating scheme?

This floor needs to be stripped and re-waxed, he thought. A good buffing wouldn’t hurt things, either.

He swallowed, was barely able to work up enough saliva to complete the action, and realized he had a major case of cotton mouth. It also felt like his stomach had imploded—Christ, he was hungry.

Breakfast in five minutes.

He stood, pulled in a deep breath, and took exactly three steps toward the door before his right leg buckled and his left decided that looked like the thing to do and joined it, which is why he was sitting on his ass in the middle of the floor when Sing-Song the Impatient came by again.

“Having a little trouble finding your legs this morning?”

“No, I found them just fine. It’s getting them to cooperate that seems to be . . .” He couldn’t think of any way to finish that, so didn’t bother trying.

The attendant—whose name tag identified him as B. WILSON—came into the room and helped Martin to his feet. “Want me to lend you a hand getting to the dining area?” “If you don’t mind.” And as the attendant was helping him up, Martin asked, “What’s the ‘B’ stand for?” “Bernard. But everybody just calls me Bernie.” “But you prefer ‘Bernard’, don’t you?” The attendant looked at him. “Actually, yes, I do. How’d you guess?” “‘Bernard’ sounds like a good, strong name. ‘Bernie’ sounds like some weasel bookie whose math is always questionable.”

Bernard laughed. “I like that. If you can make me laugh, then you ain’t as far gone as you think. C’mon, food’s getting cold.”

Breakfast was scrambled eggs, three links of sausage, toast, orange juice, milk, tea or coffee, and a fruit cup. It was brought in (as were all meals) in plastic-covered hospital serving trays. Clients were allowed to use only plastic utensils (all of which had to be accounted for at meal’s end), coffee and tea were always decaffeinated, you were allowed only three small packets of sugar, and if you were in a mood and didn’t want to eat, you went hungry until the next meal was delivered.

The main area—which also served as the dining room, break area, television room, group therapy space, and activities room—consisted of two large, long folding tables with a dozen folding chairs, a small sofa and two easy chairs that had seen better days (judging from the amount of duct tape used to repair the various tears and gashes), a color television with an actual honest-to-God channel dial, a VCR that appeared to have fallen from the cargo hold of a plane cruising at twenty thousand feet but somehow still worked, a shelf filled with donated books and videotapes, a coffee table whose surface was hidden beneath piles of magazines (most of them at least six months out of date), and a single wire mesh-covered window that looked out on a parking lot with two Dumpsters squatting at the edge. There was only one door for people to enter and exit by, and that had to be opened electronically from inside the nurses’ station. As for decorations, the walls sported bulletin boards with various outdated announcements tacked to them, posters of the cute-kitty Hang In There! variety, pictures and watercolors drawn by children who’d come to visit parents or relatives, and a large dry-erase board where the daily schedule was written:

8:00 – 8:30 – Breakfast and Morning Medication

8:30 – 9:00 – Showers

9:00 – 10:00 – Individual Sessions

10:30 – Noon – Group Session #1

Noon – 1:00 – Lunch and Afternoon Medications

1:00 – 1:30 – Free Time

1:30 – 3:00 – Group Session #2

3:00 – 3:30 – Free Time

3:30 – 4:30 – Individual Sessions

4:30 – 5:30 – Dinner and First Evening Medications

5:30 – 11:00 – Socialization

11:00 – 11:15 – Wash-Up and Second Evening Medications

11:15 – Lights Out

Martin was already worn out from just reading it.

Look on the bright side, he thought . . . then couldn’t come up with any way to finish it.

He was starting in on his second sausage link when one of the nurses—an attractive black woman in her early fifties—walked up to the board, picked up a red marker, and made a large red X through everything between 9:00 and Noon. As she passed by Martin, she stopped for a moment and smiled. “We’ve only got three clients right now, Martin, including yourself, I think, and the doctor here doesn’t like to conduct group meetings if there’s less than four—but don’t worry, we’ll have a fourth soon enough, probably more, and probably in time for the second session; it’s Friday, and we tend to get full-up for the weekend. You came in during one of our rare slow periods.”

“So I’ve got nothing to do between now and lunch?”

The nurse shook her head. “I didn’t say that. We’ve got a gymnasium of sorts around the corner and through the only door there It’s mostly just a basketball court, but you can walk around or shoot some hoops if you want—be careful, though: there’s four steps that lead down onto the court once you go through the door, and they take some folks by surprise. Anyway, Dr. Hayes will be in around ten a.m. to talk you through things. In the meantime, my name’s Ethel; if you need anything, just knock on the nurses’ station door, all right?” She pointed to the station, which was actually an oversized glass-walled cubicle separating the main area from the sleeping rooms; you had to walk (squeeze, almost) through a semi-tight hallway to move from the bedroom corridor into the main area, and because the nurses’ station had glass walls on all sides, at no time were you out of anyone’s sight; even the ultra-small smoking room could be watched from there, despite its having a door that closed it off from view of the main area.

Martin took in all of this with a single, sweeping glance. “Looks like you keep a close eye on everything.”

“We do,” replied Ethel; it was both an answer and a warning. “Now, you finish your breakfast and I’ll go get your medicine.” On her way out, Ethel stopped long enough to turn on the television: a network morning news show, two oh-so-pretty hosts chatting incessantly about nothing in particular and making it sound like the most profound thing they’d ever discussed.

Martin was, for the moment, alone in the main area. He chewed his sausage—which was surprisingly flavorful—and wondered where the other clients were. Hadn’t Bernard woken everyone in the same whimsical manner? And why was Ethel—the person he assumed was in charge—unsure of how many clients they had right now? That seemed like the kind of thing they’d keep a close count on. So what was the deal?

Maybe if he didn’t eat his food too quickly, someone else would show. He suddenly wanted company.

As if she’d read his mind, Ethel appeared a few moments later with a small paper cup in her hand. “Here you go.” Martin took the cup from her, saw it had five—five?—pills, tossed them all into his mouth, downing them with a deep drink of orange juice.

“Open your mouth, please,” said Ethel, clicking on a small penlight.

Martin did; Ethel shone the light into his mouth. “Lift your tongue for me.”

He complied, Ethel nodded her head, clicked off the light, and started to walk away. Martin called her name and she turned around.

“Do you have to go?” he asked. “It’d be nice to . . . have someone to talk to.”

“Martin, come this time tomorrow, if not sooner, you’re gonna be looking back at this time by yourself as the good old days. Enjoy the quiet while it’s yours to enjoy. If you’re still hungry after you finish, they brought extra trays of food—they always bring extras; have some more if you want. What doesn’t get eaten goes down the disposal.” And with a bright and sincere smile, she went back into the nurses’ station, closed the door, and took her seat at one of the desks; another nurse, this one much younger, with porcelain-doll skin and a head of lustrous red hair, was typing something into her computer while talking to Bernard, who caught sight of Martin through the glass and gave him a quick nod.

Martin looked down at the food remaining on his tray and wondered how many trays like this the hospital kitchen had to wash every day, and just as quickly remembered all the times he’d watched his mother standing at the sink washing dishes, her and Dad having never been able to afford a dishwasher, and as he stared at this remembered image of her arthritic hands slipping dirty dishes into hot soapy water (while she hummed Charley Pride’s “Kiss An Angel Good Morning,” her favorite song), he wondered how many hours of her life she’d spent like that, alone in the kitchen, after the meals, standing at the sink washing dishes; had she ever gotten tired of it? Did she wish she’d been able to afford a dishwasher so she didn’t have to spend so much time on this chore that no one else really noticed or thought about unless it wasn’t done? Did she ever want someone else in the kitchen with her, someone to talk to while she performed this thankless task in a day filled with thankless tasks? How much of her life had she spent washing . . . ?

Martin set down his plastic fork and knife, lowered his head, and wept into his hands. He could try thinking about Dad but odds were he’d just come up with some equally happy image alive with equally cheerful thoughts. Christ! Why was it that the bad memories were always broadcast in high-definition crystal clarity, while the good ones could only be found using an old set of rabbit-ears that obscured them in static and snow?

It should have surprised—if not outright petrified—Martin to discover that the third client in The Center was the large, balding black man who’d read the first part of the story to him from within the television, but by the time he sat down to lunch that first day, he was almost beyond it; too much had happened too quickly for him to fully deal with any of it, so—after taking his afternoon meds—he decided to follow his dad’s advice: He’d keep his eyes open, his ears peeled, and his ass attached. He was feeling shiny and more than willing to go along for the ride.

Wendy sat at the far end of the second table; Storyteller-Man at the far end of the first; so Martin took a spot more or less equidistant from each of them.

“You’re not making this easy,” said Storyteller-Man.

“I get a lot of complaints about that,” replied Martin, trying to figure out what sort of Mystery Meat had been used to make the hamburger. Storyteller-Man sighed, shook his head, then picked up his tray and moved down to sit across from Martin. “They’re real.” Not looking up, Martin doctored his hamburger with some salt and pepper and said, “Who’s real?” “You know. The Onlookers.”

Now Martin raised his head. “Is that what they’re called?”

“That’s what Bob named them, yes.”

“Who’s Bob?”

“I am. Well, my name’s Jerry, but I’m still . . . wait a second.” He closed his eyes and pressed his chin down against his chest, and for a moment he flickered, becoming a reverse image, a living film negative, but then pulled in a deep, hard breath and re-assumed solidity. “Sorry. It’s getting harder and harder to keep up this ruse.”

“What the hell are you talking about? What’s happening?”

Jerry raised one of his large, strong-looking hands, stopping Martin from asking further questions. “Remember how your dad was always telling people to stop yammering and get to the point? That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“How do you know what Dad used to say?”

“The same way I know that you had a short but perplexing conversation with your six-year-old self last night. The same way I know that when you tried to lose your virginity to Debbie Carver when you were fifteen you shot your wad all over her left thigh before you even got it in, and from that day on she always called you ‘Lefty’ but never told anyone why. The same way I know that you once stole ten dollars from your mom’s purse when you were sixteen to buy a couple of really rotten joints—and you always felt bad about that, didn’t you? Even though you eventually put back twenty, you always felt bad about it—and remember the way she made such a fuss over finding that twenty? ‘I must have a fairy godmother looking after me, Zeke.’ ‘Zeke’ was her nickname for you, by the way, and no one except her and you knew that. Ever. Do you want more examples or can we assume that you now understand I know things and move on?”

Martin raised his hands in surrender. “How can you be both someone named Jerry and someone named Bob?” No sooner was the question out of his mouth than he knew the answer:

R.J. Nyman.

Robert Jerome Nyman.

“But you weren’t black,” he said. “You were a short little old white guy with bad teeth, B.O., and shaky hands. I remember the shaky hands because the only time they were still was when they were holding a pencil or brush.”

“Hooray, his powers of recall aren’t completely in the crapper. Yes, that’s right—Bob is that short little old white guy; I’m the image he invented for his muse, and he calls me ‘Jerry’ because I’m as much a part of him as your right side is to you.” “Why’d he make you black?” “You got something against black folks?” “No. Just curious.”

Jerry thought about this for a moment. “I guess I believe you. To answer your question: I don’t know. I’ve only been . . . like this . . . real, I’d guess you’d say, for a little while. There’s only so much mental detritus I can sift through at any given time.”

“What are you, exactly?”

Jerry picked up his hamburger, looked at the Mystery Meat, then dropped it back onto his tray. “I’m what’s left of Bob’s lucidity, of his reason, of his creativity and intelligence. I’m what managed to escape before Gash started in on the last few courses of his feasting. I can only hold this form for so long—like when Bernie does his bed-check or Ethel comes around with the meds . . . they only think of me as being here for as long as they see me, then maybe for a few minutes or so afterward . . . I . . . uh . . . I can only be this way for short . . . wait, I said that already, didn’t I? . . . I can only be this way for short periods . . . because the closer Bob comes to death . . . .” He stopped speaking, his eyes snapping closed, his whole body locking up in pain; his face began to bulge and swell and discolor; a jagged crack appeared in the center of his forehead and split downward, chewing through his substance like a shredder through sheets of paper, consuming him, bit by bit—his arms and legs became stumps, his eyes seemed to collapse into their sockets, his chest began to implode and he flickered once again, a human film negative, and from somewhere in the center of all this came the echo of a terrified scream, then with a sudden, powerful lurch, he pressed himself against the edge of the table and again was whole.

Martin shot a panicked glance toward Wendy, who sat facing down at her food with both eyes closed, emitting a low, deep snore, a thin string of drool trailing down from her mouth. When he turned back, Jerry was breathing heavily, gripping the sides of his lunch tray. “Are you all right?” Jerry couldn’t speak just yet, so gave his head a quick shake.

“I get it, okay?” said Martin. “I understand why you can’t stay like this for very long, why you had to . . . do that television thing like you did.”

“. . . corporeality’s a bitch . . .” whispered Jerry. “I liked it a lot better when I was just a flight of fancy. It’s easy, being a dream or manipulating electromagnetic waves. Flesh demands too much of the mind and heart. I don’t know how human beings do it.”

Martin started reaching for Jerry’s hand, thought better of it (how would it feel?), and so started to rise. “Can I get you anything?”

“Nothing. Please sit down.”

Martin complied.

“What it boils down to is this: right now Bob is lying in a dim little shit-hole of a room in the Taft Hotel in final stages of Alzheimer’s. He’ll be dead soon—maybe a day or two, maybe less—and when he dies, Gash is going to get out. Not as the disease he once was, not as Alzheimer’s, but the thing the Alzheimer’s is becoming.” Jerry closed his eyes and put a hand against his chest, pulling in three broken breaths that obviously hurt like hell. “It’s getting bad. I don’t think this is it, but it’s . . . it’s gonna be an awful one.” He opened his eyes. “You got time for one more question, then I need to go elsewhere and rally my ass.”

“Why me? Why are you—why is Bob, someone I don’t know—why are you coming to me?”

“Because you were kind. Because you did more for him that day than you remember. Because he thought of you as a friend. And because, in his last moments of lucidity, before the dementia got its hooks in all the way, he called on some superhuman reserve of will that I still can’t comprehend and managed to do two things: help me to escape, and remember you.” He pressed his hands against his eyes and pulled in a strained breath. “Listen, I gotta boogie-two-shoes for a little while. You stick around here . . . something tells me it’s going to get real interesting . . . .”

And with a flicker, he was gone.

When Ethel came out from the nurses’ station five minutes later, she found Wendy passed out at the table and Martin sitting in front of two trays of half-eaten food.

“My, my, aren’t you the one with an appetite?” she said to him.

Looking at her, Martin thought: Would she remember Jerry if I said something? Then decided, what the hell, he had nothing to lose: “Jerry couldn’t finish his, so he said I could have it.”

Ethel stared at him, blinking as if trying to remember something, then gave a slow nod of her head. “Oh, right, Jerry. I guess he’s still not . . . feeling well . . . .”

“He didn’t look too good to me,” Martin replied.

Ethel seemed about to say something else Jerry-related, then looked at Wendy, blinked again—I should take care of this, yes, that’s what I came out here for—and walked over to the unconscious girl.

Martin finished off his food, then what was left on Jerry’s tray.

If things were only about to get interesting, he was going to need all the energy he could store away against the effects of the drugs.

The rest of the day was torture.

Shortly before the scheduled second group session, Ethel came out and put a red X through the rest of the day’s planned activities, then Wendy woke up long enough to pitch another fit about being in “. . . this fuckin’ fruitcake factory!” before having to be sedated once again (though Martin had to give her high marks for her alliteration, accidental though it probably was); Martin watched The Best Years of Our Lives (with no ad-libbing from any of the actors, only crying at the very end when he remembered watching this with his dad), read half of a John Cheever short story collection he found on one of the shelves (having forgotten how sad Cheever was—a damned great writer, but depressing as hell), walked around the basketball court a dozen or so times before getting that Waiting for Godot feeling and deciding to shoot a few hoops (he’d sucked at basketball as a kid, and discovered that the ensuing years had done little to improve his stats), taken a second shower, checked out his window to make sure the Onlookers hadn’t decided to come back for an evening performance, and was about to resort to counting the holes in the ceiling when Bernard announced it was chow time.

Wendy all but inhaled her dinner, never once acknowledging Martin’s presence, then went back to her room. Martin sighed, got himself a tray, and was just removing the cover when Ethel came out to join him.

“Want some company?” she asked.

“Yes, please. All this ‘quiet time’ is losing its charm.”

Ethel sat across from him and smiled. “Things here are usually a lot more structured than this, Martin; but right now it’s just you and Wendy. I’m sure we’ll have more folks in here come tomorrow and things can get back to normal—well, what passes for normal in here.”

“I’ll try to occupy myself.”

She leaned forward, her face growing serious. “It must have been hard on you, losing both your folks so close together like that.” It didn’t seem like something that required a response, so Martin made none. “You took care of them for a long time, didn’t you?’ “Yeah . . .” “You should be proud of yourself; a lot of people wouldn’t’ve done that.” “Didn’t change things.”

“But that doesn’t mean you failed. They were both very sick. Just because they left you, that doesn’t mean they love you any less where they are now.” Martin looked up from his Jell-O cup and tried to smile. “I wish I could believe that.” “You promised to take care of them, and you kept your word.” “I tried.”

“You’re not God. You couldn’t make them not be sick.”

He set down his spoon and leaned back. “No, I couldn’t. All I could do, in the end, was watch them die.”

“At least you were with them; at least they didn’t have to die alone. I know that probably doesn’t seem like much, but it ought to count for something, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know what to think, Ethel. That’s most of the reason I wound up in here.” “You’ll be better when you leave. Maybe not a lot, but at least a little.” “That might be nice.” In the nurses’ station, Amber answered the phone, then called for Ethel.

“I have to go see who that is,” she said, rising. “I think you should spend the evening out here and not in your room. Watch another movie, or some stupid sit-coms. I’ll make popcorn in a little while, how’s that sound?” “Sounds okay.” “You strike me as a decent man, Martin. I just wish you saw it yourself.” Martin thanked her, finished his dinner, and spent the next few hours in front of the television.

Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t just Ethel’s saying that he and Wendy were the only clients—Jerry hadn’t shown himself for hours, so why would she remember him?—it was this nagging sense that something was about to happen.

Soon.

And it bugged the shit out of him that he didn’t know what. Jerry had told him just enough to tell him almost nothing at all.

Because you were kind. Because you did more for him that day than you remember. Because he thought of you as a friend . . . .

“Had a friend and didn’t even know it,” he whispered at a re-run of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

At eleven, he went in to brush his teeth and wash up, then Ethel came out with his evening medications—the ones designed to knock you on your ass inside of fifteen minutes.

Christ, he wished he didn’t have to take these.

Ethel handed him a cup of water and his cup of pills, Martin tossed the pills into his mouth, and then—once again—Amber was confronted with some crisis in the nurses’ station she couldn’t deal with, so Ethel went back to check on it. Martin turned his head and spit the pills into his hand, then quickly put them in his pocket. Ethel never came back out to check with her penlight. And so Martin went to bed, wide awake and anxious.

* * *

Martin slowly descended the four steps leading down into the gym—why the architect who’d designed this building had thought it was a good idea to put the light switch at the bottom of the steps was beyond him, but at least the light spilling in from the upper window offered enough illumination that he didn’t fall and break his neck.

It struck him as funny that he was suddenly concerned for his own well-being, all things considered.

As soon as his feet hit the basketball court, the light from the window shrank into a single silver beam, focusing on a spot in the middle of the floor. From the shadows behind the beam, someone coughed.

Martin froze. “That had better be you, Jerry . . .”

“I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t make fun of me. I’m very sensitive.”

Jerry stepped into the light. He wore a harlequin’s patchwork costume of blue, red, and yellow triangles, a white half-mask covering the upper part of his face, a mock sword at his side, and a semi-squared hat from which protruded a huge ostrich feather. Martin stared, swallowing the urge to laugh. “Well, don’t you look . . . different.” Jerry folded his plume-sleeved arms across his chest. “Nothing escapes Mr. Perceptive, does it?” “Why are you dressed like that?” “Because Gash is, for the moment, sated and sleeping. And I’ve been instructed to give you a present.” “Okay . . . ?”

Jerry pulled a whistle from his pocket and blew a long, shrill but not unpleasant note, and the light spilling in from the window snapped off as easily as that from a desk lamp.

But some light remained; golden, it was, scattered and slitted . . . but widening.

Perched atop the folded bleachers, crouched on the backboard, standing in the corners, and hanging like bats from the darkened light fixtures on the ceiling, dozens of the Onlookers began opening their brass half-sphere eyes, the golden beams crisscrossing to form a web with a pulsating center. “Don’t be afraid,” said Jerry. “Easy for you to say.” “Shhh . . . watch now.” The center of the web grew wider, the intensity of its light almost too painful to look at, so Martin began to close his eyes. “Don’t,” said Jerry. “It’s important that you see this. Otherwise you might talk yourself out of believing it later.”

The glow spread farther, a bit less intense now, flowing across the floor, over the ceiling, and down the walls, swallowing the image of the gym like a slow cross-fade in a movie, and a few moments later Martin found himself standing in the center of a great structure whose interior dimensions were circumscribed by a roof and walls made from brightly-colored tarpaulin—a traditional circus tent, held upright by seven massive wood beams placed at evenly-spaced intervals around the gigantic center pole. The sawdust-thick three-ring floor was surrounded by bleachers that reached so far upward and back Martin couldn’t see the top rows.

The interior of this tent was easily ten times the size of the gym—hell, it was probably five times the size of The Center itself.

“What is all this?”

Jerry shook his head. “Man, you really do have to be slammed in the skull with a sledgehammer sometimes, don’t you? This is—duh!—a circus, Einstein! You told Bob that you’d never been to one, remember?”

Martin shook his head. “No. I’m sorry, but . . . no.”

“That’s all right, you probably don’t remember much about that day except buying the watercolor from him; but he remembered every detail of the twenty minutes he spent in your company: the things you said about his work, the hot dog and soda you bought for him from the street vendor, you’re talking to him about wanting to be a writer, the stories you exchanged about DeVito’s, but most of all, he remembered your kindness. He was not a man accustomed to being shown kindness, odd little fellow that he was. But that day meant everything to him. Everything. This is his way of thanking you . . . and of showing you what’s about to be lost, if you don’t help us.”

“How the fuck am I supposed to help him? I can’t even hold my own life together.”

“Says you.”

“Goddamn right, says me.”

“And now,” said Jerry, ignoring Martin’s protests and removing his hat with a flourish, then taking a deep bow, “allow me to introduce our performers; they are all that remain of the painter’s imagination—and don’t think it was easy gathering them all back from the ether. Now sit your ass down and enjoy the show.”

Martin stumbled back to the bleachers and sat in the first row. An elegant woman with the head of a horse, vapor jutting from the nostrils, glided by, handing him a cone of cotton candy and a paper plate bearing a funnel cake.

Martin bit into the cotton candy, reveling in its thick, sugary texture and sweet taste, then took a bite from the funnel cake and actually groaned, it was so delicious.

The air erupted with music from calliopes and steam organs and colorful Orchestmelochors puffing out a steady, rhythmic melody—oompah-pah, oompah-pah, oompah-pah-PAH—that Martin thought was as close as any sound ever came to capturing the essence of childhood in a few simple tones; under this sound emerged the thrum of tympani, the boom of drum, the crash of symbols and the ping of triangles wrapping their merriment around the silver gaiety of bell and chime; sunburst steel gongs resounded percussive laughter as swirling songs from whistle and reed were joined by cithara, syrinx, and flute; the brassy calls of horns and tuba flanked the bluster of bag-pipes whose five-drone bellow was a call to celebration, gathering the sounds into a wide, warm pair of hands that affectionately cupped Martin’s face and said, “C’mon, let’s have a grin.”

Jerry moved to the front of the Center Ring. “I give you the Grand Entrance Parade of the Circus of the Mind and the Heart.”

The pageant continued with triumphal and tableau cars, some with flat paintings on their sides, others with high-relief carvings interspersed with mirrors. The head car was a magnificent gallery unto itself; full-sized human and animal figures crowded its curved body, surrounded by profuse hand-carved ornamentation depicting scenes of myth and allegory ranging from Jason and the Argonauts to Mother Goose and The Brothers Grimm and countless tales between; emerging from the top of the car was a statue of Perseus riding high on the back of Pegasus while battling the scaly kraken. Vibrant banners fluttered from the corners of every wagon, trailing toy balloons made of goatskin bladder; broad-tossers ballyhooed the camel punks & clockers; medicine-show mountebanks pitched to ponging kinkers and spanglers; gilly wagons of jossers and Pierrot clowns tossed flower petals and confetti; acrobats from Crete astounded the gajos, flatties, and yobs, while Ptolemy II’s ropedancers waltzed effortlessly over the heads of all; there were exotic birds in cages of reed, cheetahs astride unicycles, elephants on velocipedes; hyenas and tigers, serpent and deer; zebra and dromedary, elk and lion; sorrels and pinto and bays; roans dancing the Two-Step; Italian funambuli; Roman mansuetarii; Libyan skiapodes; riders on horseback veering their routines between the militarial Über die Erde—making their horses spin into figures that caused all four feet to leave the ground—and the more elegant Auf die Erde style, the rider sitting immobile as the horse waltzed, side-stepped, then trotted forward, its mane flowing proudly; and at the rear of the procession, their heads at least four times too big for their squat, compacted bodies, with faces that were comically elongated, not so much walking as lurching from side to side on their stubby legs, a group of performers announced as The Tumblesands executed their specialty: collapsing sentient probability waves in a slapstick-agile manner that would have made Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton proud.

“Well?” said Jerry, suddenly at Martin’s side. “You digging this?”

Martin was so overwhelmed he could barely find his voice. “I can’t . . . I can’t fathom that one man’s mind came up with all . . . all this!”

“There was a thousand times this much before Gash came alive—a thousand-thousand times this. What you’re seeing here are the scraps, the broken bits, the damaged goods.”

“They’re . . . amazing.” Until this moment, Martin Tyler had never been in the physical presence of anyone or anything that he would have called miraculous; now, with his unblinking gaze locked on the sights before him, he thought without any cheap sentiment that he might be seeing a glimpse of Heaven as he’d imagined it to be as a child.

“You’re not that far off the mark,” said Jerry. “Thinking that.”

“How did you know what I was—?”

“I told you, Gash is sleeping for the moment. We’ve—Bob and I—we’ve got a little time and a little more power than we’d have otherwise.”

Everything seemed to be spinning, rising, expanding; the calliope music growing faster, happier, the singing more joyous: the sound of sweet summer laughter released from a jar.

“So it’s not going to last, is it?” asked Martin.

“Nothing much does, in the end—but that doesn’t mean it has no value, no consequence.”

The musicians and performers began to move into place; for what, Martin didn’t know and couldn’t possibly guess . . . but he sure as hell wasn’t going to miss it. “Earlier today, when you told me how you managed to escape, how Bob ‘. . . called on some superhuman reserve of will’ that you couldn’t comprehend . . . you lied to me, didn’t you?” “‘Lied’ is such an ugly term,” said Jerry. “Let’s just say that I rearranged the facts to form a more palatable truth.” “You lied.” Jerry shrugged. “I lied.”

Martin looked at him. “What are the Onlookers?”

Jerry took off his mask and smiled. “That is not the question I was expecting.”

“Happy to disappoint you. Well?”

“They are the watchers through whose eyes God witnesses what we create and what we destroy. I suppose a simpler way to put it is, they’re God’s art critics, and humankind is the work in progress. Doesn’t do to underwrite an artist who never keeps trying to expand his or her creative horizons. Os Anjos de Percepção; Die Engel der Wahrnehmung; Angely Vospriyatiya; Los Ángeles de Percepción—” “The Angels of Perception.” “Retained a little Spanish from high school, I see.” Martin looked back out at the circus. “Is Bob human?” “More or less.”

“Oh, that clears things right up, thanks.”

“I’m trying to explain this in the simplest terms possible, work with me, okay? And stop worrying that you’re living in your own private Idaho, all right?” “Okay.” Below, the bacchanal of performers swirled: One thing became many: a white rhino, grains of sand. Many things became one: an antelope herd, an emerald wheel.

“Have you ever read Atlas Shrugged?” asked Jerry.

“Yeah. It got a little wordy, but I liked it.”

“What if—and this may require a great leap of faith and imagination for someone of your endearing but nonetheless limited capabilities—what if it were possible to simply will the world to stop spinning on its axis? Only you would have the power to do it, and no one else could notice until you said so.”

“The planet would go hurtling into the sun and we’d all be vapor in a millisecond.”

“That is one cheery outlook you’re walking around with. No, it would not go hurtling into the sun, not if you didn’t want it to. Try getting into the spirit of this, it’ll go faster.”

“All right, fine—I can stop the world on its axis and prevent it from going into the sun and no one knows this but me. Then what?”

“The real world goes on, oblivious to this wonder you’ve performed, so . . . you perform another. You go into Fountainhead mode and do a Howard Roarke, build the most astonishing building, a fantastic piece of architecture that hasn’t been seen since the Tower of Babel, then you tear it down because it isn’t perfect and you build another one, a better one—only in this case, since no one can consciously register what you’re doing, you re-create the whole effing world, turning it into this fabulous, breathtaking, mind-blowing work of Art. Think about it! You could destroy and re-create the world a million times over and no one but you would know it until you decreed otherwise.”

“And by then it would be too late for anyone to stop you.”

“But why would they want to? When the real world gets too horrible, then the real world must be altered.”

Martin laughed but there was no humor in it. “And whose job is it to make these covert alterations that the rest of us don’t notice?”

Jerry said nothing, only stared at him in the same way a patient parent will stare at a child as they wait for it to realize something on its own.

“Oh, no,” said Martin. “Huh-uh, no way, not buying it, nope, sorry.”

Jerry pointed toward the Center Ring, where ballerinas pirouetted on the backs of marble manticores, starlight and meteor dust flowing from their fingertips; where dwarves with leopards’ heads leapt over one another, becoming the base equations of infinite mathematical theorems; where selachian angels, their luminous wings the pectoral fins of stingrays, arose from the bosoms of tigers; where scores of young lovers emerged from velvety chrysalides, bringing forth all their past and future generations in an unending procession; where a black hawk wearing a feathered headdress and calling himself Golgi tamed the Wild Machines; where a turtle named Kôbios, the Master of Notion Games, wore a large-brimmed fedora like some private eye from a Forties detective movie and made the sawdust sing; where the circus historian, Voices Carry, dressed in a clattering bone robe into which were carved the faces of all who had performed in the Center Ring, conducted the musicians with a wand made from second thoughts; and where a glass owl called Patience Worth flew around filling its belly with the stray bits of distraction that might interfere with anyone’s performance.

Martin jumped to his feet, flinging away the cotton candy and dropping the funnel cake. “So I was nice to him, so what? That doesn’t make me anything special.”

“It does to him. To us.”

“What is he? And don’t give me that ‘more or less’ human shit, I need to know.”

“Why?”

“Because I . . .” He felt the tears forming in his eyes and hated himself for being so weak yet again. “Because I need something to believe in. I need to believe that I’ll be at ease in my own skin one day, that something I’ve done matters, that I can still fall in love with . . . anything—a woman, a song, an idea! I need to believe that there’s more than just breathing and taking up space and collecting a paycheck every two weeks. I need to know if . . .” “If what?” “. . . nothing . . .” “Say it.” “Fuck you.”

“Ever the eloquent one—say it.”

Martin balled his hands into fists and pressed them against his legs, his body shaking. Oh, yeah—you’re living in your own private Idaho, all right.

“Fine,” said Jerry. “Then let’s see if we can’t jog a little something loose, shall we?”

He rose to his feet and lifted his right hand.

The performers in all three rings froze in place, and from the very center of the Center Ring a ripple appeared in the atmosphere and one of the Onlookers stepped through, the ripple closing behind it (for a flash Martin saw the wall of the gym, then it was the circus again). It leaned forward, opening only one of its brass half-sphere eyes, projecting a beam that solidified a few feet from where Martin stood.

He was looking at the image of himself talking to Dr. Hayes, who was saying: “. . . if you will tell me, to the best of your recollection, where you were and what you were doing when you first made the decision to start planning your own death, we’ll call it a day and take up at that point tomorrow, all right?”

Martin looked down and shook his head. “This isn’t fair.”

“Oh, give me a break!” said Jerry. “Is that the best you can come up with? ‘Fair’ is for six-year-olds playing with marbles or horseshoes; the stakes are a bit higher here.”

Martin looked back to himself and Dr. Hayes. His projected self was saying: “I’d stripped the floor in one of the second-floor women’s rest rooms and was re-waxing it. I started in the toilet stalls and worked my way out—that’s how you do it if you don’t want to wax yourself into a corner. But when you start in the stalls, you have to do it on your hands and knees, with rubber gloves and a sponge and the wax in a bucket. You dip the sponge in, then spread it on the floor, being careful not to splash any on the toilet base or the wall tiles down there. It’s kind of like painting, and it takes a while.

“I’d laid the first two coats in all the stalls, and was just starting to lay the last one when I stopped, sat back, and really looked at it. It was a good job, the corners were sharp, nothing on the base or the walls, the coats were smooth . . . and it occurred to me that this didn’t matter! I’d just spent forty minutes doing something that no one except maybe the building manager was going to notice or care about. And I got to thinking about something Dad used to say after he’d had a really rotten day at the plant—and there were a lot of those: ‘At least it’s honest work, there’s no shame in that.’ But I could tell, every time he said that, I could tell that he didn’t really believe it, that he felt ashamed, because who gives a damn about the person who cuts the blades for the saws you buy at the hardware store, or who waxes behind the women’s toilet? I sat there looking at this smooth job, asking myself what else I could have done with those forty minutes if I had them back, and . . . I couldn’t come up with anything. My whole goddamn life was right there in that freshly-waxed corner behind the toilet: a lot of careful effort put into something that was ultimately meaningless. I watched my parents work shit factory jobs their entire lives, sometimes coming home so sore and tired they could barely force down some dinner, and all it did was lessen them, diminish them in their own eyes, suck the joy out of them until they‘d finally put in enough years to retire, and by that time they were both so fucking sick they couldn’t enjoy it. So I looked at that perfectly-waxed corner and decided, screw it; you’re forty-four years old, if you were going to do anything of value or importance with your life, you’d have done it by now, so why drag this out?

“That’s when I decided to do it. Happy now?”

Dr. Hayes smiled and leaned forward, patting Martin’s shoulder. “You probably don’t know it, but you’ve told me an awful lot today. Thank you.”

The Onlooker closed its eyes and the image vanished.

Martin whirled around to face Jerry. “And the point of that little stroll down Happy Moments Lane was . . . ?” “To remind you of the one thing you most need to believe.” “Which is?” Jerry shook his head. “You tell me.” “We’re back to that?”

“Say it.”

“Fuck you squared.”

“Say it.”

“Fine—I need to know that my folks died believing their lives had some value, okay? I need to know whether or not I was . . . shit—a failure in their eyes. If I could just know that, if I could’ve known that . . . maybe that goddamn waxed corner would’ve just looked like a waxed corner. Jesus does it sound ridiculous, saying it out loud like that. But I can’t . . . can’t help wondering, you know?”

“Dr. Hayes was right, you know, when she said that some peoples’ spirits bleed to death from thousands of small scratches they aren’t even aware of. Just so you know, yours hasn’t bled quite to death yet.”

“Go piss up a rope—your turn: what the hell is Bob?”

Jerry looked away for a moment, his eyes focusing on something only he could see as he considered how to phrase the reply. “The Onlookers are God’s art critics; the human race is, for lack of a better term, the work in progress; Bob is one of those rare people who has been entrusted with the duty of re-creating the world on a daily basis.”

Martin stared at him, blinked, then said: “I think I just slipped a gear—come again?”

“The world as you know it is kept in existence by a group of beings whose number is quite small when compared against the whole of humankind. Some are painters, others are composers, poets or storytellers, but most of them, Martin, most of them are the brick-layers, the auto mechanics, the laborers, those who cut the saw blades, who wash the dishes, who wax the floors. The only difference between them and you is that they know the value, the necessity, the beauty of what they do and what they are. There is as much majesty in a perfectly-cleaned window looking out on a winter’s night as there is in the entirety of the ceiling in the Capella Sistina.

“The Universe is constantly bombarding human senses with images and ideas like these—” He pointed toward the circus performers. “—but most people can’t pick up on, let alone interpret, them. Bob has been receiving them for all his life, non-stop, just like the others of his kind—and just so you know, they are called Qui Constructum, Tunc Constructum Iterum: ‘Those Who Build, Then Build Again.’ Some very ancient texts refer to them as the Substruo, which means ‘to build beneath, to lay a foundation.’ “They are the ones who must revise and re-create reality; who destroy and re-build the world—” “‘—because when the real world gets too horrible, then the real world must be altered.’” Jerry nodded. “Exactly.”

“And they do this somewhere underneath our perception?”

“Yes.”

Martin rubbed his eyes. “You’re telling me that these beings, these Substruo, destroy and then re-create the world every day?”

“Sometimes quite a few times a day, often in the blink of an eye; and with each incarnation, the world contains a little less horror, a little less fear, less loneliness and despair; some of the changes—most, actually—are quite small but have surprisingly vast consequences: new fractal patterns, changes in cell behavior, an unexpected warm breeze on a chilly autumn day, millions of other like fine points—but each revision moves the world closer toward becoming the masterpiece God once envisioned, one that the Onlookers can approve of with a good review and be proud to show to Him . . . or Her . . . or Them—I’m still a bit fuzzy on the exact nature of that last one, but you get the idea.”

“How is that even possible?”

“Imagine that all of this—” Again Jerry gestured toward the circus. “—is just one note you hear from a single triangle in the back of the orchestra.

“Substruo like Bob can hear the whole symphony. They have different receptors than the rest of humankind, their minds and hearts are better equipped to process the information that the Universe is transmitting. They can not only receive the data, but they can play with it, re-shape it, mold it into something unique and powerful, something filled with new sorts of meaning. Mozart could do it. Van Gogh and Thomas Aquinas, Mark Twain, Lovecraft, Stephen Hawking, Kurasawa, Philip K. Dick, Einstein . . . and thousands of people whose names you wouldn’t recognize but whose efforts at re-shaping the quanta have profoundly affected the way you exist . . . and ensure that you never remember your daily death and rebirth.

“If you want something simpler to compare it to, think of the way old-school cartoonists used to animate: they’d take a bunch of clear plastic sheets, draw a sky on one, a field of grass on another, a bunch of trees on the next, some people on the last one, then layer them all together to have the image of a summer picnic. The Substruo work basically the same way.”

“Sounds like it should be a precise system—so where’d the fuck-up occur?”

Jerry shook his head. “It’s not a question of where, it’s a question of why. Fuck-ups happen because the Substruo are mostly human, and because of that are just as vulnerable to sickness and genetic whims and disease and brain-chemistry brouhaha as the rest of humankind: some are born retarded, or become schizophrenic, or develop other mental illnesses; some of them never realize what they are and so never harness their power; the very old whose minds are crumbling into terminal dementia pick up on it shortly before they die, but that’s accidental; in that stage of death, they can receive the data, can even sometimes see various reality branches simultaneously, but they can do nothing to adequately express what it is they’re experiencing because they didn’t comprehend their true nature in time.

“But then you get one like Bob, who can not only receive and process all the random bits of data and consciousness and quanta in order to create a Starry Night or a Letters From the Earth or an Ikiru or String Theory, but uses it as a place to simply begin his work the same way you used Dick and Jane books in kindergarten to begin learning how to read. Of all the Substruo on Earth today, there are only a dozen who possess the same level of ability as Bob; their life span is about twice that of a normal human being, give or take; and these twelve are the foundation-makers; the rest simply build upon the work they construct.

“The foundation is cracking, Martin. The closer Bob comes to death, the wider this fracture becomes.”

Martin considered all this for a moment. “Last night, before I was brought in, I saw an Onlooker after it had been killed, and I saw a part of the thing that killed it.” He rubbed his eyes against the image, then looked at Jerry. “Did I see Gash?”

“Yes. He was testing his own strength, making sure he could find the way out of his prison. But as long as Bob is still alive, that’s all he can do—slip through for a few moments.”

It occurred to Martin that the Onlooker he’d seen had probably been fighting Gash before he’d lain eyes on it—that would explain the blood it was spitting from its beak. “So Gash is still more or less trapped right now?” “More or less . . . leaning toward the ‘less’ side of things every hour.” “But why bother killing an Onlooker?” “Because there’s a finite number of them. Kill them all, God has no direct way of observing the work in progress.” “Okay . . . ?”

“C’mon, Martin—think: if you were sponsoring an artist, and that artist stopped showing you his or her work, what would you do?”

“Stop sponsoring them. Cut off money. Pull the plu—oh, shit.”

“Methinks he’s finally getting it.”

Martin looked back at the circus. In the Center Ring, a musical note named Cottleslip played hide-and-seek with the Ghosts of Confused Twilight, accompanied by the Pattern Juggler, the Rain Witch, and the Satin Lion Dancers. Martin once more shook his head in wonder. “And all of this is just a fraction of what Bob was working with?”

“Consider it the first few words of an epic novel.”

Martin watched as Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, believed to have been tortured to death in Grenoble in 1535, was shot out of a cannon as he scattered copies of the lost fourth volume of De Occulta Philosophia, his book that contained, among other things, an alchemic cure for epilepsy and the precise topographic location of Integrity; Mirza Ali Mohammed appeared with eighteen more letters of the living that he passed on to Baha-Ullah, who could not wait to share them with his faithful Baha’i; a mechanical crane rose above it all, a film camera attached to it, Orson Welles calling the shots from up high while Sam Peckinpah moved through everyone at ground level, using a Stedi-Cam to get all the grit Welles couldn’t capture—babies with iron hooks in place of their heads; hump-backed figures with faces that were little more than smooth, featureless ovals, creatures that were thin wisps of amorphous Ideals.

“What happens when Bob dies?” asked Martin.

“Another Substruo will be born who can one day take his place.”

“That still leaves you one short.”

“Which isn’t an insurmountable problem, so long as the foundation stays in place. The remaining eleven can repair what damage exists at this moment. But it cannot be allowed to worsen. Gash must be dealt with.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?”

“Depends on you.”

At that moment, Martin Tyler took a cold, hard look at himself and his life: the books read in the solitary evening hours; the movies he’d gone to by himself; the offices and restrooms he’d worked long and hard to clean, only to get up the next day and do it all over again; the meals he’d shared with no one; the emptiness of the days, the aloneness of the nights; the fear that always accompanied him and that kept him at arm’s length from the rest of the world. What he saw was a man whose life was devoid of meaning and purpose because he had allowed it to become devoid of meaning and purpose.

But now it had both; maybe for the only time it ever would.

Am I crazy? he thought. Did I do a serious number on my brain with all the pills?

Then decided he didn’t care.

For the first time in several years—since Dad had first been diagnosed with prostate cancer, to tell the truth—he felt active, vital, necessary, strong—alive. He wanted to hold onto this feeling, if just for a little while longer. “Tell me,” he said to Jerry. “Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it.” “You’ll have to find a way to get out of here as soon as possible.” Martin nodded. “I’ll think of something.” “And once you’re out the door, there’s no turning back.” “I understand.” “I mean it, Martin; you can’t let anyone or anything stop you or slow you down.”

“I get it, okay? Just tell me what to do.”

Jerry studied his face for a few moments, then nodded. “There is a place called The Midnight Museum. It has been in existence for as long as Substruo have walked the Earth. In it are housed those pieces of work that the Substruo have never been able to finish, or polish, or—in some cases—correct. It does not have doors or windows as you know them, but it does have entrances and exits. One entrance can be found in René Magritte’s The Glasshouse; another in Dali’s The Persistence of Memory; Escher’s Waterfall contains two exits; Mozart’s Requiem, three; but there are only two pieces that contain both an entrance and an exit: one is Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The Burghers of Calais; the other is an unfinished painting of Bob’s that he’d intended to call In The Midnight Museum—he would have been the first Substruo to use the name in a piece of work, and since that’s all but outright forbidden, that should give you some idea of the power he knew he possessed.

“That is where Gash is trapped.”

“How do I work this? What do I do once I get inside?”

“The first thing you have to—” Jerry’s eyes widened and he doubled forward, grabbing his stomach and opening his mouth to scream, but all that emerged was a faint, strained, wet shriek.

The circus performers all stopped, many of them looking around in confusion and panic.

Jerry flickered, then came most of the way back.

“What’s wrong?” said Martin, kneeling in front of Jerry and trying to grab onto his arms; his hands passed through as if the other man were smoke.

Jerry pulled in another pained breath: “Gash just woke up.

“And I think he’s really pissed off . . . .”

In the Center Ring, one of the Satin Lion Dancers fell forward, intestines belching through a large hole in its chest; one of the ballerinas began to scream, but a small dark growth appeared on her lower lip, quickly growing to engulf her face, turning it into a massive, black, crusty tumor, the pressure blowing one eye completely from its socket while pushing the other around to where her ear had once been; two of the Tumblesands lay writhing on the floor, blood jutting from their oversized mouths and noses, spraying into the faces of the performers nearest them, many of whom slipped in the thick muddy puddles made when blood soaked into sawdust, falling to impale themselves on steel poles thrown free of the fire-blasted wagons; a leopard screamed as it was turned inside-out, its teeth tearing through its own face as its ribcage was pulled out through its throat; the ropedancers howled in agony as the rope beneath them turned into barbed wire, shredding chunks of flesh and muscle from their feet and legs as they fell down into the growing flames; bodies imploded; tongues grew to twenty times their size, blasting through the fronts of faces and tops of heads; Onlookers tumbled through the scrim, crashing to the floor with hideous screams as their entrails and mechanisms splattered out in a burst of bloodied gears and slick viscera; a lower section of bleachers near Martin exploded into a thousand pieces, the splinters of wood flying out to blind dozens of the fleeing performers, the force of the blast toppling three of the massive wooden beams holding the roof in place.

Within seconds, the entire circus was flayed, shredded, gutted, crushed, and burning. Flames danced across the walls, spreading to the roof, dripping fire that sizzled when it met the blood running down the walls.

Martin threw himself down, covering his head and shouting, “What am I supposed to do?”

“Room 401, the Taft Hotel,” was all the more Jerry could say before he flickered, shrank, then imploded into nothing.

Martin leapt to his feet, his flesh turning red from the intensity of the heat, and started running for the door—

—then realized he didn’t know where the door was, the Onlookers had hidden it behind the circus tent, it could be anywhere, in any direction, he had no idea what he—

—then he remembered where the Onlooker had stepped through into the Center Ring; crouching down, trying to find some breathable air as the smoke from the fires roiled overhead, he thought he caught a glimpse of the spot, and if he was right, if that was the spot, then it was in front of the wall with the window, and if that was the case, the stairs leading back up into Buzzland should be . . . be . . .

To your right.

But what if—?

“I warned you to watch out for those steps,” said Ethel, daubing peroxide onto the bloody knot rising on Martin’s forehead.

“I know, I’m—ouch!—I’m sorry.” He was lying on the sofa in the main area, where Bernard had dumped him after bringing him up.

“You ought to be making with the ‘ouch’ and the apology,” said Ethel. “What were you doing up at this hour, anyway?” “I couldn’t sleep; I figured a few laps around the court would wear me out.” “You didn’t swallow your medicine this last time, did you?” “No.”

“I knew I should’ve checked; you’ve been so good about it up until now, I just assumed . . . oh, well, live and learn. Do it again, and I’ll personally make sure you get two more days in here.”

“I stand—well, lay—warned.” She shook her head. “I still can’t figure out how you got by with no one seeing you.” “I wasn’t trying to be sneaky.” “Well . . . it’s a good thing Bernie checked your room, or you might’ve laid in there all night.” “What time is it, anyway?”

Ethel looked at her watch. “Almost midnight. Amber’s gone, and I was supposed to go home half an hour ago but Betty—she’s the head nurse on night shift, you haven’t met her yet—she’s running a little late, and so is Amber’s relief, seeing as she rides in with Betty.” Ethel sat back and looked at her handiwork. “That doesn’t look any better to me. How much does it hurt?”

“Kind of a lot.”

She seemed to consider something, dismiss it, then reconsider. “I can’t give you anything stronger than regular Tylenol here, and something tells me that ain’t gonna cut it. Besides, your eyes looked a little glassier than they should, even with the medication. That you didn’t take. I’m gonna send you over to the ER and have them check you for a possible concussion.” She handed him an ice-pack and told him to hold it in place while she made a call.

Martin watched her through the glass, using his free hand to slip down into his right pocket, then realized he didn’t have his car keys.

His room. All of his personal items had been put in his room after he’d been processed. The keys—along with his money, his smokes, his lighter, his wallet—must be in the desk drawer.

He rose unsteadily to his feet and started back toward his room.

He was almost there when Ethel opened the nurses’ station door and said, “Now, I know you’re not gonna try to lay down, not with a possible concussion.”

“I just wanted to get a . . . a book I’ve got in here. Something to read while I’m waiting.”

“Hurry it up.”

Martin went inside, heading straight for the desk, opening the drawer, and removing everything—car keys first. He started reaching for the watercolor of DeVito’s Books when it hit him: he’d have no way of explaining why he wanted to take this to the ER with him, and the last thing he needed to do was give anyone a reason to be suspicious.

The realization that he was going to have to leave it here—and probably never get it back—brought a hard and unexpected rush of tears to his eyes.

Goddammit—he loved this picture.

Right—but this isn’t about you.

Then: Well, maybe a little bit . . .

He turned the picture sideways and slipped it under his shirt (he’d once stolen a record album—on a dare—from a department store the same way when he’d been in grade school), then put his coat on over it.

Back out in the main area, Ethel saw him and said: “Where’s your book?”

“I thought I’d left it back there, but I guess I didn’t.”

“No matter—you’re not gonna have time for reading, anyway.” She put her hand on his shoulder and looked him right in the eye. “Martin, I need you to promise me something.”

“If I can.”

“I’m the only staffer here right now—Bernie left right after he brought you up, he’s a real pain in the ass about going home exactly at quitting time—anyway, I can’t leave the premises until Betty and Marie get here. The entrance to the ER is just across the parking lot. They’re expecting you right away. They’re real busy tonight and can’t spare anyone to come over here and get you. I trust you, Martin—we had a nice talk today and I think you’re a man of your word. I want you to promise me that if I let you walk out of here by yourself, you’ll go straight over there. Any other time, me or Bernie would take you, but this isn’t any other time.

“I’m not trying to be mean, telling you this next part, but you might want to remember a couple of things: you haven’t been officially released by Dr. Hayes, you’re still considered a danger to yourself and maybe others, and as far as the law is concerned, that makes you no different than someone who escapes from jail. You take off on me, I’ll have the police after you in a heartbeat. We’ve got your address, the license number of your car, we know where you work . . . you take off, the police will find you, and when they do, they’ll bring you back here in handcuffs, and you’ll be staying the whole ten days. But that’s not the worst of it.”

“No?”

“No. The worst of it is, you’ll have abused my trust, and hurt my feelings, and probably gotten me chewed out by a couple of different people. In short: I will be irked at you, Martin. And I’m kinda like The Incredible Hulk that way; don’t irk me; you wouldn’t like me when I’m irked.”

Martin smiled. “Damn, Ethel, I like you.”

“Then prove it by keeping your word.” She started back to the nurses’ station. “Okay, I’m gonna buzz you out.”

“Thanks.”

He was out the door and into the night before it occurred to him (and probably Ethel, as well) that he hadn’t promised her anything one way or the other.

Okay, as moral loopholes went, it was fairly underhanded, but he took it.

Now, the question of the moment was: where did Dr. Hayes park his car? He had maybe five minutes before Ethel called the ER to check on him, tack on another three if she called the police right away, which, being irked, she would undoubtedly do, so . . .

It was not in the first place he checked: The Center’s parking lot.

It was, however, in the second place he looked: across the street from The Center and down a little ways.

Looking over his shoulder, he froze when he saw Ethel’s face peering from the small square window of The Center’s door.

Shit, shit, shit!

He took off running, looking back in time to see Ethel’s face move away from the window. The throbbing ache in his head wasn’t helped any by his running—every time his foot hit the ground, it sent shockwaves of near-blinding pain into the center of his skull—but he managed to make it to his car, unlock the door, and start the engine before he caught a peripheral glimpse of someone very large and very male and very strong in a very white uniform running out of the ER and directly toward him.

“I’m sorry, Ethel,” he said.

Then floored the gas pedal and tore away in a smoking squeal.

Once the most exclusive and expensive hotel in Cedar Hill, the last fifty years had seen the Taft slide not-so-slowly into disrepair and decay (as had many of the buildings in this unpopular area near the East End), becoming nothing more than a glorified flop-house where those who’ve reached the end of their rope could crawl into poverty’s shadow and just give up. Martin thought it looked like some mangy, dying animal left by the road. The rusted fire escape twisted around the exterior like a piece of barbed wire, and were it not for the low-wattage lights seen in a few of the dirtier, cracked, and duct-taped windows, you’d swear it was an abandoned ruin waiting for the wrecking ball to put it out of its misery.

He stood at the front doors, readying himself for whatever waited inside.

He’d left his car three blocks away, in the city’s only parking garage. It had cost him all the money he had to get through the gate, but at least it wasn’t on the street and in easy view of any cops who might cruise past; he supposed he ought to count himself lucky none had driven by while he was walking over here: the last two things he’d done before leaving his car was tear off one shirt sleeve to use as a makeshift bandage for his head (the knot had begun bleeding—not a lot, but just enough to start dripping into his eye), and taken a crowbar out of the trunk, sliding it up his coat sleeve. A full half of the serious crime committed in Cedar Hill occurred in this area, and he wanted to be able to defend himself if it came to that.

Martin, however, could not see himself; some of the blood from the wound had spattered onto both his shirt and coat, had even left a thin trail down the side of his face; the bandage around his head was ragged, too tight, and already stained with fresh blood that was also soaking into stray strands of his hair; his face was far too pale (he did have a minor concussion, though he didn’t know it), and his eyes appeared to be sinking farther and farther into the dark circles around them; add to this the manner in which he walked—fast and hard, a man in a hurry—and that even a nearsighted ninety-year-old grandmother could tell he was carrying a crowbar up his sleeve, and you had a picture of someone you did not. Want to. Fuck with.

Martin pulled in a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped into the hallway. It was lighted (as were all of them) by naked bulbs that hung too low and cast too many shadows.

He shook his arm, letting the crowbar drop a little farther into his grip, and started up the groaning stairs. Christ, he’d almost swear he could hear the rats gnawing at the woodwork, or roaches scuttling across dishes left too long unwashed.

Somewhere outside, in back of the building, a trashcan was knocked over.

He hurried his step.

If the looks and sounds of the place weren’t bad enough, the smells made up for it: rot, filth, the ghost of recently-mopped vomit, the sickly sweet aroma of urine and old human feces, all of it mixing with the thin mist rising from the outside sewers that added its own olfactory panache to the evening. He began breathing through his mouth so as not to gag. He hit the fourth-floor landing and stepped into something moist and spongy, but didn’t look down to see what it was. All he could see was the door a few feet away from him. 401. He approached it, raised his hand to knock (out of habit), then tried the knob. Locked.

He pulled the crowbar from his sleeve, tried to reach the bulb hanging nearest him with his hand, couldn’t, so stepped back, jumped up, swung the crowbar, and shattered the damn thing. Hitting the floor, he hunched down in the new shadows and waited for someone to come investigate the noise. No one did. Of course not; no one would, not here.

He rose up and pressed his shoulder against the door, forced the hooked end of the crowbar into the jamb, tightened both hands around it, and yanked back.

The doorjamb splintered apart in a shower of semi-soft flakes and the sound of a rotten tooth being torn from infected gums. Not looking to see if anyone was watching, Martin stepped into the room and closed the door behind him; it wouldn’t latch (he’d taken care of that for good), so he looked around, saw a crate stuffed with books and newspapers and painting supplies, and dragged it over to hold the door in place.

He then heard something from elsewhere in the room; the pulling in of a deep, slow, ragged breath, thick with mucus, that made a sickening rattle-wheeze-pop! at the end, an equally terrible sound when exhaled.

He walked toward the nearly used-up old man lying in the shabby, half-broken bed, his body covered by tattered blankets.

No, not just some old man—Bob.

This was him.

It was really him. Martin recognized him from that day outside DeVito’s; his face was all but collapsed now, barely more than a skeleton covered in a tissue-thin layer of flesh, but it was him.

A hundred different questions came to him simultaneously: how long had Bob lain here in this condition? How had he managed to keep himself alive? How long had he lived here, anyway? Didn’t he have any friends who might have come by to check on him?

Martin realized he was wasting time—Bob couldn’t last much longer, no way—but he had no idea what he was supposed to do, what he was supposed to look for or find here, so he fumbled in the dark until he found the small desk lamp attached to the head of the bed and snapped it on.

It was only a forty-watt bulb, but that was all it took.

Dear God, he thought. No one should have to die like this.

It wasn’t just that Bob’s skin had the grey pallor of spoiled meat, or that his hands had locked into shapes that more resembled talons; it wasn’t even the smell of him—dried blood, ruined bowels, the mold from the sheets and the blankets, something both pungent and moist that could only have been a freshly-burst infected bedsore—no; these were bad enough, sure, because goddammit no one should have to endure a death this cruel: it was, simply, that Martin Tyler was looking at the crystalline image of his very worst fear: that he was going to end up old, sick, alone, and forgotten, living out the remainder of his empty days in some dim little shabby room with no one to talk to or care whether or not he woke every day to the promise of more loneliness, feeling like his life had amounted to nothing.

No one deserves to die like this.

Bob pulled in another terrible, thick, rattle-wheeze-pop! breath (the Death Rattle, Martin remembered a nurse using the term during his dad’s final hours; the Death Rattle), then sank farther down into soaked-through mattress.

“Hi, buddy,” said Martin. Whispered. Wept.

He found a rickety wood-backed chair that he pulled over next to the bed and—after testing it to make sure it would support his weight—sat down.

“Long time no see,” he said.

. . . rattle-wheeze-pop!

“I wish I remembered more about you, I really do. I’m sorry. I—Christ, I’m not even sure you can hear me. When each of my folks died, near the very end, one of the nurses told me that they could still hear me if I wanted to say something to them, tell them I loved them or say good-bye, and as much . . . as much as I wanted to believe that, I couldn’t bring myself to say a goddamn thing. I just sat there and watched them die. And even then it felt like . . . because I didn’t talk to them . . . it felt like I was failing them one last time.”

. . . rattle-wheeze-pop!

“I don’t think I can do this again, Bob, I really don’t. But I can’t think of what else to do. I don’t know where to go from here, can you understand that? Jerry didn’t have the chance to tell me. I’ve gotten this far but from here on . . . I’m winging it.”

. . . rattle . . .

“So I’m going to sit here for a minute while I try to think of my next move and keep you company, all right? I think maybe you’d like that. I hope so, anyway. I think maybe you didn’t have a lot of company, and you would’ve liked some.”

. . . wheeze . . .

“I’m sorry that you were so lonely that spending twenty minutes with me was a high point in your life. I wish I’d known that. I’ve never been anyone’s high point before.”

. . . pop!

“If it helps, that watercolor I bought from you is my prize possession. I really love that picture, you know? You were good; you were really good.”

. . . rattle . . .

“I’ll remember you, I promise. Even if no one else does, I will. Does that count for anything?”

. . . wheeze . . .

“I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone, if that’s all right, since we’re here like this, just you and me. All my life, I’ve

(been half in love with easeful death)

felt lonely. Even in a crowd of people, or with people I know, even the few times I’ve had girlfriends, I’ve felt that way. I’ve spent so much time looking back at the bad things, or imagining the good things ahead that never get around to happening, that I’ve . . . I’ve missed out on most of my life. You ever feel like that? Like you’ve

(Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme)

been living just outside the frame of the movie, except it’s in the frame where all the real living is happening?”

. . . pop!

“Ah, well, shit. My head really hurts, and I’m tired, and I’m scared right down to the marrow of my bones. And I sound like a whiny little kid. I’m sorry.”

He reached out touched one of Bob’s hands, gently stroking its surface; it felt rock-hard, clammy, a brittle used-up echo of something grand that once was.

“Why couldn’t I talk to my folks like this, at the end?” And son-of-a-bitch if that didn’t open the goddamn waterworks again. Martin didn’t fight it; he just leaned down his head and placed Bob’s hand against his lips, kissing it once, not too quickly, then pressed it against his forehead as he cried, and once he almost lost his grip but managed to grab hold before Bob’s hand dropped back down and—

—and Bob was holding something.

Martin slowly turned Bob’s hand around—wincing at the sound of the frail bones cracking—and moved it a little more toward the light.

Bob was clutching a piece of paper that had been wadded into the size of a lime.

Carefully working it free of Bob’s frozen grip, Martin smoothed open the sheet of stationary.

Hello, Dipshit, read the salutation.

Martin almost grinned. “Hello yourself, Jerry.”

The letter continued:

Since you’re reading this, then Gash woke up before I could finish telling you what you need to do.

Yes, I figured that you’d end up holding Bob’s hand; cop to it or not, you’re a hand-holder; held your dad’s hand, held your mom’s, it only stood to reason . . . .

Second floor above what used to be DeVito’s; first room on your left at the top of the landing. Bob’s old apartment many years ago. The painting is there, so is the key to the museum. You’ll know the key when you find it—or when it finds you. There’s a flashlight under the bed, you’ll need it.

Be careful; once you’re inside, Gash will know and he’ll come looking. Make damn sure he doesn’t spot you—and more important than that, make sure you don’t see him. It, actually. Trust me on this: you lay eyes on that thing, you’d sooner rip them out of their sockets than have to look at it a second time.

The exhibit you want is called Rights of Memory. In it, you’ll find a piece entitled As Was, As Is. Smash the case, and take the piece out of the museum. Once you’ve gotten out, destroy it—and don’t let your heart or hand be swayed by its appearance, that’s what Gash wants.

This piece is the disease; it is the physical form of the Alzheimer’s that is killing Bob; Gash is what the Alzheimer’s is becoming. As long as he and it are in the same place, the process can’t be stopped. He’s been using other pieces from inside the museum to build himself; when Bob dies, he will ingest As-Was and be complete. It is the single most powerful source of his strength; destroy it, and he’s toast.

No, this won’t save Bob, but it will stop Gash and buy the rest of the Substruo time to repair the foundation while they wait for Bob’s replacement to come of age.

Then there’s one last thing that you’ll need to do, and it’s going to take nerve.

Here Jerry had drawn an arrow at the bottom of the page. Martin turned over the letter and read the two short lines written there.

“Oh, no . . . .”

From the bed, Bob released another rattle-wheeze-pop! Martin looked at him. The gaps between each breath were growing longer. And Martin knew what this meant; he’d known it with Dad, known with Mom. There was maybe an hour left; probably less.

He grabbed the flashlight from under the bed, rose from the chair, leaned down, kissed Bob’s forehead, whispered, “Good-bye, my friend; I will keep you in my heart always,” then walked across the room, kicked aside the crate, wrenched open the door, and ran. And ran. And ran. Hitting the street, he kept running, the crowbar hanging from his grip, not giving a good goddamn if anyone saw him or not. He would not be stopped. Regardless of what he had to do, he would not be stopped. He stuck to the side streets and alleyways. Six minutes after he’d said good-bye to Bob, Martin emerged half a block from West Church Street. He would have to be out in the open now; if the cops were going to spot him, it would be between here and DeVito’s.

The area of the square where he’d emerged was once again swarming with classic cars . . . and police cruisers. Like the first night, the cars seemed to be going a little too fast, showing off, but the cops seemed to be enjoying it as much as the spectators.

Good, just keep watching the show . . .

Sliding the crowbar back up the sleeve of his coat, he lowered his head and started crossing the street—there were a lot of spectators tonight, the streets were lined with lawn chairs—and was just turning the corner onto West Church when a little boy sitting a few feet away from a foot-patrol officer shouted: “That guy’s all bloody!”

The officer turned in Martin’s direction, saw the way he looked, and began approaching him while simultaneously talking into the microphone of his portable communications unit.

Martin shook his arm, letting the crowbar drop back into his grip.

Only if I have to . . . Then turned and continued walking away. After a few yards, he turned and looked behind him. The officer was at the corner, finishing speaking into his mike, looking right at him. Martin tightened his grip on the crowbar.

And then a grotesquely wonderful thing happened: someone in a souped-up ’67 Chevy hit the gas to beat a yellow light, didn’t make, and broadsided a Bentley that in turn spun around and slammed into the front end of a ’74 Ford Mustang. The collision wasn’t bad enough to seriously injure any of the drivers or passengers, but it created one hell of snarl.

The officer following Martin spun around to see what had happened, then ran out into the street and started directing traffic around and away from the accident.

Martin wasted no time; he sprinted down West Church, crossed at the deserted intersection, and ran to the front of the Tae Kwon Do studio. To the left of the display window

(used to be so many books there)

was a dilapidated-looking puke-green door. Martin put his shoulder against it, worked the curved edge of the crowbar between the door and jamb, and forced it open.

Could have a whole new career as a burglar waiting for you.

He all but threw himself into the small area at the bottom of the stairs, yanking the door closed and whispering a silent hallelujah when it stayed in place.

He took a few seconds to catch his breath—I’m gonna quit smoking I swear to God I’m gonna quit—then realized that by closing the door he’d plunged himself into near-total darkness.

He fumbled the flashlight from his coat pocket and turned it on; the beam came alive with churning dust motes, wriggling a bright path up the two dozen or so stairs that led to the second floor.

Martin began to climb, the stair boards creaking and groaning under his weight. He seemed to be making a habit of climbing up noisy stairs.

Halfway up, something scuttled away from the wide beam of light.

God I hope it’s not some wino waking up from a binge.

Then: Or Gash testing the exit once again. He stood shivering in the silence, listening for the sound of any further movement. Nothing. He ascended the rest of the stairs without incident. He reached the landing of the second floor and turned left into a long corridor, stopping at the first door. It opened with a low, deep moan, loosing a cloud of dust.

Martin swung the flashlight beam around the room, illuminating an old sofa, its springs and stuffing bursting forth and spilling to the floor, crawling with insects. The room was littered with old newspapers, broken boards, and pieces of shattered glass. The walls glistened from both the broken pipes behind them and the leaking roof; the wallpaper curled downward like strips of flayed skin, and much of the plaster had fallen out in large chunks to reveal the disintegrating plumbing and electrical wiring that ran in sloppy, tangled patterns.

The largest of the windows in this room was broken, sections of sharp glass jutting upward like crooked teeth. A steady, chill October wind whistled softly through, ruffling sections of newspaper that drifted along the floor with dry, rasping sounds before pressing against the wall, torn corners rustling like the wings of a moth. Martin cast the flashlight beam down onto the floor and saw the desiccated corpses of several flies and beetles buried under layers of dust and grime.

He entered, the flies and beetles crunching under his shoes. Somewhere in a back room, water was dripping steadily, pinging against metal. He caught his foot on a large piece of cardboard, kicking it aside to reveal a nest of spiders.

Sidestepping the nest, he moved toward the nearest door—what he assumed to be the bedroom. A mildew-stained mattress lay on the floor in the corner, a third of its surface burned away some time ago by a careless cigarette; the stink of the old fire still lingered in the air.

He looked through the room for the painting and, not finding it or anything that might be a key, moved to the only other room, deciding the kitchen was right out and not wanting to risk seeing the condition of the bathroom.

At first he thought he’d struck out here, as well; nothing but more newspapers, cardboard boxes stuffed with old magazines and painting supplies, and more broken glass. He shone the flashlight on the walls to his left and right, then the one in front of him.

I misunderstood something, he thought. I must have misread it.

He set down the crowbar and began to look through his pockets for the letter—he had brought it with him, hadn’t he?—but then dropped the flashlight, which rolled to the side and then around, shining right into his face.

Instinctively, he turned away to shield his eyes from the glare, keeping them closed for a moment until the bright explosions behind his lids lessened, then opening them again—

—his breath caught in his throat—

—you really are a dipshit, sometimes—

—because he’d been looking for a canvas, for something stretched or matted, maybe setting on an easel or hanging on the wall in a frame . . .

. . . but Bob had used the wall itself.

Martin knelt down and fumbled the flashlight into his hand, then stepped back so as to allow the beam to reveal the work in its entirety.

Its sheer size was overwhelming; it reached from one side of the room to the other—easily twelve feet—and rose from floor level to the ceiling—at least seven feet.

Even though he knew time was slipping away, Martin was so stunned by the sight he couldn’t move for several moments.

The painting possessed a dark edginess echoing movements of the past—social realism, German expressionism, Dadaism, surrealism, even a touch of the more recent imagists—yet no one style conflicted with the others; its identity came from an effortless fusion into something that, Martin thought—if it could be labeled at all—might be called “Cumulativism”. It beckoned to him, demanded his awe, his closeness, but as he neared it, at the moment of communion, the faces within seemed to withdraw, distancing themselves from him. Soft shadows of sadness bled from each corner into the center of the painting, creating a disquieting rippling effect, the emotional residue of a broken and embittered heart, searching for a place of healing in a universe that ultimately had no use for either sadness or redemption.

It was the most astonishing thing he had ever seen.

He couldn’t make out the landscape for the crowd of near-life-sized people in the foreground; instead, their shapes seemed to almost be the landscape, with heads in place of hills. Forty faces—he counted them—stared out, their expressions ranging from benevolent acceptance to fury so white-hot you could feel it radiating outward to sear the skin. The faces in front were the most detailed, yet their expressions were the most placid. The faces behind grew less developed the farther back they appeared—many were little more than a few splotches—yet their expressions were instantly recognizable. These faces were thoughtful, their eyes alive: there was a man dressed in an old leather coat, his darkly lustrous face accented by an even darker beard as he stared downward and a little to the right, a shepherd’s cap held in his wind-burnt hands, a man of hushed, gentle resignation, his dignity whispering of well-earned rest, a warm fire waiting at home, and the rich scent of bread baking in the kitchen; behind him stood an exquisite woman in a golden dress that fluttered gently in the breeze, and though her back was turned forward and you saw her face only in profile, it was easy to see the care she took before presenting herself to the world, her delicate hands the ghost of an errant wish—that a woman might never grow old, never lose the radiance that kissed her face when a suitor came to call, never see her beauty dissolve little by little in the unflattering sunlight of each morning, and never know a day when the scent of fresh roses from an admirer did not fill her rooms; next to her stood a bittersweet girl with long dark hair tumbling about her shoulders, her face seemingly held in a velvet cradle, a hand covering her mouth, eyes with sad dark places around them that told you she often hid behind a scrim of gaiety to conceal a lonely heart; she was every night you sat isolated and alone, wishing for the warm hand of a lover to hold in your own as autumn dimmed into winter and youth turned to look at you over its shoulder and smile farewell.

A single, hard, unnoticed tear spilled from Martin’s eye, trailing down his cheek.

“‘To take into the air my quiet breath . . .’” he whispered. “‘To cease upon the midnight with no pain . . . .’”

Above all these face was an agate sky that warned of the coming storm; a cold veil of rain approached from the upper right side, a sprinkle becoming mist becoming a terrible cloud formation that erupted across the top of the scene to cover nearly one-fifth of the entire painting: swirling black tinged with grey and purple, its mass thinning somewhat as it spread outward to form the shadow of a great, winged creature.

Martin shook himself from a sudden chill, stepped back once more, then gave the painting one last look.

“Okay,” he whispered to the emptiness. “I found the painting. Now where’s the goddamn key?”

A voice behind him said, “‘The world is a stone, soldier . . .’”

Martin whirled around to find himself once again face to face with the six-year-old boy he’d once been. “Jesus Christ, scare me to death, why don’t you?”

“Sorry.”

“What are you doing here, any—?”

You’ll know the key when you find it—or when it finds you.

Martin smiled. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the key!”

The little boy shook his head.

Martin’s heart sank. “Then why are you here?”

“‘The world is a stone, soldier . . .’” “You already said that; repeating it doesn’t help me.” “You have to remember.” “Remember what?”

The little boy shook his head and released one those deeply dramatic sighs of which only children are capable, then said: “When you bought him that hot dog and soda that day, you said that you’d once been a writer. He asked what kind of stuff you wrote and you told him stories and books and a few—”

“. . . a few lousy poems,” said Martin. “Yeah . . . I think I remember saying something like that.”

“He said that there was no such thing as a lousy poem, only lousy poets.”

Martin laughed. “That’s right! I remember really liking that line.”

The little boy nodded. “You said you might use that sometime, and he said you could have it . . . for the price of a poem.”

Something in the back of Martin’s mind was stirring beneath its covers. “Yeah . . . that’s right . . . that’s what he said.”

“And you recited one for him, and he loved it. He loved it so much that it gave him an idea.” The boy nodded toward the painting. “He painted that because of you, because of the poem you recited to him. You were the inspiration.

“You’ve forgotten too many of the good things, Martin. You only see your mistakes.

“The admission to the Midnight Museum is that poem. That’s the key. It was one of the many good things about yourself that you’ve forgotten.”

Martin knelt down in front of the boy. “Where did you come from? Did Bob or Jerry send you?”

The little boy shook his head.

“Then how did you get here?”

“With you. I’ve always been with you. You just forgot about me. I got out the other night, after you took the first bunch of pills. I didn’t want to die just because you did. Dumb bunny.”

“I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

The little boy reached out and put his hand on Martin’s shoulder. “You don’t have to be sorry about anything, not anymore.”

“Why?”

“Because Mom and Dad still love you, they always did and always will, and because . . .‘The world is a stone, soldier . . .’”

The thing stirring in Martin’s brain threw back the covers, reached out, and turned on the light.

Martin rose slowly to his feet and turned to face the painting.

“‘The world is a stone, soldier,’” he said. “‘It holds no thought of long brown girls, dead gulls, vanishing town. The great clock with its golden face, face-down; Beneath these cloud-ribbed skies where stars would rot

if stars were men. No alien gods remain along the

boulevards . . .’”

In the painting, the sky began to brighten ever so slowly, allowing beams of broken sunlight to pierce the clouds and fall on the faces of the people gathered below, the faces, Martin now realized, of other Substruo.

He moved a little closer as the light glided across more faces, and a few of those faces closed their eyes and turned up toward the glow.

Martin continued reciting the next stanza, amazed that he was remembering any of this slight, forgettable bit of verse that he’d written a full decade before meeting Bob that day: “‘In this bleak land Civic ghosts dissemble. The street lamps stand, delinquent angels weeping in the rain.’”

The people in the painting began to move; some toward the back, some to the side, others merely turning to the left or right where they stood, creating an opening, revealing a path.

“‘There are countries untroubled by the seas,’” whispered Martin.

The path was wider, clearer now. A few of the people were looking right at him, smiling; the man with the shepherd’s cap even lifted his hand to wave Martin closer.

“‘There are greener worlds, soldier, and other skies; music in the square, women under flowered trees, and summer slides into soft decay, leaf unto leaf . . .’” The woman in the golden dress, who before had stood in profile, now directly faced Martin, and began to offer her hand. Martin reached out and took hold; it was a delicate hand, satin-gloved, exquisitely feminine, and flooded his arm with warmth.

“‘There are always tomorrows, soldier, and other battles done; this music in the square, these women under flowered trees, as summer slides into soft decay, leaf unto leaf; And larks into falcons rise from the yellow sleeves of eternal day.’” Her sudden soft smile was a song his heart had forgotten, and now remembered, could no longer contain. He stepped in among them.

The shepherd laughed; the girls smiled; the older ones, hunched and slow but not beaten, never beaten, grasped his arm and bid him welcome, bade him thanks.

“I would walk with you a ways,” said the woman whose hand held his, “if you would like.”

Martin could barely find his voice. “Yes . . . I’d like that very much.”

He turned and looked down the path, back out into the cold ruined room where his six-year-old self was still standing.

The little boy lifted his hand and waved.

Martin said: “You’re a fine little fellow.”

“And you are a good and decent man,” replied the boy. “Someday you’ll know that. I’ll keep the door open for you as long as I can.

“Now go stop that miserable fucker in his tracks.”

The woman laughed and pulled Martin away, leading him into a field of trees whose bright blue leaves formed upturned faces, and beneath whose shade deeper shadows danced.

Coming to a stop, the woman turned Martin to face her and kissed him firmly on the lips. “Just so you know, his favorite book was Alice in Wonderland.” Martin looked at the dancing shadows, that had now stopped, forming a deep, dark circle beneath the trees. “Have you your weapon, still?” asked the woman. Martin shook the crowbar from his sleeve and held it up.

“‘There are always tomorrows, soldier, and other battles done,’” said the woman, kissing Martin once again. “Might I suggest you remember the old rule of tuck-and-roll?”

“What are—?”

He never finished the question, because Gold Dress gave him a playful push backward, and before he could regain his balance to stop it, he spun around and was falling down the hole made by the stilled dancing shadows.

I’m finally flying, he thought as he dropped downward, arms out at his sides, legs behind him.

It took perhaps fifteen seconds for him to reach the floor, and by then he had pulled himself into a ball, legs bent to lessen the severity of the landing, and when he hit, he hit hard, but he remembered to tuck-and-roll, and when he came up again, when he stood, his entire body still thrumming with the echoed impact of the landing (pain, yes, no doubt about that, but muffled, waning), he took only three seconds to steady himself and pull in a deep breath before running forward, toward the marbled doorway only a few dozen yards away, the magnificent marble doorway into whose columns were carved whimsical figures of monkeys, serpents, lions, butterflies, Hindu- and Greek-inspired deities, and figures who bore so close a resemblance to the circus Tumblesands Martin almost expected them to step forward and take a bow.

The entablature above the doorway proclaimed:

THE MIDNIGHT MUSEUM

Afternoon Tours Available

“Funny,” he said, then—smacking the crowbar against his hand to assure himself of its weight and power—stepped through.

The floor was a highly-polished chessboard of alternating black-and-white marble tiles whose configuration, coupled with the incredible height of the ceiling, gave the interior an almost-dizzying forced perspective, but despite the bright tract lighting, the large wall-mounted video monitors (all of which were currently displaying electronic snow), and the enormous oval skylight set into the center of the cavernous ceiling, it was a dim-spirited place, a terrible place, a place where gigantic tumors squatted in fossilized silence, where syphilitic skulls stared out from glass cases, and where a pair of tubercular torsos encases in bulky Lucite squares sat atop short ersatz-Roman columns, one on each side of the entrance to the innumerable displays—among which a quick glance would find: infected eyes; rows of malformed infants in chemical-filled Plexiglas coffins; sliced cross-sections of human faces; a baby without sexual organs; a colon grown to seven times normal size; a plaster cast of Siamese twins, made after death, with armpit hairs in the casting; a special display centering around a nameless man who died in 1897 when the tissue connecting his muscles mutated torturously into bone; something called “The Soap Lady”—a body buried in soil possessing rare properties that turned her corpse into adipocere, her mouth open as if she’d died calling out the name of some long-forgotten love; the skeletons of an eight-foot giant and a three-foot dwarf (The remains of an old magic man and his ungrateful apprentice? Martin wondered); and the obscene death-mask of a little boy whose grotesque facial cleft had turned him into a human gargoyle. No sound. No movement. Death inviting the viewer to pause, so as to better esteem the agonizing poetry of its more creative handiwork.

Unable to absorb all of it at once, Martin focused his eyes straight ahead, on the sign reading Rights of Memory.

He swallowed, took a deep breath, and moved toward it.

Upon entering, the first thing he saw were rows upon rows of bookshelves crammed to overflowing with ancient volumes that reached from the floor to the ceiling.

The books were all three times the size of any encyclopedia he’d ever seen; stamped in gold on their spines were words and sigils he didn’t understand. The smell of mildew wafting down from their pages filled the air, even though only a few of them lay open, face-down, on nearby reading tables.

So Gash has been passing the time with a little light reading.

The video monitors came on, and Martin immediately jumped behind one of the reading tables.

Oh, some hero-to-the-rescue you are, jackass! First little sound and you’re scrambling for cover.

After the better part of a minute with Gash still a no-show, Martin realized that the monitors must be on some kind of automatic timer—or what passed for such a thing in this place.

He moved from behind the table in slow increments, not fully rising to his feet until he was certain company wasn’t coming.

Each screen was displaying a different image: Spring-greened fields; animals giving birth; scenes of war that shook and jerked from side to side because whoever was holding the camera couldn’t keep it still; an empty playground; a pair of gloves lying on a sand dune in the moonlight; silently screaming faces; children playing; old folks

(Bob, lying in that room in the Taft . . . no, he wasn’t among them)

dying; homeless ones begging for money from passing strangers; couples making love; people in uniforms torturing prisoners; babies being murdered by their parents; priests celebrating Mass; bright fireworks over rivers; assassinations; roses in bloom; wedding photographs; mangled bodies in bomb-blasted streets—

—Martin had to look away, shaking his head to clear it of the images.

Gripping the crowbar with both hands, he moved toward the center of the room, turning in slow circles as he did, not giving anything a chance to sneak up from behind.

The video monitors blinked, then returned to their previous state of silent electronic snow.

Overhead, something moved.

Martin looked up and saw what appeared to be a large, pulsating, organic black sac hanging from between two of the monitors. A thin red tube ran down from its center, dividing into several more that branched out in all directions like veins or exposed nerves.

He held his breath, then looked down at his feet.

The floor itself—already dizzying when stilled—was pulsing in rhythm with the sac overhead, as if the entire structure was a living thing, a single entity composed of several disparate parts, each one somehow alive—but not in the same way Martin himself was alive; this level of existence (if it could be called that) more resembled that of someone in REM sleep, or a hospital patient deep in a coma.

It took a moment for the impact of this to register, and when it did, Martin smiled.

Gash was sleeping again; maybe just a quick little nap, forty winks before finishing the job, but . . . yeah; asleep once more.

Stepping past a glass case containing something that looked like a giant insect carapace with angel’s wings, Martin moved toward a pile of bodies (Christ, how he hoped they were just life-sized and –like statues), all of which had been set aflame at some point in the past: they had melted in places, fusing together into a grotesque mass of entwined limbs and bloated flesh that encircled a glass case in the middle. At various points, a few of the red “veins” from the ceiling sac entered the mass through moist, puckered knots.

But this still wasn’t the worst of it.

Behind the mass and the glass case they encircled, the first in a series of naked human figures hung upside-down by its shackled ankles, swinging back and forth at the end of a rusted chain.

It wore Bob’s face, broken with grief, darkened by terror.

In the center of its chest was a moist, round, bloody hole.

It’s not him; remember that.

Easier said than done, because each succeeding figure not only shared Bob’s face and the gaping bloody chasm in the center of his chest, but built upon his original expression of grief and terror, his horror more defined, enabling Martin to witness the perverted evolution of his anguish: rage, euphoria, self-loathing, ecstasy, confusion, pride, and—on the final, hideously-realized figure—helpless resignation. This last image of Bob was looking directly at something massive that lay

(slept?)

under a gigantic tarpaulin at the farthest side of the room.

Martin thought: Oh, fuck me . . .

Because he knew what was under there.

(Make damn sure he doesn’t spot you—and more important than that, make sure you don’t see him. It, actually. Trust me on this: you lay eyes on that thing, you’d sooner rip them out of their sockets than have to look at it a second time.)

“Don’t freeze-up now, Dipshit,” he whispered to himself. “You got this far.”

He turned toward the body-heap once again, this time looking at the display in the center.

Even this far away, Martin could easily make out the words on the plaque:

As Was, As Is

This baby had no cranium, and was nestled on a bed of cotton in the large glass case filled with what he assumed was formaldehyde; whatever it was, years of soaking in the chemical had turned the baby’s skin a ghostly white. It sat in a semi-upright position, legs bent at the knees, feet horizontal, arms thrust straight out from the elbows as if resting on the arms of a chair: a wise old sage upon his throne, waiting on a lonely mountaintop for the truth-seekers to arrive.

Stepping as lightly as he could (the fucking floor would not stop pulsing), Martin began to climb the body-heap, forcing himself to ignore the elastic, spongy softness of each face or torso he stepped on.

It didn’t help that he could fully use only one hand to assist his climb, the other busy gripping the crowbar.

Even though it took him only a minute to reach the top, to Martin it felt like an hour; by the time he was able to fully stand before the display, he was drenched in sweat, his heart trip-hammering in his chest as if trying to squirt through his rib cage.

He stared down at the malformed baby. “Let me ask you something, little man As-Was,” he whispered between gulps of air. “Could this be just a tad more ominous? I mean, seriously. Throw in some cobwebs and a cameo by Boris Karloff, and we’d have the serious makings.”

Keep joking, he told himself. As long as you can make with the smartasseries, you won’t have to think about what’s under that tarpaulin or admit how goddamn you-should-pardon-the-expression scared you are.

Leaning closer to the case, Martin said, “I take it from the notable lack of enthusiasm that you’re more of a Vincent Price man, am I right? I am right, aren’t I?”

As-Was made no reply. Extra cotton had been packed behind its neck and around its shoulders to prevent its head from lolling forward or around; only close scrutiny revealed the clear, thin wire that ran down from the lid of the case, snaking through the dense layers of cotton to attach itself—via a small silver hook—to a catch protruding from the base of his skull.

Despite his rising anxiety (it wasn’t quite outright terror yet, but it was probably within walking distance of the neighborhood), Martin couldn’t resist reaching out with his free hand and giving the case a small but solid shake, if for no other reason than to re-affirm that he was really here. The formaldehyde rippled once, twice, more, each rising disturbance pattern expanding into the one above and below it, creating hybrid ripples that looked like rolling lines of static on an old television screen, and as each series of ripples broke against the surface, As-Was began moving in response to the mild turbulence: first a finger—up, then down, tapping in rhythmic thoughtfulness, a smooth liquid reflex; then a hand—side to side, waving as if it were trying to attract someone’s attention; then an arm—shuddering; then both arms; and, finally, the head—up-down, up-down, the wise old sage nodding in sympathy as the truth-seekers spoke of their dilemma.

Here in the Midnight Museum, moments became the real becoming dreams becoming now and in a blink were gone: then.

The liquid in the case stilled.

As-Was’s bobbing head lolled forward, chin resting against its chest.

The nightclouds retreated, allowing the moonlight to spill through the skylight and grow brighter against the baby’s pallid features. Slanted shadows dissolved. No more sound, save for the soft, ragged rasp of Martin’s breathing. No further movement. Death moving on to busy itself with the weaker living who did not understand the aesthetic of its efforts.

Martin stepped back, readying himself to raise the crowbar and do what he’d come here to do, but froze when all the video monitors surrounding him simultaneously flickered back to life.

Each screen displayed the same image: Bob, as he was right now, as he was at this very second, lying on his shabby bed in his even shabbier room, struggling for every breath. The image was silent and chilly and ashen and dead, save for the diffuse light that shone down from the icy edge of a dispassionate Heaven.

“Oh, Christ,” said Martin, the words emerging somewhere between a nauseous choke and strangled sob.

He watched on-screen as Bob involuntarily opened his mouth, gasping for air; even though there was no sound, Martin thought he could hear Bob’s scream, silent and gnarled and endless: Do it, for chrissakes! In the Midnight Museum, the baby’s mouth opened, releasing a bubble of air that had not been in its lungs a moment before. Bob’s right hand twitched. As did the baby’s.

Bob’s eyelids quivered, then stilled as he released another breath, sinking further into himself and the living death of his affliction.

The baby’s eyelids also quivered, but then snapped open, revealing the burnished, obsidian-black marbles that had been used to replace its eyes. It smiled up at Martin, revealing starched, toothless gums.

“Now or never,” it whispered in a voice clogged with thick liquid age.

Before Martin could react, As-Was reached behind its head with one fishbelly-flesh arm and yanked the hook from the catch in the back of its skull—

—and with unexpected force kicked its feet against the glass, spiderwebbing a crack from which liquid squittered outward as it pressed its arms against the sides of the case to gain more balance before kicking again and then screaming—

—but Martin was ready now, stepping sideways and gripping the crowbar in both hands, swinging it farther back and higher, determined to come down with all the power he had, do it all in one or two massive blows, he could do it, he knew he could, he had to—

—As-Was slammed his feet against the glass once more, heels-first this time, the crack widening as small chunks of glass spit outward, the front of the case pissing an arc of formaldehyde that hit Martin in the belly, soaking his shirt and pants, pooling at his feet, and with one quick last look at Bob’s dying face on the monitors, he swung the crowbar with all he had, connecting with the crack and shattering the front of the case, the liquid vomiting out, soaking him, running in rivulets down the heap of bodies upon which he was standing—

—As-Was tumbled forward, spitting up, then caterwauling at the top of his lungs just like any baby would when it woke up at three in the morning and Mommy and Daddy weren’t there in the dark and it was hungry—

—and Martin squatted down like a baseball catcher and scooped As-Was into the crook of his free arm, his other hand still gripping the crowbar, and this little son-of-a-bitch was slick, slippery, and would not hold still, would not stop kicking, would not give it a rest with the spitting-up but that wasn’t going to stop him, no way, because he’d done it he’d actually for the first time in his life done something that he thought mattered and no squalling little black-eyed flat-top monstrosity was going to screw this up for him—

—and just as he spun around and began to slide down the heap ass-first like a kid with a sled on a snowy hill he saw something from the corner of his eye that kicked his anxiety right in the parts and turned it into outright terror—

—the tarpaulin in the far corner lay flat on the floor.

Not just flat—neatly folded.

You son-of-a-bitch! thought Martin.

He’d been tricked.

Gash had never been asleep, he’d only wanted Martin to think he was asleep, had probably been chuckling to himself while folding the tarpaulin as Martin smashed the case and fought against the rush of formaldehyde and As-Was kicking his chest and screaming and spitting up . . .

Martin hit the floor and slid forward a few yards, propelled not only by the angle of the descent from the body-heap but because the liquid from the case had continued running forward, creating a slick little river across the floor, and by the time he was able to stop scuttling and sliding around and finally get to his feet, two enormous, heavy thumps caused everything above, below, and around him to shudder just as an equally enormous shadow rose up to block out most of the light.

(Don’t look, don’t look, for the love of God whatever you do, don’t look)

Martin hunched forward and ran toward the entrance, As-Was still kicking and clawing and screaming against his chest, and then the floor shook again as Gash took two more

(Simon says take two)

giant steps, only now he was stomping because the bookshelves began to wobble and tilt, raining down dozens of heavy volumes, one of them coming so close to crushing Martin’s skull the corner of its cover tore a small section from the top of his ear, but he kept running, and there it was, there was the entrance, and then he was through and moving forward to where he could see a circle of light spilling down from—

—“Oh, shit!” said Martin—

—from the hole above, from the hole above that it had taken him fifteen seconds to fall through, from the hole above that there was no goddamn way he could reach, even if he didn’t suck at basketball no way could he jump that high, smooth move, Einstein, you got this far and God knows we’re all more than a little shocked by that, warn us next time, will you, but you know what, here’s a question, a real brain-teaser, a little mental exercise for all you over-the-hill glorified janitors out there: why do you always start waxing the floor in the toilet stall?

Everything was shaking apart as Gash continued stomping forward.

(don’tlookdon’tlookdon’tdon’tlook)

Give up?

Answer: because you don’t want to wax yourself into a corner. The difference between a good plan and a not-so-good plan is that a good plan usually includes a way out. Martin looked up and saw all the faces from the painting encircling the way out, peering down. “I don’t suppose any of you have something like a rope?” Their faces told him everything he needed to know.

Martin looked down at the floor and released his breath. If I had a razor, I’d probably open a vein right about—

—then it hit him.

A vein.

The ceiling sac.

Not giving himself time for second thoughts, he turned, hunched down, and ran back into the museum, his eyes focused on the veins running down from the sac and not, repeat not on the foot the size of a couch that had just slammed down on the floor a few yards away from him, and when Martin reached the nearest vein he swung up and out with the crowbar, severing it near floor and loosing a spray of bright blood that geysered in all directions as the vein snapped and whipped around like a live electrical wire, and he had maybe five seconds to grab hold of it and hope he could pull it loose from the sac and that meant either dropping As-Was or the crowbar, and it really wasn’t much of a choice, so it was good-bye crowbar, and he dropped it, grabbed the whip-curling end of the severed vein and somehow managed to twist it around his wrist, grabbing onto it and pulling with everything he had.

From deep inside the core of the sac, something gurgled, then screamed.

Martin moved backward, toward the entrance, pulling, pulling, trying to keep his balance on the blood-slicked floor as the screaming from inside the sac grew louder, ragged, and more intense, damn near deafening him, but then the other end of the vein came loose with a wet, stubborn rip and fell limply to the floor.

Damn thing was strong. Chalk one up for the janitor. He turned to run out— —but Gash was having none of that. And that’s when Martin made his only mistake. He didn’t look away when the thing stepped into the path of his escape.

Gash walked on tree-thick legs that crawled with living sinew on the surface. Where his groin should have been was a bloated, black, seeping cluster of tumors. His skin—if it could be called that—had the jagged, ferromagnesian texture of andesine, though not quite as dark. His arms were held in place like prostheses by moldy leather straps that formed an X across his chest. A curved section of copper tubing snaked from the tumors of his groin to a glass container strapped to his hip. With each heavy, tormented step he took, the tube discharged into the container a thick, reddish-brown liquid full of wriggling ebony chunks.

Gash sucked these excretions into his mouth through a long copper straw.

He looked at Martin and smiled, his pulverized lips squirming over rotted needle-teeth caked with loose bits of flesh and still-fresh strands of wet muscle. He spoke in a voice clogged with phlegm, putrescence, and piss.

“I think you have something that belongs to me.”

Close your eyes and just run, just run, he can’t move that fast, he’s too fucking enormous, too heavy, too clumsy.

But Martin couldn’t do it.

Gash leaned down, the shadows cast by his soldier’s helmet spreading away from his bloodshot, bulging eyes, neither of which was where it was supposed to be. “No?” he said. “Then maybe a trade?” Martin at last found his voice. “You don’t have a goddamn thing I want.” Gash’s smiled grew even more hideous. “I think I do.”

He reached down with both arms and thrust his talon-like hands deep into the center of clustered tumors, digging around inside, making a sound like a child working to create a stack of mud pies. Finding what he’d been looking for, he pulled out his hands in a slop of pus and excrement, raising the treasures up into light, then licking the pink-and-white cancerous afterbirth from each figure before spreading wide his arms so Martin could clearly see. In his right hand, Gash held Martin’s father. In his left, Martin’s mother. “I’ll give them back,” said Gash, his diseased voice sounding as bright and honest as something so corrupt could sound. Then he shook them a little; enough to make each of them shriek in agony.

“It hurts so much, Martin,” said his father. “Oh, God, why didn’t I just do what you and Mom wanted and let them take the bastard out of me?” Martin began shaking, from head to heel he was shaking, losing his hold on both the vein and As-Was. “So . . . what do you say?” hissed Gash, thin strings of pinkish slobber dribbling from his lower lip. Martin said nothing.

“So you’re gonna let us down again?” said his father, his voice taking on that same cold anger that had been so present in his speech the last few weeks of his life. “I thought you’d at least make us proud this one time, this one goddamn lousy time.”

“Please, honey,” Mom pleaded. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but you were always such a good boy. Please do this one thing for us, Marty. Please?”

And just like that, the brief moment of uncertainty that had nearly cracked his resolve became a cold ball of anger.

“Nice try,” he said to Gash. “But she never once called me ‘Marty.’ Her nickname for me was ‘Zeke.’

“You’re not only ugly, you’re obvious and sloppy.”

And with that, Martin made three quick movements that were so fast they might as well have been a single motion: he let go of the vein, spun around and downward to grab the crowbar, and threw it toward Gash; it shot straight out, a steel arrow, and buried three-quarters of its length in the center of the tumor cluster.

Gash threw back his head and screamed, dropping the lifeless and now-featureless figures, his hands fumbling down to find and remove the crowbar, and that was all the opening Martin needed; grabbing the end of the vein again and tightening his hold on As-Was, he ran straight out, right underneath Gash’s parted legs, reaching the hole a full ten seconds before Gash yanked out the crowbar and turned, still slobbering in pain, and started toward him, half-stomping, half-limping.

Martin threw the end of the vein upward with all the force he could muster; the shepherd caught it on the first try, and within seconds most of the people from the painting had lined up above, each grabbing a section. Below, Martin tightened the other end around his wrist and arm, gripping the slack with his fist. “Pull!” They did, and it worked, but it was slow going; they slipped once, almost dropping him back down, but caught it in time. Meanwhile, Gash was rallying, gaining strength and speed, closing the distance.

Martin shouted: “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!”

Gash saw that Martin was almost to the surface, let out a massive roar—

—and unfurled his hideous wings, taking flight, demolishing the walls, the bookshelves, and most of the displays as he soared forward, talon-hands thrust out, barreling toward Martin and making a final push—

—as the people from the painting gave one last, massive, powerful yank, pulling Martin through the hole and to the surface.

“Thank you,” he said, and that was all the time he was going to have, because now the first of Gash’s hands shot up through the hole, talons impaling the shepherd through his chest and face.

Martin ran.

Just ahead, dim and ruined and depressing, he saw the room where his six-year-old self still held open the doorway, and damn if that decrepit room wasn’t the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life.

Behind him, the people screamed. Something ripped. Something else was pulled apart with moist, shredding sounds.

And then Gash’s scream filled the air.

Doubling his speed, Martin chanced one look behind him and saw something that would haunt his dreams off and on for the rest of his life: Gash’s torso, arms, and wings were free of the hole, and he was slaughtering everyone within reach.

Oh, God, please forgive me, all of you, please forgive me . . .

. . . and just before he reached the doorway, Golden Dress appeared from behind a tree and had just enough time to shout “This is not your doing!” before Martin released a scream of his own and leapt into the air, passing through the doorway, tossing As-Was forward, and slamming to the floor beyond—but remembering to tuck-and-roll, which is probably the only thing that prevented him from snapping his neck.

He saw Gash rise high in the background of the painting.

Martin looked around for something with which to destroy As-Was, found nothing, but then the little boy who’d once been him shouted, “Here!” and tossed the flashlight to him, the wonderful, big, long, heavy flashlight, and Martin raised it above his head, readying to swing down—

—except As-Was had changed; no longer a ghostly white deformed monstrosity, but a soft, pink-skinned, chubby newborn with perfect hands, feet, face, head . . . and the loveliest blue eyes. It looked up at Martin and gave a gurgling giggle. “What the . . . ?” The baby squealed with delight, shaking its arms and kicking its legs, its smile wide, toothless, radiant. Martin looked from the baby to the painting. Gash was free of the hole, crouching down, unfurling his wings once again, readying to take flight. Below Martin, the baby’s face changed into an expression of perfect newborn love.

He felt his arm slowly start to drop, then just as quickly remembered Jerry’s warning: don’t let your heart or hand be swayed by its appearance, that’s what Gash wants.

Martin closed his eyes, turned the baby’s head to the side, and smashed its skull into pulp with three powerful strikes. His ears filled with the sound of a melon hitting the pavement after being dropped from a great height, and he almost threw up, but then a great jolt like an electric shock shot up his arm, throwing him back against the wall and flipping the flashlight through one of the shattered windows.

The baby jerked and spasmed, thrashing against an ugly light engulfing its body, causing it to flicker and sizzle and—very quickly, at the end—fold in on itself like a film negative set on fire and implode into nothing.

At the same moment, the painting on the wall rippled and bulged, pushing outward like a bas-relief work before deflating, flattening out . . . and returning to the way it had been: a field of faces, looking out at something only they could see.

Martin sat up, pulling his knees to his chest and folding his arm around them.

“You did it,” said the little boy.

Martin lifted a hand and waved him away: not yet, please, just . . . not yet. “You’re not finished.” “I know . . .” “You gotta—”

“I know!” And as much as seeing the false images of his parents had nearly shattered him for good, what he had to do next was worse.

Burn the painting, the letter had said.

Burn it right away and get the hell out.

Martin staggered to his feet and grabbed the box of magazines and newspapers and painting supplies, scattering the papers and opening the jar of kerosene that had been used to clean the paint brushes. He poured the liquid over the papers, onto the floor, and splashed the remainder onto the wall and the painting. Pulling his lighter from his pocket and flicking open the lid, Martin looked at the little boy and said, “You need to leave.” “I know. I’ll be going with you. If you want me to.” “That would be nice, yes.”

The little boy smiled. “Cool.”

Martin took a deep breath, struck up the flame, took one last look at the painting that no one else but him had ever seen or would remember, then tossed the lighter into the papers and, per Jerry’s instructions, ran like hell.

It took less than three minutes before the rooms were engulfed in flames.

Five minutes later, the entire second floor was ablaze.

In the end, it became a four-alarm fire that razed the entire building. Firefighters fought for nearly six hours to get it under control, finally extinguishing the last remnants of the conflagration around 6:45 a.m.

By then Martin had made an anonymous 911 phone call about the body in room 401 of the Taft, hightailed it back to his apartment, taken a shower, put on clean clothes, and applied fresh peroxide and bandages to his various wounds.

Then he sat on his couch and waited.

They came for him at 7:30. The officer pounded on the door twice, then shouted: “Martin Tyler, this is the police. Open up now.” Martin complied. The officer pushed him back into the room, was joined by his partner, and they were joined by Barbara Hayes.

“What the hell did you think you’d accomplish by running out like that?” “You wouldn’t believe me,” said Martin as the officers cuffed his hands behind his back. Dr. Hayes looked at him and shook her head. “I’m sorry it has to be this way, Martin, but there are rules.” “I know.” He was alive. He had done it.

Damn had he done it!

“How irked is Ethel?” he asked as they led him out to the police cruiser.

“Oh, you’ll be finding out soon enough, I think,” said Dr. Hayes.

After the officers had gotten Martin safely into the back seat, Dr. Hayes leaned down and said, “There are consequences for certain actions, Martin. You’re not being charged with any crime, but you just bought yourself the entire ten days at The Center.”

“I figured.”

She looked as if she were going to chew him out some more, but then her eyes softened, her face filling with something . . . something . . . not her.

“There will be other circuses for you, Dipshit,” she said in a voice that could only have been Bob’s—because it wasn’t Jerry’s, and it sure as hell wasn’t hers. “There will be cotton candy and funnel cakes and calliope music. There are always tomorrows, soldier, and other battles done; music in the square, women under flowered trees, as summer slides into soft decay, leaf unto leaf . . .”

Then she stopped, blinked, and gave her head a little shake before looking at Martin again. “You screw up, you deal with the consequences. That’s life.”

“Yeah,” said Martin, barely able to contain himself. “It sure is, isn’t it?”

The cruiser pulled away, taking him back to Buzzland.

Martin looked out the window at the morning world. The sun broke through the heavy thick clouds still lingering from the downtown fire, shining directly into Martin’s eyes.

And larks into falcons rise

from the yellow sleeves of eternal day.

He wished peace to Bob, bade the Substruo much luck, and sent his parents his love.

A new day, a new world. Yet again.

And again.

And again.

The yellow sleeves of eternal day, he thought.

Bring it on.

“Well it’s a winding highway that never seems to end…”

—Rory Gallagher, “Lonesome Highway”

“…sometimes the bodies leak.”

I looked over at the man driving the meat wagon in which I was currently a court-required passenger and said, ever the fellow armed with a witty retort: “Huh?”

The driver—a fifty-something guy named Fred Dobbs (I’m not kidding; just like the character Bogart played in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, swear to God), a man built like a walk-in freezer who was also a twenty-two-year veteran driver for the County Coroner’s Office—nodded his head and sighed as if empathizing, though he was trying hard to conceal a grin. “Yeah, whenever we get a call like this one—y’know, when the folks have been dead a day or two—sometimes you’re gonna find that the bodies have been laying in the bed or on the floor, and if the weather’s all hot and humid like it’s been and they ain’t got air-conditioning, the internal gasses build up a whole lot faster and then things start to strain and tear and rupture and the bodies, well…sometimes they leak when you move ‘em.” He cleared his throat, and when he spoke again his tone was much lighter, as if telling a joke: “I once had so much trouble trying to get this one old gal out of her bed—her bedsores were so bad that I thought her skin was gonna peel off and dump her guts right on my shoes—I finally just had to wrap her up in the sheets she’d died in before transferring her to the bag. If it’s bad, then we let the wizards in the doc’s office do the peeling. Our job is to just get in there and remove the bodies.”

“Which sometimes leak.”

Another nod: the teacher pleased that the student wasn’t as dim as he’d feared. “I’m not trying to make you sick or nothing, understand, but I figured maybe you ought to prepare yourself for the possibility.” He shrugged, honked the horn for reasons I‘d never know at someone or something I couldn’t see, then removed one of his hands from the steering wheel and flexed his fingers, the bones crackling like dry twigs on a campfire.

I reached out to turn down the radio; the news had been talking about a massive (what they called “…spectacular”) eight-car accident in Columbus on the I-71 loop last night that so far had left five people dead. The radio station had someone broadcasting live from the scene which still hadn’t been cleared. It appeared the accident had been caused when someone driving a Hummer cut across all four lanes without signaling and slammed into a Ford Gargantua or some other four-wheeled yuppie tank that in turn hit a semi...and I didn’t want to hear about it. There’s only so much death and destruction I can take when the sun is shining and there’s still the possibility of having a nice day.

“‘Course, now,” said Dobbs, “if the bodies’re on a rug or carpeting, that makes it a bit easier in some ways. If they’re leaking all over a rug, we just roll ‘em up in it and save the county the cost of a bag.”

“And if they’ve leaked onto the carpeting?” Pause for a moment and consider: how many people get to start their workday with conversations like this? Was I the luckiest guy on the planet, or what?

“Then we haul out the carpet cutters and…” He mimed scissoring around a body. “But then you’ve got the added problem of some extra weight if they’ve really been leaking, and especially if it’s shag carpeting.”

I shook my head. “Damn the shag carpeting!”

“Oh, you got that right. Me, I think that shit makes any room look like something that belongs in a porno movie—not that I’ve seen all that many pornos, you understand, it’s just there’s something kinda…I dunno…sleazy and tacky about it.”

Gas-ruptured bodies and home decorating tips. With lunch still hours away. My life was an embarrassment of blessings.

I looked in the back of the wagon where a crate hand-labeled Retrieval Gear sat with its unlocked lid bouncing up and down every time we drove over a pot-hole. Symbolic thoughts of Pandora’s Box notwithstanding, the sight gave me the creeps, knowing as I did what was inside.

“Do you think we’ll have to use any of the science-fiction paraphernalia?”

Dobbs seriously considered this; I knew he was considering it seriously because the right side of his face knotted up as if he were having a stroke. “Hard to say. I kinda like putting on them HazMat suits myself. Scares the hell out of people and they keep outta your way. I used to feel silly wearing that stuff until the doc explained to me that dead, leaking bodies produce their own kind of toxic waste.” He looked at me and, for the first time that morning, outright smiled; there was a lot of genuine kindness it. “Don’t you worry none. If it’s bad, I’ll walk you through it. I know this ain’t exactly what you had in mind, and I may act like a royal horse’s ass most of the time—at least according to anyone who’s known me for more than twenty minutes—but I got sympathy.”

“You’ve had assistants like me before?”

He barked a loud laugh. “Hell, buddy, how do you think I got started on this job?” “You’re kidding?” “If I was kidding, don’t you think I’d try to come up with something funnier than that?” “Good point.”

He gave a short, sharp nod. “They got me same way as you. Had one too many before hitting the road one night and got stopped by Johnny Law. Since I’d drove an ambulance in Vietnam, judge figured that me and the meat wagon was a perfect community-service match.” He shrugged. “When my CS period was done, they offered me a permanent job.” He looked at me. “I actually kinda like it. Dead folks’re quiet, and I treat them with respect, even when I gotta roll ‘em up in sheets or rugs.”

“Or shag carpeting.”

He almost grinned. “I don’t make no jokes when I’m taking care of them. The doc likes that, likes my attitude, which is why I can get away with some of the shit that I pull, and whenever the city does its budget-cut dance, like they done here last quarter, I don’t have to worry about being left out of work.”

“That explains why I wasn’t given a choice in the matter.” My lawyer had told me that the courts try to match your own individual abilities to a county department where those abilities could best be used, which is why I’d expected to find myself cleaning offices—I’m a crew manager with a local janitorial company—but Judge Walter Banks was in a bad mood, evidently being pressured to assign more defendants to CS duty (damn the budget cuts!), and said he’d had his fill of “…people who think they’ve got the constitution of an ox so they don’t think twice about getting behind the wheel while under the influence…” and slapped me with both a five hundred dollar fine and one hundred hours of community service. My lawyer argued that, by law, I was to be given a choice of assignments; Judge Banks pointed out that the matter of being offered a choice was up to the discretion of the bench, and his particular bench felt that I damned well ought to be exposed to the dead in order to remind me of what could have happened had I hit a pedestrian or another car.

So I was assigned to the budget-strapped County Coroner’s Office. As Fred Dobbs’ assistant. In the passenger seat of the meat wagon. Talk about your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

“By the way,” I said, “I wasn’t drunk.”

“Of course you weren’t. And every man on Death Row is innocent.”

“I’m not trying to say I didn’t deserve my fine and the rest of it, I just want it made clear that I wasn’t drunk.”

“But you were half-snowed on Demerol.” “I’d gotten slammed with a migraine, I went to the ER, they gave me a shot—” “—and probably told you not to drive yourself home, isn’t that right?” I shrugged. “I thought I could make it home before the stuff really kicked in.” “Appears you were mistaken.”

I shrugged. “Hell, I was probably more dangerous driving to the hospital than I was driving home afterward.”

“Hate to be the one to break the news to you, but ‘under the influence’ don’t just refer to drinking, you know.”

“I do now.”

Dobbs sighed, rubbing one of his eyes. “You’re not gonna grouse like this for the next three weeks, are you? Unless it’s the sound of my own voice—which I find soothing and not without a certain musical quality—I kinda prefer to keep the conversation upbeat.” “I didn’t think I was complaining.” “Maybe not, but you were in the neighborhood. Speaking of—double-check the address for me, would you?” I picked up the clipboard and read the address to him. “You sure that’s right?” I offered the board to him; he stopped at a red light, took the board, and read it for himself. “Huh. That’s odd.” “What?”

“When Doc said East Main, I just kinda assumed it was the Taft Hotel. A lot of old folks and welfare cases wind up croaking there.”

I was familiar with the Taft; hell, anyone who’s lived here for more than a year knows about it. Once the most popular and expensive hotel in the city (named after William Howard Taft, who’d frequently stayed there), the last fifty years have seen it slide not-so-slowly into disrepair and decay, becoming nothing more than a glorified flop-house where those who’ve reached the end of their rope can crawl into poverty’s shadow and just give up. I’d assumed, as well, that the Taft was our destination, but it turned out we were headed for The Maples, an apartment building located two miles farther down East Main Street. The Maples’ residents were exclusively those elderly who still had their wits and retirement funds very much about them, and who were capable of living unsupervised. The Maples had good security, two doctors who lived on-site, an exercise room, a small chapel for Sunday services (some residents could not drive to church, so church came to them), and touted itself as the place to go for “…those seniors who can still do it on their own.” My grandmother had lived there until her death three years ago. Though I hadn’t set foot in its lobby since then, I had no reason to think that The Maples had suffered a fate similar to that of the Taft.

“Well,” said Dobbs, tossing down the clipboard as the light turned green, “I think we can rule out having to wear the spacesuits today.”

“Another thrill my life will have to do without.”

“I can feel your heartbreak all the way over here.”

I picked up the clipboard and looked at the sheet again. Under Caller’s Name, the space was blank.

“Aren’t they supposed to take the name of whoever calls it in?” I asked.

“Supposed to. The city’s supposed to have fixed all the potholes in the road, I’m supposed to weigh thirty-five pounds less than I do, and you’re supposed to be doing something else besides helping me. For that matter, this whole to-do was supposed to be handled by the book, but there ain’t been nothing about this has gone like it’s supposed to.”

“Meaning…?”

“Meaning that the doc was ordered by the mayor to examine the body hisownself. Doc doesn’t do that unless it’s a murder scene. Some old lady croaks in her apartment or a hotel room or at a nursing home, he sends one of his flunkies to look over the body and make the call to whatever funeral home is gonna be handling it.” He shook his head. “Not this time, no sir—this time the doc is ordered to do it personally. Mayor called him at home around five this morning, made the man get out of bed and go to it pronto. Doc was awfully tight-lipped about everything when he called me about the paperwork. Can’t say I’m too happy about being kept out of the loop.”

I remembered the call; it had come into the office just as I arrived for work. Dobbs had seemed confused as he looked at the forms left on his desk by the coroner—his end of the conversation consisted of, “Yes sir”, and “But why—?”, and “We’ll get on it right now.” It seemed like an awfully short exchange, considering what we were being sent out to do.

“So,” I said, “you’re supposed to be given more information than this?”

Dobbs nodded. “Yeah, but like I said, supposed to don’t always cut it. My guess is that one of the neighbors found her, told the building manager, and the manager called the police, cha-cha-cha—though why in hell the mayor got involved in this is beyond me. We can always ask whatever poor doofus the department left on the scene.”

“There’s gonna be a cop there?”

He nodded. “There’s always a cop there until we show up. Once foul play has been ruled out—and that’s already been done—what you’re left with is a body that’s just laying there stinking up the place and making everyone else nervous as hell. The law doesn’t require that an officer remain with the body until it’s picked up, but it ain’t exactly like Cedar Hill is Miami. They can spare an officer to corpse-sit for an hour or so.”

“I’ll bet that puts them in a cheery frame of mind.”

“Well, we’re gonna be finding out here in a minute or three.”

He drove the wagon into the Maples’ underground parking garage, expertly backing up so that the rear doors faced the freight elevator. We got out, unloaded and unfolded the collapsible gurney, grabbed the clipboard, Latex gloves for each of us, some scissors in case there was carpet work to be done, a couple of filter masks, and then, finally, the body bag.

Dobbs pressed the button, stood waiting for a moment, then shook his head and said, “Shit, I forgot, come on.” He started walking toward one of the parking garage doors that led into the lobby. “We have to get the elevator key from whoever’s manning the front desk.”

A set of glass doors opened into a warmly-lighted hallway with gold carpeting. On the walls hung bulletin boards with announcements and fliers tacked on them—Bingo Night, a pot-luck dinner at a local church, a lecture on living wills to be given at the library next week—as well as tastefully-framed prints of bowls of fruit, glamorous cityscapes, and myriad pastoral scenes. The furniture was clean and over-stuffed, the sofa pillows fluffy, the doilies and afghans perfectly folded and arranged, the whole setting designed to make you feel Right At Home. Smells of soup, cornbread, and meatloaf wafted from the cafeteria (The Maples Dining Room, as it was called by the sign), and the murmuring of the voices coming from the dining area suggested that it was filled with people who’d known each other for decades and could easily fall into the kind of familiar, friendly conversation that, between lifelong friends, becomes a kind of art unto itself.

Despite my increasing anxiety over what Fred and I were about to do, I slowed down, chancing a glance into the dining room, then stopped in my tracks entirely when I saw how everyone was dressed; the women wore either dresses or attractive suit outfits, while all the men were in slacks, jackets, and ties. I looked around, trying to see if there were anything posted about a dress code, and then just as quickly realized there wouldn’t be. This dining room was filled with people who remembered what it was like to treat mealtime as an event, every day. You dressed for meals not only out of respect for yourself, but for those with whom you would share the meal. Looking at the diners at that moment, I found myself wondering when, how, and why we’d come to view what was meant to be a sociable event of the day as just another excuse to grab some chow. Me, I frequently ate alone while wearing only my underwear, and the last time I’d had a dinner date, I’d worn khakis and a polo shirt, while my date arrived resplendent in her jeans, sandals, and OSU sweatshirt. Maybe we think it’s too old-fashioned or outright corny to dress like this for meals every day, but I’d’ve bet a week’s salary that every person in there had spent a lot of time deciding what to wear, then just as much time getting ready, and were probably enjoying their meal more than we of the jeans-and-T-shirted pizza nights could or would ever understand.

Somebody has to come up with these commonplace profundities. Might as well be me.

I smiled at an old woman who looked up and saw me looming in the doorway, then double-timed it to catch up with Dobbs, who was speaking to the receptionist at the front desk.

“…moved in about seven months ago,” the woman was saying, “and in all that time I don’t remember her ever having a single visitor.”

Dobbs gave his head a slow, sad shake. “That’s terrible,” he said, sounding like he meant it.

“One of the things we try to do here at The Maples is make sure that none of our residents feel isolated—it’s a terrible thing to be getting on in years and feel alone and lonely. We encourage everyone to interact with their neighbors—you know, sort of keep an eye on each other’s well-being so that no one feels ignored or forgotten…but Miss Driscoll never really allowed herself to become part of The Maples’ community. Oh, she’d be pleasant enough at meals and come to the weekly residents’ meetings, but aside from those times, she rarely left her room.”

Fred put on his stroke-face again, considering this. “And she never had any visitors?”

The woman behind the desk shook her head. “Not unless you count delivery people. And the thing is, she has—had—one of our bigger apartments. People who can afford anything on 7 or above are, well…comfortable, you know? They’ve been careful with their money. And—oh, God, this is going to sound so mean—our older residents who have a little money, they tend to get visitors. You know—family and friends who want to be left a little something in the will. Not to imply that they don’t love their grandma or grandpa or great aunt or whoever, but…oh, my; I’m really putting my foot in it here, aren’t I?”

“Not particularly,” said Dobbs.

The woman shook her head. “But not Miss Driscoll. Never a visitor, just the deliveries. I’ll bet she had two, three packages a week delivered to her. And some of those packages were fairly sizeable. On days when she had deliveries, she never came down for meals, just called the desk and said she wasn’t feeling well and could she have her meals sent to her room. We do that here, send meals to a resident’s room if they’re not feeling good enough to come down.”

“So she’d sometimes miss, what—three meals a week?”

“More, if it was a big delivery day.”

I couldn’t help but wonder why Dobbs was asking all these questions, unless it had something to do with what he’d told me about treating the dead with respect; maybe asking questions gave him some sense of what kind of person they had been while alive, and helped him decide how best to treat their remains. And maybe he was just a good, old-fashioned, first-class nib-shit. The woman behind the desk gave the freight elevator key to Dobbs. “Your gurney doesn’t squeak, does it?” “No, ma’am, it certainly does not.”

She nodded her head. “That’s good. I wouldn’t want the other residents to be disturbed by this—at least, not any more than they already have been.”

Dobbs thanked her for the key, turned to leave, then looked back. “You don’t by chance know who called this in, do you?”

“I know it wasn’t me, I just came on-duty a couple of hours ago, but…wait a second, please, I’ll check the phone log.” She called up something on her computer. “We have to keep records of who makes this kind of call, and when, all that good stuff.” She found was she was looking for, scrolled up, then down, then said, “Huh.”

“Something wrong?” asked Dobbs.

“There’s nothing here. If the call had been made from this desk or the manager’s office, it would be entered in the phone records. But…there’s nothing.”

“So maybe it was one of her neighbors?”

“Let me check.” She called up another file, then another, then one more. “Okay, this is odd.”

Dobbs gave me a quick look, then went back to the desk. “You’re not gonna actually make me ask, are you?”

The woman looked at him, then back at the computer screen as if she expected the information she’d been searching for to have suddenly appeared during the interim. “We have certain rules that all our residents abide by, and one of those rules is that in a situation like this, if they make the call to the police, they are to immediately inform us so that we can enter it into the records. When a resident passes away on the premises, it’s vital that we record every bit of information—not just for the family’s peace of mind, but to protect ourselves should any legal questions arise.” She looked back at Dobbs. “There’s nothing here about Miss Driscoll’s dying—and I mean nothing.” Her eyes narrowed. “This is lazy and thoughtless and inexcusable. We could get into a lot of trouble for this.”

“I won’t say anything,” said Dobbs. “But it looks like maybe this’d be a good time for you to enter some information, huh?”

“I…I don’t know any of the specifics, I wouldn’t know where—”

Dobbs handed her a photocopy of the forms given to him by the Coroner’s Office. “Most everything’s there; when we got the call, when the doc arrived here, the estimated time of death, the doc’s official conclusion, all of it.” She took the forms from him. “Do you always carry extra copies of this stuff?” “All the time. You’d be surprised how many people forget to write this stuff down when someone dies.” She pressed the forms against her chest and sighed with relief. “You’re a life-saver, you know that?” “All part of my famous curmudgeonly charm.” And with a wave, he left, gesturing me to follow. “Why all the questions?” I asked him as we re-entered the parking garage.

“You mean about Miss Driscoll?” He shrugged. “I dunno, it’s just something I do on jobs like this. Seems like, since I’m gonna be the last human contact their bodies will ever know outside of a funeral home, I ought to know a little something about them. It’s a terrible thing, to have your last human contact be with a total stranger. Just seems right somehow, knowing a few things.” Another shrug. “Or maybe I’m just a nib-shit.”

I laughed, but not too loudly.

Dobbs inserted and turned the key, pressed the button, and the freight elevator doors opened. We maneuvered the gurney into the too-wide, too-deep, too brightly-lit compartment and Dobbs pressed 7. The doors closed with a thump! that seemed so loud I actually started.

“Easy there, Rambo,” said Dobbs. “This ain’t the time to get a case of the willies. You just follow my lead once we’re up there, okay? Let me do the talking with the officer, and once we get inside, don’t do a thing unless I say so, okay?”

“Okay.” I sounded just as anxious as I felt.

“Hey, look at me. The first time I had to go along on one of these, I was so scared I thought I was either gonna piss my pants or throw up. I surprised myself by doing both.”

“If that was meant to make me feel better, it needs a little work.”

“I’m just saying that it’s okay to be nervous. Do yourself a favor and don’t fight it. Fighting it’s what makes it worse. If it’ll help, just pretend that you’re moving a piece of antique furniture. I know that sounds cold-hearted as all get-out, but if you can put yourself into that frame of mind—that you’re moving a thing, not a person—it’ll go easier. Besides, when you get right down to it, that is all we’re doing, moving a thing. It’s not really a person, it’s just something they once walked around in.”

“Then why bother asking all those questions like you did?”

“We’re not talking about me, Einstein, we’re talking about how you can handle this. I’ve been doing this a helluva lot longer, and asking questions is how I deal with it so I can get to sleep at night and not feel so soul-sick and sad when I wake up the next morning that I can’t get out of bed.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you, Fred.”

“I know. And I apologize if my tone was a bit harsh. But that’s my advice for you; if worse comes to worst, just think of them as being a piece of furniture, got it?”

I swallowed—a bit too loudly for my nerves—and nodded. “Thanks.”

“Look, on an average month the Coroner’s office only gets maybe one or two calls like this. Mostly what you and me will be doing is hauling bodies from the morgue to whatever funeral home they’re going to. We might have to maybe drive a body over to another county, or go to another county to bring a body back here, but mostly what we do is fill out paperwork and sit around waiting for Doc to call us with a job.”

“Filling out paperwork sounds delightful right about now.”

Dobbs reached across and patted my arm. “You’ll be fine. Just do me a favor—you feel anything coming up or your bladder starting to do the Watusi, you make a beeline for the toilet. Oh, I forgot to mention—the first two things you locate once we’re inside are, 1) the body, and, 2) the toilet. Long as you know where both of them are at all times, you should be okay.”

The elevator came to a groaning stop and the doors opened. We rolled everything out into a concrete corridor, following the signs past custodian closets and storage rooms until we came to a set of heavy swinging metal doors that led into another warmly-lighted hallway with gold carpeting. Its design and decor was an almost exact replica of the lobby.

According to the wall-mounted signs, 716 (Miss Driscoll’s room) was to our left. We rounded the corner (making almost no noise whatsoever; Dobbs was right, this gurney was quiet) and the police officer sitting watch outside the room rose from her chair and gave us a nod.

“Been waiting long?” asked Dobbs when we got there.

“About forty-five minutes,” said the officer, whose nametag identified her as Carol Seiler. She pushed some blonde hair back from her almost-cherubic face (the only thing marring the “cherubic” image being the heat she was packing) and said, “I guess I have to earn my salary now and ask you if you’ve got some official-type paperwork to show me.”

Dobbs handed her the forms. She looked them over, nodded, initialed the bottom of each, took her copies, then gave back everything else.

“You’ve got quite the show waiting for you in there,” she said.

Dobbs looked at me with an expression that was, for him, wide-eyed: Maybe we’re gonna need the sci-fi gear, after all?

“Is it bad?” he asked.

“The body is fine, but the rest of it is…well, a little strange.”

“‘A little strange’?” said Dobbs. “I don’t like starting my Mondays with ‘strange’. Doc didn’t say anything to me about ‘strange.’ But then, he didn’t say much of anything to me. Don’t suppose you’d care to elaborate on this ‘strange’?”

Officer Seiler shook her head. “And ruin the surprise?”

By now, I was getting a serious case of the jitters; maybe these two dealt with stuff like this frequently enough that they could afford to be flippant, but my composure was just about at the breaking point.

“Could you just tell us, please?” I said, a bit more loudly than was probably called for. Officer Seiler looked at me, then back at Dobbs. “Let me guess, your new CS sidekick?” “He’s a bit uneasy.” “Think maybe he’s wound too tight?” “Could be, but he seems like an okay guy.” Don’t you just love having people talk about you like you’re not there? Does wonders for the old self-esteem.

The two of them continued chatting about this and that—how the department was still trying to track down family members, the weather, the accident in Columbus that was all over the news, the recent budget cuts (Damn the budget cuts!)—so I turned around to lean against the wall and nearly jumped out of my shorts when I found myself face to face with a small, slightly hunched, bespectacled man who immediately reminded me of the drawings of Mole from The Wind and the Willows. “She was an odd’n,” he said, nodding toward room 716. “Hello,” I said, nothing if not quick on my feet. “I’ll not speak ill of the dead,” said Mole, “but I have to tell you, I’m not going to miss the power outages.” I looked toward 716, then back at him. “Okay…?”

He gave out with one of those exasperated sighs that suggests the listener should have been able to figure out the rest for themselves already, if they had half a brain and were paying attention, which obviously I had not been so he was going to explain it to me very slowly, taking pity on my lack of common sense. “Them packages she was always getting. Every time she got a delivery, you could count on the power on this floor going out sometime that night. Got so bad that the management company had the custodians install a breaker box down by the laundry room so they wouldn’t have to keep going to the basement. Thought it was damned considerate of them, myself. Power goes out, one of us’d just grab a flashlight, go down to the laundry room, flip a switch. Still, you couldn’t stay mad at her, not hearing the way she cried some nights.”

I didn’t want to know this. One of my greatest fears is that I’ll end up old, sick, alone, and forgotten, living out the remainder of my shabby days in some dim little room with no one to talk to or care whether or not I wake every day to the promise of more loneliness, feeling like my whole life has meant nothing.

Just spreading my sunshine. Hence the daily doses of Zoloft.

I was about to go into this woman’s home and remove her body. The last goddamn thing I needed to hear was that she kept some of her neighbors awake because she cried every night. It was just too much.

“Yeah,” said Mole when I made no response, “that old gal could caterwaul with the best of ‘em, I swear. I mean, some nights, she’d wail like nobody’s business.” He stopped talking for a moment, something having just occurred to him. “Huh. You know, now that I think of it, it seems like the worst nights were those right after she got a big delivery.” He narrowed his eyes, thinking hard, then nodded his head. “Yes sir, that’d be right. Anytime she got a big package delivered to her, you could count on two things: the power going out, and her crying up a storm. Like I said, she was an odd’n. You got any idea if someone from her family’s gonna be dropping by for her stuff? Don’t mean to sound morbid, but I’d sure like to get a look at whatever it was she had going on in there.” This last said in a tone suggesting Miss Driscoll had some kind of juicy, dirty little secret that he was just dying to be the first to know about.

I felt even more nervous now. “I, uh…as far as I know, they’re still trying to track down her family.”

“Damn shame. Don’t think I ever saw a visitor come to her door, aside from the delivery people.”

“That’s what I heard.” I wanted him to go away. I was trying to think of a tactful way to tell him as much when Officer Seiler stepped in to serve and protect.

“Come on, Mr. Boyle,” she said, gently taking his arm. “Let’s stay out of their way so these two gentleman can do their jobs.”

“Damn shame,” he said again as she led him away.

“It sure is,” she replied, casting a quick glance over her shoulder and winking at me. Even packing heat, she looked so gorgeous right then I wanted to bear all of her children. “You ready?” asked Dobbs, opening the door. “No.” “Good answer.”

We righted the gurney and rolled it into the apartment, closing the door behind us should any curious eyes decide to sneak a peek. I found myself hoping that Officer Seiler hadn’t actually left, that she’d stick around long enough to make sure no crowd formed in the hallway, that maybe she’d thought it over and decided I was just the guy to carry her offspring.

The apartment had a small foyer with a polished wood coat rack, telephone stand, and single chair for callers to use. A framed photograph on the wall over the phone showed a very striking woman surrounded by what looked like dozens of children, all of them smiling the type of forced, could-you-hurry-up-and-take-the-picture-puh-leeeeze smile that we’ve all plastered on our faces at one time or another as suited the occasion. I wondered if Miss Driscoll had been a grade-school teacher at some point in her life, because all of the children in the photo looked to be between the ages of 7 and 12. The glass covering the photo was cracked, the break running down the center of the woman’s face. I wondered why Miss Driscoll had never bothered replacing the glass.

“All right,” said Dobbs, letting go of his end of the gurney and walking into the living room, “let me make sure we’ve got a clear path before we…”

“Before we what?” I asked, trying to squeeze around the gurney to join him.

“…hol-ee shit…”

“What is it?”

“You are not going to believe this.”

You heard it here first.

I honestly don’t know what I was expecting to see—a room filled with stuffed animals, or priceless antiques, maybe porcelain figurines of angels or those little statues of children with those really big eyes that are supposed to warm your heart but personally give me the creeps; whatever it was, it’d be something lonely-old-lady-like, that was for certain—

—I’d sure like to get a look at whatever it was she had going on in there—

—but I think even Mole a.k.a. Mr. Boyle would have started at the sight of what took up a full eighty percent of this old woman’s living room.

Table-mounted HO slot-car racing tracks.

It wasn’t just the sheer amount of track—though that in itself was enough to drop your jaw (lay all the individual pieces end to end, and my guess is you’d easily have a quarter-mile or more of the stuff)—but the configurations. These tracks weren’t arranged in anything so banal as circles or ovals or figure eights, but in complex, looping, multi-layered patterns, complete with overpasses, off-ramps, and even rest areas. Model buildings were placed at various points along and around these tracks (there were a half-dozen tracks set up throughout the spacious living room) depicting small townships and bigger cities, including HO-scale trees and human figures.

“Good Christ,” said Dobbs, looking around the room. “There must be about three or four thousand dollars’ worth of track and…stuff.”

“At least,” I replied, still trying to absorb all of it. Then thought: No wonder the power was always going out.

The biggest track—a four-lane job—was wired for individually powered lanes, with power taps located at three different points around the track, all of the wires running underneath the table to a variable 20-amp power supply that was mounted to a small metal shelf running between two of the table’s legs.

I used to be a slot-car racing fool when I was a kid, and I knew damn well that you can only run a power supply for so long before it starts to really heat up, and if you push your luck (like I always did) you were apt to blow a fuse before you were done.

And if for some reason you had several tracks and power supplies running at the same time…you could blow out the electricity to the entire floor of an apartment building.

I was so caught up in my own amazement that I didn’t even realize Dobbs had left the living room until he came back in and said, “Oh, man, you gotta see the rest of this place! She’s got tracks mounted everywhere—in her bedroom, the guest room, the kitchen…hell, she’s even got a little one set up in the bathroom!”

“We’re never going to get the gurney through here,” I said. “There’s barely room to walk around.”

Dobbs nodded his head. “Yeah, I already figured that out. We’re gonna have to move a couple of these tables. But not just yet.” He squeezed past me, pressing the clipboard into my hands, heading for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“You just stay here, all right? Miss Driscoll’s laid out in the bedroom, so you wait and take a look around. I don’t think she’s gonna mind.” He stopped, then turned to face me. “I got a digital camera in my bag down in the wagon. I have got take some pictures of this place. My wife’ll never believe me.”

I stared at him, blinked, then asked: “Why would anyone working a job like this carry a camera with them?”

He grinned. “Because every once in a while I come across something really weird, and my wife requires proof.”

“Do you lie to her that much?”

“I don’t like to think of it as lying. I…embellish. I embroider. I exaggerate.”

“You lie.”

“I lie. Just to keep her guessing, mind you. Believe me, after 32 years of marriage, nothing I do surprises her anymore, so I gotta do something to make it interesting for the old gal.” “So you carry a digital camera to work in case something weird comes up.” “That’s it. Don’t you ever fib to your wife?” “I’m divorced.” “Oh, sorry. Well, didn’t you ever fib to her when you were married?” “Probably.”

I was tempted to ask him what other weird things he’d encountered that required him to take pictures so his wife would believe him, then decided that some things were better left as mysteries. “I’d rather not stay here by myself, Fred. Okay if I come along?” “Sorry, my friend, but once we’re on the premises, at least one of us has to be with the body at all times. Them’s the rules.” “Then let me go and get the camera.”

“Oh, no, sorry. I paid a pretty penny for that thing and nobody but me handles it. Look, you’ll be fine. Back in a couple of minutes. Take a look around, it’s pretty interesting.”

And with that, he left me alone with a dead body, several thousand dollars’ worth of custom-made slot-car racing track, and what felt like a solid rod of iron running from the top of my throat to the bottom of my stomach.

Okay, confession time: this was not the first instance of my being in a situation like this.

Back in the Neolithic Period, when I was a senior at Cedar Hill High School and working part-time for the same janitorial company I still worked for, a guy in my class by the name of Andy Leonard flipped out one Fourth of July and killed a bunch of people, including most of his family. The man who owned the company at the time—a Vietnam vet named Jackson Davies—was hired by the city to go in and clean up the Leonard house after the police were finished with it. No one who worked for him wanted to help, so he wound up offering me and a couple of other guys—Mark Sieber and Russell Brennert—300 dollars each to go in with him. Brennert had been Leonard’s best friend. Mark and I gave Brennert a pretty hard time that night; hell, everyone in town was still upset and sick about the murders, and I guess we were looking for a scapegoat. Things were pretty bad in Cedar Hill for a long time after that particular July Fourth.

I will never forget what that house felt like; even from the street, you could sense the death that had soaked into its walls and floors. And once inside, that death got on your own skin, as well.

And it was so cold. I don’t think I’ve ever been that cold in my life. I couldn’t stop shaking the whole time we were in there.

I don’t know if it’s possible to put into words how it feels to mop up a puddle of blood and tissue that used to be a human being. Sometimes I still have nightmares about it.

Brennert wound up going into the nuthouse for a few weeks after that night. After we graduated, he kept on working for Davies until Davies decided to retire to Florida. Brennert bought the company from him. It said an awful lot about Brennert’s character that he hired me right on the spot when I came looking for work after both college and my marriage (in that order) didn’t work out. We never talk about that night. I guess we can still smell that cold, cold death on each other. Like I could smell it now. Hence the rod of iron inside me.

Since I couldn’t just stand there—it seemed like there were shadows in every corner trying to move in around me—I heeded Dobbs’ advice and took a walking tour of the place.

Altogether, Miss Driscoll had 17 tracks of various sizes mounted throughout her apartment—though the track in the bathroom, a small, simple oval, was a battery-operated child’s version of what engulfed the rest of the place. She had arranged the larger tracks to create aisles so that she could move easily between rooms. I couldn’t help but wonder at her fascination with these things.

And then thought of her loneliness.

Everything told you that this wasn’t just a hobby with this woman, it was an obsession, something she’d fostered to fill the holes in her life. Dobbs might have found this interesting in a weird sort of way, but the more I moved from room to room, seeing the details she’d added to each setup (tiny bits of trash spilling from a trash can at a rest stop; the tired, road-weary expressions on the peoples’ faces; a vending machine with an Out Of Order sign taped to its front), the more it all struck me as frighteningly sad. A lot of care had gone into the construction and maintenance of these tracks, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it had been her way of avoiding her loneliness.

It was in the guest bedroom that I first began to notice the trashed cars and tiny memorial wreaths set among the HO-scale buildings. The trashed cars were bad enough—how she’d manage to crumple some of these like she had was beyond me, but damn if they didn’t look like the real thing—but it was the miniature wreaths and crosses that really started to unnerve me. You’ve seen the real thing, I’m sure: drive for any length of time on any stretch of highway through any state, and you’ll pass them; sad little shrines—some homemade, others bought from florist shops—left behind by family members and friends to mark the place where someone they loved died in an automobile accident. Crosses and hearts seem to be the two most popular shapes, usually constructed of wire mesh covered in plastic flowers or plastic white lace to make the shape stand out, ribbons hand-tied all around to flutter in the breeze as if that silent activity was meant to fill the world with movements the dead could no longer make for themselves…and always, in the center of these memorials, staring out at passing cars whose drivers never return the eye contact, are the photographs, the faces of those who will never again see a new place, a different road, or a light in the window waiting for them at journey’s end.

Yes, give me a mondo case of the willies and I turn into a half-assed poet.

All of the tiny wreaths and crosses that were set at various points around the tracks had even tinier photographs in their centers.

And each one was numbered on the back.

I got out of there, found myself in the suddenly too-small hallway, and without thinking about it walked through the nearest doorway—

—and right into Miss Driscoll’s bedroom.

To this day I don’t know why I didn’t just turn around and leave once I realized where I was. I could have just waited in the living room for Dobbs to come back, but I guess morbid curiosity got the better of me.

The thing is, her body was the last thing I noticed.

Expensive tract lighting ran alongside opposite sides of the room, giving the place the too-bright look of a department store; if you wanted to make sure you kept yourself awake at night, this was the way to do it. There were two table-mounted tracks in here, and they were even more intricate than the others—one of them was a four-lane triple-tiered job that must have taken days to set up. There was a computer that had an LCD flat-screen monitor bigger than my television. Pages torn from what looked like a few dozen road and highway atlases were taped to the walls, the windows, and her dresser mirror. The pages sparkled under the harsh lighting, and it was only as I moved closer to a few of them that I saw why: the maps were decorated with dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of small foil stars, each roughly the size of my thumb nail. (Remember those little stars that your kindergarten teacher would stick on your drawings when you got an “A”? Yeah, those.) They were all over these maps; some of the stars were silver, some of them were blue, but most of them were gold. And each one had a hand-written number in its center. Out in the hallway, a shadow moved near the door. “Fred?” I called out. Nothing. My imagination. My nerves.

I was getting jumpy. Jumpier.

Stepping back, I moved to the side in an effort to avoid bumping into one of the tracks and in the process banged my hip into the back of the desk chair, that in turn rolled forward, hit the keyboard tray, and woke the machine from Sleep mode.

There were two images displayed side by side on the screen: one was the schematic of an HO-track configuration; the second was a map of the I-71 loop in Columbus.

There were the same shape. I knew this because I’d just seen it.

It was behind me.

I turned to look at the second table-mounted track and, sure enough, eight mashed cars had been set aside, and seven small memorials had been placed at the spot where the accident had occurred.

Not being one whose grasp of the obvious will ever be called keen, I looked back at the computer screen, then again at the track, then once more at the computer.

Which is when I finally noticed the stack of files beside the desk.

Another shadow, this one bulkier than the last, moved in the periphery of my vision. I stomped to the doorway and looked in every direction but saw no further movement.

“Fred? Goddammit, c’mon, this isn’t funny.”

No answer. No sound.

Checking my watch, I saw that Dobbs had been gone only three minutes. It felt like I’d been alone in here for hours.

Ever had one of those “I-Know-This-Isn’t-A-Good-Idea-But” moments? The smart thing to do was leave the room and not look at anything else. The smart thing to do was leave. Once more, with feeling: Smart Thing = Leaving. So of course I turned back, picked up the top file, and sat down in the desk chair to look at it. It was a record of traffic deaths.

The first several pages consisted of hand-written columns noting dates, locations, number and makes of cars, fatalities, and the names of everyone involved. Next to each line of information was a number written in blue, silver, or gold ink. The rest of the file contained newspaper clippings, arranged by date, containing details (and sometimes photos) about the accidents catalogued in the first batch of pages.

Closing the file and setting it back atop the stack, I looked around the bedroom once more.

How goddamn lonely, bitter, angry, and morbid would someone have to be to make this their hobby? I mean, it was bad enough she’d spent so much time collecting and organizing this information, but to drop thousands of dollars on custom-made HO track and accessories to recreate the accidents in the privacy of her home…can I get an Eeeewwww!?

And to top it all off, she hadn’t even gotten the last accident right; five people, not seven, had died as a result of the I-71 crash.

I stood, pulling my wallet from my back pocket and riffling through its contents until I found my lawyer’s business card. I wanted out of this. If it meant some jail time instead of community service, so be it. I was so creeped out that even the threat of incarceration seemed preferable to spending one more minute in this apartment. Brennert would understand. I wouldn’t lose my job over this. He was that kind of guy. (And I had serious doubts that the judge would actually put me in jail; I’d probably end up washing dishes at the Open Shelter or something like that.)

I spotted the phone among the stuff on the cluttered nightstand, walked over, picked up the receiver, and only then allowed myself to look down at Miss Driscoll’s body.

She might have been the same woman in the photo hanging in the foyer, but I couldn’t be certain; at least fifty years separated the face in the picture from the one I was looking at now.

Staring down at her still form that looked more asleep than dead, I couldn’t help but wonder how she came to this, what led from point A to point B (and so on) to her cutting herself off from the rest of the world with only this grotesque hobby to fill her days.

Is that why you cried some nights? I wondered. Did you know or suspect that your life had become something ghoulish and ugly? Did you feel so powerless and alone and afraid that you couldn’t talk to someone about it? Did it hurt that much, knowing what you had become?

“Lady,” I whispered, “what the hell happened to you?”

I reached down with a shaking hand to punch in my lawyer’s phone number and accidentally hit the Redial button, freezing just long enough for the seven digits to complete their rapid-fire dialing and hear a voice on the other end say: “Cedar Hill Police Department, how may I direct your call?”

“Sorry, misdialed.” I hung up with too much force, just about tipping over the mostly empty glass of water next to the phone. Steadying the glass, I managed to knock one of the prescription containers from the nightstand. Sometimes I’m so graceful it’s a wonder I didn’t pursue a career in ballet.

Counting the one I’d knocked to the floor, there were seven empty prescription containers on the nightstand: painkillers, sedatives, blood pressure medication, muscle relaxants, anti-depressants, and two different kinds of sleeping pills. There was also a good-sized bowl with remnants of chocolate pudding clinging to its rim and to the spoon lying inside (having consumed more than my fair share of chocolate pudding and knowing how it looks when you fail to rinse out the bowl in a timely manner, I recognized this immediately, perceptive and clever fellow—not to mention tidy housekeeper—that I am). Mixed in with these remnants was a not-so-fine powdery substance.

Oh, shit.

I take in pill form a drug called Imitrex for my migraine headaches. The stuff works wonders most of the time, except on those nights I forget to carry some on me and end up at the ER getting a shot of Demerol so I can be arrested for DUI on my way home and be assigned community service that will lead me to be standing over the dead body of a seriously weird old lady, but I digress. If I do not take the Imitrex with food or milk, I will be vomiting within half an hour. Since it takes two pills to tackle one of my migraines, I break them up into several pieces and mix them in with applesauce or—drum-roll please—pudding.

I stared at the bowl, the empty prescription containers, and knew.

Miss Driscoll had committed suicide.

Now before you shake your head and let fly with one of those long, low-pitched, boy-has-he-lost-it whistles, consider: 1) This was an isolated and terribly lonely old woman who, 2) had a morbid hobby, 3) possessed enough prescription medications to kill herself three times over if she took them all at once, and whose, 4) last phone call had been to the non-emergency number of the police department.

It would have been simple enough; wait until you feel yourself starting to drift toward sleep, then make the call: I’m sorry, this isn’t an emergency, it’s probably nothing, but I live over at The Maples on—oh, you know where that is? I was wondering if you could send some officers over to apartment 716 sometime tonight around, oh, 8:30 or 9? There’s a young man who’s been coming to my door at that time for the last couple of nights—I think he might be trying to sell something—and he will not leave me alone. He’s been very insistent, and he’s starting to frighten me a little. I was hoping the officers might have a word with him?

She’d probably invented a better reason, but my guess was it had been something along similar lines, some vague, borderline silly, old-lady reason to have a couple of officers drop by, nothing urgent, mind you, but allowing for enough time between the call and their visit to make sure she’d be dead when the police arrived.

I can’t say that I was pleased about realizing this—consider the circumstances—because if it was true, then it raised more questions than it answered: why was there no record of this downstairs? The police would have checked in with whomever worked the front desk. The door to the apartment hadn’t been forcibly opened, it had been unlocked by someone with a passkey (presumably the building manager or one of the security guards). How did the mayor come to be involved? And why would the coroner file a false report of “Natural Causes” when it must have been obvious to him that Miss Driscoll had taken her own life? (C’mon; if I could figure it out based on an almost-empty pudding bowl, someone with the coroner’s medical knowledge must have known it the moment he saw the body.)

Two things stopped me from deciding that I was full of shit and just letting my anxiety get the better of me; the first was something Dobbs had said on the way over here: “…this whole to-do was supposed to be handled by the book, but there ain’t been nothing about this has gone like it’s supposed to.”

The second thing was what I saw when I finally worked up enough nerve to test my theory and picked up the bowl: pieces of pills mixed in with the remaining glops of pudding.

Now what was I supposed to do?

First thing: put down the bowl.

The second thing was what I should have done in the first place—get the hell out of the room. I’d put in my CS time today, go home, and call my lawyer this evening. Whatever was going on here was out of my hands and none of my business.

Hell, yes, I felt bad for Miss Driscoll—you’d have to be a monster not to—but none of this was my responsibility. A lonely old lady offs herself and some city officials decide for whatever reason to cover it up. Fine. I was just here to transport her body so she could get some kind of decent burial. And like Dobbs had said, ultimately this wasn’t her, it was just something she used to walk around in. Wherever she was now (assuming there was a Wherever), she had better things to concern herself with.

“I see you’ve located the body,” said Dobbs from the doorway.

I looked over just in time to be half-blinded by the sudden flash of his camera.

“Oh, man, you ought to see the expression on your face. ” He started over, working his way around the tracks. “Take a gander.” He turned the camera’s display window toward me.

“All I can see right now are spots.”

“Oh, sorry about that. I couldn’t resist.”

If I was going to say anything about this, now was my chance. I pointed at the cluttered bedside table. “You notice anything odd?” Dobbs looked at the table. “She was a bit messy.” “Is that all?” He shrugged. “I dunno. What am I supposed to be seeing?” “Humor me. Take a good look at what’s on this table.”

Dobbs sighed, then leaned down to examine everything. He picked up the pudding bowl, stared at its contents, and made the Stroke Face again, so I knew he was concentrating. After several seconds, he said: “Gimme the clipboard.” I handed it over and he flipped through the official paperwork. “Son-of-a-bitch,” he whispered. “What?” He looked down at Miss Driscoll, then at me. “You first.” I shook my head. “Oh, no. No. Sorry but…no. I don’t want to get myself in any more trouble than I already am.” Dobbs stared at me, blinked, then nodded. “She died of natural causes like my ass chews gum.” “So…what do we do about it?”

Dobbs looked back at Miss Driscoll’s body, then rubbed his eyes. “Nothing, that’s what. We don’t do a goddamn thing about it. If the doc falsified the report, I’m guessing it’s because the mayor told him to.”

“But aren’t you curious to know why?”

“Shit, yes—but I’m also…” He shook his head. “Look, we say anything about this to the doc or the mayor or anyone official, there’s going to be a lot of questions, then some kind of investigation, and all sorts of nasty shit for us to deal with. Maybe it don’t make any difference to you, you’re only here temporary, but me, I gotta think about my job, you understand? If a city employee makes any kind of an accusation against a city official, then they’d better have some goddamn proof or else they’re gonna be out on their unemployed ass in a hurry. You got any medical background? I sure as hell don’t. Who do you think people would believe, anyway—the County Coroner or a couple of schleps who drive the meat wagon?”

“You could take a picture of the table, we could show that to someone, and—”

“—and how would we prove that we didn’t just put all this stuff here to make it look like she offed herself? You know as well as I do that someone would think that.”

“We call the Columbus police department, get them to send over someone from their lab, they could—”

“Are you listening to yourself? First of all, that kind of call would have to come from the mayor, the sheriff, the chief of police, or the coroner. Second, even if you and me did call and somehow managed to get them to come, we’d have to sit here with the body until they arrived—and I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like babysitting a corpse for however long it’d take them to get here. And third, how do you suppose they’d react once they dusted this place and found our fingerprints—” He pointed to the pudding bowl. “—on what is probably the central piece of evidence?”

As soon as he pointed at the pudding bowl, something occurred to me. “Why is this stuff still here?”

“Say what?”

I nodded at everything on the bedside table. “If the doc and the mayor have decided to cover this up, at least on paper, then why not get rid of the evidence, as well? Why leave all of this stuff out in plain view and risk someone being able to figure it out?”

“They couldn’t be sure that somebody would, maybe?”

I shook my head. “No—c’mon, Fred. I figured it out. If it’d been you up here instead of me, you would’ve noticed something, too. It’s almost like…”

“Like what?”

I looked back up at him. “It’s like somebody wanted you and me to figure it out.”

“But why?”

I shrugged. “Beats the hell out of me.”

“There you go, then,” said Dobbs. “Maybe there’s something to what you’re saying, okay? Maybe. But if you’re right, if they did leave all this shit out hoping that we’d put two and two together, how’re they gonna know unless we say something? If we don’t do anything, if we don’t say anything, just come in here and haul her body away like we’re supposed to, then there’s no way anyone’ll ever know. As long as we keep this to ourselves, it’s fine.”

“We can’t just do nothing.”

“The hell we can’t! Listen to me, the next time we go on a call like this, you don’t touch nothing besides the front door, the gurney, and the body, got it? We find anything weird like this again and I invite you to take a look around, just hit me, okay? I’m not that far away from collecting my pension, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna have it fucked up for me by a CS temp! So from now on, you don’t touch nothing unless I say so.”

There wasn’t going to be a next time for me, so I nodded my head and muttered apologies.

Dobbs stared at me for a few more seconds, his features softening. “I don’t mean to yell at you, I’m sorry. But it’s a done deal at this point, all the paperwork’s been filed, and the best thing that you and me can do is just…what we came here to do.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. She’s gone, nothing we do is going to change that, and I’d rather not be the one responsible for you losing your pension.”

He reached over and gave my shoulder a little squeeze. “There’s a good fellah. Me and you, we won’t talk about this again, right?” “Right.” “Or mention it to anybody else?” “Or mention it to anybody else.”

He looked around at the tracks and computer. “Still, you gotta wonder what the hell she was doing in here, all by herself, with this crap.” I pointed toward his digital camera. “Did you get enough pictures?” He nodded. “I pretty much got the whole place before I came in here. I’m surprised you didn’t hear me banging around out there.” “I was, uh…” I looked at Miss Driscoll’s bedside table. “…a little preoccupied.” “I heard that.” He looked at me and smiled. “C’mon. Let’s go clear a path so we can get the gurney in here.”

It took us over half an hour to move the tracks, and even then it was a tight squeeze, but somehow we managed. We lifted Miss Driscoll’s body from the bed (she didn’t weigh very much, I could have done it alone), put her inside the bag, and zipped it closed. There was a cold finality in that sound that, for a moment, put me back inside the Leonard house. Christ, I didn’t want to be here. Dobbs took the lead. We’d gotten the gurney almost all the way to the foyer when one of the wheels on his end locked up. “Son-of-a…hold on a second, will you?” “Sure thing.” I let go of my end, stood there for a moment, and then noticed something. “Hey, Fred, do you have the clipboard?” “No,” he said from somewhere below the gurney. “What’d we do, leave it in the bedroom?” “Looks like.”

His head came around the far right wheel leg. “Well?”

I looked at him.

He looked back at me, then sighed. “Hey, here’s a question—when you were going to school, did you ride there on a long bus or the short one?”

“So you’re saying I should go back and get it.”

“Whatta you think?”

“I think I’ll go back and get it.”

His head disappeared behind the gurney leg once more. “I’m so proud right now.”

Back in the bedroom, I found the clipboard lying on the floor in front of the bedside table. I retrieved it and started making my way out of the room when I gave into a sudden impulse, turned back, and removed one of the numerous star-covered maps from the wall. Folding it up and slipping it into one of my back pockets, I went back to help Dobbs move the gurney out into the foyer. “You doing okay?” he asked once we were back in the hall. “I guess.” Dobbs pulled the door to 716 closed, checking to make sure it locked behind him, then said, “You look kinda upset to me.”

“This hasn’t been the best morning. Could we just go, please?”

We began moving the gurney toward the end of the hall. Dobbs asked, “So…think you’re gonna have the stomach for this?”

“I haven’t urped on your shoes yet, have I?”

“Just checking. Usually with CS helpers, this is about the time most of them decide they’d rather risk roadside trash pickup, dishwashing, or jail. But all things considered, you held your own real good here this morning.”

“Thanks.” And I meant it. Dobbs didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who was in the habit of handing out compliments like business cards at a convention, so knowing that I’d earned his seal of approval actually made me feel kind of proud of myself.

“I have decided,” said Dobbs, “that you aren’t okay, that you’re just trying to put up a good front for me. I have decided that this kind of stiff-upper-lip behavior deserves rewarding. I have decided that you need cheering up.”

“Oh, you have, have you?”

“Yes, and since I’m in charge, you’re getting cheered up. Besides, I’m hungry.”

We were just turning the corner at the end of the hall when I chanced a look back at Miss Driscoll’s apartment and saw a bulky shadow closing the door from inside. A second later, the deadbolt was engaged. I started to say something to Dobbs, then changed my mind; after all, we didn’t see anything suspicious, did we?

We headed for a nearby McDonald’s. Since Dobbs wanted to avoid the crowd inside (and the thought of leaving Miss Driscoll’s body unattended seemed—to me, anyway—creepier than our eating our lunch while sitting in the wagon with it), we placed our orders at the drive-thru.

The people in the cars in front of and behind us kept looking at the wagon and trying to look like they weren’t looking. Hard to miss a big-ass white wagon with the word CORONER written across the back and sides (as well as backwards across the front).

Because Dobbs was picky about how his food was to be prepared (so it was going to take a few extra minutes), we were asked to pull out of line and go wait in one of the parking spaces designated Drive-Thru Customers Only.

So we sat there while the rest of the customers took their bags of food and kept looking over.

Two other cars were asked to move out of line and park in our area, which they did, one on either side of us. It was a hot day and everyone—including Dobbs and me—had our windows rolled down.

There are two windows in the rear doors of the wagon, and one on either side toward the back. These side windows come equipped with blinds that can be lowered so as to keep the body from view of passing drivers.

Dobbs had forgotten to lower the side blinds, so the cars parked on either side of us had a clear, unobstructed view of the bagged body.

The man and little girl in the car on Dobbs’ side looked about half sick.

The young woman in the car on my side sat with her hands on the steering wheel, staring straight out at the patch of weeds beyond the parking lot. Dobbs finally turned to face the man and little girl on his side. He raised his hand and gave a short wave. “Hi’ya.” “Hey,” said the little girl. “Elizabeth,” said her father, “don’t bother the…nice man.” “Oh, she ain’t botherin’ me,” Dobbs replied. “We’re just waiting on our order.” “Me, too,” said the little girl. Then: “Is that a dead person back there?” “Sure is.” “What’cha doin’ with them?” “Just making a delivery.” The man turned ashen, but the woman sitting in the car on my side was red-faced. The little girl asked, “Where you taking the body?” Dobbs smiled. “That’s a secret.” The little girl looked from Dobbs to the body, then at the golden arches.

The woman in the car next to me made a sound, and I looked over to see her lowering her head, her lips pressed tightly together but quivering; she was trying so hard not to laugh.

About this time, a young woman looking shapely and cute in her Mickey-D’s uniform came out with our order, handing it through the window to Dobbs. “Here’s your order, sir. Thank you for your patience.”

“No problem,” said Dobbs. Then: “So, which door in the back do we go to?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?” She looked at him for a moment, then rolled her eyes and sighed. “Oh, no, not you again…”

Dobbs started the engine. “Yes, me again. Now, which door? We go through this every time, and I, for one, am getting bored with this little innocent routine you insist on playing. This stuff won’t stay fresh for long, not in this weather.”

The woman in the car next to me looked like she might burst a vein in her head if she held her laughter in much longer.

“Never mind,” said Dobbs to the Mickey-D’s crewperson. “I understand, all these witnesses and everything.” He winked at her. “We’ll find it.”

The young woman slunk back inside, shaking her head and muttering.

Dobbs pulled his Quarter Pounder out of the bag, unwrapped it, lifted the top part of the bun to check it, and then shrieked. Everyone else—including me—jumped at the sound.

“Oh, my God!” said Dobbs. “It’s true. God help us all, it’s true!”

He backed out then, shouting, “Soylent Green is people! Soylent Green is people! Soylent Green is peeeeeeeeeeeeeeople!”

The man in the other car gripped the steering wheel and placed his forehead against the backs of his hands. His daughter was jumping up and down, shouting “Soylent Green is people!” The woman in the farthest car was howling with laughter, and customers inside were lining the windows, staring.

Dobbs stopped at the exit, opened his door, and—brandishing his Quarter Pounder like it was the Olympic torch—stood up on the running board: “I can’t take it anymore! I warn you all—fear the Mystery Meat! Fear it! Fear it! For the love of all that’s good and decent, FEAR IT!” Then he got back inside the wagon and drove away as if nothing had happened.

After we were back on the road, I said: “You’re a very weird person, Dobbs.”

“But not boring. Gotta give me that much.” “What about your pension? Won’t you get into trouble if someone calls to complain?” “I haven’t yet. I pull this routine every time I get a new CS sidekick. Consider it your initiation.” “I thought the idea was to cheer me up.”

Dobbs shrugged. “Actually, the idea was to cheer me up. You were turning into a real Gloomy Gus.”

I figured I wouldn’t be going back to that particular McDonald’s anytime soon.

* * *

“Where is it?”

Opening my eyes, I saw the digital clock on my bedside table.

4:42 a.m.

The voice from my dream was fading. I sighed, rolled onto my back, and started to drift off once more when a hand I could have sat in clamped around my neck and began to squeeze.

“Where is it?”

I opened my eyes and saw two bulky shadows leaning over my bed. One of them pressed down, increasing its grip around my neck. The pressure was enough to hurt me but not completely cut off my breathing.

“I’ll ask you one more time,” said this shadow, “and then we’re going to hurt you.”

I struggled against the grip but it did no good. “Where’s what?” I managed to get out.

“The map you stole from Road Mama’s apartment.”

Road Mama? Okay, I was still dreaming. Cool. Not quite so scared shitless now. “In the back pocket of my jeans. On the chair over in the corner.” “You shouldn’t have stolen it, you know.” Strange, how your conscience works on you. All day long I’d felt bad about taking that damned thing. One of the dream-shadows moved away from the bed. I heard some rustling, then: “Got it.”

The pressure was released from around my neck as the second shadow let go to remove something from its pocket. “You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.” It leaned down once again, and I felt a short sting in my right arm, and then everything got warm and shiny and I rode the high back down into sleep.

* * *

“Did you give them the map?”

I felt the blood drain from my face. She couldn’t have said what I thought she’d said. I sat down and asked her to repeat the question. Leaning forward, she nailed me to the spot with her piercing green eyes and said: “Did you give them the map?” Shit, shit, shit. “Did I give who what map?” “Don’t be cute with me. Answer the question.” My heart pounded. “How did you know?” She sat back, sighed, and reached for her coffee. “The mayor told me.”

“The mayor? How the hell did he—”

“Did you give it to them?”

“First of all, if you know who ‘they’ are, could you let me in on it? We didn’t exchange many pleasantries so introductions were just sort of skipped over, and second, yes, I gave it to them—or, rather, they took it after I told them where it was. And by the way, one of them was choking me at the time, then he gave me a shot to knock me out. And for the record, Counselor, they somehow managed to get in and out of my apartment without breaking any locks or windows, which prompts me to ask: Jee-zus, Barb, what’s going on?” She opened the menu and began perusing the selections. “I’m not sure.” I stared. “You never could lie worth a damn.” She shrugged. “Have it your way.”

I reached over and pulled down the menu she was holding. “Is this what was so important? That stupid map? You could have asked about that in the message and had me call you back.”

“No, this isn’t just about the map—though that’s part of it. Don’t ask me how you managed to do it, Prince Charming, but you’ve gotten some very powerful people upset with you.”

“What powerful people?”

“Powerful enough that the both the mayor and chief of police are scared of them. Beyond that, I honestly don’t know, okay?” The waitress came to our table and poured coffee, took Barb’s order, then asked what I’d like to have. “I just have time for coffee,” I said, looking at my watch. Barb said, “You’ve got time for breakfast.” “I have to be at the coroner’s office by nine.”

She shook her head. “Not today, you don’t. Today, you have a new community service assignment. Now order some real food. I’m guessing your diet still consists of whatever pre-packaged trans-fatty caloric nightmare you can toss into a microwave. Hopefully some real cooking won’t send your system into cataleptic shock.”

I ordered my breakfast and the waitress left us with a bright smile.

“Why am I here, Barb?”

“The mayor didn’t call just me, he also called the coroner and Judge Banks. I spoke with Banks this morning before I came here.” She produced a thick envelope from her briefcase and tossed it on the table. “This would be for you.”

Inside was a Triple-A TripTik, a sheet of paper with street directions, an address, and a phone number written on it, as well as three hundred dollars in fifties and a cashier’s check made out to me in the sum of one thousand dollars.

“What gives? Is this check for real?”

Barb added some sugar to her coffee. “Yes, it’s for real—in fact, you can waltz your ass over to the Park National Bank right after breakfast and cash it—if you agree to the offer I’ve been authorized to make to you.”

“Which is…?”

“How would you like to have your record wiped clean and fulfill all your required community service time over the next couple of days?” I almost laughed. “Who do I have to kill?” She blanched. “That’s not funny.” “Sorry.”

Barb stared at me for a moment, then shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. Guess I’m a little grouchy this morning.”

“Apology accepted. Now, I believe there was something said at the outset about an offer…?”

“It turns out Miss Driscoll does have some family, and they’d like to bury her in the family plot, and they’d like her body to be driven home as soon as possible. So here’s the off—you’re way ahead of me, aren’t you?”

I lifted the envelope. “I drive her body home, and when I get back my record is clean and my community service time is done, right?”

She nodded. “And you’ll be two thousand dollars richer.”

“Two? But the check’s for—”

“I know how much the check is for, thank you, I’m the one who had it drawn up. You’ll be given another one just like it when you get back. If you accept the offer, you’ll have to leave today. The family wants her there by tomorrow afternoon.”

I checked the directions and the TripTik. “This is an 18-hour drive. And that’s if you go at it without having to stop.”

“So you stop for gas and food when you need to, and a motel when you get tired. The cash is to cover your travel expenses.”

“Just pull into my friendly Motel 6 with a stiff in the back of my car? You gotta be kidding! How am I supposed to explain a dead body if I get pulled over by the cops?”

She produced another envelope from her briefcase. “This is what’s called a Federal Remains Transportation Permit. Don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of it, these aren’t issued very often. It allows whomever is in possession of it to transport readied remains across however many state lines necessary in order to reach its intended place of interment.”

I looked at her, blinked, then said: “In English?”

“It’s a permission slip from the Federal Marshal’s Office saying that it’s okay for you, and Average Joe, to be driving a burial-ready stiff halfway across the country so the family can give it a proper funeral.”

“Oh.”

“There’s usually a hell of a lot more paperwork to deal with when something like this has to be done, but Miss Driscoll’s family evidently has a lot of pull in Washington. Neither the mayor nor the police chief would tell me who called them, or what was said, but to give you some idea of just how important someone has to be in order to rate one of these puppies, out of all the FRTPs issued since 1945, counting the one you’re looking at—and there haven’t been as many issued as you would think—one of them was to Eleanor Roosevelt so she could take FDR’s body home by train.”

“…holy shit.”

“Tell me about it. I don’t know who Miss Driscoll was, but her family has enough power to bypass every inch of local, state, and federal red tape. You don’t say no to people like that.”

“What if I do?”

“But why would you? Think about it—this is a gravy job! You’ll be on the road maybe a total of two days, and when you get back home, you’re a couple of grand richer plus your record’s clean and your community service time is marked as fulfilled.”

“Who wanted the map, Barb? Who wanted the map bad enough to somehow break into my apartment in the middle of the night without opening a window or a door? They threatened me! One of them had his big-ass hand around my throat! They drugged me, for chrissakes!”

“They’re also paying you two thousand dollars to make the trip.”

“Oh, well, that makes all the difference then, doesn’t it?”

“Keep your voice down.”

I took a breath, held it, and counted to ten. “Since you know about the map, then you must know what else was in her apartment, right?”

“No—and I don’t want to know, got it? I have as of right now told you everything I know about this, okay?”

“Fine.” I stared at the envelopes, thought about the bills I could pay off with two thousand dollars, then slid everything back across the table. “Afraid I’m going to have to pass, but thanks.” I started to get up to leave; her hand shot out and grabbed my wrist.

“You’re not leaving me stuck with the check for a meal you didn’t eat. Sit down.”

You would have to have known her since high school to recognize the hint of fear crowding at the edges of her voice. Barbara Greer was nothing if not always in control of herself. She wasn’t telling me to stay and eat; she was scared—scratch that, she was terrified—that I was going to walk out on the offer.

I sat back down. “I guess I should eat what I ordered.”

“That’s almost sensible, coming from you.” The control was back in her voice, but behind her eyes something was shaking with near panic. She took out a pen and began scribbling something on the back of the first envelope. “I never understood how you managed to stay alive, what with the crap you eat. Do you get any protein besides peanut butter? Don’t answer that—it would probably just depress me.”

She slid the envelope toward me, all the while chatting away about this and that and nothing in particular and blah-blah-blah…

Her note read: You don’t have a choice. I can’t say that out loud. People are listening.

I looked up at her, then gestured for her pen.

You’re serious, aren’t you?

I pushed the envelope back to her. She read it, looked at me, and nodded her head.

“So,” I said a bit too loudly, “this, uh…this deal you’re offering me.”

“The one you just offhandedly turned down? The one that any person in his right mind would have jumped at? That deal?”

“You’re going to make me grovel, aren’t you?”

“You were a royal horse’s ass. Yes, I’m going to make you grovel.” “Okay—this is me, groveling. Grovel, grovel, grovel, I am an ungrateful butt-wipe, please forgive me, I am not worthy.” “Are you quite finished?” “Grovel, grovel.” I waited a moment, then said: “All done. Have I groveled enough?” “For now.” “I’ve reconsidered things.” “I’ll bet you have.” “I’ll do it.”

The look of massive relief on her face almost broke my heart. She reached across the table and squeezed my hand, not saying a word.

For the second time that morning, I was almost afraid to breathe. I kept seeing those hulking shadowed figures over my bed, one of them whispering, You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into….

* * *

I don’t like maps. All the lines give me a headache, and half the time I’m so busy trying to interpret the miniscule printing I either miss the exit I’m looking for or almost drive into a guardrail—or sometimes even another car whose driver was so busy trying to read his map that he didn’t see me coming.

Give me landmarks and I’m hell on wheels; give me a map and I turn into Forest Gump in Death Race 2000.

Can you tell that driving is not my favorite thing in the world? Oh, with short distances I’m okay, but the fabled American Road Trip? Inwardly, I shriek in horror. Aside from the monotony, it gives you too long to think about things, and eventually your mind starts either sorting through useless trivia or dusting off memories best left in cold storage. Or, at least, mine does.

I’m good for about four or five hours cooped up inside a car, and then I need open space, food, and a bathroom—and that’s the best case scenario, when I’m traveling with other people who can share the drive and conversation. (The last actual road trip I’d taken with another person was during the summer after high school graduation, when a bunch of us drove to Cleveland to see an Emerson, Lake & Palmer concert as our big pre-college blowout.)

Now imagine driving alone for well over a thousand miles with a corpse your only companion. A Hope & Crosby On The Road movie this was not.

I’d been traveling for almost 14 hours and it was getting seriously dark. I was tired, I was upset, I was hungry, the coffin and its passenger were creeping me out to the nth degree, I needed to stretch my cramping legs, I’d missed the rest-stop entrance a few miles back (I was busy trying to make out the TripTik printing under the dim glow of the dome light), my bladder was grumpy, and I was pretty sure that I’d gotten onto the wrong stretch of highway at the interchange, so I decided, fuck it, I was going to take the next exit and find an all-night gas station and ask for directions.

That’s right—ask for directions: I am not one these guys who feels genetically obligated to never admit that he’s lost. If I’m going somewhere I just want to get there, preferably not too far behind schedule, in one piece and with my sanity intact; if that means I have to endure some twenty-something kid behind the counter of a Sip & Piss laughing at me under his breath as he shows me the best way to get back to where I need to be, well…there are worse humiliations that can be suffered, even if I sometimes do feel like belting that kid one upside the head. (And I swear it seems like it’s always the same kid behind the counter, regardless of where you stop; personally, I think they’re being manufactured in some top-secret government facility dedicated to creating as many aggravations as possible for American drivers so we don’t notice that the gas prices always start to go up on Wednesday night, right about rush hour.)

According to my TripTik, the next exit—happy-happy-joy-joy—was twenty miles farther down the highway. If I was right and it turned out I should’ve taken the I-70 West ramp, then I was almost 25 miles away from where I should have taken the exit, which meant by the time I got back to where I needed to be I’d be about 50 miles in the hole.

I turned up the radio, which was tuned to a “classic rock” station, and was just in time to hear the DJ introduce The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” with the words: “Can you believe this song is older than I am?”

I wanted to reach through the radio waves and strangle the little fucker.

I don’t think of myself as being ancient (I’m only 44), but it still blows my mind that there are people out there who don’t remember when “Baba O’Riley”, “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, Zeppelin’s “Stairway To Heaven”, and even Deep Purple’s “Smoke On The Water” were brand-new. Hell, half the DJs working these “classic rock” stations probably have no idea that “Smoke On The Water” tanked in the U.S when it was released as a single from the Machine Head album; it was only when it released as a single from Made In Japan that it became the monster smash—not to mention the first riff every kid learns to play once they get a guitar—we all know and pretend to loathe.

Told you my mind starts sorting through useless trivia if I spend too much time on the road, so don’t start bitching about how this has nothing to do with anything.

I cranked up the volume and pressed down on the accelerator—almost anything from Who’s Next turns me into a speed king—and before Roger Daltrey was finished roaring about the teenage wasteland, the exit was in sight.

Or, rather, an exit.

I checked the odometer and saw that it had been just under five miles; there wasn’t supposed to be an exit for a while yet.

You know those moments in life that, when you talk about them later, you always preface with something like, “I should have known because…”? Well, there’s no “because” here; yeah, what happened a few moments later was odd, no question, and I wish to hell I could say that I knew or sensed that something in the world was about to wander off the highway permanently, but the truth is there was nothing that set off any serious alarms. By now, I was so tired and cramped and sore and hungry and all the rest of it that I didn’t care about the shadows that had broken into my apartment, or Miss Driscoll’s morbid hobby, or the two thousand dollars, or my date with redheaded Kimberly—nothing.

On the TripTik map or not, that next exit was mine. If I’d turned down the radio and listened carefully, I bet I could have heard my bladder cheering.

That said, I can tell you now that if I had decided to wait for the following (and TripTik-acknowledged) exit farther down, all of this still would have happened—hell, I could have taken any exit from this point on and it wouldn’t have changed anything.

The sign said, simply: EXIT. Nothing more; no town name, no number, no white arrow pointing in the correct direction. All of this both registered with me and didn’t (like the total number of deaths from the I-71 accident); I saw it, knew something about it was odd, but just didn’t care. I wanted to feel solid ground and not pedals under my feet for a few minutes.

As soon as I merged onto the ramp the light above the EXIT sign blinked twice, made a sputter-buzz kind of noise, then went out completely.

I wasn’t prepared for how damned black it became after that. Nowhere on either side of me was there another light, so all I had to see by were the meat wagon’s headlights. I clicked over to the brights and slowed down, just in case some possum, squirrel, dog, or deer decided to make a break for it and test my reflexes.

The first roadside memorial (a cross made of plastic flowers, sporting several ribbons) barely registered with me when it faded into the glow of the headlights. I drove on. The cross glided past. One of the ribbons snapped backwards and flapped in the breeze as if waving good-bye.

I thought of the miniature monuments Miss Driscoll had erected around her tracks.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find something creepy about these monuments (be they HO-scale or life-size). I understand that those left behind have to do whatever it takes to deal with their grief, but if it was me and someone I’d loved had died in a wreck (probably in bloody pieces and great pain) the last goddamned place I’d want to erect a monument to their memory was the spot where their final agonized breath had been drawn and expelled. And since the maintenance of these things is the responsibility of those who erect them, that means you have to make an at-least quarterly pilgrimage to the place—assuming that you don’t have to drive past it every day on your way to or from work. How can you pay suitable respect to someone’s memory when you’ve got semis and SUVs and busloads of screaming kids roaring by every few seconds? Cemeteries may not be the cheeriest places to visit, but at least it makes sense to mourn there. Grieving by the side of the road in front of a monument no one but you gives a shit about just strikes me as distasteful…but then, I’ve never had to confront that particular kind of grief, so it’s easy for me to pass judgment: Dianne—my ex-wife—always pointed that out to me—that it was easy for me to judgmental about these memorials; she found them to be deeply moving.

Dianne never brought up my shortcomings to try and make me feel small; she did it because they, in her words: “…keep the best of you hidden from me and everyone else. You’re not the cynic you want everyone to think you are.” I never saw it that way, nope; as far as I was concerned, it was her way of proving to me once again that my moral compass was fucked up and wouldn’t I just be the best person if I saw the world just like her.

Yes, I was an asshole. It’s taken all these years of being without her for that to finally sink in.

I looked in the rear-view mirror, saw the lone waving ribbon from the shrine, and felt a brief sting of regret—but for what, I wasn’t sure.

“Baba O’Riley” segued into Grand Funk’s “I’m Your Captain”, and I turned up the volume, forcing myself to not think about the way Dianne detested this song.

The next shrine popped up as suddenly as a slice of bread from a toaster. This one was of the heart-shaped variety, but that isn’t what startled me. It was the sight of the face in the center. It blinked at me. And then smiled.

A sharp movement on the right of the shrine flashed against the windshield and I hit the brakes, thinking that some animal was about to make a mad dash for safety across the road, but instead of a raccoon or cat, what emerged from the side of the shrine was a hand, then a wrist, and then the face in the middle glided upward, leaving a blank space in the center—

—and the girl who was setting up the shrine waved at me.

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding and waved back at her, easing off the brake but not yet speeding up again.

Pushing back some of her long strawberry-blonde hair from her face, she looked at me, then at the shrine, and then shrugged, her smile looking more and more like that of a child who’d been caught doing something they shouldn’t have been. Her clothing was dark—way too dark to be safe at this time of night, in this location.

Checking the dashboard clock, I saw that it was almost two in the morning, and there was no other car in sight. Had she walked here from whatever town lay at the end of the ramp? Why do this in the middle of the night when there was the chance someone might not see you until it was too late? And what the hell was I doing, sitting here wondering about this when I needed to be moving?

That’s when it hit me that she wasn’t trying to erect the shrine, she was trying to take it down, and I‘d surprised her. This was probably some kind of sorority prank—she couldn’t have been more than nineteen—and the look on her face told me that she was embarrassed but not necessarily sorry.

I looked at her, then the shrine, shook my head in disgust, and drove away.

She came out into the middle of the road and stood watching until I rounded the curve that emptied out into the town proper. I half expected her to give me the finger—after all, I’d been the one who had the nerve to interrupt her little practical joke—but she only stood there, arms at her sides, staring at my tail-lights.

Something about her shape seemed off to me, but I couldn’t pin it down, and then decided I didn’t care.

The second after I crested a small hill and she disappeared from view, I saw the stack of memorial wreaths, crosses, and hearts. They were piled up to the side at the traffic light like discarded bags of trash, plastic lace cracking, ribbons waving in the air, and countless photographed faces staring up through the open spaces in the center.

There must have two dozen of the things piled there. I sat staring at them for several moment before turning to look out the rear window. Jesus, had she taken all of these? How far had she been walking, anyway? There was no way all of these had been taken from the small stretch of road along the exit, unless this particular exit was one of the deadliest in existence, which I doubted.

I looked back at the dead pile—that’s how I suddenly thought if it, and had no idea where the hell the phrase had come from—then decided, screw the light, made my turn, and headed toward the service station about a quarter-mile down the street. I didn’t know what the hell she was up to and I didn’t want to know. I’d gas up, take a piss (well, leave one, actually), get my directions, and mind my own business the rest of the way to Miss Driscoll’s home town.

Still, it angered me to think that, sitting in some sorority house somewhere, a bunch of smug sisters were giggling over this prank and not giving one thought to the additional grief it would bring to those whose heartbreak had compelled them to mark the place of their loved one’s death.

And that thought struck me as funny: Hey, Dianne, here’s a question: What is the sound made by a moral compass shifting?

I exhaled, shook my head, and turned down the radio as I pulled into the service station.

It was surprisingly modern for what appeared at first glance to be a very small town; automated pay-here pumps, a diesel docking area, an attached car wash, and one of those seemingly hermitically-sealed booths where the “attendant” sat behind inch-thick glass and you made purchases after midnight through a series of metal drawers.

I swiped my credit card (I was saving the cash for emergencies), waited for the pump to authorize my purchase, and looked over to see the attendant staring right at me and talking into the phone. He looked nervous, maybe even a little scared, and for a crazy moment I thought, He’s calling the cops.

(Help, dear God,, help me—I’ve got an actual customer! What’ll I do? I’m doomed! Doomed, I tell you!)

Then it occurred to me: I was driving a meat wagon, clearly marked CORONER. That’d freak out anyone at this time of night.

The authorization came through and I filled the tank, got my receipt, and decided to give the windshield a quick wash. I was wiping away the last of the cleaner when I asked myself: What would Dianne do if she were here?

Dianne could never, never see a wrong without at least trying to take some kind of action, even if all that action amounted to was pointing out to someone that the wrong was being committed. I made her believe that this annoyed the hell out of me, which in truth it did—not because it was another way of her proving how moral she was, but because I admired the courage it took to always do it, and in my admiration found that same conviction to be sadly lacking in myself, which irritated me, so more often than not I took it out on her in a series of little cruelties that ran the gamut from deliberately ignoring her to going out of my way to be a pain in the ass. I was a real prince of a hubby, me.

So the question: What would Dianne do?

She’d tell someone, that’s what.

I looked at the kid in the booth, then back at my car, then at my feet. Staring at my feet has been the source of many an epiphany over the years.

I was surprised to discover that I was genuinely pissed at what that girl was doing back there.

Next thing I know, I’m standing at the booth and waiting for the kid to look up from the issue of Guitar Player that he’s reading. Steve Morse was on the cover. I like Steve Morse’s music a lot. Perhaps I could use that as an ice-breaker if the little shit ever acknowledged my existence.

Finally I cleared my throat, and without looking up from the page he was reading, the kid reached out and pressed on the intercom button: “Yeah?”

“There’s a girl about a mile back who’s vandalizing some roadside memorials.”

“You don’t say?” He looked at me with the kind of unctuous, smarmy smirk that doesn’t try to mask the wearer’s amused apathy, and instantly makes you want to step on their face and grind your heel.

Keeping a civil tongue, I quickly explained to him what I’d seen, and where, and finished by suggesting that he call the police or sheriff.

That smirk still on his face, he nodded, flipped to a new page in the magazine, and said: “Anything else I can do for you?”

I tried, Dianne; give me that much. I tried.

“Yes,” I said. “Where are your restrooms?”

This got an audible sigh. He closed the magazine, stood up (which seemed to be a source of great physical strain), walked over to a cabinet on the wall, opened the door, and removed a key that was attached to a chain that was soldered to a piece of metal half the length of my forearm. Returning to his stool (I saw now that one of his legs was encased in a metal brace of some kind), he valiantly struggled back into position, tossed the key into a drawer, then shoved it out to me.

Removing the works from the drawer, I waited for him to say something. When he didn’t, I used the end of the key to tap on the glass. Hearing it, he paused in his reading, sighed even more loudly than before, and (still not looking up at me) said : “Yes?”

I couldn’t help but wonder how long he’d last in this job if it actually required him to step outside and work for his paycheck, metal leg brace or no. “This does me no good unless you tell me where the restrooms are.”

He pointed to his left. That’s all the more I was going to get from him as far as directions went; past left, I was on my own.

I nodded, turned away, muttered, “If I don’t return, let it be on your conscience,” and made my way around the left side of the building.

The restrooms, as it turned out, were at the back of the building, which meant I had to go left, walk the length of the place, then turn right. Night vision goggles would have helped me locate the door quicker, since the back of the place—despite the glaring lights from the pump islands—was mostly in shadow, but I’m pleased to say that I didn’t have to add a stop at an all-night department store for a new pair of pants to my travels.

I found the restroom, unlocked the door, and made it inside.

I have been in kitchens in peoples’ homes that weren’t as clean as this restroom. It not only smelled brand-new, it looked brand-new: the floor tile was shiny, the faucets sparkled, the mirrors were streak-free, someone had decorated the wood-paneled walls with framed photographs and old movie posters, there was none of that moist, old-urinal-cake stink that usually permeates service station bathrooms (the urinals and toilets looked as if they’d never been used), and there was no trash in the receptacles—not a paper towel, wad of chewing gum, empty soda can, nothing.

I almost felt like I was defiling the place when I finally stepped up to the urinal, but an aching bladder will diminish the sanctity of even the Sistine Chapel; yes, you may quote me on that.

Standing there, I looked around at the movie posters and photographs. I was expecting stuff like Gone with the Wind and pictures of New York at night—your standard, safe, pleasant, nothing-to-offend-anyone type of public restroom milieu—but instead what I got were posters for Two-Lane Blacktop, Vanishing Point, Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry, The Driver, and (the one that made me laugh out loud) Death Race 2000. Whoever decorated in here had a thing for racing and car-chase movies.

The photographs were of people standing beside heavily tricked-out or racing cars; a couple looked to have been taken in the winner’s circle at NASCAR or Formula One races (I don’t know the difference between the two, it’s all just roaring engines and squealing tires to me).

Then I turned my attention back to the business at hand and caught a glimpse of the framed photograph hanging over my urinal.

Have you ever heard someone say, It scared the piss out of me? Well, if there’s an expression for the opposite bladder-related physical reaction to being frightened, it pretty much describes what happened when I saw that photograph, because everything south of my personal Mason-Dixon line came to sudden, dribbling halt; it felt like my bladder would have slammed everything into reverse had it been capable.

I was looking at a very striking woman surrounded by dozens of children, all of them smiling the type of forced, could-you-hurry-up-and-take-the-picture-puh-leeeeze smile that we’ve all plastered on our faces at one time or another as suited the occasion.

This wasn’t a copy of the picture from Miss Driscoll’s foyer—it was the same photograph, in the same frame, with the same crack in the glass running down the center of her face.

Of all the thoughts that could have gone through my mind, these are the three things that occurred to me at that moment: 1) the hulking shadows in my apartment had not used any doors or windows to break in or to leave; 2) another shadow had closed the door to Miss Driscoll’s apartment from the inside after Dobbs had made certain it locked behind us; and, 3) if these shadows could just pop in and out when- and wherever they wanted, who was to say they couldn’t bring something along…like, say, this picture? Take a good look: this is me, not realizing I’m screwed. This is me, not realizing I’m screwed while still holding my dick in my hand. And dribbling piss onto my shoes. A moment of great personal dignity that I felt compelled to share. I feel it’s brought us closer.

Backing away from the urinal, zipping up, and wanting to look over my shoulder to see if someone or something were standing behind me, I found I couldn’t take my eyes off that photograph. There were probably, oh, at least one or one-and-a-half very good, logical, reasonable scenarios to explain how this picture had followed me to this place, but at that moment I couldn’t think of any that didn’t involve bulky shadows. And even if I could have, all of them would have shared the same ending, anyway; me getting the hell out of Dodge right now.

Except—as I was about to find out—Dodge had other plans.

Coming around the side of the building, I blinked against the strobe-light glow cast by the whirling visibar lights atop the Sheriff’s Department vehicle parked at an angle in front of the meat wagon. It appeared that I wasn’t going anywhere for the moment.

Plastering what I hoped was a genuinely innocent smile on my face, I started toward the nearest uniform and said, “Is there a prob—”

He held up his hand—Please be quiet—as he spoke into the radio microphone. “He just came out of the bathroom. Call Impound and let ‘em know.”

Impound? I looked around. What the hell did he think—

—You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into—

—the meat wagon now had a passenger, as well as some additional cargo.

Young Miss Memorial sat in the passenger seat. Behind her, crammed in none-too-carefully, were the contents of the Dead Pile; wreathes, crosses, and several hearts, all of them now sans photographs, all of them having scattered ribbons and plastic flowers around the interior as well as over Miss Driscoll’s oh-so expensive coffin.

I couldn’t have been in the restroom for more than three minutes, yet somehow in that time Young Miss Memorial had not only managed to cover a good two-and-half miles of road on foot, but did so while carrying all of her evening’s roadside pickings. I doubted that the things were all that heavy individually or cumulatively, but their collective bulk was enough to tell me no way could she have done this on her own.

So who’d helped her?

The sheriff finished talking to whomever he’d radioed, then signaled to his deputy, who promptly came up behind me and shoved the business end of a revolver into my back. Always priding myself on taking a subtle hint when one is offered, I slowly raised my hands. “We’re not going to have any problems, are we?” said the sheriff, looking down at his feet. Momentarily unable to summon a witty retort, I just shook my head. “You have some paperwork to show me?” When I neither spoke nor nodded, the deputy pressed his gun farther into my back. “My inside coat pocket,” I managed to get out. The sheriff reached in and removed the envelope, took out the FRTP, read it over, then said, “Okay, then. Let’s go.” “Go where?”

He nodded toward the meat wagon. “You’re under arrest for vandalism, theft of city property, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” Little Miss Memorial smiled at us, held up an open can of beer, then gave the gas station attendant a little wave. “This is bullshit,” I said. The sheriff took a step closer to me. “Oh?”

“I didn’t take those goddamn things and you know it. I’d tell you to ask him—” I nodded toward the attendant, “—but something tells me his memory might be a little fuzzy.”

The sheriff looked over at the attendant. For a moment I thought he was actually going to ask the guy, then just as quickly realized what I should have known all along: they were all in on it. No, Little Miss Memorial couldn’t have moved the Dead Pile so quickly on her own, but with a squad car and a couple of guys to help her—no sweat.

At least now I knew who the attendant had been calling when I first pulled in. What I didn’t know was why.

Summoning all the nerve I had under the circumstances, I said, “I’m not going anywhere.”

This got a huge laugh out of the sheriff as he pushed back his hat, giving me my first clear view of his face.

He was a kid. Nineteen, twenty years old, tops.

“Here’s the thing,” he said, tucking the FRTP back into my pocket. “It’s after two o’clock in the morning. You’re not where you expected to be—you’re where you’re supposed to be, sure, but my guess is you were figuring on—what?—at least a few more hours of road time. Doesn’t matter.” He got right up in my face then. “It’s the middle of the night. No one, and I mean no one, including you, knows where you are right now. We’ve got guns. You’re in possession of vandalized and stolen property. And there’s an underage girl in your front seat with an open container of alcohol. So you don’t get to say where you will or will not go or what you will or will not do.”

I wondered how many Raymond Chandler novels he’d had to read in order to teach himself to talk that way, but figured this wouldn’t be a good time to ask, so instead I opted for, “I want to talk to someone in authority whose age is higher than my shirt size, if that’s all right with you.” “Fair enough. If you’ll shut the hell up and get into the back seat of my vehicle, I’ll take you to that person.” I nodded toward the meat wagon. “What about—?” The sheriff held out his hand. “The keys.” I gave them to him. “Anything happens to that vehicle or the body, and I’m gonna be in a lot of trouble.”

He smiled. “Nothing’s going to happen. These streets are safe. Hell, a person couldn’t have an accident if they tried.” He walked over and handed the keys to Little Miss Memorial.

“Does Daddy Bliss know that Road Mama’s come home?” she asked him.

The sheriff nodded. “He knows. Everyone knows by now.” He patted the top of the wagon, and then smiled. “I like how that sounds, ‘Road Mama’s come home.’”

Little Miss Memorial smiled back at him. “Me, too.”

Road Mama and Daddy Bliss. Sounded like the name of some faux country & western ballad from 1970’s pop radio, a rip-snortin’, high-ballin’, pedal-to-the-metal toe-tapper you’d hear sandwiched between C.W. McCall’s “Convoy” and Jerry Reed’s theme from Smoky and the Bandit. If I hadn’t been so angry and scared (mostly scared), I might have laughed at the thought.

The sheriff leaned down to whisper something in Little Miss Memorial’s ear. The back of his jacket pulled tight, and for a moment I thought, he’s got five spines, because that’s how it looked. It was only as he stood back up and I heard a pronounced metallic scrape and the rustle of straining Velcro that I realized he was wearing some kind of complicated back brace. Without thinking, I asked, “Does that hurt?” “I beg your pardon?” I gestured toward him. “That brace you’re wearing. Does it hurt?” He stared at me for a few seconds, blinked, then replied, “Sometimes. What’s it to you?’ I shrugged. “I’m just wondering why you weren’t assigned desk duty until you healed up.”

“Because, Mother Theresa, I’m not going to heal up.”

“I meant no offense.”

“Nobody ever does.” He opened the back door of his cruiser. “Any more questions, or can we get on with this?”

I ducked down my head and climbed in behind the shotgun seat, surprised to see no wire-mesh divider separating the back seat from the front.

The deputy who’d been holding the gun in my back slid in on the other side of me, closed the door, and removed his hat. He looked, if anything, even younger than the sheriff. Round face, bright grey eyes, flushed cheeks…sixteen, at most. Plus he was smaller than the sheriff, so his uniform was pulled in and tucked tightly so it wouldn’t hang too loosely. He might as well have been a big-for-his age child playing Policeman. If it weren’t for the metal plate covering the right side of his skull, I might have even believed he was a little kid.

If he noticed the way I stared at him, he gave no indication.

The plate itself was a dull shade of silver, tinged at the edges with a crusty red substance where the jagged flesh of his grayish, moist-looking scalp fused with the metal. There were six screws in all, one at each corner of the plate, with one extra on the upper and lower sides. None of them matched. Some were small and thin, others were thick, and one looked, I swear, like a cement screw. Most were flush, but two rose slightly above the surface.

He finally noticed that I was staring, and so moved to brush some of his hair back in a futile effort to cover at least a portion of the plate. All he succeeded in doing was showing me that part of his scalp had been peeled completely away near the base of the plate, offering me a glimpse of skull.

“What happened to you?” I asked.

He shrugged. “This looks a lot better than it did. Shoulda seen it before I got fixed up.”

The sheriff climbed into the driver’s seat, closing his door with more force than was needed. “What have I told you about flashing that thing at people? Put your hat back on, Dash.”

“You took yours off just now.”

“That’s because I’m driving and need an unobstructed view. If you were driving, then you could take yours off. But you’re not driving, Dash. You’re in the back seat scaring the living shit out of our prisoner for no good reason other than you can. Now put your hat back on, or I’m gonna tell everyone it’s okay to start calling you ‘Chop-Top’ again.”

“You wouldn’t do that.”

The sheriff turned around to face him. “No, I probably wouldn’t, but that should give you some idea of how much this bothers me. You know that Daddy Bliss had them make that hat especially for you. It’s got that steel band around the inside and everything.”

Deputy Dash blinked. “I know. Gets pretty hot with it on. And heavy.”

The sheriff gave me a quick look—Kids, what’re you gonna do?—and then sighed. “If you wear the hat, Dash, then you won’t get so many headaches, and you won’t hear so many voices.”

Deputy Dash leaned over toward me. “This plate picks up radio waves sometimes.”

“And sometimes,” said the sheriff, “it interferes with them. Like when I need to call in.” He held up the microphone. “So will you please put it back on?”

“See there?” said Deputy Dash. “All you had to do was say ‘please’.” He donned his hat once again. “Just ask me nice, that’s all. Don’t order me like you’re my boss or something.”

The sheriff hung down his head. “Dash, I am your boss.” “You know what I mean.” We pulled out of the gas station, the meat wagon following close behind. I stared at Deputy Dash. “How come you’re called Dash?” He pointed to the metal plate. “‘Cause that’s where my head hit.” I nodded as if that cleared up everything. “Oh. You get FM with that?” He grinned. “You’re funny. We don’t get many funny ones.” He was still holding his gun on me. “Could you maybe point that toward the floor?” I asked. “If we hit a bump or something, it might go off.” “It don’t work.” “What?”

“His gun isn’t loaded,” said the sheriff. Glancing into his rearview mirror, his gaze momentarily met mine. “I mean, look at him. Don’t misunderstand, he’s my kid brother and I love him, but seriously—would you feel safe knowing he was in possession of live ammunition?”

Deputy Dash held up his weapon. “Sure is big, though. That usually does the trick.”

“And what if it doesn’t?” I asked.

“Then I use my gun,” said the sheriff. “My gun is loaded.” Deputy Dash puffed up a bit as he said, “But it ain’t nearly as big.” “You can put your gun away now, Dash.” “Nah.” “What was that?”

Deputy Dash looked up at his brother. “If I have to put my gun away, then the hat comes off. Since I have to keep my hat on, the gun stays out.”

“Why can’t you wear your hat and put your gun away?” asked the sheriff.

“On account I need to have something in my hands to play with or I get jumpy, and if I can’t have either my hat or my gun, that just leaves my dick, and the last time I played with my dick in the car, you throwed a hissy fit.”

“That’s because you never clean up after yourself!”

“I do so!”

The sheriff pounded his fist against the door. “You wipe up the seat, sure, but you never clean the dashboard or the steering wheel! You got any idea how it feels to start my day by coming out to the cruiser and then grabbing the wheel to find your day-old spooge all over it?”

Dash shrugged. “Never bothered me.”

“That’s because it’s your spooge! Of course it’s not gonna bother you, just like my farts don’t bother me. In fact, I think my farts smell just fine!”

“Then how come you keep a can of air freshener in the glove compartment?”

“Because you’re always complaining about how my farts stink up the car.”

“Yeah, but whenever you use that air freshener, all it does it make it smell like someone squeezed out a load of Cleveland Steamers in a rose garden.”

I cleared my throat. “This sounds like a private family matter to me. If you want to pull over and let me out, I’d be glad to—”

The sheriff let go of the steering wheel and spun around, his arm shooting straight out, holding his gun less than an inch from my face.

“Shut the hell up!” he screamed at me, cocking the hammer. “You’ve already caused enough trouble, Driver. You think this is funny? You getting a chuckle out of listening to me argue with my brain-damaged little brother? It’s not his fault he’s the way he is.”

“Thank you,” said Dash.

“You’re welcome.” He looked back at me. “You keep your comments and your questions to yourself until I say otherwise. One more word out of you, Driver—one more fucking word—and I will shoot you in the kneecap. Do you understand me?”

I nodded.

“We all appreciate that you brought Road Mama back home, but if someone told you that your job ended once she was delivered, well…that’s probably what they were told, but it’s not true. Ah-ah—not. One. Word.” I mimed zipping closed my mouth. “He’s funny,” said Dash. “We don’t get many funny ones.” “You said that already.” “Felt like saying it again.”

I went cold all over. I could feel the blood draining from face. Yeah, the gun and the look in the sheriff’s eyes were scary enough—there was no doubt in my mind that he’d shoot me in the kneecap if I gave him the excuse—but even those seemed minor compared to what I’d just realized.

The car was driving itself.

Ever since the sheriff had spun around in his seat, the car had continued to maneuver along the street just as smoothly and evenly as you please. It even decelerated and signaled when cornering.

The sheriff noticed I wasn’t staring at him or his gun. Looking over his shoulder, he hissed, “Shit!” and then turned back around, holstering his weapon and gripping the spooge-free wheel once again. “I’m sorry. You weren’t supposed to see that yet.”

“Oops,” said Dash, then giggled.

I opened my mouth to ask, “See what yet?” but my kneecaps reminded me that, ahem, silence was golden.

The sheriff grabbed up the microphone again. “Nova, darlin’, you there?”

“Of course I am, where else would I be?”

“I think I just screwed up.”

“Oh, dear. What have you gone and done?”

He told her. There were several moments of silence, and then Nova said, “Well, now, that doesn’t sound all that bad. You just hold on and I’ll get right back to you.” “Will do.” He glanced in the rearview mirror at me. “May be that we’ll have a change of plans.” I mimed unzipping my mouth. “I think he wants to ask you something,” said Dash. “He can talk.”

“You know I didn’t take those memorials, right?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“And I sure as hell didn’t give that girl a ride or a beer. Especially not light beer.” “There a point you’re getting to?” “Yeah—why all the bullshit and brouhaha?” “Needed to make sure you’d come along peacefully.”

“Why not just ask me?” “Wasn’t sure you’d say yes.” “And if I hadn’t?” “Then we’d’ve had to resort to the bullshit and brouhaha, anyway. Just seemed easier to go with the sure thing.”

I looked at Dash, who offered a shrug that said, Older brothers, what’re you gonna do?

I leaned forward against the front seat. “You said something about a ‘change’ of plans? Would you mind telling me what the original plan was supposed to be? For that matter, what the hell was that girl doing back there, gathering up all those memorials? And how is it that this goddamn cruiser can drive itself? Now that I think of it, where am I, exactly? I’m not supposed to be anywhere near my destination. And what is it with everyone and—” “You know what?” said the sheriff. “I changed my mind. Shut up or I’ll shoot you.” “No, you won’t.” He turned around and shot me.

There was a lot of confusion right after that, what with the too-bright muzzle-flash, the gargantuan noise made by the shot in the enclosed space, and me screaming like a castrato with flaming hemorrhoids. Grabbing my happy sacs—that’s where he’d aimed—I knew something had happened down there because I could smell the gunshot and feel the heat between my legs and God Almighty there was something wet under my hands but I was too busy screeching and waiting for the pain to register, then I caught a peripheral glimpse of Deputy Dash laughing his ass off and realized that the sheriff hadn’t shot me, he’d shot the portion of the seat between my legs, and what I was feeling beneath my hand wasn’t blood gushing out of the hole where my nuts had previously resided but plain old-fashioned urine.

“Good shot!” shouted Dash.

“Like hell!” yelled the sheriff. “I missed.”

“I’m sorry!” I screamed at him, my voice breaking on the second word. “Jesus Christ, I’m sorry! I didn’t…I didn’t mean anything.”

“Do you believe that I will shoot you?”

“Yes!”

“All right then.” He turned back, holstered his weapon, and took hold of the wheel once more.

I have no idea how long I cowered in the back seat with my knees pulled up against my chest, shaking and trying not to cry. I hate showing weakness in front of others. It gives them the upper hand and diminishes me in my own eyes.

Eventually, Dash leaned over and put his hand on my shoulder. I jumped at his touch and slammed the top of my head against the roof.

“Sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have laughed.”

All I could do was nod my head, and even that hurt like hell. “We can get you some clean pants and underwear,” said Dash. “…would be nice…” I heard myself whisper. Then the radio crackled and the dispatcher’s voice chimed in. “You still there, Hummer?” He grabbed the microphone. “Where else would I be?” “That’s my line, Sheriff.” “Sue me.”

“Touchy tonight, aren’t we?”

“Did you talk with Daddy Bliss?”

“No, I just missed the sound of your voice—of course I talked with him.”

“And…?” “And Daddy says, no worries. He wanted Driver to have the grand tour, anyway.” Hummer stared out at the road, saying nothing for a few seconds, looking confused. I leaned toward Dash. “Is that a nickname, ‘Hummer’?” “Nope.” Sheriff Hummer was still speaking to the dispatcher. “When’s the tour supposed to start?” “As soon as possible.” “Can we at least get him a change of clothes first?” “A change of clothes?” said Nova. “What did you—never mind. Sure thing. He can look through the wardrobe when he gets here.” “Call our ETA five minutes. Ciera’s right behind us with Road Mama.” “You want me to call Stick and tell him to hit the lights?” Hummer glanced in the rearview mirror toward me, then said, “Might as well.” “Oh, you’re gonna like this,” said Dash. “Ain’t everyone who gets to see Levegh Lane.” “Why’s that?” Deputy Dash shrugged. “We don’t get many visitors.” “So this is big deal, huh?” “Yep.” “Why…why do you call it that? Is there some significance to the name? Is that Daddy Bliss’s real name or something?””

Hummer answered this one: “It’s named after Pierre Levegh, a race car driver. Drove a Mercedes at Le Mans in 1955. In the third hour of the race, this Jaguar driver named Mike Hawthorn got a signal from his pit crew to stop for gas. He slowed down, but there was this Austin-Healey right on his ass, and it had to swerve to avoid him. A little ways behind, Levegh raised his hand to signal another car to slow the hell down. Levegh was going 150 miles per hour.” Hummer shook his head. “He never had a chance.

“Levegh slammed into the Healey and his car took off like a rocket, crashed into the embankment beside the track, hurtled end over end, and then just…disintegrated over the crowd. The hood decapitated a bunch of spectators. The engine and front axle cut through a bunch of people, splitting them in half. The car had a magnesium body, right, and that son-of-a-bitch burst into flames like a torch, burning dozens of others to death. The whole thing took maybe 12 seconds, but in that time 82 people were killed and 76 others were maimed.”

I blinked. “And you named a street after him?”

“That’s right. Levegh was a great man.”

“A great man,” said Dash.

Hummer nodded. “Only a truly heroic man could bring so many new members into Road Mama and Daddy Bliss’s family in a few brief seconds.”

Do I need to tell you exactly how anxious this little exchange made me? It finally sank in that I was trapped in a car with a couple of out-patients. If my luck held up, we’d soon be passing the Bates Motel.

I was so scared…but I was also damned if I was going to show it; at least, no more than I already had.

“You might want to sit up,” said Hummer. “Make sure you can get a good look out the window. You might not know it, but this a great honor, Daddy Bliss wanting you to see everything.”

I heard a distance buzzing noise, like a massive electrical grid warming up. Even through the vibration of the tires against the streets I could feel the deep, powerful thrum that rose in power with the pitch of the grid.

“You might want to prepare yourself some,” said Hummer. “This could be a bit of a shock.”

That didn’t even begin to cover it.

The street exploded with light, bright and blinding, bearing down like a curse from Heaven and forcing me to close my eyes and throw my arms up against my face.

After the stars stopped going supernova behind my lids, I slowly opened my eyes and saw that both sides of this cliff-lined street were being illuminated by rows upon rows of huge stadium lights that rose easily a hundred feet above the surface of the road. I wondered how they’d managed to install them at the tops of the cliffs, and then realized that these weren’t cliffs or hollowed mountainsides at all.

They were cars.

Crushed, smashed, mangled, and twisted, stacked dozens atop dozens, held together by steel beams and girders that had been welded into place to form main spannings and supports, creating something like a life-sized shadowbox. The stacks

(dead piles?)

rose so high I almost couldn’t see the tops of the damn things. Each car-cube was roughly the size of a large building, nine or ten stories high, separated from its neighbor by a space of maybe 30 feet. It was in those spaces where the stadium light towers were installed, and as we passed the first group and I looked through those spaces I saw that the car-cubes not only lined both sides of the street but extended backward for what seemed miles, a giant child’s building block set, each one placed at a point equidistant from those beside, in front of, and behind it. It was like something out of an Escher painting.

“Where did all of these come from?” I asked.

“Everywhere,” replied Dash. “They come from all over the place in the U.S.”

“And sometimes Canada or Mexico,” said Sheriff Hummer. “If someone drives here from Canada or Mexico, they’re on our roads, so their ass is ours if something happens.”

“‘Ours’?” I said.

“Ours,” replied Dash.

“Well, technically,” said Hummer, “they belong to Road Mama and Daddy Bliss, but since the rest of us are family, we like to think of them as ‘ours’. That answer your question?” “Not really.” “Don’t worry, things’ll be explained to you.” Ciera came up alongside us in the meat wagon, waving and smiling before hitting the turn signal and taking a side road. “She’s using the shortcut,” said Dash. Hummer nodded his head. “I got eyes, little brother.” “Daddy Bliss told us we weren’t supposed to take no shortcuts tonight.” “And Ciera will have to explain herself to him, so it’s not our problem.”

“But he won’t do anything to her, he never does. It ain’t fair! How come she gets to do whatever she wants and the rest of us gotta do as we’re told?”

“Because Daddy Bliss favors Ciera, you know that. She was the last person he brought into the family himself.”

Dash folded his arms across his chest and pressed his chin down, pouting. “Yeah, well, still…it ain’t fair.”

“Not much is, little brother. Don’t need to keep reminding ourselves.”

We made a left, turning onto a stretch of road where the car-cubes were replaced by typical middle-class houses on a typical middle-class street. All the lights were on inside each house, and several people were standing on their front porches, watching us pass by.

“Gonna be a big night for everyone here, Driver,” said Hummer. “A big night.”

I swallowed, leaning forward. “Why are you called ‘Hummer’?”

The sheriff looked into the rear-view mirror. “Because that’s what I was driving when I got myself and my little brother killed. It was my fault, I was screwing around, pretending that the goddamn thing was a tank, I accidentally side-swiped a semi, lost control of the wheel, and went over the side of a bridge.”

“I was pretty scared,” said Dash. “I was all bent over and crying. That’s how I busted open my head on the bottom of the dashboard.” “And I was the driver,” replied the sheriff. “That’s how it works.” I returned his stare in the rear-view mirror for a few moments more, then said, “Fuck you.” “What was that?” One of his hands snapped down to the butt of his gun. “I said fuck you. I’m supposed to believe that you two are dead, is that it?” “We ain’t dead,” said Dash. “Just Repaired,” said Hummer. He pronounced the second word with such awe and reverence I could almost see the capital ‘R’.

I looked at the houses we were passing. The people on the porches all had something wrong with them; some used canes or crutches, some were in wheelchairs, others had arms missing or in slings, and a couple of them wore those square metal-cage get-ups that people who suffer severe neck injuries are saddled with using.

“What about them?” I asked, nodding toward the onlookers.

“Repaired,” said Hummer. “Everyone who lives here has been Repaired or is in the process of being Repaired. Sometimes the Repairs aren’t that big of a deal, like with Dash and Ciera and me. But some Repairs, they take a bit of work.” Dash looked at me and nodded his head. “So this is, what? Zombie Town U.S.A.?” Hummer glared at me. “I’d watch the sarcasm if I was you. And, no, there aren’t any zombies here. Only the Repaired.”

We turned off the street and hit a long patch of road that wound through a heavily industrialized section of town. Factories small and large lined both sides of the road for nearly three miles, and judging from the amount of noise and smoke pouring from each building, things were busy.

It was only as we were turning off onto another street that I caught a glimpse of any of the factory workers (which I think was Hummer’s intention, seeing as how he was driving not only slowly but quite close to the curb). A large set of heavy iron doors were open, giving me a clear look into the foundry where one of the workers was emptying a vat of white-hot molten metal into an arc furnace. Despite the shimmering heat waves and sparks scattering as the liquid metal gushed down, I got a very clear look at the man.

His right arm had been replaced by a steel prosthesis whose components had been molded, bent, twisted, and press-punched into something that was meant to look organic and serve the same function as his missing arm. It had an elbow joint that bent easily enough and a semi-robotic hand with five finger-like appendages. The wires and conduits that snaked through the openings in the metal were in a configuration comparable to that of veins. The prosthesis moved stiffly, and every time the worker turned his back to us, the highly-polished sheet of silver chrome used to replace his shoulder blade caught the light and threw it back into my eyes. I was still blinking when the worker stopped what he was doing, rose straight up, and—like he’d known all along that he was being observed—turned to face me.

The left half of his face had been Repaired, as well. I saw the bright protruding taillight that had taken the place of his eye, the section of sheared metal that served as his jawbone, and what I swear looked like seat leather that now replaced the flesh of his cheek. He lifted his robotic hand and waved. “Believe me now,” said Hummer, “or do you want us to get out so I can make a personal introduction?” “…incredible…” was all I could get out. “No,” said Dash, “just Repaired, that’s all. Ain’t no big thing, really.” Hummer laughed and sped up the cruiser.

I turned around in the seat, staring out the rear window, and saw the foundry worker walk out into the middle of the street and watch us drive away. Even after his body disappeared into shadow, I could still see the bright red light of his Repaired eye.

I was about to ask Hummer where they got the parts to Repair people, then thought of the car-cubes and knew the answer.

We pulled up in front of a large concrete building that contained few windows and began to park. “If he’s getting the tour,” said Dash, “then shouldn’t we take him in through the back?” “Shit,” said Hummer, backing out of the space, “you’re right. Thanks for reminding me.” “You’re welcome.”

We drove around to the back where a single streetlight provided little illumination. We got out, and then entered the building through a heavy steel door.

The first thing that hit me was the smell of the place; it was combination of that sweaty, metallic, smoky, machine-grease stench of the factory floor and the overly-antiseptic aroma of a hospital corridor. I’d never smelled anything like it in my life.

“You get used to the smell,” said Hummer, clamping a hand on my elbow and leading me through a set of doors on the left. Dash made a beeline for a set of doors on the right—the vending machine area.

We entered a somewhat cramped but well-lit office filled with scuffed wooden desks and chairs that were easily 30 years out of date, the furniture made all the more anachronistic by the expensive state-of-the-art equipment setting on it: 25-inch flat screen LCD monitors on broken roll-top desks, iMacs being used by people sitting in slat-backed wooden chairs held together in places with duct tape, and a trio of huge 50-inch plasma televisions mounted on the walls displaying a slide-show series of maps, as well as images from what I assumed were security cameras; empty streets, empty corridors, empty parking lots.

“It’s impolite to stare,” said Hummer, pulling me toward a door marked Holding Room at the back of the office. Opening the door, he reached in and flipped on the light, then pushed me inside. “Bathroom’s on the right, and there’re snacks in the refrigerator.” He pointed to a rolling metal rack filled with hanging clothes. “Nova’s already had some stuff from the wardrobe put in here, so you can change out of those pissy clothes. Clean yourself up and get a bite to eat. You won’t be in here for too long.”

“Wait a second,” I said as he began closing the door.

He paused. “Yes?” I took a deep breath and summoned what little nerve I still had. “Aren’t I entitled to one phone call?” “You are.” “I’d like to make it, please.” Hummer grinned. “Who have you got to call, Driver?” “That’s my business.” “More like your daydream, from what I understand.” Glaring at him, I made a fist but did not raise it. “I demand my right to a phone call.”

“You’ll get your call, stop whining.” He stared at me for a moment, his features softening a bit. “You’re really scared, aren’t you?”

“…yes…”

Hummer looked over his shoulder, then stepped back into the holding room, pushing the door most of the way closed. “Listen to me, Driver. I don’t know what you did to piss off the Highway People, but it must have been pretty goddamn serious for you to wind up here. The folks who come to this place, they don’t drive in, and they sure as hell don’t leave. Nobody just passes through here, the Highway People won’t let them. But you, you’re getting special treatment. I can’t tell you whether or not you’re gonna leave here alive because I don’t get to make that call, but I can tell you that no one, the Highway People included, has any intention of harming you. Anything that might or might not happen to you will be your own doing, not ours.”

I was still trying to get past I can’t tell you whether or not you’re gonna leave here alive when I heard myself asking, “Who are the Highway People?”

Hummer shrugged. “That’s just what we call them. I don’t know what their actual names are—hell, I don’t even know if they have names. They’ve been around as long as there have been roads and cars. I guess they’re…I dunno…the gods of the road.”

“Have you ever seen them?”

“Once. Right after the accident. They came for me and Dash.” He was staring out at something only he could see. For the first time that night, he looked so much older than his years. “I remember,” he said, “that the windows were rolled halfway down—it was a warm night, Dash had his open and so did I, so when we went over the bridge and hit the water below, these…these swords of water slashed through the interior. I guess that happened because when we hit, we made a mother of a splash, it happened so fast, and we were both panicking because the interior was filling up and we were trying to get our seatbelts undone…Dash’s arms were flailing all over the place and he kept looking in the back seat for something, and I remember…I remember that those first swords of water felt like they’d actually gone in, y’know? Straight through flesh and into the bone. Even though everything was happening very fast and I knew it was happening very fast, in my eyes it was all in slow motion. Getting my seat belt off and then trying to help Dash with his, and that’s when I saw that he was already dead. His arms weren’t flailing, they were just floating, and the reason he was looking in the back seat was because his head had slammed against the dashboard and he’d broken his neck.” He looked back at me. “His head had just…turned around like that, and I could see where a good portion of his skull had been caved in. I undid his seat belt, anyway, and even though we were sinking there was still an air pocket inside, and I tried to get to it, and that’s when the semi that I’d hit came over the side of the bridge and landed on top of us. I felt my back shatter, and then it was dark and cool and quiet, and then a hand gripped my arm, and I opened my eyes and there was this…this shadow floating over me. It had silver eyes, and I knew it was going to help me. ‘Make sure you get my brother,’ I said to it. And it pointed over to another shadow with silver eyes that was pulling Dash out of the car. They swam away so smoothly, it was kind of graceful.

“I remember looking back at the car and…seeing our bodies still trapped inside. What was left of our bodies, anyway. It took me a long time to understand the process, how it was that our bodies are left behind—at least, for a while, and….” His words trailed off as he smiled to himself, then blinked, and—remembering his duty—pointed toward the bathroom door once again. “Get yourself cleaned up.” “I’m sorry,” I said. Hummer paused at the door once again. “What the hell for?” “I’m sorry that you died. It must have destroyed your parents, losing both of you at the same time.” He shrugged. “We never knew. That’s part of the price for being Repaired.” He closed and locked the door behind him.

I went into the bathroom (which had a shower), cleaned up, found some clothes that fit (the underwear was new, still in the sealed bag), and was putting my shoes back on when I noticed that some of the clothes remaining on the rack were damaged; rips and tears that had been stitched up, dark stains on some that didn’t quite come out in the wash, and some with hand-sewn, hand-lettered labels; property of s. wilson, DAVE’S PANTS, This Jacket Belongs To: JASON.

I wondered if the clothes I’d just put on had similar labels sewn into them, then just as quickly decided that I didn’t want to know.

I heard a slight, soft whirr behind me, and turned around. A security camera mounted in the corner nearest the bathroom door blinked its red light and adjusted its position.

They were watching me, big surprise.

I walked toward it, and with every step I took the camera shifted its position to keep me in view.

“So these clothes,” I said. “I’m guessing they were, what? Taken from the bodies and repaired, as well? Is that what all these are? Dead men’s clothing?”

“Yes,” said a voice behind me.

I spun around, nearly tripping over my own feet.

“Easy there, Driver,” said the nightmare in the doorway. “Mustn’t hurt yourself. Think of what it would do to our insurance deductibles.” It laughed and rolled forward. “I’d shake your hand, but as you can see, that’s somewhat problematic.”

It—he—wore no shirt and had no arms or legs, and sat in an electric wheelchair that was guided by one of those attachments that enables the user to steer by using his or her mouth. As he rolled closer I saw that he wasn’t sitting in the chair at all—he was attached to it by a series of clamps that were soldered into the frame of the chair and disappeared into his flesh at waist level. The skin at the entry point was swollen, red, and crusted at the edges with dried blood.

“My given name is Henry,” he said. “But everyone here calls me Daddy Bliss.”

A series of three curved iron pipes curled out of his back and down into the wheelchair’s battery. Every time the chair moved, these pipes shuddered.

“I do apologize for not dressing appropriately—one should always look one’s best when greeting a new visitor—but you caught me during one of my quarterly tune-ups.”

“I didn’t mean to be rude. You know—staring at you.”

Daddy Bliss nodded, giving me a close-up view of the matchbox-sized rectangles with electrical wires implanted in his skull. The skin of his exposed scalp was also crusty and red where it joined the metal. It was impossible to see where or to what the scalp-wires connected because they hung down his back, mixing in with a bundle of other wires that were held together by plastic clamps. What I could see—too clearly—were the two clear plastic bags that dangled from the metal IV pole attached to the right arm of the wheelchair. The tube from the first bag—a catheter—snaked downward and then up into his penis, which was hidden behind one of the metal waist-clamps. The bag was filled not with urine but a thick black liquid, and as I stared, I realized that the liquid wasn’t going into the bag, it was flowing downward, into him.

“Motor oil,” he said. “It seemed to me you weren’t about to ask, so I thought I would get right to it.”

“Motor oil?”

“A highly…specialized brand, mixed with my own blood but, yes, motor oil nonetheless. The second bag contains a liquid protein supplement that helps keep me both alive and regular.” To illustrate this last point, his bowels groaned, and something moist and heavy dropped into an unseen container housed within the wheelchair’s lower casement.

I was glad I couldn’t see it.

“My apologies,” said Daddy Bliss. “But I had Thai food for dinner, and it always goes right through me. But don’t worry, the casing is quite solid, you can’t smell it.”

“Do you ever get out of that chair?”

“Oh, goodness gracious me, no. I would lose my mobility, silly boy. Do you have any more questions along these lines?”

I thought of Dash, Hummer, and the foundry worker and said, “Why haven’t you been repaired like the others I’ve seen?”

“It’s a question of compatibility, my boy. Just as the human body will reject unacceptable organic tissue, the same goes for iron, steel, aluminum, plastic, any man-made alloy or other such material…it’s a question of trial-and-error. Some of us have been able to be Repaired almost immediately, while others—like myself and Fairlane, who you’ll be meeting later on—have to make due with more…primitive results.

“For myself, I made the decision long ago to not attempt any further Repairs. It’s an excruciatingly painful process, despite the advances we’ve made, and each member of our ever-growing family is given the right to say ‘No more’ at any point in that process. The younger ones—like Dash, Ciera, and our resplendent Sheriff Hummer—are strong, and willful, and can deal with the pain of a full Repair…which is why they can interact more openly with the outside world. Any more questions at this point?”

“Nassir.”

“Sir, is it? So respectful. I like that right down to the ground. Yes, I do.” He bit down on the guidance device and turned the chair around. “Come along, Driver. There’s much to show you, and time is not exactly on our side.”

He rolled out the door and I followed.

We passed through the office and made a left, going through the same doors to the vending area that Dash had taken earlier, only now the cafeteria was empty. Daddy Bliss moved toward a set of weight-activated doors at the far end. They hissed open as soon as his wheels touched the mat in front of them.

We entered a long, brightly-lit concrete corridor.

“Our family album,” said Daddy Bliss. “Feel free to stop and look at whomever catches your fancy. We were forced to eschew the traditional bound albums some time ago, for reasons I’m sure you’ll come to understand.”

Every inch of wall space was covered by hundreds (if not thousands) of framed photographs, each one more gruesome than the one before; a car split nearly in half by the tree it had slammed into, the body of the driver splattered across the windshield; a head-on collision between two SUVs, the vehicles so demolished it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended, their drivers’ bodies little more than pulpy smears; broken bodies of passengers who’d been thrown free, their shattered remains glistening with blood, sometimes covered in one another’s internal organs…it was a photo essay of a slaughterhouse.

“As they were when the Highway People came to them,” said Daddy Bliss.

“Why keep such…gruesome reminders?”

“Because each of us must never forget our beginnings. Neither the Highway People nor—more importantly—the Road would approve.” He said it with such awe and reverence I could see yet another capital ‘R’.

I looked at him. “The Road?”

He gave a short nod of his head. The wires in his skull stretched as he did so. “The Road demands its sacrifices, as any self-respecting god would.”

“God?” I said. “So that would make you…what?”

He smiled. “Think of me as the high priest.” He began turning the chair around. “Shall we, then? Get on with it?”

I stood my ground. (Not as heroic or brave as it sounds—I was still scared as hell.) “What exactly are we getting on with?” He stopped, sighed, then turned back toward me. “Why must you try my patience so early on in our relationship, Driver?” “I wasn’t aware that we had a ‘relationship’.” “Oh, we do, Driver. That we do.” “What’s going on? What are you planning to do with me?”

“That is for the Road, and not me, to decide. I am only your guide—and you’re making it dreadfully difficult for me to discharge that duty. What the Road decides, it decides between midnight and dawn. We have only a few hours remaining before your options run out. Cooperate, and you may just be on your way back home come first light. Continue to be difficult, and here you’ll remain for the rest of your days.” He rolled closer, glaring at me. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes sir.”

“Again with the ‘sir’ business. I could get used to that.”

We continued down the corridor toward a set of heavy iron doors. As we neared them, a security camera mounted over the top of the doorway made a soft whirr, a red light clicked on, and a set of locks within the doors disengaged.

“These doors usually require a card-key,” said Daddy Bliss, “but since I have no arms, for me they will open once visual identification has been made.” He looked up at the camera and smiled.

The doors opened, and I was immediately assaulted with the sounds of a factory floor at full production speed. The smells of machine grease, metal, warm plastic, dust, and a hundred other scents put my sense of smell into overdrive, and I remembered how both my parents used to smell when they came home from a hard day on the line.

I followed Daddy Bliss through the doors into a cage-style elevator. When the iron doors closed behind us, the back wall of the elevator dropped into place and the whole contraption began to rise. I reached out and grabbed two of the bars to steady myself. “Afraid of heights, am I correct?” asked Daddy Bliss. “Ever since I fell out of a tree in our backyard when I was five,” I replied. “You needn’t worry, Driver. This elevator is perhaps the safest one in the country.”

It continued to rise like a roller coaster car clack-clack-clacking up the tracks toward that drop that you just knew was going to send your balls up into your throat, and a few moments later the elevator stopped, shuddered, made a clack-clack-clacking of its own, and shifted forward, the top mechanisms connecting with an overhead track and pulling us forward.

“There will be a bit of a lurch in a moment,” said Daddy Bliss. “It’s nothing to be concerned with.”

“Uh-huh.”

The elevator lurched, dropping down about a foot as the whole shebang left the safety of the platform and hung suspended thirty feet above the factory floor. Once my initial panic was over, I realized that both the moving mechanism and the overhead track were solid. The ride was smooth. Daddy Bliss grinned at me. “Better now?” “Yes, thank you.” “Then I’ll ask you to step over here and look down, please.” 0“I’d rather not.” “The heights business again?” “The heights business again.” “I assure that we are perfectly safe. Now, come here.” I moved toward the side, not once lifting my feet. Somehow it felt safer if I slid toward him.

Below us I saw three separate work areas, each one crowded with equipment and machinery that dwarfed those people working the line. I had no idea what I was looking at, what these machines were called or what function they served. I did recognize a lathe press because Dad used to operate one, and an area near one of the walls was used for wiring small circuitry chips—this I knew because Mom used to do the same thing, only she wired chips for all-night banking machines. These two things aside, I couldn’t tell you what was what or what purpose it served.

The only thing that was obvious to me was that each line started with some part of a trashed automobile; a door, a dashboard, steering wheel units, under-hood components, instrument panels, floor pedals, and other parts both external and internal that I couldn’t place because they’d been removed from whatever it was they’d been attached to in the first place.

The cage glided over the factory floor as the workers continued with their labors. I couldn’t see what parts of the workers had been repaired from up here, save for a few people who—like Dash—had large sections of their skulls replaced with metal plates.

Daddy Bliss said, “Now here is where we see whether or not you’ve got half a brain, Driver. Take a good look at what’s going on down there, and see if you can spot the one thing that all this busy bee-like activity has in common.”

“Is this part of whatever test it is you’re giving me?”

He sighed. “You mustn’t think of this as a test, it will add far too much pressure on your nerves. Think of it more as an assessment, an evaluation, a review.”

“In other words, a test.”

“Have it your way, then. Now, take a good look and see if you can answer the question.”

I studied the activity, though from above it was impossible to see any detail work. It wasn’t until I saw one of the workers use a pair of industrial shears to strip the covering off of a control panel that I knew the answer.

“Plastic,” I said. “They’re removing all the plastic from what’s left of the cars.”

Daddy Bliss smiled. “Bravo, dear boy, bravo—though I feel compelled to point out, for the sake of accuracy, that it isn’t precisely plastic. It’s polypropylene, a form of thermoplastic. Did you know that the average car has 245.5 pounds of plastic? The ever-increasing use of plastics in automobiles helps reduce vehicle weight, thus improving gas mileage and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A total of 4.19 billion pounds of plastic will be used in North American autos and light trucks this year, increasing to about 5.63 billion pounds within the next decade.” He laughed. “All that wonderful raw material, recycled over and over again.”

“Is this where you make the parts for people to be repaired?”

“Hm? Oh, goodness gracious me, no. The Repair facility is located about a mile away—in fact, I think Hummer drove by it just so you could see the place.”

I remembered the worker and his tail-light eye and went cold. “Yeah, I saw it.”

“Excellent. Here is where we manufacture our goods. We produce a limited, specialized line of products here.”

The cage was nearing the farthest end of the factory floor. Below us, I could see several rows of molds arranged inside shelves that were built into the walls. There was something like a large oven, and another huge contraption that looked like some kind of cooling unit, and then an area where the melted, molded, and cooled final product was cut into shape. “Jesus…” I whispered. They manufactured custom-made HO-tracks and cars. I looked at Daddy Bliss. “Is this where Miss Driscoll got her track and cars? From you?” “Her name is Road Mama, Driver, and, yes, we make every piece of track and every car to specification.” “And all of it’s made from the polypropylene taken from wrecked automobiles?”

“The track is made from the polypropylene. The cars are made from whatever is left over from the raw materials—the automobiles—once the polypropylene has been taken. Not one piece of raw material goes to waste. It is in this way that the cycle of production and purpose keeps turning, pardon my lapsing into pathetic poeticisms.”

“And alliteration,” I said. “That’s the second time since we’ve met that you’ve done that.”

“Is it, now? I shall have to take care to watch my tongue.”

The cage slowed, then shuddered once again as it moved onto another platform, disengaging from the overhead track as the front-most door rose up automatically and another set of iron doors opened before us.

We entered another brightly-lighted hallway, this one with a highly-polished off-white floor and walls the same color. The iron doors closed behind us and the stink of the factory was replaced by the sharp, antiseptic smells of a hospital. I moved alongside Daddy Bliss. “And this is…?” “The Pre-Repair Unit.” All of the doors were closed, and there were no personnel working the floor. We paused by one of the closed doors. Daddy Bliss jerked his head to the side, gesturing. “Why don’t you take a look through the observation window there?” I did. I wish to hell I hadn’t.

All I can for certain is that the person lying in there was female; she could have been 17, she could have been 52—it was impossible to tell. Her massive facial injuries rendered her features almost unrecognizable as being human. Her lower body was covered by a sheet. From the ceiling there extended down a pencil-thick cable that spread out at the bottom like the wires inside an umbrella, each one attached to one of the spark plugs implanted in her skull. She jerked underneath the sheet as if in the midst of a seizure, arms and legs twitching as the sparkplugs lit up in a precisely-timed sequence. Her eyes were held closed by two heavy strips of medical tape. A clear plastic tube ran from her throat into a large glass jar set on a metal table beside the bed; with each jerk, dark viscous liquid crawled through the tube and oozed into the jar. With each sequence of sparks she bit down hard on her lower lip, breaking the skin and dribbling blood down the side of her face. Finally, one of the convulsions was so violent that she ripped the sheets from over her body, exposing the metal rings that encased her torso from the center of her chest down to her knees. It looked as if she were being tortured.

I looked away, took several deep breaths to stop myself from vomiting, then looked down at Daddy Bliss and said, “Where are the nurses and doctors?”

“There aren’t any. All of the medical care here is automated. The girl you saw in there is recovering from an emergency procedure. Her body rejected its new torso, so a new one is being made for her. Hopefully, we’ll have better luck this time.”

I looked through the window again, this time seeing that what I’d mistaken for metal rings were actually grooves in a massive cylindrical chamber encircling the center section of the bed.

“It’s holding her organs in place,” said Daddy Bliss as if I’d asked the question out loud. “Some of her bone structure remained intact, but not nearly enough.”

“How long can you keep her alive in that condition?”

“Indefinitely. She’s a stubborn case, that one. She’s insisting on the full Repair, no matter how long it takes. When her Repairs are complete, we shall name her Pinto, and love her as a family should love a new member.”

Next to the door was a small framed black and white photograph of a young woman that would have looked right at home in the center of a roadside memorial wreath. “Is this her?” I asked, pointing at the photograph. “That is how her family chose for the world to remember her, yes.” “Was this taken from a memorial?” “Of course. That’s always the second step in the Repair process.” I stared at him for a moment. “What’s the first step?” “I’d think that would be obvious—taking the soul from the shell before the body dies completely.” I looked back in at Pinto. She shuddered once more, and so did I.

“I don’t…I don’t understand how this is possible,” I said. “How do you get their bodies? Rob the graves after they’re buried? What if they’re cremated?”

Daddy Bliss rolled toward me. “The bodies left at the accident scenes are of no use to us—besides, the survivors have to have something grieve over and bury, don’t they? We’re not quite that heartless. No, the soul is the key. The soul, as it turns out, is a curious thing. In the initial stages of Repair, the soul’s identity is still tied very closely to the individual’s self-image—how they think of themselves, physically.

“At some point in everyone’s life, they lock onto an image of themselves—how they looked at 27, or 32, or 45—as being, for lack of a better way to put it, the best they will ever appear, and it is this image that ties itself to the soul’s memory. Depending on how quickly the soul is retrieved, much of that physical identity remains easily accessible, so it’s not difficult to convince the soul to bring forth that physical identity once again.” He smiled. “You’d be surprised how easy it is for a just-taken soul to summon flesh from the ether.

“The difficulty lies in how long it takes to have the soul delivered to us. In most cases, the Highway People deliver them here in a few seconds, but sometimes, when the Road has been particularly demanding on certain nights, it may take as long as two minutes before they are brought to us. When that happens, the soul has already begun its process of ‘letting go’ of the physical identity, and so what flesh is summoned from the ether is, well…incomplete. When that happens, we are forced to improvise with whatever materials are on hand.”

I pointed toward the picture hanging outside Pinto’s room. “Why the photos?”

“Consider them a way of checking the quality of our workmanship. Luckily, those friends and family left behind inevitably choose a memorial photograph that was taken of their loved during this ‘ideal’ image time. When the soul has forgotten too much of the physical identity, we take the photograph and use it as our blueprint.”

“But how can you be sure that…that you’re Repairing them correctly?”

“Not to oversimplify, dear boy, but Road Mama and I decided long ago to use only three basic body types as our Repair base: endomorph—the larger and fleshier body; mesomorph—the more muscular type, and ectomorph—the slender or lean body type. These three types rarely show up in pure forms, but rather in numerous but finite combinations. Once we have what flesh the soul remembers, and the photograph, it’s not difficult to discern which body type—or combination of body types—is required for the Repair process. Would you mind showing me your watch?”

The sudden change of subject caught me off-guard, but I did as he asked.

“Ah, how time does slip away,” he said, looking at the hour. “Not that I’m not thoroughly enjoying our talk, Driver, but we’re on a bit of tight schedule this evening. Come along.”

He moved on down the hall.

I almost looked in at Pinto again, then knew I couldn’t; another glance at her condition, and I might start laughing, and if I started laughing, I knew I’d never stop.

So I followed him.

I did not look through any more observation windows or at any of the memorial photographs hanging beside the doors.

We turned right at the end of the hall and moved toward a door with frosted glass window with the words Control Center #1 stenciled onto the glass. A security camera mounted over the door tracked our every move.

When he reached the door, Daddy Bliss once again looked up and smiled at the camera; once again, the door automatically unlocked and swung open.

We entered a medium-sized room that was taken up by expensive computer equipment. There must have been a dozen high-end machines working away in there, all of them with 25- and 40-inch LCD monitors, and all arranged on a series of wall-mounted shelves so that the sole person working the room could roll her office chair from unit to unit without banging her legs against anything. And it appeared that Ciera—the strawberry blonde girl who’d been collecting the roadside memorials—was very busy, indeed. Daddy Bliss gave her a quiet, loving look. “How are things going, my dear?” “Just fine, Daddy. You’re just in time for Lexington.”

“Oh, excellent.” He rolled forward. “You should see this, Driver.”

“Is it going to be like back there with Pinto?”

Ciera stopped what she was doing and sighed. “Oh, Daddy! I wanted to show him Pinto.”

“My apologies, dear, but it couldn’t be helped. We were in the area and it seemed a pity to waste the opportunity.” He moved closer to her. “All right—how angry are you?”

“I’m not angry,” she said, pouting. “Just…disappointed.”

“Well, this will not do, will not do at all. I can’t have my favorite girl feeling this way, so here is what I propose: if the Road decrees as I think it will, then you, my dear, will be given the honor of starting the festivities.”

Ciera’s eyes grew wide, and then she squealed in joy and threw her arms around Daddy Bliss’s neck. “Oh, Daddy, I love you so much!”

“As I do you, dear Ciera. As I do you.”

This was the first time I got a clear look at what had been done to her arms, how the elbows had been replaced with hood hinges, her veins and remaining cartilage woven around and through the metal. No wonder they hadn’t looked right earlier, even though she’d been wearing a sweater; they were each roughly six inches longer than a normal human arm was supposed to be.

She saw me staring at her, then—giving Daddy Bliss a quick and affectionate kiss on the cheek—stood up, stretching out her arms, then crossing her legs and tilting her head to the side in an imitation of the Crucifixion of Jesus. “Be honest—do these make me look fat?”

Both she and Daddy Bliss exploded with laughter.

I was still busy replaying Daddy Bliss’s promise about her “…starting the festivities”, so it took a moment for me to realize that, once they stopped laughing, both of them were staring at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I drifted off for a moment.”

“You’re cute,” said Ciera. “I kinda hope you get stuck here.”

“Now, now,” said Daddy Bliss. “No flirting—at least, not right now. I, too, think the pair of you would make a handsome couple, but that’s neither here nor there.” He looked up at one of the wall clocks; there were several of them, covering different time zones. “I believe that Lexington beckons us, does it not?”

Ciera blew me a little kiss, ran her tongue quickly over her upper lip, then sat back down in her chair and rolled over to one of the computers with a 40-inch monitor. “About one minute.”

“I still get goosebumps” said Daddy Bliss. “Imagine that. After all this time, and I still tingle when this happens.” He looked at me. “You need to see this, Driver.”

“I’d rather not.”

“But I insist, really I do.”

Not wanting to find out what happens to someone who refused his insistence, I moved over, the three of us clustering around the monitor.

“Can you split the screen?” asked Daddy Bliss. “I don’t know that Driver will be able to follow otherwise.” He looked at me. “No offense intended.”

I said nothing. It seemed the smart thing to do.

Ciera typed in a single command, hit the return key, and the image on the screen split in two; on the left side, a schematic of a section of highway (presumably somewhere in Lexington, Kentucky); on the right was a live feed from a camera mounted atop what I assumed was a light somewhere along the same highway shown on the schematic.

“Okay,” said Ciera, turning a smaller desk-top monitor toward us. Its screen showed a middle-aged man sitting in his living room, running two HO-scale cars around a large track that was an exact replica of the schematic. Beneath this image was a series of changing numbers and the words Bloomington, Indiana.

The man onscreen stopped for a moment, looked at the clock, then carefully placed two more cars onto the track at different locations; after that, he picked up a second control handset and squeezed the triggers on both. The cars on the track began moving, and at the same time four blinking lights appeared on the schematic, each one following the same path as its counterpart on this man’s track.

“You might want to step back a little bit,” said Ciera. “The idea is to take all this in at a glance. It’ll be easier for you to see everything if you move back a foot or two.”

I did as she said, and watched as Bloomington, Indiana increased the speed of the HO-scale cars.

As he increased the speed, the blinking lights on the highway schematic began moving faster.

As the blinking lights on the schematic moved faster, two cars became visible in the distance from the live-feed camera.

Daddy Bliss wasn’t looking at the screen any longer; he was watching me. “I do believe that our Driver has figured something out.”

“Oh, God…” was all I could get out.

When it happened, it happened quickly.

Two cars approached the camera, a Ford Explorer and a Chevy Corvette. They were one lane apart, both going at roughly the same speed. As they drove closer to the camera, two cars traveling in the opposite direction on the other side of the concrete divider zoomed into view; a Pontiac Bonneville and a Saturn Ion Sedan. The Pontiac and Saturn were going well over the speed limit. The Pontiac veered into the lane directly behind the Saturn and flashed its brights. The Saturn increased its speed, as did the Pontiac. I wondered what the hell the Pontiac driver was thinking, what he (or she, I couldn’t tell) thought was going to be accomplished by this. Maybe the Saturn had done something to piss him off, and the Pontiac driver was just acting on impulsive anger. Or maybe the Pontiac was trying to get in the Exit lane and the Saturn driver was just fucking with him.

A few moments later, it didn’t much matter.

The Saturn suddenly hit its brakes (or had its brakes hit for it). The Pontiac slammed into the back of the Saturn, crumpling its own front end and upending the Saturn, which flipped over the divider just as the Explorer came up from the other side. The Saturn landed on the hood of the Explorer, crumpling it and forcing the Explorer to slant-skid right and side-swipe the Corvette, causing the driver to lose control and spin out, the rear of the car smashing into the divider and sending the thing spinning even harder, coming to a screeching halt a second before the Explorer slammed into its side and the Saturn came off its hood to smash squarely onto the Corvette’s roof. It couldn’t have taken six seconds. The man on the smaller monitor dropped his handsets and walked over to his HO tracks, examining the four smashed, piled-up cars. The schematic showed a single blinking light now, this one bigger than the others, and flashing a bright red.

The live feed showed only a mass of smoking, twisted, smashed, bloody metal and glass. The Saturn had run halfway up the divider after rear ending the Pontiac, and looked like a sick beast trying to climb over a rock.

After a moment, one of the Saturn’s doors opened and a woman who was nothing but blood from head to heel fell out onto the highway. A moment later, several bulky shadows dislodged themselves from the night and swam toward the wreckage. I couldn’t watch any more. I turned away, closing my eyes. A few moments later, I felt a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay now,” said Ciera. “It’s over.” I opened my eyes and saw Daddy Bliss moving toward me. “So,” he said, “you’ve some idea now?” I could barely find my voice, but somehow managed to do so. “One question.” “Of course.” I pointed toward the screens. “Is this…do you…” “Take your time, Driver. Take a deep breath. There you are. Now, once more?”

“These accidents…they’re not accidents at all, are they?”

Daddy Bliss sighed. “I think the answer to that should be obvious, dear boy. But that’s not your real question, is it?”

I looked right into his unblinking eyes. “Is it just certain accidents like this one, or is it all of them?”

“Ah, direct and to the point this time. Splendid. Allow me to return the candor, Driver.” He moved closer to me. “It is all of them. It has always been all of them. All of them.” “…oh, God…” “So you believe?” “…yes…”

“You’ve no idea how much that pleases me. It will make the rest of this so much easier.”

I looked at the destruction on the monitor once more. “Says you….”

Daddy Bliss decided to skip the tour of the Repair Unit itself. “You’ve already seen the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of the process. The ‘during’ portion would be a bit of overkill at this point, I think.”

We were back in the holding room, having re-traced our route through the halls and elevators. I’d almost looked in on Pinto again but closed my eyes at the last moment and just kept moving.

Someone had prepared a lovely meal for me; broiled pork chops in garlic-and- butter sauce, steamed vegetables, homemade rolls, a nice side salad with parmesan cheese and no dressing, and a generous slice of pecan pie topped with an even more generous portion of real whipped cream for dessert. A large, frosty mug of A&W Root Beer sat on a coaster, the ice cracking and rising to the top, thin beads of condensation running slow rivulets down the sides.

When we’d first entered the room, all I could do was stare at everything. If it were possible to have all of my favorite foods in one place at one time, prepared exactly the way I preferred them, then this meal was it. “How did you know?” I asked him as I picked up the mug and sipped at the root beer. “How did we know what?” I stared at him. “Please don’t be cute with me, sir.” He grinned. “Apologies. You want to know how we knew what to prepare, and how to prepare it?” I looked at the food. “Or you could just tell me that you already know all there is to know about me and be done with it.”

“We already know all there is to know about you. We’ve known since the moment you took that map from Road Mama’s apartment. I’m sensing more questions coming, am I correct?”

“You have to admit, this is an awful lot to take in.”

“Agreed.” He glanced at the clock on the wall—a clock that had not been here earlier. “We have some time—not much, but enough. Ask your questions but, please, do eat your food as you do so. Nova prepared the meal herself, and she is by far the best cook in town.”

I picked up the knife and fork and began carving up the first pork chop. I paused with the first piece halfway to my mouth and said, “Some people might look at this—all their favorite foods prepared just how they like them—and think, ‘This is a last meal.’”

His only response was to stare at me.

“I did nothing to deserve this.” I popped the piece into my mouth and chewed. It was perfection.

“On the contrary,” said Daddy Bliss. “The moment you took that map, you put yourself in this position—wait, that’s not entirely correct. The moment you asked Mr. Dobbs to take a close look at everything on Road Mama’s bedside table, you were already on your way here, you just didn’t know it—ooh, that sounds so ominous, doesn’t it? I would apologize, but I so rarely have the opportunity to indulge my flair for the dramatic.”

“You were watching, even then?”

“The Highway People were watching, dear boy. They are always watching.”

I stopped carving up the pork chop and stared at an empty space in the middle of the table. It wasn’t quite as effective as staring at my feet, but it got results. “The bowl and the prescription bottles.”

“Yes…?”

I looked at him. “I was right. They were left there on purpose, weren’t they? You—or the Highway People—wanted someone to figure it out.”

“‘Needed’ would be the more applicable term but, yes, it was the will of the Road that those items be left in plain sight. Had you kept quiet when Mr. Dobbs came back into the room, had you said nothing at all, then there might have been some doubt as to whether or not you had known. But fortunately for us, you did not keep quiet.” He smiled. “But even if you had, you still took the map off the wall. Either way, you’d marked yourself.” “So the coroner, the mayor, the chief of police…all of them knew that Miss Driscoll—that Road Mama—had committed suicide?” “Of course. And they also know that there are certain protocols that must be followed if and when something like this occurs.” I thought of Barb, and how she’d told me three times to be careful. “What is it?” asked Daddy Bliss. “You have the look of someone who’s just realized his lover has betrayed him.” “Barb, my lawyer. She’s in on this, isn’t she?”

“This may come as surprise to you, dear boy, but no, she isn’t. She knows only as much as those in authority told her. But she’s a sharp one, your Barbara. She suspects there’s more going on than what she’s been told, but she also knows enough to not speak of it too loudly, if at all. You needn’t worry, Driver. Your friend did not betray you.”

My hand was shaking, but I still managed to hold the fork. “Exactly how many people do know about you? I mean, outside of here?”

He thought about this for a moment, then replied: “There’s an old conspiracy theory joke about what happens when a man is elected President of the United States. It is said that, as soon as he assumes office, the president is taken to a room in the basement of the White House where the people who really control the country sit him down in a chair and show him a film of the Kennedy assassination—not the famous Zapruder film,

another film, shot at the same time, but this one taken from a radically different angle and much, much closer—so close, in fact, that some of Kennedy’s blood spatters on the lens. Once this film has been shown to him, the president is asked, ‘Do you have any questions?’ To which he replies, ‘Just tell me what my agenda is.’

“It’s not so different with us and the people who hold office in this country. It doesn’t matter if they’re the president or a governor or simply the mayor of some backwater township. If they are in power, they are aware of us. And they are very careful with whom they choose to share this knowledge.

“This country—and arguably the world—survives because of the Road. Of course there are planes and ships and trains for transporting people and supplies, but mostly, dear boy, it is the Road that sustains us, that serves as the main artery of the economy. Delivering food, medicine, building supplies, fuel, books and newspapers, moving the sick, transporting children to and from school…ultimately, everything that enables a society to function on a day-to-day basis is made possible because of the Road. Close a single busy street in the middle of a city for even a day, and you have an immediate effect on that city’s economy—people are late for work because they have to drive however-many miles out of their way, service stations see more business because of the fuel needed to make these detours, or maybe they see less, it all depends on the location of the street, doesn’t it? Merchants can see either a large climb or a massive drop in their business because of a street closing. A person who is, say, suffering a heart attack—or a woman in labor—may not be able to make it to the hospital in time because of this closing. The possibilities for loss and gain are endless. And that’s with just a single street…providing it’s the right street.

“Now imagine what might happen if several streets, major streets, were all closed simultaneously for a prolonged period of time. A month. Two months. Three. A year. A city’s economy—not to mention the well-being of its citizens—would be adversely affected in a matter of days. Then close enough of the right highway exits and entrances on top of that, and one could theoretically make access to a particular city or town nearly impossible. People like your mayor, your coroner, your chief of police, know all too well that the economy of their city can be destroyed if we decide to close enough streets and highway access ramps for an indefinite period of time. That is why they cooperate with us. You think it’s the city planning commissions who decide what streets to close for construction, or where the new mall is going to be located? No, dear boy, everything is decided for them by the Road, and the Road’s orders are delivered by the Highway People, and are then carried out by us—and, of course, our emissaries.” “Like Road Mama and that guy in Bloomington?” “Precisely. You’re not eating your meal.” I dropped my fork. “I seem to have lost my appetite.”

“Then find it again. I will not have you return an uneaten meal to our Nova. There will be no argument on this point.”

I glared at him for a moment, then picked up the fork and shoved a piece of the pork chop into my mouth. It was still perfection, and I continued to eat. It gave a sense of normalcy to things, and I needed that.

Besides, Nova was one hell of a cook. I would have liked to have told her that in person.

“How else do you ensure their cooperation?” I asked. “I mean, assuming that threatening the economy of their city isn’t enough?”

“Their loved ones. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Driver. No one threatens their friends or families. We protect them. As long as those in power cooperate, their loved ones never come to any harm while on the Road. In fact, their loved ones couldn’t be hurt in an accident if they tried.”

I remembered the way Sheriff Hummer’s car had driven itself earlier, and had no reason to disbelieve what Daddy Bliss was telling me. I swallowed a sip of root beer. “And if they fail to cooperate…?” “Then our protection is lifted, and their loved ones’ numbers are placed back into the order.” “The order?”

Daddy Bliss nodded toward my meal. “Do try Nova’s rolls. Flaky on the outside, soft and warm on the inside. She uses just the right amount of butter.”

Not looking away from his face, I took a bite from one. It practically melted in my mouth. God this was good food.

“The order…?” I said again.

His eyes were as cold as his voice. “The moment that you are born, Driver, you are either chosen by the Road as an acceptable sacrifice or are spared by it—that’s not to say that those who are spared won’t meet an even more terrible fate somewhere down the line, but for whatever reason, the Road doesn’t choose them and so their fates are of no interest to us. But those who are chosen, those whom the Road deems an acceptable sacrifice, are given a number. It’s quite a long number, actually, containing as it does the year, month, day, time, and location of death—and before you ask, yes, the location is also a number, albeit one that also contains letters. Every inch of highway, road, and street in this country is identified on the national grid as a specific number in a topological pattern—how do you think satellite navigation works in newer automobiles with systems that employ GPS technology? It’s all broken down into numbers, dear boy. Even those sections of new road and highway that have yet to be built have a number, one only the Road knows in advance.”

“So the accident I saw earlier tonight—”

“—the occurrence, Driver, the occurrence. There are no accidents.”

“Fine—the occurrence I saw earlier, all of those people were predetermined to be in that place at that time since the moment of their birth?”

“Yes.”

Something clicked in my head at that moment. It wasn’t any kind of epiphany, not even close. I once read a line in novel that went something like, “There comes a time when the human mind can no longer deal with the amount of horror being heaped upon it, and so it all starts to become kind of funny.” That’s what happened to me at that moment: some small part of the rational area of my mind clicked off and all of this became oddly surreal. I went with, and continued eating throughout the rest of our conversation, eventually finishing every bite of Nova’s delicious dinner.

“So if someone’s number is put back into the order, what happens if it turns out that number has already come and gone?”

Daddy Bliss grinned. “They are sacrificed immediately. If we are well past the point in the order where that number should have fallen, the very next time they climb into an automobile, they will not emerge from it alive. It causes a little extra bookkeeping for us, but it’s a small price to pay for keeping the Road satisfied.”

I gobbled down the second half of the roll. “So how is it that the Road came to dictate all of this?”

He stared at me for a moment. “You’re really a much more perceptive fellow than you give yourself credit for, Driver. You’ve asked a surprising amount of insightful questions this evening. One would not expect that from a person who holds your station in life.” “I’m guessing that was meant to be a compliment?” “It was.” “Then thank you. Now would you mind answering my most recent insightful question?” “Ah, yes…the ‘how’ of it all.

“Even in the midst of death, dear boy, life resonates. It seethes, trapped, waiting to be given release, to be given form. You’ve been in jail, Driver, you must have some idea to what I’m referring. You’ve been in a cell where the massed feelings of hatred, deprivation, claustrophobia, and brutalization have seeped into the very stones. One can feel it. The emotions resonate. It is the same when someone dies on the Road. That energy spills from their mangled bodies and is absorbed by the Road. And when a place or thing absorbs the resonating sentience of enough life, it’s only a matter of time before it achieves sentience itself. That’s why one can sense the despair emanating from the walls of a jail cell, or why you felt the death seeping from every corner of the Leonard house all those years ago. It’s not so much an unnatural phenomenon as it is what a physicist might deem an ‘unconscious confluence’ of resonating energies. That is how the Road came into full being.” I nodded my head. “Okay.” “That’s all? ‘Okay’? Just like that?” “Just like that.”

He blinked. “How utterly intriguing.” He looked once more at the clock. “Have you anything further you’d like to discuss with me?”

I finished with the first pork chop and began carving up the second one, my mouth watering. “Do I have a number?”

“No, you do not. You were not deemed an acceptable sacrifice. You were, however, of interest to the Road, and so you were watched.” He moved his chair closer to me. “I will tell you that your friend Barbara Greer does have a number, as do several of the employees on your crew. And your ex-wife.” I almost couldn’t swallow the food, but managed to force it down. “Why tell me this?” “Because if the Road decides about you as I think it will, you might find this information to be helpful.” “Helpful how?” He shook his head. “Cart before the horse, and all that. We’ll see if I am correct, and then proceed from there.”

There was a knock on the door, and a moment later Ciera entered, carrying a phone. “It’s time, Daddy. The Highway People are gathering.”

I looked at him. “So the jury’s coming in, is that it?”

“Indeed.” He maneuvered the chair around and started toward the opened door. “You and I may not have any further time alone after this, Driver, so allow me to say that it has been a genuine pleasure getting to know you. The Road has chosen wisely with you.” “Thanks, I guess.” “You’re welcome, perhaps.” And with that, he rolled out the door and was gone. “Did you two have a nice talk?” asked Ciera as she plugged the phone into the jack on the wall. “It was very…informative.” “Cool.” She set down the phone next to me and began to leave. “Wait a second.”

She turned back. “You need a refill on the root beer? We’ve got plenty.” She giggled. “I had some earlier, though I wasn’t supposed to—we got it just for you. Hope you don’t mind.”

“No. What I do mind is this.” I held up the phone and turned it toward her. It had no number keys. “What about it?” she asked. “How am I supposed to make a call when I can’t punch in or dial the number?”

She smiled. “Operators are standing by.” Then she laughed. “Sorry, I’ve always wanted to say that in real life but never got the chance. Just pick up the receiver when you’re ready and your call will be put through. You’ve got about fifteen or twenty minutes now. I’ll be back for you soon.” She blew me a kiss and began closing the door behind her, then stopped and said, “Listen, it’d be a good idea if you didn’t try to leave this room until I come back. When the Highway People call for a gathering like this, things become a bit…well, for you, anyway…things would be kind of confusing.”

“In what way?”

She thought about this for a minute, and as she did, I caught a glimpse of the young girl she’d once been, one who was now searching for a way to express in words something for which her previous life-experience had given her no point of reference. She looked almost…innocent. If I’d been a couple of decades younger, the look on her face would have really turned me on; now it just me feel sad and old.

Finally she said: “You ever wake up from a dream in the middle of the night and for a couple of seconds you’re, like, not sure whether you’re awake in your own bed or still in the dream? Some parts of the dream are so fresh in your memory that you can still see them, and for a couple of seconds it’s like the dream and the real world are the same thing, only you can’t tell which is which? Like you’re looking at a double-exposed photograph. Does that make sense?”

I nodded. “Sure does.”

“Well, if you leave this room on your own, that’s what everything’s going to seem like to you. You won’t be able to tell what’s real and what isn’t.”

“Why is that?”

“Because part of what holds this all together is everyone being here and doing their jobs, living their lives. But when the Highway People call for a gathering and everyone leaves their posts, there’s, like, no glue, right? Things start to…come apart, change, whatever. But when we come back, it all snaps back into place. That’s because we know what it’s all supposed to be like. You don’t, so everything would look real screwed-up to you, and you’d get lost in a hurry, and I don’t think we could find you again.”

I looked around the holding room. “Is that why this room is so bare? So it would be easy for me to remember what it looked like?”

“Yeah. We move around a lot—the town, I mean—and we move pretty fast. Fast like” —she snapped her fingers— “that. So it’s important that you stay here in this room you know so you don’t get lost in the empty places.” She gave me a sweet, slightly melancholy look, blew me another kiss, and left.

I expected her to lock the door behind her to make sure I’d stay right where I was supposed to, but she didn’t. She trusted me. Not that it mattered; I couldn’t have found my way out of town on my own. I could maybe get myself as far as the gas station, but that’d be about it.

So I finished Nova’s superb dinner, sat back in my chair, and stared at the phone, wondering who I knew who wouldn’t hang up on me for calling at this hour. Maybe Brennert, but what could I tell him? Barbara Greer might not get too upset, but if she were being watched, a call from me would only draw more attention to her.

I sat forward and picked up the receiver to see if there was an operator waiting at the other end. I listened to the ringing, still having no idea who I was going to call if and when the operator answered. In the middle of the third ring the call was answered, but instead of an operator I got a moment of hiss, followed by a recorded voice-mail introduction:

“Hi, this is Dianne. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave a message…oh, you know the rest. You’ll have three minutes after the beep, so don’t feel like you have to talk really fast. I hate that, don’t you? Okay, thanks for calling.”

This was the first time in five years that I’d heard her voice, and it almost broke me in half; clear and musical, with a subtle South Carolina accent that caused her to end every sentence on a smoothly descending note of embarrassed laughter that snuggled down in the back of her throat and wrapped itself up in something like a purr…I could almost feel her voice with my fingertips. In those few seconds it took to listen to her message, all those parts of her that I’d purposefully chipped away bit by bit in an effort to make her just another memory came together again, and there she was: her smile, her laugh, her eyes, the smell of her in the morning, the scent of her shampoo lingering on the pillow long after she’d lifted her head, the ghost of her touch against the back of my hand, and before I could even release the breath I didn’t know I was holding, the empty space in my life that had once been filled by her hummed so intensely with her absence that the last half-decade of my existence suddenly seemed inane and empty, a prolonged delusion, a vaudeville of what a life was supposed to be.

God, how I’d missed her.

Then came the beep and I began talking.

“Hi, Dianne, it’s, uh…it’s me.”

And then it hit me: I had less than three minutes. What the hell do you say to someone under these circumstances when you’ve only got three minutes, and it might very well be the last time you ever have the chance to say anything to them? For a second I flashed upon a high school drama club production of Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology that I’d been in; the director had explained to us that we needed to approach each of the monologues as that character’s only chance to come back from the grave and say all the things they wished they’d said to everyone while they were still alive. “Their only shot at finally making things right,” she’d told us.

So, I thought, just pretend you’re a dead man back for a few moments from the grave. Got it? Good. Places…

“Please don’t skip over or erase this. I don’t have a lot of time. Listen to my voice. I’m not drunk, okay? What I am is in a lot of trouble, and I don’t know if I’m going to be…ah, hell, Dianne. I never stopped loving you, and I’ve never stopped missing you. I was a jerk—no, wait, that’s not quite right, is it? I was cruel and selfish and cold, and I’ve never forgiven myself for it. Don’t worry, I’m not about to ask for your forgiveness, though I’d bet you would forgive me if I asked. You were always so compassionate, and thoughtful, everything any man who had the brains God gave an ice cube would want or hope for. But me? I blew it. And I want you to know how sorry I am. I hope that whoever you’re with now treats you with all the respect and affection you should have gotten from me.

“You told me after the divorce hearing that you figured I’d go on and live my life like you’d never been a part of it. I tried. And it worked for about a week. Then one morning I got up and started making my lunch for the day and realized halfway through that I was packing yours, as well, like I used to some days, remember? I’m standing there in the middle of kitchen looking at a tuna fish sandwich and wondering if I used enough mayo—you still like lots of mayo on your tuna fish?—anyway, I’m standing there with this goddamn sandwich and realize that you’re not going to be eating it, and I started…well, I kinda lost it, and I hugged the sandwich to my chest and squashed it all the hell over my shirt…it was one of those mawkish moments that always used to make you laugh when you saw them in a movie. It was really pitiful.” I looked at the clock; I had less than a minute.

“I want you to know something, Dianne. You were the love of my life—you are the love of my life, and whatever happens tonight, even if I never see or hear from you again, my soul was blessed because you were once a part of my life, and even though I didn’t treasure it at the time like I should have, I treasure it now, and wish to God I’d have the chance to treasure it—to treasure you—again. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. Just know that everything you did, all you tried to give to me, all of it mattered, all of it. And whatever happens after I hang up, if this is it, I want you to know that my last thought will be of you and how you made my world rich, even if I was too much of an idiot to appreciate it at the time.

“I love you. I always will. I just…I just wanted to thank you for all you gave to me when we were together.

“And it just occurred to me that all of this must sound melodramatic as hell, and I’m sorry. It’s been an…odd couple of days. But it’s almost over now. I love you. Be happy, and never let yourself think that any part of what happened was because of you. You were wonderful—shit, you were perfect. I was an asshole. I didn’t deserve you. This isn’t self-pity, hon, it’s just plain old regret. Six of one, half-dozen of the other, I know.

“Good-bye, Dianne. I love you. Think about using a little less mayo in the tuna fish, okay? I hear it’s not good for the cholesterol. You may quote me.” The beep sounded again, I hung up, covered my eyes with my hands, and wept quietly for a minute or two. The lights flickered and I looked up just as Ciera opened the door. “It’s time.” She stared at me. “Are you okay?” Wiping my eyes, I shook my head, then said, “Just ducky, thanks.”

“Nobody wants you to get hurt, Driver.” “So I keep hearing.” I wiped my eyes once again, let out a breath, and rose. We stared at each other for a moment. “So?” I asked. “I take three giant steps, or what?” “I wish you wouldn’t be so mean to me.” “I didn’t think I was.”

She glanced down at the floor for a second, then back up at me. There was some genuine hurt in that gaze. “I keep trying to be nice, but you act like you don’t like me very much.”

“Like you? I don’t even know you. Until a few hours ago, I had no idea you or anyone else in this place even existed! All I knew was that I was supposed to deliver a body so the family could bury it, that’s all. Now, suddenly, I’m right smack in the middle of something pretty seriously goddamn scary, I might be dead before the sun rises, and you’re getting defensive about my bad manners?”

Her eyes began tearing up. “Please don’t yell at me.”

“What the fuck would you do if you were in my position?”

“Please stop yelling.”

I opened my mouth to really let her have it, then her words—Please stop yelling—echoed back, only this time it was Dianne’s voice I heard speaking them, as it had so many time during the course of our marriage whenever I had been made aware of my shortcomings and was looking for someone to blame, usually her.

Please stop yelling. Oh, hon…. “I’m sorry,” I said to Ciera, stepping forward and putting a hand on her shoulder. “I’m not mad at you. I’m just…mad.” “Okay,” she said, not meeting my gaze. “Hey?” She looked up at me.

“What’s your name—your real name?”

A single tear slipped from her eye and slid a slow path down her cheek. “I don’t remember.”

“Really?”

“Really. Only Road mama and Daddy Bliss remember their real names. The rest of us, we kinda…don’t bring them with us when we come back.” “How old were you?” “I would have been twenty-one on my birthday.” “Christ…I’m so sorry.”

“Not your fault. I really like you, Driver. It’s been a long time since…well, since a new guy’s been here who’s still got all of his face and stuff.” She shrugged. “I get lonely sometimes.”

I touched her face, using my thumb to wipe away the tear. “How bad is it, being trapped here?”

She stared at me for a moment, blinked, then gave her head the slightest shake. “I’m not trapped her. None of us are.”

“You stay here by choice?”

“Yes. Everyone here is given that choice. The Highway People bring them back, and if you choose to stay, then your Repairs begin.”

I really couldn’t get my head wrapped around this one. “But…for God’s sake, why would you choose to stay here and take part in all of this?”

“The people we leave behind. If we choose to stay, they are protected. I mean, it’s not like it can be all the people we leave behind, but our immediate family and closest friends, they’re okay.”

“Their numbers are withdrawn from the order?”

“If they have a number, yes. If, like, my sister didn’t have a number—and she didn’t—then I got to pick an extra friend.”

“How long do you have to stay here?”

“Until the people we pick die of natural causes, or however it is they do die. Just not by the Road. Once they’ve all passed on, then we can follow them.”

I tried doing a little arithmetic in my head—if you picked five people, and the youngest was only twelve, then how long…?—then realized it was pointless. She was talking about a long time, no matter how you looked at it. “Can I ask you stupid question?” She smiled. “You can ask me anything. I won’t think it’s stupid.” “How do you get by on a day-to-day basis? How do you stay sane?”

She thought about this for a moment, and then shrugged. “Like everybody else does, I suppose. You go to work when you’re supposed to, you do your job, then you go home, eat dinner, maybe watch some TV or put in a movie. Hang out with friends. Y’know…normal stuff.” “Watch TV or movies?” “Uh-huh.” “Hang out with friends?” “Uh-huh…?” “I guess I’m asking…what do you do for fun? What do you do to relax?” “I like to take walks.” For a moment I thought she was joking, then just as quickly realized she wasn’t. She took hold of my hand, leaned up, and kissed my cheek. “We really need to get going.”

“Ciera, please, please tell me what’s going to happen.” “I can’t. I could get into a lot of trouble if…” She broke off, stared at me, and smiled. “Let me ask you something, okay?” “Okay…?” “Am I prettier than Dianne?”

No way was I going to lie to her—she was the closest thing to an ally that I had (and something told me she’d know instantly if I tried bullshitting her)—but maybe I could respond without actually answering the question.

I touched her cheek and said, “I think you’re beautiful.”

“Thank you. You’re going to race Fairlane.”

I remembered Daddy Bliss’s words from earlier—Some of us have been able to be Repaired almost immediately, while others—like myself and Fairlane, who you’ll be meeting later on—have to make due with more…primitive results—and felt myself shudder. If Fairlane had to make do with results even worse than Daddy Bliss’s, I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet him at all…so sayeth the King of Understatement. “A race?” She nodded. “The Road decided long ago that a race was the most direct and just way to settle a matter.” “What happens if I win?” She almost giggled. “Silly—you get to leave and go home.” “And if I lose?”

She stared at me for a moment, and then threw her arms around my neck and planted a kiss on me that would have killed a kid half my age; as it was, it left me weak in the knees.

“Then,” she said, “you and I can be together.”

So it was that simple; win, and I could leave; lose, and here I’d remain. It seemed almost too simple, but at the time I didn’t dwell on it. I was only interested in getting the hell out. In one piece, if possible.

She took hold of my hand and led me from the holding room, through the offices, and to the front doors. I looked out the windows and saw a long, dark limousine parked at the curb, engine purring. Ciera opened the door and out we went. As we neared the limo I saw, at last, how it was that Sheriff Hummer’s car was able to drive itself; a deep groove ran all along the center of both street lanes: the whole city was built on a gigantic HO track.

Ciera opened the back door of the limo and held my hand until I was seated inside.

“This is as far as I go,” she said. “I have to do a couple of things to get ready, but don’t worry, I’ll see you there in a few minutes.” She started to let go of my hand and I did something that surprised both of us: I tightened my grip and put my free hand on top of hers. “What is it?” she asked. “I…I don’t want to…let go just yet.” She gave me a tender smile and nodded her head. “I can hang for a minute.” “Good.”

I sat there trying to steady both my breathing and the beating of my heart. Ciera neither moved nor spoke, just kept hold of my hand until I was ready to let go. “Thank you,” I said. “You’re welcome. Tell you something weird—I kinda hope you win, but I also hope you don’t, you know?” An idea came to me. “You could come with me.”

“What?”

“You and me. We get the meat wagon and hightail it out of here.”

She pulled in a breath, held it, then released it with a soft little moan as she leaned in and kissed me again. “Do you have any idea how tempting that is?”

I sure hoped so. Shame on me.

“But you know I can’t. I couldn’t do that to my family and friends. But thank you for asking.” She pulled her hand from my grip and closed the door, which locked automatically.

The limo pulled away, and I looked through the back window, watching her stand there in the street until the car turned a corner and she was gone.

Strange as it might sound, I missed her.

I looked up front to see that the divider window was up; it was tinted, so I couldn’t make out anything about the person driving. I looked around until I found the intercom button, pressed it, and said: “Can you lower the window, please?”

There was a soft click, followed by a low, steady hum, and the window glided downward. There was no one driving. I should have known.

There was, however, a small television mounted on the dashboard, and as the window finished lowering, the screen flickered to life and I was looking at Daddy Bliss’s face.

“This is a pre-recorded message, Driver, so please don’t do anything so pointless and predictable as talking back to the screen. They lock people up for that sort of behavior.

“I’m fairly certain that you’ve by now managed to charm some information from our dear Ciera—I was, in fact, counting on it. So let’s proceed on that assumption, shall we?

“You are being driven to the only stretch of road in our fair metropolis that is smooth blacktop from beginning to end. A three-mile straightaway that my children long ago named ‘Daddy’s Dead Run’. A bit over-the-top, I know, but their hearts were in the right place and I’ve never been able to bring myself to tell them that I think it’s a silly, melodramatic name, but what is one to do?

“Once this limousine—and isn’t it a lovely vehicle? You should help yourself to some snacks and the wet bar, both are well-stocked. Now, where was I? Ah, yes.

“Once this limousine comes to a stop, you will be taken to your vehicle for this evening’s contest. You will be driving a car that I personally chose for you. I call it ‘The Ogre.’ Yes, I know—I have the gall to make fun of ‘Daddy’s Dead Run’ and then name a car ‘The Ogre’? It’s the little contradictions in one’s character that makes one fascinating to others. An enigma, so to speak.

“‘The Ogre’ was a1964 Triumph Spitfire in its previous life. Allow me to gloat a bit of its history—after all, I designed and supervised its metamorphosis myself, so I think I’ve earned the right to boast.

“I began with a Spitfire frame that was made ready for a Chevy V-8 engine, Muncie transmission, and modified Corvette rear suspension. When the chassis was complete—with engine, transmission, rear suspension and third member, brake lines, front suspension with stock rack and pinion steering, as well as new body-mounts—the body from the stock Spitfire was prepared and set on the frame. The electrical systems were re-established and the bonnet added. Its present engine is a 383 Stroker. On the Dyno, she checked out at 470 horsepower and 500 ft-lbs of torque. This a small but very powerful car you’ll be climbing into, Driver. It has a maximum speed of 180 miles per hour, and goes from 0 to 90 in just under ten seconds.

“For the first ten seconds of the race, both The Ogre and Fairlane’s vehicle will be under the sole control of The Road. Once you have passed from the sight of the crowd, control of the vehicles will be given over to you. I trust you can drive a shift. If not—well, then, this could be a short but spectacular contest.

“You have a few minutes before you reach your destination, dear boy. Why not raid the refrigerator and wet bar? Godspeed, Driver. No pun intended.”

And with that, the screen snapped off.

I looked out the window and saw the lights reflecting from the massive car-cubes along Levegh Lane in the distance, and realized that these dead piles rose so high they could be probably be seen from any place in the city.

I wondered if, very soon, the smashed corpse of the Ogre would be added to them for future Repair material.

FADE IN: a seemingly endless stretch of smooth two-lane blacktop emptying into shadows. Crowds of people line both sides of the road, the men looking tough while clutching at their bottles of beer, the women looking anxious while clutching at the filtered tips of their cigarettes, and the kids—especially the really young ones—looking like they aren’t sure how they should be feeling while they clutch at the hands or coats of the tough beer drinkers and anxious cigarette smokers.

…and this is where we came, isn’t it?

I climbed out of the limo and saw the Ogre parked in the left lane up ahead, Sheriff Hummer leaning against the driver’s-side door. He saw me, gave a little wave, and gestured for me to join him.

I kept glancing at the crowd as I approached him, but after a few seconds of that realized it wasn’t the best idea; the people who comprised this crowd—men, women, children (God, the children…)—were all Repaired to varying degrees, and the fusion of flesh and metal, rather than repulse me as it had before, now seemed to possess an organic correctness that I was suddenly all too willing to accept as being normal…or what passed for normal, here. One little girl who couldn’t have been more than seven years old smiled at me, displaying a mouthful of spark plug tips that took the place of her teeth. She seemed so proud of that smile, like she was showing off. I smiled back at her, and she blushed.

Don’t look at them, I told myself. If you don’t look, then they’re not there.

Pitiful, I know, but it worked. They were shadows, props, decorations on the periphery, not real, not flesh and bone (and metal and steel, said the voice in the back of my head), and maybe, if I concentrated hard enough, I could Zen-out of this whole mess for a few moments.

“You seem tense,” said Hummer.

I looked up at him but couldn’t think of anything to say.

Then he did something that surprised me; he stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder and said, “You’ll be fine. It’s almost over.”

I heard the grinding of a large engine in the distance behind us, and as I turned the crowd broke into wild shouts and applause. More lights came on, illuminating the road, and a few seconds later the object of their adulation rolled into sight.

A great semi tractor-trailer crawled out of the darkness, pulling a car-cube, smaller than the ones I’d seen before but still fairly massive. Atop the cube four large torches burned, flames snapping against the night, one set at each corner, and in the middle of it all was a raised platform. Daddy Bliss sat there, the wheels of his chair held in place by clamps attached to the base. Large concert speakers were positioned at the sides of the platform, angled outward. Ciera stood at Daddy Bliss’s side. She’d changed clothes; she was now dressed in a paisley skirt and tight short-sleeved sweater, her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail, a scarf tied around her neck. She held a long red kerchief in each of her hands.

The truck crept by, rumbling and growling like a constipated dinosaur, then began a slow, wide turn, moving forward, then back, a little to the left, forward again, the driver doing an impressive job of reversing, until, finally, the car-cube was well off the road and at an angle facing the crowd.

Ciera walked to the side of the cube and pushed something over the edge; a long rope ladder that reached to the ground. She turned, blew a kiss toward Daddy Bliss, and began descending.

Daddy Bliss smiled—a celebrant at the beginning of Mass—and the crowd’s cheering grew even louder. He smiled, nodded his head a few times, then cleared his throat; amplified by the speaks, it sounded as if a section of the ground were splitting open.

The crowd fell silent.

“My children,” said Daddy Bliss.

And the crowd exploded once again. Daddy Bliss waited until the roar died down, but it took a minute; Ciera was already on the ground before he started speaking again.

“My children. As you know, our dear Road Mama has been returned to us, and is, as I speak, being Repaired. She will be back among us soon. For that, we have Driver to thank.”

The crowd erupted once more, some of them calling out my name—or, rather, the word, “Driver! Driver!”

“The Road,” said Daddy Bliss, “has granted us this contest—this trial, if you will—to see whether or not Driver is, indeed, worthy.”

Worthy of what? I thought.

“Give praise to the Road. Give thanks to the Highway People. They provide, they sustain, they bless us and watch over our loved ones under their protection.” The crowd as one looked downward and began muttering quiet thanks. Even Hummer removed his hat and bowed his head in prayer. “Driver,” said Daddy Bliss. I looked up toward him.

“You have done well for us, and have our thanks. You still have many questions, this I do realize. Know that they will be answered soon.”

I nodded.

“Very well, then,” he said, clearing his throat once more. When he spoke again, his voice was louder, powerful, commanding. “Release Fairlane.” Then he looked at me and grinned. “Sounded somewhat ominous didn’t it? Apologies. ‘Release Fairlane.’ Not quite ‘…let slip the dogs of war,’ I’m afraid.”

The crowd cheered, but this time I could hear some genuine anxiety at the edges of the sound.

And then something so incredibly absurd happened that I couldn’t even laugh at it, as much as it demanded to be laughed at: the concert speakers erupted with the opening chords of AC/DC’s “Highway To Hell” and the crowd as one turned to face the road behind me.

“I’m dead, aren’t I?” I said to Hummer. “I got in a wreck on my way out of town and all of this is just some fucked-up hallucination that my subconscious has dredged up while my life trickles away.”

Hummer grinned, and then backhanded me across the mouth. “Did that feel like an hallucination?”

“That hurt!”

“Sorry. Seemed the best way to get the point across, all things considered.”

I shook it away, which wasn’t easy—he had one helluva powerful swing. When I was able to gather myself together and stand fully upright, I was looking down the darkened road at something that appeared to be a small bonfire, only it was moving.

The music became louder as the whole band kicked in, the thump-a-thump-thump of the base and drums shaking the ground under my feet, and the bonfire grew brighter, wider, and closer.

Ciera appeared at my side. “Fairlane is…I’d guess you’d call him…I dunno…The Road’s guard dog. Does that make sense?”

“Not really.” I tried to grin at her and didn’t quite make it. “I guess I could use some reassuring words.”

“Then try this,” said Hummer. “If you took every instance of violence, death, pain, and destruction that have occurred on the roads and highways of this country and forced them all together so that they’d have a single form, it would be Fairlane.”

I stared at him for a moment. “I think we need to compare notes about the definition of ‘reassuring.’”

“He’s the closest thing to an actual demon you’ll ever meet,” said Ciera, taking hold of my hand. “And he’s got terrible table manners.”

Hummer nodded. “Not a pretty motherfucker, that’s for sure.”

“Plus he cheats,” said Ciera.

I could make out a shape in the middle of the flames; the outline of a car’s body, the massive hunched shoulders of the driver, the glint of light off metal and chrome.

The flames, I now realized, were coming from two sources; the back tires and the exhaust pipes that ran along the sides of the car. The cloud of flame, smoke, and exhaust moved up to the right lane and came to a stop right beside the Ogre. I blinked, shielding my eyes, hacking against the fumes, and waited for the cloud to clear.

I have no idea if what happened next was just a coincidence or something that had been previously choreographed to unnerve me, but until the day I die I’ll swear that the cloud of smoke and exhaust lifted at the exact moment the song stopped.

And there he was. My opponent for the evening’s festivities. I couldn’t take him in all at once, that would have been too much, so I looked at the car first; at least I could get my head wrapped around that.

When I was a kid, I used to collect and build model cars. I tended to favor models of older cars because their shapes were so varied and cool—not like the generic stuff I saw on the roads then and still see now. One of my favorite models had been a Revell kit of a 1934 Ford High Boy Rumble Seat Roadster. To me, it was the single coolest-looking car I’d ever seen—forget that I’d never actually seen the real thing, I knew Cool when I saw it.

And this car was Cool. Same make and model, only the back end had been jacked up and the tires replaced by wide, dangerous-looking slicks. The body—what was left of it, anyway—was a fierce, bright, almost terrifying shade of red. The exhaust pipes that ran along the sides of the car covered the entire length of the body and then some, curling slightly outward at the ends. The front grille and headlights were still in place, but the rest of the body between them and the windshield had been removed to make room for an engine that was more like a gigantic chrome cobra than anything that functioned under the laws of internal combustion, its body coiled and tense, it hood expanded, ready to strike. It would not have surprised me if a forked tongue had shot out for a moment.

And then the cobra roared, just once, spitting smoke and sparks. Fairlane wanted my attention. I had no choice but look at my opponent.

His skin—what there was of it—had the gray fish-belly pallor of something spoiled, and his head was disproportionately large for his body; like Dash, part of his skull was visible where the scalp had been torn away and cauterized at the edges. Thick strands of long, greasy, dark hair hung down the back of his head, tied into something that was supposed to be a ponytail but looked more like a section of putrid intestine left dangling for the elements to feast upon. He still had his own eyes, after a fashion: each was embedded into the center of a cone-shaped floodlight welded into the sockets. His nose was a knot of mashed tissue that leaked a thick, brown substance onto his upper lip. Every few seconds he would smile, allowing the liquid to spatter down onto his long, dark tongue that lolled around like that of a particularly happy or stupid puppy, never disappearing completely into his mouth. Something about the texture and shape of the thing demanded closer attention, and when it flopped fully out of his mouth a second time, I realized that the tongue was maybe one-third human tissue; the rest of it was a fan belt onto which the organic tissue had been attached.

Fairlane must have seen the realization hit me, because his face began to split in half as he smiled, displaying a mouth crowded with full-sized sparkplugs that had been jammed in to replace his teeth, both on top and bottom. He chortled—that’s the only word for it—and clicked his teeth together; a series bouncing blue electrical currents danced around his smile. I wondered if the little girl I’d seen earlier was his daughter or niece. Maybe she was just a fan and was paying tribute to her hero.

Hundreds of metal strips were mixed in with the flesh of his arms, and several twisted license plates had been used to good advantage in replacing the pectoral muscles of his chest, but his hands were the most unnerving thing about him; long, wide, with quadruple-jointed fingers, each hand was equal parts meat and metal, with small silver hinges used in place of bone joints. One hand was fused to the steering wheel at the ten o’clock position, while the other was fused to the gearshift.

“Told you he was ugly,” said Hummer.

“No,” I whispered. “It’d take the light from ugly ten thousand years to reach him.”

Fairlane chortled again, this time throwing back his head, his tongue flailing through the air.

Ciera took hold of my hand. “You need to get in your car now.”

I nodded at her and crossed back to the vehicle, opening the door, climbing inside, and then buckling up—more out of habit than any belief that doing so was going to keep me safe. “Good luck,” said Ciera. “Wait a second, please.” “What is it?” “How…I mean…what’s at the end of this road?”

“All of us—or we will be. You’ll see.” She leaned down, gave me a quick kiss, and then walked about ten yards ahead, stopping in the middle of the road and raising her arms. I stared at the red kerchiefs and tried once again to Zen-out of this whole freak show.

“On your marks,” she shouted, her arms now raised to their full height, the crowd silent, wide-eyed, leaning forward.

Fairlane gunned his engine. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel. Ciera gave us both a smile that might have been radiant in any other place, under any other circumstances. “Get set…”

Her grip tightened on the kerchiefs in her hands. In a moment, she’d swing down those impossible arms in a swift, decisive arc, and off we’d go.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, wondering how long I’d be missing and dead before anyone took serious notice of my absence. It was quite the revelation, it was, to realize that out of all my friends…I didn’t really have any.

“GO!” Ciera screamed, snapping down both arms simultaneously.

And we had a race.

I didn’t have to touch anything for the first ten seconds because, as Daddy Bliss had told me, the Road was in control. My rear tires spun madly for a second or two, screaming burned rubber and churning up a lot of smoke, and then the car shot forward, slamming me back against the seat. Fairlane gunned it—or, rather, the Road gunned it for him—and flew ahead, but a few seconds later, just as the crowd disappeared from my rear-view mirror and the safety railings began, control of the vehicles was returned to us and I gripped the wheel, shifted, and floored the accelerator, coming up fast on him.

For a few seconds, we were side-by-side, both of us increasing speed, both of our cars shuddering, both of us being followed by bulky overhead shadows that finally swept down, causing both of us to hunch so they couldn’t touch us, and just as quickly as they had appeared, the Highway People vanished and we got back to business.

And that’s when Fairlane began cheating. He slant-drove across my front and squealed into my lane. I resisted the impulse to break and instead sped up, ramming into his rear bumper; once, gently; the second time, not so much; and then with everything the car had, taking off part of his rear bumper and slewing him back into his own lane and against the railing where he scraped along, throwing off sparks for about a hundred yards. Some of the sparks flew toward my face, a couple of them landing on my cheek and burning the skin, but it was quick, the wind saw to that, and the pain kept me focused, kept my grip tight on the wheel, and I ran up alongside Fairlane, keeping him pinned between my car and the railing, and he was screaming, and I was laughing in panic, and when another set of sparks came spitting over against my face I jerked the wheel to the left, shot back into my lane, and surged forward.

It didn’t take Fairlane long to right his vehicle and close the distance between us, but at least now he’d gotten the idea and remained in his own lane, and pretty soon we were side-by-side again—

—and that’s when I discovered that Fairlane wasn’t the only person here who cheated, because I looked ahead and saw the flashing visibar lights of the Sheriff’s Department cruiser coming at us, roaring down on top of us, right the fuck smack in the middle, it would hit us both unless one of us did something, and I heard myself screaming “A fucking game of CHICKEN? This all boils down to a game of CHICKEN?” but Fairlane either didn’t hear me or didn’t care because he moved closer to me, so I returned the favor, our cars pressing against the each other’s side, neither one of us moving to get out of the cruiser’s way—there was nowhere to go, the railings made sure of that—but whoever was driving the cruiser wasn’t budging, just kept barreling down on top of us, and when I saw the lights of the burning torches flicker in the distance I knew we were almost done, this was it, now or never, and I figured, fuck it, I didn’t have to prove my nerve to anyone, so I took a chance and stood on the brake, spinning over into the right lane, but Fairlane didn’t follow suit, he just kept burning forward, looking back over his shoulder at me and laughing, and when he turned back toward the road it was too late, the cruiser was right there, and the two vehicles impacted at over a hundred miles an hour; the cruiser caught it hard in the left front, went up on its side, ricocheted, spun out, and walloped into the railing a twisted mass of steel, flames, and shattered glass. Fairlane was horizontal across the center and caught a shattering side punch from the cruiser as it spun out; he hit the railing, spun out a second time, flipped onto his side, and then scraped along for a few yards until he flipped tail-over onto his top, snapping his neck and sliding to a stop, leaving a long, wide, dark, wet trail behind as the cruiser caught fire, sputtered once, and then blew apart like an M-80 tossed into a can of kerosene.

I stared at the destruction for a few seconds, then put the car in gear, floored it, and shot through the flames and debris to cross the finish line to wild, deafening cheers. True to Ciera’s word, everyone and everything that had been at the beginning of the road were now here at the end.

I slammed on the brakes and threw open the door. I couldn’t get out of that car fast enough. Staggering back toward the finish line, I watched as Fairlane tore himself from his burning vehicle and stumbled out into the middle of the road, both arms missing from the elbows down, spurting blood, his head twisted at an impossible angle, black smoke skirling from his charred, sluicing flesh.

He shook his stumps at me, and then began to dance as the concert speakers once again began blasting “Highway To Hell.”

Why aren’t you dead? I thought.

“Because you can’t kill a demon,” said Hummer, stepping up beside me and putting a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about Fairlane. He digs the pain. Always has. Any excuse for more Repairs makes him happy.”

I spun around and surprised him with an uppercut to the jaw that knocked him squarely on his ass.

“Who was driving the goddamned cruiser?” I screamed.

“Nobody,” he replied, massaging his jaw and spitting out a small glob of blood.

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Because I didn’t know, all right? None of us did. The Road gets a wild hair up its ass sometimes. It decided that it wanted someone to bleed, so….” He touched his jaw again, winced, and then stuck out his arm. I helped him to his feet and fully expected him to slug me into the next decade.

“Nice punch you got there,” he said. “So now we’re even.”

“Driver!” called Daddy Bliss from atop the car-cube. “You have, indeed, proven yourself worthy.”

“Of what?” I shouted back at him.

“Of the Road’s trust, and our family’s respect and affection.”

Ciera pulled up alongside me in the meat wagon, got out, and handed me the keys. “You did good, you know that, right?”

I could not find any words. The full impact of what had just happened hit me all at once, and my legs turned to rubber. She helped into the driver’s seat, smoothing down my hair and laying her hand against my cheek. “I really hope I get to see you again someday.”

I looked at her, swallowed once, and finally found my voice. “What happens now?”

She tilted her head to the left, indicating the darkened road ahead. “You go home. Just drive straight for a little while, and you’ll be fine.” “Just…drive. That’s it?” “That’s it.” A small orange-red stain began to spread across the horizon. The crowd began to disperse. “Time’s up, Driver,” said Daddy Bliss. “A new day with new responsibilities awaits us all. Off with you, dear boy; off with you.” Ciera closed the door, kissed her finger tips, and pressed them against my lips. I started the meat wagon and drove away, never once looking in the rear-view mirror.

It took only a few minutes before the sunlight was right in my eyes. I blinked, slowed down, and dug around until I found a pair of sunglasses on the passenger-side floor. I knew they hadn’t been there when I left Cedar Hill. Ciera or someone else had known that I’d be driving into the rising sun, and so left them for me.

Ten minutes. I drove for only another ten minutes before I saw the exit sign for Cedar Hill. I took the exit, turned right—

—and found myself on 21^st Street.

I braked, looking around, confused. There was no traffic at the moment, no early-morning joggers on the sidewalks, no bicycle riders cruising along the curb…nor was there any sign of the exit I’d just taken. My guess is, had anyone been there to see, it would have looked like the meat wagon had just appeared out of thin air, and me with it.

Tired—Christ, I was suddenly so tired. And hungry. It felt like I hadn’t eaten in days, despite the meal Nova had prepared for me earlier.

Do something normal, I thought. Something banal.

So a breakfast at Bob Evans it would be.

I’d completely forgotten about the cash I still had and so drove to my bank to get some money from the ATM. I withdrew thirty dollars and was walking back to the meat wagon when I glanced down at the receipt to check my balance and damn near tripped over my own feet.

According to the receipt in my hand, my checking account had a balance of seventy-five thousand dollars. I went back to the ATM, inserted my card, and asked for a checking account balance once more. Still seventy-five grand. I checked my savings account: seventy-five thousand. I suddenly didn’t have much of an appetite.

A brown, business-sized envelope was taped to the door to my apartment. It had no address, no return address, no stamp; only a single, handwritten word: Driver.

I opened it and removed the single-page letter inside.

Driver:

You needn’t worry about the government or the IRS becoming too interested in your sudden financial windfall. No one asks questions when we tell them not to.

You will serve us for one year, until such time as Road Mama has completed her Repair process and can assume her duties once again. Understand that for the entirety of this year, no one close to you will be in any danger from the Road.

Upon completion of your duties, you will receive an additional deposit in each of your accounts equal to what you found waiting there this morning. You will be what was once referred to as “comfortable”.

You will find instructions waiting for you inside. Your first assignment is scheduled for 9:45 p.m. this evening. This time and this time only, the track has already been assembled for you. Expect a delivery of more material Monday morning, and again on Thursday. You’re a bright fellow; you’ll catch on soon enough. Ciera sends hugs and kisses. Isn’t that sweet? I tucked the letter inside my pants pocket, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.

A massive HO track was set up in the middle of my living room. Five large boxes, containing what I assumed was more track, were stacked against the far wall. Miss Driscoll’s—Road Mama’s—incredible computer system was already in place on a new desk, plugged in, and running. Several large maps hung from the walls. And a box of multi-colored, thumbnail-sized foil stars waited on the coffee table.

I closed the door behind me. It clicked into place with the finality of a coffin lid being lowered.

* * *

“Music’s exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.” —Igor Stravinsky “Without music, life would be a mistake.” —Friedrich Nietzsche

Of all the things I have lost in this life, it is music that I miss the most.

I read once that humankind was never supposed to have had music, that it was stolen by the Fallen Angels from something called The Book of Forbidden Knowledge and given to us before God could do anything about it. This article (I think it was in an old issue of Fate I found lying around the Open Shelter) said this book contained all information about Science, Writing, Music, Poetry and Storytelling, Art, everything like that, and that humanity wasn’t supposed to possess this knowledge because we wouldn’t know what to do with it, that we’d take these things that were supposed to be holy and ruin them.

I remember thinking, How could God believe we’d ruin music? I mean, c’mon: say you’re having a rotten day, right? It seems like everything in your life is coming apart at the seams and you feel as if you’re going under for the third time...then you hear a favorite song coming from the radio of a passing car, and maybe it’s been twenty years since you even thought about this song, but hearing just those few seconds of it brings the whole thing back, verse, chorus, instrumental passages...and for a frozen instant you’re Back There when you heard it for the first time, and Back There you’re thinking: I am going to remember this song and this moment for the rest of my life because the day will come that I’m going to need this memory, and so you-Back There taps you-Right Here on the shoulder and says, “I can name that tune in four notes, how about you?”

You can not only name it in three, but can replay it in your mind from beginning to end, not missing a single chord change, and—voila!—your rotten day is instantly sweetened because of that tune. How could any self-respecting Divine Being say that we might ruin music when a simple song has that kind of power? I’ll bet many a sad soul has been cheered by listening to Gordon Lightfoot’s “Old Dan’s Records,” or broken hearts soothed by something goofy like Reunion’s “Life Is A Rock (But the Radio Rolled Me)”; how many people in the grips of loneliness or depression have been pulled back from the edge of suicide by a song like “Drift Away,” “I’m Your Captain,” “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66,” or even something as lame as “Billy Don’t Be A Hero”? You can’t really say for certain, but you can’t discount the thought, either, because you know that music has that kind of power. It’s worked on me, on you, on everyone.

(It never occurred to me before, Byron Knight—yes, the Byron Knight—said to me the evening it happened, how frighteningly easy it is to re-shape a single note or scale into its own ghost. For example, E-major, C, G, to D will all fit in one scale— the Aeolian minor, or natural minor of a G-major scale. Now, if you add an A-major chord, all you have to do is change the C natural of your scale to a C-sharp for the time you're on the A-major. Music is phrases and feeling, so learning the scales doesn't get you “Limehouse Blues” any more than buying tubes of oil paints gets you a “Starry Night,” but you have to respect the craft enough to realize, no matter how good you are, you’ll never master it. Music will always have the final word.)

Of all the things I have lost in this life, it is music that I miss the most.

I can’t listen to it now, and it’s not just because I’m deaf in my left ear; I can’t listen to music anymore because I have been made aware of the sequence of notes that, if heard, recognized, and acknowledged, will bring something terrible into the world.

(The progression seemed so logical; leave the G string alone—tuned to G, of course—so the high and low E strings go down a half step to E flat. The B string goes down a half step to B flat, the A and D go up a half step, to B flat and E flat. The result was an open E flat major chord, which made easy work of the central riff. For the intro, I started on the 12th fret, pressing the 1st and 3rd strings down, dropped down to the 7th and 8th fret on those same strings for the next chord, and continued down the neck...as the progression moved to the 4th string, more and more notes were left out and it became a disguised version of a typical blues riff. The idea was to have a rush of notes to sort of clear the palette, not open the back door to Hell...but that’s a road paved with good intentions, isn’t it?)

Some days I’m tempted to grab an ice-pick or a coat hanger or even a fine-point pen and puncture my good eardrum; total deafness would be a blessing because then I wouldn’t have to worry about hearing that melody...but the tune would still be out there, and I’m not sure anyone else would recognize it, so who’d warn people if

(...B string goes down a half step to B flat, the A and D go up a half step, to B flat and E flat...)

the Mudman hears his special song and shambles in to sing along?

The Reverend and I were out on our second Popsicle Patrol of the night when Jim Morrison climbed into our van.

That Friday evening was one of the crappiest nights in recent memory. It was November, and it was cold, and it was raining—the kind of rain that creates a gray night chiseled from gray stone, shadowed by gray mist, filled with gray people and their gray dreams; a dismal night following a string of dateless, nameless, empty dismal days. The forecast had called for snow, but instead we got rain. At least snow would have been a fresh coat of paint, something to cover the candy wrappers, empty cigarette packs, broken liquor bottles, losing lottery tickets, beer cans, and used condoms that decorated the sidewalks of the neighborhood; a whitewash to hide the ugliness and despair of the tainted world underneath.

Can you tell I was not in the best of moods? But then, I don’t think anyone was feeling particularly chipper that night, despite the soft and cheerful classical music coming through the speakers, one in each of the four corners of the main floor. (I think it was something by Aaron Copland because listening to it made me feel like I was standing in the middle of a wheat field on a sunny day, and that only made me feel depressed.) The shelter was about a third full—there were twenty-five, maybe thirty people, not counting the staff—and the evening had already seen its first “episode”: a young guy named Joe (I didn’t know his last name, people who come here rarely have them) had kind of flipped out earlier and took off into the dreary night, upsetting everyone who’d been eating at the table with him. The Reverend (the man who runs this shelter) spent a little while getting everyone settled down, then sent one of the regulars, Martha, out to find Mr. Joe Something-or-Other. Neither one of them had come back yet, and I suspected the Reverend was getting worried.

The Cedar Hill Open Shelter is located just the other side of the East Main Street Bridge, in an area known locally as “Coffin County.” It’s called that because there used to be a casket factory in the area that burned down in the late sixties and took a good portion of the surrounding businesses with it, and ever since then the whole area has gone down the tubes. Most of the serious crime you read about in The Ally happens in Coffin County. It’s not pretty, it’s not popular, and it’s definitely not safe, especially if you’re homeless.

As hard as it may be to believe, there’s not all that many homeless people in Cedar Hill. If pressed to come up with a number, the Reverend would probably tell you that our good town has about fifty homeless folks (give or take; not bad for a community of fifty-odd thousand), most of whom you’ll find here on any given night, which explains how he knows all of them by name.

The shelter is in the remains of what used to be a hotel that was hastily and badly reconstructed after the fire; the lobby and basement were left practically unscathed, but the upper floors were a complete loss, so down they came, and up went a makeshift roof (mostly plywood, corrugated tin, and sealant) that on nights like this amplified the sound of the rain until you thought every pebble in the known universe was dropping down on it; luckily, the lobby’s high ceiling and insulation had remained intact after the fire, so that—combined with the soft classical music the Reverend always has playing—turned what might have been a deafening noise into only an annoying one. When it became evident that “Olde Town East” (as Coffin County used to be called) was not going to recover from the disaster, the city decided its efforts at a face-lift were better employed elsewhere. As a result of the Reverend’s good timing in getting the city to donate this building, the Cedar Hill Open Shelter was the only one in the state (maybe even the whole country) to have Italian marble tile on its floors and a ballroom ceiling with a chandelier hanging from it. Makes for some interesting expressions on peoples’ faces when they come through that door for the first time.

The shelter has one hundred beds on the main floor, with thirty more in the basement adjacent to the men’s and women’s showers and locker rooms. (Aside from storage, the basement was used by the hotel’s employees, many of whom worked two jobs and came to work at the hotel after finishing their shifts at one of the steel mills or canneries—those too now long gone.) A third of the main floor is covered with folding tables and chairs—the dining area—and the Reverend’s office, which is a pretty decent size and doubles as his bedroom, is past the swinging doors on the right; go straight through the kitchen, turn left, you’re there.

During the holidays you’ll see more unfamiliar faces and crowded conditions because of transients on their way to Zanesville or Dayton or Columbus, bigger places where there might be actual jobs or more sympathetic welfare workers. The shelter turns no one away, but you’d damned well better behave yourself while you’re here—the Reverend might look harmless enough at first, but when you get close to him it’s easy to see that this is a guy who, if he didn’t actually invent the whup-ass can opener, can handily produce one at a moment’s notice. (Opinions are divided as to who the Reverend more resembles: Jesus Christ, Rasputin, or Charles Manson. Trust me when I tell you that he can be very scary when he wants to.)

Almost no one does anything to piss off the Reverend. The business earlier that night with Joe was a rarity—even those folks who come in here so upset you think they’ll crumble to pieces right in front of you and take anyone in the vicinity with them know that you don’t ruin things for the rest of the guests. That’s what the Reverend calls everyone, “guests,” and treats them with all the courtesy and respect you’d expect from someone who uses that word. Still, the business with Joe was enough to set everyone’s nerves on edge a bit. It wasn’t even ten-thirty yet, so the regular guests who weren’t already here would be wandering in by midnight. Of the two dozen or so guests who were here, I only recognized a few.

We had four new faces tonight, a young mother (who couldn’t have been older than twenty-three), her two children (a boy, five or six; a girl, three years old tops), and their dog (a sad-ass Beagle with an even sadder face who was so still and quiet I almost forget he was there a few times until I nearly tripped over him). It breaks my heart to see a mother and her kids in a place like this. The Thanksgiving/Christmas period’s always the worst, and the most depressing. At least for me.

“That’s about all the excitement I can stand for one night,” said Ethel, the old black woman who mans the front door. She’s a volunteer from one of the churches—St. Francis—and sits here every weeknight from seven p.m. until eleven, greeting folks as they come in, handing out all manner of pamphlets, answering questions, and you-bet’cha happy to take any donations; she’s got a shiny tin can at the edge of her folding card table marked in black letters for just such a purpose.

I smiled at her as I cleared away some more of the empty plastic plates left on the various tables. “But you gotta admit, there aren’t many places like this that offer a free floor show with dinner.” “Mind your humor there; it’s not very Christian to make light of others’ woes.” “Then how come you grinned when I said that?” “That was not a grin. I…had me some gas.” “Uh-huh.”

“That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.” She winked at me, then looked out at the guests. “I don’t mind doin’ the Lord’s work, not at all, and Heaven knows these poor people need all the help they can get, but I swear, sometimes....” She squinted her eyes at nothing, trying to find the right way to express what she was thinking without sounding uncharitable.

“Sometimes,” I said. Then winked back at her. “We can leave it at that and it’ll be our little secret.”

She laughed as she dumped the contents of the DONATIONS can onto the table and began counting up the coins. “Oh, bless me, will wonders never cease? It looks like we might’ve took in a small fortune tonight. Why there must be all of—” She counted out a row of dimes, then a few nickels and pennies. “—three dollars and sixteen cents here! Might put us in a higher tax bracket.”

“I’m sorry it isn’t more,” I said, digging into my pocket and coming up with thirty-three cents, which I promptly handed over. If you’ve got spare change, it goes into Ethel’s til or. She. Will. Get. You.

“Always remember, Sam,” she said to me as she took the change, “what the Good Book says: ‘What we give to the poor is what we take with us when we die.’” “Then I’m screwed to the wall.” Her eyes grew wide at my language. I looked down at my feet. “I’m sorry.” “I’m going to chalk that up to your being tired and let it go, Samuel.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Both Ethel and the Reverend (who’ve looked out for my own good as long as I’ve been here) call me “Samuel” when they’re irked at me about something. I prefer “Sam.” “Samuel” always sounded to me like the noise someone makes trying to clear their sinuses.

Ethel picked up her purse and took out a five-dollar bill and some change, adding it to the til. “I have one rule for myself, Sam—I will not, absolutely not hand the Reverend less than twenty dollars at the end of each week.”

“How often do you have to make up the difference?”

She shrugged. “That’s my and the Good Lord’s business, you needn’t bother yourself worryin’ over it.” Then she gave me a conspiratorial wink. “Maybe we’ll soon have enough saved up to get the basement wall fixed.”

“Be still my heart,” I said.

Ethel was referring to the east wall in the men’s shower room. For the last several weeks, more and more of the tile and grouting had fallen out, and the cement foundation on that side was starting to crumble. Because of an unusually damp autumn, and with the almost non-stop rain of the past week or so, the soil behind the weakening cement started oozing through the gaps, slowly transforming everything into a muddy wall that was pushing out what tile still held its ground (it didn’t help matters that there was a leak in one of the pipes running into the showers). I’d been down there with the Reverend earlier that day, piling bags of sand, wooden crates filled with canned food, and even a couple of pieces of old furniture against it. It was a fight we were going to lose unless one of the contractors the Reverend had been guilt-tripping since spring threw up their hands in surrender and donated the time, manpower, and materials to repair it. I didn’t think Ethel’s twenty dollars a week was going to help much, regardless of how often she’d been making up the difference—something I suspected she really couldn’t afford to do.

I was thinking out loud as I watched Ethel slide the money into a brown envelope with the rest of the week’s donations. “I worry that if something isn’t done soon, that whole side’s going to cave in and we’ll have a helluva mess down there.”

Ethel shook her head. “My, my—the mouth on you this evening!”

“I’m sorry—again.” I rubbed my eyes. “I haven’t been sleeping too well the past couple of nights.”

“Which means most of the week, unless I miss my guess—don’t bother denying it, either. I could pack for a month’s vacation in the Caribbean with those bags under your eyes. Still taking your medication like the doctor prescribed?” Meaning my anti-depressants.

“Yes.”

“Still going to your weekly appointments?” Meaning Dr. Ellis, the psychiatrist who prescribes my anti-depressants.

“They’re twice a week—and, yes, I’m still going.”

She tilted her head to the side, puzzling. “Hmm. How about your diet? Your appetite been okay, Sam? Been eating regular?”

I nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I’m not particularly worried about anything, I haven’t been drinking too much caffeine or anything like that...I have no idea why I can’t sleep.”

“Bad dreams, maybe?”

Before I could answer, a voice behind me and said, “Terrible, just terrible,” loudly enough to make me jump, nearly dropping the stack of plates I’d gathered.

“Hello, Timmy,” said Ethel.

“Terrible, just terrible.”

I did a spin-dip-balance-and-catch routine with the plates that Buster Keaton would have been proud of, then set everything on Ethel’s table in case Timmy or someone else decided to test my reflexes again. “You shouldn’t sneak up on me like that,” I said to him, and was immediately sorry for the way I said it because Timmy got this look in his eyes like he was going to start crying. “Oh, hey, I’m sorry, Timmy. I’m not mad or anything, I didn’t mean to snap at you like that.” I put my hand on his shoulder and gave it a little squeeze. “Forgive me?”

Timmy is one of the more-or-less permanent residents here. The Reverend never makes anyone leave if they don’t want to or have no place else to go. The city council gives him no end of grief about this come the yearly budget meetings, but like every other city body and official in Cedar Hill, they don’t push it too far; it’s all for show, to save face. I don’t know what it is about the Reverend that makes them always back down, but I’m grateful for it, as are the permanent residents like Timmy.

Timmy is something of a walking, talking question mark to all of us. Nobody but the Reverend knows his last name, his story, or even if he’s from Cedar Hill. He never says anything more than “Terrible, just terrible,” to anyone else. But he’s courteous, and quiet, and clean.

He also sees things.

I found out from the Reverend that Timmy suffers from gradual and irreversible macular degeneration. The result is, you see things that aren’t there. In Timmy’s case, these visual hallucinations are pretty harmless: waiters, dancing animals, buildings that have been gone for thirty years, stuff like that. Timmy talks to the Reverend and only to the Reverend. The rest of us make do with Terrible, just terrible—but you’d be surprised how much he can convey with just those three words.

“We still friends?” I asked him. I didn’t want to make him cry; he was the closest thing I had to an older brother.

Timmy wiped his eyes, then pulled in a deep breath and patted my arm, smiling. “Terrible, just terrible.” Said in the same tone as, Don’t ask me dumb questions.

I pressed one of my hands over his and nodded my head.

Ethel finished getting all her things together, and was just about to head back to the Reverend’s office when he came barreling through the swinging doors like a man with a

pissed-off pit bull snapping at his butt. The Reverend is not known for displays of panic, but one look at the expression on his face and all three of us knew something bad had happened.

As if he knew what we were thinking (which wouldn’t surprise me), the Reverend came to a sudden stop, looked up, and tried to smile like nothing was wrong.

“That man couldn’t lie if his life depended on it,” said Ethel.

“What do you suppose it is?” I asked.

Timmy said, “Terrible, just…terrible.”

It was the way he said that last “terrible” that made me and Ethel look at him. Timmy sounded genuinely scared. I patted his shoulder and told him everything would be all right.

The Reverend took a deep breath, held it, then let it out in a quick puff before starting toward us again, slower this time, smiling like someone had just stuck a gun in his back and told him to act natural.

“Some night, eh?” he said.

“Oh, will you can it with the easygoing routine?” said Ethel. “Ain’t none of us blind, we saw you do that Jesse Owens through the doors. What’s wrong?”

“I…” The Reverend looked into Ethel’s eyes and shrugged. “I honestly can’t say—and, no, I don’t mean that I won’t say; I honestly don’t know what’s wrong.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Martha come back yet?”

“No,” said Ethel. “And neither has Joe. What was troubling him, anyway?”

The Reverend walked closer to the front door and stood there a moment, staring out at the freezing rain. “It’s a bad night, Ethel. Nights like this, they make some people think too much. If you think too much, you start remembering things, and some of those things are best left forgotten.”

“You get that from a fortune cookie?”

The Reverend turned to face her. “Beg pardon?”

Ethel sighed. “I asked you what I thought was a fairly direct question, and what do I get for an answer?—gobbledygook that sounds like something from an Igmar Bergman movie.”

“You know Bergman?”

Ethel stood up a little straighter, as if trying to decide whether or not she should be offended. “Yes, I know Bergman movies. I also like Kurosawa and Fellini and think The Three Stooges are very funny. And you’re changing the subject. I asked you what was wrong with Joe?”

“He’s dealing with some bad memories.”

Ethel finished getting ready to leave, handing the Reverend the money envelope. “You can’t save the world, Reverend. Only that part of it that comes through these doors and chooses to stay.” He took the money from her and grinned. “When I grow up, I want to be just like you.” “You’d look terrible in my wardrobe, you’re an Autumn.” He shook the envelope. “Ah…sounds like…let me guess…twenty dollars?” “Learn to juggle while blindfolded and you could take that act on the road.” The Reverend laughed. “Oh, Ethel…what would I do without you?”

“Don’t you be sweet-talking me, mister. I’m immune to your charms.”

“No you’re not.”

Ethel smiled; her smile is a wonderful thing to behold. “No, I’m not, but we can’t have you thinking you’re special or anything like that, now, can we?” She kissed his cheek, smiled at me and Timmy, and was just going out the door at the same time Sheriff Ted Jackson was coming in. The sheriff stood aside and held the door open for her.

“Evenin’, Sheriff,” said Ethel. “There some kind of trouble?”

“Only my troubled heart—why won’t you run off with me, Ethel, why?”

She laughed and smacked his arm. “Ted, one of these days I’m gonna take you up on that, and then what’ll you do?”

“Rejoice. Sing. Dance in the street.”

Ethel shook her head. “You men. What goes on in those heads of yours?”

“Sweet dreams of holding you in my arms, Ethel,” said Jackson. As Ethel walked away toward her car, Jackson called out: “Don’t leave me! I’ll crumble. I love you. Come back!”

I looked at Timmy. “Wow. Two floor shows tonight.”

Timmy snorted a mischievous laugh and said, in a conspiratorial tone, “Terrible, just terrible.”

Jackson came inside, closing the door behind him. “You know, some night that woman is going to haul off and knock my teeth down my throat. And I’ll probably deserve it.”

“I keep a camera at the ready for that very day,” replied the Reverend. He shook Jackson’s hand. “Thanks for coming, Ted.”

Jackson shrugged. “My social calendar suddenly cleared up.”

We all knew that Jackson’s wife had left him after she miscarried. She’s living down in Oregon with her sister now. Jackson was elected Sheriff last year, after having served as a deputy for something like six years. The new title and new uniform and new power hadn’t changed him at all; he still looked like he was waiting for someone to come out of the shadows and take it all away from him. He and the Reverend both have a tense, lonely way about them, which is I guess what drew them together as friends. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what they had in common, but I guess that doesn’t really matter when there’s someone you can always depend on for company and small talk over a cup of coffee or a sandwich or a smoke.

They stood there chatting about Jackson’s new responsibilities, the upcoming City Council budget meetings, the weather, and just when I was about to interrupt and ask what was going on, Jackson said, “So how long you need me here?” The Reverend checked his watch. “An hour, two at the most.” “What’s going on?” I asked. “Popsicle Patrol,” said the Reverend. “You need to go warm up the van.”

I looked out at the freezing rain—which was coming down even harder than before—and nodded my head. “I was wondering if we were going to do that tonight.” And I had been. I said good-bye to Timmy and was making my way toward the back when a little voice behind me said: “Mister, the tape won’t play.”

She stood there in all her three-year-old radiance, mussed hair, a smudge on one of her cheeks, hands on hips, one foot impatiently tapping, lower lip sticking out in what I’d bet was a well-practiced pout. I wanted to wrap her up and take her home with me.

“Is the tape broken?” I said, kneeling down so we could see eye to eye.

She tsk’d, rolled her eyes, and sighed. “Noooooo, it’s not broken. It just won’t play. They’re not the same thing, y’know.”

I looked toward the “lounge”—an area near one of the corners with three chairs, a sofa, a coffee table, and a television set—and saw the girl’s mother, brother, and dog staring at us. The dog in particular seemed irritated that the tape wasn’t doing its part to share in the duties of entertaining the kids. I told the little girl I’d see what I could do, and she grabbed my hand, dragging me toward the TV.

As soon as I knelt down in front of it I saw the problem. “It’s not the tape, honey—the VCR has to be set on Channel 3 or it doesn’t come through the TV.”

“Well, did you set it?”

“Missy!” said her mother. Then, to me: “Sorry. She really wants to watch the tape and she gets…a little impatient.”

“That’s okay.” I set the VCR and cued up the tape. This was a good one: A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Frosty the Snowman, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The Reverend had taped a bunch of holiday specials and movies for folks to watch, to make their holidays here less depressing.

“My name’s Beth,” said the woman. “This is Melissa—”

“—Missy,” said the little girl.”

“Missy…excuse me. This is Kyle, and that bundle of fur on the floor is Lump”

Lump’s face was buried between his paws, but he managed to raise up one ear in greeting.

Missy walked over toward me, pointing. “What happened to your ear, Mister?”

“Melissa!” snapped Beth.

“It’s okay,” I said, touching the knot of scar tissue that clung to the side of my skull. I looked at Missy, trying to decide just how much of the truth to tell her. “Well, you see, Missy, I don’t have much of an ear left, so I can only hear out of the other one.”

Once again, she tsk’d at me, shaking her head. “I know you only got one ear, I see that. I mean, what happened to your ear?” “You mean why isn’t it there anymore?” “Uh-huh.” “I got hit in the head.”

“Huh? You mean you can get…not-hearing and lose your ear from being hit in the head?”

I nodded. “If you get knocked out and land in the snow like I did.”

“Wow…you musta got hit real hard.”

“Yep. I was out for about five hours.” I hoped she wouldn’t quiz me further; I don’t lie well.

Beth saved me by mussing Kyle’s hair and making him groan. She told Missy that was enough, stop bothering the nice man, then looked at me. “We’re on our way to Indiana. We’re going to…stay with my folks for a while.”

“Gramma and Grampa told us we could come stay with them because our Daddy’s dead,” said Kyle matter-of-factly, as if he understood all about death and had accepted it and was wise beyond his years; which, in a way, I guess he was: bad wisdom is still wisdom.

As soon as he said “dead”, Beth shot me a look that was equal parts fear and pleading, and that’s all it took for me to know the rest of the story: Daddy wasn’t dead, Daddy was some white-trash asshole who’d decided he’d enough responsibility for one lifetime, and so took the car (or, more likely, the truck), all the money, and however much beer he could fit in the cooler and abandoned his family—odds are in an apartment from which they were about to be evicted anyway, leaving her to fend not only for herself but two kids and a dog. I wondered how Daddy had “died”, and if Beth had taken care to cover her tracks so he couldn’t suddenly resurrect himself from the dead once they were Indiana.

All of this I saw in her eyes for that brief moment; I nodded my head in understanding, and was rewarded with one of the most luminous smiles of gratitude I’d ever seen. These kids had nothing to worry about, not with this woman as their mother. I felt sorry for anyone stupid enough to try and pull anything on them. If Daddy did suddenly come back from the dead and show up in Indiana, my guess was he wouldn’t be out of that grave for long.

I pointed to the VCR, triumphant. Missy and Kyle applauded my efforts. I took a bow, then said: “Would you guys like some popcorn and sodas to snack on?”

I expected both of them to shout yes, but instead they looked at their mother, who shrugged and looked at me. “Can I have some too?”

“You were here in time for dinner, right?”

“Oh, uh…yes, we were. I just…the kids don’t get treats too often and….”

“I’ll make extra,” I said. “And don’t worry—we keep plenty on hand.” Which we did, at the Reverend’s insistence. Don’t ask me why, but somehow eating popcorn and sipping a soda while watching a good movie or a cartoon seems to make everyone happy, at least for a while. A mouthful of popcorn and you’re a kid again, at the movies with all the other kids, having a good time and enjoying the hell out of life, not at the end of your rope in a homeless shelter right before Thanksgiving and wondering where’d you’d be come Christmas morning. I guess for a lot of the people who come through here, the smell of popcorn is the smell of childhood, and that can make things easier, if only for a little while.

I made two bags (one butter, one plain), popped open three Pepsis, and put a couple of ham-and-cheese sandwiches on the tray, as well. (I didn’t remember seeing them at any of the tables during dinner.) I even found a can of dog food, which I put in a bowl for Lump, who seemed to have a higher opinion of me after I set it in front of him.

Everyone thanked me, then snuggled together under a blanket on the couch, watching Charlie Brown and munching away.

“Ahem?”

I turned to see the Reverend standing right behind me. He looked at Beth and her children, then at Lump, then at me, raising his left eyebrow like that actor who used to play Mr. Spock on Star Trek.

“I know, I know,” I said, moving past him toward the rear doors. “What was I supposed to do, ignore them?”

He fell into step beside me. “No, you were supposed to do exactly what you did. It just seemed to me that you were basking in the moment a little too long…you knight in shining overalls, you.”

“They weren’t here for dinner, were they?”

“They were, but they were sleeping and I wasn’t about to wake them. You did good, Sam.”

“Your praise is everything to me.”

The Reverend grinned. “Could you maybe be a little less sincere?”

“I could give it a whirl, but it costs extra.” We smiled at each other, then the Reverend moved toward the kitchen to stock up on hot coffee and sandwiches while I made my way out back to get the van started for Popsicle Patrol.

As I was closing the door behind me, I took one last look inside; Timmy was sitting down in one of the chairs in the lounge, Lump’s face seemed permanently fused to the bowl, Beth and her kids were munching happily away (on both the popcorn and the sandwiches, which they shared with Timmy), and the other guests were either settling into their cots, playing cards, or chatting quietly. Sheriff Jackson was sitting at Ethel’s table, reading a paperback novel. Everything was quiet, warm, pleasant enough, and safe. It made me feel good, knowing that I’d helped make this a good, clean, decent place for folks who weren’t as fortunate as me. I wanted to freeze this moment in my mind so I could take it out again sometime and look at it when I was feeling blue.

They were all fine; they were all safe.

I try very hard to remember that now; how safe it all seemed.

It wasn’t just the freezing rain that kept my mood more on the downside that night; I’d felt like something was…off all day. Ever since I’d arrived at the shelter—well before four that afternoon—it seemed like the whole world was moving at a slow, liquid crawl. People looked out their windows at the dark skies as if they sensed there might be something looking back down at them but taking care to keep itself hidden from their gazes.

I guess that sounds a little on the melodramatic side, and I’m sorry I can’t make it any clearer than that, but there was just this feeling in the atmosphere. The closest thing I can think of to compare it to is the day the World Trade Center buildings went down. Remember how, when you went outside, even if there were no radios or television sets to be heard, even if you were alone, you could feel the weight of it in the air? As if the wind itself had been stopped dead in its tracks, stunned by the horror of it, and everything around you was holding its breath, wondering, What happens now?

That’s what this day had felt like to me.

Like I’d told Ethel, I hadn’t been sleeping too well the past few days, and I figured that had a lot to do with the way I was seeing things. It wasn’t like some slimy, big-ass tentacled monster was going to come dropping down on Cedar Hill like a curse from Heaven once the clouds parted and the rain stopped. I was just tired. That had to be it.

Once the van’s engine was all warmed up, I turned the heater on and in a few minutes had the inside all toasty. I pulled around in front and waited for the Reverend, who came out almost right away, carrying a cooler that I knew was full of sandwiches, as well as three Thermoses; two of hot coffee, one of hot chocolate. He slid open the side door, shoved the cooler inside, then closed the door and climbed into the front passenger seat.

“Me, too,” he said.

“What?”

He shook off the rain, ran his hand through his hair to push it back from his face, then looked right at me. “I’ve been feeling it, too.”

I blinked. “Feeling…wh-what? What’re you—?”

He shook his head. “Don’t play dumb with me, Sam. All day you’ve felt like something’s been off, haven’t you? Like something’s about to happen?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. Yes.”

“Hence my saying, ‘Me, too.’ Try to keep up.” He leaned forward and looked out the windshield, his eyes turning up toward the rain. “Makes you crazy, doesn’t it? That sense that something’s going to happen and you don’t know if it’ll be something good or something…not.” “Either way,” I said, putting the van into gear, “we got the perfect night for it.” The Reverend turned to me and smiled. “That’s just like you, Sam. ‘The perfect night.’ Saying something like that.” “Oh, it’ll be all right, Mr. Frodo, you’ll see.” I pulled away from the curb and the Popsicle Patrol officially began.

Believe it or not it was the Reverend, not me, who started calling it that. It strikes some people as offensive—Ethel, in particular, thinks it’s pretty tasteless—but the Reverend defends it by saying: “Would it be in better taste if I called it the ‘Corpse-sicle Patrol’? Because that’s what they’ll be if we don’t get to them in time. If you wish for us to change the name, then you have to make at least two runs with us. Otherwise you get no say.”

Ethel declined the offer and never complained about it again after that.

There are five pickup points on Popsicle Patrol, and on nights like this, when the rain and the wind and the cold conspire to freeze you in place, the homeless folks all know where these pickup points are and know which routes to take in order to get there; that way, if we pass each other while they or us are heading in that direction, we just stop and pick them up. Cedar Hill isn’t that big of a place when compared with a city like Columbus or Cincinnati, but it still takes a while to drive through it on bad weather nights. The Reverend established the pickup points about five years ago, when he first showed up in Cedar Hill, and since then not one homeless person has frozen to death here in winter—or any other time of the year. Let’s see Columbus or Cincinnati try and claim that.

The first pickup point is on the downtown square at the east side of the courthouse. Like all pickup points, we pull up and wait fifteen minutes, then drive on to the next if no one shows. As soon as we have a full van, we go back to the shelter, drop them off, then head to the next pickup point, and so on. The Reverend took a lot of time figuring out the route, making sure that the trips to and from each pickup point takes us past the previous ones again in case anyone new has shown up in the meantime. All in all, we pass each pickup point a minimum of five times during Popsicle Patrol, which is why it usually takes us a couple of hours.

We pulled up the courthouse and I automatically killed the headlights.

“Sam,” said the Reverend.

“Sorry, force of habit.” I keep forgetting that the out-of-towners are wary of approaching a dark van. I turned the headlights back on just in time to see a man with no legs rolling himself toward us on a makeshift cart built from two skateboards and a wooden crate, using two canes to propel himself forward.

The Reverend looked at his watch. “He’s late.”

“Probably didn’t want to get stopped for speeding.”

The Reverend started to laugh, stopped himself, said, “Sam, that’s not funny,” and then burst out laughing. The man in the cart heard the laughter, pulled back his canes, adjusted the gloves on his hands, then folded his arms across his chest and stared at us. With the canes forming a giant ‘X’ across his body, he looked like some ancient Egyptian sarcophagus, only crabbier.

The Reverend reached back and slid open the side doors, calling, “Come on, Linus, your security blanket hath arrived.”

“Oh, jeez—I’ve never heard that one before.” Linus—I don’t know his real name, he calls himself that after that character Humphrey Bogart played in Sabrina, not the Peanuts character—pulled down his canes and pushed himself over to the van. “You were laughing at me.”

“No,” said the Reverend. “I was laughing near you. There’s a difference.”

“Especially when you ain’t the one who’s wet and cold.”

“Now-now, Linus; don’t get short with me.”

“Oh, that’s a stump-slapper, all right.” He tossed his canes into the back, then pulled himself up into the van while I got out and went around to retrieve his cart, watching as he maneuvered himself around and up into one of the back seats. Most people would take one look at Linus and feel revulsion or pity; me, I marvel at the strength of the man. His arms are the most muscular I’ve ever seen in person. You had to feel bad for anyone who might be on the receiving end of one of his punches. “You got any more carny worked lined up?” I asked him. “Starting in early June,” he replied. “I will once again be touring the tri-state area as Thalidomide Man.” “You gonna carve out any more of those little wood figures you used to sell?” “Always.”

Linus makes a seasonal living with whatever touring carnival will hire him. He calls himself “Thalidomide Man” because of his legs—tells people it was because his mother took the drug during her pregnancy. Every season he whittles a couple of hundred little wood figures of himself—long arms, hands, no legs—and sells them for a couple of dollars each. I have a few, and have noticed that he tends to change the look of the figure every year, usually making himself much more handsome than he really is...and I tell him that every year. One of these days he’s going to carry through on his threat to bite off my kneecaps.

I put the cart on top of the van, covering it with the tarpaulin we keep there, then secured it in place with a length of clothesline. The Reverend reached back and slid closed the side door as I was climbing back in just in time for their traditional Godzilla Trivia game.

“All right,” Linus was saying. “I got a toughie for you tonight.”

“I doubt that.” The Reverend knows his Godzilla trivia.

Linus made a hmph sound, then cracked his knuckles like some card dealer ready to toss out a losing hand to an opponent. “Okay, Mr. Chuckles, try this one: Name the first movie where Godzilla was the good guy and tell me the other monsters who were in the movie and how long into the movie it is before good-guy Godzilla makes his first appearance.” The Reverend looked at Linus and grinned. “Is that it?” Linus looked at me. “’Is that it?’ he asks me. A lesser man would feel insulted.” “A lesser man would have no arms and be hanging on a wall and be named Art,” I replied.

Linus made the hmph sound again and shook his head. “You know what you two are? You’re limb-ists.”

“That’s not a word,” I said.

“Then how can I say something that isn’t a word? Huh? Answer me that one, Kato.”

“Godzilla Vs. Monster Zero,” said the Reverend. “Godzilla, Rodan, and Ghidra. And it’s thirty-seven minutes into the movie before both Godzilla and Rodan first show themselves.”

Linus was visibly crushed. “I thought for sure you’d miss it. A three-parter. I’d’ve bet money you’d miss at least one of them.”

“Try another one.”

Linus shook his head. “No, thank you; one disgrace a night is my limit.”

“I got one,” I said. Both the Reverend and Linus looked at me in surprise. I shrugged, then said: “What was the name of the giant rose bush that Godzilla fought with?”

“Biollante,” they both said simultaneously; then Linus chimed in with: “The best special effects they save for the dumbest story line. It’s a damn shame.”

“Well, I tried.”

Linus reached over the seat and patted my shoulder. “It was a good question, though, Sam. Most people don’t know that any new Godzilla movies were made after Terror of Mecha-Godzilla. And I don’t count that big-budget abortion from ’98…although Jean Reno kicked ass in it.”

“Yeah, he’s great,” said the Reverend.

After that, the three of us fell silent for a few minutes. The rain was turning into serious sleet, and a few pebble-sized chunks of hail bounced off the windshield. I turned up the defrost and ran the wipers, turning the world outside into a liquid blur of shapeless colors.

“A fit night for neither man nor beast,” said Linus.

I turned around and grinned at him. “That’s a line from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, right?”

Linus rolled his eyes and sighed. “We three are just a fount of useless information this evening.”

“No, I fixed up the VCR back at the shelter so this woman and her kids could watch Rudolph before we left.”

“That’s some truly unnerving syntax,” said the Reverend.

“I work hard at it.”

The Reverend poured Linus some hot coffee and gave him a sandwich, and while he ate I checked the time and saw it was about time to move onto the next pickup point. I put the van into gear and was just pulling away from the curb when a police cruiser rounded the corner doing about sixty, its visibar lights flashing but the siren turned off: silent approach. It sped past us, followed by an ambulance whose lights were flashing but whose siren was turned off, also.

“Okay, that’s interesting,” said the Reverend.

Both of the vehicles stopped at the mid-way point on the East Main Street Bridge. One of the police officers got out and looked over the side of the bridge.

Without being told to do it, I spun the wheel and headed in that direction. There’s an old fisherman’s shack on the banks of the Licking River below the bridge that some of the homeless folks in town use as a flop when the weather’s bad and they can’t make it to the shelter.

By the time we got to the bridge, two more squad cars had pulled up and I could see that there was already another ambulance and at least three other squad cars parked down near the river bank.

“They must’ve taken the access road,” said the Reverend, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t want to try and drive back up that thing tonight.” He threw open the door and climbed out. The police officer who was looking over the railing caught sight of him and turned around, his hand automatically resting on the butt of his gun, but then he saw who it was and relaxed. The Reverend went over and spoke to him for a few moments, the officer nodded his head, asked a question, and on hearing the Reverend’s answer turned his head slightly to the side and spoke into the radio communications microphone attached to his collar. The Reverend thanked him, and then came back to the van.

“What’s going on?” I asked as he climbed in.

“I don’t know. Looks like Joe was at the shack for a little while. He’s not around and they’re still looking for him. They’ve got Martha, though, and I guess she’s in bad shape. The paramedics had to sedate her. That ambulance down there is for her.”

“Then who’s this other one for?”

The Reverend ran a hand through his soaked hair. “Not just yet, Sam. Drive over to the other side of the bridge and pull over.”

Asking no more questions, I did as he asked, and saw there was an unmarked car idling by the curb, its cherry-light whirling on the dashboard. A beefy man was sitting inside, talking on the radio. When he saw the van pull over, he climbed out of the car, pulled up the collar on his coat, and ran over to the side door. It took Linus a moment to get it opened, but once he did the man climbed inside and shook the freezing rain from his hands. “I smell coffee. Why has none yet been offered to me?”

“And a good evening to you, too, Bill,” said the Reverend, unscrewing the top of a Thermos and pouring. Detective Bill Emerson took the cup in his thin, dainty, almost-feminine hands (he gets a lot of grief from the guys on the force about them), took a few tentative sips, said, “Starbucks charges you six bucks a shot for stuff this good,” then stared down into the dark, steamy liquid as if expecting to see some answer magically appear. “Okay, so Joe was at the shelter earlier and got upset and took off and you sent Martha after him, right?”

“Right.”

Emerson nodded his head, took another sip of the coffee, then looked at Linus. “Linus, I don’t suppose you’ve got any smokes on you, do you?” “Not tonight, I’m afraid.” “That’s all right. My wife’d kill me if I came home smelling of tobacco.” “How’s Martha?” asked the Reverend. “Quiet, now. They’ve got her in the ambulance.” “Can you tell me anything about what happened?” Emerson shook his head. “Not officially.” “Then off the record?”

Emerson looked up; his eyes were glassy and tired and haunted-looking. “Among other things—which I can’t tell you about, so don’t ask—we found a body down there. I don’t think it’s anyone you know.”

The Reverend tensed. “You don’t know that for certain.”

Emerson reached into his coat pocket and removed three Polaroids that he passed up front. The Reverend looked at all three of them, whispered, “Good God,” and passed them to me.

What happens now? I thought as I looked at them.

There’s an almost-joke that we use to settle the nerves of folks who are passing through, who maybe don’t know about or haven’t heard some of this city’s colorful history: This is Cedar Hill. Weird shit happens here. Get used to it.

Even by the standards of our usual weird shit, what I saw in those photographs was way the hell out there.

The guy had to have been almost seven feet tall. He was naked and pale and dead, but that wasn’t what caused me to gasp, no—he had only one eye socket, directly in the center of his forehead where two eyes struggled to stay in place. His face had no nose; instead, there was a proboscis-like appendage that looked like an uncircumcised penis growing from the center of his too-small forehead.

I was looking at photographs of a dead Cyclops.

What happens now?

I continued staring at them until Linus reached between the seats and snatched them out of my hand. No sooner had he done that and began looking at them than Emerson snatched them from him.

“That’s not fair—they got to see ‘em.”

“Have you seen Joe tonight?” asked Emerson.

“No.”

‘Can you offer me any information that might shed some light on what happened at the shelter earlier this evening?” “No.” “And is there any chance that you’re ever going to replace my wooden figure of Thalidomide Man that the arms fell off of?” “For five bucks, sure.” “I meant for free.”

“What do you think?”

“I think that you’re not connected to this case, then, so you don’t get to peek.” Emerson slipped the Polaroids back into his coat pocket. “Have you ever seen anything like that in your life?”

Both the Reverend and I shook our heads.

“Something strange and maybe kind of terrible is going on in this city tonight,” said Emerson, looking out at the rain. “I can…feel it. This is a perfect night for monsters or ghosts and—Jesus, don’t I sound portentous? Sorry.” He took a couple of deep swallows of the coffee, then wordlessly requested a refill, which the Reverend wordlessly gave. “I’ve felt like something bad’s been going to happen all day,” I said. “For a couple of days, to tell you the truth.” “I hear you,” replied Emerson, then: “Do any of you know any other spots Joe might go to?” None of us did. “Do you think he might have gone back to the shelter?” None of us did. “You guys are a damned helpful bunch,” said Emerson. “Is it all right if I go by and see for myself?” “You can call. Ted Jackson’s holding down the fort until we get back.”

“I’ll do that, thanks.” Emerson finished the coffee, handed the cup back to the Reverend, and slide open the side door. “I don’t have to tell you not to repeat anything, do I?” “Repeat any of what?” said the Reverend. “There you go.” And with that, Emerson closed the door and ran back to his car. I stared at the Reverend for a moment before finally saying, “What the hell was that?”

“That, Samuel, was a deformed human being whose life was probably an unbroken string of lonely miseries that ended on the muddy, freezing banks of this river with no friend near to hold their hand or mark the moment of their passing—that’s who that was.”

I nodded my head and apologized.

“Looked like something out of Jason And The Argonauts, you ask me,” said Linus.

The Reverend shot him a look that could have frozen fire. “Nobody asked you. And I’ll thank you to show a little respect for someone who wasn’t lucky enough to have us find him first!”

Linus blanched at the Reverend’s sudden anger. “I…I didn’t mean anything by it, I’m sorry.”

The Reverend glared at him for a moment longer, then exhaled, his shoulders slumping and the anger vanishing from his face. “I’m sorry, too, Linus.” He reached out and grabbed the other man’s hand. “I didn’t mean to raise my voice like that. Forgive me?” “I will if I can have another sandwich.” “Done.” Linus tore into his ham-and-cheese and I pulled out, turned the van around, and headed for the second pickup point. None of us mentioned the photographs; not then, not later, not again. If you live here, you accept the weird shit—even if it’s with a capital ‘W’—or you try to get out. Good luck with that last option.

We dropped Linus off at the shelter about an hour later. Beth’s kids immediately wanted to ride on his cart, and Linus was all too happy to oblige them.

We’d picked up another half-dozen folks along the way, and as soon as they were all situated, Sheriff Jackson came up to me and the reverend and said, “Grant McCullers just called from the Hangman. He’s bringing some hot food over for everyone, and it appears that he’s got another guest for you tonight.”

“Who?” asked the Reverend.

Jackson shrugged. “He wouldn’t say. I guess he found the guy camping out between a couple of the lumber piles.”

McCullers owns and operate the Hangman’s Tavern, a place out by Buckeye Lake. It’s called that because the KKK, back in the day, used to hang black folks near the spot. There’s even an old makeshift “T” post with a noose dangling from it to mark the road to the tavern.

Grant’s a good guy. We hadn’t heard much from him since October, when a nasty storm did some serious damage to the Hangman. I hated to think what the repairs were costing him, but even with all his own financial troubles, Grant somehow always managed to come to the shelter a couple times every month to bring some hot food. He’d even offered to donate whatever lumber was left from the repair work so that we could do something about the wall in the basement.

The Reverend checked his watch, then the weather outside. “I wouldn’t want to drive from Buckeye Lake in this weather.”

“Yeah, well, Grant’s funny that way,” said Jackson. “He’ll go out of his way for someone without a second thought. Hell, during the divorce, he and you were about the only people I had to talk to.”

The Reverend nodded his head, then gave the place a quick once-over to make sure everyone was doing all right. “Sam and I are going to make another Popsicle run. Can I impose on you to hang around for another hour?” “Everybody knows I’m here,” said Jackson. “But if there’s an emergency, I’ll have to leave.” “You got my cell number, right?” “I’ll call and let you know.” The Reverend squeezed Jackson’s shoulder. “You’re a really good friend, Ted.” “Don’t spread that around. I have a non-reputation to protect.” The Reverend turned to me. “You get all the sandwiches and coffee refilled?” “All packed up.” “Let’s go, then.” Back in the van, the Reverend turned on the radio as we pulled out. Someone was playing Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” “Oddly enough,” said the Reverend, “not my favorite Dylan tune.” He punched a button and switched to a different station. This next station was also playing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” “That’s an odd coincidence,” I said. The Reverend said nothing, only looked at the radio, then back out at the night. “I want you to do me a favor, Sam.” “Sure thing.” He looked at me. “Pay to attention to where the song is when I change the station, okay?” “Okay…?” He punched another button, going to a third, different station.

Not only was this one also playing the same song, but we’d come in to it at the exact spot where it had been when the Reverend changed stations. This time, I punched a button. Different station, same song, same spot where it had been before. “Maybe something’s wrong with the radio,” I said, switching it over to AM. Same song, same place. The Reverend and I looked at each other. “I told you something was going on tonight,” he said to me.

For the next ten minutes, we changed stations, changed bands, reset selected stations manually, and it didn’t matter a damn; AM or FM, pre-set station or random scroll, every station we found was playing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”, and each time the song was at the same spot where it had been before we switched. Over and over for ten minutes, same thing each time.

“Maybe something happened to Dylan and everyone’s playing this,” I said.

The Reverend looked at me and shook his head. “First of all, if anything had happened to Bob Dylan, it would have been all over the news, which it wasn’t. Secondly, even if that were the case and I somehow missed out on hearing it, I sincerely doubt that—” He checked the current station setting. “—the Power Wad 106 would be playing this song. The Wad specializes in thrash metal. If this were the Guns ‘n’ Roses cover, I might buy your explanation, but we’ve got…” His words cut off as he looked up and saw someone standing in the light fog at the pickup point.

“We’ve got weird scenes inside the gold mine, is what we’ve got.” He turned off the radio and we pulled over so that a too-skinny young man—maybe late 20’s, early 30’s—could get in. This guy didn’t so much stroll as slink toward the van, moving with the easy grace of a cat across the top of a wall; head tilted slightly to the left, long dark hair caught in the wind, hips swaying from side to side.

I leaned toward the Reverend. “Is it just me, or does that guy look like—”

“There’s no ‘look like’ about it, Sam. That’s him.”

Okay, there’s no way to say this without sounding like a basket case, so I’m just going to say it and be done: we’d just picked up Jim Morrison, lead singer of The Doors, a man who supposedly died in Paris almost 30 years ago. Morrison climbed into the back of the van, closed the door, and sat staring down at the floor. “Mr. Mojo Risin,” said the Reverend. Morrison looked up at him with heavy-lidded eyes and gave a short nod. “I’m a big fan.” The Reverend offered him a cup of coffee. Morrison took it with a half-grin, then sipped at it. The Reverend watched him for a moment, and then asked, “How is it you wound up here?”

And if I’d had any doubts as to who this really was sitting in the back seat, they were erased when he looked back up and said, “I am the Lizard King, I can do anything.”

It was that voice. “The killer awoke before dawn…”, “Break on through…”, “When the still sea conspires in armor…” The same timbre, the same inflections. Not a good imitation of the singer from a tribute band. The real thing.

I started shaking. Morrison saw this, then reached over and squeezed my shoulder. “Easy there, Sam. You got no reason to be afraid of me.” All I could do was nod. “Why are you here tonight?” asked the Reverend. Morrison shook his head. “Sorry, man. I’m not allowed to say.” “Understood. Can you tell us where we need to go next?”

“Second Popsicle pickup point.” Morrison grinned. “Man, alliteration. I’d forgotten what that feels like on the tongue. Not that I ever used it much—alliteration, not my tongue.”

We drove off into the sleeting night.

When I was a kid, I wanted so much to be a rock star. The music, the adulation, the fame and riches, all of it.

But mostly the music.

I tried my hand at half a dozen different instruments; the harmonica, the guitar, bass, drums, the piano, and even—hand to God—the flute (hey, if Ian Anderson could use it to make Jethro Tull one of the greatest groups of all time, why the hell not?). I was a failure at all of them, except for the guitar, and even then I had the sense to realize that if I dedicated myself to the instrument, if I practiced for ten hours a day every day for the rest of my life, I would be an at-best average guitar player…and the world has too many of those already.

So I contented myself with the fantasy of rock stardom, and my love of music. Classical, country, prog, blues, rock, metal—I loved it all. And my admiration for anyone who can pull a tune out of the ether and make it real has never lessened. Even if it’s a crap song, it’s still a song, something that didn’t exist until someone heard it in the back of their head and put it out into the world.

But I never understood why so many rock stars went down in flames. I could never dredge up much sympathy for someone who made millions doing what they loved, creating something that gave so much pleasure to the rest of the world, and then pissed it all away on drug and booze or whatever the poison of choice was at the time. But then, that’s an easy judgment call to make when you’re not the one who has to live with the pressure of always having to be on for the world, of not being able to go anywhere without people following you, wanting your autograph, your picture, a lock of your hair, or whatever else is required so that they can prove to themselves that they once touched greatness…even if that greatness was fleeting, or only in their minds, or even manufactured.

I guess any culture needs its popular icons, something for the rest of its populace to aspire to, knowing they’ll never make it. Hell, there was probably some prima donna cave-wall painter back in the Neolithic days who started to believe it when his fans told him that his shit didn’t stink.

I don’t know how many times during the next hour or so I wanted to turn around and ask Morrison or any of the others why they’d allowed themselves to fall victim to their self-indulgences when they’d died still having so much more to give to the world…then just as quickly realized how goddamned selfish that was. Maybe that Neil Young song hit it on the head about it being better to burn out than fade away.

People like you and me will never know, so how can we be made to understand?

Over the next hour, we picked up Keith Moon and John Entwistle (both from The Who), Gary Thain and David Byron (of Uriah Heep), Tommy Bolin (The James Gang and Deep Purple), Paul Kossoff (Free), the great blues guitarist Roy Buchanan, as well as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Billie Holiday—to whom everyone paid the greatest respect and courtesy.

The Reverend gave them each welcome and coffee, and asked each of them the same questions: How did you get here? Why are you here? Where are we taking you?

“Honey,” said Billie Holiday, laying a thin and elegant hand against the Reverend’s cheek, “what we got to do, we got to do. ‘Taint nobody’s business but ours, and that’s just how it’s gotta be. You got that look in your eyes, you know that?” “What look is that?” “Like you already know whatever it is you’re tryin’ to get one of us to say.” “Can we get out of this fuckin’ cold already?” said Cobain. I put the van in gear and drove back to the shelter. “Sam doesn’t say much,” Morrison announced to the others. “Ah, a quiet one,” said Entwistle, grinning. Keith Moon shook his head. “Bloody birds of a feather.” And began to beat a tattoo against his legs.

Morrison leaned forward, resting his elbows, respectively, on the back of the Reverend’s seat and my own. “I gotta hand it to you two, you’re not freaking out like I expected. I—whoa, pull over.” We did, and Jerry Garcia climbed in. “Come see Uncle John’s band,” I muttered under my breath. “I always hated that fuckin’ song,” said Garcia. “Really?” asked Cobain. “That’s, like, one of my guilty-favorite tunes of all time.” Garcia shrugged. “What’s it hurt to admit it now?” Cobain thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “I see what you mean.”

“Hey, Nevermind was a great record,” said Garcia. “You were a great songwriter, my friend. Sloppy guitarist, but a great songwriter.”

“Thanks,” said Cobain. “I think.”

“You’re welcome,” said Garcia. “Maybe.”

I looked over at the Reverend. “If Ms. Holiday was right, Reverend, if you got some idea what’s going on, I’d sure appreciate being let in on the secret.”

It was Morrison who answered. “Hasn’t it crossed your mind to wonder how it is a van that’s designed to hold only eight people is holding almost twice that many right now?”

I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw an empty van reflected back at me. “I guess it’s because you’re all ghosts, right?”

Morrison laughed, as did everyone else. “Shit, no, Sam! Ghosts are, like, the spirits of real people who’re hanging around because they’ve got unfinished business.” “Like that girl up there,” said Hendrix, pointing to a young woman crossing the street. “Do we need to pick her up?” asked the Reverend. Morrison shook his head. “No. She’s got nothing to do with this.” I stared at her. “Who is she?” “Roberta Martin,” said Garcia, Hendrix, and Buchanan simultaneously.

I put the van in park and turned to face them. “Who?”

“The greatest guitar player who ever lived,” said Morrison.

I shrugged. “I’ve never heard of her.”

“No reason you should have,” said Buchanan in his soft, soft voice. “She was killed by a drunk driver on her way to a gig in Nobelsville, Indiana in 1982.”

“Girl was so good it was scary,” said Hendrix.

Garcia nodded. “You got that right.”

“Never recorded a demo for anyone,” said Buchanan. “She was only 22 when she died.”

“I was only 25,” said Tommy Bolin.

“Yeah,” replied Hendrix, “but it was your own fucking fault. By the way, I want my ring back.”

“This one?” said Bolin, holding up his hand. “My girlfriend gave it to me.”

“That was the same ring I was wearing when I died,” said Hendrix. “How the fuck she wound up with it, I don’t know.”

Bolin removed the ring and tossed it to Hendrix. “It was kina tight, anyway.”

“Says you.” Hendrix slipped it back on his finger, and the two men smiled at each other.

“She’s a ghost,” said Cobain, pointing toward Roberta Martin. “We’re…shit, I guess you’d call us…what?” “Ulcerations of the idealized,” replied Entwistle. “Good going,” said Morrison. “We’re more than a memory but less than something alive.” “I still don’t understand.”

“Who says that we do, hon?” asked Billie Holiday.

In the street, Roberta martin stopped and turned toward the van. Everyone inside became quiet. She smiled at us, lifted her hand, waved, and then disappeared into the sleet.

“Girl had the fire,” said Hendrix, his voice suddenly sad. “She sure did,” replied Buchanan. Cobain nodded. “A fuckin’ shame.” Jerry Garcia leaned forward, passing halfway through Janis Joplin, who shared his seat. “You know anything about physics, Sam?” “A little, I guess.” “So you know how black holes are formed by stars that collapse inward on themselves, right?” “Okay…?” “And how matter can be reformed into anything as it passes through…I mean, at least theoretically?” I shrugged. “I guess, sure.”

“Then think of us as a something that’s come out of a black hole…only in this case, it’s a black hole of idealization, formed by a collapsing psyche.”

I opened my mouth to speak, then shook my head and looked at the Reverend.

“They’re not ghosts,” he said to me. “They’re the idealized versions of themselves. They’re not the people they were, they’re the icons, what they were imagined to be by those fans who idealized and worshipped them.”

I nodded. “The legends, not the human beings?”

“Right.” He looked back at our passengers. “Right?”

“Close enough,” said Morrison. “At some point, every one of us has been idolized by someone. Be idolized by enough people, and that idol-image becomes more real to them than you ever could be. Fuck, man, I had so many people calling me a ‘rock god’ that I started believing it myself.”

“I wouldn’t know, mate,” said Paul Kossoff.

I looked back at the guitarist. “But you were good. Back Street Crawler was a kick-ass album.”

“Thanks, mate. But after I left Free…” He shrugged. “All I was to the world—to whatever part of it still noticed me—was ‘ex-Free guitarist…’ And the only thing Free did that people still remember or care about was ‘All Right Now’.”

“But at least that’s remembered,” I said.

Kossoff smiled. “Yeah, there’s that.”

“All it takes,” said Buchanan, “is one person. One person idolizes you, and you’re screwed. Like it or not, from that moment on…you kinda split in two. Some part of you is always aware of the idol-half” he gave his head a little shake. “And it can mess with you.” “Amen,” said Cobain. Morrison tapped my shoulder. “You need to get moving again.” “Where are we going?” “Back to the good Reverend’s shelter.” “Why there?” “Because,” said Entwistle, “the source of the ulceration that brought us here should be there by now.” “You and your bloody loopy syntax,” said Keith Moon. “You always talked just like you played. Too damned busy for its own good.” “Coming from you,” said Entwistle, “I take that as a compliment.” “You would.” Then Moon smiled. “Good to see you again, Ox.” “Likewise.” I looked at the Reverend. “I’m scared.” He said nothing in return, and I knew. Despite what Morrison had said to us, the Reverend was scared, as well.

It didn’t help that none of them said a word after that, just sat back there staring out at the night and looking more and more like the ghosts they claimed not to be.

They filed into the shelter silently, each finding a cot or a chair at various spots around the main floor, where they sat, watching all the doors and windows.

The dog—Lump—sat up as soon as we came inside, his ears jerking. Missy sat down to pet him when he started growling, and Beth looked at her daughter, then to me.

“Lump never growls,” she said. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him all of a sudden.” “It’s just a bad night,” I said, as if that could explain everything. “Where’s your son—sorry, I forgot his name.” “Kyle? He’s downstairs taking a shower.” “How’re you doing?” “Hm? Oh, me…I’m okay.” She patted her stomach. “The food really hit the spot.” “Well, if anybody wants seconds…” “You’re very nice.” “I try.”

“Would it be all right if the kids watched Rudolph again? Kyle and Missy really like it, even though the Bumble kinda scares them.” “The Bumble?” “The Abominable Snow Monster. Remember, Yukon Cornelius calls it the ‘Bumble’?” “That’s right. Huh. Thing scared me half to death when I was a kid and saw it for the first time.”

The Reverend called me over to the kitchen area, where he, Jackson, and Grant McCullers were warming up some stew and wrapping other food for the refrigerator. Grant was doing most of the wrapping, and doing it quickly. I only mention this because he’s got a bad hand that looks more like a claw than it does a human hand. It’s been that way for as long as I’ve known him. Arthritis. But he can play a mean harmonica better, serve drinks more smoothly, and wrap food faster and with more dexterity than anyone I’ve ever seen.

“Hey, Sam, I hear you’re something of a music expert,” said Grant.

“Not an expert, but I know trivia. Some trivia.” “Did you ever hear of a band called Parallax?” asked Grant. I looked at Jackson and the Reverend, both of whom were staring at me like the answer to this was something important. “Sure. They only did three albums, but they were pretty good.” Grant finished wrapping a half-pound of hamburger, tossed it onto the pile of to-be-frozen foods. “They were from Ohio, right?” I nodded. “Two of them were from Zanesville, but the guitarist, Byron Knight, he was from here, from Cedar Hill.”

Grant exchanged an I-told-you-so look with Jackson, who nodded his head and gestured for the Reverend and me to follow him into the back. “It was real nice of you to bring over all this food,” I said to Grant. “The new freezer’s a tad smaller than I’d planned, so I had to do something with this chow, y’know?” I grinned at his white lie. “How’s the Hangman coming along?” “I look to re-open in about two weeks.” “You gonna replace the old jukebox?”

He stopped for a moment, thought about something, then shook his head. “You know, I don’t think I will. It works just fine. In fact, I’m getting rid of that new one.”

The reverend came up behind me. “Are you two finished with this architectural discussion? I could use Sam’s help.”

“You can always use Sam’s help,” said Grant. “In fact, I wonder if you’d get anything done if you didn’t have Sam’s help.” “And yours, and Ted’s, and God’s. I am useless without any of you.” Grant laughed. “Just wanted to hear you say it.” “It’s unbecoming of you, Grant. Fishing for a compliment.” “Been a bad couple of months. But you don’t want to hear about my dreadful personality problems.” “Your lips to God’s ear.” They looked at one another and smiled. The Reverend took hold of my elbow and we fell into step behind the sheriff. “This guy was in pretty bad shape,” said Jackson, “so Grant and I put him back in your office. Hope you don’t mind too much.” “As long as he hasn’t puked on everything.”

Jackson grinned. “Not that kind of bad shape. The guy was shit-scared half out of his mind. Wanted to be put someplace where no one could see him.” “Did he get here before or after Bill Emerson?” “After.” Jackson grinned. “Can’t say any of us were much help to Bill.” “Still no word about Joe, then?” “Afraid not. I’ve got my deputies out looking for him, as well, now. Don’t worry, We’ll find him.” “God, I hope so.”

We arrived at the door to the Reverend’s office-slash-living quarters. Jackson gripped the doorknob, then looked at us. “I was kinda into Parallax, too, when I was younger. That’s why I about fell over when I saw who this was.” He opened the door and we stepped into the room.

Byron Knight—that’s right, the Byron Knight—was laying on a cot beside the Reverend’s desk. It had been almost 30 years since anyone had seen him. Most people who cared to remember him at all assumed that he was dead, what with his dramatic disappearance back in the early 1980s.

The years had not been good to him. His once muscular frame—featured on the covers of both Rolling Stone and Melody Maker the same month—was now an emaciated ruin. The clothes he wore were torn, patched, and tattered. And the sickly-gray pallor of his skin betrayed an illness I was all-too familiar with: cancer. I’d watched it slowly chew my mother to death after Dad abandoned us when I was twelve.

“The source of the ulceration,” whispered the Reverend.

“The source of the what?” asked Jackson.

The Reverend, ignoring the sheriff’s question, turned to me. “You stay here with him, Sam, all right? Don’t let anyone except me or Ted or Grant through the door, understand?”

“Yes sir.”

“What the hell is going on?” asked Jackson. “I only ask because it seems to me that neither one of you were too surprised to see him here. Me, I see a rock star from 30 years ago who I thought was dead, I get curious.” The Reverend took hold of Jackson’s arm and led him out of the room. “Lock the door behind us, Sam.” “Don’t have to tell me twice.” They left, I locked the door, and I heard a voice from behind me say one word. “…mudman….” Wow. Okay, it wasn’t quite the same as hearing Morrison call himself the Lizard King…but it was close.

The Buckeye State has produced only four rock acts that ever amounted to anything more than passing curiosities; Devo (Akron), The James Gang (Cleveland), Guided By Voices (Dayton), and Parallax (Zanesville/Cedar Hill). Parallax came out of central Ohio in the mid-1970s, just as the progressive rock movement was hitting its zenith. Bands like Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Flash, King Crimson, and a trio of Canadian upstarts calling themselves Rush were engulfing the airwaves with long, complex “concept” pieces like “Close to the Edge”, “Tarkus”, and “2112”. It was not uncommon (thanks to the earlier success of Iron Butterfly’s 17-minute “In a Gadda-Da-Vida”) to turn on your FM radio and hear only three songs played over the course of an hour. 10-minute songs were almost short compared to a half-hour epic like “Karn Evil 9.” It seemed that if you were going to be taken seriously in the prog rock movement (by anyone who wasn’t Lester bangs of Creem magazine), you had to produce a “concept” piece that would initially befuddle listeners while giving the DJs time to take a leisurely piss break. A lot of it was pretentious crap, but some of it was kind of amazing. It didn’t matter if you thought Rush’s “The Fountain of Lamneth” was overblown silliness, because Yes’s “The Revealing Science of God” might blow you away right after.

One of these concept pieces that you could hear played on FM radio back then was an 18-minute beauty by Parallax entitled “Kiss of the Mudman.”

What made “Mudman” so unique that even Lester bangs admitted a grumbling admiration for it (Bangs was infamous for loathing everything about the prog-rock movement) was its fusion of traditional blues with Hindi music. Critics were divided on whether or not it was a successful piece, but even those who disliked it had to admit that it was unlike anything produced during the short-lived prog era—and that it was performed by your basic rock trio, using only a bass, drums, and a single guitar, without any studio trickery or overdubs, served, according to Rolling Stone’s review, “…as a testament to Parallax’s serious-minded goals, if not their cumulative musicianship, which seems too agile at times to move ‘Mudman’ into the realm of potential classic. Still, Canada’s Rush might soon have reason to be looking over their shoulders if Knight, Shaw, and Jacobs continue to move in this direction.”

Kiss of the Mudman (both the album and the song) made Parallax instant (if fleeting) icons. Their two previous albums (both of which had done okay but not great) were re-issued and sold like crazy, giving them two gold and one platinum album the same year, 1978.

And then Alan Shaw, the bassist, died of a heroin overdose, and Tracy Jacobs, the drummer, was killed in an auto accident (it was later determined that he’d been drunk at the time). Byron Knight recorded a terrific solo album that just bombed, and then he dropped off the radar. Some college stations still dusted off “Mudman” from time to time when the DJs felt like making fun of it (or needed a leisurely piss break), and it, like the band who recorded it, was now nothing more than a curiosity piece.

Still, if you were a fan, (like I’d been) to hear the man who’d written and sang the song mumble the word “…mudman…” was, well…still kind of a thrill, and I couldn’t help but remember the verse that had been all the rage for a few months back when I was a teenager:

“You wonder where it all went wrong and why you feel so dead

why it seems that every day you’re hanging by a thread

Are you still who you were and not what you’ve become?

Is this the taste of failure that lingers on your tongue?

“It was right after our second album, Redundant Refugee came out. We were doing well enough, opening for bigger bands, being called back for a few encores every night. Things were moving along. We’d recorded maybe half the songs for the Mudman album but I still had no idea what we were going to do for the concept piece. We wanted something long, a whole side of record, and we were beating our heads against a wall. We decided to take two weeks off from the project and each other.

“I was involved with a model at the time—you might remember her, Veronique? Very hot at the time. She talked me into going to India with her. She was making her first stab at acting, a cameo in a big-budget art film.

“I hated almost every minute I was there. The humidity was oppressive as hell and it seemed that, regardless of how far away from the cities you were, the sewer stink always found you. There were areas near the hotel where we were staying where the garbage and shit—and I’m talking real, honest-to-God human waste—reached to my knees. But, man, there were places in that country that were so beautiful—the old Hindu temples and shrine, for instance—but I never could decide whether that odd, damaged beauty was a result of my being stoned most of the time or not. But the thing is, there was this one afternoon when I was stone-cold sober that I remember clearer than anything.

“I wandered away from the movie set and walked to a nearby village. I passed a Hindi temple and saw peacocks flying, men squatting in fields as the sun was setting behind them, a woman making dung patties as she watched an oxen pulling a plow toward the squatting men, all of them turning into shadows against the setting sun; unreal, y’know… holy things. Young boys with sweat- and ash-streaked faces rode past on bicycles with cans of milk rattling in their baskets. I could hear the echo of a lone, powerful, ghostly voice singing the Moslem call to prayer. I closed my eyes and simply followed the echo, breathing in the dust from the road as a pony cart filled with people came by, feeling the warmth of the evening breeze caress my face, and when the singing stopped I opened my eyes and found myself before the iron gates of the cemetery of Bodhgaya.

“I remember how still everything was. It was as if that ragged, lilting voice had guided me into another, secret world.” He fired up the joint once more, took a hit, slowly releasing the smoke. It drifted into the cloud and remained.

“I started walking around the graves until I came this big-ass statue of Kshetrapala, the Guardian of the Dead.”

For a few moments I thought maybe I was getting a contact high from the smoke, because the room began yawing in front of me, expanding to make room for the smoke from Knight’s joint that hung churning in the air.

“You should have seen him,” whispered Knight. “A demon with blue skin, a yellow face, bristling orange hair, three bulging red eyes, and a four-fanged grin. He was draped in corpse skin and a tiger-skin loincloth and was riding a huge black bear. He carried an axe in one hand and a skullcap of blood in the other.”

I blinked, rubbed my eyes, then blinked again.

I wasn’t imagining things.

While Knight had been describing his encounter with Kshetrapala, the smoke from his joint had churned itself into the shape of the demon.

Another hit, another dragon’s-breath of smoke, and more figures took form around the Guardian of the Dead, acting out Knight’s story as he continued.

“There was a group of people standing around the Guardian’s base, all of them looking down at something. None of them were making a sound. I made my way up to them and worked toward the front for a better look.”

I watched as the Knight smoke-player moved through the other shapes to stand at the base of the statue.

“An old beggar woman in shit-stained rags, was kneeling in front of Kshetrapala holding a baby above her head like she was making some kinda offering. Flowers had been carefully placed around the base of the statue, as well as bowls of burning incense, small cakes wrapped in colorful paper, framed photographs, dolls made from dried reeds and string, pieces of candy, a violin with a broken neck...it was fucking unbelievable. I don’t remember what kind of sound I made, only that I did make a noise and it drew the old woman’s attention. Without lowering her arms, she turned her head and looked directly into my eyes.” He shook his head and—it seemed to me—shuddered.

“Man, I’m telling you, Sam, I have never before or since seen such pure madness in a someone’s eyes. For a moment, as she stared at me, I could feel her despair and insanity seeping into my pores. She was emaciated from starvation and had been severely burned at some time—the left half of her face was fused to her shoulder by greasy wattles of pinkish-gray scar tissue. She was trying to form words but all that emerged were these…guttural animal sounds.

“The baby she was holding, it was dead. Not only that, but it had been dead for quite some time because it was partially decomposed. It looked like a small mummy.”

I could clearly see the baby take shape from a few stray strands of smoke.

“The old beggar woman lowered her arms, laid the baby’s corpse on the ground, and began keening—that’s the only word for it. She sang her grief. I looked at the others and saw these placid expressions on their faces…they seemed almost distracted.” He looked at me for a moment, then directed his gaze to the shadowy smoke-play unfolding in the air between us.

The figure of the beggar woman thrust one of its hands under its shawl and pulled out something that could only have been a knife; a very, very long knife.

“She began hacking away at her own chest, ripping out sections of muscle and bone until this bloody cavity was there,” said Knight, his eyes glazing over. “I backed away but I couldn’t stop looking. I mean, I’d read all the stories of Yukio Mishima’s committing public hara-kiri as a way of merging life with art but I never tried to picture something like that in my mind—and now, right here in front of me, this poor, crazy woman was disemboweling herself in an apparent act of worship, and the ‘congregation’ looked like a bunch of disinterested Broadway producers forced to watch a cattle-call audition.”

The woman collapsed, took the dead infant, and shoved it into the cavity, then lay there sputtering smoke-blood from her mouth.

“I was transfixed...but unmoved, y’know? The image of that dead child floating in the gore of the beggar woman’s chest fascinated me on an artistic level, so I stood there and watched her dying, searing the image into my brain. And then I heard the music.”

Instruments appeared in the hands of the smoke-crowd; drums, a flute, something that could only have beer a sitar.

“I have no idea where the instruments came from. To this day I swear that the others were empty-handed when I got there but now, suddenly, all of them had instruments and were playing them with astonishing skill—ghatams, tablas, mridangams, a recorder and sitar—and the sound was so rich, so spiraling and glad! I could feel it wrap itself around me and bid ‘Sing!’ I couldn’t find my voice—believe me, if I could have, I would’ve sung my heart out—so one of the women in the group began to sing for me: ‘I am struck by a greater and greater wonder, and I rejoice again and again!’ She was singing in Hindu—Hindu, a language I don’t know, yet I understood every word in her song. ‘Oh, see him in the burdened, In hearts o’erturned with grief, The lips that mutter mercy, The tears that never cease,’ and the others responded in voices a hundred times fuller than any human’s voice should be: ‘I AM, I AM, I AM the light; I live, I live, I live in light,’ and now I’m shaking not only from the damned weirdness of it all but because the music, this pulsing, swirling, pure crystal rain sound is inside me—I know how that must seem to you, but I swear I felt it assume physical dimensions deep in my gut. It shook me.

“I went down on one knee because I thought I was going to be sick but the sound kept growing without and within me, and I was aware not only of the music and the people playing it and the dying woman in front of me, but of every living thing surrounding us; every weed, every insect, every animal in distant fields, the birds flying overhead...it was...I’m not quite sure how to—oh, hang on.

“I once met a schizophrenic who described what it felt like when he wasn’t on his medication. He said it was as if all of his nerves had been plugged into every electrical appliance in the house and someone had set those appliances to run full-blast. That’s what it was like for me that day in the graveyard. For one moment all life everywhere was functioning at its peak and I was ‘plugged into’ everything—but only as long as this music deemed me worthy of possession.”

I began shaking my head; slowly, at first, then with more determination, in order to rid my ears—both my ears—of a buzzing pressure that was growing inside my skull.

Knight continued: “I managed to pull my head up and look at the beggar woman. She had reached over and taken the violin with the broken neck and was holding it against the baby—both the dead infant and the instrument were slick with her blood—and she made the smallest movement with her head, a quick, sharp, sideways jerk that I knew meant ‘Come closer.’ I leaned over until my ear was nearly touching her lips and I heard her whisper three words: ‘Shakti. Kichar admi.’ It wasn’t until later, when I’d gotten back to the set and asked one of the Indian crew members about it, that I found out what ‘Shakti’ meant: Creative intelligence, beauty & power. The cosmic energies as perceived in Hindu mysticism, given to mankind by Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva so it might know some small part of what it feels like to be a god.

“Then she pushed me away with surprising strength. I fell backwards onto my ass and felt the music wrenched from my chest. I was suddenly separate from all of them, from the earth, my own flesh, the glow of the setting sun; the surrounding life had withdrawn from me, unplugged itself. I was being asked to leave, so I did. With their glorious music still spinning in the air behind me, I moved toward the road and did not look back until I was well past the gates.”

The smoke-players began to reverently shift their positions. I rubbed my temples and turned my head to the side; not only was I hearing the song Knight had described, but underneath it was the cumulative babble of a million whispering voices speaking in as many different languages.

“As soon as I stepped from the cemetery I heard a new sound join the music, a lone, sustained note that floated above everything, a mournful cry that sang of ill-founded dreams and sorrowful partings and dusty myths from ages long gone by, then progressively rose in pitch to soften this extraordinary melancholy with promises of joy and wonder—‘I AM light’s fullest dimension, I AM light’s richest intention, I AM, I AM, I AM the light!’—and I turned for one more look, one last drinking in of this gloriously odd, golden moment, and I saw the child standing in the midst of the musicians, such a beautiful child, the violin tucked firmly under his chin. He looked at me and smiled a smile unlike any that had been smiled before, full of riddles and mischief and answers and glee, and in that smile I knew his name: Shakti. He was giving me a final chord, a last bit of the music to remember for the rest of my life, and in that last moment he opened me up to the majestic cacophony to such a degree that I heard…Jesus Christ, I heard everything.

“I ran. It was the only thing I could think to do to break this hold on me. I turned and ran back toward the film set. And even though it seemed that every person I passed on the road wore the beggar woman’s face or was clutching a dead infant to their chest or was in some way sick or damaged, I felt…elated. I know that must sound crazier than a soup sandwich, but I knew all of these people, with their lips that muttered mercy and their tears that never ceased, were walking toward the cemetery where the pain and sadness would be lifted from their eyes, and that I was being watched over by a child of wonder who would always be waiting at the entrance to my secret world. “And all of them said the same thing to me as they passed by. ‘Kichar admi.’” “Did you ever find out what that meant?” He nodded, then strummed the guitar once again. “’Mudman.’” “Holy shit.”

“Yeah.” He began playing the opening to “Kiss of the Mudman”, that almost-traditional 12-bar blues riff where you can tell something is just a bit off but can’t put your finger on it.

“What is the Mudman supposed to be?” I asked him.

“I always figured it was just another name for Kshetrapala, but later, when I woke up in the middle of the night after me and Veronique had practically went through the floor with our fucking, I thought…man, I thought, what better way to describe what it feels like after you wake up from a night of excess. The taste of booze in your mouth, maybe a little puke-burp rolling around in the back of your throat, your body aching, your head splitting, your face feeling like a glazed donut from going down on wet pussy…excess. You wake feeling like you got kissed by the Mudman.”

He stopped playing. “I was still hearing that song they had been singing, so I picked up my guitar and started fooling around with it, and I realized that what they’d been singing was…I don’t know if this’ll make sense…but they’d been singing something like an inverted traditional blues riff.”

He played it again, and this time I heard it, the off-thing, a single note in the middle of the riff that didn’t seem to fit.

“The progression seemed so logical,” said Knight. “Leave the G string alone—tuned to G, of course—so the high and low E strings go down a half step to E flat. The B string goes down a half step to B flat, the A and D go up a half step, to B flat and E flat. The result was an open E flat major chord, which made easy work of the central riff. For the intro, I started on the 12th fret, pressing the 1st and 3rd strings down, dropped down to the 7th and 8th fret on those same strings for the next chord, and continued down the neck...as the progression moved to the 4th string, more and more notes were left out and it became a disguised version of a typical blues riff. The idea was to have a rush of notes to sort of clear the palette, not open the back door to Hell...but that’s a road paved with good intentions, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean, open the back door to Hell?”

“The Mudman, dude. Whatever name you wanna give him, he’s real. He is Shakti’s shadow. He feeds on creative energy, and when that energy runs out, he feeds on the person who used to carry it. And this series of notes—” He played the opening again, only much slower. “—is his invitation to enter this world. Not at this tempo, it’s got to be a little faster.”

“How do you know this?”

He grinned. “Because I called him up by accident one night. I’d just finished the first leg of my solo tour, and I was bored out of my skull at the hotel at three in the morning, so I started fiddling with the riff, and I increased its tempo and…there he was.” He set aside his guitar and opened his shirt. The middle of chest was a mass of scar tissue.

“Fucker tried to take a piece out of me, Sam. That’s why the police found all the blood and that section of my flesh in the hotel room. The Mudman demanded a sacrifice from me, and I wasn’t ready to make it.” He buttoned up his shirt and picked up his guitar once again.

“I’ve been running away from him ever since. But I’m too sick now. I can’t run any more.”

I scratched at my dead ear. “So why are…why are the others out there looking for you?”

“Because they’ve been kissed by him. He devoured all their creative energies, then chewed up what was left. That’s how he works, Sam. He finds someone who’s really creative, and he feeds on their energy, all the while giving them too many temptations, access to too many excesses, because that way, their energies will be spent faster. He gorges himself on their energy, then eats them for the dessert. What you’ve got out there, those are the ulcerations that remain, the aftertastes, the memories of the legends.”

“The icons, not the people.”

He nodded. “You might buy the farm, but your legend never does…and as long as the legend remains, even if it’s just in the mind of one person, then you’re tied to him and his desires. It sucks. If you’re born with any kind of creative talent, you’re on his hit list from the beginning. They’re all here because I dug their music. I’m one of the ulcerations that keeps them alive.”

“So why not…why not just not play the notes?”

“You think it’s just as simple as that? Dude, it doesn’t have to be me who plays them. The notes, they’re out there. They’re everywhere. A bird, the sound of the wind, a car backfiring…the notes are all over the place. And every so often, enough of them come together in the same place, at the same, and in the right tempo, that the doorway opens and he comes shambling in. And there’s not a goddamn thing you can do to stop it.” There was a knock on the door and I rose to see who it was. “It’s me,” said the Reverend. I let him in. He took one look at Knight, sniffed the air, and said, “Hawaiian seedless?” “A man of the cloth who knows his weed,” replied Knight. “Will wonders never cease?” “Not anytime soon, from the looks of thing.”

Knight stared at him. “Please don’t tell me Elvis just showed up.” “I think he’d feel a little out of place with this crowd.” “Is Billie Holiday really there?” “She is.” Knight shook his head. “Damn. I finally rate Billie. Wow.” The Reverend closed the door. “Is it always the same bunch?” “Some of them change. Depends on who I’ve thinking about or listening to before the Mudman finds me.”

The Reverend did not ask who or what the Mudman was. One look at him, and I knew that he knew. Don’t ask me how, but the Reverend…knows things. Most of the time it’s pretty cool, but sometimes…sometimes it’s just creepy.

“What are we supposed to do?” he asked Knight.

“Damned if I know, but if I had to guess, I don’t think it’s up to you to do anything. Whatever’s gonna happen…it’s my call.” He rose from the cot, finished his brandy, and patted down his hair. “And what I’m gonna do, if it’s all right with you, is play in front of an audience one more time.”

The Reverend considered this for moment. “I think that would be wonderful.”

And Byron Knight smiled the last genuine smile of his life.

Everyone gathered around the center of the room as Knight situated himself on a stool. Even Morrison and the others looked on him with a sad kind of respect. “Any requests?” asked Knight.

It was Grant McCullers who spoke up. “I’ve always been partial to Bach’s ‘Sheep May Safely Graze.’ It’s kind of a Christmas tune, don’t you think?”

“I do.”

And Knight began to play it, smoothly, hauntingly. It was majestic and sad and melancholy and glorious, and yet there was something hesitant about the way Knight played the song; the notes brushed you once, softly, like a cattail or a ghost, then fell shyly toward the ground in some inner contemplation too sad to be touched by a tender thought or the delicate brush of another’s care.

It was perhaps the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.

And then someone screamed from the basement.

Timmy was the first to respond, snapping his head in the direction of the scream and muttering, “Terrible, just terrible,” as he ran across the room and down the stairs. Linus hopped up on his cart and made a beeline across the floor, then pushed himself off and took the stairs with his hands as Beth, Lump, and the still-damp Kyle followed after him.

That’s when I realized that it had been the little girl, Missy, who’d screamed.

I reached the top of the stairs just as Timmy came around the corner, carrying Missy in his arms, her small, shuddering body wrapped in a towel.

He was pale and shaking. “Terrible, just terrible.”

He sounded horrified.

A few moments later Lump gave out with a snarl and a bark, then came charging up the stairs, Beth and Kyle right behind him.

“I saw the Bumble,” cried Missy. “he w-w-was…he was in the wall!”

Beth took Missy from Timmy’s arm and began stroking the back of her daughter’s head. “Shhh, hon, there-there, c’mon, it’s all right…c’mon, you just got a fright, that’s all. The Bumble scares you and you just imagined it.”

She might have just imagined it, but Lump had seen or sensed something that was making him crazy; his legs were locked in place, his lips curled back, eyes unblinking as he stared at the bottom of the steps and growled.

“Where’s Linus?” asked the Reverend, coming up beside me.

“He’s still down there.”

Ted Jackson joined us. He’d unstrapped the top of his holster and was touching the butt of his gun, ready to pull it. “Jesus Christ in a Chrysler, I about jumped out of my shorts.” “Probably nothing,” said the Reverend. “The little girl got spooked, that’s all.” I could tell from the tone of his voice that he didn’t believe it any more than I did. Knight was standing now, holding his guitar like a child, his eyes closed, his face almost peaceful. Morrison and the others were gone. And from somewhere in the basement, something moved. Something big. “What the hell?” said Jackson, gripping his gun but not pulling it from the holster.

Timmy came up to the reverend and grabbed his arm, saying, “Terrible, just terrible,” over and over, getting louder and more excited.

“Timmy,” said the Reverend, gripping both of Timmy’s arms, “I need you to calm down, c’mon. There you go, deep breaths, all right. Good. Now…did you see something down there?”

Timmy nodded.

“Are you sure you actually saw something that was there, or was it—”

Timmy pointed at his eyes and shook his head: no, it wasn’t one of his visual hallucinations, he knew the difference, thank you very much. “Terrible…terrible…just terrible.”

Beth was rocking Missy back and forth, whispering comfort in her ear, kissing her cheek, while Kyle sat on the floor beside them, holding his little sister’s hand.

Whatever was in the basement moved again, and this time with enough force to shake the foundation of the building.

A few second later, Linus came barreling out on his hands, covered in sweat and shaking, his face even paler than Timmy’s had been.

“You’re gonna think I’m crazy,” he said as he took the stairs two at a time, “but I just saw goddamned Godzilla down there!” He hopped onto his cart and sped over to Missy, Beth, and Kyle. Lump still stood at the top of the stairs, ready to attack. “Okay, that’s it,” said Jackson, removing his weapon and clicking off the safety. “I’m going down there.” “Not alone, you’re not,” said the Reverend.

Grant McCullers joined us. He was holding a wooden rolling pin. “Hey, it’s the most dangerous thing I could find in that kitchen.”

“Hang on,” said the Reverend, running back to his office.

He was gone maybe thirty seconds, just long enough for the whole building to shake once more. The chandelier began to swing, rattling. Everyone was gathering in the farthest corner of the room, watching that chandelier. Then the lights flickered once, twice, and went out. The emergency generator kicked in a few seconds later, and the Reverend was standing next to me, handing out weapons. “Goddammit,” said Jackson. “Do you have permits for these things?” “Bet your ass I do.” He handed Grant a pump-action shotgun, then stuck a .22 in my hands. The Reverend had opted for a 9mm.

“Look at us,” said Grant. “The poor man’s Wild Bunch.”

The Reverend almost smiled at that. “Let’s go.”

And we started down the stairs.

When I was eleven years old, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. She went fast, lasting just over one year, but it was an agonizing year. My dad, who never was worth much of anything, put her to bed and left her there, leaving it up to me to make sure she got her medicine on time, to change her sheets, and to clean her up when she didn’t make it to the bathroom on time.

Toward the end, I became so angry with him, with his cowardice and drunkenness, that I actually made the mistake of hitting him one night.

He beat the shit out of me, then threw me out the back door into the yard. It had snowed a lot that week, and there was about a foot of snow and ice on the ground.

I remember landing on my side, half my face buried in the snow.

I remember that I couldn’t move because it hurt so much.

And I remember thinking how cold my ear was getting.

I regained consciousness about five hours later. A neighbor had come home and seen me laying in the yard. They took me to the hospital where I stayed for almost two weeks. I had pneumonia and frostbite. They had to remove my ear, which was okay because I was deaf on that side, anyway.

Somewhere in there dad took off and just left Mom alone. The whole time I was in the hospital, I was so scared because she had no one there to take care of her (one of our neighbors was keeping an eye on her, but I didn’t know that).

By the time I was released, Mom was all but dead. She lasted just two days after I got home.

There was no money to cover the hospital bills, so the house was sold, and I was put into the care of the county.

I remember that as I sat there in the courthouse, waiting for someone from Childrens’ Services to come and collect me, that I had never felt so alone and afraid in my life. I hated myself for not being there for Mom, and I hated Dad for being such a worthless coward, and I hated looking like a freak with one ear, and I hated everything.

But mostly, I hated feeling that afraid.

And I promised myself that I would never, ever, ever feel that afraid again, no matter what.

A promise that I had kept to myself until the moment the Reverend, Grant, Sheriff Jackson, and I hit the bottom of those stairs and turned in the hallway.

And I came face to face with the Mudman.

The east wall had almost completely collapsed, spewing out wood beams, bricks, and mud. So much mud. And it was moving. “Holy Mother of God,” whispered Grant.

A demon with three bulging red eyes and a four-fanged grin rose up from the muck before us. It was draped in corpse skin and riding a huge black bear. It carried an axe in one hand and a skullcap of blood in the other…and from every side of its form, faces peered out, faces made of black mud, their dark lips working to form words.

I saw them all; Hendrix, Morrison, Garcia, Ms. Holiday, Cobain, all of them.

And I felt the buzz in the center of my head as their words began to come clear.

I Am, I Am, I AM the darkness…I AM, I AM, I AM darkness’s empty belly, the pit at the end of your days…

It rose up to its fullest height, cracking the ceiling with its back, and lumbered forward, blood spilling from the skullcap, snot and foam dripping from the bear’s snout and mouth, smashing holes into the wall with every swing of its axe.

Its eyes glowed brighter with every step.

The Reverend was the first to fire. The bullet slammed into the muck with a loud splat! that did no damage at all. No sooner was the hole made than it oozed closed, healing.

And with every step, the thing grew larger, the singer’s words louder.

I AM, I AM, I AM Kichar Admi, I AM, I AM, I AM the source of all the songs you sing…

Grant McCullers pumped four rounds into it but it would not stop coming.

I AM, I AM, I AM the song the darkness sings, in the pit of my starving belly… We continued backing up, all of us firing into its center, none of the bullets having any effect. The mud dripped and oozed, clumping into the face of a beggar woman, the body of a dead child. The singers continued:

I AM, I AM, I AM what you made me, what you wanted me to be, I AM, I AM, I AM only my song and nothing more… The lights flickered again, and the building shuddered. I ran out of bullets, as did everyone else. And then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and saw Byron Knight beside me. His face was a mask of peace and acceptance. I had to watch his lips, because I could no longer hear anything; the roar of the gunfire was still screaming through my head. “I’ve had this appointment for a long time,” he said. “Just…let me go.” Cradling his guitar, he pushed past us and walked forward. The Mudman stopped moving. The singers fell silent. And the bear rose up on its hind legs.

The axe swung down swiftly and surely, deeply burying itself in Knight’s chest. The demon threw back its head and howled with laughter, then pulled Knight from the floor, his legs dangling as blood from his wound pumped down in heavy rivulets, splattering across the floor.

The demon opened its mouth, its jaws dislodging, dropping down, growing wider, until its face was nothing more than slick, dark maw, big enough to swallow a man whole.

Which is what it did.

Then spat out Knight’s guitar, that hit the floor and shattered into half a dozen pieces, the snapping strings a final death groan that echoed against the walls.

The demon turned around and walked toward the collapsed wall, then crouched down and began to move into the mounds of dirt, sludge, and muck, becoming less and less solid until it became what it had been; just mud.

I closed my eyes and began to cry. The Reverend came over and put his arms around me.

It didn’t help much.

We don’t talk about that night. Oh, every once in a while, when the four of get together to play cards, Grant McCullers will call us “The Wild Bunch” and everyone will get this look on their faces, but that’s as close as we come to discussing it.

One night Ted Jackson told us a story about something he’d seen after a recent labor riot that made me cringe, and Grant told us what had really happened at the Hangman.

We listened, and we all believed, but we don’t talk about it.

Like the Reverend says, this is Cedar Hill. Weird shit happens here.

Grant gave Beth and her kids five hundred dollars and put them on the bus to Indiana himself. Lump even got a seat, but he had to ride in a carrier, which didn’t please him too much from all reports. Beth and the kids promised to write and call Grant as much as they could, but if they’ve ever been in touch with him, he hasn’t said.

The basement was finally repaired after the Reverend got really pushy with a couple of local contractors. So far, it’s holding up fine.

Linus is touring with another carnival, once again as Thalidomide Man. He sends us postcards all the time.

I’d almost managed to learn how to live with what I saw, until one afternoon a couple of weeks ago when I was waiting at a crosswalk for the light to change. A bird chirped. A car backfired. A child laughed somewhere. The wind whistled.

And those four notes, in succession, in the right tempo, began that tune, and I remembered Knight’s words: The notes, they’re out there. They’re everywhere. A bird, the sound of the wind, a car backfiring…the notes are all over the place. And every so often, enough of them come together in the same place, at the same, and in the right tempo, that the doorway opens and he comes shambling in. And there’s not a goddamn thing you can do to stop it.

I can’t listen to music anymore. Oh, I hear it, but I’ve trained myself to think of it as background noise, nothing to pay attention to.

It has to be this way, because I have been made aware of the sequence of notes that, if heard, recognized, and acknowledged, will bring something terrible into the world.

Of all the things I have lost in this life, it is music that I miss the most.

Ethel, God love her, has noticed that I don’t seem as “chipper” as I used to be. I smile, shrug, and tell her not to worry, that I’m fine, still seeing the doctor, still taking my medications. “You need to stay cheerful, Sam,” she says. “It’s a sad world, and you got to fight it or else it’ll eat you alive.” She has no idea. She tells me that I ought to be like the Seven Dwarves when I work, that I should whistle a happy tune. A happy tune. But I can’t remember any.

“The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.”

— Thomas Wolfe, “God’s Lonely Man.”

Make certain that all the tools you’ll need for cutting materials for your patchwork quilt are properly sharpened so as to ensure each edge-cut is as clean as possible.

* * *

Sort your materials into separate stacks, double check to make certain all detailing accessories have also been gathered and properly assembled into groups that correlate with their respective patches.

* * *

Place two fabrics right sides together, making sure to rotary cut strips the width of the square template you are using; if the strips weren’t compatible when you cut them, do so now, layering them, and making individual alterations as necessary in order to achieve conformity.

* * *

Cut squares and nip off the corners, then chain pieces by picking up two squares at a time so they don’t shift out of alignment. Alternate the fabric that is on top (this pair light on top, that pair dark). The chain can be as long as you want.

* * *

Press seam allowances toward the darker fabric. Cut apart in pairs. The squares are in their proper color placement and ready for sewing. Place the first pairs right sides together and sew into four patches.

* * *

If you failed to place strip sets together before cutting, place two segments right sides together, checking to be sure the colors and seam allowances oppose each other, and sew into a four-patch.

* * *

You still need to go back and cut off the corners to eliminate bulk!

* * *

Once you have reached this step in the process, the base-patches should reveal to you the overall pattern you need to follow in order to complete your quilt. How wide to make it and how many patches should be included is up to you. You’re on your way to having a patchwork quilt! Congratulations! Now, go back, and repeat steps 1-7 as needed.

* * *

"We will gather images and images of images until the last—which is blank: This one we agree on." —Edmund Jabés, "Mirror and Scarf"

As she watched people file into the pub Amanda found herself recalling some lines from an old T.S. Eliot poem: In the room the women come/and go/Talking of Michelangelo. How many women, she wondered, had come in here since she’d first sat down, come in quite alone but looking ever so lovely, only to leave with a man in tow, complimenting him on how wonderful he looked and getting the same in return? How much attention had these women relinquished on their faces, their lovely, just right, just so faces, making sure the eye shadow wasn't too heavy, the base not too thick, the rouge not too bright, all of it in an effort to—as that old cosmetics slogan used to say—Right Nature's Wrongs?

In the room the women come and go...

Lighting a cigarette, she blinked away a sad memory and shrank into herself.

There are lonely ones who by nature cannot smile; watching in silence as people pass by, they never dare to speak for fear they might say the wrong thing. It would be a mercy if the Passing People became little more than vague shadow-shapes to the lonely ones, but that rarely happens; always there is something that draws attention: a knowing smile; a certain glint in the eyes; the lilt of a voice; the brief, sensuous, teasing scent of a woman's perfume or a man's cologne that still clings to the body of their partner; an echo of the embrace, the kiss, the humid passions left amidst soft, rumpled sheets and in the damp, sculpted impressions that moistly reshaped downy pillows: O my love, my love, my love....

Amanda looked toward the left—If only I had a smile like hers—and the chill of her isolation deepened; she looked straight ahead—What I wouldn't give for her cheekbones—and suddenly the ache in her center widened, a pit, a chasm, threatening, as it always did, to swallow her whole.

In an attempt to make herself feel better and pull her thoughts out of the mire she reminded herself that, for a good long while now, by choice and thanks to a lot of hard work, hers was a life marked not by giddy emotional highs and gut-wrenching spiritual lows but a steady unbroken line of small disappointments occasionally counterbalanced by equally small satisfactions, all of them the sum total of an average woman's existence; for that was the word that best described Amanda: average.

Or so people told her.

She crushed out her cigarette much more violently than she’d intended, then rubbed her eyes much too hard, amazed again at how pliant they felt under their slightly quivering lids. It would take so little pressure for her thumb and index finger to become spears...

She pulled her hands away, opened her eyes, and caught a glimpse of her inverted reflection in the small silver spoon lying beside her glass.

At least the ugly, the scarred or deformed, were given pity ; awe was reserved for the truly beautiful, but at least the ugly were given some quarter; either way, both received attention from the people who passed.

She stared at her half-empty glass, chastising herself for thinking this way. She'd never been the type to indulge in the false luxury of self-pity—well, maybe once, long ago in dead yesterday, when she’d been younger and so damnably foolish and was quick to spill the contents of her heart; yes, then, probably at least once; but now—now these evenings of quiet soul-searching were the closest she ever came...still, there could be found, from time to time, when one person too many failed to return a look or a smile or an “Hello,” a certain edge in her voice, not quite bitter but more than dark enough, intended to cut not whomever she spoke with but herself. Call it resignation.

For at least the ugly were given pity.

The plain were simply left alone.

At the bar a woman laughed a little too loudly at a joke told by the man sitting two stools to her left. The woman took a second to catch her breath and regroup, her eyes fixed solidly on the man's face, just long enough so he'd know she was appraising him, making a decision, then the moment of truth arrived and she gathered her drink and her purse and gracefully, promisingly, with perhaps a bit more stretch-and-wiggle than was needed, moved closer to him.

Amanda ordered another diet soda, smiling at the waiter who either didn’t notice or didn't care.

She stared down at her folded hands. She had come to know her routines as well as her limitations: Fridays were for collecting a paycheck, going to the bank, then over to the pub for dinner and two weak cocktails before heading home for a little television, then it was off to bed with a novel. She only drank on Friday, her wild day, her crazy day, her get-down-get-funky-Get-Real day, because too much alcohol might serve to soften her resolve, and after thirty-seven years of being eclipsed by others' smiles, others' eyes, others' voices and faces and figures, Amanda knew that soft was dangerous.

Her soda arrived. The waiter was perfunctory, abrupt, damn near rude; he tossed down a napkin, set the drink on top of it, laid her check on the edge of the table, and cleared away her remaining dinner dishes. He never once looked at her, never once said anything.

The woman at the bar laughed again and slipped her hand under the joker's arm, and soon the two of them were gliding toward the door, compliments flowing freely, the scent of her too-expensive perfume mixing with the aroma of his cheap cologne, an augury of things to come.

God, and it wasn't even seven o'clock yet.

...the women come and go....

Amanda watched them leave, unaware that her grip had tightened around the glass.

Music oozed from the jukebox in back—a sappy love song, wouldn't you know? She checked her watch, took a few sips of her soda, and was reaching into her purse for money to pay the check when the woman came in.

Every set of eyes, including Amanda's, turned toward her.

Her physical beauty was breathtaking. Shimmering. Enviable.

Those women who were with a man suddenly reached for their partner's hand—just to make sure no one got any ideas; men who were alone casually glanced in the nearest mirror, straightening their ties and patting down their hair, readying themselves for the approach.

The woman herself seemed oblivious to any of it and looked for a place to sit. The pub was crowded and Amanda quickly realized that sitting on a barstool was too common and so held no interest for this woman—

—who quickly crossed the room and, without a word, sat down across from Amanda in the booth.

"Please join me," said Amanda in a flat, irritated voice. The woman smiled without looking at her, then turned her attention toward a group of men clustered near the end of the bar.

Amanda's grip on her purse tightened. So. Much. More. It. Hurt.

It was one thing to see a man's eyes effortlessly dismiss you; it was another thing altogether when a woman like this so glaringly snubbed you because you couldn't compare to her.

I must be the perfect contrast to you, thought Amanda, and therefore the perfect accessory.

She swallowed back her anger, reasoning with herself. After all, there was no other place for the woman to sit but here. Fine—

—but that didn't mean she had to act like this; she could have at least said something, a hollow greeting, but she’d chosen to ignore Amanda in the rudest way possible.

You have every right to feel offended.

Amanda was not a vindictive person, had always thought herself to be a level-headed pragmatist, but at that moment, in that place, with that woman and her beauty declaring they wanted no part of the plain creature sitting across from them, she felt a fury so intense, that stung so deep inside of her, she thought for a moment her bones might dissolve. It was the most violent, frightening sensation she'd ever known. Why tonight, after all this time, she'd felt a stab of truly unreasonable jealously was beyond her; she only knew that she did, and it was ugly, and diminishing, and she hated it.

She threw down the money on top of the check and left the booth, only to have her vacant seat immediately taken by a man who'd been hovering so close he actually bumped her shoulder as she stood. The woman turned toward him and for the first time Amanda got a look at her eyes: the purest bright azure blue, an early summer sky, the type of eyes heroines in novels and on television always had.

God, those eyes!

On her way out the door Amanda glanced at her reflection in the long mirror behind the bar, noting with pride that she’d looked far worse in her day; her light reddish-brown hair still held its luster from this morning's shower and her face, though plain, yes, was a pleasant one, a compelling one, the face of someone who observed, who listened—and not just to the words that someone might say but to the unspoken meaning beneath those words as well. Hers was the face of a friend on whom you could always depend, one who did not expect to get something in return for her kindness and compassion.

And her eyes...hm, yes, well...not a pure bright azure blue but a striking enough hazel, sparked by a sharpness of intelligence—after all, becoming an insurance actuary (the type of math fool even computer geeks thought of as a nerd) wasn’t exactly easy.

There.

Her silent pep-talk done, she made her way out to her car, feeling content with who and what she was, though no less lonely.

As she slid into the driver's seat her vision blurred. The world washed away like sidewalk chalk drawings under a great and sudden downpour. She blinked once, twice, then uncontrollably, leaning down and pressing her forehead against the steering wheel to kill the dizziness and disorientation. She took several deep breaths. After a few more frenzied, loopy seconds, it passed.

That's when she heard someone screaming.

Loud, ragged, and shrill, the scraped-raw howl of an animal in agony blasted through one of the pub's half-opened windows and latched onto the back of Amanda's neck.

The scream was quickly underscored by several loud, panicky shouts, then the whump-crash! of glasses being smashed, maybe knocked to the floor by some drunk who'd fallen across a table but she knew that wasn't right, knew it as surely as her name because now the underscoring voices and panicky shouts were growing in density and volume and number, nearing hysteria as another, worse scream erupted and the upper half of a figure smashed through one of the windows, a familiar figure, a beautiful figure clutching at her lovely face, hands clawing at bloody, empty eye sockets. The woman screamed a third time, though not as loudly, as someone inside tried to pull her back in. Amanda watched horrified as two men with slashes of blood staining their shirts grabbed the woman's arms, trying to calm her. It did no good. Her pitiful screams quickly faded under the wail of an ambulance siren slicing through the damp night air.

Amanda closed her eyes, offering a silent prayer that the woman would be all right. Maybe she had been arrogant and rude and offensive, but no one deserved the kind of pain that produced a scream like that. No one.

Jesus Christ, what had happened to her?

As the ambulance roared into the parking lot Amanda blinked away a few tears—feeling more than a little guilty for the way she'd judged the woman so harshly—and sat back in the seat, pulling a few tissues from the box on the dashboard and drying her eyes. The police wouldn't be too far behind the ambulance and she was a witness, of sorts, and— —she looked into the rear-view mirror to see if she'd smeared her mascara too badly— —felt strangled by the cry that clogged her throat as she saw her eyes— —so blue so blue so pure bright azure blue, lovely and bright and sparkling in the night— The commotion of the paramedics and the chaotic shuffling of the pub crowd covered the sound of Amanda shrieking into her hands.

She had been forced to leave state college one semester into her first year because her father had gotten laid off from the plant and her parents needed her help. Though the letter her mother sent wasn’t obvious in its manipulations, it nonetheless managed to push all the right guilt buttons. Two days after receiving it Amanda withdrew from school and used her last forty-five dollars to buy a bus ticket back to Cedar Hill. It was during the four-hour bus ride that she began to wonder about the price a person paid for so-called "selfless" acts. From the moment she'd stepped into the iron belly of the road lizard her throat had been expanding, then contracting at an alarming rate, finally forcing her to open the window next to her seat so she could breathe easier. Her chest was clogged with anger, sorrow, confusion, and, worst of all, pity. Everyone knew the plant was on its last leg, that the company had been looking for an excuse to pull up stakes ever since that labor riot a few years back, and when it happened, when the plant went down, so would the seven hundred jobs that formed the core of the town's financial stability.

More than anything Amanda didn't, dear God, didn't want to end up like every other girl in town; under- to uneducated, with no dreams left, working nine hours a day in some bakery or laundry or grocery store, then coming home to a husband who didn’t much like her and children who didn’t much respect her, wearing a scarf around her head all the time to cover the premature gray hair, watching prime time soap operas and getting twelve pounds heavier with each passing year.

As she stepped off the bus she promised herself that, regardless of what eventually happened with the plant, she wouldn't betray herself for anyone or anything. That alone was her hope.

“I thank God for a daughter like you,” said her father, embracing her as she stepped through the door. “Come on in and sit down and let your mother fix you up something to eat. It's good to see you, hon. Here, I saved the want ads from the last couple days, maybe you'll find something....”

She wound up taking a cashier job at the town's only all-night grocery store. Amanda smiled at her late-night customers, and spoke with them, and tried to be cheery because there was nothing more depressing than to find yourself in a grocery store buying a loaf of bread at three-thirty in the morning in a town that was dying because the plant was going under and no one wanted to admit it.

Still, Amanda smiled at them with a warmth that she hoped would help, from a heart that was, if it could be said of anyone’s, truly good and sympathetic.

The customers took no notice.

For eleven months she lived in a semi-somnambulistic daze, going to work, coming home, eating something, handing her paycheck over to her parents once a week, then shuffling off to bed where she read until sleep claimed her.

Outside her bedroom window, the soot from the plant’s chimneys became less and less thick but still managed to cover the town in ashes and grayness.

She read books on sociology, countless romance novels and mysteries, biographies of writers and film stars, years-old science magazines, and developed an understanding and love of poetry that had eluded her in high school. Of course she went for a lot of the Romantics, Donne and Keats and Shelley, as well as a few modernists—T.S. Eliot and James Dickey, Rainer Maria Rilke and the lyrical, gloomy Dylan Thomas. Cumulatively, they gave eloquent voice to her silent aches and hidden despairs.

Crime began to spread through the town: holdups, street fights, petty thefts, and acts of vandalism.

And in the center of it all stood the plant, a hulking, roaring dinosaur, fighting desperately against its own extinction as it sank into the tar of progress.

Amanda discovered Jane Eyre in the library one day. Over the next month she read it three times— —and the dinosaur howled in the night— —and her mother at day’s end sat staring at the television or listening to her scratchy old record— —and her father's eyes filled with more fear and shame as he came to realize he was never going to be called back to work— —and somewhere inside Amanda a feeling awakened. She did what she could to squash it but it never really went away.

So sometimes, very late at night when shameful fantasies are indulged, she took a certain private pleasure as she lay in her bed, and usually felt like hell afterward, remembering the words to a nursery rhyme her mother used to read to her when she was a child:

"Mirror, mirror, tell me true

Am I pretty or am I plain?

Or am I downright ugly?

And ugly to remain?"

No man would ever want her in that special, heated, passionate way. She was too plain, and the plain did not inspire great passion.

Mirror, mirror, told her true.

Amanda finished giving her statement to one of the police officers on the scene (who failed to ask for her address and home phone number until she volunteered the information) and was getting ready to leave when she saw the man who'd taken her spot in the booth. His shirt was spattered with dried blood and his face was three shades whiter than pale. He looked up from his shaking hands for a moment, through the swirling visibar lights and milling patrons, past the police officer who was taking his statement, and stared at her.

It seemed to her that she ought to say something to him—but what?

Before she could come up with an answer she found herself walking across the parking lot and coming up next to him. He was no longer looking at her—if he actually had been in the first place. He ran a hand through his hair and turned toward the officer beside him.

“You say she just doubled over suddenly?” asked the officer.

“Uh, yeah, yeah. It was weird, y’know? We're sitting there talking and then she starts...blinking. I'm thinking to myself, ‘Oh, Christ, she's lost a contact lens,’ then she bends over, real violently, like maybe she's gonna throw up or something and I moved out of the booth to, y'know, help her get out and over toward the bathroom but she's making this sound, this awful sound like she's choking and now I'm shaking 'cause I've never had to Heimlich someone but she sounds in pain, serious pain, and I reached over to grab her and she pulls away and covers her eyes with her hands, and now she's groaning and wheezing and people around us are looking, so I reach for her again and that's when I see there's all this...blood coming out from under her hands. It was fuckin' horrible.”

The officer finished writing something down, then said, “Was there anyone else in the booth with her?”

“No. She was alone when I got there.”

Amanda turned away, biting down on her lower lip as if that would be enough to shield her from the invisible fist that had just rammed into her gut, and half-walked, half-ran to her car where she checked her eyes—no, not her eyes, not hers at all—again in the rearview mirror, then turned the key in the ignition, backed out, and drove away.

She had no idea how long or how far she drove, only that she had to stay in motion while the numb shock of realization ebbed into a dull thrum of remorse. She hadn't meant for anything to happen to the woman, not at all, but—

—Was there anyone else in the booth no she was alone when I got there no she was alone no she was ALONE—

—bastard had bumped right into her. Right into her.

Twenty deadened minutes later, feeling very much like an etherized patient on the anesthetist's table, she parked in front of a church, stepped out of the car, then walked up the steps and through the doors, pausing only to dip her fingers in the marble font of holy water and make the Sign of the Cross over her forehead and bosom, then strode down the aisle, through a set of small wooden doors, lowering to her knees as she pulled the doors closed and a small overhead light snapped on—

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

Kneeling in the confessional, her voice that of a disembodied ghost, Amanda felt as if she were being operated by remote control, only vaguely aware of the words coming out of her mouth, mundane sins—cursing, lusting, small acts of thievery like sometimes not putting a quarter in the box at work when she got a cup of coffee, sins of omission, white lies, I meant no harm, then she was whispering, humiliated, about impure thoughts that still moved her blood faster and still took her to a private place where moist fantasies waited for her...

...and in one of these private places where plain-faced fantasies lay hidden, she was as beautiful as she wished to be and with a man who not only loved her but desired her as a result of that love, his lips moving down the slope of her breasts, his tongue tracing soft circular patterns around her nipple— She was suddenly, awkwardly aware of the claustrophobic silence in the confessional, and wondered how long she'd been quiet. On the other side of the screen the priest asked, "Are you all right?" She pulled a compact from her purse, opening it to examine her eyes in the mirror. "No."

"What’s really wrong?" His voice was soft and velvety, like Burt Lancaster’s in Atlantic City. She wondered what the priest looked like; maybe he was young, perhaps handsome and—

—stop it right now, you're bordering on pathetic.

She almost rose but hesitated for some reason, and in that moment the soothing male voice on the other side said, "Please, ma'am—uh, miss—if you can, try to forget that you’re talking to a priest. I know that sounds trivial but you might be surprised how much it helps some people. You could pretend I'm a close friend—" "—don't have any real close friends—” “—then your mother or father, maybe a sister—" "—my parents are dead and I don't—" She blinked, realizing something. True, she had no siblings, had been an only child— —but she did have sisters, nonetheless.

In restaurants, in the lobbies of movie theaters, standing in the checkout line at the grocery store or wandering the aisles of video rental stores twenty minutes before closing, they were there, her sisters, waiting for something that would probably never come along, waiting alone, always looking toward a place not imagined by the beautiful or ugly, a spartan, isolated place reserved for the plain, for those never noticed, not bothered with; every so often their eyes would meet her own and Amanda would detect a glint of recognition in their gaze: I know just how you feel and just what you're going through, and I'd smile if I could but it’d probably look awkward, if not absurd, so I’ll just go on my way and promise you that I’ll remember your face, one much like my own, and I’ll wish you well, and good luck, you'll need it.

Then it was through the checkout, down the next video aisle, into the darkness of the movie theater, or out of the dining room and into the night, never speaking, never allowing for a moment of tenderness, keep that guard up because it's all you've got, and it should be enough, that guard, but sometimes it wasn't, sometimes it slipped and something painful leaked inside, or something ugly slipped out—

—she was snapped out of her reverie by the ghost of her voice.

"When I was a child my mother used to play this one record over and over, I don't know where she got it, Dad had bought the record player for me—it was one of those models that came in a carrying case, it had this really heavy arm—but Mom, she had this one record, the only one she owned, an old ‘78, a Nat King Cole song called ‘There Will Never Be Another You’ or something like that. It was one of the sappiest songs I ever heard, I never understood why she liked it so much. But she did, she loved it, and she used to have a few shots of whiskey after my dad went to bed, then she'd play that record over and over, until she got this dreamy look on her face, sitting there in her chair and listening to that song and pretending she wasn't who she was. Sometimes I could see it in her face, that wish. She was someone else and the song wasn't on a record, it was being sung to her by some handsome lover come to court her, to ask for her hand and take her away to a better life than the one she had, the kind of life she'd dreamed of when she was the age I am now. I used to sneak downstairs and watch her do this, and I'd laugh to myself, you know? I'd laugh at her because I knew that my life was going to turn out differently, I'd never be so stupid as to wind up marrying a man who didn't really love me like a husband should but I stayed with him anyway because that's what the Church told me I was supposed to do. I'd never do that. I'd never spend my days working around the house, doing the dishes and the laundry and the dusting, having no life of my own, no hobbies, no interests, spending half the afternoon fixing dinner, then half the evening cleaning up afterward, only finding time for myself after everyone went to bed and I could sip my whiskey and play a goddamn record by Nat King Cole about there never being another me. I mean, I was just a kid, I was only in grade school, and Mom was old and used up and kind of funny at those times. But now it's twenty years later and here I am, just like her— hell, I even have that record of hers! It’s the only thing that was really hers that I have, just like my dad’s old straight-razor. A couple of award-winning keepsakes, huh? I look at these things of theirs, then I look at my life and...I try to keep the bad feelings at bay but sometimes it doesn't work. I've turned into her. There's no man who loves me, all I've got is my work, and instead of whiskey and Nat King Cole I've got two weak cocktails on Friday night after work and Jane Eyre or well-thumbed collections of poetry or a ton of videotapes, most of them romantic comedies. My God, if I had any kids they'd be laughing at me now, sneaking down after I think they're asleep and watching Mom get all teary-eyed over a book or movie or poem. They'd look at me and laugh and say, 'Look at her, she thinks she's Katherine Hepburn or something.' Most of the time I can get by but on nights like tonight I...I feel so lonely I could scream, so I tell myself that at least there's my job, at least there's a place I can go where I won't have to think about how I feel, except now I work with a bunch of other people, most of them women—and younger than me—and they all want to tell me about their love lives. 'You've got a kind way about you,' they say, or 'You're such a good listener.'

"Oh God, when I hear them going on about their love lives, how it's so hard being in a relationship because they don't agree on...on what kinds of toppings to get on a pizza or who should make the first move or how truthful they should be or why they don't feel comfortable making a serious commitment just yet...when I hear all this, I really want to slap them sometimes, you know? They have no idea how it feels to be the 'nice' girl who's always there, always willing to listen, the girl you can call anytime because she's always home, who's friendly and reliable like an old dog or five bucks from Grandma in your birthday card every year. I know I'm not the most stunning woman ever to walk the face of the Earth, but...." She reached into her purse for a tissue to wipe some of the perspiration off her face. Unable to find one, she kept searching around while she spoke.

"It's amazing how relaxed a man can be when he's in the presence of a woman he thinks doesn't need or want passion. I don't know how many times I've had a guy I know make a mock pass at me, then we'll both laugh like it was no big thing. I'm not feeling sorry for myself, that's too damned easy, and I know that I'm plain, but the thing is, because I'm plain, I'm safe. And safe means being rendered sexless."

She took a breath, weighing the truth of that word.

"Sexless. And sometimes I'd like to pull all these people aside who are so overwrought about their shaky sex lives and whisper that word to them, because it's a feeling they'll never know. Because with all their whining and crying and bitching and all their melodramatic romantic suffering, they'll always be able to find someone who wants them, even if it's just for one night. And I'd like to know how it feels from their side, just once. To be wanted that way just once, to be that beautiful for just one night."

She looked toward the small tinted glass separating her face from the priest's, caught sight of her face, saw the azure eyes, and remembered the other woman's screams.

"It hurts, Father. Sometimes it physically hurts! I don't know how but I...I did something tonight, caused something to happen. I didn't mean for her to get hurt, to suffer like she did, but I—" The words clogged in her throat when her hand brushed against something inside of her purse. Something small. Soft. Moist. And round. "What is it?" asked the faceless priest. Amanda couldn't answer. She opened the top of her purse wider, then slowly looked down inside, tilting it toward the dim light. Then she saw them.

Saw them and gasped and snapped closed her purse and leapt from the confessional and ran down the aisle sobbing, the sound of her grief echoing off the wide arches above as she kept running, wanting to rip the purse off her shoulder and throw it away and never look inside again, wanting to close her eyes—not her eyes, not hers at all, just different eyes in her head—close them forever and not have to face her reflection or see the way other people looked at her, close the eyes and make everything go away, deny that what had happened was real and make everything better by that denial but she knew it was true and didn't understand why, and now she was outside the church, running down the stone stairs, the priest following and calling for her to stop, please, stop, but she couldn't, she was too frightened as she threw herself in the car and flung the purse into the back seat, slammed the door, and pulled away, the houses and street signs blurring as she sped past, lights melting, images flowing into one another like paint on an artist's canvas, blues into tears into yellows into aches into reds—

...Talking of Michelangelo....

—into greens into curses and back to blues, signs guiding her way, STOP, YIELD, ONE WAY, ROAD CLOSED AHEAD, rounding the corner, finding detours, familiar trees, lonely trees and this empty street, dark houses, dirty fences, take a breath, there you go, calm down, take another breath, slow down, breathe in, out, in, out, that's good, that's a good girl, slow it down, pull it over, close to the curb, there ya go, here we are, home sweet, ignition off, keys out, all stopped, all safe, alone, alone, alone.

She stared at the front of her house, then turned around and lifted her purse as if she had only—

—only—

—only one way to know for sure. She took a deep breath, exhaled, then opened her purse and looked inside. Silence; stillness. She calmly reached in and took them out, holding one in each hand like a jeweler examining uncut diamonds. They were still quite moist, sheened in corneal fluid. No sparkle now. But still a striking enough hazel. She felt a pang of remorse, for until this moment she'd never realized how pretty her old eyes had been. "God, I'm gonna miss you," she whispered.

Then looked up into the night sky, into the depths of a cold, unanswering, indifferent heaven, where no angel of the plain-faced looked back down.

One afternoon, shortly after moving back home, she had wandered down to a local flea market and found a table covered with dolls. Among them was a set of mismatched nesting dolls ("Matryoshka dolls," said the old woman sitting behind the table. “You must always call them by their proper name."); the largest was the size and shape of a gourd, the second largest was almost pyramid-shaped, the next was an oval, the fourth like a pear, and the last resembled an egg. What surprised her was that each of them, despite their disparate shapes, was able to fit neatly inside the next, and the next, and so on, until there was only the original matryoshka holding all the rest inside.

She carefully examined the largest doll, somewhat shaken that its face bore a certain resemblance to her own. The artist had captured not only the basics of her face but its subtleties, as well: the way the corners of her eyes scrinched up when she was smiling but didn't want anyone to know what she was smiling about, the mischievous pout of her mouth when she had good news to tell and was bursting for someone to ask the right question so she could blurt it out, the curve of her cheekbones that looked almost regal when she chose to accent them with just the right amount of rouge—all these details leapt out at her, impressive and enigmatic, their craftsmanship nothing short of exquisite, as if the hand which painted them had been blessed by God.

She looked away for a moment, then looked back; no, she hadn't imagined it. The thing did look a little like her.

As she was paying for the set, the old woman behind the table told her, "The old Russian mystics claimed that the matryoshka had certain powers, that if a person believed strongly enough in the scene the dolls portrayed when taken apart and set side-by-side-by-side, then it would come true. A lot of old-country matchmakers used to fashion matryoshkas for the women of their village who were trying to find a husband and start their own families. It's said that someone created a set for Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt that showed her marrying Nicholas II and having several children."

"Wouldn't it be nice if that were true?" said Amanda.

"But this set here, I have no idea what someone would want with it. Especially a young girl like you. None of the dolls resemble one another. It's like a bunch of riffraff, discards. Though it's odd, isn't it, how all of them fit together so well?"

"I like discards," Amanda replied. "It's nice to think that even the unwanted can find others like themselves and become a family." "But these're all women." "Then they're sisters. A family of nothing but sisters." The old woman nodded her head. "I like that. I like that right down to the ground." Amanda smiled. "Me too."

Once back inside her house after fleeing the church, Amanda quickly put the eyes in a large-mouthed mason jar containing a mixture of water and alcohol, then set the jar on the top shelf of the upstairs linen closet. She stood for a moment, watching them bob around, turning this way, then that, one eye looking toward the front while the other glanced behind it; finally they looked at her, then slowly, almost deliberately, turned toward each other.

Hey, babe, haven't I seen you somewhere before?

Why, yes, sexy, you do look sort of familiar.

Amanda closed the door, leaning her head against the frame. She gave up trying to invent a rational explanation because there wasn't one.

She went into the bathroom and washed her face. Looking up into the mirror, she stared at her new eyes. They were so perfect, so sparkling and bright, eyes that would cause anyone to stop and take notice, eyes that gave her face a luster it had never possessed before, eyes that would make people realize that maybe this particular package wasn't so plain, after all.

Then she remembered the woman's bloody face as it came through the window of the pub and at once cursed herself for being so narcissistic. She blinked, then took one last glance at herself—

—her nose.

Ohgod, her nose. It was different. Not so wide, so pug anymore; it was slender and perfectly angled, not rounded on the end but sharp like— —like—

—like Sandy Wilson's nose. Sandy, who was the receptionist at the office, who'd gone out with half the men working there, men who smiled at her every morning as they passed by her desk, and Amanda began to shake as she remembered this afternoon when she was leaving she'd looked at Sandy and thought: The reason her face looks so good, so delicate and chiseled and playful, is because of her nose, it's a really sexy nose, it accents her features without drawing attention to itself and makes her face seem all the more friendly and God, what I wouldn't give to have—

—she covered it with her hands, hands that seemed to be folded in prayer, or were clamping down to rip this thing off her face so she could stand here and watch her old one grow back, and for a moment the image struck her as funny but she didn't laugh—

—she whirled around and went out into the hall and yanked open the door of the linen closet, looking up at the jar—

—her old eyes had company.

Slamming the door, her heart triphammering against her ribs, she ran downstairs and grabbed her purse and dumped its contents onto the kitchen table, frantically sifting through the debris until she found her small phone number/address book, then quickly looked up Sandy's home phone number, grabbed the receiver off the wall, and dialed the number. A voice—not Sandy's—answered on the third ring. "H-HELLO?" Whoever it was sounded nervous and panicked, damn near hysterical. "Is...May I speak with Sandy, please?"

Amanda heard two other voices in the background, one of them Sandy's, the other an older man's, probably Sandy's father because she still lived with her parents, didn't she, she was only twenty and why in God's name was she wailing like that?

"There's b-b-been an accident," said Sandy's mother, her voice breaking. "Please call back tomorrow."

Click. Amanda pulled the receiver away from her ear, stared at it for a moment, then slowly started to hang up— —and saw her hands. Slender, with long, loving fingers; artist's fingers.

She remembered the woman who'd been sitting on a bench in the small park behind the Altman museum downtown a few days ago, sketching that incredible sculpture of those grieving women that was attracting so much attention lately. Several people had gathered to watch what this artist was doing. She'd been in her early thirties, with strawberry-blonde hair, lovely in a hardened, earthy way. Amanda had stood unnoticed among the admirers—mostly men—staring at first the woman s face, then her thick but not unattractive neck, and, finally, her hands.

Her strong yet supple, smooth hands....

Amanda fell against the kitchen table shuddering, the contents of her stomach churning, and tried very, very hard not to imagine what was—or rather, wasn't—dangling from the ends of that woman's arms right this second.

Back in the bathroom, she looked at her face again.

The lips this time, full and moist and red and alluring as hell.

Jesus Christ, whose lips are they?

Numbed, she checked the jar.

Getting pretty crowded in there.

She filled a portable cooler with ice and water and rubbing alcohol, pried the hands out of the jar and tossed them into the cooler; they hit the ice with a sickening, dead plop! and lay there like desiccated starfish.

She slammed closed the lid, then vomited.

Over the next two hours, it only got worse.

Her legs were next, model's legs, long and slender and shiny, with extraordinarily subtle muscle tone. Amanda wondered who she'd seen them on, and where, and what the woman must look like now.

Wondered, then wept.

As she did with everything else:

Breasts, full and firm, even perky, with tan aureoles so precisely rounded they seemed painted on, nipples so pink and pointy, and nowhere were there any blue veins visible on their surface, only a few clusters of strategically placed freckles that fanned outward from the center of her chest, creating teasing shadows of cleavage; then her hips were next, not the too-wide, too-sharp hips she'd been born with, not the hips that made it almost impossible for her to find blue jeans that fit comfortably, but hard, rounded hips, not wide at all but not too small, either, lovely hips, girlish hips, God-you-don't-look-your-age hips and a now-size-8 waist—

—the cooler filled up quickly and she had to go to the bathtub, adding water, ice, and alcohol to keep everything moist and sanitary—

—next was the stomach, not the slightly sagging thing she'd been carrying around for the last ten years but a deliciously flattened tummy, its taut, aerobicized, Twenty—Minute-Workout muscles forming a dramatically titillating diamond that actually undulated when she moved, a bikini stomach if ever there was one, abs of steel; then came her jaw, elegant and chiseled, the jaw of a princess, Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday; her neck became slightly longer, thinner, sculpted, losing the threat of a double chin that had been hovering for the last couple of years, the muscles flowing down toward the sharp, perfect “V” in the center of her collarbone, something she'd always thought was unbearably sexy—

—the bathtub was quickly filling but that was all right, there couldn't be too much left at this point—

—then, after a while, her bone structure began to change: ribs not so thick, shoulders not so wide or bony, knees not so awkward and knobby—

—the rest of her body began altering itself with each new addition, her features and limbs molding themselves to each other like sculptor's clay, an organic symbiosis, her forced evolution, heading toward physical perfection until, at last, her skin itself blossomed unwrinkled and creamy, sealing around everything like a sheet of cellophane.

Amanda was sitting on her bed when she felt the last of it take place, then rose very slowly—the pain of each change had grown more and more intense, the last few minutes becoming almost unbearable—and looked at herself in the full-length mirror hanging on the inside of her closet door, not sure whether to smile or simply die. She had become both her own Galatea and Pygmalion. No other woman she'd ever met or seen could compare with what stared back at her from the mirror. She was completed, breathtaking, beautiful.

More than beautiful; she was Beauty.

And Beauty always has her way.

She told herself not to think about it, then went into the bathroom and pulled a bottle of prescription painkillers from the medicine chest, downing two of them before turning to face everything.

The remnants of Old Amanda.

There was arranging to be done.

By the time she finished there were four full Mason jars, as well as a full bathtub, sink, cooler, and toilet tank. The bones went into the laundry hamper along with several wet towels, and the skin, well-soaked, was draped over the shower curtain rod. She nodded, thinking to herself that it all looked very tidy, indeed.

She suspected that her mind would crumble soon—how could it not, after all this?—but hopefully the painkillers would kick in and she'd be nicely loopy before it got too bad.

She looked once more at her reflection in the mirror and thought, Why not enjoy it while you can?

Then it hit her: How in hell was she going to explain this at work on Monday?

Like my new clothes? I think they make me look like a new person, don't you?

She rubbed her temples, realizing that she had chosen to keep her own hair.

She liked that very much; liked it right down to the ground.

The pleasant, seductive numbness of the painkillers began to pour over her body, and she decided to go lie down for a little while.

She was just putting her head onto the pillow when she noticed that all six matryoshkas were displayed across the top of her dresser. She tried to remember when she'd taken them apart and arranged them this way.

She stared at them, noting after a few seconds that their shapes were now oddly uniform, all like gourds growing progressively smaller, right down to the baby who was no longer a baby but Amanda as she'd been at four years old; the next showed her as she'd been this morning; the next, as she'd been a few hours ago; the others, so silent and still, illustrated the rest of the stages of her transformation, the last and largest of them a sublime reflection of the woman who now lay across the room staring at it.

She felt so soft...

...In the room the women come and go...

...and it was so good to feel this soft, and sexy...

...Talking of Michelangelo...

...no guard now, no hardness, my sisters, I understand how you feel...

...a breath, a sigh, then—drained and exhausted—she felt herself falling asleep—

—in the room the women come and go—

—and was startled back to wakefulness by sounds in the upstairs hallway; slow, soft, almost imperceptible sounds; tiptoeing sounds.

She breathed slowly, watching her breasts rise and fall in the shadows, imagining some lover passionately kissing them, tonguing the nipples—

—the front door opened, then closed.

She sat up, holding her breath.

Looking around the room, she saw that her closet door was now closed; it had been open when she’d fallen asleep, and her bedroom door, closed before, was now standing wide open.

Jesus Christ, she hadn’t been out for very long, just a few seconds, wasn’t it? Just a moment or two but the time didn’t really matter a damn, ten minutes or ten seconds because someone had been in here while she was asleep! She jumped off the bed and ran into the hall, saw that the bathroom light was on, and kicked open the door. No one was inside— —but the sink was empty. Just like the bathtub. And the laundry hamper. And the toilet tank and the portable cooler and all of the mason jars. She stormed back into her bedroom and snapped on the overhead light, then flung open her closet door.

She stared at her wardrobe and knew instinctively that something was missing; she couldn’t say what, specifically, had been taken, but she knew that the whole didn’t match up quite right.

She sat down on the bed and stared at her reflection in the mirror hanging on the inside of the closet door.

Damn if she wasn’t still a stunner.

Then she saw the matryoshka dolls behind her. No longer uniform in shape, they had returned to their original, disparate forms—a gourd, a pyramid, an oval, a pear, an egg, a seashell—but each of them now had one thing in common, one characteristic they hadn’t shared before:

None of them had a face.

Amanda took a deep breath, then checked the clock.

It was only twelve-thirty. The clubs didn’t close for another two hours and she wanted to be seen, to be admired, to feel pretty and wanted on this night.

It was nice to actually have the option for once.

She thought she knew what was happening, maybe. Maybe it would only be a matter of time, less than a few hours, and maybe she had all the time in the world and would be this gorgeous for the rest of her life, but either way she was going to make this evening count, goddammit!

She dressed quickly, purposefully choosing a pair of old jeans and a blouse that she knew she’d outgrown over a year ago.

Both fit wonderfully, hugging her form tightly, accentuating every wonderful curve. She threw an old vest on as well—which did wonders for emphasizing her bust—then unbuttoned not one, not two, but (for the first time in her life) three top buttons of her blouse, showing just enough of her freckles and cleavage and the slope of her breasts to make anyone want to see more. She checked her face in the bathroom mirror, under the harsh, unforgiving glow of the fluorescent light. No wrinkles, no bags, no blemishes; she needed no makeup. She looked...delicious. That made her smile, and brought a sparkle to her eyes. “What say we go out there and win one for the Gipper, eh?” She giggled, then Sparkle Eyes Amanda flowed out into the night.

Taking a shortcut through town in order to get to her pub before it closed, Amanda was driving down the side street which served as the location of the Altman Museum when she thought she heard someone scream—

—and knew she saw a figure running from behind the museum.

Later, she would remember feeling frightened yet oddly detached from herself—much like the state she’d been in after fleeing the church earlier.

She knew this wasn’t the safest area of the city, even during the day, but she nonetheless watched from a place outside her body as Sparkle Eyes pulled into a parking space beside the museum, got out of the car, and walked toward the small plat at the back of the museum that served as an ersatz-park where artists whose work was too big for indoor exhibition often displayed their pieces. Sparkle Eyes walked up to a bench that sat near the park’s entrance. Sparkled Eyes looked down at the thick sketch pad that was lying face-down in the grass. Sparkle Eyes kicked the pad over with her foot to see what the artist had been sketching—

—and that’s when Amanda found herself firmly reunited with her new body, because the pages facing her were covered not with drawings but with wide slashes of blood—as if whoever had been sketching had suddenly had their throat cut—

—or lost their hands, she thought.

She looked around, nervous, and only then realized that the sculpture of the grieving women that had been such a crowd-drawing showpiece for the Altman was gone.

In its place, a new bas-relief piece had been incorporated into the museum’s outside back wall.

Looking once more at the blood-drenched sketch pad lying at her feet, Amanda approached this new piece.

For a moment she forgot to breathe, she was so stunned by what she saw.

A massive curtain of bluish-gray flowstone hung before her, its surface shimmering and shifting like sand beneath incoming waves at high tide. She had no choice but to think of it in terms of liquid, for everything about the image embedded in the curtain seemed to ripple.

The piece was of a woman, lying on her back, naked from the center of her chest upward, her hair cascading to the left as if draped over a pillow. Her arms were crossed over her center, the right slightly higher than the left, and her hands, their fingers slightly bent as if about to clutch at something unseen, unknown, were pressing down against the rest of her body, which was hidden underneath a wide sheet.

She stepped forward, peering, and saw that the sheet was composed of smaller stones and slates and sculpted shapes of uncountable fossils: toads, lizards, prehistoric arachnid crustaceans the likes of which she’d never seen, praying mantises, eels and serpents slithering over faded, ancient symbols and primeval drawings.

Even the skin of the woman in its center was not as she first perceived it to be: thin and transparent, misted with a fine scintillance like lavender spiderwebs, it allowed the viewer to see through the woman’s surface to the millions of swarming, teeming, multiplying cells and legions of bacteria-like clumps within. There was an odd, damaged beauty to the sight, a vague impression of transcendence, of the human becoming the elemental, then the infinitesimal, and Amanda found herself drawn toward it but, at the moment of communion, something in the image seemed to pull back and become cold, alien, unreachable, leaving her to stare into exhausted eyes too much like her own, eyes that were balanced atop dark crescents. They were lifeless eyes, lightless and unfocused, beyond caring. They were her own eyes. The woman, she realized then, was herself as she used to be, Old Amanda, not Sparkle Eyes, and her mouth was curved downward, trapped somewhere between a pout and a groan, but as she moved a little to the side a parallax effect—aided in part by the small spotlights the museum had installed to help night viewing—took place; viewed from the right, this image of her was a sad, dark, twisted thing, but viewed from the left, she appeared to be beckoning a lover to her bed, her mouth teasing, her eyes filled with promise.

She reached out to touch her flowstone face and suddenly the upper portion of the curtain erupted with other faces, some angry, some gloomy, others insane-looking or hideously deformed, and a few that were not even close to being human; with mandibles clacking or antennae twisting in the air, these last faces, the inhuman ones, were in too-close proximity to that of her own image, threatening to fall on it and chew away her features. Far above them, their not-quite-formed eyes looking down, more faces moved in the deepening shadows, their fossilized skin covered in cracks and swarming with tiny things she couldn't bring herself to look at too closely.

She stumbled backward, the curtain of liquid stone rising higher, revealing more sick-making details: One of the faces near her own—this one little more than a skull with an impossibly large cranium encircled by two serpents—had a carving of a rose on its side, a most delicate rose, and its ghostly beauty rather than being out of place seemed right and proper, buried as it is in the terrible image, soft hints of red trickling outward into her hair, tingeing it in blood. She touched the rose, then pulled her hand away and saw that it was, indeed, blood. She looked back to the bench where the sketch pad lay on the ground. She looked at her new hands, and knew who’d been screaming, and why.

She looked back; all of the faces—her own included—opened their mouths and began to speak, words that she herself had said before, or thought, or heard others speak, others that she has thought of as her sisters, the plain-faced who are simply left alone:

"...he calls me out of the kitchen to admire a lovely actress on the television, then points to a Miss America-type and says she's a little too fat, you know, and her face isn't as pretty as it ought to be, and he never once thinks about how that makes me feel..."

She was aware of shadows moving from the darkness toward her.

"...I can't stand to look at my whole face, so if I'm combing my hair, it's only my hair that I see; if I use a mirror to put on lipstick, I hold it so close that I don't have to see my cheeks..."

The voices were coming from both the sculpture and from those shadowy figures slowly surrounding her.

"...never look at my naked body, and I'd rather walk out of the house without checking my clothes than look at myself in a full-length mirror because there's always that face on top, making a mockery out of the pretty clothes below it..." Her sisters, nameless and lonely. "...my face embarrasses me, it's so flat and dull; I can't even make it better with makeup..." Each one clutching a jar to her chest. "...and I never, NEVER let anyone take my picture because when I look at myself in a photograph I cringe inside...." "Stop it," she whispered, then shouted, "STOP IT!"

The voices ceased, the faces faded back to their still, sculpted shapes, and her image suddenly, violently, rolled up out of sight, a window shade snapping closed. Silence and murkiness. Then a pair of glowing eyes, somewhere back in the shadows embedded in the piece. "Who are you?" asked Amanda. "I am what you once were. You are what became of me." "Are you...me?"

"No. And yes. I am the First Woman—not Eve or Lilith —though some have called me by those names. I have also been called Shekinah, Metrona, Shine, Isolde, Old Roses, Bright Hands, and a million other names. I am the only woman, and all women. Even the last.

"You know me."

"No, no I—"

"You've seen me before, in certain faces you glimpse in restaurants, in the lobbies of movie theaters, standing in the checkout line at the grocery or wandering the aisles of video stores, waiting alone for something that will never come along, looking toward a place not imagined by the so-called beautiful or ugly, though I am in those faces, too. You know me. You came from me. I know you hurt. So ask me one question and I will answer you with the only truth there is; perhaps it will help your sadness."

Amanda did not hesitate: "Why are some of us plain and others so beautiful?"

A picture appeared in the wall, a framed print of M.C. Escher's The Waterfall. Amanda stared at it, then shook her head. "I don't understand." Silence. She stepped closer to the picture. The water in the picture began to move.

The voice of Metrona, who was also Shine and Bright Hands, joined now by the Jar Sisters standing behind Amanda, sang: "'Mirror, mirror, tell me true/Am I pretty or am I plain?/Or am I downright ugly?/And ugly to remain?'"

Amanda watched closely, her eyes following the path of the water around the loop again and again and again, quite fast at first, then much slower. The path of the water seemed perfectly normal and natural to her—until she found herself right back where she started from. She blinked, sighed, took a deep breath, and followed the water's path once again, realizing at the halfway point that the entire loop, when taken as a whole, is manifestly an impossibility, yet at no point on the path going around the loop did anything go 'wrong'; she was able to go from point A to B to C and so on, all the way back around to A but she shouldn't have been able to! She decided to break the path up into sections and, taken by themselves, they were fine, but holistically they remained an absolute impossibility.

"What's wrong with this picture? It makes no sense."

The water turned silver and bright, then Shekinah, who was Isolde and Old Roses as well, said: "'Mirror, mirror, tell me please/Is this my face I see?/So plain and ugly and pretty/One face made from three.'

"The water doesn't know it's following an impossible path, Amanda; it's just water, flowing along. It doesn't care about what goes 'right' or 'wrong' in the loop, so long as it goes. There is no manifest beauty, no ugliness, no plainness or any kind of imperfection which lessens; there is only One, who once was Me, and now is Many, including You. There is only Woman; anything else is a lie.

"And Woman shouldn't care about lies like Beauty and Ugliness and Plainness. Just remember: As forgettable as you think your face is, there is someone out there who envies what you have; to whom you, as you are, are the ideal."

And with those words, the sculpture froze again, just a haunting bas-relief in flowstone at the back of a museum late, late at night.

She turned to confront the women with their jars but found she was alone.

She looked at the blood on her fingertips, then wiped them against the surface of the sculpture and half-walked, half-ran back to her car.

She went back to her usual pub—which was still quite crowded, surprisingly. The bartender and several of the servers were buzzing about the terrible thing that had happened earlier. There was a strong smell of disinfectant in the air but it didn’t bother Sparkle Eyes, who noticed the empty booth near the back—the one next to the window covered by a sheet of particle board.

Everyone looked at her when she glided through the doors. Men glanced into mirrors, straightening their ties and patting down their hair. Women greedily took hold of their dates and shot her a look that said, Don’t try it, bitch.

As she walked down the aisle, not having to look to see if anyone was watching her because she knew everyone was, her attention was caught by a song from the jukebox, an old Motown hit: “Always Something There To Remind Me.” She stared at the back of the man who was leaning over the machine, punching in his next song choice.

Any guy who was a Motown fan got high marks in her book.

Ready or not, here I come, she thought. Then he turned around. Amanda’s breath caught in her throat. Dear God.

The acne scars on his cheeks were so deep she could see them even from where she was standing, some twelve feet away, and you could tell from the way he moved, from the way he looked down at the floor and would not make eye contact with anyone who passed, from the way his hands immediately—snap!—went into his pockets, you could tell that this was not a confident man, not a popular man, not a man who'd come here easily; it had probably taken all the nerve he could summon just to leave the house, let alone actually walk into this place. It wouldn’t have surprised her to know that he was terrified, and it did not surprise her that he was sitting alone at a small two-person table near the jukebox and loud pinball machines and entrance to the billiards room; it did not surprise her that he gripped his half-empty glass a bit too tightly, or that his head came up a little too hard and a little too quickly whenever some woman nearby laughed; it came as no surprise that his waitress would not look at him, even though he smiled and tried to be friendly when she came to his table; it came as no surprise that he stared at his folded hands, that he rubbed his eyes a lot, that he smoked and blinked too much, and that he looked like he couldn't decide whether to cry, scream, leave, or just drop dead on the spot. Every move he made, every gesture, every awkward smile and self-conscious glance-around betrayed his true feelings, if only to Amanda: I know I'm not much to look at, but I'm a nice guy, really I am, and I wish you'd sit down and talk with me, that’s all I want, really, just to talk and nothing more, I’m not trying to get into your pants, promise, just let me buy you a Coke or something because I've been sitting here for most of the evening and I gotta tell you, I feel stupid and ugly and lonely and I don't know if I can handle it anymore so, please, if you wouldn't mind—

—he froze, blanching, when he saw that she was staring at him, and for a moment, one slow, frightened, awkward and god-almighty-agonized moment, he stared back at her, just long enough for a gleam of hope to flash across the surface of his eyes—Is she really looking at ME? Is that smile of hers meant for ME?—then die a fast, sputtering, miserable death as reality kicked in—Hell no, what would a woman like that want with YOU? How could a woman that damned beautiful be attracted to YOU, CRATERFACE?

—and before she could lift her hand to give him a little wave, a little gesture to tell him she was on her way and it was not, repeat not out of pity that she wanted to be with him but because she could tell he was a nice—hell!—a terrific guy, and she would settle for nothing less than a terrific guy—before she could do this, something inside of him, something weak and frightened and conditioned since childhood to kick in on those rare occasions when he felt like a fine, normal, and at least partially attractive man—this awful something reached up and jammed an iron butcher's hook into his heart and he...

crumpled, simply crumpled. He looked away, ashamed, then turned toward the jukebox, downed what was left in his glass, then tossed a too-generous tip onto the table and jumped to his feet and made his way toward the rear exit door, head down, hands in pockets, shoulders slumped and trying hard not to shudder too much. Disgraced, defeated, diminished.

And alone; alone, alone, alone.

The song finished playing, then started again. Sparkle Eyes Amanda wondered if he sat in a favorite chair at home listening to this song over and over, sipping at his beer or whatever poison he picked until he got a dreamy look on his face and could pretend he was someone else. Her heart broke for him a thousand times, then a thousand more. By the time she got to the door and ran out into the parking lot, he was nowhere to be seen. So Sparkle Eyes went back inside.

She took a seat at the far end of the bar and soon found herself laughing just a bit too loudly at some joke told by a man sitting two stools over. He smiled at her. She smiled in return. He moved closer, bought her a drink, and stumbled over his tongue several times, not able to look away from her face. She laughed a soft laugh that ended in something like a low, promising purr, then touched a fingertip to his lips. The rest was easy. Because Beauty always has her way.

* * *

Her sisters surrounded her now, whispering of their awe and admiration as they caressed her— I've never seen hair as lovely as yours your eyes are so breathtaking and pure azure what I wouldn't give for a figure like yours with that stomach so flat and diamond perfect God your lips I love your lips so full and red and sensual and moist your neck so slender your arms so slim your hands so delicate your legs so exquisite your skin so luminous—

—then she remembered the words of Old Roses, who was Shekinah and Malkuth, as well: Women shouldn't care about lies like Beauty and Ugliness and Plainness—

—she saw that each of her shadow sisters had claimed some part of her old self— her old eyes, her old lips, nose, hands, legs, cheeks, teeth, bone structure, neck—and it took a moment for the full impact of that to register—

—As forgettable as you think you are, there is someone out there who envies what you have; to whom you, as you are, are the ideal— "I don't want you to envy me," she said to her sisters. "Not envy," said a sister in Shekinah's voice. "Admire." "Why are you here?" "To admire, and to give thanks. I am changed." "I am changed," echoed the others. "I am more than I was." "I am more than 1 was." "But you always were," said Amanda. "All of you." “We know this. Because of you.”

One of them placed a warm, loving hand on her bare shoulder, a touch so sensual in its silent softness that its physical pleasure transcended the merely sexual. “We understand how you feel,” said this sister, “and we love you so very, very much." She leaned forward and kissed Amanda on the lips, long and lovingly; then, with great tenderness, cupped her face in magical hands and squeezed until Amanda had no choice but to part her lips; when she did this, her nameless sister breathed into her mouth an age-old breath filled with the breath of all sisters before and yet to come. It seeped down into her core and spread through her like the first cool drink on a hot summer’s day: an ice-bird spreading chill wings that pressed against her lungs and bones until Amanda was flung wide open, dizzy and disoriented, seized by a whirling vortex and spun around, around, around in a whirl, spiraling higher, thrust into the heart of all Creation’s whirling invisibilities, a creature whose puny carbon atoms and other transient substances were suddenly freed, unbound, scattered amidst the universe—yet each particle still held strong to the immeasurable, unseen thread which linked it inexorably to her soul and her consciousness; twirling fibers of light wound themselves around impossibly fragile, molecule-thin membranes of memory and moments that swam toward her like proud children coming back to shore after their very first time in the water alone, and when they reached her, when these memories and moments emerged from the sea and reached out for her, Amanda ran toward them, arms open wide, meeting them on windswept beaches of thought, embracing them, accepting them, absorbing them, becoming Many, becoming Few, becoming One, knowing, learning, feeling; her blood mingled with their blood, her thoughts with their thoughts, dreams with dreams, hopes with hopes, frustrations with frustrations, and in this mingling, in this unity, in this actualization, she became:

a woman, alone, nameless, any ordinary woman, and this woman enters a department store from the street, tired, hot, her hair windblown, looking very mortal, her face perhaps just a tad more visible than she would like, and in order to reach the cosmetics counter she has to pass a deliberately disorienting prism of mirrors and lights and perfume-scents which cumulatively suggest to her that she isn’t all she could be, so by the time she reached the counter she feels old and ugly, then uglier still as she looks across the counter and sees that it is staffed by ranks of angels—seraphim and cherubim—perfect young faces on perfect young bodies, backlit, ethereal, programmed for paradise, and the woman places her hand on the cool glass, looking down at heaven in a tube, in a jar, under the lid of a compact or on the tip of an eye-liner, and when she looks up to the angelic faces behind the counter, hoping for understanding, for some moment of communion, she sees a line of round, unmerciful mirrors, each reflecting her own face in all its imperfection back at her, larger and in harsher light, so flawed and shut out from the paradise on the other side of the counter;

whirling, she became:

two women simultaneously; one, in her late thirties, crossing the street with her face buried in a book, just like Amanda in her high school days when she walked home alone every day, but this woman looked as if she were more interested in keeping her eyes averted from the world passing by than in paying attention to the words on the page; the second woman, much shorter than the first, a good forty pounds heavier and ten years older, carried a shoulder bag filled with books, only the expression on her face—part impatience, part resignation, and part longing—betrayed that she wished she had the nerve to walk with her face buried in a book, but then what would she have to look forward to once she got home? And as they passed one another, both looked up and slowed their steps, just for a moment, because suddenly one was thinking Is that what I’ll look like in ten years? while the other thought My God, is that what I used to look like when I was that age? then the crosswalk sign changed and both, Before and After, hurried along, shaken, rushing along to the same plans in the same kind of house where each had lived similar evenings for longer than either wanted to admit;

spiraling, she became:

a woman named Rosemary, married for twenty-two years to a man she knew had been having an affair with a much younger and prettier woman for at least a year, probably longer, so this Rosemary found herself sitting, nervous, in the waiting room of a plastic surgeon’s office where she planned to have a little liposuction, a bit of a face-lift, and perhaps, if she could afford it, a little breast augmentation, some Inflate-a-Boob so maybe he’d take notice of her once again;

spinning, she became:

a patchwork quilt of wrinkles and cuts and swollen bruises that was once Joyce’s face, and Joyce carefully, with trembling hands, washed away the blood, wincing, her boyfriend’s words, so much more violent than his fists, replaying in her mind: “Why aren’t you beautiful? You’re not even pretty!” and she wept because she knew it was true, she wasn’t pretty and really, really wished she were, because then Kevin wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen with her, and maybe she ought to break it off with him but who else would have her? Maybe getting hit once in a while after he’d had a few too many was the price she had to pay for not being lonely in bed at night;

mingling, she became:

the secret, embarrassed fantasy of so many plain-faced ones: Changed into a very beautiful and glamorous woman, closing their eyes and watching this other beautiful woman who used to be them from another place outside of themselves, seeing her so clearly, so vividly, and trying hard not to shout, “Enjoy it! Enjoy it while you can, you deserve it!” all the time knowing this other woman isn’t them, not really, it was only a silly schoolgirl fantasy;

accepting, she became:

the echo of voices, chanting: “It isn’t me...not myself...not this body of mine, not this fat/sagging/shapeless/old/nothing-special body...it’s her, a someone else...and that face!...a face to die for, not like this one, so ordinary, forgettable...removed from me...from fantasy...a beautiful woman...and I hate myself for feeling this way...not me...not myself...her...someone else...hate myself for feeling this way...why am I nothing if not thin/beautiful/young/without a man?...but, still...

...still I shout...

...enjoy it...

...enjoy it while you can...

...enjoy it while you can you deserve it...

...still...”

…lost and lonely, Amanda felt herself being wrenched backward, down through the ages, through the infinite allness of want and desire and isolation and dreams and shames and moments of pride and self-worth and meaning that Woman had shrunk Herself into so as to be human, raw with pain yet drenched in wonder, and she stretched herself under the weight of this knowing, her eyes staring toward the truth that was her soul, her whole body becoming involved in drawing it back into her in one breath, and in the moment before she came away whole, clean, and filled with glory, in the millisecond before she found herself once again standing in her bathroom staring at the reflection in the mirror, in that brief instant of eternity that revealed itself to her just this once before her final metamorphosis took place, she broke into a language few could understand, speaking of herself and her sisters as zealots entering a church resurrected on the sight of pagan temples called Beauty and Ugliness and Plainness, a novice in the inner sanctum, knowing at whose altar she knelt, to what god she prayed, and in this communion between herself and her sisters she knew all of Woman, and loved them, and thanked them as a thread of knowledge wound itself around a certain part of her consciousness and Shekinah whispered a last answer to a final question—

—and Amanda, awakened to the majesty that was always without and within her, knew exactly, precisely, with a strength of certainty most people know only once in their entire lives, what had happened to her, and why.

She looked at her sisters, crowding around her; so lonely-eyed and plain-faced and in desperate need of one moment of glory, a moment like she’d experienced tonight—and to hell with the empty feeling in the pit of her stomach when it was over—but could not find the words to articulate.

Her sisters, standing there with their jars in their hands. “You’re so beautiful,” said one of them. “Like a picture by Michelangelo.”

Then held out her empty jar.

Amanda reached up and took hold of her father’s straight-razor, opened it, and stood in awe at how exquisitely the blade gleamed in the light. Her sisters held their breath. Every moment of glory comes with its consequences. “I love you,” she whispered to her sisters. “And I give myself to you.” “Amen,” they whispered, tears of gratitude in their eyes. She placed the razor against her lips and began.

Table of Contents

In the Midnight Museum

The Ballad of Road Mama and Daddy Bliss

Kiss of the Mudman

Tessellations

The Sisterhood of Plain-Faced Women