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His head felt heavy. He wanted to lay it down, let his chin fall on his chest, let his neck rest from carrying that improbably heavy burden, but he couldn’t. Something burned in the back of his head and he felt as if that burning pinpoint kept his head from falling forward. There were other burning spots as well, little fires in his hands, along his sides, down one leg, in the heel of his other, twisted leg. The skin around each point of fire was warm, too, but the warmth was wet and ran in long lines down his limbs.
When he was up in the light he could smell things that didn’t make sense, a cacophony of odors. Distantly he thought that they should make sense, but it was so hard to think with that constant burning. He struggled to separate the smells. There were four of them, he thought. One smell was sweet and thick and reminded him of freshly sheared copper. Another smelled like his mother’s kitchen and her spicy food, of Sunday dinners with Uncle Tony and the pot of gravy always simmering on the stove. He could remember that kitchen to the tiniest detail, though he could not, for the life of him, remember his own name, or how he came to be there. Or where he was. Or anything useful.
His thoughts drifted back to the smells. The third smell was an outhouse stink of urine and sweat, and he knew that those smells
came from him. He wondered if he had made a mess of himself; he wondered if he should care. The last of the smells was an aroma from his teenage days long ago. How long ago? He wasn’t sure. A long time? Yesterday? He could not be sure, but he knew that smell was the gasoline stink of cars and grease and filling stations. The four smells were all around him, covering him, clogging his nose, filling the air that drifted past his bloodied nose and mouth and eyes.
He tried to move, and from a thousand miles away he felt the fingers of one hand twitch. Was it his right hand? He wasn’t sure. Just fingers, moving.
He coughed once. A short, sharp cough choked with bloody phlegm, and the brief convulsion of the cough ignited each of those burning points into white-hot searing suns that fried his nerve endings. He wanted to scream, to run away from the burning points of agony, but he could not throw his head back to utter the shriek that welled in him; instead his jaw dropped down and a stuttering, gagging growl bubbled out of the back of his throat.
Gradually, gradually, the intense flare of pain subsided, the fires banking back down to the burning points of heat. Then he coughed again, unexpectedly, sharply, a deeper cough that knotted his guts as if he’d just been punched. He doubled forward and the burning pain in the back of his head flared again, but the resistance was immediately gone. As his heavy head sagged forward, his shoulders followed, igniting more of the burning spots again, but with each flare more of his body became unstuck. He crumpled forward and he could see the ground reaching up toward him. He could see the puddle of gasoline and blood and urine that pooled around his shoes. He toppled forward, finally pulling free of the nails that had held him to the trapdoor.
Frank Ferro collapsed onto the porch of Griswold’s house.
The punctured sprayer leaked high octane down his sides and onto the floor, and blood pumped sluggishly from twenty-six deep punctures in his body. The hole in the back of his head glistened red and there were tiny flecks of bone and brain tissue mingled in with the flowing blood.
One pierced hand flopped out, scrabbling feebly toward the light. He tried to find his feet, tried to recall how they worked, and after long minutes of trying managed to kick weakly backward against the door. He managed to shove himself six inches forward, six inches farther toward the yard. He tried again, and this time his fingers closed around a thick piece of debris from the fallen porch. He pulled with all his strength and slid another five inches forward. He coughed again and blood began streaming from his nose. The light flickered off and on and the point of burning pain in the back of his head became white hot again.
Ferro laid his face down on the floor and tried to remember how to pray. He knew he should be able to remember. But it was so hard to think.
When the thin black man in the dirty suit came walked out of the woods, Ferro looked up, hope flaring in his chest, but then the insight of the dying told him who this man was—this young man in cheap funeral clothes, with a nappy old-fashioned Afro and a blues guitar.
The man sat down on the porch rail, swinging the guitar around in front of him. He had a kindly face, though his eyes were like dusty marbles.
“You can see me, can’t you?” the man said.
Ferro couldn’t find his voice. He tried to nod, but even that was so hard.
“Yeah, you can see me. And I think you know who I am. Something tells me you do. ” He picked out a couple of notes on his guitar. “Listen, my brother, ’cause time is short. There’s someone coming out here who you’re not gonna want to meet, but he’ll be here just the same. He’s the peckerwood son of a bitch did this to you, and he’s the one laid the traps for your friends. ” He bent closer. “I hope you can understand me, man, ’cause if you do, then you got one last chance to stick it to the Man. ”
3
The sight of Jimmy Castle standing there jerked Crow sideways into an unreal world where nothing made sense. If he had seen Ruger he could probably have dealt with it…but Castle was dead and buried. He and Weinstock had opened his coffin, had seen his putrefying corpse, had confirmed that Castle was dead. He could not be here.
Castle tossed the flashlight over his shoulder, where it struck the wall and clattered to the ground, the lens cracked but the bulb still lit.
Even though he was still bundled up in the carpet, LaMastra nonetheless made a gagging sound, which is when the spoiled-meat stink of Castle registered in Crow’s stalled brain. It was as rancid as the leavings in the corner of a bear’s den.
“Man, the look on your face is priceless,” Castle said, laughing. “Almost as bad as when you and Saul Weinstock opened my casket. You both looked like you swallowed frogs. ”
“You…were dead!”
“I’m still dead, asshole. I’m a fucking vampire. You think sleeping in a coffin for a few days was gonna bother me? Nels and I—we thought it was a gas. Fooled your ass. ”
“But you were all…”
“All what? De-com-posed?” He made each syllable sound like a separate word. “Yeah, well, we can do all sorts of things and regenerating is part of the luxury package. Soon as I chomp down on you and your butt-buddy I’ll be right as rain. ”
Castle shook his head and laughed. Other voices laughed, too. Behind them…near them, around them in the dark. Crow turned slowly to see other white faces emerge from the shadows. Crow saw Nels Cowan, and he had a flash of memories of their days together as policemen. The thickset man had always been funny, quick-witted, thoroughly in love with his wife and kids, and just crooked enough to accept free dinners at the Scarecrow Diner and a Christmas bottle of Jim Beam from the owner of Friendly Spirits. Now, dressed in the torn and filthy black suit he’d been buried in, he shambled through the shadows, drool hanging pendulously from his bloodless lips. This was the Nels Cowan of Weinstock’s video, but worse—purpled by expanding gasses, visibly rotting.
LaMastra finally punched and wrestled his way out of the carpet and flopped around onto his hands and knees. He stared upward in furious indignation and instantly the look of fury on his face changed to one of stark terror. LaMastra screamed.
Without warning Jimmy Castle grabbed the front of LaMastra’s Kevlar vest and jerked him off the floor and pulled him toward his grinning mouth, teeth gleaming like yellow knives. He held the big detective as easily as if he were a little child. LaMastra punched and squirmed, but Castle was far too strong. The vampire bent forward and ran a colorless tongue along the bloody seepage along the line of stitches on LaMastra’s jaw; a moan of deep, almost sexual pleasure escaped Castle’s throat. His eyes were totally black and as he pulled LaMastra even closer his jaws opened impossibly wide. Castle took one handful of the detective’s hair and jerked his head to one side, exposing his throat.
Castle suddenly gagged and staggered, his grip going from rock hard to weak in the space of a second; LaMastra sagged down to his knees and Castle reeled back, pawing at his own mouth, spitting and hissing like a snake.
Crow stared in shock and confusion. Around him the other vampires sent up a howl of anger and confusion. Then Crow got it. The word sprang right into his head.
