Ghost Road Blues (Pine Deep 1)

Prologue

One Month Before Halloween This Year

I have wrought great use out of evil tools. Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwe-?Lytton, first Baron Lytton, Richelieu

Every evil in the bud is easily crushed; as it grows older, it becomes stronger. Cicero, Philippicoe

I got to keep moving, I got to keep moving Blues falling down like hail, blues falling down like hail Mmm, blues falling down like hail, blues falling down like hail And the day keeps on remindin’ me, there’s a hellhound on my trail Hellhound on my trail, hellhound on my trail. Robert Johnson, “Hellhound on My Trail”

1

The last thing Billy said was, “Oh, come on…there’s nothing out there. ”

And then two sets of bone-?white hands arched over the slat rails on the wagon and seized him by the shoulders and the collar and dragged him screaming into the darkness. He tried to fight them, but they had him and as he rasped along the rail, feet flailing and hands scrabbling for some desperate purchase, other white figures closed in and he was dragged away.

Claire screamed at the top of her lungs. Everyone else screamed too. Even the guy driving the tractor screamed.

Billy screamed louder than all of them.

Claire launched herself forward from the hay bale on which she’d been sitting just a moment ago holding Billy’s hand; she leaned out into the darkness beyond the rails, her fingers clawing the air as if that could somehow bring him back. Thirty feet away six figures had forced Billy down to the ground and were hunched over him, their white hands reaching down to tear at him with hooked fingers, their black mouths wide with slack-?jawed hunger, their bottomless dead eyes as vacant as the eyes of dolls.

“Billy!” she screamed, and then grabbed at the others around her, pulling at their sleeves, slapping at the hands that tried to pull her back. She wheeled on them—on eighteen other kids, most of them from her own high school, all cringing back against the wooden rails of the flatbed, or trying to hide behind bales of hay—she begged them to help. A few shook their heads. Most just screamed. One boy—a big kid who looked like he might be a jock—made a halfhearted attempt to move forward, but his girlfriend and his buddies dragged him back.

Claire spat at them and spun back, screams still ripping from her throat as she watched Billy’s thrashing arms and legs. She looked up at the man driving the tractor, but he was white-?faced with shock and was frozen in a posture of near flight, half out of his seat.

Then one of the white-?faced things bent low toward him and because of the angle Claire could not see what he was doing, but Billy gave a single high, piercing shriek of absolute agony and then his legs and arms flopped to the ground and lay still.

The moment froze.

Slowly, the creature raised its head from Billy’s body and turned toward the tractor with its towed flatbed of schoolkids. It snarled at them—a low, menacing growl, the kind a dog would give when another animal came close to its food. The creature’s white skin peeled back from its teeth and there, caught between those yellow teeth, was a drooping tube of purple meat that trailed back to the red ruin that was Billy’s stomach.

Claire’s scream rose up above the darkened road, above the vast seas of whispering corn on either side, far up into the swirling blackness that spread like a shroud from horizon to horizon. Flocks of nightbirds cried out and took to the air. The driver stamped down on the gas and the tractor’s engines made a guttural roar as the flatbed was jerked forward.

Three of the creatures rose at the sound and turned to face the tractor, their faces painted with crimson, their jaws working as they chewed. As the tractor inched forward, the wheels still churning in the mud that had stalled it there a few minutes ago, the creatures began moving toward the smell of fresh meat. Of living flesh.

Everyone screamed again and they shouted and cursed at the driver to move, move, move! The man at the wheel kicked down harder and with a great sucking sound the wheels tore free of the mud and the whole mass—tractor, flatbed, and kids—lurched forward, picking up speed with every second. The white-?faced ghouls staggered out into the road and began to follow. Slowly, awkwardly at first, and then faster as they saw their prey gaining ground.

“Move!” the jock roared, and others shouted with him.

The ghouls were trotting now, their awkward gait becoming more orderly as they gained momentum. They were gaining.

Up ahead, the road bent around past a stand of old weeping willows and the driver shifted gears and kept kicking the gas pedal.

“They’re coming!” Claire shrieked.

The tractor was moving faster and faster now, the cold air whipping past the faces of the kids. The ghouls were thirty yards back. Twenty-?five.

Twenty.

The jock was mumbling, “This isn’t happening…this isn’t happening…” over and over again as he clung to his girlfriend.

The tractor took the curve as fast as the driver could manage it, with the flatbed canting sharply to one side and all the kids screaming again as they were pushed one against the other.

It cleared the curve and there in the distance were the lights of the main building. Everyone was still screaming as the tractor roared down the last hundred yards toward the big barn where scores of people stood, each of them caught in a posture of surprise, turned toward the sound of the big engine and the constant screams.

Claire turned and looked back, but the shadows along the road had closed over the leading ghoul. It was gone. Maybe…maybe it had given up.

She sank back against the nearest person, clutching the stranger’s sleeve and weeping brokenly. “Billy!” she kept saying. “Billy…”