Ghost Road Blues (Pine Deep 1)

Chapter 9

1

Tow-?Truck Eddie made no move to get out of the cab. For fifteen minutes he just sat there, looking at the blood on his hands, amazed. Doubt had plagued him for most of the drive home, but as he sat there and stared at the blood, he could feel his fears fragment and fall away, leaving only a clean, shining belief.

“Thank you, God,” he whispered. The gratitude welled up so suddenly and fiercely in his breast that tears sprang from his eyes. “Thank you, my sweet Lord God!”

Finding that man back there by the wrecked car, deep in the corn…how wonderful it had been. He marveled at the subtlety of God’s intricate design, and how he—humble Eddie, the Sword of God—was guided in such sure but secret ways so that hints and clues of the great plan opened up to him bit by bit.

It had been years since his first epiphany, since that day years ago when God had first whispered to him. An actual voice in his head, not just words on the pages of a Bible. A real voice. The voice of God.

Eddie had been twenty when it happened. It was only days after Eddie’s first encounter with the Beast. Back then the Beast had taken a different form—Satan is the Father of Lies—and Eddie and a few men from the town—Vic Wingate, Jim Polk, Gus Bernhardt, and others—had tracked the monster down and killed him, ending the string of murders that had been destroying the town.

After that night the voice of God started speaking to him during his prayers. Not often, at least not at first, and there were long stretches of months when no matter how fervently Eddie prayed there was no response from heaven. Then a few weeks ago God had begun speaking to him almost daily, sometimes several times a day. Then this morning he had been shown the new face that the Beast wore, and Eddie was filled with such holy purpose and glory that he felt he would burst. He kept looking in the rearview mirror to see if light was coming from his eyes and nostrils and mouth. Not yet. Not yet.

He had been cruising A-32 looking for the Beast, unsure if he had actually been killed or not back there. When Eddie had gotten out of the cab to look, there was no sign at all of either boy or bike. Was that how it was when the Beast, in this guise, was killed? Would he just simply dissolve, returning to the corruption from which he was formed? Eddie wasn’t sure and God had not spoken to him to tell him. So, he was prowling the road just in case when either some instinct or perhaps the subtle nudging of God’s hand directed him to the spot near the Guthrie farm where a car had gone off the road. Eddie had immediately pulled over and gone to investigate. Was the Beast here? Had the car struck the Beast and then both of them gone off the road? That thought gave him a pang because he wanted to kill the Beast. He—not anyone else—was the Sword of God.

He checked the scene and could find no traces of a broken bicycle, no debris left from even a minor impact. Just skid marks sliding off the road and into the cornfield.

Eddie moved quietly down the lane of smashed-?down corn stalks, his big hands held defensively. Though Eddie was now fifty, he was still in perfect health and his body—the temple of the Lord—was packed with muscle and finely toned from relentless exercise with free weights, jump rope, heavy bag, and speed bag. He kept his body a perfect offering to the Lord. He had begun to bathe three and even four times a day now, and he was constantly washing his hands at work, especially if he had touched a customer or one of the other mechanics. Those impure oils had to be cleansed from his flesh as quickly as possible, but he had had to do it in secret. The guys had started to notice his fetish for cleanliness, had begun to rib him about it, saying that Tow-?Truck Eddie had a new lady friend who didn’t like grubby fingers on her tender flesh. He had laughed along with the jokes, choking down the rage and shame he felt at such suggestions. A lady friend indeed! As if he could allow himself to be distracted with carnal desires at a time like this. What a pack of dimwitted, shortsighted, unenlightened mud he

ads he worked with. Might as well be working with pigs. They had no idea, no clue, as to why he was preparing himself.

I am God’s predator , he thought, then chastised himself for the vanity of that concept. He rephrased it, I am the Sword of God , and left it at that.

The beam of the flash sparkled on the black metal of the open trunk of the car, and he walked calmly toward it, surveying the scene. The car was smashed, the ball joint broken; he could see that from fifteen feet away. Eddie swept his flashlight over everything, seeing the carnage, examining the pitiful leavings of some kind of adventure that had ended recently and badly. He paused briefly to shine the light in the trunk, saw the scattering of blood-?soaked bills, the small mounds of white powder. He wrinkled his nose in disgust; if there was one thing Tow-?Truck Eddie despised it was pollution of the body. Beer and the like were bad enough, but drugs were downright unholy. He clucked his tongue in disapproval and began scouting the rest of the car. He had approached from the driver’s side of the car, and everything looked deserted. Shining the light in through the open driver’s door revealed nothing but blood. Quite a lot of it, which sent a thrill of excitement coursing through him. The keys were still in the ignition. Tow-?Truck Eddie frowned. Straightening from his inspection of the car, he swept his light over the rows of corn, seeing no one. Then he walked carefully around to the other side of the car, and there lay a man sprawled in the bloody mud. If he had shone his light down when he was peering into the trunk he might have seen him, but the man had fallen down by the passenger side of the car and lay entirely in shadow. The harsh white light of his flash made the scene look like a black-?and-?white photo: black for the man’s suit and tie, white for his face, black for the huge stain of blood that had entirely soaked his shirt.

Eddie had squatted down next to the man and looked him over, from death-?pale face to bloodstained shoes. Odd how lifelike the dead can sometimes look, he thought, and then actually gasped as the man moved his mouth in an attempt to speak, though he made no actual sounds.

Tow-?Truck Eddie was amazed that the man was still alive. He examined the man in the light, seeing that the dark stain of blood still glistened wetly. There were two ragged holes in the man’s shirt. He’d been gut-?shot and was bled as white as the cocaine that had spilled all around him. What a mess, thought Eddie, who couldn’t stand disorder of any kind.

The smell of blood was thick in the air: blood from the man, blood from the birds. The smell was appealing, almost intoxicating, and for a moment Eddie just closed his eyes and let the smell wash over him and through him. He felt a little dizzy from it and had to blink his eyes clear for a few seconds.

He bent closer to peer at the man. Never in his life had he seen a man so close to death. He had seen sick people, sure, even badly wounded ones dragged from wrecks, and he’d seen corpses, but never a man hovering on that delicate point between life and death, his life essence fluttering like a lightning bug trying to work free from a child’s cupped hands. It was incredible to see. Beautiful and delicate and quite moving, and it did something to him. At first he wasn’t aware of it, of what was happening within him, but the realization crept into his consciousness as he watched the man continue his task of dying.

The man looked up at Eddie with pleading in his eyes; eyes that were aswirl with pain and fear, hatred and desperation. Tow-?Truck Eddie crouched there, tasting the emotions overflowing from the man’s eyes. The flow of pain was exquisite. He licked his lips and sniffed in the scent of blood through both nostrils.

“You’re hurt,” he said, savoring the intense rush of blood scent and pain, of truly perfect suffering right here in front of him.

“I…I’ve been…shot. ”

Tow-?Truck Eddie pushed the man over onto his back so he could see the bullet holes more clearly. Fresh blood bubbled weakly from the wounds. He had a sudden and powerful urge to bend forward and drink from the wounds, but he knew that it wasn’t the time for that kind of thing, for that kind of…

He sought the right word.

Sacrament? Was that it? Yes, he thought dreamily. Sacrament. It wasn’t yet time for that kind of sacrament. Not yet. Everything had to be in its time and place, as it said in the Bible. He took the scent again and nearly cried out as the thick coppery smell of fresh blood shot through his nerves like a white-?hot current of electricity. His eyes snapped wide and he rocked back on his heels as door after door blew open in his mind. Suddenly he understood! Suddenly—all at once—this all made sense. Everything made sense. Everything that he had thought about and dreamed about for the last few years made absolutely crystal-?clear sense. He laughed out loud for the sheer joy of it.

He looked down at the man, staring at him with eyes that were still wide with amazement, seeing the man for who he was…for what he was! He laughed again, and he felt tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. Of course! This was no ordinary accident. How could it be? How could he even have thought that it was? How could anyone be so blind as to think that? It wasn’t even an ordinary crime scene. No, no, this was something far removed from all of that, and Tow-?Truck Eddie could suddenly see it. This was something special, something meant only for him, something orchestrated solely for him, and yet something immensely powerful.

He touched the wounds and then looked at the blood on his fingers, glistening black in the light of his flash.

Tow-?Truck Eddie’s mind went click! as that thought passed through him.

He was right. This was not the Sacrement in which the Lord had told him he would one day partake. This was…his baptism.

In his mind the voice of God very faintly whispered, Yesssssss.

Tears burned in Eddie’s eyes and he bent his head in humble thanks. All at once, here in this lonely place, amid all this carnage, he fully understood what he was and who he was. God, mysterious and subtle, had brought this man, this baptizer here. Just as surely as he had directed Eddie to come here. Amid all this violence and evil.