Dead Man's Song (Pine Deep 2)

Little Scarecrow screamed and screamed. He felt the claws of the beast as it seized the shoulder of his jacket and spun him around. Little Scarecrow stared up in terror at the face—at that horrible, impossible face! Red eyes flared at him, eyes filled with h

ate, with hunger, and with triumph. A long muzzle wrinkled back to reveal rows of dripping teeth like racks of knives. Little Scarecrow stared into the black depths of the mouth, he felt the heat of its breath, smelled the carrion stink as the muscles of the beast bunched, tensed—and then it lunged at him…

…And he woke up, as he always did, just as he felt the claws tear through his flesh. Even a marginally kinder universe would have let him wake up a moment sooner.

Crow sat up in bed, clamping a hand over his mouth to stifle the scream that was bubbling there behind his tongue. He turned and shot a worried, desperate glance at Val, but she was still deep in sleep, her face slack and painted blue-white by the starlight.

He closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose, deflating the scream and calming the spasms in his chest. His heart was fluttering inside him like a baseball card stuck in bicycle spokes. Then with the soothing clarity of a breeze blowing over hot skin he heard another sound. It may have been another dream, or it might have been a peculiarity of the wind as it whistled through the drains and pipes that clung to the side of the hospital walls, but as he lay there Crow thought he heard—faintly, just a whisper—the sound of a guitar played far away. Soft, sad music. Mississippi blues played by a deft hand—one that knew how make the strings weep and moan. Like the way the Bone Man played all those years ago. The sound could not be there on the wind, it was so ghostly and thin that it was probably not there, even though when Crow strained to hear it he believed he actually did. The music—sad as it was—was a comfort to him. Listening to it, Crow drifted back into sleep. This time he didn’t dream at all, which was a blessing.

(3)

It was the dream about the Change. Terry lay there, aware that he was dreaming, which made it worse, because Sarah was really there beside him just as she was in the dream. In both worlds her warm reality was pressed up against him, back and buttocks and feet all snugged in, her breathing steady and deep, her vulnerability absolute.

He could feel her heat, smell the fragrance of her shampoo and the faintest traces of fabric softener from the pillow under her head. Terry drew in those smells and found that he was becoming aware of other smells, smaller ones, subtler ones. Smells he would never have noticed before or perhaps never have been able to detect before, but that were now distinct and unique. Perfumes in their bottles on the bureau across the room. He’d never noticed those before. Dust bunnies under the bed. A whiff of cedar from the closet. The Desenex in his gym shoes. Potpourri in a bowl in the hallway. The lingering smell of the salmon they’d had for dinner. The detergent from the dishwasher downstairs. He could smell everything, and not just smell it—he knew what each smell was. Each one was separate, distinct; he could catalog them all.

It was the same with sounds. Party Cat’s breathing was as loud as if he’d fallen asleep in front of a microphone, but he was in the twins’ room all the way down the hall, and though Terry’s own bedroom door was closed he could hear the kids breathing as they slept. He could hear dry leaves skittering along the shingles on the roof, and he could hear when the sound changed as the leaves fell into the rain gutter and slithered along the metal. He could hear cars on Corn Hill, but he could also hear the growl of a truck way out on A-32. Somewhere way out on the breeze he could hear the sound of someone playing blues on an acoustic guitar—something sad and sweet. He could hear the blood racing through the big veins in Sarah’s sweet, soft throat. Terry could hear all of these things, just as he could hear the slow grinding mumble of his bones as they began to shift and change under his skin. His skin moved with a sound like someone stretching wet leather. Why could Sarah not hear that? It was so loud.

Then the pain started. First it was a dull ache in his bones, an almost indefinable throb of the kind his Gram used to call growing pains. An ache that seemed to hover around each bone rather than actually be a part of them, a throbbing that made him want to move, to shift, to find a new position in which to lie, but he knew that he couldn’t shift away from what was happening in his bones and cartilage. Then his skin began to hurt as it stretched over the new bone-shapes. He’d felt an ache like that once before when he’d broken his ankle while hiking and the whole joint had swelled inside his boots, and then continued to swell when he’d managed to pull the boot off, swelling until it seemed like the skin itself would have to split. Back then the skin hadn’t split—though Terry had gone through long hours where he perversely wanted to take a pin and pop the swelling to see if his ankle would explode. Now that same feeling of swelling-to-bursting was blossoming in every joint, not just his ankles but his knees and hips, his elbows and wrists, each separate joint of his fingers. It was like someone was pouring gallons of hot blood into him, pumping it under his skin.

He wanted to scream, needed to scream, had to scream, but he bit it back—literally bit down, plunging his teeth into his lips, aware that the skin was tearing, aware—oh God how aware—of the delicious salty blood that was filling his mouth. His teeth, those biting teeth, felt huge and so, so wrong. He clenched his hands—swollen and misshapen as they had become—and dug his nails into his palms until there, too, blood welled hot and sweet-smelling.

Beside him Sarah stirred in her sleep and wriggled tighter against him. He almost did it then. Right then. He almost reached for her with hands and with mouth, with hunger and with teeth. Almost. After a moment Sarah drifted back into her dreams, sliding deeper beneath the surface and was unaware of anything but his warmth and nearness while Terry ate his screams.

The night boiled around him and gradually, with infinite and perverse slowness, the urge retreated, leaving Terry sweating and trembling, lips and palms slick red, breath hissing in and out of his flaring nostrils. Again the awareness of every sound, every smell came flooding back and Terry’s senses filled him with an animal keenness. He lay awake, terrified of that dream, of the nightmare he had just escaped, dreading the thought of going back to sleep for fear that the dream would start again and that this time he would not be able to shake himself awake from it.

Terry was very much mistaken about that. He had not been asleep for hours. He had not been dreaming at all.

(4)

Barney caught Weinstock just as the doctor was about to open his office door. “This just came,” he said and handed over a large envelope.

Weinstock looked at the label. The second set of lab reports on Cowan and Castle. Barney was still standing there, visibly fidgeting. “Is there a problem, Barney?”

“This is more about those cops,” the nurse said quietly, glancing around to make sure no one else was in earshot. “Isn’t it?”

Weinstock gave him a long, steady look. “I thought we had an agreement about this, Barney,” he said.

“I…”

“I’m doing some follow-up work,” Weinstock said evenly. “Do you feel that you need to say something about this matter?”

Barney stiffened. “No, Dr. Weinstock. ” He opened his mouth to add something, thought better of it, and clamped his jaw shut.

“Have a good evening, Barney,” Weinstock said, and he kept his gaze steady as the nurse turned walked down the hall, back rigid. When Barney turned the corner, Weinstock quickly opened his office door, hurried inside, locked it, and began tearing at the envelope. His fingers trembled and fumbled as he tore it open and pulled out the sheaf of papers from the lab. For a slow five-count he closed his eyes, not wanting to see what was written there and bracing himself for the worst. If they matched the first report he didn’t know what he would do. Weinstock had checked the staff schedule to make sure that his request for new labs would not go to Don Ito—Ito had the day off and another and more junior tech had processed the samples. That was good because until he was sure what was going on he wanted to keep the whole thing off the radar. He opened his eyes and began to read, first the reports on Cowan’s blood and tissue work, and then Castle’s; then he read through them both again.

“Almighty God…” he breathed. The shadows in his office suddenly seemed to loom up around him and never in his life had Saul Weinstock been as deeply terrified as he was at that moment.

(5)

Mike Sweeney drifted between three dreams. First it was the nightmare of the burning town and the death of everyone he knew and that melted into the dream where the Wrecker chased him and ran him down, grinding him to red paste on the black highway. The third dream—the new one—that was the worst by far. It always started out okay, with him feeling immensely powerful, pedaling his bike faster than the wind, swooping down the long hill to the Hollow at the base of the mountains, skidding to a stop amid the flame and the hordes of murdering monsters. He would leap off, dragging his sword out of its sheath, the blade bright with mirrored flame, launching himself into a murderous attack. It was the kill that thrilled him most, and he was good at it. Naturally, easily, gleefully good at it. His sword would flick and dance, seeding the air with scarlet droplets of blood. He would dodge and twist, too fast to catch, too strong to overwhelm, too powerful to be stopped. His enemies would fall around him, unable to stand before his fury.

And yet still his friends would die. He would kill the monsters until they were stacked like cordwood ten deep around him. Or he would cut them, watching as they burst into flame. But always, always, always there were too many, and they would overwhelm his friends. Even while he survived. Even if he went on to kill every last one of the monsters, his friends—Crow, Val, Tyler—all of them would die.

Then he would hear the voice of the Beast—this time a beast he could see, and he would turn and there it was. Fifteen feet tall, with great bat wings spread wide and gnarled goat legs with hooves that split stones when he stamped. Curling horns arched up from his head and in his mouth his teeth were like daggers. A devil in flesh, the demon god of some new hell.

“LOOK AT ME!” it would roar in a voice that shook the world. Mike would begin to scream then. Even with all of the other monsters dead around him and his sword still in his hands, he would begin to scream. It was not an inarticulate howl of rage or pain or even terror. It was a word that he would scream, and the screaming of that single word would tear blood from his throat and rip him raw. The sound of it would shatter the cold steel of his sword and shatter the bones in his own legs, dropping him down onto his knees as agony exploded upward through his thighs and into his groin. He would scream that one word over and over again until the screaming of it burst him apart more surely than the wheels of the Wrecker, and in his dreams Mike would feel himself dying, would actually feel his skull splitting and his throat rupturing as his blood fought to escape his veins.

He would scream the word, “Father!” And then he would die