Ghost Road Blues (Pine Deep 1)

He sat there for many minutes, still holding the Xanax, feeling them grind and crunch in his fist. Beside him the bottle wafted its own perfume of escape.

Please come home.

He struggled to his feet and shoved the fistful of Xanax deep into his jacket pocket. He almost—almost—went to the bathroom to flush their temptation away, but did not. Ultimately could not. In order not to embrace the option he needed to know it was still there. The same with the bottle. He capped it and put it in his briefcase. He did go to the bathroom, though, and there he ran cold water and splashed it on his face by the handful for over a minute, then patted his face dry. It was still clear that he’d been crying, but there was nothing more he could do to repair that.

Turning, he went back into the lounge and stopped still. There, by the chair in which he’d been sitting, stood Mandy. His face was still streaked with blood, but tears now ran down and cut paths through the caked red. She looked at him with a mixture of horror and reproach.

Terry stood there in the bathroom doorway, gripping the sides of the frame with both hands, his nails digging into the wood. What could he say? How could he defend against the accusation in her eyes?

“I can’t do it!” he hissed. “I can’t! I have Sarah! I have my friends…my town! You can’t ask this of me. ”

Mandy lifted her eyes to his and the look in them changed from one of horror to a look of total hopeless defeat. She shook her head from side to side, closing her eyes and finally hanging her head.

“It will all be worse now,” she said, but her voice was a ghostly whisper that he could barely hear. Between one teary blink of his eyes and the next she was gone.

Terry stood there, unable to move, for a long time as his heart hammered in his chest and icy sweat pooled at the base of his spine. When he could finally make himself let go and walk out of the room and through the hospital hallways he moved with the unnatural stiffness of the condemned walking the ghost road to the chair.

5

Mike was nearly dancing with happiness when he left Crow’s room. All the way down the hall and in the elevator he kept breaking out into grins. Working for Crow at the Crow’s Nest would be the coolest! He could quit his paper route, which was okay money but a real pain in the ass, especially in bad weather. And he’d get his comics at a discount. Crow said that he could start at eight dollars an hour, which was huge! Anything he wanted to buy from the store would be at cost. Crow even said that they could maybe do a little jujitsu when things got slow. If Mike wasn’t in so much pain he would have thought he was dreaming.

His face was locked into a broad happy grin as he exited the elevator and headed across the broad hall to the exit doors, passing nurses who saw his smile and returned it automatically. Mike passed two police officers who were heading into the hospital—one medium-?sized and skinny and one huge and muscular. The skinny one grinned at him, but the big one gave him a flat, wide-?eyed stare and as Mike passed he craned his head all the way around to watch him go. Mike barely noticed the cop’s attention as he pushed through the doors and jog-?limped over to his bike.

In the lobby, the cops stopped and the bigger officer stood staring with total intensity out through the glass.

His partner said, “What’s up? You know that kid?”

Temporary Officer Edward Oswald stared slack-?jawed, not even hearing his partner. His heart had suddenly started hammering in his chest.

His partner, Norris Shanks, tapped him on the arm. “Yo! Tow-?Truck. What the hell’s with you?”

Tow-?Truck Eddie Oswald blinked, becoming aware of his partner. He cleared his throat and forced himself to turn away from the sight beyond the glass doors of the Beast—the very much alive Beast—unchaining his bike.

“No…” he said absently. Then recollecting himself, he said, “No. It’s nothing. ”

Inside his brain the voice of God was telling him: Wait! Wait until you are alone!

“Yes,” he murmured.

“What?” asked Shanks.

“Nothing,” Tow-?Truck Eddie said and moved on into the hospital.

6

Val was awake when Crow came in and she felt her heart lift when he poked his head through the doorway.

“You order a pizza?”

She held her good arm out to him. “Come here and kiss me this instant, you idiot. ”

With as much consideration for their mutual injuries as he could manage, Crow gathered her in his arms and showered her face with kisses. Val could feel his heart beating against her chest as he held her close, and she leaned into him, kissing his neck, inhaling the scent of him—sweat, anesthetic, a hint of chocolate—and the reality and familiarity of him, even in so unfortunate a place as this hospital, made her feel more human than she had all day.

Val touched his hand, where the nub of the IV port was still taped to the skin. “You playing copycat?”

“Yep. I waited until they started a new IV bag, popped it out, tied a loop in the plastic thingee, and snuck out. The cop on duty is Norris Shanks and he’s an old bud. He play

ed lookout for me while I snuck in. If we get caught, though, we have to say he was on a bathroom break. ”