Dead Man's Song (Pine Deep 2)

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

—Ernest Hemingway,] “On the Blue Water” Esquire, April 1935

Wolf comes hunting, pale moon overhead Big gray wolf comes hunting, blood moon overhead Better lock your doors, better say your prayers ’Cause the wolf’s come hunting…hunting for your child.

—Oren Morse, Bad Moon Blues

Chapter 10

(1)

In his dreams he was usually Iron Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil, a planet-hopping, dimension-crossing super-hero with high-tech weapons and vast powers that made him invulnerable to harm. In one of his favorite dreams Mike was the squad leader of a team of interstellar commandoes and in those dreams he moved with the ruthless efficiency and eyes-on-the-prize clarity of focus of Jack Bauer—if Jack Bauer had been a spaceman. Frequently the villains in his dreams looked like Vic—and even in the deepest of his dreams Mike realized what that was all about—and in each of those dreams the Enemy of Evil would kick the ass of alien invader-Vic, or demon-Vic, or monster-from-beyond-Vic. Those were pretty good dreams because it felt good to blast Vic with a laser or cut his head off with a two-handed broadsword.

Sometimes—rarely over the years and then almost exclusively over the last few months—Mike’s dreams changed into very regular and specific nightmares. In those dreams he would be walking through a dark swampy hollow. The bushes and trees around him were on fire and there were people lying everywhere. Dead people, covered in blood, torn apart. In those dreams Mike always carried a samurai sword, a katana, in his hands, which was odd because in his adventure dreams Iron Mike Sweeney always used either a blaster or a big knight’s sword, never one of the slender Japanese blades, but in these new dreams it was always a katana, and its blade was always smeared with bright blood.

In these dreams the dead people were people Mike knew. Crow was there a lot, and he almost always wore a big tank on his back of the kind that extermin

ators or lawn-care guys wore, and the hose was clutched in Crow’s dead hand. The only part of him that wasn’t covered in blood was the front of his T-shirt, which showed the logo for band called Missing 84, which Mike had never heard of. Crow’s fiancée was usually alive, but she’d been beaten to her knees and was weeping over the body of her father, Henry Guthrie. There were other people: Dr. Weinstock from the hospital, sprawled with his throat torn out, and the chief of police sitting with his back propped against a tree and his legs spread, a piss stain spreading on his pants as he dribbled blood from his nose and mouth and ears. Others, too, like his mom. She wasn’t dead, but stood naked and covered in blood—and when he was awake Mike wondered how sick it was that he dreamed of his mother naked and tried to imagine how much of his life would be spent in therapy because of that image—and his mom was laughing as the forest burned and people died. There was a dark man standing next to her, also laughing, but he was hazy like an out-of-focus photograph and Mike could discern no details.

Last night Mike had been through that dream again, all of the familiar images of pain and loss and horror, all the way up to the point where a shadow passed over Mike and he turned to see what had cast it. He turned and looked up…and up and it stood there: impossibly huge, monstrous, towering above the flames, laughing in a voice that rumbled like thunder. A vast creature like something out of horror movies, with hairy goatlike legs, the muscular torso of a man, a whipping tail with a barbed point, and vast black wings. A mouth that was filled with teeth the size of daggers and horns that were splashed with gore. A monster Mike had seen on TV and in films and that he’d read about in books, but though this was the form of the devil in every aspect, Mike knew that even its shape and appearance were a lie. A special effect, or at least done for effect. Not that it made the creature any less terrifying. If anything, the deliberate choosing of this image—an aspect intended to be reviled and feared on a primal level—showed the subtlety and mockery of the beast. In these dreams the monster would spread its great arms as if to encompass the burning hollow, the forests, the town, and the world, and he would hiss “Mine!” just before reaching for Mike.

This is how his dreams had started last night, and then at the moment those massive hands were closing around him the dream changed as abruptly as if someone had clicked a TV remote and immediately Mike was on his bicycle out on A-32, pedaling fit to burst his heart, his breath burning in his throat, as behind him the Wrecker barreled down on him, its horn blaring like the howl of a hellhound and the spiked bars of its chrome grille breaking apart in the middle to form two rows of jagged metal fangs. That dream also played itself out, all the way to the point where the wheels of the trucks rolled over him from the toes upward, pulverizing his bones and pulping his flesh while worlds of fire exploded in every cell and his mind absorbed all of it without escape.

Then last night, as this dream literally ground to a halt with his skull exploding into blackness, he should have awakened—as he had the night before, and the night before that—but again some perverse hand punched the Great Cosmic TV Remote and his consciousness was switched into a new dream. A brand-new dream, not a rerun. Mike was always aware that he was dreaming even when he was in the deepest part of his sleep. Part of him—he was never sure if it was his essential self or some alien part—was always watching as things happened. This had always been the case with him, even during the adventure dreams of Iron Mike Sweeney, the Enemy of Evil, and that part of him knew that it was not he who was controlling the Great Cosmic TV Remote. If it had been, he’d have channel surfed away from the burning forest and out from under the wheels of the Wrecker and back into an adventure dream in which he was the buff hero with a big sword rescuing a scantily clad heroine who would look suspiciously like Scarlett Johansson.

This new dream was, in its way, stranger than all the others, and in its way it was part of all the others. A blend. The burning forest was there, though instead of staggering through the forest looking at all the twisted dead, Mike rode down a long hill toward it. The hill started out as Route A-32, and the Wrecker was hot on his tail, the grille snapping at his back tire, but then Mike got a weird kind of second wind and it gave him the grit to amp it up. His legs became a blur and the thin rubber of his tires send up a high keening wail as he shot forward, moving faster and faster, pulling ahead of the Wrecker. Behind him the horn screamed in frustrated protest, but Mike was flying forward now, the wind moving across his cheeks so fast it felt like cold water. His red hair snapped behind his skull like the streamers of a torn flag.

The black flatness of A-32 changed under him and he looked down to see that asphalt had become hard-packed dirt and then a rutted road, but still he rode on. Several times he would surge his weight upward so high that the bike would lift under him and they would sail right over a deep pothole or a fallen branch. Nothing could stop him. As the tires thumped back down on the dirt the shock would go through him, but there was no pain in it. The jolt felt good because his muscles were hard and yet loose, tensed only where they needed to be, like a top athlete’s would be in the heat of the championship race. His lungs worked, but there was no burn in his throat. This was a pace that would kill anyone else, but it couldn’t kill him because it was his pace.

As the bike jolted back down he felt something bump hard against his back. Something long and comfortably heavy was slung across his back. He could not see it, but he knew what it was. His sword. His katana. A samurai sword with a wrought-iron hilt made to look like November trees whose branches were filled with crows. He knew the crows-in-the-trees pattern was painted on the black lacquered sheath.

His bike followed the path as it began to plunge down away from the highway, down into the shadows of Dark Hollow. The shadows cast by the mountains and the tall trees closed in around him, but Mike did not lose sight of the road. In this dream Mike could see in the dark. In this dream Mike understood the dark—though the part of him that was watching the dream did not understand what that meant. It was enough that the Mike in the dream understood it.

Down and down he rode, the path smoothing out as it neared the bottom. Ahead Mike could see the first of the burning trees and shrubs, and he knew he was reaching the place where the dead would be. Where the creature would be. Where the killing would be. The farther down he went the more of the forest was ablaze and he could feel the heat on his skin. It was leaning into a picture of hell, because the fire was filled with screams and bodies that twisted and writhed as they shrieked. Mike loved the fire, loved what it was doing, though he didn’t understand why he loved it. The slope bottomed out and broadened into a clearing and this field was packed with hundreds of people—some burning, some not. Those that were not aflame spun toward him, hissing like snakes, glaring at him with crimson eyes, snarling with mouths filled with yellow fangs.

These monsters clustered around a small knot of people—Crow, Val, Dr. Weinstock, a few others he didn’t know—and had been closing in on them as Mike swept down and skidded to a stop, swinging the back end of his bike around so that a plume of dust was kicked up into the air. Bits of twig and leaf in that plume caught fire, and for a second Mike was hidden behind a veil of that fire, then he leapt through the curtain, drawing his sword and howling with a bloodlust that was a match for any monster in any of his dreams. He felt older, bigger, powerful, insanely confident.

He laughed in triumph as his blade flicked out and cut one monster’s head from its shoulders. The creature instantly turned to a pillar of flaming ash and then exploded into dust. Mike landed in front of the crowd of people—and even Crow looked helpless and weak—and the creatures all hesitated. Mike’s sword flashed through the air and then he swept it down and slashed a line in the ground in front of his feet. The line burned as if the tip of the sword was filled with kerosene.

“Let’s do this!” he said aloud in a line cribbed from the movie Blade.

The monsters snarled and in a single mass of teeth and claws they closed in on Mike and his friends, but Mike’s sword became a blur of bloodstained silver as he leapt to meet them, slashing and twisting, skewering and then whipping the sword free and using the same motion to kill a creature lunging at him from behind. The monsters died by the dozens, they died by the score. Flames ignited everywhere as they died, and Mike never stopped laughing as he whirled and lunged and killed and killed and—

The scream behind him made his freeze in place and when he snapped his head around he saw that indeed all of the monsters had closed in at once. Not one at a time the way they did in the movies, but all at once. More than a hundred of them. Maybe two or three hundred. All at once. Mike’s flashing sword had killed fifty, sixty of them…and the rest had fallen on Crow and Val and Dr. Weinstock and the others and had torn them to bloody shreds. Mike stared as the last of his friends—Tyler Carby, from his homeroom class—was dropped to the ground, head lolling on a neck that was no more than raw meat and strings. Everyone was dead. Everyone. Crow and Val lay in a tangle of broken limbs and burst flesh and the only part of them that was not streaked with blood was her left hand where the diamond engagement ring glittered in the firelight, sparkling like an accusing eye.

“No…” Mike said—and the dreaming Mike and the watching Mike said it as one. One pale voice that caught fire and vanished into silent smoke. The ring of monsters all leered at him with looks that were almost comical what-did-you-expect looks. Mike tried to lift his sword, but it was too heavy for him. Around him the ring of monsters closed like a fist.

Mike Sweeney woke up with the sound of his own death scream in his mouth. He almost screamed out loud, but even in the worst moment of panic he still remembered Vic and so he snatched his pillow and pressed it to his face and screamed into that. It was three in the morning, and Mike did not go back to sleep at all that night. He didn’t dare.

(2)

On the pitched eave above Mike’s window, the Bone Man sat cross-legged in the cold wind of 3:00 A. M. , his guitar across his thighs and night birds perched on both shoulders. He heard Mike’s scream as loudly as if the boy had shrieked it in his e

ar. He stared up at the moon, whose arc was cutting itself into the horizon over past the hospital.

“Damn, boy” he said to the wind, and shook his head. “Damn…you almost had it. ”

One of the night birds shifted and cawed softly. The Bone Man nodded, as if the bird had said something profound. The wind that blew through him was cold, and he could feel it. He always felt cold, and now he felt colder still.