Get a writer talking about himself and he’ll eventually come around to the question of genesis. How did he become a writer? When did he know that storytelling was the path for him, and why? As a reader I love those kind of questions. Give me a short story collection with biographical notes or story introductions, and chances are that I’ll read that stuff before I ever get near the fiction. I can’t help myself There’s just something inside me that needs to know… and right now.

So it’s only fair that I give you my answer to the genesis question up front. Not so much the how, when, or why I became a writer, because I’m still not exactly sure about the answers to those questions.

I can tell you the where, though.

I became a writer at the drive-in movies.

Let me tell you about it.

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather

The multitudinous seas incarnadine,

Making the green one red.

—    Shakespeare

Macbeth, II.2

I was out past the dump, digging a grave for a coyote, when I spotted the van with the naked Mexican chained to the bumper heading my way.

Nothing unusual about that. The van belonged to the border patrol. It didn’t take a college degree to figure that the Mex had crossed the line and got himself noticed by the wrong folks. And in a town like Amigo, that meant trouble served up plain and hot and plenty of it.

That’s trouble, pure western style.

I mopped sweat from my brow with a dirty bandana and watched the van bumping over the rutted dirt road. The tires kicked up dry rust-colored dust. What didn’t stick to the Mexican clouded the crisp blue horizon, hiding Amigo from view.

There wasn’t much to hide, really. Like my daddy used to say before he up and vanished, “Amigo’s a one-horse town, scratch the horse.”

Most folks like it that way, I guess. Around here we keep to ourselves, and the rest of the world doesn’t bother us much. Amigo isn’t exactly a tourist magnet. Oh, once in awhile we get some magazine writer or amateur historian who wants to know about the time Billy the Kid rode through. And every now and then some university kid shows up and drives around the desert for a week or two hunting after Native American artifacts and such. But historians and archaeologists are pretty harmless, as long as they don’t go poking their noses into places they don’t belong. The sheriff and his deputies — with a little help from the border patrol boys — are pretty good at making sure that doesn’t happen.

Other strangers are a little more persistent. Like the flying saucer nuts who want to dredge up those stories from the fifties. Now, I don’t like to stereotype, but in the case of these so-called UFOlogists, it’s hard not to. In my experience they’re generally male and overweight. They’re as familiar with talk radio as they are unfamiliar with personal hygiene. Around here we don’t cater to them much. Mostly, we just shoo ’em on to Roswell. That town likes tourists.

But back to the van and the Mexican. I leaned on my shovel and watched both come my way. There was no sense trying to look busy. When you’ve got a job like mine, it doesn’t matter if you’re good at it or not. Putting on some eager beaver act isn’t likely to impress anyone, especially not the hardcases who pull down checks from the border patrol.

Animal control, that’s my line. All kinds of animals, all kinds of problems.

Jesus, here I go. Off the point one more time, but we’ll just have to let that naked Mexican keep for another minute or two. I promise I’ll keep it short.

If Rover’s got rabies, I get the call. Rattlers nest under a house, my phone rings. Sure, it’s a long way from a big fuckin’ deal. But that’s not to say the job doesn’t have possibilities. Say we had an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease hereabouts. Then my job would be a mucho grande fuckin’ deal. If I did something like quarantine some cattle, something where a few dollars were involved, the good people of Amigo would show me some respect.

But it never comes to that. Things go on around Amigo the same way they’ve been going on for years. As for my job, I know my place. I like it that way. I deal in roadkill mostly. Like the coyote, or anything else that gets caught between a set of headlights on the highway. I shovel what’s left off the blacktop and bury it out by the dump.

I’ve shoveled up Chihuahuas and Gila monsters. Rattlers and French poodles. One time I even shoveled up a dead alligator… at least that’s what I think it was. It was big and blackish green and scaly. If it was a gator, I sure as hell can’t figure out how it ended up in New Mexico.

Doesn’t matter to me. I figured out a long time ago that there’s no use trying to figure out anything at all. You ask me, the best thing to do is mind your own business and stick to your job.

I try to take my own advice. I answer my telephone when it rings. I drive around a lot. And when I come across something dead, I shovel it up and bury it out past the dump.

Dead is dead. As long as it doesn’t move, I’m not squeamish. And if it does move… well, I carry a gun.

See, I hate to see things suffer. There’s no cause for it, really. That’s what bothered me about the naked Mexican. There’s no need to be cruel. Just watching him made my stomach do a little flip-flop. The way he trotted along on bare, bloody feet behind the van, his shackled wrists clicking together, his arms outstretched, those pitiful screams tearing his sandpaper throat.

Christ, the poor bastard sounded like an animal or something. What’s that they say? Like a lamb going to the slaughter. It was a hell of a sound, especially with noon coming on. Not the kind of memory a man wants rattling around in his head when he’s just started thinking about lunch.

My guess is that the border patrol boys were of the same opinion, but I have my doubts. But whatever their reason, it seemed that they were tired of the naked Mexican, too.

The van picked up speed. The Mexican tripped. For a second he looked like a man diving into a swimming pool.

Only for a second, though.

The rest of it didn’t take long. The road, all sand and grit and gravel, skinned the Mexican raw in the time it took me to swallow around the lump in my throat.

I was quiet. The Mex kept on screaming, though. I could hear him above the smooth purr of the van’s engine. And then the driver cut to the left, tearing through a tangle of mesquite and golden brittlebrush as he picked up speed, and pretty soon the Mexican wasn’t screaming anymore.

The van didn’t head back to the dirt road, though.

It came in my direction.

I glanced down at the hole I’d dug. I did some quick calculations. The hole was big enough for a coyote, but something told me that it was going to have to be a whole lot bigger.

I picked up my shovel and got busy.

ONE

There in the shadows, none of it mattered, because it was only the two of them. Two creatures from different worlds, but with hearts that were the same.

He’d come one hell of a long way to find this. Searched the world over. He’d known that he’d find it, once he went looking, same as he’d known that it was something he had to go out and find if he wanted to keep on living. His gut told him, Find it, or put a bullet in your brainpan. But he hadn’t known it would feel like this. It never had before. But this time, with this person… she filled him up like no one else. And he figured it was the same with her.

“I want you.”

“I think you just had me, Mr. Morris.”

Her laughter tickled his neck, warm breath washing a cool patch traced by her tongue, drawn by her lips. Just a bruise, but as sure and real as a brand. He belonged to her. He knew that. But he didn’t know–

The words slipped out before he could think them through. “I want you, forever.”

That about said it, all right.

He felt her shiver, and then her lips found his.

“Forever is a long time,” she said.

They laughed about that, embracing in the shadows.

They actually laughed.

Things were never quite so plain in England. Oh, they were just as dangerous, that was for sure. But, with the exception of lunatics like Arthur Holmwood, the upper crust of Whitby cloaked their confrontational behavior in a veil of politeness.

Three nights running, Quincey stood alone in the garden, just waiting. Finally, he went to Lucy’s mother in the light of day, hat literally in hand. He inquired as to Lucy’s health. Mrs. Westenra said that Lucy was convalescing. Three similar visits, and his testiness began to show through.

So did Mrs. Westenra’s. She blamed Quincey for her daughter’s poor health. He wanted to tell her that the whole thing was melodrama, and for her benefit, too, but he held off.

And that was when the old woman slipped up. Or maybe she didn’t, because her voice was as sharp as his bowie, and it was plain that she intended to do damage with it. “Lucy’s condition is quite serious,” she said. “Her behavior of late, which Dr. Seward has described in no small detail… Well, I mean to tell you that Lucy has shown little consideration for her family or her station, and there is no doubt that she is quite ill. We have placed her in hospital, under the care of Dr. Seward and his associates.”

Mrs. Westenra had torn away the veil. He would not keep silent now. He made it as plain as plain could be. “You want to break her. You want to pocket her, heart and soul.”

She seemed to consider her answer very carefully. Finally, she said, “We only do what we must.”

Quincey listened to the words, holding Lucy’s hand, watching the night. The sky was going black now, blacker every second. There was no blood left in it at all.

Just like you, you damn fool, he thought.

He pulled his bowie from its sheath. Seward’s words rang in his ears: “One moment’s courage, and it is done.”

But Seward hadn’t been talking to Quincey when he’d said those words. Those words were for Holmwood. And Quincey had heard them, but he’d been about ten steps short of doing something about them. If he hadn’t taken the time to discuss philosophy with Count Dracula, that might have been different. As it was, Holmwood had had plenty of time to use the stake, while Seward had done his business with a scalpel.

For too many moments, Quincey had watched them, too stunned to move. But when he did move, there was no stopping him.

He used the bowie, and he left Whitby that night.

He ran out. He wasn’t proud of that. And all the time he was running, he’d thought, So much blood, all spilled for no good reason. Dracula, with the needs of a tick. Holmwood and Seward, who wanted to be masters or nothing at all.

He ran out. Sure. But he came back. Because he knew that there was more to the blood, more than just the taking.

One moment’s courage…

Quincey stared down at the stake jammed through his beloved’s heart, the cold shaft spearing the blue-pink muscle that had thundered at the touch of his fingers. The bowie shook in his hand. The piano man sang:

She said we should bring that stuff down to her shack by the creek cause we had to give her that stuff if she was gonna do what Jimmy Tibbs wanted her to do. And we didn’t know then that she was a witch so we brought that stuff down there. Us kids did. That was before the aqua duck when there was still a creek there. And Jimmy made me tote the big spool of barbed wire cause I was stronger than he was and cause I was a nigger and he said that niggers was like Ygor in the picture and did what they was told. He was littler than me but back then I figured he was right bout that Ygor stuff so I didn’t bellyache.

That particular year it was a dusty summer. Hot and dry and miserable dusty. The creek bed was all buzzin with gnats and the rocks that was used to bein underwater was hot like little fryin pans and my socks was all itchy with brambles. And on top of that I was sick of the whole thing cause Jimmy had done had me runnin back and forth along that dry creek-bed with notes for the witch all week long. Anyhow, now everythin was settled and us kids was all finally gonna go and get turned into growed ups. Jimmy was way ahead of me cause all he was carryin was his daddy’s RCA radio and the plug cord draggin tween his legs was like Satan’s tail. Mary Hannah wasn’t too far behind Jimmy. The poke with lipsticks and powders she stoled from her daddy’s five-and-dime was scissored tween her arm and her chest and her cheeks was all shiny with lipstick in thick stripes like she was an Injun chief. And she was real eager to come with us fellas cause she said that since her daddy took sick he had to live upstairs all the time and her mama sometimes did that stuff with the truck drivers who brung goods to the store so she wanted to know how to do that stuff too cause now the truck drivers was startin to look at her sometimes too. And after Mary Hannah come Rusty and all he had was the keys to his daddy’s Ford but Rusty was lazy so he was slow and I knowed he was frettin on account of all the trouble he could get into bout them keys if his Daddy found out that he stoled them. And b’sides, he was sneezin on account of the dust from the itchy brambles us kids was kickin up.

And Jimmy laughed, singin, “Sickly child, sickly child… ”

I was last. The spool of wire was heavy and I was wearin gloves and two coats to keep from gettin scratched and I didn’t like to think what Pap was gonna do when he found out the barbed wire wasn’t in the barn no more like it was supposed to be. But Jimmy said to me, “Little Pete, your daddy is just a stupid nigger so he ain’t even gonna know it’s gone, and even if he does know it he’s gonna know better than to holler that someone stoled it, cause God knows where that kinda yellin gets a nigger round here, Little Pete.”

Little Pete. That’s what they call me cause I’m hunched up like Ygor. But I wish they would call me like they did the little boy in the picture. Peter. That’s what Mama used to call me before she went off to the sportin life. And I wished I was like Peter in the picture too, all brave like nobody’s business and off huntin rhinocerasses and alligators and havin adventures bout the giant who stoled my storybook and that soldierman with the rubber arm who rescued me.

But this wasn’t no adventure like that. Like I said, it was hot. Not cold and rainy and gloomy like in the picture. The witch’s shack was a teeny bit of a place out behind the big house and it was all leanin sideways and ready to fall over like the big house was too and like the houses in the picture. Jimmy said that she wrote him in a note that we had to meet her in that shack cause the big house was too grand for the likes of us little folks and little folks got to meet her in a little place. So we climbed up from the creek bed over the hot fryin pan rocks that was real smooth even though, like I said, there wasn’t no water in the creek. This was before the aqua duck, cause since we got that there is always water there and you can’t walk down that way no more and there ain’t even no stones in the bottom of it accordin to what people say and now there ain’t no grand house or even little house there no more, either, cause I guess them houses finally leaned over too far and just fell down and somebody hauled them away. But back then there was still a creek and two houses and when us kids come up through all that manzanita and then through the rusty barbed-wire fence what was all tangled-busted and needin fixin bad we was practically on the little porch which belonged to the shack. It was pretty rickety with a hole in the roof and I thought bout the picture and the hole in the labboratoree roof where Ygor pushed a boulder through and almost hit Jimmy.

But it wasn’t Jimmy he almost hit it was the doctor in the two-tone coat. Jimmy said the man was Frankenstein’s son, like the picture’s called. I said that Peter was Frankenstein’s son but Jimmy just said I was stupid cause Peter was the grandson. But then when I asked him how come the picture wasn’t called Grandson of Frankenstein he couldn’t even give me a right answer. It’s the same way as when he tried to tell me that Ygor was the same fella as Dracula and that the Frankenstein Monster was really the Mummy.

Anyway, “You bring it all?” was what the witch asked and Jimmy allowed how we had. “Boy, you better not be lyin,” was the next thing she said.

“I ain’t lyin,” was what Jimmy said.

Jimmy lied all the time, though. He always said we should go to the picture together but then he wouldn’t sit with me when we did go even though we went plenty of times cause it was the only picture they showed for weeks and weeks. He told me he was my friend plenty of times and then throwed rocks at me when he seen me walkin by myself while he was with Rusty and the other fellas. I knowed he did it cause I was a nigger and I was always gonna be small like Ygor, anyhow. Even though back then I used to pray it wouldn’t be so, specially when Jimmy and Rusty called me a nigger dwarf circus clown.

And for sure Jimmy lied bout that stuff with Mary Hannah too, even though he said that he really didn’t hate her cause of what happened though after it happened he said she was just like the witch.

“I had to say it,” was what he said bout that back when I was still talkin to him. “I had to make up that story bout us kids runnin into that barbed-wire fence that was covered up with weeds and manzanita. You don’t want folks to know what really happened out there, now do you, Little Pete? You don’t want that man comin after us, or talkin to your pap, do ya?”

“No.”

“Well that’s thinkin straight. Cause you and me know we got to keep that a secret tween us, just like Ygor and the Doctor kept their secret bout the Monster in the picture.”

I didn’t say nothin to that even though I wanted to say that Ygor and the Doctor didn’t keep their secret too good. But I didn’t say it cause I knowed that Jimmy didn’t understand bout that witch and her barbed-wire man and it wouldn’t do no good to argue bout them if he didn’t even understand bout Ygor and the Doctor.

Anyhow, us kids was in the shack with the witch and Rusty was still coughin and snifflin because of the itchy dusty brambles and the witch asked, “He ain’t got TB, does he?” and Jimmy just laughed and said bout the brambles. So she forgot bout that and then she started lookin over our stuff, checkin the tubes in Jimmy’s daddy’s radio and twistin up Mary Hannah’s stoled lipsticks to make sure them lipsticks wasn’t empty Next she got hold of Rusty’s belt and pulled him up close right tween her legs with her red dress all wrinklin up round him. “These keys go to a car now, don’t they, little man?”

Rusty nodded quick and she just laughed and laughed with her rosy lips a big circle and then a big man stepped out of the shadows and he was laughin too. He looked like a nigger but he looked just like the Monster too — I mean to tell you he looked like Frankenstein but Jimmy always said that ain’t right cause the Doctor is the one who’s Frankenstein and the Monster ain’t got a name at’all cause he’s dead and nobody gives a name to things that is dead— and the Monster Man was grinnin at the way the witch had a hold of Rusty’s belt and the way he was squirmin. And then he stepped up to us kids and said over his shoulder “Hey now Viletta this un ain’t even no boy” while he ran a big thumb over Mary Hannah’s war paint.

Jimmy piped up, “She’s as good as a fella. She does everything that us fellas do.”

The Monster Man just laughed some more when he heard that. Real hearty, he laughed. He pulled Mary Hannah toward him by her overalls and then commenced to smearin her war paint into two rosy circles.

“No,” I said, and I grabbed hold of his arm just like Ygor did in the picture and it was a hard arm like a fence post. “She’s my friend and you ain’t gonna make her a circus clown.”

He looked at me sort of puzzled and then he made questionin eyes at the witch and shrugged his big shoulders. She said, “Leave the little gal be. When I was young I used to like to run with the fellas too.” She winked. “And you see how good I turned out.”

He allowed how she had turned out pretty good. She said that as everythin seemed right we might as well get down to brass tacks and me and him should run along and might as well take the radio up to the big house and enjoy it for a spell. And then later we could come back cause she didn’t spect Jimmy or Rusty to last very long and then it would be my turn since I didn’t bring nothin that was so grand as a radio or keys to a car, but I already done that thing that Jimmy and Rusty wanted to do anyway even though they didn’t know bout it so I didn’t mind even though I still didn’t feel growed up like a man. But still I couldn’t figure out why the witch said that bout comin back since she knowed I already done it cause I done it with her.

Anyway, the Monster Man said okay and bent down and the witch kissed him with them rosy lips of hers and even her tongue. Later on Jimmy said that was the worst part of it. Seeing that a white woman was in love with a nigger. I said that maybe the Monster Man wasn’t really a nigger cause his skin just happen to be black like the Monster’s skin just happen to be green (you can tell that from the poster at the picture show). Maybe he was part nigger and part Monster, I said. Like Ygor was part Dracula and the Monster was part the Mummy. But Jimmy just wrinkled his nose at that and said, “jumpin Jesus Christ, Little Pete, that fella wasn’t nothin but a big dumb buck nigger. Next you’ll be tellin me that you seen a coupla bolts stickin out of that dumb coon’s neck.”

But he didn’t have no bolts. And since I knowed that from then on I knowed that Jimmy Tibbs was a pretty stupid fella. I told him so right then, and I told him there wasn’t nothin bad bout bein a nigger cause I knowed after what happened at that witch’s place that Jimmy was deep-down scared of niggers. And that was the last time I wasted my time talkin to Jimmy Tibbs who thought he was a big man right then but sure enough found out he wasn’t as the years went by.

So back we went into the heat. Me and the Monster Man. He was takin long strides and it was hard for me to keep up cause I could hardly see over the radio and I almost tripped in a coupla postholes that was by the front steps. He said “Just watch it now” and I did while I hopped round them holes and them holes was wet at the bottom and the ground down there was black-red like an old sore that ain’t healed over after a long time and them holes was crawlin with worms and all of a sudden I didn’t want to look at them holes no more cause they stunk and they made me think of what that boilin pit must have smelled like in the picture cause it was full of sulphur. So we got up to the porch of the big house and there was a big patch of shade up there so I set down my burden in the middle of it. We both happened to wipe our brow at the same time and that made the Monster Man chuckle. “Hey shortcake,” he said, “how bout some lemonade fore we go back?”

I allowed how I’d like that. So he got us some and I seen that his was a touch darker than mine and I was gonna trouble him bout it but before I could he asked, “What’s wrong with you, anyhow?”

“I can’t say as I know,” I said soundin kinda puzzled and quiet like Pap always does when folks ask him bout me. “I was just born this way.”

“Uh-huh,” he says. “I heard bout stuff like that. Your ma took a bad scare while she was carryin you, I spect.”

I didn’t say nothin cause I didn’t know bout that. Maybe it had somethin to do with the lightnin was what I thought that summer, cause I recollect in the picture where Ygor said the Monster’s mother was the lightnin. And I wanted to know if the big man was the Monster and knowed bout that, so I asked him straight out. “Naw,” he said. “I seen that picture too. That man ain’t really big, like me. He ain’t really a monster. He’s wearin elevator shoes and a jacket stuff full with pillows. That Frankenstein is a scrawny little white man, just like everybody else in that picture. It ain’t nothin but make-believe.”

I was gonna tell him bout the difference tween Frankenstein the Doctor and the Frankenstein Monster but I didn’t want to get him riled. So I just asked him what his name was and he jingled Rusty’s daddy’s keys in front of my face and said, “Today my name is Jesse James, shortcake, but you can call me Jess.”

“Okay, Jess,” I said. And then he asked me what they call me and I said “Peter” cause I like that boy in the picture. His name is Peter and he wears sailor suits and hunts all manner of stuff. And when he gets in a fix someone comes right quick and helps him out of it like the soldierman with the rubber arm helped him and his daddy helped him too.

I took to lookin at them postholes while I drank my lemonade, waitin to see if a worm dared to poke its head out in the sun and what Jess would do to a worm that dared. But that didn’t happen. Nothin happened ceptin Jess drank some more lemonade and patted the top of the RCA. He said, “I sure am sold on radios, yes sir.”

“Me too,” I said. “And this radio is awful grand. I wish my Pap had one like it. I bet Amos and Andy sounds awful grand on a radio like this one.”

Jess wrinkled up his nose. “That’s just a couple of white men on that show, Peter,” he said. “You know, the only kinda white folks you should mix with is the ladies.” And then Jess seen Jimmy come out of the shack all puffed up like a rooster and he patted the radio once more and chuckled in a way that made me know he thought that RCA was awful grand too. “Hey now, Peter, you come and watch how to mix with white folks.”

Jess drank down his lemonade in one big gulp then stepped off the porch and dust puffed up all round his boot just like a bomb goin off in a war picture. My, he was big and his stride was long. Long as the space tween them postholes with the scabby dirt and worms, which was a good bit long. “Hey, boy,” he hollered to Jimmy. ‘You come here.”

Jimmy looked up sharp and when he seen who was talkin to him his ears got awful red. But he come ahead anyway. And when he got close enough Jess squatted down real low til he could look him in the eye. “You like that, over in there?” he asked and Jimmy kinda looked away but he was smilin. Then Jess said, “Well, it sure didn’t take you long.”

Now Jimmy’s whole face got red and Jess said, “Yeah, well, don’t never take a cherry very long. I figure that was bout four… mebbe five minutes, countin unbuttonin and buttonin time. Now, you tell me boy was that worth your daddy’s RCA?” But Jimmy didn’t say nothin so Jess said some more. “Well, I’m sure gonna enjoy that radio.”

Jimmy was lookin at the dirt but he said in a loud voice like they do in the gangster pictures, “It ain’t for you it’s for the lady.”

Jess curled up a fist and smacked Jimmy’s ear real good like Joe Louis does and the blood come like Jimmy been cut, and while Jimmy was swayin all woozy Jess said, “The lady is mine and I’m hers, so it goes to figure that your RCA is mine and hers.” He took hold of Jimmy’s shirt and pulled him close and I seen Jimmy cringin away from Jess’s lemonade breath. “Now, you listen up, boy. And you do like I say unless you want your daddy to find out where you been playin.”

Jimmy listened real good now cause I reckon I should have told you before that his daddy was a soldierman like the soldierman with the rubber arm in the picture ceptin Jimmy’s daddy didn’t have no rubber arm. Anyhow, I never seen anyone talk to Jimmy like Jess did, and I spect no one ever had ceptin his daddy. But Jess didn’t just talk he dragged Jimmy over by the old busted fence that we come up through when we come up from the creek bed over the hot fryin pan rocks. He give Jimmy some wire cutters and told him to cut the rusty wire off them old posts, but Jimmy tried to give them cutters over to me.

“I paid with my radio to do what I wanted to do,” Jimmy said. “I ain’t gonna do no nigger work for you.” But Jimmy looked kinda sick when he said it somehow, and I knowed his stomach was feelin like mine always did when he throwed them rocks at me, and I was gonna say so when Jess said, “What kinda nigger work you think I’m talkin bout, white boy?”

“Buildin a new fence,” Jimmy said. “Look here, I know you got a whole spool of wire in there on account of that’s what Little Pete brought. I thought you aimed to sell it to somebody, but if you think I’m gonna— ”

Rusty come out of the shack just then wipin his nose on his shirttail. I grabbed hold of Jess’s hand feelin like Ygor in the picture when he grabs hold of the Monster and sends him after them fellas who hanged him and busted his neck but didn’t kill him through and all of a sudden I knowed just how wrong Jimmy was bout Ygor. “Him too,” I said, pointin at Rusty. “Him too.”

In a minute Rusty was cryin cause Jess had told him what he imagined would happen if Rusty’s daddy found out bout the missin car keys. So Rusty got real busy quick workin the posts out of the ground. It wasn’t hard work cause them posts was already leanin and wasn’t set in cement like they set posts in these days. But like I said Rusty was a lazy sort and so it was hard for him and it didn’t help when he got to sneezin again.

“Look here.” Jimmy pulled Rusty away from his work and stood up to Jess cept he was so small standin in Jess’s big shadow that he was silly lookin. “We paid you, mister. We ain’t gonna build no fence.”

Jess just laughed that same real hearty laugh, mainly at that “mister” stuff I spect cause it come right out of the blue.

Bout then was when she come out of the shack. The witch did. She was holdin Mary Hannah’s hand and Mary Hannah was as pretty as could be with powder and lipstick and you could see how she wasn’t no little girl no more.

“Now don’t you be scared,” was what the witch whispered to Mary Hannah. “There ain’t one thing to be scared of.”

Jess looked Mary Hannah over with a big grin then he says to Jimmy and Rusty, “Now you remember what I said bout your daddies.” And then he took hold of Mary Hannah’s hand and took her up to the big house.

I sat down in the dust, in the sun, right tween them two postholes, listenin to the radio and lookin at the worms squirmin in the black-red mud and tryin to recollect how things went when I’d brung Jimmy’s notes to the witch.

All of a sudden I smelled sulphur.

Soon enough the witch got Jimmy and Rusty busy with a shovel and them old posts and that old rusty wire. Their hands got cut up somethin awful cause they didn’t have no gloves, and she just shook her head at Rusty when he begged for somethin to drink. She said, “You boys wanted to make men, didn’t you?”

Like the Doctor in the picture. That’s what I got to thinkin. He said he wanted to make a man. But that ain’t what he ended up makin. He ended up makin a monster. A giant that stoled storybooks from nice little fellas like Peter. But Peter thought that giant was nice and Ygor thought he was nice too. And Mary Hannah always said how sad he was and how he never did nothin bad that those other folks didn’t make him do cause he was really just gentle as could be. And I watched Jimmy and Rusty and I thought Jess was pretty nice and I recollect diggin them two holes by the porch after the witch took me inside the shack. And then I took off my gloves and looked at the scabs on my palms and recollect how she told me to hold that last note to Jimmy real careful so I wouldn’t get no blood on it.

Rusty finished makin his barbed-wire man first. The witch pushed him up against it and then pushed him away and she started rubbin on the barbed-wire man with her red dress all wrinklin up round her like before. And then Jimmy finished and she did the same thing to his barbed-wire man and Rusty started cryin then. But I think it was just cause he was scared cause he couldn’t have knowed what was gonna happen to him cause of that man.

And then the radio went quiet and Jess come out of the house with one arm round Mary Hannah and the other round the RCA. He walked right over to Jimmy and handed him the radio, sayin, “I was just spoofin you bout keepin it, boy. We sure wouldn’t want you to get into trouble with your folks.”

The witch laughed at that and then Jess give Rusty the keys to his daddy’s Ford and Rusty stopped bawlin so I knowed for sure he didn’t really understand.

“Skedaddle, now,” the witch said and Rusty and Jimmy did just that real quick, runnin down the creek bed over the hot fryin pan rocks, runnin like they was so happy to be free and didn’t have a care in the world like you can still see them boys runnin today.

Then Mary Hannah come over and took my hand, and she had little scratches on her hand. And the witch went round them postholes and slid her little hand into Jess’s big one. I looked up at him and I was all mixed up cause I didn’t know if he was the soldierman with the rubber arm who come to save me or the Monster or the giant who stoled my storybook or maybe all three, like Ygor was Dracula and the Monster was the Mummy. But I looked at his eyes and I looked at them two big holes like sores in the ground that was dug by me when I made my barbed-wire man and I knowed that I was never gonna grow up to be a man cause Jess had done that for me and I was grateful cause I bet it was somethin I never coulda done by myself anyhow.

And Mary Hannah had a hold of my hand. She said, “C’mon, Little Pete, I’ll take you home.” And she picked up the witch’s shovel and the poke of lipstick and powder and I got the spool of barbed wire. Off we went tween Jimmy and Rusty’s barbed-wire men and that rusted wire was startin to sigh and then we was climbin through what was left of that busted-down fence and it was singin in the hot breeze.

And the witch waved goodbye and said, “Thank you for my man, Little Pete.”

And I looked one last time at Jess who looked mighty happy and big and strong as anybody could ever want to be and it was like lookin into a mirror and seein somethin that was never gonna be.

And I smiled at the witch and said “Thank you” right back.

ONE

“That musclebound Barney Fife of yours figured he’d take my pelt,” the prisoner said. “I gotta admit he did a pretty fair job. It’s a good thing that I’m a fast healer.”

Dwight cringed. The kid’s face was one big welt — green and blue and purple and red all at the same time. The kid could hardly breathe through his nose — which was surely busted — and his voice sounded like a gurgling echo that came from a deep well down in his gut.

“I’ll get Doc Rivers to look at you,” Dwight said.

The kid barked a short laugh. “Forget the doc. Better make it a vet, Sheriff. Or have you already forgotten my warning?”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Dwight said. “You’re a werewolf. When the full moon rises tonight, you’ll change. And then you’re gonna make mincemeat out of me and my deputies and my jailhouse.”

“Unless you let me out of here right now,” the kid added. “Not very likely.”

“No way I can get you to change your mind?”

“Nope.”

The kid shook his swollen head. “Let me tell you something else about werewolves,” he said. “We ain’t much different from real wolves. We run in packs.”

“Is that so?”

‘Yep. And we can pick up a scent.” He lay a slim finger along the swollen sausage that bisected his face. “Even through a busted nose. And you know what I can smell right now, Sheriff?”

“I’m sure you’re gonna tell me.”

“Well… it’s one mean aroma. Motorcycles and blood and misery, all mixed up. There’s twelve of ‘em, and right now they’re real close. I’m number thirteen, you see. We’re like little pieces of a puzzle, and we all fit together. They’re already in your town, Sheriff. I can smell ‘em. They want that missing piece, and you’d better give it to ‘em, or else this quiet little Mayberry of yours is gonna be a slaughterhouse when the full moon rises. If you’ve got an Opie and an Aunt Bee at home, you’d better say your prayers — ”

“I’m a confirmed bachelor,” the sheriff interrupted. “Look… I’m sorry about what happened to you. Soon as I find him, that deputy is going to be in the cell right next to yours. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit here and listen while you spin campfire stories. You might scare a moron like Vin Miller, but you won’t scare me.”

“Even so, Sheriff, you take my advice about those prayers. Not that prayin’ ever helped me any… You know what they say, Even a man who is pure at heart, and says his prayers by night… ”

But the sheriff was already moving away from the cell. “I’ll send the doctor,” he said.

The kid answered, “You send the vet.”

Barefooted, Vin padded into the kitchen.

He almost slipped in the blood.

Beef blood puddled on yellow linoleum. That’s all it was. Vin breathed a sigh of relief. The blood must have overflowed the little plate as the steaks thawed, then dribbled off the counter and puddled on the floor. But then Vin saw that it wasn’t a puddle of blood; it was a scrawl.

Three words: LET HIM GO.

Vin shivered. He glanced at the sideboard. The steaks were gone, but the T-bones were still there. Picked clean. Gnawed.

“Jesus Christ.” Vin turned toward the phone, and that was when he saw the open bird cage, the dusting of green and yellow feathers on the kitchen table.

Vera Marlowe’s parrot had moaned its last.

Beyond the table, the back door stood open. Vin moved toward it, afraid of what he might find outside.

He expected that he might see any number of frightening things… but Sheriff Dwight Cole wasn’t one of them.

They stood near the open graves. Five ragged holes in sacred earth. Broken coffins, torn shrouds, shredded clothing. Desecration was too clean a word for it.

And the bones… Dwight was sure that Lily could have identified each one of them. She’d taken her degree in mortuary science, after all. But Dwight didn’t need to know their scientific names, because he could read what they said.

LET HIM GO. There it was, a message spelled out on the green grass, defiling hallowed ground. Letters made of leg bones, and arm bones, spines and fingers and broken ribs still caked with bits of dry flesh…

Lily’s pale lips were a tight line of anger. “Horrible, isn’t it?” She motioned toward the big house where she lived with her father, just fifty yards distant. “Father says that he didn’t hear a thing last night. But to think that they were so close, that they might have broken into the house… I don’t care if they’re not werewolves. Even if they’re only men — ”

“Don’t torture yourself.”

“I can’t help it.” She looked at him, her eyes dark wells of pain. “Guilt is a terrible thing. My mother died while I was away at college. If anything were to happen to my father… well, I just couldn’t deal with it.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I guess I’m not so tough after all.”

“Shhh.” Dwight waved her off. “Listen.”

In the distance, they heard a low rumble.

Engines.

Motorcycles.

Dwight pushed through the banks double doors and started down the deserted street. Things were real quiet. So quiet that if he’d worn spurs, he would have heard them jingle-jangle.

He crossed the street and stopped short in front of Liz Bentley’s barber shop. He wasn’t thinking straight. He was starting to think just as crazy as everybody else in town. Christ, if only he’d managed some sleep in the last forty-eight hours, but those two days had been just as crazy as the weeks — and months — that had come before them.

He sighed. Fine. If he was going to act crazy, he might as well go whole hog. He pushed through the barbershop door. Liz was sitting in the big chair, reading a confessions magazine.

“That silver razor of yours,” Dwight said. “Can I borrow it?”

“Take a load off,” Liz offered, standing up. “I’d consider it my civic duty to do the job for you, Sheriff. I don’t mind telling you that you look pretty shaky. I’m afraid you’d cut your own throat.”

“It’s not that,” Dwight said. “I don’t need a shave. I need some answers, and I need them fast.”

Liz nodded. “I get it. Lon Chaney, Junior kind of stuff, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, sit down for a minute just the same. Let me get this thing good and sharp for you.”

Her name is Jessie.

She’s about twenty-five. Dark, and thin.

Not delicate. Not that kind of thin.

Hungry thin. She can put it away. Wedged in a corner booth where no one’s likely to see her, she’s working on a lumberjack breakfast special and a side order of hashbrowns. Eggs scrambled dry and sausage and white Wonder Bread toast slathered with every pat of butter the cook put on her plate.

Damn good toast, too. Singed just past golden brown and painted slick purple with blackberry jam from little plastic containers.

Thick Jackson Pollock smears of jam. Jessie really should have gone to art school. Her mother always told her: “You’ve got an eye, dear. Other people don’t even know how to look at the things you see.”

“It’s just that they blink at the wrong times, Mom,” Jessie always answered. “They blink, and they miss the world that’s right there in front of them.”

Jessie stares at the jam. She doesn’t blink. She sees it, every gleaming smear. Darker than wine, dark as arterial blood. A color just short of black, the same color as a tattered human heart.

Just that fast her appetite is gone. She pushes the plate away and catches the attention of the restaurant’s lone waitress, a young woman about her age who is trying to brighten the day of a family whose fishing vacation has drowned in a September downpour.

Age is the only thing the two women have in common. The waitress is a granola eater. Rule of thumb for the California traveler — anywhere that redwoods grow, they grow girls just like this one. Retro-hippies with dull spacy smiles. Tie-dyed and brain-fried Jerry Garcia wetdreams.

Only Jerry has been dead a long time now.

Yeah. Jerry’s dead. But if you take a really good look at the waitress, and if you manage not to blink while you’re doing it, you can tell that he’s still alive, too.

Jessie’s stomach lurches, because Jerry’s not the only one.

The waitress tries really hard to turn on some rainy day sunshine for the vacationing family, but the suburbanites won’t give her so much as a smile. She breaks things off with a resigned shrug and slips Jessie the check on her way to the service window, then hurries off with a couple lumberjack breakfast specials for a pair of truckers on the other side of the restaurant.

At least they look like truckers. The men sit in a booth, their faces lost in shadows cast by worn ball caps, their big hands bathed in dull saffron light from a redwood and glass chandelier. Rain lashes the window on the far side of the booth, but neither man pays any attention to the storm outside. After all, this is Northern California, home of the banana slug. Up here, mildew is a way of life.

Jessie stares past the men, through the window. She doesn’t want to go outside. Putting it in artistic terms, it’s much too Emily Carr for her tastes. Which is to say that its extremely north woods impressionistic — sky the color of a dead man’s flesh, decaying horizon bleeding cold water, redwood forest on the other side of the highway dense, black, forbidding.

But Jessie doesn’t have far to go now, and at least with some breakfast in her belly she isn’t liable to faint on the way. How to get where she’s going is the question. She doesn’t have a car, and the parking lot doesn’t exactly present many possibilities. A couple motor homes, and the soggy tourists that match up to them don’t look like their Christian charity would extend as far as Jessie. Besides the condos-on-wheels, there are several trucks. Mostly chromed-to-the-tits Peterbilts. A couple of the tractors are empty. Those with loads are hauling dead redwood trees.

That’s a crime in itself to some, but not all. If the deadhead waitress is ecologically minded, she’s forgotten about it. Little Ms. Earth Mama is flirting with the truckers for all she’s worth — coy and carefree, like she just burned her Earth First! membership card.

Tips in this joint, they must come few and far between. The little waitress is giving it her best. Jessie can see that. She knows how hard a buck comes for most people these days.

Yeah. Money comes hard for most.

But not for all.

Jessie looks at her check. Lumberjack breakfast special and a side order of hashbrowns and coffee. Six bucks and change.

Jessie has money. Money that came the hard way. She’s got seventy-seven bucks in the left pocket of her black leather jacket. Lapel on the left side, there’s nine hundred jammed into a rip in the seam. Six thousand in big bills stuffed in a tear in the inside lining. Plus seven hundred split between her boots, and that’s a bitch. Her boots are too small to begin with.

One last sip of coffee before she goes. One of the truckers cracks a tree-hugger joke and the waitress laughs like she’s never even heard of Greenpeace. Hell, a couple thousand dead trees here and there, what does it matters The cafe walls are lined with dead redwood. Like anywhere else, up here life is all about money and how to get more of it. Everyone’s got to make a dollar — hard or easy — and everyone knows how it’s done in the Pacific Northwest.

You grow something, you cut it down, you sell it. Redwoods or dope. Take your pick. And that’s just what is happening now. Because the waitress is slipping money to one of the drivers, trading him cash for a Ziplock bag of California’s finest…

The big man slides the greenbacks into the pocket of his flannel shirt. “Darlin’, I’ll bet you had to carry a hell of a lot of bacon and eggs for that cash.”

“I’m in the wrong business.”

“You got that right. What you need is a growth opportunity.”

“What? Forty acres? Sensimilla?”

“Hell no. I’ll grow the dope. You grow the babies.”

Laughter splashes dry redwood walls. The waitress and the truck driver, both of them laughing hard while his hand strokes her flat young belly.

His fingers find a piercing there. That’s no surprise. After all, the waitress is one of Jerry’s kids. Garcia himself would have admired the silver belly button ring that twinkles in the saffron light, and the trucker is of the same mind. His thick finger flips the fragile hoop up and down and the waitress doesn’t do anything but laugh some more.

The man’s head tilts back as he eyes the waitress. Light spills from the redwood chandelier above, misses his face, bathes his neck…

Jessie shivers.

There’s a swastika tattooed over the man’s carotid artery.

Quickly, Jessie slides out of the booth. It’s time to go. No one’s looking at her. Everyone’s looking at the waitress, at the truck driver, at his hand on the young woman’s belly.

Everyone’s looking at that little silver ring.

Jessie wads the six-bucks-and-change check into a ball and stuffs it into the pocket of her leather jacket, the same pocket that holds seventy-six hundred and seventy-seven bucks. Twenties and fifties pinch her toes as she passes by the unattended cash register, jilting it cold.

She slips through the door. She squints against the storm. Almost looks back. Doesn’t. Her face is suddenly cold. As cold as the face of a dead man Jessie used to know, his heart splattered slick purple by shotgun fire, his dead eyes staring up at a man with a swastika tattooed on his neck.

Inside the restaurant, no one is laughing anymore.

The man with the tattoo smiles at the waitress.

He says, “Now about this girl we’re looking for… ”

If you’re like me, there are things you need to tell people, but you can’t get the words out. You want to, but you can’t. The machinery just won’t work, and everything gets all jammed up, churning in your guts long after those people are gone from your life.

You’re stuck with them, and they stay inside you forever.

The things you wanted to say. And, in a way, in memory, the people you wanted to say them to.

All together, stuck inside you forever, and there’s no way to get them out. You can write about them — like I’m doing now — scribble from A to Z and back again, but they’re still with you when you’re done, because writing starts and ends in your guts.

And that’s kind of funny, isn’t it? All that stuff churning inside you, all those people you remember and all those things that you wanted to tell them… it’s funny how it never comes together. I mean, it’s all in there, cataloged and nicely filed, and somehow it seems like you should be able to put it together. After all, you remember the person and you sure as hell remember what you wanted to say. It’s like you should be able to figure out what would have happened had you only said it.

How your life would be different.

How the lives of those other people would be different.

That’s my problem. I keep on trying to figure out what might have been.

Maybe that’s why I still have those dead people stuck inside me.

Maybe that’s why I still have Anelle Carney stuck inside me, too.

On an August morning in the summer of 1960, a man dressed in black shattered the kitchen window at the Peterson home.

The house was empty. Major Peterson was at the base, writing a report on the importance of preparedness in the peacetime army. Mrs. Peterson was shopping for groceries. Their daughter Tracy was doing volunteer work at the local hospital.

Billy Peterson was the youngest member of the family. He was ten years old. Like the rest of his family, Billy was not at home when the man in black shattered the kitchen window.

Billy was pedaling his bicycle down Old MacMurray Road.

Billy was pedaling very fast.

Billy’s Daisy BB gun was slung over his shoulder, and he was wearing a small army surplus backpack.

There were only a few things in the backpack.

For one, there was a blackbird’s nest. In the nest were three eggs.

And there were two more things. Two items that, just like the backpack, had once been the official property of the United States Army.

One was a canteen, which Billy had filled with gasoline siphoned from his father’s lawnmower.

The other was a hand grenade.

11:59.

Moonlight filtered through the oatmeal-colored drapes, bathing the bed in an amber glow. Under the covers, Susan Hunter tossed and turned, caught in the grip of a nightmare.

Outside, the sound of gravel crunching beneath heavy boots.

Susan awoke. Her eyelids, smeared with runny mascara, flashed open. Empty green eyes in goblin-black pools.

The sound. Crunching. Giant iron fists smashing tiny, bleached skulls.

A temple bell rang. Soft. Then loud. Soft, then loud.

Susan’s breath caught in her throat.

On the bedroom drapes, a shadow.

The oily shadow boiled across the translucent drapes. Susan shook away her dream of giant fists, tiny skulls, and temple bells.

The shadow loomed larger.

Susan heard footsteps on the gravel path.

Crunch. Crunch. Giant fists. Tiny skulls.

Moonlight pooled on the bedroom floor. Susan clutched the down comforter; she could sense someone staring through the tiny crack where the drapes didn’t quite meet.

“Randy,” she whispered. “There’s someone outside.” Her hand slipped across the sheets, searching for her husband’s callused fingers. She was ready to forgive every angry word he’d spoken earlier, forget all the biting remarks that had made her cry and —

A cold, empty space where Randy should have been.

Instantly, Susan knew that she was alone in the house. She shivered. Her wedding ring felt like a band of ice.

Damn him. Damn Randy Hunter. He’d slipped out to the bar. He wasn’t going to protect her. She’d have to suffer for his crime all over again, and this time he wasn’t even going to share the punishment.

Susan wondered if the man outside had planned it that way.

When the war was over the living came home. Not a rifle among them but those that had been transformed into crutches or canes, but rifles would not have mattered to men who were tired of war and wounds and death. Their bellies were empty and they broke their swords into plowshares, and they embraced a land they remembered and people they could not forget and wished the simple wish that they had never gone to war.

Of course, the dead came home, too. They came at night, and warily… their bellies bloated with grave worms, their hearts as heavy as fallen fruit. They marched in tattered battalions beneath willows that whispered in the sultry summer wind, and they paused at forgotten crossroads bordered by thorny brush and bayonet bramble, and they marched on and made their camps in cemeteries where mortal footfalls were seldom heard, far past the place where the woodbine twineth.

That was how it was with the living and the dead. But others came home, too. Men like John Barter. Barter had seen many places since leaving the South. Places to the north, places with names that he could never forget. Gettysburg… Cemetery Ridge… Devil’s Den…

But John Barter did not speak of those places. He spoke hardly at all. He came home with a mouthful of bone buttons that he had sliced off a Union sergeant’s uniform. He chewed and sucked those buttons all the way from Virginia, tramping the lonely miles in sunshine and in shadow, and he came home with rags on his feet and seven toes, and he came home with a sword that was as sharp as an officer’s tongue.

He came home with a fiddle, too, an instrument given him by his wife on the day of his enlistment. A single nail pierced the fiddle’s neck, the wood scissored around it like the slivered hand of Jesus on a crucifix. Still, the fiddle made sweet music. All Barter’s comrades said so… both the living and the dead. Even a Yankee at a distant outpost could be moved to tears by the sound of Barter playing “Aura Lee” on the eve of battle.

So Barter brought the fiddle home, just as his wife knew he would. He carried it all the way from Virginia wrapped in a mildewed regimental flag, and her heart beat a little faster at the sight of the instrument in her husband’s hands. Of course, the nail that pierced the fiddle’s neck had rusted since she had driven it home on that far-off day, but she had expected that. Time rusted all things.

Her name was Loreena, and she was a woman only seven years gone from a country very different than this one. That was the reason she knew the things she did. In Loreena’s country, the land was so very green and the shadows so very long that in the end everything was nearly black. Heavy clouds held the people to the land and did not let them stray, but the clouds could have been as heavy as iron and still they would have been unable to hold Loreena. She was a woman made for other places, and she did not fear the heavens and she did not fear the earth.

Loreena did not fear much of anything. Not the living. Not the dead. As a girl she had learned many secrets from her grandmother, a woman who spoke only in whispers. Loreena kept those whispered words in her head and in her heart. She listened to them still, as she practiced the craft her grandmother had taught her. The old woman’s whispers told her that the world held a place for all things, and Loreena wanted nothing more than to stake one small corner of it for her husband and herself, for she loved John Barter as she could love no other.

When Barter’s ragged feet crossed the threshold of their cabin. Loreena took the fiddle from his hands. Even before they embraced, she took it. Barter’s picture hung on the wall, secured by a nail grown nearly as rusty as the one that pierced the fiddle. Barter hardly recognized himself, for the picture had been made before the war.

Loreena took that picture off the wall as if it were something dead and threw it into the fireplace. Then she grabbed Barter’s fiddle by the neck — as if it were something alive — and she nailed it to the wall in the picture’s place. Finally she parted her husband’s lips with gentle fingers and, one by one, took the bone buttons from his mouth and placed them on the mantelpiece.

Still, John Barter did not say a word, so Loreena kissed him deeply, and she kissed him long. And when their lips parted she stripped the ragged uniform off her husband’s back and tossed it into the blazing fireplace, and then she took off her clothes and guided her husband’s fingers over her naked flesh until they found the tight circle of silk around her neck.

Barter’s hands circled that ribbon and his fingers disappeared in Loreena’s long black hair, and beneath that hair at the back of her neck his fingers found a black velvet bag knotted to that silk ribbon, and in that bag were eleven nails — just a little rusty — that pricked Loreena’s neck on moonless nights and brought bad dreams.

But now those bad dreams were banished… or so Loreena thought. For she believed in magic. And she believed in a twelfth nail that had bound a portrait to a wall of the home she shared with John Barter, just as she believed in the power of a thirteenth nail that was driven through a fiddle’s neck.

A thirteenth nail now driven into that very same wall.

A nail that bound a fiddle to that wall.

Yes. Loreena believed in magic.

Just as she believed in a man’s soul.

One that had never been allowed to wander.

Four. Yes, that’s how many there were. Come to my home. Come to my home in the hills. Come in the middle of feast, when the skin had been peeled back and I was ready to sup. Interrupting, disrupting. Stealing the comfortable bloat of a full belly, the black scent of clean bones burning dry on glowing embers. Four.

Yes. That’s how many there were. I watched them through the stretched-skin window, saw them standing cold in the snow with their guns at their sides.

The hollow man saw them too. He heard the ice dogs bark and raised his sunken face, peering at the men through the blue-veined window. He gasped, expectant, and I had to draw my claws from their fleshy sheaths and jab deep into his blackened muscles to keep him from saying words that weren’t mine. Outside, they shouted, Hullo! Hullo in the cabin! and the hollow man sprang for the door. I jumped on his back and tugged the metal rings pinned into his neck. He jerked and whirled away from the latch, but I was left with the sickening sound of his hopeful moans.

Once again, control was mine, but not like before. The hollow man was full of strength that he hadn’t possessed in weeks, and the feast was ruined.

They had ruined it.

“Hullo! We’re tired and need food!”

The hollow man strained forward, his fingers groping for the door latch. My scaled legs flexed hard around his middle. His sweaty stomach sizzled and he cried at the heat of me. A rib snapped. Another. He sank backward and, with a dry flutter of wings, I pulled him away from the window, back into the dark.

“Could we share your fire? It’s so damn cold!”

“We’d give you money, but we ain’t got any. There ain’t a nickel in a thousand miles of here… ”

Small screams tore the hollow man’s beaten lips. There was blood. I cursed the waste and twisted a handful of metal rings. He sank to his knees and quieted.

“We’ll leave our guns. We don’t mean no harm!”

I jerked one ring, then another. I cooed against the hollow man’s skinless shoulder and made him pick up his rifle. When he had it loaded, cocked, and aimed through a slot in the door, I whispered in his ear and made him laugh.

And then I screamed out at them, “You dirty bastards! You stay away! You ain’t comin’ in here!”

Gunshots exploded. We only got one of them, not clean but bad enough. The others pulled him into the forest, where the dense trees muffled his screams and kept us from getting another clear shot.

The rifle clattered to the floor, smoking faintly, smelling good. We walked to the window. I jingled his neck rings and the hollow man squinted through the tangle of veins, to the spot where a red streak was freezing in the snow.

I made the hollow man smile.

Professor Jacob Hearthstone listened to Dr. Taoka’s words, mentally translating them with a slight bit of difficulty. Though the Japanese language was second nature to Hearthstone, he still had trouble deciphering terms not used in everyday conversation, and such was the case with the surgeon’s medical jargon. But Hearthstone realized that words were not the important thing here. Anyone familiar with the niceties of Japanese culture could ignore the words, concentrate only on Taoka’s body language, and easily recognize the true intent of the surgeon’s visit.

Dr. Taoka was here to beg forgiveness.

Hearthstone closed his eyes and let Taoka’s quiet words engulf him. Cloaked in the surgeon’s explanations were effusive excuses beyond number. The professor sighed mightily, and Taoka began to speak faster.

The true hell of it was that the surgeon’s explanations made perfect sense. After all, Dr. Taoka had come to Hearthstone with high recommendations and an excellent reputation among the most conservative elements of the Tokyo medical community. But Hearthstone, unfettered from the chains of logic and reason during his bride’s long illness, had an increasingly difficult time processing information that should have made perfect sense.

The old man fought his suspicions, watching the surgeon’s lips twist as he stumbled over a particularly difficult explanation. Dr. Taoka was not a butcher, he told himself. The surgeon could not be an avenging murderer. He was exactly who, and what, he claimed to be.

And yet…

Taoka was skilled in the use of blades. Hearthstone had watched him from the gallery above the surgery, had seen him take the scalpel from the towel-covered tray, the tray that, covered, existed in shadow. With his own eyes Hearthstone had watched the surgeon put blade to flesh — the flesh of Hearthstone’s bride — and he had noted the familiar intensity that burned in the man’s eyes.

If man he was.

Hearthstone fought against his powerful memory, but a memory that cataloged even the most minor impression could not be dammed. Everything came flooding back. The blade. Taoka’s eyes. The cotton mask that had covered the surgeon’s mouth. Hearthstone had watched the thin material puff out with an exhalation; he’d seen it draw back with Taoka’s next breath.

The mask had drawn tight against a lurid grin. Of that, Hearthstone was certain. And at that moment, standing alone in the gallery, the sibilant hint of a Beethoven sonata issuing from stereo speakers below, Hearthstone had remembered another blade and another woman.

And the same grin.

At that moment, the surgeon made the first deep incision.

At that moment, screaming violins sliced the silence.

And now the surgeon spoke of infection and fever. The diagnosis was poor. Hopeless, really, but Taoka was trying desperately not to say that.

Trying desperately, Hearthstone thought, not to smile.

“Thank you, Doctor Taoka,” the old man said, his Japanese impeccable, his accent perfect. “This is awful news, of course, and I find myself terribly saddened by it. But I would like you to put the best face on your report. A happy face, if you please.”

“Professor Hearthstone… I’m afraid that I don’t understand.”

Hearthstone bent forward. “Sir, I would appreciate it very much if you would smile for me.”

Doctor Taoka was confused. Perhaps this was an American custom with which he was unfamiliar. He made to protest. But as his mind searched for a tactic that would not offend, his lips twisted unbidden into a perplexed grin.

Hearthstone thanked the surgeon and promptly shot him dead.

Black entered the cemetery shack and tossed the severed ear onto the desk, between a can of Brown Derby beer and a salami sandwich that was missing a bite.

The desert wind whipped through the open doorway, salting the warped floorboards with gritty sand. Black was already sick of the desert — sick of the earthy smell, sick of the unyielding heat, sick of the sand in his boots.

He closed the door, but that didn’t help much. The shack’s only window was open a fraction of an inch, and the steady wind whistled through its corroded metal lips. The sound was unsettling. Black leaned on the latch, but the window was rusted in place and wouldn’t budge.

Black sighed. Only open a fraction of an inch, but a fraction of an inch was enough to mess with his senses.

Well, there was nothing to be done about it. Black rubbed a clean circle on the grimy glass. His ’73 Toyota Corolla sat about twenty feet from the shack. The engine ticked and pinged, trying to cool without much success. Rust spots on the hood and trunk shone like pools of dark rum in the light of the setting sun.

A week’s parking at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas had cost twenty-five bucks, and that little fact irritated Black. He doubted he could sell the damned car for twenty-five bucks. But the Toy was inconspicuous, and that was the important thing.

Black scanned the desert. There wasn’t much to see besides his car. Whistler’s limo was nowhere in sight. Neither was the prospector’s Ford pickup — Black had hidden it in an arroyo on the other side of the old state road. Only the cemetery lay before him, a borderless expanse dotted with tombstones that had been sandblasted blank over a period of forty years.

Anonymous graves, forgotten by a town that had folded when the interstate opened. Black thought about that. If your grave went untended, if your sacred piece of ground was forgotten — or worse, desecrated — was there a chance that something evil might get its hands on your soul even though you’d been laid to rest in a proper Christian cemetery?

Black wondered if it made a difference. He supposed that every grave was forgotten sooner or later. He toyed with the severed ear, flipping it from between the beer and the sandwich. He’d never thought about graveyards, or tombstones, or Christian burial before in his life. He’d never thought about heaven or hell, either. He knew that such worries could get in the way of a man in his business, and he’d always felt fortunate to consider them a waste of his time.

Before today.

Even now, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to start thinking about those things. He’d never felt comfortable tackling life’s little intangibles.

He looked at the sandwich and his stomach growled.

The prospector wasn’t coming back for it.

The salami was greasy and good. Black ate the meat and threw away the bread, because the latter was salted with sand. He chased salami with warm Brown Derby beer and tossed the empty can over his shoulder. It bounced off of a filthy duffle-bag and rolled to a stop against the rusty blade of the prospector’s shovel.

Black wanted to sort through the old-timer’s duffle, but he didn’t want Whistler to come barging in while he was at it. Instead, he pulled up a chair and rested his feet on top of the desk.

Soon it was dark. Black lit a few candles and watched faint shadows dance on a map of the cemetery that was mounted next to the door. The map was dotted with black pins, except for one spot in the right-hand corner where a white pin stood out, as stark and unexpected as a corpse at a family reunion.

Black grinned, thinking I Bury the Living. He’d seen that movie late one night in a cheap hotel room in Denver. It starred Richard Boone, and that was the only reason that Black had stayed awake for it, because more than a few clients had told him that he resembled the young Richard Boone. He did, kind of— they were both all ruined around the eyes, and they both had noses that were of equal thickness from skull to tip, like carelessly fitted hunks of pipe.

Anyway, the movie was about a guy who thought that he was murdering people by sticking black pins in a map that marked presold cemetery plots. Boone was pretty good in it, worrying that he was some kind of psychic monster or something. It wasn’t Have Gun, Will Travel, but it was okay, until the ending.

Because the ending was a cheat — it turned out that Boone wasn’t a monster, after all. He hadn’t killed anyone. The deaths were only a cheap coincidence, nothing to do with God or the Devil. And while Black had certainly never believed in anything supernatural — or much of anything at all, for that matter — he thought that in the movies there should always be something spooky, something unknown or unknowable —

The wind whistled through the window’s corroded lips.

A dirty yellow halo bloomed on the glass.

Bright light seeped beneath the bottom rail of the door.

The glow of headlights.

Whistler’s limo.

Black reached behind him and straightened the knife that was tucked under his belt, then covered the weapon with his shirttail.

The cold steel felt good against the small of his back.

The desert, just past midnight. A lone truck on a scorched black licorice strip, two men — Anshutes and Coker — inside.

Outside it’s one hundred and twenty-five degrees under a fat December moon. Frosty weather in the twilight days of global warming… and just in time for the holiday season.

Curtain tossed the canteen in the dirt, just beyond the reach of the man with the broken hands. Not out of pity or compassion, but as punctuation — a period against the red earth, big and round and implacable and unmoving.

Leaving the canteen was only a gesture. Curtain had broken Sanchez’s hands with a claw hammer while Kirby and Wyatt held the Mexican. Now Sanchez’s fingers were twisted and swollen like rotten sausages. Even so, Curtain had done a good job tightening the cap on the canteen. Sanchez would never be able to open it. Not in a month of Sundays.

Curtain watched as Sanchez reached for the canteen. Broken hands dripping blood on polished leather. Mouth open. Dry tongue on jerky lips. Swollen clown fingers smearing the cap with blood, then slipping off, slipping off… slipping off again.

Kirby kicked the canteen out of Sanchez’s hands. It skidded across the dirt at a slight angle, leaving a mark like an especially long comma.

No one said anything. Kirby and Wyatt paced the Mexican as he bellied across the floor of Apache Canyon like a crippled sidewinder. The canyon was deep here. There were many shadows. But it was August and this was Arizona, and shadows did not make a difference. It was hot.

Sanchez hooked the strap of the canteen with his forearm and pulled it to his chest.

“You’ve got to hand it to the little bastard,” Kirby said. “He doesn’t give up, does he?”

“Maybe he doesn’t know how,” Wyatt said.

“He’ll learn,” Curtain said.

Curtain’s first name was Walter. No one called him Walt. He had a lot of money, and he was very wise with it. As far as he was concerned, all that buyer beware stuff was a load of crap. He didn’t believe in it. He believed in getting what he paid for. He figured that was the least a man should expect out of life.

Kirby drew his Glock M22 and aimed at Sanchez’s face. “Want me to finish him?”

“No.” Curtain sighed. Normally, the question wouldn’t have bothered him, because — normally — Kirby would have been the one to handle someone like Jesus Sanchez. But there was nothing normal about this situation. Apart from some minor assistance, Curtain was handling this job himself. And when he handled a job personally, he handled it start to finish. His own way.

Consequently, Kirby’s question was insulting. If Curtain wanted to finish this particular job with a gun, well then, he had his own. But this wasn’t a gun kind of job. This was a claw hammer kind of job. And as far as Curtain was concerned, he’d finished it.

Curtain glanced at the hammer in his hand, wondering why he was still holding it.

He dropped it in the dirt.

It landed without a sound, a bloody exclamation point.

“Let’s go,” Curtain said.

Kirby looked astonished. “You sure you want to leave him like this?”

Curtain glared at the bigger man, nodding very slowly.

“What about the canteen?” Kirby asked. “It’s a long way back to the Mercedes, you know. And it’s fucking hot today.”

“It’s fucking hot everyday,” Wyatt said, as if sarcasm would defuse the simmering tension. “This is Arizona.”

“Yeah,” Kirby said. “This is fucking Arizo — ”

“We’re finished here,” Curtain said quickly, because he was the boss, and his word was the word.

If Curtain said they’d leave Jesus Sanchez, they’d leave him.

If Curtain said they’d leave the canteen, they’d leave it too.

Right or wrong didn’t matter. A cast iron non-negotiable don’t-fuck-with-me attitude did. And as far as Curtain was concerned, Kirby should fucking well know that.

Curtain turned his back on the whole mess and started up the shadow-choked throat of the canyon. A few steps and he realized that Kirby and Wyatt weren’t following him. He didn’t have to look back to know that. The rut that passed for a trail was thick with shale and gravel. Even an Apache couldn’t move quietly in Apache Canyon.

So his ears told him that the gunmen weren’t walking, but they were talking. Whispering, really. And nothing singed Walter Curtain’s bacon quite as thoroughly as employees whispering behind his back.

He was ready to lose his temper when he heard footsteps.

He glanced over his shoulder.

Wyatt was coming.

Kirby stood below, looking long and hard at Jesus Sanchez.

Curtain whistled loud and shrill, the same way he whistled at his dog.

Kirby looked up at him.

Just like an Irish Setter, he came right along.

Highway 50 cuts a ragged wound across the belly of California, finally ripping across the border into Nevada. A little slice north and you’re in Virginia City. And when you’re done there — and if you’re lucky — it’s east on 50 until 95 slashes south.

Tonopah… Scotty’s Junction… Beatty and Amargosa Valley and Indian Springs.

And straight on into Vegas.

According to the AAA California/Nevada TourBook, the trip should take nine hours.

We say fuck the AAA California/Nevada TourBook.

Me and Mitch, that is. We’ve got us a Mustang convertible, and it’s tanked to the gills with Chevron Premium. Two sixes of iced Pacifico in the trunk, bricks of every kind of cheese known to man because Mitch can’t control himself in a grocery store, an old Hamm’s Beer display sign that lights up and an authentic Jayne Mansfield hot water bottle and a dozen matchbooks from various incarnations of the Mustang Ranch (because Mitch can’t control himself in an antique shop, either), T-shirts from every tourist trap along the way, and a couple of pairs of swimming trunks.

No swimming tonight, though. The cold desert air bites like a pissed-off rattlesnake tossed onto smoldering campfire coals, but we’ve got the top down anyway.

Even though we’ve got the heater cranked full blast, I’m shivering behind the wheel — leather coat zipped up tight, face numb as the hide of a zombie that stumbled off a midnight movie screen. Mitch is a hardcase, of course. No coat for this boy — he’s wearing that T-shirt. The one he got up the street from the Bucket of Blood Saloon while I bided my time, stretching the last sip of a three buck beer that I couldn’t afford.

It’s an eye catcher, the shirt is. Bullet holes cratering high on the chest, bright red blood driving over the legend:

NOVEMBER 25, 1970

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

The flies buzzed the gauntlet of aircraft models, darting and dipping in perfect formation like the Red Baron’s famed flying circus. Walter expected the insects to riddle the models with gunfire at any moment, even though he knew the idea was whacked out.

Each maneuver was performed under the watchful eyes of Howard Hughes, as if he were a master of insect tactics. The old buzzard stood in the doorway, looking like a mummy without bandages, a tower of bone with jutting ribs like twin xylophones. Add to that spindly arms scarred over with cardboard flesh, no muscle tone at all, and those horrible fingernails. And don’t forget his eyes, bipping and bopping in huge hollow sockets.

Those eyes locked on Walter’s, and the flies rushed his way.

Walter ducked low, gasping as the insect squadron brushed past him.

“Could you get me a television set, Walter?” Hughes asked.

Walter closed his eyes, but that was no escape — he saw Uncle Jack, and Uncle Jack didn’t look happy. Howard Hughes wasn’t allowed to watch television. Uncle Jack said that it disturbed his routine. And the routine was what kept the machine running, even Walter knew that.

The flies made another pass, but Walter didn’t open his eyes. “Did you hear me, Walter?”

“Yes,” Walter whispered. “I mean… no.”

“SPEAK UP, DAMN YOU!”

Walter remembered that Hughes was nearly deaf. “THERE ARE NO TELEVISION SETS ON THE NINTH FLOOR, MR. HUGHES!”

“But you could get me one if you really wanted to, couldn’t you?”

“NO… WELL, YES. BUT UNCLE JACK… UH, MISTER MORTON SAYS THAT — ”

Hughes’ screech cut Walter’s protest. “Who pays for your services, Walter?”

‘YOU DO, MR. HUGHES.”

“And don’t you think I should get what I pay for?”

“WHY… I GUESS SO… BUT UNCLE JACK WOULDN’T LIKE IT IF I GOT YOU A TELEVISION SET, MR. HUGHES.”

A rattling cackle. “Are you a poetry enthusiast, Walter?”

Walter shook his head.

“My mother used to tell me this one: I knew an old lady who swallowed a fly. I don’t know why she swallowed a fly. Perhaps she’ll die. Isn’t that funny, Walters”

“I don’t think — ” Walter wanted to say more, but he couldn’t, because five sharp fingernails had closed on his jaw, holding it open.

All two hundred and forty-five pounds of Walter Sands trembled with fear. But he refused to open his eyes, no matter what. He wouldn’t do that. Not for anything. Not for a paper airplane worth a million dollars.

Something rattled over Walter’s teeth, something that tasted rusty.

A sharp jab. A tiny bit of pain. Walter tasted his own blood welling on his tongue. Next came a tickling sensation. Then a whining buzz filledhis mouth… tiny legs capered over his teeth, across his tongue, to the place where the blood flowed freely.

The sharp fingernails went away.

“Close your mouth, Walter.”

Obediently, Walter’s jaw snapped closed. The trapped fly raced the length of his tongue. Tiny wings fanned his gums as the insect launched itself, crashed against his wisdom teeth and scampered across his tongue once again, all the while buzzing frantically.

Again, Hughes cackled. “This isn’t much fun, is it, Walter?”

Walter agreed with a pathetic groan.

“Then there’s only one thing to be done.” Hughes’ brittle fingernails tickled Walter’s belly. Walter giggled in spite of himself, his exhalation blasting the trapped fly against the prison walls of his teeth.

“Swallow, dear boy.” Hughes laughed. “Just swallow, and everything will be all right.”

The old folks circled Jack Mormon like a pack of hungry wolves, but he wasn’t signing any more autographs. He. was too busy dialing KLAS-TV’s phone number.

He couldn’t get past a busy signal. He hung up, dialed again. Damn. The station manager knew better than to show horror pictures, especially this horror picture. If Hughes was watching it — and there was little doubt in Jack’s mind that Howard Hughes was behind this, one way or another — then things could get really dicey back at the Desert Inn.

The Desert Inn! Jack dropped the receiver and pushed through the crowd. The geriatric set babbled questions about the Spruce Goose and Jane Russell and other Hughes marginalia, but Jack had no time for questions other than his own.

What was going on at this moment on the ninth floor? He’d left the hypochondriacal football player alone with Hughes. It had been unavoidable, but now… Jack cursed his stupidity. It was a bad decision, even if it had been unavoidable. The kid was brain dead, perfect fodder for flyboy duty. But he didn’t even know that Hughes was dangerous. None of the flunkies knew anything about the billionaire’s peculiar condition.

Jack slammed through the double doors. Politely put, he was up excrement creek without a implement of locomotion. Hughes, even in his weakened condition, wasn’t a man who’d cut his rivals a millimeter of slack.

The glorified body snatcher yelled at Jack from the rear seat of the police cruiser, but Jack didn’t stop to tell the old ghoul that he was off the hook. The cops could do that. The limo was warm and ready to roll. The driver, Provo Sam, knew his business — he got out of Jack’s way, sliding into the shotgun seat.

Jack put the car in gear, hit the gas, and cut off a delivery truck as he made the first light with a whisper of yellow to spare.

The big car roared toward the Strip. Jack got on the radio. He was patched through to Nellis Air Force Base in a matter of seconds.

Jack signed off, made a quick U-turn, and headed toward Nellis.

Yep. It was just that simple. You didn’t impersonate someone without getting under his skin. If you were really good, you could slip into your subject’s head and see the world through his eyes.

But what happened, Jack wondered quite suddenly, when you looked through those eyes, and you couldn’t even blink anymore?

Jack laughed at the crazy thought. He glanced at the rear-view mirror, and for just a second he confronted a wide-eyed little boy who liked to stare at two steel rails that ran through the Utah desert. Then he blinked and once again found himself staring into Howard Hughes’ eyes.

He saw all the crazy things that Hughes had made of himself — the human things… and the inhuman things. The bats, and the bloody kite, and the other horrors Jack had seen but never shared with another living soul.

Jack pulled over to the side of the road. Howard Hughes. Always running away, but never getting anywhere, because there was no way he could escape the things inside him.

Very suddenly, very clearly, Jack saw himself driving fast, piling into a sandstone formation somewhere out in the desert, and he laughed and laughed and laughed until his ribs started to hurt.

He got his breath, put the car in gear, and lead-footed it into the night. God, this was crazy. He twisted the rear-view mirror at a useless angle, so that he couldn’t see anything at all.

He should go to Nellis. Should, hell. That’s what he had to do. There were arrangements to make. Deals to cut…

There was the road, unfolding before him.

“Y’know” he said to no one in particular, “once upon a time you were a pretty nice guy.” And then he rolled down the window and sent Howard Hughes’ fedora tumbling into the night.

In the distance, somewhere beyond the November wind, came the low whistle of a train riding steel rails.

Arboles de la ladera porque no han reverdecido

Por eso calandrias cantan o las apachuria el

nido…

Don’t marry your daughter to a Gold Mountain Boy,

He will not be in bed one full year out of ten

Spiders spin webs on top of her bed

While dust covers fully one side.

— Anonymous