31. Maggie in the Dark (D1)

__ Not satisfied that Munson's rapidly-cooling and breathless body was beyond reviving, Todd Namer straddled him and brought the barrel of the .22 down to his staring lifeless eye.
__ A shot, then another, crack-echoed through Palley's Woods. They weren't loud shots, the .22 being smaller than the .357, but the woods were quiet enough that they may as well have been cannon fire.
__ Todd tilted his head, admiring his handy work. Even if this guy somehow survived three shots to the neck and two to the skull, he wouldn't be able to see without any eyes. "Good enough," he smiled.
__ Turning his attention to the idling vehicle and its bulleted windshield, Todd thought of the Gypsy girl inside, bleeding to death -- or dead -- from the two shots he had fired through the glass. The shooting out of the eyes, he decided, would be his "calling card." Everybody needs one, he smiled, especially in this new dark age with no daylight.
__ He approached the passenger side and tugged at the handle. The door came open easily but not because it was pushed by a lifeless body within. In fact there was no body to be found at all. The two shots ripped ragged holes through the car's passenger seat and into the back seat as well, but there was no body to slow down the slugs. Climbing into the warm car interior, Todd looked under the seats, in the back. Nothing. No sign of the Gypsy.
__ Todd was now a slick and oily combination of excited and disappointed. He was disappointed because the fortune teller who insulted him last night was missing. He was excited because the anticipation of their final and deadly meeting gave him a charge.
__ "Besides," he muttered to himself, "I didn't want it to be this quick anyway."
__ Leaving the eyeless guy and the filthy hard corpse to lie together until they were covered by snow, Todd got behind the wheel of Munson's car, put it in reverse, and left the woods behind.

__ From behind the seclusion of a thick oak, Maggie watched, shivering. As the car's headlights bobbed and faded from sight, a deep blackness closed in around her.
__ Leaving her alone with the two dead men.
__ She smiled.

__ Ardy drove the Datsun slowly along the icy road while Doug whimpered curled in a ball in the passenger seat. Like Munson the night before, he could only cry uncontrollably and repeat "No, no, no," or "Why? Oh, Lord, why?"
__ She knew the anguish he had experienced, though she couldn't understand why Doug had been in hell after his death. His life had been a righteous one -- or at least as righteous as a mortal life can be. Perhaps, she thought, it had something to do with the dark specter that had possessed him.
__ "Doug, honey," she tried.
__ His response was a brief noise that could have been an acknowledgment or a jolt of surprise at her sudden address.
__ "Doug, I know what you were through. I was there myself, remember? With Munson."
__ Doug's tears refreshed and he shook with sobs, "Oh, Ardelene, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry you went through that."
__ "I know, honey, I know. But I'm out of it now, and so are you. We both are."
__ She let another forty or fifty feet of road pass beneath them before pushing further. "Doug. What can you tell me about the thing that had possessed you?"
__ To Ardy's surprise, Doug spoke right up without hesitation. He said, "It was an Alterling."
__ "Alterling? What's that?"
__ "I don't know. I just know that's what it called itself inside my head." His tone dropped and he said, "It gripped my soul with its teeth."
__ "What?"
__ Doug shook himself out of a trance. "W-Where are we?"
__ Ardy squinted out the window. Streaks of snow flashed in the headlights. The woods around them were growing white between the shadows as the snow stuck. The time on the Datsun's dashboard clock read five minutes to noon, but it may as well have been midnight. "I'm sorry. I have no clue."
__ "Stop at the next cross street so we can get our bearings."
__ "Okay." Then, "Are you all right?" She risked a glance in his direction. He was sitting up, staring straight ahead, and had a look of determination in the corner of his eye. Ardy had never seen Doug look so.... Fierce.

[** HOLD: The Munson Chapters will continue next month after I've had time to do some outlining. In the meantime, stay up-to-date with my 'blog: "Baby Blue Spider" at www.babybluespider.blogspot.com. Later! **]

30. Another One Bites the Dust (D1)

__ Ardy's breath came in short chopped clouds as she strained to hear signs of activity outside the car. The driver's side door still stood open and, despite the Datsun's chugging heater, the air had grown frigid.
__ Long moments passed without a sound or source of movement. Her ears had stopped ringing after the popping gunfire. She knew the police officer was planning to gun down Doug, afraid he was going to transform into some sort of monster. Then, she recalled, he did.
__ Something happened to him. He charged the cop screaming like a mad man possessed.
__ Now he was--.
__ "Doug!"
__ Ardy struggled for a moment with the handle on her own door before throwing it open and charging out into the street. A light snow was replacing the black rain but it was not yet sticking to anything. Perhaps the deep summer earth was still too warm to accept this strange turn to the weather. The red and blue lights on top of the police cruiser still thrashed the surrounding forest chasing black shadows away. The car the officer had stopped still sat diagonally across Henderson street. And no one, not a soul, seemed to care.
__ She fumbled around the back of the car, almost slipping on the wet pavement, and stared at the most bizarre scene yet from the past eighteen hours.
__ The officer lay on his back, a dark hole under his chin, burned around the edges from his own weapon. Over him stood Doug. Doug... was worse off.
__ Though he stood his vision was blank, glazed over. Two dark holes decorated his head: one on his forehead slightly to the left, the other had ruptured his right cheekbone. Another dark hole stained his polo shirt just over his heart.
__ He was dead, had to be. But here he stood gazing blankly toward the sky, his eyes as unseeing as those of a mannequin.
__ "Oh, my God, Doug! No!" Ardy ran a couple of steps toward him but stopped. Something wasn't right here. Well, of course something wasn't right, but she felt something was actually horribly, horribly wrong. Something else was here, something far worse than anything she had seen on earth.
__ But maybe not in hell.


__ Munson stared at the figure through the frosted windshield. It appeared to be a shirtless teenager, his upper body rippling with muscles. The kid, if you could call him that, was staring down at Clye Morrow's body. He was breathing heavily as if he had just run here a great distance. The kid didn't seem to care about the car, whether or not anyone was in it staring at him. He was fixed on the body at his feet.
__ He couldn't let the opportunity wait. Munson had also seen the gun in his hand, a rough looking .357. It was past time to wonder where Maggie got her information, where Ardy was, or what he would do now that he couldn't redeem himself through Clye Morrow. Moving with the quick reflexes and killer instinct that fed his bloodlust just eighteen hours earlier, Munson opened the driver's side door and dove-rolled into the dark forest, kicking the door shut behind him.
__ The kid responded as expected. He leveled the pistol toward the sound and squeezed off a shot, then another. The reports echoed through the frosted forest.
__ That's two, Munson thought. Four to go.

__ "Who are you?" Ardy called. "What have you done with Doug?"
__ The dead-Doug marionette twitched before leveling its blank gaze on her. "Doouugg?" it hissed.
__ A chill colder than this freakish night-day vibrated through Ardy. She had heard that sound before, that hissing cold voice. That was the voice of him -- the lowercase him. The him of darkness and anti-love. The him who hated Him.
__ "Leave him alone! This is not your place!"
__ The Doug-thing twitched again. Ardy could swear one of his eyes had started to focus.
__ "Noooooooo," it hissed. Doug-thing took a staggering step back, raised its hands and smacked at its own face. Then, in Doug's own voice, "Noooo!"
__ A tiny black metal slug dropped from his forehead and tick-ticked on the pavement.
__ "Doug! Fight it! Fight it! Come back to me!"
__ "I will take your Doug with me," he hissed at Ardy, "To the place you came from. Then you will follow by your own-- No!" Another twitch. More like a seizure.
__ "I love you!" Ardy screamed, hot tears welling in her cold eyes.
__ That did the trick.

__ The rock Munson hurled arched perfectly through the darkness and clocked the kid on the temple. The boy didn't flinch. The rock just tousled his hair and dropped with a thump.
__ Super boy turned toward the rock's trajectory and fired his pistol again. Two thunderous booms shook the bark of the trees around them.
__ That leaves two, Munson counted, and rolled to his left, further from the car.
__ But this time the boy didn't fall for it. He smiled wryly and said, "Oh, no you don't. I know what you're trying to do."
__ Munson froze. Panic started to build in his chest, it stoked his muscles for the charge he knew would come.
__ "Fine," the kid said, "I'll just have to waste your girlfriend." He then turned, aimed for the passenger side of the car, and fired his last two shots. Spiderwebs of safety glass cascaded out from the dime-sized holes that drew a direct line to Maggie's position in the passenger seat.
__ "No!" Munson screamed. Anguish and loss flooded through him but he didn't care. He only knew he had to stop this kid, avenge the girl.
__ But the boy was too fast and knew what would happen. In one smooth move, he dropped the empty .357 in the mud at his feet and, while whirling on Munson's position, drew the .22 pistol tucked in the back of his pants and leveled it at Munson's throat.
__ R. Lee Munson actually heard the three shots and felt them tear through his neck.
__ Then he was gone again.

__ Ardy stood shivering so badly her teeth chattered and her vision blurred. "Doug?"
__ Doug stood about eight feet from her. He too was shaking, his eyes wide. "I-Is it gone?"
__ She shrugged, "I d-don't know. I-I'm n-not sure."
__ Tears streaked his face, "W-Where was I, Ardy? W-Where d-d-did it take me?"
__ Ardy's chin puckered. She knew where he had been. She recognized the look in Doug's eyes. It was the same look Munson had when he was brought back from the brink of hell.
__ "Ardy!?" It was a scream. A scream of absolute fear and anguish. "Why is it so dark!? Why is it so cold!?" Doug collapsed onto the pavement hugging himself. The three slugs that had ended his life lay scattered on the road. The dark shadow that had taken hold of him was gone.
__ Ardy ran to him and embraced him. He was as cold as the road and his shivers were racked by his heavy sobs and screams of anguish.
__ "It took me, Ardy," Doug snorted. "It took me away from God. I can't go back there. Please don't let me go back there!"
__ "Sssh, love. Sssh. I won't. I promise I won't let it take you again." She petted his head now wet with melted drops of sleety snow. "I-It's okay, my love. We'll be okay. I w-won't let-t it come again."
__ Doug's cries, like Munson's the night before, were filled with the darkest kind of knowing, the deepest hardest truth to learn.
__ All she could do was hold him and rock him. All she could wonder was what had taken hold of him and why. And why it had let him go. And if R. Lee were okay out there in the darkness of Palley's Woods.

29. Waiting Him Out (D1)

__ Munson was wondering if he should get out of the car and re-bury Clye Morrow.
__ He sat behind the wheel, Maggie next to him in the passenger seat playing "church steeple" with her fingers. The engine was running and the heat was on. He didn't know why, but Munson noted the sudden and fierce drop in temperature over the past hour.
__ "What're you gonna do?" Maggie asked, moving her fingers from the "steeple" to the "open the doors to see all the people" position.
__ "I don't know." In truth Munson didn't know what to do, let alone say. He came to Clye's grave to dig him up so that Ardy Jacobi could resurrect his sorry but and they could dialog about murder and death and hell and resurrection.... and redemption.
__ But along came the little girl, Maggie. She told him, matter of factly, that Clye was as dead as any rock on the swelling river bank, that Ardy wasn't going to bring him back to life, and that Munson was going to have to protect her from a "crazy boy" on his way out here to harm her.
__ "You have a gun, right?"
__ "Not anymore."
__ "How come?"
__ Munson frowned at his reflection in the window. "I gave it to some friends."
__ "Ardelenie and Dougie?"
__ Munson squirmed in his seat and half turned to face the girl. He rested his massive calloused hand on her dainty fidgeting digits and said, "Tell me, Maggie, please...." He waited for her to look up at him. Her eyes were enormous and green like emeralds. Her skin was smooth but dirty and tracked by long dry tear tracks. She was so innocent. "Please tell me how you know these things, and where you came from."
__ Maggie pulled her hands out from under Munson's and turned in her seat to face him. She suddenly looked so adult. "It's ending."
__ Munson seemed to know what she meant, but he was terrified at the prospect. He was more terrified that the observation came from a child. He swallowed hard, "What is?"
__ The girl looked out the window, leaned forward and craned her neck to look out down the slope beyond the headlight beams. Then she began to fidget again, mumbling to herself in a sing-song voice.
__ "Maggie," Munson said, trying to sound like a cross adult, "What's ending?"
__ The girl sighed, yawned, and rubbed her eyes. Then she said, "You needn't worry about that. You have to fight the boy."
__ "What boy?"
__ Munson was getting exasperated, but his ultimate lesson -- the price he paid by spending moments in hell -- curred him, and he held his temper at bay.
__ Still, the girl was testing his resolve, taunting him -- though not purposely he felt. She was a strange little thing without a beginning or an end. Maggie was just there. She appeared before him in a flash just like the lake of fire and the darkness, the screaming, and the oblivion without love. Only Munson felt she was something more, a key. Perhaps her few words were links in a chain that would suspend him high over hell's gate and possibly even swing him into the arms of salvation.
__ God, it's been a long night, Munson sighed.
__ "Maggie, dear, please. Tell me what I have'ta do."
__ She stared into his dark eyes, considering -- or determining her next act of postponement.
__ "Magge," Munson insisted, "What boy?"
__ "That one," Maggie said and pointed to the figure standing over Clye's body in front of the car.

28. A Shadow of Frost (D1)

__ Somewhere between Todd's bloodbath and Munson's interview with Maggie the odd little psychic girl, Doug and Ardy were still miles away and trying to find access to Palley's Woods.
__ "What's this now?" Doug squinted through the rain dotted windshield at the blinking blue and red dots in the distance. "I hope that's not on Henderson."
__ "What?" Ardy looked up from where she had been studying her hands in her lap. She had been daydreaming about Doug's kiss, his tenderness, his boyish fear with the solid iron bar of bravery packed inside, his cute geekiness. She wished all this was over so they could just talk and hold hands and go on a date to the movies, or maybe go to church together on Sunday.
__ But then, she mused, in some weird way it's as if all this horrific nightmarish stuff was concocted to bring them together so they would fall in love.
__ Doug braked and coasted to the soft shoulder of the two-lane. "Crap. It is Henderson."
__ Several blocks ahead lay Henderson Avenue. It was a long lane through a short suburb on the far north side of town and probably the best chance for reaching Palley's Woods the long way. Another bridge had washed out preventing them from making it to Munson via the short cut on the north side.
__ Ardy wasn't as familiar with this side of Covert. "What does that mean?"
__ Doug sighed, "It means we're trapped on this side of the river. It means we can't get to Munson on the other side." He sighed again and turned up the heat in the car. "It means we're trapped in Covert."
__ Leaning forward, studying the waves of blue and red light ahead of them, Ardy said, "Go forward. Maybe it's not a bridge. Maybe it's just an accident we can go around." She patted his arm to encourage him but also because she couldn't stand not touching him, feeling that he was close to her. Despite the warmth in her heart, Ardy shivered.
__ "You okay? I turned up the heat." Doug put the car in gear and steered back onto the rainslicked blacktop.
__ Ardy didn't answer. Instead she looked at the heater dial and locked on the little white notch turned to the broadest band of red. "What's wrong with the world?" She grabbed the window crank and rolled down the window. The rain that misted in was frosty, the air a sudden bite that smelled like snow.
__ She quickly rolled it back up. "Oh, my God."
__ "I know," Doug said, craning his head and studying the midnight sky. "It'll be noon in an hour or so and it's as black as if the sky was covered with a blanket."
__ "And why is it getting so cold?"
__ "I don't know, love. I don't know."
__ She smiled, suddenly and inexplicably unconscious of the darkness, the cold, and the fact she had died and come back the night before. She only heard one word, spoken by him.
__ Then she remembered the last time she felt such warmth in her heart. It was when she was on the Other Side and feeling the flow of love from all the people around her, the distant light growing warmer. She no longer feared or wondered about death. But she did fear dying without getting to know Douglas Testerbird.
__ The Datsun coasted to a stop as the tempest of blue and red machinegunned around them. A silhouette of a hulking drill instructor came toward them from the harsh light. The smokey hat identified the man as a state policeman well before Doug rolled down his window to speak to him.
__ "What's going on, officer?"
__ The cop's breath came out in a puff of steam. His teeth chattered. It was August. He wasn't expecting to need his winter uniform coat. "Y-You're kidding, right?"
__ Doug shrugged it off as the cop leaned down to glimpse Ardy in the passenger seat.
__ Doug said, "I know. Weird night -- I mean day."
__ The officer's expression twisted slightly. "May I ask where you folks were headed this morning?"
__ Doug didn't glance at Ardy. That would belie a mystery that might lead to interrogation. Instead he looked forward at the single-squad road block. "Out of town. We were on our way through to Indianapolis when the storm hit last night."
__ "Where you folks from?" The cop tilted his face to peer into the back seat. "No luggage?"
__ "We're from Morton. Just a day trip." Doug said, trying to put his own face in front of the officer's. "Is the bridge to 41 out... sir?"
__ The officer stepped back and straightened up. "Can you explain where you got those bruises, sir? And the lady?"
__ Doug glanced at Ardy. She wasn't bruised. She wasn't marked at all. She was beautiful. A little haggard maybe, weary and tired, but beautiful. As for himself, he wanted to say he had been bashed by a crystal ball, almost blown away by a shotgun, and generally beat up by circumstances since adding the extra dash of cologne before leaving home last night.
__ Ardy sensed something wasn't going right. There was a problem with this picture.
__ The cop said, "Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to step out of the car."
__ That's when Ardy turned her gaze forward and her eyes lit upon the silvery glint of a snowflake on the windshield. Then everything went black-red-blue-white-black-red-blue-black-blue-black... black.

__ Todd Namer knew the roads would be impassible because of the rain. He also knew -- somehow -- that he couldn't wait in the parlor for Ardelene to return. She wasn't coming home. He knew... he somehow knew she was out there somewhere in the dark day. She was with that guy and they were trapped.
__ He didn't know how he knew, he just knew.
__ It was a knowledge that came with power, with the power that grew inside him and coursed through his arteries like burning kerosene.
__ He had finished cleaning up the parlor and decided it was time to leave. He would follow his new wolf-like senses through the dark until he found her.
__ Todd dressed in his jeans and sneakers, but left his shirt off. He enjoyed the feel of his rock hard abs, the taut fierceness of his muscular chest and arms. He wasn't like this yesterday. Yesterday he had a bit of a pouch and was pale and somewhat scrawny-limbed. Cold frosty air was swirling in through the broken front door, but Todd only felt comfortable.
__ "Must be the vitamins," he laughed. He tucked the .22 into the back of his jeans and carried the .357 at his right side. He left through the front door, kicking it completely off its hinges with a flying scream.
__ Landing on his feet outside, Todd surveyed Route 9. The rain was mixing a bit with tiny snowflakes, sleet. The sky was still midnight black. A pinpoint of warmth in the direction of far off Palley's Woods called to him.
__ Todd took a deep breath of the day-night and sprinted into the frost-starched cornfield toward Palley's Woods.
__ And destiny.

__ Ardy wasn't inside herself anymore. She had expected to wake inside Doug's mind, perhaps experience the fear and anger being imposed by the state policeman as he ordered Doug out of the car.
__ Instead, Ardy was inside the officer's head. And this is what was whirring by in a mad dash of insanity: What the hell is wrong with these people? Don't they see what's going on? There are creatures out here and they're probably part of it. I should shoot them now. Nobody on the radio. No way out of town. That guy in the car over there, torn to pieces. What did that to him? Creatures. There was a creature in the frost, all black and formed like a man -- Oh, Christ -- don't think about it. It'll come get you. What if this guy is one of them. I should shoot him. I should shoot him because he probably hurt that woman. He got bruised by her fists as she fought off his attacks in the darkness. Poor girl. Oh, God, what if he transforms into that black frost thing and attacks her while I'm here. I should just shoot him. I should kill him now. I have to defend her. Myself.
__ The cop, whose name was Frederick Duffy ("Sly" to his drinking buddies because of his weak resemblance to a certain Rambo film star), had Doug walk around behind the Datsun and open the trunk. He was reaching for his sidearm.
__ Oh, God, Ardy, wake up! Get up! Get out of this psycho's brain and yell! Scream! Wake up!
__ "Just nice and easy, pal," Duffy told Doug. He was waiting for just the right moment, for a window of opportunity when Doug would have to take his eyes away for at least four seconds, enough time for Duffy to draw his revolver and squeeze off three quick shots in his back.
__ Doug must have sensed something was completely wrong with the cop because, while he obeyed every order just as slowly as it was given, he never once took his eyes away from the officer.
__ Ardy swam in the mental sea of paranoia looking for a way to get out. The only image that played itself over and over in Frederick Duffy's mind was the willowy black creature that skulked along the roadside, retreating from the twisted wreckage of the car in front of his patrol prowler. Whatever it was, it was real -- or so Duffy's mind believed it was real -- and it was inhuman. And evil.
__ Duffy didn't have the luxury of having seen this day unfold through a series of murders, resurrections, visions, and signs. All he knew was that he was a cop who went on duty one night, it started raining, the sun never came up, and now it's getting very cold and creatures are causing cars to wreck.
__ And the radio in the police car didn't work.
__ That was a random thought that seemed to be the anchor to this long string of links in Officer Duffy's mind. The cop felt alone. He was Charlton Heston in The Omega Man. The world was crumbling and no one would answer his calls for help.
__ Naturally, he reasoned, anyone he sees now cannot be human.
__ Doug only knew something was wrong, very wrong, and that his actions -- or inactions -- would have a very severe bearing on whether he could keep Ardy and himself alive in the next few moments. His eyes were locked on the cop's eyes. The cop's eyes were drilling into Doug's eyes.
__ Neither man noticed the tall, slim creature, like a marionette coated in shining black oil, rise up behind Doug. The rain was swallowed up by its body and snowflakes that touched its smooth skin melted into the oily surface with an infinitesimal tisking sound.
__ Ardy, whose attentions and senses were those of Officer Duffy now, didn't see the thing either.
__ And she didn't see it when the thing stepped into Doug, forming his shape and sliding into him like a shadow chased into hiding by the sun.
__ She only saw Doug's expression suddenly change.
__ She heard him hurl of stream of obscenities at the cop.
__ Then she saw him charge.
__ Back in her own body, Ardy jolted awake by gunfire.
__ And screamed.