37. Rock of Ages Cleft for Munson (D1)

__Munson stood by the roadside staring up into the sky, watching as the snowflakes whirled down out of the darkness, his breath billowing up in soft gray clouds of warmth. "It's beautiful," he muttered.
__ Maggie looked up at him appreciatively.
__ Doug, who was losing patience with each moment away from Ardy, said, "How can you say that?"
__ Doug made a motion to check the time on his watch, then realizing he wasn't wearing one smacked at his wrist. "It's probably three in the afternoon."
__ "So?"
__ Doug snorted and raised his palms to the sky. "Look, Munson. It's insane. This whole day has been insane."
__ Munson tilted his head back, closed his eyes and caught a snowflake on his tongue. Maggie laughed and mimicked him, giggling as the tiny frosty swirls kissed her red cheeks.
__ Doug growled, "It's August!"
__ Munson laughed. Took a deep breath. "August winter."
__ "August winter," Maggie repeated. She met Doug's eyes with a mischievous smile, then noticed the look in his eyes and let her expression fall. She hugged Munson's legs and edged behind him.
__ Munson noticed her fear and gently put a hand on her head. Looking to Doug, he said, "Why are you afraid, Douglas? You saw me rise like Lazarus just as I had before. You did that. Are you afraid you won't be able to do the same for Ardelene?"
__ In the silence drifting between them, Doug slowly closed the distance. His hands were clenched into cold fists as he blinked the snowflakes off his eyelashes and pushed his breath out in long huffs. Maggie whimpered and now hid completely behind Munson.
__ "What happened to you this time?"
__ Munson tilted his head, blinked his new blue eyes. "Explain."
__ "Yer speech. The slow and calm way you're talkin'. How you've... changed. It ain't you."
__ Munson blinked slowly, sniffed a long breath of the cold air.
__ Doug said, "Yer eyes. The fact that you don't seem concerned about Ardy."
__ "Why would I be? I mean," he shrugged, "Like I said, you can revive her if she's dead."
__ Doug's shoulders hitched, then heaved as a shudder of fear, pain, confusion, anger, and sadness tore through him. He fell to his knees, hands on his face, weeping and groaning. "I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't. I don't," he cried. Then after a long wail, "I want my momma."
__ Munson watched as the young store owner was swallowed by his own despair. He watched speechless as Maggie went to Doug and wrapped her arms around him to comfort him. He watched as Doug cried harder collapsing into the young girl's arms, screaming for his mother.
__ "August winter," he whispered. "August winter."

__Ardy regained consciousness in waves of pain rolling up from her knees to her gut. Her head was spinning, her broken arm twisting and swaying like a knotted rope toward the sky. Trees moved by her, upside down, and she realized her arm wasn't reaching up toward anything. It was dangling useless, swinging behind the marching jean legs of the hideous Pizza Kid. She tried to speak, tried to ask what he was doing with her, but there was no answer. She could only go along for the ride, carried over the shoulder of the carrion-wearing monster. She closed her eyes.

__ "We need to go, Douglas," Munson said calmly.
__ Doug sat on the slushy road, his face burried in Maggie's chest as the little girl petted his head. He nodded into her and forced himself to his hands and knees.
__ "It'll be okay in the end," Maggie said, and rejoined Munson taking his hand.
__ Doug stood and brushed himself off. "Okay," he said with sardonic surrender. "Whatever."
__ Munson and the girl turned and started to walk up the stretch of road that split the darkness of Palley's Woods.
__"Whatever!" Doug called after them. "I'll forget all this," he waved at the dark trees canopied with white snow. "I'll forget the fact that I can bring people back from the dead. I'll forget Ardy can enter people's thoughts. I'll forget that little girl there can see the future. I'll forget that it's dark in the middle of the day and it's snowing in August." A deep breath, then, "I'll even forget that you're a murderer."
__ Munson stopped and turned. Maggie did likewise, standing next to her friend. "All this has changed, as you said, Douglas," Munson intoned, "Yet you don't realize that I have changed too."
__ "Oh no, Munson. I get it. You're different too." Doug was being sarcastic, waving his arms crazily and crying again. Though this time his tears were the tears of a madman surrendering to a cascade of thoughts and feelings he could never understand.
__ Maggie looked up to Munson who nodded to her. "It's time?" she asked.
__ Munson smiled down at her. He nodded.
__ "What's this?" Doug called, "Secrets?"
__ Maggie skipped carefully through the slush to the roadside and started digging in the shallow ditch snow for something there.
__ Munson said, "You're not going to help us, Doug. I have to make you fall unconscious by striking you with a stone."
__ Doug straightened. "What?"
__ Maggie lifted something that looked like a turtle shell, black slick and curved. Doug recognized it as a rock. He shouted, "You can't be serious."
__ Maggie called, "You're not going to calm down. You're just going to get worse. Mr. M. has to carry you to the church so we get there in time."
__ Doug glanced from side to side. He had fallen back as Munson and Maggie lead the way. Now he was standing at least fifty feet away. It would take a professional ball player with a steady windup to tag his melon with one throw at that distance. He laughed. "No. You're not serious."
__ Munson took the rock from Maggie and, in one smooth move, tossed it in a tall underhand arc toward Doug.
__ Doug, tracing the arch with a wide grin, stepped easily aside as the rock crunched on the asphalt under the slush cover a few feet from him. He barked a laugh. "Ha! Now it's my turn."
__ Maggie took a safe position behind Munson as Doug retrieved the stone. Munson stood tall, took a deep breath, and clasped his hands behind his back.
__ Doug turned his left shoulder to Munson and eyeballed him like a pitcher waiting for the perfect call. He nodded at the invisible catcher, kicked up his left knee, and lost his balance as a black ice sheet under his right foot gave way. Doug landed with a thud on his back. The rock came down on his forehead with a cluck.
__ Maggie giggled, but stopped when Munson met her gaze seriously. "Sorry."
__ "He's having a hard time, Maggie," Munson suggested as he approached Doug's unconscious form.
__ "He is," the girl agreed, "But he'll be okay for Ardy. I know he will."
__ Munson nodded. He knelt beside Doug, lifted him over his shoulders, and fireman-carried him down the road in the direction they had been walking.
__ "You don't usually use a rock, do you, Mr. M."
__ Munson shook his head, readjusted Doug's bulk.
__ "The sword with the fire coming out of it would have been cooler."

__ Ardy's eyes opened and slowly focussed on the roof of the grumbling car. The gentle sway of the back seat she lay crumpled on told her they were in motion. To her right she saw the plane of the passenger seat. A fluffy hole the size of a dime had been punched through it. Cold wind from a broken windshield puffed through it and around the seat. She groaned and whimpered as the little lightning bolts echoed through her body again.
__ The sound alerted the driver who turned and looked at his backseat passenger with crooked eyes. It was the Pizza Kid, but his head was oddly shaped and ruined by the deer antlers that had been pushed into his temples and ears at odd angles. The points protruded from his forehead like the horns of the devil. His right eye was staring at the bridge of his nose, dried blood rimmed the socket. His left eye blinked at her in an unintentional perverse wink.
__ He had the expression of a reanimated corpse, which is what Ardy suspected he was. She didn't know how, when, or why. And none of it surprised her.
__ She couldn't scream. She couldn't laugh Doug's laugh of insanity. She couldn't ask where he was taking her. All she could do was close her eyes and pray.