40. Doug Finally Sees the Light (D1)

__ Michael stopped where the road split. The broader snow-covered lane to the left would head back into town. The thin band of gray-lit snow breaking the trees to the right would lead to St. Peter's church. "This is the way?"
__ Maggie Morrow, now appearing much more mature than her eight year-old frame, stepped forward and pretended to sniff the air, examine the bark on nearby trees, study the snow at her feet for evidence of earlier trails. She said, "Snow already covered most of everything. Can you feel her no more?"
__ The archangel slowly shook his head. A tear glistened in the corner of his eye.
__ "It'll be okay, Mr. M. I promise."
__ A groan sounded from Doug still slung over Michael's shoulder like a large sack of flower. Michael knelt and gently lowered him into the snow.
__ Shaking himself awake, Doug said, "What happened?" Then he registered Maggie and Michael and it all came back to him. He shuddered and scooted away from them. "Stay away from me, Munson, or whoever the hell you are."
__ "Not hell," Maggie said.
__ Michael, in Munson's form since the killer's death hours ago, held up placating hands. "If you remember, Douglas, it was you who fell on the stone. I didn't actually hit you."
__ "Yeah," Maggie offered. "You were acting crazy. You were gonna hit us."
__ Doug's breathing fell less heavy and he stood on shaky legs, dusting himself off. He examined the road to his right, behind his two companions, and over his shoulder.
__ Thumbing the direction over his shoulder, Doug said, "That road dead-ends at St. Peter's church."
__ Michael nodded.
__ "She's there? Is that where he took Ardy?" Doug started to turn, head down the snow covered lane, when Michael's hand stopped him. The grip made Doug wince, "What are you doin', Munson. We gotta help--"
__ "She's dead."
__ Both men turned and looked down at the little psychic girl who announced the fact as though she were commenting on the cold.
__ Doug knelt before her and put his hands on her shoulders. "Listen to me, sweetheart, she's not dead. We have to hurry so we can save her."
__ Maggie scrunched up her face and looked up at Michael who raised an eyebrow as if to say, want me to tell him?
__ Michael offered. "Doug. You have to listen to her."
__ "To her? What about to you? What are you doing to save Ardy?" Doug stood and positioned himself in front of the man to challenge him. His voice raised in a harsh whisper, he said, "Ever since you came into the picture, you've tried to kill us, rape her. You brought all this down. You are the one who came onto the scene with your guns and knives and rope. It was you who kept us prisoner in her store. You're the murderer. You are the one keeping me from going to her even now!"
__ Maggie patted at Doug's arm and kept repeating, "No, no, no, no," but he wasn't listening.
__ And his voice got louder. "I tried to tell her not to come after you. I tried to protect her. I tried--" His voice broke and he sniffed back tears.
__ "Doug, don't cry," Maggie pleaded, her own chin quivering.
__ Michael's grip on Doug's arm loosened and he raised his other hand to Doug's cheek. "Douglas, listen to me. I'm a soldier. I'm not equipped to handle this and I don't have time right now."
__ "He's right," Maggie said.
__ "On the way here Maggie explained the whole thing to me. There is a plan, Douglas, and it's not yours. It's His." Michael pointed skyward.
__ "What are you talking--?"
__ "It's too complicated. And it's not complicated at all." Glancing to Maggie, Michael said, "From the mouths of babes, Douglas. The mouths of babes." Michael pushed past Doug and started down the narrow road.
__ "What are you doing?"
__ Michael turned and looked at the store owner and the little girl. His smile was weak. "What I was made to do."
__ "I'm coming with you," Doug said, anger fresh. Maggie grabbed him around the leg and held firm.
__ "No, Douglas. That's not how it's written. Please do this for Ardy. Listen to the girl. She will explain everything."
__ "No. I'm coming." Doug pushed Maggie back and started after Michael.
__ "Doug!"
__ He stopped.
__ Michael continued, "You were right."
__ Doug cocked his head and gave it a slight shake as if to say, About what, exactly?
__ Michael's blue eyes closed. When they re-opened, they were Munson's brown eyes. Weariness cascaded over his body and his expression was one of sorrow and deep, deep regret. The change was subtle, but it was enough to scare Doug back a few steps. Maggie hugged him as Munson spoke.
__ "You were right, Doug. This was all my fault." Munson spoke through tears that formed narrow streams down his cheeks. "I'm paying for it now. For all of it. For my whole life. I've been used to play a part here today - as you have. As Maggie has. As," he sniffed, "Ardy has.
__ "You were right, Doug. I was an evil man, unforgiven because I didn't seek the forgiveness as you have.
__ "Look around you. You know something larger than any of us is coming. The darkness. The cold. The abilities you and Ardy, and Maggie, all have. That's not happenstance, Doug. That's not coincidence or some miraculous turn of cosmic energy."
__ Doug shook his head. "This can't be God's will. He can't be allowing all this pain and suffering. This - This chaos is not heavenly. It's --"
__ "Hell. You're right." Munson blinked, smiled, "Why do you think he sent Michael here?"
__ Doug stared. Blinked. He forced all the rationale from his mind. He pushed away the Star Trek and X-Files and movies and TV he loved so much, perhaps too much. He thought about the only thing that could make sense in all of this; that what Munson was saying was true. Doug went to church regularly, he prayed hard. He wasn't involved in missions or church groups, but he was regular. He understood.
__ Or thought he did until today. "I don't remember this in Revelation."
__ "That's because it hasn't happened yet," Munson offered. He came back to Doug, rested a hand on his shoulder. "You saw me die. You know where I was, what I have to go back to."
__ Doug nodded slowly. His chin quivered in pity for the man.
__ "I'm telling you what I saw with my own soul. Hell is readying for war."
__ Doug's eyes grew wide. He glanced down at Maggie who was nodding in full understanding, as if this little girl could possibly conceive --
__ Munson stepped back. "You were right. I was a cold-blooded killer. I had lost my way as the seed spread on poisoned ground. But I had known it once. When I was little." He looked at Maggie and smiled the smile of a proud brother. "God is sending me in there with his archangel to face not only my demons, but the demons of the world."
__ Doug shook his head. "I-I still don't understand. How do we compute in all this?"
__ "He's coming back, Doug. This is it. The big game. We're all getting off the bench now to play our part. He will come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead."
__ "And his kingdom will have no end," Doug finished the prayer, his expression shifting from ignorance to shocked disbelief.
__ "Maggie was blessed with the answers you need, Doug." And with that, with a blink from brown eyes to blue, Michael turned and walked purposefully toward the church in the snowy dark.
__ Feeling useless, Doug called out the only thing he could think of, "Save her."
__ Michael barely turned his head in acknowledgment.
__ Maggie pulled on Doug's sleeve. "She's already been saved, Mr. Testerbird."
__ Doug took a deep shaky breath and crouched in front of the girl. He nodded, "Okay. Now tell me what I have to do."
__ Maggie smiled. Then her smile faded. "You have to have very strong faith, Mr. Testerbird. More than me or Mr. M, or even Ardelene. Yours will be the hardest part of all."
__ He nodded again. "I can do it."
__ Maggie looked at his forehead as though she could look into his mind and read his thoughts, which she could. She said, "I'm not Yoda, and you're not Luke, and Darth Vader is not in there.
__ "It's easy to say you can do it because it's easy to say it in the movies."
__ Doug forced a laugh. "But I can. I'm going to do it for her, for you. I have to."
__ "Really?"
__ "Really."
__ "Then you're ready to betray me - a little girl - to the devil?"

39. Plans of the Fallen One (D1)

__ Deerhead wasn't Deerhead anymore, but he was still grotesque, still something other than Todd, the delivery boy for Pizza King. Ardy watched the creature work, her head mushy and filled with non-thoughts as the pain wallowed up inside her and raged in burning rivers up and down her skin. Her head was pounding like a large dull hammer was pounding her body into a splintered piece of wood.
__ Like a large nail into arcacia wood.
__ St. Peter's church was located on the outskirts of Palley's Woods, but far from the center of the town of Covert. Only the most devout Catholics from the countryside gathered here, and usually only around Easter or Christmas. Other times, it served as a hall for easy stringless marriages or BINGO games. You would think that the eve of Doomsday would bring throngs of people to the house of God to beg forgiveness, especially with the evidence of an August winter and mid day midnight all around them.
__ But as Legad told her as he lay her broken body on the fat beam of wood, "All fornicators. They're saying good-bye to life by living it." He cinched the cord tighter around her arm and whispered in a cold dead breath reeking of stale blood, "Only the idolaters would be caught dead here tonight. Now who's the fool?"
__ Ardy didn't understand the question and could barely understand where she was or why a reanimated delivery boy with antlers jutting through his skull was dismantling the inside of the church.
__ All she could say was, "Water." And it came out weak, pained, and wincing.
__ "Of course, child," Legad smiled crookedly. "None too soon, none too soon."
__ Moments later he returned from the sacristy holding a golden communion chalice. He poured the water clumsily over her mouth and she lapped at it drunkenly. As he poured, Legad giggled like a teenager involved in an elaborate prank, and muttered, "He who drinks my water shall have eternal life."
__ Ardy coughed up the water that went down the wrong pipe and cried out in pain.
__ Legad noticed something below her vision and ducked out of sight. Whatever he was doing was causing new waves of pain to rocket up her legs. When she saw her own tennis shoe fly up against the wall she understood he was simply removing her shoes.
__ "P-Please, dont'," she managed.
__ "Ssssh." The monster reappeared in her face, the one straight eye glaring at her. "Save your strength for your death. You'll need it." Again, the dry laugh.


__ Ardy continued to fall in and out of consciousness for the next hour, or so it seemed. All the while, Legad - as he had introduced himself at one point - busied himself trashing pews with a fire ax and lighting candles. One moment he was in a rage and decapitating the wooden Christ figure from the large cross over the alter. The next he was quietly humming Amazing Grace as he lit candles at twelve points around the church's interior.
__ Her breathing was labored and came in rattles and rasps.
__ "Do you know why--" he suddenly snapped, appearing at her right ear and startling her. She jostled and felt new waves of pain, not just from her legs but her wrists and arms now too. "-- I'm keeping you so close to death but refusing to let go of the rope?"
__ Ardy could barely comprehend the miasma of memories swimming through her soupy brain. The only returning image that meant anything to her was that of Doug. His memory was keeping her grounded, keeping her hopes alive. She knew he would come for her soon. As for other dreams: resurrections, heavenly guardians, gravelly drags through hell, gunshots, snow, Deerhead.... She let them swim behind her eyes weakly without trying to decipher them. The only thought keeping her from giving up the ghost was Doug. If not for him, it would be that easy. Somehow, she knew that if she just let her heart break - that would be the last part of her to die.
__ "Not going to answer? C'mon, Ardelene, you have to keep your strength up."
__ "He'll come," she whispered.
__ "He who? Douglas?"
__ She would have nodded but was using what little strength she had to hold still. It was hard enough to breathe as it was. Then it dawned on her to keep her thoughts bottled up. If this thing knew Doug was coming for her....
__ Legad sat on the post of the communion rail and sighed. "You can't keep your thoughts from me anymore."
__ Ardy turned her head slightly to look at him. When the reanimated face showed no emotion, she turned back and closed her eyes.
__ "That's right. It wasn't your power at all. It was mine - well, his."
__ When Ardy refused to acknowledge him, Legad kicked out at something by her feet. A wooden scrape sounded and bolts of pain in her legs, feet, arms, hands, and chest made her come alive with a scream.
__ "Pay attention," Legad cried over her lingering scream. When she fell silent again, he smiled, "Better."
__ Ardy's dry and cracked voice winced, "W-who is he?"
__ "Ah. Glad you asked." Legad stood and started to pace. "The age of darkness, the reign of the Fallen One, is upon us."
__ "Lucifer," Ardy whispered.
__ "Clever girl. Or just a churchgoer."
__ "Follower."
__ "Follower of the Son, huh?"
__ "Father, Son...."
__ "Blah, blah, blah. Listen."
__ Ardy forced herself to meet the gaze of the horned head, the bent eye.
__ "All that stuff on TV, movies. It's great."
__ When he wouldn't elaborate, Ardy took a shuddering breath and offered, "What's great about it?"
__ "It's all sin. All of it. The Way," Legad said with arms raised heavenward, "Is lost."
__ "Lost," Ardy smiled weakly, "Like the TV show?" Her laugh brought spasms of agony and her scream was weak and pitiable.
__ "Pride goeth before the fall, Ardelene. Not funny."
__ "Before - gasp - the fall - gasp. That's your boss - gasp - you're talkin' about."
__ "My boss, as you call him, has ruled his domain for thousands of years. Yours," Legad started pacing again, "Well, yours was nailed up to a tree - much like you are now - by people like you."
__ Ardy now recognized the source of the new pains. She forced herself to turn her head to the left. Her left arm, outstretched on the cross that once held the decapitated Jesus, was bound with curtain cord. A thick knife of metal, she guessed from a broken candle holder, had been hammered through the carpal tunnel of her wrist. There was no feeling but pain from her elbow-up. She didn't even bother to look across at her right. The pains matched. And, though she couldn't look down at her feet and badly broken leg, she could imagine what Legad had done there.
__ And then the full of it cascaded down over Ardy. She was going to die today, for good and forever. Doug wasn't going to save her after all. This was the last day of Earth. This was the end.
__ But something didn't seem right in what was left of her mind. "No," she whimpered.
__ "Yes," Legad laughed. "Oh, yes."
__ "No," she weakly explained, "This is. Not right."
__ "Hm? How? -- Oh, don't answer. Save your strength for the end. I'll fill in the blanks for you."
__ Legad was suddenly joined by a host of dark phantom creatures, the Alterlings. Nine of them gathered around Ardy's cross and set about the task of lifting her upright. As they hoisted, repositioned, and clumsily jostled her one degree higher at a time, pain gave way to numbness. If not for the cord pulled tight around her broken and bruised legs, her chest, and her arms, Ardy was sure the weight of her body would pull her down off the cross. She hung limply, limbs burning.
__ All the while she rose higher and higher, Legad entoned, "Earlier I asked you a question that you didn't answer, sweetheart. I asked you why it was you thought I was keeping you alive, or killing you slowly. You didn't answer."
__ Ardy's only answer this time was a grunt and truncated scream of agony.
__ "The reason is bait."
__ She released a final groan as the cross was propped against the wall behind the altar. The Alterlings drifted down, six on each side of the church. Legad sat in one of the unbroken pews and steepled his fingers. "We gave up two of our angelic powers to a couple of humans far from the site of the Son's return.
__ "One was given the sight of the future, the other the sight of the heart - the ability to literally walk in someone else's shoes."
__ Legad scratched at a raw spot on his forehead where one of the antlers had poked through. He crossed his legs before continuing. "We knew that would open the door, distract the guardsman - so to speak - and allow us to walk the earth which was rightfully ours to toy with in the beginning.
__ "So we brought the darkness.
__ "If you weren't here, you'd probably be home watching or listening to the news, hearing about the strange goings on in the Middle East, the strange turn the war is taking, and about the very special prisoner of war being transported out of Jerusalem.
__ "A thief in the night," Legad muttered to himself more than to Ardy.
__ "Ardelene, my dear, you served us well. But your time is over." Legad stood, took a sharpened curtain rod - fashioned someone like a spear - and approached the altar. "Even now the other gifted one approaches, and brings his soldier. It's been a long time since my master and the archangel have spoken. Should be quite the reunion."


__ Gravity had been playing its part. The true tool to bring death in crucifixion was not the nail or the hot sun, the deprivation of food or water. With the body weakened and the arms held outstretched, pulling open the ribcage, breathing becomes toxic. The expanded lungs have no muscle power to push out bad air and the victim begins to suffocate with his own air.
__ Ardy was already too weak and her breathing broken. Legad wasn't trying to keep her awake. He was trying to kill her quicker by making her scream and talk. She was dizzy and couldn't keep her lolling head up to gaze upon the creature that had done this to her.
__ Her body was already dying. Pain was trading hands with a cold numbness and periodic aching waves as nerves slowly died off.
__ She hadn't really heard any of Legad's speech. She was busy trying to form her thoughts into prayers and mental cries of repentance.
__ Then she saw Legad approach her with the makeshift spear.
__ He said, "It's too bad you won't be here to see it."
__ She used the last of her energy to force a smile and whisper, "Forgive--"
__ Then Legad thrust the pointed rod into her side. Ardy felt the skin and organs puncture, but there was no agony left to be felt. Instead she felt her spirit tumble out of her body and soar up toward the warmest, most loving light imaginable.

38. Quiet Worm, Don't Squirm (D1)

__ Maggie absorbed the warmth from Mr. M's hand as she walked with him down the center of the deserted stretch of road between the two hemispheres of Palley's Woods. She thought about asking him why it seemed there was no one around except the three of them: Mr. M., Maggie, and Doug who hung limply over Mr. M's shoulder.
__ "You're so strong," she offered, then wished she hadn't said anything. She was rather enjoying the hush of the August Winter silence.
__ "I have to be, child," Mr. M said.
__ Maggie sighed and gave his large hand a squeeze. It was amazing how warm it was considering how cold it was in death just about an hour ago. But she didn't want to think about that either.
__ Instead, she concentrated on who she was and wondered where she would be tomorrow. And, in thinking about that, she couldn't help but remember and wonder how she got to be where she was now. What she was yesterday. A worm.


__ "Stay quiet, little worm. Stay quiet," man said.
__ That's what Maggie Morrow called her father. She didn't call him "daddy" or "papa," or even "Clye," his given name. Because he wasn't her father. He couldn't be. Fathers don't touch their daughters the way he did. They weren't supposed to hurt them.
__ "Stay quiet, little worm. Don't squirm," was a little rhyme he used to tell her before the touching began. He used to repeat that mantra over and over as he went about his duties and she, the dutiful daughter, would try to detach herself from him, from life. She tried to imagine she really was a worm because things like this don't happen to worms. They don't cry or scream. They don't even talk. Worms just crawl and eat dirt and get eaten by birds.
__ She used to imagine --
__ "Stay quiet, little worm. Don't squirm."
__ -- that a giant robin would swoop down through her bedroom window and swallow her up so she'd be away from it. So she wouldn't have to wonder about daddies and why they would say, "Stay quiet, little worm. Don't squirm."
__ After it was over she wouldn't cry or whine. He would smack her with his palm and tell her that was just the beginning if she ever told anyone about his duties. He would open a manilla folder and show her black and white pictures of horribly dead people, eyes staring like unblinking dolls, weeping holes in their cheeks and foreheads. Sometimes they'd be in pieces with dark black liquid in puddles around them and tendrils of slop splattered all around. "Little worms," he'd say, "who talked."
__ Then he would leave her with the nanny, Miss Rita, as he went off to his law firm to make money to buy more toys, dolls, crayons, and books for her. To make money to buy her silence.
__ She never told Miss Rita about it because every time she thought about telling her, Miss Rita would pull at her long stringy hair and say, "Doesn't your dad ever buy peanut butter?" or "Don't you hate that Friends isn't on TV anymore" or "Hey. Wanna color?" and those distractions were so welcome and needed that she pushed the other thing away. She could forget about man until he came home from work and sent Miss Rita away. Some days that would be that. They'd have a quiet dinner, or man would ask about what she colored that day. Sometimes --
__ "Stay quiet, little worm. Don't squirm."
__ The last time she saw him, well before he became like the pictures, he sat on her bed staring off into space.
__ She didn't ask him what was wrong. Worms don't talk, remember. But he answered her anyway. He said, "You had a brother."
__ Maggie Morrow kept the covers pulled tight to her chin, kept staring straight ahead, but her eyes and ears grew wide. She felt the blood heating her ears as man talked.
__ "Robert Lee, he was called." Man paused, imagining some pictures she was glad she didn't see. He smiled. His ugly pink tongue touched his lower lip. "Huh. Don't know why I started thinking of that little shit."
__ Then he looked at her and said, "You can go out on your own before you become a teenager. I don't need that kinda crap, I'll tell ya."
__ She didn't ask what kind of crap. She let him imagine she asked it.
__ "He was the property of my last wife. She didn't like the games we played, so she took him away." His black eyes fell on her for a moment, over his shoulder, "Good thing for me your momma died, huh?"
__ That was the first time Maggie ever felt like crying, not like a worm at all. She never knew her momma, but imagined she was not like man at all.
__ "Well, little worm," he said, rising to his feet, "No lesson today, huh? I think you know the rules by now."
__ More silence. More vacant stares. Then the last words man ever said to her, "Okay, I'm gonna go pick up Miss Rita. You get some sleep 'til she gets here." Then he was gone.

__ That night she prayed herself to sleep. She prayed for her brother she never knew she had to come back and save her. She prayed her momma up in heaven would send him.
__ And she did.
__ Maggie changed when the news came. She had already started having the strange dreams. The dreams had dirt and shovels, rope, guns, and a glowing eye behind a pane of glass. She dreamed of boys delivering pizza and of store clerks coming to court lovely young psychics.
__ The news came in the form of neighbors and strangers who never rescued her when she needed it. But now they were here to comfort her, to tell her that her father had gone to heaven. That a bad thing had happened. That a bad man had taken him away. Others talked about something called 'video surveillance' at his office. And others, when they thought she wasn't around, said things like 'disgruntled client' and 'brains splattered all over the floor.'
__ But she knew the truth. She could see it on the day the darkness came. That morning she felt the rain coming down on her face as she ran away from her house and the crying neighbors.
__ "Let her go!" they called. "Let her run it off!"
__ "Poor child!" others called. Miss Rita was not among them. Her mother wouldn't let her come. Maggie knew that but didn't know how she knew. She just did.
__ But she giggled as she ran. Her brother had returned and made man go away. And God told her in her waking, running, giggling dream that she would find her brother in the dark and the snow. Winter in August!? Yes. Apparently, yes.


__ Maggie Morrow squeezed Mr. M's hand again, this time to get his attention.
__ He smiled down at her. "Yes, Maggie?"
__ "Did you know my brother, Mr. M?"
__ "Robert Lee?" Mr. M looked ahead and smiled. "No. But I understand he played his part well."
__ "I knew he would," Maggie giggled. "I just knew it."
__ "I'm glad, child. There's a lot you have to know before the end. A lot."
__ She abruptly stopped and pulled back on his arm.
__ Mr. M released her hand and turned to face her, lowering himself to one knee so they could be eye to eye. He lowered Doug to the snowy pavement and gently rested his head.
__ "Mr M," Maggie started.
__ The man who looked like Robert Lee Munson -- except for the crisp blue eyes -- took Maggie's hands in his own. He smiled. "You wish to talk to him?"
__ The little girl couldn't say anything. Her chin quivered and icy tears welled up in her eyes. She nodded.
__ Mr. M's blue eyes closed. His brown eyes opened. He instantly looked softer, warmer, forgiven.
__ "Oh, Maggie," R. Lee cried. He pulled his little step-sister to his chest and hugged her hard. Their shuddering tears mingled as she rubbed her hands up and down his broad back and his large hands hugged the back of her head and neck like a warm hood. "I'm so sorry," he sniffed. "I didn't know. I didn't know any of it."
__ They separated to soak up each other's faces, faces they never knew. Faces that would have had different lives if not for the circumstances that caused them so much separate but identical physical and emotional pain. They were instantly a brother and sister who had always known and loved each other.
__ Munson said, "I knew what he did to me, but I didn't know he--"
__ Maggie pressed a finger to his lips. Tears cascaded down her cold red cheeks as she shuddered. She couldn't tell him. She could only stutter, "Nobody needs to know anymore."
__ They hugged and cried some more, catching up on lost years of love in a single embrace.
__ When they parted a second time, Munson stood. He said, "I have to go now."
__ Maggie sniffed and nodded. "Will I see you again?"
__ Munson slowly shook his head. "I still have much to repay. I was lost before I was found."
__ The girl nodded again and fresh tears glittered in the corners of her eyes.
__ Before returning to the darkness, R. Lee knelt again and hugged his little step-sister good-bye. "Before this day is over," he said, "You'll be with your momma who loves you more than you could know."
__ Maggie hugged him tighter and cried harder.

__ When she finally pulled away from him, his eyes were once again hard but loving, the cool blue of a determined soul, God's soldier.
__ "Mr. M?" she sniffed. "Thank you."
__ He lifted Doug onto his shoulder again and took Maggie by the hand. "Let's go, shall we?"
__ They walked off into the night without another thought of worms or death, the child, the store clerk, and the archangel.

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.

36. Faith and Patience (D1)

__ R. Lee Munson leaned against a tree, his right arm steadying himself as his shaky knees threatened to bring him back down to the ground. With his back to the girl and Doug, he looked headless, his face hidden from their view below a bowed head while his eyes reformed in their ruined sockets.
__ "What makes this so hard," he said in a strangely soft voice, "Is that everything is frozen." Then he chuckled.
__ Doug could only stare shaking, partly from the cold, partly from terror. He glanced from Munson's back to the little girl - what was her name, Maggie? - smiling up at the reanimated murderer.
__ Maggie looked to Doug and said, "See, I told you it was you. You did it, Doug. You did."
__ "I-I did?"
__ Maggie nodded as Munson slowly turned around. Doug was thankful for the darkness. He could see the dark hollow shapes that once held his eyes, now slowly forming dim whites and amoebic irises.
__ "M-Munson?" Doug tried.
__ Munson nodded. He cleared his throat tentatively like a flu victim testing his voice after an all-night fever. "I'm cold."
__ "I can imagine."
__ Munson slowly shook his head. "No you can't, Doug. ... You can't."
__ Doug watched as Maggie approached the articulate zombie and reached her hand out to him. "Hi again," she said.
__ Not sure he was believing what he could see through the dim, Doug thought Munson smiled down at her. "Thank you, little lamb. I'm sorry I left you."
__ "You did what you were s'posed to, Mr. M."
__ He nodded again and shivered under his blood-crusted jacket. To Doug he said, "Ever have your intestines frozen sixty degrees below normal body temp, Testerbird?"
__ Still stunned, but suddenly remembering Ardy, Doug said, "I don't know how you— How I—. We have to go after her."
__ Munson looked down to Maggie. The little girl clarified, "The Crazy Boy took her, I guess, after he shot you in the eyes."
__ Doug stammered, "He sh-shot you in the—"
__ "Doug's right," Munson smiled to the girl. "We have to save Ardelene. She's important to this whole thing."
__ "What do you mean," Maggie smiled back, "Important?"
__ "Later, child." Then to Doug, in that same soft voice, "Where, Doug? Where was this?"

__ No pain.
__ Nothing but bloodlust and ferocity. Ferocity personified.
__ That's what Ardy was feeling inside Deer Head. The creature was called "Legad" at least in its own mind. His head was swirling with promises she recognized as false but apparently Legad thought of them as the largest pot of gold at the end of the most beautiful rainbow ever. Inside his head she saw her own torture. She saw his plans bobbing in a pool of blood. He planned to rape her. He planned to eviscerate her with his fingers. He planned to break the bones that had not yet been broken.
__ And from what Ardy could determine, the only thing keeping him from starting his chores was that he didn't know what he could do to her without making her pass out. Any one of the incredible horrors he gleefully played with in his mind would undoubtedly shock her into unconsciousness. It seemed important that she survive the pain to bring him his pleasure.
__ The psychic connection started to weaken as Ardy mentally cringed away from the terror film she starred in within the creature's mind. Then she found herself kicked out forcefully as another being pried itself into its mind. This third brain was ancient and dark, more vicious than anything Deer Head was dreaming. This was a persona who existed since time began. The only thing Ardy could get from him before going back to her own body was that he wanted to make someone suffer, someone he could never make suffer but would try nonetheless.
__ He wanted to make God cry.

__ Doug followed as Munson and Maggie lead the way through the woods. Maggie kept step behind her Frankenstein friend who didn't seem to need to see in the dark to navigate his way around the trees of Palley's Woods.
__ "Munson?" Doug called as they hiked. They had all been silent for the past fifteen minutes or so.
__ "Yes, Doug?"
__ "What about your friend back there?" Doug remembered it was Munson's running off, the whole adventure outside the safety of the Psychic Parlor that got Ardy taken. It was all because he thought Ardy could resurrect his murder victim. It was all because he wanted to repay Clyde Morrow, to bring him back to life so that he wouldn't go back to hell again when he died.
__ "What about Mr. Morrow?" Munson said without slowing or looking back. He had obviously thrown in the name to acknowledge to Doug that he was fully aware of his original reason for coming out to the woods.
__ "If I'm the one with the resurrection powers, as Maggie says, don't you want me to revive him?"
__ "It's too late, Doug. Hell already has him."
__ Doug jogged up a couple steps to close the distance on Munson's back. "But you were in hell. You came back."
__ "That wasn't my plan, Doug. That was God's."
__ "What about all that redemption you were babbling about? I thought you had to confront him."
__ Munson continued his pace, Maggie jogging alongside like she were running to the playground with her friends.
__ Doug jogged up again, this time within reach. "You can't just leave him there, R. Lee. It's because of you Ardy came out here—"
__ Munson suddenly stopped and whirled on Doug. He took the skinny store owner by the collar and lifted him back off his heels and slammed him against the rough bark of a tree. The air knocked out of Doug's lungs with a cough. "Look, Doug, that wasn't the reason I came out here. I came out here so that you and Ardy would come looking for me, so that Legad would come looking for her, so that Maggie would find me and lure you to me to bring me out of hell for the last time, so that he would not be prepared for the return."
__ Munson took a deep breath and loosened his grip on Doug's collar. He smoothed the other man's shirt and placed a palm against his cheek. "If you can't just have faith, Douglas, you'll never understand anything."
__ As Munson and Maggie resumed their brisk walk, Douglas sniffed back a tear and forced his chin to stop quiverring. "Who?" he called after them.
__ Munson stopped and turned. His eyes were blue and warm. Doug could swear that wasn't their color earlier when they'd first met.
__ Doug repeated, "Who? When who returns."
__ Munson smiled and took a deep breath. "The first teacher, Doug."
__ "Teach—?"
__ "The Christ."

__ Ardy was starting to feel more clear, though somewhat loopy. Her head swam in big round circles and she no longer felt her arm and leg. In fact, her whole body was floating, waving like flotsam on a polluted creek ridge. Every time she looked at Dear Head she laughed at him.
__ "Vlagh ju rhunkus gungy," the Head said.
__ "Oh, shut up," Ardy said, and laughed again. "I can't even understand you."
__ Suddenly the creature stood and placed its bloody human hands to its animal head just under the devil horn antlers and pushed ceilingward. Ardy watched, wide-eyed, as the Deer Head peeled back off a bloody human face. As she watched, the head dropped behind the boy she now recognized as the Pizza King kid, the delivery boy from the shootout. Ardy realized the look she was giving him was one of saucer-eyed horror, but all she could do was bust out laughing.
__ "Now you shut up!" Pizza Boy said, peeling bits of gutted dear head and brains from his cheeks and nose. "If I hadn't hit this stupid thing and totalled the car, we'd be at the church by now!" Then his anger surged and he brought a crimson fist down on Ardy's bandaged broken arm.
__ Her laughter suddenly electrocuted by a white hot flash of agony, Ardy heaved and thrashed on the bed. That caused a chain reaction through her body, waking up her leg even through the tranquilizer and heavy drugs Legad administered that he had found in Munson's car. She quickly collapsed to a shudder and merciful unconsciousness.
__ Shuddering himself, more with anger and ferocious despair, Legad screamed until his lungs burned. Then he reared back and punched Ardy's body as hard as he could.
__ At least that's what he had planned to do. Someone grabbed his arm as he extended it backward and twisted it behind him until it snapped at the elbow. This time all Legad could do was whimper as his Master forced him to his knees.
__ "It seems I made a mistake choosing this vessel," the Master hissed with a shushing paper-tear voice that chilled even Ardy's unconscious spine. With that, the Master reached down and snapped an antler off the roadkill deer's head.
__ And pushed it into Legad's ear.

35. Talking to Deer Head (D1)

__ Ardy Jacobi dreamed she was being dragged to the edge of a glowing orange lake of fire. Freezing air burned her face, but her arms and legs were warm. In fact, her right leg and right arm, the ones held out to ward off the heat of the lake, were beginning to bleed smoke.
__ "No."
__ Thrashing from side to side, Ardy saw what was taking her to the lava pit. On the one side was R. Lee Munson brandishing the slippery grin of a mass murderer, just as she remembered the first time she saw him. The other shape belonged to Pizza Kid. His pimply expression was wild and lustful. And he was naked.
__ As she approached the lake, fire snapped and crackled from her shin and thigh. In just a couple of seconds her entire right leg was engulfed in searing flames.
__ "Don't! No, please! Don't!"


__ Though the pain in the dream was intense, and the circumstance increasingly urgent, Ardy felt herself wake slowly, groggily, and realized the pain was genuine and crackled without the snapping sound. But her right leg and arm weren't burning. They were broken and contorted. And, from what she could see in the hissing yellow glow of a Coleman gas lantern, they had been crudely splinted with curtain rods, a dirty two-by-four, and tied with torn sheets.
__ Delirious with agony, Ardy lolled her head and forced her eyes to focus on her surroundings. She didn't remember getting hit by the car. She only remembered being in Doug's Datsun, pulling over for some unknown reason, and running out into the snow. Now she was here.
__ "Where--?" She croaked. Her voice was weak and cracked, but she had to hear it to make sure she wasn't still dreaming. A pulsing cramp ached in the part of her thigh that didn't burn, but she dare not move it to get comfortable, if that were possible.
__ The place looked like some kind of windowless cabin. Dark red-brown plank wood made up the walls and ceiling. Cobwebs laced the air like the remaining filaments of nightmares. The only door was heavy oak but stood slightly ajar. Snow drifted in with tiny swirls on the hardwood floor. The bed Ardy currently occupied was musty smelling and the blankets under her body were itchy and oily at the same time, and its springs were large and uncomfortable through the thin mattress pad.
__ Despite the freak winter chill outside and the breeze coming through the slightly-open door, Ardy felt as though she were burning up. Her head pounded in time with the throbbing explosions of pain in her leg and arm. The pain and discomfort screamed and refused to let her make sense of what was going on around her or even recall the events of the day that lead her to this place. Her only calming thoughts were fleeting memories of the Kind Ones, the angels or whatever they were who touched her gently on the other side when she had died for a short time.
__ When was that? I died? Impossible.
__ That odd memory or delusion seemed to be the only strand of mental webs she could reach, so she concentrated as best she could on that. What on earth made me believe I was dead? Am I dead now, suffering and burning in hell--?
__ Then she remembered the other death, the one that wasn't hers. The one she "rode along" on. Who was that?
__ Then, as quickly as she was starting to remember, her visions faded away.
__ The oaken door creaked as it slowly opened.
__ Ardy's eyes alternately grew wide, then squinted, as she tried to focus on what was surely a living nightmare.
__ Into the cabin-room walked a creature with the body of a man, naked and muscular from the waist-up, with the head of a deer. The antlers on his head numbered six points and, to Ardy, resembled the horns of the devil.
__ Reflexively trying to scoot away from the creature as it reached out for her, Ardy felt a surge of pain peel through her insides from her ruined thigh, into her groin, and up into her chest.
__ Then she was mercifully unconscious.


__ Whatever it was that grabbed Doug Testerbird's pant leg had released it and withdrawn. Sure the trickster Alterling was baiting him somehow, he kicked angrily in the direction of the retreating gripper only to meet nothing but air.
__ "You're on your own, now, Douglas," came the paper-tear voice from somewhere far off to the right. "Try not to hurt her before you take her to Legad."
__ All Doug could do -- considering living through death, witnessing murder and despair, feeling the day and temperature give way to a freezing and frost-filled night in August -- was stare and scream. His yells echoed in the woods but his raspy-voiced friend was true to his word and did not take the bait.
__ "Please! Please! I need you." Knowing full well that he was beseeching an agent of God's own enemy, but feeling this evil shadow was the only thing that could help him find and rescue Ardy, Doug dropped to his knees and cried. He leaned back, bellowing to the treetops skirted with snow, "Please! I have to find her. Help me! Somebody, help me!"
__ "It'll b-be okay, D-D-Doug. N-N-Now that you're he-he-here."
__ The voice belonged to a young girl, her clicking teeth tapping out I'm freezing in Morse Code. She was behind the small arm that had gripped Doug and was now huddled next to a snow-covered, and apparently dead man and wrapped in the filthy jacket of another corpse rapidly becroming part of the snowscape nearby.
__ Doug stumbled back and fell against a tree before sliding down onto his rump. "W-Who are you?"
__ When the girl didn't answer right away, he persisted with, "Are you okay? Where are your parents?"
__ The girl coughed and said, "My name is M-Maggie. I don't have any parents."
__ Doug started to ask, "Then who--?" but Maggie cut him off.
__ "This is Mr. Munson. I think you know him."
__ If he wasn't already on the ground, the last comment would have knocked him there.
__ The girl seemed to warm with Doug's presence as he continued to grow colder. She stood and brushed herself off before turning to Munson's corpse to brush the snow out of his hair, off his shoulders, out of his ruined eye sockets--
__ "Don't," Doug commanded. He reached out to pull her away from the body. Who was this kid? How does she know R. Lee? Why isn't she scared out of her wits?
__ Must be demented, Doug reasoned as the girl retreated from his reach. She's lost it. Who wouldn't in all this? This crazy night?
__ "Please don't touch him. He's... He's not... umm."
__ "He's dead. I know that." Maggie stared down at Doug, then glanced to Munson's body as if to say, Well, aren't you going to do anything?
__ Doug eased off the ground but didn't rise higher than a squat. He waved a finger loosely in Munson's direction. "How-- H-How do you know--?"
__ "R. Lee Munson."
__ Doug nodded, stare vacant.
__ "He found me. He saved me from the crazy boy."
__ "C-Crazy boy? Who--?"
__ "The one who took your girlfriend. Ardelene."
__ Doug stood, almost hit his head on a low dark branch lost in the shadows of cris-crossing trees. "Ardelene?"
__ "Ardy to her friends," Maggie filled in, perplexed that she had to fill in so many blanks that Doug should already know.
__ "I-I know. She--"
__ "The crazy boy's got 'er. He drove off in Mr. Munson's car before you got here. Long before." She emphasized the time she spent waiting by brusquely rubbing warmth into her arms.
__ Doug stepped closer to her, crouched down to eye-level. "Tell me how you know these things."
__ Maggie shrugged. "After you wake up Mr. Munson."
__ Doug glanced at the body. "I can't do that. I don't--"
__ "Yes you can. You can do it just like you did it before, like you did it for Ardy."
__ "But I didn't--" Doug started to protest, swinging his arm back and brushing his fingertips inadvertently over Munson's cold hard shoulder. In that imperceivable instant, tiny jolts of lightning fired through Doug's fingernails and surged into the corpse. "--have anything to do with those things. It's Ardy. She's the--"
__ And that's when Munson drew his first breath in over an hour.

__ Ardy lay shaking, staring up at the dead black eyes of the deer-headed creature who sat next to her bed. Fear and pain, not the cold, had her head quivering and thrumming from side to side.
__ When she woke she found her good arm and leg were bound to the bed where she lay and a broken syringe lay on her stomach which heaved with each laborious breath.
__ The creature checked her pulse, pressed the back of a bloodied hand to her cheek to feel her temperature. It let out a short grunt of satisfaction but it showed no other emotion. Ardy was so out of it from the trauma of the accident she still wasn't believing her eyes. Having been to hell twice already, she was sure this was yet another layer of it.
__ "Who?" she croaked.
__ The creature twitched at her voice, leaned its deer snout closer as if to hear better. A drop of pussy blood dripped from a torn nostril and tapped her t-shirt just above her left breast. It made her wince and pinch her eyes shut. She tried to wish it away, tried to cry out from her soul for the warm loving spirits she knew before.
__ But when she opened her eyes, it was still there, silent and horrifying.
__ "P-Please. Who?" Ardy muttered through a sudden flow of hot tears. "Where am I?"
__ No reaction from Deer Head.
__ Going only by what she knew of the past insane 24 hours, Ardy did the only thing she could. She plead for her soul. She wept through the words, "I'm sorry. Please don't hurt me anymore. I-I'm so sorry."
__ The creature bellowed something from its throat that sounded like, "Muhr Maharmu!?"
__ Ardy flinched and cried out. Pain echoed through her bones as the Deer Head reared back, then forward again.
__ "Muhr Maharmu!? Mvoaw vahkum nahr mu!"
__ "No!"
__ Then Ardy's eye glimpsed a twinkle from another dangling snot in the creature's nose as the ambient light of the cabin were suddenly concentrated in that point for the purpose of catching her eye....
__ And drawing her in.
__ Within seconds, Ardy understood everything.

34. The Dance of the Alterling (D1)

__ Doug had only wasted a few minutes trying to re-start the Datsun before giving it up. Abandoning the car as Chris McCandless had done, Doug noted the irony, and hoped he wouldn't be found dead in an abandoned bus.
__ Hugging himself against the cold, he looked into the darkness where Ardy vanished with her abductor, then he glanced toward the dark woods where the Alterling had vanished with its dry tinny laugh.
__ Without a car, he didn't stand a chance of catching up with the Pizza King kid. He could only hope Ardy was alive, okay, and strong enough to fight off whatever it was the kid was going to do. Doug knew he stood a better chance trying to run down the creature that appeared as suddenly and strangely as the night-for-day snowstorm in the middle of August.
__ Glancing once more down the road, he muttered a brief prayer of promise, "I'll find you Ardy. I swear," and jogged into the woods after the Alterling.


__ Legad almost wrecked the stolen car a half dozen times as he found it difficult to concentrate on the icy road. There she was, the gypsy girl, unconscious next to him. He kept pulling his eyes away from the road to watch her chest rise and fall with shallow breaths. He watched her hair toss in the harsh breeze from the ruined windshield. He rested his palm on her bare thigh, feeling the coldness of the skin, rubbing it to keep it warm. He wanted to touch her in other places too, but knew enough to remain patient until he found a place to have his fun. Legad needed a quiet place, a warm place, a place hidden from passersby.
__ He couldn't believe the absolute luck and power he was experiencing. And it was all thanks to her.
__ Another stolen glance, another rub on her thigh. He avoided touching the other thigh. It looked funny. In fact, that whole leg looked funny. Too many knees and it was turning colors.
__ It was this woman who scorned him like so many others, like all the girls in school who put out for guys like, like.... He couldn't remember his friends, the ones he killed and devoured.
__ "Huh. Funny."
__ It didn't matter anyway. He took his eyes off the road again and forced his hand, his poking fingers, between the passenger seat and the woman's bottom.
__ Withdrawing his hand when the car whirred on a sudden patch of black ice, Legad gripped the wheel tightly.
__ Her fault, he decided. She distracted me to make the car slide like that. I can't wait to tear her to pieces. He proclaimed silently then that he would dispose of her body by eating it -- raw.
__ When he was done doing other things that is. He smiled. His teeth felt sharp.
__ Legad gave the woman's leg a pinch and she moaned but didn't wake.
__ "Good. Brain still works."
__ Taking his eyes off the road again, he raised his hand to her chest and cupped his palm around a breast. The cold air was doing wonderful things to her--
__ The car slammed into a brick wall. Somebody screamed, short and shrill. What was left of the glass shattered in and rained down on Legad. His head cracked the steering wheel and the car's forward momentum turned into a shunting corkscrew. The woman's head thumped the passenger glass, but her seatbelt held firm. Blood sprayed Legad's face and bare chest and a giant fist with matted hair poked--master!?-- through the broken windshield and punched him square on the nose, sending shivers of color through his vision before everything went black.


__ "You're leaving your girlfriend behind." The voice was dry but coarse, like tearing sandpaper.
__ Doug stopped his run through Palley's Woods and rubbed his arms to generate some brief warmth. He glanced left and right, up, right again but couldn't figure out where the voice had come from. He knew the Alterling was close, but had lost the foot path some time ago.
__ It was dark. Doug could only make out dim tree-like shapes in front of him. He couldn't see the thickness of the forest beyond. It was just a black velvet curtain.
__ From the darkness, it came again. "The boy is going to murder her, you know."
__ "Where are you? Show yourself to me you coward."
__ "They are all going to be mine," the paper voice rasped. "Legad is going to bring them to me. All the souls. After he makes them turn away."
__ Doug wanted to ask from what, but was suddenly afraid the only reason the creature didn't move back inside him had something to do with the answer to that question. So he pretended he knew. "Why do you need him to turn them away. Do it yourself."
__ A shadow, darker than the dim around him, passed by. Doug tried to lock onto it with his straining vision, but he couldn't. Then the voice returned, even closer, from the opposite direction.
__ "Because I am tired of doing all the work. This is my springtime. This is my birthday."
__ "Happy birthday," Doug sneered, and whirled on what he thought was the source of the voice only to get poked in the cheek by a twig.
__ From a new location, higher in a tree: "He's going to rape her corpse, you know. Stupid boy. He can't get the order right on anything."
__ "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" Doug clamped his eyes shut and put his hands over his ears. He screamed until his throat burned, "Go away! Leave us alone! Shut up! Why are you doing this?"
__ When he finally stopped, Doug put his hands on his knees and slumped. He labored to catch his breath. It was too dark to see the plumes of breath billowing down from his mouth, but he figured that's what the shapes were.
__ Until one of the shapes reached out and grabbed his pant leg.