The Burning

Only one of the shadows was not a shadow at all. It was a man, an old man, who came limping in from between the trees at the opposite end of the graveyard and knelt down before one of the not-so-randomly positioned rocks. He was carrying what looked like a black cloth bag, the kind magicians sometimes used in the service of a trick, and as Dennis hid behind a tree, holding his breath and hoping he would not be seen, the man withdrew a live chicken from the bag. Grasping the clucking, thrashing animal by the neck, he slit its throat with a knife that suddenly appeared in his hand, and as the animal spasmed its last, he held the wound open wide, letting the blood fall onto the protruding rock. The man was whispering something, a chant perhaps, but Dennis could not make out any of the words.

What was this? Some sort of Santeria ritual? It seemed unlikely here in the white-bread bowels of the ,4idwest, but he could think of no other explanation or the bizarre rite he was witnessing.

The kneeling man placed a finger on the rock, in the blood, then touched it to his forehead and bowed deeply.

Dennis could not see the old man's face-for all he knew, the man was Hispanic and a Santeria practitioner-but he was glad of that. Something told him he didn't want to see the features of that shadowed face.

Maybe it wasn't Santeria but Satanism.

The idea did not seem as far-fetched as it should have, and Dennis tried not to make any noise as the man crammed the dead broken chicken back in the black bag. If push came to shove and a fight broke out, he had no doubt that he could physically take the old guy ... but he was not sure that was all that was at work here.

The man stood and spoke out loud two words that could have been Spanish but sounded like 'bo sau'- 'revenge' in Cantonese-then hobbled off the way he had come. A darkness descended over the graveyard upon his exit, and Dennis realized that for the few moments the man had been there, the moon had shone its light directly onto the spot where he'd been kneeling.

Dennis crept out from behind the tree and stepped into the clearing, walking carefully around the suddenly uniform mounds, shining his flashlight on the ground until he reached the blood-soaked rock. The small standing stone was wet and shiny, and where the blood had spilled on the adjacent ground there were two jet-black stains in the shape of Chinese characters. He wished now that he had allowed his mom to teach him to read and write Chinese the way she'd wanted to. But it was too late for that now, and the best he could do was commit the characters to memory and try to find out later what they meant.

Bo sau.

Revenge.

He wanted to touch the bloody characters but was afraid to do so. There was an aura of malignancy about the shapes, a sense that whatever venom they possessed could be imparted to anyone who touched them, and Dennis backed fearfully away, wondering what exactly the old man had done. He had never been so frightened in his life, and though he continued to think he'd been meant to see this, he still did not know why. For the first time, it occurred to him that whatever had led him here, whatever had compelled him to take this trip, might not be so benign.

He turned back the way he'd come, vowing never to return to this spot.

This spot'? Hell, there was no reason for him to stay in this town. He'd earned enough cash to get him to Colorado at the very least, maybe all the way to California if he skipped a few meals and spent a couple of nights in his car. He could go back to the motel right now, pack up his stuff, catch a few winks, then, in the morning, collect what he was owed from the owner and be off. If need be, he could get another crappy job in another podunk town and stay there for a week or so to pick up some extra cash.

But he was not going to remain in Selby another day.

That settled it. Feeling better, feeling lighter, as though a great burden had been lifted, Dennis made his way past the deadfall, over the graded land of the soon-to-be subdivision and back onto the sidewalk.

Ten minutes later, he was sorting through his belongings and filling up suitcases, thinking about what he'd need before he hit the road.

If only he'd packed his Brigit's Well CD ...

Fourteen

Flagstaff, Arizona

In her dream, Angela was living in a tent in the woods with an ugly little monkey that was her baby. She was hiding but from whom or what she did not know, and that made her feel even more tense and anxious than if she had known the identity of her pursuer. She peeked out from between the flaps of her tent to make sure no one was near the camp, listened for a moment to ensure that she heard no unfamiliar noises in the surrounding woods, then quickly emerged, baby in one hand, pail in the other, to get water from the creek a few yards down the hill.

The baby chittered in her arms, showing its fangs.

There was no sign of anyone about, no indication that another person was anywhere near the woods, but something felt off, something felt wrong, and she wished she had waited to get the water.

It was too late to turn back now, though. She was already out and halfway there, so she might as well go through with it. She sprinted between a tree and a manzanita bush-or came as close to sprinting as she could with her arms full-and saw the creek just ahead. Reaching it, she knelt down, scooped up a bucket of the fresh clear water.

And a shadow fell upon her.

She looked up, startled, heart pounding crazily.

It was Chrissie, but it was not Chrissie. She was a man instead of a woman, and she was standing on the opposite side of the creek dressed in some sort of gray uniform that looked familiar but that Angela could not quite place. There was a striped hat and overalls ...

An engineer.

The man who was Chrissie was a train engineer.

With a vicious snarl, the man stepped into the water, drew from behind his back a lantern and swung it at Angela's head. Angela put up her hands to ward off the blow, but her baby was in her hands, and the metal edge of the lantern struck the monkey full in the face, causing it to cry out once, shrilly, before a splatter of blood erupted from the back of its shattered skull, spraying all over Angela. The drops that landed in her open mouth tasted salty, sickening.

Then Angela was running over train tracks, over soft ground covered with dry leaves, over hard dirt roads, toward town, never looking back, knowing she was being chased but afraid to see how close her pursuer was getting.

Once in town, she ducked into a shop. She'd never seen the shop before, but she knew its layout perfectly and ran through a doorway hung with beaded curtains, down a narrow flight of steps and into-

The tunnel.

It was crammed not with dead bodies but with living people, and they were all hiding there, the same way she was. She knew instantly that it was the engineer from whom they were seeking sanctuary.

Footsteps sounded on the floor above their heads. The slow deliberate knocking of boots on wood.

Engineer's boots.

Around her, women started sobbing; men whimpered; a child cried. Angela tried to push her way through the densely packed crowd, wanting to get as far away from the entrance as possible, knowing that this time the engineer would ignore all of the others, that this time he had come for her. But the wall of bodies held fast, no one willing to give up space or pass his or her advantage to Angela.

The boot steps started down the stairs.

Someone screamed, and then the man who was Chrissie was standing in the doorway, larger than life, bloody lantern in his hand. He looked in on them and laughed, a deep echoing basso profundo, but made no effort to enter the tunnel. Instead, he withdrew, and seconds later the door was shut.

Sealed.

And as the boot steps retreated up the stairs, and in the darkness the air became thicker, warmer, harder to breathe, she knew with a certainty that went all the way to the core of her being that they were going to die.

Angela awoke gasping, as though she really had been trapped in that airless tunnel and had just now