Ghost Road Blues

“My strength comes from purity,” Crow said, hefting the plate. “As well you know.”

“Then you must be as weak as a kitten.”

“Ouch.” Crow thumped down the plate and slid onto one end of a hardwood bench at the far end of the massive oak table. There were enough plates and cups scattered around to show that several people had already eaten and left. Crow knew from long experience that the Guthrie kitchen was in nearly constant use by field foremen and supervisors, the Guthries themselves, and various other people who happened to be passing, from the seed merchant to the milkman. Despite Guthrie’s threat of giving the breakfast to the cows, they didn’t actually own any.

Guthrie poured coffee for Crow and then for himself and sat down in the big captain’s chair at the other end of the table.

“So, what’s on your agenda?” Guthrie asked. He checked the hall to make sure Val wasn’t looking before adding real sugar and half-and-half to his coffee instead of Splenda and skim milk.

With a mouthful of French toast, Crow said, “Got to go over to the hayride and do some work. Couple of the traps need some repairs.” Pine Deep boasted the largest Haunted Hayride in the country. It was owned by Crow’s friend, Terry Wolfe, but Crow was the one who designed it and kept it in top shape. He personally devised each of the “traps”—the spots where the monsters jumped out at the customers and scared the living hell out of them. Each of Crow’s traps was very elaborate. “After that,” he said, swallowing and reaching for the bacon, “I guess I’ll head into town to open up the shop.”

“Business okay?”

“Doing great.” Crow’s other concern was a small arts and crafts store on Main Street, where he sold art supplies, fancy paper for scrapbookers, even knitting yarn, but which turned into Halloween central this time of year. Even with the crop blight that was hitting the local farms, and the resulting economic slump, Halloween was still the number-one business in Pine Deep.

Munching bacon, Crow assessed Henry Guthrie. Val’s dad was getting up there now, and high-tech farming or not the fields took their toll. He looked every one of his sixty-four years, and perhaps a bit more. His bushy black eyebrows had become wilder and shot with silver, and since Val’s mother died two years ago, Guthrie’s head of hair had gone completely gray. Even so, his blueberry-blue eyes sparkled with youth and mischief.

“I’m thinking of taking Val to New Hope next weekend. Just to get away for a day or so. Can you spare her?”

“Well,” Guthrie said, considering, “without her the farm will collapse, I’ll be financially ruined and will have to live in a cardboard box under the overpass, but other than that I don’t see why you two shouldn’t have some time.”

“Cool.”

“Oh, I ran into your buddy — His Honor, I mean.”

“Terry? Where’d you trip over him?”

Guthrie almost said that they’d met in the waiting room of the psychiatrist they both shared — Henry for grief management and Terry for who knew what? — but shifted into a different lane when he realized he didn’t know if Crow knew that Terry Wolfe was in therapy at all. He said, “In town. I had a few errands to run.”

Crow grunted, eating more bacon.

“He doesn’t look too good these days,” Guthrie said.

“Yeah. He says he’s been having trouble sleeping. Nightmares, that sort of thing.” Crow wasn’t looking at Guthrie while he spoke. He was having some nightmares as well, and didn’t want Val’s very sharp and perceptive dad to see anything in his eyes.

“Well, I hope he takes care of himself. Terry always was a little high-strung.”

The batwing saloon doors that separated the kitchen from the main dining room creaked as Mark Guthrie, Val’s brother, pushed through. He was a few years younger than Val but was beefy and out of shape, and unlike his father Mark was starting to lose his hair. He wore a gray wool business suit and was reading the headlines of the Black Marsh Sentinel.

“Morning, Dad, morning, Crow.”

“Hey,” Crow said, waving at him with a forkful of sausage.

“It’s all on the table,” Guthrie said. “Sit down and let me pour you a cup.”

They sat there and ate, and Mark gently shifted the conversation to local business, discussing the financial crisis in town without actually mentioning the phrase “crop blight.” So far it hadn’t hit the Guthrie farm, but some of their neighbors had been devastated by it. Mark, who was a nice but rather pedantic guy, offered his views on how to solve everyone’s financial woes by the right investments. Guthrie nodded as if he agreed, which he didn’t, and Crow ate his way through a lot of the food. Val’s brother ran the student aid department of Pinelands College and therefore held himself up as an expert on anything dealing with finances.

Crow let him talk, grunting and nodding whenever there was a pause, and when there was an opening, he jumped in and said, “Well, fellas, much as I hate to eat and run…I’m going to anyway. Mark, see you around. Henry, I’ll probably see you later. Val said she’s going to make dinner for me tonight.”

Both of the Guthrie men stared at him as if he’d just said that blue ferrets were going to pop out of his ears.

“Val?” Guthrie said.

“Cook?” Mark said.

And they burst out laughing.

“If she hears you she will so kick both your asses,” said Crow, but they were right. In all the years Crow and Val had known each other she’d only cooked for him a few times and it had always ended badly.

They were still laughing as Crow jogged upstairs, gently pushed aside the hair dryer, kissed Val in a way that made them both tingle, and then ran downstairs again. Now Henry and Mark were exchanging horror stories about some of Val’s previous attempts at cooking. Mark was as red as a beet and slapping his palm on the table as they guffawed about something dealing with a pumpkin pie and a case of dysentery.

Whistling to himself, Crow strolled across the broad gravel driveway to where his old Chevy squatted under a beech tree. The song he was whistling was “Black Ghost Blues,” though he wasn’t consciously aware of it.

(2)

Terry Wolfe rolled over onto his side as if in sleep he was trying to turn away from his dream. It didn’t work. The dream pursued him, as determined this morning as it had been for the last ten nights. As cruelly persistent as it had been, off and on, since the season had begun. Since the blight had started.

His face and throat were slick with sweat. Beside him, Sarah moaned softly in her sleep, her dreams also troubled, but in a less specific way, as if the content of hidden dreams tainted hers, but somehow in her sleep she was only aware of a sense of threat rather than of the nature of it.

Terry’s hands gripped his pillow with ferocious force, his fingernails clawing at the thick cool cotton as he dreamed….

In dreams Terry was not Terry. In dreams, Terry was something else.

Some.

Thing.

Else.

In dreams, Terry did not lie sleeping next to his wife. In dreams, Terry always woke up and turned to Sarah and…

The part of Terry that was aware that he was dreaming cringed as he watched what the dreaming thing did. That part of Terry cringed and cried out and wept as he watched the thing pull back the covers from Sarah’s sleeping form and bend over her, dark eyes flashing as they drank in her curves and her softness and her vulnerability. The watching Terry tried to scream as the thing opened its mouth — and the sleeping body of Terry Wolfe actually opened his mouth, too — and leaned closer still to Sarah, teeth bared, mouth watering with an awful hunger.

No! the watching Terry screamed — but the scream only took the form of a choked growl.

It was enough, though. The tightening of his throat and the desperation of his need to cry out snapped the line that tethered him to the nightmare and he popped awake. He lay there, chest heaving, throat raw from the strangled cry, sweat soaking him.