At the bottom of the hill I locked up the brakes once again and slid to a halt with the battered nose of my truck sticking out into the intersection. I flipped a mental coin and turned left, ignoring the stop signs as I went. I was less than a mile down the road when my head began to clear, and the throbbing pain that had once occupied it drained away.
I immediately slammed on the brakes and turned around.
The category five migraine returned as soon as I cleared the underpass heading south, and I knew I couldn’t be far behind him. My misaligned driver’s side headlamp canted awkwardly at the pavement, illuminating it in a harsh swath of blue-white. If it hadn’t been for the bizarre angle at which it now shone, I probably would have missed the shining skid marks.
In June of 1929 the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge opened. The fifth bridge to cross the Mississippi, linking Missouri to Illinois, it was one of the longest continuous truss bridges in the country at slightly over one mile in length. By 1968 a newer, wider bridge had been opened up river, and the “Old Lady” had been closed. After over thirty years of sitting silent, the structure had finally been renovated for use as a pedestrian-only bridge linking hiking and biking trails on either side of the river.
It was here to which the skid marks led.
Yet again I applied my overtaxed brakes and slid the truck to a slightly canted halt. At this stage the bridge was only open on weekends between early spring and late autumn. A tall, chain link fence surrounded the entrance to what was originally a park-like area leading up to the old toll bridge. The wide gate that would normally be locked shut was now splayed open in a deformed mass, barely hanging from its hinges.
This close to the river the fog was nearing terminal density, and visibility was threatening to disappear. I twisted the steering wheel and followed the marks through the ruined gate, advancing with caution as I pushed through the opening.
With my engine revving barely above idle, I made my way around the left perimeter of the gravel parking area, fully expecting a large black panel van to loom dully in my headlights at any moment. It never did, and as I came upon the entrance proper to the old bridge, my fear was confirmed.
Two evenly spaced metal posts had been set at the mouth of the bridge to bar vehicular traffic from entering. The leftmost of the barrier posts was now slanted at an outward angle from a recent impact. If I strained to follow the beam of my one still-aligned headlamp, I could just barely make out the Iron Gate slightly beyond the posts that was used to close off the entrance. Just like its chain link predecessor, this one had been violently flung open.
I slowly idled the truck up the ramp and between the metal barriers. The rampant itching on my forearm had intensified and joined with a painful soreness that I knew to be a precursor to yet another weeping stigmata. Urgent emotion was declaring that I needed to race across the bridge to catch up with my quarry before the gory symbol was brought into being. Bitter logic was arguing that I was crossing a bridge that hadn’t been used by vehicles in over thirty years and that visibility was near zero.
My throbbing temples told me that he wasn’t far away, so logic won out for a change.
Now at the opposite end of the scale from the earlier chase, I cautiously urged the truck along at just over ten miles per hour. The Old Chain of Rocks Bridge was only a two-lane structure, and I steered up the center, casting my intent gaze forward as I made my way along the slow incline.
The clinging mist combined with my headlights to create an eerie forced perspective. The rust-marred superstructure rose around me to blend with the shadows. The lower beams bore a recent coat of dull green paint, and a four-foot fence painted a bright blue lined each side. The sight line of the structure faded quickly into the veiled atmosphere to join with an imaginary vanishing point.
The old patched pavement before me was marred by graffiti imprinted upon it throughout the years of non- use. Some of it benign declarations of so-and-so-loves-so-and-so, some of it disgusting epithets, all of it enhanced by the shiny wetness overlaying the asphalt.
I had traveled maybe a third of the distance across the bridge when I finally saw the red taillights of the panel van peering back at me like a pair of demonic eyes in the grey ether. I forced myself to maintain my wary pace and much to my surprise continued to gain on them. In less than a minute a perfect outline of the vehicle was visible, and the swath of my headlamp fell across the back to reveal the rear doors hanging open.
In an automatic motion I halted the truck and pushed the gearshift into park. A demolition crew was now working with a jackhammer directly behind my eyes, and the rabid itch on my forearm had mutated into a fiery burn. Somewhere within all of the pain, it crossed my mind that I was suddenly in way over my head.
I sent my hand in search of my cell phone and fumbled the device out of the dash-mounted holder. When I glanced down to punch in Ben’s number, I realized why I hadn’t heard from him yet. I had forgotten to switch it on. I quickly pressed my thumb against the power button, and the moment the unit completed its flashing and self- diagnostic chirping, an urgent peal emitted from it. I stabbed the button to answer and placed it against my ear.
“Ben?”
“GODFUCKINGDAMMIT, ROWAN!” my friend’s voice distorted through the earpiece, “WHAT THE HELL DO YA’ THINK YOU’RE DOIN’?”
“He’s here, Ben,” I stated urgently. “I’m right behind him, and I think he might have someone else out here!”
“WHERE? WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?”
I had quickly switched the phone to my left ear and was reaching to the dash to turn down the volume on the CD player when the battered driver’s side door of the truck swung violently open with a loud groan. Before I could utter anything more than a surprised yelp, a massive hand slapped against the back of my neck, its bony fingers wrapping around to almost completely encircle my throat.
The cell phone flew from my hand and clattered across the pavement as I was wrenched forcefully from the seat and tossed like a piece of discarded trash against the bridge’s safety rail.
In the confusion my fingers had spun the volume knob on the stereo in the opposite of the intended direction, and music now blared raucously into the night.
CHAPTER 26
Acute slivers of pain were rapidly followed by an overwhelming dull ache across my back as I roughly impacted the metal railing and tumbled to the wet asphalt. I let out a tortured scream as I suddenly felt the flesh ripping on my forearm to form what I knew could only be a bloody rendition of a religious symbol. Realization punctured the storm of agony inside my skull, and I knew instantly that the victim I was assuming he had in his clutches was in fact, me.
“Wherefore, since you, Rowan Linden Gant, are fallen into the damned heresies of Witches, practicing them publicly, and have been by legitimate witnesses and your own confession, been convicted of the sin of heresy,” an ominously dark and distinct voice began in the shadows, blending deeply with the music to lend a surreal edge to the recitation.
The tone was intimately familiar from my visions, and hearing it now, steeped in the trappings of the physical plane, paralyzing fear arced through my very being.
“And as you have refused the medicine of your salvation, we have summoned you to answer for the said crimes before us, but you, led away and seduced by a wicked spirit have refused to appear.”
Eddies of the thick mist swirled around the huge silhouette as it advanced toward me. Looking up from my prone position, he appeared to me as an absolute giant, easily dwarfing Ben by several inches. I shuddered with an involuntary start as I pressed myself into the cold metal fencing and reached upward to the rail. Gritting my teeth against the aches criss-crossing my body, I fought to drag myself to my feet.
“Whereas the Holy Church of God has long awaited you up to this present day of kindness and mercy.” He continued his recitation of question thirty-two as he moved closer still; verbally applying the razor to the guilt he had already confirmed. “That you might fly to the bosom of her mercy, renouncing your errors and professing the
