Dead Man's Song

hand. Wait! Wait until you are alone! And he had stayed his hand, though it burned him that the end of his most sacred mission had been right there. What did it matter that there were other people around? Surely once the Beast had been killed his true nature and face would be revealed to all. Wasn’t that the point? To reveal the Beast so that the righteous would see and understand?

He wanted to drop to his knees while Malcolm Crow slept and beat his head on the floor seven times, to beg his Father to explain why his hand had been stayed. Could he risk it? Tow-Truck Eddie looked at the man in the bed and wondered if he was really asleep. A few minutes ago he had moved, but that could have just been shifting in his sleep. He was supposed to be drugged. Surely, he wouldn’t wake if Eddie went to his knees to pray. The nurse had already done her rounds and wouldn’t be back for an hour. He’d only need a few minutes, just a simple abasement and then his prayers.

There was the sound of footsteps and then a voice spoke in greeting just outside the door followed by a response. A conversation started, muffled by the closed door, but it was right outside. No, he thought, don’t risk it, too dangerous. Just wait, just wait, Father will speak to me. He will make His will known. Wait. You were told to wait. Be a good son. Wait. Wait. Then, like the taste of water on a parched tongue he heard his Father’s voice.

You are my son and in you I am well pleased.

Tow-Truck Eddie nearly cried aloud. He wanted so much to throw himself down on his face and weep, to tear at his clothes and hair, to beg forgiveness for his weakness and failure. His hands trembled and he almost dropped his Bible. “Father…” he whispered in his softest voice. “Forgive a sinner his transgressions.”

You are my beloved son. The voice rang in his head. You are my faithful servant, and you are my holy instrument on Earth. Do you know this? It was part of their litany and he knew it so well that tears filled his eyes.

“I—failed you, my Lord, my Father…”

You are the Sword of God. Do you know this? The words hit his brain as if the fist of God had punched right through his skull. Eddie had to bite his tongue to stifle the cry that rose like a boiling bubble in his chest. He dropped the Bible on his lap and clamped both hands over his mouth, staring at Crow, who stirred briefly and then settled. After a long minute while he watched to see that Crow was going to remain asleep and as the searing agony of God’s displeasure ebbed away like a reluctant tide, Eddie remained frozen there on the edge of his chair.

More gently now, God said, You are the Sword of God. Do you know this?

“Yes…yes, my Lord!” Eddie said in the tiniest of whispers.

When the Hand of Righteousness beholds the Beast, what is thy holy purpose?

“To destroy him, my Lord! I am the servant of God!”

And to this holy purpose do you dedicate yourself?

“I am the instrument of the Lord and His will is as my own. With my body, my heart, and my immortal soul shall I serve the will of the Lord.”

Then in my servant I am well pleased. But be ever vigilant for the Beast is clever and the Beast is quick, and to destroy him will be a test and a trial to you. Be not overconfident, be not complacent even in your power. The Sword of God is patient and he is strong.

“I will be patient as well as powerful, my Lord.”

The servants of the Beast are many and they are strong. Be silent, be secret. Be patient, and do not be deceived. The Beast may wear a child’s flesh but it is the Son of Perdition. There was a pause and Eddie tensed, certain that some great truth was about to be imparted. It is not death, not blood that will destroy the Beast. It is ritual.

Joy blossomed in Eddie’s chest as he finally, completely understood. Now he knew why God had stayed his hand yesterday. He could have killed the skin-suit the Beast wore, but unless he performed a blood ritual then the Beast’s spirit would simply find a new host. He closed his eyes against the welling of his joyful tears, nodding as understanding rose like a new sun in his heart. No, he had to take the Beast to some quiet place and then perform the ritual to its utmost conclusion, to the point where he tore the Eucharist from the Beast’s chest and tasted it, sealing the Final Covenant.

God whispered silkily into his mind. You are the Sword of God, and in you I am well pleased. Gratitude flooded through Eddie and he wept silently, his face in his hands.

(3)

Crow kept his eyes closed and listened to the faint mumblings as Tow-Truck Eddie spoke to himself. Is he praying? Of course he is, he told himself.

Then a few minutes later he thought, Is he crying? He listened and after a while he could clearly make out Eddie’s nearly silent sobs. Oh, that’s just peachy, Crow thought.

(4)

Mike Sweeney was fourteen years old. In eighty-eight days, on December 28, he would be fifteen, but he wasn’t entirely sure he would ever live that long. Until recently Mike seldom thought about the future because the future had always seemed like an impossible concept—the future was something that people got to if they had a sane life. There was nothing about Mike Sweeney’s life that was sane. Or safe.

He wasn’t a handsome kid, though others thought he would grow into it. He had the makings. Curly red hair that was garish now but would darken to reddish-brown if he lived into his twenties, good bones, a splash of freckles, blue eyes. Those eyes were his best point, and certainly the thing that Anna Marie Hellinger, who was in his English class, thought made him look brooding and mysterious. She wasn’t wrong. Mike knew a thing or two about brooding. He did it well, he did it often, and he had reason.

When Mike was still in diapers, his father, Big John Sweeney, had gone sailing through the guardrail up on Shandy’s Curve and had been cooked in his car at the bottom of the ravine. Before grass had started to grow on Big John’s grave, Mike’s mom, Lois, had let local mechanic Vic Wingate move in, and shortly after that they were married. Though Mike was never aware of it, this was a major town scandal. Big John was well liked and there was always a little suspicion surrounding the crash—the official report was that he had fallen asleep at the worst possible place on Route A-32, but the expression “Oh, horseshit!” was thrown in the face of almost anyone who said that, especially if it was said over beers at the Harvestman Inn, where Sweeney’s friends still hung. Suspicion even fell briefly on Vic Wingate, but that was something folks kept to themselves, even at the Harvestman, because Vic was not the kind of guy you made comments about, not unless you wanted to eat pureed food through a wired jaw. Vic Wingate, you see, was a hitter.

Vic was forty-seven years old and except for his eyes—he had the cold and patient eyes of an old crocodile— he could have passed for a fit thirty-five. He was rawboned and flat-bellied, with arms and shoulders that held a promise of quick and ugly power though not bulky muscles like Tow-Truck Eddie, nor the sculpted physique of Terry Wolfe, the town’s charismatic and handsome mayor. Vic Wingate had wrestler’s muscles and boxer’s hands. Vic was battlefield tough and would take a bad hit just to land a crippling blow, though very few hits ever got past him. Vic chose his fights with care, he hit first and hardest, and knew where to hit. Since Mike was four Vic had used him to practice the art of hitting, flicking out with apparent laziness to knock Mike sprawling, or rapping him hard enough on the top of the head to drop him to his knees. If Mike had a dime for every time he’d felt Vic’s hand he could have saved all the struggling farms in the borough of Pine Deep.

Until last night, all of those blows—blows beyond counting—had been slaps. Hard, yes, painful, yes, but open-handed. Now all that had changed. Last night Mike, at the ripe old age of fourteen-going-on-never-grow-up, had graduated to the fist.

It had started after Mike had been late delivering the last of his newspapers and had been hurrying home along the darkened stretch of A-32 when a monstrous wrecker had come barreling down the road and had very nearly run him down. To save himself from being ground to roadkill under the twenty-four-inch wheels, Mike had swung his bicycle off the road with an agility and speed that was a surprise to him even while it was happening. The wrecker had missed him by inches and Mike had gone ass-over-heels into a pumpkin patch, cracking a rib, bruising his skin, and banging his head. It wasn’t the most graceful landing, but it was a landing, and you know