Bad Moon Rising

the place. He looked down a wet farm road to where a barn had stood, but it was just a charred frame from which the last few tendrils of smoke curled without enthusiasm. Beside and beyond the burned-out barn were cornfields whose leaves were pot-holed by insects and whose corn hung fat and pendulous, swollen with disease and rippling with maggots. Strangely, the air around him suddenly felt calmer and he thought he heard the blend of musical notes as some unseen hand fanned down over the strings of a guitar. It came from behind him, where the stag had stood, and Mike turned quickly back, and his mouth opened in a soundless “O.” The stag was gone, antlers, dark spots, footprints, and all.

“You the one,” said a voice that seemed to come from the middle of the air. It was deep, soft, flavored with a Southern accent. “You the one we all got to pay close mind to now, you know that?”

Mike didn’t know where his mouth was or how to make thought into sound. He tried to move but felt himself frozen in place.

“Go ahead, son…you can speak.” The voice now came from behind him. He heard the sound of fingers lightly strumming guitar strings and the sound was so soothing, so…safe.

Just like that, Mike could. Cool air rushed into his mouth and down into his lungs. “What’s going on?” he blurted.

“You dreaming, young son. You lost in the dreamworld, just like me.”

Mike braced himself to fight the immobility, but when he tried to turn it was easy; all restrictions were gone. He turned to see a black man in a dirty suit sitting on the top step of a flight of wooden stairs that led to the big wooden porch of the old farmhouse. The man’s skin was dark but ashy-gray and his hair was styled in an old- fashioned Afro, nappy with dirt and rainwater. The man smiled at him, and though his face was kindly his eyes were unblinking and covered with a thin film of dust.

“What the hell’s going on?” Mike demanded, angry and confused. “Who are you?”

The man picked out a couple of notes with his long fingers; on the forefinger of his left hand was a glass slide made from the neck of a whiskey bottle, and he drew this down the neck of the guitar to turn the notes into a wail.

“Who are you?” Mike asked again, his tone wavering between demand and plea.

“I ain’t hardly nobody no more, but you can call me Mr. Morse.”

“I don’t understand this. I don’t understand what’s going on. How’d I get here? I was at the hospital…at least I think I was…”

“You was…and you still is. This ain’t real, Mike, this is all a dream.” Mr. Morse smiled at him. He had a nice smile, but he looked very sad and tired. “You know what a shaman is, boy?”

“Sure. It’s like an Indian medicine man or something.”

“Or something, yeah. Well, a shaman would call what we got here a vision, and you’re on a vision quest.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Yeah, you do, but you don’t know you do. Y’see, Mike, you been having visions for a good long time now.” He played a few notes, the break of an old Ida Cox tune. “You call ’em dreams, but they are bona fide visions.”

“How…?”

“You been dreaming about this town just burning itself up, burning down to the ground.”

“How do you know that?”

“I know,” said Mr. Morse. “And you been having dreams of him.”

“Who?”

“You know who. You may not know his name, but his blood screams in your veins, boy. His breath burns in your throat.” The man stopped playing and leaned forward. “Look here, boy, you got to listen to me real good, because a whole lotta folks are sitting right there on the edge of that knife blade. You go the wrong way, you make the wrong choice…or worse yet, you don’t do nothing, and they all gonna die.”

“No,” Mike insisted, shaking his head.

“We don’t have to like something to make it so. Believe me, I know. Hell, yes, old Oren Morse he knows.”

“I don’t want to be responsible for people dying. I don’t want that. That’s not fair.”

Mr. Morse sighed and gave a sorry shake of his head. “Fair got nothing to do with this. This is Heaven and Hell. This is the bad times come to Pine Deep and everybody here got to play their part.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Well,” Mr. Morse said, leaning back and picking out some more notes, “that’s your choice. Everybody got a choice, even them bad ones—even they got a choice. It’s what we do with our choices that makes us or breaks us. The whole world is spinning right now on the choice you got to make.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Well that’s as may be. But your father is about to do some bad shit here in town, and Crow and Val, strong as they is, ain’t enough to stop him. Not alone. Not without you. I can’t see everything that’s gonna happen—an’ maybe that’s a good thing an’ maybe it’s not—but I know this, Mike Sweeney—if you don’t make your choice, if you don’t take your stand, then the Red Wave is going to wash over this town. It’ll start here…it’ll start in Dark Hollow, and it’ll start at the hospital, right there in that bed with your daddy in it, and it’ll start right on Corn Hill. The Red Wave will start here and there all over this town, all at once, and it’ll gain momentum and force and it’ll get so strong the boundaries of water won’t stop it, and it’ll wash out across this whole country.”

“My dad’s dead. My dad is John Sweeney and he—”

“Boy, it breaks my heart to break your heart, but Big John, good man as he was, he wasn’t never your daddy. Big John didn’t know it, but another mule been kicking in his stall.”

“Stop saying that! You’re a liar!”

Mr. Morse set down his guitar and stood up. He towered over Mike, covering him with his shadow, and his eyes were fierce. He placed his hands on Mike’s shoulders and when Mike tried to turn away Mr. Morse held him fast. His gaze was as hot as a blowtorch. “Now you listen to me good, Mike, you listen like a man, not like a boy. You listen like what you hear and what you do about what you hear matters. Don’t turn away from me, son, and don’t you dare call me a liar. You don’t know who I am, boy, but I died for this goddamn town. I died for it and my memory’s been spit on for thirty years. You think a man can rest quiet in his grave when every time his name is spoke there’s a lie and a curse put to it?”

Mike stared at him, shocked to silence, confused, his mind reeling. Mr. Morse’s hands were like hot irons on his shoulders.

Mr. Morse never blinked. Not once, and his dusty eyes were filled with a weird light. “Boy, I want you to listen to me for your own soul’s sake, even though what I’m going to tell you might take away what little love for this world you got left. I know that pain, boy, and I lost my own love and most of my hope, but by God I’m standing right here. I made my choice, and I’ll take my stand, come Heaven or Hell. Now…you going to listen?”

Mike didn’t want to. He wanted to block his ears, he wanted to hit this man, to push him away, to turn and run. He didn’t want to hear anything this man had to say. Rage mingled with terror in his chest and it felt like his heart would burst. When he opened his mouth he wanted to scream at the man, to tell him to go away, to leave him be.

What he said was, “Okay.” Just that.

That agreement unmasked a terrible sadness in Mr. Morse’s face, and for a moment he lowered his head, murmuring, “I’m sorry, boy. Believe me when I tell you that I mean you no harm.”

“Okay,” Mike said again.

Mr. Morse told him everything. Mike listened, and he listened, and he listened, and then he screamed. Sometimes the truth doesn’t set you free.