Clay grabbed the computer and stole outside before he lost his nerve.
The guitarist was plucking the same open strings as he, or she, had the night before. Low E, A, and D (Clay knew that much). Thrum-Tum-Tee. Then back up the strings, Tee-Tum-Thrum. Thrum-Tum-Tee, Tee-Tum-Thrum….
Hypnotic in its repetition.
And from the back deck, there was no mistaking where it was coming from this time.
Clay had been in the Generator several times already, but never at this hour and never alone. Remembering how a sharp voice had startled Savy’s friends, Clay shouted, “Hey! You!”
The guitar fell quiet.
A flesh-and-blood intruder after all.
“You’re trespassing. You need to leave.”
No immediate response from inside the guesthouse. At which point Clay thought, Those were open strings. They were playing one-handed.
So then, dear friends, what was in their other hand? An ax came to mind—and not the kind that did Metallica solos. Clay could picture its long handle, its decapitating blade. His hair was still wet from the shower, and when a drop fell down his shirt, he jumped wildly.
Just as he was turning tail to call the cops, something else occurred to him: “Savy? Joe?” It seemed a reasonable hypothesis, considering their presence the last time he’d heard the strings. Maybe they’d a guitar stashed in the underbrush.
The open strings started up again, mocking him. Thrum-Tum-Tee!
“If you’re going to break in, the least you can do is play ‘American Rapture’.”
A whisper came back in reply. One voice. Alone. Fiasco Joe or a drifter or a disgruntled ex-gardener who knew a loophole in the security.
And before Clay knew what he was doing, he surged ahead, laptop held up like a 21st century flyswatter, triggering the motion lights across the yard. Fuck it, I’ve faced worse. Whoever was in there would never be as terrifying as a devil smiling through a peephole.
Hinges squealed as Clay shoved the Generator open.
All was black inside. Nothing moved in the large space. No one here but us ghouls, Clay thought. But something changed in the air as he stepped across the threshold. And the guitar abruptly changed its tune. Playing chords. A riff Clay knew well. Anyone with working ears knew it. “American Rapture” was the anthem that had launched Rocket Throne to stardom. The unseen guitarist played it quickly, perfectly, answering the challenge.
Clay’s hand froze over the light switch. What he was afraid of finding in that moment was not an ax-wielding Manson chick. Because what if it wasn’t an intruder in his midst at all, but someone who belongedhere? A previous occupant. The man who’d built this house in the scrub of a dead-end road. Rocco Boyle, swinging from the chandelier fixture like he had on the night of his death, his neck fatally locked in the vice of the noose, legs kicking, tongue wagging as it turned purple-blue—but his hands still pounding away on his guitar. A performer to the end.
The very idea made Clay step away. And he might have escaped—if his backward momentum didn’t carry his hand up the light switch.
Electricity filled the Generator’s single, naked bulb.
And the guitar quit with the light. The room was empty. The boxes and workout equipment and what-not that he and his father had tossed in here sat flush against the walls—impossible for someone to hide behind. Which left one place.
Clay crossed the bare planks and stood at the bottom of the stairs leading to the loft. Spores of dust swirled up into the darkness above. “Alright,” he said, hating the shake in his voice. “I call a truce.”
He waited, ready to hurl the computer at anything that came rushing down at him.
Nothing did. Would he have to go up there? It seemed that every time he should have been retreating his feet were pushing forward.
The strings started up behind him.
Clay gasped, spun.
No. It wasn’t coming from behind him. Or above him. But below. At his feet. Under the floor. Clay shuffled, locking on to where the sound was strongest, near the middle of the room. Dave Ganek had parked his Harley on the spot and a skid mark still graced the floorboard—as if Ganek had once heard something himself and gone screeching away.
Clay tested the board with his toe, felt it wobble. Don’t! his mind hissed. But he was already laying the laptop aside. The guitar grew steadily louder as his fingers pried the plank up.
Though when he finally lifted it free, quiet fell over the room again.
Clay stared, the dust settling over his hunched back.
In the six inches of crawl space beneath lay one of Rocco Boyle’s guitars. A Rickenbacker 370. Fireglow paint job, custom humbucker pickups, sharkfin inlays. Its vintage body scarred, dented, and beaten to shit from Boyle’s intense playing. And even before Clay touched it, he knew this wasn’t really happening. Couldn’t be. The guitar was an electric, requiring amplification for its sound to carry. Even an acoustic would have had trouble broadcasting up through floorboards, a closed door, the night, and a closed bathroom window. He was dreaming.
Then pinch yourself, end it.
But even that might not do the trick. Since pinching yourself was such a cliché, Clay believed he could goose himself in his sleep, feel the pain, and keep right on dreaming, convinced now it was reality. He needed something else, and quick, before his excitement overran his logic. So he lifted his right foot and, without thinking, drove his heel down on top of his left.
The pain was stark and immediate, burning through every tendon and vein like electricity through a highly conductive line. Clay cursed and hobbled for the nearest wall. “No fucking way am I asleep,” he grunted. Only reality hurt this much.
Then he limped back and teased the guitar though the opening. A cord was attached, and when he pulled, a miniature battery-powered amp skittered
