The only movement was that of the poplar and locust trees somberly and steadily giving up their colorful dead—bat wings of red and gold. Softly as they landed, this was all that Bennington heard. Jupiter knew of something else, though.
Bennington drew his matchlock pistol and peered down its barrel—as if it offered the magnification of a sailor’s glass scope—toward the direction Jupiter was staring and cocking his ears.
“Is someone there?” he called, in the most powerful and booming voice of all the settlement. “I’ll let you be on your way, if you show yourself to me! If you hide, I’ll presume you mean me harm!” Bennington allowed a moment for this before resuming with a warning. “I will see you—and shoot you!”
Only falling leaves and Jupiter’s breath answered.
Bennington called a greeting in what he knew of the Cherokee tongue.
Did he hear a moan?
If so, Jupiter heard it too. The horse took agitated steps backward, until Bennington halted him and leaped off. If there was to be trouble, he wouldn’t endanger his loyal friend.
Bennington took four steps. Though he trod lightly, his boots crunched like burning maple branches on the newly carpeted forest floor. He listened and took another step, repeating the process until he found himself at the top of a shallow slope.
Halfway down, a long-fallen oak lay crosswise amid its own broken branches. From the far side of it, a man’s leg protruded at an odd angle. Bennington grimly hoped that he would find the rest of the body there as well.
A glance back at Jupiter did not offer reassurance. The fidgeting beast had backed itself to the full length of its tether.
Bennington eased his way down the slope, his cumbersome weapon at arm’s length. He walked wide of the fallen tree until he was just within a comfortable range of accuracy. Leaning over the oak, he saw the full figure—and laughed.
It was the false man from Friedrich Schroeder’s cornfield, discarded here for some reason. The strawman had been a subject of much curious chatter when the cheerful Dutchman made and displayed it.
Then Bennington recalled the soft moan he’d heard a moment earlier and braced himself again. “Ho there!”
There was no answer, but the leg shifted minutely, in a way that Bennington recognized as a sign of injury. He stepped over the oak and sidestepped until he could see the man clearly. There was blood on the old clothes, and a fullness to the frame that was too meaty for a mere effigy.
The handle of a reaping tool poked out from under nearby leaves. Bennington examined it—and found bloody fingerprints.
Bennington lowered his pistol and went to the man. “What’s happened to you, sir?”
The burlap-masked face of Everett Geelens rose. His eyes were nearly closed, hiding from Bennington the madness that dwelled within.
“Tricked…” mumbled Everett as he showed Bennington the wound in his side.
“Hold here.” Bennington ran back to Jupiter, cursing the beast for resisting with all his might as Bennington dragged him down the slope.
* * * *
Modern day
“Jesus!” grumbled Dennis. “You’d think I pissed in the water cooler.”
“My question is…are you sure you’re not drunk right now?”
“Not even funny, Stuart.”
“Yeah, well, neither was casually tossing out the idea that we should record down in the bowels of hell, where a bunch of us nearly got our tickets punched.”
“That’s why I’m so sure we should, little bro. Authenticity.” Dennis lowered the volume of the hearse’s stereo, playing Alien Sex Fiend again, which Stuart now realized should have been a dead giveaway of his brother’s growing infatuation with death rock.
“Look, we’ll take all the precautions. Have Hudson check it out, keep somebody on guard…”
“First, you gotta get past Reverend McGlazer.”
“He’s always been on board.” Dennis returned a wave from excited kids in the back of a pickup. “He’s our biggest supporter.”
“Yeah, well, something tells me you already hit the end of that rope,” Stuart said. “Not just with him, but with everybody.”
“Jeez, you’re a buzzkill tonight, man. Sleep on it, at least.”
“Oh, sure! Can’t wait to see what nightmares you’ve conjured up in my poor young melon with your cockamamie—”
“Dude! Ice it, already.”
Dennis turned the stereo back up until it was too loud to hear Stuart if he did say something.
As for Stuart, long accustomed to stepping on eggshells for fear of sending delicate Dennis back to the bosom of the bottle, he didn’t press it. But he couldn’t ignore his disappointment in his brother, after what he, Stuart, had experienced, along with his friends, down in that goddamned moldy chamber of horrors.
Out on Main Street, thin evening fog had already settled on the streets, sidewalks and the many piles of gathered leaves. Two years ago, the shops would already have had their windows and signs decorated for Halloween. So far this year, only occasional pumpkins, left uncarved, or yellow-and-red wreaths gave any hint of the holiday.
Stuart was saddened, though not surprised. It was taking all he had to muster any Halloween spirit himself.
He recalled again the horror of being lost in the soul-crushing darkness of Saint Saturn Unitarian’s secret basement with DeShaun, Reverend McGlazer and the Rieslings as the ubiquitous fungus triggered horrifying hallucinations.
And that was before the super-aggro ghost of Conal O’Herlihy took possession of McGlazer. Then, of course, the effing mushroom demons made the scene.
Dennis’s suggestion wouldn’t really be causing Stuart bad dreams, because they were virtually guaranteed anyway. Luckily, just like Candace and a good double fistful of his fellow survivors, he had his meds to keep the terrors beaten back. And he didn’t even need as high a dose as Candace. His brother was only an alcoholic music genius, not a psychotic killing machine, like hers.
Still, Stuart could almost understand where Dennis was coming from. His older brother’s devotion to the integrity of his music was not just intense, it was damn near insane.
And there could be no doubt: any music recorded in those dank,
