The Man With the Barbed-Wire Fists

blankets and checked them carefully. Satisfied he ran his fingers through his bride’s hair; but still found nothing there.

He sighed. Stepped back. Impossible. Taoka was dead. And Machii was dead. And Dempsey was loyal.

His bride…

Impossible. But something was here. He could feel it.

And whatever it was, it was more than a memory.

He pulled Anastasia to him. Parted her mouth and kissed her. He forced his tongue against hers, felt it squirm away.

Like that night in the prison, he thought. Like The Shroud, shrinking from my power.

Anastasia pushed at him. “He’s weak.” She sobbed. “He’s nearly dead, just leave him be. Let him die in peace.”

Hearthstone slashed Anastasia’s shoulder with the katana, then drew the blade across his palm. “Come on, you bastard,” he said. “It’s time to face your master.”

Hearthstone took the stainless steel scissors from the top of the dresser. He cut open his bride’s nightgown, then drew it apart.

He stared down at the purple scar that ran the length of her breastbone.

Black blood oozed from Anastasia’s wound. She pressed a hand against it, stemming the flow, her fingers trapping the creature that desperately wanted out. “You won’t have him,” she said, her eyes glowing with defiance. “Not while I’m alive.”

“Very well,” Hearthstone said.

His bride shivered as the scissors touched her sternum.

Anastasia shivered as Hearthstone drove the katana into her breast. She fell back, slipping off the short blade, collapsing onto the floor with hardly a sound.

Hearthstone dropped to his knees and pressed his wounded hand against Anastasia’s bloody chest.

Her heart wasn’t beating.

She wasn’t breathing.

She wore a slight grin that fell somewhere short of a smile.

“Come out, you bastard,” he whispered, his eyes everywhere at once: on the shadows that swam beneath the furniture; on Anastasia’s blood; on the hem of her silk dress, which ruffled under a breeze from the open window. Each image burned into his brain as if branded there.

“Come out, you coward.” He closed his eyes but saw the room, the blood, Anastasia’s dress. “Come out and let me forget.”

Hearthstone held his hand to Anastasia’s breast, whimpering in frustration, until her blood began to dry.

He sat there alone, but for his memories.

Hearthstone stared at his bride’s lips. At the scissors in his hand.

No, it couldn’t be.

He wouldn’t do this.

His bride was an innocent. She was not possessed. Neither was Dr. Taoka. Nor the yakuza, Mr. Machii. Nor Dempsey.

This was madness. Time had passed, so much time without incident. The Shroud was dead.

Dead to the world.

Dead, everywhere, but in Jacob Hearthstone’s memory.

Anyone…

The professor turned toward the mirrored wall and stared at his reflection. What he saw didn’t match his memories.

If he had to remember everything, why couldn’t he remember how to be the man he once was? Young, strong, confident…

Now he was none of those things.

Hearthstone laughed at the feeble old man in the mirror. Here was the true seat of memory. A withered receptacle, nothing more. “Wipe the slate clean, grandpa. Purge the hatred, the insanity. Make afresh start. ”

Hearthstone turned the scissors on himself and drove the blades deep into his chest.

Anywhere…

Blood coursed from the wound.

Anytime…

The shadows flowed over him, along with the laughter, along with a whispered promise.

Those who are evil must suffer, then die.

Hearthstone pressed cold fingers against the wound and felt warm blood pump from his heart. “Are you demon or angel?” he asked.

The answer came from the shadows.

I am… The Shroud.

TOMBSTONE MOON

Black entered the cemetery shack and tossed the severed ear onto the desk, between a can of Brown Derby beer and a salami sandwich that was missing a bite.

The desert wind whipped through the open doorway, salting the warped floorboards with gritty sand. Black was already sick of the desert — sick of the earthy smell, sick of the unyielding heat, sick of the sand in his boots.

He closed the door, but that didn’t help much. The shack’s only window was open a fraction of an inch, and the steady wind whistled through its corroded metal lips. The sound was unsettling. Black leaned on the latch, but the window was rusted in place and wouldn’t budge.

Black sighed. Only open a fraction of an inch, but a fraction of an inch was enough to mess with his senses.

Well, there was nothing to be done about it. Black rubbed a clean circle on the grimy glass. His ’73 Toyota Corolla sat about twenty feet from the shack. The engine ticked and pinged, trying to cool without much success. Rust spots on the hood and trunk shone like pools of dark rum in the light of the setting sun.

A week’s parking at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas had cost twenty-five bucks, and that little fact irritated Black. He doubted he could sell the damned car for twenty-five bucks. But the Toy was inconspicuous, and that was the important thing.

Black scanned the desert. There wasn’t much to see besides his car. Whistler’s limo was nowhere in sight. Neither was the prospector’s Ford pickup — Black had hidden it in an arroyo on the other side of the old state road. Only the cemetery lay before him, a borderless expanse dotted with tombstones that had been sandblasted blank over a period of forty years.

Anonymous graves, forgotten by a town that had folded when the interstate opened. Black thought about that. If your grave went untended, if your sacred piece of ground was forgotten — or worse, desecrated — was there a chance that something evil might get its hands on your soul even though you’d been laid to rest in a proper Christian cemetery?

Black wondered if it made a difference. He supposed that every grave was forgotten sooner or later. He toyed with the severed ear, flipping it from between the beer and the sandwich. He’d never thought about graveyards, or tombstones, or Christian burial before in his life. He’d never thought about heaven or hell, either. He knew that such