Chapter 42

  Dwayne Hartman

  Dwayne Hartman saw his deceased ex-wife, Helen, in the fog the next morning. He saw the first man he had ever killed. He saw the jungle, the flashing lights, heard the thunder, heard an echo of a memory of the Voice of God. He saw friends that had died, places he had been. He saw himself as he had been, or as he might have been. Several times he saw Isaac Milton.

  Dwayne did not like the fog; he did not trust it. But he did trust God, even when he was lost in an endless gray sea with a confused young man that argued with himself. Even when his truck broke down on an empty highway. Even when he hadn’t seen another vehicle in hours, which was odd even for this Montanan road. Even when he had seen the body of Isaac Milton, dead on the main street of Pikeston. Even when the world, according to Jacob Hollow, was coming to a sudden and unexpected end.

  He sat in the truck and took stock of their assets. They weren’t many. Half a pack of cigarettes, for one. He had smoked too many during this drive. Well, he could allow himself that. As for food and water, Jacob was out fetching some from a deserted gas station they had passed by earlier. They had some maps which didn’t seem to be of much use. His shotgun. Isaac’s hat. A spare tire with a jack, some assorted tools. A tank mostly full of gas. Not much else.

  He dropped the oil-stained cigarettes onto the seat of the truck and turned out the open door. His canes leaned against the rusty side panel. He took them, planted them firmly in the gravel, and lowered himself with a grimace to his feet. It always ached, that first pressure, the first time his legs took his weight. A sharp twinge in the hips made him suck in his breath. The cold dankness of the fog didn’t help. But he settled his weight, acclimated to the pain, and walked with the aid of the canes around to the hood of the pickup.

  He already knew it was hopeless. He had just spent a half hour fiddling with the inner workings of this machine. Countless times before he had fixed it up. He had patched, braced, taped, and jerry-rigged this engine for years now. It could still be fixed. Dwayne Hartman firmly believed that all things could be fixed, given the right tools and enough time. But here, now, this truck would not be going anywhere. He needed an entire mechanic’s garage and a day’s work to extend the life of this already decrepit vehicle.

  Jacob Hollow had declared it ‘bad luck’ that they had broken down here at a critical moment. Dwayne Hartman did not believe in luck, of either the good or the bad variety. If they had broken down here, unable to fix the engine and without another means of transport, then it was because this was where God wanted them to be. He offered up a prayer, not for guidance but for faith.

  A shape moved in the corner of his eye. Pain spiked through his hips as he lumbered about to face it. The shape was not Jacob returning with the supplies. It was not a person at all. It was a darkness: black against black, a void in the gray, approaching. Dwayne had seen it before.

  Boots crunched on the gravel as a figure emerged from the dark, a tall figure wearing black, two revolvers at his sides, and one look at his yellow bloodshot eyes was enough to tell Dwayne Hartman that he was faced with not a man, but a monster.

  Hold fast.

  “Sho it’sh you,” said the stranger, who came to a halt five paces away. His bleeding lips spread in a ghastly smile over stained teeth. “Where’sh that light?” He looked theatrically to the left, to the right. “I don’t shee it.”

  Dwayne’s legs nearly gave out; he leaned back against the cool damp side of the truck. He gripped his canes and shoved them into the gravel to steady himself. “Who are you?” he asked, though he knew perfectly well.

  The man swept off his hat and bowed low to the ground. His movement was somehow wrong. It was too smooth, the mocking bow too low. “The name’sh Abraham Black. Homelesh now, I’m afraid.” He replaced his hat with a satisfied leer.

  “I’m Dwayne. Dwayne Hartman.” He made the merest show of tipping his hat. “I’ve still got a home, I reckon.” His voice began to shake, and he steadied it through sheer willpower. “Why’d you do it, Abraham?”

  Abraham Black’s smile faltered, replaced by a look of mild puzzlement–an odd expression on that wasted, ruined face.

  “Isaac,” said Dwayne in clarification. “You killed him. Shouldn’t have done that.” Still struggling to keep cool, to keep his voice steady. He was no match for this beast before him, but such things had never mattered to him. God was mightier; that was what mattered.

  But now Abraham Black looked truly confused. He looked around at the fog as though for inspiration. “Ishaac? Who’sh that?”

  Abraham Black was caught off-guard. He was wary, uncertain. Dwayne Hartman had turned him away in the snow, at night, on the streets of Pikeston, in front of the Stocker house. And now Dwayne Hartman saw, for the briefest moment, a spark of a person within the horror. Dwayne knew that men could become monsters. He had seen it happen. But no matter how dark a road a man traveled down, or how far, or for how long, they never stopped being a person. No man, by any means, could remove himself from the love of God. Surely, that must apply even to such a creature as Abraham Black.

  You shall love your crooked neighbor with your crooked heart.

  Abraham Black leaned back. “What’sh with that shtare?” He hacked out a cruel laugh. “You are a shtrange man, Dwayne Hartman. It’sh a shtrange thing…”

  “You too,” said Dwayne.

  “A man…” said Abraham, musing. “What do you shay if I show you what short of man I am?”

  The fog churned around them. It formed and reformed into scenes, places, landscapes. A red plain, the interior of a dark building, a burning forest, a place amongst the stars, and more that were fantastical beyond Dwayne’s comprehension. Yet they shared common themes: death and Abraham Black and the thunder of his twin revolvers, like an unholy trinity–inseparable, inescapable, omnipresent. Here he stood over a heap of corpses. Here he was, soaked in many-colored blood, hot and fresh from the vein. Here he was, taking vengeance. Here, destroying as he had been destroyed. Here, inflicting cruelty because of the cruel injustice done to him. Here, doing the only thing he knew to do, the thing he had been created for, the only thing he was good at: killing, breaking, unmaking.

  He walked along with Death; it had become his only friend. And a long, long way he had to walk before he reached The End.

  And who assaileth Death? That mighty beast, no one will dare, for the bones of gods and heroes lie in heaps within His lair.

  For hopes, and dreams, and prayers are the bricks that pave the road, bright and straight and slick with blood, leading to that beast’s abode.

  So roll on thunder, roll on like the rains, come like Death and come again. Smokestack eyes and skin of wax, vengeance will be Abraham Black’s.

  And here came the thunder, like rain on every scene of death that Dwayne saw. Not the distant grumble of a storm on the horizon, but the horrendous rippling crack of a lightning strike close at hand–a sound Dwayne knew well. Thunder, death. Thunder, death.

  “Stop,” said Dwayne Hartman, his voice weak, his ears ringing with the sound. “Please. Stop.”

  It stopped.

  Dwayne was sitting on the cold gravel, his canes splayed uselessly at his sides. Abraham’s mad rictus leered down at him. “And that’sh jusht the shtart,” he said.

  Dwayne felt tears in his eyes. He wiped them with a rough hand, then felt his heart, placed his hand on his chest over a beard damp from the fog. “I…I’m sorry,” he said. His voice cracked.

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  Abraham tilted his head. “Shorry?”

  Dwayne did not understand what happened next, nor how, but his thoughts and feelings became manifest in the fog just as had Abraham’s. And his, too, was thunder–thunder in a dark jungle, hot and steamy, but thunder of an entirely different quality.

  Dwayne Hartman’s thunder was the voice of God, descending holy and terrible from unseen heights in the night sky, a flashing brightness that cut the soul, a towering perfection, an immutable reality so pure that all faded to mist.

  The thunder of Dwayne Hartman was the voice of God, saying: HOLD FAST, and there is no going back. Hold fast to the truth, to what you have seen and heard, to the hope you confess. Hold fast like an anchor in the storm, for he who does not believe is flung by the waves.

  The thunder of Dwayne Hartman was a promise for the future. It was a burning coal on the lips, giving words to speak, giving praise, giving hope. The thunder of Dwayne Hartman was love, Love Itself, the presence of the Almighty God. And for just a brief moment, that presence was there with them in the fog.

  It lasted only a moment, and it startled Dwayne Hartman nearly as much as Abraham Black.

  All was still, all was quiet.

  “…ah…” said Abraham Black, his expression blank.

  Dwayne Hartman nodded, wiping sweat from his forehead, tears from his eyes. “Yup,” he murmured.

  “Ah,” said Abraham again. “Well. Let’sh shay we–”

  A sound like the snapping of fingers echoed loud and clear from somewhere nearby. The sound dispelled the fog in a broad area around Dwayne, Abraham, and the broken-down pickup truck.

  Abraham and Dwayne turned to see Jacob approaching warily, his wounded hand tucked tightly to his chest, his other hand out, ready to snap.

  Abraham brightened up. “Exshellent! Jusht the pershon I came to shee.”

  Jacob stopped a dozen steps from Black. “What do you want? That man has done nothing to you.”

  “Not quite true.” Abraham turned aside from Dwayne to face Jacob straight-on. “And it’sh funny to shee you defending him. He’sh not the weakesht of the three of ush.” Abraham’s smile had returned.

  “What do you want?” Jacob repeated. He kept his eyes fixed on Abraham.

  “I know you shpeak to them.”

  “Who?”

  “You know who. The voishesh. The demonsh. I know they’re helping you. I know they eshcaped.”

  Jacob opened his mouth, closed it, licked his lips. “How do you know?”

  “A Shade told me.”

  “And?”

  “And I have a meshage for them.” Abraham’s expression darkened from smug satisfaction to murderous rage. “I’m coming.”

  The snap and the thunder occurred simultaneously, as far as Dwayne could tell. Noise and light in equal measure, brief and stunning. In the next moment, Jacob Hollow lay dead on cold gravel while Abraham Black still stood. Abraham hissed in displeasure and touched a hand to his side. He was bleeding, but a dark greasy smoke leaked from his wound instead of blood. It neither rose nor fell, but gathered into a smeared mass of shadow in the air.

  Abraham disturbed this smoke when he turned and leveled a revolver at Dwayne Hartman. “Why did you apologishe?”

  Dwayne Hartman, heart pounding, thought hard about his answer. At last, with a weak shrug and a cracking voice, he said, “I could see that you’ve been wronged. You’re no monster. I misjudged you, and I’m sorry. You’re just a man, like me.” Then, thinking he had nothing left to lose, he added, “God loves you, Abraham Black.”

  Abraham stood without moving for what seemed to Dwayne like a very long time. Then he simply said, “No.” With an almost imperceptible movement, the revolver was back at his belt. “But I won’t kill you today.”

  Abraham turned and vanished back into the darkness whence he came.

  Dwayne leaned back against the pickup and tried to still his heart, to catch his breath. “Why?” he asked. “Why me? Why now?” He struggled back to his feet. “I know,” he added, “that ‘why’ is the most useless question to ask you.”

  Dwayne shuffled to the driver’s side door, popped it open, and sat on the seat. He stared at the body of Jacob Hollow. He would have gone and checked, made sure. But he knew. Somehow, there was no doubt. Even if there wasn’t a sizeable pool of blood there under the corpse, Jacob Hollow was completely dead. A meadowlark had landed on the gravel nearby and observed the body with interest.

  But what now?

  A new sound drifted out of the fog, interrupting his thoughts. It was the rubbery sound of something bouncing down the road on the surface of the asphalt. Behind it followed the purring of an engine and the faint glow of dimmed headlights. A vehicle approached. Dwayne watched from the side of the pickup, one hand on the shotgun that rested across the driver’s seat, out of sight. The sound of the vehicle became a crunching of gravel as it turned off the road and approached Dwayne.

  A gold sedan emerged from the fog. Its headlights made hazy twin halos out of the vapor that swirled around it. The bouncing object came to rest on the damp gravel.

  The door of the newcomer’s vehicle swung open on the driver’s side. A young man stepped out, and Dwayne knew who this must be.

  “Michael Whyte,” said Dwayne.

  “Dwayne Hartman,” the man replied, relief obvious on his face.

  Michael looked around, caught sight of the body barely visible at the edge of the fog, and went pale.

  “Son,” said Dwayne Hartman, “we got a lot to talk about.”

  Michael nodded.

  “Got your brother? He okay?”

  He nodded again.

  Dwayne Hartman no longer knew what to do or say, and he was not in the mood for sitting down and trying to figure it out.

  So he sang a hymn: “All creatures of our god and king…”