The Revenant Road

by Michael Boatman

  “Son of a bitch!”

  I gripped the steering wheel as my BMW accelerated, pushed forward by the S.U.V.’s greater bulk.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I screamed.

  The red S.U.V. surged forward and slammed into the back of my car with enough force to rattle my teeth.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  I pressed the accelerator, felt myself sink into black leather seats that had been hand-tooled by underfed German teenagers, and my BMW pulled smoothly away from the red S.U.V. I swerved into the middle lane and waited for the idiot in the red truck to pass so I could read the license plate and call the police.

  The red S.U.V. swerved into the center lane and accelerated. This time it hit my rear fender so hard I momentarily lost control of the BMW and slalomed horizontally across the highway…directly into the path of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler.

  The driver of the eighteen-wheeler blew his horn as I jerked the steering wheel hard to the left and mashed down on the brakes, correcting the BMW’s trajectory a moment before the eighteen wheeler blew past me with a furious roar, rocking my car on its wheels.

  I had slowed to about seventy-miles an hour, my hands gripping the steering wheel for dear life, when the headlights of the red S.U.V. filled my every horizon (and my windshield) with imminent death. The S.U.V. was rocketing toward me, heading West against the flow of traffic.

  The idiot’s going the wrong way, I thought wonderingly.

  I floored the accelerator and swerved just as the S.U.V. thundered past on my right side.

  He’s trying to kill me.

  That realization brought with it a kind of clarity. I lifted my foot off the accelerator and coasted toward the nearest exit. Behind me, a swirl of headlights and blaring horns informed me that my assailant was causing difficulty for the late-evening commuters in my wake. I glanced up at the rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of several cars slewing across the highway. One of them blew a front tire, swerved and flipped over before coming to a halt on its roof.

  “What the hell?” I breathed.

  In my haste to leave my apartment I’d left my cell phone behind. I spotted an all-night gas station at the foot of the nearest off-ramp and made for the exit. The gas station would have a phone I could use to call for help.

  The red S.U.V. roared up beside me.

  Fear slammed my foot down on the accelerator. The red truck sped up, blocking my egress from the highway, forcing me away from the exit. A moment later, the driver’s window was lowered and the silver barrel of a semi-automatic handgun flashed in the darkness.

  The first shot took out my right rear passenger window. Shrieking wind shattered the bubble of Teutonic silence around me as glass exploded across the back seat. The second shot smashed my rear view mirror: The metal frame bounced off the steering wheel and hit me in the forehead; I barely noticed: My heartbeat thundered in my ears.

  The silver muzzle flashed. To my left, the driver’s side window exploded and covered me with broken glass. Up ahead on the right, the exit was approaching fast. I could see the bright neon glow of the all-night service station across from the highway.

  Directly in front of me, the concrete barrier separating the highway from the exit ramp reared up like the curse from an angry concrete god. The driver’s strategy became wickedly obvious: By keeping me hemmed in he could either pick me off with the gun or force me into the concrete barrier, but playing “Graffiti Splash!” using my spinal column as the paintbrush was not on my list of fun ways to spend an evening.

  I twisted the steering wheel hard to the right, forcing the S.U.V. to veer into the exit lane. The big vehicle wobbled, and the silver automatic blasted a volley of high-velocity slugs against the driver’s side of my car. As we pounded down the exit ramp I twisted the wheel again and slammed into the side of the S.U.V.

  I skidded to a halt as the red truck swerved, hit the bottom of the exit ramp, and rocketed toward the service station. With a squeal of brakes the S.U.V. fishtailed as the driver struggled to regain control, then it flipped over, bounced onto its roof, rolled once, twice, three times...and slammed into the island of gas pumps in front of the convenience store.

  The explosion was heard as far away as the Bronx.

  * * * *

  “Am I under arrest?”

  Three hours later, I sat nursing the cup of bile-flavored coffee I’d been handed upon my arrival at the Yonkers police department. I was exhausted, still confused about the “accident,” and furious: No one had offered to top me up.

  The detective who’d been blowing smoke up my ass since my arrival leaned back and smiled with the kind of avuncular authority that made me yearn for a concealed weapon.

  “I told you, Obadiah,” the detective, whose name was McMurray, said. “You’re not under arrest. We’re simply waiting to confirm the ID’s on your dead friends. You’re free to go at any time.”

  I stood up and grabbed my car keys.

  “However… we’re hoping a man of your obvious accomplishments might shed a little light on why three grown men should be street racing in the middle of the night.”

  I sat. “I already told the state troopers; I wasn’t ‘street racing.’ Those lunatics were trying to kill me.”

  McMurray frowned. “And why would they want to do something like that?”

  “I don’t have a clue,” I sighed.

  I stood up, needing to stretch my legs, but also needing to put some distance between me and McMurray. My statement wasn’t strictly true.

  After the pigeon assault in Central Park, I was beginning to get a clue. But what explanation could I possibly have offered McMurray? That the forces of Evil were after me? That supernatural creatures with a thirst for human flesh were real, and that I was their next target?

  Although I was uncertain to what extent that might or might not have been true I knew without a doubt where such an admission would land me: A luxury suite in one of New York’s overcrowded booby hatches, probably with a feces-flinging roommate thrown in for local color.

  A diminutive female officer came into the interrogation room and laid a folder on top of the desk in front of McMurray. The lead detective picked it up and began to leaf through its contents. I waited a thousand years while he thumbed, whistling tunelessly through teeth the color of old sheetrock. Finally, he spoke.

  “The S.U.V. was registered to a man named Neville Rhys Gilliam,” McMurray droned. “That name mean anything to you?”

  I froze.

  “What did you say?”

  McMurray frowned. He leaned forward, all pretence at playing ‘casually disinterested’ abandoned.

  “The guy we scraped outta that S.U.V.” he said. “We ran his plates, matched the tag with an old I.D. card we found in his glove compartment. Neville Rhys Gilliam.”

  “It can’t be,” I said, recalling the Copernicus Geller incident of the day before. “It’s impossible.”

  McMurray shook his head and chuckled. “Guys like these two snap all the time. Maybe too much meth down at ‘Club Manhole,’ or hidden service charges on their Barbra Streisand tickets. Trust me: It’s possible.”

  “What do you mean, ‘these two?’” I said, ignoring McMurray’s feeble attempts at sentience. “There were two people in that truck?”

  McMurray nodded. “Yup. The passenger was thrown from the vehicle when it flipped over: Asian male, late-forties. Sucker smacked headfirst into the back of a parked Hyundai. Pity too. Guy had a headful of beautiful white hair. Pretty unusual for your typical Asian. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  McMurray snapped his fingers. “Killed like that.”

  Snap.

  “He ain’t pretty now, I can tell you,” McMurray chortled. “We pulled the Asian guy’s wallet. His name was…”

  “Carter Yamato,” I said wearily.

  McMurray smiled while managing to frown simultaneously, like a man who has just discovered gold in a bucket of battery acid.

  “So you do know these guys,” he
said. “Something you’d like to share with Uncle Ted?”

  I sat down in the chair across from McMurray and stared into the swirling depths of the coffee cup. The cup was adorned with a picture of Batman, his cape outstretched like the black wings of his namesake. The caption beneath the picture read: “Criminals Are a Superstitious Cowardly Lot.”

  “No,” I said. “I mean… I know who they are.”

  “Couple of fruit-loops from the look of it.”

  “They were life-partners, if that’s what you mean.”

  McMurray’s eyebrows formed two grizzled question marks over eyes as opaque as Hudson River sediment. “Well bully for the boys,” he sneered. “The I.D. we found in Gilliams’ glove compartment had ‘Press’ on the front. Was he some kind of reporter?”

  I shook my head.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “He’s the book critic for the Village Voice.”

  21

  The 13th Step

  By the time I reached my mother’s house, it was nearly two o’clock in the morning. She hadn’t answered the phone calls I’d placed from the police department and by the time I was released I was nearly frantic with worry. Despite Detective McMurray’s wary-eyed warnings about not leaving town and obeying posted speed limits I broke several local ordinances on my way to Lenore’s house in Bronxville.

  It was late July so the wind tunnel stampeding through the empty window frames in my car was, at least, balmy enough to soothe my troubled brow.

  The fresh night air distracted me, prevented me from thinking too much about what I might find when I got to Lenore’s house. As I drove toward Bronxville, I reviewed the disturbing series of events that had overtaken my life.

  In the span of two weeks I’d learned of my father’s death, the secret life he’d led. I’d learned that the Forces of Darkness were bound and determined to “whack me out”; that humanity was at the mercy of creatures from a realm I could scarcely comprehend. Now, another flock of malcontents was clamoring for my head.

  Copernicus Geller, the one-legged knife wielder: Talk-show host and Book reviewer for the New York Sentinel.

  Neville Rhys Gilliam, homicidal operator of the red S.U.V.: Book critic for the Village Voice.

  Carter Yamato, Gilliam’s live-in lover: Syndicated columnist and book critic for the Daily Times.

  All three of these men had trashed my work. All three of them had tried to kill me. Now, all three were dead.

  Although I had every right to celebrate, I was too frightened to gloat. Dozens of critics had called for my public execution, but none of them had actually stepped forward to make it happen. Until now.

  What the hell was going on? Were the three critics part of some larger plan? Had they each been visited by something from the Wraithing? Or had they simply read too many of my books? Was I really that bad? Was any of this really happening to me? Or was I simply losing my mind?

  Once more, I toyed with the idea that I was sick, that the real me was lying in a mental ward somewhere, strapped to a table in some electroshock boutique, awaiting the liberating jolt that would restore me to my senses. Or maybe I really was suffering from a brain tumor, one just malignant enough to cause intense hallucinations.

  God, if only that were true.

  But what about the things I’d witnessed? What about my mother’s story? What about Neville Kowalski?

  Frigging tumor would have to be the size of a Hanukkah basket.

  No. The insanity that had re-colored my world in shades of crimson and black and ice-cold emerald was too visceral, its presence too worrisome at the back of my neck to be a mere hallucination. It was real alright.

  And it sucked.

  * * * *

  The first thing I noticed when I clattered to a halt in front of the three story Tudor where I’d spent my adolescence was the orange light flickering through the living room windows. A surge of panic propelled me out of my car and up the stairs.

  My God, she’s torched the place.

  I reached for the spare key I’d carried since I was twelve years old, my heart knocking against my ribcage as I envisioned Lenore, unconscious inside a burning death trap.

  My forward momentum was so great that when the front door opened I barreled through the doorway, past the shadowy figure crouching there, and sprawled face-first across the entry hall floor to a hail of laughter.

  The laughter died instantly.

  In the silence, I looked up from where I lay on the cold marble tiles. About fifteen people sat around the sunken living room, their bodies arrayed so that they were facing the center of the room. The fattest woman I’d ever seen was standing in the center of the partygoers.

  The fat woman glared down at me as if I’d vomited in the punchbowl, her fingers hovering over a tray of hors ’d’oeuvres being proffered by a black woman wearing a pink apron, floral print dress and a string of pearls.

  I got to my feet, wincing at the sharp twinge of pain in my right knee from where I’d banged it during my acrobatic entrance. “Where’s...owww. Where’s Lenore?” I snarled. “What’s going on? Who the Hell are you people and what have you done with my mother?”

  The woman in the floral print dress stepped forward and lifted the tray of fingerfoods. “Obadiah...” But I wasn’t interested in whatever appetizer the woman was hawking.

  It took me another twenty seconds before I realized the woman hovering in front of me was Lenore. “What the Hell are you wearing?”

  “Obadiah, listen to me...”

  “Have you lost your mind? You’re having some stupid midnight dinner party? I’ve been frantic. I’ve been calling you for the last three hours. Why didn’t you answer the goddamn telephone?”

  “Obadiah, just listen for a moment.”

  “What the Hell are you wearing?”

  Lenore grabbed me by the crook of my elbow and hooked the skin covering my right tricep with her fingernails.

  “Listen to me, you son of a...”

  “Owww!”

  Lenore scowled. She stopped a passing party-goer, a tall man wearing a black suit. The right side of the man’s face was horribly disfigured. Its twisted contours and odd angles gave the impression of having been scrambled and remolded by a crude, uncaring artist. The left side of the man’s face, however, was unmarred, almost beautiful in its patrician plainness.

  “Garver, would you mind?” Lenore said, indicating the tray. “I’ll be back in just a moment.”

  “Sure, Lenny.”

  The disfigured man took the tray.

  “Thank you.”

  Gripping the meat of my arm in her pincers, Lenore pulled me into the kitchen.

  “Let go of me! Owww!”

  “Shut up.”

  “The tone of her command brought me up short. Without transition I was suddenly furious. “What did you say?”

  “I told you to shut... up,” Lenore hissed. “You come barging in here without returning my calls, uninvited, disturbing my guests, cursing, making demands without having a clue as to what might be happening in my life. As usual, you make everything about you and expect the whole world to jump on the bandwagon and I’m sick of it. I’m sick of it and right now I’m sick of you. So I’m telling you: Shut your big fat pompous mouth and listen for a change.”

  Lenore pointed toward the living room.

  “Those people out there happen to be my friends. More importantly, we all share a common problem. We’re all Survivors.”

  “Survivors of what?” I snapped. “Bad parenting? Well let me pull up a chair. I’m sure I’ll fit in just…”

  “Survivors of the madness that took your father,” Lenore said. “All those people were victims of the Wraithing Pale. Either through direct experience or through the experiences of a loved one.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re talking about a support group? Like a twelve step program?”

  Lenore nodded. ”That’s right,” she said. “In fact we call ourselves The Thirteen Steps, because the things we’ve exp
erienced are so far beyond the scope of ‘normal’ reality that twelve-steps-based support groups can’t even begin to cut the mustard.

  “We come together twice a month to share stories and experiences, and to confirm that we aren’t crazy; that these things really happened to us; and that they’re happening to other people too. Excuse me. I have to check the dessert.”

  Lenore went to the oven, opened it and removed a cookie sheet filled to the edges with the most delicious-looking chocolate chip cookies I’d ever seen. She set the cookies on the counter top and mopped her brow with the back of her forearm.

  “This ‘dinner party,’ as you called it, is our second meeting of the month and it was my turn to host. No interruptions are allowed during a meeting, so I turned off the ringer on my phone. I’m sorry if I frightened you. Are you alright?”

  The sudden shift in her tone invoked an upwelling from deep within the iron vault where I stored my emotions. Lenore’s image swam before my eyes as a lump rose up the back of my throat.

  No, I whispered silently. No, mama. I’m far from alright.

  “Why are you dressed like that?” I said, instead. “You look like you stepped out of one of your old glamour magazines.”

  Lenore smiled and set the cookies on a glass serving tray. “I was wearing this dress the night Nestor Charles attacked me. Every so often I drag it out of mothballs. It reminds me that life isn’t always what we think it is. It keeps me honest.”

  She smiled. “The pearls were a wedding gift from your father. I wore them tonight to honor his memory.”

  That admission uncapped the reservoir of reaction I’d been holding back since leaving Kowalski and Kalakuta and the star woman. My legs went rubbery. I crumpled in the middle of Lenore’s kitchen floor and leaned my head back against the dishwasher.

  “I was attacked by a homicidal pigeon in Central Park yesterday,” I said. “I just spent the last three hours being interrogated by the police, and the critics are trying to kill me.”

  Lenore waved my complaints away. “You’ve never been a critical favorite, dear.”

  “Mother, they’re literally trying to kill me.”