He checked the scene and could find no traces of a broken bicycle, no debris left from even a minor impact. Just skid marks sliding off the road and into the cornfield.
Eddie moved quietly down the lane of smashed-down corn stalks, his big hands held defensively. Though Eddie was now fifty, he was still in perfect health and his body — the temple of the Lord — was packed with muscle and finely toned from relentless exercise with free weights, jump rope, heavy bag, and speed bag. He kept his body a perfect offering to the Lord. He had begun to bathe three and even four times a day now, and he was constantly washing his hands at work, especially if he had touched a customer or one of the other mechanics. Those impure oils had to be cleansed from his flesh as quickly as possible, but he had had to do it in secret. The guys had started to notice his fetish for cleanliness, had begun to rib him about it, saying that Tow-Truck Eddie had a new lady friend who didn’t like grubby fingers on her tender flesh. He had laughed along with the jokes, choking down the rage and shame he felt at such suggestions. A lady friend indeed! As if he could allow himself to be distracted with carnal desires at a time like this. What a pack of dimwitted, shortsighted, unenlightened mud heads he worked with. Might as well be working with pigs. They had no idea, no clue, as to why he was preparing himself.
I am God’s predator, he thought, then chastised himself for the vanity of that concept. He rephrased it, I am the Sword of God, and left it at that.
The beam of the flash sparkled on the black metal of the open trunk of the car, and he walked calmly toward it, surveying the scene. The car was smashed, the ball joint broken; he could see that from fifteen feet away. Eddie swept his flashlight over everything, seeing the carnage, examining the pitiful leavings of some kind of adventure that had ended recently and badly. He paused briefly to shine the light in the trunk, saw the scattering of blood-soaked bills, the small mounds of white powder. He wrinkled his nose in disgust; if there was one thing Tow-Truck Eddie despised it was pollution of the body. Beer and the like were bad enough, but drugs were downright unholy. He clucked his tongue in disapproval and began scouting the rest of the car. He had approached from the driver’s side of the car, and everything looked deserted. Shining the light in through the open driver’s door revealed nothing but blood. Quite a lot of it, which sent a thrill of excitement coursing through him. The keys were still in the ignition. Tow-Truck Eddie frowned. Straightening from his inspection of the car, he swept his light over the rows of corn, seeing no one. Then he walked carefully around to the other side of the car, and there lay a man sprawled in the bloody mud. If he had shone his light down when he was peering into the trunk he might have seen him, but the man had fallen down by the passenger side of the car and lay entirely in shadow. The harsh white light of his flash made the scene look like a black-and-white photo: black for the man’s suit and tie, white for his face, black for the huge stain of blood that had entirely soaked his shirt.
Eddie had squatted down next to the man and looked him over, from death-pale face to bloodstained shoes. Odd how lifelike the dead can sometimes look, he thought, and then actually gasped as the man moved his mouth in an attempt to speak, though he made no actual sounds.
Tow-Truck Eddie was amazed that the man was still alive. He examined the man in the light, seeing that the dark stain of blood still glistened wetly. There were two ragged holes in the man’s shirt. He’d been gut-shot and was bled as white as the cocaine that had spilled all around him. What a mess, thought Eddie, who couldn’t stand disorder of any kind.
The smell of blood was thick in the air: blood from the man, blood from the birds. The smell was appealing, almost intoxicating, and for a moment Eddie just closed his eyes and let the smell wash over him and through him. He felt a little dizzy from it and had to blink his eyes clear for a few seconds.
He bent closer to peer at the man. Never in his life had he seen a man so close to death. He had seen sick people, sure, even badly wounded ones dragged from wrecks, and he’d seen corpses, but never a man hovering on that delicate point between life and death, his life essence fluttering like a lightning bug trying to work free from a child’s cupped hands. It was incredible to see. Beautiful and delicate and quite moving, and it did something to him. At first he wasn’t aware of it, of what was happening within him, but the realization crept into his consciousness as he watched the man continue his task of dying.
The man looked up at Eddie with pleading in his eyes; eyes that were aswirl with pain and fear, hatred and desperation. Tow-Truck Eddie crouched there, tasting the emotions overflowing from the man’s eyes. The flow of pain was exquisite. He licked his lips and sniffed in the scent of blood through both nostrils.
“You’re hurt,” he said, savoring the intense rush of blood scent and pain, of truly perfect suffering right here in front of him.
“I…I’ve been…shot.”
Tow-Truck Eddie pushed the man over onto his back so he could see the bullet holes more clearly. Fresh blood bubbled weakly from the wounds. He had a sudden and powerful urge to bend forward and drink from the wounds, but he knew that it wasn’t the time for that kind of thing, for that kind of…
He sought the right word.
Sacrament? Was that it? Yes, he thought dreamily. Sacrament. It wasn’t yet time for that kind of sacrament. Not yet. Everything had to be in its time and place, as it said in the Bible. He took the scent again and nearly cried out as the thick coppery smell of fresh blood shot through his nerves like a white-hot current of electricity. His eyes snapped wide and he rocked back on his heels as door after door blew open in his mind. Suddenly he understood! Suddenly — all at once — this all made sense. Everything made sense. Everything that he had thought about and dreamed about for the last few years made absolutely crystal-clear sense. He laughed out loud for the sheer joy of it.
He looked down at the man, staring at him with eyes that were still wide with amazement, seeing the man for who he was…for what he was! He laughed again, and he felt tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. Of course! This was no ordinary accident. How could it be? How could he even have thought that it was? How could anyone be so blind as to think that? It wasn’t even an ordinary crime scene. No, no, this was something far removed from all of that, and Tow-Truck Eddie could suddenly see it. This was something special, something meant only for him, something orchestrated solely for him, and yet something immensely powerful.
He touched the wounds and then looked at the blood on his fingers, glistening black in the light of his flash.
Tow-Truck Eddie’s mind went click! as that thought passed through him.
He was right. This was not the Sacrement in which the Lord had told him he would one day partake. This was…his baptism.
In his mind the voice of God very faintly whispered, Yesssssss.
Tears burned in Eddie’s eyes and he bent his head in humble thanks. All at once, here in this lonely place, amid all this carnage, he fully understood what he was and who he was. God, mysterious and subtle, had brought this man, this baptizer here. Just as surely as he had directed Eddie to come here. Amid all this violence and evil.
And did not God direct Jesus to the waters where John was baptizing the penitent? Was that not amid the oppression and violence of Rome’s crushing occupation of Judea? Not exactly the same, surely, but the pattern was there, clear as sunlight to Eddie.
This man…this dying man…the baptizer, and his blood was the purifying waters of salvation. A child could see it.
The man gasped and blood leaked from his mouth, dribbling down his chin. He would be dead soon, but Eddie wasn’t sure exactly what he was supposed to do. Was he supposed to care for this man? Was he supposed to rescue him?
No, that didn’t feel right to him. This man — baptizer or not — had been manifested to him in the form of a criminal, and Eddie could not believe that God would want his Sword to rescue the wicked. The time for that sort of thing had passed.
What then? Was he supposed to watch him di
e? Was there a message in that?
That felt closer to the mark, but Eddie still didn’t feel right about it. Letting the man’s life just slip away — an event that was imminent — seemed like a waste of some kind of opportunity.
He frowned for a moment, his triumph dimming instantly as doubt chewed at him. What if he interpreted it wrong? What if he misread the holy signs? So much hinged on his reading it right that he felt a wave of sickening uncertainty crash down on him. His smile faded and fell away and he looked from the man to the wreck to the dead birds and back again. What if the act of reading the signs was itself a test? A puzzle or a riddle of some kind? He wasn’t sure what would happen if he failed to solve the riddle. For a full minute he worried over that as the dying man passed in and out of a haze of delirium.
“No,” he said softly to himself, steeling himself. Doubt was a tool of the Beast, not of the Almighty.
In a ragged whisper, the dying man repeated what he had said: “I’ve been shot.”
“Uh-huh. I can see that,” Tow-Truck Eddie said softly, reveling in it. The pain in the man’s eyes was so finely tuned that it flickered like electricity; he could barely look at it without crying out for the sheer joy of it. His mouth was dry and he could feel his palms grow slick with sweat.
“Could you…help me?”
Oh my, how exciting this moment was! The man was actually begging him for help and that fast the answer came to him. It was not rescue, nor the passivity of standing by and doing nothing. This was a direct command from God presented in the form of a test.
“Who am I?” Eddie asked himself with the droning intonation of a litany, and he responded: “I am the Sword of God!”
His purpose was clear to him. A sword was forged for a single purpose, its nature clear to even the meanest intelligence.
“I am the Sword of God!” Eddie yelled and his declaration sent the lurking night birds screaming into the troubled sky.
He smiled, joy flooding his heart and swelling his massive chest.
“Did you come…to help me?” And the dying baptizer’s words became part of the holy litany, and Tow-Truck Eddie heard the laughter of the Beast buried deep beneath the human pain. This was the key to everything. Compassion and restraint were tools of the Beast and Eddie was being tested on that point right now. Everything hinged on this moment and how he would answer.
In his mind he kept repeating: I am the Sword of God.
Then another voice overlay his own, booming in his brain like heavenly thunder as God said, Do this for me and open the way to paradise!
Did you come to help me?
Tow-Truck Eddie smiled, tears brimming in his eyes. “No,” he said and with great reverence reached for the man. He took the man’s face in both of his hands, lifted it, kissed the sacred forehead, kissed the bleeding mouth, and then held the face close, almost nose to nose, as he looked deeply into those eyes, trying to reach down through the barriers of evil to the trapped human soul within. The man struggled feebly, a last attempt to deceive him, a last ruse to really test his faith, his resolve, but Tow-Truck Eddie was steadfast. He looked into those eyes, searching, searching. The demon resisted him, keeping the man alive, denying Tow-Truck Eddie that brief glimpse into the infinite, but he was not to be denied this most sacred of all rewards. Holding the man’s head with one hand, Tow-Truck Eddie reached down with his other hand and placed his fingertips over the ragged holes torn by bullets. The man felt the touch and his eyes flared with the dread, but Tow-Truck Eddie smiled mildly at him and then thrust his fingers as deeply as he could into the man’s body.
The man screamed with all the agony of man and all the rage of a demon as Tow-Truck Eddie tore out his bowels. Then, the screaming mouth shouted only silence, though the jaws still gaped wide and the throat worked and the chest heaved.
“Bless me,” Tow-Truck Eddie murmured softly, gently. “Bathe me in the waters of salvation so that I may be purified, for I am the Sword of God!”
He stayed with the man, creating with his body the rituals of the New Covenant. The new bond of blood and flesh that would be the cornerstone of the world to come.
Now, hours later, sitting there in the cab of his wrecker, staring at the dried blood, he thought about all that he had seen and experienced. The man’s death had been so exquisite, so enlightening, and afterward when he had done all that was required and ordained to the man, he had learned so much. He felt glutted with knowledge, and yet much of that knowledge had yet to be processed, to be held up to the light of his new insight and examined. He knew that even now, with his mind so profoundly expanded, it would still take him some time to understand what he had seen, and what it all might ultimately mean.
He mumbled his own name over and over again as he sat there.
He had killed the Beast and been baptized in blood all in one night. He was sure that he would meet other demons in the days to come, now that his own nature had been discovered and declared. Well, that was fine, just fine with him. He grinned and flexed his powerful hands, feeling the muscles ripple on his forearms. Let them come, he thought. He would be ready.
He smiled grimly, still muttering his own name over and over again.
“Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.”
(2)
“The mayor is in a meeting right now, may I take a message?”
“Ginny, it’s me. Crow.”
“Oh, hi, how are you?”
“I’m fine, I…”
“My God, do you know about all the stuff that’s happening around here?” Ginny asked in a low and conspiratorial voice.
“Some of it. Look, I’m calling from my cell and I don’t have much time. Reception sucks out here. I need to speak to Terry.”
“Oh, gee, Crow, like I said he’s in a meeting.” For effect she added, “With Philadelphia narcotics detectives,” as if they were something akin to angels with burning swords.
“I know that. It’s about that stuff that I’m calling. Or might be, anyway. Can you tell him I’m on the phone?”
“Oh, I don’t know—”
“Ginny, Terry deputized me tonight, so you can consider this official business.”
“You’re back with the department?”
“More or less. Look, Ginny, just get him for me, will you?”
Ginny thought about it for another exasperating few seconds, and then said, “Okay, Crow. I’ll just do that.”
“Thanks,” Crow said, and as soon as she put him on hold, he said, “Hallelujah.” Crow had never liked Ginny Welsh, though she never knew it. Ginny acted as if being the receptionist-cum-dispatcher-cum-secretary put her at the very heart of regional law enforcement.
While he waited, Crow looked over at Mike Sweeney, who sat in the passenger seat of his car. The boy’s bike was stowed in the trunk, the trunk’s hood held down with bungee cords. The kid looked very small and young as he sat there, and it made Crow feel really bad for him. Mike Sweeney, or Iron Mike as Crow had nicknamed him last year, was one of those bright but lonely kids with so much imagination that it almost, but not quite, made up for the fact that he had few friends. It was easy to see that the kid was on a totally different intellectual plane than his age-group peers, and whereas intellectuality would probably see him in good stead among the adult community of Pine Deep in later years, it was quickly turning him into an embittered loner as a teenager. Crow also knew that Mike’s home life was a little rough, and that was something he could relate to.
Mike saw him looking and offered a smile.
Iron Mike was a regular customer at the Crow’s Nest, converting his hard-earned newspaper route money into model kits, comics, and copies of Fangoria. The kid knew almost as much about classic horror films as Crow did, but was the master by far when it came to science fiction. Crow was introspective enough to know that the nature of his own store, as well as his extensive readings of horror fiction and folklore, was part of his personal escape route. To make a monster
look less scary, shine a bright light on him — you get to see the zippers and spirit gum and latex. That — and the bottle — had been Crow’s way of not dealing with the events of the Black Harvest, and he was fully aware of that fact. His dissociation was entirely deliberate.
It appeared to him, though, that Mike on the other hand walked a very fine line between reality and fantasy and was far less aware of it. Crow knew that Mike called his bike the War Machine, and that he often drifted away in thought, visiting who knew what kind of interior landscape. Crow wondered if he would grow out of the fantasies, or would grow strong enough to confront them. Therapy rather than sour mash.
Crow knew Vic Wingate very well. Vic was older than Crow and had been a legend in Pine Deep for decades. He was known as a hitter. Totally fearless in a bar fight and just as tough as he thought he was, but a world-class asshole nonetheless. More than once Crow had seen Mike walking with that stiffness that only comes from a leather belt wielded with enthusiasm. It made Crow sick and furious, but also frustrated because there wasn’t anything he could do about it, as he knew from personal experience. His own dad had a hard hand and used it way too often. In his heart, Crow would love to invite Vic to step behind the proverbial woodshed and dance him a bit. Crow wasn’t entirely sure he could take Vic, but he would love to try. The problem there was that Vic was tight with Gus Bernhardt and Jim Polk, and he was too smart to accept a private challenge. Anyone who went up against Vic, or tried to sucker punch him, wound up first in the hospital and then in jail, or in court. Vic was as cunning as he was vicious.
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