“For his mercy endureth forever.”
At five a black cat fell onto its back at my feet. It rolled in the grit, bathing in the dust. The birds grew louder.
“For his mercy endureth forever.”
At six, a crow landed on the traffic signal and cawed. It hopped along the metal support, flicking its tail and flapping. As it yapped, its cries were answered by others, off in the blackness. They approached the intersection, flying circles around the crowd like the souls of the departed fleeing this plane at Rapture. They formed a high dome, a swirling black cup that forced my voice and guitar right back down to me, creating an amphitheater in which the fantastic could happen. The air warmed. The caws seemed superficially loud, like they were in my head. And when that wave of birds landed, another surged in from the blackness.
Some of the kids tried to video with their phones, but there was nothing to see above the glow created by the traffic lights. It was as if the night itself transformed into a mass of black feathers. The cawing grew as birds flew tighter circles around me. Their shadows caused the light from the signals to be reflected in all directions. I could see faces in the crowd. Some looked like they regretted coming out tonight.
In the space between the birds I saw the faintest trace of pink appear in the sky to the east. Katy wouldn’t look.
Hundreds and hundreds of them descended upon us, their wings creating a superficial breeze that made the air heavier as they flew tighter circles around the intersection.
So I didn’t see the car come in from the west. I only saw the shadows created by her headlights grow down the highway ahead of me. Then I heard a pair of thunderous booms. Just like the night I met Tommy over in the cemetery.
Everybody turned and looked.
The crows didn’t fly off at the noise. So I didn’t actually hear Danicka get out of the car and shut the door behind her over their clamor. But I could smell clove and citrus. Like clementines at Christmas. Beneath it all I caught the faintest scent of wood ash. She wore a short grey wool jacket over a black dress. Her hair was pulled back in a silver hair band.
She said, “So you saw the dog and the bull and the rest?”
“Just like you said. Followed the steps down to the letter. No shortcuts.” I let my guitar hang on its strap and shook out my hands. Pins and needles shot through my fingers, up to my shoulders. Bursting with confidence, I said, “Let’s get to it.”
“Preston, we don’t talk.” She set her fingers lightly on my arm. “I’m sorry.”
And like that, she shattered my resolve. I could barely find words to express my disappointment. “But you said—”
Katy and the rest were on their feet, ready to act if needed.
“Preston, be quiet. Please.” She spoke without her normal poise. Her reply was quick and frail. “Do you have the items I asked you to bring?”
When I tapped my toe she bent down and picked up the Jack Daniels bottle.
She shook it hard, breaking up the little clumps of clay. Then she walked a few feet due east and sprinkled a spot of dirt onto the road. She did it again to the north, to the west, and to the south. There was still a good bit of dirt in the bottle by the time she’d finished, and she used some of it to connect the dots to make a circle.
“Lift up your foot,” she said. “Quickly.”
She scattered half of what remained under my left boot.
“Put your foot down, and do not move it.” She’d moved fast, methodically. “Now the other.”
She poured the rest beneath my right boot. When the bottle was empty I planted my foot, and did not move it.
“Silver coin?”
I found it in my pocket.
“Put it on your tongue. And whatever happens, do not speak. Do you hear? Don’t say anything. In your head, think ‘Body of Christ’ over and over, nothing else.”
“Dani—”
“You cannot speak, Preston. This is a warning.” She put her hand over my mouth as she turned to look over her shoulder.
“I misled you—we have nothing to discuss tonight. Maybe you will never believe me, but it was not easy to have used you like this.” She looked very sad, distracted. “I didn’t know any other way. Surely you must think I’m horrible, which I do not deny, not anymore. I have acted selfishly, and am very sorry to have involved you. And I am not evil in the way you think.”
She took a bit of chalk and wrote crazy letters I didn’t recognize on the blacktop.
“In my apartment, when we were eating sushi, I said to let everybody write what she wants, and I meant it very sincerely. Do you remember?” She stopped writing long enough to look up at me. “I said that nothing matters until it is written. If it is not written, it never happened. Do you remember?”
I looked for Katy. It hurt a bit to see Ben holding her. Protecting her. Pauly had his face buried in his hands.
“Well, I have nothing with your name written on it. And I have nothing with your brother’s name written on it. I am the only one here bound by an inscription.”
From the east I heard a rumble and tried to turn, but was too scared to move my feet.
Danicka said, “For one hundred and fifty years I have tried to renegotiate my destiny. But the biggest part of my agreement specifically forbade that.”
I bit my lower lip and glared at her. That’s where I come in.
“And I am sorry to have deceived you. So very, very sorry. Perhaps, I recognized that a part of you would harbor compassion for me even though I’d hurt you so badly. But I couldn’t rely on that. Not tonight. The price that I paid was the price of never being able to love or trust.” She sniffed back tears.
“With everybody I touch recoiling from me…” Her eyes searched the sky for something. A word maybe, or an intervention. “Every time I share a kind word with a man, he learns to abhor me. Two lifetimes of accumulated hatred. Enough rejection and coldness for ten women.”
She pointed at Katy. “You can find love and die knowing you are loved, but I can’t. Because I can never love, even if that is what my heart wants more than anything. But until I have loved, I am the same stupid girl I was one hundred and fifty years ago. It’s my shame, to have agreed to something I now see is a lie. A tremendous lie and a curse.”
She put her hand over my mouth again. “Remember not to speak and do not move.”
A cold wind blew down from the salmon-colored sky. I heard a commotion from the cars. Somebody shuffling their feet.
Danicka yelled, “No!” and I twisted to see.
Ben and Rachael both yelled, “Katy!”
But it was too late. She broke Ben’s grip and ran into the intersection, past Dani and into the circle. She put her feet right next to mine and wrapped her arms around me.
“I’m not doing this anymore, Preston. If we’re together…” she cried.
I lifted my arm and held her against me while my guitar slid to my back.
“She is stupid. Stupid. What does she think—” Danicka reached into her pocket. She held up a silver coin like a priest holding up the Eucharist. “You do not need to be here, only Preston! Put this on your tongue and do not speak.”
As Katy closed her lips my body shook, like electrodes had been clamped to my shoulders. My back and neck jerked and my legs wobbled. My ankles felt like they’d been replaced with marbles.
“I needed only Preston because I am forbidden from performing this ritual. You must understand that I could not simply ask him to do it as a favor to me.” Danicka stumbled as the ground shook. She took Katy’s hand and looked into her eyes. “You must not say anything.”
I held Katy and fought gravity to keep the grave dust beneath my boots. All along the intersection people fell to their knees.
“Get back.” Danicka yelled, “Stay off the road.”
An electrical sensation rose from the pavement. My shoulders jerked up to my neck as my head rolled forward with each pulse. My fingers curled as current throbbed through them. Katy and I kept each other from fallin
g over. Danicka toppled toward the edge of the circle she’d made. I grabbed her wrist with my free hand.
A flash of light appeared on the horizon, like from distant fireworks. Another boom hit so hard the traffic lights shook. Our shadows swayed back and forth in front of us like pendulums. The energy traveled through my knees and hips as people ran to their cars.
Then everything was quiet.
As my mind tried to anticipate what came next, a figure emerged from the light on the broken white line of Highway 49. Down where the white lines met the horizon I could barely perceive movement. But it closed the miles fast.
“Stay off the road!” Danicka yelled. “Everybody!”
Like an animal, but I couldn’t be certain.
Running at full speed.
A clumsy, uneven march. A gallop.
Stumbling over nothing.
Arms flailing out to both sides.
It fell and tumbled forward and pushed itself back up. Danicka pressed herself against me and Katy, holding her arms out to the side like a mother trying to defend her children. She placed her foot between mine, trying to get a little grave dust beneath her own toes. “Don’t say anything. You both must remember this.”
Short in stature, it ran from one edge of the concrete to the other. Zig-zagging from side to side. Banging car hoods and kicking quarter panels.
People recoiled and hid behind their cars and trucks. Some ran into the trees.
As it got within twenty yards the highway cleared completely. Some got into their vehicles and locked the doors. Some screamed.
Danicka trembled while I fought to stay on my feet. The smell of sulfur and human waste filled my nose. Like the odor of the sewage plant down by the river. The aroma caught in my throat. Made my eyes water.
Unable to take more than two or three steps in a straight line because its legs were two very different lengths, it came into the crossroads, running wide circles. Its clothes were old-fashioned but difficult to place. Black pants torn at the knees. A white collared shirt with buttons and long sleeves, ripped and stained yellow and brown as if from vomit and shit and whatever else. Blond hair stuck out at all angles from his head. Its eyes drifted up to the stop-lights as it spun wide arcs that got closer and closer to the dead center of the crossroads.
Closer to us.
“Do not speak.”
It looked like one of the kids from the special classes back in school. Not special, like Billy Clover from second grade. He had art and music with us and all his other classes were in another building.
This boy had eyes that never quite found anything to focus on. His face, neck and arms were covered in dark scabs. The white of his left eye appeared brown and bloody. A lazy half-smile stayed on his crusty lips, his cracked tongue waggled in the cool air. Except for when he spotted my guitar. He stumbled toward me and reached for it with a dirty, curled finger. The stench made me gag. He batted at the strings. His right arm was dramatically longer than his left. Like, fifteen inches longer.
“Don’t react to him,” Danicka whispered in my ear. “Do not speak.”
I put my hands at my side as it tried to pull the guitar away from me. I turned my head and leaned back.
It stamped its feet and the ground shook. A noise like a bray from a hound dog came from deep in its chest. Headlights and tail lights flashed, and horns blared as car alarms were activated.
My ears rang, shooting sharp pain into my head like an ice pick through my eye into the dead center of my brain. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I held Katy’s head to my chest, even when she wanted to turn and look at him.
Danicka pleaded, “You must listen, please.”
She folded her hands and bowed her head. “You’ve made your point and I am sorry.”
It stood there, swaying on uneasy legs. Its head fell from side to side like a slow metronome.
“Please!” Dani screamed. She sniffed back tears. “I have done everything for you. Even at Leningrad and Srebrenica I did everything you asked.”
Its posture stiffened, its arms didn’t fall so easily at its sides, like it was swelling.
“You lied to me.” She pounded her chest, her tiny little fist accented each syllable.
“My family died. Every last one of them. You promised protection.”
To the east, the sky grew pinker, inch by inch.
“I’ve fulfilled my end, don’t you—”
It grabbed Dani by the hair and slammed her to the ground. Blood came from her nose and ears. She pulled her knees toward her chest to shield herself from further harm.
“You can’t hurt me anymore.” Danicka looked up at it and said, “You’ve taken everything.”
It stomped its foot. The force knocked me back to the edge of the circle. Katy fell into me. My guitar hit the blacktop with a crunch. The birds took to the sky in a wash of blackness. Even the wind came to a sudden end.
With the voice of a kid, speaking in multiple, ancient accents, it said, “If you break this seal, I will rape you like the Benjamites raped the Levite’s concubine. I will eat the flesh of every last king and general, of every last saint and prophet, in your name. Then to honor your broken promise, I will wash it down with the blood of every last man and woman on earth.”
It brushed the grave dust aside with its foot and stepped into the circle. “Then I will cut you into twelve pieces, and I will eat you, and each bite will be like honey in my mouth.”
It hovered over Dani, inching closer and closer to me. Its bloody tongue searched for something at the corner of its mouth. “And I’ll leave only the children to cleanse the Earth’s surface with their tears.”
“Do not move,” Danicka looked up at me through teary eyes. Her voice was frail. She wiped the blood from her nose with the back of her hand.
It walked backward, then slowed.
“And you,” it said, looking at Katy and me. “Next time you dial my number, we’re going to talk.”
It turned and drifted back toward the sunrise before shuffling into a flailing run.
My eyes fell. I didn’t see it disappear into the light.
For the longest time I couldn’t move. And Katy didn’t move. She held me so tight I thought she’d lift us both into the air. I realized I’d been holding my breath. I turned my head and spit the silver coin onto the road.
“Hey,” I said.
Off in the distance I heard a car horn. Somebody needing to get through the crossroads on their way to church. That broke the spell.
Rachael and Jamie grabbed Katy, helping her to her feet. Pauly took my hands and lifted me off the asphalt. Some of the people who’d stayed to watch drifted into the crossroads with us. Nobody spoke.
Finally, after giving us both a good once-over, Jamie said, “You kids okay?”
I nodded.
Jamie began to speak, but Katy cut him off. “Nobody saw anything. Hear me? Nothing. Let these people all say what that want. But you didn’t see anything.”
All I could do was bite my lip.
“Chloey, do you hear me? Mom, tell her.”
Rachael said, “She knows.”
She looked for Ben, to tell him, but he’d walked right past us and took a knee on the ground next to Dani. With a gentle touch, he wiped blood from her cheek with a blue bandana. “I’m Ben.”
He extended his hand, and added, “Collins.”
“Danicka Prochazka.” She gazed up at him with those big amber eyes and accepted his hand. While she gathered her composure, he bent over and brushed dirt and gravel from her knees.
She turned to me, and said, “Danicka Petráková Prochazka,” then waited for some sort of confirmation that I understood.
I acknowledged with a nod.
Ben put his hand around her waist and led her over to her car. He opened the passenger-side door for her. Just before getting in himself, he tossed Henry the keys to his Jeep and gave us all a half-salute.
And as Ben started the silver Mercedes, Jamie reached into his jacket pocket and
handed me his own keys.
As Ben completed a three-point turn, Jamie took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.
As Danicka and Ben disappeared into the night, Jamie broke off from the group and headed back to his car. I released Katy, and caught up with him. He slowed when I put my hand on his shoulder.
“He’s never coming home, is he?” Jamie’s eyes searched my face for honesty.
“He’ll be back, Jamie,” I said. I didn’t know what else to do. “He just finally found a soul that needed saved more than his own.”
Jamie hugged me before settling into the backseat.
The rest of them stood there wearing their saddest faces. They held each other for support, keeping that grey cloud over their heads for just a little bit longer. I had to prompt them to follow us back over to the cars.
“What the hell do we do now?” Henry said.
“I don’t know, man. I really don’t know. We’ll figure it out once we get out of here.”
I grabbed Katy’s hand and kissed it, then I grabbed Pauly and pulled him over to me and gave him a big kiss on the cheek. I looked at Chloey, still nursing her arm. She rested her head on her mom’s shoulder.
“Preston…” was all that Katy could say.
“I know,” I said. I watched the sky for some sign that this was over, some sign that I’d done the right thing. By now I knew that sign would never come.
Katy sat down and looked at me for an answer, maybe expecting from me the words I wanted from above. But try as I might, the only thing I could come up with was a weak, “I told you I’d take care of everything,” before shutting her door.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Revelations of Preston Black is not the result of writing to impress. I wrote this book for fun, and I’m extremely grateful for all of the people who have helped to make this process so rewarding and so wildly entertaining: Brad Vetter for the incredible cover design; Joe White and Ayla Nett from Black Bear Burritos’ Morgantown location for their infinite generosity and support; Sam McCanna of Skurvy Ink for the awesome T-shirts; Jennifer Barnes, John Edward Lawson and the rest of the Raw Dog Screaming Press gang for the camaraderie and legitimized debauchery; and Michael A. Arnzen for always being the best friend a writer could have.
The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) Page 30