by Michael Jahn
He ran through the back door but misjudged it. Because it was thicker than the rest, Frank thought it would be harder to get through. But he went through the final door the way a knife cuts hot butter and, off balance, tumbled onto the pavement of the parking lot.
Across the lot, Dammers locked a handcuff onto a roll bar in the backseat of a squad car he had commandeered. The other end of the cuffs was fast around Lucy’s wrist. She struggled against it, screaming, “You bastard!”
Dammers slammed the back door on her and let himself in the driver’s door. Then he started the engine and turned up the stereo to drown out her cries.
“Let me go!” she yelled. “Murderer!”
Frank heard her voice.
“Lucy!” he cried out, then realized yet again she couldn’t hear him.
Bannister began running toward the car, but his feet went straight through the asphalt and he fell down again. He struggled to his feet, yelling, “Let her go, Dammers,” then thought, So what if they can’t hear me!
Frank tried as hard as he could to control his rubbery body. This must be what Ray felt like when I shoved him through the car door, he thought.
Dammers put the car in gear and stepped on the gas pedal. He steered the vehicle out of the parking lot and into the street. As he did so the Reaper rose out of the sidewalk behind it. The creature looked around, and for an instant its eyes met Frank’s. It hissed, then turned away and began running, with damnable grace, after Dammers’s car as it entered a stream of traffic.
Frank began running after both of them. He flew through the air, controlling his feet this time, stepping neither too hard nor too lightly. He was much faster than he had ever been in his life, even as a high-school sprinter. Once he got the hang of it, Frank zipped down the road, the particles that formed his emanation body ebbing and flowing behind him, creating the effect of a silvery slipstream.
The squad car turned onto an on-ramp leading to the coastal highway. The Reaper, moving much faster than Dammers’s commandeered squad car, was closing in on it. Of course, neither Dammers nor his captive could see the creature.
But Frank could see it all too well. He ran as fast as he could, and thought he was doing a pretty good job of controlling his new emanation body, but still he fell behind. He stopped at the entrance to the on-ramp with the car and its pursuer hopelessly ahead of him.
Then he spotted the highway overpass under which the squad car would have to drive within a matter of seconds. Bannister ran up to the top of it, passing over a grassy area and straight through a stand of maples and, in so doing, sending a few hundred blackbirds flying, squawking, into the night.
Frank ran through a chain-link fence, turned right, and dashed up to the crest of the overpass. He stood at the side of the overpass and looked down as Dammers’s car approached, gaining speed.
Lucy was struggling in the back of the car as the stereo blasted. “This is the end of your career, you bastard!” she screamed. “Add kidnapping to the murder charge I’ll bring against you if Frank dies.”
“Bannister is already dead and nicely on ice,” Dammers shot back.
“You won’t get away with this, Dammers.”
“We’ll see who gets away with what,” Dammers replied, speeding up and pulling into the center lane.
The Reaper was visible through the rearview mirror of the car as it gradually caught up with the vehicle. It leaped onto the trunk and moved swiftly from there to the roof, where it clung on like a gigantic spider, hands and feet looking like claws to the edges of the roof, cloak whipping around in the wind caused by the moving car.
The Reaper plunged its hand down through the roof of the car, reaching for Lucy’s heart. But she had thrown herself to the left side of the car, the side on which there was the most traffic, and was beating against the window and screaming, trying to attract the attention of other drivers.
Without knowing it, she slipped away from the Reaper’s deadly fingers.
From above, Frank saw the Reaper clinging to the roof of the squad car. He leaped onto the railing, carefully judging the moment to spring, as the squad car raced along in increasingly thick traffic. He jumped, but his body didn’t exactly drop. Instead, it gently floated down, wafting on the air currents soaring around as a steady stream of traffic went under the overpass.
Floating along like an autumn leaf, Frank watched helplessly as the squad car passed beneath him and sped away. “Goddammit,” he yelled, and kicked at the air.
“Dammers, you bastard,” he swore, shaking a ghostly fist. As he watched the car recede into the distance, he suddenly floated through the roof of a speeding bus.
He landed on the floor, in the aisle, amid a bus full of gamblers on their way to Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut. These were solid Maine citizens, mostly middle-aged or older, dressed in their Sunday best and on the way for a two-day junket to lose their money in the gambling empire an Indian tribe had built in the Connecticut woods. Half of them were poring over color brochures showing the wonders of the casino. Frank scrambled to his feet and dashed toward the front of the bus, sending the brochures flying into the air.
A few people screamed. The bus driver got on the PA system and said, “Don’t worry, folks, it’s just a draft from that jammed AC vent. I’ll have it fixed before you’re ready for the trip home. Just settle down and enjoy the ride.”
That was the moment that Frank jammed his foot down on the accelerator. As the driver gasped and fought for control and the passengers ducked behind their seats, the huge, brightly painted charter bus rocketed forward—doing fifty, fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five, then seventy miles per hour.
Frank relinquished control to the driver and leaped out the front of the bus. He hit the ground running at seventy mph and soon was doing seventy-five and then eighty. He quickly began to gain ground on the squad car.
Sixteen
At eighty-five mph, Frank’s emanation became an almost amorphous fluid, his body discombobulating in the slipstream. He reached the back bumper of the squad car, close enough to see the Reaper atop it and Lucy struggling within.
“Lucy!” he yelled.
She couldn’t hear, but the Reaper looked around and hissed, its yellow eyes glaring at the sight of its persistent enemy. With a mighty leap, Frank hurled himself forward onto the car and grabbed the creature by the ankles. Hissing and growling, the Reaper was pulled off the roof of the squad car. Frank and the creature tumbled onto the road at high speed, rolling over and over in a tangle as Dammers drove off into the darkness. Cars sped through Frank and the Reaper as they grappled.
Frank had the creature by the throat. It frantically snapped and hissed, more like a wild animal than anything human. As they rolled to a halt Frank freed one hand and punched the Reaper again and again. He could see the thing more clearly now; its features changed with each blow. The horrible, skeletal eye sockets became more and more human with each punch.
Frank paused. Although distorted and still grotesque, the face was becoming to look . . . well, familiar.
“Who are you?” Frank groaned between clenched teeth.
For an answer, the Reaper roared and threw Frank off. He rolled away into the stream of traffic and was buffeted around by the speeding cars and trucks.
The Reaper sprang to its feet, producing the wooden staff from beneath the cloak. With a loud click, the steel blade locked into place.
Frank backed away as the Reaper approached, scythe raised. The creature charged then, swinging the awful weapon at Frank, narrowly missing him.
As a convoy of trucks sped by, their slipstreams caused both Frank and the Reaper to spin and float. Both were off their feet and wafting in midair, like feathers sucked down a country road behind a pickup truck. At one point the Reaper swung his scythe again at Frank. This time, to get away Frank had to dive to the ground—where he was immediately flattened by the wheels of a huge truck.
He re-formed his shape and turned to run—straight into the path of oncoming traff
ic. The Reaper was hot on his heels, scythe at the ready. Another bus was coming. They ran straight through it, their heads and shoulders visible above the floor of the speeding bus—this one carrying a group of mystery writers on their way to the annual Stephen King Convention in Bangor. In a flash they were out the back of the bus. Bannister was running as fast as he could, but the Reaper was gaining on him. More cars, trucks, and buses passed through them in quick succession.
Frank looked around desperately for a way out. A huge Mack truck was rocketing toward him, carrying a load of smoked salmon from Nova Scotia to New York. A flashy yellow logo on its cab read THE LOX ROCKET. Frank ran right at it and held up his arms while squeezing his eyes shut and praying that what he had in mind would work.
At the moment of impact, Bannister was scooped up by the truck’s massive grille. His body flattened against the front of the truck as he instantly reversed direction. Instead of running away from the Reaper, he now was speeding straight at him at better than seventy mph. As the Reaper’s eyes widened in shock Frank raised his foot and kicked the beast in the face as the two collided at high speed.
This time there was no hiss, no roar. The Reaper was hurled backward off his feet, disappearing over the highway barrier as Frank sped away, clinging to the front of the truck.
The truck exited the coastal highway at the next off-ramp, heading toward the IHOP rest stop so the driver could fill up on coffee, beef jerky, and audiotapes to carry him through the rest of his journey.
As the huge vehicle slowed, Frank looked around in a desperate search for Dammers’s borrowed police car. He saw it heading up a distant street, into the hills above town. Frank leaped off the truck and began racing across town.
One advantage to being an emanation in a hurry is that you needn’t bother with stop signs, red lights, or difficult directions. You just go straight for your destination. And so Frank ran in a straight line toward Dammer’s car—through fences, yards, parked cars, garages, living rooms, and bedrooms. He went so fast through one living room that the giant-screen TV flickered and switched, mysteriously, from a Bob Dole campaign speech to a Hootie and the Blowfish concert. Bannister ran through the public library, spilling books on the floor as he raced up one aisle as fast as a passing locomotive.
Unaware he was being followed, Dammers stared intently at the road ahead as he steered the car toward the hills. Lucy continued to tug at the handcuffs, making raw, red rings around her wrist, but to no avail. Then she caught sight of Dammers’s black eyes staring at her in the rearview mirror.
“What are you staring at?” she snapped.
“Have you calmed down yet?” he asked.
“I’ll calm down when you’re in jail or dead.”
Dammers held up a hand, as if to calm her. But in so doing he exposed a small swastika tattooed on his hand. She saw it and said, “Is that what you are, a Nazi? Is that what’s behind this?”
“No,” he said tersely.
“One of those neo-Nazis who are killing Turkish immigrants in Germany? Is that who you are?”
Dammers growled. “You’re looking at a war wound, a result of all the horrible undercover jobs I was forced to take over the years.”
“As what this time, a burning-cross lighter for the KKK?”
“It was 1969, do you remember that year?”
“I wasn’t even born,” she said.
“Squeaky Fromme . . . the Spahn Ranch . . . Simi Valley . . . I was her sex slave for six months.”
“Did you help her kill all those people or did you merely stand by and watch? Is that how you get your rocks off, Dammers? By watching?”
“I spent six months in the service of my country,” he said bitterly, “disguised as a filthy hippie.”
Just then Frank emerged out of a warehouse wall, raced onto the road, and stood directly in front of Dammers’s car. With a loud thump he was collected on the hood and frantically grabbed hold of the roof to avoid being blown off.
“I find cemeteries very restful places, don’t you?” Dammers said.
“Let me go, you bastard,” Lucy said again.
“I intend to, Mrs. Lynskey . . . as soon as we’ve watched the sun rise.”
Dammers looked at his watch. It was nine thirty-five.
“In nine hours’ time,” he said.
Frank thrust his face through the windshield. “Lucy!” he cried out.
She didn’t respond. Even if she had heard him, she was too busy being furious at Dammers.
The car pulled through the front gates of Fairwater Cemetery. At that hour of night, the burial ground was darker than a coal mine and creepier than a pit full of vipers, which, to a large extent, it was.
As Dammers drove into the cemetery Frank saw the Reaper in the distance, a black smudge racing through town toward the cemetery hill.
Dammers drove deep into the cemetery and pulled to a halt between tombstones on a bluff overlooking the town. Dammers shut off the engine and got out of the car, unbuttoning his shirt. At that moment two large ghostly paws suddenly grabbed Frank’s shoulders and yanked him off the car.
It was the fearsome Gatekeeper, the ogre spirit who helped keep peace among the emanations. He held Frank as if he were a rag doll.
“State your business,” he said in his guttural voice.
Frank struggled, but the Gatekeeper had an iron grip on his shoulders.
“It’s me . . . Frank Bannister.”
“Who?”
“Frank Bannister. I died.”
“You ain’t Bannister no more,” the Gatekeeper growled. “You’re just a shitty little spook.”
Desperate, Bannister said, “Listen to me! There’s an evil spirit coming up that hill.”
He pointed in the direction from which he had seen the Reaper coming.
“The only evil here is you, Bannister,” the Gatekeeper growled. “You’re an evil asshole who’s better off dead. That way Hiles and I can keep an eye on you.”
As if summoned, Hiles appeared, marching over, aiming his ghostly Uzi at Frank.
“Shut up, you subhuman emanation,” Hiles snapped. “I heard that you lost your protectors, Cyrus and Stuart. The two emanations you were using to con chump change off innocent humans finally got away from your evil influence and took the corridor.”
“You don’t have time to stand there and insult me,” Bannister said desperately. “A dark spirit is coming up that hill right now and might just chop your loudmouthed head off—the same way he killed Cyrus and Stuart.”
Furious, Hiles said, “You contemptible heap of teleplasmic shit. If there was an evil spirit loose in this town, I would be negligent in my duty!”
Raising his voice to a drill sergeant’s scream, Hiles said, “Are you accusing me of professional incompetence? Are you saying that I am one prize piece of anus breath?”
“You’re gonna die, Hiles,” Bannister warned.
“I wouldn’t listen to you if you were the last emanation on earth, you worthless hunk of shit.”
It was then that an old, familiar, and to Frank, very welcome voice chimed in. “I’ve had as much of your foul mouth as I can stomach, son,” the Judge said.
Hiles spun around and stared in disbelief at the Judge, who peered out of his grave.
“I suggest you treat Mr. Bannister with a degree of respect, boys,” the Judge said.
“Get back in your grave, you senile old goat,” Hiles screamed.
“Get ’em, Rustler,” the Judge snapped.
With that, Rustler suddenly sprang out of the Judge’s grave, leaping through the air and clamping his jaws onto Hiles’s wrist. Howling in spirit pain, Hiles dropped his ghostly Uzi machine gun. The Gatekeeper threw Frank to one side and rushed to help Hiles. The ogre spirit grabbed the big flea-bitten dog and tried to pull it off Hiles’s arm.
Unseen by the two Spirits, the Reaper had made it through the cemetery gates and was rushing toward them at high speed, its scythe still held aloft. Rustler saw the creature, though, let go of
Hiles, and with a whimper, dived into the Judge’s grave. The Judge, too, ducked his head below ground as the fearsome Reaper closed in.
At last the spirits saw the Reaper.
“What the hell is that?” Hiles gasped.
“I warned you,” Frank replied from off to one side.
The Gatekeeper jumped in front of Hiles, trying to protect him.
“State your business,” he snapped in the guttural voice that had scared so many others.
The Reaper didn’t hesitate. It gracefully swung his scythe, splitting the Gatekeeper in two from bottom to top. The ogre fell to the ground, two dissipating clouds of ectoplasm.
“Think fast, Hiles,” Frank said, ducking behind a tombstone.
But Hiles had no time to react. He was beheaded by an equally fluid swing of the scythe.
Finished with those obstructions and unaware of Bannister’s presence, the Reaper moved swiftly toward the nearby squad car, closing in on Lucy with remarkable speed.
She was using the clasp of her watch in an attempt to unscrew the roll bar from the side of the car. The Reaper glided in through the door and sat beside her. Its horrible breath touched her cheek. Its bony hand hovered over her chest.
“Don’t fear the Reaper,” the creature said with silky menace.
At that moment Frank leaned over from where he was hiding in the front seat. He swung Hiles’s ghostly Uzi into the Reaper’s face.
“Go to hell,” he snarled, and fired a burst of machine-gun bullets into the creature’s face. The blast sent the Reaper flying out the back of the car. Frank leaped out after him, firing again, a withering burst. The Reaper convulsed and shuddered as the ghost bullets thudded into their target.
The creature snarled and roared as it was literally shot to pieces. Large lumps of its body flew into the air, dark glutinous masses that landed on the ground with wet splats.