The Revenant Road (12 page)

“And you and Kowalski...?”

Marcus smiled. It was one of the few times I can remember seeing him do that. The fact that he was dead brought that fact home even harder.

“Kowlaski and I played ‘goalie.’ It was our job to collar the sports that get past the Nolane’s defenses and seal the breach. This little incursion was nothing compared to some of the cluster-fucks Kowalski and I set straight. Right, Othello?”

The raven spread its wings and chuckled again.

“He understands you?” I said.

Marcus nodded. “Some hunters are gifted with minor supernatural enhancements. We call them Bents. I happened to share a special connection with this old bird. Othello was my
abettor
. He pulled my fat out of a lot of fires. Except for that last one, right O?”

Turning to me, Marcus winked and jerked a thumb toward the raven. “He was off gettin’ laid.”

Othello croaked guiltily.

“That’s alright, brother,” Marcus said. “You remember Black Murray?”

“My garter snake?”

“Yep,” Marcus said. “He was
your
abettor. Had he lived he would have made an excellent companion on your Walk.”

Black Murray left us, tragically, a year after Marcus did. He had slithered out of his terrarium home and onto our blacktop driveway one balmy Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately our neighbor, Mr. Mayberry, had chosen that same afternoon to try out his brand new riding mower. As Black Murray lay sunning himself on the hot blacktop, Mr. Mayberry had rolled over him, flattening him instantly.

“I haven’t thought about Black Murray since...”

 “Since you and your mother flushed him down the toilet,” Marcus said. “I know. She wrote me what happened in her letter.”

 “Wait a minute, Lenore wrote you?”

 Marcus nodded. “Intermittently,” he said. “At first it wasn’t too bad. She wrote me every week to tell me what was happening with the two of you. But sometimes the work took me out of the country. Sometimes months went by before I was able to collect the goddamn mail. I think, in the end, your mama just got tired of waiting.”

 I made a mental note to call my mother as soon as my head stopped throbbing. I was angrier than at any other time I could recall.

 “Part of me hoped that John Mayberry’s killing that snake meant you might be spared.”

Othello croaked again. Then he hopped off of Marcus’s shoulder, and settled on mine.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Marcus said softly.  “Most Benders only get one abettor in a lifetime. Looks like you’re getting a second chance.”

I had to admit it: It felt right somehow, having that big black pigeon-killer preening itself on my shoulder. It felt like the most natural thing in the world.

I hated it.

“Look, Marcus,” I began. “I didn’t ask for this. I’m having a hard time accepting any of this.”

Marcus waved aside my protestations. Then he stood up.

“You hear that?” he said.

“What?”

Marcus turned to me, his face aglow, as if lit by the light from an alien sun.

“It’s time for me to go,” he said. “The Road is calling me on.”

“Now?” I squawked.

I’d suddenly remembered the ten million things I wanted to say to him. At the same time I hated the creeping emptiness that blossomed in the pit of my stomach at the thought of him leaving.

Marcus began to dissipate like wisps of smoke torn apart by high winds.

“Ask Kowalski about the Bent, son,” he said. “He’s a good friend and an excellent hunter. He’ll stick by you when the corners get tight.”

“Wait!” I said.

There was a flash of lightning, followed by the deep rumble of thunder. Then it began to rain in earnest.

I looked around, squinting to see a glimpse of my father through the downpour. 

But Marcus was gone.

18

Legends

Seattle
Washington
,
5:01 AM
. July 21st.

Murder is never pretty. Ritual human sacrifice in church can be downright inappropriate.

The Southwest Chinese Lutheran Sanctuary sat at the corner of
196
^th
Street Southwest
. In its heyday the sanctuary boasted one of the largest Chinese congregations in
Seattle
. It was built by a wealthy businessman named Bai Mu Shang.     

A lifelong Buddhist, Bai had immigrated to the
U.S.
in 1946 seeking his own piece of the post war American Dream. Desiring to bring Buddhism to the shores of his adopted land, Bai commissioned the construction of a temple that would attract followers of the Four Noble Truths from all over the West.

But during the laying of the foundation, Bai was discovered in a compromising position with his blonde secretary, a Presbyterian from
Bakersfield
named Trixie.

As a gesture of reconciliation, Bai dedicated the future temple to his wife, Margaret Zhang. A recent convert to the Lutheran faith, Margaret insisted the new temple become a Lutheran church, thereby reflecting the couple’s new Western sensibilities. In the traditional spirit of marital fence-mending, Bai agreed.                          

Two days before the inaugural service in the new sanctuary was to occur, however, Bai was caught screwing the blonde Presbyterian in the church’s main office, this time by Margaret herself. In the Western spirit of marital dissolution, Margaret shot them both to death before turning the gun on herself.

After a suitable period of mourning, Bai Mu Shang’s business partners reopened the sanctuary to the eager Christian faithful. It remained a popular church until the late 70’s when it was destroyed by fire.

Many among the sanctuary’s oldest worshippers whispered that the fire started in the same office where Bai Mu Shang and Trixie had passed so many pleasurable hours; that Bai’s angry spirit had exploded back into the living world to burn Margaret’s precious sanctuary from the earth.

In 1986, the sanctuary was condemned. Its blasted window frames, once the resting places of Christian icons, now gaped out across
196
^th
Street
like the empty eyes of a cadaver. It remained a haunted place, a place of mystery and speculation, and within its crumbling walls, Nurse Sandra Woo was having an exceptionally bad night.

The thing from the old stories dropped the remains of its latest victim on the grisly altar at the front of the Church. The creature dipped its maw into the open trough of the dead black man’s torso and tore out his heart.   

Woo had been forced to watch the thing torture and devour seven human beings, forced to listen to their screams, their prayers and pleas for help, while it ripped them apart and consumed their flesh. Three days after her abduction, Sandra Woo teetered on the brink of insanity.

As the thing from the old stories swallowed the dead man’s heart, a blinding burst of emerald light exploded over the altar. The thing, whose name Sandra dared not allow herself to remember, threw back its head and howled. Of all the dark wonders Sandra had been made to witness in the last three days, this single horror was the worst.

Despite her fear, Sandra squirmed around on the filthy floor of the sanctuary, the skin of her wrists and ankles rubbed raw from the thick ropes that bound her, to stare at the being that hovered over the altar.

A tall, thin figure, man-shaped and crooked, floated, suspended in the seething green glare. Its long fingers dangled at the ends of sticklike arms. Its eyes were twin black holes; its face gnarled like the bole of an ancient tree.

The wooden man with the rotten eyes reached down with one brown hand, his face twisted with rage, animated by a palpable hunger. His fingers seemed to meet some form of resistance in the clear air above the “altar,” an invisible tension.

The wooden man clenched his fists and hammered them into the invisible barrier. But an explosion of power ignited the wooden man’s hands and he screamed.

The flames burned brightly for a moment, and then disappeared. Sandra sensed a deep groaning rumble through the earth beneath the sanctuary. There was a high-pitched, shrieking roar. The wooden man glared down at the thing from the old stories, smoke rising from his hands like censers.

“More, Chen,” it hissed. “I need more.”

The wooden man’s voice tore the air from the sanctuary, scoured the nerves in Sandra’s brain. She gasped, her lungs burning, red starbursts erupting into pain-bright blossoms behind her eyes. When she could snatch a breath she screamed.

The wooden man glared at her.

“The Witness,” he crooned. “Well done, Chen.”

The thing from the old stories chuckled, a deep-bellied rumble that drew a shudder of revulsion from the woman that lay surrounded by human remains.

Sandra recognized the creature that had abducted her from the N.S.F.C.S. Her parents were modern, second generation Americans. They’d even granted her an English name at her birth to ease her passage among suspicious Westerners. Her Chinese name, Woo na Wen, was for family.

But her father’s father, Grandpa Yun, had remained traditional Chinese until the day he died. It was from him that Sandra had learned the old stories.

It was Grandpa Yun who told her about the
Yirin
.

The giant ape man that many Chinese believed still haunted the forested regions and remote provinces of rural
China
had stepped out of the stories to feast on the flesh of the living, here in
America
.

Light from one of the broken windows crept through the sanctuary. The abandoned church brightened as Dawn spread its warmth through the chapel. At the approach of the light, the
Yirin
uttered a warbling shriek and leapt up into the burnt-out timbers high overhead.

The wooden man faded, like a shadow eaten apart by motes of sunlight, but its voice echoed through the chapel like the whispered promise of Death.

“Soon.”

Silence descended over the sanctuary.

Sandra Woo cried out for help. No one heard her. The chapel was too far from the street. The burnt out timbers and dense walls swallowed the sound of her terror as effectively as a soundproofed tomb.

Sandra lay her head down and wept into the blood and ash. Her parents’ God, the white Christian God of the West, had forsaken her. As Dawn illuminated the carnage in which she lay, she prayed to the old gods, the ones Grandpa Yun had taught her to remember.

She prayed for Death’s mercy before the
Yirin
returned.