The Revenant Road (23 page)

32

Special. Weapons. and. Terror.

We crouched behind a parked minivan long enough for Kowalski to give me a primer on crossbow etiquette. “
Pearl
” had thoughtfully provided me with a “self-cocker,” a weapon that only required the user to turn a small ratchet to retract the fiberglass bow, set the iron-tipped bolt to the nylon string, select a target, aim and fire.

By Zippo-light, Kowalski demonstrated the maneuver. The Seward had a “draw weight” of 175 lbs. It could propel a twenty-inch arrow through the air at 345 feet per second to deliver 107 pounds of force: Power enough to stop a horny bull moose in its tracks. The iron-infused broadhead bolts looked like miniature harpoons. They were designed to slice through tough hide on impact and shred the vulnerable organs beneath.          

After Kowalski had assured himself that I could load and fire the Seward, we continued.

The church was an architectural mongrel, part Asian pagoda, part Anglo-European cathedral. Its stained glass windows hung in jagged shards like parti-colored stalactites. Its doors had been bolted and chained shut.

The fire-gutted sanctuary stood slightly off center, like a wounded mastodon leaning toward the nearest tar pit. The ancient timbers groaned, overburdened by the effort of supporting the pagoda’s carcass.

Kowalski gestured and vanished up a dark walkway between the pagoda and the wall of the overpass.

“Wait,” I hissed.

I followed him around to the back. It was so dark in the passageway between the church and the concrete wall of the overpass that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.

I cleared my throat nervously. In the oppressive silence, the bubbling rustle of phlegm reverberated like an elephant’s death rattle. “Kowalski?”

Someone grabbed me. I snatched in enough breath to scream and my attacker clapped his hand over my mouth and hissed mint Altoid fury into my face-“Shut...the fuck...
up
.”

Kowalski.

I struggled in his grip (He was surprisingly strong for a toothless old coot) until he released me.

“Rear entrances are chained shut,” he whispered. “Find another way in. I’ll try to jimmy the locks.”

I nodded, turned away.

“And for the love of Christ, be
quiet
.”

I indicated my understanding. Then we separated.

My heart slammed itself against my ribcage as I crept along the back wall of the church searching for another entry point. The ground level windows had been boarded up. All of them were nailed shut, impossible to see through.

Except for one.

A window on the far side of the church had been blocked by three long wooden slats. The glass had been smashed. I could peek through the open space between two of the slats and into the basement, but in the dim light of the cloud-shrouded moon I couldn’t see more than a few inches beyond the window.

“Good work.”

Despite myself, I jumped.

“Will you stop doing that?”

“Shhhhh,” Kowalski hissed.

He laid his crossbow on the concrete and grabbed one of the boards. Following his lead, I grabbed the lower board and began to push. It was painstaking work, trying to pry the boards loose without making a racket. Kowalski was disturbingly adept, though. Working together, we were able to push the middle slat out of the window frame without waking up the whole neighborhood. I laid the board gingerly down on the concrete, taking great care not to drop it.

The upper and lower boards however, proved immovable. Even with both of us pressing as hard as we could, we were unable to budge them.

Kowalski waved me away from the window. Then he stuck his head in between the two boards. A moment later, his torso and legs disappeared between the two slats. With alarming dexterity for a man of his age, he dropped to the basement floor, landing quietly on the balls of his feet.  

Kowalski gestured for me to follow.

I handed the golf bags through the slats to Kowalski.  

Then it was my turn. I squeezed my arms, head and shoulders between the upper and lower slats. My upper torso slid through easily, followed by my ribcage and mid-section; I was almost through...

I stopped.

“What are you doing?” Kowalski hissed.

I tried to move forward; couldn’t.

“I’m stuck,” I hissed back.

I tried to squeeze out the way I’d come in; couldn’t.

“I’m
stuck
,” I said, louder.

“
Don’t panic,” Kowalski grated.

Cold fury sharpened my reply: “I’m
not
panicking.”

Starting to panic
.

I shot my hips forward, trying to force my way through the opening. Something ripped loudly in the gloom: Whatever it was, it only made my situation worse. The more I struggled the more hung up I became.

Then I realized what it was.

“My belt,” I said. “It’s caught on something.”

My goddamned Kenneth Cole black calf’s leather belt. The one with the silver buckle. I’d chosen it because the buckle stood out against a fantastic pair of black flat-fronts I’d picked up at the Barney’s Yearly Sales Event during my last trip to LA.

The big silver buckle was stuck on a nail.

“It’s my belt,” I groaned.

“Shhhh!” Kowalski said.

“Goddamn Kenneth Cole!”

“Quiet!”

Kowalski was furious, his face glowing, apoplectic in the moonlight. He eyed the shadows warily.

“Grab my arms,” I said, the prospect of being gutted because of a two-hundred-dollar fashion accessory looming large in my consciousness.

“Pull me out!”

Kowalski flapped his arms like a dope fiend waving down a speeding crack dealer—

“Shut...

—and my pants ripped.

I fell through the window and landed on top of a child’s desk. The desk broke apart under my weight and I fell off, knocking over a chest-high stack of similar desks on the way down. I crashed to the wooden floor with a noise like a race riot in a Burmese drum shop.  

Kowalski was there instantly. He grabbed me by the lapels, hauled me to my feet and whisper/screamed into my face, “
SHUT UP!”

Behind us, the two slats fell out of the window with a clatter of splitting timber and broken glass.

Above us, something howled like a damned soul.

Kowalski glared at me, the promise of murder writ large across his face.

“Sorry.”

Kowalski snatched the crossbow out of the silver golf bag and began to load it.   

“Shut your mouth and listen!” he snapped, “I’ll take the point. Back me up. You see anything weird, sing out. You hear anything, yell. Most importantly if you see a monster lookin’ to chomp my guts start shootin,’ but you make
damn sure
I’m not in your line of fire,
comprende?

I nodded. “Yeah...Yes...I...”

Whatever had howled a moment earlier, howled again.

“Oh my
fucking
God.”

Kowalski thrust the crossbow at me.    

“Alright,” he said. “Pull your head out of your ass and pay attention.”

Something big ghosted through the rafters overhead.

“What was that?” I said.

“School’s in session, Junior,” Kowalski said. “Let’s go.”

We ran toward a wide staircase and headed upstairs toward the chapel. I flipped the safety switch to the “Off” position as Kowalski had shown me earlier, stumbled, and nearly dropped the silver crossbow.

“Goddammit, Grudge,” Kowalski said. “Keep it together.”

“
You
keep it together,” I said. “I’m fucking terrified.”

Something moved in the corner near the top of the staircase. I whirled. A dark silhouette rose, head and shoulders shrouded in the silver moonlight shining through a shattered window.

“Look out!” I cried.

I lifted the crossbow and fired. Half a second later I heard the satisfying
thunk
as the iron-headed bolt struck its target.

“I got it,” I rasped. “I got the son-of-a bitch!”

Then my eyes adjusted to the moonlight and I saw the thing that I’d hit.

In the corner, one half of a silken curtain flapped in the cold draft that flowed in through the broken window. The other half was pinned to a wooden bust of a smiling Asian dignitary with thick glasses.

My aim was true: My bolt had struck the bust in the center of its breast.   

“Jesus,” Kowalski groaned. “You sure Marcus Drudge was your real father?”

An inhuman scream cut him off. I whirled as the scream was repeated. It was coming from the chapel. 

“Holy shit.”

Across a small ocean of charred furniture and crumbled plaster and wood, a makeshift altar stood at the front of the chapel.

The altar had been formed from human bodies.

A pile of corpses and
pieces
of corpses nearly nine feet high stood at the front of the chapel. Whoever had built the altar had constructed a gruesome stepladder, using the corpses to reach his most recent acquisition.

There was a woman dangling above the altar. 

She hung suspended from a rope that had been tied to her wrists. The other end of the rope had been hung over a jagged spar of blackened timber twenty feet above the chapel floor.

The woman was alive. When her eyes met mine she began to kick weakly, her bare feet brushing the top of the corpse altar below her.

“Fuck,” Kowalski growled. ”She’s a Witness.”

“A what?”

Kowalski cursed and scanned the rafters overhead.

“A witness,” he hissed. “She’s been placed at the top of the corpse heap in order to act as a repository, a vessel for all the torture and misery she’s seen. When her mind breaks (if it hasn’t already) whatever set this whole goddamn thing in motion will slip past the barriers and into our world, using her as a conduit.”

Jesus,” I rasped. “That’s the shittiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

I began to pick my way across the ruined floor.

Kowalski said, “Leave her.”

“What?!?” 

“We don’t have time.”

“We can’t leave her there like…”