Ghost Road Blues

Book 1: Pine Deep Novel

by Jonathan Maberry

Genres: Horror; Sagas; Post-Apocalyptic sci-fi

Synopsis

From a master of horror comes an apocalyptic showdown between the residents of a secluded, rural town and the deadly evil that confronts them wherever they turn.

Evil doesn’t die...

The cozy little town of Pine Deep buried the horrors of its past a long time ago. Thirty years have gone by since the darkness descended and the Black Harvest began, a time when a serial killer sheared a bloody swath through the quiet Pennsylvania village. The evil that once coursed through Pine Deep has been replaced by cheerful tourists getting ready to enjoy the country’s largest Halloween celebration in what is now called “The Spookiest Town in America.”

It just grows stronger.

But then—a month before Halloween—it begins. Unspeakably desecrated bodies. Inexplicable insanity. An ancient evil walks the streets, drawing in those who would fall to their own demons and seeking to shred the very soul of this rapidly fracturing community. Yes, the residents of Pine Deep have drawn together and faced a killer before. But this time, evil has many faces—and the lust and will to rule the earth. This struggle will be epic.

A Blackstone Audio production.

Release date: May 31, 2016

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 480

Sample

“I first met Jonathan when he was a teenager, and I predicted
great things then. And look, he has achieved great things.
Jonathan Maberry is writer whose works will be read for
many, many years to come.”

—Ray Bradbury

“Maberry has the unique gift of spinning great stories in
any genre he chooses. His Pine Deep vampire novels are
unique and masterful.”

—Richard Matheson

GHOST ROAD BLUESWinner of the Stoker Award for Best First Novel

“Jonathan Maberry rushes headlong toward the front of the
pack, proving that he has the chops to craft stories at once
intimate, epic, real, and horrific.”

—Bentley Little

“Reminiscent of Stephen King . . . Maberry supplies plenty
of chills in this atmospheric novel. . . . This is horror on
a grand scale.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Every so often, you discover an author whose writing is
so lyrical that it transcends mere storytelling. Jonathan
Maberry is just such an author.”

—Tess Gerritsen New York Times bestselling author
of The Mephisto Club

“It is hard to believe this is Jonathan Maberry’s debut novel
because his writing is of such a high caliber and his storyline
is comparable to that of a master writer of horror. Great
action scenes, a growing sense of foreboding and fine
characterizations make this a one-sitting reading experience.”

—Midwest Book Review

“Jonathan Maberry writes in the grand poetic horror
tradition of Poe and Robert McCammon. His novel is not
just a frightening tale but one in which the reader can truly
identify with both the characters. The language and
descriptions are vivid, threatening, and beautiful. Maberry
belongs with the big names including King and Koontz.”

—Stuart Kaminsky

“A chilling tale about the staying power of evil.
As lyrical, melodic, and dark as the music that provides
the imaginary soundtrack. Maberry breathes new life
into modern horror fiction.”

—Scott Nicholson

“Maberry knows that true horror lies in the dark, hidden
places in the human heart, and to take this journey with
him is genuinely chilling.”

—T. J. MacGregor

“If I were asked to select only one new voice in horror
fiction to read today, it would be Jonathan Maberry. Ghost
Road Blues jumps so easily out of his blend of words,
images, and characters that you hardly realize you’re reading
a novel rather than watching a movie.”

—Katherine Ramsland

“If you think that small-town horror has nothing new to offer
the reader, you have a surprise in store for you. Jonathan
Maberry’s Ghost Road Blues, first in a trilogy, demonstrates
that even the most haunted town in America is unprepared
for the full depth of evil, either human or inhuman. A fine
blend of authentic supernatural folklore and conventional
villainy in a fully realized contemporary setting.”

—Don D’Ammassa

“Ghost Road Blues is a superbly woven, chilling tale that
makes you wonder who the real monsters are—humans
or the undead.”

—L. A. Banks

“As effective an opening as I’ve ever read, and the jolts
just keep on coming.”

—Jeremiah Healy

“Stunning! A fierce and new talent!”

—Ken Bruen

“A fun, fun read and creepy as hell. Jonathan Maberry
serves up scares like pancakes at a church social.”

—Gregory Frost

“I read as much horror fiction as I can get my hands on,
and it’s been a long time since I’ve read anything that I’ve
enjoyed as much as Ghost Road Blues.”

—Stephen Susco

“Ghost Road Blues rocks. From the first page to the last,
Jonathan Maberry displays the sure hand of a master of
the craft. I can’t wait to see what this new king of horror
has in store for us next.”

—Bryan Smith

“Jonathan Maberry writes densely layered prose full of real
characters and plenty of eerie atmosphere. He’s in tune with
both the dark side of human nature and the simple goodness
that can redeem us all.”

—David Wellington

“Jonathan Maberry is the big guy you’d want to back you
up in a fight. Now he’s writing big scary books that feel just
right. Ghost Road Blues is dues paid in advance: read it now
so that you can say you were there at the beginning
of a blockbuster career.”

—Bill Kent

“With Ghost Road Blues, Jonathan Mayberry lands solidly
on his feet in territory once dominated by Manly Wade
Wellman and Joe Citro; this haunting, complex, terrifying,
and deeply humane novel is a heady feast for those who’ve
been looking for something new and lyrical in horror.”

—Gary A. Braunbeck

“Ghost Road Blues reminded me why I’m afraid of the dark.”

—Charles Gramlich

“Maberry will scare the bejibbers out of you!”

—John Lutz

“Dark, scary, and so darn well written that one might think
this book something Stephen King wrote and forgot
about many years ago.”

—Michael Laimo

“Maberry takes his reader to new and chilling places. If you
read horror, you can’t miss this book.”

—H. R. Knight

“Ghost Road Blues is a hell of a book—complex, sprawling, and
spooky . . . with strong characters and a setting that’s pure
Americana Halloween hell. A satisfying chunk of creepy,
visceral horror storytelling—I’d recommend this to anyone
who loves the works of Stephen King.”

—Jemiah Jefferson

“Reading Maberry is like listening to the blues in a graveyard
at the stroke of midnight—the dead surround you, your
pounding heart keeps steady rhythm with the dark, melodic
prose, and the scares just keep coming. You find yourself
wondering if it’s the wind howling through the cold,
foreboding landscape of gray slate tombstones or whether
it’s Howlin’ Wolf ’s scratchy voice singing ‘Evil.’ ”

—Fred Wiehe

“Get ready to be totally hooked, because it’s all here:
incredible atmosphere, characters you truly care about,
and a level of pure suspense that gets higher with every
page. Jonathan Maberry is writing as well as anyone in
the business right now, and I’ll be counting the days
until his next book.”

—Steve Hamilton

“Maberry’s Ghost Road Blues leads with a hard left
hook and never lets up, full of good, strong writing and
complex characters who step right off the page and into
readers’ heads. It’s a lyrical, frightening, and often astonishing
read. Although Pine Deep is not a place you’d like to
call home, you’ll feel as if you’ve been there before. A
wonderful novel from a fresh new voice in the genre.”

—Nate Kenyon

“Maberry weaves words of mesmeric power. Gruesome,
scary, and bloody good fun.”

—Simon Clark

“A wild mélange of soulful blues music and gut-wrenching
horror! Through vivid characters and clever descriptions,
Jonathan Maberry carefully crafts a very special town that
any horror fan would love to live in—that is, until it starts
to get ugly . . . really ugly. He brings terror to life in a
uniquely contemporary way. I’ll be so excited to read the
second book in his trilogy!”

—Brinke Stevens

“Ghost Road Blues is epic horror that puts you in mind of
The Stand, It, Boys’ Life, and They Thirst, but beats its own
scary path. Nicely tied to the blues and the dark magic of
Halloween, it is the first of an impressive new trilogy by
Jonathan Maberry, whose vivid prose hits the right rhythms
and whose creeping horrors will feed your nightmares until
the next installment—and maybe forever. High-octane
storytelling meant for chilly, full-moon nights.”

—W. D. Gagliani

“Prepare to be scared. Maberry frightens, amuses, and
makes you think, often on the same page. The horror is
pervasive, but so is a deeply entrenched sense of fun.
Move over, Stephen King.”

—J. A. Konrath

“Jonathan Maberry writes with the assured hand of a
veteran wordsmith. His voice is a confident one, his stories
possessed of the kind of rhythmic, lyrical quality one might
find in the work of Cady, Conrad, or even Faulkner. And yet
such comparisons, though hard to avoid when sitting around
Maberry’s campfire and hearing his voice, are not entirely fair,
for there is a uniqueness here that is exciting to behold.
Jonathan Maberry is reaping a crop all his own, and I for one
eagerly await the fruit of future harvests.”

—Kealan Patrick Burke

“Maberry writes a vivid, fast-paced prose, creating
characters and events that are memorable and often
frightening. If you like your fiction compelling and
deliciously dark, this is an author you should get to know.”

—Bruce Boston

“Ghost Road Blues begins with more horror than one
can imagine and ends savagely beautiful, intricately and deftly
written. Don’t start this book unless you can finish it!”

—Jack Fisher





“Like Stephen King in ’Salem’s Lot, Jonathan Maberry creates
a small town where the everyday flesh-and-blood brutality
of the citizens seems to call forth a deeper, more supernatural
evil . . . The cliffhanger ending will make you impatient for
the next installment of this trilogy!”

—E. F. Watkins

“Terrifying. Maberry gets deep into the heads of his
troubled characters—and ours. The small-town horror feels
like it’s right next door.”

—Jim Fusilli

“Stunning, powerful . . . a complex, heart-pounding read. It
deserves the Stoker for Best First Novel.”

—Kim Paffenroth

“As a horror fan, I loved Ghost Road Blues with its great
storytelling and memorable cast of characters. As a music fan,
I loved Maberry’s references to classic blues and rock
recordings.There may very well have been hellhounds
on Robert Johnson’s trail.”

—Andrew Burns

“Riveting, bristling with scares, rich with atmosphere . . .
brings to mind early Stephen King. Highly recommended!”

—Jay Bonansinga

“Without a doubt this prolific author is the next Stephen
King. Maberry deserves more then a Bram Stoker Award
for this; he deserves Bram Stoker to rise from his grave
and shake his hand.”

—Chad Wendell

“A must for anyone who enjoys a literary roller-coaster
ride with a deliciously grotesque streak.”

—Litara Angeli, Dark Realms magazine

DEAD MAN’S SONG

“Maberry takes us on another chilling roller-coaster ride
through the cursed town of Pine Deep. You might want to
keep the night-light on for this one. Really.”

—Laura Schrock

“A fabulously written novel that grips you from its first line
to its last. Jonathan Maberry’s writing runs from dark and
beautiful to sharp and thought-provoking, and his books
should be on everyone’s must-read list.”

—Yvonne Navarro

BAD MOON RISING

“One of the best supernatural thrillers of recent years.”

—John Connolly

OTHER BOOKS BY JONATHAN MABERRY

BY JONATHAN MABERRY



Ten years.

That’s how much time has passed since my first novel, Ghost
Road Blues, was published.

In some ways it feels like ten minutes, and in others it feels
like this is the sort of thing I’ve always done. Write fiction, I
mean.

It’s not, though. When I sat down to write this novel it was
my very first attempt at fiction. I had no idea if I was going to be
any good at it. Hell, I didn’t even know if I was going to like
writing novels. Prior to that I’d written nonfiction going all the
way back to my college days. Thousands of feature articles and
how-to articles for magazines, mostly on topics like jujutsu, selfdefense,
travel, bartending, skydiving, relationships, science, music. I
did reviews and op-ed pieces, then I shifted gears and began writing
college textbooks (on judo, archery, martial-arts history, etc.)
and mass-market nonfiction, again mostly about martial arts.
Until something odd happened in 2000.

That was the year I published a book on a subject I’d never
before written about, although it was a subject that had always
fascinated me.

The supernatural.

I wrote a huge nonfiction book on the folklore of supernatural
predators from around the world and throughout history. It was
the final book in a four-book contract with a small press. And since the first three books had been about—you guessed it—
martial arts, the editor assumed that’s where I’d go again. I didn’t.

You see I’ve always been fascinated by the things that go
bump in the night. Monsters, in all their varied aspects and
guises, filled my young dreams and my waking speculations.
That process started with my grandmother, who was a wonderfully
spooky old lady. She believed in everything. All of the monsters,
spirits, devils, demons, ghosts, and faerie folk were part of
what she called the “larger world.” That was her world. She read
tea leaves for the other ladies in the neighborhood—a fiercely
blue-collar, low-income part of Philadelphia. The stuff she believed
in scared the bejeezus out of my siblings and, quite frankly,
a lot of her neighbors. She was the crazy old woman down the
street.

I loved her.

She taught me to read tarot cards when I was eight, told me
stories about ghouls and goblins . . . and vampires. Werewolves,
too. Because of her, I knew the folkloric versions of these monsters
long before I saw the Hollywood versions and before I read
the literary takes on them.

So I wrote a book about it. The Vampire Slayers’ Field Guide to
the Undead. My publisher feared that my martial arts readers
would think I’d lost my marbles; he insisted I publish it under a
pen name. And so it came out with Shane MacDougall as the
author.

Suddenly Shane MacDougall was getting more attention than
Jonathan Maberry. More people were talking about his vampire
book than had about the dozen or so nonfiction books on other
subjects I’d written previously.

It was because of that book that I met some of the people in
the horror community—other writers, but also readers. It encouraged
me to go back to reading horror fiction, which was
something I’d drifted away from over the years. I rediscovered
old favorites: Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, Sheridan Le Fanu,
Mary Shelley, Robert Bloch, H. P. Lovecraft, Richard Matheson,
Stephen King, Peter Straub . . . so many others. And I encountered the newer breed, among them Graham Masterton, James
Herbert, Brian Keene, Bentley Little . . . well, the list goes on
and on.

I read everything I could get my hands on, and the more I
read the more I loved the subtlety and variety in the genre.

Somewhere along the way—I think it was around 2002—I
began toying with the idea of trying my hand at horror fiction.
Although I’d written plays and poetry, which are a kind of fiction,
I’d never tackled prose fiction with any enthusiasm. I always assumed
I had too orderly a mind, a journalist’s mind. Fiction was
something magical that only other, better writers could manage
and who the hell was I, anyway?

While I mulled over it, I began scouting around for horror
fiction that drew on the folkloric monsters rather than retreaded
the Hollywood versions. I looked and looked, and found very
little. I began grousing about the paucity of such fiction. I became
vocal about it. Which is when my long-suffering wife, Sara
Jo, finally said, “Well, stop complaining about it, and write the
damn thing.”

Which I did.

Ghost Road Blues was written to get it out of my system. In
part. Mostly, though, it was written because it was a story I
wanted to read. It was real people in a practical and pragmatic
version of the world encountering monsters. And the monsters
in question were variations of vampires, werewolves, and ghosts
that appeared in old legends. I wrote the book that was conjured
in my boyhood dreams and fed by my love of horror.

In the writing I realized a couple of things.

First, it became very apparent that the story I wanted to tell
was not going to fit in one volume. Not even in one very large
volume. I love stories with ensemble casts, stories that have an
epic feel to them. So I broke the story into three parts, set at the
beginning, middle, and end of one very unlucky October.

The second thing I realized was that I rather enjoyed writing
fiction. It felt natural, comfortable. It felt right. It felt so right, in
fact, that I had to wonder why I’d waited so long to try it. I sold my first magazine features in 1978. My first nonfiction book
was published in 1991. Why had I waited until almost the new
millennium to try writing a novel?

No clue at all. Maybe I just wasn’t ready.

The third thing I realized was that I had to get an agent.
When you write articles and textbooks you don’t need a literary
agent. You do need one—and ought to find a good one—when
you write novels.

I did my homework and I found a good one, Sara Crowe,
originally of Trident Media and since then of Harvey Klinger,
Inc. Even though Sara is not a fan of horror, she saw something
in Ghost Road Blues that made her want to take it, and me, on.
She shopped it and surprised the living hell out of me by selling
it—and its two sequels—to Michaela Hamilton at Pinnacle, an
imprint of Kensington Publishing.

The first of what was to become the Pine Deep Trilogy debuted
in June 2006. I doubt any of us had high expectations. It
was a paperback original, and a horror novel, published during a
period of tragic decline in horror fiction. I was warned that the
book would probably enjoy a few months on the shelves and
then quietly fade away. Maybe it would sell a few extra copies
when each of the sequels came out, but maybe not.

Something different happened.

People started buying Ghost Road Blues. Reviewers began
talking it up. There was message board chatter about it (this was
way before Facebook and Twitter). Jonathan Maberry began
getting invited to speak at the same events where Shane Mac-
Dougall had formerly been a guest.

And then something that was totally out of the blue happened.
The book was nominated for the main award in the horror
industry, the Bram Stoker Award. It was nominated twice, in
fact. Best First Novel and Best Novel.

In that latter category I was up against Stephen King. He
trounced me—fair enough—because he’s Stephen King and his
book that year was the beautiful and nuanced Lisey’s Story,
which deserved to win.

In the Best First Novel category I was also up against serious talent—and what’s fun is that they’ve all since become good
friends. Those other books were killer. Absolutely killer.

But Ghost Road Blues won the Bram Stoker.

I was at the Stoker Awards banquet, held in Toronto that year.
I vaguely remember them reading the names of the winning
book and author. I remember kissing my wife and stumbling up
to the podium to give an acceptance speech. God only knows
what I said. I sure as hell don’t remember.

At that point I had no real plans in fiction beyond the three
books of the Pine Deep Trilogy. I expected to go back to nonfiction—
and I did, kind of. I wrote five more nonfic books on
supernatural folklore, this time under my own name. But something
had changed in me. Through a process I’ve never quite been
able to define I had changed from being a nonfiction writer to a
novelist.

Novelist.

That was something I never expected to use as a self-defining
word.

Now, though, that’s mostly who and what I am. And most of
what I write is horror. The experience of writing the Pine Deep
Trilogy left a curious mark on me. I fell in love with the characters—
Malcolm Crow, Val Guthrie, Terry Wolfe, Iron Mike
Sweeney, Ferro and LaMastra . . . they’ve become friends. And
the tragic, confused, but well-intentioned ghost, the Bone Man.
I even like the villains in the way one can like a villain. Karl
Ruger, the utterly vile Vic Wingate, Jim Polk, and Ubel Griswold
are fun to write even if they are loathsome in every practical
way.

Since the books came out in 2006, ’07, and ’08, they’ve remained
in print. They’ve become popular in audio. I’ve revisited
the town in quite a few short stories that have gone into the series’
prehistory and also revealed what happened after the end of
the third book. The town of Pine Deep remains as a second
home for me, troubled as it is.

At this writing, with October 2015 about to start, I am writing
the pilot for a possible Pine Deep TV series. I’m also writing
my twenty-fifth novel since I tried my hand at this weird “fiction” thing. Writing number twenty-five, and I have seven more
presold and stacked up behind it, with no end in sight. I write
some articles and I write comics for Marvel, IDW, and Dark
Horse, but when I pick a single word to define who and what I
am, it’s “novelist.”

And it all started with Ghost Road Blues. A book I wrote because
it was the horror novel I wanted to read. A book that changed the
course of my professional life, and—despite the appalling things
that happen in its pages—has made me a happy man.

In the succeeding volumes of this tenth anniversary printing
I’ll talk more about the content of these books. The legends behind
the novels. The horror inside the horror.

For now, though, I wanted to share the story of how I chose
to write my first novel.

So, old friend or new reader, turn the page and go visit the
troubled little town of Pine Deep, Pennsylvania. I hope you
enjoy your stay. But . . . don’t go wandering alone in the dark.

Del Mar, California

September 2015

One Month Before Halloween This Year

I have wrought great use out of evil tools. —Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwe-Lytton, first Baron Lytton, Richelieu

 

Every evil in the bud is easily crushed; as it grows older, it becomes stronger. —Cicero, Philippicoe

 

I got to keep moving, I got to keep moving Blues falling down like hail, blues falling down like hail Mmm, blues falling down like hail, blues falling down like hail And the day keeps on remindin’ me, there’s a hellhound on my trail Hellhound on my trail, hellhound on my trail. —Robert Johnson, “Hellhound on My Trail”

(1)

The last thing Billy said was, “Oh, come on…there’s nothing out there.”

And then two sets of bone-white hands arched over the slat rails on the wagon and seized him by the shoulders and the collar and dragged him screaming into the darkness. He tried to fight them, but they had him and as he rasped along the rail, feet flailing and hands scrabbling for some desperate purchase, other white figures closed in and he was dragged away.

Claire screamed at the top of her lungs. Everyone else screamed too. Even the guy driving the tractor screamed.

Billy screamed louder than all of them.

Claire launched herself forward from the hay bale on which she’d been sitting just a moment ago holding Billy’s hand; she leaned out into the darkness beyond the rails, her fingers clawing the air as if that could somehow bring him back. Thirty feet away six figures had forced Billy down to the ground and were hunched over him, their white hands reaching down to tear at him with hooked fingers, their black mouths wide with slack-jawed hunger, their bottomless dead eyes as vacant as the eyes of dolls.

“Billy!” she screamed, and then grabbed at the others around her, pulling at their sleeves, slapping at the hands that tried to pull her back. She wheeled on them—on eighteen other kids, most of them from her own high school, all cringing back against the wooden rails of the flatbed, or trying to hide behind bales of hay—she begged them to help. A few shook their heads. Most just screamed. One boy—a big kid who looked like he might be a jock—made a halfhearted attempt to move forward, but his girlfriend and his buddies dragged him back.

Claire spat at them and spun back, screams still ripping from her throat as she watched Billy’s thrashing arms and legs. She looked up at the man driving the tractor, but he was white-faced with shock and was frozen in a posture of near flight, half out of his seat.

Then one of the white-faced things bent low toward him and because of the angle Claire could not see what he was doing, but Billy gave a single high, piercing shriek of absolute agony and then his legs and arms flopped to the ground and lay still.

The moment froze.

Slowly, the creature raised its head from Billy’s body and turned toward the tractor with its towed flatbed of schoolkids. It snarled at them—a low, menacing growl, the kind a dog would give when another animal came close to its food. The creature’s white skin peeled back from its teeth and there, caught between those yellow teeth, was a drooping tube of purple meat that trailed back to the red ruin that was Billy’s stomach.

Claire’s scream rose up above the darkened road, above the vast seas of whispering corn on either side, far up into the swirling blackness that spread like a shroud from horizon to horizon. Flocks of nightbirds cried out and took to the air. The driver stamped down on the gas and the tractor’s engines made a guttural roar as the flatbed was jerked forward.

Three of the creatures rose at the sound and turned to face the tractor, their faces painted with crimson, their jaws working as they chewed. As the tractor inched forward, the wheels still churning in the mud that had stalled it there a few minutes ago, the creatures began moving toward the smell of fresh meat. Of living flesh.

Everyone screamed again and they shouted and cursed at the driver to move, move, move! The man at the wheel kicked down harder and with a great sucking sound the wheels tore free of the mud and the whole mass—tractor, flatbed, and kids—lurched forward, picking up speed with every second. The white-faced ghouls staggered out into the road and began to follow. Slowly, awkwardly at first, and then faster as they saw their prey gaining ground.

“Move!” the jock roared, and others shouted with him.

The ghouls were trotting now, their awkward gait becoming more orderly as they gained momentum. They were gaining.

Up ahead, the road bent around past a stand of old weeping willows and the driver shifted gears and kept kicking the gas pedal.

“They’re coming!” Claire shrieked.

The tractor was moving faster and faster now, the cold air whipping past the faces of the kids. The ghouls were thirty yards back. Twenty-five.

Twenty.

The jock was mumbling, “This isn’t happening…this isn’t happening…” over and over again as he clung to his girlfriend.

The tractor took the curve as fast as the driver could manage it, with the flatbed canting sharply to one side and all the kids screaming again as they were pushed one against the other.

It cleared the curve and there in the distance were the lights of the main building. Everyone was still screaming as the tractor roared down the last hundred yards toward the big barn where scores of people stood, each of them caught in a posture of surprise, turned toward the sound of the big engine and the constant screams.

Claire turned and looked back, but the shadows along the road had closed over the leading ghoul. It was gone. Maybe…maybe it had given up.

She sank back against the nearest person, clutching the stranger’s sleeve and weeping brokenly. “Billy!” she kept saying. “Billy…”

The tractor jerked to a stop by the barn and the crowd surrounded the flatbed. The driver stood up, turned around to the kids on the flatbed, and then gave them a bright grin that stretched from ear to ear.

“And that, kids, concludes our ride,” he said, giving everyone a little bow.

The kids on the flatbed stared at him in total, comprehensive shock.

Claire was the first one to stand up. She turned to the other kids, smiled sweetly, took a bow of her own, and let one of the crowd help her down to the ground.

The kids on the flatbed were still stunned to silence.

The driver—a small man named Malcolm Crow who had dark hair, dark eyes, and a wicked grin—plucked his hat off his head and waved it toward the barn. “There’s refreshments at the concession stand. And if you haven’t had enough for one night, visit our haunted house. Only five bucks and it’ll scare the bejesus out of you.”

He winked at the shocked-white faces, and then hopped down to the ground.

Two older teens in jeans and black staff sweatshirts that had Pine Deep Haunted Hayride: the Biggest, the Best—the Scariest! emblazoned in glow-in-the-dark orange letters stepped up to help the customers down.

The kids on the hayride still didn’t move.

The taller of the two staffers turned to the other. “I don’t know about you, dude, but I think Crow kinda overdid it with this one.”

They glanced at Crow, who was now helping another set of kids climb onto a second flatbed that stood at the far corner of the barn; a third tractor and flatbed was already vanishing into the far distance where the complex maze through the cornfields began. Claire was with him, sipping a Diet Pepsi that someone had given her, and chatting airily to Crow, sharing the highlights.

The shorter staffer said, “Oh, ya think?”

It took them a couple more minutes to convince the huddled teens on the flatbed that everything was all right. It was the jock who broke the spell. He forced a laugh that was supposed to sound like he knew it all the time. “It’s all planned,” he said. “Those two—the girl, the kid that got killed—all part of the show.” He patted his girlfriend’s arm. “I knew it all along. It’s more fun if you play along.”

She looked up at him with a measure of contempt on her face. “Tommy…you screamed like a girl.”

She hopped down and trotted off to the bathroom on wobbly legs, leaving the jock to try and paste on a look of cool indifference. His expression would have been more convincing if his face weren’t gleaming with sweat despite the forty-six-degree temperature.

 

Over at the barn, Malcolm Crow handed the tractor keys to an older man who wore an ancient Pine Deep Scarecrows ball cap over a perpetually sour face.

“Coop,” Crow said, still grinning, “you should’ve seen the looks on their faces. Jee-sus!” He laughed bent over, hands on his knees, ribs convulsing, shaking his head back and forth like a dog. “Claire and Billy—I’m telling you, Coop, we’re not paying those kids enough. I’m talking Academy Award performances. Damn near had me going.”

Coop just smiled and nodded, but his mouth had a sour twist to it. He wasn’t a bright guy at the best of times and generally didn’t like extremes. Like some of the other staffers, he thought Crow’s latest addition to the Haunted Hayride was a little over the top. He remembered days when the hayride just had kids in fright masks jumping out and going Boo! Simple stuff. Not this weird blood and guts nonsense. It meant adding a bunch of new staffers, including three sets of kids from the Theater Department of Pinelands College to play the doomed couple, one for each of the attraction’s three tractor-pulled flatbeds.

Coop didn’t think the owner, Terry Wolfe, would approve either, but the problem there was that Mr. Wolfe was also the town mayor and he never—ever—came out to the hayride. To him it was just a seasonal cash cow, and he gave Crow a free hand to do with it as he pleased.

Lately Crow seemed pleased only when the kids came back half a tic away from a genuine coronary. Coop watched Crow laugh it out and when he saw that Crow was looking at him, he measured out half a spoonful of smile.

He said, “What are you going to do if we get some kid from Philadelphia or Trenton who’s got a gun tucked down the back of his pants? Half the kids these days have guns. Bang! There’s Billy or maybe one of the ghouls shot and killed. That might not be so funny.”

Crow rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Never happen. Everyone knows this is a haunted hayride. Things are supposed to jump out at you.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Crow checked his watch. “I’m probably going to do the nine-fifteen tour and then I’m out of here. Think you can handle it the rest of the night?”

“Have so far,” Coop said, trying to convey through his tone that having run the attraction for fourteen years before the owner had made Crow the general manager, he could somehow find it in himself to slog through another night.

If he caught the sarcasm, Crow made no sign. Instead he clapped Coop on the shoulder and went through the barn into the office.

 

In the office, Malcolm Crow settled into the leather swivel chair behind the desk, propped his crossed heels on the edge of a stack of boxed T-shirts, and tugged his cell phone out of his jeans pocket. He hit a speed-dial number with a thumbnail and held it to his ear.

She picked up on the third ring. “Hey,” she said, her voice husky and breathless.

“Mmm,” he said, “sounds like I interrupted you in the middle of some sordid sexual adventure.”

Val Guthrie’s dry snort was eloquent. “Yeah. I’m having wild and crazy sex with my Stairmaster.”

“You harlot.”

“I think I climbed the equivalent of Mount Rainier. I’m all sweaty, but my buns are like steel.”

“Whereas I get my strength through purity.”

“Crow, if that’s the source of your strength you would be able to bench press a daffodil.”

“So young to be so hardened.” He clucked his tongue a few times.

“Are you coming over tonight, or are you going to stay there and increase the therapy bills of every teenager in four counties?”

“I’ll be over, baby,” he said. “But—you should have heard the screams. That last trap I built—the one with the living dead dragging the kid out of the cart? Man oh man, was that hot!”

There was a slight pause and Crow could imagine her sighing and shaking her head. “You are a very, very, very strange man.”

“Your point being?”

“Oh, shut up and come over here so we can engage in something a bit more wholesome than blood and gore.”

“Hmmmm,” he said, drawing it out.

“I’ll take a nice hot shower and I’ll be all pink and clean when you get here.”

“I don’t know, I think I prefer you sweaty.”

“I don’t mind getting sweaty all over again,” she said sweetly, and hung up.

Crow leaned back in his chair and pictured her—slim, strong, with black hair and a crooked nose, and the most intelligent eyes he’d ever seen. Eyes that went all smoky and out of focus when they made love.

Suddenly gore and ghouls had less immediate appeal.

He looked at his watch. Almost time to take out his last batch, and after that it would be off to Val’s farm, and maybe a long walk in the cornfield to a spot where they both liked—well away from the house—where they sometimes made love under the stars. Even on cold nights like this one.

Crow got up and shoved his cell back into his pocket as he walked through the barn to the field. The staff would be herding the next group of kids onto the flatbed, but Crow didn’t watch them. Instead he turned and looked east. Val’s farm was that way. Miles and miles away, across seas of waving corn and knobbed fields of pumpkins. There were no lights at all in that direction, and there would be no spray of stars tonight. The sky was a uniform and totally featureless black that stretched forever.

He felt wonderfully happy. The hayride was a success, even if it did push the limits—a fact he’d never openly admit—and Val Guthrie was the most wonderful woman on earth.

Then, without warning, he shuddered. A deep shudder that raised gooseflesh along his arms and made all the hair on his scalp twitch and tingle. Somewhere beyond the veil of black nothingness he heard the faintest growl of thunder. Just the hint of a coming storm. The thunder sounded a little like laughter. The deep kind, from far inside the chest. Mirthless.

He shivered again.

“Someone walked over my grave,” he said aloud.

In the distance the thunder laughed again and there was a single flash of lightning that scratched a deep red vein in the darkness.

Off to his right he could hear the screams of the kids as they encountered monsters. At that moment, Crow didn’t like the sound of it.

(2)

That night, after leaving the hayride and driving over to Val’s farm, and after taking a moonlight stroll and then making love, Crow drifted to sleep in her arms, the strangeness of the coming storm gone from his mind. But down there in the darkness, even with Val’s arms around him and the warm reality of her breath against the side of his throat, Crow sank down into a tangle of an old dream. Not a dream that was so old that he hadn’t dreamt it in a while, but a dream that was worn into the fabric of his mind like calluses on a grave digger’s hands. Part of the dream was actual memory—the latter parts—but most of the dream was a patchwork of things he had guessed, or pieced together over the years, or intuited. The dream was as ugly and as compelling as the morbid fascination of watching a neighbor’s house burn down, and on some level Crow knew that he had to pass all the way through it, relive every bit of memory and supposition, before the dream would leave him alone. Asleep, he set his jaw and ground his teeth and floated helpless on the current that took him back thirty years….

(3)

Autumn of 1976

 

The Bone Man killed the devil with a guitar.

He chased the devil past the crossroads and chased the devil through the corn, and he caught the devil in the hollow between the mountains where the deep shadows live. It was a swamp down there with mosquitoes as fierce as hurt dogs and snakes the color of mud.

Truth is, they chased each other. Sometimes the devil had the upper hand and he hunted the Bone Man, first with a German Luger he’d been issued a long time ago, and then when he ran out of bullets he chased the Bone Man with a skinning knife. Though the Bone Man was skinny and looked sick, he was a strong man with twenty years of fieldwork in his hard hands and a back made of iron slats and old rope. They’d grappled at the top of the hill, down at the Passion Pit where the kids go to neck. They were both filled with blood and rage, but the moon was still down and the devil was still only a man; on equal ground the Bone Man was stronger. The skinning knife went spinning off into a tangle of wild rose and the devil lost his footing there at the edge. He fell and rolled and tumbled and finally overturned back onto his feet and went running the rest of the way down that steep slope into the shadows of Dark Hollow.

The Bone Man stood panting at the top of the hill for just a second, looking west to see the sun dropping toward the tree line and gauging how much day he had left to do this thing. The amount of day was the same as the amount of time he’d had left to live if he didn’t catch the devil right now. Once the moon was up, the tide of events would turn, and turn red.

His guitar was still strapped across his bony shoulders—it had jiggled and jounced throughout the chase and the fight but it was still there. Clear beads of cold sweat ran in steaks down his brown face and glistened like splinters of broken glass in his Afro.

Then he jumped over the edge of the hill, dropping eight feet onto the slope, running so fast that he beat the pull of gravity and kept from falling. He wore no socks and around his ankle was a dime with a hole through it strung on a piece of twine. The dime flashed in the dying sunlight with each step, and then he reached the line of shadows created by the angle of the farthest mountain, and the twinkling dime winked out. His aunt in Baton Rouge had given him that, and even though the Bone Man didn’t do vodoun, he was smart enough to keep any charm against evil. The slope was three hundred yards and almost as steep as the inside of a pilsner glass. The Bone Man could hear the devil crashing through the brush in the shadows a dozen yards below.

The Bone Man raced faster, not caring at all when tree branches whipped his face or briars tugged at his ankles. He had to catch the devil before moonrise.

He hit the bottom of the hollow hard enough to jolt him down to his knees and he cried out in pain, but he hauled himself right back up because crying about it don’t get it done. Setting his teeth against the pain and setting his heart against the fear, he ran into the shadows, his eyes adjusting to the bad light, searching for the devil and finding him almost at once. The devil had stopped to wrestle with a tree branch, trying to break it off, but the wood was green and didn’t want to die.

The Bone Man had no Luger, no skinning knife. All he had was his guitar and without even thinking about it he plucked the strap from his chest and hauled the instrument over his head just as the devil broke off the green branch. As the devil turned to face him, the Bone Man could see the man’s eyes change from blue to yellow to red. Just like that. The pupils contracted to slits and the devil suddenly laughed, his mouth opening wet and wide, and there were a lot of teeth in there. The devil looked at the stick in his hands and as his hands began to change he snarled with contempt and threw the stick away.

The Bone Man didn’t stop, didn’t flinch though his heart was turning to ice in his chest. He gripped the guitar by the neck and as he raced the last few yards he swung it. The devil was arrogant. He was into the change now and he knew what he would become. He was prideful, was the devil; and pride is a dangerous thing, even to the devil.

The guitar wh. . .