Storytellersunplugged

With my first Rogue Angel novel, THE LOST TOMB, due in just a few days, I haven’t had time to put together a column for this month. Instead, I’m going to share one of the few short fiction pieces I’ve done during my career. (It takes my longer to write a short story than it does a novel, so I don’t do all that many of them.)

“Roadside Memorials” was written for the Roc anthology, LOST ON THE DARKSIDE, which came out back in 2005. The editor absconded with the money due to the contributors and to this day I don’t believe any of us have been paid, but that shouldn’t prevent others from enjoying the work.

As this is a longer tale, I’m going to put the majority of it after the cut. Read on, if you like…

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“Roadside Memorials” by Joe Nassise

A DRUNK DRIVER KILLED MY FRIENDS!

So read the sign now standing at the corner of Thunderbird and Main. It stood in almost the exact spot where Martin had pulled the bodies of two teenagers from the smashed wreckage of their yellow Nissan Xterra just two days before, shouting its message out to any and all who passed by. Around it was a haphazard collection of candles, flowers and photographs, laid out in commemoration of the lives that had ended so abruptly there.

“Freakin’ morbid, that,” his partner Giles said, but Martin barely noticed. He couldn’t take his eyes off the memorial, stunned by the size of it. It had to be six feet square and the accident wasn’t even 48 hours old yet. Where the hell had all this stuff come from? It was disturbing, uncanny even, how swiftly such memorials could appear. Back home in Philadelphia, he’d never heard of the practice, had never laid eyes on even one such marker, but here in the southwest they were practically guaranteed to show up whenever there was a fatal accident. They sprang up overnight like ravenous weeds. He wasn’t certain where the tradition had come from or what those who created them hoped to achieve, he just knew that being around them made him uncomfortable. It didn’t matter where the accident had taken place - back roads, city streets or the long stretches of road bisecting the desert - time and time again he would see them there, like soldiers standing solitary vigil in the darkness.

“…don’t see what good it does.”

“What?” he asked, as the marker swept behind them in the distance and he belatedly realized his partner was still speaking.

Giles waved a hand toward the rear of the ambulance. “Those stupid memorials. Those folks are dead, right? What good do those things do them?” He snorted in disgust. “Besides, I’d rather have folks visiting me in the cemetery than in the middle of nowhere. Who wants to be reminded they’d died in the middle of a freakin’ car wreck?”

Martin nodded, turning away from the window as the memorial slipped away behind them in the distance, but he wasn’t really listening. It had been a long night; three car accidents, a knife fight, and two heart attacks, the most activity they’d had in one night in weeks. And we aren’t even halfway through our shift. All he wanted to do was get back to the hospital and crash out for awhile before the next call came in.

At 36, Martin Jones was already tired of his so-called life. He spent his days sleeping, his nights cleaning up the messes left behind by other people’s mistakes. Gone was the idealism that had gotten him into the EMT business in the first place, washed away by too many stupid accidents, too many senseless beatings, and more than his fair share of horrible car wrecks. It didn’t help that his days were other people’s nights.

Tonight was worse than usual, however. He’d felt an odd sense of unease all evening and the weirdness surrounding that roadside shrine didn’t help. It was almost as if he could sense something, something looming just beyond the horizon; at any moment he knew it was going to come charging in to swallow everything whole.

It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.

As Giles droned on, Martin leaned back in his seat and wearily closed his eyes. Tonight’s shift couldn’t end fast enough as far as he was concerned.

* * *

The call came in around two a.m. A tractor trailer rig had jackknifed out on I-17, taking out three vehicles before colliding with a bridge embankment. Traffic was stopped in both directions for miles. Ambulances from three different hospitals had been called in, including their own.

Martin was behind the wheel for this trip. Switching back and forth halfway through their shift kept them both from going crazy with the redundancy of the job and tonight he was glad for the change. He couldn’t seem to get his mind off all the roadside memorials they passed, especially that large one he’d seen back at the beginning of their shift, and staring out the passenger window as they drove around all night wasn’t helping. He’d never really paid much attention to the things before now, but tonight they haunted him. It was simply amazing how many of the damn things were out there. One hell of a lot of people where dying on these streets, that was for sure. At least driving would keep his attention focused on the road and not on those weird little shrines and the deaths they represented.

When they arrived at the crash site, they were updated on the casualty list. Eight dead, three wounded, and a truck driver with nothing but a scratch. Martin had long since stopped being surprised at the vagrancies of life. It was just the way things were. Still, he couldn’t help but feel sorry for the lives that had ended so abruptly there. All those unrealized dreams.

Giles chatted up the female driver next to them while they all waited for the firefighters to cut the bodies loose from the wrecks and call them in. Judging from the condition of some of the vehicles, it was going to be awhile.

Three cups of coffee and two hours later, they were finished. Having been the last to arrive, they were the last to be loaded and most of the crews at the scene had already left by the time they got the body stowed away in the back, ready for transport to the morgue.

As they pulled onto the main drag a repetitive thumping could be heard from the right rear side of the ambulance. When Giles got out to investigate, he found a six inch piece of steel sticking out of the rear passenger tire. Cursing a blue streak, Giles prepared to change it while Martin went to tell the remaining officers they were going to be a few more minutes.

It shouldn’t have been a big deal; after all, the guy in the back didn’t have any place to be anytime soon. But something about the evening, something about the call, had Martin spooked. He found himself nervously drumming his fingers on the dashboard and gritting his teeth the way he did when he knew he’d screwed up. It was totally unlike him and that’s what made him nervous. Something was wrong.

He could feel it, taste in the air.

That sense of impending doom.

He felt like he had a hundred pairs of eyes on him and several times he found himself searching the darkness around them, looking for persons unknown.

More than once he snarled at Giles to hurry up, only to receive blistering waves of swearing in return. Finally he couldn’t take it any more. He jumped out of the truck, pushed his partner aside and finished tightening the bolts on the tire himself. He didn’t know what was wrong; all he knew was that he wanted to be out of there as quickly as possible.

Unwilling to even take the extra time to properly stow the spare, Martin simply threw it in back next to the body. Climbing back into the driver’s seat, he gunned the engine and pulled onto the road.

He made the mistake of looking back, however, as they left the scene.

Behind them, in the gray light of the early morning, he saw a figure dash out of the woods near the crash site, drop something on the spot where the tractor trailer had been, and then disappear back they way they had come.

Without understanding what he had just seen, Martin knew that the strange figure had been the cause of his unease.

And suddenly he desperately wanted to understand.

Without another thought he slammed on the brakes.

Giles bounced off the dashboard as the ambulance skidded to a stop, not yet having had a chance to buckle in. “What the fuck?” he swore, but his question was left unanswered as Martin threw open the door and ran back toward the scene.

“Martin? What are you doing, Martin?” Giles called after him.

But Martin only had eyes for what was ahead. Even before he could see it clearly, he knew what it was.

A small white cross.

This one was of the Celtic variety, with the center point wrapped in a large circle. It was still swaying slightly from the force that had been used to plant it in the ground.

The sight of it sent the hairs on the back of his neck crawling.

The body hadn’t even left the scene and someone was already erecting a marker on the spot?

What the hell was that all about?

He walked over and squatted beside it. It appeared to be fashioned of a couple of thin, wooden slats, like the kind that made up packing crates. The circle appeared to have been cut from similar material. The whole thing was painted white and from the looks of it, it had probably been done with a cheap can of spray-paint.

In other words, it was perfectly normal looking.

So why did it creep him out so much?

He didn’t know.

He reached out a hand to touch it, but stopped short of doing so.

Very slowly, he stood up and backed away from the cross, in the same manner one would move away from a suddenly snarling dog.

When he was several feet away, he turned and jogged back to the truck, feeling like he’d just narrowly escaped a danger he didn’t understand.

Behind him, the eyes of the living and the dead watched him leave.

* * *

Martin couldn’t get the events of the previous night out of his thoughts, so he called in sick, determined to get to the bottom of what he’d seen. He’d made arrangements to borrow his brother’s black Trans-Am and the car was waiting for him in the driveway a little after nine. Like the car, he, too, was dressed in black, hoping the dark clothing would help him blend in better and avoid being seen.

He spent an hour hanging around in the local Safeway parking lot, listening to the battery-operated police scanner he bought earlier that afternoon, and then he got lucky. A two-car accident on Highway 60. An elderly lady had lost control and smashed into another vehicle driven by a young woman. The girl was in critical condition and was being removed from the wreckage, the older woman was already dead.

That was all Martin needed to hear. The Trans-Am’s tires smoked as he peeled out of the parking lot and raced for the scene.

Traffic was stopped a quarter mile from the wreck, a police officer rerouting traffic to the nearest off-ramp. Martin pulled over to the side of the road, parked the car in the breakdown lane and approached the officer on foot. He flashed his identification, saying he’d been called in to fill the right-hand seat on an ambulance that had gone out with only the driver, and managed to scam his way through.

As he neared the crash scene, he slowed and looked around. Several emergency vehicles were parked nearby, but no one seemed to be looking at him. When he was sure he wouldn’t be seen, he jogged up the embankment and pushed his way into the scrub brush lining the noise barrier at the top. Once out of site, he continued moving until he was immediately above the scene itself.

From here, he could keep watch on everything going on.

And he could get a better look at the mysterious cross bearers.

If they showed up.

Scratch that. When they showed up.

They’d be here.

Martin settled in for a long wait.

From his position on the hill, he watched the ambulance load up the injured girl and the older woman’s body and then drive off just shy of an hour later. The tow trucks and the police were there for another half hour and then they, too, left. Seeing their blue flashers fade into the distance, Martin moved into a crouch, ready to make his way down the hill to confront anyone that arrived.

It was good that he did. Only a few moments passed before a figure scuttled out of the ditch slightly further down the road, near the spot where the elderly woman had died.

Martin burst out of the shrubs and charged down the hill, intent on catching whoever it was and discovering just what was going on.

He closed the distance swiftly and the other didn’t hear him coming. As he drew closer he could see that the figure was clothed in dirty robes and in its hand it held a white cross, like the one he’d seen at the accident site last night. As it raised the cross over its head, preparing to sink it into the earth, Martin snatched it out of its hands.

“What the hell are you doing?” he cried.

The other whirled around and Martin had his first good look.

What he saw sent his heart stuttering in his chest.

The thing had no face.

Only the slightest sense of features existed, as if it were an unfinished canvas given life before its time. Its eyes were shadowed indentations beside the nub of a nose and where its mouth should have been was only a flat expense of grey flesh.

“Holy shit!” Martin yelped, stepping back. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

The creature rose to its full height, an odd tittering sound emanating from it. Martin had the disturbing notion that the thing was laughing at him and maybe it was. But where was the laughter coming from if the thing had no mouth?

Beyond a doubt, Martin knew he’d made a mistake.

Some things were best left alone.

This, this thing, was certainly one of them.

He had no idea what he had stumbled into, but he knew it was time he got the hell out of there. He turned to run and found a second, similar creature standing a few feet behind him, blocking his escape back up the hill.

Martin hadn’t even heard it approach.

From the darkness around it, several more of the creatures suddenly appeared.

Martin stumbled away from them, out into the road, his hands held out defensively before him, praying they wouldn’t follow.

A weird, haunting cry rose on the wind and the leader took a step toward him, causing Martin to back up ever farther.

That was when the delivery van roared around the corner, silhouetting Martin in its headlights where he stood by the side of the road. The driver slammed on the brakes, but it was too late. His rearview mirror clipped Martin on the shoulder and tossed him aside like a rag doll.

Martin never took his eyes off the creatures watching him. Their odd, featureless faces were the last things he saw as he slammed against the ground and the darkness closed in around him.

* * *

He woke up in a hospital bed, a swatch of bandages wrapped around his skull. His doctor told him it was only a minor concussion, but he’d have to stay a few days while they made certain there was no internal damage. Martin had no recollection of the events leading up to the accident and the doctor said it was unlikely he would ever recover more than bits and pieces of those few hours, but if that was the worst of it, Martin felt he couldn’t complain.

Late in the afternoon of the third day they discharged him with a prescription for some codeine and orders to get more rest before trying anything strenuous. His boss gave him the week off without argument and he spent it lying around the house, recuperating.

The ride into the office went without incident and it wasn’t long before he was down in the locker room, joking around with the other EMTs. Giles insisted on driving for the night, something Martin didn’t blame him for, and the two of them settled back into their easy routine.

Their first call came in fairly quickly; an elderly man over at the Northside Rest Home had breathed his last. Martin and Giles were dispatched to pick him up and bring him in.

Northside was on the other side of town, but since they weren’t in any hurry Giles took the scenic route. He wound his way through the city streets, taking as many of the back roads as he could to avoid the traffic that had fled the construction on the expressway.

Martin glanced out the window as they drove by the scene of an accident they had worked the month before and froze.

A white memorial cross now stood on the spot, draped with ribbons and flowers.

The sight of it terrified him.

The light turned green and Giles drove off, but Martin couldn’t rid himself of the haunting image of that cross and the unexplained fear it stirred within him. As they passed others, his fear, unease, and disgust only seemed to grow. By the time they reached the nursing home, Martin was all but useless, cowering in the corner by the door, refusing to look anywhere but at the floorboards beneath his feet. He would not get out of the truck and so Giles was forced to handle the call on his own.

On the ride back to the hospital, Martin chose to sit in the back with the corpse, preferring the company of the dead to having to lay eyes on another of those crosses.

When they returned to base, Martin excused himself, apologized to Giles and his supervisor, and went home sick for the rest of the evening.

* * *

 

Martin spent the next day turning the events of the previous evening over and over again in his mind. He’d seen such roadside shrines more times than he could count. They’d never bothered him before.

What had changed?

He didn’t know.

What he did know was that the crosses unnerved him. They frightened him. He sensed instinctively that they were dangerous, but wasn’t able to put just why into words. All he knew was that they shouldn’t, couldn’t, remain.

Despite his fear, he felt driven to get rid of them.

Called to even.

Doing so proved much harder than he expected, however, when he tried to do just that later that night. The crosses were sunk deep into the ground, so deep that it was impossible to pull them loose no matter how hard he tried. He was forced to resort to cutting them off at the base, but even this wasn’t easy. The wood seemed to have been treated with some kid of special chemical. An ordinary wood saw wouldn’t even dent them and the hacksaw he resorted to using went through blades like they were butter. The need to do it all at night, when there was less a chance of getting caught, did not make things any simpler. Yet he persevered. Martin was on the road almost constantly once the sun went down, roaming the city streets, tearing down as many of the makeshift shrines as he could find, scattering far and wide the objects visitors had left behind.

He had no idea if destroying the memorials was actually doing any good, but the physical action made him feel like he was doing something, anything, and so he kept it up as long as he could each night, only stumbling home after the sun had risen in the east and the danger of being seen became too great.

The nights began to blur together as Martin pushed himself to the limit.

He was at the Mobil station at the corner of Thunderbird and Main early one morning, only feet away from the makeshift memorial that had started it all, when he finally cracked beneath the strain. He had finished filling his tank and was turning to replace the gas hose into the pump when he caught sight of a young girl adding a wreath made of photographs and flowers to the memorial on the corner.

Exhausted, dismayed, appalled at the seemingly endless array of these roadside shrines, Martin couldn’t take seeing another person build them up any higher. He dropped the hose, ignored the splash of gasoline across his sandaled feet, and rushed the young woman, screaming at her to stop what she was doing. Snatching up a wooden sign that made up part of the memorial, he brought it cracking down across the woman’s skull when she turned to see what the commotion was about.

By the time the police were able to tear him away from the victim ten minutes later, it was hard to tell just what she had once looked like. Blood ran thick in the gutter, coating her long blonde hair and the face of the nearest of the flower wreaths like some kind of organic spray paint.

Martin had begun screaming in tandem with the trapped souls standing in the midst of the memorial behind him when he’d begun striking the woman and did not stop until the responding officers shocked him into unconsciousness with their tasers.

* * *

“All rise. The Honorable Judge Prentiss Wilson presiding,” cried the bailiff, as the judge returned to the room.

Martin dutifully rose to his feet beside his attorney, but he was barely aware of the proceedings. His trial had been swift; the jury’s decision even swifter. Five weeks after the incident and here he was waiting to be sentenced. The public had wanted swift justice for the brutal and unprovoked attack and the district attorney had given it to them on a silver platter. Truth be told, Martin didn’t care what happened to him any longer. He just wanted it to be over with so that he could go back to his bunk and curl up again, safe from those faceless thieves that had haunted his every waking minute since the accident. He’d been running ever since that night and he hadn’t stopped until they’d locked him up inside.

The judge had been speaking for more than ten minutes when Martin’s public defender nudged him in the side, telling him to pay attention. The judge was going to deliver the sentence.

“Mr. Jones, based on the testimony at your trial, it would appear that your behavior has been uncontrolled for quite a while. You’ve been physically violent, eccentrically erratic at best. Your attorney may have requested leniency due to the fact that this is your first such offense, but if I were to release you back into the public in your present condition, I’m afraid I would be remiss in my duty to the people. Never mind to that young lady still languishing in critical condition. Based on the findings of this court, I sentence you to five years confinement.

“For the time being, I’m remanding you into the custody of Mount Holy Oak Hospital for a thirty day psychological evaluation, the results of which will determine where you will spend your sentence.

“Questions?”

Neither side had any so with a crack of his gavel the judge rendered his sentence. Martin barely noticed. He’d drifted past the point of caring these last few weeks, knowing as he did what lay beyond these cement and steel walls. All of those crosses gleaming in the darkness…it had become too much for him to think about. At least, inside the walls of the courthouse and its adjacent jail facility, he did not have to seem them standing there, mocking him with his impotence.

No, as far as he was concerned, they could keep him locked up forever.

* * *

They put him in irons with the other prisoners for the walk out to the transport vehicle. Hands chained to the waist, feet chained together, prisoner after prisoner chained to each other. He shuffled along with the rest. At the door to the bus they checked his ID once again, matching his photo to his face, and then they were loaded up, the guards pushing them gently into seats in every other row, the shorter length of chain that had tied them to one another now used to secure them to a large ring in the floor of the bus in front of each seat.

The windows were covered with a thick, steel mesh and a guard rode on either side in the front seat, their shotguns out and ready. The driver, too, was armed; Martin could see the butt of his pistol from where he sat a few rows away. Martin was relieved; he’d been dreading the move from the jail to the hospital facility. Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes and he’d be safely inside the hospital walls with enough dopamine coursing through his veins to get him to forget he’d ever seen such things.

As the bus pulled away from the curb and merged with the traffic around it, Martin, his head down, keeping his gaze focused on the floorboards in between his feet, determined not to see another of those damned crosses if he could help it. So earnest was his concentration that he wasn’t aware there was a problem until the guard a few seats ahead of him began cursing and shouting out the window.

“Hey asshole! Get the fuck away from us, this is a government vehicle.”

Martin looked up. The sun had set. They were out in the middle of the desert, halfway to their destination, nothing to be seen in the harsh glow of the streetlamps ahead of them but four lanes of blacktop and an occasional cactus that dotted the dirty landscape around them. Martin followed the guard’s gaze to the left and turned just in time to see a black El Camino come swerving back across three lanes of traffic to hang directly off the driver’s side of the bus. The car’s passenger side window was open. Martin watched as a long, dark muzzle appeared from within its depths. Before he could shout a warning, the gunman fired.

Three quick shots, one immediately after another.

The bus driver’s skull exploded, showering the windshield with a smattering of blood, brains, and gore.

The El Camino swerved in one direction.

The transport bus went in the other.

One moment they were traveling sedately down the road, the next the driver was dead, the guards were bouncing around the front seats, a shotgun went off, accidentally or otherwise, and by then the bus had left the blacktop. It jolted over an irrigation ditch, careened off a large outcropping of rock, and soared off the edge of a deep canyon before smashing roof down into the desert floor some hundred feet below.

* * *

When Martin opened his eyes the first time, he had a moment to glimpse the crumpled wreckage of the bus around him and then a wave of pain washed over him, pain so intense that it stripped him of his ability to breathe, to see, and he was quickly drowned in its wake.

When he regained consciousness a second time, his pain was less intense, enough so that he could move slightly without blacking out. At first he was disoriented, confused, uncertain of where he was or how he had gotten there. But as the minutes passed he began to remember; the trial, the prison bus, the shotgun blast, everything.

The moon was high in the sky and nearly full. By its silvery light he could see that he was trapped in a narrow opening formed when the roof of the bus had collapsed down upon the seats around him. The tightness at his midsection let him know that he was still chained to the floor beneath him by his restraints.

He was resting in a pool of something sticky and viscous; it sucked at his skin as he braced himself up on his right arm and pulled his face away from the floor. His thoughts were slow, jumbled, as if he was seeing everything from behind a veil of thick fog, and it took him several moments to realize that his left arm was hanging limply at his side.

He could barely feel the pain emanating from his dislocated shoulder.

It took him even longer to realize that he couldn’t feel his legs at all, but he wasn’t able move his head enough to see them beneath all of the wreckage.

He wasn’t going anywhere.

His heart sank at the realization.

A sound caught his attention.

It was a familiar sound, yet one he couldn’t place.

A rhythmic thumping, like sheets snapping in the wind.

The sound grew louder, closer.

Something’s coming.

The sound nagged at him, teasing him with its identity.

He turned his head to the left, so that he was looking out the window of the bus to the desert landscape beyond, searching for the source. The floor of the arroyo in which they had landed was dotted with outcroppings of rock and the occasional piece of wreckage from the accident.

Martin barely had eyes for the landscape, however.

He was too busy staring at the seven white crosses arrayed in a semi-circle just a few feet away from where he was trapped, their shadows stretching across the desert sand behind them in the stark moonlight.

One cross for each of the other men that had been traveling in the bus with him.

Martin’s scream was drowned out as the thumping sound grew near, louder.

Abruptly, silence descended.

The night seemed to hold its breath.

Out of the shadows behind the crosses a lone figure emerged.

Darkness seemed to cling to the newcomer, hugging him, like a large cloak draped about his form, preventing Martin from getting a good look. All he could tell was that it was a man.

For a moment Martin even wondered if the figure was simply a figment of his imagination, a phantom brought on by the shock and blood loss he knew he must be experiencing, but then the figure began to walk toward him. As he did the shadows surrounding him slowly dripped away, pooling at his feet.

Now Martin could see the newcomer more clearly. The stranger was tall, somewhere over six feet, and dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a matching shirt. Despite the summer heat he wore a long trenchcoat over his clothing. Perhaps it was the sound of the trenchcoat flapping behind him that he had heard, Martin thought. Maybe he would be getting out of this after all.

Then the shadows at the feet of the stranger reformed into man-sized shapes dressed in loosing flowing robes and wearing featureless faces.

The dam inside Martin’s mind burst and the memories flowed like sudden rain.

Any hope of rescue swiftly fled.

The stranger spoke. “My, my, my. What a predicament you’ve gotten yourself into, Martin. Stuck like a rabbit in a hole. What a damn shame, that.” The man’s voice oozed with sarcasm and the threat of violence. Behind him, the creature’s tittered and swayed, predators waiting to rush their prey.

Martin couldn’t speak. His lips trembled, his mouth gaped, but no sound came out. The fear he felt at the others presence had swept the fog away from his mind, however. His heart beat faster, harder. The blood around his body flowed anew.

“What’s the matter?” the stranger asked. “Cat got your tongue? You had to know we would be coming for you, didn’t you?”

At last, Martin found his voice.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

The stranger cocked his head to one side. “Who am I? What do I want,” he mimicked. “I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out yet. What is the line from that stupid book? ‘His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth?’ The stranger grinned, a horrible, leering grin that split the night like the rasp of a chainsaw. “I’m nothing more than a fallen star, you stupid monkey. But unfortunate for you, even fallen stars need to feed. And I’m tired of you messing with my dinner.”

He snapped his fingers and the creatures rushed forward, charging into the confined space around him. His flesh burned where they touched him and he thought for certain he was finished, but seconds later he found himself dragged free of the wreckage and dumped to the ground in front of the stranger, his chains now severed and loose.

Before he could do more than gather his wits, his arms and legs were quickly seized by several more of the things, holding him down. Another gripped his head in a vice-like grip, preventing him from turning away.

The stranger stepped closer, scooping up a handful of dirt as he did so. He spat into his hands, mixed the saliva in with the dirt, and then smeared the mixture over Martin’s eyes.

Cold.

Intense, burning cold, the likes of which he’d never experienced.

Martin clawed at his eyes, wiping the muck off of his skin, relieving the pain.

The sight that met his eyes when he opened them again forced another ragged scream from his already weary vocal chords.

The crosses were gone. In their place were seven wraith-like forms, writhing in pain. Though hazy and indistinct, they were still recognizable as the men who had occupied the bus with him. Their lower bodies were encased in cobweb-like substance that pulsed and glowed with an eerie greenish-purple cast and kept them rooted where they stood. Within its depths, Martin could see hundreds of tiny mouths opening and closing. Each time they did the wraiths would scream in pain.

Horrified, Martin tore his gaze away from the dead, only to find himself looking at the stranger again. The man’s shirt was now hanging open. Across the grey skin of his chest were hundreds of similar mouths, open and closing in unison with the others. The stranger’s head was thrown back in pleasure and his eyes shown with joy.

Martin’s recoiled in fear.

Looking down, the stranger grinned once more. “Should have left things well enough alone.”

He reached for something behind him outside of Martin’s view. A moment passed and then he thrust the same arm toward the earth with breathtaking force.

When he pulled away, another white wooden roadside cross stood stark in the moonlight, still swaying slightly.

Martin jerked his head back, stunned. “But,..but I’m not dead yet,” he sputtered, his mind trying hard to come to grips with the situation as his body continued to bleed out its lifeblood into the desert sands beneath him.

The stranger leaned in close, so that the injured man could smell the stink and feel the heat of his breath on his check. “Don’t worry.” That grin again. “You will be.”

The faceless creatures faded into the darkness. The stranger stood and stepped back a few feet from Martin, giving him a good look. The man’s coat billowed out behind him like a great sheet caught in the wind and then split in two. Seconds later he leaped up into the moonlit sky and disappeared.

In his wake, a single, dark feather drifted to the earth and came to rest just inches from Martin’s face.

Seeing it, Martin finally understood the oddly familiar sound he had heard just before the stranger had appeared.

It had been the sound of wings.

Large, powerful wings.

Angel’s wings.

As his life left him and his body went cold and silent, Martin’s soul found itself trapped there with the others and it began to scream.

It would continue screaming for a long time to come.