Dave's laughter cut off midway through the first chuckle when they rounded the corner.
The car wasn't there.
The weeds weren't even pressed down where it might have been there before.
He turned, eyes wide, and just stared at his companions, who were looking back at him like
he
was the lunatic.
"Maybe it wasn't this place," he said dubiously.
He knew that it was.
The angle on the old graveyard was just as it had been the night before.
Moving as if he were in a trance, he made his way to the front door and made as if to knock on it.
There was no need.
The door stood a few inches ajar, hanging from one broken hinge that was half-rusted through.
Inside the sheets hung, just as he'd said, and he brushed his way past them both in a rush, heedless of the many spider's' webs and scuttling things that shot out in all directions as he passed.
The piano was gone, too.
There was nothing in the house at all, in fact.
Nothing but the smell, which he remembered only too well, dust, and a family of sparrows that shot out the window in a burst of sound and feathers, nearly stopping his heart.
"Telling the tall tales again, eh?" Mark observed, looking around the place and brushing a cobweb off his arm.
"Commune of musicians?"
Dave staggered to the window, his face ashen, and stared across the lot outside at the church.
Something else was wrong.
The sign – the ludicrous, cockeyed "FOR RENT" sign was gone.
Then he heard it.
It was faint, at first, winding its way through his senses so deceptively that he thought at first he was imagining it.
It was the music, the awful, discordant piano music.
The piano was gone, but the music lived on, it seemed.
"There!" he cried, turning wildly to where his friends were examining some dusty relics in the back corner of the room.
"Do you hear it?"
Not waiting for an answer, he rushed back out into the yard.
The music was louder there, coming from the direction of the old church.
There were lights on, too, he saw, coming from the windows between the cracks of the old boards that held them shut.
He stopped, his eye caught by a small pamphlet lying on the ground at his feet.
Picking it up, he peeled it apart carefully where the morning dew had glued the pages together.
The First Church of Light and Vision, learn the wisdom of the stars.
There was more, but he couldn't quite make it out.
It said something about the coming of a God, or a savior, or perhaps just a traveling evangelist.
He couldn't quite make out the name.
It looked like HE..B.
He turned to show his find to Wayne and Mark, but they were nowhere to be seen.
Frowning, he returned to the old house, looking carefully through each room.
Gone
"All right, man," he said aloud.
"This isn't funny."
He figured they were outside, hiding and waiting for him, and he was in no mood to play their game.
"Let's just get back to the house, okay?"
No answer.
He made his way into the yard again and something drew him toward the church.
Maybe they'd just gone over there to check out the music.
It could be that the graveyard extended to the other side of the church, that there was another house, which would explain the music.
He started forward, watching every shadowy nook where his two friends might be lying in wait, and approached the old church.
As he drew nearer, it became obvious that they had somehow managed to get that piano into the church itself during the night.
The music was coming from inside, and, against his better judgment, he moved to the door at the end of the building.
There were plenty of cracks in the old wood, he could just look inside and see what was going on for himself.
Before he could bend down to have a look, however, the door burst open.
Light flowed out and around him, surrounding him on all sides.
Charles Manson stood framed in the doorway, his greasy hair actually combed back and braided and his arms spread wide.
Where there had been dull, mindless oblivion in his eyes the night before, now they burned with a strange, wild light.
"I knew you would return," he said, grabbing Dave's arm and propelling him inside.
Across the room, Little Richard sat with his back to the two of them, dancing his hands over the keys of the ancient piano.
This wasn't what had captured his eyes, though.
There was an altar at the front of the room, and on it a feast – or what appeared to be a feast – was laid out.
Mark and Wayne stood there at the table, turning to meet his confused gaze with wide, feral grins.
He saw that their eyes were alight with the same odd spark as Manson's.
Wayne waved to him, and he saw what was in his friends hand.
It was a leg-bone – a human leg bone – and the skin was rotted and flayed from it, black with dirt and maggots.
As he tried to pull back, retching violently, Mark called out to him, slipping back into the odd, Monty-
Pythonesque
accent from earlier.
"I was wrong, Davey, so wrong.
Herb don't want the Christian dead to go, we have to get rid of them ourselves!"
As his head hammered to the wild, incomprehensible banging of the piano, Dave heard the doors crash shut behind him.
There was another figure behind the altar, taller, darker, blending into the shadows themselves.
As the light began to course through him, eating its way to his eyes, he felt the first pangs of hunger, and he moved forward, moved to the combined beat of piano and stereo – the car had somehow been parked to the left, behind the pews, and Manson had resumed his seat.
As he reached for a rotting hand, he began to wonder.
He wondered what instrument
he
would play.
Near The Great Dismal Swamp, everything grows.
Bugs thrive.
Plants barely hesitate between frost and full, pollen-bearing bloom.
A warm winter week can produce things that should sleep until summer.
It's in the earth. Birth, rebirth – death.
Whatever grows must decompose.
That is truth.
As the sun set in a splash of deep violet and dark purple above the tree line, Jasper Winslow was contemplating that truth.
He was rocking slowly in an ancient pressed back chair, watching the road crumble and brushing flies from his sweat-slicked brow.
Jasper wasn't an old man, but he was no pup.
He'd been running his father's farm pretty much on his own since he turned twenty, and he'd been selling the excess produce at this out-of-the-way, run-down stand for just as long.
The boards were gray, warped and without a sign of peeling paint left to indicate they'd ever been white.
The swamp was a ways down the road and across a field, but its creeping, encroaching presence worked its way closer every year.
The road had nearly washed out in the last flood, and only a dump truck or two of gravel and half a dozen lazy state highway workers had prevented it.
Down the road in the opposite direction, spitting up a shower of dust and stone in its wake, a pickup truck turned off the freeway, bouncing and weaving down the two-lane gravel road.
The back of the truck was covered with a blue tarp, flapping in the breeze.
Something poked out from beneath that tarp, but it was still too far away for Jasper to see.
The truck was Bobby Lee's, a grimy, green-colored Ford as old as Methuselah and twice as cantankerous.
Whitish smoke billowed from the tailpipe, and the truck listed heavily to the left, obviously struggling under an unfamiliar load.
Jasper reached down to his left, flipped up the lid on a rusted, old metal cooler, fished in the ice and water until he found a beer, and pulled it free.
He twisted off the top, slammed the cooler closed with a practiced motion, and leaned back again.
He drained a third of the bottle in one quick drag, then sat, resting it on the bulky expanse of his belly, and watched Bobby Lee park.
The truck wheezed, gasped, and died with the rumble of an engine that doesn't want to quit running, despite its inability to do so.
The belch of smoke that erupted from Bobby Lee's pipes was so reminiscent of a giant fart that Jasper broke into a grin.
"You
runnin
' that thing on beans?" he hollered, not getting up, but raising a hand in greeting.
Bobby Lee was Jasper's best friend in the world, but it was hot, and Jasper Winslow rose for no man, once he'd started rocking.
Bobby Lee clambered down from the driver's seat, slammed the door without looking back and grinned.
"Got one a' them nitro bottles up front," he said, nodding.
"Filled it with Hall-a PENYAS just yesterday. You ought to see her run when I punch
that chili button."
Jasper laughed.
With an uncharacteristic flash of energy, he opened the cooler again, grabbed a second cold beer, and flipped it through the air.
Bobby Lee caught it neatly, bringing the cap to the brim of his faded Catfish Hunter Baseball cap with a flourish that resembled a salute, and twisted off the top.
"I just bet," Jasper commented.
"Day you waste a
Halla
Pennyee
on that truck is the day I quit drinking."
Both of them laughed at that.
"What you got in the truck, Bobby Lee?" Jasper asked, eyeing the oddly draped tarp and the still-listing rear end of the truck.
"Some
sorta
tractor?"
Bobby Lee grinned.
He took another pull off his beer, and then shook his head.
"Nope.
I got me a gold mine, is what.
I got the answer to all our problems."
He sipped his beer and his grin widened.
Jasper frowned.
When he frowned, his brow furrowed, and the expression never ceased to widen Bobby Lee's grin.
"Don't think
too
hard," Bobby Lee advised.
"I know you've been
conservin
' that gray matter all these years – be a shame to waste it now."
Jasper considered getting up.
Bobby Lee needed his ass kicked, and there wasn't anyone else around to take up his slack, but for the moment, he held his peace.
He was rocking, and that was important.
So was the beer, and it was only half done.
"What's in the truck?" he asked again.
This time, his eyes narrowed, and his voice had taken on a cold, empty tone.
Bobby Lee watched him a moment longer, still chuckling, then he spoke.
"You still got that old tin shed you had stored behind your mom's place?" he asked, ignoring Jasper's question.
"You know, the one you never put together?"
"I got it," Jasper answered.
"So what?
What's in the fucking
truck
asshole?"
Bobby Lee hesitated a little less this time, but his own smile had darkened.
"Hold your horses," he said finally, "and I'll show you.
You don't have to be an asshole about it – I'm
lettin
' you in on a good thing."
Jasper just rocked.
He was one step closer to rising from the chair and doing what had to be done, but he let it ride a last time.
Bobby drained his beer, tossed the bottle aside and turned back to his truck with a curse.
"Ought to just leave you here and keep it for myself," he growled.
When he got no response, his shoulders sagged, just enough to be perceptible, and he stepped to the truck.
There were three ties holding the tarp in place on the near side.
Bobby undid them quickly.
Then he stepped to the back of the truck, gripped the blue plastic tightly, and with a flourish, he yanked it free.
Jasper stopped rocking.
He drained his beer, reached around to set it on the cooler, let go of it and missed by six inches.
He gripped the arms of his chair tightly, half-rising.
"What the f..."
What rose from the bed of the truck was beyond description.
Jasper fell back with a thump, setting the rocker in motion again and nearly tipped over backward.
He gasped, tried to speak, fell silent and gasped again.
Without thinking, he reached down and retrieved another beer.
It was half gone when Bobby Lee, grinning once again, stepped closer, leaned down, and asked, "What do you think of her?
She's somethin', ain't she?"