A second bottle of Jim cracked open.

Pacing by the kitchen table for the umpteenth time, PJ noticed the lantern he had brought home. "What'r you lookin' at?" he shouted. The lamp didn't respond he hadn't expected it to, but somehow it seemed to call to him all the same. Beckoning for his attention. Drawing him closer with an unseen power. And for a moment the music seemed to fade into the background, replaced by an ominously growing wall of silence. Pulsating. Buzzing. Whomping in his head. Before PJ realized what he was doing, he was sitting at the table, brushing the black dust off the intricately carved lantern, wiping clean its blood-colored globe. Jiggling the lamp, he could hear fuel sloshing inside and wondered if it could still be lit. One way to find out. He raised the gla.s.s and struck his lighter, holding it steady against the crusty, dry-rotted wick. A moment later, the flame took hold and a dark plume of smoke pillared toward the ceiling. A red aura illuminated the room, glowing against the wood paneling, reflecting off the mirrored sconces that Arlene had bought back when life had been better. Sweeter.

PJ sat, staring into the light, inhaling the fumes. The aroma was strange, yet intoxicating. His mind cleared. Peace overwhelmed him. Clarity. Then a sense of power. Slowly at first. He felt it in his joints. His back became strong again. Young. A new energy burned within him. His senses heightened. His eyes came alert. He could smell everything in the room. The leftovers. The lingering scent of Arlene's perfume. Arlene. He also felt his spirit rising. Soaring. Awakening in rebirth. And, for once in his life, he felt as if he were in complete control of everything around him.

Then the silence snapped. The music from the party suddenly blared into his ears, exceedingly louder than before.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!.

PJ jumped back, knocking the whiskey off the table while throwing the chair to the floor.

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!.

The ba.s.s pounded his eardrums like a sledgehammer, and he clasped his hands over his head. Pain wrought his face as he opened the back door, exposing himself to the cool night air.

"Shut up! Shut up, y'stupid potheads!" he shouted.

The music reverberated inside his skull.

"Dammit! Argh! STOP! I wish to G.o.d you'd stop!" He squeezed his head, weeping uncontrollably. "I wish to G.o.d you'd all just roll over and DIE!"

"I don't know about the G.o.d part." A silky voice sliced through the black smoke. It whispered gently. Soothingly. Calmly into PJ's mind. "But the dying, I can certainly arrange."

Boo pulled up to the house at Couch's Branch just as a man tore through the swinging screen door and leapt off the porch. His fingers were clasped about his neck as if he were asphyxiated, his eyes bulging from their sockets. Others were already in the yard, doing the same. They flailed about, wailing and screaming. Blood flowed from their mouths, eyes, and ears. Finally, as they each let out one last agonizing shriek, their pupils exploded, sizzling with bursts of flame. Then their bodies flopped to the ground.

Frozen, Boo sat in his cruiser with a hand on the hilt of his gun, watching in complete and utter horror.

PJ laughed as the last person scrambled out of the house, screaming in pain.

"Take that, y'buncha potheads!"

Then he turned to the smoke, which had oddly begun to take a form arms, head, two orbitals blazing with fire.

Curiously, though, PJ did not feel surprised or afraid.

"Who'r you?" he asked, his ears, once again, filled with the ominous silence.

"Power," a voice said. Smoky tentacles extended out from the form, encircling PJ's head. "Wealth." They explored his ambitions, searched his thoughts, probed his dreams. "Anything your heart desires."

As dark wisps curled into PJ's ears, his face lit with an evil grin. A wicked sheen glistened in his eyes. "Anythang, huh?"

"Yes," the voice whispered again. Softly. Lullingly. p.r.i.c.kling his neck like the breath from a red-hot lover. "Anything."

PJ chuckled. And his laughter grew until he was bursting out like a crazed maniac, cackling at the top of his lungs.

The next day at Pat's Diner, Boo sat in his usual seat. Dark circles shaded the skin around his puffy red eyes, while deep wrinkles creased his brow. It seemed he'd aged ten years overnight. Having worked the grisly crime scene, he had not been able to sleepif, in fact, what had happened was a crime. Boo really couldn't say. All he knew was that a lot of people had died in the same strange and horrible fashion, and that the ground had been saturated with their blood.

His face was still pale from disgust.

"Howdy thar, Boo. Burger today? Grits?" the waitress asked.

Boo almost hurled at the thought. "No thanks. Just coffee, please."

Except for a few rowdy guys in the back of the restaurant, the patrons were generally quiet, their mood somber. Word was getting around town fast of the incident at Couch's Branch, no matter how well the local law enforcement tried to keep it under wraps. Too many people owned police scanners, and too many people knew the police codes.

Boo thumbed through some information he had printed out from the Internet. He had researched various drugs and their side effects during the early morning hours at the station. If anything, he figured the deaths were caused by an experimental new drug gone wrong. Or, at least, that's what he hoped. So far, there was no account of anything that would explain the tragedy he had witnessed.

The officer from the day before sat down next to him.

"Dang it, man. Y'look like c.r.a.p."

Boo sipped some coffee. "I feel like c.r.a.p."

"So tell me...what happened out thar last night?"

Boo shook his head. "Weird stuff, man. Scary stuff."

"Like Alibaba?"

"Worse."

"Do y'thank it was drugs?"

Boo took another sip from his cup. "Not sure. I'm doing some research, but ain't found a thing yet."

The deputy took off his hat, then glanced around to see if anyone was listening. "Well, get this...I was talkin' to ol' man Sizemore this morning. Y'know him, right?"

Boo had to think a moment. He had seen Sizemore only twice in his life. As he recalled, he was a scraggly, bearded backwoodsman in coveralls who looked as if he needed a bath. Smelled like it, too.

"Isn't he that ol' coot that lives up on the mountain?"

"Yeah, that's him. Apparently he'd heard about what happened last night. Turns out, his dad was half Indian, y'know...pa.s.sed down all these tales of thangs dating way back before Daniel Boone even came to these parts, when Indians were the only ones around. Anyway, he was saying thar was this pipe the Indians founda spirit pipe, they called itthat supposedly gave 'em the ability to channel spirits or demons...some hogwash like that. Anyway, he told me the Indians forbid the use of it. Said the ones who had smoked it ended up being possessed by the very spirits they conjured, losing their minds and dying from unnatural causes. 'Death by fire,' he called it."

Faintly, someone started coughing in the background as if he or she had inhaled smoke.

Boo pondered the tale. He thought about the people the night before, flailing about, and how he could have sworn their eyes had exploded in flame. "So you think the people last night might have gotten a'hold of a spirit pipe...or maybe the drug that was used in one?"

The coughing grew louder. Stronger.

"I wouldn't put it past 'em. They were always smoking something at that place," the deputy said, playing with a pack of Sweet N'Low. "And it sounds just weird enough that it might be true, even if it is a bunch of Indian voodoo."

Boo thought a moment. "Voodoo's more like a Caribbean thing, isn't it?"

The deputy shrugged. "Voodoo...hoodoo...it's all the same, if y'ask me. Even that Alibaba stuff. 'Same thang, different name'that's what my granny used to say. Like 'potato' and 'tater.' Speaking of which," the deputy motioned to the waitress, "I thank it's time fer some fries."

But the waitress wasn't looking. Like most others in the diner, she had been distracted by the coughing, which had now escalated into deep, bl.u.s.tering blows, coming to a head as a man at the corner table, sitting with four other guys, staggered to his feet, whooping hard while clutching his chest. He took a few steps forward before collapsing onto the floor, trembling in an apparent seizure. Boo immediately sprang from his stool. Rushing across the diner, he slid by the large man's side and tried to hold him steadyas did the deputybut the convulsions were too strong. The man continued to shake harder, more violently than anyone Boo had ever seen. Then, to everyone's surprise, a filthy ooze began to seep from the man's mouth, bubbling from his nostrils like dirty black suds. Boo and the deputy stepped back. They heard a loud crack. Blood splattered all over the floor, and the man's chest burst open wide.

Some people gasped. The waitress screamed.

Meanwhile, from the rupture of bone and flesh, two dark slug-looking creatures slithered out. They snaked across the floor, a streak of crimson blood trailing behind.

"Good Lord! I-i-i-is that his lungs?" The deputy gaped.

Boo didn't know what to say. The creatures indeed appeared to be the man's lungsdark, decrepit, black with decay. The organs swelled up and down, as if they were exchanging air, as if they were still working inside the man's chest.

The four guys who had been sitting with the victim were aghast.

"W-w-what happened to Slick?" one of them asked.

Boo didn't know how to respond to that either. He didn't know about anything anymore.

Suddenly, the man who had asked the question began scratching. "What the..." He dug at his neck, chest, and legsclawing himself hysterically with his nails. "Sum'ns eatin' me up!" he cried.

Everyone watched as what started out as small specks on the man's skin multiplied into a horde of moving black dots that appeared to be thousands, if not millions, of...

"Fleas!" The man fell backward, knocking over a table and screaming on the floor. "They're killin' me! Make 'em stop! Please! Nooo!"

His friend, the one called Beanpole, frantically searched about. "Hold on, Flea! I'll find sum'n to git'em with. I'll find sum'n" But abruptly his words and actions were cut short as a succession of vines shot up from the floor, wrapping themselves around the man's body until he was completely encased in a coc.o.o.n of green.

As for the other twothe one called Tennessee had already started gagging, unable to breathe as his skin turned a bright orange, while Hawk had sprouted feathers and was hopping about, flapping his arms as he cawed for help.

"This whole place has gone mad!" one person exclaimed.

"It's the end times!" an old man shouted.

Meanwhile, out of the corner of his eye, Boo happened to see someone standing outside the diner's main window, peering through. Laughing. Leering.

"Isn't that PJ Smith?" he asked.

His fellow deputy glanced up, still awe-stricken by the weirdness around him. "Huh...y-yeah, that's him." Then he added. "Don't he live by that house where all those deaths happened last night?"

Boo hadn't realized it before but, oddly and suspiciously enough, it was true.

"He sure does."

PJ continued to gaze through the window, pumping his fist with glee while watching the turmoil inside. His face beamed with a sinister glow. Behind him hung a dark cloud that seemed to originate from a lantern connected to his belt. The form resembled a person's shadow, except for something peculiar. Strange. Then Boo's heart stopped. He couldn't believe it. The shadow was the same as the ones he had seen in the desert, when the guards had shot themselves, when they had all looked possessed.

PJ twisted his lips into an evil grin, reveling at the chaos for a moment longer. Then he jerked away from the gla.s.s and disappeared.

Boo gathered his nerves. "Stay here," he ordered, stepping around the two black slugs that had now sprouted teeth and were gnawing on the dead man from which they had been sp.a.w.ned.

"Wait a minute!" the deputy implored. "You cain't leave me with these thangs! What am I supposed to do?"

"Call for backup!"

"What'r they gonna do?"

Boo was already out the door.

Sprinting into the parking lot, he caught a glimpse of PJ's truck spinning away and rushed to his cruiser to pursue.

45...55...60 miles per hour.

PJ's truck moved faster ahead.

85...95...100.

Boo's car struggled to make the curves, yet the dented old pickup in front of him, which appeared to be one rust hole away from the junkyard, rounded them with ease, pulling away at even more improbable speeds as if powered by an unseen source. As if goaded by Satan himself.

Finally, Boo was forced to slow down, easing up on the accelerator as PJ's truck careened out of sight. He kept driving nonetheless, hoping that he might miraculously catch up with the vehicle or, at least, stumble upon some clue as to where it had gone.

The decision paid off.

After several miles, he saw the truck parked at a holiness church on the outskirts of Big Creek.

Pulling up beside the church, Boo got out of the car and slipped into the small vestibule just inside the front door. He could already hear PJ yelling inside, ranting uncontrollably.

"Wha'chew doin' with this hyer preacher, Arlene?"

Boo peeped around the corner.

"Wha'dya mean?" a woman at the front of the church asked. She wore a floral dress, her dark hair draped down her back.

"Y'heard me! Wha'chew doin' with this preacher? This hypocrite!"

Behind the wooden pulpit cowered a thin man wearing a grey suit and paisley tie. No other people were in the building.

The woman answered, "I've been praying," and she motioned to the man. "We've been praying."

"LIAR!" PJ shouted. "I know what yuns been doin'!" He paced back and forth, the lantern still dangling by his side. The shadow, barely visible, still loomed behind him.

"I've been praying," Arlene repeated.

PJ stomped. "Prayin' fer what! Huh? Fer love! Fer money! My money!" Veins throbbed in his neck. Rage burned through his gaze. "I gave you ever'thang, Arlene! Ever'thang y'ever wanted! And y'left me! Y'left me fer him!"

Normally, Boo would have stepped in at this point, but he didn't quite know what he was dealing with yet. All he could think about was what had happened out at Couch's Branch last night. And at the diner a few moments ago.

Arlene's voice broke in. "You've been drinking again, PJ. Why don'chew just go home. Go home and sleep it off."

PJ smashed a vase filled with artificial flowers, then took the offering plates and slammed them onto the floor. "I don't need to sleep it off! What I need to know is why I was never good enough fer you. Won'chew tell me that! Huh? Was I a bad man?" he mocked. "Was I a sinner?"

The woman looked frightened, yet held her composure rather well. "No, you're not a bad man. You just had issues that made you hard to live with."

"Fer better or worse, Arlene. What happened to that?" PJ steamed.

The woman shook her head. Tears streamed down her cheeks. "I loved you, PJ. But we're not together anymore. Don'chew understand? We're just not. And we cain't ever be. Not with you like this."

The words cut him deeply; PJ said nothing. All that could be heard was his breathing, which grew louder and stronger as anger boiled inside him, filling his mouth with a taste bitter as bile. The shadow behind him fed on the rage, growing proportionally in size. Finally, PJ released his fury on the man behind the pulpit. "It's all yer fault, Preacher!"