"No! No, it's not, Brother," the preacher said.

PJ roared. "Don't start brotherin' me! It's all yer fault, and y'know it! You and yer d.a.m.n snake church!"

The preacher looked confused. "But this ain't no snake church."

PJ sneered. Lifting his hands, he brought the lantern over his head and laughed. "Well, it is now."

Suddenly, the earth started to quake. In the vestibule, Boo stumbled backward, grabbing the doorway for support. Throughout the old church, floorboards rippled. Pews upended and flipped. Chunks of the ceiling crumbled. Then, from the center of the sanctuary, the ground cracked open. Flames licked up through the fissure as out from the fiery hole burst a copperhead snake, forty feet long and as round as a car tire. Venom dripped from its curved fangs; its forked tongue flapped viciously with each hiss.

Arlene screamed. The preacher ducked behind the pulpit and began reciting the twenty-third Psalm.

PJ stood in the front of the church with outstretched arms. Gleaming. Basking in the power to command nature and creation at will. A fire rose up from the floor to surround him. Flames danced in his eyes.

Boo took particular notice of the strange lantern, its scarlet glow throbbing like the beat of a heart. The thin stream of smoke that billowed out from the artifact wrapped about PJ's head, flowed through his hair and around his ears, and eventually curled back to form the tail of the demonic shadownow a gargantuan ent.i.ty hovering over PJ like a puppeteer over a marionette.

The preacher spoke louder, trembling with a semblance of spiritual authority. "Yea, though, I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil..."

PJ cackled. "Welcome to my valley!" His voice was different. Colder. Then it morphed to sound like a legion of demons squealing from h.e.l.l. "Welcome to your DOOM!"

With those words, the snake struck out, sinking its fangs into the pulpit and splintering the wood into a thousand pieces.

The preacher was thrown back against the wall. Arlene scampered beneath an overturned pew.

From the vestibule, Boo took a deep breath. To protect, honor, and serve. He repeated the oath in his head, trying to figure out where giant snakes and the forces of darkness fit in. The last time he had faced such evil, he and his fellow soldiers had rightfully retreated. This time, however, two innocent lives were at stake. And a peaceful community. Possibly the fate of Harlan, itself.

Boo had to do something. He couldn't simply stand by and watch any longer.

"Stop!" he shouted, running out with his gun raised high. He let out a flurry of shots that riddled the snake in the back of the head. The creature flinched only slightly, as if rapped by a handful of pebbles, then whipped about, peering at its a.s.sailant through slitted yellow eyes. In an instant, it snapped forward, coiling around Boo and leaving him immobilized from the chest down. With his arm still free, however, he continued firing into the reptile, but to no avail. The weapon was useless.

The snake constricted tighter, and Boo could feel the life being squeezed out of him. He couldn't breath. Everything around him started to fade, consciousness slipping away. In desperation, he pointed the gun toward PJ.

"Shoot me!" PJ dared, the flames around him lifting higher, enveloping his body but leaving him eerily unscathed. The dark form overhead swelled with delight.

PJ cried out again, "Go ahead and shoot! I am invincible! I am a G.o.d!"

Boo flashed back to that night in the desert. The guard walking into the fire. The others shooting themselves. Bullets flying. Oil fields burning.

Other memories followed. Children crying over dead mothers. Bodies singed beyond recognition. Death. Destruction. The face of war. The face of the shadow.

"You're no G.o.d," Boo wheezed. Then he pulled the trigger.

The bullet sailed just shy of PJ, barely catching the threads of his shirt. Instead, it ripped into the base of the lantern, causing an explosion that shook the foundations of the church. The dark shadow wavered. Furiously, it clamored about, looking for a way to maintain its existence, but with its source of fuel destroyed, it quickly dissolved into nothingness. The giant snake that held Boo vanished, as well.

Around PJ, however, the wall of fire began to spin. A hole opened up under his feet, forming a whirlpool of brimstone that sucked him downward.

Death by fire, the old Indian legend had said.

PJ called out as he clung to the edge of the swirling abyss. His voice sounded normal again. Gentle. "I'm sorry, Arlene. I'm sorry fer ever'thang. I always loved you. I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to hurt n.o.body."

And in a poof of flame, the hole was gone. PJ, too.

The next day, a fresh breeze blew through the Appalachian valley. At the diner, Boo sat in his usual seat, a bandage stretched over his left brow, the deputy perched on the stool beside him.

"So," the deputy started, "y'gonna tell me what happened out at that church yesterdi'?"

Boo shook his head. He looked weathered. Worn. "No, Douglas, I don't think I am."

The deputy nodded.

Boo said, "Let me ask you something, though."

"Shoot."

"Do you think I'm a sinner?"

The deputy huffed. "Do what?"

"Just answer me."

The uniformed man thought a moment. "Well, my granny used to say that we're all sinners, just depends on the time of day." He smiled at Boo and winked. "And, of course, how pretty the girl is."

Boo couldn't help but smile back.

Then, as if it were nothing, the deputy changed the subject, pointing at Boo's fries. "Y'gonna eat those?"

Boo looked down at his plate. "No. Help yourself."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, a man tending a rice field stumbled upon a strange lamp buried deep in the muck.

"The Thing at the Side of the Road"

Ronald Kelly.

Ronald Kelly resides in the hills and hollows of central Tennessee. After a decade-long hiatus from the horror genre, he's back, writing his unique brand of Southern-fried horror. His novels and collections include Fear, Blood Kin, h.e.l.l Hollow, Undertaker's Moon, The Sick Stuff, and Midnight Grinding & Other Twilight Terrors. Please drop by his web site at ronaldkelly.com.

The thing at the side of the road worried Paul Stinson something awful.

He didn't know why, since it was nothing more than roadkill. Some unfortunate creature that had strayed onto the blacktop of Highway 987 and got clipped by a pa.s.sing vehicle. Or maybe it had reached the center line, got mashed beneath speeding tires, and crept its way back to the side before curling up and giving up the ghost. Either way, it was dead. Paul had pa.s.sed it on the way to work and back for the past two weeks and it hunkered there in the exact same spot...nothing more than a clump of glossy black fur amid a fringe of brown weeds and wilted c.o.c.klebur.

Paul couldn't easily identify it, and that's what bothered him. What the h.e.l.l is that thing? he wondered every time he drove past.

Not that the thing at the side of Highway 987 was the only thing about Harlan County that bothered Paul. No, since the company sent him down from Louisville to take over the local State Farm office, he had found more than enough to be bothered about. The people, the way they looked and acted...h.e.l.l, even the lay of the land was all somehow wrong. But it was nothing tangible, nothing he could actually put his finger on. Every time he tried expressing his concerns to his superior back at the main office he came off looking like a freaking idiot.

That Sat.u.r.day afternoon, on the way home from getting groceries in town with his wife, Jill, Paul decided that he had finally had enough. He wasn't driving another mile without finding out exactly what that furry black thing was.

When he slowed the Escalade and stopped, Jill turned and looked at him. "What are you doing?"

Paul sighed and put the vehicle into park. "You remember that thing at the side of the road? The one I pointed out on the way to town?"

Jill nodded. "The dead dog?"

"Yeah, but that's the point," said Paul, shutting off the engine. "I don't know if it's really a dog or not."

His wife regarded him with irritation. "What do you care?"

Paul exhaled through his nose and gripped the steering wheel. That was Jill's typical reaction. March on through life with blinders on. No curiosity, no worries. Just that annoying, sugar-coated Pollyanna att.i.tude of hers.

"I care because it's bugging the s.h.i.t out of me and I need to know, that's why."

Jill stiffened up a bit and sat back in her seat. She knew better than to argue with her husband when he was in such a p.i.s.sy mood.

Paul climbed out of the Escalade, leaving the driver's door open. "I'll just be a minute."

"Don't touch that thing. It could've died of a disease or something."

Paul ignored Jill's comment. As he walked down the shoulder of Highway 987, a beat-up Ford pickup pa.s.sed by. The driver-an old man wearing a green John Deere cap-threw up his hand at him, as the old folks did in greeting.

I don't know you, buddy, thought Paul, neglecting to return the gesture. Ignorant hick.

As he walked toward mound of black fur, he surveyed his surroundings. The valley was narrow, with thin stretches of farmland on either side. Across the road was a small farm; a two-story white house, greywood barn, a few outbuildings. Being early spring, the pastures were empty of crops. No cows around at all.

A little smile of triumph crossed Paul's face as he came within eight feet of the questionable roadkill. Now, let's see what the h.e.l.l you are. He bent down and picked up a dead branch that lay nearby.

When he finally stood over the animal, he realized exactly how large the thing was. Even curled inward the way it was, it was huge...much bigger than a normal dog. All he could see was that glossy black coat with a strange grey-striped pattern running through it. He couldn't make out the creature's head, tail, or legs; they were completely tucked from sight. Standing close to it, Paul found that the coat wasn't actually fur, but heavy black bristles, more like that of a wild boar than a canine.

Also, even after a couple of weeks of rotting on the side of the highway, Paul smelled no trace of decay, only a heavy muskiness to the thing.

He should have found all this, well, unsettling. Instead, he found his inability to identify the animal infuriating. "Well, we'll just flip you over and take a better look at you," he said. Paul wedged the tip of the branch underneath the thing and started to exert a little leverage.

That was when the thing at the side of the road woke up.

"d.a.m.n!" Paul jumped back as it stretched and then lifted its head. Its ma.s.sive head. The thing's black-bristled skull was long and narrow, almost rat-like in a way, its tiny ears laid back sharply toward its broad neck. It had silver eyes. Silver like polished chrome. And the teeth. Lord have mercy! How could anything have so many long, jagged teeth within the cradle of two jaws?

Paul Stinson knew then that the thing at the side of the road hadn't been dead for two weeks.

It had been waiting. Waiting for someone stupid enough to stop by and wake it up.

Paul held onto the stick but knew it wouldn't serve as any sort of effective weapon. He'd fare better going against a pit bull with a toothpick. He took a couple of wary steps backward as the thing stood up on short, stubby but powerful legs. It shook its coat off with a shudder, shedding a couple weeks' worth of debris. Dead leaves, gravel, an old Snickers wrapper someone had tossed out a car window. It yawned, stretching those awful triangular jaws to capacity. The thing could have swallowed a softball without strangling. And all those d.a.m.n teeth! And a long, thick tongue as coa.r.s.e and grey as tree bark.

Paul began to back away. "What...what the h.e.l.l are you?"

The thing c.o.c.ked its huge head and grinned.

Paul suddenly remembered the Escalade behind him. The driver's door stood wide open.

The thing saw it at the same time.

Paul turned and began to run. He didn't get far when he sensed the thing beside him, then outdistancing him. Up ahead, in the pa.s.senger seat, sat Jill, her pretty face a frightened mask blanched of color. She watched, mortified, as the thing about the size of a young calf poured on the speed, heading for the open door of the SUV.

"Paul," he saw her mutter. Then he heard her, loud and shrill. "PAUL!"

"Stop!" Paul muttered beneath his breath. "Stop, you sonofab.i.t.c.h!"

But it didn't. It knew its target and it got there a moment later. The black-bristled thing leapt into the Escalade and, with a long tail as sleek and serpentine as a monkey's, grabbed the door handle and slammed the door solidly shut behind it.

"NO!" Paul reached the door as the power locks engaged with a clack! The thing was smart...and it knew what it wanted. And what it wanted at that moment was to not be disturbed.

"Paul!" shrieked Jill, hidden by the thing's heaving, black bulk. "Oh, G.o.d...Paul, help me! Oh, G.o.d...it hurrrrrrts!"

Outside the vehicle, Paul could hear the thing at work. Biting. Tearing. Ripping.

Frantic, he looked around and found a large rock at the far side of the highway. He grabbed it up in both hands and battered at the side window. It held fast, refusing to shatter. d.a.m.n safety gla.s.s!

Without warning, the inner gla.s.s of the Escalade began to gloss over with great, thick curtains of crimson. "Paul!" screamed Jill from inside that slaughterhouse on wheels. "Paul...pleeeeeeease!"

Her husband began to scream himself, loud and horrified, full of utter hopelessness. He paced back and forth beside the vehicle, wishing...no, praying that some ignorant Kentucky redneck would happen along to help him. But the highway remained empty and no one came.

The last window to gloss over with gore was the driver's window. The thing turned and grinned at him with those awful, four-inch teeth. Pieces of Jill clung in between. Her ear, the ruptured sack of an eye, the bottom half of those ruby red lips he had kissed so pa.s.sionately following their wedding vows seven years ago.

The thing licked its glistening grey lips, then turned back to the ugly, jagged sack of seat-belted carrion that had once been Paul Stinson's wife. Rivulets of blood obscured the horrible sight from view...but far from mind.

At a loss for anything better to do, Paul dug his cell phone from his jacket pocket and dialed 911.

The first one out of the Harlan County Sheriff's car was a tall, burly fellow in his fifties. "What seems to be the problem, sir?" he asked. He had a stern, suspicious expression on his broad face, the same severe look that the locals customarily directed toward people who had been born and bred beyond the county line.

Paul quelled the impulse to run up and grab hold of the man in complete desperation. "An...an animal of some kind is inside my car!" he said. "I...I...I think it's...oh, G.o.d...I think it's killed her!"

The deputy, whose name tag identified him as Frank McMahon, walked briskly toward the Escalade. His eyes narrowed as he saw the blood-splattered windows. "What sort of animal? A dog?"

Paul laughed, almost hysterically, then caught himself. "No...no...wasn't a d.a.m.n dog."

Deputy McMahon tried the doors. They were all locked. He turned questioning eyes toward Paul.

"It locked them...by itself."

The law officer regarded him suspiciously. "Sir...exactly what is going on here?"

Anger flared in Paul's eyes. "I told you...some...some thing...it jumped in there and attacked my wife..."

"And it slammed the door behind it and locked it?"

Paul realized how very lame that sounded. "Yes."