The 3x5 card Lisa gave Ingram read, "D. Miller, 200 Cherrylog Road, Brinkley. P.S. I think you're cute."

Chuckling, Ingram got back into the coupe and headed toward the filling station he'd seen earlier as he entered Brinkley's main street. The station attendant pointed him in the right direction.

Brinkley, Ingram realized, was just Main Street and one other block of modern houses: four walls, a roof, a driveway, porch, backyard, maybe even a second story. Once he drove beyond that block, he passed overgrown lots next to small, low-slung houses and shacks with no discernible line between driveway and lawn. Derelict cars lolled on cinder blocks and scarred tree trunks; stacks of tires teetered by front doors. Beyond stood hovels held together with galvanized tin and bailing wire.

It was dark now, and Ingram drove into unknown country, the electric lights illuminating Main Street diminishing in his rear view mirror. As he drove past the tar-paper shacks, he saw candles and lanterns lighting bare rooms with shadowy figures.

Ingram followed the station attendant's directions and eventually his headlights found the hand-painted sign for Cherrylog Road. Flat fields surrounded his car. Corn blocked his view to the left and right. Rustling with the breeze, the stalks stood taller than even Ingram underneath a sky salted with starlight. His tires crunched on the gravel, and the road wound among the fields, passing corn, then cotton, then a stand of trees, then more fields until Ingram crossed a small concrete bridge.

Ingram saw a farmhouse, dormered and gabled, with a porch and a gallery, passably maintained except for the soft decay of scaling paint. Bean fields ran up and kissed the yard. Ingram parked his car, angling the headlights onto the porch and front windows.

He shut down the coupe, leaving the headlights on, and opened the door. It was quiet, except for the rustle of the wind and the tick-tick-tick of the coupe's engine as it cooled. Each footstep crackled dry grass, each footfall on porch-step creaked abnormally loud. Ingram hunched his shoulder blades with the noise.

Knocking on the front door, he bellowed, "Hello?" He walked around the house's lower level, shielding his eyes, and peered through the windows. The interior of the house was dark, shadows and looming patches of blackness appearing as furniture. The stars didn't give enough light to see, and the coupe's headlights didn't reach. Ingram moved back to the front of the house, squinting his eyes in the glare, and considered heading back to town to get dinner.

The headlights died.

Suddenly, he was blind. From behind the coupe, Ingram heard footsteps and low-pitched sounds like garbled speech.

Oun tulu dundu nub sheb tulu onnu ia denu fin de nulu sheb lar stir rub neb.

Ingram paused, listening. His body tightened, arms out as if fending something away.

He jumped off the porch, landing in the grass in front of the coupe. Still blind, he crouched as low as possible, and balled his hands into fists. He thought of his gun.

Still the bizarre words came. Ingram edged out to the side of the coupe so that he might be able to get into his car, retrieve his .38 under the front seat. Anything. He felt his back prickling in the same sense he'd had years ago in the Pacific, the sense of impending danger. For a moment he felt a strange dislocation and he closed his eyes, thinking that when he opened them he'd smell the smoke and gunpowder, hear the screams of his men and the report of their rifles. Even now he felt the thick jungle undergrowth of years before, lost in the darkness of Guadalcanal.

Oun tulu dundu nub sheb tulu onnu ia denu fin de nulu sheb lar stir rub neb.

The sound of the voices pulled him away from his reverie. Ingram opened his eyes, and could see again, dimly. Shapes formed out of the blackness: the coupe, a bush, the line of overgrown lawn.

A tall, black figure watched him from across the rural road, the silhouette of a man, lean and angular. The darkness concentrated down to two specks, the creature's eyes. They watched him, unblinking.

Ingram remained locked in the thing's gaze as the guttural sounds continued, coming in harsh, pounding rhythms. Layered above and beyond the voices came a sound like the tearing of the dark; beyond sound, it rocked Ingram's frame, shook his bones.

Something bad's gonna happen. Something bad...

His mind felt disjointed; his thoughts careened around and dashed away unchecked. He gritted his teeth. His shoulders rose, and he raised his fists, every muscle taut.

The sound grew-Hastur! he thought, remembering the recording from Phelp's studio-widening and expanding. He felt like he could taste an oily blackness invading his mouth.

Desperate, he dug his keys from his pocket and leapt forward toward the coupe's door. He fumbled at the handle. The keys flipped away, slipping from his fingers. His hands were numb, unresponsive. The hideous sound filled all his senses. Eyes full of night, the reek of the dark in his nose and on his hair, the oily taste of blindness on his tongue, Ingram's senses filled with noise and blackness and pain.

"Come on, then, bastard. Come on," he bellowed into the approaching dark, swinging his fists.

The shadow overwhelmed him.

Ingram screamed with rage, ripping at his own face. The black noise grew, rising. He felt the red sensation possess him, the fury of battle-madness gripping him like long ago, and he hated. The dark thing standing across the road, himself, the world-he felt unbounded hatred for everything. He staggered forward, trying to get to the black figure still watching him, eyes like congealed darkness, to kill it, rip it to shreds, pound it to a pulp. If anything came between Ingram and the loathsome figure across the road, it would die too.

Ingram fought desperately to remain standing and sane, but his ears rang from the screams. The strange, high-pitched sound ripped at his mind again, and his sanity skittered away like butter on a hot pan. He keeled over into the grass and ripped at his eyes, his ears; anything to stop the sound, stop the darkness. Blackness pushed in from all sides, invading his body, and he knew no more.

Chapter 5.

Ingram awoke to stars.

He'd dreamed of Captain Haptic, his old captain. They'd been on leave, in Hawaii, drinking and singing old country folk songs, off key. A real memory. But in the dream, Cap Hap had been dressed as a Roman centurion, like in the movies, with a breast plate and plumed helmet. He drank like Ingram remembered him, though.

From where he lay on the lawn, the black curtain of sky above him was strewn with millions of twinkling points of light. He looked down at himself. Dried blood streaked his fingers and palms. His face felt raw.

Ingram lay there on his back, half-under his coupe, face throbbing. He watched the heavens turn above him as he breathed in the grass, chest rising and falling.

The sound of cicadas ebbed and peaked, accompanied by the hoot of an owl and the faint far-off bark of some lonely, chained dog.

Ingram brought his hand up to his cheek, and his fingers came away sticky. He rolled over on hands and knees and patted at the grass in the darkness until he found his keys. He rose painfully, and levered himself into the coupe. He turned the key, and the engine growled into life. Ingram discovered that the light switch for the headlights had been depressed to the off position.

Ingram pulled out a smoke and lit it with trembling hands.

Why did he stop? Let me live?

Ingram felt his anger building-a strange echo of the feeling he'd had with the rough sound of the silhouette-his resolve to see this job through calcifying to some rock-hard permanence. With every throb of ripped face, his anger grew.

I'm gonna find that bastard if it's the last thing I ever do, so help me God.

It was Ingram's version of prayer, and he didn't know even if he meant Early Freeman or Derwood Miller or the silhouette by the side of the road.

The coupe trundled through the night, crunching its way back Cherrylog Road.

On Main Street, Dougan's pharmacy was closed, but KBRI was still lit. Ingram drove the coupe slowly past the building. Couch was in the booth window, head bent, ministering to his flock, an electric priest sending out his blessings at 1570 kilohertz with one thousand watts of power. But Ingram wanted no more conversing with Couch, no more dissembling; thinking about it now, he realized it was only the girl's presence that had kept him from forcing the truth out of Couch. With cracked bones and blood. Maybe too much blood.

He pulled the coupe around the back of the KBRI building, parking in the shadows of the tower. Ingram exited the coupe and tested the building's rear doors; both were locked. He went back to the car, lit a cigarette, and sat fiddling with the radio, tuning in KBRI.

Ingram watched for Derwood, smoking and taking sips from the pint of whiskey he kept under his seat. From his bag he took a white undershirt, poured some whiskey on it, and dabbed at the scratches on his face.

Jesus. Did a number on myself. What the hell happened back there?

Couch's voice sounded sonorous and lulling even through the speakers of the coupe. Ingram leaned back in his seat and dozed.

When Derwood took the air at 10 PM, Ingram sat upright and cursed, looking around the lot, wishing he had watched the front door.

"Welcome, ya'll, to KBRI's evening programming. I'm Derwood Millah, and tonight we got a real treat for you, the new single from Little Rock's own Jim Cannon. Later we'll spin some of the Memphis favorites but right now I don't want you to forget that everybody needs some plumbing work sometimes. Pipes get clogged, food gets down the drain and not to mention hair and other stuff... ooh. But there's a solution to all of these problems. That's right, if you need help with your plumbing, be sure to call W.T. Grant and Son Plumbers, right here in Brinkley, and they'll come by and-"

Derwood's voice wasn't as smooth as Couch's but what he lacked in polish, he made up for with enthusiasm. When Derwood began playing music, Ingram sat upright.

Rhythm and blues, he called it.

It came through the speakers like a dream, a deep pulsing dream. He started with Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who sang a throaty spiritual. He followed it with Robert Johnson, who cried of hell hounds and debt. When Derwood announced a Helios artist, Hubert Washington, Ingram started the coupe, maneuvered it out of the parking lot, and drove back to Cherrylog Road.

He parked the coupe away from the house, out of sight, and walked back down the road, his footsteps crunching on gravel. It was dark now, an intermittent cloud-cover partially obscuring the stars. The sap rested easily in his hand, the .38 cold and reassuring in the small of his back.

He went around to the back of the house, found a door, and smashed the window with the sap. Inside, he flipped a kitchen light and looked around. A picture of a man with a woman and infant, bundled in winter clothes. Nothing more to indicate family.

Might be his ex. Miller, a shabby, solitary male. The house reeked with the stench of unwashed bodies and trash, yet it was relatively clean. Ingram walked around the first floor, flipping on lights and opening closets, cabinets, anything. Finding nothing of interest, he went back to the kitchen, turning off lights as he went, and pulled a fresh bottle of milk and a wedge of cheese from the main compartment of the ice box. He sat his .38 down beside the milk bottle, and took a seat facing the kitchen door. Using his pocket knife, he curled slices away from the cheddar and popped them into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

He sat sipping milk, eating cheese, at the flimsy wooden table until he heard the car pull up to the front of the house. He hummed the Sister Rosetta Tharpe song he'd heard earlier.

Ingram waited. He heard creaks on the porch steps, the ratchet of the key in the front door, and then heavy footfalls coming toward the kitchen.

Derwood Miller walked into the kitchen with his mouth open, eyes wide in unbelief. A stringy man, dressed in cheap clothes that hung loose on his frame, Derwood nervously ran a hand through over-greased hair and glanced from Ingram, to the milk and cheese, to the gun.

Ingram smiled, nodding at the opposite chair.

"Derwood?"

He didn't bother with exclamations of protest. Derwood crossed his arms over his narrow chest, standing in a yellow pool of light, eyes boring in to Ingram.

"Yeah. That's me. What're you doing in my house?"

"Waiting for you," Ingram said, hooking the chair with his foot and sliding it toward Miller. "Have a seat."

His eyes shifted from the gun to the milk then Ingram again. He sat down on the offered chair like a dog sitting down to a meal from an unknown hand.

"Derwood, earlier tonight, I was attacked right out in front of your house by... someone-something-I can't explain." He pointed toward the bloody streaks on his face. "You can see I got the short end of that stick."

Ingram reached forward and pulled the pack of cigarettes out of Derwood's shirt pocket. He took one for himself and offered one to the other man. Derwood shook his head. Ingram lit his.

"I can't explain it, so I won't even try." He blew the smoke toward Miller and dropped the match on the floor.

Ingram sat quietly for a long while, smoking, blowing the smoke into the other man's face. He picked a loose fleck of tobacco from his teeth. He took a speck of lint from his slacks and smoothed the fabric.

Eventually, he raised his head, looked at Derwood, and said, "Tell me everything you know about a man named Early Freeman. If you lie, if you leave anything out, you'll regret it."

Miller swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat.

"I know Early through work, deejaying at KBRI. He comes through about once a month, takes Mr. Couch to lunch and drops off some forty-fives, then moves on to the next radio station, the next town. That's about it."

"Mr. Couch said you've spent some time with him. Tell me."

"Well..." Miller's eyes flicked around the kitchen looking for something, some way out of this unexpected domestic interrogation. "Sometimes, we'd go drinking, you know, roll out to the Stockyard tonk, out near the county line, and Early would always do the buying, long as I made sure I spun his records. Which was fine with me cause I would've spun 'em anyway. They're good."

"Tonk?"

"Yeah. Honky-tonk. A blues joint. We'd listen to the blues, drink beer, or Coke and whiskey."

"It a Negro establishment?"

"Yeah, but they know me there. They play the best blues, even on the juke. Most weekends, there's a player, or a band. It's good. Folks don't know what they're missing."

Ingram paused to think, flicking the ash of his cigarette onto the floor. "So, when was the last time you saw Early?"

"Same day Mr. Couch did. He told me you'd been by asking after Early."

"He take you drinking that night?"

"Yeah, he did. We went out to the tonk, like I was telling you, and pretty much got our bellies tight, you know?"

"He mention where he was off to next?"

"Said he was gonna head down to England, visit the folks over at KENG."

That matched what Ruth Freeman had told him about Early's last phone call.

"What do you know about Ramblin' John Hastur?"

The outraged flush of red drained from his cheeks like water from a cracked glass, his eyes pulled tight as if to ward off a blow. Miller brought his hands into his lap, like a schoolboy, and clasped them together.

"Nothin.' I don't know nothing 'bout him."

Ingram clubbed Miller across the face with the sap. Miller looked at Ingram with surprise, an expression of pure bewilderment on his face. He toppled onto the linoleum of the kitchen floor.

Ingram snatched the front of Miller's shirt, lifted him, then placed him back in his chair.

"What do you know about Ramblin' John Hastur?" Ingram said slowly.

Miller swayed in his chair and reached a hand up to touch his rapidly swelling cheek. His hand came away bloody.

"I know... I don't know nothing," Miller said, looking Ingram straight in the eyes and saying it slowly. "Nothing."

Ingram rapped Derwood's head twice with the sap, and the man slumped back into the chair, unconscious.

Ingram stood. He moved across the room and rummaged in the kitchen cabinets and closets. In an adjoining hall, he found a cylinder of nylon rope and returned to the kitchen. He bound Miller's hands and feet. He tied his body to the chair. Taking a pot from an open cabinet, he filled it with water and dumped it on Miller's head.

Miller spluttered. He twisted his body, looked down in surprise at the rope binding him.

Ingram patted Miller's cheek. "Here's the deal, pard. I'm not gonna hit you again. You're gonna tell me everything you know about Ramblin' John Hastur or I'm gonna pick up this chair, with you in it, and take you outside, where that fucking thing attacked me. I'm gonna set you down on the edge of the wood, out of sight of the road, and let you think about what you know and you don't know. I'll come back tomorrow and we'll have this conversation again, if there's anything left of you."

A growing horror filled Miller's face as Ingram spoke, and Ingram felt it too. The blackness. The memory of a silhouette approaching. A black, open mouth, emanating sound. The idea of leaving Miller out there, on the edge of the woods like a sacrifice-no, an offering, he thought suddenly-horrified him. And just as suddenly, Ingram knew-he knew-that if he did leave Miller on the wood's edge, the offering would be accepted and he'd be able to parlay with the black creature.

"No," Miller said. "I'll spill."