The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) (38 page)

She put her hand over my mouth again.
“Remember not to speak and do not move.”

A cold wind blew down from the
salmon-colored sky. I heard a commotion from the cars. Somebody shuffling their
feet.

Danicka yelled, “No!” and I twisted to
see.

Ben and Rachael both yelled, “Katy!”

But it was too late. She broke Ben’s
grip and ran into the intersection, past Dani and into the circle. She put her
feet right next to mine and wrapped her arms around me.

“I’m not doing this anymore, Preston.
If we’re together…” she cried.

I lifted my arm and held her against
me while my guitar slid to my back.

“She is stupid. Stupid. What does she
think—” Danicka reached into her pocket. She held up a silver coin like a priest
holding up the Eucharist. “You do not need to be here, only Preston! Put this
on your tongue and do not speak.”

As Katy closed her lips my body shook,
like electrodes had been clamped to my shoulders. My back and neck jerked and
my legs wobbled. My ankles felt like they’d been replaced with marbles.

“I needed only Preston because I am
forbidden from performing this ritual. You must understand that I could not
simply ask him to do it as a favor to me.” Danicka stumbled as the ground
shook. She took Katy’s hand and looked into her eyes. “You must not say
anything.”

I held Katy and fought gravity to keep
the grave dust beneath my boots. All along the intersection people fell to
their knees.

“Get back.” Danicka yelled, “Stay off
the road.”

An electrical sensation rose from the
pavement. My shoulders jerked up to my neck as my head rolled forward with each
pulse. My fingers curled as current throbbed through them. Katy and I kept each
other from falling over. Danicka toppled toward the edge of the circle she’d
made. I grabbed her wrist with my free hand.

A flash of light appeared on the
horizon, like from distant fireworks. Another boom hit so hard the traffic
lights shook. Our shadows swayed back and forth in front of us like pendulums.
The energy traveled through my knees and hips as people ran to their cars.

Then everything was quiet.

As my mind tried to anticipate what
came next, a figure emerged from the light on the broken white line of Highway
49. Down where the white lines met the horizon I could barely perceive
movement. But it closed the miles fast.

“Stay off the road!” Danicka yelled.
“Everybody!”

Like an animal, but I couldn’t be
certain.

Running at full speed.

A clumsy, uneven march. A gallop.

Stumbling over nothing.

Arms flailing out to both sides.

It fell and tumbled forward and pushed
itself back up. Danicka pressed herself against me and Katy, holding her arms
out to the side like a mother trying to defend her children. She placed her
foot between mine, trying to get a little grave dust beneath her own toes.
“Don’t say anything. You both must remember this.”

Short in stature, it ran from one edge
of the concrete to the other. Zig-zagging from side to side. Banging car hoods
and kicking quarter panels.

People recoiled and hid behind their
cars and trucks. Some ran into the trees.

As it got within twenty yards the
highway cleared completely. Some got into their vehicles and locked the doors.
Some screamed.

Danicka trembled while I fought to
stay on my feet. The smell of sulfur and human waste filled my nose. Like the
odor of the sewage plant down by the river. The aroma caught in my throat. Made
my eyes water.

Unable to take more than two or three
steps in a straight line because its legs were two very different lengths, it
came into the crossroads, running wide circles. Its clothes were old-fashioned
but difficult to place. Black pants torn at the knees. A white collared shirt
with buttons and long sleeves, ripped and stained yellow and brown as if from
vomit and shit and whatever else. Blond hair stuck out at all angles from his
head. Its eyes drifted up to the stop-lights as it spun wide arcs that got
closer and closer to the dead center of the crossroads.

Closer to us.

“Do not speak.”

It looked like one of the kids from
the special classes back in school. Not special, like Billy Clover from second
grade. He had art and music with us and all his other classes were in another
building.

This boy had eyes that never quite
found anything to focus on. His face, neck and arms were covered in dark scabs.
The white of his left eye appeared brown and bloody. A lazy half-smile stayed
on his crusty lips, his cracked tongue waggled in the cool air. Except for when
he spotted my guitar. He stumbled toward me and reached for it with a dirty,
curled finger. The stench made me gag. He batted at the strings. His right arm
was dramatically longer than his left. Like, fifteen inches longer.

“Don’t react to him,” Danicka
whispered in my ear. “Do not speak.”

I put my hands at my side as it tried
to pull the guitar away from me. I turned my head and leaned back.

It stamped its feet and the ground
shook. A noise like a bray from a hound dog came from deep in its chest.
Headlights and tail lights flashed, and horns blared as car alarms were
activated.

My ears rang, shooting sharp pain into
my head like an ice pick through my eye into the dead center of my brain. Tears
streamed down my cheeks. I held Katy’s head to my chest, even when she wanted
to turn and look at him.

Danicka pleaded, “You must listen,
please.”

She folded her hands and bowed her
head. “You’ve made your point and I am sorry.”

It stood there, swaying on uneasy
legs. Its head fell from side to side like a slow metronome.

“Please!” Dani screamed. She sniffed
back tears. “I have done everything for you. Even at Leningrad and Srebrenica I
did everything you asked.”

Its posture stiffened, its arms didn’t
fall so easily at its sides, like it was swelling.

“You lied to me.” She pounded her
chest, her tiny little fist accented each syllable.

“My family died. Every last one of
them. You promised protection.”

To the east, the sky grew pinker, inch
by inch.

“I’ve fulfilled my end, don’t you—”

It grabbed Dani by the hair and
slammed her to the ground. Blood came from her nose and ears. She pulled her
knees toward her chest to shield herself from further harm.

“You can’t hurt me anymore.” Danicka
looked up at it and said, “You’ve taken everything.”

It stomped its foot. The force knocked
me back to the edge of the circle. Katy fell into me. My guitar hit the
blacktop with a crunch. The birds took to the sky in a wash of blackness. Even
the wind came to a sudden end.

With the voice of a kid, speaking in
multiple, ancient accents, it said, “If you break this seal, I will rape you
like the Benjamites raped the Levite’s concubine. I will eat the flesh of every
last king and general, of every last saint and prophet, in your name. Then to
honor your broken promise, I will wash it down with the blood of every last man
and woman on earth.”

It brushed the grave dust aside with
its foot and stepped into the circle. “Then I will cut you into twelve pieces,
and I will eat you, and each bite will be like honey in my mouth.”

It hovered over Dani, inching closer
and closer to me. Its bloody tongue searched for something at the corner of its
mouth. “And I’ll leave only the children to cleanse the Earth’s surface with
their tears.”

“Do not move,” Danicka looked up at me
through teary eyes. Her voice was frail. She wiped the blood from her nose with
the back of her hand.

It walked backward, then slowed.

“And you,” it said, looking at Katy
and me. “Next time you dial my number, we’re going to talk.”

It turned and drifted back toward the
sunrise before shuffling into a flailing run.

My eyes fell. I didn’t see it
disappear into the light.

For the longest time I couldn’t move.
And Katy didn’t move. She held me so tight I thought she’d lift us both into
the air. I realized I’d been holding my breath. I turned my head and spit the
silver coin onto the road.

“Hey,” I said.

Off in the distance I heard a car horn.
Somebody needing to get through the crossroads on their way to church. That
broke the spell.

Rachael and Jamie grabbed Katy,
helping her to her feet. Pauly took my hands and lifted me off the asphalt.
Some of the people who’d stayed to watch drifted into the crossroads with us.
Nobody spoke.

Finally, after giving us both a good
once-over, Jamie said, “You kids okay?”

I nodded.

Jamie began to speak, but Katy cut him
off. “Nobody saw anything. Hear me? Nothing. Let these people all say what that
want. But you didn’t see anything.”

All I could do was bite my lip.

“Chloey, do you hear me? Mom, tell
her.”

Rachael said, “She knows.”

She looked for Ben, to tell him, but
he’d walked right past us and took a knee on the ground next to Dani. With a
gentle touch, he wiped blood from her cheek with a blue bandana. “I’m Ben.”

He extended his hand, and added,
“Collins.”

“Danicka Prochazka.” She gazed up at
him with those big amber eyes and accepted his hand. While she gathered her
composure, he bent over and brushed dirt and gravel from her knees.

She turned to me, and said, “Danicka
Petráková Prochazka,” then waited for some sort of confirmation that I
understood.

I acknowledged with a nod.

Ben put his hand around her waist and
led her over to her car. He opened the passenger-side door for her. Just before
getting in himself, he tossed Henry the keys to his Jeep and gave us all a
half-salute.

And as Ben started the silver
Mercedes, Jamie reached into his jacket pocket and handed me his own keys.

As Ben completed a three-point turn,
Jamie took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.

As Danicka and Ben disappeared into
the night, Jamie broke off from the group and headed back to his car. I
released Katy, and caught up with him. He slowed when I put my hand on his
shoulder.

“He’s never coming home, is he?”
Jamie’s eyes searched my face for honesty.

“He’ll be back, Jamie,” I said. I
didn’t know what else to do. “He just finally found a soul that needed saved
more than his own.”

Jamie hugged me before settling into
the backseat.

The rest of them stood there wearing
their saddest faces. They held each other for support, keeping that grey cloud
over their heads for just a little bit longer. I had to prompt them to follow
us back over to the cars.

“What the hell do we do now?” Henry
said.

“I don’t know, man. I really don’t
know. We’ll figure it out once we get out of here.”

I grabbed Katy’s hand and kissed it,
then I grabbed Pauly and pulled him over to me and gave him a big kiss on the
cheek. I looked at Chloey, still nursing her arm. She rested her head on her
mom’s shoulder.

“Preston…” was all that Katy could
say.

“I know,” I said. I watched the sky
for some sign that this was over, some sign that I’d done the right thing. By
now I knew that sign would never come.

Katy sat down and looked at me for an
answer, maybe expecting from me the words I wanted from above. But try as I
might, the only thing I could come up with was a weak, “I told you I’d take
care of everything,” before shutting her door.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The
Revelations of Preston Black
is not the result of writing to
impress. I wrote this book for fun, and I’m extremely grateful for all of the
people who have helped to make this process so rewarding and so wildly
entertaining: Brad Vetter for the incredible cover design; Joe White and Ayla
Nett from Black Bear Burritos’ Morgantown location for their infinite
generosity and support; Sam McCanna of Skurvy Ink for the awesome T-shirts;
Jennifer Barnes, John Edward Lawson and the rest of the Raw Dog Screaming Press
gang for the camaraderie and legitimized debauchery; and Michael A. Arnzen for
always being the best friend a writer could have.

And
Heidi, thank you for needing me as much as I need you.

About the
Author

Jason
Jack Miller knows it’s silly to hold onto the Bohemian ideals of literature,
music, and love above all else. But he doesn’t care.

His
own adventures paddling wild mountain rivers and playing Nirvana covers for
less-than-enthusiastic crowds inspired his Murder Ballads and Whiskey series,
published by Raw Dog Screaming Press. The next installment,
All
Saints
,
is due out in 2014. He is a creative writing adjunct at Seton Hill University,
where he also mentors in the school’s prestigious Writing Popular Fiction MFA
program. Jason is a member of the Authors Guild and International Thriller
Writers. He lives just outside of Pittsburgh with his wife, Heidi, and a cat.
His blog is http://jasonjackmiller.blogspot.com. Tweet him @jasonjackmiller.

Read the rest of the
MURDER BALLADS AND WHISKEY SERIES:

THE
DEVIL AND PRESTON BLACK

HELLBENDER

THE
REVELATIONS OF PRESTON BLACK