Prologue
Charlie Pruitt was not quite thirty, but he looked over fifty. Beneath the greasy baseball cap he always wore, his prematurely gray hairline retreated rapidly away from a face that showed the early signs of a hopeless alcoholic. He looked up from under the cap’s bent bill, and his superthick glasses caught the reflection of predawn light breaking the horizon. He grunted and resettled himself in the metal tractor seat, its vinyl cushioning long ago eroded away by the decomposing effects of heat, wind, and rain. He lowered his head, anticipating as much as dreading the blinding flash when the sun broke the horizon.
The ancient and rusty John Deere chugging beneath him popped and groaned raggedly. He was truly surprised it was still running. The engine was beyond anything even Charlie’s considerable mechanic’s expertise could do to repair it, and Old Man Hadnought finally believed him when he said that it had to be completely overhauled. So, he was up early this morning, taking it to town, to the dealership, where Bill Kirby would probably recommend that the crusty old farmer open his ratty old wallet and buy a new tractor.
Charlie knew that Old Man Hadnought was far too tight to do that, not until he had absolutely no choice. This time, though, there might not be a choice. A new, sharp metallic grate had joined the old engine’s familiar mechanical complaints. He smiled in a grim hope. At last, the old man might have to make a decision. By tomorrow, Charlie dreamed, he might be driving a brand new tractor that wouldn’t leave him stranded several miles from the house in high summer, as this one often did. Maybe, he thought as the fantasy expanded to meet the ideal, Kirby would tell Hadnought that he had no alternative. And maybe, Charlie indulged himself in euphoria, he might spring for something with an air-conditioned cab and a radio, as well. Maybe the old fart would wake up and discover modern American technology was available right there in front of him.
As if in rejection of his idyllic notions, the John Deere’s engine stopped its noisier clanking and settled into a more or less steady growl. Charlie, deflated, shook his head and figured that the best he could hope for was an overhaul and some measure of reliability.
As the tractor made slow progress toward a barbed-wire gate that closed off an abandoned highway—a shortcut he always took when he moved implements from the farm into town or back—he glanced around, somewhat surprised. Despite the pending dawn, things seemed to grow darker, as if the sun were setting instead of rising. He glanced eastward, past the skyline of the small town some several miles distant. The grain elevators and water towers were still outlined against a yellowing horizon, but in his immediate vicinity the mesquite and scrub weeds choking the pastures and ditches were actually retreating into new jet. Stars and planets that had been brightly visible only moments before were utterly gone from the western sky. It seemed the whole horizon in that direction yawned like a huge black tunnel.
He let out the clutch, pulled down the throttle, and coasted to a stop. He stood up on the driver’s platform and looked around. The oddness of the phenomenon was remarkable and not a little disturbing. He wondered, idly, if he was falling into the same pattern of hallucinations that had recently been visited on his aging parents. Lifetime drinkers, both, they were often tormented by things only they could see, feel. The D.T.’s. He remembered the phrase with a worrisome scowl. That’s what his old man called it. “Got the goddamn D.T.’s. Next thing you know, I’ll see snakes on the ceiling.” Next thing you know, Charlie thought, so will I.
He removed his thick glasses and wiped his eyes. He put them on again and looked once more toward the east. Sure enough, the dawn seemed to be moving backward, as if recoiling from the night it had come to disperse. He searched the clear sky for clouds, for some explanation. Maybe it was an eclipse, he thought. He’d never seen one, but he vaguely remembered hearing about such things in school.
A movement more than a noise drew his attention back to his immediate surroundings. His eyes peered into the recurring darkness, and what he saw caused his breath to catch, his limbs to go numb. “Oh, shit,” he breathed out more than said.
Parked across the abandoned road where the barbed-wire gate had been strung only moments before was a black 1957 Chevrolet two-door hardtop, its hue darker than the night surrounding it. Leaning against the brilliant flame lettering along its side stood a tall, muscular young man. Handsome in a casual, lanky posture, he wore jeans and a white tee shirt, no jacket, though the morning air was chilly. His hair was swept back into a ducktail, a forelock dipping almost to the exact center of the mirrored aviator shades that covered his eyes.
“Bobby Dean,” Charlie whispered. He blinked his eyes rapidly, but what he saw didn’t go away. “No.”
“Hello, Charlie boy,” Bobby Dean said through a broad, affable smile, one that showed his familiar dimples and straight, white teeth but never could betray an artificiality, a deliberate, plastic manufacture. He took a long drag off a cigarette and blew twin streams of smoke out his nostrils. “Long time, no see.”
Charlie heard the popping, vibrating idle of the tractor beneath him, felt the cold metal of the steering wheel beneath his fingers. He blinked again, and felt the sharp pain of raw terror climbing from his gut to his throat. “No,” he said again.
“Been missing you,” Bobby Dean said, his insincere grin turning down into a sad frown. “Been missing you a lot.” He dropped the cigarette casually to the pavement, ground it out under the sole of a plain black oxford with a pointed toe. “Been out here much? Been looking for me?”
Charlie’s ears heard the words, somehow distant and metallic but clear over the tractor’s clattering idle. He swallowed, stared hard, tried to make sense of what he was seeing. “What do you want?” he asked, finally. His voice sounding so immediate, so right now, that it startled him.
Bobby Dean’s smile returned, synthetic as ever. “You, Charlie boy. I want you.” He stepped away from the car, then opened the passenger-side door. At once, Charlie’s ears filled with the heavy beat of a familiar Top 40 tune, something that was leading the charts years before. He couldn’t quite name it, couldn’t quite recognize it, but it was there, and it was intensely familiar.
“I need you, Charlie boy,” Bobby Dean said, sober and serious. “Need my old wrench jockey. Never was any damn good without you under the hood.” He grinned again. “Come on, Charlie. I got a race to run. Tune me up. Going to blow that son of a bitch away.”
An icy sensation coursed through Charlie’s body, causing him to shudder, then to shake. He was unable to control himself, to stop himself from obeying Bobby Dean’s order. As if sleepwalking, he began to move, keeping his eyes fixed on Bobby Dean’s mirrored shades. He climbed down from the tractor, felt his worn work boots’ soles scraping the ancient blacktop beneath him, felt the soured chill of the morning air striking his lungs. The tractor still popped and choked its idle behind him, but the metallic music overrode it. Bobby Dean’s face was clear despite the darkness, his smile more affable and inviting than ever. With what seemed like an incredible force of will, Charlie stopped and stood where he was. Nothing, he thought, had ever been harder to do.
“C’mon, Charlie. They’re waiting. They’re all waiting to watch me shut him down. Teach them who’s boss. You know who’s boss, don’t you, Charlie? You’ve always known. Everybody knows. And now, they’re waiting for me to prove it one more time. C’mon.”
Beyond Bobby Dean’s form, Charlie now could see figures in the Chevy’s back seat. Indistinct shadows, they, too, seemed to be waiting for him to step forward, slide into the passenger side, join them. He heard laughter mixed with the unnatural music that seemed to come from everywhere at once. He looked beyond the Chevy, and now he could see a long row of headlights lined up alongside the old, abandoned highway. Some flashed their high beams, as if demanding him to step forward.
“No,” he heard himself say. “I won’t. You’re not really here. Go away. You’re dead.”
Bobby Dean shook his head in disapproval, a fraternal scowl forming beneath the sunglasses. “So are you, Charlie boy. You just don’t know it, yet. Look at yourself. You’re a drunk, a joke. You always were. You never were nothing without me. So, can the bullshit. Let’s go. I’ve been waiting for you too goddamn long.”
Charlie felt his feet moving. Try as he might, he couldn’t stop them from shuffling forward toward the open door, though his every instinct tried to resist. His throat closed, he couldn’t breathe, but he couldn’t stop himself, couldn’t tear his eyes away from Bobby Dean’s mirrored shades. They seemed to look right through him, to see his very soul. He was sinking under the spell of the direct gaze. His heart thundered in his ears, keeping beat, it seemed, with the music, as the coaxing voice called him once more. He took another step, then another, all the time screaming silently at himself to stop, to break free. It was as if he was deep in dark water, struggling for the surface, desperate to reach the light and air. But his eyes were locked on Bobby Dean, and he stepped again, felt himself drowning in the power that held him.
Then from somewhere deep inside, an idea took shape as a desperate bid to free himself from the trance. With a great effort, a display of strength he didn’t know he had, he reached up and jerked the bottle-bottom glasses from his face. Instantly, the sights in front of him blurred into mere streaks of light against an impossible darkness. Nothing was distinct, nothing discernible, only obtuse blurs and shadows and fragments of impressions flitting here and there like lightning against a summer sky. He felt the hold on him loosen. He breathed, but he wasn’t yet free.
“C’mon, Charlie.” Bobby Dean’s voice rose as if in anger. “Quit fucking around. I’m waiting for you. Put on your goddamn glasses and come on.”
Charlie felt his arm moving, rising against his will to replace his spectacles. Then, in one more burst of courage and strength, he flung them onto the ground, stamped them hard with his heavy boots. He felt the ground glass crush beneath his heel, and the ghastly hold break entirely.
“You four-eyed son of a bitch!” Bobby Dean’s voice came to his ear, but it was now distant, fading, like an echo. “What have you done?”
Charlie didn’t answer. He turned and ran, raced down the blacktop away from the black specter toward a growing light he perceived in the east. His legs, muscles atrophied by years of heavy drinking and indolence, pumped up and down, his feet slapped the pavement as he galloped down the highway. Behind him, over the heavy sound of his labored breath, he heard his name being cried by a thousand banshee voices. “Charlie! Charlieeee!! Come back!” The music he heard before rose in a crescendo, impossibly loud, hurting his ears, but over them the cries segued into the unmistakable cacophony of roaring engines, the squeal of rubber. His nostrils filled with the acrid smell of sulfur, smoke, exhaust from high-test gasoline burned rapidly in finely tuned V-8 engines. These were familiar sensations, though it had been years since he’d experienced them. They terrified him even more as they increased in intensity, seeming to come from right behind him, filling the unnatural night.
Charlie raced on, pumping his arms, slamming his feet one in front of the other, feeling his lungs protesting, almost bursting. His side stitched, but he ignored it, his legs felt heavier with each step, but he pushed ahead. As the noises behind him rose in a hellish din, he ran even harder, desperately trying to reach the light his dim eyes told him was coming.
If he ever reached it, he promised himself, he would never come back.