Act 2 - Prophet

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Chapter Eleven

Machines and Prophets

I was born in Atlanta -

He began his story in his garage, which for Elijah was

appropriate. In the brief time I'd known him everything about Elijah

spoke of machines. This was his garage. This was him. Somehow I

knew that.

He began his story in his garage.

I was born in Atlanta in the back of the same silver Ford

Mustang that I'd been conceived in.

It hadn't been planned that way, of course, birth and death are

rarely planned. My mother had been on her way to the hospital with

my father at the wheel when it became obvious that I wasn't going to

wait for the Emergency Room. I guess you can say this about me –

I've never been someone to have patience. That much hasn't really

changed in all of my twenty seven years of life.

I don't remember my birth, of course. Who the hell does? But I

remember reading the brief newspaper clipping years later – the news

organizations picked it up. A boy born on the freeway, with two cops

his deliverer. There was a photo of my parents and they looked so

happy. I was seven years old when I found that photo, and I remember

thinking when I found it that it was the first time I could remember

having seen my parents as happy.

To call the relationship my parents had toxic isn't fair. It



was tragic. My father was abusive to my mother and me physically and

emotionally and my mother was an alcoholic, burying her own abuse

under layers of make-up and liters of Jack Daniels. My only out came

from my uncle; my father's brother.

His name was Bartholomew, and everyone tried to call him Bart

only he wouldn't let hem get away with it. The only nickname he

would allow is that everyone called him the Major since he'd spent

five years in Vietnam. They say that no one participated in that

war without getting scars, and he certainly had his share of them.

But for all that he was a good father figure for me. I was five when

he first starting letting me sleep in his house. He would leave the

door open and unlocked for me, and leave food on the table. He was

never able to say it, and I'm not sure he would ever allow himself to

confront his brother for the way he treated my mother and me (he

would always say “a man's affairs are his own”) but I don't think he

was able to let what my father did without notice either. So in many

ways he raised me.

When I was seven, and confused having just found the newspaper

clipping of my own birth, I found the Major in the back of the house.

For as long as I could remember I'd seen something covered in the

back underneath burlap, and I'd never given much thought as to what

was under there. Anyway, that day I found him underneath an old

Chevy Nova his hands deep inside the guts of the engine. I don't

think anyone would call the Major an intelligent man, or a man of

words, but he loved mechanics and he loved cars. And I might have



been seven, but I was looking for something to focus on other than my

own unhappiness and that day cars became my way out.

Of course he would never have let me near his car. I was seven.

So instead he gave me the old car radio which never worked anyway and

told me to play with that. Within two days I took it apart, put it

back together, then took it apart again and got it working correctly.

Better than it had worked originally even. The Major told me I had a

gift, and he started giving me things that didn't work around the

house – old toasters, radios, ovens, vacuums, or even remote

controlled cars he found thrown in dumpsters. I fixed all of them.

He started calling me his little mechanical prophet, and fixing

things became a kind of outlet for me. A way to forget the pain of

living at home.

When I was eleven my father came home with a shotgun.

I don't remember much about that night. I know there was noise

and I know there was screaming and I know by the end of it I was an

orphan.

The next few years I don't remember much either. I know I

didn't speak for almost a year and a half after. I know that I was

adopted by the Major and he fought the guilt of never making sure his

brother was straight in the head. And I know that I taught myself to

fix machine after machine after machine.

When I was twelve I came home to find the Major at the dinner

table and I could tell he had been crying. There was something

tragic about that on its own. I'd never seen the Major cry – he'd



always been a man's man. He'd always been the same tough guy that

the army had molded and turned into the man I knew him to be. He was

the kind of man who could chew Clint Eastwood's face off.

Yet there he was crying at his kitchen table, and I knew I had

to speak. I could barely remember how. So I just came from behind

him and put my arms around him in some semblance of a hug. I spoke,

my voice creaking like it needed to be oiled “It'll be all right.”

And then he spoke and flowed out of him like blood or water. He

told me about my father. Not the father I'd always known, the one

who was haunted by alcohol or by depression or by violence, but the

man I saw in the newspaper. The one who smiled. He told me about

the man he knew growing up. And I knew he loved him, and I knew he

loved me.

And for a long time after we just couldn't speak. The words had

been said and we didn't need them anymore.

When he did speak again it was over dinner. He'd ordered out,

soul food that would be the death of him eventually. “Elijah I need

you to know something. You're special. And I don't just mean that

the way every man sees his son or his nephew as special. You're

really something else. You're able to do things with machines that I

can barely understand. It's like you understand them. It's like

magic.”

It was the longest conversation I'd ever had with him. The men

in my family aren't exactly big on conversation.



I moved to Boston when I was seventeen amid the promise of an

acceptance letter from MIT and the hope that life outside of Georgia

held more for me than life inside. That's when I got involved with

Alan and Elise.

I met Alan my second year out at MIT. I'd been splitting my time

studying and making money working on cars for a man who was harder on

me than anyone I'd ever met. He taught me about cars, and he taught

me about roads. He told me to learn physics and to embrace it. To

make it a very part of my being. I'd been thinking of quitting and

working at the garage full time but he would never let me. I think

the Major talked to him my first week at MIT and told him that he

would come and kill him if he let me quit school.

The man I worked for, his name was Bill. He was this great big

man, and I think every part of him was fat. But a wrench in his

hands was poetry. There were designs in his office of engines and

airplanes and cars and boats; he would never talk about them, but I

knew they were important, because every lunch hour he would just shut

his door and I could see him staring at these designs through the

glass windows. Sometimes he would be scribbling on the papers

feverishly like a man possessed.

The garage opened every day of the week. The man wasn't

religious, or at least his religion had nothing to do with God. He

worshiped cars. He breathed them. The only time the garage was ever

really closed (for he lived above it) was every Saturday afternoon.

To anyone else this wouldn't seem like anything but an exhausted



mechanic but to me – someone who had known him and worked with him

for almost two years – it seemed preposterous. I couldn't imagine

Bill without cars and without mechanics. Still everyone had to have

their secrets and Bill had his.

Until the day I met Alan.

It was a Friday and Bill was at lunch, working feverishly on his

designs, attacking them like h was in a war. The garage smelled like

oil and grease and I was elbow deep in the guts of an old Corvette.

I didn't see him come in, I only heard the sound of a girl's

laughter. And when I looked up there was this guy who stood there

with this girl on his shoulder. She was maybe five, and he looked

thirty. To call this man average wouldn't do it justice. He oozed

being mundane. I would come to learn, of course, that he was

anything but.

“Excuse me,” he said, “I'm looking for Bill.”

I cleared my throat. “Bill's at lunch. Is there any way that I

can help you?”

He laughed, and put his daughter down on the ground. “Don't run

around Alaura. This place is dangerous.” She was the kind of child

who would vibrate if she wasn't jumping. “You must be Elijah.

Bill's told me about you. Is it true? Can you fix anything?”

I laughed, “Anything that moves. There something you need

fixed?”

He shrugged, “Something like that. He's in his office?”

“He's at lunch sir.”



“Oh, I'm sure he won't mind. Alaura, stay here and don't bother

the man.”

The young girl managed to stand quietly near the office door for

the few seconds it took her father to go in. He looked average but I

could tell she was anything but. She was five, but I could tell –

you come sometimes just tell – that this girl was going to grow up to

be gorgeous. Just absolutely gorgeous. You could tell because she

was gorgeous now. But the girl couldn't stop vibrating.

By the time the office door closed, and my arms were once again

in the car's engine, she was there next to me. “What are you doing?”

She stood right next to me, peering into the car's heart. “I'm

tightening some things that came loose. Why don't you sit over by

the office?”

She shrugged. “Do you know who my father is?”

I sighed. I've never been very good with kids. “No,” I told

her, “I don't know who your father is.” God how I wanted her to

leave me alone.

“My father is a sorcerer!” She said it like it was a secret.

I looked at her the same way an adult always looks at a child

when they say something ridiculous like that. “Is that so?”

The office door opened and her father walked out again, shaking

Bill's hand. He collected his daughter and walked out, just as

quietly as he had walked in.

“Elijah. Come into my office.” Bill kept the door open for me

as I walked in, wiping my hand on a rag.



“That was Alan. He's an old friend of mine. I have a

proposition for you.”

“What is it?” I asked. God, I was so eager back then. But I

guess every eighteen year old genius is. Well, that or hopelessly

jaded by that point.

“Well,” Bill said, “It's easier to see than tell. What are you

doing tomorrow afternoon?”

I met Bill the next afternoon at the garage. He'd given me the

morning off, telling me to get a lot of rest; he was being cryptic,

but I was intrigued. There was never anything cryptic about Bill, he

was always the kind of guy that seemed up front about everything. So

this had my attention.

Bill was just closing up shop when I came around, my feet sore

from walking from Medford to his garage. He grinned at me when I

walked in.

“Glad to see you here.” I could see the man from the day before

was already there. He sat in a chair in Bill's office; his arms were

crossed and when I walked in he looked at me. I could feel his gaze

piercing through me. There was an intensity about him that day that

hadn't been there before. He was frigtening.

“Who is he anyway?”

“His name's Alan.”

“His daughter called him a sorcerer.” Maybe a cheap birthday



magician. Bill just laughed, and I expected him to say something

about the folly of children.

Instead he said this, “I guess you could call him that. Come

in, I'll introduce you and we'll get started.”

I watched him walk away from me incredulously. Bill never

seemed the sort to be swept up in flights of fancy.

I walked in behind Bill into the office, and Alan stood up at

our arrival. “Elijah, good to meet you again.”

I shrugged, not really sure what to say to a sorcerer. I almost

laughed at the concept.

Bill and Alan talked for a few minutes about mundane topics.

The weather, the Red Sox, and even how business was doing and I just

stood in the corner watching them. Finally Alan took out a pocket

watch, which I thought was strange since there was a clock right

there in the office big as life and twice as useful, and declared

that it was time to leave.

We all piled into Bill's old station wagon, Bill and Alan up

front with me in the middle of the back seat. I remember seeing

Bill's face reflected in the rear view mirror. “Elijah,” he told me,

“don't get too worried now. No matter what just remember, we know

what we're doing.”

Alan snorted at that, and Bill just mock punched him in the

shoulder. I started to wonder whether I was being lead to some

strange gay sex cult. Hell, it didn't even have to be gay, just

strange.



Still, I was fairly confident that if need be I could kick

Bill's ass. And Alan was shorter than I was. Bill started the car

and pulled out into the road, talking as he went.

“You know your daughter told Elijah you were a sorcerer

yesterday?”

Alan started, “Did she? She's developing a big mouth.”

Bill laughed, “Takes after her mother right?” He looked back at

me through the rear view mirror again, “Elijah, you know that Alan

here is a genuine prophet? That's what they used to call him anyway.

The prophet or Rhode Island.”

Alan shook his head, “That was a long time ago. Besides I never

was a prophet anyway.”

“But you healed all those people! You got in the paper and

everything.” Bill was putting on a show for me, I could tell. But

he was talking like a crazy man. “He cured over a hundred people

they said. Only he never preached. Can you be a prophet if you

never preached.”

Alan looked back at me and I could tell he was close to

blushing. “I was never a prophet.”

I found the voice to speak. “So you're a sorcerer?”

And Alan actually laughed, “Something like that. But I'm not

the one currently working with magic. Look out the window.”

I had no idea where I was. It was the forest, but it wasn't the

forest I knew. I'd lived in the greater Boston area for almost two

years and without a car I walked everywhere; I devoured the road and



maps like I wanted to imprint it on my soul because I knew that one

day I would want to have a car and I would just drive and drive and

drive. I would have freedom.

But I didn't recognize any of this. And the road changed from

dirt to gravel to swamp. There was a moon over head, then the sun,

and then it was snowing in the middle of April. “What the hell is

going on?”

“Relax Eli. We're almost there.” Bill turned down onto a road

lined by small rounded stones and came to a clearing where a small

wooden house stood. The car came to a rest and for a moment the

three of us just sat there. I couldn't even breathe, it was all just

so strange, and yet so...mundane? I always expected that if magic or

God or aliens existed it would be momentous, but this just

felt...natural. This felt ordinary. And that was how miracles would

have to be. When Jesus walked on water it must have been the most

natural thing that anyone has ever seen.

Alan cleared his throat. “Well Elijah. I'm sure you have

questions, Bill, I'm sure, will answer them.”

He got out of the car and ambled over to the cabin.

Bill looked at me in the rear view again, “You okay boy? If

you're about to have a nervous breakdown the Major would kill me?”

I met his reflected gaze and a slow smile just crept across my

face without me wanting it to.

“You've got to show me how to do that.”

Bill just laughed. And he did.



Chapter Twelve

Monsters and Devils

I was the kind of student that Bill probably wished he never

had. I had questions and there were times that he had no answers.

He took me on his drives, and we went to places I didn't know could

exist, all light and sound and purity. Bill taught me to drive, to

follow the roads in front of me. Even the roads that were no longer

there; even the ones that didn't want to be found. “A road never

disappears,” he told me. And I learned to believe him. I learned to

drive on those roads. I studied maps, and I made some of my own. I

got to know the roads and paths and high ways and side streets around

Boston and I rapidly grew better than my teacher. He told me I had a

natural talent.

I learned a lot in those first few months. I learned about the

roads, like I mentioned, but I also learned that not all roads were

safe. We walk (or drive) the roads, but so can others. So can other

things. As much as old roads stayed around long after they'd been

paved over, filled in, or covered by dirt or sand or water, so did

spirits. I call them spirits because I don't really know what else

to call them. Echoes perhaps. Demons or devils.

I was in the driver's seat of Bill's station wagon the first

time I met my first devil. We'd come out to Salem on a cold Saturday

afternoon, and Bill was listening to the oldies on the radio (and he

was complaining the songs from twenty years ago were playing and I



just laughed. He felt old). We were on Washington heading into the

historic district and he pointed off to the right. There was an old

road there, older than any I had taken to that point, that went out

into a storefront. I had gotten used to the strangeness of driving

into buildings and finding myself at riverbanks or in forests, and

pulled off onto the dirt road that shimmered and wavered.

And the station wagon started going and going fast, like it had

just been released by the chain on a roller coaster at the apex of

that first hill. I pumped the brake and grunted; his car was

fighting me, and I knew that I was losing control.

“Relax,” Bill said, sitting next to me like everything was all

right. But things were not all right. “Don't fight it. Just drive

with it.” I looked at him like he was crazy, and maybe he was, but

he had never lead me on the wrong path and I trusted him.

Still, I was frightened out of my mind.

And now it's kind of funny to think back on. Because I think I

was screaming and I think that Bill next to me was still trying to

keep his calm and the car just kept on driving and driving and

driving.

“Okay, now stop!” Bill said all of a sudden and I slammed on

the brakes without even thinking.

The car skidded, then the brakes kicked in something fierce and

we came a halt before our souls did. My insides were spinning, and I

saw this chittering, giggling shadow just scream from the engine and

onto the path ahead.



I stayed silent for a moment. Then a moment more, and then Bill

started laughing. I started too; I was upset, but it was either

crying or laughing and laughing was better for my soul.

“What the hell was that?” I asked when I caught my breath.

Bill took a deep breath in. “That,” he answered, “was a speed

demon.”

“What are they?” I asked him a day later, over a car engine that

he had his arms elbow deep in. It was still cold outside but it was

oppressively hot inside the garage. It always was.

“What was what?” Bill was like that. Out on the road we talked

about the road, but when we were at work on the cars, that was what

he talked about. That was what his life was. Me, I've never had

that kind of separation; work is life and life is work.

“The thing that climbed out of the engine yesterday. You called

it a Speed Demon. What are they?”

“Oh. Here can you tighten this?” He handed me the wrench and

reached down into the guts of it and tightened it deftly as he began

to speak. “There are religions and faiths that believe that

everything has a soul. The rocks, the water, the trees, and the

dirt. And I think it's a little like that. What we do, no matter

how mundane, it's power. And the important things we do, the things

that have a lasting impact, they leave artifacts. That what I think

those are.”

It was the longest thing I'd ever heard him say. Who knew he



could become so poetic about anything. “Have you ever...caught one?”

I don't even know why I said it. All I could think of was how the

creature had made the station wagon move faster than it should have.

Bill just looked at me. Now I was the one that was crazy. “No.

Why would I want to?”

I didn't know.

But I couldn't stop thinking about it. It was in my head day

and night. I'm like that; I'm a good student because when I come up

to a problem I can't solve I just keep at it until I've beaten it,

and frequently I come up with a really elegant solution. Bill told

me it was what made me a really good mechanic.

Between my school work and my work at the garage and my new

found extracurricular activities with Bill, I found I didn't have

much time on my own, but what was there, all I could think of was

that little speed demon. How would I catch it? What would I learn

about it when I did? What would I do with it?

I started venturing out onto the roads on my own; though I never

told Bill about it, and I understand that this was a bit foolish.

But no one could ever say I wasn't adventurous. That's what

eventually got me into all that trouble with Elise.

I stalked the roads looking for anything that would lead me to a

speed demon; I staked out places where prepubescent (whether they

were men or not) boys would come and race their latest machine that

they cobbled together from parts of old Japanese cars from the



junkyard. I was stalking it, and it never showed. I became almost a

man obsessed.

And it wasn't lost on Bill.

“You've been thinking about that creature.” He said one day

when I was in his office. “The Speed Demon.”

I took a sip of water and regarded him carefully. My half

crazed state was not lost on him and I shouldn't have been surprised.

With the Major's threat of beating the ever lovin' Jesus out of him

if I ever came to harm Bill would always watch me closely.

“Yeah,” I said. “I've been thinking about it.”

“Well, so have I. And so has Alan. It can be done. Alan even

thinks its a strange idea, and for him that's saying something. But

he asked me something that I still don't know the answer to. And I

don't think you do either. Why?”

And I couldn't answer.

That night I dreamed of trucks. Trucks that were strong enough

to move mountains. Trucks that were strong enough to withstand the

kind of roads that Bill had begun to warn me about; the long

forgotten ones. The roads that could strike you dead just by being

there. That night I dreamed of trucks.

And when I woke I started to draw.

And I kept on drawing until well into the next week, missing

classes, missing work. Missing everything. When I came out it was

like waking up again. Or being born. And all over my shabby little



Medford apartment there were designs. Designs of wheel bases,

transmissions, and and engine that should never work in this world.

There came a knocking at the door while I was still sitting

there astounded at what I'd done. I walked over to the door,

carefully, so as not to disturb anything I'd drawn or thought up, and

there was Bill with this concerned look on his face.

“Elijah, no one's seen you in a few days now, and I just wanted

to check up on you.” Then he caught sight of what was behind me.

For an hour we just drank coffee and looked at designs; we didn't

even speak. Speaking wasn't enough. I was in awe, because I didn't

think I'd done any of this.

“Elijah, this...this is insane,” he told me after the coffee was

cold and the designs lay stacked in a pile on top of my desk. He

didn't need to tell me. I felt like I had just awoken from insanity

and didn't quite understand what I'd created. “And I think that it's

the most genius thing I've ever seen.”

He stood up, and grabbed his jacket from off the chair he'd been

sitting in. I stood up as if to follow. “I'm going to show these to

Alan. And Elijah, please for the love of God and and all that's

holy, take a damn shower.”

The truck wouldn't be completed for at least a month, even with

Bill having closed the shop down for three days a week just so that

the two of us could work on it. And throughout all I could think

about was going out to find that creature.



The truck was slowly taking shape underneath the tarp in the

back of the tarp, and we stopped going to drive on Saturdays. I even

began to spend nights back there, building and changing. It was the

first vehicle I've ever built and in some very obvious ways it's the

most inspired.

Alan came to see me near the end of the month in the garage with

this small smile on his face that wouldn't go away. “Who taught you

to do that?”

I was at a loss, and probably had been for quite some time.

“No one taught me. I don't even know where it came from.”

Alan laughed and shook his head. “Well, Bill's ordering the

parts now; the final list should be in your hands soon...he wants to

make sure you have final say in everything. He wants me to help you

catch the....what is he calling it....Speed Demon?” He laughed

again, only this time I was thinking it was a bit pejorative. He

took out a little crystal from his pocket the color of deep crimson.

You could get lost by staring into it, and I think Alan knew that I

was because he stopped me. “This is what we're going to use the

capture the thing.”

I breathed out, overwhelmed. “I can't believe we're actually

going to do it.”

“This weekend. Make sure you're ready.”

The next few days Bill closed down the shop and we worked on the

truck full time, hoping to have it completed by Saturday.



Saturday morning I woke in the garage, having gone to sleep

there at two in the morning. I was barely conscience when I heard

the knocking at the door. Slowly I came to, and let Alan in through

the front. I felt like hell, like a bomb had gone off inside me and

I couldn't feel all the pieces. I freshened up and put on a pot of

coffee and started to feel human.

I found Alan back on the garage floor with two cups of coffee in

my hands; one for me one for him. He smiled as he took the cup, and

looked at the mountain we'd created underneath the tarp.

“That done yet?”

“Yeah,” I told him. “Doesn't run yet. But it will after

today.”

Alan shook his head. “Don't get your hopes up. This hasn't

ever been done before.”

I just smiled. Somehow I knew.

We waited for Bill who arrived not long after looking even more

like hell than I did. He hadn't shaved and had a dusting of hair

underneath his double chin that scratched him as he moved. He looked

tired. He looked like how I felt. Still, there was a nervous energy

in the room, because what we were going to do was new and it was

scary, even for Bill. Even for Alan.

We got breakfast together, putting off the inevitable until each

of us felt like we could handle a drive. We waited a bit longer



after that because these weren't ordinary drives we would be doing.

Today we would be hunting.

We took the station wagon, and Bill was driving because he had

the most experience. Alan sat in the front seat and I was in the

back again. There was none of the camaraderie between Alan and Bill

that had saturated the drive that first day, the two of them were far

too hopped up on caffeine and nerves to act like friends. Then Bill

started to drive.

We drove for hours, and over miles and miles and miles. We

drove on roads that none of us had ever seen before, all in the hopes

of finding the demon I'd found by accident hat day. “The trick,”

Bill said when we were two hours into our hunt, “is that there is no

trick.” And he was right. This wasn't like hunting deer. There

were no tracks to follow, there were no hunting lodges, and there

wasn't a protocol of what had worked before. This was luck. And for

most of the day our luck ran dry.

The sun was beginning to seat and the three of us were tired and

about to give up when Bill found it. He was right, there was no

trick and when he shifted gears and turned onto the old road leading

down from the mountain that shouldn't have been in eastern

Massachusetts (to say nothing of the volcano we'd circumnavigated

earlier in the day). We were running low on gas, and I knew that we

would soon have to stop for the day. Bill was tired, and Alan was

irritable, and I needed to use the bathroom. It wasn't like stories



that you read. They don't tell you things like how the heroes were

hungry, or irritable, or really needed to use the facilities. Yet

here were the three of us, sick of our own company at the tail end of

what had been a rather pointless day.

We were going downhill so at first none of us noticed the

acceleration. When we hit pavement – the first we'd managed to find

in quite some time – the car sped up and Bill grunted, and the three

of us knew, we just knew. We had it.

“Elijah, give me your hand.” Alan reached back for it and I put

my palm into his. All the tiredness and irritation just went away

then in a wash of adrenaline and energy. Bill tried to keep the car

under control as we just went faster and faster and faster.

One of the things about Alan is that he never said anything

while he worked. His daughter said he was a sorcerer, and every time

I saw him doing something that couldn't be explained he just looked

like he was concentrating real hard. Like he was constipated or

something.

And that's when things started getting weird, because it was

like the world started to get sucked into the crystal Alan held in

his other hand. It wasn't literal of course. Far as I can tell

Magic never quite works like that, it's almost never obvious or

something you can point to or something that you can see. Even our

time spent driving was subtle; you could tell the changes if you were

looking for them or if you knew what to look for, but otherwise one

landscape just flowed logically to the next. But this wasn't subtle,



and while the world didn't physically fly into the crystal, I could

feel...I don't know, me...being sucked into it. My soul. My

essence. Whatever new age garbage you want to call it.

And Bill just grunted again and I wondered whether that was

Bill's only real method of communication when he was working in his

own right.

The world got dark, and then the world just stopped.

When it started again it was like the world was taking a deep

breath, as if it had been holding it for the longest time. The three

of us sat in the station wagon, which had finally stopped in a grassy

field south of Harvard (damned if I knew how it got there). The

three of us said nothing, because there were no words to say. Alan

just held up the crystal which had turned black as burned coal. And

then he just smiled.

The garage was waiting for us when we came back and I stopped

myself from throwing the tarp off our creation and starting it up

just to see if it worked. It had to work. We couldn't have had a

day like that day and then not have it work.

Bill was smiling and he was the one to take the tarp off what

we'd created. It stood there, her black chassis gleaming from the

fourth wax job we'd administered the night before. The Major was the

one who taught me to treat my machines right, and Bill did nothing to

stop those instincts.



Alan was the one who put the crystal in. Alan was the only one

of us who could probably do it. “Here it goes,” he said. And the

three of us held our breath. Well, maybe it was just me, I wasn't

really watching Alan or Bill.

For seconds nothing happened and there was a growing sense of

disappointment in the room. Then, ever so quietly, like a cat

purring or a dog's growl, the engine began to turn, then hum, then

scream. The engine exulted in it's new found power and glory.

I imagine that sound was only eclipsed by the sound of three

grown men whooping for joy.

I told you this for two reasons. First of all, so that when you

call my truck a monster you know that you are correct. That truck is

my baby, that truck will be my legacy. That truck is a monster.

And that truck is also the reason I met Elise.



Chapter 13

Dark Roads

There are dark roads out there.

There are roads that haven't been traveled in ages, and still

they exist, in time, and in space, but well beyond where most people

can see them. Well beyond where even Bill could see them. They said

that Alan could, but they said Alan could do anything. He was the

prophet from Rhode Island.

These roads are dangerous they told me, and I did believe them

because of all the things I'd seen. My truck is a monster, yes, but

it's a monster from roads that are, even to this day, well traveled

despite most people's lack of awareness of them.

Can you think of the kinds of things that exist on roads that

haven't been traveled in over an age? Yeah, I can't either. Still

can't. But I've seen them. Oh God, I've seen them, and I wish I

hadn't.

It started like this:

“I have a job for you, if you want it.” Alan would sometimes

come over on Saturdays now just to watch us work. He was still more

Bill's friend than mind (possibly Bill's only friend), but he liked

to talk to me. I had been riding in their cars less and less and

driving my own truck in my hours not at school or at the garage. It

was almost a year now, and I still hadn't gotten over the rush of



driving in places long since forgotten. Not for power, and not for

secrets, but just for the pure unadulterated joy of driving.

I straightened up at Alan's bit of information, and cleared my

throat. “A job?” I was perplexed if you have to know the truth.

That wasn't how Alan referred to his current partnership with Bill.

Although to be fair I was sure that Alan could probably have traveled

those roads all on his lonesome. He hung out with Bill because he

enjoyed it.

Alan chuckled. “Sure. It'll pay. Money or barter. People in

my line of...work...are usually more interested in barter, because

money will only get you so far. And there are things far more

useful.”

Bill snorted, “Yeah, but the paper is a lot more useful. Alan

gave me something that almost turned me into a frog the first time I

drove for him.”

Alan gave him a double take, “I don't know where you get this

stuff. Don't listen to him, he's full of it.” I'd gotten used to

their near constant jabbing at each other in front of me.

I cleared my throat. “Well, what kind of job?”

Alan shrugged, “Don't know really. It's not for me. It's for a

friend...well, she's not really a friend, she's more of an associate

I met while in London. She's in town and she's asked me to look

around for someone who could give her a hand. Bill came to mind, but

Bill's old now, you know, he just can't get it up anymore.” Bill

threw a dirty rag at him, which somehow missed Alan. Well, it wasn't



so much that it missed Alan it was more that Alan just wasn't there

when it would have hit him. I'd learned to stop worrying about that

kind of thing. I knew enough about Alan to be happy that he wasn't a

lunatic.

I took a deep breath. “Well, what kind of job is it?”

Alan frowned, and that was a little bit troublesome. But at

least he didn't look quite as shocked as the time I asked him to

power my truck with a demon.

“I don't know the details. I know she can be...well, she's

promised me that the job is a simple one. Still, if you take it I'd

like to be there when you find out what it is.”

A lesser man would have felt that Alan still didn't trust me.

But I knew better. He was many things but he was always up front

with me about the difficulty of doing something.

And he never acted like my father.

That was Bill's job.

I took a moment, then smiled, “Sure. I'll meet with this woman.

Is she cute?” For some reason Alan started laughing. Real honest to

God laughter, when I hadn't heard it from him even when his daughter

was saying something ridiculous in that way that a six year old

could. “What, I asked?”

“It's nothing. It's just that...she's a little old for you.”

We left from the garage after work, with Bill staying behind.

It was strange, for all that Bill had always been there for me, he



seemed to be worried about my continuing interest down paths less

traveled, and I would have had to have been stupid to not see that he

was worried about me even considering doing this job. Still, he bit

his tongue and stayed away from doing the adopted uncle thing. I

have to say I was grateful. And it probably made me more willing to

be careful than if he had.

I probably smelled like motor oil and propane (which smelled

like heaven to me, but whatever, I'm kind of messed up in the head),

but we went straight from the garage down to a bed and breakfast out

in Salem. Alan actually seemed apologetic about the destination.

“She has a sense of humor,” was his only explanation. I didn't get

it at the time. Considering her constant reminders that she's not a

witch I don't get it either.

I don't even remember the bed and breakfast's name. It feels

like such a long time ago, but I guess it wasn't. You would think in

my current condition, time would move more quickly....what with my

condition as a time share and all. It doesn't. Sometimes the hours

can pass and feel like days when you're awake and underneath. But

I'm getting ahead of myself. I haven't even gotten to the good part

yet.

I pulled the truck into the driveway, and it sat there like the

monster it was, dwarfing the other cars. I expected to get out, but

Alan touched my arm. “Stay here. I'll be right back.”

He climbed out and down to the walkway, and he didn't even get

to the house when the door opened. She stood there. My life changed



forever.

I just didn't know it yet.

I only get to see her in mirrors now when my eyes are cloudy and

not my own. I only get to see her in mirrors, and though she's

probably spent hours looking into them (for above all things, this

woman is a vain creature), I can't bear to constantly be awake and

aware when my body is not my own. It's a loss of control that I'm

not happy with. It's a loss of something more than that too, but

it's hard to explain. And I pray you'll never have to.

So though I see her face in the mirror, that time she walked out

is how I will ever remember her. She wore a long black dress, and

her dark red hair was done up in a bun. She oozed confidence as she

walked. What was strange was that her hands were wrapped and

bandaged, as if she had been burned. Even then she lacked that

thumb, and I don't know how she lost it. I don't want to know why

she lost it. There's a lot of things that I don't want to know about

Elise now.

She embraced Alan, hugging him close, and I wondered if Alan's

wife (was he married or just living with the woman who gave him

Alaura? I never asked him.) knew he liked to embrace hot looking

women like this.

Because above all things Elise is breathtaking to look at.

She talked with Alan for a few moments, and I saw her smile.

She and Alan have a history. I'm know I don't want to find out what



that is.

They made their way back up the walkway and I climbed out of the

driver's side of the truck. Elise is tall, and she was wearing

heels, so she was almost as tall as I am.

“Elijah, this is Elise. Elise, this is Elijah. He's the one I

told you about.” Suddenly the t-shirt and jeans that I'd bene

wearing just didn't seem good enough.

I offered her my hand to shake and she took it with her parallel

hand in a kind of side ways grasp. The hand that would have been the

usual one to shake didn't have a thumb. When she spoke she had this

light little French accent that spoke of things that are old, and

things that are mysterious. It spoke of places that I'd never been.

“Evening ma'am.” My southern accent probably came out a bit

more too. I get that way when I find myself attracted to someone.

Alan just rolled his eyes in the background.

“Elijah is it?” She made a point of looking at the truck behind

me, as if she hadn't seen the monster coming up the walkway at all.

“I was hoping for something a little less...ostentatious.”

I smiled back. “Well ma'am, I don't do subtle.”

“No, I can't imagine you would. Americans don't do subtle.

Your entire nation is...I digress. Shall we find some place to go

for a drink?”

“So Elise, why are you in town?” Alan asked over drinks, once

they arrived. She drank a bit of sherry and Alan had a beer. I was



driving and I never drink and drive. Not even a little. You respect

your tools, and my car is more than that. My car is my life. I had

a soda. So for that moment I guess my soda was my life.

…

This is why I'm not a writer.

“I'm trying to find something. A burial site. A very old one.

It exists elsewhere but the doorway I believe is here. And I don't

know the roads here. I could, of course, learn them. So I'm willing

to go with someone local.” She said that with the obvious

implication that someone local would be someone she would have to

settle for.

Beautiful women could get away with such bullshit.

“And I'm the local.”

Alan leaned back. “Elise, I need you to know something. Elijah

here, he's a very talented driver. Probably the most talented I've

ever met. But he's new at this, for all his talent. And I'm here to

make sure you drive a fair bargain.”

Elise sighed, and looked me over as if she were checked me out.

Somehow I knew that her reasons weren't sexual. “I can see that.

Very well, then I shall be upfront with these things.” She brought

out a compass that spun about amiably as if it were drunk and trying

to find true north.

“There was a man who once captured his essence so well that he

learned to live forever. It was said that if he should ever destroy

the painting that he would die, and so he hid it on the dark roads.”



At that Alan narrowed his eyes. “If this is about the dark

roads then we can leave right...”

He didn't get to finish before she held up her thumbless hand.

“Relax, I'm not taking him down the dark road this time around. I

just need a driver to take me around. See the sights as it were. I

need to find out where I'm looking to find out where to look.” She

smiled as if that made some kind of sense.

It made some kind of sense to Alan.

Sorcerers, right?

I cleared my throat. “What exactly would you need me for?”

She looked straight at me. “I would need you to go as far in as

you know how to go, and then stay with me as I...do some

things...then drive me back. Should I be happy with that, there

might be more another day.” She reached into her purse and brought

out a five hundred dollar bill. “Would that be enough? It'll be a

night's work.”

Alan looked at her like he wanted to smack the hell out of her.

But he didn't. I wish he had. Because what happened next sealed my

fate. I took the five hundred dollar bill and swallowed hard. I'm a

poor kid from Georgia. I was in Boston on scholarship. How could I

say no to a five hundred dollar bill? The Major didn't raise no

idiot.

Then again, maybe he did, because the next words out of my mouth

were, “When would you want to start?”



That night it turned out. Alan asked to be dropped at the

garage, and he asked me to meet him when I returned. He looked

troubled, and I figured it had something to do with the dark roads

that she mentioned. And I'm not going to lie, a part of me wanted to

see them. Because a part of me will always want to explore and push

the boundaries; it was how I got into the position I was in now.

I walked away and started my truck and waiting until Elise

finished talking with Alan. I have no idea what they talked about;

what do sorcerers talk about? Like I've said many many times, I

don't want to know.

Elise came to the truck and I leaned over and opened the door

from the inside. I'd been a gentleman before, but I was nervous now,

and if I got out I knew that there was a chance that I would back

out. The truck was my home. The truck was my courage.

I cleared my throat. “So the deepest place I know how to go?”

She looked at me. “Yes.” She looked around the inside of the

truck. It was well maintained. “Alan tells me he helped you build

it. Tell me, who was it that decided to make it this big?”

I laughed, and shoved her into gear and gunned her down into the

street. She took off the whole way growling; the demon wanted out

and I was going to take her home.

My truck was a monster and I'd found it to have certain

advantages in the year that I'd been driving her. There were

obvious benefits, such as not having to worry about fuel (I'd been



using the same tank of gas I had when I first started driving her),

but there were other things as well. Since Bill and I built her, and

since I'd been driving her, there was little that met me out there.

Since my first screaming, careening, and upsetting experience with

the road demon, I'd learned that there were other things out there;

things that were old and things that festered on long forgotten

roads. These things gave me a wide berth, and there were times that

Bill asked to use my monster instead of his old station wagon to

drive Alan around for just that reason.

So I drove until the moon was high, and we were too far down the

rabbit hole of twists and turns to tell you precisely where we were

in terms you would understand. I'd come here before, and it was the

deepest I dared go. I'd taken Bill here once and he balked, telling

me if I went any further down the path I should bring Alan, and he

seemed to indicate that there was no reason Alan would want to go

down those roads. If I were telling the truth, I would also tell you

that while I had some interest in going down those roads, just to see

what was there, I had never felt comfortable looking down them. It

was like I could look down and feel the Lucifer himself looking back.

Like somewhere out in the darkness there was someplace that God

buried his enemies.

When I got there, I put the truck in park and shut it off. It

was as far as I would go.

It was a field. And old field, and there were mountains in the

distance, and while I couldn't have said where I was I knew where I



was was old.

“A battle was fought here.” Those were the first words she said

in almost an hour. She looked out through the window and touched the

glass like she was trying to caress the sky. She was a quiet

passenger and there were times that I thought I had been driving

alone.

She looked at me. “You're to stay here. I'm going to go

outside.”

She opened her door and, for a while, she stood outside.

For minutes nothing happened. Then she lifted a stick and she

drew something on the ground; some design. I couldn't see it. Then

she stood right in the center of what she'd drawn, and she stripped

from her clothes, her naked form underneath the moon, in this strange

light that seemed to illuminate things more than it should have.

I was appreciating the view when the knife came out. And I

almost climbed out screaming when I saw it come to her wrist. I

don't know what it was that stopped me; perhaps it was common sense.

When the strange lady with bandaged hands tells you to do

something, do it.

Then, when her blood had run, she merely sat in the middle of

the design she'd made.

For a long time she just sat there and I wondered whether she

was dead. I hoped not. I couldn't imagine going back to seeing Alan

and saying, “So, your friend? The woman with red hair? She decided

to slit her wrists and bleed out all over this clearing in the



deepest part of the world that I've ever gone to.” That wouldn't

have been a conversation that would have gone well.

It was sometime later that she opened her purse and took out

some bandages that she wrapped her wrists with. Then, she put her

clothes back on, wiped out the design in the dirt, and came back to

the truck. She looked tired. I felt tired just looking at her.

“Did you find it? What you were looking for?”

“Let us return. I think I will sleep.” I started the truck and

started going back the way I came.

Well, not precisely the way I came, because how you go is never

the way you return, but that's neither here nor there.

She slept almost the entire way back, her head resting against

the cushion on top of the seat. I thought to offer her the extended

cab to sleep in, but she fell asleep too quickly for me to offer. So

I just drove her back.

It was almost three in the morning when I returned to the garage

and Alan and Bill were waiting for me. Bill looked haggard, but Alan

looked revoltingly awake and chipper.

I thought I saw Bill eying Elise mistrustingly as she spoke to

Alan, in words that I couldn't hear (and probably wouldn't

understand). She left then, and Bill drove her back to the bed and

breakfast in that old beat up station wagon of his. I was too tired

to speak and I was considering just sleeping at the garage when Alan

walked quietly over.



“You did a good job tonight. But...I'm not sure I should have

drawn you into this. But she wants to use you again. It seems she

liked your work.”

I managed a small smile. “That's because I was taught to do

good work.”

He put his arm around me in a gesture that somehow wasn't

fatherly and was affectionate. “That you were. Just do me a favor?

If she asks you to do something, check with me first. Or check with

Bill.”

Oh God how I wished I'd followed that advice.



Chapter Fourteen

The Lonely Hours

Pick one thing you love. It can be sport, an instrument, a

movie. Even a woman. And I mean really love, not this Saturday

evening movie bullshit definition of love. I mean really love. I

mean not being able to stand before it because of the very force of

what you feel. I'm talking about the love that holy men find in a

church, or the love that Martin Luther King must have felt when he

looked out across the plaza and said with a loud voice “I have a

dream...”. Now just think about what you love. It's intoxicating.

It becomes all you can think about if you can't have it and all you

can experience when you do.

That's the way I felt about driving. More specifically that's

what I felt when I was driving on long forgotten roads, of things

that used to be and could have been. Driving along those roads was

like finding a diary in an attic. Even though there's nothing of

monetary value in there you still might find yourself excited to be

touched by something in the past. These two things are the closest

that I can tell you to how I feel about driving. It's not enough of

course, because it's a deeply personal act for me. It's like trying

to explain God to a skeptic.

I'm telling you this so you understand what happens next. It

wasn't out of pride. It wasn't out of overconfidence. It wasn't

even out of desperation. It was out of intoxication.



This was the tail end of my senior year at MIT and I was taking

physics and building electric engines that were not half as amazing a

the demon I tamed to motivate my truck. This was the tail end of

exams and projects and a never ending stream of hard work (and

sometimes, I admit, tears...), and fate would have it that I couldn't

do as much driving as I would have otherwise. What little driving I

did was for Elise, and that was because she paid well.

I had become like a starving man. I wanted to drive, I wanted

to find freedom. Freedom was hard to come by.

“I need you to drive me.”

Elise showed up at my apartment one night, in the rain in her

black over coat and her red hair all done up just so. She looked

positively vibrant, her pale skin almost aglow despite the lateness

of the hour and the darkness of the storm.

I hadn't been sleeping properly for weeks and now I stood in the

aftermath of my entire life up until that point. I'd finished my

classes and tests and problem sets and I was in tatters, but only in

the best of ways. Still I was unsettled.

I wiped my face and tried to think about being awake. She did

like the night. So did I, but I also like sleep, apparently more

than she did. “Come on in.” I told her and backed away from the

door, yawning as I did so.

She came in as I retreated back into the room. I was half

asleep but the idea of driving had me excited. It had been weeks



since I had done more than simply ferry myself back and forth from

school and work. And here I was at two in the morning. I found

myself smiling as I turned away.

“Anything I can get you?” I asked as I turned. I was immediately

more awake. I was thinking about what I would have to get ready. I

was thinking about driving. “Tea maybe?”

I could feel her smile on my back. “Tea would be fine.”

I put some water up to boil, and then frowned. I needed a

shower. I would have to do for a change of clothes and some

deodorant. “I'll be back.”

I ducked into my bedroom and changed into a pair of jeans and a

shirt. I freshened myself up, and then walked back into the kitchen

just as the water started to boil. Good timing.

I reached up over the refrigerator where I kept my tea. “All

I've got is English Breakfast.” I shrugged in an apology, “Sorry, I

don't drink tea much.”

“That's fine.” I poured hers in a mug and took some for myself,

adding a couple of spoonfuls of sugar. “So, what's this driving you

need me to do?”

She took a sip of tea, then set it aside. “I believe I have

found what I've been looking for. But it's deep inside, and I can't

get there on my own. And it needs to happen soon.”

I cleared my throat. “Just how soon?”

“Tonight. If you're able. If not, I'll have to attempt it on

my own. They are deep roads.”



“The dark roads?”

She froze for a moment. Ever since Alan warned me about them

something deep inside me wanted to try it. And all that I had done

with Elise had, perhaps, given me something of an ego. “Perhaps.

Will that be a problem?”

“I should tell Bill. Or Alan.”

“Last I heard Alan is out of town, and Bill...isn't it his day

off?”

I hesitated. Alan had told me to alert him or Bill before going

out with Elise, and this did sound a bit dangerous...but I knew Elise

had power, though she had never really displayed it. And I had never

seen Alan truly display either, and so I had no basis for comparison.

I didn't hesitate long. I had been wanting to drive and I had

faith in myself. I had faith in my truck. “Is there anything I

should be concerned about?”

She smiled in that way that made everything okay. Elise rarely

smiled. “As long as you're with me, there's nothing to worry about.”

I should have started to worry.

We left before the clock hit two because she wanted to be there

before dawn. I had taken to parking the truck in the garage under my

apartment building, away from prying eyes and close enough for

comfort. Elise took the passenger's seat and I gunned the engine

that made the demon wail with pleasure. I was grinning as I left the

parking lot.



I drove for miles and hours peeling back the accumulated layers

of time and space until I wasn't quite sure of where I was or when I

was anymore. All along Elise was my guide and she depended upon me

to see the things she was guiding me towards.

The hours passed by quickly and slowly at the same time, in that

strange way that it passes while you're driving. It's like a

marathon – slow and fast at the same time. I drove with a rhythm. I

drove with a beat, and all at once I was driving like it was music.

But I guess you know music; I don't need to explain anymore than

that.

It was four in the morning when I came to the place we'd come to

before. A dirt road leading off into darkness. The dark roads she

called them. But she assured me we weren't going that far in.

Besides, I had the truck, I had her – what more could a man like me

want?

Safety and sanity. God how I wish I could have gone back and

told myself these things.

I'd come to a stop here at the threshold that wasn't a real

threshold. It was more like the slow walk into the desert. It was a

slow progression, until suddenly you're at a point where you know

that if you take one more step forwards you're in a new place.

“Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked. “We've come this

far.”

My demon was uncommonly quiet, which in retrospect should have

been enough to warn me about what would happen next. But I wasn't



that smart. I shoved my demon into gear and my foot came down onto

the gas pedal. We jumped forward and crossed over into oblivion.

The dark roads aren't like the others. They look the same, and

they act the same, but they're not the same. I could tell that right

away; these roads were lonely. They were quiet and they were still

and it felt like it was blasphemy just to be traveling on them.

We drove for another hour or so, on dirt roads, and on old ones.

But not all of them were old, which was a surprise. Some of them

were new, and even paved. There were shadows there that sometimes

would move when I wasn't looking. There were things on the road, and

while I didn't see them, I knew they were there. My demon was

growling and I started to grow nervous.

I gunned the engine and we flew, we growled and we surged

through the dark roads, looking for something that Elise had found.

Through it all I knew that the roads were looking for something from

us too. It was a strange feeling, but at that point I had gotten

used to the strangeness.

We were on a paved road when Elise suddenly sat at attention.

“Stop!” she said. “We'll wait here.”

I came to a stop, and turned my truck's engine off. She'd

stopped me on a paved road that looked out into a black horizon. The

road was the only thing in front of us, and on either side was steep

cliff down into nothingness. If I looked down there were things that



moved there, but I didn't look. Not too hard anyway.

“What happens now?” I asked her.

“Now, we wait.”

And wait we did, as the world stayed stationary about us but the

sky seemed to shift, shimmer and scream. Dawn was coming and it was

coming violently. “Whatever happens, I want you to stay calm.” She

told me. “Because there will be things that are about to happen that

you've never seen before.”

I took a deep breath. And dawn came.

And when dawn came, the earth shifted, and the earth cracked and

the world roared. “Now,” she said, “go!” I turned the engine over

and slammed my foot on the gas after putting it into gear.

Cracks appeared on the paved road before us and light poured out

of them, extending up into the sky, linking heaven and earth. I

could see that farther along, and screaming closer, was the edge of

the world. But Elise told me to go. And I trusted her. God knew

why.

I shoved the engine farther into gear as the world around me

crumbled and the things down below that moved when you weren't

looking grasped hungrily at the pieces that fell down to them.

And then I knew where we were headed, because a vast estate

loomed large before us, just over the cliff face. It extended to the

horizon and all around us. It rose out of the depths and it's spires

touched the sky, cracking the blues, yellows and reds of the oncoming

dawn.



I was holding my breath, and I didn't even realize it. “Don't

be afraid,” she told me. “Just close your eyes and go.”

I didn't close my eyes, but I did go.

My truck leapt off the edge of the cliff, jumping into the gap

just as everything crumbled behind and around us. The universe

swelled and I could feel myself screaming, although I don't believe I

ever uttered a sound.

The world stopped for a moment.

And then loudly, and violently, we came to a stop on the

estate's grounds, as the mansion loomed large ahead of us. We

skidded, and kicked up dirt and stone and dust. Tires had never

touched this earth, I knew. This was old earth. This was older than

it should have been considering it's construction.

We came to a screeching halt just in front of the mansion and I

began to breath again. I breathed in. I breathed out. And I knew

that I was safe. Or I thought I was.

All around us there were stone statues of angels. Women with

wings that reached up to the sky. The pebbled stone of the

“driveway” was rich with golds and reds and grays. I took a deep

breath and looked towards Elise as the sun came into view, casting a

soft glow about the world.

“I think this is where you're going.”

She smiled. “Well done. I'm going to open the door, and what

you see of me is what I really am. These are the old roads, and you

are what you truly are here. Do not be afraid.”



She opened the door, and stepped out.

And she was like nothing I had ever seen; a creature who's skin

glowed and dazzled; each scar a chasm into depths of something that

was almost unknowable. She had a halo of twilight and stars, and

wings that extended out into the sky. But they weren't wings because

it was the stuff of the sky falling down into her, filling her.

I stumbled out of the car. “This is what I truly am.” She

marveled and sang up into the sky. She had such joy now. I had

never seen have this joy.

I looked down at myself and saw what I was. I certainly wasn't

the glowing creature she was, but I was more than I was. I was

concrete and engine and steel and chrome. I was my truck and my

truck was me. I was the world according to the road.

I looked back up at her and coughed gravel and tar. “What are

we?” I asked.

“What we truly are.” She said. “Now come, we don't have much

time here.”



Chapter 15

Burial

My truck had grown legs. What we truly are she said, and my

truck was now the monster I knew it to be, with a door in it's side.

It was sleeping and growling and I looked at the keys in my hand and

smiled.

I spat tar and oil onto the ground and followed Elise towards

the house.

That house. House doesn't describe it. It was a mansion. It

was an estate. They sky was red behind it and it went on for miles

and miles. It went on towards the horizon and just kept going. I

spoke, my voice deep and gravelly. “What is this place?”

Elise looked back as she walked. Her voice was like a song

rejoicing toward the dawn. “These roads are long forgotten and

rarely traveled. There are rumors that there are places on these

roads that were built long after they'd been forgotten. It's a good

way to hide things.”

“And you think this is one of these places?”

“I believe so. Like I said, it's only a rumor.” She looked up

at the massive structure that seemed like a sky scraper rendered low

and horizontal. Like the tower of Babel, only trying to reach for

something else other than heaven. “If you want to stay here while I

go inside, I would understand. I hope to not be long.”

I smiled, “I wouldn't miss this for the world.”



I followed her.

The door was wood, and Elise took the knocker in her hand and

brought it down onto the wood once, twice, and three times. The

sound resonated inside, as if it were echoing down the hallways

inside for miles and years.

Does someone live here? It was a good question, but one that I

didn't have time to ask, because the door opened. There was no one

on the other side, but it opened to a great hall half a mile long.

The carpet was lined with stone angels that rejoiced towards heaven.

They held vengeful swords, and defended themselves with sheilds and

armor. Their wings spread wide; wider than any angel that I had seen

in a church.

Something didn't add up. Not that I wasn't interested in being

there. Not at that moment anyway. There was a very interesting place

to be. The experience of a lifetime. The experience to end a life

time. But I get ahead of myself.

Not that I'm spoiling anything I guess. It's not like you don't

know how this story ends.

But like I was saying something didn't add up. And it went all

the way back to that first time Elise and I met, over beer and sherry

and soda. “When we first met,” I began to ask, “you said you were

looking for a burial site. For a painting in that burial site. Some

sort of Dorian Gray thing.” I looked over head at the ceiling on

which a mural of Noah crossing the red sea as walls of water were



held back only by the kindness of an angry God. “This is not a

cemetery.”

The stars shifted inside Elise as she walked and the wings of

blackness and stars and light came down from the ceiling. She

shifted colors as she walked, like some kind of mood ring, or like

her whole body was hazel.

“Everything here is a grave. Whatever this is, it is a monument

to things you wish to forget. Things you wish to bury. But what

we're looking for is in this estate's mausoleum. We're here to find

what the dead wanted buried.”

I didn't like the sound of that.

Besides the angels and the mural, the first thing I noticed was

just how quiet it was. As quiet as a grave perhaps. As quiet as a

cliché. Nothing lived here. I began to suspect that nothing ever

lived here. If Elise was right, and this place was built to bury

things, to hide them, then I didn't necessarily want to be here.

Because things that are buried should stay buried. I've seen

enough zombie movies to know that. But it was something else that

bothered me too. Maybe it was Alan's warning about the Dark Roads.

Maybe it was just a feeling of something more dangerous than George

Romero's imagination.

“We're looking for a painting?”

She nodded, which was just a little strange looking from a woman

that looked like the twilight sky. “Yes.”

As I followed her through the hallway that seemed to go on



forever, I began to wonder just who it was that hired her to find

this painting. “Won't whoever made the painting not want us to find

it?”

She laughed, “Not likely. The painting saved the man from

aging. But not from drowning. Ah, here we are.”

We'd come not to the end of the hall, but to a mural done on the

floor in the image of the moon. And not some stylized version, but

something that looked almost photo realistic.

“What's here?”

“Here's the entrance to the mausoleum. Now hush, no more

questions. Not for sometime. Learn to be patient.” And Elise did

the one thing I never thought I would see her do.

She began to pray.

At least it sounded like prayer; it was done in French, her

language suddenly beautiful in a way that I had never thought of

before. I'm not one who believes French is a beautiful language, but

her accent isn't Parisian. It's something else. Rural she tells me,

but back then I didn't know it. When she spoke her wings that were

not wings contracted down into her and she glowed with fire and with

lightning.

She prayed for what felt like an hour. I took merely to walking

around her, looking at all the different angels rendered in stone.

Whoever was here had a great love for them. There were other things

too; Gods and demigods wrought in iron or marble or copper.

Then I began to hear the whispers. At first I thought it was



merely echoes of Elise's words, because I didn't understand what the

whispers were saying. But as time passed I began to realize that

while the voice was hers, if it was an echo they were not her words

that came back.

That was when I began to get frightened. I'm the type who

watches a horror movie then is able to just go to sleep as if nothing

happened. The first time I saw Nightmare on Elm Street I wouldn't

sleep for a week. I simply don't think of myself as a brave person.

And here I was in the middle of some place that Elise told me was a

burial site and I was hearing words that were in Elise's voice but

weren't her words.

They were English, I could tell that but I couldn't tell what

they were saying. I took a deep breath and didn't wander far after

that.

Elise stopped talking to herself, or to whomever she was trying

to talk to and she took a knife from her belt and before I could say

a word she bit into the flesh of her arms and spread bits of the fire

and electricity over the floor. It pooled like blood, which it was,

and fell coagulated in what looked like prearranged patterns. It

built a doorway.

There was a rumbling, and I swore that somewhere in there I

could hear a great wailing, and I wanted to stop her. I should have.

But I didn't. Instead I just told her what I'd heard.

She frowned. As if all that I'd said simply merited a frown.



“This is a strange place,” was all she said. I couldn't tell if she

believed me. “Yet there's something about it that looks familiar.”

“You've been here before?”

She looked around, “Perhaps.” Then she met my eyes as if she

challenged me to ask more questions. And I knew that she didn't want

to explain herself. “Blood is not the only thing I sacrifice for my

art.” It was the only thing that she gave me. She disappeared down

the stairwell and I followed after. It was that or wait by the

truck, and as much as I trusted my little monster that could, I

didn't trust the walk back to it.

So I followed her down into oblivion. Or at least down a

staircase down underneath the estate.

The walls here were all stone and light poured in from

everywhere and nowhere all at once. I stuck closely to Elise and I

began to feel like I was one of those statues that we'd passed on our

way in. I looked like a modern art project.

The staircase seemed to go on forever, down towards the depths

of the world. I began to wonder just how far down we were, but we'd

come up quite a ways to get here. Things like that, were they even

relevant here on the dark roads? I began to think like a physicist,

and wondered just how much fun someone would have running experiments

out here.

Would that ruin the magic of the place? Magic certainly wasn't

what I thought it was growing up. It didn't seem to break natural

laws, but rather it seemed natural. Like just another hard to spot



bit of the world that we hadn't found yet. But I had no wish to be

the first scientist to come out to the dark roads and try to explain

what all these places and things were.

It's a strange way to think about myself, as a physicist, but it

was what my degree is in. And I would graduate merely days

afterward. The Major would be coming up from Georgia and that in

itself was better than any gift anyone would give me.

I broke out of my reverie as I crossed into a deep barrel vault

a the bottom of the stairs. There were stone monuments there;

coffins I realized, with the remains of the dead perhaps. Perhaps

other things too.

I tried not to think about those other things.

Elise walked quickly through, not stopping nor looking, and I

followed her lead. We walked through five such vaults, buried far

beneath the earth, and hidden even from the dark roads themselves.

In the sixth vault, there was a painting of a man. At least it

must have been a painting, but it was like it was too well done. It

was almost like a photograph, but more than that. The man sat in his

den and he had this expression on his face like he knew more than you

did. His eyes, they seemed to follow, and I wanted to be anywhere

but there with it.

Elise said that the man had caught his essence so well that it

became locked in the painting. I could believe it.

She smiled and walked right up to it, gripping it's sides

carefully. She tugged at it, but it wouldn't come down. I saw her



strain, and she sighed.

“This might take some time. It seems to have taken root here.”

She began to mumble and pray again.

Like I said I wanted to be anywhere but with that painting, and

I began to look around once more. That's when the seventh room

caught my attention.

It shouldn't have. Like I said I'm not the kind of person who

wonders around on his own, challenging horror movie tropes, but

anywhere was better than the room with that bloody painting in it.

God was I wrong.

Because in the next room I saw another stone statue of an Angel,

but it was not like the Angels overhead, built of granite and marble

and iron. The one was made of onyx and it shone in that strange

light that came from nowhere. I gravitated towards it, because it

was strange and beautiful all at once.

I crossed over into that seventh room without ever realizing

that I did so. The black angel stood on a pedestal of granite and

stood with a book and a spear, the kind that seemed to be used for

hunting. It was strange though, because the angels above, while they

were armed, they seemed gentle. This one seemed anything but. It's

face – what I could see of it – looked passive, but not gentle. Not

at all. It looked arrogant. It looked angry. It gripped the spear

like he seemed ready to strike, and his garb was more like that of a

priest or a pastor than that of an Angel.

And it had no plaque, it had nothing saying what this was



supposed to symbolize. What kind of angel would be carved out of

black stone?

“Elijah?” I heard from Elise in the other room. Whatever she

had been doing she seemed done with it.

I turned back and stood at the threshold between the two vaults.

“I'm here,” I told her. And then I told her what I found.

“You shouldn't be wandering around by yourself.” Now she tells

me. But she seemed interested in looking anyway.

She walked passed me, and into the seventh room, and then just

stopped. She was looking up at the black angel, at his hand with the

book and the spear. “I know that book. I know that book.” She

walked towards it slowly, and her eyes looked at the face of the

black angel.

“Oh my God. Oh my God, Elijah, we need to leave.” She looked

back towards me.

I was looking at the black angel when she said what she said.

And that's why I saw it. The black angel moved.

And not only did it move, it moved astonishingly quickly, taking

it's spear and bringing it down...

And I don't know what I did next. I don't know why I did it.

Maybe it was because she hired me to get her here and get her out.

Maybe it was some deep seated instinct that told me I was the man and

I needed to protect her. Maybe it was because deep down I'm just that

kind of person. But all of a sudden I was there and pushing her away

from the strike that impossibly came from this man carved out of



onyx.

She fell and I was the only thing that the spear found.

For a moment I just choked on...something. It was my own blood,

made from tar and oil and antifreeze. I coughed once, then twice and

then the spear was wrenched from my body, and all of me just started

pouring out onto the stone floor below.

I fell.

“Elise,” his voice spoke in whispers long unheard, with an

accent that was part Spanish and part New Orleans drawl. “I thought

you would never come.”

I struggled to stand. I hurt. I hurt so much, and I knew that I

was going to die. His foot came down onto my chest, not letting me

stand. Not letting me move.

“Let him go.” I heard Elise say, and I began to laugh, if it

didn't hurt so goddamn much. Too late for that. I wasn't going

anywhere.

“I don't think so. No, I think I'll take him. His blood.

Everything. You left me here to die Elise. You left me here for

almost a century. But that's all over now. It was blood that bound

me, and now it will be blood that sets me free.”

I could barely even tell what was happening. They were speaking

and I lost it then. I could feel myself slipping away. Then I heard

something else. Something like an explosion. Something deep, and

something old.

And then I heard Elise say, “Go to hell.” And there was another



sound then, and this one I knew because it sounded like I felt. It

was screaming.

And I lost it then. Everything faded to black.

When I came to everything was shaking and Elise was pouring into

my chest.

There was pain in everywhere I moved, and I looked around –

there were shadows everywhere, coalescing once more towards the

center of the room.

“Can you move?” Elise asked.

I sat up, despite the pain and looked once more at the wound in

my chest. Elise had cut herself and she was bleeding into it, but

here in these dark roads we are what we truly are and everything that

is in Elise is in her blood. She was her own painting that had

trapped her essence.

“What did you do?”

“I saved your life. Come on, we don't have much time.”

I struggled to my feet, and saw the shadows, and the pedestal.

“Come on,” she said, “We don't have much time. I merely scattered

him, but now that he has your blood, it won't take him long.”

I began to move.

We moved slowly through the six barrel vaults. We were leaving

the painting behind, but somehow I didn't want to stop and point that

out. Why did she save me? I wondered it. Sometimes I wonder it

still. But then I knew. It was that truck. Somewhere between



capture and loving use, the monster in my truck had become loyal and

I doubt that it would leave without me. And she knew that.

The entire estate began to rumble, and I doubled my admittedly

slow pace. I was coughing up blood and I didn't know whether it was

my own or Elise's. She lead me up the stairs, and we left a trail

behind us, of her blood, and of mine. Little pieces of ourselves

left behind.

Then we were at the main floor and I collapsed. I could just

move no further. Elise dragged me a few feet from the entrance, and

I could hear this rushing behind me. I turned on my back to look up,

and there was the black angel flying, once more put together from the

shadows Elise had spread, and made strong again from the blood we'd

left behind.

It soared up high. Elise looked down at me. “I'm sorry. This

was all my fault.” When she spoke it was this strange double voice,

like she spoke in my head as well.

“I'm free!” The black angel was yelling. What he was free of

was only Elise's guess at the time. “But not completely. I need

more blood.” Then it came flying down towards us from on high.

And I heard a growl and the crash of steel on stone, and all I

could see was the black angel break away at the last possible moment,

and a monstrous claw take a swipe.

My truck. My truck had come to save me. The black angel cried,

and started a long turn to begin his assault once again, and this

time I knew he would not be deterred by the ministrations of a minor



demon.

Elise took me, and her, and now I couldn't tell where she began

and I ended, and she got us both in the car. She sat in the drivers

seat and she slammed her foot down on the gas, even as my demon

wanted to stand and fight. I don't know whether it was because we

were now equal parts of each other or what, but in that moment the

demon obeyed her.

We went surging through the hall, towards the entrance as behind

us the black angel slammed through statues and pillars to get to us.

“Brace yourself!” I heard her say, and I looked towards the wall that

Elise planned to take us through. We were bleeding all over my front

seat, and Elise's blood is power.

We slammed into, and then through the ancient wall of stone, and

into the courtyard outside with a sound that was like thunder. I

jerked my head back, to see the black angel stopped by some barrier

where there was only a hole that I saw. It was still trapped in the

estate somehow. But I understood it wouldn't be for long. I'd lost

too much blood.

The shadows came from down below us, those strange moving things

that I'd tried not to look at earlier, and they surrounded the

mansion that went on for miles. It shrouded it in the darkness and

began to take it apart brick by brick by brick.

They made alarmingly short work, and I was losing consciousness.

Elise was saying something but I couldn't hear her. I couldn't

understand her. The world began to rumble and shake and I knew that



we would die.

We would have to die.

Cracks began to appear in the ground, down into the nothingness

below us, as the world that was began to crumble, and break. Was I

ready for death? I was not. But I saw no choice.

Then, impossibly, there was a shooting star. Or what I thought

was a shooting star. Perhaps it was the black angel, now free from

his prison. But it was not.

It slammed into the ground in front of us, raising dust and bits

of reality began to blur. It took me a moment to recognize what it

was. It was Alan. Alan that truly was. He looked strangely like

the Alan that I knew. Still I could feel the power that emanated

from him. He could do anything here. He could do anything anywhere

I began to realize.

He spoke, and I swear he said something like, “You're a goddamn

idiot.” But I can't be sure, because I was just on the edge of

consciousness.

Then Alan reached into the curtain of reality and he pulled,

ripping a doorway into a safer place.

Then I really lost it.

First there was darkness.



When I came to all I could feel was pain. And then surprise

that I could feel pain. I had survived. How did I survive?

Memories began to come back in bits and pieces. That thing stabbed

me. The black angel stabbed me.

I opened my eyes and looked around. I was in a garage. I was

in Bill's garage. Specifically his office. There were plans and

bits of paper everywhere, and through the window I could see my

truck, now just a truck, sitting there in the garage alone in the

dark.

Alan sat there in the darkness with me, and I could see him

then. He was unhappy, clearly. He was probably unhappy with me.

“She thought you were dead.”

Did she now?

I struggled to sit up. “What happened?”

Alan poured a glass of water and then handed it to me. I drank

greedily. “I saved your life. I could tell you that you should

never have gone there. But its too late for that now. What's done

is done. And I suspect that consequences shall be more educational

than a lecture.”

I looked around, and put my hand to my temple. My head hurt.

My everything hurt, but my head hurt. “Is Elise....okay?”

“After a fashion. Saving your life the way she did, it had some

unforeseen side effects. Unforeseen by her.”

I frowned, and looked down. My chest was whole, but it still

hurt. I remembered her blood pouring into me and how strange that



felt.

“Will she be all right? I have some questions for her.”

Alan looked at me grimly. “Well, you should probably ask her

yourself.”

You probably should.

That voice in my head wasn't my thoughts. They were thoughts,

they were voices, but they weren't my thoughts or voice.

There were some...unwanted side effects.

I put two and two together.

Son of a bitch.

Act 2 - Prophet

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Transcript of Act 2 - Prophet