They drove on. Tolenka writhed in Franny’s arms, but the movements didn’t seem directed at the cop. He fought some other battle. A sibilant whisper wove through the truck. Words on the edge of understanding. It raised the hairs on the back of Franny’s neck.

A thread of violence began to weave and dance through his thoughts. He looked down at the misshapen horror he held in his arms. Such perversion shouldn’t be allowed to live. A new majesty was waiting to be born. Only this abomination held it back.

Franny watched with bemused interest as his hand crept toward the ropy, wattled neck. The truck veered and he had to grab for purchase and it broke the spell. He noticed their surroundings. They were driving through a deep valley washed by a poisonous greenish-yellow light. The source of the light was a massive bloated moon that filled the sky and kissed the horizon. All around were colossal mountains whose unnaturally sharp peaks were like jagged teeth rending at the sky, trying to devour the moon.

Franny didn’t need Bruckner to tell him that it was time. Cradling the old man in his arms Franny crawled on his knees to the drop gate of the truck.

“It’s now or never, mate!” Bruckner shouted.

Franny looked down into the ravaged face and tried to see the vestige of the handsome man from the picture. “You did it. You can rest now.”

He heaved the wizened body out the back. It hit the slate-grey ground hard and exploded. At that moment a thousand mouths opened on the face of the moon and began to scream. The mountains walked, and out of the mist of blood rose something that defied words and understanding. A swirling blackness that began to rapidly swell until it was a towering twisted figure. Sparkling red glyphs ran through the body. An inchoate howl of rage like a gust of hurricane winds struck the truck. Bruckner fought for control as he downshifted and floored it.

The mouths of the moon became eyes and they wept filling the valley with a heaving sea of decay. The smell of burning rubber joined the other stomach-churning smells as the liquid ate at the tires. The canvas cover was starting to burn. When the acid reached him Franny would burn, too.

Franny flinched as liquid pattered through the holes in the canvas, but it was only water that struck his upturned face. Outside the pus slowly shifted into black water and the mountains transformed into trees trailing beards of moss.

Franny collapsed onto his back and stared at the canvas roof of the truck but all he could see was the shadowed face of the god. The god he had defied and thwarted. It would find him someday and a reckoning exacted. He began to shake.

New sounds broke through the fear that gripped him. Voices and car horns, the sounds of traffic. He managed to sit up. They were on a street circling a tall pillar with the figure of a man on top.