Up ahead another sign rose into view. It flanked the highway on the right, immediately opposite the merge of a secondary road, one which cut from Highway 50 at a sharp angle and snaked over a rise and disappeared. Stiles pulled the van onto the shoulder directly in front of the sign. It was really two sheet-metal placards on one pole, both light green and peppered with buckshot and 22s. The uppermost marked the new road as Croglin Way. The other sign simply read ISHERWOOD in modest letters and pointed down that same pike.

Alex’s words echoed in his ears as he pulled onto that side road. Real evil this time. His hand strayed beneath his vest and touched the butt of a pistol for reassurance.

Croglin Way was a typical country road, well traveled but rarely cared for. The pavement was pocked and pitted and it played hell with the van’s suspension. The road’s edges were crumbling away, and the abundance of tire gouges in the mud beyond testified to its narrow width. It was lined on one side by near-naked shade trees that left a stuttering tattoo of sunlight on the windshield, and on the other by a jigsaw of farms and open fields. Rusty strings of barbed wire edged the latter, grown over with cotton-haired milkweed and withering stalks of sunflowers, and completely fallen down in some places. Leaves swirled everywhere when the wind picked up, through the fields and onto the road like brown snow, a constant reminder of winter’s approach.

For those enamored with country life, this setting would have evoked a certain rustic charm. But not to Stiles. His reactions were guarded; he was always wary and watching, trying to see beyond the placid images before him. Because, in his experience, the essence of evil always seemed to permeate rurality. It was not a hard and fast rule—even the Enemy, whatever it really was, had killed Alex in one of the biggest cities in the country. But such incidents were generally isolated. The majority of the evil he had encountered over the years, no matter what form it took, had at least one foot planted in the countryside.