Czarnecki pulled me into the shed and slammed the door shut, plunging the room into darkness. He yanked a string to turn on a bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. The kid quieted. He was twenty or so, with blond hair and blue eyes. The skin on his forehead, his arms, his legs—wherever the sun’s rays had touched him—was black and blistered. The stench of it made me retch, and I retreated in horror until my back was against the door.

Before my eyes, the wounds began to heal. The charred areas flattened and softened, and new flesh spread like melting wax to cover the lesions.

“Isn’t that something?” Czarnecki said.

I had no response.

“You can shoot them, stab them, run over them with your car, and they’ll come right back from it.”

Pretty soon it was as if the boy had never been burned at all. As his pain eased, he regarded me with a disdainful sneer that revealed a gold tooth up front. He was so thin, his elbows and knees were swollen knobs, and you could count his ribs. There was a tattoo of a butterfly on his chest.

Enough for now.

My fingers are too weak to hold this pen, my mind too tired to remember clearly. I’ll get some sleep and set the rest down later. Unless I wake and find this has all been a bad dream. Please let that be so.

TODAY’S PASSAGE: Everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

—John 3:20

8

8

THE FIENDS MAKE THE RIDE TO PHOENIX OVER TWO NIGHTS, with a stop in Alpine to wait out the sun. They keep to deserted back roads, hogging both lanes and rocketing through sleeping one-horse towns.

At one point they come upon a pickup truck rattling home from some late-night mischief and speed up to overtake and surround it. Eight black Harleys ridden by eight leather-clad devils materialize out of the darkness, and the truck’s driver is buffeted by the bone-jarring rumble and soul-deep throb of the bike’s engines. The Fiends laugh at the yokel’s jaw dropping beneath his cowboy hat and roar off—disappearing, the driver swears later, in a cloud of smoke and swirling sparks.

They get to Phoenix just before dawn and check into the Apache Motel. That evening Antonia calls George Moore’s man. The guy is some kind of hawkshaw, some kind of bounty hunter. He doesn’t offer his name.

“McMullin is flopping at the Sandman on Van Buren,” he says. “But he’s at a ball game tonight, at the stadium.”