Bancroft sat in the chair hidden in a niche of shadow between two gleaming windows. He watched the surgeon sleeping. A snore emerged every three breathes with a flare of his nasal cavity. The morning light reached the bed and rose to the sheets. Bancroft leaned forward into the light. Any minutes now. The world was awakening. A smoky haze hunger over the bluffs. The wind came through the crack in the window and brushed the curtains. It reeked of funeral pyre. Grass fires torched the Midwest. No one determined the cause for the magnitude. Patches of fire across Iowa, South Dakota, Illinois, Colorado- Kansas was ablaze and no people crossed from state lines- Nebraska however remained untouched by the flame. So far. Many strange things occurred lately. Unbelievable things. But none of it mattered to Bancroft. He wanted to resume his search. And he had only one place left to look. Once he finished his work.
The drone of semis down the highway devoured the songs of the meadowlarks. It reminded Bancroft of a time before- back a decade or even more. Bancroft rubbed his sharp chin and shifted his head towards the light. A highway junction diner one midnight in Missouri.
That night Bancroft ate a steak. Rare. And smoked a cigarette. He scribbled on a pad. Taking notes, drawing diagrams, making lists and scratching away possibilities- figuring where he ought to begin searching. The counter lady distracted his concentration. “You can't smoke in here.” she pointed to a sign.
“You don't get paid enough.” He told her.
Her attention drifted to a tired stranger with long legs, short fingers, with elbows that axed out like yield signs. He came in, passed the row of empty seats, and dropped into the stool adjacent to Bancroft. Half of his face leathery and scaled. Bancroft knew right away. A truck driver. One of his eyes oozed with infection. A band aid covered a spot on his throat. He smiled at the counter lady. His open mouth exposed so much gum that it grew over one of his front teeth. Before any sentence he hummed like a motorboat, collecting his thoughts. He asked for a plate of crackers and a glass of water.
He leaned over to peek at Bancroft's project.
“Mmm...What are you looking for?”
“none of your business.” Cigarette ash smeared across the page.
“Can I bum a smoke?”
“No.”
“Just one?”
“Then I must give one to everybody.” Bancroft meditated on how to get away with his next murder.
“You aren't a nice guy. Been hauling since '92 and not met a single nice person out there.”
Bancroft snorted and pretended to watch the TV. The news reported on police recovering a body from an old dryer abandoned in the bed of a creek. The truck driver snickered.
“Hey.” he nudged Bancroft. “Hear about her before?”
“Not my problem.”
“Have you?” his enthusiasm rose. “Have you?”
Bancroft smashed the cigarette out on his plate. “Why do you insist on bothering me?”
“Because I knew you the minute I saw you that we’d be friends. Mmm...You’re going to like what I have to say. That girl went missing two months ago. I had her in the back of my truck.”
“You're sleep deprived.”
“No-No. I got pictures-” he took out his wallet and took a folded parchment from a hidden sleeve “had her in my truck for two months.”
He unfolded the parchment. A Polaroid of the girl on the TV. She wore a woman’s dress that awkwardly drooped over her. Stood crew footed in heels too small for her feet. With red palms held up to plead. She stood on a weed garden growing out from rotting floor boards. Vines hung from holes in the roof, no walls behind her. Only open country. Her emaciated features sharpened.
“Ain't she a dime.” Bancroft stuck the dead cigarette back in his mouth.
“I move all over the country. By the time they find a body I'm gone. They can search my truck, but she’s gone too!”
“You’re worse than an ape.” Bancroft pressed a finger into the truck driver's chest. “A mindless mongoloid.”
Bancroft paid his bill and walked out. The truck driver sat with his plate of crackers. Crestfallen. Bancroft walked among the junction. Storage garages, a sanitation center, a cigar shop, and a keno bar. The sanitation center looked cleaner and better maintained than the rest. Iron bars impeded windows to the cigar shop. The garages smelled of urine and burned out aspiration. Black letters dropped from the keno bar's sign. It read Fri Kor Night. A vagabond dug through a dumpster. He peeked from the receptacle when he heard Bancroft's boots pass. Bancroft paid no mind. He stared at the pad in his hands. The search looked like it would take a lifetime. At his car he put the pages in his back pocket. He took out keys and unlocked the door. He paused. Steps encroached behind him. A heavy hand clasped his shoulder and swung him around. The truck driver's trembling, tear filled face looked into Bancroft's beady eyes.
“Please, don't tell no one what I said! Please,-”
Bancroft took the hand from his shoulder, and pressed his thumb into a magic button between the truck driver's two middle fingers. He squealed in pain and dropped to his knees. Bancroft only pressed harder.
“Listen here. I've killed more more people than you've met.”
Bancroft dropped the hand, climbed into his car and drove into the night. He would’ve broken the man's arm but he admired the truck driver for his success over the years. He understood the photo meant that he kept other photos and the police don't need to find a body in the truck if they can find a photograph. Bancroft spent the rest of the night thinking of how he would get away crimes of the truck driver. He knew how to get away with such crimes. He did it before. But wolves don’t teach ferrets how to hunt.
Bancroft took his thoughts back to the present, but wondered if one of those trucks came from that junction in Missouri. Bancroft looked back from the window. The surgeon stirred, his pale arms reaching out from under the sheets and stretching out as he lifted his head from the pillow. Weariness sealed his eyes shut. He dropped his head back down, rubbed his eyes, arched his back, rolled his hips around and cracked his back. He sat up and opened his eyes. Confusion snapped across his face, and then a frozen concern paralyzed him. Bancroft stretched his legs out into the light, crossed them, and watched like a burned out scientist waiting for results. The surgeon swung his head to the empty glass, and gasped. “Who sent you?”
“None of that now.”
“You remember me don’t you?”
“No.”
“We went to Creighton together. Don't you remember?”
“I already poisoned you. There’s no talking your way out of this.”
“I remember you!” Sweat dripped into his eyes. “Bancroft Malum! Remember when we shaved all the cadavers and we thought Doctor Gupta was going to eat us alive? You said you didn't care because you really wanted to be a vet!”
“It doesn't matter, anyhow. I already spent the money.”
“but why... why?” veins in his neck throbbed. He clutched at his chest and groveled in agony. He curled up and dug his fingers into his chest as if to scrape the poison out. Foam spilled over pale lips as his limbs spasmed out of his control. Bancroft leaned forward, checked his watch, and smiled like a child on Christmas Eve peeking into the presents. He concocted his own poisons, waited all night, and the serum took effect exactly when he predicted. His stomach growled. Bancroft didn't care. Finishing his search occupied his mind. Once the surgeon died.
In his last moments the surgeon lifted with a bolt of life and tumbled from the bed, grabbing hold of his sheets, the white fabric flowing on top of him as he dropped with a mild crash. Bancroft stood up.
He lifted the sheet away from the stone face of his target. Felt his neck. No pulsation. Bancroft whistled a melody he no longer remembered the name of. The only lyrics he remembered: There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins, And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. Bancroft stuck his hands into his pockets and stood up to leave. He walked with his shoulders pinched and his upper body perched forward. His steps echoed like heart beats.
He lifted the sheet away from the stone face of his target. Felt his neck. No pulsation. Bancroft whistled a melody he no longer remembered the name of. The only lyrics he remembered: There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel's veins, And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. Bancroft stuck his hands into his pockets and stood up to leave. He walked with his shoulders pinched and his upper body perched forward. His steps echoed like heart beats.
Bancroft exited the bedroom, closing the door soundlessly behind him. A gallery of photos hung on the walls. Mountains. Fish. The surgeon shaking hands with other white coats. He came into the parlor and stopped before the stairs that led to the front door. He smelled coffee. He turned his head to a door barely open. Dishes clanged, a tap ran. Tender humming of flat notes. The running water stopped. The door opened. Bancroft stood exposed in the light spilling in from the balcony. A young lady halted in the doorway. Her eyes snared onto Bancroft as if a grizzly bear stood before her. She didn't see the nocturnally pale skin tone of Bancroft nor the flowing coattails of his suit. She saw a hideous idol emerging from noxious artillery shell smoke with wings scraping the walls. Tangles of hair impaled on barbed finger tips with one hand outstretched as if intending to tear out the heart of heaven. Igniting eyes that burned with the intensity to drill through quartz. The monster she saw seethed like a meteor striking the ocean-
Bancroft stood frozen. He reached for his weapon, and remembered that he left it behind in his vehicle. But he didn’t need a gun. He cocked his tongue. The whistling stopped. He shifted his eyes to the photographs on the mantel. One of the girl, her homely features asymmetrical like disjointed woodwork. He smirked.
“You must be the daughter. Wasn't expecting any visitors.” He walked forward.
“I was s-s-surprising him…” Tears build up in her eyes. His heartbeat-steps struck like hammers on a hot blade. His eyelashes pointed at her like a row of archers.
“Not today. You know there’s one nerve in your body- the nervus radialis in your brachial plexus- it is the most painful nerve in your body. But we won’t need to find that out, will we? I’m willing to forget all about this,” He took the coffee from her. “If you just get in your car, drive back home, climb into bed, and forget that you ever came here.”
“I'm just here to s-see my dad.”
“Smart. Now, I’d like to bring you to him.”
He went down the stairs and the daughter followed. Bancroft whistled the rest of his song. They went out the front door, across the porch, and to the well across the property. Bancroft lifted the lid, and looked down. Dark fluid shimmered along the sandy bottom. His head cut against the glaring reflection. Mist poured from the trees. Forest animals scampered. Grassy dew soaked through his shoes.
“Look below.”
“I’m afraid to. As a little girl I thought mons-s-s-sters would pull me down.”
“The monsters are up here with us.”
She tilted her head to see. Her eyes popped out of thin eyelids. She stared and for a second she thought she saw the arachnid legs of her nightmares crawling up with ferocious hunger for daylight. A nail at the tip of the leg grabbed a coil of hair. The hollow wail of the well walls constrained her gasps, her deep voice moaning disfigured cries. Her head dropped and her waist followed. The water splashed at the bottom. The sound rose like smoke. Bancroft recovered the well. The semi trucks droned over the sound of the waking world but vanished in the distance as Bancroft walked back to where he left his Mercedes.
Bancroft walked across the lawn. Dew soaked through his socks. Summer mornings pleased him. The killer heat is dormant. The air feels almost springlike. As he exited the property, an acute pain picked at his brain. Silver aura blinded his left eye, and along with acute pain. Bancroft rubbed his temples. The pain only increased. Nausea boiled his stomach. A red hot coal burned in his skull. The silver aura widened. And from the silver he thought he saw cloaked shadows. Flat ground splitting apart, and jet towers erecting. A cult of monsters stood around a plateau. There stood a creature in black armour beneath a cape of royal purple. Four arms, with a pair of man legs beneath its waist and a shrunken pair of wolf legs from the sides of it's hip bone, Bancroft almost fell over. The silver loomed over him... the scene right in front of him, feeling as real the air breathed. Feathers covered the flesh of the creature. It took hold of the helmet it wore. Bancroft panicked and dropped to the ground. The silver aura shrunk and seeped into the grass. Bancroft climbed up. He felt fine brushing grass off his chest and legs. Dehydration, he figured. He tried to remember last time he ever suffered from any migraine, let alone one so pronounced. Sleep deprivation, he lamented.
A police cruiser idled at a crossing of the country road. His gut toughed. The windshield reflected the bleach sky. But remained still. Even as Bancroft paused and looked at it through the cross hairs of his squinting eyelids. A strange curiosity enticed him. The police cruiser looked to be thirty years old. A sedan. Black with white doors. The lights on top broken. The headlights broken too. Rust ate away at the vehicle. Bullet holes riddled the hood. Bancroft approached. The gravel from the road dusted his pant legs and caked his damp shoes. The water irritated his feet. The cruiser parked diagonally. Cracks crossed the windshield. Bancroft peered inward. He found no one inside. A scoped rifle locked into place on the dash. The back seats smeared with dry blood. A glove lay with the fingers drooping over the seat. He readjusted his headwear, and went back to his own vehicle.
Bancroft entered his Mercedes, took out the map, and marked where he needed to be with an X. He removed his coat, unbuttoned his shirt, took his shoes off, and unpeeled the socks from his feet. Waiting the night away drained his strength. His thighs and shoulders ached. He yawned until his jaw popped. He started the car up. He wished for an 8-ball. Anything to stimulate his journey out of Nebraska. He hated this place. The heat feels more personal. As if the land intended to kill anything living on it. Not because it wants nothing to live there, but because power is its own excuse. Bancroft just needed to cross over the west.
He drove to the highway and turned on the radio. A gospel station played music from the 40's. The kind of music that his grandfather liked. Bancroft liked the scratch of old records, the ghostly recordings of easy going voices behind pipe organs. He wished for Christmas time. For the snowy weather, but most of all for the Christmas songs. He rolled the window down. The earth warmed up. The air rushed in and stunk of pesticide. The plains cut into rows of tiny sprouts. Bancroft noticed. No others cars joined him on the highway. Not ahead of him. Not behind. Only the haze of smoke. He pressed the accelerator. The rivets on the pedal impressed the sole of his foot. He shifted to fifth gear. The station's morning show started. Bancroft reached to change the station, but what they said surprised him. An earthquake in Iowa. 6.8 magnitude. Only minutes ago. Damage so grievous that president Duke was due to make a rare public appearance. Bancroft wondered if anyone would try to shoot the president again. After that ended a new show began. Bancroft listened at once, his attention snared. He couldn't believe what he heard. He turned up the volume. A spiritual guru addressed calls from distressed old ladies. Bancroft couldn't be sure, but he started giggling, wondering if it could be... the caller asked him something. The spiritual leader hummed like a motorboat as he collected his thoughts. Bancroft exploded in laughter. The truck driver. After all these years! He slapped his thigh. Laughed until his ribs ached. He struggled to breath. Each time he tried to halt it only became funnier. His cheeks burned, and his side cramped. He glanced back to the road, and a glimpse of shadow slipped from a patch of high grass. He lost concentration. He laughed until a cramp sealed his right side and it hurt enough to cause him to lose his voice and choke out silent laughter. The shadow in the road developed and as he sped nearer he saw definitions of a dumbstruck kid- Bancroft caught these details and cried “By God!” as he slammed the brakes. The wheels screeched, but the hood devoured the boy. All the same. The car stopped. Bancroft broke from the car and ran across pavement to the twisted body. One look made it clear. Bancroft swore and stomped the road. An easy wind pushed by carrying small cyclones of dust. He checked each way with his arms on his hips. Grassy plains filled with space between bean fields. A barn with the roof caved in beyond some trees. No houses. No witnesses. Bancroft looked back to the kid. Straight black hair matted with blood. Glasses now in pieces, and forged into what's left of his face. A bag in his possession. Bancroft took it and undid the tie. A pillow. A blanket. A pack of Chesterfields. The kid was a runaway. Bancroft stuffed the smokes in his pocket. Took the blanket out, covered the body and rolled the runaway up. He bent down and hoisted up the body. Not hard work. Weighed 90 pounds at the most, but pieces of the runaway stuck to the road as the body lifted. Bancroft chastised the dead runaway as he took him to the trunk. “Little cretin! Look where you're walking next time. Now look what I have to do! Any idea how much time this costs me? How much trouble this is?”
He stuffed the runaway in the trunk. Shut the hatch. The heat intensified. Sweat ticked down behind his ear. Another migraine hit. He leaned against the car. The silver aura strobed, and pain chiseled between the hemispheres of his brain. The pain didn't bother him. He'd been mauled by dogs, stabbed with a rusted pitch fork, electrocuted by a car battery. But Bancroft shook in fear. The tower. The feathered creature before the congregation of ailing horrors. He never felt a fear so potent, as if the danger already ate away at him like a parasite. Bancroft vomited. What little his stomach contained. The runaway's blood soaked into the road. Bancroft looked to the blood, but a flash of light stabbed his eyes. He looked to the shade of a tree on a hilltop. The old rusted police car sat with sunlight reflecting in splashes of light. A scope. Bancroft climbed back into his Mercedes. Kept his head low, but surveyed the landscape. He drove further, pulled onto a country road, and followed it until he lost sight of the police cruiser. He took a towel from his things, and stopped to clean blood and pick pieces of boy from the grill. He lit the towel on fire and let wind blow the ashes away. Another migraine came and went back into hiding.
In the distance a tower of smoke rose from a ring of blackened stakes ranked from a halo of ash. Flakes of charred leaves floated from the crown of the tower of smoke. Insects popped against the windshield. The wipers smeared yellow guts across the glass. A grasshopper plopped onto the ridge of the rolled down window. It's wings folded into its body. Bancroft swatted at it. But it remained in place watching with bulbous eyes locked onto Bancroft. He flicked it out the window and rolled the window up. A wing stuck to the windshield. The wipers failed to scrape it off no matter how many times they passed over it.
Bancroft massaged his temples to alleviate the lingering migraine. Some pain numbed, but the pain that felt at the core of his brain hurt as much as ever. His left eye remained blind this time, but he felt it tremble. The cornea down to the stem, to the root of his brain.
A warm grasp fell over his shoulder. He thought something from the back fell over, but the warmth soon leaked down his shoulder. He took hold and his foaming nausea expanded to the base of his throat. A bloody hand of broken knuckles hung on his shoulder. In the rearview he clearly saw the collapsed face of the runaway he hit sitting up against the driver's seat. Metal rims imbedded into the bridge of his nose, glass in his eyes. Blood dripped. He sat quietly. Not breathing. His hand without pulse.
“You're no ordinary runaway.” Bancroft said. The rolling definitions of the smoke became clear.
The runaway tried to speak but his jaw hung fractured. He pointed to the smoke.
“What's there?” Bancroft's left eye closed. Tears leaked. He rubbed them away.
The runaway gestured with his twisted hands. A rifle.
“How far has he been following me?” Bancroft rubbed at his temples. The pain sunk enough for him to open his eye as the aura reduced to dimes hanging in the air. The runaway vanished from the back seat. The blood remained on his shoulder.
The gospel stopped. A medieval polyphony began. A hundred voices singing in a long dead language. Non latine, Bancroft thought. He turned the knobs. Nothing changed. He tapped the off key. Nothing changed. He listened. It's familiar... The tower of smoke looked clearer. Not in a single beam of smoke, but the smoke from each burned tree mixing into a singular cloud. The nearer he drove, the more insects plagued his view. Ash and bug guts fell like slow rain. He slowed, desiring to find a place to leave his car.
He left it on the side of the road by a mound of gravel. Put his shoes and coat back on, scooped up the body and walked towards the trees. Weeds tangled around his feet. Burrs clung to his ankles and mosquitoes bit his neck. Bugs flew over his head. Ash built up on his shoulders, and hair. He stumbled over a pit but remained balanced. The sun beamed through the overcast of smoke. The ground crunched beneath his feet. What remained of the trees radiated a mild heat. Specks of ash stuck to Bancroft's sweaty flesh. Wood crackled. Red embers glowed from inside fallen branches. He stepped around toppled trees. Through unscathed thorn bushes. Across a bridge over a creek bed. The stream ran like a sick snake. Colored a polluted green. The stream ran along a way, but stopped at a beaver dam. Bancroft followed the dry bed. A dragonfly whizzed past his ear headed for the sandbar of a quaint body of liquid swarmed with winged insects. The water looked unpolluted to Bancroft. Branches poked from the surface. Ripples echoed around them. The water looked dark, and smelled like fish. Frogs hiding in tall grass croaked. A layer of algae floated under a glaze of pond water. As Bancroft came nearer he saw no branches steaming from the surface, but outstretched hands grasping towards the sky. Noses and tips of boots protruded. A dragonfly rested on an erect ring finger, fluttered its wings, and lifted once more into the swarm. A cold wind from the surface of the pond reached beneath Bancroft's clothing. The runaway's hand dangled. With his shoes in the sand, the soles flush against the lip of the fluid, he noticed faces emerging from the water. Bloated, but eyes half pen, mouths filled with mud and weeds. He waded in , carrying the corpse. The water chilled his legs, his hips. His feet sunk into mud, but the body became easier to carry. Once the water cooled his naval, he let go of the body. The runaway floated in place. Bancroft grew nervous. He needed to sink the bastard. He looked around for a rock. But he didn't have to. Hands slid from the algae and grabbed hold of the runaway's clothes and hair and pulled him under. Bancroft reached for his gun, but realized he again left it behind. He splashed through the water. Stopping at the shore. Dripping wet. Shaken, resting in the sand, no longer knowing if anything he saw manifested into tangible fact anymore. He took out a cigarette, but found the pack soaked. The migraine returned. He realized the cause (because he loses focus of his mission!) He dropped the pack in the sand. A rifle cocked.
A trio stood on a tough of grass before the pond. The constable held the scoped rifle against his shoulder in one hand. Held two captives chained together in the other. His shirt splattered with mud and blood. His chest large, his legs thin and bent backwards like a mutt's. Fur exposed through the gaps of his misaligned buttons. The captives. One male. One female. Sordid couple. Both beaten, abused, neglected. Oozing scabs riddled their faces.
“You here to kill me?”
“That'd be no good.” The constable led the captives. Passed Bancroft, slowly. A walk in the park. Into the water. When one resisted, the constable pulled the chain and choked them both. Once deep enough, he lined them up and shot them. The bodies floated, and gradually sank as a cushion of red velvet water comforted their descent. The Constable walked back to the sand. “You're going to tell me where you're headed first.”
Bancroft's migraine drove railroad ties into his brain. Both eyes became blurry, bulleted with silver convection. Spots rising, disappearing, reappearing without pattern. Shadows of cloaked men behind each silvery hole burning in his corneas.
The constable discharged the shell. Steam simmered in the wet sand.
“By tomorrow it won't matter.” Bancroft said sitting up in the sand. His skull caught in a vice.
“I like it here. Would be nice if we could stick around longer...” he took a breath of the sulfuric air, and scowled as if his hopes dashed. “I'm not in the mood to sweet talk you.”
“Never.” Bancroft crawled backwards towards the water. The Constable rolled his eyes.
“You're just like your dad and his dad before him. When you're ready, we'll talk. Until then I'll just wait here for while you run out of air.”
Bancroft's coat submerged as his hands sunk into the water. Sand and grass wrapped around his arms. Water flowed over his abdomen and waist. The shining aura strobed between vacuum black and thunderous silver. It consumed the constable. Outlines of armored warriors emerged from behind the charred trees. Cold hooks took hold of Bancroft's collar and coat sleeves. The water froze his sweating neck and scalp. Something took hold of his hair in tough tangles and held him under as he took a mouthful of pond water into his lungs. Algae filtered through his teeth. Bitter mud kissed his lips. The daylight eclipsed. Bubbles escaped from his nostrils and open mouth. Slowed. Then stopped as he tensed his throat and stopped breathing.
A bolt ripped through the water and struck his thigh. Bancroft tasted his own blood in the water. The hands dropped him, and something else took hold of his ankle, propelling him back upwards, then lifting him from the water. The constable stood in the water, taking Bancroft by the collar. Bancroft heard his voice, but only saw the figures along the shore inching towards the water. Bancroft moaned in the fracturing pain in his head and thigh. The figures spoke- the same as on the radio.
“I can't go back.” the constable said. “Know how long I been there? How hard I worked to break free? I can't go back. You have to tell me. I must know.”
The figures stepped aside. Another shadow emerged.
“Not this- not this!” Bancroft cried. Its armour looked hand crafted, with ornamental etchings and designs of fearsome beasts. . The others all watching him as he passed. It's attention unbroken as it waded into the water. It's capes left trails in the water. It lifted its helmets, and the others followed, revealing multifaced monstrosities whose blasphemous appearances scarred Bancroft's memories in unforgettable ways. He grabbed for the rifle the constable held. The Constable claimed again and again “I'm staying here! I like it here, I'm staying!” The monstrosities reached with iron gauntlets and took the constable. He let go of Bancroft, and he sunk back into the pond as the constable fought the forces that he saw none of. Yet he recognized the pain of their hold. He screamed as they pulled him from the water. His boots dropped into the pond. His blood dripped moments later. The aura dissipated. The pain numbed in the cold, dark water. Bancroft writhed in confusion. He rose from the water, witnessing the constable suspended. Taking no chances he darted from the water, and raced away from the pond, a trail of ash blossoming with each step. The constable repeating himself. “I won't go back. I won't” until lightning cracks tore his body to pieces.
Only when Bancroft reached his mercedes did he recognize the language being chanted by the figures and the radio. Enochian. He hoped his keys remained in his pocket. They did not. He panicked, but found them in the cup holder. His heart flipped over. He put them into the ignition, but again saw the cloaked monstrosities lined up before him. Without the pain of the migraine, unveiled by the shining obstruction, as tangible and as real as his own car. They wielded halberds with red flags waving in the wind. He lost his breath.
They stood aside for him. Bancroft looked on down the road. They went for miles. As he passed them, they lowered to their knees.
The smoke grew thicker. The sky darkened at noon. The knights disappeared into the darkness. Their burning eyes guided Bancroft down the highway. The radio broadcasted static on each station. His wrists tingled. His sopping clothes reddened his flesh with irritation. He drove for hours, undistracted. His mind absolutely focused on his search. Suffer no migraines, he knew, so long as he kept on track. His clock stopped running, and clouds of smoke obscured the signs. His high beams cleared through enough that he could read. Only fifty miles. Only twenty five miles. Only ten miles. The road rocked and broke. Red lightning whipped across the bounding darkness, illuminating the plains with a purple brilliance. Clouds rolled and clashed. Rain fell. Summer heat cooled. Wind howled. The trees looked like marching porters along gatetops. Only five miles.Bancroft whistled the song again.
The sun returned, burning a hole in the clouds. At first it burned red, violet, orange, then broke through the cover of smoke. Cyclones twisted and hurled branches and small animals among pieces of torn crop and grass. Bancroft almost lost control of his mercedes. He slowed down, stopping. Under the calming, and warming hush of wind he relaxed with nowhere to go. At last he fell asleep.
He slept without dream. Awoke with the sun bleaching his fresh through the windshield. Blue skies for miles. No clouds. Bancroft sat up and rolled down his window. The air felt hot. Mud and sand caked his suit. He reeked of stagnant pond water. Dirt like warpaint covered his eyes.
A police officer stopped on the highway and approached Bancroft
“You're obstructing the road. Move on.”
“How close am I to the border?”
“See them red flowers along the hill? That's it. Better go now. We found two bodies in a mansion along the bluffs.” He winked at Bancroft. “They think the guy's coming this way. Gonna be a roadblock set up. I'd go right now if I were you.”
“Obliged.” Bancroft drove. He looked back. The officer watched him go. Fur sticking up from his collar.
The hilltop grew clearer. Bancroft could smell the castilleja linariifolia growing. He sped by a dead possum by the side of the road. When he saw it in his rear view, he slammed the brakes and reversed back to the dead creature. Its tongue out one eye knocked loose, its swollen belly squirmed like the fingers of a masseuse. Bancroft thought worms, but knelt down to inspect closer. He used a utility knife to cut the creature open with two incisions. It felt good, not the blood on his fingers or the smell, but to see that he could still make clean and straight cuts through flesh. He peeled back the flesh, and saw six pink little possums with their eyes closed. He dumped the contents of his suit case out and placed small stones around the corners. He placed a bottle of water inside with an incision cut so vapor could escape. Water spilled onto the towel. He cut fencing down from the field to hold the bottle and the stones in place. With a towel he scooped the little possums up and put them inside. He set the improvised incubator on the passenger seat. He rolled the windows up. Restarted the ignition. A Christmas song played on the radio. Bancroft entered the state. Smoke lingered behind him. A single spark. A welcomed fate.
