Strange Highways Read Free Page B

know about that. He’s always traveling, on the move, researching. It’s not my fault … being out of touch with him.”
    Reluctantly, Devokowski nodded. “I saw the piece about him in People a few months ago.”
    P.J. Shannon was the quintessential writer of life on the road, the most famous literary Gypsy since Jack Kerouac.
    “He should come home for a while,” Devokowski said, “maybe write another book about Asherville. I still think that was his best. When he hears about your dad, poor P.J., he’s going to be broken up real bad. P.J. really loved your dad.”
    So did I, Joey thought, but he didn’t say it. Given his actions over the past twenty years, he wouldn’t be believed. But he had loved Dan Shannon. God, yes. And he’d loved his mother, Kathleen—whose funeral he had avoided and to whose deathbed he had never gone.
    “P.J. visited just in August. Stayed about a week. Your dad took him all over, showing him off. He was so proud, your dad.”
    Devokowski’s assistant, an intense young man in a dark suit, entered the far end of the hallway. He spoke in a practiced hush: “Sir, it’s time to transport the deceased to Our Lady.”
    Devokowski checked his watch. To Joey, he said, “You’re going to the Mass?”
    “Yes, of course.”
    The funeral director nodded and turned away, conveying by body language that this particular son of Dan Shannon had not earned the right to add “of course” to his answer.
    Outside, the sky looked burnt out, all black char and thick gray ashes, but it was heavy with rain.
    Joey hoped that the lull in the storm would last through the Mass and the graveside service.
    On the street, as he was approaching his parked car from behind, heading for the driver’s door, the trunk popped open by itself and the lid eased up a few inches. From the dark interior, a slender hand reached feebly toward him, as if in desperation, beseechingly. A woman’s hand. The thumb was broken and hanging at a queer angle, and blood dripped from the torn fingernails.
    Around him, Asherville seemed to fall under a dark enchantment. The wind died. The clouds, which had been moving ceaselessly out of the northwest, were suddenly as unchanging as the vaulted ceiling of Hell. All was lifeless. Silence reigned. Joey was frozen by shock and cold fear. Only the hand moved, only the hand was alive, and only the hand’s pathetic groping for salvation had any meaning or importance in a world turned to stone.
    Joey couldn’t bear the sight of the dangling thumb, the torn nails, the slow drip-drip of blood—but he felt powerfully compelled to stare. He knew that it was the woman in the transparent gown, come out of his dream from the night before, into the waking world, though such a thing was not possible.
    Reaching out from the shadow of the trunk lid, the hand slowly turned palm up. In the center was a spot of blood and a puncture wound that might have been made by a nail.
    Strangely, when Joey closed his eyes against the horror before him, he could see the sanctuary of Our Lady of Sorrows as clearly as if he were standing upon the altar platform at that very moment. A silvery ringing of sacred bells broke the silence, but it was not a real sound in that October afternoon; they rang out of his memory, from morning Masses in the distant past. Through my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault. He saw the chalice gleaming with the reflections of candle flames. The wafer of the host was held high in the priest’s hands. Joey strained hard to detect the moment of transubstantiation. The moment when hope was fulfilled, faith rewarded. The split instant of perfect mystery: wine into blood. Is there hope for the world, for lost men like me?
    The images in his mind became as unbearable as the sight of the blood-smeared hand, and he opened his eyes. The hand was gone. The trunk lid was closed. The wind was blowing again, and the dark clouds rolled out of the northwest, and in the distance a dog barked.
    The