He drove on the dark roads, screaming into the night. "Oh yeah old man oh yeah!" He drove rough and was banging up the car quite a bit as he took the turns way too fast.

He sprayed sparks every time he hit a bump or dip, only flooring it in response-- taking those bumps and dips as hard as he could. It was one of the best drunken rides he'd ever taken. He must've been capable of blowing a .25 BAC. Hit the fucking road Jack! We are out in the country taking a fucking joyride!

And the old half standing Kurtz church came upon him as he rounded a turn. It was a good place to stop-- the turns were getting tougher and tougher to take as the tires got hotter and his BAC kept on rising. The B&B was beginning to hit him hard and the adrenaline was draining (used!) from his system. It was real quiet here; the moon passed through the clouds.

He lit a smoke and looked around at the crime scene tape that bordered the property.

"Mark? Is that you Mark?" called a vaguely familiar voice from the shadows. It was Uncle Eugene's voice, almost. "Come back here, I won't harm you," the voice called from inside the treeline. "I can't come out, it's an agreement. Once one of us shows ourselves in your world, the Revelations Wars are guaranteed to begin. Nobody wants that, not yet. I sat here today and listened to that freak torture and kill that boy in the name of one God. There's nothing we can do; if the wars started tomorrow, we'd be crushed in 6 months. I listened to what that Cat'lic maniac did to Tommy's poor boy after he was dead and could do nothing. That's what the Cat'lics are about?"

"What in the hell are the Revelations Wars?"

"The dead come back for starters. But the time is not ripe to talk too much about that. Your job is to enjoy your life, enjoy Maureen's company. Go inside the church and listen. We'll meet again; come back here 20 years from tonight come back and look for me. Don't waste your time before that. Don't concern yourself with the murder of my lawyer's boy-- It's being taken care of. Goodbye, Mark. Tell Maureen I love her."

He walked into what was left of the church and sat in one of the rotting pews-- sipping from the B&B bottle. Uncle Eugene's speeches and sermons begin echoing and reverberating. Sermons and the sounds of a 70 pound boy (or maybe a sack of potatoes) being tossed around the church.

Uncle Eugene's echoing voice: "We now find ourselves riding wave upon wave of blood infected with incurable diseases. This is our punishment. We must repent by sending back our purest, our youngest. But our sacrificial lambs have grown malignant and diseased and they have sickened our lord. Long live our lord who shall return. She shall return and our land will breathe once again!

And then the voices began (intercut with Mark "touching" the scene of the crime, utilizing his gift): "You know what kind of boys smoke cigarettes, Johnny?"

"No reverend."

"That's father Johnny."

Mark felt himself heading toward the world of the passout so he took another sip of ambrosia. He stood up and looked at the broken altar, offering the Sacred One a toast.

"Thank you Uncle Eugene. Thank you for the bar and thank you for your daughter."

He stumbled backward, twisting his ankle and losing his balance.

He slammed his head against a pew and it all faded to black after an explosion of blue.

*****************************

(FADE INTO): A few hours later, he was sitting in the back of a sheriff's car. "Hey fuckhead, " John Wyandt, Lloyd's deputy, said, "hey fuckhead, are you alive?

"Yeah," Mark replied, his mouth foul and dry with liquor, "where's my car?"

"We'll get it tomorrow. It's safe. Nobody comes back here in these woods much, if you know what I mean. You know what I mean don't you Mark? Maybe it's time to grow up, eh?"

"You taking me home? Are you taking me to the Lincoln?"

"I'm taking you to the station where there's a nice bed waiting, for you. You're spending the night there; you pulled a gun on a small crowd--that's reckless endangerment. Fucking around with a crime scene, who knows what that'll get you around here. Let's say you're lucky you are family. "

"I had clearance."

3:00 a.m.

Mark woke up when Wyandt came into the cell.

"I forgot something," Wyandt said to Mark. "Maureen called and told me you were real prone to suicide attempts and such. Throw me the shoes."

"Maureen said that?"

"She cares bout you. Me? I think you're an asshole but to each his own. Blood runs thicker than water; blah blah blah. Throw me the shoes.

"What? You think I'd hang myself?"

Wyandt finished and left the cell. Mark slumped backward and stared at the photos that adorned the office's walls. Mostly they were black and whites taken of the days of Kurtzville gone by. Lot of picnics put on by the foundry. Mostly.

DREAMLAND

Tonight's REM clue was similar but this time he was barreling along a straight rural road that was very wintry in character. The roadside is dotted with trees every twenty yards or so. Snow dots the landscape. The woman sitting next to him is wearing black lace, including a veil. She knits a pair of pink booties. There is a thump, something red splashes onto the windshield and the car careens out of control. Lack of gravity takes over and the car flies away. Then the car plummets back earthward and smashes into a tree. All is still for a moment. A baby cries in the distance and then fades out.

Mark was trapped in the car, some of the tree had burst through the windshield and then gone through his stomach, finally getting stuck to the car seat. The woman passengers' face had been torn off revealing half a skeleton. Her arms show that she was an old woman, flesh hung loosely from her arms. But what's left of "her" is still trying to knit the baby booties until her bones creak to a standstill. Mark slumps. He looks to his gut and sees his insides spilling out. His innards steam in the wintry air. Some guy was calling an old football game on the radio. He's trying to move but he's not going anywhere. A sad looking old farmer is taking pictures of the wreck, his breath turns to steam, the flashes of his camera illuminate the gray sky.

He awoke. Wyandt was asleep, his feet propped up on the desk. The quiet static of a slow night came over the radio. He focused his attention on a small group of photos that hung on the wall; they were photos of a wreck on the highway. There was the dead faceless woman from his dream. And there was a dead man in the front seat, his insides spilling out. The guy looked a lot like himself, Mark noticed.

He looks into the woman's pregnant stomach to get a glimpse of the dying Tessie, who is fading into a dark whirlpool like oblivion.....

"Cheer up, Johnny," Mark whispered-- mostly to himself, "you are a very important person around here."

****************************

Maureen walked into the Beck County sheriff's station around 6 a.m., immediately walking to the cell where Mark slept.

"I didn't want to leave the house in the middle of the night or else I would have come earlier. You want to go fishing?"

"Sure."

On the way out the front door, Wyandt handed Mark his shoelaces.

"You want to get your car?" she asked as she started her Bronco.

"It can wait."

"Destination Hawk Mountain."

She floored the jeep out of the gravel lot and headed toward mountain that loomed in the foreground.

They parked the truck and hiked up the stream, towing their gear.

"This is what it's all about," she said to Mark in passing as they hiked past a miniature spring that poured cold and fast from somewhere inside the mountain.

Playfully, she tossed a couple handfuls at Mark, who was off somewhere else-- lost in his thoughts.

"Now maybe we should catch a fish or two."

"If there are any left," Mark said as they came upon the part of the Saucony where they were going to fish, "shit when I was here in 81 about the only thing besides you that I really, really liked was the fishing."

"Well, after that battery acid started seeping out of the mountain and into the creek the fish were hit pretty hard for quite a few years......

"I read a lot about it when I was at Penn State.

"It's nice to know you didn't forget about us completely. You could have answered one of my letters ...."

"It was a mistake; I was young I didn't like living with your father and the rest of the assholes that run this town ... I always cared about you-- as long as I can remember."

And their brand of trout fishing in America began; their flyfishing rhythm were remarkably similar and the motions seemed to create a little bit of mystic hypnotism in them both. They smiled.

After about 5 casts apiece, Maureen hooked a fish-- her rod dipped sharply. A sizeable Rainbow-- its skin glistening like a spectrum-- leaped from the water, dancing and splashing and looking like the two pound slab of muscle it was.

"It's a little like American Sportsman," he said to her as she was bringing the fish to land in her net.

"I told you the fish would be back!"

Maureen unhooked the trout as she held it in the water, letting it catch its breath before she let it swim away; downstream it went, away from the battery plant. "I know where they raise these guys in tanks, we'll get our dinner there. Who knows this one could be the last one left in the stream."

They spent another two hours fishing and then hiked back down but not before taking a rest at the spring again.

"What's going on inside that head of yours, Mr. Davidson?"

"Oh, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately.

"Yeah,, about what?"

"A lot of things: my employee's missing brother; How many murders have they gotten away with completely? What do you think? How many dead at this Church's hands? Maureen, do you ever look around and notice how often the dead walk with us?"

"Of course I've thought about it. Dennis's brother was here. Lloyd asked me not to talk about it after he saw Dennis show up at the house last night; if you would've asked me about it at the store I would have told you all about it. Fuck, if you would asked a half hour before; I would have told you. The guy's name is Raymond McPherson, he was here making little movies when he wasn't teaching college; he went out with Jennifer Johnson for awhile... and then he upped and took off.

"You have any idea the last time Jennifer saw Dennis's brother?"

"Not really but I roughly remember running into her at the Farmer's Market-- we really don't run into each other all that much anymore-- I remember her telling me that the guy she was seeing took off. A black stranger shows up in Kurtzville with a movie camera he gets noticed, you know?"

"You think your friend will talk to me and Dennis?"

"She was pretty hot about the guy taking off but wow if he was hurt or something like that, I'm sure she'll help you out plenty. She's a nice woman, just has too many responsibilities that I don't have. Kids. I don't know if any of the men I know are capable of murder but they sure as fuck were capable of destroying my womb. I can't have kids. After you ran off......

"I went to college."

"You walked to Topton in the middle of the night and boarded a bus to State College."

"Nobody was real upset about it."

"You should have called. "

"I was hoping you'd forgive me."

"Frankly, my love, some things happened to me the year after you left and I can't help but thinking that had you not left those bad things would not have happened? You know?"

"What happened?"

"I'm not ready to talk about it."

"You've had 300k sitting in trust, waiting for you since your mom died, why stay?"

"Grenden is the church's lone trustee now that my father's dead; once he goes, all the church's property goes back into another trust where it is to remain until the church is rebuilt again. I plan on stealing that money from the trust."

"The way I see it, the church owes me damages...."

They embrace and the picture fades out.

An hour and a half later he dropped her off at her house. He watched her kiss Lloyd on the cheek as she walked in the front door.

Lloyd pulled her back and kissed her hard.

*****************************

It was real quiet out at the Improper; dark and quiet was pretty much the story. Every few minutes a car or truck would buzz down 737, but that was 3/4 a mile away. Mark sat there, waiting for Dennis. He listened; he heard someone walking up the winding road, purposely making noise as if they were trying to scare away any predatory animals that might be lurking around.

"Your brother was here," Mark said to Dennis as he approached, "you were right my cousin was full of shit last night. "

"Big deal, no kidding he was here but I can top your story."

"Yeah, what?"

"I saw your friend Lloyd, that guy Binder and that old man pulling that fat priest you were talking about out of the back of an Astrovan. Burlap sack over his head and he was handcuffed; they took him into the Historical Building. I heard somebody-- probably him-- start screaming as soon as they got him inside. They had fire going up there in the tower, looked like they were burning torches."

"If you don't mind my asking, what were you doing at the Historical Society?"

"I was drinking over at Toad Creek-- you were a frequent topic of conversation by the way-- for a while and then decided I'd take a nice walk through the woods, you know with the full moon illumination and all. It's been a long time since I took a nighttime walk through the woods. I can tell you this, Mark, some of our answers as to what's going on in Kurtzville are up there in that tower. I'm pretty sure they killed that slob up there so you might want to exercise a little caution around your relatives. They might want you up there in that tower. I'm sure they'd like to see me up there. (pause) Boss, they are killing people up there.

"Yeah, well, that's why I carry my baby; I knew my uncle and most of that congregation he preached to weekly were a little nuts but I didn't think they were killing people. (Sure you didn't, Mark!).

They passed the next hour drinking beers, both of them silently overlooking the now quiet 737 and the nature that surrounded them.

"You sure you want to stay out here instead of the motel?"

"Yeah," Dennis replied, "the more I see of this town, the more I prefer being outside of it."

"Point taken. See you in the morning, we'll get some real work done."

Mark got into his car, gunned it to life and tore off back toward the motel.

*****************

Davidson had one more Bourbon Presbyterian, staring at himself in the mirror the whole time.

He drifted off to a dreamless sleep.

******************

Mark awoke at 6:30, showered and headed over to Topton and picked up a couple breakfasts to go. He drove with the top down, the chilling early November air whipping by. His spirits were high.

Upon arrival at the inn, Mark and Dennis ate breakfast and went to work-- continuing to remove the dead pieces of the Improper until roughly three in the afternoon. They stopped for the day and had beers. They weren't going to stop drinking for the rest of their stays in Kurtzville.

Mark surveyed the work completed and forked over three hundred fifty bucks in tens. "I'll buy the drinks later."

"Hey dude," Dennis asked sipping a beer, "you think we can drive out to the trailer park, maybe talk to that chick Ray went out with?"

The park was named the Beeber Trailer Park. It's just another rural trailer park ghetto, mostly populated by the unfortunates lucky enough to work at the local foundry. Jennifer came out of her house when she heard the GTO pull up; she had that "what now?" look on her face. He walked to the fence, keeping an eye on the gaggle of mixed race children running around the little yard.

He looked again at all those kids running around.

"You look like your brother, " she said to Dennis as they walked into the small property's front gate. "I don't know where he is. I talked to Maureen this morning; now I'm hoping he did leave town after the way Maureen was talking. I sure miss Ray. There's a guy, an Indian or Native American or whatever the proper term is these days, he owns a junkyard out on Schlegel Road. Look for the sign to the place, he had a better idea as to what Ray was up to than I do. Things are funny that way sometimes."

It started pouring as they pulled away, Jennifer called the children inside.

The heavily wooded and wet-- but paved-- road that led to Angstadt's Junkyard was at least scenic, Mark thought to himself. They drove through the downpour in the midst of a seasonally bare (we hope!) line of oak trees.

They both marvelled at the scenic waterfall that dropped a hundred feet off Blue Mountain, just off the road.

"Rain's coming down pretty hard, eh?"

Mark looked down at the Saucony-- running brown and fast-- that ran next to the road; it looked to be near flooding stage.

There was a sign at the junkyard's entrance read: NO SCRAP TAKEN TIL SPRING FURS BEING BOUGHT NOW. A German Shepherd barked at them fiercely. A man came out of the blue schoolbus that was sunk so far into the mud that it looked like it was made in it. The guy hunched over as he walked toward the shepherd; he took the dog by the collar and gently led him to the chicken coop a few yards away. The chickens squawked, then quieted down.

"What do you two want?" the guy asked as he walked toward them, "car parts for your getaway car? hahahaha!"

"No," Mark said, taking the investigative lead, "I want to ask you some questions about Doctor Ray Macpherson."

"Are you a cop?"

"No."

"Is he a cop?"

"No."

Wearily, he beckoned to them. "Let's go inside."

Once inside they both looked around at the place: it looked like an art studio, both finished and unfinished clay sculptures cluttered the bus' interior.

"Would you two like beers?" the Indian asked, no doubt smelling the alcohol they brought in with them. They accepted and he returned in seconds with a couple Kurtzville BottlingWorks beers. "You look like your brother,"he said to Dennis.

"Do you know what happened to him?" Mark asked.

"He stopped coming around; I don't know."

"Did he leave? Was he finished his research?"

"I'm going to ask you again friend," Angstadt inquired of Mark, eyeing him warily. "Are you a cop? I'll tell you the truth, I'm dying.... stomach cancer. It's time for me to talk, you know?"

"I quit the Philly Police Force on Monday.

"Well now that we know who is who, I'll let you in on the big secret. I think the members of that whacko religious cult that masquerades as a church killed him. Ray thought the Kurtzville church was an apocalypse cult that had been practicing in secret for three centuries; maybe your uncle was right, maybe the end is near..."

"You know who I am?" Mark asked, obviously genuinely surprised.

"You used to walk the roads by Saucony Creek with a fishing pole, you reminded me of a sad Tom Sawyer. Yeah, they don't separate church and state much around here. You and your cousin, Maureen you two reject the church, eh?"

"That's about right; is being the son of a god something you want to deal with? You think being acquainted with a god's sorrows is some kind of picnic?"

"Yet, you appear to be like your uncle," the Angstadt said confidently, "guns, liquor and the lust for the flesh of your own blood."

"This is getting Biblical all right," Dennis interjected with a smirk.

"It all apparently started for the Europeans around here in the late 1600s when a guy named Jacob Kurtz moved into the county, kicked some of my ancestors asses right out of here and started some farms.... and a church.

Neither Jacob nor his associates had ever experienced such magnificent crop growth as they got here. It's been a fertile area for centuries; Jacob caught onto this and decided it was a good idea to worship who was really responsible for the wonderful harvests they enjoyed here. They began worshipping nature under the guise of Christianity and became part of the what the Christians call the pagan tradition. The reality is that Kurtzville has good dirt; it's all about the Herkel's Loem-- it has nothing to do with gods....

"A few years after, Jacob and his wife, Maggy, were trying to have a child to no avail. Maggie had produced three stillborns who were buried in the yard just outside their stone house; it was their turn to provide Molech his necessary sacrifice.

The new gods they chose to worship in their new land now expected something from them-- the flesh of some of their newborns. Keep Molech happy with the flesh of infants and the crops grow. That was the deal and for a century and a half and six magic children the gods kept their part of the deal--the crops grew.

"Sometime in the 1920s, though, one of these children began exhibiting horrible tumors and this particular child apparently grew into some sort of monster that you folks have been hiding up in that Historical Society's tower for the past 70 years or so. At least that's the legend......

"Do you know anything about this?" Dennis asked Mark.

"It's all new to me" Davidson responded.

But something was building inside him now, something that felt like it was going to be real hard to stop.

"It's in you my friend and there's no way to get it out, there's no way to escape from your fates. Go to the cabin Ray rented while he was here digging around, it's back by 737 and the waterfall. It's hard to miss my friends.

"You want to take a ride?" Mark asked the Indian.

"No thank you-- I would say that you two are the last two people I want to be seen with around here."

"I got one more question, sir. Do you think my cousin is involved in the killings that have happened and continue to happen around here?"

"No. I don't think so. I think that Maureen adheres to different philosophies than her family does. I'm a bit of a voyeur, you know, I've seen her out in the woods, practicing her chants. I think she's basically pure.

"Basically?"

"Basically. "

"Thanks for your help," Dennis offered.

"No problem. "

"You wanna go check out that cabin?" Dennis asked.

"Might as well," Mark replied, a feeling of nervousness beginning to seep into his spine.

"If this place is so fucked up," Dennis asked, "why do you stay here?"

"This is good land. Someday the crops will again grow strong and I-- in one incarnation or another-- will be here waiting. But until then I'm lying low, you know what I mean don't you Mark?"

"I'm beginning to get the idea, yeah."

"When this Kurtzville Congregation crap is over stop by and have a beer, Mark. You too Dennis. I get lonely out here and I like the company."

"Maybe if you clean the place up, calm the dog down, more people might stop by."

"The hell with it," Angstadt said in reply, waving his hand. He took the Shepherd back inside the bus with him. The rain was not letting up.

**************************