Prologue:  

    Frightening images can mutate within the passage of time, growing increasingly horrific as the subconscious sews a tapestry born of fear and anxiety; a sinister, wholly fictional tapestry that, in truth, never existed except perhaps in the recesses of an overactive imagination.    

  Regardless, the horrors one truly visualizes and what they think they saw can be equally fatal within a brittle, fragile mind.   ''Seeing is believing’...indeed.

  With that in mind, let us press that pedal to the floor and cruise the still, black night along...resurrection road...

***

 “Best get your rear in gear, dude. You’re already late for a very important date,” he spat nervously, attempting in vain to block out the buzzing choir of crickets whose incessant rant only seemed to intensify with his level of frustration.

    The car’s hood stood agape, the thin trail of smoke rising from its overheated engine barely visible in the foreground of the blackened forest engulfing the roadway.

     “Brenda the beast isn’t exactly known for her patience and understanding.  Woman is apt to tattoo the outline of her knuckles on your forehead if you’re late picking her up again.”

     Wiping stringy, sweat-drenched bangs from his line of vision, Chris began circling the vehicle, purposely avoiding any prolonged eye contact within the narrow back glass.  He had served as a transport driver for Desmond’s Mortuary for just over two weeks, a summer job to assist in paying off his student loan, and had yet to become comfortable in sharing vehicle space with a coffin, much less its recently-deceased contents.  Sticking the face of his aged wristwatch practically flush with his left eye, he noted its dimly lit hands read 6:56 PM.  

    “Swell. Barely twenty four minutes ‘til the viewing.  Gonna be some seriously pissed off family members.  Poor dude’s gonna be late for his own viewing…” he mumbled through a warped grin, “..it is to cry...hysterically.” 

    Having just turned the ripe young age of twenty, Christopher Jarred Munson stood six-four and tipped the scales at a hardly robust one-hundred sixty-five pounds. Nicknamed Walking Stick by first his high school and now college peers, he nonetheless held a starting position on the basketball team as a sophomore.  Despite a floss-thin build, narrow face, pointy chin and stringy, shoulder length hair, Chris was building a solid reputation around campus as quite the ladies’ man, a label he didn’t at all mind cultivating.  

    Just as he’d kneeled to lean on the hearse’s front bumper, a pair of headlights appeared from the east, piercing the night air like twin lasers negotiating a subterranean cave. 

   Can’t be the boss.  Coming from the wrong direction. Here’s hoping it’s someone…anyone…possessing at least a fair knowledge of auto mechanics. 

     Upon approach, the vehicle visibly slowed.  The cell phone hooked to his belt sounded off just as a late model Grand Prix rolled to a stop just a few feet from where he stood.

     “Yeah?” Chris answered, waiving at the Pontiac’s as- yet-unseen driver with his free hand, “Afraid so, sir.  The radiator’s still boiling but good.  Safe bet that she’s bone dry.  I recall she seemed to be running hot a few times earlier in the week.”

     A portly, middle-aged man wearing a worn BREWERS cap departed the dark maroon Prix’s drivers’ side as Chris posed with the cell phone tucked tightly against his left ear.

     “You folks okay?” the man asked dourly, his tone more put-upon than helpful.  

     “Um...hang on, Mr. Desmond,” Chris murmured, temporarily lowering the cell, “…just fine.  Got someone on the way.  Appreciate you stopping, though.”

   Did he just say, ‘folks’? 

   The man nodded briefly before ducking back into the vehicle and driving quickly away, apparently to avoid any sudden change of mind on Chris’ part.  

    What did he mean, ‘folks’? Was he counting the stiff? 

    Turning his attention back to the cell, Chris thought he heard a muffled clicking sound, like a car door being eased shut. Twisting about in an impromptu about-face, he scanned the area around the hearse but saw nothing.

   “I’m back, sir. Just a good Samaritan.  Route four-four isn’t exactly a hub of activity.  Yes, sir, see you in a few.”

    Securing the tiny device onto his belt, Chris couldn’t help but ponder what the Pontiac’s driver had meant by ‘folks’.  Folks…as in plural.  Folks… as in more than one.  

   Dude probably assumed that someone was in the passenger seat. Either that, or the poor guy’s waaaay past due to see his optometrist. 

   Leaning in just beneath the propped hood, his nostrils assaulted by the smell of thoroughly cooked anti-freeze, Chris viewed the car’s entrails like an anthropologist attempting to decipher recently discovered hieroglyphics from an ancient stone tablet.  Desmond had mentioned something about a  defective thermostat, or possibly a ruptured hose.  Scratching his head and smiling wryly, Chris stepped away from the hood and stood on the centerline with bony arms folded across an equally slender chest. 

  Knew I should have taken a shop class in High School.  Only thermostat I know about is on the dayroom wall back in the dorm.  

   His watch reading 7:09 PM, he sighed and sat down lotus-style directly at the center of Route Forty-Four.  It was rare for a customer to request the deceased be brought to a residence for viewing instead of remaining at the funeral home, but Dean Desmond’s motto had always been and would always remain ‘In times of bereavement, never question the decision of a grieving family’.  Rough translation: ‘If they’re paying, we’re granting’. Desmond’s Mortuary had been a lucrative business for going on three decades for a reason; appease the family of the dear departed no matter how outwardly outlandish or strange the request, but of course for a price. Usually a very steep price, at that. 

     Desmond and his short cuts. Talk about the middle of nowhere.  GPS force-fields all around, my man.

    A sudden gust of wind slapped his face, forcing him to wipe away long, jagged bangs from his field of vision. 

    Quit stalling, man.  Call the girl and tell her you’ll be at least an hour late.  Sure, she’ll be royally pissed, but it beats showing up at her pad with an excuse that just begs to be picked apart.  Worse, if she’s downed a few glasses of wine, she’s libel to dump a pot full of boiled linguine on your hea..

   “Need some help, son?” the ragged voice chimed, seemingly mere inches from Chris’s right ear. 

    Hopping forward on all fours as if forcefully shoved, Chris attempted to cry out but found insufficient air to do so.  Leaping clumsily to his feet, he seriously considered the thumping palpitations at his chest as the first signs of a massive coronary.  

     “Wh-who…w-whal-?” he managed, tightly squinted eyes still adjusting to the lone figure standing just a few feet away. 

     “Sorry to startle ya, son,” the man replied apologetically, backing up a step and holding his hands high with the palms out.

    He was a short, stoutly built elderly man with thinning, silver hair that was obviously combed over to cover a mostly balding dome.  He wore a dark brown suit and striped tie that hung the length of his stubby torso.  In the dimness of the surrounding night, Chris could tell little of the man’s facial features other than a veritable road map of age wrinkles encasing his eyes and lips.  

     “Uh…no, I…it’s just that, well…you caught me by surprise…um…mister...uh...”

      The old man scratched his head with great care, as if contemplating the correct answer.  

     “Mills…Dalton Mills Junior. I…uh…was just taking a stroll, I...I reckon…” he croaked somewhat hesitantly, peering past Chris as to properly size up the hearse, “...want me to take a look? I was…uh...used to be pretty fair with a wrench.” 

     Taking a walk in a suit and tie? Going where exactly? And from where? Poor old codger might just be one brick shy of a load.  Alzheimer’s maybe. Tread carefully…

      Chris gestured towards the vehicle, forcing a smile.  

      “Be my guest, Mr. Mills.  Old heap overheated.  My boss is on his way with a jug of water for the radiator.  I’m already late for an appointment, so any time I can save is valuable.” 

    Without responding, the old man lumbered over and ducked beneath the hood.  Keeping a three to four foot distance between them, Chris watched the man reach inside and begin tinkering with both hands, seemingly indifferent to the possibility of coating his suit in oil or grease. 

    After a full three minutes of silence, he leaned out and grunted knowingly.

     “Your prognosis, doctor?” Chris asked, instantly regretting his choice of words.

     The old man eyed him curiously.

     “What’s that, son?” 

    “Uh, you got it figured out?” 

    “Ay-yep.  Your thermostat’s stickin’, that’s a certainty. Have your boss fill the radiator, and she’ll get where you need to go for now.  I’d have that ‘stat switched first chance ya get, though.” 

    Stepping forward until he was at arm’s length from the elderly man, Chris felt an inexplicable chill trail up his spine that instantly transformed the short hairs on his neck into spiked quills.  He started to reach forward to offer his hand, then recoiled as if snake bitten.  

    “Well, I sure appreciate you checking it, Mister Mills.  You better finish up your walk before you’re missed.”

     “Ay-yep…they just might…at that,” the old man replied flatly, staring at the winding road ahead with slumped shoulders and a slack, lifeless expression.

     From want of anything else to do, Chris turned back to the hearse and pretended to inspect the engine, balancing his bony elbows on either side of an octagon shaped ornament at the hood’s center. 

    “Thanks again, sir. Wish I could offer you a ride. You take care now,” he said without turning, hoping the old man had already walked away.  He had no idea why he felt so uneasy in the man’s presence, but at that moment desired nothing more than to be happily isolated once again.  

     After a brief moment of silence (cricket overture not withstanding), Chris slowly cocked his head around to check the old man’s whereabouts, as he had yet to hear footsteps indicating departure. 

     Approaching headlight beams descending from the tip of a nearby grade lit the roadway like runway lighting, allowing Chris a clearly illuminated two to three hundred foot view of the highway and its adjoining shoulders. 

   “D-Desmond, I presume?” he quipped nervously in a pathetic attempt to divert his rattled senses from the mind-numbing mystery on display. 

     Okay, don’t pop a vessel, man.  The old guy must have got confused and walked into the woods.  Yeah, that’s it.  Maybe he had to take a leak.  I hear old dudes have a hard time holding back the old floodgates.    

    As the vehicle grew closer, he instantly recognized the shape of Desmond’s Mercury Cougar.  Leaning against the hearse’s passenger door, Chris felt his legs weaken as if he’d just completed an uphill sprint.  His eyes darted from left to right several times, as if expecting the old man to teleport from thin air in the same fashion as he had seemingly vanished. 

    The Cougar pulled onto the left shoulder just behind the stalled hearse, the former’s engine purring smoothly. In turn, Chris felt strangely compelled to kneel down onto all fours and check beneath the car for the old man, the sudden thought of a pair of gnarled, liver-spotted hands shooting out to grip his ankles preventing the actual act.   

     Obtain a grip, Christopher….mama Munson didn’t raise no cowards. None that she knows about anyhow. 

    “Has it cooled off?” he heard someone ask from what seemed like a faraway mountaintop.  

    “Chris? Has it cooled off?” 

    Dean Desmond, bathed in headlights, stood directly in front of him, the man’s pock-marked face the color of a freshly cut rose; his thinning black hair pinned to his forehead by fresh fop sweat.

    “Uh…I…I guess so, sir.  You...um...bring a jug of H2O?” he croaked in response while scanning a nearby patch of thick shrubbery for any possible movement. 

     “In my trunk.  Come on now, Let’s move with a purpose.  The Harrison’s are waiting.  My cell hasn’t stopped ringing in the last half hour.”

     Pulling back onto the highway less than five minutes later with Desmond’s vehicle hot on his trail, Chris’ darting eyes examined both sides of the road and the nearby forest, secretly praying he’d spot the outline of a squatty old man wearing a dark suit somewhere in the vicinity.  

*

    It is Dean Desmond who discovers the hearse’s rear door partially agape upon their arrival at the Harrison home some eighteen minutes after departing Route Forty-Four. Following a brief scolding from his always-excitable boss, Chris Munson prepares the mahogany coffin for removal when a framed photo sitting near the coffin’s base catches his soon-to-be widening, wildly twitching eyes. 

    A framed photo obviously meant to accompany the dearly departed upon viewing by those coming to pay their respects. 

    Despite a thick head of hair that is dark brown in lieu of silver and a complexion not yet ravaged by the passage of time, the individual featured in the grainy black and white photograph is easily identified.  Suddenly feeling as if his scalp were literally lit ablaze, Chris drops the frame to the concrete drive.  Glass fragments scatter like miniature ice crystals in and around his feet, but he is utterly oblivious.  As his tremor-racked hands reach ever-so-gingerly for the coffin’s slick, heavily waxed lid, he is unaware of Dean Desmond bellowing from the home’s front porch.

    The lid swings open with little effort on his part.

    Cautiously, he leans inside and takes a peek, his breath hot with a sudden fever.  

   He begins to giggle.  The giggle soon transforms into a muffled guffaw that a tightly pressed palm fails to mute. The muffled guffaw then mutates into a wailing howl which, from a distance, one might associate with the shrieking of a caged animal.  Upon his abrupt descent onto the jagged glass-coated concrete below, Chris Munson feels something within his subconscious snap like a brittle shard of kindling beneath a workman’s steel-toed boot.  

    Mercifully, he never feels the heavy thud that brings forth the darkness.

**

“Glad you saw fit to accompany us, Mr. Desmond.  Sorry to pull you away from the dinner table,” the deputy says, passing a rust-engulfed pick-up truck that is leaving a virtual funnel cloud of black smoke in its wake.

   “Not a problem, officer. I...seem to be the only one to whom he listens during these...episodes,” Dean Desmond replies—either unable or unwilling to mask the weariness in his tone—from the cruiser’s passenger seat.  A nervous habit he has picked up of late, he vigorously wrings his hands as if severely chilled despite the snugness of the late spring day.  

    From the backseat, a squat, heavily-muscled man wearing a white lab duster with state insignia leans toward the front and speaks in a calm, reserved tone that belies his rather menacing outward appearance. 

   “Seems every time they make the decision to move him to minimum security, we’re forced to participate in this little hide and go seek sideshow. Again, Mr. Desmond, Doctor Willis wanted to pass on a formal apology from the institute.  I’ve been told it most definitely will not happen again.”

   Desmond nods non-committedly—perhaps just feigning acceptance—his self-induced hand wrestling competition hardly wavering. 

   The deputy executes a wide right turn onto an aged two-lane clearly marked ROUTE 44, and all three men visibly tense as the cruiser is swallowed up by the thick foliage lining both sides of the roadway in jagged walls built of neglected grass and overgrown weeds. The sun vanishes behind the wall’s seemingly impenetrable blockade, instantly transforming early afternoon into late evening. 

    “So the kid still has the craz-…um, misguided notion that he’s some kind of…body snatcher? I mean, I’ve only been on the force since June, but everybody in the whole blessed state has heard the legend of Dalton Mills.  Don’t mean to stick my nose in where it don’t belong, but what is he being treated for specifically?” the deputy queries, his words growing increasingly timid as he progresses.

    “I’m not the treating physician, officer, but even so, I wouldn’t be at liberty to say,” Desmond replies flatly, no longer leaning forward but against the left passenger window, intensely scanning the passing landscape through wide, unblinking eyes.

    “Since that night nearly two years ago that Christopher seemed to somehow...misplace Dalton Mills’ body, his fractured mind has constructed then subsequently torn down several, rather sinister scenarios that have kept him institutionalized,” he continues in a stiff, mechanical monotone not unlike an audio recording of one’s study notes.

    "The authorities quickly cleared him of wrongdoing, but Chris had…has apparently charged and convicted himself with stealing the body and inexplicably hiding it for no apparent reason.  His second theory—equally outlandish—was…is  supernaturally themed, that being that Mills was obviously a wandering phantom of some kind, a kinder, gentler version of the living dead, I presume.”

    The cruiser slows as it crests a steep, curvy hill and approaches a light-colored Jeep Cherokee parked crookedly along the wide, gravelly shoulder. 

    A young couple stands outside the jeep, the female holding a cell phone tightly against her left ear.  As the cruiser nears, the young man—wide-eyed and mouth agape—waives them on, pointing eastward.  

    “Must be our witnesses,” the stout man in the back seat announces somewhat wearily.

     Slowing the cruiser to less than twenty miles per hour, the deputy centers the yellow line, flicking on the spotlight that hangs from the driver’s window. The wide oval light hardly dents the forest’s overgrown perimeter, which resembles a solid wall constructed of leaves, vines, and waist-high sea-grass. 

   “Gonna be hard to find him in that jungle. State boys are on their way, but it’ll be at least another half-hour or so,” the deputy says, braking almost to a complete stop.

   “I…think I see him, officer,” Desmond blurts excitedly, gesturing towards the distant highway.

    All three men cautiously depart the vehicle, the deputy concentrating the spotlight a few dozen feet to their north.

   “Got that hypodermic locked and loaded?” the deputy asks the larger man, who is in the process of pulling a long-needled syringe from a bulky black bag which he had lain on the cruiser’s idling hood.

   “Affirmative. Let’s hope he goes gently,” he replies, now eyeing their intended target with a comically curious expression, “What…what’s he saying?” 

   Dean Desmond steps past the other two men, his hands held palms up. The smile he flashes is kind but obviously manufactured as he nears the young man whose bellowing, nearly incomprehensible rants pierce the misty night air like a malfunctioning car alarm. 

   “Just wait…just have to…wait…be patient...that’s all….patience is a virtue, right? Dalton’s here…..I can feel him…can’t you FEEL HIM? He’s been here….RIGHT HERE…all along!” Christopther Munson shrieks, pacing from one side of the shoulder to the other, waiving his spindly arms madly about as his pale, nude body shakes and tremors in short, concentrated spasms.  His once blonde locks have turned ghost white; his once youthful, unblemished face contorted into a grotesque mask of unimaginable anguish birthed from the darkest regions of a lunatic’s realm. 

    “It’s all right, Chris. It’s perfectly all right. I’ll wait with you,” Dean Desmond replies calmly as the boy paces just a few feet away, “we’ll both wait for Dalton, how’s that?” 

    “We’ll need a car! A car with….with an open hood, YES! THAT’S IT! Dalton won’t appear until he…until he has a purpose….A REASON FOR BEING! Don’t you….don’t they get it? He’s coming back, people! He’s coming back…..and he’ll then…. he’ll...he’ll tell everybody why…why and how he refused….refused to stay dead! Once the mystery’s cleared up….cleared up once and for all…..I’ll…I can get…back on track….put my life back…back in order. So….let’s set things up, Dean…set things up for Dalton!  That police car there….pull the hood!  PULL THE DAMN HOOD ALREADY!!” 

   Sprinting towards the cruiser, his skeletal frame horrifically emaciated, Christopher Paul Munson can no longer visualize the landscape he so recklessly treads.  He can no longer hear Dean Desmond’s pleading cries.  The police cruiser, as well as the two uniformed figures standing nearby, vanish in segmented flashes, like puzzle pieces being pulled apart a single section at a time. 

    As Munson’s frenzied dash slows to a lumbering jog, a lone, shadowy figure steps from the murky fog and halts at the center of Route Forty-Four, its arms spread wide as to receive a long-delayed hug.  

   Chris grins—wide, toothy and sincere—in sweet, unbridled relief while lunging directly into the old man’s waiting embrace.  

   Dalton Mills’ warm, kind smile matches the younger man’s own...save the bloodied, slightly hooked fangs that protrude downward like crimson-smeared spear-tips.  

     As he collapses into the old man’s cold, steely grip—soon accompanied by a double-stinging sensation piercing the flesh just below his left ear—Christopher Munson feels all apprehension and fear fade mercifully away upon the gleeful realization that he has finally come home. Home to a lonesome, isolated stretch of highway on Route Forty-Four—a three to four mile stretch with the bizarre penchant for playing host to thick patches of fog despite weather conditions that are unconducive to same.  

  A rarely driven upon stretch of cracked, worn asphalt that he and his newly resurrected surrogate father are fated to forever roam, searching in vain for a life they could never again claim.

***