Read Online Poppy Z. Brite - 1992 - Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite - Free Book Online Page B

eyes did not challenge Steve to
believe.
                 The
kid had an air of quiet sureness; there was nothing cocky about him, nothing
arrogant, but he seemed to know he spoke the truth.
                 Steve
was interested despite himself. Anyway, a kid from the mountains was surely
entitled to his share of weird folklore. “Yeah?” he said. “What else does your
grandmother know about?”
                 “Lots
of stuff.” The kid hesitated. “If you want to meet her, you could come visit us
sometime. We live out on Burnt Church Road right by the dead end.”
                 It
should have been hard to extend that invitation, being the new kid with no real
friends, not knowing whether Steve might just laugh at him and walk away. And
it should have been difficult for Steve to accept. But already there was an
easiness between them that surpassed any words they had exchanged. Standing on
the path in the sun-dappled September woods staring up at the skinny kid in the
tree, the kid he had not yet known for ten minutes, Steve felt comfortable, as
if he could say anything. It was not quite déjà vu; it was not so unsettling,
but it was somehow familiar. When he remembered it now, Steve thought that it
was not so much like meeting a friend as like recognizing one.
                 He
loosened his grip on the steering wheel and stared ahead into the sparkling
night.
                 Christ,
but he was tense—first his bad mood and the whiskey, then the spooky shit on
the hill. His nerves were as fight as the thrumming of the wheels on the road.
Ghost mumbled something, but when Steve glanced over at him, Ghost was still
sleeping, his eyes soundly shut and his hands lying limp in his lap. He was
dreaming again. Ghost always dreamed, but only sometimes did his dreams come
true, Now they were coming into the outskirts of Missing Mile, the place called
Violin Road, where dark pine branches hung over the dusty gravel road, where
the land was peppered with heaps of old scrap metal and chicken Coops and
family graveyards that sprouted from the tired grass like sad little crops of stone.
Whenever Steve drove out here in the daytime, he saw kids with ragged clothes
and faded eyes playing on rickety jungle gyms, digging holes in the dirt of the
scrubby yards, standing aimlessly, their heads swivelling to follow the T-bird as it went by. Once he had seen a group of small kids
hunkered down around a dead possum by the side of the road, poking it and
turning it over with sticks, looking for maggots. That had been a
hundred-degree August day, and Steve had caught a noseful of ripe possum as he’d driven past.
                 But
now, under the cold September moon, the trailers and rusty cars and trash heaps
seemed to fade, to grow insubstantial. Only the grass and the low-hanging trees
appeared to shimmer and come alive. Steve wondered who lived here, scratching
out a place to exist, holding the kudzu and the wide empty sky at bay. Were
they farmers gone broke trying to beg crops from this dirt that had gone barren
fifty years ago? Were they field hippies, aging bohemians who thought living
off the land meant a couple of scraggly tomato plants and Dannon yogurt from the 7-Eleven two miles up the road?
                 Steve
glanced down at the gas gauge. Nearly empty, but the change from the Pepsi
machine would buy a tankful tomorrow. The T-bird was
damn thirsty these days. Piece of shit, he thought with affection.
                 They
were almost home now. Steve would sleep in his once-cheerful wreck of a room,
swathed in filthy sheets, trying to fend off nightmares. In the morning Ghost
would make whole-grain banana pancakes and bring him a beer. The presence of
Ghost in the next room, drunk and dreaming, would be a comfort. It had been a
long night.

  Chapter
5
                 Fifteen
years later, Christian’s bar was not so very different than