Free The Revenant Road by Michael Boatman Page B

noose was complete, the dimmer orbs on the edges of the circle turned the same pallid shade of green. As each green orb attacked the brightly-colored individuals, those orbs would erupt into dazzling doomed brilliance. Then the bright orbs would fade and vanish. The space formerly occupied by the bright orbs would then be replaced by a new green one.
    When the last orb had turned green and joined its fellows, the circle moved on, larger, gaining speed as it undulated across the dark landscape, consuming and transforming any individual lights that drifted too close.
    I heard a savage voice screaming into the wind. After a moment, I realized that it was mine. The dance of the lights, the conversion of the multicolored orbs was the most horrible thing I’d ever seen.   
    “And so we meet again.”
    I whirled, hoping to see Kowalski grinning behind me, knowing that Kowalski was a million miles away.
    “No,” I said.
    The thing that couldn’t be there, not in that place, not at that moment, raised its right hand and performed a perfect karate chop. Then it laughed, a high, rasping shriek that scraped at the inside of my head like a rusted trowel.
    “Remember me, O-dog?”
    I tried to scream, but my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth.
    “Gonna set you at my right hand, O-dog,” the thing pronounced. “I’m comin’ for you .”
    I couldn’t stop myself: I scrambled backward, forgetting where I was. The thing from my nightmares floated after me.
    “July 25th th , O-dog,” it shrieked. “Then it’s lights out for Kowalski!”
    “Stop it!” I screamed.
    Then my foot slipped over the ledge and I plunged backward over the precipice—
    “ Into the blackness of space rides the Fighting 509 th !”
    —And looked up into the face of Neville Kowalski.
    I was back in the cave beneath Kalakuta, lying flat on my ass with my head in Kowalski’s lap. Behind him, the starwoman stood still as unyielding stone.
    Kowalski jerked his thumb toward the Amazon.    
    “Ain’t that a kick in the nuts?”
    He leaned in and sniffed.
    “Oops,” he snorted. “I’d better go cop you a change o’ skivvies.”
    “No,” I said.
    I glared at Kowalski, then at the starwoman, then back at Kowalski, then back at the starwoman, my focus bouncing back and forth between the Alcoholic and the Amazon.
    “No!” I moaned.
    “Calm down,” Kowalski said.
    “Fuck you!”
    I was done. I threw off Kowalski’s arm, leaped to my feet and bolted for the door, ranting my denial as I scrambled up the stairs.
    “No oh no oh nononono...”
    “Obadiah, wait!” Kowalski thundered. “Goddamit!”
    But I was already halfway up the stairs.
    Forty seconds later, I tore open the front door, burst out of Kalakuta, and hit the driveway running.
    “No no no oh no no no...”
    Kowalski had called it the Wraithing, an alien dreamland connected to the waking world. Our world. But the thing that had spoken to me atop the cosmic golf tee was no dream. The thing atop that dark dais was real.
    Because Carlos Vulpe was real.
    I’d seen his picture earlier that afternoon but failed to make the connection: Carlos Vulpe was also the  star of my favorite classic TV show, Time Rangers, a hand-carved marionette with a Death-ray Lazer Blaster and perfect karate chop; a forgotten bogeyman that had once convinced a lonely little boy that it wielded the power of Life and Death.
    Somehow, Carlos Vulpe and Doctor Necropolis were one and the same.
    And he lived in a realm called the Wraithing.

 
     
     
     
    15
    Witness
     
     June 18th th. Northern Seattle Forensic Care Facility.
    The N.S.F.C.F was chronically understaffed and tragically under-funded. Originally, the facility had catered to non-forensic (non-violent) patients, mostly homeless alcoholics and chronic drug-abusers who’d run afoul of the legal system and been consigned to the permanent company of others like themselves.
    A state budget crisis—along with an increase in violent criminal convictions