Revival Road

By Chris DiLeo

A fast-paced, gripping thriller between the living, the dead, and something far darker.

On an average street in a typical suburban town, a child dies in an all-too-plausible accident. For Sherri Matthews, a neighbor who has dedicated her life to God's calling, this is part of God's plan. And when the child wakes in the morgue seemingly healed, Sherri knows she must now prepare the way for what comes next.

"Something big is coming," the revived child promises. His pet dog, dead and buried weeks prior, has come back as well, but more monster than mutt. Abbott French and Ellie Pike have never trusted Sherri or her unwavering belief and don't believe these resurrections are God's work. But how to explain when his sickly mother dies and is resurrected? And what about the horror Chance Gold encounters in the woods and the voice that insists, You're mine? Or the secret a mental patient who murdered her friend knows? Or the terrible thing Carl Nichols is hiding in his basement? Or the hundreds of crows gathering across the street as if in anticipation?

As Sherri gathers believers, she takes an unthinkable step to fulfill God's plan. Meanwhile, Abbott and Ellie must find out why this is happening and how they can stop it. The stage is set for a gruesome, apocalyptic showdown between good and evil, between life and death—where life may be the most horrifying prospect of all.

Not your typical zombie novel, Revival Road is a fast-paced thrill ride of horrors human and supernatural, an exploration of the dark underbelly of suburban life, and a testament to fears elemental and otherworldly.

The only guarantee in life is death.

Except when you die on Revival Road.

Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Where Stories Come Alive!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crystal Lake Publishing
• Release date: Mar 25, 2025
• ISBN: 9798230204572

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First published by Bloodshot Books in 2021

Current version copyright © 2025 Chris DiLeo

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Cover Art:

Lynne Hansen Design | lynnehansen.zenfolio.com

Layout:

Jacque Day | jacqueday.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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PRAISE FOR CHRIS DILEO

DiLeo is a remarkable writer, with a clear ability to evoke character, conjure dread—and to do whatever it is that drives the reader to keep turning the pages, one by one, and faster and faster. – Michael Marshall, best-selling author of The Straw Men

[DiLeo’s work] does what the best supernatural fiction must—ground the terror in the human heart. Chris DiLeo delivers…with a skilled, steady hand. Follow him into the dark! – Michael Koryta, best-selling author of Lost Man’s Lane

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When I was a teenager, my favorite novel was Needful Things by Stephen King. I carried the paperback around with me and read it into a creased, dogeared artifact of pure reader affection. I regaled my peers by reading aloud the most gruesome sentences, ones about sex and bodily fluids and especially that one about the dangling intestines. Teachers raised eyebrows.

I loved the book’s cynical view of humanity, a modern Faustian interpretation in which people sell their souls in exchange for a Sandy Koufax baseball card, a photo of Elvis, or a piece of carnival glass. What interested me more than the commentary on Capitalism, however, was how each character was a bomb of hysteria and rage with a fuse lit by jealousy, paranoia, and fear. These bombs explode, in some cases quite literally, in over-the-top orgies of violence. Two women knife each other in the street. A husband murders his wife with a hammer. Parishioners from rival churches battle each other while singing Onward Christian Soldiers. I delighted in the madcap insanity of a world crumbling into chaos not because I want chaos, but precisely because I’m so frightened by it.

I loved that novel, and love it still, because it is unafraid to let the characters be true to their basest impulses. It’s unafraid to show how people are really messed up and capable of some batshit crazy things.

There’s a supernatural monster in that book, too, but what always scared me more—and continues to scare me at forty-years-old—are the human monsters.

Hardly necessary to say (especially in light of the storming of the Capitol), but humans are far scarier than any supernatural predator. Remove society’s laws and protocols, cut the electricity, toss in a flu-plague, fill the mind with conspiracy theories or fanatical religious doctrine (or both!), and then give them a target for their fear and watch what happens.

Chaos.

Nothing scares me more.

I wanted to write a book about chaos, a big book with lots of characters and grand horror set pieces. I wanted to write a book my teenage self would’ve loved (and one those eyebrow-raising teachers would’ve derided as déclassé.)

I think I succeeded.

On average, it takes me six to nine months to write the first draft of a 100,000-word novel. I wrote the first draft of this book in four months and at over 160,000 words, it is the longest thing I’ve ever written. I wrote with joy and heedless glee. There’s a dog-attack sequence that made me cheer, a revolting massacre in a basement that made me sick to my stomach and pause just long enough to wonder if I’d gone too far, and there’s a set piece with tons of characters that was as intimidating as it was thrilling to write.

In the following pages, you’ll meet Sherri Matthews. She believes in the power of God, and she will immediately embrace that God has burdened her with the responsibility of carrying out His plan on the street where she lives. The street where the dead are coming back to life. Sherri is one of those bombs with a burning fuse lit by her unshakable faith. I had so much fun writing her.

Resurrection stories have been done to death (haha)—zombie tales, reanimated Frankenstein-type stories, possession-like spinoffs, and all sorts of other variations. Pete Kahle, who published my demon-possession novel, The Devil Virus, and my serial killer thriller, Dark Heart, was very clear in his call for submissions that he did not want typical back-from-the-grave zombie novels. In my tale, as you will discover, the deceased are coming back not as shuffling, flesh-eating walking dead (or even fast-moving flesh-eaters), but as seemingly normal, completely healthy people—except for the voices they hear and the strange visions they suffer.

And the chaos they will soon cause.

I want to know why bad things happen. The answer—because they can—is as obvious as it is glib. Religion gives us such platitudes as God works in mysterious ways or as Sherri will remind us, God has a plan. Our curse is not that bad things happen, perhaps, or even that we’re doomed to die, but that we have consciousness and self-awareness. We know bad shit can and will happen—car accidents, rapes, murders, cancers. Good people, including innocent children, suffer and die. Where’s the logic, the grand plan, the justice?

The tale of horror is the most honest form of storytelling because it dares to make us face what many of us would rather not—bad shit happens, and everyone we love, including ourselves, will one day be dead.

The horror story can be gruesome and distasteful. It is the mangled car wreck on the highway. Here, the horror story says, look at this—it’s horrible and I want you to see it.

And we must admit that at least part of us wants to look.

I’ve always gone after stories in which something bad happens and people have to deal with it—it could be the Outside Evil, a monster, perhaps, or simply the death of a loved one. Watching my father die when I was eleven no doubt established for me that the world is a dangerous, unpredictable place. Terrible shit happens. We are thrust into bad situations and we have to decide how to respond. Some turn to religion. Others science. And others take up arms.

Revival Road offered me the chance to go at these themes head-on and in spectacular, bloody fashion.

This book owes much to King’s Needful Things, from the large cast to the extravagant violence to the book’s organization as chapters divided into numbered sections. In addition to violence and expletives, King’s book is full of italics and exclamation marks and onomatopoeia (usually in italics with an exclamation mark), the sort of thing that makes the cultured literati (and judgmental teachers) turn up their noses—and you will find tons of the same here.

Turn back now, literati!

Caveat emptor: This is a horror novel. Bad things happen to people, including children. There’s a lot of violence and a lot of gore. Religion gets wielded as a shield and a sword. This is not a story for the easily offended or the squeamish.

I am grateful to Pete Kahle for first publishing this book, and now to the good people at Crystal Lake for giving it new life. Thanks as always to my wife, Jenn, for her endless support.

And now, turn the page and follow me to Revival Road.

Something bad is about to happen, and I want you to see.

– Chris DiLeo

For the boys—

Brian Barbulean,

Francois Barcomb,

Hayden Carlin,

Jim Connor,

John DeVenuto,

Scott DiLeo,

Steven Fowler,

Steve Grey,

Pete Kahle,

Bob Lyon,

Michael Paolo,

Jim Rogulski,

Jimmy Sheehan,

Mark Williamson,

Jay Young

The only guarantee in life is death.

– The Book of Ironies

Lazarus, come forth.

– John 11:43

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1

In the woods behind her house, Maria told Juliette to close her eyes.

Why?

It’s a surprise.

Juliette did as asked. Freckles saddled her nose. At fifteen, she was all-American cute, pulling stares from boys at school, especially in their fifth-period English class where even the teacher watched her cross the room to sharpen her pencil.

He walks in the woods, Maria said.

Bailey, their third wheel, stared at the printout in her hands. Saggy jeans and an awful Ramones T-shirt made her look like a little kid.

Come on, Maria said. This is supposed to be fun.

Bailey’s mouth creased but she started reading, voice unsteady. He walks in the woods. He lives in the spaces between the shadows. He haunts our dreams. He comes for us. He is hungry. He must be fed.

This is stupid, Juliette said. Her blue dress billowed around pale knees.

Maria slipped the knife from a front pocket.

Fading sunlight streaked the sky red and orange. Mosquitoes hummed. Trees towered all around. In the distance, little kids laughed and cars thumped across a bridge.

Juliette was peeking.

Maria hid the knife flat along her thigh. Eyes closed, Julie.

She sighed, slapped her arm. I’m getting bit.

Read the rest, Maria said.

He walks in the woods. He lives forever. He is eternal.

Keep going.

Another arm slap. Seriously. We’re not little kids. This is dumb.

We’re almost done.

Darkness creeped through the trees, shadows eating the light.

A bird’s cry echoed.

Maria opened the knife until the blade locked in place. She bought it for thirteen dollars at Gander Mountain. The guy at the counter pushed greasy hair behind his ears and asked her if she knew how to handle a knife like that. She played the flirt and let him show her. He asked how old she was, and she said, Old enough.

The rest, Bailey.

Bailey swallowed. The paper crinkled. We come here as day dies to offer supplication to he who lives forever. Only the gift of death can save us.

I’m not scared, Juliette said. She lifted her dress in a curtsy and hummed a stupid pop song.

Patience, Julie. The surprise is coming.

She’s right. This is stupid, Bailey said. She folded the paper, but couldn’t meet Maria’s stare.

Don’t you dare, Bailey.

Let’s go, Juliette said. Sunset-orange brushed her open eyes.

The knife, curved to a tip and serrated along the straight edge, pointed at her.

Disgust trumped fear. I’m not doing that blood-friendship thing.

That’s not what this is.

Bailey was a blind witness, refusing to look.

Juliette swallowed, fear creeping into her now and that was good. As it should be. Life wasn’t all bare legs and cute smiles. Would Juliette insult her? Maybe say something derogatory about Maria and Bailey’s friendship. Go ahead. Jealousy burned hot.

I’m going home, Julie said.

Children’s laughter floated above them.

What about your surprise?

She played the knife slowly back and forth.

Juliette straightened, flattened her dress. You’re sick.

That the best you can do?

She stared, her breath quickening, and that was good too, would make it faster. She huffed, a little girl trying to be tough, and started away. Ground debris crunched under her flip-flops, pink like her toenails.

Maria went for her.

Bailey finally looked up. No!

Juliette spun around, and there was the knife cutting through the air, and her hands came up in defense. Sliced her palms. She screeched more in surprise than pain. What the fuck? Look what you— Maria stabbed Julie’s hand, the girl’s eyes going huge, and then she shoved it all the way through flesh and bone. Julie spasmed, a scream dying in her throat.

Maria pushed hard and they stumbled several feet before Julie tripped and Maria landed on top of her. The knife pushed in to the hilt and the blade pierced her stomach. She gagged, mouth wide, eyes enormous shadows. The sharp metallic-bite of blood mixed with her apple-scented body spray.

Her free arm batted at Maria, smacked her in the head.

The knife came out with a hard, mushy yank. Blood slipped from the blade. Soaked her dress.

Stop, Bailey said. "STOP!"

Juliette convulsed, choked. Her face paled. She swallowed several times. Please, she said.

The next stab was a hard and merciless punch between her breasts.

After that, it was like beating a rag doll.

2

Bailey said nothing on the way back, head down. Maria walked tall, a strange grin on her face, her red hands at her sides. Blood stained her arms and blotted her clothes.

Three little kids ran in a circle in her neighbor’s backyard. They laughed and cheered. Maria could not tell who was chasing whom. A woman stood on the deck, watching, a yellow light behind her. The woman raised a hand to Maria. Backlit, the woman was a faceless shadow person.

Maria waved back. Moonlight darkened the blood to oily smears.

She did not tell Bailey to keep her mouth shut, and it was just as well. In the bathroom, Maria stared at herself, black hair long and silky, pale cheeks splashed with blood. She pulled two fingers down her cheek through the blood to reveal the tannish birthmark beneath.

Maria scrubbed her arms, and her mother pushed open the door mid-sentence and was halfway through explaining the latest office gossip when she stopped.

They stared at each other.

It wasn’t my fault, Maria said.

Watery blood splashed against white porcelain and whirled down the drain.

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Chapter One

Abbott French cut the porch light and handed Ellie a Saranac, and they sat on the front steps of his house.

Ellie Pike sipped the beer and appreciated the night sky, white dots speckling the dark. We used to spend hours staring at the stars, she said.

In the shadows, Ellie might have been fourteen again, all bony knees and bubblegum. Stupid kids, he said.

"Not that stupid. At least not both of us."

He sat beside her and they clinked bottles. Almost twenty years ago, they had kissed among the trees across the street, multicolored leaves twirling in an October breeze. In The Book of Ironies it says, A kiss is never simply a kiss.

Well, stupid me then, he said.

She leaned her head on his shoulder. He tried to suck in his gut but his shirt stayed glued to it, an embarrassing reminder he wasn’t fourteen anymore, either. In jeans, her legs stretched down the steps. She kicked off her sandals, wiggled her toes. A silver ring circled a pinkie toe.

You’re the best, she said. The best.

You’re not half bad yourself.

She elbowed him and he laughed agreeably, but the familiar tightness in his chest constricted the laughs with a painful squeezing, a hand seizing all his insides and mushing them in a fist. The underarms of his shirt sagged damp.

Her hand rested on his thigh. His ears warmed.

I’m sorry, she said.

For what?

For not being yours, he thought.

I don’t know. Nothing I guess.

Doesn’t sound like nothing. He sipped his beer, surveyed the dark trees across the street, and tried to ignore how his heart wedged into his throat.

Things could have been different, she said.

He turned to her. How so?

Starlight pinned her eyes.

He kissed her. She let it happen, not pulling back, her lips soft and swelled, and he touched her thigh, her hand resting on his, and the summer night flushed with her perfume, light and teasing, and in the dark he traveled to what might have been, and what might yet be.

She watched him for a moment. Her lips glistened.

I should go.

They walked to the street and Abbott glanced at the light flickering in the second-floor window. In her bed, his mother stared glassy-eyed at a TV, not that she was even aware of doing it.

How is she? Ellie asked.

Bad.

I’m sorry.

When she goes, I wonder what I’m going to do.

You’re going to start your life. Finally. She rubbed his back. You know what I mean.

A thin-paper pamphlet sagged from his mailbox like a tongue. He tugged it free. Sherri had done her rounds again. The trifold pamphlet, like all the ones previously invited him to Let Jesus Save You. An open-armed Jesus floated on the cover, head aglow, face serene and welcoming. Information about Our Lord of Joys Church in Ketauny, just over the border in Pennsylvania, stamped the back.

Sherri recruiting again?

He folded the pamphlet, the inside always unread, shoved it in his pocket. She stops by sometimes, asks to pray with my mother. Says God has a plan. He created everything and He knows exactly what He’s doing.

What, you don’t believe in Intelligent Design? Ellie taught high school biology at Warrenville High. Their alma mater. Go Wildcats. The world is so intricate and beautiful. Can’t be by chance, right?

Uh-oh, he said. You’re one step from Bible study nights with Sherri.

She spun into the middle of the street in an improvised ballet move, just like she used to do, arms curling above her head, laughter ending her attempt just as it was getting started.

Maybe she’s on to something, Ellie said. Take out all the bullshit and maybe she’s right.

A crow cawed from one of the trees and another returned the call.

How do you separate out the bullshit?

You have to have faith in something, she said. Better than the alternative.

She did another slow spin; shadows flickered across her body. You’re beautiful, he wanted to say. You’re a science girl. Isn’t faith in that enough?

Her warm hand squeezed his. You’re really sweet.

He waited, as he sometimes did outside the faculty room when her lunch break was ending. Shouldn’t you be monitoring the halls? she’d ask. Thought you might need an escort to class, he’d say. Escort? How risqué. Administration would not approve.

We’ve been friends a long time, he said. I have faith in that.

She kissed him on the cheek, a peck that lingered long after she disappeared onto Carter Road where she lived with her father. Her parents divorced years ago. She was saving for a place of her own. And maybe someone to share it with.

Abbott stood in the street.

He removed the pamphlet and walked along Revival Road.

Chapter Two

1

The gun wasn’t loaded.

That’s what Peter told himself afterward, in the brief period between shock and horror.

Are we going to talk about this or what? Janel stood before him, hands on her hips, staring down at him like he were a child.

He downed the last of his beer and dropped the bottle on the carpet with the others.

Very mature. Drink yourself to death and leave me with the mess.

The lamp beside him spilled enough light on the coffee table so the silver-plated revolver glowed like something magical. Engraved from his father, four years gone. Dad knew life for a rigged game, tried to warn him. Peter caressed the gun as he had once caressed his wife’s body—tenderly, lovingly.

Are you going to say anything? Janel leaned toward him. Peter liked to imagine that the wood paneling down here made this place a cabin in the woods, a refuge far from Revival Road with its bullshit suburban responsibilities, lawn mowing and bill paying. And wife bitching.

Why?

Why what?

Why bother?

She huffed and glared down at him. Like she was something special. A hairdresser in a strip mall wasn’t setting the world on fire, babe.

He removed the box of bullets from the table drawer, rolled it from one hand to the other. The weight felt good. And the promise it offered, of course.

The question, Janel said, "is why should I bother? You tell me that."

He sat back against the couch. It smelled musty and a bit sour. Spilled beer splotched the armrest. Then don’t, he said. Go. Leave. You don’t think I can make it on my own? I’ll be better off.

No job? No money? You think that’s better?

Cause you’re raking it in over at Shear Cuts?

Another of her extended pauses and dead-fish stares. Five years ago, they came back from honeymooning in Mexico and a month later she said they were having a baby. Never shed that pregnancy fat.

I want you to go to AA.

No.

They have meetings at Sherri’s church.

Bible-thumping weirdoes.

"So then what? I’m supposed to watch you drink away our money? My money."

I’m relaxing. I’m entitled to that much.

She crossed her arms. Her mouth sagged in disgust. Playing with your gun? It’s pathetic.

He rested the box of bullets on the table. Three toppled out and rolled. You want to piss me off, that it? Give you a reason to call the police again?

She blinked, backed up ever so slightly.

Shouldn’t you be putting our son to bed?

Oh, suddenly you’re father of the year? I thought he was with you.

Leave me alone. He lifted the last beer from the six pack, twisted the cap and flicked it.

Beer slopped down his chin. He wiped at it and slurped the juice off his fingers, watching her gape at him.

The meetings are every Saturday.

Great.

This is not a free ride.

Oh? What’s the price?

How many more chances? Debbie says I should—

Fuck Debbie.

Fine. I’m done. Enjoy your shitty life with your gun.

Thanks.

And who do you think Gabe will want to stay with? He grinned. Daddy’s boy, Gabe tagged after him everywhere. The last time Mommy had one of her pissy moods, Gabe sat next to him on this very couch, his hair a hilarious mess, and asked why she was so mean. Maybe she doesn’t love you as much as I do, he said. His son hugged him, little arms pulling tight.

I want you out.

He picked up the gun and swung open the chamber. He spun one of the bullets on the table and picked it up. Janel once thought him so sexy, cleaning his gun, showing skill with a thing of such power. She’d been tolerable then, even enjoyable. As much as a woman can be.

Fine, she said. I’ll force you out.

She stomped upstairs. Anger tightened his nerves and squeezed his brain, a claw digging into a sponge. He needed a few drinks to unwind. Big deal. She could use a few beers herself. Maybe a Valium. Learn to relax. Gabe might actually like her then.

The cordless phone lit up on the side table. Janel upstairs, using the phone. Calling Debbie?

He waited.

Hello? she said plenty loud for him to hear. Yes. My husband is threatening me. He has a gun.

Bitch.

His hand tightened on the gun and released it. He left it on the table and took the stairs two at a time.

2

Gabe Wilcox nestled in the Land Behind the Couch or, as he sometimes called it, Narrow World. Bobo had loved to nap back here and Gabe sometimes joined him, his head on Bobo’s wide chest. It was funny when Bobo dreamed, his body twitching, paws paddling.

But a teenager in a red car ran Bobo over. That was two weeks ago. July 30. Gabe wrote it down on the inside of a book about a steam shovel that digs a hole so deep it can never get out.

Daddy wrapped Bobo in the blue blanket he used like a pillow on his doggy bed. He buried him in the backyard and set a rock over the grave. In marker, Gabe scrawled Bobo.

Gabe cried a lot that day, confused and scared, red-faced and snotting. Why is he dead? I want him back. Make him better! Make him alive!

Dad kneeled beside him and raised a beer. To Bobo. A good dog.

Bobo’s smell lived in Narrow World and if Gabe closed his eyes and hugged Chip against him, he could almost believe Bobo was alive. Chip had once been alive. He was a chipmunk with beady black eyes and a skinny rat tail Uncle Jack bought at a gas station in Cuddebackville.

The couch shifted when Daddy got up and went to the Up Floor, which is how Gabe thought of the upstairs. He was in Narrow World in the Down Floor, and Mommy and Daddy were now shouting at each other on the Up Floor. Another world away. They called each other names and were mean. He squeezed Chip tight and wished Bobo were here to nuzzle him and lick his face.

A door slammed, and the house settled into quiet. Gabe let his grip loosen. Then Daddy was pounding on the door and screaming. Gabe curled into a tight ball. Chip peered out from beneath his chin.

Something crashed. The sound vibrated down the hall. Gabe waited. No more shouts, yet not exactly quiet. It’s okay, Gabe told Chip. They can’t get us in Narrow World.

I know, Chip said. We protect each other.

That’s right, Gabe said. We’re best friends. And best friends never leave each other.

Why you always talking to that dead animal? Daddy asked.

He’s my friend.

First, it’s not ‘he.’ It’s a thing. It’s dead and stuffed with cotton.

Yes, Daddy.

Mommy didn’t believe, either. She played her part, said the right things, even asked what Chip said when they ate dinner together, Chip in his own chair. She was pretending. She didn’t really believe, not the way Gabe did.

Best friends, Gabe said again. He kissed Chip on his furry head.

He strained to hear his parents on the Up Floor. They were moving around, grunting, but not yelling, and soon they’d be on the bed making it squeak. This time, at least, the police would not have to stop Daddy from hurting Mommy.

It grew hot in Narrow World. Gabe pulled back the cloth covering his secret way in. The air was sweeter out there, lush with Daddy’s beer. Gabe leaned out on all-fours.

The gun waited on the table.

3

Peter stank of booze, but if Janel tilted her head back she could suck at cleaner air. He groped her breasts and yanked hard on the waist of her jeans. They clung to her hips and then they were off and flipping across the room to thwack the wall. He grabbed her, firm and determined. The phone, no call actually made, dropped to the floor.

She’d done what Debbie said and confronted him, gave him an ultimatum about Alcoholics Anonymous at Our Lady of Joys, and maybe he’d warm up to some religion as Sherri suggested, but now he was ripping her panties off and shoving his fingers around.

God help her, it felt good.

He lasted longer drunk, and anger swelled his muscles so she could pretend he was one of those beefcake celebrities. She would leave out all of this when she told Debbie. She wasn’t proud of it. Peter needed to get his shit together, find another construction job or even be stock boy at the Food Stop or the bank was going to get serious about foreclosure, but she loved him and they had a son who adored him. How could she take his daddy away when Peter’s own father killed himself, leaving him without a guide on how to be a husband and father?

Naked from the waist down, Peter got to the main event. The first moments were always the best, so startling and familiar, hitching breath in her throat. He pinned her arms behind her head and sucked on her neck. She hooked her legs around him and thrust in time with him. Wet slapping sounds.

She hoped Gabe wasn’t listening.

The subsequent thought rocked her so suddenly and completely she couldn’t articulate it and Peter mistook her effort to knock him off as an invitation to push her down harder and really prove himself a man.

No, she gasped. "Stop!"

Yes, he said in her ear. "Yes, yes, yes."

She’d stormed past Gabe’s room, the door open, the bed empty. He might be behind the couch downstairs where he liked to play.

Peter’s silver-plated Colt. The bullets.

4

Daddy warned him many times not to touch any of his guns unless he was there. They could really hurt you. Especially the big one Daddy kept hidden in the garage. He’d gotten that one from a friend. Daddy showed that gun to Gabe once, standing like an action hero with the gun braced in both hands, the stock wedged against his shoulder, the weapon all black with a long curving ammo magazine. Daddy sometimes quizzed him on the parts of a gun.

Gabe picked up one of the bullets. It was smooth and pointed like an Indian arrowhead. Daddy showed him where to put the bullets. Loading the gun, it was called. Loading gave the gun power. Just as courage gives men power, Daddy said.

The gun was a gift from grandpa, who died before Gabe was born. Daddy said he was a good man who made bad choices. Gabe wasn’t sure what that meant, but the gun had writing on the handle and Daddy liked to read it aloud, a strange crack in his voice and that meant it was important to him: For my son, may you never confuse strength and judgement. Love, Dad.

Gabe slid the bullet into an open slot. Chamber, it was called. That made it sound magical.

He sat Chip on the edge of the couch. The gun was heavy and Gabe had to use both hands. He pushed the chamber into its proper place. It clicked. It was ready. A loaded Magic Maker.

Chip watched, black eyes unblinking.

5

Horror drowned her pleasure.

The gun, the goddamn stupid gun from his asshole suicidal father. The damned gun Janel quit nagging him about selling—they could use the money, after all—the piece-of-shit gun his father used to kill himself, the fucking gun he spent hours cleaning and polishing and showing their five-year-old how to load and how desperately Gabe wanted his father to love him, wanted his approval—

In flashes she saw a blood-soaked carpet, pale-white limbs, dimming blue eyes, and flowers staged like trophies around poster board splayed with baby pictures and herself in black slumping in a folding chair before a tiny grave where a white coffin lowered into the shadowy earth.

Stop! she yelled. "Stop!"

Take it, he hissed. Take it, you bitch. He was thrusting so fast and hard and grunting like a beast.

"Gabe! she screamed with all she had. GABE!"

6

The most-primal sense of Peter’s existence insisted he keep going, keep shoving himself deeper and deeper until the pressure released. Let Janel protest and resist and scream and shout, but she liked it and she needed it as much as he. Here, in this moment, he could live, be alive, unburdened with life’s bullshit and ride through the haze of beer and loathing to know what it meant to be a man. To conquer.

Wide-eyed, cheeks flushed crimson, and veins pulsing in her forehead, Janel screamed their son’s name.

His stomach spasmed with recognition and acidic fear, but the thing squirming beneath it, deep in his core of physicality, squeezed with incredible force that blanked his mind.

He orgasmed.

The gunshot might have been the sound of his own body desperate to rid the self-hatred seething within.

Chapter Three

1

Abbott tapped the Jesus pamphlet against his palm. Unfolded it. Folded it again. As he walked among the five nearly identical houses on Revival Road, he continued to fold and unfold it, the pamphlet reducing to a small, bulging square, and flowering back to its regular, although newly crumbled, state. Three street lamps pooled light and large black swirls filled the spaces between. Abbott paused in one of these spaces, something comfortable about it.

Sherri Matthews’s two-story house stood at the corner where Revival Road met Holy Saints Boulevard. God, no doubt, placed her there, an almost too-perfect location for a woman who wore conservative dresses and clutched a Bible against her at all times. Her house was dark. Asleep before ten.

A crow cawed. In the trees parallel to Revival, a flock of crows perched on leafy branches. Watching.

Not a flock, he thought. It’s called a murder of crows.

Abbott straightened the pamphlet and smoothed it against his thigh, but it curled in on itself and sagged, a wilting flower. He opened her mailbox, placed it inside. Maybe she had good intentions, maybe she truly believed, and was merely trying to spread the Good Word, but it was disconcerting how she kept at it with these pamphlets and how she knocked on his door and stood there, back-straight, an air of expectation about her, a presumption of invitation, as if she were a summoned doctor.

A door slammed.

Peter and Janel fighting next door. Nothing unusual about that, their muffled, angry shouts pushing against windows that stayed closed even during the smoldering summer afternoons, as if they lived in a burning hotbox.

There ought to be a sign on their lawn: 14 Days Without a Fight. Time to change those numbers back to zero.

The last fight erupted when Peter was downing beers on the front porch and Abbott was sipping through half as many next to him. Peter had buried their Bull Terrier, Bobo, in the backyard. Some kid in a speeding sports car. Tore the poor dog open. The kid said something about a state leash law in New York and Peter took a swing at him, but the kid ducked and Peter smashed his hand against the car. Abbott stepped between, and the kid threatened to sue. Peter’s swelling knuckles bulged. Beer calmed him, but then Janel came out and started in about how Peter shouldn’t have let Gabe watch him bury the dog. Things like that did permanent damage.

The fight quieted. The night settled around him, quiet save for the crickets and frogs hiding in the woods across the street. And the occasional vocal crow. The trees stood tall and lush, a natural barrier. A sign admonished, CLEAN UP AFTER YOUR DOG. Bobo died near that sign and so it could read, CLEAN UP YOUR DOG.

Another entry for The Book of Ironies.

Peter was not the type of guy Abbott expected to befriend, but they bonded two summers ago when Peter asked for help changing the radiator in his rusting Ford. They guzzled beer, cracked jokes, and Peter got his car in working order and Abbott got a new friend.

Gabe started calling Abbott Uncle Ab, and the friendship was sealed.

Janel screamed their son’s name. Even through the closed windows, her panic was immediate and absolute.

The downstairs windows glowed faintly through curtains. If he wasn’t on the porch drinking, Peter spent his time down there, the room dark and wood-paneled, a defunct fireplace as centerpiece.

He liked to sit there and clean the gun his father—

A gunshot echoed in a loud, ricocheting bang.

Abbott was running up the lawn before his heart caught up and hammered hard and fast, like it might burst free of his chest. He moved quickly, his feet not touching the ground, yet sure-footed and steady. He took the front steps, opened the door.

Janel stumbled at the top of the stairs, groped at the railing. She wore only a T-shirt, her bare legs pale and heavy. She shouted something, her son’s name, but the gunshot throbbed all around as if the sound could not escape the house.

Abbott went downstairs, thinking not of Gabe but of Peter. Killed himself. Finally did it. Gabe’s chipmunk was on the couch. Blood speckled its dry, taxidermied face. The gun lay beneath the coffee table. Gabe’s skinny arm stretched toward him, small palm wide open and supplicating.

An ice bath constricted Abbott’s breathing and sweat slicked his neck. Shitshitshitsshit.

Blood soaked the carpet and globs of something he couldn’t at first recognize speckled the stain. Didn’t want to recognize. Pieces of Gabe’s head.

Janel pushed him aside and fell before her son, screaming and crying and begging. Veins crisscrossed her face. She pawed at her son, lifted him, and his body dangled, his head sagged, and liquid bubbled down over his ear and coated his neck.

Abbott grabbed a blanket off the couch, moving so quickly, his knees almost giving out, and pressed the blanket to Gabe’s head and Janel wrapped her arms tight around her son, tears not yet of pain and grief but of pure terror.

No, Peter said from the stairs. "No. No. NO."

His chest heaved too fast for him to say anything else. He stood at the far end of the room, head shaking, arms jumping spastically as if a puppet master were yanking at strings. He was naked from the waist down. He staggered forward and collapsed to his knees, face paling and eyes rolling to whiteness.

Abbott snatched the phone.

2

The paramedics arrived in seven minutes. Abbott watched the time second by second on the clock above the fireplace. Each second-hand jitter seemed to stretch for several seconds and seven minutes lasted an hour.

Janel cradled her son and Abbott kept the blanket to his head. Fluid seeped through and he wadded more blanket against him. She rocked back and forth. Please, she said. "Please, please."

Peter Wilcox lay on the floor, unconscious.

A cop arrived first. Officer Mike Trumbly. He radioed in another request for the ambulance and stayed back, watching the scene as if afraid to help.

The first paramedic saw the cop, and paused at Peter, staring down, unsure.

Here! Abbott shouted. "HERE!"

He rushed over, kneeled, and the second paramedic didn’t even acknowledge Peter.

You have to let him go, the second paramedic said.

"No!" Janel screamed, thinking he meant there was no hope, she had to give up, let him go, what’s done is done.

It’s okay, Abbott said. They’re here to help. Let them help.

She handed over her son and clutched her empty hands together so hard her arms shook. Abbott hugged her and they watched as the paramedics examined Gabe and tugged supplies from their duffel bags. An oxygen mask. A length of tube. Plastic wrapping tore and floated to the ground.

He’s not going to die, Janel said. He’s not. He’s going to be okay.

Abbott hugged her tighter.

When the paramedics hefted Gabe in the stretcher, Abbott ran upstairs. The sheets on their bed were a disheveled mess and the stink of sex lingered, but he found the clothes and hurried back.

Janel joined the paramedics in the ambulance. I’ll get Peter and be right over, he said.

The door shut and the sirens came alive.

Next door, a light came on. Awake and see death, Abbott thought morbidly.

Sherri peered out from her bedroom window.

3

Peter shoved his pants on and sat on the couch. He leaned forward, arms on his thighs, and wavered side to side, tilting with a ship’s unsteady pitch.

Trumbly picked up the gun, pinching it with two fingers. Yours?

Peter swallowed, nodded.

Permit?

Peter stared at him, only he was really staring at the gun, wondering if he could snatch it from the cop and swallow a bullet before the cop stopped him. His knee knocked the table and bullets rolled back and forth. One tumbled off.

Officer, Abbott said, I think he needs to go to the hospital right now.

Trumbly might have been thirty, but with clean cheeks and a full head of brown hair he was a young boy in a Halloween costume. A faint scar squiggled down his temple. You are?

A neighbor. I live three houses down. His son was just shot.

You were here?

I was outside when I heard it.

What were Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox doing at the time? The corner of his mouth tugged up. Did you see them?

He should be with his wife right now. Can we go?

Trumbly held up the gun, read the engraving. Like father like son, huh?

If he had any energy, Peter would have attacked the cop. Instead, he bowed his head and wept hard, dry tears.

Chapter Four

1

Sherri woke to emergency lights splashing through her bedroom window, said a quick prayer— Please, God, guide my every action—and got up.

An ambulance blocked the driveway next door. Janel and Peter Wilcox. A poor, simple-minded couple who brought a child into the world without knowing what they were doing, but God had a plan. She told as much to Janel. You need only be open to His love, and He will show you the way.

Alcohol corrupted Peter, warped him into a crippled version of himself who guzzled booze and abused his wife and son, and now something had happened. Something awful. For even in the midst of life, there is death.

The wages of sin, she thought and said, Dear God, show me the way.

People prayed for world peace, or they prayed for the health of loved ones or the souls of the recently departed. Those people were missing the point. God put every single person on this planet for a reason—the goal was to find that reason and fulfill it.

Religion did not need to get any more complicated than that. Even Pastor Ermine got that confused. Standing at the pulpit at Our Lord of Joys in Ketauny just over the border in Pennsylvania, Ermine wasted his breath with sermons about the evils of violent movies and homosexuality. That, as Sherri’s mother would have said, was seeing the trees and not the forest.

God saw fit to strengthen Sherri through a lonely childhood in which children mocked her for the brownish scar creasing her cheek, a hot iron tumbling off the board, her pale, soft face staring up stupidly as if the sky were falling. God gave her a husband and a son, and tested her will when her husband fell into another woman’s bed and her college-bound son turned against her, condemning her as he condemned God. You’re living in a fucking fairytale, he said.

That was five years ago. Howard was gone and so was Herbert, living in the city fighting God’s will, and when he called twice a year, on Mother’s Day and her birthday, he spoke in short, curt sentences and did not say he loved her but only added You too when she said it.

God challenged her to stop counting the trees and see the forest. Painful as it was to her, especially the nights when she prayed so hard to be shown the way and ended sobbing into her pillow, her empty house expanding around her, she would rise to His calling—she would follow the path He cleared for her.

Howard and Herbert were mere trees. Like the ones across the street bordering Revival Road, ambulance lights swooshing across them in mangled, ominous faces that melted the moment they formed.

The paramedics carried out a stretcher. The shape small, hardly even there. The doors closed on Janel and a siren whined into a shriek. It sped off and Abbott French stared up at her window.

Another one of the misguided, a lost sheep.

Another tree.

On the wall hung a simple cross. Beneath it was a small framed sign. It read: He who lifts the cross carries a heavy burden.

Sherri used the phone to call Linda Hale.

What’s happened?

God has shown me the way, Sherri said.

2

They met in the hospital parking lot, hugged and Linda stood back, short and strong, at the ready, a full believer without a trace of doubt, she so much like Sherri—mid-forties, divorced, pious in all the ways it mattered.

Sherri envied Linda’s absolute faith. But Sherri’s doubt that sometimes threatened to tangle belief against itself like a kite’s string in branches, was the very thing that gave her belief authenticity and vigor. She wasn’t a follower of anyone—except God.

We never know when, do we? Sherri said.

Linda nodded.

May God guide our every action, Sherri said.

She led them into the hospital. She walked faster and more confidently with every step.

3

Abbott spotted Sherri coming down the hall, Bible pressed tight against her slim chest and moving with determined stiffness. A woman walked beside her, short and solid.

I know why you came, but now is not the time, Abbott said. Behind him in a windowless room, Janel vacillated between heavy sobs and an exasperated string of nonsensical pleading. Her friend Debbie Towles comforted as best she could. Janel’s brother, Jack, was on his way up from New Jersey. Peter sat cramped on the floor in the corner, hands hiding his face.

Did Janel say that? Sherri asked.

She’s in shock. Abbott stared down at her, neither person giving an inch. This was not one of the de-escalation methods he’d been taught at work. I’ll tell her you stopped by.

And Gabe?

Abbott couldn’t form words.

Is there a priest?

Hospital chaplain came by.

Sherri made an exasperated huffing noise and pushed past him. He reached for her, not sure if he was going to grab her and make this into some sort of showdown, but her companion swatted his arm aside with hard, certain force.

He stared at them. Who the hell did these women think they were?

4

Janel hugged Sherri. Her fingers dug into Sherri’s shoulder blades. Please, Janel begged, please tell me he’ll be okay. Please tell me he’ll survive.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

"I need more than that. Please."

Sherri appreciated the Bible in her hand, as if contemplating whether opening it were a good idea.

Tell me what happened.

Janel blubbered out words and then smacked her own face hard enough for Debbie to cringe. She stabbed a finger at Peter, huddled like a frightened child. "Him. He left the gun out. He did this."

Peter flinched but didn’t look up.

I cautioned you, Sherri said. You strayed so far from God’s love.

Janel wiped snot off her lip, stared, eyes red, uncomprehending.

It’s okay. I can help. We can embrace His love and His mercy together.

It’s not my fault, Sherri said, a child disavowing responsibility. "I tried to talk to him. I told him for years to get rid of that gun. Oh God."

Debbie stood, hugged her.

Abbott stayed in the doorway where the air was easier to breathe, not so weighted with grief and anger.

Let us pray, Sherri said.

She and her friend kneeled, bowed heads. Sherri set her Bible before her on the floor. She started to invoke God’s mercy and Janel slowly turned to stare down at them. Emotions battled on her face, an indeterminate mix of pain and hope. What was she going to do? Abbott could go home, take a shower, and sit with his mother, but Janel couldn’t do anything to make herself feel better. Yell at Peter? Cry in her son’s bed? Scream and break things?

Stop, she said. Just stop.

Sherri asked for God’s mercy and forgiveness, for God to show Janel the way to His Kingdom, for God to free her from this pain, for God to not punish her any further for her transgressions.

Stop! Janel stepped forward, stood tall over them. "It’s not my fault!"

Sherri grabbed Janel’s arm, quick as a striking snake, and yanked her down to her knees. Debbie came forward and Linda Hale brought one hand up in a warning STOP gesture. The sheer surprise kept Debbie in place—frozen, mouth agape.

Janel tried to pull free and Sherri grabbed her other arm, pulled her close, faces almost touching. "Your son is dead. Be angry all you want. Curse God. Blame others. None of those useless emotions will bring him back. Unless you ask His forgiveness, you will never know anything but the pain that scorches your heart right now."

Fresh tears glassed Janel’s eyes.

You love your son?

Yes.

Do you love God?

Heaving breaths and she gritted her teeth.

If you don’t love God, what hope can there be?

Janel spoke very slowly, barely opening her mouth, the words clear, sharp as slaps: I. Want. You. To. Leave.

The moment stretched and stretched.

Sherri released