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mind gibbered. He shook his head frantically.
Am I still asleep, or is this really happening?
    Another wave of slaughterhouse stink rose from the woman’s body
and Jordan vomited. Then, smelling his own puke, he vomited again.
    When he stopped retching and stood up, he saw Richard Weal
standing there beside the steering wheel. In his left hand, he held a
pickaxe. The blade of the axe was clotted with clumps of flesh and hair.
In the right hand, he held a red-spattered butcher’s knife with an eight inch blade. To Jordan, he looked like a monster out of a horror movie.
The entire bottom half of his face was caked with blood. The front of his
shirt and army surplus jacket were soaked with it and shone wetly under
the dim overhead lights of the driver’s cabin.
    As Jordan’s terrified mind shook off the last remaining shred of
torpor and his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he saw the bus driver’s
mutilated body crumpled at Weal’s feet. Half his skull was missing and
his throat had been torn out.
    “The blood is the life,” Weal said thickly, licking his lips. He waved
the pickaxe idly in Jordan’s general direction. “I told you, I brought my
tools. He tells me how,” Weal said reverently. “He speaks to me. They told
me, in that . . .
place,
to take the pills. But when I did, I couldn’t hear him
anymore. He showed me how to do this. He sends dreams into my brain.
He wants me to find him so I can live forever. I’ll be like him. I’ll be able
to fly.”
    “You’re crazy,” Jordan whispered. “You’re fucking crazy.”
    Weal smiled, his teeth red. “No, no, I’m not crazy. He wants me to
wake him. He wants me to find him where he sleeps and wake him. He
loves me.” Weal cocked his head like a dog listening for a supersonic
whistle. “He’s speaking right now. I can’t believe you can’t hear it. He
says I should kill you, because if I let you live, you’ll tell everyone about
him. About us.”
    Weal wiped the knife on his pants and began swinging it lazily in
front of him like a pendulum. Jordan heard the hiss as it cut the air. Weal
took a step towards him, still swinging. Jordan jumped back, slipping
again on the gore-slick floor. Weal took a compensatory step forward as
though he were leading in some ghastly tango.
    “No, I won’t tell! I swear! Please, please, let me go! Please! I have
to get home.” Weal swung the knife in wider arcs and feinting half-jabs
at Jordan. He grinned, advancing. Jordan backed up farther. “My mom
needs me! My dad’s hurting her. Please, if you kill me, she won’t have
anyone to protect her. Please, don’t. Oh God. I’m begging you.”
    “The blood is the life,” Weal whispered. “And I’m going to live forever.”
    He struck hard with the knife, slashing Jordan across the chest.
The blade shredded Jordan’s shirt, and bit deep into flesh and muscle.
He screamed as the blood rose from the wound. Jordan clutched his
chest and backed away. Weal kept advancing, driving Jordan backward,
slashing with each step, cutting Jordan’s hands when he tried to ward off
the swinging blade, slashing his neck and face when Jordan’s bleeding
hands were elsewhere.
    When finally Jordan staggered and fell, dizzy from shock and pain,
Weal turned him onto his back, almost lovingly. He kissed Jordan on the
lips. Then he drew the knife across his throat, severing his carotid artery.
The last thing Jordan felt were Weal’s lips against his throat, lapping at
the blood that gushed from the wound.
    Through dying eyes, Jordan looked up and tried to focus on his
murderer.
    Weal’s face became his own father’s face, full of deadened, murderous
rage. Then it was Weal’s face again. Then his father’s. Then it was Weal’s
again.
    Directly behind Weal, a tenebrous, mist-like column was forming,
vaguely human-shaped, but seemingly made entirely of darkness. Its
head (or whatever part of it looked to Jordan most like a human head)