They call midnight the witching hour, but no witchery happened. All of the sorcery had been done.
All the farmers were asleep by then, though their sleep was troubled by thoughts of what that much rain might do to the crops. Harvest was in full swing and torrential rains killed things, drowned roots, washed soil away, and glued the wheels of farm equipment to the ground.
In town, the clubs on Boundary Street pulsed and throbbed and hammered and feasted long past the two o’clock cutoff. No cops bothered them. No neighbors complained because that was a new part of town and the only neighbors were either running their own clubs or drinking at the bars next door.
Patty was asleep by then, but it wasn’t a good sleep. Not anywhere close to that.
Owen Minor was also asleep, smiling as he dove deeper and deeper. He kept getting hard and soft, hard and soft, in time with the things he saw. The things he did. His pale fingers clutched the pillows and tore at the sheets and his tongue tip darted out every now and then, clever as a snake’s, and licked sweat from his upper lip. Flies crawled over his face and there were maggots down deep in the sweaty folds of his sheets.
Out on the road, Monk Addison was way down in his own dark hole lit by remembered flashes of guns. Ghosts stood all around his car, and some were inside, on the front seat, crowded into the back. Looking at him. There were always ghosts with him. Sometimes they screamed him awake. Tonight they let him sleep, and he slept all through the night. Monk stirred only once, when the rain eased and then stopped. He murmured a single word—a name—before sliding farther down.
“Tuyet…”
The ghosts and the nightbirds all heard that name. They heard him repeat it throughout that long night.
Slowly, smirking at a job well done, the rain and the storm went away.