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The devil crashed to thelike candles, his distorted face a dripping red mask of hate and pain

The Bone Man stood over hiuitar in his hands In the darkness of Dark Hollow there was no trace of God’s sunlight, and so Above the to silver as the death-​ht

Even now, beaten down and bloody, the devil was about a heartbeat away froht would be his

The Bone Man’s face was streaentle et this done, and he tried to uitar neck in both hands and raised it over his head The strings of the guitar and all the tuning pegs touched the o back to hell!" he screauitar neck down onto the devil’s back The Bone Man’s body arched back and then bent forward as he convulsed to use every ounce of strength he had to drive the wooden spike like a stake through hair and flesh andthe devil’s black heart

The devil screamed so loud all the crows fled the trees, and the echo of it slammed off the walls of the three h the Bone Man’s ears and he let go of the stake and grabbed his own head and staggered back The screas died and woras erupted froht fire as they fell The Bone Man coughed and blood sprayed from his mouth and nose

The devil tried to rise, tried to reach behind him and claw the stake out of his body, but his arain, but now the screams were man screams, and they eaker The red in his eyes drained away and then the yellow faded and the eyes were an icy blue, but still they ithout any trace of hu hatred that burned into the Bone Man even as the eyes began to glaze and eround near the swamp His mouth opened one more time, but instead of a scream a dark pint of blood splashed heavily onto the damp leaves

The Bone Man sank down onto his knees and then toppled forward onto his palms Blood dripped from his mouth and nose and fireflies danced in his brain He stared at the devil for a long time, stared at hiht shone cold and hard on the devil, but noas only light and it did no harh the devil’s pockets There was some cash, but he left that He flipped open his wallet and looked at the driver’s license The devil’s face stared at hiht by the camera The name on the card was Ubel Griswold, but the Bone Man suspected that it wasn’t the devil’s real nah, so he just tore out some of the devil’s hair, wrapped it in a leaf that had a few spots of blood, and put it in his shirt pocket When he got back to his sleeping bag, he’d take the hair and blood and mix it in a boith some herbs and then bury it in a churchyard Evil, he knew, is hard to kill, and he wanted to kill the devil on the spirit plane as well as the physical Else it’d coed the corpse of Ubel Griswold toward the swareen stick the devil had broken off and used it to push the body down into the hungrytied in the black goo Now no one would find it except the bugs and the verh

He spat on the stick and threw it into the woods, then wiped his hands on the seat of his work pants

Then he gathered up the pieces of his guitar--all except the neck, which was still buried in Griswold’s back--and dug a fresh hole and buried theuitar It had been his father’s and then his great-​uncle’s before that That guitar had played a lot of sweet blues music, from Mississippi and all over the country Once Charley Patton had borrowed the guitar froreat-​uncle and had played "Mississippi Boweavil Blues" on it at a church picnic in Bentonia, laying it on his lap like a Hawaiian guitar and singing in that loud gospel voice of his Another tiil Morse, had played backup on a couple of Sun Records sides by Mose Vinson That guitar had history, and even the Bone Man himself--or Oren Morse to those back home--had played it in a hundred clubs and coffeehouses froe in New York to the smoky black clubs in Philadelphia Noas splinters and all its ic to kill the devil, and what uitar than that?

He covered over the pieces and stood up The ht showed hi froreasy residue of terror

He clih his head was It’s over

A dozen tiht his trouser cuffs on thornbushes and had to pull hard to free himself He never noticed that one time when he pulled he tore loose the dirass and was lost to him forever

He reached the top of the hill just as a flat black cloud cover fro pulled like a tarp over the moon and stars Even so he could see his way There was a dirt road that led from the Passion Pit back out to the h the corn to the Guthrie place All of the corn, far as the eye could see, was Henry Guthrie’s, and way over past the fields was the barn and in the barn was the Bone Man’s bedroll

"It’s over," he said to the night as he set out toward the corn

Then the lights cahts and one set of blue and red police doht He stopped, frozen in theand shoes crunching down on gravel

"Hold it right there, boy"