Alabaster

2

During my time in Athens, Georgia, way, way back in the mid-nineties, I did a stint as the vocalist and songwriter for a local goth-folk-blues band called Death's Little Sister. This wasn't long after I'd finished writing Silk, and it was taking a lot longer to sell than either my agent or I had expected. So I decided I'd be a rock star instead. Luckily, the work for Vertigo came along and the novel did eventually sell, shocking me back to my senses and rescuing me from the indie-rock purgatory that is Athens.

Anyway, one bitterly cold night in November 1996 we played a show at the 40-Watt Club on Washington Street. All our original material, which amounted to about seven or eight songs, plus all our covers-"House of the Rising Sun," "Crimson and Clover," "Sweet Jane," "Bloodletting," and so forth. Enough people showed up that at least it didn't feel like one of our interminable practices, and no one threw anything at us. To make matters worse, someone approached us after the show to ask if we'd like to contribute a track to a compilation of Bowie covers being put together by a local record label. So, we were in pretty good spirits afterwards, which was anything but usual. About one a.m., we loaded out, collected whatever paltry few bucks we had coming from the club, sold a couple of tapes, and then piled into my blue Honda station wagon. All four of us, plus a couple of hangers-on, squished in amongst our gear (amps, a mixing board, mike stands, instruments), elbows in ribs, shoes where shoes ought not be, and our keyboardist sitting in the backseat floorboard (she was very, very tiny). We had about half a case of truly crappy beer-PBR or Sterling or some such weasel piss-a big bottle of Jagermeister, and another bottle of Wild Turkey, a little weed, and we headed north out of town on I-129.

A pretty bleak stretch of road, leading nowhere any of us had any business going at one o'clock in the morning, half-drunk, stoned, and dressed like a bunch of whores from Hell's cotillion (thank you, Matthew Grasse, wherever you are). To our credit, we did have a destination in mind, the old Woodbine Cemetery in Jefferson, about 20 miles north of Athens. At some point, Barry Dillard, our guitarist, had told us a story about a murder-suicide at UGA in 1918 and, he'd said, the murderer was buried in Woodbine. His victim was buried three miles from Woodbine, in a Presbyterian cemetery. I'm sure it has a name, too, but I've forgotten it. And, so the story went, because such stories always go this way, his ghost and the ghost of the woman he killed could be glimpsed at Woodbine from time to time, reunited, wandering aimlessly about the tombstones.

There isn't much between Athens and Jefferson – kudzu, cows, junk cars, house trailers, and "towns" with names like Red Stone, Arcade, Attica, and Clarksboro. Maybe a few state troopers looking for drunken idiots in blue Honda station wagons. Nothing you want to run into on a dark night. And it was a very dark night, no moon at all, but not cloudy, either. I remember the sky was clear and the stars were bright, in the way that stars can fill the whole sky, horizon to horizon, and yet give off no light whatsoever. I remember that someone put in an Echo and the Bu

"Jesus, man, it's Saint Elmo's fire," Barry said. Or maybe that was Mike, our bass player. Someone else said it was a ghost, and I said that it couldn't be because we hadn't even reached the cemetery yet.

We slowed down, and the ball of light slowed down. We sped up, and it sped up. After a mile or so, the novelty began to wear thin and the situation started to get seriously creepy. The girl I'd drafted to drive pulled over to the side of the road just as the pines ended and the land opened up into pasture again. The ball of light floated out of the trees, turned and drifted over a barbed-wire fence, coming to a stop in the middle of the road, maybe ten yards in front of the Honda.

We sat and stared. It bobbed up and down. We sat and stared some more. I don't remember anyone saying much of anything, just Echo and the Bu

"Let's just get the fuck out of here," Barry said and, as if the thing had heard him, it dimmed slightly and then began to rise, going straight up, higher and higher until it seemed not much more than a particularly bright star. At some point we finally lost sight of it and the driver pulled back onto the I-129, heading for Jefferson.

"I don't think I want to go anymore," Shelly, the keyboardist-in-the-floorboard, said. There was a little nervous laughter and then, "No, I'm serious," she said. "Turn the car around and let's go back to town."

And before we had time to start arguing about whether we were going back to Athens or continuing on to Jefferson to hunt ghosts, there was an extremely loud BLAM and the car swerved off the road into a weedy ditch. A few seconds later, once we were sure that none of us were bleeding or unconscious or disemboweled or anything, Barry climbed out one of the windows (his door was jammed shut).

"It's a blowout," he reported. "We blew a tire."

I had a spare, of course, And, of course, it was also flat.

For the next ten minutes, maybe less, we sat there in the car, rubbing at our various scrapes and bruises, drinking the weasel-piss beer and Jagermeister, and debating whether we'd get shot if we went to one of the houses along the road and asked to use the phone. The girl who was driving (she had a name, but none of this was her idea, so I'm not using it) turned on the flashers and declared that we never should have left town in the first place. I don't remember anyone disagreeing with her.

"What if that thing comes back?" Shelly asked anxiously.

"It won't," I said, hoping I was right, and started looking for the bottle of Wild Turkey, which had rolled under the front seat when we went into the ditch.

And that's when the black Monte Carlo came along, heading south towards Athens, away from Jefferson. It only had one headlight and that didn't seem to work very well. "Thank god," Shelly grumbled, as the big, ugly Chevy glided across the yellow center line and came to a stop directly in front of us. After sitting in the dark, even that one weak headlight seemed blindingly bright.

Mike-whose door wasn't jammed shut-got out of the car, and a very tall, very fat man, a veritable mountain of human flesh, climbed out of the Monte Carlo, and the two of them stood staring at the crippled Honda, shaking their heads. The man from the Monte Carlo was wearing a dark suit and a white shirt, a long coat that almost reached the ground, and a derby hat. He had a long beard, which may have been gray. Echo and the Bu

"Where are you kids headed this late?"

"Nowhere."

"Well, good, because that's the only place you're go

"Our spare's flat."

"You're kidding?"

"No sir. Are you going to Athens? If you're going to Athens, maybe you could give one of us a ride back to town."