A Little from Chapter 9: Things Begin Horribly Wrong

The text below is from a novel in progress. First draft so there's still plenty of editing that will need to be done before it's "ready."

It was like some kind of spilled gold that coated his mouth, his throat; he could feel his skin begin to unfurl. The basement lit up and Aloysious could see the skeletons of Sal and the Raspy Man; he could see beyond the walls and floor and saw more bones tangled together. Amid the sudden cool power of being three cans in, there were voices twisted together. Cries of pain, anguish. Sobbing.

Aloysious dropped the empty can.

The walls started crumbling and something cracked along the floor. The bones started vibrating.

Through a veil of mist Aloysious missed the finer points of what happened next, especially every fax machine, cell phone, television, and computer within a twenty kilometer radius spewing out an address. Even car radios were affected. A reassuring feminine voice intoned the address over and over, no matter what station was playing. He also missed the skeletons reassembling themselves and pushing aside poured concrete like a shower curtain and climbing from the earth like voles. The past victims of Raspy Man and Sal grabbed hold of the stunned pair and dragged them to the main yard.

If anyone had been around to see it, they would have seen a ghostly blue form of Aloysius smash through the roof and wait for the ghastly parade to join him. As the skeletons entered the yard, many of them laid down in neat, orderly rows seeking rest that had been so far away when they'd moved on to something astral. But the skeletons clutching Sal and the Raspy Man moved on toward where Aloysious' massive form hovered a few feet above the ground.

The fear roiled off the pair, but Aloysious paid no attention. He could see their bones and without so much as a word, he begin shattering and splintering the bones of the pair. (Later, doctors would look at the x-rays and describe some of the bones as, “dust.”) He began with the toes. No matter what piggie went to market, it was never coming home. Thigh bone connected to the hip bone – if you looked at the right angle it did. Some of the more important bones Aloysious left untouched – another fact that confounded doctors later; was it a concentrated sound beam? – such as the ribcage and especially the jaw bone and most of the throat. These two pieces of flotsam needed to be able to tell their story.

The skeletons lowered their charges to the ground, then settled in themselves, finally peaceful. Sal and the Raspy Man screamed.


Aloysious floated over the macabre field of bone and as names revealed themselves, he etched them into the ground in front of the resting skeletons. The sirens were getting closer as he pulsed and shimmered, vanishing like fog.