The Pale Man Rises

CHAPTER TWELVE

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When Clarke Arrington received Crumpler's call concerning the arrival of the new Chevrolets he'd been expecting he was so angry that he started to dial up the GM plant in Atlanta and tell them he was starting civil procedures against them come the next day. He would promise them that he would immediately get in contact with corporate headquarters in Detroit and let them know that he intended to end his relationship with GM for such shoddy treatment.

That would get there asses to hopping. He could hear his own words now. "Listen dick I'm the most influential dealer in this part of the state and I can pretty much talk these yokels into buying whatever brand I recommend...so if it's Fords I got on my lot that's what they'll buy! And another thing I'll tell them every secret I know GM doesn't want the public to hear about their cars...there won't be a goddamn one of 'em on the roads around here 'til I'm six feet under!"

He rehearsed the conversation while he dressed. And who did this truck driver think he was demanding he get down there right now at this god forsaken hour to get the cars off of his carrier? He was another one of these piss ants that he intended to give a piece of his mind before this day was over.

But when he arrived at the dealership he was shocked to see what awaited him. There were gaping holes in many of his vehicles and soon the bottom line businessman in him began to calculate his losses even while he worried over what he saw and the disappearance of Crumpler and the truck driver.

Soon enough he discovered the blood next to the truck. It shocked him and filled him with a sick fear. He did not find the body which had lost the blood and this caused him even greater distress. He was startled out of his wits as he rushed off to the office to call the cops. And just as he reached the door he heard the sound of a motorcycle moving off in a northerly direction on the road that lay some 300 feet away and was the right turn just before coming upon his business. It was Luther Newton he heard.

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Once he'd hidden the body of the truck driver whose commercial license indicated that he was one Wilbur Gage from Jonesboro, Georgia, he sped off up to the intersection of the two roads. He was well enough up the road that Arrington did not see him as he passed on his way to the car lot. Luther had his light off as he lingered there observing the lot as best he could. He was able to watch the man's every move about the property because it was so well lit up. And in little time at all the dealer found the blood and then dashed off to the office to summon the cops.

Gage's body was not where the pale man had killed him because Luther had heaved it up and carried it a great distance away from that spot. He had hidden it beneath one of the used cars in the lot. He knew that if they didn't find the body very soon it would delay the investigation into the matter.

It hadn't taken him long to hide the body. Gage didn't weight no more than 160 pounds and the chore had proven to be quite profitable as well. Gage was toting two hundred and fifty smackers in his wallet and Luther vowed to his corpse that he would have a kick ass good time on it.

He rode the narrow byways for hours seeking them out eventually once more going in an easterly direction. At last the quest brought him onto a seemingly abandoned stretch of blacktop save for a worn out Buick that slowly crawled ahead of him and coughed black clouds of smoke like a declining smoker. Eventually he managed to get around it cursing whomever was behind the wheel.

The old fart was going rather slow and Luther was in a mood to bust him up if he could have gotten the chance. In days gone by he'd roughed up any number of elderly folk. Why not, they were easy prey and were usually packing some long green? Especially the ones you met on the open road. If you could pop some wrinkled old kike snow bird from the Big Apple headed for south Florida you could make a reasonably big score. But he was more eager to find the pale man and his young accomplice, who, by now, he had figured out was the Reese kid himself. He had no idea the guard Dwayne Crumpler was in their company having assumed the pale man had done him in.

Yet when he passed the creeping old Buick and clicked his light to bright it fell on three individuals. It was the pale man and the Reese kid as well as the night watchman. 

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 They moved quickly beyond some trees and brush alongside the roadway heading for the other side. For some reason he was going in the opposite direction and he didn't understand how that could have happened.

After passing on up the road for another hundred feet or so he stopped and killed his lights. He was idling once more trying to observe them. He could see the pale man's hair and face, as it seemed to float in the darkness like a fearsome ghost. He could see Clay Reese quite well also as they penetrated further into the deep wood.

He could not imagine where they were headed being almost totally unfamiliar with the area. The only landmark ahead that he definitely knew about was the Alliance River. Its headwaters began just northeast of here and flowed on down through lower Byrd County on into Pickett moving south and east through Branch and Chase Counties. There it began to meander like a serpent until it met the Cape Fear River. The Cape Fear then coursed into the most southeasterly part of the state until it met the Atlantic Ocean at its mouth by the small historic port city of Wilmington.

How could he keep up with them as they moved through the forests he wondered? This was surely a terribly complex situation for someone whose usual response to solving a problem was to resort to violence.

He came to the conclusion that he would simply zigzag with the intersecting roads that went south and east along this vast wooded area. He would do this as he watched for them alighting from wood to wood. He knew they would have to at last come upon the river and would have to then take a singular route until they overcame it. He hoped that then they would change their routine and he could follow them on to wherever they were headed. And so he rode until daylight.

It seemed that this section of the Piedmont was nothing but deep forests. Because of it one would naturally think North Carolina was no more than a densely wooded rural state instead of one that was thriving, endlessly growing with an ever changing economy. All this space was destined for development in the coming decades of course, but on this cold brisk morning that hung heavy with slow drifting fog it was an ominous territory with numerous dark trees lining the roads looking much like somber giants.

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He wished the wind would rise up and push the fog away or the rising sun that pierced through the branches as though a needle bright and harsh would burn it off. He was tired of riding and so pulled alongside some scarred plastic dumpsters where the rural residents deposited their garbage instead of risking catastrophe by burning it or polluting the land by burying it.

He found his stogie once more and lit it up. It was then that he saw them again once more emerging from the safety of the forest. Even in the fog the pale man's hair was bright, bright as a brilliant flag floating through a veil of gray smoke. And his black outfit seemed to be a cameo full-grown in its silhouette moving softly across the road leading the way his head lifting slightly as if a canine sniffing the distance for some odor drawing him on in search of whatever.

But now the trio did not continue on into the next growth of trees. They instead turned there on the road going east further into the shroud of the fog. And at last Luther lost sight of them as they continued to move. He could not start up after them immediately knowing full well that to do so might blow the whole deal and get him killed.