Page followed, tried to speak to the Guitarist, but he focused on the disjointed memories. “I remember finding you in the woods,” he offered, but Iggy looked at the back road. A smile played across his lips, “I was actually joking, when I asked you to play dungeon music.”

The Guitarist burst into a gale of laughter, “That was the weirdest request I ever had!” The broad smile felt funny, so seldom had it emerged.

“You did it, spooky,” Page smiled, “I knew you were going places too.”

“Yeah,” he said and chuckled, “going to straight to juvie or a trailer in Owl Sticks.”

“Hey dude,” Page shook his head, “I would have probably taken over my dad’s practice. But, you, you were going to be a legend, a real one!”

“I just love it,” he moved with a smooth gait, music played sweeter. “It was a challenge too,” he bobbed his head, “and to switch it up as you guys played, fun.”

“You could have played too,” the teenager sprung up beside Iggy, as they walked.

“On a Jerry-can guitar I made,” he smiled. His cigar box one had been run over by a dark vehicle, Iggy recalled, but he didn’t get a good look at them.

Before he could hum the tune to Page’s campaign of Mad Max’s Maze, the Guitarist stepped into Owl Sticks. Iggy’s old man, before he found the ferryman at the bottom of a bottle, had bounced between them. “Like a trailer park hell,” he marveled, and whistled a low, long note. All the jobs are gone, he had heard, and looked at the long wall that separated the edge of town from the surrounding creek. Prone to flooding, the lack of rain over the last couple of weeks had left only a halfhearted trickle. Trailers and hovels beyond the fence peeked at him, most dark. The last of the day’s light died, but the full moon had come. Its glow made the land horror haunted as the unsettled heart. Even beyond the low end housing division, sour sweat was washed in the cat piss stink of meth labs. Children, parents too high to watch, roamed through the streets like feral packs of dogs. A house or trailer would suffer their joy, end in flames.

“I walk through it sometimes, man,” Page shook his head; his dad had closed up the practice, after his mom had left. “Like places with those creatures from a horror show; you know the things that shamble about.”

“That was where I was headed,” he said, and recalled the terror that had bloomed in his heart. Heard those stories about Jimmy my whole life; he considered the crossroads, where he had prayed for deliverance. I could go around it, he thought, but pushed away any memories of the second time he visited the intersection of roads. Distant police sirens rose, though he heard only the tunes inside his heart.

Back to the road he turned, and stepped away from the desolation of rural lifted. The system of roads, beyond the town, spread out through the low land. Iggy had preferred walking them, instead of going back home after school. They had ended up an old home near the Blackberry Bog. Once he had seen two men lead another towards the swamp’s heart, but he had hid. Men accustomed to the old ways would seek justice in the muck, where modern law failed. Send them to the Serpent was said by the town’s older families, he recalled. Van Lear family atop the mountain were said to make use of the mire, when someone needed to disappear. Iggy had nightmares about the two men, face shrouded, would lead him to its heart. A man with steel spurs, who smelled of hand rolled cigarettes, would watch him swing.

Iggy shivered at the smeared face that leered from memory. Page and the shadowy figure had played about behind, but they only followed, huddled together. He walked, mind on the discordant image, and the music inside that had slowed.

Only when his parent’s house stood before him, he finally stopped. The years were hard on Owl Sticks, yet left the house untouched. Though the yard looked rough, it was the only place poorly kept. Iggy walked to the house, eyes moved on the property. Memories lingered half hidden in the bright moonlight. Dad wasn’t much for work, even when he had a job, but he had obsessed over the yard. Once, after a bad day at the plant, the Guitarist had found him passed out on a riding lawnmower, which they could never afford. It sat beside the porch, he saw, as Iggy stepped up to the door.

He raised a hand to knock. Door ajar, Iggy felt a cold blade trace his heart. The music inside skipped. Back to Page he looked, and saw his friends had stopped at the yard’s edge. With a frown, the Guitarist beckoned them, but he shook his head. Over and over the sour notes resounded. Bile rose up into his throat. He called for her, but only odd voices buzzed out from a speaker.

Her name on his numb lips, he stepped inside. A migraine tore through his head, and Iggy staggered. In her favorite chair, his mother sat, throat cut. Just like them, his mind groaned. Slight build of the woman was devoured by the night gown. Blood turned the fabric black in the television’s light. Upon her head was a symbol carved deep, which dripped no blood. Sight of it dug into his right eye. Exactly like them, a voice screamed inside. Tears burst out, for the sigil, like a tree of pain, pounded in the mind.

“I’m a free man,” he cried, vision blurred. “They found someone else’s—”

The scanner burst to life in fits and starts. It buzzed one was alien, discordant, and the voices of the police were often garbled. Between each other and dispatch, they spoke in quick bursts. They searched the town.