Strange Highways

replay than he had the first time. His brother's serpentine shadow had already slithered out of the moon-yellow light below and was nowhere to be seen. P.J. was farther into the labyrinthine cellar than before. With Celeste.
     Joey started to descend the stairs two at a time, then realized that caution was still required. By discarding the gun and taking up the crucifix, he had altered the future that would unfold from this point on. Previously, he had reached the final chamber in the cellar before encountering P.J., but this time his brother might be waiting elsewhere along the way. He clutched the stair railing with one hand and continued downward with circumspection.
     Such heat. An oven.
     The smell of hot lime from the concrete. Hot stone baking in the walls.
     In the first room, the jittering shadow of the frenzied spider spiraled ceaselessly on the floor.
     Warily crossing toward the archway, Joey searched the long, deep coffers between the ceiling timbers for something other than spiders.
     By the time he reached the second room, a railroad rumble had arisen under St. Thomas's.
     As he stepped into the third chamber, the ominous sound swelled and was accompanied by tremors in the floor.
     No time for caution.
     No time for mistakes either.
     He gripped the crucifix tightly in his right hand, held it out in front of him: Professor Von Helsing in the castle of the count.
     Overhead. Shadows. Only shadows.
     Room by room to the final archway.
     Celeste lay unconscious under the single lightbulb.
     The village-rocking subsidence hit, the church shook, and Joey was thrown through the archway into the final chamber just as the stone floor cracked open. Blades of orange light slashed out of the tunnel below. The fault in the floor widened as mortar disintegrated and stones broke loose, creating a more formidable gap between him and Celeste.
     P.J. seemed to have vanished.
     Stepping under the ceiling coffer that lay just this side of the fissure, standing with the brink of the raging mine fire to his right, Joey peered up expectantly into the recess between the rough timbers. P.J. was there as before, scuttling toward him, spider quick and spider agile, defying gravity, weirder than ever in the seething firelight. He shrieked, twitched with an arachnid spasm, and flung himself down at his prey.
     Joey had no more Twilight Zone explanations to fall back upon, no more quirks of quantum physics, no more Star Trek time warps or energy waves, no more relatively polite monsters from the X-Files that might be taken out with a shotgun, not even any more complex Freudian analyses. There was only the real thing now, the foul and ancient thing, purest evil, the greatest fear of so many other centuries, millennia, here now swooping at him, shrieking hatred, reeking of sulfur, dark devourer of souls, eater of hope: only the fundamentals now, only a beast so primal that believing in it was difficult even when face to face with it. Joey cast out all doubt, however, overcame all cynicism, shed the supposed sophistication of the postmodern age, raised the crucifix in both hands, and thrust it out in front of him.
     The top of the crucifix was blunt, not pointed, but it impaled P.J. when he slammed into it. Impaled, however, he was not stopped. He
fell into Joey and drove him backward. They staggered, stumbled, stayed on their feet, but teetered on the edge of the fiery gulf.
     P.J. got one hand around Joey's throat. His fingers were as powerful as the jaws of a motorized vise, as shiny and hard as the carapace of
a dung beetle. His yellow eyes reminded Joey of the mongrel dog that he'd seen only that morning on the front porch of his dad's house.
When P.J. spoke, black blood bubbled on his lips: "Altar boy."
     In the inferno below, an expansive pocket of toxic gases burst from confinement and exploded, shimmering incandescently. A white ball of flame spun out of the cellar floor, engulfed them, igniting P.J.'s clothes and hair, scorching away his skin in an instant. He released Joey, lost his balance, and with the crucifix embedded in his chest, he dropped through the steadily widening fissure into the old mine tunnel, folding the cape of fire around his body and taking it with him.
     Although Joey had been immersed in the flames, he was unharmed. His clothes were