Werk was dead, like a snake’s scales shed.

The time of day, was perhaps mid morning, midnight for all he cared, far to early to be awake.

The bait car, this tiny KEA CRV, whined like a siren that announced that mankind was racing down the far side of decline.

“Hm, hm, hm!” he chuckled, his thick body gloved into the piece-of-junk car as he turned left on the country lane, then left into the Hindu town that had been Christian a blink of Time’s eye ago, then right to parallel the train tracks on his left, then right again onto the Garden State Parkway, headed for the snake folk’s towering den, soul-eating Manhattan.

A box truck, driven by a Pakistani, cut him off. He braked with perfection, began to snarl a challenge, and then recalled the mission, “I know, three, She requires three.”

The box truck flew off into heavy traffic.

A white SUV, driven by a terrible elf witch, cut in front of him without looking or signaling, confident that the world, including he, were all dedicated to her comfort and safety, even to her hasty impulse to try a new brand of coffee. The oblivious creature was speaking on her smart phone, barely watching the road.

“Kunt,” he roared, overcome by the rage that mourning for ages builds. Speeding up and bumping her rear left bumper with his front right, he sent her spinning into the guardrail, flipping over, once, then twice, and rocking back onto the too-crushed roof, as he fishtailed with good control back into his lane—HIS LANE.

“Gotch you, bitch,” he snarled with delight, as if he had just tasted the most delicate ambrosial sherbet.

Stoked with pleasure, certain he was not driving this road again, he cruised onward.

A truck, a pickup truck, roared up next to him. Three Latino men, a middle-aged bald driver, who looked Puerto Rican and two watermelon-headed Mexicans, rolled up next to him, demanding he pull over, pointing fingers in unison to the berm.

“Hm, hm, hm,” he chuckled deeply smiling into their fat faces.

Ahead he saw a motorcyclist lying in the road, his bike tangled up under the box truck driven by the Pakistani jippo. The Paki actually seemed concerned, was standing over the twisted rider, a tall man whose helmet was cocked too far to the left to maintain life. Waving and crossing his arms overhead, the Paki realized that the black KEA CRV was not stopping. His eyes bugged and he leapt towards his truck, its door still open, across this inside lane.

The white landscaping truck was banking to stop diagonally behind the cyclist, according to some weird notion of cosmo-civics. He sped up with fury, pedal to the plastic, and hit that skinny Paki in the knees! The right foot flew into the side of the panel truck. The body bounced off the left fender, which was trashed and dragging, launching the head of the shocked jippo into the passenger side door of the white landscaping truck, spattering the faces of the two passengers, who had been yelling out the windows, with blood, saliva, teeth, and whatever kind of Paki juice flowed through those bursting veins.

He met the eyes of the driver and the front passenger at once, his cold gray stare offset by his throat-tearing smile, banked in front of them. Noticing that his driver’s side window had somehow been shattered, and that the fender was dragging, he reached one apish arm out the window and forward, grasped the flimsy back of the fender, ripped it off, and flung it across the windshield of the white pickup.

“Heh, heh, heh,” he sneered, gave them the rude middle finger of his gloved left hand, and shouted, “Are you Mexicans or Americans?”

They yelled in Mexican, a brassy muddle of Aztec and Spanish anger rendered into universal machismo that was a sure leash for the impulsive amigos.

He gunned it and the lightweight piece-of-junk responded, picking up to 70, in a half mile—though something seemed to give in the guts of the engine. The next exit it was. For the truck was thundering after him, intent on some kind of old fashioned revenge.

“Hm, hm, hm,” he soothed the inner beast, banking off the ramp to Asbury Park, the truck full of howling amigos after him, the driver screaming to the police on his smart phone, the other two hanging out the window.

“Before the pigs get here, let’s do this right,” he reminded the feet and hands, the hat winking its visor at him in the rear view mirror in agreement.

He pulled over and monkeyed out the passenger side door.

They pulled over and piled out, the big one in the back putting on his leather landscaping gloves, the little one in front flexing, the driver, older, perhaps forty, on his phone.

Three paces out he shot the single lag, turned it into a suplex, and dumped the shorty on his head, hearing with relish the neck snap.

The old man was screaming into the phone and punching him in the back, while the big one smashed a right into his chin. He locked up with the big man and slid around behind him. The hat fell from his head, elongated, slithered, grew lizard claws and crawled across the boots of the driver while Mourn broke down the big man: onto one knee, then to both knees, then, knee to back—the lion kill, pulling back that fat head—thank God for my hands!—until the pleasing snap of neck bones caused the landscaper turned vigilante to crumble, numb from the neck down, drowning in his own blood.

“Grrrr!” he heard himself snarl as the driver stood dumb with terror, looking at the malleable, leathery thing slithering about his ankles, binding them to stand.

The leather was one with his hand, his every finger, his roiling wrist as his grips wrapped around that gulping neck and wrung it like it was all the world!

He pressed down, bending the man’s knees with growling fury, downward shoved his palms, his boiling hatred pouring into his hungry hands and squeezing out the unworthy shade squirming within.

A car pulled up, a door shut—the pigs had come, finally he could return. He turned towards the empty commands and weak threats leveled along with the gun between shaking hands. He howled, “My Mother’s People!” and charged the terrified thing…

…

Dash cam and body cam, would record Officer Gwyn emptying his service weapon at a stocky, dark-haired man in a suit. Officer Gwyn was then “bulled” over as his weapon was spent. Rising to his feet, off the dash cam angle, Gwyn can be heard saying, “No, Oh My God, no—what, what? Thank God. The assailant is gone—I can’t believe my eyes, the assailant, he is nowhere to be seen. Oh My God,” exclaimed Gwyn as he stepped slowly around clockwise and then counter clockwise, then recalled his weapon was empty and reloaded it.

“I don’t know how to call this in—Oh shit, EMS, EMS, three motorists down!”

So it came to pass, that not merely three, but six mourners, were gathered for the Amber Wake.

…

Mourn stood in his black body paint, wearing his black mask, holding the holy garrote between his hands, looking at those bound to the great green stone, a rock larger than a house, the altar of this sacred grove and its eternal spring that bubbled behind his bare, blackened heels. The six sorry souls, all naked and numb, the moss having grown about each wrist, holding them upright on their knees, looking on longingly at what splashed in the sacred spring behind him.

His eyes seared into each of their forfeit souls…

…

Concluded in Jungle Boat, #10.