Stories from a HARD PLACE

“You can’t beat me. You can’t win. You don’t have what it takes,” The Judge said as he looked down at Jacob.

 An hour past the Ol’ Scratch tavern on 11, Jacob, Brian and Clyde turned off the main road onto a two-wheel trail that threaded itself through the trees opening onto a farmyard.

It was quiet but filled with hope.

By 6 p.m. John had worked himself into a frantic state. He was shaking and sweating.

Mary Lou watched as she shook The Judge’s hand.

Wincing again, he thought of the song that had forced its way out of him yesterday. He tried to play it, but it would not come.

He kicked the heap of useless timber, then picked it up and flung it across the room. It slammed into the framed photo of his icon, Robert Johnson. It crashed to the floor—bits of glass and wood scattering everywhere.

Once, the lonely house had been painted light green and white, but now much of the paint was peeled, flaked off, revealing weathered grey boards. Some windows still held glass, reflecting a washed-out and colourless sky.

He walked alone down a dirt road on a quiet, moonless night. He came to a sign he could not read. It pointed back to the way he had come.

He sighed. It had been a long day, and there was always more to do. His mind wasn’t on the farm, though. The past few days, he had thought about Billy a lot. It wasn’t fair.

He held it up in both hands and looked it over. Was it smoking? It seemed blackened, as if it had recently been in a fire. There was a faint smell of burnt wood in the apartment, though he couldn’t be sure.

He had had a dream and had let it go. And the dog knew it.

Matt walked across the crisp marble, each footfall echoing loudly around him. Behind a long counter that looked as if it had been carved from a single block of white stone, a young, clean-shaven man stood expectantly.

Though he ignored it, the guilt was always there.

“Next time,” he would tell himself.

Three days later, Matt still had not heard from Allen.

“If you don’t have any answers and the questions keep adding up, you have to take a moment and decide if you are facing the right direction,” 

Prologue Billy hated contests, especially in-store raffles or scratch and win tickets.   When your day starts with a close friend stopping by and trying to kill you, you know the rest of your week could only get better. Unfortunately, for Jacob, that’s not the case. Jacob’s hatred had turned into a hard thing, a rock in his heart he couldn’t put down. It weighed on him, every minute of every day, and Clyde was there to remind him of the mistake he made, his deal. But what if the deal he made wasn’t what he thought it was? What if everything he knew to be true was all a lie? Around him, Death stalks and friends will die. His world soon would be coming apart, unravelling. Matt had only just begun his career as a detective, but already he had a trench coat and an impossible case. Along the path, he would fall in love and realize that the world was far different than he knew. When Mr. White and The Judge meet at the crossroads, Jacob and Matt could lose everything.

Many people talk about the night Bob Dylan played at Ol’ Tom's Backroom but no one ever mentions the night John 'Whitey' Burnett woke the devil and made him cry.