As she touched me, I heard and felt, deep within myself, the blade cutting, grating, separating muscle from joint, flesh from bone, soul from body, the artist working on his canvas; and I felt pain dancing through me, arcing through a fading life like a lightning flash, welling like the notes of a hellish song through the unknown girl in th Louisiana swamp. And in her agony I felt the agony of my own child, my own wife, and I was certain that this was the same man. Even as the pain faded to its last for the girl in the swamp, she was in darkness and I knew he had blinded her before he killed her.
"Who is he?" I said.
She spoke, and in her voice there were four voices: the voices of a wife and daughter, the voice of an old obese woman on a bed in a wine-dark room, and the voice of a nameless girl who died a brutal, lonely death in the mud and water of a Louisiana swamp.
"He is the Travelin´ Man."
11% into the book and I´m hooked. This book is dark, creepy, mysterious, brutal and utterly compelling. I have to devote a considerable amount of time to it tomorrow.
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