After many calls and texts and threats Huddie stopped being a whiny bitch long enough to tell me what he knew. I figured since he’s a old fucker he might know something. He did.
Route 66 was one of the original US Highways running from Chicago to Santa Monica. According to Wikipedia it symbolizes escape, loss, and the hope of a new beginning. Somehow. Now it’s being turned into a bicycle tour.
According to Huddie, Raymond Pine was behind all this, designing Route 66 to drain magical energy from the Midwest to the coast, resulting in California being full of weirdos because of too much magic and preventing the emergence of Saint Louis as the center of US trade and culture because of not enough magic.
“Why did Raymond Pine care about Saint Louis?” I asked.
“How should I know?” Huddie crabbed crabbily before mentioning for the 7th time that he was probably going to be killed by the black magic cult that I wasn’t there protecting him from.
One of my first posts was about how I thought the highway system might somehow be channeling magic. I’m so damn smart. Unless Huddie is full of shit.
This river of magic energy created a spirit as a side effect or attracted a spirit that already existed and turned it into a road monster. Huddie said that happens, that spirits are malleable and can turn into whatever is going on. Or possibly Raymond Pine summoned and bound the spirit to help with the great Midwest magic theft.
Over time the magic got all magicked out along Route 66 and the spirit should have faded away with no magic to eat but instead it found a way to possess a semi and scrape along an existence feeding itself through blood magic ritual murder. It’s always fucking blood magic. I’m sick of that always being the answer.
“What can I do about it?” I asked.
“Send the damn thing here to kill the people trying to kill me” he said and hung up.
When I told this all to Milham and Ruth they both said something like “interesting but does this information help us?” I guess it doesn’t but it’s nice to know what the hell is happening for once.
I tried the Eterno exorcism spell and the Kebab man spirit ejection spell on the truck but neither did anything. I asked Ruth why she couldn’t cast out the evil spirit being Christian white magic person. She was insulted and said that only Catholics do that.
“Didn’t Jesus do that in the Bible? Something with pigs?” I asked.
“Exactly” she said with crossed arms.
Reluctantly I agreed it was sword time.
The concrete serpent watched me with obvious amusement as I approached. Concrete serpent sounds sexual but I guess anything with snakes is bound to. It wasn’t amused when I gingerly punctured one of the tires. The ungodly shrieking sound it made would have erupted my eardrums if I was hearing the sound with physical ears.
The creature shrunk down to a tiny smoke monster and fled into the engine. Ruth and Milham said they could see the truck rock slightly when this happened. After spending 20 minutes figuring out how to open the hood I poked around with the sword but there was no way to get to it. It had ensconced itself somewhere no sword could get it.
I told Ruth it was time for a road trip to Iowa City.
Rocket Cat 