The candy-apple red Caddy drifted into the lot like a whaler on a high tide. The road surrendered to the weight of Detroit steel, gripping the vibrating rubber like a frightened child. The prettiest man Cloverville, Tennessee, had ever seen at the wheel, his eyes glistening in the dashboard lights, making the dreamboat in the land yacht all the more unreal. The door opened slow and heavy. And all the grandmothers in Cloverville still swear the temperature rose twenty degrees when the heel of Bubellé Reinholdt’s mauve-and-cream spats stabbed into the melting tar of a lost highway…

Henri LaRoche woke on the morning of his hundredth birthday with a pep in his step so unexpected it startled him. That light feeling had been absent so long he had forgotten it existed. He could feel the buzz in his bones. He had slept through the night, waking famished for the first time in decades.

The tune the young man had played the night before still swirled through his mind, quick and light, teasing a smile from him every few moments. Without thinking, he slipped into a quick jig as he sliced tomatoes and smeared brie across toasted bread.

“Why not,” he thought…

PART 1 — THE TAPE

“Here’s how I heard it — and this is straight from Luther King, Sonny Ray Redding’s drummer.

The one from the Tear Me Down LP — not that twat he’s using now.

And listen — Luther knows his shit when it comes to myths, legends, all that weird stuff.

You know that Robert Johnson ‘sold his soul’ ghost-story bullshit?

Dude, that really happened, and it wasn’t the Devil.

It was aliens, just like in the Book of Enoch.

All that crazy shit is one hundred percent true — the aliens, the giants, all of it.

There’s a bunch of books from the Bible they hid.

Luther knows all that mess.

His ex-wife was a legit Egyptian and knew everything about pyramids and curses.

She was a spooky bitch.

She was a sweetheart, don’t get me wrong.

There was just something off about her.

It’s a shame what happened to them.