As soon as town was in sight, Brent SNAPPED. Out of nowhere, he just took off ahead of us, like a bull intent on prematurely shortening the matador’s career.

It was so unexpected, the rest of us just stood there, stunned. The second half of the day, he’d seemed fine. Even with the news about his car, he was still BRENT again. He set land-speed records en route to Orviston, sure, but he was acting like his old self.

Maybe that should’ve been the giveaway, his LACK of distress.

The first person he saw – hell, he wasn’t even technically within city limits yet – he charged at. Far behind, I watched him sprint, full-bore, before pulling up short only a few feet from his target. After recovering from their shock, Brooke and Cal raced after him, with me further behind.

Brent didn’t attack, thank God, but he was right up in the guy’s face, screaming at him. There were shades of his blow-ups at Brooke there, but Brent was far fiercer now, militant.

“Do you know the melted man?”

The guy took a step back, gaping at Brent, wide-eyed. A pretty reasonable response to a stranger rushing up and shouting in your face, I’d say.

The interrogation didn’t last long, though. From the man’s reaction, it was obvious had no idea what Brent was yelling about. So, before Brooke and Cal could catch up, Brent ran off. Fortunately, in that town, new prey took a while to find. We did our best to stop him. Cal even tried to tackle Brent, to literally TACKLE him. Brent threw him off.

He’s not a big guy, Brent, but he was imbued with devil-may-care ferocity. Cal lay there on the ground in disbelief as he watched Brent flee.

Brooke chased her brother,screaming his name, begging him to stop. Brent ignored her.

Meanwhile, I helped Cal up. “You ok?” I asked.

“How?” was his only response.

I shook my head, “I think it’s been there this whole time. Maybe he planned this, maybe not, but that single-minded hostility has been bubbling just below the surface for a while.” True, I didn’t know for sure, and I was just thinking aloud, but it made sense. Was his previous demeanor an act to keep us from interfering or was this a spontaneous, emotional breakdown? Did it matter?

Either way, it was difficult to watch. Brent, dashing through the empty streets, howling his question at ANYONE – the handful of passerby, drivers, concerned faces appearing in windows. At one point it looked like he was going to accost a small child playing in their front yard, but he veered away from the property at the last moment. His madness, at least, had some scant boundaries.

And of course, the whole time, Brooke, Cal and I pursued, alternately trying to calm him down, threaten him, reassure the terrified populace that there was nothing to worry about. He’s completely harmless, we promised, not a dangerous, escaped convict, even though that’s precisely how he was acting.

I suppose in Brent’s broken mind, none of it mattered. This was a town condemned, guilty by association. The Warlock was responsible for his brother’s disappearance and the town responsible for the Warlock’s APPearance. They were going to tell him what he wanted to know and he would continue his crusade until they did.

In all of that chaos, the fear and the helplessness, you want to know the craziest part? It worked.

~~~

Calling Orviston a one stop-light town affords it more grandeur than it deserves. There really wasn’t much to the place. We’d passed through some tiny villages during our search, but Orviston could have been those quaint hamlets’ underachieving little brother.

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That didn’t stop Brent. He was going to question every brick and timber in the place if that’s what it took. First, though, he honed in on Orviston’s sole commercial institution, a convenience store.

Again, “store” might be an exaggerated boast for the place he burst into. There were maybe a dozen shelves of overpriced snacks and sundries and a single gas pump out front that clearly hadn’t been updated since before I was born.

We entered the building just behind Brent. Our current tactic was to convince him that getting arrested was contrary to his goal. It would keep the brothers apart even longer. For Brent to find Brase, he needed to be a free man, not in jail trying to explain why he’d just terrorized the population of a small town. Brent paid neither the argument, nor we making it, any mind.

There was a single customer in the store. He was at the counter, pointing to a row of cigarette cartons on the opposite side. “Yeah, I’ll take a--”

When the front door crashed open, he took one look at Brent stalking toward him and froze. His finger continued limply pointing at a green box as Brent, using his INDOOR bellicose snarl, demanded, “Where is the Melted Man?”

The finger curled slightly and dropped to the man’s side. He didn’t look scared, exactly, but puzzled. He even mouthed a quizzical, “Melted Man,” as Brent neared. When most of Orviston saw or heard Brent, they cowered or ran. This was the first person apparently interested in the content of Brent’s demand more than self-preservation.

Likewise, for the first time since entering town, Brent altered his inquest. “Warlock,” he clarified.

“Oh,” the man said. And he smiled. He SMILED.

I’m not going to commit to record what transpired after that. I’m not proud of what Brent did, and even less so that we stood by and let him do it. I can’t explain it. The guy’s reaction, like he’d just heard casual mention of an old friend, was unmistakable. Unavoidable. I THINK that’s what Brent saw, what set him off. I HOPE it is. The alternative is that Brent’s subsequent actions were -- what? Performed without provocation?

Eventually the man was convinced. He wanted – no, was BEGGING – to tell Brent everything he knew about the Warlock. In the chaos of what transpired, though, Brent never even thought to ask the bastard’s real name. None of us did. I was too fascinated and horrified by what I was seeing, maybe, or I just wanted it all to be over as soon as possible. I don’t know. As a result, our quarry remains, “The Warlock.”

Yet, despite this oversight, the man did provide something better.

Buck, the squatter, and, later, Brent, himself, had been right. Where do you go when times are hard and you just want a little peace and comfort? You go back home.

And we just got an address.

~~~

The nature of the relationship between Brent’s… witness and the Warlock/Melted Man – friends? Casual acquaintances? --was largely glossed over during the interrogation. As with the Warlock’s real name, Brent was too intent on his ultimate goal to dally in these details. What DID become clear, though, is that the legendary Warlock of Karthaus and our ex-carnival employee turned brooding specter are one in the same. I suppose there wasn’t a lot of doubt remaining by that point, but we were finally certain.More importantly, he’s returned to Orviston.

The Warlock has come back home,and we know where he lives.

Say this for Brent, at least : he did try to knock.

He’d finally calmed down -- whether from attaining the address or ...catharsis, I can’t say. That’s not to say he was “normal,” again, but manageable. Brent no longer stampeded through the streets like the world’s least-pleasant town crier, but he also wasn’t fielding any questions or welcoming dissenting opinions.

That didn’t stop us from trying.

“What in the hell were you doing?” Broke said. She was on her fifteenth or twentieth iteration, sounding almost as single-minded as her brother had been. Her’s was a much more reasonable demand, though.

“I got the goddam address.” Brent’s only response came as he pounded his fist against the trailer’s front door. It was his third such attempt, and also his last. Frankly, I’m amazed he lasted that long.

He stormed to the nearest window, and before any of us could protest, “opened” it. The frame now bore a jagged,snarling smile,but, technically, it was open.

“Brent, you’re going to--”

Brent pulled himself up, and swung inside. He disappeared into the trailer amidst the crackle of snapping glass.

It was dark by then, but we didn’t have the time to simply stake out the place. At least one of us was going to be in cuffs before long. Whatever passed for local law enforcement would be coming by any moment. Why they hadn’t already done so during Brent’s initial tirade, I couldn’t imagine. But the convenience clerk, at LEAST, would have been on the phone the moment we left. The clock was ticking.

It was now or never, and Brent didn’t come this far to be deterred by a locked door.

For the rest of us, I think we spent so much time and energy chasing, shouting, and pleading with him, we’d become resigned out of exhaustion.Even Brooke, who had made every threat and appeal she could think of in a vain effort to at least slow her brother down, barely flinched when Brent smashed the window. She, like Cal and I, surrendered to inevitability. After all, breaking and entering seemed the least of our concerns by that point.

As we soon learned, however, we were wrong.