"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

-Matthew 5:9

My name is Stephen Wall, and I am a peacemaker.

Every summer of my adolescence I took that road trip with my family to Minot North Dakota, for the Woodhouse family reunion. My mother's side.

A most perilous journey indeed from the Colorado mountain town of Palmer Lake, for fear one might die of boredom.

Oh, visiting with family was always exciting, sure. My grandfather's corny and touchingly appropriate jokes were always a joy, as was the rest of the family's more frank, honest sense of humor whenever he left the room. And, of course, adding just that extra touch, you had my grandmother, constantly giving us that look that she didn't completely approve of that less appropriate talk she heard from us, but she was amused nonetheless.

But Minot was on the furthest edge of North Dakota, so far it may as well have been Canada (the edge of my known world), and between Colorado's mountains and the Woodhouse family reunions were endless fields of wheat, sheep, and corn. The land was so flat out there, that if you stared out at the horizon you felt like you might fall off the surface of the earth, right out into the blue sky just beyond the plains.

Eternal construction slowed us down at every major highway. My father often joked the dead must have worked those roads, for he never saw a soul there. The construction zones were as ghost towns, save for the occasional police officer looking for an excuse to pull someone over.

Finally, you'd reach the state of North Dakota, and that's when the windows turned crimson. So many mosquitoes filled the air that we watched the green plains around us go by through blood-colored windows.

Miserable as we were, my sister and I would turn on each other. Bickering and arguing constantly between the two of us.

My father was certainly not inclined to hide his displeasure. In fact, he spoke in great volume about it.

And my poor mother sat silently enduring it all. As if she were Jesus Christ Himself, enduring the cross that had become hers to bear. After all, the paradise of family lay at the end of that drive.

One safe haven along the way kept us together for the trip. One place in the middle where we'd stop to enjoy ourselves. A restaurant simply named "Pizza Place," in Lusk, Wyoming. The owner of the restaurant was from New York, or so I was told. The way my Long Islander father described it, New York pizza was a slice of the food they serve the saints in Heaven.

We'd pull into that town, with dust hanging in the wind, the early afternoon sun scalding my pale, introvert skin. No place to hide out here, not a bit of shade. I would have to endure that burning sun until we were inside again. All of us squinted, we'd step into the light, our muscles and joints aching from prolonged inactivity. I'd pray to see that first of safe havens on the long trip.

I'd stretch out my twinging limbs, and when my eyes finally adjusted to the searing light, I saw the red sign with white letters.

Conoco.

My heart would sink at first, but I'd remember that this meant the next stop was our beloved "Pizza Place."

Of course, the first rule of road trips was simply this: if you had a chance to use the bathroom you did it. Whether you had to or not. This preceded even packing a spare tire or making sure you had a map. This was the first of all rules.

And so, every time we arrived I'd leave the back of the van to go use the Conoco restrooms. Which had always baked so thoroughly in the hot, Wyoming, summer sun.

Then, as I came back out, I'd usually find the wind had picked up when it blew my long, dark hair into my face. One time, when I was sixteen, I came out to what seemed at the time to be a dust storm, because from the glass door up front I couldn't see the minivan, which was still at the gas pump.

I think that's about where my bloody history began. Right there, looking for my family across a cloud of sand and dust.

See, the road we were on that year was on the same route as the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota.

I couldn't see the minivan, where my family sat waiting. But I saw a yellow motorcycle up close to the building, with "The Bandits" painted on the front. A cold chill crept up my spine as I recognized the name from my father's old stories, and I craned my neck back to see if I could spot the rider outside and plan my way to avoid bumping into him.

A dark shape appeared in the dust and stumbled toward the gas station doors. It was a tall, heavy-set man, covering his face with the sleeve of his leather jacket. I caught sight of his back just before he flung open the glass doors and ambled in.

"The Bandits"

"Probationary"

He wasn't an official member yet. I scooted back, toward the donut case, as he came in. According to my father, anyone who wanted to join The Bandits officially had to win a fist fight with a stranger in front of another gang member. As a shut-in, small-town boy who worked out in his father's basement enough to look tough, but really had never won a fight in his life, a scuffle with a real gangster was the last thing I needed.

So, I kept my distance from the probationary bandit who stood between myself and the front door. I silently prayed he wouldn't even notice me, lest he decide I was an easy target.

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A scream from near the bathrooms snapped my attention away from the stranger, to the cold drink rack.

She was a tan woman with black hair, wearing a leather vest and blue jeans. She held up her arms and stared at them in paralyzed terror as blood gushed forth from wounds down her wrists.

"Sheila?" cried out the probationary bandit.

The other customers milling about the gas station yelped at the sight. In their horror, they called upon God and cursed out loud.

Having lost so much blood, Sheila grew faint and collapsed, just as the bandit arrived to catch her in his arms.

"Call 911!"

I'm still not sure who shouted it. Might have been me, for all I know.

I just remember knocking over a pot of hot coffee, which smashed on the ground behind me, as I ran to Sheila's side.

The Bandit gave me a confused look as I approached. "You a... paramedic?"

"No, I'm a peacemaker," I blurted out as I fell to my knees by Sheila's side.

He squinted at me and curled his upper lip. "What?"

Razor-blade wounds striped Sheila's wrists, though her whimpers seemed just as surprised as her husband's slew of questions.

I winced at the sight, then reached out and gripped her wrists with my palms.

"What the...?" the bandit shouted, followed by a hard shove on my shoulder.

Before my eyes, another wound opened up on her left wrist. Then another on her right. I blinked twice and shook my head to confirm that what I saw had been real.

Sheila's whimpers turned into screams once more, and she flailed and thrashed to escape my grip. Her booted foot caught me in the gut, and I held on tighter to her wrists.

"I can't let go or this won't work!" I said.

Her blood was warm and sticky against my palms, and the smell of copper filled my nostrils. Her flesh was cold and her bones trembling.

A stabbing pain pierced my palms and shot up through both my arms, to my elbows. The nerves in my funny bone felt like they were being pinched in needle-nose pliers.

The bandit flipped open a butterfly knife from his jacket pocket. He cursed at me and shouted, "Let go! Now!"

"I'm healing her," I said. I didn't expect to be believed, but it was worth trying.

"No, you're hurting her!" He bellowed again.

I looked down at Sheila's wrists to see if the blood had flowed back into her veins yet, but before I could get a good look, her furious husband seized me by the collar and brought my head down to the tile floor with a loud smack.

My vision was a wash of colorful lights.

But I held firm.

Now I could feel the warm, sticky liquid rushing back into the gashes on her arms.

"Harry!" Sheila cried out.

And her husband called upon Jesus Christ in a sharp intake of breath.

I released Sheila's now dry wrists and forced myself to sit up. Both Sheila and Harry stared at her forearms, which were clean of all blood, with dark scars where the gashes once were.

"It's a miracle..." Harry breathed.

I looked up, and a crowd had gathered around. Some holding tire irons with which to remove me from Sheila, and others with bandages and gauze in their hands. All of them stood in silence, their eyes wide at the sight.

But my heart stopped when I saw the only one of them who wasn't looking down at Sheila.

He was a tall man in a tan trench coat and cowboy hat. With unblinking eyes, he gazed off, above the crowd, to the back door of the gas station. Just behind his head, my eye caught the round mirror high on the wall, showing both front and back doors. A figure in a bright red sweatshirt with the hood pulled up hurried out the back door.

The man in the cowboy hat grinned, revealing rows of bony needles where teeth should have been.

No... is that a gnasher?

Though I'd never seen one, it was exactly how the book Pastor Dave gave me described it.

My whole body shook, and everything grew cold. My heart screamed and tried to escape my chest. Terror became a jagged stone in my throat. I silently prayed, my words a begging mantra, that the gnasher wouldn't thirst for my blood.

I turned away from Sheila and Harry, hunching my neck and shuffling toward the front door.

In my peripheral vision, I watched the gnasher's reflection in the round mirror.

His head stared straight at the back door, where the figure in the red hoodie had vanished just moments ago.

The dust still obscured my parents' minivan, but I couldn't wait any longer to leave the gas station. I pushed on the door, and it flew open, caught in the wind. Dust blasted me in the face. I ducked outside and behind a pile of firewood.

Too much sand had gotten in my eyes. I couldn't see.

I removed my glasses and rubbed at my eyes, trying to get some of the grit loose and restore my own sight. The wood pile shielded me from the dusty gusts. When I opened my eyes again, I found myself staring back into the gas station. My vision slowly returned to normal.

That sharp grin stared back at me.

The gnasher in the cowboy hat stood inches from the window, and he looked down at me with the same, hungry smile he'd had when watching the back door.

I jolted away and ran through the dust cloud.

At first it was a blind run. For all I knew, I could be running into oncoming traffic.

But then I saw the minivan in the cloud, and I dashed for the passenger door.

Terrified as I was, there wasn't a hurricane in all the world with enough force to prevent me from slamming that car door shut and locking it.

"A little windy?" said my father with a chuckle.

I coughed and nodded. "Dad... can we go now?"

"In this?" He gestured to the sand blowing all around us. Blue sky was only visible when I looked up through the closed moonroof.

But rather than focus on that one pane of hope above, I looked instead out the passenger window, toward the gas station.

I could see the Conoco sign above it, but not the station itself.

"We were listening to the radio just now, Stephen... are you paying attention, Stephen?"

I turned my gaze briefly from the window to look my mother in the eye. "Mhmm..." A forced smile, and I returned my eyes to the Conoco.

A dark shape in the dust cloud.

I cursed the fact that we'd left Lucky with a dog-sitter.

In my peripheral vision, my mother shrugged and continued. "Anyway, they said this is a freak storm, came out of nowhere. And they don't know when it'll let up."

The figure drew closer, and I caught the outline of a brim around the hat.

The gnasher!

My palms grew slick with dread.

"We ain't going anywhere in this," said my father.

Through the brown dust I could see his bared fangs and unblinking eyes. My breath froze in my throat at the sight, and my brain racked itself for anything I could remember about how to hurt or otherwise deal with gnashers.

Why didn't I pack that book?

The gnasher was now within arm's reach of the minivan, and my mind went blank with terror.

He turned to my father and just as my dad turned to look up at the gnasher, the creature squinted as if it couldn't see, closed its lips, and tipped its hat to us. My dad gave a half smile and a friendly wave, and the gnasher shambled off past us.

I turned my head to watch out the back window, as he disappeared beyond the dust.

My father groaned. "You said this isn't due to let up any time soon?"

"Yeah," said my mother. "On the radio they said it looks like it will be a couple hours at least before this lets up."

My father cursed and rubbed both his eyes. "Ok, look at the map, see if there's a motel or something close by." As my mother opened up the map and searched for the town of Lusk, my father muttered, "So glad we don't ride to Sturgis anymore..."