Sepulchre by James Herbert

Fortunately, a shithead who knew him on a supplier/client basis and whom he ran into several blocks away obliged him by tugging the knife free after much jiggling and muttering 'man-oh-man' and some giggling. Jiggle and giggle. The junkie had paid for the enjoyment with a windpipe so badly flattened that he talked like Popeye for the rest of his short years.
    Once again, Monk was on the hoof, and this time both Pigs and Mob were after him. He robbed a drugstore for some travelling money (no gun necessary for a crude dude like Monk), leaving the druggist seriously splattered among his pills and potions.
    The old flaky Dodge he stole only took him as far as the outskirts of town before coughing oil and chunking to a permanent demise.
    Shoulder all fiery and already beginning to fester in the heat, ragged oozy cheeks like fast-food counters for flies, Monk legged his way down US95 (maybe he had Boulder City in mind he wasn't thinking straight by then), a fat thumb hoisted (all fingers fisted, no POT sign this) every time he heard an engine motoring up from behind. But who would stop for a hiker with a dark bubbly stain on his back and tomato-ketchup spread across his face? Right. No fucker. Nobody normal.
    Except one car did stop.
    The black car, its windows all tinted dark and mysterious, glided to a soundless halt beside him, the movement as easy as a vulture landing on a carcass.
    Monk shifted his bulk so that he was facing the silent car (no grace in his movement, none at all), pain and fatigue stooping him by now (he'd left the dead Dodge at least five miles behind), his clothes and pony-tailed hair powdered with dust, his face, with its scarlet-rose cheeks, puckered up into a shit-eating grimace. For a few moments, he wondered if the occupants were Big Guys who kept Small Guys down (to keep the law in your pocket you had to maintain a certain law yourself) and he waited for a snub-nose to poke through a lowered window like some black viper sliding from its hole.
    But a window didn't sink down. And no gun was pointed towards him when the rear passenger door was opened wide.
    He squinted to see into the big gloomy interior and could only just make out the dark shape sitting in there among the shadows.
    Then a voice said in a persuasive way: 'Need a lift, Theo?'
    (That was the first and only time Kline had called him by his first name.)
    12 Neath
    'Not far, Liam,' said Cora, leaning forward slightly in her seat. 'Look for the gates, just ahead on your left.'
    Kline, beside her, opened his eyes and for a moment that seemed no less than infinite, he and Halloran stared at each other in the rearview mirror. It was Halloran who averted his gaze and he was surprised at the effort it took to do so.
    Thick undergrowth and trees crowded either side of the road, the greenery even more dense beyond, the few gaps here and there almost subterranean in their gloom; these were woodlands of perpetual dusk. The high, old-stone wall that appeared on the left came as a surprise: it looked firmly rooted as though having grown with the trees, a natural part of the forest itself, organic life smothering much of the rough stone and filling cracks. Twisted branches from trees on the other side loomed over, some reaching down like gnarled tentacles ready to snatch unwary ramblers.
    He noticed the opening in the near-distance, the forest withdrawing there, allowing the smallest of incursions into its territory. Halloran slowed the Mercedes, turning into the drive, the roadway here cracked and uneven. The rusted iron gates before them looked impregnable, like the forest itself. Letters worked into the wrought iron declared: NEATH.
    'Wait for a moment,' Kline instructed him.
    Halloran waited, and studied.
    Tall weathered columns hinged the gates, stone animals mounted on each (griffins? he wondered. Too decayed to tell), their blank eyes glaring down at the car, their lichen-filled mouths wide with soundless snarls. The gates would be easy to scale, he