by Lukens, Mark
“I didn’t see them,” Jed finally answered. “I never saw the skinwalkers.”
“You never saw any of them?” Moody asked with a sarcastic smirk and suspicion in his eyes.
Jed locked eyes with Moody. “I didn’t see any of them.”
“Your two deputies were taken, and you didn’t see who did it?” Moody asked, his voice rising a few octaves.
“They were both taken when we were in the woods,” Jed explained. “They were taken like Lawrence was. Like everyone in this town was.”
“But you said Red Moon got away,” Moody reminded Jed, reminding everyone else.
Jed glanced at Billy, then at Esmerelda. “I wasn’t being completely truthful about that.” Before Moody could protest, Jed went on. “Red Moon told me, promised me, that the men in the woods weren’t his men. He said they weren’t coming to rescue him. Of course I didn’t believe him. And when my men were taken, I thought for sure Red Moon was in on the whole thing.”
“You found your men,” Billy said. It wasn’t a question; it was a statement of fact. “It wanted you to find them.”
Jed nodded.
“What happened to your men?” Esmerelda asked.
Jed made a show of glancing at David, letting them know that the details weren’t proper for a young boy’s ears. “They were killed. Mutilated. A lot like your townsfolks were.” He hoped that was explanation enough.
“What about Red Moon?” Moody asked.
Jed wasn’t sure how much to tell. How could he tell them that he had left Red Moon behind? How could he tell them that his good friend Roscoe (only his head) had told him to leave Red Moon behind like an offering? How was he supposed to tell them that Roscoe said that “he” would want more things?
So he didn’t tell them any of that.
“They got Red Moon,” Jed finally said. “They had already taken our horses. I had my gun belt, my pistol, and whatever I could carry in my pockets. Then I ran.”
“Did you see Red Moon get killed?” Moody asked, that suspicion still burning in his eyes. “Did you actually see his dead body?”
Jed could feel his temper rising, getting close to boiling over. “I just told you they got him, didn’t I?”
Moody didn’t seem satisfied with the answer.
Jed reached for the bottle and a shot glass. He poured himself a drink and swallowed it down.
“Let’s not accuse anyone of anything,” Esmerelda said, trying to calm both of the men down.
“I’m not accusing anyone of anything,” Moody said. “I’m just saying that if our U.S. Marshal here didn’t actually see Red Moon’s body after he was taken, it could be Red Moon out there with his gang doing this.”
“Red Moon was scared to death,” Jed said. “He said those skinwalkers in the woods weren’t his gang.”
“Skinwalkers are no longer Diné,” Billy said. He was lightly caressing the silver charm hanging from his leather necklace. “Skinwalkers are no longer men. They are monsters.”
“That’s the same thing Red Moon said,” Jed told everyone. “He said the skinwalkers were no longer his people.”
“He could’ve been lying to you so he could get away,” Moody said.
“You can’t still think it’s Red Moon and his gang out there,” Jed said, looking at Moody. “After what you’ve seen tonight? After what you just saw up there in your own hotel room, Rose and that cowboy tangled and twisted together, their heads and faces melted together?”
Moody looked away.
Jed could tell that Moody was wrestling with the same feelings he’d had earlier, trying to rationalize, trying to come up with any other explanation rather than admitting the truth—that something unbelievable and unexplainable was happening.
“I’ve heard of skinwalkers,” Sanchez said. “Never seen one myself, but old women used to talk about them. They’re witches. They can cast spells and they can turn into animals.”
“But what is out there now are not skinwalkers,” Billy said.
Everyone looked at him.
“It is the Anasazi out there—the Ancient Enemy. Some call it the Darkwind.”
“What is the Ancient Enemy?” Esmerelda asked. “A demon?”
Billy shrugged. “You could call it a demon. A god. Something ancient and powerful. There are stories of the ancient people that vanished. There are stories of the ancient people eating each other, of bones crushed, bodies twisted together. No signs of attack from another tribe. There are stories of cities built into the sides of rock mountains, stories of all of the people disappearing.”
“We have those stories, too,” Sanchez said. “In Mexico, and farther south. They tell stories of old cities swallowed up by the jungle. Some say the people abandoned those cities that they built. But others say all of them were taken.”
CHAPTER 21
The saloon doors and windows were all locked, but Jed suggested that they barricade the doors and the windows as best they could. Moody grabbed a hammer and a can of nails from his office, but he didn’t have much in the way of spare wood. His office was a cramped little room with one small window, a desk, a chair, and a couch that Moody slept on most nights instead of sleeping in his home a mile away.
“We’ll have to use the tables,” Jed told everyone.
Moody wasn’t happy about that idea, but he knew they needed to do something about the doors and windows, something to protect themselves.
They broke the legs off some of the tables and used those as braces against the front doors, toenailing the ends of them to the wood floor. It wasn’t the most secure bracing, but it was better than nothing. They flipped four of the tables up onto their sides and shoved them against the windows. The tables were round and didn’t cover the windows completely, but they offered some kind of obstacle if anyone wanted to come through the windows.
“We’ll sleep in watches tonight,” Jed told them after they were finished barricading the windows and doors. “I’ll take the first watch.”
“Who’s going to be able to sleep?” Moody muttered.
*
Two hours later all of them were sleeping as Jed sat alone at the table, on watch. He had a cold cup of coffee in front of him. He wanted a few more shots of whiskey, something to take the edge off of his fear, but he couldn’t risk getting sleepy from the alcohol.
They had turned down most of the lanterns to save the fuel. Jed had a lantern on the floor closer to the door so he could see the doors clearly. The wood stove was still burning and provided just a red glow from that side of the saloon, but most of the saloon was hidden in shadows now.
Jed was getting tired of sitting in the chair. His back was beginning to ache, his muscles stiffening up from the cold. The saloon was quiet except for Moody’s snores and the heavy breathing of the others. There was a stale smell of body odor in the room, and the faint smells of piss and shit coming from the chamber pots just inside the storeroom. There were no noises coming from outside.
He knew there was a good chance he might fall asleep without even remembering it. Even as frightened as he’d been, he had fallen asleep twice in the woods.
Jed looked down at his Colt sitting on the table in front of him. The gun seemed like a foolish and useless thing now against whatever was out there, the Ancient Enemy as Billy called it.
All of this felt useless, but he couldn’t allow himself to wallow in despair—that was dangerous. If he gave up now then he might as well go outside and offer himself up to that thing out there. No, he needed to fight; it’s what he had always done. He was a lawman with a duty to protect these citizens in this saloon, and most of all David. The boy gave him a kind of strength, and he wondered if this is how a father would feel about his own son.
Someone was materializing out of the darkness, walking towards the table. At first Jed thought it was David, maybe because he’d just been thinking about him, but it was Esmerelda. She sat down in the chair next to him.
“I had a bad dream,” she said as if Jed had asked for an explanation.
“It woke me up.”
Jed didn’t say anything.
Esmerelda looked back at the others hidden in shadows, all of them sleeping near each other in a big group except Sanchez who was curled up in front of the bar, his right wrist cuffed to the foot rail. Every once in a while, when Sanchez moved around in his sleep, the handcuff would clink against the metal foot rail.
Esmerelda looked back at Jed. “How did you find David?”
It was obviously a question she had wanted to ask for a while.
“After my men were killed in the woods, I walked out of there with just my pistol and whatever I could carry in my pockets. Like I told you earlier.”
She nodded, watching him.
“I figured I was looking at a four day walk to Smith Junction. Maybe even five days. But a few hours after I was out of the woods, I saw David’s house down below in a valley. It was a small spread with a few cows and some sheep. A house, barn, and stables with three horses.”
Jed paused and Esmerelda watched him.
“David’s ma and pa were killed,” Jed said in a low voice, almost a whisper. “His older brother, too. I found David in his bedroom, hiding behind his bed, so I took him with me. When we left, David took a photograph of his family with him, that’s how I knew who they were.” He remembered that he had stuffed David’s photograph into his pocket last night when David had fallen asleep with it on his chest next to the campfire. He pulled it out and showed Esmerelda.
She took the photograph and stared at it for a moment. She handed it back to him.
Jed knew he should give the photograph back to David, but he decided to slip it back into his pocket for safekeeping. “Their bodies were gone when I got there,” Jed told her. “But there was plenty of blood left behind. And . . . and some small pieces of them.”
“But they were taken,” she whispered. “Just like the people here.”
Jed nodded. “When I found David in his bedroom, I asked him what had happened, he didn’t say much. Still doesn’t. I couldn’t leave him there.”
“Of course not,” Esmerelda hissed, like his mentioning something like that had offended her.
“We borrowed two of his pa’s horses. I left a note. We rode north towards Smith Junction. But then that sandstorm sprang up and we had to come here.”
“What do you plan to do with him?”
“Take him to Smith Junction.”
“And then what?”
Jed shrugged. “I don’t know. I reckon the people there will try to find his kin.”
Esmerelda looked doubtful about that prospect. “You wonder why you weren’t taken in the woods? Why David was left behind in his house?”
Jed nodded. “And Sanchez. The barkeep was taken, but Sanchez was left behind. Sanchez was handcuffed and hobbled. Tied to a chair. He was easy pickings. Why not take him instead of the barkeep?”
Esmerelda nodded in agreement. “Sanchez was easy pickings like David was.”
And me, Jed thought.
“That Darkwind,” Esmerelda whispered. “The Ancient Enemy as Billy calls it. That thing, whatever it is, takes a whole town but leaves the few of us behind in this saloon.”
“This saloon isn’t any safer than any other building here. The barkeep was taken from here. And then there’s what happened to Rose and that cowboy she was with upstairs.”
“But it only did those things when we were gone,” Esmerelda said. “Not while we were here.”
“What are you getting at?” Jed asked her. If she was going somewhere with her questions, he wished she would get to the point.
Esmerelda didn’t answer him; she just stared at him like she was studying him, like she knew he was hiding information of his own.
And he was hiding something, wasn’t he? He was hiding what Roscoe’s head had told him to do.
“You tell fortunes,” Jed finally said. It almost sounded like he had accused her of something bad.
She nodded. “I read the cards. Doesn’t work all the time, but sometimes it does.”
Jed wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what those cards might say about all of their futures right now, but he asked anyway. “You can see the future without the cards?”
Esmerelda sat back, thinking for a moment. It seemed to be a question she’d never been asked before. Jed studied her in the low light of the lantern on the floor. She was a striking woman in a certain way, and he wondered why she wasn’t married.
“Sometimes I see things,” Esmerelda said. “The past. The future. Sometimes I see it in my dreams.”
“And your dream tonight? The bad dream you just had?”
She didn’t answer. She shook her head. “Just a bad dream.”
Jed felt sure she was sitting on her own information, protecting her own secrets.
“You might want to try to get some more sleep,” Jed suggested. “I’ll be waking Moody up in a few hours for his watch.”
Esmerelda stared at him like she knew that wasn’t true, like she knew that they would all be asleep and helpless when the Ancient Enemy came for them.
For a moment Jed thought she was going to tell him about her dream.
But she didn’t.
She went back to her blankets.
CHAPTER 22
Screams from outside woke Jed up. He was sitting in the chair at the table, hunched over it, his head on his arms. He jumped up when he heard the screams. He grabbed his Colt .45 off the table.
It was early morning, but light enough to see clearly inside the saloon. The double doors were wide open. The braces they had nailed in place earlier in the night were tossed aside on the floor. The screams were coming from outside.
There was movement from behind Jed, a shifting of clothing, footsteps. He turned and saw that David was sitting up on his blanket and staring at the doors. Moody, Billy, and Esmerelda were already on their feet. Sanchez was up on his knees, staring at the front of the saloon, his wrist still chained to the foot rail of the bar.
Karl was gone.
Jed bolted towards the doorway. Moody was right behind him with his shotgun, and then Billy with Karl’s Smith & Wesson.
They found Karl at the end of the walkway in front of the saloon, close to the corner of the building. He seemed uninjured, no blood, and he still had all of his limbs. He was flat on his back on the walkway, his arms up like he was trying to ward off something only he could see. Jed thought maybe the man was in the middle of a bad dream, but his eyes were wide open.
Moody crouched down beside Karl, using his shotgun like a walking stick to steady himself. Jed and Billy covered the two of them with their pistols, but there was no one in sight on the dirt street. Hope’s End looked like the ghost town that it had become overnight.
“What is the matter?” Moody asked, touching Karl’s bony shoulder.
Karl’s eyes shot to Moody, staring at him like he was trying to decide if he was real or not.
“You see someone out here?” Jed asked Karl.
Karl ignored Jed’s question, keeping his eyes right on Moody.
“Why’d you come out here?” Moody asked Karl in a softer voice.
Karl’s mouth was still wide open, his eyes bulging so badly they looked ready to pop out of his pale face. He had lowered his arms now, his hands clutching at his sunken belly.
“We should get back inside now,” Jed warned.
“My . . . my wife,” Karl finally said. “Min kvinna, Ingrid. I . . . I saw her. And my boys.” His words were coming out in a shuttering stutter, his teeth chattering. He was shaking all over. “She came to me. She reached for me with her arm, the only one she had left. The other arm was gone. Just a bloody stump. And my boys. Their legs were gone. They were crawling down the street towards me.”
Billy descended the steps to the dirt street below, studying it.
Jed followed Billy, covering him with his pistol. He watched the dark alley between the saloon and the next building.
“Why’d you come out here?” Moody asked Karl again.
>
“I . . . I don’t know,” Karl answered. “I . . . I don’t remember coming out here.”
Jed looked down at the dirt street, then at Billy. He was sure the Navajo saw the same thing he was seeing, the tracks in the dirt. Maybe Jed wasn’t quite the tracker that Billy might be, but Jed had learned how to follow tracks over the years as a U.S. Marshal.
Moody didn’t notice Jed and Billy; he concentrated on Karl. “What do you mean, you don’t remember coming out here? You think you were walking in your sleep?”
Karl didn’t answer.
Jed backed up towards the wooden walkway, climbing the stairs backwards up onto the walkway in front of the saloon. “Moody, get Karl up on his feet. We need to get him back into the saloon.”
Billy stared up and down the street, his breath clouding up in front of his face in the cold air. He looked east towards the end of town, the sun just up above the horizon, the sky there a blaze of yellow, orange, and red. He looked towards the other end of town, towards the church where the sky was still a deep, dark blue. He turned and looked at Jed, his eyes saying: Did you see that?
Jed nodded at Billy, indicating that he had noticed it. “Moody,” Jed warned.
“Come on,” Moody told Karl. “Up you go.”
“Ingrid . . . she . . . she came to me . . .”
“We can talk about it inside,” Moody told Karl, practically tugging the man up into a sitting position, spurred not only by Jed’s words but by the tone of his voice that said: Hurry the hell up because something bad is coming.
Jed walked towards Moody and Karl, his boots clomping on the floorboards, the sound echoing on the front walkway. He helped Moody get Karl to his feet, and then they practically dragged him to the saloon doors.
Billy had backed up to the steps of the walkway. He had his eagle feather in one hand, Karl’s gun in the other, but he seemed to take more comfort in the feather than the pistol. He looked up and down the street, scanning it for movement like he was waiting for a stampede of wild horses to come at any minute. He climbed up the steps backwards just like Jed had done, afraid to take his eyes off of the street.
