The Rail Specter

by Vennessa Robertson

  Someone threw a bottle. It hit the side of the house and shattered, sending up new shards of glass to explode around us. There was a new sound, a sound I knew all too well: a low growl. My canithrope was loyal and fearless. The trouble was, he was not the most patient of creatures, especially when someone he loved was threatened.

  “Enough!” I screamed.

  Everyone stared at me, their cries for blood died away, replaced by angry murmurs.

  “How dare you?” My outburst forced them to stop and focus on me. My throat feel like vipers were wrapping their way around my neck, but I could not stop now even if I had wanted to. “How dare you come here and threaten this mother and her children?”

  My knees felt weak and sweat dripped down the back of my neck despite the chill in the air. These men came here to do violence. Challenging them would not stop them.

  I softened my tone. “Doesn’t a mother have the right to protect her children and raise them, no matter what?”

  Mr. Massey smiled at me, the kind of smile one gives children or simpletons. “Now look here, ma’am, poor Carey loves his children, but if work takes him away from home then it falls upon his community to keep his family on the path.” He pulled me aside as though he was revealing some great truth. “Nannie here is all right, she’s a good Christian woman, but her brother, Steven, is never in church and we never see her brother’s friend. They’re nothing but trouble. It’s best for the children that they go where they belong.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I longed to slap him. “Where they belong?”

  I believe it was the man who threw the glass bottle that had barely missed Nate who took a step toward Haimovi. “Are we going to let these dirty Injuns turn us from our Christian duty?”

  The mob spoke as one. “No!”

  “We can’t save the souls of these demons, but these children are all half-white. It’s our duty to look after them.”

  Mr. Massey pushed back his hat. “We’re taking Carey’s children. All of them. Nannie, don’t interfere. You are free to go back to your people or you can stay with them at the mission school, but they need more structure than a woman can provide. I’ll speak with Joseph when he returns. He’ll understand.”

  Haimovi drew his knife. “They’re not Carey’s children. None of them.”

  Suddenly, I saw it on the top of the hill watching over us all. The monster. Its black pelt swallowed up most of the light around it and the white skull gleamed in the pale light so the head appeared to float eerily. Its eyes glowed like icy moonlight that had been caught and swallowed up, a dead and glassy light.

  It approved of this awful scene. The long, bony muzzle was smiling. The eyes were watching us the way a predator fixes on its prey, enjoying every subtle movement. It drank in the anger, the rage, and the hatred. Its shaggy shoulders swelled in delight.

  I don’t know who fired the first shot.

  The door frame exploded less than a foot from Chameli’s head.

  The baby had been sobbing, now he was hysterical. The baby’s wail drew the thing’s attention. It started down the hill. The nightmare moved like a predatory bird, bobbing its fleshless skull as it walked, but I did not believe it actually touched the ground. I thrust my hand into my pocket. The ruby was hot. It was calling to me and I could not ignore its pull. The last time I used it, it burned me, but I would gladly try to do it again to protect Chelan and the children. And I would do anything to protect Nate.

  I caught a flash of movement from behind me. Despite being focused on the mob and the monster I did not think the men I was with were capable of doing something stupid. But I forgot one of them was a teenage boy. And the mob was threatening his mother and his sister.

  Meturato threw himself at one of the men with a bellow. Both went sprawling into the dirt. Neither of them saw the monster descending the hill. Before I could shout a warning, the mob, galvanized by Meturato’s attack, came alive.

  One brought the stock of his rifle down upon Meturato. The young man grunted but stayed on top of his target as they rolled, hollering and beating each other, with the hollow, meaty sound of flesh on flesh.

  I swallowed my protest. A man screamed.

  The front yard of the Carey home was chaos.

  Nate transfigured. He didn’t bother removing his clothing. He dropped one hand to the ground to support his frame as his shoulders broadened and his hips shifted. His thighs became more massive, the pelvis tilting slightly and tucking forward. His feet shifted so he would prance and walk on his toes. He groaned: changing quickly was painful.

  He didn’t bother with the smaller, compact form of his dog, Ranger. Instead, he chose the hulking form that was a killing machine of both dog and man, larger and stronger than both.

  His hands became claws, tipped with dark, sharp nails capable of rending wood and denting steel. His jaw deformed and jutted forward, the muzzle lengthening, teeth sharpening and extending into fangs capable of gripping and tearing flesh. His ears moved higher on his head to pick up sound—one had been split by a spear a year ago, giving him the look of a battered street cur.

  He stretched and arched his back and unleashed a bone-chilling growl that made the men cower in fear.

  I beamed. There was my husband. He was a wonderful, masterful man—God and Dog, both noble sides of man in a single, wonderful, protective form.

  The Cheyenne behind me stood, mouths agape.

  Nate placed himself between us and the mob, creating a raging barrier of fur and flesh, challenging them with a snarl and a gnashing of teeth. Come forward, I dare you. They are under my protection.

  Meturato and his opponent ceased their mad pugilistic battle, staring at this new development. Meturato recovered first, and slammed his opponent’s head into the earth, knocking him out cold.

  The flurry of movement started the battle anew.

  In the chaos I lost track of Chameli. She returned from inside the house with a pistol. She leveled it, drew back the hammer, and fired.

  The pistol went off with an angry, ferocious report. One of the mob fell with a cry.

  Chelan took the pistol from her daughter and handed off the baby, shoving them back inside the house. She drew back the hammer herself, ready to shoot the next man to threaten her children.

  Haimovi and Nacto were both armed with knives. They were grossly outnumbered if the mob started shooting. The only way they had any chance at all was if the mob refused to shoot for fear of hitting their own friends. Haimovi and Nacto knew this and dove into the crowd. Nacto held his knife so the blade rested against his forearm. Haimovi soon had a man immobilized in his arms.

  Nate grabbed one man, dragging him to his feet, and roared in his face before throwing him back and clawing viciously into other men. Nacto slashed wide, connecting with the forearm of a man wielding a broken bottle, trying to stab anyone in range. Haimovi was a less elegant fighter: he grabbed one man, much taller than himself, and threw him over his shoulder, onto the ground, before knocking him out with a single punch.

  I needed a Tarot symbol to gain control of the situation, but I could not think of anything capable of moving an entire crowd. Every card I brought to mind dealt with an individual facing a situation, and I could not battle the mob one individual at a time. Or could I? I readied myself. Swords were action and asserting power. I just needed to come up with a good one.

  Then I saw the monster again. The wendigo had no fear of the firelight. The monster came down the hill, watching in morbid satisfaction as the thirsty ground lapped up the blood. It moved impossibly fast, gliding rather than running. It passed through the men looking quite pleased.

  The demon reached out a skeletal arm. I expected it to be purely bone but, instead, its arm was long, impossibly so, thin, wiry, and tipped with sharp, curved claws.

  It touched one of the men in the mob, its touch feathering upon the back of the man’s neck. For a brief moment the man went stiff as though he was suffering from catalepsy or some other trance-l
ike state, then he dove for the man nearest to him, one of his neighbors, a man so similar in looks they might have been kin.

  His new victim was so stunned he didn’t fight back at first. Then the man leaned in and tore a chunk out of his friend with his teeth. The victim screamed, a high pitched, keening cry of shock and pain. Men tried to pull them apart. The monster reached into the fray again, touching a man here, another man there.

  I could no longer follow the chaos in the darkness. Only the monster and its skeletal, wolf-like head stood beyond the mob that was frantically ripping itself apart—and Nate, wearing his canithrope skin, stood between them and us, staring, creeping backward, trying to put as much distance between us and them as possible without drawing the thing’s attention. Behind him stood the Cheyenne family. I wished they would retreat into their home, but I knew if they did they only risked the mob burning them out.

  Before us, the three men the monster touched ripped their friends apart, glutting themselves on blood, and tearing into their friends with their teeth. They’d turned cannibal, turned murderer, turned Cain to Abel, brother murdering brother. The monster was among us. Worse, now it was inside us. I swear, despite the lack of lips, it smiled.

  The rest of the mob, untouched and uninfected by the monster’s touch, stood in a panicked circle swinging their lanterns around, trying to defend themselves from their friends and neighbors, and also from Nate, now a terrifying monster in his own right, and finally from the Cheyenne they had come to threaten and harm. They had descended into a great seething mass of human misery, crying and fighting each other in a senseless orgy of violence that moved too quickly to follow.

  Nacto and Haimovi stood, back to back, weapons in hand, each protecting the other’s weaker side. Nacto glared at the grim scene of death as Haimovi squinted into the darkness, his eyes darting to and fro, searching for his enemy as he stood before his beloved and his children, ready to fight to the death to protect those he loved.

  I suddenly understood. Not everyone could see this demon of sin that made brother turn against brother. Nate and I could see it. Nacto could, he had proved it the night he found us at the Tate farm. I was sure Chelan could see it. She followed its movement, glancing from it to the mob and back again, but Haimovi and the children stood terrified, staring into the darkness and at the mob, searching for the force that had driven the men mad.

  Oh God, if that thing touched my husband, what would it turn him into?

  “Nate!”

  The monster—the wendigo—ignored me. The monster, who had turned so many men into vicious killers, stalked toward us like some horrid macabre bird, bobbing as it stalked. It strode forward, intent on feasting on the misery it brought. It reached out to touch Nate.

  I pulled the ruby from my pocket and thrust it before me.

  Star.

  Moon.

  Sun.

  I thought them as frantically as I could. Pain shot across my body where the symbols once resided beneath my skin. I opened my mouth, ready to spout dragon fire at the wendigo—it would not take my husband. But like a ruined circuit they merely sparked uselessly. I cried out at the pain of it. Nothing happened. I didn’t know how to activate the ruby, to make it do what it did before. My mind was a battlefield.

  The monster grabbed Nate by the throat. I had to help my husband!

  Nate fought. He arched his back. The monster glared, his teeth bared, snarling. The change that came so easily with the men was nothing to Nate. Whatever power the wendigo possessed, Nate was fighting it somehow.

  Fight, Nate! Fight, love!

  Love.

  A great strength bloomed in my heart. I loved him. More than anything, I loved him. Love needed to be enough.

  Then I saw it, something I could do that could help. A symbol came to me clear as day. A man and a woman stood nude under the great Archangel Raphael as he blessed them and watched over them. Trust, confidence, faith, love. The Lovers, they were lovers, in this world they had each other and that was all they needed. I felt great heat coming off me in waves, building, burning me, blistering my flesh. I bit back the pain.

  Red light slammed into the monster, knocking it free of Nate, across the bloody dirt.

  For an instant the whole yard was as bright as noon.

  Nate hit the ground. He was a man again, wearing his man-skin, naked and face-down in the moist, healing earth at its feet.

  I screamed. Not in helplessness, but a fierce battle cry.

  The monster wheeled to face me.

  The ground was a slick, wet mess, made so by blood and gore. I struggled to keep my footing.

  I was not about to lose to this creature. Two sphinx; one black, one white, drawing The Chariot across a field. The charioteer was victorious, wearing a laurel and a crown. This struggle would make me stronger. The Chariot is willpower, victory, control, determination. I would win, and quickly. Nate lay naked and motionless. And, in the light, I could briefly see that the mob had not dispersed, but that they had destroyed themselves. They lay moaning, crouched in the grip of mania, bloody and broken.

  That would not be me. Nor would it be my Nate, nor would it be the family we swore to protect. I felt power burning through me, coursing through my system. My feet dug into the earth, made soft by blood and struggle. But where the others had fallen, we still stood, strongly. Nothing would stand against love. It was victory, and before that it had been the sun, the moon, the star: hope, peace, and vitality.

  The virtues of man. The goodness of man.

  There was a crack and the weight was gone. I stumbled forward, both exhausted and relieved. The light left me in darkness, but a clean sort of darkness, nothing ominous or frightening, merely calm.

  I waited in the eye of the storm.

  The land before the Carey house was dark, almost supernaturally so after the red-white light that had poured from me left us all in a state of night-blindness. I jammed the ruby into my cleavage, for in that moment I knew the ruby was a piece of my heart and that was where it belonged, and dove for Nate. I was sure I knew where he lay. I had caused the supernatural light, somehow summoning it from my own body to battle the monster and, as it rushed through me, the details of his exact location had burned into my brain.

  The mob lay in piles of human misery of their own making. It had been a mania and bloodlust I had never seen before.

  They had turned their violence upon one another. No, the monster made them turn their horrific violence upon each other. There was no stopping it, as even men that appeared to be brothers fought one another to the bloody end.

  Haimovi and Nacto resumed their back-to-back positions and readied themselves to face off against the mob should they attack again.

  The world went white. The red. Silent.

  My chest burned like I had spilled a whole tray of hot grease down my front. The Tarot image of The Lovers centered above my heart. It was from my heart that I had called upon love to give me the strength to banish the monster, and to protect Nate before any evil could tear him from me.

  My heart pounded in my ears. And Nate shifted, proof my prayers were answered. His hand curled and clawed at the soft earth beneath him. Thank God.

  I wished I could not hear the low groans from the injured and dying men.

  Nate groaned. The yard was as dark as midnight, but the flash of light from the ruby was burned into my mind, and so, despite the dark, I could see him, a pale expanse of nude flesh against the dark earth. At least it wasn’t the stark white of the dead bone of the monster.

  My head shot up, searching for the monster. I half-expected it to be looming over us, ready to pounce and strike our heads clean off. It was already dead, so I couldn’t kill it.

  Then an odd thought struck me. Could I kill an undead evil?

  Haimovi and Nacto stared at me. Meturato looked torn between wanting to run back into the house with his sister and baby brother, or wanting to stand with the men. Only Chelan looked upon us with the soft look of sympathy and kindness.
She ducked past Haimovi and Nacto, untying her shawl as she moved. She draped it over Nate and whispered something.

  She stood and switched to English for our benefit. “Haimovi, get them back into the house.”

  Nacto lifted Nate and, together with Haimovi, they managed to get him to his feet. I cast a look at the yard. My eyes were adjusting again to the near darkness. My breath caught in my throat. The men in the yard were not dead, not all of them. The moon was absent, but the stars cast a little light upon the scene.

  The force of the light from the ruby had thrown the horror into the trees. Were I bolder, I could see if shattered bits of bone and charred black flesh and fur lay scattered beneath the trees, or if the monster had survived. But the thought of facing that thing alone was enough to make every part of me quiver. Nothing in the world would make me go hunting for it, alone, in the dark.

  The blast from the ruby had made my hearing hollow, causing my breathing to sound too loud in my ears, but my vision was starting to recover. I looked one last time for the monster among the trees.

  One of the men was crying, pleading. No…many of them were.

  “Mama.”

  “Help me.”

  “Please.”

  “No…”

  This last one was a moan, low and sobbing. I choked on a cry.

  Haimovi took my arm. There was no demand there, just strength stopping me for a moment, holding me long enough to give me pause. “Do not go to them. If the monster is still there it will drag you down.”

  “If?” Then I remembered, Haimovi could not see it. Maybe it was still there, and I could not see it now.

  There was a resigned sadness in Haimovi’s voice. “I will help them pass.”

  I opened my mouth to protest but he stopped me. “The monster will not see me now. Chelan will be sure.”

  I longed to ask him how, but my breast was on fire and I was so tired I could hardly stand. I had managed to twice bring fire and light down upon this monster without any clue as to what it was or how to defeat it. I may have driven it off, but I was not any closer to defeating it for good and, every time I fought it, I seemed to be on the losing end. So far, despite Nate’s good intentions, his canithrope form had not been helpful.