by David Boop
After Sprig convinced her to cover herself adequately, he finished the session, but she insisted on poses with leaning and postures and come-hither expressions that might set a minister’s blood boiling.
Mrs. Armundson waited for him outside the lobby door. She wore a different calico dress from the one she had when he met her, and all traces of her cough and fever were gone. “I may have treated you unfairly this morning,” she said without preamble. “It would please me mightily if you would drop by my house for dinner tonight.”
Sprig didn’t have a chance to answer before she turned and exited the hotel.
As he worked at the boardinghouse shed, his face ached from smiling. He could develop and print the day’s images before cleaning up for the widow Armundson. Much of his work had to be done in the dark, but he’d made so many images over the years that the lack of light did not bother him. He was surprised, though, when he finished and inspected the prints, that night had fallen. The yard behind the shed was nearly as dark as the shed itself.
So, when he stepped from the shed, the light that suddenly streamed from the heavens blinded him. The three tall figures who descended in the light didn’t speak as they entered the shed and emerged with the coffin. Sprig’s limbs were paralyzed.
Clearly, though, the device was theirs. Sprig strained to look up, to see the light’s source, but his muscles ignored his efforts. He groaned in an effort to move. If they took it now, how could he keep Mrs. Armundson well? Would his own aches return?
His foot twitched, and Sprig leaned toward them, raising his hand maybe an inch against the invisible bonds. That was enough. Unbalanced now, he fell, like a doll posed into one position, striking his cheek against the ground. He could feel his face swelling as momentum rolled him to his side, still as rigid as a statue, tears streaming from the sudden pain.
The figure who was not holding one end of the coffin paused and looked at Sprig. Through the tears, Sprig couldn’t read an expression, if there was one. The face didn’t look right—eyes too far apart, mouth too small, no lips—but the tall creature paused.
Sprig gasped out, “I need it.”
Whether the creature understood him, Sprig didn’t know, but it knelt, hovered its hand over his cheek that warmed as if in the sun. The air buzzed and the heat spread down his neck and through his limbs like heated molasses.
Except that he couldn’t move, he’d never felt so fine, so whole.
Then the figure stood and turned away.
Sprig watched them float up from the ground with his coffin between them. When the light flicked off, he relaxed, released from whatever had held him. The sky appeared empty except for the hard-edged stars, and not even a wind whispered to indicate that anything had occurred.
An hour later, wearing a suit he’d borrowed from the landlord, Sprig sat at Mrs. Armundson’s table. She laughed often and clearly didn’t know what to make of his story.
“The coffin, though, it is really gone?” She offered him a slice of cake.
“Yes, ma’am. I believe they were the proper owners. It wasn’t a simple pine box at all.”
She refilled his wine glass. “Too bad. I haven’t felt this healthy since my husband died.”
“Me neither.” He touched her hand. “Perhaps you would accompany me for a short stroll? We could admire the night sky.”
She dimpled when she smiled, an indescribably appealing expression by candlelight that Sprig knew he’d never be able to photograph. The best way to preserve the image would be to remember it.
“Only,” she said, “if you agree from now on to call me Molly. And what shall I call you?”
He smiled. A lady had never given him permission to be so familiar. Sprig rose and offered his arm. “My friends call me Emmanuel.”
Fang for Fang, Fire for Blood
AVA MORGAN
“Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”
James 4:7, Holy Bible
Apex, Kansas, 1880
Restaurant owner Cora Bishop slung her gaze out the window to the dusty street and eyed the white sheet draped over the lifeless body of twenty year-old Jedidiah Hamilton. A small crowd gathered outside her establishment to gaze in horror as the undertaker loaded the body onto a mule-drawn wagon. Preacher Hamilton, Jedidiah’s father, staggered behind the wagon in a daze and put his face in his ebony hands. Poor man.
A sharp creak made Cora’s head turn. The double doors to the restaurant flung open, and in shuffled the two farmhands Tim and Morrison, who brought Jedidiah’s body back to town fifteen minutes ago. The handful of customers inside gawked as the men walked by the first set of wooden tables. Cora recognized the sorrowful weariness that weighed down their eyelids and formed grim lines across their dark-skinned brows. “Come sit at the counter,” she bade them, while giving a firm look to her other customers to stay where they were. One by one, they reluctantly returned to their meals.
Cora wiped the counter clean of bread crumbs and soup splatters before setting two glasses down. “This meal is on the house, gentlemen.”
“Just somethin’ to drink, please,” said Tim. He wore a tan hat. “Make it strong and make it a double.”
“Only the saloon serves liquor.”
“We’ll go there next. A cool glass of water, then,” Morrison requested. He spoke to his friend while Cora got the pitcher and poured for them. “Bad way for a preacher’s son to die. Neck ripped clean open.”
Cora’s bones chilled as she overheard them. She didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Her hearing was simply better than most.
Tim drained his water glass. While she refilled it, he said, “Wolves must’ve done it. They need to be shot.”
“Got to catch them first.”
“Wolves?” Cora spoke, her voice soft.
Both men appeared to notice her for the first time. “Yes, missus, er, Miss Cora.” Tim lowered his eyes, gripped his glass, and stared at his reflection on the water’s surface. “Jed said yesterday he was going to a surveyor’s camp five miles further west. He thought they were with the railroad and wanted to find work.”
“I was out this morning looking for one of my calves that wandered off,” said Morrison. “I found him dead on the side of the road. Throat wide open but not a drop of blood anywhere.”
A shiver ran along Cora’s nerves. The same shiver appeared to jump across to Tim next. “Hush, Morrison.” He practically hissed between his teeth. “It’s too gruesome for women to hear.”
Morrison took a faded handkerchief from his shirt pocket and mopped his brow. “Sorry, Miss Cora.”
They thought her female nature was why she appeared visibly upset. Cora didn’t correct him. It was easier for them to think so. “It’s all right. Go on.”
“I went and got Tim to help me bring Jed to town. Jed should’ve preached like his pappy wanted instead of looking for another job.”
She filled Morrison’s empty glass. “You both should eat. If you don’t have the appetite now, at least take some bread and beef with you when you go.”
Tim nodded his appreciation. “It’s mighty sweet of you.”
She gave a polite smile and turned to go into the kitchen to get more soup for the other customers. She heard Tim scold his friend again. “Why couldn’t you be quiet? You know her husband died the same way Jed did.”
Cora’s chest ached. Her husband Samuel had been deceased for two years, but what she heard and saw today made the pain of grief return. They left Georgia to start a new life in Kansas. Cora and her husband struggled to find steady work in the newly emancipated South. Samuel had heard of the great Pap Singleton, whose bold, fiery speeches called for poor black men and women to leave the South, to seek employment and true freedom out on the Western frontier. When Samuel came to her, dark eyes bright with excitement and conviction, and told her he wanted to do this, Cora felt her heart stir. She agreed that they should set out for Apex, one of the black free-towns in Kansas.
Yet Samuel didn’t make it to Apex. She always t
hought his manner of death was…unnatural. When they were on their way to Kansas, he left camp outside of Savannah one morning to go wash himself by the river. He didn’t come back. Cora found his body several miles downstream, his throat gouged as though he were attacked by a wild animal, yet nary a single drop of blood on his person or on the ground. His body had been drained of all blood. He never got to see the free “Promised Land” she and other black people were told awaited them west of the Mississippi.
Another shiver started to form. She suppressed it. Whatever killed her husband two years ago in Georgia was back in her life and preying on other folks in their settlement.
She had to get answers tonight.
* * *
Cora waited until the close of business day. She helped Mrs. Jenkins, her business partner and restaurant co-owner, clean the tables and floors. The older widow extended a wrinkled hand to pat her shoulder. “Don’t you let yourself get upset by what you saw today.” The woman’s voice was gentle and motherly.
“I can’t help it, Mrs. Jenkins. It made me think of Samuel.”
“But this is different, child. Jedidiah shouldn’t have gone from town with no rifle to defend himself. Folks know there’s coyotes and wolves in the hills.”
Cora didn’t think it was different. However, she didn’t want to keep talking and risk alarming the eighty-year-old woman. “See you in the morning, Mrs. Jenkins.” She embraced her friend and left the restaurant.
She stepped outside to see other establishments also beginning to close their doors for the day. She headed further down Main Street to pay a visit to Sheriff Grisham. He might be able to help her.
Cora found the door to the sheriff’s office ajar. She heard him talking to a man inside. Their tones were hushed and laced with tension. She gave a polite knock on the door before entering. “Good afternoon.” Immediately, both men ceased talking and gaped at her when she walked in. “May I speak with you, Sheriff?”
She recognized the other man as Mr. Harold, the editor of The Apex Weekly, the town’s newspaper. The sheriff nodded to him. The man tipped his hat to Cora before leaving the office. He closed the door behind him.
“What can I do for you, Miss Cora?” Sheriff Grisham leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk.
Cora had a hunch he was showing out for her, trying to act calm and relaxed when only a moment ago, he and Mr. Harold sounded more skittish than two sparrows caught in a thorn brier. “I want to speak to you about Jedidiah Hamilton.”
The sheriff sighed. “The town’s getting ready to bury him in a few days. Can it wait?”
“I’m afraid not. Sheriff, I heard about the manner in which he died.”
“Then you shouldn’t have been listening to gossip. Preacher Hamilton spoke about that last Sunday, but I didn’t see you in church.”
“Are you saying his throat wasn’t ripped open, then?” She fixed her stare on the sheriff. She wasn’t going to let him dance around the subject.
He moved his eyes toward the window and appeared to be studying the sunset. “It looked like a wolf got him. Should’ve been carrying his rifle.”
“Sheriff, I have reason to believe it was more than a wolf.”
He narrowed his eyes and shifted them on her again. “More? What do you mean, more? A pack of wolves instead of just one?”
Cora looked down at the desk. “I don’t know. I must say, though, I have seen another man fall victim to that kind of attack. A tear in the throat, loss of blood, but no blood in sight.”
“Only Lord knows the minds of widows.”
She lifted her head. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.” The sheriff took his feet down from the desk. “You’re still grieving your husband’s death. You think the same thing happens to every other man who dies in the wild.”
She couldn’t believe his sudden charged outburst. “Sheriff, this is the only the second time I have heard about a man who lost his life in a similar way that my Samuel lost his.”
“This isn’t…wasn’t Samuel this time.”
The louder Sheriff Grisham’s voice rose, the more he gave off an aroma. Cora smelled the pungency mixed with his sweat. “You’re scared, aren’t you?”
He fell silent. Then his mouth clamped down in a hard line. “Go home, Cora.”
“Do you know what’s out there? Has anyone else been to the surveyor camp?”
“No. Jedidiah is barely cold and here you are, trying to spook folks ’bout how your husband died the same way. Go home and let the town bury its dead.”
Cora felt her hands curling into fists. She had to control her anger. No sense in trading harsh words with the sheriff. He was a man running scared. She turned and marched out of the office.
Sheriff Grisham was right about one thing. For now, it was good to go home. She needed to think about some things.
* * *
Hours later, when the last storefront lantern went dark on Main Street, Cora slipped out of her house and into the night. The light wool of her husband’s trousers rustled on her legs as she hurried through the empty streets and past the wooden sign with the town’s name staked into the hard-packed earth. She went west to the surveyor’s camp, according to John’s directions.
To her eyes, both the dirt road and trampled grass were visible as if it were early evening, not a quarter past ten. She remembered what she told her mother the first time her abilities appeared when she was eleven, some eighteen years ago. Sometimes the night looks like day to me and Tamsy, Mama.
Don’t tell no one, Mama had whispered a warning while Cora and her little sister Tamsy were huddled in the shack they shared with two other slave families on the Georgia plantation. Tamsy slept on the ground, her skinny feet sticking out of the moth-eaten gunny square she used for a blanket. Moonlight streamed through a patch of sod on the wall and cast its silvery beam on Mama’s black skin, making her round, unlined face take on a light all its own. Then Mama frowned, creating ridges on her forehead. Don’t tell no one of your ancestors’ secret, or I’ll lose you both.
Cora never told another soul how she could see or hear real well, or how she could make her body change and do things other folks couldn’t. She didn’t even tell her husband while he was still living. Samuel, Mama, and Tamsy were all gone now, leaving her alone with the secret.
A twig snapped. Cora crouched down in the tall grass. The howl of a lone wolf carried in the air. She peered through the grass at a yellow light coming from a campfire up ahead. Her nostrils tingled with the smell of burning wood chips and raw meat. Three tents formed a line behind the campfire.
Cora heard another twig break in half under a boot. The person wasn’t far behind her. She sniffed and smelled two different kinds of sweat. The person wasn’t alone.
She waited until someone cocked a rifle. “Get up out of the grass.” His drawl was Southern and drunken. “Do it show and slow them hands.”
Cora didn’t think he’d like it if she told him he got his words backwards, so she stayed quiet and complied, rising slowly to her full height. She kept her hands up. A light flashed in her face. She squeezed her eyes shut before opening them to see the face of a bearded white man. He held a kerosene lantern.
“It’s one of them from the Negro settlement a few miles east.” He pressed his face in close. Cora saw what remained of his dinner stuck in his long beard. “This one’s a she, but dressed like a man.” He lowered the lantern. “What you doing out here, missy?”
“I saw the light from your campfire. I must’ve got turned around.”
“You sure did.” He held out his other hand as if he were going to give her a good push to send her in the right direction.
“Wait, Boone,” said the man’s drunken friend. “He might want to see her, help her get back.”
Who was he? Cora wondered. She wanted to get into the camp. She made her voice higher in pitch and slipped a blank, naive look over her face. “If a gentleman can help me, I’d appreciate it.”
/> “He’s a gentleman.” Boone led the way to the camp with his lantern.
Foul air hung in the atmosphere like the hot breath of a foul suitor, eager to descend in an undesired advance. Cora could barely breathe. She coughed as the sickly sweet smell of decaying raw meat carried on the humid wind, mixed with campfire smoke.
She expected to see more railroad surveyors, either tending to the fire or cooking food. Nobody except her and the two men moved through the camp. They led her to the row of tents. Firelight did a slow dance across their stained canvases. Some stains were light brown, possibly from dirt. Others were darker in color, reminding her of the rust color of dried blood.
Boone stopped in front of the largest tent, situated in the middle. Cora rubbed the back of her neck where her skin prickled. Boone lifted the flap of the tent. “Sir, there’s a woman out here.”
Cora noticed how quickly his voice fell into a low mutter. She strained to hear the rest.
“…says she’s lost…”
She heard a deep-voiced murmur in reply, yet was unable to make out the exact words. Then she realized the words weren’t being spoken in English. She glanced at the man with the rifle. He had a look of understanding on his face while he listened to Boone and the mysterious man inside speak.
“Drazek says come in,” Boone said to her, his words coming at her in plain English.
Candlelight illuminated from the opening in the tent flap. Cora’s fingertips itched as though something sharp wanted to come out through her skin. She stepped past Boone and went through. The tent flap fell behind her, causing candlelight to flicker across worn leather volumes stacked within an open fancy brown-gold valise.
“Come closer, dear lady. I’m told you are lost.” The fellow’s pleasant words took on a peculiar life of their own, filling the room and surrounding Cora. She heard Englishmen before, and a German once, but this man’s accent was entirely foreign to her ears.
She followed the light to find two sturdy candles burning on a table next to an empty plate and a glass half-filled with dark liquid. Seated was a man in a grey coat. His black hair was pulled in severe fashion from his face. Shadows moved over his pale skin and the sharp, asymmetrical lines of his features.
