by M Ennenbach
Then he stopped his slow cutting as a strong smell hit him like a charging steer. What was that? He had to turn his head as the beef jerky and water in his stomach came forcefully out. It smelled like the charnel pile they had found at the last camp. The one Jarod had found, but James had made him bury. He looked around frantically for the source of the stench. All seemed calm in the night. Lee remained sleeping, the hat over his face provided a mask against the smell, he reckoned. Then to his left, the shrub and tall prairie grass began to move. He sawed into the rope faster and faster. He wouldn’t let a coyote take him now. Not this close to freedom. And if it woke Lee, he would never get away. He was too close.
Then he saw something crawl out of the grass. It looked human, but impossibly thin. A skeleton with gray skin barely stretched across it. As it got closer, the scent of death grew into a cloud that he could not escape. In the sudden panic of seeing that thing, he cried out. “Lee!”
Lee jerked the hat from his face and stared in alarm at Daniel. Slowly, the gears in his head turned and he realized what was happening. “You bastard!” Then his eyes followed Daniel’s and he saw the living dead man slowly crawling to camp. Jagged, broken arrow shafts stuck out of its head and torso. Like a nightmare cactus corpse. The all black eyes stared with pure, malevolent intent at them. “What in God’s name is that?” he asked as he pulled out his revolver.
“Death,” Daniel answered. “You gotta untie me!”
Lee never turned his eyes from the thing crawling towards them. He raised his revolver and cocked back the hammer and aimed down the barrel. “Leave us be. Ain’t nothing to come from this but pain.”
Daniel looked at him in shock. “Don’t talk to it! Shoot!”
Lee squeezed the trigger. The gun let out a small burst of fire and the bullet flew true into one of the black eyes. It looked like tar erupted from the now ruined socket and the thing fell unmoving to the dirt.
“What was that thing?” Lee asked quietly.
“Something from hell.”
Lee turned to face Daniel. “Don’t think your good deed of waking me earns a reprieve. You did it to save your own sorry hide as much as anything. I should have left you over the back of the horse.”
“And you’d be just as dead as I’m fixing to be.”
Lee turned his gaze back to the rotting corpse. He nodded once. “You may be right on that account.”
“Untie me, then. We can ride to Duncan. I’ll go my way, you wait for the guys.”
Lee eyed him. “We just forget the incident at camp?”
Daniel nodded. “Bygones be bygones.”
“Pleeeeease don’t . . . ”
They both gave a jump. The thing was staring balefully with its remaining eye.
“That’s not possible . . . ” Lee just stared at it.
A sick sound came from Daniel’s throat. One of fear and utter hopelessness.
Then the thing moved with speed that should not have been possible for such a broken form. Like a cockroach, it scurried across the ground in a blur. Lee fired, but it moved so quickly he missed three of four shots. Then it was on Daniel, sick ripping sounds as its mouth tore at his stomach. Lee tried to pull back the hammer as a spray of blood fountained into air. Daniel screamed in agony with his head thrown back to face that smiling curve of the moon shining down. The creature had its head buried in his open torso. As Lee watched, the broken arrow shafts popped out of the gray flesh. The gaunt form seemed to grow as it consumed Daniel. The revolver fell from his hands as Daniel shuddered into silence, blank eyes glaring at the sky. The creature turned to stare at him. The clatter of the gun on the ground seemed to remind it of his presence.
Two black eyes stared at him out of that demonic skeletal face covered in gore. “Pleeease . . . ”
Lee darted toward the horse, forgotten to the side of camp. It reared in fear at the creature and all smothering smell of death. He reached for the tether tied carefully to an old withered stump. He didn’t look back. Didn’t want to see if the creature followed or had puts its face back into Daniel’s body. The horse reared again and a metal shod hood caught him in the shoulder. He felt bone break as he spun through the air and landed with a thump and bounced on the hard packed dirt to rest with his back against the stump. Pain flared down his arm. He watched as the horse bolted into the flat lands, galloping and leaving a trail like smoke behind it.
“ . . . don’t.”
He blinked and looked up through the haze in his head. The thing stood in front of him. The skin stretched over ropy muscle and seemed to be at the verge of splitting. The head cocked as it stared down at him, as if trying to figure out exactly what it looked down upon. Lee knew the answer at that moment. It was looking at its next meal. He mouthed a prayer, that the Lord watch over him in this moment of need. Then it cried out and he saw too long claws flying towards his face. Before consciousness faded, he felt his own eyes rupture like overripe berries. A thick jelly rolled down his cheeks. And all he could do was scream as he felt teeth and fetid breath upon his flesh. He screamed for a long while into the night. And then, mercifully, the night fell silent again.
The curved snarl of the moon, no smile in the face of the carnage it had witnessed, slowly lowered from its perch. Excusing itself from the horror it had witnessed. The twinkling stars winked out as the sun rose in the Eastern sky. Two dark stains and a discarded revolver by the burned-out fire were the only sign of what occurred the night before.
5
Duncan
The town of Duncan had just begun to wake from the long night into another sleepy day. Barely established three years prior, it was more a collection of people looking to be lost than a real town. It came more to life when the cattle drives rolled in, or the cattlemen made the last stop as they returned to Texas. Between, it was nearly idyllic. A place to rest, to find yourself, and to share the protection of like-minded folk from the hazards of the untamed West.
Karl sat at the table in the middle of the sheriff’s office. The iron barred door to his cell was hanging open behind him as he drank a cup of coffee and watched the city outside. There was a cattle drive due to arrive around the end of the week and everyone was rushing about to be prepared. It was the first of the season and a sign of times to come. As he sat there, rereading his notes on the skirmish he had stumbled onto in New Orleans, the door to the office slammed open.
He looked up in surprise. A man in tattered clothes with a few days of growth on his face stared at him with intense eyes. Karl stared back at him in curiosity. The man looked around, a bit of panic in his steely gaze.
“What year is it?”
Karl raised an eyebrow. “Eighteen seventy-two.”
The man looked shocked at this. “Eighteen seventy-two? Gods be damned,” he muttered. “You the sheriff round these parts?”
Karl laughed and the man gave him a cold stare. “Afraid not. Just a traveler, much like yourself if I had to guess. Name’s Karl, Karl Beck. You lost, friend?”
The man gave a mirthless laugh. “You have no idea. Call me James Dee.”
He extended his hand across the table. Karl shook it and was surprised to feel the callused grip. A dangerous man with killing etched onto his face. Karl grabbed the bottle of whiskey off of the floor and held it up to James. He nodded gratefully, pulled the cork out with his teeth and took a long pull. He held it out, but Karl shook his head and gestured for him to keep it. James raised it again and drained the rest of it.
“Thank you kindly, Karl.”
“Of course. You seemed to have a thirst. The road does that to man.”
“Where is this?” James asked, looking out the window as Tracey opened up the shop across the street. They both stared at her as she raised the blind on the door. She looked back at them and raised her hand to wave hello, but after she saw the look on both of their faces, thought better and quickly moved back further in.
“Duncan. You’re in the Indian Region, smack dab in the middle of the Chisholm Trail.”<
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James stared at him, his mouth moving soundlessly. “Oklahoma, then,” he finally uttered.
It was Karl’s turn to look confused. A thousand questions ran through his mind. Before he could pry one from the pack, James smashed his fist down onto the sturdy table.
“I need to get to Dust, I’ve got business to settle there.”
“Dust?”
James looked at him with a gaze that nearly froze the blood in Karl’s veins. “Dust, Texas.”
Karl screwed his face up in thought. “There are so many new settlements that spring up. I can’t say I recall any Dust, though. Describes most of them, though.”
Neither man laughed at this half-hearted joke. James sat down in the empty chair and cradled his face in hands. Karl watched him warily. He knew the look of a man with a mission. And of a man lost. In his experience, that made for one dangerous combination.
“What’s your business in Dust, if you don’t mind me asking, Mr. Dee?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Mr. Beck. You’d think I was crazy. Which way is Texas?”
Karl smiled. “You may find yourself surprised at what I would believe. But if you head out and take a right and keep going for a mighty long spell, you’ll reach Texas. Just follow the Chisholm Trail.”
James Dee stood and offered his hand again, which Karl shook. “I thank you for the drink and the directions. I’m off to find Dust then, as soon as I can. I have Gods to kill.” With that, he turned and left. Karl sat staring long after the stranger had turned and begun to walk down the street.
Mikhail walked in moments later and saw Karl still staring into space. “Did you see the stranger?” News travels fast in a small town.
“I did.”
“And? I hear he already began to head out of town.”
“He needed directions is all.”
“You look a might bit disturbed. Was he trouble?”
Karl gave him a long, steady look. Then he reached down and grabbed a fresh bottle of whiskey. “Like you would not believe. He is headed to Texas. And I fear he brings Hell with him.”
Mikhail stared at the normally unflappable Karl Beck. “That bad?”
Karl poured three fingers into the dented metal coffee mug and threw it back in one drink. “Worse for whoever it is he is after.”
They sat quietly for a long spell. Mikhail grabbed the bottle and poured himself a glass as well while the wind blew down the main street of the one-road town. Karl stared out the window. Tracey busied herself with moving the stock around on the shelves across the street. She was a fine-looking lady, if a bit withdrawn from the rest of the townsfolk.
“What’s her story?” he asked as he refilled each mug from the bottle.
Mikhail turned and looked. “Tracey? English from South something or other. Was married once upon a time. Real bastard, I hear. She had about enough of him and hopped a boat. Then kept on moving until she finally found Duncan.”
Karl nodded. He couldn’t think of a better place to be lost and found. “She hasn’t said two words to me.”
Mikhail laughed. “Spend some money and she’ll thank you kindly. She’s a tough one. Rumor has it she has taken to the Laudanum. I can’t say for certain. Until it becomes a problem for the rest of the townsfolk, it doesn’t matter none. So tell me, this demon stuff, what’s your real profession?”
Karl took a long sip of his whiskey. Thoughts of James Dee raced through his mind. “I don’t think you’d believe me.”
“Try me. I’ve been told I am a good judge of character, part of the job I reckon. You don’t strike me as the sort to consort with the darkness.”
Karl smiled, one that didn’t seem to quite reach his eyes as he stared outside. “Fine. What if I told you that monsters were real? Really real? And that some of us have taken it upon themselves to stop them?”
“I would question if you were right in the head. Are you saying they are real? You’re one of those people?”
“I have crisscrossed this young nation of ours over the last twenty-five years doing just that. Seen things that would make you sleep with a lantern burning next to your bed. Stopped events that could have probably ended everything more than a few times.”
Mikhail sat silent for a moment, watching Karl’s face. “And that brought you here? Some kind of monster?”
Karl laughed. “No. Treasure brought me to Texas. A monster in New Orleans knocked me off course. And I decided to head up North to lick my wounds and study some more.”
“Treasure?”
“If the rumors are true, luck itself. Somewhere in the Southwest. The power to harness it, bend it to your will.”
“You want to be lucky? All of this to be good at cards?”
Karl shook his head sadly. “No. I just don’t want the wrong people to find it. It isn’t a curse I want for myself at all. There are stories of the end of all things. In these tales, they talk of one person that can stop it with the power of luck.”
“Could it have been the stranger from earlier?”
“No. He has his own fate, his own path to walk. I have a feeling I have to find the right person before I can find the treasure I seek. I just have no idea where to look. So, it’s to Wisconsin to chase rumors. Then back to the Northeast to restock.”
“Sounds lonely, what with saving the world from monsters and no one knowing.”
Karl gave him a steady look. Then removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeve. Three puckered scars traveled up his arm, deep looking rents that must have been clear to the bone. “The thing that did this to me killed my wife. My pregnant wife. If loneliness is the price to pay to stop some creature from doing this to another, that is a price I will gladly pay.”
Mikhail stared in shock at the scars. Nothing short of one them big cats he heard came around with traveling shows could have done that. Yet part of him knew it was no big cat. The same part of him that believed Karl even if it was the most outlandish thing he had ever heard. “So the wards you drew in salt at the bar were just that?”
“Simple things to keep lesser spirits at bay. Nothing more.”
“You realize you are free to go, don’t you? Have been since the second day. It’s why I don’t lock the cell at night.”
“I do. But I have some things to sort out. And your hospitality is second to none, Sheriff.”
Mikhail smiled. “You’re welcome to stay until my replacement comes. Might be a tad hard to explain you loitering in the cell after that. Why don’t you come to my place tomorrow evening? Have a real dinner. My wife is an excellent cook and we’d both be happy to have you.”
Karl blinked in confusion. “Someone married you? On purpose?”
“Now I expect you to have better manners than that. Jia-Li doesn’t tolerate tomfoolery.”
“Jia-Li? Your wife is Chinese?”
“That she is. The most beautiful flower of the Orient, if I do say so myself. Came with her father as the transcontinental railroad was being built. We met in the north. Love at first sight. For me, anyway. She couldn’t speak a lick of English and her daddy couldn’t stand me. But I have a pernicious streak a mile wide. So here we are after ten years.”
Karl smiled. “I think I would be honored to meet your lovely wife. I shall be there.”
“You bring the whiskey.”
“Deal.”
Mikhail stood up and adjusted his belt and looked outside the window. Tracey smiled and waved and he tipped his hat to her. “Time to make the rounds. You want to take a stroll with me? Everyone is a might bit curious as to who the stranger is that sits in the jail all day and summons demons.”
Karl shrugged. “Why not? It ain’t like I’m accomplishing much here. This belly full of whiskey could use walked off if I plan on making it to sunset.” He grabbed his battered hat off the hook and shrugged on his just as beat jacket.
Together they walked across the street and into the town store. Tracey gave them both a smile and curtsey. “Morning, Sheriff. And a good morning to
you, Mr. Beck. I’ve seen you sitting in the sheriff’s office, wondered if you would ever venture across the street and say hello.”
Karl smiled at her and removed his hat. “I reckon it was odd seeing me look out across the bustling main street the last couple days. Us hardened criminals know when we need to stay put, though. A pleasure to meet you.”
Mikhail stood to the side, pretending to look at the wares as they made their introductions. “Karl is a rehabilitated man, Tracey. He just needed a few days in jail to see the error of his ways.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Rehabilitated? Seems like there is still a bit of scoundrel behind his eyes. I hear you like to play with demons, Mr. Beck. Any truth to that?”
“In my experience, there is no playing with demons. You either send them back to Hell, or they kill you. I ain’t been killed yet, as fortune would have it. Not for lack of trying on their part. I fear the rumors may have been exaggerated slightly, ma’am.”
