Riders in the Sky - [Millennium Quartet 04]

by Charles L. Grant

  For an instant Casey saw the brass knuckles, the fist, the face behind them, and he flinched before he realized that he didn’t hurt much at all.

  “No,” he said, amazed.

  “That,” Ronnie said, “is because you’re all doped up. When it wears off...”

  * * * *

  3

  He stands in the modest belfry of a modest church, and Hell boils below him—houses burning, glass melting, buildings exploding, trees afire all the way to the horizon; people running and crawling and screaming and dying, or dead already, faces turned to the night sky, blind to the rain and the lightning.

  A shotgun blast.

  The sound of an ax meeting the back of someone’s skull.

  An automobile strikes a tree and adds fuel to the fire.

  A cry for help.

  A cry for mercy.

  The flames are too bright in the middle of the night, and he can’t see anymore what’s real down there in the midst of flickering sliding shadow; he can’t find his friends to see who’s still alive, and he can’t find the woman who brought all this to the town that was his home.

  A boy far below looks up at him in horror.

  He stiffens and rage takes him—the woman is right behind him.

  A voice in his ear: “Believe it or not, we’re on the same side.”

  * * * *

  4

  He had questions, but he couldn’t stay awake long enough to ask them all, sometimes asked them twice because he couldn’t remember the original answers.

  So the answers came in spurts and soft whispers, as the light dimmed and brightened and dimmed again, as the pain made its way to the surface on the tips of jabbing spears and lances, fighting the medication, fighting his sense of time and place.

  * * * *

  “Who found me?”

  “Senior Raybourn,” said Reverend Baylor. There was amusement in his tone. “He said he was coming back to take care of you, whatever that meant. He had his shotgun, so I can imagine you must have ... well, never mind. It doesn’t matter. He found you on the walk, said there was more blood than skin, and thought you were surely dead. I think, Mr. Chisholm, that disappointed him somehow. At any rate, he called the sheriff, Gloria Nazario, and me. By the time I got here, Sheriff Oakman had already arrived.”

  “The Teagues. It was the Teagues.”

  “So you’ve said. A number of times.”

  * * * *

  Chilly.

  The furnace loud.

  Fresh sheets, a clean blanket, someone gave him a sponge bath because he couldn’t stand, couldn’t walk, and would be damned if he’d crawl.

  * * * *

  “What day is it?”

  Ronnie grinned. “Maybe you should ask what week it is.”

  * * * *

  Gloria Nazario brought him soup, fed him over his feeble protests, dried his chin with a napkin, all the while looking as if she’d murder the first person who looked at her sideways. She had taken over his care, and no one argued. Not even Hector, who sometimes stood in the doorway, staring at him as though trying to figure out what he was.

  Gloria had no gossip, no news. All she said was, “Eat.”

  When she had to leave for Betsy’s, Kitra Baylor took over, sitting in a corner armchair, reading, checking to be sure his pills were administered on time. When he tried to talk to her, all she said was, “Sleep.”

  * * * *

  Whittaker Hull had more questions than answers, and Casey had a bad feeling he was going to show up on the Weekly’s front page. Thank God, the man hadn’t taken any pictures.

  As far as he knew.

  “Are the Teagues in jail?”

  “No.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Why did they attack you, Mr. Chisholm? Do you think it’s because you helped me, is that what it was? Did you say something to Stump at church Thanksgiving morning? I saw you talking to him, with Mrs. Baylor, and later, when you took him away. Well, I saw what you did; I don’t know if you talked to him or not. He has a rather nasty temper. It doesn’t pay to have it aimed at you. As you’ve already found out. What did you say to him, Mr. Chisholm? May I call you Casey? What did you say to him, Casey? What did you do? Do you know something? Do you know what’s going on?”

  * * * *

  A strong night wind that prowled around the house, voicing its displeasure at not being able to get in.

  Once, the sound of rain snapping at the window, and the night seemed much darker.

  * * * *

  A chubby man, with thin strands’ of short brown hair that refused to lie down properly across a tan-mottled scalp. Heavy lips, pale eyes, ears that stood out from the side of his head. Glasses in thick black frames.

  Clark Gable ears, Casey thought, and must have said it aloud because the man scowled and shook his head with impatience.

  He had a needle; he used it.

  Casey drifted forever each time the man left.

  * * * *

  “What day is it?”

  “Eat.”

  * * * *

  “What day is it?”

  “Sleep, Mr. Chisholm, sleep. It’s the best thing for you right now.”

  * * * *

  “Why aren’t they in jail?”

  “Sadly, Casey, it’s the way of it here. You haven’t been around. You saw it in my office. Now you know.”

  * * * *

  Sometime, he didn’t know when, but he still couldn’t sit up without nausea spinning out of the dizziness that spiraled along with it...sometime during the next few days, Sheriff Oakman came to see him, full uniform, without the sunglasses. Perched on the foot of the bed, hat pushed back, gunbelt leather creaking each time he shifted. He said nothing about the last time they had spoken.

  Casey couldn’t think very straight, drug and pain at constant war, yet it didn’t take long for him to catch on:

  “So you say it was the Teagues, Mr. Chisholm?”

  “I don’t say so. It was them. Billy Ray hit me first. I don’t remember much after that.”

  “So you don’t really know if Stump and Cord took their licks, too.”

  “Don’t think they just stood around, Sheriff. Stump was pretty ticked at me.”

  “It was near dark, that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Near dark. You told me before, you said that you were angry at something. Senior Raybourn, for one.”

  “Yeah, I was.”

  “And it was near dark.”

  “Like I said.”

  “So you were blind angry, it was near full dark, no streetlights, no moon, and you saw Billy Ray clear as a bell. That right?”

  “I saw him. Yes. I said something to Stump, who was on my steps, and Billy Ray said something, and I turned, and he hit me. With brass knuckles.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that, Mr. Chisholm. Doctor Alloway says those injuries aren’t consistent with the use of brass knuckles. For one thing, your jaw isn’t broken.”

  “Okay. Maybe it was just his knuckles. What the hell difference does it make?”

  “Makes a lot of difference, Mr. Chisholm. The way the light was, the way your mood was, can’t really believe that you saw what you claim you saw.”

  “I don’t claim anything, Sheriff. I saw what I saw.”

  “Almost full dark, no—”

  “Sheriff, I don’t really give a damn what you think just now, okay? As soon as I can walk and think straight, I’m coming down and I’m swearing out a complaint, and you’re going to arrest those sons ...”

  “Mr. Chisholm, you okay?”

  “Unless it’d give you pleasure to see me throw up my lunch, Sheriff, you’d better leave now.”

  * * * *

  He resented all those people trampling through his house. Poking through his things. Making themselves comfortable on what little furniture he had. Walking in and out as if they owned the place. Every so often he could hear laughter downstairs, that hushed kind of laughter heard in hospitals and s
ick houses, joy muted in deference to the ill and injured.

  A doctor came by several times—Alloway? Calloway?—but he could barely remember the man’s face from one visit to the next, only that he was going bald and doing a lousy job of hiding it.

  He was angry. At himself for being ambushed when he had been expecting it, and at the world for refusing to just leave him the hell alone.

  * * * *

  He thought it was morning; it was certainly bright enough. And he could smell the sea.

  Someone stood in the doorway.

  He squinted, shaded his eyes.

  “Mr. Raybourn,” he said. Pulled at his throat with two fingers, hoping he wouldn’t sound too hoarse, wishing his eyes would work better—focus was blurred, light was vaguely hazed. “It looks like I owe you a pretty large debt, sir.”

  Senior Raybourn stepped into the room, baggy pants and suspenders, his cap in one hand. “Don’t owe me nothing.”

  “Yes, I do. You saved my life.”

  Raybourn’s lips pulled at one corner. “To tell the truth, I was going to shoot you.”

  Casey smiled in turn. “Yeah. I kind of heard that.”

  “My boy ...”

  Casey waited, praying the old man wouldn’t start up again about the handshake.

  “I went home last night, he was looking at a magazine.” Two hands at the cap now, twisting it. “Night I saw you, he was reading it, Mr. Chisholm. Stories and everything. The boy can’t read all that well, but that night he was reading it like he’d been reading all his life.”

  “Look—”

  “Last night he looks up at me and he says, ‘I like the pictures, Daddy, all these pretty pictures.’ “

  Casey didn’t get it, and frowned to prove it.

  “Couldn’t read worth a lick, Mr. Chisholm. The boy couldn’t read no more. Whatever you done, it didn’t stick.” He slapped the cap on. “Couldn’t remember that he did, either.”

  Casey spread his hands—I don’t know what to say.

  Raybourn backed out of the room, turned to leave, and looked back. “He’s my only kin, Mr. Chisholm. You do something to him again, next time I’ll finish it. I swear by God, I’ll finish it right.”

  * * * *

  A week after he woke up the first time—maybe it was longer, he couldn’t tell, time meant little or nothing and he really didn’t care—he lifted his T-shirt and looked at his chest, and the bruise had shrunk dramatically and was so faded it had turned pale grey, little more than a shadow lurking under his skin. There were still a couple of bandages on his face, but the stitches had been taken out, assurances given that he probably wouldn’t have any scars. None, that is, that would scare anybody.

  He supposed he ought to feel good about that.

  He couldn’t figure out why he didn’t.

  * * * *

  The doctor—it was Alloway, not Calloway; a small victory he relished—instructed Kitra and Gloria that Casey was to take the medication only with his meals, but not to skip or skimp the dosage. Very important for the healing process, he declared; vital.

  “I don’t want anymore,” Casey protested that evening.

  “You heard the doctor,” Gloria said.

  “I don’t care.”

  Hands on her hips, she watched until he swallowed, and he hated her for it.

  * * * *

  The sheriff returned.

  “Had a talk with Stump Teague,” he said. Casey frowned, shook his head to drive off the cobwebs. It almost worked.

  “Says he was on the mainland, him and his brothers. They got a bartender to swear to it.”

  “The bartender’s lying.”

  “Your word against his, Chisholm, and he don’t have a record.”

  “No, but I’ve got the bruises.”

  “No kidding? Can’t hardly see them from here.”

  “Get out, Sheriff.”

  “Why? You gonna throw up again?”

  He stayed, trying to chat with Kitra Baylor, but she insisted he leave, Casey needed his rest.

  “Rest?” Oakman snorted. “Man’s been lying on his fat back for two weeks, give or take. He gets any more rest, he’ll be dead.”

  * * * *

  Eventually, what few visitors he had only came by in the evening. They had jobs, and his condition wasn’t life-threatening; he wasn’t dying. They didn’t stay long, either, and he didn’t encourage them to. He couldn’t figure out why they had bothered in the first place.

  Eventually they stopped.

  The quiet was a relief.

  He used the time to practice sitting up, then walking, not doing very well at either and cursing himself for it; he used the time to stare out the window and watch the season slip closer to winter. It was still pleasantly warm when the sun was out, but there were days when clouds killed the warmth, and the wind had a touch of ice on its breath.

  * * * *

  Rick Jordan brought him a portable radio, spent an entire afternoon telling stories about what could be seen from the fire tower on the ridge. About the people he could see with his high-power binoculars, and what they were doing. Casey laughed, but he didn’t know why. The young man was so earnest in his attempt to pass the time, Casey didn’t have the heart to ask him to repeat whatever it was he’d just said.

  When he left, Casey pounded the bed in frustration, glared at the pills, and decided it was time to stop. The hell with Alloway, the hell with Gloria and Kitra and their Mother-knows-best looks. He was tired of living in a shifting cotton fog.

  After dinner that night, he tucked the pills under his tongue, drank the juice Gloria handed him, and closed his eyes. Listened to her move around, straightening the sheet and blanket, turning off the radio and the Christmas carols it played, whispering with Kitra and Hector in the doorway.

  He kept his eyes closed until he heard her leave the room, then spit the pills onto the bed; he kept his eyes closed until the front door closed and he heard two cars pull away.

  When he was sure he was alone, he used elbows and palms to sit himself up, keeping his eyes half shut because opening them, even this time of day, let in too much light and made his head ache. Next, using bed and nightstand, he pushed carefully to his feet. Swayed. Swallowed. Used the bed to get him close to the door, then lurched across the floor and grabbed onto the frame.

  There was no pain.

  Just that damnable fog.

  A few deep breaths, a few curses for encouragement, and he shuffled down the hall, bracing his hands against the wall, refusing to lift his feet because he knew he would fall.

  Once in the bathroom he turned on the light, groaned, and grabbed onto the smooth round edge of the sink.

  The mirror on the medicine chest door was streaked with leftover cleaner, but he could see his reflection well enough, and it made him grin.

  “Mummy bandages,” he muttered. “Lord, she wasn’t kidding.”

  His knees weakened.

  He snapped them rigid, splashed cold water on his face, drank from his palm until the cold stung fingers and throat, then splashed water vigorously over his head.

  The fog almost lifted; it would have to do until all the medication was purged from his system.

  Then, with fingers that disobeyed him half the time, he peeled the bandage patches from his forehead, his cheeks, from his left temple and the blunt of his chin, tossing them aside, not caring who might find them. He couldn’t manage to lift the T-shirt over his head, so he grabbed a pair of manicure scissors from the cabinet and patiently, fumbling, cut it off.

  When he was done, he stepped back as far as his arms would permit while one hand still held on to the basin.

  “Lord,” he whispered. “Good ,.. Lord.”

  There were splotches of dried disinfectant—iodine, something else maybe, he really couldn’t tell—and there were dark lines here and there the adhesive had left behind.

  Nothing else.

  No scars, no signs of the gashes and the cuts; no scratches, no bruises, no fresh-looki
ng skin, and when he tested his skin with a rough finger, no tenderness.

  I was hurt, he thought; damnit, I know I was hurt.