by Faith Hunter
“Thank you,” he said.
There was a scream—a man. The Chaplain drew his Colt. “Stay here, until I get you,” he said. Anna nodded. He slid open the door, scanned the hall, and then slipped out, shutting the door behind him.
Josh was lying in the hallway, shaking as if he were cold. His pistol lay near him.
“What the hell happened?” the Chaplain asked, kneeling by the boy.
“He...he bit Gurney,” Josh muttered and then passed out. Mr.Whittcomb came up the stairs, huffing. He stopped when he saw the two men in the hall.
“Get downstairs,” Chap growled. The old man nodded and hurried down the stairs. The Chaplain stood and pushed open the door to Gurney’s room. It was cold. The window was wide open and the curtain fluttering. Gurney was on the bed shuddering, much as Josh had been. Gurney ‘s sheets were soaked in blood. No one else was in the room.
“Gurney,” Chap whispered in the wounded man’s ear. Gurney groaned. There were two large, ugly-looking puncture wounds on Gurney’s shoulder. The skin around them was swollen and discolored.
Chap noticed something by the window—it looked a little like a tangled blanket. He knelt by it. It was skin, smooth and dry. He lifted it, gingerly, and saw it was a human’s skin, complete with hair on the head. The mouth of the hollow mask of flesh was torn and tattered, as if it had been stretched to the point of shredding. Chap shuddered and dropped the skin. He looked out the window and saw only the tree near the window and the dark, empty street below.
Isaiah crashed into the room, twin six-guns drawn. He lowered them when he saw only Gurney and Chap. “What’s wrong with Josh?” Isaiah asked.
“Get him to bed,” Chap said. He pointed to the wounds on Gurney’s shoulder. “Look and see if he’s got anything on him, like that. Stick with him and let me know if he wakes up or he gets worse.”
Anna appeared at the open door. “What on Earth happened?”
“I thought I told you to stay put,” Chap said as he closed and locked the window.
“I ignored you.”
“Get to your rooms, lock the door and keep the windows shut,” he said to Anna and Isaiah. “Don’t open up for anyone but me, y’hear?”
Once the Chaplain was sure they were all locked in, he closed Gurney’s door and walked downstairs to the parlor. The Whittcombs were standing at the edge of the landing watching him with expressionless eyes.
“The doctor?” Chap said. “Did Lynch show up?”
“Couldn’t rightly say,” Mr. Whittcomb said. “I didn’t see him come in, young fella.”
The Chaplain nodded and headed back upstairs. The old couple looked at each other and said nothing. Chap returned to Gurney’s room, checked on his comrade who now seemed to be breathing well enough. He put fresh dressings on Gurney’s stomach wound and on the odd punctures, locked the door, and sat in a chair next to the bed. He slept very little, and when he did his dreams were dark, squirming things that licked at the edges of his waking mind.
Dawn gave way to bright morning. The Chaplain woke with a start to Gurney’s smiling face. “You look like shit,” Gurney said.
“How you doing?” Chap said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “You were dying yesterday. You took one to the gut.” Gurney sat up. He pulled the bloody bandage away and there was a discolored, puckered scar where the day before there had been an ugly, wet hole.
“What the hell?” the Chaplain muttered, looking closer at the bullet scar. “Gurney, this ain’t possible.”
“You sound upset I ain’t dead, Chap,” Gurney said, climbing out of bed. “Anything to eat hereabouts? I’m starved.” Chap stood and looked at Gurney’s shoulder as he swung to the edge of the bed. The punctures were gone. He glanced over at the pile of skin by the window, but all that remained of it was a pile of dust in the morning light.
“No, I’m glad to see you up and around,” Chaplain said. “Just...didn’t expect it.”
Breakfast was a hearty affair. Mrs. Whittcomb laid out quite a spread for the crew. They were apparently the only boarders in the house. Gurney was starved, so was Josh, who had awoken in the morning feeling fine. Hoxie stomped into the house with a huge grin on his face, joined them at the table, and began shoveling food into his mouth.
“Where you been?” Isaiah asked, sipping his coffee.
“Off having a time with that redheaded adventuress from the saloon,” Hoxie said dropping a pile of hoecakes onto his plate from the platter. “The things that whore did to me...”
“Language!” the Chaplain said. “Got ladies present.” Anna blushed and looked at her plate. Hoxie looked and her and snorted.
“Shit,” he said. “Pardon-fucking-me, your highness.”
“Enough, Bill,” the Chaplain said. “Or do you need another reminder like out in the desert?”
“Might not fall the same way it did last time, Chap,” Hoxie said, grinning through the food in his mouth. He took his hat off and Chap noticed that the ugly bruises and cuts he had inflicted on Hoxie yesterday were all gone.
“Okay, everyone’s good to ride,” the Chaplain said, “I say we resupply and get the hell out of here. Head for Nogales and we divvy up there. I’ll use part of my share to buy Anna, here, a ticket on a coach back to Contention City and we all go our separate ways. Agreed?”
Laughter erupted at the table from Hoxie, Josh, and Gurney. “I ain’t in no hurry to leave,” Josh said.
“What are you talking about?” Isaiah said.
“Same here,” Gurney said. “Seems as nice a place to hole up a spell as any other, Chap. Better than most.”
“So, looks like were staying put,” Hoxie said. “’less you care to ride off minus your share,” he said. “We ain’t leaving yet, and neither’s the money.”
After breakfast the crew split up. Outside, Chap, Isaiah, and Anna walked along the warped boards set up on either side of the main street to act as sidewalks.
“What the hell happened to Josh?” the Chaplain said. “Did he say anything to you, Isaiah?”
The elder Doncaster shook his head. “Nothing much. He was all shivering last night and he had a great big old bite like the one Gurney had on his arm.”
“Bite?” Anna said.
“Yes ma’am,” Isaiah said. “Looked like a bad one and whatever gave it to him it was big. Josh woke up this morning all smiles and shines. He said he couldn’t recall how he ended up on the floor or anything about him or Gurney getting bit. Matter of fact, when I looked at his arm this morning...”
“The bite was gone,” Chap said. Isaiah nodded. “Same thing happened with Gurney’s bite, and he seems in a damn fine mood for a fella we should be digging a hole for.”
“What do we do, Chap?” Isaiah asked. “Josh ain’t acting like Josh. I don’t like it.”
“Let’s go pay a visit to this sawbones and see what he has to say about all this,” Chap said.
~*~
The shack had a tar-paper roof and a small shingle hung by the door which said “E. W. Lynch: Physician.” Chap knocked while Isaiah and Anna looked around the edges of Main Street.
“Sun’s well up and not a soul to be seen,” Anna said.
There was no answer to the Chaplain’s knock. He rapped harder on the door. “A lot of these houses look empty,” he said, “unused.” There was still no response to his knocking. Chap looked over to Isaiah. “We clear?” he asked the elder Doncaster. Isaiah’s eyes scanned the street and then he nodded curtly as his hand fell to his holster.
“Clear?” Anna asked a second before the Chaplain kicked in the shack’s door, its small lock flying across the room with a metallic ‘ting’. Lynch sat up in his small wrought-iron bed as Chap and Isaiah entered. Lynch appeared to be naked except for the sheet covering him. Anna followed them and swung the damaged door closed.
“Morning, Doc,” Chap said, standing at the end of the bed, and drawing his pistol. He pointed it at the wide-eyed, shivering Lynch. “Need your medical opinion on a few things, hope you do
n’t mind we ain’t got an appointment.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Lynch said, “else I call the law on you!”
“How you gonna do that with a hole in your head?” Chap said, cocking the Colt. “You were supposed to come by and minister to our friend last night, recall that?”
Lynch glared at the Chaplain. Chap noticed that Lynch’s skin seemed very pale, vaguely translucent, and it almost glistened as if he were covered in a sheen of sweat. His dark hair was slicked back from his face as if it were wet, or greasy, but Lynch was dry.
“You sick or something?” Isaiah asked. Lynch only glared.
“Did you see Gurney and Josh last night?” the Chaplain said. “I ain’t going to ask you again, and you won’t be able to answer anyway if you wanted to.” He steadied the gun and Lynch threw up both arms in front of his face, as if it would stop the bullet.
“Yes, yes!” Lynch shouted. “Put that damn thing away!”
Isaiah crossed the room and pulled Lynch from the bed. The doctor was naked and his whole body had the same odd sheen. “What the hell did you do to my brother, you sumbitch!” Isaiah shouted. Anna looked away.
“Nothing,” Lynch said, trying to cover himself, “not a damn thing! I swear!” Something caught the Chaplain’s eye. There was a crumpled, dried mass peeking out from under Lynch’s bed. “At least let me put my pants on, for god’s sake,” the frightened doctor said while Chap prodded at the mysterious mass gingerly with the toe of his boot. It made a dry hushing sound like dead leaves as it was kicked out from under the bed. It was a snakeskin, a big one. A dried rattle about the size of man’s palm gave a hollow hiss as the skin was slid across the floor.
“Jesus, fuck,” Isaiah said as Lynch fastened his canvas jeans. “That is a hell of a snake! What is that six, seven feet long?”
Something jagged tumbled in the Chaplain’s mind—pieces that could not possibly fit together in a sane, rational universe run by a benevolent god. The snakeskin, the man skin... nope, it was crazy, but the world was too. His guts—the same instincts that had allowed him to survive hell on earth and everything after it—screamed at him to act. He raised his gun again and pointed it at Lynch. He recocked the hammer. “Isaiah, son, get away from him.” he said.
Lynch hissed and opened his mouth wide, too wide for a man. He had large wicked, curved fangs, dripping something. Moving faster than humanly possible, he struck at Isaiah’s shoulder. Anna was shouting something. Chaplain fired, and the Colt thundered in the small cabin. Stinging gun smoke filled the air, biting at the Chaplain’s eyes. Lynch’s shiny chest erupted as the .45 round ripped through it and continued on to blow a hole in the wall of the shack above the bed. Lynch’s eyes were wide with pain and something else—a madness, an unreason that glazed them. The insane light dimmed and then departed his eyes as he stumbled back from Isaiah, bumped against the bed rail, and fell to the floor, dead.
“Sumbitch bit me!” Isaiah shouted, as he clutched the two deep punctures in his shoulder. Anna grabbed the corner of the sheet from the bed, tore it, and quickly worked to administer a bandage to the wound.
“Hold still,” she admonished Isaiah as he winced in obvious pain. “What is he?” she asked the Chaplain, who was kneeling beside Lynch’s body. A pool of black blood was gathering around his still form. “He’s not human,” she added as she had Isaiah sit on the edge of the bed. He did so reluctantly. “How can that even be?”
“I don’t know,” Chap said, poking the dead doctor’s mouth with the barrel of his gun. The body suddenly convulsed and the mouth bit at the steel with the large fangs, dripping a slightly yellowish substance. Anna and Isaiah both jumped back.
“Reflex,” Chap said, pulling the gun away, “just like a dead snake.” He used a piece of the sheet to wipe the liquid from the fangs off his gun. “And venom,” he said and looked to Isaiah. The boy was already starting to look waxy, and his eyes were looking weak.
“Am...am I gonna die, Chap?” Isaiah said, sounding more like the frightened boy he truly was. Chap patted him on the knee and stood up.
“Not if I can do anything about it,” he said. “Anna, grab the doc’s bag, and we’re getting the others and getting out of this hell hole.”
There was loud banging at the door. “Alright, we heard the shootin’,” a dry, gravelly voice called out. “Open up and throw your irons out here now, or else we’ll shoot all of ya down!”
“Who is this?” Chap shouted, as he stood by the side of the door and cocked his pistol. Isaiah drew his own pistol, but it fell to the floor as he winced in pain and fell back onto the bed, seemingly unconscious. Anna started to reach for it, but Chap shook his head. He pointed to a rickety wardrobe in the far corner of the room and mouthed “hide” to the woman.
“This is Sheriff Canebreak,” the voice replied. “I know who you are, fella, so I recommend you come on out, nice and gentle.”
Anna opened the wardrobe; it smelled of mothballs and old tobacco. She slid in-between the rows of coats and shirts and disappeared. Chap stepped over and closed the doors.
“Hang on,” he shouted out to the sheriff. “I got a sick man in here. I’m coming out. Don’t start shooting.”
One more thing to do quickly. There was an ax near the small wood stove in southern corner of the shack. He hefted the ax and in one clean motion took Lynch’s still-biting head clean off his shoulders. The head rolled across the floor and continued to mindlessly bite. Finally, it was still.
Chaplain looked at Isaiah’s pale form. He could already feel the heat coming off of him. He tossed the ax away and picked up the boy’s gun. He threw open the door, threw both pistols in the dust and raised his arms in the air.
Sure enough, Sheriff Canebreak was the old man from the Snakebite saloon the night before. He had a white mane of hair and a prominent handlebar mustache. His star reflected the desert sunlight. His .44 pistol was leveled at Chap’s chest. There were three men with him. All were armed and looked ready to kill him at the slightest twitch. Chap didn’t twitch.
“Not looking for any trouble here,” the Chaplain said. “Got one of my crew in there been bit by a snake,” he looked at the sheriff’s dead, dark eyes. “A big one.”
Only Canebreak’s lips moved, “Hank, Artie, go see to the doc.” Two of the men went inside cautiously, passing Chap, guns at the ready.
“What the hell is he?” Chap asked the lawman. “I’ve seen some damn queer things. I saw a giant winged bird the Sioux say serves the Great Spirit; I’ve seen strange airships lit up like gas street lights, burning bright and silent in the sky. Saw a white spirit buffalo. Once I even saw a dead man rise up on the battlefield, no soul left in his eyes, but I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“Stop jawin’,” Canebreak said and spit a line of tobacco juice onto the thirsty dust. One of the gunmen stepped out of Lynch’s shack, his gun holstered.
“Doc’s dead, Sheriff,” he said. “Boy’s in there. Looks like he’s been bit.”
“Take the boy to the church,” Canebreak said, “and take this son of a bitch to the jail. Lock him up.”
“The church?” the Chaplain said. “Why the hell...”
The Chaplain never saw the blow from behind coming—a gun butt most likely. There was a flash of white light behind his eyes and then darkness. His last thought was that he deserved the darkness to never go away.
~*~
Chap opened his eyes and was greeted by a dull pain behind them. He tried to stand but only made it to his hands and knees. He was in jail. He’d been in enough to know what they sounded like, smelled like. It was dark out. The place was illuminated in the grimy, shivering light of an oil lamp hanging on a post near a desk and a few chairs. He coughed and struggled up onto the hard bunk that was chained to the cinder block wall. He looked around. To his left was an empty cell, separated from his by a wall of bars. To the right was another cell, but this one was occupied. The man was an Indian, most likely a Zuni from his ornate turquoise-and-shell ne
cklace and bracelet. The Indian wore a simple headband and his silver hair fell to his shoulders. He wore a buckskin tunic and simple denim work trousers, like cowboys favored. His face was weathered and calm. He looked at Chap and nodded.
“How are you feeling?” the Indian asked in decent English.
“Like someone used my head as a chamber pot,” Chap replied in broken Zuni. The old man’s face lit up at the sound of his own language.
“You just told me you are a stinkhole,” the Indian said. Both men laughed. “Where did you learn to slaughter my language?”
“I almost married one of your girls,” Chap said. The smile slid off his face. “It...It didn’t work out. She died.”
“I’m sorry,” the old man said. “My name is Lonan.”
“People call me Chaplain,” Chap said. “Nice to meet you,” he said, looking at the bars that separated them, “given the circumstances.”
“This is a very bad place,” Lonan said. “I imagine you are here for the same reason I am—you are a danger to them. I discovered this town through dreams—it draws bad men to it. I came here and was soon taken prisoner once they learned I knew their true face.”
“True face?” Chap said. “You know what’s going on here?”
Lonan nodded. “I came here to stop it,” he said.
“Stop what, exactly?” the Chaplain asked.
The old Indian leaned back against the wall, sighed, and closed his eyes. “There is a very old story among the first people about where the rattlesnake comes from,” Lonan began. “The world was to be wiped clean in a great rain. Situlili, the spirit, tried to warn a group of haughty, evil humans the rain was coming. They laughed at him and taunted him. He tried again to warn them, but they took their gourd rattles and they danced and mocked the snake spirit even more.
“As the rain fell and the lightning crashed, the dancers were transformed one by one into snakes, each with a rattle at the end of their tail to warn others of their evil and their foolishness, for all time.”
“So, Lynch is one of these snake people?” Chap said, rubbing his aching head.
