Hope's End

by Mark Lukens

  Judging by how tacky the blood was Jed guessed that the murder of David’s family had happened at least twenty-four hours ago, maybe even longer. That meant that those skinwalkers might have come down to this valley to kill David’s family before they even attacked him and his deputies in the woods. Maybe there were two groups of them, one group down here and one group in the woods.

  Why would they kill David’s family? David’s family had nothing to do with Red Moon, did they? And why spare David?

  They spared me, Jed thought. They told me to leave Red Moon for them. And I did.

  It was early afternoon now, maybe only five hours left until sundown. Staying the night in this house was out of the question. They needed to get to a town, a place where they could get some help and send men back here. But first they needed to take two horses and some supplies.

  “We need to leave, David,” Jed told him. “Those people that hurt your family, they could be back at any time.”

  David nodded.

  “I need to take two of your pa’s horses, okay? I’m a U.S. Marshal. Remember? I’m just borrowing the horses so we can get away.” Jed wasn’t sure if the skinwalkers were mounted or not—he hadn’t heard the sound of horses in the woods at all—but at the very least he had to assume that some of them had his and his men’s horses. “I’ll leave a note behind, okay?”

  The boy stared at him blankly.

  “You got some paper I can write on?”

  David didn’t say anything or make a move.

  “You just wait here,” Jed told David. “I’m going to get us out of here. I’m going to protect us from those people that did this to your family. I’m just going to go and get a few supplies together to take with us. Do you have a pack you can get together?”

  David stood there for a moment, but then he bolted over to the other side of the bedroom where shelves were built onto the wall. The shelves had been hidden by a blanket before, but the blanket and some of the shelves were down on the floor now. David pulled a canvas pack out from the mess.

  Good, the boy understood him. “That’ll do fine, David. I want you to put a change of clothes in there. Just one. Don’t make your pack too heavy. If there’s something else you want to bring along, a special toy or book, you can bring that, too.” Jed glanced down at the broken and battered wood toys—nothing really looked salvageable. “Or if there’s something special you want to keep from your ma and pa.”

  David gave Jed a slight nod.

  “We’ll be back,” Jed said. “We’re just going to go and get some help. Bring back more lawmen like me. I can’t leave you here by yourself. You understand that, don’t you?”

  David nodded again, and then he bolted to a small dresser, opening the top drawer. He was hurrying, shoving a shirt and a pair of pants down into the canvas pack—obviously ready to get as far away from this house as possible. He dropped the pack on the floor and opened up a wooden box on top of the dresser. He pulled out a fat pencil that was whittled to a point. He held it out for Jed to take.

  “Thank you, David. That will help quite a bit.” Jed advanced slowly towards David, taking the pencil from his hand gently.

  David followed Jed as he went through the living room and then into the kitchen. He didn’t really want the boy to see all of the blood and bits of meat inside the house, but there was going to be no shielding him from the horrors out here.

  Jed looked through the pantry in the kitchen and found an old flour sack. He looked around for supplies they could use, but there wasn’t much. He found a tin can on its side that was half full of coffee. He closed the lid tightly and added it to the flour sack. He grabbed a pack of kitchen matches, a dented coffee kettle, and a small metal cooking pot. He also found a sack of dried beans and an extra canteen for David, some eating utensils, and a stack of Navajo flatbread.

  The flour sack was half full but not too heavy. He used a scrap piece of butcher paper to write a note on:

  Had to borrow 2 horses and some supplies. Will return them. Family murdered here.

  Jed Cartwright U.S. Marshal

  Jed left the note behind, holding it down with a broken piece of pottery.

  He hurried back to the living room. Even though the bodies weren’t inside the house anymore, the smell was still nauseating and Jed had his bandana up around his face again, covering his mouth and nose.

  David stood in the living room with his canvas sack, which didn’t look too heavy. He bent down and picked something up from the floor amid the shattered glass—it looked like a piece of paper.

  “Can I see?” Jed asked as he approached David.

  The boy held out the photograph to Jed. David was in the photo along with his mother, father, and an older brother. Jed felt a pang of sorrow knife through him, his throat choking up with emotion. He handed the photo back to David who folded it in half and stuffed it down into his pants pocket.

  “Did . . . does your pa have a gun?” Jed asked David as they hurried to the front door. “A rifle or a shotgun?”

  David nodded.

  Jed stopped and looked at David. “I didn’t see one in the house.” He thought the gun might have been taken along with the bodies, but he didn’t want to say that to David. “Does he have it stashed somewhere else?”

  David didn’t answer.

  Jed didn’t want to waste too much more time inquiring about a gun. There weren’t any bullet holes or shotgun blasts anywhere in the house—only blood and small pieces of flesh. Maybe David’s father kept a shotgun in the stables, hidden somewhere.

  “Just wait here a few seconds while I have a look around outside,” Jed told David at the front door.

  The boy looked panicky.

  “I’ll be right back in. I’m not leaving you. I just want to make sure those (he almost said skinwalkers) men aren’t out there anywhere waiting for us.”

  David nodded. He hadn’t spoken a word except for his name so far, but at least he was communicating.

  Jed stepped out through the front door with his cloth bag in one hand and his gun in the other. He slipped all the way out onto the front porch, closing the door behind him. He walked to the end of the porch, trying to look everywhere at once. He didn’t see any movement anywhere, and he didn’t hear any noises. He still had a feeling of dread weighing him down, that creepy-crawly feeling dancing along his skin, a feeling he’d come to know so well in the last twenty-four hours.

  He stood at the edge of the porch, hesitating for just a moment. Something was bothering him about the front porch and the field of dirt beyond it. And then it hit him: there wasn’t any blood on the front porch, and there were no drag marks in the dirt. How had the skinwalkers gotten the bodies out of the house without dribbling any blood? Of course there was so much blood in the house that maybe there hadn’t been any left in the bodies, but Jed didn’t think that was the answer.

  For just a second it seemed like the whole world had shifted slightly, everything tilting just a bit. A wave of light-headedness washed over Jed as he stared down at the bone-dry floorboards of the front porch. For the first time in his life, he felt small and weak, like everything he’d always known was suddenly beyond his control, like he was a piece of wood floating helplessly down a raging river, carried along through this horror whether he wanted to go or not.

  A noise from behind him spun Jed around with his gun aimed. David had stepped out onto the front porch with his canvas bag in his hands.

  Jed exhaled a long breath. “Come on. Help me pick out two horses. Show me which one you usually ride.”

  David hurried towards Jed and they walked together to the stables. Inside the stables, David walked up to a small mare that was obviously his horse. Jed didn’t have to show David how to mount the horse; David was familiar enough with them.

  There were a few bedrolls on a shelf, rolled up tightly and tied with twine. Jed tied one of them to the back of David’s saddle and one to the back of the saddle of the horse he was going to take, the better of the two hors
es that were left. He let the other horse out into the corral and left a large pile of feed by his pen, leaving the stall door open. He wasn’t sure why the skinwalkers hadn’t taken the horses after taking David’s family, but he was sure they had a reason for it. Jed couldn’t help feeling that the skinwalkers were doing certain things purposely, like they had a plan they were laying out. He couldn’t help feeling like he was being herded somewhere . . . herded into a trap.

  Jed’s horse was a little nervous, but Jed rode him around the corral for a few minutes to calm him down, and then they were ready to go.

  They rode away from David’s house, north into the badlands of northern Arizona. And soon they would camp for the night.

  CHAPTER 8

  Jed’s eyes popped open in the darkness. Their campfire was out, but the darkness wasn’t as complete as the darkness in the woods had been; a full moon provided plenty of light for Jed to see the man seated at the other side of the dead campfire.

  For a moment Jed didn’t know where he was. He had awakened in a state of grogginess, more confused than afraid at first as his conscious mind tried to catch up to what his eyes were seeing.

  He wasn’t in the woods anymore—he knew that right away. He was in the desert with David. They had camped out for the night.

  And now Red Moon was here by their dead campfire, sitting cross-legged and naked under the moonlight. His head was bent forward, his long hair hanging down over his shoulders, his face hidden behind his hair and the shadows.

  Suddenly all of the memories of the last thirty-six hours came back to Jed: Dobbs’ skinned body, Roscoe’s severed head, David and his slaughtered and missing family. And he had left Red Moon behind in those woods.

  Jed sat up on his bedroll and stared at the Navajo who sat only ten feet away from him. Jed glanced over at David who was curled up on his bedroll, his eyes closed; he was either sleeping or pretending to be asleep. Jed looked over at the stand of trees where he had tied their horses. Both of them were still there, both jittery and snorting, their legs still hobbled. He looked back at Red Moon.

  Red Moon sat very still, his head still bent down like he was looking down at his lap. It looked like Red Moon’s skin was rippling, like something was moving just underneath it, little lumps sliding back and forth under his skin.

  “He is going to want something from you,” Red Moon said in a deep, guttural voice. He still hadn’t looked up at Jed yet, his face still in shadows, the moonlight shining down on the top of his head and shoulders.

  Jed couldn’t respond; his throat had locked up with fear. His Colt was within easy reach. He could shoot Red Moon right now if he had to. But he knew that it wouldn’t do any good, so he left his gun alone.

  Save the last two bullets for me and David. I won’t let us end up like this.

  “He is going to want things,” Red Moon said again in his gravelly voice. “You give him what he wants, and he will let you live.”

  Jed was going to ask Red Moon what “he” wanted, but he still couldn’t get his voice to work. He had been afraid many times in his life, but never like this. He’d never faced something so powerful that it made him feel like giving up.

  The lumps under Red Moon’s skin were moving around faster now, and there were more of them. One of the lumps pushed through the skin of Red Moon’s shoulder, and a black beetle wiggled out, its shell shiny in the moonlight. Once the bug was free from Red Moon’s skin, it skittered down his chest and into the shadows of his lap.

  Another beetle pushed itself out of Red Moon’s skin, and then another one. And another. Dozens of beetles were pouring out of Red Moon’s skin, racing down his flesh like an army of ants. The beetles were merging together, forming into a bigger organism, an amoeba-like being.

  Red Moon raised his head, his face coming out of the shadows. “Remember what I said. When the time comes, you give him what he asks for.”

  How was Red Moon speaking? He had no face—there was just a deep black hole where his face should have been, a giant cavern with edges of ragged flesh and bits of torn, gleaming skull.

  Jed snapped awake, jumping to his feet beside the bedroll. The sky was lightening up in the east, and it was only a half an hour until sunrise. The campfire was long dead. The air as cold, the coldest it had been all night. He was shaking, a feeling of dread blanketing him.

  Red Moon.

  He looked where Red Moon had been sitting next to the campfire last night.

  It was just a dream, Jed told himself. Just a terrible nightmare. But he saw a slight indentation in the sand where someone had been sitting last night. Another chill ran across his skin.

  They needed to get out of here.

  Red Moon had told him in the woods that the skinwalkers were witches that could cast spells. Had they cast a spell on him in those woods? Had they made him see things that weren’t there? Were they still making him see things right now?

  At least both of the horses were still there. And David was still asleep on his bedroll. If Red Moon had truly paid him a visit last night, then Jed felt sure the skinwalkers would have taken the horses, and maybe even David. But it felt more like Red Moon had been sent to send him a message, one last warning from the skinwalkers.

  Give him what he wants.

  But Jed didn’t know what he, or they, or whatever they were, wanted. And he couldn’t concentrate on that right now.

  Focus on the task in front of you. He repeated the mantra in his mind that he had told himself for years.

  “Just a dream,” he muttered as he gathered a few sticks of dried wood from the small group of trees the horses were tied near. It was still early morning, the world not fully lit up yet; many parts of the land were still hidden in shadows. He tore some of the bark away from a tree, peeling fibers of wood back, lighting the dry fibers with a kitchen match to get the campfire going again. He watched the flames as they spread along the kindling.

  Ten minutes later he started a pot of coffee with some water from his canteen. His hands shook as he poured the water; he tried to make them stop shaking, but he couldn’t. He felt a strong urge to wake David up at that moment, pack up their camp, get on their horses and ride away as fast as they could. He had originally planned on going to Hope’s End because he’d been on foot, but now that he and David were on horseback, they could make the trip all the way to Smith Junction where they would be safe.

  Nowhere is safe, a voice in his mind whispered. He could ride all the way to the Canadian line and it still wouldn’t be safe.

  Jed woke David up after the coffee was boiling. The boy woke up easily, his eyes popping open. He didn’t smile and he didn’t say anything, he just sat up on his bedroll. Jed handed David a tin cup of coffee.

  “We need to get going soon,” Jed told David. “If we get a good day of traveling in, we could be in Smith Junction by tomorrow afternoon.”

  David didn’t say anything, didn’t seem to care. He didn’t even look at Jed; he just cradled the cup of coffee in his hands like he was trying to warm them up.

  Jed bit off a few pieces of jerky and handed a piece to David who took the dried meat without a word. They would save the rest of the beans for tonight.

  Thirty minutes later Jed and David were on horseback and riding away from the dead campfire. Jed cooed at his horse, stroking his mane, trying to get the animal relaxed. Moments later a group of coyotes began yipping on the horizon.

  CHAPTER 9

  The coyotes followed them throughout the day, yipping and staying out of sight most of the time.

  Until now.

  Now Jed saw ten of them lined up on a hill in the distance, they stood like a sentry of soldiers. Not only that, there were buzzards circling in the air above. He’d also heard the rattling of rattlesnakes several times, but he’d never seen any of them. All of this made him think of the animal noises he’d heard in the woods: the hoots of owls, the howls of wolves, the rattling of snakes.

  Maybe there was something dead around here, something big
enough to attract scavengers like buzzards and coyotes. But the coyotes on the hilltop in the distance didn’t seem to be hunting or scavenging—they seemed to be watching him and David as they rode by.

  Jed and David rode down into a little canyon, and now the coyotes were out of sight. Jed heard the bubbling of a stream splashing across the rocks. He got off his horse to stretch his legs. He grabbed the reins and led his horse to the stream. David got off of his horse and did the same. It was almost afternoon now so Jed broke a piece of jerky apart so he and David could share it. David bit a small piece of the dried meat off and chewed, and then he walked away from the stream and looked back at the canyon floor that they had just traveled through.

  Jed walked over to see what the boy was staring at.

  More coyotes had gathered in the distance a few hundred yards away. The coyotes were just thin, dark shapes on the horizon, but Jed could tell that they were sitting on their haunches and watching them. A chill ran through him—animals didn’t act like that. Jed had never been afraid of coyotes—they were skittish animals and scavengers of opportunity. Even wolves didn’t scare Jed that badly, unless it was a pack of them. Wolves only became dangerous when they were more hungry than scared. Bears and cougars concerned him a little. Cougars liked to sneak up behind a man, especially at night, or attack from above, perched on a rock or a tree branch. But Jed didn’t usually see too many cougars in this area. Both cougars and bears could be scared off by loud noises or gunshots. But those coyotes at the other end of the canyon were spooking him; they weren’t acting the way coyotes were supposed to act. Skinwalkers could supposedly transform into animals. Could that line of coyotes be the skinwalkers? Could they have transformed into coyotes?

  That was ridiculous, and Jed pushed that thought out of his mind. He was still jumpy and tired, his mind entertaining strange thoughts. He knew he had seen some strange things in those woods, things he couldn’t explain, perhaps hallucinations, but he wasn’t going to accept the idea of a man changing into an animal.