“Moon!”
But at once my guide vanished over the horizon, horse hooves clopping on scattered rocks; my needed mount in tow. It was night. I was alone in the wilderness with a handgun, six bullets and half a canteen of water. I struggled to control my consternation. I circled the small area, looking for ideas. The shed was nearly worthless, but would serve as some kind of shelter were I to arrange the components properly. I found a lantern, a moldy box of matches and a small container of oil. I dragged the sheet metal over to a dead-end section of the gully and propped it up on opposite lips of sand. I braced it with timber and stepped back. Now I would have three sides blocked and only one open.
It was totally dark in the canyon and the wind was rising.
Something howled, and my skin crawled like a colony of black ants. Coyotes? Likely nothing to be afraid of, and yet I felt an atavistic dread beyond description. I wasted four of the precious matches before I succeeded in lighting the lamp. The yellowed expanse of brightness warmed my very soul. I paced the area, trying to hold the terrain in my mind. I am an anthropologist, and I know the deep and ghastly dread of the darkness that lives in the bravest of men. I wanted to defend myself with logic, awareness and perhaps even to sketch a small map so that I would be able to readily picture the area around me during the night. For a moment, I felt I had control of the situation.
There came a fiendish grunt. I froze and then spun around, holding up the lantern, gasping rapidly for air…nothing. But then I heard a liquid slurp, like a large beast slavering and sucking up its own drool. I drew my weapon. My hand trembled. I backed away, towards my cubby hole in the parched earth, my chest tight and my face slick with sweat.
The first one came from the south.
It shambled sideways, something like a sea crab. I cringed back and gasped. At first I thought it to be some prehistoric being returned from the bed of a dried-up sea. But it was worse than that, far worse. It was something that had once been human. The hair and nails were impossibly long, and rags still clung to the clicking bones. Some skin still stretched across the skull like yellowing parchment, and one cheek had been eaten away, likely by insects. The hideously grinning teeth shone through like yellowed piano keys. They opened and closed with an audible clack.
I fired, but it did not flinch. I fired two more times and it stopped. Then the thing emitted a small, high-pitched squeal and retreated into the darkness. I swallowed vomit and thanked God for my luck, for I must have struck some remaining vital area. I was down to three bullets. I backed away and started to duck down into my make-shift home at the foot of the gully. The creature scuttled forward again.
I heard a low, urgent moan of unholy desire from behind me, and knew there were others. I spun and fired twice, wasting more precious bullets. Then I crawled into my hole and curled up in a ball. To my utter horror I heard many more of the things approaching, and now from all directions. Whistles, shrieks and coughs ensured. They were dead, yet had voices of some kind, but from what soulless, fleshless orifice those sounds were created I do not know. I had but two bullets remaining in my side arm, and knew that my hubris was to cost me my life.
I drank some tepid water. I closed my eyes and prayed. When I opened them again, a thing beyond description faced me. It stood just at the edge of the light. He had long white hair and filthy nails; an eviscerated rodent hung from a clenched fist. His ravaged features were tilted to one side in a quizzical manner. A long, thin string of bloody drool hung from the jawbone and trailed off into the sand. He wore what remained of a black suit with tails.
Something happened inside me, something I cannot explain. In a flash I recalled my grandfather’s funeral, his distinguished body packed in ice for the wake, and the black suit with tails he had been buried in. Could such a thing be? I felt the strangest mixture of fascination and sickly dread. I raised the lantern and inched as close to the monster as I dared.
The grandfather thing retreated, and it was then I realized my bullets had been useless. However, they were afraid of the light! I moved forward, and after taking a deep breath, stepped out into the gully. The yellowish glow spread. It beat back the night. All around me, gnarled forms withdrew; hissing their disappointment.
“Grandfather?”
The thing cocked its head again, as if responding to my voice with invisible ears. I swallowed more bile and stepped forward. “Can you help me…?” And at once I heard movement behind me, as several of the things attempted to slip down into my shelter. I whirled around and fired without thinking.
One bullet left.
I raised the light. The creatures grumbled and stumbled; cawed, crawled and staggered away. Now I could see that some were male, some female; some large and some mere children. Many wore what had once been the clothing of white settlers. Some wore fragments of tribal garments or carried ancient weapons. In this horrid place, the dead continued on indefinitely.
My breath left me and the world fell away. “Help me, Jesus.”
I saw them clearly, a few yards off: The same long hair and nails; all bones and strips of filthy fabric. They were fighting, as usual, only now over something red and wet. My father, improbably wearing bent wire rim glasses and what remained of his gold suspenders, was snarling and clawing at a raw, purple-veined chunk of meat. Meanwhile, my mother tried to drive him off by striking him with her well-worn Bible. They had become a ghastly and grotesque parody of themselves. I lowered the lamp in disgust.
Movement behind me! My body was now blocking out the light. The grandfather thing lurched forward and teeth sank into my lower leg. The pain was excruciating and I made a sound so high and shrill it could have come from a woman. I kicked out and pulled away, but the predator would not release me.
“No!” I cried. “Let me go!” I twisted my damaged leg and yanked. A large chunk of my flesh remained in those macabre, gnashing teeth and blood spurted out onto the sand. The army of ghouls grunted with glee. They moved forward as one to enclose me.
I could not stop the bleeding with my bare hands. I had nowhere to go, and one bullet left. I inched back down into my shelter and used my belt to bind the wound. I began to write in this journal. At once, an ominous lethargy began to overtake me; a numbness that began with the aggrieved calf muscle, and then traveled both down and up that leg. As I write this now, I can no longer feel my lower body.
The lantern is flickering out.
I am spent. Soon will put the gun to my head. Pull trigger.
Can write no more. Take no more.
God help me Nelly Tall Bear is eating my foot…
_______________
“The memory of the just is blessed;
But the name of the wicked shall rot”
—Proverbs 10:7
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Table of Contents
Introduc
tion by Jonathan Mayberry
Pain
About the Author
In the Name of the Wicked
Dark Regions Press Ad
Pain Page 13
