The Killer's Game

by Joe R. Lansdale

  He went back to the nightstand, tugged the cork from the whisky with his teeth. He took a swig. The whiskey was warm both in temperature and spirit, and he could have cleaned his pistols with it, but it did the trick. He felt a comfortable heat in his throat and his stomach, a wave of relaxation soaking into his brain. It wasn’t food, and it wasn’t water, but it beat nothing in his stomach at all. After a moment, and a few more swigs, the whisky warmed him from head to toe, set a bit of a fire in his balls.

  He sat on the bed and took several sips before returning the cork to the bottle and going downstairs. He went out into the street again, still looking for some place with water. He glanced at the stagecoach lying on its side, horseless, and noted something he had not noted before. The runner to which the horses would be hooked was dark with blood. Jebidiah examined it. Dried gore was all along the runner. And now he noted there were horse hooves, bits of hair, even a gray horse ear, and what looked like a strip of skin lying in the street. Not to mention a hat and a shotgun. There was a smell too. Not just the smell of dried blood, but a kind of wet stink smell in the air. Jebidiah was sure the source was not from the blood or the horse remains. It was the stink of evil, and the smell of it made him absently push back his long black coat and touch the revolvers in their holsters.

  He heard a moan. It was coming from the stagecoach. Jebidiah scampered onto the runner and onto the side of the coach, moved along to the door with its cut-away window, looked down and inside. Lying against the far side of the door that lay on the ground, was a woman. Jebidiah reached through the open gap, grabbed the interior latch, swung the door open and climbed inside. He touched the woman’s throat. She moved a little, groaned again. Jebidiah turned her face and looked at it. She was a handsome woman with a big, dark bruise on her forehead. Her hair was as red as a campfire. She wore a tight fitting green dress, some fancy green shoes. She wore a lot of makeup. He lifted her to a sitting position. She fluttered her eyes open, jumped a little.

  Jebidiah tried to give her a smile, but he was no good at it. “It’s okay, lady” he said. “I am here to help.”

  “Thanks. But I need you to let me lift my ass. I’m sitting on my umbrella.”

  Jebidiah helped her out of the stagecoach, into the hotel and upstairs. He put her on the bed he had shaken the dust from, gave her a snort of the whisky, which she took like a trooper. In fact, she took the bottle from him and took a long, deep swig. She slapped the umbrella, which had a loop for her wrist against the bed.

  “Damn, if that don’t cut the dust,” she said.

  Jebidiah pulled a chair beside the bed and sat. “What’s your name?” he said.

  “Mary,” she said disengaging herself from the umbrella, tossing it onto the end of the bed.

  “I’m Jebidiah. What happened? Where are the stage horses?”

  “Eat up,” she said. “Them, the driver, and the shotgunner too.”

  “Eaten?”

  Mary nodded.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  And then, after another shot of whisky, she told it.

  “I’m a working girl, as you may have already noticed. I am late of Austin, Texas and Miss Mattie Jane’s establishment. But Mattie met a man, got married, sold her place, made a deal with the madam here in Falling Rock for my services, as well as the remaining girls. I was the only one that took her up on the deal. The others spread out across Texas like prairie chickens.

  “Must say, I thought there would be more to Falling Rock than this. Thought it would be a sizable town. And maybe it was. I figure whatever got the driver and shotgunner, as well as a whisky drummer in the coach with me, got most of the town too. Hadn’t been for my umbrella, I’d be dead. I was surprised at how well I was able to protect myself with it.

  “We came into town late last night, me ready to start my job here at the Gentleman’s Hotel, ready to buck pussy, when a strange thing occurred. No sooner had the stage entered the town, then a shadow, heavy as if it had weight, fell across the place, and sort of lay there. You could see the moon, you could see the town, but the shadow flowed between buildings and into the stagecoach. It became hard to breath. It was like trying to suck down flannel instead of air. Then the stage shadow flowed away and the stage rolled on, stopped in front of the hotel. The stage shook real hard and then I heard a noise. A kind of screech, unlike anything I had ever heard. Then I remembered one of my old johns telling about being in an Indian fight, and that it had been close and hand to hand, and the horses had been wounded, and there had been a fire in a barn that the Indians set, and the horses inside burned alive. He said the horses screamed. Somehow, I knew that was what I was hearing. Screaming horses. Except there wasn’t any fire to burn them. But something was scaring them, causing them pain.

  “The stagecoach shook and tumbled over. I heard the shotgun go off a couple of times, and next thing I knew the driver and the shotgunner were yelling. The whisky drummer stuck his head out of the overturned window, jerked it back again. He turned and looked at me. His face, even in the night, was as white as the hairs on an albino’s ass. He pulled a derringer, then there was a face at the window. I ain’t never seen a face like it. I couldn’t place it. My mind wouldn’t wrap around it.

  “The drummer fired his derringer, and the face jerked back, then it filled the window again. An arm, a hairy arm with what looked like hooks on it snapped through the window and caught the drummer in the face, peeled him from his left ear to the side of his lip. I remember seeing his teeth exposed through a gap in his jaw. Then the hairy, hooked hand had him by the throat. The drummer fought, slamming the derringer into the thing’s face, pounding on its hands with the butt of the gun. He was snatched through the window in a spray of blood.

  “I didn’t know nothing but to grab up my umbrella. It’s all I had. Then the face was there again, tugging at the door, about to pull it off, I figured, so I jumped forward

  and stabbed out with the tip of the umbrella and got the thing in the eye. It let out a horrible howl, moved away. But two more ugly, hairy faces took its place. Yellow eyes glowing, and all those teeth, dripping spit. I’m not brave, but fear drove me to jump at them and stab into them, and I got one of them, and it, he, whatever it was, jumped back and went away.

  “I don’t think I scared them, I just think they sort of, well, got bored or something. Or more likely… full. Cause I could hear them prowling around and around the stage, and I could hear other things, snapping sounds, gnawing sounds, a kind of excitement that sounded like miners at a free lunch.

  “They climbed up on the stage and looked in the window a few times, and I struck at one of them, missed. The thing almost swatted me with that hairy arm, those big claws, then there was pink light through the window, and it went silent outside. I considered coming out, but couldn’t. I was too frightened. I was exhausted too. More than I realized. I dreamed I was awake. I had no idea I had fallen asleep until you came. Good thing I dropped my umbrella while I slept, otherwise you would have found it in your ribs, your eye, some place.”

  Jebidiah picked up the umbrella and looked at it. It was ragged and broken in spots, tipped with wood. He touched it with his fingers. Oak. He gave it to her. “The tip is sharp,” he said.

  “I broke it off some time ago. Never did get another.”

  “Good thing,” Jebidiah said. “The broken tip made a good weapon.”

  Mary looked at the window. “It’s growing dark. We need to leave this town.”

  Jebidiah shook his head. “No. I have to be here. But you should leave. I’ll even give you my horse to do it.”

  “I don’t know why you have to stay, that’s your business, but I won’t lie. I’m ready to go. And I’ll tell you, I was just lucky. I think the day light ran them. Had it been earlier in the night, I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be some turd, digested and dropped on a hill somewhere, maybe drawing flies in an a
lley. I’ll take you up on that horse, mister. But I’d like to do it now. And I’m telling you, you damn sure don’t need to be here afoot. Or on horseback, or in a stage, or no kind of way. You need to ride on out with me.”

  “I’ll leave when my job is done.”

  “What job?”

  “His job… God.”

  “You some kind of preacher?”

  Some kind.”

  “Well, sir, that’s your business if you say so. I don’t pray to God much. He ain’t never answered any of my prayers.”

  “I don’t know that he’s answered anyone’s,” Jebidiah said.

  Darkness was edging into the street when Jebidiah and Mary left the hotel, then began to walk briskly toward the barn. The oppressive humidity was gone, and now there was a chill in the air. By the time they reached the livery and Jebidiah had saddled his horse, the night had slipped in smooth and solid.

  Outside the livery, leading the horse, Jebidiah looked toward the woods that lay beyond the town, saw that they were holding thick shadows between leaves and limbs.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Mary said. “I’ve waited too long. Bad enough it’s dark, but me out there without anyone to help, damn if I will. I’d rather stay here till morning. Provided I’m here in the morning.”

  “You are probably right,” Jebidiah said. “It wouldn’t be good for you to go now. It’s best to go back to the hotel.”

  They started back down the street, Jebidiah leading his horse, and as they went, a kind of dark cloud fled out of the woods and covered the quarter moon and fell on the town and came apart, shadows skittering in all directions.

  “What in hell is that?” Mary said.

  “The mantle of darkness,” Jebidiah said, and picked up his pace. “It sometimes comes when a place is full of evil.”

  “It’s cold.”

  “Odd, isn’t it? Something from the Devil, from the bowels of Hell, and it’s cold.”

  “I’m scared,” Mary said. “I don’t normally scare up easy, but this shit is making my asshole pucker.”

  “Best not to think about being scared,” Jebidiah said. “Best to think about survival. Let’s get back to the hotel.”

  When they got to the hotel it was full of ghosts.

  Jebidiah tried to lead his horse inside. It pulled at the reins, not wanting to enter.

  “Easy, boy,” Jebidiah said to the horse, stroked its nose, and the horse settled down, slightly. Jebidiah continued to soothe the horse as he and Mary watched the ghosts move about. There were many ghosts and they seemed not to notice Jebidiah and Mary at all. They were white and thin as clean smoke, but were identifiable shapes of cowboys and whores, and they moved across the floor and into the stalls. Women hiked their ghostly dresses, and ghostly men dropped their trousers and entered them. The bartender behind the bar walked up and down its length. He reached and took hold of bottles that were not bottles, but shapes of bottles that could be seen through. At a piano a ghostly presence sat, hatless, in striped shirt and suspenders, all of which could be seen through. The ghost moved his hands over the keys but the keys didn’t move, but the player seemed to move as if he heard the music. A few cowboys and whores were dancing about to the lively tune that was heard to them, but not the living.

  “My God,” Mary said.

  “Funny how he always gets mentioned,” Jebidiah said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Don’t fear these. They can’t hurt you. Most of them don’t even know you’re here.”

  “Most?”

  “They are spirits of habit. They do this over and over. It was what they were doing, or wanted to do before they died. But that one—”

  Jebidiah pointed to a ghostly, but much more distinct shape sitting in a chair against the far wall. He was a stubby cowboy in a big, ghostly hat. He was almost solid, but the wall and the furniture could be seen through him. “He knows we’re here. He sees us as we see him. He has been here a while. He has begun to accept his death.”

  At that statement, the ghostly figure Jebidiah referred to, rose and crossed the room toward them, walking, but not quite touching the floor.

  Mary moved toward the door.

  Jebidiah grabbed her arm. “Best not. The street will be a far less welcome place shortly, perhaps already. There’s more out there than an oppressive cloud.”

  “Will he hurt us?” Mary asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  The ghost sauntered toward them, and as he neared, he showed a lopsided grin, stopped, stood directly in front of Jebidiah. Beside him, Mary shook like a leaf in a high wind. Jebidiah’s horse tugged at the reins, Jebidiah pulled the horse forward slightly, glanced at it. Its visible eye rolled in its head. “Easy, boy,” Jebidiah said to the horse, then turned to the ghost, said, “Can you speak?”

  “I can,” said the spirit, and the voice was odd, as if it were climbing up to them from the bottom of a deep, dark well.

  “How did you die?”

  “Must I answer that?”

  “You are bound to answer nothing at all, or anything you wish,” Jebidiah said. “I have no control over you.”

  “I want to pass on,” the ghost said, “but for some reason, I cannot. I am here alone, because the others, they don’t know they’re dead. This town, it holds us. But I seem to be the only one that knows what has happened.”

  “Evil has claimed it,” Jebidiah said. “When that happens, all manner of things can occur. Not always the same, but always evil. You have decided to embrace the truth, they have not. But in time, they must.”

  “I’m not evil. I’m just a cowpoke that got dead.”

  “The evil is what’s holding you,” Jebidiah said.

  The cowboy nodded. “Them.”

  “The hairy ones,” Mary said.

  “Yes, the hairy ones,” the ghost said. “What they did left me in this place. There are other places, places I would like to move to, but I can’t, and it’s because of them, who they are and what they are.”

  “It’s the way you died,” Jebidiah said. “You are caught in one of God’s little jokes.”

  The ghost twisted its head to the side like a curious dog.

  “What kind of joke?” the cowboy said, “because I assure you, I don’t find it all that funny.”

  “And, in time, you will find it less and less humorous, and then you will get angry, and then you will react, and your reactions will not be of the best nature.”

  “I have no intent of haunting anyone,” said the ghost.

  “Time and frustration turns the spirit dark,” Jebidiah said. “But I can help you pass on.”

  “You can?”

  “I can.”

  “Then do it, for Christ’s sake.”

  “The evil must be destroyed.”

  “Do it.”

  “I would ask a small favor of you, first.”

  “Of me?”

  “Tell me about this town. What happened to you. If I know about it, I can fight what’s here, and I can help you pass on. That is my promise.”

  “Oh, you can’t fight what’s here. Soon, you and her will be like me.”

  “Perhaps,” Jebidiah said.

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Mary said.

  “First things first,” Jebidiah said. “I don’t want to stand here with my horse and my back against the door.”

  “Understood,” said the ghost.

  Jebidiah found a big room, a kind of sitting room, and that was where he put his horse, fed it grain that he poured out onto the hardwood floor. Then, as the ghost watched, he pushed a long cabinet across the doorway and pulled the curtains on the window. He and Mary took a seat on a kind of settee that was before the large window with the pulled curtains. There was no light inside, and Jebidiah did nothing to find one, though an oil lamp stood out from the wall in brass fixtures. They sat in the dark, it being nothing to the ghost. Jebidiah and Mary’s eyes adjusted in time, enough to make out shapes, and of course the ghost was fore
ver constant, white and firm.

  Once seated, the Reverend pulled both his revolvers and laid them on his thighs. Mary sat tight against him. The ghost took a chair as he might have in real life. He pulled a ghostly chaw from his pocket and put it in his jaw. The room grew darker and the night grew more still.

  “There’s no taste,” the ghost said after a few jaw movements. “It’s just the idea of a chaw. It’s there, and I can put it in my mouth, but it’s like the liquor the bartender serves, it’s not really there. Thing that makes me feel a bit better about that is the fact the money I pay him, it ain’t there either. Ain’t nothing really there but my urges.”

  “So the bartender knows you’re here?” Jebidiah said.

  “Sometimes. Sometimes not.”

  “I’m sure it is a misery,” Jebidiah said. “But now, if I’m to help you, help us. I feel that we are short of time. Already the street is full of the night, and the great shadow lays heavy on the town. I can taste it when I breathe.”

  “You talk funny.”

  “I was educated funny.”

  The ghost nodded. “That shadow comes down on the town before they do. It comes, they are not far behind. When they show up, and that’s at the beat of twelve,” and with that the ghost nodded toward a big grandfather clock in the near corner of the room, “that’s when things get hairy, so to speak.”

  Jebidiah struck a match and leaned it in the direction of the clock. It said seven P. M..

  “Then we have some time,” Jebidiah said, shaking out the match.

  “So maybe we can and should get out of town now,” Mary said.

  The ghost shook its head. “Nope. You don’t want to go out there. They don’t get serious until midnight, but being out in the street, under that big ole shadow, that ain’t the place to be. The things to worry about the most ain’t gonna be here for awhile, but, still, there’s things out there under and in that shadow, and you don’t want no part of that. I’m dead, and I don’t want no part of it. And besides, time ain’t the same here. Take a look at the clock.”