The River of Souls

by Robert McCammon

  “And Joel would’ve been right, Corbett,” said Royce, as he walked forward to stand only a few feet away from Matthew. “Dangerous place out here. Things can happen mighty fast.” He eyed the gory shirt. “I see you found that out already. What hit you?”

  “Boy got himself taken by the Dead in Life,” Stamper supplied. “Accordin’ to him they came up under some boats and took quite a few Jubilee men. Boy caught an arrow but kept his head.”

  “Bad wound, looks to be,” Royce went on. “Best head back to the Green Sea, you and Muldoon both.”

  “I’ll live,” said Matthew, grimly. He looked at the cloth bandages on Royce’s right forearm, where the medical compress had been yesterday. To his dismay, he saw that both of Royce’s forearms were scratched and bloody, and so too were Gunn’s. If there was any evidence of scratches from Sarah Kincannon’s fingernails, they were lost amid the others. “You went through some thorns?”

  “A heavy patch. There was no easy way around.” Royce held Matthew’s stare for a few seconds, and then he visibly dismissed the younger man and turned toward Stamper. “We’re not too far ahead. Saw your fire back here. Knew it couldn’t have been the skins, they wouldn’t be that stupid, but we had to come take a look. No offense meant.”

  “None taken,” said Stamper. “But why’d you two leave the river?”

  “We found their boat,” said Gunn, who kept spearing Matthew with his hard blue eyes. “Tried to drag it out and hide it, but the mud told the tale.”

  “They’re on foot now,” Royce said. “They had a choice to make. Either swim back across and head through heavy swamp, or go northeast through the woods to the grasslands. I think they’ll likely take the easier way.”

  “May I ask this question?” Seth Lott ventured, his voice mannered and quiet. “Where do they think they’re going? To freedom from the crime? Where would they ever hope to find refuge out there?” He motioned broadly toward the wilderness.

  “Wild animals run ’cause it’s in their nature,” Royce answered. He had spied the snake upon the stone, and kneeling down he drew his knife and began to carve himself some meat. “They don’t know where they’re goin’. All they’re tryin’ to do is run from justice. And that damn buck Abram…drawin’ his blood into it, and makin’ them pay too.” He took a stick from one of the others, pushed the chunk of snakemeat upon its sharpened end and began to roast his meal. “I’ll tell you, if I had my way that damn Granny Pegg would be swingin’ from a rope right now, too. Seems to me she should’ve stopped Abram from runnin’, should’ve told him to face up to what he’d done. Saved us all a lot of trouble.”

  Matthew couldn’t help it. It came out of him before he could stop it, and maybe it was because of his loss of blood or weariness or lightheadedness, but he spoke the words: “Mr. Royce…how many knives do you own?”

  Royce looked up from the business of snake-cooking. His expression was untroubled. “Three. How many do you own?”

  “None. But I was wondering…have you lost a knife lately?”

  “Not that I know of.” Royce gave Gunn a quick, dark glance before the calm expression returned. “Matthew…can I call you such?…you ought to sit down before you fall down. I think the swamp’s workin’ on that wound right now.”

  “I was wondering,” Matthew went on, in spite of himself, “where Abram might have gotten the knife he used to kill Sarah.” He paused to let that circle Royce’s head. “I mean to say…could Abram have stolen one of your knives? He had to get the knife from somewhere. Or from you, Mr. Gunn.” Matthew turned his face toward the other captain. “My question is…how did Abram get hold of that knife?”

  “Easy answer.” Royce’s teeth began to tear at the meat. “A servant in the big house likely stole a knife and got it to him. Those girls are always stealin’ things to take down to the quarter. One of ’em slipped a knife up her skirt and Abram got hold of it. That’s how it happened.”

  “Bet Abram slipped somethin’ else up the bitch’s skirt in exchange,” said Gunn, and he laughed a little too loudly and harshly, which a few of the others echoed with dumb humor.

  “A lady’s present, gentlemen,” Stamper cautioned, with a sly grin.

  “Where?” asked Bovie. “All I see is Rotbottom trash.” He aimed his eyes not at Quinn, but at Matthew. “Cracked in the head, too. Thinks this boy here is her dead husband come back to life. Ain’t that a crazy thing, Royce?”

  Royce made a noise of affirmation while he consumed the snakemeat.

  Matthew thought he should say something in Quinn’s defense, yet he knew not what to say. Suddenly Quinn let go of his arm and stepped forward, and she lifted her chin in defiance of the rough-hewn men around the fire and she said, “I pity you.”

  The three words, quietly spoken, brought down silence.

  “Where are your women?” she asked them. “Where are your wives? Why aren’t they here with you? Because you didn’t want ’em, or because they don’t care whether you come back home or not? They know what’s said about this river…this swamp. They must not love you very much, to let you come out here…and them not with you, to see you through this. Well, I’m here with Daniel…” She hesitated, struggling inwardly. “Matthew,” she corrected. “And I am going to see him through. You will never know what real love is. You will never touch it, or hear it spoken in a voice. That’s why I pity you…every one of you poor wretched men.”

  To this, one of the men across the fire—Matthew thought it was the red-haired Morgan—lifted his leg and let utter a reply from between his buttocks, which brought a gale of laughter from the gallery. But the laughter did not last very long, and afterward the silence seemed as heavy as a gravestone.

  Quinn said nothing else; she backed away from the fire, and her arm found Matthew’s. He was perplexed and unsure of what to do about this girl. It was a problem he didn’t know how to solve. But in the meantime he was glad she was beside him, for he did have to lean upon her lest his legs weaken.

  “Daylight soon,” said Royce. He wiped his lips with the scratched and bloodied left forearm. Matthew noted that the day was indeed coming, faintly, but it was going to be a gray morning. “An hour’s rest, then I say we move out together. Comb the woods better that way. Should get ’em ’fore they make the grassland.”

  “Fine with me,” Stamper replied. “But I’m still plannin’ on gettin’ me some ears…and some of that Kincannon money.”

  Matthew couldn’t stand up any longer. As he sank down, both Quinn and Magnus kept him from a hard fall. He settled with his back against a tree, and Quinn sat close beside him. His head was spinning, his focus blurred. He knew that Gunn had surely told Royce the whole story of what had happened in the chapel. If I had my way that damn Granny Pegg would be swingin’ from a rope right now. Yes, if Royce had his way. Royce and Gunn feared the slaves might be captured, their brands read, and then returned to the Green Sea. If Abram had a chance to defend himself before Mrs. Kincannon, and with Granny Pegg’s story plus the evidence of the broken compress…it wouldn’t go well for the two captains. Yet out here, Matthew could prove nothing.

  Matthew was further perplexed by something Quinn had said, and he pondered this as he slipped away from the world.

  Something about Daniel. His death.

  Taken, she’d said. By the beast. It fell on my Daniel, she’d said, and he was gone. Matthew slept, as heat lightning streaked across the dark gray sky above and the River of Souls ran its ancient, twisting course.

  Fourteen

  The searchers, twenty in all including the girl from Rotbottom, moved through the wilderness in a long row so as to cover the most ground. Quinn carried her water gourd and stayed close to Matthew, who still staggered and felt lightheaded after barely an hour’s sleep. Beside Matthew walked Magnus, the bearded bear keeping an eye on him if he started to fall. Matthew carried the short-bladed sword, which felt as heavy as an anvil to his weary arm.

  The early morning sky was plated with thick gray clouds
, cutting the light to a grim haze. Every so often thunder would rumble and lightning flared, yet no rain fell. The woods were a tangle of vines, thorns and underbrush, the ground sometimes swampy and sometimes hard, and the going was slow. The torches had guttered and started to burn down to blue flames, but Stamper was carrying a leather bag strapped to his shoulder that held a supply of rags soaked with his own mixture of flammables, and from these the torches were revived. The more light to pierce this gloom, the better. From where he was positioned in the row, Matthew could see only Joel Gunn under the torch the man was carrying, Seth Lott and Magnus to his left, Quinn right beside him, and then through the thicket on his right the red-haired Morgan and an older man with gray hair and a full gray beard streaked with white. This man was armed to the teeth, with musket, sword and dagger. The other men on either side were obscured by the woods and the low light, though occasionally the glint of another torch could be seen through the trees.

  Matthew spoke to Quinn as they walked. “You think Daniel’s spirit is in me? That he’s become some part of me?” He waited for her to nod. “Why?” he asked. “Do I look like him? Is there something about me that reminds you of him?”

  She took a moment in answering. Then, “You do look like him…some. But there’s more to it than that. There…was a knowin’. A feelin’ that I should leave my house and get to the river, because…you were comin’ back. Because after all my waitin’…finally…this was the night. I brushed my hair out and tried to make myself pretty for you. I didn’t know what you would look like…or what your name would be, or if you’d remember me at all, but I knew when I saw your boat pull over…I thought…this must be him. And then I heard your voice, and I saw your face. Yes, you do look like him. In the eyes. The way you carry yourself. With dignity, like he did. With a purpose, like he did. I knew he was going to come back to me, if he had to break out of Heaven and use the body of another man to do it. I knew this, deep in my heart.” She looked at him and gave a lopsided little grin. “You think I’m as crazy as a two-headed dog, don’t you?”

  “I think you’ve wished for something so strongly that you believe it’s true,” Matthew replied. “What do your mother and father think about this?”

  “They don’t. I never knew my pa. My ma liked her drink strong and her men wild. A few years ago she got full of one and ran off with the other. Goin’ to Charles Town, she said. Be back directly, she said. And him in his wagon full of ’gator skins, ’cause he was mighty good with a spear and a knife. Said she’d be back directly, but she never came back.”

  “You were married to Daniel by then?”

  “No, not then. I was left on my own. But soon after that, Daniel came to Rotbottom like any outsider does…to hunt the ’gators. Get their skins, get paid for ’em in the big town. We met at a dance, on a night in May. But Daniel was an educated man, and soon after we met he decided his callin’ was to start a school for the young ones—teach ’em readin’ and such—and give up the huntin’. You’ll remember, in time. I know he’ll bring the memories back.”

  Matthew sighed. Her conviction that he had been ‘possessed,’ if that was the correct term, by the spirit of her dead Daniel was—for the moment, at least—unshakeable. She was desperate and out of her mind. He couldn’t go any further along that route, but as they pushed onward through the woods he decided he needed to ask about one more thing that had piqued his interest.

  “The beast,” Matthew said. “You said Daniel was taken by a beast that came out of the smoke. What did you mean by that?”

  “I meant what I said,” was the firm reply. Lightning speared through the clouds to earth and distant thunder rumbled like a bass drumbeat. “It’s called the Soul Cryer. Sobs like a little child.”

  Matthew said nothing for a moment, as he had run into thornbrush and was picking his way carefully forward even as the thorns pricked at his shirt and trousers. He was recalling Granny Pegg’s warning and the sound he’d heard at the village of the Dead in Life. “All right,” he said. “But what is it?”

  “Nobody’s ever really seen it up close and lived. Just glimpses from a distance. Seems to be about the size of a man. Mottled colors, brown and black. Can run on four legs and walk upright on two.” She glanced at him to make sure he was listening seriously, which he was. “First heard about it killin’ a man when I was ten. Took him from a huntin’ party. They found his bones couple of months later. Brought ’em back to town in a sack. They were all broken and had teeth marks all over ’em, I remember that. But sometimes they never find the bodies or bones. They never found my Daniel. And they have found bodies with just the throat ripped out, or the face chewed away or the heart gone. The Soul Cryer’s a meat-eater, but it kills for pleasure too.”

  Magnus had been close enough to hear most of this conversation, and now he came a little closer. “You talkin’ about the demon thing supposed to live up in here? Somethin’ the witch made and let loose? That would be a good story, except what I hear is that the thing wasn’t around until six or seven years ago. It’s just an animal, is all. Likely a panther.”

  “Could be,” said Quinn. “But the colors aren’t right. Not brown and black. They say its skin looks scaly…like a snake’s. And walkin’ on two legs, which somebody from Rotbottom swore he saw at a distance? There are plenty of deer and wild boar in these woods. Why does it want to hunt men?”

  “Because men can be more careless than deer and wild boar. They get out here huntin’ and they forget to look at what’s comin’ up behind ’em.”

  “The Soul Cryer’s as much part of this swamp as the river itself,” Quinn said. “It’s a cursed thing too, born of pain and bound to give pain. Whether a witch made it or not, or where it came from, I don’t know, but I know what sufferin’ it can cause. When you hear that thing cryin’, you’d best guard your life.”

  As much as a short-bladed sword could do against a man-killing predator of supposedly supernatural nature, Matthew thought, but then again…he didn’t believe in such things. Did he?

  The searchers moved on. Overhead in the turbulent sky the lightning flared from clouds to earth and the sound of thunder seemed to shake the ground. No rain fell, and there was no relief from the stifling heat. Within the next hour a man on the left side of the row from Matthew and three beyond Magnus stepped into a bog that looked simply like a large puddle of grainy mud. He let out a series of shouts for help when it quickly took him down to his knees and like a viscous paste held him trapped there. Then it began to draw him downward still, and though the man panicked and fought against the thick embrace he could not pull free nor stop his slow submergence. The others ringed around to watch, keeping their distance from what Matthew realized was a quicksand pit. Stamper somewhat redeemed himself for the killing of Jackson by taking command of the situation, ordering Bovie, Magnus and a couple of others to find the largest fallen treelimb they could handle, drag it over and throw it into the pit for the unfortunate citizen of Jubilee—whose name was Tom Coleman, Matthew learned—to grab hold of and therefore pull himself up to solid ground. This endeavor, which took the weakening Coleman another half hour to complete before Magnus reached out and pulled him fully free, was a hard-earned lesson to all not to walk so confidently—or foolishly—into any body of standing water in these woods, no matter how shallow it seemed to be. Many small branches suddenly were in use to probe the treacherous earth. Matthew found his own and both Quinn and Magnus also acquired them, and then as the storm above continued to throw fireworks from the clouds and sharp rebukes from what seemed the angry voice of God someone asked a question:

  “Where’s Doyle?”

  “What’d you say, Ellis?” Stamper asked the man who’d spoken.

  “Doyle,” the man repeated. He was thin and brown-bearded, his eyes sunken in nests of wrinkles, and he held an axe at his side. He scanned the assembly, which included Royce and Gunn, Lott and Morgan and all the rest…except the one he sought. “John Doyle. He was walkin’ to the right of me. K
now he must’ve heard Tom’s shoutin’. Where is he?”

  “Maybe takin’ a shit in the woods,” said Bovie. “Who gives a care where he is, anyway?”

  “I care,” said the other. “John’s my friend. He was maybe thirty feet away from me.” He turned to the right and faced the wilderness. He cupped his free hand to his mouth. “John!” he shouted. “Where are you, man?”

  There was no reply.

  “John! Holler back!”

  Still nothing.

  “We’ve got to move on.” Royce swiped his hand through the air to ward off the biting and humming insects, of which there were legion around every man and the one female. “Doyle’s got himself lost, maybe.”

  “He was right beside me,” Ellis said, as if explaining this fact to either an infant or an idiot. “Saw him through the trees. Then I heard Tom and I came over here. Figured John would follow.” He shouted once more into the thicket: “John Doyle! Answer me!”

  John Doyle did not answer.

  “Maybe we should look for him?” Magnus asked.

  “You do that,” was Royce’s response. “Take your boy and his girl and whoever else wants to waste time, and go lookin’ for that damn fool. Gunn and me are headin’ on. Anybody else?”

  The voices to head on were almost unanimous. But Ellis, Doyle’s friend, stood his ground. “You go on, then. All of you. I don’t know what’s happened to John, but I’m goin’ to find him. You won’t at least wait for me?”

  Stamper said, “You can catch up. Royce is right. We need to keep movin’.”

  “All right,” Ellis answered, resignedly. “But I’d sure think that if any of you was lost…or maybe stepped in another of those suck pits, you’d want a friend to come help you.”