It took the last step and rounded the facing. Garret screamed and almost shot… Dr. Grey. It wasn’t the creature. It was Dr. Grey the veterinarian, wearing his usual grey vest and nice pants. His sleeves were rolled up, and his hands were covered with blood, much like Garret’s.
Grey flinched in surprise when he saw Garret. In three seconds, Grey’s face went from surprise to confusion to worry.
Grey wasn’t the creature. So where was it? Garret panned the shotgun back across the front windows again and hissed, “Did you see it? Where is it?”
Grey didn’t reply. Garret turned. Grey was gone. He’d vanished in silence. Garret hesitated. “Dr. Grey?”
No answer. Garret crept out of the room towards the back of the house. “Dr. Grey,” he hissed. “Dr. Grey!”
Garret’s unsteady steps creaked a floorboard, and at the same time, the backdoor creaked again, swinging shut this time. Garret stumbled forward, desperate not to be alone and wondering what on earth Grey was playing at. Garret went down the hall and into the kitchen, well preceded by the shotgun. The curtain over the door glass was swinging from recent movement. Grey had seen him, Garret had no doubt. They’d stared at each other across the livingroom. But now Grey was running from him.
What in the hell is going on? Garret wondered. His thoughts were still sluggish and uncoordinated. He eased the door open, and after a long look around the backyard, he stepped onto the small stoop. He kept his back to the wall. Sighting down the barrel, so he would be ready to fire at an instant’s notice, Garret swept the yard. The house sat on a small bench on a hillside. From the back stoop, it sloped gradually away to the clothes line and the outhouse. Farther down over the hill sat the well house. Nothing was out of place.
Part of the wellhouse shadow moved. Garret jumped, even though it was a hundred feet away. His mind wasn’t processing well, and he was seeing the recent past and even the present in clips, as if he was blanking out at random moments. He squinted at the shadow and tried to process what he was seeing.
The shadow was moving. It was also oversized and hunched in a way the sharp corner of the building wasn’t. So it wasn’t the wellhouse shadow. It was the creature. Garret shrank against the door. It was huge, taller than a man. It seemed made of muscle and was covered with dark fur the color of a shadow. It was worrying at something, tearing at it with its long mouth and misshapen head.
The long bloody sausage with a shoe on the end was actually a leg. Doc Bentley’s leg. The creature flipped its tall, black ears and tugged its head to the side, peeling the quadriceps from Doc Bentley’s leg like Garret would peel a banana. Garret’s head swam. He was hyperventilating.
Wood flew from the house not a foot from Garret’s shoulder, peppering his face and neck with chips. A gun report followed. Garret lurched away from the chips, inadvertently squeezing off a round at the same time. The door opened when he fell against it. He staggered into the kitchen and kicked it shut. Face and neck stinging, and head ringing from the report of his shotgun, Garret stumbled back through the house as fast as he could go. Crashing into things, knocking pictures off the walls. After he bumped his head again, his injured brain gave up on rational thought. He had nothing then but the overpowering, animal desire to escape and live.
He made it into the foyer, slipping again in the blood, but not falling. He staggered onto the front porch, swinging the shotgun wildly everywhere. Warm sun and green grass rolled away to Bentley’s white fence. A whinny came from his left. Garret whirled and almost blew Violet’s head off. She stood just off the porch, her skin shivering nervously in patches, bobbing her head, her coat crusted with dried sweat.
Garret got down off the porch as quickly as he could and clambered onto the wagon. He pulled his tackle box out from under the seat and dug the fillet knife out of a tangle of line and cork bobbers. Trying to keep an eye everywhere at once, he climbed back down and cut the wagon straps until the broken harness fell from Violet. Grabbing her mane, Garret tried to hoist himself and his shotgun onto the antsy horse. She pranced.
“Hold still,” Garret demanded, glancing over both shoulders.
She pranced again, making his awkward grasps useless.
“Hold still, I say!”
Finally, it occurred to him to lead her up against the porch and use it to mount. That worked.
“H’yah! H’ya!” She was more than ready to go. She bolted for the road. Garret hunkered low and tried to stay conscious through the pounding of her hooves. It felt like she was stomping on his head.
They thundered along the white fencing. Violet made the turn towards town without being told. The world was fading in and out around him, hitching in time with the pounding in his head. When he could see, tears blurred the images. Maybe he still had hold of the gun, maybe he didn’t. He didn’t know.
* * *
Garret was aware, if only mechanically so, when Violet thundered into town. He was weak and nauseated, lying on her back, his right fist tangled and frozen in her mane.
As he became more aware, he began to see her neck and front shoulders. They were lathered, and even his own knees were flecked with her foam. She was still at a full gallop, which had pounded Garret’s injured mind into a pulp, but as they stormed down Main Street, he began to hear her breathing. She was making a deep, rasping grunt every time she exhaled, and it sounded like it was coming from down in her chest.
He pulled weakly at her mane, trying to slow her down. She didn’t seem to know he’d done it. The tailor’s shop flashed past, then the mercantile. Garret pulled hard on her mane and managed to haul himself upright, though his vision narrowed dangerously when he did it.
“Whoa, girl,” he said. She didn’t hear.
Garret’s own shop was coming up. He wobbled. His vision went dark, but he fought his way back and said it louder, pulling on her mane with his flaccid arm.
“Whoa, Violet.” She dropped to a canter, then to a trot. She was gasping, her ribs heaving under his legs like forge bellows.
The sheriff’s station came up on his left. Garret hauled Violet to a stop and slid off of her. Violet sounded like she was gagging. He had to get to the sheriff. Two boys sitting in the dirt stared at him, the marbles game between them forgotten. Garret stumbled towards the sheriff’s station and gestured to the oldest boy. “Walk her around.”
The boy was frozen.
“Walk her around!” Garret thundered.
The boy started as if he’d been slapped, and scrambled for Violet. They were drawing a crowd, women in big hats with brown paper parcels, workers with dirty hands, clerks with pinstriped shirts and waxed moustaches, but all of them stood back, watching Garret.
“Where’s Sheriff Halstead?” Garret asked, taking another lurching stumble at the steps.
They stared. What the hell was wrong with everybody?
“Where’s the sheriff?” Garret begged. “Where is he? They’re dead.”
No one replied.
“Where is he!” Garret screamed it. He sat on the steps, panting, holding his head with one hand. The other hand had become frozen around something so long ago that he’d forgotten about it. The people were moving, talking quickly. Some of them were coming closer, some were skirting him.
Garret stood and tried to climb the steps again. He collapsed into a green vest and a shining gold star badge. It was Sheriff Halstead. Garret fought to stand. Badge. Sheriff. I found the sheriff.
Garret was bawling the story out in a comma-less stream. “I found them they’re dead they’re dead there was this thing and it killed them I saw it kill Mrs. Stumf I think it broke her neck it was gonna get me too I don’t know why it didn’t…”
He didn’t know what he was saying after that. Maybe nothing intelligible. He found himself in between three strong men while he babbled and cried. They led him in somewhere out of the sun.
Suddenly he remembered Violet. “Violet!” He stood bold upright. “Is she okay? I think I ran her to death.”
“She’s fine
son. The boy’s walking her around.” It was Mr. Fix. His warm voice made Garret want to curl up in his lap and sob. They sat Garret down. Dimly Garret recognized the inside of the sheriff’s station. Sheriff Halstead and Mr. Orem were talking in low tones, staring at him. Someone was trying to pull his arm off. No, they were trying to take the thing out of his hand. It was Mr. Fix. Oh, thank God he was here. Garret tried to let it go of whatever it was, but couldn’t make his hand open.
Suddenly, Garret had a horrible thought. “Violet, I think I ran her to death! Is she okay?”
“She’ll be fine son.” It was Mr. Fix, the barber. Thank God he was here.
“They’re dead,” Garret said. “They’re both dead. I don’t know how. I don’t know what it was.” Tears ran off the end of his nose. Mr. Fix was kneeling in front of him, saying something.
Someone else ripped the thing out of Garret’s frozen fingers. He screamed as they were forced open. Fix snapped something angrily at whoever had done it. Garret heard Orem’s voice, low and hard, as he inspected a bloody shotgun. “This is Bentley’s gun alright.”
Garret cupped his throbbing hand in his other, and was suddenly hit by a horrible thought. “Violet, I think I ran her to death! Is she okay?”
Mr. Fix was still kneeling in front of him, the laughter lines along his kind face creased deeply into worry. Garret relaxed at the sight of the kindly barber. Thank God he was here.
“Violet’s okay, son. I already told you. Don’t you remember?”
Remember what?
“Where were you, son?” Fix asked. “Were you at Doc Bentley’s place? We need to know where you were.”
Garret thought hard. It was like pushing his mind through mud. It would start to move, then slow down and he’d have to go back to the place he’d begun and start again. Mr. Fix was tilting his head. No, his whole body was tilting. No, the whole sheriff’s station was tilting. Mr. Fix said something, but his voice was a buzz. Garret fell over into someone’s arms. Strong arms. He was sideways. Or upside down, maybe. That was all he saw.
* * *
Garret awoke with a pounding headache, and an everything-else-ache, too. If I open my eyes now, the room will be spinning, and I think I’ll throw up again. So he lay still. Eventually, his body realized which way was down, and his stomach came in for a landing. Once the which-end-is-up issue was settled, Garret realized he wasn’t lying in his own bed. The bed beneath him was hard and lumpy and the blanket over him was scratchy and stiflingly hot.
Garret pushed it down, letting out a billow of steamy hot air. His clothes clung to him. Timidly, he opened his eyes. A plain wooden ceiling stood above him, but it wasn’t his bedroom ceiling. The light was weak, and in the wrong place too.
Jesus, what happened? A subtle fear crept over him in answer to the question.
Garret closed his eyes again and focused his sludgy brain on his body. Slowly, he sat up, teetering when the world did a flip. He made it to a sitting position and opened his eyes. He was in the sheriff’s station, sitting on a bunk. He was looking at the sheriff’s desk from behind. He’d never seen it from that angle before—because he’d never been in a cell before. The subtle fear grew to a cold trickle, running down his spine.
I’m in a cell. He blinked at the iron crossbars, some of which he himself had forged. Christ, I’m in a cell. Why did they put me in here? Garret staggered to his feet and lurched to the cell door. He pulled on it. It clanked solidly against the bolt. He was locked in. Fright swept the mud from his mind. Jesus! What did I do? Why am I in here?
He grabbed it with both hands, rattled it hard enough to make his shoulder and side hurt, not to mention his head. I’m in jail. He had only a jumble of half remembered memories of the recent past, all slurred together and cut to pieces by the blows to his head. The images and sights were fragmented, but the emotions weren’t. Fear, anxiety. Sorrow. And blood.
He couldn’t see the blood in his mind’s eye, but he could smell it as if it was all over him. The thick, syrupy, metallic smell of blood. It cloyed in his mind and constricted his throat. Someone had been killed. He remembered being somewhere, in someone’s house. He remembered being scared. He had a gun. He remembered fearing for his life. Pulling the trigger.
Oh Jesus, did I kill somebody? The thought buckled Garret’s knees and he fell against the wall, sliding down to a heap on the floor against the bars. Surely I wouldn’t kill somebody. But sometimes he was so afraid and so angry. The feelings often controlled him. What had they motivated him to do this time?
Garret’s guts twisted and churned. He gripped handfuls of his hair and fought not to cry like a baby. It crept in on him anyway—the truth that always hid within him. Garret knew what he was. He knew how worthless he was. He was a pathetic waste, not even of a man, but of a boy. He’d never been good enough, and he never would be, no matter how hard he worked at it. Beneath the bluster, he was always afraid. He was a scared little boy whom nobody but Sarn could love. Garret was always afraid because he knew what he was worth. Or, more accurately, what he wasn’t worth. Molly couldn’t love him. She deserved more than he could be. She was worth more.
And now, in his fear, he’d killed somebody.
Garret gripped his hair and gritted his teeth until his knuckles were ready to explode and the pressure in his chest forced itself through his teeth in a screaming whine. An explosive sob tore out of his chest. Followed by another. His hair was stiff and crusty in his hands, as if it was full of mud and dried maple syrup at the same time. That’s when he realized where the blood smell was coming from.
His hair was full of it. His clothing, especially his left side, the side that hurt the worst, was soaked with it. He sprang up, scrambling against the wall as if to escape his own legs. The blood was dry, so he shouldn’t have been able to smell it, but it suddenly became overpowering. The suffocating metallic smell sickened him, as if it was wet and he was playing in a big puddle of it. It came on him as if his sense of smell had abruptly wakened after sleeping all his life.
A blurry memory surfaced: a scream of pain, severed by the wet crunch of bone.
Garret lost it. He ripped his shirt off and flung it to the opposite corner of the cell. He ripped his suspenders loose and tried to kick his pants off, but only succeeded in winding himself up in them.
He hit the floor in a sobbing tangle as the front door of the sheriff’s office flew open and hit the wall. Outside was darkness and angry, frightened men. They pushed through the door, Sheriff Halstead in the lead. His sleeves were rolled up. Dark earth crusted his nails.
The men surrounded the front of Garret’s cell, but he couldn’t see or hear them clearly, or think clearly, other than one thought: Oh Jesus I killed somebody. He bawled like a baby until the tears wet the dried blood on his face. The men were talking to him. Garret couldn’t hear them. One of the men was yelling at him now. Several of them yelling. Garret bawled.
Halstead was on his knees, right in Garret’s face through the bars. Halstead’s normally ruddy skin was pale and drawn, making his eyes protrude. His usually spotless green vest was rumpled, smudged with dirt. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, but they hadn’t escaped a few drops of the blood and dirt which was also crusted beneath his fingers. The other shoes which were now at Garret’s eye level wore similar mud. The men had been digging a grave.
Halstead was questioning Garret. Demanding an explanation for something. Garret didn’t understand. The lights were too bright. He stank of blood, and it kept growing stronger. It was gagging him. The cell door was open and several sets of strong arms grabbed Garret and jerked him to his feet. The bellowing voice of Mr. Fix cut in and somebody got pushed. Garret found himself in a chair and the yelling rose, between Fix and a couple others.
Halstead turned to deal with the argument, leaving Garret alone, until Orem’s dirty hairy face appeared. He looked like he’d seen a ghost, but his eyes glittered coldly. He said something, but it sounded like “Mhmgmgm mhhmm.”
Orem’s big
hand came out of nowhere and hit Garret across the face, making his head bloom with lights and sounds. Only Orem’s other hand around Garret’s arm kept him from being flung out of the chair. Orem’s lips quivered as he spat the words in Garret’s lap, “They’ll hang you for this, little bastard. Just like your whore of a mother. I’m gonna have her next, just for you.”
Orem hit him again, wrenching his head hard to the side. Orem was screaming something about Jerry Bentley being his best friend. About them being raised together. Garret tried to protect himself, but his free arm felt like putty. Mr. Fix burst through the circle, throwing the sheriff and Mr. Carter aside like nine pins. Orem’s palm jerked another sob out of Garret, as well as sprinkling the boards with Garret’s spit and blood. Garret thought Mr. Fix was going to grab Orem. He didn’t. Fix punched Orem so hard that Garret felt it through the floor.
Orem dropped like one of his potato sacks, only dirtier. A half dozen men were on Mr. Fix. As Garret was lying on the floor, he realized he had fallen from the chair. That’s when he saw the other person who had entered the sheriff’s station. Molly. She was shouting at the top of her lungs at Sheriff Halstead and trying to make her way to Garret. Three men were on Mr. Fix, struggling to pin the bull of a man down. They crashed into the desk, breaking off two of its legs, and sending the remainder sliding into the wall.
Molly leaped nimbly around them, tight-faced, still trying to get Halstead’s attention. Instinct rose up in Garret. It had no words, but Garret knew what it meant. Protect the mate. Garret found his knees, then stumbled towards her around the brawl. Mr. Fix was bellowing and flinging people off. Mr. Starcher picked up one of the broken desk legs. Molly leaped around the sheriff as he stumbled back to dodge Starcher’s first swing. Garret caught Molly and spun, dropping to his knees to use his body as a shield.
Brimstone Page 18
