by James Axler
“Reckon we’ll never know what really happened here. Oh, well. World’s full of stuff I’ll never know. Best get back to Widow Oakey’s place, now, and see what kind of mischief Wymie’s gettin’ up to in this bright new day.”
* * *
THE “CROWD” WIDOW OAKEY had spoken of turned out to consist of about half a dozen, Sinkhole residents and people from the surrounding countryside. They included a couple who had joined her sorrowful procession the night before, like Walter John and Burny Stoops, who had followed Conn’s orders to carry her sister to the coffin-maker’s place.
With a shock she realized she’d still have to go talk to him, to Sam, about arrangements for Blinda, and her ma, for that matter.
Mord Pascoe could lie out to feed the wolves and coyotes, as far as she was concerned. Unless the bastard had burned too far to carbon for even the likes of them to stomach. She wished he could’ve felt the flames that had consumed most of all she had held dear. But a person in her circumstances had to make do…
She swayed.
“We come to see how you was, Wymie,” Burny said. “And to see what you wanted to do about your, you know. Quest for vengeance.”
She felt her eyes fill with hot tears yet again. But this time, they were tears of gratitude.
She smiled at them.
“Thank you. Thank you all.”
It’s not much, she knew. But it was a start.
She could work with this!
* * *
Chapter Five
“Wait,” a voice called from the scrub oak. “Don’t shoot. I’m not one of them.”
Mildred saw Ryan look at Krysty, who shrugged.
The midafternoon mugginess hung heavy in the air of the little glade on the slope a few dozen yards above a gurgling brook. Red oak and hickory branches overhung the clearing, masking most of the direct sunlight. Mildred didn’t want to imagine what the afternoon would feel like without that shade.
“Define ‘them,’” Ryan called back.
“The coamers,” the unseen man said. “The albino grave robbers. The ones you’re looking for.”
“Grave robbers, as young Ricky suggested,” Doc stated. “That adds a new dimension to our present difficulty.”
“Dark night,” J.B. muttered. “It surely does.”
The companions had been traveling single file along a game trail a couple miles southwest of their dig site, with Ryan in the lead and J.B. protecting their rear. They had just begun to fan out on entering the clearing when Jak’s warning birdcall brought them up short. They had immediately crouched or knelt, covering the brush-screen on the far side with their blasters.
“Mebbe,” Ryan said. “How do you know so much about them?”
“And how do you know what we’re looking for?” Mildred asked.
“I’ve roamed these woods nigh onto thirty years. I seen many a thing come and go, some stranger than most. And I seen the ones the locals call ‘coamers.’ They come and go, too. Currently they seem to be coming.”
J.B. grunted in interest.
“Come out where we can get a better look at you,” Ryan commanded.
“Don’t go shootin’ me, now.”
“If we were going to, we would’ve by now,” J.B. said. “That brush won’t stop many bullets.”
The branches rustled.
What appeared from the vegetation was anything but threatening, at first glance: a man of smallish to middle size, middle-aged to old, walking tentatively on rather bowed legs left bare by ragged and dirty cargo shorts with bulging pockets. A coonskin cap covered the top of his head. Around his shoulders he wore a cape made of shaggy bark that gave the locally abundant shagbark oak its name. Beneath that was a linen shirt. His round face was fringed by a shock of black hair and a beard with brushstrokes of gray in it. His eyes suggested strong Asian ancestry, but his accent, unsurprisingly, was pure western Kentucky.
He had his hands, clothed in shabby fingerless gloves, raised over his head to signal benign intentions, which was good, because he was clearly far from helpless: the butt of a late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century replica longblaster stuck up over his right shoulder, supported by a beadwork sling, and he wore both a Bowie knife with worn staghorn grips and a single-action, cap-and-ball revolver on either hip in cross-draw holsters, likewise beaded in colorful geometric patterns.
“Osage Nation work,” Krysty said, nodding at the beaded accessories. “Nice.”
“That’s right, ma’am,” he said. “I’m a local boy, but I been everywhere. Abe Tomoyama is my name. Abe to my friends, so you can call me that, long as you don’t chill me.”
Ryan raised a hand. “Stand down, everybody,” he said. “Keep eyes skinned to all sides, in case the pale shadows decide to check us out.”
“Don’t worry,” Abe stated, “yet. Them coamers don’t attack when the sun’s high in the sky. They only like to come out when it gets low. Like it’s fixin’ to right directly. Surely you noticed that?”
“Surely we didn’t,” Mildred said sourly.
“It does fit observable facts,” Doc said. “The few we have been able to observe.”
“Reckon we need to talk,” Abe said. “Let’s find us a place to palaver. Say, I’m a feeling mite peckish. What do you say we go to one of my campsites and chow down while we do it.”
“Won’t say no,” Ryan said, but he had a wary furrow to his brow as he said it.
He was wondering what was in it for the strange man they’d run into. And they all had learned a hundred times over, in the Deathlands, if you didn’t know what somebody had coming out of a given interaction, that usually meant it was coming straight out of your hide.
* * *
“FOLKS’RE SCARED, HEREABOUTS,” Abe said. “They don’t rightly know of what—shadows dimly seen at dusk, strange cries in the dark. Rumors of people disappearin’ out in the woods in the dark of the night. But I reckon I do know.”
“Suppose you tell us why you think we’re hunting these coamers of yours?” Ryan asked as he seated himself next to Krysty, where she hunkered down across from a small, nearly invisible dry brush fire from their peculiar host.
“I know hunters when I clap eyes on ’em, I reckon you’ll allow,” Abe said. “But you show no interest in the wildlife, other than to keep eyes skinned for ones as might be dangerous. You’re huntin’ man or mutie, or something close to one or the other.”
Abe’s camp was nestled in a bare-dirt hollow among sandstone boulders at the crest of a low rise, surrounded by brush and stunted trees. Krysty thought it a sweet spot, giving the option of surveilling the surrounding area from a height without spotlighting the fact you were there. It was already cool here, or cool for the Pennyrile, shaded at this spot from the low sun’s slanting rays. The smell of a brace of ruffed grouse roasting on sticks over the little fire was tantalizing.
“So what are these coamers, anyway?” Mildred asked. “Man or mutie?”
“Ghosts,” he said, and laughed at their expressions. “I don’t mean the spirits of chills. I mean they appear and disappear sudden-like, and seem to leave no traces at all, as if they had no more substance than smoke. But they got substance, right enough. They eat, they bleed, they die. And they chill, with their long white claws and those double-big jaws of theirs, more like a dog’s than a person’s.”
“Or a baboon’s,” Mildred suggested.
“That sounds consistent with the description, yes,” Doc agreed. Mildred seemed surprised; usually the two would argue over whether the sun was coming up or going down at high noon on a cloudless day. “I have heard the term ‘dog ape’ in connection with the beasts.”
The hermit shook his head. “Dunno nothin’ about those. But I seen ’em. Just glimpses, mind, over the years. But I seen the bones they’ve cracked in those jaws and the carcasses of beasts they chilled for meat.”
“They known to eat humans?” Ryan asked.
“Other than dead ones,” Mildred added.
Abe sh
rugged. “Mostly I hear tell of them digging up chills and eatin’ those. Prefer ’em fresh-buried. But they ain’t what you’d call picky.”
He sighed and dropped his gaze to the flames. His hand reached out to turn over first one, then the other plump game-bird carcass on their willow-wand spits. It looked to Krysty as if he did that by pure muscle memory, no conscious thought or intention involved.
“But like I say, there’s…stories,” Abe said. “Tales of folks out wanderin’ the woods at night by they lonesome, who never come back, and are never heard from anymore. The Pennyrile’s a big, wild place, with plenty of dense brush and caves and sinkholes. Lotta ways for a body to go missin’, if you catch my drift.”
“I don’t,” Mildred said. “Does anybody?”
“Ever hear of them attacking a camp or house?” Krysty asked.
“No. But they been getting’ pretty bold this season.”
“Why didn’t the people in Stenson’s Creek gaudy think to blame them first,” Ricky began, “instead of—”
“Yeah,” Ryan said, just emphatically enough to shut off the youth from blurting any more. “Never heard mention of them before now.”
Ricky’s dark eyes got big, and his cheeks flushed. Ryan couldn’t stop him wearing his heart on his sleeve. Fortunately their host seemed too preoccupied to notice.
Ricky’s close friend Jak shot him a wicked grin, half-sympathy, half-derision. Ryan had ordered the albino to sit in with them to learn whatever the woodsman had to impart. Jak had complied unwillingly, since he considered this with reason to be enemy territory, and that it was therefore even more urgent than usual that he be on patrol for danger. But he obeyed Ryan, as he generally did. Krysty suspected Jak understood the wisdom of Ryan’s wishes in this case, unlikely though he was to ever admit it.
“Like I say,” Abe went on, “they come and go. Like, from generation to generation. They seem to resurge every generation or two. Most of the settled folk, in the villes and such, forget about them, or think they’re just made-up stuff. But the oldies, out in the hills—they know. They remember. And this year—well, they seem to be gettin’ more aggressive than ever.”
“What about you?” Krysty asked. “How do you manage to survive?”
Abe grinned with strong, surprisingly white teeth.
“I’m reckoned by some a fair shot with a blaster, hand or long.” He patted the flintlock rifle he’d laid by his side on a coyote-skin cover.
Krysty shot a sidelong look to Mildred. The other woman nodded. She was clearly impressed; good shots rarely claimed to be, in her day or this one.
“You a hunter, too?” J.B. asked.
“Hunter. Trapper. Fisherman. Gatherer. Bit of whatever I need to be. Come from a long line of mountain men and women, I do.”
“‘Mountain men’?” Doc echoed. “You mean, like the solitary fur trappers and traders from earlier in my— That is, back in the early 1800s?”
Not everyone would have got a reference to such ancient history, but Abe brightened right up. He nodded.
“The very ones,” he said. “I’ve spent time in the Rocks myself, and up in the Dark range. Used to get to rendezvous in Taos each spring, like olden times. That’s where I learned my wilderness chops, from my poppa and momma.”
“Reenactors,” Mildred said, with a certain reflex distaste.
Abe looked at her blankly.
“Guess not,” she said sheepishly. “Your ancestors—culturally, at least—they were reenactors. But I reckon you and your people have been the real deal for decades.”
“Mebbe,” Abe said, clearly not getting her meaning.
Mildred’s smooth brown forehead wrinkled. “Also, how do you even know folks hereabouts are scared of these things? I thought you were a hermit.”
He laughed. “Oh, I am, I am. But that doesn’t mean I spend all my time alone in these woods and karst plains. Even a man like me gets tired now and then of listenin’ to nothin’ but the wind and the brook and the hoot-owl cries. Also I got what you might call a bit of a thirst, although I learned to keep a pretty tight rein on it, after some unfortunate happenin’s at Rendezvous a few years back… Anyhoo, I head in every once in a while to Stenson’s Creek gaudy, trade some pelts or gewgaws I make or trade for elsewhere, for the jack to wet my whistle. Was just in last week. I heard the stories then, mostly in whispers.”
He paused to drink out of a canteen that seemed to be a corked clay pot, carried in a pouch filled with damp moss, evidently to keep it cool.
“Also, sometimes I come across isolated camps of woodcutters and hunters or other folk not too unlike myself, or of travelers. I talk to them, just like I’m talkin’ to you. And they tell stories that are even scarier. And sometimes…”
He shook his head.
“I find a site in some double-lonely and isolated spot that’s deserted, and shows signs of a scuffle. Tracks so blurred up even I can’t identify them. Dead remains of a fire that been kicked asunder. Once or twice a spatter of dried blood on the grass or a berry-bush branch. Signs somethin’ bad happened to the former occupant. Mebbe done by a bear or a painter. But mebbe not.”
After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Ryan said, “So you know these woods.”
“They’re my home.”
“You managed to catch any of these coamers? And why ‘coamers,’ anyway?”
“Second question first,” Abe said. “Dunno. People just allus call them that, when they speak of them, which as I think I indicated, is mostly in whispers.
“As for your first question—nope. No luck there, either.”
“Not track?” Jak asked. He seemed to be studying the stocky man intently. The albino tended to be dismissive of everybody else’s talents in the woods, and compared to him, most humans were as clumsy and oblivious as drunken bears. Even Ryan and his strong right hand, J.B., both of whom were adept woodsmen by most mortal standards.
But the younger man’s red eyes were narrowed and thoughtful. Krysty thought to see at least a glimmer of respect for the self-proclaimed mountain man. She wasn’t sure what Jak was basing his judgment on; he put less stock in words than J. B. Dix, and that was saying plenty. But whatever he saw in this man, it looked genuine to him. Or so she sized it up.
“They don’t leave much sign,” Abe said. “Not even scat. And that looks just like a normal person’s, if tendin’ to be runnier than most. I don’t reckon they get much roughage in their diet. But they’re elusive as puffs of wind, and only rarely much easier to see.”
“Ever chill one?” J.B. asked.
“Had to fire ’em up a couple times. Just in the last month. They never plagued me before, other than I suspect them of raidin’ my snares for squirrels and rabbits and the like. Hit a couple, too, judgin’ by the squallin’ I heard and the blood I found on the leaves nearby. But I couldn’t prove it. I never found a carcass. It seems they take their chills with them as well as wounded.”
“To eat later?” Ricky asked in a tone of eager horror.
The mountain man shrugged. “Seems likely.”
“So even you can’t track them, is what you’re saying?” Mildred said.
Krysty felt a moment’s apprehension that her friend’s usual bluntness—or tactlessness, more closely—might annoy their host, which would be a pity just as the grouse were smelling done. But the man just nodded.
“Not far, anyway. After a few steps it’s like they vanish off the face of the Earth.”
Krysty looked around. Her friends seemed as distressed by the revelation as she was.
“How do you reckon they do that?” Ryan asked. “I doubt they fly. Or use magic.”
“Oh, no,” Abe said, grinning. “They go to ground, like foxes.”
“What do you mean?” Mildred asked.
“I mean when they vanish, I usually find some kind of hole in the ground nearby. No more than a coyote burrow would have for an entrance, commonly. But they’re built on the slim side, and don’t seem like they’d need much room to
wiggle through.”
Jak frowned at the revelation. Krysty guessed it was because he himself had not yet spotted the fact.
“They have dens?” Ryan asked.
“Mebbe. But remember this district is peppered with sinkholes like a plank shot with buckshot, and honeycombed by caves beneath. They could have a whole underground empire with roads and villes, for all we know.”
That struck Krysty as fanciful. It surprised her in someone as practical and…earthy as Abe seemed to be. All the same, he seemed pretty sharp, and his kind of life would offer plenty of time for flights of fancy.
“Ever checked?” J.B. asked.
“Do I look like I got a death wish, friend? Also, you’ll notice I’m built more for endurance than agility. If I could fit myself down one of them rabbit holes, I shudder to think what might be waitin’ for me on the other side.”
Krysty’s mind filled with a vision of Blinda’s face—or the raw red concavity where it had been—and she shuddered too.
“Anyhoo,” Abe said, reaching for a spit, “looks as if our dinner’s ready to serve. Now—”
His black eyes got wide, seemingly fixed right on Ryan. He slapped leather with his right hand.
At the same time, Ryan, staring right back, went for his own blaster.
As quick as a pair of diamondback rattlers, the two men drew their weapons, pointed them straight at each other and fired.
* * *
Chapter Six
“Anything?” Wymie asked.
She stopped to catch her breath and wipe sweat from her brow with a handkerchief. She was used to hard work in the hot sun, but not all this walking up and down hills, bashing brush most of the time.
Her cousin Mance, face streaming sweat from under a bandanna, shook his head. “Not yet, Wymie.”
He sounded worried. She understood. She had started out with nineteen or twenty helpers. The past two days of fruitless searching had whittled them down to a round dozen.
“Should we head back to the Mother Road,” asked Dorden, who to Wymie’s amazement was not one of the ones who had abandoned her, “or keep searching this area?”
