Black Horse and Other Strange Stories

by Wyckoff, Jason A.

  ‘The “museum” was a converted barn. It was just your regular fading, peeling, barn red on three sides, but the front was kept up real nice and done up real ornate. It had a big mural painted to look like the countryside with these big creatures on it, mammoths—you know, like hairy elephants?—and sabre-toothed tigers and other extinct animals. And it had this sign over the entrance that was kinda hippie-ish, with the flowery letters an’ all, but it looked good. You could see the effort, you know? This fella Walsh came out to meet us as we pulled up. He looked like a college professor more’n anything, really. He was skinny and he had them round-rimmed glasses and that hair that wasn’t quite long anymore, you know? And boy, he looked uptight. Real anxious. He led us down to the barn and opened ’er up.

  ‘After he got the doors open we just stood outside in silence for a second, waiting for him to go in. You couldn’t see nothing inside except some shapes. The light didn’t reach. And man, it was quiet there in the mist, waiting. Then Walsh turns around and he’s got this big grin on his face. “Well,” he says, “I think you ought to see it the way it’s meant to be seen before we take it down.” So he steps inside and faces back to the wall and flips on the lights.

  ‘I damn near fell over. The interior was just clean and simple; it was an old post and beam number and it looked like he didn’t really do nothin’ to the barn itself except hang these theatre lights on the crossbeams. The lights shone down in half a dozen spots on the floor, but left everything else dark. What the lights was on is what threw me. Skeletons. The big one in the centre of the room was a mammoth; you could tell that right away, even though the tusks were laid out on the floor instead of attached. The sabre-tooth tiger was actually closest to the door; he was kind of crouched and turned like he was hungry and about to pounce. Then this thing to the right caught my eye and I think I said, “Whoa!” I never saw the like before. Must’ve been twenty feet, easy, snout-to-tail. It had this huge barrel of ribs and long arms reaching down to the floor ending in these claws each bigger’n your head. Looked like it could tear up a man easy. Walsh must’ve been readin’ my mind.

  ‘He came up behind me and said, “Terrifying looking, isn’t he? He was actually quite harmless. That’s the skeleton of a giant land sloth you’re looking at.”

  ‘Me and Speed and Jerry, none of us could believe that monster was a sloth. We all got struck dumb thinking about what it must’ve looked like walking around. That was the thing that really got you about that barn. You had to admire how he had those skeletons lit, ’cause it hushed you up. You felt small and—what’s the word?—reverent, like you were in church. And it put you to thinkin’ about time and how much had gone on before you ever got born. But it was thrilling, too, mysterious-like. It made you feel a part of something bigger, just to be standing next to those things that’d been dead for forever. I don’t know if I can say it quite right, but I think it’s something we all felt some time or another—tiny, but with some sort of understanding that makes it so you don’t worry about being so small. That feeling—it was just incredible. It hushed your head, you know. I can say for sure that I forgot about the job for a few minutes.

  ‘He had a couple other displays, too. There was a shortfaced bear, which was pretty much like a regular bear but taller and skinnier. And of course its head was different. And there was a dire wolf, which we all thought was from a Zeppelin song. Five foot at the shoulder; that’s a big ass wolf! And then the last one was human. That one was weird ’cause you’d think he would’ve posed it in a setting, you know, like doing something an old Indian would’ve done or at least holding a spear. But he was just standing there. I guess it might’ve been to get a sense of scale.

  ‘One thing that was strange was the mammoth and the sloth were both crouched down like they would’ve had their bellies on the ground if they still had bellies. It was like Walsh had got ’em ready to fit in the trailer but he didn’t want to take them apart, except for the tusks like I mentioned. The bones were held together by short metal pins stuck through each bone at the joint. But then there was also this cord that tied the bones together. It was like fishing wire but duller coloured—kinda yellow, too—and silky to the touch. Thing was, it didn’t look to me like the cord did any good structurally. I couldn’t imagine it was too strong and it looked like Walsh had tied it on there kinda sloppy. I guessed it was maybe a redundancy with the pins, like a back-up; or maybe it kept the joints from swinging and loosening the connections with the pins. But it ran over every skeleton, all over, at every joint. You didn’t notice it until you got right up on it, but then it just seemed strange and out of place. Oh well, not my concern, right?

  ‘They were real steady, though. We treated ’em with kid gloves at first, but when we saw we weren’t gonna knock ’em over that easy, we stopped worrying and just wrapped ’em in these foam pad sheets and secured ’em in the trailer. We went smallest to largest to make getting ’em back out easier; first the man, then the wolf, then the bear, then the tiger. It wasn’t too hard until we got to the mammoth. We put the tusks in—big, beautiful things eight feet long at least and smooth as you please—then we went on to the body. Now, Walsh was particular about one thing: we had to put the skeletons in all assembled. He told us if it came to it, he’d be the one—and the only one—to break them down, but he said he really didn’t want to do that, so we tried to do it straight. After we got the mammoth wrapped, we measured and saw it was only just going to fit. It was a bitch getting straps around it and tied back to the forklift so that it was secure enough to move; even then Speed and Jerry held on to steady it while I drove it to the trailer, and you’re not supposed to do that. Somehow we got it in there.

  ‘That left the sloth, though. Jerry was driving a fifty-three footer, so we had the depth—though nothing left to spare. We set to working one of these sheets over the sloth, starting at the head and going down. Jerry’s up at the head and I’m about halfway down and Speed is down at the tail trying to figure out what to do about it. Jerry gets the sheet over far enough that I can grab it, but then it gets caught. We give it a couple good tugs, ’cause like I said, we’re not too worried about how well put-together the skeletons are at this point, but the pad doesn’t budge. Jerry says, “Shit” and ducks underneath the cover. So I just stand there waiting.

  All of a sudden Walsh, who was back in the house for a minute, comes running full-tilt and yelling his head off. He goes underneath the cover at Jerry and curses him something good. Jerry comes out from underneath cussing back at Walsh but not for him to hear. Walsh stays underneath for a minute and when he comes out, he’s pissed. Walsh might’ve looked like a college professor but he laid into Jerry like a sailor.

  Jerry told us later what the big to-do was all about: It seems the foam sheet got stuck in such a way going over that Jerry had to cut it away from the skeleton. Turns out Jerry wasn’t too careful with his knife and he cut some of that thread that was looped around all the joints. Now, how Walsh knew that happened from across the yard, I don’t know, but he did.

  ‘After Jerry caught hell from Walsh, we set to finishing the load. It was quiet, quick work—Jerry was sore, and Speed and me just wanted to get done and get out. We were careful, though, you can be sure of that. We got that sloth in the trailer snug as can be with not another scratch on it—and not an inch of space left in the trailer.

  ‘Walsh came up when we were done. He’d cooled down, but he still looked real serious. He looked at us and said “Sorry.” I could see Jerry was still sore, so I said back, “That’s all right, we’ve been yelled at a lot worse’n that.” Walsh said, “That ain’t what I’m sorry about,” and he walked away.

  ‘We didn’t know what he meant by that, but Speed and me didn’t care ’cause our day was done. Jerry only had a short haul ahead, but the company had arranged some other suckers to do the off-load, so Speed and me lit out.’

  The trucker paused here before going on with his story. I’ve turned it over in my head a few times, b
ut I could never decide if he was trying to figure out how to proceed, as though he hadn’t told the story before, or if he was pausing for dramatic effect, like he’d had a good deal of practice at the telling.

  ‘Speed called me up the next day, sounding kinda . . . funny. He says “Hey, come on out to Gilly’s”—that’s where we drank—“and I’ll buy you a beer.” Well, that’s something I never turned down, and probably never will. So I met him there and he’s at one of the tables by himself, already leaning over one with an empty on the side. I sat down and I can see he’s got troubles. It’s only a day since I saw him, so I wonder what it could be.

  ‘So I tell him, real delicate-like, that he looks like hell and ask what’s up his butt. But he doesn’t laugh, he just shakes his head. It takes a couple rounds of lousy conversation before he finally sees fit to speak his mind.

  ‘ “Leila tells me we’re broken up,” he says. Leila’s the girl he’d been living with for a couple years and thought he might marry someday.

  ‘ “Well, that’s a hell of a thing,” I say. “You probably just had a lover’s tiff. It’ll blow over in a couple days.”

  ‘ “That’s the thing, though,” he tells me. “She says we broke up six months ago.”

  ‘I can’t help but laugh at that. But I can see how confused and messed up he is, so I shut up pretty quick. “Well, we both know that ain’t true,” I tell him.

  ‘ “She means it, though. I thought she was kidding at first, and then I thought she’d gone crazy. But then I started to think maybe I went crazy ’cause that’s how she was treating me. We get to yelling, as you might expect, since it ain’t funny to either of us, and we’re both wondering if the other one’s gone nuts. She threatened to call the cops if I didn’t leave. But I said, ‘Where do you expect me to go? This is my house!’ And I took out my driver’s license and pointed at it and said, ‘See! Look what it says there!’ And she stopped being angry and starts to cry. And I can see in her eyes that she’s crying out of concern. And she said real soft, ‘Look yourself’.”

  ‘Speed slaps his wallet on the table and opens it up. He takes his license out and slides it across the table to me. I look at it but it seems normal to me.

  ‘ “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at,” I tell him.

  ‘ “That ain’t my address!” he says.

  ‘Well, I don’t know his address, and I tell him so. We go back and forth for a bit with him insisting that ain’t his address and I guess I gotta believe him.

  ‘Then he points out something else: “Look at the date of issue. It’s exactly right. I got that license four months back and that’s exactly what it says there. But according to Leila, we were broken up two months before I got the license—which makes total sense if you look at the address on it! But you know we weren’t broken up, we sat right here in this bar with you only last week!”—which was true.

  ‘My head spins a little on that, ’cause I don’t quite know what to make of it. So I ask him if he went to the address on the license. And damned if he don’t tear up right in front of me, right in the middle of the bar. I hated to see that. But he was a friend and I wasn’t gonna run out on him or nothing.

  ‘He wiped his eyes off and blew his nose and he says, “Yeah, I went there. It’s just a ratty old apartment. I swear to you, I have never been there a day before in my life. But the key to the door was on my keychain, so I went inside. And there was everything I owned in there. It was all my stuff, and it was thrown around just like I used to before I lived with Leila. All the signs of a broken-hearted bachelor in residence. I sat down on the edge of the bed, my bed, and just stared at the wall for the rest of the night. I didn’t know what the hell else to do.”

  ‘He looks like he’s about to start blubbering again, and I don’t want him to have to embarrass himself any more, so I suggest why don’t we call it a night and let me think about what he told me. Speed looked like he didn’t want to go back to that lonely apartment by himself, but what the hell was I going to do about that? So he agreed and we left Gilly’s.

  ‘As soon as we got out in the parking lot, we damn near get run over by a pick-up come screaming off the road. I start cussing the driver ’fore I realise that it’s Jerry Urlich’s truck. He parks over three spaces and jumps out, not even bothering to close the door. And he looks a lot worse than with Speed. Jerry looked like he’d run through Hell and back in the last day. His hair was greyer and his face had some deeper lines in it. He runs up to us and starts talking a mile-a-minute. Real crazy. It was five minutes before we got any sense out of him. When we did get some sense of what got him so upset, Speed’s story paled in comparison.

  ‘It seemed Jerry got home from his run real late, and the house was all asleep, so he just went to bed. He was a little pissed at his wife because it looked like she’d moved a bunch of stuff around again without asking him his opinion first, but mostly he was just tired, so he didn’t really pay any mind to what she’d done. Well, it’s Saturday, so his wife is cooking breakfast when he gets up. And when he sees her in the kitchen, she looks different; her hair’s all different. She says “Hi, honey, how are you” just the same as always. Then she calls the kids down for breakfast. Now, instead of the trample of two little girls’ feet, Jerry hears slower, heavier steps coming down the stairs.

  ‘ “The girls came in the kitchen”, Jerry told us, “I knew they were my girls,” he said, “I could see it in their faces, my Angeline and Sophie, looking exactly as I knew they would someday, two beautiful teenage girls!”

  ‘ “Jerry, your girls ain’t teenagers,” I said, like an idiot.

  ‘ “They are now!” he just about screamed at us. Then his eyes got real wide and crazy. “But that ain’t all.” Jerry fell forward and we had to hold him up, me and Speed, one on each arm. Jerry looks up at us and his face is terrible to see. “After my girls came in, all grown up . . .” Jerry started sobbing so hard it was a few seconds before he could say, “Then my six-year-old son walked in!”

  ‘I tell you, I was just about dumb enough to mention he didn’t have a son. Just about.

  ‘If you think Speed had a hard time with Leila, imagine how Jerry’s day with his family went. He was a wreck. Jerry figured seven years of his life had disappeared. Speed tells Jerry that he figures he lost about a year himself. But we all knew that the date hadn’t changed. The day we were yelling at each other in Gilly’s parking lot was the day after we’d loaded up those bones. So the world at large didn’t seem to change at all.

  ‘Naturally, these sorts of circumstances were pretty hard to accept. Hell, I was just confused and tired and a little scared, too. And that made me kinda sore at the other fellas. So I’m not proud of it, but I decided just to get the hell out of there and let those two try to figure out their own problems. Maybe if I had stuck around . . . well, you know, “maybes”. ’Bout as useful as wishes. Anyway, I told ’em I had to think about what they told me and I went home. Left them there looking after me like I was crazy for leaving. Maybe I was. Maybe when people tell you stuff like that, telling ’em, “Forget about it,” and going home is a little crazy.

  ‘Speed called me up the next morning. Turned out Jerry stayed with him at his crummy apartment and they talked all night. They’d come to believe that them losing a part of their lives had something to do with Walsh’s bone museum. I guess I had reckoned the same thing by then. Speed told me he couldn’t calm Jerry down. Jerry decided to go after Walsh. Speed figured Jerry was likely to kill Walsh if Walsh couldn’t reverse whatever had happened. I said, “Why didn’t you go with him?”

  ‘Speed tells me, “I figured I lost enough already and I don’t want to lose no more. The gamble wasn’t worth the bet to me. Jerry, he lost a lot more, so I guess he feels he’s got a lot more riding on it. I tried to talk him out of it but it weren’t no good. Probably I didn’t do a good job talking him out of it ’cause I think he’s right. Hell, can you imagine how Jerry felt when he met his own son and he didn�
��t recognise him? And if it is that fella Walsh’s fault—well, I hope Jerry figures it out, but if he don’t, I guess Walsh won’t get less than he deserves.”

  ‘I tell Speed he’s a dumb son of a gun, ’cause Jerry’s liable to miss his boy’s graduation, too, if he gets after Walsh; then I hang up. I still had a copy of the paperwork for the Walsh job and I got the delivery address off it. It was a three-hour drive, but I set out right away.

  ‘The delivery address was a warehouse in an industrial park, not new, not old. I go around the back and one of the dock bay doors is open. Jerry’s truck is there already. I get out and I call, “Jerry?” No reply.

  ‘I walk up the ramp next to the loading dock and, as I’m going up, I can see the outline of the mammoth back in the shadows. Then I start to pick out some of the smaller animals. But I don’t see the giant sloth until I step into the warehouse. I didn’t see him ’cause he wasn’t all together. It was kinda laid out on its back with half the ribcage stickin’ up into the air, with a couple legs still attached. The rest was disassembled and scattered in a heap on the floor. Then I see something that stops my heart cold. On the floor next to the broken sloth skeleton, there’s two other skeletons, and they’re both human. Now I know there was a human skeleton that we moved, but he was still there, standing, kinda hunched and bored like before. The two men on the floor were kinda intertwined, you know, laying one across the other. And close by the hands of one, there’s a crowbar. It wasn’t hard to guess what I was looking at. Jerry must’ve tried to bust up the skeleton and Walsh must’ve tried to stop him. And whatever “time” they had in them got used up. I turned and ran out of there as soon as I figured that part out. Got in my truck and got the hell out of there.

  ‘I didn’t call the cops. What the hell was I going to say to them? They came and asked me a question or two after awhile, just because of the association with the job. They asked some funny questions about Speed, too, so I could tell he tried to tell them something like the truth. I told ’em about the load-up, and I told ’em Speed had been under a lot of pressure lately. I didn’t tell ’em about driving up after Jerry. They said Speed told them I had, but I denied it. I’m sure I came off more sensible than Speed, so they believed me. Speed didn’t talk to me no more after that. Three weeks later I was out towards that warehouse, and I couldn’t help but drive by. That dock bay door was open again, so I peeked inside. The bones were all gone. There were a couple guys working there and they looked at me funny. I didn’t feel like asking them any questions, so I went on my way. Where those bones ever got to, I have no idea.’