At the far end of the clearing, just upslope from the river, sat a low, sprawling wooden house with a veranda that wrapped the whole way around just like they build them in Dixie. Above the door hung a plank with a strange symbol burned into it. It looked a bit like a capitol D lying on its belly with a grasping tree branch growing out of one side. There were iron bars over all the windows.
Bigelow halloed the house, and Big Bill Grummond came into the yard.
For the first time that day, I felt genuine fear. Bill Grummond had a long, ugly history: He'd been an Argonaut as a boy and he'd once bragged about killing six men over a few grains of California gold dust… but when the war began, he went back east to fight under Braxton Bragg. After that, he returned to the west coast, venturing from San Francisco up into the Oregon Territory trying to win his fortune with a panhandle and rifle. Judging by the size of his house and crew, he'd finally succeeded.
We weren't friends but we weren't enemies, neither. Years ago, after a couple whiskeys, he'd talked about a Creek wife and a pack of daughters he'd left back east. I wondered if I was about to meet them, and if so whether I might get close enough to catch a whiff.
Grummond came toward me the way he always did, with his shoulders hunched and his head lowered like a bull. His face was pale and his eyes sunken. He looked to be sick unto dying.
"Eli Sutherland," Grummond said. His voice hadn't gone sickly. "What bad luck brings you to my door?"
"Bad luck by the name of Art Bigelow."
"I caught him robbing the Godwin place," Art said.
"I wasn't--" I started, but Digger kicked me in my back and knocked me into the mud.
"He had these on him." By the time I was upright, Grummond was looming over me, Wallace's knife in his hand.
"This the knife you used to kill Billy Wednesday?"
I struggled to my feet. I wouldn't speak to any man from my knees. "You hated Billy Wednesday."
"I think I'll be keeping this," he said, dropping the knife into his coat pocket.
"You can't take something from a man if it isn't his." He didn't know what to make of that, so like a good fellow he ignored it.
Grummond took the rope off Art's saddle and led me across the yard like a dog on a leash. I stumbled over a tree root, and Art sniggered. Digger joined in, laughing like an asthmatic mule.
In that moment, I decided for sure--I was going to kill as many of them as I could.
"I'm glad Art brought you here today," Grummond said. "It's like God delivered you into my hands when I needed you most. I have a problem that someone of your lineage should find right simple to fix."
"What's that?" I asked, my parched throat making me croak.
"I have three beautiful daughters, Eli. The only ones I got left and I do my damnedest to keep them safe from these redskins and the pink-cuffed low-lives that putter by on the mosquito fleet. But somehow, despite the locked doors and barred windows, the girls are leaving the house at night."
Grummond glanced at me. I held my tongue, but I could tell he didn't think much of the grin on my face. I couldn't help it if they sounded like my kind of girls. He worked his mouth a little, like he was thinking of taking an axe handle to me, but he went on with his story instead. It was costing him some pride to tell me this, and I knew the man well enough to understand it was the dearest coin he had.
"They ain't meeting up with none of this lot. I'd know by now. I've tried sitting up to watch them, too, but I can't keep my eyes open past the tick of midnight. No one here can. And I don't know where they get the shoes I find every morning--"
"What shoes?" We kept moving toward the house.
"Thin, violet-colored dancing shoes, made out of the most delicate leather I've ever seen. Every morning I find the girls sleeping in their beds, with yellow sand on their clothes and these damn shoes on their feet, and none of the locks or windows have been opened."
This was getting interesting. "I want to see those shoes."
"Can't. They don't last. The first bit of daylight falls on them, they turn into mist and vanish."
Witchery. I couldn't help but smile at the old man. He needed me or someone with my lineage. And there weren't many of us in shouting distance. "Why should I help you?"
Grummond pointed toward the water. A dock extended out into the river and there were stacks of timber beside it. "Three days from now, a scow is going to pick up that load of wood. If you find out where my girls go and how they get there, you can go downriver with it and keep whatever you can sell it for."
My breath caught. I didn't know how much I could get, but it would be substantial. It had been a long time since my gift led me to money. "And if I fail?"
"In that case, we have a second option." Grummond tugged on the rope.
Behind the house, the workmen had notched two strong cedars and wedged a plank between them. Hanging from the plank was an Indian boy of about 15, his ribs showing through his mottled skin, his tongue sticking out of his mouth to make a capital Q.
"I am past the point," Grummond said, "of accepting failure gracefully. You will do this, Mr. Sutherland, or you will die. Do we understand each other?"
"Oh, yes," I said, wondering what my gift had gotten me into. "We do."
"If you need anything, ask Art." With that, Grummond threw the rope to Bigelow.
I held up my wrists. Art loosened the ropes and I rubbed my wrists to get the circulation back. "I need clean water and some food," I said.
"I'll send Chang out." He sounded bored.
"And I'll need the key to the girls' room."
Art gave me an icy look. Digger let out his wheezing donkey laugh again. "Forget it," Art said. "You work for Mr. Grummond now, and men who work for Mr. Grummond don't come within 25 feet of the house or they get shot."
"Then how am I supposed to help him with his girls?"
"Watch from the yard. I don't much care if you succeed or not. Digger."
Digger nodded at Art and stood some distance from me, his rifle cradled in his elbow. Wonderful. I had a guard.
Chang turned out to be the camp cook. He brought me a crockery pitcher of beer. He seemed surprised when I asked for a pot of tea, but he fetched it. An old Indian woman brought me a bowl of barley mush.
I carried my bowl and pitcher to the back of the house. There wasn't a dry spot to sit on, so I sat on a root of the hanging tree, just a few paces from the unripe blackberry bushes and the edge of the forest, and began to eat. Occasionally, the wind shifted and I caught a whiff of the strung-up boy, but that sort of thing never bothered me much.
I ate as slowly as I could. Digger sat near to me, forming a triangle of sorts with the house. It would have been a powerful configuration if we were doing a working.
After an hour the back door to the house creaked open, and three young women stepped onto the porch under the watchful eye of Big Bill. They were dark-skinned, with thick black hair in tight braids. Their cornflower dresses were out of fashion even on the frontier.
They turned and looked at me, their expressions still and closed without seeming to have any serenity in them. My bowl was still half full, so I saluted them with a spoonful of barley. They gave me no more regard than I might give a dockside rat.
The two taller sisters looked to be twins; they each had a long nose, pointed chin and large, watchful eyes. The third girl was smaller and rounder with an upturned nose she'd inherited from her father. They were lovely, and I wasn't saying that just because I'd lived the last two years in Seattle, where women were few, and those few were mostly married, full squaws, or sawdust girls.
I watched them sit there, their father standing guard with his rifle. Grummond didn't face the yard to watch the workmen. He was watching his daughters. Once or twice he tried to engage them in conversation, but the girls never responded. They were as still as sleeping serpents.
Finally, night began to fall. Grummond shifted position, and his daughters stood and walked back into their room. They shut the door behind th
em and I heard the bolt engage. Grummond engaged a second lock from the outside and pocketed the key.
Night fell. The cook brought two jugs out to the workmen and they retired to the long house. The old woman brought me another bowl of mush and a pot of cold, stewed tea, then tried to take the pitcher full of beer away. I wouldn't let her.
The sky was clear. The stars were beautiful. The Indians sang a handful of Christian hymns, then fell silent. Grummond's house was quiet, with all the cloths pulled tight.
Then, close to midnight, my gift came alive. My skin began to crawl and my bones trembled. I rolled to my feet and heard the sudden, sweet tone of a woman's singing.
The song was wordless, some la la la any fat farmwife might sing to her chickens, but this voice had tones behind tones, echoes that curved back onto themselves, and as I followed those sounds, I felt myself falling into blackness.
But my skin still crawled and my bones still shook. I opened my eyes without realizing I'd closed them and saw Digger collapse onto the grass in a heavy slumber. A man coming back from the outhouse collapsed into the mud, his face suddenly serene and still.
I focused on my own skin and bones, anchoring myself with my gift, then groped blindly in the darkness at the edge of the forest. My eyes refused to stay open and my legs were trembling. The whole world was filled with the sound of that singing.
My hand closed on a thorny vine. The pain was distant, but I had found what I was looking for. I twined the bramble around my left wrist. The hurt wasn't enough, but it didn't have to be. I went into darkness.
Pain woke me in a blackberry bramble. I rolled toward the muddy clearing, the thorny vine around my left wrist tearing through my skin. The day had barely begun.
Wallace Fielding's knife lay at the bottom of my coat pocket again. I cut myself free and stood. Digger lay sprawled on the grass some feet away, and the logger still lay face down. Everything was quiet.
I went back to the hanging trees and picked up the pitcher of beer. It was flat, of course, but that didn't matter. After squeezing a couple drops of blood into it, I poured a circle around Digger's sleeping form. When the circle closed, I murmured a few words I knew, then poured the last few mouthfuls in a line pointing north.
I kicked Digger once on the leg, waking him. As I walked back to my spot by the hanging tree, I heard him cock his rifle and jump to his feet.
By the time I'd sat and turned around, he was rubbing his mouth and looking bewildered. Within minutes, he had saddled his horse and was riding toward Seattle and the nearest saloon.
Things were quiet again after that. I felt like a wolf among a sleeping flock. "Thank you for the knife, Wallace," I said.
Wallace's voice came to me from the right, thin and indistinct. "I couldn't let him keep it."
"I understand that." Wallace's spirit was bound to that knife, and he was particular who he spent his afterlife with. "Can I ask a favor?"
"I guess." He sounded wary. If we had been sitting someplace dark I might have been able to read his expression, but I couldn't see him in the morning light. That's one of the reasons ghosts love the sun.
"I'd be a grateful man if you'd help. In fact, if the job here goes well, I should have a goodly amount of pocket money."
"Will you go to the Mad House? Will you take the knife?"
"Don't I always, Wallace, for you?"
"What do you need?"
"I'm just wondering if there are any ghosts nearby. Would you scout around?"
He was not gone for long. "There's only the Indian boy hanging behind you, an Indian man who fell from a plank and an old woman who had a pain in her side."
"No young women with mixed blood?" Grummond had more than three daughters. Or he used to, anyway. Ghosts don't last much longer than 10 years if they were trapped somewhere daylight could touch them. If Big Bill's daughters had died here, Wallace would have seen them.
"None."
"What about inside the house?"
"I can't go inside the house."
That surprised me. There were few places Wallace couldn't go. "Well, why the hell not?"
"I can't go inside the house."
If a ghost couldn't tell you something, they couldn't tell you, and no trickery or cajoling would get it out of them. "Fair enough. Thank you kindly."
I went to the long house and peeked in the door. The men were still sound asleep. It would take a good kicking--or a thorny vine--to wake them. Perfect.
I vaulted onto the back porch, wincing at the sound my boots make on the wood. I wiped blood onto the knife and gently slid the tip of it into the keyhole. I spoke an ancient word that meant both "open" and "submit." It was a raping word. The lock sprang open and the bolt slid back.
I eased the door inward, listening to it creak on brass hinges. Anticipation made my blood pound.
The three daughters were all sitting up in their beds, all in a row. Their expressions were utterly calm. The youngest one was aiming a pistol at me.
The crack of the gunshot echoed in the room. I stood absolutely still while she cocked the hammer again. Nothing hurt, but I'd heard tell of men who'd never felt the bullet that killed them.
"You missed him," one of the tall ones said. "You know better than to miss." Doors slammed open and booted feet stampeded nearby. Men were shouting. I tossed the knife back through the door into the yard.
"I wanted to miss him," the little one said.
I glanced to the side. The room was full of empty beds, some so small a child of ten wouldn't fit in it. Twelve beds in all, and each with a pink bed sheet on top.
"Then you shouldn't get a turn with the gun," her sister said.
"It's my turn, so I decide. I decided to miss."
Something hard and heavy struck me on the back, knocking me into the room. I sprawled on the floor.
It was Art, of course. He drove me inside, probably to impress the girls by how vigorously he protected them. Then he started threatening me like a church-going teetotaler and I nearly laughed.
He started at me with the butt of his rifle. I couldn't dodge the blows, but I could take them on my thigh instead of my kneecap, my shoulder blade instead of my backbone. I squirmed and moved away.
He'd hit me three times, one of them damned hard, when the pistol went off again. Art stopped moving.
"Damn," she said. "That time I did miss."
"Miss Ruthanne?" Bigelow sounded as if his feelings were hurt. "Miss Bonnie? Miss Elizabeth?" The three sisters looked at him as if he were a kicked-over chamber pot.
Grummond finally burst into the room, scattergun in hand. I started shouting, accusing Art of shoving me in here so he'd have cause to shoot me, and Art was so startled he couldn't keep up.
We settled it in the yard, with Art and me kneeling in the mud and Grummond standing over us. He had enough shells to plug us both, and who would care if he did?
He finally set a pair of men to watch over us while he went inside to talk to his daughters. When he came out, he walked up to Bigelow and cocked both barrels. Art flinched.
"Don't." I told him.
"Why not?"
"Because those girls hate his guts and aim to see him dead. You can't trust a word out of their mouths."
Grummond sighted down the barrel at Bigelow, and for a moment I thought he'd pull the trigger. Then he sighed and lowered his weapon. I knew he didn't trust those girls of his, but I was surprised that he trusted them less than a known liar, killer, and witcher like me.
"So what did happen?"
"I arranged to wake from that sleep early--"
"Ain't you from a line of witches? Couldn't you fight it off?" Bigelow sounded a little peevish.
"If I'd known about it, maybe." I said sharply. "When I woke, a power was calling me toward the house. I went to investigate it. Art here saw me by the door and assumed the worst, knocking me to the floor in there."
"What about the shots?" Grummond asked. "Who unlocked that door?"
"I found the door unlocked
when I got there." Let him prove otherwise. "And your own daughter fired the shot. She assumed the worst, too."
Grummond stood there with his mouth working as though he had to chew over everything I'd said. Finally, he said: "I need coffee," and stalked off. Art followed him.
"Where are your other daughters?" I called to him. "What happened to the other nine?" Grummond ignored me. Without standing, I tapped my elbow against my coat pocket, confirming that the knife had been returned. Thank you, Wallace.
After a few minutes, the old Indian woman shuffled over to me, another bowl of mush in her hand. She set it on the ground beside me.
"Excuse me, ma'am," I said, thinking a show of manners from a white man would flatter her, "but I wonder if you would answer a couple of questions about Grummond's daughters."
"Fuck you, white face. I wouldn't help you for your weight in gold. You and Massachie Grummond can kill each other for all I care."
Right. I was on my own. Like always.
The day passed slowly. I didn't know what to do next, so I sat thinking. Art sat in Digger's spot. Whatever his former position at the camp, he had been reduced to guard duty. He didn't look happy about it.
My gift hummed for the entire morning, urging me toward the house. I felt like a parched man who'd been told not to touch the glass of whiskey beside him. What could be in that house that my gift wanted? I sure as hell hoped it wasn't one of those Grummond girls. Women were scarce in the territory, true, but I have never cared for having lead thrown in my direction.
By lunch time, the sun had brought on a powerful thirst. I stood and walked toward the side of the house.
Bigelow jumped to his feet. "What the hell do you--"
"Shut up," I told him. "Follow me."
I led him to the cook's side door. Just then, I noticed that there was lattice around the bottom of the house. I knelt in the mud, my gift buzzing like a nest of flies. Behind the lattice was a wide, gray stone with rough marks along the side.
Bad Little Girls Die Horrible Deaths: And Other Tales Of Dark Fantasy Page 3
