Blood Samples

by Bonansinga, Jay

  Poe cocked his head. "Go where, pray tell?"

  "The wilderness, Mr. Poe. The Great Moraine to the immediate southwest of the stockyards — the direction from which the villain had come."

  Poe still did not follow.

  Pinkerton enthused: "It's the largest, darkest glen this side of the Mississippi. It's as far as you can go into the wild. Less than a day away…and I've enough provisions in the buggy for at least a week."

  Another long pause here, the talk of murder and the late hour taking its toll on Edgar Poe's sensitive constitution. Counteracting this fatigue, however, was a strange, unnamable adrenaline flowing through him now.

  Finally the poet gave a reluctant shrug. "Far be it from me to argue with a man of the law."

  6.

  "FACTORY OF BLOOD"

  10 March

  It took them the rest of that night and a good shank of the next day to get down-state to the Great Moraine along the Kankakee River. They took roads that were washed-out, and they were forced to stop more than once when the map did not correspond to the rugged prairie before them. Along the way, the buggy broke down twice — at one point requiring an improvised lubricant from a tin of lard Pinkerton kept in his chuck-trunk. Poe went through the rest of his laudanum, which put the slender fellow in a woozy state once they entered the dark thickets of the Kankakee River valley. Pinkerton kept an iron grip on the reins, his talented team of Belgian draft horses impervious to the obstacles, side-stepping massive exposed roots and dead-falls. It was slow going, and they didn't see any signs of civilization until well after dark that second evening, but as they descended the moon lit grade of boulders and mossy logs just south of Vermilion Creek, the distant peak of an abandoned cavalry outpost came into view.

  It was a map-maker's cottage, and it looked like a small, beleaguered Inn buried in the dense woods. A single gabled rooftop poked out of the crown of a massive willow, and the surrounding foliage seemed to consume the building like ingrown hairs, their skeletal limbs and branches penetrating the shutters and logged walls. A patina of bird dung and animal spoor covered the windows. Moonlight glinted off a lonely lozenge of glass above the front door.

  Pinkerton parked the team in the shadows north of the building, then rousted Poe awake. "Come, Mr. Poe. It ain't much, but it'll do fer the night."

  Indoors, the cottage smelled of mold and camphor, and the floorboards creaked as loudly as the bones of a decrepit old crone as the two men entered and looked around. Pinkerton lit a few kerosene lanterns, and started a fire in the musty old hearth. Before long, the map-maker's shack was aglow with warmth and fellowship. Pinkerton made some trail coffee, and the twosome sat at the supper table, continuing their talk of mad men and mayhem into the wee hours.

  Outside, the drone of crickets bathed the dense darkness of the woods.

  Out beyond the deadfalls, in the silent shadows, there crouched a dark figure who thought of himself as Vengeance. He watched the distant smoke rising from the mapmaker's chimney with interest, the blurred figures of white men silhouetted in the yellow window glass. Vengeance felt the presence of the intruders like a spider feels the vibrations of its prey. Breathing low, deep breaths, praying to some nameless Nature God, Vengeance girded himself for another kill.

  In the moonlight, his great and many scars were the color of pitch, criss-crossing his face in deep furrows. Born the proud son of a tribal elder, he had once scampered through these woods as a boy with a light heart, a lover of all animals. Then the plague had come, the men with machines, plundering the land, raping the boy's mother, killing the boy's father, whipping the boy mercilessly, and finally burning the boy's village near Checagau. The boy managed to escape, but the white devils had chased him into the new place they called the packing house — the factory of blood – and the boy had seen the nightmare made flesh: his beloved deer and bison being rent apart, eviscerated, quartered and skinned alive, the screaming sounds, the blood gushing in rivers.

  Vengeance closed his eyes, blocking out the terrible memories.

  He had not spoken human language since that terrible attack, had lived all these years among the wolves, plotting his revenge. Now he was fulfilling his destiny, his lifelong calling: to bring carnage to this nation of meat cutters, to avenge his mangled and torn brethren. Again and again he would bring the nightmare home to the white man.

  He would be Vengeance.

  The noises of the woods rose around him, the night sounds, the breathing bellows. He shook the memories off as a dog might shake off the rain.

  It was time. Again, it was time to wreak havoc. He took a bracing gulp of night air, then lowered his center of gravity and started creeping through the darkness.

  Creeping toward the mapmaker's cabin.

  7.

  "AN UNINVITED GUEST"

  10 March - 2:37 AM to 3:41 AM

  That night, a fever dream gripped Poe — as vivid and palpable as the powder flash of a portrait camera. As he struggled to slumber on a moldy bed of straw, he dreamt he was a boy in Richmond, and it was in the wee hours, and he was wandering the woods in his nightcap and robe. He was following a ghostly woman in flowing white chiffon into the deeper shadows of the forest, and he realized, in the dream, that the woman was his birth mother, the achingly beautiful Elizabeth, an actress of modest repute, her lustrous obsidian curls flowing behind her as though she were underwater. Of course, the woman had died many years earlier, but now the sight of her, so elusive and tantalizing in the shadows of those distant trees, began to fill the boy in the dream with immense sorrow, sorrow so overwhelming it threatened to knock the young boy off his feet and crush him into the cold muddy humus. But on he went, shivering in his bare feet, through the brambles and foliage.

  The ghost was leading him somewhere, somewhere troubling and hazardous. The boy hurried to catch up with her and she vanished before his eyes in a whirlwind of smoke. He grabbed at the smoke, calling out for her, but she was gone, and the feeling was almost too much to bear, the empty horrible black feeling of loss and futility and hopelessness. And that's when another sound intruded into the dream: a deep, sepulchral growling noise — so low and sonorous it sounded like a dissonant chord oozing through the largest, longest chamber of a pipe organ. Poe spun, and all at once he came face to face with a monstrous abomination of humankind, a man-beast at least seven feet tall, covered with matted gray fur, its scabrous face open-mouthed and drooling and showing fangs —

  "Mr. Poe... MR. POE!"

  — and the strange incongruous voice was coming out of the beast like an echo from some distant canyon, and in the dream the boy tried to scream, but no sound came from his lungs, and he tried to flee, but his legs would not perform. The werewolf pounced at him and —

  "MR. POE!"

  — the poet jerked awake, sitting up in the flickering darkness of the second floor berth, starting at the sound of Pinkerton's whispered burr.

  At first Poe was disoriented, glancing around the spartan chamber, gaping at the cold hearth in one corner, the shopworn desk and chair in another, the single shuttered window lined with silver moonlight, the bedside table and dimly glowing kerosene lamp. His head throbbed. The laudanum had worn off and he was raw and dizzy as he finally focused on the Scotsman's bulldog visage hovering over his bed in a penumbra of candlelight. "Mr. Pinkerton?" Poe uttered in a hoarse voice. "What... time is it? I... I don't... I... ."

  Pinkerton put his finger to his lips in a silencing gesture, then whispered with the utmost urgency, "We seem to have an uninvited guest."

  "I'm sorry — you said we have a what?" Poe managed to swing around into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, his stomach clenching with nausea and panic. He wore long johns. His brogans sat on the floor at his feet. He stifled a belch and ran fingers through his unruly black hair.

  "I'm afraid, Sir, we have an intruder," Pinkerton said and pointed a gnarled finger at the ceiling.

  Poe looked up. His breath caught in his throat as an arrhythmic series o
f creaks traveled across the ceiling. Footsteps. "Dear God, is that someone on the roof?"

  "Indeed it is, Mr. Poe." Pinkerton reached over to the bedside lamp, which the poet, in his earlier stupor, had neglected to extinguish. The Scotsman removed the hurricane glass and snuffed the flame with his rough fingers. The room was plunged into darkness.

  Poe acted instinctively then, dipping his stocking feet into his brogans and madly pulling on his pants and suspenders. If he was about to tangle with some dark force of nature, by God he wasn't about to do it in his skivvies. "Is that a man, do you reckon? Are those human footsteps?"

  "Yes, sir, I believe they are."

  The creaking noises advanced toward the dormer. Pinkerton drew his Maynard, holding the pistol aloft and ready to talk. Poe frantically pulled on his frock jacket and coat. His hands were trembling convulsively. But something beneath the fear steadied him, galvanized him, even ennobled him. Poe would not forsake this salty plain-speaking Scotsman. Not like Poe's birth father had forsaken his youngest son. Not like John Allan, Poe's foster guardian, had betrayed the young poet at West Point. No, this time, unlike his fickle kin, Poe would stand beside this decent deputy in whatever terrors were descending upon them.

  "I would ask ye to stand silent and still, Mr. Poe, if you wouldn't mind." The creaking sounds abruptly halted. Pinkerton cocked the Maynard's hammer back with a CLICK!

  Something flashed by the dormer window — something huge and dark and ragged.

  In one fluid movement Pinkerton drew a bead on the glass and squeezed off a shot. The Maynard barked. Poe jerked at the sound, as the blast punched a biscuit-sized hole in the windowpane, sending dust and shards of glass flinging, but it was a day late and a mile short.

  The figure — or object or whatever it was — dropped out of view unscathed, making a loud thud in the stones down below. Pinkerton rushed over to the window and saw the figure darting off toward the road.

  "Mr. Poe!" Pinkerton grunted as he threw open the damaged window, then began climbing out. "If ye would be so good as to stay here, I will return directly!"

  "Not on your life, Mr. Pinkerton!" The poet went over to the window and proceeded to follow the Scotsman through the jagged maw and into the night.

  Icy wind slapped Poe in the face. The smell of pine and smoke braced him. He lowered himself onto the second-storey ledge behind the Scotsman. A crust of ice made negotiation delicate, and Poe nearly slipped off the shingled roof as the deputy whistled for his team.

  Off in the distance came the sound of horses stirring, snorting, leather straps snapping and popping in the shadows. Poe marveled at what he saw next: the carriage materializing along the edge of the cottage's property like a ghost ship drawn by two winged avatars.

  The horses, obviously trained by the Scotsman to respond to such signals, came cantering within inches of the building, the carriage nearly tipping over. Rusty iron wheels keened against the rocks. Pinkerton glanced over his shoulder. "I'm afraid, Mr. Poe, there's only time to jump!"

  "After you, Sir!

  Pinkerton leapt off the edge of the roof and landed feet-first on the pilot bench. The buggy groaned, and the Scotsman let out a grunt. The buckboard drifted slightly, the horses rearing and scraping.

  Poe came next, vaulting off the roof and landing in the cargo bed with a painful thud.

  Pinkerton snapped the reins. The horses launched, and the carriage lit out.

  It clattered and cobbled across the lot, then into the sparse trees where a narrow cavalry trail still cut through the weeds. The buggy began to gain speed. Within moments the carriage was roaring along at a full gallop, Pinkerton squinting to see through the swaying branches and limbs that were clawing at the passing buckboard. Straining to see any sign of the mysterious intruder, the Scotsman had holstered his Maynard, but now reached for the Roberts rifle tucked beneath the bench.

  All the while this was going on, Poe was bouncing around the rear luggage deck like a loose stone. He made a feeble attempt at grabbing hold of the brougham's bulwark but his hands were cold and greasy with flop-sweat. He could hear the rheumatic wheeze of the horses as they churned through the woods, weaving between trees, side-swiping scabrous trunks of massive pines. Faster and faster they went, making the carriage pitch like a ship on a stormy sea.

  They careered around a hairpin corner at full speed, again nearly tipping.

  Out of the corner of his eye Poe saw the Scotsman yank the rifle free of its nest. The weapon did a somersault, turning end over end in the deputy's strong, practiced grip — the sound of a shell clanging into the breech — and then a loud, flat blast issued a plume of sparks into the night.

  At that point Poe made his first tactical error of the evening: he rose up on his knees to get a better view of what the Scotsman was hunting.

  At that precise moment the carriage hit a bump on its way around another tight corner.

  It was as though Poe had been perched on a catapult, the inertia lifting him up into the air, his scream drowned by the noise of hooves and wagon wheels and gunfire as he hurled backward off the carriage.

  He landed hard on the side of a ravine and careened down the muddy slope, his arms flailing, legs akimbo, one boot flying off into oblivion. He rolled and rolled and tumbled and rolled, teeth gnashing as he slammed over spiny, slimy boulders. Pain crashed in his skull. He tried to grab hold of roots, branches — something to stop this headlong plunge — but it was futile.

  At last he landed on the floor of the ravine with a dull thump, banging against the face of an ancient mossy boulder that stood sentry in a stony clearing.

  For a few moments he was stricken dumb, lying supine in the weeds, paralyzed from the fall, unable to see or hear or feel a thing in the darkness save his pounding head and flash-struck eyes. He tried to focus on the netherworld around him. Shadows interlaced with shadows, giant monolithic tree trunks rising up into the impossible darkness. He swallowed back the pain and finally rose to sitting position.

  That's when the terrible transformation began.

  It happened in stages, the first one squeezing Poe's heart like a vice. The ambient noise of crickets and night fauna had suddenly ceased as though a switch had been thrown. The ensuing well-deep silence sent gooseflesh down Poe's back, and he tried to react rationally, tried to rise to his feet and stay calm, but the panic was choking him now. He could hear his own heart beat echoing in the dead black quiet.

  "P-pinkerton! PINKERTON!"

  The poet's voice — accustomed to projecting lyrical wonders to the back rows of appreciative audiences — now mewled out of him with impotent terror. Something had moved behind the darkness to his left.

  A twig snapped. Then another, and another. The noises were closing in from all directions.

  Poe began to scoot backward on his rump like a mute, lost child. Shapes were materializing in the inky black soup all around him: predatory phantoms, their ashen faces emerging from the dark — grinning rictuses full of drooling fangs, revealing themselves to be wolves!

  Wolves!

  The pack had him surrounded. Poe's heart filled his throat. Slowly, slowly, inch by inch, their shoulders hunched in attack postures, their eyes luminous with bloodlust, they approached. All possible escape closed off. No way out... and the noise was indescribable. Like a hundred knife blades grinding against a hundred whetstones.

  Poe became frozen with paralytic terror, a horrible, disjointed notion crossing the back of his consciousness: They're behaving not unlike worker bees in some unholy hive, waiting for the queen or the leader to sanction the final, monstrous, collective swarm.

  "God... help... me."

  The words came spontaneously out of him on a breath of delirium. Was he dreaming? His terror had risen beyond all comprehension now because someone — or some-thing on two feet— was coming this way. Heavy footsteps came tromping slowly, menacingly, nightmarishly through the rank and file of wolves... until a figure appeared in the gloom.

  Poe's breath caught in hi
s throat. The wolves now seemed to sag and slump deferentially, backing off like congregants in some feral church. The figure came closer and then paused in front of Poe as though for theatrical effect. In the moonlight it cast a gargantuan shadow like an inhuman Golem with improbably huge shoulders.

  At first Poe could not even bring himself to gaze up at it, but finally he managed to gape up and let out a mortified utterance.

  "... .oh dear God... "

  It was neither man nor beast... but both. Probably once an Indian, most likely Potawatomi or Keokuk, this brown, scarred young brave was now draped in tattered feathers and a collection of bleached bones strung together into a macabre necklace. The brute bore the hideous scars of a long ago attack, perhaps the battle of Fort Dearborn, perhaps the Starved Rock skirmish. His long savage face resembled a patchwork of wounds.

  But the worst part, the part that held Poe rapt with horror, was the thing on the man's shoulders, the thing clinging to him like a hellish abomination of an infant.

  To call the miserable creature riding on his back a feral dog would be understating matter: it was once some kind of classifiable species, perhaps a coyote or wolf or jackal, but was now a tufted, gouged, matted nightmare of fur and fangs, perched on the Indian's neck and shoulders, peering over the top of his head like some kind of inbred spawn.

  Right then something extraordinary happened, and even in his stupor of fear — in what he believed were his last moments on earth — Poe experienced a series of realizations that could ultimately be enjoined into a single epiphany: this is the killer, and the extra weight on his back was why the footsteps had distorted in the snow.

  Then the Indian took another step closer and barked an order which sounded to Poe's ears like "Kooomahhhh!" — and all at once the wild dog sprang from the man's muscular shoulders, and leapt through the air with improbable grace directly at the poet.