“Many kinds Evan. Some buried in the earth, the sea, man’s heart and mind. Lightness though, that is here as well and we use it to reveal, to battle the dark things, for striving outside our notice, the enemy gains power.”
“I’ve felt it.” And I had. With the help of my family’s money, I had travelled to the far ends of the Earth, always searching. For what? I had no idea. Love? Adventure? I had found it all but still I roamed. Physical dangers caused little fear in me. I had faced down Zulus in the dark continent, the bitter cold of an Asian mountaintop, and the sharp knives of scorned lovers.
Though I had known fear, intense suffocating fear. And it was in my own bed, often just upon waking. My heart beating madly, my mind wild with hidden knowledge and also seized by the dreaded truth that death rushed toward me, a certainty for all of mankind. Something even I would not outsmart in the end.
The sheriff was speaking again, he had paused as if aware of my very thoughts. “Yes Evan we are the watchful eyes revealing darkness. Blessed by our attributes but cursed with our knowledge. Welcome to our ranks.”
The sheriff was standing over me suddenly, but I could hardly see him as the smoke continued to pour out of me clouding the small cabin. I was beginning to feel terribly empty. I had to fight the urge to cover the holes in my wrist.
“Yes! Let it out. For I did not. I gave in.”
I coughed fitfully, but my thoughts cleared a bit. I asked “How long have you been gone?”
“She took me last night. So cowed by fear I whimpered like a kitten and begged for my death.”
“Where’s Grant Burnett?” I inquired to what I now knew to be nothing more than a specter of a dead man.
“He is out there.” He pointed to the door. “Running free as he can.”
“Can I save him?”
“No, he is beyond your help now, but he is not the one you must save.”
“Myself?”
The ghost of Sheriff Heller chuckled, and there was real humor in his laugh this time. “No you ass, but I think your mind is clearing. Remember all things are not about you Evan.”
“How are you here? How are you doing this?” I tried to stand. I needed to get outside and to fresh air. On my hands and knees was how I made it to the door in the end. I pushed it open and flopped onto the cool ground.
“You’re not here.” I heard myself mutter as I drifted away.
10
A smile was on my face as I awoke. It was because my first thought was of the conversation with myself I must have had earlier. Of course the phantom snake had helped, but I had figured it all out, it had been a fever dream surely, not an actual meeting with the sheriff’s ghost. That was the only explanation.
And now here I was laying in a comfortable…cot?”
I wasn’t moving but I froze anyway and the smile slowly melted off of my face. There was a creaking sound, repeating so that it was at first reminiscent of sounds one might hear on a gently rolling ship as it crossed the ocean. I was on no ship. And it was the pine rocker making the sound. I remembered through our whole conversation the ghost sheriff had never made the thing rock. I was laying on the messy cot and someone was here with me in the cabin. Slowly and without moving, I came to realize that I was tied securely to a bed with strips of material, perhaps not for the first time in my life, but certainly with a less recreational time in store tonight.
With my eyes closed I listened to the ceaseless rocking. The smell from the cooking pot had grown stronger during the time I was asleep, but now I could detect another musky, woodsy odor in the cabin. Unable to contain my curiosity, my eyes opened and flicked toward where the rocker sat, almost on their own accord.
Ever since Mama Louise had warned me of the woman from the mountain, a portion of my mind had toiled with the possibilities of her nature. But I was truly not prepared for what faced me now.
She sat to the right of my cot, rocking in the chair and watching me intently with a set of eyes that seemed to almost glow with a sickly yellow light of their own. She was grinning and her mouth was too wide for her face, with long, pointed teeth protruding from her lips like triangular shards of glass. There was all manner of woodland debris lodged in her hair such as the browning leaves from one of the towering cottonwoods outside. A tattered and soiled white dress hung loosely on her skinny frame and longish feet with curved, overgrown nails protruded from its hem. Even in my stricken and restrained state, my mind wondered at what kind of hold a grotesque creature such as this might have had on a man such as Grant Burnett. In a matter of seconds, I would know.
“Awake?” Her voice was a growl, low-pitched and husky. But it grew in both tone and pitch as she leaned forward in the rocker, eagerly watching me. “He’s awake! Awake!”
I steeled myself as best as possible when she sprang from the chair and landed neatly astride my prone form. But then, I am not embarrassed to admit, my eyes flew wide in terror as she sniffed and snuffed like some wild beast at my neck and hair. The wild woman’s eyes blazed into mine and I reluctantly held her gaze for a moment. That horrifically, smiling mouth grew even wider at this. A blackish tongue slipped out and pierced itself on one of the wickedly pointed teeth.
I pulled mightily at my bonds, twisting and turning fruitlessly in their hold as the woman began to grind firmly against me. Even as I concluded that my present ordeal could not become worse, she spit a mouthful of blood from her pierced tongue in my face.
“Damn you!” I cursed, blinking the tainted stuff from my eyes. I felt her talon like fingernails tearing at my shirt and slicing into the flesh of my chest. Once when her head came close, I managed to swing my own crown up hard and deliver a powerful blow to her nose. She growled wildly and I saw her terrible maw open incredibly wide, the numerous, razor sharp teeth flashing in the fire light as she wailed in pain. In my scattered thoughts somewhere, I felt I now had the answer to the question of what had made the grievous wound in the head of the sheriff’s unfortunate Indian scout.
I turned my face away during her raging and stared off toward the lowly burning fire in the hearth. My eyes burned from the saltiness of her spat blood but there was something else going on. Even as I watched a tiny, rolling drop of the stuff making its way down my nose, I felt the first wave of euphoria crest over me. Involuntarily I began to lick at my lips, seeking more of the taste of her. I felt my body responding to her gyrations in the most undignified manner. Turning back to face the savage crone, I found her calm now, staring at me wantonly and smiling with a wide, devilish grin that veritably smacked of triumph.
Even as I felt myself desperately wanting to embrace, this base, monstrous creature, a deeper part of me, the cold, hard calculating part, the part that sometimes made me hard company to keep, was signaling wildly for me to fight! Fight her soft, luscious blood borne siren call that most likely threatened my very soul.
With her cold, glowing and sickly amber eyes on me, the wretch of a woman was down, tearing at my belt. I felt the opiate-like quality of her blood seeking a stronger hold on my senses and I was teetering on the threshold of capitulation, when I finally recognized the scent wafting from the pot in the hearth. It was like a tin of strong, black coffee after a night of overindulgence in a shanty town saloon. My mind was clearing and with that, I was nearly overcome by a powerful feeling of revulsion. I had to do something, and I decided to gamble on the strength of my intestinal fortitude in one last throw of the dice.
Though I was strapped to the cot, my hand had some movement, and I guessed that I could get a grip on one of the witch’s fingers as she struggled with my belt. Keeping up the appearance of being dazed took hardly any effort, but I was watching the placement of our hands closely. Waiting…there! Her hand had brushed mine for an instant and I grasped it with all my strength, praying that it would be enough. I twisted her fingers backwards with tremendous force, just as I had been shown during my time in the orient. The effect was immediate and satisfactory. The woman screamed in pain like an arrow stricken fawn
. And her next move was what I had calculated it would be. She swung her free arm around and slashed savagely at my offending grip, parting both flesh and, luckily, restraint. The cloth material did little to shield me, but it parted readily enough under the assault of her blade-like nails and after enduring several painful, slicing strikes, my arm was free! I wasted no time in reaching up and getting a fistful of that long and scraggly hair. I take no pleasure in recounting that I wrenched it with savage relish. There was a distinct snapping sound as her neck broke with the force of my harsh yank. Her body fell to the floor beside the cot in a mangy heap. For a moment, I felt too exhausted move.
Finally I freed myself and stumbled toward the hearth. I grabbed an iron ladle from floor and knocked off the lid of the black pot. The odor instantly swept over me with more force. I had smelled it before, under terrible circumstances, during my travels deep in the heart of the African continent. Waving the putrid steam away, I swallowed hard and looked into the pot’s deep well. There was a dark liquid, and bobbing in it, large clumps of fleshy masses. One was the shape of a human head and I used the ladle to spin it around, wondering if my search for Grant Burnett would end here.
It was Sherriff Heller. The skin of his face was melted down and sagging off of the bone like an over-boiled chicken carcass, but he was still recognizable from my recent and revelatory fever dream. And of course the upper lip still retained the magnificent and bushy moustache.
I turned away and surveyed the cabin. I saw my Iroquois revolver lying under the table and I retrieved that before doing anything else. I could tell by its weight that it was still fully loaded, which was good for when I looked to the cot, the woman’s crumpled body was no longer beside it.
11
I kicked open the cabin door and stepped through into the night with the Iroquois sweeping back and forth. I had searched the hovel’s interior, and save for a number of insidious concoctions of an alchemic design I found nothing else that would aid in my hunt for Grant Burnett. I breathed in deep, partaking of the fresh night air and felt my mind clear even further. The wounds on my arms and torso were proof of my encounter with Burnett’s mad woman.
The night had a wet, bitter chill to it, preparing for the onslaught of cold rain about to break. I looked over the ground immediately outside the cabin. My rifle was nowhere to be found. It was pitch black between the surrounding trees and danger could come at me from any side, so I resisted whistling for Nina as I slowly crept back down toward the main trail. The climbing was treacherous and several times I nearly stumbled into a fall. The way up had seemed so easy under the influence of the witch’s snakebite and following the ghostly sheriff.
The cold was biting through my tattered clothes and I was relieved to see my beautiful Appaloosa waiting patiently beside a particularly tall and thick cottonwood.
“Oh my girl, good girl.” My voice sounded strange and unfamiliar when I heard it. Perhaps during my earlier confinement I had believed that I would never hear it again.
I patted Nina’s neck and she swung her head around to chuff me lightly in the chest. Grant Burnett’s coat still hung across the saddle horn so I took it and slipped it on to help ward off the cold. It fit well enough and after adjusting the collar, I looked up to see the wicked hag staring at me from the trail’s edge.
Her arms hung at her sides and her neck was bent at a most unnatural angle. This time the woman’s face was twisted into a horrific scowl of hatred and I found this to be much more terrifying than her earlier wicked and lustful smile.
The next happened fast. My Iroquois I had holstered to get on the coat was in my hand in the blink of an eye but the woman was on me faster still. Her mad, snarling face in mine by the time I pulled the trigger. Now the Iroquois revolver is not an overly powerful gun, more useful for its accuracy, but even so the three quick shots I put into the guts of her should have been enough. She was thrown to the ground only so long as it took me to mount Nina and get the mare into a run before the crazed witch was up, twisted spine and all, giving chase at my horse’s tail.
Slowly we outpaced her and I nearly laughed at the madness of it. I suppose, deep inside I must have still expected to survive this terrible encounter regardless of the mysterious and wondrous abilities of my foe. Under my left arm I fired away and finally struck a leg on the running woman, sending her tumbling into the surrounding foliage. I rode on and already the sounds of her struggling to her feet reached my ears. I aimed to put some distance between us for now.
12
Nina had been well rested and now her hooves beat a steady staccato on the earthen trail. Lightning bloomed in the sky and I felt the fist cold drops of rain strike my face. I hadn’t planned on running all night, only until I could think of a way to dispose of my evil, spindly pursuer. Between the splattering sound of raindrops, I could just make out the sounds of her pounding feet still in the chase. Suddenly a dark shape broke from the trees on our left, startling Nina almost into a stumble. It was the big grey wolf we had seen before. Up close he looked to have a wild streak of silver running from his brow and down the back of his head. A tingling feeling fluttered at my temples and I felt the hot rush of impending supernatural happenstance. Was the wolf in league with the woman? It seemed likely. And my assumption appeared correct when the wolf began nipping at Nina’s ankles on the run.
I took aim at the squat sleek form, but before I fired, I realized that the wolf was not violently attacking Nina but instead seemed to be herding my horse to the right of the trail. I turned my attention to the woods and saw what looked to be a small game trail coming up. Behind me the woman was nowhere in sight, and Nina was mere feet from the trail when I pulled hard on the reigns, my faithful girl did not fight me. We made the severe right turn and crashed into the woods without losing a step.
The trail was tightly shrouded by vegetation and with the moon behind dark clouds we might as well have been in a lightless railroad tunnel. The sounds of the running wolf were close under foot and I bent low over Nina’s neck urging her to continue on blindly.
A desperate screech echoed out from somewhere behind us causing me to jerk in the saddle but then I heard something else from up ahead. At first I thought it to be the notes from wooden wind chimes but as Nina and I dashed on, objects appeared beside us, streaks of light reflecting even the reduced illumination from an obscured moon.
They were bones. Bones of all shapes and sizes, dangling from sinewy strands secured somewhere high above. They grew ever more numerous and hung tighter against the trail as we raced on. Once, Nina’s side clipped a long curved rib from a buffalo and we left it spinning in the darkness behind us. In front, the wolf began to slow, so I whispered Nina down to a trot and glanced apprehensively back along the strange hall of bones. The mad woman was not to be seen.
The trail angled up the mountain, much like the one leading to the cabin below us and I sensed that the summit might not be too far above. It had grown steadily colder, with the rain only making matters worse. My hat had been lost earlier and I was forced to blink the water from my eyes continuously while tracking the wolf’s progress. Following the beast was foolhardy at best, but Burnett, dead or alive, was on this mountainside somewhere and I wasn’t leaving without him. Briefly I thought of an older acquaintance of mine, an Englishman and fellow logician whom had recently passed on. He had written a few popular tales concerning a little girl crawling through a rabbit hole and leaving all of reality behind. She was immediately swept up into adventures full of opiate induced constructs and creatures of nonsensical purpose. Certainly he would have found my current endeavor fertile soil for more such stories.
Floating out of the darkness ahead, three white orbs appeared across the trail. They were skulls hanging like the other bones though these three were all human and I had to duck as we passed them. When I straightened, I found myself facing a looming mass of large boulders blocking the way forward. The rain ever increasing in volume slapped onto the rocks with force, creating a cacopho
ny of sound I suspected would mask any approach of the she devil that pursued me.
The wolf dodged around the first of the boulders and disappeared into their midst. I reluctantly slipped from Nina’s back and followed on foot, breathing hard from the chase but energized by this new turn of events. I reloaded as I walked, trying to determine the makeup of this strange rock formation. It was as if the mountain side had spewed up its stone guts and left them in a messy pile on its chest.
As I peeked around the first of the boulders, I saw the wolf disappear into a dark opening on the mountain’s face. Running back to Nina, I dug through her saddlebags and searched for the little rugged lantern I kept there. I found it and pulled it free. The lantern appeared none the worse for wear, even considering our mad race through the hall of dangling bones.
“I’m off to the literal wolf’s den, dear Nina. Please, I hope you would run if that she devil finds us, but I know you to be too loyal by far.” It should be obvious to all by now I have the habit of orating to my horse for reasons that confound even me. She gazed at me with one long lashed, beautiful eye and whinnied quietly. I kissed her nose and returned to the rocks.
Just inside the opening, I lit the lamp on the third try with some fairly damp matches and held it up to get a look about. I was in a stooped and narrow passage that led diagonally down and out of sight. The walls were rough and naturally formed, but the rock of the floor was worn smooth, likely from the passage of many creatures over many more years. I went on, expecting at any time to be hit with the rank odor of an animal den at best and attacked physically by some manner of beast at worst. Neither had occurred by the time the passage open into a wide and towering space. A sloping floor led to a pool of water, and I found myself in a naturally formed grotto, complete with long, pointed stalactites draping down from the cavern’s shadowed dome. In the darkness to my left the wolf waited, sitting back on its haunches. Large head bowed, he watched me expectantly.
The Shadow Trail (An Evan Ryder Weird Western) Page 4
