Stupefying Stories: August 2016

by Sarah Read

  “My broom!” the haint rasps at him, enraged. “My sieve! Done counted these straws and holes before, you bastard! Day after day, cleaning and cooking for your dumb ass!”

  The last shred of uncertainty unravels in my heart. This is Merlene Wilson. Her husband beat her to death in this very room, and then he dumped her corpse without ceremony into the marsh. Her soul moved on, but her spirit remained, twisted, within the shell of her body until she rose from that watery grave, transformed into a boo hag.

  Undead. Hungry for juju and vengeance.

  Merlene leans close to her husband’s face, begins to inhale. Through my cobalt shades, I see flecks of his rotten soul drawn from between his lips into her deadly grin. Transfixed by her power, all he can do is roll his eyes in my direction and hoarsely croak my name.

  “Doctor Crow!”

  The boo hag snaps her head around. I shrug off the spell, let myself be seen.

  “John Wilson,” I say, “I only break jinxes for the innocent. The guilty? I let them suffer the consequence of their own misdeeds. You killed your wife, you goddamn fiend. I ain’t lifting a hand to stop her if she wants to get her revenge.”

  The boo hag flings away broom and strainer, clamps her bloody hands around his throat. As she strangles him, she sucks what little holiness she can salvage from his murderous heart.

  When he’s dead, I stand, picking up a jar of salt from beside the chair. Merlene scrambles from the bed, regards me warily.

  “Bastard deserved what he got, that’s for true. You were justified.” I brandish the salt, and she cringes a bit before recovering and standing defiant. “But know this—now you better get the hell off my island, Merlene Wilson. Don’t want to hear a single report of sleep disturbed by a visit from you. Find your kind elsewhere or let yourself slip from that undead flesh, one of the two. Because if I run into you again here on St. Helena, I will shred your spirit to ruination with salt and hoodoo and every scrap of my considerable mojo. You understand me?”

  The boo hag inclines her head ever so slightly before rushing like the night wind from that room, that house, that swamp.

  I walk over to the bed, reach for Wilson’s wallet on the night stand. Inside are bills. I take sixty bucks.

  “Payment for services rendered, dumb ass,” I mutter. “She won’t be bothering you again.”

  The palmetto moon, ever watchful, shines down on me as I leave.

  A product of an ethnically diverse family with Latino roots, David Bowles spent his childhood in the Lowcountry of South Carolina before moving as a teen to his parents’ native Río Grande Valley of south Texas, where he now teaches at the University of Texas. Recipient of awards from the Texas Institute of Letters and Texas Associated Press, Bowles has written several books, most recently Border Lore. His work has also appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Rattle, Eye to the Telescope and James Gunn’s Ad Astra.

  RECKONING IN SPOTSYLVANIA

  By Ambrose Stolliker

  Captain George Reims cried out into the night. It had been a terrible dream, the one he’d dreaded most. He pushed aside his tattered blanket and stifled the choking sounds coming from his throat. Though he’d only been awake for a few seconds, he knew full well what he intended to do, and he didn’t want Simms or anyone else to interfere. He held his breath for a few moments, praying no one had heard him thrashing about. Simms’s snores continued. Reims gathered his things and crawled outside his tiny tent.

  The cool night air washed over him, providing a momentary respite from the dream, but after a few moments, he felt chilled. Pulling on his boots and waistcoat, the latter in severe need of mending, Reims went to his horse. From somewhere close by he heard the sound of other horses, the crackle of slowly fading campfires, and the intermittent coughs, belches and farts of men in other tents. The horse, a six-year-old Morgan the color of nutmeg, stirred when he felt his master’s presence and let out a low nicker. Reims shot the animal a threatening look and then went about saddling him.

  “George?”

  Reims turned. Simms stood outside his tent, his waistcoat on but unbuttoned. His gun belt was in his hand.

  “Evenin’, Marcus.”

  “Thought I heard somethin’.” He strapped the gun belt to his waist and pointed at the horse. “The hell you think you’re doin’?”

  “I’m going. Do yourself a favor. Don’t try to stop me.”

  “That’s desertion, Captain.”

  Reims put on his hat. “I don’t give a good God damn what it is.”

  “What in Hell’s gotten into you?”

  “Nothin’ in particular. Just don’t see the point in any of it anymore.”

  Simms’s right hand twitched.

  Reims pointed his carbine at him. “I swear to the Lord, Marcus, you reach for that pistol and I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

  “You have a duty—”

  Reims sneered. “Duty? What duty? The Confederacy’s whipped and you know it. Hell, even the old man knows it. The Yankees done burned half of Virginia, and I aim to make sure Claudette and Lanny don’t get burned up with it.”

  “That what this is about? Your family? You think you’re the only man in this regiment achin’ for his wife? You think I ain’t livin’ for the day I see my Betsy and my little Maureen again? You’re gonna have to do better than that.”

  “I don’t have to do anything, Lieutenant. I’m goin’. You’re smart, you’ll do the same, and light on outta here ‘fore Grant and those Yankees break through the lines.”

  “They ain’t gonna break through. The old man’s got a plan.”

  Reims shook his head. “You better believe they’ll break through. There’s three of them for every one of us. It’s over. And that Grant, he’s like a terrier with a bone. He ain’t gonna give up now. Not after all the Yankee blood he spilt. You’re a fool if you think otherwise.”

  “Well now, I may be a fool, but at least I ain’t a coward, Captain. And I ain’t lettin’ you go.”

  Reims’ dark eyes were cold and hard. “Marcus, we’re friends. Brothers even. But you don’t take your hand off that goddam pistol this instant, I’m going to shoot you down and that’s a fact.”

  “Sonuvabitchin’ traitor—’’

  Reims pulled the trigger before Simms even got close to drawing his revolver. The lieutenant was thrown backward and landed on top of his tent, already dead. He rolled several times and came to rest face-down in a smoldering fire. The embers still glowed orange, and his hair caught as quickly as dried leaves and tinder. Within seconds, the top of his head and the right side of his face were aflame.

  Reims recoiled as his friend’s skin turned black, the latter quickly starting to peel away like burnt paper in the wind. From nearby, he heard the sound of men and horses stirring. They’d been awoken by the sound of the shot. He started for his horse, then stopped and looked back at Simms. The lieutenant’s shoulders were now afire.

  Don’t look at him. Jesus in Heaven, don’t look at him.

  Three men appeared in his section of the camp as Reims mounted, drew rein, and spurred his horse into the cold Virginia night. He blew by the pickets before they had a chance to react and drove the horse hard for the first few miles of road, glancing over his shoulder from time to time to see whether anyone had bothered to pursue him. He didn’t expect anyone to follow him though. For one thing, desertions had become commonplace, even amongst mid-ranking officers like himself. For another, regimental manpower was so depleted in some units after five years of war that many commanders refused to risk men and horses to look for soldiers they figured probably wouldn’t be much good in a fight anyway. From what Reims could tell, he had more to fear from running into some random Yankee patrol than he did of catching one in the back from one of his own. What he’d told Simms right before he’d shot him had been true—Grant’s army far outmanned Lee’s, and with Petersburg surrounded, it felt like there were blue-bellies around every corner.

  They ain’t gonna be on the lookout
for just one man. Way I figure things, that gives me the advantage. Better get off the turnpike though. Yankees’ll be watchin’ it for sure. Up ahead, he spotted a dark patch of forest, and steered his horse down a steep incline leading into the woods. Luckily for him, it was a clear night and the winter cold had long since stripped away the forest canopy, making it easy for Reims to keep his eye on the North Star. North. That’s where he was going. Spotsylvania Courthouse was eighty miles away by turnpike, but only about sixty miles as the crow flies, and he knew every wood and glen in this part of Virginia like the back of his hand. The going would be slower than if he stuck to the roads, but he didn’t want to chance being spotted by either the blue or the grey. By his estimation, he’d be home in a day and a half, two at the outside.

  A mile into the woods, he slowed the nutmeg to a trot, and an hour or so later, to a spirited walk. As he rode, he tried to picture what Claudette would look like after so long, but found that he couldn’t. He thought back further in time, his mind working to extract a more concrete remembrance, until it settled on the first time he had ever laid eyes on his wife. She had been onstage in Richmond, playing the lead in Brougham’s Better Late Than Never. Theirs had been a whirlwind courtship, and within three months, they’d been married, her acting career all but over. It was not the type of profession the wife of the eldest son of a respected Virginia family could hope to pursue, and she had given it up. He knew she missed it at times. She would deny it, but more often than not, she fell asleep at night with a copy of Shakespeare or the theater review in Harper’s Weekly across her chest. She was utterly devoted to him and Lanny, and for that he loved her—that, and the softness of her blond curls and the warmth of her touch.

  By dawn, he’d gone more than twenty miles and had stopped in a thick grove of trees to give his mount (and his backside) a rest. He’d done far longer rides over shorter periods of time with the cavalry many times since the start of the war, but with the 1st Virginia bottled up in Petersburg for the last several months, his horse and his rump had gone soft. One more reason to give it up and go home as far as Reims was concerned. He didn’t have it in him to fight the Federals anymore and he knew it. He settled with his back against the trunk of an ancient cottonwood and wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. His revolver, a nine-shot, .42 caliber LeMat, rested in the palm of his right hand. He held his breath and scanned the woods, listening and looking for any sign of an intruder. After several minutes, he was satisfied that he had not been followed, and he closed his eyes. Just gonna rest me a short while is all. No one’s comin’ after me.

  His thoughts drifted back to the dream that had awoken him the night before. Dreams—bad ones, especially—had become a nightly ritual for him after he’d first seen action at Manassas back in ‘61. Most of the time his dreams were of men and horses being slaughtered, brought down by Minié balls or torn apart by the Union artillery’s canister shot. Every so often, he would catch a glimpse of his wife and daughter having a picnic just beyond the field of battle. Men would be dying all around them, but there they sat, eating finger sandwiches, drinking cold lemonade, and laughing and talking, completely oblivious to the carnage. Sometimes he was wounded in the dream, and he would cry out, his hand reaching out to them in the hope they would hear him, but they never did. Last night’s dream had been different from all the others though. He’d seen Claudette and Lanny, pale and still, lying side by side in the marriage bed, each holding a bundle of spring flowers in their hands. It had been the first time he’d ever dreamed they were dead. It had been the final straw.

  Reims was just about to drift off when he heard the sound of heavy riding boots on dry leaves behind him. The nutmeg raised its head as he rolled away from the cottonwood and to his left. His hope was he would get at least a decent chance of a clear shot at whoever had come for him. The cold morning sun had risen by then, however, and he was momentarily blinded. Should’ve rolled the other way. Of all the damned fool mistakes to make now. A tall silhouette towered over him, and he steeled himself for the booming shot and the searing pain of a bullet tearing into his belly, but it never came. Instead, the figure raised its hands in surrender and stepped toward him. In doing so, the intruder’s head blotted out the sun.

  Or what was left of his head, anyway. Reims gasped when he realized who it was looming over him.

  “Simms?”

  The right side of the lieutenant’s face was a ghastly wreck of charred skin, muscle, and denuded bone. Where his eye should have been there was nothing but an empty socket, and little was left of his once bountiful head of hair save for a few ridiculous singed patches here and there. His voice was thin and hoarse. It sounded like a muted, smoky scream, and it made Reims shudder.

  “Didn’t expect to see me again, didja, Captain?”

  “Ain’t possible… I shot you… Watched… Watched you burn…”

  Simms knelt down on one knee. The stench of burned flesh and hair was overwhelming. It took every last bit of willpower for Reims not to vomit.

  “Yes. Yes, you surely did,” Simms croaked. The small portion of his lips that hadn’t been burned away formed a malevolent grin. He pulled back the burnt remains of his waistcoat and showed Reims where the bullet had cratered his chest. “Killed me dead, you did.”

  Reims stared at the grotesque creature before him in disbelief for another moment or two before his wits came back to him. He pointed the revolver at Simms and fired. The back of the lieutenant’s head flowered into a fleshy bloom of brain and bone, but the revolting smile on his face only widened into a mocking rictus grin.

  “Well now, that wasn’t very gentlemanly,” Simms said. He snatched the gun from Reims’s hand, moving faster than the captain thought it possible for any man to move.

  “You ain’t… You ain’t human…”

  “No. No, I ain’t.” He placed the barrel of the gun under Reims’s bearded chin. “I ain’t quite livin’, and I ain’t quite dead. Can’t show my face to my wife and young ‘un, that’s for sure, it bein’ in the shape it’s in, ‘specially now you gone and blowed a hole in my noggin. Maybe though I’ma gonna show it to yours. Less’n they’re already dead. Guess we gonna find out now, ain’t we, Captain? Only question is, who gets to ‘em first.”

  “Go near Claudette and Lanny and I’ll—”

  “You’ll what? Kill me again?” Simms let out a gruff laugh. “Tell you what, Captain. Other than the fact that you shot me and let me burn, you always treated me fair. Hell, you kept me alive for goin’ on five years. So, here’s what I’ll do: you get to Spotsylvania before me and maybe you and me can come to an agreement.”

  “What kind of agreement? What’re you on about, Simms?”

  “Be best if you just let me worry about that for now.” Simms stood and moved toward Reims’s horse. “Now, I know what you’re thinkin’. If I can just get to my horse ‘fore he does, I might have a chance.”

  The nutmeg watched Simms approach with dumb, dark eyes.

  Reims held out a hand. “Don’t… Leave him be…”

  Simms raised the gun and fired the remaining shots into the nutmeg. It let out a piercing whinny and collapsed to the ground, but somehow remained alive, twisting and turning its head and thrashing its skinny, hooved legs in an agonizing struggle to free itself from the cottonwood.

  “Goddam you, finish him!” Reims screamed. “He’s just a dumb animal!” Tears formed in his eyes.

  Simms tossed the revolver. It landed at Reims’s feet. “You finish him. Like you finished me. Only I ain’t quite finished with you, nossir, not by a sight, I ain’t.” The nutmeg’s cries subsided into a series of miserable groans. Simms looked down on the dying horse. “Fight’s goin’ outta this one, I think.” He turned back to Reims. “Never should’ve left your post, Captain. You’d seen this thing through like the rest of us, none of this wouldn’t’ve happened. Guess there’s gonna be a reckoning now. Oh, yes, sir, there’s gonna be a reckoning. You gonna learn what it is to suffer.” He pulled the
remains of his waistcoat around himself. “Best get a move on, Captain! If’n you wanna get to your sweet wife and daughter ‘fore I do!”

  Though part of him refused to believe what he had just witnessed, Reims did not fail to notice the direction in which Simms was headed. North. He picked himself up off the ground, took up his carbine, and walked over to the nutmeg. The horse moaned and blinked its eyes as the blood trickled from its wounds. Reims untied the reins and cradled the nutmeg’s head as he lowered it to the ground, patting and rubbing its muscular neck.

  “I’m sorry, old horse,” he whispered. “But there’s nothin’ for it now.”

  The horse groaned as if in answer. Reims stood, then placed the carbine’s stock against his shoulder, cocked the hammer, and fired.

  ¤

  He did not see Simms again all that day. After gathering up his weapons and provisions, he’d taken off in the same direction as the lieutenant, but there was no sign of him. Simms had vanished, as if the forest had swallowed him whole. Reims’s march north began at an all-out run, but within half an hour, his lungs felt fit to burst in the cold air and he was forced to slow to a weak trot. By nightfall, he’d covered near fifteen miles and finally stopped at the edge of a slow-moving brook, utterly spent. The water was so cold it burned going down his throat, but Reims didn’t care. His canteen had run dry hours before. He crawled on hands and knees to a collection of rocks and threw a worn saddle blanket over himself. Every bone, every joint ached from the pounding his body had endured on the day’s long journey north. As long as it had been, however, he knew there were still many miles between him and Spotsylvania.

  Never should’ve stopped this morning. I’d be more’n halfway there by now if I hadn’t stopped, and my horse’d still be alive, he chided himself. Then, Simms’s terrible face—and his revolting grin—came back to him, and Reims got down on his knees. God above, I ain’t a praying man and I don’t know what it is Simms has become. Is he a man? A ghost? One of those demons from below Reverend Godkins was always on about back home? I know I was wrong to leave my regiment, I know it, but I’m beggin’ you, don’t let whatever Simms has become get to my Claudette and Lanny. They’ve done nothing wrong. You want to punish me, fine, but please, Lord, I’m asking you, leave my wife and daughter out of it.