by Neil Gaiman
“It didn’t so much as make the thing move. I might as well have been rubbin’ its belly. It lifted its eyes and looked at me, and…As God is my witness, it spat out what was left of poor Sissy’s head, and slapped its mouth over her blood pumpin’ neck, and went to suckin’ on it like a kid with a sucker.
“I ain’t ashamed to admit it, my knees went weak. I dropped the pistol and ran and got the axe. When I turned, it was on me. I swung that axe, and hit it. The blade went in, went in deep…and there wasn’t no blood, didn’t spurt a drop. Thing grabbed me up and flung me at the window, and damned if I didn’t go straight through it and land out on my back, on top of some of them rocks I’d pulled out of the well. It flowed through that window like it was water, and it come at me. I rolled over and grabbed one of the rocks and flung it and hit that thing square in its bony chest. What five shots from a pistol and a hack from an axe couldn’t do, the rock did.
“Monster yelled like the fire of hell had been shoved down its throat, and it ran straight away for the well faster than I’ve ever seen anything move, its body twistin’ in all directions, like it was going to come apart, or like the bones was shiftin’ inside of it. It ran and dove into the well and I heard it hit the mud below.
“I climbed back through the window, rushed into the main room, tryin’ not to look at poor Sissy’s body, and I got the double barrel off the mantle and lit and lantern and went back outside through the front door with the lantern in one hand, the shotgun in the other.
“First I held the lantern over the well, got me a look, but didn’t see nothin’ but darkness. I bent over the curbin’ and lowered the lantern in some, fearin’ that thing might grab me. The sides of the well were covered with a kind of slime, and I could see the mud down below, and if the thing had gone into it, there wasn’t no sign now accept a bit of a ripple.
“I hid out in the woods. I went back the next mornin’ and got Sissy’s body and buried it out back of the place, and then before it was dark, I boarded up all the windows good and locked the door and I got the shotgun and sat with it all night in the middle of the big room. I knew it wouldn’t do me no good, but that was all I had. Me and that shotgun.
“But didn’t nothin’ bother me, though I could hear it and smell it movin’ around outside the house. Come morning, I was brave enough to go out, and Sissy’s body had been pulled from the grave and gnawed on. I reckon animals could have done it in the night, but I didn’t think so. I buried her again, this time deep, and mounded up dirt and packed it down. I cut some sticks and tied a cross together and stuck that up, then I walked into town and told my story. They didn’t even think I was a murderer. They didn’t question if I might have killed Sissy, which is what I thought they might do. They locked me up for bein’ a crazy, and wasn’t no one cared enough to come and see if her body was at the cabin or not. They wasn’t interested. I done taken Sissy off and wasn’t no man wanted her back now that she had been with me, which considerin’ the kind of women they was usually with didn’t make no sense, but then there ain’t much about Wood Tick that does make sense.
“And then you come along, and you know the rest from there.”
(3)
THE THING DOWN THERE
The sun was starting to slant to the West, but there was still plenty of daylight left when they arrived on horseback. The house was built of large logs and it looked solid. The chimney appeared sound. The shingles well cut and nailed down tight. It was indeed a good cabin and the Reverend understood the attraction it held for those who passed by.
Norville slipped off the back of the horse and hurried around behind the cabin. After the Reverend tied up his horse, he too went out back. Norville stood over an empty grave, the cross turned over and broken. Norville and the Reverend stood there for a long moment.
Norville fell to his knees. “Oh, Jesus. I should have taken her off somewhere else. He’s done come and got her.”
“It is done now,” Reverend Mercer said. “Stand up, man. None of this does any good. Let’s look around.”
Norville stood up, but he looked ready to collapse. “Buck up, man,” Reverend Mercer said. “We have work to do.”
No sight or parcel of the body was found. The Reverend went to the well and bent over and looked down. It was deep. He took out a match and struck it on the curbing and dropped it down the shaft, watched the little light fall. The match hissed out in the mud below.
“Do you believe me,” Norville said, standing back from the well a few paces.
“I do.”
“What can I do?”
“Whatever you do, you will not do alone. I will be here with you.”
“Kind of you, Reverend, but what can you do?”
“At the moment, I’m uncertain. Let’s look inside the house.”
The cabin, though not huge, had two rooms. A small bedroom and a large main room with a kitchen table and a rocked in fireplace and some benches and a few chairs. There was blood on the floor and on a rug there, and on the walls and even on the ceiling. The Reverend paused at the rocked up fireplace. He bent down and looked at the rocks. “Did you notice a lot of these rocks have a drawing in them?”
“What now?”
“Look here.” Reverend Mercer touched his finger to one of the stones. There was a strange drawing on it, a stick figure with small symbols written around it in a circle. “It’s on a lot of the rocks, and my guess is, if you were to pull the ones without visible symbols free, you could turn them over and the marks would be on the other side. They came from inside the well, correct?”
“Nearly all of them. It’s a very deep well.”
“As I have seen. Did you not notice the marks?”
“Guess I was so anxious to get those rocks out of there I didn’t.”
“It is only visible if you’re looking for it?”
“And you were?”
“I was looking for anything. This is my business. When you said you hit this thing with a rock and it fled after shooting it and hitting it with an axe had no effect, I started to wonder. I believe these are symbols of protection.”
The Reverend began walking about the house. He looked under the bed and at the walls and checked nooks and crannies. He bounced himself on the floor to test the boards. He stood looking down at the blood-stained rug for awhile. He picked up the edge of the rug and saw there were a series of short boards that didn’t extend completely across the floor.
Sliding the rug aside, the Reverend used his knife and stuck it under the edge of one of the boards and pried it up. There was a space beneath and a metal box was in the space. The Reverend removed a few more boards so he could get a good look at the box. It had a padlock on it.
“Find the axe,” the Reverend said.
Norville went outside and got the axe and brought it back. It was a single edge, and the Reverend turned the flat side down and swung and knocked the lock off with one sure blow. He opened the box. Inside was a book.
“Why would someone put a book under lock and key?” Norville said.
The Reverend went to the table and sat on the long bench next to it. Norville sat on the other side. The Reverend opened the book and studied it. He looked up after a moment, said, “Whoever built this house originally, their intentions for us were not good.”
“Us?” Norville said. “How would they, whoever that is, know we would be here?”
“Not you and I. Us as in the human race, Norville. They, meaning the ones who possess this book, called THE BOOK OF DOCHES. The ones who find it or buy it or kill to possess it, always believe they will make some pact with the dark ones, the ones darker than our God, much darker, and they believe that if they allow these dark ones to break through they will be either its master or its trusted servant. The latter is sometimes possible, but the former, never. And in the end, a trusted servant is easily replaced.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Norville said.
“There are monsters on the other side of the veil, Norville. A p
lace you and I can’t see. These things want out. Books like this contain spells to free them, and sometimes the people who possess the book want to set them free for rewards. Someone has already set one of them free.”
“The sucking thing?”
“Correct,” the Reverend said, shaking the book. “Look at the pages. See. The words and images on the pages are hand printed? The pages, feel them.”
Norville used his thumb and finger to feel.
“Its cloth.”
“Flesh. Human flesh is what the book says.”
Norville jerked his hand back. “You can read this hen scratch?”
“Yes. I read a translation of it long ago, taught myself to understand the original symbols.”
“You have the same book?”
“Had. One of them got away from me, the one adapted into English. The other I destroyed.”
“How did it get away from you?”
“That’s not important to us today. Whoever built this house may have brought this copy here. But their plans didn’t work out. They released something, one of the minor horrors, and that minor horror either chased them off, or did to them what they did to your poor Sissy. This thing they called up. The place where it is from is wet, and therefore it takes to the well. And it is hungry. Always hungry. A minor being, but a nasty one.”
“But if this beast is on the other side, as you call it, why would anyone bring it here?”
“Never underestimate the curiosity and stupidity and greed of man, Norville.”
“If the book set this thing free, then burn the book.”
“Not a bad idea, but I doubt that would get rid of anything. In fact, I might do better to study the book. My guess is whoever first brought the book, loosed the creature. They then decided they had made a mistake, made the marks of power on the stones and sealed the thing in the well where it preferred to reside—it liked the dampness, you see. And then, someone, like you, took the rocks from the well and the thing was let loose. One of the other survivors, the preacher for example, may have figured out enough to seal the thing back in the well. And then you let it out again.”
“Then we can seal it back up,” Norville said.
The Reverend shook his head. “Then someone else will open the well.”
“We can destroy the well curbing, put the rocks in, build a mound of dirt over all of it.”
“Still not enough. That leaves the possibility of it being opened up in the future, if only by accident. No. This thing, it has to be destroyed. Listen here. It’s light yet. Take my horse and walk it and take off its saddle, and then bring it inside where it will be safer.”
“The house?”
“Since when are you so particular? I do not want to leave the horse for that thing to kill. If it must have the horse or us, then it will have to come and get the lot of us.”
“All right then.”
“Bring in my saddle and all that goes with it. And those rocks from the well. Only the rocks from the well. Start bringing them in by the pile.”
“Aren’t there enough here in the fireplace?”
“They are in use. One may cause this thing to flee, but that doesn’t mean one will destroy it. I have other plans. Do it, Norville. Already the sun dips deep and the dark is our first enemy.”
∇
When the horse was inside and the stones were stacked in the middle of the floor, the Reverend looked up from the book, said, “Place the stones in a circle around us. A large circle. Make a line of them across the back of this room and put the horse against the wall behind them. Give him plenty of room to get excited. Hobble him and put on his bridle and tie him to that nail in the wall, the big one.”
“And what exactly will you be doin’?”
“Reading,” the Reverend said. “You will have to trust me. I’m all that is between you and this thing.”
Norville went about placing the stones.
It was just short of dark when the stones were placed in a circle around the table and a line of them had been made behind that from wall to wall, containing the tied up horse.
Reverend Mercer looked up from the book. “You are finished?”
Noville said, “Almost. I’ll board up the bedroom window. Not that it matters. He can slip between some small spaces. But it will slow it down.”
“Leave it as is, and leave the door to the bedroom partially cracked.”
“You’re sure?”
“Quite.”
The Reverend placed one of the rocks on the table, removed the bullets from his belt and took his knife and did his best to copy the symbols in small shapes on the tips of his ammunition. The symbols were simple, a stick man with a few twists and twirls around it. It took him an hour to copy it onto twelve rounds of ammunition.
Finished, he loaded six rounds in each of his revolvers.
“Shall I light the lamp?” Norville asked.
“No. You have an axe and a shotgun lying about. We may have need for both. Recover them, and then come inside the ring of stones.”
(4)
THE ARRIVAL
While they waited, sitting cross-legged on the floor inside the circle of stones, the Reverend carved the symbols on the rocks onto the blade of the axe. He thought about the shotgun shells, but it wouldn’t do any good to have the symbols on the shells and not on the load, and since the shotgun shot pellets, that was an impossible task.
Lying the axe between them, the Reverend handed the shotgun to Norville. “The shotgun will be nothing more than a shotgun,” he said. “And it may not kill the thing, but it will be a distraction. You get the chance, shoot the thing with it, otherwise, sit and do not, under any circumstances, step outside this circle. The axe I have written symbols on and it may be of use.”
“Are you sure this circle will keep him out?”
“Not entirely.”
Norville swallowed.
∇
They sat and they listened and the hours crept by. The Reverend produced a flask from his saddle bags. “I keep this primarily for medicinal purposes, but the night seems a little chill, so let us both have one short nip, and one short nip only.”
The Reverend and Norville took a drink and the flask was replaced. And no sooner was it replaced, than a smell seeped into the house. A smell like a charnel house and a butcher shop and an outhouse all balled into one.
“It’s near,” Norville said. “That’s its smell.”
The Reverend put a finger to his lips to signal quiet.
There were a few noises on the outside of the house, but they could have been most anything. Finally there came a sound in the bedroom like wet laundry plopping to the floor.
Norville looked at the Reverend.
Reverend Mercer nodded to let him know he too had heard it, and then he carefully pulled and cocked his revolvers.
The room was dark, but the Reverend had adjusted his eye sight and could make out shapes. He saw that the bedroom door, already partially cracked open, was slowly moving. And then a hand, white and puffy like the leaves of an orchid, appeared around the edge of the door, and fingers, long and stalk like, extended and flexed, and the door moved and a flow of muddy water slid into the room along the floor.
The Reverend felt Norville move beside him, as if to rise, and he reached out and touched his shoulder to steady him.
The door opened more, and then the thing slipped inside the main room. It moved strangely, as if made of soft candle wax. It was dead white of flesh, but much of the skin was filthy with mud. It was neither male nor female. No genitals; down there it was a smooth as a well-washed river rock. It was tall, with knees that swung slightly to the sides when it walked, and there was an odd vibration about it, as if it were about to burst apart in all directions. The head was small. Its face was mostly a long gash of a mouth. It had thin slits for eyes and a hole for a nose. At the ends of its willowy legs were large flat feet that splayed out in shapes like claw-tipped four-leaf clovers.
Twisting and winding
, long stepping, and sliding, it made its way forward until it was close to the Reverend and Norville. It leaned forward and sniffed. The hole that was its nose opened wider as it did, flexed.
It smells us, thought the Reverend. Only fair, because we certainly smell it.
And then it opened its dripping mouth and came at them in a rush.
As it neared the stones, it was knocked back by an invisible wall, and then there came something quite visible where it had impacted, a ripple of blue fulmination. The thing went sliding along the floor on its belly in its own mud and goo.
“The rocks hold,” the Reverend said, and it came again. Norville lifted the shotgun and fired. The pellets went through the thing and came rattling out against the wall on the other side. The hole made in its chest did not bleed, and it filled in rapidly, as if never struck.
Reverend Mercer stood up and aimed one of his pistols, and hit the thing square in the chest, and this time the wound made a sucking sound and when the load came out on the other side, goo and something dark went with it. But it didn’t stop the creature. It hit the invisible wall again, bellowed and fell back. It dragged its way around the circle toward the horse, tied behind the line of stones. The terrified horse reared and snapped its reins as if they were non-existent. The horse went thundering across the line, and then across the circle of stones, causing them to go spinning left and right, and along came the thing, entering the circle through the gap.
The Reverend fired again. The thing jerked back and squealed like a pig. Then it sprang forward again, grabbed the Reverend by the throat and sent him flying across the room, slamming into the side of the frightened horse.
Norville swung the shotgun around and fired right into the thing’s mouth, but it was like the thing was swallowing gnats. It grabbed the gun barrel used it to sling the clutching Norville sliding across the floor, collecting splinters until he came up against the bedroom door, slamming it shut.
