Old Broken Road

by Alexander, K. M.

  It was larger now. A tan arm flopped out limply, a knee covered by faded blue trousers rose from the blackness. Someone was inside it! It had taken one of my people!

  I shuddered involuntarily and bit down on my cheek to keep myself in the moment. Keep myself from going into that gray zone of mindless action.

  Please, not Sam!

  Not again.

  I thought of Hannah, of Tin, and of Shaler. And of older faces, faces that still haunted me, lurking on the edge of memory.

  I bit down harder on my cheek. The pain flared brighter, but I remained focused.

  We follow it. Whatever happens, don’t expose us.

  My breath came out in a huff and I watched as the creature pulled itself backwards, awkwardly entering the Big House and disappearing into the gloom. There was no way it was keeping my people in there. We had searched that building high and low earlier that morning, left no room unturned. There was no sign of Hannah or that creature. Where did it go when it was inside?

  I waited a moment. Two. Move! Something inside screamed at me. It has one of your people! Are you going to lay there and let it take them?

  I was.

  I remained motionless.

  We wait. Moving immediately would reveal everything. It was agonizing, but waiting would give Taft and I enough space to follow at a distance. If it entered through the Big House that meant it left by some other means.

  Finally, I could wait no longer. I rolled down from my barricade and landed in a crouching position, the Judge in my hand. A sharp pain flared in my knee, reminding me I was still hobbled. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except my people.

  I moved towards the laager as fast as I could. All I wanted to do was check on them, make sure they were all right.

  I burst past the tarpaulin near Taft’s chuckwain.

  Samantha lay in her bedroll. I exhaled and slumped backward against a barrel. She was safe. I felt at once relieved and guilty. If she was still here, someone else was missing.

  Wensem had taken first watch on the east side of the square. Range and Chance were second shift. Chance was curled up tightly next to Shaler’s prairiewain. The bedroll next to his was empty.

  Range.

  Taft materialized at my side. Her voice was muffled by the mask but the emotion in her voice was evident. “Did you see that thing?”

  I nodded, and swallowed the lump in my throat.

  “Who did it take?”

  “Range,” I said. My voice cold.

  A familiar numbness took over. My panicked breathing eased slightly. An emotionless void that dwelled deep inside me rose up. It filled my chest and calmed my nerves. I felt it before. First in a police station in Lovat, then in the tunnels below the city, and most recently outside Methow. Now it emerged again.

  Air rushed through the mask as I inhaled deeply and checked the chambers of the Judge.

  The Big House loomed large in the dark night. Somewhere inside was the town’s tormentor. Somewhere inside was that thing.

  I motioned with the barrel, pointing it at the wide open doors of the house.

  Taft’s eyes narrowed behind the mask.

  It was time to move in.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE INSIDE OF THE BIG HOUSE WAS EVEN DARKER THAN THE TOWN SQUARE. We moved in slowly, creeping along carefully, hoping the old flooring wouldn’t squeak. The ticking of a clock echoed from somewhere inside. My heart pounded, my breath a roar as I sucked air through the mask. I held the Judge out before me, partly for defense and partly because I was worried I’d smack into a wall.

  The interior oil lamps had been extinguished for the evening and it was hard to navigate the hallway. The first few rooms in the south end of the building were meeting rooms. Narrow slivers of light cut in from outside, revealing enough to make it clear that both were empty.

  “Think it’s still in here?” whispered Taft through the mask, her voice cracking.

  “Where else could it go?”

  Taft moved next to me, the snub-nosed shotgun looking tiny in her hands. We crept along, making our way deeper into the old building.

  A loud scrape followed by a thundering boom caused both of us to jump.

  “What was that?” Taft hissed.

  I shook my head. “It sounded like it came from deeper inside the house. Towards the back…”

  I hadn’t spent too much time in the Big House. I wished Wensem was with us. He and Range had searched it twice looking for Hannah, and he would know the interior layout.

  Something else haunted me. About a third of the town slept here. That left us with a lot of potential suspects, and top of my list was the shady sheriff.

  Sweat ran down into my eyes and I wished I could remove the mask and wipe it away but I was too worried about the gas. Who knew how long it hung in the air?

  “We can’t go banging around in here,” I said. “We need a light.”

  “One second, boss,” said Taft and she disappeared back the way we came. She returned with a small lantern cranked to about half its brightness. In the gloom of the interior the light was meager but it let us see where we were going.

  I lead the way, moving down a hallway that lead to the windowless interior rooms. The walls were a stained gray and were lined with black and white photographs in modest frames. The gray gas hung around the floor, so thick that it obscured our feet.

  The Big House was comprised of a central staircase with a single hallway that encircled it on each floor. Clustered in the center of the building were small rooms, now used as bedrooms for families. Along the north and south ends were larger rooms with windows that faced outward. I knew the council occupied the rooms at the back, though I wasn’t sure about the rooms on the floors above. Storage? More bedrooms?

  In the interior rooms we found citizens of Methow fast asleep in their beds, chests rising and falling beneath their covers. Eyes shut but moving behind their lids as they dreamt the awful dreams that came with the night. Occasionally one would move or moan and Taft and I would start, our hearts hammering.

  We moved to the exterior rooms along the house’s north side. This was where the sheriff, mayor, and the two council members slept. Each had individual rooms.

  We opened the door marked “Mayor” and found the old man in bed making mewling noises. His knuckles were pale as he clutched the threadbare blankets. Across from his bed was a dresser with a cracked mirror. A few chairs sat next to a small table along the windows that ran the length of the living space. Piles of yellowing papers covered every available surface, collecting dust, curling in the corners. The strong smell of urine penetrated even our gas masks.

  I moved quietly inside and tried to rouse the man but he didn’t wake.

  “This stuff is stronger than I expected,” said Taft.

  We proceeded to the next room. A small plaque on the door read “Sheriff.”

  Taft pushed it open. The room was laid out much like the mayor’s: the bed, the dresser with a mirror. But the bed hadn’t been slept in. The big maero wasn’t here.

  “He’s gone!” I nearly shouted.

  Anger filled me.

  The sheriff was involved. He could even be the thing that took Range.

  We began to hurriedly toss the room, looking for an exit, a trapdoor, anything that writhing mass could have escaped through. The windows of the room were boarded shut and heavily reinforced. No light leaked in from outside. I rolled up the ancient carpet but found only solid floor beneath. We moved furniture, checked under chairs, looking for something, anything.

  We found nothing. If the monster used the sheriff’s room as an escape point, it had done so through means we wouldn’t be able to follow.

  “Not here,” I said, a harshness creeping into my voice. “Come on.”

  Councilwoman Eustis’s room was next to the sheriff’s but it was also silent and undisturbed. The small dimanian woman didn’t wake when we tried to rouse her. Still, we checked for exits and found none.

  “Maybe it went
upstairs?” suggested Taft, her voice louder now. I hoped not. With all our banging around the creature would certainly have heard us by now.

  “One more room and then we head up there,” I said, pushing open the door to Councilman Boden’s room.

  His bed was empty.

  I turned and looked at Taft, my eyes wide. Her expression mirrored my own.

  “Boden!” I hissed.

  The frail old man in the hood with the gloved hand who lurked in the shadows of the Big House.

  His room was much like the others. The large bed dominated one wall. A dresser the opposite. Unlike the others, though, the windows were blackened and in the space normally occupied by a table squatted a black ornate trunk with golden slats and gold pictograms painted in patterns on its surface. Scratch marks marred the floor around it.

  I pointed at the trunk and Taft and I struggled to push it to the side. It was heavy. Finally it gave and slid across the ancient wooden floor with a loud scraping sound.

  A neat hole about two feet by two feet was cut into the floor below. A tunnel dropped straight down, disappearing in a shroud of black. It was clear the passage was used frequently. The edges of the wood were worn smooth.

  “Too small for me,” said Taft. “Here.”

  She handed me the lamp and I tried to shine it down. There was a floor down there, barely visible. I guessed it was about a ten foot drop. I wasn’t sure which direction it went from there.

  “How far you think it goes?” Taft asked.

  “No idea.” I wasn’t relishing the thought of moving underground again, nor of dropping the ten feet. My knee wouldn’t appreciate it.

  “Here, lower me down,” I said, attaching the lamp to my belt and sitting on the edge of the hole. I glanced down into the dark and then extended my arms toward Taft.

  She gripped my forearms, lowering me, and I dropped the last few feet to the floor. Taft’s bulk blocked the hole above me. Her masked face peered down, the glass lenses reflecting my lamp light. They looked like a pair of dim orange suns.

  I looked around. I was in a small chamber about six feet by six feet, a tunnel branching off northeast towards the mountains. I explained what I was seeing up to Taft.

  “Has to come out somewhere. I’ll circle around and meet you wherever you come out.”

  “How will you find me?” I asked.

  “You have a bright lamp.”

  I grinned and nodded, watched Taft’s face disappear from the opening. It’d take her a while to circle the town and find the end of the tunnel, so I leaned against the wall of the vertical shaft and caught my breath before heading down the tunnel.

  Certainly a part of me knew how idiotic this was. I had seen the writhing mass take my people. Its movements were part physical and part liquid. My movements, on the other hand, were hobbled. How would I be able to stop it? I doubted that even a heavy caliber revolver like my Judge would do much to the creature.

  My hands were shaking. The numbness that welled up previously was fading. I looked down at my hands and willed them to be still but they ignored me.

  I took a few deep breaths. Hannah was out there and now Range as well. I had to help them. That was my duty. I wouldn’t let it take any more people. It ended tonight. Here.

  After a few moments, I began to hobble forward. The ceiling was low, and I moved with my back bent. The lamp did little to light the way ahead and sometimes I jostled myself to one side to avoid hitting a gnarled root or the occasional stone.

  The tunnel stretched on for what felt like miles. A few times I had to rest and catch my breath. After what seemed like two hours of my awkward scrambling it began to slope upwards. Soon after, I found myself outside. I was at the base of a huge fir tree, standing in a waist-deep hole.

  Drag marks were etched into the ground running from the hole and leading north. They disappeared a few feet beyond the exit where the underbrush began. I wished I had Hannah's help. Her tracking skills.

  I looked around, trying to get my bearings.

  I was on a steep hillside, in a forest. Thick bushes and narrow trees rose up around me. To the south I could see the last of the torches burning around the town. The gray fog seemed to have disappeared. I cranked the light of the little lamp and moved around the tree hoping Taft would be able to spot it among the bushes. I waited, grateful for the rest.

  Taft found me about half an hour later.

  Sweat soaked her shirt, darkening the fabric around her neck, down her back. Her chest heaved in heavy breaths.

  “Lucky I found you!” she panted, leaning up against the tree.

  “You okay?”

  I set the lamp on the ground and stretched, feeling my spine pop. I tried my best to brush off the dirt that found its way into my shirt and trousers.

  “Can’t… remember the last time… I ran like that,” Taft said, her voice a muffle behind the gas mask. “Especially uphill. And in this damned mask.”

  I smirked and motioned with the Judge. “There are drag marks leading north.”

  “Isn’t that where the old mine used to be?” She tried to peer above the trees.

  “Yeah. According to the sheriff, it’s somewhere up here.”

  We moved uphill between lodgepole pines, picking our way through bramble thickets that had lodged themselves between the skinny trees. Looking over my shoulder, I realized the dense growth blocked any view of Methow.

  “Think it’s safe to remove our masks?” Taft asked.

  I shrugged.

  “It’s getting hard to breathe in this thing. If I keel over, just let me lie,” she said pulling the mask free and inhaling deeply. We waited for a moment. When she didn’t topple, her face broke into a grin. “By the Firsts, real air feels good.”

  I pulled off my mask as well and inhaled my first breath of clean air in what felt like days. I also realized that the stink of the Forest hadn’t traveled this far up the mountainside. It tasted crisp and sweet. Like home. The scent of the road. The fresh smell of pine and the rich earthy scent of moss.

  “How far do you think we are from Methow?” I asked.

  Taft shrugged and looked over her shoulder to the town. “Three or so miles, I guess.”

  It was hard to believe I was in the tunnel that long.

  We continued to move north up the side of the valley. We didn’t see any other sign of the creature on the forest floor. No broken branches. No trails cut into the pine needles that scattered below our feet. Nothing.

  “This thing is tough to track,” I admitted. Taft said nothing.

  It was probably another mile before the forest began to thin and we came upon a clearing. A small church with a crooked steeple occupied most of the space. It leered away from us like a brawler with a puffed up chest. Its roof was bent and twisted awkwardly.

  The little building was thirty or so feet square and butted up against the steep slope behind it. The northwest corner of the building was buried up to its roof in what looked to be landslide. Thorny raspberry bushes and saplings grew out of the piled dirt.

  “It’s a wonder that it’s still standing,” I said.

  We moved closer and took stock of the church, hunkering behind an abandoned, decaying wain. Long rows of stacked firewood covered in a gray lichen lay between the trees, slowly rotting away.

  The steeple leaned over the roof, stooping like an old man with a bent back. A faded sign of hand-painted red letters above the entrance read “Kadath Chape”, the “L” missing. No other adornment marked the building.

  “Part of the mine,” Taft said.

  I nodded. If the mayor or sheriff were to be believed, somewhere behind that landslide was the Kadath Mine and that massive headframe we saw from Methow. I tried to spy the tower, but it was hard to see over the steep slope and through the trees.

  “Come on,” I whispered, dimming the lamp. “Let’s check it out.”

  We moved at a hunched walk past the wain and towards the little church.

  The soft pine needles silenced
our approach. The building faced the southeast. Its front entrance was a yawning, toothless mouth. I spied the double doors lying about thirty yards away near the clearing’s edge.

  “I don’t like approaching it from this direction,” I said and lead Taft around to the side unaffected by the landslide. Three windows missing their glass peered out above us from the clapboard siding. We huddled below them. Sounds of movement came from somewhere inside.

  My heart seized.

  There was no lamp lit but we could hear more movement now. A shuffle. A quiet clatter. Whoever was in there was working in darkness.

  “There is someone inside,” Taft hissed.

  I nodded and tapped a finger to my lips and crouched even lower.

  I turned the lamp down to a mere ember.

  Better to remain unnoticed for now.

  A light rain began to fall, pattering on the metal roof of the small church. It would give our movements some cover.

  More clanks. The sound of metal scraping on something. A grunt.

  Boden was probably in the church, probably the sheriff as well. At least one of them was that thing. We might surprise them, but I didn’t relish the idea of charging through the front door. Maybe I could come in from one side and then have Taft go around the other.

  It was dangerous.

  Whoever was in the church began humming Father Armstrong’s “Life is So Peculiar.”

  I took one last deep breath, steadying myself.

  Ready or not, here I come.

  I placed my hands together, making a hoisting motion to Taft. The windows were a few feet above me and I needed a leg up. If Taft could hoist me, I could spring in through the window and surprise whoever was inside. I tucked the Judge into my waistband and readied myself to be lifted. Taft knotted her fingers and I placed a boot into her meaty hands.

  She grunted quietly, bending with her knees.

  I rose upward, pulling myself up when I could and stepping onto the window’s frame. In one fluid motion, I stood, cranked the lantern, and held it out, lighting the interior of the church in a blaze of orange light.