A Fistful of Horror - Tales Of Terror From The Old West (23 page)

I wouldn’t want to be the one that had to decorate, John thought.

Shortly after the curse had begun to spread across the frontier, Campbell had told John that the savages were setting their dead loose in the countryside. Some of the tribes were letting their Great Spirit and the cursed spirits of their brothers come to peace on when to lie down and move on from this world. Campbell had said that the red men had come to believe there was a knife in each man’s brain. If he did evil in this world, the knife made a partial turn inside. Once a man did enough wrong, the knife completed the circle cutting out the man’s life and mind. This left the cursed body to struggle mindless and lifeless through this world alone.

It’s no more ridiculous a notion than believing the ridges are scratched out from Noah’s flood, John thought as watched the dead savages try to pull loose from their stakes to scratch open his belly.

Then, the curse had jumped the Mississippi and began to spread east into the lives of civilized men.

John snapped the reins and brought the horse forward before the savage bodies broke free from their stakes again. He knew if he rode far enough ahead, they would go for the bodies he had left for them in the bushes. Then, they would go for the outpost again.

I’m the problem, John thought as he rode on with his mouth twitching up at the corners. They were coming up to take the bodies. They weren’t following me this time. I got no business in the hellish land. It’s time to finish this.

***

John found the bit of blue cloth hung on the end of the bramble. It could have been from anyone’s clothes. It could have been there from any other time, but it wasn’t. John knew it wasn’t.

He circled his horse around and trotted slowly off the trail through the line of broken stems.

***

John came up behind him as he was crossing the field. He turned his head slightly, but kept moving forward away from John and away from the horse.

John dismounted and whistled.

The creature moaned and lifted its shoulders in response, but still didn’t turn. It still did not stop walking in the opposite direction.

This behaviour disturbed John more than if the cursed man had behaved as cursed men were supposed to behave.

John took the rope and the small bag. He tied the horse’s reins to a felled log as the animal tried to pull away and abandon John at the first opportunity.

“You’re a disloyal beast,” John scolded.

The monster turned its head at the sound of John’s voice and stared. John just stood. He couldn’t look away from the battered face. It was more scarred and weathered than last time he had seen it. The old wounds were still there. They were unhealed and decay had set into the body. The skin was blue now. It had a shiny coating over the exposed surfaces that looked like sweat, but couldn’t be.

It turned back and continued to walk away from John.

“How dare you?” John shouted. “You have the nerve to chew the throat out of my nephew, but you walk away from me like I ain’t tasty enough for you?”

The cursed man kept walking through the tall grass pressing it down in front of him with one bare foot and one boot. John trudged up the new path through the grass after him.

“I’m the one that had to crack his skull in front of his mother while you walked away. Then my mother sends me after you. Look at me when I talk to you, devil!”

The body lumbered through the field without looking back at John who was gaining, but slowly.

“You like being chased, I suppose. You just plan to keep going? If I let you, would you just walk right into the ocean and wade all the way to China? I’m afraid you’re coming back with me, devil.”

John grabbed its shoulder. Now the creature did turn on him. It was still strong for so much dead muscle. It clawed at John with nails that had been broken and turned jagged by whatever business it had been about since he started walking west.

John was jostled back knocking his hat off into the grass as he struggled with the once dead body. John dropped the bag in the grass by his feet too. His gun remained holstered and his stained knife remained sheathed as he held the length of rope in both hands.

John pushed the wrists away as he slipped and turned in the grass trying to circle away from the monster’s hands. It snapped its teeth at John’s fingers.

John’s thumb rubbed across the underside of the stretch of rope. It reopened the deep cut and his blood leaked into the threads of the woven rope.

The body lunged forward and bit down on the rope finally. John twisted around behind it and pulled it down to the ground backward. Its tongue licked up past the rough hue of the rope as it tried to claw up at John’s face again. John drove his knee into its side and twisted the rope. He turned its head and forced it over on to its belly.

As it went, its finger locked over the star on John’s chest and tore the badge loose from his shirt.

John planted both his knees on top of its back as he held the rope with his bleeding hand and pulled the creature’s arms back behind its waist with the other. He shivered as he pulled the length of the rope through the monster’s teeth to bring more of the rough bond around to the other side. The noise of the teeth over the rope made John’s skin crawl.

John was careful to only grab the rope on sections that had not been in its mouth.

He wrapped the wrists and the tied them off in the rancher’s knot that Campbell had shown John a hundred times when they were kids. The hands opened once they were tied and John saw the barb of the badge’s pin driven into the heel of the blue palm. He left it there as he tied the cursed man’s ankles together with the remainder of the rope. One booted foot and one bare, blue foot were locked together.

The body twisted from side to side like a snake as John took the bag and pulled it over the top of its head with the rope still tight through its jaws pulling back the puffy flesh of its lips and cheeks.

He was thankful not to have to look at that weathered, scarred face any longer.

John stared down at the silver star glinting in the dead skin of its pierced and bound hands.

“I guess you wanted that back after all.”

John pulled the star loose and held the fouled barb of the pin out away from his own body. He used the toe of his boot to roll the hooded, tied body over on its back.

John leaned down and carefully pinned the badge through the blue skin in an exposed hole through the blue shirt. The star had originally been pulled off its chest in the struggle that ensued after the boy had his throat bitten out by this monster. John speared through the skin and locked the clasp back without touching it directly.

The star reflected the light again as it hung on the dead skin.

John backed away pressing his sleeve against his mouth and nose trying to block out the crisp, sweet smell of slow decay that he always forgot about until he was in the thick of it again.

“It is yours anyway. I didn’t want it to begin with,” John mumbled through his arm as he stared down at the hood and listened to the teeth grinding and creaking against the rope.

John reached down with his other hand and picked up his hat. He slid it back on his head and pushed the brim down low above his eyes.

“I’m going to get that piss poor horse of yours now,” John explained. “I’m going to throw you over its rump which will probably cause it to buck me off and finally break my neck like it’s been trying to do this whole trip, Campbell. I’m going to take you back to mom and your grieving wife for reasons I can’t possibly understand to lay you to rest next to your son under the oak near the old cabin. If your wife or our mother hadn’t hanged their selves in sorrow by the time we get back, it will be nothing shy of a miracle.”

John stared down at the marshal twisting against his bonds in the bent patch of grass where they had fought. “If I cut you loose, you’d up and leave wouldn’t you? That’s what the California men do best, ain’t it? Even dying doesn’t keep us from running away from family anymore.”

He turned around and walked toward the horse that was bobbing its head and pulling against its reins on the log. He could still hear Campbell stretching and biting against the rope on the ground behind him.

Don’t make it worse trying to fix it.

He could still smell his brother’s wet, putrid flesh.

“You should have shot that mountain lion when we were kids and I should shoot you now.”

THE KNOCK ON THE DOOR

Tim Tobin

The man came at night the first time. Their father heard him ride up and watched him hitch his horse. Herb Welch took his rifle off the mantle and cocked it. When the man knocked, Herb nodded to his eldest daughter Gillian to open the door. She did and the man strode into the house.

The stranger was a large man, six-two or three. His face was weather beaten under a worn hat. His duster showed trail wear of mud and dirt and even some blood. If he had a gun it was inaccessible under the duster. Herb relaxed a bit and eased the hammer down on his rifle.

The man asked if he could spend the night in the barn. He told Herb that he could pay a little or he could do some work in the morning to earn his keep. The rain had not started yet but the evening thunderheads told them that a storm was coming. So Herb agreed and offered the man a cup of coffee.

When Herb turned to set his rifle down the man pulled a small pistol from his pocket and shot Herb in the back, killing him. The girls screamed and Lucy Welch leaped for the rifle. The big man easily swatted her away. Lucy yelled to her daughters, “Run, girls, now!”

Gillian and Ann scrambled over the body of their father and ran from the house. They hid behind the wood pile and waited for the man to chase them. Instead they heard screams from the house. Lucy was crying and begging the man to stop. Her cries went on for hours.

Gillian knew she had to get her baby sister away from the house and the man. She sighed deep inside. Her father was dead and probably her mother too. Ann was now her responsibility and she could not let this monster hurt her. They crept quietly towards the sparse woods near the back of the house.

Hours passed with no sign of the man. Ann finally fell asleep. Gillian dozed even as she tried to remain alert. Dawn finally came and so did the man. He left the house with Herb Welch’s rifle in his hands. He walked around the house obviously looking for the girls.

As quiet a rabbit hiding from a fox, the girls tiptoed back towards the house. They opened the back door when the man walked towards his horse. The door made no sound and Gillian thought her dad must have oiled the squeaky hinge.

Lucy lay on the floor softly moaning. She was naked from her waist down and blood seeped from her and pooled around her legs. Gillian held Ann’s mouth so she would not cry out. Gillian knew the man had her father’s rifle. But she wondered about his pistol.

She inched towards the chest near the bed and opened the top. She rummaged for a moment and found the gun. The Colt was huge in her teenage hand. She checked and it was loaded. She peeked out the window and the man was still tending to his horse. So Gillian cocked the weapon and made her way to the front door.

She watched him make a torch out of some hay and knew he was going to burn the house and her mother. Terror, anger, revenge all swirled inside Gillian as she became a woman on the spot.

She hefted the gun in both hands and signalled for Ann to open the door. Ann’s eyes were wide in panic.

“No! Gilly, please don’t.”

But Gillian nodded impatiently. The man had lit the torch and was walking nonchalantly towards the house. He stopped when the door opened and Gillian walked out with the gun in her hands. This time the man could not reach for his hide away pistol and Gillian shot him the chest.

She cocked the gun again using both hands and walked close to the man. He was lying in the dirt gasping for breath. He tried to speak but no words came out. His right hand inched towards his duster. Gillian stomped on his hand and his moan was almost a scream.

She put the barrel of her huge pistol in his eye and rummaged around his pocket until she found and removed his gun. Gillian stood and told Ann to watch him. She ran back into the house to tend to her mother. But Lucy was clearly dying. Her chest barely moved up and down and her eyes rolled back into her head. Gillian suppressed a tear and knew she could not help her mother.

Outside Ann sat on her haunches carefully watching the murderer. He was dying too but that was not good enough for Gillian. She hitched the wagon and tied his feet to it. The girls climbed aboard and dragged the big man to the top of the hill. Somehow he survived the short ride.

There was a single tree at the top of the hill. Gillian untied the murderer and tossed the rope over a tree branch. She tied one end of the rope to the wagon and she looped the other end around his neck.

The man struggled to speak as he realized what was about to happen. He croaked out a desperate “No!” His eyes were open wide in fear. Gillian looked down at him.

“I know the penalty for murder,” she told him.

She urged the horses forward and the man was slowly pulled up by the neck. He dangled at the end of the rope for a long time strangling to death.