Dead Man’s Hand (36 page)

Like the dragon Fafnir of Germanic legend, the monster suddenly poked its great, grinning
head into the stairwell, darting it forward and back as if it did not know what it
might find waiting there. I held my fire until the nightmare had swung back into the
light of the dying lantern again, its mouth opening as it peered at what must have
been a blinding glare. I pulled the trigger. The Springfield roared, and the monster
jerked back with an answering bellow. I could hear it smashing things at the base
of the stairs, where it could scarcely have room to turn, but instead of the thing
falling dead with a four hundred and five grain bullet in its skull, it began trying
to climb to the landing to destroy the annoying gnat that had just stung its face.
I could see a tattered flap of skin and a crude, bloody hole below its eye, but otherwise
it seemed unmoved by my first shot.

As it got its massive, clawed foot up onto the first few steps, and just as I finished
loading the second cartridge and slammed the breech shut, the stairs cracked and broke
beneath it, canting the creature sideways as it struggled for balance in the wreckage.
I took advantage of its loss of balance and fired again, right into the exposed ribcage.
This time I saw black blood pulsing strongly from the wound, but I also saw that the
injury was by no means fatal. The thing splintered the remains of the steps and a
good deal of the stairwell as it struggled for footing, but even if it couldn’t climb,
it was still tall enough to reach me with those immense, snapping jaws. Before I could
fumble another cartridge into the long rifle, I was snagged by the toothy mouth and
the gun was thrown from my hand. It shook me like a terrier with a rat, smashing me
against the wall, then tossed me down to the first floor, where I landed like a pigeon
full of birdshot.

The deadly beast put one of its massive hind feet on me, pinning me flat and helpless.
I could feel my ribs buckling as the snarling mouth turned sideways and tilted down
toward me, a vast bear trap full of carrion stink, its teeth as big as skinner’s knives,
then suddenly the massive thing grew faint and shadowy. For a moment I thought life
was fleeing me as my organs ceased working, but then, only a few seconds later, the
creature simply vanished, and I was lying by myself in the soft pink light of dawn
as it streamed uninhibited through the shattered wall of the house. With the rising
of the sun, Midsummer’s Day had finally ended.

* * *

Medicine Dance had been lucky—
very
lucky. Despite the extent of the catastrophe, there had been no deaths other than
livestock, though a few other families had suffered damage as great as the Denslows.
Some of the houses had been knocked entirely from their foundations by Dahler’s Leviathans,
huge grazing creatures with serpentine necks that some excited souls swore were almost
a hundred feet long. Determined not to be driven out, even by such bizarre happenings,
the rest of the townsfolk immediately began to rebuild. Everyone chipped in, whether
their own houses had been damaged or not. Even the preacher did his best to help his
flock during this trying time, but everyone could tell that the man’s faith had been
severely tested. (Indeed I later learned that he did not last the year in Medicine
Dance and was gone long before the next summer came, taking himself to Tombstone to
ply his trade, a place whose sins were many and whose problems, though grave, were
more familiar.)

Two days after Midsummer, Mrs. Denslow brought a pitcher of lemonade out to me and
Ned Billinger and the local men who were helping repair her house. As the rest of
the men shared it, she took me aside. We paused in the shade of the very lemon tree
that had supplied the fruit.

“I remember that distracted look from last time, Custos,” she said to me. “You’re
going to be on your way soon. I don’t suppose it would do any good to ask where you’re
headed?”

“I’m afraid not, Ma’am.”

“Will we see you again? I mean, before thirty-nine more years pass?” She smiled sadly.
“Because I don’t suppose I’ll still be around when that happens.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself,” I told her. “You Lymans have a rugged constitution.”

“Which means no. I hope you said goodbye to Catherine. She’s become quite fond of
you.”

I looked out to where Catherine had brought a glass of lemonade to Ned Billinger,
who had taken personal charge of the rebuilding of the Denslow house. “She’s fonder
of him—and that’s the way it should be.”

“I was very taken with you myself, when you were here last.” The old woman wouldn’t
quite meet my eye. “I’d just lost my husband the year before, and I thought you quite
handsome and mysterious.”

“That’s very flattering, Mrs. Denslow.”

Her smile was sad. “But you’re not for the likes of me or even my granddaughter, are
you?”

“No, Ma’am. That’s not why I’m here in this world.”

“I didn’t think so.” She stood on her tiptoes, shy as a little girl, and kissed me
on my cheek. “What cool skin you have!” she said. “Are you the Lost Angel, Custos?
Are you the angel that our mesa was named for? Is that why you don’t change?”

“I’m no angel, Marie.” I don’t know why I called her by her Christian name, the name
I had known her by first, but I did. “I promise you that’s true.”

I bid goodbye to Catherine after supper, then asked Edward Billinger to come with
me while I gathered my things.

“Here’s a list of items I need,” I told him, handing him the list I had drawn up on
brown paper, then I took a bag of gold Liberty dollars from the crate and gave that
to him as well. “Use this to pay for it all.”

“But this is a fortune!” he said. “There must be two or three thousand dollars here!”

“Buy those things for me, then keep the rest to start your life with Catherine.”

He stuttered his thanks, then said, “But what do I do with all these items after I
purchase them? And what on Earth would you want with a Gatling gun? Are you going
to come back for them?”

“Eventually. But you don’t need to worry about that. When you have collected them
all, bring them to the cemetery.”

“The… cemetery?”

“Don’t be frightened—it’s a place I know they’ll be safe. There is a grave not far
from Noah Lyman’s—a stone crypt above the ground. The marker reads ‘C. Denslow’ with
no date. It’s empty. Open the crypt and store the weapons and other supplies there.”

“C. Denslow…” He stared. “Is that you, Custos? Catherine’s grandmother told me she
met you before, long ago. Are you some member of the Denslow family, then, returned
from beyond the grave to protect them from the professor’s ungodly experiment?”

“I swear I am no ghost,” I told him. “Good luck, Edward… Ned. Take good care of Catherine
and her grandmother.”

I left him there, shaking his head, the bag of gold and the piece of brown paper clutched
in his hands like holy relics.

I walked out of town and made my way along the riverbank, looking out over the dry
lands that only a few short days ago had briefly but memorably been an inland sea.
When the darkness began to fall across the valley and I felt sure nobody could see
me, I struck out across the open grassland toward the jut of Lost Angel Mesa. When
I reached the crumbling, rocky butte I began to climb, by ways only I now knew, until
I reached a place high on the side of the mesa, sheltered from view of the town that
had grown so distant below. A row of caves looked out over the valley as they had
for thousands of years—not quite back to the days of the reptiles which we had so
recently visited, but since long before white men had first walked here. Now the caves
were empty, or nearly so, the aboriginal men and women who had lived there long gone.

In the third cave from the left lay the passage that led deep into the Earth. I climbed
down the difficult slope in darkness. I needed no lantern to find my way—I was home
now—but when I reached the bottom, I lit a candle. The machinery was delicate and
I wanted to make certain all was left as it should be when I returned to sleep.

If the high cavern with its odd, nearly silent machines seemed a little strange even
to me, how much stranger would it have seemed to Ed Billinger, Marie, or Catherine,
despite the fact that all the devices had been built by Noah Lyman, the Denslows’
ancestor? I sometimes wondered if Doctor Lyman, who had taught me all I knew and made
me what I am, might himself have wandered to England and then to Medicine Dance from
some farther future—certainly I knew that nothing like his machinery existed anywhere
else, either the device that had originally loosed Medicine Dance from the normal
strictures of space and time or the machinery that enlivened and supported me. But
that was something I doubted I would ever discover. All the information Noah Lyman
had given me was, of course, still with me and always would be, even though the doctor
himself was long dead. But Noah Lyman’s great mistake would never go away, and that
was why I would always be here, too, protecting Medicine Dance and Lyman’s descendants.

I was tired. I could feel the magnets inside me, which ordinarily spun so fast that
I did not even notice their existence, beginning to slow and take on the tiniest bit
of wobble, indistinguishable to anyone but me. It was time.

I opened the vault door in the concrete floor and lowered myself into the coffin-shaped
space there, then stripped off my coat and tie and set them carefully into a cedar
box resting at my feet before taking off my shirt as well. Then I lay back until I
felt the gears in the bottom of the mechanism engage smoothly with the flywheel in
my back. Once in contact, the gears began their slow, delicate winding motion. A few
months would have all my springs back to proper tension again, and then I would lie
waiting, sleepless but not awake, until the time came again for me to rise and do
what Noah Lyman built me to do.

The lid slowly closed above me, leaving me alone in darkness with the sound of my
own slow workings. I had done my job to the best of my abilities, but I would have
time now to consider what I could have done better—what I
would
do better next time, because I knew that no matter what happened in the milder Midsummers
to come, I would be awakened when the thirty-nine year cycle came around again. There
would likely be an entirely new generation of Lymans to protect by then, and perhaps
more. It was not such a long time to wait in the quiet dark, not for something like
me.

I was content.

McCall saw the star fall.

Like a match struck against the hard dome of the sky and then dropped, trailing sparks,
burning out.

It fell slowly, though. Not like other falling stars that were there and gone, mostly
caught out of the corner of the eye. This one wanted to be seen.

For a moment McCall thought it was an angel, but then he blinked his eyes clear and
shook cobwebs from his head.

An angel, maybe
, he thought bitterly,
but if so, then it’s sure damn coming for me with a flaming sword.

He wanted to tell himself that he didn’t deserve fiery justice or burning retribution,
but McCall wasn’t much good at lying to himself. Besides, the light from the falling
star was dropping toward the east—the way he’d come—and by its bright light it wouldn’t
require divine perception to see the truth.

So many bodies. Animal and man. Red and white.

The stink of gunpowder still burned in McCall’s nose. That smell and the death smells.
The copper of blood, the outhouse odor of shit and piss. And, just as the sun set
an hour ago, the first sick-sweet stink of rot. Bodies out here in the Wyoming heat
didn’t wait long before they turned foul.

So many dead.

And at the end of that crooked trail, one last survivor. A guilty man and his blood-streaked
horse, both of them alive by chance or miracle. Alive when they should have been as
dead as everyone else. The last survivors of a massacre, now required to sit and witness
the death of this piece of cosmic rock.

The comet moved slowly across the sky, so big and so bright. Going down in a blaze
of glory, firing its last as it died, declaring itself bold and powerful even while
the world was poised to snuff its fire out.

“Now ain’t that a sight?” McCall asked his horse, a big paint named Bob.

His voice sounded thin even to his own ears. It sounded sick and old.

Old before my time
, he mused, but that wasn’t true, either. A preacher once told him that a man aged
according to what he did, not by how many years he lived. A good man lived forever.

A bad man?

McCall was a short footstep over forty years and felt like he was ninety. Before the
fight—before the
massacre
—he’d felt younger, but that was a relative thing. He couldn’t remember ever feeling
young
. Maybe back in Philadelphia when he was a boy. Before he signed on to guard wagons
heading west. Before he went to work killing red men. Before he began chipping days
or maybe weeks off of his life every time he pulled a trigger.

Weeks or maybe years.

Far above, pieces began breaking off of the comet. Like people jumping out of a burning
building. McCall had seen that once. Way back in Philadelphia when a hotel burned
right down to the ground. People from the top floors jumped out of the windows. They
weren’t trying to escape the flames. Not really. Most of them were already on fire.
They just wanted it to end. They wanted the hard pavement below to punch the suffering
out of them, to get it all over fast so they didn’t have to live through their own
deaths. That was how McCall saw it. People who didn’t have the guts to go all the
way down to the end.

McCall couldn’t understand that. He could never have jumped out of that building.
Death wasn’t a destination he wanted to get to a second or a step sooner than he had
to. No, sir. When his time came to go into the big dark, then he was going to fight
every step of the way. It wouldn’t be cowardly kicking and screaming, either. Jonah
McCall was going to make death come for him. He’d make death work for it, earn it,
sweat over it.