Deadman's Crossing (8 page)

“They climbed up on the stage and looked in the window a few
times, and I struck at one of them, missed. The thing almost swatted me with that hairy arm, those big claws, then there was pink
light through the window, and it went silent outside. I considered
coming out, but couldn’t. I was too frightened. I was exhausted
too. More than I realized. I dreamed I was awake. I had no idea I
had fallen asleep until you came. Good thing I dropped my umbrella while I slept, otherwise you would have found it in your
ribs, your eye, someplace.”

Jebidiah picked up the umbrella and looked at it. It was ragged
and broken in spots, tipped with wood. He touched it with his
fingers. Oak. He gave it to her. “The tip is sharp,” he said.

“I broke it off some time ago. Never did get another.”

“Good thing,” Jebidiah said. “The broken tip made a good
weapon.”

Mary looked at the window. “It’s growing dark. We need to
leave this town.”

Jebidiah shook his head. “No. I have to be here. But you should
leave. I’ll even give you my horse to do it.”

“I don’t know why you have to stay, that’s your business, but
I won’t lie. I’m ready to go. And I’ll tell you, I was just lucky. I
think the daylight ran them. Had it been earlier in the night,
I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be some turd, digested and
dropped on a hill somewhere, maybe drawing flies in an alley. I’ll
take you up on that horse, mister. But I’d like to do it now. And
I’m telling you, you damn sure don’t need to be here afoot. Or on
horseback, or in a stage, or no kind of way. You need to ride on
out with me.”

“I’ll leave when my job is done.”

“What job?”

“His job...God.”

“You some kind of preacher?”

“Some kind.”

“Well, sir, that’s your business if you say so. I don’t pray to God
much. He ain’t never answered any of my prayers.”

“I don’t know that he’s answered anyone’s,” Jebidiah said.

Darkness was edging into the street when Jebidiah and Mary left
the hotel, began to walk briskly toward the barn. The oppressive
humidity was gone, and now there was a chill in the air. By the
time they reached the livery and Jebidiah had saddled his horse,
the night had slipped in smooth and solid.

Outside the livery, leading the horse, Jebidiah looked toward
the woods that lay beyond the town, saw that they were holding
thick shadows between leaves and limbs.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Mary said. “I’ve waited too long.
Bad enough it’s dark, but me out there without anyone to help,
damn if I will. I’d rather stay here till morning. Provided I’m here
in the morning.”

“You are probably right,” Jebidiah said. “It wouldn’t be good
for you to go now. It’s best to go back to the hotel.”

They started back down the street, Jebidiah leading his horse,
and as they went, a kind of dark cloud fled out of the woods and
covered the quarter moon and fell on the town and came apart,
shadows skittering in all directions.

“What in hell is that?” Mary said.

“The mantle of darkness,” Jebidiah said, and picked up his
pace. “It sometimes comes when a place is full of evil.”

“It’s cold.”

“Odd, isn’t it? Something from the devil, from the bowels of
hell, and it’s cold.”

“I’m scared,” Mary said. “I don’t normally scare up easy, but
this shit is making my asshole pucker.”

“Best not to think about being scared,” Jebidiah said. “Best to
think about survival. Let’s get back to the hotel.”

When they got to the hotel it was full of ghosts.

Jebidiah tried to lead his horse inside. It pulled at the reins, not
wanting to enter.

“Easy, boy,” Jebidiah said to the horse, stroked its nose, and
the horse settled down, slightly. Jebidiah continued to soothe
the horse as he and Mary watched the ghosts move about. There
were many ghosts and they seemed not to notice Jebidiah and
Mary at all. They were white and thin as clean smoke, but were
identifiable shapes of cowboys and whores, and they moved across
the floor and into the stalls. Women hiked their ghostly dresses,
and ghostly men dropped their trousers and entered them. The
bartender behind the bar walked up and down its length. He
reached and took hold of bottles that were not bottles, but shapes
of bottles that could be seen through. At a piano a ghostly presence
sat, hatless, in striped shirt and suspenders, all of which could be
seen through. The ghost moved his hands over keys that didn’t
move, but the player seemed to move as if he heard the music. A
few cowboys and whores were dancing about to the lively tune
that was heard by them, but not the living.

“My God,” Mary said.

“Funny how he always gets mentioned,” Jebidiah said.

“What?”

“Nothing. Don’t fear these. They can’t hurt you. Most of them
don’t even know you’re here.”

“Most?”

“They are spirits of habit. They do this over and over. It was
what they were doing, or wanted to do before they died. But that
one—”

Jebidiah pointed to a ghostly, but much more distinct shape
sitting in a chair against the far wall. He was a stubby cowboy in a
big ghostly hat. He was almost solid, but the wall and the furniture
could be seen through him. “He knows we’re here. He sees us as we
see him. He has been here a while. He has begun to accept his death.”

At that statement, the ghostly figure Jebidiah referred to,
rose and crossed the room toward them, walking, but not quite
touching the floor.

Mary moved toward the door.

Jebidiah grabbed her arm. “Best not. The street will be a far less
welcome place shortly, perhaps already. There’s more out there
than an oppressive cloud.”

“Will he hurt us?” Mary asked.

“I don’t think so.”

The ghost sauntered toward them, and as he neared, he showed
a lopsided grin, stopped, stood directly in front of Jebidiah. Beside
him, Mary shook like a leaf in a high wind. Jebidiah’s horse tugged
at the reins, Jebidiah pulled the horse forward slightly, glanced at
it. Its visible eye rolled in its head. “Easy, boy,” Jebidiah said to the
horse, then turned to the ghost, said, “Can you speak?”

“I can,” said the spirit, and the voice was odd, as if it were
climbing up to them from the bottom of a deep, dark well.

“How did you die?”

“Must I answer that?”

“You are bound to answer nothing at all, or anything you wish,”
Jebidiah said. “I have no control over you.”

“I want to pass on,” the ghost said, “but for some reason, I cannot. I am here alone, because the others, they don’t know they’re
dead. This town, it holds us. But I seem to be the only one that
knows what has happened.”

“Evil has claimed it,” Jebidiah said. “When that happens, all
manner of things can occur. Not always the same, but always evil.
You have decided to embrace the truth, they have not. But in time,
they must.”

“I’m not evil. I’m just a cowpoke that got dead.”

“The evil is what’s holding you,” Jebidiah said.

The cowboy nodded. “Them.”

“The hairy ones,” Mary said.

“Yes, the hairy ones,” the ghost said. “What they did left me in
this place. There are other places, places I would like to move to, but
I can’t, and it’s because of them, who they are and what they are.”

“It’s the way you died,” Jebidiah said. “You are caught in one
of God’s little jokes.”

The ghost twisted its head to the side like a curious dog.

“What kind of joke?” the cowboy said, “because I assure you, I
don’t find it all that funny.”

“And, in time, you will find it less and less humorous, and then
you will get angry, and then you will react, and your reactions will
not be of the best nature.”

“I have no intent of haunting anyone,” said the ghost.

“Time and frustration turns the spirit dark,” Jebidiah said.
“But I can help you pass on.”

“You can?”

“I can.”

“Then do it, for Christ’s sake.”

“The evil must be destroyed.”

“Do it.”

“I would ask a small favor of you, first.”

“Of me?”

“Tell me about this town. What happened to you. If I know
about it, I can fight what’s here, and I can help you pass on. That
is my promise.”

“Oh, you can’t fight what’s here. Soon, you and her will be like
me.”

“Perhaps,” Jebidiah said.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Mary said.

“First things first,” Jebidiah said. “I don’t want to stand here
with my horse and my back against the door.”

“Understood,” said the ghost.

Jebidiah found a big room, a kind of sitting room, and that was
where he put his horse, fed it grain that he poured out onto the
hardwood floor. Then, as the ghost watched, he pushed a long
cabinet across the doorway and pulled the curtains on the window.
He and Mary took a seat on a kind of settee that was before the
large window with the pulled curtains. There was no light inside,
and Jebidiah did nothing to find one, though oil lamps stood
out from the wall in brass fixtures. They sat in the dark, it being
nothing to the ghost. Jebidiah and Mary’s eyes adjusted in time,
enough to make out shapes, and, of course the ghost was forever
constant, white and firm.

Once seated, the Reverend pulled both his revolvers and laid
them on his thighs. Mary sat tight against him. The ghost took a
chair as he might have in real life. He pulled a ghostly chaw from
his pocket and put it in his jaw. The room grew darker and the
night grew more still.

“There’s no taste,” the ghost said after a few jaw movements.
“It’s just the idea of a chaw. It’s there, and I can put it in my mouth,
but it’s like the liquor the bartender serves, it’s not really there.
Thing that makes me feel a bit better about that is the fact the
money I pay him, it ain’t there either. Ain’t nothing really there
but my urges.”

“So the bartender knows you’re here?” Jebidiah said.

“Sometimes. Sometimes not.”

“I’m sure it is a misery,” Jebidiah said. “But now, if I’m to help
you, help us. I feel that we are short of time. Already the street is
full of the night, and the great shadow lays heavy on the town. I
can taste it when I breathe.”

“You talk funny.”

“I was educated funny.”

The ghost nodded. “That shadow comes down on the town
before they do. It comes, they are not far behind. When they show
up, that’s at the beat of twelve,” and with that the ghost nodded
toward a big grandfather clock in the near corner of the room,
“that’s when things get hairy, so to speak.”

Jebidiah struck a match and leaned it in the direction of the
clock. It said seven p.m.

“Then we have some time,” Jebidiah said, shaking out the match.

“So maybe we can and should get out of town now,” Mary said.

The ghost shook its head. “Nope. You don’t want to go out
there. They don’t get serious until midnight, but being out in the
street, under that big ole shadow, that ain’t the place to be. The
things to worry about the most ain’t gonna be here for awhile, but,
still, there’s things out there under and in that shadow, and you
don’t want no part of that. I’m dead, and I don’t want no part of it.
And besides, time ain’t the same here. Take a look at the clock.”

Jebidiah struck another match, held it up. The clock had moved
a full fifteen minutes. Jebidiah shook out his match.

“It’s messed up,” Mary said.

The ghost shook its head.