Deadman's Crossing (9 page)

Jebidiah said, “The devil’s time is different from mine and
yours.” Jebidiah turned to the ghost. “Do you have some helpful
advice for us? I believe we could use any you might possess, and
considering your situation, you are bound to have experiences that
we do not.”

“And if you’re lucky,” said the ghost, “you’ll never have them.
Let me tell you, this ain’t no dosey-do, being dead, being hung up
between here and wherever.”

The ghost paused for a moment, as if gathering his energies,
and in fact, he seemed to become brighter, more solid, and as he
did, he leaned forward and told his story.

“My name was Dolber Gold, but everyone called me Dol when I
was alive. Me and all these cowboys and whores once lived in, or
worked in, or passed through, this town. And this here establishment, which could be called a kind of house of pleasure, a sure
enough Gentleman’s Hotel, minus the goddamn gentleman, was
always packed and full of piano music and dancing, and if you’ll
pardon me, ma’m, the riding of asses and the drinking of liquor.”

“Mine has been ridden plenty,” Mary said. “I’m a working girl.
So no begging your pardon is necessary.”

“I thought as much,” Dol said, “and I mean that with no disrespect. My favorite women were always of the loose nature, and
I respect the job they do and the pleasure they give. And if I were
able, I’d be glad to lay coins down to buck a bit with you.”

“Tell your story,” Jebidiah said.

“The hairy ones,” Dol said. “That’s your problem.”

Dol nodded at the grandfather clock. “Go outside now you’ll be
covered in a kind of sickness, a feeling that will make you weak.
It’s them a’comin’. There’s bad things in that shadow in the street,
but it ain’t nothing to what’s gonna be here when that clock hits
high midnight.”

“You’ve said as much,” Jebidiah said, throwing a glance at the
clock. His eyes had adjusted enough he could make out the fact
that the hands had moved again. Another fifteen minutes. There
were still time, but it was best to be prepared, and have time to do
it. Dol was as chatty as a squirrel, and nowhere near on point.

“Me and some of the boys got liquored up and rode out to the
old graveyard for some fun. I didn’t have no respect, ’cause I was
full of rotgut to the gills. We rode out there with bad intentions.
Graveyard there is what used to be for all them folks settled here,
but there was graves older than that on top of the hill, lost in
amongst the trees. And it was said Conquistadors come through
here, gave trouble to the Indians. Story went that they come
through this part of East Texas, up the Sabine River, searching for
gold. Course, wasn’t none. But they searched anyway. These woods,
deep as they are now, were deeper then, and there was things in
there from times before we know’d about time. Conquistadores
began to die out, and the six that was left, they camped here abouts,
and in the night, a hairy one came. Maybe he was an Indian. Who
knows? The Indians tell the story. But he was hairy and he came
into the center of them and killed the lot of them, tore them up.
Their bones were left to rot on the hill. But Indians said them
Conquistadores, ever full moon, gathered flesh and hair on their
bones, and come into camp searching for food and fun killin’.
It was said this thing that killed them had passed along a piece
of himself to them, making them like him. Wolves that walked
like men. Indians finally captured these six and even the original
hairy one, who they claimed came from some hole in the ground,
came up to plague man and spread evil. But they captured them
somehow, and buried them deep and pinned them to the ground.”

“Pinned them?” Jebidiah said.

“Comin’ to that,” Dol said. “So me and my buddies, we thought
it might be fun to dig up them old graves. We wasn’t worried
about no curse, but we figured there might be something inside
them graves worth somethin’, if it was no more than just a look.
Armor, maybe. Swords. Might even have been something in there
worth a few dollars. Truth is, we didn’t figure there really was
no Conquistadores buried there. But, you get bottle smart when
you’ve drunk enough, and we’d drunk enough, and we rode up
there and found some old unmarked mounds at the top of the hill,
trees and vines grown up on and around them. There was a big
old stick, like a limb, stuck down in one of the mounds. It looked
fresh, like it had just been put there.”

“What kind of limb?” Jebidiah asked.

“What?”

“What sort of wood was it?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I think it was hickory or something like
that.”

“Oak?”

“Could have been,” Dol said. “I ain’t for certain, but I sure wish
I could remember, and maybe figure on what kind of trees grew
around there and the name of all the plants and birds and such.
What is wrong with you fella? Who gives a shit?”

“My guess is it was oak,” Jebidiah said. “Like the tip of Mary’s
umbrella.”

The ghost just looked at him.

“Never mind,” Jebidiah said. “Go on with your story.”

“Tim, he’d brought some shovels and he passed them out, and
we started digging. I remember we come to this stick in the ground,
a stick carved on with symbols and such, and I pulled it out and
tossed it, and, well, drunk like we was, we didn’t last too long. But
before we passed out, we did make some progress on one of them
mounds, enough to open it. But I don’t remember much about
that. Next thing I knowed, I was on my back looking up at the full
moon shining down through the trees. I got up on one elbow, and
that’s when I seen it. It was the grave we had dug into. There was a
hairy arm pushing up out of the ground, and then this long snout
sheddin’ dirt, and then this thing pulled its way out of the hole and
wobbled up there on the edge of the grave. It was about seven feet
tall. It was like a wolf, only it had a long snout and ten times the
teeth. Them teeth hung out and twisted ever which way, and tall as
it was, it was still bent some, and its paws was tipped out with long,
shiny claws. But the eyes, that was the worst. They was as yellow
as old custard, except when they rolled, ’cause then they showed a
kind of bloody white around them.

“I tried to get up. But I couldn’t move at first. Drunk and scared
like I was, kind of going in and out of being awake. This thing
bent over and started digging in the ground, and pretty soon it was
tearing at the dirt and tossing it all over the place. It didn’t seem
to take no time at all before it had dug into a hole and pulled out
another stick like that one I pulled, and then up come another of
them things, and he went on to do this time and again, and I tried
to get up, tried to shake one of my buddies awake, but he wouldn’t
budge. Got my gun out and shot at it, but it ignored me. It just
went on getting them others out of the ground until there were six.
Well, even drunk like I was, by this time I knew I wasn’t having no
dream, and I was scared sober.

“One of them things picked up one of my buddies by the ankle,
held him up high and bit into his head, started slurping at the
brain. Well, I’ll tell you, I was up then and running. I heard one
of my buddies scream up there on the hill, then after that I was
running so fast through the trees, getting hit in the face by limbs
and such, I didn’t hear nor notice nothing. It come to me that I
might have been better to have grabbed up my horse, but I don’t
remember if it was even around no more. Good as it was about
being trained to stand, I had either forgotten it, or it had run off at
first sight of that thing comin’ out of the ground.

“I ran and I ran, thought I was making pretty good time and
doing well, then I seen a shadow moving through the woods, and
pretty soon it was everywhere. It made me feel sick and weak,
like I’d walked into a cloud of poison. Then there was these other
shadows that come out of the darker shadow, and they moved, and
they changed, took shape. It was them hairy things, kind of wolf-like they were. I got my brains back for a moment, started firing
my six gun, but it wasn’t doing no good. I’d have done about as
much good to try and stop them by peeing on them. But I didn’t
even have that kind of ammunition, having already peed all over
myself from being so scared. And I guess, since I’ve gone this far,
got to say I messed myself too. I was so scared my goosebumps had
goosebumps.

“I ran and ran, then come to a break in the woods, climbed to
the top of a hill, and then I heard them growl, and they was on
me. It happened faster than you can skin your foreskin back for a
soapin’.

“But they didn’t kill me. Not right off. They slapped me around,
bit on me some. Finally one of them threw me over his shoulder
like I was a sack of taters, carried me off. I tell you, I was one scared
cowpoke. Didn’t know if they was gonna eat me or stick their
peckers in my asshole. What they did was carry me to the woods
and they brought me back to where we had been, up the top of the
graveyard. As they carried me I tried to take note of things, see
where I was goin’, thinking maybe I stayed alert I had a chance.
But there wasn’t no chance. They got to the graveyard, they threw
me down and one of them stood there with his big paw on my
chest, the claws cutting into me like knives, and the others took
to digging. Down on their knees, digging like dogs, or wolves, or
whatever they was, and soon they had a big hole dug out and they
pulled this big run of bones out of the ground, and yanked a long,
carved stick out of between its forehead, which wasn’t nothin’ but
a skull, and while I’m lookin’, I seen the moonlight come down
on that head and I seen that hole in the head seal up, then I seen
flesh start to run over them bones, and then I seen it get pink with
blood and the chest start to breathe, and then hair started to grow,
in patches at first, then finally all over, and when it was thick as
wild prairie grass, the thing sat up, and finally stood up. It was a
male, that was obvious. Male like all the others, cause the thing
that let me know they was all male was hanging out for all to see,
long as a razor strap, thick as my ankle. And then it looked right
at me.

“Well now, this is the ugly part, and I start to almost feel
humanly sick when I think about it, even though I’m deader than
Custer and his whole outfit. Still feel the fear, dead or not, thinking
back on it. This thing, it come at me slow and easy, pulled its lips
back on that long old snout and showed me all them teeth, and I
went to screamin’, just like a little girl who’s seen a spider. And
boy, that thing liked that. It pulled those lips back even more and
spit started dripping off its teeth, and then it crouched like, and
finally I realized I was screamin’, cause at first I was just doin’ it,
not knowing I was, you know, and I heard the quality of it, and I
thought, well, ‘You go to hell,’ I ain’t screamin’ another sound. And
I shut my mouth and went quiet and made to go like a man...only,
I didn’t. He started to move fast then, a funny kind of move, like
some of the moves was left out, and then just before he had me his
pecker got stiff, like he was gonna do some business, and maybe he
was I thought, and I screamed again. Big and loud and I couldn’t
stop till he stopped me, his teeth in my throat. I don’t remember
much after that, but the next thing I knowed I was here in this
hotel, and thinkin’ I’d dreamed. But I couldn’t get nobody to see
me. And then gradually, there was more spirits like me, ’cause that
cloud come through the street every night, and then them wolves
would come. Kind of folded out of the shadows. Caught everyone
here eventually. Before they did, they once got trapped in the old
hotel across the street. The real hotel. And the folks in the town
burned it down. And them things, they come out of there afire,
their hair and flesh growing back fast as bullets fly. They went
on a rampage, and then there wasn’t no one left in this town but
ghosts, like me. They took to eating horses and cats and rats and
dogs, whatever stray animal might wander in. After that, there
wasn’t nothing. And then they kept coming around. Kept waiting
for something. More meat I guess. I don’t know why they didn’t go
off somewhere else, but they didn’t. Maybe far as the trees where
me and my poor pals found them was as far as they could go, ’cause
I know one night I seen the big one up there on the hill, howling
at the moon. I figure it was ’cause he was so hungry his stomach
thought its throat was cut.”