Ghostwalkers (14 page)

“
Used
to own,” corrected Jenny.

“—
used
to own a cattle ranch northeast of town.”

“You're a rancher?” asked Grey, rubbing the red welt on his cheek.

“Why?” said Jenny with challenge in her tone. “Can't a woman own a ranch?”

“Sure. But you don't look old enough.”

A shadow passed behind the woman's eyes. “It … it was my father's place. I took it over when he…” She let the rest hang, then added, “I ran near three hundred head before that bastard Deray got here.”

“Miss Pearl, please…,” said the monk.

“Not talking about it isn't the same as it not being the case,” said Jenny; but then she sighed and nodded, withdrawing her anger from the moment.

“And this,” said Looks Away, “is Brother Joe, late of the order of the Brothers of Outcasts.”

“I heard about you fellows,” said Grey, nodding.

Those monks were all, in one way or another, failed shepherds of their herds. Drunks and sinners, thieves of church offerings, men who had broken their vows of chastity, and others who had dishonored their vows. Where such disgrace would drive most clerics totally away from the church, a handful of them had come crawling back and begged for a chance to redeem themselves.

They were stripped of most of their priestly powers and allowed to serve without pay, without praise, and probably without much chance of setting things right. Grey had never met one before and didn't give much of a damn for humility, but he admired their courage. As a man who felt the weight of his own sins and worried about the slim chance of salvation and the very real threat of celestial punishment, he hoped the Outcast Brothers would prove that even the most wretched had a fighting chance on Judgment Day.

He said, “Thought you were all down Mexico way, trying to turn the last Mayans into good little Christians. What brings you up here? You a priest of a church 'round these parts?”

“We missionaries go where the Lord sends us.”

“God sent you here? Why? You lose a bet with him?”

The joke fell flat and Grey was sorry he'd made it. The monk actually winced as if he was in physical pain.

“Are you a Christian, brother,” he asked.

Grey shrugged. “Not sure where I stand on that topic. God and me haven't had any meaningful conversations in quite a long time.”

“But you believe?”

“That's a complicated question,” said Grey. “The world's big and strange. Maybe bigger and stranger than people thought it was. So … I guess I'll keep an open mind. But that doesn't mean you're going to find me in a pew come Sunday morning.”

Brother Joe nodded. He was as thin as a rake-handle, nearly bald. He wore a rough brown robe with the hood folded down on his bony shoulders, and rope sandals on his feet. His only extravagance was a beard that was full and wild. His voice had only the faintest echo of the Spanish that had probably been the language of his childhood.

Brother Joe offered a thin hand and Grey shook it. The monk's hand was like dry parchment stretched over fragile sticks.

“Although I abhor violence of any kind,” said Brother Joe, “I thank you for what you did. Those men might have hurt Miss Pearl.”

“They might have done worse than hurt her,” said Grey. “I know men like that. I know that type. Maybe I should have schooled them a bit more on how to treat decent folks.”

Jenny smiled at that.

But Brother Joe shook his head. “Judgment and punishment are for God.”

“Sure,” said Grey, “forgiveness, too. But I'd rather be judged by the Almighty for doing what I think's right than stand aside and let bastards like that make life hell for people. Tell me I'm wrong.”

“It's not as simple as that.”

Grey put a hand on the monk's shoulder. “Yeah, padre, I know. Maybe carrying a gun makes me a bad man, too. I'll talk that over with Saint Peter if I get the chance. Or maybe my answer will come from a lick from the Devil's riding crop, but I will be
damned
if I stand aside and do nothing. Some men can. I can't.”

Brother Joe met his eyes and it was clear that there was much he wanted to say, but they both knew this wasn't the time. Instead he took Grey's hand and kissed it.

“May God's mercy and protection be with you always.”

“Amen to that,” said Looks Away. “Now, how about we draw some of that water and get off the street? I doubt our Deputy Perkins or his employer will let this matter stand where it is.”

“So what? I'm not afraid of them, Looksie,” said Jenny.

Looks Away winced at the nickname, but he let the bucket slide down the well. “I'm not afraid of them coming back,” he said. “But let's make it later than sooner. I'm fair parched.”

“
Looksie?
” echoed Grey, grinning.

“Don't start,” warned the Sioux as he cranked up the laden bucket. “You wouldn't be the first white man I've scalped.”

There was a sudden rumble, deep and heavy, and they all turned toward the west. Far out over the ocean was a massive bank of dark clouds that Grey could have sworn were not there five minutes ago. It was a storm front, and the clouds pulsed and throbbed with thunder. Lightning flashed within and it looked like red veins in the skin of some great beast.

“Looks like the town's in for a break,” said Grey. “Stretch some canvas and catch the rain. Nothing beats a cup of fresh rainwater.”

“Not
that
rain,” said Jenny softly. “God…”

Brother Joe quickly crossed himself.

A wet wind whipped off the ocean and blew past them. It smelled of rotting fish and sulfur. Jenny wrapped her arms around her body and shuddered. Even Looks Away seemed to grow pale and nervous.

The first fat raindrops pinged on the tin roof of the nearest house. Fresh thunder growled at them. Closer now.

High above they heard the shrill and haunted call of that strange bird. It seemed to be pushed toward them on the stiff wind.

Rain splatted down on the street a block away and they watched the leading wall of the storm march toward them. Grey frowned at the storm. It was strange. It was …
wrong.
As the belly of the storm swelled outward like an obscene pregnancy, the lightning changed in color. Where a moment ago it had been like red veins, now it changed into a tracery of blue.

Grey knew that shade of blue. He'd seen it in Nevada. He'd nearly been killed by a burst of it.

“Looks Away—,” he began, but thunder exploded like artillery fire, smashing all other sounds into nothingness.

Inside the storm, behind the veil of slanting rain, something moved. Something vast, something that writhed like a nest of serpents. And tangled up with the growl of thunder he thought he heard something else. Something that roared with a voice from nightmare.

Looks Away glanced down at the bucket he held.

He let it fall.

“Run,” he murmured. Then as the rain thickened and as the sky turned black as sackcloth, he yelled it. “
Run!”

The four of them turned and ran.

 

Chapter Twenty-Five

Running from a storm is like running from a forest fire or the fall of night. At first it seems possible, but then with every step the realities become apparent. What man can do, nature can overmaster.

“Get the horses!” Grey bellowed to Looks Away. “You take Brother Joe and I'll take—.”

Before he could finish the statement a gray bulk slammed into him and sent him skidding into the stone well. He rebounded and whipped around in time to see Picky race away from him in a full-out panicked gallop. Queenie was neck and neck with her.

Grey wasted no time cursing the horses. Instead he launched himself to his feet, caught Jenny Pearl's arm, and together they ran. He heard feet slapping on the dampening mud behind him.

“Oh God, Oh God, Oh God,” breathed Brother Joe with every step.

“Move your holy ass,” snapped Looks Away.

Rain pelted them, punched them, and chased them. Grey could see that the street up ahead was empty. Everyone had fled the coming storm. Two of the rocking chairs still wobbled, proof that their occupants had been there only a moment before.

The howl of the wind was a terrible thing to hear. It was the sound of souls in burning torment. It was the shriek of the tortured damned. As he ran, Grey tried to tell himself that it was the wind, only the wind. That the sound was some freakish side effect of ghost rock that was somehow caught up in this gale. That it was no more dire than the hiss of a burning fuse or the bang of gunpowder. Just a sound.

Only that.

But the rain burned as it struck his skin. It hissed and sizzled as if the storm had come howling up from Hell itself, carrying with it the screams of the dead. The cries of a thing that hated the living for what the quick had and the dead did not. It was a hungry, covetous sound that betrayed a greedy want of life. Or to see life torn down and swept away.

As Grey ran he heard human voices screaming, too. Rising to match the wind.

They came from inside houses. They came from behind closed doors and windows. And they came from the mouths of Thomas Looks Away, Jenny Pearl, Brother Joe.

And from his own mouth.

Jenny grabbed his sodden sleeve and jerked him sideways toward a rain-spattered porch. They raced up the three wooden steps and across the porch. Jenny fumbled in her skirt pocket for a key, stabbed it into the lock, turned it, shouldered the door open, and fell inward, dragging Grey with her. Brother Joe came through next, stumble-running from a push, and finally Looks Away staggered in. The Sioux slammed the door and began slapping at his skin, trying to swat away the stinging rainwater as if it were filled with biting gnats.

Jenny pushed past him and tore a curtain down. “Use this!”

They each grabbed a corner of the frilly yellow curtain and frantically dabbed and blotted themselves.

“It burns,” cried Brother Joe. “God, it burns.”

“Out of those clothes,” ordered Grey. “Now.”

Brother Joe, despite his pain, cast an appalled look toward Jenny, but the woman brusquely waved him off and began unbuttoning her blouse. Grey half tore his shirt getting it off. He yanked off his boots and shoved down his jeans. Looks away was already down to britches and Brother Joe pulled off his robe to reveal a thin and many times patched pair of what looked like woman's cast-off bloomers.

All three of the men turned their backs on Jenny Pearl and she stepped out of her dress. Grey had a lingering afterimage of her in layers of white, and a bodice with a plunging neckline. There was another tearing sound and he half turned to see her rip down a second curtain and begin winding it around her slim body.

Thunder boomed and outside branches snapped from the oak tree on the lawn. Flying sticks hammered the front of the house.

“Stay away from the windows,” warned Grey.

“Looksie,” said Jenny, “the shutters.”

“Shite,” groaned the Sioux, but he ran to the closest window and opened it. Wincing into the spray, he snagged the pulls of the heavy wooden shutters and slammed them closed. Grey did the same with the window on the other side of the door as Brother Joe and Jenny ran to repeat this with the windows upstairs. By the time they were done, Grey and Looks Away had the rear and side windows shuttered. It darkened the house, but it felt far more secure. They grabbed the curtains and rags from the kitchen to mop up the stinging rain.

“Am I burned?” asked Looks Away, probing at his face with nervous fingers.

“Don't take this the wrong way,” said Grey, “but your skin's red.”

“Hilarious. But it feels blistered.”

“It's not. How's mine?”

“The same. There must be something in the rain to cause this, but it doesn't seem to be causing tissue damage.”

“Hurts like a bitch, though.”

“Yes, it damn well does,” agreed Jenny as she rejoined them. Grey became instantly and acutely aware of how transparent white undergarments could be when soaked with rainwater. He tried his level best to look anywhere but at her, and failed miserably. He felt his face burn even hotter, and that had nothing at all to do with the rain.

Outside the rain intensified. Grey bent and peered through the shutter slats. The rain fell in sheets that seemed to march like platoons of ghosts across the street.

“It's starting to hail,” said Looks Away, then he stiffened. “Oh … bloody
hell
!”

“What is it?” asked Jenny, crowding beside him to peer between the slats.

When Brother Joe joined them, he immediately gasped and clutched his crucifix in a white-knuckled fist. “Dear Lord, save us from the horrors of the Pit.”

In silent fear, they stood and watched for long minutes, each of them staring in horror at what was falling with the rain.

Snakes.

And frogs.

Hundreds of them.

Thousands.

The snakes were strange and there were many kinds Grey had never seen. Not desert snakes like sidewinders and rattlesnakes. These were mottled and sinewy, more like sea snakes or eels. And the frogs were tiny and brightly colored. Livid greens and bright blues and shocking yellow. Some of the frogs landed in puddles and hopped away; others struck harder parts of the street that hadn't yet softened to mud. These exploded into red that was immediately washed away. All of the falling animals steamed, though, as if plucked from boiling pots.

Overhead the lightning flashed with blue madness and it cast the entire street into an alien strangeness.

They could still hear the screams and the deeper bellows of whatever vast things they'd glimpsed inside the storm. Huge, stentorian cries rattled the glass in the frames and shook the timbers of the house.

“What's happening?” whispered Jenny. “What the hell
is
this?”