Hallowed Ground (3 page)

A hock of wild pig boiled on the fire.
 
The water hissed and sizzled as it spilled over the brim of the tin pan.

The scratching on the roof grew steadily louder.

Without it she might have heard the other sounds, the slight susurrus and the death rattle as the viper slid from the darkness to coil slowly around the leg of her chair. Ma Kutter felt its scaled skin brush her ankle but by then it was already too late.
 
She barely felt the pin-prick of the snake's fangs sinking into her soft fatty flesh.
 
It was the sudden flush of warmth as the venom entered her blood that gave it away.
 
By then she was already dead.

As she slumped in her chair, her hands clutching weakly at the arms, the scratching on the roof stopped.
 
The serpent wound its way past her, out through a crack in the door and into the shadows beyond.

Creed was up before the sun.
 
His head had the empty, hollow ache of lingering whiskey, and his belly crawled with hot, thick coffee.
 
It ate at his gut like acid, but his eyes were focused and bright.
 
He wasn't sure what he expected to find, but he saddled his horse and rode out of Rookwood just as the red-orange fingers of dawn stretched over the horizon.
 
A blood red sun slid sluggishly from behind the ends of the Earth, and he squinted into it, using one hand to shade his eyes from the glare.

The crows were gone.
 
They could call them rooks all they wanted, but the damned things were crows, and in any case, neither crows nor rooks fly at night.
 
Not unless they're spooked. Something, or someone was out there, and Creed was thinking about the trappers Silas had mentioned the night before.
 
He was also thinking about the story the crusty old barman had tacked on at the end.
 
The Messengers had said they saw something flying over the trees -- something too big to be a bird -- something dark.
 
Creed didn't have much patience for ghost stories, but he scanned the treetops all the same.

He wanted to find that camp.
 
Wouldn't hurt to be first on the scene and give it a look before every tramp in town got out and rifled through it.
 
Also wouldn't hurt to be in and gone before the Sheriff caught wind.
 
Creed had no particular feud with "Moonshine" Brady, but he avoided the man when possible.
 
Besides the fact they were often on opposite sides of the law, there was something about Moonshine that gave him the creeps.

The Sheriff stood six and a half feet if he was an inch.
 
He did nothing without careful thought and consideration, but once he made up his mind, he was fast as lightning.
 
There was something in Rookwood that stuck the right word to a thing, and Moonshine, the way it made a man see things others didn't see, and move slower than normal – was a perfect name for the Sheriff. It would be better to be back in Rookwood before Brady found the camp.

Creed topped the first rise outside town and stopped.
 
He knew the trapper's camp should be off to the north, but something else had caught his eye.
 
Something had glinted over by Dead Man's Gulch.
 
Even as he thought about riding on toward the camp, Creed turned his mount and headed toward the gulch.
 
The camp wasn't going anywhere, and he still had time before anyone else was likely to show.

As he turned, the silence was shattered by the loud, mournful peeling of a bell.
 
Creed glanced over his shoulder toward town.
 
It was the bell at the old chapel.
 
There hadn't been a preacher in Rookwood for more than a year.
 
They rang the bell for weddings, and deaths.
 
No one in town was engaged.

Creed frowned, tossed a moment's thought at the question of who had passed, and then turned away.
 
He kicked the horse's flanks and took off at a trot.
 
Whoever it was would still be dead when he got back.
 
Of that much, he was certain.

Creed rode down into the valley of shadows that led toward the gulch.
 
The land he crossed was cracked and withered, much like his skin.
 
The wind blew hard along the gullies, whipping up sand and scrub.
 
There were no miracles in this place, least of all miracles of life.
 
Dust and bones, sand and souls; that was the way of it.
 
How much blood had soaked into the earth over the decade since the first wagons rolled out West?
 
Enough that a man could stab the crust and it would bubble back up viscous and red?
 
Creed rode the familiar trail lost in thought and watching the shadows.
 
Even in that sun-baked hell, there were shadows.

The ground before him rippled with heat haze.
 
The bullying wind stirred tumbleweeds into constant motion.
 
The effect was disconcerting, and Creed closed his eyes now and again to break its spell.

He pulled the brim of his hat down, shading his eyes from the rising sun and the stinging sand carried by the breeze.
 
Whatever it was he'd seen glinting in the sun from the ridge was nearly in sight, but his eyes were dust-blind, and despite the early hour, they stung with sweat.

As he rode closer things took on substance and form: canvas, like distant rolling hills.
 
The land beyond Dead Man's Gulch had been transformed into a city of tents and wagons.
 
In the center, one huge patched structure rose toward the sun, and affixed to the top-most point on the center pole stood a rough-hewn cross of dark wood.

Creed stopped his horse and pulled out his canteen.
 
He rinsed his mouth and spat into the brush, then took a longer drink.

"I'll be damned," he muttered.

He stowed the canteen and spurred his horse into a trot, not slowing until he'd reached the edge of the camp.
 
He continued at a walk, stirring a cloud of dust into the unfamiliar hive of activity.
 
The first thing that hit him was the smell; the reek of sweat and bodies too long estranged from water and soap.
 
It clung to the canvas as much as to the laborers working around the tents.
 
There was no breeze; scent didn't carry in the gulch under normal circumstances, but once you were caught in it
it
clung to the skin and stuck in the nostrils.

Disinterested heads turned his way as he rode past.
 
He'd expected to cause something of a stir, but it was as though each forgot him before he'd even left their field of vision.
 
He'd never seen a place so deserving of the word grim.

He drew up beside a squat, thickly muscled man driving stakes into the hard ground.
 
No blood bubbled back out of the wounds in the earth. Creed smiled wryly to himself at the thought.
 
The man glanced up and met his gaze but not his smile.

"What's going on here?" Creed asked.

"The Deacon's arrived," the man replied, as if that explained everything.

Maybe it did.

The country was full of charlatans and snake oil peddlers offering universal cure-alls and spiritual guidance for a pocketful of silver.
 
Whatever your ailment, someone was out there looking to profit from it.
 
Provender Creed eyed the man intently, expecting him to say more.
 
Instead, the hammer rose and fell again, driving the peg all the way home.
 
The man didn't glance up again.
 
Creed watched him a moment longer.
 
The stranger favored his left side.
 
A closer look showed that the arm on that side was withered, the hand shrunken like a bird's claw.

Creed rode on without a word.

After a few moments he began to wonder if he'd actually come up on a circus freak show.
 
He saw a pretty young girl sitting outside a ratty tent, wringing murky water from her wet laundry.
 
Close beside her an equally pretty twin scrubbed away with lye.
 
The girls looked up and smiled at him.
 
It took Creed the silence between heartbeats to realize
 
what was wrong with this image of domestic bliss: they weren't sitting close beside one another at all.
 
They were co-joined at hip and ribs, and only had three arms between them. It did not make their smiles any less beautiful.
 
Creed tipped his hat slowly, and turned away.

A young boy with a twisted gait shuffled across his path, dragging a clubbed foot.

"Boy," he called down, "which tent belongs to the Deacon?"

The boy glanced up at him with a half-toothed grin and pointed toward the rocky outcropping at the rear of the camp.
 
Creed saw a wagon with a canvas extension that looked cleaner than the rest of the camp.
 
It was set out in back of the great cross-topped tent in the center.

He nodded his thanks.
 
He was about to say something, then fell silent.
 
It wasn't a boy's face staring up at him, as he'd thought.
 
It was a midget.
 
The small twisted figure turned and shuffled off into the camp.

‡‡‡

Creed dismounted outside the revival tent.
 
He figured it was better to check out The Deacon's place of business than to just bust in on the man in his 'home'.

A single black feather lay in the dirt at his feet.
 
Creed bent down to pick it up and slipped it into his pocket.
 
It was a curious thing to do; he knew that even as he did it but something felt right about claiming the crow's feather for his own.
 
Boone's superstitions were wearing off on him.
 
He chuckled at that and pushed back the tent flaps.

Strategically placed oil lamps lit the interior.
 
Four lines of two dozen wooden benches formed an arc around the central stage.
 
There was little in the way of ostentation about the set up, no painted banners or racks of medicinal compounds lined up to be purchased.
 
There was an upright piano off to one side and a central podium.
 
The sides of the stage were curtained off with thick drapes, the cloth backdrop adorned with a single simple cross dyed into it.

He heard the bustle of movement behind the curtain.

"Hello?" Creed walked down the central aisle toward the stage.
 
Shadow shapes flickered and danced along the cloth walls, matching pace with him.
 
For a moment the shadows seemed to form the silhouette of a vast black winged bird, then the light guttered and the illusion was broken.
 
Creed shivered, as though someone had walked across his grave.

"Hello back there!" he called again. "I'm looking for the Deacon?"

"And you've found him."

The voice was soft and sibilant.
 
It was so close to his ear that he thought he felt the touch of hot, moist air on his skin.
 
Creed flinched, and then stiffened to mask his shock.
 
He reached up to tilt back the brim of his hat as he turned.

"How can I help you?"

The man Creed faced was tall and gaunt.
 
His suit was black and too heavy for the heat.
 
His white shirt was buttoned to the neck, and he wore a plain black bow tie that drooped beneath his collar like a dark, wilted flower.
 
His hair was long and dark, brushed back over his collar.
 
His eyes glittered like chips of grey glass.

"I'm not sure you can," Creed answered slowly. "I dropped in out of curiosity."

"About the state of your soul?" The Deacon asked.

"About whether or not you've been in to see the sheriff about a permit to pitch camp here," Creed replied.
 
"You can't just set up on any bit of land that strikes your fancy. That's not how we do things in Rookwood.
 
There's order.
 
Structure.
 
It's how we survive.
 
If you'd come into town the mayor and the sheriff could have apportioned you and your people a pitch and worked out a fair rent for the land."

"Ah, so it's about the money then?"

Creed turned instinctively as another midget scurried out from behind the curtain. "Give us a moment, Longman," the Deacon said.
 
The midget nodded and scuttled off.
 
It was all Creed could do not to chuckle at the irony of the name.

"It ain't up to me to say one way or the other what you do," he said.
 
"I'm just
tellin
' you what they're likely to say in town."