Spring 2007 (11 page)

The deputy said nothing. He sat on the bench and watched
Jebidiah’s curious work. Jebidiah sat on the bench beside the deputy, rested
one of his pistols on his knee. “You got a .44, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I got a converted cartridge pistol, just like
you.”

“Give me your revolver.”

The deputy complied.

Jebidiah opened the cylinders and let the bullets fall
out on the floor.

“What in hell are you doing?”

Jebidiah didn’t answer. He dug into his gun belt and
came up with six silver tipped bullets, loaded the weapon and gave it back to
the deputy.

“Silver,” Jebidiah said. “Sometimes it wards off evil.”

“Sometimes?”

“Be quiet now. And wait.”

“I feel like a staked goat,” the deputy said.

After a while, Jebidiah rose from the bench and looked
out the window. Then he sat down promptly and blew out the lantern.

***

Somewhere in the distance a night bird called. Crickets
sawed and a large frog bleated. They sat there on the bench, near each other,
facing in opposite directions, their silver loaded pistols on their knees.
Neither spoke.

Suddenly the bird ceased to call and the crickets went
silent, and no more was heard from the frog. Jebidiah whispered to the deputy.

“He comes.”

The deputy shivered slightly, took a deep breath.
Jebidiah realized he too was breathing deeply.

“Be silent, and be alert,” Jebidiah said.

“All right,” said the deputy, and he locked his eyes on
the open window at the back of the shack. Jebidiah faced the door, which stood
halfway open and sagging on its rusty hinges.

For a long time there was nothing. Not a sound. Then
Jebidiah saw a shadow move at the doorway and heard the door creak slightly as
it moved. He could see a hand on what appeared to be an impossibly long arm,
reaching out to grab at the edge of the door. The hand clutched there for a
long time, not moving. Then, it was gone, taking its shadow with it.

Time crawled by.

“It’s at the window,” the deputy said, and his voice was
so soft it took Jebidiah a moment to decipher the words. Jebidiah turned
carefully for a look.

It sat on the window sill, crouched there like a bird of
prey, a halo of bees circling around its head. The hive pulsed and glowed in
its chest, and in that glow they could see more bees, so thick they appeared to
be a sort of humming smoke. Gimet’s head sprouted a few springs of hair, like
withering grass fighting its way through stone. A slight turn of its head
allowed the moon to flow through the back of its cracked skull and out of its
empty eyes. Then the head turned and the face was full of shadows again. The
room was silent except for the sound of buzzing bees.

“Courage,” Jebidiah said, his mouth close to the
deputy’s ear. “Keep your place.”

The thing climbed into the room quickly, like a spider
dropping from a limb, and when it hit the floor, it stayed low, allowing the
darkness to lay over it like a cloak.

Jebidiah had turned completely on the bench now, facing
the window. He heard a scratching sound against the floor. He narrowed his
eyes, saw what looked like a shadow, but was in fact the thing coming out from
under the table.

Jebidiah felt the deputy move, perhaps to bolt. He
grabbed his arm and held him.

“Courage,” he said.

The thing kept crawling. It came within three feet of
the circle made by the crumpled bible pages.

The way the moonlight spilled through the window and
onto the floor near the circle Jebidiah had made, it gave Gimet a kind of eerie
glow, his satellite bees circling his head. In that moment, every aspect of the
thing locked itself in Jebidiah’s mind. The empty eyes, the sharp, wet teeth,
the long, cracked nails, blackened from grime, clacking against the wooden
floor. As it moved to cross between two wads of scripture, the pages burst into
flames and a line of crackling blue fulmination moved between the wadded pages
and made the circle light up fully, all the way around, like Ezekiel’s wheel.

Gimet gave out with a hoarse cry, scuttled back,
clacking nails and knees against the floor. When he moved, he moved so quickly
there seemed to be missing spaces between one moment and the next. The buzzing
of Gimet’s bees was ferocious.

Jebidiah grabbed the lantern, struck a match and lit it.
Gimet was scuttling along the wall like a cockroach, racing to the edge of the
window.

Jebidiah leaped forward, tossed the lit lantern, hit the
beast full in the back as it fled through the window. The lantern burst into
flames and soaked Gimlet’s back, causing a wave of fire to climb from the
thing’s waist to the top of its head, scorching a horde of bees, dropping them
from the sky like exhausted meteors.

Jebidiah drew his revolver, snapped off a shot. There
was a howl of agony, and then the thing was gone.

Jebidiah raced out of the protective circle and the
deputy followed. They stood at the open window, watched as Gimet,
flame-wrapped, streaked through the night in the direction of the graveyard.

“I panicked a little,” Jebidiah said. “I should have
been more resolute. Now he’s escaped.”

“I never even got off a shot,” the deputy said. “God,
but you’re fast. What a draw.”

“Look, you stay here if you like. I’m going after him.
But I tell you now, the circle of power has played out.”

The deputy glanced back at it. The pages had burned out
and there was nothing now but a black ring on the floor.

“What in hell caused them to catch fire in the first
place?”

“Evil,” Jebidiah said. “When he got close, the pages
broke into flames. Gave us the protection of God. Unfortunately, as with most
of God’s blessings, it doesn’t last long.”

“I stay here, you’d have to put down more pages.”

“I’ll be taking the bible with me. I might need it.”

“Then I guess I’ll be sticking.”

***

They climbed out the window and moved up the hill. They
could smell the odor of fire and rotted flesh in the air. The night was as cool
and silent as the graves on the hill.

Moments later they moved amongst the stones and wooden
crosses, until they came to a long wide hole in the earth. Jebidiah could see
that there was a burrow at one end of the grave that dipped down deeper into
the ground.

Jebidiah paused there. “He’s made this old grave his
den. Dug it out and dug deeper.”

“How do you know?” the deputy asked.

“Experience…And it smells of smoke and burned skin. He
crawled down there to hide. I think we surprised him a little.”

Jebidiah looked up at the sky. There was the faintest
streak of pink on the horizon. “He’s running out of daylight, and soon he’ll be
out of moon. For a while.”

“He damn sure surprised me. Why don’t we let him hide?
You could come back when the moon isn’t full, or even half full. Back in the
daylight, get him then.”

“I’m here now. And it’s my job.”

“That’s one hell of a job you got, mister.”

“I’m going to climb down for a better look.”

“Help yourself.”

Jebidiah struck a match and dropped himself into the
grave, moved the match around at the mouth of the burrow, got down on his knees
and stuck the match and his head into the opening.

“Very large,” he said, pulling his head out. “I can
smell him. I’m going to have to go in.”

“What about me?”

“You keep guard at the lip of the grave,” Jebidiah said,
standing. “He may have another hole somewhere, he could come out behind you for
all I know. He could come out of that hole even as we speak.”

“That’s wonderful.”

Jebidiah dropped the now dead match on the ground. “I
will tell you this. I can’t guarantee success. I lose, he’ll come for you, you
can bet on that, and you better shoot those silvers as straight as William
Tell’s arrows.”

“I’m not really that good a shot.”

“I’m sorry,” Jebidiah said, and struck another match
along the length of his pants seam, then with his free hand, drew one of his
revolvers. He got down on his hands and knees again, stuck the match in the
hole and looked around. When the match was near done, he blew it out.

“Ain’t you gonna need some light?” the deputy said. “A
match ain’t nothin’.”

“I’ll have it.” Jebidiah removed the remains of the
bible from his pocket, tore it in half along the spine, pushed one half in his
coat, pushed the other half before him, into the darkness of the burrow. The
moment it entered the hole, it flamed.

“Ain’t your pocket gonna catch inside that hole?” the
deputy asked.

“As long as I hold it or it’s on my person, it won’t
harm me. But the minute I let go of it, and the aura of evil touches it, it’ll
blaze. I got to hurry, boy.”

With that, Jebidiah wiggled inside the burrow.

***

In the burrow, Jebidiah used the tip of his pistol to
push the bible pages forward. They glowed brightly, but Jebidiah knew the light
would be brief. It would burn longer than writing paper, but still, it would
not last long.

After a goodly distance, Jebidiah discovered the burrow
dropped off. He found himself inside a fairly large cavern. He could hear the
sound of bats, and smell bat guano, which in fact, greased his path as he slid
along on his elbows until he could stand inside the higher cavern and look
about. The last flames of the bible burned itself out with a puff of blue light
and a sound like an old man breathing his last.

Jebidiah listened in the dark for a long moment. He
could hear the bats squeaking, moving about. The fact that they had given up
the night sky, let Jebidiah know daylight was not far off.

Jebidiah’s ears caught a sound, rocks shifting against
the cave floor. Something was moving in the darkness, and he didn’t think it
was the bats. It scuttled, and Jebidiah felt certain it was close to the floor,
and by the sound of it, moving his way at a creeping pace. The hair on the back
of Jebidiah’s neck bristled like porcupine quills. He felt his flesh bump up
and crawl. The air became stiffer with the stench of burnt and rotting flesh.
Jebidiah’s knees trembled. He reached cautiously inside his coat pocket,
produced a match, struck it on his pants leg, held it up.

At that very moment, the thing stood up and was brightly
lit in the glow of the match, the bees circling its skin-stripped skull. It
snarled and darted forward. Jebidiah felt its rotten claws on his shirt front
as he fired the revolver. The blaze from the bullet gave a brief, bright flare
and was gone. At the same time, the match was knocked out of his hand and
Jebidiah was knocked backwards, onto his back, the thing’s claws at his throat.
The monster’s bees stung him. The stings felt like red-hot pokers entering his
flesh. He stuck the revolver into the creature’s body and fired. Once. Twice.
Three times. A fourth.

Then the hammer clicked empty. He realized he had
already fired two other shots. Six dead silver soldiers were in his cylinders,
and the thing still had hold of him.

He tried to draw his other gun, but before he could, the
thing released him, and Jebidiah could hear it crawling away in the dark. The
bats fluttered and screeched.

Confused, Jebidiah drew the pistol, managed to get to
his feet. He waited, listening, his fresh revolver pointing into the darkness.

Jebidiah found another match, struck it.

The thing lay with its back draped over a rise of rock.
Jebidiah eased toward it. The silver loads had torn into the hive. It oozed a
dark, odiferous trail of death and decaying honey. Bees began to drop to the
cavern floor. The hive in Gimet’s chest sizzled and pulsed like a large, black
knot. Gimet opened his mouth, snarled, but otherwise didn’t move.

Couldn’t move.

Jebidiah, guided by the last wisps of his match, raised
the pistol, stuck it against the black knot, and pulled the trigger. The knot
exploded. Gimet let out with a shriek so sharp and loud it startled the bats to
flight, drove them out of the cave, through the burrow, out into the remains of
the night.

Gimet’s claw-like hands dug hard at the stones around
him, then he was still and Jebidiah’s match went out.

***

Jebidiah found the remains of the bible in his pocket,
and as he removed it, tossed it on the ground, it burst into flames. Using the
two pistol barrels like large tweezers, he lifted the burning pages and dropped
them into Gimet’s open chest. The body caught on fire immediately, crackled and
popped dryly, and was soon nothing more than a blaze. It lit the cavern up
bright as day.

Jebidiah watched the corpse being consumed by the
biblical fire for a moment, then headed toward the burrow, bent down, squirmed
through it, came up in the grave.

He looked for the deputy and didn’t see him. He climbed
out of the grave and looked around. Jebidiah smiled. If the deputy had lasted
until the bats charged out, that was most likely the last straw, and he had
bolted.