Deadman's Crossing (10 page)

“They’re confined to this area,” Jebidiah said. “The cloud is
part of the evil that came out of the graves. They were held there
by the sharp ends of the oak. Some evil can’t stand oak. And this,
obviously, is that evil. Unfortunately, you released them.”

“Unless it’s hickory,” Dol said. “Or some kind of other tree.
Ain’t nothing says it’s oak. I didn’t tell you it was oak. I don’t
remember.”

“You have a point,” Jebidiah said, “but from my experience,
I’m betting on oak.”

“It’s your bet,” Dol said.

“I don’t understand,” Mary said. “He bit you, like he bit them
Spaniards so long ago. They become wolves until the Indians
killed them...or held them down with the sticks. But you got bit,
the others got bit, why ain’t you and them wolf-things?”

Dol shook his head. “Ain’t got a nugget on that. Nothin’.”

“Because,” said Jebidiah, “the leader, he is one, and they are six,
and together they are seven.”

“Well now, that clears it right up,” Dol said.

“Satan’s minions, that’s what they are. And there is one directly
from Satan, and there are six that he made. That allows seven.
They can kill others, but they can only make so many, and seven
is their number. If they were vampires, or ghouls, they could make
more, but the hairy things, they can only make seven.”

“Who made that rule?” Mary said.

“My guess is the gentleman in charge,” Jebidiah said.

“God?” Dol said.

“He likes his little games,” the Reverend said. “They have no
rhyme or reason to us, or perhaps to him, but, they are his games
and they are real and they affect us all. Seven. That is the number
for the hairy ones.”

“How do you know that?” Mary asked.

“I’ve seen more than I would like, read tomes that are not that
delightful to read.”

“So you seen it, or you read about it?” Mary said.

“In this case, I read about it.”

“So you ain’t had no practical experience on the matter?” Mary
said.

“On this, no. On things like it, yes.”

“Well, Mary said, “I hope this is some like them other things,
or otherwise we can bend over now and look up between our legs
and piss on ourselves.”

The night grew heavy and the shadow fled through all parts of the
town. In the hotel, and in the other buildings, it was nothing more
than a dark, cool, fog, a malaise that swept over Jebidiah and Mary.
Jebidiah removed the barrier from the setting room door, and as
he did, the clock ticked eight-thirty. Dol and the other ghosts
returned to what substituted for lives; the limbo of the hotel; the
existence of the not quite gone and the not quite present.

Jebidiah led his horse out of the sitting room, into the saloon.
In there they watched the ghosts for a moment, and then Jebidiah
took a candle from one of the tables where it was melted to a saucer,
broke the saucer free, and put the candle in his pocket. He found
two kerosene lamps with kerosene still in them, and gave those to
Mary to carry. He and Mary went up the stairs to the hotel room
where Jebidiah’s whisky resided. Jebidiah led his horse up there
with him. The animal was reluctant at first, but then made the
stairs easily and finally arrived at the landing, snorting in protest.

When Jebidiah looked down on the hotel, the dark fog had laid
down on the floor like a black velvet carpet, was slowly seeping out
of sight into the wood.

“You don’t go far without that horse, do you?” Mary said,
causing Jebidiah to turn his head and look.

“I’ll save him if I can. No use leaving him to be eaten. He’s
the best horse I ever had. Smart. Brave. Worth more than most
humans.”

“That may be true, but he just shit on the floor. And it smells
like a horse stall now.”

“We’ll live with it.”

They went into the bedroom, Jebidiah leading his horse. He let
go of the animal and took Mary’s umbrella off the bed and pulled
out his pocket knife, and began to whittle pieces off of it.

“I’m glad you got a hobby,” Mary said. “Me, I’m scared shitless.”

“And so am I. Whittling relaxes me. Especially when it has a
purpose.”

“What purpose?”

“These little shards of oak. For it to affect the wolves, it has
to bear some of the wood’s insides. Oak itself, that doesn’t do it.
Shaved oak. Sharpened oak. Anything that takes the husk off and
shows the meat of the tree.”

“What you gonna do, chase them down and poke them with
that little stuff? I don’t see you’re doing no good.”

“I’m going to take these little fragments, and I’m going to make
them smaller. Then I’m going to take my bullets, use my pocket
knife to noodle a small hole in the tips of the loads. I’m going to put
wood fragments in those little holes, then, I’m going to take this—”

He produced the candle from his pocket. “I’m going to seal the
little wood shaving stuffed holes with wax. When I shoot these
guns, the oak goes into the wolves along with the bullets.”

“Ain’t you the smart one?” Mary said, and she took a swig from
Jebidiah’s bottle.

He took it from her. “No more. We had best have our wits about
us.”

Mary said, “You want, you could knock you off a piece. No
charge.”

“I would hardly have my wits about me doing that, now would
I?”

“Reckon not. Just a friendly offer.”

“And a fine one. But I fear I’ll have to pass.”

Jebidiah went back to whittling, but not before he waved
a match under the bottom of the candle and stuck it up on the
nightstand and lit the wick. When he finished whittling, the wax
was soft. He went to work inserting the miniature wood shavings,
sealing them with wax. Mary helped.

Howls came down from the piney hills and filled the streets
and the Gentleman’s Hotel.

“They’re coming,” Jebidiah said.

Jebidiah went out on the landing, looked down. The ghosts had
gone, except Dol, and he had wandered behind the bar and laid
down flat on the floor. The wolves couldn’t hurt him, but Jebidiah
assumed he didn’t want to see them. Dead or not, he still knew
fear. Jebidiah watched his silent, still, white figure for a while, then
returned to the room and closed the door. He hefted the revolvers
in their holsters. They were packing his special prepared bullets.
He had done the same for his Winchester ammunition. And he
had done it for his gun belt reloads until the wax ran out. The
umbrella he had whittled on was little more now than a thin, sharp
stick, as Jebidiah had torn off the umbrella itself, and worked on
the shaft with his knife.

Mary sat in the center of the bed. He had given her the rifle.

She said, “You know, I can’t hit the back end of an elephant
with a tossed shot glass.”

“Wait until they’re close.”

“Jesus,” Mary said.

“He’ll be of no help,” Jebidiah said. “Put your faith in that
Winchester.”

“Maybe they won’t know we’re here,” Mary said.

“They’ll know. They’re hungry. They can smell us.”

The sound of Mary swallowing was as loud as a cough.

Jebidiah sat in a chair by the window and watched Mary, who had
fallen asleep. He was surprised she could sleep. Every nerve in his
body was crawling. He lit one of the lanterns and put it on the floor
by his chair, then sat back down, took out his pocket watch. He
popped the metal cover and looked at it. Even as he watched the
hands crawled from eight-thirty to nine. He took a breath, shut
his eyes, looked again. It had already moved five minutes past. He
went to the window and looked out. Something moved across the
street, through the low hanging shadow that had mostly seeped
into the ground, like a dark oil of evil. Jebidiah had gotten only
a glance, but it was something big and hairy, and it had moved
from the far side of the street to the back of the hotel. His horse
stirred in the corner of the room, where it had taken up residence
by backing its ass against the wall.

Jebidiah took a breath and moved away from the window. He
went over and stroked the horse’s nose, then went to the door,
opened it, stepped out on the landing.

It was dead dark down there and he couldn’t see a thing. Not
even Dol lying behind the bar; perhaps he had gone wherever the
others had gone, some other part of the town, all scrunched up and
wadded together in a mass of white mist in a closet somewhere. He
could see that the door to the hotel was partially opened. When
they had come into the hotel, he had closed it.

Jebidiah stood there for a long time, one hand on the rail,
looking down. Gradually his eyes became somewhat more adjusted.
He thought he saw something moving near the bar.

There was a shape.

It was still.

Perhaps it was nothing.

All right, Jebidiah thought, it’s not like they don’t know we’re
here. He took a small Bible from the inside of his coat pocket and
tore off the front page and took out a wooden match, struck it, lit
the paper and dropped it.

In the falling light of the paper, which lasted briefly, he saw the
shape was not just a shadow, but was in fact a thing. Dark fur was
glimpsed, hot, yellow eyes, teeth, and then the beast was moving,
darting around the bar, heading for the stairs, climbing two or three
steps at a bound. In that brief moment, Jebidiah saw that there was
another in the corner. A large beast with even larger, yellow eyes.
That would be the King Wolf, he thought, the one who would command the others, the one who would send them on their missions.

Jebidiah stepped to the mouth of the stairway and pulled his
revolver, pointed it casually and comfortably at the shape that
was bounding up the stairs, its chest covered in a metal Spanish
breastplate. In the darkness he could only tell it was there, couldn’t
make out features, could catch glimpses of that breast plate by the
thin moonlight they came through the hotel windows. He aimed a
little low, toward the groin, so that when he pulled the trigger on
the Colt .45 it bucked and rode up, throwing the bullet into the
upper part of the thing’s body, clanging the armor, but traveling
through it. The beast grunted, twisted slightly, kept coming. White
smoke twisted up from its breastplate where the bullet had gone
in, and from its back where it had come out.

Jebidiah cocked back the hammer again, thought, my God, I
hit it straight on. A .45 slug should have knocked him down the
stairs and on his ass, flat, breastplate or no breastplate.

The Colt jumped again, a burst of red flame coughed from the
barrel, the bullet struck the beast in the face just as it reached
the top of the stairs and was within six inches of Jebidiah’s
gun barrel. There was a barking sound. The beast twisted and
slammed against the wall and rolled down the stairs, smashed
through the railing, bounced onto the bar and lay silent and dark
in the shadows.

One, thought Jebidiah.

He looked down into the shadows, but couldn’t really make out
much. He thought he still saw the shape lying there, but he wasn’t
for sure. He glanced toward the corner of the room. The King Wolf
moved. And it was like Dol said. It seemed to move with some of
the moves torn out. One moment it was in the corner, the next it
was consumed by shadows.

Okay. One down. Maybe.

He squinted and looked again. He couldn’t be sure what was
down there. He had hit it solid, and with the oak in the bullet, so
he thought perhaps he had done the old boy in.

The front door of the hotel burst open wider and in came four
hairy black shapes, moving so fast it was hard to realize at first
what they were. They leaped about, two hitting the stairs and
coming up fast, another striking the wall, moving along the side of
it, scuttling there with its claws like a giant, hairy roach. The fifth
was running on all fours up the railing.