Deadman's Crossing (11 page)

Jebidiah shot at the one on the railing, hit it in the head and
saw it fall, but now the others were coming at top speed. Jebidiah
felt his nerves grow taught, about to snap.

Red flames and a loud bark came from his left and one of
the wolves on the stairway fell and hit the other and they both
went tumbling through the already damaged railing. One hit the
floor and didn’t move, the other scrambled, ran in a circle like a
frightened dog.

Jebidiah glanced left. It was Mary with the rifle. He grabbed her
elbow and twisted her and pushed her through the open doorway
and into the room and slammed the door even as the beast running
alongside the wall—causing plaster and wood to fly every which
way from its claws—climbed to the ceiling, turned upside down
and scuttled across that. They heard the creature drop to the floor
outside the doorway, heard its breathing, loud as the pumping of
blacksmith bellows.

Then it hit the door, knocking a large gap in it. But as it did it
screeched and drew back its paw. There was a roar and the sound
of something clambering wildly on the landing.

Inside the room, the horse reared and came down hard on
the floor with its hooves. Jebidiah feared he had made a mistake
bringing the horse up there with them. It could do as much damage
to them as the wolves if it became frightened.

Well, maybe not that much.

Mary stood staring at the gap in the door. “What happened?”

“The door is oak. He snagged his arm on it, a sharp piece of
wood.”

“Then they can’t come through?”

“I think they can, just not easily.”

“Did I kill the one I shot?”

“I don’t know. I think the bullet still has to strike a vital organ,
and if it does, the oak splinter in it should act like poison. But
maybe it has got to be solid hit. Not just a leg, a shoulder. But the
heart. The brain. Liver. Something like that. Looked to me you
had a good shot, right in the head. But it was dark. It happened so
fast...I can’t say for sure.”

Jebidiah went over and took his horse’s reins and pulled at
them gently and stroked the horse’s nose. Its eyes rolled wildly and
it lifted its nose and dropped it back down, repeated the motion
numerous times. Slowly the horse calmed.

They stood for a while, then sat on the edge of the bed, facing
the door, guns in hand.

Nothing.

The night crawled on.

Mary said, “It couldn’t have been midnight. Not already. My
God, did you see those things?”

Jebidiah took out his watch, looked at it in the lantern’s glow.
The hands indicated two a.m.

“I thought it was just after nine,” he said. “Advantage to this
limbo time is that it will be day soon, and then time will slow.
They don’t come out in the day.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“No,” Jebidiah said. “I don’t.”

They had sat for only a moment when they heard a kind of scratching sound, coming from the street. Jebidiah went to the window to
look out, saw nothing. But the sound increased. He leaned against
the window glass and looked down. Something was coming up the
side of the wall. He opened the window quickly, stuck his head
out. A wolf was scratching its way up, moving fast, its head lifted
to look up at Jebidiah. It was almost on him.

Jebidiah grabbed up the lantern, flung it out the window and
down on the wolf. Flames burst in all directions and rose up on the
thing’s head like a dunce hat of flame, whipped about and caught
the fur on fire. The beast let go with its front paws, slapped at
the flames, held itself out from the side of the building with its
back claws, then lost purchase, first one foot came loose, then the
other, and it fell. It dropped in a twist of fire, hit the ground on
its back, rolled on its belly. The flames licked down and along its
spine and it screeched and crawled along the street, then went still
in the middle of it. The flames lapped its fur clean and cooked the
charred meat and the meat fell off in puddles, then there were only
the bones, blackened and smoking. The eye sockets in the thick
wolf skull chugged out wafts of dark smoke that rose up to the
sky and made little black dissipating mushroom shapes. The skull
shifted and cracked and fell apart. Jebidiah blinked. It was the
skeleton of a man now. The wolf bones had twisted and changed.

Jebidiah, trembling slightly, pulled his head in. “They don’t
like fire,” he said. “That and oak splinters. Make a note.”

Mary had moved to the window to stand beside him. She looked
down at the bones in the street. “Noted,” she said, but the word
sounded as if she were clearing her throat.

Jebidiah reloaded his six gun. “If I got one with a shot, and you
got one, and now there’s this dead one in the street, we’ve done all
right so far.”

“If? So we either have four left, or six,” Mary said.

“That sounds about right,” Jebidiah said. “And we haven’t even
seen the big boy, the pack leader. Least not well. He might be a
whole different kettle of fish. One thing is for sure, he lets his boys
do the dirty work.”

“What time is it?”

Jebidiah looked. “Damn,” he said.

“What?”

“The watch. It’s moving backwards. It’s midnight again.”

Jebidiah thought: If we can last until morning, it won’t matter if
we stop them all. Perhaps then I can catch them where they sleep,
someplace dark and well hidden most likely. But if I can get them
now, I can be sure, I won’t have to search for them. Of course,
there’s the problem of time. It moves forward and backward. It
could do that until we are hunted down, eaten, shat out brown and
greasy on a distant hill.

He walked up and down the floor, stopping now and then to
soothe the horse that now he wished he had not bothered with. Yet
the thought of leaving a fine animal to the monsters, that wasn’t
good, couldn’t do that. Even God, the old sonofabitch, might
appreciate a good horse.

He paced and he thought and he felt his nerves twist around
inside of him, his feelings and impressions coming fast like rifle
shots, jumping from one thought to another. Mary was sitting
dead center on the bed, the rifle across her knees, watching the
split in the door, turning her head now and then to look behind
her, toward the open window, out into the night which seemed
to have gone more dark and bleak than before, leaving only thin
silver moonlight.

Jebidiah went to the window and looked out. The bones were
still there.

He walked across the room, trying to make himself sit and
rest. But he couldn’t do it, felt like he had drank two or three
pots of coffee. Shit. Coffee. That would be good right now. Some
bacon and eggs. Hell, he was hungry enough to eat the ass out of a
menstruating mule.

What was that? A flutter?

A moth beat at the window.

Okay. A moth. No problem there. It moved beneath the window
and through the gap where Jebidiah had opened it to drop one
of the lanterns. The remaining lantern hung from a hook in the
ceiling and bled pollen-yellow light all over the place.

Jebidiah watched the moth. It was a big one and dark of wing
and fuzzy. It flew into the room over the bed, up against the ceiling
where it flittered about, the lantern light causing its shadow to
flick and swell and flap along the wall. Jebidiah turned to look at
the shadow and the shadow seemed larger than before. Jebidiah
felt something move on the back of his neck, like prickly-pear
needles. It was his hair, standing on end. He turned to look at
the moth again, up there on the ceiling, and it was a wolf; it
had shifted shape. It clung upside down over the bed and Mary.
Jebidiah wheeled, cross-drew pistols and fired rapidly. One. Two.
Three.

Mary was moving then, off the bed, running across the floor.

The wolf dropped, hit the bed, blew slats and frame in all
directions, tossing fur and flesh, scattering dry bones. Then the
door was hit, and Jebidiah caught a glimpse of a big yellow eye
through the rent in the wood. He jerked off a shot. Mary wheeled
toward the door, fired and cocked the rifle and fired and cocked
the rifle and fired again, banging holes through the door. Outside
the door came a noise like someone sticking a hot branding iron
up a bull’s ass.

The horse ran around the room, nearly knocking Jebidiah and
Mary over. The door banged. Another bang, louder this time, and
the frame cracked and the door came flying in. Two of the wolves
bounded in.

The horse went wild. It reared. It slammed its hooves down
on one of the wolves. The beast was driven beneath it. It latched
its teeth into the horse’s belly. The horse bolted toward the door,
clattered through it, dragging the wolf beneath it as it went.
Jebidiah could hear his mount clattering down the stairs, then
there was a breaking sound, and Jebidiah knew the horse had lost
its step and gone through the railing. He could hear a cracking
sound as it fell, the horrible noise of a horse screaming.

He didn’t have time to consider it. The other wolf was there. The
revolvers bucked in his hands and the wolf took two shots in the
teeth and the teeth flew like piano ivory. Mary, who had dropped to
her knees, was cocking and firing with amazing accuracy, hitting
the staggering beast with shot after shot in the chest. One went low
and took off his balls. The wolf fell backwards, skidded, hit the
wall, slammed up against it in a sitting position. Immediately it
transformed. Its characteristics changed. The snout dove back into
its face. The ears shrunk. Hair dropped off. A moment later where
the odd version of a wolf had been was a naked Conquistador.
Flesh fell off its frame like greasy bacon and its bones clattered to
the floor like a handful of dice.

They waited.

They breathed.

They continued to look toward the gaping doorway.

Nothing.

Just silence.

After a long time Jebidiah picked up the lantern and carried it
out on the landing, pistol at the ready. Nothing jumped him.

He walked to the railing and dangled the lantern over it and
looked down. His horse lay dead with its back broken across the
bar. The wolf was not visible. Without fire or oak splinters, it had
survived the fall.

He waved the lantern around, saw the bones of two other
wolves. The ones he and Mary had shot on the stairway. All right,
he thought, that’s good. One in the street. Two in the room. And
two out here. That’s five. Two left. One of them the big guy.

Jebidiah saw movement. Something white. Or gray. It was Dol.
He was gliding up the stairs.

“Why are you hiding?” Jebidiah said. “They can’t hurt you
now.”

“It’s a habit,” Dol said, more or less standing on the landing
beside Jebidiah. “I still think they can hurt me, even though I
know they can’t. There ain’t no reason to it, but that’s the way it
is.”

“So why did you come out now?”

“To tell you the big fella’s coming. I can sense it. And he’s mad.
He ain’t got but one wolf left. Thing is, he can make five others.
That means you and her or two more. Least that’s the way I see
it from what you’ve told me. Long as there’s six he can’t make no
more. But now for fresh meat. Fresh wolves. Put a gun in your
mouth. Don’t let him take you like he did them Conquistadores.
You did them a favor. But don’t let the big boy or the last wolf have
you, boy. You won’t like it.”

“Thanks for the warning,” Jebidiah said. “So there are just the
two? We got the others?”

“Yep.” Dol lifted his ghostly hat, slid past Jebidiah, across the
floor and melted into the wall.