Skin Medicine (25 page)

If Cobb concentrated real hard, he could even make it speak.

When he was done stuffing his sausages, whistling some old Indian deathsong he’d never once heard in his life, he nibbled on a little finger food he’d boiled from the bones below. One of Gleer’s legs was spitted and roasting over the fire, carefully seasoned. It was getting nice and brown, gobs of fat dropping from it and sizzling in the flames beneath. The meaty, rich smell filled the cabin and went up the flue.

Cobb knew the meat-smell would bring the others home.

They wouldn’t have a choice.

And he would welcome them, surely. He figured two more kills and he’d have more than enough meat to put up until spring, if he practiced a little conservation, that was. Avoided his usual gluttony. But he was no savage. He would invite both Barlow and Noonlan to break bread at his table. He’d give ‘em both a good meal before putting them to the knife.

It was the Christian thing to do.

So Cobb nibbled and waited, a curious light flickering in his eyes.

He remembered the night he’d crept back up to the cave, something in him telling him it was the right thing to do. That what was in there, what was hiding in the cracks and crevices and maybe the bones, too, was the very reason he had come. Not gold. But…
it.
Whatever in the hell
it
was. The very thing them injuns had cut from the ground. He could remember it started with that gassy smell. A foul, yellow odor it was, a terrible sweet smell of unburied corpses and miasmic tombs.

It had touched him.

Physically touched him.

In his head

as it held him tightly, nursed him against its breast like an infant

it had told him what to do. How long it had waited for him. How it was he could survive if he could simply overcome certain social taboos, that was.

But Cobb would not listen, would not.

He’d been thinking along those lines, but he wasn’t ready just yet.

And the thing had pressed him into itself, squeezed him so that he thought his bones would come busting out of his mouth. It told him there was no other way. If he wanted power…and he did want that, didn’t he? Then there was only one way to have mastery over men. Same way you had mastery over animals

by eating them. Devouring the flesh and absorbing all that they were and could be.

This, it said, was the path to invincibility and immortality.

But Cobb just was not sure, so the thing sweetened it a bit for him. It talked to him like an old friend. It didn’t try to intimidate or terrify him, it just talked in a natural, easy rhythm. And, funny thing, it had a deep Southern accent, a hellbilly accent just like his kin from the Missouri Ozarks.

Well, at least it seemed that way…but maybe it was just a breathing gray sibilance forming words in his head.

Now, let me tell ye something, Jimmy Lee. Jus’ mind me and listen, hear? Shet up now, this here’s important. Once upon a time, there was these injuns what lived up here in these hills. Just yer ordinary savages, I reckon. They was some shirttail kin of the Shoshoni called themselves the Macabro. Well, cousin, these Macabros, they started tunnelin’ in the earth like worms into pork…well, sir, weren’t long before they dug somethin’ up, somethin’ mebbe they weren’t a-supposed to find at all. It jumped up, said hello and how you be, and rode down hard on them savages like Christ come to preach. Now this thing here, it crawled into their skins. Ran roughshod all over the tribe like Yankees marching through Georgia. I shit you not. Ye remember them bad things what were supposed to live down in them hollers back home in Missourah? Yessum. This thing, it was like that. Now, it weren’t exactly neighborly, this critter. It got into them injuns deep. Sure as Christ was hammered to the cross, the Macabro belonged to this thing.

Now, cousin, lemme tell ye how it were fer them.

These injuns, they took to etin’ human flesh and what not, sacrificin’ their firstborn and all. The shaman would et the little shitters raw and wrigglin’. Yep, their own children, that’s what I said. But adults, too. Jus’ about anyone. And virgins…heh, that sumbitch what out of the ground, he was real sweet on maidens, see. Now, the Macabro were always fighting one tribe or another. When they caught some, they’d make burnt offerings of their enemies, nail ‘em upside down to poles and sometimes put ‘em to the flame and sometimes jus’ left ‘em there to rot to bone.

Now wait, son, keep yer Henry in yer pants…yep, there’s more. See, these Macabro…they started digging up their dead and the dead of anyone they could find, yessum. Started worshipping bones and skulls. Made altars of ‘em and doin’ things with the dead uns ye just don’t want to think about. They was jus’ real soft in the heads, this bunch.

Now these shaman, priests

whichever ye want to call them baby-rapin’ devils

they was quite a bunch. They called all the shots. Sumbitches didn’t cotton to bathin’ no how. A filthy lot what jumped and hopped about in their cloaks of baby-skins, snakes just a-twisting in their long filthy hair. They sang them profane songs and wore skull masks and chattered their teeth what were filed to points to rend and tear, ye see. These shaman, they controlled everything. Their bodies were tattooed with snakes and symbols and witch-sign, what they called the Skin-Medicine. Some sort of conjurin’ and magical formula written right on their skins. It was said that with this Skin-Medicine, them heathen devils could control the spirits of the dead and change themselves into man-eating beasts jus’ any old time the need struck ‘em. Now on nights of the full moon, the Macabro priests would light big fires and them injuns would dance naked in the snow while the priests read from their own skins. Injuns what had been captured from other tribes would be slaughtered, their flesh eaten, and the snow would just stain red with their blood. And if the Macabro could get some of those injun’s young-uns, well, a regular party they’d have chompin’ up that fine, fat squib.

Well, cousin, ye get the picture.

These injuns was mad, yessum, but they had it half-right about etin’ other peoples to absorb all they had. Now the Macabro, they was all wiped out by the Ute two-hundred year ago, but what ye found in the cave, yes sir, that was their legacy. See, the Ute herded them Macabros what weren’t killed outright and all the dead uns up into that cave, burnt ‘em up alive, seeded their bones in them pits. Yessum, the cave. It was fitting, I reckon, in that the cave is where a lot of that pagan sacrificin’ went on.

And now, Jimmy-boy, ye understand? Do ye? Do ye?

Cobb didn’t remember much after that.

Just that he wasn’t quite the same. Sometimes he was himself and sometimes part of the thing that had impregnated his mother and sometimes part of that rabid hillbilly out of the cave. Sometimes they were all just one mind. The next day and all the days after, Cobb just waited and plotted the getting of skin and meat and bone.

And that’s how it all came about.

Cobb, a chunk of finger meat packed in his cheek, went over and turned Gleer’s leg on the spit. He poked it with a fork and the juice ran free and clear, telling him it was done. His belly was rumbling at the nauseating stench.

Just then, he heard movement outside the cabin.

He grinned, his eyes flashing with hellfire. It was Barlow and Noolan being real quiet and stealthy, sneaking about like red savages. They were doing a good job of it, too, but Cobb heard them. The sound of their boots breaking the crust of snow. The roar of the blood in their veins, the throb of their hearts. And mostly, yes mostly, he could smell their fear and to him it was like freshly uncorked brandy.

Cobb went about setting the table.

His back to the door, they came bursting in, the both of them. They held pistols on him and they were both shaking from the cold, their faces pinched and mottled and edged with fear.

“
You’re crazy, Cobb, you sick sonofabitch,” Barlow said. “Now real careful like, I want you to take that pistol out of your belt…with your left hand. Real slow now, let it drop to the floor…”

But Cobb just giggled. “Ye stop with that talk, friend. I’m just a-setting the table here. I want the both of you to sit with me and have a fine meal. Ye know ye want to, so why fight it? We’ll have us some eats and discuss this like men.”

Barlow and Noolan just stood there, not sure what to do. Cobb was insane, sure, but why was he so damn calm? What was that funny light reflected in his eyes? There was something very wrong about all this and it wasn’t just the cannibalism either.

“
We better just shoot him,” Noolan said.

“
That wouldn’t be very neighborly,
cousin,”
Cobb said.

“
See? See? He’s crazy! Watch him now, watch him real careful, because James Lee Cobb he’s right fast with that Colt,” Noolan was saying. “He can pull it so fast you—”

“
Drop that gun on the floor,” Barlow said.

Cobb sighed, shrugged, went for the gun with his right hand. And actually cleared leather before two bullets ripped through his belly. But all that did was make him laugh as his blood dripped to the floor. He dipped one finger into the hole in his buckskin shirt like a quill into an inkwell. He pulled it back out, licked the tip. His face was narrow and pallid, real tight like a skull wearing skin, his eyes lit like glowworms.

But he had his Colt out and, barking a short laugh, put a slug right between Barlow’s eyes, dropping him dead in the doorway.

“
Now,” he said to Noolan. “Why don’t ye join me for supper? What’s say?”

The pistol dropped from Noolan’s fingers and he started to whimper. Whatever was in Cobb’s eyes had him tight. He stumbled over to the table, his own eyes wide and unblinking and filled with tears. He sat down and watched dumbly as Cobb pulled the leg off the spit and began to carve it up.

Then he began to eat.

His fork jabbing and his teeth chewing and his throat swallowing, his mind gone to a formless putty. He ate and ate while Cobb watched him, all the while holding Gleer’s head by the hair. And the real bad thing was that Gleer was
speaking,
that white furrowed face was speaking. The eyes were rolling in his head and that black tongue was licking his lips. Cobb asked him questions and he answered in a dry, whistling voice, telling Gleer exactly what it was like down in that black pit of death and how Noolan’s kin were all down there burning with him.

Sometime later, Gleer’s head screaming and the cabin filled with chanting injun voices, Cobb slit Noolan’s throat and dressed him out.

***

In the Spring, Cobb came down from the mountains on foot, his parfleche still packed with dried human jerky. His travels after that were unknown for the most part. What
is
known is that he assembled a crew of blooded killers with similar leanings and tastes as his own. That they accompanied him back to Missouri where there was something he needed to collect. And sometime later he made for the Shoshoni peoples. Knowing he had something in common with them now.

And somewhere along the way, he heard about a Snake medicine man called Spirit Moon.

Part Four:

The Good, the Damned, and the Deranged

1

Whisper Lake by daylight.

It was afternoon by the time Tyler Cabe rolled out of bed and even later by the time he stepped out onto the streets, his brain still reeling with the sight of the murdered prostitute. He stood before the St. James Hostelry, breathing in the air which, although not cold as the night before, was kissed by a chill blowing down from the mountains.

He hadn’t even been in Whisper Lake a full twenty-four hours yet. It was hard to believe. He thought of the crazy hillbilly Orville DuChien. Jackson Dirker. The crazy tales that bartender—Carny—at the Oasis had told him about the local animal attacks. The Texas Ranger, Henry Freeman. Sir Tom English. Virgil Clay laying dead in a pool of his own blood. The jail and Charles Graybrow. And, yes, Mizzy Modine.

It all came together in his brain and made his head ache.

He lit a cigarette and wondered what would come next.

Licking his lips then, he made his way down the muddy, rutted street, taking in the town an inch at a time. It was his first real look at it. Whisper Lake was like other mining camps he had ridden through: a congested, dirty mess of humanity.

High above town, clinging to the rises and mist-cloaked slopes were the looming steel headframes and drum hoists of the mines themselves, the outcroppings of assorted buildings and sheds that rose up around them. There was a constant thundering and booming and clanking from up there, as the earth was gutted of silver. Ore wagons made the run continually from the chutes to the looming refineries down by the lake itself…you could see the gray, toxic smoke that belched from the stacks and fell back to earth, dusting everything in filth.

It looked oddly as if the town itself had once been part of the mine systems above and had slowly slid down the muddy inclines to its present position.