Skin Medicine (33 page)

Graybrow stood by his horse, his long gray hair whipping in the wind. He had a Whitney 12-gauge in his arms. “If you figure it’s the right thing to do, white man.”

Cabe didn’t suppose it was at all. Just the feel of the place was enough to make a man jump on his horse and ride until there was no trail left. The air was oppressive, physically heavy as if it were not air, but something slimy and moist. The overpowering, almost vaporous sense of malignancy made Cabe want to wretch. He was afraid to go any farther, to touch anything. Like maybe the contagion would find him, make him part of whatever had ripped the guts…and the soul…out of this place.

He stood on the boardwalk before what might have been a saloon once. A splintered sign creaked on its hinges overhead, but was entirely unreadable, the letters erased by winds and weather. Only a vague shape was still visible. Possibly the head of a horse.

“You telling me this place went to shit only since this Cobb fellow showed up?” Cabe wanted to know. “Looks like it’s been abandoned for years.”

“It has,” Graybrow said.

He told Cabe that the town had originally been called Shawkesville, after its founding father, Shawkes Tewbury, a New England Yankee. Tewbury had discovered the lead in the hills and had built the town, probably to resemble some crumbling seaport town out east. He had owned everything. Upwards of five, six-hundred people had been living in the town and working the mines as recently as 1865, but then the ore had played out and the railroad passed it by…and it had died out.

“Tewbury was the last to leave back in ’70, so I hear. Whole place here, it sat empty until two years back when Mormon squatters moved in, decided to rebuild it. Don’t look like they ever got very far.”

Cabe didn’t think so either. He looked up and down the angular streets. “We’re wasting our time, Charles. Can’t be nobody left living here.”

“That’s what we came to find out, isn’t it?”

Damn Indian logic. It was always so blasted black and white. And just when Cabe figured he had a good reason to get them out of here. He walked up to the door on the old saloon. It was water-damaged, warped in its frame. He had to put his shoulder against it to pop it open. And then it nearly fell off its hinges. Inside, dusty tables and a mildewed bar. Leaves had blown in through the cracks.

Cabe stepped in there, over the mummified body of a rat, very aware of the sound of his boots and spurs on that crooked flooring. There were empty bottles and glasses behind the bar. A few dirty paintings of whores festooned with cobwebs and covered in filth. Cabe just stood there, listening, listening. Though he heard nothing, he sensed everything. The town was not empty. Not in the ordinary sense. There was an overpowering sense of…
occupancy.
As if the villagers were hiding, playing out some macabre version of blind man’s bluff. Just waiting, waiting to come pouring out from doorways and cellars and shuttered attics, to show the two intruders just what sort of game they were up to.

And this more than anything, chilled Cabe right to the marrow.

He pulled a rolled cigarette from the pocket of his broadcloth coat and lit it with a match. He didn’t honestly want to smoke, but he needed to smell something other than the stink of the town. Because in here, in this vacant bar the stink was electric. A deep, pervasive odor of depravity and degeneration that told him that this town was blighted, polluted right to its core.

He could not put his finger on the source, but it was there. A loathsome, invidious atmosphere of charnel pits and violated graves. Cabe was not given to superstition, but right then…he would not have wanted to be caught in Deliverance after dark. He would sooner have slit his own wrists.

“C’mon,” he said to Graybrow.

Rifles in their hands, they checked out an old assay office, a boarded-up dance hall, the remains of a hotel. It was the same in each and every place. Lots of dust motes drifting in the air, lots of dirt and rotting furniture, but not a lot else. They found buildings where there were trails broken through the dust, but never the people who made them.

They took their horses with them as they walked the streets because the animals were nervous and skittish. There was no doubt they felt it, too, felt it and wanted out in the worst possible way.

Cabe and Graybrow did not look in every house or building. There were certain places they just couldn’t bring themselves to enter. And numerous cul-de-sacs where the roofs overhung to such a degree that they created oceans of shivering shadow so impenetrable, nothing could have forced the two men to investigate. But wherever they went, they could feel that sense of spiritual contamination, that deranged aura of pestilence. In more than one building, they heard footsteps in empty rooms or scratching sounds within the walls. And once, a whispering from a dank, stygian cellar.

But there was never anything to be found when they investigated.

Other than that, the only sounds were the wind moaning and their own boots stepping over groaning timbers. But that did not satisfy Cabe that he was imagining any of it. Because, someone or something was there. Behind them, in front of them, maybe on the rooftops or down in the cellars. More than once he had caught movement out of the corner of his eye. And there was no mistaking one thing: they were being watched. Eyes were peering at them from shadowy tangles, leering from behind shuttered windows and staring from dark, damp places.

At the edge of town, they found a few log houses that showed signs of recent occupancy. Beds were made and tables set, firewood stocked and barns hayed. There was dust over everything, but it made Cabe think that whoever had lived in those places had left in one hell of a hurry. In that part of the country times were always harsh and you didn’t abandon your belongings and wares without a real damn good reason.

In one of the houses they found a single yellowed bone.

It was sitting in the center of the floor, a human femur. Both he and Graybrow examined it and came to the same conclusion: the marks punched into it were from teeth.

“What do you make of all this?” Cabe finally asked.

But Graybrow just shook his head, saying, “I think it’s much worse than what folks are saying. Whatever happened here…maybe I don’t want to know.”

Cabe just looked him dead in the eye. “You scared?”

“Damn yes, I am.”

And Cabe was, too. He had never experienced such a total sense of terror before. And what made it all the worse, all that much harder to handle was that he did not even know
what
he was afraid of. Only that if it found him, if it reached out and touched him, he feared he’d lose his sanity.

They found a livery in which a dozen horses were stabled. They were very much alive and had plenty of feed and water. There were saddles and rigs, bits and reigns. Even shoes and nails stacked on a bench.

“Somebody’s here, all right,” Cabe said.

They checked out the old jail and then the only church in town. Its spire was high and leaning, the cross missing. If there was one place the Mormons would have set to right, it would have been the church. It stood at the end of a weedy road, surrounded by a rusty wrought-iron fence with spiked corner posts that rose up five, six feet. It was frightful and uninviting, looked like it might fall right over at any moment. The windows had been planked-over and a weird, gassy smell emanated from it.

Cabe climbed the rickety steps and tried the iron door-puller.

“Locked,” he said, sounding relieved.

Graybrow stood just outside the fence with the horses. “You see what’s carved into that door?”

Cabe did.

He was not an educated man, but he could read. And had read widely in his lonely occupation to pass the time. What he saw carved in the face of the door were signs and symbols generally associated with witchcraft and black magic—pentagrams and pentacles, stylized inverted crosses.

Regardless, he had seen enough.

They both mounted and rode through those streets one last time, each with their weapons in hand. The shadows were elongating and they heard sounds, murmuring voices, distant movement…as if whatever lived in Deliverance was real anxious for the sun to go down.

When they got outside town, Cabe and Graybrow rode like hell was opening behind them and that wasn’t too far from the truth.

17

It was well after dark when Cabe finally tracked Dirker down to a sordid rooming house called Ma Heller’s Place just this side of Horizontal Hill, the red-light district. He had been all over town looking for the sheriff ever since returning from Deliverance and this is where he found him, staring up at the house astride his gray mare.

Cabe brought him into a tent-roofed saloon called the Mother Lode and laid it out for him over warm beer.

“Empty?” Dirker said.

Cabe just shrugged. “It is and it isn’t. There’s something there, but I’m not just sure what.”

Dirker just gave him those ice-blue eyes full blast. “Maybe you better explain yourself.”

So Cabe did. He took his time, telling the sheriff everything he had learned about Deliverance and James Lee Cobb and how he figured the degeneration of the place was definitely connected with the man. At least, it seemed likely. Because something was wrong there, the place had gone from a God-fearing Mormon enclave to a vile pest-hole and there had to be a reason.

Dirker didn’t laugh at him or dismiss it outright. He gave it all pause while he sipped his beer. “I’ll grant you that something strange has happened there…but witchcraft? Satanism? Christ, Cabe, I just can’t swallow that sort of business.”

“Don’t blame you, Dirker. Not in the least. I wouldn’t have swallowed it myself unless it was rammed down my throat,” Cabe said. “I think…I
think
what ought to be done here is a posse organized and taken in there. Hell, maybe the army. But something ought to be done.”

“Then why don’t you do it? I told Forbes that you were the man for the job.”

Cabe just stared at him. “I guess…I guess I appreciate that. But this whole thing is bigger than me. Even all that money he promised me, it ain’t enough to get me up to Deliverance by myself. That place has to be torn apart and rooted out.”

But Dirker wasn’t so sure. “When the time comes, I think that’ll be my decision.”

Cabe just sighed. “Goddammit, Sheriff…listen now, this ain’t a matter of who’s in charge. It’s a matter of something being real fucking wrong up at that place and something having to be done about it.”

But Dirker would only tell him he’d think it over, maybe do a little more intensive research on his own. What you don’t understand, Dirker told him, was that there was more than just that crazy town to deal with here. There was the vigilantes and last night they had raided Redemption. And word had it the Mormons had brought in the Danites now and things were about to get seriously ugly.

“Way things stand, Cabe, I can’t afford to have all my men sniffing around that deserted village, not with what’s going on.”

Cabe understood that, said, “Sooner or later, Sheriff, this is going to have to be dealt with. And I hope it’s before more people are dead or missing.”

Dirker agreed with him on that. “But right now,” he said grimly, “how about we discuss why I’m out here instead of at my office? How about that?”

Cabe finished his beer. “Why
are
you out here?”

“It’s about your friend Freeman.”

And it was more than that. It was also about the Sin City Strangler. Dirker told him that not less than two hours before…just about sunset, in fact…the killer had struck yet again, carving up another prostitute. This one was named Carolyn Reese and she worked at the Old Silver Gin House. But the law had gotten lucky this time, for another whore had seen a man with her shortly before it happened.

Cabe was paying attention now. “And?”

“And the description was of a tall man, narrow face, dead-looking eyes. Worn a Stetson and a canvas duster. He also wore the star of a Texas Ranger.”

Cabe felt his head go dizzy, felt a rushing sound in his ears. “Freeman…Jesus H. Christ. I figured there was something wrong there, but, dammit, I didn’t want to think this.”

Dirker nodded. “Well, it just so happens that I wired the Rangers in Abilene. They had a fellow named Freeman working for them. But he disappeared about six months ago back up in Wyoming. He was a short, rotund fellow with an eye patch.”

“So Freeman…or whoever we got here…he just borrowed this man’s identity?”

“That’s how I’m figuring it,” Dirker said. “Just so happens, Freeman has a room over at Ma Heller’s.”

Cabe stood up. “Well, let’s bag that cocksucker.”

Dirker smiled thinly. “Figured you’d see it my way.”

***

It was Cabe who kicked the door in to Freeman’s room.

He kicked it in and Dirker went through low with a sawed-off shotgun. But the theatrics were unnecessary for Freeman was not there. In fact, nothing was there. The closet was cleaned out and the bureau was empty. The sonofabitch had made his run again.

But he left a parting gift to the men he probably knew would hunt him: a human heart in a mason jar of alcohol.