A Fistful of Horror - Tales Of Terror From The Old West (14 page)

Brannigan put a hand on my shoulder. “The demon knows I’ve come to kill him.”

The sun went behind a cloud and I could hardly breathe. “A demon?”

“A yee naaldlooshii which in your tongue means witch.”

“I thought witches were women,” I said diverted.

“Some can be women but most are men. My mother’s people call them Skin-walkers.”

“Do they worship the devil?”

“A Skin-walker has to kill a member of their own family in order to gain their powers so they’re evil all right.”

“What kind of powers do they have?”

“They can shape shift into an animal or if a human looks them in the eye and is weak willed, the Skin-walker can steal their skin. Seeing my confusion, he added, “take over another man’s body.”

“Does he eat flesh?” I asked shuddering.

“He created the sickness that turns men into zombies. They’re in his power.”

“Where are you going?” I asked, panicked as he started to walk away.

“To find a piece of the Skin-walker’s magic in order to summon him. I think I know where to look.”

“Something tried to get in last night,” I blurted out. When I had Brannigan’s full attention, I added, “I thought it was a man but it turned into a coyote. It was probably a dream,’ I added sure he would laugh.

Brannigan didn’t laugh. “Tell your Ma if she won’t leave to keep the doors and windows shut and locked and don’t open them even if you know who it is. Do you have a basement?”

“No.”

“Then make torches. Fire kills them. Be ready. They’ll come at night when the power of the witch is at its highest. I’ll be back before nightfall,” he promised.

“I watched him walk across the street to the blacksmith. A few seconds later, he rode out of town.

When I went in for lunch, I told Ma what Mr. Brannigan said.

“We can’t leave and he had no right scaring you like that.”

“Promise you’ll do what he says,” I begged.

Ma glanced out the window. The sun was at its zenith warming the kitchen.

“Ma,” I pleaded.

“With all the lawlessness, I guess it just makes sense to lock up.”

I breathed a sigh of relief and returned to beating the rugs.

***

When I looked up a couple of hours later, I saw Drew Morgan tear down his saloon sign and load what remained of his women and his liquor into a wagon.

Doc Wilson had a few words with him before watching him take off. I joined Doc. “Where’s he going?”

“Austin.”

Marvel Goodwinter and two of his sons rode past, with all their furniture and pots and pans piled high in the wagon.

“Pretty soon we’ll be the only ones left,” I said feeling a stab of fear.

“Looks that way,” he agreed grimly. “Half the town is sick but their relatives are hoping it isn’t the plague and hiding it and the other half is leaving. Tell your Ma to lock up good,” he added as he walked away. His hands shook and he looked worried sick.

Brannigan returned a few minutes later. He didn’t speak to me or stop in the dining room for supper but went straight to his room.

I listened at his door but I didn’t hear anything so I opened it even though I knew I should have knocked first.

Brannigan had his shirt off, the doeskin pouch around his waist. He was giving himself a shot.

He had his back to me.

“What is it?” he asked roughly as he finished, washed the needle, wrapped it in a cloth and put it in the doeskin pouch. He sat on the edge of the bed, pain etched on his face.

I couldn’t help noticing the bullets lined up on the bureau were opened. Next to them was a dish of white ashes and an eagle feather with blood on it. I stared at it.

“Is that the Skin-walker’s magic?”

Brannigan was sweating, clutching his stomach.

“Get out.”

“But…”

“I said get out,” he groaned and standing up, moved so fast, I wasn’t prepared when he slammed the door shut in my face. I heard him moaning and retching inside.

I went downstairs and made sure all the doors were double locked before I gathered up boxes of matches and made torches out of sticks wrapped with old cloth soaked in kerosene.

When I came downstairs I found Ma alone in the kitchen loading up a Winchester repeating rifle.

“I thought you didn’t believe Mr. Brannigan?”

“There’s no harm in being prepared.”

“Seeing Ma loading the rifle made the thing more real. She hated guns.

Mr. Brannigan joined us. He looked a lot better. We didn’t say much. He had a cup of coffee. I had a glass of milk. He put the cup of white ashes down.

“Mix some of that with the bullets,” he instructed Ma.

To my surprise, she followed his instructions.

When I returned from checking the lock on the front door for the third time, I heard Ma’s voice.

“If anything happens to us, I want you to make sure we don’t rise from our graves. You understand me, Mr. Brannigan?”

“I do, Ma’am.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. Hearing my mother asking a stranger to kill us if necessary, shocked me. It was the first time I thought we might not make it through the night, even with Mr. Brannigan’s help.

We moved furniture around, blocked doorways, loaded the rifles and made more torches ending up together in the kitchen.

I dozed in between eating chocolate cake. I knew Ma was worried sick because she didn’t stop me having a third piece.

The hammering on the kitchen door made me jump. We could see Doc Wilson’s terrified face through the window. He was bleeding. A piece of his cheek was missing.

Ma started to go to the door but Mr. Brannigan stopped her.

We watched in horror as Doc’s body was attacked by a pack of zombies. His blood and brains splashed the window.

I heard a commotion at the front door and the sound of glass shattering.

“Light the torches,” Brannigan shouted running to the front.

As I lit two of them, my hands were shaking so badly I could hardly hold them.

A rock sailed through the kitchen window and a zombie began crawling through even though the jagged glass sliced pieces of dead flesh off. The first was Reverend Porter and I kept telling myself he was dead as I ran over and set him on fire. He staggered back bumping into the other zombies setting them on fire. The kitchen door finally gave way and more staggered through.

Billy Hanson, with dead eyes, his body covered in blood from a gaping neck wound grabbed my arm and pulled me to him. I screamed and began punching and kicking him. Ma’s Winchester was shooting zombies who had made it through the window.

Ralph Hanson shoved his way through. He emptied his Skofield revolver into Billy but the bullets were just bullets and had no effect.

“Let her go,” Mr. Hanson bellowed as if he raised his voice his son could hear him. When Billy didn’t respond, he punched him in the face and tried to pry his fingers away from my arm.

Billy stared at his father without recognition before sinking his teeth deep into his throat.

Tears streaming down his face, Mr. Hanson shoved his revolver under Billy’s chin and pulled the trigger. Billy lost half his face. His teeth were gone but he still had a piece of his tongue and licked at the blood that covered them both.

Having shot her attackers with Brannigan’s special white ash bullets, Ma pointed the rifle at Billy and blew the rest of his head off.

Billy’s headless corpse still gripped my arm but he was weak and I finally broke free. I grabbed one of the torches and struck a match, setting him on fire.

Staggering about the room, Billy ignited the others. The rest backed off as though some remnant of consciousness warned them fire was their downfall.

Mr. Hanson was sobbing. He lifted his revolver to his own head and pulled the trigger but the gun jammed. He tried again but nothing happened. He turned to Ma.

“Kill me,” he begged as the blood poured from his neck. In God’s name, somebody kill me.”

“No,” a voice hissed.

The zombies shuffled, moving aside as Dale Emerson appeared. He wasn’t the same Dale Emerson I knew. His eyes glowed like red coals.

“Show your true self, Eagle Feather,” Brannigan demanded as he joined us, standing in front of Dale brandishing the feather. “I tracked you and found your magic.”

Dale’s body twisted and his face shimmered, switching back and forth between that of the white foreman and that of the Comanche Skin-walker.

“Suddenly he stood before us as he really was, stripped of everything but the skin of a coyote. His flesh was filthy his nails long and caked with dirt. He pointed a finger at Mr. Hanson.

“You and the blue soldiers drove us off our land and you took it for your own. Now I take your spirit and all that you love.”

Brannigan fired but Mr. Hanson rose up to attack the Skinwalker just as Brannigan’s ash filled bullet struck him in the head and he fell and lay still.

With a howl of rage the Skin-walker snatched his feather and screamed, “Kill them.”

The zombies rushed us.

Brannigan shot again but the Skin-walker disappeared into the onrushing zombies.

Ma shot six of them before she was pulled to the ground. Three of the monsters landed on top of her taking bites out of her flesh. She started screaming as blood pooled under her.

“Get off her,” I shrieked as I set fire to them. Suddenly I was aware of Mr. Brannigan at my side. “Don’t you kill her,” I shouted.

Ma looked a bloody mess. I could see the teeth marks on her neck, face and upper body. She was dying and once she did, she would turn into them.

“Mr. Brannigan,” she whispered as two more zombies fell on her.

“No,” I sobbed, hysterical.

The zombies were filling the hall making their way toward us. Brannigan grabbed me. “Set fire to the rug. Do it before it’s too late” he ordered.

Blinded with tears, I turned away for a second to light the rug piled up at the entrance to the kitchen. I heard a shot in back of me and whirled around. Life had gone out of Ma’s eyes and she lay still.

I had no time to grieve. One of the zombies made it through the flames. He staggered and fell near me clamping his jaws down on my ankle, crushing the bone before expiring.

I screamed, dropping my torch. Brannigan shot the zombie in the face and picked me up and shoved me into a kitchen cabinet, moving the heavy oak table against it before turning to face the rest who were pouring through the windows ripping and tearing at his skin, trying to get him down on the floor.

I heard his gun go off until it stopped and then he fought them hand to hand.

The Skin-walker had vanished.

I saw Brannigan light two torches and set the zombies on fire before picking up the gun and reloading it. The house was in flames. I felt the heat in my hiding place. Smoke crept under the cabinet doors making me cough and my eyes tear.

I heard Brannigan shoving the table away. He tore open the door.

“Hurry up. We don’t have much time.” He was mauled and bleeding from a dozen bites and where the zombies hacked at his flesh.

I couldn’t move. I was in shock and a part of me was sure he was going to shoot me.

He reached in and dragged me out. The zombies who hadn’t been killed were staggering around disoriented and confused. Most of them were in the front room, burning up, trying to get out.

“Run,” he said as the flames reached the kitchen floorboards making them warp from the heat. We ran past the panicked zombies out into the cold air.

Brannigan dragged anything he could find to block the doors. We waited by the windows armed with torches for any zombies trying to escape the inferno inside.

When a few stumbled out, he knocked them to the ground and set fire to their corpses.

When there were no more zombies, we stood around and watched my house burn. It was awful and I cried.

When it was over we went to all the houses and shops in town and set fire to them too. We killed a few zombies who were hiding in the cellars. Before long, the whole town was in flames.

I felt numb. My mother was dead. My home was gone and I was infected. It was the worst birthday ever.

The sky was beginning to get light. We’d fought the zombies all night. The sun would be up soon like any other day I thought bitterly.

“How’s your ankle?” Brannigan asked as he took off his ripped shirt and tightened the doeskin pouch around his waist.

Rage burned away the numbness, coming at me like the Santa Ana winds. I flew at him, attacking him, punching him in the stomach and face.” I hate you. You killed my mother,” I screamed.

He looked at me sadly and stood there without defending himself. “Your Ma was brave. She asked me to do it.”

Exhausted, I stopped hitting him and heard a horse whinny.

Brannigan whistled and his black and white stallion trotted over and nudged him. Any other horses who escaped the fires had fled.