And the Hills Opened Up (15 page)

28

The night had grown so cold and silent it was tempting to peel back a few layers of hammered board, straighten your hat, and step outside to look around and breathe in some fresh air.  You could almost convince yourself the whole thing had blown over, that the demon set loose on the camp had moved on like a fast-rolling thunderstorm. 

Of course, you’d probably get your head ripped off before more than three seconds passed.  Elwood Hayes had no doubt of that, no matter how peaceable things appeared both inside the Runoff Saloon and out.  The Charred Man was growing a new skin–he’d need all the food he could get and Red Earth was the closest town for fifty miles.  The demon could hunt wild animals, sure, but they’d be nearly as much trouble as they were worth, stringy and fast as they skittered around the mountains.  No.  The Charred Man would make sure he’d picked Red Earth clean before he moved on and he’d have caught their scent hours ago, their fear and sweat and piss, as they holed up in the saloon.  The Charred Man was just biding his time, picking folks off one or two at a time, till he felt strong enough to assail the Runoff.

Which was why Elwood had run back downstairs, still buttoning his pants as he took the stairs two at a time.  He turned the hanging lanterns back to full flame, stoked the fireplace high, and brought out three bottles of moonshine from under the bar, careful not wake the widowed ladies sprawled on the floor.  A fierce, eye-watering smell wafted up as Hayes uncorked the bottles, but the shine was clear and didn’t have much grit floating in it.

“That’s nothing but rotgut,” Caleb said.  “Not much better than turpentine, I reckon.  You could probably use it to strip paint off the side of a barn.  Some wild-eyed prospector traded me three bottles for three shots of good whiskey.  I talked him down to two shots and he was happy to deal.”

Elwood took a cotton bar rag, wetted it with shine, and plugged the rag into one of the bottles.

“You must be crazy, wasting good alcohol like that.”

Elwood glanced at his brother, who was watching him while Roach and Clem and Caleb and the prospectors were all still dutifully watching their respective corners of the saloon, as instructed. 

“You mind your business, Owen, and I’ll mind saving our hides.”

“My business?  Is that what you’re calling this empty corner I’ve been staring at for three hours?”

“Hush,” Clem Stubbs said.  “Your piping voice is making my head hurt.”

“You’re soaked twice over, that’s why.”

“He’s got a point there, Clem,” Roach said, turning in his chair.  “You’ve been sucking on that whiskey bottle like it’s water.  How you expecting to shoot straight when you need to?”

“The Good Lord shall be my shield, Roach, and my aim he’ll guide true.”

The men all laughed at that, breaking the strain.  Elwood pointed his younger brother back round again and returned to his work, wetting bar rags with the moonshine and stuffing one into each bottle.  They weren’t sticks of dynamite, but they’d do nicely once you touched the rags to flame and tossed the bottle—he’d read once that some hard case had done this same thing to start a fire at the back of a bank while he was standing out front.  When the tellers had run out, carrying the bank’s silver in their arms, the bandit had just kept his gun level and ordered them to hand the sacks right over. 

Elwood took a step back from the bar and surveyed the room, wiping his hands on a clean rag.  The fumes from the bottles had made his sight watery and blurred.

“Who here’s good at pitching?”

Chairs creaked as all eight men turned to look his way.  One of the prospectors, an old codger the others called Jim, scratched beneath his hat.

“Pitching?”

“Like rocks and such.”

Clem scratched under his beard. 

“You want us to throw those bottles at the haunt?”

“Yes.  First you light them with one of the lanterns, then you throw.  You need to be quick about it, too.”

“Like touching off a stick of dynamite,” Roach said, smiling and pushing up his spectacles.  “You think we can burn this son-of-a-bitch out.”

“That’s right, I do.  He’s been burned before, ain’t he?  We just—”

Something pounded on the saloon’s front wall.  The men rose from their chairs as if they’d been bitten and raised their guns. 

“That’s him,” Owen said.  “That’s the goddamn Charred Man.”

The pounding stopped.  Elwood glanced at the saloon’s second floor railing but Ingrid hadn’t come out of her room.  She was probably still in bed or getting dressed.

“Maybe it’s somebody else,” Stubbs whispered.  “Maybe somebody is trying to hide out with us.”

“If that’s so, I don’t give a damn,” Owen said, whispering back.  “They can find their own hidey hole.”

The pounding started up again, louder now.  The tables they’d overturned and nailed to the wall shook with each strike. 

“He can’t be that strong,” said Stubbs, who hadn’t been at the Copper.  “That’s solid oak—”

The nailed-up tables cracked, lines running through them.

“Jesus,” Stubbs said, pulling back the hammer of his pistol.  “I guess y’all weren’t telling stories.”

Elwood turned his back to the front of the saloon to look at the men.  “Everyone go round to the far side of the bar and sight your guns.  Don’t fire till he’s close and don’t waste your shot.  You might only get one.”

The men stood frozen, looking past him.  He could hear the wood splintering without having to see it.

“Move, damn you!”

That got the men scrambling, but they’d barely circled round the island bar when the barricaded wall gave way, exploding like a crack of thunder.  Elwood reached for the nearest bottle on the bar, touched it to the flame of his lantern, and turned.

A tall, pale man in a fine dark green suit was striding through the breach in the wall, grinning as he unfolded a straight razor.  His hands were no longer claws, but you could still make out the strange creature he’d appeared to be earlier in the tight way he held his shoulders, the darkness in his eyes.  Elwood said a brief prayer, drew back his arm, and hurled the lit bottle at the demon’s chest. 

The Charred Man ducked as if he’d already known what trick was coming.  The bottle crashed behind him, exploding in a ball of fire.

Elwood shifted back on his heel.

He’d missed, and the level part of the fight was already over. 

Ingrid remained in bed after Elwood Hayes rushed out of her bedroom, mumbling queerly about fire.  She was in no hurry to return to the vigil downstairs.  She preferred to stay burrowed far down in her blankets, splendidly nude, retaining as much warmth as possible as lovely sleep tugged at her, calling her home.  She could still feel the stubble of his chin brushing against her cheek, rough and welcome at the same time.  The weight of his body—

Gunshots. 

Ingrid pulled the blankets above her head.  More gunshots cracked below.  She moaned into the covers and turned onto her side.

She understood that she was supposed to get out of bed.  She understood she was supposed to put on her clothes, run to the railing, and peer down to watch the pitched fight.  Perhaps there was something she could do, some brave and clever way she could kill the Charred Man, like a girl in a fairy tale.

Yet, she did not care to do so.  Her love was gone, gone for years and gone forever, and she did not care.  Ingrid Blomvik preferred to stay in bed, cozy beneath the covers, and wait for the events downstairs to play out, one way or the other.  She was spent and Erik was gone.

29

The priest retreated to his bedroom to guzzle as much gin as he could hold down.  He was bent on getting blind drunk and falling back asleep until morning.  His great hope was that when the sun rose above the hills, burning the morning dew off, that everything in Red Earth would go back to normal.  There’d be no one dead, no coffins in the sanctuary, and no tall, spindly stranger walking about in ill-fitting clothes, sniffing the air like a bloodhound.

Sleep would take an ocean of gin, though.  From his bedroom window Father Lynch could see two bodies lying in the street, both lying face down in the dirt, pitched forward like they’d been shot in the back.  He kept staring at them, vague outlines in the starlight, but they made no move to stand on their own and they did not disappear.  This was a firm nightmare. 

“Rise,” he whispered through the window.  “Rise and walk again.”

The wind caught at their clothes, whipping them about, but neither rose.  One of the bodies was a man, the other a woman.  The wind made the woman’s skirt balloon over the back of her legs, revealing a patch of creamy white skin that would have been comely under other circumstances.  Lynch found his gaze focusing on this exposed skin with the absorption of a lovesick youth gazing at the moon—the bare whiteness of it was somehow brighter than everything surrounding, including the fallen woman’s bare neck and hands. 

Fresh screams came from the south end of camp, down by the general store and livery stables.  The screams didn’t last long, sometimes only a half-second, but the shortest ones were the worst, like you’d heard some poor soul’s final worldly utterance before it could even reach full-throat.  Lynch took a pull from the bottle after each cry and said a prayer for the screamer’s soul, willing it safely to Heaven with every liquor-warmed ounce of his body and asking it to forgive an old man his cowardice, his locked door, and the bottle in his hand.

After the south end screams, a quiet period passed.  Lynch pulled his gaze away from the fallen woman’s exposed thighs and tried to focus on the Runoff Saloon instead, from which he could hear the occasional hammering behind its shuttered windows.  He wondered how many folks had taken shelter there, seeking the safety of numbers and firearms.  He hoped their numbers were large—fifty, sixty souls—and that they had plenty of good men left to lead them.  Perhaps they could last out the night, emerge at daybreak, and hunt the stranger down as a posse united.

  “Hold out the night,” Father Lynch implored, pointing his bottle at the window, “and we shall hunt the stranger together.  We will hunt him down like a rabid dog, hang him from the highest tree, and bury him six feet under.”

Lynch leaned toward the window.

“We’ll bury all of them, together, and I will pray for their immortal souls.  I will say my finest prayers.”

As if in response to his plea, the tall stranger reappeared on the street, walking smoothly.  He paused briefly to examine the two fallen bodies in the road, bending slightly at the waist for a better look.  His coat seemed to fit better than earlier, more tightly, and the priest realized the stranger was wearing an entirely new suit. 

Lynch lowered the bottle of gin and set it on the floor beside him.  The stranger straightened abruptly and smelled the air.  A terrifying pause, in which the priest could hear his own heart beating in his ears, and the stranger began moving again, his long legs scissoring as he continued toward the camp’s north end. 

A minute passed before Lynch realized two things: the stranger’s hands had both resembled normal hands, with nothing claw-like about them any longer, and that Lynch had pissed himself more than slightly.

The priest changed into clean clothes in the dark, only bumping his knee once on the iron frame of his bed, a bump which he did not feel much as the gin began to take greater hold, asserting itself over his fear.  Once he’d changed, Father Lynch opened his bedroom door and passed into the sanctuary, striding down the main aisle toward the four coffins lined together at the back.  The floor creaked beneath his weight but Father Lynch didn’t mind the noise—he welcomed it, in fact—and as he stood before the coffins, he felt like a general surveying his troops.

His dead, coffin-bound troops.

“Men,” Lynch said, “You have not given your lives in vain.”

The priest searched his memory, trying to recall exactly for what reason these four men had given their lives.  Their arrival at his church seemed so long ago, a daylight affair unconnected from anything that mattered now.

And the lids—only one of the coffin lids was nailed shut.

“Lord Almighty,” Lynch said, loudly.  “That is no way to honor the memory of the dead.  Any meddlesome fool could come along, lift your lid, and get an eyeful.”

Lynch lifted one of the lids and peered inside the coffin.  It contained a dead man, his hands politely crossed.  He was no older than forty.

“Poor fool.  You could have lived another two score.”

Lynch dropped the lid and dusted off his hands.  He was sweating now, his power returned.  He strode back across the room, paused beneath the large cross hanging behind the lectern, and swiftly made the sign of the cross.

“Please, my Lord.  Deliver us.”

The priest went back into his bedroom and sat at the window.  He heard more screams on the north side of camp, or howls (they could have come from a coyote, lonely for the moon) and the world spun beneath his chair.  Then Lynch might have nodded off, or he might not have, and suddenly there across the street was the stranger again, knocking on the Runoff Saloon’s front door.  He battered it with such force the building’s entire front shook from the impact, the door buckling till it finally splintered and gave way with a loud crack.

Lynch expected a barrage of gunfire to greet the stranger as he stepped through the doorway, moving as casually as any invited salesman.  Instead, there was only a silent pause, followed by a sudden rise of flames in the saloon’s doorway.

Then came the gunfire.

“My,” Lynch whispered, watching the flames curl out of the doorway and rise up the saloon’s front.  The whole building was tinder-dry wood.  If they didn’t throw water on it straight off the entire structure would burn like it was filled with hay.

More gunfire.  Nobody ran outside to throw water on the fire, or to escape.  The gunfire stopped and the flames climbed higher, lighting up the whole street until it seemed like mid-day.

“No…”

The shutters of the second floor window drew back, revealing a woman cast in shadow.  She looked down at the ground, back into her smoke filled room, and swung her legs out, so she was sitting on the windowsill.  Lynch willed her to make the jump, prayed for it, and finally she dropped, landing awkwardly on one leg before the other.  The priest flinched, imagining her pain as she laid on the ground clutching her knee. 

“Keep moving,” he said, as if she could hear him through the window and the distance.  “The fire…”

The fire had risen to the building’s roof and was avidly devouring the entire structure, its heat so ferocious Lynch could feel the glass of his own window warming.  The woman began to crawl into the street, favoring her hurt knee.

Lynch squinted, studying the woman’s face.  It was one of the Madam Petrov’s girls—Ingrid. 

Sad, beautiful Ingrid. 

Her dress was untied at the waist, as if she’d dressed hurriedly, and the fire behind her was so bright Lynch could see the rounded outline of her body through the garment’s light fabric.  The priest rose from his chair, ready to run and help pull her to safety, as the tall stranger stepped back through the saloon’s doorway.

Father Lynch cursed, his hands balling into fists at his side.  Ingrid noticed the stranger striding after her and rose from the ground, scrambling in her terror.  She made it to the middle of the street before her knee buckled and sent her sprawling.

The stranger came on, brandishing his straight razor, and Lynch remained rooted to the spot, paralyzed by the scene playing out before him.  Ingrid moved to rise again but suddenly the stranger was beside her, covering the distance in an unnatural blur.  He grabbed at her blond, corn silk hair, lifting her head toward him, his face as blank as if he were considering a fence post, or a fish, while behind them the saloon crackled and raged with flame.

Twisting in the stranger’s grasp, Ingrid drew a small pistol from the folds of her dress and raised it.  Just as quickly, the stranger slashed down with his razor, opening the skin of her wrist and forcing the gun from her hand.

A moan rose up from the back of Lynch’s throat as the girl considered her bleeding wrist.  She looked from the wound to the razor and back again, as if unable to believe the connection between the two.  The stranger kicked the gun away, wiped the razor on his pants, and hugged Ingrid against him, like a father showing his child how to tie her shoe.  He set the razor beneath her throat, tightened his grip, and drew the blade across her yielding skin in a slow, easy arc. 

A ribbon of blood appeared, trailing where the razor had passed.  Ingrid’s eyelids fluttered as her body quaked for several seconds, then stilled.  The stranger released his grip on her long hair and let the girl fall to the ground.  The scab on his cheek, already shrunk to the size of a nickel, pulsed once and then faded away entirely.  The stranger smiled and touched his face.  He shone like a new penny.

Father Lynch took an involuntary step back from the window, his foot knocking over the gin.  Outside, the stranger’s head swiveled as if he’d heard the bottle’s clunk.  He looked toward the church.

“No,” the priest whispered, drawing back from the window.  “Please, Lord.  Please.” 

Lynch retreated to his bedroom door.  He turned the doorknob and quietly let himself into the sanctuary.  Whatever comfort the gin had brought the priest had now departed, leaving in its place a muddled terror that felt like a ball of ice in his gut.  Lynch scanned the sanctuary, trying to picture a way out.  He noted the coffins and crossed the room, raising the unfixed lids and studying each man.  He chose the skinniest National man and got in beside him.

“Don’t mind me, son.”

The priest dropped the coffin’s lid and sealed them in darkness.  The National man gave off a sour, gaseous odor.  Lynch slowed his breathing and tried not to think about the smell.  About anything.  Somebody tried the door to the church, found it locked, and forced it open with one strong kick.  Lynch didn’t think about it.  He didn’t think about the sound of a man’s footsteps going round the coffins and toward the front of the church.  He didn’t think about his bedroom door creaking open, or the long pause after that.  He was a cloudbank of white.  He was not there.  He was dead, one dead man wedged beside another.

The footsteps returned and stopped at the coffins. 

A cloudbank, pure and white.

One of the other lids was lifted.  The coffin’s contents examined.

Clouds.  High blank clouds.

The lid dropped back in place. 

Clouds.

Floorboards creaked as the footsteps slowly, ponderously, drew back, leaving the church.  The living dead man waited, taking shallow breaths.  He wondered when he could safely rise once more.