And the Hills Opened Up (21 page)

As the train’s arrival time neared, more folks stepped onto the platform.  They waited with their heads turned to the west, like turkeys hoping to be fed.  Elwood wondered—

What was that smell?

Elwood sat forward on the bench, sniffing the air.  He smelled something peculiar.  Something like…

Char.

The last drop of alcohol fled from Elwood Hayes’ blood, flushed by a sudden and joint-locking certainty that every person on the platform was about to die.  He sat back against the bench slowly, trying not to call attention to himself, and scanned the crowd as they waited for the train. 

He picked out two families, holding no luggage, and figured they were waiting for somebody to arrive.  He counted eight women and ten men, standing either in pairs or alone, with luggage piled at their feet.  Everyone wore some kind of hat, the women in hats and gloves.  Turned west slightly, he could make out each face in profile, but even as Elwood studied the men, he realized he had no solid idea of what the Charred Man looked like.  The first time he’d seen him, he’d still been half-covered in char, and the second time he’d been more worried about aiming his throw.  Now, pressed to it, he could only recall a man’s pallid, smooth face, glistening like it was wet. 

Shiny, Father Lynch had said.

Shiny like a new penny.

Elwood sighed and reach slowly behind him, unbuttoning his gun from its holster and preparing the way for a clear draw.  The burnt char smell had faded and been replaced by perfume, too much perfume.  Elwood scowled at the old woman sitting beside him and rose to his feet, moving as natural as he could as he watched the men standing in the crowd, trying to keep an eye on each one at the same time.

He was tall. 

He remembered that.  The Charred Man fought low to the ground, but he was—

“Sir?”

Elwood sniffed the air.  He’d caught the burnt scent again.  He was here, in the crowd.  He was near.

“Sir?” 

An old woman’s voice, rising shrill.  Elwood turned, hoping she was talking to somebody else.  She wasn’t.

“Sir, you forgot your luggage,” the old woman he’d been sitting beside called out, waving at him and pointing at his saddle bags with her foot.  Elwood felt the crowd eyeing him curiously and kept his back turned so nobody could see his face.

“Thank you, ma’am,” he said in a low voice, gritting his teeth.  “I was only getting up to peer down the tracks a moment.”

“Oh,” the old woman said, deflated.  “I thought—”

“I appreciate your concern, though.  It was mighty kind of you to call me back like that.  Mighty kind.”

The old woman brightened, twisting her gloved hands in her lap. 

“No bother.  No bother at all, sir.”

Elwood smiled through clenched teeth and counted to five, letting the crowd lose interest and return to their westward gazing before he pivoted round again, hands clasped behind his back.  He expected to find the Charred Man already upon him, straight razor lifted, but nobody was at his back—the crowd was milling about ten feet away as the train, now a smoking speck on the horizon, blew its horn to alert Rawlins of its arrival.

Elwood drew his pistol and stepped up to the rear of the grouped men, nostrils flaring like a hound’s.  He noticed one of the taller men, a gentleman in a fine suit and black bowler hat, had lost interest in the approaching train and was studying one of the women on the platform.  His arms were thin, like stovepipes, and hung limply at his sides, as if separate from the rest of his body and waiting to be told what to do next.  Elwood closed in on the man, careful to keep at his blind.  He thumbed back the gun’s hammer, a small noise lost in the train’s second whistle.  The smell of char grew stronger as he neared the man, so pungent he wondered how the others on the platform could tolerate it.  He raised his pistol and aimed it just under the brim of the man’s bowler, his eyes watering. 

He’d made mistakes.  He could be killed.

“Red Earth,” Hayes whispered.  The man’s shoulders flinched and Elwood shot him in the back of the skull, his gun a dry pop as the train rolled into the station, brakes screaming as steel pressed steel.  The man wavered on his feet a moment, absorbing the shock, before his knees buckled and he pitched forward onto the platform. 

Elwood thumbed a second round into his gun’s chamber and rolled the man over with his foot.  The bullet hadn’t passed through—the man’s pale, glistening face was still intact, his dark eyes open and showing their surprise.  The man opened his mouth, tried to say something, and shut it again.  Elwood fired two more shots into the fallen man’s chest and delivered a hard kick to his side.

“You know what that’s for, you bastard.” 

The Charred Man flopped about on the platform and red-black ooze dribbled from the corners of his mouth.  The train blew its whistle a third time.  The other passengers had collected their luggage and were boarding as if they hadn’t noticed the shooting at all.  For a short, dreamy moment Elwood considered grabbing his saddlebags and joining them, going to Cheyenne as if nothing had happened and moving on from there, living like a king on the Dennison money.

Instead, Elwood holstered his gun and dragged the demon across the platform, aiming for the little wooden shack the stationmaster sold his tickets from.  He couldn’t tell if the char smell had lessened from the train smoke, but he knew this needed to be a certain thing.  He knocked on the stationmaster’s door and the gaunt young man came out straight off, trembling hands raised.  He shouted something but Elwood couldn’t make it out.  He waved the boy off, allowing him to tuck tail and run, and dragged the demon into the shack—the Charred Man’s tall frame filled the small building so greatly Elwood had to raise him by the shoulders and prop him up until he resembled a man reading in bed.

An oil lamp and matches sat on a shelf beside the shack’s window.  Hayes unscrewed the lamp, dumped its contents both onto the demon and the walls surrounding, and stepped back out through the doorway.

“You ready?” 

The demon had stopped its sputtering and flopping.  It regarded him in a cool, hard manner, its dark and bottomless eyes fixed upon his face.  Hayes, who could feel his flesh crawl and threaten to run off, struck a match on the doorframe and tossed it inside.  The match’s flame dimmed for a moment then bloomed in a fine way. 

Soon enough, the shack was burning like it had been made for it.  Hayes heard no screams, no curses uttered with a final vehemence.  The train had pulled out of the station and was rolling east once more, picking up speed as it belched along.  Hayes left the station to find the nearest stack of timber he could lay his hands on—one or two wagonloads would see this last bit through.

Epilogue

Elwood Hayes was scheduled to hang in mid-September.   The time before the hanging passed both quick and slow, with summer taking its gradual leave of southern Wyoming as Elwood paced his narrow cell daily, wishing he was back in Colorado, or even on the old farmstead.  He’d written to his parents about his brother’s death and his own impending but no reply had come, which did not surprise him much.

Then, on the morning of the big day, Elwood was visited by a ghost.

The ghost was let into the jailhouse by a Rawlins deputy.  Dressed in a stiff brown suit of rough linen, the ghost wore his brown hair slicked back, like a lawyer or politician.  He came up to Elwood’s cell and gripped a bar with each hand.

“Hey there, El.”

Elwood stoop up from his cot, his astonishment genuine.

“Johnny?  Johnny Miller?” 

The ghost smiled and Elwood stepped closer, getting a proper look. 

“Christ, son.  I thought you were dead.”

“No, sir,” Miller replied, shaking his head.  “The sheriff let me loose and sent me packing.  I figure he already had enough on his hands, what with the Indians about to attack and all.”

Elwood rubbed his eyes with his palms.   

“There weren’t no goddamn Indians, Johnny.  That’s a lie the papers made up, like how they call it the ‘Bone House Massacre’ to sell more papers.”

“There weren’t no Indians?  What hit town, then?”

Elwood leaned toward the bars and lowered his voice.  “It was the goddamn miners.  They blasted too deep and woke a demon.”

Miller smoothed his hair, which was already lying flat.  Elwood watched him absorb what he’d said like he’d been told how to sight a rifle, or saddle a horse.  Miller had never been the swiftest thinker, but he did give things his full consideration.

“That man I shot here in Rawlins?  That was him, Johnny.  No matter what they say, that was the demon as sure as I’m standing here.  I was lucky and got the drop on him.”

“Lucky?  They’re going to hang you for it, El.  I saw them setting up the gallows in front of the courthouse.”

Elwood shrugged.  “Could have been worse—he could’ve torn through this whole damn town if he’d had a mind to.  Besides, they’re really hanging me for that payroll in my bags.  Mr. Dennison’s making sure I get strung before the whole world to set a proper example.”

Miller scratched his cheek, still digesting the idea.  He looked strange with his face clean shaven.

“That demon killed Roach and Clem, then?”

“Yes.  My brother also.  And he gave me this pretty scar on my cheek and threw me through the goddamn saloon wall.”

Miller whistled softly. 

“Well, I guess I owe you thanks for handing me over.  You hadn’t done that I’d be a goner myself.”

Elwood snorted and paced around his cell, of which he knew every quarter inch by heart.  Miller cleared his throat.

“I came to apologize, El.  I shouldn’t have killed that National man like I did.  You took me in and showed me how things were done and I went off and did something small like that.  I deserved to get knocked down and handed over.  I deserved a hanging.”

Somebody shouted outside Elwood’s cell window.  People liked to shout into the jailhouse, knowing Elwood was there to be shouted at.  They came and hollered at all hours, night or day, sober or drunk.

“From here on out, I plan to live a clean life and not let my temper best me,” Miller said, pushing his face between the cell bars.  “I’m going to get a job with the railroad and thieve no more.”

Elwood stopped his pacing and looked the young man in the eye. 

“That’s good, son.  You stay clear of trouble.”

Miller grinned in earnest, showing the boy he’d once been, but his grin faded as the jailhouse door creaked open behind him. 

“I’m sorry they’re going to hang you, Elwood.  You’re a good man.  I’ll be there to see you off and pray for your soul.”

“Thank you, Johnny.”

They shook hands through the bars of the cell and Miller, satisfied, showed himself out.  Two hours later Elwood Hayes was standing on the trapdoor of a temporary gallows, listening to the same blowhard preacher that buried Milo Atkins hollering about mortal sin and the Lord’s justice and the eternal flames of Hell.  They’d been right to choose a Saturday for the hanging—a full crowd was in attendance, filling the square and spilling into the streets beyond, men and women and children who all looked, from up here, like people Elwood had seen somewhere before.  He let his thoughts drift to Ingrid Blomvik as the preacher thundered on, recalling the warmth of her body against his, her soft blond hair and sad blue eyes.  He wondered if he could have settled down and loved a woman like that for fifty years, if they could have grown old and happy together in some calm place, perhaps a house tucked near the ocean.

When the preacher asked him if he had any last words, interrupting his pleasant reverie, Elwood Hayes said no, he did not.  He figured some things you just didn’t come back from.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Mark Rapacz, Jason Stuart, Karen L. Williamson, and the entire Burnt Bridge crew for bringing this strange beast of a novel to the world so beautifully.  He would also like to thank his agent Jonathan Lyons of Curtis Brown, LTD. for all his tremendous insight, effort, and often baffling doggedness.  Finally, as always, the author would like to thank his friends and family for their love and unflagging support.  You are the light out of the dark.

About the Author

David Oppegaard is the author of the Bram Stoker-nominated
The Suicide Collectors
(St. Martin’s Press),
Wormwood, Nevada
(St. Martin’s Press) and
The Ragged Mountains
(eBook). David’s work is a blend of science fiction, literary fiction, horror, and dark fantasy. He holds an M.F.A. in Writing from Hamline University and a B.A. in English from St. Olaf College. He teaches at Hamline University and the Loft Literary Center and works at the University of Minnesota. He lives in St. Paul, MN.

You can visit his website at
davidoppegaard.com
.