Deadman's Crossing (6 page)

Gimet gave out with a hoarse cry, scuttled back, clacking nails
and knees against the floor. When he moved, he moved so quickly
there seemed to be missing spaces between one moment and the
next. The buzzing of Gimet’s bees was ferocious.

Jebidiah grabbed the lantern, struck a match and lit it. Gimet
was scuttling along the wall like a cockroach, racing to the edge of
the window.

Jebidiah leaped forward, tossed the lit lantern, hit the beast full
in the back as it fled through the window. The lantern burst into
flames and soaked Gimlet’s back, causing a wave of fire to climb
from the thing’s waist to the top of its head, scorching a horde of
bees, dropping them from the sky like exhausted meteors.

Jebidiah drew his revolver, snapped off a shot. There was a
howl of agony, and then the thing was gone.

Jebidiah raced out of the protective circle and the deputy
followed. They stood at the open window, watched as Gimet,
flame-wrapped, streaked through the night in the direction of the
graveyard.

“I panicked a little,” Jebidiah said. “I should have been more
resolute. Now he’s escaped.”

“I never even got off a shot,” the deputy said. “God, but you’re
fast. What a draw.”

“Look, you stay here if you like. I’m going after him. But I tell
you now, the circle of power has played out.”

The deputy glanced back at it. The pages had burned out and
there was nothing now but a black ring on the floor.

“What in hell caused them to catch fire in the first place?”

“Evil,” Jebidiah said. “When he got close, the pages broke into
flames. Gave us the protection of God. Unfortunately, as with most
of God’s blessings, it doesn’t last long.”

“I stay here, you’d have to put down more pages.”

“I’ll be taking the Bible with me. I might need it.”

“Then I guess I’ll be sticking.”

They climbed out the window and moved up the hill. They could
smell the odor of fire and rotted flesh in the air. The night was as
cool and silent as the graves on the hill.

Moments later they moved amongst the stones and wooden
crosses, until they came to a long wide hole in the earth. Jebidiah
could see that there was a burrow at one end of the grave that
dipped down deeper into the ground.

Jebidiah paused there. “He’s made this old grave his den. Dug
it out and dug deeper.”

“How do you know?” the deputy asked.

“Experience...and it smells of smoke and burned skin. He
crawled down there to hide. I think we surprised him a little.”

Jebidiah looked up at the sky. There was the faintest streak of
pink on the horizon. “He’s running out of daylight, and soon he’ll
be out of moon. For a while.”

“He damn sure surprised me. Why don’t we let him hide? You
could come back when the moon isn’t full, or even half full. Back
in the daylight, get him then.”

“I’m here now. And it’s my job.”

“That’s one hell of a job you got, mister.”

“I’m going to climb down for a better look.”

“Help yourself.”

Jebidiah struck a match and dropped himself into the grave,
moved the match around at the mouth of the burrow, got down
on his knees and stuck the match and his head into the opening.

“Very large,” he said, pulling his head out. “I can smell him.
I’m going to have to go in.”

“What about me?”

“You keep guard at the lip of the grave,” Jebidiah said, standing.
“He may have another hole somewhere, he could come out behind
you for all I know. He could come out of that hole even as we speak.”

“That’s wonderful.”

Jebidiah dropped the now dead match on the ground. “I will
tell you this. I can’t guarantee success. I lose, he’ll come for you,
you can bet on that, and you better shoot those silvers as straight
as William Tell’s arrows.”

“I’m not really that good a shot.”

“I’m sorry,” Jebidiah said, and struck another match along the
length of his pants seam, then with his free hand drew one of his
revolvers. He got down on his hands and knees again, stuck the
match in the hole and looked around. When the match was near
done, he blew it out.

“Ain’t you gonna need some light?” the deputy said. “A match
ain’t nothin’.”

“I’ll have it.” Jebidiah removed the remains of the Bible from
his pocket, tore it in half along the spine, pushed one half in his
coat, pushed the other half before him, into the darkness of the
burrow. The moment it entered the hole, it flamed.

“Ain’t your pocket gonna catch inside that hole?” the deputy
asked.

“As long as I hold it or it’s on my person, it won’t harm me. But
the minute I let go of it, and the aura of evil touches it, it’ll blaze.
I got to hurry, boy.”

With that, Jebidiah wiggled inside the burrow.

In the burrow, Jebidiah used the tip of his pistol to push the Bible
pages forward. They glowed brightly, but Jebidiah knew the light
would be brief. It would burn longer than writing paper, but still,
it would not last long.

After a goodly distance, Jebidiah discovered the burrow
dropped off. He found himself inside a fairly large cavern. He
could hear the sound of bats, and smell bat guano, which, in fact,
greased his path as he slid along on his elbows until he could stand
inside the higher cavern and look about. The last flames of the
Bible burned itself out with a puff of blue light and a sound like an
old man breathing his last.

Jebidiah listened in the dark for a long moment. He could hear
the bats squeaking, moving about. The fact that they had given up
the night sky let Jebidiah know daylight was not far off.

Jebidiah’s ears caught a sound, rocks shifting against the cave
floor. Something was moving in the darkness, and he didn’t think
it was the bats. It scuttled, and Jebidiah felt certain it was close to
the floor, and by the sound of it, moving his way at a creeping pace.
The hair on the back of Jebidiah’s neck bristled like porcupine
quills. He felt his flesh bump up and crawl. The air became
stiffer with the stench of burnt and rotting flesh. Jebidiah’s knees
trembled. He reached cautiously inside his coat pocket, produced
a match, struck it on his pants leg, held it up.

At that very moment, the thing stood up and was brightly lit
in the glow of the match, the bees circling its skin-stripped skull.
It snarled and darted forward. Jebidiah felt its rotten claws on his
shirt front as he fired the revolver. The blaze from the bullet gave
a brief, bright flare and was gone. At the same time, the match was
knocked out of his hand and Jebidiah was knocked backwards,
onto his back, the thing’s claws at his throat. The monster’s bees
stung him. The stings felt like red-hot pokers entering his flesh.
He stuck the revolver into the creature’s body and fired. Once.
Twice. Three times. A fourth.

Then the hammer clicked empty. He realized he had already
fired two other shots. Six dead silver soldiers were in his cylinders,
and the thing still had hold of him.

He tried to draw his other gun, but before he could, the thing
released him, and Jebidiah could hear it crawling away in the dark.
The bats fluttered and screeched.

Confused, Jebidiah drew the pistol, managed to get to his
feet. He waited, listening, his fresh revolver pointing into the
darkness.

Jebidiah found another match, struck it.

The thing lay with its back draped over a rise of rock. Jebidiah
eased toward it. The silver loads had torn into the hive. It oozed
a dark, odiferous trail of death and decaying honey. Bees began
to drop to the cavern floor. The hive in Gimet’s chest sizzled and
pulsed like a large, black knot. Gimet opened his mouth, snarled,
but otherwise didn’t move.

Couldn’t move.

Jebidiah, guided by the last wisps of his match, raised the
pistol, stuck it against the black knot, and pulled the trigger. The
knot exploded. Gimet let out with a shriek so sharp and loud it
startled the bats to flight, drove them out of the cave, through the
burrow, out into the remains of the night.

Gimet’s claw-like hands dug hard at the stones around him,
then he was still and Jebidiah’s match went out.

Jebidiah found the remains of the Bible in his pocket, and as he
removed it, tossed it on the ground, it burst into flames. Using the
two pistol barrels like large tweezers, he lifted the burning pages
and dropped them into Gimet’s open chest. The body caught on
fire immediately, crackled and popped dryly, and was soon nothing
more than a blaze. It lit the cavern up bright as day.

Jebidiah watched the corpse being consumed by the biblical
fire for a moment, then headed toward the burrow, bent down,
squirmed through it, came up in the grave.

He looked for the deputy and didn’t see him. He climbed out
of the grave and looked around. Jebidiah smiled. If the deputy
had lasted until the bats charged out, that was most likely the last
straw, and he had bolted.

Jebidiah looked back at the open grave. Smoke wisped out of
the hole and out of the grave and climbed up to the sky. The moon
was fading and the pink on the horizon was widening.

Gimet was truly dead now. The road was safe. His job was done.

At least for one brief moment.

Jebidiah walked down the hill, found his horse tied in the
brush near the road where he had left it. The deputy’s horse was
gone, of course, the deputy most likely having already finished
out Deadman’s Road at a high gallop, on his way to Nacogdoches,
perhaps to have a long drink of whisky and turn in his badge.

A little dust devil
danced in front of Jebidiah Mercer’s horse,
twisted up a few leaves in the street, carried them skittering and
twisting across the road and through a gap made by a sagging
wide door and into an abandoned livery stable. Inside, the tiny
windstorm died out suddenly, dropping the leaves it had hoisted
to the ground like scales scraped from a fish. Dust from the devil
puffed in all directions and joined the dirt on the livery floor.

Jebidiah rode his horse to the front of the livery, looked inside.
The door groaned on the one hinge that held it, moved slightly in
the wind, but remained open. The interior of the livery was well
lit from sunlight slicing through cracks in the wall like the edges
of sharp weapons. Jebidiah saw a blacksmith’s anvil, some bellows,
a few old, nasty clumps of hay, a pitchfork and some horse tackle
gone green with mold draped over a stall. There were no human
footprints in the dirt, but it was littered with all manner of animal
prints.

Jebidiah dismounted, glanced down the street. Except for an
overturned stagecoach near a weathered building that bore a sign
that read GENTLEMAN'S HOTEL, the street was as empty as a wolf’s
gut in winter. The rest of the buildings looked equally worn, and
one, positioned across the street from the hotel, had burned down,
leaving only blackened ruins and a batch of crows that moved
about in the wreckage. The only sound was of the wind.