Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror (49 page)

I used to get some real quality leads out of an old River Rat, a friend of my father’s, who had zero qualms about closet skeletons.

“Wanna see something crazy? Then go down to the river,” he told me. “There are carved stones down there that’ve been around since before the Comanches.”

“Where at?” I asked.

“Not too far from your place. You take the farmer’s road down past the Ross’s pasture, the road by the old church, right? When you get down the cliffs, just go upriver. You’ll find them. But I gotta warn you. You don’t touch those stones, and you don’t touch the tar coming out of them. Some kinda poison. And then there’s the River Things. They’ll drag you underwater if they can catch you.”

The hair stood up on the back of my neck. Usually, nobody ever talked about the River Things; they only talked around them. You didn’t go down to the river after dark. You didn’t go to certain parts of the river without your gun—and other parts you didn’t visit at all. Official reasons were quicksand, rattlesnakes, rabid wildlife, and, sometimes, a long, pointed silence. If you were a kid or an outsider, you had to learn for yourself: there was no mountain lion half as bad as what lingered in that silence.

The River Rat kept talking. “Back in 1876, when old Rath built his saloon, he used the stones off the river. Made the Comanches furious—they attacked ’im for it, and we sent an expedition as far as Lubbock to teach them a lesson. Never could catch them, though. At the time, Rath City folks thought it was some religious tomfoolery. It wasn’t; turns out those Comanches were wise to something we didn’t know. Whole town of Rath City disappeared in a night. Gramps said you could hear screaming down on the Brazos for weeks.”

By “whole town,” he meant a population of about two hundred or so. We can’t keep them much bigger down here.

“Then they took all the stones back, one by one,” he said. “And it was like Rath City never was.”

“And by ‘they,’ you mean the River Things, right?” I asked.

“Yep!” he said. Before I could ask him anything else, he turned on the TV and shooed me off.

If you don’t think I planned to go down to the river that very Saturday, you don’t know me at all.

§

No one blinked twice when I said that I was taking the scenic route around the Brazos. I braided my hair and packed the saddlebags with a simple lunch as usual. However, when it came time to saddle the horse, I nabbed Pistol, Mom’s blocky bay. He was a racetrack reject who could cut cattle as quick as a wink. And although I’ve always been a believer in leaving a creature alone if it’s minding its own business, I brought my brother’s .22 and a box of shells along. If Mom had been paying more attention, she might’ve asked me what the hell I was doing.

I rode down the dirt road to the river, which snakes across the landscape like a groping alien limb. I still remember how fresh the day was—one of those clear, cool days in the late spring, just before the summer sun baked the soil into crackled plates. We’d had buckets of rain and hail and a couple of tornado watches just the day before, and the road was rutted with murky puddles. The distant skies were still bruised black-blue and forked with lightning. As for me, I was lost in my own thoughts: meditating on the squeak of the saddle, the healthy scent of the horse, and the slop of mud beneath his hooves.

Before long, Pistol and I drew up to a rusty gate leading into the overgrowth that clusters ’round the Brazos. I had just dismounted to unlatch the chain when I heard an engine rumbling down the road behind us. I couldn’t get over into the ditch because it was steep and slick and full of water, so I leaned over to see which farmer it was. I figured they’d probably stop to say hello.

I had to blink hard and squint. Churning torturously between the ruts was a gleaming black Fairlane spattered liberally with mud. I pulled Pistol over to the far left so the stranger wouldn’t have to pass us, but to my displeasure, the car dragged to a stop beside us and the window rattled down.

A little old man sat in the front seat with the kind of face I’d only seen in Sunday afternoon movies. He had a neatly groomed mustache and goatee, wore round gold-rimmed spectacles and a threadbare tweed suit, and carried an old-fashioned briefcase stuffed full to bursting. His eight-track tape player was going full tilt—Strauss, “On the Beautiful Blue Danube,” same recording as the one on a record back home. He struck me as one displaced in time, from his shining Oxfords to his spotless pair of driving gloves. I had the thought that if I touched him, he might dissipate like a soap bubble.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Is this the way to the Brazos River?”

“It is,” I said. “But you have to go through Ms. Ross’s and Mr. Greentree’s pastures. You get permission?”

“Oh, of course!” he said, and patted a couple of signed papers sitting beside him. “By the way, I don’t believe I’ve introduced myself. I’m Dr. Arnold Peaslee from Miskatonic University in Massachusetts.”

Massachusetts! A far-off salmon-colored state I’d only seen in Social Studies. Suddenly I had a place to put with his accent.

He extended his hand, and we shook.

“My name is Leah Byrd,” I said, squaring my shoulders. “What are you doing out here?”

“I’m on the trail of some fascinating local folklore,” he said. “Have you, by any chance… ah… seen any remarkable stones down on the river bank?”

I bit my bottom lip and glanced back at Pistol, who was eyeballing the Fairlane.

“Stones like these,” he said, and rustled around in his briefcase.

He pulled out a series of fuzzy photocopies: stones of every size and shape and persuasion. Stones jutting above the waterline, stones eclipsed by thorny bushes, stones that still stood in some semblance of walls. Some of them were big enough to build a house with; others, no bigger than your fist. Many bulged and bubbled in organic shapes, while others were graced with bas reliefs. Tarry seepage trickled from broken corners.

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m… I know about them.”

“My specialty is archaeology,” he said. “And of course, I dabble in folklore and myth on the side.” When he saw my expression, he smiled. “If you’re worried, I assure you that I won’t disturb the location.”

“You couldn’t touch them if you wanted to,” I said. “It’s been raining hard and the river’s overflowed its banks. We may not see anything at all.”

A flash of panic crossed his face, and he sagged through the window. If I had been wise, I would have jumped up on Pistol and spurred him the whole way home—it would’ve saved me a lot of trouble in the long run. Instead, I hesitated. I can’t help liking earnest people. It’s a curse.

“Ms. Byrd, I beg of you. It’s a cosmic stroke of fortune that I have discovered you at all,” he said. “You know what I speak of and you know where to go. It seems you may even know the same stories. If you do, then you know what day this is, and why it is so important that I visit the stones at once.”

“Are you sure you’re dressed for it?” I asked. “There’s gonna be mud up to your ears.”

“Yes, I’m prepared,” he said.

“I’m saying this because the road ends in a bit and you’ll have to walk the rest of the way. If I were riding China I’d say we could double up, but Pistol’s a drama queen, and I don’t want you falling off.”

“I see,” he said, and looked a bit relieved.

“Your car doesn’t have four-wheel drive, either,” I said.

“Ms. Ross said that I should be fine,” he said.

I shrugged. “All right, if you want. But if you get stuck, you’ll have to walk back to her house.”

So he rumbled through the gate, and I shut the gate behind us. I swung my leg over Pistol’s back, and together we descended into the knotted mesquite thickets.

Dr. Peaslee drove alongside me and Pistol down the road, car groaning over the ruts. The blessed silence and rain-perfumed air was gone, exchanged for the rumble of the engine and the stink of exhaust. Dr. Peaslee turned to smile at me every now and then. I smiled back, but I won’t lie; I was a bit nervous. The River Rat gave me stories because he knew he could trust me, and it felt like betrayal to bring an outsider.

“Do you know anything about archaeology?” Dr. Peaslee asked.

“I like reading the
National Geographic
,” I said. “And I’ve got some arrowheads in my jewelry box.”

“How much do you know about the local area?” he asked. “Do you know anything about the end of Rath City?”

“A little, but it’s a ways out south,” I said. “It didn’t last too long.”

“Yes, only four years, from what I’ve heard,” he said.

The hair stood up on my neck. It’s one thing to discuss Rath City in a house, quite another when you’re nearly at the Brazos itself.

His voice took on a slightly fretful tone. “It seems everyone has a different story to tell about it. Some say the Comanches had something to do with its end…”

“Sir, all due respect, but we shouldn’t talk about it here,” I said.

He nodded and withdrew, and there was silence for a while. We weaved between the tortured trunks of the mesquites, last season’s blackened beans swiveling in the wind. Branches squealed against the Fairlane’s flanks, and the horse’s ears rotated idly. The incline grew steeper, and the branches around us knotted tighter and grew higher—a jumbled mass of root and branch and thorn and leaf, stained dark from the recent rainfall. A bobwhite called from far away and went silent. I remember feeling oddly lonely.

Soon we sloshed up to a cul-de-sac dug out by decades of truck tires. The last gate hung there, paint peeling, its faded “No Trespassing” sign glaring wearily at us.

“You can’t take the car any further,” I said, jumping off the horse. Mud squelched beneath my boots. “Take what you need and I’ll show you the rocks.”

Just as I pulled on Pistol’s reins, the stupid horse laid his ears back and put on the brakes. I had to drag him all the way and knot his reins around my arm so I could undo the latch.

“Is there something wrong with your horse?” Dr. Peaslee asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t think he likes your car.”

“But I turned it off,” he said.

“Pistol is a special case,” I said. “I probably shouldn’t have ridden him today, honestly.”

Dr. Peaslee opened his door and perched on the edge of his seat, staring down into the mud. Very methodically, he unlaced his patent-leather dress shoes, so glossy I could see my reflection in them, and donned a pair of neat old hiking boots. I almost laughed—each boot was big enough for him to put both feet in. With that, he withdrew a camera case and a satchel bulging with god-knew-what.

I eyed the doctor’s shoes. “Are you sure you don’t need to go back for galoshes?”

“I’m perfectly sure,” Dr. Peaslee said, lifting his chin, and stepped off into the mud up to his shins. He paled a little. Cold water in his shoes, I guess. I knew right then that I was probably going to bring him home so he could shower.

As for me, I was a little nervous about getting on Pistol again. He had progressed from mild distaste to insistent refusal: he strained away from me, lips pulled back from his thick, flat teeth. A chill ran down my neck; the silence seemed heavy and oppressive, and in the distance, the thunder was oddly muted. Don’t know why I didn’t stop right then; I guess Dr. Peaslee’s presence kept me going.

While Dr. Peaslee picked his way around the edge of the cul-de-sac, where the mesquites and weeds clumped the earth together, I dug my pocketknife and spurs out of the saddlebag. I tucked the knife into my pocket and I donned the spurs—usually unnecessary on Pistol, who would take off at the least insistence—and finally managed to remount. When we passed through this gate, I didn’t close it. This is the height of bad manners since it might free livestock, and it was the first time I hadn’t done so since I was a little girl.

I urged Pistol out through the gate and into the pasture beyond. The doctor lurched alongside us, picking his way along the side of the road. Finally, we broke out of the undergrowth and slopped to the edge of a cliff. Below, the Brazos had clawed a ragged red canyon into the earth. The old river was swollen, churned up into a dirty gray color, choppy with a rough current. Dr. Peaslee withdrew a camera with a lens jutting out of it as big as a pepper-grinder and snapped a few shots of the landscape. The snapping and clicking sounds were unpleasantly loud.

I pointed upriver. “The stones are that way,” I said. “Are you sure you want to head out? It might be flooded.”

I gotta admit, by this point, I wasn’t thinking about betraying the River Rat. I was thinking how weirdly silent it was out there. Usually, all the little frogs come out after a storm, but they were quiet as the grave.

“That’s all right,” he said. “I’ve come this far.”

“All right,” I said. “Watch your step. And don’t follow Pistol too closely. He might kick.”

We padded carefully down a steep incline toward the canyon floor. I kept an eye on the doctor as he stumbled behind us. He was covered in mud: mud up to his knees and mud all over his hands and sleeves, and a streak of mud on his forehead from where he had wiped away sweat. I was a little worried about him. He was a desk-job type, and I doubted he did much more than toddle to the mailbox every day.

The incline flattened out at last and we were safe on the level valley floor. It was easier going down on the winding hog paths between the mesquites and cactus; the roots kept the soil firmer there. We passed some hog wallows circled by prints—cattle, deer, hogs, coyotes—wild things all sleeping somewhere in the dripping foliage. As we passed further into the brush, I started smelling a sticky musk, something reminiscent of the stink of a skunk and a garter snake put together.

Dr. Peaslee covered his nose with a handkerchief. “What is that?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

All of a sudden, Pistol spooked something awful, dancing sideways as though he’d seen a rattlesnake. I scanned the underbrush and saw nothing, and that just scared me more. You don’t understand, coming from the suburbs, how easily a wild thing can just disappear into the underbrush. All it has to do is stand still, and nine times out of ten, you can stare directly at it and see nothing.