Haints Stay (15 page)

The killer was going from house to house then.
Entering, and then shortly after, firing. He was steadily approaching the inn.
Martha moved Mary and Bird to the back of the building, into a back bedroom with a
large vanity. She opened the vanity, removed the dresses and suits, as well as the
bulk of the cobwebs and dust, and instructed them to get in and not to come out, no
matter what they heard.

“There are spiders,” said Mary.

Martha positioned them beside one another and clipped the vanity shut.
She considered turning its front to face the wall, but she hadn't the strength to
budge it. She went back to the front room where the innkeeper's body sat slumped.
She checked the window and saw nothing. She heard a gunshot, faintly, but did not
flinch. She covered the open-eyed gaze of the innkeeper with a bit of lace from the
back of the couch. She did not know the name for it or its actual use.

She positioned herself behind the couch and trained the gun at the door.
She sat a moment. Listened. She could hear only her heart pulsing in her neck. After
a moment of silence it occurred to her that there was no way he wasn't anticipating
a gun trained on at least one of these doors he was kicking open. Without a doubt,
he would enter prepared for the obvious position she'd taken, and their exchange
would be only a matter of speed and accuracy, neither of which did she care to match
with someone who'd long been in this line of work.

She examined the room for a better position or plan. The room was only
slightly furnished. Two couches facing one another at either side of an empty
fireplace. A body leaned against that fireplace, with a bit of lace over its gaze.
Across from the body was a low desk with thin legs. It would offer no
protection. Behind the desk was a row of small cubbies. They looked something like
mail slots but each had been filled with small trinkets, porcelain figurines, and
tiny stones or dusty gems.

She heard movement, Mary and the boy shifting in the vanity, banging
their elbows and whispering to one another. She heard the vanity's wooden base creak
beneath their weight. More gunfire. It was single-sided fire. One or two or three
measured shots and then silence. The killer was eliminating the townspeople, one by
one. She entered the bedroom in which the vanity was stored and examined the other
possible hiding places. There was a closet that would not do. There was space under
the bed that would not do. There was the vanity, which was full. And there was a
window.

She heard Bird and Mary go silent as she climbed atop the desk.

“Do not step out and do not speak,” she said to the vanity.

“Martha ?” said Mary's voice.

But she did not reply.

She exited through the window.

In the alley behind the building the town seemed almost peaceful. The
dirt there had been smoothed by the wind. Only a few scattered footprints and bits
of trash decorated the path. There was a foul smell, but that was to be
expected.

She could no longer sense the killer's systematic approach. She spotted a
small pile of crates at the far end of the alley, where it opened up onto the town.
She kept low and approached the crates for cover. From behind them, she could see
the empty street.

The killer appeared then, on the porch of the building across from the
inn. She did not know the building's function. She aimed, but it was not a
guaranteed shot. She was not terrible
with a rifle, but she was not
good with a rifle. The killer looked tired, as if he had not slept in days. He was
limping, bent slightly at the waist. He looked ill and miserable, like an old dog
she and John had once put down together. It was only a puppy. John could not bear to
shoot it, so they had carried it in a sack out to the stream near their house and
loaded the sack with rocks. The poor thing had not struggled in the slightest. It
had even seemed to smile as they crowded the space between the sack and its fur with
stones.

She did not like killing things. And here she was, preparing to kill one
more thing. Not that she felt conflicted about it. She just didn't like the idea of
it, resented that she would carry this weight with her for the rest of her days. It
was not a sin, to protect herself against violence by putting an end to it — but the
act would stay with her forever. Her mind would always have there to go, that memory
to reflect on, and it would likely have a stronger pull than most of the others.
Each death did not lessen the load of the previous. But you grew the muscles to
better carry them. John used to have nightmares about the men he had killed. He rode
with some general during a violent time in the territory. John had said the
general's name many times, as if Martha were to recognize it, but she did not
recognize it and so it did not stick. John would wake up in the middle of the night
sweating and crying like a child. She had not asked, but had assumed he'd done some
unforgivable things.

The killer was at the inn, finally. Martha had not raised her rifle, had
not even thought to raise her rifle. She had not even registered his approach at
first, but snapped into focus when he dumped the spent shells from his pistol and
began to reload. They hit the ground like spilled coins. Somehow, the sound of those
shells clicking against the dirt rang throughout the town
louder
than the muffled shots from within each home. It was the sound of him leaving those
deaths behind. It was an unnatural sound. It was monstrous. There was a desperate
look in his eyes, like a cornered dog. But there was a matter-of-factness to his
movement, like a lost man, decidedly looping the same patch of desert land in the
hopes that death will find him more quickly. She knew that face. She knew this man.
She had been born to kill him.

Just then, Mary appeared in the window from which Martha had exited. She
was trying to open it, but could not lift the frame more than an inch or so. She
knocked, softly. Martha shook her head. The killer stepped onto the porch. Mary
tried again, to lift the window, but with no success. The boy was not with her.

“Martha,” whispered Mary.

Martha shook her head, waved her hand.

“There are spiders,” said Mary.

Martha waved her hand.

The killer cracked the door and stepped into the inn and Mary vanished
from the window.

Martha tried to remember, had she shut the door to the bedroom ? She had
when she had tried to set herself up in the front room. But after ? Before she
exited through the window ? She could not remember.

There were two windows that looked out onto the alley, the window she had
exited from and a window between the alley and the front room. From her position,
she would not have been visible from the front room, unless the killer were to press
himself directly against the window and look down. From where she was, she had no
real view into the inn through either window, and if she rose to one or the other
she would expose herself to whomever stood in the room. She kept low and worked her
way out from behind the crates and around to the front of the
inn. The porch was raised slightly off the ground, but the space between the dirt
and the building was not enough for her to squeeze through. A hero would have
charged through the front door, but she did not know any heroes. She knew dead men,
and the men who'd killed them, and the boy. The killer was inside the inn with Mary
and the boy and Mary was out of the vanity. Martha needed to act fast and protect
the child, but she was out of any sensible ideas and was starting to feel frozen
there on the dirt, hunched beside the front porch. Thinking it through kept her from
having to move. She heard no sounds of struggle, no real movement. Every second that
passed without gunfire loaded the next with more and more potential. She was bound
to break from the weight. She heard wood cracking and imagined the children were
done for. She rose onto the porch, flinching at the sound of its creaking, and
spotted through the window the image of the killer pulling floorboards up and
setting them against the wall. She heard and saw him speaking but could not make out
the words. She was perfectly still and silent as she could be. Her breathing seemed
too loud and dangerous, so she held her breath. He did not look up. If he had, he
would have seen her there on the porch, holding her rifle against her like a rope.
Something had happened to her. Time had slowed and she'd lost her nerve. She was as
still as a rock or a tree, or a gravestone. He was directing his pistol to the hole
in the floor. He was talking and nodding as if to someone who was afraid of him. He
shook his head. The door to the bedroom was closed. He reached into the hole and
withdrew an infant, wrapped in a filthy blanket. The child was crying and he stood
and held it against him. He lifted the blanket to examine its face. He turned
and fired into the hole, then tucked his pistol into his belt and
headed out the front door.

He saw Martha there, clutching her rifle. She did not raise it. He paused
only a moment before directing his attention back to the screaming child, and then
rushing down from the porch and toward the stable. Martha had the thought to shoot
him in the back, but there was the child. Instead, she rushed into the inn and back
to the bedroom, casting only a casual glance at the hole in the floor, the inside of
which was too dark to determine much at the speed she was moving. Mary was not in
the room. The vanity was shut. She opened it and found the boy hunched, alone,
crying into the space between his knees. He had wet himself again, and the floor of
the vanity.

“Where is Mary ?”

The boy did not speak.

“Mary,” said Martha, into the room.

There she was, under the bed. Her hands appeared first and then her face.
She did not seem upset, but was glad instead for Martha's return.

“There were spiders in the closet,” she said.

Martha scooped her up. She would have scooped the boy up too, but for the
urine.

“Stay here one more second,” she said to Mary.

“I don't want to go in the closet,” said Mary.

“Just sit on the bed then,” said Martha.

Martha set her hand on the back of the boy's head. She told him it was
okay and that they were safe. He seemed comforted.

“I was scared,” he said, and she told him it was okay.

She left them, the boy in the vanity and Mary on the bed, and returned to
the hole in the floor of the front room. Inside, she was able to make out a man on
his back. There was a bit of light
from the room and the cracks in
the floor and she could see that he was on his back and still. A dead man. He had on
the clothes of a mobile man, a deputy or a rancher, not a retail man or a smith or
an innkeeper. She could not see his face.

“Is there anyone alive in this hole ?” she said.

There was no reply.

A horse thundered past the inn then and she spotted the killer on its
back, vanishing toward the path that led to the woods. He was not hunched over or
working the horse for speed, but was instead upright and gentle looking. She
determined he was still carrying the child. It was hardly larger than a bowl, that
child. She could not imagine what a man like that would want from something so
small. She assumed it was the baby of a landowner or a political figure, and that he
was holding the baby for ransom. But there was always the possibility that the man
was evil incarnate and that the things he was determined to do with that baby would
not reward imagining.

“Mary,” said Martha. “Do you remember how to make a chicken ?”

“Yes !” said Mary. “You pull out all the feathers and bake it in
butter.”

“Do you remember how to kill a chicken ?”

She did not.

“It is not hard,” said Martha.

“Is it like killing a hog ?” said the boy. He stepped from the
vanity.

“We need to strip you,” said Martha, and she did just that. He resisted
only slightly as she undressed him and set to the drawers for something to cover him
with.

“It is much like killing a hog,” said Martha. “It is easier, in
fact.”

“Are we going to kill and make a chicken ?” said
Mary.

“Two doors down,” explained Martha, “you will find a pen with chickens in
it. You will find grain for those chickens and you will find horses and maybe a hog
or two. I cannot guess at everything and I did not see everything. Here.”

She handed a small dress and an old tattered button-down to the boy.

“This is all that will hold to you,” she said.

“We'll need a knife to kill a hog,” said the boy, wiping his face and
pulling on the clothes as Martha handed them over.

“You will find a knife in the kitchen of the building across from us.
That is where the stove is and the pots are. I spied the layout through the window.
Everything you need is there.”