Less Than Human (33 page)

There had been a raid on a neighboring tribe for horses. It had gone badly. Many had been killed in the battle that followed. An old warrior by the name of Lame Bear had been wounded, a lance in the stomach. Matt had felt pity for the injured man, and so, amid the wailing of the women who tended the death camp, he had sat close by and listened to the fevered recounting of stories about battles fought, coups counted, as the man who had been like a father came to grips with dying.

The stories were mostly the same.

But one story had been different from all the others; one had been about a good man's sacrifice that had led to eternal damnation.

From what Matt could make out, there had been a year when the buffalo had failed to return. In an effort to save his starving people, a medicine man had struck a bargain with the
Tena-Ranide
, a spirit of the underworld.

The tribe was spared starvation, but the forces the medicine man had tried to use for good were now using him for their own purposes. Dark purposes. The man who had become the servant of death became more evil as the days passed, and beneath a hungry, staring moon strange rites were held—rites that soon demanded human sacrifice.

The old man on his deathbed said the earth had run red with blood for many years.

After untold suffering, the tribe managed at last to bind the medicine man's mortal body, to hide it deep in the earth. They made great magic to seal him in his final resting place, and the fear of his evil was such it was forbidden to even speak his name.

The old man's last words were of a feathered serpent that marked the grave.

The fire popped, yanking Matt back to the present. A feeling of unease rested like an icicle in his guts as his thoughts turned to the last painting on the cave wall. Painted in blood, it said not to disturb this final prison, that whoever intruded was in great danger, because the only way the
Tena-Ranide
could ever have any form of life beyond this cave was if it found another body to inhabit.

And it came to Matt what was strange about the crack in the medicine man's skull; it had been split from the inside out.

Steven stirred in his sleep, mumbled something, but after a few seconds his breathing became regular again.

Matt stared at the young man's back and thought about his own son, dead at five, taken by the cholera. His wife had followed less than a year later. Something went out of her after the boy had died, and Matt always thought the reason she died was because she simply lost the will to live.

Sometimes Matt wondered how the boy would have turned out if he had lived. Would he have been like Steven? Matt shook his head, trying to rid himself of the painful images that seemed to haunt him lately. There was no point in thinking about a past that was gone. A past that brought only sadness.

He stretched out and tried to find a position that didn't cause his bad leg to ache.

Outside the wind rose. The sound reminded him of something familiar from his past. He tried to place it. After a while he did.

It sounded like the wailing of the women from the death camp.

S
teven awoke to find Matt asleep and the fire down to a few embers. Something had pulled him from sleep. A sound? Yes, it was a sound, but not one he could place. He started to add some wood to the fire, and that was when he first noticed the smell. God, it stank something awful in here, like every rotting buffalo carcass in the world. What could cause such an odor? He was about to wake Matt when he heard movement; wet slithering noises, like a snake crawling out of its skin, coming from somewhere back in the darkness.

The sounds grew louder.

He stared deep into the cave, but he couldn't see anything moving in the cold, moist darkness. Whatever was back there was getting closer. The stench grew stronger, becoming overpowering, and his hands covered his mouth as he fought to hold down his rising bile.

All thoughts of being sick vanished when Steven got a look at what was emerging into the feeble light. A patch of blackness on the wall had detached itself from the rest. The shape looked like the shadow of a man wearing a tall hat, and yet when Steven looked around the cave, he saw they were all alone, that there was nothing to throw such a shadow. His eyes followed the thing as it somehow crept along, possessed of an impossible life.

Steven backed away as he softly called out Matt's name.

At the sound of Steven's voice, the thing darted across the wall with unnatural speed. As he watched, it abandoned the shape of a man altogether and changed into a writhing mass that sent thin, ropelike tendrils shooting down the wall. He was reminded of a spider spinning a web as they gathered about Matt's head and hung there, coiling and uncoiling with a rhythmic pulse that matched the old man's breathing.

Steven called out again, louder this time.

Why didn't Matt wake up? Couldn't he feel it hovering above him? Couldn't he smell the damned thing? Steven tried once more to warn his partner, but only small gagging sounds came from his mouth. He was frozen, and everything began moving with nightmare slowness while he watched the clinging shadow continue downward until it touched Matt's battered hat. Several tendrils entwined themselves around the old man's throat, and there was something obscene about the way they stroked the flesh.

The rest, as though they were a nest of rattlers, struck out at the sleeping face… but instead of drawing back afterward… they began crawling into him.

Matt began twitching like a rabbit in an ever-tightening snare—once again Matt was standing on that hellish plain while the buffalo thundered by, and he watched as the Indian who now wore his face reached out and drew him close. They embraced. When Matt tried to pull away, he found that he couldn't separate himself from the clinging figure, that the Indian's flesh was still melting, flowing over him in rippling waves, crawling down into his mouth, into his throat, choking him so that he was unable to even cry out in his revulsion and fear. He realized they were merging together—that soon they would become one.

Blood erupted from every opening in Matt's body. His eyes jerked open and he screamed. He tried to stand, but his bad leg gave way and he pitched forward into the dirt. As he struggled to rise, the sounds that came from him were the high, keening sounds of a man who has gazed upon something he cannot bear to see, something that has driven him to the brink of madness.

The screams broke the spell that kept Steven from moving. He scrambled to his feet and the .44 that Matt had given him for his twenty-first birthday appeared in his hand.

The screams grew louder, and Steven was screaming, himself, when he emptied the pistol into whatever had hold of Matt. His bullets had no effect. And neither did the smoldering stick of wood he plucked from the fire. He might as well have been striking at the air. The thing was too fast.

Steven grabbed Matt, trying to pull him away from whatever held him, when one of the tendrils wrapped around his wrist. It was not a shadow. It never had been. The thing on the wall was real, solid, and cold as barbed wire when it cut into him, and for a second, Steven was able to see into the mind of whatever held him.

His whole being recoiled when he got a brief glimpse of what hell must look like.

With every ounce of his strength, Steven wrenched his arm free, stripping off the skin where the tendril touched him. The arm tingled with cold needles that somehow burned like fire. It felt as though something alive were moving inside his arm. He took the flaming stick of wood and pressed it against the raw spot. A scream followed and Steven wasn't sure it belonged entirely to him.

Incredible pain flared for a second but the feeling of something alive in his arm stopped.

Matt continued to struggle as the thing poured into him, his body arching backward, contorting in agony, but the fight seemed to be going out of him. He bounced on the cave floor, looking like a broken puppet being tugged along by a careless, impatient child.

Steven was reaching out with his unhurt arm when Matt raised up and looked at him. The eyes had changed—something cold, inhuman, stared out from Matt's face.

Enraged at his own helplessness, Steven grabbed Matt and shook him. Blood was still flying from every crevice of the old man's body, even his crotch. He was pissing blood.

"Fight, damn you." Steven struck him across the face.

The old man stiffened, his eyes filming over, and for a moment the Matt he knew was looking back at him. But Matt seemed to be dwindling away, as though he were being dragged downward to some terrible, distant place. His eyes held the pleading look of a drowning man each time he struggled to say something.

At last, in a strangled whisper, blood spilling from his mouth, "For God's sake, shoot me, son. Don't let it have me. Promise… don't let it… promise."

Steven nodded and the bitter taste of ashes filled his mouth.

The old man's struggles were growing much weaker. The thing was almost totally inside him now, and whatever made Matt Thomas human was just about gone. The friendly blue eyes glittering like chips of winter ice when they rested on Steven.

The man who played billiards for money knew what he had to do, and he knew nothing he had ever done would be as hard.

Reaching down, he picked the Sharps off the floor, raised the heavy stock to his shoulder, pulled back the hammer… and slowly pointed the rifle at Matt. His finger inched forward like a blind worm until it wrapped around the trigger. He gradually increased the pressure, trying to hold the rifle steady while the blood thundered in his head. His teeth were bared like those of an animal in pain as he tried to pull the trigger.

"I can't do it," Steven pleaded in a grainy whisper, "don't make me. Please don't make me."

His finger loosened its grip and he let the huge rifle drop to his side.

And then the screams started; in their pain and rage, they were the most awful sounds Steven had ever heard. He didn't believe such cries could come from a human throat. They went on and on.

Steven knew he could no longer stand by and let his friend endure such agony. He raised the rifle and again centered the sights on Matt's forehead.

A look of calm appeared on Matt's face. "Good-bye, Mister billiards player." He tried to smile. "I still say the game ain't going to catch on." And with those last words, Matt was gone. The creature was completely inside him now.

Steven squeezed the trigger. Gently… just the way Matt had taught him… and at that moment a part of Steven Adler died, too.

Steven dropped the rifle, started to turn away.

Movement caught his eye, stopping him dead in his tracks. Matt, in a pool of his own blood, was moving in broken, wet circles the way a bug will alter being stepped on. Fear flooded Steven's insides with a warm liquid rush. The top of Matt's head was gone and he was still moving.

Steven jammed a hand into his coat pocket and found more shells for his .44. Working quickly, he reloaded with hands that shook so much he could barely hold the revolver.

This time he didn't hesitate. The pistol jumped in his fist and a foot-long tongue of blue flame erupted from the barrel. For an instant, everything became bright as day, letting him see his shot was a good one, catching the thing that had once been Matt Thomas high in the chest. The impact of the slug lifted the creature from the floor and flung it backward against the cave wall.

Steven's ears were ringing, but he heard its labored efforts to rise and fired again. His shot went wide this time. In the flash, he saw the thing smile, showing teeth that were a startling white in the blood-drenched face. He fired again before it could move, and his next four shots found their mark, pinning it to the wall. Blackness streamed from each bullet hole, and when it hit the floor, the blackness began crawling toward him.

With a moan, Steven flung the pistol. There was no stopping the thing. He wheeled and ran blindly from the cave, paying no heed to the cold that waited outside. His only chance was to get to the horses. He heard the jingling of their harness, but they seemed impossibly distant as he plowed through the drifts. His feet kicked up gouts of snow that hung in the air like shattered faces.

There was no moon. The animals were shadows in the dark and they were spooked, dancing sideways, shying away from the stink of fear on him. Several times he almost edged close enough to grasp the reins that dangled in front of him, but each time they managed to elude him. Around and around they went in a mad dance, until his footing betrayed him and a windswept patch of ground, frozen hard as iron, rushed up to drive the breath from his body. He lay paralyzed, listening to the wind blow softly through the ice-covered branches, causing a tinkling noise that sounded like glass. As he watched the trees sway, he heard steps crunching in the snow. Grunting with the effort, he raised up and scuttled sideways, a crab covered with white.

The horses were mad with fear as Steven staggered nearer. They must have caught the scent of what was behind him, because they bolted. In a second they would be beyond his reach. Steven, gathering his fading strength, flung himself forward. His hand touched a heaving flank, sliding downward, and he felt himself falling. The animal stumbled and his fingers wrapped around a piece of the harness, slipped, then grabbed hold. His arm was nearly wrenched from its socket. Ignoring the blackness that danced at the edges of his vision, he held on.

A shot rang out. The horse squealed, a sound nearly human in its agony, and pitched sideways in the snow. The wounded animal floundering, trying hard to rise. Another shot came, and Steven heard the bullet strike home. The horse let out a final death rattle before going limp.

Steven struggled to free himself from beneath the crushing weight.

"You weren't planning on leaving me here, were you, son?" the familiar voice said, moving closer. "All alone, in the cold. I thought we were partners. Remember?" Then came laughter. Obscene laughter.

Steven noticed that sickening odor was growing stronger and he tried with all his might to get loose. But he knew it was too late. Already the tendrils were drifting down toward his face like cold, black snow. He screamed and his screams floated across a vast dry prairie that had never been touched by rain. In the blinding sun he watched a medicine man draw near, and the earth began to tremble with a stain that grew dark on the horizon.