Mr. Shivers (17 page)

Connelly did nothing.

“You say it!”

He still did not move. The sheriff let the gun fall and he walked around and pressed the gun under Connelly’s chin, forcing
him to look up at the sheriff’s face. “He says I can’t kill you,” said the sheriff. “You know that? I said, did you know that?”

“No,” said Connelly.

“What do you think about that?”

“I-I guess I’d say that’s mighty polite of him,” he said, confused.

“No!” shouted the sheriff, and cracked Connelly with the handle, then placed the gun under his chin once more. “Not like that.
The Mithras-man says… says you’re unkillable, boy. Like even if I tried it wouldn’t stick. You think that’s true?”

“No,” Connelly said honestly.

“No,” echoed the sheriff. “No. Me neither. I don’t believe that at all, boy.” He took the gun away, inspected it. Wiped off
the small flecks of blood. “Not at all. Reynolds?”

“Yes?” said the young man.

“Get these men out of here. Make sure to rig up the big fella’s cell nice and good.” He stayed focused on the gun, cleaning
it over and over again. “Nice and good, you hear me? Nice and good.”

“Yes, Sheriff,” said the young man, and opened the door.

Mr. Shivers

They tossed Connelly back into his cell a little more than ten minutes later. He looked up and inspected the walls, the ceiling,
the floor. He did not know what they had meant by rigging up his cell. It seemed just as damp and uncomfortable as before.
His sick was still pooling in the corner.

Except it was a little different. The light felt different, like the source had changed, but he could see the sunlight still
streaming through the window at the top. Yet it seemed greasier, oilier, like water tainted and fouled by some foreign contaminant.
Connelly dismissed it. Surely a man who had taken as many beatings as he had over the past days was allowed some confusion.
He felt ill as well. There was a constant ringing in his ears that would not go away. Perhaps he was permanently damaged.

“Connelly?” said Peachy’s voice through the crack in the wall.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“They beat on you?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” said Peachy. “They beat on me sometimes, too. Not too often.”

“When are they going to let you out?” asked Connelly.

“They never said.-I-I don’t think anyone knows I’m in here. Except maybe a few of the other deputies and I don’t think they
care.”

“Christ,” said Connelly. Never had he felt more alone and miserable. Before this he had trudged through whatever he needed
to but at that moment all the lonely days and terrified nights collapsed on him at once. He curled up and shrank into the
corner.

“What do you think of the sheriff?” asked Peachy.

“Don’t care for him much.”

“They had a man in the cell before you. Did you know that? It was him that pried open the little slivers of wood so he could
talk to me. Do you see any carvings he left there? Anything at all?”

“No.” For the first time Connelly wished Peachy would be quiet. The ringing in his ears had increased to a whine.

“He was old and crazy as hell. I don’t know how long he’d been in here. I almost wished he never did carve that gap. At night
he’d just sit there and lean against it and whisper to me. He’d say the most terrible things. About screamings coming from
under the jailhouse and about the sheriff. He said the sheriff could make the cells sing to you at night, sing about all the
bad things that had happened to you, and drown you in them. And he said he was old. You know how old he said the sheriff was?
How old would you say he is by looking at him, Connelly?”

“Don’t know. Fifty. Fifty-five.”

“He said he thought the sheriff was nearly ninety years old.”

“Bullshit.”

“I know. That’s what he said, though. But it makes sense, don’t it? I mean, you’ve seen him. Have you… Have you seen his eyes?”

“Yeah.”

“They ain’t right, are they? Even though he’s a little old man, his eyes is older. Like they seen too much. Or maybe they
seen things most folks shouldn’t see.”

“What are you saying?”

“Oh, just something that crazy old man in your cell said once. Said the sheriff’d been working in this town for so long it
was unreal. Said the sheriff’d made a deal with a god.”

Connelly stopped. “What did you say?”

“Huh? I said the sheriff made a deal with a god.”

“Which… which god?”

“Which god? I don’t know, he was crazy. ’Sides, seems to be a lot of gods.”

“What did he make the deal for?” whispered Connelly.

“What for? To live longer, that’s what for. I don’t know what the god got. Maybe just… just help. Maybe one hand washed the
other, I don’t know.”

Connelly half listened to Peachy’s words. He felt sick. He swallowed and said, “You… you think he can make people live longer?”

“Who? The god? Why, sure. He’s a god. Old man said he’d come down out of the hills. Said sometimes there’d be screaming in
the jailhouse, and those screams, they’d call to him. Wake him up. He’d come on down and see what was what. Like the mountains
opened up and bled and he rose up out of the ash, just tapping his foot.”

“What did he look like?”

“What?”

“The god. What did the god look like?”

“He never said. Why? What’s gotten into you?”

“Jesus,” said Connelly. “Jesus Christ.” His head began pounding again. There was a high, warbling whine in his ears, boring
into all his thoughts. He grasped his skull and pushed his fingers into it as though to squeeze the pain out along with this
new revelation.

What was this thing they hunted? How old was he, how long had this been going on for? Connelly remembered Korsher, drunkenly
rambling in the grass. Remembered the look on the young boy’s face as he recounted the scarred man’s appearance. They had
lived in his wake for so long, but what was he?

“What?” said Peachy’s voice. “What’d you say? How long what? What you doing over there, Connelly?”

Connelly mumbled something in reply. He felt sick. Without thinking he began tearing strings off of the cuffs of his pants.
Then he pulled splinters out of the wood around him and began trying to get his fingers to work. He was not as skilled as
Roosevelt so the idol he made was crude but still good enough, he thought. He made its face out of dust and spit and though
the eyes were lopsided they still were vaguely human.

“There,” he wheezed, and lay back. “There.” He placed it in the corner. Then he began coughing.

“Don’t… don’t you die on me, Connelly,” said Peachy. “I ain’t had no one to talk to in over a month. Please, don’t you die
on me, Connelly. Please don’t…”

Connelly did not answer. The high-pitched squeal trapped in his head was drowning out all other thought. He curled up tighter
on the floor and through watering eyes stared up at the ceiling. Above him he saw the shaft of sunlight flicker like a dying
bulb, strobing the cell with shadows. But that was impossible. For if the sheriff had the power to kill the sun itself, even
for a second, then Connelly and the others were surely in their graves already but did not know it yet.

Time became soft to him. Hours bled into weeks bled into months. Whatever part of Connelly’s mind still worked believed he
was sick, some infection, perhaps another concussion. He shivered all day and all night and when the deputies dropped off
gruel and water he did not eat or drink. They laughed when they took away his full plate, their chuckles leaking through the
slot in the door, and sometimes he believed they were staying on the other side of the door, watching and smiling.

The whine in his ears grew louder each day, his head filling up with pressure like a balloon. It made sleep difficult and
thought almost impossible. Simply breathing was hard with that whine rattling in his head, turning his mind to jelly. He tried
to feel his forehead to get a gauge of his temperature but his palms were clammy and wet with sweat. He shivered at all times
and tried to tell his complexion by examining the backs of his hands but it was far too dark.

On the first morning the idol he had made was gone. There was no scrap of string or piece of twig left to show that it had
ever been there. He suspected that something had come in the night, crawling out of the darkness and devouring it before retreating
again. So he made a new idol. And when that one disappeared in the night, he made another, and another. And though he could
not be sure he felt somehow that all these little souls he made and blessed in the dark cell were keeping him alive and staving
off death. That each time they disappeared they had bought him another day.

He tried to count the days by the shaft of sunlight at the top of his cell but could not, as with each minute the light seemed
darker and darker, like the very sun was fading or its radiance was being eaten by his cell. Peachy spoke all day and all
night, telling him about the family he had, his mother and sisters, about frying fresh perch next to the river and drinking
ale in the evening and kisses sweeter than any wine. Sometimes Peachy would sing and when he did Connelly’s sickness seemed
to fade a little. He knew Peachy was doing it to keep himself sane as much as anything, but Connelly did not care.

Then there came one night when Peachy slept and Connelly did not have voice enough to wake him. Connelly listened and believed
himself deaf, he blinked at his cell and thought he was blind, and when he felt the boards beneath or beside them it was like
touching air.

And Connelly said to himself, I am dying. And he believed it. Perhaps he was dead already.

Darkness swooped down on him, dripping out of the corners of the cell and swallowing him. He lay staring at the wall for what
felt like ages. And when he shut his eyes he saw the desert.

White and brown and blue. The pale line of the desert burning against the chilly azure of the sky above. Dry air rushed over
him and he blinked his eyes as their moisture evaporated. He focused and looked at what was before him.

He was sitting on a small hill, looking down on an immense basin. The sun beat down from the cloudless sky and to his left
and right great arches of plateaus formed the edge of the bowl, their wrinkled, rusty skirts sloping down to the ivory floor
of the desert. The air was so crisp and hot it felt electric. A land so striking and beautiful it pained the heart.

“Look,” said a voice, and he turned to see the pale young man sitting beside him, still flecked with blood, his flaxen hair
dancing in the wind. A wide smear of red still shone on his forehead, like the bill of a cap. The boy gestured into the desert
before them.

Connelly turned to look. There was movement in the basin. On the far side he saw the edges of the plateaus almost quiver,
like the sporadic rain of rocks that precedes a landslide, but as he watched he saw that the movements came not from rocks
but from men, men with dark skin and long black hair. They poured from some unseen pass in the mountain face and even at this
distance he saw they were sprinting at a great speed. Their teeth shone white and wild and in their hands they carried rude
weapons hacked from wood and stone. They wore no clothing, and once they were close he realized some were women as well.

“Watch,” said the young man to his left.

Connelly heard a cry from below. Another group of people came running from the near side, worming their way through a hidden
crack in the slope. They were indistinguishable from the band of people in the distance save for streaks of mud across their
faces and chest, like warpaint. The screams from the two groups intensified once they saw one another and their paths curved
to meet, charging head-on, each party throwing themselves to greet the other’s approach.

“What are they doing?” said Connelly.

“Watch,” said the young man.

“What’s going to happen?”

“You must watch.”

As the two bands closed the distance they both let out shrieks of bright, glad rage. The heads of many weapons rose up into
the sky like some feral salute, axe and spear and crude blade all hungry to crush and bite. All things seemed to stand still
and tense, pausing to leap.

The two groups met. The spray was terrific on the white sands. Arcs of crimson spun out through the air and traced graceful
circles on the desert floor. Axe and spear bobbed up and slashed down, bringing with them a rain of gore. Connelly watched
as one man was spitted through the abdomen. He fell to his knees shrieking while a painted woman stooped and began sawing
at his neck with a small black blade. Another painted soldier stood over a fallen foe, beating his opponent’s head into pulp
with a wide, flat stone. He screamed incoherently, unaware or perhaps not caring that the man was dead. Perhaps he could never
be dead enough.

Connelly could not tell the screams of agony from those of triumph, the dances of victory from the death throes, the anguish
from the joy. He watched as one woman picked up a severed head and held it above her and howled with pleasure, and was in
turn attacked by a painted man who coveted her prize. He brought his mace down and her knee bent strangely and the head tumbled
from her grasp. Two of his comrades crowded around to savage whatever part of her still lived.

“Why are they doing this?” Connelly asked.

“Why?” asked the young man. “They would not even know the word. If you were to ask they could not tell you.”

“Who are they?”

“Killers. Killers of men. Killers of what can be killed. That is all they know or wish to know.”

“So they kill for no reason? Not for land? For hate?”

“They do not know territory, nor do they know the past, and so they cannot hate. They may someday. In the future they may
understand it and use it as their reason, as their means. But it is not their end.”

“What is?”

The young man gestured before them. The desert floor was a deep red now. To Connelly it resembled a great red eye, a ring
of white and a ring of red and then a circle of glistening brown, twitching and heaving. Almost none remained standing now.

“They’re killing their friends,” said Connelly.

“They have no friends. To them, friends are merely devices with which they may conquer their enemies. And when they cast down
their foes, who remains? More enemies.”

“They got to learn. They got to learn eventually.”

“They have not yet.”

“How long have they been here?”

“They have always been here. They change, some. The method of battle changes, the stakes grow, but the battle itself is always
there.”

“They could give up. They could go someplace else. Live peacefully.”

“There are no peaceful lives,” said the young man.

“What?” said Connelly. “No.”

“Yes. All life is struggle. It is always battle. These people choose this way because it is simpler. It is easier for them.”

“I knew peace once. I once lived a peaceful life.”

“Then go back to it,” said the young man.

To that Connelly had nothing to say. The young man nodded.

“It always finds you, in the end,” he said. “It does not matter how you come to it. But you will. Struggling against someone,
seeking to cast them down and make the final blow. One day each man and creature will find themselves doing the same.”