Mr. Shivers (20 page)

They stayed still. They heard the crunch of dirt and gravel, a rain of loose earth tumbling down the slope. Nothing for a
while. Then Connelly thought he heard soft branches being bent or needles being crushed, the whisper of a footfall. A dove
grieved somewhere, but he was not sure if their stalker was calling for aid or if it was as simple as it sounded.

Roonie rose to a crouch across from him. Connelly shook his head no. Roonie nodded, pointing down the slope, and in return
Connelly motioned to get back down. The little man shook his head, still trembling.

A branch snapped. Close by, too close, no more than a dozen yards. Something stopped moving and Connelly withdrew farther
into the branches.

A gout of yellow-white flame roared up into the air a few feet away and Connelly knew the man had been closer than he had
ever guessed. Roonie leapt up, startled like a partridge by the warning shot. As he tried to sprint away the other barrel
fired and Connelly saw the little man’s side dissolve and his cheek burst open. He tumbled in a heap, thin lines of smoke
rising into the air, a puppet whose strings had been abruptly cut. A voice cried out in triumph.

“Hot damn, I got you!” shouted the sheriff’s voice. “I got you, you big son of a bitch, I told you I would! I told you I would!”

The sheriff skipped over to the fallen man with the spryness of a child and looked down on the corpse. The mere action of
murder made his face more boyish than it had ever been. He smiled and put a foot under it and turned the body over. Then he
grunted in surprise.

“What?” he said.

Connelly sprang out from the cover of the tree.

He carried him deep into the forest, a quarter mile at least. It was hard going. The sheriff was not a big man but he was
not light either, and the odd times that he resisted slowed Connelly considerably. But he kept on.

Connelly dragged him far away from his town, far away from any roof or hut or home. He did not cry out. Connelly had seen
to that, having broken his jaw at the onset. When he judged he had carried the little man into the heart of the forest he
sat down and went to work.

He broke his knees, his shins, his feet and hands. He broke his elbows and his wrists and put fractures in his pelvis. Connelly
could not say for sure but he felt he broke the little man’s eye socket and maybe a few of his ribs.

Bones crushed to dust, grinding in the sockets. The little man writhing under his grasp, unable to strike back. To relish
it was an evil thing, he knew, but he found resisting it difficult.

As he worked Connelly whispered, “This is the world I make for you. This right here. This is the world I make for you.”

He did not kill him. He would not give the sheriff the dignity of murder.

When he was done Connelly was covered in sweat from his toil and he turned and continued down the gentle slope of the mountain.
The sheriff whimpered behind him, his limbs shuffling in the pine needles. Connelly did not look back. Soon the whimpers and
noises faded and he could not hear anything at all.

Mr. Shivers

Connelly walked for more than a day. He guessed he could not go back as all the woods close to the jailhouse were probably
hunting ground, and besides, he knew if he followed the slope long enough he would eventually find water.

He did not realize how weak he was until three hours in, when he stumbled and fell down a gully. He twisted his ankle and
tried to pry a dead branch off a tree for a crutch but found he had lost most of his strength. The starvation and sickness
and lack of water had taken their toll and then some.

He saw and heard no animals, no other people. When the dawn rose it wove a silver forest world of mist and gray-green undergrowth.
The air was fresh and thin here, perhaps due to the elevation, but Connelly was no longer sure where he was. Perhaps New Mexico,
maybe Colorado. Maybe it was no state at all, just an empty land with no allegiance or creed. As all states were, if one walked
long enough.

The silence was unbearable and soon the cold matched it. As the day wore on the frost wormed into his bones and his shivering
made every step uncertain. He was still barefoot. He had done his best to keep his feet uninjured but now he could barely
feel them.

He looked up as he stepped across another small gully and saw a thin, gray stream of smoke rising into the sky. He studied
it and guessed the distance and changed his course.

He came to a rocky stream and examined the smoke again and decided they had to be camped next to the river. He stripped and
washed himself first and drank deep, the water so cold it stung his lips and face. Then he limped along and saw the smoke
was coming from a crumbling chimney whose snout poked above the tops of the trees, just off the river. He heard singing and
he looked and saw there was a woman washing clothing in the water. She was old with skin like molasses and her voice warbled
like a man playing a saw. She lurched back and forth between the stones, scrubbing down her laundry, and as Connelly approached
she glanced up and grinned hugely.

“What you doing there, dead white boy?” she called.

“I’m not dead,” said Connelly.

“Sure you are. Just don’t know it yet.”

“Ain’t really a boy, neither.”

“Well, what you going to do to prove me wrong? Take your pecker out and wave it at me? That’d raise a few eyebrows, white
fella doing that in front of a colored woman, wouldn’t it?” She cackled gaily.

Connelly leaned on his crutch and hobbled closer. The old woman stood up and looked him over.

“You seen some shit, white boy,” the old woman said.

“I’m… I’m hungry, ma’am. I don’t mean to interrupt, but—”

“But you going to anyways.” She sighed and clucked her tongue. “Oh, well. Set you on down by the bank there and try not to
die anytime soon. I won’t have no corpse-water dirtying up my stream. You just set there and wait.”

He did so. He looked behind and saw a wide, low cabin hidden back in the trees. Its windows danced with the warmth of a hearth
fire and on its porch sat three empty rocking chairs. A winding path led up through the trees to the front door. At the mouth
of the path was a pile of loose odds and ends, shoes and fishing poles and even cheap jewelry. He listened to the old woman
sing and toss her clothes into a wicker basket. Sometimes she would peer into the stream and dart her hand in and fish out
some piece of junk, a shiny bauble that was no more than trash. Then she would caw happily and bring it over to the pile and
carefully place it on the mound.

“You live here by yourself?” said Connelly.

“With my sisters,” she said. “I’m the only able one, though. They old. They old as hell. You know?”

“Sure.”

She laughed. “You don’t know.”

“Sure.”

“Boy, you every woman’s dream, agreeing with whatever fall out of her mouth.”

“I try.”

“Give me a second,” she said. “I’ll give you something that’ll put a spring in your step, maybe your trousers too.” She cackled
again and shuffled up into the cabin. She returned with an old tin cup, plumes of steam pouring out the top. She handed it
to him. “Careful, now. It’s hot.”

He took it and looked at it. The fluid it held was thick and brown-green and smelled strongly of mint and herbs. “What is
it?”

“Pine needle tea. With mint. And wormwood. All sorts of good shit. It’s my sister’s recipe. Give it a whirl, you been freezing
for God knows how long, I can tell. It lets you know you’re alive, white boy.”

He blew on it and sipped. As it dripped down his throat his insides turned cold and hot all at once. He breathed out and it
burned but seemed to burn away the fatigue as well.

“God,” he said. “It’s… it’s…”

“It’s awful,” she said cheerfully. “I said it was good for you, I never said it tasted good. Things that’s good for you are
never fun to swallow. Ain’t that the way,” she said to herself. “Ain’t that the way.”

She shuffled back down to the creek and picked up her basket of clothes with a grunt. Connelly rose to help her.

“Oh, sit down,” she scolded. “You in worse shape than me. Them clothes are all that’s holding you up and there ain’t much
of those, neither. ’Sides, I need the exercise.”

She strung a line from the window of the house to the cedar across from it and draped her clothes over it, humming tunelessly.
She stepped back, brushed her hands, and nodded in satisfaction. Then she turned to Connelly and looked at him with a keen
eye.

“You been causing some serious trouble, ain’t you?” she said.

Connelly did not answer. He readied himself to run if he could and attack if he had to.

“Oh, come on now,” scoffed the old woman. “I just served you some damn good tea. Secret recipe, too. I don’t waste that on
just anyone.”

“How did you know?”

“Smoke told me,” she said with a grin, and she gestured toward the chimney. “Rose on up into the sky, looked over the mountain
and said, ‘Say, old Nina, I see a lot of hubbub down south of here and there’s a man coming your way carrying a lot of trouble.’
” Her grin faded. “A lot of trouble,” she repeated solemnly.

“Yeah,” said Connelly. “I know.”

“That’s just it, ain’t it? You don’t,” she said. “Here, come on up to the house, boy. We’ll let my clothes dry and we’ll get
you close to a fire. You can rummage the junk heap too, if you want. Try to find shoes. Come on.”

The old woman led the way, clucking whenever Connelly tried to help her up. As she opened her front door she shouted, “Dexy,
we got company!”

“Oh?” said a voice even older than Nina’s. He rounded the corner. A shrunken old woman sat in an overstuffed chair before
a guttering fire. She was so bent double her chin almost touched her chest. In her lap she was doing her best to crochet but
her knuckles and wrists were swollen with arthritis. She was blacker even than Nina, her skin like cracked volcanic glass
at the edges of her eyes. She stared into Connelly’s waist, then grunted and looked up at him. She worked her lips, tonguing
her toothless gums, and said, “Good gods, you’re a big one. I don’t know what they fed you but they fed you too much of it.”

“He’s been starved, Dexy,” said Nina.

“Oh, no.”

“Yeah. Wandered on out of the woods like a wild child. Raised by wolves, maybe.”

“No. He looks wolfish but he’s got a boy’s eyes,” said Dexy.

Nina grunted noncommittally, like she disagreed but would not argue.

“Here, sit you down, boy,” said Dexy. “There ain’t a chair here can hold you, but just sit down on the floor if that’s all
right.”

“I’ve sat and slept on worse,” said Connelly.

“That I believe,” said Nina.

The cabin was large and shabby but still comfortable. The stone floor was cracking but laid well and the rafters were kept
clean of cobwebs. Three chairs sat around the fire, the empty ones on either side of Dexy. Each was made for little old ladies.
On the opposite wall were three doors, two open and leading to bedrooms, the third slightly closed and the inside dark.

“Your tea is good,” said Connelly. “I had some.”

“Oh, flattery,” Dexy said, but she smiled. “Flattery. That will get you anything. What do you need, young man?”

“Just, well… I came up, and…”

“Oh, you don’t have to say no more,” she fussed. “Nina, this boy needs to eat.”

“Well. I guess I’ll feed him, if that’s the way it’s going to be,” said Nina grudgingly, and went to the kitchen.

“Here,” Dexy said to him. She held out a melted lump of wax with a small bit of wick swimming in the center. “Here, take this
candle and light it in the fire, if you don’t mind. My damn eyes ain’t worth a lick anymore.”

Connelly did so, using a thin branch as a match. He set it on the table beside her and she fiddled with her crochet halfheartedly.

“I used to be so damn good at this,” she said. “Only thing that’s worse than a thing that don’t work is a thing that almost
works.” She dropped her needles, sighed, and raised her head up to the ceiling in despair.

“Mind if I ask you a question?” asked Connelly.

“Oh, probably. But go on ahead if you want.”

“What are you all doing out here? It must be miles from anything.”

She grunted, turning the question over. Then she said, “Knitting.”

“Knitting?”

“Yeah. Well, that’s alls I do, at least.”

“You moved out to the woods to knit?”

“Most days it seems like I’ve always been here,” she said. “But then, it may just be my age.”

Nina came out and served him cold chicken and cornmeal. She left to get him a fork and when she returned he had already eaten
most of it with his hands.

“Lord, I said you was starving, but I didn’t realize you was dead on your feet,” she said. She sat on Dexy’s right and pulled
a shawl about her shoulders.

He took the fork from her. He had not used one in a very long time and it took some remembering.

“Hold it like a pencil,” said Nina.

“Been even longer since I held a pencil,” said Connelly, but he tried. The two old women watched him eat.

“Boy’s been living on the edges a while now, Nina,” said Dexy in her frail little voice.

“Ain’t that so. Long time.”

“He went out there himself and now he don’t know where he’s going.”

“No idea at all. I agree.”

Connelly looked up and saw the two old women were watching him, Nina no longer cackling, Dexy’s face no longer old and confused
anymore. In the firelight they could have been carved from wood.

“What?” said Connelly.

“Hmm. Lookie here,” Nina said. “The knight errant, wandering through the forest, a-questing. Olden days he’d be cantering
on a white horse. Not no more.”

“Not at all,” said Dexy. “Things change.” They looked him up and down, studying him as though he was some strange anomaly.
They did not seem so old now, or so fragile.

“What’s going on?” said Connelly.

“You think we don’t know your type?” said Dexy. “We seen your type before. If we lined up all the men like you we seen, why,
it’d stretch all the way down the river.”

“The man on a quest,” said Nina almost condescendingly. “Venturing out to slay the beast.”

“What monster you hunting, white boy?” Dexy asked. “What demon is it you seek to slay?”

“There is one, ain’t there?” asked Nina.

Connelly stared back and forth between them. “You know about the shiver-man?”

That surprised them. Their eyebrows rose up, crinkling the skin of their faces like butcher paper. They did not seem so dismissive
anymore.

“Ah,” said Nina faintly, and nodded. “That one.”

“Who are you?” said Connelly.

“Oh, us?” Nina said, and laughed again. “We just three black bitches sitting by a river, minding our own.”

“We’re old,” said Dexy. “We just been around a while, sugar. We know a thing or two.”

“All of us,” said Nina.

“All of who? Who else is there?” asked Connelly.

Nina gestured to the shut door behind her. “Our sister, of course. She lies dreaming, as she always does. Always has. Best
not to wake her. It’s what she likes.”

“And you… you know about the scarred man?”

“Everyone knows,” said Dexy. “Maybe they know in a part of them they don’t want to think is there. But they know. We just
know a little more.”

Connelly shook his head. It was incomprehensible to have this happening, to have stumbled half dead from the jail and wandered
here to be met by the same. Weeks ago he would have fought for a scrap of news of the gray man but now he seemed to dominate
every patch of earth Connelly walked over.

“No, I-I’m leaving,” he said. “I’m going to go. I-I thank you for the dinner but I’ve had, I have had enough of this.”

“You won’t go,” said Dexy calmly.

“And why’s that?”

“Because you want to ask us questions. Because you want to know.”

He turned at the door and shook his head again. “No. No, not this, not again. Do you have any… Do you know what I’ve been
through? Do you?”

“Yes,” said Nina.

“We got an idea, hon,” said Dexy.

“No you don’t!” he shouted. “Don’t you… Don’t you sit there and tell me that! Just don’t!”

There was a noise from the back of the house, a faint thud. Dexy and Nina looked at each other in fear and Nina stood to her
feet. “Oh, Lord,” she said. “Oh, Lord, he woke her up. Such noise, such noise these boys make.” She pulled up the hems of her skirt and opened the bedroom door and slipped in, but before it could shut
Connelly smelled stale air and the noxious scent of bile and decay. He did not know who slumbered back there but he did not
think he wanted to.

“There,” said Dexy. “I hope you’re happy.”

“I’m… I’m sorry.”

“Oh, you didn’t know. She’s just… crabby.” She looked balefully at him. “So you done yelling?”

Connelly shrugged, then nodded.

“Hm. You made up your mind, then? You staying or going?”

He watched her for a while, then slowly lowered himself back down to the floor.

“Good,” Dexy said. “That’s sensible. Very smart of you.”

“So what are you going to tell me?”

“What you need to know, I suppose. But give us a second. We ain’t all woke up yet. Here, let me get you your tea right quick.”