Portlandtown: A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes
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Authors: Rob DeBorde
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For Sue
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
“Yer ma ain’t gonna like this one bit.”
Walter Peterson was not in the habit of talking to corpses, certainly not those recently removed from the ground after seventeen months of peaceful slumber. He might speak a word of kindness to the deceased before laying them to rest, presuming he had known their bodies in life. That included most of Astoria’s longtime residents, among them Abigail Ellison, whose withered body now lay before him, facedown in the mud, one arm dangling into an open grave. Her mother, Margret, whose early-morning constitutionals often brought her to the top of the hill to visit her daughter, would be horrified to find the girl in such a state. Walter knew this, which is how he came to be standing in the pouring rain at four o’clock in the morning, a shovel in one hand, Winchester rifle in the other.
“I ain’t happy ’bout it, neither,” he said to the woman. Abigail did not respond. The dead rarely did.
Walter had already buried the Ellison girl once. As Astoria’s only undertaker he’d moved earth for more than seventy of his neighbors since taking the job a decade earlier. It was good, meaningful work, and relatively uneventful compared to his previous employment as a rubbish collector in Portland. The only disturbances under Walter’s watch had been a botched grave robbing and an unsupervised burial. The former had been drunkards seeking treasure within the crypt of Astoria’s second wealthiest man, Captain Caleb Jennings. The thieves were no doubt disappointed to discover the captain’s relatives had beaten them to it.
More curious was the unmarked grave that had appeared two months into the caretaker’s tenure. Despite questioning nearly everyone in town, Walter was unable to learn the identity of the cemetery’s mysterious new occupant. Since none of the locals had gone missing, he’d dug no deeper, figuring it wise to leave the dead undisturbed, lest they become restless.
Walter knelt beside the corpse, the third such desecration he’d discovered that night. First had been Tim Johnson, a local fisherman, who’d drowned in a horse trough seven years prior. Walter had found the man’s skull in the grass next to an uneven hole dug down to his coffin, the top portion of which had been roughly chopped away. A little farther up the hill, Vernon Schilling sat upright within his grave, body intact but fully extracted from the pine box he’d been buried in the summer before. A tree root had hooked the dead man’s jacket, keeping him from toppling over.
Two rows and six stones to the west, Walter had found Abigail.
“Best get inside ’fore you wash away with the weather.”
A flicker of light caught Walter’s eye.
“Who’s there?” he said, barely loud enough for his own ears to hear. A quick scan of the cemetery revealed nothing but trees and tombstones through the rain.
Walter tightened his grip on the rifle. He almost hadn’t brought it, figuring the light he’d seen from his window to be nothing more than a lonely mourner unable to pass the night without visiting a loved one. It had happened, more than once during a downpour. The rain made people do strange things.
Somewhere a pane of glass shattered.
Walter froze. A flash of light drew his eyes to the back of the cemetery where it glowed brightly for a moment and then was swallowed by the ground. Someone was digging another hole. And he was standing in it.
* * *
A fresh pile of earth lay beside the grave of Abraham Alcott, dead since March 1874, one of the few locals buried before Walter had assumed caretaker duties. The lack of a personal connection didn’t make Walter any less uneasy about what was being done to the man’s remains, and as he approached the faintly glowing hole in the ground, he considered shooting the villain on sight.
A familiar voice rising from the grave gave him pause.
“Are you him?”
Walter cautiously peered over the mound of dirt to see the body of a man slumped at the bottom of the grave, a broken lantern between his feet. He was older, sixty at least, but still carried the musculature of a younger man. A waterlogged nightshirt clung to his body, the weight of it seeming to press him deeper into the muck. Cuts on his hands and feet continued to seep, though the blood was quickly washed away by the rain. His face was pale, but familiar. And he was breathing.
“Marshal Kleberg?”
Marshal James Kleberg, retired, looked up at the caretaker and blinked. He’d never felt so tired in his life.
“Him?” he whispered.
Walter knelt beside the hole. “Marshal, what happened?”
Abruptly, the old man thrust a skull before Walter’s face.
“Is it him?”
“What? Marshal, I don’t—”
“Holes, man! In his head! Do you see them?”
Walter stared at the muddy skull floating before him. A mat of black hair attached to a thin layer of skin slipped away, completing thirteen years of decomposition. Numerous teeth were missing, as was the jawbone, but the skull appeared otherwise intact.
Walter reached out but did not touch the wet bone. “Do you mean from a bullet? I don’t see any holes, ’cept for the eyes and nose.”
The marshal drew the skull back, holding it before his face until the dead man came into focus.
“Damn,” he said, dropping the skull into the mud. Slowly, he became aware of the stone cross looming overhead. It was worn, but the name was clear enough.
ABRAHAM THOMAS ALCOTT
APRIL 21 1837–
MARCH 7 1874
“Alcott. That’s not him.” The marshal tried to remember what he was he looking for—was it a grave?
“I don’t understand, Marshal. Who did this to you?”
The marshal sighed. He felt his chest go up and down, a sign he took to mean he wasn’t on the verge of dying despite the pain that seemed to crawl over every inch of his being. He looked at the caretaker—Peterson, that was his name. Did he know?
“I can’t…” the marshal began, before trailing off.
“Can’t what, Marshal?”
“Find,” he managed. “Can’t find…”
Walter leaned back, wondering if an old man could dig up four graves in the dark all by himself.
“Who, Marshal? Who can’t you find?”
The marshal repeated the question in his head, for that was what had brought him to this place on such a miserable night. He was looking for someone, someone buried in the cemetery, someone he wasn’t supposed to forget.
The marshal felt a sharp prick in his hand and opened it to see faint words scraped into the palm as if by a dry quill.
WAT IS NAME?
The marshal stared at the words for a moment and then looked up at the caretaker, his tears masked by the raindrops rolling off his cheek.
“I don’t remember.”
1
In his dream,
Joseph Wylde wakes to the sound of a baby crying—his baby, his daughter. It’s steady, in distress, and not alone. Also crying, softer, but in sync with his sister, is a baby boy. Joseph has a son and a daughter. Twins.
Before Joseph can rise from his bed, pain screams from behind his eyes. His hands instinctively reach for his face, but stop short. He knows what to expect but is still surprised to find a cloth about his head, laid over his eyes. Someone has seen fit to bandage him, or perhaps to cover that which should not be seen. Joseph is blind, has been for five days, thanks to—
Your children are crying, Joseph.
Joseph stands, steadying himself against a wall he knows he can’t see
—but he can.
This is his room, the small corner bedroom on the second floor of the marshal’s home. He can feel the loose floorboard just beyond the edge of the bed, hear the wood groan as he steps off
—was it ever so loud?
To his left there’s a small nightstand, and then, three paces, a door. He searches for the handle, but finds none. It’s open. He knows he can’t see this
—but he can.
In the hallway, the crying is louder and there’s something else: creaking, back and forth. Someone is sitting in his father-in-law’s old rocking chair, the one Joseph repaired after Kate cracked one of the legs. She was going to give birth to a giant, he’d teased her, a bear of a child. Kate said there would be two. She had known, even then.
The crying keeps time with the old wood, as if in motion, closer and then farther away. Joseph is halfway down the stairs before realizing he’s begun the descent. He opens his mouth, not entirely sure what will come out.
“Kate?”
Joseph hears the shallow gasp as it catches in his wife’s throat. The creaking doesn’t stop. He reaches the landing.
The stench of the man hits Joseph’s nostrils, a mixture of sweat, worn leather, and gun oil. Stronger still is the scent of blood—not of the man, but other men … dead men.
In his dream,
Joseph hears the sound of metal slide across leather as the Hanged Man draws the red-handled gun from its holster. His eyes don’t see the bastard set the barrel of the pistol across his daughter’s skin
—but he can see it.
* * *
The smell of salt brought Joseph back to the present. It was faint, just a hint in the air, but getting stronger. They were almost there.
Joseph stood at the port rail of the steamer
Alberta,
having left Portland at eleven minutes past eight that morning en route to Astoria. By his estimation, it was now midafternoon. They’d made good time. Not a surprise considering the boat was traveling with the current, but whether that would remain an advantage was yet to be seen. Thanks to the nearly twenty pounds of refined Oregon firestone allotted for the burn upriver, the captain had promised Joseph would see some real speed on the voyage home.
Joseph smiled at the thought.
He couldn’t see, of course, in any traditional sense. That didn’t stop him from keeping one eye open—the right—to maintain appearances. It gathered no information, but since the scarring was less obvious, he’d trained the otherwise useless organ to deliver the proper cultural signals—blink, squint, stare, etc. It was Joseph’s experience that people were more comfortable when they could look a man in the eye and receive the same in return.
His left eye was covered by a worn leather patch that hid what most found difficult to look at. Kate claimed the milky-white iris added another layer of complexity to her husband’s handsome face. Joseph thought he was complicated enough. Despite the damage, the eye still picked up faint, undefined light and shadow, which Joseph found mostly a distraction. He was blind by any modern medical standard, and had been for more than a decade.
In that time, Joseph had discovered those same standards suggested that other senses could be developed to make up for the loss of his sight. He’d found numerous cases where the blind were able to use sounds, vibrations, even smells, to create a picture of the world around them. Such studies were generally considered scientifically dubious, but Joseph didn’t doubt them. After all, he was blind and had read the documents himself.
