The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel (24 page)

Then it began to saw back and forth in the opening. The things outside fluttered around it, climbing over the slats, trying to pull it out. The limp head rolled and bobbed.

“Oh, my Lord,” Miss Eliza said sickly, and put her hand over her mouth.

But the beef was well and truly stuck. One of the keung-si shrieked in rage and drove a fist into the steer’s side, then began to squeal and thrash when its hand became stuck. One of the others came to its assistance. The first one swatted it away, but the jerk freed its arm and they both toppled off. There was a thud and a yelp as they hit the gravel.

Somebody laughed, screamingly. It was an awful sound, choked and hysterical, and others in the car took it up, wailing mad laughter until it dissolved into crying. Brother Clark’s voice rose shrill over the chorus.

“Brethren! Be not afraid! Though the hour of death may be upon you, trust in the Lord and you will be redeemed!”

“Hour of death, my ass,” Boz said. “I don’t mean to die in some box-car like a damn steer.”

“Nor do I,” said the conductor, hefting up his rifle.

“Though this darkness may surround us, and the minions of Satan try to tempt us to the path of unrighteousness—”

“I say we go out there and give those bastards a taste of lead,” said Charles, brandishing his shotgun in one hand, a torch in the other.

“Don’t go near that door,” Trace snapped. “You open that and all these people are dead. We’re not fightin them off a second time.”

“You wanna wait here til they break in?” Charles demanded.

“Lead don’t stop them, remember?” Boz said. “I didn’t mean we should go rushin out there.”

“Yet we must not falter! For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age—”

“They won’t break in, and if they do we’ll make our stand here,” the conductor said. “Better to take one at a time than open up our flank to their numbers.”

“Mr. Tracy?” Ferris said quietly. “Did you not have some insights on how to defeat these demons?”

Boz turned and gave Trace a long, hard look. “Yeah, partner—you have any
insights
?”

“I told you everything I knew for sure,” Trace said.

“So what do you
not
know, for sure?” Boz demanded. “What else she tell you that you think I didn’t need to know?”

“It ain’t like that, Boz, I
told
you she didn’t know much about it, she only gave me a half-assed list of ideas—”

“Which you never bothered to read to
me
—”

“What in blue blazes are you two carrying on about?” the conductor demanded. “Who is
she
and what do you know about these critters?”

Trace broke off, noticed the others staring at them. Ferris looked thoughtful; Miss Eliza’s eyes were lowered, her lips pursed in disapproval. And in the sudden quiet, Trace heard something else.

“Listen,” he said.

There was a soft, slithery sound under their feet, something sliding under the floor of the car. A series of gentle thumps, and something rattling.

“What’s under us?” Trace asked.

“Feed boxes,” the conductor said.

“Full o’ hay and corn,” Charles added.

“And the wheels and undercarriage, of course, the journal boxes.”

“No doors?” Trace asked. “No access in here?”

“No. What was that you were saying about how to kill them?”

Trace glanced from Boz’s accusing look to Ferris’s encouraging one, and swiped a hand down his chin. “Fire kills them—we know that. Sunlight … I think Ferris the Fire-Master is right about that, but it doesn’t do us any good. Pure metals, like silver and gold, maybe—”

“Lead’s as pure as it gets,” the conductor said, “and it only slows them down.”

“Don’t have any silver or gold, anyway,” Charles said.

“Shut up, let him think,” Boz muttered.

Trace ground his teeth: he’d looked at those notes often enough, he could see Miss Fairweather’s spidery writing in his mind’s eye, but not clear enough to recall the last item in the list. He scratched the back of his head and winced as his fingers raked over the goose-egg throbbing there. Whatever the word was, it made him think of food, of steak and potatoes—

Yum!
said a voice.

Trace glanced warily at the waiting faces; he was pretty sure he’d heard that voice with his mind, not his ears. He felt the slight shiver of power along his arms and neck, but he couldn’t fix on it coming from a particular point.

Yum!
the voice said again, more insistently.
Yem!

“Yim?” Trace repeated.

“What?” Boz said.

“Did somebody say
yum
? or
yim
?”

They all looked at each other, an exchange of glances Trace had seen many times, usually before somebody asked if he’d had too much sun, or too much whiskey. He turned, slowly, sweeping his gaze over the people huddled in the cattle-car.

The Chinaman’s ghost stood in the corner, erect and still, while the emigrants around him cowered and wailed. His dark robe blended into the shadows, and when Trace looked directly at him he faded further, until only his face and his pointing hand showed pale in the flickering light.

Yim!
said the dead Chinese, pointing under the feed trough. He raised his empty gaze to meet Trace’s, and raised his pointing finger to his own throat.
Keung-si,
he said, and made an unmistakable slashing gesture.

Understanding rushed in on Trace, like a flash flood in a canyon. He dove for the space under the trough.

It was down there, a whole block of salt-lick for the steers. Trace hugged it to his chest with one arm and crawled out backwards. “Salt!” he crowed. “Salt! That was it!”

“Of course!” Ferris said. “Salt has powerful protective properties.”

“Salt?” Charles repeated. “What, are you gonna pickle ’em?”

“I can’t believe this,” the conductor grumbled.

Trace gestured to Boz. “Gimme that ax.”

Boz passed it over and Trace rose on his knees in the middle of the floor, lifted the ax handle up in two hands to bring the flat top of its head down square on the salt-lick.

But he checked it. His knees felt warm where they touched the floorboards. He bent over and put one palm flat against the floor. Not merely warm—hot enough he had to pull away after two breaths. The quality of the smoke in the air they were breathing had changed, too.

He looked at Miss Eliza, who was barefoot. “Your feet feel warm?”

“No,” she said, and came closer to where he knelt, then quickly backed up. “Oh! It is there.”

Trace beckoned to Charles. “Bring that torch over here.”

There was smoke coming up through a knothole in the tightly-laid floorboards. He bent low, and got a whiff of hot metal, like a branding iron. “What did you say was under here?”

The conductor’s face went slack, with terrible understanding. “The wheel journals,” he said hollowly. “We’ve got us a hot box.”

“I think they
made
us a hot box,” Trace said.

“Ah yes! Lubricating grease burns quite well,” Ferris said brightly. “They had only to light the animal fodder and let it spread.”

“But they burn up if they touch fire,” Charles protested.

“So do we, my friend,” Ferris said, “but we still handle it every day.”

“Maybe you do,” Boz snapped. “These things are too damn smart to be animals.”

“On the contrary, monkeys are quite clever,” Ferris said. “They’ve been known to—”

“Will you shut up!” the conductor shouted. “There’s a damn fire underneath us and this whole car’s gonna go up in about five minutes!”

That, of course, started another panic. A number of people rushed for the door, but Boz and the conductor got in front of them, Boz with both guns out. Miss Eliza tried to calm them, her hands and voice soothing, pressing people back toward the edges of the car. Brother Clark called out for an angel with a fiery sword.

Trace got a leg up on one of the water troughs and stood, balancing against the wall to look out through the slats. Down the slope about five yards from the tracks, a half dozen of the black shapes crouched in a line, watching the car, firelight reflecting in their eyes. Smoke wafted up past the ventilation slats.

Trace hopped to the floor and caught up the ax handle in one hand. “Boz!”

“What?” Boz’s eyes and guns were still on the passengers, but some of them had backed down, and Trace’s words caught their desperate attention.

“Sponge this water out of here,” Trace said, splashing his hand across the surface of the trough and trying to meet as many eyes as possible. “Soak the floorboards with it, where Mr. Railroad Conductor tells you to. Buy us some time.”

“Sure will, boss,” Boz said, but it was the passengers who surged toward the trough, taking off shawls and shirts to soak up the water. Charles and Ferris moved to help.

Trace caught Miss Eliza’s elbow, drew her toward the back of the car where Brother Clark was standing and shouting before his glassy-eyed audience.

“Remember the prophet Elisha?” Trace said, kicking the block of salt before them. “How he cleansed the poisoned waters?”

She looked blank for a moment, then her eyes widened. “The salt?”

“Yes. It’s one of the guards against evil I studied at seminary. Blessed Salt. Same use as Holy Water, more or less.”

“Holy wa—” She blinked. “You’re a papist? A
priest
?”

“Papist, yes. Never got as far as a priest. I know the words to say but we’ll need Brother Clark to say them. You think his faith is true?”

“He’s a believer, true enough,” she said, her lips pinched. “But I don’t think he’ll agree to this, Jacob.”

“Make him,” Trace said, and put his hand on Brother Clark’s shoulder. “Pastor, I think I’m ready to hear the error of my ways, now.”

Brother Clark flung him off with a snarl. “Blasphemer! You brought this pestilence upon us!”

“I did not bring it,” Trace said. “I came here to fight it, but I need a holy man.”

“You know nothing of sanctity! You speak with a false tongue, and you bring judgment upon all of us!”

“You’re right,” Trace said. “I know I’m cursed. I’ve been this way for a long time, but I keep tryin, brother, and I need somebody to show me the right way.” He got down on one knee, laid one hand on the block of salt. “I just need your help with this one thing. Just ask a blessing on this salt-lick and—”

Brother Clark sucked his breath in as if the suggestion were obscene. He whipped his right hand across Trace’s cheek. “Blasphemer! Papist! I will not be led astray by your falsehoods! This is the hour we must stay true, and walk willingly into the fiery furnace! Those of the
true
faith will be saved!”

Trace’s jaw had already taken some bad blows that night, and the slap was enough to make his eyes water. He clasped a hand to his chin, amazed that anyone could be that arrogant.

Brother Clark gave him a most un-Christlike look of triumph, and raised his hands. “Brethren! Though we are tested as Job, we must be ready as Job was, to go into that land of darkness, the place from which we shall not return, a land as dark as the shadow of death, where even the light is like dark—”

Trace swung and clipped him under the ear. His audience gasped. Brother Clark’s head snapped back and he went down like a sack of potatoes, quiet at last.

“I always hated that passage,” Trace said, flexing his hand.

“I’ve never been fond of it either,” Miss Eliza said.

And that was a damn fool thing to do,
Trace thought, looking down at Clark’s slack mouth. He glanced at the huddled, shuddering congregation. “Anyone else here right with the Lord?”

They just stared at him—eyes wide and faces bland with terror. Like sheep, he thought with a contempt that shocked him, because he’d always resented that derogatory description of the faithful. But it certainly fit here—these folks sitting and waiting to die instead of—what was it Miss Fairweather had said?
Rather than accepting the truth, and learning to fight?

“Jacob.” Miss Eliza put her hand on his arm. “You do it.”

“Ma’am, I can’t,” he said. “I was never ordained. It has to be a priest.”

“Elisha was not a priest,” she countered. “He was a prophet. And I know for a fact that you received a vision from God when Martin told you where we were going. I suspect your whole reason for following us here was to protect us from this evil.”

Trace looked at her in surprise, but she only nodded, calm and sure. “My father used to say that the reluctant prophets were the only ones we could trust.” She smiled her serene Madonna smile. “I trust you.”

The hiss of steam caught his attention; Boz and Ferris had resorted to scooping water from the troughs with a feed bucket and flinging it on the floor. The wood was hot enough that the water just sizzled when it hit. The last few children were whimpering and trying to back away from the spot, but they were already crowded into the corner as hard as they could get. The air was beginning to get quite warm.

“Trace!” Boz hollered. “Whatever you’re doin over there, you better do it fast!”

What the hell,
Trace thought recklessly. Miss Fairweather had been right about the exorcism rite; maybe raw ability would serve him here, too. Or maybe God gave dispensation to folks who saddled up in a crisis.

He closed a fist around his crucifix and pulled it off over his head, kissed it, and crossed himself. He dropped to one knee and put his hand on the block of salt.

The words came to mind with frightening ease, bringing with them the smells of incense, and old wood, and musty vestments. He shut his eyes, sucked into a memory so sweet and strong it blotted out the darkness around him—the younger boys whispering and fidgeting during Mass, the singing at Vespers, the simple feeling of being
good
that he had hugged to himself in those days.

“Almighty Lord, I beg you to bless this salt,” he said, “as You blessed the salt scattered over the water by the prophet Elisha. Wherever this salt is sprinkled, drive from us all unclean spirits, all satanic powers, all infernal invaders, all wicked legions, assemblies and sects—”
Except the Baptists, we need them,
his mind added irreverently, and he nearly upset it all by laughing. That sense of exhilaration was building in him again, that sense of being exactly where he should be, doing what he was meant to do—of being
heard
. He made the Cross again. “In the Name and by the power of Our Lord Jesus Christ, drive away the power of evil, and protect us always by the presence of your Holy Spirit. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.”