The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

JOE R. LANSDALE The Crawling Sky

WOOD TICK WASN’T so much as town as it was a wide rip in the forest. The Reverend Jebediah Mercer rode in on ebony horse on a coolish autumn day beneath an overcast sky of humped up, slow-blowing, gun-metal-grey clouds; they seemed to crawl. It was his experience nothing good ever took place under a crawling sky. It was an omen, and he didn’t like omens, because, so far in his experience, none of them were good.

Before him, he saw a sad excuse for a town: a narrow clay road and a few buildings, not so much built up as tossed up, six altogether, three of them leaning south from northern winds that had pushed them. One of them had had a fireplace of stone, but it had toppled, and no one had bothered to rebuild it. The stones lay scattered about like discarded cartridges. Grass, yellowed by time, had grown up through the stones, and even a small tree had sprouted between them. Where the fall of the fireplace had left a gap was a stretch of fabric, probably a slice of tent; it had been nailed up tight and it had turned dark from years of weather.

In the middle of the town there was a wagon with wooden bars set into it and a flat heavy roof. No horses. Its axle rested on the ground giving the wagon a tilt. Inside, leaning, the Reverend could see a man clutching at the bars, cursing at a half-dozen young boys who looked likely to grow up to be ugly men, who were throwing rocks at him. An old man was sitting on the precarious porch of one of the leaning buildings, whittling on a stick. A few other folks moved about, crossing the street with the enthusiasm of the ill, giving no mind to the boys or the man in the barred wagon.

Reverend Mercer got off his horse and walked it to a hitching post in front of the sagging porch and looked at the man who was whittling. The man had a goitre on the side of his neck and he had tied it off in a dirty sack that fastened under his jaw and to the top of his head and was fastened under his hat. The hat was wide and dropped shadow on his face. The face needed concealment. He had the kind of features that made you wince; one thing God could do was he could sure make ugly.

“Sir, may I ask you something?” the Reverend said to the whittling man.

“I reckon.”

“Why is that man in that cage?”

“That there is Wood Tick’s jail. All we got. We been meaning to build one, but we don’t have that much need for it. Folks do anything really wrong, we hang ’em.”

“What did he do?”

“He’s just half-witted.”

“That’s a crime?”

“If we want it to be. He’s always talkin’ this and that, and it gets old. He used to be all right, but he ain’t now. We don’t know what ails him. He’s got stories about haints and his wife done run off and he claims a haint got her.”

“Haints?”

“That’s right.”

Reverend Mercer turned his head toward the cage and the boys tossing rocks. They were flinging them in good and hard, and pretty accurate.

“Having rocks thrown at him can not be productive,” the Reverend said.

“Well, if God didn’t want him half-witted and the target of rocks, he’d have made him smarter and less directed to bullshit.”

“I am a man of God and I have to agree with you. God’s plan doesn’t seem to have a lot of sympathy in it. But humanity can do better. We could at least save this poor man from children throwing rocks.”

“Sheriff doesn’t think so.”

“And who is the sheriff.”

“That would be me. You ain’t gonna give me trouble are you?”

“I just think a man should not be put behind bars and have rocks thrown at him for being half-witted.”

“Yeah, well, you can take him with you, long as you don’t bring him back. Take him with you and I’ll let him out.”

The Reverend nodded. “I can do that. But, I need something to eat first. Any place for that?”

“You can go over to Miss Mary’s, which is a house about a mile down from the town, and you can hire her to fix you some-thin’. But you better have a strong stomach.”

“Not much of a recommendation.”

“No, it’s not. I reckon I could fry you up some meat for a bit of coin, you ready to let go of it.”

“I have money.”

“Good. I don’t. I got some horse meat I can fix. It’s just on this side of being good enough to eat. Another hour, you might get poisoned by it.”

“Appetising as that sounds, perhaps I should see Miss Mary.”

“She fixes soups from roots and wild plants and such. No matter what she fixes, it all tastes the same and it gives you the squirts. She ain’t much to look at neither, but she sells out herself, you want to buy some of that.”

“No. I am good. I will take the horse meat, long as I can watch you fry it.”

“All right. I’m just about through whittling.”

“Are you making something?”

“No. Just whittlin’.”

“So, what is there to get through with?”

“Why my pleasure, of course. I enjoy my whittlin’.”

The old man, who gave the Reverend his name as if he had given up a dark secret, was called Jud. Up close, Jud was even nastier looking than from the distance of the hitching post and the porch. He had pores wide enough and deep enough in his skin to keep pooled water and his nose had been broken so many times it moved from side to side when he talked. He was missing a lot of teeth, and what he had were brown from tobacco and rot. His hands were dirty and his fingers were dirtier yet, and the Reverend couldn’t help but wonder what those fingers had poked into.

Inside, the place leaned and there were missing floor boards. A wooden stove was at the far end of the room, and a stove pipe wound out of it and went up through a gap in the roof that would let in rain, and had, because the stove was partially rusted. It rested heavy on the worn flooring. The floor sagged and it seemed to the Reverend that if it experienced one more rotted fibre, one more termite bite, the stove would crash through. Hanging on hooks on the wall there were slabs of horse meat covered in flies. Some of the meat looked a little green and there was a slick of mould over a lot of it.

“That the meat you’re talkin’ about?”

“Yep,” Jud said, scratching at his filthy goitre sack.

“It looks pretty green.”

“I said it was turnin’. Want it or not?”

“Might I cook it myself?”

“Still have to pay me.”

“How much?”

“Two bits.”

“Two bits, for rancid meat I cook myself.”

“It’s still two bits if I cook it.”

“You drive quite the bargain, Jud.”

“I pride myself on my dealin’.”

“Best you do not pride yourself on hygiene.”

“What’s that? That some kind of remark?”

Reverend Mercer pushed back his long black coat and showed the butts of his twin revolvers. “Sometimes a man can learn to like things he does not on most days care to endure.”

Jud checked out the revolvers. “You got a point there, Reverend. I was thinkin’ you was just a blabber mouth for God, but you tote them pistols like a man whose seen the elephant.”

“Seen the elephant I have. And all his children.”

The Reverend brushed the flies away from the horse meat and found a bit of it that looked better than rest, used his pocket knife to cut it loose. He picked insects out of a greasy pan and put the meat in it. He put some wood in the stove and lit it and got a fire going. In short time the meat was frying. He decided to cook it long and cook it through, burn it a bit. That way, maybe he wouldn’t die of stomach poisoning.

“You have anything else that might sweeten this deal?” the Reverend asked.

“It’s the horse meat or nothin’.”

“And in what commerce will you deal when it turns rancid, or runs out?”

“I’ve got a couple more old horses, and one old mule. Somebody will have to go.”

“Have you considered a garden?”

“My hand wasn’t meant to fit a hoe. It gets desperate, I’ll shoot a squirrel or a possum or a coon or some such. Dog ain’t bad you cook ’em good.”

“How many people reside in this town?”

“About forty, forty-one if you count Norville out there in the box. But, way things look, considerin’ our deal, he’ll be leavin’. Sides, he don’t live here direct anyway.”

“That number count in the kids?”

“Yeah, they all belong to Mary. They’re thirteen and on down to six years. Drops them like turds and don’t know for sure who’s the daddy, though there’s one of them out there that looks a mite like me.”

“Bless his heart,” the Reverend said.

“Yeah, reckon that’s the truth. Couple of ’em have died over the years. One got kicked in the head by a horse and the other one got caught up in the river and drowned. Stupid little bastard should have learned to swim. There was an older girl, but she took up with Norville out there, and now she’s run off from him.”

When the meat was as black as a pit and smoking like a rich man’s cigar, Reverend Mercer discovered there were no plates, and he ate it from the frying pan, using his knife as a utensil. It was a rugged piece of meat to wrestle and it tasted like the ass end of a skunk. He ate just enough to knock the corners off his hunger, then gave it up.

Jud asked if he were through with it, and when the Reverend said he was, he came over picked up the leavings with his hands and tore at it like a wolf.

“Hell, this is all right,” Jud said. “I need you on as a cook.”

“Not likely. How do people make a living around here?”

“Lumber. Cut it and mule it out. That’s a thing about East Texas, plenty of lumber.”

“Some day there will be a lot less, that is my reasoning.”

“It all grows back.”

“People grow back faster, and we could do with a lot less of them.”

“On that matter, Reverend, I agree with you.”

When the Reverend went outside with Jud to let Norville loose, the kids were still throwing rocks. The Reverend picked up a rock and winged it through the air and caught one of the kids on the side of the head hard enough to knock him down.

“Damn,” Jud said. “That there was a kid.”

“Now he’s a kid with a knot on his head.”

“You’re a different kind of Reverend.”

The kid got up and ran, holding his hand to his head squealing.

“Keep going you horrible little bastard,” Reverend Mercer said. When the kid was gone, the Reverend said, “Actually, I was aiming to hit him in the back, but that worked out quite well.”

They walked over to the cage. There was a metal lock and a big padlock on the thick wooden bars. Reverend Mercer had wondered why the man didn’t just kick them out, but then he saw the reason. He was chained to the floor of the wagon. The chain fit into a big metal loop there, and then went to his ankle where a bracelet of iron held him fast. Norville had a lot of lumps on his head and his bottom lip was swollen up and he was bleeding all over.

“This is no way to treat a man,” Reverend Mercer said.

“He could have been a few rocks shy of a dozen knots, you hadn’t stopped to cook and eat a steak.”

“True enough,” the Reverend said.

The sheriff unlocked the cage and went inside and unlocked the clamp around Norville’s ankle. Norville, barefoot, came out of the cage and walked around and looked at the sky, stretching his back as he did. Jud sauntered over to the long porch and reached under it and pulled out some old boots. He gave them to Norville. Norville pulled them on, then came around the side of the cage and studied the Reverend.

“Thank you for lettin’ me out,” Norville said. “I ain’t crazy, you know. I seen what I seen and they don’t want to hear it none.”

“Cause you’re crazy,” Jud said.

“What did you see?” the Reverend asked.

“He starts talkin’ that business again, I’ll throw him back in the box,” Jud said. “Our deal was he goes with you, and I figure you’ve worn out your welcome.”

“What I’ve worn out is my stomach,” Reverend Mercer said. “That meat is backing up on me.”

“Take care of your stomach problems somewhere else, and take that crazy sonofabitch with you.”

“Does he have a horse?”

“The back of yours,” Jud said. “Best get him on it, and you two get out.”

“Norville,” the Reverend said, “come with me.”

“I don’t mind comin’,” Norville said, walking briskly after the Reverend.

Reverend Mercer unhitched his horse and climbed into the saddle. He extended a hand for Norville, helped him slip up on the rear of the horse. Norville put his arms around Reverend Mercer’s waist. The Reverend said, “Keep the hands high or they’ll find you face down outside of town in the pine straw.”

“You stay gone, you hear?” Jud said, walking up on the porch.

“This place does not hold much charm for me, Sheriff Jud,” Reverend Mercer said. “But, just in case you should over value your position, you do not concern me in the least. It is this town that concerns me. It stinks and it is worthless and should be burned to the ground.”

“You go on now,” Jud said.

“That I will, but at my own speed.”

The Reverend rode off then, glancing back, least Jud decide to back shoot. But it was a needless concern. He saw Jud go inside the shack, perhaps to fry up some more rancid horse meat.

They rode about three miles out of town, and Reverend Mercer stopped by a stream. They got down off the horse and let it drink. While the horse quenched its thirst, the Reverend removed the animal’s saddle, then he pulled the horse away from the water lest it bloat. He took some grooming items out of a saddlebag and went to work, giving the horse a good brushing and rub down.

Norville plucked a blade of grass and put it in his mouth and worked it around, found a tree to sit under, said, “I ain’t no bowl of nuts. I seen what I seen. Why did you help me anyway? For all you know I am a nut.”

“I am on a mission from God. I do not like it, but it is my mission. I’m a hunter of the dark and a giver of the light. I’m the hammer and the anvil. The bone and the sinew. The sword and the gun. God’s man who sets things right. Or at least right as God sees them. Me and him, we do not always agree. And let me tell you, he is not the God of Jesus, he is the God of David, and the angry city killers and man killers and animal killers of the Old Testament. He is constantly jealous and angry and if there is any plan to all this, I have yet to see it.”

“Actually, I was just wantin’ to know if you thought I was nuts.”

“It is my lot in life to destroy evil. There is more evil than there is me, I might add.”

“So. You think I’m a nut, or what?”

“Tell me your story.”

“If you think I’m a nut are you just gonna leave me?”

“No. I will shoot you first and leave your body. Just joking. I do not joke much, so I’m poor at it.”

The Reverend tied up the horse and they went over and sat together under the tree and drank water from the Reverend’s canteen. Norville told his story.

“My daddy, after killin’ my mother over turnip soup, back in the Carolinas, hitched up the wagon and put me in my sister in it and come to Texas.”

“He killed your mother over soup?”

“Deader than a rock. Hit her upside the head with a snatch of turnips.”

“A snatch of turnips? What in the world is a snatch of turnips?”

“Bunch of them. They was on the table where she’d cut up some for soup, still had the greens one ’em. He grabbed the greens, and swung them turnips. Must have been seven or eight big ole knotty ones. Hit her upside the head and knocked her brain loose I reckon. She died that night, right there on the floor. Wouldn’t let us help her any. He said God didn’t want her to die from getting’ hit with turnips, he’d spare her.”

“Frankly, God is not all that merciful. You seen this? Your father hitting your mother with the turnips?”

“Yep. I was six or so. My sister four. Daddy didn’t like turnips in any kind of way, let alone a soup. So he took us to Texas after he burned down the cabin with mama in it, and I been in Texas ever since, but mostly over toward the middle of the state. About a year ago he died and my sister got a bad cough and couldn’t get over it. Coughed herself to death. So I lit out on my own.”

“I would think that is appropriate at your age, being on your own. How old are you. Thirty?”

“Twenty-six. I’m just tired. So I was riding through the country here, living off the land, squirrels and such, and I come to this shack in the woods and there weren’t no one livin’ there. I mean I found it by accident, cause it wasn’t on a real trail. It was just down in the woods and it had a good roof on it, and there was a well. I yelled to see anyone was home, and they wasn’t, and the door pushed open. I could see hadn’t nobody been there in a long time. They had just gone off and left it. It was a nice house, and had real glass in the windows, and whoever had made it had done good on it, cause it was put together good and sound. They had trimmed away trees and had a yard of sorts.

“I started livin’ there, and it wasn’t bad. It had that well, but when I come up on it for a look, I seen that it had been filled in with rocks and such, and there wasn’t no gettin’ at the water. But there was a creek no more than a hundred feet from the place, and it was spring fed and I was right at the source. There was plenty of game, and I had a garden patch where I grew turnips and the like.”

“I would have thought you would have had your fill of turnips in all shapes and forms.”

“I liked that soup my mama made. I still remember it. Daddy didn’t have no cause to do that over some soup.”

“Now we are commanding the same line of thought.”

“Anyway, the place was just perfect. I started to clean out the well. Spendin’ a bit of time each day pullin’ rocks out of it. In the meantime, I just used the spring down behind the house, but the well was closer, and it had a good stone curbin’ around it, and I thought it would be nice if it was freed up for water. I wouldn’t have to tote so far.

“Meanwhile, I discovered the town of Wood Tick. It isn’t much, as you seen, but there was one thing nice about it, and every man in that town knew it and wanted that nice thing. Sissy. She was one of Mary’s daughters. The only one she knew who her father was. A drummer who passed through and sold her six yards of wool and about five minutes in a back room.

“Thing is, there wasn’t no real competition in Wood Tick for Sissy. That town has the ugliest men you ever seen, and about half of them have goitres and such. She was fifteen and I was just five years older, and I took to courtin’ her.”

“She was nothing but a child.”

“Not in these parts. Ain’t no unusual thing for men to marry younger girls, and Sissy was mature.”

“In the chest or in the head?”

“Both. So we got married, or rather, we just decided we was married, and we moved out to that cabin.”

“And you still had no idea who built it, who it belonged to?”

“Sissy knew, and she told me all about it. She said there had been an old woman who lived there, and that she wasn’t the one who built the house in the first place, but she died there, and then a family ended up with the land, squatted on it, but after a month, they disappeared, all except for the younger daughter who they found walkin’ the road, talkin’ to herself. She kept sayin’ ‘It sucked and it crawled’ or some such. She stayed with Mary in town who did some doctorin’, but wasn’t nothing could be done for her. She died. They said she looked like she aged fifty years in a few days when they put her down.

“Folks went out to the house but there wasn’t nothin’ to be found, and the well was all rocked in. Then another family moved in, and they’d come into town from time to time, and then they didn’t anymore. They just disappeared. In time, one of the townspeople moved in, a fellow who weaved ropes and sold hides and such, and then he too was gone. No sign as to where. Then there was this man come through town, a preacher like you, and he ended up out there, and he said the house was evil, and he stayed on for a long time, but finally he’d had enough and came into town and said the place ought to be set afire and the ground ploughed up and salted so nothing would grow there and no one would want to be there.”

“So he survived?”

“He did until he hung himself in a barn. He left a note said: ‘I seen too much’.”

“Concise,” the Reverend said.

“And then I come there and brought Sissy with me.”

“After all that, you came there and brought a woman as well. Could it be, sir, that you are not too bright?”

“I didn’t believe all them stories then.”

“But you do now?”

“I do. And I want to go back and set some thing straight on account of Sissy. That’s what I was tryin’ to tell them in town, that somethin’ had happened to her, but when I told them what, wouldn’t nobody listen. They just figured I was two nuts shy a squirrel’s lunch and throwed me in that damned old cage. I’d still have been there wasn’t for you. Now, you done good by me, and I appreciate it, and I’d like you to ride me over close to the house, you don’t have to come up on it, but I got some business I want to take care of.”

“Actually, the business you refer to is exactly my business.”

“Haints and such?”

“I suppose you could put it that way. But please, tell me about Sissy. About what happened.”

Norville nodded and swigged some water from the canteen and screwed the cap on. He took a deep breath and leaned loosely against the tree.

“Me and Sissy, we was doin’ all right at first, makin’ a life for ourselves. I took to cleanin’ out that old well. I had to climb down in it and haul the rocks up by bucket, and some of them was so big I had to wrap a rope around them and hook my mule up and haul them out. I got down real deep, and still didn’t reach water. I come to where it was just nothin’ but mud, and I stuck a stick down in the mud, and it was deep, and there really wasn’t anymore I could do, so I gave it up and kept carrying water from the spring. I took to fixin’ up some rotten spots on the house, nailin’ new shingles on the roof. Sissy planted flowers and it all looked nice. Then, of a sudden, it got so she couldn’t sleep nights. She kept sayin’ she was sure there was somethin’ outside, and that she’d seen a face at the window, but when I got my gun and went out, wasn’t nothin’ there but the yard and that pile of rocks I’d pulled out of the well. But the second time I went out there, I had the feelin’ someone was watching, maybe from the woods, and my skin started to crawl. I ain’t never felt that uncomfortable. I started back to the house, and then I got this idea that I was bein’ followed. I stopped and started to look back, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Just couldn’t. I felt if I looked back I’d see somethin’ I didn’t want to see. I’m ashamed to say I broke and ran and I closed the door quickly and locked it, and outside the door I could hear somethin’ breathin’.

“From then on, by the time it was dark, we was inside. I boarded up all the windows from the inside. In the day, it seemed silly, but when night come around, it got so we both felt as if something was moving around and around the house, and I even fancied once that it was on the roof, and at the chimney. I built a fire in the chimney quick like, and kept one going at night, even when it was hot, and finally, I rocked it up and we cooked outside durin’ the day and had cold suppers at night. Got so we dreaded the night. We were frightened out of our gourds. We took to sleepin’ a few hours in the day, and I did what I could to tend the garden and hunt for food, but I didn’t like being too far from the house or Sissy.

“Now, the thing to do would have been to just pack up and leave. We talked about it. But the house and that land was what we had, even if it was just by squatter’s rights, and we thought maybe we were being silly, except we got so it wasn’t just a feelin’ we had, or sounds, we could smell it. It smelled like old meat and stagnant water, all at once. It floated around the house at night, through them boarded windows and under the front door. It was like it was gettin’ stronger and bolder.

“One mornin’ we came out and all the flowers Sissy had planted had been jerked out of the ground, and there was a dead coon on the doorstep, its head yanked off.”

“Yanked off?”

“You could tell from the way there was strings of meat comin’ out of the neck. It had been twisted and pulled plumb off, like a wrung chicken neck, and from the looks of it, it appeared someone, or something, had sucked on its neck. Curious, I cut that coon open. Hardly had a drop of blood in it. Ain’t that somethin’?”

“That’s something all right.”

“Our mule disappeared next. No sign of it. We thought it over and decided we needed to get out, but we didn’t know where to go and we didn’t have any real money. Then one mornin’ I come out, and on the stones I’d set in front of the house for steps, there was a muddy print on them. It was a big print and it didn’t have no kind of shape I could recognise, no kind of animal, but it had toes and a heel. Mud trailed off into the weeds. I got my pistol and went out there, but didn’t find nothin’. No more prints. Nothin’.

“That night I heard a board crack at the bedroom window, and I got up with a gun in my hand. I seen that one of the boards I’d nailed over the window outside had been pulled loose, and a face was pressed up against the glass. It was dark, but I could see enough cause of the moonlight, and it wasn’t like a man’s face. It was the eyes and mouth that made it so different, like it had come out of a human mould of some sort, but the mould had been twisted or dropped or both, and what was made from it was this. This thing. The face was as pale as a whore’s butt, and twisted up, and its eyes were blood red and shone at the window as clear as if the thing was standin’ in front of me. I shot at it, shatterin’ an expensive pane of glass, and then it was gone in the wink of that pistol’s flare.

“I decided it had to end, and I told Sissy to stick, and I gave her the pistol, and I took the fire wood axe and went outside and she bolted the door behind me. I went on around to the side of the house, and I thought I caught sight of it, a nude body, maybe, but with strange feet. Wasn’t nothin’ more than a glimpse of it as it went around the edge of the house and I ran after it. I must have run around that damn house three times. It acted like it was a kid playin’ a game with me. Then I saw somethin’ white that at first I couldn’t imagine was it, because it seemed like a sheet being pulled through the bedroom window I’d shot out.

“You mean it was wraith like. A haint, as you said before?”

Norville nodded. “I ran to the door, but it was bolted of course, way I told Sissy to do. I ran back to the window and started using the axe to chop out the rest of the boards, knocked the panes and the frame out, and I crawled through, pieces of glass stickin’ and cuttin’ me.

“Sissy wasn’t there. But the pistol was on the floor. I dropped the axe and snatched it up, and then I heard her scream real loud and rushed out into the main room, and there I seen it. It was chewin’. You got to believe me, preacher. It had spread its mouth wide, like a snake, and it had more teeth in its face than a dozen folk, and teeth more like an animal, and it was bitin’ her head off. It jerked its jaws from side to side, and blood went everywhere. I shot at it. I shot at it five times and I hit it five times.

“It didn’t so much as make the thing move. I might as well have been rubbin’ its belly. It lifted its eyes and looked at me, and. As God is my witness, it spat out what was left of poor Sissy’s head, and slapped its mouth over her blood pumpin’ neck, and went to suckin’ on it like a kid with a sucker.

“I ain’t ashamed to admit it, my knees went weak. I dropped the pistol and ran and got the axe. When I turned, it was on me. I swung that axe, and hit it. The blade went in, went in deep. and there wasn’t no blood, didn’t spurt a drop. Thing grabbed me up and flung me at the window, and damned if I didn’t go straight through it and land out on my back, on top of some of them rocks I’d pulled out of the well. It flowed through that window like it was water, and it come at me. I rolled over and grabbed one of the rocks and flung it and hit that thing square in its bony chest. What five shots from a pistol and a hack from an axe couldn’t do, the rock did.

“Monster yelled like the fire of hell had been shoved down its throat, and it ran straight away for the well faster than I’ve ever seen anything move, its body twistin’ in all directions, like it was going to come apart, or like the bones was shiftin’ inside of it. It ran and dove into the well and I heard it hit the mud below.

“I climbed back through the window, rushed into the main room, tryin’ not to look at poor Sissy’s body, and I got the double barrel off the mantle and lit a lantern and went back outside through the front door with the lantern in one hand, the shotgun in the other.

“First I held the lantern over the well, got me a look, but didn’t see nothin’ but darkness. I bent over the curbin’ and lowered the lantern in some, fearin’ that thing might grab me. The sides of the well were covered with a kind of slime, and I could see the mud down below, and if the thing had gone into it, there wasn’t no sign now except a bit of a ripple.

“I hid out in the woods. I went back the next mornin’ and got Sissy’s body and buried it out back of the place, and then before it was dark, I boarded up all the windows good and locked the door and I got the shotgun and sat with it all night in the middle of the big room. I knew it wouldn’t do me no good, but that was all I had. Me and that shotgun.

“But didn’t nothin’ bother me, though I could hear it and smell it movin’ around outside the house. Come morning, I was brave enough to go out, and Sissy’s body had been pulled from the grave and gnawed on. I reckon animals could have done it in the night, but I didn’t think so. I buried her again, this time deep, and mounded up dirt and packed it down. I cut some sticks and tied a cross together and stuck that up, then I walked into town and told my story. They didn’t even think I was a murderer. They didn’t question if I might have killed Sissy, which is what I thought they might do. They locked me up for bein’ a crazy, and wasn’t no one cared enough to come and see if her body was at the cabin or not. They wasn’t interested. I done taken Sissy off and wasn’t no man wanted her back now that she had been with me, which considerin’ the kind of women they was usually with didn’t make no sense, but then there ain’t much about Wood Tick that does make sense.

“And then you come along, and you know the rest from there.”

The sun was starting to slant to the West, but there was still plenty of daylight left when they arrived on horseback. The house was built of large logs and it looked solid. The chimney appeared sound. The shingles well cut and nailed down tight. It was indeed a good cabin and the Reverend understood the attraction it held for those who passed by.

Norville slipped off the back of the horse and hurried around behind the cabin. After the Reverend tied up his horse, he too went out back. Norville stood over an empty grave, the cross turned over and broken. Norville and the Reverend stood there for a long moment.

Norville fell to his knees. “Oh, Jesus. I should have taken her off somewhere else. He’s done come and got her.”

“It is done now,” Reverend Mercer said. “Stand up, man. None of this does any good. Let’s look around.”

Norville stood up, but he looked ready to collapse.

“Buck up, man,” Reverend Mercer said. “We have work to do.”

No sight or parcel of the body was found. The Reverend went to the well and bent over and looked down. It was deep. He took out a match and struck it on the curbing and dropped it down the shaft, watched the little light fall. The match hissed out in the mud below.

“Do you believe me,” Norville said, standing back from the well a few paces.

“I do.”

“What can I do?”

“Whatever you do, you will not do alone. I will be here with you.”

“Kind of you, Reverend, but what can you do?”

“At the moment, I’m uncertain. Let’s look inside the house.”

The cabin, though not huge, had two rooms. A small bedroom and a large main room with a kitchen table and a rocked-in fireplace and some benches and a few chairs. There was blood on the floor and on a rug there, and on the walls and even on the ceiling. The Reverend paused at the rocked-up fireplace. He bent down and looked at the rocks. Did you notice a lot of these rocks have a drawing in them?”

“What now?”

“Look here.” Reverend Mercer touched his finger to one of the stones. There was a strange drawing on it, a stick figure with small symbols written around it in a circle. “It’s on a lot of the rocks, and my guess is, if you were to pull the ones without visible symbols free, you could turn them over and the marks would be on the other side. They came from inside the well, correct?”

“Nearly all of them. It’s a very deep well.”

“As I have seen. Did you not notice the marks?”

“Guess I was so anxious to get those rocks out of there I didn’t.”

“It is only visible if you’re looking for it.”

“And you were?”

“I was looking for anything. This is my business. When you said you hit this thing with a rock and it fled after shooting it and hitting it with an axe had no effect, I started to wonder. I believe these are symbols of protection.”

The Reverend began walking about the house. He looked under the bed and at the walls and checked nooks and crannies. He bounced himself on the floor to test the boards. He stood looking down at the blood stained rug for a while. He picked up the edge of the rug and saw there were a series of short boards that didn’t extend completely across the floor.

Sliding the rug aside, the Reverend used his knife and stuck it under the edge of one of the boards and pried it up. There was a space beneath and a metal box was in the space. The Reverend removed a few more boards so he could get a good look at the box. It had a padlock on it.

“Find the axe,” the Reverend said.

Norville went outside and got the axe and brought it back. It was a single edge, and the Reverend turned the flat side down and swung and knocked the lock off with one sure blow. He opened the box. Inside was a book.

“Why would someone put a book under lock and key?” Norville said.

The Reverend went to the table and sat on the long bench next to it. Norville sat on the other side. The Reverend opened the book and studied it. He looked up after a moment, said, “Whoever built this house originally, their intentions for us were not good.”

“Us?” Norville said. “How would they, whoever that is, know we would be here?”

“Not you and I. Us as in the human race, Norville. They, meaning the ones who possess this book, called The Book of Doches. The ones who find it or buy it or kill to possess it, always believe they will make some pact with the dark ones, the ones darker than our god, much darker, and they believe that if they allow these dark ones to break through they will be either its master or its trusted servant. The latter is sometimes possible, but the former, never. And in the end, a trusted servant is easily replaced.”

“What are you talkin’ about?” Norville said.

“There are monsters on the other side of the veil, Norville. A place you and I can’t see. These things want out. Books like this contain spells to free them, and sometimes the people who possess the book want to set them free for rewards. Someone has already set one of them free.”

“The sucking thing?”

“Correct,” the Reverend said, shaking the book. “Look at the pages. See. The words and images on the pages are hand-printed? The pages, feel them.”

Norville used his thumb and finger to feel.

“It’s cloth.”

“Flesh. Human flesh is what the book says.”

Norville jerked his hand back. “You can read this hen scratch?”

“Yes. I read a translation of it long ago, taught myself to understand the original symbols.”

“You have the same book?”

“Had. One of them got away from me, the one adapted into English. The other I destroyed.”

“How did it get away from you?”

“That’s not important to us today. Whoever built this house may have brought this copy here. But their plans didn’t work out. They released something, one of the minor horrors, and that minor horror either chased them off, or did to them what they did to your poor Sissy. This thing they called up. The place where it is from is wet, and therefore it takes to the well. And it is hungry. Always hungry. A minor being, but a nasty one.”

“But if this beast is on the other side, as you call it, why would anyone bring it here?”

“Never underestimate the curiosity and stupidity and greed of man, Norville.”

“If the book set this thing free, then burn the book.”

“Not a bad idea, but I doubt that would get rid of anything. In fact, I might do better to study the book. My guess is whoever first brought the book, loosed the creature. They then decided they had made a mistake, made the marks of power on the stones and sealed the thing in the well where it preferred to reside — it liked the dampness, you see. And then, someone, like you, took the rocks from the well and the thing was let loose. One of the other survivors, the preacher for example, may have figured out enough to seal the thing back in the well. And then you let it out again.”

“Then we can seal it back up,” Norville said.

The Reverend shook his head. “Then someone else will open the well.”

“We can destroy the well curbing, put the rocks in, build a mound of dirt over all of it.”

“Still not enough. That leaves the possibility of it being opened up in the future, if only by accident. No. This thing, it has to be destroyed. Listen here. It’s light yet. Take my horse and walk it and take off its saddle, and then bring it inside where it will be safer.”

“The house?”

“Since when are you so particular? I do not want to leave the horse for that thing to kill. If it must have the horse or us, then it will have to come and get the lot of us.”

“All right then.”

“Bring in my saddle and all that goes with it. And those rocks from the well. Only the rocks from the well. Start bringing them in by the pile.”

“Aren’t there enough here in the fireplace?”

“They are in use. One may cause this thing to flee, but that doesn’t mean one will destroy it. I have other plans. Do it, Norville. Already the sun dips deep and the dark is our first enemy.”

When the horse was inside and the stones were stacked in the middle of the floor, the Reverend looked up from the book, said, “Place the stones in a circle around us. A large circle. Make a line of them across the back of this room and put the horse against the wall behind them. Give him plenty of room to get excited. Hobble him and put on his bridle and tie him to that nail in the wall, the big one.”

“And what exactly will you be doin’?”

“Reading,” the Reverend said. “You will have to trust me. I’m all that is between you and this thing.”

Norville went about placing the stones.

It was just short of dark when the stones were placed in a circle around the table and a line of them had been made behind that from wall to wall, containing the tied up horse.

Reverend Mercer looked up from the book. “You are finished?”

Norville said, “Almost. I’ll board up the bedroom window. Not that it matters. He can slip between some small spaces. But it will slow it down.”

“Leave it as is, and leave the door to the bedroom partially cracked.”

“You’re sure?”

“Quite.”

The Reverend placed one of the rocks on the table, removed the bullets from his belt and took his knife and did his best to copy the symbols in small shapes on the tips of his ammunition. The symbols were simple, a stick man with a few twists and twirls around it. It took him an hour to copy it onto twelve rounds of ammunition.

Finished, he loaded six rounds in each of his revolvers.

“Shall I light the lamp?” Norville asked.

“No. You have an axe and a shotgun lying about. We may have need for both. Recover them, and then come inside the ring of stones.”

While they waited, sitting cross-legged on the floor inside the circle of stones, the Reverend carved the symbols on the rocks onto the blade of the axe. He thought about the shotgun shells, but it wouldn’t do any good to have the symbols on the shells and not on the load, and since the shotgun shot pellets, that was an impossible task.

Lying the axe between them, the Reverend handed the shotgun to Norville. “The shotgun will be nothing more than a shotgun,” he said. “And it may not kill the thing, but it will be a distraction. You get the chance, shoot the thing with it, otherwise, sit and do not, under any circumstances, step outside this circle. The axe I have written symbols on and it may be of use.”

“Are you sure this circle will keep him out?”

“Not entirely.”

Norville swallowed.

They sat and they listened and the hours crept by. The Reverend produced a flask from his saddlebags. “I keep this primarily for medicinal purposes, but the night seems a little chill, so let us both have one short nip, and one short nip only.”

The Reverend and Norville took a drink and the flask was replaced. And no sooner was it replaced, than a smell seeped into the house. A smell like a charnel house and a butcher shop and an outhouse all balled into one.

“It’s near,” Norville said. “That’s its smell.”

The Reverend put a finger to his lips to signal quiet.

There were a few noises on the outside of the house, but they could have been most anything. Finally there came a sound in the bedroom like wet laundry plopping to the floor.

Norville looked at the Reverend.

Reverend Mercer nodded to let him know he too had heard it, and then he carefully pulled and cocked his revolvers.

The room was dark, but the Reverend had adjusted his eyesight and could make out shapes. He saw that the bedroom door, already partially cracked open, was slowly moving. And then a hand, white and puffy like the leaves of an orchid, appeared around the edge of the door, and fingers, long and stalk like, extended and flexed, and the door moved and a flow of muddy water slid into the room along the floor.

The Reverend felt Norville move beside him, as if to rise, and he reached out and touched his shoulder to steady him.

The door opened more, and then the thing slipped inside the main room. It moved strangely, as if made of soft candle wax. It was dead white of flesh, but much of the skin was filthy with mud. It was neither male nor female. No genitals; down there it was as smooth as a well-washed river rock. It was tall, with knees that swung slightly to the sides when it walked, and there was an odd vibration about it, as if it were about to burst apart in all directions. The head was small. Its face was mostly a long gash of a mouth. It had thin slits for eyes and a hole for a nose. At the ends of its willowy legs were large flat feet that splayed out in shapes like claw-tipped four-leaf clovers.

Twisting and winding, long stepping, and sliding, it made its way forward until it was close to the Reverend and Norville. It leaned forward and sniffed. The hole that was its nose opened wider as it did, flexed.

It smells us, thought the Reverend. Only fair, because we certainly smell it.

And then it opened its dripping mouth and came at them in a rush.

As it neared the stones, it was knocked back by an invisible wall, and then there came something quite visible where it had impacted, a ripple of blue fulmination. The thing went sliding along the floor on its belly in its own mud and goo.

“The rocks hold,” the Reverend said, and it came again. Norville lifted the shotgun and fired. The pellets went through the thing and came rattling out against the wall on the other side. The hole made in its chest did not bleed, and it filled in rapidly, as if never struck.

Reverend Mercer stood up and aimed one of his pistols, and hit the thing square in the chest, and this time the wound made a sucking sound and when the load came out on the other side, goo and something dark went with it. But it didn’t stop the creature. It hit the invisible wall again, bellowed and fell back. It dragged its way around the circle toward the horse, tied behind the line of stones. The terrified horse reared and snapped its reins as if they were non-existent. The horse went thundering across the line, and then across the circle of stones, causing them to go spinning left and right, and along came the thing, entering the circle through the gap.

The Reverend fired again. The thing jerked back and squealed like a pig. Then it sprang forward again, grabbed the Reverend by the throat and sent him flying across the room, slamming into the side of the frightened horse.

Norville swung the shotgun around and fired right into the thing’s mouth, but it was like the thing was swallowing gnats. It grabbed the gun barrel, used it to sling the clutching Norville sliding across the floor, collecting splinters until he came up against the bedroom door, slamming it shut.

It started forward, but it couldn’t step out of the circle. Not that way. It wheeled to find the exit the horse had made, and as it did, Reverend Mercer, now on his feet, fired twice and hit the thing in the back, causing it to stagger through the opening and fall against the line of rocks that had been there to protect the horse. Its head hit the rocks and the creature cried out, leaping to its feet with a move that seemed boneless and without use of muscle. Its forehead bore a sizzling mark the size of the rock.

“Get back inside the circle,” the Reverend said. “Close it off.”

Norville waited for no further instruction. He bolted and leaped into the circle and began to clutch at the displaced stones. The Reverend put his right leg forward and threw back his coat by bending his left hand behind him; he pointed the revolver and took careful aim, fired twice.

Both shots hit. One in the head, one in the throat. They had their effect. The horror splattered to the floor with the wet laundry sound. But no sooner had it struck the ground, then it began to wriggle along the floor like a grub worm in a frying pan; it came fast and furious and grabbed the Reverend’s boot, and came to spring upright in front of the Reverend with that strange manner it had of moving.

Reverend Mercer cracked it across the head with his pistol, and it grabbed at him. The Reverend avoided the grab and struck out with his fist, a jab that merely annoyed the thing. It spread its jaws and filled the air with stink. The Reverend drew his remaining pistol and fired straight into the hole the thing used for a nose, causing it to go toppling backward along the floor gnashing its teeth into the lumber.

Reverend Mercer ran and leaped into the circle.

When he turned to look, the monster was sliding up the wall like some kind of slug. It left a sticky trail along the logs as it reached the ceiling and crawled along that with the dexterity of an insect.

The horse had finally come to a corner and stuck its head in it to hide. The thing came down on its back, and its mouth spread over the horse’s head, and the horse stood up on its hind legs and its front legs hit the wall, and it fell over backward, landing on the creature. It didn’t bother the thing in the least. It grabbed and twisted the horse over on its side as if it were nothing more than a feather pillow. There was a crunch as the monster’s teeth snapped bones in the horse’s head. The horse quit moving, and the thing began to suck, rivulets of blood spilling out from the corners of its distended mouth.

The Reverend jammed his pistol back into its holster, bent and grabbed the axe from the floor and leaped out of the circle. The thing caught sight of the Reverend as he came, rolled off the horse and leaped up on the wall and ran along it. As the Reverend turned to follow its progress, it leaped at him.

Reverend Mercer took a swing. The axe hit the fiend and split halfway through its neck, knocking it back against the wall, then to the floor. Its narrow eyes widened and showed red, and then it came to its feet in its unique way, though more slowly than before, and darted for the bedroom door.

As it reached and fumbled with the latch, the Reverend hit the thing in the back of the head with the axe, and it went to its knees, clawed at the lumber of the door, causing it to squeak and squeal and come apart, making a narrow slit. It was enough. The thing eased through it like a snake. The Reverend jerked the door open to see it going through the gap in the window. He dropped the axe and jerked the pistol and fired and struck the thing twice before it went out through the breach and was gone from sight.

Reverend Mercer rushed to the window and looked out. The thing was staggering, falling, rising to its feet, staggering toward the well. The Reverend stuck the pistol out the window, resting it on the frame, and fired again. It was a good shot in the back of the neck, and the brute went down.

Holstering the revolver, rushing to grab the axe, the Reverend climbed through the window. The monster had made it to the well by then, crawling along on its belly, and just as it touched the curbing, the Reverend caught up with it, brought the spell marked axe down on its already shredded head as many times as he had the strength to swing it.

As he swung, the sun began to colour the sky. He was breathing so hard he sounded like a blue norther blowing in. The sun rose higher and still he swung, then he fell to the ground, his chest heaving.

When he looked about, he saw the thing was no longer moving. Norville was standing nearby, holding one of the marked rocks.

“You was doin’ so good, I didn’t want to interrupt you,” Norville said.

The Reverend nodded, breathed for a long hard time, said, “Saddlebags. If this is not medicinal. I do not know what is.”

A few moments later, Norville returned with the flask. The Reverend drank first, long and deep, and then he gave it to Norville.

When his wind was back, and the sun was up, the Reverend chopped the rest of the monster up. It had already gone flat and gushed clutter from its insides that were part horse bones, gouts of blood, and unidentifiable items that made the stomach turn; its teeth were spread around the well curbing, like someone had dropped a box of daggers.

They burned what would burn of the beast with dried limbs and dead leaves, buried the teeth and the remainder of the beast in a deep grave, the bottom and top and sides of it lined with the marked rocks.

When they were done chopping and cremating and burying the creature, it was late afternoon. They finished off the flask, and that night they slept in the house, undisturbed, and in the morning, they set fire to the cabin using The Book of Doches as a starter. As it burned, the Reverend looked up. The sky had begun to change, finally. The clouds no longer crawled.

They walked out, the Reverend with the saddlebags over his shoulder, Norville with a pillowcase filled with food tins from the cabin. Behind them, the smoke from the fire rose up black and sooty and by night-time it had burned down to glowing cinders, and by the next day there was nothing more than clumps of ash.