Hell Snake

by Bernard Schaffer

  He scraped the hair from the top and sides of the skull and laid it on top of the pile with the rest, then he set the skull aside, picked up the bundle with all its wet contents, and pitched it forward into the fire.

  He picked the skull back up and held it in front of his face so that he could peer into its empty eye sockets, then he spit on it and watched his spittle drip down the forehead. He picked up his knife and cut a straight line into the enamel there.

  The line crossed the forehead, diagonally, to the bridge of the nose. He drew another one next to it, to form the lines into the shape of a spear. Then he used the tip of the knife to carve the shape of a snake between the eye sockets—a snake being impaled by the spear.

  “Thy blood flows through thy last living heir,” Deacon said aloud. “I will find him. I will cut him open over a black altar and collect that blood in thy very skull and drink from it. This I promise, Ashford Sinclair. This I do most solemnly—”

  The screeching behind him started again, louder than before.

  Deacon pounded his fist against his thigh. “Can’t anyone see I’m doing something?” he complained.

  He looked around the camp, but there was no one nearby to assist him. Several acolytes had been injured trying to rescue the Children of the Forest from the burning house, to no avail, and he’d dispatched as many as he could spare to hunt the Sinclairs and bring them before him. So far, no one had returned. The ones left at camp were either asleep or too far away to hear him. He set the skull down and got up once more. “Have I not been patient with thee,” he said. “I have done everything in my power to show thee that this is the path to paradise and what hast thou done to repay me?”

  Feet thrashed from inside the tent, trying to kick him, and Deacon rolled his eyes. He went back inside the tent, threw several punches, and emerged dragging the Native girl by her long black hair. She twisted and bucked as he pulled her, but she was bound at the wrists and ankles, which were bloody from her repeated attempts to free herself from the ropes.

  Deacon grabbed a bottle of opium with his right hand, pulled the cork out with his teeth, and spat it away. He twisted her hair around his other hand, winding it tight until she stopped screeching and winced in pain.

  “That’s better,” he said. “Drink, Moonflower.”

  He tipped the bottle toward her mouth and she knocked it out of his hands. Deacon slapped her across the face so hard she dropped to the ground. He picked up the bottle before too much had spilled and grabbed her back up by the hair.

  “Drink,” he said again.

  He offered the bottle to her once more and saw in her eyes that she still wanted to fight. Very well, he thought. He pushed her onto her back and held her down by the forehead and clamped his left hand over her nose. When her mouth opened so she could breathe, Deacon poured the wine straight down her gullet.

  He let her choke and gag and drown in it long enough that she stopped struggling so much and then he let her sit up.

  She coughed and tried to clear her chest. Tears and snot spilled down her face and she wiped it with her bound hands. Deacon smiled. “What is thy name?”

  “Kakìdsha,” she said.

  Deacon threw her on her back once more and forced her mouth open. He emptied the bottle into her mouth, then grabbed another and pulled the cork out and emptied that one into her mouth as well. Her mouth overflowed like a flooded-out pond, and it was all she could do to swallow so that she did not die.

  Finally, her eyes rolled upward into her head and she went still, and Deacon sat her up again.

  She leaned over and vomited into the grass and Deacon rubbed her back between the shoulder blades as she heaved. He sat her back up and picked twigs and pieces of dried leaves out of her hair as she tried to catch her breath. “Thy name is Moonflower,” Deacon said. He smiled at her. “Can you say your name?”

  She glared at him but did not speak.

  Deacon picked up a third bottle, more full than the first two had been. He set it down between his knees where she could see it and, stroking her hair, said, “Now. What is your name?”

  Kakìdsha’s eyes fluttered and she could no longer hold her head upright.

  Deacon lowered her to the ground. Her eyes were open but unfocused. He cupped the back of her head in his hands and drew out her hair to spread it out as far as he could. It looked like a halo framing her face as she lay there with her mouth hanging open.

  He smoothed out her hair so that it was flat against the ground, then drew the jeweled dagger from his waistband and started to cut her hair off, working his way around her head. He cradled her in his lap as he continued to cut closer. He sliced off her hair until there were bald patches all along her scalp. He took handfuls of the shorn hair and tossed them into the fire.

  Now the girl was no longer fighting or screaming. Instead she was singing. Her voice was soft and quiet and he did not recognize the words. It was a song in her language, he realized, and the song was very beautiful. She was very beautiful as well. If she did not stop resisting him, none of those things would matter for long.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A murder of crows filled the sky above Edna’s Prayer and above them soared a wake of vultures, waiting their turn. Swarms of black birds circled the sky like a tornado in slow motion.

  Mirta Escalante leaned forward in the wagon’s seat to get a better look at the birds. She glanced back at Hank Odell to tell him to look, but he was already looking. Had he smelled the acrid scent of charred wood that lingered in the air? she wondered. Had he caught the faint smell of decaying flesh layered beneath it?

  She heard a low, menacing growl ahead and her head snapped back to the road in front of her. Two wolves were fighting over a hunk of meat. They battered one another with their front paws and bit one another with their large fangs, doing combat over a severed human arm. One wolf snatched the hand in its jaws and pulled while the other latched on to the meat of the bicep. They fought with and snarled at each other until Mirta shouted at them to chase them off. The wolf holding the bicep looked at her in surprise and the one holding the hand took off running with its prize.

  The remaining wolf curled up its snout and growled at her. Mirta stood up in the wagon, threw her arms out wide, and shouted at it to be gone. The wolf turned and ran to chase after the other wolf.

  Mirta sat back down in the wagon and snapped the reins to get the donkey moving again. When they reached the front gate of the Sinclair ranch, she stopped abruptly. The house with its tall chimney, the barns and the animals, the smell of good food cooking, and the warmth of the people who lived there had all been laid to waste. Nothing but destruction was left in its place. The house had been leveled by fire. The porch and bedrooms and kitchen where Miss Rena had cooked so many fine meals and done her best to teach Mirta how to cook as well were now nothing but collapsed beams and ash.

  Worst of all were the bodies.

  Carrion birds pecked at them, digging for organs beneath the blackened flesh. They ripped the bodies open searching for anything wet or juicy, the same way humans broke apart the carcass of a bird that had been overcooked in the oven.

  Hank Odell rode to a stop at Mirta’s side, and as his eyes fell on his daughter’s house, she heard a tight, muted sound come from his throat. He inhaled sharply and let it back out in stuttering breaths.

  “Wait here,” Mirta said.

  “Like hell.” Odell spurred his horse toward the wreckage of the house and Mirta followed behind him.

  Near the barn, they found the body of a young cowboy and chased off the crows that had been feeding on it. “I don’t recognize him. Do you?”

  “Is he the sheriff?” Mirta asked.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “The sheriff was the only visitor we had while I was here. Are you sure it isn’t him? He looks like him.”

  Odell screwed up his face. “What
makes you think that?”

  “He is white,” she said.

  Odell looked again. “Well, this feller is pretty chewed up, but I don’t see a badge on his shirt. I think the sheriff was a little scrawnier than this fella.”

  “Then I do not know who he is,” Mirta said.

  They kept searching for any sign of Jesse or Rena. “What the hell happened here?” Odell asked. “Who the hell are all these people?”

  “I do not know,” Mirta said. “I cannot tell any of them apart. They all look the same with their skin burned off.”

  Odell leaned over the side of his horse to get a better look. “The good news is, most of them are men.”

  “I see a few women as well,” Mirta said.

  “True,” Odell said. “Except these women didn’t have no clothes or jewelry on. I recall Miss Rena wearing earrings or a necklace the times I seen her. And Jesse always wore her wedding ring.”

  “Wouldn’t that all have been burned off their bodies?” Mirta asked.

  “No,” Odell said.

  Mirta frowned at the old man. “I think you see what you want to see.”

  “I wouldn’t want to meet the man who wanted to see his daughter’s body burned up like this. Your father probably wouldn’t have wanted to find you here either, young lady.”

  Mirta realized she had spoken too harshly. She looked back at the bodies inside the house and said, “I think you are right. I do not see your daughter or Miss Rena here.”

  Odell nodded. “Remember this. Clothes don’t just burn off and vanish,” he said. “Neither does jewelry—it might melt if it gets hot enough, but it won’t vanish.”

  “How do you know this?” Mirta asked.

  “It’s better you not know the answer to that,” Odell said. “Ash Sinclair and your father weren’t the only ones with a colorful past, you know. Anyway, none of these bodies had been wearing clothes or jewelry far as I can see, so that means Jesse and Miss Rena are still alive.”

  “Then we must find them,” Mirta said.

  “Yes, we must,” Odell said. “But first we need to get Connor a doctor. Wherever she is, his mother would never forgive us if we let him come to harm.”

  Mirta turned around and lifted the blanket that covered Connor to make sure that he was still breathing. A wave of heat and foul air wafted up and she scowled. “I do not know where the doctors are in this place.”

  “Neither do I,” Odell said. “I think we have to go see that sheriff, Elliot Reuben. Maybe he knows what happened here. Hell, Jesse and Miss Rena might even be there now. At the very least, he will be able to summon a doctor.”

  Mirta looked back at Connor and repositioned the blanket to cover his shoulders. Just that slightest touch made him shiver so hard that his teeth chattered. “The fever grows worse,” she said.

  As Odell waited for Mirta to get the wagon turned around, he said, “You know, me and Ash Sinclair were always bitter enemies. We killed more of each other’s men than the law could have ever dreamed of. It’s amazing to me that our blood got commingled into that boy.” Odell sighed. “I’d have thought it’d be pure poison, with one side attacking the other and trying to get the upper hand. I will say this, though. Much as I hated Ash, I always respected him. Both him and your father, matter of fact. The Venom Snakes had this code, you see. They’d kill lawmen, bank men, railroad men, all the livelong day, but they never killed no women or children. I always respected that.”

  “What about you, and your gang?” Mirta asked.

  “Red Trail was a little different,” Odell said. “Whereas your father and Ash started the Venom Snakes on their own terms, I came up through the ranks in my gang. I was stuck with what I got when they put me in charge.”

  “Your men killed women and children?” Mirta asked.

  “Not specifically,” Odell said. “We never went out looking for them. It’s just that when the job needed to get done, we didn’t exactly take any special precautions, if you know what I mean.”

  Mirta nodded. “This is how you know a woman’s clothes and jewelry do not burn the same as their skin.”

  “That’s right,” Odell said. “I was a different person back then. We were bad men. I was probably the worst of the bunch, that’s why they put me in charge. You wouldn’t have been glad to ride alongside me, that’s for sure.”

  “I cannot imagine you that way,” Mirta said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because you are an old man.”

  Odell laughed. “Well, it happens to the best of us.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Mirta said. “You are an old man and all I know of you is that you have sad eyes when you look at your daughter. Connor calls you Grandpa Hank. You only have one hand and do not seem to miss it. All these things.” She turned her head toward him and said, “But more than that, you have a good heart. You would not let me go alone to bury my father. I am glad to ride alongside you, Mr. Hank.”

  Odell smiled gently. “It warms my heart to hear you say that, Miss Mirta. I am glad to ride alongside you as well. You and Connor make me feel that no matter how much bad I did in my time, the world starts all over again every few years and gives us all another chance.”

  He flexed the stump on his right wrist as he spoke, rolling the wrist bone back and forth, feeling the muscles in his forearm. The damnedest thing was, he could still feel his hand there, even after all those years. It still hurt, long after it was gone.

  “That warden who cut my hand off said I’d killed his sister at some bank Red Trail had robbed. He had his men hold me down and they went to work on me with a bone saw and didn’t use no morphine or anything. The whole time, the warden kept screaming, ‘This is for Henrietta, you son of a bitch! This is for my baby sister!’ You want to know the worst thing?” Odell asked. “I didn’t even remember what bank he was talking about.”

  “Did you remember the warden’s sister?” Mirta asked.

  “No,” Odell said. “Way I looked at it, though, there could have been a whole lot of Henriettas. Even if it wasn’t me, I still would not have been able to deny that I probably deserved it.”

  Mirta considered this as she drove and was silent for a while. “I still think you are a good man, Hank Odell.”

  Odell laughed sadly and said, “No, Miss Mirta. I’m afraid that’s not true.”

  “My father told me he grew up in the woods alone, stealing to survive. He said that his true father was his first jefe, who taught him what it meant to be a man. He told me that there is family you are born with and a family that you choose. He chose this man to be his father, and then he chose Ash Sinclair to be his brother.”

  “Well, I certainly understand what he meant by that,” Odell said. “Red Trail was my family. Even if they weren’t good people.”

  Mirta nodded. “So, I choose you to be my grandfather.”

  Hank Odell looked away from her then and shook his head. “No. I don’t think I’m a good choice for that, Miss Mirta. I’m Connor’s grandfather and it certainly hasn’t done him any good.”

  “It does him no good because he is inmaduro,” she said. “I am not. From now on, I will call you abuelo.”

  “You sure?” Odell asked.

  “I have said it,” she insisted. “So you know I am sure.”

  “Abuelo. I like the sound of that.”

  “Unless I am mad at you, then I will call you Hank.”

  Odell laughed and said, “I wouldn’t expect it to be any other way.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Edwin Folsom had spent the night searching for the Red Priest to no avail. His first thought had been to check the woods, but that was no simple task. The woods he’d passed through on the way to Elan Valley were vast. He’d checked the main trails and found nothing but old wagon tracks, probably made by merchants carrying their wares. Then h
e’d checked hunting trails that led to falling-down old cabins that showed no signs of occupation beyond rodents.

  The woods had stretched on endlessly on either side of any trail he checked.

  The ground itself was not well suited for signs. Even if the ground were soft enough to leave the impression of horse hooves, it was all covered over by fallen leaves. Thickets of twisted vines with sharp thorns and bristles grew between the trees as well. He could find no evidence of anyone passing through.

  Folsom had ridden until he could barely keep his eyes open. When he came upon Nelson Granger’s ranch, his heart leapt. It was the perfect place for the Red Priest and his followers to hole up. A massive property with many acres of land and a large house that had been abandoned.

  The doors and windows had been boarded up. There were bullet holes in the walls and columns, some large and some small. The white walls around the large bullet holes were speckled red, like someone had dipped a paintbrush in red paint and flung it across the walls.

  Whoever had fired these rounds had used a large rifle, Folsom thought, and their aim was true. They’d clearly blown a hole through their target.

  He thought he had found them when he reached the back of the property and saw an encampment of tents. But the camp was abandoned as well. There were no people, no food, no signs of recent activity.

  Folsom yawned into his hand and rubbed his eyes. It was a good campsite, he thought. Even if just for a few hours. There were some cut logs by the fire pit and he lit a fire to warm himself.

  He folded his knees up beneath his chin and stared at the flames. He did not want to sleep. He wanted to keep going. To tear to pieces whatever stood in the way of finding Kakìdsha. But the fire felt warm and his eyes felt heavy enough that they closed on their own. He forced them to open. They slowly closed again. He forced them, and forced them, and then they closed and his head dropped.