by Lukens, Mark
Esmerelda took a sip of her coffee, thinking for a moment. “No,” she finally said. “Purvis came later. I made it as far as Ohio on the money I had saved. I started doing the only thing I knew how to do, giving readings and séances. After a few months I got the itch to move farther west, afraid that somehow my father would track me down. I met a man named Purvis at one of my readings. He was amazed at my ability, and he seemed fascinated with me. He was at least fifteen years older than I was, but he was handsome and dashing in his own way. He ran a traveling carnival and invited me to go with him. They were working their way to California. That sounded good to me—California seemed to be just about as far as I could get from Philadelphia. But as soon as we reached the next town, I realized that Purvis was not the man he pretended to be. I had joined a traveling carnival with a man just like my father. Worse than my father. He beat me. Abused me. Raped me. He kept all of the money that I made while I did as many showings as possible as we moved from town to town. Purvis went a few steps beyond my father. He rigged the table to shake and ectoplasm to form in the air around me. It became a theater show then, not spiritual contact anymore. Again, like history was repeating itself, I saved any tips I got until I had enough to leave. On the night I left, I stole more money from Purvis—money that was rightfully mine—and then I rode a horse into town. A woman at a hotel helped me get a stagecoach the next day. The stagecoach was headed for Denver, but I wouldn’t have cared where it was heading as long as it wasn’t east again. I had still planned to go to California from Denver even though Purvis’ traveling show was heading to California.”
“But you didn’t make it there,” Jed said.
“No,” Esmerelda sighed. “I ran out of money and ended up here. I started working with Moody, helping him with his saloon and hotel, mostly cooking and cleaning the rooms. I even started doing readings again, but I wasn’t going to part with all of my money this time. I only gave Moody his fair share.”
She stopped like she’d seen a reaction on Jed’s face that she didn’t like.
“Moody was nothing like Purvis or my father. He took his share and never treated me with anything but respect. That madman you saw, that wasn’t Moody. I just wanted you to know that.”
Jed nodded.
“This town had been thriving when I first got here, before the mines dried up. There were rumors of the railroad laying tracks through here, but those rumors died along with the mines.”
“Do you still want to go to California?” Jed asked.
Esmerelda nodded. “Yes, I would. I would love to see Los Angeles and San Francisco. Travel up the coast all the way to Canada. I’ve been saving the money I made here, waiting for the right time to leave.”
“Maybe you’ll still get your chance to see California,” Jed told her.
But Esmerelda didn’t look so sure about that.
CHAPTER 36
Jed snapped awake. He was still sitting at the table, leaning to the side in his chair, his chin on his fist. He had fallen asleep sitting at the table. It wasn’t morning yet, still dark. Very dark. Only the lantern at the bar was still lit, but the flame was low and it looked ready to wink out at any moment. Jed could barely make out the sleeping forms of David, Esmerelda, and Sanchez on the blankets.
Esmerelda must have gone back to sleep, but Jed couldn’t remember exactly when she had left the table. Had he fallen asleep in front of her? The last thing he could remember was that they were drinking coffee and talking. She had been telling him about her childhood, and then the traveling carnival with Purvis. And then . . .
He couldn’t remember anything after that. Maybe he had fallen asleep, drifted off right in this chair.
Something had roused him from sleep, but he wasn’t sure what it had been. Maybe a noise. A noise from outside. He felt jittery, his skin crawling, a nervous pit of nausea in his stomach, his mouth dry.
He was afraid of something in the darkness, he was sure of that. He looked over at the stairs, barely making out the sharp incline of the railing in the dark.
A noise outside the saloon startled him—it was like something had scraped against one of the windows, like tree branches scratching at the glass. His hand flew to the butt of his pistol as he turned around in his chair, staring at the saloon doors.
Footsteps out on the walkway, just beyond those doors. But those couldn’t be someone’s footsteps, they were too heavy. It sounded like a horse was walking around out there, but a horse on two legs—something massive with hooves. The footsteps were slow and deliberate, the sound thundering in through the glass of the windows and the doors.
The scratching noise was at the windows again, and then there was a scratching sound at the wood, like gigantic claws were pawing at the wood siding.
Jed looked back at the blankets again. None of them had moved in their sleep.
He got up and hurried to the bar, grabbing the only lantern left that was still lit. He brought it with him as he walked towards the saloon doors that swam out of the darkness the closer he got to them with the light.
When he was a few feet away from the saloon doors, the noises were louder, more frenzied. The locked doorknobs jiggled slightly, like someone was testing them.
It wasn’t supposed to come for us until sunup, Jed thought. It told us we had until sunup.
He went towards the window instead of the door, about to peek out and see what was out there, but Billy popped up in front of him, his face blank, his eyes cold, his breath warm and rotten. “Do not look out there,” Billy told him.
Jed froze in mid-step.
For just a moment Jed thought Billy was dead. He thought Billy had been killed in the night and now that thing was inside of him, controlling him. Jed’s fingers twitched, and he was ready to draw his pistol.
“If you look at it,” Billy continued in his low, monotone voice, “if you see what it truly looks like, you will go crazy.”
Jed took a step back from Billy. He heard a noise from the saloon doors and then saw a movement underneath them. Something long, thin, and black was wriggling underneath the door, squeezing in through the cracks like a flattened snake. The snakelike thing squirmed farther inside, thrashing from side to side on the floor for a moment and then rising up like a cobra. But it wasn’t a snake—there were no eyes, nose, or mouth, just a black shape that seemed to change form as soon as it was inside the saloon, growing bigger and rounder now.
“What is that?” Jed whispered to Billy. “Is that what the Ancient Enemy really looks like?”
“Only a small part of it,” Billy answered. “It is always changing.”
Both of them stepped back. Billy had his lantern in his hand, but the flame had been out for a while now. The wick in Jed’s lamp was very low. They needed to get the lamps lit again.
Jed heard sounds in the darkness behind them.
“What is it?” Esmerelda asked.
Jed turned and looked at her. He handed Esmerelda his lantern while keeping his right hand on the butt of his Colt, ready to draw at any moment if he needed to. “We need to get these lit.”
Esmerelda took Jed’s lantern, but her eyes had shifted to the tentacle flailing around underneath the doors. Another thinner tentacle had joined the first one, both of them whipping around blindly. The heavy footsteps still thudded from outside, stomping around on the walkway out there with no discernable pattern. The scraping at the wood walls and the windows was getting faster and louder.
“That’s . . . that’s what it looks like?” Esmerelda asked as she stared at the tentacles, but it sounded more like a statement than a question.
“Go,” Jed told her.
Sanchez hurried up to them, his body tense. He was ready to draw his guns, his eyes sharp even though he’d just woken up. “Is it dawn already?”
Jed shrugged. “Sun might be coming up now.”
Esmerelda stopped at the table on her way to the bar to check Moody’s pocket watch they had left there. She picked up the watch and brought it up close
to the lantern so she could see it. “It’s dawn,” she told them. “Close enough, anyway.”
“We need to have some more light,” Jed told Esmerelda, trying not to shout at her. The lamp was almost out now and she stood in the little circle of light now, almost everything else in the saloon had faded away into darkness the farther she moved away with the dim light. Jed didn’t want to be trapped in this saloon in the dark, not with those tentacles thrashing around, pushing their way in more and more, whipping themselves against the bottom of the door where Billy had carefully painted his symbols.
David went with Esmerelda to the bar as she lit the two lanterns. She also lighted the ones on the wall behind the bar.
Now that it was brighter in the saloon, Jed looked back at the saloon doors. The two thin tentacles were still flailing around, and now they glistened in the light like they were coated with some kind of mucus—the film on the tentacles reminded Jed of the mucus Karl had thrown up with all of the tarantulas in it.
“The symbols,” Sanchez said as he stared at the saloon doors. The doors and the floor in front of it were covered in ancient writing that Billy had painted there.
“Those symbols aren’t working,” Jed said, glancing at Billy.
“Maybe they keep it from coming all the way in,” Billy said, defending his ceremony.
All of the noises outside stopped. The tentacles pulled back, disappearing underneath the door, back outside again. Everything was quiet for a moment.
“The boy,” a voice called from right outside the saloon doors. “Kill the boy!” It was Moody’s voice.
Sanchez drew his guns, lightning-quick.
“Wait,” Billy told Sanchez.
Sanchez cocked both pistols.
A loud crash came from upstairs. It sounded like the intertwined bodies of Rose and the cowboy had just torn free from the ropes and fallen out of the bed.
They all looked up at the ceiling.
Footsteps stomped across the hotel room floor above them.
“It’s coming,” Jed told them.
“Quick,” Esmerelda said as she reached for Jed. “We need to hold hands. We need to make a circle with David in the middle.”
The crashing from upstairs was louder now. The thing was busting through the door they had barricaded with the slats of wood.
Jed took Esmerelda’s hand and then he held Billy’s hand. Billy grabbed Sanchez’s hand after he had holstered his pistols. Sanchez grabbed Esmerelda’s hand, and now they formed a complete circle. It was like they were playing some kind of children’s game with David in the middle.
“We pray now,” Esmerelda told them, yelling over the sounds of the thumps and crashes coming from upstairs and outside.
“Kill the boy!” Moody’s voice screamed at them from outside.
Other voices were joining in with Moody as he chanted, only a few of the dead townspeople at first.
“Kill the boy!”
“Kill the boy!” More voices were joining in now outside the saloon doors.
“Kill the boy!” The whole town was yelling now, chanting the same three words over and over again.
The thumping sounds were in the upstairs hallway now—the door had broken free and the monstrosity was working its way to the top of the stairs.
“Kill the boy!”
One of the front windows shattered, then the other one. Arms reached in through the broken windows, hands grabbing at the air, hands formed into claws. Bodies thudded against the saloon doors, the weight of the bodies about to force the doors open.
“Kill the boy!”
Jed looked at Esmerelda—her eyes were squeezed tight, and she was whispering. Billy and Sanchez were doing the same thing in their own faiths. Jed looked down at David and locked eyes with the frightened boy.
God, Jed thought. Save us if you can, but please save David. Please let David live.
CHAPTER 37
“We’ve done enough praying,” Jed said, pulling his hands out of Esmerelda’s hand and Billy’s hand. “Now it’s time to fight.” He turned toward the saloon doors and drew his Colt, cocking it.
The monstrosity from upstairs was halfway down the steps now, still hidden in the early-morning shadows. As it descended, it was somehow untwisting itself back into two bodies, flesh pulling apart, skin stretching and snapping, blood oozing, bones and joints popping—the thing was forming back into two separate people, back into Rose and the cowboy, but now their bodies were shredded mounds of gore with blood running down the stairs like a river—yet the abominations were somehow still maneuvering down the steps.
The saloon doors gave way, crashing open. Wood splintered and glass shattered.
“You can’t have him!” Jed yelled at the approaching horde of the dead. A stench of rotting flesh and dried blood drifted towards him like a cloud of dust.
The pastor was the first one through the saloon doors, the whole town behind him, others crawling in through the broken windows, crawling right over the jagged shards of glass and pieces of broken wood, pushing the table tops away that blocked their way.
“One last chance,” the pastor said as he waited in front of the dozens of dead and mutilated people behind him. “Kill the boy.”
Jed didn’t bother glancing to his right and left, or at David behind him. He heard the windows in the back room and in Moody’s office shattering, wood splintering. The other dead townspeople were crawling in through those windows, pushing the tables away that were barricaded there. Jed kept his eyes on the pastor, his gun aimed right at the dead man’s chest. “No,” Jed told him. “We won’t kill David.”
The pastor’s smile slipped, his face blank for just a moment. All of the dead people had stopped, frozen for a moment in their tracks, all of their expressions blank. Then the pastor smiled, the corners of his mouth jerking up violently. “Then we will kill all of you. We will find others to kill the boy. We always have before.”
The pastor rushed at them, the others following.
Esmerelda was facing towards the back of the saloon. The ones who had gotten in through those windows were rushing towards her. She fired the shotgun at the closest man, the blast blowing off the lower half of one of his legs. The man fell forward, crashing down to the floor, but he began to crawl towards Esmerelda, leaving a trail of dark blood behind him.
Billy shot at the two things that used to be Rose and the cowboy. They were almost unrecognizable now, just shuddering mounds of flesh and snapped bones—they looked like they had been turned inside out. Billy emptied the bullets from Karl’s gun into those two things, but the bullets didn’t slow them down. He dropped the gun and pulled the eagle feather from his hat, waving it in front of him, chanting and singing, preparing for his journey into the next world.
Sanchez fired all of the bullets in both of his guns in less than ten seconds. They were all clean headshots that rocked the targets back. But those bullets didn’t kill them. The dead snapped their heads forward again and they kept coming.
Jed shot six times into the pastor’s head, blowing part of his face away. But he kept coming.
This was it, Jed thought. The dead were all around them now, reaching for them, about to tear them apart. He could try to reload his gun with the bullets in his belt, but why bother? They were seconds away from death now, all of them in a circle around David, but with their backs to David now, protecting him as best they could in these last few seconds.
“No!” David screamed and ran out from their circle, standing in front of Jed and Billy.
The dead stopped, some of them collapsing, their bodies contorting as things moved underneath their skin. A wind seemed to build up around them, spinning around them, Jed could feel the force of the wind blasting them. The dead seemed to be trying to back up, but it was like they couldn’t move.
David stood in front of Jed, his body trembling, his eyes rolling back in his head. Filaments were being pulled out of the townspeople’s bodies like iron filings being drawn towards a magnet.
&n
bsp; Everything around them began to swirl, everything around them turning into a blur, like they were all in the middle of a huge tornado.
Esmerelda held Jed back as he tried to move forward to help David. “No,” she whispered into his ear. “We can’t help him. Not anymore. Let him do this.”
The black snake-like tendrils were pulled out of the people, the tendrils collapsing into black shapes that were constantly changing. The tendrils swirled around them like black streaks in the air, twisting and turning, intertwining with each other, trying to form shapes, trying to form arms and hands with claws, faces with open mouths of sharp teeth. But the shapes didn’t hold for long, disappearing back into the black ooze that swirled all around them in the air, moving up and over them, forming over top of them like some rapidly spinning dark cloud.
“Look,” Sanchez said, backing away.
Underneath David, a black space was opening in the floor. It looked like a black circle at first, then a deep hole. He stood over that hole like he was floating above the darkness. The spinning mass of darkness, the Ancient Enemy in front of him, was floating towards David as he stared at it, his hair blowing around, his mouth opening wide, his eyes entirely white now, the pupils gone. David levitated up above the black hole in the floor, that fathomless void. As he rose up higher into the air with his arms out wide, the black mass of the Ancient Enemy lowered down to meet him, beginning to swirl around David.
The thing screeched and screamed as it swirled around David, the hole from the floor rising up to engulf both the Ancient Enemy and David. Now David could barely be seen, there was only a black ball of energy spinning around above the hole in the floor, crackling with blue lightning.