The Beast of Nightfall Lodge

by SA Sidor

  One late October midday, Hallowe’en in fact, I was unpacking a box of ancient seals and rings. I had purchased them from a dealer I’d met at the American Natural History Museum in Central Park, after a discussion on the habits of the round-tailed muskrat. He invited me for tea and a look at his private items soon to be available at auction. The tea was weak, the seals were frauds – not even clever ones – but I asked him to throw in a four-chambered alabaster kohl vessel I spotted holding down a pile of unpaid bills on a nearby table, which I suspected was authentic and well beyond his knowledge. He agreed gladly.

  I slid the rings off my desk. The cost of those fraudulent trinkets was a fraction of the value of the lovely Middle Period cosmetic urn used to sweeten the pot. As I carefully unboxed the artifact, I heard footsteps climbing up the stairwell.

  I received no visitors here. Not even the landlord, or the jovial, sallow-faced tobacconist from downstairs with whom I chatted about the fates of the two New York Giants baseball teams over a morning pipeful. Those stairs were mine alone to tread upon. I pushed away from my desk in a state of genuine startlement.

  Who can it be?

  Three swift knocks on the door jolted the silence.

  “Yes?” I called out.

  “Delivery,” the voice outside the door answered.

  “You have the wrong office. I am expecting no delivery.”

  Three louder and more rapid knocks followed.

  “Go away. I am an office for antiquities! Check your address!”

  “I have coffee,” said the voice.

  “What did you say?”

  “This is a special delivery coffee for… Dr Ramalass Hardcheese?”

  “Oh, for the love of all that is holy… I am coming.” I stood and straightened my vest before answering the call.

  I opened the door, saying, “The name is Dr ROM-U-LUS HAR-DY.”

  My caller was a slim, older boy dressed like a cowboy in his Sunday church clothes and a long duster coat. He wore his hat pulled down over his face and carried no coffee of any kind.

  “Where is this delivery, young sir? You have disturbed me at my work.”

  He thumbed the brim of his hat up and smiled.

  I passed quickly from anger to confusion to recognition.

  “Yong Wu! Is that really you? You’ve grown so tall!” I shouted.

  I could not resist the urge to clap him on the shoulders. My heart surged.

  “Hello, Dr Hardy. I am happy to find you well.”

  Here was a boy I first met on my doomed train ride west. He had been the porter’s assistant then, and the first time we introduced ourselves he was delivering coffee to my private train car filled with crated mummies. I frowned in mock sternness. “Ramalass Hardcheese?”

  Wu blushed. “McTroy told me to say that.”

  “I have no doubt about that.” I led Wu by the arm into my office. “If you don’t have coffee, I certainly do. Come in and sit down. I’m afraid there’s only one chair. But I sit all day. I have a fireplace and can heat up some water. Remember making coffee over the fire in the Gila Desert? We are a bit more civilized here. Now let me see if I have an extra cup.” I dusted out the cup I found. “Take off your coat. We have steam heat on Beaver Street. It’s boiling in the winter when it’s not freezing and drafty. The summers are no milder, though I wouldn’t trade it for a day riding the Camino Del Diablo wondering if I’d die of thirst or a bandito’s bullet.

  “Wu, it is good to see you. Don’t tell me that scoundrel McTroy put you on a train and made you ride all the way out to New York City alone. Let me take your coat and hat.” I hung his things on a wall peg. Wu kept his long hair braids tucked up under the hat. I shook his hand. It was rough, calloused.

  “Remember, sir, I worked on a train alone.”

  “Yes, yes you did. Remarkable things are common for you, I forgot. How is McTroy?”

  “He is the same. McTroy is teaching me to be a bounty man. To track and hunt…”

  I nodded.

  “And you are studying, I hope,” I said. “I trust it hasn’t been all six-guns and cussing?”

  This was Wu’s turn to nod at me.

  We waited for the water to boil. In the tiny office there were few places to look, especially when another person arrived. I chose the window pane. Wu stared at the floor. I opened the window a crack and observed a carriage passing below. I must have smelled horses every day, but today their animal smell transported me back to a different place, on the trail with my three friends in Mexico. Did I transmit this very thought to Wu? Who knows the uncanny powers of the human mind?

  A sorcerer had occupied my psychic landscape for a time against my will, and his presence left a residual stain of strangeness I lived with, gifting me with expanded sensibility but also a muddled sense of where I left off and others began. Edges blurred. Other people’s thoughts mixed without warning into my own. I glimpsed their hearts in glass cases, but the cases were often ill-lit or draped. The vegetable seller’s youngest daughter had a cough that worried him in the night. (All I did was buy lettuce from his stand.) A tall, elegant woman at the New York Public Library disliked her dead husband’s high-strung poodle but tolerated the canine because she was terrified of empty houses. (We sat all morning at the same long table, in complete silence.) It was something like remembering old conversations you’ve had with people that they’ve utterly forgotten. I was a benign spy, and I had no control over it. The clip-clop of hooves drummed. I shut my eyes to see a kaleidoscopic swirl of sunset colors and weird desert thoughts hanging there buoyantly, expectantly, in the depthless darkness. (Look, Wu, horses!)

  I felt inseparable from my friends; we were parts of the same living organism.

  “I have my own horse. A black and white pinto,” Wu said. “Her name is Magpie.”

  “Is she fast?” I asked, pulling back into the solid world.

  “Very fast, and very smart. She is the best horse. But she has a strong mind of her own.”

  “The best ones always do.”

  Independence is a valuable trait… within reason. But, like Wu, I found myself attracted to that which can never be tamed. He was too young for women; at least I hoped McTroy hadn’t tried to initiate him into that arena yet, a boy of what? Twelve years? Even McTroy wasn’t so imprudent. I guessed the bounty man’s heart was likely as scarred as the rest of him. And having seen the women of Yuma, I suspected temptations were but few, and limited to dark, moonless nights and a momentary slippage of character. Wu was a child, an orphan practically. We owed him what remained of his childhood. His parents had saved our lives. Surely, McTroy would respect them enough to protect their son in matters of amour.

  Here I was thinking like an old man when I had but journeyed midway into my third decade. Women evaded me – purposefully, I sometimes imagined. Not that their charms did not work – they did, but their actuality remained vexingly elusive. Perhaps if I left the office and talked to people I would find more success.

  “What brings you to the city? Have you grown tired of dusty Yuma?”

  “No,” Wu said. “I like living in Yuma.”

  He got up from his chair and browsed through my books.

  “Ah, I was hoping you’d say you wanted to join me at the Institute. I have need for an assistant, you know. And, if we’re lucky, I think Miss Evangeline will visit here eventually.”

  “She visited us in Yuma.”

  “What’s that you say?”

  The coffeepot rattled.

  “Dr Hardy! Your hand!”

  I removed my fingers from the pot handle. The pain was coming now. It throbbed like a heartbeat of some small, fragile creature that was biting me.

  “A minor burn, nothing more,” I said, as I wrapped a handkerchief around them and using a small white towel, lifted the pot to fill our cups. “You’ve seen Evangeline in Yuma? On local mining business, was she? Just passing through town?”

  Wu shook his head. “I don’t think so. She stayed with us for two wee
ks the last time.”

  “Two weeks!” I nearly dropped the pot. “I see she’s been checking up on you then. That’s good. She must be as worried as I’ve been about you living with McTroy. You’ve grown very close to Miss Evangeline. I’m glad that your relationship continues.”

  Wu frowned at me. “Miss Evangeline did not seem to worry about McTroy.”

  “She masks her feelings, Wu. Women, like fine artifacts, are not so easy to understand. They have layers that must be peeled back. Depths, Wu… depths are contained in them.”

  Wu showed puzzlement, and I figured he was grasping at what I said.

  “We went riding a lot. Magpie loves her. Miss Evangeline fed her apples out of her hand and would laugh at the way it tickled. She and McTroy would talk and walk, walk and talk. At night they would go riding again, but I would be too tired to go with them.”

  “Everyone loves Evangeline,” I said. My coffee was too hot to drink. Still, I drank it.

  Wu patted his jacket as a look of embarrassment overtook him. “I have a letter for you from McTroy. He said it was important and I should give it to you as soon as I arrived.”

  I took the plain, unmarked envelope from the boy and tore it open.

  “I didn’t know the brute could write.”

  Dear Doc,

  Yes, I can write. Mama raised me up to handle wordy men. Listen to the news Yong Wu has to tell. He does not know the whole story. Not by a long shot. I won’t lie to you. Danger is guaranteed. Sure as Hell the weather will be cold. There’s money in this proposition and that’s a fact. It’s a snipe hunt as far as I can tell. The man making the offer is a museum type like you-know-who (you, Doc!). Fool’s money spends as good as any other. Join us if you want. Leave the mummies out of this. – McTroy

  P.S. The boy is turning out fine despite your soft influences. Ha! Unclench your fists, Doc, ’fore you hurt somebody.

  Opening my hand, I flicked a stiff finger at the paper. Then I let it float down to my desk.

  “McTroy’s inviting me on some sort of speculative venture. Humph. I couldn’t possibly go. I am too occupied with things; planning a new Egyptian expedition, for a start. I can see the disappointment in your eyes, Yong Wu. You might want to think about joining me on a trip overseas to Nile country. You’ll learn about culture. See amazing sights in an ancient terrain.”

  “Isn’t that where the cursed mummies came from?”

  “Yes.” I struggled to add a more positive note. “McTroy said you have news?”

  “We’re going to New Mexico Territory.”

  “All of you? Evangeline is going too?”

  “Yes, she is there already, visiting a woman of dark interests like herself.”

  I guffawed. “I suppose this lady’s a witch who’s written a book of spells?”

  Wu nodded vigorously, adding to my general confusion. “She talks to the dead. But Miss Evangeline didn’t call her a witch. She called her a spirit medium. Miss E wants to record her ‘dead talks’ for the Institute. The witch lives in Raton. How did you know about her?”

  I leaned my back against the cool brick wall. “At times my intuition astonishes even me. But why would McTroy make this trip?” I wondered aloud.

  “To collect the bounty on a butcherer of nine men from Raton,” Wu said, deepening his voice with manly seriousness. “The spirit lady’s husband is offering $10,000 to the man who captures the killer.”

  McTroy could not resist cash. He would jump at the chance for making such a fortune. If Evangeline conducted some occult business in the same town, then all the better for him. Ah, he was a shrewd dog. But I decided to prove myself a shrewder one yet. “Wu, we are finally getting somewhere. The picture coalesces. This assassin must have quite a reputation. What’s his name?”

  “He has no name.”

  “People don’t know his name? So, he is a mystery man,” I concluded.

  “The people on the mountain say he is no man. They have seen him on the forest slopes. In the Sangre de Cristo Mountains they hear his scream at night through the trees. His body is too tall to be human. His steps are long, and they disappear, leaving no track in the dirt or snow. He vanishes when they chase him. Something grows out of his head, like a crown. Like horns. He ate those nine men, Dr Hardy. They were all hunters. He killed them and he ate them. No one can stop him. We are headed there to catch him. They say he has no name because he is no man.”

  “No man? I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “They say he is a monster.”

  “What kind of monster?” I asked, perplexed.

  Wu shrugged and showed me his empty hands.

  “They call him the Beast.”

  3

  The Castle Ram

  The Streets and Grand Central Depot

  Lower Manhattan, New York City

  I was not about to let Rex McTroy ride into the mountains of New Mexico with Yong Wu and Evangeline lacking my company. I thrilled for adventure as much as any man. I would take a holiday and go to the Sangre de Cristo range. Mountains are notorious for meditation and revelation. Perhaps I would learn a thing or two about myself I did not know already. Chasing monsters, indeed. I was more baffled by McTroy’s brief note than I was intrigued. The urge to deny him remained strong. But I think McTroy knew if he sent Wu in person I would not refuse his invitation – at least that was my interpretation of matters at the time – and he must have needed me, or my expertise, for something, although I did not know what it might possibly be. Does Egypt now lie on the border of Colorado and New Mexico? I felt guilty putting Wu back on a train when he’d just come off one, so we spent the rest of the day sightseeing in Manhattan before heading west. Wu had never seen the ocean. I walked him down to the harbor where he informed me that he saw the Pacific Ocean daily when he lived in San Francisco.

  “Here is the mighty Atlantic,” I said, sweeping out my arm.

  “It looks very like the Pacific.”

  “Well I don’t know about that.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I have never seen the Pacific,” I said, turning up my collar to the damp salty breeze. “On the other side of these waters lies Egypt. Just thinking of it makes my limbs tingle. Amazing!”

  Wu nodded. “This,” he pointed to the gray wavelets in the harbor and the ships and various tugs and small craft bouncing up and down upon them, “is very like the Pacific.”

  We left the waterfront, and I continued guiding the boy on my “city tour,” one I had often imagined giving if I ever were to enjoy the occasion of an out-of-state visitor. New Yorkers do love to brag about our metropolis even if we complain to each other about living here. The dirt, the crime, the crowdedness of the place. But I wouldn’t trade it. Wu must have been awed by the experience as his silence spoke volumes about the great sensations he was no doubt having for his first visit to Gotham. Yet I might have negligently overlooked his state of travel weariness, for he seemed to be almost asleep on his feet; I cut my planned tour short and decided to wind up our excursion with a special surprise. We circled toward home, but veering off my usual course, I stopped our progress at Mott and Canal Streets. I spun on my heels, jabbing my silver cane tip at the surrounding buildings, and the hustle-bustle of passing strangers (almost all men) as if I were bursting balloons – POP-POP-POP – in a boardwalk arcade game.

  “What do you think of it, Wu?”

  Wu’s chin was tucked down into his duster, but his eyes darted around.

  Had his powers of observation diminished so under the tutelage of McTroy?

  “This is Chinatown!”

  “I am an American. I was born in California,” he said.

  Of course, I knew Wu had lived in San Francisco with his parents prior to their seeking employment on the railroad. His father had been a teacher, his mother a cook, before an unforeseen tragedy of a parasitic and vampiric nature infected his parents in the desert of the Southwest. Here I was embarrassing the poor boy with my misplaced enthusiasm.
<
br />   “We are all Americans, Wu. You are wise beyond your years. Now let me take you to an American feast at the Citadel where we will dine on vol-au-vent financière like kings!”

  Alas, I drank too much brandy at the Delmonicos’. Wu slept on my cot. I curled up on my desk, using a stack of reports from the Egypt Exploration Fund as my pillow, waking with a crick in my neck and bleary, unfocused eyes. My head ached as we met our train an hour later at the Grand Central Depot. I boarded unsteadily, my innards in locomotion before the train lurched from the platform. Soon my brain pounded in wicked rhythm with the clack of the wheels. I cannot speak of my memory of the whistle without feeling it piercing me again like a red-hot needle in my medulla. The eastern half of the country passed me through a pallid haze of pipe smoke and steaming cups of coffee dutifully supplied by Wu. I came alive again in Chicago as we changed trains to the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe line that would deliver us to our final stop in Raton, New Mexico.

  “I went to college here,” I told Wu, whilst grabbing a hasty meal between trains.

  “You are not from New York?”

  I shook my head and dove into a slab of ham, warm cornbread, and a pickled egg.

  “Born in Peoria, Illinois. My father was a farmer. Nothing ever happened in Peoria, not for me in any case. If I wanted real adventure, I had to leave to find it, that much I knew.”

  “So, you left?”

  “Take a lesson from it,” I said with a wink and an encouraging nod. “Perhaps our fate and fortune lie in the mountains of New Mexico? One never knows until one goes. Remember that.”

  Wu promised he would.

  I offered him half my pickled egg and he politely declined.

  They say travel takes a person out of themselves, but I am never more myself than when I travel. For better or worse, I bring Romulus Hardy with me wherever I go. Here I was, with no mummy crates to worry about and only my bag to carry. My last train ride out West began with anxiety and ended in tragedy. I was determined not to relive it. And tragedy did not strike.