The Beast of Nightfall Lodge

by SA Sidor

  “Crazy old coot,” Billy said. “Asking if I’m a gambler… Damn if I ain’t Billy the Kid!”

  I perked up at the mention of the infamous gunfighter.

  Billy saw my reaction and acknowledged me by raising his eyebrows gamely.

  Now reader, you may not recall your outlaw history, but William H. Bonney, also known as Billy the Kid, died in 1881. He was killed by the famous lawman Pat Garrett. The original Billy the Kid was a cattle rustler and a murderer. While he had forged his reputation in New Mexico, he had also died there, in Fort Sumner, nine years ago. Rumors of his survival persisted, as the legends of bad men often do. From of the corner of my eye, while working diligently to conceal my interest, I studied the killer next to me. Slim, poor posture, cheap boots. I looked higher only to find him staring boldly back at me. Note here: his frosty blue eyes, a blond beard of sparse bristles, and small crooked yellow teeth like corn. This young gent propped against the bar would have been a scrawny boy of no more than ten, nine years ago. He could not possibly be Billy the Kid.

  “You looking for something, mister?”

  “Me? No… I am new to town.” I added, “How is your ear?”

  “Stings a little. But Pops will fix me. The man keeps me in fighting shape.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “You see the shooting?”

  “No. I was at the hotel. I just arrived on the train.”

  “Then you missed yourself a great show. I’m a legend, you know?”

  He drained his whiskey. Pops asked him to roll up his sleeve. The surgeon removed a syringe from his bag and filled the vial from an upturned little green bottle. He tied a cord to the muscle in Billy’s arm and massaged the forearm searching for a plump vein. I noticed the arm was covered with bruises. Perhaps Billy ran into mischief often and needed his damage repaired on a routine basis. Pops pushed in the needle and depressed the plunger. Billy’s eyes sparkled wetly.

  “We finished here, Pops?”

  Billy rebuttoned his cuff. He sucked air through his teeth as he combed his fingers through the lank strands of greasy hair that fell over his eyes before replacing his hat.

  “Go forth and multiply,” Pops said.

  Billy caught a dancer’s elbow and whirled her around, escorting her into the gathering.

  Pops was putting his instruments away. I sidled closer to him.

  “Is that young man your son?”

  He shook his head, amused. “Everyone calls me Pops. I am no kin to that wild boy.”

  “Did I hear correctly that your friend calls himself Billy the Kid?”

  “You did.” Pops shut his bag and ordered a pink gin from the barkeeper.

  “But Billy the Kid is dead.” I offered a cautious half-smile. Stating the obvious had taken on an inherent danger within the present circumstances.

  “Do not share that information with my friend. He is easily offended. You’ll find yourself in trouble like that codger they carried out of here.”

  The surgeon appeared serious. Dead serious. I decided to drop the matter.

  “Is the Starry Eyes always so popular a spot?” I asked to change the subject.

  “I wouldn’t know. This is my first visit here. New Mexico is Billy’s terrain. We are travelers now, the two of us, bold and enterprising businessmen of the future. We sail wherever the winds carry us. Do you have ailments of the body or mind? I have the cure… in my wagon.”

  I could not gauge the irony in his statement though I sensed more than a small pinch.

  “Are you here for business or pleasure?” I inquired.

  “Pleasure is my business, Mr…?”

  “Dr Romulus Hardy,” I introduced myself, tipping my bowler.

  “Dr Pops Spooner.” He shook my hand. His was cool and jumpy as a sunfish. He withdrew it quickly. “A fellow medical man?” He shared a knowing glance with me, but I failed miserably at reciprocating since I did not comprehend what he meant by it.

  “Doctor of Egyptology,” I said. “Adventure is my trade, you might say.”

  He smiled wryly. “Your geography needs improvement, Dr Hardy. The only pyramids you’ll find in Raton reside in pairs at Miss Champagne’s cathouse.” His mouth opened slightly, and he sucked his lip. “If it’s adventure you seek, look no farther than the Velvet Box’s dungeon of amusements. I’ve never explored a better setup, apart from the Quartier Pigalle. Hard to see where Miss Champagne recruits her legion of such highly delicious girls, or where she finds the flow of clientele in this tiny mountain backwater. I am not complaining, sir. I have never been so thoroughly exhausted in my life. Yet my body craves the coming hour when I return for more!”

  An electric shiver ran through him. I feared he might be having a seizure.

  I checked to see if Wu had overheard his remarks, although I was not entirely sure I grasped the whole meaning of them myself.

  Wu’s grin told me that he understood enough.

  “Wu, what is that you’re drinking?”

  “It’s a beer.”

  I swiped the glass away from him. “This could be turpentine, tobacco juice, and mountain goat piss for all you know.” I took a sip and then another. Then one more, for the sake of the boy.

  “It tasted like beer,” Wu said.

  “How do you know the taste of beer? Is McTroy teaching you anything but the most unsavory habits?” Even to my own ears I sounded like a self-righteous prude. I finished the draft.

  Wu was protesting to my right side when Pops tugged at my left arm and pointed the edge of his glass toward a source of commotion in the barroom as the crowd began to part like a red sea of faces, and the wooden prow of a ship glided forward in our direction. The ship was only an elevated, wheeled pulpit that two men were pushing with significant effort. Following the men came two women, opposite in their looks, but both quite striking. The first wore a black lace dress, matching her dark eyes and darker hair and emphasizing her pale complexion. She was the woman whose portrait hung in the Castle Ram! I could tell she was tall though she wore gold braces on her long legs, and sat in a wheelchair, rather than the throne depicted in the hotel painting. The second woman pushed the wheelchair. I had traveled halfway across the country to see her face again.

  She was Evangeline Waterston.

  She did not see me.

  Yong Wu jumped to greet her, but I held him back. And we watched and waited to see what would happen next.

  A short, bearded man, who carried himself with authority and the gruffness of a natural leader, climbed the steps of the pulpit after it was pushed back against the bar and in full view of the room. Evangeline and the woman in the wheelchair stationed themselves on the other side of the podium out of our line of sight.

  The man cleared his throat and raised a hand.

  The crowd grew quiet.

  “Now you all know why we are here this evening,” he began. I did not know, but I kept that fact to myself. “I am Oscar Adderly. I own the Starry Eyes and the Castle Ram Hotel, and, to tell you the truth, most of the land in this town either belongs to me now or it once did. There’s coal in these mountains. The mines that bring up that coal are Adderly mines. But I am not occupied with the daily operations of my mines. I hire people to do that for me. What I do is travel this globe of ours. And I hunt. The more exotic a beast is, the more I desire to track it down, whether that means I must slash my way into a leafy green hellish jungle, roast my hide on the plains of dry grasslands, or freeze my feet, and nether parts–” here the crowd laughed – “…on a block of dirty polar ice. I will stalk my prey, kill it, and bring the body back here to America. I preserve these bodies with artistry. And the beneficiaries of my art are the museums in New York, Washington, and Chicago.

  “The reason I tell you this is because we have a problem in the Sangre de Cristo mountains; we have a dire problem here in Raton, and that problem is a creature I do not understand. This creature is terrorizing our homes. He, she, or whatever it is, is killing our animals, and now it is killing
us! Nine good men have died. Let me repeat, nine good men have died within a day’s walk of where I am standing right now. I apologize to the women here tonight, but I am sparing no detail when I tell you these men were viciously ripped apart, de-limbed, beheaded, unmanned, skinned alive, and then eaten so that all we might recover were bones and ragged bits of clothing soaked in their blood.”

  Here one of the men who had pushed the pulpit into place retrieved a large burlap sack from behind the bar and spilled onto the floor a pile of bones that if my quick count was correct contained part of five of the nine victims. People in the crowd gasped. A buxom red-haired dancer screamed and fell backward, landing dramatically in the arms of a dapper card player.

  Adderly continued, “I will not stand for this carnage in my town. That is why I am offering $10,000–” Another gasp went up, dare I say louder than the cry the bone-spilling elicited. “$10,000 for the capture of this Beast!”

  The room erupted with cheers, and chair legs banged into the floor so that it felt like a locomotive had left its tracks at the station and was rumbling outside the very walls.

  “Here! Here is my first rule. I do not want it dead. I want to study it and kill it and stuff it myself. If any one of you fine hunters kills the Beast I will pay you… yes, reluctantly I will pay. But I will only pay $1,000. So, wound me this creature, snare it, cage it, drop it ass over elbows into a pit, and $10,000 are yours. A good many of you are outsiders to Raton. Welcome. I have no time for longer pleasantries.

  “Now I will give you my second rule. Do not hunt for the Beast on my mountain. Where is my mountain, you ask? Any local will tell you how to find the road to Nightfall Lodge. The lodge, my home, sits near the top of my mountain. I have not seen the Beast on my mountain, and I assure you it is not there. But if I find you on my mountain I will shoot you dead and drop your body down a hole where no one will ever find you, and your families will never know that you died here because you could not follow a simple rule. I say it again: capture, but do not kill the Beast, and stay off my mountain.

  “I am finished talking, but some of you are lucky enough to know my wife, Vivienne, and you are familiar with her unusual gifts. Vivienne talks to the dead. And the dead talk back through her. She is an elegant instrument of secrets and enigmas. I am blessed to have her. As a favor to me, she has agreed to talk to one of these slaughtered men. Let him tell you what to look for as you go into the woods tomorrow. Vivienne, dear, will you please come up here and share your talents with us.”

  Oscar Adderly climbed down the stairs and, in a feat of some strength, lifted his wife from her wheelchair. He carried her up onto the podium, and there she was able to stand on her own, balancing upon two braced legs with her arms locked on the pulpit buttressing her in place. Any weakness in her legs had transferred power into her arms, for they held her steady; the muscles were lithe and rippled like peeled, smooth branches of white wood. She carried herself with self-assured elegance despite her infirmity. I had a better look at her now that she was above me. Her large dark eyes dominated her face; she wore her hair piled on the top of her head, the black curls held with a carved horn comb shaped like the moon.

  Standing in the pulpit, Vivienne was taller than her husband by several inches.

  Her smile was as dazzling as it was brief. Then she called for the lamplights of the bar to be lowered. A single black candle on an iron stand was placed in front of her, and lit. It made a soft, spitting sound as the wick burned.

  She gazed into the dancing flame.

  I felt myself growing lightheaded and realized I had not been breathing.

  I took several deep breaths in unison with Vivienne Adderly. She swayed, and I swayed.

  She grew still, and I felt the short distance between us shrink as if it were only us here, not a room containing better than a hundred strangers in the audience, just the two of us sitting across a table staring into the flickering candle together. I heard a clock ticking in a hallway.

  Then quiet.

  Her eyes widened as if she’d been caught by surprise. Her taut throat moved.

  And when she began to speak I felt she was talking only to me.

  5

  Floating Head

  “Who are you, friend?” Vivienne asked as her head turned slightly to the left. Her voice had taken on a singsong quality. Slowly her head pivoted back to the center, and this time when she spoke it was a shockingly different voice that came out. Deep, accented, and choked with fear.

  “I am… I am…” The voice stopped.

  Vivienne’s head turned left again. “Go on, friend, you are safe here. Tell me your name.”

  “I am Gustav. Gustav Svensson. Where…?”

  A woman sitting at the table nearest to the bar whispered, “He was the third man killed.”

  One of the drinkers at her table, a heavy man in a beaverskin cap, shushed her.

  “Where am I?” Gustav asked. Vivienne’s head quaked, so did the words she channeled.

  “You are with me in the Starry Eyes Saloon,” she answered. As she resumed her own musical voice the shaking vanished. “We are safe. We are only talking. The doors are locked.”

  The doors were not locked, but she meant to put the frightened hunter at ease, I supposed.

  “Might I have a beer?” he asked.

  A few in the audience laughed but most stayed silent.

  “No, Gustav, you cannot. But you may talk with us. We need to hear you.”

  “I am thirsty.” Gustav (Vivienne) nodded solemnly. “But I will…” He swallowed with effort, like a child taking a spoonful of cod-liver oil. “I will talk first.”

  “Thank you,” Vivienne said. “We must ask you, Gustav, about what happened on the mountain. In the woods. You were hunting elk, were you not?”

  “Mule deer,” he said. “I seen a big buck. I was waiting for him to show again. I got down behind a rock. I had my rifle pointed where I thought he would come out of the spruces. The wind blew in my face but not too bad. I waited, watching a patch of shadow on the snow that I thought might be him, his shadow I mean. But he wasn’t coming through them trees. I was hungry. I could hear my stomach growling. It was hard to keep still because it was cold kneeling in the wind that morning. I been out for hours. My face felt like a hard mask. I wanted to go home, but I wanted to take that big muley on the naked slope if he would only step out of them spruces.”

  The voice paused.

  “What happened next?” Left-facing Vivienne prompted him to continue.

  “Snow.”

  “Snow?”

  “I seen snow falling. Big flakes floating down slow. Like torn lace. The shadow was gone. Where did my muley run to? I wondered. The bigger shadow came then. But from the other side of me where I wasn’t looking, where the trees bunched up real thick. Right by me this shadow stops. I could piss and hit this shadow.”

  Vivienne and Gustav looked at the barroom floor, but they saw the shadow too.

  And I saw it with them. I don’t know about the other patrons in the bar. I don’t know about Wu. But I know the shadow was right there on the dirty pine planks, the shadow creeping over the knotholes, over a trail of blood drops that had fallen from the chest wound of the gray man Billy the Kid murdered, and red streaks smeared where boots had scuffed them. The shadow of a head bloomed like ink spilled in water. A huge head; not with curled horns like the ram on the Castle hotel sign, but the head was shaped similarly. There was a blankness to it, a uniformity, and a deadness that I felt inside me. And it had long crooked antlers branching off and mixing with the men and women sitting at their tables or standing around watching this medium, this black-haired occultist. I don’t think the others saw the shadow like I did, because they would not have let it touch them. It was foul, this erasure of light. Worse than a stain. You would not let it touch you if you could help it. Well, I wouldn’t. It kept stretching. Pulling thin so it wasn’t like an elk or a ram or any animal but something new and terrible to behol
d.

  Longer, longer, it pulled, and those branches reached out touching so many people.

  I shut my eyes. But I saw it still stretching like black taffy.

  “What did you do, Gustav?”

  “I shut my eyes. I thought…” He laughed, but it was harsh, the way a man sucks air in and out when he’s in pain to keep from crying out. Nervously he continued, “I thought maybe here’s Gustav’s lucky day. Maybe he gets an elk instead of a muley. I shift my rifle, smooth as new snow on the snowbank, because I know I got no time. One shot, I think. You make your shot, Gustav, and then you get to eat, drink, and tell everybody at the Starry your lucky day elk story.”

  He stopped.

  “But it was not an elk, was it? Gustav?”

  “I don’t want to say no more what it was.” He coughed. “I want my beer… so thirsty.”

  A noise started then outside the Starry Eyes. It was not far away. A kind of high whistle that hurt your ears like an icy stream of water pouring inside, like the point of a skinny knife tapping your eardrums. Every person made a face of discomfort and clapped their hands over the sides of their heads or plugged up their ears with their fingers or pieces of clothing, anything they could find to muffle it. And the whistle climbed higher, louder. There was another sound too, just outside the walls, like boots, or, better yet, hooves clopping on the boardwalk and punching holes in the mud around the back alley. This sound circled us. The whistle seemed right above us. On the roof, I thought. It’s on the roof. Then the hooves were knocking up there too. Loud. One-two. One-two. A man, or some two-legged creature, walked on the roof. What creature except a human being walks on two legs?

  “Gustav?” Vivienne asked. “What was the shadow?”

  The whistle went silent, like it wanted to hear Gustav telling us what happened.

  “Ooooooh…” Gustav moaned. “Can’t tell you. My legs cramped from kneeling in the snow so long. I try to get up, but the snow is deep all around me, there in front of me it’s deep, I don’t know where to go that’s not deep… I’m running trying to run but the snow is to my hips.”