by SA Sidor
The Beast did not show itself bit by bit in the window, no. It was not there.
And then it was.
I jumped back. Every molecule of me wanted to flee.
The hairs on the dog’s back stood up. In the splintery remnants of stars and moonlight, I saw his skin quivering, but he did not yield.
The Beast – gaunt and slavering, spittle running from its narrow chin – pressed its long face to the glass and smeared the pane with blood and drool. Its antlers spread as wide across as a bull elk’s. The tips reached higher than the head of the window – each antler smooth and thicker than my wrist. Some points were stained with blood. Others shone white. The mouth was a toothsome grimace – red pink gray all running together like paint, with chunks of flesh stuck against the gums. Eyes like red ice. They did not blink but stared and stared. It seemed that I might die from looking at this thing. I could count its ribs, the arms all bones and tendons, it appeared to be almost without skin; but the skin of the Beast was pulled tight and gray as the night clouds. If it stood unmoving one might miss it among a landscape of trees. It raised a hand – the arm monstrously rangy, the hand like a human’s stretched to a limit of extreme exaggeration; each bony finger tipped with a claw, six inches long, or more, and tapered to a knifepoint. It dragged its fingernails down the glass. Five furrows appeared.
I covered my ears.
The dog whined at the shrieking, scraping claws, and then growled so ferociously that I feared he might jump through the window, shattering the glass. There would be no barrier then–
Gone.
The Beast was gone as quickly as it had come. I never saw it bolt.
The dog lifted his nose. His ears were twitching. “It is running down the mountain. But it will come back. Not tonight. But soon,” he said.
I touched the glass where the Beast left the five score marks on the other side.
“Does it scare you?” I asked. “Because it scares me…”
“I am thirsty,” he said. “There is a jug of water next to my bowl in the kitchen. I will show you the way. If you would pour me some water, I would be grateful. Also, over there in that tall cabinet with the sweet-smelling liquor bottles, they keep smoked cow bones in a drawstring sack on the highest shelf. I would like one before I go to sleep. I have many things to consider.”
The black dog carried the bone in his mouth as he walked me back to my room. I had lit the lovers’ candle again in the kitchen. The flame fluttered. I was tired now. My eyes grew heavy. The dog dropped the bone to the floor with a clatter and pinned it there with his paw.
“Thank you for the bone, Undressed Man Who Smells Afraid,” he said.
“You’re welcome.” I could see him, smell him, and hear him. “Are you real?”
“I am here, if that’s what you mean. Everything is real, more or less.”
He picked up the bone again and started to trot off. Scratch, scratch.
“Wait,” I said.
He looked over his shoulder at me. His brow wrinkled.
“What is your name?” I asked.
He spit out the bone.
“I am called Orcus,” he said.
“Goodnight, Orcus. I am Rom Hardy.”
“Goodnight, Undressed Rom Hardy Who Smells Afraid,” he said. Then he picked up the bone and walked out of my candlelight.
Feeling unsteady and completely exhausted, I retired to my room.
10
The Apis Bull
“Doc, hey, you alive? Wake up,” McTroy called out as he shook me roughly awake.
“What is it?” I asked, taking in the full measure of his grizzled, gray-hatted visage. “Let go of me!” I attempted to twist out of his grip. He hauled me involuntarily into a sitting position.
“You were sleeping down where the dead men go, Doc. I’ve hollered myself hoarse. I was starting to think you was snakebit, poisoned, or taken up in one of them trances.”
I swept my pocket watch from the nightstand. It was six o’clock in the morning.
McTroy continued, “Wu’s snuck over to the trophy room and back again. He says it’s filled with maybe a half-dozen bad hombres. Old Oscar’s itching to start his morning speechifying and that means he’ll be laying out the terms of his reward for capturing the thing what’s been eating the hunters and picking its teeth with their splintered bones. Drag on your britches, man. We’ve got business to conduct.”
He threw my clothes at me, followed by my boots.
“Stop that!” I slapped everything aside.
I jumped up from the bed and picked my belongings off the floor. I pulled my boots on.
“Doc?” he said.
I was in no mood to entertain his rudeness before the crack of dawn.
“Hey there, Doc?” The bounty man poked my forehead.
“What?” I shouted, wheeling my arms around wildly.
He dodged the blows. “You’re putting your boots on,” he said.
“I know very well what I am doing. Don’t be an imbecile. Get that light out of my face.”
“Ain’t you forgetting something?” he asked, shifting the kerosene lamp to one side.
“Yes, come to think of it, I am. I am forgetting why I left the comforts of my New York City office to be harassed by the likes of you before my eyelids have opened. I don’t give a hot damn if Oscar is handing out gold nuggets the size of pawpaws to everyone who asks him nicely. I will get there when I get there. The Beast isn’t going to be caged before breakfast, is it now?”
“I reckon not,” he said.
“Then allow me to get dressed in peace.”
“Can’t do it, Doc,” he said.
If, like a horned lizard, I might’ve shot blood from my eyes then I would’ve done so.
“Why?” I asked through gritted teeth.
“Because I am your friend and you ain’t put on your britches.”
I looked down from buttoning my shirt. He was correct. I also had omitted my socks and misaligned my top two buttonholes in my haste to depart.
“I had trouble sleeping,” I said. I sat and slipped the boots off.
“Not when I saw you.”
“No, before that… after we went to bed… you, Wu, and I… well, I could not fall asleep. The total darkness bothered me. And this bed… also, I heard odd sounds outside our bedroom.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” he said.
“You were asleep. You didn’t even wake when I left the room.” I now recalled, with all due embarrassment, my spying on the mystery lovers and the highly improbable conversation I had with Orcus. What was I to make of talking with a hellhound? Nothing for now. I had seen the Beast! I was not sure how to broach these subjects with McTroy.
“Sorry, but you never left the room, Doc.”
“That is where you are wrong. I saw wonders when I left this room.” I combed my hair with my fingers, but a tuft refused to stay down. At the dresser, I filled a wash basin from a flowery porcelain pitcher beside it, dipped my fingertips into the cool waters, splashed my face, and wet my stubborn cowlick. In the mirror I watched it rise again. That would have to do. My cheeks had color. Properly attired, I knotted my tie quickly. “Hand me my stick, please,” I said.
“You dreamed it, Doc. I’d have heard you go, if you did.”
I pondered the possibility that I had been dreaming. The elements of a nightmare were all present. And no dog had ever spoken to me before in my waking life. When I dream, I do dream vividly. Had last night been nothing more than the product of an overactive mind and a strange bed? But any nagging suspicions soon fled. I had concrete proof of my stroll.
“It was no dream,” I said. I pointed to the nightstand. “Observe the candleholder. Where did it come from? Answer: I found it on the floor of the lion’s den in Oscar’s gallery. ‘When?’ you ask, incredulously. When I went out in the wee hours to inspect the goings-on in this most strange lodge. I encountered things, McTroy. Significant things. It
felt real because it was real. Mark me, sir. I know my way around the fantastic. Let’s go to this meeting.”
“That candleholder was here when we got to the room,” he said.
“Was not,” I said. I cracked open the door and breathed deeply. “I smell bacon!”
“You feeling up to snuff this morning, Doc?”
“I feel splendid. Exhilarated, in fact. Life is best when we are surprised by it. Now then, we shall endeavor to be surprised.” I stepped past him and over the threshold.
“Whatever you say,” McTroy replied.
And surprised we were.
The trophy room was a bustle of activity – manly activity – which is to say idleness, smoking, thrusting of chests, and thickly mumbled words of threat, braggadocio, or both. I spotted Oscar fixed in the center of business, expounding as he cut the end of a Havana cigar. Claude had a foot up on a window ledge with his back to the room. Smoke from his cigarette feathered the glass. It was the window where the Beast had appeared. Intentionally or not, Claude was blocking the Beast’s scratch marks from everyone’s view. He massaged his temples.
Ah, the morning after a drunken night is a dry march through a blinding desert.
Of the other men, I recognized three: Pops Spooner, Billy the Kid, and a burly, bearded man in a beaver fur hat – they had all been at the Starry Eyes the night of the fire. The other two men were new to me. The older gent was an Indian, dressed in a fringed deerskin tunic and leggings, a mink poncho, moccasins, and two eagle feathers in his braids. He sat staring at the ceiling, only half-awake. The second man was a redheaded gunfighter. He wore a pearl Colt Lightning and sported goatskin shooting gloves. His right hand was missing two fingers. Red stitches marked their place. He holstered his pistol on his left side. His liquid eyes met mine and instantly moved to McTroy. The gunfighter smoked a meerschaum bulldog. He was looking at McTroy, smiling as he walked up.
“Haven’t seen you around since… was it Dynamite Creek or Sully’s Fork?” he said.
“Sully’s Fork,” McTroy said.
“That’s right. I remember now. You still hunting bounties?”
“I am.”
“Good for you. Get right back on the horse, as they say. Is she with your party?”
The gunfighter nodded at the archway where Evangeline had entered, pushing Vivienne.
“Yes.”
“Introduce us, Rex. Show good manners.”
Evangeline linked eyes with the red-haired duelist. She came over, extending her hand.
“This lady is Miss Evangeline Waterston. Evangeline, meet Gavin Earl.”
Earl inclined his head and kissed her knuckles. “Charmed,” he said. “If your wit exceeds your beauty, then I am in for a rare treat.”
“Why, Mr. Earl, I was thinking exactly the same thing,” she said.
“We shall not know disappointment this day,” Earl said.
“The day ain’t over,” McTroy said.
“You’re right, Rex. It’s just getting started,” Earl replied.
McTroy had an angry-looking rash climbing up the side of his neck. I cleared my throat and took a step forward.
“This is Doc Hardy,” McTroy said. “He steals mummies from people.”
“I do no such thing. McTroy jests. I am a scientist and historian. I studied in Chicago.”
I gripped Earl’s gloved, three-fingered hand. It was like touching a piece of machinery.
“I sketched a mummy’s head once while I was at Yale,” he said.
“Oh, Yale College is quite prestigious. What did you read there?” I asked.
“Old books,” he said.
“What sort of old books?” I pressed him.
“The sort that made me flee New England.” Earl shifted and cut our conversation short. He grasped Evangeline’s fingers. “You’ve made this a worthwhile trip from Texas. Rex, I am so glad you’re here to keep things from getting boring. Sully’s Fork… that was quite a time. Forgive me. I need a word with my men.”
He went to the group which included Billy, Pops, and the fur-wearing, long-whiskered fellow. Earl said something to Pops who snapped a look at McTroy and then gazed at Evangeline. He rubbed his bulbous nose and commented back to Earl. The two men laughed.
“What happened at Sully’s Fork?” I asked McTroy.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“How do you know that man?” I said.
“He used to be my partner.”
“Rex, you don’t strike me as the partnering type,” Evangeline said. “Is he as good as he pretends to be?”
“He collects the biggest bounties. We made money together in Texas.”
“But you left and went to Yuma?” she asked.
“That’s right. I went to Yuma.”
“Why’s that?” I chimed in.
“Because Yuma ain’t Texas. Watch yourself around Gavin Earl. You’d be better off trusting a diamondback. He knows how to talk real pretty too. The man could sell sand in the Gila. Don’t listen to him, either one of you. He’s a devil.”
“The more you say about him, the more intrigued I am,” Evangeline said.
“Did he really attend Yale?” I asked.
McTroy nodded. “His family’s rich. Shipping money. His story about leaving Connecticut is a lie. They shipped him out West. He killed a mayor in Kansas. You could fill the Grand Canyon with people he’s stabbed in the back.”
“Does he stab in the front too?” Evangeline asked, amused.
But McTroy was having none of her joke. “Watch yourself. He’s greedy.”
“We’re all greedy for something. Greedy isn’t the worst thing a man can be,” she said.
“What is?” I asked her.
“Dull. I’d take greedy over dull any day of the week. Where’s Wu?”
“Checking our horses,” McTroy said.
“Oh, that reminds me. I was wondering if you brought a horse for me,” I said.
“I thought you’d want to walk so you might get to use that stick of yours.”
“I can’t walk if you three are riding!”
“Calm down. I have a gelding for you. You’ll get along,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means he doesn’t get too excited. He’s a thinker, like you.”
“What’s his name?”
McTroy grinned. “Jingle,” he said. Evangeline covered her mouth and snorted.
“Jingle? Well, I suppose the horse didn’t pick his name. I would never be a Romulus if I had picked mine. Prejudice is a terrible quality. I refuse to prejudge him.”
“Hardy, you are the most fair-minded man I know,” Evangeline said.
“When you speak of dull, I hope I am not that too. Last night I saw amazing things in this lodge. The sleeping hours hold mysteries. McTroy doesn’t believe me. You may not either if I tell you. But I have proof, or at least corroboration of my account. Have either of you seen a black dog roaming the halls? You can’t miss him. His head is bigger than mine.” I put my hands up on either side of my head and moved them apart to show Orcus’ size.
“That is no small accomplishment,” McTroy said.
“Ha. Find the dog and I will render you speechless, bounty man.”
I left him to his jibes.
Vivienne Adderly sat tall and straight in her chair. She smiled as she saw me heading in her direction. I don’t know how an arrogant blowhard like Oscar convinced her to marry him, but I had to give him credit. She was a superior woman. And if she was a witch, so be it.
“You are looking tired, Dr Hardy,” she said.
I dragged a hand across my unshaven face. “I sleep poorly in new places.”
“Do you have nightmares?”
“What an odd question. Yes, I do. But what is worse is that sometimes I don’t know if I am awake in a dark room or if I am asleep in dark dream. I have a restless brain, I suppose.”
“Do you have any
other restless parts of your anatomy?”
I paused, uncertain if I had heard her question correctly. “Pardon…?”
“Your feet? Do you sleepwalk by any chance? It is a trance state, and you are susceptible to trance states – as we have seen.” She wheeled herself against my leg and crooked her finger at me. “Come down here.”
I bent on one knee beside her wheel.
“You walked last night, didn’t you, doctor?”
Her eyes were very big and appeared almost black to me. She smelled of incense.
“I don’t know what you mean. I slept fitfully, as I said–”
“You left your room. Are you aware of that?” she said.
“I left my room!” I did what I could to act shocked. “How on earth did I do that?”
“You opened the door and…” She stepped her fingers up my arm and touched my chin.
“Heavens! How do you know this? Did you converse with me? I have no memory of it.”
Vivienne nodded. “I did not talk to you. But I did see you. I have a crystal orb next to my bed. Last night the orb showed me you walking in the hallways. You went through the gallery and into the trophy room.” She frowned and lowered her voice. “You were not alone, Doctor.”
“Who joined me?” Here I played dumb, but I was also curious as to the extent of what she knew. Plainly, I suspected now that Orcus had reported my trespassing and our subsequent conversation to Vivienne. That was the likeliest explanation. The dog had told her everything. I paused to wonder which was more absurd: whether I wholehearted believed I had conversed with a canine or that I now questioned his discretion.
“I don’t know. Nightfall is often busier after dark than in daylight hours. You were in danger last night, Hardy. I don’t want to alarm you–”
“But you have!” I thumped my walking stick on the floor.
“I don’t want to alarm you beyond reason. You must be cautious while you are here with us. Not everyone is kind. We have hidden natures. Do you know what I am saying? We guard a darkness inside us that we cannot control. The middle of the night is when the will weakens. Lock your door tonight, or better yet, I can move your room to one adjoining mine. If you wake, I will hear you. I am a light sleeper and reach my peak energy well after sundown. If you need somewhere safe from the horrors, I can provide that for you.” She looked at me for a long time.