The Beast of Nightfall Lodge

by SA Sidor

  “Wu needs to run. He’s better off out there, even if there is a Beast loose,” I said.

  “I’ll help him.”

  “We will both help him,” I said.

  Evangeline looked tired. A smear of grime made a crescent on her cheek. I wiped it away. I touched my head to hers. “Rex is gone. But he rides still. He follows the sun.”

  She nodded again.

  “They may desecrate his body, but they cannot soil the man’s soul,” I added.

  “Goddamn! Get off me, you pop-eyed sawbones! I will chew your liver!”

  McTroy, it seemed, lived.

  I have never been gladder to hear another man’s voice. But I feared this outburst might be a final flourish of activity before the inevitable end. He looked so awfully dead.

  He punched Pops squarely on the jaw. Teeth snapped together; some broke. The surgeon grabbed up his bone saw from the pile of torture devices. He brandished it, but he was seeing stars, his eyes rolling in his head like spinning marbles. He tested his jaws to verify that they still matched up when he shut his mouth. Then his rear end dropped hard in the pine-needled mud.

  Gavin Earl cocked his pistol, pressing the gun to McTroy’s temple. “Welcome back, Rex. Now throw another punch. Go on, boss. Try me. I will empty your pig skull where you sit.”

  McTroy stared at his chest wound. “It burns. What did you do? Plug a chili in there?”

  “Pops, will a knock keep the stuff from working?” Earl asked.

  “No. It’s a mighty powerful concoction.”

  Earl thumped McTroy on the top of his head with his pistol. McTroy lay back where he had been, dazed and muttering. The wound in his chest didn’t bleed anymore, as if the elixir had stoppered the leak. Earl forced his boot heel under McTroy’s chin. “It’s Sully’s Fork all over again,” he said. “Only the boot is on the other foot. Or rather, my boot is on your throat. How does that feel, partner?”

  McTroy sputtered indecipherable curses and clawed through the slush and mud until his fingers scraped against unforgiving rock. He grabbed Earl’s calf, trying to push the weight off. For a mortally wounded man, he was fighting and full of vinegar.

  Earl leaned on him. “Fair’s fair,” he said. “I want you haunted, Rex. I like you weak.”

  “I’ll never be as weak as you,” McTroy said. “You should’ve stayed at Sully’s Fork where I left you.”

  “And you should’ve shot me in the head if you wanted me dead,” Earl said.

  McTroy reached up higher and dug his fingers into Earl’s knee.

  Earl cried out. He shot McTroy between the knuckles. McTroy screamed. Earl hopped off his neck, springing back quickly as a smile carved his handsome face into a hideous mask of hatred. McTroy rolled and cradled his hand against his bloody shirt. It sprayed the snow red. When he put it up to his face I saw through the hole. He tried to make a fist. And couldn’t. More blood.

  “I’m not going to kill you. Hell, I don’t know if I could with Pops’ green concoction zipping through your veins. It’s better this way.” Earl kicked him in the stomach. “Biblical.”

  “A hand for a hand,” Dirty Dan said, snickering.

  “That’s right,” Earl said. He turned toward Wu. “Let that be a lesson to you, boy. Your champion is a beaten man. McTroy thought he was better than me. He thought I would disappear because he knocked me down, ruined my shooting hand, and rubbed my face in the damned dirt. Over a bag of bounty money! He hurt me, boy. But I am back. Oh, yes I am!”

  He kicked McTroy again and again. So wild was his thrashing that when his hat fell off, he didn’t even notice. He gleamed with sweat. He tore a seam of his elegant sheepskin coat. He stomped on McTroy’s legs and pummeled his ribs with unremitting blows. Too many for me to count. McTroy sighed and moaned like an old man on his death bed.

  No one stopped the beating.

  I could not judge how long it took. The sky, the ground, and the trees – all were painted the same sickly shade of gray. What could we do but watch? I feared any intervention would only draw more wrath and get us all killed. This poison had brewed a long while. Finally, Gavin Earl was out of breath. Panting, he suddenly looked at us as if we’d caught him rolling in the hay with a corpse. He smiled sheepishly, combing his gloved fingers through his hair. He found his hat in the snow. Putting it on, he tipped it to Evangeline.

  “Miss,” he said. “Good afternoon.”

  “Your horses are in the draw up the hill,” Pops said, taking a friendly tone.

  Dirty Dan hoisted Billy under his arm. He tossed the body over the mule. Pops brushed Billy’s long oily locks, jabbing the needle in a gap above his spine, filling his skull with green elixir. Billy looked deader than any man I ever saw. Pops petted him. “Wild boys never learn.”

  “Storm’s coming,” Dirty Dan said, talking to himself the way hermits do. “Big one. I can smell it. The Beast wants a full belly ’fore the snow’s too deep.” Puddin’ looked at the sky with his little eyes when he said that. Then he followed him. Snowflakes swirled on the Copper Trail. Any signs of the outlaws soon vanished. The sky darkened. The pines closed on us like a tunnel.

  15

  Wound Lickin’

  We were alone with McTroy. Illness and injury can bring people closer together. But more often it raises a barrier, a fence you might see over but cannot cross. Pain is a country with a distant shore. You have heard of it, you have partaken of its goods, and even visited its coastal cities, but it’s likely you have never traveled far inland and made it your home. Now your friend lives there.

  I asked Wu to get our horses. He seemed relieved to go. The sight of the bounty man was pitiful indeed. Seeing him in his current condition could not help but mar whatever heroic thoughts you might have had about his character prior to the beating. Rex McTroy looked like a squashed bug. He seemed flat, partly embedded in the earth.

  Snow continued to bury us.

  Kneeling on the ground, I put McTroy’s hat back on him, if only to keep the snow off his face. He gazed at me with half-lidded eyes as if he were passing-out drunk. He was breathing. He was alive at least. If I did not know better I would’ve guessed he was anesthetized by sleep, caught in an in-between land of waking yet still dreaming, trapped in that frightful nightmare place he could not escape. I lifted his coat and touched him.

  “His ribs, I think, are broken.”

  He groaned, and I ceased my examination.

  “They feel like a bag of snapped sticks. Miraculously, his hand has stopped bleeding. The bullet traveled out the wrist. See here?”

  Evangeline nodded. “What about his chest wound? Let’s have a look.”

  I carefully unbuttoned his shirt, peeling away the sticky blood-soaked material which had already begun to stiffen. There was a hole between his nipple and collarbone.

  “Amazing,” I said. “It appears to have sealed itself. There is a pink cork made of what appears to be healthy skin.” I met Evangeline’s eyes. “Are you familiar with this sorcery?”

  “This is not witchcraft.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what this is. Pops doesn’t seem capable of devising a method of flesh rejuvenation. It must be something he stumbled on.”

  “Or he stole it,” I said.

  McTroy mumbled unintelligibly.

  “We will get you back to the lodge, friend,” I said. “Sooner rather than later.”

  “Bllllllaaa…”

  “Don’t try to talk. You have been severely beaten. You have also been shot. Twice.”

  “Daahaa…”

  Wu emerged from the bend in the trail. He was riding Magpie. The other horses were in line behind him. It was encouraging to see their heads nodding through the white obscurity.

  “Good job, Yong Wu!” I cupped McTroy’s shoulder. “I am going to sit you up.”

  “Blaaa,” McTroy said. His face was swollen. His lips plumped like two blood sausages.

  “Evangeline, please take his other si
de. We will get him half way up, and then we will try to stand him on his feet. Move on my count of three. One… two… three!”

  We bent McTroy into a sitting position. He hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Blaaadaah,” he grunted.

  With his good hand he latched onto my coat collar and shook me.

  “Do you think he might be trying to tell us something?” Evangeline said.

  “He is delirious from being killed, brought back, and nearly killed again. His head is swimming with an unknown poison devised by a drug-addled drunkard and snake oil charlatan.” I tried to pry his fingers loose. “I do not think he’s coherent. This is purely a defensive reaction. It’s natural. Like a pond turtle pulling his head inside his shell.”

  McTroy growled at me.

  “Give me back my collar so I can help you,” I said.

  Wu jumped down from his saddle and joined us. We were variously standing, kneeling, and sitting in an oval of bloody snow. It smelled like the floor of a butcher’s shop. The wind blasted hard little ice pellets against our bare skin. Although it was only afternoon, the sunlight faltered. Heavy clouds made the hour feel later than it was. It was the picture of bleakness. Time on a mountain was as hard to figure out as predicting the weather, or so I was learning.

  When Wu was close enough, McTroy let go of me and seized him.

  “At last! Oh now, release him! It’s only Wu. You are making this so very hard for us.”

  McTroy’s behavior was that of a madman. Lunging and grabbing. Spit-drooling. Unable to capture his thoughts in words. Who knew if Pops’ elixir had irrevocably harmed his mental faculties? He had the strength of the mad as well. Wu was wincing under the power of his grip.

  “Blaaa.” McTroy’s tongue clicked in his mouth. He gasped in frustration.

  “He is saying something,” Evangeline said. “I am convinced of it.”

  “You must calm yourself. We cannot understand you,” I said to him. “Relax. Breathe.”

  I gave him an example of breathing. “In and out, you see? Smoooooothly…”

  It must have been a scary thing for a boy to do, but Wu leaned in toward McTroy’s battered, lumpen face. His de facto guardian pulled him nearer still and whispered urgently in his ear. Wu looked at first alarmed, then confused, and finally, absolutely terrified.

  “He is saying ‘blood,’” Wu informed us.

  McTroy nodded vigorously, one red eye bulging. He tugged at Wu, bringing him in again.

  The boy listened.

  “Blood… bings? Brings! Blood… brings… blood brings beast,” Wu said.

  “My God,” Evangeline said. “He’s warning us. We haven’t been paying attention. The Beast might’ve crept right up to us. Would we have even noticed?”

  I quickly scanned the woods. What did I see? Virtually nothing. The shapes of trees. Shadows underneath them growing from the ground and filling the gaps like a black mist. The pale screen of snow falling, falling, quiet as feathers. I saw no living thing in the open except us.

  “We must go at once,” I said.

  “Yeaaasss,” McTroy said. “Blaaadaa. Beeessst…”

  It took the three of us, and the valiant effort of McTroy, to hoist him into his saddle. He fell against Moonlight’s neck, hugging her as tightly as a sailor holds the last floating beam of his ship in rough seas. We rode four across on the trail. Our horses’ flanks nearly touching. McTroy bookended by Wu and me in case he began to slide off his horse. He seemed to have lost consciousness. Yet he and Moonlight appeared as one. McTroy was able to sleep in the saddle. He’d told me once that, if he could choose, he would die there. I only hoped today was not the day.

  “We are not far from Nightfall,” Evangeline said.

  It was true of both our lodging place and the approaching hour.

  I ducked under snow-laden branches sagging near the trail edge. To my right lay dense forest. To the left: a steeper downward slope of thinning timber, like a hound sleeping with its mangy, narrow hindquarters jutting into the air.

  “I am sure we will make it,” I said.

  I was not sure at all.

  Something was following us. I did not see it. But I felt it there. Watching. Stealthy. Keeping pace with our horses. Evangeline was feeling the same thing. She kept looking back.

  “We’ve come a long way,” she said. “The trail will join the road shortly.”

  “I hope so,” Wu said.

  “Do I smell the lodge’s chimneys? The scent of roasted meats and hot cocoa?”

  I injected this thought hoping it would bolster spirits. Nothing ahead of us looked remotely different than what we had already passed. The repetitiveness of the landscape was hypnotic. Disorienting. I understood now the danger of getting lost in these exotic high-altitude wilds. Never to return. To wander off the map was my sudden strong desire. I did not know why, or from where the strange temptation originated. I made a conscious effort to resist. The twilit hour stripped the stark geography of its colorful morning dress. We traveled among sticks and stones enrobed in white like minor gods awaiting a sacrifice. Our view down the mountainside was a pencil sketch of smooth mounds and sprigs of gnarly scrub; the rest might have been clouds.

  It all seemed unreal, a fairytale scene where a wizard might appear in conversation with a winter ice queen or a mountain giant. Skinny evergreens slouched like disappointed elves. Everything lulled you as it lured you inward. Go deeper, it said. Nothing too awfully bad can happen here. It’s make-believe after all. The horses’ hoofs struck muffled drumbeats on the path. Even the majesty of the mountains – emerging between gusts – became no more than a diversion. Crags, cliffs, and walls of volcanic stone – along these precipices my mind strayed like a fool. With your senses compromised (I could smell nothing, for example), you become smaller. You think (wrongly) that you go unnoticed. This is the dullness that kills the deer chewing on a snippet of grass. The lion or the wolf springs. The deer dies. Bits of limp weed stuck greenly in its teeth…

  Prey cannot afford daydreams.

  I forced myself into the moment. Must keep my mind alert! I set my spine straight and pulled icy air into my lungs until they throbbed. I held it. Letting it go slowly.

  I felt those watchful forest eyes. They made my heart skip.

  Death. Was it death lurking in some terrible shape?

  The horses kicked up little puffs of snow. Their manes whitened and became hard as carousel horses. It was difficult to lift my eyes without my lashes freezing together, locked in tiny crystal balls; our mouths steamed, no different than the animal engines we rode upon.

  I turned around quickly.

  Nothing.

  But I sensed a presence out there. Stalking us. Whatever it was, the weather proved no obstacle for it. This thing lived in the weather. Used it. We were being hunted by a killer native to this place, at home in this harsh terrain.

  “Do you see that?” Wu asked. “Look! There in the woods!”

  We pulled up on our horses. Moonlight stopped on her own. McTroy slumped, oblivious.

  A large form descended darkly through the timber.

  “I make out no details,” I said. My curiosity outran my fear.

  “It is very tall,” Wu said. “Long steps. Moving rapidly. What should we do?”

  “Hold steady,” I said. “Perhaps it will pass in front of us. Whatever it is…”

  Evangeline wrestled with her skirts. Out came the silver pistol. She aimed it through the trees and pulled the trigger. Once. Twice. Loud and close by – I was momentarily deafened.

  The form stopped. It turned in a circle, trying to locate us in the chaos of swirling snow and gunfire echoes.

  “I have no range with this. Hand me McTroy’s rifle,” she said, pointing.

  We had retrieved his Marlin after the beating. I slipped it from its scabbard.

  “Are you sure this is wise?”

  “Give me the rifle.”

  Evangeli
ne handed me her small, hammerless weapon in exchange.

  “The lever is cocked,” I said. My ears were ringing still.

  Evangeline shouldered the Marlin, tucked her cheek into it, and closed one eye.

  The form was too tall for any ordinary man, though it walked plainly on two legs. It started up again, the long arms swinging, lurch-lurching along, still coming for the trail, not fifty yards ahead of us. If it continued, it would cut off our only route to safety. We would be trapped. The approaching Beast had a blocky bovine head and antlers like a stag’s – but not the enormously expansive rack I had seen when it stalked the lodge’s window ledge. I conceded the creature might appear more fearsome in the full dark. Or my sleeplessness had added to my terror. But that did not explain fully the marked change of appearance.

  “Hold your shot,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I do not know…”

  “I’ll shoot as soon as it clears the pines,” she said.

  “Do as you see fit. I only suggest you might want to know what you are shooting at first.”

  It moved clumsily, smashing through the snowbank, knocking two wheelbarrows’ worth of crusty snow chunks onto the trail. It was covered in brown hair. The upper body was massive and barrel-chested. It bent over stiffly, hands resting on its knees, winded and catching its breath.

  Evangeline fired.

  Missing her target (as it shifted suddenly) but shearing a branch near its head.

  The creature crouched, pivoted to look for us, twisting not at the neck but at its waist. It appeared to have a hard time seeing. It raised its arms in alarm, then after some reconsideration, dropped them. When it finally saw us clearly, it cried out. This cry was not the piercing whistle we had heard earlier, but a low, chest-buzzing moan mixed with a gravelly roar. Frustration was the word I thought while hearing it. And pity. Why pity? This Beast on the Copper Trail was undeniably huge. I would guess eight feet tall, not counting the length of the horns. Yet I did not feel the same watery panic melting in my gut as I did last night. Where was the chill? The demonic red eye-glow? That slavering mouth?