by SA Sidor
“I can touch it with my fingers,” Wu said from behind me, his head buried in the wagon’s dark, smelly recess. “It is soft. Not a gemstone at all. Soft like jelly… I feel a cool burning in my fingertips. But it is not bad. I touched an octopus once at a fishmonger’s stall. It was like this.”
“You had better stop touching. Just to be safe,” I said, turning around. I heard a hollow rolling sound from inside the nook. Wu had both of his arms shoved into the cubbyhole. His narrow shoulders worked back and forth as if he were wiggling something free that was lodged inside.
“I have it! I think I can get it out.”
Brave boy! Braver than I!
“What does it look like? Is there enough light sneaking around your body to see? Because I thought I saw something very different from what you said you saw.” I chuckled at my apparently erroneous first impression. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this now, but I swore I thought I saw what appeared to be a slime-covered, bald, and somewhat teardrop-shaped–”
“There!” Wu said. He withdrew his slender arms. His upper half flowed from the hole as if he were being poured out. In his hands he held the prize.
“It’s a head!” we both shouted.
To Wu’s credit he did not throw the gruesome discovery as far away as possible. Instead, he stretched out his arms rigidly and screamed. I like to think I did not scream. But what I like to think is often not true. Together we ran, jumping off the platform and bolting to the rear of the mountain niche. This change of location did nothing to calm us. After all, we had brought the drippy, oozy, oval source of our terror with us. At the back of the niche we changed direction, following the curve of the alcove, passing the startled horses, and then pivoting on the slippery floor, our boots skidding, and heading for the blizzardy mouth of the grotto and the only way out.
I halted. I seized Wu by the blue sash he wore like a belt. “Wu, listen. Stop.” He struggled to pull away as I dragged him backward to the rear of the wagon.
“Let go of me,” he said.
“This is an important find. We cannot risk losing it… if only for McTroy’s sake.”
“You take it then,” he said. “The cool burning is in my fingers. It’s creeping up my arms! I can’t feel my hands. I… I… I can’t drop the damned thing. I think it blinked at me when we were running. This head… It’s alive!”
He offered the head to me. Green slime coated his bare hands. The alarming color was more chartreuse than shamrock, and rather than suggesting a specimen of the natural vegetable world, it seemed highly odd. Otherworldly. Wu’s wrists and elbows dripped with the odious gel.
“Blinked, you say?”
Wu nodded. He turned his face away from the horror in his hands.
“Let me study it.”
“No! Take it. Please take it.”
“You say you cannot feel your hands.”
“I can’t!”
“Well, if I take it and I can’t feel my hands, then we are two handless investigators. I think that would be a disadvantage to our mission. I will remove it in the fastest and safest way possible. Hold still and let me have a good look. Who knows, it might be dangerous to remove it from your grip altogether. Or even impossible, for that matter.”
“Ooohhh… don’t say that,” Wu said. “I don’t want this green thing on my hands forever.”
“I’m sorry. You are correct. Wu, we must stay calm.” I dug into my pocket.
“What is that?” Wu said.
“My pocketknife,” I said. I opened it with a snicking sound.
“I am going to try an experiment here. Close your eyes. I promise not to hurt you. Tell me if you feel this. Again, I won’t hurt you. Believe me. I am being very careful, Wu.”
“Ooohhh… just do it already…”
“Here we go…”
18
The Flesh Draws
“You are telling me that you feel this? Yet you do not have any sensation when I touch, say, here…?” I moved the dull edge of my pocketknife from one location to another.
“That is correct,” Wu said.
“Interesting…” I inserted the point of the knife through the gelatinous ooze. “And what about riiight… now?”
“Ow!” Wu winced. “That is very uncomfortable.”
I retracted my knife. Leaving Wu standing at the back of the wagon, I went inside. Rummaging through Pops’ supplies, I found a wad of cotton, wiped off my blade, and put it back in my pocket. I dragged a drawer full of miscellaneous instruments out to the wagon’s platform with me. I had prodded the severed head’s upper left eyelid. I didn’t tell Wu that when I did that I saw it wince too. Exactly as he had. The reactions twinned.
“We have a most intriguing situation,” I said. “When I touch you anywhere on your arms from the crooks of the elbows to the tips of your fingers, you say you cannot feel it. Yet, if I touch anywhere on the head that you are holding, you claim it is sensitive, even painful. Somehow your nervous system has merged with this foreign body, or body part, and it has numbed you near the point of contact while extending your peripheral response into its domain.”
Wu whimpered at my findings. “What can we do, Dr Hardy?”
“That is the question, Wu. I wonder what would happen if you tried to put it down. Climb onto the platform with me. See if you can roll it off your hands onto this retractable shelf.” Pops must have used the shelf to mix remedies on the spot for customers. “Your arms must be getting tired.”
“I can’t feel them. I don’t think I can bend them either.” Wu’s face began to twitch and I sensed he was going to cry but was doing his best to keep his tears bottled up. He chewed his lip.
“Wu, stand right there, over the shelf. I will attempt to push the thing out of your hands.”
“Good. I like that idea very much.”
What should I use? I dug into Pops’ drawer until I found a pair of long metal tongs.
“These will do the job,” I said.
I clamped the tongs through the green jelly onto the sides of the head.
Wu yelled. “I feel them! Do not squeeze, Dr Hardy! What if my head rolls away?”
“I am stopping.” I pulled the drippy tongs away from the head. “It is quite fascinating, really. I absolutely wish you were not in peril, of course. But the sympathetic connection between you and this unknown entity is remarkable. The head is not green. Do you see that? I think it is gray. When I open up a gap in the gel I observe the actual color. Then it re-seals. It appears green because this viscous gel has a glowing tint. I wonder if it’s plant-like, an algae maybe. It might contain chlorophylls and use photosynthesis for its energy. It’s not very light in this alcove. But it’s much darker inside the medicine wagon. Have you noticed if the head has gotten progressively slimier the longer we’ve had it out of its compartment?”
“I wasn’t paying attention,” Wu said. “I’ve been too horrified.”
“That is one reason you are lucky to have me here. I can maintain a scientific distance.”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble. What I am wondering is if the slime is the real culprit.”
“What do you mean?”
“If the head exudes this sludge, this viscid mucus, as a defensive protection against predators. You cannot feel yourself where you are attacking the head – that is how the head would see it from a protective angle – and anything you do to harm the head, feels like it aggrieves you. It’s quite a deterrent keeping you from inflicting further damage.”
“But the head is cut off,” Wu said.
“Ah, but it still works to some degree. It blinks. It oozes. It seems to be sending telepathic signals into McTroy’s brain. To this we can attest.” I had my pocketknife out again. I was using it to pry the lid off the rum barrel. After some fussing, the lid popped free.
“I have an unorthodox idea, Wu.”
“You have so many, Dr Hardy. Maybe you should get
Miss Evangeline,” Wu said.
“Nonsense. It would take a long time to explain all this to her. Who knows how the head might be knitting its nervous system into yours as we speak! We must act. And if we succeed in fixing this matter, there is no reason to tell her what happened.”
Wu sighed. The strange bald head inside its encasement of verdant muck sighed too.
I set the slightly less than half-barrel of rum on the platform at Wu’s feet.
“Move your boots apart a bit,” I said.
“What are we doing?”
I brushed at a few nonexistent dust specks on Wu’s shoulders. Then I grabbed him firmly by the biceps.
“This!”
I forced his locked arms downward and plunged his hands (and the green-gray head) into the barrel of liquor. Then I quickly hauled up on his armpits. The head had detached from him. Wu smelled like a sailor on shore leave, but appeared none the worse for the experience.
“Can you feel your limbs coming back?”
“Yes! Like tiny needles sticking me. I can move again.” He smiled, showing me his elbows and wrists bending. His fingers worked like a pair of giant, pale, excitable spiders.
We had but a short interval of celebration. As I tilted over the barrel of rum to observe the stream of bubbles popping on the surface, an angry outcry from the other end of the wagon jolted us.
“What are you bastards doing in my wagon?”
Pops rounded the platform. His face was red from the cold and his glasses were fogged. He dropped his Gladstone bag in shock. Spittle flew from his lips. “Vandals! Thieves! I will see you suffer for this crime, the both of you. Age is no excuse. I offer no second chances.”
I straightened my spine and stepped down off the platform toward him. Wu stayed behind me.
“Bold charges coming from the mouth of a faker and poisoner. But lying is the least of your vices. Have you been playing God too, Pops Spooner? You experimented on McTroy.”
“I saved his life.” The surgeon was baffled by my accusation.
“Saved it so Gavin Earl might hurt him more.”
Pops shook his finger at me. “But I saved him regardless. He’d be dead if I hadn’t.”
“He wouldn’t have been shot at all if not for your gang,” Wu shouted.
“Boy, you best learn to respect your betters,” he said.
“You are his elder, but no better,” I said. “Wu is ten times the man you’ll ever be.”
Pops surveyed the destruction of his medical props, where they lay scattered off the back end of the wagon. He shuffled through the wreckage of shattered glass, spilled rum, and boot-trampled herbs, shaking his owlish head. “This all costs money! Do you know how mean a man gets when you take money from his pocket?”
“What about when you sell him impotent potions? Quackery? You defrauded people.”
“They had a choice. Every one of them could’ve walked away. I took no coin that wasn’t offered to me freely. I sold hope to the hopeless. Who can say what benefit my cures had?”
“I can. They had none,” I said.
Pops removed his glasses and polished them with a soiled handkerchief. “You will pay for ruining my wagon. Oh, yes. Since you have no inclination to give me any gold, I will take my restitution in another form.” Pops set his hands on his hips and smirked. His teeth were jagged, and as multicolored as flint corn. “I demand the punishment of your flesh.” He giggled and wagged his tongue at us. “It might be worth my loss of stock to watch you twist in agony.”
I knew then that Pops had enjoyed Earl’s whipping of McTroy. There was a sickness that ran deep into the roots of this so-called medical man. Pain entertained him.
“Doc Spooner,” I said, “you carry no weapon. I think it would be unwise of you to engage in a physical battle with me and Yong Wu. We don’t wish to hurt you. Any damage we did to your wagon occurred during our search for the nature of the elixir you injected into McTroy. We’re trying to save our friend. Cooperate with us, and we will tell the law to spare you when the time comes for your gang to answer for their depravity.”
“The law?” Pops laughed. “Oh, you are far from home, Dr Hardy. There’s no law here.”
I had hoped that my warning might have swayed him.
“There is law in Raton. And where there are no lawmen, there are good people who stand against men like you. Now step aside, and let us pass. Wu, grab the barrel.”
“That’s my rum!”
“Not anymore it isn’t.”
Wu placed the lid on top of the barrel and hammered it with his boot heel. He hugged the barrel to his chest and fell in line with me. Pops still blocked our way. I swung my cane out in front of me.
“Pops, this is my last warning. You won’t be able to stop us from leaving.”
“I don’t need to stop you,” Pops propped his aging backside against the wagon’s frame. He hooked his spectacles around his ears and grinned at us. There was a crack in the left lens that split our view of his eyeball. It made him look like he had three eyes embedded in his face. “Because Billy will,” Pops said. “Nail ’em, Billy. Nail ’em both good.”
Coming in from the blizzard, Billy the Kid carried a pistol in one hand, a rifle in the other, and a black bullet hole cratering the center of his forehead. He walked unsteadily, dropping his feet as if he were wearing iron boots. His stare pegged us, but his left eye kept rolling up into his skull. It was like part of him wanted to check and see if he had any brains left. There must not have been much. I’d seen a good portion blown out onto the snowy trail hours earlier: a steaming spray of hot red soup swimming with gray lumps and gritty chips of cranium.
“Draw me down, dare dogs. I’ll cur you ’fore the hour that kills,” Billy said.
Instead of emitting a menacing growl, or a silence that chills the marrow of men’s bones, Billy burped loudly. His slack mouth hung open. Spittle, like a broken kite string, floated off his lower lip, vibrating sympathetically in the wind-strewn cavern.
“You are the house in Billy Kid’s town. Know it,” he said. Adding, in a whisper as cryptic as it was disturbing, “Me show yellow.”
The rolling eye returned, bloodshot. The spittle thrummed but did not break. He raised his pistol, pointing it with alarming accuracy at my face. I don’t know if resurrected Billy was more dangerous now than he had been before, but it occurred to me in that very instant what we were dealing with was likely the twice resurrected and authentic outlaw, William H Bonney, Kid Antrim, born Henry McCarty Jr in New York City, baptized in Manhattan, and killed in Lincoln County, New Mexico, by Sheriff Pat Garrett, his former friend, in 1881. Billy scratched the bloody, matted, sandy mop of hair under his sombrero with the hammer of his Winchester ’73.
“Now Billy,” I said. “Be reasonable. Pops has been using you. You’re an experiment.”
“He won’t hear your lies, Hardy. Billy knows his friends,” Pops said.
Billy began singing, “Darling, I am growing old, Silver threads among the gold, Shine upon my brow today; Life is fading fast awaaay…”
“What do you hope to accomplish by killing the two of us?” I asked Pops.
“Oh, nothing. But it sure will feel good. I might bring you two back with my elixir. Put you to work on the medicine wagon. I could always use extra hands to post my advertisements.”
“Is Billy an automaton? Does he understand anything?”
“The flesh draws!” Billy shouted. He cocked the hammer of his Colt.
“Billy understands just fine. He knows without me he’d be wormfood in a graveyard. This way he’s having fun times. McTroy set him back with that head shot. But give him time.”
The gunfighter sang out of tune, “Never, never winter’s frost and chill; Summer warmth is in them still… Silver threads among the gooooooooold…”
“No head shots, Billy. Hit ’em in the belly. Let’s watch these fools bleed,” Pops said.
Billy lowered his aim.
I felt as vulnerable as if I had been stripped naked. How could I stop a bullet with a stick? I had no doubt I would soon be lying on the cold floor of the niche with my life force leaking out of me… then darkness descending like a cloud of flies… next, the sting of Pops’ needle piercing the base of my neck. My only concern was getting Yong Wu out of this predicament. If I rushed Billy, that might cause a surprise big enough for Wu to dash around the wagon’s other side and run for the lodge. It is hard to fight one’s animal instincts for survival. My feet felt cemented.
“Billy,” I said. “Would you rather fight like gentlemen of old?”
I drew the sword secreted inside my walking stick. The blade was razor sharp. I slashed the air between us. Billy’s eyes followed the distracting motion, but his weapon never wavered.
“Lurp?” he said.
At least that’s what I thought I heard. Confusion contorted Billy’s face. His body lifted up off the ground, reaching so high that the ceiling of the alcove dented his sombrero. He fired his pistol wildly. Then he fired his rifle before dropping it. Bullets ricocheted around the enclosure.
Billy’s boots kicked helplessly in the air.
A high-pitched whistle drowned out his screams. A claw burst through his chest. Warmth splashed me. It was as if Billy had dived into a summer pond. Everything was suddenly wet. I turned to see Wu, who was likewise splattered. He wore a slick red mask of Billy’s blood.
“The Beast! Get under the wagon! Now, Wu, crawl! Crawl!”
Pops stood shaking and awestruck. The color drained from him.
The Beast opened its claw. Billy’s ribs cracked apart. Blood gushed from the Kid’s mouth. He was still screaming – screaming and firing his gun spasmodically – when the Beast reached around with its elongated arm, knocked the weapon from his grip, and sliced his face off. The skin landed in one piece at Pops’ feet. It made a horrible wet, smacking sound. Pops jabbered to himself. Kneeling in the broken glass from his bottles, he groped for his Gladstone bag – he fumbled it open, rising up again unsteadily, holding a scalpel in his tremulous fist.