The Beast of Nightfall Lodge

by SA Sidor

  There were gnawed bones.

  I did not want to look in case they had once been people.

  McTroy put Claude on the cot.

  Claude coughed. “Whiskey,” he said. “In my bag. I need it.”

  McTroy loosened the drawstring, uncorked the bottle he found. He passed it to Claude.

  Claude upended the whiskey, spilling liquor. After several swallows, he slowed and nuzzled the glass bottle against his cheek. Evangeline opened the trunk. It split apart into two equal compartments, each containing drawers. She pulled them out, one by one. I heard her quick intake of breath, a suppressed exclamation of surprise. She returned with a change of clothes.

  “The bleeding won’t stop,” I said. I took my hands from Claude’s back. The sledge’s blanket had soaked through. I replaced it with the cot blanket. My hands were wet and slipping.

  Claude said, “Someone please roll me a cigarette.”

  “Where’s your shag and papers?” I asked, wiping my hands on my trousers.

  “In the sack where this was,” Claude said, taking another swig from his bottle.

  McTroy tossed me the sack.

  I dug out the tobacco. I pinched up some shag and started to roll.

  “Don’t really know what I’m doing here. More of a pipe and cigar man,” I said.

  “Give it to me,” Evangeline said.

  Her delicate fingers moved adroitly. She licked the paper and rolled a perfect cylinder. She put it between her lips. “Match?” she asked me.

  I struck one, and she drew at the fire.

  Then she placed the cigarette between Claude’s lips.

  He inhaled smoke. Eyes closed.

  “Sorry for knocking you off your horse,” he said to Evangeline.

  “Then why did you?”

  Claude shrugged. “Cats are curious. You smelled good.”

  His wounds leaked through the blanket. A man has only so much blood in him. He wouldn’t be awake much longer. We’d never get him to Nightfall. I wanted to be respectful. But I had a question that needed answering.

  “Ask away, Hardy. You’re itching to know what the game is.” Claude’s hooded eyes half opened. “You deserve as much. Candor, I mean. You’re an honest man, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “At least I try.”

  Claude nodded. “Thought so… I can smell them… me being a werecat. Haven’t smelled many though–” He coughed and there was blood. “I was born this way. Mother’s family is very, very old and a bit… ambiguous… she’s not like me. Viv’s all woman. Her father was a werecat. Thrown from the cathedral walls after too many ciudadanos went missing… They killed him in Mérida, forcing my grandmother and mother to flee to France.”

  He sighed. Removed the cigarette. Looked at it. He tore the soggy red part off. He spit the blood out of his mouth. His cheeks hollowed out as he sucked at the tobacco. Smoke trickled from his nose.

  “Who wounded you?” I said.

  “A fucking bear. That fat shit’s grizzly. I was on the road. Coming here to change. I can do it when I please, you know. It’s not moon-related or any bullshit like that. I saw the leader, Earl, and the fat shit. They had the giant on the ground. They were going to kill him. Frenchy-something they were saying. It was about money. I was getting closer. Then that damned bear–”

  “What happened to the bear?” McTroy asked.

  “I tore out its throat.”

  “Who was that giant man?” I said. “Why was he out there when the sledge came?”

  Claude shook his head.

  “No clue,” he said. “Earl and Trapper Dan the Hatchet Man ran off with him after I fought the grizz. There’s a hunters’ shack back there. They must know about it. Probably waited out the storm inside. They had that giant scared. Maybe they sent him to check on the bear. He didn’t have a gun. I heard the sledge and I needed help. Boy, that giant was surprised to see me.”

  Claude dropped the bottle. The glass shattered.

  “Ahhh… shit. That’s all I had.”

  “Where’s the Beast, Claude? What do you know about the Beast?” I said.

  He didn’t answer me. He still had the cigarette. Staring at the lantern, like he saw figures inside it. Dreadful figures. I touched his shoulder. “Hey, Claude… tell me about the other jaguar.”

  McTroy stepped up to the cot. “He’s dead, Hardy. We need to get out of here.”

  24

  Frenchy’s Friends

  “Where is Yong Wu?” Evangeline said.

  McTroy and I shut Claude’s eyes and wrapped his corpse in the blankets. We moved the cot to the back of the cave, tucking his drawstring bag beside him. The news of his death would damage his family enough. They didn’t need to find him naked, mauled, and gaping into the void of eternity. Whatever they knew of his feline transformations, there would be guilt at losing him.

  “McTroy, Hardy, have either of you seen Wu? He’s not here.”

  “He was here a few minutes ago,” I said.

  “Was he?” Evangeline asked. “I can’t seem to recall his presence in the cave.”

  “Did he stay on the lookout?” McTroy said. “The boy’s got sense. He wouldn’t wander.”

  We three exited Claude’s makeshift tomb.

  Wu was nowhere in the passage through the gray volcanic monuments. Outside the cave the night was fading. The sky turned from charcoal to ashen in the east. The snowy ground glowed whiter. I could see more of the trees and the road climbing up to Nightfall. The giant lay quietly on the ground, a toppled statue spattered with red paint, and missing most of an ear.

  “Wu!” I shouted. Then I noted another among our missing. “Orcus! Wu!”

  “He is nowhere,” Evangeline said as she returned from crossing the road to the sledge.

  “Neither is the dog,” I said. “I don’t like this one bit.”

  McTroy studied the tracks. The snow was a chaos of prints, both cat and human.

  “Here’s where Claude the jaguar passed after fighting the bear,” McTroy said.

  “Puddin’,” I said.

  “What’re you saying, Doc? Is your stomach growling at a time like this?”

  “Puddin’ is the grizzly’s name. Dirty Dan mentioned it after Earl kill– after he shot you.”

  “You got to be shittin’ me. Dan named his bear Puddin’?”

  Evangeline and I confirmed the ursine creature’s moniker.

  “Dan was fond of his pet. I suspect he’ll be furious that it has died,” Evangeline said.

  “Losin’ your killin’ partner tugs at the heartstrings,” McTroy said.

  He did not appear to be joking.

  “How do we know it is dead?” I said.

  Evangeline said, “Claude ripped its throat out. I think that’s how he phrased it.”

  “But what if he was wrong? A wounded grizzly? Is there anything more dangerous?”

  “The Beast for one. That black jaguar would be another. Not to mention our human hunters. I’d say this mountain is full of dangers.” Evangeline waited for my rebuttal.

  I had none.

  “Puddin’s dead,” McTroy said.

  “You’re certain?” I asked.

  “I’m lookin’ right at ’im.”

  McTroy had backtracked Claude’s jaguar prints around a pile of broken slabs that at one time or other land-slid down the mountain face. They looked like crude ancient tombstones. Plowed from the earth, jumbled, and capped with snow. On the far side of the pile, Puddin’ the Bear in his death throes had bled buckets over them. It was ghastly.

  McTroy nudged the bear with his boot.

  “Claude judged correctly,” Evangeline said. “Most of the throat is missing.”

  “Puddin’ died quickly,” I said. “The animal didn’t suffer. Blood loss is euphoric.”

  “Which is more mercy than you’ll have.”

  Dirty Dan emerged from the pines. He seemed half tree himself. With boughs
fastened to his furs and even a little cone-shaped headdress. He’d smeared pine tar on his bare skin and pressed on handfuls of fallen needles and a few unlucky pinecones. I had mistaken him for a stout evergreen tree. But this tree lumbered toward us with a murderous glare. He had a tomahawk in his right hand and an old-style flintlock blunderbuss pistol in the other.

  Odd fellow, I thought to myself. Regardless of the bear, Dan marched to his own drum.

  “Ho, there, Dirty D,” McTroy said. “We didn’t kill your friend.”

  “You kicked him. I saw you do it.”

  “He is dead, Dan. I don’t think he cares.” McTroy meant this as a comfort.

  “I’m killing the lady first. Then the schoolteacher. Then I’m gonna kill you for good, McTroy.” Dirty Dan pointed the blunderbuss at Evangeline. “I loaded this with buckshot and rusty nails. Your pretty face won’t be pretty after I’m through.” He sneered. His teeth were like mollusk shells. I smelled his breath at ten paces. But I could not stand his gross inaccuracies.

  “I am no schoolteacher,” I said. “I’ll have you know I am an Egyptologist, you buffoon.”

  “Doc, does it matter?” McTroy asked.

  “Yes, it does!”

  “Quiet yourself, teacher. I always hated teachers.” Dan swung the blunderbuss at me.

  “For Godsake, perhaps that’s because you failed to pay attention,” I said.

  “To what?”

  McTroy reversed his rifle and struck Dan squarely in the face, breaking his nose. Dan stumbled. Fired the blunderbuss. My shoulder moved as if I’d been shoved rudely. I felt a stinging like hornets and saw blood seeping through the holes peppering the sleeve of my coat.

  “Ahh,” I said. “I am shot.”

  McTroy hit Dan again – a quick chop under the chin – and the evergreen-disguised trapper flopped. McTroy kicked the flintlock pistol away from his hand. He bent and took the tomahawk. Kneeling at Dan’s side, he raised the war ax to cleave his skull.

  “McTroy! Stop! Do not kill him,” I said.

  Evangeline cautiously approached the bounty man. He kept the tomahawk overhead.

  “Rex? He is no threat. Let’s bind him before he wakes,” she said.

  “The stars! I am made for the stars!” McTroy blinked rapidly. His arms trembled. But still he did not lower the tomahawk. “I kill and I feed. I eat. I will survive this. Who is here? Why? Let me go to the stars.”

  I sat clumsily on the stone slabs. I was feeling lightheaded, foggy. My arm burned, and my mitten was full of blood. “He is having a conversation, I believe. McTroy is more than one entity. He is beyond himself. He is many things right now.”

  “I am alone. But not alone,” he said. “I want to be one. Not these who fight themselves.”

  “Rex, give me the tomahawk.” Evangeline moved so he might see her.

  He braced a hand on Dan’s bulky chest. Something in him was about to butcher Dan.

  “Kill him, it says. But I am for the stars bound. In the desert, I dream. In the mountains… I drown… yet I wither. When will I be whole? For the stars I should be,” he said. “Not here.”

  Evangeline took the tomahawk from McTroy.

  “You saved us again,” she said.

  “We will not kill him today,” McTroy said.

  “That’s enough. Both of you get away from him,” Gavin Earl said.

  He had Wu. Had him locked in a chokehold. A pistol pointed to his head.

  McTroy was kneeling in the snow. Arms hanging. Face blank.

  He never looked at Earl.

  “Get him up. You, Egyptologist, come along. We’re going to the shack,” Earl said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m cold and tired. And I need to figure out who’s who on this rock.”

  Evangeline helped McTroy to his feet.

  I joined them. Holding each other up, we walked.

  “What about him?” Evangeline pushed her chin in the direction of Dirty Dan.

  “Is he dead?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Then I guess he’ll wake up with a goddamn headache. Now move,” Earl said.

  The shack wasn’t big, more shed than shack. Rough pine logs and a stovepipe chimney. We couldn’t all fit inside. Gavin Earl stayed in the doorway, on the other side of the threshold. He pushed Wu at Evangeline. There were two small windows without glass. The shutters were open to let light in. The air turned blue now, and you could see things that were hidden a while ago.

  “How do you know Frenchy?” Earl asked.

  He hadn’t slept. He looked older than he had a day ago. His eyes were red like he was scared to blink. I wouldn’t say he was panicked, but his confidence had taken a blow or two during the night. It made him more reckless. Fidgety. I thought he might kill us right there in the shack. Group us up and BANG BANG! It wouldn’t have been hard. McTroy walked like he was asleep. Wu was terrified. I am no fighter. Only Evangeline posed a problem. Earl didn’t know it, but she was the one he needed to worry about the most. Did she have her hammerless pistol?

  “We don’t know anyone named Frenchy,” she said.

  “You’re lying. I don’t have time for liars. The giant told me everything.”

  “We didn’t know the giant. We only saw him die.”

  Earl’s eyebrows arched. He hadn’t seen the giant’s body lying outside the cave. It was behind the rock pile. I tried to figure out just what he knew and what he didn’t. I couldn’t.

  “Who killed the giant?” he said. “Was it McTroy or Ole Dirty?”

  “Neither. He was killed by a black jaguar,” I said. I watched to see how Earl reacted.

  “The spotted cat?” he said.

  “No,” I said. “All black.”

  “So, there’re two of them?” He scratched his jaw with the knuckles of his black-gloved hand, the one missing fingers.

  “The spotted jaguar is dead,” Evangeline said. “Puddin’ killed it. They inflicted mortal wounds on each other. They’re both dead. Listen, we don’t know what’s going on here. But if we work together, we might live. Sitting here in this shack is stupid. The Beast is going–”

  “The Beast is the one thing I do know about. Lie to me again, I’ll shoot the boy.” He pointed at Wu with the barrel of his gun. “I won’t hear any more Beast talk from you all.”

  McTroy slumped against the wall of the cabin. He would’ve hit the ground if I didn’t get underneath him and pin him to the logs.

  “What’s wrong with Rex?” Earl asked. His eyes glinted with delight.

  “Pops’ elixir,” I said. “He isn’t the same since then.”

  Earl smiled. “Death’s a bitch. She likes to gnaw on you when she gets hungry. Are you folks hungry? Because I’m starving. Last night during that blizzard, I got to thinking I might shoot that bear myself and slice off a couple of nice big, juicy steaks. Roast them over a hot fire. Just to hear that fat drip and sizzle. What I wouldn’t do for chicken leg. Hey, China Boy, you got legs like a chicken?”

  Earl laughed and licked his dry lips.

  “I know what you said, but the Beast is what we’re here for,” Evangeline said.

  “Wrong! Gold is what I’m here for, Miss Waterston. The Beast is a fraud. A con, a hoax. Frenchy’s cut you in on the deal. I know he has. And Frenchy and all of Frenchy’s friends are going to Hell. I’m sending them there personally. If that cat hadn’t killed the giant I was going to put a bullet in his gut and let the wolves take him home. Something took my horse and Dan’s pack mule during the night. They didn’t even make a sound. It was like they were snatched up in the sky. Wolves, Dan said. But I don’t think he believed it. No sign of blood. We didn’t hear a pack yelp or howl. That’s why I sent the giant out to look for Dan’s bear. Wildcats or wolves, I figured a big catch needs big bait. Something was going to eat that tall sonofabitch, I reckoned. Now you can wear the suit, Doc. But nobody’s going to mistake you for a Beast? Are they now?”


  Earl laughed again.

  “We don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. “Who is Frenchy?”

  “Oh, sure you do. It’s like Frenchy planned it. His giant friend goes running around the woods. Too far for anyone to take a decent shot. He blows that skinny brass whistle and makes some curious tracks. Then one of you claims to have plugged him and say he fell in a crevasse. The others swear to have witnessed it. Old Oscar pays the shooter in gold. When you get far enough away from Raton, you split it up. It’s a good plan. I’ll grant you that. Hell, I might’ve joined in with you. Only I wasn’t invited in on the game. Now your Beast is dead. So, it looks like Dr Hardy is the new Beast. Or maybe McTroy. Say, he’d be perfect. He’s died once already. Let’s try the costume on him and see if it fits. I always told Rex he should join the damn circus.”

  Evangeline and I exchanged glances. Earl sounded as if he’d gone mad in the woods overnight. But some of what he told us fit together. He went around the cabin, stopping to poke his pistol in one of the windows. He was knocking up against the logs. Carrying a heavy object that scraped and thumped along the outer log wall. Back in the doorway, he dragged the object out from under a moldy canvas. Antlers. The rack was sticking out of a headpiece. He reached down and hauled up a long-faced, sad, bulbous buffalo head. He tossed it at me.

  “Put that on McTroy,” he said.

  “He’s barely awake.”

  Earl fired a bullet into the log above my head.

  I looked inside the buffalo head. It wasn’t really a buffalo head. Even I could see it had been shrunk some. The inside was cleaned out and smelled of sweat and hair oil. The antlers were not the bison type, but likely came from an elk or a mule deer. There was no skull inside the skin. So it was much lighter than it looked. The inner top was a sturdy helmet with leather straps and a chin buckle. The rest was a mask made from buffalo hide. It had changes to the outside to give it a weirder, more fearsome aspect. The eye cutouts were set high and close together, to fit a man-sized face. The teeth glued into the widened mouth, in a hideous rictus, came from a big breed of dog or maybe even a wolf. While still propping up McTroy I fitted the mask over his head. He moaned in the dark.