The Beast of Nightfall Lodge

by SA Sidor

  I’d heard that moan before. Or something very similar to it. The giant had worn this. He was the Beast we saw crossing the Copper Trail, the creature Evangeline had taken a shot at and missed. No wonder he acted as if he had trouble hearing and seeing. Cassi said she saw a brown Beast sneaking around the Silvers. That was the giant too. A circus performer. An actor playing the role of the Beast. And this Frenchy person had put him up to it.

  “Don’t forget the whistle,” Earl said.

  He threw the brass whistle on a long chain at me.

  “I’ll blow the whistle. He can’t.” I put it to my lips.

  Earl nodded. “And I’ll howl through this megaphone.” From under the canvas he produced a conical circus ringmaster’s bullhorn.

  I blew. A harsh high-pitched shriek filled the cabin.

  “Louder, louder, Dr Hardy.”

  I filled my lungs and forced my air into the whistle. The noise was piercing. Like the Beastly whistle, or close enough that it would be hard to distinguish any differences in the mountains, where rocky surfaces and their echoes altered loud noises. Evangeline and Wu covered their ears. McTroy shifted, taking some of his weight off me. Standing on his own two feet. I blew and blew until Earl waved at me to stop. He howled into the megaphone like a lovesick wolf. I’ll admit these instruments might have produced the noise we heard at Nightfall.

  Earl put down his horn. “Pops and Billy wanted to head back to the lodge. We’d lost sight of the Beast – I mean, Frenchy’s giant. The storm wiped out the tracks. So, we split up. Dan and I stayed low in the canyon. We’d go as far as the road and then circle back if we didn’t see anything. But we found the giant right here in this shack. He cried like a woman when we kicked in the door. Dan’s bear couldn’t fit, but Dan could. He had his tomahawks out. And the giant screamed, practically knocked himself out standing up so fast he hit the ceiling. Dan said he’d skin him right here if he didn’t talk. And he would have. The giant doesn’t speak much English. He’s a French Canadian too. Just like Frenchy. They met up in the circus. Now we couldn’t get the giant to explain everything, because he was pissing his drawers and he doesn’t know the words to tell us what we’re asking him. We took him out of this closet and thumped him around in the snow. ‘Frenchy made him do it. Frenchy lied to him too.’ Then Dan’s bear gets into a brawl with a spotted wildcat, and we pull back. The giant’s yelling, ‘La bête sauvage! La bête sauvage!’ He tried telling us the Beast was real. He’d seen it out in the woods. That’s why he was quitting. After the storm he was leaving for Raton. Screw Frenchy.”

  “We had no part in this,” I said. “The giant is correct. I’ve seen the Beast. The real thing, not this giant in a costume. Smoke Eel thinks that any one of us might be capable of turning into a Beast. He says that his people believe in the Beast as an actual living demon. But people under its influence lose themselves. They act as the Beast does.”

  Earl stared at me. I thought he might kill me.

  But he said, “Smoke Eel told you this? Did he write it in his little notebook?”

  I nodded. “That’s exactly what he did. I found shredded men’s clothing outside Nightfall. I thought it might belong to a man who changed into the Beast. I don’t think that now. But Smoke Eel warned me not to follow the road. He thought the Beast was one of us. But changed.”

  “Smoke Eel? He’s your expert?”

  Gavin Earl began to laugh harder than before. He reached into the cabin and snatched the beast head off McTroy. He chucked it out into the snow. He slapped me on my wounded arm, and I nearly screamed with pain. He grabbed the whistle and looped it around his neck. He leaned out of shack, blowing it. The canyon filled with echoes, like one long cry. He spit the whistle from his mouth.

  “Oh, Doc,” he said. “You’re a bigger fool than me. I can’t wait to tell Billy and Pops.”

  I didn’t inform him that he’d have to wait a while to talk to them.

  “Tell them what exactly?”

  “Smoke Eel is Frenchy. René ‘Frenchy’ LaFarque. He’s pulling the strings. Oscar’s phony Indian is a Canuck confidence-man. He dyes himself with iodine and carrot juice. Ha!”

  Earl blew the whistle again. Then he threw it at me.

  In the distance, we heard the whistle answered. Loudly, clearly. Not by an echo. It cut through the flesh until we felt it vibrating inside us. Drilling into the bone. Getting stronger and stronger until the shack rattled and a fine, woody dust rained down from the joints, like sand.

  All our heads turned toward Nightfall Lodge.

  25

  Snowmelt

  We trudged out of the shack together to go and check on Dirty Dan. He was gone. There was a big, sandy crater in the snow where he’d fallen, and tracks leading off into a deeper part of the woods at the creek bottom. The woods gave him ample cover, and the water would keep him from losing his bearings. Gavin Earl marched us back to the road, then, without a glance toward Raton, uphill toward Nightfall Lodge. He was determined to get a share of the golden bull for his troubles. He declared the Beast a con game in its entirety. Oscar was a fool blinded by his grandiosity. Earl refused to listen to my tale of talking to the Beast. I think frankly he found my credibility somewhere south of a village idiot. The chilling high-pitched whistle that had answered his call he attributed to another metal whistle like the giant’s, a spare, no doubt in the possession of Frenchy LaFarque (alias Smoke Eel). Earl didn’t worry about us as long as we kept walking, in a line, with him behind us. He holstered his pistol and lowered the brim of his hat against the glare of the morning sun. The temperature was rising. Brilliant melting ice glittered in the mountainside like cut diamonds; the frozen melt shone like veins of wet silver. Everywhere was the sound of dripping, trickling water.

  The wind had turned warmer. I loosened up my coat. My arm had stopped bleeding. I could move it, but a sizzling pain coursed through me whenever I did. Otherwise, my wound settled into a dull throbbing ache. I helped McTroy unbutton his sheepskin jacket and open his collar. He was sweating; his skin felt clammy, sickly. He remained sluggish, and though present in body, his mind drifted elsewhere. In the barrel and the desert.

  “Keep going, friend,” I said. “We’ll rest a spell when we get to the top.”

  McTroy stared straight ahead. But he walked. He’d stopped talking except for fragments that meant little to me. Picking them up and trying to make any sense was fruitless.

  “White fire,” he said, as I unknotted his scarf. “My ship is stranded. I am a prisoner.”

  “You are a free man, McTroy. The most free I have ever known.”

  “White fire in my eyes,” he replied. “I can’t see the stars.”

  “Yes, that’s only the snow melting on the road. Watch that you don’t slip on this ice.”

  But he wasn’t talking about the brightness of glinting snowmelt. I asked him to take the lead. Even though he was stunned, he was the fastest walker among us. Evangeline trailed me with Wu at her side. I overheard them talking about his turning up missing when we entered the cave. She asked him his whereabouts.

  “I went to get the rum. McTroy must have the barrel. Mr Earl was looking at the sledge, and he found me there. I couldn’t run away. He said he’d shoot me in the back if I tried.”

  “That’s not your fault,” she said.

  I turned. “Did you find the barrel?”

  “It wasn’t there.”

  “It fell out up the road, here when we started our skidding.” I glanced back and forth, ditch to ditch, but if the barrel had rolled off either side it might be under snow or between rocks. In any event, I couldn’t spot it. “What about Orcus? Did you see him, by chance?”

  Wu said he hadn’t. But he’d gone straight to the sledge. It wasn’t long after that Earl had him by the collar, sticking a gun to his neck, telling him he’d kill him if he called out for help. He asked where we were. Wu said the cave. He’d take him there. Fearing it was a trap, Earl was reluctant
to follow. He decided to take Wu back to the shack and tie him up. Keep him as a hostage, something to barter with if negotiations were to develop in the future. Before they reached the shack, Dirty Dan’s blunderbuss exploded. So they circled back and watched us.

  A black head popped up from the ditch. At first, I feared it was the panther. But it was Orcus. His ears were pointed but he was keeping low, avoiding Earl’s sightline from farther back in our marching line. He chuffed once at me. Earl likely wrote off the sound to our boots scraping.

  “There’s a good boy,” I whispered. “Glad to see you alive. You best hide from him.”

  I jerked a thumb to show I meant Earl. The sun had him blinded. All I saw was the top of his hat. His knees rising and falling as he followed in our footsteps.

  “He’s nasty,” I said. Drawing nearer to the dog’s position, I saw he was hunched over something. “What’ve you found there?” The dog eyed me and gave another friendly grunt.

  Then he took off for the woods, bounding through the snow, and soon he was only a dark shadow flitting between trees and heading for home.

  I paused, scanning the ditch.

  Here was our rum barrel. The lid was off. The head lay face-down in a small drift. The smooth back of its gray head like a wet, lumpen stone. I might’ve easily overlooked it had I not known what it was. The ragged sawed end of the stump gave it away, a wrinkly sock with a hole.

  McTroy had continued to walk on.

  I jumped into the ditch.

  “Whoa, Egypt,” Earl shouted. He fired a shot into the air.

  “I’m only recovering lost gear,” I yelled back.

  “Climb out,” Earl said. “And you better not think you can outsmart me.”

  I rolled the strange triangular head into the nearly empty barrel.

  “What big eyes you have,” I said to the severed cranium. “A little mouth. No ears.”

  I retrieved the lid from a nearby rock and slapped it down. Lifting the barrel overhead, I felt a searing jolt from my wound and blood once again drooling into my armpit. Nevertheless, I gritted my teeth and started up the side of the embankment.

  “It’s rum. A bit of spirits to warm ourselves,” I said.

  Earl pointed his pistol at me. “Stop.”

  I obliged his request. “May I set this down?” I was out of breath. My arm ached.

  He nodded, and I carefully set the barrel at my feet.

  “How do you know what that is?”

  “It’s ours. It fell off the sledge. Spiced rum. Not very much of it left, I’m afraid. It spilled over there on the rocks. Smells like a sailor’s breath. But there’s a few inches left in the keg. Worth saving, I’d say. Don’t worry, I’ll carry it.”

  “If it’s only rum, then drink some,” Earl said, suspiciously.

  The prospect of drinking the potion in which the monstrous head marinated was unthinkable. If he recognized Pops’ rum barrel, he wasn’t saying so. A barrel is just a barrel after all. And even if he did suspect I’d stolen it, he had no knowledge of the hidden additive.

  “I… It’s very early in the morning for a drink.”

  “I won’t tell your mother. You haven’t got a wife. So, drink up.”

  I swallowed dryly. “I am not a good imbiber on an empty stomach. Weak intestinal constitution. And I am famished, as you said you were too. Mountain air, I suppose. It makes a body hunger. I will have a long drinking session in front of the fire at the lodge, I promise you.”

  Earl cocked the hammer of his pistol.

  “You’ll drink it now. Or I will put you in the ditch where you found it.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Fine! Make a man drink against his will. It takes a sober man to walk up this mountain. Don’t blame me if you have to carry me.” I lifted the barrel and twisted the spigot.

  Nothing came out.

  “It’s frozen,” I said.

  “Try tilting the barrel toward your mouth. Get under it, Doctor Egypt. You’ve got it shifted the wrong way. You act as if you’re kissing a rabid fox. Think of sweet Cassi Adderly.”

  Earl shot at my feet. The bullet perforated the end of my boot.

  “Don’t play me for a fool,” he said. “I am no Dan.”

  “I’m drinking it,” I said, checking to see if my toe was still there. “What do you think I have here? Explosives? Cobras perhaps?”

  I could not force myself to drink the rum. I felt it sloshing loosely inside the barrel, circling the bottom dregs. I also felt the head tipping on its chin like a child’s spinning top, rolling around. I imagined the forehead pressed into the staves, mimicking by own.

  As I closed my eyes and prepared to fill my mouth with wretched green-slimed poison, the barrel was suddenly snatched away.

  McTroy had it.

  He put his lips to the spigot and drank, spilling rum down his grizzled, hollowed cheeks as he sucked the barrel’s liquid mysteries greedily into his belly.

  “Save some for later,” I said, as I turned off the spout.

  Gavin Earl was satisfied.

  “Rex always loved his liquor. Take up thine cross and walk, pilgrim.”

  McTroy propped the rum keg on his shoulder. He recommenced trudging.

  I waited to see any effect rescuing the head from the drift or guzzling the head-spiced rum might have inflicted upon him. His step was sprightlier. And a vague smile curled his lips.

  “You are better?”

  “I can see,” he said. The distance in his voice had vanished. He was McTroy again. “It was like a thick cloud on me before. That rum hits the curative spot.” His pace quickened.

  “I am not certain that Pops told any of his crew about the, ah…”

  “Secret ingredient?”

  I nodded. “If Pops revealed what it was that brought Billy the Kid back from the dead, then why wouldn’t they steal it? No, Pops was a cagey operator. I think Billy knew. But none of the other Silvers do. Now we are the holders of the key to revivification.”

  “It’s nothing to be happy about,” McTroy said. The sun threw spears of light over the peaks. Despite the windy knives that whittled our flesh, it was an inspiring sight to behold. We might have been Greek gods ascending Mount Olympus. Bedraggled, tested, wrapped in glory.

  “Would you rather be dead?”

  “Not my choice,” he said.

  “But if you had a choice?” I insisted.

  “I’d keep it out of my own hands. Death has rules. There’s no cheating without a price exacted in return. We shouldn’t be cooking in the Reaper’s kitchen,” he said, and then spit.

  “Don’t you mean the Beast’s kitchen?”

  Before he could respond, we spotted a rider on the road. Coming down from Nightfall in the melting path left by the sledge: a speeding horse, the rider trailing smoke. It was Oscar. He rode alone. A cigar clenched in his teeth.

  My first thought in seeing him was that he did not know the fate of Claude. Who would tell him? I was not volunteering. My second thought was what Smoke Eel had said about Oscar: he set us up to be sacrificed so that he could be more notorious for slaying the Beast. Was it true?

  “McTroy,” Oscar called out as soon as he recognized him. “Did you find my son?”

  “He’s not on the road. His tracks turned to the woods at the canyon bottom.”

  Oscar absorbed this information. None of it a lie in a strict sense.

  He said, “Claude can take care of himself. I need everyone up at Nightfall. Vivienne has taken ill. Visions grip her. She talks to the walls. Screams out the warnings of the dead in breathless unfamiliar voices. I cannot control her. She wheels through the rooms, knocking into furniture, as if she is looking for someone. Yet the dead surround her, it seems. I fear she may be lost to me. I tied her to her bed. She raves about the Beast. Did you hear the thing whistling?”

  “We did,” Earl said. “But was it really the Beast? Or is a trickster more likely.”

  “I cannot say what
the nature of it is. But Vivienne told me the Beast will come to Nightfall tonight. It will break down the doors and slaughter all who are present in the house. She predicts this emphatically. She says we must get out. Flee to Raton until the hour of the Beast passes… It enters my own house… and she tells me to run away!”

  “What do you say?” Evangeline asked. The news of Viv’s breakdown upset her. Yet I could tell she was divided in her feelings about the best course of action for us to pursue.

  “I say tonight the Beast will be mine.”

  Oscar flung the burning stub of his cigar as he inspected our exhausted group.

  “Now is no time for faltering. Where is the sledge? Crashed? What of my Morgan? Never mind. I can buy new horses. I will send Hodgson down here with the carriage. The road is open enough. We must prepare.” He passed a canteen to Evangeline. She and Wu drank and gave it to me next. A flask from inside his coat he tossed to Earl. “Where are the woodsman and his bear?”

  “The bear died. Natural causes.” Earl nipped at the flask. “Dan’s run off, inconsolable.”

  “Grief is a funny thing,” Oscar said. “I’ve never seen the point of it.”

  I cringed at his callousness.

  How hard will your heart turn when you hear news of your son? I wondered.

  Oscar jerked his horse around and spurred it toward Nightfall. His dark coattails flapping and the hoofbeats’ muffled drumming leaving us… leaving me feeling more barren than before. I like to think I am no coward. I suppose most men do. But the nightly promise of the Beast did nothing to make me walk any faster. Wu joined arm in arm with Evangeline. Earl offered his flask to McTroy. When McTroy extended his hand, Earl pulled the flask away and laughed.