Hellfire

by Jeff Provine

  Ozzie then glanced down at the bottle still in her hand.

  Both of his eyes opened wide in realization. Kemp closed them again and said, “I can fight it.”

  “Nonsense,” Ozzie told him. “Just let the medicine do its work. You should start to feel faint in just a minute or two, and then it’ll all be over.”

  Kemp’s voice became slow. “All right.”

  Ozzie stood up and capped the bottle to ensure no one else could smell it. Jim stood at the foot of Kemp’s bed, watching with squinted eyes.

  Ozzie fought not to grimace. Jim had watched laudanum administered more than a hundred times. She doubted she had fooled him.

  “Jim!” she called. “I, um, in all of the sudden hubbub with the marshal and his men, I completely forgot to get you that towel for the hallway. I’ll stay with the patient if you want to go get one and finish up.”

  Jim stood still a moment.

  “Jim?”

  “All right, Miss Ozzie,” he said softly. He turned around and headed that way.

  “Actually!” Ozzie called. “I’ll come with you. Two workers makes half the time!”

  She forced a giggle. Jim looked back over his shoulder with puzzled eyes. She wondered if it were too much, but decided what was already done was done.

  Ozzie hurried after Jim, urging him out of the room. They both gave a wide berth to the huge man in the brown coat and hat. He reeked of garbage. The dark lenses in his mask followed them as they went.

  The hallway was deafening with the shouts and screams of patients. Some were pounding their doors with their arms. Others were slapping their bedpans against the walls to make loud clangs. Ozzie hated to think what the shape of the patients would be once the rail agents were gone at last.

  Jim put his hands over his ears.

  “Are you all right?” Ozzie asked.

  He shook his head. “There’s something ain’t right with this whole business.”

  Her ears perked amid the noise. “You think so, too?”

  “Yeah, and I…,” Jim began, but he was interrupted as the door to Flipp’s room burst open.

  Blood poured off the patients’ hands, where he must have scraped off a significant amount of flesh as he managed to escape his manacles. Red stains ran all over this gown, leaving blotches on his chest and striped drips down from the waist. His eyes were wide, practically rolling in his head as he looked in every direction. Then they latched onto Jim’s mop leaning against the wall.

  He and Jim both dove for the mop at the same time. Flipp was closer, and he got a bloody hand around it before the orderly could. He pulled it up and swung it out, sending Jim diving backward to keep from getting hit. Flipp let out a shrill cry and ran down the hallway toward the entry.

  “Oh no,” was all Ozzie could say. She took off after him, dropping the bottle of bitters as she went.

  Flipp was quick and dashed into the entry hall where Dr. Sims stood with Ticks and the short hunchback at the front desk. There, he skidded to a stop.

  Ozzie had to scamper around him not to run into his back. She came to a stop by bumping into the wall near the surgery ward entrance.

  Flipp screamed and pointing at Ticks. “You!”

  “Mr. Flipp!” Dr. Sims said, holding up his hands toward the patient. “Calm down!”

  “I can’t! Not with them here!” Flipp shouted. “He brought the monsters!”

  “There are no monsters!” Sims told him. “This man brought you here because you need help.”

  Flipp shook his head from side to side. “There are too monsters! I’ll show you!”

  Flipp charged the short hunchback, bringing down the mop handle squarely onto the man’s head. It landed with a clang.

  “Clang?” Ozzie mumbled. He must have been wearing a helmet under his broad-rimmed hat.

  The hunchback ducked to the side and grabbed the handle. He and Flipp tugged back and forth with it.

  “Enough of this!” Ticks shouted.

  Ozzie watched as if it happened in a dream. With one hand, Ticks threw back his long black coat. With his other, he drew a Colt revolver from across his belt. It let off a loud crack as sparks leaped from the barrel.

  Flipp let go of the mop and hit the floor.

  Ozzie’s ears rang. She heard a scream, and it was only after that she realized it was her own.

  She ran to his side and fell to her knees. More of his blood poured out from his torso, staining the rest of his white gown. She found the wound and pressed her hand against it to keep more blood from spilling. He fought against her, but she held him. There was more yelling around her, but she couldn’t hear words over the roaring in her ears.

  “Mr. Flipp,” she said. “Don’t give up. It’s just a wound. We’re going to get you into the surgery ward, and you’ll be just fine.”

  Flipp groaned in her lap.

  “Talk to me, Mr. Flipp. Rodney.”

  He closed his eyes.

  Hot tears poured down Ozzie’s cheeks. She had worked for months as a nurse, she had talked with patients and cleaned them, giving them everything she had, but now there wasn’t anything she could do. She broke and did something she hadn’t done in a long time. She prayed.

  “Please,” she said aloud. “Please, don’t let him die like this.”

  It was a prayer of desperation, but it filled her with a light feeling like she hadn’t known since she was a girl.

  Flipp didn’t move, but he breathed steadily. She somehow knew she had to talk to him, the real man beneath.

  “Zane,” she said seriously. “Listen to me, Zane.”

  He opened his eyes and asked weakly, “Zane?”

  “You work on living through this, Zane,” she said. “We’re going to get you better and get you out of here.”

  “What about…?” His weak voice he trailed off.

  He didn’t have to say it. Ozzie narrowed her eyes. “We’re going to take care of the monsters, too.”

  Mike was suddenly there, picking Flipp up from the floor. Ozzie sat backward and gulped air. Tears were still streaming.

  “Nurse Jacey,” she heard a voice call.

  She looked up to find Dr. Sims.

  “Get yourself cleaned up,” he told her. “I’ll have Rodgers and Eastman helping me with Mr. Flipp.”

  Ozzie stared at him. “His name is Zane Weatherford.”

  Sims frowned.

  She stood up and held her dress. It was sticky with blood. “The marshal lied when he brought him to us. They’re covering up something monstrous.”

  His frown deepened. “Perhaps you should take a leave of absence, nurse.”

  Ozzie sighed. Perhaps she should. She looked over her shoulder back down the hallway. “What about Nathan?”

  She couldn’t see the marshal and his henchmen. They must have already gone into Kemp’s room to collect him. The only person in the hallway was Jim, standing with a hand against the wall.

  He had picked up the laudanum bottle and sniffed it. Ozzie supposed she couldn’t blame him for wanting a little sedative after being attacked like that.

  She gasped as she remembered. It wasn’t a sedative at all. If Jim found out, Kemp was as good as dead.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mud squished up around Tom Husk’s formerly black boots. He was glad he hadn’t bothered to shine them this morning. His thought had been that locals wouldn’t trust a man with too-shined boots. Along that logic, locals would invite him home to dinner, judging by his state now.

  It had already been a long day, up before dawn to catch the first westbound train that had come across the newly repaired tracks at Bayou Bartholomew, pounding the wooden sidewalks of Shreveport to find some answers, and now hiking in the woods to find a monster. If a fortune-teller had read his cards this way yesterday, he would have laughed and asked for his money back.

  A branch whacked him in the face.

  “Sorry about that!” the tall man with the long rifle called back to him. “Good enough of a reminder to
keep your eyes open, though.”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Husk said, dusting leaves off himself with his lanky arms. “By the way, my name’s Tom Husk.”

  They had been marching for almost an hour in the mucky woods. Pike, the man in the alligator coat led them, a column of volunteer soldiers in his informal army. Husk had been swept up with them from the lumberyard. He patted his coat pocket with the revolver in it every few minutes to feel its reassuring mass.

  The shorter man with the bushy eyebrows looked back at him. “Husk, eh? What brings you to these parts?”

  Husk sniffed the spicy bayou air. “Trying to get some answers. There was another train wreck up near Bastrop yesterday.”

  The two men exchanged glances. The tall one turned back to the trail.

  Eyebrows cleared his throat. “Was there a monster there, too?”

  “One man said so. Rail agents came and took him away for questioning.”

  “Humph. Maybe they’ll listen this time. Rail agent around these parts has been telling us we’re all idiots mistaking a monkey for a real life monster.”

  Husk scratched his chin. “You’ve seen it?”

  “Nah, but Tex Henderson says he did, and I’ve never known that man to lie about anything.”

  “He’s an old-timer living out here by himself,” the man with the long rifle said without turning around. “He probably got his mind confused.”

  Husk cocked an eyebrow at him even though he couldn’t see it. “You don’t believe in the monster?”

  “I don’t know if I’d call it a monster. Gave up calling things monsters back when I was a boy. Whatever it is, it’s something that’s wrecked up O’Reilly’s place. I don’t want it doing the same to my homestead up north.”

  “It’s done a lot of damage around here?”

  “More than any bear or monkey would,” the shorter man said. “You got your answers yet?”

  “Not until I see it for myself,” Husk told him.

  The shorter man shook his head as he lumbered over a fallen log. “From what I’ve heard, you don’t want to see it. Most everybody who’s come across it had to change their trousers.”

  Husk looked down at his suit. A sleeve was torn from where it had caught on a thorny bush, and the mud-stains had gone beyond the boot onto his pants legs. His boots themselves had been made for city walking, and he could already feel the few rocks in the squelchy soil through his soles. A change didn’t sound too bad.

  “I’m ready for anything,” he assured them.

  The man with the long-rifle turned. “But why? It’s ain’t your fight, Bastrop.”

  Husk shrugged again. “Like you said, I wouldn’t want this thing, whatever it is, tearing up my own place. If it were, I’d want some help. I best help out here if I’m expecting the same kind of treatment.”

  He looked at Husk a moment, chewing something in his mouth. “Name’s Earl. Earl Thompkins.”

  Husk gave him a nod. He wanted to smirk, but these didn’t seem much like smiling men.

  “I’m Jesse Hudson,” the shorter man said. “I fish the river most of the time, but I guess we have something bigger to catch today.”

  Husk nodded again. “There must be three dozen boys out here. Whatever it is, we should be able to take it down pretty quick.”

  Thompkins grunted. “We’ll see.”

  “Pike’s got it all under control,” Hudson said.

  “Pike,” Husk repeated. “That the man in the alligator-skin coat?”

  Hudson nodded. “Yep, Vincent Pike. Hunts professionally. I run across him on the bayous every once in a while. If there’s anybody who can track down a predator, it’s Pike. He picked up its trail the day before yesterday and kept after it while word got out about our little meeting.”

  “Much to the mayor’s chagrin,” Husk mumbled. He wanted desperately to dig his notebook out of his top pocket of his jacket and jot down names, but he doubted the other men would appreciate journalism on the trail. This was going to make a good article.

  “The mayor’s been on the Rail Agency’s side since the crash,” Hudson said. “Sheriff, too. No matter the complaints, it’s always, ‘The Rail Agency’s handling it.’”

  “Not much to show for it,” Thompkins muttered.

  “Quiet down back there!” the next man up called. He wore a hunting cap and carried a boar spear. It looked like homemade iron pounded out without much more heat than a stove could offer. “Pike’s picked up fresh tracks.”

  Husk bit his tongue. He drew his revolver and checked the eight shots he had loaded. His fingers shook as he walked.

  Hudson stared at it with wide eyes and then looked up at Husk.

  Husk shrugged without a word. The nerves in his hands settled a little as he held the three pounds of iron.

  The ground became a little firmer as they climbed uphill toward a rocky bluff. Husk could see the blue sky through the rich, green canopy as the trees thinned out to a clearing. Judging from what he knew of the local map, they were above Middle Bayou, deep in logging country. The lumberjacks used the bayou to float timber into town, where men with teams of horses dragged it up the bank to dry.

  Despite the shining June sun, the patch of ground was silent like a graveyard. The air was still, as if it were holding its breath. No birds sang, and no frogs croaked. All afternoon they had trudged through a symphony of wild animal calls. Now it was deathly silent.

  “Animals have the good sense to clear out,” Husk whispered to himself.

  Hudson whacked him on the arm. His expression was bitter with his eyebrows low, telling him to be quiet.

  Husk held his arm with his free hand. He hoped it wouldn’t bruise.

  Men in front of them skneeled in the brush, each waving for the man behind him to do the same. Husk shrugged his narrow shoulders and got down, too. The few men after him at the rear tucked themselves in.

  The wind kicked up a little. Husk raised himself up to feel the cool, and then the smell hit him. It was the foul smell of rancid meat mixed with the leavings of a man with tainted bowels. There was something else, something overall flat about the smell: death.

  Husk clapped his free hand over his nose and forgot about his arm. They were downwind from something horrible just from the smell of it. All down the line of men, gasps of “phew!” rang out.

  Pike, the man in the alligator-skin coat, rose from the front of the little army and stepped quietly out into the clearing. He seemed to take courage from the foul wind. It did mean that whatever they smelled couldn’t smell them. Husk crept forward, past Thompkins, for a better look.

  A large burrow like a badger’s nest was dug out of the roots of a gnarled oak. Its leaves had all fallen off and the bark had cracking, leaving a decrepit skeleton of a tree. All around the entrance to the shadowy hole were bits of carcasses.

  Husk sneered. There were pigs, chickens, even a dog, all half-eaten. If the thing were hungry, it should’ve finished one off before moving to the next. This was just wanton gluttony, killing to kill.

  Husk’s stomach curdled, and his head swam. He had spent much of his time this morning in the tavern, eating on a plate full of biscuits and gravy. Now it threatened to come back up on him. Husk fought the nauseated feeling and swallowed.

  When his eyes cleared up again, Husk saw Pike peeking into the shadows. He didn’t get too close, and soon he trotted noiselessly back toward the crowd of men. Two men whispered with him, and he pointed for them to go around behind the tree. While they sneaked around, Pike took a freshly killed rabbit out of a leather bag. He walked back toward the hole with it, tying a long cord around its middle.

  Husk’s legs burned from sitting crouched for so long. He shifted, and a twig snapped under his feet. Hudson hit him again. He settled into a more comfortable position silently.

  Pike stopped a few feet short of the burrow. He looked into it once more and held up a hand to the men in the brush to stay where they were. The two he trusted climbed up the short slope behind the tree an
d readied hunting rifles.

  Husk had to stop himself from whistling. They were expensive guns, repeating rifles manufactured in the best gunsmith shops Lake Providence had to offer. These men took their hunting very seriously.

  Pike wrapped the cord around his gloved offhand. He clenched it, paused to take a breath, and then threw the rabbit deep into the burrow. It was a classic baiting maneuver. If the beast inside was hungry at all, it’d go after the meat. Pike could pull the cord and lure it out into the open. Husk bit his lips to ready himself for whatever came out of the darkness.

  Instead of coyly following the rabbit, the monster burst out with a deafening roar like the screaming of a hundred voices.

  It was unlike any living thing Husk had ever seen. When he was still just a worker in the print shop in ‘43, a pamphlet had come through with P.T. Barnum’s mermaid from Feejeem a horrid creature was some kind of twisted blend of fish and ape. It had been mummified, so its webbed hands were curled and its lips pulled back in a mocking grin while its eyes stared and stared. The mermaid gave him more nightmares than he wanted to admit for a grown man.

  This monster was worse. Its face sagged with tumors, leading to a low-hung jaw filled with shark’s teeth. Husk wasn’t sure if it had two eyes or twelve poking out from among the twists in its face. Horns stood out in different directions from a red mane.

  Its whole body was covered in shaggy fur, matted in places with black stains on its arms and legs. It could have looked like a bear at a distance, but this close it was clearly something unnatural. Little malformed legs and arms poked out from under the matted fur.

  Husk dropped his gun. He ducked his head and vomited out biscuits and gravy until his stomach was empty.

  He looked up again to find the army in chaos. While a few held firm, other men were cowering like Husk. Several jumped up and ran. Hudson himself stood, but Thompkin’s hand caught him around the shoulder before he could get much distance.

  Pike was backing up with his hands held out before him, as if they would have slowed down the monster that dwarfed him. He had dropped the cord with the rabbit.

  The first gunshot rang out. The monster jerked forward from the impact in its shoulder. It screeched with such a high pitch that Husk had to cover his ears. Pike dove for cover at the monster’s feet.