Deadman's Road

by Joe R. Lansdale

  "Jesus," said the deputy.

  "Jesus won't help a bit," Jebidiah said.

  "It's Gimet, ain't it? He…. it…. really is dead," the deputy said.

  "Undead," Jebidiah said. "I believe he's toying with us. Waiting for when he plans to strike."

  "Strike?" Bill said. "Why?"

  "Because that is his purpose," Jebidiah said, "as it is mine to strike back. Gird your loins, men, you will soon be fighting for your life."

  "How about we just ride like hell?" Bill said.

  In that moment, Jebidiah's words became prophetic. The thing was gone from the grave stone. Shadows had gathered at the edge of the woods, balled up, become solid, and when the shadows leaped from the even darker shadows of the trees, it was the shape of the thing they had seen on the stone, cool blue in the moonlight, a disaster of

  a face, and the teeth…. They were long and sharp. Gimet leaped in such a way that his back foot hit the rear of Jebidiah's animal, allowing him to spring over the deputy's horse, to land hard and heavy on Bill. Bill let out a howl and was knocked off his mount. When he hit the road, his hat flying, Gimet grabbed him by his bushy head of straw-colored hair and dragged him off as easily as if he were

  a kitten. Gimet went into the trees, tugging Bill after him. Gimet blended with the darkness there. The last of Bill was a scream, the raising of his cuffed hands, the cuffs catching the moonlight for a quick blink of silver, then there was a rustle of leaves and a slapping of branches, and Bill was gone.

  "My God," the deputy said. "My God. Did you see that thing?"

  Jebidiah dismounted, moved to the edge of the road, leading his horse, his gun drawn. The deputy did not dismount. He pulled his pistol and held it, his hands trembling. "Did you see that?" he said again, and again.

  "My eyes are as good as your own," Jebidiah said. "I saw it. We'll have to go in and get him."

  "Get him?" the deputy said. "Why in the name of everything that's holy would we do that? Why would we want to be near that thing? He's probably done what he's done already…. Damn, Reverend. Bill, he's a killer. This is just as good as I might want. I say while the old boy is doing whatever he's doing to that bastard, we ride like the goddamn wind, get on out on the far end of this road where it forks. Gimet is supposed to be only able to go on this stretch, ain't he?"

  "That's what Old Timer said. You do as you want. I'm going in after him."

  "Why? You don't even know him."

  "It's not about him," Jebidiah said.

  "Ah, hell. I ain't gonna be shamed." The deputy swung down from his horse, pointed at the place where Gimet had disappeared with Bill. "Can we get the horses through there?"

  "Think we will have to go around a bit. I discern a path over there."

  "Discern?"

  "Recognize. Come on, time is wasting."

  They went back up the road a pace, found a trail that led through the trees. The moon was strong now as all the clouds that had covered it had rolled away like wind blown pollen. The air smelled fresh, but as they moved forward, that changed. There was a stench in the air, a putrid smell both sweet and sour, and it floated up and spoiled the freshness.

  "Something dead," the deputy said.

  "Something long dead," Jebidiah said.

  Finally the brush grew so thick they had to tie the horses, leave them. They pushed their way through briars and limbs.

  "There ain't no path," the deputy said. "You don't know he come through this way."

  Jebidiah reached out and plucked a piece of cloth from a limb, held it up so that the moon dropped rays on it. "This is part of Bill's shirt. Am I right?"

  The deputy nodded. "But how could Gimet get through here? How could he get Bill through here?"

  "What we pursue has little interest in the things that bother man. Limbs, briars. It's nothing to the living dead."

  They went on for a while. Vines got in their way. The vines were wet. They were long thick vines, and sticky, and finally they realized they were not vines at all, but guts, strewn about and draped like decorations.

  "Fresh," the deputy said. "Bill, I reckon."

  "You reckon right," Jebidiah said.

  They pushed on a little farther, and the trail widened, making the going easier. They found more pieces of Bill as they went along. The stomach. Fingers. Pants with one leg in them. A heart, which looked as if it has been bitten into and sucked on. Jebidiah was curious enough to pick it up and examine it. Finished, he tossed it in the dirt, wiped his hands on Bill's pants, the one with the leg still in it, said, "Gimet just saved you a lot of bother and the State of Texas the trouble of a hanging."

  "Heavens," the deputy said, watching Jebidiah wipe blood on the leg-filled pants.

  Jebidiah looked up at the deputy. "He won't mind I get blood on his pants," Jebidiah said. "He's got more important things to worry about, like dancing in the fires of hell. And by the way, yonder sports his head."

  Jebidiah pointed. The deputy looked. Bill's head had been pushed onto a broken limb of a tree, the sharp end of the limb being forced through the rear of the skull and out the left eye. The spinal cord dangled from the back of the head like a bell rope.

  The deputy puked in the bushes. "Oh, God. I don't want no more of this."

  "Go back. I won't think the less of you, cause I don't think that much of you to begin with. Take his head for evidence and ride on, just leave me my horse."

  The deputy adjusted his hat. "Don't need the head…. And if it comes to it, you'll be glad I'm here. I ain't no weak sister."

  "Don't talk me to death on the matter. Show me what you got, boy."

  The trail was slick with Bill's blood. They went along it and up a rise, guns drawn. At the top of the hill they saw a field, grown up, and not far away, a sagging shack with a fallen down chimney.

  They went that direction, came to the shack's door. Jebidiah kicked it with the toe of his boot and it sagged open. Once inside, Jebidiah struck a match and waved it about. Nothing but cobwebs and dust.

  "Must have been Gimet's place," Jebidiah said. Jebidiah moved the match before him until he found a lantern full of coal oil. He lit it and placed the lantern on the table.

  "Should we do that?" the deputy asked. "Have a light. Won't he find us?"

  "In case you have forgotten, that's the idea."

  Out the back window, which had long lost its grease paper covering, they could see tombstones and wooden crosses in the distance. "Another view of the graveyard," Jebidiah said. "That would be where the girl's mother killed herself."

  No sooner had Jebidiah said that, then he saw a shadowy shape move on the hill, flitting between stones and crosses. The shape moved quickly and awkwardly.

  "Move to the center of the room," Jebidiah said.

  The deputy did as he was told, and Jebidiah moved the lamp there as well. He sat it in the center of the floor, found a bench and dragged it next to the lantern. Then he reached in his coat pocket and took out the bible. He dropped to one knee and held the bible close to the lantern light and tore out certain pages. He wadded them up, and began placing them all around the bench on the floor, placing the crumpled pages about six feet out from the bench and in a circle with each wad two feet apart.

  The deputy said nothing. He sat on the bench and watched Jebidiah's curious work. Jebidiah sat on the bench beside the deputy, rested one of his pistols on his knee. "You got a .44, don't you?"

  "Yeah. I got a converted cartridge pistol, just like you."

  "Give me your revolver."

  The deputy complied.

  Jebidiah opened the cylinders and let the bullets fall out on the floor.

  "What in hell are you doing?"

  Jebidiah didn't answer. He dug into his gun belt and came up with six silver-tipped bullets, loaded the weapon and gave it back to the deputy.

  "Silver," Jebidiah said. "Sometimes it wards off evil."

  "Sometimes?"

  "Be quiet now. And wait."

  "I feel like a staked goat," the
deputy said.

  After a while, Jebidiah rose from the bench and looked out the window. Then he sat down promptly and blew out the lantern.

  Somewhere in the distance a night bird called. Crickets sawed and a large frog bleated. They sat there on the bench, near each other, facing in opposite directions, their silver-loaded pistols on their knees. Neither spoke.

  Suddenly the bird ceased to call and the crickets went silent, and no more was heard from the frog. Jebidiah whispered to the deputy.

  "He comes."

  The deputy shivered slightly, took a deep breath. Jebidiah realized he too was breathing deeply.

  "Be silent, and be alert," Jebidiah said.

  "All right," said the deputy, and he locked his eyes on the open window at the back of the shack. Jebidiah faced the door, which stood halfway open and sagging on its rusty hinges.

  For a long time there was nothing. Not a sound. Then Jebidiah saw a shadow move at the doorway and heard the door creak slightly as it moved. He could see a hand on what appeared to be an impossibly long arm, reaching out to grab at the edge of the door. The hand clutched there for a long time, not moving. Then, it was gone, taking its shadow with it.

  Time crawled by.

  "It's at the window," the deputy said, and his voice was so soft it took Jebidiah a moment to decipher the words. Jebidiah turned carefully for a look.

  It sat on the window sill, crouched there like a bird of prey, a halo of bees circling around its head. The hive pulsed and glowed in its chest, and in that glow they could see more bees, so thick they appeared to be a sort of humming smoke. Gimet's head sprouted a few springs of hair, like withering grass fighting its way through stone. A slight turn of its head allowed the moon to flow through the back of its cracked skull and out of its empty eyes. Then the head turned and the face was full of shadows again. The room was silent except for the sound of buzzing bees.

  "Courage," Jebidiah said, his mouth close to the deputy's ear. "Keep your place."

  The thing climbed into the room quickly, like a spider dropping from a limb, and when it hit the floor, it stayed low, allowing the darkness to lay over it like a cloak.

  Jebidiah had turned completely on the bench now, facing the window. He heard a scratching sound against the floor. He narrowed his eyes, saw what looked like a shadow, but was in fact the thing coming out from under the table.

  Jebidiah felt the deputy move, perhaps to bolt. He grabbed his arm and held him.

  "Courage," he said.

  The thing kept crawling. It came within three feet of the circle made by the crumpled bible pages.

  The way the moonlight spilled through the window and onto the floor near the circle Jebidiah had made, it gave Gimet a kind of eerie glow, his satellite bees circling his head. In that moment, every aspect of the thing locked itself in Jebidiah's mind. The empty eyes, the sharp, wet teeth, the long, cracked nails, blackened from grime, clacking against the wooden floor. As it moved to cross between two wads of scripture, the pages burst into flames and a line of crackling blue fulmination moved between the wadded pages and made the circle light up fully, all the way around, like Ezekiel's wheel.

  Gimet gave out with a hoarse cry, scuttled back, clacking nails and knees against the floor. When he moved, he moved so quickly there seemed to be missing spaces between one moment and the next. The buzzing of Gimet's bees was ferocious.

  Jebidiah grabbed the lantern, struck a match and lit it. Gimet was scuttling along the wall like a cockroach, racing to the edge of the window.

  Jebidiah leaped forward, tossed the lit lantern, hit the beast full in the back as it fled through the window. The lantern burst into flames and soaked Gimlet's back, causing a wave of fire to climb from the thing's waist to the top of its head, scorching a horde of bees, dropping them from the sky like exhausted meteors.

  Jebidiah drew his revolver, snapped off a shot. There was a howl of agony, and then the thing was gone.

  Jebidiah raced out of the protective circle and the deputy followed. They stood at the open window, watched as Gimet, flame-wrapped, streaked through the night in the direction of the graveyard.

  "I panicked a little," Jebidiah said. "I should have been more resolute. Now he's escaped."

  "I never even got off a shot," the deputy said. "God, but you're fast. What a draw."

  "Look, you stay here if you like. I'm going after him. But I tell you now, the circle of power has played out."

  The deputy glanced back at it. The pages had burned out and there was nothing now but a black ring on the floor.

  "What in hell caused them to catch fire in the first place?"

  "Evil," Jebidiah said. "When he got close, the pages broke into flames. Gave us the protection of God. Unfortunately, as with most of God's blessings, it doesn't last long."

  "I stay here, you'd have to put down more pages."

  "I'll be taking the bible with me. I might need it."

  "Then I guess I'll be sticking."

  They climbed out the window and moved up the hill. They could smell the odor of fire and rotted flesh in the air. The night was as cool and silent as the graves on the hill.

  Moments later they moved amongst the stones and wooden crosses, until they came to a long wide hole in the earth. Jebidiah could see that there was a burrow at one end of the grave that dipped down deeper into the ground.

  Jebidiah paused there. "He's made this old grave his den. Dug it out and dug deeper."

  "How do you know?" the deputy asked.

  "Experience…. And it smells of smoke and burned skin. He crawled down there to hide. I think we surprised him a little."

  Jebidiah looked up at the sky. There was the faintest streak of pink on the horizon. "He's running out of daylight, and soon he'll be out of moon. For a while."

  "He damn sure surprised me. Why don't we let him hide? You could come back when the moon isn't full, or even half full. Back in the daylight, get him then."

  "I'm here now. And it's my job."

  "That's one hell of a job you got, mister."

  "I'm going to climb down for a better look."

  "Help yourself."

  Jebidiah struck a match and dropped himself into the grave, moved the match around at the mouth of the burrow, got down on his knees and stuck the match and his head into the opening.

  "Very large," he said, pulling his head out. "I can smell him. I'm going to have to go in."

  "What about me?"

  "You keep guard at the lip of the grave," Jebidiah said, standing. "He may have another hole somewhere, he could come out behind you for all I know. He could come out of that hole even as we speak."

  "That's wonderful."

  Jebidiah dropped the now dead match on the ground. "I will tell you this. I can't guarantee success. I lose, he'll come for you, you can bet on that, and you better shoot those silvers as straight as William Tell's arrows."

  "I'm not really that good a shot."

  "I'm sorry," Jebidiah said, and struck another match along the length of his pants seam, then with his free hand, drew one of his revolvers. He got down on his hands and knees again, stuck the match in the hole and looked around. When the match was near done, he blew it out.

  "Ain't you gonna need some light?" the deputy said. "A match ain't nothin'."

  "I'll have it." Jebidiah removed the remains of the bible from his pocket, tore it in half along the spine, pushed one half in his coat, pushed the other half before him, into the darkness of the burrow. The moment it entered the hole, it flamed.

  "Ain't your pocket gonna catch inside that hole?" the deputy asked.

  "As long as I hold it or it's on my person, it won't harm me. But the minute I let go of it, and the aura of evil touches it, it'll blaze. I got to hurry, boy."

  With that, Jebidiah wiggled inside the burrow.

  In the burrow, Jebidiah used the tip of his pistol to push the bible pages forward. They glowed brightly, but Jebidiah knew the light would be brief. It would burn longer than writing pap
er, but still, it would not last long.

  After a goodly distance, Jebidiah discovered the burrow dropped off. He found himself inside a fairly large cavern. He could hear the sound of bats, and smell bat guano, which in fact, greased his path as he slid along on his elbows until he could stand inside the higher cavern and look about. The last flames of the bible burned itself out with a puff of blue light and a sound like an old man breathing his last.

  Jebidiah listened in the dark for a long moment. He could hear the bats squeaking, moving about. The fact that they had given up the night sky, let Jebidiah know daylight was not far off.

  Jebidiah's ears caught a sound, rocks shifting against the cave floor. Something was moving in the darkness, and he didn't think it was the bats. It scuttled, and Jebidiah felt certain it was close to the floor, and by the sound of it, moving his way at a creeping pace. The hair on the back of Jebidiah's neck bristled like porcupine quills. He felt his flesh bump up and crawl. The air became stiffer with the stench of burnt and rotting flesh. Jebidiah's knees trembled. He reached cautiously inside his coat pocket, produced a match, struck it on his pants leg, held it up.