by Steve McHugh
With newly born sunrays breaking into the cave, I rolled to my feet and ate some more of the fruit. Sam was lying there, staring up at the ceiling, and for a moment I thought that maybe his head had been badly injured in the fall and it had taken its toll.
Sam sat up and took a handful of berries. "Will you help me?" he asked after a moment.
"Why do you need my help?"
"I want to find out who killed my dad, and why."
"I'll tell you what," I said, as I stood and stretched. "We get to this ranch, you answer my questions honestly, and I'll discuss helping you out. Sound fair?"
Sam thought for a moment before nodding.
"I'll be back in a few minutes," I told him. "Meet me outside and we'll get started. It's a long walk."
I went to fetch some more water and came back to find Sam stroking Valour's neck. "Ready?" I asked.
He nodded, and after checking that I'd left nothing behind, we set off.
By the time we'd reached the outskirts of the ranch, the sky had turned cloudy and threatened to rain. Sam and I walked together. I hoped the journey would let him open up, but he was still weak and in pain, and spoke rarely. We'd stopped every hour at first, to let him rest, but when it became too much for him to walk, he rode Valour.
The journey still took a few hours longer than I'd expected and I was looking forward to good food and some sleep in an actual bed. Sam had told me that the owner was a widow of about forty, who had often let him sleep there throughout the six months he'd been looking into his father's murder.
"Let me do the talking," Sam said. "She'll want us to work in return for a bed and meal."
"Hopefully that work will wait until the morning, when my belly is full and my eyes no longer heavy," I said. "Hell, if I can get a bath into the deal, then I'd happily do any job that needs doing."
"Don't let her hear you say that," Sam said. "She'll hold you to it."
I smiled. "Sam, if there's one thing I've learnt, it's that no matter how hard the work, a bath, food and a good bed make those memories fade pretty damn fast."
The conversation came to an abrupt end when we reached the entrance to the ranch. Ranches were normally abuzz with activity, people working hard at all hours of the day and night. And the sun was still high in the sky. The ranch should have been full of people going about their daily work, but it was barren of any kind of life. I suddenly had a very unpleasant feeling in my stomach.
"Get down," I said to Sam.
He dismounted and then led Valour behind me as we walked onto the ranch. I considered carrying the Winchester rifle outright, but if anyone was watching I didn't want to show them any weapons. Just in case they had itchy trigger fingers.
I scanned all around, taking in the large barn to my right, and another to my far left. Several small buildings sat together near the barn furthest from me. They were probably houses for the full-time workers. A somewhat larger building sat nearby them, the door open and a bar clearly visible inside. The owners certainly took care of their employees.
"How many people work here?" I asked.
Sam shrugged. "Thirty or so," he said. "A lot of people seem to come and go."
"What was the owner's name again?"
"Victoria Warren," Sam said. "What do you think happened here?"
I took the reins from Sam and tied Valour to the nearest hitching post, leaving her to drink from the trough that sat under it. "The cattle are still here," I said pointing to the cows in the distant fields at one end of the ranch. "A rancher wouldn't leave their livelihood behind."
I removed the Winchester rifle from the holster on Valour's side and made sure it was loaded, before turning to Sam. "Is that revolver working?"
"Loaded, too."
"Good. Come with me, stay close." The weight of the two silver daggers on the small of my back was suddenly noticeable to me, as Sam and I walked toward the main house.
The building was huge, and would have hundreds of places for people to hide. "How many lived in here?" I asked as I ascended the steps to the porch and peered through the frosted windows of the wood-framed, white front door.
"Just Missus Warren and her servants," he said. "There was a cook, two maids and a butler. She said it took a lot of people to make the house run. She let the workers eat Sunday dinner in there."
I tried the brass door handle, and turned it with a soft creak, before pushing open the door. Silence stayed with me as I stepped into the mansion, followed by a hastily moving Sam.
Nothing appeared to have been disturbed. Paintings were still on the walls, the ornaments--a mixture of vases and brass figurines--were scattered around the room, and were all immaculate. "See anything missing?" I asked.
Sam looked around. "No," he said with a shake of his head. "But then I rarely spent time in this room."
"How many rooms on this floor?"
"Four. There's this living room, a dining room, along with a kitchen and study."
"You sure?"
"On occasion, I helped the house staff with their work. It was mostly just cleaning, or doing little jobs around the house, but I enjoyed it. Missus Warren had asked me if I'd be interested in staying on."
I opened the only door from the living room and entered a hallway. The wooden floor was polished to a near mirror shine, and tables sat along one wall, all with more ornaments on them. Whoever Mrs. Warren was, she certainly took pride in displaying the many baubles and junk she'd accumulated.
Sam and I made our way down the hallway, opening every door and checking each room when as we reached it. It took a while, but I'd soon come to the conclusion that nothing was to be found on the ground floor. "How many rooms upstairs?" I asked.
"Six," Sam said after another moment's thought. "All but one are bedrooms, the last is a large bathroom."
"Okay, same as before. I'll go in front, we go room to room. You keep that revolver at the floor."
"What do you think happened to everyone?" Sam asked, fear encasing every word he spoke, as we were about to make our way up the stairs.
"Nothing good," I said, since there was little point in lying to him. Whole ranches full of people don't just get up and leave without taking anything with them.
We ascended the stairs and searched each of the rooms in turn, without finding anything to suggest something untoward had happened. The only evidence of anything, beyond the missing people, was a broken vase in the master bedroom and the bed covers had been strung around the room, as if thrown aside with some force.
We were about to make our way back downstairs, when I noticed something weird on the outside of one of the master bedroom's windows. Five little piles of darkness were pressed against the glass.
I walked over and opened the window, reaching around to the outside to touch the dark substance that stained the glass.
"What is it?" Sam asked.
"Dirt," I said, rubbing it between my thumb and forefinger. I glanced up at the window again, and realised what the pattern was. "It's a footprint. Someone had their bare foot up against the window."
I moved back to the window and stuck my head out, looking down at the porch roof beneath me, and then up at the overhanging roof above my head, where a small portion of beam was visible. Just enough for a hand hold. "Someone was out here," I said. "Recently, too. There's no way a woman who keeps her house this tidy would leave dirt marks on a window this easy to clean."
I pushed the window open as far it could go, and then climbed up onto the window sill.
"I'll meet you by the front door," I said to Sam, before lowering myself onto the porch roof. It was as sturdy as it looked, made by someone who knew what they were doing.
There was more dirt on the wooden roof here and there as it had fallen from someone's feet. I continued to search for anything to tell us where the inhabitants were, until Sam appeared in the yard below.
"Where would people go if there was trouble?" I asked as I looked down on him.
Sam pointed to one of the two barns,
the one that had been to our right as we entered the ranch. "That's where the horses are kept. If there was trouble, they'd either use them to get away or lock themselves inside. There are huge wooden bars which slot across the front and back doors."
"Okay, let's go," I said, and the second Sam turned to head toward the barn, I stepped off the porch roof and used a small measure of air magic to ensure I landed softly on the ground. The pale white glyphs vanished before Sam turned back, a quizzical look on his face, probably wondering how it was that I made no sound on landing.
I ran past him to the barn, readying my Winchester for whatever we might find inside. "You ready?" I asked Sam once he caught me up.
Sam gripped the gun tightly in his hand and nodded.
A smaller, man-sized, door was built into one of the two massive barn doors, and as I moved to push it open, I noticed bloody marks on it. The hands of whoever had closed it had been covered in blood. I kicked the door open and stepped inside, and the stench almost knocked me back.
Sam followed me and gagged at the smell of death and blood that sat heavily in the air. I removed the wooden beam that kept the barn doors closed and pushed them both wide open, hoping the fresh-air would help make searching the barn a little more palatable.
"Good God," Sam whispered, taking in a deep lungful of air.
"Stay here," I told him and walked back into the barn, trying my best to ignore the overpowering smell.
Blood saturated the floor, large puddles of dark fluid that splashed as I walked through them, but I found no bodies to account for the huge volume.
As I started to check each of the ten stalls in turn, I soon discovered the reason for the quantity of blood. It flowed from the stalls like ten rivers, all meeting in the middle of the barn. Bones and gore littered the ground, covering the hay and bare floors with yet more blood until there was barely an inch unstained by its presence.
I opened the stall furthest from the entrance and stepped inside. The number of bones accounted for a whole skeleton's worth, and it was easy to spot the skull and determine what had happened to the horse who'd been kept inside the stall, and by extension what had happened to all of the horses in the barn.
I avoided a small lake of blood and picked up a mostly clean bone. It was thick and large, probably something from the one of the horse's legs. I turned it over, and my horror at what I'd seen so far increased. There were teeth marks. Something had eaten the horse, and judging by the spray of blood, it had been alive when attacked.
I carefully made my way back outside, avoiding the worst of the gore, to inspect the bone further under the midday sun. Sam saw me, and his already green complexion appeared to worsen. "What is that?" he asked.
"I think it's the femur of a horse," I said inspecting the bone. "There are bite marks on it. Small sharp teeth, lots of them, a bit like a piranha."
"A what?" Sam asked.
"It's a small fish found far south of here. They hunt in groups and can strip an animal down to the bone in a few minutes."
"And whatever did this is like that?" The horror on Sam's face told me that the idea of small killer fish was up there with the worst things he'd ever heard of.
"I'm not sure what did this. I've got a few ideas, but nothing I can be certain about."
"What about the other barn?" Sam turned and pointed to the large building on the other side of the ranch.
"I'll check; you go get Valour." I threw the bone back into the barn, it made a squelching noise as it landed. "I want to be out of here as soon as possible."
Sam immediately ran toward Valour. I walked toward the smaller barn with considerable trepidation as to my mind as to what I might discover there, stopping only at a trough full of water to wash the blood from my hands before continuing.
I paused outside the barn, and glanced over at Sam who was untying Valour. I really hoped I wouldn't find what I was expecting inside the building. I pushed open the heavy wooden door and immediately wished I hadn't.
What was inside the barn wasn't what I expected. It was much, much worse.
It was one person's private hell.
Chapter 10
The word torture was not enough to describe what was inside the barn. Horrors had been inflicted upon the dead woman, and I couldn't begin to imagine how she'd lived for more than a few moments once they'd started.
I stepped inside and pushed down the part of me that screamed to leave, detaching myself from seeing what used to be alive. It was now just meat, in a human form maybe, but meat nonetheless. No different than any dead animal or human I'd seen in the past.
The woman had been brought into the barn and hoisted into the air by straps on her ankles. She swayed gently, her head roughly four feet above the ground. She would have had to have been already in the air when they started. The blood trails all went down, toward the slick floor beneath her swinging arms. Swinging, skinless arms.
I closed my eyes and let the sickened feeling that had built up subside quietly, before continuing my inspection of the body.
After being strung up, they'd removed the skin from her arms, fingers to shoulders, along with her legs, toes to thighs. A sharp knife and patience would have been required to do it, and she was probably dead before they started, so as to cut down on her moving around. God, I hoped she'd been dead. The killer had cut from her navel down to her sternum, in what appeared to be a clean cut with one sweep. They had then forced open the cut, allowing her internal organs to fall out. Her stomach and intestine remained on the floor by her hand, along with her lungs. The lack of blood on the floor, along with the scuff marks of something being dragged, meant that it had been caught and collected.
I searched the spacious barn. It was full of tools and supplies, everything needed to run a ranch. A trough sat in one corner, the inside coated with thick, black blood.
At some point during her ordeal, they'd scalped her, although I couldn't locate the scalp or the weapon used. I'd have to do a more extensive search of the barn's interior in case it had been discarded before the killers left.
A scream from the entrance brought me back to my senses.
I rushed over as Sam darted to the side of the building and vomited repeatedly. When all that was left was dry heaving, he started crying. Big, deep sobs of someone fearful and panicking.
"Sam, how old are you?"
"Wha?"
"Age, Sam. How old?"
"Six... sixteen," he said between haggard breaths.
"Your surname?"
"W...Ward."
"Tell me about your mum and dad."
Sam found it hard to catch his breath, but he forced himself to speak. "Mum was the daughter of a bank robber, Dad was a U.S. Marshal."
"Bet that made for an interesting upbringing."
Sam sighed, and took another deep breath. "Mum died when I was four. Smallpox."
"I'm sorry," I said. "How's your breathing?"
Sam looked surprised. "Better. I thought I was going to die."
"You just needed something to focus on until your breathing calmed. You stay here and concentrate on your breathing, okay? I'll be back in a few minutes."
"Stay a minute." Sam's voice was barely above a whisper.
I sat down on the soft ground beside him.
"That is…was Victoria... Missus Warren," Sam said and spat onto the ground. "Bad taste."
I'd already assumed that the person in the barn was the owner of the ranch, so I kept quiet and let Sam continue.
"Why did they do that? What was the point?"
"I don't know, but I plan on finding out.” I let a silence fall between us for a short time. “So, not much of a murderer then?"
Sam shook his head and tears fell in steady streaks.
"You want to talk about it?"
"No," he said firmly.
"If you ever change your mind, let me know." I stood up. "I need to finish checking inside. You going to be okay?"
"Is that the worst thing you've ever seen?"
&nb
sp; I didn't know if lying would make him feel better or worse, but the truth was all that wanted to come out of my mouth. "No," I said. "What happened in there is horrific, and disturbing and wrong. But it's not even close to the worst things I've ever seen."
"How do you push them out of your mind?"
"You don't," I said. "You just learn to deal with them. The brain is great at doing things like that. Eventually what you saw will be a foggy memory. It'll take time, but it will happen."
I left Sam to ponder my words and re-entered hell. At the rear of the barn, above several closed barrels, was a tomahawk axe imbedded in one of the barn's wooden posts. Blue feathers hung from the bottom of the deep brown, wooden handle, blond hair stuck to the blood-slick blade. I pulled the axe free, and found more remains inside the cut on the wood.
I moved the barrels and found Mrs Warren's scalp on the floor. It had probably slipped off the axe and fallen onto the floor. I left it where it was and sighed.
"What the hell are you doing?" someone shouted from the front of the barn.
I turned to discover a beautiful young woman stepping into the barn, a rifle aimed directly at me.
"I asked you a question." She glanced at the dead body, and her eyes focused on me once more. They were hard and cold, a dark brown that matched her long hair.
"You're also pointing a gun at me," I said. "I’ve just gotten here, too. So how about you lower the rifle? Or we at least go have this conversation somewhere that doesn't smell like blood and shit."
The woman stepped away and waved for me to come out of the barn. I did as she asked, and walked round to the side of the large building, where Sam was still sitting.
"Sit," the woman said.
"No," I replied.
"Mapiya?" Sam asked, getting back to his feet. "What's happening?"
"You know her?" I asked.
"She was staying here the same time as me." He glanced over at Mapiya. "Where is everyone? What happened to Missus Warren?"
"I was going to ask you the same thing," she said.
"Lower the gun and we'll talk," I told her once again.