“Happy shall he be that taketh thy children and dasheth them against the stones.”
JOE R. LANSDALE
The Crawling Sky
JOE R. LANSDALE IS the author of over thirty novels, the latest of which is Edge of Dark Water. He has written numerous short stories and articles, screenplays, teleplays for animated TV shows, and comic scripts.
Lansdale is a recipient of the Edgar Award, the British Fantasy Award, nine Bram Stoker Awards, and a Grandmaster Award and Lifetime Achievement Award from The Horror Writers Association, amongst many others.
His novella “Bubba Ho-Tep” was filmed by Don Coscarelli in 2002 and is considered an independent film classic. He is currently writing a new novel and producing and co-producing films.
As the author explains: “‘The Crawling Sky’ is one of the stories I’ve written about the Reverend, a reluctant servant of God.
“He is inspired by Robert E. Howard’s weird westerns – maybe there’s a bit of Solomon Kane, certainly there’s some Jonah Hex and Sergio Leone, working in the background, and then for this tale there’s also Lovecraft, and every creepy-crawly comic I ever read.
“Add to that an odd sky formation I watched for a while, you have this story.”
I. Wood Tick
WOOD TICK WASN’T so much as town as it was a wide rip in the forest. The Reverend Jebediah Mercer rode in on ebony horse on a coolish autumn day beneath an overcast sky of humped up, slow-blowing, gun-metal-grey clouds; they seemed to crawl. It was his experience nothing good ever took place under a crawling sky. It was an omen, and he didn’t like omens, because, so far in his experience, none of them were good.
Before him, he saw a sad excuse for a town: a narrow clay road and a few buildings, not so much built up as tossed up, six altogether, three of them leaning south from northern winds that had pushed them. One of them had had a fireplace of stone, but it had toppled, and no one had bothered to rebuild it. The stones lay scattered about like discarded cartridges. Grass, yellowed by time, had grown up through the stones, and even a small tree had sprouted between them. Where the fall of the fireplace had left a gap was a stretch of fabric, probably a slice of tent; it had been nailed up tight and it had turned dark from years of weather.
In the middle of the town there was a wagon with wooden bars set into it and a flat heavy roof. No horses. Its axle rested on the ground giving the wagon a tilt. Inside, leaning, the Reverend could see a man clutching at the bars, cursing at a half-dozen young boys who looked likely to grow up to be ugly men, who were throwing rocks at him. An old man was sitting on the precarious porch of one of the leaning buildings, whittling on a stick. A few other folks moved about, crossing the street with the enthusiasm of the ill, giving no mind to the boys or the man in the barred wagon.
Reverend Mercer got off his horse and walked it to a hitching post in front of the sagging porch and looked at the man who was whittling. The man had a goitre on the side of his neck and he had tied it off in a dirty sack that fastened under his jaw and to the top of his head and was fastened under his hat. The hat was wide and dropped shadow on his face. The face needed concealment. He had the kind of features that made you wince; one thing God could do was he could sure make ugly.
“Sir, may I ask you something?” the Reverend said to the whittling man.
“I reckon.”
“Why is that man in that cage?”
“That there is Wood Tick’s jail. All we got. We been meaning to build one, but we don’t have that much need for it. Folks do anything really wrong, we hang ’em.”
“What did he do?”
“He’s just half-witted.”
“That’s a crime?”
“If we want it to be. He’s always talkin’ this and that, and it gets old. He used to be all right, but he ain’t now. We don’t know what ails him. He’s got stories about haints and his wife done run off and he claims a haint got her.”
“Haints?”
“That’s right.”
Reverend Mercer turned his head toward the cage and the boys tossing rocks. They were flinging them in good and hard, and pretty accurate.
“Having rocks thrown at him can not be productive,” the Reverend said.
“Well, if God didn’t want him half-witted and the target of rocks, he’d have made him smarter and less directed to bullshit.”
“I am a man of God and I have to agree with you. God’s plan doesn’t seem to have a lot of sympathy in it. But humanity can do better. We could at least save this poor man from children throwing rocks.”
“Sheriff doesn’t think so.”
“And who is the sheriff.”
“That would be me. You ain’t gonna give me trouble are you?”
“I just think a man should not be put behind bars and have rocks thrown at him for being half-witted.”
“Yeah, well, you can take him with you, long as you don’t bring him back. Take him with you and I’ll let him out.”
The Reverend nodded. “I can do that. But, I need something to eat first. Any place for that?”
“You can go over to Miss Mary’s, which is a house about a mile down from the town, and you can hire her to fix you some-thin’. But you better have a strong stomach.”
“Not much of a recommendation.”
“No, it’s not. I reckon I could fry you up some meat for a bit of coin, you ready to let go of it.”
“I have money.”
“Good. I don’t. I got some horse meat I can fix. It’s just on this side of being good enough to eat. Another hour, you might get poisoned by it.”
“Appetising as that sounds, perhaps I should see Miss Mary.”
“She fixes soups from roots and wild plants and such. No matter what she fixes, it all tastes the same and it gives you the squirts. She ain’t much to look at neither, but she sells out herself, you want to buy some of that.”
“No. I am good. I will take the horse meat, long as I can watch you fry it.”
“All right. I’m just about through whittling.”
“Are you making something?”
“No. Just whittlin’.”
“So, what is there to get through with?”
“Why my pleasure, of course. I enjoy my whittlin’.”
The old man, who gave the Reverend his name as if he had given up a dark secret, was called Jud. Up close, Jud was even nastier looking than from the distance of the hitching post and the porch. He had pores wide enough and deep enough in his skin to keep pooled water and his nose had been broken so many times it moved from side to side when he talked. He was missing a lot of teeth, and what he had were brown from tobacco and rot. His hands were dirty and his fingers were dirtier yet, and the Reverend couldn’t help but wonder what those fingers had poked into.
Inside, the place leaned and there were missing floor boards. A wooden stove was at the far end of the room, and a stove pipe wound out of it and went up through a gap in the roof that would let in rain, and had, because the stove was partially rusted. It rested heavy on the worn flooring. The floor sagged and it seemed to the Reverend that if it experienced one more rotted fibre, one more termite bite, the stove would crash through. Hanging on hooks on the wall there were slabs of horse meat covered in flies. Some of the meat looked a little green and there was a slick of mould over a lot of it.
“That the meat you’re talkin’ about?”
“Yep,” Jud said, scratching at his filthy goitre sack.
“It looks pretty green.”
“I said it was turnin’. Want it or not?”
“Might I cook it myself?”
“Still have to pay me.”
“How much?”
“Two bits.”
“Two bits, for rancid meat I cook myself.”
“It’s still two bits if I cook it.”
“You drive quite the bargain, Jud.”
“I pride myself on my dealin’.”
“Best you do not pride yourself on hygiene.”
“What’s that? That some k
ind of remark?”
Reverend Mercer pushed back his long black coat and showed the butts of his twin revolvers. “Sometimes a man can learn to like things he does not on most days care to endure.”
Jud checked out the revolvers. “You got a point there, Reverend. I was thinkin’ you was just a blabber mouth for God, but you tote them pistols like a man whose seen the elephant.”
“Seen the elephant I have. And all his children.”
The Reverend brushed the flies away from the horse meat and found a bit of it that looked better than rest, used his pocket knife to cut it loose. He picked insects out of a greasy pan and put the meat in it. He put some wood in the stove and lit it and got a fire going. In short time the meat was frying. He decided to cook it long and cook it through, burn it a bit. That way, maybe he wouldn’t die of stomach poisoning.
“You have anything else that might sweeten this deal?” the Reverend asked.
“It’s the horse meat or nothin’.”
“And in what commerce will you deal when it turns rancid, or runs out?”
“I’ve got a couple more old horses, and one old mule. Somebody will have to go.”
“Have you considered a garden?”
“My hand wasn’t meant to fit a hoe. It gets desperate, I’ll shoot a squirrel or a possum or a coon or some such. Dog ain’t bad you cook ’em good.”
“How many people reside in this town?”
“About forty, forty-one if you count Norville out there in the box. But, way things look, considerin’ our deal, he’ll be leavin’. Sides, he don’t live here direct anyway.”
“That number count in the kids?”
“Yeah, they all belong to Mary. They’re thirteen and on down to six years. Drops them like turds and don’t know for sure who’s the daddy, though there’s one of them out there that looks a mite like me.”
“Bless his heart,” the Reverend said.
“Yeah, reckon that’s the truth. Couple of ’em have died over the years. One got kicked in the head by a horse and the other one got caught up in the river and drowned. Stupid little bastard should have learned to swim. There was an older girl, but she took up with Norville out there, and now she’s run off from him.”
When the meat was as black as a pit and smoking like a rich man’s cigar, Reverend Mercer discovered there were no plates, and he ate it from the frying pan, using his knife as a utensil. It was a rugged piece of meat to wrestle and it tasted like the ass end of a skunk. He ate just enough to knock the corners off his hunger, then gave it up.
Jud asked if he were through with it, and when the Reverend said he was, he came over picked up the leavings with his hands and tore at it like a wolf.
“Hell, this is all right,” Jud said. “I need you on as a cook.”
“Not likely. How do people make a living around here?”
“Lumber. Cut it and mule it out. That’s a thing about East Texas, plenty of lumber.”
“Some day there will be a lot less, that is my reasoning.”
“It all grows back.”
“People grow back faster, and we could do with a lot less of them.”
“On that matter, Reverend, I agree with you.”
When the Reverend went outside with Jud to let Norville loose, the kids were still throwing rocks. The Reverend picked up a rock and winged it through the air and caught one of the kids on the side of the head hard enough to knock him down.
“Damn,” Jud said. “That there was a kid.”
“Now he’s a kid with a knot on his head.”
“You’re a different kind of Reverend.”
The kid got up and ran, holding his hand to his head squealing.
“Keep going you horrible little bastard,” Reverend Mercer said. When the kid was gone, the Reverend said, “Actually, I was aiming to hit him in the back, but that worked out quite well.”
They walked over to the cage. There was a metal lock and a big padlock on the thick wooden bars. Reverend Mercer had wondered why the man didn’t just kick them out, but then he saw the reason. He was chained to the floor of the wagon. The chain fit into a big metal loop there, and then went to his ankle where a bracelet of iron held him fast. Norville had a lot of lumps on his head and his bottom lip was swollen up and he was bleeding all over.
“This is no way to treat a man,” Reverend Mercer said.
“He could have been a few rocks shy of a dozen knots, you hadn’t stopped to cook and eat a steak.”
“True enough,” the Reverend said.
II. Norville’s Story: The House in the Pines
The sheriff unlocked the cage and went inside and unlocked the clamp around Norville’s ankle. Norville, barefoot, came out of the cage and walked around and looked at the sky, stretching his back as he did. Jud sauntered over to the long porch and reached under it and pulled out some old boots. He gave them to Norville. Norville pulled them on, then came around the side of the cage and studied the Reverend.
“Thank you for lettin’ me out,” Norville said. “I ain’t crazy, you know. I seen what I seen and they don’t want to hear it none.”
“Cause you’re crazy,” Jud said.
“What did you see?” the Reverend asked.
“He starts talkin’ that business again, I’ll throw him back in the box,” Jud said. “Our deal was he goes with you, and I figure you’ve worn out your welcome.”
“What I’ve worn out is my stomach,” Reverend Mercer said. “That meat is backing up on me.”
“Take care of your stomach problems somewhere else, and take that crazy sonofabitch with you.”
“Does he have a horse?”
“The back of yours,” Jud said. “Best get him on it, and you two get out.”
“Norville,” the Reverend said, “come with me.”
“I don’t mind comin’,” Norville said, walking briskly after the Reverend.
Reverend Mercer unhitched his horse and climbed into the saddle. He extended a hand for Norville, helped him slip up on the rear of the horse. Norville put his arms around Reverend Mercer’s waist. The Reverend said, “Keep the hands high or they’ll find you face down outside of town in the pine straw.”
“You stay gone, you hear?” Jud said, walking up on the porch.
“This place does not hold much charm for me, Sheriff Jud,” Reverend Mercer said. “But, just in case you should over value your position, you do not concern me in the least. It is this town that concerns me. It stinks and it is worthless and should be burned to the ground.”
“You go on now,” Jud said.
“That I will, but at my own speed.”
The Reverend rode off then, glancing back, least Jud decide to back shoot. But it was a needless concern. He saw Jud go inside the shack, perhaps to fry up some more rancid horse meat.
They rode about three miles out of town, and Reverend Mercer stopped by a stream. They got down off the horse and let it drink. While the horse quenched its thirst, the Reverend removed the animal’s saddle, then he pulled the horse away from the water lest it bloat. He took some grooming items out of a saddlebag and went to work, giving the horse a good brushing and rub down.
Norville plucked a blade of grass and put it in his mouth and worked it around, found a tree to sit under, said, “I ain’t no bowl of nuts. I seen what I seen. Why did you help me anyway? For all you know I am a nut.”
“I am on a mission from God. I do not like it, but it is my mission. I’m a hunter of the dark and a giver of the light. I’m the hammer and the anvil. The bone and the sinew. The sword and the gun. God’s man who sets things right. Or at least right as God sees them. Me and him, we do not always agree. And let me tell you, he is not the God of Jesus, he is the God of David, and the angry city killers and man killers and animal killers of the Old Testament. He is constantly jealous and angry and if there is any plan to all this, I have yet to see it.”
“Actually, I was just wantin’ to know if you thought I was nuts.”
“It is my lot i
n life to destroy evil. There is more evil than there is me, I might add.”
“So . . . You think I’m a nut, or what?”
“Tell me your story.”
“If you think I’m a nut are you just gonna leave me?”
“No. I will shoot you first and leave your body . . . Just joking. I do not joke much, so I’m poor at it.”
The Reverend tied up the horse and they went over and sat together under the tree and drank water from the Reverend’s canteen. Norville told his story.
“My daddy, after killin’ my mother over turnip soup, back in the Carolinas, hitched up the wagon and put me in my sister in it and come to Texas.”
“He killed your mother over soup?”
“Deader than a rock. Hit her upside the head with a snatch of turnips.”
“A snatch of turnips? What in the world is a snatch of turnips?”
“Bunch of them. They was on the table where she’d cut up some for soup, still had the greens one ’em. He grabbed the greens, and swung them turnips. Must have been seven or eight big ole knotty ones. Hit her upside the head and knocked her brain loose I reckon. She died that night, right there on the floor. Wouldn’t let us help her any. He said God didn’t want her to die from getting’ hit with turnips, he’d spare her.”
“Frankly, God is not all that merciful . . . You seen this? Your father hitting your mother with the turnips?”
“Yep. I was six or so. My sister four. Daddy didn’t like turnips in any kind of way, let alone a soup. So he took us to Texas after he burned down the cabin with mama in it, and I been in Texas ever since, but mostly over toward the middle of the state. About a year ago he died and my sister got a bad cough and couldn’t get over it. Coughed herself to death. So I lit out on my own.”
“I would think that is appropriate at your age, being on your own. How old are you. Thirty?”
“Twenty-six. I’m just tired. So I was riding through the country here, living off the land, squirrels and such, and I come to this shack in the woods and there weren’t no one livin’ there. I mean I found it by accident, cause it wasn’t on a real trail. It was just down in the woods and it had a good roof on it, and there was a well. I yelled to see anyone was home, and they wasn’t, and the door pushed open. I could see hadn’t nobody been there in a long time. They had just gone off and left it. It was a nice house, and had real glass in the windows, and whoever had made it had done good on it, cause it was put together good and sound. They had trimmed away trees and had a yard of sorts.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23 (Mammoth Books) Page 39