The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel

by Holly Messinger

  “Listen, friend,” he said. “I don’t mean to get in the way of your work, but the rest of us’d take it as a kindness if you did it somewhere else.”

  “Oh-oh. Do that parfum de loup offend your nose, Prêtre?” Remy took the cheroot from his teeth and tapped the ash onto Trace’s boot. It might’ve been an accident, since the wolf-hunter’s sly golden gaze never left Trace’s. “Remy hate to think he make a bad step in dis salle de bal.” He made a sweeping gesture across the ranch proper.

  “Just keep your traps and your bait outside the yard, hear?” Trace dumped his dishes in the wash-bin and headed for the office.

  He expected to find the Kid quietly at work. He’d seen no one else go into the foreman’s house, and so was surprised to hear the Kid’s voice coming from within—arguing with someone, in a petulant, protesting tone.

  Trace stepped onto the porch and the voice cut off abruptly. The Kid turned toward the door with a spooky, animal reflex. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes red and watery.

  “Who you talkin to, Kid?”

  The boy’s chin wobbled furiously. “You better keep that animal away from me, Preacher, or something bad’s gonna happen!”

  “Who?”

  “That Cajun trash! He followed me up from Salt Lake and now he’s tracked me here from Evanston.”

  Even though Trace had considered the possibility himself, it still sounded unlikely. “Why would he be trackin you, Kid?”

  “Because he’s a devil! Or a deviant. I don’t know! I just want him to leave me the hell alone!” The boy seemed manic, desperate. “You see things, don’t you, Preacher? I mean they don’t just call you that because you were at seminary. God talks to you.”

  “Sometimes,” Trace said cautiously. “What’re you gettin at, Kid?”

  The Kid reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a folded page of newsprint, offered it up with a challenging look.

  It was a page from the Salt Lake Clarion, dated mid-April. And there in the first column was a reprint of the original story about the Herschel murders. Trace read the words with a feeling of recurring nightmare—intimations made by one Jacob Tracy … adamant in his assertions of Miss Herschel’s innocence … Could some otherworldly knowledge be the source of his certainty?

  “That’s you, isn’t it?” the Kid said. “I heard you and Boz talk about St. Louis.”

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “I read it. Back in Salt Lake, just before … I left.”

  “So who’s followin who, huh?” Trace’s skin felt taut, as all his senses groped for the lie, the trap. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d met a man he couldn’t get a read on, and that in itself was worrisome. “No—you can’t expect me to believe you came up here lookin for me. I didn’t even know I was gonna be here in April.”

  “I didn’t,” the Kid said. “It wasn’t til you got here, and I overheard you tell Boz how you needed to take a turn on the night watch—”

  “What do you do, Kid, listen at doors?”

  “No! I wasn’t trying to listen. But everybody knows you talk to God on your watches. The others make jokes about it, but not too loud, cause they all know you got eyes in the back of your head. And I thought I remembered your name from the paper, so when we were in Evanston on the Fourth, I went by the printer’s office, and they had an old copy with the story in it.”

  It was possible—just. Given the sensationalism of the Herschel murders, and small papers’ tendency to reuse any and all interesting content that came across the wire … it was appalling to think how far his fame might have spread. And what interested parties might have seen it.

  “Look, Kid.” Trace threw the paper on the desk, and sat. “You gotta realize reporters will take a little bit of a thing and twist it til it sounds like somethin entirely different.”

  “But you are a man of God, I know it! Please, Preacher, I don’t know what else to do—”

  “What’s the matter, son? What is it you think I can help you with?”

  The Kid wrapped his arms hard around his shoulders. “I hear things. Voices, telling me to do things. Making me want to do things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Tear everything apart.” He raked his nails down his arms hard enough to make threads pop in his shirt sleeves. “Last night I dreamt I was standing in the horse corral—you saw me there, with blood on my hands. But when I woke up, I was in the bath-house, and I was all muddy. I don’t know how I got there.”

  Rather convenient, don’t you think? Miss Fairweather’s voice echoed in Trace’s head. “Have you walked in your sleep before?”

  “I did when I was a kid, but not like this. I didn’t wake up in strange places. And I didn’t have these dreams.”

  “How long has this been goin on?”

  Some dark memory crossed the Kid’s face. “Since April.”

  “Before or after your folks died?”

  “I don’t remember. Before.”

  There was something hazy about the boy’s aura, as if a cloud of mosquitoes swarmed around him. The nearest thing Trace had seen to it was the demon in the drunk tank, but this didn’t have the grasping, territorial feel of a demon. It was aloof, distant. He thought he might’ve been able to force his way through the veil, get a look at it from that side, but he didn’t want to tip his hand. The Kid’s distress seemed real enough, and if there was a demon in him—particularly one with a taste for blood—Trace didn’t want to back it into a corner yet.

  “So what do you want me to do, son?”

  “I thought maybe you’d know how to … I always heard that Catholics had special prayers, to drive out demons—”

  “You think you’ve got a demon?”

  “What else could it be?”

  “Well, did you talk to anybody else about it? I’d think the Prophet might know a thing or two—”

  “My father knew,” the Kid said curtly. “He said I’d brought it on myself for having … bestial thoughts.”

  In spite of himself, Trace winced. The Kid was watching him too closely for comfort—trembling downy chin and cold, old eyes. He didn’t think the boy was wily enough to have contrived this scene, but maybe the thing inside him was.

  Or he might be genuinely insane. Trace had heard similar accounts of sinister voices, from fellow patients in the asylum. Not the lycanthrope—that fellow had been quite jolly and up-front about his affliction.

  “All right,” Trace said at last. “I know somebody who might know somethin. But I’ll have to send ’em a telegram when we go into town next week.”

  The Kid’s face lit up. “You mean I get to go to the horse-fair with you?”

  “I don’t see why not. You been enough of a help here, and I gotta take somebody.” And I’d rather not let you out of my sight while we’re gone. “But I was figuring on takin Hanky along too, so you might wanna bury the hatchet with him before we go.”

  The Kid’s elation deflated like a pig’s bladder. “What do you expect me to say?”

  “Tell him you’re sorry you hit him, for a start. And I expect you to treat Boz with respect from here on out, too. He’s my partner and your elder, besides.”

  The sullen look did not alter, but the Kid’s eyes shifted away. Trace had the impression he was listening to something—a whisper that Trace sensed only as an insectile whine.

  But: “All right, Preacher,” he said, and put on a meek good-boy face.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  TO: SABINE FAIRWEATHER, HYDE PARK, ST. LOUIS.

  SUSPECTED LYCANTHROPE IN AREA PLEASE ADVISE RE INDENTIFICATION SUBJUGATION OR IF SPIRIT SIGNATURE POINTS TO OTHER KNOWN CULPRITS PORTENTS OMINOUS

  J. TRACY

  “Will you want that sent today, sir?” the telegraph clerk asked, rousing Trace from his scowl at the page.

  He took the pencil out of his teeth and pushed the telegraph form across the counter, his arm stiff with the dual effort of moving forward and holding back. He wished he could talk to her. It was hard
to know what to say in a telegram, or whether he was asking the right questions, even.

  In the nine days between the slaughter of Boz’s horse and their departure for town, the ranch had been quiet. No slaughtered stock, no mysterious tracks, no disturbances in the night.

  “Dey not hungry after a big kill,” Remy explained, when somebody asked why he hadn’t caught anything. “He lay quiet for a while til he get hungry again.” The wolf-hunter was making a batch of his cheroots on a little rolling machine, filling the papers with pinches of dried material that looked like no tobacco Trace had ever seen. “Besides, dey smell Remy nearby, dey know eez danger. Wolfs is smarter than you think.” He offered the cheroot to the Kid, who gave him a look of contempt, so Remy shrugged and smoked it himself.

  The wolf-hunter made a show of poisoning bait and setting traps, but as far as Trace could tell he was only there to collect three squares a day and get under everyone’s feet. Twice he had left a pile of traps on the steps below the bunk-house door, right where somebody was likely to break an ankle if they came stumbling out in the dark.

  “How well do you know that scalawag?” Trace asked Miller, just before they left for Evanston.

  “Remy?” The rancher chuckled. “He’s a rare one, ain’t he? He’s a good trapper, though, don’t let him fool you. Just leave him be, he’ll prob’ly be gone by the time you get back.”

  The fact that Miller had known Remy for several years made the Kid’s claim of having been followed even less likely, which reinforced Trace’s suspicion that the thing possessing the boy was trying to cover its tracks. Despite his unsavory habits, Remy did not seem inclined to provoke trouble. Other than mealtimes he never went near the Kid—or any of the rest of them, for that matter. The wolf-hunter’s nature was as solitary as the critters he hunted.

  Meanwhile the Kid, whether by contrivance or some remission of his condition, had been remarkably sweet-tempered for the past week. He made peace with Hanky—whether there had been actual apologies issued Trace didn’t know, but soon after their talk he had seen Hanky teaching the Kid how to lasso, a glaring gap in the Mormon boy’s knowledge that had cost him considerable skin from the others. Letting himself be taught was a gesture of tremendous condescension on the Kid’s part, though Hanky was too open-hearted and blunt to realize it.

  On July thirtieth they set out for Evanston—Trace and Boz, Hanky and the Kid—with twenty-two horses in tow. It was two days’ ride at an easy pace along the Sweetwater River, and they stopped to camp at the halfway point on the first night. They staked out the horses, cooked and ate supper, bickered amiably about who would take the first watch. Boz drew the short straw, and everyone else stretched out to sleep.

  Trace had not had the chance to meditate for several days, and although he’d planned to do so during his own watch, apparently his power—or something else—couldn’t wait that long. As soon as his eyes were closed the vision began to lap over him, soft as velvet and enticing as perfume.

  It was clearly and specifically a dream. The massive banquet hall, which might’ve been suspended in the cosmos, for all he could see; the walls were lost in darkness. The table groaning under its bounty of flowing wine, sculpted pastries, and quivering golden aspics. The laughter and indistinct conversations—that sense of important things being discussed just out of earshot.

  He sat at the end of the table, his view of the other guests mostly obscured by a massive bouquet of fruit and flowers, but he could see the dusky-hued lady to his left, her tangled black curls falling over her decaying finery, and beside her a round, jolly Irishman, making merry with the wine despite the gaping wound in his chest. To Trace’s right sat Kieler, dressed in rich robes and a ridiculous turban that did not quite disguise the misshapen concavity of his brow. While Trace watched, Kieler lifted his napkin and dabbed at the trickle of blood that ran down his temple.

  “Do excuse me,” he said to Trace. “My mental powers aren’t what they used to be.”

  “More wine, Mr. Tracy?” said Reynolds, at his elbow. The reporter wore a waiter’s uniform and his usual feral grin. He held out a bottle with a smudged label. “With the lady’s compliments.”

  Trace followed his glance down the table, to where Miss Fairweather sat, regal in scarlet velvet, her face as white as wax. One frail arm lay stretched across the white tablecloth, and some awful wormlike creature, like an oversized leech, was fastened onto her wrist, pulsing as it sucked the life out of her.

  All the diners had leeches, their long tails coiling and throbbing across the tabletop, weaving over and around plates and goblets, feeding into the towering, bubbling fountain in the center of the table. Trace could smell the iron reek of blood from where he sat.

  The man beside Miss Fairweather took her hand, raised it to his lips, but she made no sign she appreciated or even noticed the gesture. She reached for her glass, turned it so Trace could see the skull and cross-bones marked on it, and held his eye as she took a deliberate swallow.

  “You really should try some of this, young’un,” Reynolds said, holding out the bottle. “It’s the lady’s own vintage.”

  Fairweather ’71, said the label on the bottle, in her familiar handwriting. Panacea, Protegeum, Defensio.

  “I had some of that.” He held up his hand, to show the scar. “Didn’t care for it.”

  “Didn’t you?” Reynolds said. “Oh, look, here come the entrees.”

  All the guests were cooing and applauding, and the man beside Miss Fairweather stood, lifting his goblet, smiling benevolently and accepting the accolades, as a whole platoon of servants marched into the room, bearing masterpieces of cooking and chicanery: cockatrices, mermaids, phoenixes; homunculii with apples in their mouths; a whole roasted keung-si, charred black around the edges …

  “You might wanna wake up now, young‘un,” Reynolds advised. “You won’t want to see this.”

  The last salver was as big as a coffin, carried on the shoulders of six enormous wolves, and on it lay Boz, naked and hog-tied, gagged with a bit in his teeth. The wolves set the tray down before Trace, and Boz began to thrash, screaming against his gag. Trace saw all eyes turn toward him expectantly, found a carving knife and fork in his hands. The Russian held out his glass in salute, waiting, the promise of threat in that cruel smile.

  Venenum Fatalis, Contagii, Clades Inevitabilis. He heard her voice as if she were whispering in his ear. He looked down the table again, saw her raise her left hand and pantomime thrusting a knife into it, at the same time as the Russian glanced down at her and fury crossed his face—

  Trace was thrust away from the table, yanked away as if by a river current, awash in cold and tumbling confusion. He felt her hand clawing for his, trying to hang on, but she slid away like candle smoke—

  —and he thrashed awake in a swaddle of blankets, cold night air bearing down on his lungs, neck and shoulders aching with the strain of reaching, trying to understand.

  He fell back with a hard sigh, panic cooling in his blood and condensing to the weight of guilt.

  “You all right?” Boz said, low, from across the fire.

  To Trace’s left, Hanky was snoring and senseless. To the right, the Kid whimpered softly, twitching in his sleep. The sky spread out above them, vast and black, with a band of stars across its middle. A few yards away, the horses stood patiently on their tethers.

  Trace rolled on his elbows, rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Just dreams.”

  “Was I in ’em?”

  Trace shook his head. He got his knees under him and stood, wincing at the stiffness in his joints. “You might as well turn in. I ain’t sleepin any more tonight.”

  That had been two nights ago. He had not slept much since, though he had spent long hours meditating while the others were asleep, searching in ever-widening circles around the river valley and through the wilds of Wyoming, for disturbances, portents, signs of any kind … but there was nothing. Or at least nothing he could recognize as threatening.

&nb
sp; He didn’t know what he was looking for, was the problem. This dream had been more pointed and cryptic than the others, full of things he recognized—the wine, the leeches, the words of Miss Fairweather’s protection spell—but didn’t know how to interpret.

  Had she been trying to send him a message? But if she could do that, why didn’t she come closer in the gray space? If he was such a powerful psychic then why couldn’t he talk to her?

  Their first day in Evanston was Sunday, but there was still plenty to do: renting a corral from the stockyards manager, arranging lodgings for himself and the boys, getting the horses settled. Boz handled the customers at the corral with thorough competence, and Hanky leapt like a frog to do anything Boz told him. Even the Kid was lickspittle diligent, although he was edgy and had twice reminded Trace of his promise to telegraph his friend.

  So here he was, on the second of August, almost three months after he’d stormed out of her library, sending a telegram to St. Louis and praying to God she’d forgiven him enough to answer.

  “Is this … Latin?” the telegraph clerk asked, frowning at Trace’s handwriting.

  “She’s European,” Trace said. He’d composed the message in a mishmash of Latin and French, in hopes the sending and receiving offices would not grasp its meaning and assume it was written by a lunatic. “Just send it as written.”

  “What service do you want?” the clerk asked, counting letters.

  “The quicker the better.”

  “You want to wait for a reply?”

  “No, I’ll come back in the morning.” He didn’t allow himself to suppose she might not answer.

  * * *

  TRACE LEFT THE telegraph office and made his way along the crowded sidewalk, dodging ladies in fishtail skirts and cowboys in batwing chaps; the cowboys gave him berth and the ladies looked him over from the corners of their eyes. He felt awkward about that, particularly since he was wearing the suit Miss Fairweather had bought for him. He had to turn out respectable for his duties as Miller’s agent in town. Hanky had made appreciative noises about his fine duds; Boz cocked a knowing eyebrow and said nothing.