by Matt Kilby
“Is he lying?” John asked without looking.
“About which part?” the old man said, and that answer alone made John want to shoot him. “If you’re asking whether I murdered your wife, then yes, he’s buying heartbeats. But I did pass them on the road.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What does it matter? Just because I saw them doesn’t mean they didn’t kill her. All the same, them seeing me doesn’t mean I did.”
“You told me they killed her.”
“Did I?” Lester said. “I don’t remember that. I told you I’d help you kill them, but you're the one who said they were guilty.”
“Son of a bitch,” John breathed and looked at the old man.
“What if he did?” Lester shrugged. “Are you prepared to let him walk away because you’re not as sure as you thought? You have as much evidence now as when you killed his brothers. And there is that. Do you think he’ll laugh it off and buy you a drink because this was some misunderstanding? You let him go, he’ll come for you. He’ll bring any soldiers left alive and hunt you down until you’re hung like his little brother. What if you find Mary in Heaven to learn it was him? What if she asks why you broke your promise?”
When the gun went off, John didn’t blink. Neither did the colonel as the blood spilled out of his heart. He dropped to his side and stained the snow as John closed his eyes.
“You made the right choice,” Lester said, and John shot him too. The bullet went in his stomach, his hands folded to hold his guts inside. A low groan left his mouth as he fell.
John couldn’t say for sure which was guilty and which was innocent, but the old man was right. He made a promise and would keep it, even at the risk of damning his soul. He stood watching the two die and then looked to find his horse. A woman held its reins by the tepee where he spent last night, so John stepped over Lester toward her. When he was halfway there, the woman's eyes went wide, her attention beyond him as a ripple of gasps passed through the others.
“Wendigo,” the woman cried out and dropped the reins, putting the hand to her mouth. The other hand pointed to where she stared. As the tribe echoed the word, John turned to Lester, on his feet and brushing snow off his clothes.
John didn’t take time to think about what it meant, instead shooting the old man again. The bullet jerked Lester’s shoulder, but he stepped forward as if it was a mosquito bite. John tried for his head, but his shot went low and right, grazing Lester’s cheek. The miss might have been a mercy, at least in the name of not wasting bullets, because this time he saw the wound close, leaving nothing but a trace of blood behind. He realized then that, whatever a wendigo was came closer to the truth than calling him a man. Opening his hand, he dropped the revolver and hoped the creature knew it meant surrender.
“Pick it up,” Lester said as he approached. “Your work ain’t done.”
“I killed you,” John said and felt hollow, even when the old man slapped a gloved hand across his cheek.
“Not yet,” Lester said. “You’ve got plenty of time before you do. Now put that gun in your holster before men come back with fight still burning in their eyes. As hot as their blood is, they won’t think twice about taking on some blood-thirsty wendigo.”
“What does that even mean?” John stared at the healed cheek instead of reaching for his fallen revolver.
“You want to take this one, chief?” Lester called to the bear, who nocked another arrow and contemplated whether to shoot. “My friend is wondering what your women call me.”
“Wendigo,” the bear said. “A skin walker. He changes faces like clothes and eats the flesh of anyone foolish enough to listen to him.”
“John here has listened to me plenty and I haven’t so much as licked him. Can you at least vouch for that?”
He looked at John again, satisfied at the short nod of his answer. It was all he could muster with his mind spinning to figure the thing out. The old man was right. Whatever he was didn’t raise a finger to hurt him the whole time they traveled together. That didn’t mean he could trust him more than he had or should any further. He still might have killed Mary. Hell, the scales tipped further in that direction knowing he was something other than a man. Back in Pine Haven, Preacher Harrow would call him a demon and swear this whole ordeal was his way of securing John’s soul. If so, John made it easy. He did the damning himself.
“You see,” Lester held out his hands as if he was harmless. “If I was some—what did you call it?”
“Wendigo,” the bear repeated past the taut string of his bow.
“If I was some wendigo, would I bring a man all this way without even a nibble?”
“He might be a wendigo too.”
“So now there are two wendigos,” the old man raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t that convenient? I bet that poor sack of shit over there on his face is one too, right?”
“That man is dead,” the bear shook his head.
“Well he’s the lucky one,” Lester sighed. “How about this? Put down that bow and let us leave and you’ll never need to worry about us again. Fire one arrow this way and I’ll tear every one of you to pieces with my bare hands. Does that sound like a deal?”
“You can go,” he said, “but I’m not putting this down.”
“Fair enough,” the old man turned to John. When he saw he hadn’t moved, he cursed under his breath and bent for the revolver, shoving it into John’s holster.
“Unless you want to know the feeling of an arrow in your chest, we need to leave now. I promise you’ll understand when we get where we’re going.”
John didn’t move, and Lester walked past him toward the horse.
“Suit yourself,” he called back as the bear aimed his arrow at John.
“Go,” the Indian said, “but if you’re a man, don’t go with him. He’ll lead you to ruin.”
“I’ll lead you to answers,” the voice behind him said. John found him with his hand out to help him up. “You can’t tell me you don’t want them.”
John walked to him, his hand on his revolver until he accepted the fact it was useless. At the horse, he took Lester’s hand, feeling strength instead of the brittle bones he always assumed. He mounted at the front of the saddle and felt the hand grip the back of his duster.
“Where are we going?” he asked with his head turned.
“Far from here,” Lester muttered and spoke louder after John sent the horse forward. “Ride to the river and west to California. A place called Eris Cove. That’s where we’ll find him.”
“Who?” John rode, the fort’s rifles growing distant and eventually quiet.
“The man who killed your wife.”
13
The cowboy stopped talking and walked to the desk for the holstered revolver. He strapped it to his waist and pulled on the leather duster, the hat going on last to complete the costume, though Carly wasn’t sure it was one anymore. Her eyes lingered on the stitches in the coat, scars of bullets in old dried skin. He went to the door and glanced at her.
“Ready?”
“Wait,” she shook her head and wished it cleared her thoughts. “That’s it?”
“For now. Like I said, someone else needs to hear how it ends.”
“Are you a wendigo?” she blurted, surprised she didn’t feel stupid. Instead she worried how he’d answer. She should have known he wouldn’t, chuckling as he shook his head.
“A vampire?”
“No,” he smiled. “I’m no god either, so save your breath.”
“Then what?” She thought she was prepared for his answer or lack of one, but he hadn’t failed to surprise her yet.
“I don’t know,” he turned to the door. “I never thought to ask. As far as I’m concerned, I’m a man with a job to do. Are you going to drive me or should I see how long it takes a state trooper to notice a car swerving down the wrong side of the road?”
She rolled her eyes and stood, following him outside for the first time since they got there.
/> “All this time, you never bothered to get a driver’s license?” she said as they walked down the steps.
He shook his head. “I knew I’d have you.”
Carly started to laugh but glanced to the payphone where the junkie kept watch. A smile lingered on his lips, as if he already had his reward. She wondered if Mr. Ciasto would pay him in drugs or wait for the money to channel back. She wondered how many men he would send and how even an immortal cowboy could keep them from killing her.
“What about him?” she asked, and the cowboy’s head turned.
“He’ll make his call when we’re gone.”
“And you want him to?”
“It will happen whether I want it or not,” he shrugged as he walked to her car and tapped on the back window. Her stomach turned when she saw the shadows inside, a man’s face appearing as he cracked the door.
“Can I help you, hoss?” he said, out of breath.
“We need our car back.”
“Fuck off,” the man spat and shut the door, his face receding into the dark.
The cowboy pulled the door wide and grabbed his ankle, hauling him onto the asphalt. The man struggled to hold the door frame or anything his fingers found, but the cowboy slung him to the ground and went back in for the prostitute. When they both sat stunned and pantsless in the cold, some misguided chivalry brought the man to his feet before the cowboy opened his duster to show the horsehead revolver. The man sat down and didn’t move again.
The cowboy got into the passenger seat and Carly behind the wheel, trying to ignore the smell of sex as she cranked the engine. She looked at the payphone, the junkie watching with his ravenous smile. If he noticed the gun or cared, it didn’t touch the greed in his eyes. She wished the cowboy would go ahead and shoot him.
“He’ll get what he deserves,” the cowboy said as if reading her mind, “and slower than any bullet.”
“You sure about that?” she muttered as she drove to the highway and then toward Creek Hollow.
“When the people coming for you don’t return home, the man who sent them will be angry. The easiest scapegoat will be the one who brought them there. He’ll reward him with bad drugs, and he’ll wander half a mile down this highway to lie in a ditch when he gets tired. Paralysis will come before death, and so will rats. Knowing they are chewing his face will be his last living thoughts.”
She sighed and looked at him with a soft smile. “You tell the nicest stories.”
He shrugged.
“And you know that how?”
“It happens every time. The stone makes sure.”
“The stone?”
“You’ll see,” he nodded. “Once Vick Hafferty is out of jail.”
14
In the stark white hall of wherever he was, Joe found time best measured by broken bones and bruises. Wounds and lacerations. Missing teeth. They all healed the same, though the serious injuries took longer. The days he was too damaged to walk back to his room, he was carried and slipped into what was best described as a short coma. Then the red light woke him whole to do it all over again.
Each time Joe walked down to the circular room, he found the man they called Pharaoh waiting with some new instrument for his torture. It started with his hands, but when Joe fought back, he graduated to blunt weapons and then to those with blades. He was slashed with knives and swords and impaled by spears. He once lost a hand but woke the next morning to a new one, unsure if it was sewn on or he grew a new one.
Not knowing was the worst part. He could survive any injury Pharaoh inflicted, though that was more or less clear when he embraced a bomb in the lobby of a courthouse, but he couldn’t take Pharaoh’s grin. There was something in it Joe couldn’t put his finger on until he found himself able to hold his own. The light in the bastard’s eyes wasn’t any blood lust but a teacher’s pride.
The realization created more questions. Foremost was what he was being taught. Based on the men who brought him there, it was some military operation. Once that detail clicked into place, he understood better. This was some kind of experiment, and he was among about fifty other lab rats. Pharaoh learned to run his maze well enough to rise above the rest so was in charge of teaching Joe to run his. But what did that mean? Had Pharaoh touched the black stone too?
Impossible. The stone had been under the Memorial Hill Cemetery maple for thirty years before Joe dug it up. Before that, Grady found it under his oak in Creek Hollow. There was no telling how long it had been there, though he tried to remember if Grady told him. If he did, the stone’s power didn’t help his memory, so on nights Joe fell asleep by choice instead of Pharaoh’s hands, the thoughts exhausted him until his eyes drifted shut.
The overhead light flashed red. Time to fight again. One day, Pharaoh stood with that unshakable smile, holding a war hammer by his knee as he threw what looked like a broomstick to Joe with his other hand. The next, he shot a crossbow bolt into Joe’s shoulder and walked over to toss a thin-bladed rapier by his head, barking for him to get up. At the click of the bowstring drawing back, Joe snatched the sword with the hand of his injured arm and yanked out the bolt with the other, waiting for the familiar tug of the wound closing before he settled into a defensive stance.
The days he fought, he thought of Brad and told himself Pharaoh stood in the way of seeing him again. Even so, hitting him hard enough to make the smile falter wouldn’t swing the doors open, the soldier he referred to as “The Asshole Beyond the Glass” telling him he could go home. Instead, a couple doors would slide open down the hallway and two lab rats would carry Pharaoh to his room as they sometimes did him. He tried to find perspective, reminding himself they were all stuck in the same situation—forced to fight and suffer and heal. Maybe to see if they had a limit. Maybe to satisfy whoever watched on the security cameras he heard whirring in the light fixtures. He found sympathy those days they carried Pharaoh away and lost it again the next time the asshole impaled him through the stomach.
When not fighting, he stood in the living room where the panel once slid away, asking questions until he felt insane. If The Asshole Beyond the Glass listened, he didn’t answer and wouldn’t until he decided it was time.
One day, walking through the flashing red into the hallway, he decided to see if he could hurry that along. At the end of the corridor, he found Pharaoh waiting, this time wearing metal bands across his knuckles with a mean-looking spike jutting from the middle of each. Though he’d felt every type of pain imaginable, his stomach tightened at the thought of one of those going into him, but he kept his course to the center of the room. There, he sat with his legs crossed under him as Pharaoh chose another weapon. He took two matching batons and dropped them in front of Joe as if he didn’t notice his Gandhi-esque pose or didn’t care.
“Get up,” Pharaoh said.
“No. I’m done.”
“You think you got a choice?”
“I do. You too, but I think you’ve forgotten. You have any idea why we do this?”
“It’s what we’re here for.”
“But why?”
“I’m guessing you think you know.”
“Pretty sure,” Joe smiled and felt peace in it. Though he killed this man many times, they were having their first conversation.
“I’m listening,” Pharaoh crossed his arms, careful not to stab himself with the spikes on his hands.
“We fight because the people who brought us here are nothing like us, but they want to be. I don’t know how you got here or can heal like me, but the men who came for me were soldiers. Soldiers want weapons. We either fit the bill or are here to make sure the power in us is stable enough to take themselves. They need us, and that gives us the advantage.”
“You suggesting we go on strike?” Pharaoh tilted his head.
“Why not? We force them into a conversation, we at least find out the point of all this. Don’t you want a reason for your suffering?”
“I got a reason. Has the same name you do.”
“Well you don’t need to worry about that anymore,” Joe stared past Pharaoh to the wall behind him—through it and over the miles to home and Brad.
“You’re telling me I take a swing at you, you won’t try to stop it.”
“Nope,” Joe shook his head. “Do your worst. I’ll be here again tomorrow.”
Pharaoh put his hands on his hips, the angle making the spikes look sharper. Instead of using them, he glanced at the ceiling.
“Any suggestions?” he asked the room’s only light fixture. “If I take a seat across from him and play patty cake, will you join us? If we organize, I bet we can start a hell of a bowling team.”
Joe sighed, wondering how he thought this would work. After a moment, the intercom squawked and a familiar voice spoke—the soldier he last saw through the panel in his living room.
“You do that, you’ll find your refrigerator empty. We’ve seen you bounce back from any injury. How long do you think you could go without eating? Not physically, mind you. I’m sure you’d survive that the same as the rest. I’m talking about the hunger. The emptiness. The need. You know about that already, don’t you Pharaoh? How long do you think it’d take to break you? We have time to find out.”
“I was just asking,” Pharaoh grinned, but Joe saw fear behind it and knew he would do whatever they told him.
“If so,” the voice said, and Joe imagined the cold in the soldier’s eyes as he spoke into the microphone, “put him down.”
Pharaoh gave a lazy salute and flexed his fingers as he approached Joe. Balling them into fists, he squatted in front of him.
“You sure you don’t want to make it a fair fight?”