by Steve Vernon
Brady stared bullet holes into Olan Walker.
“Any more conjuring,” he said in a real quiet voice. “And we kill him.”
He pointed at me. I tried to make myself invisible, but it didn’t work. Knowing Boss Brady had already emptied his gun should have helped, but it didn’t.
We’d all seen that snake killed, too.
Olan Walker nodded, like he’d accept what Boss Brady said.
“Fetch me Black Betty,” Brady ordered.
Then everything got real quiet.
*
Black Betty was the law maker. A leather strap about the width of a fat boss’s hand, maybe as long as a man’s shoulder to his fingertips. Three layers of leather stiffened with sweat and blood. Like a piece of swamp oak, grown mean. Right down both sides run a string of brass grommets, like you’d tack around a shoe lace hole. Like being whipped with a cuttle fish, them grommets would catch a convict’s skin and pull it off his bones like salt taffy.
I seen men beat to fish glue, when the boss’s piss was up.
The gun bulls grabbed Olan Walker. Then Boss Brady set to work. Laid Olan Walker’s back open, until his skun hung in flaps skinned down from his shoulder bones, and his spine looked like the hair of a burning woman.
It was the damndest thing I’d ever seen. Chunks of Brady fell like moldy turds. Every time he’d take a chunk off Olan Walker, a piece of his own self fell down.
He kept on whipping. I had the feeling he’d keep whipping until there was nothing holding the whip but a handful of hate.
We’d seen Olan Walker hang on the rack like nothing could bother him. He was a conjure man, and he knew no pain. But they got to him that day. No man could stand up to the whipping he took.
He leaned against the tree, laughing and weeping and howling like no one emotion was big enough for his agonizing body.
I’ve heard screech owls yell for the devil by moonlight. I’ve heard the mockingbird call for a sinner’s soul. I’ve heard the wet black swallow of my mother’s last breath as lung rot took her down into the hard long night.
But I never heard nothing like the sounds Olan Walker made that day.
I ain’t sure what happened first. Either Boss Brady’s arm gave out, or Olan Walker got tired of standing. Both men fell, like they were tied with an invisible chain.
Then it got dark. One moment it was blind naked sunshine, next it was blacker than twice boiled pitch. A storm cloud the size of Missouri rolled in from the heavens.
Olan Walker raised his hands like he was letting go. Let a long wail loose from somewhere round the bottom of his soul.
He’d been keeping that back for a long lonesome time.
That’s when the first lightning struck. Took Boss Brady, right where he knelt. Sizzled his fat and hatred like pork fried down to cracklings.
Olan Walker stood up. It was like watching a fallen tree getting back up. He stepped from his skin like a snake sliding out of a three year old hide. He looked to me to be about as smooth and unblemished as a fresh born baby.
He looked down at me and smiled.
I hid my eyes, his smile was that terrible scary.
The lightning came in sheets and chains. It struck neat as arrows, slicing links of US grade steel as easy as a hot razor through fresh chilled butter.
One of the gun bulls unlimbered his shotgun.
The lightning fried him down to bones.
It played about what was left of Boss Brady. His moldering carcass jittered and twitched like a sinner finding instant religion.
The gun bulls and bosses ran as fast as they could.
The lightning picked them off like rats in a cheese barrel.
Miles away lightning struck the Captain’s bungalow. The camp, the kitchen, even the camp bell.
Miles further a bolt of lightning sizzled out of a cloudless sky and crashed into Government House. The lightning blast charbroiled the governor like a seasoned steak while he was sitting over his afternoon tea.
Some men swore that Olan Walker was struck by lightning.
Some said that he was blasted to dust and ashes.
I know better.
I don’t know what I saw, but I’ll tell you what happened. That cloud rolled down and touched the dirt, and Olan Walker stepped into that cloud like a man stepping onto a train. Waved goodbye, but nobody saw him but me.
None of the bosses or gun bulls survived. The camp burned to the ground. The convicts ran for the hills. Some were caught, some got away. Nobody told the same story.
I lay under the snake tree, long after the last gun bull died. Long after the last convict ran. Long after Olan Walker stepped into that cloud and waved goodbye.
As I lay there I saw a long gray woman, standing atop the tree.
Now there are stories of a voodoo queen up around New Orleans. She can turn a man’s blood to ash with a wave of her hand. She can shrivel a man’s snake down to worm size with a single cold laugh.
As powerful as that voodoo queen was, she’d bow down and kiss the muddy feet of this gray woman of the snake tree.
“That boss,” the gray woman said in a slow molasses voice. “He killed a lot of my friends, you know?”
Maggots of the purest white crawled through the dead snakes and bosses alike. The rotting meat perfumed the air worse than skunk spray. The wind held its breath in disgust, or maybe awe.
“Where’d Olan Walker go?” I asked.
The gray lady pointed to the sky. I looked up. There, in broad daylight, was the stretch of stars my daddy called the hunter’s belt. And beyond that stretch was a thousand more stars that had names my daddy never knew.
“Climb the tree,” she said. “The hunters’ll be coming.”
I didn’t want to.
I stood and stared there, at the tree.
I saw the skin of Olan Walker, all that was left of him, grinning at me like a laughing suit of long johns. I saw the gap of his tongueless mouth gaping like an open grave. The wind caught at that tongueless mouth and drifted it upwards like a tattered flag of surrender.
Bam, I was snagged.
I climbed the tree. When the police and the posse and the politicians gathered I was high above them, hidden in the branches.
I saw birds fly by.
I saw snakes hung like moss from the branches.
I saw bats chase mosquitoes.
A big barn owl stared at me.
There were other things as well. The bark of the tree crawled with them. Shapes and tatters and visions of things that danced in nightmares.
Nothing I saw seemed concerned with me or the men below.
I saw the gray woman, high above it all, looking down and smiling like I was made of solid gold and emeralds. Her mouth looked like an ivory rainbow. I had to get up to where she was waiting for me.
I heard Olan’s slow laughing voice talking of trapdoor spiders.
I struck out like a sailor clambering a mast. Climbing higher until I was way past where the tree ought to have stopped growing.
That gray woman opened her smile wider, like the pearly Jordan gates. I pushed towards her. That smile opened like she was the queen of all king snakes, getting ready to swallow a fresh caught rat.
She slithered like chimney smoke, slipping and sliding as the stars glittered around her like glittery scales.
She turned herself into a giant flying snake, her mouth open wide enough to swallow a whole chain full of men. I tried my damndest to turn back but I was caught in the current of her all burning hunger.
I tried to kick away.
She laughed at my effort.
Her laughter was the booming of the wind in a sail, the drumming of summer thunder, the chuffing of a great gray locomotive yonder bound.
Then I was in, and I heard her teeth slamming like a gallow door behind me. I expected to feel my flesh torn from my bones by the gnashing of her teeth; but there was only the long slow mudslide down her gullet, only the long tunnel ride down towards forever, feeling the burning of h
er stomach fluids and hearing the far off screams of lost souls drifting up ahead of me.
It would be a long hard road from here, a long hard road down the gullet of a forever kind of snake that lead me winding on down towards hell knows where.
Only I got a feeling when I finally get there old Olan Walker’s gonna be waiting to tell me the law of the land.
About the Author
Steve Vernon is a storyteller. The man was born with a campfire burning at his feet. The word "boring" does not exist in this man's vocabulary - unless he's maybe talking about termites or ice augers.
That’s all that Steve Vernon will say about himself – on account of Steve Vernon abso-freaking HATES talking about himself in the third person.
But I’ll tell you what.
If you LIKED the book that you just read drop me a Tweet on Twitter – @StephenVernon - and yes, old farts like me ACTUALLY do know how to twitter – and let me know how you liked the book – and I’d be truly grateful.
If you feel strongly enough to write a review, that’s fine too. Reviews are ALWAYS appreciated – but I know that not all of you folks are into writing big long funky old reviews – so just shout the book out just any way that you can – because I can use ALL the help I can get.
Also By Steve Vernon
My Regional Books – from Nimbus Publishing
Haunted Harbours: Ghost Stories from Old Nova Scotia
Wicked Woods: Ghost Stories from Old New Brunswick
Halifax Haunts: Exploring the City’s Spookiest Spaces
Maritime Monsters: A Field Guide
The Lunenburg Werewolf and Other Stories of the Supernatural
Sinking Deeper OR My Questionable (Possibly Heroic) Decision to Invent a Sea Monster
Maritime Murder: Deadly Crimes From the Buried Past
My E-Books
In the Dark and the Deep – Steve Vernon’s Sea Tales #1
Harry’s Mermaid – Steve Vernon’s Sea Tales #2
I Know Why The Waters Of The Sea Taste of Salt – Steve Vernon’s Sea Tales #3
Flash Virus
Fighting Words
Tatterdemon
Devil Tree
Gypsy Blood
The Weird Ones
Two Fisted Nasty
Nothing to Lose –Adventures of Captain Nothing, Volume 1
Nothing Down – Adventures of Captain Nothing, Volume 2
Roadside Ghosts
Long Horn, Big Shaggy
Author: Steve Vernon
ISBN-13: 978-1-927765-32-6
Second Printing – October 22, 2014
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Look for all of Steve Vernon’s upcoming Crossroad Press books
Devil Tree
Long Horn, Big Shaggy
Nothing to Lose
Nothing Down
Rueful Regret
Roadside Ghosts
Gypsy Blood
The Weird Ones
Noir Dark