Those Across the River

by Christopher Buehlman

  When I got behind the wheel of the car and started it, it occurred to me that the moment of the applause when I saw my wife coming towards me was the best moment of my life, that there never had been nor would be a better one. I wanted to slow everything down. I wanted to remember every lake-grey- and shallows-green-eyed glance she threw at me, pregnant as they were with what had happened before and what we had now won through to. I wanted a camera when she climbed out of the car in her wedding dress to change in the washroom of the filling station.

  As I drove home, I looked at her so often in the bronze light of late afternoon that she chided me to keep my eyes on the road, but she was laughing.

  It was good.

  I have never forgotten how good that day was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE NOISE BEGAN around eleven that night.

  My new wife and I were talking in low tones, too excited to sleep, but spent from our last union, while the candle sputtered and made shadows. The breeze from the window was cool now so Dora had unpacked our blanket for the first time in that house. I remember looking once past the curtains and marveling at how beautifully the full moon threw light over the leaves outside. The view from our window looked like a picture-show view.

  When the screams came even I heard them. Neither one of us moved for a second.

  They came again. Two women. The word help.

  I sat up in bed.

  “Was that the Noble place?”

  She nodded, wide-eyed. Gripping my arm and holding. I removed her hand and threw off the damp sheets. I put my pants on and took my holster, belt and service pistol from the drawer of the bedside table. While my wife had prepared for bed, I had readied things because Cranmer’s words had echoed in my head, and because I remembered what Saul had said about the moon.

  So I’d seen that the doors and windows were locked and I had loaded the clip with the silver-tipped lead custom-made for me in the mill town.

  Now I held that pistol and my sweat was on the grip because I sensed I would shoot it soon and my life would hang on how I shot.

  And maybe Dora’s life, too.

  “Stay here!” I shouted at her.

  And I ran down the stairs barefoot and shirtless, almost tripping, out into the movie-house night.

  The moon and the wind were strong and the trees made dazzling shadows. My bladder, while not full, would have felt better empty. I ran hard, hardly noticing the stones I later found had bruised and cut my feet. The screams had stopped, but I still heard noises. I was about to see something bad.

  The lights were on.

  The front door was standing open.

  It was bad.

  Ursula Noble sat cross-legged on the floor of the kitchen holding one arm between her legs. Everything around her was knocked over or spilled or torn up and she had gotten the tablecloth off the table and had it wrapped around that arm and blood was all over the cloth and all over her. All over her legs and face and I suddenly knew that she would die.

  Her father was lying on the floor of the common room and he did not move.

  She was crying and I went to her and pulled her arm from between her legs and saw that her hand was gone. I used a long wooden spoon from the floor and part of the tablecloth to make a tourniquet as best I could remember how. I did this barely looking at her, mechanically, just to get through it. Watching both doors, afraid of what might come through one of them. My sweat in my eyes despite the cold air. My hands shaking.

  I heard the youngest crying in a back room.

  When the tourniquet was on I went and found little Sadie sitting in the bedroom and crying with deep lungs. She looked unharmed.

  I ran back into the kitchen, stepping over the father. I could see the man was breathing. A stain in the shape of a clover darkened the wallpaper. Everything upset and broken. It was too much. I went to Ursie and took her face in my hands.

  “Where’s your mother?”

  She was sobbing too hard to make a sentence.

  “Shook her” and “outside” were all I could understand. Her drool on my thumb. I stood up and she knew I was leaving and she opened her eyes as wide as they would go and tried to keep me there with her one hand but I tore away. I took the pistol from where I had set it on the floor and left, a saltshaker rolling under my foot spilling me so I hit my shoulder hard on the way out, but never fell down. I had the impression the father was moving now, slowly rubbing his stick-like legs on the floor trying to come to, but I rushed out the door now and did not look back.

  A shiver went through me and raised gooseflesh on my left side as I went out into the cold air and silver light again. A streak of blood on the front porch hooked left, betraying the direction in which the mother had been dragged. There was a bobby pin in it. I took care to step around it all and walked to the left side of the house. Softly and quietly now, straining to see in the patchwork of moon-shadow.

  The woods were thin and I saw motion in a clearing sixty or seventy yards away. My lips began to move as I whispered please please please although I did not know what I was asking for or whom I was asking. I crouched behind a tree.

  I could see two of them.

  Pulling at her the way dogs would fight over a rabbit.

  Like wolves but not wolves.

  Bigger.

  Using their forepaws in a mockery of hands.

  Standing half-erect sometimes like apes might.

  My heart beat so loud and fast I thought it might break the shelf of my chest. My breathing was so hard I was sure they would hear. I fought to keep still but shuddered anyway. I sighted down the pistol but didn’t draw the hammer; I was too far away for a good shot and I knew I could not make my legs move closer. She was clearly dead but even if she wasn’t . . . Not towards them.

  I backed away from my tree, keeping an eye on them. Trying to control my shaking. Crouching low, I made my way to the Noble house again and saw that the front door was shut. Sadie cried out but her cry was stifled. I went to open the door but as soon as I touched the handle I heard a loud clap and something stung my face and something else passed by my head.

  Am I shot?

  I ducked to the side and shouted, “It’s Frank Nichols!” But another shot tore a chunk out of the door and would have hit me had I not moved.

  Light came from the hole in the door.

  Sadie cried now that her father’s hands were busy.

  The noise will bring them back.

  It was then that I remembered my wife alone in our house and I ran. I sprinted through the night air bare of chest and foot with the pistol tight in my hand.

  I only survived because I looked over my shoulder.

  It was closing in at a full run, not ten yards away.

  Its eyes like dim green lamps, its teeth bared, its wild pelt rippling. This could be my death. Now.

  I thumbed the hammer back and pointed the pistol behind me, still running. The monster dodged right, meaning to flank me, but exposed its own flank for just that second.

  Please.

  The big .45 jumped hard in my hand and banged loud. An instant of bright flame and then smoke. It was powerful. It was good magic. The thing’s hindquarters bucked sideways when the slug caught it and it spun out, giving a bark of pain and surprise. It stopped to lick its badly injured haunch and I might have sunk one in its chest had I been willing to stop running and take a steady shot, but I kept running and shot again and missed.

  I saw motion behind it, farther off but coming. How many of them? I had only seen one other but there was no way to tell if maybe half a dozen were threading their way towards the noise of my gun. I thought they could probably smell my fear, that it would smell bright.

  As I ran I saw my bedroom window as a square of light bobbing past the branches of the young trees along the road and I moved so fast now it seemed the balls of my feet barely nipped the ground. One was moving in the trees beside me. I glimpsed its shoulders as it ran. It was bigger than the other one and darker, maybe black
, but it darted back into the brush when I raised my weapon and kept pace with me, just too far off for a good shot. I wanted to make sure one was not gaining on my other side but feared to take my eyes from this one. They were quick.

  As I got to the porch I put my back to the wall and tried the door with my left hand. Open. I had forgotten to tell Dora to lock the door behind me. I got it open and leapt inside and saw my wife in the kitchen wide-eyed and small, holding a knife.

  “Get upstairs and shut the door! Lock it!” I said, and I bolted the front door and dragged the heavy sofa and two packed, taped boxes in front of it.

  Something moved past the window.

  Please please please.

  I ran into my kitchen, which was wild with the shadows of branches swaying on the floor. I grabbed Dora’s silverware from the drawer. Some of it fell and clattered to the floor as I took the stairs two at a time, moving past the shut bedroom door and into my study. The front door downstairs began to rattle as something strong tried to force its way in. Then three hard raps came.

  Is it knocking?

  They came again.

  “Frank?” Dora yelled.

  “Stay in there! No matter what you hear!”

  I took the small cannon from its place in the corner of the study and poured powder in it, but the powder went everywhere. Now I perched it on its carriage. This was taking so long. If my hands weren’t shaking. If I had a little time. Tore one pocket out of my pants for wadding. Quarters and nickels from my pocket—I remember how ridiculous it was to see a buffalo going down the hole—but not dimes; dimes were too light. Only butter knives and those delicate forks fit in the narrow aperture of the weapon. This was taking too long! Now the other pocket so the load didn’t fall out when I pointed it down. More like a large shotgun than a small cannon, made to shred horses and men.

  Why is it so quiet?

  When I had it loaded I moved it to the hallway and pointed it down the staircase so that nothing could get up them without facing it. I had choked off the upper floor.

  Or so I thought.

  They’re planning something, too.

  I laid the pistol next to me.

  Glass broke in the kitchen.

  “Frank?”

  “I’m alright, love. Be still.”

  I poured the priming.

  It walked into the living room below.

  Not the black one. Reddish. I saw it through the railing at a hairpin angle from the stairs. When I saw it my hands began to shake so badly that I could not light my lighter. I felt my testicles turn to ice and crawl up inside me.

  It came around the corner with its yellowed teeth bare and its tongue hanging. Teeth like Turkish knives. It saw me and reared up to consider me, its ears nearly brushing the ceiling. It was not impressed. Back down on all fours and started its run up the stairs. Its smell coming hot before it, my skin tingling, anticipating the grab of those awful teeth.

  It happened fast, I know that, but it seemed very slow.

  Jesus God please please I’ll do anything so sorry heartfully just let it THERE yes THERE please you GOD!

  The lighter caught and I touched it to the priming, which issued a short sst and then a hard and final BANG that rattled every joint in the house and broke out a downstairs window.

  At the last moment, when it saw the flame of the lighter and understood that it was going to be hit, it half turned away and caught the brunt of it through the ribs and middle. The effect was appalling. It was almost sawn in half. It panted hard twice through what was left of its lungs, blowing an awful bubble, then shuddered, caved in and died.

  The recoil of the gun knocked me from a squatting position and onto my back; the carriage had slammed across my shin, laying it open and all but breaking it. It was some time before I felt this. Or my badly burned hand.

  My wife screamed my name.

  I picked up the pistol.

  I ran to the door and when I found it locked, I laid my shoulder into it and it gave.

  The monster, the black one, was attacking Eudora where she had backed herself into the closet, kicking at it. It looked up at me as I burst into the room, and even as I raised the pistol it leapt on the bed and broke it and jumped out the window. My shot hit the headboard. I turned to see my wife. She was sitting on the floor of the closet holding her wounded foot aloft. It had bitten deeply into the meat of her heel and her blood ran and dripped.

  “Frankie oh Frank help me it got me but I think I’m alright I just need help getting up oh my God what was it what the hell was that?”

  “Just sit here and let me see it.”

  I stopped her bleeding with the top sheet of the bed. My hands were still shaking.

  “That was the cannon.”

  “Yes. We’ll have to clean this out.”

  “Oh God, we should have left. Why didn’t we leave?”

  “We’ll leave now.”

  “It hurts. I’m sorry I jerked my leg. You’re just trying to help and I can’t stay still.”

  “I think you’ll be alright. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

  Dora rarely cried but she did now.

  “I want to leave, you have to take me home. I don’t understand what’s going on here but it’s so bad. Take me home, Frankie, anywhere.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  That was what I said.

  Even though both of us knew it was too late now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  DO YOU KNOW him?”

  “No.”

  The sheriff stood with me on the porch in the cool of the morning.

  I thought he looked grey and ill, and he was probably thinking the same thing about me.

  “I’m supposed to take you in.”

  I nodded.

  “If the best explanation you got is that you shot an animal and in the morning it wasn’t.”

  “Please don’t.”

  “I don’t guess I will. A lot goin on I don’t comprehend. No animal I know could have done that at the Nobles, and no man neither.”

  His voice faltered as he choked back a sob.

  “What are you going to do with him?” I said, nodding towards the staircase inside. I had covered the two biggest parts of the naked man with sheets and towels. What was left of the back and shoulders suggested an acrobat. Small man, but strong. His face had been spared. He had an Irish look about him with his auburn hair and friendly cheeks and when I had thumbed his eyes shut he seemed to be frozen, laughing at the best joke he ever heard.

  “Bury him in a potter’s field. I don’t know what else.”

  “Shouldn’t somebody look at him? The other sheriff?”

  “Ain’t nobody comin.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “They said it’s our bed to lie in and they won’t come.”

  “What about . . . I don’t know, the FBI?”

  “You want to tell your story to the FBI? The wolf-man story? They’d lock you up in a sanatorium and then lock me up for not lockin you up. I need time to think. About everything. It’s too much.”

  “I know.”

  “I guess you do. How is she?”

  “Dr. McElroy stitched her and put ointment on her for infection. He’s worried about that because the bite’s so deep.”

  “I hope you put something on that eye, too.”

  I nodded. He meant my eyebrow, which had swollen up badly. The night before I had noticed it hurting and found a dime-sized piece of pine from the Noble’s door wedged under it.

  “Did he want her in the hospital?” he asked.

  “He said that hospital’s only good for dying. You go in for a hernia and never come out.”

  “That’s about right. But he sent poor Ursie there. Oh my Jesus.”

  That half-choked sob came out of him again.

  He put his hands on his hips and bent forward at the waist, trying to collect himself. I put my hand on his back, and as soon as I felt the warmth of his skin through his shirt, the gesture seemed invasive
and awkward. I withdrew it and he stood up.

  He reached for a tin in his shirt pocket and put a pinch of tobacco in his mouth.

  “We’re leaving town,” I said.

  “Maybe me, too. Let’s see about movin him off your stairs.”

  IN THE PICTURES, gangsters spray bullets and the victims shut their eyes and fall asleep. Killing isn’t like that, of course. I found that out pretty young. But killing someone in your house is different from doing it on a battlefield. On the battlefield, you might have to throw a body into a shell hole, or hide behind one, or share a trench with one until the shelling stops, but that’s it. When it happens in your house, you have to clean it up. All of it. And then you have to keep living there.

  It was a huge, awful fucking mess. Endless pieces of bone and tissue on everything, endless pumping at the well. I scrubbed the walls and floor until my hand and arm were numb, except for the hot pain where the flash had burned the back of my hand raw.

  But the floors and walls.

  I thought the sponge would run pink forever.

  When that was finally done and the sheriff and Lester came by for the dead man, I drove into town to get supplies. Estel gave me the keys to the hardware store and told me to take what I needed and not to worry about paying.

  As I drove, I passed the carpenter’s house and saw him hammering in his open work shed. The whole town could hear it. Everyone knew it was for caskets.

  When I got back home, I was grateful to do a different kind of work. It was easier to strip burned wallpaper and board up windows and dig warped nickels out of the wall than to do what I had done before. And it was better to work than to sit and think.

  Between tasks I saw to my wife. Once the downstairs was clean, I sat her pillow-propped on the couch and fixed the bed, then carried her back upstairs warm and dreaming in my arms.

  Anna Muncie, the teacher of the younger grades, came over with cookies for Dora. Anna’s face was swollen from crying. Dora did not have much appetite nor did she speak much, but Anna sat with her while I worked and then near dusk she made a dinner that she herself ate most of.