“Should we go?” Owen asked, hopping from foot to foot. “Might be a trap.”
Elwood glanced at Roach, who shrugged and looked up the street.
“Owen, you go on back to the saloon and tell Stubbs we’re heading to the meeting. If we don’t come back in an hour, you boys will have to spring us free.”
“Spring you free?”
“That’s right. You wanted to be an outlaw, didn’t you? Well, outlaws spring each other free.”
Owen rubbed his hands and blew into them.
“Right. Spring you free. I’ll go tell Stubbs.”
They watched as the younger Hayes brother lurched down the street, shot thigh and all. Roach removed his spectacles and wiped the one good lens.
“He won’t be coming to our rescue, El.”
“I hope not,” Elwood said, straightening his hat. “We’d all get shot then.”
The lobby of the Copper Hotel was packed, with more folks assembled along the second floor railing to watch the proceedings below. Elwood and Roach managed to wedge themselves through the front door and find a place at the edge of the crowd, backed up against the hotel’s front bay window. Almost as many women were in the crowd as men. They’d gathered around Sheriff Atkins, who’d raised his hand for silence, and shouted questions about the miners still not back from their shift. Atkins made no effort to respond, simply holding his hand in the air like a school boy waiting to be called upon. Gone was the puffed lawman Elwood had encountered earlier—there was no strut to the way he held himself this evening, no cocky gleam to his eyes.
Eventually, the sheriff’s gesture for quiet worked, as eerie and uncommon as it was, and the shouted questions trailed off into silence. Atkins lowered his arm and looked around the room.
“You all aren’t going to like what I’m going to tell you, but it’s the truth. Leg Jameson and his boy will tell you the same as I’m about to.”
Atkins crossed his arms.
“They unearthed something in the Dennison Mine. Something wicked.”
The crowd broke into a racket again, everybody turning toward their neighbor to shoot off their mouth. Atkins waited out the first wave of yammering and shouted over the second.
“It killed the miners down there. All of them. It killed Hank Chambers, too, when we tried to seal the mine.”
The racket tripled this time, louder than a dozen hens crammed into a barrel with a hungry fox. Elwood and Roach glanced at each other, wondering at this news and whether it would help or hinder their own scheming. The crowd shouted a barrage of questions until Sheriff Atkins, lips tightening, took out his pistol and fired it into the air, causing the folks along the hotel’s second floor railing to start and draw back.
“We don’t have time for jawing and hair pulling. If we’re going to live out the night we need as many men armed as possible. If you’ve got a gun, make sure it’s loaded and ready to fire. We blew the mine shut, but it broke out anyway. Burrowed right through the loose rock.”
“But what is it?” a man called out. “Bear?”
The sheriff shook his head and holstered his pistol.
“No. Not a bear. Looks like a human, but its skin is burnt up and it’s got hands like claws. Hank Chambers called it the Charred Man.”
A thoughtful silence fell over the crowd as everyone tried to picture this creature in their own minds. Hayes tried to figure it himself.
“That’s why you blew the mine shut?” a man on the second floor called down. “Because you’re ’fraid of a goddamn critter?”
The sheriff looked toward his critic on the second floor. Elwood noticed a disturbance in the crowd at the far back of the room, in front of the hotel’s kitchen door. It looked like somebody had stumbled and taken a few others down with them. Then a woman screamed, and the crowd turned into a scrambling, hollering mass as something charged through it.
Elwood stepped up on the bay window’s sill for a better view. He saw a spray of blood erupt like water from a geyser and a tall, soot-colored man clawing his way through the crowd, tossing bodies like a farmer harvesting wheat. Elwood looked down to Roach, whose mouth had dropped open.
“Well, I reckon that’s what a demon looks like.”
Most of the town, except the dead miners, was in the Copper Hotel when the Charred Man entered. Men, women, and a handful of children surged back in terror as he tore among them, slashing at their vulnerable spots with his clawed hands, crushing their skulls as if they were made of eggshells. The crowd trampled each other in their mad terror and clogged the hotel’s two exits. The few armed men fired their weapons without having the time or proper stance to do so—elbows flew into their backs, tossed bodies sailed at their knees—and their shots went wide, missing the Charred Man and hitting other folks instead. When the armed men tried to reload, their shaking fingers failed them and the Charred Man knocked away their guns and fell upon them with uncanny strength.
For the second instance that day, time slowed for Elwood Hayes. The crowd, wild as it was, receded into the shadows of his vision as he focused upon the unnatural thing in their midst. It was shaped like a man, with arms and legs, but it wore the form like an ill-fitting skin. A damaged skin—somehow the creature had been badly burned, but it’d been too stubborn and unnatural to die.
The creature lifted a man off his feet, bit into his neck, and ripped out his throat. Amid the spray of arterial blood, Hayes noticed patches of clammy white poking through the creature’s blackened skin.
The Charred Man was growing himself a new hide, like a snake.
“God almighty,” Hayes shouted above the din, reaching behind his back and removing his revolver from its holster. “Roach, try and aim for the white spots. They might be weaker.”
“Hell,” Roach shouted back, leveling his gun and spreading his feet. “I think we’re just going to rile it further.”
Roach Clayton was right. They emptied their pistols at the Charred Man, but either they missed him as he whirled about or the bullets had no effect. He kept tearing through the crowd, knocking folks down and going at them. The hotel’s floor was covered in bodies and gore and, as they watched, a scrambling fat man, not minding himself, stepped onto an infant as she lay flailing, caving her chest in as he plowed mindlessly forward.
“Nothing we can do,” Roach said, grabbing Elwood’s arm. “You saw how those shots didn’t do nothing.”
At the back of the room, two women fought over a pistol until it went off, shooting a third woman in the back. The shot woman dropped to her knees and keeled over while the other two kept up the fight.
“We need to git,” Roach shouted in his ear. “Right now.”
Elwood turned to his friend, his mind still fogged. Roach’s eyes darted in their sockets like hummingbirds. Behind him, the hotel’s bay window reflected the whole bloody scene. The smell of piss and blood and smoke filled the room, a scent somewhere between slaughterhouse and coal fire.
Elwood shrugged off the fog and raised his pistol above his head.
“Mind your eyes, Roach.”
The bay window shattered beautifully as Elwood brought the butt of his gun down on the wide and expensive pane, closing his eyes as shards of glass laced the air. A cold draft of air rolled into the room. They jumped over the windowsill and into the night, already running as they touched the ground. Elwood sprinted with his head down, as if he was being shot at, and when he looked to his side he saw Roach doing the same. The juiced feel of escaping after a robbery had come over him, shooting through his veins like heat lightning. “Runoff,” Elwood shouted, though they were both already headed there anyhow. He could see his brother standing on the saloon’s front porch, looking confused in the spill of torchlight.
Elwood pulled up at the porch, gasping. Owen stepped down.
“Good hell, brother. What’
s happening over there?”
Elwood turned to look at the hotel. Folks were breaking windows on the second floor and jumping out while the Charred Man, a choppy blur, swept behind them. Those who’d managed to escape stood scattered in the street, watching like he was. Several had fallen to the ground, badly hurt, and their moans competed with the cries inside the hotel. Nobody seemed to know where to go or what to do.
Owen came over and stood beside him. Roach was bent over beside the saloon’s porch, dry heaving.
“What is it, El? What?”
Elwood took a breath and tried to pull the strands of his mind together. A light was snuffed out on the hotel’s second floor, then another. More screams erupted behind the broken windows—tortured, ugly screams. He was still holding his pistol upside down, his hand frozen around it.
“We had a meeting,” Elwood said, finding his voice. “We had a meeting and a demon showed up.”
Roach heaved again as more lights were snuffed out and the hotel’s entire second floor went dark. The screams came less frequent now, but Elwood could hear a repeated snapping that reminded him of breaking dried branches for kindling.
“A demon?” Owen said, turning a shade paler than he already was. “Like preachers go on about?”
“That’s right, little brother. And he’s an ugly son-of-a-bitch, too.”
Elwood holstered his gun, climbed up onto the saloon’s porch, and turned to the folks in the street. “You want to live, get in here right now,” he hollered. “You see somebody hurt, carry them along.”
Heads slowly turned his way, each lost in their own fog.
“You tarry, you die.”
23
He’d tried. He’d tried to warn everybody, to let them know what the town was dealing with. He’d called a meeting and brought all the guns and asked Leg and Henry Jameson to guard the hotel’s front door and Butch Hastings and Larry Nolan to guard the back. He’d spoken loudly and with purpose, like he’d been a lawman for twenty years instead of just two, and he hadn’t taken any bull about any of it. He’d done everything within his worldly powers that he could.
But the Charred Man had still come calling. Too fast and too strong and now they were all dying, dead, or about to die, and you couldn’t blame Milo Atkins for running for home. No sir, nobody could blame him for that. Not the groaning man he’d just passed, crawling in the dirt with his guts torn out, or the woman who was just standing there in the middle of the street, covered head-to-toe in blood and mumbling to herself as if speaking in tongues.
At a time like this, a man needed to look after his family.
He’d known they were in for it when the faces around him changed from confused and angry to surprised, plumb surprised, like all the steam in them had leaked out all of a sudden. He’d known before he heard the screams at the back of the room, before the first bone snapped and the smell of burnt flesh reached his nose. He’d known and he’d recalled the face of Hank Chambers, covered in grime and furious at the sheriff’s disbelief.
Luckily, belief was not a problem for Atkins anymore. Soon as he realized the meeting was over, and more folks were about to die, a lot of folks, he’d ducked low and sprinted through the room, barreling his way through the crowd before any of them could think to do the same. He’d been the first out the door, in fact, and had tripped over the bodies of Leg and Henry Jameson on the Copper Hotel’s front porch.
Their eyes bulged from their sockets, almost popped all the way out, and black bruises circled both their necks. Atkins imagined the Charred Man lifting them off the ground, one in each clawed hand, and squeezing the breath from them until their feet stopped kicking and their bowels loosened, Leg falling as mute as his son.
“I’m sorry, fellas,” Atkins said, scrambling to his feet. “You did your duty as best you could.”
The screaming started in earnest inside the hotel. The first couple of escapees burst out of the hotel and tripped over the Jamesons, as Atkins had done. They fell hard, before they could brace themselves for the impact. Atkins moved to help them up, but suddenly more folks sprinted out, knocking him into those he was trying to help, and then a third wave of escapees added to the heap, the whole tangle of folks roaring in terror. Atkins cursed the pile at the top his lungs, picturing his wife and boy weeping over his grave.
At last, a few sensible heads prevailed and the heap began to untangle itself. Atkins extracted himself from the crush and started pulling others out as well, grabbing any hand he found outstretched and pulling with his heels dug in.
“Settle yourselves,” he shouted, recalling himself and his position in town. “Everybody cool off and we’ll get you safe.”
The shouting helped. The pile was unpiled, each person freed staggering to his feet and running off into the dark.
It wasn’t so simple in the hotel’s doorway, though. Big Reggie Stills had somehow gotten himself wedged sideways against the doorframe, like he’d been running for the door, tripped, and fallen that way, only to have the surge of folks behind him press him into the frame before he could right himself. Atkins couldn’t see Reggie’s shoulders or legs—only his round gut, protruding through the door as the crush of folks shoved into his spine, bowing it out.
Big Reggie’s screams were something special, even compared to those coming from further inside the hotel. Two men, still on their feet, were crammed right behind Reggie, their faces reddening from the forces working at their own backs. Atkins took a breath, figuring the problem. He picked up Leg Jameson’s shotgun, checked to see if it was still loaded, and fired both barrels into Reggie’s gut, aiming right where his body was bent the most.
A scattering of insides flew into the air. Big Reggie screamed double, his whole body shaking. Atkins wiped the mess of pulp off his face, picked up the other shotgun, and emptied it into about the same spot. This time Reggie split open, snapping like a branch bowed too far. The two men behind him fell through the doorway, landed flat on their faces, and were trampled under by a dozen more folks scrambling for their freedom.
Those at the back of this group were caught by the demon at their heels and yanked back into the hotel, howling murder. Atkins removed his pistol from its holster, fired all six rounds into the hotel without taking particular aim, and took off at a sprint, relinquishing his role as the town sheriff right then and there.
He slowed to a walk, his side burning. The north side of Red Earth seemed quiet and strange after what Atkins had seen downtown. The cabins and shacks were dark. No lamps burning, no squabbling, no cries of rough lovemaking. Only a few whip-thin dogs, curled and sleeping against shut front doors as they waited for dinner scraps.
Atkins prayed his wife was home. He looked up at the stars and begged them from the pit of his stomach. He hadn’t seen Violet at the meeting but everything had happened so fast, so fast and then the Charred Man had appeared, tossing folks left and right. His wife might have been at the meeting the whole time, holding Billy by the hand and waiting to speak to him.
Atkins broke into a run again as he reached the north end of town.
“Vi? You home, Vi?”
A light was burning in their cabin. A shadow moved behind the window and Atkins felt his heart bump.
“Hey!”
The door opened. Two figures, one tall and one short, stepped out into the night. The shorter one dove forward and tackled Atkins around the waist.
“Pa!”
Atkins grabbed the boy and lifted him into the air, sending his little feet swinging. He hugged him to his chest and breathed in the fresh hay scent of his hair.
“What are they having downtown?” Violet asked. “Some kind of miner’s ball?”
Atkins took another breath, savoring it, and looked at his wife. Violet had her white apron on and her hair tied back with a ribbon. “We heard the blasting earlier,” she said. “Th
ey find a new seam of copper along with those killed miners? Is that why they’re so riled up tonight? Billy said there was gunfire in the saloon.”
Atkins set his son down and pushed him toward the cabin.
“Go inside, Billy.”
“We ate supper without you, Pa.”
“That’s fine, Billy. Go on in.”
Atkins took his wife in his arms. He nuzzled her neck and kissed its softness. He could feel her smiling, even with his eyes closed. An owl hooted up in the hills and the wind rustled the pine trees. She tasted like salt with a faded bit of soap to it. He wondered what his father was doing back in Wichita tonight, if the ornery old lawman would ever believe the stories that came back to him from this small company town.
“I love you, Violet,” Atkins told his wife, cupping her narrow shoulders with both his hands. “I sure do.”
24
Father Lynch fought against waking, even as the noise next-door rose to a babbling clamor. He’d only slept long enough to enter a deeper phase of sleep—the gin he’d drunk before retiring still warmed his blood, soothing, and the feather down in his pillow was soft and yielding beneath his skull. He’d lived in Red Earth long enough to expect additional noise on a Saturday eve, the one night the miners would be allowed to sleep in the following day, and whatever was happening at the Copper Hotel reached him only as a natural attendant to the usual revelries.
Until the gunshots and the screams. They roused him from bed as if he’d been fired from a cannon, sending him stumbling across his dark room in bewilderment. For a moment he could not recall where he was, or what time it might be, and listened at stiff attention as more screams filled the night, wondering if he’d gone mad.
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