Billy and Violet fell asleep quickly, their breathing steady and reassuring in the dark. Atkins lay curled around his wife and allowed the day’s events to play across his mind. Johnny Miller shooting that coach guard over spilt beer. The ride out to the Dennison Mine with Leg Jameson and his crew. Hank Chambers covered in gore, his eyes wild and serious, ready to torch the whole mine. And that first glimpse of the Charred Man, a murky outline at the far back of the entrance—like a man, but not. How they could all tell, even at a hundred yards, that he was an unnatural thing, something right out of a child’s nightmares.
They should have believed Chambers right off. They should have let him put fire to those fuses as soon as they’d seen that blood on his clothes and the fear in his eyes. Instead, they’d held him up with their foolish chatter, still worried about the mine and the goddamn copper.
Atkins sighed and turned onto his back. His mother said the past was like the stars in the sky—you couldn’t change either, no matter how much you worried them in your mind. Nothing to be done now until morning, when they’d have to see to the dead and living and make preparations for leaving town. Atkins started going over the long list of things that would need doing, the supplies they would need and what they could leave behind. He started drifting above himself, rising above the bed and the dark room, and a fine silt of sleep came over him without his notice.
Next he knew, Milo Atkins was sitting up in bed, wide awake and listening. Somebody had come into the cabin—he could feel him in the other room, waiting.
“No,” Atkins whispered. “Lord, no.”
He reached for the pistol on the bedside table but it was gone. The room smelled like smoke.
“No, no, no.”
He put a hand out and touched his wife’s shoulder—she was still warm and breathing. Thankfulness flooded his heart and he swung out of bed, his strength returned. He pulled on his pants by feel, then a shirt. He padded barefoot to his son’s cot and stood over him, listening to his whistling breath.
“You’re a good boy, Billy.”
The rhythm of his son’s breathing paused, started again. Atkins went out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him.
They had a visitor at the kitchen table.
Their visitor had set a lantern in the middle of the table, providing the cabin’s only light. Atkins swallowed the fear that threatened to overwhelm him and sat across from the Charred Man, his legs tingling with an urge to run as fast and as far as they could. He set his hands on the table and felt the wood grain beneath his palms. The Charred Man was wearing a different suit than before, a finer getup that fit him better. His pale skin was clearer, too, with only one middling black patch on his right cheek. He smelled like a smokehouse.
“Thought you might show,” Atkins said, his mouth dry. “Hoped you’d pass us by, but I suppose not.”
The Charred Man tugged at the emerald cufflinks on his jacket and grinned, the corners of his lips receding with unnatural stiffness.
“No, Milo. No one gets passed by.”
Atkins nodded, suddenly feeling very tired and very heavy, as if his body had been stuffed with clay.
“Is that Revis Cooke’s suit?”
The Charred Man’s tight grin faded. He leaned forward in his chair and set his hands upon his bony knees.
“Milo Atkins, you shall bear witness to what has happened here.”
“I will?”
The Charred Man appraised Atkins with dark and uncanny eyes. Their visitor was old, Atkins realized. Very old.
“What about my family?”
The Charred Man reached into his coat pocket. He drew out a pearl-handled straight razor and set it on the table.
“A prophet travels faster alone.”
Atkins looked around the cabin. It was like he’d never seen it before, any of it. Not the fire or the rocking chair or the straw dolls scattered on the floor. He picked up the straight razor with a hand that did not feel like his own. He unfolded it and studied the keen, square-headed blade. He recalled the screams from inside the Copper Hotel, the sound of bones cracking and flesh tearing. The sense, deep in his gut, that something was feeding inside the hotel—not on flesh and blood, but on the agony itself.
Atkins licked his dry lips. His bones felt hollow and cold. He rose from his chair and went into the bedroom where his wife and son lay sleeping. He floated above himself, drifting through the roof of his home and into the night sky, rising so high it was as if he were looking down on their cabin from the heavens, with a field of endless dark all around him.
28
The night had grown so cold and silent it was tempting to peel back a few layers of hammered board, straighten your hat, and step outside to look around and breathe in some fresh air. You could almost convince yourself the whole thing had blown over, that the demon set loose on the camp had moved on like a fast-rolling thunderstorm.
Of course, you’d probably get your head ripped off before more than three seconds passed. Elwood Hayes had no doubt of that, no matter how peaceable things appeared both inside the Runoff Saloon and out. The Charred Man was growing a new skin–he’d need all the food he could get and Red Earth was the closest town for fifty miles. The demon could hunt wild animals, sure, but they’d be nearly as much trouble as they were worth, stringy and fast as they skittered around the mountains. No. The Charred Man would make sure he’d picked Red Earth clean before he moved on and he’d have caught their scent hours ago, their fear and sweat and piss, as they holed up in the saloon. The Charred Man was just biding his time, picking folks off one or two at a time, till he felt strong enough to assail the Runoff.
Which was why Elwood had run back downstairs, still buttoning his pants as he took the stairs two at a time. He turned the hanging lanterns back to full flame, stoked the fireplace high, and brought out three bottles of moonshine from under the bar, careful not wake the widowed ladies sprawled on the floor. A fierce, eye-watering smell wafted up as Hayes uncorked the bottles, but the shine was clear and didn’t have much grit floating in it.
“That’s nothing but rotgut,” Caleb said. “Not much better than turpentine, I reckon. You could probably use it to strip paint off the side of a barn. Some wild-eyed prospector traded me three bottles for three shots of good whiskey. I talked him down to two shots and he was happy to deal.”
Elwood took a cotton bar rag, wetted it with shine, and plugged the rag into one of the bottles.
“You must be crazy, wasting good alcohol like that.”
Elwood glanced at his brother, who was watching him while Roach and Clem and Caleb and the prospectors were all still dutifully watching their respective corners of the saloon, as instructed.
“You mind your business, Owen, and I’ll mind saving our hides.”
“My business? Is that what you’re calling this empty corner I’ve been staring at for three hours?”
“Hush,” Clem Stubbs said. “Your piping voice is making my head hurt.”
“You’re soaked twice over, that’s why.”
“He’s got a point there, Clem,” Roach said, turning in his chair. “You’ve been sucking on that whiskey bottle like it’s water. How you expecting to shoot straight when you need to?”
“The Good Lord shall be my shield, Roach, and my aim he’ll guide true.”
The men all laughed at that, breaking the strain. Elwood pointed his younger brother back round again and returned to his work, wetting bar rags with the moonshine and stuffing one into each bottle. They weren’t sticks of dynamite, but they’d do nicely once you touched the rags to flame and tossed the bottle—he’d read once that some hard case had done this same thing to start a fire at the back of a bank while he was standing out front. When the tellers had run out, carrying the bank’s silver in their arms, the bandit had just kept his gun level and o
rdered them to hand the sacks right over.
Elwood took a step back from the bar and surveyed the room, wiping his hands on a clean rag. The fumes from the bottles had made his sight watery and blurred.
“Who here’s good at pitching?”
Chairs creaked as all eight men turned to look his way. One of the prospectors, an old codger the others called Jim, scratched beneath his hat.
“Pitching?”
“Like rocks and such.”
Clem scratched under his beard.
“You want us to throw those bottles at the haunt?”
“Yes. First you light them with one of the lanterns, then you throw. You need to be quick about it, too.”
“Like touching off a stick of dynamite,” Roach said, smiling and pushing up his spectacles. “You think we can burn this son-of-a-bitch out.”
“That’s right, I do. He’s been burned before, ain’t he? We just—”
Something pounded on the saloon’s front wall. The men rose from their chairs as if they’d been bitten and raised their guns.
“That’s him,” Owen said. “That’s the goddamn Charred Man.”
The pounding stopped. Elwood glanced at the saloon’s second floor railing but Ingrid hadn’t come out of her room. She was probably still in bed or getting dressed.
“Maybe it’s somebody else,” Stubbs whispered. “Maybe somebody is trying to hide out with us.”
“If that’s so, I don’t give a damn,” Owen said, whispering back. “They can find their own hidey hole.”
The pounding started up again, louder now. The tables they’d overturned and nailed to the wall shook with each strike.
“He can’t be that strong,” said Stubbs, who hadn’t been at the Copper. “That’s solid oak—”
The nailed-up tables cracked, lines running through them.
“Jesus,” Stubbs said, pulling back the hammer of his pistol. “I guess y’all weren’t telling stories.”
Elwood turned his back to the front of the saloon to look at the men. “Everyone go round to the far side of the bar and sight your guns. Don’t fire till he’s close and don’t waste your shot. You might only get one.”
The men stood frozen, looking past him. He could hear the wood splintering without having to see it.
“Move, damn you!”
That got the men scrambling, but they’d barely circled round the island bar when the barricaded wall gave way, exploding like a crack of thunder. Elwood reached for the nearest bottle on the bar, touched it to the flame of his lantern, and turned.
A tall, pale man in a fine dark green suit was striding through the breach in the wall, grinning as he unfolded a straight razor. His hands were no longer claws, but you could still make out the strange creature he’d appeared to be earlier in the tight way he held his shoulders, the darkness in his eyes. Elwood said a brief prayer, drew back his arm, and hurled the lit bottle at the demon’s chest.
The Charred Man ducked as if he’d already known what trick was coming. The bottle crashed behind him, exploding in a ball of fire.
Elwood shifted back on his heel.
He’d missed, and the level part of the fight was already over.
Ingrid remained in bed after Elwood Hayes rushed out of her bedroom, mumbling queerly about fire. She was in no hurry to return to the vigil downstairs. She preferred to stay burrowed far down in her blankets, splendidly nude, retaining as much warmth as possible as lovely sleep tugged at her, calling her home. She could still feel the stubble of his chin brushing against her cheek, rough and welcome at the same time. The weight of his body—
Gunshots.
Ingrid pulled the blankets above her head. More gunshots cracked below. She moaned into the covers and turned onto her side.
She understood that she was supposed to get out of bed. She understood she was supposed to put on her clothes, run to the railing, and peer down to watch the pitched fight. Perhaps there was something she could do, some brave and clever way she could kill the Charred Man, like a girl in a fairy tale.
Yet, she did not care to do so. Her love was gone, gone for years and gone forever, and she did not care. Ingrid Blomvik preferred to stay in bed, cozy beneath the covers, and wait for the events downstairs to play out, one way or the other. She was spent and Erik was gone.
29
The priest retreated to his bedroom to guzzle as much gin as he could hold down. He was bent on getting blind drunk and falling back asleep until morning. His great hope was that when the sun rose above the hills, burning the morning dew off, that everything in Red Earth would go back to normal. There’d be no one dead, no coffins in the sanctuary, and no tall, spindly stranger walking about in ill-fitting clothes, sniffing the air like a bloodhound.
Sleep would take an ocean of gin, though. From his bedroom window Father Lynch could see two bodies lying in the street, both lying face down in the dirt, pitched forward like they’d been shot in the back. He kept staring at them, vague outlines in the starlight, but they made no move to stand on their own and they did not disappear. This was a firm nightmare.
“Rise,” he whispered through the window. “Rise and walk again.”
The wind caught at their clothes, whipping them about, but neither rose. One of the bodies was a man, the other a woman. The wind made the woman’s skirt balloon over the back of her legs, revealing a patch of creamy white skin that would have been comely under other circumstances. Lynch found his gaze focusing on this exposed skin with the absorption of a lovesick youth gazing at the moon—the bare whiteness of it was somehow brighter than everything surrounding, including the fallen woman’s bare neck and hands.
Fresh screams came from the south end of camp, down by the general store and livery stables. The screams didn’t last long, sometimes only a half-second, but the shortest ones were the worst, like you’d heard some poor soul’s final worldly utterance before it could even reach full-throat. Lynch took a pull from the bottle after each cry and said a prayer for the screamer’s soul, willing it safely to Heaven with every liquor-warmed ounce of his body and asking it to forgive an old man his cowardice, his locked door, and the bottle in his hand.
After the south end screams, a quiet period passed. Lynch pulled his gaze away from the fallen woman’s exposed thighs and tried to focus on the Runoff Saloon instead, from which he could hear the occasional hammering behind its shuttered windows. He wondered how many folks had taken shelter there, seeking the safety of numbers and firearms. He hoped their numbers were large—fifty, sixty souls—and that they had plenty of good men left to lead them. Perhaps they could last out the night, emerge at daybreak, and hunt the stranger down as a posse united.
“Hold out the night,” Father Lynch implored, pointing his bottle at the window, “and we shall hunt the stranger together. We will hunt him down like a rabid dog, hang him from the highest tree, and bury him six feet under.”
Lynch leaned toward the window.
“We’ll bury all of them, together, and I will pray for their immortal souls. I will say my finest prayers.”
As if in response to his plea, the tall stranger reappeared on the street, walking smoothly. He paused briefly to examine the two fallen bodies in the road, bending slightly at the waist for a better look. His coat seemed to fit better than earlier, more tightly, and the priest realized the stranger was wearing an entirely new suit.
Lynch lowered the bottle of gin and set it on the floor beside him. The stranger straightened abruptly and smelled the air. A terrifying pause, in which the priest could hear his own heart beating in his ears, and the stranger began moving again, his long legs scissoring as he continued toward the camp’s north end.
A minute passed before Lynch realized two things: the stranger’s hands had both resembled normal hands, with nothing claw-like about
them any longer, and that Lynch had pissed himself more than slightly.
The priest changed into clean clothes in the dark, only bumping his knee once on the iron frame of his bed, a bump which he did not feel much as the gin began to take greater hold, asserting itself over his fear. Once he’d changed, Father Lynch opened his bedroom door and passed into the sanctuary, striding down the main aisle toward the four coffins lined together at the back. The floor creaked beneath his weight but Father Lynch didn’t mind the noise—he welcomed it, in fact—and as he stood before the coffins, he felt like a general surveying his troops.
His dead, coffin-bound troops.
“Men,” Lynch said, “You have not given your lives in vain.”
The priest searched his memory, trying to recall exactly for what reason these four men had given their lives. Their arrival at his church seemed so long ago, a daylight affair unconnected from anything that mattered now.
And the lids—only one of the coffin lids was nailed shut.
“Lord Almighty,” Lynch said, loudly. “That is no way to honor the memory of the dead. Any meddlesome fool could come along, lift your lid, and get an eyeful.”
Lynch lifted one of the lids and peered inside the coffin. It contained a dead man, his hands politely crossed. He was no older than forty.
“Poor fool. You could have lived another two score.”
Lynch dropped the lid and dusted off his hands. He was sweating now, his power returned. He strode back across the room, paused beneath the large cross hanging behind the lectern, and swiftly made the sign of the cross.
And the Hills Opened Up Page 18