The Killer's Game

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Mary sat in the center of the bed. He had given her the rifle.

  She said, “You know, I can’t hit the back end of an elephant with a tossed shot glass.”

  “Wait until they’re close.”

  “Jesus,” Mary said.

  “He’ll be of no help,” Jebidiah said. “Put your faith in that Winchester.”

  “Maybe they won’t know we’re here,” Mary said.

  “They’ll know. They’re hungry. They can smell us.”

  The sound of Mary swallowing was as loud as a cough.

  Jebidiah sat in a chair by the window and watched Mary who had fallen asleep. He was surprised she could sleep. Every nerve in his body was crawling. He lit one of the lanterns and put it on the floor by his chair, then sat back down, took out his pocket watch. He popped the metal cover and looked at it. Even as he watched the hands crawled from eight-thirty to nine. He took a breath, shut his eyes, looked again. It had already moved five minutes past. He went to the window and looked out. Something moved across the street, through the low-hanging shadow that had mostly seeped into the ground, like a dark oil of evil. Jebidiah had gotten only a glance, but it was something big and hairy, and it had moved from the far side of the street to the back of the hotel. His horse stirred in the corner of the room, where it had taken up residence by backing its ass against the wall.

  Jebidiah took a breath and moved away from the window. He went over and stroked the horse’s nose, then went to the door, opened it, stepped out on the landing.

  It was dead dark down there and he couldn’t see a thing. Not even Dol lying behind the bar; perhaps he had gone wherever the others had gone, some other part of the town, all scrunched up and wadded together in a mass of white mist in a closet somewhere. He could see that the door to the hotel was partially opened. When they had come into the hotel, he had closed it.

  Jebidiah stood there for a long time, one hand on the rail, looking down. Gradually his eyes became somewhat more adjusted. He thought he saw something moving near the bar.

  There was a shape.

  It was still.

  Perhaps it was nothing.

  All right, Jebidiah thought, it’s not like they don’t know we’re here. He took a small Bible from the inside of his coat pocket and tore off the front page and took out a wooden match, struck it, lit the paper and dropped it.

  In the falling light of the paper, which lasted briefly, he saw the shape was not just a shadow, but was in fact a thing. Dark fur was glimpsed, hot, yellow eyes, teeth, and then the beast was moving, darting around the bar, heading for the stairs, climbing two or three steps at a bound. In that brief moment, Jebidiah saw that there was another in the corner. A large beast with even larger, yellow eyes. That would be the King Wolf, the thought, the one who would command the others, the one who would send them on their missions.

  Jebidiah stepped to the mouth of the stairway and pulled his revolver, pointed it casually and comfortably at the shape that was bounding up the stairs, its chest covered in a metal Spanish breastplate. In the darkness he could only tell it was there, couldn’t make out features, could catch glimpses of that breastplate by the thin moonlight they came through the hotel windows. He aimed a little low, toward the groin, so that when he pulled the trigger on the Colt .45 it bucked and rode up, throwing the bullet into the upper part of the thing’s body, clanging the armor, but traveling through it. The beast grunted, twisted slightly, kept coming. White smoke twisted up from its breastplate where the bullet had gone in, and from its back where it had come out.

  Jebidiah cocked back the hammer again, thought, My God, I hit it straight on. A .45 slug should have knocked him down the stairs and on his ass, flat, breastplate or no breastplate.

  The Colt jumped again, a burst of red flame coughed from the barrel. The bullet struck the beast in the face just as it reached the top of the stairs and was within six inches of Jebidiah’s gun barrel. There was a barking sound. The beast twisted and slammed against the wall and rolled down the stairs, smashed through the railing, bounced onto the bar and lay silent and dark in the shadows.

  One, thought Jebidiah.

  He looked down into the shadows, but couldn’t really make out much. He thought he still saw the shape lying there, but he wasn’t sure. He glanced toward the corner of the room. The King Wolf moved. And it was like Dol said. It seemed to move with some of the moves torn out. One moment it was in the corner, the next it was consumed by shadows.

  Okay. One down. Maybe.

  He squinted and looked again. He couldn’t be sure what was down there. He had hit it solid, and with the oak in the bullet, so he thought perhaps he had done the old boy in.

  The front door of the hotel burst open wider and in came four hairy, black shapes, moving so fast it was hard to realize at first what they were. They leaped about, two hitting the stairs and coming up fast, another striking the wall, moving along the side of it, scuttling there with its claws like a giant, hairy roach. The fourth was running on all fours up the railing.

  Jebidiah shot at the one on the railing, hit it in the head and saw it fall, but now the others were coming at top speed. Jebidiah felt his nerves grow taut, about to snap.

  Red flames and a loud bark came from his left and one of the wolves on the stairway fell and hit the other, then they both went tumbling through the already damaged railing. One hit the floor and didn’t move, the other scrambled, ran in a circle like a frightened dog.

  Jebidiah glanced left. It was Mary with the rifle. He grabbed her elbow, twisted her and pushed her through the open doorway into the room, and slammed the door even as the beast running alongside the wall—causing plaster and wood to fly every which way from its claws—climbed to the ceiling, turned upside down and scuttled across that. They heard the creature drop to the floor outside the doorway, heard its breathing, loud as the pumping of blacksmith bellows.

  Then it hit the door, knocking a large gap in it. But as it did it screeched and drew back its paw. There was a roar and the sound of something clambering wildly on the landing.

  Inside the room, the horse reared and came down hard on the floor with its hooves. Jebidiah feared he had made a mistake bringing the horse up there with them. It could do as much damage to them as the wolves if it became frightened.

  Well, maybe not that much.

  Mary stood staring at the gap in the door. “What happened?”

  “The door is oak. He snagged his arm on it, a sharp piece of wood.”

  “Then they can’t come through?”

  “I think they can, just not easily.”

  “Did I kill the one I shot?”

  “I don’t know. I think the bullet still has to strike a vital organ, and if it does, the oak splinter in it should act like poison. But maybe it has got to be solid hit. Not just a leg, a shoulder. But the heart. The brain. Liver. Something like that. Looked to me you had a good shot, right in the head. But it was dark. It happened so fast… I can’t say for sure.”

  Jebidiah went over and took his horse’s reins and pulled at them gently and stroked the horse’s nose. Its eyes rolled wildly and it lifted its nose and dropped it back down, repeated the motion numerous times. Slowly the horse calmed.

  They stood for a while, then sat on the edge of the bed, facing the door, guns in hand.

  Nothing.

  The night crawled on.

  Mary said, “It couldn’t have been midnight. Not already. My God, did you see those things?”

  Jebidiah took out his watch, looked at it in the lantern glow. The hands indicated two A. M.

  “I thought it was just after nine,” he said. “Advantage to this limbo time is that it will be day soon, and then time will slow. They don’t come out in the day.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “No,” Jebidiah said. “I don’t.”

  They had sat for only a moment when they heard a kind of scratching sound, coming from the street. Jebidiah went to the window to look out, saw nothing. But t
he sound increased. He leaned against the window glass and looked down. Something was coming up the side of the wall. He opened the window quickly, stuck his head out. A wolf was scratching its way up, moving fast, its head lifted to look up at Jebidiah. It was almost on him.

  Jebidiah grabbed up the lantern, flung it out the window and down on the wolf. Flames burst in all directions and rose up on the thing’s head like a dunce hat of flame, whipped about and caught the fur on fire. The beast let go with its front paws, slapped at the flames, held itself out from the side of the building with its back claws, then lost purchase, first one foot came loose, then the other, and it fell. It dropped in a twist of fire, hit the ground on its back, rolled on its belly. The flames licked down and along its spine and it screeched and crawled along the street, then went still in the middle of it. The flames lapped its fur clean and cooked the charred meat and the meat fell off in puddles, then there were only the bones, blackened and smoking. The eye sockets in the thick wolf skull chugged out wafts of dark smoke that rose up to the sky and made little black, dissipating mushroom shapes. The skull shifted and cracked and fell apart. Jebidiah blinked. It was the skeleton of a man now. The wolf bones had twisted and changed.

  Jebidiah, trembling slightly, pulled his head in. “They don’t like fire,” he said. “That and oak splinters. Make a note.”

  Mary had moved to the window to stand beside him. She looked down at the bones in the street. “Noted,” she said, but the word sounded as if she were clearing her throat.

  Jebidiah reloaded his six gun. “If I got one with a shot, and you got one, and now there’s this dead one in the street, we’ve done all right so far.”

  “If? So we either have four left, or six,” Mary said.

  “That sounds about right,” Jebidiah said. “And we haven’t even seen the big boy, the pack leader. Least not well. He might be a whole different kettle of fish. One thing is for sure, he lets his boys do the dirty work.”

  “What time is it?”

  Jebidiah looked. “Damn,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The watch. It’s moving backwards. It’s midnight again.”

  Jebidiah thought: If we can last until morning, it won’t matter if we stop them all. Perhaps then I can catch them where they sleep, someplace dark and well hidden most likely. But if I can get them now, I can be sure, I won’t have to search for them. Of course, there’s the problem of time. It moves forward and backward. It could do that until we are hunted down, eaten, shat out brown and greasy on a distant hill.

  He walked up and down the floor, stopping now and then to soothe the horse that now he wished he had not bothered with. Yet, the thought of leaving a fine animal to the monsters, that wasn’t good, couldn’t do that. Even God, the old sonofabitch, might appreciate a good horse.

  He paced and he thought and he felt his nerves twist around inside of him, his feelings and impressions coming fast like rifle shots, jumping from one thought to another. Mary was sitting dead center in the bed, the rifle across her knees, watching the split in the door, turning her head now and then to look behind her, toward the open window, out into the night which seemed to have gone more dark and bleak than before, leaving only thin, silver moonlight.

  Jebidiah went to the window and looked out. The bones were still there.

  He walked across the room, trying to make himself sit and rest. But he couldn’t do it, felt like he had drank two or three pots of coffee. Shit. Coffee. That would be good right now. Some bacon and eggs. Hell, he was hungry enough to eat the ass out of a menstruating mule.

  What was that? A flutter?

  A moth beat at the window.

  Okay. A moth. No problem there. It moved beneath the window and through the gap where Jebidiah had opened it to drop one of the lanterns. The remaining lantern hung from a hook in the ceiling and bled pollen-yellow light all over the place.

  Jebidiah watched the moth. It was a big one and dark of wing and fuzzy. It flew into the room over the bed, up against the ceiling where it flittered about, the lantern light causing its shadow to flick and swell and flap along the wall. Jebidiah turned to look at the shadow and the shadow seemed larger than before. Jebidiah felt something move on the back of his neck, like prickly pear needles. It was his hair, standing on end. He turned to look at the moth again, up there on the ceiling, and it was a wolf; it had shifted shape. It clung upside down over the bed and Mary. Jebidiah wheeled, cross drew pistols and fired rapidly. One. Two. Three.

  Mary was moving then, off the bed, running across the floor.

  The wolf dropped, hit the bed, blew slats and frame in all directions, tossing fur and flesh, scattering dry bones. Then the door was hit, and Jebidiah caught a glimpse of a big yellow eye through the rent in the wood. He jerked off a shot. Mary wheeled toward the door, fired and cocked the rifle and fired and cocked the rifle and fired again, banging holes through the door. Outside the door came a noise like someone sticking a hot branding iron up a bull’s ass.

  The horse ran around the room, nearly knocking Jebidiah and Mary over. The door banged. Another bang, louder this time, and the frame cracked and the door came flying in. Two of the wolves bounded in.

  The horse went wild. It reared. It slammed its hooves down on one of the wolves. The beast was driven beneath it. It latched its teeth into the horse’s belly. The horse bolted toward the door, clattered through it, dragging the wolf beneath it as it went. Jebidiah could hear his mount clattering down the stairs, then there was a breaking sound, and Jebidiah knew the horse had lost its step and gone through the railing. He could hear a cracking sound as it fell, the horrible noise of a horse screaming.

  He didn’t have time to consider it. The other wolf was there. The revolvers bucked in his hands and the wolf took two shots in the teeth and the teeth flew like piano ivory. Mary, who had dropped to her knees was cocking and firing with amazing accuracy, hitting the staggering beast with shot after shot in the chest. One went low and took off his balls. The wolf fell backwards, skidded, hit the wall, slammed up against it in a sitting position. Immediately it transformed. Its characteristics changed. The snout dove back into its face. The ears shrunk. Hair dropped off. A moment later where the odd version of a wolf had been was a naked Conquistador. Flesh fell off its frame like greasy bacon and its bones clattered to the floor like a handful of dice.

  They waited.

  They breathed.

  They continued to look toward the gaping doorway.

  Nothing.

  Just silence.

  After a long time Jebidiah picked up the lantern and carried it out on the landing, pistol at the ready. Nothing jumped him.

  He walked to the railing and dangled the lantern over it and looked down. His horse lay dead with its back broken across the bar. The wolf was not visible. Without fire or oak splinters, it had survived the fall.

  He waved the lantern around, saw the bones of two other wolves. The ones he and Mary had shot on the stairway. All right, he thought, that’s good. One in the street. Two in the room. And two out here. That’s five. Two left. One of them the big guy.

  Jebidiah saw movement. Something white. Or gray. It was Dol. He was gliding up the stairs.

  “Why are you hiding?” Jebidiah said. “They can’t hurt you now.”

  “It’s a habit,” Dol said, more or less standing on the landing beside Jebidiah. “I still think they can hurt me, even though I know they can’t. There ain’t no reason to it, but that’s the way it is.”

  “So why did you come out now?”

  “To tell you the big fella’s coming. I can sense it. And he’s mad. He ain’t got but one wolf left. Thing is, he can make five others. That means you and her or two more. Least that’s the way I see it from what you’ve told me. Long as there’s six he can’t make no more. But now for fresh meat. Fresh wolves. Put a gun in your mouth. Don’t let him take you like he did them Conquistadores. You did them a favor. But don’t let the big boy or the last wolf have you, boy. You won’
t like it.”

  “Thanks for the warning,” Jebidiah said. “So there are just the two? We got the others?”

  “Yep.” Dol lifted his ghostly hat, slid past Jebidiah, across the floor and melted into the wall.

  Jebidiah turned to see Mary in the doorway with the rifle.

  “Dol,” he said.

  “I heard,” she said. “Jeb?”

  “Yeah,” he said, as the two of them moved back inside the room.

  “Looks like I ain’t gonna make it… Shoot me.”

  “We’ll make it.”

  “Promise. You’ll shoot me.”

  “We’ll make it.”

  “Promise.”

  “It looks bad, you got my word.”

  “And if I can, I’ll do the same for you.”

  “Well, just do not be in any hurry. I am in no rush. Make damn sure the end is nigh.”

  No sooner had they ceased speaking than they heard steps on the stairs. The lantern light gave the room a soft glow. A cool wind came through the open window and blew against their backs. Jebidiah said. “You turn, watch the window. See a moth, a bird, a bat, if you can hit it, shoot it.”

  “I can’t hit it,” she said. “I have to be standing right in front of it to hit it.”

  “You’ve done well enough tonight.”

  “Once with luck, once because no one could miss, not even a blind man.”

  “Well, if it’s small, swat it.”