The Killer's Game

by Joe R. Lansdale

  They went silent again. Boards creaked on the landing.

  Jebidiah wiped his hand on his coat, took hold of his revolver again. Then he did the same with the other hand. He pointed both revolvers in the direction of the door.

  A slat of darkness fell into the room, but Jebidiah couldn’t see its source in the hall. The shadowy slat began to move, a kind of oily thing that took shape, flowed over the floor, rose up large and solid.

  It was a wolf thing with barred teeth. Jebidiah had been so amazed, he had done nothing, and now the wolf was on him. It came at him so hard it knocked him across the room, to the window, forcing him through the opening.

  He fell. A boot caught on the window frame. The wolf leaned way out and grabbed him, pulled him up by his pants legs. Its mouth opened so wide Jebidiah felt as if he could see all the way to Hell. Its breath was every dead thing and rotten thing that had ever existed. It was about to bite him in the crotch.

  Mary’s rifle cracked two times and the wolf let him go. Jebidiah fell, twisting to land on his back with a white puff of dust. He hit so hard the breath was knocked out of him and he was unconscious.

  When he awoke, he realized he had only been out for moments. He could hear screaming in the room upstairs. He moved, and it hurt to do so. His back felt as if it were on fire. He eased to a sitting position and tried flexing his legs. They still worked. All of him worked. His head ached as if he had been on a ten-day drunk.

  He found his revolvers in the dust. Started back toward the hotel.

  The screaming stopped with a loud shot. Jebidiah looked up. The wolf thing was at the window now, its snout dripping blood. It crawled out the window and scuttled down the side of the hotel toward Jebidiah.

  Jebidiah opened fire. Hit the beast in the head the moment it dropped to the ground, a good shot just above the left eye.

  The thing charged him. Jebidiah dropped the revolvers and grabbed at the wolf’s shoulders, pushing away its head, its snapping teeth. He fell back, placing his boot in the creature’s stomach, kicked up, launching the wolf.

  When Jebidiah whirled to his feet and snatched up the revolvers, the wolf lay in the dirt. Not moving. Jebidiah realized his shots had been well placed, if slow in having effect.

  The wolf lost fur, changed shape, shifted back to a naked Conquistador. The flesh fell of, and instantly it was nothing but bones scattered in the street.

  When Jebidiah had reloaded his revolvers, he walked around to the front door of the hotel, stood for a moment in the street. The door to the hotel was still wide open. He eased inside, pistols at the ready. He thought about Mary, took a deep breath, started up the stairs. Every step he took made a squeak. He thought he saw a shadow move on the landing. He squinted, saw nothing solid. But the wallpaper appeared darkly stained in one spot, and he had a feeling that his huckleberry was there, part of the shadows, part of the wallpaper.

  Easing on up, he paused, turned his head like a curious dog. The spot on the wall moved, and as it did it swelled. It was the great wolf, easily eight feet tall. It clacked its claws as it walked. It bent slightly at the waist and stood at the top of the stairs.

  “Could not wait, could you?” Jebidiah said. “Too impatient.”

  The King Wolf’s ears flicked, its tongue came out of its mouth and licked at the air and lapped across its own snout.

  “You are not tasting me yet,” Jebidiah said.

  And then the King Wolf bent forward and came down on its front paws in a dive, came down the stairs at a run. Jebidiah’s pistols barked, once each, and then the King Wolf hit him and he went tumbling backwards, step by step, landing at the base of the stairs.

  He looked up. Smoke was twisting out of the King Wolf’s body where the bullets had struck and it seemed frozen on the stairs, and he could see the creature better. It was unlike the others. Not only bigger, but there was a peculiar countenance about the horror that made Jebidiah feel as if he were in the presence of Satan himself.

  And unlike the others, the bullets had done damage, but the King Wolf had been able to take it. Jebidiah got to his feet in a kind of shuffle, backed toward the door, the pistols held before him, his back aching, his side on fire. So far he had fallen out of a window and been knocked down a flight of stairs and he could still walk, so he felt he was doing well enough. And he hadn’t even added in the werewolves.

  When he was in the street, the doorway of the Gentleman’s Hotel filled with the King Wolf’s shape. It stood on its hind legs and its cock and balls swung about when it moved as if they were a clockwork mechanism. It bent its head to accommodate the doorway and moved out into the street, its teeth dripped saliva in thick strings.

  “Guess it’s you and me, Mr. Wolf. I know your boss. Both of them. One high, one low. I have not got such a great opinion of either.”

  The King Wolf charged off the hotel porch and into the street on its hind legs. Jebidiah fired with his revolvers, two shots, and though the shots had effect, they didn’t stop the beast.

  Jebidiah bolted and ran. He felt pain in every muscle, but fear of what was about to happen was stronger than pain. He ran. He ran fast. He was nearly to the overturned stagecoach when he looked back to find that the King Wolf was loping along rapidly, closing the gap. He could feel its burning breath on the back of his neck.

  Jebidiah jumped up on the stage, dove through the open side window, dropped down inside. The King Wolf’s face dunked into the open space and it let out with a wild howl that shook Jebidiah’s already tormented insides.

  Jebidiah let loose with both revolvers. Firing twice.

  King Wolf jerked back. Jebidiah quickly began to reload. He had three bullets in one revolver when the thing showed itself again. Jebidiah fired a shot that hit the King Wolf solid in the forehead, made a hole and smoke twisted up from the hole, but the beast took the shot and didn’t pull back. It stuck an arm through, caught Jebidiah by the ankle, jerked him up and out of the stage window, banging his head and causing him to drop one of his revolvers as he was pulled free.

  King Wolf held Jebidiah high above the ground with one hand, its face easing closer toward him. Slowly. Making the triumphant moment last. The King Wolf’s mouth opened wide.

  Jebidiah jerked up the loaded revolver he still clutched in his fists, and fired his last shots straight into the King Wolf’s open mouth.

  King Wolf snapped its mouth shut. Smoke came out of its nostrils. It stepped back a step. It opened its mouth so wide Jebidiah could hear the bones in its jaws pop. And then the King Wolf dropped Jebidiah on his head. The Reverend rolled and came up with the empty revolver. He supported himself on one knee, began reloading, glad he still had some wax and wood-shaving shells left, not happy that it seemed to be taking him forever to fumble the bullets into the gun. He glanced up fearfully as he loaded. The King Wolf was stepping backwards, slowly. Then it paused, its head tilted… and fell off, splatting heavily into the street, rolling over and over, losing hair, showing nothing but a skull, white as purity.

  The rest of the torso fell over.

  Finally, thought Jebidiah, the accumulated bullets, the shavings, have done their duty.

  The great, cold shadow rose out of the ground and filled the street. Jebidiah stood. The shadow rose thick and to the height of his neck, then the shadow fled, and with its passing came a cool wind, and when the wind was gone, there was nothing in the street, not even the shadow which was melting into the tree line at the far end of the town.

  The King Wolf was gone. There was only a twist of fur flying by. It clung to his cheek for a moment, then was blown away.

  Out of the hotel came the white wraiths that had hidden there, among them the more solid Dol. All of the spirits rose up toward the sky, toward the stars, gathered into a fluffy, white formation that fled upward to join the Milky Way. In a moment they were all gone and the stars in the sky winked out like snuffed candles. The sun rose as if out of the ground and took a position at high noon immediately. The sky turned blue. White clouds bo
iled across it quickly, and then stopped, looking like mounds of mashed potatoes on a shiny blue, china plate.

  Jebidiah turned his head toward a sound.

  Birds chirping in a tree on the edge of the north end of the street. Brightly colored birds so thick that at first Jebidiah thought they were fall leaves gone red and yellow and blue and golden. The birds made a sudden burst to the sky, as if confetti had been tossed, and the sunlight behind them made them look strange and otherworldly.

  In the hotel room Jebidiah found Mary. She lay on the floor. She had the rifle under her chin. She had managed to pull the trigger, shooting herself. He could see why. She had been bit all over. Maybe she had been in time. He decided to make sure.

  He took her body out to the street, then brought the mattress out. He broke up chairs from the hotel and made a bon fire and got it started and put the mattress on that, put Mary’s body on top of the mattress. He leaned against the stagecoach and watched her burn. When there was nothing left, he went up the hill to the trees where Dol had said the graveyard was. He saw it and walked among it, went up the hill and into the deeper trees where he found gutted graves. The wolves’ graves. He used his pocket knife to shave off pieces of oak, and he made crosses from them, tying them together with strips of cloth from his shirt. One cross for each grave. Just in case. He tore pages out of his Bible and put those in the graves with them. Another just in case.

  He went back to the hotel and got his saddle and saddlebags off of his dead horse, threw it over his shoulder, went out into the street and started walking south.

  A crow followed, flying just above him, casting a shadow.