1987 - Swan Song v4

by Robert McCammon

  Thirty-seven

  The elemental fist

  Darkness found them short of the Jaspin farm. Josh tied the bull’s-eye lantern to the front of the wheelbarrow with twine. Leona had to stop every half hour or so, and while she laid her head in Swan’s lap, Josh gently massaged her legs; the tears Leona was weeping from the pain in her rheumatic knees crisscrossed the dust that covered her cheeks. Still, she made no sound, no complaint. After she’d rested for a few minutes she would struggle up again, and they’d continue on across rolling grassland burned black and oily by radiation.

  The lantern’s beam fell upon a rail fence about four feet tall and half blown down by the wind. “I think we’re near the house!” Leona offered.

  Josh manhandled the wheelbarrow over the fence, then lifted Swan over and helped Leona across. Facing them was a black cornfield, the diseased stalks standing as high as Josh and whipping back and forth like strange seaweed at the bottom of a slimy pool. It took them about ten minutes to reach the far edge of the field, and the lantern’s beam hit the side of a farmhouse that had once been painted white, now splotched brown and yellow like lizard’s skin.

  “That’s Homer and Maggie’s place!” Leona shouted against the wind.

  The house was dark, not a candle or lantern showing. There was no sign of a car or truck anywhere around, either. But something was making a loud, irregular banging noise off to the right, beyond the light’s range. Josh untied the lantern and walked toward the sound. About fifty feet behind the house was a sturdy-looking red barn, one of its doors open and the wind banging it against the wall. Josh returned to the house and aimed the light at the front door; it was wide open, the screen door unlatched and thumping back and forth in the wind as well. He told Swan and Leona to wait where they were, and he entered the dark Jaspin farmhouse.

  Once inside, he started to ask if anyone was home, but there was no need. He smelled the rank odor of decomposing flesh and almost gagged on it. He had to wait for a moment, bent over a decorative brass spittoon with a dead bunch of daisies in it, before he was sure he wouldn’t throw up. Then he began to move through the house, sweeping the light slowly back and forth, looking for the bodies.

  Outside, Swan heard a dog barking furiously in the black cornfield they’d just come through. She knew that the terrier had shadowed them all day, never coming closer than twenty feet, darting away when Swan bent down to summon it nearer. The dog’s found something out there, Swan thought. Or… something’s found it.

  The barking was urgent—a “come see what I’ve got!” kind of bark.

  Swan set her bag down and leaned Crybaby against the wheelbarrow. She took a couple of steps toward the black, swaying cornfield. Leona said, “Child! Josh said to stay right here!”

  “It’s all right,” she answered. And she took three more steps.

  “Swan!” Leona warned when she realized where the little girl was heading; she started to go after her, but immobilizing pain shot through her knees. “You’d best not go in there!”

  The terrier’s barking summoned Swan, and she stepped into the cornfield. The black stalks closed at her back. Leona shouted, “Swan!”

  In the farmhouse, Josh followed the beam of light into a small dining area. A cupboard had been flung open, and the floor Was littered with chips and pieces of shattered crockery. Chairs had been smashed against the wall, a dining table hacked apart. The smell of decay was stronger. The light picked out something scrawled on the wall: ALL SHALL PRAISE LORD ALVIN.

  Written in brown paint, Josh thought. But no, no. The blood had run down the wall and gathered in a crusty little patch on the floor.

  A doorway beckoned him. He took a deep breath, straining the horrid smell through his clenched teeth, and walked through the doorway.

  He was in a kitchen with yellow-painted cupboards and a dark rug.

  And there he found them.

  What was left of them.

  They had been tied to chairs with barbed wire. The woman’s face, framed with blood-streaked gray hair, resembled a bloated pincushion punctured by an assortment of knives, forks, and the little two-pronged handles that stick into the ends of corn on the cob. On the man’s bared chest someone had drawn a target in blood and gone to work with a small-caliber pistol or rifle. The head was missing.

  “Oh… my God,” Josh croaked, and this time he couldn’t hold back the sickness. He stumbled across the kitchen to the sink and leaned over it.

  But the lantern’s light, swinging in his hand, showed him that the sink’s basin was already occupied. As Josh shouted in terror and revulsion the hundreds of roaches that covered Homer Jaspin’s severed head broke apart and scurried madly over the sink and countertop.

  Josh staggered backward, the bile burning in his throat, and his feet slipped out from under him. He fell to the floor, where the dark rug lay, and felt crawling things on his arms and legs.

  The floor, he realized. The… floor…

  The floor around the bodies was an inch deep in surging, scrambling roaches.

  As the roaches swarmed over his body Josh had a sudden ridiculous thought: You can’t kill those things! Not even a nuclear disaster can kill ’em!

  He leaped up from the floor, sliding on roaches, and started running from that awful kitchen, swatting at the things as he ran, swiping them off his clothes and skin. He fell to the carpet in the front room and rolled wildly on it, then he got up again and barreled for the screen door.

  Leona heard the noise of splintering wood and ripping screen, and she turned toward the house in time to see Josh bring the whole door with him like a charging bull. There goes another screen door, she thought, and then she saw Josh fling himself to the ground and start rolling, swatting and squirming as if he’d run into a nest of hornets.

  “What is it?” she called, hobbling toward him. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  Josh got up on his knees. He was still holding the lantern, while the other hand flopped and flipped here and there all over his body. Leona stopped in her tracks, because she’d never seen such terror in human eyes in her life. “What… is it?”

  “Don’t go in there! Don’t you go in there!” he babbled, squirming and shaking. A roach ran over his cheek, and he grabbed it and flung it away with a shiver. “You stay out of that damned house!”

  “I will,” she promised, and she peered at the dark square where the door had been. A bad odor reached her; she’d smelled that reek before, back in Sullivan, and she knew what it was.

  Josh heard a dog barking. “Where’s Swan?” He stood up, still dancing and jerking. “Where’d she go?”

  “In there!” Leona pointed toward the black cornfield. “I told her not to!”

  “Damn!” Josh said, because he’d realized that whoever had done such a job on Homer and Maggie Jaspin might still be in the area—maybe was even in that barn, watching and waiting. Maybe was out in that field with the child.

  He dug the pistol and the box of bullets out of the wheelbarrow and hurriedly slid three shells into their cylinders. “You stay right here!” he told Leona. “And don’t you go in that house!” Then, lantern in one hand and pistol in the other, he sprinted into the cornfield.

  Swan was following the terrier’s barking. The sound ebbed and swelled with the wind, and around her the long-dead cornstalks rustled and swayed, grabbing at her clothes with leathery tendrils. She felt as if she were walking through a cemetery where all the corpses were standing upright, but the dog’s frantic summons pulled her onward. There was something important in the field, something the dog wanted known, and she was determined to find out what it was. She thought the barking was off to the left, and she began to move in that direction. Behind her, she heard Josh shout, “Swan!” and she replied, “Over here!” but the wind turned. She kept going, her hands up to shield her face from the whipping stalks.

  The barking was closer. No, Swan thought, now it was moving to the right again. She continued on, thought she heard Josh calling he
r again. “I’m here!” she shouted, but she heard no reply. The barking moved again, and Swan knew the terrier was following something—or someone. The barking said, “Hurry! Hurry, come see what I’ve found!”

  Swan had taken six more steps when she heard something crashing toward her through the field. The terrier’s voice got louder, more urgent. Swan stood still, watching and listening. Her heart had begun to pound, and she knew that whatever was out there was coming in her direction and getting closer. “Who’s there?” she shouted. The crashing noise was coming right at her. “Who’s there?” The wind flung her voice away.

  She saw something coming toward her through the corn—something not human, something huge. She couldn’t make out its shape, or what it was, but she heard a rumbling noise and backed away, her heart about to hammer through her chest. The huge, misshapen thing was coming right at her, faster and faster now, cleaving right through the dead, swaying stalks, and in another few seconds it would be upon her. She wanted to run, but her feet had rooted to the ground, and there was no time, because the thing was crashing at her and the terrier was barking an urgent warning.

  The monster tore through the cornstalks and towered over her, and Swan cried out, got her feet uprooted and stumbled back, back, was falling, hit the ground on her rear and sat there while the monster’s legs pounded toward her.

  “Swan!” Josh shouted, bursting through the stalks behind her and aiming his light at what was about to trample her.

  Dazzled by the light’s beam, the monster stopped in its tracks and reared up on its hind legs, blowing steam through its widened nostrils.

  And both Swan and Josh saw what it was.

  A horse.

  A piebald, black-and-white blotched horse with frightened eyes and oversized, shaggy hooves. The terrier was yapping tenaciously at its heels, and the piebald horse whinnied with fear, dancing on its hind legs for a few seconds before it came down again inches from where Swan sat in the dirt. Josh hooked Swan’s arm and yanked her out of harm’s way as the horse pranced and spun, the terrier darting around its legs with undaunted courage.

  Swan was still shaking, but she knew in an instant that the horse was more terrified. It turned this way and that, confused and dazed, looking for a way of escape. The dog’s barking was scaring it further, and suddenly Swan pulled free from Josh and took two steps forward, almost under the horse’s nose; she lifted her hands and clapped her palms together right in front of the horse’s muzzle.

  The horse flinched but ceased jittering around; its fear-filled eyes were fixed on the little girl, steam curling from its nostrils, its lungs rumbling. Its legs trembled as if they might give way or take flight.

  The terrier kept yapping, and Swan pointed a finger at it. “Hush!” she said. The dog scrambled away a few feet but caught back the next bark; then, as if deciding it had come too close to the humans and compromised its independence, darted away into the cornfield. It stood its distance and continued to bark intermittently.

  Swan’s attention was aimed at the horse, and she kept its eyes locked with her own. Its large, less-than-lovely head trembled, wanting to pull away from her, but it either would not or could not. “Is it a boy or a girl?” Swan asked Josh.

  “Huh?” He still thought he felt roaches running up and down his backbone, but he shifted the lantern’s beam. “A boy,” he said. And a whopper of a boy, he thought.

  “He hasn’t seen people for a long time, I bet. Look at him; he doesn’t know whether to be glad to see us or to run away.”

  “He must’ve belonged to the Jaspins,” Josh said.

  “Did you find them in the house?” She kept watching the horse’s eyes.

  “Yes. I mean… no, I didn’t. I found signs of them. They must’ve packed up and gone.” There was no way he was letting Swan into that house.

  The horse rumbled nervously, its legs moving from side to side for a few steps.

  Swan slowly lifted her hand toward the horse’s muzzle.

  “Be careful,” Josh warned. “He’ll snap your fingers right off!”

  Swan continued to reach upward, slowly and surely. The horse backed away, its nostrils wide and its ears flicking back and forth. It lowered its head, sniffing the ground, then pretended to be looking off in another direction, but Swan saw the animal appraising her, trying to make up his mind about them. “We’re not going to hurt you,” Swan said quietly, her voice soothing. She stepped toward the horse, and he snorted a nervous warning.

  “Watch out! He might charge you or something!” Josh knew absolutely nothing about horses, and they’d always scared him. This one was big and ugly and ungainly, with shaggy hooves and a floppy tail and a swayed back that looked like he’d been saddled with an anvil.

  “He’s not too sure about us,” Swan told Josh. “He’s still making up his mind whether to run or not, but I think he’s kind of glad to see people again.”

  “What are you, an expert on horses?”

  “No. I can just tell, from the set of his ears and the way his tail is swishing back and forth. Look at how he’s smelling us—he doesn’t want to seem too friendly. Horses have got a lot of pride. I think this one likes people, and he’s been lonely.”

  Josh shrugged. “I sure can’t tell any of that.”

  “My mama and I lived in a motel one time, next to a pasture where somebody’s horses grazed. I used to climb over the fence and walk around with them, and I guess I learned how to talk to them, too.”

  “Talk to them? Come on!”

  “Well, not human talk,” she amended. “A horse talks with his ears and tail, and how he holds his head and his body, He’s talking right now,” she said as the horse snorted and gave a nervous whinny.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “He’s saying… that he wants to know what we’re talking about.” Swan continued to lift her hand toward the animal’s muzzle.

  “Watch your fingers!”

  The horse retreated a pace. Swan’s hand continued to rise—slowly, slowly. “No one’s going to hurt you,” Swan said, in a voice that sounded to Josh like the music of a lute, or a lyre, or some instrument that people had forgotten how to play. Its soothing quality almost made him forget the horrors tied to chairs back in the Jaspin farmhouse.

  “Come on,” Swan urged. “We won’t hurt you.” Her fingers were inches away from the muzzle, and Josh started to reach out and pull her back before she lost them to crunching teeth.

  The horse’s ears twitched and slanted forward. He snorted again, pawed at the ground and lowered his head to accept Swan’s touch.

  “That’s right,” Swan said. “That’s right, boy.” She scratched his muzzle, and he pushed inquisitively at her arm with his nose.

  Josh wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it. Still, Swan was probably right; the horse simply missed people. “I think you’ve made a friend. Doesn’t look like much of a horse, though. Looks like a swayback mule in a clown suit.”

  “I think he’s kind of pretty.” Swan rubbed between the horse’s eyes, and the animal obediently lowered his head so she wouldn’t have to stretch up so far. The horse’s eyes were still frightened, and Swan knew if she made a sudden move he’d bolt into the cornfield and probably not return, so she kept all her movements slow and precise. She thought that the horse was likely old, because there was a weary patience in the droop of his head and flanks, as if he was resigned to a life of pulling a plow across the very field in which they stood. His dappled skin jittered and jumped, but he allowed Swan to rub his head and made a low noise in his throat that sounded like a sigh of relief.

  “I left Leona over by the house,” Josh said. “We’d better get back.”

  Swan nodded and turned away from the horse, following Josh through the field. She’d taken about a half-dozen steps when she sensed rather than heard the heavy footfalls in the dirt behind her; she looked over her shoulder. The horse stopped, freezing like a statue. Swan continued after Josh, and the horse followed at a respectfu
l distance, at its own ambling pace. The terrier darted out and yapped a couple of times just for the sake of being nettlesome, and the piebald horse kicked its hind hooves backward in disdain and showered the dog with dirt.

  Leona was sitting on the ground, massaging her knees. Josh’s light was coming, and when they reappeared from the field she saw Swan and the horse in the beam’s backwash. “Lord A’mighty! What’d you find?”

  “This thing was running wild out there,” Josh told her, helping her to her feet. “Swan charmed the horseshoes right off him, got him settled down.”

  “Oh?” Leona’s eyes found the little girl’s, and she smiled knowingly. “Did she?” Leona hobbled forward to look at the horse. “Must’ve belonged to Homer. He had three or four horses out here. Well, he’s not the handsomest animal I’ve ever seen, but he’s got four strong legs, don’t he?”

  “Looks like a mule to me,” Josh said. “Those hooves are as big as skillets.” He caught a whiff of decay from the Jaspin farmhouse. The horse’s head jerked, and he whinnied as if he’d smelled death as well. “We’d better get out of this wind.” Josh motioned toward the barn with his lantern. He put the pistol and the lantern back in the wheelbarrow and went on ahead to make sure whoever had killed Homer and Maggie Jaspin wasn’t hiding in there, waiting for them. He wondered who Lord Alvin was—but he was surely in no hurry to find out. Behind him, Swan picked up her bag and Crybaby, and Leona followed with her suitcase. Trailing them at a distance was the horse, and the terrier yapped at their backs and began to roam around the farmyard like a soldier on patrol.

  Josh checked the barn out thoroughly and found no one else there. Plenty of hay was strewn about, and the horse came inside with them and made himself at home. Josh unpacked the blankets from the wheelbarrow, hung the lantern from a wall and opened a can of beef stew for their dinner. The horse sniffed around them for a while, more interested in hay than in canned stew; he returned when Josh opened a Mason jar of well water, and Josh poured a bit out for him in an empty bucket. The horse licked it up and came back for more. Josh obliged him, and the animal pawed the ground like a newborn colt. “Get out of here, mule!” Josh said when the horse’s tongue tried to slip into the Mason jar.