The River of Souls

by Robert McCammon

  “You ever know anybody got bit on the balls by a black snake?” Bovie asked, his question aimed at anyone who might answer. “Damn me, if that won’t make a story to earn me a drink or two! Stings a little bit. Nothin’ bad.”

  They continued to follow the bootprints, as the swamp deepened and the pools of gray water spread. The smoke was following them, floating through the brush and hanging from the trees. “Hot in here!” Bovie said. “Damn, I’m sweatin’. My balls are swole up, Stamper! God A’mighty, that black snake got me good!”

  “Yep, must’ve,” said Stamper, staring straight ahead.

  “I’m all right, though,” Bovie said. “You boys gettin’ tired? I ain’t tired. Nossir. And I ain’t afraid of that thing, either. Devil panther or whatever it is, I’ll stand up to it! You believe in the devil, Stamper?”

  “I do, Caleb.”

  “I believe there’s a devil and an angel in every man,” Bovie went on, his face, hair and brown beard damp with sweat. “They’re fightin’ in you all the time, tryin’ to win you over. Sometimes I can feel ’em fightin’ in me. Pullin’ me this way, and pullin’ me that. They’re whisperin’ in your ear, and they’re slidin’ in and out of your head. You feel that way, Stamper?”

  “Yep.”

  “My balls are kinda hurtin’. Maybe I need to stop for a minute and get a breath.”

  “Keep goin’,” Royce insisted. “We can’t stop for a dead man.”

  “What was that?” Bovie asked. “What’d he say, Stamper?”

  “He said, we can’t stop right now.”

  “All right, then.” Bovie’s voice had weakened. “All right,” he said again, as if he wasn’t sure he’d spoken it the first time.

  They hadn’t gone on but a few more minutes when Caleb Bovie said, “I can’t hardly breathe, all of a sudden. Damn this smoke…I can’t hardly breathe.” He dropped his sword to run a trembling hand across his face and he left the sword behind, lying in the mud. “I’m feelin’ like I need to rest, Stamper. My legs are ’bout to give out. I don’t know…I’m feelin’ poorly.”

  “We’re not stoppin’,” said Royce.

  “Yes,” Stamper said, with a hard glare at the other man. “We are stoppin’. Caleb, sit yourself down for a few minutes and rest.”

  “No!” Royce got up in Stamper’s face, his green eyes aflame. “The skins are just ahead! You said so yourself! We’ve got to stop ’em!”

  “Stop ’em?” Stamper’s eyebrows went up. “Why, Griff? If they’re headin’ back to the Green Sea, why would we want to stop ’em?”

  “We don’t know they’re headin’ there! Could be they’re tryin’ to cross the river and cut south! You think they’re goin’ back to give themselves up? Hell, no!”

  Bovie was sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree, his musket leaning beside him. He had begun to shake, as if freezing cold in this swamp’s heat. Magnus approached him, walking at the edge of what looked to be an expanse of black, grainy mud. Stamper noted his progress and called out, “Muldoon! Careful! You’re walkin’ close to a quicksand pit!”

  Magnus abruptly stopped where he was. He knelt on the ground a few feet away from Bovie, who had started to rock himself back and forth, his face gray and his eyes fixed on a limitless distance.

  “I’m changin’ my ways when I get home,” said Bovie, speaking to all and none. “Goin’ to church every Sabbath. Doin’ what I ought to do. I swear it.” He realized Magnus was kneeling near him, and he turned bloodshot eyes upon the hermit. “I’m cold,” he said, shivering. “Ain’t you cold, too?”

  “A mite,” said Magnus.

  “Knew it wasn’t just me. My gut’s hurtin’ bad.” Pain was beginning to show in Bovie’s face. He clenched his hands over his stomach and squeezed his eyes shut. “Hurtin’ bad…oh mercy…mercy on me…”

  “We ought to leave him,” was Royce’s pronouncement. “Wastin’ time, waitin’ for—”

  “Shut your mouth,” said Stamper. The way he said it made Royce’s mouth close in a tight, thin line. Stamper walked over and stood near the dying man, and Barrows came nearer as well. Royce took a long look at the others, and then he placed his musket against his shoulder and walked over to stand beside Magnus. Royce stared off into the swamp, toward the river and the path of footprints leading to it.

  “Stamper,” Bovie rasped, his eyes open now, watery and red-rimmed, and he looked pleadingly up at the other man. “Can you help me get home? I can stand up and walk. Swear to God I can.”

  “You just stay where you are. Just rest a bit.”

  “I’m hurtin’, Stamper. All over. I think I…I need to stand up.” Bovie tried, and when he got up halfway he let loose an agonized cry and fell to his knees. He stayed there, his hands still gripped to his belly, his face now taking on a bluish tinge. Foam was gathering in the corners of his mouth. He began to blink rapidly, his breathing loud and harsh. “Oh Christ,” he whispered, his voice choked with pain. “Save me…please…save me…”

  Magnus started to get up off his knees. When he began to stand up, he was struck from behind by Griffin Royce, who swung the butt of his musket hard against the back of Magnus’ skull.

  Magnus staggered and dropped both his torch and the pistol. Fireballs exploded in his brain, and he pitched sideways into the quicksand pit.

  Stamper looked dumbly at Royce, his mouth hanging open. He therefore saw Royce take a step forward, cock the musket, aim its barrel at his head and pull the trigger. Through the burst of blue smoke the lead ball hit him just under the left eye. Stamper’s head rocked back, the hat with its raven’s feather went flying, and he fell backward into the mud as if pole-axed.

  Royce already had drawn his knife. He walked two paces through the roiling smoke to where Barrows was standing in shocked disbelief, and without hesitation drove the blade downward into the hollow of the man’s throat. Barrows had no time to get his musket up for a shot or draw his pistol; he lifted his left arm, the fingers clawing at the bandages on Royce’s right forearm. Royce twisted the blade, the thin smile of a true predator warping his mouth. With a blood-choked gasp Barrows tore free and turned to run, but Royce was quickly upon him. His teeth gritted and red whorls in his cheeks, Royce drove the blade into the man’s back once…twice…four more times with the force of uncontrolled rage, until Barrows’ knees gave way and he fell on his face, the white stone of an eye pressed into the mud.

  Royce stepped back to view his work, the breath hot in his lungs and his blood singing in the afterglow of violence. Magnus was a prisoner of the quicksand, Stamper was stretched out and Barrows done for. Bovie had pitched forward on his hands and knees, trembling and retching. “God help me,” he gasped, beginning to sob. “Oh Christ Jesus…help me…”

  Royce had no more time to waste. He replaced his knife in its sheath and helped himself to Bovie’s musket, which he knew to be still loaded after the encounter with the buck. He picked up Magnus’ pistol, also still loaded, and slid that into the waist of his breeches. He would reload his own weapon later, he decided, when he got nearer the skins and Corbett. He had plenty of powder and shot in his ammunition bag. Who to shoot first would be the question. He put his own musket under his arm, held the other one in his left hand and then picked up Stamper’s torch where it lay guttering in the mud.

  Bovie fell on his side and began to curl up, crying and moaning. Royce stood over Bovie for a few seconds more, his eyes narrowed with disgust at this scene of human weakness. In a voice loud enough for Bovie to hear, Royce said, “Cottonmouth.” Then he turned away from the stricken man and hurried on after his prey.

  Eighteen

  Magnus awakened in the grip of Death.

  He couldn’t breathe. His face was pressed upon by a wet, heavy darkness. Panic shook him. In the horror of the instant he realized where he must be, on his right side in the quicksand pit. His head pounded and he could taste blood. Someone had hit him from behind…Royce. He had to get his face up into the air. Had to get his legs under himself
, and his body straightened out…the quicksand was up his nostrils and in his mouth and sealing shut his eyes, and Magnus knew that if he did not get air within the next few seconds he was finished in this world.

  He fought against the mire. It fought back. The paste of black earth had him. He strained his neck and face upward, toward where he thought the surface was. His muscles screamed, and he wanted to scream. Maybe he did, there in the dark pressure of wet, clinging tides.

  But in the next instant his nose and mouth broke the surface, which was only a few inches above, and though he remained blind and gripped hard by this demonic mud he was able to spit his mouth clear and draw a howling breath that shuddered through him and gave him a small gift of hope.

  He was able then also to expell the quicksand from his nostrils, and breathe air tainted with the sharp and putrid odors of the swamp and the smell of smoke from the fire that burned beyond. The next challenge was getting his entire face and head clear of the muck. It was going to take an effort of muscle and will. Magnus felt both faltering, but by God he had to try before he was pulled down any deeper.

  He went about an attempt to get his body straightened out and keep his face at the surface. He worked hard at this objective, but the quicksand worked harder to hold him firm and, indeed, draw him downward. Though he was able to maintain a breathing space, any movement of intended speed or strength was met by a resistance that made him feel he had the weak muscles of a helpless infant. He had the distinct memory of trying to draw a comb through his bear-greased hair, hitting clots and knots and ripping his hair out to spite both Pandora Prisskitt and Matthew Corbett; he felt now like that comb, heavy with bear grease and doomed to fail.

  The substance was thick about him, like both a wet sand and a clinging mud. Was there anyone out there to help him? He tried to answer that question by calling for help, but the quicksand threatened to flood his mouth. If anyone had answered, he couldn’t tell because his ears were stopped up.

  Trapped, Magnus thought. And then the real terror hit him and he began to flail at his fate, to try to fight his way out of this with sheer boulder-shouldered brawn, but the quicksand just seemed to close more tightly around him and once again his face went under. He stopped fighting, for he realized muscle would not overpower this suckpit and hard motion brought forth an equally hard reaction. He suddenly remembered very clearly Matthew’s first words to him upon arriving at the house.

  Calm yourself, sir.

  Magnus ceased all motion. His heart was pounding, telling him it was wrong to give up the fight, yet he intended to fight not with terrified brawn but with a calm brain. Slowly…slowly…he pushed his face upward through the muck…slowly…not incurring the wrath of the suckpit…and his nose and mouth once more broke the surface. He spat out quicksand and took in air, and determined that slow movements might yet defeat the will of the pit. Thus he began to very slowly push with his legs against the mass of viscous earth, and it took an iron will not to fight hard but it was this or death and he was not ready to give up, and surely not to the evil of a witch-cursed swamp.

  He felt the desire of the suckpit pulling at him, even with these slow, sinuous movements. How long it took him to work his head and shoulders out of the mire, Magnus didn’t know. Still moving with slowness respectful to the pit, he was able to get his eyes cleared and saw in the afternoon’s blue light and drifting smoke the carnage of the scene: Stamper lying on his back with a pool of blood around his head, Barrows crumpled and bloody, and Bovie lying on his side. Royce was gone, and Magnus knew who he was going after.

  The man was a mad dog, Magnus thought. An animal who killed on impulse, either in rage or misguided passion. Surely the killing of Gunn had been intentional…and now this.

  He had to get out for still he felt the pit pulling at him, accepting his weight and bulk like an offering to the demons below.

  If he moved slowly enough, he thought, he might be able to swim out. There were only a few feet to firm ground. So he might use his arms as a swimmer would, to move the muck around and behind him…but even the distance of a few feet would be torturous through this paste. Even so…it had to be tried.

  He began his journey from the pit of death toward the shore of life. The motions were slow, the quicksand still heavy and clinging around him and yet it did yield to these more deliberate actions. When at last he reached more solid earth, Magnus dug his fingers into the mud and weeds but found further difficulty in pulling himself out, for the suckpit did not want to let him go. Inch by inch he worked himself from the mire, as if struggling out of a suit of tar. Several times he thought he couldn’t get out for even moving by inches his strength was nearly gone, but what fortified him was the knowledge that Royce had killed Sarah in the same kind of blood frenzy the man had just shown, and now Royce was on his way to finish his job of sealing all mouths.

  Royce could say the cursed swamp got its victims by alligator, the Dead in Life, quicksand, poisonous snake, accidental gunshot or the Soul Cryer, and it might be many years before anyone would come searching for the bodies. By that time, the swamp and its creatures would have disposed of the flesh, and Royce would be long gone.

  “No,” Magnus rasped, as he yet struggled to pull himself free. “Not lettin’ that happen.”

  A hand was offered to him.

  Magnus looked into the blue-tinged face of Caleb Bovie, who had crawled across the wet earth on his belly like the reptile that had bitten him.

  Tears of torment had streamed from Bovie’s bloodshot eyes and yellow foam coated his lips, but in spite of his obvious agony he whispered, “Grab hold.”

  Magnus did. Bovie had no strength to speak of, but he tried his best. It was enough. Magnus freed himself from the pit, feeling his boots being sucked off his feet as payment for escape, and he lay weary on the ground next to Bovie like an oversized scarecrow covered head to toe with the black grime of the swamp.

  “Muldoon?” Bovie asked, again in a pained whisper. “Will you help me get home?”

  “Yes,” said Magnus.

  Magnus got to his bootless feet with a determination that would have earned an awed respect from even Father Prisskitt. He started to reach down to help Bovie up, when he heard the Soul Cryer’s eerie weeping somewhere in the wilderness at his back.

  It was close, but it could not be seen. Smoke moved in the trees, and here and there in the higher branches burned sputters of flame like little torches. The dry, hot wind that had been blowing toward the river had calmed to an acrid breeze, but Magnus could see the orange glow of the fire in the sky that meant a large portion of the forest was ablaze. The main part of the fire looked to be maybe a quarter mile away, and was throwing a constellation of embers into the air that drifted down like burning stars.

  Again the Soul Cryer wept, closer still.

  Magnus walked the few paces to Bovie’s discarded sword and picked it up. He retrieved the pistol from Barrows’ dead body and cocked it. Soul Cryer smells blood, Magnus thought. It’s comin’.

  With sword in one hand and pistol in the other, the grimy black mountain of a scarecrow stood over Caleb Bovie and readied himself to fight for both their lives.

  “River’s just ahead,” said Matthew, who could see it about thirty yards distant through the trees. Quinn was holding his hand, gripped hard, and a few yards behind them came Abram, the crippled Mars and Tobey.

  “Need to rest just a minute,” Mars said. When Matthew and Quinn paused, Mars’ sons eased their father down to the ground with his back against a willow’s trunk. “Stepped in a gopher hole,” Mars told Matthew. “Heard that ankle snap like a broomstick.”

  “Does it pain you very much?”

  Mars gave Matthew half of a smile; the other half of it was sad. “Not much. You like to see my brand, suh? Now…that did pain me much. Pained me more, to watch my wife and sons be branded. God bless my Jenny, I miss her. You own slaves, suh?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “What kind of work you do?”
>
  “I’m…” A problem-solver, Matthew was about to say. Instead, he said, “I’m paid to stick my nose into places where it doesn’t belong.”

  Mars laughed, a rich deep sound. “And here you be. Who’s payin’ you for this?”

  “Mrs. Kincannon.”

  “Why not the mister? He still poorly?”

  “I don’t know. He was abed when I left the Green Sea.”

  “Hm,” Mars said quietly, and stared past Matthew toward the River of Souls. A whiplash of lightning flared across the charcoal sky, followed by the rumble of thunder. “Boys, we did wrong runnin’. Should’ve faced up to things, right then and there. Course, you’d be hangin’ by now,” he said to Abram. “Kincannons weren’t gonna take your word for nothin’, against Cap’n Royce and Cap’n Gunn.”

  “I didn’t want you two comin’ with me,” Abram said. “Told you to stay put, I was the one they wanted.”

  “Weren’t gonna let you come out here alone,” Tobey answered. “Got to look out for each other, and that’s how it is. Anyway…die out here or die at the Green Sea, don’t make no difference.” He turned his attention to Matthew. “Pardon my askin’, suh, but what’s this proof you got that says Abram didn’t kill Miss—”

  Tobey’s question was stopped by the crack of a musket being fired from the darkness of the thicket behind them, and at once Tobey grabbed at his left side and with a cry of pain fell to his knees. Matthew had seen the flash of the pan, and now the cloud of smoke indicated from where the shot had come.

  “Down! Get down!” Matthew urged, and pulled Quinn with him to the ground. Abram crawled over to shield his father, while Tobey gasped and clutched at his bleeding side.

  “Who’d I hit?” came Royce’s voice, casual and unhurried. “I was aimin’ at you, Corbett! That’s all right, I’ll get you yet! You too, Abram! Gonna get all of you before it’s done!”