Less Than Human

by Raisor, Gary

  Steven fumbled around in his pocket a few seconds before coming up with one, but his fingers were so numb he had trouble holding it. He scooted into the entrance, trying to protect the match from the wind. After five or six futile tries, he finally succeeded in getting it lit. He crawled the rest of the way into the opening with Matt following close behind.

  Once they were inside, they saw that it was indeed a cave and bigger than they first thought. They couldn't tell how big from Steven's match, only that they were able to stand. At first glance nothing seemed to be living inside, so they quickly turned and went back to the wagon to gather some firewood they had stored there earlier. Soon they had a roaring fire going.

  "If you don't back up, you're going to catch on fire," Matt observed as Steven hugged the blaze.

  "I don't care. At least I'll die warm."

  Grudgingly, the younger man moved away from the fire. "You stay here and warm up those old bones, and I'll go see about the horses. But first, one for the road." He backed up and stood over the flames until Matt swore he saw smoke curling up from Steven's backside.

  Steven returned a few minutes later with both arms full. "If you was to look around that mess, you might scare us up a bite to eat while I get some snow to melt for coffee."

  "More buffalo meat?" Matt asked.

  "Yeah, that's all we got."

  "God, what I wouldn't give for some beans."

  They ate quickly and in silence, wolfing down their food, and when they were finished, Matt pulled out his pipe and worked on getting it lit. Soon fragrant smoke drifted across the fire. Outside the wind raged at the cave entrance, its thin keening sounding like something hungry.

  "I don't know about you," Steven said, "but I didn't think we was gonna make it there for a while."

  "Yeah," Matt agreed around his pipe, "I was beginning to have some serious doubts my ownself. It must be twenty-five, thirty below out there." He gave his head a wry shake. "Guess maybe we should have quit this game a mite sooner."

  Steven cleaned off the plates while Matt worked on his pipe some more. After a few minutes Matt knocked the ancient briar out and stuck it in his coat pocket. "I think I'd sleep better after a look around. Hate to have a grumpy old bear climb into bed with me. 'Less, of course—" he winked—"she was female. We got any of those torches you rigged up?"

  "Look under the wagon seat, over on the left side. Should be two or three still under there."

  Matt reappeared a few minutes later. "I thought you were trying to hide them," he grumbled, stamping snow from his feet and backing up to the fire. After he warmed himself, he stuck the end of a torch into the fire and, when it flared into life, he handed it over.

  "Steven, my boy," he said, hefting the Sharps, "let's go have a look-see around."

  As Steven held the torch high, they treaded their way deeper into the darkness, pausing for a moment to stare at some boulders that circled the floor in an almost perfect ring. Tall as a man, they didn't look natural. They looked as if they had been placed there. A rusty stain rested in the middle of the stones, looking like the remnants of long-dried blood. There was something about the rocks that reminded Matt of silent old men sitting around a campfire, brooding about a secret they would tell if they only had the ability to speak.

  Matt was glad to be away from the huge stones.

  The cave went back a lot farther than either man would have thought. Their footsteps floated back with a ring that took some time dying.

  Droppings, speckled with white, littered the floor.

  "What do you think caused those?"

  "Bats'd be my guess," Matt answered, a smile crossing his face as he warmed to the subject. "When I was down in Mexico, I seen bats that'd suck the blood right out of a man's body. Yes sir, do it while he was sleeping. I ever tell you about 'em?"

  "No, and I wished you hadn't told me now." Despite the easy banter, the prospect of finding their way back caused the younger man's back to prickle with sweat.

  They had taken several convoluted turns when the torch began to flicker. Matt handed over another. There was barely enough fire left to light the new one and, for an instant, the darkness moved in close, reminding them how far beneath the earth they were.

  An anxious moment followed before the new torch caught. "We only got one left," Steven pointed out.

  "I can count."

  "Shouldn't we be thinking about getting back?"

  "What do you make of that?" Matt asked, pointing at a bulky object draped in shadow.

  "I don't see a thing."

  A dry, rustling sound carried, like the wind blowing leaves across the ground, before silence once again descended upon the chamber. Matt readied the Sharps, prepared to shoot at the first sign of movement. As he neared the object, it seemed as though a sliver of ice had been driven into his chest. An inner voice warned him of danger and his nerves were stretched tighter than wet rawhide by the time he was close enough to see what rested in the darkness.

  Both men stared in disbelief. In front of them was… an Indian burial platform. The rustling sound had come from the wind moving around what was left of the blankets. Everything was rotted, and that accounted for the musty smell to the place. But beneath that, barely discernible, was another odor, one that Matt had never smelled before. Whatever it was, it was sickening.

  Steven was the first to speak. "What kind of Indians would put their dead in a godforsaken place like this?"

  "None that I know of," was Matt's flat reply.

  "I always heard they like to be buried on high ground, so's their spirits could sort of watch over things." Steven lowered his voice several notches. Something about this place made a man want to whisper. "You know, it don't make no sense why somebody would go to all that trouble, just to put one man back here."

  There was a reason that Matt knew of, but he said nothing. He started to turn away when something caught his eye.

  Squinting in the dim light, he tried to make it out. Pictures. Lots and lots of pictures. The cave wall had been painted into one huge mural.

  "Bring over that torch."

  In the flickering light they studied the paintings, trying hard to understand why someone would go to the trouble to draw pictures that no one would ever see. They were crude slashes of color, barely more than stick men. Large portions were faded or gone altogether, so it was difficult to make sense of what they were trying to say.

  "What's all this mean?"

  "It means," Matt answered softly, "we're standing in the burial chamber of a medicine man."

  "What in Sam Hell is a medicine man?"

  "Indians believe there are some men who can heal the sick with magic, control spirits, that sort of thing. They're held in great respect by the rest of the tribe."

  "Yeah? Then why'd they stick him in here?"

  "Cause they were afraid of him."

  "That don't make no sense," Steven answered. "The son of a bitch is dead."

  "Indians are superstitious, that's all."

  "You sure don't look too convinced from where I'm standing," Steven replied, watching the older man's face. "You sure there ain't more to this than what you're telling?"

  "Come on, I'll show you there's nothing to be afraid of!"

  Matt angrily grabbed the torch from Steven and walked over to the platform. Holding the light above his head, he studied the remains of the figure lying on the bare wood. Both men steeled themselves at the sight. It was impossible to tell how long the skeleton had lain there, but all the clothing had rotted away long ago, along with the flesh, and the only things that still clung to the yellowed bones were patches of skin. One had a feathered snake on it.

  Matt felt as if he had been kicked in the stomach.

  But that wasn't the worst of it.

  "Who could do something like that?" Steven asked, his face turning ashen. "Drive stakes through his hands and feet, and then leave him in the dark. I bet he was still alive when they brought him here."

  Matt saw that Steven was ge
tting scared and put a comforting hand on the boy's shoulder. "Don't get yourself worked up, son. He's dead and the dead can't hurt you. Besides, he was killed before they brought him here. Look at his skull, it's damn near busted in two."

  Something was odd about the crack, though.

  "Let's get out on back to the fire," Steven said, nervously licking his lips as the second torch began to flicker, throwing shadows that made the stick men seem to move.

  Matt needed no encouragement.

  Their campfire led them the last few yards through the dark, and though neither of them said anything, both were glad to be away from the dead medicine man. They stoked up the fire as they made preparations to turn in for the night. But sleep was the farthest thing from their minds.

  "Think I'll go out and seen what the weather's doing," Steven said, making the first excuse. "Maybe if the snow's quit, we can get an early start in the morning."

  "Good idea. Check the horses and make sure they're doing all right. Make damn sure to give 'em some extra feed." Steven made no effort to move.

  "What's on your mind?" Matt asked in a wary tone.

  "I was thinking maybe one of us should keep watch tonight. You know… just in case there's something to what we saw back there." Steven laughed but his laugh sounded strained.

  "What we saw back there was just a few smudges of paint and the rotting bones of some dead Indian." Matt's words were a curious mixture of mocking and concern. "You ain't afraid of that, are you?"

  Steven looked ashamed, yet from his voice, Matt could tell he was still scared. "It's the way you looked when you first saw those paintings. Your face turned pale, like you'd seen your own ghost. Something bad happened back there. I don't claim to know what it was, but it just felt wrong. I think we should get out of here tonight. Right now."

  "How far you think we'd get in that storm?" Matt hunkered down and poked at the fire even though it was burning just fine. "I done told you everything I know about what we saw. Will you quit bending my ear and get some rest?"

  Steven looked closely at Matt, trying to gauge the truth of his words. A look of reluctance crossed his face but he finally nodded. "Don't forget to wake me up in a few hours."

  Matt nodded. "You can count on it."

  As Steven wrapped up and prepared for sleep, Matt stared into the flames, brooding about what he'd seen earlier. There were gaps in the story on the cave wall, still he was able to fill in most of the missing pieces… because he'd heard the story once before. His memories carried him back to when he was young and living with the Sioux, back to a distant night when he had heard a story he had never forgotten:

  There had been a raid on a neighboring tribe for horses. It had gone badly. Many had been killed in the battle that followed. An old warrior by the name of Lame Bear had been wounded, a lance in the stomach. Matt had felt pity for the injured man, and so, amid the wailing of the women who tended the death camp, he had sat close by and listened to the fevered recounting of stories about battles fought, coups counted, as the man who had been like a father came to grips with dying.

  The stories were mostly the same.

  But one story had been different from all the others; one had been about a good man's sacrifice that had led to eternal damnation.

  From what Matt could make out, there had been a year when the buffalo had failed to return. In an effort to save his starving people, a medicine man had struck a bargain with the Tena-Ranide, a spirit of the underworld.

  The tribe was spared starvation, but the forces the medicine man had tried to use for good were now using him for their own purposes. Dark purposes. The man who had become the servant of death became more evil as the days passed, and beneath a hungry, staring moon strange rites were held—rites that soon demanded human sacrifice.

  The old man on his deathbed said the earth had run red with blood for many years.

  After untold suffering, the tribe managed at last to bind the medicine man's mortal body, to hide it deep in the earth. They made great magic to seal him in his final resting place, and the fear of his evil was such it was forbidden to even speak his name.

  The old man's last words were of a feathered serpent that marked the grave.

  The fire popped, yanking Matt back to the present. A feeling of unease rested like an icicle in his guts as his thoughts turned to the last painting on the cave wall. Painted in blood, it said not to disturb this final prison, that whoever intruded was in great danger, because the only way the Tena-Ranide could ever have any form of life beyond this cave was if it found another body to inhabit.

  And it came to Matt what was strange about the crack in the medicine man's skull; it had been split from the inside out.

  Steven stirred in his sleep, mumbled something, but after a few seconds his breathing became regular again.

  Matt stared at the young man's back and thought about his own son, dead at five, taken by the cholera. His wife had followed less than a year later. Something went out of her after the boy had died, and Matt always thought the reason she died was because she simply lost the will to live.

  Sometimes Matt wondered how the boy would have turned out if he had lived. Would he have been like Steven? Matt shook his head, trying to rid himself of the painful images that seemed to haunt him lately. There was no point in thinking about a past that was gone. A past that brought only sadness.

  He stretched out and tried to find a position that didn't cause his bad leg to ache.

  Outside the wind rose. The sound reminded him of something familiar from his past. He tried to place it. After a while he did.

  It sounded like the wailing of the women from the death camp.

  Steven awoke to find Matt asleep and the fire down to a few embers. Something had pulled him from sleep. A sound? Yes, it was a sound, but not one he could place. He started to add some wood to the fire, and that was when he first noticed the smell. God, it stank something awful in here, like every rotting buffalo carcass in the world. What could cause such an odor? He was about to wake Matt when he heard movement; wet slithering noises, like a snake crawling out of its skin, coming from somewhere back in the darkness.

  The sounds grew louder.

  He stared deep into the cave, but he couldn't see anything moving in the cold, moist darkness. Whatever was back there was getting closer. The stench grew stronger, becoming overpowering, and his hands covered his mouth as he fought to hold down his rising bile.

  All thoughts of being sick vanished when Steven got a look at what was emerging into the feeble light. A patch of blackness on the wall had detached itself from the rest. The shape looked like the shadow of a man wearing a tall hat, and yet when Steven looked around the cave, he saw they were all alone, that there was nothing to throw such a shadow. His eyes followed the thing as it somehow crept along, possessed of an impossible life.

  Steven backed away as he softly called out Matt's name.

  At the sound of Steven's voice, the thing darted across the wall with unnatural speed. As he watched, it abandoned the shape of a man altogether and changed into a writhing mass that sent thin, ropelike tendrils shooting down the wall. He was reminded of a spider spinning a web as they gathered about Matt's head and hung there, coiling and uncoiling with a rhythmic pulse that matched the old man's breathing.

  Steven called out again, louder this time.

  Why didn't Matt wake up? Couldn't he feel it hovering above him? Couldn't he smell the damned thing? Steven tried once more to warn his partner, but only small gagging sounds came from his mouth. He was frozen, and everything began moving with nightmare slowness while he watched the clinging shadow continue downward until it touched Matt's battered hat. Several tendrils entwined themselves around the old man's throat, and there was something obscene about the way they stroked the flesh.

  The rest, as though they were a nest of rattlers, struck out at the sleeping face… but instead of drawing back afterward… they began crawling into him.

  Matt began twitching like a r
abbit in an ever-tightening snare—once again Matt was standing on that hellish plain while the buffalo thundered by, and he watched as the Indian who now wore his face reached out and drew him close. They embraced. When Matt tried to pull away, he found that he couldn't separate himself from the clinging figure, that the Indian's flesh was still melting, flowing over him in rippling waves, crawling down into his mouth, into his throat, choking him so that he was unable to even cry out in his revulsion and fear. He realized they were merging together—that soon they would become one.

  Blood erupted from every opening in Matt's body. His eyes jerked open and he screamed. He tried to stand, but his bad leg gave way and he pitched forward into the dirt. As he struggled to rise, the sounds that came from him were the high, keening sounds of a man who has gazed upon something he cannot bear to see, something that has driven him to the brink of madness.

  The screams broke the spell that kept Steven from moving. He scrambled to his feet and the .44 that Matt had given him for his twenty-first birthday appeared in his hand.

  The screams grew louder, and Steven was screaming, himself, when he emptied the pistol into whatever had hold of Matt. His bullets had no effect. And neither did the smoldering stick of wood he plucked from the fire. He might as well have been striking at the air. The thing was too fast.

  Steven grabbed Matt, trying to pull him away from whatever held him, when one of the tendrils wrapped around his wrist. It was not a shadow. It never had been. The thing on the wall was real, solid, and cold as barbed wire when it cut into him, and for a second, Steven was able to see into the mind of whatever held him.

  His whole being recoiled when he got a brief glimpse of what hell must look like.

  With every ounce of his strength, Steven wrenched his arm free, stripping off the skin where the tendril touched him. The arm tingled with cold needles that somehow burned like fire. It felt as though something alive were moving inside his arm. He took the flaming stick of wood and pressed it against the raw spot. A scream followed and Steven wasn't sure it belonged entirely to him.

  Incredible pain flared for a second but the feeling of something alive in his arm stopped.