Dark Avenues

by Brian J Smith

  VOICE RECORDER DIES

  A PROPER BURIAL

  AS I stated before, writers like to mix things up. Mystery and horror or in this case, a western horror.

  As a child, if I had a penny for every time I walked into the living room and saw my father watching a western on television, I’d been one rich little shit. I thought they were boring and the farthest thing from my mind until I watched Big Jake, Tombstone and Unforgiven.

  I wrote my first western horror story after watching a scene in “The Horse Soldiers” starring John Wayne and Rock Hudson and it was published in the anthology, “The Book Of Cannibals 2”. It isn’t featured here but like many others, you will see it in a future collection. This story was inspired by Jack Ketchum’s “The Western Dead” and if you haven’t read it please do so.

  1885

  “GRANDPA!” Clay exclaimed, squinting into the gloom.

  “Howdy, partner.” A familiar voice said in an uneasy tone.

  When he stepped out onto the front porch, the cool spring breeze snapped him out of his fatigued state. A skinny old man appeared at the foot of the front porch steps, his rail-thin frame outlined by the waxy-white moon. His wrinkled skin–which had once been white as the moon itself–now had a soot-gray tint and a thin cap of wispy-white hair stuck up from his large liver-spotted head. He wore a dingy and ragged salmon-colored shirt under a pair of blue-jean coveralls; his bushy-white beard hung three inches past the tip of his chin and the matching mustache nearly shrouded his upper lip.

  He had a sorrowful look on his face like a dog staring down the barrel of a gun. He braced the sides of his hat with both hands, his craggy gray fingers tapping against the ragged brim.

  “What in tarnation are you doin’?”

  “Did you gone foregut?”

  Clay glanced to his right and saw his big brother Pete leaning against the porch railing, all six-foot-three of him. He wore a pin-striped blue shirt and black pants under a camel-colored frock coat. The big brown Stetson on his wide bullet-shaped head shaded the top half of his face save for the wreath of salt-and-pepper beard hugging his square-jawed face.

  He peered up at the moon and sighed when he realized what time it was. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten; he just wished that it’d happened in the middle of the day not before sunrise.

  Why should he worry?

  He was more worried about if and when Laura was going to come back anytime soon; he hadn’t eaten a good home-cooked meal in weeks and he could sure go for a bowl of her famous beef stew. This time, when she did come back, he’d do whatever she wanted as long as she stayed; anything.

  “Why does the house look so damn dark, son?” Grandpa asked curiously. “Why don’t you tell that pretty lil–”

  Pete gave a fake cough and cut him off in mid-sentence. He jerked his head in Clay’s general direction and mouthed the word “no”. Grandpa nodded, bowed his head and fixed his gaze back at Clay, his rheumy-gray eyes glistening like ten pennies.

  “I’m sore I–”

  Clay cut him off with a dismissive wave of his hand and nodded. He couldn’t expect his grandfather to be up on current events; he had matters of his own to worry about. Pete craned his head toward the watercolor sky and then back at his brother.

  “We best git goin’, little bro.” He said. “We best get there before sunup.”

  Clay sighed, motioned for them to wait outside and lumbered back inside. The place had been too dark for his liking but the past always had a way of making you adjust to the future; it would be cold and dark for quite some time. He slipped on a dingy white shirt, brown boots with matching pants and a white down coat; he couldn’t remember the last time he used his Colt but since time was of the essence he gave up and strapped on his suspenders.

  “Are you comin’?” He asked, casting a sideways glance at his brother.

  “Why can’t eye?”

  “Any other time you bring him here,” He said, shutting the door behind him. “you’ve gon rode away from here like you saw the devil sose I end up doin’ it mself.”

  Clay was walking up to Grandpa when Pete came stomping after him, his big heavy boots clomping against the hard packet desert. He spun around on his heels, his fists raised and ready and fired an icy cold stare that stopped the big man dead in his tracks. The look had scared him plenty of times in the past when they stood a knee high to a grasshopper but it didn’t work tonight.

  “You got sumthin’ to say?” Pete said, inching his face closer to Clay’s “Then spit it out?”

  “I just think it’s a lil strange when you decide to help me tonight seein’ is how I’ve been doin’ this on my own for five doggone years.”

  “I’ve got my reason. Don’ you worry cause after dis you never gone see me ‘gain.”

  Pete flapped one massive manly hand at his little brother and walked back to Grandpa.

  That wasn’t exactly what Clay had wanted but there was no way to reason with a big stubborn bastard like him. Pete was always “playing the victim” when he didn’t get attention for not doing what everyone else around him had been doing. Clay glanced past his brother’s shoulder, absorbed the black desert landscape sprawled out before him, drew his breath deep into his lungs and sighed.

  In the time it’d taken him to get ready, a full moon sat high in the night sky spreading an alabaster glow that outlined the spines of the mountains that rose along the horizon. The short grass prairie weaved in the breath of the wind; the stream behind his brown stucco abode churned and bubbled around wet dark rocks while glinting in the downward glare of the moon. He felt the hairs along the back of his neck stiffen at the sight of the treacherous black prairie waiting to swallow them as it’d done plenty of other ancestors before them.

  When he glanced back at his brother, a muscle twitched in their jaws as if they were fighting off the urge to hit each other. Pete slipped his pistol out of his holster, spun the chamber and watched the moonlight reflect off the edge of the barrel before he holstered it.

  Something struck the ground with a heavy thud. They flinched and spun, their scarred black bootheels kicking small clouds of dust across the hard-packed sand. Clay’s skin prickled with fear; his heart thudded like thunder.

  Grandpa knelt down and plucked his right arm from the ground between his feet. It’d fallen off at the shoulder, revealing a flaky gray stub; the bones jutting out of his fallen arm were reduced to thin pockets of powdery-white dust carried off in the breeze. He flicked his gaze from Clay to Pete and held his arm in the air above his head like a torch.

  “It’s just my dad blame arm.” He said apologetically. “Are we gonna get ma ass back into the dirt fore sunup or sit around here nippin’ at each other like a bunch of old biddies.”

  *****

  THEY headed north through the mountains, per Clay’s instructions.

  He’d buried Grandpa in the west as far and as much as he could before moving off to the east until tonight when he realized he couldn’t bury him there anymore. North was as good as he was going to get at least for now before he’d have to start combing the South.

  He’d gotten a good look at the scenery over yonder and had planted a few grave markers around to help him pick out the proper places. He’d dug out a lot of holes, six-feet-under and six-feet-wide, and left them open to make it easier for him to bury them again. He hoped he could still find them.

  Clay gathered a lantern and an old shovel with a scarred wooden handle from the shed and lit the lantern with a box of matches Pete had given him. He kept the wick down just enough to allow them plenty of light to see where they were going and carried the shovel perched on his left shoulder. Pete held his Grandpa’s rotting arm and decided to walk in between them to avoid getting hit; he thought that if Clay had the chance to ring his bell with one good swing he’d take it.

  “I want you boys to understand somethin’.” Grandpa said, wagging a lone finger at them. “Life is somethin’ you should never take for granted cause I sore did and look wha
t hapn’.”

  They followed the two-track dirt road that started from the front of Clay’s house and stretched along the crick before connecting onto a straight stretch in the direction they agreed to go. When they entered the mouth of the forest, Clay licked a drop of sweat from his upper lip and felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise again. He felt naked without his pistol but whatever lurked out there in the shadows would go down with one good swing.

  “I ad a chance to make my life somethin’ special that most young’uns only drep about. I used to deal cards and shoot a bullet like the res’ of them but there were a few times when I didn’t get so lucky. My goose could’ve been cooked several times fore’ now, let me tell yaw. I gotta hand it to your Grandma Bessie, though. She had the patience of a saint and such a gud heart I’d think to meself that I never deserved her and I still don’.” He said, then stopped and gazed over his shoulder at Clay. “Where did you bury your grandma?”

  The question made Clay’s heartbeat accelerate. The bright orange glow from the lantern splayed across their faces, cloaking it in a mask of half-light and half shadow.

  “Thirteen miles south.”

  “Okie.” Grandpa nodded. “Did you burry her right?”

  “I buried her the way she always wanted to be.” Clay said, shrugging a lone shoulder.

  Grandpa mumbled under his breath. He tried to take his hat off with his right arm and scowled when he realized that Pete had been carrying it the whole time. He brought the back of his right hand hard across the meaty part of Clay’s right shoulder and drew his lips back in a tight angry snarl.

  “You bess not be jerkin’ my chain.”

  “Grandma wanted to be buried with her ass in the air so that anyone who ever disrespect her cool come by and kiss it. I was just doing what I was told.”

  “I can’t believe her.”

  Clay waited for the look of stunned surprise to fall across his grandfather’s face before he cracked into a smile. Pete shook his head, clamped his hand across his mouth and glanced down at his feet to hide the comical look on his face.

  “She said you’d do at.”

  “Do wha?”

  “She new you’d get a burr in your ass if she tol me to tell you she was burry like that when she isn’t.”

  Grandpa’s forehead puckered with confusion and his mouth shrunk into a tight-lipped snarl. He saw the mischievous grin on his grandsons’ faces, gave them an angry scowl and whopped them both across the shoulder with the brim of his hat. They chuckled again, unfazed by the playful slaps and felt the tension between them sliding away.

  They continued on and followed the road for another three miles before the forest finally opened; Clay felt a little better about being out of the darkness although he’d never been afraid of it before tonight. The road snaked through a wide open field of high grass on the left and a flat grassy plain on the right. A thick leafy oak tree stood on the right, its spiky-haired shadow rippled across the prairie; the high grass billowed in the breeze that caressed their faces and stirred their coats.

  “As eyes saying,” Grandpa said, hitching his pants with his left hand. “I wish ever day of my life I hadn’t laid eyes on that woman but hell I couldn’t help it.”

  Pete rolled his eyes and mumbled something under his breath. Clay reared his head back, scrunched his face together and stared annoyingly at his brother.

  “Me, your papa and your cousin Jed comin’ back home from hauling a herd of cattle to Abilene and we were gonna be a day behind because of a storm before I could feel your grandma’s body warth again.”

  They nodded but that was all.

  “We’s pickin’ up some supplies from a general store in Theodore when eyes saw her standin’ at the counter. She had the prettiest dark hair that wen pas her shoulders and the prettiest brown eyes I’d ever seen. She wore one of those long dresses with the knots at the bottom and a white shawl with all kinds of beads on it. We changed our mins’ after she left and followed her about six miles outside of town. I couldn’t get that beeyoutifull smile out of my head no matter how hard I tried and ever time I thought of it I felt a little jingle in my spurs.”

  The old man’s cracked gray lips pulled back in a wide pleasing grin and massaged his crotch with his left hand. The note of erotic satisfaction in Grandpa’s voice made Clay’s stomach churn with disgust. He swallowed and tried to put himself in another time and another world where he didn’t think about his grandparents playing slap and tickle under the covers.

  “We’s found her living on this patch of land next to a crick bed but she wasn’t alone. She had two little Injuns and a couple of elders livin’ with her and dey’s cookin’ outside of their little teepees but the two women livin’ with her boot day’s weren’t as purdy as her. We rode onto their camp and shot every woman and child there cept her and the ol’ man she’d been kissin’ wasn’t just standin’ in my way but he was shakin’ some kind of dog gone bag in my face and spoutin’ all kinds of Injun language. I din’t know what he was doin’ but if eye’d known then what eyes new now I’d would’ve just shot them both and rode off with watever they had.”

  They’d cleared the tree by now and went onto another straight stretch. The night was silent save for the rhythmic call from the cicadas and the wind moaning in the treetops. Pete yawned, licked the roof of his mouth and regarded at the surreal beauty of the great dark frontier.

  “We’s shot that old man and kicked him into the river that day. We’s got off of our horses and–and–.” His voice cracked.

  His head slumped over and his shoulders sagged. There were a lot of things Clay had enjoyed in thirty-six years but this wasn’t one of them. There was something nauseous about watching a man’s pride crumble like stale bread; his soul leaked out into the shadows and receded out of sight never to be seen again.

  “I member jumpin’ on top of her and she fought me the whole way and then I tore her clothes off and then slapped her ded’ cross the face and rolled her onto her belly. By then, your Paw and Jed were over there holdin’ her arms down and all I could hear was her screams and she was tight as a fist but I got her to loos’ up after a while and pounded her snatch but good til’ I forgot all about your grandma’s warmth and when I had my fill Jed tied her hands together with rope and then tied it to un of the tent stakes and all I could hear was their belt buckles jinglin’ like somethin’ fierce and den thay took their turn and when thay’s done thay fillid her with lead and left her dere to bleed like a stuck pig but now that I think about it at least the poor girl didn’t have to suffa like we do.”

  A few moments of silence passed before Grandpa said, “And that’s wer that dang curse come from. That old Injun was a galdamn medicine man. Slap us with a curse harder than my Pappy’s switch was wat he did.”

  Clay had heard the story more times than he cared to but there was nothing wrong in letting an old man say what was on his mind. A dead old man, in fact. He could’ve shut him up at any point and time but he couldn’t bring himself to deny him that nor could he blame the old man for feeling like he did and for that he’d let him say whatever he wanted as long as it made him feel better.

  They didn’t forget what happened to Jed and Great Grandpappy, either. Jed’s wife found him in the barn with a bottle of rotgut whiskey and a double barrel in his mouth; his top teeth were clamped onto the top of the barrel–at least the ones that hadn’t been blown into the wall or managed to stay in place after years of tobacco use. And Grandpappy? Poor bastard was checking the fence around the chicken coop when his horse lost its footing and fell on top of him; by the time anyone found him the coyotes and snakes made sure he didn’t scream again.

  Grandpa rubbed his eyes but kept on trudging. There weren’t enough tears in the world to make up for what they’d done to that innocent woman. And in for their dastardly deed, their family was cursed to repeat this process over and over and over again.

  Two miles later, he lost his footing and hit the ground sideways. Clay lowered
the lantern and found the old man’s right leg lying on the ground beside of him, wriggling like a worm on a hook; a carpet of powdery-white dust spilled out. Pete wanted Clay to carry him but when Clay reminded him about the tools perched on his shoulder the odds were not in Pete’s favor.

  He set the tools and the lantern down long enough to hoist the old man onto Pete’s wide fleshy back, retrieved his tools and led the way.

  “You bes not bite me,” Pete warned Grandpa. “or I’ll blow your damn head off.”

  Clay jerked his head to the side, motioning for them to follow him into the forest. They slapped at a few overhead branches that grappled at their clothes and skin; shafts of bone-white moonbeams sifted through the trees, spreading brittle black tree shadows across the forest. The sound of dry leaves and frail twigs crackling under their feet echoed through the forest and barely muffled the resounding chorus of cricket calls.

  Once they found the right trail, Pete asked Grandpa, “What’s it like?”

  “Wha?”

  “The afterlife. What’s it like?”

  Grandpa glanced up at the sky, his rheumy gray eyes glistening in the firelight. He sighed in Pete’s ear, causing the big man to cringe and pull his head away. Pete shook off the noxious smell of wet dirt and rotted breath from his face and fought back every fiber in his body to not curse at his brother for making him carry this old bag of bones.

  “I really can’t tell ya.” He said in a slow riveting voice. “It’s kinda hard to describe it you know.”

  “Damn.” Pete winced. “You’re breath smells like you died.”

  Grandpa jabbed him in the ribs with his left boot until Pete winced. Clay led them over the crest of a hill and glanced up just in time to see the marker he planted in front of a pair of thick gray oaks. Clay glanced into the pockets of darkness and moonlight filling the forest and sighed, his eyes roving across the other white-painted grave markers he’d placed throughout; plenty of places to bury the kind of sin that’ll never stay grounded whether under the bright-blue heavens or inside the warmth of Hell’s fiery catacombs.