by Brian Hodge
“I don’t think I scared them, I just think they sort of, well, got bored or something. Or more likely… full. Cause I could hear them prowling around and around the stage, and I could hear other things, snapping sounds, gnawing sounds, a kind of excitement that sounded like miners at a free lunch.
“They climbed up on the stage and looked in the window a few times, and I struck at one of them, missed. The thing almost swatted me with that hairy arm, those big claws, then there was pink light through the window, and it went silent outside. I considered coming out, but couldn’t. I was too frightened. I was exhausted too. More than I realized. I dreamed I was awake. I had no idea I had fallen asleep until you came. Good thing I dropped my umbrella while I slept, otherwise you would have found it in your ribs, your eye, some place.”
Jebidiah picked up the umbrella and looked at it. It was ragged and broken in spots, tipped with wood. He touched it with his fingers. Oak. He gave it to her. “The tip is sharp,” he said.
“I broke it off some time ago. Never did get another.”
“Good thing,” Jebidiah said. “The broken tip made a good weapon.”
Mary looked at the window. “It’s growing dark. We need to leave this town.”
Jebidiah shook his head. “No. I have to be here. But you should leave. I’ll even give you my horse to do it.”
“I don’t know why you have to stay, that’s your business, but I won’t lie. I’m ready to go. And I’ll tell you, I was just lucky. I think the day light ran them. Had it been earlier in the night, I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d be some turd, digested and dropped on a hill somewhere, maybe drawing flies in an alley. I’ll take you up on that horse, mister. But I’d like to do it now. And I’m telling you, you damn sure don’t need to be here afoot. Or on horseback, or in a stage, or no kind of way. You need to ride on out with me.”
“I’ll leave when my job is done.”
“What job?”
“His job… God.”
“You some kind of preacher?”
Some kind.”
“Well, sir, that’s your business if you say so. I don’t pray to God much. He ain’t never answered any of my prayers.”
“I don’t know that he’s answered anyone’s,” Jebidiah said.
Darkness was edging into the street when Jebidiah and Mary left the hotel, then began to walk briskly toward the barn. The oppressive humidity was gone, and now there was a chill in the air. By the time they reached the livery and Jebidiah had saddled his horse, the night had slipped in smooth and solid.
Outside the livery, leading the horse, Jebidiah looked toward the woods that lay beyond the town, saw that they were holding thick shadows between leaves and limbs.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Mary said. “I’ve waited too long. Bad enough it’s dark, but me out there without anyone to help, damn if I will. I’d rather stay here till morning. Provided I’m here in the morning.”
“You are probably right,” Jebidiah said. “It wouldn’t be good for you to go now. It’s best to go back to the hotel.”
They started back down the street, Jebidiah leading his horse, and as they went, a kind of dark cloud fled out of the woods and covered the quarter moon and fell on the town and came apart, shadows skittering in all directions.
“What in hell is that?” Mary said.
“The mantle of darkness,” Jebidiah said, and picked up his pace. “It sometimes comes when a place is full of evil.”
“It’s cold.”
“Odd, isn’t it? Something from the Devil, from the bowels of Hell, and it’s cold.”
“I’m scared,” Mary said. “I don’t normally scare up easy, but this shit is making my asshole pucker.”
“Best not to think about being scared,” Jebidiah said. “Best to think about survival. Let’s get back to the hotel.”
When they got to the hotel it was full of ghosts.
Jebidiah tried to lead his horse inside. It pulled at the reins, not wanting to enter.
“Easy, boy,” Jebidiah said to the horse, stroked its nose, and the horse settled down, slightly. Jebidiah continued to soothe the horse as he and Mary watched the ghosts move about. There were many ghosts and they seemed not to notice Jebidiah and Mary at all. They were white and thin as clean smoke, but were identifiable shapes of cowboys and whores, and they moved across the floor and into the stalls. Women hiked their ghostly dresses, and ghostly men dropped their trousers and entered them. The bartender behind the bar walked up and down its length. He reached and took hold of bottles that were not bottles, but shapes of bottles that could be seen through. At a piano a ghostly presence sat, hatless, in striped shirt and suspenders, all of which could be seen through. The ghost moved his hands over the keys but the keys didn’t move, but the player seemed to move as if he heard the music. A few cowboys and whores were dancing about to the lively tune that was heard to them, but not the living.
“My God,” Mary said.
“Funny how he always gets mentioned,” Jebidiah said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Don’t fear these. They can’t hurt you. Most of them don’t even know you’re here.”
“Most?”
“They are spirits of habit. They do this over and over. It was what they were doing, or wanted to do before they died. But that one—”
Jebidiah pointed to a ghostly, but much more distinct shape sitting in a chair against the far wall. He was a stubby cowboy in a big, ghostly hat. He was almost solid, but the wall and the furniture could be seen through him. “He knows we’re here. He sees us as we see him. He has been here a while. He has begun to accept his death.”
At that statement, the ghostly figure Jebidiah referred to, rose and crossed the room toward them, walking, but not quite touching the floor.
Mary moved toward the door.
Jebidiah grabbed her arm. “Best not. The street will be a far less welcome place shortly, perhaps already. There’s more out there than an oppressive cloud.”
“Will he hurt us?” Mary asked.
“I don’t think so.”
The ghost sauntered toward them, and as he neared, he showed a lopsided grin, stopped, stood directly in front of Jebidiah. Beside him, Mary shook like a leaf in a high wind. Jebidiah’s horse tugged at the reins, Jebidiah pulled the horse forward slightly, glanced at it. Its visible eye rolled in its head. “Easy, boy,” Jebidiah said to the horse, then turned to the ghost, said, “Can you speak?”
“I can,” said the spirit, and the voice was odd, as if it were climbing up to them from the bottom of a deep, dark well.
“How did you die?”
“Must I answer that?”
“You are bound to answer nothing at all, or anything you wish,” Jebidiah said. “I have no control over you.”
“I want to pass on,” the ghost said, “but for some reason, I cannot. I am here alone, because the others, they don’t know they’re dead. This town, it holds us. But I seem to be the only one that knows what has happened.”
“Evil has claimed it,” Jebidiah said. “When that happens, all manner of things can occur. Not always the same, but always evil. You have decided to embrace the truth, they have not. But in time, they must.”
“I’m not evil. I’m just a cowpoke that got dead.”
“The evil is what’s holding you,” Jebidiah said.
The cowboy nodded. “Them.”
“The hairy ones,” Mary said.
“Yes, the hairy ones,” the ghost said. “What they did left me in this place. There are other places, places I would like to move to, but I can’t, and it’s because of them, who they are and what they are.”
“It’s the way you died,” Jebidiah said. “You are caught in one of God’s little jokes.”
The ghost twisted its head to the side like a curious dog.
“What kind of joke?” the cowboy said, “because I assure you, I don’t find it all that funny.”
“And, in time, you will find it less and less hum
orous, and then you will get angry, and then you will react, and your reactions will not be of the best nature.”
“I have no intent of haunting anyone,” said the ghost.
“Time and frustration turns the spirit dark,” Jebidiah said. “But I can help you pass on.”
“You can?”
“I can.”
“Then do it, for Christ’s sake.”
“The evil must be destroyed.”
“Do it.”
“I would ask a small favor of you, first.”
“Of me?”
“Tell me about this town. What happened to you. If I know about it, I can fight what’s here, and I can help you pass on. That is my promise.”
“Oh, you can’t fight what’s here. Soon, you and her will be like me.”
“Perhaps,” Jebidiah said.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Mary said.
“First things first,” Jebidiah said. “I don’t want to stand here with my horse and my back against the door.”
“Understood,” said the ghost.
Jebidiah found a big room, a kind of sitting room, and that was where he put his horse, fed it grain that he poured out onto the hardwood floor. Then, as the ghost watched, he pushed a long cabinet across the doorway and pulled the curtains on the window. He and Mary took a seat on a kind of settee that was before the large window with the pulled curtains. There was no light inside, and Jebidiah did nothing to find one, though an oil lamp stood out from the wall in brass fixtures. They sat in the dark, it being nothing to the ghost. Jebidiah and Mary’s eyes adjusted in time, enough to make out shapes, and of course the ghost was forever constant, white and firm.
Once seated, the Reverend pulled both his revolvers and laid them on his thighs. Mary sat tight against him. The ghost took a chair as he might have in real life. He pulled a ghostly chaw from his pocket and put it in his jaw. The room grew darker and the night grew more still.
“There’s no taste,” the ghost said after a few jaw movements. “It’s just the idea of a chaw. It’s there, and I can put it in my mouth, but it’s like the liquor the bartender serves, it’s not really there. Thing that makes me feel a bit better about that is the fact the money I pay him, it ain’t there either. Ain’t nothing really there but my urges.”
“So the bartender knows you’re here?” Jebidiah said.
“Sometimes. Sometimes not.”
“I’m sure it is a misery,” Jebidiah said. “But now, if I’m to help you, help us. I feel that we are short of time. Already the street is full of the night, and the great shadow lays heavy on the town. I can taste it when I breathe.”
“You talk funny.”
“I was educated funny.”
The ghost nodded. “That shadow comes down on the town before they do. It comes, they are not far behind. When they show up, and that’s at the beat of twelve,” and with that the ghost nodded toward a big grandfather clock in the near corner of the room, “that’s when things get hairy, so to speak.”
Jebidiah struck a match and leaned it in the direction of the clock. It said seven P. M..
“Then we have some time,” Jebidiah said, shaking out the match.
“So maybe we can and should get out of town now,” Mary said.
The ghost shook its head. “Nope. You don’t want to go out there. They don’t get serious until midnight, but being out in the street, under that big ole shadow, that ain’t the place to be. The things to worry about the most ain’t gonna be here for awhile, but, still, there’s things out there under and in that shadow, and you don’t want no part of that. I’m dead, and I don’t want no part of it. And besides, time ain’t the same here. Take a look at the clock.”
Jebidiah struck another match, held it up. The clock had moved a full fifteen minutes. Jebidiah shook out his match.
“It’s messed up,” Mary said.
The ghost shook its head.
Jebidiah said, “The Devil’s time is different from mine and yours.” Jebidiah turned to the ghost. “Do you have some helpful advice for us? I believe we could use any you might possess, and considering your situation, you are bound to have experiences that we do not.”
“And if you’re lucky,” said the ghost, “you’ll never have them. Let me tell you, this ain’t no dosey-do, being dead, being hung up between here and wherever.”
The ghost paused for a moment, as if gathering his energies, and in fact, he seemed to become brighter, more solid, and as he did, he leaned forward and told his story.
“My name was Dolber Gold, but everyone called be Dol when I was alive. Me and all these cowboys and whores once lived in, or worked in, or passed through this town. And this here establishment, which could be called a kind of house of pleasure, a sure enough Gentleman’s hotel, minus the goddamn gentleman, was always packed and full of piano music and dancing, and if you’ll pardon me, ma’am, the riding of asses and the drinking of liquor.”
“Mine has been ridden plenty,” Mary said. “I’m a working girl. So no begging your pardon is necessary.”
“I thought as much,” Dol said, “and I mean that with no disrespect. My favorite women were always of the loose nature, and I respect the job they do and the pleasure they give. And if I were able, I’d be glad to lay coins down to buck a bit with you.”
“Tell your story,” Jebidiah said.
“The hairy ones,” Dol said. “That’s your problem.”
Dol nodded at the grandfather clock. “Go outside now you’ll be covered in a kind of sickness, a feeling that will make you weak. It’s them a’comin’. There’s bad things in that shadow in the street, but it ain’t nothing to what’s gonna be here when that clock hits high midnight.”
“You’ve said as much,” Jebidiah said, throwing a glance at the clock. His eyes had adjusted enough he could make out the fact that the hands had moved again. Another fifteen minutes. There was still time, but it was best to be prepared, and have time to do it. Dol was as chatty as a squirrel, and nowhere near on point.
“Me and some of the boys got liquored up and rode out to the old graveyard for some fun. I didn’t have no respect, ’cause I was full of rotgut to the gills. We rode out there with bad intentions. Graveyard there is what used to be for all them folks settled here, but there was graves older than that on top of the hill, lost in amongst the trees. And it was said Conquistadors come through here, gave trouble to the Indians. Story went that they come through this part of East Texas, up the Sabine River, searching for gold. Course, wasn’t none. But they searched anyway. These woods, deep as they are now, were deeper then, and there was things in there from times before we know’d about time. Conquistadores began to die out, and the six that was left, they camped here a’bouts, and in the night, a hairy one came. Maybe he was an Indian. Who knows? The Indians tell the story. But he was hairy and he came into the center of them and killed the lot of them, tore them up. Their bones were left to rot on the hill. But Indians said them Conquistadores, ever’ full moon, gathered flesh and hair on their bones, and come into camp searching for food and fun killin’. It was said this thing that killed them had passed along a piece of himself to them, making them like him. Wolves that walked like men. Indians finally captured these six and even the original hairy one, who they claimed came from some hole in the ground, came up to plague man and spread evil. But they captured them somehow, and buried them deep and pinned them to the ground.”
“Pinned them?” Jebidiah said.
“Comin’ to that,” Dol said. “So me and my buddies, we thought it might be fun to dig up them old graves. We wasn’t worried about no curse, but we figured there might be something inside them graves worth somethin’, if it was no more than just a look. Armor, maybe. Swords. Might even have been something in there worth a few dollars. Truth is, we didn’t figure there really was no Conquistadores buried there. But, you get bottle smart when you’ve drunk enough, and we’d drunk enough, and we rode up there and found some old, unmarked mounds at the top of th
e hill, trees and vines grown up on and around them. There was a big old stick, like a limb, stuck down in one of the mounds. It looked fresh, like it had just been put there.”
“What kind of limb?” Jebidiah asked?
“What?”
“What sort of wood was it?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I think it was hickory or something like that.”
“Oak?”
“Could have been,” Dol said. “I ain’t for certain, but I sure wish I could remember, and maybe figure on what kind of trees grew around there and the name of all the plants and birds and such. What is wrong with you fella? Who gives a shit?”
“My guess is it was oak,” Jebidiah said. “Like the tip of Mary’s umbrella.”
The ghost just looked at him.
“Never mind,” Jebidiah said. “Go on with your story.”
“Tim, he’d brought some shovels and he passed them out, and we started digging. I remember we come to this stick in the ground, a stick carved on with symbols and such, and I pulled it out and tossed it, and, well, drunk like we was, we didn’t last too long. But before we passed out, we did make some progress on one of them mounds, enough to open it. But I don’t remember much about that. Next thing I knowed, I was on my back looking up at the full moon shining down through the trees. I got up on one elbow, and that’s when I seen it. It was the grave we had dug into. There was a hairy arm pushing up out of the ground, and then this long snout sheddin’ dirt, and then this thing pulled its way out of the hole and wobbled up there on the edge of the grave. It was about seven feet tall. It was like a wolf, only it had a long snout and ten times the teeth. Them teeth hung out and twisted ever which way, and tall as it was, it was still bent some, and its paws was tipped out with long, shiny claws. But the eyes, that was the worst. They was as yellow as old custard, except when they rolled, cause then they showed a kind of bloody white around them.
“I tried to get up. But I couldn’t move at first. Drunk and scared like I was, kind of going in and out of being awake. This thing bent over and started digging in the ground, and pretty soon it was tearing at the dirt and tossing it all over the place. It didn’t seem to take no time at all before it had dug into a hole and pulled out another stick like that one I pulled, and then up come another of them things, and he went on to do this time and again, and I tried to get up, tried to shake one of my buddies awake, but he wouldn’t budge. Got my gun out and shot at it, but it ignored me. It just went on getting them others out of the ground until there were six. Well, even drunk like I was, by this time I knew I wasn’t having no dream, and I was scared sober.