by Ronald Kelly
Shakily, he got to his feet and was relieved to find that he had suffered no broken bones. His ears rang from a glancing blow to the side of his skull, probably on one of the jutting stones, but there was no blood. His probing fingers found a good-sized knot beneath his oily black hair, but fortunately that seemed to be the extent of the injury.
After a spell of dizziness had passed, Slash studied his surroundings in the pale glow of the moon. He had fallen into a large hollow of some sort. Looking up at the honeysuckle patch he had stepped through, he figured he had fallen a good fifty feet down a very steep incline. It was a wonder he hadn’t broken his fool neck in the process.
Slash stood there and looked around. The hollow was a deep basin choked with heavy underbrush and tall pines. The opposite side of the valley ascended in a steeper slope than the one he had just fallen down and he groaned at the prospect of having to climb back up to level ground. Nevertheless, he knew he had to get moving. If he could find a secluded farm nearby, he had a chance of getting back on track. He might luck upon food, water, and perhaps even some spending cash and a vehicle. And, if he was fortunate enough, perhaps some fun of the kind he had enjoyed with that brunette back in Georgia.
He started northward across the floor of the hollow, stepping high to keep from getting snared by the creeping ivy that grew heavily above the earth. Halfway across, he spotted something in the moonlight. At first he thought it was an old shack covered with green ivy. But, upon closer inspection, he discovered that it was not that at all.
It was a wagon. An ancient four-wheeler that resembled a western stagecoach. Or, on second thought, it more closely resembled an old-time circus wagon, the type that traveled from town to town back in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Its wheels had collapsed beneath the weathered hull and it was almost entirely obscured from view by a heavy blanket of dark, clinging ivy.
Curiously, Slash approached the wagon. As he neared the rusty iron tongue of the front axle, the toe of his boot bumped into something below the kudzu. He bent down and dug through the undergrowth until he found what he was searching for. It was the bleached white skull of a horse. One that looked to have been there for decades.
Intrigued, Slash reached the front of the ivy-covered wagon. He climbed upon the broken bench of the front seat, surprised at how sturdy the ancient vehicle still seemed to be. On either side of a narrow doorway leading into the back, were the shattered globes of lamps secured just below the lip of the overhang. One still held the stub of a candle. Slash wrestled the tapered length of wax from its mounting and, taking the Zippo from his jeans pocket, attempted to light it. It took four tries, but eventually the wick ignited and held its flame.
Slash moved around to the side of the wagon. Beneath the mass of clinging vines, he could detect a trace of writing. He pulled the stubborn strands of kudzu away, then stepped back and read the elaborately-lettered words that covered the side panel. They were badly weathered and faded, but he could still make out what they said.
DOCTOR AUGUSTUS LEECH’S TRAVELING MEDICINE SHOW – MAGIC, MUSIC, & MUSE – FEATURING THE GOOD DOCTOR’S PATENTED CURE-ALL ELIXIR!
After reading the inscription, Slash turned toward the rear of the wagon. Maybe there was something in the back that might be of interest or value. Maybe some antiques that he could pawn for traveling money.
When he reached the back of the medicine show wagon, he found that the twin doors were caved inward. Most of the entrance was obscured by vines, while pitch blackness lurked beyond. Slash tugged the ivy away and cautiously stepped inside. It was the height of summer and the woods he was lost in were bound to be crawling with snakes. He would hate to walk blindly into a den of timber rattlers or copperheads. He had enough trouble to contend with already.
Upon entering the cramped hull of the wagon, he stood still and listened. He heard nothing stirring in the darkness. As a matter of fact, since he first fell into the hollow, Slash hadn’t heard much of anything. No chirring of crickets, no peeping of tree frogs, no distant call of a lonesome nightbird. All that had greeted him was complete silence. That should have unnerved him, but he was too intrigued by the discovery of the wagon to give it much thought.
He crept into the dark belly of the wagon, holding the moldy candle ahead of him. The interior was musky and cluttered with all manner of junk; wooden cases marked ELIXIR, and old cherrywood wardrobe, a fancy dressing table with a cracked oval mirror, and an ancient five-string banjo with a broken neck. And there was something else at the foremost end of the cramped cabin. Something Slash Jackson certainly didn’t expect to find.
It was a skeleton. The skeleton of a rather tall man, from the looks of it. It was dressed in a black coat and Abraham Lincoln hat, the material of both mildewed and crumbling into dust. A tarnished gold pocket watch with the leering face of a devil hung from the fob of a satin vest that had split at the seams, revealing the skeleton’s naked ribs.
Slash suppressed a shudder of fear that threatened to run down the length of his spine. His curiosity far outweighed his uneasiness. He drew nearer and examined the skeleton that sat with its back to the front wall. Both of its legs were shattered. They were nothing but jagged shards of white bone from the knees down.
That hadn’t been what had killed the man, however.
He lifted the candle, letting the flickering light play upon the grinning face of the skull. In the center of the bony forehead, directly between the gaping, black eye sockets, was a single bullet hole. A rifle bullet from the size of it.
“Somebody sure had it in for you, didn’t they?” said Slash. He studied the grinning skull for a long moment. “Just who were you, anyway? The fella that ran this traveling show? Doctor Leech?”
The skeleton simply smiled back at him almost teasingly, a mystery in time-bleached bone.
“Yeah, I bet that’s who you were,” he said. “What the hell did you do to get somebody that pissed off?”
Again, the earthly remains of the traveling medicine man held no answers. Only grim and sinister possibilities.
Slash was about to turn back to the junk that littered the wagon floor, when the candlelight played across the skeleton’s right hand. Clutched in the bony claw was a skinny, long-necked bottle. A cork was jammed firmly in its mouth, but slightly askew. Almost as if it had been sealed hastefully, at a second’s notice.
“Let’s see what you got there, partner,” said Slash. He pried the bottle loose from the skeleton’s hand, snapping a couple of brittle bones as he did so. He blew dust from the paper label. It was faded from age, but Slash could make out what it said. It read: DR. LEECH’S PATENTED ELIXIR – CURES A VARIETY OF PHYSICAL ILLNESSES – GOUT, ARTHRITIS, HEADACHES, IRREGULARITY, & CHILDHOOD AILMENTS.
Intrigued, Slash uncorked the bottle and lifted the mouth to his nostrils. At first, the scent of the bottle’s contents repulsed him. It smelled like a combination of sulfur, urine, and dried snakeskin. But, when he took another whiff, the aroma somehow smelled entirely different. It smelled like the finest Tennessee sipping whiskey; like Jack Daniels Old Number Seven aged to a delectable vintage.
“Don’t smell half bad,” said Slash. His throat yearned for a drink of anything liquid, his thirst nagging at him like a dull ache. “Well, let’s see if it tastes any better than it smells.”
The aroma of the dark and ancient elixir curled through his nostrils, drawing him like a fish on a hook. Unable to resist the temptation any longer, he lifted the bottle and took a long swallow.
The liquid went down smooth, as if possessing more oil content than water. Slash expected it to burn going down his gullet, like good whiskey should. But it didn’t. Instead, it seemed as cold as ice. The elixir flowed through him like a swallow of Death itself, chilling him from head to toe.
“Gaaaah!” chocked Slash, flinging the bottle into the lap of the grinning skeleton. “No wonder they iced you! That’s some evil hooch you brewed there!”
The skull with the bullet hole between its empty ey
es simply stared at him and grinned, as if privy to some dark secret Slash had no earthly inkling of. At least, not yet.
Slash coughed and gagged, but the damage had been done. The swallow of nasty elixir had already reached the pit of his stomach. He felt it settle in his belly like a ball of ice, then slowly expand. Frightened, he crawled toward the back entrance of the wagon, but suddenly found himself barely able to move. His limbs grew sluggish and heavy, as though he were attempting to swim through a sea of road tar and molasses.
“Damn!” he groaned as his arms collapsed beneath him and he fell flat on his face amid the clutter of the wagon floor. “What have I done? Poisoned myself?”
Using the last bit of strength he possessed, Slash turned his head and stared at the skeleton who sat a few feet away. Its toothy grin almost seemed to have broadened, grown more wicked and satisfied. It knows, he thought to himself numbly. It knows what it’s done to me.
Unfortunately, Slash Jackson had no earthly idea of what he had just gotten himself into. The terrible coldness engulfed him like the cloak of a black cocoon, dragging his consciousness into its dark and frigid depths. A moment later, he had fallen into a deep slumber.
A slumber possessed of frightful sounds and disturbing images that had long since been forgotten with the passage of time.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They were nearly upon him.
In defiance, he cracked the whip. It broke the hide of the right-hand horse, drawing dark blood and sending him at a faster pace than before. The other animal caught the rich scent of his partner’s blood, surging forward as well. Soon, they had sped from a trot to a full gallop. Their shod hooves drummed on the hard clay dirt of the road that stretched into the dark forest ahead of them.
He couldn’t help but laugh. His mirth climbed into the cool night air, brimming with arrogance and cruel humor. His black eyes sparkled wildly as he considered the purpose of their pursuit. He recalled how they and their wives had watched him with rapt fascination as he expounded eloquently on the virtues of his wondrous elixir. In all, they had purchased two cases of the bottle medicine, anxious to return home and try its miracle properties on ailing kin and sickly children. The fools! So gullible and full of blind trust. If they had tested his elixir on their livestock before they offered it to their loved ones, they would have seen it for the poison that it was. But they had not and, as a result, twelve had died horribly.
The traveling medicine man’s laughter grew louder and bolder. He considered the children that had suffered and his smile broadened, framed by his waxed mustache and goatee beard. He could imagine their pain, their bright and lasting agony. The convulsions, the vomiting of blood, the sensation not unlike hot needles piercing internal organs… the side effects were truly horrendous. They were more intense the younger the child, of course. He had done much research to ensure its potency, going as far as adopting children from local orphanages and testing his deadly concoction upon them. Pleasure filled him at those cherished memories of watching them writhe and scream, timing the length of their torment with the assistance of his devil-faced watch.
His elixir worked on adults, as well, but in an entirely different manner. It was not as immediate or obvious. Sometimes, after ingesting the concoction, they would go unaffected for days or weeks at a time. Then tragedy would befall them. They would die of cancer or failure of the heart, or some horrible accident would befall them: a farming accident, a buggy wreck, or an unexplained fall from a railroad trestle. Sometimes they simply went insane. It didn’t really matter to him. Eventually, it always came down to the same end result.
He thought of how long he had sold death and despair to the God-fearing folk of the South. He had peddled his lethal wares for nearly seven years and, in all that time, had never been caught. He had never been made to pay for the evil he had brought upon the rural communities he frequented. And it would be the same that night. He would elude his most recent pursuers, vanishing into the darkness of the Tennessee forest before they could they overtake him.
“Faster, you black bastards!” he laughed. His whip cracked the autumn air like tethered lightning. Blood blossomed from dark hide once again and the geldings, already lathered with the sweat of exertion, pushed their stamina beyond the limit. The brightly-painted wagon rocked from side to side, its red wheels spinning as swiftly as the roulette wheel of a Mississippi River gambling boat.
A gunshot cracked from behind him, striking the edge of the seat and sending splinters flying into the night air. He grinned and looked around the corner at the advancing posse. Another gunshot rang out and a revolver bullet tugged at the crown of his stovepipe hat, nearly knocking it from his head. He caught the edge of the brim in time to save it and then turned back to his escape, cackling all the while.
Deeper into the forest he drove. Soon, the treetops mingled above the roadway, forming a canopy dense enough to shut out the glow of the full moon. The candles of the wagon’s lamps cast some illumination on the earthen trail, but not enough to light the team’s way. They galloped onward blindly, afraid to let up lest they suffer the agony of the whip of their slowness.
Then, suddenly, the medicine man knew that he had made a fatal mistake. The road abruptly vanished and both team and wagon lurched into open space. The horses wailed in fright, their thin legs flailing through empty air, as they soared into a deep backwoods hollow. A moment later the animals and the vehicle they pulled hit the earth with a tremendous and devastating crash. The black geldings collided with the ground first. One died immediately, while the other’s legs snapped like matchsticks. The wagon’s wheels collapsed upon impact and the medicine man suffered similarly. The front end of the wagon plowed into solid earth, snapping the seat in half and driving him violently downward. Both of his legs shattered with the force of the fall. Sharp spikes of gleaming bone jutted from the cloth of his black trousers as he screamed in agony and defeat.
When the wagon had finally settled in a fractured heap amid the bed of stones and kudzu, he struggled against his suffering, knowing that fate had finally dealt him a losing hand. He could hear the excited yells of the horsemen as they carefully made their way down the steep slope of the wooded hollow toward him. With difficulty, he pulled himself upward and squeezed through a narrow entrance that led into the belly of the wagon’s cabin. He dropped to the floor with a jolt of white-hot agony and sat there against the back wall, breathing raggedly, fighting against unconsciousness.
He knew the end was inevitable. They would finally have their retribution this time, burnished with hatred and rage for the poison he had knowingly peddled for the supposed benefit of them and their precious children. But he did not want to face his demise in a stupor. He wanted to look them square in the eyes and let them know, in no uncertain terms, that he did not fear them. He wanted them all to know the extent of his contempt for them, as well as for the virtues of faith and goodness they held in such high regard. He wanted to curse in the face of their Almighty Savior, the way he had all the days of his adult life.
Outside the wagon, the group of angry farmers and townsmen had arrived. Their horses snorted and shied at the agonized cries of the injured gelding. The boom of a shotgun thundered through the night and the animal’s hoarse bellowing ceased. The medicine man fought against his own torment, listening as they dismounted and approached the wagon. He knew he had little time to spare. He reached into the inner pocket of his black frock coat, produced a bottle of his deadly elixir, and pulled the cork free.
He heard them as they surrounded the wagon, searching for him. “Let’s see if the son of a bitch is hiding inside,” one suggested. He knew they would be through the back entrance and upon him in a matter of seconds. He closed his eyes and chanted something in a language that was far removed from the country he now traveled in. Then he lifted the bottle to his mouth. But he did not drink.
The pounding of rifle butts against the back door barely came to him as he lowered the bottle and pushed the cork firmly into
place. An instant later, the partition caved in and the dark forms of several men squeezed through the open doorway. He could smell the anger rolling off of them like the pungent scent of a polecat.
“He’s poisoned himself with his own medicine!” exclaimed a mousy fellow with round, wire-rimmed glasses; the town banker from the looks of him.
A tall, rawboned farmer with a leathery face led them. “Well, it won’t kill him quick enough, that’s for sure!”
The medicine man felt the coldness engulf him, sensed the darkness closing around him like a smothering blanket. Soon, he would be gone. But, before that happened, he summoned the strength to utter one last curse. “Damn you all to hell,” he rasped, his lips curling into a grin of pure wickedness.
He watched as the big farmer lifted a Winchester rifle to his shoulder and placed a calloused finger upon the trigger. The man glared over the sights as he settled them on a point squarely between the murderer’s eyes. The lanky man in the black coat and hat closed his eyes and smiled almost smugly as darkness surrounded him, pulling him further into the void.
“No, Pa!” came the voice of a child – a small boy. “Please, don’t!”
But the farmer would not listen. His finger tightened on the rifle’s trigger. A single shot cracked through the night… and it was over and done with.
Or so they thought.
~ * ~
He opened his eyes and laid there for a long time. Eventually, the awful coldness left his body and the warmth of life and vitality surged through him. Slowly, he sat up and stretched, as if awaking from a long and restful sleep.
The candle lay on its side, its wick still lit. He picked it up, found a tarnished brass candleholder lying amid the rubble of the floor, and secured it firmly into the socket of the base. He set the candle on the dusty surface of the dressing table and then pulled himself to a standing position. He had to steady himself, for he felt as week and unbalanced as a baby taking its first faltering steps. That would pass, however. The vessel he occupied was strong. Its muscle and sinew were toughened from years of grueling labor and its brain was certainly compatible, well accustomed to the same dark thoughts and sadistic pleasures he had once relished. It was as though he were home once again following an extremely long absence.