by Steve Wands
Fighting in the open water of the pond Simon felt the tendril pull against his leg once more, its force providing no competition to his flailing arms. Feeling himself pulled beneath the surface Simon swallowed one final lungful of air knowing full well it could be his last.
He attempted to open his eyes, hoping for a glimpse of what was pulling him to the murky floor below. His view blurry as the muddy water invaded his eyes, all before him was cast in a hazy sheen. Below he could see the long tentacle attached to his leg disappearing into the gaping darkness spread across the bed of the lake, the coldness wrapping around him like the hugs he dreamed of from the young girl watching above.
As he sank Simon glanced back towards the sandbar he was plucked from. Before him was an immense wall, mottled in browns and greens, a thin layer of sandy rocks covering the surface. His eyes drawn along the length of the structure, Simon followed the curves of his moving sandbar in search of what was moving the behemoth beneath his feet. Eyes bulging, Simon nearly lost the precious breath held in his lungs as he came across an unexpected feature in his search; staring back at him was a large eyeball nearly his height in diameter, locked upon him with a hungry intensity.
The weight of the predicament fell against Simon as he let his stare slide down the length of the eye, landing squarely upon the crease of a large mouth tucked away at the bottom of the creature. Teeth stood jarringly at jagged angles from the mouth; it was obvious to Simon that he would make a quick and tidy meal to whatever it was that inhabited the deeps of Price’s Pond.
Managing a small smirk at the irony of it all, Simon looked back at what brought him to be trapped in the clutches of this unseen horror. He often fretted over his fear, the idea that there was something lurking in the cold dark of the middle of the pond. The humor wasn’t wasted upon him when he discovered that he was in fact right; there was something to fear lying deep upon the murky floor. With the air in his lungs growing thin Simon’s chest began to burn as he fought against the arm pulling him down, down into the muddy weeds. Feeling no give in the grip upon his leg he fought the urge to scream, knowing it held nothing but pain and finality.
As he sunk, Simon took some time to think back on his attempt to swim the pond. Surely somebody would think to blame Billy for forcing him on his fateful trek; that would surely put an end to his bullying tactics for some time. While this thought made his heart grow fondly, the feeling was cut short as Simon turned his thoughts to Suzie. Surely she would have been impressed when he pulled himself upon the far shore, yet now he would never know what her tender kiss might feel like. It was truly a shame he figured, he had looked forward to that kiss for the entire summer.
Soon the end grew near, the burning of his lungs growing too strong to bear, the burning in his leg overcoming his entire body at this point. Glancing upwards he took in the bright sunlight that rippled across the surface for a final time. The fight left his outstretched arms as they began to float upward, whatever lied in the darkness below began to pull him quicker as if it sensed the fight leaving its meal.
With one final flinch Simon let go of the final breath he held in his lungs, the bubbles escaping in a large torrent as icy water rushed in to take its place. His body flinching once in the grasp of the tentacle, he grew limp as the large eye turned to watch him sink lower into the weeds at the bottom of Price’s Pond.
*
When Jeb Killed a Man
by J. P. Moore
“Last in line,” Pablo said. “How long have you been with us?”
Jeb shrugged.
“Two months,” he answered.
Pablo and Rory laughed. It had seemed longer to Jeb.
“I bet your hands are still soft,” Pablo said.
Jeb blinked. It had been a mistake to leave Boston in the first place. The South had surrendered. The war was over and his father’s factories bankrupt. There had been little for him to inherit. Still, Jeb might have fed off of the corpse. Like a vulture.
But a new world beckoned. The West.
It had been a mistake.
He spat into his bowl. He barely had any saliva left. He swirled it around with his fingertip, making mud of the dust.
Jeb was at the end of the chow line. He watched as, ahead of him, Rory punched Pablo in the shoulder. Augustus, the fourth of the group, fed them.
Rory was of ancient Irish blood. The quirks of inheritance, rather than any failure of industry, had robbed all but his eldest brother of any meaningful inheritance. Rory, then, was also looking for manhood and means by wrangling cattle for an ill-bred ranch owner. The Irishman seemed frail and had a tumbleweed of wild, curly brown hair, atop which his Stetson magically defied the wind. Rory, though, could speak a serviceable amount of Spanish, but with a brogue. Jeb had often tried but always failed, particularly when drunk, to imitate the effect.
Pablo was the boss on this ride. He had come from Mexico and, as far as Jeb could tell, knew more than anyone about herding and ranching. Pablo was quiet about it, though accomplished most tasks with a simple ease that left Jeb quite jealous. As easy as thinking, it seemed. Pablo never wore a hat, but would lay his hand over his brow to shade his eyes. He would stand in this way for seemingly hours, looking over the land as if he knew something inside, as if he could hear the cattle moving miles past the horizon.
And there was Augustus, a giant African who was rumored to have escaped slavery years before the war. He never spoke except to answer a question. Sweat beaded on his bald dome in the morning and, by afternoon, was like rivers pouring down his back. He was perhaps more skilled than any with the rope, but terrible with a skillet. Somehow, he had become their cook.
They were three days west of the ranch, still on Mr. Holden’s property in Texas but close to the Mexican border. The rancher needed over two hundred head to keep the operation alive another month. Three days looking for cattle—they had only found ten head. With their rations now running short, Pablo had ordered that they take the cattle home in the morning.
Augustus lifted a spoon from the Dutch oven. The brown stew bubbled and smelled like rot. He slapped it down into Jeb’s bowl, where it made a sucking noise as it fell from the spoon.
“What is it?” Jeb asked. It was the closest he could get to having a joke with the man, because it was always the same thing. Dried beef and flour.
“Dried beef. Flour. Water. This time, something else.” Augustus smiled. “Cactus.”
Jeb moved to the fire and sat across from Rory and Pablo. Behind them, a mesa loomed against the western sky.
“Let’s see your hands,” Rory said over the fire, then looked to Pablo. “I don’t think he could do it.”
Pablo smiled.
“Do what?” Jeb asked.
“Would you kill a man?” Pablo asked.
“What were you, anyway?” Rory asked. “A teacher?”
“A tutor,” Jeb replied.
“For little girls?” Rory pressed.
Jeb shook his head.
“Little boys,” Pablo said.
Jeb turned to Augustus, who was now sitting far from the fire, eating his stew with a lust that Jeb could not understand. It was a horribly sour, gluey mess.
“How do you avoid these conversations?” Jeb shouted.
“Don’t talk to him,” Rory said. “He won’t answer. And look at him. He’s probably killed more men than all of us.”
Augustus bared his teeth. Rory laughed out loud.
“Vicious, that one,” Rory said.
Jeb was relieved, for Rory and Pablo seemed to have forgotten the question.
*
Jeb felt sleep creeping from the edges of his thoughts. The ten head of cattle had shown surprising reluctance on the march, almost like toddlers. They were distracted by everything, making as much work as they could for the four cowboys. Smart, Jeb thought. Perhaps they knew that slaughter lay ahead for them.
“Where are the others?” Pablo asked one, staring into its dumb wet eyes as if it would answer. It did not,
of course, except to burp up its cud and begin grinding it between flat teeth.
“So kill me,” Jeb said. “March me, brand me and kill me.”
“What?” Pablo asked.
“That’s what she’s saying.”
“He,” Rory shouted from the rear of the bull.
Augustus smiled and snorted a laugh, which was the most he ever did to contribute to a conversation.
Jeb closed his eyes for a few long seconds, then opened them. His cheeks tingled. He felt drunk. The night sky through the flap in his tent was clear but for thin strands of high clouds. Jeb felt the heat rise from the sand, through his bedding and his body. The stars spun slowly on whatever point he fixed with his gaze. There was no breeze, and no noise but the horses huffing, and the ten head of cattle moaning at whatever they saw in the dark—perhaps just one another.
Some time passed. The other men went to sleep as well.
Then, shouts. Rory.
“No! No! No!”
And stoic Pablo burst into laughter that sounded out of his control, so forceful as to deplete all of his breath before threatening to rip his lungs out of his body.
The cattle and horses were next, exploding in an almost human chorus of panicked shouts.
Jeb lifted himself onto his elbows, thinking that he might stand and help, or run. The stars fell all around him, through his tent and bounced on the sand. Dying fireflies, he thought. Or tiny comets. They were hot and smelled like sulfur, covering his thighs. A blue orb, another world, came down upon him, falling so quickly that it threatened to drown him in its piss warm sea.
Suddenly, it was morning. Rory was kicking him.
“Get up, Jeb.”
Pablo and Augustus stood across camp. The Mexican had his arms crossed and stared at the ground. Jeb looked at Rory.
“I know,” Rory said. “We all saw things.”
Rory pulled him by the wrists. Jeb’s knees buckled and his stomach swam in nausea. He stumbled several steps forward, the ground seemingly weaving out of his path. He shook his hands as if they were wet. They were tingling, like he had slept on top of them all night.
The sun was high and hot in the sky. It must have been noon, though Jeb was not hungry at all.
The cows were spread farther apart than Pablo would normally have allowed. Jeb counted the head. He could only come up with eight. The horses huddled close to camp, standing by the makeshift hitch even though they were untied. Perhaps it meant some kind of protection to them.
“We’re missing two head,” Jeb said.
Pablo snapped out of his trance.
“Over here,” he answered.
Jeb followed the other three as they descended into a gully on the edge of camp. There were two corpses, ripped open as if they had exploded. Flies buzzed over the glistening bones.
“There’s no blood,” Jeb said.
Pablo shook his head.
“Chupacabra,” he said.
“What?” Jeb asked.
“‘Goat sucker,’” Rory said. “What the hell is that?”
“It is…” Pablo began. “It is a creature. ‘Goat sucker.’ Chupacabra. It is a legend. It kills the livestock and drinks the blood.”
“A monster,” Augustus bellowed. His voice rolled over the plain. “A demon.”
“Demon?” Rory asked. “What kind of demon?”
Jeb rubbed his eyes, not entirely sure that he was seeing the truth. Every movement trailed a ghostly image. Voices were distant, as if coming through water. His ears felt clogged. He could see signs in the others. Pablo kept blinking hard. Rory had a tic that lifted the corner of his mouth every second. Augustus, however, seemed unaffected.
“Let’s eat,” Pablo said. “Then, we can get this herd moving.”
“Let’s just get out of here,” Rory said.
The wind rose suddenly, driving the sand into their faces. Rory cried aloud, covering his eyes. Pablo led him back to the camp. Jeb thought he saw faces in the swirling sand—drawn and stretched faces, long with sunken cheeks and empty sockets. Their mouths opened and closed. He could hear their voices, but could not understand the words.
Augustus dished the cold remains of the previous night’s stew. He beamed proudly, as if he had just prepared it. After, the sandstorm intensified. Pablo decided to wait it out, calling out the decision but silent under the roar of the wind. The faces became more numerous and the voices louder as Jeb lay in his tent, hugging his knees. Mouths closed on the fabric as if they were trying to chew it open. Long, sharp fingers poked at the cloth. Rory and Pablo screamed from their own tents.
Rory went silent with a choking gulp as a shadow fell over the camp and the wind died. Pablo whimpered. Jeb was certain that his own tent was buried. It would be his tomb, his pyramid. He would die here, to be found ages away by learned men.
He opened the tent flap, expecting sand to spill in. There was none. Outside, the camp was almost as they had left it. The horses were gone. Two of the cattle had wandered into camp. They stood in the center, chewing by the smoldering coals. One of the cattle saw Jeb and groaned. The sun was setting behind the mesa. The sand of the plain rolled and shifted like the sea, but the faces and voices had left.
Rory and Augustus were gone, their tents empty. There were no signs of tracks. Pablo was asleep, tears tracking through the dust on his cheeks. Jeb kicked the soles of the Mexican’s boots. Pablo jumped, gasping, flailing his arms as if he were trying to wave away a cloud of flies. Pablo’s eyes were wild and flashed red. Jeb was not sure if it were true, or if he were just seeing it.
Pablo shook his head and cupped his ears with his hands. He took two deep breaths and turned to Jeb.
“I think I’m all right,” Pablo said. “I’m still hearing things.”
“Rory’s gone,” Jeb said. “So’s Augustus. The horses are gone.”
Pablo sighed.
“How many head?” he asked.
“I didn’t count.”
“Do it.”
“There are two in camp,” Jeb offered.
“Count the others.”
Jeb could only see the two. He walked toward the gully. The sand shifted so much that he had to drop to his knees. Looking down, he saw only the two carcasses. He could account, then, for only four of the ten head.
Pablo was out of his tent, looking at the mesa. He pointed.
“A cave,” he shouted.
The setting sun flared around the edges of the formation. Jeb squinted. There was a long cut, a cave like a half-open mouth drawn across the mesa.
“Can we make it?” Jeb asked, unable to stand even on level ground.
“There’s a slope. There. We can see the whole plain. We should be able to see the horses. And I think… I think it will be a safe place to spend the night.”
*
Before long, Jeb was feeling better, less dizzy. He and Pablo walked up the slope at first, but the grade became so steep and the ground so loose that they had no choice but to crawl. The sun had almost set. The shadow of the mesa fell over the plain behind them. Stars appeared on the eastern horizon. The moon was now visible, a fine and brittle etching against darkening blue at the top of the sky.
There was a sharp pain in Jeb’s stomach. He was not sure whether it was hunger or something else. The hallucinations had passed, for the most part. When he moved his eyes rapidly, the world wobbled. But that was all.
“Rory is probably up there,” Pablo said. “And Augustus.”
Jeb squinted, but saw nothing in the yawning darkness of the cave. He felt a tap on his shoulder and heard a buzzing by his ears. He reached up to swat it away, but it was nothing. The movement, though, was careless and he lost his footing. Jeb grabbed a larger rock at the last possible moment. It held his weight but spun him toward the eastern sky. It was now full night, with whirls of stars. Distant suns—time and light so far in the past was just reaching him at that moment, washing over but completely oblivious of him.
“What are you doing?” Pablo shouted.<
br />
Jeb simply lay on his back and stared. The stars gathered into ropes that twisted into tight knots. He could feel the tension, as if that tautness were pulling him even here from Earth, from Texas, to some other place. It ached in the back of his eyes and lit a flare of itching anxiety at the top of his spine.
“Keep climbing,” Pablo said. “Look at the ground in front of you. Do not look up or down.”
Jeb saw a flash in the corner of his eye, from the cave. He turned. There was light, dim and diffuse. Shapes moved. Rory or Augustus, he thought at first. But there were too many. He could see structures built into the very rock. Stairs led to terraces. Windows looked out from the walls. Dread shot down his back as he saw heads moving in and out of view. Pale orbs of eyes watched him. Voices carried over the light breeze. They spoke clear syllables of words that he could not understand. They grew in number and pushed against the lip of the cave. A crowd gathered and growled. Dark creatures, their wings unfolded. It was not just vicious intent, not just threat, but excitement in their voices.
Pablo did not seem to see any of it.
“You have to keep going,” the Mexican said.
They were Pablo’s last words. The creatures flocked and shot from the cave in a stream, a river in the air. It spun all around Pablo in a blackness of leathery arms and wings, bristles of hair like needles. It wrapped the Mexican and lifted him from the ground, passing him into the cave. Pablo’s mouth and eyes opened in a scream, but his throat was clogged shut.
Wild fear filled Jeb’s lungs. It choked like dry stone dust. They saw him. Their eyes fixed on him. Their voices ceased. Their ancient alien minds arrived at an action that would bring his end. Jeb now knew that he was an intruder. They had all been, for days. Horses, cattle and men. They had crossed some line in the dust, perhaps arousing interest at first, perhaps even fear. Now, nothing but hunger.
Rory must have been there, a corpse hanging on hooks or splayed, bloodless, on an altar. The horses were already devoured, warm and raw. Pablo was now in shreds, torn apart so violently that his blood was a cloud of red mist in the air.
Jeb did not think. He did not choose. He released the rock and began scrambling down the slide, so fast that he lost control. The stones carried him in their tide, banging him against boulders and dropping him down a short cliff. He plunged into a narrow crevice.