Mr. Shivers

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “Show those bastards,” he panted. “Show those bastards how to do a burning.”

  “Roosevelt?” said Pike. “Where have you been?”

  “Walking,” Rosie said. “Walking and seeing.”

  Pike looked at him mistrustfully and Connelly knew they shared the same thought.

  “If we’re going we need to go,” said Hammond. He looked behind at the column of smoke. “The whole place can’t burn. Whoever’s left is going to lay hands on guns quick.”

  “How long do we have until dawn?” Connelly asked as they started their way up.

  “Three hours,” said Pike. “More.”

  “Let’s make use of it, then.”

  The slope became nearly vertical. They wrapped their hands in rags from their shirts and gripped roots and stones to hoist themselves up the damp hills. The stink of the fire was still in their nostrils but as they mounted the air became thin and clean. They found a ravine and crawled when they had to and leapt to solid ground when they could.

  Roosevelt no longer needed to be led. He seemed to have an easier time of it than the others. He jumped to one stone and smiled down at it, pleased. “La,” he said, and laughed.

  Connelly and Pike glanced at each other and continued climbing.

  They came to a small landing in the hills. Cedars and furs dotted it in rings and they crept their way through the little maze, guns drawn. Then Hammond held up a hand and whispered, “Look.”

  They saw the roof of the farmhouse a few hundred yards away. Weeds rose up higher than the waist and shielded part of it from view. They worked their way around and farther up the slope so as to get a better angle.

  It was an old place, all the color and darkness of the wood long since washed away from years of rain. It seemed to be made of nothing but splinters, everything cracked and white and leaning, all the angles askew. The windows were dark and Connelly imagined black eyes watching them from behind each misplaced board. The house was paired with another barn, queerly placed in the small stretch of barely usable pasture. Decaying fenceposts ran along the slope. To their eyes each segment resembled the shattered spine of some long-decayed creature lying askew in the field.

  They watched for any motion. They saw none. They checked the rounds in their guns and moved down through the weeds and over the fence and up to the porch, leaving Roosevelt sitting behind in the trees.

  Everything creaked, leaving no chance of stealth if the fire had left any. There was no inch of the farmhouse that was solid. Each time the wind blew the house filled with a chorus of groans. Pike and Hammond checked the windows and shook their heads and Connelly looked in the door. The front hall stretched away, roof bulging down and the walls awry. He squinted into the dark and waved in and they entered.

  It was as though they were in the belly of some monster. The house muttered and squalled and some parts of it dripped. They could hear the scutter of insects and rodents from somewhere in its walls. A strange scent was in the air.

  “Something’s dead here,” whispered Hammond.

  “Yeah,” Connelly said.

  They found nothing in the house. The kitchen and living room were filled with the scattered remains of old furniture. A child’s chair. A soiled rag that had once been a linen tablecloth. They paced through it and exited on the other side. There the previous owners had once kept a playground of sorts. A ragged swing hung from an ancient tree and shattered glass and old toys glittered in the weeds. Some sort of foundation was on the ground, cracked and broken, shards rising from the turf like a rocky shore among the sea.

  Pike pointed. There was a stone shed on the side of the house. Bricks and stones were missing from its entry and its front passageway was far longer than they had expected. They walked to it and looked in and though it was dark they knew they faced a tomb.

  The reek was worse here, pungent and sour. Connelly remembered the house from long, long ago, the winding stairs that had led down to the basement, the wave of flies and the stench of decay. He knew the sensation of walking where the dead had once lain, but something far worse waited inside. He did not know and did not want to know what the gray man had kept in that place, but there in his hallowed ground he surely kept something special, something that went beyond any sickness mere men could ever know.

  What was in there? What did the passageway hold? Connelly had turned away before and refused that grim knowledge, but he was not sure if he could do so again.

  The wind blew across the mouth of the shed and it moaned. Hammond took a step forward, almost hypnotized. Connelly awoke and threw his arm out to stop him and whispered, “No. No.”

  Hammond glanced at him, perplexed, and they struggled. Hammond tried to push past to enter but Connelly refused to let him go.

  Then Pike held up a hand and motioned toward the barn. “There,” he hissed. “There, you damn fools. There.”

  There was movement in the barn. They turned away from the shed and crouched down around the corner of the house and waited. Pike cocked his gun, then Hammond did the same. As the creature in the barn came out into the weeds a ray of moonlight broke through the clouds and fell upon the small field, illuminating it until it was a translucent silver.

  It was a bull, enormous and white. How it had gotten up so far in the mountains they could not say, but there it was. It would have been a stately animal had it been cared for, but one horn was cracked and its coat was ragged and its backside spattered with dried shit. Flies buzzed around it in a thick cloud and it lowed as it made its way toward the center of the field.

  Movement came from the opposite end. The leafless trees twitched and rustled and then the gray man emerged, shuffling out, his eyes fixed on the bull. He stood at the edge of the grass and he looked more tired and worn than they had ever seen him before, like he barely had the energy to lift his head. Yet when he stepped into the light he straightened, almost growing taller, and he breathed deep and opened his eyes. He flexed his limbs, testing them. Stretched his back and took a firm step forward. Then he looked down on the bull across from him like a king examining his subjects. The bull lifted its head at his arrival and stepped forward.

  Connelly and the others did not fire. They did not shout or attack. Instead they sat frozen, aware that they were witnessing some ancient rite, a thing so old it had no name. It preceded language. Preceded any knowledge of the world at all save that those who watched it turn around them were fading from it even as they looked on.

  The gray man and the bull circled each other. The animal dipped its head and swung its broken horns but the gray man did not flinch. It dug one hoof into the mottled earth and lifted its head and lowed again, warning him, yet the gray man still took no notice. Instead he reached inside his coat and took out a small silver knife. It glittered greedily in the moonlight. He breathed out, a cloud of frost forming and evaporating. Then the bull charged.

  It was a short space but the animal’s speed was still immense. The gray man flickered away, dodging like he could walk on air, and the bull flew by him harmlessly. He scored a mark in the bull’s side as it passed, tongues of blood running down its white coat, and it lowed again and whipped its head but the gray man was already moving away, dancing over the ragged grass. They both turned at the perimeter of the small field, facing one another again, judging their weaknesses and strengths and waiting for the next strike.

  The bull charged again. This time the gray man stood perfectly still, hands at his side as he looked down on the animal barreling toward him. When the bull neared he leaned to one side and his hand flicked out and grabbed hold of the horn. He spun himself around onto the bull’s side and put his knee into the back of its neck. It collapsed and slid to a halt, its massive legs lashing out and gouging lines in the grass. The gray man held his knife high and plunged it into the side of the animal’s neck. It bellowed in anger and blood sprayed from its throat, dotting the head and shoulders of the gray man and soaking the ground around it.

  The gray man kept the knife i
n place until the bull lay still, its sides heaving with breath, and then he dipped his head down to the wound. What he did there they could not see but when he lifted his head it was smeared with blood, black-red and glistening. He shut his eyes and moaned softly as though pained, then brought his hands to his face, trembling. He touched the red on his forehead and rubbed madly at it like it either pained or exhilarated him. He pushed his fingers into his mouth and then when he seemed on the verge of tears he spread his arms wide and lifted his face to the sky and screamed, long and loud.

  They had never heard a scream like it. There was fury in it, terrifying rage, a cry of dominance and power that could not be ignored. But there was also sadness in it, a sense of futility, like he was a lone man screaming his curses at a sky that would not listen. His scars appeared to open wide until they were no longer a disfigurement but instead were a part of his enormous mouth, a jaw that stretched to such a size that it could swallow the world. He held out his hands as though beckoning the stars to come and hear his plea. For a second Connelly believed there were invisible strings that ran from the ends of his fingers to every star, and though he felt there was a great tension there he could not tell who was pulling whom.

  The gray man howled again, holding his bloody hands before him, and then dropped them to his sides. A cloud passed over the moon and the field darkened again, like a curtain covering a stage. He stood still for a moment, drawing his strength. Then he snapped his head around and stared right at them. Connelly felt that the man’s eyes were for him alone but before he could be sure the gray man turned and sprinted into the trees with a speed they never knew he had.

  The spell broke. “Goddamn it all,” said Hammond, and they began trudging through the field after him, no longer sure why they had sat still at all.

  As they entered the scrub Connelly heard a snap somewhere and something buzzed by him. He leapt and tackled Pike and Hammond and dragged them to the ground. Hammond began to curse him but Connelly held his hand over his mouth.

  There was another crack and something whizzed through the tall grass. Connelly motioned across the clearing toward the barn and pointed at the black smoke from the town burning below. Pike and Hammond looked back across the scrap of pasture. Someone was moving in the far trees.

  Connelly pointed at himself and Pike, then at the path of the gray man. He pointed at Hammond and then pointed to the trees and mimed firing. Hammond nodded. They got to a crouch and silently counted one, two, three.

  Connelly and Pike raced up the hill while Hammond opened up on the moving shadows on the side of the clearing. No more than three shots, carefully placed, then he turned and began running as well.

  “You sons of bitches!” screamed an anguished voice. “You goddamn sons of bitches!”

  Crystal-white flashes lit up across from them and shot and bullets rained here and there. Connelly and Pike threw themselves behind a large outcropping and Hammond knelt down behind a tree, arm carefully poised, his aim steady. Their surroundings snapped and popped and whined but they did not move.

  There was a gap in the shots and one man awkwardly stumbled out of the treeline and made for the cover of the barn. Hammond squeezed the trigger and the man spun around and fell. More furious screams from the trees. Another hail of shots. Hammond smiled grimly as he reloaded and sucked his fingers when they burned.

  Pike took out his revolver and took aim. Connelly counted again, one, two, three, and he and Hammond scrambled up the rocks while Pike fired across the field.

  “How many do you think are there?” said Hammond as they ran.

  “Five or six,” said Connelly. “Few rifles, one or two pistols. One shotgun, from what I heard.”

  Hammond laughed harshly and took cover behind a boulder. “Goddamn townies,” he said.

  A shot whined by and Connelly felt a heat in his shoulder. He ignored it until Hammond said, “You’ve been hit.”

  “What?” he said.

  “They hit you.”

  He looked at his shoulder and at the spreading blotch of red. He pushed the torn clothing apart and saw a nick on the mass of his shoulder, about an inch long. He clucked his tongue and rolled his sleeve up to stanch the bleeding.

  “You good?” said Hammond.

  “Yeah,” Connelly said.

  By the time they protected Pike’s retreat they were well up the hill. The mountain started honestly a little over a quarter mile away. Connelly and Pike climbed up over the bluff and Connelly called to Hammond to come on. He emptied his pistol and turned and began to follow, grabbing stones and heaving himself up.

  Behind him the townspeople broke cover and began to run after them. Pike raised his gun and squeezed off three shots, hitting one in the neck. His target clapped a hand to his collarbone but his partner took a knee and fired.

  Hammond cried out from below. Connelly moved to look. He saw Hammond leaning against the rock face, a dark red patch growing just beside his spine. He pawed at it uselessly, unable to bend his shoulder. Someone whooped happily and Pike fired his gun empty and began to reload.

  “Shot!” cried Hammond. “I’ve been shot! Goddamn… goddamn townies sh-shot me.” He choked and made a sob, rolled over to look at his wound. “Connelly?”

  “I’m here,” he said.

  “They shot me.”

  “I know.”

  “Right in the back.”

  “I know.”

  Pike began firing again, letting shots fly wherever. They rained on the pasture and one of them found a home in the back of the dead bull.

  Connelly said, “You got to get up, Hammond. You got to get up and climb up.”

  “My God, Connelly!” he shrieked. “I can see my insides! I can see them!”

  “You’ve got to get up and climb up to us, Hammond! Just get up and we’ll help you!”

  He heard shuddering breaths from below. Pike fired another round and someone squawked.

  “Hammond?” called Connelly.

  “I’m… I’m trying.”

  Connelly rolled to look below. Hammond was extending one deathly white hand toward a tree root. His fingers clutched at it but could not grab hold. “I’m trying,” he said softly. “Going to pull myself up. Pull me up. Far as I can go.”

  “Come on, Hammond.”

  The boy’s head lolled into his upper arm. He coughed. A bullet caromed off of a stone above him.

  “Connelly?” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m dying.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m dying here, Connelly.”

  “I know, Hammond.”

  “This… this is an awful place to do it in.”

  “Yeah.” He stared down at the boy. Rubbed the sweat from his head with his coat. “We’ll get him for you, Hammond,” he called down.

  “Get who?”

  “Shivers. We’ll get him.”

  “Oh,” he said weakly.

  “It’s his fault. Bastard trails death behind him, and… and…” He left off. All words of justification and purpose sounded pathetic against the silence of the boy dying below.

  “Connelly?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I want to go home.”

  Connelly did not answer.

  “I want to go home, Connelly,” Hammond whimpered. His voice was terribly soft now. “I should have never come out here.” He coughed again. “I want to go home,” he said, louder. Then he shrieked, “I want to go home! I want… I want…”

  His voice faded. Connelly looked below. The boy was rubbing at his wound, his eyes glazed and almost dark. “Connelly?” he whispered. “There’s… there’s…” Then the movement stopped and he lay still.

  “Don’t,” said Pike.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t go get the gun,” he said.

  “What… what the hell do you mean?”

  “I mean don’t go get it. It’s too dangerous. It’s not worth it.”

  “I wasn’t going to, anyways.”
<
br />   “They aren’t chasing us anymore. Whatever spine they had we took out of them, shot for shot.”

  “Shut up,” said Connelly.

  “What?”

  “Just… just shut up. For once. I mean…” Connelly shook his head.

  Pike turned his blank face back to the woods, waited a moment, then stood and started on the trail again. Connelly stayed for a second and then followed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  They staggered through the bends and gullies of the mountain, fighting the dry cold. Pike tried to follow the gray man by bent leaves and broken twigs but eventually said he wasn’t sure what the hell he was looking at anymore and they limped along in silence. They walked until the sky was white with morning light.

  “I’m thirsty,” said Connelly.

  “I am, too.”

  They sat down on the side of a steep embankment and drained their canteens. Connelly tossed his over the edge and listened to it clanking and rattling as it tumbled below. He could not see where it landed.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” said Pike.

  “There isn’t going to be any water up here.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yeah I do.”

  Pike looked at his canteen and then hurled it over. They listened to it crash and stood up and dusted themselves off and started walking again.

  “We should have asked those goddamn bastards for more food,” said Connelly.

  Pike laughed. It was a nasty, grating sound. Connelly was not sure if he had ever heard him laugh before.

  “Did I ever tell you about my friend?” Pike asked, shivering. “My friend, Jonas?”

  “No.”

  “He was my friend. Back in Georgia. I was a preacher and he was one of my flock.” Pike was quiet for a long time. “He was a beautiful boy. Most beautiful boy I ever saw. I-I was young then. At least… I think I was.”

  Connelly took measure of the terrain and stepped over a wide ditch. Pike followed.

  “He cut his throat,” said Pike. “I remember that. Cut it ear to ear, for no reason I can understand. You have to remember those things. Keeps you going.”