Peter hired Brandon Casler to work as a stable-boy on afternoons he didn’t have football practice, and some weekend afternoons. Brandon’s father had sold his fallow farm and moved into town, taking over Crossroads Diner after Fat Doug died—heirless—of complications from a stroke. Mr Casler worried about Brandon getting into ‘too much trouble’ and tried to keep him occupied when the diner was open and Brandon was out of school. Brandon was basically a decent young man but he was dangerously good looking to be walking around with a teenager’s libido in a small town. Mr Casler wanted Brandon to go to college, and figured it was a race between graduation and impregnation for his son. Brandon didn’t mind playing football, as it impressed his female classmates—though any boy in acceptable health with a mild inclination could make the team: Brandon’s athletic skills matched well with the rest of the lousy secondary. Brandon didn’t mind working for Peter and looking after Blackie, either, because it helped him get a little bit of money to treat a young lady to a movie at the Sloope Valley Mall or maybe even get Kevin at the body shop to score him some beers. Brandon didn’t think much of Peter, but neither did he think ill of him. Brandon laughed to himself that with all the time Peter spent making sure he was getting his money’s worth out of Brandon, the farmer could’ve done the stable work himself. He could see that his boss felt apprehensive about the horse but didn’t understand why; Brandon thought Blackie an admirable creature even if, for some reason, he could never coerce the creature into letting him ride. He helped Blackie get his exercise in the pen. He thought the horse could be let loose and called back reliably, but Peter didn’t want him to do it. Brandon wasn’t sure why Peter seemed worried about a horse getting loose that he seemed to have no use for to begin with, but he accepted the eccentricity of the situation and forgot about it. He did, however, drop the reins whenever Peter was out of sight; Blackie never gave any indication that he would run without being given permission.
Once, when Brandon was standing in the middle of the pen and letting the horse walk the perimeter at the end of a rope, Peter approached and asked, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Exercising him. It’s called “longeing”.’
‘Huh. They got a name for walkin’ a horse around in a circle?’
‘Yes, sir. It’s good training if you want to put children up on ’em to ride in controlled circumstances.’
‘Huh. Yeah, I’d like to see anybody ride that horse. Heh,’ Peter chuckled dryly.
Blackie cast a curious look at Peter which disquieted its master.
‘I’d better see to the fields.’ Peter trotted away from the pen.
Peter grew feed corn (rotating with soybeans) haphazardly. ‘Seeing to the fields’ meant looking to see how soon he should have Johnson and Sons come out with the combine and pull in the harvest. Peter never got a lot of money from his crop. He was fortunate to own his farm outright. Like many of the farmers in the area, he used to receive government subsidies for leaving his fields fallow to keep prices from devaluing too much. When the subsidies had stopped, many farmers had put themselves back into the cycle of debt that family farms often utilise as their regular basis of operation. Unfortunately, prices never recovered and drought stymied cash flow, leaving many (such as Mr Casler) to either sell their land to larger commercial farmers or go into foreclosure with their banks. Peter had managed to pay off the lien on his small farm during the subsidy years, and his reticence to invest too heavily back into the business when the time came actually saved him from incurring too burdensome a debt. Still, he was not rich, nor even well off. Those who knew Peter assumed that no commercial interest had ever offered him what he thought his farm was worth, and that’s why he still worked it. It was enough to ascribe some small pride to the man, and garner begrudging respect.
For some reason, the idea of children riding Blackie stayed with Peter as he walked down the rows, brown-silked ears bluntly tapping his chest and thighs. He couldn’t say why—he wasn’t endeared to their presence and never missed not having any of his own. When his cousins visited with their children, he enjoyed the company of the younger ones best. As they grew older, the children developed that same sort of condescension for Peter their parents demonstrated. Peter wasn’t sure if it was something they learned from their sires or if it evolved from their own observations. Peter was sure his cousins didn’t feel any impetus to visit him beyond a vague familial guilt, but he knew that they enjoyed the farm, and he suspected the children (the younger ones, anyway) would pester their parents to go and play there for an afternoon. The boys especially liked going into the corn rows and pulling off a few ears, breaking them in two and lobbing the half-ear corn grenades high in the air at their hidden competitors. Peter wondered if they ever actually managed to hit each other; he doubted it: he imagined the hubbub that would rise up out of the cornfield if they did. They never played that game too long, anyway: Peter’s one rule was that they had to go and pick up every ear they husked and chucked before the sun went down. The parents groaned that Peter shouldn’t let them out there if he didn’t want them to hurt his crop, but Peter knew it was only because they were bored with the visit and anxious to go. Now Peter had Blackie, a new attraction. Damn horse won’t let anybody up on him! Peter lamented. But the idea wouldn’t let Peter alone. There’s something to it, Peter felt sure. He couldn’t say why he thought the horse might let a child mount him. He’s sure well behaved otherwise. Least they could look at him and pet him. Feed him sugar cubes and carrots. I ain’t got nothing to be embarrassed about if some damn horse my daffy Uncle left me won’t let nobody up on him. Peter giggled as he trudged back towards the farmhouse. Maybe if Blackie do let them ride, I can charge them for it—get a little something out of the deal.
As Peter emerged from the cornfield, Brandon ran up to meet him. He claimed that there was an ‘emergency’, holding his cell phone out in front of him to indicate how he received the news and in defence of any doubt from his employer that the excuse was genuine. Brandon worked the ends of his mouth down with effort as he waited for Peter’s dismissal. Peter could see that ‘emergency’ actually meant ‘opportunity’—maybe Brandon had actually managed an interception at last night’s game, or maybe he just impressed some young thing by running around a lot. After his walk through the cornfield, Peter was feeling meditatively rejuvenated and didn’t begrudge Brandon his desires. He let the boy know that he’d pay him a little less for that week’s work and sent him on his way. Brandon dropped the pretext of gravity and ran off in giddy anticipation, calling back over his shoulder that Blackie was still in the pen. Peter heard Brandon’s truck peel out in a flurry of churning gravel by the time he reached the barn. He continued on back around the stable and walked past the horse; he watched it contentedly pull up a rough patch of grass at the edge of the fence. Peter watched spotty clouds clear off to the west in slow pursuit of the lowering sun. He figured there was no hurry in getting the horse back in the stable, and went into the farmhouse and lay down on the couch to take a late-afternoon nap.
Peter woke up with a shiver and a rumble in his stomach. He sat up on the couch and stretched an arm out to close the window behind it, but the window was already closed. Peter fluttered his eyelids in surprise at the dark outside, trying to drive his drowsiness away. Weak shadows huddled in the corners; Peter didn’t remember turning the end-table lamp on, but he was glad he had. He hugged himself and sulked about the sudden cold; he hated to think about putting the furnace on and vowed to make it through the night with an extra blanket. He went upstairs to his closet and dug out a sweatshirt. Warmer, he shifted his attention to his hunger and went into the kitchen to pull something microwavable out from the freezer. Seven and a half minutes later he sat back down on the couch with Swedish meatballs with noodles and a cola. He grabbed the remote and flipped on the TV, turning away from the late local news (well, that was a long nap) before coming back around to it again after a disappointing channel surf. During a report about the destructive contributi
on of pigeon faeces to bridge collapse, he remembered that Blackie was still out in the pen.
Peter turned on the porch light, left the living room, went through the kitchen and descended the three steps beside the pantry. He turned on the exterior lights on the side of the house. He could see no further than the near side of the fence, so he picked up the flashlight on the pantry shelf and went outside. The air was still, but the chill of the night bit through Peter’s body. Gotta call Johnson tomorrow, he mused, thinking of the harvest. Peter’s breath caught the light from the house; playfully, he blew through pursed lips to see how far it would carry before dissipating in the dark. Pretty early for that, he thought. Peter followed the elongated oval of his flashlight beam along the ground towards the pen. He wondered at the quiet of the evening. He heard the faint hum of the power lines, but not the supporting chorus of crickets that had filled the air as recently as the night before. Guess the cold shut ’em up. The faint scrape of Peter’s boots on the dry dirt seemed to him as loud as the crack of ice-topped snow against the still of January. Peter stopped several yards short of the pen. He swallowed to test the sudden dryness in his mouth and throat. The oval of light danced with the tremors of his hand. Peter could not remember ever having this sort of animal response before, that surge of instinct telling him something was wrong, that some threat lurked nearby. Unused to the experience, he was unsure of how to respond to it.
‘Blackie?’ he called meekly.
In response came the reassuring shuffle and clap of hooves moving over dirt.
Peter stepped forward and came to the fence. He raised his right arm over the top rail and shone the light into the pen. Blackie stood in profile towards the far arc of the circle. He looked at Peter with a clear, sharp, expectant eye. For the first time in his experience with the beast, Peter felt Blackie was asking him something, though the question was yet inscrutable.
And, while Blackie stood immobile, a rustle of movement continued; Peter saw something low to the ground—no, several somethings moved on the other side of the fence in the failing glow of his flashlight’s beam. Peter’s lips drew back and his breath hissed and whistled between his teeth. He aimed low to the ground past the fence and caught the creatures in the fringe of the light. They were dog-things, like coyotes, but nearly invisible with their ash-black coats matched to Blackie’s. Their elongated back legs pushed their haunches high while shorter forelimbs scraped the ground at the elbows. Their snouts were short and broad, falling away in layers as though grotesquely whittled from black pelt to pink hide to white bone; viscous froth fell from stained fangs. Flat, long-toed paws, bald and raw-pink like their snouts, scratched and curled down into the dirt. They saw Peter and slowed their movements, turning wide, black eyes to stare at him. The cold had left Peter completely. He was sweating; the top rail of the old fence cracked and splintered under the pressure of his grip. And Blackie stood there, still questioning, waiting. The horse, the hounds, thought Peter. Where is the rider? and then, What is the prey?
Then Peter noticed a peculiar detail in the dreadful scene before him and dropped his flashlight at the shock of it.
‘Ah!’ he exclaimed and dropped to his knees, bent and stretched to grab the flashlight beneath the lowest rung of the pen, and, recovering it, fell away back onto his rear. He held the flashlight with two hands, elbows straight, pointing between his knees back towards Blackie, but he didn’t see the creatures outside the pen anymore. Peter leapt to his feet and supported himself against the fence so that his fright-weakened knees wouldn’t buckle. He heard soft movement in the grass.
He tried to shout, ‘ha!’ but it came out more like a swallowed hiccup. ‘Ha!’ he tried again, and it came out better. Encouraged, he kept going, amplifying until he reached a full-throated yell, ‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’ He waved his arms over his head as much as he dared before training the light down again on the ground around him. ‘Blackie!’ he hissed. ‘Come on! Come here, girl!’ He went to the gate and unlatched it. ‘Come on, Blackie! Come on!’ Peter opened the gate. In the shallow glow of the lights on the house, he saw the creatures stealthily advance around both curves of the pen towards his position. Now he could really see their eyes, their damnable black eyes and their bald muzzles grinning with greed, open mouths slavering. Peter turned to run and tripped himself, falling flat on his stomach. A deep growl, hollow and old like wind over the mouth of a vast cave built up from the pack as they crouched close and low, preparing to pounce. In a distracted panic, Peter realised it was the first sound he’d heard them make.
Then Blackie made the first sound Peter had ever heard him make. The horse reared up, magnificently black against the night, blotting out the pitiable stars behind its full mass, and it whinnied a blast of trumpet and banshee wail, searing the air and shaking the leaves down from the trees. Peter felt the sound press him against the ground where he watched small gravel stones jump and leap. By the time Blackie settled back on his front hooves, the grotesque dog-things had fled out of sight.
Blackie bent his head down and looked at Peter. Peter looked back with appreciation, and amazement, and horror. The startling detail he’d noticed earlier that had caused him to drop his flashlight was uncontrovertibly true with the horse so close: Though Peter’s breath was clearly visible as it curled away from his slack jaw and dissipated into the dark, despite the audible snorts blasting out from the horse’s flared nostrils, Blackie’s breath was not to be seen. Neither had been that of the other creatures.
Peter saw nothing mysterious or fantastic about his farm when the sun finally came up. It was the same farm as the day before, untouched in all aspects by the previous night’s events. Peter walked around the pen, but saw neither trace nor track of the creatures that had terrorised him. He went out to the stables. Blackie stood placidly in his stall, turning his head at Peter’s approach. Peter looked into the fathomless black eyes of the horse and saw there a conspiratorial connection he lamented he was unable to understand. Peter felt sure of one thing: Whatever shrouded origin the beast might have, Peter knew he had nothing to fear from Blackie; in fact, Blackie’s defence of his master had clearly demonstrated the horse’s loyalty.
‘Good girl,’ muttered Peter. He turned and shambled out from the stable.
Bleary-eyed with confusion and fatigue, Peter drifted through the chill of the morning back to his house, wondering if there was someone he was supposed to call. Peter knew the wildlife of the area, he knew the night creatures didn’t fit any local taxonomy; he felt rather sure that they couldn’t be found in any book or internet search. So who was he to call? No one would believe him—or, they’d think he mistook the animals for something more than they were, because he was a hysterical coward or lonely drunk. The strangeness of Peter’s experience made him feel disconnected from the world, leaving foremost in his mind the need to anchor himself in recognisable reality. But what call could he make that wouldn’t end in derision and humiliation?
Peter called Johnson and Sons to schedule a time for them to come over with their combine and pull in the corn harvest. Jack Johnson told him that it would be a week until they had an opening. Peter pleaded for them to come over sooner. Jack told him they could come that very day, Sunday, but it would cost extra. They settled on the coming Thursday. As soon as Peter hung up the phone, his cousin Josie called to say her kids had been bugging her to come out to the farm, and would it be okay if they ‘stopped over’ that afternoon, as their path to her in-laws brought them through the general region. Peter was uncharacteristically enthusiastic about the visit from his relatives, and urged them to come as soon as they were able. Josie was surprised by the hospitality and quavered in her commitment; when Peter (deliberately) lapsed towards his typical sullen apathy, she confirmed the visit.
Peter put the saddle on Blackie and led him out to the pen in preparation for his relatives’ arrival. The horse appeared unperturbed at being back in the area where the creatures were the night before. Peter thought, But then, he wasn’t upset
to be around them to begin with—until they went after me. Brandon arrived around noon; Peter was glad the young man would be around to show off the horse to his cousin’s kids. Brandon smiled half-heartedly when he greeted Peter; Peter saw him soon after kicking at the dirt with undirected frustration. Peter grinned, Looks like he didn’t get his itch scratched, after all.
Josie pulled her ox-blood mini-van into the gravel drive an hour later. Kelli, Naomi and Keith, ten, eight and seven respectively, clamoured out from the side door and ran for the pen, offhandedly acknowledging Peter on the way. They all jumped up immediately onto the lower rail of the fence and leaned elbows over the top one. To Peter’s astonishment, Blackie immediately sauntered over to let them pet his nose and pat his neck.
‘Looks like he’s got some new best friends!’ Josie said by way of greeting to her cousin.
They followed the children towards the pen. Brandon saw the activity and hurried over, his normal ebullience returning at the sight of the company.
‘Can we ride him, Uncle Peter?’ Keith asked.
‘He’s not really your uncle,’ Kelli corrected sagely, but Keith’s quizzical look showed that he didn’t understand her meaning.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ Peter answered the question.
Josie heard Peter’s comment as an unnecessary taunt. ‘Why did you saddle him if you didn’t want the children to ride?’
‘It’s not that,’ Peter said. ‘Blackie won’t let no one ride him.’
‘Blackie?’ Josie chuckled incredulously.
‘Blackie!’ the children echoed approvingly.
‘He’s gentle as could be, though,’ Peter offered unconvincingly, picturing the stallion reared up and scattering the dog-things.
Black Horse and Other Strange Stories Page 16