by Jasper Bark
“Bart honey, you best take that body up by the graveyard and burn it,” Molly said. Bart nodded meekly. Then Molly unlocked the shackles and Bart dragged the body outside as if Big Bill himself had ordered it.
Bart tied the woman’s ankles with rope, then fastened her to the saddle of the nag he kept as back up. Then he’d ridden off, dragging her bloodied corpse behind him.
Her body was a little beaten up by the time he got to the graveyard. In the dawn light he could see that, in spite of the damage the ride had done to her face, she was still looking at him with awful pity.
Bart climbed down from his nag and untied the rope from the horn of his saddle. He dragged the corpse up the tiny hillock next to the graveyard; the only spot of dry ground close enough to the graveyard to burn a body.
Bill walked over to the woodpile that was supposed to be stocked for just this sort of occasion. There was a tiny collection of logs and an even smaller pile of kindling. A half empty kerosene bottle sat next to the wood. Hardly enough to set light to a corpse.
Bart cursed his bad luck. Things were getting scarce in Dead Scalp lately. Surely Bill must know about this. How could he let stocks get so low? How could he let little shits like James steal Bart’s place in Bill’s favor?
Bart began to build a fire as best he could. He glanced on over at the graveyard. It looked kinda different. As if it had changed color. Then it struck Bart. He knew what was wrong. There was a brown carpet growing across the whole graveyard and out of the gates.
It looked like very fine brown grass sprouting up out of the ground. Bart blinked and looked again. That couldn’t be right. No grass grew in Dead Scalp. Yet more and more of it was appearing all the time. It advanced up to the little hillock where Bart stood. Then he realized that it wasn’t grass. It was hair!
Within seconds, hair started to sprout from the ground beneath Bart’s feet. He dropped the wood and forgot about burning the woman’s body. Bart ran for his horse as the ground all around him grew hair.
Before he could get to the nag, the hair at his feet wrapped itself around his ankles. Bart was held fast. He tried pulling with his legs and tearing at the hair with his hands, but he was unable to raise either of his feet.
For the first time in forty years, Bart was suddenly very scared. He didn’t recognize the feeling at first. It crept into his gut like a chill weight. His chest rose and fell with heavy, convulsive breaths. Then Bart noticed how much he was sweating and it suddenly hit him. He was more scared than he’d been as a boy, when his mother had fixed him with her eye and he knew she was going to skewer him with her ice cold pity.
Bart had forgotten about fear since he came to Dead Scalp. He was the baddest motherfucker, in a magic town, where you never got old or died. He’d had nothing to be afraid of, until this very moment, when there was a sudden and growing likelihood of his death.
The hair sprouting from the ground wove its way up his legs and fastened onto his waist, unbuckled his belt and tugged his trousers to the ground.
“Mother fucker!” Bart shouted and grabbed at his pants, but they disappeared beneath the morass of hair that was surrounding him. The hair began to bind itself to his legs and hundreds of individual hairs wrapped themselves around Bart’s leg hairs.
The hair worked its way up his legs from ankles to thighs. Bart winced as each leg hair was yanked, sending tiny pin pricks of pain up both his limbs. Bart glanced over at the corpse of the woman. The look of pity that was seared into her features seemed to have intensified and he saw his mother gazing out at him from her face.
Hair sprung up from the ground all around her. It folded itself over her limbs with a gentleness that could almost be mistaken for love. It rolled under her still form like a canopy and lifted her body from the ground.
Bart watched as the woman’s body was passed along the carpet of hair on a single ripple that moved from strand to strand and carried her back towards the graveyard. Bart saw that the graveyard, and the ground that surrounded it, were now covered with a luxurious lawn of hair. The lawn was spreading quickly and Bart could see it wouldn’t be long before it reached the town. God help those bastards when it hits, he thought.
That brought him back to his own predicament. The hair growing over his legs had reached his crotch, and begun to fasten onto his pubic hair. First the hairs around his scrotum, then around his anus, finally the bush of hairs above his cock.
Every attempt Bart made to stop the hair’s progress brought him more torment. The hair pulled on the follicles they were already torturing, and refused to let go, no matter how desperately he clawed at them.
The strands that had a tight hold of his short and curlies separated themselves from the others. Then they began to retreat back into the ground. Bart was pulled into a squat. His crotch throbbed with the pressure the hair was exerting.
The agony was so great he hadn’t even noticed the hair that had crept under his shirt and taken hold of the hairs up his back. Not until it began to pull him backwards, and away from the hairs that were tugging at his crotch, was he aware it was even there. By then it was too late.
Bart screamed and cussed in anger and pain, and tore at the hair coming out of the ground around him, like a foul mouthed toddler trying to pull up grass. He was as helpless as a squalling infant in the hands of a parent who means to teach it a hard lesson.
For a moment this scared Bart more than the damage the hair was doing to his body. Then a deeper, fiery pain burst from the skin around his crotch. It wasn’t until Bart heard the rending, and smelled the blood gushing down the insides of his thighs, that he looked down and saw the skin above his bush had torn and was coming away from his body.
Bart suddenly felt very cold and his mind disconnected itself from what was happening to him. The disbelief cushioned him from the shock of what was being done to his body. The tear in his skin widened and travelled along the sides of his scrotum then around the back of it.
The full extent of what was occurring only hit Bart when he watched the base of his foreskin fold over on itself and peel away from his penis, like the sleeve of a sweater turned inside out. The pink erectile tissue and the bright red glans beneath looked so delicate and fragile that Bart sobbed with pity for his cock. Then despised himself for feeling the one emotion he hated most of all.
Bart’s scrotum detached itself and his testicles plopped out. Two pink and white ovals dangling from red and brown, tubular ducts. The inside of his dick looked soft and moist in the dawn light. More hairs wrapped themselves around what was left of Bart’s reproductive organs and yanked them so hard they ruptured and tore away from his body.
Bart howled with rage and anguish as blood flooded from his loins and pooled beneath him. He was livid about everything that had been taken from him. Since Charlie McKinnell’s death, the hair had taken his income, his power, and now his manhood.
The hair had known exactly how to find the source of his strength and self worth. But it hadn’t just taken it from him. The hair had destroyed it utterly.
Bart just hoped he bled out before anyone found him. If they did find him alive, they’d have a man you could do pretty much anything they wanted with. Except pity him. Dear God don’t let them pity him.
CHAPTER 8
James woke slowly. He’d drunk himself to sleep the night before, and he was wary of the hangover that might be waiting, when he opened his eyes.
He’d needed the alcohol to wash away everything he’d seen last night. Like the mess that was left of Nat Gunderson. Or the strange hair creature trying to pollinate the graveyard with its ruptured organs, before it buried itself.
The way Clem had told the story, Big Bill had been pleased with all of them. So pleased, he gave James a night’s lodgings in the saloon, and a free whore, who James was too drunk to use in the end. He could have made use of her now, if he didn’t have such a splitting head.
James pulled back the cover and climbed off the horse hair mattress. Horse hair, he thought, and s
huddered. He walked to the dresser at the foot of the bed, put his head over the earthenware bowl there, and poured a whole pitcher of water over his head.
This helped clear his head, but it didn’t do anything to stop the pounding. He stared in the cracked mirror and stroked his chin. After one day here, he had a full grown beard and his hair was longer too.
That’s when he heard the first scream. It was high pitched and hysterical. Probably a woman’s scream, but James had heard men make similar noises in his time. It had come from outside on the street.
James pulled on his pants and walked through the saloon to see what the commotion was all about. What he saw on the street made his stomach lurch and sweat break out on the back of his neck.
All along the street hair was growing out of the ground, like a fine brown carpet or an auburn lawn. It was creeping up the sides of buildings like vines and breaking through the walls. Many of the people on the street were stuck fast to the ground. The hair had grown over their feet and around their ankles and was holding them tight.
James saw two women fighting over a ladder that could have led them both to safety, if they’d helped each other, as long strands of hair reached up from the ground and engulfed them both. He saw a man clubbing a horse till he drew blood, as the trapped horse whinnied and bucked in desperation at the hair that was wrapping itself around its legs.
Doc Hendry was trying to make his way to the saloon. He was holding the tiny lump of swamp bark that he had from last night. Great clumps of hair were rising up all around him like brown, fibrous waves. Doc would wave the smoking bark at one clump, to ward it off, and another clump would loom ominously over him. Doc would then have to fend that clump off while the first closed in on him.
He was within ten feet of the saloon when an unseen clump grabbed him round the middle like a tentacle and lifted him off his feet. Doc yelled and dropped the bark. The tentacle dragged him under an ocean of undulating hair.
“Let go of my fucking leg!” James heard a familiar voice growl. He turned to see Big Bill and Clem advancing through the hair towards the saloon. They were both carrying Civil War sabers. They used them to hack at the surrounding hair like machetes slicing through foliage. As each new tendril of hair reared up over them they attacked it with the blade.
A woman had hold of Big Bill’s legs. Great lengths of hair had wrapped themselves around her legs and waist. She was lying prostrate and her fingers dug into Bill’s leg. Her face was etched with terror and pleas for help.
“I said let go!” Bill snarled. He brought his saber down on her forearms, severing them just below the elbow. The woman screamed as the hair dragged her into its seething undergrowth. Within seconds, all that could be seen of her were the stumps of her arms, spraying the hair red with blood.
Bill reached the steps of the saloon. As he was mounting them a tendril of hair seized his right wrist preventing him from wielding the saber. Another tendril grasped his left shoulder and began to tug him back.
James rushed from the doorway and snatched the saber from Bill’s hand. He chopped at the hair that held Bill prone. It was tougher than it looked and the saber’s blade was chipped from severing the woman’s arms. Finally James hacked his way through the hair. “About fucking time,” Bill said as the hair fell from his wrist and shoulder.
James ran up the steps after Clem and Bill. Before he could get back into the saloon he heard a thump behind him. He turned to see Doc Hendry standing on the top step. The skin of Doc’s hands and face seemed stretched and misshapen, as though something was writhing beneath it.
Blood trickled from Doc’s nostril and the corner of his mouth. His eyes were filled with an inexpressible pain and his movements were strange and jerky, as if he weren’t in control of his body. Between Doc’s legs, James caught sight of a thick cable of hair that appeared to be fixed to his back. James’s mouth went dry as he realized that the hair had torn a hole in Doc’s back and forced its way beneath his skin while he was still alive. It was using Doc as a living meat puppet.
Before James could say anything, Clem moved towards Doc to help him. Doc’s head jerked backwards and there was an audible click as his jaw dislocated and his mouth opened impossibly wide.
Clem froze as he realized something was wrong. Hair streamed out of Doc’s mouth, dripping with Doc’s blood and saliva. It latched onto Clem’s own hair and entwined itself inextricably about it. The cable of hair at the back of Doc began to retreat, taking Doc and Clem with it.
Clem cried out and stumbled forward, trying to dig his heels in and pull himself free. James caught hold of Clem’s waist while Big Bill grabbed his shoulders. “Get it off, get it off,” Clem screamed and hacked at the hair with his saber.
“You can’t cut your hair, that’ll kill you,” said Bill, reaching into his boot for a knife. Bill took hold of Clem’s chin and put the blade against the top of his forehead. James watched in horror as Bill cut into the skin and sliced along Clem’s hairline. Clem yelled with pain as a thick veil of blood spilled over his face. Bill continued to cut along the hairline, moving the knife around the back of Clem’s head, then up the other side of his face and over the top of his ear.
The scalp started to peel away from the top of Clem’s skull. Bill didn’t need to cut through the last of it. It was torn from Clem’s head as the hair from Doc’s mouth shot back into his head. The hair at his back yanked Doc’s body from the top step and engulfed it once again. James, Clem and Bill fell backwards through the door of the saloon. “Get him up to my office,” Bill ordered as he got to his feet and stomped up the stairs.
Clem was twitching with shock as James lifted and dragged him towards the stairs. Clem’s face was covered with a layer of blood so thick, James could only see the whites of his eyes and his bared teeth. The blood was starting to clot around the frayed edges of skin that clung to Clem’s temples. James could see the white of Clem’s skull beneath the gore that speckled it.
James dragged Clem up the stairs and through the door of Bill’s office. Bill locked and bolted the door behind them and closed all the shutters on the windows. James laid Clem down on a couch; he appeared to be unconscious.
“I thought you said you sorted this thing out,” Bill said.
“We did,” said James.
“So why’s my town covered in hair? Didn’t you bury that thing properly?”
“Well, it kinda buried itself.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was stuck in the ground of the graveyard when we found it. Then it started shooting its innards up into the air. The innards was covered in hair and they landed on the other graves and buried themselves. Doc Hendry said it was sporing, like a mushroom. Then it just sunk into the ground and disappeared.”
Bill shook his head in disgust and disbelief. “I oughta kill both of you fuckers right here on the spot.”
“Can’t we just burn some of the swamp bark and drive all the hair back?”
Bill knelt in front of his safe and unlocked it. He removed a small burlap sack and emptied its contents on his desk. Twelve small pieces of bark sat on the desktop. “That’s all the bark we have left. We’ve scraped every last piece of it off of the dead trees in the swamp, and that’s all we have left.”
“How come?”
“Cos nothing grows in this godforsaken place, that’s how come. Nothing ‘cept hair. Think we’re gonna drive that murderous tide of hair back with just this?”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
Clem came round with a groan.
“You fucked up, Clem,” Bill shouted at him. “You fucked up and look how things turned out. This isn’t right though, it isn’t right. It shouldn’t be happening. I had assurances. You remember? Assurances! This place is mine now. Mine! As long as the sun shines, the grass grows and the rivers flow. That’s what I was promised!”
Bill paced the floor of his office, tugging at his beard in thought. James knew enough to keep his mouth shut while Bill ruminated
. “This is Tsiishch’ili’s doing I’ll swear it is. It’s got his name written all over it. If I could put my hands round his stinking throat all over again... Wait... that’s it... I’ll summon up the conniving redskin, that’s what I’ll do. I’ve still got all the stuff to do it.”
He turned to James. “You look after Clem. I’ve just got to go get some stuff from the other room. Don’t let anyone in till I get back.” With that, Bill left by a connecting door to one of the other rooms.
Clem groaned again, and his eyelids fluttered. James shook him to keep him conscious. “Clem, stay with me, Clem. What was Big Bill talking about? Is this place really his? What did he mean he had assurances?”
Clem licked his lips with a dry tongue. His breathing was little more than a rasp. “There’s some whiskey in the bottom drawer of Bill’s desk,” he said. “Real good stuff, single malt, bring it to me.”
“Won’t Bill be mad?”
“Think I give a fuck what Bill thinks? Fetch me that whiskey and I’ll explain everything.”
James got the whiskey from the bottom drawer and Clem took a good long pull on the bottle. He sighed and wiped some of the blood from his eyes. “What Bill means is that he had assurances from the injuns who were here before us.”
“This place used to belong to the redskins?”
“Whole damn country used to belong to the redskins.”
CHAPTER 9
Clem was sorry he’d come to. It was less painful to be unconscious. The top of his head stung like a motherfucker. A throbbing sting that grew in intensity. Just when he thought he could bear it, the pain got worse.
The whiskey he was swallowing would have tasted a whole lot better without all the blood in his mouth. Even still, it helped with the pain.
James was asking him all kinds of fool questions about Bill’s outburst. Something about James just didn’t sit right. Clem had been aware of this for a while. It was the money that tipped him off. James had fought like hell to stop Bart taking the silver dollars off him, but then he’d handed them over meekly when Clem and the others got the drop on him. It was almost as if he didn’t think the money belonged to him. Clem had come to suspect he should have listened to Bart before he let James in.