by Jasper Bark
None of that mattered now though. Clem was going to die soon. If not from the scalping, then from the monstrous hair that was tearing down the town. James was the closest thing he had to a confessor.
“This is a sacred place to the Navajos. A secret they kept for centuries. In fact most of them don’t even know about it. We only learned about it by accident. We were on the run from the law at the time.”
“We?” said James. “Would that mean you and Bill?”
“And the other members of the Baldwin Gang. Named after Bill, that’s his name, William Baldwin. Wasn’t Bill put the gang together, that was Edward Davies. Bill took over after Edward got his fool head blown off, second time we robbed a train. We did pretty good for a while. Made a lot of money and spread a lot of money around. That way no one went blabbing to the law and we always had a place to hide.
“Problem started when we robbed a train with federal wages. Thought we’d hit the jackpot at first. Then we discovered we’d stolen a military pay roll. They weren’t gonna rest until every member of the gang was swinging from a scaffold. Right alongside everyone who ever helped us. Soon ran out of places to hide after that.
“We split up to avoid detection and they picked us off, one by one. Me and Bill ended up hiding out in the wilds, living off whatever we could kill and nearly starving as a result. We was stalking this hare when we saw this young injun shoot and make off with it. We followed him, meaning to kill him and take back the hare.
“He lead us to this hidden plateau, where this ol’ injun was waiting for him. We thought we’d wait while they skinned and cooked the hare for us, then we’d kill ‘em. But instead of cooking the hare they performed this weird ceremony and opened up a sort of shimmering gateway in thin air. We couldn’t believe what we was seeing. It didn’t make any sense, it was almost as if we couldn’t look at it without losing a part of our minds. You probably had the same feeling when you saw it.
“Then we saw the ol’ injun passing stuff back and forth with other injuns who lived inside the gateway. Eventually the shimmering gateway started to get smaller and then it just disappeared. After that they cleared everything away and burned the hare. While they was doing that, we lay in wait and ambushed ‘em as they left.
“We beat up on ‘em a little, to get ‘em to tell us what they was doing, but they refused. They was only an old man and a young boy, but they stood up to some rough treatment. Finally we roasted the old injun’s feet over a fire till he gave in.
“The old bastard told us he was opening a portal to a magical realm that existed outside of time and space. He called it the Eternal Dreaming. It was part of the place that our souls go to when we dream. It had been cultivated by the Navajos like the maize that they grew. They’d coaxed it into being a tiny bit at a time, building a living space out of tiny bits of dream, knitted together over generations till they had a whole realm. That’s why nothing grows here, it’s not part of the normal world.”
“What about hair, that grows here.”
“The Navajos believe that a man’s hair is the physical manifestation of his dreams. That’s what the ol’ injun told us. I remember an injun scout we had back in the war, refused to cut his hair because he’d lose his edge if he did. Said it sharpened his intuition. It was his dreams you see, spilling out of his scalp, day by day. In a land made up of dreams, hair’s the only thing that’s gonna grow.”
“Maybe, I dunno.”
“You don’t know shit. You wanna hear this story or not?”
“Okay, calm down.”
“So this Eternal Dreaming is a place where their ancestors live for all eternity. Only the wisest and most pure of their medicine men and women were chosen to live there. They would pass over before they died and stay there forever more, without ever aging, getting sick or dying. The ol’ injun’s family had been tending to the needs of the ancestors for countless generations. His bloodline was part of the magic that anchored the place to this world. The care and tending of the Eternal Dreaming was passed on from parent to child throughout the ages.
“Course, soon as we heard about this place, where you never got old and died, where the law couldn’t touch you, we knew we had to get in there. So we tortured them both till they opened the portal for us. Then we put a knife to their throats and threatened to kill the boy and the ol’ injun if the ancestors didn’t let us pass through the portal.
“They tried to warn us off, telling us that once we stepped through we could never leave, but we didn’t pay no heed to that. See, they knew that if the boy and the ol’ injun died, then they’d lose their anchor to this world, so they had to let us in.
“I held a knife to the ol’ injun’s neck while Big Bill jumped through the weird shimmering hole between this place and the outside. Then he threatened to scalp the head ancestor, an old Navajo called Tsiishch’ili, if they didn’t let me in. I jumped over as it was closing up. Nearly didn’t get my foot through in time. Got a helluva shock, just like you did.
“Once we were inside we took a look around and decided the place was a goldmine waiting to happen. It was the perfect hideout. We could charge huge amounts of money to outlaws who wanted to avoid the law and live forever. We could even run rackets on the outside without fear of getting caught. All we had to do was tidy the place up a bit, make it fit for proper white folks, and get rid of the injuns that were living there.
“They’d avoided us ever since we arrived. Being all mystic and such, they weren’t violent like us, and they were much older. We knew they were plotting to get rid of us, so we struck before they got a chance to do anything.
“We rounded ‘em all up and told ‘em we were taking over. Then we forced ‘em to tell us how the place worked and what we needed to do to control it. We tied ‘em all up and started torturing ‘em. We scalped the first couple we went to work on. Thing was, they almost seemed relieved that we took their whole scalps off and not just their hair. They seemed terrified of cutting their hair.
“So the next thing we did was shave a couple of their heads. That’s when we found out about the ingrowing. It’s also how we learned what to do with the things you become if you cut your hair. The injuns told us how to use the swamp bark to knock out and kill one of ‘em. Didn’t have to torture ‘em none to get that information neither.
“After that, they just gave up and told us everything we wanted to know. We got them to perform a ceremony that put is in control of the whole place. They assured us that it would belong to me and Bill, but mostly Bill, for all eternity. Or, as they put it, for as long as the sun shines, the grass grows and the rivers flow. That’s what Bill was talking about when he said he’d had assurances.
“They also performed a rite putting the ol’ injun and the young brave in our power, so they would serve us and keep the Eternal Dreaming intact for as long as their bloodline existed. The ol’injun died but the young brave grew up to be that wily bastard Rivers Flow. We corrupted him over time, and he got to like the power and the money Dead Scalp brought him. Dead Scalp was what we renamed the place.
“Course Rivers Flow got too greedy in the end and that’s what undid him. Maybe it was that young Mexican spitfire he took in, I hear she developed rich tastes. Anyway, he tried to rip off Bill and that cost him his two young sons. He started muttering about getting even with Bill for a while, but he soon forgot about that.”
Clem drained the last of the whiskey. It hit the back of his throat and he breathed it in. Great wracking coughs burst from his chest as his body tried to get the whiskey out of his lungs. Each hack and splutter set off explosions inside his cranium. Stars burst behind the eyelids he’d squeezed tight.
Clem kept his eyelids shut as the searing, harrowing pain took over his head. Murdered every thought inside it and took hold of all his senses. Clem realized there wasn’t much point holding on to life, if this was all he had to look forward to. Death was better than this torture and disfigurement.
He’d lost his taste for life anyway. The mon
otony and the drudge of life in Dead Scalp had worn him down. Nothing ever changed. Everything lost its flavor. The joy and the thrill of life were slowly sucked out of a man. Even gambling and sex had become pointless. He may as well be dead. At least this way he’d cheat the blasted hair.
He travelled through the red mist of pain into an endless, numb blackness. Like the Eternal Dreaming, Clem knew that this was a place from which he’d never return.
This realization brought him more relief than he’d ever known in his entire life.
CHAPTER 10
James watched as Clem quit coughing, dropped the bottle and stopped breathing altogether. He hoped Bill wouldn’t blame him for Clem’s death.
He stood and peered out from behind the closed shutters. Nothing moved on the central street except for the hair that was growing up the sides of the buildings, including the saloon. James and Bill could very well be the last two people alive.
Bill burst back in through the connecting door. His arms were full of carved stones, a couple of weird looking rattles and a brazier. Bill dumped all this on his desk and glanced over at Clem. “‘S’matter with him?” he said.
“He died,” said James. “I’m sorry, I know he was your friend.”
Bill was quiet for a moment and stared hard at the floor. He seemed to be choking back his grief, so as not to show any type of weakness in front of another man. James was cautious enough not to say a word while Bill was like this. Finally, he nodded and seemed to come back to himself.
Bill swept all the papers and other objects from his desk. “Gimme a hand with this,” he said, arranging the brazier and other objects in a careful pattern. Before James could do anything, both windows exploded inwards and the shutters were torn from their hinges.
James wheeled round to see a tide of hair pouring through the windows and over the floor. James lunged for one of the sabers. Bill scrabbled with some matches and swamp bark.
James slashed at the hair which moved out of his way, then wrapped itself around both his wrists. He was yanked off his feet and pulled back towards the wall, where the hair pinned him with his hands above his head. Bill had also been pinned to the wall with his hands over his head before he could light any bark.
More and more hair pushed its way into the room. The loose strands began to interweave themselves, creating complex plaits. The plaits formed themselves into two columns that looked like legs and feet. Then the legs continued to grow upwards, weaving a torso and then a head and two arms complete with hands.
The figure that now stood before them looked like a wise, elderly injun woven entirely from hair. The figure crossed its arms and stared implacably at Big Bill.
Bill narrowed his eyes and smiled a cold humorless smile. James could see he recognized the figure that stood before them.
“Tsiishch’ili, you redskin, sumbitch,” he said. “What in hell do you think you’re doing here?”
“William Baldwin,” said the figure, in a voice that sounded like a thousand knotted strands of hair being brushed apart. “Weren’t you just about to summon me?”
“Only to kick your red ass back down to whatever hell I sent it to in the first place!”
“It would seem to me, that I’m not the one who is currently in hell.”
“Is that why you’re doing this? Trying to destroy my town. You want to send us all to hell, huh?”
“I’m not the one who’s responsible for this.”
“Oh really? Well, forgive me for asking just who the fuck is responsible, if it’s not you? See, this hair comes for the graveyard where we stuck your corpse. So it’s already got your stink all over it.”
“Are you still so ignorant of what’s really happening? Have you not known all along why only hair grows here? This is a part of the dreaming world. The hair is your dreams made manifest. It is simply your worst nightmares given substance. Your subconscious fears of retribution finally surfacing. I’m not even Tsiishch’ili, just a guilty memory that still lurks in your subconscious.”
“Don’t try and wriggle out of this. You swore to me, when you did the ceremony and handed this place over. It would all belong to me as long as the sun shines, the grass grows and the rivers flow!”
“This is a land outside of time and space. No rivers flow here and no grass grows either, that’s not even the sun shining in the sky. While we’re talking of swearing, do you not recall that you swore you would let us all live? But the moment the ceremony was over you butchered me and my fellow shamans.”
“We did what we had to. I ain’t about to apologize. We brought some order to this place. We brought trade and we brought commerce. We found all kinds of ways to exploit what you were wasting and we got rich off the back of it. It don’t belong to you savages anymore. This is American territory. You can’t have it back no matter how much hair you send.”
“As I said, William Baldwin, this is not hair. These are your dreams, breaking through the soil. This is your American dream, rising up to choke you, as you always knew it would.”
“We had a deal!”
“Which you broke when you severed the blood line and killed Rivers Flow’s children.”
“We didn’t sever shit. That old Redskin can have more brats any time. We might have killed his kids but we didn’t kill Rivers Flow and that’s what counts. The bloodline is still intact. We’re still anchored to the outside world. The deal still stands. You can’t be here. Now get the hell out of my town before I choke you with your own guts all over again.”
“Ah yes, I’m very glad you mentioned that. It makes this so much more poetic.”
The figure of Tsiishch’ili unfolded his arms and pointed at Bill. His arm unravelled itself and the loose strands shot towards Bill’s face. Bill struggled, tossing his head backwards and forwards, but the hairs forced his jaws apart and a whole trunk of them plunged down his throat.
Blood trickled from the corner of Bill’s mouth. His legs went into spasms and he beat his palms against the wall, cracking the wood. His head bent backwards and the hair began to withdraw.
Bill grabbed instinctively at the trunk of hair, but he couldn’t stop it as it left his throat and tore his intestines out of his mouth. Blood dripped down Bill’s chin as his lower colon was yanked from between his dislocated jaws.
James saw Bill blink with disbelief, as the hair wrapped his intestines around his neck and pulled them tight. Bill’s face went from red to purple. It swelled up with the pressure and his eyeballs bulged so much in their sockets, that James was afraid they would pop out of his head.
James could hardly believe that Bill was still alive, let alone filled with righteous indignation that the injuns had dared to cross him. He went to his death believing that Dead Scalp still belonged to him according to the terms of the agreement.
James knew that wasn’t the case though. He also knew now why the old devil he’d got the silver dollars from, was so easy to rob.
Everyone had said it couldn’t be done, that the place had too many men and was too well guarded, but James was desperate and up against it. He needed the ten thousand entry fee so bad, he was prepared to rob Dead Scalp itself. To make off with the money they kept on the outside, under Rivers Flow’s watchful eye. It seemed kind of fitting to use Dead Scalp’s own money to buy his way into the place. So long as they didn’t find out, he’d have nothing to worry about.
Rivers Flow had put up no fight as James filled his saddle bags. Then he’d accompanied him to the plateau and performed the ceremony to open the portal, just like James told him.
At the last minute, just as the portal was about to open, Rivers Flow had grabbed the saddle bags and made a dash for it. James had chased him behind a big boulder nearby. He was much older than James and couldn’t run as fast.
James had knocked him to the ground, but Rivers Flow wouldn’t give up the saddlebags. So James had taken the knife from his boot and plunged it into the old devil’s heart.
James had been wiping the blood off his knife a
s the portal opened. James hadn’t been too bothered about this, with Rivers Flow gone there were no loose ends. What bothered him though, was why Rivers Flow had smiled as James pushed the knife between his ribs. Why he seemed so satisfied.
As the hair closed in on him James knew at last. When he killed Rivers Flow, James had severed the bloodline and sentenced everyone in Dead Scalp to death, before he’d even entered. Rivers Flow had smiled because he’d finally got his revenge on Big Bill for the murder of his sons.
The hair swarmed over James like a final revelation. He knew that no sun would shine, no grass would grow and no rivers would flow for anyone in Dead Scalp ever again.
AFTERWORD
JOHN LLEWELLYN PROBERT
Did you enjoy that? Or were you—quite rightly I should think—shocked, horrified and possibly even a little offended by some of what Mr Jasper Bark has offered to you over the preceding pages? I know I was, and so it has fallen to me to give you some inkling of the kind of fate that befalls such authors who dare to produce such outrageously entertaining fiction.
Where did Jasper Bark come from? I honestly don’t know. But if the stories in this collection are anything to go by, I can guess where he might be going:
The scene is a courtroom. Not a nice, brightly-lit, American-style courtroom—the kind you see on television shows that have comfy seats, intimidating but essentially kindly judges played by African American actors who have made a career out of this sort of thing, and lady lawyers with big hair played by actresses who are just ever-so-slightly past their prime and very behind on their payments for their excessive and inappropriate visits to the tanning salon.