by Mark Lukens
“If you look at it,” Billy continued in his low, monotone voice, “if you see what it truly looks like, you will go crazy.”
Jed took a step back from Billy. He heard a noise from the saloon doors and then saw a movement underneath them. Something long, thin, and black was wriggling underneath the door, squeezing in through the cracks like a flattened snake. The snakelike thing squirmed farther inside, thrashing from side to side on the floor for a moment and then rising up like a cobra. But it wasn’t a snake—there were no eyes, nose, or mouth, just a black shape that seemed to change form as soon as it was inside the saloon, growing bigger and rounder now.
“What is that?” Jed whispered to Billy. “Is that what the Ancient Enemy really looks like?”
“Only a small part of it,” Billy answered. “It is always changing.”
Both of them stepped back. Billy had his lantern in his hand, but the flame had been out for a while now. The wick in Jed’s lamp was very low. They needed to get the lamps lit again.
Jed heard sounds in the darkness behind them.
“What is it?” Esmerelda asked.
Jed turned and looked at her. He handed Esmerelda his lantern while keeping his right hand on the butt of his Colt, ready to draw at any moment if he needed to. “We need to get these lit.”
Esmerelda took Jed’s lantern, but her eyes had shifted to the tentacle flailing around underneath the doors. Another thinner tentacle had joined the first one, both of them whipping around blindly. The heavy footsteps still thudded from outside, stomping around on the walkway out there with no discernable pattern. The scraping at the wood walls and the windows was getting faster and louder.
“That’s . . . that’s what it looks like?” Esmerelda asked as she stared at the tentacles, but it sounded more like a statement than a question.
“Go,” Jed told her.
Sanchez hurried up to them, his body tense. He was ready to draw his guns, his eyes sharp even though he’d just woken up. “Is it dawn already?”
Jed shrugged. “Sun might be coming up now.”
Esmerelda stopped at the table on her way to the bar to check Moody’s pocket watch they had left there. She picked up the watch and brought it up close to the lantern so she could see it. “It’s dawn,” she told them. “Close enough anyway.”
“We need to have some more light,” Jed told Esmerelda, trying not to shout at her. The lamp was almost out now and she stood in the little circle of light now, almost everything else in the saloon had faded away into darkness the farther she moved away with the dim light. Jed didn’t want to be trapped in this saloon in the dark, not with those tentacles thrashing around, pushing their way in more and more, whipping themselves against the bottom of the door where Billy had carefully painted his symbols.
David went with Esmerelda to the bar as she lit the two lanterns. She also lighted the ones on the wall behind the bar.
Now that it was brighter in the saloon, Jed looked back at the saloon doors. The two thin tentacles were still flailing around, and now they glistened in the light like they were coated with some kind of mucus—the film on the tentacles reminded Jed of the mucus Karl had thrown up with all of the tarantulas in it.
“The symbols,” Sanchez said as he stared at the saloon doors. The doors and the floor in front of it were covered in ancient writing that Billy had painted there.
“Those symbols aren’t working,” Jed said, glancing at Billy.
“Maybe they keep it from coming all the way in,” Billy said, defending his ceremony.
All of the noises outside stopped. The tentacles pulled back, disappearing underneath the door, back outside again. Everything was quiet for a moment.
“The boy,” a voice called from right outside the saloon doors. “Kill the boy!” It was Moody’s voice.
Sanchez drew his guns, lightning-quick.
“Wait,” Billy told Sanchez.
Sanchez cocked both pistols.
A loud crash came from upstairs. It sounded like the intertwined bodies of Rose and the cowboy had just torn free from the ropes and fallen out of the bed.
They all looked up at the ceiling.
Footsteps stomped across the hotel room floor above them.
“It’s coming,” Jed told them.
“Quick,” Esmerelda said as she reached for Jed. “We need to hold hands. We need to make a circle with David in the middle.”
The crashing from upstairs was louder now. The thing was busting through the door they had barricaded with the slats of wood.
Jed took Esmerelda’s hand and then he held Billy’s hand. Billy grabbed Sanchez’s hand after he had holstered his pistols. Sanchez grabbed Esmerelda’s hand, and now they formed a complete circle. It was like they were playing some kind of children’s game with David in the middle.
“We pray now,” Esmerelda told them, yelling over the sounds of the thumps and crashes coming from upstairs and outside.
“Kill the boy!” Moody’s voice screamed at them from outside.
Other voices were joining in with Moody as he chanted, only a few of the dead townspeople at first.
“Kill the boy!”
“Kill the boy!” More voices were joining in now outside the saloon doors.
“Kill the boy!” The whole town was yelling now, chanting the same three words over and over again.
The thumping sounds were in the upstairs hallway now—the door had broken free and the monstrosity was working its way to the top of the stairs.
“Kill the boy!”
One of the front windows shattered, then the other one. Arms reached in through the broken windows, hands grabbing at the air, hands formed into claws. Bodies thudded against the saloon doors, the weight of the bodies about to force the doors open.
“Kill the boy!”
Jed looked at Esmerelda—her eyes were squeezed tight, and she was whispering. Billy and Sanchez were doing the same thing in their own faiths. Jed looked down at David and locked eyes with the frightened boy.
God, Jed thought. Save us if you can, but please save David. Please let David live.
CHAPTER 37
“We’ve done enough praying,” Jed said, pulling his hands out of Esmerelda’s hand and Billy’s hand. “Now it’s time to fight.” He turned toward the saloon doors and drew his Colt, cocking it.
The monstrosity from upstairs was halfway down the steps now, still hidden in the early-morning shadows. As it descended, it was somehow untwisting itself back into two bodies, flesh pulling apart, skin stretching and snapping, blood oozing, bones and joints popping—the thing was forming back into two separate people, back into Rose and the cowboy, but now their bodies were shredded mounds of gore with blood running down the stairs like a river—yet the abominations were somehow still maneuvering down the steps.
The saloon doors gave way, crashing open. Wood splintered and glass shattered.
“You can’t have him!” Jed yelled at the approaching horde of the dead. A stench of rotting flesh and dried blood drifted towards him like a cloud of dust.
The pastor was the first one through the saloon doors, the whole town behind him, others crawling in through the broken windows, crawling right over the jagged shards of glass and pieces of broken wood, pushing the table tops away that blocked their way.
“One last chance,” the pastor said as he waited in front of the dozens of dead and mutilated people behind him. “Kill the boy.”
Jed didn’t bother glancing to his right and left, or at David behind him. He heard the windows in the back room and in Moody’s office shattering, wood splintering. The other dead townspeople were crawling in through those windows, pushing the tables away that were barricaded there. Jed kept his eyes on the pastor, his gun aimed right at the dead man’s chest. “No,” Jed told him. “We won’t kill David.”
The pastor’s smile slipp
ed, his face blank for just a moment. All of the dead people had stopped, frozen for a moment in their tracks, all of their expressions blank. Then the pastor smiled, the corners of his mouth jerking up violently. “Then we will kill all of you. We will find others to kill the boy. We always have before.”
The pastor rushed at them, the others following.
Esmerelda was facing towards the back of the saloon. The ones who had gotten in through those windows were rushing towards her. She fired the shotgun at the closest man, the blast blowing off the lower half of one of his legs. The man fell forward, crashing down to the floor, but he began to crawl towards Esmerelda, leaving a trail of dark blood behind him.
Billy shot at the two things that used to be Rose and the cowboy. They were almost unrecognizable now, just shuddering mounds of flesh and snapped bones—they looked like they had been turned inside out. Billy emptied the bullets from Karl’s gun into those two things, but the bullets didn’t slow them down. He dropped the gun and pulled the eagle feather from his hat, waving it in front of him, chanting and singing, preparing for his journey into the next world.
Sanchez fired all of the bullets in both of his guns in less than ten seconds. They were all clean headshots that rocked the targets back. But those bullets didn’t kill them. The dead snapped their heads forward again and they kept coming.
Jed shot six times into the pastor’s head, blowing part of his face away. But he kept coming.
This was it, Jed thought. The dead were all around them now, reaching for them, about to tear them apart. He could try to reload his gun with the bullets in his belt, but why bother? They were seconds away from death now, all of them in a circle around David, but with their backs to David now, protecting him as best they could in these last few seconds.
“No!” David screamed and ran out from their circle, standing in front of Jed and Billy.
The dead stopped, some of them collapsing, their bodies contorting as things moved underneath their skin. A wind seemed to build up around them, spinning around them, Jed could feel the force of the wind blasting them. The dead seemed to be trying to back up, but it was like they couldn’t move.
David stood in front of Jed, his body trembling, his eyes rolling back in his head. Filaments were being pulled out of the townspeople’s bodies like iron filings being drawn towards a magnet.
Everything around them began to swirl, everything around them turning into a blur, like they were all in the middle of a huge tornado.
Esmerelda held Jed back as he tried to move forward to help David. “No,” she whispered into his ear. “We can’t help him. Not anymore. Let him do this.”
The black snake-like tendrils were pulled out of the people, the tendrils collapsing into black shapes that were constantly changing. The tendrils swirled around them like black streaks in the air, twisting and turning, intertwining with each other, trying to form shapes, trying to form arms and hands with claws, faces with open mouths of sharp teeth. But the shapes didn’t hold for long, disappearing back into the black ooze that swirled all around them in the air, moving up and over them, forming over top of them like some rapidly spinning dark cloud.
“Look,” Sanchez said, backing away.
Underneath David, a black space was opening in the floor. It looked like a black circle at first, then a deep hole. He stood over that hole like he was floating above the darkness. The spinning mass of darkness, the Ancient Enemy in front of him, was floating towards David as he stared at it, his hair blowing around, his mouth opening wide, his eyes entirely white now, the pupils gone. David levitated up above the black hole in the floor, that fathomless void. As he rose up higher into the air with his arms out wide, the black mass of the Ancient Enemy lowered down to meet him, beginning to swirl around David.
The thing screeched and screamed as it swirled around David, the hole from the floor rising up to engulf both the Ancient Enemy and David. Now David could barely be seen, there was only a black ball of energy spinning around above the hole in the floor, crackling with blue lightning.
They backed away from the massive spinning ball, from the crackling lightning, from the screeches that came from outside.
“David!” Jed yelled.
The ball of darkness was spinning faster and faster, but it was also getting smaller and smaller. It collapsed in on itself with a blinding flash of light, and then it was gone. The Ancient Enemy was gone.
David was gone.
*
Jed woke up. He didn’t know how much time had passed, but the saloon was much brighter with the morning light streaming in through the open doors and broken windows. He sat up on the floor and saw that Esmerelda was right beside him, still unconscious. Billy and Sanchez weren’t too far away, and both of them were beginning to wake up. Sanchez sat up and grabbed his pistols that were on the floor.
Esmerelda sat bolt-upright, drawing in a quick breath. All of them got to their feet and stared at the spot where David and the Ancient Enemy used to be. There was nothing there now, no void, no hole in the floor, no black shapes, nothing.
“He’s gone,” Jed whispered. “Where did he go?”
Esmerelda didn’t answer.
Jed looked at the dead people piled up inside the saloon, many of them heaped together and blocking the doorway. A few of them were stuck in the windows, one of them folded over the window sill with his arms hanging down. But none of them were moving—they were all dead now.
“He saved us.” Esmerelda finally answered Jed’s question with tears running down her face.
Jed looked at the floor where David used to be, then he looked back at Esmerelda and the others. “He gave his life for us.”
CHAPTER 38
Jed had to walk over the dead bodies to get out through the saloon doors. Their bodies squished under Jed’s footsteps as he walked over top of them, some of them piled two or three high in the doorway. He didn’t want to walk over them, but he had no choice, and he prayed he wouldn’t trip or lose his balance. He made his way slowly, his boots sinking down into flesh. He slipped once, almost fell, but he was able to catch himself at the last second.
Once Jed was past the bulk of the dead bodies, he descended the wooden steps from the walkway down onto the dirt street. The two boys without their legs were out in the street, frozen in the action of crawling towards the steps—Karl’s boys.
As soon as Jed was in the middle of the street and far enough away from the bodies, he felt like he could breathe again. But even from this distance he could still smell the stench of blood, guts, piss, and shit.
The sun was above the horizon now, lighting up the world and driving the freezing night air away. He trembled as he stood in the wide dirt street, his pistol in his hand even though he couldn’t remember drawing it from his holster. He was still scared, still afraid that this wasn’t really over, afraid that the Ancient Enemy was tricking them, letting them believe they were safe for the moment, and then the bodies would stir, the dead would stand up, the monster would be back and they would have no protection now that David was gone.
He heard the noise from the saloon, turned that way and watched Sanchez step across the bodies with far more agility and grace than Jed had shown, stepping across the dead like he was hopping over exposed rocks in a creek bed.
“Where’s Esmerelda?” Jed asked Sanchez when he was out in the street with him.
“Billy’s with her. She’s still upset.”
Jed nodded. He was upset about David, too. He hadn’t wanted the boy to die. It had been his mission to protect David since the day he had found him, and he had failed at that mission. He stared back at the dead bodies jumbled up in front of the saloon’s doors and windows like a logjam. He looked at Sanchez.
Sanchez was tense, ready to go for his guns if Jed gave him a reason to.
“I’m not taking you in,” Jed said.
“You believe me?” Sanchez asked. “
You believe that I shot that man in self-defense?”
Jed didn’t answer. He knew he was shirking his duties as a marshal now. He was thankful that Sanchez had helped them, thankful that Sanchez had shot Moody before he could slit David’s throat, even though David was gone now.
But it didn’t matter. He couldn’t outdraw Sanchez ten times out of ten, and he could see now that Sanchez was not going to let him get the jump on him again.
It was more than that, though. Jed felt old and tired. He felt different, fundamentally changed in these last few days. He didn’t want to be a marshal anymore, weary of the responsibility that weighed him down now, weary of the violence that came with the job.
Did he believe Sanchez? Yes, he did. But that wasn’t his decision to make—it was the court’s decision, a judge’s decision, a jury’s decision. Would Sanchez get a fair trial in Smith Junction, Arizona? Probably not.
Sanchez watched Jed.
“I believe you,” Jed finally said.
Sanchez relaxed a little.
“Let’s get some of these bodies out of the way of the doorway,” Jed said as he pulled a pair of gloves out of his pockets and pulled his bandana up over his face.
*
Sanchez helped Jed pull the bodies away from the saloon doors, pulling some of them farther down the walkway to the edges of it, rolling some of them down into the street. Flies were already beginning to swarm around the bodies. Lifeless eyes of dead people stared up at the sky, mouths open, stumps and wounds glistening with dried blood.
Even though it was still bitterly cold, Jed was beginning to sweat a little underneath his clothes from the work he’d done so far.
Now that the path was clear, Billy and Esmerelda left the saloon and walked out into the street.
“We can’t leave them like this,” Esmerelda said as she looked back at the scattering of bodies all over the walkway in front of the saloon, the floorboards stained dark reds and browns, the clouds of flies visible from where they stood.