by Guy Adams
“I heard Thomas say that something was glowing.”
He shrugged, drained his coffee and began to kick dust into the fire.
IN A FEW more minutes, we were back on our mounts and heading further into the rocky pass.
My mule seemed improved from its night’s sleep, moving along the narrow trail with more confidence than ever before. Maybe my companion had slipped it some of the coffee.
While we were close together I decided I would finally ask his name, but, no matter how hard I tried, the words just wouldn’t come out. No doubt that sounds foolish to you, but I’m telling it like it is. It wasn’t that I didn’t dare to ask—though I admit I was still in awe of the man—it was just that I couldn’t make the question form in my mouth. I would imagine the question in my head, open my mouth and end up exhaling nothing but air.
When I was growing up, there had been a woman by the name of Hawthorne, who lived a short distance away. She had worked as a nurse, making up medicines and handling the sort of bumps and scrapes that were beneath the attention of the doctor, an angry little Swede called Skarrsen. Skarrsen acted like every single ailment was an insult, one of those medical men who responded to enquiries with a mixture of fury and despair, as if every patient was there to spite him. It got so Mrs Hawthorne took most of his business.
She had problems of her own, however. Around her throat was a livid, pink scar. People were full of stories as to how she got it, some saying she’d fallen foul of a hangman’s noose, escaping before the rope choked her off for good. Others suggested Indians—the root of all evil in those days—had set upon her during her youth and slit open her throat.
The rumours grew and Mrs Hawthorne would never set them right, because whatever the cause, the result had struck her dumb. She communicated with a combination of mime and written notes, the only sound she could make being a dry cough. That cough would bubble up out of her when she got frustrated, either through the ignorance of her patients or irritation at wanting to make herself understood and failing. When the anger settled on her, she would shake slightly, her skin reddening, open her mouth and issue that short cough. A woman desperate to force a word out, but left without the tools to do so.
That’s what it felt like.
In the end I stopped trying and rode in silence, scared at what it was that robbed me of my voice.
MID-MORNING BROUGHT US an open canyon and a view that seemed to offer up the whole of Colorado.
“What a sight,” I said, speaking for the first time in a couple of hours.
The old man wasn’t as impressed, more concerned with the route directly ahead than the landscape.
“The going’s steep,” he said, jumping off his horse and gazing down over the edge of the trail. “There’s just room if we go single file.”
He scratched at his face, his eyes working their way along the route and anticipating dangers. “Your mule is about to come into its own,” he said. “Slow and steady will be the way.”
“Slow and steady we can do,” I agreed, patting said mule’s head.
He climbed back in the saddle and began to make his way down into the canyon.
He hadn’t exaggerated the width of the track. My left shoulder brushed against the stone walls and my right hand dangled over nothing but air. Sometimes I had to lie flat against the mule’s back, ducking beneath jagged outcrops that stabbed out over the trail. It seemed to me that there had to be a better way to continue on our planned route.
My mule had the advantage, the old man had been right about that. The extra height of my companion on his horse caused him problems. Eventually, he was forced to slide off the back of the animal and push it ahead of him.
After twenty minutes or so, the path widened briefly and he suggested we both dismount and continue on foot, leading our animals behind us.
“They’re going to find the next stretch hard enough without having our weight to bear too,” he explained. “It’s only a mile or so; the walk will do us no harm.”
I agreed readily enough. I’d been so tense on the back of the mule that my thighs were shaking from where I had been gripping it so tightly.
He continued to lead as the trail dropped to an even steeper angle, boots and hooves frequently skidding in the loose grit of the narrow path.
I looked over the edge and felt that welcome coffee threaten to return for a spell as the scale of the drop sank in.
“Next time we come upon something like this,” I said, “we go round.”
“No journey worth making is ever easy,” he replied. “We’d have lost an extra day or so if we’d tried to go round, and that’s time I can’t spare.”
I had been avoiding the subject of Wormwood after Willie’s story of the night before. It was obvious the old man had no interest in talking about it—like everything else—but my curiosity was too big to ignore.
“The town you’re heading for,” I said, “it’s the same Wormwood Willie was talking about, isn’t it? A place that only exists for a short time.”
“It is.”
“And does it really contain the doorway to Heaven?”
“I’m not sure Heaven is really the name for the place that stands on the other side of it.”
“So what is the name?”
“It has so many,” he sighed, obviously wishing the subject would just go away, but aware that, having chosen company for the journey, it couldn’t be avoided forever. “It’s the world that comes after.”
“After you die?”
“For some people.”
It was like digging for water in the desert.
“You called it home.”
“I did.”
“So... what? That’s where you grew up?”
At that moment, he paused and held up his hand. At the time I thought he was just trying to avoid any more talk, but as I came up close, I looked over his shoulder and saw what lay ahead.
The trail was turning in towards the canyon, giving us a view of the way ahead before it wound back against the outcrop and vanished again from view. Just a few feet away, something was obstructing the path; it took me a little time to figure what it was. It looked like a bonfire, a pile of white branches gleaming in the sun. The branches had strips of something wet and glistening hanging from them, thin red banners like skinned snakes.
“I guess our dinner guests didn’t get far,” the old man said. That was what it took for me to puzzle out the obstruction: the two men and their horses, all folded in together, the meat from their bones tugged away until all that was left of them was a jumble of bone and skin.
“What happened to them?” I asked. “Did they fall?”
“No,” he replied, moving closer. “Something attacked them.”
“Something?” I looked around, suddenly terrified.
The old man stooped down to examine the pile of bones. I did my best to see past the back of his horse, but the trail was too narrow for me to get a clear look.
“Something stripped the meat from them,” he said.
He stood up and began kicking at the pile, sending the remains toppling over the edge of the trail to fall down into the canyon itself.
“You can’t just do that!” I shouted.
He turned to me, a stern gaze in those ancient eyes of his. “Keep your voice down,” he said. “We don’t want to attract whatever it was that did this.”
He turned back to the bones and carried on clearing them. “We need to get past, and quickly. It ain’t doing them no favours to leave their remains where they are. They’re gone. The fate of their bones don’t matter.”
I watched as he kicked a skull out into the air, a ragged pink and white ball dragging a long beard behind it. Willie’s head.
Once the way was clear, he continued to walk, moving quicker now.
“We need to be faster,” he said, his voice quiet and controlled. “Stuck here we’re at a disadvantage. Whatever attacked them could strike at any minute, and we haven’t room to fight.”
&n
bsp; As if I hadn’t been terrified enough.
The mule fought my attempts to drag it along the track; it knew its own pace, one foot placed carefully after another. At one point it drew to a halt, determined to stop my yanking on its reins.
“Come on!” I told it, trying to coax where brute force had failed. “It’s in your own best interests, you dumb ass!”
Eventually it began to move again, the old man now several feet ahead. I watched him turn around the next outcrop and vanish from sight. The idea that I was now alone was even more terrifying and I broke into a slow run.
That was nearly the death of me, when my feet slipped in the loose rock. I dropped to my knees, one leg slipping out over the edge of the canyon, my hands scratching at the dirt so I could get a grip and keep myself on the trail.
It was the mule that helped, yanking back on the reins I still held in one hand and giving me enough of a lift to regain my balance and get back to my feet.
“I owe you,” I told it, patting it on the head again before continuing on our way, more carefully than before.
I worked my way around the outcrop, and once more the old man was in sight. Even better, I could see that the narrow trail we were on began to widen about half a mile ahead, turning into a dirt track more than big enough to let us ride again.
“Nearly there!” I shouted and the old man turned to stare at me, a look of real anger on his face. He held his finger to his lips and I remembered what he had said about keeping quiet. In my relief I had clean forgotten about it.
“Sorry,” I whispered, so quiet now I doubted he heard me.
It was clear that he heard something, mind, his head cocking to one side like a raven’s.
It took me a few moments to catch the noise myself, a low ticking sound like that of a pocket-watch. It got louder, and the old man waved at me to keep moving, turning back to the trail and breaking into a run, pulling his horse behind him.
Wary of how close I had just come to tipping myself over the edge, I tried to match his pace. To my relief, the mule didn’t fight me this time. Perhaps it was aware that something was heading towards us, its animal senses more finely tuned than mine.
I fought the urge to look over my shoulder. Desperate as I was to know what might be bearing down on us, it took all of my concentration on the trail ahead to ensure I didn’t miss my footing.
The ticking noise was getting louder and louder.
“Move!” the old man shouted, having nearly reached the point where the pass widened. “They’re nearly on top of you!”
They? I just couldn’t help it. I had to see what it was. I turned slightly and it seemed as if the entire wall of the canyon was on the move, great waves of creatures charging towards us. My feet skidded and I snapped my eyes back forward, head filled with childhood memories of ant hills. We had one out back of the house one summer and it terrified me (naturally). A volcano of vicious, biting insects. Ma had poured steaming hot water into it, thinking that would make me feel better. It didn’t. For weeks I dreamed of those hundreds of insects, washed around the banks of their nest, some still wriggling as they boiled in their own shells. The fuckers were back to haunt me.
The old man had reached the wider trail, mounting his horse and turning to watch me as I ran the last few steps.
“Quickly, damn you!” he shouted. “Or you’ll be the death of both of us.”
No need to blame me, I thought, nobody’s stopping you riding off as soon as you like.
There was a sudden loud clacking noise from right by my head and I saw one of the insects, a fat beetle the size of my forearm, its carapace glistening like oil. Its mouth parts clashed together and I now understood the cause of the clicking sound.
A gunshot rang out and the evil-looking bastard exploded in a cloud of shell and ichor the colour of rotten apple flesh.
I saw the old man shifting his aim and firing again and again over my shoulder as I finally reached the wider stretch and climbed on the back of my mule.
There’s no way the damn thing will run fast enough, I thought; I was probably quicker on my feet.
Then one of the beetles leapt on the animal’s ass. It bucked, kicked, and began to sprint down the path at a speed I suspect it had not known since its youth, many centuries ago. It was all I could do to hang on as we bolted down the track, the old man just ahead of us. He held up his gun, shook the spent shells from it and reloaded. I’d seen the sheer number of these things. If he thought we were going to shoot our way out of the situation he’d lost his mind.
My thoughts on the matter became more focused as a loud clicking set up just behind my head and I felt sharp legs poke into my ribs. One of the things had jumped me.
“Fall forward!” the old man shouted, and I did so without even thinking, only realising as I pressed my face into the mule’s hair that he planned on shooting it.
The gunshot rang out and I screamed as the bug dug in with its pointed feet. There was a cool splash of its guts on the back of my neck and I tried not to throw up over my poor, terrified ride.
“It’s dead,” he shouted.
“It’s still holding on!”
“That’s as may be, but it has no head. It’s beyond doing you any harm, boy.”
I sat back up and tried to shrug the thing off, but it seemed to have securely latched on, its feet wedged into the material of my jacket (and no little amount of my skin).
We continued to ride, the old man naturally pulling away, however hard my mule tried to match them.
The clicking remained constant. Every moment I expected to feel another of the creatures leap on me.
Then, as we turned out of the canyon and continued on towards open ground, the noise grew softer. It faded away until, eventually, all we could hear was the sound of our own hoofbeats.
The old man stopped and turned, gazing back towards the canyon.
He held up his hand. “You can stop, boy,” he said. “They ain’t following.”
I did so, that poor ancient mule of mine actually sinking to the ground in exhaustion. I clambered off and looked back the way we had come.
“Seems they don’t leave the canyon,” he said. “I guess that’s their territory.”
“They’re welcome to it.” I began fighting to shed the remains of the bug off my back. In the end, I had to pull off my jacket and throw the lot to the ground. I touched the back of my neck, still thick with the insect’s guts.
“Look at the thing,” I said, prodding at it with my foot. “Did you ever see the like?”
He dismounted and walked over, stooping down and unhooking the remains from my jacket. He handed the jacket back, though I was in no mood to wear it, and examined what was left of the creature.
“It ain’t natural,” he said, “something this big.”
“Damn right,” I agreed. I may not know much about nature and the like, but I am fully aware beetles don’t come the size of dogs.
“We’re going to see more of this sort of thing,” he explained, getting up from his examination. “The closer we get to Wormwood, the more nature takes a pounding.”
“Then I guess it’s time I carried on towards my nice safe job,” I told him. “If this is the sort of thing I can expect in Wormwood, I sure as hell don’t want to go there.”
He fixed me with a stare at that, as stern and disapproving as a church statue. “Boy,” he said, “what makes you think you’ve got a choice?”
CHAPTER FOUR
FIND A PLACE TO DIE
NOW, I’LL ADMIT, I hadn’t seen that one coming. I’d wondered whether he’d truly wanted my company on the road, given how damned uncommunicative and secretive he’d been. Now it seemed that there was a reason, and one important enough that he wouldn’t let me leave.
“And what’s to stop me just riding off?” I asked, my anger giving me a little steel.
“You’d be lost within the hour,” he said, “and likely dead within a couple of days.”
“I managed to get along just
fine before I met you,” I insisted.
“That’s as may be, but you’re on the trail to Wormwood now. It’s marked you. It knows you’re coming.”
“To hell with that!” I shouted. Weeks of frustration on the road flooded out. “I ain’t even going to Wormwood! If the place even exists... which I doubt. I’m heading to California, remember? To take up a good job in a nice town, miles away from giant beetles and mad bastards like you.”
“Said like a man who’s never been to California,” he replied, and for the first time he actually split his face into a half-smile. “But that’s not where you’re going. Your road ends at Wormwood, it always did.”
“We’ll just see about that!” I turned my mule and tapped at its sides with my heels. The damn thing refused to move. “Get going, you lousy ass!” I shouted, hot with anger now. The mule wouldn’t take a single step.
“See?” said the old man. “He knows.” He shook his reins and began to continue on the way we had been riding. “Come on,” he said, and, damn the rebellious bastard, that mule turned and followed.
I tugged and kicked, but it paid me no heed whatsoever, trailing behind the old man as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
I hated that mule.
I wondered how far I would get if I just jumped off the thing and walked away. We had been following the route I had planned to take before we cut through the canyon, but now I wasn’t sure where we were. Maybe with my map, I could get back on track. I reached down and pulled the map from my saddle bag, holding it carefully in case he turned around and guessed what I was doing, not that he would have cared.
We were miles from any town. I could end up walking for days out here and never find my way. Besides, without my mule, how far would I get? I didn’t have the money to buy another, and I could hardly walk all the way to the coast. But if I stayed with the old man, I wouldn’t get to the coast anyway.
I tucked the map away again. I felt desperate. I wished I’d never met the crazy idiot (conveniently forgetting that if I hadn’t, I would have died back in Haskell). Most of all, right then, I wished I’d never left home.