by Rob DeBorde
Mason, having decided against shooting anyone, holstered his gun. He kept all other options on the table. “What do I want with a dead man?”
“The last shot, the shot that finally killed him, was fired from his own gun,” Henry said. “They buried him with it.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s true. I saw Marshal Kleberg fire it a dozen times into the corpse and then throw it into the box.”
“You saw him fire it?”
Henry nodded. “A dozen times.”
Mason let his hand fall on the butt of his gun as he turned the story over in his head.
“Mason, we best get movin’ on,” Hugh said. “I don’t like standing around with my gun drawn any longer than I have to.”
“Tie him up,” Mason said, pointing to Asa. He turned to Henry. “We’ll be needing directions.”
“No,” Henry said. “I’m coming with you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You want the location, you gotta take me with you. I’m sick of this place, this life. I want to dig that bastard up and let whatever evil is left on him seep back into this town until it rots.”
Mason looked at Henry, wondering if he might be seeing him for the first time. As it turned out, Mason was a very good judge of character, and as such pegged Henry as an angry young man in need of direction, purpose, and possibly a surrogate father. Mason wouldn’t offer any of those things, but he liked the idea of having another member of the gang to boss around.
“This store sell shovels?”
* * *
“It never misses,” said Hugh, raising his pistol and mock firing at nothing in particular. “That’s what Pa told us. You point and it don’t never miss the target.”
“That’s not right,” said Charlie. “Pa said it just killed folks—that every bullet went straight into your heart.”
“Which means it never misses, ya idiot.”
Charlie considered this. “What if you point it at the ground?”
“Then you’d hit the ground.”
“But what if you was wantin’ to kill a man and you fired in the opposite direction?”
Hugh sighed. “I guess the bullet would bounce off a tree or something.”
Charlie was not convinced. He again raised his gun, this time lining up a nearby fir tree in his sights. He hesitated, then pulled back the hammer.
“Fire that and you won’t need a ricochet to do the job,” said Mason. “I’ll put a bullet in you myself.”
Charlie holstered the pistol. “I wasn’t going to shoot.”
Henry watched the exchange from the bottom of a hole he’d already spent more than an hour digging. The grave was not in the cemetery proper but well outside its border on the south side of the hill. Despite the lack of a headstone or any other marker, he knew this was the right spot. His memory of the day was clear and, perhaps more telling, he could feel the dead man beneath his feet.
Henry tossed a shovelful of dirt over the side of the excavation and paused to check his progress. His efforts had thus far produced a five-foot-deep hole, several piles of wet earth, and three bodies—two women and a man whose funeral Henry had attended the preceding summer. The man’s gravestone remained unmolested and visible at the edge of the cemetery twenty yards to the north. Henry told Mason he couldn’t imagine why someone would have moved the body. He told himself the shallow depression in the ground connecting the two graves could not be what it looked like.
“It never needs reloading,” Henry said, adding a shovelful of dirt to the nearest pile. “Doesn’t matter how many times you fire, the Hanged Man’s gun never runs out of bullets. Ever.”
Charlie and Hugh looked at Henry. “You seen this?”
“I saw the Hanged Man shoot seventeen men on Second Street. I never saw him reload.”
“Coulda had more than one gun,” said Charlie.
“When the marshal went to bury the bastard, he wasn’t dead. Had thirty bullets in him, at least, but he was still twitchin’. Marshal pried the gun out of his hand and shot him in the heart. That stopped the twitchin’, but just to be sure he shot him eleven more times, the last one square in the forehead. Didn’t reload.”
Hugh and Charlie shared a look. Charlie opened his mouth to ask another question, but Mason beat him to it.
“Why didn’t you dig it up?”
“What?”
Mason approached the edge of the hole. “You knew it was here all this time. Why didn’t you come get it for yourself?”
Henry stopped digging. He knew the answer, of course. Henry hadn’t gone after the gun because he’d forgotten it existed until a few days ago. Even then, it hadn’t occurred to him the gun might be worth something until another pistol was shoved in his face.
“The old marshal,” he said. “The man that killed the Hanged Man, he lives in the last house we passed on the way up. I couldn’t get to it with him watchin’ all the time.”
Mason looked over his shoulder at the cemetery. The marshal’s excavations had been repaired, but the fresh graves were obvious.
“And he’s the one that tore up them other graves?”
“Yep.”
“Suppose he was looking for something?”
“Might’ve been. Didn’t find it.”
Mason again found himself taking a closer look at the young store clerk. For no reason he could surmise, he believed Henry. This was not like him. Bill Mason had managed a career in general mayhem specifically by not putting faith in others. It hadn’t been a spectacularly successful campaign, but he was still a free man despite the tidy sum put on his head by the Oregon Mining Company.
“Charlie, grab a shovel,” he said. “Give our new friend some help.”
Charlie felt like protesting, but didn’t. Henry had taken his position on the bottom rung of the gang and even if it was only temporary, he wanted to enjoy it as long as possible. Charlie picked up a shovel and began swiping at the nearest pile in an attempt to move some of the dirt out of the way.
“Hey!” Henry yelped, dodging a small avalanche of soil.
Charlie quickly changed tactics to stem the flow. “Sorry.”
Henry took a deep breath before removing the dirt Charlie had returned. He wasn’t tired, which was surprising given his time in the hole. He would have at least expected his shoulders to ache, but each dig and lift seemed to energize him. The soft loam removed, Henry reversed the shovel and brought it down hard on the leading edge of his excavation, striking something solid.
“I’m there.”
Henry scraped at the soil until the top of the coffin became visible. It was nothing special, just a pine box, but the wood was in remarkably good shape given the amount of time it’d been in the ground. Henry punched the top of the box several times with the sharp edge of the shovel.
“It’s pretty solid. Give me the pry bar.”
Hugh passed Henry a long iron pry bar. All three outlaws clustered around the edge of the hole, causing another avalanche of dirt. Henry hardly noticed. He jammed the slender end of the bar under the crosspiece of the lid and forced it upward. The nails squeaked in defiance but came undone easily.
It occurred to Henry that he didn’t know which end of the coffin he was opening. His hole was offset from the true grave and thus only about a third of the box was exposed. If he broke through to find feet, what would he do then? Grab the dead man around the ankles and pull? Henry drove the crowbar between the slats and mentally crossed his fingers.
The center slat snapped and Henry pulled it back, revealing two rows of yellow teeth.
“Jesus,” whispered Hugh.
Henry broke off the remainder of the slat and, for the first time since finding the coffin, stopped trying to get into it.
The Hanged Man’s lips had curled back to a lifeless grin, but he was otherwise more alive than any dead man ought to be. Thick strands of straw-colored hair fell across an unusually long face, partially obscuring eyes that might open at any moment. C
heeks, while pale and weathered, were not the brittle mask of a decade-old corpse. There was meat between skin and bone, and it was just as fresh as the day he died.
Mason unfolded the newspaper clipping he’d brought from the store. The resemblance was striking.
“Looks like our man.”
Henry didn’t need to see the picture. He reached out to touch the face he’d seen in his dreams.
“Still soft.”
Hugh leaned into the hole to take a closer look. “When did you say this fella died?”
“Eleven years ago last Tuesday.”
“How come he ain’t a pile of bones?” asked Charlie.
Henry shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, unsure if that was the truth.
“Cursed,” said Mason. “Like his gun.”
“You sure it’s him?” Hugh said. “Not just a body like them others we found?”
Henry pushed aside a matted shock of hair to reveal a small black hole in the dead man’s forehead.
“Show me his neck,” said Mason.
Henry used the crowbar to loosen more of the boards, breaking them off where the box disappeared into the earth. The Hanged Man’s head and upper body were now in full view. A tattered leather coat stretched across broad shoulders that filled the coffin side to side. Henry pulled open the collar and undid the top button of an undershirt that had once been white but was now bloodstained for eternity. He spread the fabric wide to reveal a deep rope burn cut into a neck still defined by muscle and tendon.
“It’s him,” Mason said. “Or another man made his name cheating death.”
For a moment, no one said a word. Henry felt an inexplicable urge to leap from the hole and run as fast as he could down the hill. He would run to the river and then jump in and swim until he made it to the other side or his lungs gave out and he drowned. For a moment, this seemed like a very good idea. Charlie reminded him of why it wasn’t.
“Where’s the gun?”
Henry blinked and then reached inside the dead man’s coat. The body was warm. Henry nearly pulled back his hand, but forced himself to feel around before abandoning the search after only a few seconds.
“I can’t reach in far enough,” he offered as an excuse.
“Pull him out,” said Mason.
Henry looked at Mason. “Um, how exactly should I…”
Before Henry could finish, Mason jumped into the hole and grabbed the dead man under the armpits. He must have felt the heat coming from the body, because, for just a moment, Henry thought he would let go. Instead, Mason dug deeper and lifted the dead man to a sitting position. He ripped open the jacket to reveal an undershirt marked by numerous bloodstained holes and an empty holster riding high on the waist. Mason reached behind the body, feeling around for an unseen weapon. He came back empty-handed.
“Grab his right arm.”
Together they lifted the body from the box and into the hands of Charlie and Hugh. The brothers barely got the dead man out of the hole before dropping him to the ground.
“Jesus, he weighs a ton,” Charlie moaned. “Them others weren’t so heavy.”
Mason brushed the dirt off his clothes and climbed out of the hole. He then turned to offer Henry a hand up—except he didn’t.
“Stay there,” Mason said. Not taking his eyes off Henry, he said, “Find anything?”
Hugh looked up from the corpse. “Nice pair of boots, but no gun.”
Mason smiled at Henry. “Check the box.”
Henry got to his knees and reached into the box. There was more dirt, a handful of rocks, and nothing else. Henry ducked his head down, but there wasn’t enough light to see anything beyond the opening.
“I can’t see all the way in. Guess we dig out some more.”
“No need,” Mason said. “You climb in, feel around.”
Henry thought briefly of protesting, but didn’t. It was only an empty box. It wasn’t until Henry had twisted his body around the broken lid and was halfway into the darkness on his back that he realized what might happen to him if there was no gun.
“You stuck?” Mason asked.
“No,” Henry said. The gun was here, he told himself. It had to be. He’d seen it eleven years ago and he’d seen it in his head the past three days. Henry twisted a little more and slid his slender frame all the way into the coffin. It was tight, but he was shorter than the Hanged Man and so had some room to maneuver.
Henry felt around the space at his sides, finding more dirt and what felt like a piece of torn cloth. He reached forward and found the end of the box was close. His head was less than a foot from the wood, perhaps only six inches. The coffin seemed smaller than it had only moments before, and familiar, as if from a dream.
Henry felt something hit his feet. He raised his head as far as it would go and could just make out his boots in the light. A few clods of dirt fell into the coffin. They were already starting to bury him.
“Mason?”
“Did you find it?”
“No—wait, just wait!”
Henry jabbed his hands above his head—nothing. He felt along the edge to the right corner (empty) and then to the left, where he touched something cold and metal. His fingers closed around the barrel of a pistol and Henry allowed himself to breathe again.
“I found it! Pull me out!”
Henry felt hands grab his ankles and he was yanked backward. When his waist reached the opening, a hand appeared into which Henry shoved the gun. A few more clumps of dirt fell into the box and then the avalanche stopped. Henry pushed forward, awkwardly twisting his body in order to fold himself back around and out of the opening. As he scraped along the bottom of the box he felt something else slide past his arm. Once free of the coffin, he got to his feet and peered over the top of the hole. He could just see Mason and Hugh examining the pistol. They appeared to be having trouble deciding on a target.
Henry ducked back down and reached into the darkness, finding what he was looking for on the first try. It was a small, leather-bound book about six inches tall. It had a strap tied around it and a worn symbol scratched into the front that appeared to be a bird. To Henry it looked like one of the crows that lived in Astoria year-round, although the neck seemed proportionally too long. Henry untied the strap and opened the book to the first page.
Everything changed.
Henry felt safe. He was suddenly free of the fear and worry that had plagued him, from both his reclaimed memories and the uncertainty of the present situation. Warmth flowed through him, filling him with a vitality that was both new and familiar at the same time. This was the feeling that had sustained him throughout the dig, perhaps even pushed him into action.
Henry focused on the page. It was blank. He flipped to the next and found a rough circle drawn around a smaller circle filled in with black ink. Henry touched the small black spot and felt a tingle in his finger.
“Mine.”
Henry flipped another page and found handwritten words filling every inch of space on both sides of the spread. He held the book aloft to catch more of the lantern light but found he didn’t recognize the words—not all of them. There were English words, and some he thought were French and possibly Spanish, as well as a few he didn’t recognize at all. There were more on the next spread and, of course, the next. Henry let the pages flip freely, finding the same dense collection of handwriting on every one.
It was magic.
Henry knew it, as sure as he knew he would read and reread every word in the book until he understood them all.
Henry flipped again, more slowly this time. There were notes, randomly scattered among the pages, scribbled between lines, and in the margins, in a hand different from the rest. Someone else had tried to decipher the language but had not gotten very far.
Henry would do better.
He turned back to the beginning of the book, but the loud crack of a gunshot caused him to clamp the cover shut.
Henry peered out of the hole to see Mason taking aim at a grave
marker about thirty feet away. He fired, putting a second chip in the stone. He glanced at Henry, then quickly fired four more shots at his target.
Henry scrambled out of the hole, only to find that Mason had turned the pistol on him.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you think?” Mason said, thumbing back the hammer.
“Wait, don’t—”
The hammer snapped into place, but the weapon didn’t fire. Startled, Henry took a step back, lost his footing in the loose soil, and slid back into the hole. He landed on his feet and then fell into a sitting position. Mason appeared above him, holding the pistol.
“Wrong color,” he said, holding the weapon so Henry could clearly see the dark brown handle.
“That’s not his gun,” Henry said. “That’s not what was buried with him.”
“I gathered, which is both good and bad for you. Good in that you didn’t just get shot, but bad because as soon as I reload, I’m going to be needing a reason not to try again without the target practice.”
“I saw the old man throw the gun into the grave, the red gun!”
Mason looked to his partners. Hugh shrugged. Charlie shook his head.
“I found this in the coffin,” Henry said, holding up the book. He hated the idea of giving Mason the book—of the man even touching it—but it was his only play.
“What is it?”
“It’s a book full of spells, I think, and other things.”
Mason finished reloading the pistol, held it for a moment, then shoved it behind his belt.
“Toss it here.”
Henry started to throw the book, hesitated, then set it on the edge of the hole at Mason’s feet. Mason kept an eye on Henry as he bent to pick it up. He flipped through the pages, stopping every so often to stare at the text.
“What language is this?”
“English. French and Spanish, too, and maybe some others.”
Mason looked at Henry and then back at the book. Hugh peered over his shoulder.
“What’s with the book?”
“Henry says it’s a magic book.”