Some Will Not Sleep: Selected Horrors

by Adam Nevill

  At fifteen feet the soldier shot off the bereaved husband’s face, along with the top of his head, leaving just the jaw hanging down beneath the spray of black juice, pinkish drops and dusty skull that pattered amongst the dry rocks like an unexpected rain.

  As he reloaded the pistol and carbine, without once looking at his hands, the soldier peered over his cover and watched the other side of the ravine. He holstered the pistol, sheathed the sword and leaped over the rock; he followed the scratching that the female Nephite had made in the dust as she crawled.

  The trooper stamped on the back of the wounded female’s head to stop its mutterings, and felt the skull give way like a cabbage underfoot in a farmer’s field. Then he cut the head free with two sawing swipes of Old Wristbreaker, before mounting the greyish ruin of the head upon the point of the sabre and holding it aloft.

  ‘Lehi! See what comes to the Fair-skinned Nephites. Nary one of your flock will see another night. By the Lord and all that is righteous, you will be smote down. And you will see your flock cut like wheat afore you go. I promise you that, you son of a whore’s cunt!’

  There was no answer from across the ravine. No movement, save a trickle of pebbles and sand from somewhere up high. The Prophet had been making his retreat while the trooper despatched his congregation, who had unwittingly gathered here that morning for a cleansing by steel and iron ball. Lehi would be gone now, the soldier guessed, retreating on foot to his ramshackle Kingdom of God.

  The two mares that pulled the black carriage were nothing more than bone heads covered in dusty hide, with rotten manes and ribs sticking through skin so thin and cluttered with moving blowflies that they looked like they’d been dead for months. Their eyes were sightless milky orbs, hung with bunches of white ticks. Their smell was of graves freshly interned in the eternal black fields of Hades. Their distended bellies were peppered with tooth marks, from where the faithful had bled them down to these sorry tired husks.

  The soldier cut through each long neck with one stroke of Old Wristbreaker and they fell swiftly, with a clatter of old bones within their bridles. The black carriage would roll no more across God’s earth.

  There was little inside the bed of the wagon. Some metatarsals; three Bibles that had been chewed down to the bindings by dirty teeth; a child’s bonnet, stamped into the dust; and two long thighbones from either a man or a steer, he couldn’t be sure, but they had been whittled by a fastidious gnawing to thin flutes of scratched bone, bleached white.

  The dragoon looked at the sky; indigo turned to blue cut with pink striations. In the west a great yolk of hot sun seemed to be peeking beneath the horizon like a fire at the hem of a tent’s skirt. The Nephites would be inside when the sun burned this desert white. He’d rather fight them in the open and it would now be a race on foot between him and the Prophet to the promised land.

  He went back to his horse, where she lay so quiet and solemn in the dust. She licked his hands and looked up at him with more love than he’d received from any living thing, save his sister, in this sorry unfeeling life he oft wished that he’d never been born into. He kissed her warm forehead and trickled water into her open mouth. Then he shot her still with the pistol.

  The soldier wiped his eyes and slung the saddlebags over his shoulders. The bottles of kerosene bumped together inside their oilcloth wrappings. The rest of his ammunition was inside the bags too. He took two canteens and tied them to his belt; threw his dragoon’s cape over the saddlebags. And started walking toward Zion.

  They had kept slaves, captured along the trail through three states, and had used them to erect the hopeless wooden buildings of the Prophet Lehi’s Zion, on the shores of the Great Dead Sea. Once their labours were complete, the Nephites had eaten the slaves alive, right where they had sat exhausted in their chains. Amongst the dozen sets of dirty bones, the soldier moved a few greyish heads with the toe of one boot. The slaves were not the chosen and had never been converted. He moved out of the black barn and onto Main Street.

  Beside the barn, where they’d been keeping the black carriage and the three hell mares, they had another three wooden shacks barely upright and facing the shimmering white sand that stretched to the ravines that he’d passed through that morning. At the end of the row of wooden buildings were a dozen tents, their dirty canvas sides billowing from the wind that came off the long, salty water behind.

  The settlement appeared empty. Desolate. Damned.

  The soldier had made good time out here though, and was sure that he’d beaten that long-legged Prophet back. Nephites tired easy; were always hungry; their salvation as the chosen seemed to amount to nothing more than scratching in the dust to gobble down any living thing that had blood inside it. He’d once found one buried waist-deep inside a skinned bear carcase, and feeding hard.

  He guessed the population of Zion would rest inside the broken-down buildings and loose tents until their Prophet returned with something warm and squealing in the back of that black carriage. The soldier smiled. Laid down his bags outside the building beside the barn. ‘I will be avenged sevenfold. Yes sir.’ He sprinkled the kerosene oil around the wooden foundations of the building, and peppered the liquid with gunpowder. Nary a sound from within, not even a whisper, and he’d burned three Nephite infestations out of farms they’d occupied in Wyoming the exact same way. Nephites did not like fire; must have reminded them of home, he often mused.

  He lit a cigarette and dropped the match into the oil, which lit off in a trail of blackish smoke, the flames invisible in the sunlight. The timber they’d used for the buildings was so worm-eaten and dry, and mostly cobbled together from wagon beds, that it took fire quickly and with a furious relish.

  Outside the front entrance that was covered with a dirty muslin sheet, the soldier laid down his carbine and drew Old Wristbreaker. And waited.

  But not for long. Deep inside, back someways in the darkness that they had all been lying inside, he heard the rustlings of thin limbs. Then a bumping of bony feet and a chattering of dry teeth sounded, and all getting nearer to the entrance as they came through that house of rotten wood, not yet warmed by the bright sunlight, but roused by the thick smoke.

  They came out into the light of dawn, blinking and coughing and whimpering: three raggedy females. The one in the round dress – once a tan check, but now filthy and hard with black blood down the front – came out first, its whited-out eyes blinking within the tatty bonnet. It paused momentarily to fight another behind it, a thing wearing a stained nightgown, which was trying to push around the wide skirts of the other female. They snarled at each other and there was a brief raking of long yellowy nails against leathery faces, until they became aware of the dragoon close by.

  With two swift downward strokes, as if striking from the saddle, he caved in their skulls like he was breaking crockery pots with a hammer. The third one he skewered back against a wall, where it kicked out with sharp feet, and whipped a wispy skull back and forth, and showed him a black tongue, before he shot it full in the face with his pistol from two feet out.

  At the next building, he worked faster with the kerosene on account of the gunshot. Smashed three bottles in the first room by throwing them against the far wall. Upstairs, on the next level, and just after he lit the place up, he saw a parched face grin down from a window without glass. Looked like the townsfolk were stirring. But the lower floor of the building went off blazing with them all still inside it, and nervous about coming out to face him; and he prayed to God that if his sister were inside, she would be taken by the smoke so that he would not have to see her in this morning’s white light.

  Through the dance and beat of the flames inside the building, he eventually saw insubstantial outlines of partly haired heads, bobbing in the smoke, before they rushed at the front door. Two females came out coughing and he slew them swift because their heads were practically bowed for the task set before him. Another, without a hair on its patchwork skull, came through on all fours in petticoats and a f
ilthy shawl, and he took from its narrow shoulders its foul head.

  Two children, not yet twelve, he reckoned, when they were bit, tottered out blind from the heat and heavy black smoke that they’d woken into. He took each one down from behind with quick cross-body-cuts, then stepped away to the carbine.

  He looked back at the great white desert that shimmered into the far hills, and then looked again when he thought he saw the lope of a thin black figure coming hither. But once he’d shielded his eyes and squinted hard again, he saw nothing out there but the flat, hard salt that could hide not so much as a coyote upon it.

  From the third building, a nervous evacuation was in progress, and he scanned the starved upright devils for weapons. A gangly male in braces and a top hat held what looked like a flintlock the French had left behind from when they fought the English. Using the carbine, the soldier shot three parts of its head away; in the smoke-blinded confusion another ragged figure trod on the top hat with a clawed foot.

  Taking advantage of the two neighbouring fires, the thick black smoke that dropped onto the tented area, and the litter of wasted, head-smashed bodies about the ground, the soldier calmly reloaded, both pistol and carbine. And he came up from kneeling, firing steady at those that, sighting their nemesis, took it upon themselves to race at him. Two crones, dust as much as bone, came apart like sticks and straw in their bonnets and pinafores. And then Old Wristbreaker cut down the two teenage girls that tried to scatter before him like hens.

  He lit up the third building from the inside, keeping his sabre ready and up high. It was dark in there and under his feet the chewed bones and hollowish skulls of the unfortunates that had been fed upon snapped and rolled away as he stamped into the godforsaken dark and dust.

  He came out coughing and looked towards the tents. A weary line of dark silhouettes, he counted no more than five, tottered in the bright sun. Two of them wept, which made the other three females take up a wailing like they knew the time of the Great Awakening was all but done. One of them struck her naked head with long hands and pulled from her skull the last straws of colourless hair.

  At his back the three temples of Zion, a New Jerusalem to the congregation of Lehi’s Fair-skinned Nephites, burned red and black and high into the deep-blue sky.

  The soldier walked toward the tents and reloaded as he went. There was little fight left in those that remained, and though they snarled like guard dogs they seemed reluctant to move far from whatever was under the canvass.

  One finally came out to him, low on all fours, its bone legs kicking up the dust, and the soldier shot most of its neck and cheek away on the right side. It set up a howling that only ceased when he crunched a boot heel down upon its forehead. Of the remaining four, he shot down one, right where it stood, hollerin’ at him, hitting it full in the bark-crinkled face from ten yards. The other three scattered into the tents.

  The soldier turned about, Old Wristbreaker out before him. Something with little cold feet had run up the back of his neck and given him a tingle that he knew he could trust. Something low to the soil, wearing a tall-crowned hat, had scampered behind the barn like a stray dog. Prophet Lehi must have circled Zion and come in due west across the desert; a slower and more indirect route, but better for evading the eyes of the dragoon.

  The soldier knelt down and reloaded the carbine, the pistol. Holstered the pistol, stood up and trotted to the barn in search of the Prophet.

  ‘Lehi! You cocksucker –’

  Out of the smoke and fire in the building beside the barn came a sharp orange crack of light and something like a fist punched the trooper from his feet. He felt three ribs snap like wheel spokes, lost all the air from his lungs and knew that he was hit, and hit wet-through his right side. When he tried to drag in a breath, the pain was so bad that it would not even let him scream.

  He scrabbled about in the dust to get at the carbine that he had thrown away as he fell.

  From behind the burning buildings, the Prophet let out a cry of triumph and fury, and called his decimated congregation to perform a service long overdue. ‘And he will atone, my brothers, my sisters. And he will atone with his blood that we shall let on this holy shore!’

  Up popped a trio of dreadful raggedy heads from among the tents. They weaved from side to side as they tried to sight the wounded soldier with their dim eyes, and then they dropped and scurried to where the soldier lay blind and sick-white with pain.

  He snapped his head up twice, when the black swoops came into his burning eyes and tried to put him down and to sleep. He checked the sopping hand that clutched his right side. The bullet had ripped away the skin and muscle below his nipple and smashed some bones. He prayed the ball had not fragmented down and into his belly because he could feel a hundred little brands burning inside a stomach that he might never eat with again.

  The Nephites came at him quickly too, seeing as he was down and winged bad. They hopped madly at him from out of the tents. They could also scent his hot blood in the dust and all over his white skin, and that made them prance and skip and yowl like hungry cats, and cry stark like starving black crows.

  On his other side he heard the preacher’s boots in the dirt.

  The dragoon clenched his teeth, drew his pistol and looked back at the blaze beside the barn, but Lehi was using the smoke as cover while reloading. The trooper turned and shot out the face of something on all fours that was the first to the feast. The other two broke around him, and shrieked at the sound of his gun.

  He got up to his knees and then his feet. Unsheathed Old Wristbreaker with his left hand. The ground swooped and swooned around him.

  Something landed on his back and bit deep through his hat, and he felt his scalp come up and off his bones in a whole mess of dirty chewing teeth. He threw the Nephite over his shoulders and stamped on its head to smash it still in the dirt. The second one leaped up at him, long fingers going for his eyes, but he ran Old Wristbreaker through its grubby bodice and held it away from his body, and watched it writhe like a serpent. Put it down and stamped it still and off his sabre with one quick boot, like he was trampling dry kindling flat.

  Lehi showed himself then. All teeth under a black hat and one long arm out front with a long pistol waving in his white hand. An old cavalry pistol and not accurate; as likely to blow a man’s hand off as to hit a target at no more than twenty yards. The Prophet had been lucky with that first shot from out by the barn. He aimed to make certain with the second and came in close to do it.

  ‘Looks like I need to start up a new congregation here, Ephraim.’ A few wisps of hair moved gently as Lehi came up closer on him. One knee that was mostly bone stuck through the preacher’s trouser leg.

  The soldier tottered, sweat-soaked and bleeding. He held his sabre up, but doubted he had the strength to use it again, or even the strength to curse himself for getting so far but failing to behead this false prophet, this corrupt messiah, before his last breath. But deep down, beneath the burning pain and flooding away of his life, the soldier still found an ember of hatred so hot for this devil, that he managed to spit at it.

  The devil grinned from under the brim of its black hat. Its voice was soft and gentle and near feminine. ‘Soldier, I might jus’ start a new followin’ with you. You’d make a fine fightin’ apostle. Whaddya say, trooper? I bit your sister good on our weddin’ night, in your uncle’s bed. She tasted sweet. Bet her brother done taste like milk and honey. She bore me two, soldier. And your nephews lie out yonder, waitin’ for the sweet red milk o’ life.’

  The soldier shook his head, his eyes blurred by tears, his heart burned to a husk by the unceasing horrors that confronted his weary eyes and scorched his ears.

  The Prophet aimed the long, heavy barrel of the pistol between the dragoon’s eyes. ‘Or maybe I should jus’ cut you down here and swallow you like the fish and loaves that our saviour put out for the five thousand. Yes, I do believe I may rightly –’

  The Prophet was jerked off his feet.

>   Twisted in the air.

  Hit the sand with a great dusty thump.

  And then the soldier heard the musket break the desert air further out.

  Down in the sand, the Prophet wrenched himself about like a man having a fit; his gun arm was twisted out and away from his body.

  His eyes mostly closed, the soldier turned about, his sword dragging through the dirt. And he saw the small, old prospector with the filthy beard coming across the white sand slowly, his musket longer even than he was.

  The soldier turned back to the Prophet Lehi, who had turned round and got to its thin knees. Was trying to take the pistol from its right hand with the left. The musket ball had hit its chest and smitten through the back of its jacket and cape, which smoked whitish around a dry hole.

  Using both hands, holding the weight of the sword with his left and guiding with his right, the soldier raised Old Wristbreaker, but it made him cry out and then drop the sabre’s point. The pain in his side was too great for vengeance to have its way and he cried out in his despair, and his wretchedness, and for the blood that fell from him and for the sister that was took from him. He bent double and held himself up on his feet with the sword as a crutch. Then rose with the last of himself and let that sword fall hard into the Prophet’s scrawny neck.

  It knocked Lehi flat down in the dirt, but did not sever his head.

  The old man came up to him. ‘Easy. Easy. Easy,’ he said. Then looked at the preacher and spat a long stream of tobacco and saliva across the back of that white skull. Trod a foot in a dirty moccasin onto the Prophet’s gun hand. ‘Shee-it. I’ll be. Man ain’t alive nor dead. How can that be? Sweet Jesus.’

  ‘My pistol. Load it,’ the soldier said.

  ‘Yessir.’ The old prospector took the pistol and loaded it with powder and ball and handed it to the dragoon.

  ‘Lehi. My sister. Where is she?’

  The Prophet spat and gasped, his mouth wet with black blood. And his face twisted and every tendon stretched inside that long neck and sharp jaw, and the jabbering that came out of that mouth and into the air in the thin, high voice of a child was words that no old prospector and soldier would ever make sense of. So the soldier terminated the interview. He was close to fainting and needed to know, before he left the world, that the Prophet was truly dead. So he put the dragoon pistol against the back of that pale, cold skull and shot it all apart like a pumpkin off a fencepost.