by S. A. Sidor
“What’s she doing here?” I asked.
“This is Waterston’s secretary,” Kittle said, his forehead knit in consternation. “We brought her along.”
“What the devil for?”
“Good question,” she said. Staves grabbed her elbow and she pulled free.
“I thought she might… we should ask her–”
Kittle stumbled for an answer, and then the trio literally stumbled forward as the train jerked to a final, unsettling halt.
“They’ll come for us now,” Thomas said to no one in particular. He stared at the floor, his shoulders slumping as if his strength were draining from him. While drawing a deep breath, he looked heavenward and mumbled a silent prayer, presumably asking for our holy deliverance.
“Can we lock this door?” I asked.
“No, the doors don’t have locks.”
The secretary squirmed around the crates to stand beside the largest. “Odji-Kek’s sarcophagus?” she asked, rapping her knuckles against the side and putting her ear to the box to listen, oblivious to the impending danger of the robbers.
“Well, at least close the damned door,” I said. Staves did just that.
“Have you seen him?” the secretary asked.
“Seen who?” I grew alarmed once I noticed the small hammer in her grip. She began to pry at the lid. It screeched. She flicked her wrist and a nail fell to the floor.
“Does he visit you in your dreams?” Her eyes flashed at me.
“What? Stop doing that!”
She kept up her assault on the sarcophagus crate, working loose the next nail.
“Get away from there!”
The secretary backed off sulkily and returned the hammer to her handbag.
Reports of gunshots and a piercing scream traveled from the direction of the engine. Then silence, except for the ticking of the wind. Kittle stuck his head out a side window. Sand scoured the length of the train. He pulled back. Grit peppered his hair.
“I can’t make out a damn thing! It’s worse than a blizzard.”
“If they start robbing passengers from the front of the train, we will have some time to fortify our position.” I tried to sound hopeful.
“Necrófagos don’t rob anyone till they’ve killed everyone,” Thomas said.
“Thank you, Thomas,” I said.
“Then they can take all they want from a man and even more from a woman–”
“Enough! We are fully aware of the direness of our situation.”
“What does he mean ‘even more from a woman’?” Kittle asked, rubbing his eyes.
“They lay with their corpses,” the secretary answered. “But I wouldn’t grant they are as choosy for partners as the good porter thinks. And tastes among men do vary.”
Her comment did more to silence Kittle and Thomas than mine had.
14
Another Axe in the Door
“Exactly who are you, Miss?”
“I told you, she’s Waterston’s secretary. Staves and I are both absolutely–”
I interrupted Kittle, “I’m asking the lady.”
She had collapsed sullenly, dramatically into one of the leather armchairs. She did not look at any of the men. Her gaze aimed outside, into the blowing sands, but she did not look there either. It was something internal she dwelled on, and whatever it was, I pitied it. Disappointment, frustration, anger – judging by her frowns, these feelings mingled and vexed her, and she would demand a toll for enduring them.
Exactly who am I?
My question was obviously turning around in her mind as she considered various answers, but what she said finally, with a mocking formality, was: “I am Montague Waterston’s assistant in matters of occult interest. I manage his extensive library of rare books, papers, and illustrations. When necessary I act as his business secretary concerning affairs related to his… unique collections. Mr Waterston is quite ill, near death I’m afraid.” Here I detected genuine concern. “Of late, I handle all his correspondence.”
My skin prickled.
“But you aren’t–”
“Yes, that too. I am… also his daughter.”
“Evangeline,” as I said her name, she looked at me.
She has very green eyes, I thought. Cat’s eyes.
“Did your father send you to spy on us?”
“No one sends me anywhere. Not even my father. That’s more than can be said for you, Mr Hardy. Coming was my choice. If I had asked, Father would have forbid me to go. He doesn’t know I’m here. In fact he thinks I’m still in New York shopping.” She sighed. “I suppose he’ll find out everything now that we’ve had this disaster.”
“It isn’t a disaster yet,” I insisted. “The banditos don’t know about the mummies. If they open the crates, what will they see? Coffins. That sarcophagus is too heavy for them to steal on horseback. We’ve only hit a bump in the road, if we can survive it.”
There came a solid bump then, not in any road, but above us.
Somebody had landed on top of the carriage.
Footsteps began a slow walk toward the back. They paused over our heads.
Staves aimed his rifle, but before I could caution him to hold fire, he pulled the trigger. The noise was huge. My spine tried its best to jump out the back of my suit. Staves’ bullet punched through the roof and a weight above us collapsed heavily, but no evidence of a body rolled past the windows. Burnt gunpowder hazed the room.
A sunbeam shined down through the hole.
“Storm’s blowin’ itself out,” Thomas said, as the windows lightened.
All eyes stayed fastened to the ceiling. Ten ears hearkened for any sound.
“I think you got him,” Kittle said, at last. He clapped his partner on the shoulder.
Staves smiled.
We all exhaled our relief, nodding in agreement at his marksmanship.
Then Thomas shouted, “Up there!”
The bullet hole went dark, and a long, gummy gray finger twisted through.
It wiggled, intelligently if you could call it that, and it made me wonder if the exposed flesh could somehow sense we were watching. Or, in fact, if it somehow watched us back.
“Son of a–!” Kittle fired his Colt .45. Once, twice – the finger snapped off and, hitting a wall, tumbled into Evangeline’s lap.
Kittle squeezed another shot into the upper boards.
“Easy,” Staves said. He put up his hand. “Don’t waste ammunition.”
Evangeline had not moved. She slipped on a pair of lace gloves – they opened into white ruffles at her wrists – and picked up the finger. Pinching it by its overgrown and mossy nail, more of a talon actually, she inspected the severed digit.
“It smells bad.”
“Of course it does,” I said. “It’s been blown off.”
“No, it smells old. Rotten.” She prodded, stroked, and gave a not too gentle pinch. “It feels wrong as well – all cool and waxy, like a candle.”
Inquiry ended, she tossed the finger out the window.
Thomas said, “Look at that! Not a drop of blood. I told you they don’t bleed like us.” The porter stepped under the hole in the ceiling. “Where’s the damn blood at?” he shouted.
The bullet hole closed up a second time, but now it was a gun barrel doing the plugging. The gun barked downward, close enough to scorch the porter’s uniform. An angry red fountain lifted his cap. The blast unhinged his jawbone, which tried to work in disbelief until his eyes rolled like two ivory balls and he slumped to the floor, dead.
Kittle emptied his revolver over our heads.
Staves followed the retreating footsteps with a line of hot flying lead that perforated the roof but had little or no effect on the rooftop walker, for the next sound we heard was someone dropping outside the door and decoupling our car from the train.
Evangeline and I dragged poor Thomas into a corner. She covered his face with his blood-soaked cap, opened his jacket, and unbuttoned his shirt. I watched as she retrieved a small vial
from her handbag; in it amber liquid wobbled with the consistency of oil – a quick shake released bits of herb from the sediment. She dabbed the vial’s stopper along the dead man’s neck and chest, leaving behind a weedy aromatic scent.
“What are you doing?”
“What little I can to keep them off him,” she said.
Kittle shakily reloaded from his pocket. Staves shouldered his rifle, taking aim at the door, beyond which the slithering clink and clank of metal had long since ceased.
Minutes – though they seemed like hours – later, the train began to reverse, and then with a bump and a rough jolt it pulled forward again, but without us attached.
I dared not stick my head outside for a curious look.
Horses… I heard horses.
The four of us raced to join Thomas on the floor, below the window level.
“I don’t like this,” Kittle said. “What’re they waiting for?”
My thoughts turned to ingress and egress. Where could the necrófagos come in, and where could we go out? I waited for the horrid sham faces to press at the windows. I wondered if they could smell Thomas’ fresh corpse or the oil Evangeline used on him.
The carriage had four doors. The two large center sliding doors for loading baggage – how we got the crates aboard – were padlocked from outside. The conductor had the only key. The rear access led to a balcony, a hip-high iron railing, and gated steps going down to the left or right. The third doorway had connected formerly with the train. Kittle chose to open that one just a crack. The train had moved but not far.
“If the tracks are missing, where do they expect to go?”
I had no answer for Kittle, nor as it proved did I need one.
A voice called, “Hello? Won’t you come out, gentlemen? Please, please join us.”
I was surprised to hear a necrófago speaking at all, let alone words I understood, and doubly surprised at the calm civility of the request.
Kittle nudged the door with his boot, his .45 pistol upraised for any trouble.
The door slammed shut.
Chuuunk! An axe blade burst the wood above Kittle’s head. He threw himself down and curled on his side. Inches of steel, a gleaming edge – pull, squeak, pull – and the blade jerked free. Wood splinters framed the crack. Shadow blurred it. Then an eye and a circle of rouged cheek filled the gap, looking left looking right. The eye vanished.
“I’m fine,” Kittle said through crossed arms. The pistol lay under him.
The voice, again.
“Amigos? Use the back door, no? And come out please so very, very slow and one at a time. Your hands are holding up to the sky, yes? You do this now. We wait.”
The English was imperfect, the diction languorous and slurred, as if it came from farther away than a Mexican train robber’s mouth. The speaker was not our axe man. He sat on a horse out there somewhere behind the train. I looked for him. The sun’s white fireball floated up from the desert and stole the vapor from my breath.
“I can’t see anything… just awful, terrible brightness,” I said.
“Stay here and all they have to do is to keep shooting until we’re dead. I don’t need another axe in the door to tell me when it’s time to leave.” Evangeline stood and brushed out the lines of her dress. “We have no other choice but to talk to them.”
I reached for her, but she had already swung the door wide and stepped out onto the balcony. Though there was a canopy above, she shielded her gaze, her eyes picking at pebbles in the dirt. Her silhouette moved, replaced by a bright white shaft that cut across the coffins inside the black carriage.
“And a lady, too. Ahh, miss, forgive me for not realizing. Come. Push your hands up… hi-higher… mmmm… women kill same as men, you know? Gooooood.”
If I said I felt cold that would sound strange, but those sunrays burned like ice pressing on bare skin, not hot or cold but only burning, and the voice burned the same way. I did not know Evangeline then, but how could I let her walk out alone to meet the owner of that voice?
I went after her.
15
El Gusano
We stood side-by-side blinking in the desert glare.
Five riders were fanned out behind the train car. One sat upon a huge black Paint Horse between the tracks. Two pairs of armed banditos flanked him, spaced a few feet apart on either side of the rails, these four were dead-faced and slumped in their saddles as scarecrows would be if they took to riding. Even with the wind dying down, the stink of carrion was overpowering. First, I heard the buzzing. Then I saw them everywhere, the source of the noise: flies, a cloud of hundreds, maybe thousands, searching, landing, crawling. I felt a tickle on my cheek, tiny legs moving – testing. I flicked it away.
They’re waiting for something, I thought. Something they know is coming.
The necrófagos were waiting too.
“They’re wearing masks,” I said to Evangeline.
“I see that. Faces of their favorite victims, I imagine.”
“You take the news rather well.”
“There’s nothing to be done about it. They’re ghouls, as the local legend states.”
“So you know something about ghouls?”
“Only what I’ve read. This is the first time I’ve met any personally.” Evangeline inclined her head closer to me – those large green eyes changed depth with the light. She lowered her voice. “But there’s something really bothering me about the middle one.”
My sight had adjusted somewhat. Squinting, I tried not to stare too hard.
The middle one. He seemed even uglier and quite a bit bulkier than his cohorts, but no worse. And he wore no mask, I noticed with surprise. Perhaps, if they were all this repulsive, that was the reason for the masks. A yellow-gray tuft grew out of the bloated place where he should have had a chin. His face shimmered with dots of sweat.
I said to Evangeline, “What’s the problem? Other than our obvious predicament…”
“He’s too fat. Ghouls aren’t supposed to be fat.”
“Ssssss… no talking. You listen now to me. Get your friends to come out here or I’m going to burn the train and cook them.” It was the fat one who spoke. The big black-and-white horse shifted under his weight. “Bring out the dead man too.”
How does he know about Thomas? I wondered.
“Because I can smell him, amigo.”
Keeping my voice to a whisper I said, “Can ghouls read minds?”
Evangeline shook her head.
From behind us, still hidden in the dark recesses of the private car, Kittle called to the bandito ghouls. “All right, we’re bringing out the body like you asked. Nobody shoot us.”
Kittle exchanged a few hurried, indecipherable words with Staves.
Then he shouted, “We’re coming out!”
The Pinkertons emerged carrying Thomas. Staves, gripping Thomas’ ankles, backed slowly down the carriage steps. Kittle had his hands under the dead man’s slack arms, and the detective’s chest forced the head of the corpse forward, baring its ghastly red wound.
Evangeline and I moved aside to allow the men to pass.
“Where do you want him?” Kittle asked the train robbers.
“Lay him here in front of us. Very good.” The fat one licked his lips. His tongue looked like a toad. It went back to hiding in the shadows.
I had some idea what Kittle and Staves were planning to do. I thought a distraction might help them to succeed. I stepped forward. “What is your name, sir?”
The fat one’s eyelids folded back in amusement.
“I am called El Gusano.”
He smiled. He had no teeth, but his gums were not smooth either. A bumpy purple cavern lurked in there. The flesh on my arms tingled with horripilation.
“Are you a Mexican?”
“I do not come from Mexico, though I have lived in her desert hills for many years.” His words clapped out dry as bricks. It made me thirsty listening to him talk.
“In this country,” I said, �
�we believe in the law. I hope you understand the grave seriousness of your crimes.” Ignoring my accidental pun, I continued, “Justice will come for you in one form or another. If not today, then one day soon. Remember that.”
“Worry about what’s coming for you, amigo. In one form or another, as you say.”
Kittle and Staves advanced with Thomas’ body.
Gravity pulled at the porter’s trouser leg and I saw the outline of the rifle. As the detectives squatted to lay the man’s body down, Staves clasped the Winchester and hauled it forth – or attempted to – while anchoring himself for some serious rapid shooting. The front sight snagged on the porter’s shoelace. Such trivial things decide men’s futures. Not long did it stay snagged, however. Staves quickly twisted it free.
Only not quickly enough.
A ghoul rode up and, drawing a cavalry saber from the wings of his long coat, he skewered Staves between the scapulas. The angle of impalement cut through his torso nearly perpendicular to the ground. Dropping his rifle, Staves stood tall and turned in a full circle. The red tip of the saber jutted through the fly of his pants.
“Sweet Lord,” he said, looking down. His thumb tested the naked point as if to judge its sharpness. A few stuttering paces carried him south of the train. He pivoted east, his face whitened and nodding a bit, he adjusted his course again, his mouth pursed with an unasked question and his gaze settled on nothing. Like a sleepwalker alone in dreams, a quizzical look affixed to his brow. After a paroxysm of body shaking – Awake, sleeper! – he fell down.
The Mexican ghoul whose saber it was led his horse over and coaxed the animal into stepping on the Pinkerton’s back until all nervous movement subsided. He dismounted, extracted the sword – a terrible, moist grating sound – and sleeved it, still red, in his scabbard.
We all watched, frozen at the spectacle.
Kittle, who had drawn his Colt from inside the porter’s jacket sleeve, regarded the revolver as if it had appeared by magic in his shaking hand.
He snapped to–
“Arrrrgghhh!”
–and charged.