Skin Medicine

by Tim Curran

  “You’re lucky to be alive, Mr. Cabe,” she kept saying as she drew him a bath. “Just darn lucky.”

  “Well, the fact that I am…well, it’s your husband’s doing.”

  “Jackson is a very dutiful man,” was all she would say on the matter.

  Cabe had his bath and when he went back to his room, planning on taking a nice long nap while he had the chance, Janice was waiting for him there. She had changed his sheets and bedclothes, had built a little fire in the corner stove. It felt nice in there, warm and comfortable.

  “Earlier this evening,” she said, “a man came to see you.”

  Cabe laid on the bed. “Not another one of the Clays?”

  “No. Nothing like that. This one was a very polished gentleman, said his name was Freeman.”

  Cabe sat up. “Freeman?”

  “Yes. Is that a problem?”

  Cabe wanted to lie, but he couldn’t bring himself to. He told her who and what Freeman was, how he and Dirker had almost got him.

  Janice looked decidedly pale, but recovered herself nicely as only a Southern lady could. “Well, yes, but I’m no prostitute.”

  “He could’ve killed you nonetheless.”

  And Cabe was figuring that was exactly what he’d had in mind. Freeman knew Cabe was after him and what better way to rub defeat in Cabe’s face than to not only slip away, but to slaughter the only woman in town he’d truly befriended.

  Janice said, “He told me, told me to tell you…”

  But it was getting to her now. Even all that breeding couldn’t fight the fear of what could have happened. Of what her death might have become. There was no getting around that. She allowed herself to be held and Cabe held her, liking the feel of her and smelling the wonderful musk of her flesh that no perfume could hope to mask.

  “Tell me,” he said after a time.

  She breathed deeply. “He said to tell you that he’s off for parts unknown. That you should not follow him…but, but to watch for signs of his work in other places in the years to come.”

  “Did he say anywhere particular?”

  “London. He said, in the coming years he would be busy in London.”

  But then none of it seemed to matter and all those months of hunting seemed trivial. Freeman had spared Janice and Cabe didn’t know why and could never truly guess, but it was enough. Enough then as she flowed into his arms and they melted together into a delicious pool of something seething and moist that was made of flesh and limbs and hot, seeking mouths. And then it was done and they lay naked in one another’s arms, each speechless in the warm afterglow.

  And each wondering, wondering, where it could possibly take them.

  21

  The morning after his wife made love to Tyler Cabe, Jackson Dirker was rooting through the remains of Redemption. The town was nearly destroyed. Even many, many hours after the initial attack that left no less than thirty dead (including Danites and vigilantes), the place was still smoldering. Though some homes were undamaged, most had been blasted or burned and there was stray livestock everywhere.

  An icy rain was falling and Dirker stood amongst the wreckage in his yellow slicker, feeling something coil in his belly.

  He was standing with a man named Eustice Harmony. Harmony had a farm well outside Redemption like many other Mormons. His family had taken in survivors from Redemption as had many others. But Harmony was more than just another Mormon squatter, he was a former resident of Deliverance.

  And the half brother of James Lee Cobb…more or less.

  More or less for nobody really knew who (or what) Cobb’s father was. His grandfather, the Minister Hope of Procton village, Connecticut, adopted him, packed him and his lunatic mother off to live with Arlen and Maretta Cobb in Missouri. And he himself left Procton shortly thereafter, for no one wanted anything to do with him or his church. They decided there was an evil taint on both. So the Minster moved to Illinois, remarried and, though he was well into his fifties, sired another family. One night, unable to resist the voices that tormented him, the Minister put a shotgun in his mouth and ended it. Eustice’s distraught mother christened all the children then with her family name, which was Harmony.

  In 1853, Eustice Harmony joined the Church of Latter Day Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois, and shortly thereafter set off for the promised land along the Mormon Pioneer Trail which began in Nauvoo and ended far west near the Great Salt Lake.

  Dirker was disgusted by what he saw. And truth be told, he was disgusted by just about everything in his job these days. For most of his life he’d been either a soldier or a lawman, had carried the respect and derision those offices inspire. But not once had he thought of being anything else.

  Until now.

  For, much as it pained him, he figured he’d had his fill.

  He took Harmony aside out of the rain and into an old millinery that was still standing, had been dusted out and was being used by the volunteers as a dry-out shack. There was no one in there.

  Dirker stood there, water dripping from him. “You know me, Eustice, you know the kind of man I am. I bear no prejudice against any. I’ve been good to you and your people. Have I not?”

  Harmony nodded. “Yes, you have been that. We could not have hoped for a finer lawman than you. You have been fair to us.” Harmony took his hat off, studied the brim. “I know…we know…you have tried to break up these vigilantes, but sometimes, sometimes there are far worse things.”

  “Such as?”

  “The vigilantes raided Redemption the past two nights running. But last night-”

  “Last night the Destroying Angels were waiting for them?”

  Harmony would not verbally admit to that, but he nodded silently. “But there was more here than just these two groups. From what I have been told, another group of riders came in…and attacked both parties.”

  Dirker swallowed. “This would be the same group responsible for what occurred in Sunset?”

  “Yes.”

  “And,” Dirker said, “would this group just happen to be riding out of Deliverance?”

  “Yes,” Harmony sighed.

  “Tell me about it, Eustice. I need to know now.”

  Harmony nodded. “It began with James Lee Cobb. You have, no doubt, heard rumors concerning him. Well, they are true, God help us all, they are true…”

  Harmony had never met his half-brother in person, not before he showed in Deliverance. And what brought that about was a letter. While safely confined in the Wyoming Territorial Prison, Cobb somehow, through some outside agency, discovered he had a half-brother in Utah Territory. Cobb wrote to Harmony and they began to exchange letters.

  “I believe, as our Lord Jesus Christ taught, that there is good in all men, Sheriff. I believed the same of James Lee Cobb. I wrote to him, telling him he must now turn from his life of vice and iniquity, that through Jesus Christ there could be forgiveness and salvation if he were to walk the path of righteousness and confess to his sins,” Harmony explained wearily. “And Cobb wrote back that, yes, he now sought only goodness and purity in his life. I wanted to believe this, Sheriff, but I could not. For there was an undercurrent to this man, something black and vile…but as a soldier of Christ, I could not turn away from him.”

  “But you wanted to,” Dirker suggested.

  “Yes, God, yes, I surely did.” Harmony was lost in thought for a moment. “Sheriff, although I did not personally know Cobb, I knew of him. Even before those letters began to arrive. There were things my father wrote down in a letter before he took his own life…things about his life in Procton, Connecticut and what horrors occurred there. My mother told me of them. Of the taint on our bloodline. Well, it is of no matter, I will not discuss these things. They are skeletons that shall remained locked in the family closet.”

  After he was released from prison, Cobb did not visit his half-brother in the newly-reclaimed village of Deliverance. Harmony had written to him that he must do this, must be baptized into the Church. The next he heard
of Cobb was a telegram from up in Toole County telling Harmony he had died. No details were given. Only that he had died while in the company of the Goshute and that his casket would be shipped to Whisper Lake. It apparently was his last request to be buried near kin.

  “Well, I’m sure you know what transpired. The casket indeed arrived and it was that night, while alone with it, that Hiram Callister died. The coroner ruled it suicide. I’m sure you recall this…”

  “I was not in town at the time,” Dirker told him. “Doc West ruled it suicide, though he was not at all convinced it was so. He did this to spare Caleb Callister the unpleasantries of an investigation. For it was widely-known by that point that his brother…well, that he was not exactly a wholesome sort.”

  Harmony just shook his head. “I know of Hiram Callister’s peculiarities. The rumors of which, at any rate. But Hiram’s death was not suicide. His throat was crushed and although he did indeed slit his own wrists, there are many who believe he was compelled to do it. Or did so rather than face what was in that casket…”

  “What was in there, Eustice? Was it Cobb?”

  Harmony told him pretty much what Cabe had. What was in there nearly scared the life from the men who’d brought it down from Skull Valley. Whatever was in there…no man could look upon it and retain his sanity.

  Harmony walked to the doorway, opened it a crack and stared out into the cold, misting rain which was rapidly turning Redemption into a sea of mud. “It was, perhaps, a week or two later when Cobb showed in Deliverance on a dark night of blowing wind. He wore a black velvet hood, claimed to be horribly scarred. He wore leather gloves on his hands. He came in the company of a group of, well, despicable characters. They were outlaws, soldiers of fortune, blooded killers-Crow and Hood, Greer and Cook, Bascombe and Wise…”

  They set up in a ruined hotel, Harmony said. The Mormons, being a charitable sort, did not run them off. Maybe they didn’t dare to. There was something very wrong about them all. They were invited to service, but declined. They sequestered themselves up in the old hotel, only coming out by night. They brought something with them in a wagon, something they would let no one look upon. Whatever it was, they locked it in a room in the hotel.

  “Did you ask what it was?” Dirker inquired.

  But Harmony just shook his head. “I did not. But I am certain it was a living thing…or nearly. For at night it howled and screeched and pounded on the walls. In the dead of night you could hear it up there, making the most depraved and blasphemous sounds. Whatever it was…it’s probably still there. I only know that Cobb’s men were overheard saying that it had come from Missouri…”

  Harmony’ face had gone bloodless at the memory of it. It took him a moment or two to gather himself. Then he continued.

  “There is a draw, a strange seduction to sin, to evil, Sheriff. It is the Devil’s primary tool: people will give themselves to Him in order to experience wicked gluttony.” Through the open door, Harmony watched men loading bodies in a wagon for burial. “Before long, women were spending time in that hotel. There was an unhealthy influence that Cobb and the others possessed. The young were drawn. By the time we realized that they were being taken over, body and soul, it was far too late. Our breathern had given themselves to the Evil One. Cobb had become their messiah. Those of us as yet uncorrupted, came here to Redemption to start again.”

  “And Deliverance?”

  “No God-fearing man or woman went there after that day,” Harmony explained, his face oddly slack. His lower lip trembled. “And those that did, were never heard from again.”

  “And what of that… personage they had locked away up in the hotel? Was it human? Animal?”

  “Neither,” was all Harmony would say. “But in my mind, it was the seed of human evil. There were those in Deliverance that said it was the Devil himself that was chained up there.”

  Dirker thought about it all. Thought about it long and hard. “And Cobb…he disappeared from the mortuary. If he was dead, how could that be?”

  “I don’t think he was dead,” Harmony said. “But surely not alive. His was the living death, Sheriff. No man will ever know what happened to him after he climbed from his casket. Some things are better not known.”

  Dirker was not about to argue with him. He was surely not convinced about any of this. Something had happened, yes, and Cobb was no doubt involved, but the supernatural? Dirker had heard stories and wild tales like any other, but he was not ready to accept such a thing.

  “I can see, by the look on your face, Sheriff, that you are skeptical. But what I tell you is the truth as the Lord is my witness. What happened in Deliverance is unspeakable…pagan rites, Devil worship, human sacrifice. It has been said that the first born, all the first born of Deliverance were given to Cobb as burnt offerings. To him and that demented thing up in the hotel.” Harmony looked close to tears now. “If God in His infinite wisdom would only smite that serpent’s nest from the land.”

  Dirker said, “Well, maybe God’s gonna need some help this time.”

  22

  Cabe pulled off his cigarette, sent the smoke out through his nostrils. “So, I reckon from what you’ve been saying that you talked to your Indian friends?”

  Charles Graybrow nodded. “Yes, I have.”

  “And…?”

  “Worse than I thought.”

  They were sitting in Cabe’s motel room, on the bed, sorting out those things that a week before would have been unthinkable by any sane man. Now, however, there was no choice but to look the devil, as it were, in the face and give him his due.

  “First off, you have to know about a Snake medicine man called Spirit Moon,” Graybrow said, his fingers coiling uneasily in his lap, unused to being without a ready bottle. “Now Spirit Moon…oh boy, he’s big mumbo-jumbo heap plenty bad injun witch doctor-”

  “Would you quit the dumb injun bit already?” Cabe said impatiently. “It’s funny at times. But now ain’t one of those times.”

  Graybrow nodded, smiled. “Sure, sure, understood. Okay, now Spirit Moon, you know something about him?”

  “I’ve heard a few things.”

  “What you heard is true. That’s one injun with the power, I tell you,” Graybrow said with complete certainty. “I won’t go on about things he’s done, the sick he’s cured and the bad ones he cursed…we’ll let it go by saying Spirit Moon is the genuine article. He refused to go to the reservation with the others, claimed that the Snake Nation would bow before no man, white or otherwise. So him and his followers hid out up in Skull Valley on Goshute land. And old Spirit Moon, he knew things that have long been forgotten, things others might want to know…”

  “Like who?” Cabe asked.

  “Like James Lee Cobb.”

  Ah, that name again. Cabe was beginning to get this picture of that crazy bastard in his mind and he had horns and a tail. Even the sound of that name was starting to leave him cold.

  “So Cobb went to Spirit Moon?”

  “That’s how the story goes. Cobb and his gang of bad men went to pay Spirit Moon a call.” Graybrow broke off, wanting to get it right as he’d heard it. “Now, understand that Spirit Moon didn’t make Cobb wicked, he already was. They say he was born of darkness. That he lived a life of depravity and the like. That up in the mountains…up there, well, he didn’t eat his friends because he just wanted to, but because something crawled into him. The sort of thing the Ojibwa up north might call a Wendigo. A cannibal devil, a soul-eater…”

  Graybrow told him then the story he had heard from an old Goshute named He-Who-Runs-Swift.

  Cobb and his boys rode right into Spirit Moon’s camp, a thing many others would have been afraid to do. At first, Cobb was friendly. He made up some bullshit story about needed sanctuary for a time being that the whites were hunting him and his men. It was a lie, but essentially true in that just about all his boys were wanted for something, somewhere.

  But you could not fool Sprit Moon.

  He had the gift
to look into minds, to see truths, things that had not yet even come about. He instructed his people to be kind to Cobb and the others, for even at that point he knew what Cobb was, hoped only that he would ride off given time. But it was not to be so. For what lived in Cobb, the seed planted there at birth and nurtured by what Spirit Moon called “the Old One of the Mountain”, was not in complete control just then. But it had found fertile ground and was blossoming by the day.

  Before long, Cobb admitted that he knew of Spirit Moon, knew of his great knowledge and that he had come to learn from him. By that point, everyone in the tribe was afraid of Cobb. Afraid of what was inside him and the hideous smell emanating from him, the voices heard speaking in his tent by night…even when he was alone. Spirit Moon told Cobb he would indeed teach him, but only him. That he must send his men away. Cobb agreed. Spirit Moon had no intention of teaching him; he planned on killing him. There was no other way. For Cobb was evil and he had to be purified and death was the only way. But Spirit Moon knew he had to be careful…for if it was done wrongly, what lived in Cobb would rise up and kill the entire tribe.

  “Well, Tyler Cabe,” Graybrow went on, “before Spirit Moon could do what had to be done, a woman disappeared from camp. Her remains were discovered shortly thereafter. Cobb had nearly devoured her…”

  “Jesus. They caught him in the act?”

  Graybrow shrugged. “Perhaps. I do not know. Only that when he was questioned about the crime by Spirit Moon and the elders, he freely admitted that, yes, he had eaten her. He boasted of it. Of the many people he had eaten. That his strength was absorbed directly from the flesh of those he feasted upon.

  “Well, it took no less than five or six strong warriors to hold him down so he could be shackled,” Graybrow said. “So maybe there was some truth to what he said. And next…”

  What happened to Cobb next, was not pleasant.

  The Snake called it “the Living Death”. It was a sacred, dark ritual reserved only for those who could not die in the normal way and were possessed of something discarnate and malevolent. Spirit Moon decided that it was the only way. For what was in Cobb had to be starved to death. Only this would force it into cold dormancy. So Cobb was cursed with the Living Death. Hung by the wrists, Cobb was bound by the medicine man’s sorcery. He was treated with herbs and roots, secret chemicals and wasting prayers. The skin was literally eaten from one side of his body by ants. He was hung in a medicine lodge, dangled from the roof and smoked over a fire of holy balms for three days while Spirit Moon and the other holy men chanted a ceremony of entombment over him. When it was over, Cobb was neither dead nor alive, but somewhere in-between.