For a long time there was nothing. Not a sound. Then Jebidiah saw a shadow move at the doorway and heard the door creak slightly as it moved. He could see a hand on what appeared to be an impossibly long arm, reaching out to grab at the edge of the door. The hand clutched there for a long time, not moving. Then, it was gone, taking its shadow with it.
Time crawled by.
“It’s at the window,” the deputy said, and his voice was so soft it took Jebidiah a moment to decipher the words. Jebidiah turned carefully for a look.
It sat on the window sill, crouched there like a bird of prey, a halo of bees circling around its head. The hive pulsed and glowed in its chest, and in that glow they could see more bees, so thick they appeared to be a sort of humming smoke. Gimet’s head sprouted a few springs of hair, like withering grass fighting its way through stone. A slight turn of its head allowed the moon to flow through the back of its cracked skull and out of its empty eyes. Then the head turned and the face was full of shadows again. The room was silent except for the sound of buzzing bees.
“Courage,” Jebidiah said, his mouth close to the deputy’s ear. “Keep your place.”
The thing climbed into the room quickly, like a spider dropping from a limb, and when it hit the floor, it stayed low, allowing the darkness to lay over it like a cloak.
Jebidiah had turned completely on the bench now, facing the window. He heard a scratching sound against the floor. He narrowed his eyes, saw what looked like a shadow, but was in fact the thing coming out from under the table.
Jebidiah felt the deputy move, perhaps to bolt. He grabbed his arm and held him.
“Courage,” he said.
The thing kept crawling. It came within three feet of the circle made by the crumpled bible pages.
The way the moonlight spilled through the window and onto the floor near the circle Jebidiah had made, it gave Gimet a kind of eerie glow, his satellite bees circling his head. In that moment, every aspect of the thing locked itself in Jebidiah’s mind. The empty eyes, the sharp, wet teeth, the long, cracked nails, blackened from grime, clacking against the wooden floor. As it moved to cross between two wads of scripture, the pages burst into flames and a line of crackling blue fulmination moved between the wadded pages and made the circle light up fully, all the way around, like Ezekiel’s wheel.
Gimet gave out with a hoarse cry, scuttled back, clacking nails and knees against the floor. When he moved, he moved so quickly there seemed to be missing spaces between one moment and the next. The buzzing of Gimet’s bees was ferocious.
Jebidiah grabbed the lantern, struck a match and lit it. Gimet was scuttling along the wall like a cockroach, racing to the edge of the window.
Jebidiah leaped forward, tossed the lit lantern, hit the beast full in the back as it fled through the window. The lantern burst into flames and soaked Gimlet’s back, causing a wave of fire to climb from the thing’s waist to the top of its head, scorching a horde of bees, dropping them from the sky like exhausted meteors.
Jebidiah drew his revolver, snapped off a shot. There was a howl of agony, and then the thing was gone.
Jebidiah raced out of the protective circle and the deputy followed. They stood at the open window, watched as Gimet, flame-wrapped, streaked through the night in the direction of the graveyard.
“I panicked a little,” Jebidiah said. “I should have been more resolute. Now he’s escaped.”
“I never even got off a shot,” the deputy said. “God, but you’re fast. What a draw.”
“Look, you stay here if you like. I’m going after him. But I tell you now, the circle of power has played out.”
The deputy glanced back at it. The pages had burned out and there was nothing now but a black ring on the floor.
“What in hell caused them to catch fire in the first place?”
“Evil,” Jebidiah said. “When he got close, the pages broke into flames. Gave us the protection of God. Unfortunately, as with most of God’s blessings, it doesn’t last long.”
“I stay here, you’d have to put down more pages.”
“I’ll be taking the bible with me. I might need it.”
“Then I guess I’ll be sticking.”
***
They climbed out the window and moved up the hill. They could smell the odor of fire and rotted flesh in the air. The night was as cool and silent as the graves on the hill.
Moments later they moved amongst the stones and wooden crosses, until they came to a long wide hole in the earth. Jebidiah could see that there was a burrow at one end of the grave that dipped down deeper into the ground.
Jebidiah paused there. “He’s made this old grave his den. Dug it out and dug deeper.”
“How do you know?” the deputy asked.
“Experience…And it smells of smoke and burned skin. He crawled down there to hide. I think we surprised him a little.”
Jebidiah looked up at the sky. There was the faintest streak of pink on the horizon. “He’s running out of daylight, and soon he’ll be out of moon. For a while.”
“He damn sure surprised me. Why don’t we let him hide? You could come back when the moon isn’t full, or even half full. Back in the daylight, get him then.”
“I’m here now. And it’s my job.”
“That’s one hell of a job you got, mister.”
“I’m going to climb down for a better look.”
“Help yourself.”
Jebidiah struck a match and dropped himself into the grave, moved the match around at the mouth of the burrow, got down on his knees and stuck the match and his head into the opening.
“Very large,” he said, pulling his head out. “I can smell him. I’m going to have to go in.”
“What about me?”
“You keep guard at the lip of the grave,” Jebidiah said, standing. “He may have another hole somewhere, he could come out behind you for all I know. He could come out of that hole even as we speak.”
“That’s wonderful.”
Jebidiah dropped the now dead match on the ground. “I will tell you this. I can’t guarantee success. I lose, he’ll come for you, you can bet on that, and you better shoot those silvers as straight as William Tell’s arrows.”
“I’m not really that good a shot.”
“I’m sorry,” Jebidiah said, and struck another match along the length of his pants seam, then with his free hand, drew one of his revolvers. He got down on his hands and knees again, stuck the match in the hole and looked around. When the match was near done, he blew it out.
“Ain’t you gonna need some light?” the deputy said. “A match ain’t nothin’.”
“I’ll have it.” Jebidiah removed the remains of the bible from his pocket, tore it in half along the spine, pushed one half in his coat, pushed the other half before him, into the darkness of the burrow. The moment it entered the hole, it flamed.
“Ain’t your pocket gonna catch inside that hole?” the deputy asked.
“As long as I hold it or it’s on my person, it won’t harm me. But the minute I let go of it, and the aura of evil touches it, it’ll blaze. I got to hurry, boy.”
With that, Jebidiah wiggled inside the burrow.
***
In the burrow, Jebidiah used the tip of his pistol to push the bible pages forward. They glowed brightly, but Jebidiah knew the light would be brief. It would burn longer than writing paper, but still, it would not last long.
After a goodly distance, Jebidiah discovered the burrow dropped off. He found himself inside a fairly large cavern. He could hear the sound of bats, and smell bat guano, which in fact, greased his path as he slid along on his elbows until he could stand inside the higher cavern and look about. The last flames of the bible burned itself out with a puff of blue light and a sound like an old man breathing his last.
Jebidiah listened in the dark for a long moment. He could hear the bats squeaking, moving about. The fact that they had given up the night sky, let Jebidiah know daylight was not far off.
Jebidiah’s ears caught a sound, rocks shifting against the cave floor. Something was moving in the darkness, and he didn’t think it was the bats. It scuttled, and Jebidiah felt certain it was close to the floor, and by the sound of it, moving his way at a creeping pace. The hair on the back of Jebidiah’s neck bristled like porcupine quills. He felt his flesh bump up and crawl. The air became stiffer with the stench of burnt and rotting flesh. Jebidiah’s knees trembled. He reached cautiously inside his coat pocket, produced a match, struck it on his pants leg, held it up.
At that very moment, the thing stood up and was brightly lit in the glow of the match, the bees circling its skin-stripped skull. It snarled and darted forward. Jebidiah felt its rotten claws on his shirt front as he fired the revolver. The blaze from the bullet gave a brief, bright flare and was gone. At the same time, the match was knocked out of his hand and Jebidiah was knocked backwards, onto his back, the thing’s claws at his throat. The monster’s bees stung him. The stings felt like red-hot pokers entering his flesh. He stuck the revolver into the creature’s body and fired. Once. Twice. Three times. A fourth.
Then the hammer clicked empty. He realized he had already fired two other shots. Six dead silver soldiers were in his cylinders, and the thing still had hold of him.
He tried to draw his other gun, but before he could, the thing released him, and Jebidiah could hear it crawling away in the dark. The bats fluttered and screeched.
Confused, Jebidiah drew the pistol, managed to get to his feet. He waited, listening, his fresh revolver pointing into the darkness.
Jebidiah found another match, struck it.
The thing lay with its back draped over a rise of rock. Jebidiah eased toward it. The silver loads had torn into the hive. It oozed a dark, odiferous trail of death and decaying honey. Bees began to drop to the cavern floor. The hive in Gimet’s chest sizzled and pulsed like a large, black knot. Gimet opened his mouth, snarled, but otherwise didn’t move.
Couldn’t move.
Jebidiah, guided by the last wisps of his match, raised the pistol, stuck it against the black knot, and pulled the trigger. The knot exploded. Gimet let out with a shriek so sharp and loud it startled the bats to flight, drove them out of the cave, through the burrow, out into the remains of the night.
Gimet’s claw-like hands dug hard at the stones around him, then he was still and Jebidiah’s match went out.
***
Jebidiah found the remains of the bible in his pocket, and as he removed it, tossed it on the ground, it burst into flames. Using the two pistol barrels like large tweezers, he lifted the burning pages and dropped them into Gimet’s open chest. The body caught on fire immediately, crackled and popped dryly, and was soon nothing more than a blaze. It lit the cavern up bright as day.
Jebidiah watched the corpse being consumed by the biblical fire for a moment, then headed toward the burrow, bent down, squirmed through it, came up in the grave.
He looked for the deputy and didn’t see him. He climbed out of the grave and looked around. Jebidiah smiled. If the deputy had lasted until the bats charged out, that was most likely the last straw, and he had bolted.
Jebidiah looked back at the open grave. Smoke wisped out of the hole and out of the grave and climbed up to the sky. The moon was fading and the pink on the horizon was widening.
Gimet was truly dead now. The road was safe. His job was done.
At least for one brief moment.
Jebidiah walked down the hill, found his horse tied in the brush near the road where he had left it. The deputy’s horse was gone, of course, the deputy most likely having already finished out Deadman’s road at a high gallop, on his way to Nacogdoches, perhaps to have a long drink of whisky and turn in his badge.
Fiction: Eating Crow by Neal Barrett, Jr.
“They’re dogs.”
“Dogs?”
“Look at them on the TV, sir. They’re dogs.”
“That’s impossible. They can’t be dogs. Beings from the stars are not dogs.”
“No offense, Mr. President. They’re fricking dogs.”
“I’ll ask you to watch your language, Jim.”
“Bob.”
“What?”
“Bob, sir. I’m Bob. Your Secretary of State.”
“Of course you are. Now what in blazes is going on here, Bob? And what are you doing about it? We simply can’t have dogs, hovering over the White House. Have you talked to them? Can’t they hover somewhere else?”
“I’ve talked to one, sir.”
“One.”
“The one out there, sir. On the lawn.”
“Jesus, Bob. That’s a dog.”
“Yes, sir.”
“He hasn’t done anything, has he? On the lawn, I mean. If people see that… Jim, what do they want? Women? That’s what they want on SCI-FI Channel. Scantily clad women.”
“Bob, sir. No, sir, the one I talked to, he wants to eat a crow.”
“That’s disgusting. Even for a dog. Okay, he wants a crow, give him a crow.”
“I gave him a crow, He doesn’t want a crow, he wants a Crow. A Native American, sir.”
“Good Lord! Well, he can’t have one. You know what Bill O’Reilly would do with that?”
“I told him, Mr. President. He says we better do it. He says we maybe noticed that’s a pretty big ship. He says he’ll toast a couple of states, see if you change your mind.”
“What kind of states?”
“New York, Connecticut. Eastern Seaboard, Maine to Florida, down through the Keys.”
“One Crow, Bob. That’s it. And no women.”
“Right, sir. That’s a good decision, sir.”
“I’m the decisioner, Bob. That what’s I do.”
***
“Holy Eagle crap, what are you supposed to be?”
“You are Retching Bison, Jr., a person of the Injun persuasion? I am J’haan of the Tzūn folk. On your planet I am known as Dog.”
“You’re kidding. That’s a dog suit, right? A hell of a good suit but a fricking suit. Man, how do you get your legs to bend like that? That is terrific. Really. So what are you selling, dude? Whatever it is, we don’t want any. And we don’t say Injun, pal. We say Absaroka. Crow, to you. Suppose you take your shaggy ass right off the reservation, before you get a traditional arrow up the kazoo.”
“Sorry, I cannot go now, Absaroka guy. Bob, who is secretary of the states, is to pick me up when I am done. We are staying at the hotel place in Billings of Montana. He will return in two of your Earthly hours. I should be done by then.”
“Be done what?”
“I fear that is of a confidential nature. Tell me, please. I must be correctly in this. How do I know you are a Crow? How do I know you are a Native of America or not? What if that is a merely a native suit? Where is your feather? Where are your mocs and the beach cloth to cover your ding?”
“Dong. And we don’t do feathers. Not with a three-piece and a tie. J’haan, is it? I had a dog named Duke, and another named Spot. Duke’s likely dead. Spot ran off. Look, you going to hang around here, sit, stay. I can’t stand to see you bouncing around on two legs. I think I’m at the fricking circus.”
“A circus is an event of peanuts and merry-making. I know that. We have learned much from your motioning picture and television shows. There is little to do in the spaces-in-between but peek into planetary fun on the orbs we pass by. I have watched the antics of the Lucy and the See-Es-Eyes. Peepee Herman and his band. The battle of the Leons and the Giants.
“Passing your world is where I came upon the topic that brings me here now. Much has puzzled my head. I will not deign to mention my anger at learning what ‘pet’ means. The Tzūn folk will not be forgetting this. Now, however, answer these things if you will: What is ‘Dog Gone?’ A dog is not here, a dog is gone? Gone where? Are dog days different than person days? How does that work? Is there a time differential among my kinsmen here? Why is there such great interest in dog-eared, dogface, dog fight? dog
house, dog leg, dogging it, dogie, dog’s life, put on the dog? Put what on the dog, and why? Why is there a dog in the manger? I know about mangers, and what is the dog doing there in the first place? I do not understand why it is best to let sleeping dogs lie. Lying is pointless when one is not in the conscious state. And besides, how do you know if one is doing a fibbing in his sleep? You have no powers of the sensory kind, we are certain of that.
“These and other things are of great concern to me. But what has brought me here, Retching Bison, Jr., is this business about Dogs and Crows. I can see you are of the humans. Not of the shade, say, of Bob, secretary of the states, but human nevertheless. Why, then, does history and stuff remind us that the Crow is the white man’s dog? White men, such as the Bob, can surely tell you are not of a dogly nature at all. Why, then, do we of the Tzūn come across this statement in countless bad motion-movie shows? Why do the jonwaines say this over and over again? It is, of course, an honor to be a dog, but not so much, I think, in such a case as this.”
“I cannot answer all of your questions, which would bore me to tears, but I will, indeed, tell you the meaning of that one. Many years ago, when Axxaashe, the sun, and Bilitaachiia, the moon, looked down upon my people with love instead of great disdain, the Absaroka fought the nations of the Nez Perce, the Arapaho, and the devil Sioux. We were proud, and blessed by Father Trout and Mother Pigeon. Man, Baacheé, and Woman, Bia, made love by the sweet waters, the Bilé, of the Yellowstone River. We fought our enemies with passion and honor.
“Then, we made a big mistake: We fought beside the white man. We chased the great Seated Bull north when he led his people to Canada after the great battle of Greasy Grass. From then on, we were scorned by other nations. Hated in all the camps by the rivers, on the plains and in the mountains. And thus, we became known as the white man’s dogs. I assure you, there was no honor in this, nothing but shame and sorrow…”
“I thank you, Retching Bison, Jr. That is a great deal more than I really wanted to know, but I clearly see your point. Now, though we have become companions, though certainly not friends, a disgusting thought if I ever there was one, I feel I must tell you why I have come. One of the phrases I frequently run across on our in-between voyages is eating crow. I have never thought about the meaning of these words, and don’t give a rhatt’s rear, if you really want to know. I only know that since the Crow and the Tzūn folk appear to have much in common through myth and TV, I find I wish to satisfy my hunger by eating Crow. I would be grateful if you would concede to my needs, and not make a big thing about this, which would greatly embarrass us both.”
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