by Hunter Shea
“It’s a given that a mine is dark. What did you hear?”
“After a while, you don’t even need eyes.”
More of Wyoming’s famous wind had kicked in, blowing tongues of fire Franklin’s way.
I hoped his beard wouldn’t catch.
I tried a different approach. “Where are Hank and your brothers? Are they in the mine too? Where have you all been hiding out all this time?”
“In…the…mine?”
“You’ve all gotten Selma sick with worry, not to mention your momma.”
The film that had been over his eyes seemed to clear and he said, “Momma shouldn’t be here. No one should be here.”
Selma leaned into him and asked, “Franklin, please tell me what happened to you.”
“Hank’s gonna be mad. Oh. They are all so mad.”
“Is Hank alive? Is he here?”
“No one’s here. I’m not here. I’m not there.”
“Teta, will you watch him?” I said, getting to my feet. I motioned for Selma to follow me to the house.
“The old man – I mean boy – isn’t in his right mind,” I said softly. The wind was blowing in Franklin’s direction and I didn’t want him to hear. “The only time he snaps to is when I mention either you or his dead mother. I need to get it out of him how he came to be in that mine.”
“I can certainly try.” She fussed at her lower lip with her thumb and index finger.
“But first, I need you to be straight with me. Are you hiding anything? Since your brother-in-law showed up, you’ve been acting strange. I can’t have you keeping secrets.”
Her eyes flashed hot with anger. “How am I supposed to act? I’m sick with worry, wondering what happened to him. What can turn a boy into that? I’m scared, Nat. And I can tell you are too. What was it that got you and Teta all riled up at the mine? Don’t think for one second that’s not weighing on me too.”
I deflected her question and said, “Are you positive that’s the Franklin you knew?”
“I’ve known him since he was born. Yes, it’s Franklin.”
I took a deep breath and stared into the sky. Long stretches of thin, white clouds passed by in a slow crawl.
A brief, bright flash of light illuminated the outer walls of the house, as if a bolt of thunderless lightning had touched down behind us.
The dog started barking and drew our attention to the fire. Teta lay on the ground, out cold.
And Franklin was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The dog growled at me when I ran past it to tend to Teta. If it made one move to snap at me, I had no reservations about planting a bullet right in its snarling maw.
Selma shouted, “Franklin!”
I lifted Teta’s head and checked him up and down for any wounds. When I didn’t see any, I gave his cheek a quick slap. His eyes snapped open and he leapt to his feet.
“Don’t touch me!” he barked, drawing his pistol at the wind.
He looked at me and his shoulders relaxed. He slowly put the gun back in his holster. “Teta, what the hell happened? Did Franklin do something to you?”
He removed his sombrero and massaged the back of his neck. Selma was still calling out for her brother-in-law, walking in a widening circle in the middle of the unpaved street.
Teta spit on the ground and said, “The old man, he looked at me and said he wanted to tell me something. He raised his hand like he was going to cup it by my ear and whisper some kind of secret. I didn’t like it, so I went for my gun. The next thing I know, you’re waking me up.”
“He didn’t slug you?”
He shook his head. “As far as I know, he never got close enough to touch me. Everything got real white, then black. Is he gone?”
“Like the wind.”
“Nat, no one in that kind of shape can disappear that fast.”
“I know.”
Franklin’s mutt had calmed down and stretched out with its head on its front paws. The same dog that wouldn’t leave its master’s side now couldn’t care less that he’d up and left. Even the damn animals in this town weren’t right.
“Franklin!”
“Selma, come back here. I don’t want you wandering out alone,” I said. She stopped calling out for him and walked back with her hands on her hips. I could have sworn she looked partly relieved. No matter how you sliced it, Franklin’s appearance and disappearance were distressing.
“Where on earth could he have gone?” she asked.
The three of us were left staring at the deserted streets of Hecla without a clue. I walked around a bit and couldn’t find a single track from Franklin, other than his steps from the house to the fire. It was as if he’d hitched a ride on a passing eagle and flown away.
“At any rate, he knows where to find us,” Teta said, sending a chill down my back.
* * *
We mounted up and did a quick search of the immediate area, but as I suspected, we found nothing. The dog remained by the fire. I’d hoped he would run off and join his master.
He didn’t.
It was getting close to nightfall so we headed inside. Teta rummaged through the debris of the collapsed house across the street and brought some of the sturdier boards over along with some nails he’d found scattered on the ground.
“I’m sealing us in tonight,” he said.
He unloaded his pistol and used it to hammer the nails into the board that he had slanted over the door. I gave him a hand.
“Now we just need to worry about the window, jefe.”
Despite Selma’s objections, we left the dog outside. Anything that came out of that mine was not welcome. When I thought about the creature we’d seen, I shivered and thought the board wasn’t going to be enough if it wandered out of the mine and into town. Because of Franklin’s miraculous emergence from the mine, Teta and I hadn’t had a chance to discuss what the hell was living in the tunnels. With Selma around, and the state she was in, we’d have to wait for a chance to talk tomorrow when she was out of earshot.
I checked on how much lamp oil we had left and decided it would be smart to stick with using just one lamp until we settled in for sleep. We put our bedrolls around the lamp as if it were a campfire. Selma’s eyes were tired and puffy, and any attempt at conversation was met with one-word answers or head nods.
I said, “Why don’t you close your eyes and get some sleep? Teta and I will be up keeping an eye on things. You’ve had a hard, strange day.”
A weary smile lightened the dark cast of her features and she laid her head down atop her hands. “Thank you, Nat. And you too, Teta. I’m sorry if I’ve seemed off. Franklin was always so young and sweet. He used to follow me around like a kid brother. I just don’t know what to make of everything.”
“That makes three of us,” Teta said. He had Teddy’s book on his lap and was paging through it.
Selma closed her eyes. It didn’t take long for her to wink out.
My body was tired but my mind was on fire. I was trying to put all of the odd-shaped pieces together and even if I chewed off the ends, I couldn’t get a damn thing to fit. I was going to need a few belts of whiskey to shut myself down, but that wasn’t in the cards.
“I’ll take first watch if you want,” I said.
Teta’s lips moved as he read. “I couldn’t sleep now if I tried. I’m hoping this book will do the trick.”
“Find anything interesting yet?” He nodded, his lips still working.
Lowering my voice, I said, “If Teddy only knew what he sent us into. We’ve all seen and done our share of unusual things, but this takes the cake.”
Without taking his eyes from the book, Teta replied, “I’m not so sure he didn’t know it.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I don’t know yet. If you stop talking, I can figure i
t out.”
I left Teta to the book, more than a little curious about how it pertained to our situation. In the meantime, I cleaned my pistol, smoked a cigarette, tried to count the stars outside the window and spent a good deal of time gazing at Selma’s peaceful face. Her lips had parted slightly and every now and then her breath hitched with a short snore.
Instead of counting sheep, I counted the seconds between each of her breaths. Sleep crept up on me and took me under to a dark, dreamless place.
* * *
When I woke up, the room was as pitch black as the tunnels back in the mine. I craned my neck to peek out the window. Heavy clouds had settled in during the night. The stars and sliver of moon were nowhere to be seen.
Teta must have put the lamp out before going to sleep. My chest tightened with uneasiness.
Why didn’t he wake me for my shift on watch? I reached over and lifted the lamp. There was still plenty of oil in it, which meant Teta had had enough presence of mind to turn it off before going to sleep. He should have woken me.
Selma and Teta were vague outlines in the dark. I only knew they were there by the sounds of their breathing.
But there was something else.
It sounded like panting. Heavy, quick breaths in rapid succession. Like a dog.
I reached in my pocket for a match and scraped it against the floor.
Even with its feeble light, the entire cabin came to life. I immediately went for my gun.
Franklin’s mutt was in the house. It hovered over Selma. I had to rub my eyes to make sure I was seeing right.
The dog’s jaws were open so far and wide the hinges had to have snapped into pieces. A glistening film of drool dripped down its yellow teeth. Hunched over, it poised its unnatural mouth over her head as if it intended to swallow it whole. It watched me with black, dead eyes.
Darkness returned when the match fizzled out against my thumb and finger. I cursed, found another and lit the hurricane lamp.
The dog’s black lips curled back even farther from its diseased gums and it gave a low, menacing growl. Its head moved closer to Selma’s but it never took its eyes from mine.
Selma sighed in her sleep. A long line of thick drool dripped into her hair.
I pointed my pistol at the dog. Something was very wrong with it. I’d seen my fair share of rabid animals, but this was entirely different. Its fur stood on end, like a porcupine. The flesh and fur of its face stretched thin over deformed bone. I’d seen something like it once before when I’d smoked peyote with a couple of Ojibwa scouts working for the army. I’d known then that it was just my mind playing tricks on me.
That was far from the case this time.
When I pulled the hammer back, the dog stiffened and its eyes darted to the barrel. I wasn’t going to let it move another inch closer to Selma. If it didn’t back off in the next few seconds, its head was going to paint the walls.
I croaked, “Your move, you ugly fucking mongrel.”
Its jaws opened wider and I heard the sharp crack of displaced bone. It may have been a trick of the flickering light, but it looked like its incisors were growing longer, the tips tapering into deadly needles.
The threat of my gun wasn’t going to stop it. In fact, it seemed to be doing just the opposite. It was as if it had waited for me to wake up so it had an audience to the atrocity it had in store.
There was no sense waiting. I had to shoot now, while there was still some distance between it and Selma.
Naturally, she chose that moment to wake up screaming.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Selma’s eyes flew open and she shouted, “Hank!”
I jerked my arm up and shot at the roof. Her sudden scream came too quickly for me to lay off the trigger. The shot brought Teta scrambling to his feet, his own gun in hand, sweeping the room. It also choked Selma’s screams in her throat. Her body was as rigid as a stone and she stared at me with a cross between fear and confusion.
The dog had backed off and was sitting on its haunches. Its face was back to normal. A pink- and black-specked tongue lolled out of its half-open mouth.
“What happened, jefe?”
I was on my feet now too. I held a hand out to Selma and brought her behind me. She did it without the slightest protest.
“It’s the dog,” I said.
“How did it get in here?” Selma asked. I felt her press against my back. “I don’t know how, but there’s something not right about it.”
The dog looked back at us with typical dog indifference. There was no reconciling it with the grotesque varmint that had threatened to put an end to Selma just seconds ago.
Teta checked the door and window. “There’s no way it came through here. Could it have been hiding in a corner when we were setting up before?”
“I don’t know. But I’m not taking any chances.”
I leveled my gun and pulled the trigger. The dog yelped and flipped backwards. Blood and bone and fur erupted against the barricaded door. Selma shrieked and pounded my back with her fists.
“What’s the matter with you? What kind of man shoots a defenseless dog? You’re sick!”
Her words sounded as if they were coming from far off. I watched the dog’s legs twitch as it went into its final death spasm. Its bowels emptied onto the floor. The stench of that and the blood was overpowering.
“You didn’t see what I saw,” I said, walking over the dog’s body and pulling at the wood over the door.
Selma sobbed behind me. Teta helped me get the door open and carry the dog outside.
We dropped its corpse behind one of the ramshackle cabins across the street.
Teta didn’t ask me what I saw or why I did what I did. I was grateful for that. I filled a bucket with some water from the pump and splashed it on the floor. Blood and brains and shit went out with the tide, trickling down the steps. I made seven trips to the pump, and by the time I was done, you could breathe in the house without swallowing back bile.
Selma watched me with cold hatred.
“I’ll stand watch outside the rest of the night,” I said. “There’s still about three hours before sunrise.”
I closed the door behind me and leaned against the house. It was best no one said anything until morning. Maybe a new day would bring some clarity.
* * *
I put a small breakfast together and Teta and I shared a strong cup of coffee before Selma awoke.
“Did she say anything?” I asked.
“Not a thing with her words, but I could feel a lot coming off her after you walked out.”
“That wasn’t an ordinary dog.” I told Teta what I saw, how the dog transformed into a damn nightmare that was all mouth and malicious intent. He stroked the stubble on his chin while I talked, taking everything in.
“Did it look like that thing in the mine? Like maybe a smaller version?”
I shook my head. “Not even close. It was clearly still a dog, just twisted and re-formed. It could have taken Selma’s head easily. What we saw in the mine, that was different. That looked just like the wild man the Indians talk about. I’ve seen drawings of it on rocks and wood carvings. As odd as it is, at least it has a reference point. The dog is a complete mystery to me.”
“What the hell is going on here?”
“Too much.”
“And I don’t understand how I missed my watch. You know that’s not like me.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. Neither of us are ourselves. It’s like living in a fever dream.”
The clouds from the night before had trailed off and the sun was bright and low in the sky. The air was still and dry. Hecla seemed emptier than usual. It was like entering a funeral home after everyone had left. It was just us and the cooling corpse of the ghost town.
“I think we need to go back,” Teta said. “This is too much
for just the two of us. Tell Teddy to steer clear. There’s no evidence of gold. As far as I can tell, it’s just a rumor that has led to bad things happening to the people who come here. Let’s leave while we’re still alive to do it.”
I’ve never been one to give up, but for the first time in my life, it seemed the best option.
What the hell did I know about what was going on here? None of it made any sense.
I squared my hat on my head and tossed the rest of my coffee onto the ground. “You’re right. I have a feeling if we stay any longer Hecla’s just going to swallow us whole. Teddy has bigger fish to fry. Leave this place for the buzzards, if they’ll even come.”
Teta could barely conceal his relief. We’d been knocked into a cocked hat since the moment we set foot in Hecla. Feeling confused and inadequate made me angry, and when I got angry, people tended to get hurt.
Just ask the dog.
* * *
Selma slung a steady diet of daggers my way as she got everything together. It was hard to tell if she was relieved we were moving out through all of the hatred over what I’d done to the dog, if you could rightly call it that. I left Teta to help her load up her horse.
I was happy that we were going to put Hecla behind us. I may not have known what I’d be doing next with my life, but I did know that I would never set foot in Wyoming again. When you got to a certain age, there was such a thing as a little too much adventure. Maybe it was time to ask Teddy if I was still bodyguard timber.
Teta and Selma came out from behind the house on their horses. The spare horses and mule were tied up and in tow. I was going to let them take the lead so I could spare myself the dirty glances that would be burned into my back.
Our horses had started kicking up dust when Selma shouted, “Wait!” I stalled behind her horse.
Her head snapped around. “Did you at least bury it?”
“Pardon?”
“The dog. Did you have the decency to bury the dog?”
I pulled out a handkerchief and wiped some of the sweat from the back of my neck, chasing a cluster of mosquitos away for the moment.