Deadman's Crossing (5 page)

“Jesus,” said the deputy.

“Jesus won’t help a bit,” Jebidiah said.

“It’s Gimet, ain’t it? He...it...really is dead,” the deputy said.

“Undead,” Jebidiah said. “I believe he’s toying with us. Waiting
for when he plans to strike.”

“Strike?” Bill said. “Why?”

“Because that is his purpose,” Jebidiah said, “as it is mine to
strike back. Gird your loins, men, you will soon be fighting for
your life.”

“How about we just ride like hell?” Bill said.

In that moment, Jebidiah’s words became prophetic. The
thing was gone from the gravestone. Shadows had gathered at
the edge of the woods, balled up, become solid, and when the
shadows leaped from the even darker shadows of the trees, it was
the shape of the thing they had seen on the stone, cool blue in the
moonlight, a disaster of a face, and the teeth.... They were long
and sharp. Gimet leaped in such a way that his back foot hit the
rear of Jebidiah’s animal, allowing him to spring over the deputy’s
horse, to land hard and heavy on Bill. Bill let out a howl and was
knocked off his mount. When he hit the road, his hat flying, Gimet
grabbed him by his bushy head of straw-colored hair and dragged
him off as easily as if he were a kitten. Gimet went into the trees,
tugging Bill after him. Gimet blended with the darkness there.
The last of Bill was a scream, the raising of his cuffed hands, the
cuffs catching the moonlight for a quick blink of silver, then there
was a rustle of leaves and a slapping of branches, and Bill was gone.

“My God,” the deputy said. “My God. Did you see that thing?”

Jebidiah dismounted, moved to the edge of the road, leading
his horse, his gun drawn. The deputy did not dismount. He pulled
his pistol and held it, his hands trembling. “Did you see that?” he
said again, and again.

“My eyes are as good as your own,” Jebidiah said. “I saw it.
We’ll have to go in and get him.”

“Get him?” the deputy said. “Why in the name of everything
that’s holy would we do that? Why would we want to be near
that thing? He’s probably done what he’s done already.... Damn,
Reverend. Bill, he’s a killer. This is just as good as I might want. I
say while the old boy is doing whatever he’s doing to that bastard,
we ride like the goddamn wind, get on out on the far end of this
road where it forks. Gimet is supposed to be only able to go on this
stretch, ain’t he?”

“That’s what Old Timer said. You do as you want. I’m going in
after him.”

“Why? You don’t even know him.”

“It’s not about him,” Jebidiah said.

“Ah, hell. I ain’t gonna be shamed.” The deputy swung down
from his horse, pointed at the place where Gimet had disappeared
with Bill. “Can we get the horses through there?”

“Think we will have to go around a bit. I discern a path over
there.”

“Discern?”

“Recognize. Come on, time is wasting.”

They went back up the road a pace, found a trail that led through
the trees. The moon was strong now as all the clouds that had
covered it had rolled away like wind-blown pollen. The air smelled
fresh, but as they moved forward, that changed. There was a stench
in the air, a putrid smell both sweet and sour, and it floated up and
spoiled the freshness.

“Something dead,” the deputy said.

“Something long dead,” Jebidiah said.

Finally the brush grew so thick they had to tie the horses, leave
them. They pushed their way through briars and limbs.

“There ain’t no path,” the deputy said. “You don’t know he
come through this way.”

Jebidiah reached out and plucked a piece of cloth from a limb,
held it up so that the moon dropped rays on it. “This is part of
Bill’s shirt. Am I right?”

The deputy nodded. “But how could Gimet get through here?
How could he get Bill through here?”

“What we pursue has little interest in the things that bother
man. Limbs, briars. It’s nothing to the living dead.”

They went on for a while. Vines got in their way. The vines
were wet. They were long thick vines, and sticky, and finally they
realized they were not vines at all, but guts, strewn about and
draped like decorations.

“Fresh,” the deputy said. “Bill, I reckon.”

“You reckon right,” Jebidiah said.

They pushed on a little farther, and the trail widened, making
the going easier. They found more pieces of Bill as they went along.
The stomach. Fingers. Pants with one leg in them. A heart, which
looked as if it has been bitten into and sucked on. Jebidiah was
curious enough to pick it up and examine it. Finished, he tossed
it in the dirt, wiped his hands on Bill’s pants, the one with the leg
still in it, said, “Gimet just saved you a lot of bother and the State
of Texas the trouble of a hanging.”

“Heavens,” the deputy said, watching Jebidiah wipe blood on
the leg-filled pants.

Jebidiah looked up at the deputy. “He won’t mind I get blood
on his pants,” Jebidiah said. “He’s got more important things to
worry about, like dancing in the fires of hell. And by the way,
yonder sports his head.”

Jebidiah pointed. The deputy looked. Bill’s head had been
pushed onto a broken limb of a tree, the sharp end of the limb
being forced through the rear of the skull and out the left eye. The
spinal cord dangled from the back of the head like a bell rope.

The deputy puked in the bushes. “Oh, God. I don’t want no
more of this.”

“Go back. I won’t think the less of you, ’cause I don’t think that
much of you to begin with. Take his head for evidence and ride on,
just leave me my horse.”

The deputy adjusted his hat. “Don’t need the head.... And if it
comes to it, you’ll be glad I’m here. I ain’t no weak sister.”

“Don’t talk me to death on the matter. Show me what you got,
boy.”

The trail was slick with Bill’s blood. They went along it and
up a rise, guns drawn. At the top of the hill they saw a field,
grown up, and not far away, a sagging shack with a fallen-down
chimney.

They went that direction, came to the shack’s door. Jebidiah
kicked it with the toe of his boot and it sagged open. Once inside,
Jebidiah struck a match and waved it about. Nothing but cobwebs
and dust.

“Must have been Gimet’s place,” Jebidiah said. Jebidiah moved
the match before him until he found a lantern full of coal oil. He
lit it and placed the lantern on the table.

“Should we do that?” the deputy asked. “Have a light. Won’t
he find us?”

“In case you have forgotten, that’s the idea.”

Out the back window, which had long lost its grease-paper
covering, they could see tombstones and wooden crosses in the
distance. “Another view of the graveyard,” Jebidiah said. “That
would be where the girl’s mother killed herself.”

No sooner had Jebidiah said that, then he saw a shadowy shape
move on the hill, flitting between stones and crosses. The shape
moved quickly and awkwardly.

“Move to the center of the room,” Jebidiah said.

The deputy did as he was told, and Jebidiah moved the lamp
there as well. He sat it in the center of the floor, found a bench
and dragged it next to the lantern. Then he reached in his coat
pocket and took out the Bible. He dropped to one knee and held
the Bible close to the lantern light and tore out certain pages. He
wadded them up, and began placing them all around the bench on
the floor, placing the crumpled pages about six feet out from the
bench and in a circle with each wad two feet apart.

The deputy said nothing. He sat on the bench and watched
Jebidiah’s curious work. Jebidiah sat on the bench beside the
deputy,
rested one of his pistols on his knee. “You got a .44, don’t
you?”

“Yeah. I got a converted cartridge pistol, just like you.”

“Give me your revolver.”

The deputy complied.

Jebidiah opened the cylinders and let the bullets fall out on the
floor.

“What in hell are you doing?”

Jebidiah didn’t answer. He dug into his gun belt and came up
with six silver-tipped bullets, loaded the weapon and gave it back
to the deputy.

“Silver,” Jebidiah said. “Sometimes it wards off evil.”

“Sometimes?”

“Be quiet now. And wait.”

“I feel like a staked goat,” the deputy said.

After a while, Jebidiah rose from the bench and looked out the
window. Then he sat down promptly and blew out the lantern.

Somewhere in the distance a night bird called. Crickets sawed and
a large frog bleated. They sat there on the bench, near each other,
facing in opposite directions, their silver-loaded pistols on their
knees. Neither spoke.

Suddenly the bird ceased to call and the crickets went silent, and
no more was heard from the frog. Jebidiah whispered to the deputy.

“He comes.”

The deputy shivered slightly, took a deep breath. Jebidiah
realized he too was breathing deeply.

“Be silent, and be alert,” Jebidiah said.

“All right,” said the deputy, and he locked his eyes on the open
window at the back of the shack. Jebidiah faced the door, which
stood halfway open and sagging on its rusty hinges.

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.