Fevre Dream (42 page)

It had to be right, Abner Marsh thought, it had to be, it was the only thing he could think of, the only thing he could figure. He peered up at the skylight. The angle was sharper now, and it seemed to Marsh that the light had grown just the tiniest bit red. Joshua was partly in shadow now. An hour ago, Marsh would have been relieved to see it. Now he wasn’t so sure.

“
Help
me . . .” the voice said. It was a broken whisper, a ghastly pain-racked choking. But they heard it. In the darkened silence they all heard it.

Sour Billy Tipton had come crawling out of the dimness, leaving a trail of blood behind him on the carpet. He wasn’t really crawling, Marsh saw. He was dragging himself, sticking his goddamned little knife into the deck and pulling himself forward with his arms, wriggling, his legs and whole lower half of his body scraping behind him. His spine was bent at an angle it shouldn’t have bent at. Billy hardly looked human. He was covered with slime and filth, crusted over with dry blood, bleeding even as they watched. He pulled himself forward another foot. His chest looked caved-in, and pain had twisted his face into a hideous mask.

Joshua York rose slowly from his chair, like a man in a dream. His face was an awful red, Marsh saw. “Billy . . .” he began.

“Stay where you are, Joshua,” said the beast.

York looked at him dully, and licked his dry, cracked lips. “I will not threaten you,” he said. “Let me kill him. It would be a mercy.”

Damon Julian smiled and shook his head. “Kill poor Billy,” he said, “and I must kill Captain Marsh.” It sounded almost like Julian again now; the liquid sophistication of the voice, the chill within the words, the air of vague amusement.

Sour Billy moved another painful foot and stopped, his body shaking. Blood dripped from his mouth and his nose. “Julian,” he said.

“You’ll have to speak up, Billy. We can’t hear you very well.”

Sour Billy clutched his knife and grimaced. He tried to raise his head as much as he could. “I’m . . . help me . . . hurt, I’m hurt. Bad. Inside . . . inside, Mister Julian.”

Damon Julian rose from his chair. “I can see that, Billy. What do you want?”

Sour Billy’s mouth began to tremble at the edges. “Help . . .” he whispered. “Change . . . finish the change . . . got to . . . I’m
dyin’
. . .”

Julian was watching Billy, and watching Joshua, too. Joshua was still standing. Abner Marsh tensed his muscles and looked at the shotgun. With Julian already on his feet, it wasn’t possible. Not to turn it on him, and fire. But maybe . . . he looked at Billy, whose agony almost made Marsh forget his broken arm. Billy was begging. “. . . live forever . . . Julian . . . change me . . . one of you . . .”

“Ah,” said Julian. “I’m afraid I have sad news for you, Billy. I can’t change you. Did you really think a creature like you could become one of
us
?”

“. . . promised,”
Billy whispered shrilly. “You
promised
. I’m
dyin’!
”

Damon Julian smiled. “Whatever will I do without you?” he said. He laughed lightly, and that was when Marsh knew for a fact that it was Julian, that the beast had let him surface again. It was Julian’s laughter, rich and musical and stupid. Marsh heard the laugh and watched Sour Billy’s face and saw his hand shake as he wrenched the knife free of the deck.

“The hell with you!”
Marsh roared at Julian, as he heaved himself to his feet. Julian looked over, startled. Marsh bit back the pain and went for the shotgun, diving across the room. Julian was a hundred times quicker than him. Marsh landed heavily on the gun, and almost blanked out from the pain that shot through him, but even as he felt the hardness of the barrel beneath his stomach, he felt Julian’s cold white hands close round his neck.

And then they were gone, and Damon Julian was screaming. Abner Marsh rolled over. Julian was staggering backward, his hands up over his face. Sour Billy’s knife was sticking out of his left eye, and blood was running down between his pale white fingers. “Die, goddamn you,” Marsh yelled as he yanked the trigger. The shot blew Julian off his feet. The gun kicked back into Marsh’s arm, and he screamed. For an instant he did black out. When the pain cleared enough so he could see, he had trouble climbing to his feet. But he did it. Just in time to hear a sharp crack, like a wet branch being broken.

Joshua York rose from Billy Tipton’s body with blood on his hands. “There was no hope for him,” York said.

Marsh sucked in air in great draughts, his heart pounding. “We did it, Joshua,” he said. “We killed the goddamned—”

Someone laughed.

Marsh turned and backed away.

Julian smiled. He wasn’t dead. He had lost an eye, but the knife hadn’t gone deep enough, hadn’t touched his brain. He was half-blind but he wasn’t dead. Too late Marsh realized his mistake. He’d shot at Julian’s chest, the goddamned chest, he ought to have blown off his head, but he’d taken the easy shot instead. Julian’s dressing gown hung from him in bloody tatters, but he wasn’t dead. “I am not so easy to kill as poor Billy,” he said. Blood welled in his eye socket and dripped down his cheek. Already it was crusting, clotting. “Nor as easy as you will be.” He came toward Marsh with languid inevitable slowness.

Marsh tried to hold the shotgun with his broken arm while he got two shells from his pocket. He pinned it under his arm against his body, stepping backward, but the pain made him weak and clumsy. His fingers slipped and one of the shells dropped to the floor. Marsh backed up hard against a column. Damon Julian laughed.

“No,” said Joshua York. He stepped between them, his face raw and red. “I forbid it. I am bloodmaster. Stop, Julian.”

“Ah,” said Julian. “Again, dear Joshua? Again then. But this shall be the last time. Even Billy has learned his true nature. It is time for you to learn yours, dear Joshua.” His left eye was crusted blood, his right a howling black abyss.

Joshua York stood unmoving.

“You can’t beat him,” Abner Marsh said. “The damn beast. Joshua, no.” But Joshua York was past hearing. The shotgun fell from beneath Marsh’s shattered arm. He bent, snatched it up with his good hand, slapped it down on the table behind him, and began to load it. With only one hand, it was slow work. His fingers were thick and clumsy. The shell kept squirting free. Finally he got it in, closed the gun, raised it up clumsily under his good arm.

Joshua York had turned around, slowly, the way the
Fevre Dream
had spun that night she came after the
Eli Reynolds
. He took a step toward Abner Marsh. “Joshua, no,” Marsh said. “Stay away.” Joshua moved closer. He was trembling, fighting it. “Get clear,” Marsh said. “Let me get off a shot.” Joshua didn’t seem to hear. He had an awful dead look on his face. He belonged to the beast. His strong pale hands were raised. “Hell,” said Marsh, “hell. Joshua, I got to do it. I got it figured. It’s the only way.”

Joshua York seized Abner Marsh around the throat, his gray eyes wide and demonic. Marsh shoved the shotgun up under Joshua’s armpit and yanked the trigger. There was a terrible explosion, the scent of smoke and blood. York spun and fell heavily, crying out in pain, as Marsh stepped away from him.

Damon Julian smiled sardonically and moved like a rattlesnake, wrenching the smoking gun from Marsh’s hand. “And now there are only the two of us,” he said. “Only the two of us, dear Captain.”

He was still smiling when Joshua made a sound that was half a snarl and half a scream, and threw himself on Julian from behind. Julian cried out in surprise. They rolled over and over, grappling with each other ferociously until they slammed up against the bar, and broke apart. Damon Julian rose first, Joshua soon after. York’s shoulder was a bloody ruin, and his arm was limp at his side, but in his slitted gray eyes, through the haze of blood and pain, Abner Marsh could feel the rage of the fevered beast. York was in pain, Marsh thought triumphantly, and
pain
could wake the thirst.

Joshua advanced slowly; Julian moved back, smiling. “Not me, Joshua,” he said. “It was the Captain who hurt you. The Captain.” Joshua paused and glanced briefly at Marsh, and for a long moment Marsh waited to see which way the thirst would drive him, to see whether Joshua or his beast was the master.

Finally York smiled thinly at Damon Julian, and the quiet fight began.

Weak with relief, Marsh paused a moment to gather his strength before he stooped to pick up the shotgun from where Julian had dropped it. He deposited it on the table, broke it, reloaded it slowly and laboriously. When he picked it up and cradled it beneath his arm, Damon Julian was kneeling. He had reached into his eye socket with his fingers, and torn out his blind and bloody eye. He was holding it up, his hand cupped, while Joshua York bent to the bloody offering.

Abner Marsh stepped forward quickly, pushed the shotgun up to Julian’s temple, against the fine black curls, and let fly with both barrels.

Joshua looked stunned, like he had been wrenched abruptly from some dream. Marsh grunted and tossed down the gun. “You didn’t want that,” he told Joshua. “Hold still. I got what you want.” He walked heavily behind the bar, and found the dark unlabeled wine bottles. Marsh picked one up and blew away the dust. That was when he happened to look up and see all the open doors, all the pale faces, watching. The shots, he thought. The shots had brought them out.

One-handed, Marsh had trouble getting out the cork. He finally used his teeth. Joshua York drifted toward the bar, as if in a daze. In his eyes the fight went on. Marsh held out the bottle, and Joshua reached out and grabbed his arm. Marsh held very still. For a long moment he did not know which it would be, whether Joshua would take the bottle or tear open the veins in his wrist. “We all got to make our goddamned choices, Joshua,” he said softly, in the grip of Joshua’s strong fingers.

Joshua York stared at him for half of forever. Then he wrenched the bottle free of Marsh’s hand, threw back his head, and upended it. The dark liquor came gurgling down, and ran all over his goddamned chin.

Marsh pulled out a second bottle of the noxious stuff, smashed its top off clean against the hard edge of the marble bar, and raised it up. “To the goddamned
Fevre Dream
!” he said.

They drank together.

Epilogue

The graveyard is old and overgrown, and filled with the sounds of the river. It sits high on its bluff, and below it rolls the Mississippi, on and on, as it has rolled for thousands of years. You can sit on the edge of the bluff, feet dangling, and look out over the river, drinking in the peace, the beauty. The river has a thousand faces up here. Sometimes it’s golden, and alive with ripples from insects skimming the surface and water flowing around some half-submerged branch. At sunset it turns bronze for a while, and then red, and the red spreads and makes you think of Moses and another river a long way away. On a clear night, the water flows dark and clean as black satin, and beneath its shimmering surface are stars, and a fairy moon that shifts and dances and is somehow larger and prettier than the one up in the sky. The river changes with the seasons, too. When the spring floods come, it is brown and muddy and creeps up to the high water marks on the trees and banks. In autumn, leaves of a thousand colors drift past lazily in its blue embrace. And in winter the river freezes hard, and the snow comes drifting down to cover it, and transforms it into a wild white road upon which no one may travel, so bright it hurts the eyes. Beneath the ice, the waters still flow, icy and turbulent, never resting. And finally the river shrugs, and the winter’s ice shatters like thunder and breaks apart with terrible, rending cracks.

All of the river’s moods can be seen from the graveyard. From there, the river looks like it did a thousand years ago. Even now the Iowa side is nothing but trees and high, rocky bluffs. The river itself is tranquil, empty, still. A thousand years ago you might watch for hours and see nothing but a solitary Indian in a birch bark canoe. Today you might watch for just as long, and see only one long procession of sealed barges, pushed by a single small diesel towboat.

In between then and now, there was a time when the river swarmed and lived, when smoke and steam and whistles and fires were everywhere. The steamboats are all gone now, though. The river is peaceful. The dead in the graveyard wouldn’t like it much this way. Half of those buried here were rivermen.

The graveyard is peaceful, too. Most of the plots were filled a long, long time ago, and now even the grandchildren of those who lie here have died. Visitors are rare, and the few who come visit a single, unimpressive grave.

Some of the graves have large monuments. One has a statue on top of it, of a tall man dressed like a steamer pilot, holding a portion of a wheel and gazing out into the distance. Several have colorful accounts of life and death on the river inscribed on their tombstones, telling how they died in a boiler explosion, or the war, or by drowning. But the visitors come to none of these. The grave they seek out is relatively plain. The stone has seen a hundred years of weathering, but it has held up well. The words chiseled into it are plainly readable: a name, some dates, and two lines of poetry.

CAP’N ABNER MARSH
1805–1873
So we’ll go no more a-roving
So late into the night.

Above the name, carved into the stone with great skill and great care, is a small decoration, raised and finely detailed, showing two great side-wheel steamers in a race. Time and weather have wreaked their damage, but you can still see the smoke streaming from their chimneys, and you can almost sense their speed. If you lean close enough and run your fingertips over the stone, you can even discern their names. The trailing boat is the
Eclipse,
a famous steamer in her day. The one in front is unknown to most river historians. She appears to be named the
Fevre Dream
.

The visitor who comes most often always touches her, as if for luck.

Oddly enough, he always comes by night.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

George R. R. Martin sold his first story in 1971 and has been writing professionally ever since. He has written fantasy, horror, and science fiction, and for his sins spent ten years in Hollywood as a writer/producer, working on
The Twilight Zone, Beauty and the Beast,
and various feature films and television pilots that were never made. In the mid ’90s he returned to prose, his first love, and began work on his epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire. He has been in the Seven Kingdoms ever since. Whenever he’s allowed to leave, he returns to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives with the lovely Paris and two cats named Augustus and Caligula who think they run the place.