Last of the Ravagers, page 9
Jacob made a sound of annoyance, glancing around as if afraid someone might have heard this, but there was no one else in the store. “You need to keep your mouth shut, you stupid whore. If you don’t, someone might shut it for you.” A corner of his mouth twitched. “Forever.”
Blunt words designed to instill fear.
In truth, they troubled her, but Charlotte was determined not to let him see that. “Oh, big words. Big, scary words. Kind of funny coming from a man so small where it really counts.”
Jacob was seething now
She could see him grinding his teeth and trying not to blow his stack.
“How dare you come into my place of business and talk to me this way. This is a respectable establishment patronized by god-fearing people. And you waltz in here in your harlot’s clothing, running your filthy mouth.” He sneered. “This isn’t Saturday night at the saloon, bitch. Get out of here before I decide to have a little talk with the head whore over at that den of iniquity.”
Charlotte laughed. “Oh, please. You’re playing to an audience of one here, Jakey, and I damn well know you don’t have any morals. You’ve spent lots of time at that so-called ‘den of iniquity’, ya goddamn hypocrite.”
Jacob glared at her a moment longer.
Then he sighed and shook his head. “What do you want from me, Charlotte?”
She smiled. “Money. What else?”
Her heart started beating a little faster. Until uttering these words, she’d still been on the safe side of a dangerous line, one she could step back and walk away from with no damage done. Well, it was too late for that now. The craziest part of it was how she’d arrived at this point purely on impulse. What she was attempting wasn’t even necessary to facilitate her escape from Snakebite. With the gold coins the bounty hunter had given her, she already had enough to get where she was going and start a new life. On the other hand, an additional bit of money would make her new beginning even more comfortable.
Jacob muttered a curse, spraying the counter with spittle. “I can give you some money, Charlotte, but only a little.” He lifted the ledger, displaying it for a second as if it meant anything to her, which it did not. “This is a meticulously run enterprise. Everything is accounted for. If I give you more than just a little, it will cause problems.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes. “I truly do not care. Just give me what you can. If I’m happy with it, I’ll never need to have a talk with your wife.”
Still glowering at her, Jacob stepped out from behind the counter and moved past her, starting down one of the aisles. He turned back and glanced at her with a raised eyebrow. “You coming? I’d like to get this over with, please.”
She smiled. “Lead the way.”
She followed him down the aisle and then into a back room beyond the lumber pile. This was a cluttered room filled with additional stock of many of the items for sale out front. Jacob went to a table pushed against the back wall, upon which sat, among other things, a safe. Charlotte crowded in close and tried to peer over his shoulder as he opened it and reached inside.
“What have you got for me, Jakey, dear?”
He turned around and showed her the most evil, tight-lipped grin she’d ever seen.
Her mouth dropped open.
She was terrified, but there was no time to flee.
He shoved the derringer into her mouth and pulled the trigger.
FIFTEEN
Aided by Quentin Brown, Ned Kilmister guided a woozy Doc Richardson through the back entrance of the smithy. They could feel the heat from the forge before they entered. Sweat rose on Ned’s brow within seconds. The shop was owned by Gareth Blackmore, one of just two blacksmiths operating a full-service smithy in Snakebite. Of the two, Gareth had by far the better reputation.
He also owed Ned a favor.
Heaving a breath as the trio of men came to a stop, Ned looked the blacksmith in the eye and simply said, “Roscoe.”
Roscoe Jones was the man who’d raped Gareth’s wife two years earlier. A longtime thorn in the side of the entire community, Roscoe was known for making lewd and lecherous comments to the womenfolk of Snakebite. It was one thing to talk that way to saloon girls. That was frowned upon, but a man could get away with it, especially on rowdy weekend evenings. Addressing the more respectable ladies—the wives and the mothers—well, that was more than frowned upon. A man could get the shit kicked out of him for that. Roscoe did it anyway. Repeatedly. Even after taking his beatings. The behavior got him locked up overnight for indecency numerous times. Still, no one ever thought Roscoe’s crudity would one day lead to transgressions of a more extreme nature.
Until that spring day in 1875, when Roscoe went to the home the Blackmores owned on the outskirts of town. Gareth was busy with a major project and the Blackmores’ only child was at school. Knowing no one would be around to get in the way, Roscoe let himself into the house and accosted Lydia, taking her with violence and afterward warning her to keep her mouth shut about the incident, saying he’d come back to slit her throat if she blabbed about it.
Lydia, however, did not keep her mouth shut.
She told Gareth.
Gareth told Ned.
And shortly afterward, Roscoe Jones ceased to exist. No one missed him. His mysterious disappearance was never discussed, at least not in public. It was as if he’d never walked the face of the earth at all.
Gareth nodded, his gaze flicking briefly to Richardson. “What happened to him?”
Ned sighed, shifting his weight as the woozy doctor leaned a little more heavily into him. “Trust me when I say you’d never believe a word of it. The bottom line is something messed the hell up happened and the doc here is missing an eyeball.”
He told Gareth what they had in mind.
Gareth listened with a stoic reaction. Then he nodded. He’d do it. Of course he would. He’d probably do anything for Ned Kilmister. “That’s gonna hurt. A lot.”
Richardson let out an audible sob.
Ned grimaced. “We know.”
This thing they had in mind was almost unspeakably horrific. No question. It was also unquestionably necessary, because the doc’s violated eye socket wouldn’t stop bleeding. Right now a wadded-up scrap of cloth soaked in laudanum was packed inside it. This had seemed to help at first, but now the cloth was soaked through and a steady stream of blood was seeping out of the socket again. Before this, they’d tried sulfur, also to no avail. These were normally reliable ways of getting the blood from an open wound to clot, but nothing was working. Prior to his departure, Billy ventured the theory that perhaps the problem was in some way related to its infliction by a supernatural entity. Some unseen and abnormal extra form of infection, one that could not easily be treated in the normal ways.
Hence this visit to Blackmore’s Smithy.
Ned felt more tired than he had in a long time and it was barely past one in the afternoon. After spending some time tending to their many cuts and abrasions, Ned Kilmister assisted the other men in wrapping up what was left of Angelina’s corpse and carrying it into the alley out back of the building shared by Horton and Richardson. This was after the reluctant barber, at the sheriff’s behest, first went downstairs and put up a ‘CLOSED’ sign on the front door.
Once it became apparent that death at the hands of an inexplicable supernatural phenomenon was no longer an imminent threat, Ned started rethinking his original idea of burning Angelina’s remains in the alley. He had enough to worry about already without facing a barrage of questions from the superstitious contingent of the town’s population. The alley afforded a higher level of privacy than the open street, but folks were still apt to wander through it at any given time.
Some level of discretion was obviously in order. With that in mind, he directed Billy to take the blanket-wrapped corpse miles out of town, to some unpopulated patch of land with no one around, and set the remains ablaze. The deputy agreed to this assignment without complaint, which was typical for him. A short while later, he rode out of town with the body lashed to his horse.
That left the unpleasant task of dealing with Doc Richardson, who by then had already helped himself to a generous portion of laudanum from his professional supply. He’d also consumed most of a bottle of whiskey. Given the amount of pain caused by the demon’s horrific act of mutilation, Ned judged all this well within reason. After a while, the doc’s head was wobbling so much it looked as if it might soon separate from his neck and float away.
He was likely as numb as a man could get and still be alive. In Ned’s estimation, he was about as ready to face the grim reality of this desperate measure as he’d ever be. Even in this drugged state, the agony would be severe, possibly beyond the man’s ability to endure. Ned put the man’s odds of surviving the shock to his system at somewhere around 50/50.
At best.
The shop’s entrance and exit were wide enough to allow admission to stagecoaches and covered wagons in need of repairs, though none were present at the moment. Gareth spent a few minutes getting the doors pulled shut and latched. He knew without being told it’d be best not to perform this procedure in full view of anyone who might walk by.
Once this was taken care of, the blacksmith ushered his guests over to the forge. Though the embers within had cooled somewhat since he’d paused in his work some twenty minutes earlier, the forge was still putting out significant heat. Some work with the bellows got the temperature up even higher. All the men sweated profusely as they stood within six feet of the forge. Ned glanced at Richardson and saw his remaining good eye turning glassy, a sure sign of an impending lapse into unconsciousness. Given what was about to happen, any such lapse would be short-lived. He felt sorry for the poor son of a bitch, even though he harbored suspicions regarding the doc’s possible role in the inexplicable shit that had happened in his offices. He had a lot of questions, but they’d have to wait for a better time.
If one ever arrived, that is.
After donning thick protective gloves, Gareth took a thin iron rod and began to heat it in the forge. The rod was black in color and remained so for the first few minutes. Before long, however, its tip began to glow a bright red. He kept the end of the rod immersed in the coals a while longer, allowing it to get even hotter.
As this process continued, Richardson’s knees buckled and he began to sag toward the ground. After exchanging a glance, Ned and Quentin loosened their grips on the man’s arms, allowing him to kneel.
Gareth glanced at them. “Ready when you are.”
Ned nodded. “Just a second.”
Grimacing, he dug a finger into the doctor’s violated eye socket and tugged out the blood-soaked cloth. There was no trace of the fabric’s original white color. Richardson shuddered and groaned as the cloth came free, wincing when the sticky blood forced Ned to tug harder. Once this task was complete, he made the doctor clamp his teeth down on a thick leather bit.
Gareth moved closer. “Get down on the ground with the man and grip him tight. Hold him as steady as you can. If he flails around too much, this thing is apt to go right up into his brain. And, well . . . ”
The rest of it didn’t need saying.
If they couldn’t keep him under control, the doc would be a dead man.
Ned and Quentin knelt to either side of Richardson, each taking a strong, two-handed grip on an arm. Gareth let out a breath and moved the blazing tip of the iron rod close to the oozing socket. Now that the bloody cloth was no longer in place, the blood was streaming out more freely. The flow of it, in fact, seemed thicker than before. The agony of cauterization would be a hellish experience, but by now it was clear he’d die anyway if they didn’t attempt it.
Gareth directed one last hesitant glance at Ned, the tip of the rod now no more than an inch away from the puckered flesh of the eyelids. “No second thoughts? You definitely want to do this?”
Ned growled like an animal.
He wanted this exercise in barbarism over and done.
“Do it.”
Gareth nodded, but said no more.
The time for hesitation was over.
The blacksmith pushed the glowing tip of the rod into Richardson’s eye socket. There was a sizzling sound and a thin column of smoke emerged from the socket. The smell of burning flesh triggered nausea in all those present, but the men pushed through this instinctive revulsion and put everything they had into keeping the doc relatively still, holding on for dear life as he struggled like a wild beast. The doc screamed and screamed behind the bit in his mouth, his teeth sinking so deeply inside the thick leather that it would later need to be pried free.
Gareth held the rod in place, rotating it with slow and careful precision inside the socket. The doc’s screaming continued even as the blacksmith pulled the rod free and returned it to the forge. Ned and Quentin maintained their strong grips on the doctor until long after the horrendous procedure was finished, feeling him shake and whimper endlessly in their arms.
They didn’t let go of him until he finally passed out.
SIXTEEN
A half hour of riding carried Billy Conway out to a shallow gully, where he tied his horse to a solitary tree with barren and withered-looking limbs bleached almost white by the unforgiving Arizona sun. Overlooking the gully, the lone tree stood above it like a dead sentinel, a guardian of forgotten things.
Of dead things.
Billy figured it was an appropriate place for disposing of the headless body. After removing the blanket-wrapped corpse from the back of his horse, he dumped it on the ground and rolled it into the sun-parched gully.
Best get on with it, he thought.
Careful of his footing, he descended into the gully with his tinderbox. Squatting on his haunches next to the unmoving corpse, he examined the blanket in which it was wrapped and judged it likely to ignite with relative ease. The dry parts of the fabric would act as effective kindling. He raised a hand, ready to hit the flint with the fire striker when something happened at the edge of his peripheral vision that caused him to turn his head to the right.
He frowned and stared at the dead saloon girl’s bare feet, which were sticking out from the end of the blanket. Something barely perceptible had happened there. Something he’d almost missed. A tiny flicker of movement. His gaze remained on the exposed feet several moments longer as he waited for a repetition of whatever it was. As he did this, he became aware of his heart beating a little more quickly than before.
The girl was deader than a damn doornail. That much was an incontrovertible fact. Bodies didn’t go on living without a head. Not for more than a few seconds. Billy was no man of medicine or science, but he didn’t need to be one to know that. Maybe he hadn’t really seen what he thought he’d seen. It was hotter than hell out here and it’d been a rough day. Could be his mind was playing tricks on him.
Sure.
It was possible.
But Billy didn’t really believe he’d imagined or hallucinated that fleeting movement. He was certain it’d happened. A little twitch, nothing more than that. A twitch wasn’t necessarily cause for alarm. He’d been around enough dead bodies to know they sometimes did unexpected things. Sometimes they twitched. Other times they farted or even belched. All these things were natural symptoms of muscle relaxation or internal gas releasing. One thing they definitely were not was evidence of a lingering demonic presence. What use, even to a demon, was a body with no brain to steer and otherwise manipulate the flesh?
Billy shook his head.
It was one thing to know these things as basic facts of existence, but in the context of the insane things he’d witnessed today, it was hard not to feel at least a little spooked. Knowing he’d feel a lot better once he was on his horse and riding away from here, he again raised the striker to hit the flint and get the fire going.
Then the corpse rolled over.
Billy gasped and leapt to his feet, staggering backward.
“What the hell?”
After he’d dumped it into the gully, the corpse had landed on its back. Now, however, it was a couple feet farther away from him than it’d been, in what could no longer fairly be called a “facedown” position for more than one reason.
Billy was no coward, but he wasn’t a stupid man either. His instinct now was to climb the hell up out of the gully, mount his steed, and ride away from this forsaken, empty place. He’d chosen the location specifically for its remoteness. There’d be no one around to see him set a corpse ablaze. Unfortunately, this also meant there was no one around to help him should he run into trouble.
Despite the growing urge to run away, he hesitated a bit longer, waiting in the vain hope of a rational explanation for what was happening to present itself. Maybe the wind did it, kicking up out of nowhere and causing the body to roll over. Except he already knew for a fact nothing of the sort had happened. The air in the vicinity of Snakebite was as still as it’d been all day. He would’ve felt a sudden gust of wind strong enough to move a goddamn dead body.
Nope. Something else was happening here.
Unfortunately.
Then the body flipped over a second time and rose up on its knees as the headless torso twisted in his direction.
Billy shook his head. “Nah. I’ve seen enough.”
He turned around and started racing up the side of the gully as fast as he could while still trying to stay careful of his footing. His mind could make no sense of what his eyes had seen and was making no attempt to do so. All that mattered in those crazed, wild-eyed moments was survival. Getting away. He was almost back on level ground when he heard bare feet pounding across the rocky ground in pursuit of him.
A quick backward glance brought a helpless whine to his lips. The headless body had somehow managed to extricate itself from the blanket, thus treating him to the horrifying and surreal sight of a naked and animated female corpse pursuing him with what he could only assume was lethal intent. Even missing a head and forearm and perforated with multiple bullet holes, it retained some of the beauty it’d possessed in life, which only heightened the hallucinatory feel of what he was seeing. Also, the damn thing was moving with a quickness and agility far surpassing anything normal for a body so outwardly debilitated.
