Текст книги "Dead in the West"

Автор книги: Joe R. Lansdale

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Dead in the West ©1986 by Joe R. Lansdale

DEDICATION

The original version of this book appeared in ELDRITCH TALES #10-13. It was a tribute to the pulps. Especially WEIRD TALES. This considerably revised version is a tribute not only to the pulps, but to comics like those in the infamous EC line and JONAH HEX (the early ones), and perhaps most of all, B-brand horror movies like: CURSE OF THE UNDEAD, BILLY THE KID VERSUS DRACULA, JESSE JAMES MEETS FRANKENSTEIN'S

DAUGHTER, and the like.

The first version of DEAD IN THE WEST was dedicated to Al Manachino. This version is for my brother, John Lansdale, who made many suggestions I followed, and some, if he'll forgive me, I did not.

So, this is your book, John. I hope you like it.

The hour hath come to part with this body composed of

flesh and blood;

May I know the body to be impermanent and illusory.

– Tibetan Book of the Dead

And we were not able to detain Lazarus, but he gave himself a shake, and with all the signs of malice, he immediately went away from us; and the very earth, in which the dead body of Lazarus was lodged, presently turn him out alive.

– Nicodemus 15:18(A Lost Book of the Bible)

From ghoulies and ghosties

And long-legged beasties

And things that go bump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us.

—Old Scottish Invocation

Night. A narrow, tree-lined stage trail bends to the left around a clutch of dark pines.

Moonlight, occasionally blocked by rolling clouds. A voice in the distance, gradually becomes audible.

"You goddamned, lily-livered, wind-breaking, long-eared excuses for mules. Git on, you contrary assholes."

…

A stagecoach came barreling around the bend, the lanterns on either side of the driver's seat swaying like monstrous fireflies. It gradually began to slow, amid much cussing, and finally it was brought to a stop alongside the road near the East Texas pines.

The driver, Bill Nolan, turned to look with his one good eye at his shotgunner, Jake Wilson. Nolan wore a patch over the eye an Indian arrow had put out.

"Well, hurry for Christsakes " Nolan said. "We're late."

"I didn't make the wheel come off."

"You weren't much help putting it back on either.... Will you get down and pee already?"

Jake dropped to the ground and started for the woods.

"Hey" Nolan yelled. "Why you got to go so far?"

"Ladies present."

"You don't have to piss in the coach, you goddamned idiot."

Jake disappeared into the woods.

A dapper young man stuck his head out of the coach window on the right side.

"Hey," said the young man. "Mind your mouth, mister. There are ladies present."

Nolan leaned over, looked back and down at the young man. "I keep hearing that," Nolan said. "Let me tell you something, Mr. Tin Horn Gambler. The lady sitting next to you there, Lulu McGill, would suck and blow your asshole for four bits."

The gambler's mouth fell open, but before he could reply, a feminine hand jerked him back, and Lulu's attractive red head appeared.

"Goddamn you, Bill Nolan," Lulu said. "I ain't never done the like for no four bits, and you know it. Right now, I'm a lady."

"You don't say."

Lulu was pulled from view, and the gambler's head replaced hers. "She's not the only woman on this stage," the gambler said.

From inside the coach came Lulu's shrill voice. "You saying I ain't a lady now, asshole?"

"And there's a young girl," the gambler continued. "If she weren't asleep, mister, you'd already have me to deal with. Hear?"

Nolan's right hand dipped quickly, and when it reappeared, it held an ancient Walker Colt. He pointed it at the gambler.

"I hear you," Nolan said softly. "But whisper, will you? I'd hate for the little girl to wake up and you to have to try and be a hero. I'd have to blow your stupid head down the road a piece, and we wouldn't want that, would we? Now get back inside there and shut up!"

The gambler's head moved quickly out of sight.

Inside the coach, the gambler picked his derby from the seat beside him and put it on at a less jaunty angle than usual.

Across from him, the attractive brunette, Millie Johnson, stared at him. The little girl, Mignon, lay asleep in her lap. Beside him, Lulu practically fumed.

He chanced a glance at her. Her temper had reddened her face to match her hair.

"Ain't you the top dog," Lulu said.

The gambler looked at the stage floor.

…

Nolan put the Colt away and put a cigar in his face. He took out his turnip watch and popped it open. He struck a match and looked at the time. With a sigh, he put the watch away and looked in the direction Jake had taken.

There was no sign of him.

"Why couldn't he piss in the wind like a real man," Nolan mumbled.

He lit his cigar.

…

Jake shook the dew off his lily, began buttoning up.

As he turned to start back to the coach, he saw a rope dangling from a nearby tree. He had not noticed it before, but now with the moon out, he could see it clearly. He went over and touched it, tugged on it.

It was a hangman's noose, and well tied. Someone had dangled, and from the looks of the blood on the noose-dried but not ancient—not too long ago. Maybe yesterday, or even last night.

He slid his hand along the noose and was rewarded with a slight rope burn.

"Owwwwww."

He put the wound to his mouth and sucked.

As he turned from the rope, a large spiderlike creature scuttled from an overhead limb down the rope to where Jake's blood mixed with the hemp. The spider-thing lapped the fresh blood.

The creature changed. Became larger, dropped from the rope, curled on the ground, and changed more. When the transformation was complete, it moved quickly into the woods.

Jake never heard or noticed. He walked until he was almost to the road, and just as he was about to break out of the woods into the clearing, a shape rose up in front of him. A man-shape.

Jake opened his mouth to scream, but he never got the chance.

…

Nolan yawned.

Damn. He was getting sleepy. Real sleepy.

He tossed the dead cigar butt away.

He got a fresh cigar and a match. He pulled out his turnip watch, struck the match, and held it close to the watch face to check the time.

A huge, long-nailed hand reached over his, snuffing the flame, crushing the watch and Nolan's fingers in one motion. The sound of watch and fingers breaking was very loud.

But not as loud as Nolan's scream, brief as it was.

The passengers came next.

Later, in the deepest part of night, a time when the moon had finally been concealed by the dark clouds and the stars were as dull as blind eyes, the long overdue stage from Silverton rolled into Mud Creek, a dark poncho-swathed driver with pulled-down hat at the lines.

No passengers stepped from the stage. There were no friends or relatives there to meet them. No one was aware, except for the driver, of its arrival. It had been given up for the day a good time back.

The horses snorted and rolled their eyes with fright. The driver set the rusty brake and tied off the lines, alighting to the ground gentle as dust.

The man walked to the back of the stage and threw up the cargo flap. A long crate stuck out at an awkward angle. He pulled it free, lifting it to his shoulder. Then, as if the crate were no more than a stick of stove wood, he ran down the middle of the street toward the livery, his boots throwing up little, short-lived dust devils behind him.

A hinge creaked, went silent. Now there was only the sound of the stage team snorting and a distant roll of thunder beyond the gray-black, East Texas woodlands.

I

THE REVEREND

BUT HE KNOWETH NOT THAT THE DEAD ARE THERE.

– PROVERBS 9:18

H e had come down out of the high country: a long, lean preacher man covered in dust, riding a buckskin mare with an abscessed back, a wound made by hard riding and saddle friction against dust and hide.

Both man and horse looked ready to drop.

The man was dressed in black from boots to hat, save for a dusty white shirt and the silver glitter of a modified .36 colt Navy revolver in his black sash waist band. His face, like many men of the Word, was hard and stern. But there was something definitely unGodlike about the man. He had the cool, blue eyes of a cold killer—the eyes of a man who had seen the elephant and seen it well.

In his own way, he was a killer.

Men had dropped before the blast of his .36 Navy, their last vision being thick, black smoke curling upwards from the mouth of his shiny revolver.

But in the Reverend's eyes, to his way of thinking, each had been in need of the sword stroke, and it had been God's will. And he, Jebidiah Mercer, had been the Lord's avenging hand. Or at least it seemed that way at the time.

As Jeb often told his tent congregation: "Brethren, I kill sin. I am the good right arm of the Lord, and I kill sin."

And there were the times when he did not feel so righteous. But he had learned to put these thoughts aside, swamp them with his own interpretation of God's word.

It was the break of day, and as Jeb rode—slowly– wearily—toward Mud Creek, morning slipped in on the breath of a cool wind as the birds sang in symphony.

Stopping on a velvet-green rise of grass above the town, Jeb—like some saint from on high—looked down. Down on clapboard buildings lined on either side by thick forest.

A tumbleweed thought, one that often rolled by, came to him: East Texas, a hell of a beautiful sight, a long missed home.

Tilting his broad-brimmed hat forward, the Reverend urged his buckskin on, down into the town of Mud Creek, down to plant the seed of his rambling ministry.

II

He came into town slow and easy, like an on-the-watch shootist, instead of a holy messenger of the Lord.

When he came to the livery he dismounted, looked up at the sign. It read: JOE BOB

RHINE'S LIVERY AND BLACKSMITH SHOP.

"Whatchawant?"

When he looked down from the sign, he was confronted by a shirtless youth wearing a floppy hat and baggy suspenders supporting wool trousers. The boy looked sullen and bored.

"If you don't think it'll tire you out too much, I'd like my horse groomed."

"Six bits. Now."

"I want him groomed, not shampooed, you little crook."

The boy held out his hand. "Six bits "

The Reverend reached into his pocket and slapped the money into the boy's palm.

"What's your name, son? I'd like to know who to avoid from here on out."

"David."

"At least you have a fine biblical name."

"It ain't all that good."

"It isn't all that good."

"Hell, that's what I said. You're the one that's all blazed about it."

"I'm talking about your English. ISN'T is acceptable. AIN'T is not."

'"You talk funny."

"I return the compliment."

"You look like a preacher to me, except you got that gun."

"I ama preacher, boy. Name is Jebidiah Mercer. Reverend Mercer to you. Perhaps you'll groom my horse sometime between now and tomorrow?"

The boy was about to speak when a big man wearing overalls, a leather apron, and a disagreeable expression appeared from the interior of the livery. As he approached, the Reverend saw the boy tense.

"Boy talking you to death, mister?" the man said gruffly.

"We were just making a deal on the grooming of my horse. You must be the owner?"

"That's right. Joe Bob Rhine—he charge you two bits like he was supposed to?"

"I'm satisfied."

David swallowed hard and looked at the Reverend for a long moment.

"Boy's like his mama," Joe Bob said. "A dreamer. You have to beat respect into him.

Damn sure wasn't born with it" He turned to David. "Boy, take the man's horse. Get to work."

"Yes sir," David said. Then to the Reverend. "What's her name?"

"I just call her horse. Mind you that she has a saddle rub on her back."

David smiled. "Yes sir." He started removing the saddle.

"I'd like to board her for a while also," the Reverend said to Rhine. "Is that convenient?"

"Pay when you pick her up."

David handed the Reverend his saddle bags. "Thought you might need these."

"Thanks"

David nodded, took the horse, and went away.

"Where's the best place to stay?" the Reverend asked Rhine.

"Ain't but one." Rhine pointed down the street. "The Hotel Montclaire."

The Reverend nodded, tossed the saddlebags over his shoulder, and started up the street.

III

The sign over the weathered building read: THE HOTEL MONTCLAIRE. Six sets of windows looked down at the street. Each was shaded by a dark blue curtain. All the windows were open and the curtains billowed in the light morning breeze.

Already the breeze was turning warm. It was August in East Texas, and save for the wee-morning hours, and an occasional night breeze, it was hot as a bitch dog in heat, sticky as molasses.

The Reverend took a dusty handkerchief out of his inside coat pocket and wiped his face.

He removed his hat and wiped his thick, black, oily hair with it. He put the handkerchief away, his hat on, stretched his saddle-worn back, and went inside the hotel.

A man with a belly like that of a foundered horse, snoozed behind the register desk.

Sweat balled on his face and streamed down it in dusty rivulets. A fly buzzed and tried to land on the snoozing man's nose, but could get no braking. It tried again—circled and found a perch on the fat man's forehead.

The Reverend bounced his palm on the desk bell.

The man popped out of his slumber with a start, sent the fly buzzing away with a wave of his hand. He licked his sweaty lips with his tongue.

"Jack Montclaire, at your service," he said.

"I would like a room."

"Rooms are our business." He turned the register book around. "If you'll just sign in."

As the Reverend signed. "You caught me sleeping. It's the heat.... Uh, six bits a night, clean sheets every three days.... If you stay three days."

"I'll stay at least three days. Meals extra?"

"Would be if I served them. You'll have to eat over to the cafe." Hoping against it,

"Bags?"

The Reverend patted his saddlebags, then counted out six bits into Montclaire's hand.

"Much obliged," Montclaire said. "Room thirteen, top of the stairs to the left. Enjoy your stay."

Montclaire turned the register book around, moved his lips over the Reverend's name.

"Reverend Jebidiah Mercer?"

The Reverend turned around. "Yes?"

"You're a preacher?"

"That is correct."

"Ain't never seen no preacher that carries a gun before."

"Now you have."

"I mean, a man of the Holy Word and peace and all...."

"Who ever said keeping the law of the Lord is peaceable work? The devil brings a sword, and I bring a sword back to him. It is the will of the Lord and I am his servant."

"I suppose."

"No supposing about it."

Montclaire looked into the red-rimmed, killer-blue eyes of the Reverend and trembled.

"Yes sir. I wasn't trying to tell you your business."

"You could not."

The Reverend went upstairs to leave Montclaire staring at his back.

"Sanctimonious sonofabitch," Montclaire said under his breath.

IV

Up in room thirteen, the Reverend sat on the sagging bed to test it. It would not be comfortable. He got up and went over to the washbasin, removed his hat, washed his face and then his hands. He was tedious with his hands, as if there were stains on them visible only to him. He dried meticulously, went over to the window to look out.

Pushing a curtain aside, he examined the street and the buildings across the way. He could hear hammering coming from Rhine's blacksmith shop, and below a wagon creaked by with squeaky wheels. Out in the distance, just at the edge of town, he could hear faintly the noises of chickens and cows. Just a pleasant little farming community.

Voices began to buzz in the street as more and more people moved about.

A team of mules in harness was being giddyupped down the street—their owner walking behind them– directing them out of town toward a field.

Seeing the mules sent the Reverend's thoughts back twenty years, back to when he was a ragtail kid, not too unlike David at Rhine's livery. A kid dressed in overalls, walking behind his minister father as he plowed a big team of mules, cutting tiny grooves into a great big world.

The Reverend tossed his saddlebags on the bed. He took off his coat, slapped dust from it, and draped it over a chair. He sat down on the edge of the bed, opened one of the bags, and removed a cloth-wrapped package.

He unwrapped the whisky bottle, bit the cork out, and put it and the cloth on the chair.

Next he stretched out on the bed, his head cushioned by a pillow. He began slowly tilting the whisky, and as he did, he saw a spider on the ceiling. It was tracing its way across the room, supported on a snow-white strand that connected with other strands in a corner of the room, twisted and interlocked like the tedious weaving of the mythical fates.

A muscle in his right cheek jumped.

He switched the bottle to his left hand, and his right-hardly aware of the desire of his brain—quick-drew his revolver and calmly shot the spider into oblivion.

V

Montclaire was beating on the door.

Plaster rained down from the ceiling and fell on the Reverend's impassive face.

The Reverend got up, opened the door as he stuck the Navy back in his sash. "You okay, Reverend?" Montclaire said.

The Reverend leaned against the doorjamb. "A spider. The devil's own creatures. I cannot abide them."

"A spider? You shot a spider?"

The Reverend nodded.

Montclaire moved closer to the doorway for a look inside. The sun was lancing through a slit in the curtains, catching the drifting plaster in its rays. It looked like a fine snow. He looked at the hole in the ceiling. There were legs around the hole. The bullet had punched the big spider dead center and the legs had stuck to the ceiling, glued there by spider juice.

Before pulling his head out, Montclaire saw the whisky bottle setting beside the bed.

"You got him, I hope," Montclaire said sarcastically.

"Right between the eyes."

"Now look here. Preacher or not, I can't have people shooting up my hotel. I run a nice respectable place here...."

"It's an outhouse and you know it. You should pay me to stay here."

Montclaire opened his mouth, but something on the Reverend's face held him.

The Reverend reached into his pocket and took out a fist full of bills. "Here's a dollar for the spider. Five for the hole."

"Well sir, I don't know..."

"That's respectable spider bounty, Montclaire, and it's my head beneath the hole if it rains."

"That's true," Montclaire said. "But I run a respectable hotel here, and I should be compensated for...."

"Take it or leave it, windbag."

Looking indignant about it, but not too indignant, Montclaire held out his hand. The Reverend put the promised bills there.

"I suppose that is fair enough, Reverend. But remember my customers pay for peace and quiet as well as lodging and...."

The Reverend stepped back into the room and took hold of the door.

"Then give us some peace and quiet." He slammed the door in Montclaire's face.

Montclaire took his money and went downstairs, thinking of better things to do with it than repair a hole in the ceiling of room thirteen.

VI

He had killed the spider because it was part of his recurring nightmare. So bad was this night dream, he hated to see the sun fall down behind the sky and die in shadow, the time of sleep to draw near.

The dream was full of warped memories. They flashed through the depths of his mind like ghosts. And the most terrifying part concerned the spider—or spiderlike thing. It was as if it were supposed to represent or warn him of something.

One full year of that dream with the pressure of its darkness growing heavier each time.

And it was as if it were pushing him, guiding him toward some destination, some destiny he was to fulfill.

Or perhaps it was nothing more than the shadows of his dying faith, trying to collect themselves once again into a solid lie.

But if there was something to them, guided by heaven or hell, he felt deep in his bones that that something was to be found here. In Mud Creek.

Why he was not certain. Certainly God had long ago given up on him. If this was to be his last showdown, God would not be on hand to aid him.

He tried not to think about it. He took a sip of his whisky.

He looked at the ceiling. "Why has thou forsaken me?"

After a minute of silence a grim smile parted his lips. He lifted the bottle upwards as if in toast.

"That's what I thought you'd say."

He drank a long drought of his liquid hell.

VII

Slow and easy—the contents of the bottle disappearing with the slow light of the sun—

the Reverend drank, headed toward that dark riverbank where he would board the black dream boat that sailed into view each time he stupored himself to sleep.

The bottle was empty.

Groggy, the Reverend sat up in bed and reached for his saddlebags and his next coin of passage. He took out another bottle, removed the cloth, spat away the cork, and resumed his position. After three sips his hand eased to the side of the bed, and the bottle slipped from it, landed upright on the floor—a few drops sloshing from the lip.

The curtains billowed in the open window like blue bloated tongues.

The wind was cool-damp with rain. Thunder rumbled gently.

And the Reverend descended into nightmare.

There was a boat and the Reverend got on it. The boatman was dressed in black, hooded.

A glimpse of his face showed nothing more than a skull with hollow eye sockets. The boatman took six bits from the Reverend for passage, poled away from shore.

The river itself was darker than the shit from Satan's bowels. From time to time, white faces with dead eyes would bob to the surface like fishing corks, then drift back down into the blackness leaving not a ripple.

Up shit river without a paddle.

The boatman poled on down this peculiar river Styx with East Texas shores, and along these shores, the Reverend saw the events of his life as if they were part of a play performed for river travelers.

But none of the events he saw were the good ones, just the dung of his life, save one—

and it was a blessing as well as a curse.

There on the shore, in plain sight—unlike the way it had happened in a bed in the dark of his sister's room– were he and his sister, holding each other in sweaty embrace, copulating like farm animals. In his memory, it had always been a sweet night like a velvet embrace, there had been love as well as passion. But this was lust, pure and simple.

It was not pleasant to look at.

He tried to look away from the next scene of the play, but his eyes remained latched. And before the boat sailed on, he watched his father materialize and discover them, and he heard his father curse them and damn them both. Then his younger self was bolting for his pants and leaping (it had been a window in real life) outwards and away—to run along the banks of the river, until his form grew dark and fell apart like fragments of smoked glass.

And the boat sailed on.

The last year of the Civil War (a kid then) fighting for the South and losing, knowing too much about death at the age of eighteen.

The men he had slain (dressed in blood-spattered Yankee uniforms) lined up along the bank to wave sadly at him. If it had not been so painful, it would have been comical.

Other scenes: round after round of ammunition exiting through the barrel of his Navy, first as a cap and ball revolver, then later as a converted cartridge revolver, round after round until he could hit nickels tossed into the air and split playing cards along the edge by shooting over his shoulder while holding a mirror in his other hand.

The men he had slain outside of war—those who had pushed him, and those who he had eliminated for their sins against God—lined up along the bank now to smile (sometimes bloody smiles) and wave bye-bye.

(Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.)

He could not look away. He watched the dead men recede into darkness.

More of his life came up in acts and scenes along the river. All of it was shit.

He turned to look at the opposite shore, and the play there was no better. It was the same as the opposite bank.

Sail away.

And now—ahead of him—surfacing from the water, as always, was the worst part of his dream.

Spidery legs broke the surface of the water—too many legs for a true spider, there were ten—wriggling. And then the bulbous body surfaced with them: a giant spiderlike thing with huge red eyes that housed some dark and horrid intelligence.

The spider was as wide as the river. Its legs brushed the banks on either side.

The boatman did not veer. He poled stiffly on.

The Reverend reached for his gun. And it was not there. He was butt-ass naked, shrivel-dicked and scared.

He wanted to open his mouth and yell, but he could not. It was as if fear had sewn his lips shut.

The spider made him tremble, and he could not understand it. Size or not. Red, evil eyes or not. He had faced men, sometimes three at once, and he had sent them all to hell on their shadows, and not once, not even for a fraction of a second, had he known true fear.

Until now, in these dreams. (God, let them be dreams.) The Reverend found that he could not look away from the spider-thing's eyes. It was as if they were swollen with all his sins and weaknesses.

The boat sailed on.

The spider-thing opened its black hair-lined maw, and the boat sailed into its mouth, and as the bow of the boat and the boatman disappeared into the black stench of the creature, the Reverend lost sight of the red eyes, and then all he saw was blackness, and that blackness closed out the light behind him and he was one with hell—

He awoke sweating.

He felt cold and trembly as he sat up in bed.

Lightning was flashing consistently. It was bright enough to be seen through the thick curtains, and when the wind billowed them out, it could be seen even more clearly. The curtains flapped at him like wraiths with their tails nailed to the wall. Rain blew in the window, onto the bed and the toes of his boots. The boots glistened in the lightning flashes like wet snake hide.

Rolling out of bed, he picked up the whisky bottle and took a long drink. It did him no good. It did not feel warm against the back of his throat, and it left no glow in his belly. It might as well have been sun-warmed water.

He went to the window, started to close it, but changed his mind.

He stuck his face out of it into the rain and the wind, as if inviting lightning to reach down from the sky and shatter his head like a pumpkin.

The lightning did not take the bait.

The rain washed his hair into his face, joined the sweat and tears there, dribbled down his shirt front and the back of his collar where the hair flipped.

"Can I not be forgiven?" he asked softly. "I loved her. Deep-down and honest solid, same as any man loves any woman. We were not cow and bull copulating in the meadows. It was love, sister or not. Do you hear me, you old bastard, it was love?"

Suddenly he laughed at himself. He was sounding Shakespearean, or like some of that bad poetry he had read by Captain Jack Crawford.

But the humor did not hold.

He lifted his face to the heavens again, let the rain strike his eyes until they hurt. "For the love of Jesus, oh Lord, forgive me my weakness of the flesh. Test me. Try me. I would do anything for your forgiveness."

As before, there was no answer.

He went back to the bed and joined the bottle. The rain was blowing in violently now, coating the ends of the sheets. He didn't care.

As he sipped, he thought of his life and how he had lived it. It seemed nothing more than a dark, dirty lie.

There was no God. His sermons were words to fill the air and float about like puffs of ragweed.

He slid down the bed and reached his Bible from his coat pocket. It was a well-thumbed edition. Long ago he had lost his passion for it. Sermons were his bread and butter, nothing more. He realized it had been that way for some time.

Stretching out on the bed again, he lay with his back against the headboard—the bottle in one hand, the Bible in the other. He sipped from his bottle.

"Lies," he yelled abruptly, and with all his strength, he tossed the Bible toward the window with, "Take this, you heavenly bastard!"

His aim was off. It did not go through the open part of the window as he had planned. It hit high up, and even before the glass broke, he knew he would be buying a new one for fat Montclaire.

The glass shattered, and the Bible flapped out into the night like a multiwinged bird.

Then, even as he watched, it reached a point of darkness beyond his vision, and as he was bringing the whisky bottle to his lips, it came flapping back through like a homing pigeon. It struck the bottle, and shattered it, dealt him a stunning blow to the face. Glass from the bottle cut his chin and blood dribbled down.

He sat completely upright.

In his lap lay the Bible. Open.

A droplet of blood dripped from his chin and landed in the left-hand margin of Revelations 22:12.

He read it.

AND BEHOLD, I COME QUICKLY; AND MY REWARD IS WITH ME, TO GIVE TO

EVERY MAN ACCORDING AS HIS WORK SHALL BE.

Another drop hit next to verse 14.

BLESSED ARE THEY WHO DO HIS COMMANDMENTS, THAT THEY MAY

HAVE RIGHT TO THE TREE OF LIFE, AND MAY ENTER IN THROUGH THE

GATES OF THE CITY.

Slowly, the Reverend closed the book.

There was a lump like a hairball in his throat. He and the bed reeked of rain and whisky, and there was also the faint aroma of his blood.

He worked the lump from his throat and fell on his knees beside the bed, hands clasped.

"Thy will be done, oh Lord. Thy will be done."

Still on his knees, he prayed for an hour, and it was the first time he had done so in a long time and deeply meant it.

Later, he cleaned himself at the basin, and shook the sheets free of glass, undressed, bedded proper.

Before he drifted off, he wondered if he would be worthy of whatever test the Lord had prepared for him here in Mud Creek.

It did not matter. Whatever it was, he would try with all his might.

He slept.

And he did not dream.

VIII

With the sun kicked out and a gold doubloon moon rose in its place—a moon that shone down with a bright, almost unnatural hue on Mud Creek and the surrounding countryside—the nightwalkers began to walk.

The livery gave up its tenant—the padlock dripping off into the dirt like melted butter, only to fall to the ground whole again, and finally to return locked and solid to its place.

Just outside of town at the Furgesons, their little month old girl died. Next morning, amidst much wailing, it would be attributed to natural causes.