Christopher Buehlman - Those Across the River

Got the one behind Jesus God I’m next

The rest of the party crouched and ducked and now opened up, firing madly in the direction the shot had come from.

The half-moon had come out, throwing pale light down through the trees.

I saw that we were obliged to shoot over the body of Old Man Gordeau, whose face was bare and drawn in the moonlight.

Another muzzle flash from the trees; it had relocated. Or there were two. We kept shooting. I reloaded the clip with the shells from my pocket, fired two at a silhouette, then got a stove-pipe jam. I cleared it, then stopped shooting. The doctor flinched as a bullet passed quite near his head. He was otherwise frozen, holding his empty pistol in front of his face for no good reason.

Lester emptied his rifle and said, “I’m out!”

“Me, too,” said the doctor.

Buster said, “Shut up!”

“I think they shot six!” Lester said. “If all they got’s the Enfield, they dry, too.”

“Could be they got my gun. They’s still three in that,” Charley said.

“Shut the hell up about how many bullets you got,” Buster yelled.

It was hard to be heard over Saul.

He was shrieking, hoarsely now.

I had two bullets left.

I resolved then and there not to use them unless I was within ten feet of one; to save them until I was certain I would die unless I shot. My resolution would be tested very soon. I looked around at the group. Lester had his shirt off, his white limbs bare to the cold; the doctor had dropped his empty gun and now held Lester’s shirt bunched and pressed against Saul’s jaw, muffling his cries somewhat. Lester was looking around to see if there was a dropped gun he could shoot, but he could see none, and nobody was firing now. We all panted, crouching behind trees, our breath pluming.

Lester saw something and fixed his gaze on it.

I looked where he was looking.

The red dress. The boy with no pants walked out almost nonchalantly into the moonlight. Buster stood to fire, but the boy saw him and crouched low, fast, just as Buster squeezed. The bullet whined off into the trees. The boy now bent down and grabbed Old Man Gordeau by the pants legs and began pulling him across the trail to the trees on the other side. Lester Gordeau broke from where his brother thrashed and groaned and ran to the trail, grabbing his father’s arms.

“Let him GO !” he shouted at it, but it pulled grimly, stronger than Lester, jerking at the dead man’s legs in a series of short, hard tugs like a dog pulling at a knotted sock. Lester was losing ground. He dug in and tried to pull harder. He knew it was staring at him but he would not look at its face.

The moon went behind a cloud again and it got darker.

I wanted to shoot the boy but would not part with those last bullets; nor could I make myself run onto the trail to help Lester.

“Let go, Lester!” Charley yelled.

“Lester, get back here!” shouted the doctor.

That was when the boy in the red dress dropped the old man’s legs and walked up to Lester, who stood stupefied, holding his father’s arms. He didn’t even move his head away when it reached up like a magician about to do a trick, and grabbed Lester’s ear. The boy yanked Lester’s ear off.

Lester yelled and dropped his father.

Both brothers yelling now.

The boy tucked the ear in his mouth like a piece of candy. I sighted down the barrel now, arguing with myself about whether to shoot the boy; that was when Buster grabbed Charley’s axe from his belt and ran at it.

It didn’t even duck.

Buster swung hard and hit true.

He buried the axe in the boy’s head as if in a soft tree stump; I knew the sound it was making even though I couldn’t hear it, knew that Buster was feeling that sound in the bones of his arm. He let the handle go. The boy staggered backwards until he hit a tree, then slid to the ground as his legs buckled under him. Every man stood still, holding his breath.

A gout of blood poured down the boy’s head.

Then stopped.

The axe fell out of the boy’s head and onto the trail. And then the wound was gone. The men who were close enough to see it gasped. The boy wiped the blood out of his eyes with the hem of his dress and stood up, picking up the axe.

Buster backed up a step. I walked onto the trail and stood next to Buster, my gun pointed at the boy. Not ten yards away. Despite my shaking hands, I was sure I would hit him.

The boy dropped the axe.

Grinned his sharp-toothed grin.

Then started to shake.

The doctor might have thought it was a seizure from the head wound, but that had not just been a wound any more than this was just a seizure.

Buster and I backed away.

The boy changed.

Quickly, tearing the red dress.

The moon came back, shone on its dust-colored fur.

It stepped out of what was left of the dress.

I remember smelling urine and thinking Buster’s bladder had loosed. Turned out it was mine.

I sensed Buster turn and run beside me, so I turned and ran also, still holding the pistol with two shots left in it.

I believe all of us ran.

All except the doctor, with Saul’s head in his lap.

I never saw them again.

Or Lester.

BUSTER AND I ran together until we could not run. Twice I hit trees, once so hard I almost lost consciousness. When we could no longer run we trotted, and then we walked. Buster wore the expression of a tragedy mask and, at times, made a sound between panting and sobbing. I put my arm around the big man’s shoulders but Buster didn’t seem to care; just clutched his hands under his chin like a child saying grace and made that sound.

I don’t know how long that went on. I know we were making for the river, and I have no idea if we were heading in the right direction. I was sure we wouldn’t get there. I was right.

When strong hands took my arm and spun me, I didn’t resist. I had no fight left. “This one?” said a small-eyed Negro with an unevenly trimmed woolly head. A white man said, “Yeah. This’n shot me. With this.” He had already plucked my pistol out of its holster. He had permanently matted long hair and a huge mustache. They were both naked, as was a white woman with a curly brown mane, who moved past us and made for Buster. Thankfully I didn’t see any more. The men hoisted me on their shoulders like a rolled-up rug and started running with me.

Behind me I could hear Buster screaming hoarsely, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

Not about the men running with me; about whatever the woman was doing to him.

I knew I was going to die.

And something odd happened; I relaxed.

And it all got funny.

The white one, the one with the cowboy mustache, was running in front with my legs, limping, favoring his right side. I remembered now shooting one of the monsters in the haunch the night my wife was bitten. The right haunch. I started laughing.

Then I realized that I recognized his mustache.

He was one of the hobos who came through town looking for work. I sat next to him while he ate ice cream at Harvey’s on that hot summer day. The colored with the bad haircut had been with him. It was also possible that Curly Woman was the pipe-smoking “Polish” woman. Jesus, they had our number. They hadn’t been angels looking for honest men; they had been devils making maps.

I laughed harder.

The colored with the bad haircut, who was holding my upper body, laughed, too, and said, “Sound like young marse got a joke to say.”

I thought about Dora, alone in the house, and I stopped laughing. I clawed and tried to dig my fingers into the black man’s eyes. He didn’t yell, just made a sound like ack , twisted out of it and dropped me. Because the other one had my feet, my head hit the ground. Now my feet were dropped. I opened my eyes just in time to see the black one straddle my chest fluidly and sit down on me like an anchor. I remember the moonlight on his blousy but threadbare shirt, how old and dirty it was, and his stink. It was the not-unpleasant smell of a Negro’s skin and hair corrupted with something feral and something coppery like old blood. I had smelled it while he ran with me, but now it washed down over me.