Colin Winnette - Haints Stay

At the time, Brooke found it curious that, having had no interest in pursuing them after those first few days, and certainly giving no real thought after that to finding the man and killing him, he had simply stumbled onto the man and into killing him and it was entirely likely his wife would soon hear about it, however many miles away she was and however little she cared to think on Brooke this late in life.

There was no logic to life and no road that could take you straight to elsewhere. Living was all winding around and doubling back. He was walking alongside his old tracks now, watching the stream grow broad and deep again. The red rocks where the wagon sat were even visible far, far off in the distance. He had no idea how long he had been walking, how many days, how many miles, but knew he was better off now than he had been at the halfway point. He could try to follow the wagon’s trail back to the town, at the very least. Maybe the innkeeper would take pity on him. Or had she been setting them up from the very beginning? Had the whole thing been an ambush? How was he to know? How was he to even begin to guess? The stream seemed of an entirely different color than before. Or maybe it didn’t. He could not be sure. He tasted it and it tasted like water, but that was no help in determining if the water had somehow changed or if this was in fact the same stream.

They had killed a boy once, but Brooke had not wanted to. Children are stubborn and it is rare that someone else’s child will listen to you without being instructed to do so by a guardian. Boys were worse than girls in this regard, and if a young boy got it into his head that you were double-dealing him or treating him poorly, there was no other way of getting around it than to be forceful or to be saved from force by the appearance of the boy’s parent. One such boy had caught Brooke and Sugar sleeping on his father’s property and had chosen to take the extreme route in addressing the offense. Rifle to collar, he demanded they explain themselves, which they would not be particularly good at doing, in such a position. Firstly, they did not like being threatened. No one did. Secondly, their story was not exactly one to put a frightened boy at ease. They were out to kill someone. Someone who lived in this area and owned a considerable portion of the land. Someone who had a son and a sick wife and a slow-witted brother. Someone whose son was rumored to be a bit of a handful.

The killer was going from house to house then. Entering, and then shortly after, firing. He was steadily approaching the inn. Martha moved Mary and Bird to the back of the building, into a back bedroom with a large vanity. She opened the vanity, removed the dresses and suits, as well as the bulk of the cobwebs and dust, and instructed them to get in and not to come out, no matter what they heard.

“There are spiders,” said Mary.

Martha positioned them beside one another and clipped the vanity shut. She considered turning its front to face the wall, but she hadn’t the strength to budge it. She went back to the front room where the innkeeper’s body sat slumped. She checked the window and saw nothing. She heard a gunshot, faintly, but did not flinch. She covered the open-eyed gaze of the innkeeper with a bit of lace from the back of the couch. She did not know the name for it or its actual use.

She positioned herself behind the couch and trained the gun at the door. She sat a moment. Listened. She could hear only her heart pulsing in her neck. After a moment of silence it occurred to her that there was no way he wasn’t anticipating a gun trained on at least one of these doors he was kicking open. Without a doubt, he would enter prepared for the obvious position she’d taken, and their exchange would be only a matter of speed and accuracy, neither of which did she care to match with someone who’d long been in this line of work.

She examined the room for a better position or plan. The room was only slightly furnished. Two couches facing one another at either side of an empty fireplace. A body leaned against that fireplace, with a bit of lace over its gaze. Across from the body was a low desk with thin legs. It would offer no protection. Behind the desk was a row of small cubbies. They looked something like mail slots but each had been filled with small trinkets, porcelain figurines, and tiny stones or dusty gems.

She heard movement, Mary and the boy shifting in the vanity, banging their elbows and whispering to one another. She heard the vanity’s wooden base creak beneath their weight. More gunfire. It was single-sided fire. One or two or three measured shots and then silence. The killer was eliminating the townspeople, one by one. She entered the bedroom in which the vanity was stored and examined the other possible hiding places. There was a closet that would not do. There was space under the bed that would not do. There was the vanity, which was full. And there was a window.

She heard Bird and Mary go silent as she climbed atop the desk.

“Do not step out and do not speak,” she said to the vanity.

“Martha?” said Mary’s voice.

But she did not reply.

She exited through the window.

In the alley behind the building the town seemed almost peaceful. The dirt there had been smoothed by the wind. Only a few scattered footprints and bits of trash decorated the path. There was a foul smell, but that was to be expected.

She could no longer sense the killer’s systematic approach. She spotted a small pile of crates at the far end of the alley, where it opened up onto the town. She kept low and approached the crates for cover. From behind them, she could see the empty street.

The killer appeared then, on the porch of the building across from the inn. She did not know the building’s function. She aimed, but it was not a guaranteed shot. She was not terrible with a rifle, but she was not good with a rifle. The killer looked tired, as if he had not slept in days. He was limping, bent slightly at the waist. He looked ill and miserable, like an old dog she and John had once put down together. It was only a puppy. John could not bear to shoot it, so they had carried it in a sack out to the stream near their house and loaded the sack with rocks. The poor thing had not struggled in the slightest. It had even seemed to smile as they crowded the space between the sack and its fur with stones.

She did not like killing things. And here she was, preparing to kill one more thing. Not that she felt conflicted about it. She just didn’t like the idea of it, resented that she would carry this weight with her for the rest of her days. It was not a sin, to protect herself against violence by putting an end to it — but the act would stay with her forever. Her mind would always have there to go, that memory to reflect on, and it would likely have a stronger pull than most of the others. Each death did not lessen the load of the previous. But you grew the muscles to better carry them. John used to have nightmares about the men he had killed. He rode with some general during a violent time in the territory. John had said the general’s name many times, as if Martha were to recognize it, but she did not recognize it and so it did not stick. John would wake up in the middle of the night sweating and crying like a child. She had not asked, but had assumed he’d done some unforgivable things.

The killer was at the inn, finally. Martha had not raised her rifle, had not even thought to raise her rifle. She had not even registered his approach at first, but snapped into focus when he dumped the spent shells from his pistol and began to reload. They hit the ground like spilled coins. Somehow, the sound of those shells clicking against the dirt rang throughout the town louder than the muffled shots from within each home. It was the sound of him leaving those deaths behind. It was an unnatural sound. It was monstrous. There was a desperate look in his eyes, like a cornered dog. But there was a matter-of-factness to his movement, like a lost man, decidedly looping the same patch of desert land in the hopes that death will find him more quickly. She knew that face. She knew this man. She had been born to kill him.