David Wilson - Hallowed Ground

"What the hell?" Creed muttered, as the first bird settled on the shingle of Ed Harmon’s shack. The bird pecked away at the roof for a full minute before it turned to preening its feathers. In that minute more birds settled. One roosted on Rufus Cruller's hotel, another on Felix Ruckley’s supply store, one on the roof of the Sheriff’s Office, one on the print shop and another on the foreman’s hut along toward the road to the mine.

While Creed watched black feathered birds settled on each of the tar-paper roofs of the shanties down by Slaughter Alley. What he marked as peculiar about their behavior was that not once did two birds settle on the same roof. Within minutes the carrion eaters rested on the rooftops of every building in Rookwood, one bird to each.

The last of the murder came to rest on the balcony rail less than a yard from where Creed stood. It regarded him with jaundiced eyes.

"Can’t say as I like the look of this," Silas mumbled, shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably. The fool still had breadcrumbs in his beard.

"Perhaps they’ve come for us," Creed said. "They do say that the crows reap the souls of the living and carry them back to the land of the dead. Maybe that’s what this is. Maybe the birds have come to carry us all away," he reached out quickly and caught the crow's soft body in his hands. With a quick, deadly twist he wrung its neck.

He looked up at Silas, tossed the crow aside, and laughed.

"Or maybe not. Now, what were you saying about bad business?"

Silas wasn't listening. He was standing very still, staring past the rail and down the street. Creed followed the direction of Silas Boone’s gaze. The tavern keeper had locked onto the small black form nested on his own roof.

"I could kill that one as well, if it would help you concentrate?"

Silas shook his head. "No, no. What was I saying? Bad business. Yes. Messengers rode through town this morning. They said they’d witnessed some mighty peculiar goings on out toward Scar Crag."

"How so?"

"They came across a trapper's enclave, only there was no sign of the trappers. Neither hide nor hair of them to be found. The camp appeared to be abandoned, and they left everything behind. They didn't stop to investigate, but they kept their eyes open. No sign of anyone on or around the road."

"You thinking Indians? Coyotes?"

"I ain’t thinking a thing," Silas Boone said. "That the camp was empty was just one strange thing, and it wasn't the strangest."

"No?"

"No."

"Then what was?"

Silas Boone told him.

Chapter Three

Ma Kutter heard scratching on the roof.

It was a small insistent sound, like rats picking away at the shingles.

"Get away!" she shouted, pushing herself out of her chair. The fire was warm, the light from the oil lamp low, casting shadows across the gable. She grunted. Her back ached when she straightened up. It was always worse at night. Her joints froze as the burden of dragging her old bag of bones around wore them down. She sank back into the chair, exhausted from even that small exertion.

Such were the joys of age. She was getting shorter by the year and sprouting ugly grey whiskers from her chin like a crone in stories told to frighten children. There had been a time when she'd turned heads, but all that remained was a shriveled up hag barely able to stand for a minute or more without someone to lean on.

A hock of wild pig boiled on the fire. The water hissed and sizzled as it spilled over the brim of the tin pan.

The scratching on the roof grew steadily louder.

Without it she might have heard the other sounds, the slight susurrus and the death rattle as the viper slid from the darkness to coil slowly around the leg of her chair. Ma Kutter felt its scaled skin brush her ankle but by then it was already too late. She barely felt the pin-prick of the snake’s fangs sinking into her soft fatty flesh. It was the sudden flush of warmth as the venom entered her blood that gave it away. By then she was already dead.

As she slumped in her chair, her hands clutching weakly at the arms, the scratching on the roof stopped. The serpent wound its way past her, out through a crack in the door and into the shadows beyond.

Chapter Four

Creed was up before the sun. His head had the empty, hollow ache of lingering whiskey, and his belly crawled with hot, thick coffee. It ate at his gut like acid, but his eyes were focused and bright. He wasn't sure what he expected to find, but he saddled his horse and rode out of Rookwood just as the red-orange fingers of dawn stretched over the horizon. A blood red sun slid sluggishly from behind the ends of the Earth, and he squinted into it, using one hand to shade his eyes from the glare.

The crows were gone. They could call them rooks all they wanted, but the damned things were crows, and in any case, neither crows nor rooks fly at night. Not unless they're spooked. Something, or someone was out there, and Creed was thinking about the trappers Silas had mentioned the night before. He was also thinking about the story the crusty old barman had tacked on at the end. The Messengers had said they saw something flying over the trees -- something too big to be a bird -- something dark. Creed didn't have much patience for ghost stories, but he scanned the treetops all the same.

He wanted to find that camp. Wouldn't hurt to be first on the scene and give it a look before every tramp in town got out and rifled through it. Also wouldn't hurt to be in and gone before the Sheriff caught wind. Creed had no particular feud with "Moonshine" Brady, but he avoided the man when possible. Besides the fact they were often on opposite sides of the law, there was something about Moonshine that gave him the creeps.

The Sheriff stood six and a half feet if he was an inch. He did nothing without careful thought and consideration, but once he made up his mind, he was fast as lightning. There was something in Rookwood that stuck the right word to a thing, and Moonshine, the way it made a man see things others didn't see, and move slower than normal – was a perfect name for the Sheriff. It would be better to be back in Rookwood before Brady found the camp.

Creed topped the first rise outside town and stopped. He knew the trapper's camp should be off to the north, but something else had caught his eye. Something had glinted over by Dead Man's Gulch. Even as he thought about riding on toward the camp, Creed turned his mount and headed toward the gulch. The camp wasn't going anywhere, and he still had time before anyone else was likely to show.

As he turned, the silence was shattered by the loud, mournful peeling of a bell. Creed glanced over his shoulder toward town. It was the bell at the old chapel. There hadn't been a preacher in Rookwood for more than a year. They rang the bell for weddings, and deaths. No one in town was engaged.

Creed frowned, tossed a moment's thought at the question of who had passed, and then turned away. He kicked the horse’s flanks and took off at a trot. Whoever it was would still be dead when he got back. Of that much, he was certain.

Chapter Five

Creed rode down into the valley of shadows that led toward the gulch. The land he crossed was cracked and withered, much like his skin. The wind blew hard along the gullies, whipping up sand and scrub. There were no miracles in this place, least of all miracles of life. Dust and bones, sand and souls; that was the way of it. How much blood had soaked into the earth over the decade since the first wagons rolled out West? Enough that a man could stab the crust and it would bubble back up viscous and red? Creed rode the familiar trail lost in thought and watching the shadows. Even in that sun-baked hell, there were shadows.