Deadman's Crossing

  “You get an idea to run, Bill, I can shoot you off your horse,” the deputy said. “Close range with my revolver, far range with my rifle. You don’t want to try it.”

  “It’s still a long way to Nacogdoches,” Bill said.

  The road was narrow and of red clay. It stretched far ahead like a band of blood, turned sharply to the right around a wooded curve where it was as dark as the bottom of Jonah’s whale. The blowing leaves seemed especially intense on the road, scrapping dryly about, winding in the air like giant hornets. The trees, which grew thick, bent in the wind, from right to left. This naturally led the trio to take to the left side of the road.

  The farther they went down the road, the darker it became. By the time they got to the curve, the woods were so thick, and the thunderous skies had grown so dark, the moon was barely visible; its light was as weak as a sick baby’s grip.

  When they had traveled for some time, the deputy said, obviously feeling good about it, “There ain’t nothing out here ’sides what you would expect. A possum maybe. The wind.”

  “Good for you, then,” Jebidiah said. “Good for us all.”

  “You sound disappointed to me,” the deputy said.

  “My line of work isn’t far from yours, Deputy. I look for bad guys of a sort, and try and send them to hell...or in some cases, back to hell.”

  And then, almost simultaneous with a flash of lightning, something crossed the road not far in front of them.

  “What the hell was that?” Bill said, coming out of what had been a near stupor.

  “It looked like a man,” the deputy said.

  “Could have been,” Jebidiah said. “Could have been.”

  “What do you think it was?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I do.”

  “Gimet,” Jebidiah said.

  The sky let the moon loose for a moment, and its light spread through the trees and across the road. In the light there were insects, a large wad of them, buzzing about in the air.

  “Bees,” Bill said. “Damn if them ain’t bees. And at night. That ain’t right.”

  “You an expert on bees?” the deputy asked.

  “He’s right,” Jebidiah said. “And look, they’re gone now.”

  “Flew off,” the deputy said.

  “No...no they didn’t,” Bill said. “I was watching, and they didn’t fly nowhere. They’re just gone. One moment they were there, then they was gone, and that’s all there is to it. They’re like ghosts.”

  “You done gone crazy,” the deputy said.

  “They are not insects of this earth,” Jebidiah said. “They are familiars.”

  “What?” Bill said.

  “They assist evil, or evil beings,” Jebidiah said. “In this case, Gimet. They’re like a witch’s black cat familiar. Familiars take on animal shapes, insects, that sort of thing.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” the deputy said. “That don’t make no kind of sense at all.”

  “Whatever you say,” Jebidiah said, “but I would keep my eyes alert, and my senses raw. Wouldn’t hurt to keep your revolvers loose in their holsters. You could well need them. Though, come to think of it, your revolvers won’t be much use.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Bill said.

  Jebidiah didn’t answer. He continued to urge his horse on, something that was becoming a bit more difficult as they went. All of the horses snorted and turned their heads left and right, tugged at their bits; their ears went back and their eyes went wide.

  “Holy hell,” Bill said, “what’s that?”

  Jebidiah and the deputy turned to look at him. Bill was turned in the saddle, looking back. They looked too, just in time to see something that looked pale blue in the moonlight dive into the brush on the other side of the road. Black dots followed, swarmed in the moonlight, then darted into the bushes behind the pale, blue thing like a load of buckshot.

  “What was that?” the deputy said. His voice sounded as if it had been pistol whipped.

  “Already told you,” Jebidiah said.

  “That couldn’t have been nothing human,” the deputy said.

  “Don’t you get it,” Bill said, “that’s what the preacher is trying to tell you. It’s Gimet, and he ain’t nowhere alive. His skin was blue. And he’s all messed up. I seen more than you did. I got a good look. And them bees. We ought to break out and ride hard.”

  “Do as you choose,” the Reverend said. “I don’t intend to.”

  “And why not?” Bill said.

  “That isn’t my job.”

  “Well, I ain’t got no job. Deputy, ain’t you supposed to make sure I get to Nacogdoches to get hung? Ain’t that your job?”

  “It is.”

  “Then we ought to ride on, not bother with this fool. He wants to fight some grave crawler, then let him. Ain’t nothing we ought to get into.”

  “We made a pact to ride together,” the deputy said. “So we will.”

  “I didn’t make no pact,” Bill said.

  “Your word, your needs, they’re nothing to me,” the deputy said.

  At that moment, something began to move through the woods on their left. Something moving quick and heavy, not bothering with stealth. Jebidiah looked in the direction of the sounds, saw someone, or something, moving through the underbrush, snapping limbs aside like they were rotten sticks. He could hear the buzz of the bees, loud and angry. Without really meaning to, he urged the horse to a trot. The deputy and Bill joined in with their own mounts, keeping pace with the Reverend’s horse.

  They came to a place off the side of the road where the brush thinned, and out in the distance they could see what looked like bursting white waves, frozen against the dark. But they soon realized it was tombstones. And there were crosses. A graveyard. The graveyard Old Timer had told them about. The sky had cleared now, the wind had ceased to blow hard. They had a fine view of the cemetery, and as they watched, the thing that had been in the brush moved out of it and went up the little rise where the graves were, climbed up on one of the stones and sat. A black cloud formed around its head, and the sound of buzzing could be heard all the way out to the road. The thing sat there like a king on a throne. Even from that distance it was easy to see it was nude, and male, and his skin was gray—blue in the moonlight—and the head looked misshapen. Moonglow slipped through cracks in the back of the horror’s head and poked out of fresh cracks at the front of its skull and speared out of the empty eye sockets. The bees’ nest, visible through the wound in its chest, was nestled between the ribs. It pulsed with a yellow-honey glow. From time to time, little black dots moved around the glow and flew up and were temporarily pinned in the moonlight above the creature’s head.

  “Jesus,” said the deputy.

  “Jesus won’t help a bit,” Jebidiah said.

  “It’s Gimet, ain’t it? He...it...really is dead,” the deputy said.

  “Undead,” Jebidiah said. “I believe he’s toying with us. Waiting for when he plans to strike.”

  “Strike?” Bill said. “Why?”

  “Because that is his purpose,” Jebidiah said, “as it is mine to strike back. Gird your loins, men, you will soon be fighting for your life.”

  “How about we just ride like hell?” Bill said.

  In that moment, Jebidiah’s words became prophetic. The thing was gone from the gravestone. Shadows had gathered at the edge of the woods, balled up, become solid, and when the shadows leaped from the even darker shadows of the trees, it was the shape of the thing they had seen on the stone, cool blue in the moonlight, a disaster of a face, and the teeth.... They were long and sharp. Gimet leaped in such a way that his back foot hit the rear of Jebidiah’s animal, allowing him to spring over the deputy’s horse, to land hard and heavy on Bill. Bill let out a howl and was knocked off his mount. When he hit the road, his hat flying, Gimet grabbed him by his bushy head of straw-colored hair and dragged him off as easily as if he were a kitten. Gimet went into the trees, tugging Bill
after him. Gimet blended with the darkness there. The last of Bill was a scream, the raising of his cuffed hands, the cuffs catching the moonlight for a quick blink of silver, then there was a rustle of leaves and a slapping of branches, and Bill was gone.

  “My God,” the deputy said. “My God. Did you see that thing?”

  Jebidiah dismounted, moved to the edge of the road, leading his horse, his gun drawn. The deputy did not dismount. He pulled his pistol and held it, his hands trembling. “Did you see that?” he said again, and again.

  “My eyes are as good as your own,” Jebidiah said. “I saw it. We’ll have to go in and get him.”

  “Get him?” the deputy said. “Why in the name of everything that’s holy would we do that? Why would we want to be near that thing? He’s probably done what he’s done already.... Damn, Reverend. Bill, he’s a killer. This is just as good as I might want. I say while the old boy is doing whatever he’s doing to that bastard, we ride like the goddamn wind, get on out on the far end of this road where it forks. Gimet is supposed to be only able to go on this stretch, ain’t he?”

  “That’s what Old Timer said. You do as you want. I’m going in after him.”

  “Why? You don’t even know him.”

  “It’s not about him,” Jebidiah said.

  “Ah, hell. I ain’t gonna be shamed.” The deputy swung down from his horse, pointed at the place where Gimet had disappeared with Bill. “Can we get the horses through there?”

  “Think we will have to go around a bit. I discern a path over there.”

  “Discern?”

  “Recognize. Come on, time is wasting.”

  They went back up the road a pace, found a trail that led through the trees. The moon was strong now as all the clouds that had covered it had rolled away like wind-blown pollen. The air smelled fresh, but as they moved forward, that changed. There was a stench in the air, a putrid smell both sweet and sour, and it floated up and spoiled the freshness.

  “Something dead,” the deputy said.

  “Something long dead,” Jebidiah said.

  Finally the brush grew so thick they had to tie the horses, leave them. They pushed their way through briars and limbs.

  “There ain’t no path,” the deputy said. “You don’t know he come through this way.”

  Jebidiah reached out and plucked a piece of cloth from a limb, held it up so that the moon dropped rays on it. “This is part of Bill’s shirt. Am I right?”

  The deputy nodded. “But how could Gimet get through here? How could he get Bill through here?”

  “What we pursue has little interest in the things that bother man. Limbs, briars. It’s nothing to the living dead.”

  They went on for a while. Vines got in their way. The vines were wet. They were long thick vines, and sticky, and finally they realized they were not vines at all, but guts, strewn about and draped like decorations.

  “Fresh,” the deputy said. “Bill, I reckon.”

  “You reckon right,” Jebidiah said.

  They pushed on a little farther, and the trail widened, making the going easier. They found more pieces of Bill as they went along. The stomach. Fingers. Pants with one leg in them. A heart, which looked as if it has been bitten into and sucked on. Jebidiah was curious enough to pick it up and examine it. Finished, he tossed it in the dirt, wiped his hands on Bill’s pants, the one with the leg still in it, said, “Gimet just saved you a lot of bother and the State of Texas the trouble of a hanging.”

  “Heavens,” the deputy said, watching Jebidiah wipe blood on the leg-filled pants.

  Jebidiah looked up at the deputy. “He won’t mind I get blood on his pants,” Jebidiah said. “He’s got more important things to worry about, like dancing in the fires of hell. And by the way, yonder sports his head.”

  Jebidiah pointed. The deputy looked. Bill’s head had been pushed onto a broken limb of a tree, the sharp end of the limb being forced through the rear of the skull and out the left eye. The spinal cord dangled from the back of the head like a bell rope.

  The deputy puked in the bushes. “Oh, God. I don’t want no more of this.”

  “Go back. I won’t think the less of you, ’cause I don’t think that much of you to begin with. Take his head for evidence and ride on, just leave me my horse.”

  The deputy adjusted his hat. “Don’t need the head.... And if it comes to it, you’ll be glad I’m here. I ain’t no weak sister.”

  “Don’t talk me to death on the matter. Show me what you got, boy.”

  The trail was slick with Bill’s blood. They went along it and up a rise, guns drawn. At the top of the hill they saw a field, grown up, and not far away, a sagging shack with a fallen-down chimney.

  They went that direction, came to the shack’s door. Jebidiah kicked it with the toe of his boot and it sagged open. Once inside, Jebidiah struck a match and waved it about. Nothing but cobwebs and dust.

  “Must have been Gimet’s place,” Jebidiah said. Jebidiah moved the match before him until he found a lantern full of coal oil. He lit it and placed the lantern on the table.

  “Should we do that?” the deputy asked. “Have a light. Won’t he find us?”

  “In case you have forgotten, that’s the idea.”

  Out the back window, which had long lost its grease-paper covering, they could see tombstones and wooden crosses in the distance. “Another view of the graveyard,” Jebidiah said. “That would be where the girl’s mother killed herself.”

  No sooner had Jebidiah said that, then he saw a shadowy shape move on the hill, flitting between stones and crosses. The shape moved quickly and awkwardly.

  “Move to the center of the room,” Jebidiah said.

  The deputy did as he was told, and Jebidiah moved the lamp there as well. He sat it in the center of the floor, found a bench and dragged it next to the lantern. Then he reached in his coat pocket and took out the Bible. He dropped to one knee and held the Bible close to the lantern light and tore out certain pages. He wadded them up, and began placing them all around the bench on the floor, placing the crumpled pages about six feet out from the bench and in a circle with each wad two feet apart.

  The deputy said nothing. He sat on the bench and watched Jebidiah’s curious work. Jebidiah sat on the bench beside the deputy, rested one of his pistols on his knee. “You got a .44, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. I got a converted cartridge pistol, just like you.”

  “Give me your revolver.”

  The deputy complied.

  Jebidiah opened the cylinders and let the bullets fall out on the floor.

  “What in hell are you doing?”

  Jebidiah didn’t answer. He dug into his gun belt and came up with six silver-tipped bullets, loaded the weapon and gave it back to the deputy.

  “Silver,” Jebidiah said. “Sometimes it wards off evil.”

  “Sometimes?”

  “Be quiet now. And wait.”

  “I feel like a staked goat,” the deputy said.

  After a while, Jebidiah rose from the bench and looked out the window. Then he sat down promptly and blew out the lantern.

  Somewhere in the distance a night bird called. Crickets sawed and a large frog bleated. They sat there on the bench, near each other, facing in opposite directions, their silver-loaded pistols on their knees. Neither spoke.

  Suddenly the bird ceased to call and the crickets went silent, and no more was heard from the frog. Jebidiah whispered to the deputy.

  “He comes.”

  The deputy shivered slightly, took a deep breath. Jebidiah realized he too was breathing deeply.

  “Be silent, and be alert,” Jebidiah said.

  “All right,” said the deputy, and he locked his eyes on the open window at the back of the shack. Jebidiah faced the door, which stood halfway open and sagging on its rusty hinges.

  For a long time there was nothing. Not a sound. Then Jebidiah saw a shadow move at the doorway and heard the door creak slightly as it moved. He could see a hand on
what appeared to be an impossibly long arm, reaching out to grab at the edge of the door. The hand clutched there for a long time, not moving. Then, it was gone, taking its shadow with it.

  Time crawled by.

  “It’s at the window,” the deputy said, and his voice was so soft it took Jebidiah a moment to decipher the words. Jebidiah turned carefully for a look.

  It sat on the window sill, crouched there like a bird of prey, a halo of bees circling around its head. The hive pulsed and glowed in its chest, and in that glow they could see more bees, so thick they appeared to be a sort of humming smoke. Gimet’s head sprouted a few springs of hair, like withering grass fighting its way through stone. A slight turn of its head allowed the moon to flow through the back of its cracked skull and out of its empty eyes. Then the head turned and the face was full of shadows again. The room was silent except for the sound of buzzing bees.

  “Courage,” Jebidiah said, his mouth close to the deputy’s ear. “Keep your place.”

  The thing climbed into the room quickly, like a spider dropping from a limb, and when it hit the floor, it stayed low, allowing the darkness to lay over it like a cloak.

  Jebidiah had turned completely on the bench now, facing the window. He heard a scratching sound against the floor. He narrowed his eyes, saw what looked like a shadow, but was in fact the thing coming out from under the table.

  Jebidiah felt the deputy move, perhaps to bolt. He grabbed his arm and held him.

  “Courage,” he said.

  The thing kept crawling. It came within three feet of the circle made by the crumpled Bible pages.

  The way the moonlight spilled through the window and onto the floor near the circle Jebidiah had made, it gave Gimet a kind of eerie glow, his satellite bees circling his head. In that moment, every aspect of the thing locked itself in Jebidiah’s mind. The empty eyes, the sharp, wet teeth, the long, cracked nails, blackened from grime, clacking against the wooden floor. As it moved to cross between two wads of scripture, the pages burst into flames and a line of crackling blue fulmination moved between the wadded pages and made the circle light up fully, all the way around, like Ezekiel’s wheel.

  Gimet gave out with a hoarse cry, scuttled back, clacking nails and knees against the floor. When he moved, he moved so quickly there seemed to be missing spaces between one moment and the next. The buzzing of Gimet’s bees was ferocious.