A Fistful of Horror - Tales Of Terror From The Old West (8 page)

“Gerrold.” A drunken voice slurred behind him and he turned around, startled.

A dark shadow stood before him, swaying and stinking of whiskey and rank body odour.

“Mister! You scared the jeepers out a me.” Ira’s heart beat against his ribs and he put a hand over it as though he could keep it from popping out of his chest.

“It’s time to pay Gerrold.”

“Sorry mister. You got me mixed up with someone else. My name’s Ir…”

A gun struck Ira in the forehead and he staggered back holding the gushing wound as he fought to stay conscious. Black tendrils formed at the edges of his vision. He put up a hand to ward off a blow he knew was coming but the stranger swung his pistol in a hooking gesture and the heavy metal hit Ira on the temple. He fell back unconscious.

Seamus holstered his pistol, huffing. He then grabbed Ira by the foot and started to drag him towards his horse. It was time to build a fire.

***

Ira knew he was in the worst trouble of his life. With a pounding head and the taste of blood in his mouth, he thought that maybe this was the type of trouble you don’t get out of. His stomach clenched with fear. He tried to move his hands, found them tied behind him and his blood pumped cold through his veins. He was in some deep trouble.

Unsteady footsteps pounded towards him and kicked dirt into his face before stopping. A tall, indistinct shadow swayed above him. A bottle clinked against teeth, liquid gushed into an empty space followed by a sigh, then, “Gerrold. You n’ me have some unfinished business.”

“I ain’t Gerrold.”

“I knows a Gerrold when I sees one.”

“No. You don’t.”

Ira’s denial, so calm and confident, caused Seamus to cock his head at Ira, giving him an appraising look.

“It’s too dark. Maybe I’ll start a fire. To see you better.”

“You had a good look at me in the bar. You know I’m not Gerrold.”

“You got a smart mouth Gerrold.”

The man stumbled off and Ira reached for the knife on his belt. The sheath was there but the knife wasn’t. Ira got the feeling this was more than simple mistaken identity. It was the way the man had called him Gerrold. Disingenuous, like even he didn’t believe it himself. That scared Ira more than anything. It made Ira think there was no way for him to convince the man he wasn’t Gerrold because the man already knew. He just didn’t care.

Fear shook Ira’s limbs. The man’s drunken muttering accompanied a shovel, thwack, sinking into dirt.

“A’course he’s Gerrold.” Thwack. “He’s just trying to get outta payin’ what needs to be paid. He’ll pay, Remus.” Thwack. “Don’t you worry.” Thwack. “I could tell he’s Gerrold when I looked in his eyes. It’s all in the eyes in’it Remus?” Thwack. “Yup, we’ll have us some cracklin’ soon Remus. We loves the cracklin’ don’t we?” Thwack. “That should do it.” The shovel dropped and uneven footfalls approached him and all Ira could think about was Lily’s face. The pale skin decorated with freckles and her eyes that could reach into him and caress his soul. He felt saddened at everything he would miss but rage drowned his sadness like a sea swell. To be ambushed and killed by a drunken murderer when all he wanted was to have a life, a good and prosperous one, seemed too cruel. He knew bad things happened in this world but they weren’t supposed to happen to him. They were supposed to happen to other people.

Hands grabbed at his boots and dragged him over the uneven ground. The rocks and grit scratched at his back and his anger grew, unabated. Instead of praying to God, he prayed for revenge.

During his awkward age of adolescence burgeoning on manhood, his parents argued a lot. They were farmers, near Louisiana and had a hard time growing crops. When their neighbours’ crops grew and prospered in the same dirt they were planting in, his mother went to talk to them, to see what they were doing. His mother returned wringing her hands, upset at the what she had learned and not wanting to share it with his father. She knew he wouldn’t like it any more than she did. He remembered his mother looking over at him, skeletal frame from lack of food wearing deteriorating clothes and sensed her resolve strengthen. He heard their whispers. A powerful voodoo queen, who had trained under Marie Laveau, had helped them. All it cost was a small portion of the crops raised as payment. His father was furious. Voodoo was the devil’s religion and there was no way the devil would help feed them. They argued, his mother plead pointing at Ira, asking him if he would rather lose a son to starvation than deal with the Voodoo lady. After a time, his father relented. When the Voodoo lady, Clarissa Cadeau, attended their home to perform the ritual, she had brought her nephew who was around Ira’s age. Isolated out on the farm, Ira was fascinated by these people with their dark skin and strange way of speaking. The nephew, Enoch, was just as fascinated by the sun burnt boy with his white blonde hair. The ritual took all day and Ira, being curious, asked if Enoch was indeed in contact with the devil, and if so, what was the devil like?

Enoch explained, in his strange patois of Creole, that there was no devil in voodoo. The devil was a Christian concept. There were hexes and powerful curses used against those who did you a great wrong. Ira begged him to tell him a curse, any curse. He wouldn’t use it, but it was dreadful, fascinating stuff and he asked Enoch with bright eyes and a smile. Enoch refused to tell him while looking over at his aunt Clarissa with a guilty expression, hoping she couldn’t hear what they were talking about. In the end Enoch told him one. All it cost Ira was a rat’s tail and a handful of Indian arrowheads. He considered it a fair deal.

Wanting to impress his new white-haired friend Enoch told him of a curse so powerful it was only whispered about. He told him the incantation, the words to be spoken and Ira remembered those words. They were strange, guttural yet lyrical and of no language Ira was familiar with. Enoch explained the words came from his people across the sea, from a land where strange and fearful animals roamed, a continent of monsters. Ira asked what the curse would do and Enoch told him he wasn’t sure. No one really knew because no one in recent memory had cause to use it. All he knew was the curse would cause something terrible to happen to whoever it was directed at and that it was considered a curse in itself to use against anyone. Ira remembered the words and believed they would work with the intensity only the young seem to possess. He wasn’t surprised at all, the way his parents had been, when the crops sprouted green and strong from the ground the day after Clarissa left. They never had a problem with their crops after that day and every year his father sent out the tribute as payment and thanks.

As he was dragged across the ground he rolled those words around in his head, remembering how they sounded, the musical quality incongruent to the intended effect. He whispered the words, under his breath even as Seamus dropped him and took off his boots.

Seamus, drunk as he was, noticed the quiet of his newest Gerrold. He paused halfway through tying the rope around his feet, his heavy breathing intermingling with the muttering of Ira. Seamus was bothered by the calm acceptance. Although dark, the Gerrold’s stare seethed with hatred as hot as coals and he strained to make out what he was muttering. Seamus would never admit fear but the muttering of the Gerrold did cause the hair to straighten on the back of his neck and tingle all along his scalp. It was disconcerting.

“What are you saying Gerrold?”

The muttering increased in volume.

Seamus finished tying off the Gerrold, gathered the rest of the rope and loped off. He looked back over his shoulder, unnerved by the muttering. He tried to keep his mind on the task at hand but as he brought his horse over the tingling intensified and pulled at the little hairs on his arms, undulating under his beard. He usually enjoyed the mounting terror of the Gerrolds, their pleading was pleasing. His brain was too fuzzy to articulate what he was feeling now but he knew it wasn’t pleasant. It was getting to be downright uncomfortable. He didn’t want to drag this one out, sup on the fear as deep as he did whiskey. He wanted to get this one over with. It didn’t feel right.

His hands shook as tried to toss the rope over the thick branch. It took him four tries and all the time the Gerrold’s words continued and his hair raising intensified. Seamus’ brow beaded with sweat as he tied the rope to the saddle. The cool breeze caused a reflexive shiver to pass through him. He urged the horse forward and the Gerrold rose, muttering, into the air. The Gerrold stared at him the entire time and it was Seamus who avoided eye contact. It was Seamus who wore the expression of fear. It seemed critical he finish the business. Seamus hurried into the hole, making sure his kindling was teepeed to hasten the flames. The words pulled at him. His hair tried to pull free of his skin. He lit the wood and it caught and grew. Seamus’s face twitched with an insane smile and paranoid relief.

When the heat of the pyre blistered the Gerrold’s face and the repeated chanting of the strange words grew louder, without a break in diction, Seamus’ smile downturned into a sick grimace. Seamus could feel the words pulling at every hair on his body, the skin stretching like elastic and he wondered if it would be ripped off him until he stood there, a gleaming bloody mess.

“Die, Gerrold! Why won’t you die!”

He put his hands over his ears so he wouldn’t have to hear the words, hoping it would dull their power but the tautening of his skin didn’t diminish.

The blisters on the Gerrold’s face popped and the liquid plopped onto the dirt but still the Gerrold said his words of power. His skin blackened, his eyes ruptured yet still his mouth moved and the words issued.

“Shut up!”

Seamus pulled out his pistol and shot the Gerrold in the chest. Kept shooting until there were no bullets left to shoot and at last the Gerrold shut up. Seamus looked at his pistol with awe and wondered why he didn’t use it before. He sat on the ground, exhausted but filled with relief. The pulling on his skin had stopped. He grabbed his whiskey bottle and guzzled.

After a while, when time and whiskey dulled his remembrance, he dropped the latest Gerrold, collected his rope and rolled him as far from camp as his strength would allow. He didn’t want to sleep with him nearby. Seamus sat by the fire, drank whiskey and thought the blurred and convoluted thoughts of an alcoholic. When the sun teased the horizon with a lightening sky, Seamus fell asleep. Before he fell asleep, he considered taking a break from the Gerrolds.

***

He awoke slowly, head heavy with alcohol, to the smell of a fire. He could feel the sun on his body and from years spent outdoors, knew it was an afternoon sun. The fire should have gone out by now but he wasn’t too concerned, it was merely a curiosity.

The hands dragging him by the feet across the ground concerned him. His eyes cracked open. His vision blurred and all he could make out were darkened figures walking with their weighty load.

“What the? Who?”

He blinked his eyes, trying to clear the fog on the lenses of his eyes and when he could see he didn’t, couldn’t, comprehend what was going on. There were two people at his feet, dragging him, and another person fixating on Seamus as he walked beside him. Something was wrong with these people. They didn’t look right. They looked melted, like candle wax and blackened. Seamus thought they looked like his Gerrolds but shook his head muttering, “No,” because the notion was too absurd. The dead don’t just get up and walk do they?

But these men were blackened from head to mid chest weren’t they? Disfigured, melted faces and empty eyes sockets peered at him as he was pulled along the ground. The thing holding his left leg glared at him and when a spider crawled out of the thing’s blackened socket and scurried into the exposed nasal cavity, Seamus whimpered and dug his elbows into the dirt to stop his momentum. His speed did not diminish. Thick, black smoke swirled up from the yellow and orange flames. Seamus thought if he could stand up, the fire would be about his height.

He tried to free his legs but the arms pulling him were relentless. He tried to twist around so that he could grab the dirt with his hands, maybe grab a root, get a hold of anything to anchor himself but his hands slid over the ground and he pulled a muscle in his side. Seamus yelled at them, more angry than afraid, “Stoooooop! STOP IT!”

Their reply was the sound of their feet scuffing the ground.

The heat penetrated the soles of his boots and his shins. The thing that had walked beside him squatted and leaned on Seamus’ shoulders with both arms. Its head hovered over Seamus. He wondered what it was doing when his boots were tugged off of his feet by the other two things. Fear energized him. Seamus tried to squirm out of there but it was like a horse had sat on his chest.

Immobilized, he whispered, “Please. Stop.”

The heat of the fire on his bare soles heightened. When his pants were removed, Seamus whimpered, “Gerrold. Please.”

Seamus looked into the impassive burnt head above him. Yellow fluid leaked out of the eye sockets and plopped onto Seamus’ beard. The fire had eaten holes in the flesh of the cheeks and through them Seamus could see sooty teeth. It looked like a terrible grin.

“This can’t be.”

When his ankles were pulled into the fire and held there, Seamus screamed.

It took a long time for him to die. When he would pass out from the pain, the Gerrolds would pull him out and wait. They were patient. When Seamus awoke he would be put into the fire again, an inch at a time. Seamus’ teeth exploded in his mouth, from biting so hard and the shards sat in the back of his throat. He swallowed some when he screamed. He wished for death. It was denied him a long time. The night passed and when dawn crested the horizon and Seamus’ stomach reached the fire, he died. The Gerrolds fed the fire again and tossed the rest of Seamus into it. The Gerrolds lay back in their resting places. The curse had been satisfied and they had earned their peace.