Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror (51 page)

Dr. Peaslee stopped several times to take notes and pictures. I didn’t stop for him; Pistol and I jigged onward like a pair of idiots. It occurred to me that the doctor seemed rather quick for an old man. Whenever I looked over my shoulder, he was always standing somewhere behind us. I started harboring this fancy that he would appear suddenly in front of us and touch us with that horrible black hand of his.

Finally, we broke through a heap of cactus and caught sight of the river. Normally the bank was visible, a pale sandy quagmire, but the waves had washed over their boundaries and foamed among the cottonwoods and mesquites. A combination of rain and current had crumbled part of the cliff, revealing a gaping cave mouth.

Dr. Peaslee scurried past me, camera clutched in his hands.

“Hey!” I said. “Don’t!”

For a second, both Pistol and I were frozen still. As for Dr. Peaslee, he stood at the edge of the river. I could see the gears turning in his brain. The only way up to the cave entrance was a ramp of jumbled stones, and its base had long been swallowed up by the river. No telling how deep the water was there. Every now and then I saw a dark shape bob by, usually a drenched branch or the rolling, bloated body of an animal.

“You’re going to drown!” I shouted.

He dropped his satchel beside him and opened it. Oh my god! Black syrupy stuff spidered out, stretching for the ground and groping at the air. Without hesitation, he jammed both of his hands in it until it poured out in thick goopy rolls. He lifted out a stone as big as a Thanksgiving turkey. It bled tar everywhere, and where the black syrup touched his clothes, blue flames licked up. Straightening up, Dr. Peaslee heaved the stone over his head and sang out in a weird ululating tongue.

Far off, I heard a big splash. Then another. It was the same sound I associated with a frog jumping into the water, except magnified. Whatever had fallen into the river must’ve been at least the size of a mid-sized dog. Immediately, Pistol jolted with terror and swung around. Thrusting my .22 back into its holster, I jerked on the reins. Soon we were spinning in circles, he straining to race back the way we came, I trying to restrain him.

I saw the scene in flashes with each rotation: Dr. Peaslee lowering the stone. Dr. Peaslee turning to regard us with knotted brows. Then, behind him, a long, sinuous arm lifting, dripping, from the water.

“Dr. Peaslee!” I shouted. “Watch out!”

Black, shining cords lashed around Dr. Peaslee’s throat and legs and arms and yanked him backward. He didn’t even have the chance to cry out. Down he went without a sound into the brown foam of the Brazos, stone and all.

With a choking cry, I let go, and Pistol bolted.

Pistol’s ears flattened against his skull, his neck stretched out, his hooves pounded against the hog paths. Low-hanging branches lashed us. Mesquite thorns scored us. The stacked stones stared as we galloped by. I strained to hear beyond my own heartbeat, but all that followed us was the roar of the river and the intermittent grumble of thunder.

When we burst through the brush into the clearing where the River Rats kept their hog traps, I heard it: a rattling, clattering sound, one I had long associated with a hog’s headlong flight. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw the mesquites shuddering from a pack of unseen pursuers. The wind breathed an overpowering, musky stink into my face.

The steep incline rose above us, scarred by a single narrow path. Pistol took it without hesitation. Now, if it had been dry, this wouldn’t have been a problem, but down near the Brazos, the earth is a slimy red clay. Every second step was a slip or a stumble. When we were halfway up, his hoof slid in the mud and he pitched forward and down onto one knee. For a breathless moment I hovered over a dizzying drop into a cactus patch. I clutched at the saddle horn, grabbed Pistol’s mane, and clung for dear life as he struggled to his feet. I cast a frantic glance over my shoulder.

Plunging through the careless weed were sleek black shapes, glistening like frogs, slithering and crawling in turns, some as large as cattle. And then, to my horror, a monster hog crashed through the branches, utterly black with matted hair, its barrel body pulsing with sickening throbs. Before I could see the whole of him, Pistol took off again, thrusting with his powerful hind legs. His headlong sprint had slowed only a little; he was dark with sweat, and his breathing was rough and tattered.

As we flashed through the first gate, a sudden sickening thought occurred to me. The other gate was latched shut, and Pistol was no jumper. My guess was that he’d see the closed gate and veer alongside it into the underbrush, and if that happened, we’d be caught for sure. My mind spun, my heart sank. I’d have to stop a thousand pounds of panicked prima donna to open a gate, and there was a chance he’d take off without me if I timed it wrong.

I jerked Pistol to the side of the road, where the earth was more solid and the branches slashed us, and thanked god that the road was straightforward. Pistol slipped once or twice on the mud, but foot by blessed foot, he put the distance between us and our pursuers. When I saw the gate coming, I wrenched him back, using all of my weight.

Pistol strained against me the whole way. The more he fought, the more of a hold I took, until I thought his head would end up in my lap. My arms burned; I gnawed a bloody wound in my cheeks. His nose slowly tilted toward the sun, and his spittle was pink with blood. A few yards from the fence line, his haunches finally dropped and he skidded to a stop. I dove off, praying he wouldn’t run, and hobbled to the gate. I had clenched my legs against Pistol’s sides so hard and for so long that they didn’t want to bend.

My fingers slipped on the links. I didn’t bother looking behind me, but I could hear it: the rattling, snapping sound of unseen Things breaking through the underbrush, and not far down the road, the rhythmic drumbeat of the monster hog’s hooves. His silent pursuit unnerved me. Hogs are usually such vocal creatures.

I slung the gate open. Without closing it, I hopped into the saddle and kicked him so hard that he jumped. Off he sprang again, again at a full gallop. We broke out of the brush into flat, furrowed pastureland, where you can see twenty miles to the horizon on every side. Ahead of me, a mere six miles away, I could even see the abandoned church and someone’s pickup zipping along the road. I could have cried. Instead, I dared to peek over my shoulder.

The brush shook and shuddered, but the movement stopped at the fence-line. I thought I saw the glint of feral eyes, wet, bulging bodies, and writhing limbs. Then a keening went up, a terrible screeching cry, and the monster hog shot out of the gate behind us.

God, he was huge! Freed from the blinding brush, he was much easier to see. I regretted looking at once. His sides heaved not with regular breaths, but with a weird undulating motion similar to the pulse of maggots in roadkill. His stride was almost mechanical, as though he had no joints. Sticky black strings and tendrils streamed out of his nostrils and between his blackened tusks, and every now and then I fancied that they moved of their own volition, like the searching heads of blind worms. The only points of color were his eyes: bloody, rheumy, and red.

As we fled from him, a cold wind enveloped us. A few heavy raindrops burst on my shoulders. I had neglected to watch the sky: the faraway storm had rolled toward us with unprecedented speed and we could hardly outrun it. Back in the brush, the keening transformed into a triumphant howl.

Abnormal twilight cloaked the landscape and the wedge of rainfall struck us. The keening sound fell away and was replaced by slapping, slipping sounds. In a lightning flash, I saw dozens of amorphous shadows tumbling toward us. Pistol stumbled and his breath hitched. I leaned over him, shielding my face with the hat, and peered off into the distance. I didn’t dare look over my shoulder. All I could look forward to was breaking out of the rain or hitting the paved road. One way meant better vision and less pneumonia; the other meant that we could reach a neighbor’s house in only ten minutes or so.

Thunder rumbled, lightning flashed, and a multi-legged shape slithered out of the ditch in front of us. I jerked the .22 out of its holster, whipped it to my shoulder. The thing zigzagged toward us, slinging its ropy arms out as though to drag us down. I pulled the trigger. The muzzle flashed, the shot cracked out.

Wop!
Black blood spurted across the road. Screeching, the River Thing recoiled directly into our path. Pistol darted hard right when the gun went off, but I ripped him back to the road and gouged him with the spurs.

What I had hoped would happen: Pistol would run the Thing over like a car in an action movie.

What actually happened: Pistol stabbed his front hooves into the ground, his head went down, and he launched me right over his neck. There was a sickening lurch and I was weightless.

The next second, I kamikazed that River Thing so hard that the breath was knocked out of me. I wasn’t sure if I saw lightning or stars. My .22 cartwheeled off somewhere into the dark. I wish I could say I was back up on my feet in a second, brandishing my pocketknife, but all I did was gasp and flop around in a puddle. Pistol galloped away, stirrups banging against his sides, and disappeared.

I rolled onto my knees. Through what may have been fortune, I had flipped over the River Thing and landed on the other side of it. It pushed itself up on its terrible long legs and panted, stinking, sloshing, ululating in a language I didn’t understand. I couldn’t see it well in the darkness; all I saw was a suggestion of countless arms, dozens of blinking eyes in every size and shape and color.

It should’ve killed me. Instead, it hesitated, then threw its arms out. A stream of garbled English poured from its mouth. The voice… sounded familiar.

I thrust myself up to my feet and took off running.

My legs were stiff from the ride and even with my hat I could barely see anything ahead of me. It didn’t matter; I put everything I had into that run. The roar of the rain, the slopping slushing sound of the pursuing River Things, the rapidly approaching hoofbeats and tortured breathing of the monster hog—all these things ran together until they were a terrifying singularity. For a while I had no past and I had no future; I was a runner, I had been born running, and there was no future that did not involve running.

I don’t know how long I ran, only that I was winded, aching, and exhausted. The rain slackened a little, and a building coalesced out of the darkness. I couldn’t see it well in the dark, which seemed strangely deep for the afternoon. How long had I been running? Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes?

I dashed across the paved road. Offhand, I noted that it seemed strangely worn down, weeds growing out of faults in the cement. Then I stumbled down into the ditch and over the barbed wire fence. Ms. Ross’s husband had hung coyote carcasses on the fence posts, and the stink of their rot followed me all the way to the steps. It was only then that I recognized the building. Of course: the abandoned clapboard Baptist church, a single-room affair I’d visited once to look at the owl nest in the belfry. The windows had been boarded up decades before I had been born.

I stumbled up the steps, jiggled the knob. It gave. I thrust it open with my shoulder and slammed it shut behind me, then felt for the deadbolt and twisted it with all my strength. It should’ve been rusty; it should’ve been broken. But against all reason, the bolt slid and the door locked behind me.

I whirled around, waiting until my eyes grew accustomed to the dark. Outside, the sloshing sounds grew nearer and nearer. Whatever I did, I couldn’t stand there. I shrank down against the floor, prayed the building wasn’t full of snakes, and crept toward the belfry.

Eventually my eyes adjusted. Pale light floated through the chinks between the boards. The pews were still lined up, heaped with refuse from the collapsing ceiling. A thick miasma of mouse urine and dust filled the air, and rodents skittered unseen in the rafters. All I could hear was the roar of the rain on the roof and the jingling of my spurs.

Then something wet slapped on the wall. Another joined it, and another, until uncountable creatures drummed together with uncoordinated limbs. The building groaned; a window cracked; dust hissed from the ceiling.

“Leave me alone!” I shouted.

But the drumming only intensified, and as did the unspeakable babbling. I clapped my hands over my ears and screamed back at them: swear words, Bible verses, a few lines from classics. Lightning burst nearby and illuminated the church in broken slashes. Printed painstakingly on the wall in magic marker were careful squares filled with hieroglyphs, written by an unknown hand. In the shifting blue light, each thick squiggle was a worm twitching. The more I looked at them, the hazier and uglier I felt. A weird effect passed over me: I could almost imagine a deep, chanting voice, in a guttural language unlike any from a human throat.…

I whirled and stumbled—fueled solely by terror, and not by conscious thought—up to the belfry. I registered the cold and wet only dimly, as though from a memory, and my movements grew sluggish and poorly defined. The world seemed unfocused and I had the odd sensation that my consciousness was off-kilter from my body. Worst of all, the chanting I thought I had imagined was growing louder, so deep that it vibrated through my body. I jumped when I heard the bell tolling—an awful, warped, discordant sound!

In that instant, I totally despaired. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth. In the Pentecostal tradition, I should’ve been able to use the name of God like a hammer, but never before had he seemed so inadequate. I longed for the solid grip of my gun.

When I stepped up into the belfry, I crunched over the abandoned owl’s nest and was stricken silent. An uncountable horde of River Things swayed around the church, and just past them… Let’s just say that the church as I had known it was out in the middle of nowhere, a broken edifice with boarded windows. Somehow, during my headlong flight up to the belfry, a small town had sprouted around us. I could just see the hints of right angles, the rooftops of amateur shanties, and the glitter of manmade lights. Shadows in the shapes of men wavered down unseen roads, hunched beneath invisible burdens.