The Curse of Jacob Tracy: A Novel (19 page)

“He’s out for a bit,” Trace said. “Can I help you?”

“Well, I don’t know.” The man drew out a folded letter that bore Trace’s own inelegant handwriting. “I was supposed to arrange a meeting with a Mr. Tracy, but I’m afraid I don’t have his direction. Mr. Jameson had been our intermediary—”

“I’m Jake Tracy. Are you Kingsley?”

“Yes! Martin Kingsley.” The Baptist put out his hand, and Trace shook it. “This is my sister, Miss Eliza Kingsley.”

“Ma’am,” Trace said.

“How do you do, Mr. Tracy.” Miss Eliza had a lovely smile, warm and gracious, as if he were just the person she’d hoped to meet that day. Trace gave her a longer look: she was about his age, with the handsome oval face of a classical Madonna. There was a single streak of silver in her dark hair, in rebellious contrast to her placid demeanor.

“The thing is, Mr. Tracy,” Kingsley rocked from heel to toe as he spoke, as if he had too much energy to remain still for long, “—and I hate to do this to you, after I told Mr. Jameson we’d be needing your services—but we’ve just this week received a love donation, from a sister in faith. She had her servant deliver it specially, because she’s in poor health and can’t travel. She purchased railway tickets for the entire party and our cargo, and even offered a generous portion for building our church in the wilderness—”

It was the words
in poor health
that roused Trace’s suspicions. “This servant—was he Chinese, speaks real good English?”

“Why yes,” Kingsley said. “Do you know Sister Fairweather?”

Why was he surprised? Was he surprised? No, but he was madly curious as to what her game might be. “As a matter of fact, I just took a job with her myself. In fact I might’ve mentioned I had some other folks waitin to hear back from me about a guide job, so I’m not surprised if she took it on herself to pay your way. That’s just the kind of thing she’d do.”

Kingsley beamed. “Well! Isn’t it Providential how these things work out? One good soul doing a turn for another, and all for the grace of God!”

“Amen,” Trace said solemnly, and was interested to see a twist of amusement on Miss Eliza’s lips. She lowered her gaze and converted the smirk into a serene smile.

“Well, I won’t keep you then,” Kingsley said. “I’m just relieved to know you haven’t been put in a state of privation by our change of plans. And I did take all of your cautions about rail travel into account. In fact I have some misgivings about acquiring supplies, once we reach Idaho, and I had half-hoped you might be persuaded to accompany us…”

Kingsley went on talking, but his voice grew dim in Trace’s ears: at the word
Idaho
it was as if a cold fog had swarmed in around him, blotting out the comfortable clutter of Jameson’s store, and the air gone thin, chill, like the atmosphere in the mountains. Darkness filled his senses, and fire, and the sounds of people screaming and the snarling of beasts, and Kingsley’s face contorted before him, mouth full of blood—

Trace gripped the edge of the counter and bowed from the waist. He gave his head a violent shake, and the screaming and the fog cleared, let him go.

“Are you all right, Mr. Tracy?” Miss Eliza’s voice was alarmed.

“Oh dear,” Kingsley said. “Did I say something untoward? But then I am taking up far too much of your time—”

“No, no,” Trace said. “Don’t mind me. Just remembered … um, old battle memories. What route did you say you were takin, to Idaho?”

*   *   *

T
RACE HAD NEVER
before called at Miss Fairweather’s house without being summoned, so he wasn’t sure what kind of reception to expect, but Min Chan didn’t bat an eye. He ushered Trace inside and led him up to the laboratory in the attic.

Miss Fairweather was wiping her hands on a towel as he breached the floor of the workroom, brows knit as she looked him over. She wore a bespeckled apron, and her sleeves were rolled up. He glanced at the table behind her; there was something bloody and flayed, stretched out in a cork-lined tray.

“You are quite well?” she asked, once the courtesies were exchanged. “No importunate spirits loitering about, no demon possessions?”

“No ma’am. Been pretty quiet, last couple weeks.”

“No … unfamiliar persons attempting to make your acquaintance? Ingratiating themselves with you or Mr. Bosley?”

“Just the opposite. Had some people runnin away from my company.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I met with a man named Kingsley today,” Trace said, watching her face.

“Oh?” Miss Fairweather’s brows lifted politely. He would have suspected nothing except her pale eyes riveted to his—suddenly cool, and focused.

“Yes ma’am. In fact I’d been tryin to meet up with him for a couple weeks, but we kept missin each other.” Trace found himself lapsing into the exaggerated drawl he used around other working men, in deliberate challenge to her well-spoken mendacity. “Kingsley’s a missionary, wanted to hire me an’ Boz to lead his people out to Montana. But when I saw him today, he tells me some wealthy spinster lady gave him a big donation to take his congregation by train, instead.”

“How fortunate for them,” Miss Fairweather said, as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “Especially since you were already engaged elsewhere.”

“Yes ma’am, I told them that. But then a strange thing happened. As he was tellin me the route they planned to take, I got this vision of Kingsley bloody and dyin, and somethin … attacking them, up there in the mountains.” Trace felt his throat and chest tighten, as his annoyance with her was blotted out by a larger concern for the Baptists—and a certain exhilaration at what he had seen. “Somethin bad’s gonna happen out there. I saw it. I
know
it.”

She stared at him, big-eyed, and then inhaled swiftly. “You had a premonition.” Her body swayed toward him, and for a heartbeat he thought she was going to throw her arms around him, but she controlled herself, pressing her hands beneath her bosom. “This is the first time? How long did it last? How clear was it?”

“Pretty clear,” Trace said, as she spun away and crossed to the nearest trestle table. “I mean I couldn’t see the terrain, it was dark, but it
felt
like the Rockies, the air and the sky looked like mountain country. And there was somethin attackin people, like animals—”

He broke off as he got close enough to see the map spread on the table, and her markings on it: long lines of railways, and an erratic march of red X’s from Utah up into Idaho, to a point just south of the continental divide. Trace knew the area fairly well; he’d spent several years working cattle in southern Wyoming before his marriage.

“This is the proposed path of the Utah and Northern railway to Butte, Montana.” Miss Fairweather’s thin white finger tapped the map. “In the past five weeks there have been several mauling deaths in the workers’ camps. The railroad managers blame it on Indians or wild animals, but the attacks are too random for the former, too well organized for the latter.”

She thrust a newspaper toward him. The headline read
ANIMAL ATTACKS THREATEN RAILROAD’S PROGRESS.

“According to this, the Chinese laborers have a superstitious fear of whatever is causing the attacks. The reporter was familiar enough with their language and customs to extract the term ‘keung-si’ from a survivor.” She pursed her lips. “It means ‘hopping corpse.’”

“Which means what, exactly?”

“I cannot say what, exactly, it means in this context. I have spent the last several days monitoring spirit activity in that area, and it does appear something supernatural is haunting that railway camp. But I don’t believe the attacks are the result of demonic influence. I believe there is something corporeal hunting the workers.”

“A hopping corpse?” Trace said dubiously.

“If one digs deeply enough into superstition and folklore, one tends to find kernels of truth. I believe your Christian mythology is full of stories about corpses being preserved, appearing lifelike long after death?”

“Those were
saints.
”

“And they are not the only examples. Nearly every culture in the world has a myth about deceased persons returning to prey on the living. Some drink the blood of their kin. Others suck out their souls. And in every system of primitive magic, there are myriad rituals for deterring such creatures.” She pulled toward her a stack of papers and pamphlets. “Only in so-called civilized areas, where our cities are increasingly well-lit, do we feel safe enough to make monsters into figures of comedy and entertainment.”

The booklet she held out to him was yellowing and brittle. It showed a man in a greatcoat, the capes ruffled like crow’s feathers, his face distorted in an animal grin as he menaced the young lady beside him.
Varney the Vampyre
was the title.

“A case in point,” Miss Fairweather said. “That particular drivel was serialized for three years, widely read by the masses in London.”

Trace flipped through the little book. The illustrations were lurid. “So what’re you doin with it?”

“Merely being thorough. I have an interest in rare diseases, for reasons you might deduce—particularly those that resemble anemia, or malnutrition. In many cases a simple change of diet will effect a cure, but until one understands the missing nutrient, such an illness might well appear to be the result of evil spirits. Or hopping corpses.”

Trace had the feeling she was hopping around the subject herself. “So you’re interested in whatever’s out there attackin the workers, because you think it’s related to your … uh, condition?”

She hesitated. “Not directly related, no. However, my own illness has a mystical component, and there are precious few references in the current medical journals. I must therefore chase down every possible lead.”

Aha,
Trace thought. “So you were thinkin to send me out there, to fetch you back a specimen.”

“No!” Miss Fairweather looked at him in alarm, and actually laid a hand on his sleeve, before jerking it back as if he were too hot to touch. “No, I do
not
advise you to go anywhere near that area or those creatures. I would not have you risk yourself like that, whatever you may think of me.”

“But you don’t mind sendin the
Baptists
out there to get slaughtered?”

“I did not
send
them anywhere. I only provided the financial means to go by rail. They chose the route, and it appears they chose poorly.”

“But if you knew there was somethin nasty out there—”

“I did not know, until a few days ago.”

“You know
now,
” Trace said.

That stopped her cold. She stared at him, big-eyed. “Is that why you came up here? To get my sanction on some foolish heroic venture?”

“Well I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I
did
think maybe you had some insight on why I had this vision. And come to find out, you know more than you let on … as usual.”

She licked her lips. “Mr. Tracy, I do not hold back information merely to be perverse. There are things … I believe you would find your ideologies incompatible with certain truths—”

“If that means I won’t stand by knowin those people are ridin into danger, you’re right. And what was that you told me a couple weeks ago, about the good work we could do together?”

Miss Fairweather’s jaw clenched, and Trace felt a glint of satisfaction. He could see her struggling with herself—her plans for him, whatever they were, versus his unexpected volition.

“You are too valuable,” she said, her voice strained. “I have been searching for someone—for a psychic like you, for so long…”

That needy—no,
hungry
look was back in her face. The intensity of it repelled him. It was in his nature to want to help people when he could, but the darkness in her was so vast and single-minded, he thought it might consume him, if he let himself get drawn into it.

“Well, I’m goin.” It seemed safer, ironically. “So if you know somethin that can help, best hand it over now.”

*   *   *

T
RACE WAITED UNTIL
noon to go see Boz at the slaughter yards. When the skinners and bung-hole men broke for dinner, Trace skirted the sea of blood and shit and sawdust, until he spied his partner’s long lean frame at the edge of the kill-pits. Boz had leaned his sledgehammer against a rail of the cattle-chute, and was using the edge of one hand to slick some of the blood and brains from his face.

“Here,” Trace said, holding out his handkerchief over the rail.

Boz turned, eyed Trace in his clean black suit, took the rag and wiped the lower half of his face in one hard gummy pass. “You been up to bow to Her Worship, I take it.”

It had been a little more than a week since Trace had come home and announced he was taking Miss Fairweather’s retainer. Boz had said little about it, then or since; he had merely disappeared one morning and come back that night covered in beef blood.

“Got a job at the stockyards,” he’d announced: tit for tat. The stink in their rooms had been a more lingering retaliation.

“I met the Baptist this morning,” Trace said now. “Kingsley.”

“Oh yeah? Where’s he been hidin?”

“Turns out they raised the funds to go by rail, after all.”

“Good for them,” Boz said, not sounding as if he meant it.

Trace chose his next words carefully. “Thing is, the route they’re takin out past Ogden … there’s been some kind of animal attacks along the line.”

“What animal?”

“Dunno. Miss Fairweather thinks it’s a kind of specimen she’s never seen before, wants us to bring one back.”

“Takes both of us to do that?”

“Might. Somethin big’s been pickin off the workers. Railroad claims it’s wolves. Papers blame Indians.”

Boz snorted. “They always blame Indians.”

“That’s why I thought you’d be a help.” Boz’s years in the army had been spent hunting Cheyenne and Sioux in Kansas and Dakota Territory. Miss Fairweather had been adamant that he not undertake this fool’s crusade without Mr. Bosley’s assistance, at least, and Trace had no intention of doing so.

Boz was intrigued; Trace could tell by the way his head cocked, the deliberate far-gazing toward the horizon. And a hunting expedition to the mountains had to beat the slaughter yards all hollow.