The Feeding House (7 page)

Jack walked towards the door
. His long black trench coat had been neatly hung up on a hook on the back of it ready for him to wear. He put it on slowly feeling the pain in his arms run down all the way to the bone and realised how much work the body actually put into simple everyday tasks such as putting on a coat. There was something in the side pocket a lump that felt obvious that it shouldn’t be there. He picked it out and bringing it closer to his face he saw that it was the doll that belonged to the child. Obviously the vampires had left it in there as a reminder of the fate that he was to meet and what he had done to deserve it. He looked at the doll for a while remembering the girl and hoping that one day somehow he could make it good for her and take away the pain. Maybe that would finally bring an end to the turmoil that was going on within his mind. He paused briefly as he looked at the doll feeling as though it summed up every emotion that he felt regarding his current situation and chose to put it back in his coat keeping it as some sort of mascot that would keep him going, reminding him of what he would work towards as the future seemed ever bleaker.

Jack looked for his gun belt but couldn’t find it anywhere
. Obviously they had been confiscated by the vampires who had brought him here or had been stolen by the maid who had happened to have come across them whilst cleaning the room and chanced that they were worth at least a month’s wages for her.  He took this optimistically feeling that with a new start comes a new fresh pair of guns the killing that he would do from now on would be very different to any that he had needed to do before.

Jack momentarily gathered himself at the door as he tried to numb some of the pain the flowed through his body
. He was going to look strange to the people down stairs but he wanted to minimise the attention he didn’t want any trouble. Jack opened the door and the sounds of merriment filled his ears from the saloon downstairs. The piano flooded his ears but did not fill him with joy it just made his head throb angrily at him as he began to walk down the creaking wooden steps.

The saloon was full of patrons
. They played games and gambled and shouted at each other about unfair odds and tricks that they had played to get the upper hand in the card games. Some were talking business and several men of God could be seen dotted about the bar room floor indulging themselves in the very sin that they preached against, as they spent their parish’s collection bowl money. Many sat with hired women on their laps who laughed at their comments out of common curtsey as they tried to wean more money out of the men.

The whole bar fell deadly silent as Jack began to descend into view
, his head still a mess as he struggled down gripping the banister tightly. They were all intrigued to see who this mystery man was. Jack had been the talk of the tavern ever since he was brought in a couple of nights earlier. People had speculated as to who he was and why he was here some thought, judging by the amount of money that had been given to the proprietor in exchange for his room, that he was some sort of rich army officer gone rogue. None of them however came anywhere near the truth.

Every eye was turned
to Jack and the piano had stopped playing as he walked slowly down the last few steps slowing his pace as he felt the silence. It was almost impossible to walk through. Jack took a quick look around the saloon and looked a few of the men in the eyes. Once he did so they quickly looked down at their drinks as if they feared him. The only noise to be heard was that of the horses outside and the slight mumbling of hushed voices as some people whispered into others ears. The entire focus of the room was on Jack.

He walked slowly up to the wooden bar the drinks behind it laid out neatly in rows as they stood perfectly in their half empty bottles
. Jack looked at the elderly gentleman behind the bar he gave him the kind of look that said that he wanted service but the barman pretended to ignore it, not wanting to interact with the stranger.

Jack let out a long sigh of frustration and was about to start shouting at the people around him who were so rudely paying full attention to his every movement
, while at the same time attempting to completely ignore him, when a women stepped out from the door behind the bar that led into the back room. The women wore a dancer’s style dress. It was in pristine condition and was the same sort of dress the younger women who were sitting on the preachers knees wore. Obviously they were hired hands that had a very different role in the saloon to the cleaners and the bar keeps. She seemed to be in her early 40’s and she had a strong face and held herself in a powerful posture. It was easily noticed that she had spent a life time in this profession and knew how to deal with herself and her customers. She did not seem like the sort of lady who would take shit from anyone.

“Back to your drinks you lot,”
said the women her voice booming across the saloon. At this the music continued and the bar slowly kicked back into life. As normality resumed Jack looked across the bar room floor and saw a few eyes still gazing across at him in wonderment.

“Now lovey can I get you a drink on the house you look as though you need it?” The women said as she to Jack as she took a tumbler out from the bottom of the bar and filled it with scotch
. She passed it along towards Jack who thanked her by raising it in the air. He took a big sip and then turned his attention back towards the women.

She began to speak again before Jack could get a word in “My names
Valerie but the people round here call me boss. I run this saloon and as long as you’re not one of those trouble making cowboys that come through here looking for fun in the big city from time to time then you’re more than welcome to stay. After all when your friends brought you here they left enough money for you to stay for the next few weeks. Now tell me friend what’s the deal. You some sort of fancy business man or something? I would reckon as much judging by the money that was left what’s your name?”

The
woman was good at talking. She seemed to have a friendly yet stern voice about her, probably came with the job to be honest “My names Jack Crowe,” he replied as he finished off the last of his drink. The alcohol giving his system that much needed wakeup call “I don’t know what I’m doing here, I barely know where I am do you know anything about what’s been happening to me over the past few days?” Jack saw the confusion in the women’s eyes he had to give her some sort of a normal response just to make her feel a bit safer around him. He began to lie as best as he could “I’m in law enforcement I’m researching a few leads on a case around here it’s all very secret. I’m sure I don’t need to bother you with any further details on the matter.”

Jack thought that this was a pretty good alibi but quickly realised that the women’s expression had turned to one of worry
, the girls that walked around the bar flirting with men were paid by the saloon and their job wasn’t exactly legal. The women began to try and make any excuse that she could as fast as was physically possible “My girls are all legal,” She began the sound of panic in her voice was evident “You can ask them yourself there’s nothing illegal going on round these parts I can promise you that, this is a well-respected saloon, I would never let anything illegal go down on my watch I can swear that on the Lord Jesus Christ’s name!”

Jack realised his mistake and
quickly tried to correct it “No don’t panic I’m not here to investigate anything about your bar. I can promise you we know everything here is legal and we have no problem with your business in fact we quite like how you run this place,” The lie seemed to be working as Valerie calmed down and her face went flat as she listened closely to what Jack had to say “I just think that I have ran into a few problems with the case and might have been brought here by my fellow officers can you tell me what’s been going on over the past few days with me, as I’ve been in a bad state.”

“You can say that again,” replied
Valerie as she calmed down completely letting out a sigh as she moved nervously behind the bar “Well let’s see all any of us know is that you were brought here out of the blue a couple of nights ago by some shady looking characters who didn’t really have much to say. You seemed terrible then all bruised and bloodied looked like you’d had a head on collision with a train. Come to think of it it’s strange that you look fine now,” Valerie looked up and down Jacks body and from what she could see he seemed to be fully healed like he had never had a scratch on him. She continued anyway “ well It must have been the light that made you look that way, anyway you tossed and turned up there for a couple of days it sounded like you had the devil inside of you. Some of the folks round here started to get worried as to what you actually were. There’s a lot of stories going around about you, but either way that’s all I or anyone else knows.”

Valerie
poured him another drink without asking whether or not he wanted one and Jack took it with much thanks finishing the scotch this time in one gulp. He put the tumbler back down on the table and relaxed on the bar as Valerie went off to serve another customer. So far things seemed to be going well for him, he’d got some key pieces of the story and he was pretty sure that that was all that he was going to get. After all no one seemed to know anything else about him. The patrons would be of little help they seemed happy just to stare at him and either way their minds were now too clouded with stories of his arrival and tall tales of who he might be for them to actually know anything about what had happened.

After finishing his drink Jack decided that since there was nothing else going on that he could do he would go back upstairs to his room in order to gain some much needed rest.
He began to climb back up the stairs towards his room the eyes of the people in the bar burnt in his back as he climbed the first few stairs until he was out of sight hidden by the low wooden roof. He reached the top of the stairs and turned the corner walking slowly past the other doors that covered the walls of the poorly lit hallway.

Jack heard loud shouting from behind one of the doors that he was about to walk past it sounded as though a man and a woman were having a ver
y loud and very public argument. There was the smash of a bottle that sounded as though it had been thrown with great force against the wall. He slowed up momentarily in front of the door listening out for what was going on.

The door swung wildly open hitting the wall with great force Jack felt thankful that he had not been in the way of the full force of its hit as it missed him by mere inches.
A woman stumbled out as though she had taken a small run out. She was dressed like the other girls downstairs and was sorting her dress out putting the strap back up onto her shoulder. Her makeup was smudged which really exemplified her frantic and wild state she was screaming like a banshee at the man who was still inside the room.

The women seemed to not notice Jack as she continued to yell in a fit of rage but Jack took great interest into what was going on
. He felt indebted to help somehow and he was very curious, besides he had a lot of pent up aggression inside of him caused by the past few hours and fancied a fight he needed to get it out somehow.

The women seemed to be yelling something about how much money the man owed her and about how he needed to pay it back or else he was going to find himself in a lot of trouble. The man stumbled out of the room and stood at the door frame looking straight at the women
. He seemed to have a cocky attitude towards her and it was easy to tell that he had been at the drink for a long time now. He seemed to have the look of a man who felt that he owned this women after what was most probably years of service to him.

The man began yelling at the women and pulled her hair pack forcing a pain filled yelp out of her as he took a long drag on th
e cigarette that he was smoking. He then took it out of his mouth and began to wave the red hot end in her face acting as though he was planning to burn her for her disobedience “You need to keep your trap shut missy,” He began as the women tried to move away from the cigarette end “I’ve been paying you for years now and you know I’m good for the money, just because I’ve got a little debt now doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give me what I want now get back in that room and do your Job. No one pays you to talk or have these opinions of yours.”

The man pulled the women closer to him in a very dominant way and chucked his dog end down to the floor stubbing it out with the heel of his boot as he did so
. Previously neither of them had really noticed Jacks presence and hadn’t particularly paid him any attention but now the man noticed him and didn’t like him being there. He looked him dead in the eyes and began to wave his free hand at him.

“What the fuck do you want, this whore won’t do what I want and I aim to teach her a lesson for that, you got a problem with that freak?” The man chucked the women by her hair down to the floor and approached Jack squaring up to him as he did so looking him straight in the eye as he pushed his chest against Jack’s “So you got a problem here friend?” he said with a snarl.

Jack did not look phased by the man that stood in front of him, he was obviously drunk and was trying to act like he was tough teaching this young women a lesson. Jack felt as though the man needed to learn a lesson of his own. The cracks of a smile appeared on the sides of Jack’s face as he looked the man square in the face his poise and stare did not waver for ever a moment as he sized up his opponent not thinking much of the man’s drunken state “As a matter of fact I do have a problem, I’d rather you leave that women alone if you owe her money you have no right to her services until you pay off your debt.” The women looked up at Jack from the floor a look of surprise and thanks filled her eyes as she now took an outsiders view on the situation that was unfolding in front of her.