Dead in the West Read online

  "Dead. And the sunlight was speeding up the decay. Doc, I have to admit, I find that hard to buy."

  "Reverend, I am not a quack and I am not crazy. The man was dead, and before he fell.

  The sun was working on his body, dissolving it like ice cream. There is no such disease known to man,"

  "Maybe there is now," Abby said.

  "If you want to call being one of the living dead a disease, and I suppose you could. Both of you, hear me out. Reverend, you know I'm on to something. I can see it in your eyes.

  There is something going on in this town and it runs through it like a cold winter wind.

  Deny it."

  "I can't," the Reverend said. "There is something about this place, and I know, somehow, I'm part of it. I was driven here by the Lord, for what I do not know. But, the living dead—ghouls? Vampires?"

  "Let me tell you something about Mud Creek, Reverend. It's got a curse on it, and I fear everything and everyone in this town is going to die like a bug-stung tomato.

  "Reverend, the moment I saw you, I knew you were part of this thing—I don't know how I knew, but I just knew. It was like you were the last ingredient in a stew, the chili pepper.

  This town is turning rotten, and it has to do with an Indian and his woman."

  "Dad," Abby said, "forget it"

  "No. I can't forget it. Just listen. Let me tell you what I think, and then, when I'm finished, if the two of you want to call me crazy, walk out of here and hide from me, I’ll understand. And Reverend, if you believe me and want to get on your horse and ride out of here and never look back, I'll understand that too. So before you pass judgment on my sanity, hear my story. In fact, I hope you'll tell me I'm full of manure and make me believe it—maybe that's what I'm hoping for most of all."

  Doc opened a desk drawer, took out a bottle of whisky and three small glasses. Abby and the Reverend declined.

  Doc nodded, poured himself one.

  "This will help me tell it," he said, and Doc told his story.

  THE DOCTOR'S STORY

  About a month ago this wagon rolled into town. It was brightly painted. Red and yellow with blue and green snakes twisting together on the side. At the top of the wagon painted in black were the words MEDICINE WAGON. An Indian was driving the wagon. He might have been mixed with negro. It was hard to tell. I'd never seen the likes of him before. He had shoulders broader than any man I've ever known, and he was darn near seven feet tall.

  He had a woman with him. A colored. A high yeller, to be exact. And she was a comely thing. Still, they were an Indian and a colored, and that got a lot of folks in these parts off on a bad foot with them immediately. If they had not been such a curiosity, and things hadn't been so dead around town, they might have got run out the first day they showed up.

  The Negress read palms and that sort of thing. The Indian made potions. Not like a snake oil man, but like a medicine man. You know, someone that wanted your money but was trying to give you something for it too. They also sold some harmless things. Love potions and charms. The usual rubbish. But mostly they sold medicine, and it went fast, and I'll tell you why. It wasn't for the reason you'd think. It wasn't alcohol-laced with a bit of sugar and vinegar. It was medicine that worked.

  It sort of got my goat, and I'm not ashamed to say it. I'm a trained doctor. Just a country sawbones, mind you, but no slouch either. But there were things this Indian could do, I couldn't even come near doing.

  Old Mrs. Jameson had the misery for years. Her hands would knot up like old plowlines.

  The knuckles would swell, inflame. It would get so bad sometimes the skin would crack.

  I'd tried all the conventional treatments, and the best I could manage was a bit of relief from her pain. Something to get her through a bout until another came. And it got so the bouts were closer and closer together. The poor woman could hardly open her hands.

  They looked like broken bird talons.

  But when the Indian came to town, and word got around that his medicine worked—

  everything from taking warts off the face to the curing of the croup—she went over there and bought some salve from him. Up until that point I'd been surprised at some of his cures, but I hadn't seen anything that struck me as miraculous. Then old Mrs. Jameson rubbed that salve on her poor old hands and the pain went away. And she came by to show me how she was doing. As much to gloat and show me up for a quack as anything else, I guess. But there was no denying. Not only were her hands better, they were starting to cure themselves of the damage already done. In a week's time of rubbing on that stuff the Indian gave her, she had hands like a twenty-year-old. Not only cured of their misery, but soft and pliant and attractive. If you'd had Abby put her hands down beside Mrs.

  Jameson's, the old lady's would have looked better.

  Well, to shorten the story some, that Indian and his Negress came to be looked upon as saints, and the town's attitudes toward coloreds softened considerable. Except maybe for Caleb who hates anything non-white with a passion. But then again, he wasn't sick and didn't suffer any ailment. The man has the constitution of a jackass and the brain to match.

  So, that couple was looking lighter skinned every day to folks hereabouts, and they parked their wagon out on the edge of town.

  Since there was always someone with something wrong with them, they were doing a land-office business, and things had dried up here considerable. I took a few splinters out of fingers and things of that nature, but anything of importance was taken to the Indian. It got my goat. You live in a town this size, deliver babies, see the old go out, and take care of people's ills all your life, you sometimes develop a self-importance about yourself that you don't deserve.

  I went out there to talk to them, and to thank them for all they'd done in town, but the Indian saw right through me. He knew I was there primarily because I was curious, and maybe because I was hoping to latch onto some of his healing secrets. And I'll admit that I was.

  But the way that Indian looked at me and smiled made me feel lower than a plump snake's belly, and foolish. And the woman—well, I'm a bit embarrassed to admit this with Abby in the room, but I was attracted to her. Not only was she pretty, but she was unique too. Tallish, with sleek skin like creamed coffee, and her hair was plaited in Indian-like braids. And she had the bluest eyes I've ever seen. They drew you to her. She had a fine figure—pardon me, Abby— and even at my age I felt a stirring I didn't think I was capable of anymore.

  It disturbed me. Guess I felt guilty about your mother, Abby. I went away from there and didn't go back. I didn't want that Indian looking down his nose at me, knowing what I was really up to. And I didn't want to have to look at that sleek Negress and know she wasn't ever going to be mine.

  I had dreams about her at night, and the kind of dreams you would expect. I loved her so hard—please excuse this talk, Abby, but I have to get the entire story out—I'd finally keel over with a heart attack in her embrace. Then I'd wake up sweating, feeling guilty toward my dead wife—God bless her soul.

  I say all this to give you some idea of how impressive the two of them were.

  So they'd been here a week, or a little better, and it started to rain. One of those late season drenchers that just wouldn't go away. At first it was welcomed. Crops needed it, and it cooled things off some at night. But pretty soon it was nothing but misery. The streets turned to mud, and the rain just kept coming, and people began to pick up on summer sicknesses, and of course they went to the Indian for help—which he sold them—and then the Webb girl got ill.

  I remember when I first heard of it. I wasn't in the office much then. Abby sort of hung around here in case anyone wanted a splinter out, or some such thing, but I had started going over to the saloon to toss a few drinks. Got so I spent a lot of my time there. More than I ever had before. I tell you, I had gone from feeling like a little god with a black satchel to feeling like an incompetent old man who couldn't even match heathen medicine. It may seem crazy to you, but m
ore than once I took that shotgun off the wall over there and put it under my chin and thought about finding the trigger with my toe.

  When a man gets so he's useless, especially at my age when there doesn't seem to be no turning around or finding another avenue, he begins to think he might just be better off without the worry.

  But I guess common sense prevailed, and of course thinking about Abby. And maybe most of all, I figured that there would come a time when they'd just take up and move on, and people would have to come back to me, and gradually I could regain my exalted status as a little demigod.

  I was drinking at the bar when David Webb came in, and he looked terrible. He was splashed with mud from all the rain, and his face was haggard. He looked ready to drop.

  Being a family doctor dies hard, and I slid up beside him and said he didn't look so good.

  He said it was because he'd been up nights with Glenda and that she was bad sick and getting sicker.

  Course I asked him why he hadn't brought her by, and his face went kind of odd, and he reminded me of a dog that has been kicked and was slinking under a porch.

  "Well, Doc," he said. "I just figured the Indian could do better by her," then he spotted someone at a table he wanted to talk to bad and that left me alone, and I got good and drunk.

  That night—I reckon it was on past midnight—I heard a banging at the door, and I got up and went to answer, and there stood David and his wife, and he's holding the little Glenda in his arms, and she's as limp as a dish towel. I've seen enough dead people to know at a glance that that little girl was fresh died, but I brought them in, and I did what I could for her—which was nothing. Thing I remember most about that night was hearing Webb cry.

  Seems he had taken the little girl to the Indian with a lung problem— pneumonia, I figure—and the Indian sold them some stuff, and they gave it to her and took her home, and she promptly died. That's when they brought her to me. I reckon she'd been dead a couple of hours. About the length of time it took the Webbs to get to town from where they lived.

  But to make it all shorter, Webb went crazy. He went over to the saloon, and there were enough drunks and near-drunks there that he got them roused. Caleb got behind it in an instant, and pretty soon he was talking it up big, saying about the treachery of the colored races and such, and a mob started forming. Everything they'd done that was good was forgot in an instant. It didn't matter that they'd darn near worked miracles, this dead white girl was what the crowd needed to turn evil.

  To make matters worse, the Indian chose that night to move on, so that didn't look good for them. Looked as if they'd deliberately poisoned the little girl then hightailed it. Least it looked that way to a maddened crowd.

  They caught up with the pair, pulled them out of the wagon—after the Indian broke Cane Lavel's neck and smashed Buck Wilson's jaw. I heard it took a dozen men to bring him down, and then they had clubs, pistol butts, and the like to do it with. They beat the woman and burned the wagon.

  That's where Matt came in. He got word of the crowd and what was going on, and he rode out after them, fired off his gun, and got their attention. Talked sense to them for the moment and took the couple back to the jail and safety.

  But Caleb wasn't a quitter, and Webb didn't care about the law—he wanted an eye for an eye—and so the crowd got worked up again, and they went to the jail and asked for the Indian and the Negress.

  Matt tried to stand up to them, but he weakened. Caleb seems to hold sway over him for some reason or another, and the bottom line is—he gave in—and they took the Indian and his woman away. Put them in a wagon and drove them out to the edge of town.

  Keep in mind what I'm telling you is what I've gleaned from the stories of others, and it especially gets dim on this area because I think most folks are ashamed of themselves and would just as soon forget it, even though they can't. I like to think too: had I known exactly what was going on, I'd have gotten that old shotgun off the wall and gone out there and tried to stop what was happening. Least I like to think that.

  Caleb and some others, they took the woman off in the bushes and raped her, cut her breasts and ears off, mutilated her body, making her scream so the Indian— who was bound hand and foot in the wagon—could hear it. It wasn't all the townsfolk was for that, mind you, but all that were there put up with it, and no one raised a finger to stop Caleb and the others. They were caught up in the storm of the mob.

  The woman finally died, and then it was the Indian's turn. They tossed what was left of the Negress in the back of the wagon with him, and Hirern Wayland—who was my main source on this story—said the Indian never even batted an eye. Just looked down at her body then out at the crowd, cold as ice.

  They took him out of the wagon, out to a big oak, put him on a horse and put a rope around his neck. He just stared at them.

  "We did nothing to you," the Indian told them.

  Webb ranted and raved about his daughter and how she was poisoned, and the Indian said, "She's not dead. My woman is dead, but your daughter is not dead."

  Webb—knowing his daughter was dead—went crazy, cussed the Indian up one side and down the other, and that's when the Indian put a curse on Mud Creek and all those who lived in it. When he started talking, Hirem said everybody and everything went quiet, except the crickets, and they were building in intensity, like some kind of chorus behind his words. And the Indian said he had the powers, and that he was through with the pale side of them and invited the dark side to his aid. Said the town would suffer.

  Words to that effect.

  Then he started chanting. Hirem said he didn't recognize any of the words, and he knew quite a few Indian languages and some French-Cajun talk, and it wasn't any of those. He thought maybe it was African or something. He said he remembered a few words, and he told them to me, wondering if I knew what they meant, because he said those words haunted his mind. He said that soon as they were mentioned the wind picked up and the rain came harder and thunder barked.

  The words weren't Indian. I don't know their source, but I recognized the words. I have them in some of the books I have here. THE NECRONOMICON, MYSTERIES OF THE

  WORM, and NAMELESS CULTS. Basically, the words refer to something that at times has been called a Wendigo, a vampire, ghoul, or nosferatu. Sometimes a mixture of all these things. According to my books, these words allow a sorcerer to invite a demon into his body for purposes of revenge. The demon lives for one thing. Revenge. And it gives the dead body it has animated powers beyond those of normal man, while on the other hand, it dooms the individual's soul to hell.

  Then the spell broke, Hirem said, and Webb jumped forward, slapped the horse's flank, and it ran, and the Indian dangled. He hardly even kicked at all, but in a heartbeat he was dead. The crickets went completely quiet, and the storm stopped. Then a moment later the storm picked up again. Wind broke tree limbs and tossed them, blew leaves, and the rain came down like buckshot. Lightning cracked out of the sky, hit the body of the Indian, and everything went white.

  When their eyes came free of light-blindness, the Indian was gone. The lightning had blown him to hell. There was just the rope smoking, the noose swinging in the wind—

  and a huge spider—or something that looked like a spider, and it scuttled up the rope into the tree and was gone.

  That's when Hirem knew there was more going on here than just a crazed Indian. That spider looked just like a growth on the Indian's chest. Hirem noticed it when he helped toss the Indian in the wagon, and the man's shirt tore, revealing it. At first, Hirem thought a great spider was nested on the red man's chest, but then he saw it was an upraised birthmark: a giant, hairy mole in the shape of a large spider. Or as Hirem put it,"...

  something that reminded you of a spider."

  …

  When it was all over, Hirem came by and talked to me. He was crazy with guilt. He'd been half drunk and got caught up in the mob. Later on, others told me much the same thing. No excuse mind you, but part of one.<
br />
  Hirem told me that they had dumped the Negress' body out at the edge of the stage road, and it was on his conscience. Nothing could be done for her and the man now, but he wanted to see that she got a decent burial.

  So we hitched up a wagon and went out there. The storm was really going then. We could hardly see our hands in front of our faces. The body was hard to find, but we finally located it. She'd been skinned, Reverend. Just like a squirrel. We had an old plow crate in the back, and we put her in that and took her off in the woods and buried her. And it was a chore with the rain coming down like it was, and there were all manner of stubborn roots to cut through. But we wanted to make sure the body wasn't disturbed. If Caleb got enough drinks in him, he might want to come for the body, string it up somewhere in town. Hirem said Caleb had already strung the ears on a piece of rawhide and was wearing them around his neck and was saying he was going to make a tobacco pouch out of her breasts.

  We finally got the job done and got back to town, and that's when we heard that Glenda was alive.

  The medicine the Indian had given her worked. It had made her die and come back to life, cured of the pneumonia. Either that—or her body functions had been in such a catatonic state when she was brought to me—I didn't notice, but I'm a better doctor than that, Reverend. I say the girl died and that was part of how the medicine worked, and before she was cured, the Indian was hung.

  That changed Webb's tune. He suddenly believed the Indian's curse. He and his family packed up that night and rode out of here without so much as looking back. And though it was raining bad, I saw them go, and I could tell Glenda was alive. She was sitting up front on the wagon with her mama holding a big umbrella over their heads. I remember thinking, "I hope she don't get the pneumonia again," and then wondering if the Indian's medicine would permanently prevent that.