Like many young men at the end of the
1800s, Bill has signed on to work in a logging camp to earn a fast paycheck to
start his life. Unfortunately his role model is Big John, the camp’s golden boy
known for blowing his pay as fast as he makes it. On a cold Saturday night they
enter Red’s Saloon to forget the work that takes the sweat and the lives of so
many. Red may have plans for their whiskey money, but something else lurks in
the shadows, something that badly wants a drink that has nothing to do with
alcohol. Can Bill make it back out the shabby door or does someone have their
own plans for his future?
Excerpt:
For a moment, Bill thought he was
imagining things or was having a particularly bad reaction to the rot gut.
Blinking a few times refocused his tired gaze and proved there was, indeed, a
moving pile of…something at a table close to the other end of the bar.
Nancy shuffled back towards the bar,
casting a wary look over her shoulder. “Red, he’s back,” she breathed as she
scooped up another tray and fled to the other side of the room. Upon closer
inspection, the youth realized it wasn’t a pile of something, but a figure
draped in a patchwork of skins then cloaked with half-torn, moldy furs. Most
who passed his way quickly avoided him, though whether it was because of his
odd looks or his smell, it was hard to say.
Red hissed through his teeth and ran
a sweating hand through his thick mane. “Tom Haskins,” he mumbled under his
breath for the benefit of those crowded round him.
“I thought he lived on the edge of
town,” Jack replied as he glared down the length of the bar.
“He tried to start a dry goods store, and it
didn’t go over too well. He had it in his mind he could make up his loss with
fur, though he ain’t no trapper. He moved out to the woods weeks ago and comes
into town every so often to hang round and get his fix. Just when I think he’s
finally died out there, he comes round again.” Not once did the saloon
proprietor take his eyes off the body hunched over a table. Every breath made
Tom’s ragtag cloak shudder, and every moldy hair on him quivered.
“You want me to kick him out?” Jack
offered, already shifting his weight across the room.
“Nah, let him warm up at least. He
doesn’t do much; just pesters everyone for drink now that he can’t afford it
for himself. Give him time, and he’ll be up to his tricks.”
Bill couldn’t stop looking away. The
pile of sloughed animals slumped as the man’s head rose. His skin was a cold
grey and stretched taught across his face and hands. His hair had all but
fallen out, but what was still left of it hung in clumps of long, ragtag
strands that were paler than dried straw. His thin-lipped mouth was open and he
sucked in air in painful, erratic pants.
“Look at ‘im! Actin’ like a piglet
pulled away from its ma’s teat!” Big John sneered. “I bet his clothes are fulla
maggots!”
“It’s too cold for maggots,” Ben
snorted. “His clothes are thin. Wonder how the hell he stands bein’ out in the
woods in weather like this.” “We do it,” Bill muttered. The recluse’s head
jerked at the sound of his voice; the young man immediately snapped his mouth
shut.
“Yeah, but we’re used to it! And
younger’n he ever was!” John’s voice was purposefully loud and carried the
haughty tone that won him admiration from the other loggers. “He’s durn crazy,
that’s why he don’t notice.” He cocked his head Tom’s way with a sneer. “All
that time on your own turn you yaps, man?”
Tom’s head very slowly shifted
towards them, and Bill shuddered. There were days he’d survived the logging
camp and the extreme conditions by will power and prayer alone, all the while
wondering in the back of his head what it would be like if he didn’t have even
that. Looking at the vagrant, he knew.
Ben was cursing behind them. “I saw
him not more than a month ago and he didn’t look like that. Solitary life don’t
turn a man in that short a’ time! Maybe he’s got rabies or fever n’ ague.”
Tom’s eyes sat so far back in his
skull, it was impossible to tell what color they were, though they harbored a steady,
unsettling gleam. They roved over the huddled group, searching hungrily for an
easy mark. Bill’s heart plummeted to his boots when the hollow glitter locked
onto him. He was suddenly as cold as he was when a seventh-year blizzard hit.
All the frustrations and hell he’d endured since joining the logging team, all
his good intentions and reasons, all he was trying to move forward to, swelled
and jumbled together in a brief, howling wind of thought. The two distant stars
in Tom’s eyes were the only thing that pegged him as a stable man in his
otherwise rotting and dozy appearance.
All around the little group, the
saloon’s weekend life went on. The distant sound of swearing and dice
clattering across the floor mixed with discordant harmonies and a half-hearted
mouth organ. But in the area by the bar, all was muffled and still. It was like
the snows had come without warning over the forest, smothering everything in
their path with chilled silence. Bill shuddered, and out of the corner of his
eye, noticed Red do the same.
“You want I should knock his ears
down, Red?” John’s bravado was the sudden yell that knocked the snow from the
treetops, for better or ill. He had the relaxed look of a man who’d been in his
cup just enough to throw caution to the wind. “I’ll toss him out and give ‘im a
pat on the lip he won’t forget!”
“Leave be, John,” the barkeep
muttered. His hand never stopped wiping down the bar. Though his head was
tilted down towards his task, his eyes were set on their target across the
room.
“What…what you want me to do for a
drink?” At first it didn’t register that that thing, that man, had actually
spoken. His voice was high and reedy, and cracked the way the thinnest ice
along the river did.
“Pardon?”
“What you want me to do for a drink?” His lips
cracked when his mouth moved. A thin trail of spittle dripped off his lower lip
and was quickly caught up by the tip of the derelict’s seeking tongue. The
distant gleam in Tom’s eyes burned as his mouth formed the last word.
Otherwise, it was hard to even say how he’d made it into the saloon; he looked
more than a little dim.
About the author:
Selah Janel has been blessed with a
giant imagination since she was little and convinced that fairies lived in the
nearby state park or vampires hid in the abandoned barns outside of town. Her
appreciation for a good story was enhanced by a love of reading, the many
talented storytellers that surrounded her, and a healthy curiosity for
everything. A talent for warping everything she learned didn’t hurt, either. She
gravitates to writing fantasy and horror, but can be convinced to pursue any
genre if the idea is good enough. Often her stories feature the unknown
creeping into the “real” world and she loves to find the magical in the
mundane.
She has four e-books with No
Boundaries Press, including the upcoming novel ‘In the Red’. Her work has also
been included in ‘The MacGuffin’, ‘The Realm Beyond’, ‘Stories for Children
Magazine’, and the upcoming Wicked East Press anthology ‘Bedtime Stories for
Girls’. She likes her music to rock, her vampires lethal, her fairies to play
mind games, and her princesses to hold their own.
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