“Get upstairs and shut the door! Lock it!” I said, and I bolted the front door and dragged the heavy sofa and two packed, taped boxes in front of it.
Something moved past the window.
Please please please.
I ran into my kitchen, which was wild with the shadows of branches swaying on the floor. I grabbed Dora’s silverware from the drawer. Some of it fell and clattered to the floor as I took the stairs two at a time, moving past the shut bedroom door and into my study. The front door downstairs began to rattle as something strong tried to force its way in. Then three hard raps came.
Is it knocking?
They came again.
“Frank?” Dora yelled.
“Stay in there! No matter what you hear!”
I took the small cannon from its place in the corner of the study and poured powder in it, but the powder went everywhere. Now I perched it on its carriage. This was taking so long. If my hands weren’t shaking. If I had a little time. Tore one pocket out of my pants for wadding. Quarters and nickels from my pocket—I remember how ridiculous it was to see a buffalo going down the hole—but not dimes; dimes were too light. Only butter knives and those delicate forks fit in the narrow aperture of the weapon. This was taking too long! Now the other pocket so the load didn’t fall out when I pointed it down. More like a large shotgun than a small cannon, made to shred horses and men.
Why is it so quiet?
When I had it loaded I moved it to the hallway and pointed it down the staircase so that nothing could get up them without facing it. I had choked off the upper floor.
Or so I thought.
They’re planning something, too.
I laid the pistol next to me.
Glass broke in the kitchen.
“Frank?”
“I’m alright, love. Be still.”
I poured the priming.
It walked into the living room below.
Not the black one. Reddish. I saw it through the railing at a hairpin angle from the stairs. When I saw it my hands began to shake so badly that I could not light my lighter. I felt my testicles turn to ice and crawl up inside me.
It came around the corner with its yellowed teeth bare and its tongue hanging. Teeth like Turkish knives. It saw me and reared up to consider me, its ears nearly brushing the ceiling. It was not impressed. Back down on all fours and started its run up the stairs. Its smell coming hot before it, my skin tingling, anticipating the grab of those awful teeth.
It happened fast, I know that, but it seemed very slow.
Jesus God please please I’ll do anything so sorry heartfully just let it THERE yes THERE please you GOD!
The lighter caught and I touched it to the priming, which issued a short sst and then a hard and final BANG that rattled every joint in the house and broke out a downstairs window.
At the last moment, when it saw the flame of the lighter and understood that it was going to be hit, it half turned away and caught the brunt of it through the ribs and middle. The effect was appalling. It was almost sawn in half. It panted hard twice through what was left of its lungs, blowing an awful bubble, then shuddered, caved in and died.
The recoil of the gun knocked me from a squatting position and onto my back; the carriage had slammed across my shin, laying it open and all but breaking it. It was some time before I felt this. Or my badly burned hand.
My wife screamed my name.
I picked up the pistol.
I ran to the door and when I found it locked, I laid my shoulder into it and it gave.
The monster, the black one, was attacking Eudora where she had backed herself into the closet, kicking at it. It looked up at me as I burst into the room, and even as I raised the pistol it leapt on the bed and broke it and jumped out the window. My shot hit the headboard. I turned to see my wife. She was sitting on the floor of the closet holding her wounded foot aloft. It had bitten deeply into the meat of her heel and her blood ran and dripped.
“Frankie oh Frank help me it got me but I think I’m alright I just need help getting up oh my God what was it what the hell was that?”
“Just sit here and let me see it.”
I stopped her bleeding with the top sheet of the bed. My hands were still shaking.
“That was the cannon.”
“Yes. We’ll have to clean this out.”
“Oh God, we should have left. Why didn’t we leave?”
“We’ll leave now.”
“It hurts. I’m sorry I jerked my leg. You’re just trying to help and I can’t stay still.”
“I think you’ll be alright. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
Dora rarely cried but she did now.
“I want to leave, you have to take me home. I don’t understand what’s going on here but it’s so bad. Take me home, Frankie, anywhere.”
“I will. I promise.”
That was what I said.
Even though both of us knew it was too late now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
DO YOU KNOW him?”
“No.”
The sheriff stood with me on the porch in the cool of the morning.
I thought he looked grey and ill, and he was probably thinking the same thing about me.
“I’m supposed to take you in.”
I nodded.
“If the best explanation you got is that you shot an animal and in the morning it wasn’t.”
“Please don’t.”
“I don’t guess I will. A lot goin on I don’t comprehend. No animal I know could have done that at the Nobles, and no man neither.”
His voice faltered as he choked back a sob.
“What are you going to do with him?” I said, nodding towards the staircase inside. I had covered the two biggest parts of the naked man with sheets and towels. What was left of the back and shoulders suggested an acrobat. Small man, but strong. His face had been spared. He had an Irish look about him with his auburn hair and friendly cheeks and when I had thumbed his eyes shut he seemed to be frozen, laughing at the best joke he ever heard.
“Bury him in a potter’s field. I don’t know what else.”
“Shouldn’t somebody look at him? The other sheriff?”
“Ain’t nobody comin.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They said it’s our bed to lie in and they won’t come.”
“What about… I don’t know, the FBI?”
“You want to tell your story to the FBI? The wolf-man story? They’d lock you up in a sanatorium and then lock me up for not lockin you up. I need time to think. About everything. It’s too much.”
“I know.”
“I guess you do. How is she?”
“Dr. McElroy stitched her and put ointment on her for infection. He’s worried about that because the bite’s so deep.”
“I hope you put something on that eye, too.”
I nodded. He meant my eyebrow, which had swollen up badly. The night before I had noticed it hurting and found a dime-sized piece of pine from the Noble’s door wedged under it.
“Did he want her in the hospital?” he asked.
“He said that hospital’s only good for dying. You go in for a hernia and never come out.”
“That’s about right. But he sent poor Ursie there. Oh my Jesus.”
That half-choked sob came out of him again.
He put his hands on his hips and bent forward at the waist, trying to collect himself. I put my hand on his back, and as soon as I felt the warmth of his skin through his shirt, the gesture seemed invasive and awkward. I withdrew it and he stood up.
He reached for a tin in his shirt pocket and put a pinch of tobacco in his mouth.
“We’re leaving town,” I said.
“Maybe me, too. Let’s see about movin him off your stairs.”