Westward Weird Page 8

Fran echoed his sigh. “No, I guess they don’t. Especially not when they think their livelihood’s at risk.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I think I know who’s responsible for your monster.” Fran shook her head, tugging a little harder on the leg she was using to drag the Questing Beast. “Revenue’s been down lately; Paul says the age of the traveling circus is ending. That people aren’t going to want our kind of show too much longer. So you need gimmicks if you want the crowds to keep coming. Things that no one else has.”

  “Things like fabulous monsters,” said Jonathan grimly.

  “Things just like that.” She gave him a sidelong look. “He’s not a bad man. He was only looking out for his own.”

  “Tell that to the families of the people the Questing Beast killed,” Jonathan suggested.

  Fran didn’t have an answer for that.

  ~ * ~

  It took them another hour to get the Questing Beast back to Fran’s trailer, where they covered it with a tarp to keep it out of sight. Fran went to the stable, looking for Rabbit, while Jonathan went looking for Paul.

  He found the circus manager standing next to an empty cage near the far edge of the circus, looking anxiously out on the desert. “Waiting for something?” Jonathan asked, stepping up behind him.

  Paul jumped. “Mr. Healy! You shouldn’t sneak up on a man like that. I don’t know how it is where you’re from, but out here, some folks are likely to shoot first and ask questions later.”

  “Sounds like a quiet dinner at home.” Jonathan folded his hands behind his back. “I repeat: waiting for something?”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Because your Questing Beast won’t be coming home. I’m afraid we had a little disagreement over whether it was allowed to eat me, and I won.” He hadn’t consciously decided to leave Fran’s involvement out of things until that moment, but it felt like the right thing to do. “What did you hope to achieve? Did you think it could be tamed?”

  Feigned innocence gave way to real shock, followed by fear, as the circus manager gaped at them. “You—you killed my—but how—?”

  “Given the people that it killed, I think I was justified.”

  Paul’s face darkened. “It was going to save my show. I was going to charge the rubes five dollars a head for just a glimpse. That would have given us the margin we needed to keep going, to find another way.”

  “It didn’t trouble you that it kept escaping?”

  “I was going to get it under control.”

  “It was going to kill you all.”

  “You Easterners, you’re all the same.” The gun appeared in Paul’s hand almost as fast as the knives had appeared in Fran’s. “The laws are different out here. You had no business coming and poking at things that didn’t concern you.”

  “The exploitation of cryptids always concerns me,” Jonathan said, as calmly as he could. He took a slow step backward, followed by another. “As does the panic which ensues whenever a monster is seen by the public at large. It was too great a risk. There’s more at stake than just your circus.”

  “Not more that matters!” snapped Paul, and cocked back the hammer. Jonathan saw the motion and dove to the right. The bullet caught him in the left shoulder, spinning him halfway around and knocking him back a few feet. He drew his own pistol, but before he could fire, Paul made a choking sound and fell, hitting the ground like a sack of wet hay.

  The knife protruding from Paul’s throat somehow failed to be a surprise. “You’re a bastard, Paul, and I quit,” said Fran, stepping up behind Jonathan. “Ever been shot before, city boy?”

  “More times than I care to count,” he said, wincing. “That doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

  “I guess it wouldn’t.” Fran looked at the body of the man who’d been her employer, sorrow painting her face. “What now?”

  In that moment, Jonathan didn’t have an answer.

  ~ * ~

  “All aboard for Phoenix, Prescott, Ash Fork, and all points east!” The conductor did a double-take at the young man walking toward him, one arm up in a sling. “Well, sir, it looks like Tempe’s been an adventure.”

  “I suppose one could say that,” said Jonathan, putting down his bag in order to extract his ticket from his jacket pocket. “It’s definitely been educational.”

  The conductor punched his ticket and smiled at the pretty blonde next to him, her hair pinned up in curls. “Will this be your first time in Ann Arbor, miss?”

  “It will,” Fran said, smiling broadly. “I’m looking forward to the snow.”

  “It’s not all snow,” protested Jonathan.

  “And Arizona’s not all desert and snakes, but that’s about what you saw, isn’t it?” Laughing, Fran took his good arm in hers. “Let’s find our seats so I can go check on Rabbit in the livestock car.”

  The conductor waved before turning back to the oncoming passengers, chuckling to himself. It was pleasing to see a couple who looked so well-suited to each other. Why, they’d been so clearly infatuated that he’d almost fancied he could hear the sound of a distant crowd, cheering them on.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  THE GHOST IN THE DOCTOR

  Brenda Cooper

  T he ghost had clearly never taken the Hippocratic Oath. Julian Welles Orson shook his head as the light in the teenaged boy’s eyes died on the table in front of him. He cursed, a long expletive that pissed off the ghost, but at that moment he just didn’t care. Surely this young man hadn’t deserved death.

  Of course, he probably had. Every time Julian had looked into the past of a person who died on his operating table or under his care, the death had been deserved. At least, that was true since the ghost. Boy probably raped his sister or something. No matter what he found out, it never made him feel better. He was a physician, dammit, not a judge. His eyes felt salty again, and he bit back a powerful thirst for whiskey. He could have some later. He had the mother to deal with first.

  He pulled the stained coverlet that the boy’s mom had brought him up over the boy’s slender shoulders, closed his eyes, and then covered him completely. The corpse looked even smaller and younger covered, as if he had just killed a child. That wasn’t correct: had just failed to save a child. At least he hadn’t known Tom well, had only seen him once before when he came in with an ankle the size of a baseball.

  Still, Julian pounded a fist into the sturdy doorframe hard enough that it hurt his knuckles.

  The ghost faded within Julian until it was no bigger than a breath, sitting inside his chest on top of his lungs, waiting for the next time someone noticed his doctor’s valise and asked for help.

  Julian opened the door and went out to where the mother and her sister waited, faces as grey as their clothes. He looked the mother in her face and shook his head; no comforting words snuck around his anger at the ghost. The two women collapsed into each other’s arms, shivering and crying.

  ~ * ~

  Since they didn’t look at him, he continued out to the street and shut the big wooden door softly behind him. He didn’t want to leave this town. But people eventually noticed that the times he snatched someone from death’s door came no more often than the times people he should have been able to heal slipped away from him. Last week it had been old Jed Scott, who had a heart attack while Julian was setting a broken leg. The boy—Tom—had been delirious with fever, but should have been strong enough to pull through. He was—had been—young and strong, and probably the only help his mother got on the family farm. No man had shown up to check on the boy in the day and half he’d been in Julian’s care.

  As soon as he finished notifying Sam, the undertaker, Julian took his ghost to the Swinging Gate and ordered a whiskey and water. He finished the water and pushed the empty toward Rachel for more before he started in on the whiskey. He’d miss Rachel—he always missed at least some of the people he had to leave behind. He’d been in Grover’s Gulch a year and half, longer than most stop
s. The whiskey disappeared as fast as the first glass of water. By the time the second glass of water had thinned the vile sourness of the liquor churning in his stomach he felt slightly better, if a little sick. He forced himself to run through the good litany, the one that named the people he’d saved is if by miracle. Karen the nurse whose neck had broken in a fall from a horse, Matt the sheriff who’d been gut-shot, Joe the horse-boy who’d been gut-kicked, and ten more. Lives that went on because he’d accepted the old medicine man’s ghost on accident. Iron Hawk had quietly asked if he wanted the same powers the old man had enjoyed and he had unwittingly said yes. He hadn’t known what the stiff Sioux was asking when he said yes. Worst choice he’d ever made, and he’d made pretty bad ones a few times.

  He shook his head and signaled Rachel to bring him another one. She smiled at him, soft and sweet and a little sad. If she weren’t a barmaid, he was pretty sure she’d be telling him to watch his drink. And if he didn’t have the ghost curled warm and slightly drunk in his chest, he might ask her to walk with him and count the stars overhead and smell the plains all around them and the first blooming flowers of spring.

  Maybe he would ask her anyway. Maybe he could stay, after all. He knew it was the whiskey making him think this way, but it was a nice dream. Rachel’s skin looked soft and her laugh was infectious and low. She was strong and quiet. Just the way he liked his women.

  The next morning, he woke from a poor sleep, bones cracking as he pushed up from the mean pallet in the back of the small office. His mouth tasted like ash from too much drink and his forehead felt two sizes too small for his brain. This was no way to be a doctor. He kept seeing the boy’s fever spiking and spiking on the bed in his office, his limbs thrashing before he finally stilled and then slipped away.

  The man he used to be could have saved Tom.

  Rachel could have loved the man he used to be.

  For a moment Julian thought about the gun in his saddlebags by the door, but he wasn’t far enough gone for that. At least not until he got some coffee. He was just stirring up the ashes from the stove to heat water when the undertaker came in and stood in his doorway. Sam’s head nearly touched the top of the doorframe and his shoulders nearly met the sides. A big man for a tough job. His eyes spoke accusation but his words were soft. “What happened to Tommy? I thought he had the same fever his sister had.”

  Julian couldn’t look directly at him. “I thought he’d be okay.”

  “I think he should have been. I’ve known that boy since he came into the world. He was a good one.”

  “I know,” Julian mumbled, sure the guilt sitting like lead shot in his bones was visible to the other man.

  “I’ve had a lot of business lately.”

  Julian forced his gaze to meet Sam’s and said, “I think so, too. I’ve done my best.” That was true. He knew it was true.

  “All right, then,” Sam said, looking finished with the conversation. Maybe not happy with Julian’s answer, but he’d said his piece. “Good morning to you, then. I hope it’s a good day.”

  After he left Julian stood looking after him, feeling small. The ghost inside him was invisible when there was no one that needed help, except sometimes when he drank. Damned thing liked liquor. Maybe it was as unhappy as he was.

  He’d never had that thought before, and it startled him a bit.

  After he finished making and drinking his coffee, he washed his instruments in the leftover hot water even though they were all basically clean. He wrapped them in a torn but clean shirt and tucked them into his valise, which he then tucked into the empty side of his saddlebags. The other side held emergency jerky, a bottle of whiskey, a flask of water, and in the bottom, his Colt 45.

  He wrote a note, ripping it up twice and starting over. The final version that he stuck to his locked door with a nail was, “The doctor is out for at least a few days.”

  He was on his way before noon, head still pounding so hard it was tough to enjoy the early spring warmth against his skin. When he left other places, he’d always gone out for a new town. As in those other times, he hadn’t left anything behind, but the note was new. It sent a message that he might be back.

  He didn’t think too hard about where he was going since he didn’t want the ghost to hear his thoughts. Not that he was sure it would even disagree. He couldn’t imagine living like smoke and air in someone else’s body any more than he could really imagine the ghost living inside his body even after five years.

  Instead, he thought about the pines and occasional oaks he saw and the taste of the salty jerky on his tongue and the clop and roll of Red’s hooves underneath of him. He thought about the mountains he was heading into and the sky above him and the way the early spring grass smelled like babies and the scent of a woman in the morning. He thought about Rachel.

  It was three days’ ride west to the place where he’d picked up the ghost. Of course, the tribe wasn’t there now. But traces remained. Here and there the imprint of a hoof had survived the tracks of other animals and the fall and melt of snow. He spotted the worn marks of travois heading south and followed them, letting his horse pick its way slowly while he worried about what he’d say when he found Iron Hawk.

  His ghost woke in his chest by the evening of the first day he followed the Sioux band and gave him restless dreams all night. Now he thought only of the tribe and the ghost and tried not to think about being free of the ghost or about how the tribe might kill him when he showed up. Riding up on them this way felt a little like thinking about the revolver and how its cold steel would feel against his forehead. Images of Rachel and young Tom drove him forward anyway, desire and grief both working his chest. He’d only been riding a couple of hours on the second day when he spotted a telltale smudge of smoke rising from trees above him and started looking for scouts.

  Even though he knew the scouts were there, they didn’t stop him or show themselves.

  Red’s hooves fell nearly silently on the soft, damp carpet of needles that filled the path, making Julian feel almost like a ghost himself as he kept going, the encampment further away than it had looked.

  When he got there, he found Black Shawl Woman waiting for him. She acted as if he had been gone just a day or two, inclining her head, and saying “Hello, Julian. Good to see you,” in slow but nearly perfect English.

  “And you, grandmother,” Julian replied. He dismounted and tied Red’s reins to a log that served as a bench for those too old or too tired to dance at night. “Are you well?”

  “None of us is well.”

  So she was as cheerful as usual. “Is Iron Hawk here?”

  “They are fighting. Perhaps that is why you came to us.”

  “Are they fighting Pawnee?” Please let it be Pawnee. It needed to be Pawnee.

  “White soldiers.”

  His heart sank. The ghost would judge whites. He wasn’t sure if it would judge Indians, since none had come to him for healing. But he had been with the tribe for six months a long time ago. Long enough to learn that the value of small talk was nothing. He settled in beside the old woman. “I will wait with you.”

  Her answer was to make room for him on the log. There were women and children left in the encampment, and they began to move about and make noise after he sat. He thought there should be more of them, but perhaps there were and they just stayed hidden. After watching an hour, he became convinced that there were fewer women and fewer teepees than before.

  He heard a high screech that almost sounded like a real hawk. A scout.

  Moments later, he heard hoofbeats, and then a group of ten or so riders poured up the path, calling out in Sioux to another. Two of the men pulled extra horses with white captives tied bleeding onto the bare backs, maybe alive, maybe not.

  The ghost filled Julian’s chest, straining toward the men, although it didn’t make its preferences clear about whether it wanted the Sioux or the captives or both. It pulled so hard Julian had to lean back and plant his feet in order to remain respec
tfully seated until Iron Hawk acknowledged him.

  Black Shawl Woman stood and Iron Hawk came to her. Blood stained his elkhide shirt but he slid easily off of his pony and stood in front of her, loose and easy.

  Black Shawl Woman’s looked full of fear, the first emotion she’d shown. “So few?”

  Her husband nodded. “We left some of them dead.”

  She spat on the ground and looked at Julian.

  Julian had been holding his breath. He let it out slowly, careful not to move too fast. The ghost went as silent as he felt, as if a veil of quiet had fallen over the four of them, the two Indians, Julian, and his Indian ghost. No matter that just beyond the small circle, other men talked to other women, ponies stamped and blew, and one of the captives whimpered. Between the three of them, it was all quiet and assessment.