VI
He had killed the spider because it was part of his recurring nightmare. So bad was this night dream, he hated to see the sun fall down behind the sky and die in shadow, the time of sleep to draw near.
The dream was full of warped memories. They flashed through the depths of his mind like ghosts. And the most terrifying part concerned the spider—or spiderlike thing. It was as if it were supposed to represent or warn him of something.
One full year of that dream with the pressure of its darkness growing heavier each time.
And it was as if it were pushing him, guiding him toward some destination, some destiny he was to fulfill.
Or perhaps it was nothing more than the shadows of his dying faith, trying to collect themselves once again into a solid lie.
But if there was something to them, guided by heaven or hell, he felt deep in his bones that that something was to be found here. In Mud Creek.
Why he was not certain. Certainly God had long ago given up on him. If this was to be his last showdown, God would not be on hand to aid him.
He tried not to think about it. He took a sip of his whisky.
He looked at the ceiling. 'Why has thou forsaken me?'
After a minute of silence a grim smile parted his lips. He lifted the bottle upwards as if in toast.
'That's what I thought you'd say.'
He drank a long drought of his liquid hell.
VII
Slow and easy—the contents of the bottle disappearing with the slow light of the sun—
the Reverend drank, headed toward that dark riverbank where he would board the black dream boat that sailed into view each time he stupored himself to sleep.
The bottle was empty.
Groggy, the Reverend sat up in bed and reached for his saddlebags and his next coin of passage. He took out another bottle, removed the cloth, spat away the cork, and resumed his position. After three sips his hand eased to the side of the bed, and the bottle slipped from it, landed upright on the floor—a few drops sloshing from the lip.
The curtains billowed in the open window like blue bloated tongues.
The wind was cool-damp with rain. Thunder rumbled gently.
And the Reverend descended into nightmare.
There was a boat and the Reverend got on it. The boatman was dressed in black, hooded.
A glimpse of his face showed nothing more than a skull with hollow eye sockets. The boatman took six bits from the Reverend for passage, poled away from shore.
The river itself was darker than the shit from Satan's bowels. From time to time, white faces with dead eyes would bob to the surface like fishing corks, then drift back down into the blackness leaving not a ripple.
Up shit river without a paddle.
The boatman poled on down this peculiar river Styx with East Texas shores, and along these shores, the Reverend saw the events of his life as if they were part of a play performed for river travelers.
But none of the events he saw were the good ones, just the dung of his life, save one—
and it was a blessing as well as a curse.
There on the shore, in plain sight—unlike the way it had happened in a bed in the dark of his sister's room— were he and his sister, holding each other in sweaty embrace, copulating like farm animals. In his memory, it had always been a sweet night like a velvet embrace, there had been love as well as passion. But this was lust, pure and simple.
It was not pleasant to look at.
He tried to look away from the next scene of the play, but his eyes remained latched. And before the boat sailed on, he watched his father materialize and discover them, and he heard his father curse them and damn them both. Then his younger self was bolting for his pants and leaping (it had been a window in real life) outwards and away—to run along the banks of the river, until his form grew dark and fell apart like fragments of smoked glass.
And the boat sailed on.
The last year of the Civil War (a kid then) fighting for the South and losing, knowing too much about death at the age of eighteen.
The men he had slain (dressed in blood-spattered Yankee uniforms) lined up along the bank to wave sadly at him. If it had not been so painful, it would have been comical.
Other scenes: round after round of ammunition exiting through the barrel of his Navy, first as a cap and ball revolver, then later as a converted cartridge revolver, round after round until he could hit nickels tossed into the air and split playing cards along the edge by shooting over his shoulder while holding a mirror in his other hand.
The men he had slain outside of war—those who had pushed him, and those who he had eliminated for their sins against God—lined up along the bank now to smile (sometimes bloody smiles) and wave bye-bye.
(Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.)
He could not look away. He watched the dead men recede into darkness.
More of his life came up in acts and scenes along the river. All of it was shit.
He turned to look at the opposite shore, and the play there was no better. It was the same as the opposite bank.
Sail away.
And now—ahead of him—surfacing from the water, as always, was the worst part of his dream.
Spidery legs broke the surface of the water—too many legs for a true spider, there were ten—wriggling. And then the bulbous body surfaced with them: a giant spiderlike thing with huge red eyes that housed some dark and horrid intelligence.
The spider was as wide as the river. Its legs brushed the banks on either side.
The boatman did not veer. He poled stiffly on.
The Reverend reached for his gun. And it was not there. He was butt-ass naked, shrivel-dicked and scared.
He wanted to open his mouth and yell, but he could not. It was as if fear had sewn his lips shut.
The spider made him tremble, and he could not understand it. Size or not. Red, evil eyes or not. He had faced men, sometimes three at once, and he had sent them all to hell on their shadows, and not once, not even for a fraction of a second, had he known true fear.
Until now, in these dreams. (God, let them be dreams.) The Reverend found that he could not look away from the spider-thing's eyes. It was as if they were swollen with all his sins and weaknesses.
The boat sailed on.
The spider-thing opened its black hair-lined maw, and the boat sailed into its mouth, and as the bow of the boat and the boatman disappeared into the black stench of the creature, the Reverend lost sight of the red eyes, and then all he saw was blackness, and that blackness closed out the light behind him and he was one with hell—
He awoke sweating.
He felt cold and trembly as he sat up in bed.
Lightning was flashing consistently. It was bright enough to be seen through the thick curtains, and when the wind billowed them out, it could be seen even more clearly. The curtains flapped at him like wraiths with their tails nailed to the wall. Rain blew in the window, onto the bed and the toes of his boots. The boots glistened in the lightning flashes like wet snake hide.
Rolling out of bed, he picked up the whisky bottle and took a long drink. It did him no good. It did not feel warm against the back of his throat, and it left no glow in his belly. It might as well have been sun-warmed water.
He went to the window, started to close it, but changed his mind.
He stuck his face out of it into the rain and the wind, as if inviting lightning to reach down from the sky and shatter his head like a pumpkin.
