like it was gettin’ stronger and bolder.
“One mornin’ we came out and all the flowers Sissy had planted had been jerked out of the ground, and there was a dead coon on the doorstep, its head yanked off.”
“Yanked off?”
“You could tell from the way there was strings of meat comin’ out of the neck. It had been twisted and pulled plumb off, like a wrung chicken neck, and from the looks of it, it appeared someone, or something, had sucked on its neck. Curious, I cut that coon open. Hardly had a drop of blood in it. Ain’t that somethin’?”
“That’s something all right.”
“Our mule disappeared next. No sign of it. We thought it over and decided we needed to get out, but we didn’t know where to go and we didn’t have any real money. Then one mornin’ I come out, and on the stones I’d set in front of the house for steps, there was a muddy print on them. It was a big print and it didn’t have no kind of shape I could recognise, no kind of animal, but it had toes and a heel. Mud trailed off into the weeds. I got my pistol and went out there, but didn’t find nothin’. No more prints. Nothin’.
“That night I heard a board crack at the bedroom window, and I got up with a gun in my hand. I seen that one of the boards I’d nailed over the window outside had been pulled loose, and a face was pressed up against the glass. It was dark, but I could see enough cause of the moonlight, and it wasn’t like a man’s face. It was the eyes and mouth that made it so different, like it had come out of a human mould of some sort, but the mould had been twisted or dropped or both, and what was made from it was this. This thing. The face was as pale as a whore’s butt, and twisted up, and its eyes were blood red and shone at the window as clear as if the thing was standin’ in front of me. I shot at it, shatterin’ an expensive pane of glass, and then it was gone in the wink of that pistol’s flare.
“I decided it had to end, and I told Sissy to stick, and I gave her the pistol, and I took the fire wood axe and went outside and she bolted the door behind me. I went on around to the side of the house, and I thought I caught sight of it, a nude body, maybe, but with strange feet. Wasn’t nothin’ more than a glimpse of it as it went around the edge of the house and I ran after it. I must have run around that damn house three times. It acted like it was a kid playin’ a game with me. Then I saw somethin’ white that at first I couldn’t imagine was it, because it seemed like a sheet being pulled through the bedroom window I’d shot out.
“You mean it was wraith like. A haint, as you said before?”
Norville nodded. “I ran to the door, but it was bolted of course, way I told Sissy to do. I ran back to the window and started using the axe to chop out the rest of the boards, knocked the panes and the frame out, and I crawled through, pieces of glass stickin’ and cuttin’ me.
“Sissy wasn’t there. But the pistol was on the floor. I dropped the axe and snatched it up, and then I heard her scream real loud and rushed out into the main room, and there I seen it. It was chewin’. You got to believe me, preacher. It had spread its mouth wide, like a snake, and it had more teeth in its face than a dozen folk, and teeth more like an animal, and it was bitin’ her head off. It jerked its jaws from side to side, and blood went everywhere. I shot at it. I shot at it five times and I hit it five times.
“It didn’t so much as make the thing move. I might as well have been rubbin’ its belly. It lifted its eyes and looked at me, and. As God is my witness, it spat out what was left of poor Sissy’s head, and slapped its mouth over her blood pumpin’ neck, and went to suckin’ on it like a kid with a sucker.
“I ain’t ashamed to admit it, my knees went weak. I dropped the pistol and ran and got the axe. When I turned, it was on me. I swung that axe, and hit it. The blade went in, went in deep. and there wasn’t no blood, didn’t spurt a drop. Thing grabbed me up and flung me at the window, and damned if I didn’t go straight through it and land out on my back, on top of some of them rocks I’d pulled out of the well. It flowed through that window like it was water, and it come at me. I rolled over and grabbed one of the rocks and flung it and hit that thing square in its bony chest. What five shots from a pistol and a hack from an axe couldn’t do, the rock did.
“Monster yelled like the fire of hell had been shoved down its throat, and it ran straight away for the well faster than I’ve ever seen anything move, its body twistin’ in all directions, like it was going to come apart, or like the bones was shiftin’ inside of it. It ran and dove into the well and I heard it hit the mud below.
“I climbed back through the window, rushed into the main room, tryin’ not to look at poor Sissy’s body, and I got the double barrel off the mantle and lit a lantern and went back outside through the front door with the lantern in one hand, the shotgun in the other.
“First I held the lantern over the well, got me a look, but didn’t see nothin’ but darkness. I bent over the curbin’ and lowered the lantern in some, fearin’ that thing might grab me. The sides of the well were covered with a kind of slime, and I could see the mud down below, and if the thing had gone into it, there wasn’t no sign now except a bit of a ripple.
“I hid out in the woods. I went back the next mornin’ and got Sissy’s body and buried it out back of the place, and then before it was dark, I boarded up all the windows good and locked the door and I got the shotgun and sat with it all night in the middle of the big room. I knew it wouldn’t do me no good, but that was all I had. Me and that shotgun.
“But didn’t nothin’ bother me, though I could hear it and smell it movin’ around outside the house. Come morning, I was brave enough to go out, and Sissy’s body had been pulled from the grave and gnawed on. I reckon animals could have done it in the night, but I didn’t think so. I buried her again, this time deep, and mounded up dirt and packed it down. I cut some sticks and tied a cross together and stuck that up, then I walked into town and told my story. They didn’t even think I was a murderer. They didn’t question if I might have killed Sissy, which is what I thought they might do. They locked me up for bein’ a crazy, and wasn’t no one cared enough to come and see if her body was at the cabin or not. They wasn’t interested. I done taken Sissy off and wasn’t no man wanted her back now that she had been with me, which considerin’ the kind of women they was usually with didn’t make no sense, but then there ain’t much about Wood Tick that does make sense.
“And then you come along, and you know the rest from there.”
The sun was starting to slant to the West, but there was still plenty of daylight left when they arrived on horseback. The house was built of large logs and it looked solid. The chimney appeared sound. The shingles well cut and nailed down tight. It was indeed a good cabin and the Reverend understood the attraction it held for those who passed by.
Norville slipped off the back of the horse and hurried around behind the cabin. After the Reverend tied up his horse, he too went out back. Norville stood over an empty grave, the cross turned over and broken. Norville and the Reverend stood there for a long moment.
Norville fell to his knees. “Oh, Jesus. I should have taken her off somewhere else. He’s done come and got her.”
“It is done now,” Reverend Mercer said. “Stand up, man. None of this does any good. Let’s look around.”
Norville stood up, but he looked ready to collapse.
“Buck up, man,” Reverend Mercer said. “We have work to do.”
No sight or parcel of the body was found. The Reverend went to the well and bent over and looked down. It was deep. He took out a match and struck it on the curbing and dropped it down the shaft, watched the little light fall. The match hissed out in the mud below.
“Do you believe me,” Norville said, standing back from the well a few paces.
“I do.”
“What can I do?”
“Whatever you do, you will not do alone. I will be here with you.”
“Kind of you, Reverend, but what can you do?”
“At the moment, I’m uncertain. Let’s look inside the house.”
The cabin, though not huge, had two rooms. A small bedroom and a large main room with a kitchen table and a rocked-in fireplace and some benches and a few chairs. There was blood on the floor and on a rug there, and on the walls and even on the ceiling. The Reverend paused at the rocked-up fireplace. He bent down and looked at the rocks. Did you notice a lot of these rocks have a drawing in them?”
“What now?”
“Look here.” Reverend Mercer touched his finger to one of the stones. There was a strange drawing on it, a stick figure with small symbols written around it in a circle. “It’s on a lot of the rocks, and my guess is, if you were to pull the ones without visible symbols free, you could turn them over and the marks would be on the other side.
