Harmony nodded. “It began with James Lee Cobb. You have, no doubt, heard rumors concerning him. Well, they are true, God help us all, they are true…”
Harmony had never met his half-brother in person, not before he showed in Deliverance. And what brought that about was a letter. While safely confined in the Wyoming Territorial Prison, Cobb somehow, through some outside agency, discovered he had a half-brother in Utah Territory. Cobb wrote to Harmony and they began to exchange letters.
“I believe, as our Lord Jesus Christ taught, that there is good in all men, Sheriff. I believed the same of James Lee Cobb. I wrote to him, telling him he must now turn from his life of vice and iniquity, that through Jesus Christ there could be forgiveness and salvation if he were to walk the path of righteousness and confess to his sins,” Harmony explained wearily. “And Cobb wrote back that, yes, he now sought only goodness and purity in his life. I wanted to believe this, Sheriff, but I could not. For there was an undercurrent to this man, something black and vile…but as a soldier of Christ, I could not turn away from him.”
“But you wanted to,” Dirker suggested.
“Yes, God, yes, I surely did.” Harmony was lost in thought for a moment. “Sheriff, although I did not personally know Cobb, I knew of him. Even before those letters began to arrive. There were things my father wrote down in a letter before he took his own life…things about his life in Procton, Connecticut and what horrors occurred there. My mother told me of them. Of the taint on our bloodline. Well, it is of no matter, I will not discuss these things. They are skeletons that shall remained locked in the family closet.”
After he was released from prison, Cobb did not visit his half-brother in the newly-reclaimed village of Deliverance. Harmony had written to him that he must do this, must be baptized into the Church. The next he heard of Cobb was a telegram from up in Toole County telling Harmony he had died. No details were given. Only that he had died while in the company of the Goshute and that his casket would be shipped to Whisper Lake. It apparently was his last request to be buried near kin.
“Well, I’m sure you know what transpired. The casket indeed arrived and it was that night, while alone with it, that Hiram Callister died. The coroner ruled it suicide. I’m sure you recall this…”
“I was not in town at the time,” Dirker told him. “Doc West ruled it suicide, though he was not at all convinced it was so. He did this to spare Caleb Callister the unpleasantries of an investigation. For it was widely- known by that point that his brother…well, that he was not exactly a wholesome sort.”
Harmony just shook his head. “I know of Hiram Callister’s peculiarities. The rumors of which, at any rate. But Hiram’s death was not suicide. His throat was crushed and although he did indeed slit his own wrists, there are many who believe he was compelled to do it. Or did so rather than face what was in that casket…”
“What was in there, Eustice? Was it Cobb?”
Harmony told him pretty much what Cabe had. What was in there nearly scared the life from the men who’d brought it down from Skull Valley. Whatever was in there…no man could look upon it and retain his sanity.
Harmony walked to the doorway, opened it a crack and stared out into the cold, misting rain which was rapidly turning Redemption into a sea of mud. “It was, perhaps, a week or two later when Cobb showed in Deliverance on a dark night of blowing wind. He wore a black velvet hood, claimed to be horribly scarred. He wore leather gloves on his hands. He came in the company of a group of, well, despicable characters. They were outlaws, soldiers of fortune, blooded killers-Crow and Hood, Greer and Cook, Bascombe and Wise…”
They set up in a ruined hotel, Harmony said. The Mormons, being a charitable sort, did not run them off. Maybe they didn’t dare to. There was something very wrong about them all. They were invited to service, but declined. They sequestered themselves up in the old hotel, only coming out by night. They brought something with them in a wagon, something they would let no one look upon. Whatever it was, they locked it in a room in the hotel.
“Did you ask what it was?” Dirker inquired.
But Harmony just shook his head. “I did not. But I am certain it was a living thing…or nearly. For at night it howled and screeched and pounded on the walls. In the dead of night you could hear it up there, making the most depraved and blasphemous sounds. Whatever it was…it’s probably still there. I only know that Cobb’s men were overheard saying that it had come from Missouri…”
Harmony’ face had gone bloodless at the memory of it. It took him a moment or two to gather himself. Then he continued.
“There is a draw, a strange seduction to sin, to evil, Sheriff. It is the Devil’s primary tool: people will give themselves to Him in order to experience wicked gluttony.” Through the open door, Harmony watched men loading bodies in a wagon for burial. “Before long, women were spending time in that hotel. There was an unhealthy influence that Cobb and the others possessed. The young were drawn. By the time we realized that they were being taken over, body and soul, it was far too late. Our breathern had given themselves to the Evil One. Cobb had become their messiah. Those of us as yet uncorrupted, came here to Redemption to start again.”
“And Deliverance?”
“No God-fearing man or woman went there after that day,” Harmony explained, his face oddly slack. His lower lip trembled. “And those that did, were never heard from again.”
“And what of that… personage they had locked away up in the hotel? Was it human? Animal?”
“Neither,” was all Harmony would say. “But in my mind, it was the seed of human evil. There were those in Deliverance that said it was the Devil himself that was chained up there.”
Dirker thought about it all. Thought about it long and hard. “And Cobb…he disappeared from the mortuary. If he was dead, how could that be?”
“I don’t think he was dead,” Harmony said. “But surely not alive. His was the living death, Sheriff. No man will ever know what happened to him after he climbed from his casket. Some things are better not known.”
Dirker was not about to argue with him. He was surely not convinced about any of this. Something had happened, yes, and Cobb was no doubt involved, but the supernatural? Dirker had heard stories and wild tales like any other, but he was not ready to accept such a thing.
“I can see, by the look on your face, Sheriff, that you are skeptical. But what I tell you is the truth as the Lord is my witness. What happened in Deliverance is unspeakable…pagan rites, Devil worship, human sacrifice. It has been said that the first born, all the first born of Deliverance were given to Cobb as burnt offerings. To him and that demented thing up in the hotel.” Harmony looked close to tears now. “If God in His infinite wisdom would only smite that serpent’s nest from the land.”
Dirker said, “Well, maybe God’s gonna need some help this time.”
22
Cabe pulled off his cigarette, sent the smoke out through his nostrils. “So, I reckon from what you’ve been saying that you talked to your Indian friends?”
Charles Graybrow nodded. “Yes, I have.”
“And…?”
“Worse than I thought.”
They were sitting in Cabe’s motel room, on the bed, sorting out those things that a week before would have been unthinkable by any sane man. Now, however, there was no choice but to look the devil, as it were, in the face and give him his due.
“First off, you have to know about a Snake medicine man called Spirit Moon,” Graybrow said, his fingers coiling uneasily in his lap, unused to being without a ready bottle. “Now Spirit Moon…oh boy, he’s big mumbo-jumbo heap plenty bad injun witch doctor-”
“Would you quit the dumb injun bit already?” Cabe said impatiently. “It’s funny at times. But now ain’t one of those times.”
Graybrow nodded, smiled. “Sure, sure, understood. Okay, now Spirit Moon, you know something about him?”
“I’ve heard a few things.”
“What you heard is true. That’s one injun with the power, I tell you,” Graybrow said with complete certainty. “I won’t go on about things he’s done, the sick he’s cured and the bad ones he cursed…we’ll let it go by saying
