A deep trench had been dug into the yard, six feet long and probably six deep. A grave? you wonder. But you know the hole was recently dug because the turned earth is fresh, and several shovels are lying around. You remember the fresh dirt on Mr. Morris’s hands and his reference to “diggin’.” Could he have been the one who’d dug the hole?
“Jumpin’ Jesus!” a voice cracks like a pistol shot. “Mr. Gast has up’n hung hisself!”
“Oh, my holy shee-it!” booms another.
“Looks like he’s been hangin’ a few days…”
Several townsmen are running for the house, and you see that one is the marshal. He glares at you and points. “You! You see what happened here?”
“Nuh-no, sir…”
“What’s that hole dug there?”
“I don’t rightly know, Marshal Braden…”
Something like recognition flashes. “You one’a Bella’s whores, ain’t ya?”
“Yes, sir,” you speak right up. “And I come up here ’cos a man inside owes me money.”
“Forget about your money and come help us!” he orders, so you do as you’re told.
You follow the two men into the house. “Ain’t no one seen his wife or kids for several days. Girl, you check upstairs, and we’ll check—” But the other man was already groaning.
“Marshal, in here. You ain’t gonna believe this…”
In the study two men are sitting in brass-studded armchairs. They’re both grinning but not moving.
“It’s Mr. Morris,” you gasp.
In his hand is the long knife you saw at Bella’s, and it’s clear what he’d used it for: to cut his own throat from ear to ear. A gush of blood had run down his chest to pool on the floor.
The other man is older, and has a long mustache. Half the side of his head is gone. A pistol dangles from his fingers.
“What in God’s name happened here?” the marshal mutters.
“Looks like they both kilt themselves, like Mr. Gast…”
“We gotta find Mrs. Gast and them two kids’a theirs. And where’s that damn maid?” The marshal points to you again. “Upstairs! Give a shout if ya find anything,” he says, and then both men stomp through the room toward the back of the house.
But you stay to stare at Mr. Morris. Part of you wants to rummage through his pockets to retrieve your money but you know you can’t do that. You know that if you did, he’d reach up and grab you.
So you scurry back to the foyer and go up the stairs. The first thing you notice are dirt tracks going up. On the landing you falter—your heart is pattering—because there’s something about the silence that terrifies you even worse than when you watched the Indians killing your mother.
The tracks lead to a door in the middle of the stair hall. You try the knob but it’s locked.
Maybe this one. The door clicks when you turn the knob.
You don’t scream. Instead a pressure jolts in your chest and your heart stops for a moment, but you steel yourself to remain composed. Another of Mr. Gast’s rail men lay dead. You don’t know his name but you’ve seen him at Bella’s. It’s a bath closet that you’ve entered, a fancy one that even has a wooden commode.
A hip bath sits on a heavy wooden table, water still in it. You notice that the dead man’s hair and face are sopping wet, but only after you see his trousers open, and there’s a big splotch of dried blood there.
Something in your mind that’s not really your will makes you lift the wooden lid on the commode cabinet. You look in and see the man’s thing floating in the chamber pot water.
You back out of the room. You pass the locked door and move to the one next to it.
When you open it, you’re knocked down.
Oh! Lord! What IS that?
It’s not a person who pushed you to the floor, it’s the stench that plowed out of the room. It’s an awful hot rotten smell mixed with another stench like latrine dirt on a sweltering day.
You pick yourself up and look into the room—
—and that’s when you scream a hundred times louder than when Mr. Morris was pushing the sewing needle into the tip of your nipple.
You’re looking down at a naked woman dead for days, spread-eagled on a blood-caked bed. A large ax had been dropped right between her legs.
Just before you fall backward, you think you noticed one more thing: A bloody fetus on the floor, but it’s tiny, not much bigger than a field mouse. It looks like someone had squashed it under their shoe.
Footsteps thunk up the stairs, and now you think you also hear a dog barking.
The second man gags, “In the name of—What’s that stench? Piss?”
“What the hell—” The marshal looks into the room.
The other man helps you up, but looks like he wants to throw up over the stair-hall rail. They all got enough of a look.
“Guess we done found Mrs. Gast…”
“somethin’ pure evil’s goin’ on in this place.” He jerks his head. “Where’s that dog barkin’?”
The other man leaves you to lean against the rail. “This door here.”
You bring a hand to your chest. “It’s locked…”
Ka-KRACK!
His booted foot implodes the door. More meaty rotten stench gusts into the hall, so dense it’s like a cloud, and a skinny mud-tan mutt tears out of the room and disappears down the stairs. But the man is already on his knees and then he sidles over. He’s passed out.
The marshal looks in the room but when he turns back to you it’s with a face leeched of all color, and though it can’t be true you could swear that in the time it took him to look into that room, some of his hair turned gray.
He puts his hand across your eyes and turns you around. “You get out’a this house, girl. You get out right now, and don’t come back.”
“But, sir, what’s in the—”
“You get out now! You run to the town square’n ring the bell and tell every man to get on up here to help me.”
“But—”
“Go!” He shoves you toward the steps. You stumble down the staircase. You can hear him weeping, “God, protect us, my dear God, protect us…”
Downstairs, the spacious foyer seems smaller now, and very dark.
When you turn, your heart freezes again and you almost scream.
There’s a man sitting at a desk, scribbling. He looks up at you as if irritated.
“Who are you, child?” a creaky voice asks.
“Harriet…”
“Oh, yes. The whore…” He gets back to scribbling. You recognize him a moment later from the stupid red hat and metal nose: one of Mr. Gast’s employees, who once paid to watch you shit.
“You should leave here,” he mutters without looking at you. “Even in the grievous sin of your whoredom, you are more blessed than anyone to ever set foot here.”
