Wisdom was a haphazard sprawl of shoddy buildings and lean-to shanties. With its bewildering checkerboard of streets and footpaths, the town had no general order to its layout. It was as if some mad farmer had tossed a handful of seeds into the wind, and tangles of shops and cabins had sprouted up from the mud.
Drunken laughter and piano music continued to plague the air as Keech and the siblings crept across the settlement. At one point, Nat held up a fist to halt them, and the trio melted deeper into the shadows. A solitary thrall wearing a shabby blue-and-white uniform shuffled past them. It stopped for a second, slanting its head. With a sudden panic, Keech wondered if it might be sensing the shard, but then the dead soldier muttered something and resumed its walk. Kicking at a pebble, it turned a corner and disappeared from sight.
“Doyle’s incantation,” Keech murmured, relieved. “Looks like it’s still working.”
Duck pointed ahead of them. “Let’s head toward Main Street.”
Their circuit sent them down an alleyway that turned into a skinny footpath. They followed in single file till it spat them onto a tiny plot of land, a square parcel just wide enough for a small log cabin, a stable house, and a putrid-smelling pigpen. Icicles dangled from the stable house roof, and snowy rime covered the pen’s wooden fence. Following the Embrys, Keech sidled along the fence line, careful not to slip in the half-frozen mud puddles.
A mammoth dark shape squealed inside the pen, then bolted straight for him and slammed into the fence rails, shuddering the wood. Keech wheeled backward, struggling to keep his balance. He put a hand over his coat pocket to secure the whistle bomb.
The thing that had charged him was a giant black boar.
The animal raked its curled yellow tusks across the fence. Its dark eyes reflected nearby lamplight, glimmering a feral kind of savagery.
“Filthy animal,” Keech grumbled.
Suddenly, he was yanked through the open door of the stable house. He spun around and realized that Nat was pulling at his coat. The rancher shoved him down onto the stable’s hay-scattered floor, next to a vacant horse stall, and threw a finger up to his lips: Shhh.
Duck pointed out the door to the log cabin. Lantern light flickered within. “I think we woke up somebody,” she whispered.
A lanky cowpuncher stepped out, wearing grubby long underwear and a pair of muddy boots. He held a kerosene lantern. The boar in the pigpen loosed another screech, and the man shambled across the yard. “Henrietta? What’s got you worked up, m’lovely?”
From the darkness at the back of the stable, a rowdy huff startled Keech. The skinny cowpoke trudged closer to the stable, tugging at his underwear. “Hector, you hush it up in there, you miserable brute!”
The trio pressed themselves deeper into the shadows, holding as still as marble statues.
As the scrawny man paused at the stable doorway, Keech made out a dark spiral shape on the side of his neck: the brand of the Reverend Rose. The fellow raised his lantern toward the aisle. “Don’t you be spookin’ Henrietta with your huffin’ and puffin’!” he shouted. “I’ve a mind to feed you to her!”
The man lumbered back to his cabin and slammed the door. A minute later, the light winked out. The nervous trio waited till a loud snore sounded from the cabin.
“That was close,” Keech muttered.
“Henrietta?” Duck shook her head. “That fella don’t even realize his pig’s a boy.”
“Did y’all see the brand on his neck?” Nat asked.
Duck wondered, “Why would Rose have a person branded?”
“I don’t know, but I sure don’t like it none,” Nat answered.
A loud huff sounded again from the back of the stable. Curiosity itched at Keech. He slipped down the aisle.
A massive stallion was crowded into the far compartment, watching him. The horse stood at least eighteen hands high from the floor to the top of his withers. His mane and tail were as white as dove feathers, and his fur was a beautiful cream shade, the color of freshly churned butter. Keech gestured at Nat and Duck, and they joined him to get a closer look.
“That’s the prettiest horse I ever saw,” Duck said.
Nat smiled. “A cremello stud. Rare in these parts.”
“That man talked like he hates him,” Duck added. “I bet this pony’s been rustled.”
Keech reached over the gate. He expected the animal to withdraw, but the horse nosed his fingers instead, then licked his palm. A memory of Felix nudging his hand in Pa Abner’s barn nearly overwhelmed his heart.
“I wish I had an apple for you, Hector. That’s your name, right? Like the Trojan warrior?”
The white horse snorted, flashing eyes as blue as Nat’s and Duck’s.
Nat tapped Keech’s shoulder. “He’s a swell horse, but we have to go.”
“You don’t belong in this horrible place,” Keech whispered to the stallion. “I’ll come back for you.”
The trio hurried out of the stable house. On their way past the pen, Henrietta charged the fence again, rattling the wood and gouging the air.
Duck patted Keech on the back. “That critter hates you something fierce.”
“Trust me, the feeling’s mutual.”
After sprinting down another alley, they paused for a breath in front of a brown stucco building. The windows of the place had been boarded over, the front door sealed shut by planks. Shattered chairs had been piled in the yard, as if someone had built a pyre but forgot to light it. A streetlamp stood just beyond the clutter, revealing a snow-dusted street.
Keech glanced at the front of the stucco building. A dingy sign hung by two chains from the overhang:
SHERIFF’S OFFICE
CITY JAIL
OBEY THE LAW!
Peering through a narrow gap in one of the boarded-up windows, Keech could see a small room of holding cells, their iron-bar doors wide open. The building had been abandoned, the lockup empty. If Sheriff Strahan were still alive, he was being held elsewhere.
“What now?” asked Duck.
Nat pointed to the snowy street. “Since this is the sheriff’s office, I’m guessing that’s Main Street. Let’s cut back south, closer to the town center. Look for signs of another lockup. If we don’t find Strahan there, we’ll need to head back to the ravine. I bet Doyle’s hour is nearly up.”
They scurried toward the heart of town, keeping to the shadows of tightly clustered storefronts. They passed a blacksmith shop, a mercantile store, and a barbershop. The businesses were all vacant, their windows and doors planked up like the sheriff’s office. Just ahead, the street veered east, forming a sharp left turn in front of a massive three-story building, a whitewashed edifice that blocked any view of the rest of the town.
The building was a hotel with a long balcony on the second story that looked out over the dismal street corner. It appeared to be the sole place in town that was awake. The amateur piano playing and raucous laughter that Keech had been hearing for the last hour rolled out of the hotel’s batwing doors. Muffled light shone out of the portal. Smoky shadows moved beyond the curtained windows in the rooms above and below.
Hanging from the hotel’s balustrade was a large yellow sign that read WISDOM SALOON, only someone had scratched out the town’s name and painted BIG SNAKE over it.
“Let’s move closer,” Keech whispered.
The trio stopped at the front porch of a telegraph office. They hunkered in the cold darkness and stared down the street at the Big Snake Saloon.
“That place sure is spooky,” Duck said.
Keech studied the hotel’s windows and balcony. The sounds and movement within reminded him of a grim circus—relentless swirls of bleak music and clownish cackles. “Maybe they’re holding Strahan in there.”
“That’d be my guess, too.” Duck took a step forward.
“Wait.” Nat reached out to stop her, his voice sharper than a knife. “Do y’all notice anything?”
Keech peered around the empty street, but everything was buttoned up.
From the ground floor of the Big Snake Saloon, the twisted sound of the piano called out a refrain that Keech recognized as the Moonlight Sonata. It drifted like snowfall down the street and mingled with the shadows trapped along the sidewalks.
Granny Nell used to hum that piece to him when he would awaken in the night from horrible dreams. Hush now, Granny would tell him as he cried to the sound of her humming. Listen to the moonlight and fret no more.
It dawned on Keech what Nat had seen—or rather, what he hadn’t seen.
Duck voiced his thought: “No activity, no movement.”
“Right.” Nat raised an eyebrow. “The street’s wide open. The saloon looks busy enough, but the town’s quiet. I ain’t seen a thrall guard on patrol for a good while.”
Suddenly, a hard chill sparked inside Keech’s coat. He grabbed for the amulet.
“Keech, what’s wrong?” Duck asked.
“Doyle’s spell! I don’t think it’s working anymore!”
No sooner had he said the words than he glanced over his shoulder and saw a nightmare vision.
A massive man with a split red beard stood behind the Embrys, as though he had just materialized out of the November wind.
“Behind you!” Keech yelled.
“Hello, little lambs,” Big Ben said.
The outlaw caught the siblings by the sides of their heads and slammed them together. Keech heard a dull clonk, and Nat and Duck crumpled to the filthy snow at the man’s feet.
Big Ben looked down at their unmoving forms with a smirk. “The children of Bennett Coal.” His baritone voice rumbled like a cattle stampede. He rolled his wide shoulders and stretched his back, as if he needed to work out a kink.
“No!” Keech started toward the man, but rough hands seized his coat collar from behind and wrenched him backward. Yanked off his feet, he dropped flat onto his back.
The hideous face of a rotting thrall emerged over him. It wore a blue-and-white uniform the same as the other thrall they’d seen, and its horrible mouth drooled a dark ooze.
Keech reached for the shard, but the dead patrolman shoved both of his hands to the ground. “Don’t even think about it,” the thrall muttered.
Stepping over the bodies of Nat and Duck, Big Ben plodded toward Keech. The wind kicked up and ruffled the killer’s long tan coat, giving him the appearance of a drifting mountain. His boots crunched on the packed snow.
“You’re the little orphan lamb the Reverend has spoken of. The son of Screamin’ Bill.” Big Ben squatted beside him. “Your troop survived my Chamelia. Impressive. Raines trained you well. But not well enough.”
Keech strained against the thrall’s grip, but the dead man pushed his wrists down as Big Ben dug thick fingers into Keech’s coat, found the silver shard, and pulled the charm free. The man licked his lips. “You were wrong to think a protective spell on your shard could hide you. I can reach past your tricks.” He slid a bare finger across the fragment, then stuffed the amulet into his own coat. When his hand came out, he grunted, squeezed his fingers into a tight fist, then cracked his knuckles. Keech didn’t think the shard had just caused the man pain. Faulty bones, perhaps, but not the silver.
Then Big Ben rifled again through Keech’s pockets. “What else have you hid in there?” The killer’s eyes went large when he pulled out the whistle bomb and examined it. “Now where did you find this? Young kids shouldn’t play with explosives.”
Keech shouted out to Nat and Duck, but the siblings didn’t budge. Big Ben lifted a threatening hand to silence him. An intricate dark circle scarred his flesh. The Devil’s mark. “The Reverend will be thrilled to learn you kids walked right into our hands. We’ve been preparing for another visitor, but you three are a special treat.”
Keech looked up at the sky and saw dozens of crows lining the rooftops of Wisdom’s downtown buildings. They would have been invisible but for the glow of Main Street’s lamplights illuminating their silhouettes. The creatures didn’t move or make a sound; they simply watched from the eaves, like spectators at the grim circus.
Big Ben planted a boot on each side of Keech, straddling him.
“Good night, little lamb,” he said, and brought down a massive fist.