“He still ain’t awake?” Sheriff Clement clanked his Colt against the iron jail cell bars. Culliver snored on his cot.
Noah and Harrison stood in the archway separating the cell room and the hallway leading to the Sheriff’s Office’s lobby, waiting for their boss’s instructions.
“I just assume not wake him ’till he’s ready.” Nurse Yarnell, sat on her stool outside the locked cell. “I suppose you could try to jostle him awake.”
“No, ma’am, I won’t. Let him come to on his own.” Clement, who’d returned from his shift at the doctor’s office, faced Yarnell. “How long you been here?”
“Oh, better part of twelve straight hours, more or less.”
“Go on home then. You’ve done more today than we could’ve ever asked.”
“It’s eleven o’clock at night, Sheriff, and I live a little ways outside of town. All due respect, I don’t feel safe riding my little buggy back home.”
“I’ll take you over to the hotel. You’ll be a guest of the good folks of Henderson this evening. I insist.” Not waiting for her to reply, Clement turned to Noah and Harrison, who were itching for their shifts to end at midnight.
“I won’t be too long putting Nurse Yarnell up in the hotel—heck, maybe I can convince them to cook you up a meal.”
“Splendid,” she said from behind him.
“All right then, you guys keep watch over Culliver. Call the soldiers outside, if you need them,” said Clement, referring to the two soldiers stationed in the hallway. The sheriff required two men inside the cell room and two men guarding its locked door. Two more soldiers paced in opposite directions the perimeter of the building’s exterior, constantly crossing paths in the front and back. They stopped upon seeing Clement escorting Yarnell by the arm out of the office. “One of the boys moved your wagon and stabled your horse out back. I won’t be but a second getting them.”
The sheriff steered Yarnell’s small one-horse rig from behind the building and extended his hand to help pull her to sit on the wooden seat next to him. He called to the soldiers. “It won’t take me long to walk back,” and then Clement clicked the horse to trot.
“Deputies Ellison and Boudreaux should be here soon.” Harrison slouched against a wooden wall, speaking to Noah, who stood before the cell housing Culliver. “I mean, they’re spelling us, right?”
“Yeah, Ellison’s usually early.” Noah clutched the cell’s crossed bars and leaned in, framing his face in a steel square. “I tell you, I’m bored out of my skull. I wish this guy would wake the hell up.”
“If and when he does—think he’ll talk?”
“Well, of all the people who’re trouble over the Elkton massacre, Culliver’s pretty low on the list. I think he’ll say something when he finds out all of his buddies are dead, if he doesn’t know already.”
The two adjacent cells wedged against the back wall stood ten feet in every direction, just big enough for a bed and a water bucket. The surrounding wooden walls sandwiched similar iron crossbars, giving the impression that mere planks stood between a prisoner and freedom. Windows were deliberately nonexistent in the cell room to disorient prisoners. Cement ten feet deep rooted the cell bases. Even though they were free, the deputies nonetheless felt imprisoned because they were required to stay within the small area, no more than twenty feet by twenty feet, fronting the cells.
Both Noah and Harrison turned when they heard a knock on the cell room’s locked wooden door, similarly sandwiching iron. Each man had a set of keys that would unlock the door from either side.
“Come in.” Harrison stood and greeted the two soldiers guarding the hallway. Shift change. Two sets of two soldiers took over for their comrades, both indoors and outside, and all the men exchanged pleasantries. The soldiers locked the door and there they all waited for monotony to break. The small table next to the lone stool in the cell room held two glowing lanterns, providing enough light to make one sleepy.
“Damn deputies are taking their sweet time, it must be midnight by now,” Harrison said.
“Take off then,” Noah said. “I think I can handle this.”
Not one to argue, Harrison obliged. “I owe you,” he said, before announcing, “I’m coming out!” to the new guards. He unlocked and swung open the door and then closed in Noah, who patted his pocket containing his key. Just in case.
Noah eased himself to sit on the lone stool in the room and watched Culliver sleep. Should’ve brought a deck of cards. At least I could be playing solitaire.
Ten more minutes passed. Noah couldn’t take it. “So,” he began, deciding to make conversation simply to hear his own voice. “What laid you up and killed the sheriff? Please, make my job easier.”
“One was a man and one wasn’t,” whispered weary voice.
Noah stared at Culliver and rose to see the Klansman’s eyes had opened.
Culliver, unmoving, looked skyward.
“At least the one that killed your boss was a man—I’m pretty sure of that.” Culliver inhaled deeply to speak and sounded spent at the end of the answer.
Not asking, Noah unlocked the cell and grabbed the empty cup next to the full water bucket next to Culliver’s bed.
Culliver heard the cup filling with water. “Please, tilt my head.”
Noah did and delicately poured water into the wounded man’s mouth.
“That’s better. Thanks,” Culliver said.
Noah laid Culliver’s head back down, returned the cup to its place, and stood in the cell but far enough away in case Culliver lunged—a move Noah doubted Culliver would or could make.
“What happened to you, Robert? I mean out by the farm.”
Culliver’s eyes moved around. He appeared to brood before replying.
“My friends are all dead. Killed.”
“So you know? I wasn’t sure,” Noah said.
“Saw it from where I was. Just hacked like hogs.”
“By what?”
Culliver looked at Noah for the first time. “Wraiths. Not men.”
Noah didn’t let his mounting frustration show. “You gotta give me more than that.”
“I rolled away after I saw the one with the machetes cut off one of my guys’ heads.” Culliver thought some more before continuing. “There wasn’t much light ’cept for the torch I dropped and the lanterns on the soldiers’ rig, well, before the horses took off. The one with machete had no eyes—well he had ’em, but they was all white. And I guess you could say his face was brown—maybe a freedman, Mexican or an Indian? Wasn’t white, the skin, I mean. I saw that much when he sliced up the soldier who shot him. Torch was right there.”
“Wait, this, uh, wraith was shot? Where?”
“In the chest by a scatter gun, and then one bullet in the gut after he got back up. Didn’t see no blood. You usually do when a scatter gun’s involved.”
Noah, incredulous. “He got up?”
Culliver nodded yes, followed by “Wraiths. The way they moved. Almost graceful-like, if that makes sense. I saw a few more appear from the dark, including the Mexican that axed the other soldier, and that’s when I closed my eyes, controlled my breathing, and prayed they wouldn’t see me.”
Neither men spoke. The roof began pattering. Culliver’s eyes widened.
“They’re coming.”
Noah, befuddled, listened. “It’s just rain. Christ, I’m glad—we need it.”
The drops intensified. Noah continued. “Can you guess how tall the one was who attacked the soldier? If you got the best look at him—”
Noah stopped himself, remembering the mud-splattered road strewn with human remains. Thunder rumbled distantly. He backed out of the cell and locked it.
Noah said, “Coming out!” and pulled open the door. The two soldiers stood there, glancing back at one another.
“Something wrong?”
Noah saw their faces. Lanterns indiscriminately placed on tables and bookcase tops reflected enough light to see the men were already going stir crazy. “One of you please go in there for a second, keep an eye on him. He’s awake. I’ll be right back.”
The soldiers did as ordered and Noah walked into the lobby, grabbed a glowing lantern from the reception desk, and carried it outside to stand under the office’s covered porch.
A frigid wind gust greeted him, along with rain needling him from both sides. Noah closed the door and held the lantern back to keep it dry and scanned the streetscape and the mostly dark buildings, with only a few still alight with candles in the windows. Noah squinted and stared at the second level of the seamstress’s building—as it was called—about one-hundred feet directly opposite the Sheriff’s Office. The seamstress kept shop on the bottom and lived in the room up top. Her shutters were open, and the window yawned with a candle centered on the sill. The flame lingered, unmoved by the gales. Rainwater stung all sides of the Noah’s face and the thunder grew louder.
“How the hell can that candle burn?” Noah realized he sounded nervous. Her windowpane’s clean. No rain hitting it. Noah looked above the second level. No splashing on the roof. “Good lord, where are the soldiers?”
The rain would not stop the two soldiers from maintaining their rounds, and neither had crossed Noah’s sightline since he arrived on the porch.
“Hey, boys! Where are you?” No response. Why not take shelter under the porch?
Noah looked at his ankle-high leather shoes, which were destined for ruin should he venture into the muddy sea fronting the office. He ducked back inside, went to a utility closet, and grabbed a dusty pair of Wellington boots he’d stored there should the occasion arrive when he might have to venture into water. He never thought it would occur on his town’s main road. He kicked off his shoes, slipped on the knee-high boots, and went back outside and closed the door. Lightning streaked sideways across the sky directly above the Sheriff’s Office. The flash revealed a figure wearing Klansman’s hood and dark clothes, charging down the road toward Noah. A second lightning bolt illuminated the fast-moving Klansman clutching a pitchfork and launching it like a trident toward Noah, who recoiled and grabbed for his gun. The pitchfork missed Noah by several feet and speared the wall separating the office’s front door and window. But Noah’s flinching gave the Klansman enough time to grab and ram him against the door, cracking Noah’s head against it.
The Klansman pinned Noah with one arm while trying to grab the deputy’s head with the other. The strong bony hand grappled Noah’s entire face and rammed his head back into the door, popping off his Stetson. Noah squinted through the hood’s holes to find a hateful gaze glowering from eyes wreathed with ragged, dirty flesh. The Klansman’s reek overwhelmed Noah and reminded him of Civil War battlefields rife with the decaying dead.
Dazed, Noah struggled to deflect his attacker with his left hand while drawing his gun with the other, jamming it into the Klansman’s diaphragm, unloading six shots through the body. The Klansman released and stumbled backward into the rain. It wore black overalls and Noah couldn’t see blood. The Klansman looked straight down at the wound and then back at Noah as lightning illuminated vacant white eyes. Noah fumbled with the doorknob and retreated inside the office, slamming shut and locking the door.
“Guys, get up here!”
Noah backed away from the wide front window and spotted three wriggling tines poking through the wood next to it. The prongs vanished backward as both soldiers entered the lobby from the rear.
“What is it?!” Both soldiers spoke at once.
“A Klansman, but—”
A wagon wheel, from where the men couldn’t say, crashed through window, bringing in rain and wind. The lanterns stayed against the rear wall, keeping the place lit, but not enough for the men to see who threw the wheel.
“Culliver.” Noah raced for the cell room, and to the soldiers said, “Whoever’s outside has a pitchfork!”
Noah took a keychain from his pocket and flicked to the right one to open the cell room door, which the soldiers had the presence of mind to lock. Noah took refuge within and locked the door. Culliver lay unharmed on his bed, looking at Noah.
“You wanna get in here with me?”
Noah, panting, trying to comprehend what’d just happened, slipped bullets from his belt and into his Colt.
“I do.” He loaded his weapon and unlocked Culliver’s cell, locking them both within it.
Rifle blasts startled both men. Culliver tried sitting up but stopped when he felt his stomach’s stitches tugging apart. Noah aimed through the cell’s many iron squares at the cell room door. Raucous sounds of furniture toppling and glass breaking, then a soldier screaming “Help me!” as he stormed toward the doorway, followed by heavy boots stomping wood. The door trembled as, Noah guessed, someone rammed the soldier into it. Three successive, monstrous cracks against the door. Then a body falling into silence. The door itself began shimmying, hinges clanking. Someone clearly wanted in.
Please don’t look for the keys on the soldiers. Maybe he’ll think I’ve got the only one.
The door ceased rattling, and slow boot clomps faded down the hallway.
“You all right?” Noah whispered behind himself.
“Nossir. Neither of us are.”
Noah sighed and brought back his gun. “There’s no way in here.”
“That’s not what they’re thinking,” Culliver said.
Noah waited for whoever was out there, likely more than one based on the ruckus coming from the lobby, to grab something big and blunt to use as a makeshift battering ram against the cell room door.
An explosion from above Culliver’s cell rocked the wooden ceiling, cracking it like ice on a frozen pond.
“Christ, they’re using dynamite! Get me away from here!” Culliver, with effort, lifted his left leg off the bed to stand.
Noah swooped down to help him up as another blast widened the ceiling’s fissures and knocked both men against the cell’s far side. Ceiling planks scattered to form a crude watermelon-sized hole around crossed iron bars. Rain fell into the middle of cell. Noah sat Culliver against the bars and stood to the side of the hole, looking up to see what he could through the rain.
Lightning revealed the hooded Klansman, pitchfork in hand, standing over the hole, looking down on Noah. Two other men joined him. Noah easily made out the sombrero but not the person wearing it, for the hat darkened the head. A cowboy whose black hat and bandana concealed his face, wielded two machetes, completing the trio.
“The Mexican,” Noah heard from behind as Culliver shimmied next to him to peek above. The sight of Culliver triggered the threesome to rain their instruments onto the cell bars. The force of the Mexican’s ax on metal showered Noah and Culliver in sparks. The Klansman’s pitchfork tines were too wide apart to breach the cell’s crossbars. The one with the machetes dropped onto the cage as if to do pushups but instead slipped both arms through the grating and wildly sliced at Culliver.
“Get back!” Noah in one fluid motion stooped to avoid the blades, pressed his hand to Culliver’s chest to guide him away from the knives, and drew and fired his Colt skyward. The bullets flitted through the cowboy’s torso, and he withdrew the blades and pushed himself up to stand. Noah felt as if he were staring up a well at the three marauders, who looked at one another, shaking their heads for they knew it impossible to break the bars. The Klansman dropped to glance a final time into the cell to see Noah furiously pushing bullets into his Colt while Culliver pressed himself against the cell bars, seemingly attempting to squish his body like clay through the bars to freedom.
Noah spun shut his Colt’s cylinder and aimed but stopped when the men spoke in unison. It first began as rhythmic mumbling—clearly words, but spoken in a tongue Noah couldn’t identify. The men parted ways as their voices grew louder, and in their place Noah saw something that literally brought him to his knees.
A massive black cloud swirled miles above him with lightning constantly streaking from all directions and joining in the middle to form an electrically charged eye.
It started as a pulsing white ball nestled in blackness, but discharged with blinding speed, disjointedly tracing through the sky toward Noah, bathing the ceiling in brilliant light, ripping away wooden flesh to get to the iron skeleton. Rain vomited through the hole, splashing enough to douse both men.
“Christ, they’re using lightning.” Noah jumped to his feet and holstered his gun. The stink of charred, wet wood panicked both men.
“How?!” Culliver weakly moved his head from side to side, trying to see for himself.
Noah turned. “Get off the cell!”
A thick lightning bolt rocketed onto the ceiling’s bare metal bars, with rainwater conducting the electricity into Culliver’s cell. White tendrils snaked like vines in reverse around the now-humming iron squares. Culliver went rigid where he sat, outstretched feet twitching an inch above ground. Noah froze so as not to touch the bars and watched as lightning cooked Culliver’s body. The electric tentacles withdrew through the ceiling’s hole and Culliver slumped forward, his burnt skin sticking to the iron squares, leaving grisly grid marks on his bare back.
Noah shook uncontrollably and covered his nose to shield it from a scorched-flesh scent. He looked at the ceiling and saw only rainy remnants dripping from iron bars and broken wooden planks. More than that, the sky grew brighter. Noah felt no relief when he gazed through the hole not to see raging heavens, but a full moon centered in a clear sky.