In her dream she saw nothing, but heard her father’s voice.
My father, as you know, was a sort of gentleman farmer in-shire; and I, by his express desire, succeeded him in the same quiet occupation, not very willingly…
It was as though he read to her from the other side of the veil, still comforting her like the good father he’d always been.
…for ambition urged me to higher aims, and self-conceit assured me that, in disregarding its voice, I was burying my talent in the earth, and hiding my light under a bushel.
She listened to him and felt soothed. She understood, within the dream, that it was a dream, and prayed that it wouldn’t end. Glenville Henry could read the book in its entirety and then start all over again and she would remain blissful in his company.
All she needed was her mother’s touch on her scalp, Eleanor’s knees on either side of her shoulders, a pressure as calming as the close quarters of the womb.
I would not send a poor girl into the world unarmed against her foes, and ignorant of the snares that beset her path; nor would I watch and guard her, till, deprived of self-respect and self-reliance, she lost the power or the will to watch and guard herself.
“Looks empty.”
Adelaide’s eyes opened like a snap. That was not her father.
Back in Montana. Back in her cabin.
Nearly nighttime. The evening sun going down.
Her in the great chair; the panting still playing from the overturned bed.
A child’s voice. A boy.
Sam?
Another voice. A woman. “Then why is there a horse tied up out here?”
That wasn’t Grace. Not Bertie.
She sat up and spied the bed. The panting underneath picked up pace.
Adelaide leaned forward in her chair, going as low as she could, creeping to one of the windows that seemed farthest from the voices.
From here she saw the boy. Twelve or thirteen, though he might be mistaken for younger. Thin as wire and small for his age. He’d gone up on his toes, peeking into one of the other windows. If not for the curtains, he would’ve seen everything inside.
“I don’t see her.”
Joab.
The name returned to her, as clearly as his story of pushing a child down a well for teasing him. The youngest of the Mudge boys. The woman’s voice would have to belong to their mother.
A loud knock at the front door, followed by Mrs. Mudge’s voice.
“Mrs. Henry? Mrs. Henry. Open your door.”
A sound—a snort—came from under the mattress. The creature was waking up. Which monsters were worse? The one in here or the family out there?
“Should I call you Mudge or Morrison?” Adelaide asked.
“You know my name,” Mrs. Mudge said coolly. “Let me show you my pistol.”
Adelaide stopped crouching. Rose to her full height.
“I see her!” shouted Joab. He stood at the second window. “She’s got the stove we took from the old people in Oregon. Was that in Oregon?”
Mrs. Mudge said, “Doesn’t matter, we’ll be taking it all back.”
Mrs. Mudge clapped at the wall of the cabin with the butt of her pistol.
“We’re tired of hiding up in the mountains. Rocky Point gets so cold. We wake up with our hair frosting over. I can’t have that for my boys. You understand.”
The bed shifted now and the demon reached a single paw out from its shelter. The claws dug into the floorboards.
“I think she’s got a dog,” Joab said, up on his toes now. “I want it.”
“What happened to the blindfolds?” Adelaide shouted.
“Tell me what you remember about my boys. Height? Hair color? Accents? Or just a couple of handkerchiefs over their eyes?”
Mrs. Mudge laughed with satisfaction.
Now a new sound. Rain splashing the cabin walls.
Not rain.
The Mudge boys were peeing on Adelaide’s home.
Adelaide moved toward the stove, where her rifle stood upright in a corner. As she reached for it, the demon crawled out from beneath the bed in its entirety.
She’d forgotten. Somehow Adelaide always forgot the size of it, clear in the last gasps of sunlight coming through the windows. The gray scales of its skin, the reality of such a thing in this world, she always forgot until she faced it once more. Maybe this was how climbers felt when they scaled a formidable mountain. Every summit is singular; every sighting of this beast might as well be the first time.
“You boys will clean those walls when we take this place over, you hear?”
All four boys shouted back as one. “Yes, ma’am!”
“Now listen,” Mrs. Mudge said to Adelaide. “I got a little turned around and ended up at your neighbor’s place. It might make you feel better to know you’ll be joining them in the Realm Eternal.”
“They survived,” Adelaide said, the rifle in hand now.
“Momma,” one of the boys whispered. “Is she telling the truth?”
“Of course not,” Mrs. Mudge said. “She’s just stalling for time.”
Five guns against one. She presumed they were all armed. It was true she really was stalling for time. Already the sun had finished its journey, disappearing behind the horizon, and the darkness of nighttime fell across the cabin quick.
Which meant Adelaide heard the demon more than she saw it. The sound of its heavy frame dragging across the floorboards, slithering past her until it reached the front door.
And a moment after that the door was kicked in.
Mrs. Mudge raised her pistol. A silhouette, framed in the doorway.
But then Mrs. Mudge looked down at the ground and she saw the large shape there.
“Oh my,” she said.
The demon leapt out and tore off Mrs. Mudge’s left arm.
The boys weren’t standing there with Mom, so they didn’t see what happened but they sure could hear it. Their mother howled as if she’d been shot. Only for them to round the cabin and find something so much worse.
A creature crouched over their mother; a beast guarding its kill.
The youngest boy was the only one to find his voice.
“What in hell,” he croaked.
In that instant Adelaide understood them as they truly were. Four boys. Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, and twelve. Watching blood run from their mother’s shoulder like a stream.
Mrs. Mudge panted. Her eyes swam wild in their sockets. Her lips moved, saying only one word, again and again, but there was no volume to it so no one could tell just what it was.
The two youngest couldn’t look away from their mother.
The older boys recovered more quickly. And what did they do?
They ran away.
Sprinted to the outhouse, where the Mudges had tied up three horses. The older boys didn’t look back once. The two youngest only noticed the eldest brother was fleeing when he was already up on his horse.
“Edward!” they shouted in unison.
Edward didn’t answer. Edward rode away.
The second oldest followed after.
The two rode north from the outhouse. One can see a light from miles away in the night, but the boys carried no light. In seconds they’d disappeared into the cavernous gloom of a Montana night. The rumble of their horses’ hooves was the only proof they were still out there.
The demon did something new. New to Adelaide.
It barked once. She’d never heard it make such a sound.
Then something else new: It moved from the cabin’s threshold into the clear ground between the cabin and the outhouse. It rose onto its legs and spread its arms. The loose skin under there expanded like sails. That unstoppable Montana wind gathered in the loose skin and sent the creature tumbling sideways, like an infant that’s still unsure on its legs. Such a strange thing to see that Adelaide, and even the two remaining Mudge boys, looked away from Mrs. Mudge and watched the demon right itself.
It crouched lower this time and spread its arms slowly, letting the wind gather under the loose skin. It stayed upright and then the creature snapped its arms down and it shot up into the sky.
The demon took flight.
Adelaide and the boys went rigid with shock.
That barking sound returned as an echo through the night sky. It came from farther north now. Another bark and then a horse screamed as it was taken down somewhere out there on the darkened plain.
A young man’s voice called out once, pleading—Edward!—but just as quickly it was silenced.
Soon there were pistol shots, but only two.
The sound of the second horse’s gallop snuffed out.
Adelaide came back to herself. She’d been so busy listening to the darkness that she’d stopped seeing what lay in front of her.
Mrs. Mudge.
The body not yet cold, but the soul already gone. Quickly Adelaide crouched and pulled the pistol—a Colt Single Action Army—from the woman’s intact hand.
But the last two Mudge boys had run off by now. They’d made it to their last horse and mounted it together. They rode back toward her. They became clearer to her as they approached. She could barely see past an arm’s length in the night. The fifteen-year-old held the reins. His younger brother, Joab, sat in front. They stopped directly at Adelaide’s door. Adelaide raised the pistol, but the boys only looked at their mother.
The fifteen-year-old’s eyes showed bright with rage, but it was the gaze of the twelve-year-old that chilled Adelaide. Joab watched her with a dispassionate eye.
“Mudges never forget,” Joab said.
Then he tapped his brother’s shoulder and the boys galloped off.
They rode fast, no doubt wary of the demon coming for them as well. But out there, in the dark, it had already hunted. Adelaide tried not to think of which prey the beast was more likely to be eating, the horses or the boys.
It took Adelaide some time to return to common sense. She stood in the doorway aghast at all she’d seen. Unable to understand how quickly bad had gone to much worse. Maybe the boys would go to the law in town. How would she explain a dead woman, a dead white woman—one arm torn away—lying here on her doorstep? What was she going to do? No chance of burying a body in the hard soil. She would have to think of something but she realized this wasn’t actually the most pressing concern.
Where had it gone?
Obadiah remained where he’d been tied up. No doubt the Mudges would have stolen him after they’d disposed of Adelaide’s corpse. Instead, he remained. Though now that she slowed her breathing and looked at him, she understood how frightened he seemed. And who could blame him?
Adelaide found another handful of prairie turnips and approached the horse. She stood where he could see her and he watched her warily. She didn’t rush in close; instead she held out a turnip, close enough that he could catch the scent. Only then did she come closer, feed him, place a hand on him.
As they stood together she looked at the night sky again, listened for that barking, but now all she heard were the howling winds.
The demon had saved her life. But that seemed almost accidental. Five kills. And now the first deaths outside the family. What would she do with the beast when it returned? she wondered.
She might move again, but the thought made her buckle. She didn’t have the energy, or the desire, to settle down somewhere new.
But then another thought occurred. One that made her shiver with a kind of electric thrill. She’d spent her life wondering if she could ever escape her family’s curse, but she’d never considered the possibility that the curse could be the one to leave.
What if she found a way to hide Mrs. Mudge’s body, and those boys—members of a criminal family who’d already done enough to get themselves hung, no matter their age—what if those boys didn’t say a damn thing to the law and simply fled Montana to start over somewhere else?
She fed Obadiah another prairie turnip and the horror of the night became the potential for promise by the dawn. The winds were cold but for the moment she couldn’t feel them.
What if it didn’t come back?
She knew her next thought was a selfish one, but nevertheless, it was the next one that came to her.
What if, for the first time in her life, she was free?