The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All - By Laird Barron Page 0,121
swatted him with his hat and drove him outside. Right then the matron ghosted from the gloom in the corner and hacked Bane’s shoulder with a cleaver. He yelled and smacked her in the jaw with the butt of his Rigby and she sprawled.
Blood trickled from the matron’s lips. The injury did not diminish her, rather imbued her with an aura of savagery and mania that caused the men to flinch as one might from a wounded beast. Her eyes were so very large and dark and they gleamed with tears of rage and exultation. She whispered with the intimacy of a lover, “Did ye see what’s waiting for ye in the trees?”
“Where’s our other man?” Miller strode over to the matron and leveled his rifle at her. “I’ll blow a damned hole in your kneecap, Missus. See if I won’t.”
“No need for that. The handsome lad is in the tower. They gave us the fat one for sport. It amuses them to watch us practice cruelty.”
Miller walked around Ma and the coagulating lake of blood. He grasped the ring of a trapdoor and pulled. Several of the women were huddled like goats in a root cellar. They gasped and held each other.
“See him?” Stevens said.
Miller slammed the trapdoor and shook his head.
Bane cussed as Ruark pulled the cleaver free of his shoulder with a gristly crunch. Miller fashioned a tourniquet. The entire left side of Bane’s buckskin jacket was soaked through and dripping. Horn shouted. Everyone ran to the windows. Twilight lay upon the world and a disjointed chain of lamps bobbed in the purple dark, descending the switchback trail on the other side of the valley. Miller said, “Either we fort up, or we run for it.”
Stevens said, “Trapped like rats in here. Roof is made of wood. They could burn us alive.”
“Not with they women in here,” Bane said through gritted teeth.
“You want to spend the night in here with them?” Miller said.
“Yeh, never mind.”
“We could take this one as a hostage,” Stevens said halfheartedly.
“Piss on that,” Miller said. “Who knows what she’ll chop off next time.”
“Ye should flee into the hills,” the matron said. “The horrors ye will soon meet…flee, good hunters. Or make an end of each other with your guns and knives. T’will be a merciful death in comparison.”
“Shut up before I kill you,” Miller said. The matron stopped talking at once.
“What about Ma?” Stevens said.
“He’s gone,” Bane said. “Worst way a man kin go. Gutted like a pig.”
“We cain’t leave him.”
“Naw, we cain’t.” Ruark drew his flintlock pistol. He walked over and laid the barrel against the back of Ma’s head and squeezed the trigger. For Miller, in that moment the past five years of his life were erased and he side slipped through time and space into a muddy trench in France, shells and bodies exploding. He had never left, never escaped.
Stevens aimed his rifle at the matron. He lowered it. “Don’t have the sand to shoot no woman. Let’s git, boys.”
Ruark said, “Won’t make it far in these woods in the dark.”
Stevens said, “We head for the tower and fetch Cal. See what happens.”
The Matron said, “Yes! Yes! Go into the house of the Master! He’ll greet ye with a glad smile and open arms!”
“Quiet yerself, hag,” Stevens said, menacing her with his rifle butt. “C’mon, boys. Let’s find poor Cal before the villains make stew of him.” There was grudging acquiescence to this plan and the men withdrew from the longhouse and its horrors.
Miller went to the palisade gate and shouldered the Enfield, aimed at the string of lights and blasted several rounds in rapid succession. One of the approaching lamps burst, the rest were doused momentarily. A howl of pain rose from the field. Miller reloaded in a hurry. He ran for the tower where his companions were gathered near its double doors. Something fluttered to his left—a coat tail disappearing behind a pile of neatly stacked firewood. He knew they’d been had. While the villagers waving lanterns on the flats played decoy, others had crept along in a flanking action. He dropped to a knee and swung his rifle around.
“Ambush!” Bane hollered as a dozen or more men in coats and top hats sprang from behind sheds, cottages, hay bales, seemingly everywhere. Pitchforks, hatchets, and knives, edges gleaming and glinting; a couple carried blunderbusses, bulkier and older than even Ruark’s. Those guns cracked and spat fire. Puffs of sulfurous white smoke boiled and seethed.