Deadman's Crossing Read Online Free PDF Page A

dots followed, swarmed in the moonlight, then darted into the bushes behind the pale, blue thing like a load of buckshot.
    “What was that?” the deputy said. His voice sounded as if it had been pistol whipped.
    “Already told you,” Jebidiah said.
    “That couldn’t have been nothing human,” the deputy said.
    “Don’t you get it,” Bill said, “that’s what the preacher is trying to tell you. It’s Gimet, and he ain’t nowhere alive. His skin was blue. And he’s all messed up. I seen more than you did. I got a good look. And them bees. We ought to break out and ride hard.”
    “Do as you choose,” the Reverend said. “I don’t intend to.”
    “And why not?” Bill said.
    “That isn’t my job.”
    “Well, I ain’t got no job. Deputy, ain’t you supposed to make sure I get to Nacogdoches to get hung? Ain’t that your job?”
    “It is.”
    “Then we ought to ride on, not bother with this fool. He wants to fight some grave crawler, then let him. Ain’t nothing we ought to get into.”
    “We made a pact to ride together,” the deputy said. “So we will.”
    “I didn’t make no pact,” Bill said.
    “Your word, your needs, they’re nothing to me,” the deputy said.
    At that moment, something began to move through the woods on their left. Something moving quick and heavy, not bothering with stealth. Jebidiah looked in the direction of the sounds, saw someone, or something, moving through the underbrush, snapping limbs aside like they were rotten sticks. He could hear the buzz of the bees, loud and angry. Without really meaning to, he urged the horse to a trot. The deputy and Bill joined in with their own mounts, keeping pace with the Reverend’s horse.
    They came to a place off the side of the road where the brush thinned, and out in the distance they could see what looked like bursting white waves, frozen against the dark. But they soon realized it was tombstones. And there were crosses. A graveyard. The graveyard Old Timer had told them about. The sky had cleared now, the wind had ceased to blow hard. They had a fine view of the cemetery, and as they watched, the thing that had been in the brush moved out of it and went up the little rise where the graves were, climbed up on one of the stones and sat. A black cloud formed around its head, and the sound of buzzing could be heard all the way out to the road. The thing sat there like a king on a throne. Even from that distance it was easy to see it was nude, and male, and his skin was gray—blue in the moonlight—and the head looked misshapen. Moonglow slipped through cracks in the back of the horror’s head and poked out of fresh cracks at the front of its skull and speared out of the empty eye sockets. The bees’ nest, visible through the wound in its chest, was nestled between the ribs. It pulsed with a yellow-honey glow. From time to time, little black dots moved around the glow and flew up and were temporarily pinned in the moonlight above the creature’s head.
    “Jesus,” said the deputy.
    “Jesus won’t help a bit,” Jebidiah said.
    “It’s Gimet, ain’t it? He...it...really is dead,” the deputy said.
    “Undead,” Jebidiah said. “I believe he’s toying with us. Waiting for when he plans to strike.”
    “Strike?” Bill said. “Why?”
    “Because that is his purpose,” Jebidiah said, “as it is mine to strike back. Gird your loins, men, you will soon be fighting for your life.”
    “How about we just ride like hell?” Bill said.
    In that moment, Jebidiah’s words became prophetic. The thing was gone from the gravestone. Shadows had gathered at the edge of the woods, balled up, become solid, and when the shadows leaped from the even darker shadows of the trees, it was the shape of the thing they had seen on the stone, cool blue in the moonlight, a disaster of a face, and the teeth.... They were long and sharp. Gimet leaped in such a way that his back foot hit the rear of Jebidiah’s animal, allowing him to spring