XIX

Artemus, with no known middle name, was the latest and most likely last in a long lime of Talmadges. The history of the family went all the way back to Calavera's founding, Beaufort Talmadge being one of the more prominent signatories of the town charter. See, Beaufort had spent a considerable sum to purchase enough cattle to survive the journey west and enough hands to drive them. In so doing, he earned himself the gratitude of the settlers, who ate a considerable amount of his beef on their trek. Once they reached the patch of land from which Calavera would spring, he parlayed what cattle he had remaining into his new profession: ranching. He took his herds up into the chaparral hills and built quite the sprawling edifice there. It was in essence a small town. There was a schoolhouse, a laundry, a general store. Even a little chapel for weddings and such. Entire generations had lived and up there, without ever setting foot in the town they who'd come before them had helped build.

All that was schoolboy stuff, the kind of thing learned alongside letters and numbers. That was how it'd been for Caff. Maybe it was different now that his sister Claudia was in charge of things. About the man himself, he had only gossip to guide him. Artemus had been called when Caff himself was young, and must now be firmly within his decrepitude. There had been no talk of marriage or children, no one named to take over the ranch once Artemus himself went on.

Caff had never seen Artemus Talmadge. He had never heard the man's voice and did not know much of anything about him. Except, that wasn't wholly true. He did know a little about Artemus. He knew the man had no qualms with choosing a girl to be killed like a steer for slaughter. He knew Artemus had no trouble with reaching into someone's mind and changing them into his puppet. Artemus Talmadge was a vile man. Caff knew that much.

A vile man he was going to go visit, not too terribly long from now. By some working of miracle, he had managed to return to his own house and lay down in his own bed. Sleep, he figured, would surely come to him in an instant. After not one but two hellish days back-to-back, it had to. It had not, and now he was laying flat on his back in his pajamas with eyes closed, thinking about a vile old man. He had parted ways with Jennie not long after the stars began to come out. It had felt strange to leave the occupied Jail unattended. Elijah had promised that neither he nor Rupert would make a bid for freedom. It had felt even stranger to believe him. Which led to him being here in his bed, in his very own home. Where he was currently not sleeping.

He sighed. It was as if he were of two minds. The first was sensible, knowing he had puzzled out all he could with what he knew and should wait for the rest. The second was obsessive, insisting he drive himself to distraction obsessing over every detail in hopes of finding something. What he suspected was keeping him awake was that, though he wished to favor the first, he appeared to favor the second. It was just the why that stuck with him. Of all the answers he had, which were in truth numerous, not one spoke of why. Nobody knew. His only clue was what Rupert Wagner had said that Artemus Talmadge had said, that it was time.

The thing was, Talmadge had gone to great lengths to accomplish all this. All that effort and time had to be for something other than slaking some esoteric hunger. Maybe it wasn't, and everything had happened because the last son of Beaufort Talmadge was a particularly fastidious cannibal. Caff very much doubted it, but that didn't mean it couldn't happen.

Then there was the spirit. He had only seen it once, just in that brief second after Leland's shotgun had removed the head from Ruby's animate corpse. A misshapen ball of bright, sickly orange light, moving like fire. A little chill ran down his spine as he remembered the eyes. They weren't really eyes, not in any sense of the word, but he felt them see him. There had been a weight to its regard. It was somehow connected to this whole thing. He was certain of it. Its part was either so widespread and vast it couldn't be seen from where he stood, or so quiet and thin it barely existed. Since it hadn't shown itself after being removed from the body, it really could be either one.

A long, long time passed before he slipped into an uneasy doze. It was the best he could manage with a head too full for real sleep, an uneasy time sure to leave him unsatisfied. Sure enough, he more or less woke up with the aching weight of fatigue draped across him. He had no window in this room to see out, but the air hadn't started warming yet, so sunrise was still a ways off. Why'd I wake up, then?

He heard it. A faint creak of timbers under stress. Quick as he could, he checked the room. His dresser, across the room. Walls bare of ornamentation. His open bedroom door, leading to the front room of his house. The small bedside that served as his nightstand, atop which lay his pistol. There was that faint creak again. He hadn't left the door open. He hadn't brought his pistol to bed with him. He had not looked in one place.

Up.

Slowly, he did, certain of what he would find. His mouth went dry, heart leaping into his throat, as he saw it. A shifting, oily shadow clung to his ceiling. A huge, darkened of something that should not be. Cold, dreadful recognition came to life within. His lips pressed into a thin line, his teeth ground behind them, and he did not move one iota beyond that. He didn't know what to do. It hadn't done anything yet. If he went for his pistol, it might. He was keenly aware of how vulnerable he was.

Six filmy pits of sickly orange light flared to life behind the center of the clinging, writhing dark. Three pairs of two they were, in a shape like a triangle. Eyes. He could feel the weight of their regard. From a point in the middle of that triangle, the shadow peeled away. It was beyond horrible, what was revealed, and brought with it a familiar, unnameable stench.

Like Ruby, it was once a person. Unlike her, it was once three. The shoulders, necks, and heads of these people had merged into a single piece of gray, dead flesh. It was like their bodies had melted, run, and molded like hot wax going cool. Wretched parodies of faces made, in their glowing eyes, the triangle he'd seen before. Their mouths were closed. Cracked, swollen, purpling lips peeled back over broken and blackened teeth. Like smiles. There were no arms.

Six legs, three pairs of two, curled like a spider's up and away from the center. The feet had been driven into the wooden ceiling to hold it in place. The skin, flesh, and muscle had been peeled from them. Only the glisten of bone was left behind. In a slow, deliberate manner, two of the legs slid free from the wood and curled down, opposite of the ways knees ought to, to hang beneath the center. A moment of miserable stillness, in which Caff knew nothing but confusion and fear, stretched out into an eternity.

Then there came a twitch, a tensing of atrophied muscle, in the dangling legs beneath the center. The moment ended like shattered glass and he knew what to do. As two feet were driven towards him, jagged bone shards gleaming, he threw himself forward over his legs and off of the bed.

- - -

It missed him by inches, the force of impact turning his tumble into an ass-over-teakettle spin that ended in a hard, painful landing on the floor. He ignored the screaming protest of his accumulated injuries and rolled away, pushing himself up in time to see his bed crash into and splinter the wooden wall. The corpse-spider's speed and strength meant that one moment of hesitation, one foot put wrong, and he was dead. It was between him and the pistol. He was between it and the open door. He had to get out of here. He had to.

It turned in his direction. The broken spears of bone that were once feet crunched and cracked through the wooden ceiling. There was something in the damage it was doing to itself; a glimmer of hope. A small one, maybe. It might be enough. Every thing it did, every move it made, damaged it. If he could survive it long enough, it would tear itself apart on his house. If he could survive. It was sidewinder-swift and stronger than any horse. He started to inch backwards, towards the door. He didn't dare turn his back to it. Two steps he made it before it was upon him once more. Its broken, blackened teeth looked like smiles.

He didn't think. Faster than he'd give himself credit for, he threw himself aside. Its strike came so close to hitting him that he felt his pajama shirt tearing, giving way to the exposed spears of bone. He hit the wall and stumbled forward, hearing its foot-spears punch through the wood he'd been in front of just moments ago. Chunks of wood and splinter sprayed. One of the bigger ones hit him square between the shoulders, adding another fine bruise to his collection.

It was herding him, he realized, moving him away from the door, from escape. He hit the back wall of his bedroom and dropped as a wide sweep of its legs tore a trench through where his chest had once been. Slumped on the floor, he felt blood running down his back and across his chest. He looked, and saw that the strike he'd thought had missed him had not. Twinned gouges had been carved across his body from chest to shoulder, wide and shallow. As for his back; it must not have been a bruise after all. The pain hadn't come yet. Crunch-crunch-crunch went the corpse-spider's feet as it backed away into the center of the room. It now was between him and the way out. Mocking smiles leered from beneath sickly, orange pits of flame.

He got his feet beneath him, pushing off the wall behind him to stand. It stayed still, as if waiting, and he knew it was toying with him. It was sickening. This corpse-spider was clever. Clever enough to be cruel. It seemed to be enjoying itself, and that made him hate it. He wanted to kill it, to break it apart and breathe in that unnameable stench as the corpses it puppeted fell to pieces. He couldn't do that. If he'd had a slug-loaded shotgun, then maybe. He couldn't go with the wait-and-see plan either. To hold to that, he'd have to get lucky every single time it tried to hit him. To kill him, it only needed to get lucky once. He had to come up with something.

There was the pistol. The one he hadn't brough to bed with him. The one that lay on his nightstand anyway. Had the spider brought it, just to torment me? He wouldn't put it past the thing. It had proven itself capable of such, and more. He went for it in a lunge, seizing the weapon with one hand and the nightstand with the other. With a cry of effort he hurled the wooden table at the thing. The corpse-spider speared it through with its third pair of legs and tore it in half. He fired, aiming for one of those hateful grins.

Boom

The sound was painfully loud, striking with almost physical force. His head rang from it. The shot had missedand struck instead where a forehead would have been. A chunk of flesh the size of his fist, grayed and rotted-through, flew away in pieces. It sprayed across the room behind it alongside a foul, black fluid that could only be old blood. Bile surged up his throat and filled his mouth. He wretched, spitting it to the side and mastering his heaving stomach with a great effort of will. Oh, how it burned in his throat and clung to his teeth. It was miserable. He put it to the side. There'd be time for misery later. If he lived.

The corpse-spider gave no sign of injury. Neither had the last corpse, in point of fact. Being shot had still damaged it, though. If he could maybe shoot the joints out he could stop it from moving, or slow it down enough that it couldn't run him down as he fled. There were troubles with that. First, its joints were already moving in ways they shouldn't. It could be that destroying them was different than breaking them, as they surely must be. Or it could not. He'd be betting his life on it. Second, he wasn't sure he was good enough to hit that small a target unless he was right on top of it. Keeping his distance had until now been the thing keeping him alive.

He didn't know what to do. That's what it came down to. Waiting it out would get him killed. Shooting it wouldn't do anything, not with five bullets. This thing had him over a barrel. It knew it, too. It was enjoying it. He could see that. It came for him, fast and jittering. He went to dodge one way, waiting to see those legs twitch. When they did, he dove in another direction; forward and down. The bone-spears missed him clearly this time. He landed hard on his stomach, winded, and scrambled to his feet. The corpse-spider was turning to follow, and would be on him soon. He lit out towards the door. Ignoring the pain in his back he turned and fired a hasty shot over his shoulder. He didn't wait to see if it hit, instead rushing through and slamming the door closed behind him.

Breathing hard, jaw clenched, and bleeding, he stood in his front room. The door wouldn't hold for long. He'd bought himself a few seconds to come up with something, anything, that he could do. Come on, come on, come on. Think, Caff. Think! Four shots in the pistol. Quickly, he looked around the front room of his house. It was kitchen, dining room, and sitting room all in one. The wood-fired stove was cold and empty. He hadn't used it in weeks. There was a chair in front of the embers glowing faintly in his hearth. It wasn't thick enough to use as cover or heavy enough to block its way. Same with his table.

The door shuddered, but did not break. No spear of bone came through in a spray of wood. It rattled again. The corpse-spider's torment of him continued. He set his eyes on the oil lamp hanging from its hook by the door. It too was cold. Maybe if it wasn't, he could throw it at the spider and set it alight. No, that'd take too long. What do I do? One bone-spear thrust through the closed door and retreated. Another, then the whole frame shook. Two of the spider's six eyes appeared in those holes, looking right at him. It made no sound, but he would swear it was laughing at him.

He screamed back wordlessly, tearing his throat raw with defiance and hate. Those eyes pulled away and were replaced by a stabbing length of bone. It curled around the hole the spider had made and yanked the empty space wider. More toying and torment. He knew the damned thing could reduce the door to splinters in a heart's-beat if it chose. There was a part of him that wished it would get this over with and kill him. He wondered if his corpse would smolder like Ruby's had, burned from the inside out by some unknown flame.

Wait a goddamn minute! He thought back to not too long ago, when Claudia had come to visit for an evening. There hadn't been enough oil to have all his lamps lit, so they'd had to make do with candles after the sun had set. He hadn't been able to smell any other thing than wax for a day. She had gone out of her way to bring him three flasks of lamp oil, purchased in bulk and at discount from Arnie Leeds. It was almost funny. The man whose jaw he'd wanted to break not two days ago was about to save his life.

It was with a wild and vicious kind of joy that he went for the cupboard above the stove, snatching up the flasks and spare matchbook that would be his salvation. He heard his bedroom door being torn asunder and spun to face his enemy. The corpse-spider slithered through the frame, its bulk distorting bonelessly to fit. Two pairs of legs folded beneath it, the third curling above in opposition to how it had held itself. Once a spider of corpses, now a scorpion of them, it scuttled across the floor towards him. He retreated behind the table and tossed the useless pistol aside. It landed with a clatter out of his sight and mind. The corpse-scorpion paused, just for a second, when confronted by the table. It wasn't longer than a second.

Caff put the first flask through it. The glass struck the fleshy bulk of the center and bounced, falling to the floor and shattering there. The oil within spread and soaked into the dry timbers. The scorpion leaped atop his table, breaking it and falling to the ground. It didn't pause after, now coming after him with all speed. He could hurt it now, could kill it, and it knew. He threw the second flask as it stormed through the splintered remnants of his dining table. The stabbing legs, curled overtop it, flashed out and smashed it. Oil splashed across its grayed, rotted-through flesh. The third followed, striking one of those horrid leers and breaking.

Then it was on him. Too close to dodge as it stabbed at him. The first spear went through the palm of his hand as he went for a match, the other digging deep into his thigh. He screamed as it bore down on him, pushing him to the ground. He fumbled a match into his free hand. The stench of oil, of blood, of rot was overwhelming. Its many grins loomed. Pain had his fingers trembling. He snarled against it, grinding his teeth. All of his hatred of this thing, his defiance of the death it sought for him, found light in a single match.