The Haunted

There was the thundering of hooves from far away, faint yelps of exhilaration that grew louder and closer by the second. As instructed, if he did not return by sundown, the volunteers were to come after him. And they had. Horses galloping, torches flaring, voices hollering, they came riding into the village from the opposite end, and Kit met them in front of the mercantile. He bade them dismount, then explained what they were to do.

A man emerged from the store, the man he had spoken to earlier, the law. The man had his gun drawn, and Kit shot him where he stood. The man fell, not dying right away, screaming in Spanish, and then the shooting really started. Other men came out of their homes, and volunteers took them down, moving quickly on to other houses and busting in doors, guns blazing.

In the end, they surrounded the remaining villagers, herding them into a corral, women and children mostly, but a few old men as well. The younger men, the husbands and fathers, were all dead, and their families were crying, screaming, wailing. A young girl, no more than twelve, tears streaming down her face, raised her arms to him, begging for mercy for herself and her mother. The volunteers paused, looked at him questioningly.

Kit glanced back at the tumbledown cabin at the far end of town.

“Open fire, boys,” he ordered.

1921

New Mexico had been a state for nearly a decade now, but the civilizing influence that should have come with the change had not made it to Jardine. As sheriff, Luther Dunlop was in a perfect position to judge such things, and in his considered opinion, the town was more lawless now than it had been while still part of a territory.

Particularly on Rainey Street.

Sitting at his desk, Luther thought about the murder that had just occurred there, about the man whose body had been taken away to the mortician’s. He had never seen such savagery before. And the fact that a beautiful young woman had done it—to her own husband, no less—made his blood run cold. For when they had found the gentleman, his manhood had been severed and shoved into a sort of pouch that she had carved into his stomach. His nipples had been sliced off and placed there as well. Apparently, the man had bled to death, but what none of them could yet figure out was why he had not fought back against his wife, why he had allowed her to do such a thing. For he had not been restrained in any way, and even the worst of the injuries might not have been fatal if treated in time.

The fact that she had been able to do this at all defied common logic.

Luther sighed. He didn’t like Rainey Street. He would never admit that to any man alive, but it was true. Something about the road made him feel uneasy. There’d been three killings and fifteen fights resulting in injuries on Rainey over only the last three months, a statistic that would give even lawmen in Chicago pause.

But it wasn’t just the violence that bothered him. He could handle violence; it came with the job. No, it was the feel of the place. Sometimes when he drove down that street, he grew nervous for no reason, and more than once, when no one else was in the motorcar, he purposely took a detour down another street, when taking Rainey would have been more convenient.

The telephone rang just as Luther was taking his flask out of the bottom drawer of his desk. He quickly unstopped the cork and took a quick drink before answering: “This is Luther Dunlop.”

There was no one on the other end of the line.

“Hello?” he said, but was greeted by silence.

Luther hung up immediately, jerking his hand away from the telephone as though it were contaminated, convinced that the call had come from the murder house, though there was no evidence to even suggest such a thing.

Had it been silent on the other end of the line, or had he heard whispers? The more he thought about it, the more he was certain that someone had been whispering, though he could not for the life of him figure out who or why.

The young wife who had committed the murder, Angie Daniels, had been arrested and was safe in a cell, but just to make sure, he went back into the jail to check on her.

He stopped at the edge of the doorway, shocked.

Mrs. Daniels had taken off all of her clothes and was standing in the center of her cell, completely naked. There were two other prisoners in the jail—both men, both drunks—and he would have expected them to be whooping it up, egging her on, or, at the very least, staring. But they had both turned away and were backed into the far corners of their own cells, facing the walls as though frightened.

She turned her head to look at Luther, and what she said made no sense, though it scared him.

“I was in the room where things grow old.”