Bridges
(Late July, 1862)
Chapter 10: Bridge of Death
Dipper tried to come in quietly, but the door to the room creaked on hinges thirsty for oil. "Hey, Dip," came Wendy's voice from the darkness.
"Hi. It's late. Past midnight."
"Just a minute." He heard a rustle of sheets and then Wendy touched his chest. Her warm hand slipped up to his bare neck.
There. Now we can talk. Mabel's been asleep for like three hours. You're cold.
—Your hand is very warm.
Let's lay down on the bed and you can tell me about what happened.
—Do you think we should?
Nothing's going to happen, Dip. Not with Mabel over in the next bed, not three feet away from us.
—OK.
Got to warn you, man, this is not a first-class hotel. You lay down first and scoot over, and then I'll lay next to you.
She broke their connection, and Dipper felt around until he located the bed, then sat on it—it crackled beneath him, as if the mattress were stuffed with straw, which—he thought—it probably was. The whole thing sagged like an overstuffed hammock, and he moved over with difficulty. A moment later he felt Wendy lie down next to him. The pillow under his head felt saggy and smelled funny.
Her hand found his cheek.
There we go. Gets cold out there at night! Your face is freezing.
—Not that cold. It's just the difference in temperature. Anyway, there are about a hundred people in town, I guess. About seventy guys showed up for the meeting. There's no government, really, but the mine owner, Pomfret Crudup—
You're kidding!
—Nope. Chubby old guy with those muttonchop sideburns and a mustache. Anyway, he's sort of the unofficial mayor, I guess, and they talked about the last time they had this trouble. You know what? It's when they kicked three prospectors out of town. I have a feeling they're the guys involved in that murder.
So—the monster is, like, avenging them, or what?
—Don't know. But I spoke up, and most of them thought I was crazy. They're going to form a hunting party. Last time the thing hung around the bridge for two or three weeks. Nobody in town even tried to get out after one guy vanished. And they saw a couple of people coming down the trail get killed, but they were too far away to make out details. Whatever it was killed one man driving a wagon with food and supplies—and killed and ate his mules, too. Then one day it just went away.
Dude! Wait, why did they think you were crazy?
—All the talk about cold iron. A few of the men said they'd heard about cold iron and junk, but Crudup's convinced it's just a grizzly bear or something like that. He says they'll kill it with hot lead, not cold iron. He's rounding up about ten men to go out on Monday—he says it's sacrilegious to do it on the Sabbath—armed with rifles and shotguns to hunt the bear down.
Dipper, they're all gonna die!
—Tried to warn them.
What—what are you planning?
—Nothing.
Dude! Come on. You can't hold out on me.
Dipper sighed. —OK. I've got an idea, but it might not work. Do you know anything about firearms?
Just what my dad taught me. Which is about everything there is.
—Do you think you'd know how to load a scattergun?
Like an old-timey shotgun? Yeah, I probably could figure that out.
—Well, I'm buying one, and some powder and cartidges. I'm going to go—
No, you are not.
—Wendy, if I don't try, ten men are going to get slaughtered.
You're not gonna go alone!
—I can't let you come with me. It's too dangerous.
Dude, I got my axe. It's steel—close enough to cold iron, you think? We goin' now?
—Wendy! I—
Her lips found his.
Shut up, dude. Just shut up. I'm still dressed. Let's go.
The blacksmith waited for them in the forge next to the livery stable. "Mr. Stark, sir, this is my wife, Mrs P—Mason."
The huge man looked them up and down in the light of a couple of oil lanterns. "Pleased t'meet ya, Ma'am," he said. "Your husband talked sense at th' meetin'."
"Thank you, Mr. Stark," Wendy said. "He's real smart about things like this."
Stark scratched his singed beard. "People today, they don't believe in the old-timey ways. But I been around, I come from Masachusetts through Ohio and then out through the Territories, and I seen things nobody civilized could explain. So I back your husband, Ma'am. I'll help him out. Mr. Mason, I've done what you asked me to. Got nearly five pounds."
"He's melted down a batch of iron filings," Dipper explained to Wendy. "And he's molded them into shotgun pellets."
"And give your husband the borrow of a scattergun," the blacksmith said. He held up a scarred hand. "I know, I know, you was gonna buy it off me for three dollars, but I seen you don't have much ready cash, and I'm comin' along with my gun if you're a-gonna fix that wen-ti-go."
"Excuse me, what?" Wendy asked.
The blacksmith rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. "That's what the Indians called 'em along the Ohio. Wen-ti-go, sort of creatures of the night that et humans. Fifteen foot tall they was, or so they always told me. I've heard tell that iron will hurt 'em, but silver will kill 'em." He said apologetically, "I mixed in some silver pellets with your iron, Mr. Mason. And I done this." He stooped down and brought up an axe that even Manly Dan Corduroy would have been proud to wield, a double-header twice as big as Wendy's. In the lantern light, it gleamed.
"What's that made of?" Wendy asked.
"Good steel," Stark said. "But I plated it tonight with silver. See, if you down a wen-ti-go, you got to chop it to pieces with a silver knife or axe, so's it won't come to life again.. Got to get to the heart and burn it, burn it in the hottest fire you can manage. That's how come the forge is gonna still be burnin' when we set out to find this thing."
Wendy pulled her axe from its sheath. "Better do mine."
The blacksmith raised his shaggy eyebrows. "Mr. Mason, your wife sure has got grit."
"She has that," Dipper said. "But she can't come with us."
"That's not even a question," Wendy said.
Stark reached for the axe. "This is a good'un. Sharp, too. How about I just give it a silver edge?"
"That'll do," Wendy said. "We got a little gold. We can make it worth your time."
"You can't go," Dipper said.
"I love you dearly, but you can't stop me," she told him.
Dipper sighed and took the hatchet from his belt. "If you have time," he said apologetically.
Stark melted a small heap of dimes and coated the edge of both blades with a coating of silver. Then he shaped the cooled metal into a keen edge. "Better get on the way," he said. He reached up to the wall and took down an odd-looking shotgun. "What is that?" Wendy asked.
"Colt's Model 1855," he said. "Five-shot revolver. Kicks like a dang mule. I done got five cartridges loaded and the caps set, got ten more cartridges and twenty caps in my pouch. Now, if Mr. Mason don't mind, I'll do the shootin'. He's a mite small for the heft and recoil."
"That's fine," Dipper said. "Thank you for coming with us."
"I ain't aiming to let this town die," Stark said. "I like it here."
They walked through the silent town, each holding a lantern. When they rounded the bend, they could barely see the bridge ahead under star-glimmer—just like back home, a new moon had long since set. They cautiously stepped out onto the bridge, and Stark handed the shotgun to Dipper. "Hold this a minute."
Dipper took it, grunting. In the lantern light, the blacksmith took a long pole with a hook on the end down from a couple of nails where it hung, and he reached it up to the rafters, hooked onto another oil lantern, and brought it down. "Nobody's lit these in a while," he said. "But it feels like there's oil in this one, anyhow."
He used his lit lantern to set fire to the wick of the one from the bridge, then lifted it back into place. "Other one's nearly at the door yonder," he said. "If you'll get it down and light it, I'll hold the shotgun just in case."
That relieved Dipper, because it was all he could do to bear the weight of the weapon. He didn't think he would have been able to fire it. "I'll get the lantern," Wendy said, taking the pole from Stark.
It hung high above from a rafter, but only a foot or so in from the opposite door. When she had taken it down, lit it, and then hung it back on its hook, Dipper saw the brown horseshoe—open end up—nailed over the door. Is that the only thing that kept that monster out? Has to be, he thought. Cold iron.
"Dip, is your monster sense tingling?" Wendy whispered.
"Not yet."
They took a cautious step out onto the wagon track, then another. Darkness and ordinary night sounds met them—bugs, a low wind rustling the overgrown grass, nothing else.
Until they heard a clatter of boots on wood behind them. "Guys! You ditched me!"
"Mabel!" Dipper groaned. He looked back. She and Mr. Jeremiah Lazarus were walking across the bridge. "Go back!"
"Sir," Jeremiah said, "your sister is right. I heard what you had to say at the meeting, I believe you, and though I applaud your courage in confronting this thing yourself, I have come to stand with you." He patted his waist. "I have a .44 here that will speak in a tongue of fire to any evil beast!"
"Mabel, you stay on the bridge!" Dipper ordered.
"But you ran off and didn't even tell me!"
"Guys," Wendy said, "I think I hear something."
Jeremiah came to stand off to Dipper's left, on the far side of Wendy. She held her axe in one hand, a lantern in the other—though its feeble light barely illuminated anything beyond about five or six feet. Carefully, Stark set his lantern down at his feet and then straightened, bringing his shotgun up to firing position.
That liquid, gurgling rumble that Dipper had heard before was coming toward them—slowly, the way a cat approaches a mouse. "It's out there somewhere," he said.
Wendy added, "Guys, you won't be able to see it. It's invisible."
Dipper heard a click. Jeremiah Lazarus had drawn and cocked his pistol. "The long grass is moving—yonder!"
On the edge of the wagon track and the fringe of the lantern light, the tall grass bent as though something the size of a horse, or bigger, were crushing it underfoot.
Wendy began, "Wait for—"
The pistol crashed and spat flame, and Dipper jerked from the explosion.
Something in the dark roared.
"Where is it?" Stark yelled.
Jeremiah fired again—and shrieked as something seized him and flung him ten feet into the air—
Wendy yelled and swung a roundhouse blow with her axe, and Dipper heard it chunk into something and heard an inhuman scream—
"Down!" Stark shouted, and both Wendy and Dipper dropped. The shotgun fired right over their heads—
And like a nightmare etched in red-hot sparks, the monstrous form could suddenly be seen—wherever an iron pellet had struck it, a searing ember flared—
Fifteen feet tall, more, the creature had a head five feet across or even wider—that much they could guess from the constellation of sparks that spattered it. The beast roared, and Stark fired twice more, and then as more embers erupted, they could see more of the body, two stumpy legs, a barrel-shaped torso, at least one arm that ended in a great claw. Dipper leaped to the side, drew the hatchet, and threw it as hard as he could.
The thing screamed, and the spinning blade ripped a burning gash in its torso.
Wendy hacked, and her blow severed the visible claw.
Stark pushed pasted her—and flew up into the air, seized by a remaining, invisible, claw. The mouth, outlined in flecks of fire, opened to swallow him whole—
But Stark leveled the shotgun and blasted the two remaining charges into the mouth at point-blank range.
He fell heavily to earth. "Cut it to pieces," he gasped. "Burn the heart!"
Wendy tossed her axe to Dipper and grabbed Stark's.
The—heaving, bawling—thing—congealed from darkness, showing up in the lantern light for the first time—terrible, warty, great bulging eyes, a mouth like a great shark's maw—Wendy mercilessly chopped into its flesh, making it writhe, but it seemed to have no breath to roar again. When it tried to claw at her, Dipper severed the other arm at the elbow. It offered almost no resistance, like a dry-rotted tree trunk.
The blacksmith pushed himself up. "I'll finish it!"
Wendy grabbed her own axe and Dipper and pulled him back to the bridge. Mabel knelt on the timbers, her mouth gaping in a terrified silent scream. Stark's sliver-coated axe gleamed as he chopped again and again, merciless, and then he stooped and straightened. "Got it!" The blacksmith came staggering in, clutching something dark the size of a cantaloupe that throbbed and pulsed like a wildcat inside a bag. "I'll go burn this," he gasped. "Find Mr. Lazarus. I'll send help."
Jeremiah lay on a round boulder not far from the bridge. "Are you OK?" Dipper asked, bending over him.
"I fear my back is broken," the young man whispered. "I cannot feel anything below my neck. Mr. Mason, how is your memory?"
"G-good," Dipper said.
"If you would be so kind, remember this: Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Lazarus, the Parsonage, Home Chapel Church, Strausburg, Virginia. Do me the favor of writing to them and telling them their son Jeremiah died in Plenty, Oregon and not in the stupid, stupid war."
"You'll be all right," Mabel said from beside Dipper, putting her hand on the man's chest. "I know you will!"
In the lantern light, he smiled at her. "Thank you for asking me to escort you, Miss Mabel. I hope you find what you are looking for. I surely . . . ."
He trailed off and did not speak again.