I Travel by Night (6 page)

It was not Lawson’s intent to interpret these ghosts. They just existed here, in this man’s mind. By trial and error, Lawson had also learned that the Eye served the purpose of searing with its flames his victim’s strength of will. With the Eye roaming free in a man’s memory, that individual was reduced to a mass of flesh whose mind belonged to the vampire.

“Show us your hidden cards,” said Lawson.

Brannigan was still smiling crookedly, his eyes beginning to twitch and water. He was yet strong, and he was trying to resist.

“Show us,” Lawson repeated, “your hidden cards.” His gaze was impassive, his voice slow and deliberate. “Show us
now
.”

Brannigan trembled. His mouth opened as if to protest, and the gold tooth sparked light. But he did not speak, for his senses had abandoned him.

He reached into his left sleeve and brought out an ace of spades, which fell from his fingers onto the table. Reaching into his right sleeve brought a deuce of clubs fluttering down.

“I’ll be damned!” growled one of the lumberjacks. “Lookit! Bastard’s been cheatin’ us!”

“
Silence
,” Lawson said, a quiet but firm command that was best obeyed. “Mr. Brannigan, show us your hand.”

It seemed the cardsharp wanted to twist his head to both sides, but his neck seemed too tight. His face was sweating. His fingers trembled as he turned his cards over. He revealed a five of clubs and a five of diamonds, a four of hearts, a jack of diamonds and a ten of clubs.

Lawson turned his cards over, and stared into Brannigan’s watery eyes. He brought his own flaming Eye back from the haunted hallways, and said, “I think a pair of aces wins this pot, sir.”

The flaming Eye left Brannigan’s forehead and floated across the table back into Lawson’s possession. The cardsharp had turned nearly as pale as the vampire. He shuddered and made a sick moaning noise, as if he were about to puke all over the table, the cards, the money and everything. Lawson raked the money toward himself before it could be vomited upon.

The lumberjacks were standing up, red-faced and angry. Brannigan was staring dumbly at his cards, and at the two cards that had been hidden. “What…
happened
?” he asked, a thread of saliva breaking over his lower lip. “My God…what happened…?”

“You skunked us, you bastard!”

“Sonofabitch, we don’t suffer cheaters!”

Something seemed to click in the cardsharp’s brain. Brannigan looked across the table at Lawson, and at the pile of money, and suddenly the man snarled like an animal and he was standing up, throwing his chair backward. His right hand went into his coat. Lawson saw the holster and the revolver there, and the man was fast but Lawson was supernaturally faster. He already had the Colt with the rosewood grip up in Brannigan’s face before the cardsharp’s six could clear leather.

“Let’s not get too angry,” Lawson said quietly. “Bad for the health.”

Brannigan’s hand left his pistol. Then he remained still, his fearful gaze fixed on the business end of Lawson’s gun.

The fiddler had ceased his squalling. The place had hushed and all attention was focused on the little drama at the card table. One of the loggers who’d stood up shouted, “Damn him, he stole more’n a hundred dollars of my money! I say he swings!”

“Yeah, hang the bastard!” another one hollered.

“Now look what you’ve started,” Lawson said to the hapless cardsharp. He also stood up, and noted that the young woman with the holstered six-shooter had moved back into the throng and was gone. “Hold on, all of you!” he told the crowd as they moved forward. “Maybe he can pay his way out of a lynching? Nasty way to leave this earth. Mr. Brannigan, if I were you I’d give up every cent of the money I won. Put it on the table. Then put your gun on the table, turn around and walk out of here, get your horse and
go
. The sooner the better.”

“Hell, no!” shouted the first lumberjack who’d wanted a hanging. “He cheated us, he gets a damned necktie party!”

Brannigan was already emptying his pockets. Coins and bills were flung to the table, followed by the man’s gun.

Lawson kept his Colt somewhere between Brannigan and the crowd. “You don’t want to hang anybody tonight, gents,” he said easily. “Your money’s here. Collect it as you please. But killing this man because he was stupid and greedy? Get the law down here on you? No. I say let him walk.”

“Well, then…break his legs, is what I say!” yelled a black-bearded behemoth who looked like he could do this deed with one hand.

“Let him
walk
,” Lawson repeated, staring into the man’s fierce blue eyes. He restrained throwing his own burning Eye until he had to. “Want him out of town
now
? Then step back and let him go. Take your money and be pleased to have it.” He paused, waiting to deflect anymore threats, but none came. He hated cheaters, but he didn’t care for a lynch mob either. “Mr. Brannigan, you see the way out. I’d go while you can.”

The cardsharp cast Lawson a look that may have been either grudging thanks or a faceful of hatred, but he got himself moving. A few men blocked his way and caused him to either move around them or squeeze between. On the way past the bar someone threw their beer in his face, and someone else added a glistening yellow egg of spit to his cheek. Then Brannigan was out the batwing doors and gone, the fiddler started up again and the noise did too and Lawson put his gun away and gathered up his own money. He took a beer that was sent to him from the bar, sipped it and set it aside because it wasn’t to his taste. He needed a little cattle blood to make it palatable. He spent awhile talking to some loggers about finding Nocturne and none of them knew the place. Where to rent a boat? he asked, and was told to look for McGuire at the dock.

Lawson left the Swamp Root and headed for the water. The darkness of the swamp beckoned him. He was walking past the stable when the image of a picture of Jesus hanging on a wall jumped into his mind. He smelled beer and caught a figure coming up from a shadow to his right, and as he whirled around with a speed no human could match the knife in Brannigan’s hand went for his neck.

By the time Lawson
thought
of what he should do, he was doing it. His arm came up in a blur and grasped the cardsharp’s knifehand to stop the fall of the blade, and he prepared himself to throw the fool through the nearest window.

But before he could put that thought into action, a pistol shot cracked and the knifeblade broke in front of Lawson’s face. A second shot, delivered on the powdersmoke of the first, lifted Brannigan’s hat off his head and sent it spinning. Brannigan bleated with terror, all intent to do harm forgotten. He wrenched desperately to get free of his captor, who had ducked low to avoid any more flying lead. Then Lawson let Brannigan go and the man ran for his life, in the opposite direction of the swamp. Lawson aimed a kick at his tail, but the cardsharp’s speed of terror beat the vampire’s half-hearted vengeance and so Brannigan scurried away into the night whimpering like a little lost child.

From a crouched position, Lawson drew both pistols and surveyed the darkness. He saw the gray gunsmoke hanging in a narrow alleyway. Just that fast, the vampire gunslinger sped forward to the mouth of the alley, where he flattened himself against a wall of rough planks. Nothing moved beyond. He heard the noise of shouting. People were coming to find out what the shooting was about. Lawson eased into the alley, both revolvers ready, but his red-centered eyes detected no threat.
Damnation
, he thought.
Somebody shooting at me or at Brannigan
? Whoever had pulled the quick-fire trigger, they were gone.

And so too, he decided, he ought to be.

He slipped away and became one with the dark. He holstered his guns, but kept his eyes aimed. In another few minutes he rounded a roughhewn building and found himself at the dock where the logging boats were tied up. Beyond lay the absolute darkness of the swamp, but on the dock was a cabin that showed lamplight through the windows. Lawson knocked at the door and waited.

It opened with a billow of sour whiskey smell into Lawson’s face. A wizened old man with a scraggly white beard and white eyebrows that jumped like angry snakes peered out, a blue jug of Rose’s Whiskey gripped in his hand. He was bald, his head blotched with age spots burned in by the sun. A razor scar began at the left side of his mouth and progressed nearly to the ear. His nose had been broken more than twice. He wore a faded and ragged pair of overalls, his chest bare and showing a boil of white hair. He narrowed his dark little eyes. “Whazzit?” he asked, in a voice like the grating of stone against stone.

“McGuire?”

“I am. Who’re
you
?”

“Trevor Lawson, from New Orleans. You’re the dockmaster here?”

“
Dockmaster
?” McGuire gave a nasty chortle. “I watch the boats at night. Work on ’em some if they need work. Keep the records of who goes out and where they’re goin’. That make me a dockmaster?”

“It does.”

“Then,” McGuire took a swig of his liquor, “I reckon I is.” He offered a thin-lipped smile that lasted only a few seconds. “What’re you wantin’ with
me
?”

“I need a boat. A small skiff, something with two oars. Got anything that’ll do?”

McGuire hesitated, as if thought he hadn’t heard this right. “A
skiff
,” he repeated. “You’re from New Orleans and you come here to this damned shit-hole to take a skiff out into Hell’s Acres? What’s your business? Runnin’ away from a nuthouse?”

“I’m sane,” Lawson answered, though sometimes he doubted it. “I’m looking for a town called Nocturne.”

McGuire laughed, but his eyes weren’t in it. “Now I know you’re an
in
-sane idjit! Ain’t no town called Nocturne out there! And I know that swamp, as much as any man does. Much as any man
wants
to know it!”

“No town called Nocturne?” Lawson prodded. “You’re sure of that?”

The dockmaster took another drink of what was most likely both his courage and his pride. “Sure there ain’t one
now
. Nocturne was wiped out near sixteen years ago.”

“Ah.” A ray of light in this eternal midnight, he thought. “Wiped out how?”

“Hurricane. Came tearin’ in from the Gulf and flooded the town. That was August of 1870.”

Lawson nodded. “May I come inside for a few minutes?”

“No!” came the quick response. “This is my
home
! I don’t suffer no idjits here.”

A hand into a pocket and the production of a five-dollar gold piece made McGuire put down the jug he’d been lifting to his mouth.

“Come right on in,” said the dockmaster, opening the door wider. He took the gold piece as Lawson entered, and then closed the door behind.

The place was a hermit’s heaven. All the furniture—chairs, table, bed—looked to have been hammered together by a crooked man using a crooked hammer. There stood a cast-iron stove rimmed with rust. On the planked floor was a red rug that looked like a dog had been chewing on it, but there was no dog. The walls were bare boards and even the lamplight looked dirty.

“My castle,” said McGuire, with just an edge of sarcasm. “Welcome to it.”

Lawson had seen worse. He’d been trapped in worse. He decided not to sit. “Nocturne,” he said. “Tell me where it is.”

“Out there.” McGuire hooked a gnarled thumb toward the swamp. “Off the main channel to the west, about five miles as the crow flies. What the hell you wantin’ with Nocturne?” His eyes studied Lawson’s clothes. “New Orleans gent. But somethin’ ain’t right with you, is it?”

“No,” said Lawson.

“You smell funny. Cold, like a grave.”

“My nature,” was the answer, delivered calmly and quietly. “Everyone else I asked about Nocturne tonight didn’t know it. Why do you?”

“I used to live there, bucko.” McGuire sat down at the crooked table. He set the jug aside and placed the gold coin before him so he could admire it. “Got anymore of these?”

“Enough for a skiff with two oars.”

“I reckon you do. Drink?” He tapped the jug with two knuckles.

“Not my brand. I want to leave for Nocturne within the hour.”

“Now there’s a story in
this
!” McGuire grinned wickedly across the lamplit room at the vampire. “Goin’ to Nocturne at
night
? Goin’ to a ghost town in the dark of the swamp? Holy Mary, you
did
get out a nuthouse window, didn’t you?”

“I’m sane enough,” said Lawson.
But barely so
, he thought. “You say Nocturne is a ghost town? Destroyed by a hurricane? What else?”

McGuire took a long drink and turned the gold coin between his fingers. “Not all destroyed. Some of the mansions are still there, but they’re half-ate up by the swamp. See, Nocturne was built on higher ground. Well, it was higher ground
then
. Fella who built it was a strange sort. A young man from a rich family. Came into the loggin’ business to compete with his father, they had a kinda rivalry goin’ on. Young fella was a little out of his mind, is what all us jacks figured. Well…maybe a
lot
out of his mind. We heard his father was a bully, ragged that young fella all the time about bein’ worthless. So he spent money, time and labor buildin’ an opera house and concert hall out in the swamp. Buildin’ big mansions for himself and his business partners, but they didn’t stay very long when they saw what he was doin’. Tryin’ to build another New Orleans, make a port out of it. Puttin’ all his money in makin’ a fancy town where the ’gators used to drop their eggs and the snakes coiled in the mud by the hundreds. Then that hurricane hit.” McGuire angled the coin so lamplight touched it and laid the color of gold across his scarred face. “Oh, Almighty God…that was a blower,” he said quietly. “A monster, that thing was. Flew in on black wings, it did, in the middle of the night. Brought the swamp and the creatures of the swamp right into those workmen’s houses, into those company stores, into that church and school and the opera house and concert hall and right into those mansions. Everything that wasn’t blowed away or flattened was flooded. The dock and all the equipment destroyed. It was like…a punishment from God, for pushin’ too far. You know what I’m sayin’?” He looked to the vampire for understanding.

“I do,” said Lawson.

“I thought you would. You’ve got the look on you.”

“And what might that be?”

“The look of somebody who knows what it’s like to be punished by God,” said McGuire. “I have been too. Lost my wife and a fine son in that storm. At dusk one day I was fifty, and at daybreak the next I was eighty. But time heals every hurt, they say. You believe that?”

Lawson was silent, because he didn’t know what he believed.

“Yeah,” said McGuire, who reached again for the jug of Roses, “I’m still waitin’ too.” When he finished drinking, he ran a hand over his face and sat staring at the wall for a moment as if he’d forgotten he had company in his castle. Then he said, “Twenty dollars, I’ll give you a skiff with two oars. You won’t make Nocturne tonight, though. Tomorrow sometime. That’s best, you don’t want to try to get there in the dark, you’ll never find it. I’ll get you a boat with a torch holder, fix you up. That’ll help. When you wantin’ to leave?”

“An hour at the most. I have to get some things from my room.”

McGuire cocked his head to one side, as if to get a better view of his visitor. “All right, what’s your business ought to stay your business…but I’m damned if I can figure out what
this
is about.”

“I need to go to Nocturne.” Lawson was already reaching for the gold coins. “That’s all you have to know. I’ll return the boat when I can. I’d also like you to draw me a map of how to get there. I’ll pay extra for that. Oh…one other thing: the name of the young man who founded Nocturne. Would that name be Christian Melchoir?”

“That’s right,” said McGuire. “How’d you know?”

“I suspected. It seems Mr. Melchoir has an affinity for the place he created. He wants to give it..shall we say…a new life.” Lawson walked forward and placed the coins on the table. “One hour,” he said. “I thank you for your help.”

“Thank me when you get back.”

Lawson left that statement unanswered. He departed McGuire’s cabin and, walking warily with an eye to the shadows and his hands ready to draw his Colts, he returned to the boarding-house. It didn’t take him very long to get ready. He had what he needed, and what Father Deale had secured for him. Everything was in the saddlebags and he had two folded-up black window curtains. He would need these, if he was caught by the daylight out there. The thought didn’t disturb him too much; if he was contained by the sunlight, so would they also be. He left the boarding-house and returned to McGuire’s cabin, where the old logger who knew the punishment of God was waiting for him out front with a flaming torch. They walked together along the dock to where a few battered skiffs were tied up amid the larger workboats and barges, and McGuire pointed out the boat Lawson was to take. At its stern was a wooden socket where the torch could be placed. McGuire slid the torch in and put two oars in the oarlocks.

He climbed back up on the dock. He looked out into the darkness. Behind them and at a distance, the fiddler was still playing at the Swamp Root. Lawson heard the laughter of men and women who lived in another world.

“You sure you want to do this?” McGuire asked.

“I’m sure I
have
to do it.” Lawson turned and scanned the vista of the dirty little town at his back. He was being watched; he was certain of it. Maybe one of the Dark Society was here, checking his progress. He stepped into the boat and put down his saddlebags and the folded black curtains. He didn’t bother to remove either his coat or his Stetson, because even though the night was sultry and the swamp steamed, he no longer broke a sweat. He settled himself on the plank seat and took up the oars.

“Good luck,” said McGuire as he untied the skiff’s rope that bound it to the dock.

“Thank you, sir,” Lawson answered, and then he began to row between the larger workboats toward the great dark expanse of the swamp. The torch burned at his back, but whether the light was welcome or not was an open question. He kept rowing slowly and steadily, as the town fell away behind. The fiddler’s music and the sound of civilization faded away. The humming, chirring noise of the swamp—a true nocturne—rose to meet him.

He had a map drawn by McGuire in his coat pocket. He’d already looked it over, but there was time for further study later. In another few minutes the channel curved to the right and the last lights of St. Benadicta were hidden by the tangle of underbrush and moss-draped cypress trees. Lawson paused to let the boat drift and to light up a cigar using the torch. He exhaled smoke with his dwindling breath. He noted swarms of mosquitoes, but none would bite him; he wasn’t warm enough for their tastes, and he figured that for the biting insects here he already exuded a smell of the dead.

His time, he realized full well, was running out.

He continued rowing, as the swamp enveloped him.

Something keened from a tree to his left. The darkness pulsed. Lawson smoked his cheroot and stared forward.

Shapes seemed to emerge from the night. They were the phantoms of what had been. He saw his boyhood home in Alabama and a favored dog that used to run with him. He saw a lake near his house where the fishing was always good. He saw a patch of forest and a cemetery where his ancestors lay, and who might have ever thought that he had a chance at eternal life if he only gave up his humanity and joined completely and totally with the Dark Society?

It was the stuff of nightmares, this death in life.

He had twice gone to visit his wife and daughter, after the events at Shiloh. He had twice gone to the house in Montgomery, in the concealing night, to press himself against a window and wish himself back with his loved ones. The first time, in a driving thunderstorm, the flash of a bolt of lightning had revealed him, and Cassie must have awakened and seen him through the glass, for her scream had sent him running. The second time, years later, he had followed Mary Alice on an evening in May, and noted that she had aged and was walking more slowly, and under the paper lanterns at a festival in the park she met the young woman Cassie had turned into. Also at that park was a handsome young man who held Cassie’s hand, and Lawson’s daughter held the hand of a little blonde-haired girl in a pink frock, and perhaps this was among the most cruel moments because everyone was so happy and the brass band’s music was bright and the world had kept turning while Lawson fought the demons.