Mr. Shivers (21 page)

She shuffled off to the kitchen. Connelly sat before her chair and leaned back. He felt comfortable. It was the first time
he had been warm since he had camped with the Hopkinses. He watched the flames dance and fight and thought about how mad this
all was and soon abandoned that train of thought.

He listened to the fire and his eyelids grew heavy. There almost could have been words in its crackling.

He slept.

Someone touched him on his arm and he woke. Nina was standing over him.

“It’s time, boy,” she whispered.

He stood and followed her out the back. Night had fallen and with it a thick fog had crept down from the mountains, gathering
around the bases of the trees. She led him through the maze of trunks until they came to a small clearing. In the center a
gray mountain ash grew and before that was a small fire. Dexy sat across from it, a small stew cooking on its flames. As he
sat she spooned a little into a bowl and took a bite with a tiny spoon.

“Good,” she said with a nod. “Nice and spicy. Good to keep the chill out. Care for some?”

Connelly took his share and it was warm and buttery. Nina sat on Dexy’s left, each of them on small stone seats, Connelly
on the forest floor. To Dexy’s left was another stone seat, this one empty.

“Your sister’s not here,” he said.

“She’s here,” said Nina. “She just ain’t over there.”

Connelly shrugged. “So what are you? Witches?”

“Witches, no. Bitches, maybe,” said Nina, and she laughed.

“I already had my fortune told,” he said.

“And did it answer anything?”

“Not really.”

“Well, here’s your chance. Just give me a moment,” said Nina. “Need to wake things up a little.”

With stunning speed she reached into the fire and grabbed a fistful of burning coals and flung them up into the air. Connelly
raised his arms to shield himself from their hot rain, but they did not fall. Instead their ascent slowed and they came to
a stop, hovering above, and then each of the little sparks began to twitch and move, dancing like fireflies. They spun in
little orbits and some left the clearing to explore the woods. Then it felt like the air grew close and nothing existed but
the clearing. The trees seemed to grow taller and thicker, hiding the night sky until they were towering giants. It was as
though they were in some primeval version of the world they lived in now, some original version whose wildness and savagery
had slowly been worn down with age until it was the complacent time they called the present.

“Now it knows,” said Dexy softly, looking about. “We got the word out. Now it knows we going to ask, we got troubles on our
mind and we going to ask it.”

“Ask who?” said Connelly.

“The night. Everything. Eat some more stew.”

He did. He coughed, as its spice seemed to have increased now. The forest’s colors seemed painfully bright, liquid browns
and violent blacks, and once again the sisters no longer looked like people so much as carven statues.

“What’s in this stew?” he asked.

“Good shit,” said Nina, and grinned.

“Stuff from the earth’s heart,” Dexy said. “Bit of root, bit of mud. Bit of blood of things that live down there, things that
listen. Earth knows everything. Bones under your feet, they know everything. You want to know the truth of things? You got
to take a bit of the earth’s heart and put it in you. Then you ask.”

Nina was still grinning, now looking like some squat, wicked shaman, some priestess of rituals that happened far from the
eyes of men. “So go on, little white boy,” she said. “Ask.”

Connelly looked at them a while and said, “Who is he? The shiver-man. You know him. Who is he?”

Dexy laughed. “You mean you traveled all this way and you don’t know?”

“The farther I go the less I understand.”

“You know,” said Nina. “Don’t be fooling yourself, little white boy. Everyone know who he is. You known all along.”

“You been in his wake all this time, so what’s he left behind?” said Dexy. “Each place you go to that he been, what’s there
waiting? Why would he show up in the country in these famished times?” She chuckled, exasperated. “Boy, what has he marked
you with and every other soul he meets?”

Connelly stared into the fire and thought. Thought about Molly, dancing and laughing. About Roonie and Jake and Ernie and
every other soul lost along the road, and those blank, black eyes and the joyless grin.

“He’s Death, isn’t he,” said Connelly.

“Death,” snorted Nina. “That just a word. Might as well be writing in the sea or the sand, for who can name nothing? Should
you try it would surely eat that word as well.”

“He has a thousand names and each one catches but a part of him,” Dexy said.

“He is the Harvester, the Sickle Man,” said Nina.

“The Night Walker and That Which Devours.”

“The Skullsie Man, the Star Reaper, the Grinning Bone Dancer.”

“He is the Black Rider, the great beast below all and beyond all.”

“Fenrir Wolf-End, the Sightless Hunter, Forest Stalker and Singer of Ends.”

“The Red Axis, the Forgotten Plowman, Destroyer of Worlds.”

“Pale Conqueror, the Crownless King.”

“Death?” Dexy scoffed. “Death is but a term. To say he is Death is to call night a mere shadow. He bears a dread weapon in
his hands, that thing we call nothing, and he brings it down as a blade. Cuts under all, plows it all up, turns it over. That
is what he is.”

“But you knew that, didn’t you, boy?” Nina asked him. “You knew it all along.”

Connelly thought about it. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think I did.”

“ ’Course you did. You’re slow, but you ain’t stupid.”

Connelly looked down and set the bowl aside. He stared into the fire a great long while.

“Can I kill him?” he asked.

Nina and Dexy looked to the blank seat, then up at the sky.

“To kill death,” said Nina. “Ain’t that a thing man’s hungered for since he looked about and saw where he was.”

“Could death be so great a thing that death itself could die?” asked Dexy.

“And were it to come about, what would follow? More death? More suffering? Perhaps. Who can say save he himself that has seen
the deaths of thousands, of millions, the deaths of all?”

“Well?” said Connelly. “Can I?”

“Yes,” said Dexy. “Yes, he can be killed. But not easily. With great effort and sacrifice, it may be done.”

“I sacrificed plenty already,” said Connelly. “Little more won’t matter much. But he can die?”

“Yeah. But you knew that already, too, didn’t you?” said Nina. “Otherwise you wouldn’t been chasing him at all.”

“I guess so. I saw him scared. Scared of me. Don’t know why, but… He looked like a man who knew he could die.”

“And he can,” said Nina. “Listen—he weakens now, before the new dawn. He races to stop it. He knows it is driving him back,
driving him down, ending the old and bringing in the new. He fears it. More than anything, he fears it, and the birth it brings.”

“All right,” said Connelly.

“But consider your actions, white boy,” Nina said. “Consider what you doing. Why you doing this, first of all? For everyone?
For yourself?”

“Not for me,” said Connelly. “For my little girl. It wasn’t right. I got to make it right. And if the world refuses to be
right then you just have to force it. You have to make it. Beat it until it listens.”

“Death will always be a part of this world, though,” Dexy said softly. “One way or another. I can’t say how but it’s always
going to be here. Remember that.”

“It defines all men,” said Nina. “Starts it. Ends it. What defines a country or a civilization ain’t how it lives life, but
how it ends it. How it conquers and controls. How it reaps what it needs. He going to be there for that. He going to be there.
You know?”

“I do,” said Connelly. “And I don’t care. Anything’s better than him. Folks shouldn’t go the way they do out here. Shot down
in the night, cut in half by trains. Scared and alone. It ain’t right.”

The sisters nodded to themselves.

“I asked him something,” said Connelly quietly. “I asked him something last I saw him. I asked him why he took my little girl.
And he just said so she’d die. Which wasn’t any kind of answer at all. So I’m going to ask you. Why did he kill my little
girl?”

“Boy,” said Nina, “do you not know where you are? Are you but a year old? What fool looks Death in the face and asks ‘why?’
and expects an answer? Perhaps even Death does not know why he comes to those who die. Perhaps there is no motivation, no
driving force, no intent.”

“If he cannot say, surely we cannot either,” Dexy said. “Certain questions can never have answers.”

“Dammit,” said Connelly softly. “Goddamn it. Goddamn it all.”

A breeze blew through the little clearing, pulling the flames this way and that. Dexy and Nina looked at the blank seat once
more. Then Nina scowled as though having heard some foolishness and Dexy shook her head.

“Well, Lord, Lord,” Dexy said. “First time for everything.” She turned back to Connelly. “Ask another.”

“What?” said Connelly.

“Ask another,” said Nina. “Ask another question. First time in a long age since we were asked beyond the three. But we couldn’t
answer the last, and so you can give us another.”

Connelly thought about it for a long while. Considered what he was doing, perhaps for the first time. Considered his life
after death and the lives of others.

“What’s going to happen if I win?” he asked.

Dexy peered into the fire, her eyes sifting through the flames, and said, “The same thing that always happens after death.
Rebirth.”

“The wounded and injured and dead rise again, fully healed,” said Nina. “That which came before rises up and goes on. Whole.
As it was before. Perhaps greater.”

“And I’ll go home, right?” said Connelly. “Then I can go on home. And rest.”

“Maybe,” said Dexy. “But if not, white boy… If what was lost never could return, would you still do this? Would you still
hunt this creature down?”

“In a heartbeat,” said Connelly. “Without a second’s thought.”

“All right, then,” said Nina. “All right. Your mind’s made up.”

Dexy glanced at the empty seat and tilted her head as though listening. Then she said, “Are you certain of what you want to
do, boy? Understand that you are not merely attempting to kill a man, or even a god, but a thing that perhaps holds the endings
of men and gods in his hand.”

“He looks like just a man to me,” Connelly insisted.

“And so he is, in a way. I suppose that is his weakness. I suppose that’s what gives you a chance to succeed as well as what
makes you so sure.” She sighed and the clearing seemed to grow and the trees to shrink. The dark was no longer so close, nor
did he feel so little.

“All right,” said Nina. “Enough of this. We’re done. I’m tired.”

“I got what I wanted,” Connelly said.

“You like things simple, don’t you, boy?” Dexy asked.

Connelly shrugged.

“Well,” she said. “They ain’t going to be for long.”

Nina spat through her teeth, the glob of saliva arcing out through a gap and landing yards away. She sniffed and said, “It’s
cold as hell out here. Get on back up to the house, boy. We got some talking to do and you look like you could use a year
of sleep.”

Connelly rose and did as she asked. When he looked back the women were gone, but he thought he saw their figures moving into
the trees, and unless his fatigue was playing with his eyes he thought there were three of them.

He slept before the hearth and in the morning Dexy awoke him with breakfast. She served him chicken once more, now with rye
bread. Neither of them spoke. Nina rose and went to the third room to tend to the last one’s waking.

“I suppose I’ll get going,” said Connelly once she came out.

“Yeah,” she said.

He went to the junk heap out front and picked through it. He found two old boots worn raw with age and a thick black coat,
streaked with gray mud. He washed it off in the stream and let it dry before putting it on and going out. They packed him
a small bag of dry foods and a canteen of water, its punctured skin roughly patched with old bandages. He slung it over his
shoulder and walked out front.

The mist had receded. Sunlight sparkled on the crinkled waters of the stream. Dexy and Nina came to watch his departure and
he was not sure but he thought he spotted a dark shape move in the far window.

“I thank you for your hospitality, and for your advice,” he said.

“Didn’t give you no advice,” said Nina. “Just told you how it was going to be.”

“Well. I thank you anyways.”

“Wasn’t anything.”

“I hope I see you again,” he said.

“You won’t,” Dexy said. “Boys like you are always running off chasing one thing or another. They never know when to sit still.”

“Maybe.”

They bid their farewells and he walked upstream and turned north through a passage of hills. Each time he turned around he
expected to see the stream of smoke was suddenly gone. But it was always there, threading up into the sky. Watching him, perhaps,
and frowning.

Mr. Shivers

Wandering days came then, drifting days. He learned he was in Colorado from a passing motorist who then gave him a ride to
Hawtache and provided directions to Willison. His travels became quick, desperate jaunts between towns. Each time he reached
the next his resources were exhausted and his belly empty. He bought food when he could and lived off of garbage when he had
to, stayed in the little Hoovers that grew in the backlots like so much fungus and slept in ditches and alleys when he could
not find these. Children thought him a boogey man, a great, shambling shaman, wandering backroads and scavenging whatever
he could find.

The sheriff’s town had been called Marion, Connelly learned. He made a crude map of charcoal and newspaper and began scouting
the areas around the town of his capture. He heard no news of the gray man but he did catch wind of some wounded men making
their way north, men with bad business on their mind. People could only guess at their numbers. Some said four, others five
or three. Connelly wondered how many of his companions were still alive.

He kept to their backtrail, following the followers. He learned to survive. Taught himself how to trap and kill small animals
and through trial and error he learned how to gut and cook them. It was a messy process and sometimes he was tempted to eat
them raw.

By necessity he was drawn back to the rail, but not to ride. Hobo jungles offered the most protection and news, no matter
the size, and he knew his companions would have slept there if it came to it.

He met a great many strange people in the Hoovers. In one encampment he ate a strange, stringy meat for the first time and
did not find it unpalatable. A grime-covered man came and sat down by him as he ate and confided, “They’s fought over it.”

“What?” said Connelly.

“They’s fought when we killed it. Fought over it and ate his body.”

“Whose?”

“Dog’s,” said the man, and nodded at the leg in Connelly’s hand. “His pack. We killed him and cooked him and when we was done
his brothers fought over the pickings. Ate it up.” He grinned wickedly. “Ate it all up,” he said, and laughed.

Connelly looked at the meat in his hand. Turned it over. Then he finished it and tossed the bone away.

In one shanty Connelly watched a man build a lute out of a coffee can and sit playing it and whistling songs, to the great
delight of everyone. In another he fought and beat a drunk senseless while the rest of the jungle watched and clapped. When
he was done his opponent left the clutch of foul homes, weeping like a child. And in yet another he awoke one morning to find
all the others crowded around one woman who would never wake again, having succumbed to some infection or addiction. They
did not know her name but buried her under stones and sang for her regardless.

One evening he came upon a jungle that was no more than a collection of tents and rags. He spotted a young man with an eye
patch and a bandaged hand sitting guard before a fire. Connelly approached slowly as he always did, showing that he was unarmed.
The young man stood and said, “What do you want?”

“Calling in. Just rest and a bit of talk.”

“Well, I’m not in a talkative mood. Look elsewhere.”

“I got some food on me.”

“Whoopte-doo. I don’t care. We don’t want you here.”

“You sure are unfriendly. All the other places have been okay.”

“Well, all the other places aren’t here. I—” The young man stopped and peered at him. “Holy hell, Connelly?”

“Yeah?” He looked closer. “Hammond?”

Hammond crowed laughter. “Hot damn, I knew you hadn’t kicked the bucket! I damn knew it!” He threw his arms around him and
they spun around. “Where you been?”

“All over. I was in the woods a while. Been moving from town to town. I almost didn’t recognize you, you look… Well…”

“Yeah,” said Hammond. “I got kind of roughed up getting you all out of jail. You lost some weight, Connelly, Jesus. You’re
skinny as a rail.”

“Not too much.”

Pike and Peachy emerged from tents behind Hammond. Pike grinned humorlessly. “Of course!” he said. “Of course, it’s Mr. Connelly.
A man such as you doesn’t die easy, Mr. Connelly, if he dies at all.”

Peachy ambled over and shook his hand, pumping it up and down. “Oh, damn, I thought you were dead. I really did. I thought
that’d be a shame, you getting busted out and dying just after.”

“Sorry to disappoint. Why are you still sticking with these bums?”

“These boys broke me out. I’m indebted to them. Got to do good by those who done you a decent thing.” He smiled. His bright
teeth shone in the night, his dark skin making the rest of him almost invisible. “I am glad to see you, I must say. Seems
odd us talking all the time and not seeing each other.”

“I’m glad to see you, too. Good to match a voice with a face.”

“Yes,” said Pike. “Though it’s been no easy thing traveling with a colored, we’re happy to have him along. It’s useful having
someone healthy around.”

Hammond glanced at Peachy, but Peachy’s eyes were fixed on the ground.

“Where’s Rosie?” asked Connelly.

“In the tent in the back,” Pike said. “He has weakened since your run from the jail. We worry about him, but I think he’s
doing better.”

“And Monk?”

“Gone,” said Pike. “Decided he did not want to keep with us much further.” Hammond frowned behind him but still did not speak.

“Oh,” said Connelly. “What happened at the jail? Did you all get away all right?”

“Easily enough,” he said glibly. “Scratches and bruises here and there. But we survived.”

“And Roonie?” Hammond asked.

Connelly shook his head.

“Damn,” Hammond whispered.

“The way is hard,” Pike said, and sat before the fire with a grunt. “The Lord is testing us, perhaps. One should not complain
if He beats us, for surely He is beating us to serve as some great tool, like iron in the fire.”

Connelly sat beside him. The rest followed suit and rain began to lightly fall. They set out cups to catch the drops to later
funnel into their canteens.

“I heard one or two things while I was wandering,” Connelly told them. “I ran into some folk who knew a thing or two about
Shivers.”

“How?” asked Hammond.

“I didn’t ask. They were nice but sort of strange. I listened and when that was done I left.”

“What did they say, Mr. Connelly?” Pike asked. “What news did they give you?”

He told them.

They were not all that surprised, he thought. Then again, the idea was not new to them. They had imagined the gray man as
a monster for so long that labels and names became pointless.

“So,” said Pike. “We hunt Death itself, do we?”

“It would seem,” Connelly said.

He stared into the fire. “I would call that a worthy cause.”

“Folks been having trouble with Mr. Death since forever, though,” said Peachy. “Why are we different?”

“Change is in the wind,” Pike said.

“Yes,” Connelly said. “Things are changing. Shifting. He knows he’s weak and he’s slowing down.”

“His time is over,” Pike added. “And he fears you, does he not, Mr. Connelly?”

Peachy nodded glumly. “If you say so.”

“I’d take a run at that,” Hammond said. “Yes sir, I would.” He rubbed his mouth and toyed with his makeshift eyepatch, his
face hungrier than Connelly had ever seen.

“And when we’re done we can rest,” said Connelly. “We can rest and go home.”

“Wishing is bad,” said a muffled voice.

“What?” said Connelly.

They turned. Roosevelt crawled out of a tent and sat in the dirt, looking confused. His eyes were little and unfocused. “Wishing
is bad,” he said again. “It makes you hurt. Makes all the missing parts hurt, makes them open up new and makes them bleed.”

“Rosie, go back to bed,” Hammond said.

“You take out a part of you,” Roosevelt murmured. “Take it out and blow on it and toss it to the winds like dust, and you
say, ‘Find all the missing parts of me. Go out among the world and find the missing parts of me.’ But instead of getting back
what you lost you just lose more. Wishing is bad. Wish long enough and there won’t be any of you left.”

“Go back to bed, Mr. Roosevelt,” Pike said sternly. “Go back and rest. You need it.”

Roosevelt played with his bottom lip, then crawled back into his tent. He did not seem aware of anything around him at all.

“He’s gotten worse,” Pike explained. “He mutters often. Whatever the gray man did to him, there does not seem to be any repair.”

Connelly looked at Roosevelt’s tent. Remembered the screaming he had heard in the jail and the way his friend had pawed at
his knees like an animal. He pulled his coat tight.

“We have heard some strange news ourselves, Mr. Connelly,” Pike said to him. “Though it was by no means as stunning as yours.”

“What was it?”

“Apparently our quarry traveled through Marion before. I suspect it was a safe haven for him where the sheriff could offer
protection, or perhaps it was just an entertaining trap to toy with us.”

“I had heard that, too,” said Connelly, frowning at Pike.

“You may have been right to have believed that man so long ago,” admitted Pike. “Korsher? Was that him?”

“Yeah.”

“Yes. I-I wanted so badly to… to be able to hurt this man that I was not willing to listen.” He rubbed his beard, took off
his cap, then replaced it. He said, “But I listen now, as should you—there was a young man Hammond met not more than a week
ago who had heard a story from his grandmother. A story about another group of men who had come through these very towns and
cities, looking for a man with revenge on their minds. The boy could not recall if the man they searched for was scarred or
not, or if he was the same thing as we hunt now, but I feel it is. He told us they were all found dead,” he said flatly. “All
of them killed, up in the mountains. Found by a mining team. Well, all but one. There was one they never found. A young blond
man, they never did find his corpse. But the rest died in their attempt.”

“How long ago was this?” asked Connelly.

“Sixty years. Seventy. Maybe even a hundred. It’s a story, the boy said, just a story… But out here, tales and stories don’t
seem like playthings. It feels as though time sits and stagnates and ferments in some spots out here. It’s a feeling you get.”
He looked down at the fire. “The road is not like other places.”

“What do you mean? It’s just a road,” said Peachy. “Just a road, I think.”

“Do you? I think everyone’s seen a few strange things along it, yes, but… but sometimes the road goes through places that
are… not normal.” He scratched his face and said, “The road is more than just dirt. Or stone. It’s bigger than that. And where
it’s bigger it goes into other places. That or these places cling to the road. They cling to it as mistletoe clings to the
tree branch, desperate to be seen by those walking by. Perhaps desperate to lure someone away from the road, and draw them
in.”

“We’ve been there,” said Connelly. “We’ve been in those places. Yes.”

“And seen the truth of things,” Pike said.

“This has happened before,” Hammond said softly.

“Yes,” said Pike. “But your news gives us heart, Mr. Connelly. This thing can be killed, you say, and I believe you. You said
it could not be done easily. I agree. And yet I feel that all of us, all of us here, have enough strength to do it. More strength than those who failed before.”

“I think I understand, a little,” said Connelly. “This… this man and the world he walks in. They’re twined together. He’s
its Death, the end of everything alive in it. But look at what the world has become. Old and broken and dying. And there’s
him. Crazy and mad. An animal. A wild thing. He’s winding down and so it’s winding down. The world is dying and so is he.”
Connelly licked his lips. “If we kill the Death of this world, well. Maybe we change it.”

“But what comes next?” said Hammond.

Connelly shrugged. “Anything’s better than this. Anything.”

The rain increased. They moved the fire beneath a tree stick by stick, but once there Pike shook his head and said, “Enough
of this. I’m tired as it is. I’m going to my tent and I advise all of you to do the same.” He stood up and entered his shelter
and was quiet.

“How are you doing?” said Hammond once he was gone. “I mean, really.”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Monk didn’t just leave,” he said softly.

“What?”

“Monk didn’t just leave. Or at least, I don’t think he did.”

“What happened?”

“After the fight at the jail we was all shook up,” said Hammond. “I lost a finger and an eye but I’ve gotten along all right.
Monk took one in the arm, Pike got grazed. We had guns we had bought or stolen from a few places and we shot back, maybe killed
a few, I don’t know. We got away and recovered once they couldn’t find the sheriff. When we had healed up Monk said he didn’t
want to go any further. Said he should have gone with Lottie. Said this wasn’t worth it anymore and he was giving up and he
encouraged all of us to do the same.”

“And?”

“Pike said he and him should have a talk. Talk about this like learned gentlemen, he said. So they went off and did. They
were gone a long while. Only Pike came back and he said they discussed it and he gave Monk his blessing and sent him on the
road. Said Monk felt so guilty he didn’t want to say goodbye or take any of our food. But Pike was all out of breath. All
out of breath and he had hurt his hand. I don’t know where Monk is now but I don’t think he’s on the road and I don’t think
he’s looking for Lottie, neither.”

“Pike is a strong man,” said Peachy quietly. “But he’s a frightful man, too.”

“Yeah,” Hammond said.

“Maybe we need frightening men to fight other scary men, but it just don’t sit right with me, Connelly. It just don’t.”

“I know,” said Connelly. “Are you armed?”

Hammond nodded.

“Where’s it at?”

“Two. In the bindlestick. Both loaded.” He pointed to the satchel.

“Okay,” said Connelly.