I left a bad scene at home when I was fourteen and took a bus as far as it would take me. After my meager funds ran out, I started looking for work and found some as a ranch hand. I’m sure they didn’t believe I was of age, but they barely paid shit, and no one asked any questions.
I took a few jobs like that over the next few years, and I saw plenty of human darkness I’d rather not share, but there is one story I’m willing to tell about the Wheeler ranch down in Arizona. It’s no longer there, of course.
The Wheeler was an odd case back in the day. It had a mixed reputation. The pay was good but the rules were strict, and you’d get kicked out for even the most minor violation. A lot of guys like me–traveling guys–ended up there at some point, but most didn’t last more than a few weeks.
A lot of the rules were pretty standard of course. No drinking. No girls in the bunkhouse. Others were more extreme. Like no going out after dark, even on weekends. I heard a lot of guys took jobs there to get sober. The only old hands were also religious types, guys who’d found god after misspent youths and time in lockup.
I took the job for the money. I figured a summer on the straight and narrow wouldn’t hurt, and once I got a nice roll saved up, I could blow it all in Vegas and then go on to the next one.
I guess, stupidly, I also figured all of the rumors about how strict it was were overblown.
I was dead wrong. On my first day there, Doug Wheeler, the bunkhouse manager who also happened to be the owner’s nephew cussed me out and docked me half a day’s pay just for leaving a window open after dark. Of course, a few hours later I found out why.
In the middle of the night, I woke up to a terrible sound coming from the nearby feed lot. There were probably a hundred head of cattle in there, and they were going fucking nuts, like a wolf or a bear had got in with them. I threw on my jeans and ran for the door, but one of the other hands waved me off.
“They’ll be fine,” he said. “Go back to bed.”
“Like hell they’ll be fine. Listen to them.”
“No going out after dark,” said Doug from his bunk. “No matter what.”
I tried to sleep, but it was pretty goddamned hard with the sound of the screaming cattle in the background. It’s something I never did get used to.
In the morning, I got busy mending a few fences on the far side of the ranch. It was a hot one, and when lunch came, I ended up taking a little break in the shade of an old willow. While I was there, I heard a kind of low moan, and I looked over to see a cow in the deepest part of the shade, kind of making these weird noises. Then, when I tried to take a step toward it, it hissed like a cat and bared its teeth at me. The teeth weren’t like any cow’s I’d ever seen before. Two long canines stuck down from the sides, almost like a dog’s.
After that, I noped the hell out of there and went to get backup. When I told Doug what I’d seen, he nodded seriously and grabbed a couple of the other guys. The sun was higher up by then, and then shade under the tree was basically nil. The cow was nowhere to be seen.
“It was right here,” I said. “Right fucking here.”
I walked a little closer to the spot where I’d seen it and almost gagged. A pile of gray dust in roughly the shape of the cow was stuck to the grass, almost like there’d been a fire or something. The air smelled rank.
“Looks like the problem took care of itself,” said one of the hands, and then they all went back to their business.
There were other things I noticed as the days went by, things I didn’t like. I noticed a couple of the calves having trouble standing on two feet in the mornings. One had some kind of bite mark on its neck. I tried to talk to the other hands about it, but they just told me to get paid and stop asking questions.
And then one night, I looked outside my window and just about shit myself. Not two feet from me was an old woman in a nightgown. She looked a little lost to be honest. She knocked on the window and whispered something.
“What?” I whispered back.
“Can I come in?” she said, and then she tried to flash what was probably supposed to be a sweet smile. Except that is exposed a mouth full of rotten teeth, including one of those big fucking fangs, just like the cow had.
“Tell her she can’t come in,” said Doug from behind me, his voice deadly serious. “Now.”
“Sorry ma’am,” I said, but she’d already disappeared into the night. I turned to Doug. “Who the hell was that?”
“Just my grandma,” he said. “She gets lost sometimes at night. Go back to bed.”
I got suspicious after that. Before, I’d just thought the Wheelers were eccentric. Now they gave me the fucking creeps. Like, why didn’t they ever come outside to help, or even go to town? Why did their cars only leave at night, coming back early in the morning before sunup?
It all came to a head on the Fourth of July. A couple of the hands got into some drink around dinner, and then one of guys even newer than me mentioned he’d brought some fireworks over from Mexico.
Doug told him to mind the rules, but the new guy told him to go fuck himself and that it was our country’s birthday and that meant he was an American who got to light off some fucking fireworks if he wanted.
Things got physical. I tried to step in, but the new guy had been a boxer once upon a time, and he laid Doug out cold. Then he grabbed his bag of bottle rockets and a couple more beers and headed outside.
I could have stayed in. I could have followed the rules, but in that moment, I guess I wanted to see some fireworks too. We started drinking and setting them off as the sun fell over the distant mountains.
And then the cows started lowing. I looked over, and spotted two figures, all in black, moving through the herd. One picked up a cow like it was stuffed with cotton, and pinned it against the ground, eating feverishly at its neck.
“Hey, what the fuck?” shouted the new guy, and in an instant, both figures were staring at us. One was the old woman I’d seen before. The other was a younger man, maybe in his 50’s who I’d never seen before.
In about two seconds, the figures reached the new guy. The old woman bit a chunk out of his neck so massive that when she stepped back to catch a breath I could see his spine poking out from the gushing blood. Then the other guy wanted in, pulling her off so he could get a turn at the dying man’s neck.
The only thing that saved me was probably that they were so distracted by their kill that they didn’t notice me. I stood there stupidly, holding a bottle rocket and a lighter. For a second, I thought about shooting it at them, but that seemed worse than useless. It would just piss them off.
Instead, I shot the rocket toward the house, where a patch of dry grass sat unmowed against the ancient porch. It all went up instantly, the fire practically exploding through the dry grass, up the old dry wood.
Now, the cows were starting to panic, knocking at the flimsy wall surrounding the pen. By the time the rest of the house started to catch fire, a full on stampede was on, with the cows charging off into the night.
As for me, I ran too. Sprinted for probably two miles until I got to another house and begged them to let me inside. They did without asking too many questions. They had some idea who their neighbors were.
I can’t say I regret doing what I did. We’re supposed to take care of animals, after all. Even says so in the Bible. Give me a hundred matches, and I’d burn that place to the ground a hundred times.
That said, I’ve seen plenty of places whose owners weren’t much better than the Wheelers, even if they weren’t literal monsters. Most people are just like that. They short your wages. They’re cruel to the livestock.
And if I’m being honest every time I took another gig, every job I’ve had, I’ve left wishing I could have done the same thing on my way out: burned those bastards’ houses to the ground.