The low rolling rumble of thunder swept across the open plains like an ocean wave and passed over the layover bunkhouse with a growing crescendo that rattled the rafters and windows with its passage. I paused a moment and glanced out through the open doorway leading to the covered front porch and the dim light of the waning day beyond. After another few beats, I resumed pouring a cup of coffee and replaced the decanter to the hotplate before wandering out to join Jonas.
The old cowboy was resting his elbows on the timber railing that fronted the aging porch, the tin cup and a neglected cigarette dangling from his hands. His eyes were focused out across the landscape, though the last bits of late afternoon daylight were rapidly fleeing in the face of the coming thunderheads. I had the feeling he wasn’t really looking at anything in particular and was probably just relaxing and letting his thoughts wander after a long day surveying the far side of the old McCullen land. I could already feel the drop in temperature, and the air felt heavy and pregnant with the promise of coming rain.
He spared a sideways look at me as I joined him, and I didn’t miss the half-grin he offered. He took a drag from his smoke and gestured out to the shadowed landscape. “I’ll tell you, David, even after all these years, there’s just something special about being out here all alone. Makes a man feel new, if you take my meaning.”
I thought I did and nodded as I sipped at the steaming mug. The coffee was strong and bitter, but I didn’t mind so much.
In the distance, lightning strobed and danced in the heavy cloud line that was rapidly marching our way. The wind was starting to pick up a bit, blowing in chaotic gusts that couldn’t seem to figure out which direction they should be headed, tugging at us from all different directions.
“Bad night to be out there,” Jonas said, flicking his spent smoke off into the dim light in a brief flare of sparks.
I ducked my head and took a seat in one of the old wooden chairs we’d dragged out to the porch earlier. “I’m glad we’re going to be under a roof tonight, that’s for sure. No offense, but I wasn’t looking forward to sharing that tiny excuse for a tent with you, old man,” I said with a chuckle.
Jonas cracked a grin and took the other chair, both of us sinking back and relaxing after a long day in the Jeep. “Yeah, well I can’t say as I blame ya, I guess. I’m just glad the rain held off long enough for us to make it to this old place,” he said, stamping his boot on the weather-worn wood of the porch. “It’s been a bit since I’ve been out to this section; almost forgot this bunkhouse was even here.”
We’d been out riding the perimeter of the McCullen land in the Jeep since before sunrise that morning, surveying the damage caused by the violent storms that had swept through over the last week. Several tornadoes had touched down all over East Texas, causing all sorts of trouble, and Mr. Kirkman’s land hadn’t been spared. Earlier that day, we’d passed a quarter-mile section of fence line that was just…gone, replaced with an angry brown track of destruction nearly as wide that scarred across the land, marking the passage of a pretty fair twister.
Jonas had guided the Jeep carefully over the upturned earth while I took pictures and made notes of the location and damage. Crews would be out in the coming weeks to begin repairs, but that was for later.
As the day wore on, the bright blue skies had begun to show evidence of turning nasty, but we’d been told that the worst of the weather had passed, so it wasn’t likely we were in for more than just the normal summer gutter-washers. Sure, there’d be plenty of thunder, lightning, and wind, but we didn’t expect it to escalate much beyond that, or at least that was our hope. As evening began to approach, Jonas had turned the Jeep away from the fence and towards a small structure I spied in the distance. He’d told me it was left over from the McCullen days and should serve us pretty well as a shelter overnight.
At first, my stomach sank when he mentioned it, but he caught the look in my eyes and quickly followed it up with reassurances that there was nothing ominous or ugly about the place; it was just an old ranch hand bunkhouse that had been used over the years as a layover for men working out in this area. I wasn’t completely at ease, my thoughts drifting back to that damned abandoned homestead, but I knew it was going to be a hell of a sight more comfortable than the two of us trying to sleep in the Jeep or share the small tent that was stuffed in the back seat.
When we reached the rough timber building, I was relieved to see that it wasn’t much more than just a single room structure with a few chairs and cots scattered around the interior, which was surprisingly well-kept. I supposed it was likely due to the fact that the place was still used by some of Mr. Kirkman’s crews from time to time. So, we parked the Jeep out front and brought our supplies inside for the night.
Jonas and I sat there for a while in silence, just watching the approaching thunderheads and listening to the wind as it raced across the open fields of tall grass. It was cool and damp and smelled of rain. Overall, a nice change from the heat we’d experienced earlier in the day.
Jonas had drained his cup and refilled it from the bottle, offering me a splash of whiskey for my coffee, which I accepted gratefully, trading him for another cigarette. As he was reclaiming his chair with a quiet grunt, he said, “Never did like the storms out here, though.”
It was pretty innocuous statement, but something in the way he said it made me think he had more to say, and I turned my attention over to him with a raised eyebrow.
He stroked his steel-gray mustache for a moment, his cool eyes wandering over the vista before returning to meet mine.
“The Caddo Indians have legends about the storms around here,” he started, then paused and chuckled a bit. “Hell, I guess they have legends for just about everything, now that I think about it. But the storms… The storms were something they seemed especially wary of.
“I used to work with a man, full-blood Caddo – Levi White-Ash. He was raised among the Caddo tribes and grew up listening to all the stories from his people. He used to like to spook the greenhorns whenever he had the chance by breaking out some bit of dark legend while everyone was around the fire. He was a fair imposing man if you didn’t know him close – a big bear of a man that stood a head taller than most everyone else and hard as a rock.” Jonas smiled at the memory, his eyes going distant for a moment. “He had this gold tooth right up front, where he’d gotten one knocked out during a tussle at a bar once. Gave him a bit of a menacing look, I’ll admit. But, once you got to know him, you realized he was just the about the gentlest and most easy-handed man you’re like to run across.” His eyes met mine again before roaming back out across the plain. “Hell, on the weekends he used to go volunteer at some homeless shelter up near Gilmer. At Christmas, he’d dress up as old Saint Nick and pass out gifts to the kids of the other ranch hands. He never married or had kids of his own, so he made up for it by trying to take care of everyone else like they were his.” Jonas paused a moment, then bobbed his head, almost to himself. “He was a good man. A good friend.”
A smile crept across his face, barely hidden by the bushy mustache. “Of course, he did have a mischievous streak about him and took every opportunity to play up the whole mysterious red-man routine. Tickled him, I guess. Wasn’t anything mean-spirited about it, and everyone always ended up laughing in the end.
“Hell, I’d be willing to bet that half the stories he told were made up on the spot, just as he was spitting them out. Some of them though… Some of them were real.”
“Real?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow and lighting a cigarette. “You mean real stories from his people?”
“I mean real,” Jonas said, locking eyes with me. “You know what I’m saying, David. You’ve seen with your own eyes things out here that shouldn’t be. Things that have climbed right off the pages of some two-bit horror novel. I’ve said it before, but there are things round these parts that don’t belong in the light of day. Things that you’re not like to run across in other places.”
After a bit of silence, I closed my mouth and nodded, the memories of the McCullen homestead still raw in my mind.
A peal of thunder shook the air and lightning lit the sky above us. I jumped a bit, despite myself, and looked back out across the fields. I could hear the distant soft hiss of rain on the tall grass and thought it wouldn’t be much longer before it was upon us.
Jonas sat back in his chair and continued. “On nights like this, when the storms swept in and covered everything in darkness and noise, he used to talk about the shadows that came in the night. The others. The ones who answered the call of the storm.
“It didn’t happen with every storm, of course. But sometimes, when you were far away from the lights of civilization and safety, you would hear a call; long and low and otherworldly, just below the hiss of the rain and the howling of the wind. Like a horn from hell.” He shrugged and shook his head, taking a sip from his cup. “Hell, for all I know, that’s exactly what it was.
“I ran with Levi for a while, just like you and me now. Sometimes, when he got into his drink, he’d tell me stories that he didn’t share with the greenhorns. All those tales that he told them around the campfires were just to entertain, maybe put a bit of a scare in them. But those tales were safe; just a bit of fiction to pass the time.”
Jonas gestured out into the dim light with his tin cup. “Somewhere out there is a watering hole, out past the fence line and up into the hills a bit. I’ve seen it myself once, and I can tell you it set me on edge just looking at that black, still water. It’s surrounded all around by stones, like some sort of barrier constructed by long-forgotten hands. Levi told me that his people would sooner die of thirst than to so much as approach those waters. He said it had no bottom, just fell off into that murky darkness forever.” He flashed a wry smile at me. “But that ain’t likely possible, I suppose. Just deep.”
I nodded, briefly turning my attention to a particularly brilliant flash of lightning that left its glowing after-image on the inside of my eyelids when I blinked. The thick, bruised clouds were growing closer with each passing minute at a surprising pace. I was sure we’d be under them before long.
“Levi told me that, during storms like this one, when that call rolled across the dark plains, the shadows would drag themselves from that watery pit and roam across the lands of man.” Jonas took a sip of his Irish coffee and fixed me with one of those looks. “Woe be the soul caught out in the open when they came.”
I stayed quiet, letting the old man talk. My eyes drifted back to the wide-open grassy lands that stretched out in front of us for what seemed like forever. I watched as the foothills in the distance grew shadowed and vague, and then completely consumed by the thunderheads. It felt like the land was being eaten up as they approached, like maybe if a man were to take a mind of it and drive out there, beyond the leading edge of the storm, maybe he’d find nothing but infinite blackness where the hills once stood.
Jonas fell quiet, his eyes gaining that faraway look he got when he found himself wandering through old memories.
I lit another smoke and sat for a moment in silence, feeling the heavy, damp air blow across the covered porch of the bunkhouse, bringing with it the earthy smells of upturned ground. The temperature was starting to drop a bit with the coming of the storm, but I didn’t mind so much.
“I don’t think I ever met Levi,” I said after a minute, taking a drag from my cigarette and following it with a sip of the now-cooling coffee.
He shook his head, dragged back from his reverie. “No, you wouldn’t have. Levi’s been gone a long while now.”
Jonas didn’t offer anything more about his friend and I didn’t press.
“Have you ever heard it?” I asked instead.
“The call? Maybe. Hell, I don’t really know, to tell you the truth. You hear a lot of strange things out here when you’re alone and the storms blow in. I can’t rightly say that any of them were the call, exactly.” He looked at me over his cup. “Then again, I sure as hell never went to investigate them, either. I’ve seen enough to know that a man shouldn’t go sticking his nose where it don’t belong, especially out here.”
I ducked my head in agreement, taking a last drag off my cigarette before flicking the butt out into the rapidly dwindling twilight. I could see the rain now, drifting in beneath the churning storm clouds like a hazy curtain. The air was filled with the smell of it and felt charged with the lighting that flashed and boomed from within that bruised mass.
I was about to stand and refill my coffee when Jonas started talking again, his gaze disconnected, distant.
“It was a night like this one,” he said, pouring another splash of whiskey into his tin cup. “A lot like this one, as a matter of fact. It was just the three of us – me and Tommy and Levi, sitting right here on this porch and watching a storm roll in over us. Back then, we didn’t use Jeeps to get around the ranch – they were too expensive, and Mr. Kirkman figured if we already had horses, there was no reason to buy a bunch of fancy Jeeps that he’d need to spend even more money on to maintain.”
He gestured with his cup, a motion that took in the vast area of open land in front of us. “The three of us had been out riding the fences for a couple of days already when the weather took a turn that afternoon. Tommy remembered that this bunkhouse was out here – I’d forgotten about it completely – and so we rode at a pretty good pace from that fence line directly for here, hoping to beat the storm. Nobody wants to get caught out in one of these summer storms. Hell, even if you don’t mind being soaked to the bone, it ain’t a good idea to be the tallest thing in the area when the lightning starts looking for a way to ground.”
Jonas cocked an eyebrow and turned a sideways look on me. “I saw a bull get struck by lightning once. Damndest thing. Storm rolled in and the rest of the herd moved into some trees for shelter, but this ornery thing just stood there in the middle of the pasture, like it was daring nature to mess with it. It wasn’t but a couple minutes before this bolt of lightning came down and lit the whole area in this blinding white light. Hit the bull right between the horns and burned through its body and down its legs. It went rigid all of a sudden, like all its muscles locked up at once. I remember it took a single step after that. Just one step, and then it just went still and didn’t move again.”
He smirked, somewhere between amusement and wonder. “Sonofabitch was deader than shit, but still standing there, like it refused to give up. It was burned hollow from the top of its skull down to its hooves, but it never fell over. Never seen anything like it.”
Jonas took another drink and shook his head, pulling himself back from his wanderings. He adjusted the age-worn cowboy hat on his head a bit and continued. “Anyway, we didn’t exactly make it here ahead of the rain, but the worst of it hadn’t caught us out in the open, either. We tied the horses in the shed out back and worked on getting ourselves into a dry change of clothes. Then we came out and settled with a warm drink to watch the rain. We were sitting right here, as a matter of fact. Tommy was over on my left and Levi was sitting right where you are now.”
I shifted a little in the old wooden chair at that, feeling a little uncomfortable, like I was somehow trespassing on a dead man’s spot or something. I knew it was silly, but that awareness didn’t change anything.
Just then, the heavy cloud front finally reached us, stripping away the last of the dying daylight and casting us into deep shadow. The staccato sounds of fat raindrops began striking the tin roof of the bunkhouse, ringing dull and hollow.
Then, a blinding flash of lightning lit the area in a ghostly pale light, and an incredibly ear-splitting and violent crack of thunder shattered the air at the same instant, so loud and sharp that I felt the concussion in my bones, felt it shake the boards beneath my feet.
I jumped at fair bit at that, spitting out a curse with my heart pounding in my chest, but Jonas hadn’t so much as flinched, turning his eyes back to the grassy expanse before us.
“We were just sitting here, shooting the shit and working our way through a bottle when Levi stopped talking all of a sudden, mid-sentence. His brow knotted up and he tilted his head a little, turning his attention out into the rain. He’d heard something, though what it was I didn’t know. Neither me or Tommy had heard anything out of the ordinary.
“’Did you hear that?’ he’d asked us, coming to his feet and standing at the edge of the porch. At first, I thought he was messing with us, trying to throw a scare into us like he often did with the greenhorns. But if you’d seen his eyes and the way the blood drained from his face, it was clear that he was dead-serious.”
Jonas drained the rest of his cup, which had long since gone from Irish coffee to just straight whiskey and set it on the floorboards beside his chair.
“What did he hear?” I asked, my heartbeat slowly returning to normal.
Jonas shook his head. “He said it sounded like someone calling out to us from somewhere out in the storm. I told him that he was hearing things, that there wasn’t anyone around us for miles in any direction. Nobody’d be fool enough to wander around in the dark when a storm like that was upon us.
“But he wouldn’t let it go. He swore that there was someone out there, just beyond where we could see, moving around the bunkhouse. Me and Tommy both listened as hard as we could, but the only thing either of us could hear was the hissing of the rain across the fields and the whistling of the wind.
“Tommy made some joke about how Levi couldn’t handle his firewater and we tried to laugh it off, but you could see that Levi was really rattled.” Jonas looked back at me, his eyes cast in dark shadows. “I ain’t gonna lie, David; seeing this big ol’ hoss – one of the toughest sons of bitches I’ve ever known – shook up like that, well, it was more than enough to steal away any other jokes we might have had.”
I finished my own mug and set it atop the porch railing, lighting another smoke with my Zippo. “What happened?”
The old cowboy shrugged and leaned back a bit in his chair. “Levi eventually settled down, but we all felt this weight hanging over us and decided to just call it a night. None of us felt like drinking or laughing anymore and I think we were just hoping to forget about it until the light of day.
“It was probably close to two in the morning when the sound of something moving quietly inside the bunkhouse woke me up. I snapped awake and had my gun halfway out of my holster before I recognized it was just Levi in the dim light from the lantern, pulling on his boots. ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ I’d asked him. He looked at me with the most haunted eyes I’d ever seen in my life. ‘It’s back,’ was all he said.
“Before I could say a word, Levi rose up and pulled the door open, stepping out into the night. It was still coming down pretty hard at that point, and the wind blew in through the open doorway, bringing the rain with it. I jumped up and ducked after him, giving Tommy a kick on the way out to rouse him.
“By the time I stepped out onto the porch, Levi had already stalked off into the rain, hell bent for leather. I saw his silhouette for a moment, the unmistakable shape of his big ol’ magnum held in one hand, and then he was gone, disappeared into the night.”
Jonas went to dig another smoke from his pack but found it empty. I absently held my pack out to him, which he accepted with a nod of thanks. “I went as far as the edge of the porch, shouting out to him as loud as I could, but I didn’t see so much as a hint of him out there. I thought I heard a few words that sounded like he might have been calling out to someone, but I can’t be sure about that.
“When I heard the scream and the gunshots, I yanked my pistol from the holster and took a step towards the edge of the porch, ready to run off into the storm after my friend. I would have, too, if not for the fact that Tommy had come up behind me and grabbed my arm, holding me in place.
“I tried to shrug him off, intent on charging out after Levi, but Tommy had an iron grip when he was a younger man. He about yanked me off my feet when I tried to rush out again. I couldn’t understand why he was holding me back and I cursed at him to let me go.
“Instead, he just snatched me back again, harder this time. ‘No, Jonas!’ he hissed, his voice as urgent and commanding as I’d ever known it to be. ‘Look!’ he told me, pointing an unsteady finger out into the stormy night.”
Jonas lit the cigarette that he’d been holding, and I could see a bit of a shake to the ember as he drew a deep breath before exhaling the gray-blue smoke. He picked up the bottle of whiskey and took a swig from it, not bothering with the cup. I don’t think I’d ever seen him this agitated before, and his unease was infectious.
It was full dark now, and the storm hadn’t lost any of its intensity with the failing of the light. My mind was trying to play tricks on me – shadows flitted in and out existence at the edges of visibility, and the white noise of the rain sweeping across the tall grass created ghostly voices in my ears. I touched lightly at the pistol at my hip, as if to reassure myself that it was still there.
I felt foolish as soon as I did it, but that didn’t stop me from unsnapping the strap securing it in the holster.
“I seen one, David,” Jonas said after another pull from the bottle, fixing me with those piercing eyes. “If Tommy hadn’t stopped me, I’d have gone right out after Levi. And that damned thing was waiting for me. It knew I was going to rush out after him, and it was just waiting for me.”
“What was?” I asked, barely above a raspy whisper. Jonas handed me the bottle and I took a swallow. “What did you see?”
Jonas paused, trying to find the words. “It was tall – nine feet if it was an inch. Thin – gaunt is a better word. Almost sickly. Seemed like it wasn’t more than skin and bones. It had this great misshapen head that was too big for its hunched body. And its hands… its hands were malformed and skinny as the rest of it, with fingers as long as my forearm, all twisted and distorted. It was like someone had taken all the wrong parts and tried to make a living thing out of them.
“But it moved, David. Jesus, help me, but it moved like lightning, like a coiled snake. You’d swear a thing that tall and skeletal wouldn’t be able to move like that, but when it saw Tommy holding me fast, keeping me from dashing off into the storm, it made this god-awful hissing moan, like the last breath from a dying man. Like it was furious that I’d been snatched back from its grip. Like it was hungry.
“Without a thought, I swung my hand cannon up and emptied it at the thing until the hammer just clicked on spent cases. It just stood there, watching me with empty eye sockets, not even registering my gunshots. Then it was gone into the darkness – just a flicker of motion that was too fast to track.”
“Holy shit, Jonas,” was all I could say at first. “I don’t understand - why didn’t it come for you? If it was right there, why didn’t it attack?”
Jonas shook his head and shrugged. “I’m not sure, exactly. I had the impression that it wanted to but couldn’t. Like it wasn’t made to stand in the world of men – maybe it couldn’t come up onto the porch or into the bunkhouse. Maybe it needed me to come to it, the way Levi had.
“As you’d imagine, me and Tommy didn’t get any sleep after that. He’d herded me back inside and shut the door, moving a chair in front of it and sitting there, like he was worried I’d try to go after Levi again.” He smirked a little bit at this, though there wasn’t any real amusement in his eyes. “There wasn’t any chance of that, I can tell you. You know me, David. You know I’m not one to back down from just about anything, even out here, but it would have taken old Lucifer himself on my ass to chase me out into the storm that night. Out into that darkness.”
I nodded slowly at him, considering his words carefully. “Did you ever find Levi?” I asked reluctantly.
Jonas turned his attention back out into the heavy rain and fell silent for a bit. I could see his mind was working, sifting through old memories. I hated to prod him on it, but I needed to know the rest.
“The next morning, as soon as the sun was up and the storm had blown itself out, me and Tommy threw our things on the horses and set out to look for him. It wasn’t hard to follow where he’d gone – where he’d been taken, I mean. The tall grass had been flattened in a straight line, like something heavy had been dragged through it in the night. We followed it all morning, moving towards the foothills. When we reached the fence line, we found a bit of bloody cloth hung up on one of the barbs. It looked like a piece from his shirt, caught up and torn as he was dragged through the fence.
“The horses couldn’t cross there, so we tied them off and went on by foot, back into the trees and up into the hills. It was tough-going; the ground was muddy and soft from the rains, but that just meant we were able to follow the trail without too much trouble.”
Jonas turned an eye to me. “It’s strange – other than the path made by something being dragged along, there were no prints. Anyway, about an hour after we started into the trees, we came across a pool of black water, maybe twenty feet across, smooth as glass and with a kind of an oily sheen to it. I have no idea how it deep it was, but we couldn’t see the bottom – couldn’t see if it even had a bottom. It was bordered all around by field stones. There wasn’t a real clearing or anything like that – it just sat there in the middle of the woods on a bit of level ground. The trees grew right up to the edge of it, though the ones closest to that black water were twisted and diseased looking, all gray and withering.”
Another pause as Jonas took a drag from his cigarette and washed it down with a swallow of whiskey. “Tommy spotted the bones first. He always had sharper eyes than me – never missed a thing. On the far side of that black pool stretched out what remained of a man, stripped down to bleached bones,” he continued, and shook his head in puzzlement, like he was still trying to figure it out. “It was just the upper half of a skeleton – I guess the rest was somewhere at the bottom of that inky hole. It looked like it was trying to claw its way out from the water, arms all outstretched and reaching.”
“Bones?” I replied, not understanding.
Jonas looked at me a moment. The corner of his mouth pulled up in a wry grin – almost a grimace, really – that faded as quick as it’d come. “Tommy may have spotted the bones first, but I spied that familiar gold tooth still stuck in that bleach-white skull right off.”
He fell silent again, and I felt like the story had run its course. After a few more minutes of nothing but the falling rain and rolling thunder, Jonas stood from his chair and moved to the doorway, handing me the half-empty bottle as he passed. “I think I’m off to bed – been a long day and I’m weary. Think I’ve talked enough,” he said.
He paused and fixed me with a firm eye. “Don’t you go wandering, David – not tonight. Keep these floorboards under your feet, y’hear?”
I responded with a quick nod, a combination of assent and a goodnight to my friend.
“Good man.” Jonas returned the nod and gave me a quick pat on the shoulder as he passed.
He’d just stepped a foot through the open doorway when he stopped, his head tilting to the side and brow drawn low. His narrowed eyes found mine and I saw that same haunted look as before.
“Did you hear that?”