Red Creek Waltz Read online

  RED CREEK WALTZ

  By Gregory Kay

  Copyright 2014, West Virginia; all rights reserved.

  Thanks to Kathy Foster-Gaskins for the editing; you did good!

  RED CREEK WALTZ is a novelization of an original short story by the author that first appeared in the horror anthology, DARK PATHS. It is entirely a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any person, organization, or corporation, is strictly coincidental.

  Other books by Gregory Kay

  THE THIRD REVOLUTION

  THE THIRD REVOLUTION II: THE LONG KNIVES

  THE THIRD REVOLUTION III: THE BLACK FLAG

  THE THIRD REVOLUTION IV: THE WARLORD

  DARK PATHS

  THE BARNACLES OF AEGIR

  WINGS IN DARKNESS

  DEATH IN DARK COUNTY

  Chapter 1

  Red Creek, West Virginia, 13 October, 1920

  The last red rays of the setting sun turned the Autumn sky to blood, sliding behind the darkening mountains as if it was blown there by the evening wind. That same cold breeze peeled the red and yellow leaves from the trees and sent them slanting down in a blizzard, rolling them along the dirt street and piling them against the whitewashed 'Jenny-Lind' board-and-batten miners’ cabins that lined both sides of it. The fallen leaves brushed the boots and pant legs of several men standing along the coal town’s single street as well, but they ignored them; there were other concerns, such as the dying sun they were all watching, facing west like a herd of cattle turning away from the wind.

  In a second story office of the town’s only two-story building, a flat-roofed white clapboard box with a red-on-white sign that read RED CREEK COAL COMPANY, Harvey Goldman bit his lower lip and checked his pocket watch for the fifth time in ten minutes. He had never been a clock-watcher before, but now everyone in Red Creek was exactly that; in the past month, time had ceased to mean one shift ending and another beginning, production or no production, job or no job, and had taken on the literal difference between life and death.

  Harvey swallowed hard, making his prominent Adam's apple bob; the hands on his watch told him what he needed to know, and what he dreaded. It was sundown. Pushing back his chair, he opened the right-hand drawer and withdrew his .32 S&W revolver before he pulled the wooden slats of the roll top down over the paperwork even as he rose to his feet. While he tucked the pistol into the front of his pants, he noticed that the boards under his feet creaked louder than usual; he suspected he had just become more attuned to it lately, just as all his senses had become more acute, like those of a hunted animal. Pausing by the coat rack, he slipped his arms into his jacket and clamped his cap tightly on his balding head lest the wind he could hear blowing outside snatch it away. Through the slightly distorted view of the window pane’s cheap glass and the falling leaves pattering against it with every gust, he could see the red sky in the west, and the mountains darkening from purple to black against it. It was time.

  Stepping out onto the small porch – little more than a landing for the outside stairs – Harvey paused only long enough to insert the key and lock the door before turning to the head-sized iron bell. Grabbing the knotted rope, he tugged it hard, and the hollow tolling sounded throughout Red Creek, winding its way around the buildings all the way up the surrounding mountainsides and into the dark, tree-lined hollers, where it echoed back again as a fading ghost of itself. He dropped the rope, and cupped a hand to either side of his mouth to shout.

  “Curfew! Curfew! Curfew!”

  Then he went down the stairs with a rapid clatter of shoe leather, faster than was probably safe, and headed for home at a fast walk just short of a run. He didn’t wait around to see if any one had failed to heed the warning, but then again, he didn’t need to.

  The men standing in quiet groups watching the sun spared little more than a glance in his direction before turning to retreat to their own dwellings; in fact, several of them passed Harvey at a similarly hurried pace, the miners' heavy brogan boots kicking up the red clay dust and bits of shale from the road as they went, their faces lined with barely concealed fear. Women frantically called in their last few stray offspring, snatching them by the arms and often clouting them on the seats of their denim britches or calico dresses in their worry and haste. Doors began slamming and furniture could be heard scooting across rough plank floors as it was dragged against the portals in makeshift barricades.

  In the Red Creek Church, right across from the office, the preacher, a company employee paid by Red Creek Coal to look after the souls of his flock while damning the union, took a final look outside before pulling his head back in and closing the door. The sound of the heavy bolt engaging came first, followed by the faint, muffled intoning of desperate prayers from inside.

  The final refugee from the coming night was a skinny, blue tick hound; hunching across the street with his tail between his legs to the office building, he flattened himself to the ground on his belly and squeezed through a slight depression to get beneath it. For a few minutes afterward, the street lay empty, with no movement save the blowing leaves.

  Then the double doors on the first story of the Red Creek Mine Company building opened, and a dozen armed men stepped out onto the worn, splintered boards of the porch. Dressed in jackets and overcoats against the expected chill of the autumn night, hats and caps pulled down low and tight against the tugging of the wind, they spread out in both directions along the street. Hands clasped rifles, shotguns, and sub-machine guns with much more force than necessary, fingers nervously massaging the stocks and triggers like deadly worry beads, reassuring their hard-faced owners that they were really there and ready to fire should the need arise.

  These were hard men – discharged soldiers from the Great War to End All Wars, gangsters trying to either go straight or just lay low for awhile, ex-cops doing a better-paying job – but the stink of fear that lay upon them like a caul was stronger than the smell of the gun oil on their weapons.

  One man, an Italian with a gray Homburg on his head and a .30-'06 Springfield bolt action rifle tucked under his left arm, crossed himself with his right hand, mumbling, “Hail Mary, full of grace. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our deaths.” No one other than Heaven could have heard, because the rising wind snatched the words away as soon as they left his lips.

  They took their lonely positions at regular intervals along the road, hunched shoulders and backs tight against walls or other fixed objects, eyes alert and flicking back and forth, seeking danger in the twilight.

  Sid Roush was different than the rest. It wasn’t just that he was the biggest of the mine guards – company thugs as the miners referred to them behind their backs – although at six foot-three inches in height and a broad, powerful two hundred-fifty-five pounds, he was certainly big enough. He was armed much like the rest as well; a Colt .45 automatic rode beneath his jacket in a shoulder holster, and a Winchester Model 97 trench gun loaded with double-ought buckshot rested jauntily on his shoulder, looking like a toy in his beefy hand. A broad fedora pulled low over his eyes completed the picture, and those eyes ended any similarities with his coworkers.

  He showed none of their fear, because he felt none; his wide mouth was set in a permanent sneering smile around the toothpick he habitually chewed, a smile that showed the cutting edges of his big teeth at the world around him, and those pale blue eyes beneath his hat brim glittered with cruelty and anticipation that he might get a chance to shoot someone. Sid liked the money, sure, and killing was the only trade the man who had been both a soldier and a gangster knew, but for him, it didn’t stop there. Sid genuinely liked what he did.

  He caught the flicker of a curtain parting in one of the miners’ cabins, and saw it close just as quickly when he turned his head towa
rds it. They were afraid of him, especially after what he'd done, and that was good; not only did it make him feel good, like expensive sipping whiskey rolled around on the tongue in appreciation, but it made his job easier.

  Reaching the edge of town, where the dirt road ran through the shallow, rippling creek that gave both the town and company their names, he ignored the nearby graveyard with far too many mounds of freshly-turned earth, just as he ignored the chill wind whispering in his ear and the leaves blowing against his legs. He had filled some of those graves himself, but what he had filled them with was like the leaves: dead things long past harming anyone.

  “Sid!” Charlie Elliot’s excited voice came through the gathering gloom, carrying on the wind, “Thank God you're finally here! I was afraid you weren’t going to show!”

  Catching sight of the slight figure calling out and waving to him by the town sign, Sid grinned; although he wasn't really capable of affection, he liked Charlie as well as he liked anybody, mainly because he found the smaller man amusing. He had been a soldier too, but you’d never know it now; Sid had more than once described skinny, long-featured bespectacled man as being “as nervous as a whore in church,” not that he knew much about the latter, of course. Charlie’s nervousness had grown over the past few weeks, and now he was visibly shivering in his brown suit, and Sid figured if he didn’t have his cap pulled down tight on his head, he would have shaken it right off. His bony hands rubbed the stock of his .30-30 rifle like they were trying to scrub the finish off. Sid could almost smell his fear, and thought it was funny as hell.

  “What’s the matter, Charlie? You miss me that much?” His teasing tone abruptly changed when he looked down and saw the brown wood and cardboard suitcase at the guard’s feet. “You going somewhere?”

  Charlie’s head bobbed up and down so hard he had to readjust his cap once he stopped.

  “You’re damned right I’m going somewhere! I’m going clear the hell away from Red Creek just as fast as I can. I’ve already drawn my pay, and I was just waiting for you to relieve me before I head off over the mountain.”

  Sid was so shocked, it took him a moment to find his voice, and by that time, Charlie had already bent over and picked the case up with his left hand.

  “Tonight? You go stumbling around out there on Little Back Mountain in the dark, those union men will get you for sure!”

  “It ain’t union men I’ve got to be afraid of; they’re not the ones who killed all these people here,” he said as he turned to leave. “He wasn't right, Sid; you know he wasn't...right!”

  “Don’t tell me you’re buying into all that superstitious bullshit too!” Sid snorted derisively. “Those murders are nothing but those damned dirty Bolshevik union organizers trying to scare the workers and bankrupt the company!” Sid hated Bolsheviks as much as he had hated the Germans and rival gangsters; he hated anyone who was on the other side of whichever one he was on, because that made it personal, and personal that made it more satisfying.

  “You can believe what you want to,” Charlie called back over his shoulder as he began walking away, “but those union men ain’t biting people’s throats and sucking all the blood out of them like a weasel under a chicken’s wing!”

  “Well, you’d better believe this; good, easy jobs like this one ain’t easy to come by!”

  “No, but a grave’s damned easy to come by in Red Creek; company man or union man, either one!”

  Sid thought he detected a hint of accusation in the tone, and his anger instantly rose to meet it. When he spoke, it was with his cold, killing voice.

  “Watch it, Charlie.”

  Hearing the flat warning in Sid’s tone, Charlie halted, feeling his shoulder blades tensing, involuntarily squeezing themselves together, half-anticipating a bullet. Slowly, making sure he kept his rifle pointed away, he turned.

  “Why? You gonna kill me like you did him and his family?”

  “Shut up, damn it!” Sid almost shouted. Even if the hit had been sanctioned by Red Creek Coal and everybody knew he'd done it, there was no proof, but it could still put any man’s life and freedom at risk to speak about it in public in anything above a whisper. If too much of a scandal arose from the incident, he had no doubt the company would throw him to the wolves. “That was an accident!” he hissed in a much lowered voice, “I didn’t know his daughters were in there with him!”

  Charlie looked at him, the disbelief plain on his face.

  “Would that have really made any difference?”

  “He was a union man!” Sid said, firmly believing that simple statement should not only explain, but justify everything that had happened.

  “And now he’s a dead man, and his daughters are dead girls!” He paused, pointing at the cemetery with his rifle. “Just like half this damned town is dead now!” Nodding at Sid, he added, “Just like you’ll be if you stay here!”

  Looking at his fellow guard’s pale face and wide, staring eyes magnified by the wire framed lenses of his glasses, Sid chuckled and shook his head.

  “You’re about a cheerful son of a bitch, you know that?” he asked sarcastically.

  “There ain’t nothing to be cheerful about, not here in Red Creek.” He beckoned with his rifle and said, “Come with me Sid, right now! Come on! Get the hell out of here while you’re still alive! You know they'll be coming for you soon; He told you he'd be back for you, and we all heard him! You’re the one who caused all this!”

  Sid stood watching him, still chewing on his toothpick with obvious amusement in his eyes, and Charlie sighed, shook his head, and stepped into the shallow ford. He winced as the cold spring water swirled over his ankles and into his shoes, but he kept walking, and three steps took him to the other side.

  “Why the hell aren't you walking the tracks out, at least, instead of getting your feet wet?”

  “Because they're on the other side of town, and this way is closest.”

  There was a finality in his voice and in his footsteps as he kept picking them up and putting them down, one after the other.

  “I guess I’ll see you around,” Sid said to his back, and Charlie didn’t bother to turn this time, but just kept walking. Facing away, his voice reached Sid’s ears sounding far more distant than its source.

  “I doubt it.”

  Sid stood and watched him walk up the clay and shale ‘red dog’ road until he took the first bend and disappeared into the shadows of the towering hemlock trees, never once looking back. The big man shook his head and spit out his toothpick.

  “What an idiot!”

  Tucking the shotgun under his right arm, Sid fished a pack of Camels out of his pocket and tapped one partway out. Pulling it the rest of the way with his lips, he reached into his coat pocket for his matchbox, struck one and lit the cigarette before shaking the match out and dropping it on the ground, grinding it under his heel.

  The town sign that marked the guard post was made from planks in a rectangle the size of a man’s torso, held chest high and supported by a pair of locust posts set in the ground. A nail jutted near the top of one of the posts, and Sid took down the unlit lantern that hung from it. He shook it, insuring it was full of kerosene; then, setting it on top of the post, he pressed the lever that raised the globe, exposing the wick. Taking a deep drag on the cigarette and making the tip glow like a coal in the gathering darkness, he touched it to the lantern, and, in a couple of seconds, a small flame was dancing within. Lowering the globe and adjusting the wick, he replaced it on the nail, all without putting down his weapon. Sid wasn’t afraid, but he was no fool either. Unless somebody was out there with a gun – and none of the dead had been shot, at least so far – they would have to come within that circle of light to get at him. His hand unconsciously massaged the stock's grip; if they were fool enough to do that, there’d be some more graves being filled come tomorrow.

  He smiled at the thought; it made him feel warm inside.

  Sid stood by the sign and smoked, lighting another now and
then as the last vestiges of evening left, and the night turned to full darkness. If there was a moon, he couldn’t see it; the wind had blown in a solid cloud cover that blotted out the stars, and left him cocooned in his tiny pool of light with nothing but his guns, his smokes, and his own thoughts.

  Sid didn’t think much about the future, and there was nothing happening at the moment to think about right now. Instead, he thought about the past. He remembered the stinking New York tenement in Five Points where he had grown up, the gang of boys he had run with, and, eventually, had run as their leader. He remembered his first real fight, the first woman he hadn’t had to pay for, and the first man he'd killed. The first time for anything was special, and something to compare every time you did it afterward to.

  Just because he was lost in his thoughts, it didn’t follow that he wasn’t aware of what was going on around him. He was also not an imaginative man, and he knew that the faint sound coming from near the graveyard of a foot cautiously setting down on dry leaves wasn’t simply in his head.

  Sid showed no reaction on the outside, but inwardly he instantly alerted. His thoughts fled, with all his resources going towards identifying the sound and locating its source. It could be a deer or even a bear, but he doubted it; the sound had a certain quality to it that spoke of human, not animal. Besides, with an instinct that had saved his life more than once, he could feel eyes upon him; he was being watched... not just watched, but stared at. He realized the frogs and crickets had ceased their noise; someone was definitely out there.

  Casually, under the guise of making himself more comfortable, he slid his finger into the trigger guard and his thumb onto the checkered metal surface of the cocking hammer.

  Any time now...

  The sound came again, and he instantly jerked his head, his gun muzzle moving with it, just in time to see a shadow flitting amongst the tombstones and wooden boards with names carved into them. Before he could bring his aim to bear, the shadow seemed to disappear, as if it had never been there. Whoever it was had gone to ground.