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Trapdoor.
by Jack Lance ©.
The man pushed though the dirt and heat, panting and groaning like an animal. He hadreached the point where he thought he would give up, and then decided to push onwards beyond it despite it. Now he was in a way he never imagined could possibly exist, butnow here he was, a changed animal.He had escaped, and in truth that was all that mattered to his feet and lungs. The railroadthat had been commissioned to take him to the lockup had failed. Something on the track or someone had stopped the train long enough to stir his jailors, and in their naïvedisorientation had given him all the opportunity an animal like himself needed. Their blood was still covering patches of his clothing, which themselves seemed to havedisintegrated in the days he had spent on the desert floor. Now he continued onward, he hoped in a good direction, but he had been running for solong now. So long without face or hand to greet, just the steady never ending flow of heatdown and up over him, and the very occasional harsh squeals of birds and creatures thatsomehow seemed to live out here.His knees hit something and would probably have caused him serious pain had he been ina more fit state of mind. He never got a chance to notice that the sign read the name of the town before him, Dragoon.He found the town now mostly dead and without the hustle and bustle he was used to back in New Orleans. There was no industry here to generate enthusiasm such as in places like Deadwood and New York. This place was here as many places seemed to bethese days, a place between places, waiting for the railroad to arrive. Well the railroadseemed to have passed by this place long ago, and it simply lay here dead as a chicken ashe would say. It made him sick to think about it, but he would have to use this place tofreshen up, before making a swift departure eastward.At the edge of town, at the end of the high street overgrown with weeds, where nobodyseemed to venture very often he stood and looked about, noticing the lesser of three barsto his left, and headed in its direction.He entered through the doors, and looked around at the clientele. ‘What a sorry bunch.’He muttered so they could hear.Five people lay slumped at their various tables and the young bartender looking equallyas light witted behind the bar to the left.He slumped himself in one of the barstools as growled “Whisky, boy!”The pistol he placed on the bar seemed to inject some speed into the boy. He poured alarge whisky at the far end of the bar, placed it onto the bar and slid it across into the black man’s meaty hand. On the underside of the bar a spider the size of his hand ran inthe direction of his thigh, but as the man turned around and stood up it stopped and wentabout its business.He saw that most of the men here were now looking at him with a drunken curiosity, anda few of them seemed to have sensed that there was trouble afoot.“Here’s to your shit stinkin’ town!” he said and necked half of his drink before pouringthe rest over his hair. He shook it from his head like a wild dog and then began lookingaround the bar.“Clothes and horse… now who’s going to give it me?” he said slapping one mans beer
onto the floor.“Come on now.” He said, then noticed that the man at the next table was wearing the badge of the sheriff. “Ahhh. Now there’s a man with a horse. Stand up!”He grabbed the drunken sheriff by the shirt and by the throat and pulled him out of hisseat. He barely stood and tried to reason with him unsuccessfully. “Shut up!” he saidslapping him with the back of his hand. “Get undressed. Shirt and pants.”The sheriff did so as did the man, and within moments he was wearing the sheriff’sclothing. He picked off the badge and threw it to the floor.“You.” He pointed at a man at the table behind the sheriffs. “Where’s the horses here?”“Stables, far end of town. That way. Please just take one and leave.”“I’ll leave when I’m good and done.” He said and shot the man in the shoulder.A woman he hadn’t noticed in the corner screamed, and he turned to drool in her direction. She was old, possibly in her 50s but in his mindset he had lost all suchreasoning. “Been a while for me now. Maybe this is what it takes to get rid of me boys.What do ya say?”The bartender now spoke up. “Please, we are going to be married next month. Please justtake anything you need and go.”“Well maybe I will and maybe I won’t. You never can tell with old Roberts. Hell I don’tthink I have the energy but we’ll see.”Roberts turned and scanned around the place, and catching sight of a glint of metal hewalked over to a table at the back wall.“Hey cowboy.” He said. “You shoot any cattle lately? I bet you’ve never used that on aman before.”“No, never.” The man said. “Just the bulls.”“But your sitting there with it on your belt like your some kind of big tough guy. Let’ssee how tough ‘you are now? Come on.”“What?” the man stammered, as Robert’s thick hands reached down for him and pulledhim, less forcefully than the sheriff to his feet. He guided him to the door as the womanscreeched once again.“This is what I need. Let’s get real rough.”Outside Roberts pushed the man into the street as a few heads turned to look. He walkeda little ways down the road and turned to look at the man, who now stood up straight.“What the hell is this?” the man said naively.“It’s a draw you monkey. Five seconds, starting now.”He didn’t count, but the five seconds elapsed and he pulled his gun on the man andsqueezed the trigger. His bullet fired up over into the air, and he realised slowly that theother mans bullet had fired first and struck his hand. It had cut away three of his fingersand twisted the gun out of its aim. Roberts looked at the man for a few moments,ignoring his fingers which lay round his feet, and profusely bleeding hand.He turned and ran toward the far side of town, and then out of town and back into thedesert. He ran and ran, cursing the town and the cowboy.Back in town, the townsfolk stared at the cowboy, who now turned back toward the bar with tears visible in his eyes. He ran up and back inside and slumped across the bar. Histears dropped onto the wood, and he found himself surrounded by members of the town.“Don’t feel bad boy.” an old man said.“Definitely not.” The older woman said walking behind the bar. “Peter, get back here and
serve the cowboy whatever he wants. Everything on the house now. Everything!”Someone behind the throng began clapping but stopped as he realised he was not going to be joined. The crowd was enthusiastic though, and he felt the warmth from them,something he hadn’t experienced in a while.Miles outside of town, Roberts thought that maybe he was safe and that nobody was in pursuit. He turned to look at the town, now a small shape within the ripples of heat fromthe land.Behind him, out of the land, a large creature, living in a hole beneath a lid it had createditself from the dirt, lunged out and pinned Roberts to the ground. Roberts, totallydisorientated, registered that one of its enormous fangs had pierced his left shoulder, andthat two of its legs were wrapped and locked around his torso. It was a spider, bigger thansix horses, and living out here, just outside of town. These facts began to ring true as it pulled him slowly toward its hole. He groaned and then attempted to muster a scream asthe lid closed back over them.A short distance away, on the closest of a number of farmsteads along the edge of themountain range, Charles Ferguson had a short story of his own.Wolves had been attacking all winter and had gotten worse now into the spring. So hehad set up a makeshift trap out of the barn, utilising a portcullis and using a quarter of hischickens as bait he was able to catch and slaughter over twenty of the buggers.As night fell he decided to check the barn again, since he hadn’t caught anything since acouple of days ago. His wife, Agatha had shouted something at him as he left steppingout into the cool of the dark on the front porch. He often ignored her these days as it wasalways the same old whining about something.It took about a minute to walk across to the barn. He looked through the large poles thathe had enclosed the rear opening of the barn with, and saw only the hay that he had piledup against it. Even with the oil lamp he was carrying it was hard to see inside at this hour.But then he heard something. A rustling from inside and then a large thump.“Jobe, is that you boy?” he said, calling for his favourite of his three dogs, who wouldoften follow him out here and could possibly have been trapped instead of the wolves. Hehad renamed the dog after his son who had died just after receiving the dog as a present. Now Jobe lived on in the hound. Charles had originally done this out of sentiment, but hismind had deteriorated into old age, and the line between what he had intended, and whathe now sometimes believed about the dog, was beginning to blur.Jobe barked far behind him on the porch, and was interrupted by a larger thudshouldering against the hay and portcullis. Whatever had sprung the trap had been larger than a wolf, and in fact maybe even as large as a steer. If he had accidentally caught astray steer he might be in allot of trouble. Some of those cowboys can get meansometimes when they think they’re being swindled. But something inside told him itwasn’t a steer.He leant lower and strained to look through a gap in the logs, and in the glow within hesaw the shoulder of something close on the other side. It was black and sporadicallyhairy, unlike anything he had seen but his heart sank slightly as he realised it could well be a steer of some kind.He stumbled slightly on the rocky land around the back of the barn and as he did thelantern hit one of the logs. As he righted himself he heard something on the other side
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