THE STAIRS part 2

Copyright (c) 2019 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

THE STAIRS

Part 2

By R. Peterson

Collier Jagger climbed out of bed and crossed the room looking for the source of the strange sounds. He could tell the noise was someone or something ascending the stairs in the basement far below but how was he able to her it so clearly from his suite on the fourth floor? The answer came from the ventilation pipes installed for the indoor plumbing. He put his ear next to the cold pipe and listened. The metal apparently acted as a conduit for the supernatural sounds he was hearing. He listened carefully and then heard the back exit-door next to the hotel manager’s small apartment open; whatever had climbed the stairs was going outside.

Jagger’s first thought was the phantom Indian; if only the workers hadn’t put a metal door in the tiny prison-room they sealed the bawling savage in! He used the elevator and found the basement door open as well as the one going outside. The last thing he wanted was to go into the basement at 4:30 AM but he did, ascending the ironwood stairs dressed only in a robe and holding a flickering oil lamp. The stairs burned his bare feet in places and when he looked closely he could see the super hard-wood treads glowing slightly like the fire-box on a steam locomotive. Whatever had come up the stairs had left fiery footprint images from the depths of hell. There was no turning back; he had to know. The metal door hadn’t been opened since the basement was finished. Collier took several deep breaths and then held them. The hinges creaked as he slowly pulled on the handle. The ancient Indian sat on the dirt floor the song he sang growing louder as the door opened …. “Na ya hay hay na hay hay … a hay na!”

Collier Jagger closed and latched the door then closed the outside door once he’d ascended the stairs. If it wasn’t the Indian spirit that had gone outside then who or what had slipped out of his hotel? Back in his fourth floor suite he crept back to bed and rammed his eyes shut but sleep was elusive. Two hours after the sun was up he washed and dressed.

-------2-------

Sheriff Thomas Lang was returning from a three day pursuit of rustlers when he spotted the vultures circling low over the desert east of South Fork. Something was dead or dying. Not dead yet, he thought, and clamped his heels into Comanche’s flanks. The high spirited mare surged into an easy gallop. The simple fact that the giant birds still spiraled in the air made him think something was alive … he was wrong.

A wagon sat just off the trail and the horses were gone. Barrels of flour, sugar and salt had been broke open and scattered to the wind. A rank smell like rotting cabbage led the sheriff about a hundred yards through sage and behind a large pile of rocks. What was left of a man lay stretched and staked-out naked over a huge red-ant nest. The man’s tongue had been cut away and attacked to his nose with a nail. Flies buzzed angrily when Tom brushed them away from the man’s face. There, carved into his forehead, was a single word: Meurtre. Tom had been to Louisiana and knew the word was French for murder.

At least a dozen of the big birds had been fighting over the strips of flesh that still hung on the desecrated corpse. It hadn’t rained for over a week and the sheriff examined the area around the torture-site carefully. It wasn’t Indians! There wasn’t so much as a moccasin print anywhere. Oddly, the only tracks he found were bare footprints and small, so either a child’s or a woman’s. The desert sand was too hot for any sane person to walk on without shoes. It looked like whoever left the tracks had walked in circles around the dying man numerous times … possibly for hours. He followed the tracks when they left to the top of a small hill where they disappeared. “You must have sprouted wings like your friends,” Tom muttered as he glanced back at the vultures that were once again landing.

The sheriff gathered clothing that had been scattered by the wind and varmints in all directions. Inside a torn, black coat-pocket, the kind preachers favored for Sunday show and tell, Tom found a tiny Bible and a supply-bill made out to The Church of the Devine Blood, Grace, Montana … it was signed by Rex Morton.

“Looks like you woke up the Devil, Mr. Morton!” Tom said as he removed a shovel from his horse pack. “I can’t give you a proper funeral but I can keep the buzzards from carting off all your bones until whoever cares can claim what’s left!”

The sheriff worked fast, throwing up clouds of sand, because he couldn’t leave this place fast enough. It was an all-night ride to Grace.

-------3-------

Collier Jagger paid three men from a blacksmith shop ten dollars to attach six heavy chains around the door of the special room in the basement and to put a heavy lock with three bolts on the door at the top of the stairs. He stood and watched for the entire four hours it took them to finish the job. “He must have his wife locked up down there,” one of the men muttered to his friends as they took the money, handed Collier the keys and then headed for the saloon.

Room 419 had been reserved for a whiskey drummer from Wichita, Kansas but Collier decided to spend another night and had the desk clerk switch rooms. Money wasn’t made by men who left things to chance. He had to make sure the troubles his new hotel had drawn from the frontier soil had been put to rest.

Jagger couldn’t sleep, even though he’d drank most of a bottle of Red Eye Whiskey. Just before midnight he re-lit the oil lamp and took a Gideon’s Bible from the table-drawer next to the bed. Religion was at odds with making money but Collier found himself drawn to a passage in Exodus 22:18 Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live! He read the verse at least a dozen times until finally the book fell out of his shaking hands and landed upside down on the floor. He stuffed the book back in the drawer and then finished the bottle.  The hands on the clock hung above the fireplace were almost on midnight when he closed his eyes.

-------4-------

The hands on the clock showed just before 4:20 AM. What had awakened him? Collier held his breath and listened. His own heartbeat sounded like a boy beating a drum at a Fourth of July parade. Snoring sounds came from the room just below him.   Minutes later, a toilet flushed at the end of the long hallway. Then he heard the outside door, four floors below, open. Someone had sneaked into the hotel. Collier was already dressed. He only took time to remove a Colt 45 from the small safe imbedded in a wall in every luxury suite. Jagger had taken great pains to see that nothing got out of the basement and now someone or something was coming into his hotel from the outside. The new elevators operated by steam from boilers in the basement on the opposite end from the room where the Indian was kept. It was summer and warm weather made certain there was no shortage of steam but Collier took the stairs anyway. Why risk it?

The rear exit door to the hotel stood gaping wide-open as did the thrice locked and bolted door to the basement stairs. Collier Jagger was furious. Where was the night clerk? How could he have allowed an intruder into his hotel? The clerk wasn’t in his room. Disheveled bed covers shown he had risen in a hurry. Jagger stopped long enough to light an oil lamp from the clerk’s room.

The flickering lamp light cast dancing shadows across the immaculate lobby. Both elevator doors stood open … inviting. A long shadow seemed out of place, swaying gently across the rich Persian carpeting. Collier lifted the lamp a second before he looked up. Joseph Wright the newly hired night-clerk swung by his neck from a crudely tied noose made from drapery cord. A crude sign hung around his neck.  Collier tried to scream but his throat was suddenly as dry as sand. A shot fired into the floor from the gun in his hand was followed by a second … awakened the guests.

-------5-------

Thomas Lang dozed in the saddle as Comanche plodded down the empty street. He glanced at the watch he kept in his front pocket. It was a little before six and the sun hadn’t risen but still there should be someone around. A bouncing tumble-weed crossed the street in front of him and stopped next to the town well. Good luck pulling up that bucket Tom thought. A yellow dog bared its teeth in a soundless growl and then slinked back into a darkened alley. Strange there were several stores … but no saloon.

All the buildings seemed cold and lifeless and Tom was tempted to turn around and ride out the way he’d come in when he heard singing. The voices came from a small church built on a hill. Strange, it was only Thursday. The metal looking spire in the shape of a barbed spear point seemed to touch the sky. Tom rode past thick fields of corn and several newly filled graves as he climbed the hill. No grass had yet sprouted above the departed. The cemetery that surrounded the place of worship had no fence … only a wooden sign hanging on a scarecrow that read …. Extraconjugal.

TO BE CONTINUED …..