THE STAIRS

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

By R. Peterson

It was nothing more than a cluster of nine ironwood trees grouped around an artesian spring that bubbled out of the ground. But to endless wagon trains crossing the plains on their way to Oregon Territory it was a welcome relief from the hot, dry journey. They named the watering place Shade. For a decade, during the eighteen fifties, Shade collected an assortment of leaking barrels, broken wagon wheels and cast-off furniture as weary and newly refreshed travelers struggled to lighten their heavy loads. Because it was the only source of water for forty miles in any direction, Shade was marked on all but the most careless maps.

The first permanent settlers were a group of sixty-nine secular moralists driven out of Borley, Essex, England whose wild-eyed prophet and revelator, Alistair David, opened his corrected version of the King James Bible and proclaimed with majestic reverence while preaching from a wagon seat, “This is the sacred coppice from which we shall wage war on the fiery demons from Hell and abolish all sin on Earth!”

Less than a year later, travelers found the only relief from the scorching sun at the strange oasis was the shadow of a stone and ironwood church. Its black steeple in the shape of a barbed spear seemed to pierce the sky. Fear drifted like a stench from shacks barns and stock-pens. Water from the spring was obtained at devilish prices and religious intolerance, of a severity never before seen on Earth, bid all wheels to keep rolling.

One thing that hadn’t changed was the habit of discarding weight on overloaded wagons. The outskirts of Shade were littered with a vast assortment of items no longer deemed of value.

Alistair David and his congregation were horrified one Sunday morning, after a train of more than thirty wagons from Louisiana rumbled past, to find a ragged haired woman with paint around her mouth and eyes. She spoke in tongues and a wooden sign hung about her neck declared her name Jane and that she was found extraconjugal. She wore a torn, black dress with red lace and sported a belly like a ripe watermelon as she sat on a broken wagon-tongue, rubbed her swollen belly and whispered the words to “Ah! May the red rose live always …”

The good, with growing faith, closed and bolted the doors to the black church once they were safely inside … and then prayed all day. The beggar woman, shoeless and in rags, was thereafter only glimpsed at night and by their holy grace … the wretch known as Jane became invisible in the light.

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The hamlet of Shade slowly incubated trepidation. Crusts of moldy bread saturated with broken egg shells and bacon lard were known to disappear from the feed troughs of several swine producers as well as discarded cobs from a number of corn cribs. A barn burned. Several cows began to fill only half their milk buckets! An infection of measles appeared on the face of a child and then ran screaming through the village. Alistair David’s wife, Rebecca, developed an enormous boil on the side of her nose and Alistair was stricken with palsy when he attempted to lance it. It snowed at the end of June and for three terrible days, storm clouds, dropping hailstones the size of eggs, blocked out the sun. A dog foamed at the mouth and chewed a dozen of Rex Morton’s chickens. Cloven hoof-prints danced around the outside of the church after each rain. Candles refused to light. Oil lamps began to speak … in the voice of snakes …

When blood-stains were found in Joseph Wright’s hayloft and the starving Jane was later discovered hiding in a ravaged corn field clutching a new-born infant, as black as the gates of Hell, the frightened and bewildered villagers once again took sanctuary in their holy church.

“Thou shalt suffer no witch to live!” Alistair thundered from his corrected Bible. The congregation stood and sang. They prayed until the pathway to justice was shown them by God’s word. The only thing that remained was choosing the method of ridding Christ’s kingdom of this Bride of Satin and the ever-screeching black Demon Offspring that suckled her scant breasts.

“Burn her!” The righteous cried.

“The witch can burn … but what of her imp?” Mary Wright, totally devoted to Alistair David’s new, corrected Bible, declared. “Would not the flames be soothing to a demon fresh from the fires of Hell?”

Justice consumed the righteous like a fever … and they planned long into the night.

“The witch shall burn and the spawn of the devil shall hang, both at the same time least one return from death to provide mercy to the other!”

“If this truly be God’s will, then he will demand a sacrifice!”

“Who shall pay the price for justice?”

“I shall not touch her!”

“Nor will I!”

After a long night of reason it was decided …

“The match must come from the child … and the rope from the mother!”

Before the first rooster began to crow, with torches they drove the terrified woman and her child into a storage cellar and then for three days the righteous tore down their sacred church for wood for the fire and to build a gallows. It was they without sin who would pay God’s price. The walls of their house of worship splintered and became kindling while the stone-hard black ironwood steeple became a set of thirteen dark and terrible stairs.

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With a rope tied about her neck Rex dragged Jane up the platform and with the points of burning sticks several of the villagers persuaded her to finally slip a thick noose around the screaming infant’s neck. Once the begging and hysterical woman was lashed to a pole in the center of the wood-pile the congregation waited only for a signal from the Devil’s child.

The village of Shade was strangely silent. Each breath was like a gust of wind. After several minutes Alistair jabbed the infant with a hay-fork. A cry pierced the air. The fires were lit and the trap-door opened.

The rope was too thick and the tiny neck too small. The baby dangled without weight kicking and bawling as the struggling mother sputtered and became flames. Screams from the gallows were echoed from the fire … and after ageless and terrible minutes … they became as one.

Most eyes were closed, but all heard the infernal thumping. Those few who dared to look into the face of justice saw the embers of the glowing mother slowly ascend the stairs and free the kicking child. One word, screamed with a fury that crossed the boundaries of Hell, echoed across the plains … “Meurtre!”

Smoke filled the air and day became as night. Unseen beasts not of this world large and small were heard moving through the darkness. Some things of great worth were taken … never to be returned. The fires of justice then proved insatiable to a hungry wind … and the entire village burned.

There was nothing of value left in Shade and Alistair and company, after much praying, joyful and with newborn faith, moved westward. Rain and snow eventually crumbled the charred timbers of Shade and a year later all that remained was a spring and thirteen dark ironwood stairs … rising from the ashes into destiny.

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The water coming from Shade’s precious spring had become horribly fouled, by what … no one knew. It was said the road on both sides of the damned village were littered with skulls. Vultures could be seen circling the area for miles. It didn’t take long for immigrants traveling to Oregon Territory to start using a different route.

It was pure chance then that Collier A. Jagger, a wealthy British immigrant whose map had blown away in the wind, happened upon the remains of Shade and discovered the intact stairs rising out of the ashes. He marveled at the hardness of the wood that kept the structure from being consumed like the rest of the village and being Scottish on his mother’s side, took some measurements. The thirteen stairs and the small landing would fit exactly, with minor alterations, a basement that had been excavated for a new hotel in Montana. He of course had heard the gossip concerning the village but scoffed at all superstitions and stories about ghosts. He was returning from a not completely successful furniture buying trip to St. Louis and had extra space on one of his eight wagons. He and six Chinese ex-railroad-workers tied the stairs to an empty buckboard … and off they went.

The town of South Fork had progressed from a tent city to a boom-town almost overnight. It was lucky he’d found the intact stairs. This saved at least another nine hours man-labor. The hotel construction was already two weeks behind schedule. The property had been acquired from the railroad for hardly more than a song but no sooner was the excavation complete than an old Indian appeared sitting on the dirt floor of the basement chanting death songs from dusk until dawn. The Indian, whether real or spectral as some insisted,  proved most difficult, even for a hired gunfighter from Salt Lake City, to remove. The problem was finally resolved when the area where the Indian sat was finally walled up. The troublesome singing stopped, but to Collier’s dismay, the workers had inserted a large iron door in the prison-like room and upon questioning they told him it was so he could ascertain whether the chanting-savage was still there. He could have cared less.

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The hotel was finished in three months; not an easy task for a structure of such magnificence.  The hotel soared four stories above ground-level and was as richly furbished, including two elevators and indoor plumbing, as any lodge west of the Alleghenies. Collier A. Jagger himself occupied the top-floor Presidential Suite on Grand Opening night. Room 419 was a prime example of comfort and luxury. A well-stocked bar occupied one corner of the state room while a grand-piano manufactured in Spain occupied another. There were no less than three feather-down mattresses on the king-size bed in the center of the room and bell-hops and maids were only a jingle away.

All the rooms were booked for at least the first month and Collier went to sleep that night a very happy and soon to be much wealthier man.

Collier thought something was odd when he awakened during the night and stared at the clock hung above the fireplace. The fire had burned down to red-orange embers but the clock’s face could still be read. Superstition or not, something about the numbers bothered him. 4:19 AM and room 419 seemed too much of a coincidence. He listened carefully but the noisy hotel was in perhaps its quietest hours. Collier closed his eyes and was almost asleep again when a thumping noise sounded from far below. He looked for the bell on the table next to his bed but it was missing. The hair on the back of his neck stood erect … as something ascended the stairs in the basement.

TO BE CONTINUED ….