MicroHorror

Constable Ballou was sitting behind his desk smoking a long, black cigarillo when the commotion in the streets compelled him to move. He saw the citizenry standing statuesque in the streets as they watched the curious pair that walked toward the station. It was Deputy Cat escorting another man who was bound about the wrists with chains. Ballou stepped out to greet them as they shuffled up.

“Sheriff ain’t here,” Ballou said. He looked at the prisoner. He stood hunched and inert, his body draped with a knee-length overcoat with the hood pulled over his head. Ballou looked, but the man’s face was shadow-draped.

“I know,” Cat said. He pointed at the building. “You go on ahead and have yerself a seat right in there.” The prisoner said nothing. He trudged past Ballou like a doped elephant. As he passed, Ballou caught a whiff of the stench emanating from the prisoner–a mix of sweat, urine, and dirt. Ballou pinched his nose. He watched the prisoner go, and then he turned to the deputy. Cat was scratching his head with his face defined with confusion like an ape.

“What’s this all about?” Ballou said.

Cat shrugged. “Don’t know, but that feller says he’s done killed a buncha folks up in Clarkson. He swears by it.”

Ballou raised an eyebrow. “Killed some folks up in Clarkson? How many?”

Cat looked up, his face awash in something resembling incredulity, like a man struggling to accept the sight of something before unknown and altogether fantastical. “All of ’em,” he said. Constable Ballou said nothing. He turned and went inside.

The stranger was sitting at the sheriff’s desk, and Ballou sat across from him. They sat in silence for several moments, Ballou watching the stranger as the stranger watched the floor. The man rocked in his seat, wobbling like a drunk at sea.

“Cat says you done killed some folks,” Ballou said. “Up in Clarkson. That true?”

The stranger cocked his head slightly, and Ballou found himself looking down caved and blackened sockets, the stranger’s eyes tiny and obsidian like a rat’s.

“That’s right,” the stranger said. His voice was raspy, as if his throat was devoid of any manner of fluid. The voice of a desert wanderer. The stranger coughed, the sound phlegm-laden.

“Who’d you kill?”

“All of ’em. They all dead.”

Ballou rubbed his temples and shook his head. “There’s six hundred folks up in Clarkson. You tellin’ me you managed to kill all of ’em?”

“That’s what I’m tellin’ ya.”

“There’s some healthy fellers up in them parts. Just how is it you managed to kill all them folks, but you yerself walked out alive?”

The stranger grinned wearily. “They don’t know I done it.”

“You understand what yer sayin’, don’t ya? Yer confessin’ to the murder of a whole town, fella. You’d swear an oath to that claim?”

“I will.” He was nodding, still smirking slightly.

The sheriff leaned back in his chair and tilted his hat back. “So if I was to ride down to Clarkson, I’d find ’em dead. That right?”

“Dead as hammers. Every goddamned one of ’em.” The stranger coughed raggedly again. He was no longer smiling.

The sheriff paused. He leaned closer to the stranger, the better to see his shadowed face. He said, “Take that hood off. Let me get a look at ya. So yer tellin’ me here today, in front of The Almighty hisself, that you’re the murderer of six hundred souls?”

The stranger lifted his head and pulled back his hood. His face was pale, dripping with sweat, and his eyes were sunk back so far into their sockets as to be nearly invisible. The veins protruded from his face, and across the whole of it, pulpy, purple boils pulsed with each heartbeat as if they themselves were living things. The stranger leaned forward and coughed in Ballou’s face. He grinned again.

“Six hundred and one… now,” he said.