Hallowed Ground Read Free

Alley.   What he marked as peculiar about their behavior was that not once did two birds settle on the same roof.   Within minutes the carrion eaters rested on the rooftops of every building in Rookwood, one bird to each.
    The last of the murder came to rest on the balcony rail less than a yard from where Creed stood.   It regarded him with jaundiced eyes.
    "Can’t say as I like the look of this," Silas mumbled, shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably.   The fool still had breadcrumbs in his beard.
    "Perhaps they’ve come for us," Creed said. "They do say that the crows reap the souls of the living and carry them back to the land of the dead.   Maybe that’s what this is.   Maybe the birds have come to carry us all away," he reached out quickly and caught the crow's soft body in his hands.   With a quick, deadly twist he wrung its neck.
    He looked up at Silas, tossed the crow aside, and laughed.
    "Or maybe not.   Now, what were you saying about bad business?"
    Silas wasn't listening.   He was standing very still, staring past the rail and down the street.   Creed followed the direction of Silas Boone’s gaze.   The tavern keeper had locked onto the small black form nested on his own roof.
    "I could kill that one as well, if it would help you concentrate?"
    Silas shook his head. "No, no.   What was I saying?   Bad business.   Yes.   Messengers rode through town this morning.   They said they’d witnessed some mighty peculiar goings on out toward Scar Crag."
    "How so?"
    "They came across a trapper's enclave, only there was no sign of the trappers.   Neither hide nor hair of them to be found.   The camp appeared to be abandoned, and they left everything behind.   They didn't stop to investigate, but they kept their eyes open.   No sign of anyone on or around the road."
    "You thinking Indians?   Coyotes?"
    "I ain’t thinking a thing," Silas Boone said. "That the camp was empty was just one strange thing, and it wasn't the strangest."
    "No?"
    "No."
    "Then what was?"
    Silas Boone told him.

Chapter Three
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    Ma Kutter heard scratching on the roof.
    It was a small insistent sound, like rats picking away at the shingles.
    "Get away!" she shouted, pushing herself out of her chair.   The fire was warm, the light from the oil lamp low, casting shadows across the gable.   She grunted.   Her back ached when she straightened up.   It was always worse at night.   Her joints froze as the burden of dragging her old bag of bones around wore them down.   She sank back into the chair, exhausted from even that small exertion.
    Such were the joys of age.   She was getting shorter by the year and sprouting ugly grey whiskers from her chin like a crone in stories told to frighten children.   There had been a time when she'd turned heads, but all that remained was a shriveled up hag barely able to stand for a minute or more without someone to lean on.
    A hock of wild pig boiled on the fire.   The water hissed and sizzled as it spilled over the brim of the tin pan.
    The scratching on the roof grew steadily louder.
    Without it she might have heard the other sounds, the slight susurrus and the death rattle as the viper slid from the darkness to coil slowly around the leg of her chair. Ma Kutter felt its scaled skin brush her ankle but by then it was already too late.   She barely felt the pin-prick of the snake’s fangs sinking into her soft fatty flesh.   It was the sudden flush of warmth as the venom entered her blood that gave it away.   By then she was already dead.
    As she slumped in her chair, her hands clutching weakly at the arms, the scratching on the roof stopped.   The serpent wound its way past her, out through a crack in the door and into the shadows beyond.

Chapter Four
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    Creed was up before the sun.   His head had the empty, hollow ache of lingering whiskey, and his belly crawled with hot, thick