Skin Medicine by Tim Curran Page B

prostitute called Abilene Sue. Waiting alone in her room.
    Quickly then, he darted into a closet.
    In the cramped, close darkness he heard the sound of boots and the jingle of spurs as the beasts looked into the room, departed. He had not heard a sound of them upstairs in over ten minutes now. Even downstairs, it had gone to a grim silence. There was a finality to that sound. A cessation, he thought, of hostilities.
    His heart pounding and his breath wheezing in his lungs, Provo opened the door a sliver.
    The room appeared to be empty.
    His ears listened and heard nothing but a distant dripping, a loose board on the roof rattling in the wind.
    Quietly, he slipped out of his hole. His chest was tight and pained, he could barely draw a breath. He stepped out into the corridor…and promptly went on his ass in a pool of blood.
    And in the light of a single oil lamp, what he saw…dear Christ.
    Blood was sprayed and spilled everywhere. It was pooled on the floor and painted on the walls and even sprinkled on the ceiling. There was a smeared handprint in it just a few feet from him. There were bodies in the corridor with him, parts of them. He saw heads, limbs, a single gutted torso like something hanging in a butcher’s shop. There was tissue and flesh and the raw, metallic stink of it got down into his belly and pulled everything back up with it.
    Provo vomited and sobbed and coughed.
    It could get no worse than this, it could surely get no worse.
    But then it did.
    He heard something like a low, rasping/snarling sound and one of the beasts stepped from a doorway. It looked very much like an animal, like some wolf right down to the jutting snout and luminous green eyes and feral teeth. But it was dressed like a man, leaning there against the doorway and looking…amused. Yes, amused. It had the appetites of a blood-maddened beast, but the brain and overall form of a man. A single claw scratched at a pointed ear.
    Another beast came up the steps, walking hunched over slightly, its nostrils flaring, tasting, smelling and then… yes, finding prey. Finding Provo. A ribbon of drool fell from its lips. Its brow was exaggerated, furry and jutting, shading those jade eyes in bony hollows.
    Provo pissed himself.
    But he could not speak, not even think of begging for his life…he was simply awed by these things, these demons what had burst the gates of hell. A stench came off them, an ugly odor of blood and meat. The beasts seemed to nod to one another, thick lips pulling back from those anxious teeth.
    A third one came up the steps, elbowed past the others.
    The beasts grunted and snapped at one another.
    This latest one wore a duster, a wide-brimmed hat like the others. Its shirt was open to the waist, the hairy and oddly muscular chest heaving with each breath it sucked through that blood-dripping maw. It carried a Colt pistol in each clawed hand. And they were hands, Provo saw, not pads or paws, but hands. Human hands. But grotesquely long and narrow, the fingers incredibly thin and taloned.
    It spit a gob of blood on the floor. Its teeth unclenched like a spiked mantrap and it made a gargling, guttural sound in its throat that became a voice of all things. ” You make it past us, you little fuck, we let you live…”
    The others laughed…a strangled, wet laughter.
    Maybe it was instinct or terror or God-knows-what, but Provo sprang to his feet and decided to run the gauntlet. He charged right at the Hide-Hunters and such was his ferocity, they actually stepped back. And maybe he would have made it. Maybe.
    But something tripped him up.
    Something sent him crashing into that greasy stew of human remains and as he squirmed and fought on the floor to be free…he saw it was entrails. Human entrails spread over the floor like wet ropes and he had stepped into them in his mad dash and snared his foot.
    Shrieking, he tried to untangle himself. But they were oily and rubbery and moist. He only tangled himself worse. The first two