text: Jake had been deputy sheriff for about three weeks when the stranger drove into town. At first, he was puzzled: he’d thought he’d met everyone in this God-forsaken place - hell, he saw most of ‘em in the saloon every night - but this man was unknown to him. And then, as the horse slowed to a halt and long, lean limbs unfolded themselves from the driver’s seat, he realised his mistake. Years of hardship had etched lines on the woman’s face, but he thought she would be beautiful if she ever smiled. “Who’s that?” he asked Hal Murdoch. A sour expression crossed the saloon keeper’s face. “That’s Annie.” Not someone’s wife; not someone’s sister. Just Annie. Jake waited for an explanation that didn’t arrive, then watched as Annie strode into Sam’s mercantile, her long hair snaking down her back in a copper-coloured plait. Her steps were swift and businesslike - as if she didn’t want to waste precious time here. Intrigued by the air of mystery she exuded, he followed her in and pretended to examine the small, neat pistol out on display. “Usual order, Annie?” he heard Sam ask. The woman shrugged her response, her eyes restlessly roving the store as if she were a caged animal. From the corner of his eye, Jake watched Sam weigh out a sack of sugar and another of flour, then nod towards a barrel of beans. Without saying a word, the woman tipped the barrel onto its side and began rolling it out of the building towards her waiting wagon. He stepped after her, intending to help her heave the heavy weight into the vehicle, but she hefted it easily without a sign of exertion. Feeling useless, he grabbed one of the smaller sacks and hurried it out to her. She took it without a word of thanks. “I’m Jake, the new deputy,” he said. She merely nodded, avoiding eye contact, and turned on her heel to re-enter the store. It was only as Sam was adding up her purchases that the woman spoke. “I’ll take a packet of needles too, and some thread.” The husky tone of her voice was strangely alluring. After she’d gone, he wandered back into the mercantile. “What’s her story?” he asked. “How come I ain’t seen her before?” Sam scowled. “Nothin’ to tell. She lives on a homestead a good 8 miles or more from here - her and her kids.” There was a deliberate pause. “Folks say she killed her husband.” That night, his mind kept returning to her as he lay on his narrow cot, unable to sleep. He saw the long copper plait and imagined how she would look if her hair were loose and tumbling about her face. He remembered the leanness of her body - so different to the fleshy curves of the whores in the cathouse - and wondered how it would feel if her limbs were wrapped around his. When morning came, he was still thinking of her: she was an itch that couldn’t be satisfied. Days bled into one another as winter set in. The air was crisper, colder, and daylight disappeared well before its appointed time of departure. Jake kept watch for Annie, but she didn’t reappear. After a few weeks of waiting, he resolved to lay his obsession to rest. * He was unprepared for the flurry of activity that greeted him on All Hallows Eve. Waking to the sound of hammering, he peered out of his doorway, bleary-eyed, to see what all the fuss was about. Heavy planks were being nailed across doors; the saloon and Sam’s mercantile were definitely closed for business. “What’s all the commotion?” he asked Henry Martin, the town doctor. “Jes’ a few precautions.” The older man’s gaze did not meet his own. “It happens every year. People have been known to... disappear.” “Disappear?” Henry’s expression was invisible beneath his big, black, bushy beard. “This used to be a place of nigh on five hundred people,” he said eventually. “These days, we’re lucky if can count more’n a hundred.” “What happened to them?” He was deputy sheriff; why had no one mentioned this to him before? Henry shrugged. “You’d best lock your door tonight - or better still, get out of town. Come tomorrow, there’ll be a pile more empty buildings.” Throughout the rest of the day, Jake watched as the population dwindled. Those who did not climb into carts and drive away simply retreated into the buildings that lined the town’s single street, and he now heard the sound of people hammering their doors shut from the inside to ward off the impending disaster. It was only as dusk began to stretch out tentative fingers that he thought of Annie. Was her homestead far enough away to keep her safe from whatever was coming? He knew she had two children - a girl and a boy - and that she lived due north on an isolated farm with no neighbours. An idea came into his mind. He saw himself arriving at her door, offering protection. She might be sufficiently grateful to smile at him - maybe even take him into her bed. He thought once more of her long limbs and her long hair, and his longing threatened to overwhelm him. Grabbing the pistol he’d bought a few weeks earlier from Sam, he tucked it inside his coat pocket and went off to find a horse. He should have remembered how quickly night fell in winter. Darkness enveloped him as he trotted along, leaving the town behind him and heading in what he hoped was the right direction. A faint sound on the breeze sent a chill down his spine. It sounded like screaming. He thought of Henry’s words and shuddered. He’d been going for perhaps twenty minutes when he caught sight of the dim outline of a building ahead of him. At the same time, he became aware of some sort of disturbance behind him. Something prompted him to turn his head, and what he saw almost made him fall off his horse in fright. A mass of creatures was moving in his direction. What they were, he wasn’t sure; but they looked terrifying. He calculated their distance. If he didn’t urge his horse to a gallop, they could be on him in the next ten minutes. Never a confident rider, he tried to sound braver than he felt. He’d heard horses could sense fear. “C’mon, git!” he urged, kicking the animal’s sides with his feet in an attempt to make it move faster. The sudden spurt of speed startled him. He hung on grimly, willing himself not to fall off, and then an overhanging branch took him by surprise as it whacked into his shoulder. He felt an agonising jolt of pain as the joint dislocated, then his left arm was dangling uselessly, leaving him only one hand to cling onto the reins. Somehow, he managed to reach the homestead, but the creatures were now only five minutes away. He slid off the horse before he could fall off, the pain in his shoulder threatening to make him black out, and hammered on the door with his one good hand. The door opened a crack and Annie’s suspicious face peered out. “What do you want?” Her tone sounded ungracious. “Came to protect you.” He realised as he said it how ridiculous his words sounded accompanied by his useless arm. He was expecting her to invite him in, but she remained on the other side of the door, eying him through the tiny gap as if he were a potential danger. “Did you get bit?” she asked at last. Noting his incomprehension, she added more urgently, “Did one o’ them critters bite your arm?” “It was a tree branch,” he said, feeling foolish. “Ran into it afore I knew it was there.” She nodded at this. “Best come in, then,” she said, opening the door a little wider. He slipped inside and she slammed it shut. “You’ve got one arm that still works, ain’t you?” she said. “Hold this piece of wood for me while I nail us in.” She was as business-like now as she had been at the mercantile. He held the wood as steady as he could while she barricaded the door. Whatever was out there would have a job forcing its way in past that. “What are they?” he asked when she was finally finished. “Dead people,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “They come back every year, always on All Hallows Eve.” “What do they want.” “People they can turn.” Her eyes were hard. “That’s why I asked if you’d been bit. If you’d said yes, I would have put a bullet in you - it’s kinder that way.” Kinder? “That’s what happened to Jed - my husband.” The words were matter of fact but her face was bleak as she remembered. “After he got bit, I put a bullet in his brain.” “You killed your own husband?” “I did what I had to do to protect myself and my babies,” she said fiercely. There was a pause. “And I’ve been dead inside ever since.” For a while, there was silence - the only sounds the soughing of the wind outside and the strange animal moaning of the things that were approaching the farmhouse. Now that the rush of adrenaline had left him, he found his mind returning to the pain in his shoulder, and he struggled not to let it show on his face. “You want me to look at that arm of yours?” When he nodded his assent, she told him to take his shirt off. “It ain’t the best light for doctorin’,” she muttered, “but it’ll have to do.” She had to help him pull the shirt over his head. When her fingers touched his skin, they were rough and calloused. She was a working woman, not a fancy lady with time to sit around rubbing grease into her skin. He tried not to wince when she prodded his shoulder. “Reckon I could pop that back in for you,” she said casually. “You’ll be more help tonight with two working arms.” The firelight cast shadows on her face as she said it, and he was half-afraid and half in love at the same time. “What are your children’s names?” he asked, trying to take his mind off the fiery pain in his shoulder. “John - he’s ten. And Mary - she’s going on twelve. They’re in the storm cellar right now - I reckoned it ‘ud keep ‘em safe.” An agonising flame shot through him as she attempted to realign the dislocated joint. “You were a fool to ride over here,” she said abruptly. “You should have stayed in town - or got yourself clean away.” “I was thinking of your safety,” he protested. “Yours and the kids’.” “What do you want from me, lawman?” She sounded weary. “You’re not much older than they are - and that’s too young to be settin’ your cap at someone like me.” “I’m twenty-three,” he said defensively. “And I’m thirty-four.” He gazed at the taut, muscled body, lean beneath her man’s clothing, and thought once more of what it would be like to feel her moving beneath him. “Don’t you ever feel lonely, Annie?” It was the first time he’d used her name. “Some nights,” she said honestly, “but then I tell myself I don’t deserve to take another husband after killing the first one. I haven’t had a man since Jed died.” “You deserve to be happy,” he said softly. She laughed bitterly. “I don’t think I know what happiness is anymore,” she said. The noises outside were getting louder. Annie looked him squarely in the eye. “I could lie with you tonight,” she said, slowly and deliberately, “but it wouldn’t be loving - it would be need.” He wanted her to need him, but instead, she picked up her rifle. “Keep watch at the window at the back,” she said. “It’s time I blew me some brains outta them critters.” The next few hours passed in a blur. Shoot. Reload. Shoot. Reload. Sometimes, the creatures got as far as the door and he realised why Annie had reinforced it when he heard their claws scratching at the wood. “Have you got a gun of your own?” she gasped the first time she had to reload. By way of answer, he withdrew the pistol from his coat pocket. “Take over,” she ordered. “I just need you to hold them back while I top her up.” She was already fumbling for her powder horn. Jake took her spot by the front window and peeped through the shutters. The creatures did not seem decimated: if anything, there were more now than there had been when he arrived. “Duck!” Annie yelled suddenly. He heeded her warning just in time to see brains splatter the wall in front of him. “Darned varmints,” she muttered, scrambling over him to take back her perch. He watched the back of her, noting how she gave the task her full attention. She was world-weary; but somehow, when she was shooting those things, she became alive once more. Killing them gave her life a purpose. And he knew then that she would never look at him in such an animated way. All night long they kept the creatures at bay. Annie did not tire - even when they began swarming over the outside of the house. Some time before dawn, it was finally over and a pile of corpses littered the ground outside. “You’ll be safe now,” Jake said, almost as if he had been the one protecting her. Her reply chilled him to the bone. “For a time - maybe days; maybe months; maybe even years. But they’ll be back. And one of these days, we won’t be so lucky. One of these days, John or Mary will have to take my gun and shoot me in the head, just like I did their pa.” “Then come with me,” he argued. “You’ll be safer in the town.” She shook her head slowly as if marvelling at his stupidity. “Take a good look at the critters we killed,” she said, dragging him outside. She swung her lantern over the dead bodies and the lamplight picked out clothing, features he recognised. Doc Martin’s black, bushy beard. Sam’s plaid shirt and faded leather breeches. They were his townspeople, every one of them. “Why do you think we live out here on our own?” she said as his face blanched. “It’s because that town’s cursed. Jed had to shoot his own family - mine too. We moved out here, away from the town, so we’d be safe.” “I can take you and your kids somewhere else - somewhere safer,” he began, but she shook her head. “It’s what we know,” she said. “Then let me stay here and protect you,” he said next. “With a busted shoulder?” “My shoulder will heal. But you won’t if you stay here alone.” She gave him an almost maternal look. “You’re young,” she said. “You don’t want someone old and world-weary like me.” She began dousing the corpses with kerosene. “You have to burn ‘em,” she said, “otherwise they just get up again the next day.” Her eyes were hard. “That’s how Jed got bit. We didn’t know then - thought a bullet in the brain was enough to keep ‘em dead.” She put the flame to the bodies. “Sometimes there’s no hope for the future. Sometimes all you can do is burn the past.” The two of them stood in silence, watching the flames against the night sky, and his hope burned to ashes too.