The sound stirred Joseph to life. Disregarding Alexander's gun, he ran towards the noise. Quickly, he disappeared over the crest of the hill.
The screaming continued, unabated. A hundred shouts of terror and agony rang through the din of the storm, climbed the cemetery hill and assailed Cadman and Alexander. The two men stood transfixed, listening, trying to see through the darkness. Neither moved for a moment.
The chorus ceased slowly, one voice at a time. The whole scene lasted minutes.
Alexander looked at Cadman. "You don't ..." he stopped, thinking.
Cadman felt the urge to turn and run; to get as far away from Trinity Hill as his legs could afford him. But his urge died with the grisly shouting.
"What about the boy?" Alexander asked. "Joseph."
Cadman shrugged. Whatever happened, he did it to himself, he thought.
"Let's head back down," Alexander continued. "I wanna have a look."
Cadman instinctively followed Alexander through the graveyard. His imagination ran wild as he made out the roof and upper façade of the saloon. If something had come out of the well ... He watched the graves as they passed. All of them were the same -- all drooping, missing something. He wondered if many of the townsfolk were like Paul Goodman. But that wasn't likely. There'd be too much of a chance of getting recognized. If I'd only been here a day earlier, Cadman thought. I'd have recognized Paul before it was too late -- recognized him for what he really was.
The bleak silhouette of the saloon sat calm and quiet. Cadman and Alexander moved cautiously around to the front entrance. They stopped, looking over the doors. Not surprisingly, all of the lights had been snuffed out except for a few candles here and there. Alexander started to push through the doors but Cadman held him back.
Something on the ground, just within the entrance, caught his eye. He bent to pick it up, then recoiled in horror, throwing it with force back to the ground.
"What was it?" Alexander asked excitedly.
Cadman rushed off the porch without answering, towards the livery. Alexander was at his heels, though. "What?" he asked again.
Cadman turned. "A finger," he said with difficulty. "A god-damn bloody finger with the nail broken back. Like it'd been clinging to the wood."
Alexander looked past him into the night, a look of illness on his aged face. "Every grave up there looked that way" he said, "like Paul Goodman's. There could be hundreds out there like him."
Cadman searched for words but couldn't find them. The same thought had been going through his mind. Joseph, he guessed, must've made it inside the saloon -- probably the last to go. Trinity Hill was a battleground, he thought to himself. The saloon a mausoleum. And Alexander and I listened to a massacre. "The first," his stomach wrenched, "of many."
Alexander looked at him like he understood the quiet words, like they had come from his own mind. "There'll be more like this," he said to himself. To Cadman: "When we sunk that well, seven of the men died in an accident. They were blown to pieces," he paused. "That's what we thought anyhow."
Cadman nodded, rain dripping from his hat. All we can do is run, he thought.
