The spade made a hollow ‘thunk’ as it hit wood. Elias dreaded what would come next. A man could hang for grave robbing if there was a sheriff about to arrest him for it. Praise his luck, it was the sheriff who lay in the coffin beneath him.
The night hadn’t given up the day’s heat, and his shirt was soaked through. Wiping his brow became pointless. He reached out of the hole for another drink from his skin, but found it near empty. Now that the task was at hand, water wasn’t what he wanted anyway; a bottle of coffin varnish would have been the smarter choice.
The witch had been very clear. Bring her the dead sheriff’s boots, and don’t disturb nothing else. It still took another hour to get it done—the lid wouldn’t pry, and in the end, he had to use the spade to smash it to pieces. The stench and rot were already so bad that he made sick until there wasn’t anything left in his guts. When his dark work was done, he thanked the lord that the boots had come off without a fight.
She waited by the campfire away from her hovel, staring into the flames. “You have what I sent you for, boy?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said, and dropped the boots. “But I don’t understand how this will help me when I’m staring down a Crawford Brother come noon tomorrow.”
She ignored his remarks and stirred the dying embers with her cudgel before handing him a clay bottle, already uncorked. “Drink this. It’ll taste as wretched as the sheriff surely smelt, but you’ll need to drink it down all the same.”
He brought it to his lips without question. It seemed a small thing after digging up the dead. He was wrong. He would rather have slept beside the sheriff’s corpse than stomach the foul draught, but she held him with a wicked glare until he finished.
“Good,” she said, and took the earthenware bottle back from him.
“What was…” He never finished the question. The stars above spun in a single sweeping arc until his face met the dirt.
Only the campfire and the dead man’s boots heard her answer. “Sleep, boy. And I’ll give you a fighting chance against the Crawfords, as promised.”
The water was cold; the old hag must have drawn it straight from the river. She cackled in delight as Elias sputtered awake, half drenched and lying on her stoop.
He stood up, his heels knocking heavily on the wooden planks. The soft, broken soles of his ropers were gone, replaced by the stiff leather boots of the sheriff.
“Why did you put these things on me? Christ, they were full of worms, and worse.”
He bent down to pull them off and then stopped as a pale silver shadow wisped around him before disappearing again. “What was that?” he asked, looking at the witch.
She didn’t flinch. “’Twas him that wore the boots before you.”
A cold sweat poured over Elias, and he struggled to kick off the boots until she took him in hand with a clout to the head.
“Quit stomping around, idiot, and leave the boots on.” She went inside and left Elias scared stiff, but when she came back, it was with coffee and biscuits. “Sit and eat this while you listen.”
He started in on the meal, and soon his gnawing hunger distracted him from the specter that clung to him like molted skin on a rattlesnake.
“His shade is bound to the boots and, in turn, to you while you wear them. The sheriff wasn’t a boastful man, but he was a fast hand with the iron, fast enough to go toe to toe with any one of them Crawfords.” She spat the last as if the name tasted poorly on her tongue. “You let the him guide your hand, and you might live to see tomorrow.”
She looked up to the sky and the sun climbing high overhead. “Best get yourself in the saddle. This is for you,” she said and handed him a gun. “But don’t take your mare, she’s bound to be spooked. Horses have the sight of things— take my mule.”
Elias strapped on the pistol and did as she said.
“He showed!”
He wasn’t sure who yelled, but a murmur rose on its heels and followed him down the street. Most of the town gathered along the walkways. The clever folk stood to the corners where they could duck back if the shooting got wild, but the really smart ones stayed inside and up high, peeking through shuttered windows.
Elias knew he should be terrified, that his innards should be twisting, but the dead lawman was filled to the brim with cold, hard determination. The shade’s emotions soaked into him, masking his fears and filling him with purpose.
As he approached, a Crawford brother stepped onto the road.
“Elias!” a girl called.
He searched the faces of the onlookers until he found her. Mary stood beside her father, tears streaming down a bruised cheek. He could offer her little more than a weak smile.
“You’d best not worry about her,” said the young man across from him. “You’ve got me to deal with.”
Elias was about to offer a smart retort, but the shade spoke.
“Don’t. He’s looking to get you talking, and then he’ll draw on you as he pleases.” The sheriff’s voice was a death rattle whisper through six feet of dirt. “He’s the slowest of the bunch—they think to let the runt notch an easy kill. Now relax, damn you.”
He exhaled and let the emptiness in his chest linger, and then yielded to the specter until it seemed that he wore the dead man like a coat.
Crawford spat when he saw that his bait wasn’t sweet enough. “Fine then, let’s get to it.” His hand lowered while he yammered, hoping to catch Elias unawares, but the sheriff wasn’t fooled. Where the silver shimmer of the shade went, the flesh followed, dead man and living moving as one.
Revolvers came free, and both men fired. Elias had never been so fast, and the youngest Crawford fell dead for it. The rest of the brothers swarmed into the street with their guns, hurling death through clouds of blackened smoke.
The shade had Elias fan the hammer until their lead was spent.
The witch pulled the boots free and said her piece over the boy’s corpse. She threw them in her wagon beside a shovel and a new pine coffin lid. “Don’t worry, Sheriff—it’s only a matter of time till the Crawfords drive another to desperation. We’ll have our reckoning yet.”
She snapped the reins and bade the mule to head for the boneyard.
This story originally appeared in the anthology: The Arcanist: Ghost Stories.