I'm continuing my Strange Scenes series of posting short fiction every week. Read part one of my cowboys and monsters horror story The Family in the Grass here. Part two will post next week.

The Family in the Grass

They ran, but they didn’t make it.

Folk never do. I’ve never seen one come out of there, and that goes for Indians, too, not just regular folk. I stood on the porch and looked out into the tall grass. From here, I could see the tops of it, swaying as it does when things are happening down inside of it. I can tell by now the difference from how people move the grass, and the other.
It was over soon enough, and I heard the crunch of bones, the satisfied chitter of the Family as they ate. I saw a pronghorn come through the dooryard, with the calm way grass animals will when the Family has eaten. All was right with the world.
I went back inside my shed. I’d miss them, they was good to talk to.

People were coming faster, it seemed. It wasn’t two months after that another wagon came through. I was sitting out on the shed porch with the dog the last folks left, looking out over the grass, seeing nothing moving out there, today, but there was always nothing more than there was something. I just looked because there was nothing else to look to.
The dog saw the wagon first. He got to his feet, and his tail thumped on my leg. I turned and looked down the road, and here they come, a wagon full of people, the horse pulling through the mud, the father in the seat, driving the animal, but not too hard. There wasn’t any kindness to it, he was just tired, and I could see that. I went around back to get some water on. They was coming to me, I could see that already.

I had the trough full when the man came up to me. The dog barked some but he’s not a mean dog. I think he’s lonely of me, and liked it when people stayed. The man had his rifle, and I didn’t like him right then on the spot.
“You own this place?” he asked, the gun not pointed right at me, but near enough to keep me honest.

“No sir.” I said, letting go the pump handle and setting the water bucket on the edge of the trough. “The United States Government owns this place. I’m in their employ.” I told him my name.
He stood quiet for a time, his eyes going over everything. He didn’t like me working for the government, I could tell that. He was another homesteader, a man from the losing side of the War; I could see that about him. He was having a hard time about it. Getting west, I mean.
“Plenty of water,” I said. “Bring your team around and let them drink up, if you’d like.”
“What’re you doing out here?” he asked me.
“Telegraph station.” I tipped my head up to the wires that ran out from the shack.
“Your wires are down,” he told me. “Maybe six miles back.”
“Are they?” I asked. I had heard that before, from an Indian. Never bothered to go look, even though that was my only duty. I saw his boy look around the corner. “Water’s clean.” I said. “The dog and I drink it every day, and we’ve no trouble with it.” The boy was about ten. His mother joined him, in a moment. Pretty lady. They watched me over the man’s shoulder.
The man didn’t seem certain about me, yet, but then he seemed to say what the hell, and waved his family on. The boy ran up to the bucket and cupped water in his hands. The dog sort of danced over to him, tail wagging so hard that its backside curled around.
The woman and the boy came forward, towards the pump. They had a little girl, as well, but I hadn’t seen her yet so I didn’t know, then. The man said, “Where’s the road go?”
“Goes here.” I told him.
He gave me a sharp look. “Where’s it go after here?” I had it coming, I guess. I knew what he meant when he asked.
“It just goes here.” I told him. “Nothing more. If you want to keep going, you’ll need to go back and find another way.”
That took his mind off of me for a minute. You could see he didn’t want to go back, didn’t want to cross the river again. He walked over to where the grass started. The grass is taller than a man, stiff and sharp. Homesteaders called it ‘rip-gut’, and it would do a number on you, and your team. The Family never seemed to notice it, but then they’re not natural animals.

They stayed the night, as I knew they would. I told them not to. “There’s danger, here.” I said. “Sometimes, things come out of the grass. They might get your horse.”
The man looked me over again, his gray eyes going up and down, the rifle over his shoulder. He unhitched and watered his horse with the rifle always by his hand. His woman had taken the girl into my shack, because she had a fever. The man and the boy stayed clear of it. You could see he didn’t want my courtesy, didn’t want to be in my debt. “Indians?” he asked. I shook my head, and told him what I thought the Family was. “You’re crazy,” he said, and spit on the ground by my feet. They took the girl out of shack and put her in the wagon. Her name was Rachel, a name I’d never heard before except in the Bible.
They brought the girl out to the wagon and slept out there. I warned them, but not much. I get tired of it, same as anyone would. The dog hid himself well in the shack. He knew it, what was coming. After a few months of nothing but pronghorns, buffalo and jackrabbits, the Family gets restless.
I didn’t sleep much that night. There was lots of noise, lots of goings on. It started with the horses, as it does, and then the rifle went off, two, three times. Then the people were screaming, calling to each other, praying to the Lord.
Then came the worst noises, the ones that come after, when the Family eats.

When the sun rose, they were gone. There was blood on the ground, but not much. The mud of the doorward was trampled something awful. The Family’s prints were all through the yard, big chicken toes digging into the dirt. I looked but I didn’t see any unfamiliar ones. I hadn’t in my ten years here. The big ones just kept on, the small ones didn’t seem to grow. The grass was all knocked down in a few places where the horse was dragged in. The stems were black with blood, heavy with flies. I had seen it all before, too many times in my ten years here to take much notice of it. I was glad, in a way, because it meant the Family’d let me keep the dog a bit longer.
I walked towards the side of the shack. I spied a few feathers, but none as good as the ones I’d already gathered, so I left them. The rifle was there, still straight but empty and cold. I took it up by the barrel, and threw it far into the grass. One more gun for the prairie, out there with the rest, grass growing up through the trigger guard.
I heard something, then. From the wagon. The girl, coughing. The dog heard it, too. He looked up at me, his eyes bright, tail wagging. Maybe he’d been here long enough to know the rules, and figured he’d just been given some more time.
I looked at the wagon. The canvas top was all torn, the hitch was twisted, the tongues broken clean off. The horse may have been in harness when the Family came. The girl coughed again.
I took her in. I couldn’t do nothing else.

Rachel was a smart girl, but she didn’t speak. She was just about nine, and it was plain she could hear me just fine by the way she nodded yes or no to my questions, and how she looked at me all sad when she wanted me to stop asking. She’d seen them, I figured out that much. By moonlight, and moving fast like they do, but she’d seen them. The Family.
I guess she had the croup or something like it. There was nothing for me to do but give her water, and share what food I had. The Family brought me some of the horse, as they do, and about a week later, some buffalo meat. I had the corn growing in the back, and the Family never bothered with the flour, beans, salt or what have you in the wagons they attacked. Those things had no interest for them, so I took it all. In a few days, I had the wagon broke apart for wood for the stove. I didn’t have any other place to get wood, and I wasn’t going to need a wagon for anything. I sure as hell wasn’t going anywhere.

The girl started getting better, and the dog got nervous. But it was only about a week before we got more company. I knew they were coming this time, well before they knew we were there. I was hoping for it, you’d say. Praying for it. Much longer, and I might have to choose between the girl and the dog, and I didn’t want to make that choice right away. Rachel was a good girl. She cooked, and cleaned, and sewed my things, listened to me talk, and she didn’t seem scared of the Family. We never saw them, of course, but other people who had come through the first night, like Curly, they sometimes went mad. If Rachel had gone mad on her first night, I could manage with how she went.
A man came up on a horse, riding in a hurry, rifle across his saddle. The dog and I were on the porch again, out of the heat of the sun. Rachel was off in back of the place, in the corn patch, making a doll or some such. The rider saw the tracks, the hoof and boot prints that the ground had held and would hold until it rained next, and all this surprised him. His eyes went this way and that, but I don’t think he saw the dog and me, under the porch roof. The dog stayed low, watching the man with its head on its paws.
The man was still thinking what to do when three more came up behind him, all with rifles in their hands and mud on their clothes. I could see they’d crossed the river and done it fast.
I think the girl came out then, from around the shed. One of the men called out and all four drew down on the back of the shed, rifles snapping up like they were used to it. I couldn’t see her, but I guess the girl ran back around the shed. She didn’t scream that I heard, but that was no surprise.
“God Damn you, Gibs!” one of them called, and he spurred his horse. I stood up, and pulled my suspenders over my shoulders. Best look presentable for these fellas, was my thinking. I stepped out into the light, raising my hand to block the bright sun. Three rifles came over at me. The dog stayed on the porch, I saw.
“There was no one here when I come up last spring, I swear!” The one who had come in first called.
“Shut up,” another said. I looked over at him. He was the handsomest of the three, the youngest. Also the meanest-looking; you could see that he thought he was bad, a bad man. He had a look around his eyes I see on the Indians that come up here sometimes, the ones who think they’re so mean that the Family will take them in. “Anyone else in there?” the young one said, looking at me.
I told him no.
“Who’re you, then?” Like so many, he didn’t like that I might be in the army. My clothes were dirty, and I wasn’t wearing a shirt, but my trousers were still Union blue.
“Telegraph operator.” I said. One of the others told me the lines were down and I said I knew it. “There’s water out back.” I said.
“That your girl?” the mean one asked.
“Nossir.” I said. I figured out by now he’d been an officer on the Reb army, and he might like the sir. He did, the rifle dipped a bit. “Family of homesteaders came though. She’s all that’s left.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” the one they’d call Gib said. He was the one who most looked like he wanted to shoot me. His hand was shaking, but that might be fatigue. It’s work, holding a rifle up with one hand, like it’s a pistol.
“Just what I said.” I told him. “Come now, let’s get those horses watered. No one’s gonna find you here, and you can’t go on anyways.”
I went around back, thinking they might shoot me in the back but also figuring they wouldn’t. The mean one was also the smart one; I could see that by then. He knew you could make a live person into a dead one anytime, if you needed to, but it didn’t work the other way.
I walked around to the pump. I saw that the first rider had gone through the corn, into the grass.
I remember thinking That’s the end of him, then.

To be continued