The Rolling Hill Gang

They’d been riding westward for a little over two weeks, stopping and setting up camp every night to catch some rest. Their humbly-sized gang was no stranger to running from problems, and they’d left a trail of cold bodies in their wake, along with the lawmen who had been attempting to track them on their debauched exploits. They decided to stop for a while, get the lay of the land, and make a few bucks from old-fashioned robbery. Charley Koultz chose not to participate in their more repugnant behavior, but he wasn’t much different, a blind eye here, a blind eye there. He was still a killer, and he knew that at his surface, there was no need to dig down and check the core. He’d killed men, even the occasional son, but he always did his best to spare the women, and in turn, saved what little dignity he had left. The others weren’t as gentle, and the people he’d rode with and called friends had turned to heathens. He didn’t consider himself better than them, he only knew that there were certain things he couldn’t bring himself to do. The ones that sat on his consciousness were heavy enough to carry with him, and they plagued his nightmares when the alcohol refused to quell the memories.

Having ridden into unfamiliar lands before, they'd passed through valleys and across plains, exploring uncharted territory out of necessity. But they had never laid their eyes on rolling hills like this, and they seemed to stretch as far as the horizon, as tall as mountains they’d seen out east. The bandits heard nor saw wildlife, no deer or squirrel, only the buzzing of flies in fields where they had no business. Flowers lined the recesses of the hills, odorless, pale things that grew in surplus. The day wasn’t getting any younger, and they figured the horses needed rest anyway. They picked a treeline to fade into, small patches of woods that scattered among the few flat portions of land were the only shade to be had. Charley thought how easy it would be to spot them, but there was no other option, and the hills seemed to stretch until the Earth curved with them. The four of them talked it over and decided they would camp there for the night, wait for sunrise, and continue riding. A mistake that would be.

The moonlight began to reveal itself in the sky, it seemed to go from sweltering to overcast, into pitch black in a matter of minutes. All four of them couldn’t believe their eyes, they’d never seen the sun sprint below the horizon, defying physics right in front of them. The fire had given them a brief respite from the darkness, but whatever lingered about had choked it into embers in seconds, and the noiseless day turned into a late evening of sounds, echoing off from the thickets surrounding them. At first, they sat in a circle, bewildered by the events, until the noises had grown sharper, closer, shooting the men to their feet with their guns at their hips. None of them asked who was there, or to come out and show themselves, it was obvious it wasn’t animal or anything living their ears could pinpoint. Charley and the other three’s shouting was lost in the noise, the rustling of leaves, the cracking of branches beneath their weight. It was absolute panic, and Boris shot his revolver into the bushes, hitting nothing, but it illuminated the woods just enough to see the shape of the intruders. They only spotted one, but it looked more human than animal, which confused their minds further. It was a woman, or what once resembled a woman. Her naked figure was alluring, that is until their gaze had reached her face. She wore no eyes, she had no nose, and her lips were nowhere to be found. What was left was a fleshy surface, smoother than the palm of a socialite.

“Dear God.” Was all Will said, and even he, the leader of their ragtag group of murderers stood still, gun in his holster. All four of them watched her turn around, slowly into the woods, as if they weren’t worth her time. That night was quiet once she’d let them be, which led to an even more silent day. They didn’t talk much about it, for now, they sat around the campfire and tried to work up the nerve to untie their horses and keep riding west. It was either that or greet the hangman and his goons. A flurry of questions was floating around each of their minds, and they wouldn’t speak again until they saddled up.

“We all saw it didn’t we?”

“How the hell do we explain that to anyone?” Jamie continued.

“Well, I suppose we don’t. Just keep on moving,” Will said to all of them.

“Why the hell didn’t you shoot that bitch?!” Jamie yelled, voicing his frustrations with a loud mouth.

“I tried! Why the hell didn’t you shoot it?!” Boris replied with equal measure.

“Enough, quiet, all of you!” Will interjected, demanding silence as they continued with unease.

Charley was the only one who didn’t say a word, perhaps still shaken from the sighting of a faceless woman. He was thinking at that moment, about how he should have shot her dead right then and there, but he’d never killed a woman. At least that’s what he told himself until he quickly remembered that she was no human, whatever that thing was.

“This place isn’t normal, where is everything? Haven’t heard a peep from the birds, the crickets, nothing.” Charley stated, noticing every peculiarity, every little detail that was just off enough to catch it. The wind felt like it had no direction, the hills seemed ominous in their expanse, and if there were no game to be had, they’d surely starve. He’d kept an eye out, even asking the others to let him know if they spotted anything strange, or anything normal for that matter.

“Let’s just keep heading west, follow the hills out of here,” Will said, making the only logical suggestion.

“There has to be somewhere to rest, a town, something,” Charley replied while the four of them continued onward, following their compass over rolling hills and sparsely placed crops of trees. Jamie had thought he’d heard an animal of some kind, but they’d all chalked it up to wind as they rode forth, which seemed to swirl its currents in circles around them.

They’d covered distance well, and with no time for wasted daylight, they clopped along atop their horses. The hills had done them no favors, and the constant incline had done a number on the horses. It was obvious in the men’s demeanor that stopping and setting up camp for the night spelled the possibility of death, and if there was something worse than such a thing, they would surely find it at nightfall.

Their canteens had mere sips left, and their saddlebags held no surplus of food when they spotted the small town in the distance. The sun was just beginning to set, and it cast its heavenly glow upon the town which seemed a convenient refuge. Until they noticed they weren’t townhouses at all, but tipis. Something that would quickly bring discourse, it was either risk their heads by way of tomahawk or risk whatever the hell lay in wait beyond the hills. The men were exhausted, and torn between two decisions that could cost them their lives, but the horses they sat on nickered for a night’s rest.

“Well, I’ll be damned, just when I thought we were saved.” One of the men said.

“Let’s think about this now, we’re ’bout out of food and water, our horses need to rest, we’re all tired.” Jamie continued, always a few words too many.

"We’re dead either way. We might as well risk it with the Indians. As much as I hate to say it.” Charley said, trying to think rationally.

“I think Charley might be right, boys. If we stay out here well… I’m not willing to risk it, how about you two?” Will asked the others.

“God dammit, I’m with ya”

“Yeah, I’m with you.”

They agreed on scoping the place from the highest hill they could find overlooking the village. Each having tied their horse to the rare tree around them, they trudged up the steep incline of what might as well have been a grass-covered mountain. Will was weary before he reached the top, he’d led them well, but he blew out a lung just about every time cardio played a factor in his life. He’d opted for the firearm instead, there was no need for a brawl when you have two guns and a couple of friends. Once they reached the top, Charley pulled out his rusty old spyglass which failed to extend because of its usage. He tapped it a few times against a rock, yanked on it, and peered through the smudged glass. What he saw was hard to discern, but the people moved about their evening routines, and there were no horses to be found. He didn’t notice many weapons other than the occasional bow or spear, and the women were draped in practical clothing.

“They seem peaceful, they don’t look to be the warring type. Small village, hardly anybody.”

“How the hell can you tell, gimme that!” Jamie said, grabbing the spyglass.

“You can never be so sure with their type. But I trust Charley, on account of his time spent killing them.” Boris cut in, reminding Charley of the man he was.

“That was a long time ago.”

“Well, I hope you still got it in you.”

“Don’t go starting anything, this could be our only haven for a while. I don’t know what else is out there, but I’m not trying to find out. Let’s go.” Will gave the command and they slid back down the hill, untied their horses, and walked them the rest of the way towards the light of the campfires. The sun had just fallen below the skyline, and the night crept ever closer to their shadows, brushing against their shoulders as they walked with hesitation. A whipping noise cracked through the bushes behind them.

“What the fuck was that?” Jamie vociferated, scared to look over his shoulder. “Don’t look behind you, keep walking now,” Charley said.

“Alright, okay.. “

Charley calmed the boy down as they reached the edge of the village: close enough to feel the heat from the torch posts, and to see the strange twirling of their flames. An elderly man walked out from one of the tipis to meet them, and Charley was sure he’d seen the four of them coming. The man greeted them with a nod and a stone-faced expression, gesturing them forth after they’d hitched their horses. He wasn’t sure the last time they had seen outsiders, and as they walked through the camp, he could feel the gazes of every man and woman, but there were no children in sight. The smell of sage and sweetgrass lingered in the air, and he sensed that they weren’t welcome, but among the scowls, there were glimpses of faces just happy they weren’t going to die alone. Crude symbols were painted on the tipis, and every villager adorned a feather on their headbands. As they neared the tipi closest to the central firepit and followed the old man, one thought passed through his mind. Please, let him speak English.

Only the elder who’d greeted them into his tent knew a lick of their tongue. The four of them sat down, and Charley waited for the elder to speak, anything to break the silence before one of the others got anxious. They weren’t kind-hearted men by nature but Will kept them in check most days. Tonight would be different.

“It’s nice to see an outsider, as strange as that may sound.” His voice was weathered when he spoke, and his appearance beaten down.

“You speak English fairly well.” Charley was the first of the four to say anything.

“We used to see some trade, before… Befo–”

“Spit it out,” Jamie interjected.

“Let the man finish, boy,” Will demanded, shutting him up.

“You’ve seen what the night brings, yes? Those who seem human from afar.”

“We only saw one, but there were others.”

“They were merely there to warn you of a greater threat. There’s a great beast that haunts these hills…” The man said with great regret, before stopping himself to fight back the tears he’d kept bottled.

“Animal?” Will asked the elder.

“I’m afraid not. Your kind will think me crazy.”

“Our kind is scared, and if you don’t tell us I can’t stop my friend here when he gets anxious,” Charley said, rather uncomfortably as Boris fidgeted with his belt, something he tended to do when he was in the middle of making a harsh decision. The other three sat, wide-eyed and eager to hear the explanation behind the hills that never seemed to stop rolling.

“Blood was spilled during our ceremony, one of song and dance, one of chanting and ritual, one supposed to keep the spirits at bay, but now they grow hungry with each passing night, and so do we. It seems I’ve failed at my duties. I cursed this place long ago when I turned a blind eye, one of the men here, he… he’d gone too far with one of the girls. The same night of the ceremony, I’d gone out to see what the commotion was… and he was gone, and so we’re their eyes, their mouths… it’s been said that when you see them transform, it’s the last thing you see.”

“What happened next, in this tale?” Charley said, wary of the man’s memories, but he’d seen the faceless woman, devolved into a husk.

“It hurts to recall her face… he’d killed her, my son… my son, Yuma. I’m afraid it ruined us all.” His tears ran through the cracks of his cheeks, and he fought their flowing no longer.

“I fail to see how that caused all of this,” Will spoke, pragmatic as ever.

“I should’ve stopped him, he ran into the night, and now the day is dead. Those people you saw… in the woods, they are no longer human, the moment they laid eyes on him, the moment they saw him change. Those are not people anymore, I’m afraid we aren’t either.”

“I’ve had enough of this shit, I’m out of here,” Jamie asserted, opting for the fuck this route.

“Stop! Wait!” The old man yelled for him as he stormed out through the hide flaps of the tipi.

The night was without stars, and the flames revolved in perfect circles atop the torch posts, but the wind had grown stronger, and the flames with it, blurring as they spun. “He’s here!” The man screamed as the rest of them went outside to stop Jamie from doing something stupid. The wind had picked up strength again, and the tipis shook under each subsequent gust. “Jamie, stop, hold on a sec now!” Will yelled at the boy as he neared the border of the village, and right when Jamie was about to set one foot past the invisible line. The silhouette of a small man stood in the valley, but in a moment, the human features of the man had begun to shift, and the cracking noise his contorting limbs made was that of branches. What once was a mouth, was now a protruding chunk of flesh that housed jagged razors, and the stomach of the man had stretched itself like taffy, leaving a towering, hunched beast before Jamie. To the others, it had blended in with the shadows, but they knew he saw it, they knew he saw something when he started to back up towards them. When the boy turned around, his eyes had vanished from their sockets, leaving only divots where he once had retinas. The boy would have screamed if he had a mouth to allow him. He just pressed his fingers against the soft recesses, rubbing the empty pools of flesh that layered his skull.

The men had no words to say to the boy, and he had no ears to hear them as he turned back around and walked into the darkness, joining whatever he had seen out there. The elder had left his tent to join the men, staring off into the shadows with them. The night was just beginning, and the temperature had undergone a transformation along with the beast. Each breath they took formed a cold mist of condensation, and their eyes panned from left to right, scoping the hills beyond the village for signs of life. The few elders that remained ushered the tribe’s women into their huts, and the men picked up the few weapons they had. Their village had seen better years, and Charley had wondered how they managed to survive so long without a steady supply of food, and no rivers in sight. Near the edge of the village, he could see a large mass of graves, some old and some recently buried. Only then did he realize the source of their food, and the horrific lengths one will go to for survival.

“Will… I don’t think this place is safe either.”

“You got that right, this place is not gonna keep a damn thing out, trinkets or not.”

“Maybe I should reword that for you, look at the graves. No food, lots of graves.” Charley said, his voice lowering so as not to disturb the peace.

“We can’t go out into the hills, we’re as good as dead then, let’s gun these bastards down.” Boris tended to put it bluntly.

“Leaving so soon?” The elder had returned, his voice more ominous than before.

“Where are all the young ones?” Charley said, touching Boris’s arm as to get him to lower his revolver that had been swiftly drawn and pointed at the Native.

“So, you noticed… I’m disgusted to sa– Yuma wants what he wants…”

“Give me the word!” Charley demanded.

“Kill him,” Will said as Charley was about to draw his gun, but before he could, almost as if it was a competition. Boris quickly drew and hit the old man square in the face. In the flash of events, from every corner of the night, the remaining villagers began to rush at them. There were five or so men at arms, but even the few women began to leave their tents and charge at them.

“To the horses!” Boris screamed over the others, and let off a few shots at the closest attackers, nailing one in the leg as the three of them bolted towards the hitching posts. The moment Boris turned his back to the men, an arrow hit him in his thigh, which brought his movement to an immediate limp and then a tumble.

“God dammit!” Will called out to him as he turned around to meet their charge with bullets. The wounded Native never made it to them, but the others were coming fast when the two of them began to unleash a flurry of hellfire their way. The loud pop and the faint click of the hammer were all anybody heard as the attacking men hit the dirt. The blood from their bodies hadn’t even begun to leak from their wounds when the gun smoke had dissipated into the air. Charley didn’t even think, he knew there were women in the group. It was just a reflex; one he sadly didn’t give any thought to when it had come down to his life or theirs. A feeling he would have to get used to when the blood began to seep, and he noticed the bullet hole that passed perfectly through her lips, leaving only a distorted mess of chipped teeth and chunked flesh. Not all of them were dead, a woman still twitched, and the man who had been hit in his knees writhed in the grass, and his shrieks of pain sent a quick chill down Charley’s spine. As Boris trudged slowly to the dying man, he clicked back the hammer, fired his gun, and spat on the corpse. Charley had killed men before, but this felt like a slaughter, no matter how he tried to justify it. The death they had dealt was equal to any torture a beast could deliver, or so he assumed.

“God… “ Charley muttered. It had been the first woman he’d killed, or at least close enough to discern the gender of the person he was shooting at.

“Don’t act like it’s the first time, help me with my goddamn leg!” Boris shouted as they carried him to the centralmost fire and leaned him against a bench. He was writhing in pain like the Native had been just a few moments prior, which would only get worse when Will put a branch between Boris’s teeth and yanked the arrow from his flesh. Only the hills would hear his screams now, and the corpses of the Natives lay sprawled out across their land; the same small patch of grass they’d been cursed to waste away in. Charley wondered if the Natives they slaughtered had known how to defeat it, the graves were in the dozens, entire bloodlines wiped from existence, and the shadow of Yuma was a malison that required nightly sacrifice.

Charley cauterized the arrow wound with his bowie knife, searing it against Boris’s squirming leg who clenched his teeth. The display of death that had taken place drew shadows from every corner of the night, through the valleys and atop the hills they crested. They had no eyes to reflect the light, damned for laying witness to man’s worst deeds. Skulking slower through the shadows, they’d finally made their presence known to them. Boris propped himself up a bit, aiming his revolver, waving it at every sign of movement, at every faceless man, woman, and child that seemed to appear, one after another. Will went and grabbed their guns off the horse, handing Boris his lever action which he set beside him. Charley rode with a double barrel, and it felt just a little more comforting knowing he had his boomstick on his person. They kept near the bonfire that lit the center of the village, and the torch posts near the tipis flickered and swirled violently before being snuffed by the wind. In what seemed a calculated sequence, one by one—they went out.

Standing back-to-back, they pointed their guns toward the shadows. But as they peered around, they noticed they were being circled by the faceless, who had inched ever so slowly through the village, clinging to the darkness where the torches had once lit. Amid the wall of flesh that surrounded them, they reloaded their revolvers, leaving them with twelve shots each. Will’s lever action held around ten and Charley's double-barrel two, but even twenty-four shots wouldn’t be enough to drop the dozens upon dozens that swarmed, forming a perfect circle around the village.

“Well, we’re fucked,” Boris admitted; his face sheening with sweat.

“They’re just watching, waiting.”

Right when he said it, the faceless broke their circle and made an opening for Yuma who walked between them. It was no man or animal, but rather a horrid blend of both that bore the most rank of stenches. Charley wondered why they still had their eyes when he'd witnessed the chimera of warped flesh before them, quickly remembering what the old man said about its transformation. Jamie had the unfortunate luck of seeing it contort, and twist into an amalgamation of man and creature alike. Patches of fur lined its mostly bare skin, and its stretched-out stomach looked like someone had rung out a towel of gray flesh. But without another thought, the three gunslingers unloaded every round they had like a grand display of deadly fireworks. Before Yuma could leap, the slug from Charley’s shotgun blew half of its torso apart, as he let off another, the blast ripped the top half of its body clean from the waist. Its upper half smacked against the ground, but its legs never faltered, and the pair stood perfectly still. In what seemed like an easy victory was quickly put to rest when the hairless beast's lower half began to birth a new torso. The chunked flesh around its pelvis began to bubble at the blood, before it curdled upward, forming veins and sinew on its ascent to rebirth. Wide-eyed and in utter disbelief, they could see its bones bend themselves back to shape, and the manifestation of organs and the sacs that held them. Its heart would beat anew, and its lungs would huff the deepest of breaths; skin lapping over skin until it had begotten itself. As it did so, the lifeless upper half that lay bloody on the ground began to twitch—bubble—and then regenerate. The sound its bones made as they came to the physical world, was that of a tree growing in seconds, cracking and groaning with life. There would be not one dead beast, but two in full form when Charley broke his shotgun in half and put two shells in.