Stepping Stones by Steve Gannon Read Free Book Online Page A

on Georgie’s head.  I heard a sickening thud as the heavy oak stool connected with Georgie’s skull.
    The next few moments seemed like a horrible nightmare.  It was as if a noiseless explosion suddenly detonated in the bar . . . with Georgie at the center.
    Caleb was the closest.  He got hit the hardest.  It looked like an invisible fist just picked him up and hurled him across the room.  And he wasn’t the only one.  Every man there got knocked flat, as did several wall s near the kitchen .  The front door was ripped from its hinges and blasted into the street.  Every bottle behind the bar shattered, sending glass flying everywhere.
    I was close to Georgie when it happened.  I think what saved me was that I was partially shielded by a heavy support post, but I was still slammed to the floor .  Hard.  Shakily, I rose to my knees.
    The room was silent.  All t he lanterns had been blown out.  A few lay on the floor leaking kerosene.  Luckily nothing caught fire.  There was only one light left shining.
    Georgie .
    He lay unconscious, jerking like a poleaxed steer.  As I watched, his back arched and his head began thrashing from side to side, as though he were fighting some unseen hand.  There was something else, too.  Georgie was floating a foot above the floor.  And he was glowing.
    “Oh, Georgie,” I whispered.
    Then it started.
    “God save us!”
    “Lord Jesus, what is it?”
    “It’s the work of the Devil!”
    “Kill it!”
    “Abomination!”
    “Satan!”
    I tried to crawl over to my brother.  I couldn’t get closer than a couple feet.  That “skin” was all around him again, glowing, with him twisting and shuddering inside it.
    Someone got a lantern lit, then another.  Soon there was enough light to see the extent of the damage to the room.  The Bent Pig was a shambles, but there was a worse damage than that.  Caleb’s lifeless body lay crumpled at the foot of the bar, a section of the stool he’d swung at Georgie buried in his chest.
    “Oh, God, my boy,” Abe sobbed, sinking down beside him.
    “Jesus,” Pa whispered .
    “Georgie didn’t mean it.  It wasn’t his fault,” I said, stumbling over.  Men shrank back as I approached.  “It wasn’t his fault,” I repeated.  “Tell them, Pa.”
    Abe rose to his feet and grabbed Pa’s shirt.  “What do you know about this, Neuman?”
    Pa glanced away.  “I . . . I don’t know anything.  You can’t—”
    A hollow thump sounded in the center of the room.  Every man there turned.  Georgie had dropped to the wood planking.  The light around his body was gone.
    With a snarl, McClintock released Pa and strode to the middle of the room.  He stood over Georgie. “Get a rope,” he said.
    Pa stepped forward.  “Now, hold on, Abe.  You can’t—”
    Abe w hirled, trembling with rage.  “You s hut your mouth.  You got no right to speak.  My boy’s dead, and this . . . this thing you raised killed him.  You keep out of this, Neuman, or I swear by all that’s holy we’ll be getting two ropes instead of one.”
    The wager money was still on the bar.  I scooped it up.  “Here,” I said, thrusting it at Abe.  “Take it.  It wasn’t Georgie’s fault.  Just take the money and leave us be.”
    Jake was standing beside me.  He knocked the coins from my hand.  Then he swung his fist, putting all his weight behind the blow.  I went down.  Hard.  I wound up on the floor beside Caleb’s body, blood pouring from my mouth.
    Jake spat on me.  “This ain’t about the money,” he said.  “This is about right and wrong.”
    Someone brought a rope from the storeroom.  With a hollow feeling, I realized that the men in that bar were going to hang Georgie, and there was nothing Pa or I could do to stop it.  Rising to my knees, I looked up at my neighbors.  All I could see in their faces was cruelty and fear and hate.  They had changed.  They had turned into a mob.  Alone, each may have been fair and honest