The Black Widow by John J. McLaglen Read Free Book Online

covered its face, drowning the features in a pool of
black shadow. Becky remembered trying to flee, but her feet
wouldn’t function properly, and she had struggled on as though she
was trapped in a river of molasses, while the creature glided
easily up the stairs after her.
    By turning her head to one side she
was able to watch it between the banisters, its face still hidden.
Her heel had caught in a loop of the rotting carpet and she had
fallen full-length, in a dreadful slow-motion flailing, ending up
with her face pressed close to the bars of the staircase, only
inches away from her pursuer.
    Slowly, like a dry leaf caught over a
campfire, it moved towards her. Its hand, with long yellow
fingernails, went to the front of the hood, and in a sudden sharp
movement, tugged it off. The memory, even in the cold gray light of
the fall afternoon, made Becky draw her breath.
    A face stripped of solid flesh, just
covered in white parchment skin. The eyes set in hollows of fire,
blazing at her with a blind hatred. The mouth a scar torn in the
face, the teeth stained fangs of jagged bone. Hollow caverns of
nostrils, enveloping her with the heavy odor of a
charnel-house.
    And the hair!
    Spinning and tumbling around that
midnight face like a halo of silver wire, moving with a strange
life of its own.
    Becky shuddered. The face had been
that of Whitey Coburn. Once Jed’s closest friend, now his sworn
enemy.
    Minutes passed and there was still no
sound from deeper in the valley forest. No more shots. No shouts. A
vast silence, shrouded by the snow that was now falling with real
purpose, spitting on the sticks of the fire, and coating her
clothes in a dappled covering.
    For the first time, the young girl
tried to imagine what would happen to her if Jed never returned. It
had always been a possibility. She knew that, though he had never
ever mentioned it to her. She somehow felt that he thought that to
admit the chance of death was in some way to increase the chances
of it happening.
    Perhaps she could find a position
teaching school in some growing border township. Or maybe a job in
a saloon. The idea of wearing those silk dresses and flouncy
underskirts, net stockings and red garters, excited her, and she
almost forgot what such a prospect might really mean.
    The wind was rising, and it began to howl
among the tops of the trees, showering snow in her face, bringing
her back to the reality of her present situation, to the terror of
being alone among the high Sierras; the only man who’d ever seemed
to care for her gone. Vanished. Lost somewhere in the swirling
blizzard in the valley.
    There was a gun in the saddle-bags on
her mare. A little pocket derringer. Becky decided that if nobody
came in two or three minutes, then she’d have to go and look for
Jed. The idea frightened her.
    But when those minutes had slipped
emptily by, the fear didn’t stop her.
    The fire was gone, already buried
under an inch of snow. Becky was used to snow, remembering the deep
falls that closed them in back at Tucson, but she’d never come
across the speed and violence of this sort of blizzard. She could
hear the horses snickering, and she stumbled towards them, hands
stretched out against the skimming flakes of snow.
    She guessed she was
near by where
they’d tethered them, when something caught her hands, pulling her
forwards so that she lost her balance and nearly fell. The girl
opened her mouth to scream in terror at her unseen attacker when a
hand went across her mouth, clamping the cry dead in her
throat.
    ‘ Hold still, little girl.’ The
voice was soft. The words clear in her ears despite the
storm.
    The hands tugged her into the lee of
the forest, where the snow was less violent, and she was able to
wriggle her head round and see who’d caught her. At that moment he
reached up and tugged his hat loose, revealing his face.
    Becky looked in disbelief.
    And fainted.
    It was the face of her nightmare.
Dead-white face, with glowing coals set in the