Free Mr. Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett

happened to your wife?”
    “Nothing. I still have her. She’s waiting on me. I’m going to go back to her, if she’ll take me back. Once this is done I’ll
     go back. And everything’ll be all right. Just like it was before.”
    Pike and Roosevelt glanced at each other. Then Hammond got up and strode away from the campfire. Connelly watched him go and
     looked at the others, surprised.
    “He gets that way,” explained Roosevelt. “He’s younger than he looks. I don’t think he’s yet twenty-five.”
    “He’ll come back,” said Pike. “He’ll be here in the morning. It must be a strange thing to be so young and know that you cannot
     have much of a normal life. In ways he has maybe lost more than the rest of us.”
    “No,” said Connelly. “He hasn’t.”
    Pike nodded. “I suppose not.”
    Eventually they lay down to sleep once more. And as Connelly’s eyes shut he saw the desert.
    White sands stretched to piercing blue horizons. Overhead the sun beat down, white-hot and unyielding, and as its rays fell
     upon the sand flats it made them glitter like snow. Harsh mountains lined the distance, muddy-brown and mutinous, and the
     wind barreled across the desert strong enough to knock a man over.
    Connelly blinked, astounded at where he was. Yet somehow he knew he was waiting for something. Something was coming.
    He saw it far away. Movement. Something small. He squinted at it but could not see it for the sun. It came closer, and soon
     he realized it was a man. A young man coming his way, directly toward him, and as he neared Connelly saw he was tall and pale
     and naked, and streaked with blood. He half strode, half staggered across the sands to Connelly, his arms dangling by his
     side, his crop of blond hair shining in the sunlight, his blue eyes agonizingly sad. The trail of his footprints wound away
     through the desert. They were red.
    He walked up to Connelly and looked into his face.
    “The world is changing,” he whispered.
    Then there was a clap of thunder like the sky was breaking. Connelly awoke and nearly screamed. He looked about. The fire
     had died down. Roosevelt and Pike were asleep, but Hammond was sitting cross-legged across from him, watching.
    “Bad dream?” he asked.
    Connelly nodded.
    “What happened?”
    He did not answer, just shook his head.
    “What happened?” asked Hammond again.
    “There was a desert. A young man, covered in blood. And he… he told me the world was changing, and I woke up.”
    “Well, it sure is, isn’t it.”
    Connelly looked down at Hammond’s hands. Roosevelt’s gun was in his lap.
    “What you doing with that?” he asked.
    “Holding it. Getting the feel of it.”
    “Why?”
    “We didn’t come all the way out here to yell at him, did we?”
    “I guess not.”
    “You ever kill a man before?”
    “No.”
    “Me neither. I wish I had, though. Just so I could know. But I guess he’ll be a good start.”
    “You going to practice on us?”
    “No. I just like holding it. Just to know that I can. I can’t say why, but it makes a man feel good to know that he can kill
     another. Not that he will. But that he has the capacity. You know?”
    “I guess.”
    “You know, the hobos said you can get safe passage from Mr. Shivers, but you got to be careful.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah. You got to walk out to the crossroads on a moon-filled night with no clouds in the sky, and you go out and find a stone
     and write your name on the bottom of it and bury it in the road. He comes in the morning, leading his line of men he’s taking
     off to hell, and he’ll read your name and then you can pass through that town easy and you won’t get harried by him or whoever
     he’s running.”
    “Go to sleep, Hammond.”
    He turned the gun over in his hands. “I can’t.”
    “Try.”
    “All right. I’ll try.”
    “Well. Good night, then.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “Good night.”
    Mr. Shivers

Be
    CHAPTER SEVEN
    They kept going southwest and managed to get