March 20 - "Deadman's Road"

“Deadman’s Road”
by Joe R. Lansdale
The Shadows, Kith and Kin (2007)

* * * * * (Excellent) Supernatural

The road-weary Reverend Jebidiah Rains agreed to help a deputy transport a criminal to Nacogdoches for hanging, insisting they travel by Deadman’s Road after hearing the Old Timer tell tale of an evil haunting that way.

The story I was searching for all week. I had been in the mood for a western – not old-timesy and tame, but something brutal and fierce. The addition of a supernatural element only added another level of pleasure to this tale. Lansdale knows how to write the west, and horror. The slow build from dinnertime ghost story to supernatural showdown added a sense of tension and terror that kept me shifting in my seat. There simply aren’t nearly enough well-written horror/westerns out there to keep me satiated. And the descriptions: wow.

“The evening sun had rolled down and blown out in a bloody wad, and the white, full moon had rolled up like an enormous ball of tightly wrapped twine.”

Amazingly bleak, and yet wonderfully western.