Jake is shocked that John’s able to read him so well. How is he able to see Jake’s thoughts like that? Is Jake being that obvious?
John looks up and smirks, then nods, as if reading Jake’s thoughts once more.
Jake growls. “Stop that.” He steps over to where David is talking quietly with Rebekah.
David watches him approach. “Yes, Deputy?”
“You can call me Jake. Is it true, what John just said about Richard?”
“Sorry, I wasn’t listening.”
Jake relays what John said to a nodding David.
“Oh, absolutely. He’s the most evil and defiled person I can ever imagine,” David heartily agrees and Rebekah stands there nodding her head in agreement.
Jake shakes his head in dismay. He’s met his fair share of deplorable people, but this Richard sounds like he takes the cake. He didn’t believe John when his blood-brother was describing the atrocities Richard has been committing. Surely no one can be that committed to being evil. Apparently, his thinking was wrong. How is it possible a single person could corrupt everyone around himself so thoroughly? So much so, that even as a secondary reaction, people that aren’t coming in direct contact with him are still being defiled by him?
John’s voice interrupts Jake’s musings, “Hey, David. I’m not sure what this is, but touching it is making my skin tingle. Got any idea what it is?” He holds out his hand to show a small green round plant or stone, Jake’s not sure which.
David takes one look at what John’s holding in his hand and smacks it away, flinging what he was holding far away from where they stand. “If you start seeing weird things, or feeling weird, let me know.”
Jake almost laughs at the look of shock on John’s face.
John rubs his right palm with his left thumb. He looks around a moment and asks, “What do you mean feel weird? My hand is tingling, if that’s how you mean it.”
David looks John in the eye a moment and says “It’s too close to tell. Give me your gun and knife, John. We need to restrain you. What that was, is a type of cactus called peyote. Several of the plains ‘Nations use it to go on dream-quests.” He takes the gun-belt and weapons from John when the deputy offers them. “It has very strange properties. If exposed to it for too long, you’ll start seeing things that aren’t actually there. You’ll become confused, easily manipulated.”
John’s eyes get wide. “Then do something about it!”
David grins. “I AM. The only way to do something about it, as you say, is to just let it go through your system. That’s saying you react to it. We may have caught it in time, after all.” He takes a coil of rope from the saddle-bags on his horse and unrolls it. “I’m sorry, John, but we have to do this for your own good. If you’re not reacting to it soon, we’ll untie you. I have to make sure you aren’t, however. Do you understand?”
John sighs and nods uncertainly. “Just do it already.” He holds out his hands, allowing David the opportunity to bind him up.
David quickly and tightly binds the older man. “Oh, I don’t want to do this, but I don’t think we have any choice. We have enough water to last us a couple of days, so we can watch you for a little while. Most people react within a few hours, so, if you’re not raving by morning, you should be okay.”
John nods and allows himself to be led to a different area and Jake follows the pair to where John is being led.
As David sits John down on the ground, he says, “I have to tell Bekah what’s happening. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Jake follows the young doctor back to where everyone else is setting up camp. Just as the pair makes it back, Jake asks David, “Do you think that prisoner was just reacting to that stuff? What did you call it, again, Peyote? Was that why he was so weird?”
David nods. “It’s entirely possible. I don’t know everything it does to people, but I DO know it makes them act . . . strange.”
Jake shakes his head disbelievingly. It shouldn’t be possible that a simple plant can do that to someone. He turns and heads back toward the camp, not looking forward to the rest of the night.
Chapter 31
John stares at the darkness of night, unable to fully contain his fear of the unknown. In the depths of his mind, he admits to himself that, yes, he’s afraid.
The tingling in his right arm becomes more of a dull throb. The gloom of night is suddenly as bright as the noonday sun. He looks around in wonder at how clearly he can see everything.
He guesses it’s been at least two hours since David went back to the camp, leaving him to his own devices. He looks up at the moon and gasps in pain at its brightness. The vision of the moon starts to waver as if looking at it through sheets of water and John looks around wondering when he gained the ability to breathe under water.
He hears what sounds like his name being whispered, then muttered, and finally outright stated clearly. He looks around, demanding, “What?” several times before finally noticing that the sound seems to be coming from the moon.
John gazes in amazement at the wavering image of the moon and listens to it constantly repeat his name over and over again. For hours. John gets lulled at the comforting, yet insistent sound of his name. Over time, it goes from being a comfort, to taking on an urgency that is surprising. He stares at the moon as the repeated sound of his name goes from being urgent to screaming at him.
Finally, unable to stand it anymore, he starts screaming back at it, demanding what it wants.
The color of the moon turns from a brilliant white, to a pale white, then a sickly gray, to pink, then to blood-red. While John stares at the moon, it starts dripping red onto the landscape, then a steady stream flows through the sky into a wash. He can’t do anything but stare in terrified horror as the blood from the moon fills the wash and begins to flood the landscape.
The screaming of the moon turns to maniacal laughter as the entire countryside is awash in blood and fills every nook and cranny with its brassy stickiness.
As the flooding blood approaches, John holds his breath and closes his eyes against the impending doom. When the expected disaster doesn’t come, he exhales explosively and opens his eyes.
The landscape is no longer filling with blood, but each member of the party and their horses lie dead, surrounded by spreading pools of blood coming from the cuts in their throats. He finally gets Josh back only to lose him this way. David, his young dear friend; Rebekah, the doctor’s beautiful young wife. And Joey, his beautiful enigmatic niece. All gone.
John looks down and sees himself covered in blood as well, no longer bound by the ropes and with his knife covered in blood, sitting in his lap. He screams in horror about what it looks like he’s just done. He tries to move, but inexplicably, he can’t even twitch a muscle below his face. He screams and screws his eyes tightly shut until his eyelids hurt enough he has no choice but to open them back up.
He stares as the dead bodies of his friends rise from their prone positions on the ground. They turn to John, moaning his name, demanding why he murdered them. They shamble toward him, blood oozing out of their wounds, moaning, demanding answers.
John screams in unadulterated terror, unable to contain himself. He wrenches his eyes closed once more. He screams again, this time, he feels someone touch his shoulder so he flinches away from the contact.
He hears the moon’s maniacal laughter loudly enough to drown out the sound of anything else he might be able to hear.
At an insistent shaking, John opens his eyes to behold a true abomination. At first glance, it looks like David, but a vision of David from the depths of hell.
The young man’s face is pale, sloughing flesh, eyes oozing blood. He appears to be speaking some foreign language that is so guttural as to be unintelligible. His hands are pure ebony, ending in talons. The young doctor’s most salient features, however, are the beautiful, gracefully curling, golden horns growing directly from the sides of his forehead.
David turns at a sound and John sees what appears to
be Josh approaching. Just like David, this Josh is unlike anything he ever imagined. The deputy appears to be made of glass so delicate that John is truly scared to breathe, else he’ll shatter his blood-brother into millions of pieces.
As Josh approaches, he says something to the demonic vision of the doctor. Josh’s voice is shrill, like glass scraping against glass. David responds in his guttural tongue and John can only stare as the two hold a conversation for hours with each other in their incomprehensible dialects.
After numerous comments between the two, David notices John’s terrified look and reaches for him.
Seeing the black-taloned hand reaching for his face, John involuntarily jerks back away from it, feels a sharp pain in the back of his head and is overcome by an impenetrable darkness.
JAKE LOOKS AT HIS UNCONSCIOUS friend. He wonders what it was that John was seeing to make him howl like he was.
David checks John’s pulse and nods, apparently confirming to himself of the older man’s condition.
Hearing a sound behind him, Jake turns to see Rebekah who is rubbing her arms against the cool night, approach. Looking on in concern, she asks her husband, “He gonna be alright?”
David nods shortly. “I think so. I’ve seen exposure to this stuff before, but it’s been quite awhile.”
Rebekah looks on, then leaves for the campsite.
Jake looks at his blood-brother in dismay. John’s rope bindings held, but for the Grace of God. When John started howling at the moon about an hour ago, Jake was sure his oldest friend had lost what remained of his ever-loving mind.
He and David watched from just outside of John’s field of vision. When John started screaming almost constantly, Jake tried to help him, but was stopped by David.
When John started screaming, “No,” and “Please, God forgive me!” Jake almost had a heart attack. Even in an altered state, John calls out to God. His conversion truly is real.
Jake watches as David continues to check John over, ensuring the Deputy isn’t harmed any more than he was several hours ago.
John tosses and turns in his unconscious state, as unaware of what was happening now as he was twenty minutes ago. Jake moves closer to his oldest friend and sees what appears to be a blood spot on the ground close to the back of John’s skull. When Jake points that out, David simply says, “I saw it. When he hit the ground, he split a part of his scalp. It should be okay.”
Rebekah comes back quickly with David’s black leather doctor’s bag. When she approaches, her expression is disapproving.
David takes one glance at the look on his wife’s face and scowls in return. He graciously accepts the bag that she all but drops on his lap and shakes his head. “Sweetheart, I’d appreciate discussing this later, please? I need to see to John, now. Okay?”
Rebekah huffs, turns on a heel and heads back toward the camp without looking back.
Jake looks on in dismay as the young beautiful woman storms off. He turns to David and watches as the young doctor tends to the insensate man.
David turns John over and checks him for any additional injuries. Muttering to himself, he reaches inside his medical bag and pulls out a rag and a clear bottle. He pours the acrid-smelling liquid onto the rag and works around the bloody region on the back of John’s head.
Jake leans in close enough to see where the blood is coming from and hisses in pain at seeing the oozing liquid seeping out of a several-inches long gash at the base of his friend’s skull. Almost as if to himself, David says, “I’m glad he can’t feel me cleaning this. Rubbing alcohol burns like the dickens. I don’t envy him the headache he’s going to wake up with in the morning.”
“How long do you expect him to react to the peyote?”
David shakes his head. “He should be okay come sunrise. Though, once he wakes, I’ll be able to tell better if he’s still reacting.”
Jake turns away as David takes out a length of dark thread and a needle. He can feel his skin crawl, just imagining his friend being stitched up like a rag-doll. “Hey, doc, I’m gonna go check on stuff in the camp. You know, make sure everything’s still okay. Alright?” He turns and sees David’s sardonic smirk and nods, then quickly strides back to the camp.
Rebekah is sitting in a camp chair, staring into the flames.
Jake pulls up a stool, close enough to her so they can quietly chat. “Feel like talkin’ about it?”
She shakes her head violently and sniffles, then wipes at a few tears Jake hadn’t seen earlier.
“I know what it seems like. Seeing a friend go through this has to be unsettling at best. David assures me John should be alright in the morning, though.”
She shakes her head again and sniffles. “I said I don’t wanna talk about it!”
Jake sighs and shakes his head. Grunting in pain, he rises from the stool and crosses the camp, towards his tent. Standing in the shadows between their two tents, is Joey.
As he approaches, she quietly asks, “How’s he doin’?”
“David assures me he’ll most likely be okay in the morning. Got a nasty enough gash on the back of his head flopping around, though. David is sewing him up now.”
She gazes at the firelight a moment, then says, “Fair enough.” She looks directly at him, a curious expression on her face. “How about you? How are you doing, Uncle?”
Jake is taken aback by her question. Who would think she would ask HIM how he is? AND to call him uncle like that? He nods. “Yeah, I’m fine. I expect it’s just her nerves, like with everyone else.”
Joey nods, then turns and ducks back into her tent. After a moment, he hears what sounds like quiet prayer coming from inside.
Thinking that sounds like a good idea, he ducks into his tent and follows suit.
Chapter 32
John claws his way up from the comfortable darkness of sleep into a world of pain. The setting sun is stabbing through his eyes to his very core, the heat is making his blood boil in his veins and every joint in his body screams in a language he has rarely ever heard.
Trying to say anything through the sandpaper his throat has become produces only the barest of croaks, but it gets the attention of Joey, who is just outside the tent.
She pokes her head in the tent flap and smiles winsomely at the pitiful sight John feels like he presents. “You’re awake. Good. I was afraid we’d have to try and force you to drink water again. Last time didn’t work very well and you almost drowned.” She grabs a canteen from the peg set on the tent pole and ducks into the tent. She kneels by him and helps him up, occasioning grunts and groans of pain from the injured man. “David says the most important thing now is to drink as much water as you can. You’re really dehydrated right now. No, don’t try and talk, just drink.” She holds the canteen to his lips and allows him to drink.
He gags on the first gulp as the pain starts searing his throat like a hot-iron. He’s not sure why his throat would hurt like this and he’s pretty certain he doesn’t want to know. After draining most of the canteen of lukewarm liquid, he pushes it away and is finally able to croak out, “What happened?”
Joey glances out of the tent a moment, considering her words. “Do you remember David binding you, warning you of a possible reaction?”
John gets a flash of the demonic vision of David in his mind’s eyes and gasps, then nods.
“He said your reaction was by far the worst he’d ever seen. He wants to be the one to explain it to you, though. I think that best, after all.” She makes sure he has the canteen in hand, before saying, “While I go get him, you have another drink. You really DO need the water.” She rises and exits the tent, turning at the tent-flap to peer back inside and make sure he’s doing as he was ordered. Seeing that he is, she leaves without another word, leaving John with his thoughts.
John considers the visions he remembers from last night. The grisly as well as terrifying. He prays that he never has to experience anything like that ever again.
Several moments after Joey leaves, David enter
s the tent and kneels next to his patient. He holds up his hand, forestalling any questions from John. “First things first.” He checks John’s pulse, eyes, hands and the back of his head. He sighs deeply in relief. “Well, I’m glad you’re not actively bleeding anymore. Finish that canteen. I’ll get you another, then we can talk. I promise.” He gets up and leaves without another word.
John sighs, worried about what happened. He drains the rest of the canteen down his throat, relishing in the soothing relief of the water.
David returns quickly enough, less than two minutes later, actually. He takes the canteen when offered by John and hands the older man the fresh one. “Drink,” he says in a tone that is in the nature of an order. “While you do, I’ll explain what happened. Do you remember getting a cut on your hand?”
John finishes taking yet another gulp of water and looks down in surprise at an aggravated slit in his palm. He shakes his head.
“I’d thought as much. Close as I can tell, it looks like a scratch, nothing someone would pay attention to. I located the peyote you found on that body and saw it was sliced open, allowing some of the sap out. It must have gotten into your cut.” He pauses a moment, considering his next words carefully. “You were raving more than half the night. That is, until you knocked yourself out.” He shakes his head in mild amusement.
“Knocked myself out?”
David sighs. “I tried to check on you, you were hollering something about having killed everyone. When I tried to reach out to you, you screamed out and threw yourself onto the ground and hit your head on a rock. Do you remember anything of what you saw in the hallucinations?”
While John finishes drinking the canteen, he describes as much of the vivid visions he had. When he finishes, he finally has enough nerve to ask, “How long was I out of it?”
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