A couple of shots were fired from out in the gathering dark but were not even close to reaching them.
Porter declared, “I’m going after him.”
“I’m coming with you,” Mary said. “We must get the key.”
Porter snagged his horse’s reins. “They got Zeke, and Jack is wounded and deaf. I need you to help them gather the horses and get back to the Round Tent.”
“You need back up,” she protested.
“I have Dawg.”
“He is still wounded. I’m not.”
Porter mulled that over.
Jack shouted, “I’m alright. I can get Zeke and head back with the horses. You go get the son of a bitch!”
Boles trotted toward them. His shirt was a wretched smear of blood. “Fellas, I don’t feel so good.” He collapsed before them.
Porter rushed to his side and examined his wound. “He got hit in the arm, lost a lot of blood. He might make it.” He tore off Boles sleeve and wrapped it around his shoulder. “Mary, help me get him on a horse.”
The two of them lifted Boles onto a horse and he came to, blinking awake. “Where am I? My arm hurts. Where’s Zeke?”
Porter took hold of Boles’ belt and wrapped it about the saddle horn. “Hold on, you gotta keep alive long enough to help Jack get you patched up.”
Jack stood and held the reins of another horse. “I got this!” yelled Jack. “Go get Stoney!”
“You’re hit yourself.”
“What?” Jack shouted.
Porter shook his head and pointed at Jack’s shoulder.
Jack shouted, “It just grazed me. I’m alright except for being deaf!”
Porter nodded at him and signaled him to grab as many horses as he could. Jack acknowledged him.
“I’ll get Zeke back home. What about the rest of these fellers?”
“They can feed the crows.”
Black Wings
Far back up the mountainside, just as the darkness revealed the torch fires of beyond that we call stars, a cosmic movement signaled that the conjunction was right. The veil between worlds was at its thinnest, and what might have seemed an infinite gulf between worlds and dimensions moments ago, was now separated by the barest thread of the ether.
An earthquake rumbled and a portion of the mountain sloughed off from itself in a deadly morass, revealing a gaping door not crafted by human hands. Amidst the debris of earth and stone was a scattered tumbling of massive bones. Near the place where the Chinese had found the Dragon Bones, a few small caves were revealed in the steep mountainside. A myriad of black winged bats swarmed out of these caverns, welcoming the newfound exits amidst the unholy rolling of the mountain—but they were not alone.
***
Stoney saw that he was alone. He sent a few wild shots toward Brown and Mary, then ran back through the swampy area to get a head start on returning to his own encampment. He had just lost the last eight of his most devout followers. In just two days, the Mountain Hounds band which had been robbing and murdering throughout the California territory for the last four years, was no more.
He could always get more men and he would always hunger for revenge, but in the moment, he was outgunned. He had to think of the now, getting out alive and living to strike back another day.
He raced as fast as he could back across the muddy ground until he reached a boardwalk that led along a flume and took him back into Coloma. From there he stole a horse and rode hard the mile and half back to his hideaway.
He continually looked back over his shoulder to be sure Brown wasn’t closing in on him. That he wasn’t being followed. They had slain his men, but they had wounded and dead men, too. Difference being, he knew they would be waiting up on their wounded, that wasn’t his problem anymore, he could travel light and fast, and only one thing mattered. No, two things, revenge and the strange copper book.
But revenge could come later, right now he just had to get back and lay his hands on the book.
Darkness was coming and the stars, which were right, were blinking awake. Why had that thought come to him? What made them right? Here and there the gleaming campfires of the miners cast hellish lights amidst the dark forest, and shapes pent in hell swirled awake.
Something akin to birds or bats flitted through the night sky. These black and gaunt forms swooped and dipped at one another like cascading whirlwinds. They drew ever nearer, and Stoney wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him.
He could waste no more time with such fanciful thoughts, he knew Brown was coming and hell was coming with him.
He tied the horse behind his shack, guessing that a cursory glance wouldn’t fool most anyone searching who might own the animal, but he was more than a mile from where it was taken and guessed he had a bit of time.
Stoney lit his oil lamp then gathered up his best gear and grabbed a belt and box with spare ammunition, caps and balls, and powder. He took a sack and tossed in a few vittles, jerky, hard tack, and even a few bruised apples. He took a couple bottles of whiskey that he had stolen from Porter’s wagon the other night and put all of that in the saddle bags. He was done with this place, but this strange book would make it all worthwhile.
Stalking back inside the shack, he moved his cot and a dirty frayed mat. From under those he pried up some loose floorboards and casually tossed them to the side of his shack. In the dirt was his squared treasure hole. He had a small bit of gold stashed therein along with an extra pistol. From the hole, he pulled up a burlap bag. The item inside was reasonably heavy for its size. It clanked as he returned the loose boards, then he opened the bag to gaze upon its wonder once again. He had been compelled to have it ever since, just two night ago, he’d gazed through a small hole in the Round Tent Saloon and saw the strange item. It wasn’t even gold, but it captivated him like nothing else ever had. He couldn’t explain it to himself, but he desired it more than he had wanted that pretty calico gal back in Sacramento, the redhead with the big bosom, the one he had spent so much coin on. This peculiar copper book was not of this world as near as he could recollect. It called to him. He had been compelled to steal it, and for what? He didn’t know, he was so taken by it. He opened the book and it slid open circular like a flower blossoming. It made a strange, star-like form, and the glyphs etched deeply into it seemed to dance and move in the weak lamplight. There were dozens of signs and wonders that he could not fathom the depth of their mystery, others looked like Egyptian and still others perhaps like some of the crude Cherokee he had seen when he was boy. Here and there were monstrous signs and evil looking wards.
He was taken aback at the sudden sound of horse hooves. How long had he been staring at the book? It had seemed mere moments, but he could tell instantly from the dying lantern with its oil guttering low it must have been longer than it felt.
“That’s far enough, Stoney. Drop your guns.”
It was Brown! How had he gotten here so fast? At least he was by himself. That made things fair, even though Stoney never played fair.
He withdrew his pistol and shot toward the dark figure on horseback. But he was night blind from staring at the book with the lantern’s glow across the copper face.
Brown returned fire and a bullet ripped through Stoney’s arm. His arm was soaking wet with hot blood.
“I said drop it! Last chance, ya Puke!” cried Brown.
Stoney knew this was it. Either he took the shot to end this threat or met his fate at the end of a rope—that was no way for a man like him to die. He went to raise his pistol but realized it was no longer in his hand, he held only the book. His wounded arm had held the pistol. The gun was on the ground at his feet.
Confusion washed over him. He was losing a lot of blood and his thoughts were clouded and heavy.
A sudden gust of wind blasted him in the face, and he heard Brown shooting, but the crack shot missed! Stoney wondered why he wasn’t being hit by the hot lead.
Strong, gaunt arms picked him up off the ground. Who else was here? Was it Bloo
dy Creek Mary? She was strong as any man, but no, it couldn’t have been her. The wind slapped him in the face, and he couldn’t touch the ground. Who had him?
Bullets whistled angrily nearby but got rapidly farther away. He looked down and saw lean black arms holding him firm across the chest. The arms were darker than the Jamaican slave he knew when he was boy, what was his name? Something like Green? These arms were skinny for how strong they were. And darker than coal. Whoever it was, they had saved him from sure death at the hands of Brown and Bloody Creek Mary. They were a guardian angel.
He craned his neck back so he could look upon the face of this guardian angel.
The thing looking back at him had no face.
It was like a man merged with a bat’s wings. It was the color of night and gaunt as skin wrapped over a skeleton. But even a skeleton would have had a face of sorts, this was a rounded mask of obsidian
Stoney screamed and scrambled to escape the clutching embrace of this night-colored being. He kicked and fought and bit and lost the precious book he had held in the crook of his good arm.
The night gaunt was immune to his struggles, but once it realized he had dropped the book, it screamed despite a mouthless face and dropped Stoney to pursue the falling book.
Stoney felt the ground rush up to greet him and he knew no more. The jumbled river boulders beside the road were less forgiving than even Porter.
***
“What the hell are those?” asked Porter, as he shot toward the second one swooping low to the ground ahead of them.
Bloody Creek Mary urged her horse to keep up with Porter’s and even though she could only hear half of what was asked, she knew the question. “Ghost Horn called them Night Gaunts.”
The first one that had held Stoney swooped in a wide circle and flew back toward Porter like it was daring to meet him head on.
Porter put his reins in his teeth and drew a second pistol. With both guns trained on the head of the thing, he fired away, letting a prayer guide each ball of lead.
A dozen lead balls struck the diving Night Gaunt in its blank face. It careened into the road directly in front of them, causing his horse to rear in a panic. Porter regained control of his mount and drew up before the black thing in the road.
It hissed, and Porter let loose another volley into the thing before realizing it was the swift decomposition of the body creating the hiss, not the thing itself.
Like ice swiftly melting under a summer sun, the black thing hissed and bubbled as gray steamy vapors rose from the collapsing corpse. Within mere seconds, the bat-like body of the Night Gaunt was gone.
Porter and Mary glanced up to see the other Night Gaunt wheeling through the sky, the copper book in its clawed grasp.
“It’s heading toward the mountain door. We must hurry.” Mary kicked her heels into her horse, urging it after the strange being.
Porter glanced once more time back at the spot on the ground. Only a fading mist vaguely resembling the shape of the bat-like thing remained. There was no hint left of the monstrosity beyond that. Who would believe this?
Just a short distance away, Stoney’s broken body laid on his back among the river rocks. He was splayed out facing the night sky, a look of utter horror frozen upon his face. At least he was dead for good this time, mused Porter.
The Door into the Mountain
Porter and Mary urged their horses up the trail past Williamson’s as fast as they dared. The cold chill was matched only by the glint of the full moon. Porter was grateful that if they must make this arduous trek as swiftly as they could that the moon lit their path liberally.
Urging their frothing horses up the trail, they struggled past the spot where the Chinese had camped. Some sections of the trail had buckled from the earthquake. Porter had felt the tremor but not realized it was big enough of a shock to cause this kind of damage, but here and there were strange tears in the face of the mountain. All things considered, it was amazing that Williamson’s flume was still going to capacity, it had hardly buckled and leaked at all, even with a gouge in the land forcing it to straddle a new ravine like a bridge.
Their horses made the leap across, and Porter was grateful it wasn’t any wider than it was.
Almost to the spot where they had first met Slow Badger and talked with Ghost Horn, they heard a great, wailing sound.
The landscape had changed. Some parts of the forest were all turned on end, pointing at the moon as if it were the ten on a clock, and the mountain trail was widened from a mudslide that had carried away a vast chunk of ground creating a new plateau. The sound was the wailing of Indian women and children.
There was no sign of the tepee’s or any other part of the small camp Porter had visited a night ago. With the utter change on the mountain, he wasn’t even sure which way to look anymore.
Mary spoke to one of the women who gestured to the wide expanse of earth before them, then pointed just ahead.
“She says the quake killed most of the men, including Slow Badger, her husband.”
Porter grunted, asking, “What about the…?” He couldn’t even bring himself to use the words to describe the Night Gaunts, instead he swirled a finger in the air.
The woman rattled off a horrified answer and pointed at the mountain.
“She says they opened the door and went in,” answered Mary.
“What?”
The devastation of the land had made them miss a new darkness that beckoned just to their right.
“I’ll be dipped.” Porter consciously shut his mouth as he gazed upon the dark doorway.
Cast like an open gate to the underworld, titanic doors twelve feet tall loomed open. They were each near enough to six feet wide and looked green with age, until Porter realized the doors were not corroded metal but seemed to be made from a marbled green stone, perhaps emerald? The threshold, what little Porter could see of it, was hewn from the mountain’s living rock and marked with glyphs similar to what he’d seen on the book itself. A sloping path led into utter darkness.
“They went that away?” he asked, regretting the question.
“They did,” came Ghost Horn’s voice. The old man struggled forward from the slanted tree slope. “The Night Gaunt made it through the thinning of the veil and took the book back and opened the way for the Old Ones. The door must be shut again.”
“So, lets push these doors shut and start backfilling it all,” offered Porter.
“The doors cannot be shut unless we have the key,” said Ghost Horn.
“We have to go in and get it back,” said Mary.
Porter chewed at the edges of his beard. “I killed one of those things and it faded into mist. How many more are there?”
“The Night Gaunt are but few and the weakest of what you will encounter there.”
Mary said something in a language Porter didn’t understand, and Ghost Horn answered her in likewise fashion.
“Wait, you gotta tell me what’s gonna happen if I don’t do this. Cuz I don’t fancy a trek into the dark with those things. What does it all matter?”
Mary answered, “The Sleeping Gods will awaken and come out again. They will bring death to the land like has not been seen in thousands of years. The best we can do is put them back to sleep.”
“How do we do that?”
“We take back the key and shut the door.”
“You see, that part sounds simple, but I reckon it really ain’t.”
“It isn’t, but it’s the only chance we have.”
Porter mulled things for a moment. “I trust you Mary, but can it really be as terrible as you say? Is this just gonna affect your people or what?”
“It will affect everyone. It will take time, but it will spread the world over, as they awaken more of their brethren sleeping in far off places—perhaps beneath the sea, or in the highest of mountains—but they will awaken all of the sleepers. And that will doom humanity.”
Porter wanted to be dubious, to doubt all of these strange revelations,
but he had seen too many things the last three days to deny that there was a whole lot more to the world than he had ever guessed before.
“How can just the two of us succeed?”
“Well,” answered a new voice, “I’d say keep your powder dry and give them as much hell with that thunder and lead as you can. You’ve been doing alright so far.”
Porter spun about to face the newcomer. It was the hoary old miner he had seen before a time or two. The old man had a thick bushy mustache and beard to match, along with eyes that twinkled bright in the firelight, almost phosphorus-like. Porter never had any reason to think the white-bearded man was a threat or up to anything, but the way the old man had suddenly appeared amongst not only Mary and himself, but Ghost Horn and the rest of the gathered Indians gave him pause. No one was that sneaky.
“Who are you, mister, and what do you know about all this?” asked Porter, suspiciously.
“Call me Mr. Nodens, if you like. I know a thing or two about these goings on. I like to keep tabs on the Old Ones and see that they keep to their own place.”
Porter looked at him shrewdly, wondering if he was speaking with a mad man or a demon in human form.
Mr. Nodens continued, “I can see you’re wary as a caged wolf, and that’s a fine way to be considering these here strange things. After all, even I lost track of a couple of my hounds, and they went rogue and answered the call of another master. Glad you took the one down before I had to.”
“Hounds?”
Mr. Nodens gave a soft sound like a chuckle, but declined any further answer on the subject, instead he went on, pointing at the gaping doorway. “Down there is a whole lot of pain and hurt, fear and madness. Don’t be deceived, it’s a real dark place despite any amount of light you might bring to it.”
“What’s down there?” demanded Porter.
“Slippery blasphemies,” hinted Nodens with a wry smile.
“You got anything more to tell me? Something useful?”
Nodens gave a lopsided grin. “There are strange objects in the great abyss, and you ought to take care and not wake the sleepers. Truth is, I’d love to go with you, Porter, it could be a great hunt, but I’ll have to settle for just putting you on the path tonight. I can’t cross that threshold myself. Bad knees.” He tapped at his legs.
Let Sleeping Gods Lie Page 8
