The Burden of Souls (Hawker's Drift Book 1)

by Andy Monk

  “We haven’t had a hanging for a while,” John X said evenly, his attention on the crowd which seemed to be swirling slowly around Ash. Grief and anger could be as hard to resist as gravity sometimes.

  “I suppose not. We’re quite a peaceable town at the end of the day.”

  “And the girls usually just disappear, no crime, no one to hang.”

  “That is not at all true,” the Mayor replied, moving to sit next to the gunsmith, dangling his booted feet over the boardwalk, “boys disappear too, sometimes.”

  “Strange, huh?”

  “People come, people go, people have their motives…” he glanced across at John X “…and people have their secrets too.”

  “Yes, some people do,” John X looked back at the Mayor, holding his gaze for a few seconds. He felt his stomach tighten before looking back to the crowd. What was he doing? Above all other things he was a coward and the Mayor of Hawker’s Drift was not a man to challenge.

  The Mayor of Hawker’s Drift, however, appeared more amused than challenged; a distant little smile flickering over his face was his only reaction.

  “This man Amos, he’s a friend of yours?”

  “I know him… wouldn’t go so far as to call him a friend.”

  “Friends! Who needs em eh? Especially when they’re accused of rape.”

  “I’d have given you the same answer yesterday… I’m not really a people person after all.”

  “What did you make of him, this non-friend of yours?”

  John X let out a long slow breath. He should never have offered to fix Amos’ rifle, good deeds were seriously over-rated.

  “Seemed ok.”

  “Very insightful Mr Smith.”

  “Didn’t strike me as a rapist though…” John X replied, needled by the Mayor’s sarcasm.

  “Who can tell? Many people are not necessarily as they seem, take Kate Godbold, for example, I’m pretty sure most everyone would consider her a loyal wife and devoted mother…” he tipped back his hat and grinned “…everyone apart from you and me anyway.”

  John X hauled himself to his feet, “Think I’ll be closing up the store… just in case that crowd gets ugly later.”

  “Oh, no need to worry Johnny, I’m not going to breathe a word of it, wouldn’t want people getting the wrong idea. Especially if it turns out this Amos fellow is innocent.”

  “What does that mean?”

  The Mayor rose to his feet and leaned in close to the gunsmith, “Well, under the circumstances, people might jump entirely to the wrong conclusion if it were known you’d been seen climbing out of Emily Godbold’s window just last week. You know how folk are?”

  “I-”

  The Mayor patted his arm, “Just keep that in mind if Amos’ guilt is questioned…”

  “If someone wanted me to vouch for him for instance?”

  The Mayor smiled broadly, his teeth perfectly white and straight. Just like a good politician’s should be.

  “Just so Mr Smith, just so,” the Mayor winked and hopped down from the boardwalk, straightening his cuffs as he headed towards Ash Godbold and the nucleus of the crowd.

  John X watched him for a moment, before swivelling on his heels and hurrying inside to busy himself with closing up. He’d pull the shutters down just in case things got ugly; once that was done he’d do an inventory of his stock and then check his books were up to date.

  He wanted to keep himself busy tonight so he wouldn’t have time to wonder how the Mayor knew the window he’d seen him jump out of when Ash had returned home unexpectedly had been the window to Emily’s room…

  The Preacher

  The church was dark and silent, save for the faint hum of voices that drifted in from the square. He ignored them as he tried to hear God’s voice, but if the All Mighty was listening in on his desperate prayers he was not responding, in fact, Preacher Stone suspected the Lord was hiding, the celestial equivalent of crouching down behind the biggest piece of furniture in the house and pretending you were out when someone you wanted to avoid was rapping frantically on the front door.

  He had been kneeling before his altar for hours, his knees ached and his stomach throbbed, though neither came close to the aching pain in his soul. Or at least where his soul had once been, before he’d sold it for the Mayor’s black candy.

  A long desperate sigh escaped him and he looked up at the wooden cross that hung upon the back wall of the church. He should leave. Just walk off onto the grass and keep going until his wretched life was spent. He had failed God, he had failed his father and he had failed himself.

  The last of those failings was the least important he knew, but it was the one that hurt the most. Dreams were ashes, hope was spent, good intentions withered, the man he had always intended to be had shrivelled to a cold dark cinder.

  All for a little black bottle containing he knew not what.

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t medicine. He’d been a fool of course, to ever think it was. Sure it took the pain in his guts away, for a while, but it replaced the pain with something worse. It gave him joy. That wasn’t quite right, but he couldn’t think of a better word. It took not only his pain away, but his senses too; he became a creature of weakness and desire. A wretched thing so far removed from God and the world that he’d became something less than a man. And the more of the stuff he drank, the more he wanted and the more he wanted the further he travelled from himself. Yes, it gave him joy, but it was a dark, twisted unholy joy, an abomination that rotted away his immortal soul.

  Then there was the girl.

  He prayed again, screwing his eyes shut till they hurt, begging for guidance, for a sign, for forgiveness and the Lord’s redemption. Nothing came, still just the distant voices of the people on the square eager for the vengeance of the gallows.

  Her tongue had been black, just as his became after he drank the candy. How could that be?

  The little bottle in his pocket was empty and the Mayor hadn’t come to give him more. He’d had half a bottle left and now it was gone. The last time he had drunk from it he had blacked out and awoken naked on the rug of his drawing room with the dawn light pushing at the windows and the little bottle tightly gripped in his hand. An empty bottle.

  Had he raped her? Is that where his candy had gone? Had he poured it down her throat and defiled her? Surely not? Please God not.

  When her father had asked Emily who had attacked her, he had, for one awful moment, expected her eyes to turn accusingly upon him, peering fearfully through swollen flesh as she raised a shaking figure at him. He had wanted to run, to scream and flee the room, but he had been unable to move. Instead, sweat had erupted from his body and he had begun to shake uncontrollably. Ash and Kate Godbold had been too distracted by their daughter to notice, at least he hoped they had for he had felt like a guilty man and was convinced he must have looked much the same.

  Instead, with a dry croaking voice she had whispered, “Amos… the gunslinger…”

  Preacher Stone had felt relief proportional to the rage that flowed through Ash Godbold.

  Except…

  He was new in town and had been spending a lot of time with the McCrea widow, an inappropriate amount of time if the town gossips and rumour-mongers were to be believed. Something he’d duly told the Mayor along with all the other mindless tattle he was required to listen to.

  A stranger. He had wanted to ask how she knew this man’s name, but before he could say anything, Ash had jumped to his feet and hurried out of the room. Kate had half risen and called out after her husband, only sitting back down once she heard the front door slam shut.

  Once his attention had turned back to Emily her eyes had closed again and the poor girl had drifted off to sleep.

  He had stayed awhile longer out of politeness, but had slipped away himself once Kate too had fallen asleep, her hands still entwined with her daughter’s.

  He’d returned to his church and tried to find sanctuary in prayer, but all he could feel was a deep sen
se of guilt. He couldn’t remember hurting the girl and she herself had said this Amos fellow had attacked her, but the feeling that somehow he was responsible wouldn’t leave him. He kept seeing the shredded remnants of his father’s bible and poor Emily’s blackened tongue.

  Ever since he had begun supping the Mayor’s black candy he had felt something writhing inside him, a desire he had not known for many, many years. His dreams were haunted by naked flesh and he awoke panting and slick with sweat in the morning, his crotch sticky with spent lust.

  The candy made him want to rut like a beast, it filled him with dark, monstrous desires. Every time he saw a pretty woman he had to fight the urge to reach out and touch her, to feel her, to use her and to defile her in the basest of ways. It sickened and excited him in equal measures and no matter how hard he prayed and how studiously he read his bible he found no respite, like floodwaters held by an old sun-baked mud dam his desires were rising inexorably.

  It was only his faith that had saved him from succumbing to temptation, but he needed more and God was giving him no help. He felt alone, abandoned and forgotten. Had that been why he had destroyed his father’s precious bible? And what else might he do when he lost himself to the candy? Perhaps he hadn’t hurt the Godbold girl, but he was terrified if he took the candy again he would wake and find a naked woman next to him and, maybe, like his father’s bible, she would be torn to shreds too.

  He hadn’t had any candy for days. He had not gone to the Mayor to ask for more, to beg like he had before. Now the pain in his guts was worse than it’d ever been before, but he’d rather suffer that than what the little black bottle did.

  And yet… he wanted it so badly, his very core writhed in torment for the want of it, the need of it. He had hoped if he could last a few days without it the desire would fade and with it the terrible yearnings it fuelled, but the waters had yet to subside. If anything they were still rising and the dam of his faith was buckling under its remorseless pressure, cracks were starting to appear and when it broke…

  Better he walk out onto the grass. Better that he die.

  He grimaced and let out a low rumbling groan as he rose slowly from his knees and half stumbled forward as his frozen joints and numb legs nearly buckled from the strain.

  “You’re in pain old man.”

  The Preacher, still half bent and panting slightly did not look round.

  “The church is closed.”

  “Really? I thought the doors to the House of God were forever open.”

  “They are closed to you.”

  The Mayor just chuckled.

  Slowly straightening up and fighting to keep the pain from showing on his face he slowly turned to find the Mayor sitting in the front pew, one immaculately polished boot hooked over his knee. He was dressed in a black suit, over a black vest and a black shirt. It seemed entirely appropriate given his heart was the same colour.

  The pew was less than two yards back from where he’d been kneeling, but he hadn’t heard the man come in and settle himself down. Perhaps he’d been praying too hard to hear him. Perhaps.

  “I brought you something for your pain,” he held up a little black bottle between his thumb and forefinger, twisting it back and forth.

  “I don’t need it,” the Preacher muttered, his mouth instantly filling with saliva.

  “Of course you do… it takes your pains away, remember?” The Mayor said in a sonorous voice that echoed about the church, the little bottle still twisting back and forth. It seemed to catch the candlelight as if diamonds floated in the black goo it held.

  “The pain is easier to bear than what that stuff does to me,” the Preacher insisted, though he found his traitorous legs had taken him to stand over the Mayor, his eyes following each little twist of the bottle.

  “Oh come now, there is no need to be so dramatic with me… you know you like the way it makes you feel.”

  “It is turning me into a monster!” Preacher Stone hissed, biting down so hard upon his teeth he feared he would shatter the few he had left.

  “What nonsense! It is turning you into a man in touch with his desires... that is what you want isn’t it Preacher Billy, deep down, to know all the things you’ve forsaken for your calling?”

  “I forsake those things willingly so that I might better hear God’s words and do his work. I have no regrets.”

  “You cannot lie to me Billy, nobody can lie to me. You do not hear God at all any more do you? But this? Oh, you hear this well enough, it sings to you…” the Mayor’s grin was wide and his eye still, “…my black candy sings to you Billy, loud and sweet and clear.”

  The Mayor reached up, still holding the little bottle delicately between thumb and forefinger, still twisting it as you might a toy to catch the eye of a kitten.

  Preacher Stone meant to swipe the wretched thing from the Mayor’s hand and send it spinning across the church, he swore he had. Instead, he found it resting within his own palm, the glass strangely warm against his skin as he gently rubbed his thumb up and down it, transfixed by the thick, slow sloshing of the candy inside.

  “Have a little nip; it’ll do you good…”

  He blinked away a drop of sweat and remembered his father’s bible shredded on the floor and poor Emily Godbold in her bed, black tongue flicking out from her split and swollen lips.

  “…that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him!” Preacher Stone cried, drawing strength from the familiar words where he had none himself, and hurled the bottle at the floor. When it failed to break he brought his foot down upon it, feeling the glass explode beneath his heel. The black viscid potion spurted out as if he had stamped on some giant diseased beetle.

  The Mayor pursed his lips and leaned forward slightly to examine the remains of the bottle as the Preacher took a faltering step backwards, “I think you’ll find that stain will be a bugger to get out,” he raised his single baleful eye as he added, “both from the floor and you…”

  “Be gone!”

  “My, you are in a tetchy mood this evening Billy, just why is that?”

  “Because I see you for what you are! A peddler of misery and deceit!”

  “Are you casting me out too? Don’t you need some holy water or something for that?” The Mayor asked as he looked up and gently stroked the bristles beneath his chin.

  “I am not blind to you.”

  “Isn’t that a rather insensitive thing to say to a man with only one eye?”

  Preacher Stone shook his head and tried not to think about the screaming in his head that was begging him to get down and lick up the candy before it soaked into the scuffed floorboards, “Perhaps, but in a town where everyone else is blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

  “I’m certainly no king, if that is what you are implying Preacher, I think it would be fairer to say that in a town of the blind…” the Mayor smiled as he rose smoothly to his feet, “…the one-eyed man is God…”

  “Is that what you think you are? You are not God, just a manipulative blasphemer!”

  “Good night Preacher,” the Mayor gave him a little nod as he brushed past him and headed up the aisle towards the doors, “come see me when your pain becomes too great and you change your mind.”

  “I will not beg for your poison again!” Preacher Stone shouted, “it is evil and unnatural, it is the Devil’s brew and God will smite you for all that you have done!”

  The Mayor paused and turned back, hands outstretched, “Preacher, really? What have I done, other than try to take away your pain?”

  Preacher Stone stared at him; he was panting faintly, his heart thundered and he could feel his foot sticking to the floor as if the black candy was in no mood to let him go.

  “I’ve seen the girl…”

  “Which girl?”

  “Young Emily of course! I saw her tongue, black like mine, black from this abomination!” He shouted, pointing at the floor a
nd the shards of glass scattered around his shoe.

  “I understand the poor girl was beaten quite badly,” the Mayor said evenly, “her tongue was probably just bruised – perhaps she bit it when she was attacked. Such things can happen, I understand.”

  “No, you had something to do with this, just like you have something to do with everything rotten in this damn town!”

  “Everything Preacher? I really would need to be a god to do that. Wouldn’t I?”

  “God will strike you down for your blasphemy and your evil works.”

  The Mayor laughed, a deep booming roar that filled every corner of the church, when it subsided he inclined his head slightly to the left as his eye fixed steadily on the Preacher and he took a single step back towards the Preacher.

  “Shall I tell you about God, Preacher? God is a senile old fool who lost interest in the world and the lives of the simple little apes who scurry across its surface a long, long time ago, I, however, find you all rather fascinating and amusing…” the Mayor’s right hand was tapping against his thigh as if keeping time to a tune only he could hear, “…so I decided to take up the slack.”

  “You’re quite mad...”

  “Aren’t all gods?”

  He winked his one good eye before striding down the aisle, as he opened the doors he looked back and spoke again. His voice was low, but despite the fact he was at the opposite end of the church Preacher Stone heard him as clearly as if he’d been standing close enough to whisper in his ear.

  “Oh, and don’t mention such nonsense about the poor Godbold girl again. That wouldn’t be wise…”

  Preacher Stone watched him disappear into the night, which was where he suspected he probably belonged.

  He stood for a moment, shaking in the soft candlelight, trying to find peace in the quietness of his church. When he took a step back he felt the candy sticking to his shoe, reluctant to let him go. He stared down at it, a thick black puddle spreading slowly out from the crushed remains of the bottle. His eyes filled with tears as he his legs buckled and he found himself kneeling before the remains of the bottle in much the same way that he had earlier knelt before the cross. His hand was shaking; it snuck out in frantic spasms, inexorably drawn down towards the spilt potion by some malign force he could not resist.