The Resurrectionist

by Jackson, Gil

  * * *

  Cheyne Ridge or rather the valley that it was known was a dust bowl of intolerable heat with temperatures in there high 40s and hardly cooled by the winds which continually shifted its landscape, sending clouds of sandstone swirling and eddying round its valley; wearing the exposed rocks smooth, the shrub bush harsh and prickly, and the cactus at home in an environment that had been marvelled for its ability to sustain animal life in its hostile interior. For the most part the sand stayed in the valley; it was the lighter granules which were sucked up the sloping side of the Ridge and blown out across the town which left a brown stain on anything it could get into — which didn’t leave much. If you were not indigenous it would make your face raw as if you’d had a once over with a wire brush; it would get into your eyes and ears, mouth: catching between the edge of your teeth when you least expected it causing them to painfully bite together. All this would have made no difference on the two deputies that were standing on the ridge two hundred feet above the valley floor had not the wind been blowing ‘Furnace’. For ‘Furnace’, being not its proper scientific and meteorological title but, the name given for this south westerly perpetual torment by the insular and mostly in the ascendancy, ignorant, people of Cheyne County for it: coupled with the prevailing, and registering as high eight on the Beaufort wind scale — burnt. Flat plastic orange goggles shielded the two deputies’ eyes; handkerchiefs covering their mouths and noses as they started there descent into the valley.

  With the wind trying to pull them off the edge they carefully picked out a path down into the valley floor towards the remains of the Jeep below them. Shouting to make themselves heard to each other against the relentless whistle of the wind that sounded like someone blowing continuously through lips that were too far open. Once they had started their descent there was no chance that they would fall. The wind pushed them into the sides. This was as well with one being out of condition and the other nursing a hangover.

  At the bottom the Jeep, still upside down, its front wheels out of line from the track-rod ends having been stripped from their sleeves, looked as if it had been there for years rather than two days. Its metallic green having given way to the colour of everything else in this area: gave the impression of a derelict ship.

  Deputy Al Wood pulled the door open and peered inside, slowly at first, in case the girl appeared. ‘Eerie in it?’ he said. ‘Glad I wasn’t the driver.’

  Dave pulled the handkerchief down from his mouth and spat out some sand. ‘There’s nobody here we’ll have a quick look in the mine entrances then get back, Bell reckons she was dead, but to satisfy the powers that be, in case she wasn’t and had crawled off, we were to have a proper look round. Down the mines.’

  ‘What, a couple of hundred yards, nah, she was dead alright.’

  ‘Well Bell wants us to have another look so we will. So let’s look.’ Dave said.

  ‘One each?’ Al said.

  Dave thought for a second.

  Al looked at him for an answer. ‘It’ll be quicker — we can get back for the Derby sooner.’

  ‘Try yer luck with Masie Maddison, more like, while her old man’s up in ’braska,’ Dave Carson said.

  ‘She likes me company.’

  ‘She likes sucking cock, not fussy whose. You happen to be this months’ flavour.... Oh, God! You.... Flavour of the month.... Doesn’t bear thinking about.’

  ‘She ain’t like that.’ Alan Wood, said. ‘Anyway, I’m not complaining. Least she’s a living woman. Not like, that Alison, that’d been found in her barn by those children.’

  Dave Carson looked at him hard. ‘You shut your mouth about that, you hear me. You shut yer mouth, or I’ll shut it for yer ... Anyway, Alison, she was on the game when she was alive, don’t suppose she’d complain much. You’d been watching properly you’d seen that I couldn’t get her jeans off her, so I didn’t get into her, not properly, so it don’t count.’

  ‘Yeh, well, she was still dead!’

  Dave Carson looked at him threateningly once again.

  ‘All right, it’s not my business, I’ll say nothing.’

  ‘Yeh, well make sure you don’t. You take that mine entrance I’ll take the other, back ’ere in twenty minutes. And keep in radio touch.’

  * * *

  Deputy Alan Wood was glad to be out of the sand-ridden wind. Not that the Lucky Silver mine was much of an alternative to the Moab. Dark, cold and dangerous. Since the mine closed there was no more maintenance to keep it from collapsing. Timbers were loose; ceilings shifted and could come down without warning burying any unfortunate that might be seeking shelter. Tommo, for instance. Held up the liquor store and hid out at the Moab where he opened his last bottle before the mine working and his world caved in snuffing him out.

  He pushed aside corrugated iron put there to keep casual visitors out. They had not served their purpose. Somebody had been in here recently — a coke can and an empty packet of Marlboro lay on the ground inside the entrance. He stepped into the gloom and flattened the cigarette packet under his boots. His radio crackled but no voice issued.

  Al tried transmitting. ‘Copy, copy, Dave, found anything yet?’

  ‘Give us a chance, I’ve just got ‘ere, you arse ‘ole. And cut out that copy crap.’

  Pervert, he thought. ‘Roger that,’ he said.

  Dave put his radio on his belt and switched on his torch. Expecting to see the fur-clad woman where he’d left her and was surprised that she was gone. Shining the torch down the passageway before him, he guessed he must have made a mistake; he started to walk a little way into the mine — still no body. He started to panic. His ears picked up the sound of rats scratching. Hesitantly he bent down in the darkness and felt for a stone, stood up and threw it hard toward the sound. It clattered as it hit the rock wall before ricocheting against what sounded like wood. He guessed a prop. The squeal from the rats protesting his presence made him shudder. He worried that one might come racing in his direction. He lighted a cigarette, and stooped to pick up another stone. Standing up he dropped his torch. Bending to retrieve it the beam flickered and went out. Fuck the thing, he whispered to himself, found it again, picked it up and shook it and much to his relief it came back on. He heard another sound.

  He strained to hear and was torn between running out and standing his ground in fear. He chose the latter but much preferred the former. ‘Who’s there?’ he shouted. He shined the torch round in a panic trying to light up as many dark recesses as he could. He could feel his heart beating. ‘Al! Al! That you, Al — stop fucking with me I know its you!’ There was no reply. He stopped shouting and decided to make his way out as quickly as he could — there it was again, down further, like someone sipping water. He called out and listened. Why didn’t they answer? — he hadn’t been quiet. He called out again, still nothing. He pulled his radio from his belt and pushed transmit but all he got back was static. Damn, he thought this is going to fuck things up if there is somebody here. He tried the radio again. More static. Well he thought let’s get this over with and began moving further in.

  The sound that he was hearing though was moving away from him the further down the passageway he went. It had not immediately occurred to him, but he had come further into the mine than intended. Decided it was time to get out he couldn’t find the turn back to the entrance. And he had arrangements to keep.

  Arrangements, he thought to himself. If they only knew. But why should they? He was not going to tell and if Al Woods ever did he would kill him. They wouldn’t understand anyway; he didn’t understand himself most of the time. It had come upon him like darkness — except that it didn’t have to be night. Not anymore, although it had started out that way.

  He couldn’t remember when it had first began. He supposed that it had always been with him — suppressed like. Guilt? None at all, after all they were only orphans. Why some couldn’t even tie their own shoelaces; and as for telling what he was doing the idea would not enter their heads. They must hav
e thought it was normal — why should they think any different — as far as he was concerned it was.

  * * *

  Deputy Alan Wood was having his own problems. ‘Dave! For fuck’s sake, where are you?’ But all he got was static. Funny he thought, the area was not known for its bad reception.

  He made his way in the direction of the Lucky Silver trying the radio at intervals but it made no difference, he could not get any kind of response.

  Stepping onto the corrugated iron door that was the entrance to the Lucky Silver mine he shouted into its black mouth his partner’s name. A dull echo came back to him but nothing else. What the fuck’s he playing at? he said to himself. Putting his torch on and going into the mine his eye caught sight of a cigarette butt on the ground. Picking it up he sniffed at it. One of Dave’s. He called his name again. He started into its interior guessing that he must be out of both earshot and radio reception. He reasoned that these mines could lose a voice around a couple of bends; it would not have been surprising that Dave had not heard him. He was not one to go chasing shadows unnecessarily especially with arrangements like Masie Maddison on his mind; he didn’t get too many opportunities with women.

  ‘Dave!’ he shouted. ‘You down there?’ He listened intently as his voice carried into the mine with not an echo returning. He called again, this time with a curse. He listened and thought he could hear drinking and called a third time. Then made his way back to the entrance.

  * * *

  Anxious to get this over, Dave, hurried along the passageway his feet picking purposefully among the stones and rocks towards the source of the sound. He kept calling his partner’s name but still there was no reply. He could hear his breathing and his rationale was beginning to wane but he was not a man to run from it. But she didn’t come as any less of a shock when he fell upon her.

  Draped in the furs he had first seen her, on all fours by a puddle of water, drinking, what must have leached through from the ground above. She got up and walked away from him. He guessed she wouldn’t be able to see him properly because he had the light source and that was the way he liked it, for any thoughts of Al were consigned to the back burner, for before him was the woman that had been in that Jeep that he had first carried in here, only she was alive, and he had the chance to be rid of his guilt, he would have her alive this time and bury his perversions, for the time being at least, and become a normal man.

  ‘Hello,’ he said to her excitedly. ‘I’ve come to rescue you. Glad to see you weren’t dead after all.’

  She said nothing — just stared at him turned her head lifted it slightly and appeared several yards behind where she had first stood.

  Did she walk back, he couldn’t tell. He felt afraid. He was the kind of man that commanded respect from the end of a nightstick. Not used to being ignored. He decided that the stick might get the effect he desired and pulled it from his belt and walked towards her. He knew how to deal with disobedient children, a woman shouldn’t be any different.

  ‘Not so fast, girl,’ he said, putting her magical abilities to one side as some trick of light from his torch.

  She repeated the trick. This infuriated him; he was not going to be made a fool of. He walked quickly toward her and made a grab. Her body came away from her slipped from his hand and resumed its shape once again leaving him off balance. His mouth dropped open in horror; this was no trick of the light. Overcoming the fear he cursed her made a grab for her again but this time she stopped, turning and facing him. He stood stock still, and regaining his composure pulled the fur from her body exposing first her shoulders, then her breasts. No nipples. Filled with horror his eyes were drawn down to her lower body, where there should have been her navel, but which was smooth skin, on down to her vagina, which was again nothing more than smooth skin, with nowhere for a man to enter. He turned to run but it was too late. She was on him. Her face that of a hideous creature was in his and such horrors that he had never seen in this world went though the visual vortex of his brain blowing it out of his skull with such force that there was nothing left of his head but a mass of tangled veins and arteries still connected to a soft blackened tissue. His soul, still in this world, felt the pain of being inside an iron container being heated up over a fire, where he leapt falling against its sides searing more and more flesh away from his body and without the mercy of death, carried his soul to another world where it continued to see and feel his body in torment.

  * * *

  The fact that Deputy Alan Wood was not especially fond of Deputy Dave Carson did not in itself make what he saw any less of a shock. His initial reaction at seeing the man in this condition would only add to his mental anguish. As to how Dave had managed to be where he was and how he’d got there: for there was only one entrance to the Lucky Silver and the Moab was a good half mile away. The more he put his mind to it the more confused he became.

  Sheriff Winfield Bell was not so confused: he had not believed a word that Deputy Sheriff Wood had told him and arrested him for the murder of his partner. Bell hoped that he knew the person that would be investigating the murder. All that gobbing off to the Press about apparitions by Wood; how he had not been in the mine that he had first entered, was not making the Governor of the State any more happy than himself. This was a shit town that had been kept out of the limelight until all this talk of ghosts, and a dead deputy, whose body had been put under wraps, left in the mine for a forensic investigation.

  How had special officers, headed by FBI agent, Anne Carter, from the research establishment, got to hear? Set Frederik Spannocs on edge threatening violence! Who was this Agent Carter and where did she fit into all of this? It was all getting a out of hand, and he Sheriff Winfield Bell was going to have to take the initiative in spite of the Governor and this Spannocs coming the heavy. The case needed closing. Deputy Sheriff Alan Wood had murdered his partner, for whatever reason, and that was an end of it — he would say nothing. He was a pervert, nobody was going to miss him, especially the kids up at the orphanage. But what had Wood done with Carson’s head? Where was the means? There was no weapon. He thought of planting one but what could he use that could take a man’s head off that a County Sheriff’s deputy would carry in the execution of his a duty: a sword? Hardly US issue. The only other weapon that Deputy Sheriff Alan Wood had to hand was a Swiss army knife, and they weren’t known for their ability to sever heads from bodies, remove brains and crush skulls to dust. Not unless you had a calling and a couple of hours to spare.

  * * *

  Two men in dark suits accompanied Spannocs to the entrance of Moab Mine. Leaving them he went deep inside the mine ignoring their offer of a torch or radio. He changed from man to mist and back again within seconds arriving at the point of the deputy’s discovery. She had been here all right. She had been more than a challenge to Mahon, as he thought she would be. He felt her pre-presence and knew that she locked in stone. The scientific experiment could begin in earnest. But first she would be buried until he was ready. He would come for her and with Him gone; His representative searching for her, its capture must surely bring him the immortality to be Satan’s representative. Here is where it will take place, with no interference from the likes of the Divine Circle and their scientific cronies.

  Appearing at the entrance to the mine in a cloud of cold mist, he called: ‘Bell!’

  Sheriff Winfield Bell, behind a rock, pushed the detonator that brought tons of rock down over its entrance, leaving any possibility of a forensic investigation into the death of Deputy Sheriff Dave Carson beyond reach.

  * * *

  Deputy Sheriff Alan Wood was not unnaturally a little concerned for the position that he found himself. He was totally confused as to how the events of one day could bring him to the State of Arizona’s Penitentiary’s gas chamber; going over and over it in his mind coming up with the same conclusion that he’d been set up. Being accused of the murder of his partner had left him stunned beyond belief and what was all the harder to bear was tha
t nobody believed him. But he hadn’t seen the person responsible, not of any actual killing, though he was right where Carson had been ... murdered! There had been no need for the sheriff to have locked him up. Dave would have told him that he had been speaking the truth that he hadn’t done it and that the ghost in the old Moab Mine had.

  Left alone now. The door had been closed by another deputy sheriff. The curtains were drawn back. What were all those faces, seated outside, looking in at?

  What was she? Dave didn’t deserve to die like that. She could have let him walk out of there if she had wanted to keep hidden. Perhaps he shouldn’t have mentioned her and thrown him down the shaft. But when a naked girl floats off the ground and disappears through solid rock its difficult keeping it to yourself; more so of convincing others’ of what you’d seen. He hadn’t mentioned the screaming. The sounds of all those children crying and shouting, there must have been thousands of them.

  Hydrogen cyanide gas: the chemical reaction of potassium cyanide pellets being dropped into sulphuric acid swirled around him. You’ll suffer less if you take deep breaths they said—

  He coughed. Dave Carson liked children — they’ll miss him up the orphanage—

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 26 – 1997

  Frederik Spannocs was looking particularly pleased with himself. When organisations like the Cattlemen’s Association honour you you’re entitled to be. They appreciated hard men in tough businesses and he had met their aspirations perfectly. That was not to say that he was liked — on the contrary, he was detested, but that was part of his appeal. After all, what man that had achieved the level of success and power that he had wasn’t. Organisations, collectives, rise above one person’s perspective of how another gets to be where he’s at — it’s probably as well, self appreciation societies make for good entertainment.

  He knew all this. He knew what made humans tick, he was one of them — or had been — and exploited them to their baser instincts. He only had the one fear. Mahon had screwed up. And she might have been on the roam had he not intervened.