by J. P. Sloan
Gil steps into his face and prods with heavy breaths, “Is this man Lars Richterman?”
The man looks me full in the face.
Now I remember him. He was one of the miners whose back had given out a month or so before the mine accident. He’d helped as far as he could before he’d given up.
“No, sir. That’s Denton Folger. He kept digging for our men after the rest of us gave it up. And every day Richterman found some new way to drive a wedge into this town, Folger had his number and took him to task in his paper. Hell, I might be the only man in this valley who read the damned thing.”
Gil turns to me with a sneer, which melts as he lays eyes on me.
I feel tears streaming down my cheeks.
Gil looks past me to the remains of the old feed store. I twist as far as I can to find Holcomb holding himself miserably by the ruins of the stoop.
“Holcomb!” Gil bellows. “You get your ass up here!”
Holcomb holds his position for a while before releasing his own arms and hopping over to the platform. Gil jerks him aside with a firm grip, conferring with red face as Holcomb nods at me.
I run my eyes over the crowd, finding eager eyes below. Seems they’ve made up their mind as to my true self. Perhaps I was wrong? Perhaps it isn’t justice to stand here and take the execution that Richterman had earned?
One more sunset. If I could make it to nightfall, I’m very certain this could all end quickly.
Gil breaks away from Holcomb and nods to rooftops nearby, where I’m sure his Godpistols are hunkered down.
“You’re right about one thing,” Gil says to me. “We ain’t no authority over the rule of man. So maybe we’ll just slice through the bullshit right now. Where’s your woman?”
“I’m sorry?”
He slips his hand up to his shoulder and hammers me with a right cross. My vision fades.
“The strigger bitch you shacked up with,” he grumbles.
“Don’t―”
“Say again?”
“Don’t call her that.”
“What, you don’t like it when I talk about your strigger whore of a wife?”
I glare at the man. His crystal blue eyes. His white beard. All are the Devil’s face to me, now.
“I have no wife.”
Another shot across my left cheek. Either I’m fading fast, or I’ve taken enough abuse that I barely feel his strikes.
“You’re not getting another chance, Richterman. Or Folger. Whatever you feel like calling yourself. You want a quick death? I’ll make sure this knot is set clean behind your head. Snap your neck instant. You make this hard on us? I’ll see to it you strangle slow. Your eyes will pop like grapes. You’ll shit yourself in front of the whole town, and then we’ll find your strigger wife and put her to dust.”
Holcomb hustles toward us.
“Dammit, Gil. She lives in his cellar!” His face pulls into a mask of grief. “She lives underneath his house.”
I clench my jaw.
Gil turns slowly to Holcomb.
“And what was the first place you think I’d look, Hol?” Gil grumbles.
Holcomb shakes his head. “Huh?”
“We found a cozy little space, but no striggers. She’s run off.”
I hold my breath. They’ve been in my cellar?
Holcomb runs a hand over his head and paces a quick circle, as if he’s the one with the noose hanging over his head.
“The mine,” Holcomb mutters. “There was talk about the mine. People coming in and out. Could be where they hide during the day. Could be a whole nest of them―”
Gil reaches for Holcomb’s throat, jerking his head high on his neck.
“You’re telling me you rode us into his blighted little valley and you can’t lay a solid testimony on the first strigger or Wendigo here?”
Holcomb sputters, “There’s bodies.”
Gil releases him. “Go check the mine, then.”
Holcomb lingers.
“Well?” Gil bellows
“It’s almost an hour’s ride. Sun will set pretty soon.”
“Then take Orson and Beller with you.”
Holcomb stands rigid, then looks over to me.
I shake my head. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Gil turns on me. “What are you saying, now?”
“I’m saying, if I was a Master Strigoi, and I had a human husband who had just awakened from a long, dark confusion, and I was looking for the first time in my life at a chance at happiness, I might not feel so merciful toward a treacherous piece of shit I once called a friend.” I directed the last part at Holcomb, who withers.
Gil pushes Holcomb away and wraps his arms around my hips, pulling me up off my feet to plant me onto the square of timber. He jerks the noose down over my chin and pulls it tight, swiveling it around to the side of my neck.
“Let’s speak as adults,” he says with eerie comportment. “I don’t care what’s wrong with your cracked mind, Folger. I don’t even care what happened to that idiot Odell. All I want is to find and cleanse the last of the unholy creatures from this valley. It is a calling from God, and it is a calling we must all obey.”
“Sounds like a narrow view,” I gasp, the rope tight around my throat.
He nudges the block beneath my feet, and I struggle to regain my balance.
“Every man I’ve known,” he whispers, “who’s gone sympathetic with striggers has ended up a dried-out corpse. There are constants in this world, Folger. And one such constant? You can’t. Trust. Striggers.”
“Then you’ll have to hang me. Just do it. I’d rather be dead than give you another moment of my attention.”
Gil shakes his head with a baffled smile. “You can’t be serious.”
“You’re worse than Richterman. At least he never dressed his bloodlust in the robes of righteousness.”
“You are Richterman, you fool!”
“I am… I am not Richterman.”
Gil steps away, searching me out for some kind of meaning, but I give him none. I’m done with this valley, this town, this entire existence. If it means I must choose to serve a man like Gil or a creature like Richterman, then I choose to leave it to Kate. It’s always been her world. I’ve just been… a burden.
Gil stiffens, then nods. “Suit yourself.”
He lifts his boot and kicks the block.
The rope slams up beneath my jaw. I hear a crack. Perhaps he settled the rope properly, after all. Then why is my head bursting with pressure while my throat squeezes tight? Why am I not dead?
I force my eyes open, watering and filled with a haze of blood.
Gil stands stiff, erect, stupefied.
And he falls forward with a pool of blood spreading across his back.
Holcomb dives toward him, searching his body.
Another crack.
Holcomb’s head blows out in a spray of blood.
More gunshots slice through the muddled sounds swimming in my ears. My lungs heave against the rope as my vision fades to red.
Hands on my legs.
I rise, lifted by arms in tight grips around my thighs.
The rope loosens, and finally pulls clear of my chin. Through a titanic seizure of coughing breaths, I find my air again. And I open my eyes.
A line of horsemen sweep around the burned-out church, and I recognize the point rider. Sitting tall in his saddle, enormous chin set forward and long white hair twisting behind, is William Redhawk. He cranks his rifle and aims high to the building across from the gallows to pop off another shot.
Lizzy, her mother, and some of the children ease me down to the platform as more of the townsfolk train guns up at the rooftops. Their strength fails as Lizzy’s heel catches the edge of a length of lumber, sending me sprawling into the lane.
The second of Redhawk’s horsemen swings to my side, and its rider drops to the dust, laying overtop my frame.
“Shit, Odell,” Scarlow drawls. “If I knew you were itchin’ to throw pa
ws with gunmen, I’d have stayed put.”
I reach for his arm and give it a weak squeeze. “Didn’t get far, did you?”
He shrugs and fires a shot toward a rooftop Godpistol.
Eli rushes to my other side, trading fire with more of Gil’s men. A bullet chirps dust near his boot, and he scrambles backward only to get clipped between the eyes. His body pitches sideways, legs twitching.
Scarlow swears under his breath and shoves him aside.
More shots ring out from the rooftops, and some of the townsfolk scatter as Redhawk’s men gallop into a strafing run down the street.
A body falls from the top of the assay office, slamming onto the dirt beside me, silver cross gleaming in the setting sunlight.
A pair of riders barrel around the corner. They haul up onto the crowd, hands high.
Redhawk lets loose, firing a slug into the first rider’s chest.
The last rider holds, sweating and pale.
“I―I just want the bodies,” he stammers.
Redhawk holds fire, his rifle trained at the last of the Godpistols. He turns to Scarlow, who then turns to me.
“So, what’s the call, Odell?”
“Call me… call me Denton.”
Scarlow lowers his weapon and screws his brow together. “Shee-it. You figured it out?”
I stand with some assistance from Scarlow and hobble toward the Godpistol. “The hell you want the bodies for?”
“It’s our way,” he wheezes.
“There is… there is no way. No way for this kind of violence.”
He nods, but keeps his place in his saddle.
I pull free from Scarlow and drop down beside Gil McQuarrie’s body. The head of the Godpistols, laid low by a better hunter.
I reach beneath his shoulder and rip the solar cross badge from his shirt. I toss it to the last Godpistol and grunt, “You get this, and nothing else. Now you get out of my valley!”
The badge falls short of his horse. He stares at it for a second before turning his horse around and barreling out of town.
Silence falls over Gold Vein for a while. I catch my breath, groaning from the pain in my tight stomach. I double over, and Scarlow barely catches me as I vomit a spate of blood.
“William!” he shouts. “Come over here.”
Redhawk dismounts and approaches as Scarlow turns me over. They work my shirt open, and Scarlow winces.
Redhawk mutters, “He has a hemorrhage.” He prods my midsection with stiff fingertips, then rocks back onto his heels. “He can’t be saved.”
“He’s dyin’?” Scarlow whispers.
One by one, the people gather. Lizzy crouches near my knees. I reach up and grip her hand tightly.
“I am deeply sorry… for your father.”
Tears stream from her eyes, but she lifts my hand to her mouth and kisses my knuckles.
I rest my neck, staring up at the dusky sky, wondering why Gil didn’t find my wife in her cellar.
Where the hell is Odell? Is he trapped inside my head in this grim moment?
The last rays of daylight slip into deep orange as the sun dips below the burning hills. I struggle to breathe and find it unusually difficult.
From the shadow of my old pressroom, a figure covered in black lace steps into the street. She holds her shawl over her head, a faint steam rising from her hands.
I struggle to turn, but my torso can’t manage the movement. Scarlow adjusts my posture, and the children part as my wife uncovers her face. Kate crouches down and pulls me onto her lap.
She holds me, and I her.
Redhawk gives her a long, considerable stare. Scarlow shakes his head at Redhawk, who stands and withdraws before his sense of violence becomes uncontrollable.
The fire inside my chest twists into my heart. My arms tingle with sickly heat, and the aching in my head become a slow, brilliant confusion.
Her tears fall onto my face.
“They couldn’t… find you,” I wheeze.
“I used the thrall. These were not intelligent men.”
“I’m glad. Couldn’t stand you being alone. In there.”
“I would have cut their throats, but I feared they would kill you for it.”
“They might have.”
Fresh tears stream down her cheeks. “I am so sorry I could not save you.”
I look over to Scarlow. “I had friends.”
Scarlow’s red-rimmed eyes narrow.
Someone moves nearby. I turn my head just a little. Just enough to find the phantom of Linthicum Odell standing over Scarlow, hat in his hand.
“About time… to ride for Cheyenne?” I ask without making a sound.
“I reckon.”
“What should I do, Lin?”
Odell peers over to Kate. “Another life with her? I’d say that’s a mite tempting. There’s worse fates, that’s a fact. But, you’d be giving that gift to Richterman, too.” He settles his hat onto his head and adjusts it. “Either way, it’s your call, hoss.”
He steps up to the makeshift gallows, looming over the bodies of Holcomb and McQuarrie. His face drops into a leaden mask. He takes a knee beside Gil’s body and considers it for a moment. Odell fishes his flask from his coat and drops it onto McQuarrie’s back.
And he turns to me. Our eyes lock for a second, and he tips his hat to me. I lift my fingers to bid him farewell as he turns and walks away from the gallows, and this town, and this valley forever.
“Kate?” I whisper.
She nods.
“Don’t let them bury me. I want to burn, like the heathens.”
She puts a finger on my lips. “You will not die today, my love. I will never allow it.”
“You can’t stop it.”
She winces and leans down to kiss my forehead before whispering, “I can.”
Richterman steps out of the assay office, his face full of glee.
I ball a fist. “No.”
“We can be together, Denton,” Kate urges. “For centuries.”
Richterman’s eyes go black. Strigoi black. And he smiles a needle-toothed smile.
“You can’t… can’t know he won’t survive,” I mutter. “Can’t give him that power.”
She lays hands along the side of my face. “I will take the chance.”
“No,” I cry as loud as my chest can manage.
She flinches at the word.
Scarlow grips my arm. “Listen, Odell―Denton. If there is a chance to live, you should take it. I would.”
“I know… you would.”
He shakes his head. “Don’t be all righteous. You let yourself die, and you’re abandonin’ your woman. That’s not what good men do.”
I smirk. “I believe, Eddie. Isn’t it remarkable?”
“What do you believe?”
“I know God was with me. Guiding my hand.” I try to chuckle. “That, or St. Casilda of Toledo. Either way, I know, now. I am forgiven.”
Richterman stands overtop Kate, his face full of Strigoi majesty, offering me a mocking clap.
“Kate, I can’t beat him,” I whisper. “He’s inside me. He won’t go away.”
A massive fit of coughing rolls through my chest, bringing up blood and sputum. I paw at the ground as I struggle to inhale.
“Let me save you,” she begs, crouched over my face.
I reach for her hand.
Richterman looms over her, glaring at me with monster’s eyes.
My angel, and my devil, together at my passing.
“Told you… I’d see this through… until I’m dead,” I whisper. “Taking Richterman… with me.”
She weeps as I close my eyes.
And the last thing my living ears hear is her voice as she sings something low and sweet to send me into my final peace…
…with a scent of jasmine.
J.P. Sloan is a speculative fiction author, primarily of urban fantasy, horror and several shades between. His writing explores the strangeness in that which is familiar, at times stretching the
limits of the human experience, or only hinting at the monsters lurking under your bed.
A Louisiana native, Sloan relocated to the vineyards and cow pastures of Central Maryland after Hurricane Katrina, where he lives with his wife and son. During the day he commutes to the city of Baltimore, a setting which inspires much of his writing.
In his spare time, Sloan enjoys wine-making and homebrewing, and is a National-ranked beer judge.”
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The Curse Merchant, by J.P. Sloan
(http://bit.ly/1pRNMH7)
Baltimore socialite Dorian Lake makes his living crafting hexes and charms, manipulating karma for those the system has failed. His business has been poached lately by corrupt soul monger Neil Osterhaus, who wouldn’t be such a problem were it not for Carmen, Dorian’s captivating ex-lover. She has sold her soul to Osterhaus, and needs Dorian’s help to find a new soul to take her place. Hoping to win back her affections, Dorian must navigate Baltimore’s occult underworld and decide how low he is willing to stoop in order to save Carmen from eternal damnation.
Wolf, by Jim Ringel
(http://bit.ly/1UhM7tS)
Johnny Wolfe carries his dog Sindra in a vial that he keeps in his pocket. He carries her out of loyalty. He carries her out of guilt. He carries her because there are no more dogs in this world. And he carries her to connect to her feral nature, so that he might take her inside himself and feel her animal wildness.
Johnny’s life is in shambles. His sales career at Bulldog Enterprises is on the blink. On his way to work one day he comes across a colleague who is killed by a dog. But with dogs now extinct, how is this possible? Going through his colleague’s dead body, Johnny discovers the colleague is carrying a rather sizeable sales order. Figuring “he’s dead, I’m not”, Johnny decides to place the order as his own.
Except he can’t figure out what product the colleague is selling. As he gets closer to understanding the product, Johnny starts to realize it has more and more to do with why the dogs might be returning, and why they’re so angry.
