Southern Ouroboros

by Matt Kilby

  “You can’t lay a finger on me, can you?” he let the barrel swing back down.

  The old man didn’t answer, but John thought it as good as any yes. He shot the man again, confident enough it would do the trick he stood. He waited for Lester’s dead eyes to blink, cocking his gun when they did. This time, the old man didn’t bother sitting up, staring into the clouds as if figuring out their shapes.

  “I can shoot you as easy lying there.”

  “At the end of the canyon,” the old man said, “you’ll find a shanty town by the water.”

  “I could figure that out on my own.”

  “Sure, but there are plenty of buildings to search. Chances are he’ll hide until he’s ready. You’ll wait there instead of here, this time without me to torture.”

  “Tell me where to find him.”

  “The house with the blue door. Third from the pier. But I can’t guarantee he’ll be there before it’s time.”

  “There’s one way to find out,” John turned and holstered his revolver. He walked to the horse and climbed into the saddle, prodding with his heel.

  Five miles later, the sun found the horizon and dipped beyond, the canyon snaking left to a lush green field with the ocean on the other side. A pier bounced on the rough waves, held to the land by a few stubborn splinters. Wooden buildings stood against the dusk, their shadows enough to keep his hand on his revolver. Trading the field’s grass for a wooden boardwalk to the water, his horse’s hooves clopped too loud to ride the whole way. The first hitching post was halfway, in front of a building that might have been a saloon or market, abandoned too long to tell. As he tied the reins, he stared into a trough full of fresh water. He might be early, but whoever waited for him was ready. He drew his gun and divided his attention between the sides of the street as he continued on foot.

  The wind off the water grew teeth as each step brought him closer to the collapsed pier. He pulled the duster around him, but that didn’t help. Walking faster, he had less time to decide the best approach to the place Lester told him about. It was easier to find than the old man let on, the blue door the only one left in its frame. Despite the cold, he stopped in the street and stared, wondering if the man was inside and looking back. He counted a minute and survived so walked to the shack’s porch.

  The soft sand gave only an illusion of stealth, the lowest step creaking to tell anyone within earshot where he stood. He adjusted his grip on the revolver to aim from his hip and went to the door. The handle turned easy though the door dragged rough across the frame. Not that he noticed much. His attention was on the table across the front room and the creature sitting with its back to him.

  It was hard to see beyond the large gray wings extending from the thing’s back, slipping through ragged tears in its shirt. They rose past its head before arching to the floor, tips tucked under the legs of its chair. Between the arches, a head of shaggy dark hair angled toward the table, looking like an angel with plucked wings. His instinct was to shoot while he could, but his finger wouldn’t move.

  “Come and sit, John,” the creature said. “We need to talk.”

  John stepped over the threshold and pushed the door closed. With slow steps, he lifted the gun to aim at the back of the creature’s head. Near enough to press the barrel into the unkempt hair, he found a dirty rag tied around its face and considered shooting without a word.

  “You won’t,” it shook its head. “Not like that. You might think honor’s left you, but it’s very much intact.”

  The voice sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it and didn’t have time to try. It seemed like a betrayal to Mary to share even rough words with the creature, but they rose in his throat too fast to stop.

  “You don’t know that. You don’t know a damned thing. You took any decency in me when you took Mary. I killed three innocent men, so I don’t see much trouble in shooting a guilty one.”

  “You killed three innocent men because you were supposed to,” it answered. “Fate wanted them dead by your hands, so it happened. You would have better luck keeping the sun from setting than changing that, so forgive yourself.”

  “I forgave myself when I realized I was tricked. You and that codger you had following me are another story. I’ll kill you first and ride back to pay what I owe for his help.”

  “No.”

  “No?” John shoved the barrel against its skull.

  It shook its head. “You’ve been trying to pull that trigger since you opened the door. You have questions begging to be answered. Foremost is why your wife had to die, but close behind is the point of the deception. I could have disappeared and let you get what you thought was revenge on your own. You might have killed them or they killed you, but I’d have been safe. Then Lester Johnson came to lead you here.”

  “Tell me then,” John said.

  “Sit,” the creature gestured to an empty chair. “I’ll tell you everything that fits into words and show you whatever can’t, but not with a gun to the back of my head.”

  John considered the trigger a final time, but the winged man had him pegged. He wanted answers as much as blood so took the gun away. Rounding the table, he went to the other chair without taking his eyes from the creature. The cloth was a blindfold covering its eyes.

  He sat and stared as if he had time to figure out what he was seeing. The creature kept silent as if somehow studying him despite the fabric.

  “Too much time has passed to remember how much you learn here,” it said.

  “Since what?”

  “Since I was on your side of the table,” it reached behind its head to untie the cloth. John stared into the hollow sockets where its eyes once were, pink strips of scarred flesh spreading from them like sunbursts. Even with the wounds, he recognized its face. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw a mirror, but this was close enough to the man who’d looked back.

  “What kind of trick is this?” he grunted and aimed his revolver into the warped version of his face.

  “No trick,” the creature shook its head. “I’m you, John Valance: what you’re destined to become.”

  “How?”

  “Which part? Trading your eyes for wings or sitting here talking to yourself?”

  “Start with whichever you choose,” John said.

  “The wings are a side effect of the power that makes this conversation possible. It’ll change you, and one day long from now you’ll deserve to lose your eyes. You’ll hurt people and none as much as the ones you’ll call friends. It’s what the stone asks, so you’ll give it without a question. You’ll do anything for it, even murdering your own Mary.”

  Hearing her name was a face full of cold water, jolting him out of his daze to remember the weapon in his hand.

  “You killed her,” he shook his head. “Not me.”

  “I did and you will.”

  “Why would I?”

  The thing drew a breath as if the air would answer the question. “It’s not an easy answer.”

  “I’ll still hear it before I put you down.”

  “A thousand years come between now and the end. There, a man will choose one life over a million. He’ll try to seize the source of our power, but you’ll stand against him with another who will take the stone and flee to this fragile past. Above everything, it must be protected, so you’ll open these old wounds to keep everything in its place.”

  “Speak plain,” John said.

  “You’ll understand once you kill me.”

  “Pardon?”

  “This is where the circle meets. Like a snake eating its own tail. You kill me to become me, to become yourself—a version who has seen this day too many times to count. Put your gun to my head and pull the trigger. Every answer will come when you do.”

  “Become you,” John echoed and looked to the wings sprouting from the creature’s back.

  “You always have. You always will.”

  “What if I just don’t kill you?” John pushed the hammer down with his thumb, ang
ling the barrel toward the ceiling.

  “You say it like you have a choice.”

  “I do,” he holstered the revolver.

  “I wish it was that simple.”

  “It is,” he stood to leave, though part of him knew he wouldn’t get far.

  “You never make things easy,” the winged man muttered.

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “Do you want to know how she died?”

  John tried to hide his rage, but it sprang quick, forcing him back into his seat.

  “There was a storm the night you drank too much and picked a fight with the wrong men,” it continued. “Do you remember?”

  “As if the night never stopped,” John stared at the center of its forehead.

  “Within the thunder and lightning, a door opened in the sky and I fell through.”

  “The idiot saw you.”

  The creature nodded. “I knew where I would land because I once sat in your chair and listened to a blind version of myself say these same words. You’ll swear you’ll never stumble through the rain to that barn and wait for her to check why the door is open. Bless her soul, she recognized me despite the millennium between us. She didn’t even notice the wings. Only my eyes. ‘John, are you hurt?’ she asked and I put a nail into her head. She didn’t suffer.”

  “No,” John shook his head. “You left that for me.”

  He didn’t give the creature a chance at more words. Eyes on the middle of its brow, he drew and pulled the trigger. Its head rocked back and carried the body to the floor. At first he sat numb, trying to decide if he was satisfied. Soon, another feeling snuck behind—like the answer to a question he forgot asking. In its dawn, he knew he had to bury the strange body.

  He dragged its feet out the door and up the boardwalk, grateful for the seclusion as he understood this was its point. Just as well, he understood the feet he held were his and the cold, slack face used to hold his soul. When the walkway ended, he knelt in the sandy dirt and dug with his hands. Footsteps approached and a shovel clattered down next to him. He turned to find Lester watching with a squint.

  “It’s you now, isn’t it?” Lester asked.

  “Depends on which me you mean.”

  “The one who doesn’t shoot an old man for sport,” Lester growled.

  “Don’t tempt me,” John smiled but didn’t know why. As more of him slipped away, his fading uncertainty took his hard feelings about the old man.

  “It’s me,” he stopped and nodded, stabbing the shovel into the dirt. “You did well.”

  “It isn’t over,” Lester sighed.

  “Soon,” John said. “You remember the town?”

  “Like I could forget.”

  “You’ll find a tree by the swamp,” John told him. “You’ll know when you see it.”

  “And then I kill myself,” Lester said.

  “After you kill Wolgiss,” John picked up the shovel, digging another foot before deciding it was enough. He went to his old body and Lester helped, nudging him to the head to take the feet. Together, they carried the winged version of John Valance to his grave.

  “You look more like the day I met you,” Lester spoke at the foot of the grave, “but that’s how I remember you most.”

  “Save your eulogies for those who die,” John shoveled in dirt and bent for more. He worked fast and made sure the ground was tamped flat so no one wandering past got curious. It never happened before, but that was no reason to get sloppy. Satisfied, he stepped back and unholstered his revolver, offering it to Lester.

  Lester put it into his satchel. “How do you get this back?”

  “Does it matter?” John cocked his head.

  The old man shrugged.

  John sighed. “Someone robs your corpse and trades it to pay a gambling debt. If I sit at the right table, the debt is owed to me. Just make sure you bury the Godstone first.”

  “Don’t I always?”

  “I’d hate to see what happens if you forget,” John said on his way to his horse.

  “So that’s it?”

  “I’ll see you again soon enough,” John mounted the saddle.

  “It won’t be any better goodbye than this one,” Lester looked away.

  “No point getting sentimental. We go around and around, this moment as routine as the others. It might as well be tomorrow when we’ll stand here again.”

  “Not for me.”

  “You losing your nerve, Sagin?”

  “No,” Lester shook his head. “I just thought this would feel different.”

  “Nothing does,” John prodded his horse to ride from Eris Cove for what might have been the hundredth or thousandth time. He’d lost track and never bothered to find it again. With Lester watching, the older spirit staring through his eyes, he rode toward the canyon without a glance back.

  “Not for me,” he added as his oldest friend faded in the distance.

  4

  Despite the chutter of the Charger’s engine through downtown Creek Hollow, the inside was quiet. Vick couldn’t speak to Carly’s silence, but his was a contemplative mixture of whether he believed the man beside him really was John Valance and how the Pine Haven legend of love’s revenge could have been so far off base. Forget time travel and a conversation with some winged version of himself, as hard as they were to ignore. In a roundabout way, he confessed to killing his wife to make sure the road led to where he would kill her again.

  He glanced into the rearview to gauge Carly’s thought process. It hadn’t escaped him he came so far just to run into Sheriff Arkin’s estranged daughter, but that was the closest to normal he’d seen in a while so got a pass. What didn’t was the way she studied the headrest in front of her, as if staring through to the back of Valance’s head. Her face was stone, but he couldn’t tell if she was mad or processing it all. All he could say was, if someone didn’t say something, his brain might give up and shut down. After everything in Pine Haven, he had a limit to the amount of weird he was willing to take.

  Then a steeple rose above the trees, and John Valance said, “We’re here.”

  Vick pulled into the parking lot and drove past the church to the small house behind it. The lights were on and, if the cowboy told the truth, Eric among them. His head spinning, he pulled into a parking space and cut the engine.

  “We’ll wait until you’re ready,” John said.

  “For what?” Vick couldn’t meet his eyes. He missed the beginning of the cowboy’s story, but the end was enough to tell him the gun on his hip wasn’t for show, and he didn’t search for people because he was lonely.

  “To say goodbye,” John stared at the house. He was impossible to read, but Vick doubted his attention was sentimental. This was something else he was supposed to do. Vick glanced at Joe Richards’s messenger bag in the cowboy’s lap with the black brick inside. Somehow the rock brought the three of them together to kill his best friend. Vick tried to figure out what to say to Maribeth when John reached for his door’s handle.

  “Wait,” Carly blurted, and he turned to her.

  “I don’t get it,” she shook her head.

  “What don’t you get?”

  “You killed the brothers. I understand that. Even innocent, one was a real asshole and the others too chicken shit to stop him. You could tell me they killed some other pregnant woman at some point and I wouldn’t doubt it.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  “They didn’t,” she shook her head.

  “And I did.”

  “But did you?”

  John nodded. “It’s where the circle meets and not for me to break. So I do what has been done. Every thousand years, we’re here. I fall from the sky and murder my wife, though I’m far from the man who’ll hunt for her killer. He’ll find me and kill me, my spirit joining his as the loop begins again. I save you in South Carolina so you can bring me here. We get Vick and park in this space in this lot. You’ll tell me to wait and say you don’t get it. Years pass and I fall again. Do you u
nderstand now?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “After everything you did in her name, how could you kill her?”

  “As much as I loved her, as tempting as it always is to let her live, she is a blink compared to the things after. People live because she dies, so many she’d agree dying for their future is better than clinging to the few years she would have lived if I let her.”

  “A lame excuse,” Carly huffed.

  “Maybe, but it sees me through this. Whether or not I want her to live, the choice isn’t mine.”

  “It’s the stone’s,” Vick spoke up.

  John nodded. “It answers your questions the same as any god.”

  “Then why bother?”

  “Because its way is just. The power it offers is tangible, and the future it wants us to protect is worth the blood spilled.”

  “My father and Pete Finch died for your future.”

  “I wish they didn’t have to. I wish your friend didn’t either, but this is where the stone’s road brought us.”

  “What if we drive away?” Carly asked, but the cowboy pulled the door handle and stepped into the cool night air.

  “Vick?” she tried again. “We don’t have to stay. We’ll look for your girlfriend.”

  He stopped listening when John moved toward the porch. All he thought about was Eric inside. He remembered holding Alice before he left, that curious smile she gave as her doughy fingers clutched his hand. Her father needed him, so he came to Creek Hollow. He got out of the car and left Carly to make up her own mind whether to follow. When John walked up the sidewalk, he walked behind him.

  His heart pounded as he climbed the steps. When John finally knocked, he felt dizzy and leaned on the railing. He didn’t hear the car door shut or Carly come, but when she was there, he took her hand and everything settled. As little as he knew her, he squeezed her fingers as if they were all that kept his feet on the ground.