by Kildare
Time flies.
Cillian motioned for the two women to head for the door. They rushed past and darted out the swinging doors. He backed his way out, never taking his guns off the men. They laughed at his retreat before turning their attention back to the bottle of whiskey. The leader lit a cigarette and took a long drag as Cillian slipped through the swinging doors.
Outside, the street was deserted. No sign of the two women, nor anyone else. Cillian aimed a pistol at the doors as he untied his horse and mounted. No one showed face. Once back in the saddle, he wasted no time in fleeing the town. As much as a part of him wanted to stand his ground, a feeling had spread over him even before the killing of the woman that these men weren’t to be trifled with. He had detected a presence surrounding them that though he couldn’t describe, couldn’t wrap any words around, he knew should be avoided. Even now it triggered a shudder.
He charted a course in the direction of the sinking sun. He needed a plan, but with no idea of where he was or where he was headed, he was charging blindly ahead into the unknown. The land spread away from the town table-flat, and broken only by red sandstone buttes looming like fortresses above the desert floor. A mangy coat of scrub blanketed the ochre sand. No sign of water anywhere in the waste. Without water his horse wouldn’t make it far in this heat. Even with, the horse’s endurance would soon be tested. They could just as well be riding into the Valley of Death.
The mare was soon breathing hard, her coat drenched in sweat, lather forming beneath the tack. Foam whitened the metal bit, too. How long could she keep this pace? Cillian’s shirt was also soaked in sweat. More trickled down his spine. He glanced back over his shoulder. The town had shrunk to a shimmering gray smudge. The men would begin their pursuit at any moment. He dipped his hat to shield his eyes against the huge crimson sun sinking into the west. No normal sun, it was sixty times too big, and though it still hung above the horizon, already the sky in the east had turned black, but not the black of night. No stars shone in this darkness. Something else had gobbled up the sky.
A knoll in the distance shimmered in the heat. For a second he thought he saw a movement of black on the ridge. Were his eyes deceiving him? He blinked several times. Rubbed his eyes. A woman in a black dress waved at him, motioning him to ride toward her. He changed course to meet her. She stood no more than a hundred yards away and was closing fast. She turned and walked away, disappearing over the ridge.
He reached the crest expecting to find the woman on the other side. Instead, she already stood on the next ridge. She seemed too far away. Had his eyes been deceived by the distance or was he deceived now? She beckoned him onward. He spurred the horse harder. He didn’t know why, but he felt a need to reach this woman. To talk to her. Perhaps she could assist him. Though he didn’t know how. Not from the men he was fleeing.
Again she disappeared over the next ridge and again he reached the spot to find her gone. He spotted her off to his right on another distant knoll. Who was this woman who could move with such speed? He changed directions to pursue her and this time she stood in place, beckoning him to approach. He neared and the woman’s features came into focus. She was tall and fair, with long, raven hair. Something about the woman seemed familiar, though he couldn’t remember why.
He blinked and the woman vanished. He reined the horse to a halt, looking all around but saw no sign of her in the sagebrush. No tracks disturbed the ground. Had he hallucinated her? He could have sworn she was real. She had to have been real. He was no more than twenty yards away when she vanished. He shot a quick look back over his shoulder. Saw no sign of riders. He spurred the horse onward. No time to answer the riddle of the woman in black. He could feel his doom settling down all around him like a suffocating blanket.
A crow cawed behind him. He looked back and saw the bird perched on the rump of the horse, his own reflection in the glassy eye. The crow cawed again and he felt a sudden jolt of dread. He swiped his hand at the bird and it hopped off and vanished into the scrub. He remembered who the woman in black was—Mórríghan. She was warning him of his impending death. A vision formed of his meeting with her in the forest: Not yet, Cillian, but I shall come for you soon enough.
There was no hope. He would die alone in this desert, a corpse for the vultures and coyotes to desecrate. No, it wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real. It was a dream. He took no reassurance. Everything felt too real. He fought back against the hopelessness. His doom might be guaranteed, but he refused to give up and let them kill him without a fight, even if he had no chance of victory. Perhaps he could take a couple of the bastards with him.
The sky above had changed, the darkness no longer a void. It seemed to writhe. The vision clarified, the sky black from a host of innumerable ravens. Their croaks started as a murmur, growing until he could hear nothing else. Not even the horse’s labored breathing and pounding hooves. The ugly, maddening sound echoed in his head, seemed to amplify into a roar like a jet engine. He couldn’t even hear himself think, couldn’t even think. All thoughts faded until only the monstrous cawing remained. The pressure inside his head built up until he let out an agonizing scream.
Instant silence. He could think again. The crows had vanished from the sky. The darkness endured, creeping toward the retreating sun bathed in crimson. What madness was this? Was Mórríghan playing some trick on him? Or was the heat taking its toll on his thinking? His thoughts were jumbled, attention wandering, reasoning sluggish and almost schizophrenic. He needed to find water. For himself and the horse.
He steered the horse toward a bastion of red rock towering high above the plain. The sandstone butte rippled in the heat as if it were fluid, so much so that Cillian wondered again if he was hallucinating.
Once he reached the shadow of the butte the temperature dropped dramatically—a cool, refreshing wave of air. His thoughts focused, no longer a scattered mess of absurd sensory perceptions. Reality seemed real again. He wanted so badly to stop, to climb down and sprawl out on a rock and rest. Let his mind slip into blissful dreams with no meaning, wander a verdant paradise, fed by cool springs, where birds sang cheerful melodies and one had no cares. Sit in the soft grass on the bank along a brook, dip feet into cool waters, drink from a cupped hand.
He snapped out of his daydreams. He needed to focus, be in the moment. Now was no time for frivolous wanderings of the mind. They left the shade of the butte and returned to the suffocating heat. Already the shade seemed as if it had been an illusion. Only the heat was real. Or perhaps even the heat was an illusion. Maybe only the pursuit was real. He seemed to have stumbled upon a metaphor for life. The raven, the butte, the heat were all distractions, only the journey was real. Or he was losing his mind. It could go either way.
X
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29
The horse rounded the edge of the butte, revealing a vast empty flat. Cillian reined the mare to a halt and stared in confusion at the strange sight ahead. A giant neon sign flashed the words YOUR DOOM DRAWS NEAR in neon pink. He wasn’t sure what he found more puzzling, the words or the sign itself. Surely this was a hallucination.
He rode warily across the plain toward this new curiosity, stopped at the first of the two round pillars holding the sign aloft, and rapped the metal with his knuckles. Felt the solid object without give, heard the hollow thunk of his tap, saw the sign in front of him. Could all three senses be deceiving him?
He left the neon sign blinking its warning. When he looked back, the sign was gone. Was he losing his mind?
A galleon appeared, white sails brimming with a wind that didn’t blow. The Union Jack flapped from the highest mast. The ship bucked and rolled as it plowed through the sand. Now he knew his mind deceived him. He determined to ride right through the phantom ship as it passed. The ship neared, spraying sand into the air. The horse whinnied and shied. She saw this, too. How was that possible? No ship could sail on sand. Yet he and the horse were both seeing it. They couldn’t be suffering the same hallucination. Could t
hey? Unless he hallucinated the horse’s reaction, too. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He was tumbling down the rabbit hole.
The galleon glided past, trailing an enormous wake. Sand rolled over the horse’s legs in waves reaching up to the stirrups. She tried to rear back but only managed to hop onto the crest of the wave and then stumble into the following trough. Waves receded away to little ripples and again they were racing across the desert. Cillian watched the galleon for a long time until it disappeared into the quivering heat.
A gnarled old man leaning heavily on a cane appeared seemingly from nowhere and gave the mare such a startle that she sidestepped and nearly unhorsed Cillian. The man reached out a withered black hand, petted the horse’s neck, and whispered a language Cillian didn’t understand into her ear. She calmed. His eyes were dark and piercing, teeth crooked and gapped, a little tuft of scraggy white whiskers sprouted from a narrow chin. A shabby cloak draped down to the sand.
The old man smiled. “You look thirsty, Traveler. Perhaps I can be of some assistance.” He reached into the folds of his cloak and produced a leather water bag and a small cup, filled the cup with water from the bag, and handed it to Cillian.
“Thank you,” Cillian said, licking his cracked, parched lips. He tasted blood. The water splashed his tongue and instantly turned to sand. The old man roared with laughter. Cillian flung the cup away, spitting and scrapping his fingernails across his tongue and cheeks to get the sand out.
The old man flung aside his cloak with a theatrical motion. From beneath him sprung a whirling dust devil that twisted away in a snaking path. The old man was no more, though his cackling lingered, seeming to come from all around. It, too, faded away, leaving Cillian alone to choke on gritty sand, his anger boiling, bordering on hate. He wanted to throttle the old man to death. Yes death. Right now, he would have felt no remorse at seeing the old man’s lifeless corpse and knowing he had wrung the air out.
The gritty paste of sand and saliva filled his mouth, lined his gums, was caught between his teeth, and coated his tongue. Why couldn’t he hallucinate this unpleasant taste away? Time cooled his anger so that he no longer wanted to kill the old man, though a solid blow to the jaw still seemed justified. Not that it would do much good. The old geezer had turned into a dust devil. That didn’t happen every day. Cillian was losing his mind. He needed to escape this phantasmagoria.
A wild commotion arose behind. A hundred and more Indian braves on horseback rode toward them, gaining fast. Soon overtook them. Cillian assumed they were trying to catch him, but they ignored him. Of their tribe he wasn’t sure, though he suspected Apache. Some had shirts, others were shirtless. Most wore bandanas with feathers sticking out the back. All were armed with rifles. Luminescent war paint of many colors brightened warriors and war ponies alike. They shouted battle cries as they raced past.
Cillian called out but they paid no heed to his appeal. None looked at him or showed any sign they had even seen him, instead were focused on something ahead he couldn’t see. He spurred the horse faster, but she couldn’t catch their ponies sprinting like the wind into the red sun. They lit up like torches before melting into the shimmering sands.
He looked back and saw a blot of dust rising along the horizon. His pursuers. It was only a matter of time now. He fingered the Colt .45 for reassurance. A single buzzard circled above. It would have its meal soon enough. Or had Mórríghan taken another guise?
He crested a ridge and spotted a narrow swath of green, the unmistakable sign of a river. His thirst was unbearable. Could all the water in the world quench his craving? He wondered if this river was real or another cruel illusion, a sign of hyperthermia. His thoughts were so scrambled he fought to remember why he was riding to begin with. Wouldn’t finding a shady spot to rest until nightfall be a better idea? No, he was being chased by a crow. Not a crow. An old man? Why was he running away from an old man? Something else. Had to be. The cowboys. He remembered now.
The horse was walking. He had no idea how long they had been walking, his memory a mess of images out of sequence. So close to water, yet so far. Twice he spurred the horse to no affect. He tried to dismount and tumbled to the ground. He rose to unsteady feet, wiped the sand from bleeding lips, grabbed the reins, and led the horse the last hundred feet, sky spinning black and red above. Twice he was getting back up before he even realized he had fallen.
A path in the bushes and willows led down to a river in a shallow trench. He stumbled again, reins slipped free, bruising collision with a rock, and then a cooling sensation flowed over an outstretched arm. He rolled over and drank from scooped hands. Water had never tasted so cool and refreshing. He dipped his hat in, filling it to the brim, and poured it back out onto his head. He dropped to his knees in the center of the river. The water flowed across his chest. He spread his arms out and fell backward, rippling water angels.
He rose refreshed and his wits returned. The mare drank at the water’s edge. He led her across the river to drink some more. Thirsty as he was, he couldn’t imagine how parched she must be after such a long ride in this heat. Poor girl. She wasn’t done yet.
The water darkened. Or was it the sky? He gazed up to make sure the water accurately reflected the sky. It was. Two-thirds of the sky was now consumed by the darkness spreading out of the east. If it could even be considered darkness. A nothingness seemed more accurate.
The water whispered to him, drawing his gaze back down. His image was tinted red. An effect of the sun? No, the water was turning red from crimson water flowing down from upriver. Looked like blood. The horse recoiled. No, the water was blood.
Cillian stumbled out, blood staining his boots and the hem of his jeans. The leaves of the trees along the banks burst into flame and turned to ash. A strong gust swirled the ash in a dervish all around. What new devilry was this? He spurred the horse up out of the trench and onto higher ground. He paused at the edge to take stock of his surroundings. A blood-drenched sun ahead, a burning world of ash behind.
A vision of hell seemed to be closing in all around.
On the far side of the river a pair of rock outcroppings rose high above the desert floor, split by a narrow gap. Through the gap lay a flat, barren, white plain that seemed to stretch forever toward the monstrous crimson orb. The thundering of hooves pounded on baked-clay dirt. Less than a mile and already Cillian could feel the burst of vigor fading. The horse was quickly wearing out, too. The water hadn’t been their salvation. Only a brief reprieve from their fate. Not so much as a pebble dotted the plain to offer refuge. He would have to rely on the protection of his guns. The wait wouldn’t be long. Even as he thought this, the horse stumbled and fell to her knees. She was winded. She had reached the end. Her legs kicked a couple of times, trying to get her feet back under, and then she went still. She was too exhausted. Her dark brown eye watched him raise the rifle and fire a single shot. Her chest sank and rose no more.
The outline of four fuzzy figures emerged from the heat. The first rode a pale horse, the second black, the third red, and the fourth white. Like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Seemed fitting somehow. Cillian turned a circle. The dead horse was the only mark of protection on the plain. He unhooked the saddle and after a brief struggle, freed it from beneath the animal. Propped it on her belly, hunkered down behind his makeshift fortification, and checked the chamber of his rifle. One bullet slid partway out. The magazine was full.
A raven croaked behind him. The last thing he needed. It was ten feet away, a black relief against the white earth, watching him with those glass eyes. He aimed his revolver, held the sights, and considered whether to pull the trigger. It would be such an easy, smooth motion. As much as he wanted to kill the bird, he saw no point in its death. He lowered the barrel. Another croak and the bird flew away, swallowed by the dying sun.
He lay on his stomach, gun propped on the saddle, sights trained on the man second to the right. Click of the cocked hammer when they came within distance. He closed h
is eyes and slowed his breathing. Ancient memory of his youth, hunting coyotes, concealed in an outcrop of rocks, luring with a rabbit call. The coyote had tracked straight toward him, pausing now and then out of wariness. Unless the coyote caught his scent, its curiosity and hunger were usually stronger than its caution. The key was to never rush a shot. Now was no different, though these men weren’t coyotes. The leader filled his sight. Cillian pulled the trigger. The man on the black horse showed no sign of contact. Cillian loaded another shell and fired. Nothing. A third roar and still the man appeared untouched. Was the gun off? How did he keep missing?
An explosion of pain ripped through Cillian’s right shoulder, followed by the crack of a rifle. He popped two buttons free and peeled back the shirt. Blood gushed from jagged holes on each side of his shoulder. The bullet had passed clean through. He tried to prop the gun back up against his shoulder but succeeded only in a grimace and groan. The arm was useless. He slid the rifle away and withdrew a revolver. The four were no more than a hundred feet away now.
Cillian considered his options. There was no running away. He was trapped behind the dead horse, which would be easy enough to outflank. He might be able to hold one man at bay, but not four. The numbers favored them, as did God, it seemed. He could lie here and wait for them to shoot him in the back or he could accept his fate.
This is crazy, he thought as he rose. He drew on the leader and fired, unloading the pistol until it clicked without firing. The leader reined his black horse to a stop. Cillian knew he had hit him. The others halted, too. The man turned his horse sideways, sunlight flashing along the steel of the pistol’s barrel. The shot dropped Cillian to his knees, a hole blown right through his hand. The Colt fell to the desert floor. This second shot took some focus away from the pain of the first. he stared up into the darkness above and all hope fled.
