SHADOW FALLS: BADLANDS
(An Angel of Death Chronicles Novel)
by
Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff
SMASHWORDS EDITION
*****
PUBLISHED BY:
Glenneyre Press - Los Angeles, CA on Smashwords
www.wordsushi.com
Copyright © 2007 by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff
First Edition
ISBN 13: 978-0-9768040-5-5
Edited by: Barry NM Dima
Cover Design by: MYN
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
*****
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
MORE BOOKS BY MARK YOSHIMOTO NEMCOFF
PROLOGUE
Murderers both, the boys survived.
Though not this life—not after this massacre.
It was destined that their fate be renewed at the site of the slaughter. For once and forever, their inextricable paths would both be drawn in blood—determined, as man's march unto ashes, or dewdrops unto vapor.
Tender winds above the snow melted many kinds of suffering. But within the vast and cold night, a new dawn would break. Through the morning mist, destiny’s door would appear for those who dared to peek behind it.
And then, infinity-bound, the din would begin, born of a whisper and rising to a deathly scream.
It was the year of the Lord sixteen hundred and ninety-two, on the ninth of August, when the brig Majestyk docked in the town of Duxbury, Massachusetts, having made the crossing from Portsmouth, England just over a fortnight past due. Those who had made the journey had learned the hard way that coming to the new world would be more difficult than anyone could imagine. The crossing had been marked with hard work, spoilt food, and seas which had nary a want for human passing.
All passing except death.
Of the fifty-one men, women and, children making the voyage, only forty-three would leave the boat—the other eight had their bodies committed to the sea once the mortal coil had left behind nothing but used husks.
Two had been brothers—elderly gentlemen of great wealth who had attempted the trip, neglecting the protests of friends and loved ones who warned both that they were too frail for such an undertaking. After the younger brother’s passing during the initial month at sea, the second, older brother fell violently ill. Some supposed it was out of grief for his fallen sibling. He never recovered, lasting only a scant few days before himself succumbing to the Christian Lord’s call home. It was during this time that young master Miles Lawton, age ten—on board the Majestyk with his parents, his older brother, Thomas, and baby sister, Alyson—realized there was only one thing he feared above dying.
While his mother, Corrine, volunteered to bring water below to the moribund elderly man, it was Miles who followed her into the hold where the man lay breathing his last. Back in Portsmouth, Corrine Lawton had been a nurse before her children were born. Aside from the Majestyk’s captain, whose idea of treating an open wound included a sharp rub of gunpowder, Corinne Lawton was the only qualified caregiver on board. Though in this case, as with most life-threatening afflictions while crossing the open ocean for weeks at a time, treatment consisted of little more than offering comfort, blankets, and muted prayer.
The other deaths—a mix of men and women, and a girl of three years—deaths had not been so simple to explain.
Before disembarking from the Majestyk, Miles’s father, William Lawton, donned his familiar frock, silk cap, and kid gloves, while his mother and sister both wore dresses they had carefully kept in storage during the voyage. They ventured from the lower harbor into the town of Duxbury to seek a hot meal on land. As the children sat for their supper, they all bowed their heads in silent prayer—for on the morrow, they and the other travelers of the Majestyk would head north towards the land they were to settle. To the promise of new lives!
In the dark that night, as Miles and Thomas shared a bed in the inn above the city’s finest tavern, the elder brother recounted the screaming death of the old man on the ship. It was enough to cause Miles a sleepless night of gazing at the ceiling through the dark; he could not even relish a bed that did not pitch from side to side all night long.
The proceeding week was as difficult as any of the worst days at sea. From Duxbury, fourteen covered wagons filled with supplies and passengers ventured away from civilization into territories yet uncharted by European man. It was William Lawton who had led this group, for he had negotiated the land purchase based upon a map brought back to England by some trappers who had made their own fortune in this new world. The parcel they were headed toward had not yet been settled by anyone and, given its location near a lake and what had been described to him as “virgin soil fertile ‘nough to grow trees into the heavens,” there could not be a better spot to begin a town based upon freedom from the religious persecution they had suffered back home.
Or so they believed.
That night, Thomas came to Miles as the young boy was gathering twigs and sticks for kindling. Thomas had something he wanted to tell, but the younger brother had been so excited that he ejaculated a secret of his own.
According to Miles, the local guide—who passed his days on his horse riding ahead of the party and his nights by himself sleeping near a campfire with his rifle close at hand—had a deformity. It was Miles who once recoiled from the guide's stare—for the man had one eye, which normally was hidden under a leather patch, but at this moment the hole was in plain sight. In the eyeball’s stead was an empty socket, the flesh around it was gnarled and scarred. Miles quickly turned away, too frightened to even speak. It was two full days before he could even muster the courage to mention it to his brother.
“Mayhap it was an Indian that done it?” was Thomas's reply. It then became Thomas's sole mission to himself see this injury. The next day, during a brief respite for the sake of the horses, Thomas saw the guide nearby drinking from a canteen. Desiring a clandestine look, he carefully approached from the supposed blind side, but the guide lowered his canteen and turned away. Thomas once again approached slowly, taking but one step before the guide turned toward him—his patch lowered over the eye in question—and stared singularly back at Thomas.
“Best keep near the wagons, boy,” barked the guide. “There are things in these woods that ye might not want to meet face to face.” The guide released a harsh laugh, one that Thomas did not find amusing at all. He decided seeing the guide’s deformity was not worth being clo
se to that man anymore than needed.
On the second week of the trip, the party stopped for a night in a verdant valley. Two of the men, ardent hunters, were able to catch and slaughter deer for a stew. It was this evening that William and another pair of men went to the guide during which a heated argument broke out. It was Corrine who kept her children back, far enough away as to not be able to clearly hear what was being said—but not before Miles was able to understand the gist of his father's concern.
The guide had taken them away from their intended route, and far away from their destination. And though he told no one, William Lawton was going to dragoon the guide to return the group to where they needed to go regardless of what he had to do to make that happen.
The voices of the men rose higher as tempers flared. William Lawton was accusing the guide of misdirecting the party; according to his map, they were several days off course.
“Ye don’t know these lands,” intoned the guide. Such was his rationale for the detour: something for which the men had no patience. Their journey, which had been prolonged at nearly every juncture, would not be delayed any further. The path on which the guide was taking them went suspiciously around a wooded valley instead of through it—a valley that, as far as anyone could figure, would provide easy crossing, fair shelter, and abundant natural resources and game.
As the guide lowered his voice to a hush, he again explained what William Lawton refused to believe.
This was not land one wanted to cross—not at any time, day or night. True, it was a valley abundant with lush green, but his years of trapping and hunting these parts taught him to stay clear of the areas that the Indians themselves avoided. As he explained, these were people of the earth; they communed with its spirits and lived in concert with the animals that roamed the land. If an Indian refused to go somewhere because he or she believed it to be bad ground, it was best to do the same. The guide did not know why these natives circumvented this valley; he did not need an explanation.
But William Lawton did. He insisted they be taken through the valley. Summer was nearly over and there were still many preparations that would have to be made before the chill set in: houses to be built; larders to be filled with game. Time was not a luxury they could afford to waste anymore. Again, the guide refused.
“I ain’t gon’ do it,” he said.
In the morning, the party woke to find the guide gone. William Lawton was forced to tell the others the man, “obviously a charlatan,” had absconded in the dead of night. By the guide's normal campfire was the satchel containing the silver pieces which Lawton himself had paid him back in Duxbury.
“We shall continue on our own,” William told the others. He’d reasoned the map he'd carried since England proved accurate so far, thus there was no reason to believe their destination did not lay just on the other side of the valley.
That morning they descended below the rim. William told the others he thought the “guide the fool.” Another man was convinced the supposedly one-eyed guide had been a drunkard, though no one recalled ever seeing him take a single drop of spirits. That first day they made a fair amount of distance from their previous night's camp. Come evening, as the wagon train came to a halt, two of the men who had spotted ruffed grouse a few meters back separated from the group with their guns to hunt for supper. One kissed his wife and promised her fresh fowl for dinner.
By nightfall, neither of the two men had returned.
Their families grew concerned as the hours passed. Several others volunteered to go searching for the missing pair.
“No,” William told them. “A night with no moon was not one to go on a search party. We can't afford to have more go lost.”
He reassured the others the hunters had just gotten misdirected. With the sun missing from the sky, it would be difficult to see into what you were heading. Lawton said he knew these men—they were smart enough to stay in one place until sunrise, when they would be able to find their way back to camp where a good ribbing by all awaited.
The disappearance of these two men was the talk, albeit hushed, of the entire camp. It was Corrine who forbade her boys to speak of it at all, which is precisely why Thomas quietly turned to Miles in the night as the two boys pretended to sleep.
“I never told you what I saw back on the ship.” His voice trembled as he whispered into Miles's ear. “But I must because, though I try to remember, it is like this memory seeks to evaporate from my brain like morning dew drops. If I don’t tell you, I fear I may forget entirely.”
Several nights after the elder of the two old men died on board the Majestyk, Thomas had awoken in the middle of the night with an urgent need to relieve himself. From his berth he crawled out and carefully felt a path toward the gangway to the upper deck. It was not uncommon the men on ship to urinate overboard, although always taking care to be both on the leeward side away from the wind and out of view of female folk. Thomas relished this as being the only good thing about life aboard a ship: the ability to pee freely into the sea. As Thomas settled at the stern rail, hidden behind several casks of fresh water, he froze in mid-act. Several yards away was his father, pushing a young woman over the starboard side rail. The woman appeared relenting—not even protesting—and fell like a lifeless doll into the darkness of the water below. Struck with fear, Thomas crouched behind the large barrel and watched as his father looked around and descended back below deck, wiping his hands on his coat, as if dirty.
Thomas's voice hitched. His body was shaking. With both hands he clutched Miles's arm, digging his nails into his brother's skin. “I think father killed her.”
Miles froze as if dumbstruck, and then began battering Thomas with blows from his tiny fists.
“Take that back!”
Thomas grabbed the younger boy's wrists. “Hush!” he hissed quickly.
“You lie.”
“Why would I lie? Have I ever lied to you?”
It was a question Miles had only one response to: “No.” His brother had always been truthful with him. Not once had he ever told even a fib to Miles. His brother had always been a very serious boy, a fact not lost on anyone in the family. Now, with something as grave as two men missing, their families worried—everyone had become serious. And with the deaths of several passengers aboard the Majestyk, this was not the time to think Thomas had softened his ways.
“How do you know it was father?” Miles asked, growing more scared. “It could have been one of the ruffian sailors who pushed that woman overboard.”
Thomas shook his head. Everyone on board was quite familiar with the attire of the ship's crew: loose duck trousers, checked shirts and tarpaulin hats. Their father, with his frock coat, would have borne a completely different silhouette than your average jack-tar.
“For what reason would he have to cause her harm?” Miles asked, his voice raising too much, causing Thomas to react as if struck.
“Boys!” A voice growled. It was their father. “Get to sleep.” William had been only a few feet away, cradling a gun in the crook of his arm, much like the guide used to. He waited until Thomas had lain back down and closed his eyes before turning away. A closer look would have revealed Thomas' body trembling in fear, wondering just how much his father had heard.
By daybreak the two missing men had not yet returned to camp; thus William organized a search party consisting of himself and three other men. Taking four of their best horses, they set out back through the valley in the direction the others had vanished. William promised they would find the missing men.
They didn't have to look very long.
Less than a league from camp, they came across the first man. He initially appeared to be standing in a hole up to his chest, slumped over onto the dirt, fast asleep. It wasn't until the search party got closer that one of the men on horseback realized there had been no hole. The missing man, a young carpenter who had come over to the new world with his young wife, had been severed in twain, his body shredded at mid-chest. Trailing behind w
hat was left of the man's body were viscera and blood—a dreadful quantity of blood.
“Looks as if he was dragged,” one of the men posited. Indeed it did, and all eyes followed the line of ground-soaked blood toward the bramble where it disappeared.
“We must look for the other man—” William cut himself off in mid sentence. A crackling sound had come from the thicket. It was a sound a hunter would never mistake for anything else than what it was: a footstep.
Quickly, the men of the search party dismounted. William drew a musket pistol from his belt and put a finger to his lips. An older man to his left cocked his head to the side and sniffed the air. It was even in the breeze—something bad, coming from the bramble ahead. At his feet, William could see the line blood would lead them to whatever was hiding in the thicket. With a slight movement of his hand, William gestured for them to proceed quietly. As he stepped closer he could hear it—growling, feral, and unafraid. The gun, which had been loaded and primed back at camp, came up to his shoulder as William thumbed back the hammer.
The older man to his left nodded. He would flush whatever it was out of hiding. “Yah! Yah!” he yelled, waving his arms.
From the bramble it came, baring teeth, the throaty growl blaring from its mouth making no mistake of its intention. The older man recoiled but it was no use. The beast's bloodshot eyes locked upon its prey as it launched from its rear haunches into the air.
Time stood still with the blast—the shot from the musket found its mark in the skull of the beast and it dropped like a stone onto the dirt, its shattered head lolling backwards.
The older man turned, his face ashen. “Good Lord!” His hands shook furiously as he turned, stumbled against a tree, and purged his breakfast onto the ground.
One of the other men approached the prone lump of black fur on the ground. The great beast was no bigger than a large dog.
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