Shadow Falls: Badlands

by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff

  “Don't touch it!” William commanded. He approached slowly and poked it with the barrel of his musket.

  “Nice shot, William,” the young man said to him.

  The fourth man in the party looked at the dead beast. “What is it?”

  “Wolf,” William said. “We must have surprised it.”

  “William!” The older man was calling to them. The others rushed to the sound of his voice. He pointed. In a pile next to his sickness was unmistakable: “It's— it’s a leg.”

  It was obvious to all—the leg belonged to the dead man they had found on the path. Upon further inspection, it was also obvious the wolf had been chewing on what was left of it. Talk turned to the one man still missing. The consensus was that wolves may have gotten the first man, but that left the question of what had happened to the second. Even the horses were gone without sign.

  “I am no expert,” the older man said, pointing to the upper half of the dead man's torso still on the path, “but I have never heard of wolves doing that.”

  They knew back at camp that the mood would be somber. It was agreed by the men of the search party that William would inform the wife of the halved man, but not of their suspicions of how he had died. “Best not to alarm the women and children,” he said. The others knew he was right. The second man, William would say, was still missing and he hoped all would pray for his safe return. He knew different though: the second man was not coming back either and the longer they stayed, the more chance there was that whatever was out there might decide to visit again.

  That night, Miles slept poorly, thinking of the dead man in the woods covered in darkness. At one point, the exhaustion overcame him and his eyes finally closed, only to be jarred out of slumber by the feeling of something hovering over him.

  Breathless, he opened his eyes, his heart pounding. Before he could make a sound, a hand clamped over his mouth. Leaning over him was his father, who brought his mouth to Miles's ear and whispered:

  “Listen to every word I tell you and don't make a sound, or you will perish tonight like the others.”

  Miles was so struck with fear that he couldn’t even blink; he just stared into the night.

  The boy nodded as his father continued to whisper. What he said seemed impossible—but this was his father speaking. Miles glanced over toward his brother, but Thomas was fast asleep. As far as he could tell, his mother and baby sister, Alyson, were inside the wagon as usual and in perfect slumber. There was nobody watching them. Miles considered what Thomas had told him—the story of his father tossing the woman overboard. He refused to believe it at the time but the things his father was now telling him—well, they amounted to murder.

  His own father: a killer.

  “Please, Miles, you must trust me,” William said. “There are lives in great peril. You must get dressed now. I will explain more as we walk.”

  Miles wanted to scream—to warn the others. His father had become—at what point he wasn't sure—a complete and raving lunatic, subject to the influence of the moon. It was his father's hand on his shoulder, the hand of a disciplinarian, which prevented him from doing so. If he screamed he was sure his father would kill him as well. In the dark, he slipped on his clothes, hoping, praying that his brother would wake up and see him—but Thomas lay still.

  “We must go. Hurry!” his father whispered.

  And under the cloak of night, with only the sounds of the valley and woods around them, Miles and William Lawton crept off into the darkness. At the edge of camp, Miles turned to look back at his brother. It would be the last time he would see Thomas as he remembered him.

  Miles decided that once in the woods he would flee from his father under the cover of night; but as they ventured further down the trail, he became aware of sounds coming from the surrounding woods and brush. Scurrying. Breathing. Footsteps lighting just outside the illumination of his father’s torch. The journey the past couple of weeks and sleeping outside had rendered his ears accustomed to the noises of the outdoors, especially those after sundown—crickets; owls; the occasional bump in the night—but this was different. With every step the noises grew louder, a cacophony of movement unseen, until the sound grew so great Miles thought he would surely go mad.

  In the darkness ahead, Miles would see small glints of light appearing briefly, then disappearing.

  Nothing but fireflies, he thought. But part of him knew better. The glints in the darkness always appeared in horizontal pairs.

  They were eyes.

  Eyes staring back at him.

  Watching him.

  Sizing him up from ahead in the dark.

  Run! his brain commanded him, finally breaking through to consciousness. He pulled away from his father, about to flee when the old man's hand wrapped around the back of his neck—his father's rough skin feeling hot as a flame against his soft, bare flesh.

  “Do not pull away from me,” his father hissed. “You do not want what is beyond this path.”

  Miles's eyes fell upon the pistol secured in his father's belt. William then took his hand off the boy's neck and put it back on the butt of the gun, as if ready to draw.

  Miles fell back into step; he dared not disobey. If there was a chance to escape the clutches of his murderous father, this was not it—especially not with the gun at his old man's side. He would wait and when the time came he would run as if being chased by lightning.

  They walked down the path for what seemed like ages until coming to another clearing. Up ahead in the rim of dim light from his father's torch, Miles could see something on the ground. It looked like—

  A hand. A disembodied hand.

  “Do not look,” his father said, though it was impossible. Given the choice of looking around at the eyeballs glinting in the darkness or ahead on the path, Miles decided on the latter.

  As they got closer, Miles gasped.

  William attempted to shield him but there was no keeping the boy from seeing the man torn in half—the same man William himself had found earlier. William clamped his hand over the boy's mouth.

  “Do not scream,” he whispered. “If you must look, do not scream.”

  The man, whom Miles had remembered from the months they had all spent on the Majestyk in close quarters, did not resemble a human being anymore—for his body had been mostly stripped of skin and flesh. From the man's face came the grimace of bone and teeth.

  “Carrion,” William said. “For animals,” preempting Miles's obvious question. “By the morrow there will hardly be anything left of him.”

  “D-d-d-did we come to bury him?” Miles blurted out.

  “No,” his father said, and from the inside of his frock coat drew a dagger.

  Miles's breath caught in his throat. He saw the blade and froze, expecting the next moment to be his last.

  He's going to kill me, Miles thought. But instead of turning the blade on his son, William crouched next to the dead man and cut a small lock of hair from what was left on his head.

  “Hold this and follow me,” William commanded, handing Miles the torch. Carefully, he followed his father to the bramble a few feet away—and that's where he saw it.

  Another man, naked, curled up on the ground and, judging from the fact that half his head was missing, very dead.

  “Animals didn't do this,” Miles whispered.

  “No,” William responded, crouching down next to the body of the naked man. “I did.”

  A chill ran down Miles's spine.

  “This man attacked us earlier,” William said. “I had no choice.”

  Miles looked down.

  “He was one of us.”

  “Was. Not any longer. He had turned. I'm positive he killed the other man.”

  “I— I— I don't believe you.” Miles was stunned. That he'd just said this to his father shocked even himself.

  “Please, Miles. I don't expect you to understand quite yet.” His father cut a lock from the body of the naked man as well. “Bring the torch over here.”<
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  Miles did as told. He dared not disobey as long as his father still had his pistol.

  As his eyes adjusted to the dim firelight, William paced a circle twice, drawing it in the dirt with his dagger the second time through. From there he drew several lines crossing and connecting. Miles had seen this before back home, but was always told by his mother he was too young to know of such things.

  “It's a pentagram,” William said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Back home we were persecuted for our beliefs. Shunned, ridiculed, even murdered. This is why we came to the new world, Miles. To find a better place where we are free to practice our religion as we see fit.”

  William positioned Miles in the middle of the pentagram.

  “Be still,” he told the boy. “And watch.”

  His father began by circling the pentagram.

  “Some dare call us Pagans. Heretics. Worshippers of Darkness. Let them. From whence we came, it is the self-proclaimed duty of the self-righteous to judge us based upon the fact that our beliefs do not accord with theirs. We have chosen the master we wish to worship and it is He who has delivered us to this place—a place of our destiny. But it is obvious that before we are to claim that which is ours, we will be tested first. Tested by the obstacles others choose to put in our path to challenge our faith. Tested by people who dare stand in our way. Like that one-eyed hoodlum who wanted to hold us up for more money and tried to scare us with tales of spooks and spirits. It was I, however, who had the last laugh on him. He will not be extorting monies from gullible travelers anymore. I made sure of that.”

  Miles swallowed hard. He thought of the woman going overboard. He thought of the man lying dead with half his skull blown off, brains for offal.

  “For years, I have had visions of this place. Visions of what we will find here and, before my very eyes, these visions have been true. Every last one of them.”

  A sound started in William's throat, beginning first as a low whisper then turning into a low growl—the chant coming from his mouth melting into words and phrases in a language Miles had never heard before. A language so guttural and primitive, yet at the same time mentally hypnotizing. William's arms drew back and forth in a way reminiscent of the conductor of a small orchestra Miles had seen back in Portsmouth. Back then the conductor had been summoning music from the musicians; here his father was summoning, but what was anybody's guess.

  As the chanting grew louder and more intense, Miles looked up and saw that in place of his father's eyes were now shocks of white. Miles couldn’t scream; he couldn't even move. It felt as if bands of iron had wrapped around his body. The terror inside him was swelling to the point where he felt as if his sanity were being torn asunder from his body.

  William reached out and grabbed Miles’s wrist with one hand, raising the dagger in the other. With one quick stroke he sliced clean across the boy's palm. Then, clutching it inside his own, balled both hands into a fist and squeezed. Miles felt as if the bones in his hand would shatter—his hand being crushed inside his father’s hand—but instead blood poured out onto the ground as if he were letting a calf. The blood, which pooled at Miles' feet, quickly disappeared into the ground as if being sucked down by a vampiric earth. And as quickly as it started, William dropped Miles' hand and it was over. The invisible bands holding Miles in place were gone and the youth, drained physically from the ritual, fell to the ground at his father's feet.

  “You are ready,” William said, catching his own breath, “to do that which needs to be done.”

  In silence, they waited for sunrise to come. William mouthed some kind of unholy prayer to himself. Miles had become too scared to even move, feeling as if something were sitting next to him, but anytime he’d look, there was nothing. It was a presence he could feel—but not see. To Miles, it was something oddly comforting; he no longer knew whom his father was, though this presence next to him felt familiar. At some point during the night exhaustion overwhelmed Miles and sleep enveloped him.

  It was his father who shook him awake.

  “Time to go,” William said. He didn’t even wait for Miles to get up before starting off down the path back towards camp.

  Miles started to his feet, his limbs stiff from inactivity. He glanced down at his hands, looking for the deep cut his father had put there but it was nowhere to be seen. His eyes darted from one hand to the other. Nothing. So certain he had been of the gash, his father squeezing his closed fist like...

  “Miles, please hurry!” his father called out. Miles tried to remember what had indeed happened last night—but his memory seemed foggy. He vaguely recalled what Thomas had said about how the things he’d seen on the boat evaporating from his mind like morning dew. Miles turned back to the spot where they camped—and that’s when he saw it. In the woods, through the bramble and thicket, were eyes. Hundreds upon hundreds of eyes, staring back at him from hiding.

  And those eyes seemed hungry.

  “It isn’t possible,” Miles whispered to himself; but when he turned back the stares were still there. Watching him.

  Miles picked up the pace of his feet until he had caught up with his father, grasping William’s hand for comfort.

  As they approached camp, Miles could see the clearing up ahead through the trees. The wagons were still circled in the same way to which Miles was accustomed. He wanted to run toward them—to his mother, brother, and baby sister.

  “Wait,” his father said. “One thing I must tell you before we go back.”

  Miles waited in anticipation. The evening had been long enough; he just wanted to be back at camp.

  “You could say part of my vision for this new land and our future was drawn in blood.”

  Miles’s heart beat faster; he didn’t like where this was heading.

  “We live in a time of great peril,” William continued. “War; pestilence; greed. We are at the verge of a great reckoning. Just because we walk on this ground now does not mean we always shall—I have foreseen this with mine own mind’s eye. The evil of man—persecution; genocide—has pushed this world to the brink of Armageddon. It is, undeniably, upon us.”

  Miles began shaking. His father had long ago abandoned the pulpit in the church of which he’d been a pastor. Miles had been three years old at the time and had barely a recollection of it—though at night, in secret, Thomas would talk about it on occasion. William explained he had “lost his faith,” claiming he had seen the “truth” about his beliefs. Miles was beginning to think his father’s visions were this “truth.” He was aware of the strange rituals he would sometimes hear his mother and father secretly performing late in the evening, but chose to believe they were just things he was too young to understand. He thought of the secret moans and sounds coming nightly from his parents’ room that he would often cover his ears not to hear.

  “I did this for us, Miles,” his father said. “I brought us here to be with Him, to serve at His right hand when the day of reckoning arrives—for this is the place from where He will emerge to reclaim the throne He was denied.”

  Miles closed his eyes. In his mind was an image from an old church primer from years ago, a book that had been long banished from their house. The image, a horned beast trapped in a pit of flame, seemed to burn itself into Miles’s mind.

  “I brought Him the sacrifice he wanted, Miles. I brought it to Him all the way out here.”

  His father turned his head and gestured toward the clearing—toward the camp.

  Pulling away from his father, Miles bolted down the path.

  “Miles, come back here!” William shouted. “You’re not going to like what you find there.”

  Miles ran as fast as his legs would carry him, his feet pumping against the hard dirt. His lungs burned but he kept running, finally breaking free into the clearing.

  His heart felt like it was going to explode but he kept moving toward the wagons.

  “Thomas!” he called out, gasping for breath. “Thomas! Mother!”

  It was then
that he saw the bodies.

  Two of them lay on the ground, their limbs sprawled at unnatural angles. Miles approached, slowly, his whole body shaking. Some thing had dismembered the man and woman on the ground, their bodies apparently thrown to the ground as if they were playthings. Her clothing had been ripped apart, her skirt mercilessly dragged up over her face. The man next to her did not even have a face to speak of—for the flesh had been torn off, his exposed jaw hanging open in a never-ending silent scream.

  Miles turned. “Thomas!” he yelled. “Mother!”

  No sound greeted him in return. He turned past the first wagon and looked inside. The flies had begun to already light on the dead woman, landing on the bloody gash along her neck. In her arms she clutched a bundle wrapped in a blanket. Miles remembered—this was the woman who had given birth in Portsmouth just two months before they boarded the Majestyk.

  Miles ran to the next wagon. Dripping from between the wooden slats of the undercarriage was blood. He need not look inside to know what had happened. He took two steps and found another man, laying face down, his legs severed above the knee, exposing denuded bone. Miles knew without question: those legs had been chewed off.

  And then behind him he heard a sound.

  He spun to find three coyotes gnawing the flesh of another dead body just under the next wagon. The scavengers were oblivious to Miles as he approached, but when one of the coyotes looked up, exposing its victim, is when Miles saw it.

  Thomas’s face.

  Or, more accurately, what was left of it.

  “No!” Miles screamed. “No!” He ran toward the coyotes shrieking and waving his arms like a wild man to shoo them away. The beasts scattered, disappearing into the woods at full stride. Miles fell to his knees next to his dead brother.

  “Thomas! Thomas!” He grabbed his brother’s limp arm, his shirt torn and soaked with blood. At the end was a gnarled stump where Thomas’s hand had been chewed away.

  The tears exploded from Miles as he clutched Thomas’s body to his, crying into the sky, sobbing to the point of silence—just deep, hitching breaths.