“Now dear brother, it is you who it becomes.”
And as he let go and fell limp, Galen’s heart shook as if a bolt of lightning had run through him. He turned the body of Miles over to face him.
“What did you mean?” Galen called out, shaking the boy’s dead body. He waited for a response that never came, and he watched in wonder as what returned to his brother’s face was what could only be described as a final sense of peace.
It was then he saw them emerge from the woods, those inhabitants of the netherworld. The dead who straddled this plane of existence and the next.
He stood and began to back away when their hollow eyes were upon Galen, gazing at him as if he belonged to them.
Miles’ final words echoed again in his mind. Now dear brother, it is you who it becomes.
The voice that came from behind Galen startled him for he at once recognized it before he even turned.
“Brother Thomas, I am sorry for your loss.” And the man with scorched wings was there, crouching next to Miles’ body. He reached into the boy’s pocket and pulled something out before stepping toward Galen.
With an outstretched hand, he held it out. One of the eyes formerly belonging to William Lawton.
“I believe this is yours,” he said and then laughed as Galen reached out to take it. “You’re going to need it.”
As if pulled into the eye, Galen could see it the same as he had before. The scorching of the earth, the raising of forces of darkness. The vision was vivid and alive.
An archangel impaling a slobbering horned beast on the end of a mighty sword while another has his wings torn asunder by the razor-sharp claws of a dozen hell-spawn. The blood of the righteous and unrighteous flow until every last river on earth runs red.
Standing at the head of this unending phalanx of darkness was a man with eyes like smoke and the head of a coyote.
And it was clearer to Galen more than ever that the face of this man was his own.
“What does this mean?” Galen asked breathlessly.
“Means the Wolf is coming,” Briar spoke. “Now, I would hazard a guess that he’s coming for you.” And with those words he turned away and laughed.
***
Galen carried Miles’ body to the shade under the tallest tree he could find and, with tears still streaming down his face, he kissed his brother on the forehead. With no tools to dig a grave, he puzzled for a moment before the image of a cairn—a stone pile—appeared in his mind. It was the way he’d seen Indians bury their dead in the hard dirt.
He gathered the stones and piled them on top of Miles’ body as he wept. When he was done, Galen stood beside the grave of his brother and tried to think of something to say. What came to mind was part of a poem he had heard recited several times by a fellow soldier back during the war. Though he couldn’t remember the whole verse, the words of Edgar Allan Poe came forth from his mouth.
“Be silent in that solitude, which is not loneliness—for then, the spirits of the dead who stood in life before thee, are again in death around thee, and their will shall overshadow thee: be still.”
With his hand, he patted the topmost stone of the cairn before remembering he still had another member of his family to bury. As he walked back to the clearing, he could sense the eyes of the dead upon him, smothering him with their persistent gaze. Though he could feel them practically at his elbows, reaching out to him, he kept his eyes forward and his feet moving.
And when he arrived back at the clearing still strewn with the bodies of dozens of dead beasts, he looked for Nena at the spot at which she had fallen and stopped. Again he scanned the area all around but she was nowhere to be found. It was then he began to notice the sounds he heard coming from all around him, countless voices hushed to a whisper. And among them, buried in the cacophony, he could make out two distinct phrases.
“We shall live in His house. We shall live in His name.”
***
It came as a rush finishing with a feeling akin to being struck by electricity as Cyril’s still heart began beating again. As the blood pumped once more through his veins, his mind suddenly exploded back into consciousness and with it came the agony of resurrection. In moments he became fully aware again. He opened his eyes only to find himself surrounded by complete darkness. His first breath was stifled in his throat as he suddenly felt the heaviness on his body. Again he tried to open his mouth but it would not move and as he realized the grit he could feel against his lips was the dirt from the grave he had been placed into, he started to panic. In the place where his limbs had once been he sensed no feeling as his lungs began to burn from lack of air. Cyril tried to call out for help but could not. As the fire in his chest moved to his brain, he could not remember what had put him in this situation. He was quickly swallowed by a terrifying realization.
Oh God, I can’t breathe, he thought.
He tried moving any part of his body but the weight of his tomb smothered him from above. His lips parted only slightly and he could feel the tiny granules of earth falling onto his dry tongue and into his throat.
Don’t let me die like this! His mind screamed as the burning in his chest and brain became hotter than a furnace. There in the several minutes before suffocating to death in the ground his mind’s last question was not to ask why but whether this would continue to happen again and again.
***
Galen walked until the point of complete exhaustion and then kept going, afraid that if he stopped the whispering voices from the woods would surround him once again. He remembered what Nena had said when they entered the forest, that somewhere ahead lay a river. There was no energy left in his body but he pushed forth finally seeing the expansive shining blue stretch through the trees.
Down into the mud he stumbled, falling to his knees. He had finally broken through the forest to the bank of a great rushing body of water.
The Mississippi, Galen reckoned. It was even vaster than he remembered. He looked into the sky, glad to have the sunshine directly over his head again. He had spent so much time the past few months navigating through dark forests, the country was full of them, and now he knew what lurked in those wooded shadows. Things he wasn’t keen on being near again any time soon.
Gazing out, Galen saw the mighty paddleboat steaming its way upriver. Though he had no idea where it was going, he imagined himself on it, being that anywhere was better than here.
And there was still a long way to go to complete his journey.
Why continue? He wondered momentarily but deep inside he knew the visions would never end. There were still answers out there. Answers that could only be found when he returned home—to Shadow Falls.
The next step would be to cross this river and continue east. Galen knew that following the bank of the Mississippi north would eventually get him to a boat that would ferry him to the other side.
He walked along the muddy riverbed not seeing any sign of other boats or people and more than once wondered if he was still part of the mortal world, choosing to push the thought out of his mind to keep this kind of madness at bay. As the sun set, and he could not summon the strength for another step. He stumbled to the embankment, where he sat staring out toward the river. He chose not to fight the heaviness of his eyelids as slumber enveloped him in its inevitable embrace.
***
His rest was a disturbed peace, for the images came again to him in his sleep. The church. The faces, all consumed by flame. But it was the sound that woke him with a start.
And as his eyes opened to the blinding glare of the lantern it took him but mere moments to recognize the face of the young girl from the ghetto at Veracruz. His heart froze as he gazed into her long dead face and rotting flesh and suddenly his mind clicked into place as the memory became crystal clear.
The toothless old man lay on the ground having just been knocked down, his hands up in a futile gesture in front of his face trying to protect himself.
“Take the horse!” he pleaded. “Take
the horse!”
“Oh I will,” the voice spoke as the gun was pointed directly at the old man’s head. In the moment the trigger was pulled, Galen recognized the voice as his own for what he was seeing was the firing of the fatal shots that landed him in jail back in Sagebrush with a date for the gallows.
As his mind flashed again, he was there back in Veracruz but the hand holding the knife carving into the screaming young girl’s skin belonged solely to him as now he could see the horrified looks on the faces of his drunken companions.
“It was me,” Galen whispered, unaware he was even speaking. “It was me.”
And over and over the memories returned. The Gypsy crone and the smoking Derringer in his hand. The dozens of faceless men and women he had murdered during his life as an outlaw.
Even the stuttering whore, Daisy, whose companionship he had paid for—in his memory she lay across her bed, the glistening slash across her neck oozing blood as he wiped the blade of his knife on her sheets.
“No.” Galen trembled as he stared back at the long-dead Mexican girl. “No.” It was at that moment he could feel his heart stop beating in his chest as she ran a bony finger along his cheek. And there in his mind he could hear her voice.
“You cannot escape your destiny, Galen Altos, for you have always been Death,” she whispered as her face inched closer to his in the pale light of the lantern. “And always shall you be.”
*****
The ANGEL OF DEATH CHRONICLES series continues with:
SHADOW FALLS: ANGEL OF DEATH
and
DIARY OF A MADMAN
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff is a bestselling and award-winning author living in Los Angeles who has been known to occasionally moonlight as a TV host, voice-over artist and rock journalist. A professional composer of music for television for many years, opportunity knocked and transformed him into a screen/TV writer and author featured on “Access Hollywood.” Then a podcast recorded in his car became a weeknightly drive-time radio show on Sirius Sateillite Radio. This led to a handsome feature in Playboy Magazine that compared Mark to Howard Stern and Jon Stewart. His bestselling book, “The Killing of Osama Bin Laden: How the Mission to Hunt Down a Terrorist Mastermind was Accomplished,” was written in 4 days.
Mark can be reached at: [email protected]
Twitter.com/MYN
If you enjoyed this book, please tell your friends.
-MYN
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Big thanks to Rodrigo Dauster and Barry NM Dima for helping me edit and wrangle this book into shape during its various stages of existence over the past few years.
And of course much, much thanks go out to all of the Shadow Falls fans out there who have downloaded the podcasts and audiobooks, especially those of you who kept on me to finally write the next Shadow Falls book, ANGEL OF DEATH – you know who you are and I am indebted to you for your continuing support and feedback.
Lastly of course thanks to my wife and son who continue to inspire me every day.
*****
BOOKS BY MARK YOSHIMOTO NEMCOFF:
NON-FICTION:
The Killing of Osama Bin Laden: How the Mission to Hunt Down a Terrorist Mastermind was Accomplished
Where’s My F*cking Latte? (And Other Stories About Being an Assistant in Hollywood)
Go Forth and Kick Some Ass (Be the Hero of Your Own Life Story)
FICTION:
Diary of a Madman
The Doomsday Club
The Art of Surfacing
Number One with a Bullet
Shadow Falls: Badlands
Shadow Falls: Angel of Death
Killing My Boss
###
Shadow Falls: Badlands Page 19
