Dust

by Chris Miller

  The look in Wild Bob’s eyes was one of absolutes. Absolute confusion. Absolute pain. Absolute horror. A high-pitched squeal was hissing from the man’s mouth now—one Denarius would not have thought possible for a grown man to achieve—and his one remaining hand was gripping the wrist beneath the jetting stump.

  Denarius scrambled back on his ass as Wild Bob collapsed to the ground, writhing in pain and panic, the squeal an ever-present music. Tears flowed from the man’s terror-filled eyes and Denarius could see the man had lost all reason, gone mad in an instant at the loss of his extremity.

  A shadow moved and Denarius looked up to see a man materialize from the gloom. He was tall and broad, and wore a wide-brimmed hat. He was a white man, but Denarius did not fear him, though the man’s face was fierce and hard. He wore a long coat which stopped just beneath his knees, and in his hands were one of those repeater rifles he’d heard the Confederate boys call ‘them damn Yankee rifles you can load on Sunday and fire all week’. Only this one was a newer model, not like the ones he’d seen during the war.

  “Mister,” the man spoke as he approached, flipping the lever out on his rifle and ejecting a round, then slamming it back in place. “You alright?”

  Denarius could only stare at the man, his lips trembling in awe. The man got to where Wild Bob lay squirming and hissing on the ground, looked down at the injured man, then back to Denarius.

  “Mister?” he asked. His tone was hard, but not cruel. Curious, perhaps.

  Denarius dug around and found his voice. “Y-yes, suh,” he said. “I-I’s alright, suh. Th-thank you, suh. You done saved my life. I don’t know what I’da done if you ain’t come along when you did.”

  The man only nodded and looked back down to Wild Bob’s writhing figure. Blood was pooled into a muddy lake all around him, the leaves and pine needles floating like lilies and logs in a debris filled river.

  “I hear this man correct?” the man said, pointing to Wild Bob with the barrel of his rifle. “They’s gonna make a eunuch out of you?”

  The man looked up after his question, a not quite confused expression on his face. Denarius nodded.

  “Y-yes, suh, you heard ‘em right. They’s bad men. Come to my house two days ago and took me. I managed to hide my wife and boy ‘neath the house before they come in. They took me and was headed down Pittsburg way. They’s a man there likes to buy negro parts.”

  The man regarded him for a long moment, his face scrunching in disgust.

  “That’s right awful, mister,” the man said, a hint of sympathy in his voice. “Why would the law allow such a thing to go on?”

  “I’s only three-fifths a man, suh. They don’t see us the same as white folk. We hardly more than animals to them.”

  The man’s head cocked to one side and his eyes squinted.

  “You look like all of a man to me, mister. I suppose that’s not the universal opinion ‘round here, though.”

  He looked back down to Wild Bob.

  “You aim to take this man’s pecker off and sell it, were ya?” he said and nudged Wild Bob with the barrel of his rifle. “That your goal, to take a fellow human being’s manhood off and sell it for coin?”

  Wild Bob only writhed and moaned, his face and beard now coated crimson from the spray.

  The man shook his head and returned his gaze to Denarius.

  “Name’s James Dee, mister,” he said and tipped his hat with his free hand. “I’m glad I’s on the trail here and seen what was happening when I did. Might’ve gone poorly for you otherwise.”

  Denarius smiled briefly and a bark of laughter escaped him, though he thought it absurd.

  “You and me both, mister!” he said. “I owe you my life. I aim to repay the favor.”

  The man waved a hand in the air. “Think nothing of it. I’m headed to Dust, anyhow, and you say you’ve got a family. You get back to them.”

  Denarius scrambled to his feet then and dusted off his britches.

  “No, suh,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m a Christian man and I believe God put you in my path this day. If you’re heading to . . . to Dust . . . well, suh, then so is I, least until I can repay the debt.”

  “Mister, you don’t know—”

  “I know it’s the right thing to do, repay a kindness for a kindness. And I’m handy, too. I can shoe horses, cook up a mean pot of stew, and I’m not a bad shot, neither. And the name’s Denarius, suh. Denarius King.”

  The man named James Dee regarded him for a long moment, his hard eyes narrow, then he nodded.

  “Alright, Denarius King,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re getting into, but I can see you’re a man of conviction. I won’t stop you, and I’d be much obliged for a pot of stew tonight. I’ve got squirrel and rabbit back at my camp. Can you work with that?”

  Denarius laughed so hard he doubled over, slapping his knee before coming back up.

  “Suh, you ain’t never had stew like I’m gonna make for you tonight. My name’s King, and we gonna eat like one!”

  James smiled at him and nodded. “Fair enough. Why don’t you pick one of them horses for yourself and we’ll head back to camp.”

  “Yes, suh,” Denarius said and made his way to the horses before stopping and turning back to James. “W-what about him?”

  He pointed to the still moaning and crying Wild Bob.

  James looked down at the man for a moment, then said, “Him? I don’t reckon a eunuch’s gonna cause us no harm.”

  He swung the barrel to the man’s crotch and blew his balls off in a shower of blood. The high-pitched squeal seemed like a deep bass note when compared to the song Wild Bob now sung, his good hand and stump both reaching for his now sexless groin.

  Denarius gulped audibly as he and the man called James Dee watched Wild Bob bleed to death.

  7

  Denarius hadn’t been lying about his abilities with the stew. James couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten so well, certainly in camp. He lay back with his head on his saddle, hat to his side, picking at his fingernails with a knife. Denarius was across the fire from him, staring at him with a curious look in his dark eyes as the flames cast lapping shadows across his features.

  “What’s on your mind, Denarius?” James said, not looking up from his work with the knife.

  He sensed rather than saw Denarius shrug.

  “I’s just curious, suh,” the black man said. “What’s in this place you headed called Dust? I ain’t never heard of the place before, and I’s lived ‘round here my whole life, least far back as I can remember.”

  James finished with his fingernails and drove the blade of his knife into the ground next to him before looking across the fire to his new friend.

  “Dust is . . . ” he began and trailed off, trying to decide on what exactly to tell the man. “Well, Dust is a bad place. Built on bad ground. There’s something there that needs dispatching, let’s put it that way.”

  “Something, suh?” Denarius asked. “Not someone?”

  James nodded. “That’s right. Though I suspect the residents of Dust may have a vested interest in keeping this something safe. I expect they won’t take too kindly to my meaning to dispatch it outright. Is what it is, I suppose.”

  “What is it?”

  “What’s what, Denarius?”

  “The thing, suh. What is it in Dust you aim to dispatch? And how come I never heard of this town before now?”

  James smiled and looked into the fire for a few moments before answering. There was so much this man wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t be capable of understanding. But James had judged him to be a decent fellow, and he was coming along to help James, so he decided the man deserved the truth. At least the closest approximation of it James could deliver, anyway.

  “I’m from around these parts as well, Denarius,” James began, sitting up and resting his elbows on his knees. “But I’m also not. Everything is familiar and totally foreign all at once. I know that’s hard to understand, but I don�
�t suspect I can make it much clearer. Sometimes I have a hard time wrapping my own head around it. But it’s real. I come nearly full circle here from where I began. You see, I was a lawman once upon a time.”

  “A lawman, you say?”

  James nodded. “Yessir, I do say. I was a chief, as a matter of fact, though you’d more likely think of it as a Sheriff or a Marshall, I suspect. Sheriffs are different there, though we’ve still got ‘em. Anyhow, there was this . . . thing came to my town. Wasn’t no human. It was a threat. A big threat. Could’ve ended the world, if you can believe that. Hell, I suspect you don’t, but it’s the truth.”

  Denarius looked offended. “I ain’t called you no liar, mister. Until you prove yourself dishonest to me, I’m taking you at your word.”

  James looked at the man through the flames and nodded to him, the faintest hint of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

  “Alright, Denarius. I appreciate that.”

  Denarius nodded. “So this thing could have ended the world, you say?”

  James nodded again. “That’s right. You see, it was a real-life monster. That’s no lie. And the only way I could stop it, took me out of my town and out of my world. I ended up adrift in this . . . other place. I come to call it the Void in time, because there just wasn’t nothing there. It was void of anything. Well, almost anything, that is. There were these people there. And not really people, per se, but Others. They live there, just on the outside of everything we can see and feel and touch. I called them the Others. And I learned from them that there are threats to our world and many others. Gods, you might call them, but not the God. They’re powerful, monstrous things. Their only purpose seems to be to destroy. Destroy whole worlds and peoples. And because of that, I decided I had to rid the universe of them. I been seeing to that now going on two decades.”

  Denarius squinted at him through the fire, soaking in the information. James could tell the man was confused, had questions. But he didn’t ask them. James went on.

  “I can do things, Denarius. Crazy things. Maybe the God gave me the ability, maybe evolution allowed it to develop in me for some reason. I don’t know. All I know is I can do these things and it makes it so I can do away with these gods. And I aim to do just that in Dust. The Others told me about all the different gods out there, and I’m on a mission to kill ‘em all.”

  “Killing gods?” Denarius asked and uttered a soft chuckle. “Mister, that beats all I ever heard.”

  “Yeah,” James said and tossed a shard of fingernail into the fire. “Somebody’s gotta do it, I reckon. May as well be me. That way maybe Joanna can live in peace.”

  “Joanna your wife, mister?” Denarius asked, his eyes perking up.

  James shook his head. “Daughter. She’s back . . . where I come from. With her mother and my best friend. I checked in on them for a while when I could, though they didn’t know it and it’s been some time since I’ve been able to. But she’s safe. For now, anyway.”

  Denarius nodded and looked about the camp as though searching for something to say.

  He found it.

  “What abilities?”

  James looked at him a moment before realizing what he was referring to, then smiled.

  “Oh, little of this, little of that.”

  Denarius shook his head and laughed.

  “Naw, suh. You don’t tell a man something like that and not show him what you speaking of. I may be three-fifths a man, but you five-fifths out your damn mind you think you ain’t about to show me what you talking about.”

  They shared a laugh at this, a genuine and deep belly laugh. James couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a laugh like that. It felt good.

  Finally, he nodded.

  “You still got that knife?” James asked.

  Denarius’s grin turned confused, but still amused.

  “Yes suh, I do.”

  “Hold it up.”

  Denarius stared at him a moment longer, blinking several times, then reached for the knife next to him on the ground. He held it up, still grinning.

  It was suddenly jerked from his hand as though an invisible force had yanked it free. He watched in stunned awe as it sailed across the fire, the now cleaned blade winking in the firelight.

  There was a clap as the handle slapped into James’s hand. Denarius’s mouth hung agape in stunned awe.

  “D-did you . . . ” Denarius started. “Was that—”

  “Yes sir, Mr. King,” James said as the flames twinkled in his eyes. “And that ain’t the half of it.”

  Denarius’s face split into a wide grin.

  8

  “You hungry, Gear?” Quentin asked from the inky shadows deep in the woods. Dreary paid him no mind as he watched through his collapsible telescope at the distant fire flickering through the trees.

  The moon was a bone scythe in dark sky, sparkling diamonds of stars glittering about in brilliant starkness all above them. But they were not focusing on the beauty of the night above the trees, nor could they have fully appreciated the spectacle from their current vantage. It was late now, and though Dust was a town of near myth, Dreary knew they were close now. So very close. And the gunman Dee was leading them right to it.

  His beard malformed into a savage grin.

  “Gear?” Quentin repeated, reaching a hand out to touch his boss’s arm. “Are you—”

  “I’ll appreciate you respecting my personal space, Quentin,” Dreary said, never taking his eye from the scope.

  Quentin paused, his hand only a few inches from Dreary’s arm, and withdrew.

  “Sorry, Gear,” Quentin said. “I was about to fire up some logs and heat the beans.”

  “You’ll do no such thing!” Dreary hissed, finally turning from his scope and glaring at Quentin through the gloom. “We’re much too close now to give our position away with your deplorable appetite. Eat them cold or not at all.”

  Despite the shadows, Quentin’s face could be seen well enough to make out the scrunch of displeasure which contorted it.

  “Ah, Gear, them beans ain’t no good uncooked!”

  “Then abstain,” Dreary spoke indifferently.

  Quentin started to protest further when both Avery and Bonham put a hand each on his arms, shaking their heads. He sighed harshly and sat back against the fallen log behind him and crossed his arms like a petulant child.

  “I can appreciate the hungers of a man, dear Quentin,” Dreary said, lowering the scope but not collapsing it. “I have appetites of my own. In fact, it is one such appetite which directs this very scene we find ourselves in now.”

  Dreary turned to face his three companions in the dark. His eyes blazed in the sparse moonlight.

  “Do you men really understand what awaits us in Dust?” he asked, looking at their silhouettes in turn.

  None of them answered.

  Dreary reached into his rucksack and produced a leather-bound book, tied closed with a string on the front. He held it up in the gloom for them to see in a shaft of light through the trees.

  “It’s all here,” he said, nodding toward the book. “The legend of the Elders.”

  “Elders?” Avery asked, his pitch a note too high. “Like old folks?”

  Dreary sighed and shook his head slowly.

  “No, Avery, not like old people. The Elders. The ancients. I’m talking about gods.”

  “Oh,” Avery said as though some great epiphany had just dawned on him. “Like the burning bush and that feller on the cross, then.”

  He wasn’t asking a question this time, but stating it as though it were fact, some infallible bit of information he’d just unearthed.

  Dreary sighed and lowered the book. “No, I’m afraid you’re wrong again. I’m not talking about religion and folk tales. This isn’t a Bible in my hands. It’s a record. A record of the ancient gods, the ones that live outside of our plane of existence, but just beneath the surface. They are awesome and fearsome beings, powerful beyond your wildest imagination. You
cannot fathom the power of these creatures.”

  Quentin sat forward, draping his arms across his knees.

  “What’s any of this bullshit got to do with my dinner?” he asked, that petulant tone still saturating his words.

  Dreary smiled in the dark. “Quentin, that man yonder through the woods is leading us straight to the town of Dust, a town shrouded in mystery and shadows. But it isn’t the town I’m after. No sir. It’s what the town is hiding I aim to find. The relic of another time. Another plane of existence. It’s shown up throughout history in various places across the globe according to the texts I have here. In ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. Babylon. More recently in the Southern Americas.”

  The three silhouettes stared at him in the darkness. Only Bonham seemed disinterested.

  “I still don’t see what any of that has to do with—”

  “It’s the relic of N’yea’thuul, you idiot!” Dreary cut him off with a hiss, a furious tone in his whisper. “The god of destruction. And I’m much too close now to let you give our position away to our friend, Mr. James Dee, because your tummy is growling!”

  “Gear,” a flat voice came through, void of emotion. It was Bonham. Dreary was startled by the man’s voice, not because it was fearsome, but because the man rarely spoke.

  Dreary turned his head to the man. “Yes, Mr. Bonham?”

  Bonham leaned forward himself, fussing with something in his hands. Dreary assumed he was picking his nails with his knife, though he couldn’t confirm this visually.

  “Ain’t this fella—this Mr. James—ain’t he after the same thing as you?”

  A long silence followed the question as Dreary sat back, mulling the question over. Finally, he spoke in a quiet tone.

  “Mr. James Dee is after the relic of N’yea’thuul, yes. But he isn’t after what I’m after. Our friend Mr. James will have to suffer an untimely death, I’m afraid, though his guidance to our treasure is greatly appreciated. Yet, it must be so. I aim to harness the power of the relic. Mr. James aims to destroy it. We cannot allow that. But timing is everything, dear fellows. Timing is everything.”