Straight Outta Tombstone

by David Boop

  Mild Bill wanted to book the McClantock gang for multiple performances, along with roving freelance entertainment—gun tricks and such among the crowd, but the cutthroat agent had tried to triple their fee. At one point, Robin had been so frustrated that I lurched into the negotiating room to ask if she needed any muscle to bring the gunslingers in line. It was a joke (zombies aren’t really all that intimidating), but when the agent went back to Moondance McClantock, they promptly agreed to the high midnight show.

  I guess I was more scary than I thought.

  But Mild Bill could only afford the one designated performance, explicitly defined as a single round of extravagant gun play, nothing else. Any more would be a breach of contract. Despite his disappointment, Mild Bill had promised to make the best of it.

  Around the show grounds, the spectral saloon owner put up posters featuring the outlaws, “Wanted: Dead, Undead, or Alive. Moondance McClantock and his gang!” Robin had brought along her executed copy of the contract, just in case McClantock decided to renege on the deal.

  Obviously, we all had to stay and see the big performance, which would take place in an hour.

  A skeleton played happy piano music in front of the temporary saloon and watering hole, where a potbellied zombie barkeep was pouring beer, whiskey, and shots of blood to cowboy-dressed vampires who looked as if they had just escaped from an undead dude ranch. Albert Gould, the rotting and disheveled proprietor of the Ghoul’s Diner, had set up a food stand that served “authentic Western barbecue”—blackened bones (species unknown) covered with sizzling meat. I had heard his special sauce was good.

  The Old West must have been a peaceful, nostalgic place.

  But then, gunfire rang out—real gunfire, in earnest this time, and Deadeye One-Eye was not just aiming at targets. Over by the rickety corral, he had untied the five angry nightmares, and now he whooped like a Hollywood Indian on the warpath. He fired his pistols again and again, and the noise startled the demon horses. Even though they were supernatural creatures, they certainly spooked easily.

  The ghost gunslinger laughed maniacally, something he did quite well, and the snorting black horses thundered out in a violent panic, racing into the crowd of naturals and unnaturals along the main street.

  “Shoot, that’s not part of the show!” Mild Bill flashed a glance at Robin. “You said we couldn’t afford the insurance for a full stampede.”

  “We better get these people out of here,” I shouted. “And bring the horses under control.”

  As I lurched into motion, McGoo kept up with me. “Great idea, Shamble. Throw ourselves in front of a bunch of demonic stallions?”

  “Don’t make it worse than it is, McGoo—these are mares, not stallions.”

  The horses stormed forward, their hooves striking improbable sparks on the dusty ground. Flames chuffed from their nostrils.

  McGoo drew his two service revolvers, one loaded with normal bullets, the other with silver bullets, but I didn’t think these wild horses would be cowed, regardless the type of ammunition.

  As the crowd of mummies, vampires, werewolves, mad scientists and their assistants fled to the boardwalk and the store fronts, the horses stormed toward us. McGoo opened fire, shooting into the air. If the demonic horses could be spooked once, they could be spooked again.

  The resounding gunfire scared the nightmares enough that instead of charging into the crowd, they split up and galloped toward the concession stands. The skeleton piano player and Albert the ghoul fled. The rampaging nightmares crashed into the barbecue display, knocking the tent down and spilling meat-covered bones in all directions, along with a bucket of smoking sauce. The “secret ingredient” burned craters in the sawdust-strewn ground.

  Two of the black horses still came toward us, and I drew my .38, also firing into the night sky, but my gun wasn’t as loud as McGoo’s heavier-caliber weapons. I added some harsh language, and that did the trick. The snorting nightmares wheeled about and stampeded back toward their corral.

  Then amidst the gunfire and whinnying, I heard something that made my artificial blood run cold—a scream. Sheyenne’s scream.

  “McGoo, come on,” I yelled.

  The ghost of the evil gunslinger stood front of Sheyenne, Robin, and Mild Bill. Deadeye One-Eye had both of his Colts out, and he opened fire. Sheyenne spun, crying out in pain—pain!—as a ghost bullet grazed her upper arm, and I saw a splash of ectoplasmic blood.

  Robin was in the line of fire too, but she dove out of the way. Somehow, the bullets missed her.

  McGoo and I put on a surge of speed.

  The one-eyed ghost gunslinger turned the firepower on his real target, Mild Bill. The avuncular saloon owner raised his hands in surrender. “Don’t shoot!”

  “Why not?” Deadeye One-Eye emptied his pistols.

  Ectoplasmic blood sprayed out from deadly wounds in the ghost saloon owner’s chest, like the sauce from a Spaghetti Western. The ghost gunslinger laughed at what he had done.

  McGoo and I ran up, our guns drawn. I had eyes only for Sheyenne, who was wounded, and Mild Bill, who was mortally wounded—for a second time.

  In a rage, McGoo snarled, “You are under arrest, Deadeye One-Eye!”

  “You’ll never take me alive, lawman—it’s already too late.” The gunslinger sneered at the dying ghost of Mild Bill, then looked up at me. “Now there’s no way he can rescind the contract. When Moondance gets here, Chambeaux, you’re a dead man.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s how I started out the day,” I said.

  The gunslinger’s ghost vanished into thin air while he was still laughing.

  McGoo and Robin went to Mild Bill. I raced to Sheyenne. She had clamped a hand against the ghost bullet wound in her shoulder, and red ectoplasmic blood seeped around her fingers.

  “How could you get hurt?” I asked. “You’re not even corporeal.”

  “That gunslinger has ghost bullets,” Sheyenne said. “And I’m a ghost.”

  She lifted up her hand, stared at the ectoplasmic blood, and shook her head. She looked beautiful with her blond hair and her startling blue eyes. “I’ll be fine Beaux—it’s just a flesh wound…figuratively speaking of course.”

  McGoo checked over Robin quickly. “You’re not hurt?”

  “Just lucky, I guess.” She looked shocked.

  The ghost of Mild Bill lay on the ground, moaning, his blood evaporating into the spirit world. “Never thought they’d shoot me!” With his dying gaze, he looked up at me and uttered a final sentence. “Shamble…beware, high midnight.” He gasped, let out a death rattle, and his ghost dissipated before our eyes, along with all the bloodstains.

  After his ghost vanished, the air continued to shimmer, like the image from a faulty projector at a drive-in movie theater, and we watched a vision from the past.

  All right, I know that drive-in movie theaters are also things of the past, but this went back much further. A bonus for the Wild West Show, at no extra charge.

  In the vision, we saw a lawman wearing a gold marshal’s star on his leather vest, and his thumbs hooked in his wide belt that held a holstered revolver on each hip. He had a stern, satisfied smile on his face.

  “He looks like you, Beaux,” Sheyenne said.

  Upon closer inspection, I saw that the lawman’s face was indeed square-jawed and handsome, though he wore a tan cowboy hat instead of a fedora.

  “Poor guy,” McGoo said.

  The vision was like a grainy old cowboy movie, only drier and dirtier. I didn’t expect to see the words “In Technicolor” splashed across the screen.

  The lawman stepped up, spurs jingling from the heels of his boots, and he faced a gallows, where six seedy-looking men were lined up at the rickety wooden steps, hands cuffed behind their backs, shackles around their ankles. The first man—it was Deadeye One-Eye, looking no better and no fresher in life than after a century and a half being a corpse—was nudged up to the dangling rope in the middle of the platform.

  “Sorry
we could only afford one noose,” said the lawman. “You’ll have to take turns, one at a time.”

  “We’ve got all day, Marshal,” said the man in the back, apparently the leader. He had a round face and long sideburns.

  “Yeah, but I have other things to do, McClantock. Let’s move it along. Come on, Deadeye—you’ve seen hangings before. You know what to do.”

  Annoyed at being rushed, Deadeye One-Eye ducked his head as a prissy hangman looped the noose over his neck and then pulled it snug with more fastidiousness than I would have expected from an executioner.

  The trapdoor dropped, and we could hear an audible crack as Deadeye One-Eye’s neck snapped.

  “Ewww,” said Robin.

  The speed of the vision increased, like a historical documentary on fast forward, probably for pacing. One after another, the six outlaws took their turn swinging on the noose, and when they had stopped kicking, they were pulled up again, disentangled from the rope, and placed in the undertaker’s wagon, which was conveniently parked in a spot close to the gallows. He must have had a special permit from the town.

  Finally, when only the leader—Moondance McClantock, I presumed—remained, the lawman looked at his pocket watch, snapped it shut, and nodded impatiently. “Let’s get a move on, McClantock. It’s almost over.” He tucked his thumbs in his leather belt again, watching as the hangman slid the well-used noose over the last outlaw’s neck.

  “Oh, it’s not over, Marshal Chambeaux,” McClantock said. “Not by a long shot.” He looked at the lawman, but then he turned and seemed to be looking right out of the vision. Right at me.

  When the trapdoor dropped for the last time, the vision vanished, as if the spectral film had snapped in perfect synch with the outlaw leader’s neck.

  “Well, no wonder he looked familiar, Shamble,” McGoo said.

  “I didn’t really have time for a family history lesson,” I said.

  “It’s always good to learn your roots,” Sheyenne pointed out.

  I felt angry and sickened. “Not right now. You could have been hurt. Now I know that Deadeye One-Eye caused the stampede as a diversion. We should’ve stayed with you three.”

  “Beaux, you couldn’t have known,” Sheyenne said.

  The nightmares had wandered back to the corral and now munched contentedly on thistles. Several werewolves and zombies had darted into the wreckage of Albert the ghoul’s barbecue tent and slunk off with dripping bones, leaving a trail of barbecue sauce that exuded curls of green acidic smoke.

  McGoo wiped sweat from his brow. “What did Mild Bill mean about high midnight?”

  “That’s when the ghosts of the McClantock gang are coming, per the contract,” Robin said. “Deadeye One-Eye didn’t want Mild Bill to rescind the agreement. He’s the only one with a legal signature on it.”

  Sheyenne tore a strip of gingham from her ectoplasmic dress and tied it around her wound. “It all changed when Dan found out his ancestor was a ruthless Old West lawman. And that vision told us the whole story.”

  “But I never heard of Dirk Chambeaux before today,” I said. “What difference would that make to me?”

  Then, on the ground before us where Mild Bill’s ghost had died, the air shimmered, flickered, and a second even wispier form of the spectral saloon owner rose up. He seemed even less substantial than before.

  “Mild Bill, you’re alive!” McGoo said.

  “Golly…not hardly. I’m a ghost. But this time I’m a ghost of a ghost.”

  “What are the chances of that happening?” I asked.

  “Pretty damn slim. I wish I’d had this kind of luck when I was alive, yesirree.” Mild Bill stroked his handlebar mustache, as if he was particularly pleased with his renewed existence.

  Robin asked, “What’s going to happen at high midnight? Why should we beware?”

  The doubly spectral cowboy blinked at her. “Haven’t you been paying attention, Ms. Deyer? Moondance McClantock and his gang are coming back—we arranged for it, you and me. It was all part of their plan. What they really want is to get revenge. I went to all that trouble to show you the vision after I died again. Don’t you get it? Dan’s great-great-umpty-ump ancestor was Marshal Dirk Chambeaux, the lawman who sent McClantock and his gang to the gallows. They’re not just here to perform in my Wild West Show, they’re coming to get revenge on you.” As he pointed at me, the wispy ghost’s mouth drooped in a sincere frown. “And you’re going to have to face them at high midnight, Marshal.”

  “Private investigator,” I corrected him. “McGoo’s closer to being a marshal.”

  “Hell, I haven’t even made detective yet,” McGoo said.

  A crowd had begun to gather, listening to the conversation, but when they learned that the murderous gunslingers were riding into town soon, they fled, not wanting to be anywhere close to the line of fire. A full-furred werewolf muttered that he had left the bathtub running and quickly retreated. The rest of the crowd eased away with similar, or more outrageous, excuses.

  I looked at them all, seeing fear in their eyes. Many of these were clients of mine, past clients and future clients. I stood my ground, turning to face them. “What time is it now?”

  The ghost of the ghost of Mild Bill flipped open a pocket watch that hung from a chain in his vest. “Eleven forty-five—fifteen minutes ’til doomsday.”

  “Fifteen minutes?” McGoo cried. “Shouldn’t there be more time to build up suspense?”

  “It’s a faster-paced society nowadays, McGoo,” I said.

  He lifted his chin. “Well, I’m standing with you, Shamble. Something doesn’t smell right around here, and it’s not just you.”

  “Thanks, McGoo,” I said sarcastically.

  Sheyenne looked weak and dizzy from the ghost gunshot, as if she’d lost some of her spirit, literally. “We’ll stay here to help you, Beaux.”

  “Not you, Spooky—you’ve already been hurt,” I said as firmly as I could. “If the ghost bullets are flying, I couldn’t bear to lose you again. We’ve got plenty of people around here to help stand against those gunslingers.”

  I turned to the crowd that McGoo and I had just saved from stampeding demonic horses. Oddly, the spectators that had previously been so numerous now muttered excuses and began to melt away like vampires on a hot summer day.

  Even the ghost of Mild Bill’s ghost muttered, “I better go check on my saloon. All these frightened people are going to need drinks.”

  I felt discouraged. “You too?”

  “I have already been shot to death once today.” He vanished.

  I couldn’t hold it against him.

  McGoo calmly reloaded both of his service revolvers, regular bullets and silver bullets. “I know you would’ve taken a bullet for me, Shamble.”

  “As I recall, I already have. What are friends for?” I stood next to him in the middle of the dirt main street, which was bounded on either side by the colorful, but thin, facades of a movie-set cowboy town.

  The town clock tower, which had been erected for the Wild West Show, rang out, sounding 11:55.

  “That’s an odd time for the hour to chime.”

  “I think it’s to give people time to prepare for the midnight festivities,” Sheyenne said.

  When the loud bells ceased chiming, the dirt main street on the old cursed burial ground was deserted, dust blowing in the night wind. On either side, the windows were dark in the tall clapboard storefronts, the buildings seemingly abandoned. Back in the corral, the nightmares neighed. The dude ranch vampires had fled, but not too far. I could see them behind the display window of the general store, watching me.

  Sheyenne, looking weak and ghostly, drifted to the safety of the boardwalk at my insistence. “Be careful, Beaux—I love you.”

  “I love you too, Spooky,” I said.

  Clearly angry, Robin refused to leave us. “This is not the way one should solve problems. We have a legal system, courts, and judges.”

  “It was the courts and the marshal that t
icked off these gunslingers in the first place, Robin,” I said.

  At precisely 11:57, Moondance McClantock and his gang of murderous gunslinger ghosts appeared, including Deadeye One-Eye, who had joined the party, even though he was a free agent.

  McGoo and I faced the six gunslingers in the middle of the main street. The ghost outlaws were a surly, rumpled-looking lot, greasy with sweat and prickly with razor stubble—apparently, none of the spectral gunslingers had found time to bathe or shave in the century and a half since their demise.

  “We’re here for Chambeaux.” Moondance McClantock was a round-faced man with long sideburns, a ten-gallon hat, and enough turquoise and silver to fill an entire roadside souvenir stand. I remembered seeing him in the vision. He had a gleaming gold front tooth, which clashed with all the silver and turquoise. “I’ve waited a long time for this, and finally with the Big Uneasy, us vengeful ghosts have our chance.”

  “We haven’t even met,” I said, “and I’ve only had fifteen minutes to build up my anticipation.”

  The gang leader shrugged. “Sorry about that. Back in 1856, Marshal Dirk Chambeaux sentenced us all to hang, which wasn’t fair.”

  In unison, the gunslingers all lifted their chins to show off their necks. McClantock shifted a gaudy bolo tie of turquoise and silver to reveal a long rope burn across his throat. The other outlaws had similar noose burns. One man with a full beard and huge eyebrows had a crooked neck as if even his ghost hadn’t been able to realign the snapped vertebra.

  “A miscarriage of justice,” said Deadeye One-Eye.

  “Weren’t you guilty?” I asked.

  “Absolutely,” McClantock said. “But my crimes were far worse than any of my boys, here, yet I got the same treatment. I would have gone down in history if he had skinned me alive or burned me over hot coals, but your ancestor lacked imagination, Chambeaux.”

  “But what does that have to do with me?” I asked.

  “We’ve come here to get our revenge on the last living descendant of Marshal Dirk Chambeaux. You’ll pay for his crimes.”