by Barry Reese
“I’ve never actually fired one of these contraptions before. I’ve been shot with a few. Hurts like the dickens. Have you ever been shot, Skinny Pete? I don’t think you have.” Ace’s body crumpled lifeless to the bloody floor behind him. Undaunted, Colin continued. “It seems to me that if you’re going to carry one of these dreadful things around, you ought to know firsthand what it feels like being shot.”
Skinny Pete said nothing.
Scars looked back and forth between his friend and the stranger, hoping the conversation wouldn’t expand to include him. He had been shot before and was in no hurry to relive that sensation. Much to his dismay, Colin turned to face him. “You’ve killed before.” It wasn’t a question. “And you’ve been shot, too. I can tell. Skinny Pete is afraid of me but you’re afraid of the guns. You think you could get away if I didn’t have them.” The fop leaned in close, his eyes widening with excitement. “Well, you’re wrong. It’s like that savage said: I’m a devil. I’m here from Hell and if I choose to kill you, you’re dead. Guns or no guns.”
Scars’ eyes began darting toward the door and back to Colin. He was breathing hard now. Sweat was pouring down his ugly face. Colin whispered conspiratorially to him, “You want to try me? Make a deal with the Devil? If you can make it to the door, I’ll let you go.”
“You’ll let us all go!” It was Jean. He was holding a large shotgun up to his shoulder. He cocked the gun. It was aimed directly at Colin’s back. “Take three steps back and raise your hands in the air! Any sudden moves and I’ll fill that pretty velvet suit with lead.” Lily stood behind Jean, watching excitedly. The testosterone overload in the saloon was making her giddy. Colin could smell her excitement flavoring her fear.
Taking a deep breath, Colin slowly took a step back and, still holding the pistols, raised his hands. He moved again, stepping back and to the side to avoid Ace’s corpse. “One more,” Jean growled. Colin complied. He was now in the center of the saloon. Jean kept his shotgun trained at Colin’s back but looked over at Scars and Skinny Pete. Using his head, he gestured to the door. “Go on! Git outta here! If he moves, he’s dead. Now, git!”
Scars glanced at Colin. Colin smiled at him and licked his teeth suggestively. Scars ran for the door. Almost simultaneously, Colin dropped his arms as if he were going to shoot. Jean pulled his trigger, emptying both barrels. But Colin dropped to a crouch and spun around to face the bar. The shotgun blast flew over his head and tore a few dozen holes in Scars’ already abused flesh.
Colin popped back up to his feet and pulled both triggers. His twin revolvers fired, hurling a pair of bullets at Jean’s face. One grazed his ear. The other entered his mouth, shattering teeth as it flew. Jean spun into Lily’s arms. She shrieked and pushed him away as crimson covered her face and dress. Jean crashed into the bar, frantically pawing at his own face, his eyes wide with panic.
Colin took a step, thumbing both guns as he walked, and fired again. Jean Riems’ throat exploded and he collapsed to the floor. “These horrid things are noisy, aren’t they?” he asked Lily. She only wept in response. The musky aroma of her womanhood was gone. There was only fear now. Colin put one of the guns in her face. “Do you want to live or do you want to die? I will not ask you again.”
“L-l-live!” she sobbed.
“Good,” Colin muttered. “Can you sing?”
Confused, Lily nodded. Her eyebrows were dancing again.
“Do you know Clementine?”
Lily stared blankly for a moment. Then nodded weakly. Colin hummed a few bars and her nodding became more pronounced, more sure.
“Excellent. Follow me.” He walked over to the neglected piano and sat down on the stool. Lily staggered behind him. “You’re going to sing while I play. If you sing well, you and the blind boy and Skinny Pete get to live. If not...”
“Okay!” Lily sobbed. “Okay. I’ll sing.”
The Velvet Scourge laid his guns on the music rest, cracked his knuckles and then began to play. He managed to coax the jaunty melody out of the decrepit keys and rusting strings. And Lily sang. She knew all four verses about the miner’s daughter and found herself crying at the end when the song’s narrator failed to save her from drowning.
“That was lovely, Lily,” Colin said kindly. “Perfectly lovely. Didn’t you think that was lovely, Skinny Pete?” Like Lily, Skinny Pete had tears in his eyes. Even the blind shoeshine boy’s useless eyes had misted up. “You did well, Lily. I forgive you for calling me a fairy earlier.” She let out a huge sigh of relief. “But not for laughing at me.” BLAM! He shot her in the knee. She yowled and clutched her shattered leg, trying to stifle the flow of blood. “I don’t like being laughed at, Lily. But don’t worry. The blind boy here will fetch you a doctor, I’m sure. You’ll be fine, though you’ll always walk with a limp. Consider it something to remember me by.”
Colin turned and walked across the saloon, away from Lily, discarding the empty pistol as he walked. “As for you, Skinny Pete, you laughed too.” Colin approached the shivering man. “Hold up your hands.” Whimpering, Pete did as he was told. Colin raised his remaining pistol. One bullet left. One bullet for Skinny Pete. “Tell me, Skinny Pete. Which hand do you touch yourself with?”
The blind boy flinched as the gun fired and gritted his teeth against Skinny Pete’s howls joining those of Lily. He heard footsteps coming towards him but didn’t dare move. He hadn’t laughed at the stranger and he now hoped that that would save his life. There was a squishy sound – the sword being pulled from Ace’s neck – and then more footsteps. The boy felt Colin grab his hand. The stranger’s flesh was cold, yet more alive than anything he’d ever felt. His skin hummed with energy. Then, the feel of metal. It was a coin. Heavy. Probably gold. Colin closed the boy’s fingers around the coin and walked outside. The boy heard him muttering something about sparkles and the ocean. And then something about sand in his velvet.
THE DEMON WRESTLER
by Dale W. Glaser
This is how you will enter the towns. You will ride your wagon through the front gates, if the town has them, or come down the main street, if not. You cannot control whether or not a town has gates, or what direction those may face, but if the town has none, then you can control the direction from which you approach. If there is no gate, you will ride into the town from the north, or from the east, never south or west. But if the town has gates, you will always arrive at those gates, and you will ask for permission to enter.
You will arrive at the town in the late afternoon, well before sunset, but long enough after the sun has passed its highpoint that the townspeople have started to feel the darkness coming. They will not be aware of this feeling, and you will not speak of it to them. But it will be there, in their hearts, all the same. As the light slants lower and the indigo seeps into the sky, the sense of the night will be in them all the same. This is when you will make your entrance into the town. If your horses bring you close to the town before the afternoon has begun to fade, you will wait some ways off. If your horses draw the wagon within sight of the town as the sun approaches the horizon, you will sleep on the ground, beneath the stars, and wait for the next day. You will wait for the appropriate time.
You will make your way to the center of each town. If there is no town square, you will find the town market, and if there is no town market, you will find the space that the townspeople think of as the center. You will never go to the church. In these towns, you will find that even if the church lies on the crossroads of the widest thoroughfares, the people no longer go there.
As you pass townspeople on the streets, you will nod at the men, and you will tip your hat to the ladies. You will meet the eyes of the children. You will not smile at them. When you reach the heart of the town you will stop your wagon and you will tend to your horses.
The number of people who approach you will depend on how sizeable the town is, and how long it takes you to reach the center and see to your animals. As time passes, some of the townspeople will already
have gone to their homes for the night that has yet to come, and the number remaining on the streets will shrink the closer the night comes. The very fearful will not greet you. The very proud and the very dull will avoid you. But some will seek you out.
This is how you will receive them. You will shake their hands and you will ask their names. You will give them a name only if they ask for yours, but most of the time they will not ask. You will suggest that you know the town has seen more than its share of troubles. You will do this with your eyes, and the sound of your voice, and the set of your jaw. You will not do this with words unless the townspeople have had so many troubles they will not say the words themselves. It is always important for them to say the words themselves if at all possible.
You will listen carefully to their tales of trouble and let them be told howsoever the tellers wish. If they are slow to speak, you will give them time. If they are angry, you will weather it in silence. If they cry, you will not comfort them, but let the tears flow. Their stories will take shape, and you will mark them well. You must.
When the troubles have all been told, you will nod with great understanding. You will wait for one of them to ask if there is anything that can be done.
You will tell them what you can do. As the sun sets and the moon rises, you will tell them what you can do. Not what you will do. You will not presume so much. You will speak of possibilities, and you will let them decide.
If you do all these things, they will always decide that it should be done exactly as you say.
They will insist that you spend the night, and you will not protest. They will feed you, and you will eat, even if it is the most putrid of leavings. They may offer you their daughters, or their wives may offer themselves, and whether you bed these women or not is of no consequence. You will sleep, but you must rise ahead of the dawn.
You will go to where they have put up your wagon and your horses. In the time before the sun comes up, you will work quickly and quietly to move the sacks and reveal the proper hatch in the back of the wagon.
This is how you will know which hatch to open. If the people tell you of mutilated livestock, or missing children, you will open the first hatch. If the people tell you of wild women, wives who run off in the night, or daughters who pay no heed to their parents, you will open the second hatch. If the people tell you of poisoned wells or blighted crops, infants dead in their cribs, or unexplained diseases, you will open the third hatch. And if the people tell you of anything else, you will open the fourth hatch.
You will open the hatch and you will let out what it holds under the wagon. You will close the hatch and rearrange the sacks. You will return to your hosts before the sun comes up high enough to banish the moon.
When the sky is light you will rise again. You will make sure you are seen rising, and you will return to the center of the town. You will be left alone, if the people have any wits about them at all. If they try to engage you in nervous talk, you will ignore them, for they will soon lose interest if they are not encouraged.
You will see them gathering near as the sun begins to go down. This will be at almost the same time of afternoon as when you entered town the day before. They will appreciate the rightness of this, how the warm, low sun first welcomed you, and how the same warm, low sun now gathers them all together. There will be more of them than the day before. Not all of the town, but more than before.
This is when you will begin to ready yourself. You will remove your shirt, and you will do so slowly, far more slowly than you would want. It will seem strange to you, but to those who gather to watch you it will seem only proper that they are given the time to observe your every movement. You will don the mask and tie its laces behind your head. If there are children gathered they may find the mask fearsome. You will hide your face behind the visage of the mask and you will wait for the sun to set.
When the day yields to the night, the demon will come. If you have entered the town from the north, the demon will come from the south. If you have entered the town from the east, the demon will come from the west. The townspeople will see the demon drawn into the heart of their town, drawn to you, and you will face it, and you will beckon it closer still.
The demon will snarl at you, and it will hiss, and it will gnash its teeth, and its claws will twitch, and its eyes will burn. The demon will lunge at you, and snatch at you, and bring all of its hate to you. The townspeople will see their fear in the flesh of the demon, but they will see hope, for the demon will not look at them or try to bite or flail at them. The demon will see only you.
You will catch the demon in your arms and you will lock your hands behind its back. You will scream from the pain of touching its unholy flesh but you will not let go. You will lift the demon off the ground, and throw it down. You will pin the demon to the earth with your knees and you will humble it, and you will grind the demon’s head into the dust. You will fight until the demon yields and you prevail.
When the demon lays still in the center of the town, you will lift it up in your arms as you would a slaughtered animal. You will tell the townspeople that your time is short, for you must carry the demon to your wagon and ride out of town, to take the demon far away, so far that it will never trouble the town again. The townspeople will not argue. They will feel nothing but gratitude. For they told you of their mutilated livestock and missing children, and you summoned the slavering werewolf and laid low its savagery. Or they told you of their untamed wives and daughters, and you summoned the green-scaled snake woman and triumphed over her venomous insinuations. Or they told you of their plagues and pestilence, and you summoned the lean gray vampire and overcame its fangs and its dark hunger. Or they told you of any multitude of other afflictions, and you summoned forth the chalk-white skeleton like Death itself and refused its power.
You will carry the demon, in whatever form, to your wagon and lay its body across the sacks. You will hitch to your horses and you will ride for the gates, if the town has gates, or for the edge of town where you entered the day before. The townspeople will follow you to the gate or to the edge of town, drowning you in gratitude. You will wait at the gate or the edge of town until your payment is brought to you. You will take the gold when it is offered, and you must take it with humility. You will not count the pieces, not until the town is behind you.
You will drive the wagon until the town disappears. Then you will halt the horses and climb down and walk out into the desert to find a lizard or a rabbit or a small bird. You will bring the animal back to the wagon, alive. Unless Dagoberto lies in the wagon, and then you will snap the neck of the animal as you walk back.
You will go to the rear of the wagon. You will offer the animal to the demon, and you will let the demon feed. When the demon has finished its meal, you will help the demon back through its proper hatch to its resting place under the wagon. If it is Maurico, you will take care to mind his knees and his hips, for the old vampire is as afflicted with pains in his joints as I am these days. If you jolt him he will snap at you, and it will hurt even though his teeth are not as sharp as they once were. If it is Graciela in the back of the wagon, you will hold the hatch open for her but you will not touch her and you will not help her in any other way, for she is a proud and vain snake-woman. It will take her some time to ease into her resting place, especially if your wrestling was prolonged and wearying. If it is Ezequiel in the back of the wagon, you will groom his wolf fur, you will wipe the blood from his muzzle and you will brush the dust and dirt from his hide. He will be sleeping while you do this, or close to it, after he has eaten, and if you shove him into his resting place it will not rouse him. But if you do not clean his fur first his stink will overtake the entire wagon. If it is Dagoberto in the back of the wagon, you will leave the dead animal at his side and you will wait in your seat at the front. The skeleton will let itself into its own resting place after it has fed, and when you hear the sound of the hatch opening and closing you will urge the horses forward.
Y
ou will ride as far as you can before you need to sleep. You will sleep, and you will ride, and you will sleep, and you will ride, until you find another suitable town. But most towns will be suitable. All towns have problems, and more towns than not will believe that demons are the cause of their problems, or will be made to believe it. And you will listen to their tales of trouble and offer the solution, and when they accept you will release Maurico or Graciela or Ezequiel or Dagoberto in the night, and they will hide out-side of the town until sundown, and you will wrestle them into submission and carry them off, and you will feed them and care for them, and you will take them to the next town, and the next.
For years those old demons have served me, and they will serve you, and you will always have gold in your pocket, if you do these things. All that I have told you is how to give people what they want, and how to show them what they want to see. It will be enough.
TELL ME YOU LOVE ME AND THAT'LL BE AN END TO IT
by Ian Mileham
Isobel Shayes died a violent death, as beautiful women often do. Leastways that's what Pa reckons, and he should know I guess.
Town gossip says there's no telling exactly how she was done in, what with the time she spent in the deep waters of the creek and with all the critters that fed on her in the six weeks between her disappearance and when her body was found. But murder's murder, an act of brutality by its very nature, Pa says; he doesn't believe it possible to ever strangle someone gently, say, or for a victim to settle back and smile as the person who wishes them harm takes a knife to their flesh like a lover who never learned the art of tenderness.
