Legends of the Lost Causes

by Brad McLelland

  Bad Whiskey stopped midswing, his face frantic. “What is it?”

  “Two graves,” Keech said.

  Dropping to his knees, he cleared the loose witchgrass from one of the graves.

  The hasty, knife-cut engraving on the cypress marker caused his heart to thump. It read simply:

  BILL

  My father, Keech thought, feeling those nameless emotions steal over him again.

  Still holding the pickax, Bad Whiskey charged over and shoved Keech out of the way. He leaned in and read the name, then staggered back a step, as if the mere sight of it threatened to knock him off his feet. Bad Whiskey bared his black teeth. He pointed to the second wooden marker. “Move the weeds.”

  Keech swept away the witchgrass. At first he thought the second marker was blank. Then he noticed four letters, carved into the center, obscured by dirt. He rubbed the dirt away with his thumb.

  “Erin,” he read. He felt he had heard the name before, somehow, somewhere.

  “She was yer mother,” Bad Whiskey said. He glanced at Pa Abner. “Clever, Raines, to hide the Blackwoods here.”

  Keech swallowed a heavy lump. This was the place, then. The resting place of the Char Stone. Inside the gravesite of parents he had never known. Erin and Bill. Screamin’ Bill, Bad Whiskey had called him. Terror of the West.

  Pa Abner had claimed that his parents had died a decade ago in a gunfight with Bad Whiskey. Why were they buried here, in the Withers graveyard?

  Pa stood by, silent, but there could have been the slightest hint of sadness, the tiniest suggestion of returning memories, on his face.

  Keech glared at the outlaw. “You killed them, you snake. You killed my parents.”

  Bad Whiskey cast his one good eye up at the growing swarm of crows. “Start diggin’, pilgrim, or I’ll raise ’em to join the Tsi’noo,” he said.

  “I’ll unearth your blasted Stone if you just confess,” Keech said.

  Bad Whiskey gave a rattling sigh. “I did know yer parents, boy. I rode with Screamin’ Bill. We followed the Reverend in search of eternal life. But after we all uncovered the Char Stone, Screamin’ Bill turned against Rose. He led Raines and the other backstabbers against the Reverend.”

  Keech stared off in wonder. His father had led the revolt.

  “And so you killed him.”

  Bad Whiskey tossed back his head and laughed.

  “Pilgrim, I never killed yer pa. Screamin’ Bill was the one who killed me. Got me straight in the eye with an arrow. Now get to diggin’.”

  His mind reeling with a thousand baffled thoughts, Keech hacked at the hard earth with the pickax. The young riders struggled in the clutches of the Tsi’noo, but Keech paid them little attention. Only Pa Abner captured his eye. Pa’s face had taken on the expression of someone trying to wake from a terrible dream.

  Bad Whiskey grew impatient. He commanded the Tsi’noo to thrust Nat, Duck, and Cutter into the hole Keech had started. Three shovels tumbled in after them. “Hurry!” Bad Whiskey ordered, and together the four of them dug.

  Bad Whiskey looked around, confused. “Where’s the other pup? The chubby one?” The attendant thralls shrugged. He closed his eye and stilled for a moment. When he opened it again, he screamed at a trio of skeletal creatures, “Go find him!”

  * * *

  After what seemed like an eternity, Keech’s pickax struck something. He frowned with worry. Next to him, Duck’s shovel clacked on a second hard surface, and she tossed Keech a nervous glance.

  “Good!” Bad Whiskey said.

  “Whiskey, you’re a fool,” Nat said, wiping his brow. “If the Stone is so powerful, you won’t be able to control it.”

  “If we’re lucky,” Cutter added, “it’ll turn him to dust.”

  “Ignorant pup, the Char Stone is life,” Bad Whiskey said. “It’ll restore me. I’ll finally be whole again. Free.”

  Suddenly, the outlaw’s true intentions came clear. Keech saw that all the grand talk of loyalty to the Gita-Skog, the high banter about devotion to the Reverend, was nothing more than hot air.

  “You plan to betray Rose!” Keech said. “You want this thing for yourself!”

  Something like terror dropped over Bad Whiskey’s face. His eye drifted up to the circling crows, and when he looked back at Keech, the eye was full of desperation. “You don’t understand, boy. The Reverend took my soul. He brought me back, but left me empty. The Char Stone’s the only thing that can save me.”

  He muttered under his breath for a moment, then turned and screeched at his Tsi-noo. “Get ’em out of the grave!”

  The mumbling corpses hauled the young riders out of the hole. As soon as the gang had cleared the pit, Whiskey leaped inside. His boots thudded on the lid of a coffin. With his one remaining hand he scooped aside the ancient dirt. Wood splintered as Whiskey broke open the lid of a pine casket. Inside rested the skeletal remains of a man—Keech’s father.

  “Howdy, old friend,” Bad Whiskey muttered to the corpse. “Remember me?”

  The sight in the box made Keech’s heart stutter. The long years had corrupted most of Screamin’ Bill’s burial clothes, but Keech could still make out the traces of a breechcloth and buckskin tunic, secured around the old bones with frayed cords. Upon the Enforcer’s chest lay a lone tomahawk, the cracked wooden handle studded with brass and animal teeth, the iron blade degraded to black rust.

  Bad Whiskey hunkered over the corpse and peered at the tomahawk. “Where’s your trusty bow, Bill?” he asked the dead man. After a malicious chuckle, he knocked the tomahawk from the corpse’s chest and began to search the box in earnest. Keech gritted his teeth till they hurt, wanting to shout at Whiskey to halt this desecration, but the words stuck in his throat.

  After a minute more of digging, the outlaw stood and brushed off his tainted fingers. “Nothin’.” He turned his attention to the matching box beside Screamin’ Bill. “Maybe this one, eh?” His ragged nails clawed at the wood.

  “Don’t you touch her!” Keech yelled.

  Bad Whiskey ignored him and continued his prying. He ripped open the coffin.

  Keech prayed he would see something other than the remains of his mother—a trick of the eye, a counterfeit body—but the corpse of Erin Blackwood, the mother he couldn’t remember, lay inside the box. Her skeletal hands were folded over each other like the angel’s and reposing upon her chest. She wore a plum-colored, ankle-length dress, the ragged frills of a petticoat peeking through the frayed, moldy fabric. The ornate neck of the dress was high, blooming out like a flower and reaching just below his mother’s chin. Keech had thought he would feel trepidation when he looked upon her, the fear of seeing his own mother, perhaps a mirror of himself, lying in the coffin, forever still. Instead, the feeling was that of peaceful sorrow.

  Then he noticed that his mother’s hands were folded over a small object and his breath stopped.

  Bad Whiskey noticed the object as well, and gave a triumphant cry.

  “At last!” he said. “I am no longer yer dog, Rose!”

  A terrible silence filled the air of Bone Ridge. Even the legion of crows had stopped their cawing and cackling to watch, to see what lay inside Erin Blackwood’s hands.

  Bad Whiskey leaned over the corpse to retrieve the object. Keech expected something frightful—the blast of a horrid curse or a lightning bolt that would strike their very hearts. Nat and Duck held on to each other, and Cutter clutched his bandana.

  But nothing happened.

  Bad Whiskey held the object up to the torchlight.

  “No,” he breathed. “It can’t be.”

  CHAPTER 27

  DESTRUCTION COMETH

  The outlaw clutched a child’s doll, the small figurine of a lady, its body stuffed with cotton and garbed in a tattered plaid dress. The doll’s head was wooden, crudely carved the way Robby might have carved a toy for Patrick, the face painted on and badly chipped, the crown topped by a tiny red bonnet.

  Bad Whiskey’s face quivered. “A d
oll?”

  “I got a feeling that ain’t the Char Stone,” said Duck.

  “A doll!” Bad Whiskey wailed. He threw the figurine to the ground.

  The outlaw’s cry was so furious it seemed to kick a fierce wind across Bone Ridge. Then suddenly he hunched over, his arm clutched to his chest, his face cast down in darkness. His hat tumbled off his head.

  Bad Whiskey’s body was racked with spasms.

  “Um, fellas, what’s happening to him?” asked Duck.

  “No clue, but I don’t like it,” said Nat.

  A second gale ripped across the graveyard. Granite tombstones and wooden crosses shook; fieldstones along the wall crumbled. The black locust trees beyond the wall moaned and crackled. Cutter’s hand fell to his scabbard as if to draw his knife; Keech heard him curse under his breath when he realized the blade was gone.

  The thralls’ makeshift torches flickered and many blew out. The muttering thralls chomped and gabbled nervously.

  Bad Whiskey lifted his head. Keech was shocked to see that his eyes had changed. The clouded dead eye had cleared, and both of the eyes now brimmed a brilliant shade of green.

  Both eyes could also see.

  Bad Whiskey stood upon Erin Blackwood’s coffin. His stance was different, his chest thrust out, his boots planted wide on the edges of the wooden box. Keech wondered if the doll had been the Char Stone after all, and had somehow revitalized Whiskey’s crumbling body. But then the outlaw spoke.

  “Jeffreys.”

  The hissing voice crawled over Keech’s skin like a nest of hairy spiders. It was the worst voice he had ever heard, a voice capable of conjuring nightmares—and it did not belong to Bad Whiskey Nelson.

  “He has been here. He took my Stone!”

  There was no doubt the voice Keech heard belonged to the Reverend Rose. He was speaking through Bad Whiskey’s mouth, looking through his eyes.

  Rose noticed Keech standing at the foot of the grave. A single word crawled from the thing’s lips: “Blackwood.”

  Keech froze in terror.

  “You’re worse than your double-crossing father.”

  Before Keech’s paralysis could break, Rose leaped from the grave and landed in front of him. The figure loomed, its impossible eyes blazing down upon him.

  “Without the amulet, you’re no more dangerous than a horsefly.”

  The Reverend Rose pulled the outlaw’s Dragoon. Whiskey’s thumb moved to the hammer.

  This is it, Sam, Keech thought. I’ll see you soon.

  Before the trigger finger could pull, the head of a shovel slammed into the back of the thrall’s head. There was a loud Chok! and Rose careened forward. The Dragoon flew from his hand and landed with a dull crash down in the gravesite of Keech’s parents.

  Gripping the shovel, a bloodied John Wesley shouted, “Eat dirt, you mush-head!”

  “John!” Cutter called.

  Dropping low, John Wesley kicked at a thrall that lurched in front of him. Two rotten creatures rattled after Duck, but Nat put them on the ground with two mighty punches. Keech tried to join the Embrys, but a pair of hands seized his throat. He threw a glance at his attacker. It was Pa Abner.

  “Pa, no,” Keech said, his airway choked. “Turn me loose.”

  The sound of two dozen crows cackling in fury pierced the night. Writhing in Pa’s grip, Keech saw the Reverend Rose push to his knees and slide over Erin Blackwood’s edge of the grave.

  A spark of humanity flickered in Pa Abner’s eyes. His thick fingers relaxed around Keech’s neck, letting him pull free and gulp air. Pa gritted his teeth in pain.

  Keech realized he should run. The others had already broken for the gate. He took a step after them, but his eyes remained on Pa. Waves of hope flooded his thoughts. If Bad Whiskey’s claim was true, that the Char Stone could restore his life and soul, then perhaps the Stone could return life—true life, not this obscene shambling imitation—to Pa Abner.

  “Pa, come with me,” Keech panted.

  Deep down, he knew this impossible hope was beyond foolish. Pa Abner had been explicit about the perils of the Stone. Forget you ever heard of it, the man had said. There could be no wielding it. There could be no touching it. Not without damnation to follow.

  Perhaps there could be other ways. If Keech couldn’t use the Char Stone, perhaps there were other energies, other forms of magic.

  “We’ll find a way to save you,” he told Pa. “Just come.”

  The thrall shook his head. Crimson tears streamed from his eyes. He made a pair of fists and slammed them into his temples. He tried to speak, but the only sound he made was a tormented grunt.

  “Keech, come on!” Nat called. He and the others were fighting through the Tsi’noo, but the sheer numbers threatened to overwhelm them all over again. Only John Wesley swinging his shovel cleared room for the group to advance.

  A bullet zipped past Keech, slamming into a shambling corpse nearby. He glanced back and saw that the Reverend Rose had pulled himself over the lip of the gravesite and was firing Bad Whiskey’s Dragoon.

  The Reverend’s voice slithered after him. “This ends now, Blackwood!”

  His eyes hot with tears, Keech abandoned Pa Abner and ran after the others.

  A snarling corpse jumped from behind a tombstone and blocked Keech’s path. He plowed into the creature shoulder-first. Black nails scratched at his face, scoring hot cuts across his cheek. He shoved the walking nightmare into an empty grave. “Back to your hole!” Keech screamed.

  Another gunshot roared across the graveyard. This time the slug crashed into a nearby tombstone, showering Keech with granite. Glancing back, he saw that the Reverend Rose had gained a surprising amount of ground.

  When Keech looked ahead, he noticed the other young riders had scattered from sight—except for John Wesley, who stood his ground and spun in slow circles, his shovel cutting through thralls with concentrated force.

  “Back, you monsters,” the large boy cried. The shovel’s edge tore through a blackened corpse in a buckskin jacket. The buckskin snagged the iron spade head, throwing John Wesley off his feet. Within seconds, Bad Whiskey’s horde surrounded him.

  “Hang on!” Keech yelled.

  He barreled through the wave of bodies. He found John Wesley on his hands and knees, curled into a ball. “Get up!” He tugged at the boy’s arm.

  John Wesley struggled to his feet. Through bleeding lips, he grinned and said to Keech, “I think I upset Bad Whiskey when I beaned him on the head.”

  “That wasn’t Bad Whiskey,” Keech wheezed. “That was the Reverend Rose.”

  “In the flesh,” a terrible voice hissed.

  The horde of Tsi’noo parted, leaving Keech and John Wesley exposed. The Reverend Rose appeared in front of them. He held the Dragoon, cocked and ready. His voice burrowed like a worm into Keech’s ears.

  “The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the heads of the children.”

  “Now that’s hardly fair,” another voice called.

  Nat Embry galloped up, astride Bad Whiskey’s stallion. When the animal saw the face of its longtime master, it reared like a mustang. The horse screamed in a way Keech had never heard from any animal before, but the anger of the steed couldn’t shake Nat. The horse kicked and spun, smashing into the thrall army. The rancher kept to the saddle.

  “Filthy creature,” the Reverend Rose said, and turned Bad Whiskey’s Dragoon on the stallion. A crack of thunder smashed through Keech’s ears. The horse snorted with surprise. The stallion stumbled on one hoof and toppled forward, sending Nat flying.

  “Nat!” Duck had followed her brother through a slew of thralls. Running beside her was Cutter, looking bruised and exhausted.

  Keech released a howl and charged at the man wearing Bad Whiskey’s body. He expected to strike a figure of power. Instead, he felt like he was tackling a bag of pine straw. The dark exertions the Reverend Rose had wielded upon Whiskey’s body must have turned the outlaw into a desiccated husk. Keech dropped one kne
e on the figure’s chest.

  “One day, Blackwood, we’ll meet, and then you’ll know true fear,” the monster inside Bad Whiskey promised.

  “Looking forward to it,” Keech said. He raised his fist to crack it against the fiend’s rotten nose, but he paused the blow when he noticed the creature’s awful face changing. The left eye once again became a dead yellow; the right eye reeled about inside his skull. The Reverend Rose had withdrawn, leaving behind the mealy-mouthed rogue.

  “Hello, Bad. I’m glad you’re back,” Keech growled. The outlaw struggled to raise the Dragoon, but Keech grabbed the barrel, twisted the gun from the thrall’s grip, and tossed it behind him. From the corner of his eye he saw John Wesley struggle to yank frantic thralls off Nat and Duck, but there was nothing Keech could do now but let them finish their battles. Bad Whiskey was at last where he wanted him.

  The cursed outlaw kicked out and pain exploded in Keech’s back, allowing Whiskey to topple away. He fumbled on his knees to retrieve the Dragoon. Keech grabbed for him, but his fingers found only his tattered overcoat. He took hold of the skirt and tugged Whiskey back before he could seize the gun.

  Screeching curses, the desperado dug his fingers into the earth. “Let me go!”

  A glimmer of bright orange caught Keech’s eye. The amulets. They were peeking from a pocket in Bad Whiskey’s overcoat. Keech pulled with all his might.

  The coat’s skirt tore loose with a loud rip, leaving Keech nothing but oilcloth in his hands. The outlaw’s fingers scrabbled forward and fell upon the Dragoon.

  “Yer done for, pilgrim.”

  “Think again.”

  Cutter stood over Bad Whiskey, his eyes teeming with rage.

  “This is for Bishop.” The boy slammed his boot against Bad Whiskey’s hand. With his other foot, he kicked the Dragoon out of reach.

  Under the clouds, the Reverend’s crows flew closer and closer.

  “In his coat!” Keech shouted at Cutter. “Let’s end this.”

  Bad Whiskey bellowed as the boys dog-piled him and tore at his overcoat’s frail cloth. The outlaw struggled on his back. Around him, his thralls lingered, as if unsure of what to do. He released a woeful sound of frustration and defeat.