Laura Givens is the award-winning artist of more than 100 book and magazine covers and has provided illustrations to magazines such as Talebones, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Jim Baen’s Universe, Science Fiction Trails and Tales of the Talisman, for which, she is the art director. This, however, is her first published story. She has lived these past two decades in Denver where she did improv comedy for many years and produced her own no-budget movie, The Jerusalem Tango.
I got the idea that ripping off a well known story was probably the easiest way to do something truly original. I decided to rip off Ali Baba and the forty thieves—the fact that I had never read it didn’t seem too large of an obstacle. Along the way, Indiana Jones and Jackie Chan left their marks on the story. When it came time to decide on a villain, I thought of the much loved Native American folk character, Coyote. I didn’t know a lot about him either, so my villain owes most of his personality to Wile E Coyote, super genius, with a generous dollop of the Joker. There you go, not an original idea in the whole thing… but that’s worked for George Lucas for decades.
Clay Allison and the Haunted Head
by
Bill D. Allen & Sherri Dean
It was bad enough that the severed head was seeping blood through the burlap bag hanging from Clay Allison’s saddle horn and onto his new boots, but when it started talking again, Allison was downright put out.
It all started three days previous in Elizabethtown, at Pearson’s bar. Clay was sitting at a table playing poker with some locals when a Ute half-breed named Rosa came busting in. She was caterwauling and carrying on something fierce.
“Help me!” she screamed.
Clay had just been dealt a new hand and he took a quick peek at his cards. As he didn’t have squat and was ahead on cash for the evening, he spoke up. “Men, I reckon we better end the game on this. There is obviously a female in distress.” Clay Allison was known as the Gentleman Gunfighter, but his gentile nature had a sight more to do with expediency than chivalry.
Clay stuffed his winnings into his pockets and tipped his hat to the other men at the table. He walked over to the distraught woman. “Calm down, Ma’am. How can I assist you?”
The men had all hell getting Rosa soothed enough to spit out her story, finally resorting to a double shot of rot-gut whiskey to calm her nerves. This was not strictly legal as she was an Indian, but legality never took hold at Pearson’s no how. Rosa lived with Charles Kennedy on a small farm nearby in Palo Fletchado Pass. They ran a traveler’s rest to make hard currency between meager harvests. Her story of the goings on there was enough to chill the bones of even a strong man.
Everyone knew folks went missing sometimes. They fell down ravines, took sick betwixt here and there traveling on dangerous roads. They ran into wild Indians or desperadoes and come to a bad end. But lately, there had been a more folks unaccounted than was usual.
Seems her Charlie was knocking his guests in the head and burying their bones in the root cellar. He made quite a profit on their possessions which they obviously no longer had use for. Then there was her mention of the contents of the smokehouse and what passed for jerky.
Tonight, Charles Kennedy exercised his predilection for homicide on their six year old son when the lad got a might too inquisitive and a might too mouthy about what he had discovered hidden in the smoke house. To the horror of Rosa, the beast dashed the boy’s brains out against the hearth. Then he locked her in the cabin and proceeded to drink himself into a stupor. She had only escaped by climbing out the narrow chimney to freedom.
A vigilante posse was quickly formed. And when they busted down the cabin door Rosa’s story was confirmed. The remains of the hapless boy were present as well as the bones of numerous travelers buried in shallow graves. The only question remaining in Clay Allison’s mind was where the ill gotten gains were hidden. Surely, there had been a fair portion of gold watches and silver somewhere to be claimed as evidence and held for “safe keeping”. But the Ute female was mute on that subject—confirming Allison’s philosophy of never trusting a damn woman, much less an Indian.
Kennedy was arraigned a few days later on October 3, 1870 and the local magistrate was more than willing to hold him over until the District Judge was able to travel to Elizabethtown for the trial. There was ample evidence. But the delay troubled the townsfolk. They were used to their justice being a bit more swift.
Rosa visited Allison that evening with concerns of her own.
“Senor Allison,” she said. It was obvious she had been crying again. Those wet streaks across her cheeks were a permanent fixture at this point.
“Yes, Ma’am? I hope you know I am busy.”
Tonight Clay was in the hole financially and his hand had potential he didn’t want the unlucky Ute woman to jinx. He was not inclined toward tolerance since he had neither received any of Kennedy’s horde nor the dubious charms of the female, as any man would have assumed as his due for helping last time.
“Señor, I must tell you. Charlie will not hang. He will get away.”
Allison rolled his eyes. “We have a fine justice system. Although there have been times during which we have not seen eye to eye. I have no doubt he will get a fair trial and hang like the dog he is. I’ll raise five dollars.”
“But he will buy the judge. He has money, señor, much money.”
Clay paused, considering, then lay his cards face down on the table and turned to look at Rosa. “We didn’t find any treasure trove and you were mighty silent on the subject at the time.”
“I was upset. I know he has the treasure.”
It was time to fold, in order to perform another errand of chivalry.
Allison rounded up a posse of townsmen, all righteous and true, to help dispatch a little prairie justice. Seems they could not, after all, trust the judge. Allison, having seen his share of hangings felt qualified enough to lead the good men to do the deed. They waited until the night guard retired to the outhouse, then they moved in quick and quiet.
Once inside, Allison and Stinky Johnson, faces masked by bandannas, grabbed the single cell's key from the desktop and crept to the door. Charles Kennedy lay sleeping on a cot in the corner, wrapped in a threadbare serape and oblivious to his surroundings. Allison opened the door and he and his partner went to Kennedy and, in unison, tied the prisoner’s hands and feet before he realized what was happening.
As the two men hefted him, Kennedy began to holler. “Help! Help! Who are you? Let me go! Let me go!”
Stinky crammed a rag into Kennedy’s mouth to silence his protests.
Allison and his helper ran as best as they could with the writhing form of Kennedy balanced between them. Other men helped to lift Kennedy over one of the horses and secured his body so he wouldn't slide off. Allison and the rest of the posse mounted up and rode off, leaving a very confused deputy emerging from the outhouse, pants in one hand and a sheaf of penny dreadful pages in the other. On the far edge of Main Street, the men stopped and dismounted.
They threw Kennedy to the ground. He wallowed around some and managed to spit out his gag. “I'm an innocent man! I never killed nobody! It's that lying woman you want! She's the cause of all this,” he said.
In spite of his protests, they looped a lariat around his neck. Allison tied the other end around his saddle horn and proceeded to spur his horse forward with a jolt, hurling Kennedy around and dragging him forward. Allison made two galloping passes up and down the muddy main street of Elizabethtown. Each turn he made sent Kennedy’s body tumbling like a rag doll on a string. So all assembled were amazed when, after Allison stopped, Kennedy struggled to rise. The man’s clothes were ripped in a dozen places and caked with mud and horseshit and an angry red weal was visible along his neck.
He coughed and sputtered. ‘You don’t understand. She’s a witch. Please let me go.” Kennedy’s voice was gravelly from the damage done his throat by the cruel, rough rope.
Allison cursed and kicked his horse viciously
causing the animal to jump and slam Kennedy forward by the neck into the dirt. Then Allison tore down Main Street one more time, galloping to beat hell with Kennedy jerkily following behind, his body bouncing across the hard dirt and crashing with crushing force against the hitching post in front of the General Mercantile.
Kennedy again wriggled to a sitting position. His face was covered with dirt and blood. He spit and sputtered and tried to speak.
“Oh hell,” Allison said, still seated on his horse. He drew his pistol and took aim. “Just shut up and die.” He let off a round and a neat hole appeared in the man’s chest. “I hate to see a man grovel.”
Kennedy fell backward. Everyone began to turn away and head home. The truth being that participating in a lynching was all good fun, but no one really wanted to be stuck with the job of clean up.
Then a gasp sounded from the remaining men as Kennedy spoke, this time his mouth filling with blood, making him that much more difficult to understand. “I can’t die. She’s got the magic. She done cursed me.”
Clay Allison was perturbed. When he killed a man he expected him to stay dead. He dismounted with a disgusted grimace and drew the large Bowie knife from his belt. “That’s enough, by God. This is ending now.”
He took Kennedy by the hair and whipped the Bowie knife down with wicked force, once, twice, three times and then stood with the severed head aloft. The headless body fell back again, but this time, aside from a few random jerks, it stayed where it fell.
Allison raised the head to stare at Kennedy face to face. “You look dead enough to me, ha, ha,” he said and looked at the men around him. Two of them were vomiting and the rest looked blanched white as ghosts.
“Come on now, that’s funny. He had it coming. You saw what he did to that boy.”
If they disagreed they didn’t speak. It wasn’t wise to argue with Clay Allison as too many men had already discovered. He was unpredictable and the graveyard always had room for one more. They just slowly walked away as Allison wiped the bloody blade on the clothing of the dead man.
That Rosa woman had done another vanishing act. Understandable, he supposed, but she had been too damnably vague on the location of the Kennedy’s collected loot. Still, the evening had turned out to be entertaining enough.
“Stinky, fetch a buckboard and take this dead dog to the dump at the end of town.”
“What about that?” Stinky asked, pointing at the head.
“Oh, I got plans for this,” said Allison.
Allison took a burlap sack out of his saddlebag, stuffed the head inside, then tied it to the saddle horn. He didn’t feel remorseful about tonight’s grim work. In fact, he felt like celebrating. He’d go see the Frenchman at Lambert’s Saloon and have a few drinks. If he was lucky, the Frenchman would have some dinner left.
Henri Lambert (or On-ray Lam-bear as he kept telling folks), used to be personal chef to General Grant and to that Bastard Lincoln. Allison didn’t much care for the former employers, but the Frenchman was a damn good cook.
He’d mount the killer’s head on a spike outside the saloon. It would bring in business and serve to warn all that wanton lawlessness wouldn’t be tolerated. Better yet, the Frenchman could charge a nickel to see it and give Clay a cut.
As he mounted his horse and turned toward Lambert’s, he heard a muffled sound coming from the burlap sack. Or at least it had seemed to come from the sack. Allowing his horse to continue its slow walk toward the end of town, Allison untied the top of the sack and looked in.
Charlie Kennedy’s face, covered with fresh blood, looked up at him form the bottom of the sack. Its eyes were open and sharp. “Why in the hell did you have to do that?”
Clay Allison had seen a lot of things. He had been a spy for the Confederacy and seen things no man should be forced to see. He had been captured behind enemy lines and taken prisoner, doomed to hang. But he had escaped the hellhole they called a prisoner of war camp. He had seen many horrors, but never had a dead man spoken to him.
“What in hell?”
”Look at me! I have eternal life as a head in a sack.”
“You talk?” Clay asked.
“So do you, but you don’t listen for shit. I kept trying to tell you Rosa is a damned witch.”
“I still don’t believe you. This is just proof you are the in league with the devil himself.”
“Why lie now? I’ve got nothing to lose. I’m nothing but a trophy head and she is still out causing mischief.”
Clay smiled.
“What are you doing?” Charley’s head asked.
“Henri is gonna shit when he sees you.” With that, Clay tied the bag shut again, muffling the further protests of the head. A nickel? Hell, they could charge a dollar!
Clay dismounted and tied up his horse at the hitching post in front of Lambert’s Saloon. Then, taking the burlap bag with him, he swaggered inside.
The oil lamps were shining brightly and the music from a piano filled the room with jovial warmth. But when the clientele caught a glance of Clay Allison and his bloody burden the mood immediately took on a more somber tone.
Clay smiled and approached the bar. Several men vacated to clear a spot for the gunfighter. Henri Lambert looked at Allison and shook his head disapprovingly.
“Henri, I would like two shots of whiskey. One for me and one for Charlie here.” He reached in to the sack, grabbed a handful of hair and placed the head on the bar in front of him.
Henri grimaced. “Oh no! Mr. Allison, please take that thing away. You will upset all my customers.”
“Really? Well, what do you think, Charlie?” Allison turned to the head.
Charles Kennedy’s head did not respond. In fact, it sat there glassy eyed and oozing on Henri’s counter top like so much rotting meat in the New Mexico night. A fly buzzed in and landed on its nose.
Clay drew his pistol. “Talk you son of a bitch,” he said then cocked back the hammer and put the barrel between the eyes of the severed head.
“Please Mr. Allison! Think of the mess it would make.”
A man behind Allison began to laugh. Clay narrowed his eyes and turned. A miner dressed in mud-stained clothes sat nearby, giggling hysterically and slapping his knee.
“That’s a good one for sure, Mr. Allison. That’s the funniest thing you done since you danced naked on the bar with the red ribbon on your pecker.” The man was practically in tears he was laughing so hard.
Clay Allison was not laughing; in fact he wasn’t even smiling; a fact that appeared to slowly begin to dawn on the miner.
“You calling me a liar?” Clay said—his words icy and clear. “You saying this head don’t talk?”
The man paled. “No, Clay—Mr. Allison, Sir, that aint what I meant at all. I Just….”
“No man calls me a liar and walks away. That’s an insult to my honor, and I aim to get satisfaction.”
The other customers began to clear that end of the room. Henri muttered a few curses in French, grabbed some of the more expensive bottles from the bar and also moved to a safer distance.
The man raised his hands in the air. “Mr. Allison, I meant no disrespect, Sir. I’m sorry I. ….”
Clay waved the gun around the room, but kept his steely eyes on the petrified miner. “Everybody heard this man say I was lying. Now I’m calling him out, fair and square.”
Allison made a big pantomime show of holstering his pistol, then he glanced back at Henri and the rest of the cringing crowd.
At that instant, the miner rose from his chair and made a break for the front door. Allison drew fast as hand of God and shot the man in the back.
Allison looked at the crowd, steely eyed. “You saw him. He was trying to get the drop on me!”
Heads nodded in quick succession, a single voice said “Y-y-yes sir, Mr. Allison, it was surely self defense.”
“Damn right!” Allison preened. “Now, anybody else want to say this here head don't talk?”
“No, no,” came the nervous mutt
er of the crowd, along with “Lord save us” and one brave soul in the rear piped in: “I can hear it now. Is that Camptown Races it's a'singin'?” Luckily, this smoothed Allison's feathers for he turned to Henri, tipped back the last of his drink, followed by Charlie's, then shoved the head roughly back into the burlap sack. He stalked out of the saloon making sure to knock the sides of the sack against each chair and flinching customer as he passed.
Henri could hardly wait until Allison swept grandly out the door to heave a sigh of relief. He mopped down the bar with clean, soapy water, paying special attention to the spot where the head had sat.
Allison tossed the sack roughly over the saddle horn.
“Ow!” cried Charlie's head, “Whadya go an' do that for?”
“That was for making me look the fool in front of Henri and half the town. I have a mind to dump your sorry head in the nearest latrine! Why didn't you talk in there? We could'a made some good money,” said Allison.
“I'm a little shy in front of large groups. Besides, only special people can hear me—people who might just make a whole lot more money by doin' a man a favor instead of sellin' looks at a talking head for a nickel apiece. You're a special man Allison, and even though it were you and your posse what did me in, I'll tell you where all my money and gold is stashed. All you gotta do is take me to where my body is. You owe me at least that anyway.” said Charlie's head.
“I don't believe I owe you a thing, you murderous man-eating dog. But as I am a compassionate fellow and believe if a man is to go to his eternal rest he should do it with all his pieces in the same place. I'll help you to reunite with your body. And I'll take the gold too, seeing as how I'm going to be doing all of your walking for you.”
The body wan’t at the dump here he’d directed Kennedy's body to be taken. From the looks of things, blood, drag marks and other signs, it had been there and then taken away again by person’s unknown. Some damned goody-two-shoes no doubt. Allison was getting might irritated, and was feeling a bit peculiar as he rode and not just the regular peculiar one might feel when following the directions of an ill-natured, foul tempered, severed head. This was more the feeling one got when sensing something just outside his line of sight and too quiet to recognize. Misty moving visions, shadows on the periphery and veiled whispers were carried on the breeze. There were some mighty powerful spiritual forces at work he didn't understand. But he did understand the power of gold. And, one way or another, this head in a gunny sack was gonna give up the loot.
Six Guns Straight From Hell - Tales Of Horror And Dark Fantasy From The Weird Weird West Page 3
