Caleb held his breath as he looked at Death from the corner of his eye. Death leaned forward for a closer look.
“Our appointment is cancelled.” Death looked at Caleb. “I hope you enjoy your extreme old age. I also hope you will remember this day with some fondness, if only for meeting the greatest challenge of your young life.”
Chief gave Caleb a hard congratulatory slap between the shoulders.
A sob escaped Caleb and abruptly he sat down on the still muddy ground. The warm sunlight and the caress of the gentle breeze never felt so good. He grinned and laughed from relief, though he cast a doubtful look at the silent village on the other side of the river.
“My assistants have already vacated the village.” Death looked at Chief and added, “There are no Taliban around here today.”
“Thank you,” Caleb whispered.
“What will you do with this portrait?”
“My art teacher, actually my mentor for many years, owns a successful art gallery in Las Vegas, of all places. I know he’ll love this portrait and will hang it in a place of honor.”
Death gestured with his hand and the oak board and all of the painting accoutrements faded like a morning mist before the rising sun.
“You’ll find everything waiting for you in your studio.” A flicker of a smile played at Death’s lips. “Until we meet again.”
Death’s form shimmered with fleeting shadows and a faint, ghostly whistle filled the air. “Oh shit!” Chief shouted, and shoved Caleb to the ground.
The earth shook as Death’s darkly shimmering form silently exploded in a bright, smoky white flash, like an exploding white phosphorous shell.
“That was some fuckin’ exit,” Chief grumbled as he raised his muddy face.
“Amen to that,” Caleb whispered with closed eyes as he savored the feel of warm sunlight and the gentle caress of the fall breeze on his face.
* * * * *
S S Hampton, Sr. is a Choctaw from Oklahoma, a divorced grandfather to twelve grandchildren (one more on the way), and a published photographer and photojournalist. He is a veteran of Operations Noble Eagle and Iraqi Freedom. His fiction has appeared in Horror Bound Magazine, Ruthie’s Club, Lucrezia Magazine, and The Harrow, among others, and in anthologies from Melange Books and Dark Opus Press. Forthcoming stories will be published by Ravenous Romance, MUSA Publishing, and MuseItUp Publishing. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. The inspiration for this story is his life-long interest in art, a college painting class he is enrolled in, and his service in the military.
The Exclusive
By Edward M. Erdelac
Tom Cotter was no man to be trifled with. He had rustled Mexican steer along the border into a sizeable herd in his youth and had built himself an empire as one of the first outfits to drive cattle to the Missouri railheads, putting beef in the bellies of starving soldiers during the War Between The States. He owned a good chunk of New Mexico. He was a king among cattlemen. There were senators that doffed their hats to him, and he in turn did their dirty work on occasion, sending out his hired villains to execute foreclosures on land he didn’t own, gunning down those who tried to resist. He had a beef contract with the local Indian reservation which he rarely fulfilled, yet the government money stuffed his war bag every month on schedule just the same.
Everybody knew this, but Barry Twiggs, editor-in-chief of The Perryville Premonitor, dared to print it, and often. He had been warned off in various ways by Cotter’s men. They had burned down his office twice, hired a drunk to bust his knee with a stick of firewood, and shot his horse out from under him. He had expected another reprisal after the Sunday edition’s front page headline linked Cotter to a prominent member of The Ord Gang, but not the one he got.
Now, as his flesh was scraped away by brambles and his bleeding wounds filled with grit, as he bounced along the ground through cactus patches, towed behind a galloping palomino by his ankle, he wished he’d taken a drinking colleague’s advice and bought himself a .44.
Cotter had sent a group of masked men to answer Twiggs’s latest ‘libelous’ attack on his person with axe handles and lariats. They had yanked him and his printing press out of the office, knocked him ass over teakettle, then dragged the both of them out of town.
The frictional burning all about his body was a blinding agony, but if he opened his mouth to scream he choked on dust kicked up by the horses. He could hear laughter above the noise of his body dragging, and the banging of his press as it tumbled behind the other rider’s horse.
He tried to retreat into his mind, away from the nightmare engulfing him, but composing accusatory editorial rebuttals in his pain-wracked brain gave him no comfort. He doubted he would live to print another edition.
He took some comfort in thoughts of Junia, but then a stone dashed against his face and he was cast back into hellish reality.
When they stopped, he didn’t know, nor did he know how long he lay there.
“He’s still alive!”
“He don’t look t’be. Lost enough hide to half-sole an elephant.”
“Listen to him breathin’!”
“Cotter wants him dead.”
“Shoot him.”
“You shoot him.”
“Tie him to his printin’ machine and sink him in the river.”
Laughter.
He felt them cut the latigo chord that had dug through his flesh until it was wrapped around the bare bone of his ankle. Then he was propped up, head lolling, something blocky and cold jutting into his back. They lashed him to it and he was lifted, horny fingers digging into his bleeding elbows and ragged ankles. He got a last look at the sun burning itself out in the high desert before he was heaved into a chilly darkness.
He struck the bottom. He hadn’t had the presence of mind to catch a deep breath before they chucked him in. His lungs burned. He gritted his broken teeth and weakly strained against his fetters, but it was no use. He gulped water in place of air.
He panicked and bucked, but his broken bones and torn muscles wouldn’t serve.
His eyes bulged as he looked around the dark river bottom for any kind of way out.
Then someone broke the bright surface of the water way above his head and came straight down at him like a diving duck. He had long dark hair like a woman’s, but he was definitely a man, naked as a jaybird, the wavy watery light playing across his lean muscles.
Strong as he looked, how would he cut him loose? I appreciate the effort, fella, thought Twiggs, but I’m done.
His coulda-been savior drifted to a stop in front of him and inspected his bonds. That was when Twiggs noticed the long knife in his hand. Actually it was more like a sword; and not one of those cavalry sabers either, but the sort of thing you think of a Roman soldier having. In a few quick flashes, Twiggs was loose and floating. He felt the stranger’s powerful arm encircle his chest and draw him up and out.
He lay on his belly on the riverbank trembling like a bass plucked out of its habitat. He waited for the stranger to help him up, to bear him to a horse or a wagon.
But the man only turned from Twiggs and stood staring at the setting sun, the sword propped on his shoulder.
He made no move to put any clothes on, and Twiggs saw no rig or horse nearby, nor even a pile of duds.
There was something odd about this man, to be sure. He was too dang perfect. The water didn’t speckle or shine on his skin. By God, his hair wasn’t even wet.
For that matter, neither was Twiggs’s. He ran his hand over his own head, then his face, and came away with no blood. He didn’t detect any of the wounds the cruel desert foliage had opened up on his body; he inspected his hands and feet as thoroughly as St. Thomas and found no marks anywhere. His left foot, from which they’d dragged him, should have been hanging by a scrap of flesh.
No pain, either. Not
even the dull ache in between his shoulder blades he’d been working on for the past three years, or the permanent stiffness in the knee Cotter’s paid drunkard had given him.
As the sun dipped behind the mountains, the naked stranger turned and regarded him with a pair of stark white eyes, devoid of iris or pigment.
Twiggs felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
“Ready?” the man said.
His voice was deep and bespoke infinite tiredness.
“Almighty b’damned,” Twiggs spluttered. “What in hell’s goin’ on here?” Although he well knew, or at least had a better than average inkling.
The naked man sighed and lifted the sword down off his shoulder. He advanced, the keen looking blade swinging idly in his hand.
“Whoa!” Twiggs stammered. “Hang on now. Alright. That was a stupid question. You’re a busy man, and you must get that reaction a lot, I’d warrant.”
The man stopped before him, but said nothing.
Twiggs let his eyes run up and down the imposing, weird figure before him. He grimaced a bit when he saw that below the waist, the man had been cut, apparently a long time ago, and not in the Jewish sense, unless the rabbi had been in the throes of the St. Vitus Dance and botched the job. He was like a master sculptor’s statue, a perfect male specimen but for the lack of that vital organ that warranted the appellation, as if it’d been neatly chipped away by some prudish art critic. Twiggs’s curiosity over this mutilation burned him more than had the ground from town to the river, but it was not something one began a conversation with.
“I know who you are, sure,” said Twiggs, thinking quickly. “Do you know who I am?”
“I neither know nor care,” said the stranger.
“Well sir, I’m a newspaper man. Barry Twiggs, of the Shreveport Twiggses. Founder and editor-in-chief of The Perryville Premonitor, with a circulation encompassing the better part of two counties in the territory of New Mexico.”
He paused.
“Ah, incidentally, what do I call you?”
“What?” the stranger blinked, as if he had been caught half-listening.
“You must have a name. Death, that’s just an official title, right?”
“Mr. Twiggs, what do you want?”
“A busy man, yes indeed. Well sir, as I said before, I’m a newspaper man. By a turn of fate in life I was a crusader, a voice for the people. But I never set out to be such. The whims of fortune do turn a man from his intended path though, do they not? When I came out west, I only meant for journalism to be a sideline to my real calling. I wanted to be a biographer, you see. At that time all the newspapers back east were filled with accounts of Wild Bill Hickok’s shootout with Dave Tutt, the exploits of the James gang, etcetera. I came out here to find one of these shootists, these up-and-coming killers. I thought I could hitch my wagon to one, become a Buntline or a Nichols or a Beadle. You get a sense of the real man and then embellish the rest, live off the residuals. That was all I wanted.”
He trailed off, watching a gibbous moon emerging in the darkening sky, then shook himself. Death hadn’t the patience for reflection.
“To be brief, sir, I feel the stirring of my old calling. Here I sit, in front of the most famous killer extant, whose career trumps the tally of any gunman who ever lived — who ever will live, even. I doubt you’re in the business of granting last requests. I should think a man in your line would hardly stop to palaver even, after a time. But I think sir, that you have a tale to tell. I’ll bet you millions of folks ask you ‘why’ and ‘how come’ and ‘where am I going’ and the like, but not a one of them has asked to hear your story.”
Death regarded the man. “You do realize you’re dead, Mr. Twiggs?”
“Please, Barry. I figured that out, yessir.”
“Then who do you intend to relate my tale to?”
“Why, if there’s an afterlife, I’ll regale my fellow souls with it.”
“And what if there is nothing?”
“Well, you’ll pardon me, but if you’re here, I’ll bet there’s something.”
Death nodded. “From here, you go to hell.”
Twiggs stiffened.
“You’ll be purged in fire for a time, until your iniquities and your earthly concerns are burned away. You won’t care at all for your stories and your curiosity will be gone.”
“And after my time’s served?”
Death turned to look at the moon.
“My God,” said Twiggs, settling down on a rock. “You don’t know, do you?”
Death wheeled on him, and lifted the sword, angry.
“Wait,” said Twiggs. “Tell me your story. If not for me, then for yourself. When’s the last time anybody listened to you?”
Death seemed to hesitate, the sword poised to whistle down. It did not strike.
“Come on. I’m all ears. Let’s start …. with your name. What’s your name?”
“There is no deceiving me, Mr. Twiggs. In all the eons I have been Death, I have never been once cheated out of my task.”
Well, so much for that. It had been in the back of Twiggs’s mind of course, maybe to get that sword away from him somehow.
“No tricks,” Twiggs said. “No parleys, no last minute entreaties.”
Death lowered the sword again. He turned it in his hand and drove the point into the muddy bank.
“Samael was my name.”
“Samael. Sam. There. That’s a start. Pleased to meet you, Sam.” Twiggs’s tongue touched his lip. He knew, of course, that this was a useless gesture. He wasn’t even in his body anymore. That bloodied and battered corpse of his was supper for fish at the bottom of the river. But whatever form he held for the moment anyway, soul or shade, it was still his own. He didn’t like what Death (or Sam, it was easier to talk to him that way) had said about losing his curiosity and desires, but at least hell wasn’t eternal.
“How did you get picked to be the Angel of Death?”
“It is not an honor I was selected for,” said Sam. “It is a punishment.”
“And you’re the only one that does it? You don’t have helpers?”
“I do not visit every mortal soul, so I think there must be others, but we have never met. I cannot perceive nor be perceived by anyone but the souls of the dying, those in transition.”
“Not even other angels?”
“I exist outside of Creation.”
It was like a prison, then. A prison that spanned the world and held one inmate.
“What’d you do to warrant this?”
“I fought in the Great Rebellion, under The Light Bearer.”
“That really happened?”
“It did. We lost.”
“Yeah I read about it. Why’d you and Lucifer rebel?”
“Lucifer had his own reasons. He was my friend, but I did not share his motivations.”
“But you joined him.”
“Doesn’t every man who goes to war do so for his own reason?”
“Fair enough. What was yours?”
Sam looked at the moon again, then down at Twiggs. He sat down on the stone opposite him, and rested a hand on the pommel of his silver sword.
“A woman,” Sam said.
“You mean a mortal woman?”
Sam nodded.
“I heard stories of that too. Never figured ‘em for true. So who was this woman?”
“The first woman.”
“You mean Eve.”
“Eve was not the first woman. God crafted Eve from Adam’s body to correct the mistake He made with Lilith.”
“Lilith?”
“The first woman. Lilith was made from the earth as Adam was. She was his equal.”
“Now that I hadn’t heard. What was she like?”
For the first time, Sam allowed a thin smile to slide across his face.
“Spirited. She pulsed with life. Her body, her skin, flushed with it. She had red hair, like seraphic fire. Seeing her, I know now I ached to hold her. But I did not even know what the feeling meant as I looked upon her. The creation of man and woman was not a popular decision among the ministers of heaven. To many, encasing a pure spirit within a mortal shell that was bound to expire was a perversion. To others, the commandment that we angels serve these malformed children was outrageous.”
“What about to you?”
“When I looked on Lilith, I saw the soft light that shone within her as if through a cloud. It was so precious and innocent. Long had I lived among spirits. I was used to the glory of the naked soul. Seeing it obscured in flesh and blood was exotic to me. I was old, and she was new.”
“But why rebel?”
“Lucifer made promises to all the rebel factions, as all politicians necessarily must, to form a cause.”
“He promised you Lilith.”
“Do you think me a fool?” Sam asked, and there was no threat in his tone. It was an honest question, backed by misery. It deserved a direct answer.
“Yeah, I guess you were. But there’ve been bigger fools since.”
“You speak plain, Mr. Twiggs. I appreciate that. Most would lie to me in the hope of prolonging their existence.”
“I told you, it’s Barry. And I have no illusions,” Twiggs said. “What about Lilith? Did you two ever meet?”
“Indeed we did,” Sam said. “After the Rebellion, we Fallen were cast into hell. Lucifer built his capitol, his throne, and many of the Fallen remained his servants. I wanted nothing further to do with them, so I wandered. I lingered at the edge of Eden, the Garden where Adam and Lilith were. I watched, and loved from the shadow of the East.
“I became a fixture at the outskirts of the Garden, and soon they noticed me. The man, Adam, would take Lilith by the hair and tell her I was not fit to look upon. Michael and the other angels had warned him about the Fallen. At first, she was obedient. But sometimes I would catch her watching me. When Adam took her away, she would look back until she was out of sight.”
Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper Page 23
