Ghostwalkers (10 page)

As one they began backing away from the town. Then they turned and ran for their horses.

However as they approached, Grey saw something that twisted an already misshapen day into an even more perverse shape. There, tucked into a fold of his saddle, was a single heavy pasteboard card.

On the back was a painting of the death mask of some ancient queen, her mouth bloody.

Grey did not want to touch it, and his hand shook as he reached for it.

“What's that?” asked Looks Away sharply. “Is that a tarot?”

Grey said nothing. He took the card and turned it over, though he knew full well what would be on it.

A hanged man.

Looks Away saw it and cursed softly.

Without another word the two men got onto their horses and fled toward the west.

 

Chapter Eighteen

Grey Torrance and Thomas Looks Away did not speak at all for the rest of that day. Grey knew that they should. It was probably important to compare experiences, to try and make sense of everything.

But he did not want to.

He was afraid of the sense that it would make.

The world had become a strange place. It was like stepping into a dreamscape. Or like entering one of the fantasy worlds in the dime novels he used to read back in the early days of the war. Back when fantastical adventures were a way to turn away from the endless bloodshed, the weeks of drudgery and boredom between battles, the aches of walking hundreds of miles, the diseases that came with bad food and worse water. Back then the stories of frontiersmen braving the wilds and ragtag bands of soldiers defending small Texas forts and castaways finding treasure on deserted islands were all ways to step out of the moment. They allowed for hope of something better, even if that hope was nothing more than purple prose in some writer's fanciful scribblings.

That time had past.

The war never ended. The nation became so fractured. The dream of a grand America had been torn apart by greedy and hateful men.

And there was something else.

Something that lurked behind the scenes of everyday life. Something people knew about but never talked about.

The world itself had changed.

Not merely the politics or borders. Not loyalties and plans of empire.

No.

The actual world was different now.

Something had shifted.

It was a darker world. And that thought was true even as they rode beneath this blistering sun. The heart of the world was darker. Its soul was darker.

It wasn't the same world he grew up in.

Grey knew that much of this had started when the big quake tore itself along the fault lines in the West and dragged most of California into the thrashing sea. That alone might have been enough to fracture the world. At least the American part of it.

But it was only the start, and Grey knew it. Everyone knew it.

It was simply that people didn't talk about it. The change, the darkness, was like some kind of secret.

Grey thought about that and realized that he had it wrong.

It wasn't a secret. Not really. Nothing as simple as that. It was more like a night terror. Like a monster hiding beneath the bed. It was something that was not real, but could be real if people were unwise enough to say it out loud. To name it.

To accept that it was real.

That's why Grey didn't want to talk about what had just happened. Not with Looks Away, and maybe not even with himself. Every time his questioning mind tried to look too closely, tried to put labels on the things that had happened, Grey forcibly wrenched his thoughts away. He force-fed new thoughts into his head. He considered the landscape. The clouds. He counted and named the number of cities and towns he'd been to. He mentally recited old lessons from his school days, or snatches of poetry. He mumbled the lyrics to old ballads and alehouse bawdy songs. He named all of the women he had ever known and catalogued their virtues.

He did all of that to keep from thinking about the town of Fortune and the women there. If they were women at all. He tried not to think about the hanged man tarot. He tried to erase the memory of Mircalla from his memory.

He tried and tried.

The more he tried, the more he failed.

The more he failed, the more terrified he became.

He caught Looks Away staring at him as they rode, and for three slow paces of their horses, their eyes met.

Then the Sioux shook his head.

And Grey responded in kind.

The terror in his heart grew and grew.

 

PART TWO

The Maze

Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.

—ALEISTER CROWLEY

 

Chapter Nineteen

They did not speak again until they crossed into California.

Looks Away grunted and pointed to a wooden sign hammered onto a post someone had driven into the dusty ground. It read:

SINNERS REPENT

ALL OTHERS TURN BACK

THERE IS NO REDEMPTION HERE

Clustered around the base of the post and piled into a crude pyramid that reached halfway up its length were skulls.

Human skulls.

Some still had scraps of leathery skin or strands of sun-bleached hair stuck to them, but otherwise the bones were white and dry.

“By the Queen's sacred bloomers,” said Looks Away. “That's bloody charming.”

Grey slid from his horse and walked in a slow circle around the post.

“Over here,” he called, and Looks Away jumped down and came over to see. On the far side of the pyramid were two heads that were much fresher than the others. They both wore their skin and hair, both still had milky eyes in their sockets. Withered lips were peeled back from their teeth as if the owners of these heads had died laughing, which Grey knew was a lie. Skin contracts as the moisture is leeched away.

Looks Away cursed softly as he squatted down to peer at the heads. Both of them had long black hair. Both had prominent noses and wore red cloths around their foreheads. Their skin was a slightly ruddier shade than Looks Away's.

“Apaches,” said Grey quietly.

“Yes,” murmured Looks Away. “And I sodding well know them.”

“You what?”

Looks Away bent forward and spat into the face of each Apache. He took his time, hocking up phlegm and firing it off with great accuracy and velocity.

“I take it you weren't friends,” said Grey. “But since when did the Sioux and the Apaches have trouble brewing between them?”

“They don't. Not as such. They are no more representatives of their people than I am of mine. This was entirely a personal dispute.”

“Who are they?”

“The one on the left there was known as Horse Runner. His companion was Dog That Barks. Rather an obvious name, don't you think? All bloody dogs bark. It's like saying Cow That Moos.” He sniffed. “They were renegades from their tribal lands and when last I saw them they were working as hired muscle.”

“For who? That Deray fellow?”

“No. They worked for a land syndicate run by a right bastard of a man named Nolan Chesterfield, a nephew of one of the rail barons.”

“Which baron?” asked Grey.

Looks Away caught something in his tone and gave him a sharp look. “Why does it matter?”

“It matters to me.”

“Not a chum of the barons, I gather?”

“Hardly,” said Grey bitterly. “I worked for a couple of them once upon a time. Got well paid, but somehow I always seemed to come up short on the deal. First one I signed on with was that Chinese fellow, Kang. He was my boss for six months.”

“Kang? I thought he only hired his own people.”

“His own people don't always blend in with people outside of his own crowd,” said Grey, shrugging. “And he needed someone solid to protect his lawyers when they went to dicker with some of the other barons. That was me, for a while anyway, but we had some differences of opinion. So … then I worked for that witch Mina Devlin.”

Looks Away wore a wistful smile. “Ahhh … Mina Devlin. I've seen pictures, heard tales. Reliable tales, mind you. I always wanted to make her acquaintance.”

“No,” said Grey, “you don't. She may be prettier than a full moon over the mountains, but she will gut you and leave you to bleed just for the fun of seeing it. And people say she's, you know…” He tapped his temple.

“I believe the phrase is ‘touched by God.'”

Grey snorted. “Touched by someone,” he said sourly, “but I don't think God was doing the groping.”

“Ah. Even so. She is supposed to be a truly passionate woman.” He cut a sly look at Grey. “You … wouldn't know anything about that now, would you?”

Grey felt his face grow hot and he immediately changed the subject. “You said these Apaches were providing muscle. Muscle for what?”

“Oh, for whatever needed to be done. If Nolan Chesterfield wanted a tract of land so he could lay down some tracks, he had these two fellows—and a couple dozen others who worked with them—drive off anyone who lived there. Drive off or bury.”

“Ah. I've met the type.”

Looks Away turned to his companion. “I daresay you have. I've been wondering about that. When you say you've met the type it makes me wonder if you are, in point of fact, the same type?”

Grey smiled. He could feel how thin and cold his smile was. “That's a strange question to ask, friend. Especially after what we've been through and how many miles we've ridden. You slept ten feet from me for twelve nights and now you wonder if I'm some kind of badman?”

“Actually, old sport, the thought has occurred to me before,” admitted the Sioux. “I've been trying very hard to figure you out. You have a charming demeanor when you want, but mostly you keep a distance. And your face gives nothing at all away. I'd hate to play poker with you.”

Grey shrugged. He was very much aware that he let very little of his personality show through in either word or expression. He generally played the role of a saddle-weary but competent gunhand, and that was true enough in its way. There were layers of his soul he did not want peeled back. He dreaded the thought of anyone seeing the real him. The man who had failed, who had betrayed. The man who was certain that his true road led downhill to somewhere hotter even than this desert. Nor did he want this Sioux, or anyone, to see the fear that was always vying with his courage for control of his life. So, as he had done for so many years now, he kept his face wooden and his gaze flat.

“Besides, the moment always seemed a bit wrong for bringing it all up. Manners, don't you know.”

“And mutual protection, let's not forget about that.”

“Let's not. However let's not let a shred of self-interest cloud this particular conversation.”

“Okay then. If you have a straight question, ask it.”

Looks Away sucked a tooth for a moment. Grey noted that the man's hands hung loosely at his sides, well within range for a quick grab for the pistol butt in his stolen holster. The Sioux's fingers twitched ever so slightly. Grey shifted his weight to be ready to dodge as well as draw if this all turned bad.

“I'll ask three questions,” said Looks Away, surprising him.

“Shoot.”

“That's a rather unfortunate choice of word, wouldn't you say?”

They smiled at each other. They kept their gun hands ready.

“What's the first question?” asked Grey.

“Have you ever been to the Maze before?”

“No,” said Grey flatly. “Second question?”

“Abrupt, aren't we?”

Grey just looked at him.

“Very well,” said Looks Away. “Are you hunting for ghost rock?”

“No.”

“And you're telling me the God's honest truth?”

“Is that your third question?”

Looks Away shook his head. “No.”

“Then I've already answered it once. I've never felt the need to repeat myself.”

“Fair enough, and therefore I must take you at your word.”

“Seems so. What's your last question?”

Looks Away took a breath. “Are you now, or have you ever been, in the employ of Aleksander Deray?”

“I never heard of the man before you told me about him the day we met. And that,” said Grey, “is the God's honest truth.”

They stood and studied each other, and Grey felt as if something shifted between them. Looks Away had an almost comical way of speaking, which Grey figured was more than half put-on, but there was nothing funny about the keen intelligence in the man's eyes. They were hard, cold, and sharp as knifepoints. Grey would not have wanted to stare into those eyes on a bad day if he didn't have a well-oiled gun within grabbing distance.

“Well then,” said Looks Away.

He watched a slow smile spread across the Sioux's face. It looked genuine, and the man appeared to be relieved. Probably not so much at what Grey had said in answer to those questions, but at whatever Looks Away had seen in Grey's eyes.

And Grey found himself making a similar decision about the strange Sioux renegade.

The sun beat down on them and the horses blew and stamped.

“If I've offered offense, my friend,” he said, “then please allow me to apologize. I would take it as a kindness and a pleasure if you accompanied me on my little mission. I will, in fact, pay you for your services and would value both your protection and your company. Here's my hand upon it.”

Grey couldn't help but return the smile. “You don't even know how much it costs to hire me.”

“Are you expensive?”

“I'm a little saddle-worn but I'm not bargain counter.”

“Then by all means state me a price.”

Grey did and the Sioux's smile flickered. “Dear me, you think very highly of your skills.”