The Shotgun Arcana (49 page)

“No, Harry,” Mutt said. “This isn’t about a good scrap. This skull staying safe is more important than you looking good as mayor, more important than helping Jonathan. It’s more important than any of us. I need you to nurse it. I know that’s a lot to ask while Zeal is chewing up the town, but this is important. Please.”

“I’ll be damned,” Harry said. “‘Please’ … Okay, I’ll sit this one out … for now.”

“If things go south and Jonathan doesn’t stop Zeal tomorrow,” Mutt continued, “we’re going to meet up, regroup. I’ll get word to you if that happens. Look for a chalk note on the back wall of the outhouse behind Elias Carol’s house. Understand?”

“All right,” Harry said. “Where are you going?”

“To do what Jon asked me to do and get a real good view of the show,” Mutt said, and disappeared into the darkness.

Harry secured the old skull in his private safe upstairs in his bedroom, then went to bed, exhausted and only removing his boots. He had been working again all night at his office and had only been home a short time before Mutt had arrived. He hoped to get a few hours of sleep before he had to be back at town hall.

A terrible dream awaited him. He was standing in an odd room with strange electrical lamps in it. There was a tall, handsome, slender and strangely ominous man there. He was clean-cut and dressed in strange clothes of an unfamiliar fashion that almost seemed to be too new, too clean. The man was struggling with a young man of Eastern descent—he looked Chinese, perhaps. The younger boy was only partly clothed and was screaming for his life. He was pinned on a couch that also looked strangely too new, too well made. They both spoke English and Harry understood what they were saying.

“I want you to stay,” the older man said in a voice that was calm and cold on the surface, yet hot with rage and madness. “I’m going to cut open your brain and make you stay with me.”

Harry had felt frozen until this point of the dream, but he could suddenly move. He heard labored breathing off to his left. A strange apparition stood, unseen by any but Harry in a corner of the room. It was a fat man dressed in the costume and face paint of a clown. His breathing was labored as he watched the boy struggle and his hand was sliding down to the erection he had. The clown’s thick, wet tongue slid across his lips as he watched the tableau unfold before him, mesmerized. The very existence of such a creature made Harry dizzy with anger, fear and disgust.

Harry stepped forward, feeling like he was pushing through molasses. He grabbed the arms of the older man and pulled him off the boy.

“That’s enough!” Harry shouted, even though his voice sounded like a whisper to him. The older man seemed shocked at Harry’s appearance, almost frightened for an instant. The boy wasted no time in running, half-naked, out the door of the room. The clown-ghost-thing shuffled after him, running as fast as his girth would allow, laughing as he ran.

Harry held the strange man’s arms and watched in horror as all the emotions drained from the man’s face. Something sitting on a table, behind them in the cluttered little room, caught Harry’s attention. It was the skull.

“You can’t save him,” the man said. “You can’t stop us. It’s in the blood. It’s always been in the blood.”

The handsome man’s face, his body, shifted, flowed into the screaming, raging shaggy man that had been plaguing Harry’s dreams for months. The monstrous giant’s cavernous, fanged mouth became the universe, devouring Harry and swallowing him into fetid darkness.

Harry awoke, wet with sweat, gasping for breath. Dawn was a threat on the horizon. He looked across the bedroom to the safe built into the wall. The painting covering it was swung aside. The locked safe door was open and the skull stared at him, mocking.

*   *   *

Within his sanctum inside the Celestial Palace, Ch’eng Huang stood, eyes closed, his awareness stretching out across the wastelands. He had felt Jim Negrey’s life force flare and then almost flicker out. He had felt the eye surge with power to help keep the boy alive, and then nothing. He reached out, searching, calling. In this alien land, his power was focused primarily in the places his people gathered, so it took considerable effort to sift through the wasteland. He focused on the eye instead of the boy and he began to sense its presence, like a great green flame in the shadows of the world, hidden behind sorceries of concealment and obfuscation. It was only due to his close study of the artifact that he could sense its hidden power at all. The monks that had hidden it and given it to Jim’s father had been very cautious and very clever.

The doors behind him opened softly and the padded footfalls of one of his men approached. It was a slight distraction, but Huang pushed it away as best he could. He was close to finding the boy and then perhaps he could get him some help.

“You may place the tea on the table,” Huang said, “and then leave me.”

The blade dug deep into Huang’s lower back, stabbed with brutal and precise force. The blade filled him with agony the likes of which he could not recall in this world of flesh. Hot blasts of sheer rage, anger, hatred pumped into the old man like streams of venom. He lost all contact with the eye; his senses fell in on themselves, buried under indescribable pain. He staggered forward and fell to the floor.

“Don’t care for the tea?” A voice like a cobra gliding across the water said in Mandarin. Huang struggled to roll over to confront his assassin. Part of the blade had snapped off in the wound and was still buried in his back. Waves of searing torment and mind-destroying aggression tore through his frail frame.

His attacker was dressed as one of his Green Ribbon Tong soldiers. His face was calm, but his eyes brimmed with insanity. “Remember me?” the assassin said.

“Chi Mo Duan,” Huang said, fighting out the words, ragged darkness fluttering at the edges of this vision. “You were cast out for your cruelty and undisciplined behavior. How can this be? Why are you here, how did you get in?”

Duan held the broken blade of the knife forward so his former master could see. “Ray Zeal sends his regards, old man. When you are dead I will lead the Green Ribbons to glory and blood, as is fitting an army of assassins.”

The broken blade was crystalline and a deep red in color. “Even such as you are vulnerable to red jade, old ghost. Your guards are dead. And now you will join them.”

The jade knife flashed downward.

The Wheel of Fortune

The noonday sky was dark with screaming crows as Ray Zeal and his followers rode into Golgotha. Zeal rode at the fore, smiling atop his golden palomino. To his right rode Charles Cook and to his left was Colonel Whitmore. Behind them was Cook’s private, fanatical army, the Praetorians, under Whitmore’s bloody command. Then the wagons and support for the Praetorians, and finally Zeal’s devoted worshipers, his cult, the Teeth of Cain.

A clan of gypsy murderers from South Carolina, part of the cult, played the drums and the tambourine, along with the eerie moan of the squeezebox and the panpipes, the accordion and the violin, as their garishly painted
vardo
rolled among the procession. The Romani’s eyes were hooded and cold as they viewed the drunken, stupid Gaje who clapped and danced to their music but had no idea it was a funeral dirge.

Some of the cultists looked like death riding in off a long trail. They wore black dusters and wide brimmed campaign hats. Black cloth or leather masks covered their heads to hide their self-inflicted deformities. Many of the cult had hacked away their lips, ears, and eyelids over the years, and ate them in ritual sacrifice to Zeal, their bloodthirsty god.

Professor Zenith, riding his odd little cart packed with arcane-looking devices, rolled up the back of the procession, along with a small rear guard of Praetorians. All told, the force Zeal led into town was almost a hundred strong.

The sides of Main Street were filled with the less savory locals who hooted and shouted as the procession passed; many set guns off in the air in celebration. Zeal laughed and waved to the well-wishers.

Others standing on the sides of the streets were less enthusiastic; those who had tarried too long or loss track of time were now forced to watch grimly as a seeming army entered their town. These few unfortunate souls grabbed their bundles and their packages and hurried home to hide and pray for the commotion to be over, and to hope that not too many died in the latest installment of the madness that came with living in Golgotha.

The streets were emptier than usual. Many folks had decided today was a good day to stay home, while others lay sick or dead in their homes or businesses, victims of the Brechts’ poisonous ministrations.

The procession moved forward, Whitmore barking orders to his men to disperse and cover key locations in the town. Troops and members of the cult peeled off from the main group as the eerie parade slowly advanced north up Main Street.

“Can you smell it?” Zeal said to Cook. “Fear and madness. It’s as if this town had littered the streets with rose petals for me. I’m going to like it here.”

*   *   *

The Paradise Falls was empty. Kerry Duell, Georgie Nance and the other employees, the bar girls, the match girl, were all no-shows today. Malachi Bick sat alone at his favorite red-felt faro table and shuffled and dealt himself a spread of tarot cards. He flipped a card, the Hanged Man, as Jon Highfather entered the mausoleum-quiet saloon.

“Malachi, still not too late to get you out of here,” Highfather said. Bick said nothing. He shuffled and tossed out another card, the Queen of Cups.

“Has the stage left?” Bick asked. “Someone very dear to me is supposed to be on it.”

“The stages haven’t showed up in over a day,” Highfather said. “Zeal’s people have blockaded the roads. I sent Jim and Constance out there.”

Bick frowned. He gathered the card and tossed a final one on the red table: the Magician.

“Did you pray today, Jonathan?” Bick asked.

“Nope,” Highfather said. “You?”

“No,” Bick said. “Come, Sheriff, let’s go greet our guests.”

*   *   *

Zeal’s procession, accompanied by the town’s reprobates and onlookers, stopped before town hall. Zeal climbed off his horse and pulled off his riding gloves. As he walked toward the doors of the hall, they crashed opened and two of the Praetorians led out a disheveled and slightly bloody Colton Higbee—Mayor Pratt’s assistant. Higbee was shuddering. His glasses were broken and sat on his face at an odd angle.

“Where’s the mayor?” Zeal asked his two followers.

“Gone, Lord,” one of the Praetorians said. “Checked his house too. This is his assistant. He will read it.”

Zeal handed a rolled parchment to Higbee with a smile and leaned close to the terrified young man’s ear. “Read this aloud when I tell you to, make it official, and I’ll make sure you and your parents aren’t dinner tonight, Mr. Higbee.”

“How do you know about me and my family?” Higbee said.

“I know everything about this town and everyone in it,” Zeal said. “Now be a good boy and follow my lead.”

Zeal turned to address the crowd. “Good people of Golgotha, I have with me Mr. Higbee, your mayor’s duly recognized agent. He has something to announce to all of you—a proclamation from Mayor Pratt. Read, Mr. Higbee.”

Higbee’s voice wavered as he spoke, the fear making it crack and warble. “To all citizens of Golgotha, effective immediately, I, Harry Pratt, mayor, do hereby proclaim Ray Zeal the new sheriff of Golgotha and do duly deputize his men as peace officers for the Town of Golgotha.

“Several new laws, regulations and town ordinances are listed below and will be posted at town hall and in other public places. They take effect immediately, including the imposition of town-wide curfew, and a warrant for the arrest of Malachi Bick and Jon Highfather, as well as anyone aiding or abetting these criminals. This is done by my hand this twenty-third day of November, 1870, Harrison Pratt, mayor of Golgotha.”

A rumble of dissent and confusion spread through the crowd.

“What the hell?” an angry voice called out.

“Nobody said nothing about gittin’ rid of Jon! This is a load of horse apples!”

“Curfew? Who the fuck said anything about a damned curfew!”

The angry voices were joined by many of the troublemakers who had welcomed Zeal to town like Caesar returning to Rome.

“Hell yeah!” a drunken voice snarled, “’Bout time that crowbait Highfather got what was coming to him! Let’s string him up again! This time we’ll do it right!”

“We’re with ya, Ray!” another voice shouted.

“Shut the fuck up, you damn lick-fingers!” another voice called. “Have a little respect for the sheriff!”

Zeal plucked the parchment away from Higbee and handed it back to a Praetorian. “Find Pratt, check his house again. He couldn’t have just crawled into a hole and hid. But first, nail this to the door.”

As one of Cook’s mercenaries hammered the proclamation onto the door of town hall, Zeal called out to the crowd. “Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, good people, and as your new sheriff, I promise you the best celebration you’ve ever had!”

A cheer came up from the crowd, not as boisterous or as heartfelt as before the reading of the proclamation, but still given voice by a large number of those gathered. Many of those who had protested the proclamation had either fled to their homes or had been beaten or bullied into silence now.

“You ain’t sheriff of nothing, Zeal,” a voice called out from the center of Main Street, behind the crowd and Zeal’s party.

Jon Highfather and Malachi Bick strode down the center of the street, toward the assembly. “Mayor Pratt didn’t write that,” Highfather said, “and it has no more legitimacy than that smile of yours. You are disturbing the peace and you and your men are to disperse right now and head for the town limits, or I’m going to have to arrest the lot of you.”

A rumble of nervous laughter ran through the crowd. Highfather stood his ground. One of the Teeth of Cain stepped forward, a man in his late twenties dressed like a range rider. He had a battered Stetson and a heavy pistol hanging at his hip, slung in gunfighter fashion.