The Six-Gun Tarot (23 page)

She rose quickly, violently, and hurled her glass at the towers of bottles and jugs behind the bar. Shards exploded everywhere. The salon was silent again.

“What the Jesse do you think you’re doing, you crazy bitch!” the barkeep bellowed, coming up on her fast. Phillips interposed himself between her and Milk-Eye.

“We’re leaving,” he said. “Perhaps this will cover the costs of the damages and any other expenses we might have accrued.”

He tossed something on the bar. The barkeep’s one good eye widened. A shiny nugget of rough-hewn silver shimmered in the lantern light.

Holly grabbed her bottle and took Phillips’s arm as she strode toward the door.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” she said.

It was cold outside. After the stifling heat and smoke of the Mother Lode, it felt good. She had no idea where the buggy was; she cared less. She took another long drag off the bottle, swallowed and then felt hot, scratchy bile claw its way up her throat. She gagged, burped and then laughed. She bumped into Phillips’s broad back, and fell down, still laughing.

“Did you see the look on his face when you dropped that silver down? I thought his eye was going to fall out!”

She took the calloused hand he offered, and he lifted her out of the rut-creased dirt road and she flopped forward into his arms.

“Gracious, you have big hands,” she muttered against his chest, still giggling. “Where on earth did you get that silver?”

“Come on,” he said “I’ll show you.”

He lifted her onto the wagon as easily as he might lift a small child. It was an old buckboard, with jagged gaps in a few of the rotted boards that made up the bed. There were several sealed wooden crates and a few hoop barrels sitting in the back. There was also something large and awkward shaped under a thick wool army horse blanket.

Phillips climbed up onto the seat next to her and took the reins. The horses snorted and fidgeted, pawing and stomping the ground.

“Something is spooking the poor things,” she said as she looked for her bottle.

“Yes,” he said. Tugging on the reins, he urged the frightened horses to volition, and the wagon lurched forward into the dark.

The fires at the summit of Argent Mountain were guttering in the burly desert winds, throwing shadows and sparks across the mining camp. It was late and most of the crews were asleep. Two sentries with rifles and lanterns stood watch by the main road. They waved Phillips’s wagon to a stop.

“What’s your business here at this godforsaken hour?” the older one said around a wad of chaw.

The younger one opened the eye of his lantern to get a better look at the occupants of the wagon. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Phillips, sir,” the younger one said.

The older one eyed Holly but said nothing.

“Dropping off a few things,” Phillips said.

“On your way then,” the old man said, waving them through with his lantern.

“You one of the men who bought the mine from Malachi Bick?” Holly said.

“No.”

They moved past the empty pavilions and the row upon row of dark and silent workers’ tents.

“How did those guards know you?”

“I work for the reverend. He is an advisor to the men who acquired the mine. They couldn’t have done it without the reverend’s help.”

“Why are we here? Where are you taking me?”

“You’ll see.”

“I want to know,” she said. The chill of the ride and curtness of Phillips’s answers were pushing the vague warmth out of Holly’s body and mind. It was beginning to dawn on her that home, Harry and safety were a distant point of light far across the gulf and that she was alone with a strange man in a strange, barren place. The anger she felt at Harry allowing her to be here gave way to the realization of where that anger had led her. She felt the panic begin to churn in her like white water.

“I’d like to go home now please,” she said. She tried to hide the shiver in her voice. Phillips pulled the buckboard to a stop, turned and regarded her. His eyes burned green, even in the pale starlight. For the first time he smiled. He pulled her to him and crushed her mouth to his. There had been a very narrow window when Holly had wanted this, when his words in the bar had made her feel rage and desire and need, but that time had passed. This man frightened her, and as his mouth forced its way into her own she felt a cold, slaughterhouse draft pass through her. His tongue was powerful and insistent. It seemed too pointed and too long, too deep. She tasted oily blood and gagged as she struggled to push away from him. She broke the kiss and felt the gorge rise in her belly, but before she could heave the foulness out of her, Phillips slapped her across the face. She saw bright light and fell. There was a harsh impact and sharp, jagged pain in her back. Everything fell into dizzy, drunken shadow. The last thing she saw was his beatific smile.

She awoke in cool echoes and unyielding darkness. He was carrying her like a sack of flour—by the legs, over his shoulder.

The mine. They were deep in the silver mine. She knew by the strange way the sound of his footsteps bounded and faded down the timber-ribbed tunnels and finally flattened, dead, against the unconquered walls of the mountain. She had been here once with Harry when he first became mayor, when he still loved her. The tunnels were still alive then with the light of lamps and filled with the sound of men warring against the Earth to give up its treasure.

“Why … Why are you doing this?” she asked, still too confused to be afraid. Her lips felt swollen and numb. She tasted blood. The vile aftertaste of Phillips’s tongue still remained. Even the blood and the cheap whiskey could not remove it.

“Be quiet,” he said. “He’ll explain everything. We’re almost there.”

“Help me!” she screamed, and struggled against him, pounding his back with her hands, trying to wiggle free. He swung her off his shoulder and she felt the mine floor smash into her back. She gasped and struggled to rise. She couldn’t breathe. He had her by the throat and lifted her effortlessly, above his head. There was no air and she struggled to keep from falling into a complete frenzy, but the fear was running through her like mad horses. She kicked him in the chest and ribs to no apparent effect.

“I don’t want you dead. He doesn’t want you dead. It would be easy if I wanted it, easy as killing an ant. Now be still and be quiet or I will rip out your tongue. He said I could do that if you gave me trouble.”

He returned her to the floor and eased his grip. Air, sweet air, came back into her aching lungs and she drank it in greedy gulps.

“My husband, the mayor, will make you pay for this,” she said.

“Is this the same husband you were going to rut with me to hurt?” Phillips said as he let her go. He pointed with the lantern toward a yawning passage. “Move.”

“Bastard!” she spit.

He said nothing, simply pushed her forward.

They reached a crude barricade in the middle of the shaft. A wooden sign declared that the tunnels ahead had not been fully shorn up and could collapse. Another sign said that there was blasting underway. Phillips grabbed her arm and pulled her around the barrier. They continued deeper into the dangerous tunnel.

Holly felt her ears pop as the slope continued ever downward. They had been walking so long time had stretched like taffy. The tunnels creaked and groaned with the weight of the world. Occasionally, dust and small bits of rock would rain down as the Earth breathed. It was getting hotter too; the darkness itself seemed to waver and ripple. Sweat tricked down her neck and back. She absently wondered if the mad deacon was walking her into Hell.

Phillips had paused twice—not for rest. He seemed to never tire, but the lantern did need tending. She was exhausted, sick and thirsty from the alcohol. The fear had time to congeal in her and had become a terrible weariness. She just wanted to rest, to lie down. She told herself she didn’t care where they were going or what he was going to do to her. Occasionally she would envision Harry with a torch in his hand, leading a group of the town’s men deep into the tunnels, in pursuit. But she did not believe it. No one was coming for her. No one knew she was here and no one would save her. No one.

The tunnel narrowed until Phillips’s head and chest were scraping the roof and walls, dislodging dust and small rocks with every step. His hand was an iron vice gripping her wrist as she trailed behind him. They came to an opening in the tunnel wall, surrounded by piles of rubble and dirt. The air smelled of gun smoke. Wooden crates marked with warnings to handle with care, coils of fuse, wire and box-like detonators were piled near the tunnel wall.

“In here,” Phillips said as he pushed her toward the hole. She climbed over the debris. On the other side of the hole there was nothing but yawning darkness, eternal night. The floor was smooth, flat—like it had been sanded, polished. There were tiny scratches in its surface.

“What is this?” she whispered. Her voice echoed in the vast black.

“You have passed outside of reason,” he said. “Older powers govern here.”

She focused on the rock face of the floor, illuminated in Phillips’s lantern. Her eyes had adjusted as best they could to the feeble light. The gray surface gave way to silvery black; occasionally light would reflect back at her like a shower of stars. Silver, the floor was almost pure silver. The scratches became alien markings and symbols on the silver face. They made her feel sick, strange, uncomfortable in her skin, as if her brain were plotting against her behind her face. They seemed to slither and squirm like worms in a hot skillet. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore them, but many of the images burned their way into her eyes through the lids. Other sang to her in voices that had no throats.

“Move,” Phillips said with a shove. She staggered forward across the Argent floor. Eventually she saw an island of light in the darkness. Its appearance excited her, spurred her on, even as it filled her with dread. These were her last thoughts, last moments, last breaths. She couldn’t muster the strength to weep.

A lantern on the floor was the source of the light. A man stood behind it, his features swallowed up in the shadows. He was neither as tall nor as powerful in build as Phillips, but he stood very straight. Holly could see he had a mane of hair and whiskers the color of ash. He wore a simple flat-brimmed hat and a knee-length coat—both black.

“Very good, Phillips,” the old man said. The voice was as smooth as broken leather, cloying as honey. “You’ve served me well, as always, my loyal friend.”

Phillips shoved her forward and she fell upon the black, glittering floor. The old man knelt and cupped her face. She could see his face now; he was probably in his sixties. His eyes were kind and blue.

“Hello, Holly,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you for a long time. I’m the Reverend Ambrose Ashton Smith. You can call me Ambrose. Welcome.”

He helped her to her feet.

“I found her right where you said I would,” Phillips said to the old man. “A whore, a fallen woman among the wrenched and the wicked. Lost and seeking guidance.”

“Good. Holly, have you ever heard of the Book of Judas? No? Did you realize that much of the original Bible included chapters of Gnostic wisdom?” Ambrose said. “They were purged from the King James Version, many of them lost and destroyed. Lost wisdom destroyed out of fear and narrow-mindedness. They were misunderstood, reviled, much like your own Mormon texts, as not fitting with the clockwork view of the universe as presented by the lying god’s groveling servants.”

The very air rippled with heat; it was hard to breathe, to think. The fear was on her again, awoken by the old man’s calm, warm, sincere insane voice. Fear, like a mad bird trapped in a chimney, fluttering, smashing itself blindly. Its instincts crying to fly, to escape to be free.

“What is wrong with you people?” she screamed as she tried to free herself from Ambrose’s steely grip “Dear Lord, please help me! Somebody help me!”

“Oh, it will help you,” Ambrose said as he dragged her forward, toward the well. It was a simple ring of stone within another ring of silver. At its center was darkness. The crawling symbols gave name to something that existed before the time of names. Their silent chants drummed into Holly’s mind—a relentless tattoo of obscenity.

“You are the one we have awaited,” he said as he forced her to her knees before the well. “The Bride of the Greate Wurm, the Whore of Babylon, the Bitch-Mother of a thousand young.”

Phillips approached her. He held a huge knife. He opened his wrist before her wide, frightened eyes as casually as one might snip a hangnail. She screamed as he turned his wrist over. Instead of blood gushing out, a viscous stream of black, foul-smelling ooze slowly drained from his opened vein.

“Dear God!” she screamed. “This is not happening; this is not really happening!”

“Take the communion from your bridegroom,” Ambrose said, clutching the back of her head. “Drink, whore.”

She struggled as Phillips’s massive wrist was slowly smashed to her lips. She fought to clamp her mouth closed as the foul, oily substance was smeared across her face.

Where are you, Harry? Why didn’t you come? Why?

Her nose was pinched closed with iron-vice fingers.

“Drink the Milk of the Wurm; grow in strength and understanding from the communion,” he said, his voice full of mad joy. “Glory unto the True God, the First God, the Keeper of Darkness and Patron of Unmaking.
Ia, ia, Muhog-ian, fhtagluhian!
Glory to the First God!”

She gagged as the “milk” made its way past her lips. Its stench, its vile taste, awoke some old, dreaming part of her brain, of her soul—a part that knew the well, knew what was on the other side of it. Knew the chanting and knew it meant something far more terrible and unnatural than death. She swallowed the blackness and felt it open her, fold her like paper.

“Glory to God,” Ambrose said as Phillips lifted her like a rag doll and threw her into the maw of the well. “Accept this offering, that you may be free.”

She fell into hot, humming, dizzy darkness. The place between stars, the moment between the last breath of life and the rattle of death, the black pause of awareness before murder. She fell.