The Six-Gun Tarot (36 page)

“All right, that’s enough, both of you,” Highfather said, separating the two men. “We’ve got work to do. Harry, I need you and Jim at the social, just like we planned.”

“Plan?” Mutt said.

“Harry and I figured, since whatever this thing we’re dealing with is seems to be grabbing people when they are alone, having the social and getting as much of the town there as we can makes good sense. We can take a head count and see exactly how many and who have gone missing and who hasn’t and we can get everyone out of town a lot quicker if they are all in one place, in case any of these fools are looking to start hurting people tonight.”

“The elders are on board,” Harry said. “We’ve got most of the Mormon population at the social and plenty of wagons, carts, buggies, horses and even mules to get folks away if we need to. But I still think I should go with you to get Holly.”

Highfather shook his head. “This was your idea, Harry, and it’s a damn good one. But more than just an escape plan, we need to show the townsfolk that haven’t run off that everything is going to be fine.”

“Is it?” Jim asked earnestly.

Highfather scowled at the boy, and then continued. “Mutt and I will take the boys up to the squatters’ camp and roust ’em. I’m only taking a small group up the mountain with us. I want you and my acting deputy to coordinate the rest of the posse down here in town.”

“Acting deputy?” Pratt said.

Highfather handed a silver badge to Jim. The boy’s face lit up and for a moment the ghosts in his eyes were banished and he was a young man again.

Pratt sighed and shook his head. “Just remember who you work for, ‘Deputy,’” the mayor said.

Jim smiled and winked at Highfather. “I do, sir. I do.”

“Anything goes wrong, anywhere, we meet back here, agreed?” the sheriff said. “Jim, you and Harry grab a rifle and some shells. Here, take these silver ones too.”

“Silver?” Jim said, frowning as the sheriff dropped the rounds into his open palm.

“Just do what the sheriff says, boy,” Pratt said as he, too, accepted the bullets. “Jon, you had damn well better explain all this to me and soon. The last time I saw silver bullets it was—”

“I know, Harry,” Highfather said. “I remember too, but better safe than sorry with this crew we’re dealing with.”

“You don’t know the half of it, Jon,” Mutt said.

“Tell me on the way,” Highfather said, reaching for his hat. “Let’s ride!”

A bloated, pockmarked moon leered over the cold shadows of the desert rocks as the posse ascended Argent Mountain along the narrow road. The desert heat of the rocks escaped into the purple night sky, like a soul slipping free of a corpse in the death rattle. The stars hid and the coyotes were silent.

Highfather and Mutt exchanged tales in low voices while the six men accompanying them rode a few dozen yards behind them.

“So this thing,” Highfather said, “this Ucktenner—”

“Uktena,” Mutt corrected.

“Sorry, this
Uktena,
this great serpent, is older than death. It can’t be killed and it’s mad at God for bringing life into the universe, and it’s going to destroy the world and this all starts here in Golgotha, now? Is that it?”

“Close enough for a white fella, yeah.”

“I miss rousting drunken cowboys. Holly was … not Holly. Maybe this Uktena is what got ahold of her. She changed Earl, turned him into something like her. You said Wynn told you Earl had been keeping company with a preacher staying over at the Reid place on the northwest slope?”

“Yep,” Mutt said. “Earl and all the others who went crazy. You figure this preacher is behind what’s happened to Holly and the other folks in town who’ve been getting sick?”

“It’s what we’ve got right now. You still got Earl’s Bible?”

“Yeah. It’s in my bag. I was going to give it to you to look over, but then that jackass Pratt sent me off on a damn fool’s errand.”

“Things have been kind of hectic around here,” Highfather said.

“When ain’t they?” Mutt said with a smile.

“How do you kill something that’s older than death?” Highfather asked.

“With a power that’s more than mortal,” Mutt said. “Least that’s what I heard. Simple.”

“Thanks, that really cleared things up.”

The squatter camp was silent and dark. No cook fires burned, no songs, no sounds of banjos or mouth harps, no drunken brawls or squeals of pleasure. No laughter, no life.

The lawmen rode slowly through the camp, past empty shacks and shanties. The only sounds were the night howl of the mountain wind running wild between the dwellings, the eerie rattle of pots and pans hung up on lines and the snap of fluttering canvas from vacant tents.

“Where in blazes is everybody?” Highfather muttered.

Mutt sniffed the air. “Not here. Not for a while. Let’s check the Mother Lode,” the deputy said.

The two men entered Wynn’s bar with guns drawn. Highfather carried a lantern since the place was as dark as the grave. The Mother Lode was a shambles—tables overturned, chairs broken—but there were no bodies, no blood.

“All right,” Highfather said, holstering his pistol. “Let’s get to the Reid homestead. I guess that’s where the party is.”

Edward Gabriel Reid was another one of Golgotha’s mysteries. A prospector with a shady past, Reid arrived in town in 1856. He was the man who discovered silver up on the mountain they renamed Argent, and it made the drifter a gentleman of means. Reid’s partner, Malachi Bick, helped finance the opening of the Argent Mine and it made Bick’s family even wealthier than they already were.

Reid, as the manager of the mine as well as owner, built a large, fine house on the southeastern slope of Argent, close to the mine if there was anything that demanded his attention. He married a beautiful Chinese woman, which caused quite the scandal at the time. He bragged that Argent had enough silver in its bosom to make every man in Nevada rich, sparking the boom that grew Golgotha virtually overnight. Reid was even eyeing the possibility of taking the mayor’s office away from the Pratt machine.

There were other stories about Reid too, stories about things that had happened in his mansion—odd rituals and rites, lavish parties with bizarre, almost satanic excesses. The place was said to be haunted with the spirits of the men who had died in the mine due to Reid’s greed and impatience.

In 1859, Reid vanished without a trace. His wife sold Argent Mountain to the Bick family a few months later, took her wealth and moved to San Francisco. The rumors said Bick had tried to buy Reid out and he wouldn’t budge. It was no secret that Malachi Bick’s enemies had a habit of disappearing.

The Reid house had been rented by various mine managers for a few more years until Bick declared the mine bust and closed it. The house had sat vacant for the last few years, a decaying sentinel looking down on any who entered Golgotha from the south.

As they approached the house through the weed-choked, rocky field, the posse could hear singing. It was a strange sound and it made the horses shuffle uneasily, even the normally unflappable Muha. The voices sounded reversed, shrill. No words could be made out clearly, but the mad joy, the ecstasy, was plain in the delivery. It reminded Highfather of a circus’s hurdy-gurdy organ, only made of human throats.

There were dancing lights and shadows in the broken windows—candlelight and wild, almost spastic dancing to the hellish cadence. Mutt suddenly felt the same dread swell up in him he had felt in old Earl’s shack. He swallowed it down, tightening his grip on Muha’s reins.

“Easy now,” Highfather whispered. “We got a job to do. Let’s do it. Mutt, you take Collins and Shepp and come in the back way, in case they try to rabbit down Backtrail Road. Josh, you and the others are with me.”

The horses began to whinny as the voices inside the house rose in volume and frenzy. Highfather gave the signal to dismount and the posse left the spooked animals near the edge of the yard. Mutt and his boys vanished into the shadows to the left of the front door. Highfather stepped onto the rotted porch’s steps, careful to avoid the broken boards and gaping holes. The singing was now a chant. A powerful voice leading many. Highfather could make it out through the door.

“Hail, hail that which cannot die.

All grovel to He Who eternal lies, the true one, the all-seeing eye!

Couched in blessed darkness, bound in light and lies, the ending of all that thrives, awaiting the time that ends all times.

The mindless dancer at the edge of mind, the Bridegroom to the Black Mother with a thousand bleating, hungry young—”

He reached the door and put his hand slowly on the tarnished doorknob. He hefted his pistol, cocked the hammer and slowly, slowly turned the knob.

There was a terrible crash behind him as Carl Jesper fell through a decayed step. Highfather winced and looked back at the rancher. He was up to his chest in the rotten stairs, surrounded by a cloud of dust and sand.

“Dammit, Carl!” Josh Pedigo hissed. Josh didn’t have time to finish his admonishment. Dozens of filthy arms reached up through the shadows beneath the stairs, grabbed Jesper with black, oily fingers and pulled him, screaming, down into the darkness.

Highfather felt the doorknob jerk free from his hand. He turned to find himself staring into the face of Oscar Deerfield. The mine owner’s eyes were viscous, weeping pools of darkness. Its mouth yawned open and more of the oil-like substance oozed out, revealing yellowed teeth and a fat, black worm-like thing where the tongue should be. The worm thing shook like a diamondback’s rattle trying to rip itself free of Deerfield’s mouth.

Highfather felt hands on his throat, raised his pistol and fired. The world exploded in harsh light, deafening thunder and the stench of cordite.

Deerfield’s headless body fell to the side.

“Everybody in, now!” Highfather shouted over the screams and gunfire that were erupting behind him. The lurkers that had dragged poor Carl Jesper down were now pouring out from their lair below the front steps, like a swarm of hungry rats. They were mostly squatters and they, too, leaked the black stuff from every orifice.

One them lunged at Josh Pedigo, who stood frozen in fear, mouth agape. The thing clamped its mouth to Pedigo’s even as he overcame his fear, screamed and pumped thirty-ought rifle rounds into its chest. The scream ended abruptly. He staggered backward from the squatter thing and clawed at his throat, struggling, choking. He fell to the ground making sounds like a trapped animal, rolled onto his side and was still. The squatter thing he shot leaked black fluid from the chest wounds, but seemed unharmed by the point-blank rifle shots. It turned and lumbered toward another terrified deputy.

“Silver!” Highfather yelled as he fired to cover two of his men who had followed him onto the porch and through the front door. “Use the silver rounds!” He holstered the pistol and cocked the Winchester. The voices were louder inside, the chant growing more insistent by the moment.

“Hail, hail that which cannot die!

Hail the dweller in darkness!

Hail the Effigy of hate!

Hail the many-legged goat!

Hail the beast!

Greatest of the Old Ones, the One True God of matter and decay…”

Another one of the things shambled into view in the old house’s foyer. Highfather recognized it—Vic LaSalle. He had worked odd jobs for Haglund, the butcher, liked to play faro on Friday nights at the Paradise. Told a good joke. More creatures appeared, descending the hall stairs toward the sheriff and the deputies.

“Vic, stop, right now. Only warning you get.”

“Hail the Greate Olde Wurm!” The voices wailed in ecstasy and terror, falling into alien chants now, lost to the frenzy of the collective power of the mass. The sound was more animal than human.

Vic opened its mouth; black ooze splattered on the floor. It kept walking.

“You boys got silver bullets loaded?”

“Yup.”

“Jesus almighty, Jon, what the hell is this?”

The things stumbled closer; their eyes were black mirrors, like a shark’s.

“Do you have the damned silver rounds?”

“Yes, yes!”

“Take the ones on the stairs.” The deputies leveled their rifles. Highfather aimed at LaSalle. “Powerful sorry Vic. Fire!”

The guns roared in the enclosed entry hall. The ones on the stairs fell, smoke pouring from their wounds, like steam from a kettle. Vic was driven back a few steps from the force of the bullets that ripped through its head and neck. Again, smoke pouring from the wounds, like its insides were on fire. It ended against a wall and slid to the floor, trailing smoking black ooze.

More of the creatures from outside were making their way up the stairs into the foyer, cutting off the men’s escape route. Josh Pedigo, reborn into darkness, led them.

“Go, go!” Highfather shouted as he cocked his rifle and hurried down the dark, narrow passage toward a large chamber full of candlelight and twisting shadows. He heard the men at his back firing, wildly. He hoped they were keeping track of the few precious silver rounds they still had. He heard more gunfire and figured it for Mutt’s party. None of the ruckus seemed to deter the wailing and chanting, which was definitely coming from the room ahead.

Highfather entered, sweeping his rifle before him. The room had once been a grand dining hall for entertaining bankers and speculators from Carson and Virginia City. Now it was a temple, a blasphemous shrine to whatever slumbering cosmic evil had devoured his town. The walls were covered with symbols, pictures, strange pictographs—all of which seemed to writhe and crawl like snakes in the shuddering light of hundreds of black and red candles. Feeble moonlight filtered through the dirty, broken wall of windows in the room. There were close to fifty or sixty townsfolk in the room, no, not townspeople, not anymore, creatures—the Stained. Men, women, children all bearing the dripping, oozing mark of the Greate Olde Wurm, all of them naked and writhing in debased congress with each other on the floor—a carpet of undulating, oily flesh. The room was thick with heat and the smell,
her
smell—the same as in the jailhouse—the heady, intoxicating, inhuman spoor, like all of man’s animal desires distilled and cast on the wind. Holly. She was here—she was the altar, nude, on her hands and knees, pale face slack with ecstasy, eyes squeezed shut with drops of oil, dripping,
pat, pat, pat,
between her lids. Her back was slick with blood, human blood, not the foul ichor that these creatures oozed. Highfather’s mind almost snapped when he saw its source.