Gasper opened the door to find Juan lying on his side, mumbling something. “He’s big,” he told Sterling as he nodded to the Fanta bottle. “Grab my cachana.”
“Will do.” Before exiting the trailer, Sterling stuck his unlit cigarette in his mouth and took a look at the liquid inside the plastic three-liter bottle. He shook it, and unscrewed the top to see what it smelled like. There was something fermented about the scent, a hint of grain to it as well, and Sterling was not at all a fan. He stepped out of the trailer. “This is some rank shit, Gasper.”
“Eeeee, it’s not so strong.”
“Says you.” Sterling handed the old man the bottle, which Don Gasper quickly sent to his inventory list.
“And the joint?”
Sterling gave him the joint he’d rolled and lit it for the shaman. “And the Juan?”
“Si, Juan está bien; Juan está bien.” Gasper exhaled a cloud of gray smoke and turned to the hill outside of the semi abandoned trailer park.
“How am I going to get you up there?” Sterling asked Juan as he watched Don Gasper slowly make a zigzag pattern toward the top of the hill, his intoxication already showing.
“Wh-what?” Juan asked, coming alive, his eyes bloodshot, snot dripping from the tip of his nose. Sterling retrieved his bottle of tequila and stepped back inside the trailer to find a glass. He found one rimmed with grime, and used the end of his duster to clean it out. He then filled the glass with tequila, easily four ounces’ worth.
He returned to Juan.
“Drink this.”
“¿Qué?” the man asked again, confusion painting across his face.
“Amigo, you need to drink this. It’ll be better for both of us if you do.”
“Okay, I drink…” Juan took the glass from Sterling and finished it. “Wheeee…” he said, his eyes softening as the alcohol hit his bloodstream.
Sterling pointed at Don Gasper, Juan barely able to focus on him. “We’ve got to get you up that hill.”
“¿Qué?”
Rather than say anything, Sterling went to the man’s side and helped him stand. Keeping his arm under his shoulder, Sterling slowly began to lead Juan toward the hill.
“¿A… a dónde vamos?”
“Up the hill. I need your help with something. And don’t worry, ain’t nobody going to hurt you, or try to do something fucked up to you. Nothing like that, at least not that I know of. You’re going to see a shaman up there. His name is Don Gasper, in case you were curious.”
“Don… Gasper?” he asked, his English heavily accented.
“I’ve known him for several years now, a bit of an old kook, and a pain in the ass when he’s high, but he’ll know what to do,” Sterling told Juan, as if he were an old friend. The man’s weight on his shoulder became increasingly heavy and he stank of sweat, liquor, and swamp ass, a hint of body odor as well, Sterling wishing he didn’t have to keep his head so close to Juan’s armpit. The big man started to drag his feet halfway up the hill, and Sterling had to do all the work, the cowboy necromancer cursing with each step he took.
He finally reached the top of the hill, Sterling sweating profusely by this point. He tried to set Juan down easily, but the man didn’t let him do that, and fell face first into the dirt instead. “Son of a bitch,” Sterling said as he finally lit the cigarette that had been hanging out on the corner of his mouth this entire time. He finished his smoke, drank some water from his inventory list, and watched as Don Gasper went about making a circle of small stones, all of them black. The circle was nine feet in diameter, and once he was almost finished making it, he motioned for Sterling to bring Juan to the center of the circle.
“Yeah, yeah, just give me a damn minute,” Sterling said as he took another swig of water. He turned to look out over the trailer park, and Las Cruces beyond that. Everything was bathed in yellow dust, the late afternoon sun creating a murky desert haze over the city, no oases in sight. He couldn’t quite see the interstate from here, considering their current elevation, but he got a sense of where he was in relation to the quickest way out of here.
Boy, am I ready to get this show on the road, Sterling thought as he ashed his cigarette.
Once he was ready, he dragged Juan over to Don Gasper and deposited him in the middle of the circle. He then helped Don Gasper arrange the stones around the drunken man, searching around for dark stones and placing them until the circle was complete.
“You still haven’t told me exactly how this is going to work.”
“You need to turn his… his… shirt inside out,” Don Gasper said, the effects of the peyote, the marijuana, and the witchroot he’d been drinking starting to become evident through the size of his pupils and the shakiness of his voice.
“You’re serious?”
“Of course.”
Sterling approached Juan, and after some mumbled conversation, he was able to get the man’s shirt off and turn it inside out. He then placed the shirt back on his body, feeling as if he were trying to dress a pig. Juan lay down again.
“He’s going to… need to sit up,” Don Gasper said.
“He’s drunk as hell; I don’t think he’s going to be able to sit up.”
“Get that big stone… Prop him up. He needs to be sitting.”
Sterling followed Don Gasper’s gaze to a relatively large stone, big enough that it could certainly smash someone’s head in. He went to retrieve it, and brought it into the circle. “Get your ass up,” he told Juan.
“¿Qué?”
He kicked Juan lightly, and was finally able to set the stone at the small of his back to prevent him from lying down.
“Better?”
“Better,” Don Gasper said.
“What now?”
“We sit, we wait. Once… the sun is down… that’s when.”
The two did just that, Don Gasper continuing to eat peyote buttons as they sat outside of the circle of stones, Sterling keeping an eye on Juan. While he might have been a drunk, he was a well-behaved drunk, the big man rarely moving or making any gestures to indicate that he was uncomfortable.
Eventually, and after several cigarettes, a couple Big Jim peppers, more water, a piss, more tequila, another piss, and another joint or two for Don Gasper, the sun set and the ritual was set to begin. Don Gasper, now hunched over as he approached Juan, nearly stumbled backward.
“Are you okay?” Sterling asked as he came to Gasper’s side.
“No problemo… no problemo,” the shaman mumbled. He withdrew a hand broom made of peacock feathers from his inventory list and began slapping Juan across the face as he chanted: “Bagabi laca bachabe; Lamac cahi achababe; Karrelyos.”
Sterling shook his head as he watched the ritual. “That definitely ain’t Spanish,” he mumbled as Don Gasper muttered the incantation again, Juan oblivious to his actions.
The shaman began moving in circles around Juan. Sterling stepped back as Don Gasper rushed to the outer rim of the stones and bent forward, vomiting. He wiped his mouth, looked up at Sterling with wild eyes, and continued the ritual, Juan starting to shake, his eyes clenched shut.
What the hell are you doing here? Sterling thought, but then something caught his attention—movement on the horizon. He focused on it, realizing that it had all the qualities of a mirage. Something was standing there, a figure cloaked in black, silhouetted by the stars above. Goosebumps rose on Sterling’s arms, his hand naturally finding its place on the grip of his sickle-sword.
“Shee-it…” he mumbled as the figure started to float toward the Juan Circle.
The pace of Don Gasper’s chanting picked up: “Bagabi laca bachabe; Lamac cahi achababe; Karrelyos. Bagabi laca bachabe; Lamac cahi achababe; Karrelyos.”
Sterling tensed as the cloaked figure neared the circle. The figure began to shrink in size until it was now in the form of a coyote.
Am I drunk? Sterling wondered. He didn’t feel drunk, but he had been drinking tequila, trying to match Don Gasper’s narcotic intake with his own. P
aralyzed with something akin to fear, Sterling watched as the coyote approached the circle. Don Gasper stopped chanting. He lowered the broom of peacock feathers and whistled at Sterling.
“There she is,” Don Gasper said, just about as tense as Sterling had ever seen him.
The coyote sat, just a few feet away from Juan’s back.
“She’s here,” Don Gasper said, his voice thin and whispery. “Ask her. Ask her, Sterling, I need to send her away before she sticks around,” said the old shaman, clearly spooked. “Hurry!”
“Where…” Sterling swallowed. “Where do I find the Sunflower Kid?”
The coyote licked her lips.
“I’m looking for the Sunflower Kid. I’m looking to do some damage to these goddamn Godwalkers, and I need… I need the Kid. Where do I find the Sunflower Kid?” he asked, his voice trembling.
Once again, the coyote licked her lips.
Sterling was about to ask one more time when the coyote spoke in a feminine voice: “Sunflowers grow on the airy side of the mountain. Head north.”
The coyote turned away and Don Gasper let out a jubilant cry, which woke Juan.
“What the…?” he started to ask, but by this point Sterling had already tuned Juan out, his focus now on the coyote as it began to morph back into a cloaked human, the witch’s back to him as she floated away.
“Callate pinche la boca,” Don Gasper mumbled to Juan as he hit him in the face a few times with his peacock broom.
“Hey!”
“You remember what she said?” Gasper asked Sterling, wide-eyed, twitchy. “I can’t remember.”
“That was an actual witch?”
“Never mind that, do you remember?” Don Gasper asked, the shaman clearly battling intoxication. “Do you… remember what she said?”
“Something about sunflowers growing on the airy side of a mountain, to head north.”
“That’s what you need to do, mi vaquero nigromante, head north… sunflowers on the airy side of a mountain. Write it!”
“But what does that even mean?”
“Who are you people?” Juan asked as he started to press himself to his feet. “¿Dónde diablos estoy?”
When neither Sterling nor Don Gasper responded, the big man took a look around, got a sense of where he was, and took off toward the trailer park. Juan ended up slipping on his way down the hill, cursing as he slid through a couple of small bushes and a cactus on his way down.
“You are supposed to head north… not to the east, not to Roxy, no, no. If you head north… figure it out. You need to write… must write… the message. Before we forget. Write,” Gasper said.
Sterling got out his book of desert haiku and a pen. He equipped his flashlight as well and turned it on, holding it between his teeth as he hastily scrawled the phrase on a clean sheet of paper.
“Let’s rest.” Don Gasper nodded to the trailer. “Must rest…”
“That trailer is stuffy; I’d rather sleep outside.”
The old shaman turned back to Sterling, a solemn expression taking shape on his face. “No. The witches are out… Better to be inside.”
.Chapter Twelve.
It took a couple more shots of tequila for Sterling to actually fall asleep. He always found himself behaving like this around Don Gasper, trying to match the man tit for tat, drink for narcotic. Yet he secretly knew there was no matching Gasper’s unique ability to consume drugs and conjure witches. As Sterling fell asleep, he recalled the cloaked figure and the coyote that she had morphed into.
If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it.
The trailer was warm enough that he needed to crack a window in the middle of the night, Sterling on the musty couch, Don Gasper on a thick sleeping bag he carried in his inventory list. The shaman slept like a dead man, on his back, peaceful, his arms crossed over his chest. Sterling heard dozens of coyotes that night, much closer to the window than they should have been. The sounds of their cries amidst the terrible wind blowing outside woke him several times, the cowboy necromancer strangely comforted by the fact that Don Gasper had put out a ward by placing a ring of salt around the trailer.
Sterling awoke the next morning to the smell of a strange earthy substance, something rooty and robust. He found Don Gasper standing at the gas-powered stove boiling water and sprinkling yucca into it, a clear look to his eyes.
“I can’t remember what happened last night,” Don Gasper mumbled. Sterling located his cowboy hat and placed it on his head. He cracked the window even more and rolled up a cigarette as he looked out to the hill they’d been on the previous night.
“Do you mind?” he asked Don Gasper, showing him the cigarette.
“Smoke your heart out.”
“Trying to. And just in case you were wondering, your Juan Circle worked.”
“I don’t remember exactly what happened after I started chanting. Something came, right?” he asked, the sad look in his eyes telling Sterling that Don Gasper meant it, that Gasper truly was troubled by the fact he couldn’t remember anything from the ritual.
“Yup, something came. A cloaked figure; I’m guessing it was a woman based on her shape and the fact you called her a ‘she.’ Then the figure turned into a coyote. She spoke to me.”
“And what did she say?”
Sterling accessed his desert haiku book and read the message aloud: “Sunflowers grow on the airy side of the mountain. Head north.”
“A riddle, no?”
“Seems like one. Does it mean anything to you?”
Gasper poured the tea into two cups and handed one to Sterling. “It’s not quite coffee, but it has little bit of a kick to it. Yucca, ginger, a bit of cachana, but not enough to make you hallucinate.”
“I ain’t trying to hallucinate.”
“Nor am I, I got plans as well,” Gasper said. “Drink. It’ll give you energy.”
“I got some jerky and peppers if you want some.”
“I have some tortillas, fresh made yesterday morning.”
“Shit yeah, let’s warm them sons of bitches up,” Sterling said as he took a puff off the cigarette.
“To answer your question,” Gasper said as he cleared his throat, “if that’s what the coyote told you, that riddle, then that’s where you have to go. North.”
“Hell, I needed to head north anyway to find Raylan,” Sterling said as he took a sip of strong brew. “I figured I would try to recruit him.”
“Who’s that again?” Don Gasper asked as he started warming one of the tortillas.
“Flectomancer, you know him. He’s in Madrid; I’ll avoid Albuquerque and take the Turquoise Trail instead. Either way, it’s north, and maybe I’ll be able to sniff out the meaning of this message about the Sunflower Kid along the way. What about you? What plans do you got?”
“First, read me one of your desert haiku like you promised.”
“Sort of put me on the spot over here,” Sterling said as he took another sip of the strong brew. “They’re personal.”
“You told me that last time. Let’s hear one, then I’ll tell you my plans, because I think that you and I can link up again. In fact,” Gasper turned to him and smiled, baring his yellow teeth, “I foresee it.”
“Shoot me now,” Sterling said with a grin. “Not going to lie: every time I link up with you, I find myself doing weirder and weirder shit.”
Don Gasper laughed. He handed Sterling one of the hot tortillas, and Sterling readily ate it.
“Ain’t bad. You make this?”
“Me? No, no. One of my lovers.”
Sterling snorted. “One of your lovers? What about that shaman woman, what was her name?”
Don Gasper grew serious. “Magdalena. First your desert haiku, then I will tell you my plan,” he said as he went back to cooking another tortilla. “We can speak of my lovers at another time, but not Magdalena, she’s special.”
“Fine, fine,” Sterling said as he flipped through his book. He found one that he had
written on the heat of the desert and went for it: “Light my skin aflame. Flowers, shrubs, and trees look parched. Find me some damn shade.”
“Heh,” Don Gasper said as he took the tortilla off the burner and stuffed it in his mouth. “Find me some damn shade. I had to do that this summer, was in Mexico at one point, just wandering through the desert like Jesucristo as I searched for poisonous toads. Had a vision…” He trailed off for a moment as he thought of something. Gasper swallowed what he was eating and continued. “Thanks for reading that to me.”
“My pleasure.”
“Mi poeta nigromante.”
“Please, no.”
“Now, as for my plans—”
“—Don’t tell me it’s another shaman festival?” Sterling joked. “Because that ended poorly last time, and I ain’t saving your ass again. Also, to be clear: I still don’t know what all the blood and the snake was about.”
“A shaman is like a magician, he never reveals his tricks. No, no festival this time. Maybe next time I visit Las Cruces. As for my plans… my plans are very simple, yet will probably turn out to be complex in the end: I’m going to meet you in Alamogordo. Surprise.”
“Alamogordo, huh?”
“Si, the closest city to the White Sands desert, where the militia is. I assume that’s where you’ll head after you get the Sunflower Kid and meet your flectomancer.”
“Actually, yeah, that does make sense. I still need to look for Zephyr, but maybe it’s best to get Roxy before I do.”
“Yes, get Roxy. You need her.”
“Try telling her that,” Sterling said under his breath.
“And someone has to do something about these pinche maleficiadores. I can’t have these evil sorcerers trying to attack me again, Magdalena included. I’m going to head in that direction later today, to Alamogordo. That’s where we will meet. Hopefully, we won’t have to get any closer to Texas in our pursuit of these enchanters.”
“Hopefully.” Most of the people that still lived in New Mexico had heard rumors about how tough things were in Texas, especially with the Texas Rangers, who had become a vigilante group easily as vile as the Killbillies, if not more so. Many actively avoided heading in that direction, and there was a saying that went around: Head to Texas, find certain death.
Cowboy Necromancer: Infinite Dusk Page 19