by Joe Hill
Whether he ought to open fire, well—that was another question. The faun war party might yet be led away. The boy Christian might yet make a convenient appearance and draw them off. On the other hand, if the numbers below swelled, perhaps it was best to simply slink away. He had survived in this world for nine months once before, and he knew a golem who would make a deal. General Gorm the Obese always had work for a bad man with a gun.
Charn pulled himself behind a rotting log and swiped the sweat from his brow. A single lightning-struck tree, like a beech, loomed over him, partially cored out. Below him, some brush rustled at the edge of the clearing, and the one named Forgiveknot slipped into the glade, bolas hanging from his belt. Charn knew him well. He’d misjudged a shot at the old faun years before, and given him that scar across the face. He smiled grimly. He so hated to miss.
The sight of him made up Charn’s mind: kill them now, before anymore showed up. He slipped the Remington off his shoulder and rested the barrel on the log. He put the front sight on Forgiveknot.
Something clattered in the dead tree over him. There was a chittering and a rustle.
“Assassin!” cried a whurl gazing down at Charn from one branch of the blasted tree. “Save yourselves! A Son of Cain is here to kill you all!”
Charn rolled and swung the barrel up. His sights found the whurl and he pulled the trigger and the gun made a flat, tinny click. For a moment he just stared at the old Remington in a kind of blank bewilderment. It was loaded—he had put a fresh cartridge in himself only a few minutes before. A misfire? He didn’t believe it. He cleaned and oiled the gun once a month, whether he used it or not.
He was still trying to come to grips with that awful, dead click when the loop of rope fell. It caught him around the face and Charn sat up, and as he did, it dropped around his neck and tightened. The lasso yanked. The rope choked off his air, and it jerked him back, over the rotten log and over the edge. He spun as he fell. He hit the earth with enough force to drive all the air out of him. Ribs broke. Pain screamed in his broken ankle. A thousand black specks wheeled around him, like midges, only they were in his head.
He sprawled on the ground, ten feet from his little door. As his vision cleared, it seemed the sky was lighter, almost lemon colored. He could see fair clouds in the distance.
His right hand fumbled for the rifle, but just as his shaking fingers scraped the butt, whoever held the other end dragged him away. Charn choked, tried to force his fingers under the rope, and couldn’t. He rolled and kicked as he was dragged and wound up on his belly, beneath the single corrupted, dead tree that leaned out over the whole natural amphitheater.
“Rifle wouldn’t do you any good anyway,” Fallows said from above him. Charn stared at his black hooves. “I took the firing pin out last night, while you were upstairs with Christian.”
The tension on the line slackened and Charn was able to loosen the noose a few centimeters and capture a breath. He stared up at Fallows. His skull was shaved clean to show the stumps of two horns, long since sawed off, and he was backlit by a sky the reddish-gold of new minted copper.
A little girl stood beside Fallows, holding his hand. She looked gravely down at Charn . . . the stern, cool, appraising look of a queen.
“It’s come for you, Mr. Charn,” the little girl said. “It’s found you out at last.”
“What?” Charn asked. “What’s come?”
He was confused and frightened and desperately wanted to know.
Fallows cast one end of the rope over a bough of the overhanging tree.
“Daylight,” the girl said, and with that, Fallows hoisted Charn kicking into the air.
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About Our Contributors
N. J. Ayres has been a pioneer of the forensic mystery with her Smokey Brandon novels. But short stories are Noreen’s favorite form; hers have been featured in many mystery and suspense anthologies, and earned her an Edgar Award nomination for “Delta Double Deal.”
Laura Benedict is the Edgar- and ITW Thriller Award-nominated author of eight novels of mystery and suspense, including The Stranger Inside (February 2019). Her short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and in numerous anthologies.
A voracious reader, Jill D. Block is a partner at a global law firm, practicing real estate law. In between billable hours, she writes the kind of fiction she likes to read. Since 2015, Jill’s stories have appeared in magazines (EQMM) and anthologies (Dark City Lights). She published her first novel, The Truth About Parallel Lines, in 2018, and is currently at work on her second. And she’s still a lawyer, awaiting a sign from the universe.
Richard Chizmar is the co-author (with Stephen King) of the New York Times bestselling novella, Gwendy’s Button Box. His latest book, Widow’s Point, a tale about a haunted lighthouse written with his son, Billy Chizmar, is currently being filmed. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and The Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories are among the many publications in which his short fiction has appeared.
Hilary Davidson has won two Anthony Awards as well as the Derringer, Spinetingler, and Crimespree awards. She is the author of five novels; her latest is One Small Sacrifice (Thomas & Mercer, 2019). A Toronto-born journalist and the author of 18 nonfiction books, she has lived in New York City since October 2001.
Jim Fusilli is the author of eight novels including Narrows Gate, a World War II-era epic set in a gritty Italian-American community in the shadow of New York. His debut mystery novel Closing Time was the last work of fiction set in New York published prior to the 9/11 attacks. His short stories have been nominated for Edgar and Macavity awards. As a journalist, he served as the Rock-and-Pop Critic of the Wall Street Journal.
Joe Hill is the #1 New York Times Bestselling author of The Fireman, NOS4A2, and others.
Elaine Kagan is a Los Angeles based actress, journalist (Los Angeles Magazine, Los Angeles Times) and novelist (The Girls, Losing Mr. North). When she visits New York she always has a tuna melt at the Viand Coffee Shop on Madison Avenue. On rye.
Joe R. Lansdale is a novelist with over fifty novels to his credit, and over four hundred short stories and articles. His work has been filmed and made into the Sundance TV series, Hap and Leonard.
Warren Moore is Professor of English at Newberry College in Newberry, SC. He is the author of Broken Glass Waltzes, and a repeat offender in these anthologies, having appeared in Dark City Lights, In Sunlight And In Shadow, and Alive In Shape And Color. He has played drums in a variety of unsuccessful bands, and has the hearing loss to prove it.
Joyce Carol Oates is the author most recently of the story collections Beautiful Days and Night-Gaunts and the novel Hazards of Time Travel. Her story “The Woman in the Window,” from Lawrence Block’s In Sunlight and in Shadow, was reprinted in The Best American Mystery Stories 2017. She is the 2018 recipient of the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Mystery/Thriller Fiction.
Ed Park is the author of the novel Personal Days and the editor of Buffalo Noir. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Vice, and other places. He lives in Manhattan.
Nancy Pickard likes to read and write short stories because, she says, of the heat they generate from being compressed. She has recently moved from Kansas to South Carolina in search of heat, too.
Thomas Pluck has slung hash, worked on the docks, trained in martial arts in Japan, and even swept the Guggenheim museum (but not as part of a clever heist). His new collection,
Life During Wartime, includes “Deadbeat,” singled out as a Distinguished Mystery Story of 2017. Library Journal has called his stories “stunning,” and Joyce Carol Oates says he’s “a lovely kitty man.”
A lifelong Texan, James Reasoner has been a professional writer for more than forty years. In that time, he has authored more than four hundred hundred novels and short stories in numerous genres.
Wallace Stroby is an award-winning journalist, and the author of eight novels, four of which feature professional thief Crissa Stone, whom Kirkus Reviews named “Crime fiction’s best bad girl ever.” A New Jersey native, for 13 years he was an editor at the Newark Star-Ledger, Tony Soprano’s hometown newspaper.
Duane Swierczynski is the two-time Edgar-nominated author of ten novels including Revolver, Canary, and the Shamus Award-winning Fun & Games. He’s also written over 250 comic books featuring such notable literary figures as Deadpool, The Punisher and Godzilla. He was born and raised in Philly and lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children.
Lawrence Block is the editor of At Home in the Dark, but evidently couldn’t be bothered to write a story for it. He’s been identified as a man who needs no introduction, and that’s exactly what he’s getting here.