“Who are you?” asked Porter.
“I am that I am,” she said, with haughty sarcasm. “My name was forgotten before your peoples even learned to sail the golden seas.”
“Try me,” Porter challenged.
“I am Lilitu.” She swiftly glided closer with steps that made no sound. Her black skirt giving no indication of legs striding beneath it at all. “I sensed you from afar. I knew you would come from the moment I awoke.”
Porter leveled his Colt at her but she caught his wrist in an icy clamp. “I have waited for a man such as you, with such vitality. Someone to share the dark eons with. Someone whom I might draw greater sustenance.”
“I ain’t interested,” he said, straining to escape her iron-like grip.
The giantess loomed over him, she stood almost two feet taller than himself. She ran a great hand along his bearded cheek, Porter jerked away but could not yet escape.
“I have almost finished with this meager place. I can feel that there is yet much more to sup upon not far away. Come with me and we shall tread the world down in our feasting.”
A pick ax suddenly burst through her chest. She released her hold on Porter and wheeled, eyes aflame in wrath. Porter backed away, letting circulation return to his wrist.
Mr. Ward let go of the handle in shock that she still stood. Lilitu backhanded him across the room. His body crumpled doll-like over the side of pews three rows back.
Thomason screamed, still straining at the sealed door and the final lantern was abruptly snuffed out. He whimpered near the doors. He cried out once and then silence.
Another man groaned in the dark. A moment of surprised panic was met with a sudden gurgling from somewhere in the gloom.
Dark clouds shifted and faint blue moonlight streamed from the windows high above and washed over Lilitu. She no longer bore any resemblance to a living woman but was instead a towering skeletal ghoul. The ribs stood out barren like a washboard belying the emptiness inside her. A slightly elongated skull bore hellish red witch-fire in the eye-sockets while blood stained fangs protruded from her grinning maw. With long taloned fingers she plucked the pickax from her back as if was not of the slightest consequence. She let it drop to the floor with a crack breaking the harsh silence like a bare foot through the ice.
“There is a price for eternal life,” she said. “But I paid it willingly. Join me and become my dark prince.”
Porter unloaded his Colt .45. The bullets smashed and splintered bone, but aside from scant fragments flying away there was no discernable effect and she did not slow her charge but came straight at him with talons extended.
Porter emptied his six-gun and swung it at the gaunt demon as she grasped him in a crushing embrace. Her mouth opened wide and bore down toward his exposed neck. Red eyes leered in lustful hunger.
“I command you in the holy name of our Lord to leave this place and never return!” shouted Bishop Palmer.
The red eyes flashed but stopped just before the fangs could sink into Porter’s neck. A low chuckle like something echoing from deep inside a cavern rumbled out of that wretched mouth. “You have no power over me, for this was my home first.”
The Bishop looked confused. “What did it say Porter? That was all Greek to me.”
Porter could barely breath let alone answer. He struggled to release her death grip but could not escape.
Making the sign of the holy priesthood and raising his right arm to the square, Bishop Palmer tried to rebuke the demon. He clutched a bottle holy oil for anointing’s in his left hand, unscrewing the lid with his forefinger and thumb.
“Begone, worm,” she croaked, as her bony hand shot up flinging the Bishop away but as she did so, the oil he held flew into the air and came splashing down across her offending forearm. She screeched in awful pain, releasing Porter. Smoke wafted from the holy searing. She stumbled back toward the stone box.
The bottle of precious blessed olive oil audibly rolled away into the black beneath the row of pews.
Gasping for air, Porter stumbled away. “Get the oil!” he coughed.
Someone was moving in the dark and Porter knew it wasn’t Lilitu because their footsteps made noise. Then there was a wretched gasp as the life was sucked out of someone.
Porter scrambled beneath the pews hunting for the lost bottle of oil. His left hand found a dripping trail granting hope like a candle in the blackness of despair. Crawling beneath the rows, his fingers caught the edge of the round glass, but only succeeded in rolling the bottle farther away. A smear of oil trailed invisible into the gloom.
A great foot slammed down on Porter’s back, stealing the breath from his lungs.
“Shunning my kisses?” Lilitu asked. “I danced for Akish and even he could not resist my charms.” She grabbed Porter’s coat rolling him over onto his back.
He stole back a precious breath before her foot returned, crushing the air from him. With the moonlight having retreated back behind clouds, once again she looked like a woman. A beautiful evil woman grinning at him with long dripping fangs.
“I have never been rejected before,” she said.
“Get used to it,” said Porter, as he ran his exposed hands through the trail of oil upon the floor and then grasped her leg. Holy fire erupted across her leg at his touch and she screamed a deafening wail loud enough to wake all the ancient buried kings. Smoke exploded up her scanty black gown as she tried in vain to extricate herself from his death grip but the holy fire did not burn him.
She kicked and screamed and slapped at the gunfighter but he held on with the tenacity of ages. Lilitu finally succeeded in knocking Porter away as the last of the holy fire died out. She stood before him in the bony form of a giant skeletal vampire.
“You don’t deserve the honor I would bestow upon you. I’ll drink your blood and feast upon your marrow,” she snarled.
The chapel doors slammed open as the widow Eliza Lay and some few others entered with lanterns and rifles. Porter was on the ground as were several other drained bodies. The townsfolk opened fire upon Lilitu but again with scant effect. She roared at them taking three steps forward.
“Pitch some blessed oil on her!” shouted Porter.
Lilitu paused in her attempt to destroy Porter. If a look of panic could be seen upon that deaths head, it surely flashed across that white boney face.
Someone behind the widow passed her a flask of olive oil. The widow tossed it to Porter. He caught and splashed it over the shocked skeletal face of Lilitu.
She burst into flames, shaking and crying aloud in a dead language none but Porter could understand.
The fire caught the sheet music and curtains, then the pews and torn broken wood from the façade of the rostrum. Everyone but Lilitu fled from the burning chapel. Some even hurriedly retrieved the dead.
The townsfolk made no effort to put out the fire, instead most began singing hymns to drown out the awful cries of Lilitu.
Porter stood guard at the open doors, watching, making sure that Lilitu was consumed along with the chapel. He prayed silently that the burning pyre would contain her evil night-striding soul once and for all.
By morning the chapel was but a smoking ash heap. The foundation stone was found smashed apart by the falling roof timbers. Most amazingly, everyone who had been afflicted by the wasting disease suddenly felt much better. The fevers were gone and strength returned to their bodies.
Porter felt his job was done and he mounted up to leave. His horse was no longer skittish about the town square and that was sign enough to him that his job was done.
As Porter was trotting out of town, Bishop Palmer, his arm in a sling, waved him down. “We can’t thank you enough. I was wrong, we did need a gunslinger. I mean a man of your skills and I’m eternally grateful.”
Porter nodded. “Right back at ya for bringing blessing oil to a gunfight.”
“Yes, well. Why don’t you stay on? Help us rebuild. You’ll always have a place here.”
“Much obliged a
t the offer but I already got a place to hang my hat and it needs me.”
“Til we meet again then, Brother.”
Porter tipped his hat. “Til we meet again.”
Afterword
Nothing has fascinated me so much since I was a child, as the unexplainable and supernatural unknown. Monsters and dragons, angels and demons, aliens and fairies, spirits and ghosts all dwell there like old friends. I’ve always hungered to delve into these mysteries and terrifying realms and to know.
The older I get and the more I understand, the more these mysteries only deepen and yet tantalize further with wide shadowy arms and always I must answer them.
Fiction grants refuge to explore these dark places and learn that which forever eludes us in the daylight. These tales are cathartic for me and a home for that insatiable need to tread grim lands that no longer exist . . . or do they?
Much thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed these weird western tales of Porter Rockwell, a frontiersman, a cowboy, a lawman and an outlaw, a gunslinger and gunfighter and one of my personal heroes.
David J. West
Utah
Summer 2016
About the Author:
David J. West writes dark fantasy and weird westerns because the voices in his head won’t quiet until someone else can hear them. He is a great fan of sword & sorcery, ghosts and lost ruins, so of course he lives in Utah in with his wife and children.
You can visit him online at:
http://www.kingdavidjwest.com/
https://twitter.com/David_JWest
http://david-j-west.tumblr.com/
Also by David J. West
Heroes of the Fallen
Bless the Child
Weird Tales of Horror
The Mad Song: and other Tales of Sword & Sorcery
Fangs of the Dragon
Whispers of the Goddess
The Hand of Fate
Space Eldritch
Space Eldritch 2: The Haunted Stars
Whispers Out of the Dust
Gods in Darkness
Redneck Eldritch
Six-Gun Serenade
Scavengers
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Cold Slither: and other horrors of the weird west (Dark Trails Saga) Page 27