Another nearby raider was too slow to pull his horse to a stop. The animal's legs caught against the fallen horse in front of it, causing another brave and steed to crash into the sun-baked earth. Eighteen Indians remained.
Few of the braves had noticed the old man yet. Their sights were locked on easier prey. Bullets ripped through the flesh of stumbling drunks. Flint arrowheads tied to flaming shafts set tents aflame. Tomahawks powered by muscles like steel cable cleaved into skulls.
There was one Indian amongst the war party who showed a marked disinterest in the wholesale slaughter around him. His dress placed him apart from the rest of the war party. The braves were stripped down for combat—loin cloths, war paint, and weapons. This man, in contrast, was burdened with numerous talismans and pouches. While the Cheyenne warriors howled with hatred and lust for blood, his face was calm and uninterested in the carnage about him. His dark eyes scanned the chaos, in search of something or someone specific.
The old man locked eyes with the shaman and each recognized the true nature of the other. It was a cruel epiphany for the old man, realizing the priest had been right. The devil's name had been spoken, and here the devil rode toward him, albeit in proxy.
A cruel smirk crossed the face of the medicine man and he charged his horse toward the old man. While in mid-charge he plucked a dark feather from his own hair. At the same time, the old man inhaled and rested his aim on the Indian's center mass.
Both held their breath as they let their missiles take flight. Before the shaman’s feather-dart had made it a foot from his hand, the lead slug had already torn through his lungs and lodged into a rib. The Indian was dead before his own weapon could find its mark, but find its mark it would.
The shaft of the feather lodged itself into the old man's left shoulder. The pain was incredible. It burned beneath his flesh, as if the feather were pumping brimstone straight into his muscle and marrow. It didn't much matter to him if it was sorcery or poison—he couldn't die just yet.
With a swift motion, he plucked the feather from his shoulder, hoping to cut off the flow of agony that was filling him. He flung it to the ground and stumbled backward. Raising his gun, which seemed to have grown a bit heavier, the old man found his sight too blurred to aim. The world flipped on its side and the old man was suddenly hit by the earth itself.
Darkness crept into his blurred field of vision, starting at the center of his view and spreading out like ink in water. The sounds of the world—screams, gunshots, and pounding hooves—faded shortly after his sight of it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Life was good. Emmett's ma was healthy as a lark and had been for months. The savory aroma of her cooking was now ever-present. Money had ceased to be a concern. The house was full of laughter and light.
And, perhaps best of all, folks were saying the war would be over soon. It wasn't looking good for the Confederacy, but what did it matter which side won, so long as his pa made it home? Only months before, Emmett had understood and supported his father's decision to don the gray war garb of the southern states. Now the whole conflict seemed petty and childish to him. Was there really a difference between North and South? They had both stolen this country from its true people.
Yes, life was good. Something gnawed at Emmett's mind and soul however, keeping him awake at night. It wasn't guilt, as one might expect from a young man who'd twice murdered. Nor was it the patches of dry skin or the nightmares he suffered. What kept Emmett awake at night and what haunted him during the day was the sense that he had stumbled upon the threshold of the infinite. He had glimpsed the divine, yet was still bound by gravity, mortality, and legality. He had walked the lands of the dead and saw that there was something beyond even those icy plains. He wanted more than a glimpse.
The knowledge from the skins held within the Cavern of the First Breath, the formulae and ancient secrets that had been burned into his mind, and the magic that had made a rich man of him and saved his mother's life seemed somehow weak and elementary now. Yes, the power he had attained and the wicked might he wielded dwarfed the greatest accomplishments of science, but Emmett's field of vision had expanded. He knew that greater power and infinite wisdom could be gleaned if he could just tap into the deeper vistas of reality—into the worlds that lay outside.
The problem that Emmett now faced was that he had become a student with no master. What strides he had made in the dark arts were the result of exposure to a single set of documents and an innate intuition. While he had an awareness that other worlds existed, he knew not how to reach any beyond the realm of death.
It was with this dilemma in mind that Emmett had returned to the Paiute reservation two weeks prior. His grandfather, the dying old medicine man, would share his secrets with Emmett. Of course he might refuse at first, but Emmett would convince him. He would reason first. If reason failed he would beg. If begging proved fruitless he would resort to more aggressive forms of persuasion. Of course, the other natives might come to his grandfather's aid if things got violent, but Emmett felt that the potential gain was worth the risk.
On arriving at the reservation, Emmett found that all his plans had been dashed. Hateful old Poohwi had died in his sleep two nights prior, under the dark sky of a new moon. Perhaps it was unreasonable, but Emmett felt as if the old bastard had died on purpose, leaving his hated half-breed grandson to suffer with knowledge of power he could never grasp.
There was another shaman in the camp. He was younger and had a kindness in his eyes that Emmett found to be a rarity in this world. Desperate for any knowledge that might take him up the next rung on the ladder of eternity, Emmett had tried to pry any information he could from the young shaman. There was a sternness in the native equal to his kindness, and he refused to give Emmett that which he sought. Something told Emmett that the young man would not be bullied and that a confrontation would lead to less than desirable results.
Instead, the young shaman, apprentice to hateful Poohwi, left Emmett with an unwelcome insight.
"Poohwi was mad in his old age, made wicked by his anger," he explained. "He did an awful thing to you, sending you that forsaken pit and damning you with that dark wisdom. Worse still, he was trying to do an awful thing to the whole world."
The shaman stopped speaking and locked eyes with Emmett, waiting to see if he yet understood. After several seconds he realized that Emmett had not.
"He burdened you with those dark secrets so that you might open the pathway."
"What pathway?" Emmett asked, feeling confident that he already knew the answer.
"The pathway to the black places between the stars. The path that leads to those that lie outside. Or more accurately, the path that leads them to us."
Emmett's heart raced as the young man spoke of those spheres beyond the world he knew. The dry patches of skin on his body began to itch and burn, as if mention of those secret paths had excited something beneath. His mind reeled in two voices. One voice cried out for the power and thrill offered by some exotic realm outside of this existence. A second voice, one that Emmett could not recognize as his own, bellowed with excitement at the prospect of a road that might lead out from the suffocating oceans of darkness.
The young shaman could read the excitement plainly on Emmett's face. In turn, his own face became a mask of sadness.
"Your grandfather has poisoned you. He has poisoned your mind, body, and soul. He has stricken you with a lust for the gifts of evil spirits. Worse still, he hoped to poison the whole world through you."
Emmett laughed. It was a cynical but sincere laugh. The laugh of a teenager who scoffs when told that his actions can hold the power change the world.
"Poison the whole world, huh? Mighty ambitious. Reckon he must have been going senile though, hinging his hopes on the half-breed son of a gunsmith."
"This is no joke. The magic you toy with, the spirits you invoke—these things could end mankind. The nameless one who breathed the first breath, he is a spirit of ravenous hunger. Po
ohwi wanted you to release him so that he could devour this world, just as the white man devoured ours."
"So why not release the spirit himself, if that was the case?"
"Because he was afraid, and he was wise in his fear. Even in the closing days of his life, Poohwi chose to die as himself, rather than live as a vessel for that monstrous thing."
And so Emmett had left the Paiute reservation, scoffing at the warnings of the young shaman and cursing the grandfather who had died to spite him. He traveled home low with disappointment, but far from defeated. There were other sources of wisdom in this world—other learned men and women that might lead him to the knowledge he sought.
Now, two weeks after his second pilgrimage to Bishop Colony, Emmett was readying to make his way out on a new pilgrimage to a town called Emerald. Stories had gotten around about a brothel outside of Emerald where one of the whores would read your fortune with an eerie accuracy. Folks who passed through town would often spend a few hours in Tom Porter's saloon, and many of them vouched for the spot-on nature of the fortunes gleaned by the whore seer. If what these passing drunks claimed was to be trusted, then this witch might just be his huckleberry. Yes, a witch was exactly what he needed.
Before heading southwest to Emerald, he'd have to concoct some lie to tell his ma. That would be simple enough. Emmett hadn't shared with her the fact that they were rich. He had no reasonable way to explain the plentiful amounts of gold and silver that were hidden beneath the floorboards of his bedroom, nor did he want to draw any attention from Sheriff Silver, who had taken a keen interest in him since the night he'd summoned Nibelung. To avoid concern from either party, Emmett had been leaving town for a day or two at a time. He’d claim to have taken on odd jobs at nearby farms, or work as muscle for teamsters that needed a hand loading and unloading carts. As far as Emmett could tell, this narrative seemed to satisfy any concern his mother might have and any suspicion in the mind of the sheriff.
On this particular night, two nights before he would depart and seek out the whore oracle, Emmett enjoyed perhaps the most pleasant night he could remember since his father up and left them for the blood-soaked fields of war. His mother had made a dinner of spiced carrots with roasted potatoes and pheasant. Her beauty and grace shined through her smile. She laughed and joked and told old stories about her and his father. The mundane conversation of his parent's early romance, and comedic stories about himself as a child pushed away the darkness that had recently taken up so much real estate in Emmett's mind. Dreams of re-lived murder faded behind the atavistic power of dinner's aroma. Yearnings for otherworldly power were forgotten in the musical laughter of his mother's voice. The itching of his cracked, dry skin (eczema, the doctor had called it), subsided in their shared hope that his father might return shortly.
Soon the subject turned to Emmett himself and his own future. His mother was beyond hopeful for him. She saw in his eyes, eyes so much like his father's, tenderness tempered with strength, traits that would do him well in this world. She also saw fear. Once again it was the same fear that his father was burdened with. She told him as much on this night.
"You're so strong, Emmett," she said, taking his hand in her own from across the table. "So much like your pa."
This statement invoked a mixture of emotions within Emmett, which he was not mature or introspective enough to understand. The insinuation that he was growing into a man like his father triggered currents of doubt and shadows of pride, for his father was the strongest and smartest man he'd ever known. It also churned up a tumult of conceited anger. He wasn't, in truth, like his father at all. He had stayed home and saved his ma from death's cold grip.
Last, this comparison brought to mind what he considered the greatest difference between he and his father. His pa found solace in the empirical world and saw the sharp mind of man as the alpha and omega. He remembered his father once saying that the testimony of humanity's greatness was also its greatest folly—the creation of God. Meanwhile, Emmett now knew from experience that there were things just outside the light that were far greater and more terrible than man. Forgotten powers more deadly than all the artillery in all the world's armies dwelled in spheres of reality far more important than our own.
His father was a self-driven materialist who had found the divine in the touch of a woman and the blast of black powder. Emmett, on the other hand, was a spiritualist who called upon the divine forces of those that lie outside as a tool to manipulate the world.
Emmett's thoughts were not this well formulated however, nor was he even aware that he was thinking them. His conscious mind only knew that he felt angry, proud, and afraid all at once, and it was not trained to look for deeper reasons, so it didn't.
"You're strong, modest, and hard working. There's a barrel load of anger in you though, Emmett. No surprise, given your pa running off to war and me being a burden on you."
"You were never a burden, Ma," Emmett replied, a bit louder than he had intended to.
"Shush. We both know that ain't true," she said, shaking her head. "Anger can be a killer. Your pa is overwhelmed with it, and that's half the reason he's off killing Yankees instead of eating dinner with us. My own father was absolutely sick with it."
Emmett nodded, fully aware that his grandfather had been an angry, evil bastard. His expression, he thought, might have given something away. For a moment he thought his mother might have gleaned some insight, as though his nod had expressed too much firsthand knowledge. Then she continued, and Emmett figured it was just his imagination.
"Like your pa and your granddaddy, you have a bit of fear in you, too." She said this while raising her hands up in an apologetic gesture. "Now there ain't no shame in that. Everyone's afraid. If anger was half the reason your pa went off to fight, fear is the other half. What is important is how you deal with that fear. Your pa owns his fear. He bridles it and whips it and uses it like a mustang to drive him through life. My pa, on the other hand, his fear was a wildfire that burned away his soul and any happiness he ever knew."
Emmett only nodded, not knowing quite what to say. His mother went on.
"It's easy to figure out how to use your love and compassion. It's easy to put strength and hard work to use for you. What's hard—what decides the type of man you are—is whether you use that hate and fear or whether it uses you."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The world materialized far more slowly than it had vanished. Nightmare visions of battlefields and failure melted into a mental haze, retaining only enough power to distort the old man's perception of the conscious realm. Dying screams and creaking ice echoed in his mind, making the real-life voices of those nearby barely perceptible. Shrapnel, smoke, and blood splatter were fading from his vision, but reality still hid behind the smokescreen of unconsciousness.
"I think he's waking up." The voice was distant, but the excitement behind it was unmistakable. The old man thought the voice sounded vaguely familiar.
Struggling against his uncooperative muscles, the old man tried to shake his head and banish the foggy remnants of his nightmares. Something in the back of his mind was screaming though, warning him that the nightmare was preferable to reality. But there was something to do in the real world. Someone needed him.
"He may be delirious when he comes to," a stranger's voice echoed. It sounded closer than the familiar voice. Much older as well. The first voice must have been a child's. Was it his son?
"Give him some space," the older voice echoed once more.
His son, he remembered—his son needed him.
"Just die, for fuck's sake!" dual voices screamed in his mind. One was his own. The other was a guttural growl that could not be mistaken as human.
His muscles gave up their resistance against his brain, and the old man's head shook back and forth. He opened his eyes to reveal a blurry stranger in a brown jacket, set against a sepia backdrop. The smell of grain alcohol and formaldehyde attacked his nostrils, helping to draw him out from the dream worl
d.
"Relax, friend," the stranger's voice spoke again, this time with less reverb. "That Injun poison's gonna leave ya loopy for a while. Even a big guy like you."
Suddenly the old man remembered everything. His search for his boy, the priest who'd seen Thurs, the Cheyenne raid.
His mind, still foggy from the poison, immediately flooded with questions.
How long had he been out?
Where was he now?
What happened to the priest?
Was Hank okay?
A jumble of nonsense escaped the old man's mouth as he tried to speak. His tongue, like his other muscles, was reluctant to do his will.
The stranger replied with a shush. Somewhere outside of his field of vision, the familiar voice, which he now placed as Hank's, asked if he was okay.
With great effort the old man moved his tongue around in his mouth, noting that it was as dry as the ground in Tanner's Grove. He tried to summon some saliva into his mouth, and was met with minimal response. Regardless, he tried speaking again.
"The ... priest?" The words were more of an inquisitive croak than a proper question.
"Afraid he didn't make it. One of the savages went straight for the mission."
The old man had been afraid that this would be the case.
"He a friend of yours?" the stranger, whom the old man was beginning to place as a doctor, asked.
The old man shook his head to communicate a negative, thankful that he needn't answer verbally.
"Well don't worry, you won't be needing a priest just yet, fella. We do need to have a talk when you're more with it though."
It was then that the old man realized he was shirtless, and could not feel his gun belt digging into his lower back.
He forced a painful, dry gulp before looking over toward Hank.
"My guns?" he asked the boy.
The Devoured Page 10