A week after his sixteenth birthday a major battle was to be fought. It was traditional for the Kanien'kehá:ka to grow their hair in times of peace, however, when going into battle they would cut it short and shave it into a fashion, which left a strip three fingers wide across the centre of their heads; the hair itself standing up in tall spikes which they would die with the tinctures of various berries, holding it in place with waxes made from animal fat and a certain type of plant.
This style was known as the Mohawk.
For Seven-Still-Fall this was the first time he had had the honour of wearing his hair in such a fashion, and he spent hours dying his hair to an exact redness of the carnelian stone.
The word Carnelian meant 'flesh coloured' and he was proud of his red coloured skin. It somehow went well with his tribe's name, the Kanien'kehá:ka, which meant in its most literal translation 'man-eaters'.
Seven-Still-Fall fought bravely, slaughtering all who engaged him in battle, sparing the lives of none. The warriors of the Kanien'kehá:ka rejoiced at their easy victory as they made their way back to camp, although none were surprised by their defeat as they had outnumbered the opposing tribe by three to one.
The reason soon became obvious as they approached their camp. Even with a mile left to journey, smoke could be seen billowing from their encampment. As the victorious warriors grew nearer they saw with their own eyes the destruction that had been wreaked on those who had remained. Bodies of mutilated women lay beside their dead children, whilst the heads of the men, who had been left behind as guards, had been planted by way of horseback onto six foot high spikes, their decapitated bodies heaped into a nearby pile.
There was many an anguished cry and at once many of the warriors turned their horses and set out once again, for revenge for the travesty which had occurred. Others climbed down off their horses, with looks of shock and disbelief on their faces, the sound of painful discovery echoing across the dusty terrain, as men wept openly beside their dead.
Seven-Still-Fall walked the ten yards from where he had dismounted to his mother and father's tepee. Both lay in bed, and from their appearance, he assumed that they had been killed whilst sleeping, meaning that it had started as a surprise attack. Both their throats had been slit. Yet, despite their obvious demise, lying there, in each other’s arms, Seven-Still-Falls thought he saw a smile on both faces, and he looked away before he could be certain, content in the possibility that they may have died happily.
That night he left the Kanien'kehá:ka tribe.
The only thing he took from them was his hair cut, which from that day he never once let grow again.
Without thought of a horse, Seven-Still-Fall trudged into the night, his only possessions a necklace belonging to his mother, his father's axe and a purse of precious stones. He wasn't sure where he was headed and cared even less. As the night wore on he finally became exhausted and fell to his knees where he began to weep for the loss of his mother and father, whom he had both loved dearly.
The green ember fire burned through his eyes. The desert was alight with it. Spirits circled above him, before rejoining the whole, the Great Spirit and Seven-Still-Fall watched in it all in awe.
From out of it came a female figure. She walked towards him slowly, her stride slow and graceful, like a cat. She wore an outfit he was unfamiliar with, it covered her entire body from neck downwards, and was made of an indigo material he had never before seen in his life. On her feet she wore boots.
At least this much he recognised, except again, they were made of the same shiny indigo material as the garment which covered her body. Her head had been shaved up each side and at the back and the remaining hair, which looked to Seven-Still-Fall to be at least a good shoulders length, had been gathered up in a knot at the top. As she trudged towards him he noticed that her face was littered with cuts, although no blood trickled from these wounds.
As she came closer still, he saw that she held a block of wood in her left hand, and on it was a massive spike, with a jut of spiralling blade carved into the conic implement; only to be met two thirds of the way down by two upwardly curved razors on either side.
The lingering shadows of torture left an even greater imprint of terror on a mind that was slowly turning; was in a sense going off. Warping like blistering paint on wood, he found all sense of self peeling away; the sensation was akin to bleaching his eyes to change their colour.
“Who are you?” Seven-Still-Fall asked in his native tongue.
“Call me a friend in an hour of need. And I'll call you John.”
“What do you want with me?” Seven-Still-Fall had asked.
In answer she swung down with the spike, piercing the chest, before working the spiralling razor deeper still into the wound with swift twists of her want; all the while with her hand clamped across his mouth to silence his screams.
Using the spike as an inaccurate scalpel the female carved away at his chest cavity, and when satisfied she reached in and yanked out his still beating heart, holding it an inch from his face. “This is who you are. It will tell you everything you need to know about yourself, your life and your purpose here on this earth.” The figure released her grasp on Seven-Still-Fall's mouth and his screams rose into the night, the female's laughter their only competition, a cacophony of terror and joy.
His hands flailed wildly, trying to ease the blood which gushed and pumped from inside him like an overzealous well. Yet the female's grasp was strong and grabbing both his hands in one of hers, she handed him his heart.
As he gazed into her eyes he sensed then that she was a goddess.
“This is who you are. Don't forget it. Johnny-boy,” she said softly, finishing with a wink; at which point Seven-Still-Fall awoke screaming.
The morning sun was still low in the sky however the new day had begun.
It had just been a bad dream, a nightmare.
Seven-Still-Fall began to laugh and made to stand when he caught sight of his chest. Where there had been the gaping wound in the dream, there was now a massive patch of shiny pinkish-white scar tissue. For a moment the world began to spin.
Last night Seven-Still-Fall had gone to sleep.
Somewhere in between then and waking he had died.
Now this person had awoken.
Wild John took to his feet.
He had a long way to go.
Of that he was sure.
Since awakening from the nightmarish reality which had seen his heart torn from his chest, John had quickly learned of his magikal nature, an inheritance from his father, intensified by the economics of evolution according to the law of accelerating returns.
He stood six foot three, lean yet muscular and since the discovery of his parents death had always kept his hair fashioned to a 3/4 foot Mohawk.
By the age of 35 he had learned the art of prolonging life indefinitely, and on his hundredth birthday he still maintained the youthful appearance he had had sixty five years before.
During those years he had been a hunter of the land, fierce warrior of many battles, mystic shaman, sorcerer, necromancer and drunk. He had had his dint of Peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, Datura, Salvia Divinorum and was acquainted with DMT in the form of a hallucinogenic brew. However, what John really loved was a fine bottle of bourbon and a good woman or three.
No one person he met in his lifetime knew how old Wild John really was, however when asked he would remark that the sky when born was actually a dull shade of wild flower and would leave it at that, his gaze silencing any other questions and his temporarily deaf ears shutting out those his eyes could not.
However, only once during his entire life to date, did he fall in love.
It was back, sometime in the early 1700's. The white settlers had set up camp near to his shack, and the children of the area sometimes wandered near, despite the stern warnings of their mothers “to leave that strange Injun alone. He’s a bad one, he ain’t got the lord and he’s not our kind."
John however loved c
hildren. He was a playful sort, full of the natural ease the elders from his tribe had possessed when with youngsters, and he would spend days making beaded necklaces to give to the youths as they gazed at him from across the meadow.
"Don’t let on to your mother, mind," he would say to the children. "But if you’ve got any older sisters, you just send them in John’s direction," and he would give them the necklaces, and then send them home.
But then one day, a woman came a calling on John. She was a beauty, and John fell instantly in love. She said she had heard about his powers, the "magic" she called it, and although she didn't believe in all that hocus-pocus, she said that given her problem (as she put it) she was desperate enough to try anything, even so far as to consult an Injun.
They talked for a whole day.
John drank his bourbon, two bottles, and listened to her story.
It appeared the woman had contracted a disease, and it was rotting away at her bones and blood, and the doctors said she had a month to live, at best.
"I don’t want to die John. I’m only young," the woman, whose name was Jessie, said.
"Then I will cure you, Jessie. But it’s gonna take some doing," replied John, who was drunk and saddened by her story and trying unsuccessfully to keep the tears from his eyes.
That night they made sweet love under the stars, and in the morning, when they awoke in each other’s arms, John told her what she would have to do.
"Jessie; I think I may be falling in love with you. But what you ask is no mean feat. I can do it, and I know that because I’ve done it once before. But after that time, I swore I would never do it again. But for you I will do it one last time. You must go down to your village. Say you are taking the children for a walk, and then you must meet me at a cave that is located about a mile due north of here. Don’t worry about getting lost. I will guide you with my heart. You must meet me at that cave with all the children, and you must sit all night outside the cave, with a fire burning, whilst I perform my act of ritual. You must keep the fire burning all night, until I return from the cave, because if the fire should go out at any time then all will be lost. Do you understand?" John had said, with the utmost of seriousness.
"What you gonna do to those children, John? You gonna hurt those children?" asked Jessie, fear stricken at the thought.
"Do I look like I’m in the business of hurting children? I’m gonna save your life. And your just gonna have to trust me. Do we have a deal?"
The deal was made.
At precisely sunrise, Jessie arrived with twenty of the town folk's children. A fire was burning and there was a stock of wood beside the stones that held the flames.
"Keep that fire burning, Jessie. Or we’re all going straight to hell." John strode purposefully into the cave, and as if hypnotized the children all followed.
When inside the cave John took his double edged axe and butchered all the children, swinging wildly with the steely blade. At the sight of what was happening the children began to scream, and John struck one of the children a little too softly under the chin to take off the head, instead only severing part of the neck. The little girl’s blood spurted outwards from the cut and stained his shirt. At his second attempt a young girl flew at him, her hands shaped like claws, meaning to scratch his eyes. John killed her next.
He stacked their limbs in neat piles, their bodies in another and made a circle round both mounds with the children's severed heads. He then carved intricate designs in the blood soaked sand which made up the interior of the cave.
The design was that of a pentagram, sat inside a circle, superimposed with a variety of occult sigils. This done, he began to chant, a slow whisper at first, and then as it grew purposefully louder it began to reverberate off the walls of the cave. The rhythmic incantations continued until day break, and old John had began to sweat. His concentration however, never broke once.
Outside, Jessie was becoming more and more frantic, but as she was told, she dutifully kept the fire burning.
Dawn appeared.
The sun cast a beautiful gaze upon the fine sand of the desert.
And then John also appeared.
"I see you kept the fire burning Jessie. I’m mighty proud of you," he said.
"But where are the children John?" replied Jessie.
John turned to the cave and bellowed at the top of his lungs.
"Children! Come on out here now!"
And all twenty children came skipping out from the cave, a freshness to their faces, as if they had never been harmed in their lives.
“Take them home, Jessie. Make sure they all get to their homes and sleep. When they wake up they won't remember a thing.”
“John, I didn't think, I... what shall I tell their parents? They must be going out of their minds. They're probably getting a search party together now-” began Jessie, wringing her hands with such despair that she felt like slapping the stupid Injun.
What the hell is he smiling about? her thought nearly spilled out of her mouth as a scream.
“Don't worry about that. I'll tend the fire. So long as this fire keeps burning until you get these children to bed, everything will be fine.”
Jessie nodded, although it was with dread that she returned to town. The sun was up, which meant that people would be, and despite John's assurances she could not help but picture the mob already formed, the nooses close behind. What the hell had he done with the children in there? So it was with great surprise that she found the town silent, its streets empty. And like birds instinctively returning to their nests the children all disappeared, one by one into their houses, until the street was empty. Her own brother had been one of the children and Jessie wanted desperately to ask him what had gone on, yet John had said it was important that they go bed and sleep, so she followed him into the house and found him curled up under the cover, snoring away like nothing had happened. She went straight to her room, changed into fresh clothes and was about to leave when she heard noise from her mother and father's bedroom.
The door opened and her father edged the upper half of his body round the door. “Morning, Jessie. Didn't realise it was so late. You should have woken us.”
“Morning papa. I would have, but I've only just awoken up myself. If you don't need me for nothin' then I was planning on taking a walk.”
“Suit yourself, girl. Just be careful. There's all types of crazies in these parts-” started her father, “I have to say you're lookin' better. Your mother and I were getting worried. Thought something might have been wrong with you. But...” his words trailed away into a thoughtful look, “You are okay, aren't you Jessie?”
“Never been better, papa,” replied Jessie with a smile and stared down the stairs towards the front door.
“Never been better...” echoed her father quietly, shaking his head as he went to check on his youngest.
As Jessie left the house, the town had started to awaken, and she could not think it unlike a magik spell come finally undone.
She hurried back to the place where she had left John and found him waiting for her, a bottle of whiskey in one hand, his other outstretched. Jessie took it without hesitation.
“It was all okay. The children all went to bed. It was like nothing I've ever seen before and don't rightly know how to explain it.”
John led Jessie over to the smouldering ashes of the fire.
“I know. We can let the fire rest now. Maybe we should rest too?”
He motioned for Jessie to come to him, arms extended. She stopped just short of his embrace.
“How did you do it?”
John smiled. “Let's never talk of it again.”
From that day forth He and Jessie became lovers.
He had extended her life. Yet, due to the nature of the spell, he knew he had only done so enough for her to live as long as humanly possible.
And so, aged exactly ninety years of age Jessie had died, however from old age this time round, which again left John with the broken heart of los
s and only his bourbon for company.
Now it was hundreds of years later. He was a part of something. Wild John was not the founder of the group of gifted individuals who became known, at least amongst themselves, as the Riders from Hell. He did however have a sound working knowledge of their enemies, and amongst other things he was a prophet, in that he knew the lore of the future and knew something of Candy before she was even born.
As he stepped out of one of the many bars he frequented around the city, he glanced up at the sky, and watched the strange gathering of clouds which had gathered over this one small specific area.
He took out a cigarette, despite the downpour, yet had no trouble lighting it, despite the wind. And as he smoked he tuned in that part of his mind, to the frequencies of reality and if he had been pushed to describe them, he would have used only one word. Alien.
Sighing he reached into his inner pocket and produced his tall silver spirits flask, which tonight he had filled with cheap strong whiskey.
The taste was comparable to recently extinguished wood, yet he wasn't really in it for the taste. Not this evening.
Tonight it was about a toast to nature.
He raised his flask to the sky, and after downing two thirds of the whiskey, he poured the rest onto the only patch of earth he could find. A toast to the Great Mother, and Sky Father, with a shared drink in the bargain.
Then sighing, he began his way back to his apartment. The sky told him the boy had succeeded and there would be questions to answer. He stopped on the way and spent his last sixteen bucks on a bottle of half decent brandy.
He entered his apartment and closed the door quietly. Then he set about rummaging in his apothecary cabinet. Within moments he had found both items. A small ink pot half filled with blood, and a roll of blank parchment. The parchment had a wooden scroll handle running through the top of it, and unfolded it ran to over twelve feet long. Enough space to answer questions. And if he was correct there would be many a question the boy would want answering.
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