by Andy Monk
Once he’d cleaned himself he dried his hands on Liza’s skirt. Even though he’d come down at seven o’clock she’d been wearing one of her usual slutty dresses and a full face of make-up. Nice that she’d made an effort for him an all, but she needn’t have bothered.
Once his hands were dry he went about the considerable task of hauling her fat carcass upstairs, which worked up far more of a sweat than killing her had done.
From the top of the stairs he dragged her into the room and deposited her on the floor. He stood at the end of the bed for a few minutes to both think and get his breath back, though he was admiring his handiwork so much he found he was absent-mindedly rubbing himself through his pants.
He made his hand drop to his side and leave it alone. There’d be plenty of time for that kinda business later when he caught up with Katie.
The breakfast things went onto the floor next to Liza followed by George, then he fixed George’s hands around his wife’s throat and Liza’s on to the knife handle protruding from her husband’s chest.
Finally satisfied, he stepped back and enjoyed the tableau. A frozen moment of matrimonial bliss. A final embrace for Hawker’s Drift’s most loving couple.
He allowed himself the luxury of a snigger.
It was unlikely the bodies would be found before he bid farewell to Hawker’s Drift; Liza and George didn’t have too many callers after all. The neighbours had long since realised if they made that mistake, George would shout at them or Liza would make a pass at them.
Still, if they were found the initial presumption would be that the pair had one final argument to end all their arguments. Might not fool someone with half a brain, but there were few of them in town.
For the first time since meeting Liza and George Thurlsten, he found he was reluctant to leave them. They had a beauty in death they had never possessed in life. A perfect stillness, a perfect grace, now there were no more ugly squawking noises left in their throats or petty, vacuous thoughts in their brains.
Eventually he let out a long drawn out sigh and reluctantly left the lovely couple to eternity. There was no more time for admiring handiwork.
He had a busy day of killing ahead of him.
The Clown
The abominable creature, Giselle, was following him.
He kept seeing her. Sometimes out of the corner of his eye, just a hint of darkness on the periphery of his vision. However, when he turned there was no one there. Other times she stood in plain sight, not doing anything overtly threatening, just strolling down the street, or resting in the shade, or, once, chomping on a watermelon, the blood red slice held against her mouth looked like some maniacal over-sized grin as the juice dripped onto the dust-dry street.
Each time he’d dropped his eyes and scurried on. Every time when he’d looked back she was gone without a trace, save for the time with the watermelon slice, which she’d left sitting in the middle of the street to grin at him.
He wanted to run and hide, but he knew there was nowhere to hide. He wanted to go and see Molly and Amelia, but he didn’t want to lead Giselle back to them. She’d already snatched the girl once after all, so who knew what she might try next. Instead, he’d hurried around the town, belting out hasty and – he had to concede – rather poor sermons to the disinterested.
She was playing with him. A cat with a mouse. That was all he was, something small and insignificant she could amuse herself with. An hour or so would pass and he would begin to think she had left him in peace and up she would pop again. A dark Jill-in-the-box with silver bangles that jingled and jangled like angry insects.
At least he hadn’t felt her in his mind again, not like that first time in the square, perhaps she had to be close to do that.
The thing to do, of course, was strike her down, to strike them all down, but he was not a man of violence. Not since he’d left Blossom and Jo-Jo in the rain anyway.
God had clearly picked him for some purpose, but he could not believe it was to raise a gun against these creatures, he was not a tool suited to such a task. Amos, on the other hand, was, but the gunslinger was gone. For the time being at least.
He was scurrying along Main Street, continually glancing over his shoulder. People were paying him no heed, they never did. He was approaching Ash’s shop and wanted to see if the awful dark-haired woman had been stalking him too.
He was surprised and alarmed to find Godbold’s Gentleman’s Saloon locked and the closed sign in place. Ash wasn’t one for closing his shop on a work day under normal circumstances. Of course, he hadn’t been living under normal circumstances for quite some time and with all that had happened to him and his family there were plenty of reasons why he might not be at work.
His stomach knotted all the same.
He raised his hand to his eyes and pressed his nose against the glass.
There was a broken shaving mug on the floor. The shop was otherwise as meticulously clean as it usually was. Ash Godbold was not a man prone to leaving broken mugs on his floor. They’d been dark shenanigans afoot here.
He swallowed and stepped back from the glass.
“Looks like you won’t be getting your haircut today…”
He gave a startled yelp and backed away from Giselle, who offered him a dark mirthless smile.
“What have you done?”
“Done? Oh, I’ve done absolutely nothing. Not yet anyway.”
“Where is Ash Godbold?”
Giselle took a step towards him, her bangles chiming as she moved, “Don’t you worry about him, funny little man, you should worry about yourself. Worry about what I’m going to do to you.”
He found Hobart’s old Bible with sweaty, trembling fingers and pulled it from his pocket. Not for the first time wishing his old friend could be standing at his shoulder. He’d never been a man to be intimidated by anybody. Not even a demon.
Giselle’s eyes flicked to the book and back again, “Should I be scared?”
“You are the Devil’s whore!”
“Why don’t you run along, funny little man, maybe I’ll come see you tonight and I’ll rummage around your funny little head and see what there is to see. Maybe they’ll be something worth plucking out of the meat to play with. I get bored very easily. It is a curse of mine. But maybe I can amuse myself with you. Funny. Little. Man.”
He backed away. Giselle didn’t follow, but her black eyes remained on him while her mouth held the shadow of a smile.
He turned and ran as fast as he could, which wasn’t really very fast at all and it took quite a while before he was far enough away for her laughter to fade.
*
He tried to find Mr Smith, but his store was locked and closed too. He knew the gunsmith wasn’t much taken with him, but he would accept help wherever the Good Lord provided it.
Ash was in trouble and maybe John Smith was too. He guessed they probably all were.
He left Pioneer Square, ensuring he didn’t glance towards the gaudy edifice of the Residence in the process and made his way towards the Godbold’s home.
More than anyone else involved in uncovering the town’s secrets, Ash had done so at his behest. If he’d suffered because of that curiosity then perhaps it was God’s will, but he would feel responsible all the same.
The Godbold’s lived in a modest house in a quiet street, not that many of the town’s streets were anything else. He had never been inside and he imagined Ash and Kate would be surprised he even know where they lived. He had, of course, long made it his business to know as much about the citizens of Hawker’s Drift as he could.
The street was deserted, though it didn’t stop him glancing continuously over his shoulder. However, there was no sign of Giselle or anybody else.
He approached the Godbold’s house with a growing sense of unease. Nothing appeared amiss, but he couldn’t shake the feeling something was very wrong.
The sound of a woman’s scream cutting through the afternoon heat transformed his unease into something a lot m
ore substantial. The scream had certainly come from the Godbold’s house. He’d never heard Kate scream before, but if he’d been a man afflicted by the need to gamble then that was where he would have laid his money down.
He hurried over to the window and peered inside. Kate was standing near the door with Ash behind her, she was struggling and squirming, but her husband had his arms wrapped around her and was holding her tight to his chest.
It was the third figure in the room that drew his eye, however. The Mayor was standing a few paces in front of Kate, the Serpent seemed to be speaking but he couldn’t make out his words over Kate’s cries for help. The Mayor was holding something in his hand.
A little black bottle.
He’d never considered himself a man of action. He watched and he noted and he preached. And the world swam on by without taking a great deal of heed. Confronted with the scene in the Godbold’s house, however, he knew he had to do something. God, he was almost certain, would not have sent him here at this precise moment because he wanted his unworthy servant to scurry away and hide.
The front door was unlocked and he let himself in after scooping up the only thing that he could press into action as a weapon.
Kate’s screaming had become muffled, Ash’s hand over her mouth he guessed. Poor Ash. The Mayor must have made him drink some of his hellish brew and now he was just another of the Devil’s minions.
There was no time for thought or regret however, so he pulled open the door.
“Let her go!!!”
A brief look of mild puzzlement crossed the Mayor’s face as he burst into the room, which wasn’t quite what he’d hoped for, but when did the Devil ever do what you wanted him to?
With not much in the way of a plan, he simply shoulder-charged into the back of Ash. Under normal circumstances he would have bounced straight off him, but taken by surprise and with his wife struggling in his arms both he and Kate were sent crashing to the ground.
“Leave them alone!” he bellowed at the Mayor, raising his arm to show he was prepared to use violence.
The Mayor’s eyebrow twitched up a fraction, “You appear to be holding a geranium over your head?”
The flower pot had been the heaviest thing to hand as he’d rushed into the Godbold’s home. He suspected it wasn’t the most intimidating of weapons. However, he wasn’t afraid to use it.
Grabbing Kate by the hand as she squirmed away from her husband he hurled the flower pot at the Mayor, whose look of bemusement didn’t waver an inch. Even when the flowerpot stopped in mid-air, hovered for a second before falling to shatter on the floor.
“Ooops …” the Mayor said.
He dragged Kate across the room, but she’d barely regained her feet when the door slammed shut.
“Leaving so soon?” the Mayor beamed, “Surely not?”
He tried to open the door, but it refused to budge.
“What’s happening?” she sobbed as they both spun back around. Ash had climbed to his feet and was staring at them, a vacant smile plastered over his face.
“I’m so glad you could join us, it does save me the trouble of having to come and find you too,” the Mayor turned the black bottle over in his hands, “Now why don’t you stop all this fuss and take your medicine. Then everything will be better.”
He yanked Kate away from the door and pulled her over to the window. Bradley Cloun sauntered by and Mr Wizzle slammed his palm against the glass.
“Help us!”
Bradley strolled on with his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his work pants.
He pounded the window, but the glass made no sound whatsoever.
“Please do be careful, I wouldn’t want any nasty accidents…”
They turned back to face the Mayor. Ash had moved to stand at his shoulder. He wore a beatific smile, but there didn’t appear to be a whole lot going on behind his eyes.
“What have you done to him?” He had little interest in the Serpent’s reply, but he needed time to think of something. As rescues went, this one wasn’t going terribly well.
“Just changed a few things in here,” the Mayor lightly rapped his knuckle on Ash’s head, “things haven’t quite settled back down yet, but he’ll be good as new soon. As will you both.”
“He wants to do things to Emily too,” Kate sobbed, clinging to his arm.
“I want to put things right. So you can all be happy again,” he swivelled his eye back to Mr Wizzle, “and you’ll stop all your tedious preaching too. I’ve let that go on far too long anyway.”
The Mayor took a step towards them, “Just get some of my candy inside you and then I can put everything to rights.”
He dragged the Bible from his pocket, with one arm around Kate he held the book out towards the one-eyed beast.
“Behind me Satan!”
“Really? Do we need to be quite so melodramatic?” The Mayor’s eye rolled momentarily upwards, “and take it from me, he isn’t going to be helping you.”
“Our Father, which art in heaven…” he grasped for the familiar comfort of the words “…hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done…”
The Mayor shook his head, and held out his foul little bottle.
The Sheriff
“When you put the bad men in here…” Amelia pushed her face between the bars of the cell and looked up at him, “…what happens to their horses?”
“They have to go to the horse jail.”
Her eyes widened, “You have a jail for horses?”
“Sure do,” he nodded, “some horses can be real bad.”
“Can I go see the bad horses?”
“Oh, there’s no bad horses there just now. We’re a peaceable town for the most part.”
“Oh…” Amelia looked disappointed.
He wasn’t sure whether he should be making up stories about bad horses or not, looking after children wasn’t something he hadn’t much experience of.
He watched the girl scamper around the cell, she was a skinny little thing consisting mostly of arms and legs that always seemed to be going in different directions at the same time, and tried again to figure out how the hell Molly had managed to talk him into this. Was he an old fool being suckered by a pretty face or was he simply too scared of that damn tongue of hers?
Maybe a bit of both.
“C’mon Missy, or I’ll have to lock you in for the night,” the keychain jangled in his hand.
She hurried out of the cell after assuring him again she hadn’t done anything really bad for ages.
Vasquez gave them a toothy grin as they emerged back into the office. Amelia gripped his hand and edged closer. For a little kid, she wasn’t a bad judge of character.
“He looks like a bank robber,” Amelia whispered, when they were just about out of earshot.
He’d had the same thought when he’d first met Emilio Vasquez and nothing he’d learned about the guy since had done anything to dissuade him that was exactly the kind of thing his deputy probably had on his CV.
He sat the little girl in his seat and got her drawing wanted posters to keep her amused. Hopefully she wouldn’t come up with anything that looked too much like any of his men.
He left her at his desk to check on what his valiant upholders of the law had been up to.
“No sign of Blane?” he asked Vasquez, who shrugged in response.
“He was in earlier.”
“Shame I missed him, all better now, is he?”
“I guess.”
“Didn’t bother to say where he was going, did he?”
Vasquez shrugged again, “He don’t say much.”
“Yeah,” he sighed, “I’ve noticed that.”
Any further insights into his absent deputy were curtailed by Royce bursting into the office.
“Sheriff! You better see this.”
His heart sank. Royce only ever got excitable when the shit started coming by the bucket load. He summoned Vasquez with a flick of his hand and the two of them followed Royce.
There was a grey-haired man he couldn’t immediately put his name to sitting on the steps outside the Sheriff’s Office, and a horse drinking from the trough he assumed the man had ridden into town on. He’d ridden hard too, given how lathered up the animal was.
The man looked up at him and he saw the dark, bloody stain soaking his left arm.
“I’ll live,” the man growled.
“What happened?”
“Mr Donnelly’s been attacked by drifters!” Royce blurted out, his voice even squeakier than usual.
Wade Donnelly.
The name came at last. He was one of the homesteaders living way out from town, who came in for supplies once a month or so, drank a few beers in the saloon and occasionally spent an hour or two with one of Monty’s girls before heading home. He’d never given him any trouble.
“What happened, Wade?”
Donnelly gave him a look that suggested he was surprised he knew his name.
“More than drifters,” he spat eventually.
“Go get Doc Rudi,” he ordered Vasquez before squatting down next to Donnelly. He ignored the dark look his deputy shot him. Vasquez had never taken kindly to goffering.
“Just a scratch.”
“Helluva a lot of blood for a scratch?”
Donnelly twitched his head. He wasn’t much more expressive than Blane.
“You live out east of town, don’t you?” he ventured when Donnelly remained perched on the step, cradling his arm and saying nothing.
“Guess I don’t anymore…” he muttered. His eyes were glassy and his voice thick. He didn’t know him anywhere near enough to know whether he was in shock or he was always like this.
“What happened?”
“Raiders, burnt my place down. That’s what happened. Managed to get away, but they got me in the wing,” Donnelly twitched his shoulder in case he hadn’t noticed the blood darkening the arm of his old cotton work shirt, “managed to outride them.”