A God of Many Tears (Hawker's Drift Book 4)

by Andy Monk

  However, that wasn’t what he needed now. He found the box of dressings, needles and surgical thread and a small flask of whiskey at the bottom of his bag. It was always likely he was gonna get himself hurt one day and he was nothing if not prepared.

  There was an old chipped mirror hanging on the wall and some of the light lancing through the boarded-up window fell conveniently upon it. Steeling himself he checked how bad the damage was.

  He wouldn’t be entering no more beauty pageants, that was for sure.

  The right side of his face was a mess. The gaping wound where the bitch’s bullet had blown his cheek out was encased in blood and already fearfully swollen. The whole right side of his face was darkening with bruises. His mouth hung open, it just hurt too damn much to close it, even if he could. He’d lost some teeth, but it could have been a lot worse. His nose wasn’t exactly where it should be either.

  First, he used one of his canteens of water to wash away the blood and before pouring whiskey over it. The pain was like nothing he’d ever known, but he didn’t scream and he worked hard to keep his face as rigid as he could, even the smallest movement felt like someone was turning a knife in his flesh.

  It was strange that after so many years of working so hard to keep expressions and movement from his features, it was now excruciating to make even the slightest facial gesture. There was a message in that somewhere.

  As painful as that was, he knew it was gonna feel like a playful slap on the rump compared to what was going to come next.

  It took a long time to thread the needle.

  When he was done, he poured some of the whiskey down his throat. He’d never been much of a drinker and had only carried the flask for a situation like this, but he thought it might help with the pain. It didn’t. It just burned his tongue and made him want to gag. The only way whiskey was going to ease his pain was if he drunk himself into oblivion and if he wanted to do that he might as well use the chloroform in his bag. It would be a lot quicker.

  He stood in front of the mirror for a long while, needle and thread in one hand, sucking in air through his nostrils and steeling himself for what was to come.

  Once his hand had stopped shaking and he’d squeezed every part of himself down into a tight ball deep, deep inside himself, he raised the needle to his face. He watched his mirror image, bloodied, disfigured, pale-skinned and wide-eyed looking back at him. There was anticipation in those eyes, but no fear, it pleased him to see.

  He would suffer and he would hurt, but he consoled himself with the thought that all he had endured would be nothing to what he would one day do to Molly fucking McCrea.

  He began stitching…

  The Gunslinger

  Amelia’s soul went blank the moment she placed her thin fingers on his arm.

  “I’ve waited a long time to see you again…” her voice was a whisper above the breeze.

  “I don’t understand…”

  “John and Cece can explain it to you on your way to the Mayor’s ranch.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m going back to town, to Molly.”

  Amelia stopped and poked the ground with her walking stick a couple of times, her face crumpling against the glaring sun.

  “Molly is fine. She’ll be there when you get back. But you must go to the ranch and do what needs to be done. Do what God wants you to do. What you need to do for yourself. That’s your path, your rail…”

  “And what does God want me to do? What’s there that’s so in need of destroying?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  He sighed.

  “This world runs on rails,” Amelia said, poking at the ground more forcefully.

  “So you said before. Didn’t understand it none the first time either.”

  “Don’t need no understanding! You just gotta trust me.”

  He said nothing as he tried to listen to her soul over the wind, but there was only silence.

  “How’d you know about the Thin Rider?” he asked eventually, “I’ve never told anyone about him.”

  “You didn’t need to tell me.”

  He didn’t understand anything Amelia was saying. Perhaps she was soft-headed.

  Amelia gave a little laugh, “Sometimes I wake up and don’t know who I am anymore. Alzheimer’s, they call it where I come from. It’s a terrible thing, slowly losing yourself and knowing one day you won’t wake up anywhere no more, you’ll just be this shell and all the memories that made you will have evaporated away, like a kettle left too long on the heat. A lot of folk who suffer from it find themselves wandering down the street or standing in their garden and have no memory of how they got there. Let me tell you, when you can walk between the worlds you wake up in some damn stranger places than that.”

  She turned sad dark eyes on him, “So, yes, I’m soft-headed, but not today, not here, not now. Been waiting a long time for this day. To see you again. To point you in the right direction. To write the final chapter and complete the circle. To say one last goodbye.”

  He swallowed and felt his flesh chill in the warmth of a summer sun, remembering the uncanny little things young Amelia had said

  “You can read my soul?”

  “Everyone who can walk between worlds carries that burden Amos, it’s the stuff of life itself and it’s all connected… you just need to be shown how to use it. You showed me how.”

  “But I can’t control it and I certainly don’t know anything about walking between worlds!”

  “You’ll learn and you’ll teach me…”

  He opened his mouth to say more, but she squeezed his arm and smiled, “Ssssh now, I have to go soon and so do you… time and paths wait for no man or old bird. Let’s walk together through the grass one last time.”

  Her steps were slow and each one came with a price to be paid as they walked together towards the dazzling unreachable horizon.

  “Never saw much of my Daddy and my Mom spent most of her life on a couch eating doughnuts and watching game shows. Not sure what I’d have become if I hadn’t fallen down the rabbit hole and found you and Molly… not sure I ever thanked you for what you did for me and maybe I shouldn’t have gone back. Don’t think you wanted me too even though you showed me how. I had a good life. I wanted you to know that. Met a good man, fell in love, had myself a family and tried to forget about the paths that lie between the worlds even though I always knew I had to come back this last time to make sure you go with John and Cece to do what needs to be done.”

  “I-”

  “I knows you want to go back to Molly! That you knows you shouldn’t have left her to go after Stodder Hope and that leaving her to the Mayor’s word ain’t a worthy thing to have done, but you have to trust me Amos. You have to.”

  “You’re asking a lot of me.”

  “I’ll be giving a lot to you too. If you don’t go, then none of this works and he’ll win.”

  “What is he? The Mayor, tell me that at least. What is he?”

  Amelia sucked at her teeth.

  “He comes from the in-between, the world between the worlds where the paths run straight and true. Sure John and Cece got some fancy words for it, but I prefer to call it by its old-fashioned name.”

  “Which is?” he prompted, when her eyes drifted off to the edge of the world again.

  “Heaven.”

  “Heaven?”

  “Suppose if I told you God come to me in my dreams you’d put it down to my soft-headedness. Maybe you’d be right. But I don’t think so. God cast him out of heaven and sent him here. This world is his prison. But now there’s more work to be done to make sure he stays here so he can’t do his meddlin’ in other worlds no more. That’s where you come in.”

  He couldn’t help but laugh, “God needs me?”

  “Don’t mock. Go to that ranch and you’ll see the truth of it. The truth of everything!”

  He stared at her, but her soul wasn’t in view and he got no sense of whether she was lying, or mad or both. She was hiding her soul; the
way Boy Crow had done the night he’d followed Stodder Hope out onto the grass after the Dark Carnival. She’d wanted him to see enough of it to recognise her, but when she’d touched him she’d hidden it, which meant…

  He thought of Molly and Stodder Hope and the Thin Rider and the monsters in the caves, because Amelia’s bony hand was still on his arm and she could read his thoughts as easily as a book. Just like Boy Crow had.

  Amelia smiled, but didn’t say anything.

  “Do I ever find Severn or Hope or any of the others?”

  “Your life will be better for not looking. Time comes when you gotta stop hating, when you gotta let it go and walk away else you never will. We both know men who never did. There’s always more than one path through this world. When the time comes, you gotta let it all go and trust that this world really does run on rails. Can’t tell you more of the future, other than you share it with Molly and with me, you gotta figure the rest out for yourself. Death follows life, but life follows death too. You need to remember that. You just gotta have faith to know there’s something better for you. Something better than that road you been following all these years.”

  “It’s the only road I know…”

  “Before I left the final time we talked about this day. You told me not to tell you what happens, but I think part of you wanted me too because the scars they’ll leave on you…” she shook her head, “…and if you knew you might act different and everything might change, but there’s one thing you said to tell you.”

  Small cold feet scurried across his soul.

  “What was it?”

  “A life well-lived comes with sacrifices.”

  “My life has been nothing but sacrifices. Sacrifices to a blind and terrible god…”

  She smiled, but it was a cold, awful smile and her eyes slipped away as if afraid he’d see something best left unseen in their depths.

  “You’re a good man Amos. You did right by me…” when her eyes returned to his they were wet with tears “…I think of you more as my father than the fool who was. You taught me so much, not just about the gift we share and the burden that comes with it, but how to live my life and be the best person I could possibly be. I love you and I’ve missed you so much…”

  She turned into his embrace and he felt her thin shoulders shudder with her sobs. He held her and said nothing. Not knowing what to say or believe. It all seemed too fantastical for words. God and the Mayor, messages from his future self, other worlds and whatever the hell was going on with John and Cece, but more than all those things the possibility that he had a life ahead of him where Amelia would think of him as her father. And, most of all, with Molly.

  Before the emotions and thoughts swirling around his mind could settle into any kind of order Amelia pulled away, and found a handkerchief to dab her eyes with, “Oh, look at me, stupid old woman!”

  She stood in the blazing sunshine, staring at him like she was seeing more than just a man in front of her, like she was seeing all the memories of her life.

  “One final thing. Nearly forgot, which I’m getting plenty of practice at these days. You remember this, it’s important. One day soon someone’s gonna ask you where the iron key is. You act like you know what they’re talking about and tell em it’s in Silver’s saddle bag. You’ll be able to figure out the rest…”

  “I don’t-”

  “Don’t say anything…” she stepped backwards, the grass dancing about her legs, eyes still glistening in the shade beneath her hat. The smile on her face was quivering beneath the weight of the tears she was holding back.

  “Goodbye…” she mouthed, then turned away and vanished. For an instant, the most vibrant and intense colours he’d ever seen consumed her body. They flowed and writhed around her like the arms of a thousand lovers pulling her back into an embrace that would never end.

  Then there was nothing but grass all the way out to forever.

  *

  “Guess we got some talking to do,” John said as he approached them. Cece was still staring at the thin little book in her hands, her eyes flicking back and forth with a frown etched so deep into her face it seemed she’d aged a couple of decades.

  “Nope,” he said, “we gotta ride.”

  “You going back to town?” John asked.

  “No, I’m going with you.”

  “Look, I’m not so sure we should…”

  “You don’t have to come,” Cece snapped, before her eyes turned on Amos, “What did she say, the old woman?”

  “Amelia.”

  Cece shrugged, “I’m not convinced-”

  “She is who she says she is…”

  She shrugged again.

  “The old lady, she vanished!” Dorry panted, jogging across the trampled grass towards them.

  Cece turned quickly and dropped the thin book into her saddlebag.

  “Who wants to take this one?” John asked, looking between them.

  “We need to get moving,” he said, some questions were best left ignored.

  “She vanished, I was looking right at her!”

  “How’s Laura doing?”

  “Better… but the old lady just vanished!”

  Dorry didn’t seem keen on having her question ignored.

  “What did you see?” Cece asked.

  “She backed away from Amos a couple of steps, then turned… and then… she was gone.”

  “Anything else?”

  Dorry scrunched up her face, “There was… like… colours… dancing all about her, just for an instant… then… nothing…”

  Cece worried at her lip and shook her head, “I’ll go check on Laura, see if she’s good to travel.”

  Dorry stared at the young woman before turning back to the two men and demanding, “Am I the only one who kind of finds this… strange?”

  “No, but we’ve got other concerns,” he sighed.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah…” he nodded towards the east, “we have.”

  The sound of gunfire carried on the wind.

  *

  “She had a bone sticking out of her leg…” he heard Sye whisper to Dorry as Laura took a tentative step. She was holding onto Cece and could only manage a hobble, but for a girl he’d thought would be lucky to ever walk again a few hours ago…

  “Strange day when that ain’t even close to the weirdest thing I seen since breakfast,” Dorry muttered back, summing up his own feelings.

  They’d managed to round up enough horses from those left by the dead Scourge and he was eager to get moving, before more black-sashed riders appeared.

  “You two…” he said to Sye and Dorry, “Get Laura back to Hawker’s Drift.”

  “Where are you going?” Dorry followed a couple of paces behind as he walked over to Silver.

  “With John and Cece… we got some other business.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  He turned and frowned, “No you won’t. Get to town, you’ll be safe there.”

  “I think I’m safer with you.”

  “Thanks, but-”

  “Yeah, you’re pretty nifty with the gun and I owe you for saving me from the Scourge, twice, but that ain’t what I meant. There’s thousands of those bastards heading for Hawker’s Drift. You said so yourself. They gonna burn that town down. I reckon I’m a damn sight safer sticking with you. Whatever damn strange business you’re all involved with.”

  She pushed back her hat and looked determined. The shimmers in her soul told him that was bravado. She was scared. She trusted him. She thought if she went to Hawker’s Drift she’d end up dead or a Bride of the Scourge.

  Dorry raised her chin and kept his eye. Challenging him to send her back to town.

  Which was what he should do. If Amelia was right and Molly was going to be safe, then the Scourge wouldn’t attack the town, or if they did, they’d be beaten back. He, however, had no idea what he was riding into. Old Amelia had told him he lived through it, but she hadn’t said anything about anyone else.
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  And she’d been holding something back. Something she didn’t want him to know. Why else would she have closed her soul in the way Boy Crow had?

  “Might as well let me ride with you. Gonna follow you whatever as I reckon you won’t shoot me out of the saddle,” Dorry insisted, raising her chin.

  “Where we’re going. It’s dangerous.”

  She snorted, “Show me where isn’t dangerous around here right now?”

  He narrowed his eyes and looked past the young woman. John was standing by the horses staring at Cece who had wandered over to where Amelia had disappeared; she was looking down at her thin book again as she shuffled through the grass. Sye was standing over Laura who was resting in the grass. He was cradling his injured arm, but he’d be able to ride back to town so long as they didn’t run into any more Scourge raiding parties.

  “Laura and Sye are both injured, they need you…”

  Dorry wasn’t buying that, “We’re a couple of hours from town, if they run into more Scourge… not much I could do to save em on my own.”

  “Ok… ok… but do as you’re told and keep your head down.”

  “Mind telling me what we’re doing?”

  “I have no damn idea.”

  “Something to do with the Ghost Lady?”

  “Ghost Lady?”

  “She vanished into thin air, what the hell else could she be?”

  Maybe Dorry wasn’t a million miles wrong. Old Amelia had been a ghost. Just a ghost from the future.

  “Yeah, the Ghost Lady.”

  “What-”

  “You know the bit where I said about you doing what you’re told and keeping your head down?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You can add not asking questions to the list.”

  “Gotcha!” Dorry grinned.

  *

  It took some lifting for to get Laura into a saddle. The girl was new linen white, but it was as much from fear as pain.

  “Are you going to kill more Scourge?” Sye demanded, once Laura was settled. With Dorry holding the bridle of the girl’s horse, he turned back to the young man and shook his head, “No, something else.”

  Sye stared at him, his eyes winter bleak.