The tunnel went straight down for a spell, then began to twist and turn. The walls were scored with the marks of pick axes everywhere, and rocks and piles of dirt lined the sides of the tunnel. After a few more minutes of descent, further tunnels began to branch off the main one, disappearing into the darkness. Only the main tunnel was lit by torches, though, and the group carrying Azrael remained on that path.
Azrael received his answer when they came across the bones. Bits of them scattered across the ground. The men and women carrying him took care to step over them. Then they passed a few larger spiky bones just lying there, as if the skeletons that had emerged from the tunnel had forgotten to include these bones in their unnatural bodies.
And then the tunnel ended before them in a wall of bone. Skeletons were embedded in the earth in a mess of grand proportions. They were jumbled together, as if they’d all been killed and broken apart and then tossed in a pile and buried. Maybe they had, Azrael mused, but now they were being unburied. The pick axes he’d heard leaned against the wall, amid piles of freshly chipped rock and clods of dirt. A couple of skeletal arms hung out of the wall nearby, as if reaching for the tools to dig themselves out. More of those hooks and spurs on them. And there were more bone pieces scattered everywhere here, covering the ground like ash in a fire. And dust. The dust was everywhere.
But it hadn’t covered the doll yet. It lay amid the bones, half-buried. Azrael looked at it for a moment, then back at the skeletal wall. He’d seen a lot of the dead in his time, but he didn’t recognize any of these remains. They looked ancient, like they’d been down here for millennia. They looked older than him.
The townsfolk dropped him to the ground, so he figured that was as good a time as any to stand up and draw his guns.
“I don’t know what your particular superstition is,” he said, “but the sun has set on it now.”
They didn’t show any signs of understanding him, which didn’t surprise him any. Instead, they just grinned at him like they were the ones holding the guns, not him. Then the man wearing the spectacles and hat reached out and took hold of one of those arms jutting from the wall. He snapped it free of the wall, like he was breaking a twig from a tree.
A cloud of dust erupted from the bone, as dark as the night in the unlit tunnels they’d passed. It engulfed Azrael, flowing into his mouth and nose, grinding against his skin. He could feel something residing within it. Not a soul, not exactly what he’d call life. But whatever had once animated these bones wasn’t fully dead yet. And now Azrael understood.
The townsfolk weren’t the townsfolk anymore. They’d been taken by whatever ancient beings were trapped in these bones buried deep in the earth, forgotten until the miners had dug down here and discovered them.
But Azrael was no mere mortal to be possessed by spirits lost to time. He was one of the Fallen, who were few in number but made up for it in destruction and despair. He let the form he took these days slip just a little for a second, so the bone spirit could glimpse his true nature. It abandoned its attempts to seize him. The dust swirled away, forming into a whirlwind that howled its way back up the mine shaft and out into the night. It left the others coughing in its wake, stumbling away from Azrael.
He didn’t let them escape. He delivered wrath and judgment upon them with his guns, and they fell amid the bones. The wind blew away to nothing, and the dust it had disturbed drifted back down to cover the ground once more. He couldn’t see the doll at all now.
Azrael reloaded his guns and headed back to the surface. He needed another bottle, but that was going to have to wait.
* * *
Azrael emerged from the mine into the continuing party in the street. He didn’t know why all the townsfolk hadn’t accompanied the others into the mine with him, like they had with the children. Maybe it was because he was an outsider here, or maybe it was because he was an angel. Or maybe it was because they were too busy celebrating the additions to their dance, the children who had come up out of the mine. But Azrael knew these children were children no longer.
The closest townsfolk turned to welcome him, reaching out their arms for an embrace, but then they paused when they saw it was him and not whoever or whatever it was they’d been expecting.
He shot them down and opened up a path to his horse. The girl who’d been holding the doll earlier came at him. She didn’t seem to be missing her doll at all now. He shot her down too, plus a few more of the dancers in his way. Then he rode out of town before they could swarm him.
At the abandoned wagons in the road, he encountered the old woman from the farm. She was running, dragging the man with the white eyes behind her. They appeared to have run the entire distance from the farm to the wagons. Or at least she had run. She was without shoes, and her feet were bloody. But the old man looked to be in worse shape, given he was more or less lying on the ground, with her hauling him along by the collar. His pants and the back of his shirt were torn, and his blood streaked the ground behind them.
Azrael stopped to warn her, but then saw from the way she looked at him that she wasn’t the same person anymore. Her eyes just moved over him, like he was so much air. She was humming a tune. The song the dancers had started up again, behind him.
Azrael looked at the empty road behind her. Now he knew where the entity in the whirlwind of dust had gone. He put a bullet from each gun into her, one in the head and one in the heart, and left her for the man to bury if he wished. The buzzards had enough sense to leave her alone as he rode on.
* * *
The sun was easing into the sky by the time Azrael reached the farm. The door to the farmhouse hung open, but he didn’t bother looking inside. Instead, he went straight to the barn. He pulled the doors open with his hands and looked into the gloom on the other side.
The barn was full of skeletons. It was the mob of them that had attacked the town. Although he knew now that they had actually been trying to save the children. Fifty, maybe sixty of them. About the same as the number of townsfolk. They turned to look at him as he stood there, and then they grabbed whatever they could off the ground. Pitchforks and axes, a couple of shovels, a few lengths of wood. The ones that didn’t have any weapons hung back, clustering around the children who’d been sleeping on piles of hay in the middle of the room until Azrael had intruded. A couple of boys and three girls. And the smaller tentative skeletons that had crept out of the mine the night before.
He drew his guns but he didn’t fire.
“How many more children are there?” he asked.
For a few seconds, none of them moved. The skeletons didn’t speak, but he didn’t expect them to. Then one of the boys got up and stepped forward. The one these bone creatures had dragged away, when he’d first ridden into the town.
“There’s just us,” he said. He looked at Azrael in a way that said he didn’t seem to be any happier here than he had been in the town. “The dust people got the rest of them.”
Azrael nodded at that. He didn’t know what the things buried in the earth were, but “dust people” seemed as good a name as any.
“These are the people from the town,” Azrael said, looking around at all the skeletons, and the boy nodded back at him.
“They’ve taken pretty much everyone,” the boy said. “They got the lady in the farmhouse during the night.” He didn’t say anything about the old man, but he didn’t have to.
“Which one of these are your kin?” Azrael asked, studying the skeletons. They weren’t advancing, but they weren’t letting down their guard either.
“I ain’t got no kin left,” the boy said. He brushed some straw from his clothing. “You shot them down when everyone came to rescue us the other night.”
Azrael dropped his guns back in their holsters. He understood what had happened, even if he didn’t quite understand how. The people of the town had unearthed the dust people, and the dust people had repaid them for the favor by possessing their bodies. But they hadn’t just taken them over. They’d swit
ched places with them. So the people of the town now inhabited the bones, and they’d somehow managed to cobble together their skeletal bodies out of those bones. Maybe there was a way to reverse the whole process, but if there was, Azrael didn’t know it.
“You should keep moving,” he told the boy. “Get as far away from this place as you can, and maybe those dust people will forget you were ever alive.”
The boy looked past him, at the world outside. “Some of the last people tried that a few days back,” he said. “The dust people sent a storm after them and brought them all back.”
Azrael thought again about the storm he’d ridden through to find himself in this place. The cries he’d heard. The abandoned wagons on the road.
“I seen all the bones,” the boy said. “I snuck into the mine one night. There’s too many dust people. There’s not enough of us in the town for all of them.”
Azrael looked away from the skeletons. The boy was right. There were many more of the dead still waiting down in that mine. Who knew how many? Maybe just a town’s worth. But maybe more. “I can’t help you if you stay here,” Azrael said, turning and walking back to his horse. “But if you come with me I might be able to protect you.” He had an idea. He wasn’t sure if it would work or not, but he had to do something.
The children and the skeletons followed him out of the barn, looking in all directions for signs of the dust people.
“Where are you going?” the boy asked, standing in the doorway.
“Back to the town,” Azrael said, and the buzzards took wing from the roof of the barn.
* * *
Azrael rode back into the town, followed by the skeletons. They still carried their weapons, and they trailed behind him, but they came. The ones who weren’t holding farm tools or improvised clubs carried the children in their arms. The children didn’t say anything, just clung tight to the racks of bone.
When they passed the abandoned wagons in the road, there was no sign of the woman he’d shot down or the man with the white eyes. Azrael couldn’t give it any more thought.
The people in the town didn’t falter in their dancing until Azrael rode into their midst. They reached out to him, as if to welcome him back. But then they stopped when the skeletons came into sight and halted at the edge of town. The two groups eyed each other, and the song died away, replaced by the sound of the wind blowing down the street from the direction of the mine.
Azrael shot down the man with the banjo and a woman holding a bottle of whiskey in either hand. They had more than enough numbers to take him down if they so desired, but he imagined from everything that had taken place that they desired even more to live. He was right, as they scrambled to get out of his way, leaving the dead man and woman lying in the dirt.
Azrael rode down the street to the mine, leaving the skeletons and children behind. But not the dust people. They followed him, and now they pulled out knives and guns. They were too late, if his idea worked. If not, well, it wouldn’t be the first time one of his gambles hadn’t paid off.
He got down from the horse at the mine entrance, but he didn’t go down that tunnel again. Instead, he stopped there and shook his wrists a little, loosening up. It had been a while since he’d done what he was about to try. The dust people nearest him stepped back a little, as if they thought he was getting ready to open up on them again. But he holstered the guns instead. And then he slammed his hands together and said the words in the forbidden tongue that he hadn’t uttered in centuries. He wasn’t sure if they’d still mean anything or not.
They did. The air itself rent open before him, splitting with the force of the power that flew from his hands to the mine. The walls of the tunnel exploded, earth and rock and wooden support beams erupting and crashing into each other. A giant cloud of dust billowed out, engulfing him and everyone behind him, but it was just dust.
Azrael uttered a few more words that were damnation to hear and slammed his hands into the ground. He heard the ceiling of the tunnel collapse, and felt the earth tremble under his feet. He stood back up as the dust settled around them all. He surveyed his work. The entrance to the mine was so much rubble now, the tunnel collapsed. The dead were buried again. He bowed his head for a moment, feeling the exhaustion all the way in his bones. He was glad that had worked, that the words still had power, because he didn’t have another plan. He’d been working on faith he didn’t know he still had. Or maybe didn’t want to admit he still had.
One of the torches outside the mine entrance somehow still burned. He took it and then turned and made his way through the crowd, which was now a mix of the dust people and skeletons. No one tried to stop him. No one touched him now. They’d seen his wrath and wanted none of it.
He went up the hill to the church. He stood on the front step and surveyed the crowd. The skeletons and the dust people and the children stared up at him. They waited for his words.
“I could have destroyed you,” he said, pointing the torch at the woman in the purple dress among the dust people. “I could have smote you down,” he said, pointing the torch at the man who’d given him the bottle when he’d first ridden into town. “I could have razed this town and turned even the memories of it and all of you to ash, to be scattered on the winds.”
No one said anything, because what was there to say to that?
“That mine, it’s sealed forever now,” he said. “Even I couldn’t dig my way down to those bones now. But I ain’t taking any more sides than that. What’s dust is dust.”
He went inside the church, his boots echoing in the empty room. He knelt down before that burn mark on the wall. It had been a long time since he’d kneeled, and it didn’t feel as natural as it once had. Nowhere near as natural.
He said a prayer for the woman from the farm, like he’d promised. There was no sign it was heard, but that was nothing new. Then he said a prayer for the entire town, with the same result. When he was done, he touched the torch to the wall. If there was someone listening to his prayers, he wanted to make sure there weren’t any misunderstandings over the way he still felt about things. When the flames caught he went back outside and pulled himself up on his horse.
The boy who had spoken to him back at the farmhouse stepped forward. Azrael had figured he would.
“What are we supposed to do now?” the boy asked, looking at the townsfolk. Azrael wondered which of their bodies had been home to his parents.
“This is a hard land,” Azrael said, as the church burned behind him. “You can keep on killing each other. Or you can learn to live together.” He saw the man with the white eyes in the crowd. He couldn’t tell if he was still human or one of the dust people now. “That’s up to you to decide,” he added. It was the sort of judgment that he’d been riding away from all these years, but he’d come to realize that sometimes there was no other kind of judgment.
“What kind of fate is that?” the boy asked.
“Your fate’s your own now,” Azrael said. “Make it what you will.”
He rode through them then, the skeletons and the dust people, back down the road and out of the town. He didn’t look back.
At the farmhouse, he stopped. He found some pieces of bone in the barn and used them to make a couple of crosses. He planted the bone crosses on either side of the wooden crosses. He didn’t have any bodies to bury, but sometimes it was the gestures that mattered.
Then he got back on the horse and rode out into the wasteland beyond the farm. There was another dust storm growing on the horizon, and he headed toward it.
As always, the buzzards followed.
Copyright © 2014 Peter Darbyshire
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Peter Darbyshire is the author of the novels The Warhol Gang and Please, which won Canada’s national ReLit award for best novel. He has published short stories in numerous journals and anthologies, including previously in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and his last weird western received On Spec’s Best Story of the Year award.
He currently lives in Vancouver, Canada, where he is working on a collection of stories about the end of the world. Visit him at www.peterdarbyshire.com.
Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies
MAKE NO PROMISES
by Stephen V. Ramey
Mist blanketed the Tsoi River. The clink-clack of the towing elephant’s harness became an eerie rattle from both banks, the gurgling chuck of water against the towboat’s hull were lips sucking flesh from chicken bones. A shiver went through Rahami Honra. She rubbed her forearm, careful not to scratch the spider-bite welts that marked her as Web Seer.
The Mother Oracle’s summons had surprised her, especially at this busy time of year when farmers relied on her prognostications to plan spring crops. It had provided no details beyond ordering her to leave at once.
An uncomfortable mix of anticipation and dread twisted Rahami’s stomach. Did this summons portend something good; an assignment closer to home, perhaps? It could as easily be bad news. Maybe an elder had complained about having to host a low-caste seer in the village. Her clients were content with her, but who knew how authorities saw the situation? No, it had to be more than that. The Mother Oracle would not summon her simply to change her assignment. But what?
“...beyond the divide.”
“Pardon?” Rahami twisted on the bench. The passenger closest to her frowned before resuming his stony gaze. Rahami tugged at her travel cloak’s sodden hood. Hallucinations were not uncommon in seers, but she had not experienced them before this journey. It was discomforting.
The first of Hatsi’s weathered silk warehouses emerged from the mist. “Pier a’coming,” the boatmaster grunted from his perch. Men carried poles to the rails. On shore, the elephant trainer backed the beast, letting its chains go slack while the pole men prodded the boat into position. Others hopped the narrowing gap to secure ropes. Rahami took her place in the disembarking line. She had hoped to visit her mother before meeting the Oracle at Matsomsa Spider House, but the boat was arriving a day late.
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