So they’d sent him here. They’d banished him, with the cheery rationalization, that one less person on that crowded 23rd Century earth couldn’t possibly be missed.
He would show them.
Somewhere, in all the secrets of the dead he was certain that he would find a trail home.
And once he had found his way back home he would show them all.
The Moon Man turned his thoughts outward and down towards Leadbetter, his best and poorest servant.
Where are you, Leadbetter?
He reached down into the guts of the mountain. He stirred it about, like an old style auger searching for wisdom in freshly strewn bull bowels. His mind touched the thoughts of the mountain man. The one called Zachaeus, and the big thing buried beneath his camp. The slow green dreams it dreamed, even still.
He tasted dreams of forests and jungles and plains.
The thing he wanted.
The long horn.
I will eat you, he thought.
I will eat you and make you whole.
* There Ain’t No Place Like A Hole In The Ground *
Zachaeus’s cave camp wasn’t much more than that. A cave, with an underground creek that stank of rotted eggs. The ruins of a campfire. Wood too wet to burn. No air to burn it in.
“The water’s handy for Two Bump,” Zachaeus explained. “There’s fish in that water. The fish are whiter than a nun’s belly and blinder than old Saul of Tarsus. They taste worse than crawler meat, but it’s good in a belly pinch.”
Jonah looked about in the darkness. A mole would have felt claustrophobic.
“All the amenities of home.”
“You were expecting Delmonicos? Yonder’s the coolest part of the cave camp. Good place to sleep. If you got to make dirty lemonade go do it over in the corner.”
Jonah thought about that.
“Is that something we still have to do?”
“Every now and then,” Zachaeus allowed.
“When’s the last time you did it? Peed, I mean?”
The old man dragged his hand across the fustiness of his beard, scratching for an answer.
“Twenty-three, no maybe twenty-four years back.”
“What about sex? Can we do that?”
Zachaeus grinned. “You ain’t that cute.”
Jonah nodded wryly. “Funny. But twenty-four years? How long you been down here?”
“A little longer than Leadbetter. I ain’t so sure about that Moon Man.”
“Who’s he?”
Zachaeus tilted his head upwards with a cynical grin.
“He’s the one looking down on us mole’s assholes. From way up high.”
“You talking about God?”
“Naw. He just thinks he is, is all. The Moon Man, he’s something different than God.”
“The Devil?”
“Not even close. The Moon Man’s way worse than old Nicky Scratch. Way, way worse. He’s got them crawlers digging, night and day. He wants to find something. Something only I’ve got. And he sure as shit ain’t getting it from me.”
“What’s he want?”
“I’ll show you later, yonker.”
“I wish to hell you’d stop calling me that. I ain’t that young.”
“Compared to who?”
That stopped Jonah’s train of thought cold.
How old was the old man, anyway?
“How long you been down here?” He warily asked. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the truth.
“A lot more years than a spider’s got eggs,” Zachaeus said. “Now let’s get some sleep.”
“Do we need to? Sleep, I mean.”
Zachaeus shrugged.
“No more than peeing, but it sure does pass the time.”
And with that he closed his eyes.
* The Great Green Ghost *
The Great Green Ghostly Indian spirit looked down upon the walking dead man. Leadbetter, who was waiting in the cavern for the other two walking dead men to come back out so he could try and kill them both for good.
Of course the Man Who Looks Like A Moon would want to raise them back up, but that wasn’t what Leadbetter wanted. The Great Green Ghost had looked into Leadbetter’s heart, and the thoughts he saw there were dark indeed. Leadbetter wanted both of the white men dead and gone. They represented some sort of memory curse to him. He wanted to erase the curse, by erasing them.
The Great Green Ghost smiled at the little man’s foolishness.
He could tell that this Leadbetter knew he was there. Maybe the dead man didn’t know he was watching, but he sure as thunder knew that the Great Great Green Ghost was there, and he was afraid of what the Great Green Ghost might do.
He’d seen what the Great Green Ghost had done to the crawlers. The other walking dead men. He’d seen what was left of them and was afraid.
He shouldn’t be afraid. The Great Green Ghost was only interested in burying Indian crawlers - the real people. The others were just walking white men. The white men meant nothing more to the Great Green Ghost than a patch of dried up piss, sprinkled in the hot desert dust. He was just here to watch over the dead. To burn them in his pure green fire and put them back into the earth where they belonged.
He had sadly failed so far. He had failed when he had allowed the Moon Man to stay unhindered in the upper chambers. It had seemed so harmless. It had seemed so safe. Why had he done it?
Loneliness?
Boredom?
He should have known better. It had been laziness and complacency that had prompted him to ignore He-Who-Looks-Like-The-Moon. Now he had to pay the price for his sorry procrastination.
It was a bad business, this bringing back of the dead. The raising of what should be left to rot in peace. It was white man’s magic, same as all the old bad magic. No one but white men tampered in the dark.
So the Great Green Ghost waited in the tunnels for those of his people who might come along. Those he could help. The white men could raise themselves up and kill themselves over and over until the Great Spirit brought the singing waters home, as far as the Great Green Ghost was concerned. As far as the Great Green Ghost was concerned, white men were worth less than a handful of lifeless dirt.
He passed his thoughts through the tunnels. Saw a spark of life, lingering in the shadows, like an ember lingering in a pit of ashed-out coals.
The Great Green Ghost looked closer.
Saw a single head, laying in the darkness.
He picked it up.
“Hello, little skull. What brings you to this darkness? There is little meat to eat down here.”
“I have come to pay a debt,” No Ears said. “I know you. You are the GreenMountain spirit. My grandfathers once worshipped you as the bringer of rain and life.”
This made the Great Green Ghost smile. It had been a long time since he had been addressed in such reverence. He had never truly needed it. He had never demanded it, but still, a little respect was always a good thing.
“Tell me your father’s name, little skull.”
No Ears told him.
“And his father?”
No Ears told him that too.
“I knew his father. A good man, even if he liked to eat snake. I did not think he would ever make a son.”
“He made three. And they made twelve. And one of the twelve, my father, he made me.”
The Great Green Ghost nodded.
“I guess people can change.”
No Ears laughed at that - which was kind of interesting thing to watch given the state of his current condition. It looked something like a decaying jumping bean trying to learn the polka, and it sounded like a deathwatch spider on its last legs.
“Green spirit, you have spoken a lot of truth. Some people can change more than can be believed.”
The Great Green Ghost looked at the little skull. He saw the humor in what the skull was telling him and he laughed.
“It is true. You have changed a lot, no doubt. When did you die?”
“It was a
fire in the blood that took me. It was a fever devil that would not grow cool. It burned me down to my bones, and it ate of my brains. It was a bad way for a man to die.”
“Little skull, there is no good way to die.”
No Ears tried to shrug.
“Green spirit, what would you know about dying?”
“Even a spirit can die, little skull.”
No Ears thought about that. The Great Green Ghost was right, but No Ears was stubborn.
“There are better ways,” he maintained.
The Great Green Ghost grinned at the little head’s single-minded stubbornness.
“What brought you back, little head?”
No Ears thought about that. He remembered the face, looking down at him. He remembered the head, as big as a mountain. He remembered the face of the Moon Man, so soft and burnt, like one who has roasted long at the stake, with great puss filled craters upon his face. Like one who has died in fire. Like one who has died of fever.
“It was the Man Who Looks Like A Moon, grandfather ghost.”
The Great Green Ghost nodded. He had just been thinking of this Man Who Looks Like A Moon. Perhaps the little skull was a sign. Perhaps he should go and pay a visit upon this Moon Man.
“I will put you back into the earth, little head. Back to the cool and shadows.”
No Ears bounced with agitation.
“Oh Grandfather Ghost, do not do that, please. I have much to see yet,” He winked his one good eye in grotesque fashion. “I am the last of my people, and I am not ready to lay down in the shadows and the rock.”
The Great Green Ghost nodded in dignity.
“It shall be as you say, little head. I shall see you again, when the white buffalo runs.”
He placed No Ears back on to the ground.
No Ears headed off into the darkness and shadows, hump crawling his way down the long tunnels.
He had unfinished business with the man who lay ahead.
With Leadbetter.
* Kicking High And Futile In A Thin Midair Jig *
When you live in the bottom of a mountain it is hard to find a tunnel any deeper than the windings of memory.
Zachaeus wasn’t sleeping, but he was dreaming. Or maybe he was just remembering. Or maybe he was just remembering a dream.
He dreamed of the big herds – of the big shaggies, rolling wild and free like a great stinking furry-assed tidal wave, sweeping the land good and clean. No people around. Just the wild buffalo, the outstretched plain, and a big empty sky.
Once there had been thousands of the beasts. The big shaggies. Buffalo. Enough to trample trains and towns like rotted out kindlewood.
Fuck the locomotive. Fuck the telegraph. Fuck all of this modern science. The next thing you know they’ll be throwing men into the air on kite strings. Sending them to the moon and further.
Maybe that’s where the Moon Man came from.
The moon.
Or further.
He hadn’t figured him out yet. He was bit of a puzzle box, that old, bald, rotting bastard. Might be he was just a crawler that somehow got smart. Might be he was an evil spirit. Might be he was the devil himself.
Zacheus would find that out, one of these days. He had vowed to chew on the Moon Man’s liver, and piss him an epitaph in bile green ink. He sure as shit knew where Leadbetter came from. A man remembers the last pair of eyes he watches before going under.
He drifted back, awash on a rolling flashflood tide of memory far beyond his control.
To the past where memory and regret was kept.
There stood Milton Leadbetter. He was a handsome bastard, for a peckerhead. Tall in the saddle and lead hand of a gang of so called buffalo hunters.
Ha.
Hunters they called themselves. Laying on their bellies on the backs of the hills, letting fire on a herd of poor dumb buffalo. Blasting them down by the heapload and wagon full.
Leaving them to rot in the dirt.
That’s what addled Zachaeus’s eggs more than anything. All of that wasted meat was worse than a crime to his way of thinking.
Worse than a sin.
He’d grown up in these hills. He’d raised himself by his own moccasins strings and learned to hunt from the best of them. Old Jim Bridger, Jebediah Smith, Kit Carson and Big Breckenridge Elkins. They’d showed him how. Some of it, anyway. Most of it he learned by his lonesome.
He’d never hunted for anything but meat. Even the fur trade hadn’t attracted him. In the end that was what cut him apart from the other mountain men. He got what he needed from the land. Salt and gunpowder and essentials, those he’d trade for with work. He had never seen much sense in killing something you didn’t need to eat.
That’s what riled him about the buffalo hunters. They’d come out here with the plan to wipe out the buffalo. Just so they could wipe out the Indians. Damn shame. Zachaeus never had no particular liking for the red man, but they never got much in his way, either.
No sir. It was always white men got up to no good. Killing the buffalo and hunting way beyond all needs.
So that day when he saw that pack of pissants on ponyback, hunting up the largest herd of buffalo he’d seen in six long years, he just had to deal himself a hand.
He’d sat up high. With his Springfield, cocked and ready, his volley gun close at hand.
Down in the valley he could see them standing over their latest kills. A baker’s dozen bastard sons. Looked like a pack of halfbreed degenerate asshole pups.
He found himself a tidy little hummock, where he could rest his Springfield to steady his aim. He took the smallest buffalo hunter first. Small men were usually dangerous. You never saw them coming. Poor targets, with mountain-sized grudges; usually moving too fast to kill.
He blew the little man’s throat out. He caught him in midtalk, words halfway out of his mouth, and the next he knew he was wearing his throat pipe for a necktie.
Zacheus reloaded calmly and caught the second one running for his horse. The bullet split him in the brisket and blasted a tidy little pot roast chunk out of him. The man fell to the dirt and flopped like a fresh caught trout.
The third one was shooting back. Ambitious little shit weasel. Zachaeus nailed him in the shoulder bone, and then while he was standing there trying to pick his gun back up with an arm that had suddenly grown as useful as a permanently limp dick, he finished him off.
They’d calmed down by then. Some of them mounted horses, and others hunkered down. It took them a half-day of shooting and crawling to catch up to him. He finished off three more while they were still trying.
Then they got close enough to rush him.
He’d lain there, waiting for them with his volley gun.
He caught almost the last of them before Leadbetter knocked him cold with the butt of his pistol.
Then Leadbetter had hung Zachaeus, in the nastiest way he could think of.
He still didn’t like to think about it much. Feeling the ground vanishing beneath his feet. Listening to the chunk-chunk-chunking of the shovel blade. Knowing that there was nothing but a thong of corded horsehair to hold him up. The last thing Zachaeus remembered was his heels kicking high and futile in a thin midair jig, like he was trying to learn to walk on air.
When the mountain moved, he thought it was just a part of his dream.
* One Small Step For The Great Great Green Ghost *
The Great Green Ghost hovered high above the mountain that white men called the Devil’s Anvil, adrift and afloat like a burning green cloud. There was a long, eerie green glintering thread, dangling like a birth cord from his belly, leading all the way down into the heart of the mountain.
The mountain was part of the Great Green Ghost. He’d always been rooted to it. He wasn’t really a ghost. Not in the way that white men thought of ghosts. He was more of a spirit - kind of walking memory dream. He had been here when the world first learned how to turn. Back then this whole territory had lay beneath a great hot ocean. Later, the waters had rece
ded and a forest grew up. The green in the trees had nurtured his strength.
First he’d fed in the dirt and darkness. Roots were his friends. Shadows were his house and home; his sun and sky. Then came the first bit of life. A tiny one celled chiggerlet, burrowing in the darkness.
He’d touched it and felt whole.
This is how it always begins. The first taste of life, and then a hunger for more. The Great Green Ghost had prowled through the darkness, pushing his way through the dirt, sucking up bug and worm and lizardling. Each bit of nourishment enriching his spirit and making him large and strong and powerful.
Then he had found the men, camped upon a hillside. They were hunting the herds of antelope and trying to hide from the hungry packs of dire wolves and the great two tusked tiger.
The Great Green Ghost had reached up into the camp, and tugged down a woman.
Now that had been an experience.
He had never felt such life before. He plunged into her secret wetness. He swam through the tidal pains of menstruation and childbirth. He learned to relish the dark wet secrets she kept hidden from the men.
He’d swallowed her whole. He had pulled her down into the darkness, and regurgitated her into the mysteries of the earth. There he had kept her, knowing her as best he could.
A spirit does not love the way that men do, but he came to care for her in his own slow green way.
And when he was done with her he went back for more.
He became a green and dirty plague, drawing down the people one by one, until finally in terror, they promised to worship him, and he found their fear and adoration far more nourishing than any meager blood feast. He let them worship him, and let them live, for as long as they might. Now they were gone. Now there were only the bones of the mountains, in the arid graveyard of the desert.
There were bones in these mountains older than can be imagined. There were bones older than the old man the white men called history. There were bones older than memory, older than thought; bones as old as the moon and older still. There were other bones here as well. The bones of the people who had chosen to worship him. He made it his duty to see that they lay in peace.
Steve Vernon Special Edition Gift Pack, Vol 1 Page 6