by Chris Miller
“S-so we get into Dust, then we smoke the son of a bitch and find this re-lick? That it?” Quentin asked.
“It’s relic, my dear boy, and yes, that’s about the size of it,” Dreary replied. “But I’ve no desire to cross arms with the man headlong. He’s an accomplished gunslinger and rumored to be a master of magic as well. His assassination will be best accomplished through stealth and distance.”
The men nodded slowly, their moist eyes glinting in the moonlight. The crickets sang in the night as the four men fell into a long, contemplative silence. Finally, Quentin asked a final question.
“Gear, when we find this, uh, rellick,” he said, drawing the word out, “what do you aim to do with it, exactly?”
Dreary smiled and turned back to the distant, flickering fire through the trees and raised the scope to his eye once more.
“Why, my dear Quentin,” he said in a low voice which was almost a growl, “I shall join the ranks of the divine.”
He slammed the scope closed.
9
“ . . . et her to . . . elic.”
Bits and pieces of words drifted to her through the murk of her mind as she became aware of a driving pain in her skull. She tried opening her eyes, but all she was able to make out were constellations of black stars and planets orbiting invisible suns and the sensation caused her gorge to rise. She let her eyes drift closed again as she strained to listen to the words of the man which still drifted in and out around the thrumming pain in her skull.
“ . . . take the boy to . . . eet back at the temp . . . ”
She couldn’t focus. The pain was searing and horrific. What was even more horrific was the seeming blankness in her mind as to what was going on. She began searching for memories, anything that would shed light on what was happening to her. For a frightening moment, she realized she didn’t even know how she knew what a memory was, let alone how to locate one within her brain. Her heart began to race and she felt a tingling sensation wash over her from the base of her neck down to her thighs, spreading to her fingertips like pricking tacks.
My God, she thought. Oh, my God, what’s happening? Where am I? Who am I?
Fresh panic threatened to seize within her at the advent of her own thoughts. Who was she? How could she not know who she was? How could she not know what was happening? Why couldn’t she remember anything and why was her head hurting so much and her vision so blur—
A sharp pain smacked the back of her already pounding skull and she winced involuntarily. She tried opening her eyes once more and found the constellations still there, but now swirling only in the periphery of her vision. It was dark out, though she thought she could see a pink kiss rising above the tree line announcing the onset of dawn.
Dawn is morning, she thought. Dawn is when the sun rises in the morning.
That was something. Some sort of memory. Or understanding, at the very least. But this didn’t answer the question of what was happening to her. She blinked her eyes some more to clear them.
Three sharp raps to the back of her skull that smarted fiercely and caused her to wince again brought her further out of the murk. She glanced down and realized she was being dragged by . . . by a . . .
She couldn’t make it out. The darkness was closing in once more as she was pulled through a doorway. Sharp splinters snagged at her dress and pricked the soft flesh of her arms which lolled above her head. She was being taken into a building or a house of some kind. That was why the faint pink light had faded back to a cloak of deep gray, edging on black.
Whatever it was that had been dragging her stopped and she felt her feet drop to the floor, the impact making a loud thud on the planks. The heels of her feet ached and her head throbbed in unison with her heartbeat.
She moaned.
Whatever had been dragging her moved in the shadows, an inky creature in the dark, indistinguishable aside from its movements. She became aware of a deep, bubbling sound, of a strange rasping of breath.
Of clicking sounds.
Something skittered in the darkness beyond sight, like too many feet lightly tiptoeing on the wooden planks of the floor. The bubbling, rasping, clicking sounds continued. She began to try and move, first up on her elbows, then to her side. She snaked a hand around to the back of her head and felt the knot there. It was an angry thing, hot and swollen, and her touch upon it neared on agony.
Another wince and her hand came away and joined her other, palm down on the floor. She took deep breaths, trying to steady her ever rising gorge. Sharply through the nose, long and slow past her lips. After a few moments, the nausea passed again and she managed to roll herself over onto her knees.
“W-what’s going on?” she asked, her voice feeble in the dark space. She could hear the skittering thing moving and breathing and clicking and . . .
She tried not to focus on the sounds. They weren’t natural. She wasn’t sure how she knew what natural was when she couldn’t even manage to land on her name or what had happened or how she’d gotten here. But she knew. Instinctively, she knew. Something bred into her through millions of years. Something deep within her, far in the back of her ancient lizard brain which remained largely inactive except when danger lurked.
And she was convinced it lurked now.
“I-I don’t—”
“Sssssiiilllleeeeeeennnnnccce,” a sickening voice slithered into her ears from the abyss all around her, chilling her blood in place.
Her spine rippled and gooseflesh erupted over back and arms. Even her buttocks rippled with the stuff. Her eyes were wide in the gloom, though she realized she could see just a bit more than she had before. At first, she thought her eyes were adjusting to the dark, but then she saw the thin reams of light cutting through the outer edge of a pair of shuttered windows across the room. The sun was rising outside.
Windows, she thought. Windows. Sunlight. You know these things, woman! And you’re a woman! Who are you? Think!
“Who are you?” she asked the voice in the dark as she made her way onto shaky legs. “What is thi—”
A memory flared in her mind. She was beneath a house, holding someone close to her chest. It was a boy. A young boy. Was he her boy?
Yes. She knew that like she knew what a window was and what sunlight was. They were beneath a house, and men were screaming above. Someone was hurt and being dragged over the planks above them and out the door. The boy was crying and she was desperately trying to shush him, to keep him quiet because the bad men were there, the very bad men, and if they heard him, they would be taken too.
“Nigger!” she recalled one of the men’s voices shouting above them. “Y’all’s parts bring a high price! You got you a black bitch around here, boy? Got a little coal baby stashed somewhere?”
It was coming back to her. The very bad men hurting someone above where she and the boy hid. Her boy.
“I ain’t gots nobody, suh!” a new voice whimpered. The voice of someone she knew. Someone she . . .
She loved them. Whoever it was, she loved them and the boy wasn’t just hers, he was theirs. The fruit of their love. Her . . . he was her . . .
Husband.
“I’s all alone here, suh, I tells ya the truth!” the man whom she loved was saying.
He was lying. Lying to save her and the boy. What was his name? What was the boy’s name?
What was her na—
“Maaaaarrrrrrlllllleeeeennnnnaaaa,” the slithering, satanic voice hissed from the gloom, ripping her from her memories.
Her head jerked in the direction of the sound, the motion causing her vision to swirl and she stumbled a step before recovering. She recognized the name. She’d responded to the name, not just the voice. It was as if she’d been addressed by whatever abomination had dragged her into this terrible place.
It was her name.
“Marlena,” she repeated her name, as though trying it on for the first time. But she immediately felt completely at home and familiar with it. It was as much a part of her as he
r arm.
“Yyyyeeeeeeeessssssssss,” the skittering thing said as its light and terrifying footfalls seemed to echo about the room, its bubbling, clicking, rasping breath now coupled with a low growl. “You are highly favored to receive the honor of feeding the Elderrrrrrrrr.”
The thing’s word dragged on for a maddeningly long time before finally drifting into silence. Her eyes were more focused now and she looked about the room she was in. It had a familiar feel, but felt all wrong at the same time. She could make out rows of seating with an aisle in the center, and she realized she stood at the back of what seemed to be a church. It wasn’t unlike her own church where she and her husband worshipped with their boy—Martin, that was his name!—on Sundays. Only, the front of the sanctuary was all wrong. Instead of a lectern, there was some sort of strange altar. Even this shouldn’t have seemed out of place, but the thing was unlike any altar she’d ever seen, and her memories were rushing back to her in force now. The altar was quite large, more than ten feet on a side, and it seemed to be a perfect cube.
“What is this place?” Marlena asked, turning her gaze to the gloom where she’d last heard the skittering thing speak. Where she could hear its terrible clicking and bubbling growl.
She heard the thing laugh, and as it did, it moved. The skittering sounds of its feet—too many feet, she decided—moved in front of one of the windows with the light streaming in around the edges of its shuttered surface. She thought she could make out the rough shape of a man in the middle, the arms and legs dangling like limp noodles, but that was where all similarity with humanity ended. There were arching, knuckled things coming from either end of the shape, and while she couldn’t be sure in the dark, she thought they were protruding from the head and . . . anus?
She gasped as her hand clasped over her mouth. Insanely, she remembered clambering out from beneath the house with Martin, some time after the very bad men had taken her husband, and being clubbed in the back of the head. All was black after that.
Until now.
“Thiiiiiiissssssss is the temple of N’yea’thuullllll.”
There was a wet, smacking sound and she could just make out a crimson sphere that seemed to rise up from the middle of the skittering thing. When the wet, smacking sound made its encore, she finally made out what the sphere was.
It was a blinking, red eye. She screamed.
10
Light trickled in through the thinning treetops as James and Denarius sauntered along. Dawn was coming on, though the sky was overcast with gray clouds, threatening a coming storm. The air smelled of pine and moisture, the temperature comfortable despite the warmth of the season as the breeze whisked through the trees, carrying the cool air past them like a chilling balm.
Their horses whinnied and snorted, seeming to slow despite the urgings of James and Denarius. Something up ahead wasn’t sitting right with them and they were reluctantly obedient to continue on. The soft clop-ah-dah-clop-ah-dah of their hoof falls drummed in the music of the early morning birds and crawling things.
Up ahead, James spied what seemed to be the mouth of the trail. The trees widened, thinning ever more, and there was a slight rise. Beyond it he could just make out the top of what looked like a roof, but the grade hid the rest.
“Looks like we’ve found Dust, Denarius,” James said as he pulled on the reins to halt his steed. Denarius did the same. The horses seemed all too anxious to stop.
“I’ll be a son of a gun,” Denarius said, using his hand as a visor over his eyes to block the gray morning light. “So it is a real place.”
James gave him a sidelong look.
“Did you doubt me, friend?” he asked, a sly grin parting his lips.
Denarius arched his back straight and adjusted himself in his saddle, shaking his head and waving a hand.
“Now, now, I ain’t said that, Mr. James. I ain’t said that at all. I just . . . well, hell, with all you done told me and showed me last night, I . . . it’s just a lot to process all at once. A man needs time to digest that kind of information.”
James nodded and squinted his eyes as he peered back toward the outskirts of Dust, remembering all he’d shown and told Denarius the previous night. He’d shown him first how he was able to manipulate objects with the power of his will. Even showed him how he was able to come to this time in history seven years prior. Only shown, not taken Denarius along for a demonstration. Still, the man’s mind had been nearly blown clear of his skull, his wide eyes and slack-jawed mouth a testament to his astonishment.
He’d told Denarius of how he’d moved from a place—or more properly described as a world—to the middle of the Chisolm Trail in a town called Duncan, in the middle of a territory that would soon be known as the state of Oklahoma, within the next thirty years or so. Little of this had made sense to Denarius, who had listened on in awe as James described stumbling into a jail and meeting a gentleman named Karl Beck who’d pointed him south toward Texas.
Then had come the long tale of James’s journey, always hunting the elusive town of Dust, and later hearing of a man named Dreary who had moved into the area, apparently in search of the same place.
“I aim to find Dust and kill what’s there,” James had told Denarius as they stared into the campfire. “The elder gods are killers. Destroyers. All throughout the universe, throughout all universes, these things are dormant. Sleeping. Waiting to be awakened. For willing servants to usher them out of their banishment. That’s one thing I’ll give the real God, he put them away. But there are forces working against Him, and they placed these markers throughout the cosmos.”
He had gestured up to the sky and they had both looked up to the stars.
“Everywhere you see up there, Denarius, all over, there are other worlds, other civilizations. Most are like us, just trying to make the best of what they have. Some are more malevolent. But all of the elder gods are right on the outskirts of their reality. Most of them don’t even know it. But there are some who do, who seek to find the markers and make soldiers for the elders. Once they amass enough soldiers, their aim is to trigger the marker and call the elders forward. They’re so mad with the lust for power, they’re calling their own destruction and annihilation forth. Most of them know it, too. But that’s why I think God gave me these gifts . . . ”
James had held his hand out to the air and one of his revolvers had slapped into his hand. Then he casually cocked the hammer and reseated it gently.
“To find these gods. And kill them.”
“And this Dreary fella,” Denarius had asked in a shaky tone, “he one of them fools tryin’ to call forth this elder god, uh, what was its name again?”
“N’yea’thuul,” James had said and nodded. “And yes, Denarius, he is. I’ve been aiming to find him and put him down before he had a chance to find Dust before I did. Now, I’m so damn close, all I really need to do is get into Dust and kill the soldiers. Then I can banish the marker and Dreary can do what he likes. He won’t be able to call the elder forth.”
Now, as James stared at the tip of the roof in the distance, he wondered if that had been a sound plan, after all. Dreary was dangerous. Dreary had killed, or facilitated the killing of, many men. Women and children, too. If there was information to be gained, it didn’t matter to him the obstacle before in his path. He would put it down. A man like that had no business living.
But, as James dismounted his horse and leaned sharply to stretch his back, he supposed he wasn’t too far off from being the same sort of man Dreary was. In reality, wasn’t the only actual difference between them the reason for finding the marker?
He thought so, but decided it would have to be enough.
You have a pure heart, Agatha Dupree had said. But you’re not a good man. Perhaps you were once.
He shook off the thoughts and led his horse to an oak and tied off the reins. Denarius was doing likewise.
“I want to give you one last chance to scurry on back to your family,” James said as he pulled his
repeater from the sheath on his saddle and dropped it into another which rested across his back. “This here’s my fight, not yours.”
Denarius held up a hand.
“I appreciate your saying so, Mr. James, but I owe you a debt, whether you recognize it or not. I made sure my family was safe before them bad men got to me. They’ll be safe when I return.”
James stared hard at the man for a long moment. He regarded him with equal parts respect and pity. He was obviously a man of deep moral conviction, but he was also a man who, while James had explained many things to him, still didn’t really understand what they were walking into.
“Alright, then,” James said and nodded. He decided not to press the issue further. If the stories about Dust turned out to be accurate, the poor bastard would see for himself soon enough. Plenty of time to turn tail and run then.
James began moving toward town, but stopped when he felt Denarius’s hand on his arm. He turned and faced him, his new friend’s face a shade lighter than it had been up to now.
“You have an extra shooter, suh?” Denarius asked, swallowing hard. “I aim to help you out, but I ain’t gonna be much good without some iron to toss.”
James blinked a few times, thinking. He had both his revolvers on him and his rifle slung across his back. His only other weapon was the large knife sheathed in his belt at the base of his back. Well, other than . . .
“I do have one other weapon,” he said, moving to his saddle bag. “But the ammunition is limited. In any case, you’re welcome to use it so long as you mind the recoil and don’t hit me with it.”
Denarius laughed, throwing his head back as James dug out the revolver.
“Mr. James, I can handle the recoil on anything you got just fine, I assure ya!”
James smiled as he pulled the gun from the bag and held it out to Denarius.