The Shotgun Arcana

by R. S. Belcher

  The shadowy figure they pursued was small, perhaps four feet tall, and was moving at remarkable speeds with an odd gait, more reminiscent of a penguin’s waddle than a man running. The pursued approached the edge of the Dove’s Roost’s roof, turned back to regard Mutt and Jim with glowing red eyes possessed of pupils of green fire. The thing hissed at the deputies and then leapt, almost flew, across the gap between the Dove’s Roost and the roof of the boardinghouse next door, run by Mr. and Mrs. Scutty. The thing spread its arms as it jumped and wing-like membranes under each arm extended to allow it to catch the night wind and glide to the next roof. Its taloned feet hit the roof and it scampered to disappear into the darkness again.

  “It’s got wings,” Jim muttered to himself. “Of course it has wings.”

  “Like hell I’m letting some flying … whatever the hell that is … git the better of me!” Mutt yelled.

  “Mutt, don’t!” Jim shouted, but it was too late. Mutt increased his speed and launched himself across the gap between roofs with a yip and yell that would have put gray-coated rebels to shame. He hit the other roof, rolled, and came up running and laughing.

  “Aw, dammit,” Jim muttered, as he picked up speed. He reached the edge of the roof, jumping for all he was worth. He landed on the roof of the boardinghouse, barely, his feet scraping and slipping on the weathered and cracked wooden shingles, almost falling backward and down three stories to the floor of the narrow alley below. Jim steadied himself.

  He saw some movement in the darkness of the alleyway, two figures, cloaked by night, shifting, grappling roughly. He thought he heard a woman cry out for just an instant. Jim paused, peering down into the now-silent alley, struggling to pierce the shadows, straining to hear. He looked up to call out to Mutt, but the deputy and the creature were nearing the edge of the boardinghouse roof, both fully engaged in the pursuit.

  The creature had veered toward the southern side of the roof and sprung out again, its weird arm-wings spread. It landed easily on the roof of the Elysium Hotel and scuttled-waddled off at breakneck speed, hissing and growling. Mutt was already preparing to spring after it, his thin legs churning and his arms pistoning as he prepared to leap.

  “C’mon, boy! You’re gonna miss all the fun!” Mutt shouted, and then howled as he flew through the air. Mutt landed in a crouch, popped up and kept running.

  Jim gave one last glimpse into the narrow, seemingly empty alley. All he could hear now was the raucous banter of the Dove’s Roost’s clients and ladies. The Roost was always noisy at night; most likely nothing to fret over. Still, something tugged at him. He heard Mutt whoop again as he pursued the monster. The alley would have to wait.

  Jim sprinted after Mutt and the creature. He tried not to think about the fall and the impact if he slipped or fell short. He wondered how his late pa would have handled this, but that thought was of little use to him now. Pa would have never gotten himself into this kind of fool mess in the first place. Jim laughed at the thought and flung himself into space, chasing after his friend and the thing they both hunted.

  * * *

  The trouble had started quiet enough. Trouble in Golgotha usually took its time to make a ruckus. About a month ago, Clancy Gower had come by the jail to report something very disturbing. Clancy’s goats were dying, being slaughtered. At first he had suspected his neighbor and cattle rancher, Doug Stack. Doug and Clancy had a long feud over Clancy’s goats wandering onto Doug’s property and eating up his grazing land and his few meager crops. But this was different, and Clancy said he was pretty sure Doug had nothing to do with the animals dying. The goats had all been drained of blood, but there were no wounds he could find to explain the shriveled carcasses.

  Talking to Doug uncovered that he had lost some cows in the exact same way and that his troubles had started about the same time as Clancy’s.

  “Something sour-smelling,” Mutt had said to Jim as they examined the fallen carcass of one of Doug’s heifers. “Whatever did this, it ain’t a natural predator, not a coyote or such.” Jim nodded. Mutt’s senses were far more refined than most men’s, due to his parentage, and the boy trusted Mutt’s nose a sight more than many things in this world.

  “Ain’t Sheriff Highfather gonna come on out and deal with this proper?” Doug had asked.

  “’Fraid you’re stuck with us, Doug,” Mutt said. “Sheriff’s away on business.” Sheriff Jon Highfather’s “business” involved a trip to New Orleans to properly dispose of a gris-gris bag holding the trapped souls of four dead men. It was the final chapter of a hoodoo war, fought in Golgotha a few months back. Neither Mutt nor Jim saw it necessary to elaborate on the nature of Jon’s trip and most folks who lived in Golgotha for a while learned not to ask too many questions if they wanted to sleep at night.

  They set several traps for whatever was killing the animals, but it had proven fruitless. It was only when Mutt decided to buy one of Clancy’s remaining goats and set the trap with live bait, that they saw results.

  “Who’s paying me for this goat?” Clancy had asked when Mutt had made the request.

  “Send the bill to the mayor’s office,” Mutt had said with a smile. “Harry will square up with you.”

  “Mayor Pratt will have your hide,” Jim muttered. Mutt’s smile just got bigger. They tied the small gray goat kid to one of the trees in the supposedly haunted stand known as Lover’s Grove, moved downwind of the kid and waited.Tonight it paid off. The creature had appeared out of the foliage and looked into the kid’s eyes with its own glowing orbs. The baby goat suddenly stopped protesting and stood passively, waiting to be drained. The creature remained cloaked mostly in shadow, except for its blazing, pitiless red-and-green eyes, its jutting, elongated jaw and slit of a mouth filled with razor-sharp fangs.

  Before the thing could drain the tiny goat dry, Mutt and Jim had jumped out to grab it and secure it in a canvas bag. The thing hissed at them, angry for disturbing its meal, and leapt away, and the chase was on.

  * * *

  Jim landed on the roof of the Elysium Hotel, his boots crunching against the slick slate. He saw Mutt and the creature locked in battle. The thing jumped through the air, bouncing and launching itself again and again, slashing Mutt’s face, head and shoulders with its razor-clawed hands. It made a high-pitched shrieking sound each time it attacked. The sound made Jim feel dizzy and nauseous. The deputy was swatting at the small creature the way you might to try to shoo a cloud of gnats from your face as he fumbled to grab his fighting knife.

  Jim drew his pistol and advanced, but he dared not fire for fear of hitting Mutt or a stray bullet sailing down to the street. It occurred to Jim that below this roof and a few stories down it was business as usual on Main Street in Golgotha: the cowboys, miners and ranch hands wandering from the saloons to the whorehouses to the hotels unaware of the bizarre battle waging on the rooftops.

  “Damn it,” Mutt growled. “Hold still so I can gut you, you nasty little goat-sucker! Ow, dammit!”

  The creature raked Mutt’s face and neck, but the deputy was quick enough to avoid the worst of the injuries. Mutt’s knife flashed, splitting through the thing’s hide of coarse black hair and cutting the creature across its wide torso. The creature howled in pain and leapt-flew toward the roof’s edge facing Main Street. It disappeared over the edge.

  “Jim! Git it!” Mutt shouted as he wiped the blood from his face. “Anyone sees that thing and half of damned Main Street will open fire. Those soaked jackeroos are more likely to hit themselves than that little bastard!”

  Jim reached the roof’s edge a few seconds after the creature had jumped. He looked down, leveling his father’s old .44 Colt, to see that the beast had lighted on one of the Elysium’s terraces on the top floor of the hotel. The thing looked up at Jim with its glowing, unearthly eyes and then smashed through the glass terrace doors into the hotel. Without thought, Jim jumped down lithely and followed the creature inside.

  The Elysium had been the finest hotel in Golgotha until
its owner had recently opened an even grander hotel, the Imperial. However, the Elysium was still one of the fanciest places Jim had ever seen in his life. The terrace entrance that the creature had crashed through opened into a small private dining room, part of the grand suites on the top floor. The room had engraved black walnut chair rails on the walls and beautiful imported wallpaper with a dark rose pattern print above the rails. The floor was covered by a fine European rug and an oval dark walnut table was the centerpiece of the room. The table was covered with fine china, a linen tablecloth and a beautiful silver candelabra.

  The dining room was occupied by a gent Jim recognized as having arrived a few days ago on the stagecoach from Virginia City. Older fella, with tufts of white hair at the fringes of his sun-spotted pate, white muttonchops, and a beard under his chin. Fancy clothes too.

  His companion worked at the Dove’s Roost; Jim thought her name was Becky. She was a pretty girl, with long brown hair falling below her shoulders and yellow ribbons in it. She wasn’t much older than Jim. Jim had seen her around town for quite a while. Becky was screaming at the top of her lungs at the third occupant of the dining room, who had crashed in on the couple’s intimate supper.

  The creature hissed at the girl and she fell back into the arms of her dining companion. The man pulled her back toward the double doors that led out to a hallway in the hotel, knocking over a silver cart and sending platters of food and pitchers of drinks crashing to the floor in the process.

  Jim brought his gun up, steadying it with both hands and aiming at the creature, now fully visible in the gaslight of the opulent dining room. Its elongated head scanned left to right. It looked at Jim and the gun and growled lowly.

  “Y’all go on now,” Jim said to the old gent and Becky. “We got this covered. Sorry to ruin your fancy vittles.”

  Becky smiled when she recognized Jim. “Oh thank the Lord you’re here, Deputy Jim,” she said. “What is that thing?”

  Mutt dropped down from the roof onto the terrace, his face bloody but his gun hand steady. He walked in and stood next to Jim, covering the creature.

  “What in damnation is the meaning of this?” the old white-haired man said, still edging toward the doors with Becky. Jim noticed the old man was putting the girl between himself and the monster.

  “Spell of local trouble,” Mutt said. “Nothing we can’t handle. Why don’t you take your granddaughter on out of here?”

  The old man sputtered. His face was getting redder by the moment. “Granddaughter! What the hell kind of town is this where you got some smart-mouth injun and a snot-nosed short britches as the law! I have a mind…”

  The creature roared, threw back its head and showed all its rows of yellow, bloodstained fangs. The old man ran out into the hallway ahead of the stench of shitting himself when the creature had roared. Becky followed him out, giving Jim a final glance back.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Please be careful, Deputy Jim.” And she was gone.

  “Well, ain’t that just sweet as peaches,” Mutt said, grinning. “‘Deputy Jim.’”

  Jim got redder and decided he’d rather pay attention to the dagger-fanged creature, pacing and hissing in front of him, than his friend’s ribbing right now. It seemed less perilous.

  A bald man wearing wire spectacles and a simple gray suit popped his head through the partially open door. Both deputies recognized him as Dex Gould, the manager of the Elysium. Behind him was a wall of muscle covered in tweed—a man with bright red hair, a handlebar mustache, and a derby hat. His name was Gordy Duell. Gordy’s brother, Kerry, worked over at the Paradise Falls Saloon. Gordy was the hotel dick. He stood at Dex’s shoulder with a lead-filled, leather-covered blackjack in his huge, ham-like hand.

  “You fellas all right?” Dex called. “We heard the commotion and Mr. Craytor said that … Oh my God, what the fuck is that?”

  “Jist a little lizard, came outta the desert,” Mutt said. “What say we stick with that story, Dex, okay? Anybody ain’t lived here too long should buy it.”

  The creature snarled at Dex and Gordy. Mutt leveled his gun and whistled to get the thing’s attention again.

  “Damn,” Mutt said. “Not that I am one to judge by appearances, mind you, but that thing is uglier than a bag of white men’s assholes. I know why it stays to the dark now.”

  “It is hard to look at,” Jim said, still aiming at the thing. “Like it ain’t quite finished baking, if you get my meaning.”

  The creature grew quiet and began to look intently at Mutt and Jim with its glowing red eyes.

  “I think … it’s trying to … hypnotize us, Mutt,” Jim said. “I don’t think it’s working.”

  “It’d have a damn sight better chance if it wasn’t so backside ugly,” Mutt said. “Now, vampires, there are some hypnotizers, I’ll tell you what. We had those toothy bastards pass through town a few years back and…”

  The creature snarled and began knocking dishes and trays off the dining table.

  “What the hell you call this thing anyway?” Mutt asked. “A goat-sucker? A flying hairy cow pie? Outhouse goblin? I mean what?”

  The creature began to give off its high-pitched screech again making the plates on the table jump and shiver. Mutt winced at the sound and Jim felt dizzy and sick.

  “Shoot it!” Jim shouted to be heard over the cry. Both deputies aimed at the thing. Its glowing eyes narrowing, it crouched as it prepared to launch itself past the deputies and once more into the night. The shrieking grew louder and then the creature sprung. Jim and Mutt opened fire. The thing jerked and spasmed, then hit the ground a few feet from them and laid still.

  “Mutt, your ears are bleeding,” Jim said.

  “Wonder my damn eyes aren’t,” Mutt said. “Ears will keep.” He pointed down to the dead creature. “Just glad regular lead worked on it. The really bad ones, it always takes something special to put them down.”

  The deputies, with help from Dex and Gordy, covered the thing’s body with the tablecloth and sealed the doors to the dining room.

  “Someone go fetch Clay Turlough to dispose of that thing,” Mutt said. “He’ll have a day at the fair examining it.”

  “Clay won’t come,” Jim said. “He’ll send out one of his new hands to do it. He don’t go out much anymore, since the fire.” Jim let the thought trail away. Mutt didn’t reply, but he wasn’t smiling.

  There were crowds in the lobby, folks who had heard the commotion upstairs or had seen something happening on the Elysium’s roof or had already been smacked in the ear by the swiftly moving rumors and gossip on Golgotha’s streets.

  “Faster than a damned telegraph,” Mutt said as he and Jim escorted the covered body through the crowd and onto the back of one of Clay’s wagon.

  “Hey, Mutt, what is it this time?” Judah Stenton called out. “Another one of them boogermen? Those black-eyed children? Like the ones that up and took the Summerton family and only left their shadows behind, moving?”

  “Aw, Jude,” Mutt said, laughing. “The boogeyman ain’t gonna want to git you. He takes a bite of your sorry ass and he’ll be pickled for a week! Now git on back to your corn mash and let us be.”

  Clay’s new farmhand, Joe Williams, was thick with muscles. He had a mop of black, curly hair. Joe was from New York, supposedly a war hero, but he didn’t talk much about anything—which was the main reason Clay hired him. Joe dumped the covered carcass unceremoniously in the back of the wagon.

  “Much obliged, Joe,” Mutt said. “Tell Clay that Sheriff Highfather will most likely want to know whatever Clay susses out about this critter and tell him I said to not be a stranger, okay?”

  “Okay,” Joe said, and started to climb up on the seat of the buckboard. Mutt smiled at Joe.

  “Damn, Joe, let a fella get a word in edgewise, why don’t ya?”

  Williams stared at Mutt, then snapped the reins. The wagon began to rattle and bump its way north down Main Street out to Clay’s livery, off Duffer Road. The crowd con
tinued to mutter among themselves.

  “Them bat-people again, I bet ya.…”

  “Hope the buildings ain’t coming alive like last June again.…”

  “Long as it ain’t those worm things. I still can’t swallow pert near nothing without wanting to upchuck.…”

  “All right, git!” Mutt shouted to the crowd that still milled around the hotel entrance. “You want a show, there’s one over at Professor Mephisto’s Playhouse. Now go on, ’fore we run y’all in!”

  The crowd slowly scattered back into the still-bustling flow of traffic on the street. Mutt waved to Gordy, who was standing by the entrance to the Elysium. Gordy nodded back. The deputies headed south on Main.

  “Well, that was fun,” Mutt said. Jim looked at him.

  “You git your bell rung?” Jim said. “That was no fun at all.”

  “Naw it weren’t,” Mutt said. “Trying to be all positive and whatnot. People like to hear good things sometimes, not always bad things.”

  “Uh-huh. Widow Stapleton is starting to rub off on you,” Jim said with a grin. Mutt scowled. “She back yet from that errand she had to run over to Virginia City? Been about three days.”

  “Nope,” Mutt said. “Back tomorrow, I hope. Been gone long enough.”

  “Well ain’t that just sweet as peaches,” Jim said.

  “Shut your hole, boy,” Mutt said. “Starting to attract flies.”

  Jim laughed. “Real positive there, Mutt.”

  They walked toward the entrance to the Paradise Falls. The crowd at the busy saloon was spilling out the doors, socializing on the wide porch. There were a group of cowboys, running a herd down from Rock Creek; a group of Portuguese horse barons headed back East from some business in San Francisco and a few of the local Mormon businessmen trying to have some fun away from the disapproving eyes of the temple elders. The ladies of the saloon moved between the men like sunlight breaking through a bank of storm clouds.

  “Seems like more people coming every day,” Jim said. “Town is booming again.”

  “Liked it better when it was bust,” Mutt said.