The Shotgun Arcana

by R. S. Belcher

  “Which one is true?” Highfather asked.

  “To a degree, they all are,” Bick said. “To parse the fact from the myth is counter to the nature of myth itself, but the story of the first murder is something in the memory of the race, a dark stain—a footnote on human nature.

  “I can tell you what my family knows. Long ago, a human created an idea—the thought-form of ending life—to become an anticreator. This human was the first to practice murder on another of his kind, and the act, the power derived from the act, soaked into the very soil of the earth as the blood of the first victim did. It became a compact between man and the infinite. It tainted humanity with the terrible curse of that act.”

  “You saying murder was invented, not in our natures to begin with?” Highfather leaned forward in the chair.

  “Sadly, no. It was always there. Do you understand what a human being truly is, Jonathan? It is a wickedly smart, bloodthirsty primate with a shard of the divine, of the universe, in it. You can create such works of ephemeral beauty, beauty to match and surpass the spires of Heaven. And you can create murder, undoing with the same genius, the same soul. Your capacity for cruelty is fathomless.

  “The potential was always in you, it was just fully realized, the abstract made concrete, by one human in one terrible instant, and that act gave him power—power enough to make gods take notice, to make them rage and fear.”

  “So,” Highfather said. “What do angry, frightened gods do, exactly?”

  “They punish, Sheriff,” Bick said. “The First Murderer was cast out of all human society, forced to live in the fringes of it, marked with an invisible warning, a feeling of unease that made him forever seen as a predator to his own kind. Angry at God, at the universe, for rejecting him, for punishing him for simply being what he was created to be, and furious at the feminine—the representation of the generative force of life—for creating instead of destroying. The First Murderer was given a guardian to ensure he did not harm mankind and never exercised the power inside him again to slay, not even himself.

  “Zeal?” Highfather said. “Was he the guardian? Because that would mean he’s ancient.…”

  “Zeal is not human,” Bick said. “He guarded the man until he passed, watched most of his remains turn to dust and blow away and was given that which remained of the First Murderer to guard. Even after the Murderer’s death finally claimed him, the force he conjured into the universe resided, imprisoned, in the bone of his skull, locked away and contained as much as it can be.

  “Contained?” Highfather said.

  “When human blood was first spilled, it soaked into the earth, tainting the future generations of man, making men susceptible to the force of what the First Murderer created. Like catching a mental cold,” Bick said.

  “Maybe it was helped by that worm-thing we dealt with last year? You said it hated all life everywhere and it was chained up in the earth,” Highfather said.

  “Perhaps,” Bick nodded. “A wise assumption. At any rate, close proximity to the skull for a time can turn even the most civilized men into savages and coarse men into monsters.”

  Highfather rubbed his face. “Where are you keeping it? Why are the answers to so many questions I ask this week the same?”

  “Here,” Bick said. “In one of the old cave dwellings on the eastern face of Argent. It’s been there for about seventy years or so, when Zeal originally dropped it off with my family. It escaped about twenty years ago with the unsuspecting aid of a child. It cost forty-one people their lives.”

  “Escaped?” Highfather said. “This skull is alive and can reason?”

  “Not exactly,” Bick said. “It wants free, like a caged animal. It will work with whoever it can influence to get free and rage across the world, like a wind of madness and hatred. The child, for example, helped it by pulling the teeth out of the skull and allowing them to be scattered across the world, giving the force more access to pawns susceptible to its influence.”

  “Well, I think it’s been a damn sight busy this week,” Highfather said.

  “What do you mean?” Bick said.

  “I mean, I have our esteemed Dr. Tumblety down in the clink for mutilating four women. I have a renegade Paiute, calls himself Snake-Man, who’s working for Zeal in there with him. Snake-Man was fetching the skull for Zeal, but Mutt stopped him. Malachi, is it possible this skull pushed Tumblety to do what he did? Could it be making the people in this town eager to see your blood, any blood, run in the streets?”

  “It’s possible,” Bick said. “But human beings don’t need some supernatural impetus to commit atrocity. Sadly, it in them already.”

  “You said the power in the skull made a little girl pull out and scatter the teeth?” Highfather said. Bick nodded. Highfather reached under his coat and took out an envelope. “Like these? Tumblety gave Vellas’ body a once-over for me. He said these were his only possessions that survived the fire. They were in his jacket pocket. Snake-Man, our renegade, had one on him as well.”

  He opened the envelope and dropped a large white feather and two yellowed teeth on Bick’s desk blotter.

  Bick slowly reached down and picked up one of the teeth as if he were reaching for a rattlesnake. He held it up and turned it before his eyes.

  “These,” he said, “are teeth from the skull of the First Murderer. They have a tiny portion of the power from inside the skull. If Vellas had this, then it’s a safe bet Zeal’s crew has the others. That just means they are more unstable and more dangerous than we imagined. Did Tumblety possess one?”

  “No,” Highfather said. “But we haven’t had a chance to check his house yet. Why does he want this skull now, if he gave it up so long ago?”

  “I truly don’t know. He’s insane,” Bick said. “But I do know that if he destroys the skull, the mental energy, the power of that first act of all-encompassing destruction, will spread across the world like a psychic plague, overpowering the will of every man, woman and child, turning them into vicious, amoral killers. Cities will become slaughterhouses, civilizations will burn and in time, slowly, painfully, the human race will die, screaming, at its own hands.”

  Highfather rested his elbow on the desk and covered his face with his palm.

  “Never can be easy, can it? We thought this up? We envisioned something so ugly … No wonder God doesn’t talk to us. He’s either too disappointed or too damned scared of us.”

  “I would have disagreed with you once,” Bick said, looking at the whiskey and then dismissing it. “It’s much harder for me to do so anymore. God keeps his own council. We’re on our own and Zeal is coming for the skull, Sheriff, and you need to stay out of his way. He knows you killed Vellas, his son.” Bick held up the pure white feather, examined it and slid it into his desk drawer along with the teeth. “He wants your blood too. I think you should leave town till this unpleasant business is over.”

  “I came here to suggest the same thing to you,” Highfather said.

  “I can’t leave,” Bick said. “I wish I could. I have a duty to protect Golgotha’s secrets and her dark treasures. I can’t let Zeal and his men gain access to them. I must do my job.”

  “I have a duty too,” Highfather said. “Caught it the day I pinned this star on. I can’t leave these people, this town, to a bunch of killers and worse, like Zeal’s crew. I’m in, Malachi, same as you.”

  “It is very rare we agree,” Bick said. “I have to admit, in this case, I like it.”

  “Usually only takes the end of the world for us to get along,” Highfather said. “We need a plan.”

  “I have an inkling of one,” Bick said. “But it requires a great deal from both of us and we don’t have much time.”

  “Then let’s get to it, “Highfather said. “Daylight’s burning.”

  The Eight of Swords

  Maude and Kate stood mute in the dining room of Gillian Proctor’s boardinghouse. All around the breakfast table were the still-warm bodies of most of Gillian’s boarders, t
heir faces contorted in shock, fear and pain as their poisoned food claimed them.

  Maude closed her eyes and recalled sitting at this very table a few nights ago with Mutt. It had been so perfect, so good. It could have been Mutt or Gillian and Auggie or Jim dead at this table, if they had made it to breakfast today. There was Bill Caruthers and Tommy Oates, Stuart Goggins … others Maude didn’t know, but she had seen their faces over the years. Dead.

  “Damn,” Kate muttered, her revolver out. She moved toward the kitchen, kicking open the door and sweeping the bright room. No one was there. Kate lowered her gun and turned to Maude, who had followed her into the kitchen, leaving the dead to their feast.

  “Okay, that was a good guess they might double back to here,” Kate said. “But just like everywhere else in town, we’ve missed them, but not by long by the condition of the bodies.”

  All told, about a hundred people were either dead or sick from poisoning. It appeared to Maude that the Brechts had targeted individuals and families that might stand with the law when Zeal arrived in town tomorrow.

  “They hit all of Gillian’s customers,” Maude said. “Even ones that were of no threat to Zeal whatsoever. It’s not just a mission for them, they enjoy this.”

  “So where does one go if one enjoys poisoning folks in Golgotha?” Kate asked as she holstered her gun and examined a used butcher knife.

  Maude’s eyes suddenly grew wide. “I think I know,” she said.

  * * *

  Delmonico Hauk struggled in the straight back chair he was tied to in the dining room of his closed restaurant. His face was a swollen, bloody mass of broken bone and torn tissue from a morning of beatings from Pa and Ernst Brecht. Del had arrived before sunup to begin the preparations for the lunch crowd only to discover his restaurant had been invaded. Del was a scrapper, he had to be to survive in the boroughs and warrens of New York. He had given the odd young man, named Ernst, a run for his money when the boy had tried to jump him. But when the obese giant known as Pa Brecht had placed a meat cleaver against his neck, Del had stopped resisting and allowed himself to be tied down. After that Ernst, Pa and even the Ma and her daughter, Hilde, only recently returned from their own murderous mission, beat on Del savagely and frequently. He had lost awareness several times. It was well after dawn now and Del listened in horror as Hilde described to her brother what she’d seen on her errands.

  “Und then, the little girl, she tried to claw at her throat, she didn’t understand vat vas happening. The fear in her eyes, oh, Ernst, it was so pure. She watched her momma und poppa slide to the floor, the teacups crashing. It vas perfect. I vish you could have been there,” Hilde said. “She died so confused, in so much fear and pain. The little ones always do! It was beautiful.”

  Ernst wiped a little drool from his lips and pulled his eyes away from his sister’s heaving chest. The light caught his eyes and they held red pinpoints. With his pointed ears, it gave Ernst the appearance of a hungry rat. “After ve own der town, ve can have a little tea party for the kinder,” he muttered gutturally. Hilde clapped her hands and nodded eagerly, her long blond tresses bouncing.

  Del tried to play dead, but his heart was pounding. These people were lunatics. The monstrous mother and father were in the kitchen even now, preparing poisoned food to serve his customers in just a few hours. He wished Mutt was here, or that he could work his hands free enough to reach the straight razor he always carried in his back pocket—an old habit from his rough childhood days. But the Brechts had tied him tight. All he could do was wait and pray to St. Michael for a chance to stop these maniacs.

  * * *

  “An awful lot of windows over there,” Kate said to Maude. “Even if the shades are down, no guarantee that there aren’t lookouts. That’s a long ways to cover in broad daylight, and they might start shooting at us or killing hostages if they were sane enough to keep any.”

  “There’s a kitchen entrance,” Maude said. “I could sneak back and try to get in that way and cause a distraction while you hit the front door.”

  “You are so eager to ditch me,” Kate said. “I’m holding you back, aren’t I?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Maude said.

  “I’ve stayed alive a long time by trusting my hunches, Maude,” Kate said. “And my intuition about you is screaming. Okay, you take the back, I’ll hit the front. Want one of my guns?”

  “No, thank you,” Maude said quietly, her eyes locked with Kate.

  “No fear of the things, no apprehension, just a mild disdain,” Kate said. “I’d say be careful, but I already know you will be.”

  “Pay attention to what’s going on in there and that front door, not me,” Maude said. “Meet you in the middle.”

  Maude was up and moving quickly. She was hampered by her dress and restrictive clothes, but she’d make do. Kate Warne was a very dangerous woman. She knew who Maude was, but like any good detective, she was waiting to collect the evidence to make her theory into a fact.

  Maude doubled back up Dry Well Road and crossed over. Odd Tom’s place was at the foot of Rose Hill and Hauk’s restaurant had been built right next to the house he had purchased. Maude cut through Hauk’s backyard and grabbed up a handful of wooden laundry pins from off his clothesline.

  She reached the kitchen door and smelled the thick, greasy aroma of roasting meat, possibly pork. Maude tried the door and found it unlocked. She pushed it open and entered as silent as thought. The kitchen was large and well apportioned to handle a full house of hungry patrons. An enormous, corpulent man with thinning, unwashed blond hair in a filthy apron was busy chopping slabs of meat on a butcher-block table with a meat cleaver and then tossing the pieces into a steaming stew pot on the black iron cook stove. The man held up a piece of the uncooked meat and plucked an earring off the severed ear, pocketing the jewelry and tossing the ear in the pot.

  Maude dashed toward the butcher, hurling the handful of wooden clothespins ahead of her. The tiny wooden darts thudded with great force into Pa’s throat and both his eyes as he turned toward Maude. One crushed his windpipe and the other two tore through his eyes, coming to rest in the orbits of his skull.

  Two things happened simultaneously that stunned Maude into inaction for a second. One, the gray, scaly mass of Ma Brecht blindsided her from a corner of the kitchen hidden to the door. Ma struck Maude with inhuman force, swatting her with the barrel of her shotgun. The blow lifted Maude off the floor and knocked her into a rack of posts and pans, raising a terrible clatter as the kitchen implements and Maude crashed to the floor. Ma leveled the double-barreled scattergun at Maude and cocked both hammers.

  The other thing that froze Maude, froze the blood in her for just a moment, was that Pa Brecht, choking due to lack of air and blinded and partly brain damaged by the loss of his eyes, did not fall down. He staggered back, clutched the meat cleaver tightly and sniffed the air, turning his blind, bloody face in Maude’s direction. Pa charged forward, cleaver raised.

  * * *

  Kate crashed through the locked doors of Delmonico Hauk’s, shooting the lock off as she kicked the door in. Ernst and Hilde were both up, having heard the commotion in back. Kate heard the blast of a shotgun in the kitchen and cursed herself for letting Maude go in alone. Ernst, his sledgehammer in hand, charged at Kate, swinging the twenty-pound hammer as if it weighed nothing. He closed as the detective fired her revolver into his chest. The pistol spat fire and barked thunder, but Brecht staggered toward her, ready to crush her skull as he had done so many times before. One bullet ripped through his chest, another, another and another. Ernst fell at her feet even as the pistol clicked empty. The sledge slid across the floor and lay as still as its wielder.

  Hilde had grabbed a steak knife from one of the tables. She stood behind Hauk’s chair and put the blade to the restaurateur’s bruised throat. Kate raised the revolver she carried in her other hand. She cocked it, aimed it at Hilde.

  “Drop it,” Hilde shouted, “or I vill cut
his…”

  Kate fired once. The bullet entered Hilde’s perfect blue right eye, destroying it, and then her brain, before blowing out the back of her head. Hilde dropped without another sound.

  “Shit!” Kate said as she raced to the kitchen.

  * * *

  Ma was covering Maude with the shotgun, ready to drop her if her dying husband didn’t complete his last kill. Pa staggered forward, seeming to track on instinct and smell, like a shark. The cleaver was poised to split Maude’s skull. Maude rose to her feet, a black cast-iron skillet in either hand. She twisted at the waist and spun like a top. The first blow to Pa’s head drove the clothespins in his eyes deep enough into his brain to stop him. He lurched forward and then fell to the floor. Ma, seeing this, opened fire with both barrels of the shotgun.

  Maude had trained for years under the merciless, meticulous eyes of Anne Bonny. She had been forced to memorize and practice with rock salt and then with bird shot the scatter patterns of shotguns at different ranges. She had the scars of the practice still. She knew, like she knew her next breath, where the pellets in Ma’s 20-gauge were most likely to spread to and she had her cast-iron shields there ready to cover her where they might intersect with her shifting body. There was a rumble, like the world splitting, as the shotgun fired, and a thick cloud of gun smoke. One of the skillets was knocked from Maude’s hand by the force of the impact, but it served its purpose. Before the smoke cleared, Maude launched the remaining skillet at Ma’s neck, which ripped her head clean off, and the headless body staggered back and slid down the wall and was still.

  Kate crashed into the kitchen, pistol at the ready. She found a panting, disheveled Maude and two massive, dead bodies.

  “You okay?” Kate called out. Maude nodded. “You hit?”

  “No,” Maude said. “I’m fine. Is Del okay?”