The Color of Gothic

by Joel Q. Aaron

  Tim approached in the darkness. “Do you think we’ll have to go fetch Tommy too?”

  “If we do, he’ll buy the first round.”

  They filled half an ore cart before screams of dread and shrieks of pain reverberated through the mine.

  “What the hell was that?” Curt wanted to believe the guys were playing a joke on them. But those cries sent panic up his spine. Curt dropped a rock the size of a cat. He grabbed his shovel and held it like a club. Tim picked up a pry bar and wrung it with his hands. They slowly moved up Shaft Thirty-Five with their weapons.

  If he counted correctly, a dozen men were working in Thirty-Five tonight including the Pennsylvania Four. Curt could see a group of head lanterns pointing toward the main shaft.

  “What’s going on here?” Curt only went far enough so he could talk to the huddled group of miners.

  “It’s got your man, Tommy,” a large man holding a shovel said. “We can’t get past it.”

  “It?” Tim said.

  “Yeah, a vampire,” Big Bill, the miner with the shovel, said. “What the hell do you think we’re talking about? It has the tunnel blocked.”

  Curt stepped through the group. He didn’t believe Bill’s story. “Tommy! Tommy!” He could see two figures on the ground, both moving. One man seemed to be on the other. The man on the bottom, Tommy, was kicking. The man on top had his face buried in Tommy’s neck. “Holy shit.”

  “It’s too late for Tommy, but not for us.” Big Bill shouldered Curt. “We have to get out of here.”

  Whatever the hell was happening, Curt wanted out of the darkness. Too many rumors and dead miners in the previous month set his mind to run to the light. Curt slammed his shovel against the rock wall. “Come on, boys. There’s got to be ten of us in here. We’ll either scare it off or kill it.”

  The men argued and cussed one another about life, vampires, and bravery. Tommy’s convulsions stopped.

  “Well, you sorry sons of bitches, you can live off my life if I lose. Cowards.” Big Bill spit in the dirt. “I’m with you, Curt. If these boys don’t want in now, they can fight the thing off by themselves. We’ll make it out and leave them for a snack.”

  “Tim, you with us?” Curt asked.

  “Is that really Tommy?”

  “I think so,” Curt said. He couldn’t admit it.

  “Then let’s kill it.” Tim wrung the handle of a pick. Three other men, holding tools, stepped behind Curt. “We’re going with you,” one of them said.

  “Curt, you and me will go in fast and hard, leading with shovels. We’ll push it over, knock it down, whatever it takes,” Big Bill said. “The others will follow with picks and pry bars and go for the kill. Then we’ll all keep on moving. Don’t stop. Do you hear me? Don’t stop moving up the tunnel. Once we pass it, everyone turn around with tools held out. We’ll back out of here in one piece. Curt, you lead us out. Keep an eye out for anything that might be in the tunnel.”

  “You think there’s more than one vampire?” Tim asked.

  “You bet your ass I do.” Big Bill wasn’t talking tough, he was tough. As tall as a horse and as thick as a mule, he never lost a bar fight. “Everyone get set.” The large man readied himself. Curt stood next to him.

  “Wait.” One of the four remaining men fingered the sign of the cross over his heart. “I’m going too. If I’m going to die, I’m going to die fighting.”

  “Now that’s the spirit,” Big Bill said. “What about the rest of you pansies?”

  The three men left to fend for themselves whispered to each other, as they took peeks at the other men and the dark tunnel.

  “It’s now or never,” Big Bill said.

  “We’re in.”

  “Same plan,” Big Bill said. “Except you three, when we reach the main tunnel you’ll be the backup. Hold your line until it’s clear. We’ll move toward the exit, then you follow keeping your tools back.”

  They reset the group.

  Curt stomach squirmed in disgust at the feasting vampire. His legs didn’t want to move.

  “Now!” Big Bill led the charge.

  They got within two steps of the bodies and the vampire jumped off the ground to its feet. Its quickness stunned Curt causing him to hesitate. The pause gave the vampire enough time to brace for the hit. It dodged Curt’s shovel. Big Bill missed the vampire’s head by a couple of inches. But he lodged his large shoulder into the beast’s chest, driving him into a support timber.

  The second line hit the vampire as hard. The blunt top end of a pick struck the vampire in the forehead, knocking its head against the wall. The creature fell to the ground. Big Bill laid a hit on the back of its head with his shovel. The large man spotted one of the men, from the last group of three, run toward the exit. He cussed him for leaving them behind. “I’ll find you outside. Get ready for a beating.”

  Curt stood over the vampire as it lay motionless on the ground. “Big Bill, what if we tie it up and take it to town?”

  “What the hell are you thinking?”

  “We can kill it on the way in if we have to. But we can prove this thing exists.”

  “That sounds crazy, but I think we should,” Big Bill said.

  “What the….” Tim fell to his knees. “It’s Mike.”

  “What?” Curt’s helmet lantern exposed the vampire’s face. “Oh, dear God.”

  The creature still appeared human, like Mike, but deformed. The welt on his forehead bled, but most of the blood covering his body came from Tommy.

  Curt and Tim stood silently next to Tommy’s body. They’d lost two friends in one night to the horror preying on Gothic. Tim took a close look at Tommy and lost his dinner against the tunnel wall. Mike’s deformed face kept Curt’s attention. He’d have to write the letter to Mike’s sister. What would he say?

  “Quick. Get some rope,” Big Bill said. “And chains. We’re going to town.”

  * * *

  Curt Brody and five other miners dragged and prodded Mike, bound with chains and ropes, into town. Other men carried lanterns and guns. They brought the captive to the nightly bonfire on the main street. Mike’s cheekbones and eyebrows bulged as if swollen. His gums forced his teeth out past bloodstained lips. He growled and glared at Curt with black eyes. Mike’s wrists were wrapped with frayed ropes. Big Bill kicked him hard enough to knock him down.

  “He killed Tommy Watson,” Big Bill said to the gathering crowd from the emptied saloons. “We all saw him. He was chewing on his neck.”

  The rest of the miners chimed in with agreement. They told the crowd how they had no way out of the tunnel, so they jumped him and tied him up. He tore apart the ropes so they used chains.

  “Who is it?” a spectator asked, keeping his distance.

  “It’s Michael James,” Curt said. “We work in the same shift crew. Mike disappeared. We went searching and found him killing Tommy.”

  The miners holding the chains shifted their attention to the men listening to their heroic tale, leaving the tied man to his own will. The slack in the chains was enough for the being that was once Michael James. The vampire lunged at one of the captors and jerked his head back with such force it snapped vertebrae.

  Mike jumped on the back of his partner Tim Travis, and sunk jagged teeth into his throat.

  “No,” Curt yelled.

  A tug on the chain spun Mike around. The crowd surged, snatched Travis, bleeding and crying, and dragged him to safety.

  The vampire pulled back on the chains with unmatched strength, catching Big Bill off guard. It grasped the big man by the shoulders as he fell forward. Lifting Big Bill up, the deranged captive bit into the soft flesh of Bill’s throat, releasing blood from the jugular. Big Bill squealed until the sound became bloody gurgles. He thrashed, but could not free himself from the grip of death.

  Curt froze at the insanity before his eyes. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. He went numb.

  The others composed themselves and put all their strength onto the chains forcing t
he vampire to the ground. He rolled and flayed, kicking up dust.

  “He’s a vampire,” the spectators shouted. “Kill the vampire.”

  A gunshot quieted the crowd.

  The bullet struck the vampire in the chest. The creature’s distorted face instantly went limp and his teeth reset. His eyes cleared and tense muscles relaxed.

  Michael James sat on the ground. His bloody hands bound in chains. He found his friend, among everyone staring back at him. “Curt, what’s going on?”

  “Mike?” Curt’s clenched jaw relaxed. His eyes traced a line from Mike’s face, down his shoulders, to his bound wrists, to the chain and cold links grasped in his own hands. “What have we done?”

  “Everyone stay back,” Deputy Jarod shouted. The tall, gray-haired man cocked his pistol and shot Michael James in the head. He fell over, dead.

  * * *

  Before the crowd could step closer, the Hungarians—Péter and János Kovách and their uncle András Kovách—rushed in with stakes and axes. Sándor Varga held the shotgun. The two brothers pinned Mike to the ground through his heart, then beheaded him. They repeated the act on the vampire-bitten Big Bill. András Kovách checked the man with the broken neck, but did not find bites or scratches. He stood up and waved his fingers in front of his own neck.

  Péter Kovách, the shorter of the brothers, let an ax fly, cutting off the head of the dead man anyway. “This is the only way to stop them,” he shouted to the crowd.

  The Hungarians stepped toward Tim Travis. The crowd had wrapped his bleeding wound with a shirt. The few spectators who had helped Tim backed away from the ax-wielding men.

  “No. Please. Don’t,” Tim pleaded.

  “Felteszi az i-re a pontot,” András Kovách said. “Finish it.”

  “Sorry, but you must die before you kill someone.” János Kovách, the youngest, lifted his ax over his head.

  The gun went off again, sending lead into the night sky.

  “If you touch him, you die before he does,” Deputy Jarod said. His gun hand shook. He clinched his teeth as he pointed the barrel at the Hungarians.

  The brothers questioned their uncle with their eyes. The uncle motioned for them to put down their axes.

  András Kovách stepped toward the old deputy. “He must die.”

  “You can’t cut off his head. He’s still alive.”

  “We can wait. He can die later if you promise to keep him somewhere he will not hurt anyone.”

  “Agreed,” Deputy Jarod said. “I’ll take him over to the jail.”

  “Someone needs to watch him,” the uncle said. “We don’t want to let one escape. We can’t let them get out of Gothic.”

  “I can do that,” the deputy said.

  “If you let him go, we’ll come for you.” András Kovách waved the ax in front of the deputy.

  “Where is Tommy Watson’s body?” Sándor Varga asked.

  “Still in the mine, near the entrance to Shaft Thirty-Five,” one of the miners said.

  The uncle pointed toward the mine. “Let’s go.” He faced the bleeding man. “And you, we’ll be waiting. Do yourself right, do all these people right. Kill yourself before you become a vampír.”

  The Hungarians trotted down the street out of the glow of the bonfire.

  Deputy Jarod was respected because of his age, but mostly because he treated everyone fairly. He’d been a lawman for two decades and knew how to handle a mining town. He barked orders to people on the street. “You, go get the doc. You two, help take him to the jail. I’ll be right there.”

  “What about the bodies?” someone asked.

  The older deputy smiled. “You just volunteered. Go to the stables and get a wagon. We don’t want no bears eating them. You two men help him.” He pointed at Blair and Worthington.

  Blair turned his back to the deputy.

  Worthington ushered the bounty hunter toward the Buck Snort. The deputy yelled at them, but they kept going. Blair and Worthington passed Curt sitting on the ground as people scurried about to follow the deputy’s orders. Curt, crying, still held onto the chains attached to the limp, beheaded body.

  * * *

  Blair and Worthington sat at what had become their usual table in the Buck Snort. Only a few men climbed back on the bar stools. Most still lingered on the boardwalk talking about what happened.

  “Did you see?” the professor asked.

  “What exactly?” Blair marked everyone who entered the door or passed the window. His right palm rested on the handle of a pistol, which waited in his lap.

  “Before he died, what did you witness? Were you watching him?”

  “He changed. It left him.” Blair kept his eyes focused on the people.

  “It.” Worthington touched Blair’s shoulder. “You did see. Things are not what they seem.”

  “And how do things seem?” Blair snapped out of his mental fog. “You look a little giddy for just seeing three men get killed and beheaded. You are beginning to worry me, Professor. Do you like that sort of thing?”

  “Please excuse my inappropriate mannerisms, but I have waited many years to witness what we experienced out on that dirt street,” the professor said. “Years of research and travel have led me here.”

  “Why don’t you explain what we just saw?” Blair asked, though somewhere deep inside he knew the answer.

  “Was it a vampire, Mr. Blair? Or something else?”

  The question wasn’t expected. What did I see? A mob. A chained man. He attacked. People died. His eyes. What about his eyes? His eyes weren’t his. Like those at the mission. It was no dream.

  That familiar terror bubbled up within the bounty hunter. “He was possessed.” He blurted the words out to his own surprise.

  The professor’s smirk left an uncomfortable tick on Blair’s soul.

  “You are a man with more understanding than most. I want to hear of your past, but now is not the time. We have work to do.”

  Blair leaned away from Worthington. “I don’t want any part of this.”

  “You don’t want to see this through? Find out what spirit is possessing the men?”

  “I have a deadline I must meet,” Blair said.

  “Is it that important to catch him?”

  “Life or death.” I can avoid this.

  “What about the lives here in Gothic? Are they not important?” the professor asked.

  “I’m sure they are to some folks.”

  “But not to you.”

  “It’s not my problem.”

  “Are you really a selfish bastard?”

  “Professor, don’t pretend you know me because you don’t.”

  “It is our past that forms us into the men that we are.” The professor leaned in, moving closer to Blair. “Our parents, our childhood, our experiences, our wounds, both physical and emotional. Disappointments. Tragedies. Failures. Victories. Celebrations. All these things created the man you think you see in the mirror. Is that who you are? The combination of all these factors?”

  Blair didn’t answer. His face grew hard. I can avoid this.

  “Or is it that you use these factors as an excuse to be the man you portray yourself to be? Your identity?”

  Stop pushing. Blair clenched his fists and left the table.

  The professor stood up. “Do you know who you really are?”

  Blair paused. I don’t want to remember.

  Before he left, he stopped at the bar and ordered a bottle of whiskey. With a shaky hand, he dropped coins on the bar.

  * * *

  Barely large enough to hold Tim Travis, despite the two beds, the Gothic jail was one of the few secure buildings in town. The thick rock structure was a temporary holding cell for the mining district. The reddish stones used in the construction were chiseled into nearly symmetrical blocks and placed in straight lines. But the sides and back of the building, whether due to a lack of funding or craftsmanship, was a mosaic puzzle with irregular pieces.

  Deputy Jarod leaned back in a
chair, his feet on the small desk. He slept. A half-full cup of cold coffee dangled from his hanging hand. The deputy had coordinated efforts as the three dead men were cleaned off the street last night. He made sure Tommy Watson’s body and head were brought from the mine before coming back to the jail to watch Tim. Now he slumbered instead of keeping watch over the bitten Pennsylvanian miner.

  Tim lay on the bunk crying. “I don’t want to die,” he mumbled over and over. The doctor said the bite wound on his neck wasn’t deep enough to cause serious injury, but would leave a scar, if he lived long enough for it to heal.

  “Scared, are you?”

  Tim jerked at the surprise voice, nearly knocking himself off the cot. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me, Daniel Stone,” the mine superintendent said.

  Relief washed over Tim like a baptism. Mr. Stone wasn’t there to chop off his head. “Oh man, I thought you were one of those crazy Hungarians.” He peeked at the deputy, who had a shiny line of spit running through the gray whiskers on his sleepy chin. “How did you get in here?”

  The superintendent glanced at the door. “I have ways. Four of my miners died tonight. I thought I would come check on you. Tell me, how is your neck?”

  “It hurts. Doc gave me twenty stitches.” Tim put his hand to the cloth bandage. The wound throbbed. “I’ve never been bitten before.”

  “By a vampire, no less.”

  “A vampire.” Tim melted onto the cot. If denial was an emotion, he knew how it felt. “This isn’t happening.”

  “It is. That is why I am here,” Stone said. “I want to give you peace about your journey.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” The miners would make sure of that.

  “Your transformation to a new creation.”

  Tim jumped up and grabbed the cell bars. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Mr. Travis, you never did answer my question. Are you scared?”

  “What do you think? Mike killed Tommy. Then he bit me. I got people telling me I’m going to turn into a vampire like Mike. And they all want to kill me for it. They got me locked up in here to make it easier to shoot me if I do. Fish in a barrel.”

  “No need to get hostile with me. You cannot prevent the inevitable.”