How the West Was Weird, Vol. 2

by Barry Reese

  “I’ve got a cart out back. We could use that.”

  “You try hookin’ Ra up to a cart like he was some kinda mule and he’ll kick your brains loose. Nah, I’ll build the sled.”

  Elora picked her pipe back up. “You know, you could do worse than to kill Buckley and that fat bitch before we leave.”

  “Thought some on it.”

  “And?”

  “Thinking some more.”

  Again it was the explosive sounds of gunfire that alerted Sebastian Red. He was out back of the cantina, speaking softly to Ra, who stood with his head lowered, as if to hear Sebastian better. Sebastian Red had been making a sturdy sled from stout poles and blankets.

  He dropped what he was doing and ran through the cantina, drawing his Nightmaster. Elora stood on one side of the door, inside so that she wouldn’t be hit by a stray bullet. “It’s from the hotel!”

  Sebastian threw off his sombrero and snapped at her, “Stay here!” before running out into the street. He heard the terrible whooming of those shotguns as well as other guns being fired as fast as they could be cocked and triggers pulled.

  One of Buckley’s men emerged from the hotel. The man lifted his rifle and caught a bullet from Sebastian’s gun square in the middle of his chest. At that range, the impact of the bullet lifted him right off his feet, the bullet bursting out of his back, leaving a hole the size of a woman’s fist.

  Another Buckley man ran out, saw Sebastian Red and screamed, “Don’t! Don’t!” before Sebastian Red cut him down. Sebastian had a pretty good idea of what was going on and he had no sympathy or mercy for anybody who worked for either Buckley or the woman.

  Sebastian Red entered the hotel, smelling fresh blood and gunsmoke. The bodies from the previous massacre had been removed but now there were fresh ones. And some of these wore the robes of the Clan Nischeli. Sebastian Red didn’t bother to check their life signs. He knew dead men when he saw them. Smoke still drifted from the barrels of their shotguns. Other dead men lay strewn around the lobby. Some were Buckley’s and others were Pertwee’s.

  More screams. More curses. This time from out back. Sebastian ran from the lobby, down a long narrow corridor and out to the back.

  The black wagon was there. Lying on the muddy ground next to the wagon were two more men of the Clan Nischeli. Also dead. But they would have company in Hell. Five men, blasted apart by those fearfully large shotguns lay on the ground with them, two of them cut in half, so powerful were the weapons.

  Hearing a scream above him, Sebastian Red whirled, his gun up.

  One of Buckley’s or Pertwee’s men, Sebastian couldn’t tell which, disappeared over the edge of the hotel’s roof. Wailing like a dropped baby he was. An incredibly powerful something had hold of him. The man vanished completely from Sebastian’s view.

  Warily, he went over to the black wagon and looked in. A huge black iron sarcophagus, octagonal in shape rested in the wagon. Sebastian saw ancient sigils that had been burned into the ebony metal. Wide silver straps that had been used to keep the lid of the sarcophagus closed had been shattered with a steel mallet that lay in the bottom of the wagon.

  Sebastian had seen enough. He didn’t even go back through the grisly mess in the hotel but ran around the corner of the building and back to the cantina, ignoring the shouted questions thrown at him by bewildered men and women whose eyes were large and frightened.

  Elora waited right where she had left him. She asked no silly questions, merely said, “It's gotten worse.”

  “More’n you know. Them damn fools have let a Obayifu loose and there’s no tellin’ how many of us it’ll suck dry before the sun’s up.”

  Elora visibly paled and stumbled to a chair. Her hands trembled as she placed them in her lap where they twined together as if wrestling each other. “We have to go. We have to go now!”

  Sebastian Red shook his head. His hands were busy at work. While most of the bullets in the cartridge loops of his gun belt were conventional shells, a significant number of them were gold and silver. He replaced the shells in the gun with silver ones. “Sun’ll be down in a couple of hours. You want to be caught out there with a hungry Obayifu?”

  “It’ll be busy with everybody else here in town! We’ll have time—”

  “You ain’t been stupid so far, woman and now ain’t the time to take it up. You better’n me know what those moun-tains are like. Even if there weren’t no Obayifu, it ain’t smart to be roamin’ around those trails in the middle of the night.”

  “We could use torches—”

  “Igosalek otorli!” Sebastian Red shouted. “I said no! We stay here the night and leave at first light! Now bestir yourself and get me all the garlic, grain, mirrors and candles you have while I bolt these here windows and doors.”

  Elora did indeed bestir herself. She knew enough of the Art to know that Sebastian Red would need those items to defend the cantina against the Obayifu.

  She was halfway across the room when the door of the cantina banged open. Sebastian Red brought his huge gun to bear on the terrified pack led by Missus Pertwee and Old Joe Buckley. Two of Missus Pertwee’s men supported a wounded Amerue Williams between them. Besides those two, there were six others, all with terrified faces as well as guns they cocked and pointed at Sebastian Red.

  “Git out, alla you,” Sebastian ordered. “You brought this upon yourself an’ I’ll be damned if’n I’ll let you bring it here.”

  “You’ve got to help us! The men of ours it didn’t kill have run off! We’ve got no one else to stop that thing!” Missus Pertwee yelled back. “We’ll pay! We’ll pay! Just help us!”

  “I made the mistake of helping you once before. Look where that done got me. I ain’t gonna say it again. Git.”

  “Look here, Red, we’re all in this together!” Buckley bellowed.

  “Where you get this ‘we’ stuff, white man? You was the one went messin’ around with this man and his kin—” Sebastian jerked his chin in Williams’ direction. “—after you give your word to leave him be. An’ then you went messin’ around with his property and let th’ devil himself out. Way I see it; you go on back out there an’ face the consequences of your actions.”

  One of Missus Pertwee’s men snarled, “Let’s just kill him and—”

  The booming of Sebastian Red’s Nightmaster and the sound of the man’s body hitting the floor were almost simultaneous. He cocked the fearsome weapon and said in a voice of utter coldness; “I ain’t gonna say it again. Git.”

  Elora was at his side. She was wise enough not to grab him by his gun arm. She simply said in a soft voice; “I have no love for these people at all, Sebastian. But they are human and that thing out there isn’t. We can’t drive them outside to slaughter. And besides, we may need their help if we are all to survive the night.”

  Missus Pertwee nodded her big coiffed head vigorously. “The young lady speaks with wisdom and compassion, Mr. Red! We are all human after all.”

  Sebastian Red glanced out the window. Night was quick in coming on and he had to prepare the cantina as best he could. He could shoot it out with these fools, still force them back out. But his gun was now loaded with silver bullets and he was loath to waste them all on this trash. He’d already spent one and there was no telling how many more he would need if he and Elora were to survive this night.

  He holstered his gun and rapped out quick orders: “Elora, you go on and get them things I told you to get. First show these men where your bed is at so’s they can lay Williams on it. Who knows anythin’ about doctorin’?”

  “I know some,” one man said, lowering his Winchester.

  “You’ll be our doc, then. See to this man. Missus Pertwee, you fetch him whatever.”

  “I don’t fetch!”

  “You will while you’re in here. Go on and fetch like I told you!” Sebastian whirled on the four remaining men. “Get whatever you can find so’s we can board up these windows and doors.” And finally he pointed at Old Joe Buckley. “As fo
r you…” Sebastian now pointed at the dead man on the floor. “That’s your garbage. You clean it up. An’ let me make one thing clear. The first one’a you don’t do what I say when I say it dies on the spot.”

  Missus Pertwee sidled next to Elora, who watched Sebastian Red at work. “What’s he doing?”

  “Protecting the cantina as best as he can. He spread seeds in the backyard and hung a mirror on the outside of the front door. Lit candles at the four points of the compass in this room.”

  “What’s that around your neck?”

  “A clove of garlic.”

  “I want one!”

  “There ain’t enough for you,” Sebastian said grimly. Missus Pertwee made a face but she held her tongue. “Okay, the windows have been boarded up. Fireplace stuffed with broken-up furniture. What I done ain’t much but I ain’t no spellslinger. I did the best I could.”

  “So why go through all that trouble if it isn’t going to help?”

  Surprisingly enough, it was Buckley who took Sebastian Red’s defense. “Because, you simple cow, it’ll slow up the thing long enough for the rest of us to kill it.”

  Sebastian nodded. “Williams told me that this Obayifu was one’a the oldest he an’ his brothers ever hunted. Took ‘em three days to lock him up in that box with wards an’ such. The little bit I done here won’t be no more than a pause to it. All we can do is hope it’ll slow him up some.”

  The scream from outside brought everybody’s head up and around. As one they stampeded to the boarded-up windows. Cracks had been left between the boards, just enough for them to look outside. And now they all got another shock.

  The town was covered in a thick coating of snow. Pure, utterly white snow. The whitest snow anybody in that doomed cantina could ever remember seeing. Sebastian turned to look at Elora’s hair, wondering if it was whiter than the snow outside. It was. Yes. Yes.

  “God’s Fire!” Buckley swore. “It done snowed in that fast? How? There’s got to be at least three, four feet out there! But we ain’t been in here much more than two, maybe three hours!”

  “It’s him.”

  The new voice, one ragged with exhaustion and weary anger made them all turn to look at Amerue Williams. He stood leaning on the doorway of Elora’s bedroom. His wounds were bandaged but his getting up had started them bleeding again. His tired face, pale from the loss of blood was ghastly to look upon.

  “Him? Him who?” one of the Buckley men demanded.

  “Phoratho. He may be the oldest Obayifu alive. Even my brothers and I could never agree on how old he is. But he is old. And like all Obayifu as he grows older, and he consumes more blood and destroys more souls, his power increases. Phoratho can command rats, bats, wolves and serpents with but a thought. He can summon fog and snow. The snowstorm outside is his work.”

  “But so much? So soon?”

  “I told you he is old! If Phoratho wishes it, he can pull enough snow down to cover this miserable shithole!”

  Another scream from outside, this one from a woman who took her time about dying, judging from the hideous sounds being made.

  “He’s prevented any of us from making a run for it,” Sebastian said slowly. He looked at Elora and smiled sadly. “You were right. We shoulda took our chances in the moun-tains at night, with torches. If this thing is that powerful—”

  “But you’ve got silver bullets!” Missus Pertwee said. “Your sword—”

  “Lady, that thing out there ain’t like nothing I’ve ever fought. I done kilt a couple of Obayifu in my time. But they was young ones…only a couple hundred years old. An’ they weren’t that easy to kill. This one…” Sebastian stopped as more screams rang out.

  “Oh, Lordy,” one of Buckley’s men moaned. He was still at the window. The others went over to see.

  The pure whiteness of the thick snow in the street was now splashed with blood from body parts thrown in front of the cantina. A couple of legs, an arm, half a head. And the relentless snow still fell from the black sky.

  “He’s feeding. Gorging himself on blood until he’s had his fill,” Williams said in a voice of total surrender.

  “And then?”

  “And then he’ll come for me.”

  “How does he even know you’re in here?”

  “He can smell me.” And now Williams smiled like a wolf. “But even Phoratho respects the Clan Nischeli. He doesn’t know I’m wounded and he fears my gun and my power. He will not try to break in until he is sure that he can kill me with no trouble. And besides,” he finished with grisly humor, “he never passes up an opportunity for a good meal.”

  “Then the thing to do is to drive you out!” Missus Pertwee said firmly.

  Quietly, Elora said, “You contemptible cow.”

  “You heard what the man said with his own lips! That creature is after him! If we give him up, that thing will leave us alone!”

  “That thing out there isn’t gonna be satisfied until he’s sucked us all dry and then cracked open our bones for the marrow,” Old Joe Buckley muttered. “I seen what a Obayifu done to a wagon train. Back when I was a young ‘un. Me and my pap was runnin’ guns to the Kreota. Came on this wagon train out on the Cheotio Flat. Maybe four, five days west of Babcock. Must have been close to a hundred folks. All of ‘em dead. Dry as corn husk. Legs and arms torn off so that the Obayifu could get to the bones. First and only time I ever saw my pap scared. He left our wagon fulla guns right there. We killed all four of our horses riding to Babcock in two days and my father never once slept until we got to town.”

  The screams outside were coming more regular now. Louder. They could all hear the obscene crunching of bones over the quiet whisper of the wind.

  With a quickness a woman her size had no business possessing, Missus Pertwee clubbed the nearest man to the floor with a huge fist and snatched his gun out of the holster, turned it on Elora. “Don’t you move, you black bastard! So help me, I’ll cut your whore down if you don’t do as I say! Keep your hands away from your gun!”

  Buckley crowed in triumph and leaped at Sebastian Red. “Now I settle up with you!”

  Didn’t turn out that way. Sebastian Red turned into Buckley’s leap, at the same time drawing his sword. It hissed through the air and cleanly through Buckley’s torso. Blood exploded from the bisected body as it continued falling to the floor. So clean and quick was the cut that Buckley’s top half hit the floor and he was able to watch the bottom half drop to its knees.

  Missus Pertwee’s gun boomed. By then, Elora had dived out of the way and the bullet dug a narrow groove into her left hip.

  In seemingly one motion, Sebastian transferred his sword from his right hand to his left, holding the sword in a reverse grip, at the same time drawing his Nightmaster with his right hand, fired, taking Missus Pertwee in the stomach. She screamed and fell over onto her back. But by then Sebastian Red was spinning, swinging his sword which cut through two of her men. More blood splashed, filling the cantina with its heady scent.

  The other three men retreated to the rear of the cantina. Sebastian fired, driving them back even more. The sound of gunfire in the cantina echoed and re-echoed as the despe-rate men sought escape outside by trying to kick down the rear door of the cantina. But snow was piled up so high on the outside they might as well have been kicking a solid brick wall.

  Sebastian Red sheathed his sword. He walked over to where Elora had taken shelter behind an overturned table. He helped her up. “You okay?” She nodded wordlessly.

  Together they walked over to where Missus Pertwee lay, a drool of blood from her mouth dripping from her chin. She feebly tried to lift the gun but Elora plucked it from her hand with no trouble.

  As he reloaded his still smoking gun, Sebastian Red said; “Lady, I’ve never seen a pair of stupider people more suited for each other than you and Buckley. The two of you shoulda been married.”

  Missus Pertwee managed a phlegmy laugh that made blood bubble and froth over her lower lip. She managed to croak out; �
��What makes you think we weren’t?” before falling over dead.

  “Red!” Williams yelled. He was lying stretched out in the doorway. When the shooting started he had simply let himself drop. He pointed toward the rear of the cantina where they could hear the door being broken. The three men still left alive had used the butts of their guns to batter the hinges off the door, then ripped it free of the frame.

  But Williams had heard what Sebastian Red now heard, something scuttling along the roof of the cantina, knocking clumps of snow out of its way as it did so.

  “You damned idjits! Git away from that door!” Sebastian yelled.

  It was too late.

  A lanky, naked man with long, spiky hair, alabaster skin and elongated limbs swung inside the cantina. His toes were almost as long as his fingers and the nails sharp as daggers. His feet clung onto one man, holding that unfortu-nate as securely as if in a giant vise while the Obayifu opened a mouthful of overlapping teeth. He bit into the man’s neck and red, hot blood fountained into the air. The man screamed and punched with all his strength but he might as well have been pounding on a being of living metal for all the good it did. The Obayifu forced him to the ground, stopping his feeding only long enough to whisper into his victim’s ears. The intimacy of the gesture was grisly as the man gave up his struggling and slowly sank to his knees, his eyes half-closed. He bent his head back to expose his savaged neck and the Obayifu bestowed a loving kiss of satisfied benediction on his victim’s lips, smearing the man’s own blood on his mouth and cheek. The Obayifu tossed a look of amused contempt at the horrified humans before returning to his feeding.

  The two other men ran back toward the common room, almost knocking Sebastian Red over in their madness to escape. He fanned the hammer of his Nightmaster and the common room filled with the brutal thunder of his weapon. The first bullet took the Obayifu high up on its left shoulder, tearing out a chunk of alabaster flesh. Black, oily blood sprayed. The Obayifu roared and abandoned his prey, leaping right at Sebastian Red.

  He ducked, his sword humming through the air as he slashed at the creature. Astoundingly, it twisted in mid-air, corkscrewing wildly, narrowly evading the slash that would surely have disemboweled it had the strike been true.