by Brian Hodge
"Looks like your friends are trying to save you. Too bad they're too late." He pulled the knife across John's throat with a swift economical motion, and let the hustler's head drop back to the table. A pool of blood formed, began running toward one of the pockets.
Steven knelt beside John, whispered in his ear. "Since you played so well tonight, tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to let you stay dead. We'll call it professional respect." The vampire placed the knife back in his belt and eased out into the night, looking for signs of the would-be sharpshooter. Dawn was almost here and he had to hurry. He reached the Caddy, unscrewed the cue stick, tossed it in the seat.
The bullet punched through Steven's back and splattered in the dust beyond the car. He stared at it wonderingly before turning, before looking at the man in the door holding the .44, his .44; the one Matt Thomas had given him so many years ago. "Earl, what are you.—"
The second bullet caught Steven in the leg and he had to grab hold of the door to keep from falling. "I had to kill him. He had my cue stick. I can't live without it, you know that."
"We don't have time for any more lies. I found Timmy Cates at the graveyard and he told me what he saw before I gave him back. Amy and Jesse told me you were here, so I decided to ease over and see what was going on. I heard everything you told John." Earl's face was filled with determination. "Maybe I could have lived with most of what you do, maybe even pretended I don't know what you are, but I couldn't lie to myself about the little girl. Not the little girl."
Steven made an effort to move toward Earl.
The pistol belched flame and Steven's other leg crumpled, the kneecap blown away. He slid to a sitting position in the dust, his back propped against the car, his leg cocked at an impossible angle. Almost faster than the eye could follow, he produced John's .32 from his boot and pointed it at Earl. He pulled the hammer back. His finger tightened on the trigger, but his hand trembled and, after a long moment, he lowered the gun. "Well, how about that? I can't pull the trigger. I guess John was right, I'm a little more human that I thought."
Earl walked over, took the gun from Steven's hand.
The wounded vampire didn't resist.
Bobby Roberts' Cadillac pulled into the parking lot with Louise behind the wheel, Jesse and Amy beside her. They went into Jake's and came out with John between them.
"He's lost a lot of blood, but he's still alive," Louise said. "Don't ask me how. We're going to try and get him to the doctor in Holbrook. I don't know if he can hold on that long."
Earl watched as they laid the injured man in the backseat and drove away. "He's pretty tough. I bet he hangs on." Earl turned to Steven. "You did a piss-poor job of cutting his throat."
"Did I? I guess my heart wasn't in it."
Earl sat down beside Steven.
"What do we do now?" Steven asked.
"We wait."
Across the rapidly graying night, a stage coach approached the bar. Boyce was doing the driving. Kevin, Nash, Ernesto, Manny, and Jesus were on board. They pulled into the lot, threw on the hand brake, and piled out. "Is John all right?" Nash asked. The horses were hot from running and steam rose off their bodies in the chill air.
"Don't know," Earl answered. "He was still alive when Louise took him to Holbrook."
"Is this what you wanted, Earl?" Boyce asked. "It's as close as we could get to a wagon on such short notice."
"Yeah, that'll do fine, boys. Much obliged for all your help."
Steven Adler shifted beside the car, made an effort to stand. "Did you sell out to the humans, Earl; did they promise that you could live among them like a normal man?"
"No, they didn't make me any promises, but I made them one."
"And what was that?"
"That I'd stop you."
The men gathered around Steven Adler, staring at him with equal parts of curiosity and hatred on their faces.
"Well, it looks like you caught yourselves the bogeyman." Steven regarded them calmly. "What are you going to do now that you have him? Have you come to extract your vengeance, to punish me for the death of your loved ones?"
"No, we've come to lay the dead to rest," Nash said. The people you grieve for suffered in life. I gave them peace."
"It's not up to you to decide who should live, who should die," Kevin said.
"And who are you to decide I should die? I've walked the earth longer than the race of man; I have fed on your kind since the beginning. I am the eater of souls." He grinned at Kevin. "I may have yours before the night is over, my young friend." He made a lunge at Kevin, who jumped back.
The .44 in Earl's hand centered on Steven again.
The vampire's cold blue eyes tracked the gun. "Matt Thomas gave me that for my twenty-first birthday. How did you happen to come across it?"
"I found it. I talked to Timmy, Amos, Elliot, and everything kept coming back to the Navajo graveyard. Time and again, too many times for it to be a coincidence. There had to be a reason, and I finally figured it out. Your home is close by the graveyard."
Moving incredibly quick, Steven crawled snakelike on his stomach toward Earl and made a grab for the .44.
But Earl was ready. The pistol jumped in his hand and a hole the size of a dime appeared in Steven's forehead. The long blond hair fluttered once, as if a gust of wind had caught it. Flecks of gray matter splashed the Caddy door, ran down. "Well, I'll be damned," Earl said wonderingly, staring at the stain on the car. "I finally seen a bat. After all these years I finally seen a bat." There was no joy in his voice.
The vampire began writhing on the gravel like a snake with a broken back.
Walking over, Earl pulled Steven's knife from his belt. He grabbed blond hair, held the blade in front of Steven's face. "I don't know if you can hear me or not, but you try to come out of your body and I'm going to stick you with this." Then he nicked Steven in case the vampire couldn't see the knife. Smoke boiled up from the wound and the vampire screamed in agony.
Earl picked Steven up, threw the vampire over his shoulder, and dumped him on the top of the stagecoach. He then pulled out a set of handcuffs that Louise had given him and fastened Steven's hands to the rail.
"You're taking a little trip, in case you want to know," Earl told him. "You're going home."
They all drove to the graveyard in the coach.
Earl slung Steven over his shoulder and walked toward a hole in the cliff wall. "There's a pyramid in there, right inside the mountain," Earl said, "or at least the tip of one. The rest goes down in the ground. Don't ask me how far, 'cause I don't know."
"Where did the hole come from?" Boyce asked.
"It's the entrance to Steven's home and it's protected by a stone slab that must weigh better than a hundred tons. Looks natural as hell. It slides up and down. The whole thing is controlled by counterweights." Earl pointed at the cliffs above them. "You have to climb that rock face over there to get to the lever. No human could ever make the climb."
"How did you find it?" Jesus asked.
"I used to be a pretty good tracker once upon a time. I seen where some footprints went up to the cliffs and then just stopped. That didn't seem right, so I did a little climbing myself."
They walked inside.
Boyce's flashlight found a hole leading down. There were steps carved in the stone.
"This is it," Earl announced. "Home." He laid Steven at the edge of the hole and paused. "I figured out what was really in that cue stick of yours."
The vampire tried to mouth the word "What?" but he had no voice.
"It was your salvation; it could have saved you from your evil side. You told me you had to have a taste of it to stay alive. But that wasn't true, was it? You had to have a taste to keep from killing."
Steven closed his eyes, unable to face Earl.
"The voices in your head made you do bad things, only you got to where you liked the voices in your head. You got to like the bad things. So you quit taking it. You knew right from wrong."
Ste
ven looked in the pit, tried again to speak, and this time he was able, even though the sound was muddy. "Don't do this. We were friends once. Kill me."
"You're right, we were friends once, but what you did was wrong. I'm not going to kill you. That'd be too good for you."
The substance inside Steven Adler poured out of the hole in his head, spit in two, and stretched upward toward Earl. In the dark, it looked as if the vampire had suddenly grown horns.
Manny, Jesus, and Ernesto made the sign of the cross, backed away.
Earl lifted the blond vampire high above his head, and the duster that Steven wore spread like dark wings as he was thrown into the pit waiting below.
They never heard him strike bottom.
Outside, Earl pressed a button on a remote and a series of explosions occurred. The cliffs crumbled, fell.
"Dynamite," Earl explained. "He'll spend eternity beneath those stones."
"Wouldn't it have been kinder to have killed him?" Kevin asked.
"Yes, son, it would have." Earl strode toward the coach in the predawn light.
They gathered around Earl as he climbed up in the stagecoach and gathered the reins.
"You don't have to go," Manny said.
Boyce seconded that sentiment. "You can stay with us for as long as you want."
"I appreciate your offer, boys, believe me I do, but this is the way I got into this, and this is the way I'd like to get out." Earl began turning the coach. "A long time ago, I used to drive a wagon from town to town, selling snake oil. Had me a little white dog that wouldn't do any tricks." He smiled down at them. "It wasn't much of a life but at least it was mine."
They appealed one last time.
"No, it's time for me to go. I had me a good life, so don't worry about old Earl."
With those last words, Earl pointed the stagecoach toward the desert, due east, and he drove into the rising sun.
And legend.
Epilogue
Crowder Flats, the Navajo Graveyard—Two Years Later
The day was gray, chilly, with rows of dark clouds running across the sky like some endless train, sometimes hiding the sun for several minutes at a time. When the sun popped out, it held no warmth or cheer. Rain had been threatening for a week, but had never materialized.
Amos Black Eagle and Lefty Thunder Coming had just finished laying flowers on the unmarked grave, weighing the wreath down with stones to keep the wind from blowing it away.
They stood back to check their work.
The wind rose and the wreath began flapping.
Amos laid another stone on it. "I think that'll hold."
"I don't know." Lefty sat on the stone fence, lit himself a smoke, and listened to the wind sigh through the pines. "The wind don't ever let up around here."
"I know what you mean. Sometimes I think I hear it calling MY name."
"Me too."
They stared across the gray landscape, each lost in his own thoughts.
Lefty was the first to speak, and he repeated the names of the people in the unmarked grave, his voice taken by the wind. "Billy Two Hats, Martin Strickland, Doralee Strickland, Nicholas Strickland, Chester Roberts, and Bobby Roberts." After a moment he added, "May God have mercy on your souls." He turned to Amos. "I wished they could have had a proper Christian burial."
"I do too, Lefty, but nobody can ever know about what happened here. They just wouldn't believe. This is one burden we're going to have to carry all by ourselves. We're taking a chance even putting down a wreath."
The small Apache's face was eroded with sadness and he raised up his bottle of Jack Daniel's and took a long drink. "I keep seeing them, Amos, not alive, but the way they looked when we found them in the creek bed. Martin scalped, Doralee without no eyes, Bobby all cut up." He shook the bottle, as if to assure himself it wasn't empty. "If it wasn't for this, I don't think I'd be able to sleep at night. I don't see how you quit drinking."
"It wasn't easy, but I made a promise to Jesse."
Lefty took another drink. "You heard from him lately?"
"He's coming home for Thanksgiving." Amos smiled proudly. "College boys always need two things, money and something to eat. He's getting a little uppity; he told me we can't have corn on the cob."
"Amy coming with him?"
"Yeah, then they're going out to Missouri to stay with John and Louise Warrick for a couple of days at the farm." Amos instantly regretted bringing up that subject.
"Missouri, that's a strange place for those two to end up, if you ask me. John doesn't know anybody in Missouri, and he damn sure don't know nothing about farming." Lefty took another drag on his cigarette and jumped down off the fence, dusted off the seat of his pants. "You know, I still can't figure out how John pulled through that night. My cousin knows a girl who dates an orderly at the hospital over to Holbrook who was there when John was admitted. My cousin says John should have been dead when he came in."
"How come every time something happens, you got a cousin that just happens to know what's going on?"
"I got a lot of cousins," Lefty answered, unoffended. "They hear things."
"Things like John was down to his last pint of blood? You bring that up every time we come out here, and I gotta tell you, Lefty, that story is sure getting on my nerves."
"I been thinking about this," Lefty insisted, "so hear me out, okay?"
Amos watched the sun dip behind the mountains, flashing off the large white cross before throwing the graveyard into sudden shadow. A shiver passed through him. "All right, Lefty, tell me what happened."
"Who was the first person to see John that night at Jake's?"
"Louise."
"Amy?"
Amos was becoming exasperated. "All right, who was it?"
"Earl Jacobs."
"So it was Earl Jacobs. What's your point?"
"I think Earl Jacobs and John Warrick are the same person, or at least…," Lefty floundered, "a part of Earl somehow got inside John. I think Earl did that transfer thing on John before he went outside and killed Steven Adler."
"I think you scrambled your brains with that whiskey," Amos said.
"Well, then you think about this. John and Louise had themselves a little girl, and everyone says that John and his new daughter are inseparable. They said they never seen nothing like it."
"That's your proof?"
"He's got himself a little white dog that he's been trying to teach tricks to."
"I got a dog; too, his name is Custer. I been trying to teach him to protect my chickens for the last five years." Amos paused, became suddenly still. "You hear that?"
"No, what is it?"
"Sounded like voices." Amos shook his head, laughed uneasily. "The wind up here makes me hear things." They moved nearer to the dynamited cliffs and Amos placed his ear against one of the stones. His hearing wasn't what it used to be, still, there for a second, he thought he heard a faint voice. Then it was gone.
This was crazy. Steven Adler was dead, buried under tons of rock for the last two years.
"Come on," Amos said to Lefty as they moved away from the rocks, "let's get home. Jesse's and Bobby's old running buddies are coming over for a while."
"That'll be good. Give us a chance to catch up on what they're doing these days." Lefty watched the pine trees dotting the hillside sway in the wind, and he listened to their murmuring voices for a moment. They too sounded sad. "I heard tell Manny, Ernesto, and Jesus finally got themselves that little gas station over in Albuquerque."
"Yeah, they did. They're all equal partners."
"Hell, those three can't agree on anything. They'll never get anything done."
Amos couldn't argue with that. "You hear anything from Boyce and Nash?"
"Last time I talked to them, they were still trying to buy a piece of the Broken R. They said they're going to raise beef for the Japanese. I think it's just crazy enough that the bank's going to go for it."
"Too bad Kevin didn't live long enough to hear that."
The grizzled Apache ground out his cigarette butt beneath the heel of his boot. "Kevin lives through all this, only to die of a ruptured appendix seven months later. God takes him at twenty-two and leaves two old farts like us. It doesn't seem fair, does it?"
"No, it doesn't, and I can't give you any kind of answer. I wish I could."
They said nothing for a long while.
"I heard tell Boyce got himself a girlfriend," Lefty said, brightening a little.
"Now, you don't expect me to believe that, do you?" Lefty got a twinkle in his eyes. "I think this calls for a bottle of tequila."
As they walked toward the pickup, Amos nudged Lefty with an elbow. "What do you say, after everybody leaves, we play us a little pinochle? I'll give you a chance to win back part of that ten million you owe me."
"Sounds good to me." Lefty grinned. "I'm gonna kick your butt. I feel lucky tonight."
"You say that every night."
They climbed into Amos's pickup; the one Jesse had given him, and drove away.
Soon after the taillights vanished into the twilight, the wind rose and the wreath worked loose from its perch and sailed across the hard ground, flipping end over end like a tumbleweed, until it finally fetched up against the rocks that covered Steven Adler's grave. The wreath became trapped there.
And even though the wind blew hard, the wreath remained wedged in the rocks as though it belonged there.
It stayed there until it became dust.
DARK RIDE
By Michael Laimo
CONTENTS
Summer Fling
The Rash
Something in the Air
Scarred For Life
End of the Line
Comforts of Home
Till Death Do They Part
Snakes
Soils of the Witch Garden
Contents
Last Resort
And Yet, Still He Screams
I Exude in Partials
Dance: The Devil’s Orgasm
Aftermath