Portlandtown: A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes

by Rob DeBorde

  The last half of the sentence was a translation from the Latin and French hodgepodge that was scribbled in the book. Henry didn’t think about it, he just did it. He knew the words. At that moment, he could have spoken the entire text of the spell in English, or any language, in fact. He knew it.

  Henry opened his eyes.

  The Hanged Man’s were still mostly closed.

  Mason looked from Henry to the Hanged Man and back to Henry. His gun never moved.

  “What? You trying to start a fire with magic? You an idiot? Use a g’damn match!”

  “No,” Henry said, his voice wavering. “I spoke it all, all of it. Every word. He’s supposed to…” Henry reached for the Hanged Man.

  Mason grabbed his collar and threw him down. “Never should have brought you. Just a stupid kid.”

  “Shoot him.”

  Henry turned on his side to see Charlie drop to the ground at his brother’s feet. Both men were wounded, Charlie obviously worse than Hugh.

  “Put a gun in his paw and throw him out front,” Hugh said. “Give ’em something else to shoot at ’sides us.”

  “No,” Henry said. “Wait! He’s coming, he’s coming back.”

  “Who?”

  Henry pointed at the corpse behind Mason. Mason didn’t turn around.

  “Is that what you’re doing?” Mason laughed. “Trying to raise the dead?”

  Hugh and Charlie exchanged glances as Mason moved back to the tent entrance. He slipped open the flap as little as possible and scanned the grounds. Satisfied, he dumped the spent cartridges from his pistol and began to reload.

  Henry registered that Mason’s weapon had been empty, but he didn’t care. His attention was back on the dead man. What had he done wrong? He made a mistake in the reading, he must have.

  “I can fix this,” Henry said, flipping open the book. He scanned the pages, his finger darting over the words, his mouth repeating them silently. The words in his head matched those on the page. Where was his mistake?

  “What have you got left?” Mason asked Hugh.

  Hugh glanced at his pistol. “Two and I’m out.”

  Charlie handed his weapon to his brother. “Full six, but that’s all I got.”

  Mason looked around the tent, finally spying the gun in the Hanged Man’s holster.

  “That loaded?”

  Henry didn’t look up from the book.

  Not waiting for an answer, Mason strode toward the body, but was struck high in the left shoulder by a bullet fired from outside the tent. He spun on the spot and went down in front of the dead man on display.

  Hugh dropped low and returned fire, emptying his pistol blindly into the side of the tent. He switched to Charlie’s, fired once more, and then dragged his brother behind a pedestal in the center of the room on which a Native headdress was displayed.

  Shots rang out on all sides of the tent. Most of the bullets passed through one wall and exited the opposite. A single shot grazed the Hanged Man’s right thigh. None of the men in the tent noticed as blood began to ooze from the wound.

  Finally, a voice called out, “Hold yer fire, dammit!”

  The shooting stopped.

  Mason rolled over on his hip, sat up, and scanned the tent, front to back. There was no place to hide that didn’t back up against canvas, a poor proposition for defensive purposes. One of the torches beside the Hanged Man had fallen and was within reach. Mason picked it up, weighing his options in either hand. Fire back or fire?

  “Give it up, son,” called out the circus master. “Got nowhere to go. Give up now, you live. That’s my one and only offer.”

  Mason looked at Hugh and Charlie. Both brothers had had enough. They wouldn’t be of help. Henry was only a few feet away, his face buried in that damn book. He was useless. That left Mason and the dead man. Mason smiled.

  “Always heard you were good in a fight,” he said to the corpse and then tossed the torch into the coffin. A moment later, the Hanged Man’s pant leg caught fire.

  Henry flipped another page, then nearly screamed in pain as his leg began to burn. Only it wasn’t his leg.

  Henry leaped to his feet. He grabbed the torch and threw it across the tent, where it struck canvas and fell to the ground still burning. Without hesitation he swatted at the flames with his bare hands. There was pain, much of it focused in his bloodied thumb, but the fire was out quickly. The pain in his leg subsided.

  “Thanks,” said a voice beside him. “Hate to see my investment go up in smoke on the first night.”

  Henry turned to see Mason, Hugh, and Charlie under guard. Garibaldi, the brute at his side, had his weapon trained on Henry.

  Henry took a step back. This was where it would end. His new life would come to a crashing halt before it had begun. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

  And then a hand from above fell on Henry’s shoulder and changed everything.

  13

  The Hanged Man thought it odd that none of the weapons were aimed at him.

  Three men were down, injured, and held at gunpoint by three others, two with pistols, another with a shotgun. One man was not armed at all but rather held a revolver with his foot while balancing on the other. Of the gunmen, the Hanged Man knew he would be the most formidable.

  Closer to the Hanged Man, a large idiot carrying no weapon but his size backed up an older man whose colorful vest and pristine gold-plated Volcanic pistol suggested he was the boss.

  The last man, the man close enough to reach out and touch, was Henry Macke. The Hanged Man already knew all he needed to about him.

  As for the rest, he didn’t need to know any more. They were all about to die.

  * * *

  John Garibaldi followed the hand on Henry’s shoulder back to its owner. The Hanged Man’s glassy-eyed glare returned his own, as it had every other time he’d looked at the dead man, but then something different happened. He blinked.

  Before Garibaldi had a chance to explore this development, the Hanged Man drew the gun on his hip and shot the circus master in the chest. His second shot took a chunk of scalp and a little skull off the brute. The armless freak managed to turn his weapon toward the Hanged Man before a bullet exploded his shooting leg at the kneecap. The other two men were struck in the back as they attempted to flee, the last already outside the tent when he tumbled face-first into the sod.

  “Holy Christ,” Mason managed, getting to his knees. “You actually brought the bastard back.” He grinned at Henry, thinking his situation had improved. When he looked to the Hanged Man, Mason discovered otherwise.

  The Hanged Man fired again, striking Mason in the cheek, tearing off the man’s ear in the process.

  “No,” Henry said, weakly. “Not him.”

  The Hanged Man tilted his head toward Henry. Henry looked into the living dead man’s eyes—one bloodred, one putrid yellow—and understood his world would never be the same.

  The Hanged Man pointed his weapon at Hugh and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He pulled back the hammer and depressed the trigger again. Nothing. Finally, he took a closer look at his weapon. There was paint on his hand, rubbed off from the handle.

  “Not my gun,” he said, his voice deep and ragged.

  Hugh shot Henry a look and then scooped up his brother and stumbled out of the tent. A single shot was fired outside the tent, but no more.

  Henry raised a hand to the Hanged Man and tried to back away but was thrown aside by something massive.

  The brute, blood pouring from beneath the loose flap of skin clinging to his scalp, advanced on the Hanged Man, screaming at the top of his lungs. He smashed into the coffin and the man, sending both toppling into a support beam that snapped, bringing the back third of the tent down on top of them.

  Henry rolled away from the melee and onto his feet. He couldn’t see the two monsters but could hear the brute wailing nonsensically before abruptly stopping. There was a guttural grunt and then nothing more.

  Henry stoo
d still, unable to move. This was his doing. By all rights he owned this monster. That’s how it worked, that’s what he’d read in the book. It had promised.

  Something shifted beneath the canvas. There was a sharp tear and then a rip as a knife plunged through the canvas, cutting an arcing line from left to right. The flap fell away and he stepped through, hands and chest bloodied, though it was not his own.

  The Hanged Man held up the small knife Henry had used to draw blood from his thumb. He flipped it at the younger man’s feet, where it stuck in the ground.

  Henry flinched but otherwise didn’t move.

  “I made you,” he managed.

  The Hanged Man stared at Henry, showing no emotion. His eyes fell upon the small black book gripped tightly against the young man’s chest.

  The book vibrated in Henry’s hand. It wasn’t the comforting heartbeat that had brought Henry to this place but rather a call to its master.

  “No,” Henry said. “I’m the master.”

  The Hanged Man grinned and was immediately struck in the gut by the first bullet ever fired from John Garibaldi’s vintage Volcanic pistol. The second hit the man in his thigh, the third grazed his shin.

  There were two more shots in the gun, but the carnival boss couldn’t hold the weapon aloft long enough to fire again. The pistol dropped at his side into a pool of blood. He looked up at Henry.

  “Run, you idiot,” he choked out.

  Henry stared at the injured man, momentarily unsure whether he should help him or take his advice. And then he heard the words that made his decision easy:

  “You got something belongs to me, Henry Macke.”

  Henry ran.

  * * *

  The screams and gunfire continued long after Henry stumbled through the carnival exit and into the woods above Tillamook. He ran as far his legs would carry him and then collapsed beneath a giant fir tree, striking his forehead sharply against the trunk as he went down. Henry blinked back stars, fighting to stay conscious long enough to put the tree between himself and the circus. Satisfied, he listened.

  Nothing.

  Henry tried to judge the distance he’d covered. Was it far enough? Was he safe? He shook his head.

  “I’m the master.”

  Upon exiting the tent, he’d been met by a crowd of armed circus folk, including the skinny man, who took one look at Henry and knew.

  “What did you do?”

  The answer came from a bullet that passed through the skinny man’s left lung before coming to rest in the arm of the green-skinned acrobat standing behind him. All eyes turned from Henry to the tall, shirtless man emerging from the ruined tent. In his right hand was the carnival boss’s gold-plated pistol, which he fired, striking the apeman in the neck. He dropped the weapon and replaced it with one of the three other pistols tucked behind his belt.

  Shots rang out as the carnival folk fired back. Henry saw at least two bullets hit their mark, but neither slowed the Hanged Man as he emptied the second pistol, every shot tasting flesh. Henry broke through the crowd before the villain drew again.

  The last thing Henry saw as he left the circus grounds was the Hanged Man, his made-up mug glowing brightly in the carnival lights, strolling down the midway, shooting anyone who crossed his path. Fifty yards stood between them, but the man still found Henry in the crowd and paused to show him the bloody grin on his face.

  The image stayed with Henry until he passed out thirty minutes later under a fir tree.

  * * *

  Henry awoke to the warmth of a fire and a dull headache. He put a hand to his pain, finding a large bump in the center of his forehead. He remembered hitting it against the tree. He must have passed out.

  Who built the fire?

  Henry sat upright to see the Hanged Man squatting on the other side of a small fire, trimming the overgrown fingernails on his left hand. No longer half naked, he now wore a clean white shirt and plain black jacket that seemed to fit him quite well. A wide-brimmed hat sat atop his head, hiding the evidence of his previous death. Minus the makeup and blood, he looked almost normal. Henry knew that was a lie.

  Henry moved slowly at first, backing away from the dead man as a wave of nausea threatened to keep him from moving at all. It passed and with it any pretense of staying put. Henry scrambled to his feet and bolted into the darkness. He didn’t get far before he heard its call:

  (come back)

  The feeling wasn’t so much pain as loss. He felt it in his heart. Henry stumbled to a stop, putting a hand into his coat pocket for reassurance, but finding none.

  It was gone.

  Henry spun on the spot. The Hanged Man remained by the fire only now he was staring directly at Henry. He raised the black book in his hand and grinned.

  Henry walked back to the fire and stopped just short of the flames. The Hanged Man turned his attention to the book as he flipped through its pages.

  “That’s mine,” Henry said, surprised by the fearlessness in his voice.

  The Hanged Man didn’t respond but stopped flipping pages. He raised the book into the light of the fire, illuminating an otherwise unremarkable page that featured a bloody thumbprint on the upper left-hand corner.

  “So it is.”

  A sliver of pain pulsated within Henry’s cut thumb.

  The Hanged Man snapped the book closed and tossed it across the flames to Henry. The moment the book fell into his hands, Henry felt better. It was his. He was the master. How could he have ever doubted it? He let the book fall open in his hand, sure it would land on the page he wanted. It did.

  “Earth and dust, sang et os, I call to thee ut lord quod bass!”

  The Hanged Man listened intently as Henry continued, flawlessly mingling English, French, Latin, and African phrases in perfect cadence and pitch. When he was done, the Hanged Man stared at Henry a beat, then returned to trimming his nails.

  Henry blinked. “I brought you back. You have to do what I say.”

  The Hanged Man cut across a long nail and then tossed the clipping into the fire.

  “You have to,” Henry repeated. “You’re under my control.”

  The Hanged Man stood. As a corpse, his size had been a burden, but reanimated the man’s lanky six-and-a-half-foot frame was steady and fast. He stepped across the fire and grabbed Henry by the neck, forcing him back against a tree. Henry struggled, but found no slack.

  “No man controls me.”

  Henry stared into the dead man’s eyes. The right had mostly cleared, so it now matched the yellowed orb on the left. A single, crooked red line cut across the pupil that appeared to pulse with blood. Henry wondered if it was his own.

  “But the book,” Henry managed and then began to choke. The Hanged Man tightened his grip, closing off Henry’s air supply. He held firm for a moment, then loosed his hold, as if distracted by an unexpected thought. Abruptly, he released Henry, who fell to the ground gasping for air.

  The Hanged Man plucked the book from Henry’s grasp and turned to the fire. He could not feel the heat on his legs, his hands, or anywhere else on his body. He thought he might come to miss it, but the lack of pain in his gut-shot belly seemed a fair trade. He would not be the same man. Perhaps he wouldn’t be a man at all. Either way, the Hanged Man didn’t care. The hate in his heart burned as brightly as ever.

  “But I brought you back,” Henry said weakly.

  The Hanged Man nodded.

  “Then why?”

  The Hanged Man held the book before the flames, unsure whether he wanted to let it go, or even if he could. He doubted it would burn, regardless. It wasn’t his anymore. That didn’t mean he couldn’t still be its master.

  “Wrong name,” he said, and dropped the book at Henry’s feet.

  Henry snatched it up in both hands, feeling warmth greater than anything emanating from the fire. He would never let it go again, no matter the hand that tried to steal it.

  The Hanged Man was counting on it.

  Henry gathered himself, unsure
of his next move. He could run, but to where? The Hanged Man had caught up to him easily enough. It was the book. The Hanged Man could feel it and was perhaps even connected to it. It would call to him, as it did to Henry. There would be no escape. Not yet.

  “What do you want with me?”

  The Hanged Man turned and walked away toward a pair of horses tied to a tree at the edge of the firelight. He dug into a knapsack thrown over one of the saddles and pulled out a pistol. He returned to Henry and knelt beside him, holding out the weapon butt-first.

  The red paint on the handle had mostly worn off, but Henry would have recognized it with or without the false decoration.

  “That’s the gun we found buried with you.”

  The gun spun so fast in the Hanged Man’s grip, Henry wondered if the barrel had always been pointed at him.

  “Liar.”

  “I’m not lying! That’s all we found. That gun and the book.”

  The Hanged Man pulled back the hammer, locking it into position. He liked the way the trigger felt under his finger. It was a modest-size weapon, sturdy, and one that was oddly familiar. He wanted very much to pull the trigger. The fact that he could not was troubling.

  “The old man!”

  The Hanged Man cocked an eyebrow.

  “The marshal, uh, Kleberger, I think. He took it, he must have.”

  “Kleberg,” the Hanged Man said. He knew that name.

  “Yeah, him. I saw him bury you years ago—with your gun, the real one—but he must have come back and swapped it out for that one.”

  The Hanged Man lowered the weapon. An ancient memory, the first he’d fully recalled since regaining consciousness, began to unspool in his mind.

  In it his hate found a purpose.

  * * *

  The Hanged Man is dead—or nearly so. Death will come soon despite the whisper in his pocket telling him otherwise. It never lies, but he can barely hear it, now, calling to him, singing a sweet lullaby.

  The marshal is there, floating above him, the black hole in his hand aimed at the Hanged Man’s heart.

  “Look familiar?”

  Suddenly the weapon spits fire, again and again.

  There is no pain, but the whisper goes quiet. The Hanged Man is alone. He wants to scream, wants to tear into the man’s flesh, but he can’t. The last thing he sees is the red-handled revolver as the barrel is pressed to his forehead. Kleberg leans close, a smile growing across his lips as he speaks.…