Portlandtown: A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes

by Rob DeBorde

  The Hanged Man didn’t know. Perhaps Henry could find an answer in the book. If not, there was always …

  No.

  Not yet. Not without his weapon. Not without blood.

  Something splashed behind him and he spun to see Henry kneeling in the water at the foot of the stairs.

  “Dammit,” Henry said. He started to stand but was grabbed around the neck and hoisted completely off his feet by the Hanged Man.

  “Stay out of my way.”

  Henry managed to choke out a sound that might have been agreement and then was dropped onto the wet floor.

  The Hanged Man turned away from the young man, half expecting to be shot in the back. The bullet never came.

  “I’m waiting, Marshal.”

  The Hanged Man listened. He heard water falling, and the fool breathing behind him, but there was nothing else, no hum, no call. He peered down another aisle and then moved on. Only he didn’t move. Something wasn’t right. He couldn’t see it, he couldn’t hear it, but something in this particular aisle felt wrong, something right in front of his face.

  * * *

  The Hanged Man’s eyes fell on Kate. He didn’t see her, but it required every ounce of concentration Kate could muster not to scream. The basement storeroom offered little in the way of camouflage save for shadow and boxes, which meant even a shallow breath might give her away. The dead man’s eyes crossed Kate’s and she was sure he had her.

  But the eyes moved on, and soon so did the man, down the center aisle, deeper into the basement.

  Toward her family.

  Kate moved forward silently. At the end of the aisle, she waited as long as she dared and then peered around the corner. The Hanged Man was gone. Looking the other way, she saw the door ajar, water still flowing down the stairs, but nothing else.

  He has a partner, Kate thought. She’d heard the Hanged Man speaking to someone moments earlier, but whoever it had been was gone.

  Or hiding.

  Staying low, Kate slipped around the corner and began searching the water for the Hanged Man’s pistol. It was too dark to see beneath the surface, which meant feeling her way along the floor until she found the thing that until recently she’d wanted desperately to be lost. The irony was not lost on Kate.

  Something moved in the dark beside her.

  Kate froze, searching the darkness for trouble. There was nothing to be found. She listened for a moment longer, then returned to the search. It had to be close. Both hands slipped across the basement floor and then her fingers touched metal—she’d found it.

  Kate lifted the dead man’s gun from the water. It was heavy, enough so that it required both hands to hold it comfortably by the handle. And it did feel comfortable. Kate wondered why she’d been reluctant to hold it in the marshal’s presence.

  Somewhere, in the distance, she thought she heard a faint hum.

  * * *

  The Hanged Man smiled.

  * * *

  Kate stood up, her attention still consumed by the weapon in her hand, which was why she failed to notice Henry until he was standing right beside her.

  “Don’t move, lady.”

  Kate moved.

  Henry didn’t have time to react as Kate spun and knocked the weapon from his hand. Had his finger been on the trigger, Kate would have been shot. Instead, she was able to level the Hanged Man’s gun at Henry’s head before he could recover. It never occurred to Henry that a wet pistol would never fire.

  Kate knew this gun would.

  “Where’s your friend?”

  “I don’t know,” Henry said, but his eyes betrayed him.

  Kate slipped behind Henry in one fluid motion, never letting the red-handled pistol drop from its target.

  The Hanged Man stepped from the shadows twenty feet away. His gun was drawn, but it remained at his side.

  “Come any closer and he dies,” Kate said, hearing the words in her head only after they’d been spoken. Had she really said them? The thought of taking man’s life made her heartsick. She wouldn’t do it—she couldn’t!

  Could she?

  “Go ahead,” said the Hanged Man. “Be doin’ me a favor.”

  Kate put a hand on Henry’s shoulder, steadying her grip even though she could barely hold the weapon with one hand. Slowly, she pulled back the hammer.

  “Stop.”

  The Hanged Man stopped. He didn’t want to, but his body refused to move forward. It believed her. He could not kill the man, nor because of his actions allow Henry to be killed. They were bound, in life and death. He so desperately wanted to kill someone.

  For his part, Henry was not concerned about being shot. He knew it wouldn’t happen. The Hanged Man couldn’t kill him and the woman wouldn’t. He knew this. The dead man may have suggested otherwise, but Henry was protected. He was safe. It told him so.

  “He just wants the gun,” Henry said, speaking the words aloud as quickly as they poured into his head. “Just drop it and run before he kills us both.”

  The pistol grew warm in Kate’s hand. She slid the barrel around Henry’s head until it found a new target.

  “No!” Kate screamed, not recognizing the anger in her voice. “You can’t have it, it’s mine!”

  The Hanged Man smiled and found himself once again able to move forward.

  Kate wanted badly to pull the trigger, regardless of whether or not it would do any good. Do it, a voice inside her said.

  (yes do it)

  Kate hesitated. Why was she suddenly so eager to kill? That wasn’t like her. The doubt lingered only for a moment longer and then was gone. Emotion flooded back into Kate’s conscious mind so quickly that it nearly staggered her. Her aim faltered ever so slightly and that was all it took.

  Henry was faster this time. He grabbed the barrel of the red-handled gun and twisted upward while spinning to face the woman. Kate nearly lost her grip but managed to hook a finger around the trigger guard and refused to let go. Henry grabbed Kate’s wrist, which had the unintended result of tilting the gun in the direction of his face. He lost concentration, momentarily retreating, only to find that Kate had grabbed his coat.

  Henry struggled to free himself, but Kate held strong, her hand digging into an inside coat pocket, causing it to tear slightly. She felt the momentary sensation of something very warm touching her fingers.

  Henry felt it, too.

  Henry and Kate locked eyes. A flicker of understanding passed between them and then vanished. All that remained was fear.

  * * *

  The Hanged Man considered shooting them both, knowing neither would die, but at least the woman might be hobbled. Such an action might also create an opening for her to shoot Henry, and that stayed the dead man’s hand. It would be safer to steal back his weapon as they struggled. He could see it, still held above their heads, its dark brilliance flashing in the dim light. He would have it.

  The Hanged Man was still ten feet from the prize when he raised a hand to take it. He never saw Joseph slip behind a tall wooden cage holding various lengths of pipe. When it began to move, the motion registered, but the Hanged Man did not react. It was no concern of his. The flimsy structure broke apart before crashing on top of the dead man, burying him beneath a thousand pounds of plumbing.

  Kate barely registered the calamity as she struggled against the young man. She felt her grip on Henry’s jacket weaken as the fabric tore further. To her surprise, Henry let go of the gun and her wrist to save his coat. Finally free, Kate fell backward onto the steps, hitting her head on the railing.

  The room threatened to darken completely, but with considerable effort Kate stayed in the moment. She blinked her eyes and saw the red-handled pistol in her hand. Before her, she saw Henry pull a small book from his pocket and hold it tightly to his chest. Behind him, the Hanged Man had disappeared beneath an avalanche of metal pipes. And she heard yelling. It sounded like her name. Someone was yelling her name. Beyond the rubble she saw Joseph. He was calling her name and telling her to
run.

  And then Maddie touched her mother’s arm.

  “Mom?”

  They ran.

  26

  The rain felt good on Kate’s face. Any lingering doubts about what to do with the pistol still gripped tightly in both hands were washed away by the cold, cleansing waters of the Oregon sky. She knew what to do.

  Drown it.

  Kate jumped a gap that had opened between two sections of boardwalk and then started across the scaffold bridge connecting the two sides of Second Street. That the bridge remained intact was a miracle, considering that the floodwaters would soon be approaching historic levels. There was nothing but water half a block closer to the river, but Kate would be clear of that momentarily.

  Joseph led the marshal around the corner in time to see Kate reach the other side of Second Street just as the twins were starting over the bridge. Joseph stopped at the broken section of boardwalk and searched for a way around. Before he could find one, the marshal made a clumsy attempt to step over the gap. He succeeded, but fell to his knees on the other side in obvious pain. Joseph made the leap and then helped his father-in-law to his feet.

  “Kate!”

  Kate stopped and waved. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, we’re fine. Where are you going?”

  “To the pier,” Kate replied as the twins caught up to her. She held up the Hanged Man’s red-handled revolver and shouted, “To the river!”

  “She means to throw it in,” Joseph said under his breath.

  It took the marshal a beat longer to grasp her meaning, but once he did, the strength in his legs suddenly returned.

  “He’ll catch her,” he said. “He’ll take it!”

  The marshal ran across the bridge before Joseph could offer a hand.

  * * *

  The Number 19 riverboat dock was one of only two empty berths on the west side of the Willamette River. An hour earlier it had been occupied by the sternwheeler Lurline, but rising waters had snapped the lines, setting the boat adrift until it smashed into the nearby Morrison Street Bridge. The vessel remained lodged against the span, slowly crushing itself against a steel-and-wood structure already stressed by the water cresting its roadway. The bridge survived the night; the steamer did not.

  Kate reached the upper section of the pier, an area normally reserved for top-level boarding, to find it barely five feet above the waterline. A single lamp bathed the dock in orange light, revealing a platform much longer than it was wide. Kate stepped to the edge and peered into the rushing darkness below.

  Maddie and Kick followed their mother to the end of the pier. Kick, still a little wobbly, leaned on his sister and tried not to fall over. Maddie made sure he didn’t.

  Kate raised the red-handled pistol in her hand. It was still unnaturally warm, but it no longer spoke to her. The compulsion to hold on to it—to use it—had passed. She was in control now, and all she had to do was let go.

  “Katie, don’t you do it!”

  Kate turned and saw her father approaching with Joseph right behind. She didn’t wait for him to reach her to give her reply.

  “I have to, Dad. It’s the only way.”

  “No, Katie, you can’t,” he pleaded. “Give it to me.”

  Kate shook her head.

  Joseph reached out to stop the marshal but the old man shrugged him off.

  “No!” the marshal said, stopping halfway between his daughter and her husband. “I kept it safe all them years, I did that!”

  “At what cost, Dad? Eleven years of your life? Was it all for this?”

  The marshal tried to recall the past decade of his life and was surprised by how little he remembered and, worse, how little he cared.

  “Whatever it was, I paid it. It’s mine to do with as I please.”

  The marshal closed the space between himself and his daughter. He stopped close enough to reach out and take the pistol from her hand, but didn’t. He wouldn’t have to. His daughter would give it to him.

  “If anyone is goin’ chuck it in the river, should be me,” the marshal said and held out his hand.

  Joseph heard the deception in the marshal’s voice but didn’t believe it. His father-in-law wouldn’t either, in the end. He would remember.

  “Give it to him, Kate.”

  Kate stared at her husband for a moment, and then set the red-handled revolver in her father’s open palm without another word.

  The marshal expected to feel something at the return of the gun, just not the dread that washed over him like a cold fire. It bit into his flesh, clawed at his heart, and filtered every thought in his head through fear. Was this what he desired?

  No.

  The dread was born not of the marshal but of the thing in his hand. No matter how much he wanted it, the thing did not want him. It never had.

  “It wants me,” said the dead man.

  The Hanged Man swung his massive right fist, striking Joseph just as he began to turn, connecting solidly with his patch-covered eye.

  “Joseph!”

  Joseph stumbled backward, spinning as he did to face his attacker. In an instant, he filled the blind spot in his vision, sketching a picture of the twisted creature before him. One of the Hanged Man’s ankles had crumpled, causing him to teeter on the side of his foot. A portion of his head was crushed, the remains of an ear dangling by a thin flap of skin beneath it. There were other broken bones, many loudly scraping together, which caused Joseph to wonder how such a monster could have approached unnoticed. The world went black before he found an answer.

  “Joseph,” Kate cried again and dropped to her knees beside her husband.

  The Hanged Man drew the false weapon that had been buried with him for more than a decade and pointed it at the marshal.

  “That’s my gun,” said the marshal, pleased to see his old Colt Navy, despite the circumstances.

  “Have it, then,” said the dead man, never taking his finger from the trigger.

  The marshal felt a powerful compulsion to reach for his old sidearm but caught himself in time. He forced a smile, the first that was truly his own in days.

  “Throw it in the river, Dad!”

  The marshal shot a glance over his shoulder at the water and then looked at the weapon in his hand. Could he?

  The Hanged Man thought the old man could and adjusted his aim in the direction of his daughter to make sure he didn’t.

  “Give me the gun, Marshal, or watch your family die.”

  * * *

  Henry stood along the pedestrian walkway at the western edge of the Morrison Street Bridge. He saw the confrontation taking place on the pier but had no desire to be a part of it. The fact that he was as far away from the Hanged Man as he was suggested their bond was weaker, no doubt due to the dead man’s current state of duress and damage. Should the Hanged Man survive the encounter—and Henry held no illusions that he wouldn’t—Henry would go to him.

  Until then he would watch. And read.

  * * *

  In his nightmare, Joseph stands on the hill above the marshal’s house halfway between the graves of Agatha and Althea Flynn. A gust of salt-tinged air stings the blisters about his eyes, but the pain barely registers. Joseph has fixed his attention—all of it—on a shadow in the dark, a figure defined by the heel of a boot kicking the soil level against the grade.

  Forty-one feet away, the Hanged Man turns to face Joseph.

  “I am here, Joseph. Do you see?”

  Joseph opens his senses further, straining to fill the blind spots in his sight. Kate … she is so quiet, so still, only the twin murmurs coming from her breast give her away. And then she is there—a whisper of lilac carried on the breeze. He can see Kate standing before the villain, babes in her arms, one last punishment for Joseph’s betrayal.

  “Do you see what has come between us?”

  The Hanged Man is a foot taller than Kate, but from Joseph’s slightly downward angle along the slope he is effectively shielded behind her. Joseph imagines h
is wife staring straight ahead, eyes wide open, tears on her cheek, and hopes she can see him as he mouths the words hold still.

  “You’re a coward,” he says.

  The Hanged Man laughs. “No, my friend, this is your doing, your choice.”

  The words fill Joseph’s mind not with anger but information. No longer does he stumble through the endless night—he can see the man. He can see the red-handled pistol on the Hanged Man’s hip, hear it as it slips from its holster. He can see the bastard shift slightly to the left, clearing Kate’s shoulder. It’s not much of a target, but Joseph is a good shot. Today he will have to be great. He reaches for his weapon, but her voice gives him pause.

  “Joseph?”

  “Trust me, Kate—”

  He can’t see his hand raise the pistol before him—but he can.

  “You’re not alone.”

  “No, Joseph,” the Hanged Man says, drawing his revolver to his chest. “All men die alone.”

  “He ain’t alone,” says the marshal, stepping from behind a fir tree at the edge of the cemetery. A Winchester rifle rests against his shoulder, its muzzle aimed at the Hanged Man’s head. “Unlike yourself.”

  The Hanged Man glances at the lawman … and elsewhere.

  “Sure about that, Marshal?”

  “I am,” he says. “Your partners gave you up a long time ago.”

  Joseph imagines the grin on the Hanged Man’s face faltering ever so slightly.

  “Turns out they were more afraid of the noose than a Hanged Man.”

  The marshal nods to another man that has approached through the cemetery on his right. Five men with rifles rise up behind him as four others approach from the road below. There are more. Joseph stops counting at twenty, but their numbers rise until even the Hanged Man seems resigned to his fate. He mumbles to himself, though Joseph does not hear the words.

  “Ain’t gonna be a hangin’ this time,” says the marshal.

  The Hanged Man looks to the marshal and then—of this Joseph is certain—turns to destroy everything.

  Kate is gone.

  She will not repeat the feat for years, but for a moment Joseph is sure his wife has vanished. He is not the only one who has lost her.