Portlandtown: A Tale of the Oregon Wyldes

by Rob DeBorde

  Infuriated, the Hanged Man stutters and raises his weapon to take aim of the only true target left to him.

  In the seconds before the marshal and his men open fire, Joseph is shot by the Hanged Man, though not before discharging his own weapon. It is the third time he has shot at a man—the same man, in fact—and although his bullet fails to hit flesh, it still finds its target traveling in the opposite direction. The projectiles graze each other, altering their trajectories enough so the bullet that knocks Joseph to the ground misses his heart by two and half inches. Kate will not let him rise for three days, but he will live. The Hanged Man will not.

  But in this nightmare, he does.

  Wake up, Joseph.

  * * *

  “You don’t belong in this world,” Joseph said, finding the stage much as he left it. The dead man now aimed a weapon in his direction, but its handle was thankfully not red. “We chased you off a long time ago.”

  “Resilient,” said the Hanged Man. “I always liked that about you.”

  Joseph got to his feet with Kate’s help. White flashes of light cut across his mind’s eye, bleeding in from the real world. The Hanged Man’s blow had done some damage. No matter. Joseph adjusted the patch over his scarred left eye, blocking out the worst of the phantom light.

  “What about yourself?” Joseph asked. “You can barely stand up.”

  Kate felt her husband pull away from her. “Joseph, no.”

  “It’s all right, Kate. Look at him. It won’t take much to knock him down.”

  The Hanged Man didn’t entirely disagree with his old partner’s assessment, but he felt Joseph was missing the obvious. To prove it, he fired the marshal’s old pistol, striking Joseph’s thigh. He’d been aiming for the gut.

  Maddie screamed.

  Joseph grasped his leg but with Kate’s help did not fall.

  The Hanged Man adjusted his aim, centering the barrel on Joseph’s head, then held out a hand to the marshal.

  “Give it to me.”

  The marshal looked at the dead man’s hand and then at the red-handled pistol in his own. He could still hear its call—not to the marshal but to its master. It wanted so badly to return and he had only to let it go.

  It was Joseph’s voice that called to him.

  “Throw it in the river, Marshal. Let it go.”

  The Hanged Man caught Joseph’s eye, the one he pretended could see, and realized the blind man saw much more than he let on.

  The marshal saw the dead man flinch and knew his weakness.

  “You’re not the master,” he whispered.

  The marshal remembered a message he’d received earlier in the day, a warning not to let the Hanged Man have his gun. It was wrong. In fact, at that moment he was sure of it.

  The marshal held out the pistol, handle first.

  “Take it.”

  “Dad, no!”

  The Hanged Man dropped the marshal’s useless pistol and took what had always been his. His fingers wrapped around the bloodstained wood and the Hanged Man was complete. For one fleeting moment, he knew nothing but joy—and then it was gone, replaced by dread. Something was wrong, something he’d missed, something close and coming closer. He heard the heavy footfalls just before the giant announced his arrival with a primal scream, but it was already too late.

  The Hanged Man spun on the spot and was met squarely in the chest by Andre Labeau at a dead run. The jolt knocked the pistol from the villain’s hand and sent him to the ground under 270 pounds of Louisiana muscle. There was no air to knock out of him, but Andre enjoyed the sound of the dead man’s ribs snapping just the same.

  The marshal scrambled out of the way as Andre rose and began to pummel the Hanged Man with both fists. It took the dead man a moment to get his bearings and by then his jaw was cracked. He managed to get his right arm free and quickly grabbed his attacker around the throat.

  “You!”

  The Hanged Man dug his nails deep into the soft flesh of the shaman’s throat and would have torn away the man’s jugular had the flying girl not appeared above his head. He let go in time to block several whirling swipes from a long wooden pole. The last slipped past his defenses, catching the dead man beneath the chin, snapping his head backward.

  Andre rolled off, gasping and holding his throat. The Hanged Man was strong, much more so than he’d anticipated. His was a powerful curse and it would take more than muscle to defeat it.

  The Hanged Man used the rail to drag himself upright. He was cornered and hurt, but in a straight-on fight he would ultimately gain the advantage, flying girl or not. If he could find his gun—

  “Looking for this?”

  The marshal stood ten feet to his right, waving the red-handled pistol above his head.

  The Hanged Man’s fury refocused on his old nemesis and he lurched toward him, but not in time. The marshal spun around and then lofted the gun into the air.

  He saw it clearly—polished iron reflected in amber light, arcing overhead just out of reach. The Hanged Man turned and pushed off his good foot, launching his body over the railing, never once losing sight of his treasure. In the instant before he hit the river, the dead man’s outstretched fingers touched metal. Then he crashed into a writhing mass of floating debris and was violently sucked beneath the surface.

  * * *

  Andre stepped to the edge of the railing and looked into the river. Debris clogged the fast-moving water, making it difficult to see the surface clearly. There was no sign of the Hanged Man.

  The marshal joined the large man at the rail.

  “I wish you had not done that.”

  “Me too,” the marshal, said rubbing his shoulder. “I liked that gun.”

  Andre turned to the marshal.

  “Hated to bury it with the bastard all them years ago. Finally get it back and I gotta throw it in the river? Damn shame.”

  The marshal held the red-handled pistol out to Andre.

  “Take it. I don’t want it anymore.”

  Andre stared at the gun, surprised to have it offered so easily. There was power in it, great power, but it had gone quiet. He knew it would not stay that way.

  “Keep it. For a time.”

  The marshal held the weapon at arm’s length for a beat before reluctantly sliding it back into his holster.

  Naira pulled Andre’s hand away from his neck to inspect his injury. Three crescent-shaped gashes marked the left side of his throat, a fourth cut deeper on the right.

  “Leave it,” he said. “There are other, more pressing wounds in need of attention.”

  Naira narrowed her eyes, staring deeply into her partner’s. Andre never faltered. He would be fine.

  Kate approached the newcomers, Kick and Maddie at her side. She was not sure what to make of the pair but recognized them as allies.

  “Thank you.”

  Andre nodded. Naira tilted her head and smiled.

  Kick returned the gesture, earning a laugh from the big man. Maddie slipped a little closer to her mother.

  Kate stared at the pair for a moment longer before finally asking, “You would be Andre Labeau, yes?”

  “He’s a hoodoo man,” said the marshal.

  Andre raised an eyebrow. “You remember?”

  The marshal shrugged.

  “Good,” Andre said, then turned to Kate and Joseph. “Mrs. Wylde, I am pleased to make your acquaintance. This agile young woman is Naira. We traveled a great distance to be here tonight. And as I’m sure your husband has suggested, we have much to discuss.”

  “Took your time getting here, Mr. Labeau,” Joseph said. “But I’m glad you did.”

  “As am I. Tell me, Mr. Wylde, is the weather here always this pleasant?”

  Joseph grinned, raising his face to the falling rain.

  “Welcome to Portlandtown.”

  27

  The citizens of Portland came together in the light of day to put down the zombie horde that had invaded their community. It took only a few hours to orga
nize a citywide hunt, although it would be weeks before the last of the afflicted were captured and destroyed. A list circulating among the searchers carried the names of those still missing, many of whom had been washed away by the storm, never to be recovered. They were deemed the lucky ones.

  Forty-seven bodies were recovered on the first day, most floating in the floodwaters that had already begun to recede from the record heights of the night before. Twenty-three of the dead were confirmed to be locals or visitors in town for the festival. Some of the victims had been murdered twice—once at the hands of a monster and later by those of a neighbor. Nearly all the waking dead put down in the days to come would bear familiar faces.

  The rest of the deceased were ultimately identified as medical-college cadavers. Dr. Gillman relayed the tale of two students who had been in a basement storage room when remains procured for research began to reanimate. Remarkably, the young doctors were not attacked but rather bore witness to the evacuation of thirty-one corpses, on foot, to the front gate of the facility, where a pair of men on horseback waited. The dead surrounded the larger of the two and when he pointed down the hill they shambled off en masse. Dr. Gillman was dubious of the account, despite the horrors of the night before.

  One item that remained unaccounted for was the storm totem. Most assumed it had been carried off by the floodwaters, never to be seen again. A few of the more superstitious locals suspected the totem had been taken by the souls of the damned, angered by the city’s celebration of unnatural phenomena. The following year would see Portland’s first ever Rose Festival.

  In fact, the totem had not left the city limits. Before the sun was even up, it had been wrapped in several layers of lacquered canvas, bound, and transported to a small, city-owned structure three blocks west of Wylde’s, Booksellers and Navigation. The interior of the building remained dry, but an extra layer of sandbags was added around the exterior just in case.

  Andre Labeau spent much of Friday explaining what had happened to city officials and anyone else who would listen. The shock of the attack made his job easier, although there was some resistance to Andre’s methods of recovery. A few of the more-learned Portlandians found the notion of using potions and prayers to heal their wounds too fantastic to follow. In such cases, Andre appealed to their intellects, using a more strongly worded argument, and the doubters soon fell in line, some even becoming evangelicals for the cause. Andre was happy for the help.

  Mayor Gates was glad to have an expert on hand, especially one so well regarded by the western papers. After only a ten-minute conversation, he appointed Andre head of the Emergency Commission to Restore Metropolitan Wellness, a post he invented on the spot. The title wasn’t Andre’s first, but he was pleased to have it come without the slightest mental push on his part. The mayor’s first suggestion was that Andre liaise with one of the city’s favorite sons, a man of special talents, according to him. His name was Joseph Wylde.

  Andre thought that a fine idea.

  * * *

  “I read about you,” Joseph said.

  Andre raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “You visited the Nez Percé a few years back. Made quite an impression on the chief, according to the local paper. Convinced him to accept government terms for relocation.”

  Andre took a sip from the cup in his hand. It was coffee, good coffee, which was exactly what he needed after a day of talking. He suspected there would be more conversation this evening and downed another sip.

  “Do not believe everything you read, Mr. Wylde.”

  Joseph smiled.

  The two men sat opposite each other at the Wyldes’ kitchen table, evidence of the previous night’s encounter with the Hanged Man clearly visible on both. The welts on Andre’s neck had subsided, but the cuts had only just begun to heal. As for Joseph, the area around his left eye was purple, but the ringing in his head had faded and his leg felt much better, despite the hole in it. He suspected Andre had something to do with that.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Andre nodded. He found himself staring into the man’s good eye, wondering exactly how good it might be.

  “What’d you do to my shoulder?” the marshal asked. He was seated on Joseph’s left, his arm in a sling, which he raised and lowered without showing any discomfort. “Doc said it was the cleanest wound he’d ever seen.”

  “I simply applied a few natural remedies.”

  “Uh-huh. Just so long as you ain’t put no curse on me.”

  Andre took another sip from his cup.

  “My head feels better, too,” Kick said.

  The twins shared a chair at one end of the table. Maddie had been listening intently, but Kick kept stealing glances at the young native woman perched on a stool between himself and the giant. It was to her that he’d offered his observation.

  “I’m glad,” she said.

  Naira enjoyed the boy’s attention, innocent as it was, but had thus far pretended not to notice. His mother was watching and she would undoubtedly be more cautious with her appraisals than her son was.

  Kate refilled Andre’s cup and then returned the kettle to the stove.

  “How did you find us?” she asked, slipping around the table to stand next to her husband. “I can’t imagine it was easy, given the storm.”

  Andre glanced from Kate to Joseph. Joseph already knew the answer.

  “The Hanged Man.”

  Andre nodded. “He makes very little effort to disguise his trail.”

  The marshal slid forward in his chair. “It was really him, then?”

  “I have no reason to doubt it,” Andre said. “Unlike the others, his is the body and mind of a man slain eleven years ago, though he is no longer a man.”

  The marshal raised an eyebrow. “No soul?”

  “I wouldn’t presume to know the path of the soul, but I do know the creature is not alive. The body may be perambulatory, but the heart does not beat, the lungs gather no air, the blood does not flow.”

  “But he could think,” Joseph said. “And reason.”

  “Yes, although how clearly I cannot say. He would not feel physical pain, which is how he continued to give chase despite his wounds.”

  “He could barely stand by the time we got to the pier,” Kate said. “I don’t imagine he would have lasted much longer even if the river hadn’t swallowed him up.”

  Kate caught an exchange between their guests. It wasn’t much, but a decade of watching the twins had made her aware of even the subtlest of communications.

  “But you don’t think he’s dead, do you? That’s why you’re after him. If he could be destroyed like the rest, you wouldn’t need to chase him down. He has help.”

  “There is a young man who helps him,” said Naira.

  Kate leaned forward. “Helps him how?”

  Andre smiled.

  Kate felt her cheek twitch. It wanted to return the big man’s expression, but she wouldn’t let it, yet.

  “What are you really after, Mr. Labeau?”

  Andre had intended to share everything (or nearly so), but was surprised by how quickly the conversation found its way to the truth.

  “There is a book,” he began.

  Joseph shared a glance with his wife. “Books we know.”

  “This is not a volume you will find in your collection, Mr. Wylde. There exists but one copy, which is already one too many.”

  “Books aren’t dangerous,” Maddie said.

  “Unless you throw ’em,” Kick added, eyeing his father.

  Joseph grinned. “Larger volumes, maybe, although there are those who say certain ideas can be dangerous—in the mind of someone with evil intent.”

  “Were this merely a collection of bad intentions, I would not have traveled so far to retrieve it. No, I am afraid words can be dangerous. Spoken aloud they can control, deceive, and destroy, as long as there is someone to believe them.”

  In his mind, Joseph saw the Hanged Man crouched by a fire. It was an old memory, on
e seen with two eyes. The man, wounded but very much alive, read a passage from a small black book and the flames flared, first amber and then black. He held a handkerchief over the fire and watched the flames slither into the fabric and disappear. What came next had stolen Joseph’s sight and changed his path forever.

  “You’re talking about magic.”

  Andre nodded.

  “We’ve got a dozen books on the subject down at the store,” Kate said. “I don’t think anyone has ever hurt themselves reading one.”

  “My apologies, Mrs. Wylde, I am not making myself clear. This is not a book of tricks or stagecraft, but power—dark power. The power to make men do as you wish, to twist the heart and bend the will, to raise the dead.”

  “It’s a book of curses,” Joseph said. “That’s what gave him his power.”

  “It did,” Andre said. “Once, it nearly made him invincible.”

  “Not near enough,” said the marshal.

  “True, Marshal. Eleven years ago you broke his link to the book and thus his source of power. He was truly dead.”

  “But now?”

  “The book brought him back to this world, although he does not possess it. It now belongs to young Henry Macke. Fool though he is, Henry could not stop himself from reading it.”

  “Why?”

  “It told him to.”

  Kate flinched at an echo in her head—two voices, speaking in the dark.

  “Who would write such a thing?” she asked.

  Andre hesitated, which was more than enough for Joseph to see the truth.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said before Andre could answer. “Not if you mean to destroy it.”

  Andre stared at Joseph, seeing in the man’s face more than his words revealed. Andre nodded, once more wondering exactly how much Joseph truly saw.

  “That is not so easily done.”

  * * *

  “That was the mayor’s aide,” Joseph said, returning to the living room. He rubbed the key in his hand, noting the number on its head, and then tucked it into his shirt pocket. “He’s checking up on us. Wants to make sure we’re on the team.”

  Kate looked up from the couch. “We’re a team now, are we?”

  Joseph smiled. “Apparently. He also mentioned that they found Mr. Edmonds.”