She nodded again.
“They’re going to come looking for me, I already told you that, but if you see a tall, gaunt man with them – a tall, thin man with a face like a skeleton, then I want you to leave, okay? You and your family just pack up and leave and never come back this way again. It’s important, okay? I want you to promise me, if you see him come to town, you run, you hear me?”
Ginny nodded a third time.
“I hear you,” she said, “but who is he? Who is this man you’re hunting that you’re so afraid of? Mr. Skinny Legs is just a story, right? He’s like dad said, not really real, right? Please tell me, who is this man who may be coming after you?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jack said, and held her close once more. “None of it matters, not to you. This is between me and him – just keep yourself safe, all right? You and your family, promise me…”
“I promise,” Ginny said. “I promise I’ll do everything you say.”
And just like that, he was gone.
“Good luck, Jack,” Ginny whispered as he left. “May God watch over you, and have mercy on your soul for it sounds like you’re going to need it.”
She fell to her knees and cradled her dead father, softly weeping – and that was where they found her minutes later.
***
Jack rode out to the very outskirts of the town and met Candace, waiting for him on the same hill where he’d stood earlier, just as they’d arranged.
Lights were coming on all over the town and there was the sound of an alarm being raised as the local townspeople slowly began to realise that their Sheriff had just been killed.
“You do everything you needed to do?” Candace asked him.
Jack nodded.
“Time to go, time to move on again,” he said. “You know what they say – you should never come home again.
“You have fun?” he asked.
“More fun than you, by the sounds of it,” Candace said. “You know he’s going to be pissed at you. The Tall Man’s not going to be happy what you just did, he’s probably going to come after you.”
“Good,” Jack said, and kicked his horse into a trot away from the town in which he’d once grown up, and to where he knew he’d never be able to return. “Maybe he can come looking for me for a change.”
The pair rode off across the hill, headed now to who knew where.
Jack had no idea where they were going, all he knew was that it was time to put some distance between him and the place that had been his former home, Hope Springs.
Neither one of them looked back.
It was all true, Jack thought. You really should never come back home again.
The Last Horse of a Different Colour
Dani Brown
“Wake up.”
I said “wake up.”
They’re closer now. I can smell them on the air and taste them on my tongue.
“Master?”
Something called overhead. Vulture? Crow? It wasn’t important. The coyotes were coming.
“Wake up.”
A blood-red sunset painted everything in a crimson glow. Blood would be spilled during the night as it had on so many nights before. I didn’t want it to be mine, via the jaws of the coyotes grown to monstrous proportions. They were the only thing that thrived in the endless desert.
A cloud of dust came out of nowhere. It lacked the accompaniment of galloping hooves across the desert. It was high enough to darken the blood in the sky.
A sinister feeling of something watching, creeping close, eating the rattlers on the way, penetrated my desperation and the need to wake up my cowboy. It threatened to hold me to the spot and wait for my destruction.
Paralysis threatened. Not from one of those mutant widows with double the number of eyes on their bodies, bloated from indulging on Africanised bees and grown to the size of a domestic cat. It was worse than that.
Something approached unheard. It was felt even by the cacti. They wilted under the weight of the pressing silence and red sky.
The coyotes were silent now. Not much could silence them. The absence of their howls was more unnerving than whatever it was approaching from the west. Whatever had sent up the dust - or perhaps it was the dust itself – presented a reason for even the coyotes to shut up.
The sores on my sides leaked pus. By nightfall, every coyote in the desert will know my location by smell. The feast presented by fresh pus would prove too much temptation to resist. They’d fight their brothers for the chance to dine.
Master needed to wake up. Master needed to clean them out. I wasn’t good at disposing of pus and the scents of fighting in the wilds. I nuzzled him as the dust became closer - or the cloud larger; from the ground, it was hard to tell which.
A sense of urgency, felt by all, overtook the silent desert. A frenzy suddenly broke loose in every creature within an audible distance; coyotes howled at the same time the birds went crazy squawking and dive-bombing. Bees swarmed; some white and sluggish with markings of red where eyes should be, some jet black and bred with unholy things and stingers the size of their bodies.
The mutations in one crow that landed on my nose gave it a completely normal appearance except the cloudy third eye. It somehow summed up the world better than all the extra legs and abnormal bloating combined.
He stayed there for a second – a moment – longer? While the coyotes reached their second round of howling and the crimson cloud approached – a red storm on the horizon. I was boring to him.
He landed on Master and pecked at his eyes. Master had such beautiful eyes. Both were the same colour, something not seen in centuries according to history. The sound of gunshots echoing in the distance didn’t remove him from his perch. Master’s matching eyes made the crow jealous therefore they must be destroyed.
Hooves beat down, coming from the west. Still miles away. The ground began to vibrate. There was still time to bring Master to the land of the living. He would be missing an eye and have to wear a patch like the captains out on the sea.
The vibrations sent up the first pebbles. We were in their path fleeing from the crimson storm. My cowboy wouldn’t stir. Too many hits and you’re down forever, or so they say.
Gunshots rang out, leading me to wonder if those fleeing were shooting at the cloud so crimson and now so bright. They could still be shooting at each other. Nothing is surprising out here in the West. Fleeing for your life, but your enemy must die from your fire – only to come back again after a journey in the great below with a tentacle or an extra arm.
To look at the crimson cloud for much longer would be to go blind – perhaps the crow could lend me its glazed spare eye? It may only see the shadow world through it. The shadow world was better than my eyes evaporating due to the brightness.
The spiders had nowhere to turn, for their eyes were on their backs. Their only hope lay with an ability to blink. But unless spiders had eyelids better than the rest of us, their eyes were going to be fried.
The red glowed, getting stronger with each passing second. Everything was bathed in red. I’ve never personally seen red clouds obscuring a red sunset before. Genocide the next day?
Gunshots, hooves and coyotes; an unnerving soundtrack in the uncharted desert. It was enough to make skin crawl and hair stand up on end. My cowboy lost his hat when his hair started to move.
The spiders searched for shadows under the rocks large enough to offer protection for their eyes, only to be chased out by lizards with extra arms and legs and hearts at the end of their forked tongues. At least they had tongues. Some species came back and evolved without any.
The urgency to wake up my master, my young explorer, my cowboy, pressed upon me. If the horses didn’t trample him then the lizards would, or the red cloud would get him. Coming back after being trampled by an earth-shaking stampede was something unheard of.
Flies licked the pus oozing out of my side. A tasty treat or their last meal – it didn’t matter to me. I flicked at them with my tail. The
wind picked up, kicking up dust. I closed my eyes against it. The flies didn’t move – they were immune somehow.
The galloping shook the pebbles beneath my feet. Dust danced around my flanks. The flies weren’t bothered. I couldn’t come close to imagining how much pus my body leaked. It had been a tough few days and nights in God’s country.
I grabbed master by the spurs and pulled him out of the worn wide path into the stinging cacti. His body was fat and bloated. The whore of the west had leaked vaginal secretions into him late last night. It was hard to say if that resulted in his current predicament. It would have left his body bloated with disease though.
Barbs shot out by the plants entered my ankles – they had the eyes to mark a bull’s eye. Luckily they had yet to blossom into late summer’s vines. Late summer out here was the worst time of year. The vines could stretch for one mile. They were viscous – worse in every conceivable way than the desert rattlers.
The brightness of the red approached. I missed the dark and brooding. I think everything out here did. It was hard to say if that would be here before the galloping.
The birds flew away – away from the brightness of the crimson sky and into the blue. The crimson promised to stretch its tentacles for them too. Everything in the desert would be swallowed before dawn.
The barbs shot slow acting poison into my ankles. It wasn’t the time of year for it to be potent but it hurt none-the-less. Master remained barb-free minus an eye - the crow had flown off with one. It would have eaten it right there and helped himself to another if I hadn’t dragged master out of the path of incoming horses – the first were a blur beneath the red sky. It didn’t bode well for my master’s future that the cacti weren’t attacking him. They preferred to save their poison for the likes of the living and the still-to-come-back.
Red sunsets weren’t unusual in these parts; bloodshed was a daily affair. Red dust clouds, at first dark and brooding before taking on a blinding brightness were the sinister intentions passed down in the legends of old. I needed to get myself and master out of there – a master-less horse was not a free horse, especially one with relatively few mutations.
Wake my master up before joining the stampede. That’s the only option. I tried to make the darts sting him. It didn’t work. They weren’t going to waste their poison on one so obviously dead.
Long tentacles of red dust and brooding stretched out from the brightness of it all, spewing debris one hundred feet in front of the cactus plant with its barbs in me. It scorched the earth lying a trap for the horses as it dissolved the parched soil right down through the crust to the mantle.
The sizzling was too close for comfort. I had to get out of there. Nuzzling master to the land of waking had already proven useless. The desperation of the situation called for more drastic action.
His belt buckle offered resistance to my plan. The hot metal hurt my mouth but I pulled it away anyways ripping his jeans. With one glassy eye pointed at the sky, he didn’t blink.
“Master, wake up,” I offered one last time.
I chewed his groin. One last erection for the ferryman. I didn’t have any copper to put on his eyes. There wasn’t time for burial. I would be a horse without a cowboy, but the immediate danger lay in the red stuff spewing from the sky.
The galloping and broken legs moved closer. Each man for himself. Even riding among enemies, the only shots fired were at the sky.
Leading the stampede were a pack of wolves, up early from their slumber. The coats shone with reflected red – acidic drool and foam lined their snouts. Some of the pack had visible mutations, non-evolutionary features. Every creature in God’s country knew the worst mutations lay inside the last wolf pack. Destined to be hunted to extinction by coyotes, their mutations lay bare in the entrails left to rot beneath the sun on sandy shores next to oceans long dried up.
There wasn’t time to mourn. I ran into the dirt road and turned east. I might be able to outrun the cloud and take my chances as a rider-less horse alone in the wide world.
Mutated pups or not, the last wolf pack were still fast and still hungry. Their fear of the brilliant red in the sky may not outweigh their hunger. In their eyes, there was always time for a quick meal. It might very well be their last.
The flies lapping up the pus on my side hung on, praying I could outrun both the wolves and the sky. The saddle and girth were just loose enough to rub and open fresh sores but not loose enough to do it in new places. If I can outrun this back to civilisation, someone with a kind heart will nurse me. Someone with a practical heart will put me out of my misery and dine on the fine feast offered by my flesh for a month. I ran anyways.
The wolves snapped at the barbs in my ankles. The barbs snapped right back at them spewing non-lethal poison. The wolves still had teeth despite being no bigger than a neglected house cat. The galloping horses and their riders, old foes fleeing together caused tremors beneath me. The barbs didn’t appreciate this either.
Everything was bathed in red. Anything other than a tone of red ceased to matter.
Screams from miles away reached my ears. Whatever was happening down the back of the line wasn’t the result of old enemies battling for land and dominance. Those weren’t cries of battle, anger and pain – dying for a certain belief. Those were the calls of people dying a horrible agony of unexpected death from the blood red clouds.
Red Death could move fast. The screams from the rear grew closer. The last wolf pack yelped. They sensed the people dying back there. Their stomachs wanted to go back for a quick meal. They might have witnessed it through advanced telepathy. Not something I possessed but some creatures did have it, or so the rumours went.
Clouds of thin red, so light it was nearly pink, nipped at my ankles. It hurt worse than the barbs. Covered in sweat, foam and pus oozing out of my sores, I tried to pick up my speed. Thin red clouds seeped into my skin.
By this point I knew my fate was the same as my Master’s. It didn’t stop me from trying to outrun whatever microscopic creatures lurked in red. I would not lie down until pain of outrunning became worse than the burn.
The wolves had the same idea. Their foam splashed against my ankles washing away the burn where it landed. Catching them out of the corner of my eyes was not a pretty sight. I don’t know if they were coated in blood or if it was the cloud. It dripped.
The red licked at my flanks. It was too late to consider passing on my DNA but with only a handful of mutations, any future civilisations may consider cloning me if I’m swallowed by the desert and preserved beneath the sands.
Something small and painful and red entered my lungs with the next inhale. I saw it enter through my nose. To stop breathing was not an option – I would pass out and start breathing again beneath the red.
I lurched and toppled much like the last wolf pack running alongside of me. One of my legs snapped on the way down. I heard it before I felt it. The wolves were too concerned with their own injuries to bother an old dying horse.
The screams stopped – the red dust swept in from the back of the ranks. Old enemies died together that sunset holding each other in their arms as the lungs were overcome by microscopic pain.
The red tide learned to survive on land. Death stretched out before all eternity.
Strange Dominion
Amanda M. Lyons
The Russian hired me to find her, told me she was living out in the desert someplace; he said she didn’t have a name, just some somber past and a host of weird predilections only she knew about. He said she came over with him across the ocean, but he was only doing her a favor, he didn’t want to go into it much more than that outside of his story, but he was clear on one thing. He wanted her dead any which way I could manage it.
He was wrong, as it turns out, she had a name, Agnieszka, and she was a whole hell of a lot more than just some strange woman from his home country. Aggy, she was the darkness in my heart and the weight of silence.
I had a reputation for finding things, I was good
at it, some said it was because I had powers, or some strange Indian mumbo jumbo the other bounty hunters didn’t. Well, maybe I do, and maybe I don’t. It suits me fine to leave them guessing. All they really need to know is that I do my work, I find the bounties like I’m asked, and then I get on my way.
I was born Bent-Wing Crow, my mother said it was because she knew that I would always struggle to follow the path. My name, the one I prefer to be called by, is Ben, a lot easier to remember and it don’t carry half the weight. At least not if you haven’t heard of Old Ben the Bounty Hunter, Old though I’m not more than a little past thirty. It’s my eyes, they say, something about the weight of them in the firelight, heavy and full of years.
I’d been on the road a long time by then, wandering the way I was want to, aimless, without direction, just as my mother had predicted, not that it mattered much really. I was not the sort of man who travelled well with others; I enjoyed my solitude and the light of the moon over the dessert, warm and cold in turns. It reflected my own spirit, shiftless and mostly dependant on the atmosphere I lived in. She named me for a crow, but I just might have more in common with a lizard or the slithering snake.
Or maybe I just bristle at that name, the one that marked my life and changed so much and yet so little.
I’d been bounty hunting since I was young. They didn’t really care who came to collect the rewards so long as you looked like you’d done the job and they stopped trying to stiff the ‘injun brave’ once they got a good look at my eyes and heard tell of the things I was not too squeamish to do if they tried. Funny how leaving a man’s balls resting in his lap will have that affect, especially if he wasn’t getting much use out of them for all the bluster he threw around.
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