So began his task.
Jars of food preserves filled the shelves but Mestizo noticed a couple of empty spaces and two recently opened jars placed near the entrance. Someone had walked in and grabbed what they needed. With the door in the back opened, Mestizo could see many bags of rice and beans. There was a door to the right and, as he opened it, he found himself in the neighboring house. The open cash register and empty stands told the story. These buildings were the local town shop.
Mestizo looked through every dresser and cabinet he found within the abandoned shop and stepped out empty handed. Only dust and rot met his lantern-light and his hazel eyes pondered the difficulty in this simple task. Before the vaquero stepped down to the floor, his eyes met a disturbing detail. As the mist thinned, he saw that on the ground were a fresh set of footprints leading from the stairs to the shadows of Main Street.
Looking at the ghost town for clues, a sudden chill went up his spine. The dance had begun. The town would tell him where to go.
The owl-song followed Mestizo as his feet walked across the now perturbed sand. Darkness hid the town from the lantern-light and the whispers of Pueblo Oñate filled those shadows with demonic visions. Some buildings were easily recognizable, such as the hotel-saloon and bank. Mestizo wondered what manner of witchcraft silenced this once lively village. He also wondered what connection el Conde had with Amen Corners.
He shook off all thoughts and hardened his resolve, following the footprints into Hell.
A door moaned then closed.
Creaked then closed.
Mestizo stood beneath the shadow of a church as the front door opened and closed. The tracks ended but a new search began. Opening the small gate, he made his way to the door and placed his foot between it and the frame, silencing the nightly metronome. Again, he pressed his shoulder to the door, but this time burst in, breaking the church door off its hinges. Dust and collapsed pieces of the ceiling disturbed the space but nothing living stirred within the building. He made his way through the aisles of worship and noticed more footprints leading from the altar to a door on the right side of the room.
On the altar itself, he found a withered bible coated in dust. His keen eyes spotted a set of fingerprints on the edge of the cover and decided to open the timeworn book. Inside was a dedication, which read:
***
“And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth; and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.”
Revelation 9:1
Though he did not understand the verse in that written language, he knew the verse well.
Studying the prints beneath his lantern-light, Mestizo noticed their gentleness and dimensions. A woman passed through. Smelling faint traces of perfume and incense, he glanced around the room beholding ruined figureheads and dust-covered stained glass. The air was heavy and colder than it was outside. His gut told him to leave the building but he continued. He pressed his ear to the door, listening for subtle shifts in the floorboards or any other sounds that would give away the person he pursued. Placing his lantern by the ingress, he turned the knob slowly and entered the room with caution. Grabbing the lantern, he lifted it to witness the forlorn bedroom.
By the art decorating the walls he knew it to be the priest’s room. To his left and right he saw tiny paintings of saints and other various religious ornaments. On the wall, directly before him, hanging above the bed, Mestizo was shocked to see the cross blasphemously turned upside down. Covered in dry blood that spilled down against the wall, the vision sickened Mestizo into action. He secured his revolver in its holster by his hip and proceeded to correct its position. The dry blood crackled and polluted the air; he wisped it away with a wave of his free hand.
Next to the bed was a small table with two drawers. He began looking through them hoping to find the locket or clues to its whereabouts. Finding only a journal written in English and an open wooden box, he sat down on the bed, placing his lantern on the table. The wooden box had a lock which someone had already disengaged.
The penmanship of the journal was similar to the dedication on the bible’s cover. It belonged to a man named Byron Rogan. Mestizo decided to read it. Though he was not fluent in the language, he did understand certain words and phrases. This was a skill acquired through his trade as a hired gun. He glanced at the words and dates, skimming through paragraphs, searching for relevant terms. Most of the journal spoke of townsfolk and ceremonial events that took place in Amen Corners.
Skipping to the final pages, he stopped when he read the words: ‘el Conde Andres Gervasio, desires sacrifices.’ Then an underlined name grabbed his attention, Perdita.
The floorboards behind him creaked and he closed the book with one hand while the other drew his revolver. He stood up and turned to see a smoldering form barely recognizable as once having been human. Everything became motionless for seconds as the image burned itself into his psyche. Her eyes glowed like a dying sun, and as her lips began to move, the ashen skin on her lower jaw crackled and dissolved, exposing bright veins of the flames burning inside. The seven-inch barrel of his Model 3 Schofield flashed, blasting pieces of the burned thing against the wall while ash flooded the room. Mestizo jumped and rolled to his right. He came up and positioned himself on one knee, taking aim at the entity once more, but there was nothing. Only the strong scent of the perfume and smoke permeated every inch of the room.
Mestizo walked back to the table and grabbed his lantern. The face of the woman remained in his head and he was somehow able to look beyond the suffering to the beauty that had once been there. Whatever it had been wasn’t trying to kill him, only warn him. He hid the journal beneath his poncho, then stopped in his tracks as the discordant sounds of guitar strings filled the night.
Securing his grip on his revolver, Mestizo ran out of the room and the church. Outside, there was a disturbing sight, the untouched sands were now covered by clusters of footprints as if the townsfolk had lived a day in Amen Corners. His eyes searched the darkness for something or someone, but he knew this morbid dance would continue if he didn’t leave the damned village soon.
The cacophony of guitar strums continued, and as Mestizo walked Main Street, once again he knew where to go. Faded white and black paint revealed the name of the building in question, the hotel-saloon named The Black Moth. As he stepped on the porch, he saw an advertisement on the batwing doors.
“COME SEE THE MOTH!”
Before entering, Mestizo looked back to Main Street and saw the ghastly mist returning. He entered cautiously, opening only one of the doors. Mestizo felt the double action, rusted hinges of the door breaking apart as he pushed it. Stepping through, he noticed the stairs at the back of the room leading to the second floor. To his right were round tables spread throughout the room with chairs stacked upside down over them.
A guitar string snapped from somewhere in the left corner of the room. The bar hid the guitar player. Mestizo lifted his lantern and approached slowly.
“You finally arrived, amigo,” said a man sitting on the floor. In his hands were a guitar with broken strings and a sharp knife. He scrapped the sharp knife-edge against the remaining guitar string and the increasing tension hurt Mestizo’s ears. With a whipping twist the string snapped.
The guitar player’s sunken eyes stared into oblivion. Long dark hair came to his shoulders and a thick chevron moustache covered his upper lip. Mestizo set the lantern on the edge of the bar.
“Morciglio … it was you who he hired.”
“Yes … would you care for a drink?” he asked as he pushed a nigh empty bottle with his brown leather boot. Mestizo looked to his left and saw many bottles of the same shape and color stacked against the wall behind the bar, all equally dusted and miserably labeled.
“Just give me what I came for and I’ll leave you to drink the rest of your pathetic life away.”
“Come now, Mestizo, are you so desperate to return to the Spaniard? I know you have the priest’s j
ournal by now. Do you honestly plan to hand over this simple treasure to such a man? You’re desperate … like me.”
“I’ll never be like you. What I do is no business of yours, amigo. Besides, I always follow my job through, no matter the consequence.”
Morciglio’s eyes shifted to Mestizo.
“Even if a job condemns your spirit to a fate worse than Hell,” he answered, slurring his words. Morciglio threw the guitar to the left and lifted himself while grabbing another bottle. He turned his back to Mestizo. A faint wind entered the saloon and the lantern light almost blew out.
Mestizo readied his gun and asked, “What do you know of the Spaniard?”
“He’s connected to this pueblo … I discovered as much by visiting the rest of the buildings. But I didn’t see the connections until I visited the church. There are many dried, bloody hands on those walls, a blasphemous ritual. Welcome to the City of Coffins, amigo, because that is what those buildings are, coffins. If you had el Brazo …”
“Legends can’t help us here, Morciglio.”
“Ha, the circumstances are beyond legend. Do you know what he told me when he hired me? He said this pueblo had a curse and that nothing could leave it … unless something or someone would take its place. My job wasn’t to get the item and return. No, mine was to find the item and wait for the man who would take its place. You are that man, Mestizo.”
“Then he is more unfeeling than I thought.”
Morciglio’s eyes squinted beneath the many strands of hair covering his face.
“What did he tell you?”
“He told me not to eat or drink anything from this pueblo. I now suspect there are many rituals which keep desperate men here, amigo.”
The saloon doors creaked and Mestizo turned to see the mist slowly entering from beneath and now completely overwhelming everything beyond the doors and windows. Mysteriously, it glowed green. As he was about to turn, he felt the rough tip of a knife tear through him from behind. Morciglio left the knife in place and wrapped his right arm around Mestizo’s neck, choking him. With his left hand, he dangled a small, dusty gray sack in front of Mestizo.
“We betray each other, amigo, for the contents of this bag and the designs of a brujo. I shall leave you here and collect my damnation.”
Mestizo swung his head back, striking Morciglio in the face, and pushed back until they struck the wall. The knife dug deeper. He turned to face his assailant and managed to pull the knife out. Morciglio ran to him as they struggled for control of the blade. Mestizo managed to push the blade up, gutting his opponent, and didn’t stop until he knew he struck the heart. Black blood gushed out from the wound as he pulled it out. The sunken eyes that once stared at him suddenly began to glow with a sickly green light.
He reached for the sack and pushed Morciglio towards the left corner of the room. Once securing the treasure within a coat pocket, he walked towards the body to make sure he was dead. Mestizo was shocked to see that Morciglio lay there, not as a fresh corpse, but of one rotting like the buildings of Amen Corners. Turning to the batwing doors, he saw many corpses standing outside the entrance, each with glowing green eyes.
III. Dealings
The flesh on their faces cracked and trickled as they grinned. The undead villagers leaned against the ingress, and Mestizo threw the knife between the eyes of one of the ghouls stepping through the doors. Before he could unsheathe his guns, the mob was upon him. Rotting maws and putrefied talons reached for him. He nearly tripped as he stepped back, then ran to the stairs, firing his revolvers into the horde, dusts of flesh and bits of bone scattered into the air. As the slugs blasted through the host of fiends, Mestizo felt a tug at his poncho from behind.
Bared, broken teeth snapped at his neck. Choking, he struggled to pull himself away, but his poncho was wrapped around the skeletal claws of two decomposing demons. He secured his revolvers and readied himself before the seizing dead could reach him; Mestizo grasped at his collar and pushed it up over his head. With all his might, he swung the poncho towards the undead, throwing the clutching devils upon them. Once he reached the second floor, he found an unlit oil lamp on a small desk in the hallway. He snatched the lamp and shattered it over the stairway, its contents spewing down to the saloon.
“Burn in Hell, diablos!” he spat.
He shot at the oil trail, sparking a hellfire that blazed down the stairway like a burning serpent. Mestizo limped to the room at the end of the flickering hallway. Shutting the door behind him, he pushed a bed against the entrance. He took a deep breath, pausing to compose himself, putting his hand to the stab wound. Mestizo was a man of many scars and wounds but this one caused considerable pain. His vision blurred, all his muscles and bones near the wound were hurting.
The smoke was beginning to enter from under the door. Desperate, he searched for an exit; opposite the door was a large, cracked window. He wiped the dust with his hand and looked outside. By the light of the inferno burning beneath him, Mestizo saw ghosts walking the streets of Amen Corners. The vaquero knew then that he was in Hell.
Suddenly, the dead came calling, knocking on the frail door. Prepared to face death, he drew his firearms, aiming them towards the portal. Two burned fists broke through, his trigger fingers tensed. A smoldered visage pressed through the fist-sized opening, its scorched flesh tearing and blackened skull cracking. More hands and legs tore through the door and Mestizo squeezed the triggers.
A single shot rang from the hotel-saloon followed immediately by several clicks. Mestizo’s stomach tightened as he realized he was out of ammo. Opening the cylinder of one of the revolvers, Mestizo slid a bullet into each of the cylinder slots, but ultimately decided against using them unless he absolutely had to. He grabbed the Schofields by the barrels and smashed the cephalic cavity of a rotting fiend. He embraced the stumbling corpse and ran towards the window.
With glistening shards of glass and a flailing carcass, Mestizo fell on the horde occupying Main Street. A section of the crowd tumbled over and the body Mestizo used to cushion his fall was nothing more than a darkened pulp on the sand. He struggled to get up, but Mestizo was ready for anything.
Every fiend that got in Mestizo’s way received a crushing blow to the head with the walnut stocks of his revolvers. Mestizo saw his mustang past the ghostly brood, and knew he was nearing the edge of Hell. The smell of smoke and burning flesh followed Mestizo as he ran through the horde.
At the pueblo’s border stood the smoldering female form, once again pointing away from the pueblo.
“Sálvate,” it whispered, pointing towards his horse.
Distracted, Mestizo stumbled on his own feet and fell, face-first, outside the boundary of the damned village. The sun began to rise and Mestizo turned to see its crimson glory rise above the ghost town.
The undead residents of Amen Corners slowly turned to green mist. Mestizo stood and limped towards his mustang. As he mounted his horse, a flaming stallion flew out of the burning saloon. A menacing laugh came from the burning rider, Morciglio. Upon hearing the cackling carcass, Mestizo’s stab wound throbbed deeply.
“Únete a nosotros, amigo! Join us, friend!”
Mestizo dug his heels into the ribs of his mustang and the startled beast ran away from the shunned village. Morciglio followed, laughing. A trail of green smoke spewed out from behind the fiery rider leading back to Amen Corners.
With every gallop, his tender wound sent sharp pains across his body. Mestizo’s vision blurred, he began to shudder and the heat behind him felt closer and closer. Westering winds extinguished the flames on Morciglio’s corpse and flecks of burned bone turned to mist, piecemeal.
Out of his peripheral vision, Mestizo noticed a large coyote following the chase. It howled and darted away.
Before the pain could overwhelm him, Mestizo reached for a hidden revolver within his saddle. Looking up, he saw a tower of smoke beyond some bordering hills and held on to his mustang, galloping towards it. He fell off, landing on his back as t
hey reached an abandoned campfire. Morciglio jumped off his stallion as it melted away into green mist and withdrew the speared knife from his torso.
Morciglio mounted Mestizo and stabbed the black knife into his left shoulder, a dead grin stretching across his face. He was about to stab the heart, but Mestizo blocked Morciglio’s arm and stuck the barrel of his revolver into the cackling jaws. As the metal slug burst through the charred skull of Morciglio, the entity disintegrated into the green mist, roaring and retreating into Hell.
Mestizo sighed and dropped his gun, the miasmatic poison from the stab wounds tore through his veins. The sunlight hadn’t penetrated the hills and only the oscillating glow from the campfire comforted Mestizo. His horse trotted some distance away and as he looked up to see it, a shadowy figure hid outside the light. Struggling, he rolled over on his stomach and pushed himself up. Before he could look up, an arm curled over his neck, pulling back.
“You did good, muchacho.”
“You!”
“Yes … it appears your luck dragged you out of a perpetual demise; a forlorn decay.”
“Que diablos eres?”
“What am I? That is no concern to you. We had a deal. The information I hand fed you saved your life.”
“But not Morciglio’s!”
“Every ritual requires a sacrifice.”
El Conde dug his fingers into Mestizo’s shoulder wound. Smiling, he slid his hand into Mestizo’s coat pocket and withdrew the bagged treasure.
“To think that this is only the beginning.”
“Beginning?”
“Yes, amigo. I need your services once again.”
“Never!”
Strange Dominion Page 23