That was when Highfather really began to understand what being the sheriff here meant. It meant lying down at night with things in your head that the good folk of Golgotha couldn’t possibly believe or understand, or ever, ever know. It meant accepting that he alone had to carry that load; he had to stare into the night, afraid to close his eyes, afraid to keep them open, so others could sleep.
He tended to the circle quickly. As he left the graveyard he thought he heard a low hum, the rustle of some sagebrush behind him. He tried not to run, to jump onto Bright. He rode back into town and back to work.
Jim was waiting for him when he got back. The boy did his chores, sweeping up the jail and running errands.
Around noon, the Widow Proctor brought them, and Earl, the afternoon dinner—bread, some hard cheese and a few slices of roast beef and a pot of coffee. The sheriff and the boy sat around Highfather’s desk and ended up talking about billiards. Jim was pretty good at the game, as was Jon. They agreed to play together one day at the Paradise Falls on one of the big red-felt tables. Jim let it slip that his father had taught him how to play the game; then he clammed up about his family and his home again.
Jim kept mentioning Mutt all during the meal.
“I’m sure Mutt is okay,” Highfather said, sipping his coffee. “Probably just decided to stay a spell and visit family.”
“Mutt ain’t got no family,” Jim said. “None that counts to him, anyway, ’cept you.”
“Told you that, huh?”
“Didn’t need to,” Jim said.
Highfather rode the town a few more times in the afternoon, still too few people around. Seemed like a lot of folk were down with something; the ones who weren’t looked scared.
“You think they’ll cancel the big church do Saturday night?” Gilbert Hollister asked him as they talked in front of the town hall.
“Nope,” Highfather said. “There ain’t no reason to be getting alloverish, now, Gil. Everything is fine. ’Sides, Anne Toller’s little girl would have my hide if I canceled the event where she was giving her wedding day announcement!”
“Sheriff,” Hollister said, “I’ve lived in this town my whole life, and I sure as hell know better. Just hope there ain’t no damn rat people running around this time. I hated those things.”
“I don’t think they were actually rats.… Look, I got to go. Don’t be starting a panic now, Gil, you hear me?”
“All right, Jon, but you be careful. Folks around here like you—you’ve lasted longer than any other sheriff we’ve ever had. And they damn well were rats—big as dogs and on two legs to boot!”
The sun was bleeding its last light over the mountains. Still no Mutt. Highfather sent Jim home around supper time and then had a bite to eat with Earl. The old man awoke sullenly and had a bit of broth and some water. He stared with red-rimmed, anger-filled eyes at Jonathan while they ate; then he fell back asleep.
“Almost here,” he muttered, and then began to snore.
Highfather walked over to the Paradise Falls and sat on the porch as the evening crowd shuffled in. He noticed that there were no miners with them. In fact, he hadn’t seen anyone from either the mining camp or the squatter town today. Highfather resolved to head up there tomorrow, hopefully with Mutt. If not, then he’d have to go looking for his deputy pretty soon.
It was past nine and Main Street was dark and still. Even the crowd in the Paradise was small and subdued. Highfather made his way back to the jail and decided to catch some sleep in the empty cell’s bunk, just in case something came up.
He opened the door. The lamp he had lit for Earl was guttering. There was a strange smell in the office and it seemed too hot in the room.
Holly Pratt smiled at him out of the shivering shadows cast by the dying lamp.
“Hello, Jon. I understand you’ve been looking for me?”
She was wearing a long military coat. She was beautiful but somehow odd, in the dim light. Something wasn’t right. Her pale skin looked bruised, her eyes too dark and wide. He closed the door behind him.
“Here I am,” she purred, slipping off the coat and letting it fall. Her bare, porcelain flesh was lined by ink-black veins. The smell in the place was pungent and powerful, making his nostrils flare. The smell came from her and it was speaking to his back-brain, to this body.
“Holly?” He gaped at her, startled by her nakedness. “What, what are you doing here? Where have you been? Harry has been worried sick.”
“I doubt that.” She crossed the room toward him, slowly, like a great cat full of power and poise. Her large breasts, her hips, swayed. Her eyes of pitch never left his. She licked her lips with a black tongue. Highfather found himself fantastically attracted and repelled at the same time. The feelings held him rooted in place.
“But you were worried about me, weren’t you, Jon? I knew you would be. You’re so handsome, so sweet. All those functions we had to attend together, all the wicked thoughts that darted in my mind about you. But I was too timid, too frightened to act on them, to even acknowledge them to myself.”
She was before him now, her nipples glistening with dark stains. She draped her arms over his broad shoulders and pressed herself against him, nuzzling into him. He felt her hot breath on his throat, the teasing flicker of her hungry tongue.
“What a waste. Do you know what I learned, Jon? I learned that we’re all just apes. Stupid, horny, bloodthirsty little apes. Some meddling cosmic busybody, who has the audacity to call himself God, stuck a soul into us, gave us a gatekeeper in our head that contradicts our desires, our very nature. How is that for bad planning, huh?”
He could feel her breasts, warm and firm against his chest. Her leg was raised and entwined around his own. Her hands molded his shoulders and back. The air was thick with her scent. It was getting hotter. He licked his lips and blinked. His body was aching as he fought not to grab her, to take her.
“They say you’re a dead man,” she murmured into his throat, licking and nipping at his scars. “Is that why you have these?”
His voice was hoarse with need. “You ever hear of place called Saltville? I was a soldier in the war. I never wanted to be one, but my brother, Larson, did. Mother and Father were so worried about him running off to war, so I promised I’d go along and look after him. He died before Saltville. It should have been me.”
He felt drugged. He didn’t know why he was telling her these things; he tried to focus, to clear his head.
“We won, but then some of the irregulars, they started killing the colored troops—the injured ones, the ones who had surrendered. It … it wasn’t right. A man survives battle, survives hell like that. Then it’s … it’s just not right. I tried to stop them.”
“So they hung you, darling?” she whispered.
“Yes. Twice. The rope broke, both times. The second time, I kicked the horse in the side and we ran.”
She pulled away from his throat and looked deep into his eyes. Tears, like ink, drooled down her face. “But you have three sets of scars?”
“The third one was … after the war. The damned rope broke again. Not my time yet, I guess. Even I don’t have a say in that, I suppose.”
Holly laughed. It sounded like Hell crawling up to Earth. Her hand was working its way across his chest. Her fingers grazed his sheriff’s star with a hiss of smoke. She clutched the badge tight and tore it from his shirt, tossing it onto the desk behind him. Her smoking hand returned to his chest, moving slowly lower.
“Why are you here, Holly?”
“I’m here for Earl, darling Jonathan … and for you.”
He managed to pull his gaze away from her cobra eyes. He saw a shuffling shadow behind her. It was Earl; the same black ooze gushed from his mouth and eyes. He moved slowly, woodenly, but with purpose, toward them. He looked dead.
“What are you?” Highfather croaked.
“I’m what you’ve courted for so long, dear Jon. I’m the rope that will not break; I’m the bullet you keep on your beds
ide table at night. I can bring you peace, an end to the guilt, to the responsibility, to the thinking. I am the end of all that is—the blessed eternal night. I can end it, Jon; I can set you all free!”
Her mouth was close. The sweet, thick smell of her filled his senses. Her fingers fluttered across his raging manhood. He closed his eyes at the pleasure of it.
“Kiss me,” she whispered. Their lips were almost as one. Her black tongue shook like a rattlesnake’s tail in excitement, in need.
Behind his eyelids he saw them all, like he always did—Larson, little Cole Glen, all shriveled and hollow, Eden, dying in his arms. All the ones he should have saved, could have saved, and the faces of the ones he still might—Mother and Father, Jim, Mutt, Gillian Proctor, Auggie, Harry, perhaps even Holly herself.
He snorted the sweet stench out of his nostrils and pushed her away. He tumbled over his desk, and came up behind it, pistol cocked and aimed.
Holly was gone, Earl too. The heavy door to the jail creaked in the howl of a desert windstorm.
Highfather rose, holstered his gun and picked up his badge.
The Fool
Malachi Bick stopped smiling as he looked up from his first edition of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. There was some kind of commotion outside the window to his office on the Paradise Falls’ second-floor balcony. It was nearly midnight, and the saloon was empty. Even the staff had gone home.
The window exploded in an awful crash of sound and glass. The drawn blinds over the window broke and folded around the massive body that sailed through it, like a burial shroud. Bick rose from his chair and rushed to the side of the body. Pushing aside the debris, he saw a broad, dark face, swollen and bloodied.
“Caleb?”
The giant didn’t move. A faint groan escaped his puffy, shredded lips. There was a sharp bang as the office door flew off its hinges and crashed to the floor beside Bick and his son, then the sound of crunching glass under the thump of boots. Bick looked up from Caleb’s broken body. Two men stood before him.
“It was open, so I let myself in,” the older man said with a smile.
Bick stood. The older man had a mane of gray hair and a beard to match. He resembled a lion, but his eyes were bright and hot with the same kind of madness one saw in a man awaking from a fever dream. He held a simple minister’s hat in his hands and wore a long black coat. His companion was huge—not a large as Caleb, but close. His bearing and his clothing suggested a military man. His demeanor was that of a trained dog, waiting for his master’s command to kill.
“I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure,” Bick said, putting himself between his son and the two strangers. “ I’m—”
“I know who you are,” the old man said. “I’ve prepared to meet you for a very long time. When you threatened Deerfield and Moore, you forced my hand, I’m afraid. I needed them; I needed the propriety of the mine reopening to allay suspicion. I was willing to let you be, with your whores and your card games and your gold, but you had to try to push the issue, didn’t you—had to try your hand at the family business?”
“You have me at a disadvantage, sir,” Bick said.
“Yes, I do.”
“Would you and your behemoth care for a drink?” Bick said as he moved toward the liquor cart that was to the left of his desk, bringing him closer to the closet, to the sword in it.
“My and Phillips’ drink of choice is far more pure and potent than your concoctions, Mr. Bick. But thank you. It is always a pleasure to see civility still exists even in this forsaken wilderness.”
Bick poured three fingers of cognac into a glass tumbler. He gestured with the glass toward the burly, younger man.
“So this is Mr. Phillips, I gather, but I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name?”
“Ambrose,” the older man said. “Reverend Ambrose Ashton Smith, at your service.”
“And, if you‘ll forgive me for being so bold,” Bick said, sipping his drink, “what church claims you as their own, Reverend?”
Ambrose smiled and walked around Caleb’s still form. He brushed the glass off of one of the chairs that Deerfield and Moore had occupied earlier and sat.
“I began with a Methodist congregation, many years ago, but over the years I’ve pretended to be a Baptist, a Catholic, a Mormon, whatever I had to be if it got me closer to what I needed.” The smile slipped and anger leaked through. “Lies, Mr. Bick, they’re all lies.”
“And these days, you preach the truth?”
“Oh yes, I am the high priest of the Church of the First Revealing. Mr. Phillips, here, is my deacon.”
Phillips remained standing, like a solider at attention, looming over Caleb’s body. Bick wondered if his son was alive or dead, but that determination would have to wait. There was no time to show weakness.
“And Deerfield and Moore are part of the congregation?”
Ambrose laughed. “Goodness, no! They were a means to an end—sad, pathetic little insects. I used their greed and weakness to get access to your silver mine. However, they recently saw the light and have joined us. So many people in your town are joining us, Mr. Bick.” He picked up a jagged wedge of glass off the floor. He held it up to the lamplight and admired its glittering edge.
“You may be the only person in the entire world who can truly understand, Mr. Bick. You see, as a child, I was plagued with ill humors—painful headaches, voices that sang and spoke to me in languages I did not yet know, nightmares, terrible, wonderful nightmares.
“It had been searching for me, reaching out to me from before the time of my birth, while I still resided in my mother’s diseased belly. Fate is a river, Mr. Bick; it has channels and streams and it runs swiftly and mercilessly. None of us can dam it; none of us can change it, no matter how we may lie to ourselves. This—here, now, all of this—is my fate.”
“So why become a minister?” Bick asked. He noticed Phillips tracked his every movement, his every glance. He took another sip of the cognac. “Why pretend? Why lie?”
“For a time, it wasn’t a lie,” Ambrose explained. “I wanted the stories and gospels to be real, to be true. I wanted my dreams to be sick nightmares; I wanted them to be the lies. But fate, Mr. Bick, my fate, our fate, wasn’t to be one of the sheep. My … proclivities always won out. I became a pariah. My own family abandoned me, cast me out. She was my oracle, you see. I knew what I had to do to learn the truth and to put my foot upon the path.”
“Who? Who was your oracle?”
“My little sister. She was ten. I strangled her and then read the portents in her entrails. It led me to other lessons, other teachers, other oracles.
“It was the same wherever I wandered though. My actions, my beliefs, required me to hide, to lie, as I stumbled in the wilderness for the truth.”
“And the truth?”
Ambrose dropped the glass; it shattered. He leaned forward in the chair. “The God you grovel to, that all the sheep bleat their praises to, is a lie—a false god who imprisoned the true God of the universe. This ‘Demiurge,’ this little divinity, locked away the true God and built his petty kingdom, this playhouse of matter we call a universe, on the back of the one real God, the First God—the God of darkness and silence, the Greate Olde Wurm.
“I learned these truths over time, but as I grew in knowledge and power I still did not know how to make things right, how to fulfill my destiny. I found the alchemical secrets to brew the Milk of the Wurm, a wondrous, enlivening potion. It has granted me and Phillips abilities no mortal man can comprehend. Of course the harvesting of its elements was problematic at times, but where there is a will there is a way.”
“That poison requires the blood of murdered infants,” Bick said.
“You know the alchemical arts; good!” Ambrose said with a laugh. “Yes, I’m afraid it is quite toxic to those who have not been weaned upon its nectar, as Mr. Stapleton found out. Not to worry, though, the dregs of the shantytown have been receiving a portion of the milk in the liquor rations I’ve bee
n handing out to them during my sermons. They are ready. Like me, they now hear the will of our lord, slumbering fitfully below us, beneath Argent Mountain.”
Bick swallowed hard. He nodded toward Phillips. “And him?”
“He survived the battle at Shiloh, but his sanity didn’t, poor boy. He wandered the back roads of Georgia for years, murdering families and living in their homes for a time before moving on. He knew something was calling him, but he didn’t have the capacity to understand what. He sacrificed one hundred souls to this nameless thing, including his family. Phillips, show Mr. Bick your son.”
The silent giant removed something from the pocket of his long coat. It was wrinkled and brown; at first Bick thought it was an old, stained hankie. Phillips unfolded it and held it up. It was the skin of a boy’s face, tanned and cracked.
“Phillips’ blood is almost completely made up of the milk now,” Ambrose continued. “He is truly a remarkable specimen, as your half-breed son learned.”
Bick said nothing; he only looked on, sickened, as Phillips neatly folded the face and put it back into his coat.
“So we were both lost pilgrims, seeking our fate in the wilderness,” Ambrose said. “Then, one night, two years ago I was in Okalahoma City. The whore I had gutted that night suddenly sat up in the bed in a pile of its own intestines and began to speak to me. It told me about Golgotha; it told me about the well deep under the mountain. It told me how long it had waited for me, since the dawn of the world. It told me what I needed to do, and it told me someone would try to stop me. I’m betting, since your family has been here since before there was a town, that someone is you, Mr. Bick.”
Bick hurled the tumbler at Phillips’s face; the glass of whiskey smashed into the deacon’s eyes and nose with incredible force. In two strides, Bick was swinging open the closet door, reaching for his old sword. He suddenly felt an awful pressure on his biceps, like it was caught in a vice. It was Phillips; his face was wet, but unmarked. His grip tightened on Bick’s arm until he felt and heard an audible pop. The pain was incredible, and fascinating, all at once.
The Six-Gun Tarot Page 26