The riders stopped long enough to look back at the Reid house being devoured by flames. The smoke that coiled out of the broken and missing windows took ominous, unnatural shapes before scattering on the wind, which seemed to have risen up to cast the foulness of this place out faster.
“I want another crack at that bastard Phillips,” Mutt said, hawking out more blood as he stroked Muha’s neck. “I think I can take him.”
“Later,” Highfather said, reloading his pistol. “We’re both low on silver and you heard Ambrose—more of those things are headed for the town.”
The mansion creaked and groaned its death rattle as the flames rose higher into the night. Dark silhouettes emerged from the dying house, shuffling slowly, relentlessly.
The riders galloped away from the house of flame and shadows, and raced for home as fast as their horses could carry them.
The Tower
Since Golgotha had an uncommon number of denominations and faiths for such a small town, events like the social were usually held on “neutral ground” to ensure a good turnout and fewer theological arguments around the buffet table. Dale McKinnon had, as he had in the past, volunteered his small barn, just off Prosperity and a few lots over from Pratt Road, for the festivities. It was close enough to the First Baptist Church and the Mormon temple to make most of the faithful in town happy. Dale was in the rare position of being pretty much universally liked in town.
Auggie and Gillian worked all day on the finishing touches for the church social. Gillian pushed a wayward strand of hair out of her eyes as the first wagon of guests arrived. It was a little past noon.
“See,” Auggie said. “I told you. Mysterious disappearances, rumors of sickness and strange goings-on—bah! Nothing keeps people away from free food, yes? Especially yours.”
She smiled and hugged him. “Ours,” she said.
People kept coming: husbands, wives, children, the few babies the town had been blessed with, Baptists, Methodists, Catholics. Day to day these groups kept mostly to their own small enclaves in the town, but today they all gathered—to eat, to gossip, to laugh and to play.
And the Mormons! It seemed every Mormon in town came out, whole families with wagons and carts and horses and food. It was as if the whole town collectively sighed in relief. Auggie knew, like anyone who had lived in Golgotha for any amount of time, how much they all relished these days, these chances for laughter and companionship in between the chaos and tragedy. It created a bond in old-timers like him, like Gillian.
Golgotha was a strange, almost-cursed place, true. But it was a good town too. It seemed to draw out as much good in some people as it did evil. The good folk who lived here needed these events to keep going, to keep the light alive here in a desert of darkness. So even with all the murder and the madness and the feeling of impending catastrophe, the town came today to draw strength and to remember why they fought the darkness.
The music started about two. The band arrived in a piecemeal fashion. Josiah Kemp and his brother brought their guitar and fiddle. A few hours latter, Sadie Aimes arrived with her banjo. Ernie Greene broke out his harmonica when he and his wife got there. By four, half the place was eating and dancing and the other half was playing and singing. Many of the local young men and women were here, Auggie noted. Taking their first steps in the dance of adulthood, of independence and of love.
He saw Arthur and Maude Stapleton’s daughter, Constance, dressed in mourning colors, laughing, surrounded by her friends. A beautiful young woman dressed in black, haunted by death, laughing, forgetting and embracing life. It was, Auggie thought, like she was the spirit of the town, given life.
Constance stayed close to one boy, a tall, handsome lad with an unruly mop of hair the color of wheat. Auggie recognized him as Jess Muller, the son of Auggie’s countryman Gerrard Muller, the town cooper. Auggie had to smile; when Jess moved, she moved. He smiled when she smiled. They each looked at one another when the other wasn’t looking and occasionally they caught each other in the act and both smiled and reddened. Auggie thought about him and Gillian, how they were and how much they had acted like these children. He chuckled despite himself, and shook his head. Madness.
The light mood passed like a cloud drifting across the sun. He found it almost impossible to keep his thoughts away from Gillian and Gertie. Finally, he gave up trying.
He found Reverend Prine leaning against Dale’s fence, at the edge of the noise and gaiety, nursing a mug of cider and watching the tall wheatgrass and the Indian paintbrush sway in the afternoon wind. He smiled at the shopkeep as he approached.
“It’s a beautiful world He’s given us, isn’t it, Auggie?” Prine said.
“Yes, it is,” Auggie replied. “Sometimes I wish I knew His mind. So much beauty and so much ugliness all in the same place. It is very confusing to me, Reverend.”
“The beauty would be here in spite of us, Auggie,” Prine said. “Much of the ugliness we bring with us as baggage.”
“But not all, not storm, not sickness, not hunger, not death.”
“Ah, that’s the deal breaker for most folks, to be sure.” Prine smiled. “Why must we end? Why must God allow us and those we love to part, to die?”
Prine’s eyes were kind and bright, like a child’s. His face was weathered from a lifetime in the desert. His hair seemed almost bleached white. He sipped his cider, sighed and looked out over the field.
“Genesis says before God created this world, there was darkness. I think death is a part of creation, like the stars and the moon. I don’t think God made death, made endings. I think His existence, His hand in things, is a constant war against oblivion. God doesn’t punish us with death, Augustus. He grants us the gift of this life to show us the fundamental beauty, the heartbreaking fragility of beginnings, of birth, of creation. He wants us to understand His plan, understand Him. Thorough His salvation, we are granted escape from oblivion, from an ultimate end.”
Auggie was silent. The music drifted out to them on the warm, lazy wind.
“Something on your mind, Augustus?” Prine asked. Auggie nodded. “Is it Gillian?”
“Yes,” Auggie said. “I … That is, my…”
“Spit it out, old friend,” Prine said.
“My heart, it is torn in two, and I feel like I am bleeding, falling. Gillian makes me feel like I did when Gert and I were Kinder, children. But then I feel I am betraying Gert with these feelings. I love my wife, Reverend; I do, with all my heart. But—”
“Augustus,” Prine said, “Gert is gone. She died; you didn’t.”
“It is … more complicated than that. I feel like she is still with me, like she would be lost and afraid without me, like she still needs me.”
“Who needs who, Auggie? Who’s really afraid here?”
Auggie leaned against the fence post and looked down at the grass. Prine sipped his drink.
“When she … when she was gone, I was so afraid,” Auggie finally said. “When you find the one love of your life, the prospect of living the rest of your days alone, lost to that warmth, that light, lost in the darkness, it makes you crazy, desperate. Angry, angry at God. You turn your back on Him, defy Him.”
“Love is powerful,” Prine said. “Jesus said many times that love reigned over all, even God. Is it fair the love of your life was torn from you? No. Was it fair that you had this life to share part of with her? Yes. Death frames our joys, Auggie. We’re given this slice of time to love, to see beauty, to refuse to partake in ugliness, and to learn what we can. If you’ve found love twice in one lifetime, don’t curse God for it, thank Him.”
“For the first time since Gert … passed, I feel like I’m really alive, not just going through the motions of living. I like, Reverend, I like it very much, but I feel so guilty.”
“Listen to me, Augustus. I spent a lot of time with Gert near the end. She was a remarkable woman, so full of life and happiness. When she got sick, when she knew she was not gong to get better, she talked often to me
about you, about how she was afraid for you to be alone. Gertie was looking forward to an end to the pain, to the twilight of life she was forced into. Gert was ready to move on to what waits for us on the other side, in the Lord’s glorious kingdom. She so wanted you to live, to be happy and to love again.”
Auggie looked back to the celebration. Gillian was talking and laughing with a group of older women. Her face, bright with laughter, put the sun to shame. She looked up and saw him watching her. Her cheeks reddened, and the smile grew brighter still. Auggie felt suddenly strong and weak all at once. He smiled back.
“Gert didn’t just talk to me about all this,” Prine said. “She talked with Gillian too.”
The sun was dipping low behind Argent Mountain. The old-timers sat on bales of straw and hay, smoking their pipes and talking about the second war with the British that most of them had fought in. A pile of children sat rapt at their feet, listening to the war stories. Other children ran about, laughing and screeching in delight, chasing one another in the gathering shadows. Fires were lit, but the music seldom stopped—ballads, waltzes, two-steps and fandangos.
In the dying rays of the sun, Aaron Burke and his fiancée, Mary Toller, and their families came forward to make the big announcement. It seemed like the whole town sent up a cheer, a defiant roar of life against the coming nightfall. There was more music, more food, more laughter.
Shortly after dark, Mayor Pratt, wrapped in a great black coat, and a large group of deputies arrived. The young boy Jim was with them, sporting a star on his shirt and a rifle in his hand. Their arrival created quite a stir and some expected agitation; then Harry spoke.
“It’s all right; folks!” he called out to the crowd. “Nobody’s stopping anything. Sheriff just sent these boys over to make sure you churchgoing folk don’t get too rowdy!” A roar of laughter came up from the gathering. “Everyone get back to your festivities; I’m going go get some of Mrs. Proctor’s apple cobbler, if you left me any!”
More laughter and the music and the dancing started up again.
“Poor Harry,” Gillian said to Auggie. The two of them were sitting on a bench by one of the fires. “Nobody knows where Holly’s got to. Must be awful for him.”
“Gillian,” Auggie said, “why are you here with me?”
“Auggie Shultz! What a thing to ask!”
“No, no, I mean no disrespect. I mean, are you here because Gert asked you to look after me?”
Gillian sighed and looked into the fire.
“She did ask me to look after you, Auggie, and I promised I would. But that isn’t why I’m with you. I miss her too, just as much as I miss William. I told her I’d take care of you, but along the way I discovered how much I need you in my life, Augustus, how happy I am to be with you and how lonely my world is without you.”
Clay Turlough pushed his way through the crowds. Auggie saw him glaring in his direction.
“So to answer your question, I’m here with you not because of a promise to an old friend, but because I want to be with you. Now it’s your turn; why are you here with me?”
“Because I—”
Clay was in front of them.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Procter, I need to talk to Auggie for a spell.”
“Oh, hello, Mr. Turlough. Excuse me, please,” she said, rising. She touched Auggie’s shoulder as she walked away. “You can tell me later, Auggie.”
Clay sat down; his face was florid, his eyes darker than usual.
“Having a nice time with your new sweetheart?” he said.
“Clay, listen. I think we made a terrible mistake.”
“Oh, so now you think it was a mistake. That’s convenient for you and the widow now, isn’t it? What about poor Gertie?”
“Gertie was ready to die. I was the coward,” Auggie said. “I should have let her go. We tampered with God’s plan.”
Clay snorted, “Plan? Please. Man’s knowledge is already leaving God in the dust. Death is an illness, one that can be overcome, and cured in time, not some divinely ordained prison sentence. Gertie proved that. This has to do with you not wanting her anymore, with wanting that Proctor woman!”
“Ach! Keep your voice down!” Auggie hissed. “Yes, you’re right, of course. I do want to be with Gillian. I am selfish, damn you—I want a whole, living woman. I should have suffered the way everyone does, should have endured it, not hid from it! I shouldn’t have replaced a lifetime with Gert, a good, real lifetime, with this endless nightmare.”
“Real pretty words, Auggie. Doesn’t change anything. Gerttie is here and she is alive and she loves and needs you.”
“Clay, what kind of life does Gertie have now? What kind will she ever have? I was wrong. You were wrong.”
Clay ran a hand through his thin hair. He shook his head.
“No, this was not a mistake. We weren’t … I am not in the wrong. This was just the beginning. You don’t see the whole picture, Auggie.”
“What I see? What I see, yes?” Auggie’s face grew red; his voice became a growl. “What I see is a sick man who views my wife’s suffering as just another experiment for him, just another way to show the world his genius. You don’t care about Gert; you never did. All she is to you is a way to prove your perverted theories!”
Clay’s thin hands shot out and grabbed Auggie by the collar of his shirt; he pulled the burly shopkeeper toward his face.
“You cowardly fool! How dare you say I don’t care about that woman when you’re here cavorting with Gillian Proctor! You were never good enough for Gertie; she deserved better than you, you frightened, blubbering—”
Auggie pushed Clay off of him and raised a ham-sized fist, ready to strike the smaller man. Suddenly, both men were aware that everyone was watching them. Small, soft hands covered Auggie’s fist. Gillian leaned forward and whispered to both men.
“Mr. Turlough, I think I should borrow Augustus back for a moment. Excuse us, please.”
Gillian led Auggie out onto the dance floor. The band was playing “Lorena” for the couples. The fiddle was like the slow wail of a lover, pleading. Auggie took Gillian’s hands and they began to dance.
“You looked like you were about ready to murder Clay,” she said. “I thought you might need a little break. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Nein, no. Thank you. I was getting very angry, that pompous little rooster.”
“Now, Auggie, he is your best friend.”
“Is he?”
“Well, yes. Everybody has disagreements from time to time. I just hope I wasn’t the cause of this one.”
“What? Of course not!”
“I know how much Gert meant to Clay and him seeing you and me together…” She let the thought hang. Auggie was silent as they glided and turned. The stars shivered brilliantly in the cold desert night. Gillian’s eyes were as black as that sky, deep and captivating.
“Gillian, I … Ach! Why is it so hard to talk when I am with you?”
She rested her head on his wide shoulder and squeezed his hands tighter.
“Hush. You don’t have to say anything right now.”
Auggie noticed many of the other dancers, and quite a few of the older ladies Gillian had been talking to earlier, were smiling at them.
He turned his head to face her. He fell into her eyes. All the kindness, all the patience and sacrifice this woman had given to him. All the love.
“Thank you,” he said. He leaned down toward her. She arched upward to meet him.
It was the perfect kiss—the kind you remember until the day you die, the kind that remakes you, remakes your world. The kind that can save you.
It was perfect, and then the screaming started.
From the outskirts of the party, Clara Gibbs ran screaming, her eyes wide with terror. “Oh Lord in Heaven! There must be a hundred of them! Run! Run!”
The music stopped, more screams—some sounded like men—then the bark of gunfire. Harry Pratt was shouting through the chaos in a deep, powerful voice.
“Everyone, everyone listen! I want you to gather up your loved ones and get them on these wagons and carts now! If you have a gun, go find a deputy to report to; you’re working with us now! We’ve got this covered, so stay calm! Deputy, get all the women and children, and as many of the old folk as possible, on those wagons first and head east! Do it!”
Auggie and Gillian stood still, holding each other. The madness flowed around them, screaming, panicked running, gunshots. She sighed.
“Ja.” Auggie nodded. He took her by the hand and they ran toward the wagons.
They came down off Argent Mountain and swarmed along the streets, their numbers growing as they advanced.
Frightened, shocked, the good people of Golgotha paused in confusion at the sight of familiar faces changed, twisted. By then it was too late. Hands, gripping like vises, ignoring pleas or fists; the crushing weight of the mob and cold, wet lips forced to their own. A strange heat, mixed with the terror, as nostrils flared at the alien spoor. A slithering, wriggling force insistent on pushing its way in, relentless. A scream or a gasp for air and then the terrifying gagging, choking as it greedily snaked its way in, cozying up inside their innards. A honeyed cold spreading through body and mind. Perhaps, in the stronger willed, a final desperate struggle, like the drowning man clawing at air, at light, but in most an acceptance, a compliance—submission to the sweet, sticky blackness and the awful promises it whispered.
And the good, good people of the small town of Golgotha, many of them, when they saw the Stained, saw what they did to those they caught up to; they forgot to love their neighbor, forgot to lend a helping hand, forgot to do unto others as they would have them do unto themselves. They ran, ran like animals frightened by the storm. Pushing, shoving, the weak, the innocent, the frail, all falling under their feet. Many of the souls Golgotha called, called to across the desert, across the plains and the oceans and the night sky, many of them were not good people. Many of them cared only for their own skin and their own next breath and they were more than willing to feed another to these monsters, who had been their smiling neighbors, to live, to keep running.
The Six-Gun Tarot Page 30