* * *
Sleep didn’t come easy. Red’s mind kept returning to the Hanging Tree. He could see Mort sitting on the Mule, crying openly, water dripping from his unkempt beard while his legs gripped the animal for stability. He could hear those words; I’ll come back for ya. You’ll be the first person I exterminate. Somehow Red believed it. But that was foolish, wasn’t it? Sure it was. Mort wasn’t coming back from the dead. That was impossible.
In time, Red closed his eyes and sleep came. It was a short-lived rest––a couple of hours, maybe less. He pulled himself from bed and walked towards the window. Looking out, he could see the rain falling lightly, splashing miniature explosions the puddles outside his window.
His mind drifted.
The tree. It all came back to the tree. He needed to see it again. Or more specifically, he needed to see Mort hanging from the tree again. He needed to make sure Mort was still dead.
“God,” he whispered. “I’m a fool.”
And maybe he was a fool. But if so, he was a fool that knew himself pretty well. The next few hours were not going to be enjoyable ones. He was going to be awake, thinking about Mort, wondering if the impossible was somehow possible. This meant that he had a decision to make. He could either stay home, alone in his house, listening to the rain bouncing off his roof while he wondered if Mort was coming to get him, or he could go to the Hanging Tree and put his mind at ease.
After ten minutes of scratching his head and considering his options, the decision was made. He couldn’t stay home, strolling from room to room while thinking in circles; it was making him crazy. He needed to go to the Hanging Tree and see Mort, whether it was a silly thing to do or not.
Red dressed, knocked back a tall shot of cheap whiskey and made his way to the stable. He mounted his horse and rode towards his destination. He rode slowly, apathetically. The air had cooled some. The ground felt soft from the rain, which had become almost nonexistent. Before he arrived at the tree he stopped to gather his thoughts.
Lord, give me strength.
Somewhere in the distance a coyote howled, nipping his prayers in the bud.
He dismounted, tied his horse to a nearby rock and began walking. He told himself that he needed time to think, but the truth was this: he was procrastinating. Seeing Mort’s corpse hanging from a noose wasn’t going to be pleasant, not at all. But what if there was no corpse to see? What then?
There was no easy answer to that question and Red didn’t try to find one. Instead he continued on, hand on his gun, eyes on his boots.
The Hanging Tree was just past the roll of the next hill. Red walked the hill slowly. When he looked up he could see it, the tree. There it was, standing tall in all its glory.
Mort was––
Gone.
Oh shit, Red thought. His stomach turned and his knees became weak. What the hell happened here?
As his eyes expanded his footsteps slowed. Staggered. Stopped. Stepping back, he put his hand to his mouth. There was something on the ground, a dark lump beneath the tree. Looked like a body.
He took a cautious step forward, followed by another.
But what was it? Was the lump Mort? Could it be? Was it possible?
Suddenly he was running. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest and a cold chill crawling up his back and he was running. Heaven help him, he was rushing towards the unknown. It wasn’t a conscious decision; it just happened. He needed to see what that man-sized lump was made of, because Mort lying beneath the tree meant that everything was okay in the world, everything made sense. The rope had become unraveled, the branch had snapped. Either way, something rational happened. And that’s what he wanted––no… needed. That’s what he needed. He needed something normal and sane, something he could wrap his brain around. A broken branch was rational. An unraveled rope was too. Mort Clancy coming back from the dead, on the other hand, was not.
His feet sloshed through the puddles. And when he arrived at the tree, beneath the knotted, leafless branches, he could see Mort lying there, face down in the mud.
Dead.
He was dead. Thank God.
Red almost laughed, but the nervous sound that slipped past his lips didn’t sound connected to humor in any way. Still, it was done. He had come to see Mort and he did.
It was time to go home.
Red blessed himself, turned away from the corpse, and started walking. Long before he made his way to his horse he began thinking about what he had seen. Something was wrong. Something didn’t add up. There was no rope around Mort’s neck, no broken branch either. And there was something else, something he couldn’t put his finger on.
I need to go back.
But why go back? How would that change anything?
Because I missed something, he thought. Something’s not right.
But what was it?
Red stopped walking. His shoulders slumped as he turned towards the tree. He could see the body beneath it, lying motionless.
Just go back, he thought. Take one last look and head home.
Halfheartedly, Red went back and stood next to the body. There it was: a dark lump beneath the tree. He kicked it and heard a groan.
The corpse groaned.
Oh shit. How was that possible?
The corpse groaned again, louder this time. Then it moved. Perhaps it was breathing. Perhaps it was about to stand up.
The color fell out of Red’s face and the world seemed to tilt on one axel; for a moment he thought he might faint. But he didn’t faint. Instead an inspiration came. Run, he thought. Get the hell out of here!
His feet stayed where they were, glued to the earth, next to the corpse, covered in mud.
Was it possible that Mort hadn’t died? Was it possible that he was still alive somehow, that he freed himself from the noose?
No. It wasn’t. Mort was definitely dead; Doc had confirmed it.
Red felt dizzy; he stumbled. And as he placed his hand on the Hanging Tree for balance, he felt something completely unexpected. His eyes opened wide and his muscles stiffened.
The Hanging Tree was no ordinary tree. Touching it was like placing your hand in a nest of rattlesnakes. It was alive somehow. Alive, but not like the other trees. Like an electrical current. Or a virus. And with sudden understanding came terrible knowledge. The roots of this atrocity didn’t simply burrow into the earth; they tunneled into a different time, a different world––into the place where bad things come from. Was there life after death? Yes, there most certainly was. The Hanging Tree was proof, for its seeds were planted in the dominion of the dead. Planted in the world next to ours, not where the angels go, but in that region where all pain and suffering is eternal, where sins will never be forgiven, where hatred and revulsion are universal while sympathy and compassion have no meaning. The Hanging Tree was rooted in a land where evil deeds and sinful dealings fueled a never-ending flame.
Red pulled his hand away from the tree as if burned.
He remembered the hanging. He remembered the look of terror stamped across Mort’s lifeless face, his white shirt blowing in the wind, looking like a––
“A flag,” Red whispered.
But the corpse at Red’s feet wasn’t wearing a white shirt. It was wearing a black jacket. The same one Doc had on.
Red reached down, grabbed hold of the black jacket and flipped the body over. It wasn’t Mort’s face staring up at him. It was his gunslinger friend. It was Doc, who was clinging to death’s front door.
With a scorched voice, Doc said, “Look out. He’s behind you… ”
Red heard something. Muscles tightening, he spun around.
Mort was there.
Mort, with the noose wrapped around his scrawny neck and his eyes glossed over, polished clean, lifeless, eternal. His skin was like melted candle wax. The stink of death crept from his throat and oozed from his pores. His filthy white shirt clung to his body like a second layer of flesh.
Mort moaned and groaned, limped forward and extended both of his hands. He grabbed Red by the shoulder and pulled him forward.
Red managed to snag his gun from his holster. He stuck the barrel into the zombie’s stomach and yanked on the trigger. The sound of bullets blasting through cloth, skin, muscle, organs, and bones, was earsplitting.
Doc opened his mouth wide. He leaned in. His yellow, checkered teeth tore into Red’s neck, ripping his flesh apart.
Blood splattered across both faces.
Red tried to scream a second time, but only a desperate whisper escaped beyond his lips. He tugged on the trigger three more times quickly. He felt the zombie sway. He felt the teeth on his neck again and he stepped back. The heel of his left boot thumped Doc in the chest and his balance was lost. Suddenly he was falling––falling back, over his dying friend, tumbling into the muck beside the tree, bringing the living corpse down on top of him as his blood rivered from his wound.
Mort bit into his neck again, and again.
The fight inside Red was weakening; his desperation faded.
Light started to diminish. Vision blurred. Darkness came.
He was fainting. Or dying. He wasn’t sure which.
Eyes fluttered, closed.
It was over. Over.
Nothing left.
Nothing.
Noth––
Death.
Then it happened. Red felt something cold and terrible.
His glossy eyes opened. Someone had strung him up, and now he was hanging from the tree, swaying in the breeze, noose around his neck. He had been dead for hours.
But his thirst for killing had just begun.
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The Hanging Tree Page 2