by Sarah Dreher
“Uh, Stoner...” Billy said in a high squeak.
She looked over.
Parnell was holding the rifle to Billy’s head.
Oops.
“Hi!” Stoner said. “Been here long?”
The Reverend Henry Parnell grinned, showing rotten teeth. “Thought you could get away, didn’t you? Guess you forgot I have the Power.”
“I don’t know about the Power,” Stoner said. “But you have the gun.”
He pulled back on the hammer. “I’ll thank you to pick up that knife, Son,” he said to Billy.
Fortunately, good sense prevailed. Billy reached for the knife and offered it to him.
Parnell shook his head. “You keep it,” he said, and laughed.
“I thought you wanted it,” Stoner said. “Isn’t that what this is all about.”
The man glared at her. “A little present. From me to your friend. Let’s go back to town, now. Nice and easy. No tricks.”
Billy picked up the reins and turned the mule around. “If there’s one thing I can’t stand,” she grumbled, “it’s people who go and jump in your wagon and stick a gun in your head without even waiting to be invited.”
It was a silent ride.
It looked as if the townsfolk had found a focus for their excitement. From the distance they resembled a swarm of ants scurrying busily around a picnic basket.
Stoner had a sneaking suspicion she knew what the excitement was. And she’d seen enough old westerns to know what it meant when townsfolk scurried around a tall central upright and a cross-piece.
They were getting ready to hang someone.
And she had a pretty good idea who they were planning to hang.
She glanced over at Billy, who had apparently come to the same conclusion. The woman was grim and ashen.
Okay, what do we do now? Try to take him here? Or stall for time and hope for help or inspiration, whichever comes first?
She glanced back at Parnell. The point of his gun was firmly planted at the base of Billy’s skull. His eyes took in the town, Stoner, and Billy in rapid and constant movements. Just like they taught you in driving school: road, rear view mirror, speedometer, road, rear view mirror, speedometer, keep sweeping.
The chances of taking him off guard looked pretty pathetic.
She caught the Old Booger staring hard at her during one of those sweeps. He had something on his mind. Maybe it was the Thinsulate.
She doubted it.
She waited until he came around again, and stared back. Parnell smiled and gave her a knowing wink, as if they shared some secret knowledge.
Odd.
Caroline must be dead. He wouldn’t take a chance on her getting away. And it probably wouldn’t bother him greatly to kill her off.
Everything he’d done had been directed at Billy. The fires. The kidnapping. The murder attempt. And now this.
All of this to get rid of one runaway woman?
Even if he’d been Billy’s father’s best buddy, this was excessive. And Parnell had been in town since before that incident. Besides, Billy’s father had sent the bounty hunter. Why do that if he had Parnell to take care of things?
No, what was going on here was bigger than Billy. And from the way he was staring and winking, it looked as if it involved her, too.
She wished she’d paid more attention to what he’d said last night— God, was it only last night? —instead of writing it off as maniacal raving.
She caught his eye again.
He smiled. “Did you like my fires?”
“Well,” she said carefully, not wanting to provoke his trigger finger, “I’m really not sure I understand the symbolism.”
“Oh, yes, you do.” He grinned. “You might even say I did it all for you.” He nodded toward Billy. “And him.”
What? “It was thoughtful of you, but you shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble.” She looked down at the town. Last night she had only been aware of the saloon burning, and this morning she’d been too focused on their problems to notice. But it was more than Dot’s Gulch that had been destroyed. The entire eastern side of the street, up to the alley between Dot’s and the Saddler’s—at least a third of Tabor—lay in ashes.
No wonder the townsfolk were annoyed.
Parnell gestured that way with his head. “Purified,” he said.
“What?”
“The town is purified now. The Evil has been burned away.”
Resurrect in a hundred years, Parnell, she thought. They loved that kind of we-had-to-destroy-the-village-to-save-it reasoning in Vietnam. “I think you went a little overboard.”
He laughed.
Somehow she didn’t think he was laughing at her conversational skills.
“What does that do to your Powers?” he asked with a sly look.
“You have a point,” she said agreeably. “It does take the wind out of my sails.”
The Creature was toying with him. It made him nervous and angry. He wanted to be at the end of this trip. Back in town, where they were waiting for him.
He looked up. His people were milling around the hanging tree, idle. That was bad. Inactivity was wasteful, and cooled their blood.
In one quick movement, before the Demon could react, he swung the barrel of his gun up into the air and fired.
The people turned and looked in his direction.
He rammed the shotgun back into the Bastard’s neck.
Stoner felt the explosion from the top of her head to the soles of her feet. Like hot sparks racing through her nerves. She wanted to rip the gun from his hands and smash his face in.
She glanced over at Billy.
Billy was crying, done in, anger shifted to fear.
Stoner wanted to touch her.
To hold her.
She wanted this to be over.
He had fired two shots from the gun now. It might be empty. Or did these shotguns have magazines?
Come on, you don’t even know what guns do what in your own time. Except for semiautomatics. Everyone was an authority on them in 1990 America. The news media had provided endless crash courses on Semiautomatic Weapons and the Constitution.
If the gun was empty, they could get it away from him, toss him out of the wagon, and head out of here.
Before they reached that unfriendly-looking crowd of Taborites.
If the gun wasn’t empty...
The crowd cheered.
He wanted to let out a whoop and a hollar, but it wouldn’t be dignified. Not for him.
Not for one of the Chosen.
“Faster,” he barked, and the Bastard slapped the reins.
Its strength was diminishing fast now. He could afford to enjoy his victory.
Henry Parnell rode into Tabor to wild acclaim, on the back of a broken-down wagon pulled by an exhausted mule. Just like Jesus on the donkey.
Men reached up to shake his hand. Women waved handkerchiefs.
Toward the back of the crowd someone started a chant.
“Hang the Bastard!”
“Hang the Murderer!”
It was glorious.
Stoner looked around wildly, searching for help.
Blue Mary was gone.
And Dot was gone.
Not a friendly face anywhere. They were on their own.
Parnell faced the crowd and raised his hands triumphantly.
The crowd cheered.
He grabbed Billy by the collar and hauled her to her feet. “Here he is,” he shouted. “Your fire bug, your killer.”
The fine, Church-going residents of Tabor roared for blood.
Billy’s face was gray with terror.
“Wait a minute!” Stoner heard herself shout as she got to her feet. “This isn’t right.”
The Reverend Henry Parnell laughed in her face.
“Listen to me!”
The crowd made a roaring, jeering noise that drowned her out.
Parnell gestured to a pair of angry-looking men in ragged black pants and flour-sacking
shirts. “Lock this one in the old warehouse,” he ordered.
Rough hands reached up and dragged her from the wagon.
The look of panic and hopelessness on Billy’s face tore her heart.
The men jerked her away from the mob, toward the abandoned building she had seen her first full day in Tabor. The one with the dirt floor and spiders and mouse droppings. Not her idea of a vacation cottage, but she had the feeling she wouldn’t be there long.
They threw her inside and slammed the door and leaned against it.
It was the only door in the place.
The only window faced the street.
She had to get to Billy.
Out on the street, Parnell was holding court.
The wagon was stopped at the foot of the gallows. Townspeople swarmed and milled around it like sheep at a feeding trough.
“Behold,” he was saying in his Sunday-Preacher voice. “Today I will show you things you never knew existed.”
He gave Billy a shake. The knife slipped from her hand. He held the gun to her head, forced her to pick it up.
“God has tried this miserable home-burner and murderer. God has judged him guilty. Now we...” He thrust one fist into the air. “...WE HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO DELIVER GOD’S PUNISHMENT.”
It wasn’t doing either of them any good for her to stand around watching and feeling helpless. Stoner left the window and went in search of a break in the walls. She could hear Parnell droning on and on outside.
Count on the clergy to deliver a half-hour sermon before every minor event.
She hoped she could count on the clergy to ramble on and on.
“Today,” Parnell brayed, “I will show you wondrous things. Things you never dreamed of.”
Wished he’d show me how to get out of this mess.
She kept going around the walls, slowly, forcing herself to concentrate, knowing time was running out fast.
And there it was. In a dark corner where the sun seldom reached. A few boards, rotten and decayed where the wall touched the ground.
Someone had been there before her, in fact. Some small someone with teeth—mice or rats, maybe even a porcupine—had gnawed away a nice, fist-sized section of the wall. She pushed at the crumbling boards. Chunks of sawdust and wood particle fell into her hands.
“A thousand wonders. God’s wonders.”
The crowd murmured, growing restless.
They’d sit still for that stuff through a month of Sundays, but when it came to killing…
A whole slab of board came away.
...don’t keep ‘em waiting.
She grunted and pulled. There was enough space now to slip her leg through.
Come on, Parnell, get their attention.
“Today YOU, dear friends and residents of Tabor, will see...”
He paused for dramatic effect.
She pushed against a board. A nail squealed. She held her breath.
“...THE DEVIL HIMSELF!”
Yeah, right. They’re looking at the Devil and don’t even know it. Been looking at Old Nick every Sunday for the last blessed...
The board broke away.
...ever-loving year.
She thought she could get through. She slipped her feet into the hole and worked her body toward daylight.
It occurred to her that someone could be waiting out there, just standing around whistling silently and waiting for her to get all the way through so they could put a bullet right through her head.
Well, she thought as she worked her shoulders around and made them small, you certainly do think about cheerful things at the most opportune moments.
“THE DEVIL!” Parnell shrieked.
She was out. Nobody shot her.
In fact, nobody was around.
Okay, now what?
“THE VERY PRINCE OF DARKNESS.”
“That ain’t no Prince of Darkness,” a voice of reason shouted from amid the ashes of Dot’s Gulch. “That there’s Dot’s boy.”
A set of short boards had been nailed into the side of the building, steps leading to what looked like the opening of a hayloft. She studied them.
She knew she didn’t have a chance against the mob on the ground. Not without a gun and half the U.S. Cavalry. But from an elevated position...
They didn’t exactly look safe. Sort of soft and punky, like the boards she had just torn apart with her bare hands.
Beggars can’t be choosers.
She took a deep breath and swung up onto the first step.
“A boy?” Parnell was saying. “Yes, it looks like a boy.”
Things improved as she went higher.
She heard a sound like ripping cloth. The crowd gasped.
“But it is also FEMALE!”
She had reached the top. The roof seemed solid enough, pine boards covered with tarpaper and bird dung.
For God’s sake, she thought. Another of those dress code types.”
“It thinks to make itself the equal of a MAN!” he shrieked.
FEMALE! And it dares to wear the clothes of MEN!”
Now what? She didn’t know what to do next. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She forced her attention inward and sent out psychic feelers, trying to get an impression of the man, searching for weaknesses she could use against him. What came to her was more frightening than what she had seen so far. All the impressions of a lifetime—things felt and heard and seen and sensed, things said and done—had been dropped into the box of his mind and shaken and dumped out again, and the pattern they formed was what he believed to be the Truth. Henry Parnell’s mind was a computer, programmed to randomize all input.
So much for outguessing him.
“LOOK!” Parnell screeched.
Stoner eased her way to the peak of the roof and looked.
He was holding up a piece of paper, a little larger than a playing card. Painted in vivid colors.
A Tarot card.
“Look at this. I took this from the Witch myself. It is a page from the Witches’ Book. This is a portrait of Satan.”
Oh, for the love of Heaven. If people were willing to believe that...
She looked at Billy. The man had torn her shirt. She was breast-naked in the cold November air.
He snatched the knife from Billy’s hand. “With this knife,” Parnell raved, brandishing his strange dagger. “With this very Jesus knife, this instrument of vengeance carved with the sacred symbols of God’s justice, I will show you the true nature of...” He whirled about, pointing the knife at Billy’s face. “...the Beast!”
She looked around. They couldn’t possibly be buying this.
The crowd’s attention was riveted on Parnell.
“I will plunge this dagger of Justice deep into its flesh,” he screeched. “And you’ll think you’ve seen it die. But immediately a new manifestation will come to life, each more hideous than the last. TEN TIMES THE BEAST WILL DIE AND BE REBORN.”
Spittle flew from his lips. Droplets of sweat hung like raindrops from his beard. “AND WITH THE ELEVENTH DEATH, THE REIGN OF SATAN WILL END!”
He reached for the rope. “Let the first death be by hanging!” Hayes moved up behind her and tied her hands.
He slid the noose around Billy’s neck.
Okay, it’s now or never.
Carefully, aware that standing on the peak of an old roof with a blood-thirsty mob below had its hazards, she stood up.
“Parnell!”
Parnell stopped dead in the middle of quoting Scripture, some good, woman-hating Gospel according to Paul.
“THIS IS WRONG!” The words tore from her throat, ripping the membranes like nails. “She didn’t do anything.”
She scanned the crowd pleadingly, trying to catch their attention with her eyes. “Parnell set the fires.”
From the way their faces went hard, she knew it had been the wrong thing to say.
“She dares accuse your pastor,” he screeched. “Shame!”
The crowd took up the chant. “Shame
. Shame.”
He listened for a moment, drinking in the sounds.
His people.
Echoing his words.
He threw back his head.
“Let the hanging begin!” he crowed.
The Beast thrashed against Its bonds, shouting for its life.
Someone came forth with a gag to muffle the Demon. He motioned him away. Let them hear Its misery. It would only fuel the fires in their blood.
“You’ll have to live with what you’re doing,” the Beast shouted. “Every day, for the rest of your miserable lives, you’ll remember this. YOU KILLED AN INNOCENT WOMAN!”
Parnell laughed.
“Listen to me!” Stoner shouted. The crowd turned back to her. “That man is insane.” She looked around wildly.
Two figures ran out the back door of Kwan’s Laundry. Dot and May Chang.
In the distance she could see a horse and rider, heading hell-bent for Tabor. It looked like Cullum Johnson.
Okay, okay. Stall for time.
“He killed his wife!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Caroline Parnell is dead.”
“LIAR!” He shrieked.
Ah, ha. A vulnerable point. He was afraid to let them know about that.
“I saw him do it. Look around. Is Caroline Parnell here?”
A few of the townspeople searched through the crowd and whispered among themselves.
Progress.
Parnell raised his rifle. “You get down from there now.”
For a split second they looked at each other down the barrel. Why didn’t he go ahead and shoot?
Maybe he was afraid the crowd would turn against him. Shooting an unarmed woman. Frontier chivalry... something like that.
His finger tighten on the trigger.
She was frozen.
Hands tied, noose around her neck, Billy managed to land a well-placed kick in Parnell’s rear end.
He sprawled on his stomach and got up, his face scarlet with fury. He pointed toward Stoner. “Stone the Demon,” he shouted.
A rock struck her shoulder. She ducked behind the roof peak.
Pebbles and stones rained around her.
It gave her an idea. Digging into her jeans pocket, she got to her knees. This was going to be tricky. If someone threw a big one and knocked her off balance...