The Six Messiahs

by Mark Frost

  "They took Jacob out that door." Kanazuchi pointed to the door where the stains ended. "I could not see it from my position."

  "Well," said Frank, hearing movement upstairs in the passage behind them. "We can't stay here."

  They stepped silently across the kitchen and out the door, through a small storage room and into a narrow alley on the north side of the house. Bloodstains and footprints ended, impossible to track farther in the dark. There was no one in the alley, but they heard a mob running toward the House of Hope from every direction. A bell started ringing at the top of the black church.

  Kanazuchi led them into the tangled shanties, and they ran from the rising commotion until they left it in the distance. The huts were empty; most of the town was in the theater watching the show. The two men ducked under a shabby tin lean-to.

  "Good news is," whispered Frank, "they don't know what we look like."

  "Every one of them will search for us," said Kanazuchi, his expression never changing. "We don't know where Jacob is."

  "That's the bad news."

  Moving as steadily through the rough terrain as Lionel's riding skills would allow, they found The New City road shortly before seven o'clock. Innes took the lead, reading their map flawlessly; Walks Alone guided them through two uncertain stretches. Doyle watched Jack throughout the ride for any signs of life beyond subsistence. None appeared. He gave no response to Doyle's questions, eyes focused on the horizon, face emptied of expression.

  Open desert stretched out before them, and as the moon rose in the clear sky, they accelerated their pace to a steady gallop, Lionel clinging to the lip of his saddle for dear life. Two miles along, the horses shied severely, nearly throwing Innes; something spooking them off to the right. Doyle saw dark wings circling above them in the moonlight.

  "Night owls?" he asked.

  Walks Alone shook her head. She dismounted and moved through a narrow path in an outcropping of rock to their right. A call came for them to follow; the party dismounted, walked their horses in through the passage. Fifty yards on, the horses balked at the final opening. Jack and Lionel stayed behind; the others crept through the rest of the way, weapons drawn.

  The full force of the smell hit them as they cleared the rocks. Three dozen vultures scattered.

  An afternoon in the hot sun had ruined the thirty-eight corpses in the clearing beyond the terrible outrages already committed on them. Most of the men had been shot; a dozen had suffered under knives. Carrion birds had done the rest of the damage.

  Glad we got here after dark, thought Doyle; the blood looked black in the moonlight, abstract.

  "Don't touch any of them," said Doyle.

  Doyle looked to his left. Jack had come through the rocks and was standing off to the side, staring at the mangled bodies. His features contorted, animated by the beginnings of thought and, Doyle thought, the first stirring of rage. Something fierce in him, triggered by the smell of blood.

  Doyle stepped forward and picked up a badge lying in the sand.

  "Deputy," he said, reading the badge. "Phoenix."

  "They're all wearing them," said Walks Alone, wading in farther.

  "Lionel, stay where you are," said Doyle, kneeling to examine a body and seeing him appear in the opening.

  "What is it?" Lionel asked.

  "Just stay there."

  "Most of them middle-aged, obviously sedentary," said Doyle.

  "Does this make any sense to you?" asked Presto.

  "They don't look like lawmen," said Innes.

  "They're not. They're volunteers," said Doyle, studying a bloodstained piece of paper he had plucked from inside one victim's coat. "A posse; I believe that's what you'd call them. Looking for this man."

  Doyle held out the flier, Presto lit a match, and they saw a crude pen and ink sketch of a diabolical-looking Asian man above a brief, lurid description of his alleged crimes.

  " 'Chop-Chop the decapitating Chinaman,' " read Innes. " 'Wanted for ten terrible murders throughout the Arizona Territory. Suspected in countless other dastardly crimes.' "

  "Busy little bugger, isn't he?" said Presto.

  " 'The most dangerous man alive,' " read Doyle, darkly amused. "At least they resisted the impulse to hyperbolize. And a five-thousand-dollar reward. That explains the volunteers."

  "Good God, could one man have done all this?" asked Presto, looking out at the slaughter around them.

  "Not by himself. These men were caught in a crossfire," said Doyle, pointing to two sides of the clearing. "From here and there, behind the rocks. Four men, at least."

  "With repeating rifles," said Innes, from behind the rocks. "Shells all over the place."

  "And they all still have their heads," said Presto. "Hardly this Chop-Chop's traditional modus operandi..."

  The flier was snatched out of his hands; Jack had walked up behind them and now held the paper, staring at the picture intently.

  "What is it, Jack?" asked Doyle softly.

  "He knows," said Walks Alone.

  "Knows what?"

  "That man is in the dream," she said, pointing to the flier. "One of the Six."

  Jack looked up at her, agreement shining in his eyes.

  "Then we can conclude these men were tracking him toward The New City when they were attacked," said Doyle.

  Jack handed back the flier and ran purposefully toward the horses.

  "Let's go," said Doyle.

  "We should provide them a proper burial first," said Presto, looking around at the vultures gathering again at the perimeter.

  "The desert will take care of it," said Walks Alone, moving back to the opening in the rocks.

  "Bad form, don't you agree?" asked Presto of the Doyles.

  "Yes," said Doyle, starting after her.

  "Haven't you seen this fellow in the dream yourself?" asked Innes.

  "Suppose I have, now that I think on it," said Presto in his peculiarly indifferent way, staring at the drawing. "Not much of a likeness, finally."

  "Hope the bloke's half as good with that sword they say he's carrying as you are with your rapier," said Innes, running after Doyle.

  "Let's hope he's on our side," said Presto quietly. He crossed himself, intoned a silent prayer for the dead, and left the scene of the massacre.

  Jack was already on his horse by the time the group returned, and he galloped off to the west with Walks Alone close behind him before the others mounted. No one said a word as they scrambled to keep up with them; the secret delight Doyle felt at the signs of Jack's recovery was tempered by thoughts of what might be waiting for them in The New City.

  The shirts made for a peculiar audience, thought Eileen. But why should that be different from anything else about them? Their attentiveness to the claptrap, Ruritanian melodrama bordered on reverent. Applause broke from a field of white in uniform bursts as unexpectedly as thunder. All their responses—laughter, sighs, gasps—came in a chorus, like one mind with the same thought expressing itself with a thousand voices.

  Rymer had seemed irrationally pleased by the Players' lackluster rehearsal that day and he could not stop raving about The New City Theater. Was it only her imagination or was the man behaving even loonier than usual? For all his excitement, you would have thought the late Edwin-fucking-Booth was going to be in the audience that night.

  She had to agree with him on one point: To her eye the theater's backstage facilities looked functional and well de signed, if a bit rudimentary, but the auditorium itself was a stunner, plush and fancy as any she'd seen in New York or London, let alone the horse opera circuit they'd been hunting for the past six months. Perhaps the sight of such velvety opulence had thrown Bendigo into some fever-dream of Broadway; he was ripping through the text tonight as if they could hear him clear across the Hudson.

  Eileen had played her first-act scenes—nearly deafened by Rymer's rampaging histrionics, most of them blasted only inches away from her face—but instead of retiring to the dressing room, she found a quiet
spot in the wings where she could look out and study the audience.

  Disturbed: Frank had not come back with news of Jacob, but he had told her it might take until after the curtain came down. Trying to silence her fears. She could depend on Frank McQuethy to keep his word, of that much she felt certain. In the presence of such a—there was no other way to put it— such a man, under any other circumstances it would have been herself she wasn't sure she could trust.

  When Frank returned with Jacob after the show, the three of them would ride out of town and she would file Bendigo Rymer neatly in with the rest of her mistakes. Let the penny-pinching crackpot keep her damn salary; tonight was her last performance with the Penultimate Players. One more clinch with Bendigo and her prison sentence ended.

  Then what? She would travel east with Jacob, make sure he returned safely home. Beyond that; well, yes, she loved the old man dearly, but be realistic, love: Is living with Rabbi Stern honestly the sort of Me you see for your retirement, settling on the Lower East Side, doing the washing up in your babushka, seeing him into his declining years—and how far off can they be? Now Frank McQuethy, on the other hand ...

  A row of men wearing black caught her eye—the first she'd seen in anything other than white—above stage right, in the | foremost of the mezzanine boxes. Standing around one man sitting alone in the first row of seats beside the rail. She shielded her eyes from the glare of the footlights.

  Reverend Day.

  Their meeting must have ended. She felt a dizzying flutter in her chest. But that should be good news. Frank and Jacob would be waiting for her. Why was her heart sinking?

  The hard edges of the Reverend's face as he watched the play seemed lit from within by some wicked, hideous glee, radiating cold intelligence and cruelty, his head permanently craned to one side on that awful thrusting stalk of a neck.

  Jacob was not safe and she knew it.

  She heard a distant popping sound, like a string of firecrackers somewhere outside the theater, followed by faint shouts and the deep sounding of a bell—the actors suddenly looked silly; the real world intruding into their fragile, posturing make-believe, the illusion exposed as hollow and mildly ridiculous.

  The guards in the box straightened up at the sounds; the Reverend spun around and gestured, two of them quickly exited. The Reverend's attention withdrawing from the action on stage—Bendigo strutting around, waving his sword, in the throes of heroism. None of the other actors aware ...

  A handful of black-shirted guards burst back into the box, led by the huge man in the long gray coat Eileen had seen on the street; Reverend Day turning to them, voice rising in alarm, competing with the actors now.

  "No! NO!" shouted Reverend Day.

  Heads turning in the audience, a buzz of confusion. Chaos in the box on the verge of boiling over.

  "NO! NO! NO! NO!"

  Reverend Day screaming at the men around him; they recoiled from his rage. The actors losing their way, falling out of character, staring out at the disturbance. Stagehands peering up from the wings. Bendigo dropping his focus in the scene, tracing the problem to its source, then marching impatiently down to the footlights.

  Reverend Day wheeling around, limping to the edge of the box, shouting at the audience, all eyes turning to him, a desperate eagerness distorting his features.

  "IT COMES! IT COMES! THE SIGN! IT IS BEGUN, MY CHILDREN! THE TIME!"

  Instant a storm of terror sweeping through the white shirts below; moans, wailing, screams, men and women both. Terrible, piteous, abject.

  "THE TIME OF THE HOLY WORK IS HERE! THE MOMENT OF OUR DELIVERANCE!"

  The white shirts staggered out of their seats and up the aisles, crawling over each other, rushing to perform some unknown action at a station they needed desperately to reach.

  'Excuse me

  "TO YOUR STATIONS, EVERY ONE OF YOU, AT ONCE. THE MOMENT IS AT HAND—"

  "Ex-CUSE me!"

  Bendigo Rymer standing downstage center, indignant as a peacock, wagging his sword up at the box.

  Ghastly silence. Reverend Day staring at the man in shock.

  "Really, sir. We're TRYING to give a per-FOR-mance here. A damn GOOD one, if I DO say so my-SELF. I am sure that what-EVER this is a-BOUT is all VERY im-POR-tant. But I don't sup-POSE it is TOO much to ASK... if it could WAIT until AFTER we're FIN-ished."

  No one breathed. Bendigo puffed up, staying his ground.

  Reverend Day laughed. A chuckle, genuinely amused, turning into a rolling, sustained guffaw that grew until its echoes rolled off the theater walls. The audience laughed with him; laughter building to a set of waves that roared and crashed down on the stage, shaking the scenery, knocking Bendigo's confidence out from under him. He took two faltering steps back, sweat dripping off his clammy made-up face. His sword drooped, he looked around desperately for support but instinctively the other actors onstage stepped away, avoiding his eye, smelling imminent theatrical disaster.

  The laughter cut off suddenly. In the silence, Reverend Day leaned over the edge of the box and smiled at Bendigo Rymer.

  "You're finished."

  He gestured sharply with his right hand; the curtain plummeted to the stage, isolating Bendigo on the skirt of the proscenium. Fear putting the whip to his nerves, Rymer groped along the curtain to find an opening.

  The Reverend bunched his hands into fists and twisted: The suspenders holding Bendigo's trousers broke away with a loud snap; his pants dropped and settled around his ankles. Reacting to the sound before realizing what had happened, Bendigo took a step downstage and crashed onto his chin.

  Behind the curtain, actors and stagehands turned tail and ran, scattering out of the theater in a dozen directions. Eileen, alone, paralyzed with fright, watched from the left side of the wings.

  Bendigo Rymer struggled to his knees, the uncomprehending look of an injured child in his eyes, a picture of dumb confoundment. Laughter rolled over him from the audience again; a harsh, disembodied, joyless pounding that never paused, never varied.

  Reverend Day propped himself up on the edge of the box, waved his hands like an orchestra conductor, the buttons on Bendigo's blouse popped off and danced across the stage. The laces on his corset roped in and knit tightly together, stays groaning with effort, cinching his belly into an hourglass; she could hear the breath being squeezed out of Rymer's lungs. His wig rotated on his head, the absurd Prince Valiant haircut falling over his eyes. He crawled blindly on the floor, then appeared to gradually lose control of his movements, until he was jerked abruptly upright to his feet, lifted by a dozen invisible hands.

  Eileen looked past Rymer, saw Reverend Day manipulating his fingers in the air as if he were controlling a marionette. Bendigo danced, arms hanging limply in the air, a pathetic shuffling encumbered by his fallen trousers....

  And Eileen remembered where she had known A. Glorious Day.

  His name was Alexander Sparks; she had seen him practice this same impossible nightmarish possession on another man ten years ago, a small, dear Cockney burglar named Barry. Inside the dining hall of a manor house on the Yorkshire coast. Along with six other lunatic, diseased aristocrats, Sparks had directed a plot against the Royal Family; she had fallen quite by accident into the outer tendrils of its web, but eventually found herself at its center, combatting the Seven along with Sparks's brother, an agent for Queen Victoria, and a young doctor who had gone on to become a famous author. Eileen left England for America hard on the heels of that experience and had never seen any of them since.

  But Alexander Sparks had looked nothing like this Reverend Day and she could find no explanation for the discrepancy, unless over time the man's demonic heart had slowly wormed its way to the surface. If this was the same person, it certainly explained his iron grip on these people; she had seen him perform similar black miracles the last time. Yes; the idea that the revolting, twisted body and visage that bound him now reflected the man's true nature was only too easy to believe.

  He had not recogniz
ed her for some reason. But why that was and for what purpose this misbegotten city had been born remained questions she could not begin to answer. Cold terror pinned her to that spot backstage as securely as a railroad spike.

  With a manic smile carved on his face, Rymer's dance ended and he flopped to the stage in a deep curtsy; Eileen could hear the muscles in his legs ripping away from bones as his body contorted.

  A flurry of gestures from Day: Bendigo flew to his feet again, his hand drew the saber from his belt, and he marched up and down the stage, sword raised, in a mockery of military high-step. Dead laughter from the audience doubled, deafening. For one terrible instant, Bendigo caught Eileen's eye; she saw conscious agony and horror bleeding through his eyes, but words could not break past the hideous smile that had stilled his voice before his body whipped around and marched away again.

  She regretted every misfortune she'd ever wished upon the man; this humiliation was something no human being should endure. Tears in her eyes, she wished for a gun to release the poor bastard from this misery; the rest of its bullets she wanted for Reverend Day.

  Bendigo came to a halt and gave a salute to the box. The Reverend raised his hands over his head and Rymer rose softly into the air, his bare spindly legs windmilling comically as if he were running up invisible steps. He soared up and over the audience, then hung suspended at the Reverend's eye level. The Reverend wiggled one hand; Bendigo's black wig flew off and scampered away in the air like a terrier. The laughter reached a hysterical crescendo, then stopped dead.

  "Now do tell, Mr. Rymer; I hear that you have been harboring a secret desire to play Hamlet," said Reverend Day, in an exaggerated hillbilly twang.

  Wheezing for breath, Bendigo nodded slightly; his own dim response. Eileen saw a twitch of excitement light up the pathetic fool's eyes, even a small stirring of pride.

  "Well now, don't be shy, why don't y'all treat us to a little sampling of your melancholy Dane, you insolent, uncivilized cur?"

  The audience applauded wildly, stomped their feet and whistled, egging him on to perform. Bendigo saluted Reverend