A Fistful of Horror - Tales Of Terror From The Old West (6 page)

Dark liquid eyes stared up at him. “No matter who dies, El Lobo always wins.”

He chuckled, and then started as he felt something slip around his neck. A silver crucifix, on a thin metal chain. Rosita kissed his forehead.

“For luck, Señor Orestes.”

It seems Grayson didn’t need luck. He walks over to the fallen man. Blood seeps from his heart and stains his shirt a dark brown. The hat is blowing down the street, but Grayson gives it scant notice. He blinks to make sure he’s seeing right. He hadn’t expected El Lobo to be a kid, but a baby face stares up at him. Dirty blond hair half-covers hazel eyes.

In death, El Lobo smiles.

Grayson looks back up the street. His frown deepens. There are holes in the three upstairs windows of the saloon. The undertaker’s sign still swings, two holes in the wood. That leaves El Lobo’s sixth bullet.

A horse lies on the ground outside the saloon. Grayson’s horse. He thinks of Rosita’s warning. Did El Lobo miss, or did he hit exactly what he aimed for?

Grayson spits on the ground. Questions don’t feed an empty stomach or buy a new horse. He turns back to El Lobo and kicks at his hand. It doesn’t want to release the gun.

“Promise me one thing, Señor.”

Grayson turned as he buckled on his gunbelt. He smiled, though the smile didn’t touch his eyes. Promises made to saloon girls were worth about as much as promises made by saloon girls.

Rosita went on even though he said nothing. “Promise me you won’t take El Lobo’s gun.”

Grayson blinked. That was the condition of his bounty. Whether El Lobo was dead or alive, he had to bring in the gun or he didn’t get paid.

Rosita tugged at his pants leg. “Promise me you won’t touch El Lobo’s gun.”

Grayson looks down at the revolver in El Lobo’s hand. It’s as big as a Colt 45, long barrel, with something engraved on the blue-grey steel. The handle is mother-of-pearl with an intricate inlay that looks like real gold. A lacework design, or maybe a spider web. The design moves as Grayson studies it. It is like a thread, drawing him into a maze of shifting walls. It is the dancing lace on the stocking of a whore, beckoning him towards mysteries and pleasures unknown.

He pinches the bridge of his nose. He must be tired. The sooner he gets the gun the sooner he can get out of this shit-hole of a town. He unbuckles the kid’s gunbelt, slings it over his shoulder, and then he pries the gun from his fingers.

There’s a web of burns on the kid’s palm that matches the inlay of the gun. Grayson frowns and tests the feel of the handle. Something stings his hand. He cries out and opens his fingers to drop the gun.

The gun stays firmly planted against his palm. He feels the gold filigree press into the flesh of his palm, enter his veins, follow their courses to his heart, to his brain. The web of the gun stabs into him. He sinks to his knees and screams.

An abyss opens before Grayson. He falls, faster than a racehorse, faster than a steam engine. Stars fly past him. He is on fire. He burns, but he is not consumed.

He crashes into the earth and is still. Dirt rains back on him. He rests beneath the ground. Time passes. He feels those who walk above, feels their loves, their hates, their greed, their lusts. He calls out – like calling to like. His dwelling within the earth becomes a sacred and fearful place. A place that is fought over. A place where man’s blood spills. He waits and grows stronger.

A man comes who cares nothing for holy places or spilled blood. He pulls him from the ground, forges him, fashions him. As the man works, he works on the man. He gives him the script with which he engraves his barrel. He shows him the dark wood that he fashions into his handle. He leads him to the deep caverns where he finds the strange mollusc unknown to science and the vein of purest gold.

The man who believed in nothing but his art begins to fear what he is making. He drinks and smokes as he works, great quantities of liquor and tobacco. His hands tremble, spilling ash and liquor onto his workbench. Offerings that only deepen his making.

He sets his work aside, attempts to sleep and forget about it. He cannot. With bleary eyes, he works by the light of a kerosene lamp until he is finished. It only remains to test the gun. He loads a single bullet into the first chamber, cocks the hammer, gives the muzzle a farewell kiss. He pulls the trigger.

Grayson comes back to himself with a start. The sun is low in the sky, sinking behind the mountains. Shadows cloud the street. There is movement in front of him. The gun is up before he wills it to move.

A girl stands before him, no more than eight or nine. She wears a white dress. A yellow stain grows in the front. She holds a platter out in both arms, a roast of venison or beef. Her trembling makes it seem the muscle still moves.

“For you, El Lobo.”

Grayson realizes he is ravenous. He rises on unsteady legs. The girl shrinks to insignificance as he rises. A fly, a worm he can crush under his boot. He presses the muzzle of his gun against her forehead. She lets out an animal whimper. The reek of shit fills his nostrils.

Click. The hammer strikes an empty cartridge. The girl falls to the ground, the meat falls into the dust. Grayson tries to shake off the heaviness lodged in his brain. That game with the little girl, that's not like him at all. He turns, hesitates, and opens the revolver. Six spent cartridges fall on the unconscious girl. He loads each chamber, one by one, and snaps the gun closed.

He walks to the saloon. The people within bow to him, their murmurs of “El Lobo” something between reverence and terror and awe. He pushes aside his want for food and drink. A thought forms in his head.

“El Lobo’s gun, she never misses.”

Rosita’s words echo in his mind. He now knows why the gun never misses. The gun has a will of its own that makes sure it never misses. The only reason El Lobo didn’t hit him is because he wasn’t aiming for Grayson. He wanted to die. He wanted to be set free from the curse of his gun.

Only Grayson doesn’t believe in curses. A gun is only a gun. Only a tool. He is strong. He thinks about all the things he can do with a gun that never misses. He will be the most famous bounty hunter in the West. Or there’s no need to keep wandering around. He can set himself up as sheriff somewhere, run a town as his own private kingdom. See the fear and respect in the people’s eyes. No need to go far. He can start right here in Silver Creek.

Grayson shakes his head hard. Those are not his thoughts. He thinks of Rosita and her fears. How many times before have today’s events played themselves out? His palm tingles and faces flash in his mind. The kid’s long, pale face. A round, ruddy face with no hair and a long, curling moustache. A red-faced man with dark eyes and a hooked nose. A swarthy face with bushy eyebrows and a pointed beard.

Faster and faster the faces flash. All of them El Lobo of Silver Creek. All of them dead. Grayson’s stomach churns. His hand aches. The gun is warm against his palm. Does the pounding within him come from his heart or the gun?

“This is what I fear…”

He runs for the stairs, not sure if Rosita is still in the room they shared. She’ll know what to do. He feels her under him, the solidity of her body, the wet warmth of her breath. She’ll wake him from this nightmare.

He flings the door open. Rosita lies on the bed staring at the ceiling. There is glass over her body and a bullet through her heart. Flies buzz around her and Grayson’s head swims in time with their movement. El Lobo never misses.

He sinks to his knees at her side. He brushes away flies and shards of glass. He folds her arms across her chest. They hide the wound but not the bloodstain. He clasps her right hand in both of his. He says nothing for a long while. When he speaks, it is not quite a prayer, not quite an apology.

“You were right, Rosita.” He gives a bitter chuckle. “You were right. What the hell do I do now?”

A click behind him. Grayson turns and fires in a single motion. One of the other saloon girls. The tray she held clatters to the floor, tumbler and whisky bottle shatter. “El Lobo,” she whispers as she collapses. A prayer or a curse? Blood blossoms on her dress. He’s truly become El Lobo now.

The gun drinks in her death, sweet and red. Strength flows into him. His hunger and thirst are all but forgotten. There must be a dozen people downstairs. A dozen lives for him to consume and batten on. Perhaps a hundred souls total in Silver Creek. Not to mention the strong souls of the hunters that would come after him.

The kid had tasted this too and still he sought to die. He let Grayson kill him. Grayson knows why now. El Lobo can have anything he wants, or anything a gun can get for him at least. Except he can never be free. He and the gun are connected now. Who is the servant and who is the master?

He steps over the body in the doorway and walks back downstairs. Whispered conversations fall silent the instant he is in the room. Eyes look at the floor. Grayson clears his throat.

“There’s a mess upstairs. I want it cleaned up.”

“Yes, El Lobo.” He doesn’t see who answers. It doesn’t matter.

“Rosita…” The words choke. He clears his throat and starts again. “Treat them with respect. Treat them both with respect.”

A pause. “And the others?”

Grayson closes his eyes and curses. The kid had shot into all of the upstairs windows. “Treat them all with respect.”

He walks outside. Night is close now, but he can still make out the body of the kid in the street. The girl is gone. Hopefully to a family that cares about her. He rubs the shoulder of his horse as he passes it.

“Sorry, boy. Not what either of us expected…”

He walks into the night, up the street toward the mountains. Perhaps he should throw himself from a cliff, end it all, let the gun rot in the bottom of some canyon.

He cries out in pain. The gun burns his hand, stings in his veins.

“So you don’t like that idea, huh? What are you going to do about it?”

Nausea erupts in his stomach. The pain brings him to his knees. His head throbs and, even though the gun doesn’t speak, Grayson gets the message. I own you. Keep me fed and happy, and we’ll get along fine. Try to harm me and you’ll have problems.

“All right. Enough!”

The pain eases off, though a dull throbbing remains in the pit of his stomach. A reminder. Grayson struggles to get to his feet. He kicks at the dust. He can almost hear the gun laughing in his mind.

How often does the gun need to be fed? When they start coming for him, does he take the kid’s way out? It seems like the gun isn’t going to let him choose the gunsmith’s path. He looks up at the sky. Where in all that did the metal for the gun come from? Is there more of it on this world? Again images flash in his head. A guillotine blade. A Viking sword. A Roman spear. The rock Cain used to kill Abel.

He walks back into town feeling a hunger that has nothing to do with food. Grayson no longer exists, only El Lobo. And there’s not a damned thing he can do about it.

CRACKLIN’

John Hunt

He woke up and winced. The bones in his head felt so loose his head throbbed in time with his heart. A tooth sat under his tongue and he spat it out, suppressing the urge to vomit from the pangs triggered by the simple movement. He tongued the socket where his tooth had been and, to calm himself, he breathed deeply. As the cool air rushed over the fresh hole in his gums, he cried out with a litany of curses against God, curses tasting of blood as they passed his lips. He tried to open his eyes and they wouldn’t. Panic electrified him. A terrible thought entered his head. What if his eyes were open? What if blackness was all he could see from now on? When one lid popped open with a sticky slurp, revealing a black sky decorated in myriad pinpoints of light, he smiled, but even that hurt and it didn’t last long.

A horse shuffled a few feet away. He longed to check on his horse. He edged a hip to the side so he could free a hand to wipe out his other eye but couldn’t. His hands were tied behind his back. He had thought he was just lying on them awkwardly but no, they were tied and tied very well. Not someone who gives up, he pulled on them until the acid pain pulsing through his body became unbearable. He breathed in through his nose, remembering the pain of the air passing through his mouth the last time, and tried to settle himself down. How did he end up here? He tried to think but his head pounded worse than any mescal hangover he had ever suffered.

He tried again to work his other eye open. He knew how sticky blood could get and he suspected his own blood had gummed up his eye.

He closed his eyes and –
blink
– tried to force it open. It was still stuck.

He closed his eyes, moved them around underneath his lids and they burned, gritty, like they were turning through sand. He didn’t know what more he could accomplish with two eyes open but it was all he had control over so he compelled himself to do it. He opened his eye and a bearded face leered at him.

“He-he. Thought you could get away didn’t ya Gerrold? No ’scapin’ me.” The bearded man’s breath reeked of whiskey and his head bobbled above him. The words slurred.

“I ain’t Gerrold mister. I’m Hubert. From Arkansas.”

“It’s time to pay Gerrold. You owe a life.”