Shadow Falls: Badlands (10 page)

“No,” he gasped. In one big whirl it all vanished—the darkness around him; the tree; the woods—and immediately he was back at the waterfront, freezing in the cold morning air.

You are an abomination.
He heard the crone’s voice in his head.

When he sat back on the rock, Galen let his face fall into his hands as he wept.

He stood in the cold, watching the front of the bank for hours, waiting. In his pocket, he gripped the Derringer. He made up his mind.

At half past five, darkness began to fall as the sun set into the winter night. From this spot on the street, Galen watched the fiery ball descend below the horizon. Shortly thereafter, Dunburton locked up the bank for the evening and wobbled home, fully unaware of the man shadowing him.

As Dunburton turned toward the waterfront, Galen saw his chance. Picking up his pace, he pushed close to the old man.

“Do as I say and you’ll live,” Galen told him, jamming the Derringer’s barrel into Dunburton’s ribs.

“Sir, what is the meaning of this?”

Galen thumbed back the hammer. It was the only answer he needed to give.

At his house, Dunburton’s hand shook as it reached for the front door.

“Be very careful,” Galen said in a low voice. “Because I will kill you if I have to.”

They entered the foyer and Galen put a finger to his lips. Matty was rattling around the kitchen loud enough for both of them to hear.

“Anyone else in the house?” Galen asked.

Dunburton shook his head. His pallor seemed apparent. Galen motioned for them to go directly to the study.

Inside, Galen closed the door behind them.

“Please, I beg of you,” Dunburton said in a shaky voice, “don’t do this.”

“Give me the key,” he told the banker, motioning to the banker’s pocket.

Dunburton’s fingers trembled as he fished it out and handed it over. Galen went directly to the side table and unlocked the drawer.

Inside was the box. Galen picked it up, mesmerized. Finally, he made out the design. The box’s black exterior was inlaid with intricately carved snakes.

Dunburton broke his silence. “Why did you bother giving me the box if you were planning on stealing it?”

Galen snapped out of his trance-like state, whipping the gun around and pointing it right at the banker’s stunned face.

“Be quiet or be dead,” Galen hissed.

Dunburton ignored him, staring past the barrel of the Derringer and into Galen’s eyes. “Sir, I knew I had seen you before—and how you managed to escape death that first time is beyond me. But trust me when I say that it will certainly come looking for you again.”

With the back of his hand, Galen smashed the banker in the face, sending the old man to the floor. Galen slipped the box into his pocket.

“You come after me or yell for help, and I will kill you. That, I promise you, is not a lie,” Galen said.

Before Galen could exit, Dunburton spoke.

“You didn’t plan on stealing that box until you saw it,” he said. “You didn’t even know what it was until yesterday. Perhaps you still don’t even know.”

Galen paused and looked back at the banker, momentarily making Dunburton think he was to be on the receiving end of a Derringer bullet.

And without a sound, Galen left the study and slipped quietly from the house.

“You have done well,” the crone told him as she let him into her parlor. Galen brushed past her and shook off the winter chill.

“You have it, no?”

Galen reached into his duster and withdrew the carved ebony box, placing it on her table. In the flickering lamplight of the parlor, the engraved snakes seemed to dance and slither in their own shadows. The Gypsy’s stare was transfixed on the fabulous object; her mouth pulled taut with delight under her wide eyes.

“I have waited for you for so long,” she said, opening the box.

Suddenly her expression changed. Her jaw was slack, her face crestfallen.

“What did you do with it?” she screeched, dropping the empty box to the floor. “Tell me!”

Galen stood stone-faced, unmoved by her threatening pleas.

“You don’t understand. You don’t understand its power!” she cried.

“I think I’ll manage,” Galen told her. “You used me. You played me like a fiddle.”

“It is your destiny to be used. Why do you think you were delivered to my door?”

Galen stepped back as if slapped.

“You are not from this world, Galen Altos. You do not belong here.”

Galen grabbed the crone by the shoulders and shook her like a rag doll. “How do you know my name?” he bellowed.

“I can see your past as clear as I see your true face,” the Gypsy said. “I even know that Galen Altos isn’t your true name.”

He shoved her backwards against the wall and turned toward the door, but as he took his first step to leave, the crone snatched a heavy pewter candlestick from the table, raising it high above her head with both hands. As she labored to stop the metal at the top of its arc and bring it down on the back of Galen’s head, he spun, Derringer in hand, and fired a single shot; the bullet shattered her teeth before, went into her open mouth, and exited though the carotid artery in her neck.

She fell to the floor, convulsing, her hands clutching at the wound pumping away her life’s blood.

“You search for that which you will never receive,” she hissed before dying.

*****

CHAPTER 7

G
alen peeked down at the smoking Derringer. As the Gypsy had fallen, her blood sprayed onto his hands and coat. He tossed the gun aside and took one last look into the open eyes of the dead crone. Galen stepped over to the ebony box, upside down and open upon the wooden floor of the parlor. He picked it up, reached into his pocket, and replaced the box’s original contents before closing the carved lid and dropping it into his coat.

Hastily, he made his way down the street, picking up pace with each step until he was at a full run, the vapor of his breath trailing in the frigid air. Halfway to the waterfront, Galen came across a steed tied to a hitch. Checking up and down the street for its owner, Galen freed the horse and rode away into the night.

For nearly two hours he could feel the box inside his pocket alive and slithering, pushing him to a limit of sanity. Finally, he came across an abandoned house that, by the looks of it, had recently been vandalized. Galen tied the stolen horse to a tree out of sight and carefully entered.

The place had been thoroughly picked through. Only evidence of recent squatters remained, but he didn’t find anyone still there. He used a broken chair to start a small fire in the hearth. The box wouldn’t allow anything else to occupy his mind, dispersing even his need for food. He sat on the floor by the fire and, with a trembling hand, reached into his pocket to take it out. The carvings—snakes of a talented, albeit unknown hand, seemed to move under his fingers, forcing Galen fight surging the fear inside of him. With a soft click, he threw the latch and opened the box.

Inside was an eye.

This eye had once belonged to some kind of living creature, but was now in a petrified state. But he quickly came to understand why the Gypsy and the banker had both coveted it, for it had certain palpable cognizant powers.

He picked up the eye and cupped it in the palm of his hand. The outside felt smooth and uneven, save for the slightly rough area in the back where the nerve stalks had long been severed away.

As he had done before returning to the Gypsy’s parlor, he stared into the eye’s black iris and felt himself instantly drawn into it—falling, like tumbling down into a darkened well.

The first time he gazed into the milky cornea, he’d seen how the crone had drugged him and used him to gain that which he had brought to the banker. But that scene was now replaced by a new, much more terrifying one. Again, a headache struck—an intense pressure building up between his temples; a pounding ache, as if something inside his skull were to break through like a hatchling from its shell.

Galen screamed as the pain grew and, without warning, his body felt limp, as if his brain had lost the ability to control its, to command its verticality. The pain welled, his brain felt full of fire. He thought he screamed again, but this time no sound came forth—only the hiss of air escaping his throat.

The mounting pressure inside his head built to the point when every aspect comprising his body began shaking violently, as if trying to escape their bonds. Then suddenly, as quickly as it started, it stopped, leaving Galen with an overwhelming sense of silent levity, an acute sense of the soft whoosh of air gently passing him.

Here, there was no pain, no suffering—only an inescapable brightness. Galen looked around before finally gazing down. Below his feet—several hundred yards down—he could see the ground. He was above a dense forest—serene and silent, stretching infinitely into the blue sky. Galen cocked his head. He could hear birds singing in the trees. But suddenly, their music stopped, and from the woods below thousands of birds took wing, scattering every which way—as if escaping.

Smoke was rising in black wisps, funneling into the sky, obscuring anything beneath the tree line. But orange flames began to break through, spreading with astounding speed. Within moments, the fire expanded with a deafening roar, consuming everything in its path as it reduced the forest to a cinder.

The birdsong Galen heard before was gone, replaced by something more sorrowful. One voice gently sobbing in the distance was followed by another, as anguished, whispered cries for help grew to a level higher than the fire, as they multiplied by the thousands. Voices swarmed around him as the sky suddenly began to grey, finally giving way to a frightening and oppressive sense of total dark.

Galen sensed their ascendancy from untold depths—monstrous creatures of the abyss spreading like a plague across the world below, their gnashing yellow teeth making short work of all flesh unfortunate to fall within their indiscriminating jaws. Those unlucky enough to survive then cast into chains, turned into slaves. With a crack of thunder, the sky above Galen opened as a single shaft of pure illumination punched through the darkness, containing illuminated winged figures pouring from the sky.

So he watched—timeless warriors locked in ancient combat. The blood of the righteous and unrighteous flow until every last river runs red. The carnage is magnificent, no quarter offered, none taken.

Standing at the head of the unending phalanx of darkness was a man with eyes of smoke and the head of a coyote. Suddenly Galen is upon this face, himself struck silent by recognition.

***

The dirty ghetto street in Veracruz muddied the spilt blood. Galen watched a now coyote-headed Cyril carve the scalp from a young girl’s head.

He could feel the heat radiating from the door of the church that Cyril set aflame, innocent Mexican Catholics locked inside. And as Galen stood immobile to the atrocities before his eyes, Cyril turned to grin at him, reveling the long teeth indicative of his maw.

The enchanted eye fell from Galen’s trembling hand, its spell broken; he was back sitting on the floor of the abandoned house. For minutes he stared at the eye, which lay on the floor, gazing blankly upwards through its milky cornea.

Galen shouted at the eye. In a fit of rage, he scooped it off the floor and cast it into the fire still burning in the hearth.

The night brought a fitful sleep for Galen, for the images he’d been shown were emblazoned into his mind. Every time a slumber knocked at the door, it was quickly turned away by the interior horrors that kept him awake. As dawn broke, Galen picked himself up off the hard, cold and fled the house, leaving the carved ebony box behind.

The horse, by some miracle, had survived the night out in the cold and, not surprisingly, was not happy with Galen. After some coaxing, he saddled himself on the steed and it trotted away, most likely pleased to be moving. Unfamiliar with these parts, Galen was led only by some interior guidance. He went south. Returning to Kansas City, a city that only meant consequences, was no longer an option.

Dunburton had spent the night in his study, drunk and despondent over the loss of the object he had spent so many years coveting and only a short time possessing.

To have it slip through my fingers
, he thought. It was maddening. When he had first opened the box to check its contents, the eye gave him a brief look into its deliverer. It was a mere glimpse, but enough to see through Tom Holt’s facade— that the eye told Dunburton that Tom Holt was, in truth, one of the only San Patricio deserters to escape final judgment. Had he been able to coerce a confession over dinner, he could have had him arrested, or—more appropriately—killed him on the spot, claiming the rights of his former military rank.

Instead, he allowed Tom Holt to take the eye—the object he’d procured by using his own money to purchase the bank deed to a particular ranch and applying pressure on the chance owner until the object he desired came loose.

Perhaps the rancher knew this would happen
, Dunburton thought. Indeed, if the man had used the eye to divine the outcome of this transaction, it was quite possible. The thought very much angered Dunburton.