Shadow Falls: Badlands (9 page)

Galen finished what was on his plate, noticing Dunburton had barely touched his. Finally the banker called for Matty to clean up the plates, barking at her harshly when she dropped a fork onto the floor.

As she left the room, Dunburton poured himself another drink, his unsteady hand shaking the neck of his bottle against the rim of the tumbler.

“You’re not Irish, are you Tom? Holt doesn’t sound Irish.”

“No, sir.” Galen realized that he had no idea where the kin of someone named Holt would actually hail from.

“That’s good, Tom, because the Irish are becoming a scourge in nearly every city. They infest like bugs. You see my hatred of the Irish goes back to the war. You ever heard of the San Patricios?”

“Can’t say as I have,” Galen lied.

“Goddamned cowards. Bunch of lily-livered Irish Catholics who defected from the U.S. Army to go fight for Santa Ana. Can you believe that? Joining up with those dirty Mexican bastards to fight their own countrymen?”

Galen could feel his toes curl inside his boots as the banker’s eyes stayed glued on his.

“They even took a bunch of regular boys with them, convinced them our Army was made up of devils of some kind and poisoned their minds with lies and false ideas. But in the end, we hunted down those San Patricios, nearly every last one, and you know what we did to them?”

“No,” Galen answered, gritting his teeth.

“We flogged ‘em and branded each of them with a red hot iron. Branded ‘em with the letter ’D’ right on their faces, and then hung every last one of them as a group. That’s what we do in this country to deserters and cowards.”

Dunburton put his glass down on the table with a bang loud enough that Galen nearly leapt out of his seat. The memories that lay buried—of those skirmishes; of the eyes of those American men he could see across the battlefield through the acrid smoke—surfaced much too easily in his mind, as did the atrocities those uncontrolled soldiers committed in their wake.

“You have to forgive me, for when I imbibe spirits, I often find my emotions get the best of me,” Dunburton said. He attempted to get up from the chair but his drunken legs buckled. The banker dropped his tumbler to the floor, causing it to shatter. Galen hurried to his host’s side.

The ruckus roused Matty, who rushed through the kitchen door to find Galen helping the master of the house back to his feet. The slave eyed Galen suspiciously before coming to his aid to help right Dunburton in his chair.

“It’s okay, Matty,” he told her. “I must have had one of my spells again.”

“Mr. Dunburton, I do appreciate the meal and the hospitality, but being as it’s late, I should probably take my leave,” Galen said, trying to conceal his desperate itch to flee this house.

“Tom, I do thank you for bringing me that package. Please tell your employer that his debt to me is now forgiven.” He turned to Matty. “Please take me up to my bed. Now.”

Galen thought that the rancher would have to get by without that reprieve, given his plan of never returning to that ranch.

“Goodnight, Mr. Dunburton.” Galen said, watching Matty lift the banker back to his feet—as his groping hands seemed to make quick work of finding her breasts. “I can find my own way out.”

“Goodnight to you, Mr. Holt,” he said without even looking back.

It was late and a cutting February wind blew through the street as Galen trudged back to the boarding house. His task done, he’d get the first coach going west in the morning. He had no intention of staying in this town—especially given the proximity to Dunburton, the closest reminder he’d had in years to that which he thought he’d left behind.

As he cut through the empty street, he stepped wide across the curb over the slush and piled dung from passing horses when he noticed he was standing no more than a hundred feet from the lit window of the Gypsy crone’s fortune telling parlor.

Again, she was seated there in the ornate rocker, her raven-colored hair shining in the lamplight. Galen thought of what she had said to him the previous night.

And now they’re hunting you.
Her words echoed in his mind over and over like an endless loop.

And now they’re hunting you.

And now they’re hunting you.

And now they’re hunting you.

Suddenly, a new voice replaced the ones in his head: his own, telling him to go in there and kill that Gypsy bitch once and for all.

*****

CHAPTER 6

T
he noise in his head forced Galen to cover his ears with his hands. He dropped to his knees—the slushy water from the sidewalk soaking through his pants.

Again there was a sudden flash followed by a clap of thunder rumbling inside his head. From the far echoes of his mind he could hear her screaming plaintive wails of terror as the knife carved into her flesh. The sound she made—a shrieking—when she fell to the dirt was almost animalistic, feral, as the young girl from his past died in the filthy streets of her Veracruz ghetto.

“Be still, you,” he hissed through gritted teeth just as he noticed he was down on all fours, like a dog, at the front door of the Gypsy's parlor. Looking up, Galen had no recollection of moving, let alone crawling, across the street to get there. The lock clicked before the door creaked open. Galen looked up to find the Gypsy standing before him, her body outlined by the light coming from her parlor—and from deep inside his mind, a little voice told him what he seemed to know all along: that his arrival here was an inevitability that he could not have changed if he had tried.

“I don't think this was my choice,” Galen responded.

“Understand that everything that follows is your destiny at work, and any attempt to fight it will only result in grave consequences.”

“Please,” Galen pleaded, but the crone only stood and stared. Finally, she spoke.

“Come in and warm your bones by the fire. I think I know why you’re here.”

He had been sitting by a small cast iron stove for nearly a half-hour when the Gypsy brought him a steaming mug to drink. “This will warm your bones for sure.”

Galen drank from the hot cup. What was inside was bitter, but he kept drinking because the warmth. Also, something in his mind told him he could not put the mug down even if he had wanted to.

“What do you know about your past?” asked the crone. The question alarmed Galen, raising the hairs on the back of his neck.

When he didn't answer she pressed him. “Where were you born?”

“I don't know,” came the response.

“Who were your parents?”

“I don't know.”

“What is the date of your birth?”

“I don’t know!” bellowed Galen.

“There is a curse over you,” she mewed, nodding her head. “One that is ancient. One that is unforgiving.” The Gypsy spat onto the floor. “You are an abomination!”

To Galen, all this crazy talk coming from the crone buzzed about his head like flies. “I'm a man,” he blurted out. “Not whatever you're trying to make me out to be.”

The crone's sickly laughter filled the air between them, which is when Galen smelled her breath’s rank disease. She now reminded him of a corpse, with her sallow skin wrapped loosely around her skull. It came as a sudden flash, but there he stood—in his mind's eye—over her dead body.

He blinked and his eyelids suddenly felt weighed down. With effort he opened them, but the drowsiness was overwhelming. He could feel his shoulders go slack as the energy drained from his body.

“Very good,” said the crone, grinning. She ran a bony finger down his cheek. “Very good.”

***

Galen’s eyes opened to the sight of a small white mouse crawling out of a hole gnawed in the baseboard. Its nose wrinkled and its tiny red eyes stared back at him, as if examining him as much as he was examining it.

“Hi,” Galen began to whisper before cutting himself off, startled when a shoe heel came down upon the white mouse, smashing it into the floor.

Daisy stood there nude, shoe in her hand. “Duh— duh— dirty cuh— cuh— critter,” Daisy muttered, she looked at the bottom of the shoe, now splattered with blood and bits of fur before tossing it aside.

She crawled back into the bed, pulling the covers over her back before straddling Galen’s naked frame.

“Let’s guh— guh— go again?” she whispered into his ear. Any thoughts Galen had about how he had gotten here were pushed away by her misshapen breasts brushing playfully against his chest. She began to grind her hips into his and Galen could feel his natural response come to life. But as he entered he looked up into the ugly visage of the old Gypsy crone, her skin wrapped loosely around her skull, baring her stained and crooked teeth at him.

“No!” he screamed.

His heart pulsing with fright, he roughly shoved her off and leapt from the bed. But when he looked back he only saw Daisy lying there, in her natural form, staring back at him curiously.

“I have to leave,” Galen told her, nervously gathering his pants from the floor.

“If yuh— you’re worried about m-m-money, yuh— you p— p— p— paid for all nuh— nuh— night,” she said.

Galen ignored her. He slid into his pants and shirt and sat on the bed with his back to her, putting his boots on. With her duties obviously over, Daisy got up and put on a dirty and tattered silk robe.

He pulled his foot out of his second boot after feeling something hard inside. He upturned the boot, causing a small, nickel-plated, two-shot Derringer to fall to the floor. Daisy paid no mind, as she was too busy washing herself from a small bowl of water. Galen picked up the gun, securing the rosewood grip in his hand.

Another flash overtook him. Instantly, he was back to the previous night in the lair of the Gypsy crone. In the lamplight, her bony hand slid the very same Derringer to him across the table.

“Bring me that ebony box,” her voice intoned, her gaze piercing deep into his soul.

He was back in Daisy’s shabby room, holding the Derringer in his shaking hand.

It had been just before daybreak when he left, stepping out into the cold winter air. The streets were already busy and he dodged carts and horses to make his way from the bar as fast as he could. At first he was disoriented, unsure of which direction to turn. He stumbled across a curb into the arms of a fine-suited gentleman going the other way.

“Watch where you’re headed, fool,” said the gentleman brusquely as he passed.

Galen turned, trying to spot any familiar landmarks. The first time he had visited the bar he had been mere blocks from his boardinghouse; now he was completely lost. He crossed one street, then another. Finally he spotted a man loading dry goods into the back of a buckboard.

“Can you tell me the way to Washington Street?” asked Galen.

“Standing on it,” came the answer.

“Which direction is the Gypsy fortune teller?”

Looking at him like he was crazy, the man guffawed before returning into the store.

Galen looked around. He walked up one side of the street, then down the other.

The storefront with the window marked “Fortune” was nowhere to be found. He had only seen it at night—and while drunk at that—so his only landmark was that window with the wide and crooked letters.

Again he tramped up the street, looking carefully at every building he passed.

Perhaps the window was replaced, he reckoned to himself. As the snow began to lightly fall, he trudged up the length of Washington Street and back down to the waterfront with no luck.

It’s only there at night, he thought. And as unlikely as he realized this was, he was now certain it was the case.

Galen drifted down to the edge of the water and plopped himself onto a rock by the shoreline. He put his hands in the pockets of his duster and felt the Derringer. Pulling it out, he drew a long look at the small gun. Hefting it in his right hand, he arched back, ready to throw the Derringer into the river, but had to stop himself.

The inside of his head hurt—as if someone had torn a great rift in his mind. Galen violently rubbed his temples. Before him the river seemed to fade away; again he was back in the Gypsy’s parlor, repeating a scene buried in his memory.

“Where were you born?”

“I don't know.”

“Who were your parents?”

“I don't know.”

“What is the date of your birth?”

He rubbed his eyes, watching the candle-lit room disappeared as the river faded back into view. Finally, Galen stood from the rock. He faced the great roaring river, then tilted his head to the sky and bellowed, “Why do I not know?”

The world, it seemed, was spinning around him. He could see what felt like the passage of time whizzing past as he propelled forward through it. Inside his head, synapses fired a hundred times their normal rate and load, causing his conscious mind to buckle under an overwhelming flood of forgottens he was helpless to hold back.

And, as if landing with a thud, he was there—a dark place his mind hadn’t gone to in over a hundred years. His hand ran along the side of a tree. He could feel the rough surface of its bark against his touch though he dared not look beyond it.