A Fistful of Horror - Tales Of Terror From The Old West (3 page)

The jail’s window grates had no glass in them, and the evening wind was unopposed as it whistled and whispered between the narrow metal bars like the insidious chorus of a dead world. The transit of clouds obscured the silvered moonlight sporadically, in eerie tribute to the vulture’s shadow Keen had encountered earlier that evening. Without thinking, his fingers tightened around his rifle’s grip.

“They said the messenger was an angel, but its eyes were made only to witness the glory of God’s High Kingdom, not this lowborn dungeon of flesh. So it needed eyes to see our world and judge its people. Many eyes, so many eyes. The doctor set off for the church with his prize, and his wife was set to take my other peeper. But I had faked being lame; playing up my helplessness to lure her in. When she came at me with a switchblade, I had the measure of her. I slit her fucking throat Keen, and I’d do it again in a second! But even when I killed her, she couldn’t stop smiling!” Buxtan hissed furiously.

Keen said nothing, but kept his eyes on the one door into the cell block, the flickering of an oil lamp the only light in the adjoining room.

“I ran. I didn’t even have my pants, but I didn’t care. I didn’t dare go back to look for my things. Not when I could still see…things.”

“Things?” Keen asked flatly, momentarily distracted by a cloud that swept past the window, followed by the loud stamping of the jailer down the hall.

“Wings and candles. It was like I was a part of…something. Something which wasn’t human. The muscles didn’t cling to the bones right, and the things I saw it do. Peeling a man’s head like a soft peach, wittering some kind of freak’s tongue as it did it. Drinking bones and taking faces. I never saw the whole beast, just the shadows it threw against the back wall. It was like I was there, looking out through my stolen eye. It was always surrounded with these eyeless heathens, falling over themselves to earn its praise and feed it sacrifices. But this thing…this thing doesn’t think like a person. Not even a little bit.”

Keen stood up, shaking his head, pacing before the cell. “Buxtan, you’re full of horseshit. I’ve been to this town plenty of times. They may love God s’much as they fear him, but I’ve never seen nor heard a hair of what you’re spewing.”

Buxtan threw himself at the bars, reaching out to Abel like a drowning man desperate for a hand.

“Keen, don’t you go doubting now! I see you! You aren’t sure anymore. I can tell. I didn’t think anything of it either at first. They were just dreams; I thought I was just shook up by their torturing of me. But as you brought me closer, the visions came back. Waking visions. I can see it clearly now, squatting in its den. When they take the eyes, it must... I don’t know. You look at their eyes! I swear to you, you’ll see; empty worm-burrows!”

Keen struck the bars, sending Buxtan sliding across the cell. Keen almost reached the door, before turning back. “I said I’d listen. I listened. But I ain’t fighting this fight for you. I do not make the law, I just-”

“Keen!” Buxtan interrupted with a yelp.

The jailer burst through the door, a pistol in hand. Instinct took over. Keen threw his whole weight against the door, slamming the door on the jailer. A crunch, as the thick door cracked bone.

The pistol boomed twice as the grinning loon struggled against him. Bullets struck metal and ricocheted, showering the cowering Buxtan with sparks. Keen turned to smash his rifle butt across the jailer’s knuckles. The pistol clattered to the floor, but the cultist barged his way in, flinging Keen backwards.

Before he could get a shot off with his rifle, the jailer grappled with him, desperately trying to wrestle the gun from his grip. It was too close to punch. Knees and heads clashed as the two men rolled around on the floor. Eventually, Keen managed to wrangle himself into a position straddling the thrashing psychopath. Keen worked the lever on the Winchester to reload, but as the loaded bullet was ejected, he rammed the rifle downwards, impaling the jailer through the throat with the lever.

The man made a strangled, gargling noise as blood gushed from his mouth and throat, coating Keen’s leather gloves with sticky gore. But the man was not dead. He threw Keen off of him, as a man might cast aside a child. His strength unnerved Keen; such raw power was unusual in even a healthy man, let alone one not long for this earth. The jailer rose to his feet unsteadily, desperately tugging at the rifle lodged in his trachea as he brandished a wicked looking blade in his other hand. As he did, the weapon discharged again and again, firing randomly around the room. Soon smoke and shattered lamp-glass was everywhere.

Keen took up the jailer’s fallen colt, rolling aside as his foe stabbed at him. Abel threw his stool at the man, smashing his rifle free, but the blow sent it flying into the next room.

Keen faced down the madman. Both were standing at opposite sides of the room. The jailer still blocked his path, grinning through a stream of blood which should have killed him. His glasses had fallen away. Beyond their darkened glass there were no eyes. They were not even sockets. The holes that remained were puckered and crusted, cracked like the skin of a reptile. The corpulent man’s fine clothes were now tainted with blood, and he still wielded a blade which was somewhere between a knife and a blasted scimitar. The man looked like a vision of hell as he advanced upon Keen.

Keen had his Smith and Wesson in one hand, the colt in the other. Each shot was a blow to the body that ripped veritable chunks from the massive psychopath. Eventually, he toppled to his knees. Abel jabbed the barrel of the colt into one of the festering holes in the man’s head and blew his brains out. The lifeless hulk slumped to the floor silently.

There was quiet for a moment; only the coughing of Buxtan and the slow panting of Keen broke the almost physical silence. Buxtan was the first to speak.

“I told you s-”

“I will shoot you if you finish that sentence,” Keen replied ominously. Rooting around on the jailer’s corpse, Keen fished out a loop of keys, and threw them into the cell. Buxtan silently took them, and began trying each key to see which would free him.

“Why…why do you call it an angel?” Keen asked.

“Because it looks like one,” Buxtan replied breathlessly, not looking up from his work.

Keen shook his head. “But I thought angels were blond waifs with harps and such nonsense. Eyes on wings? Blinding folk? I don’t get it,” Keen asked, his voice honestly confused.

Buxtan looked up. “You haven’t read the bible have you Mister Keen? Not of your own volition have you?”

Keen just looked at him.

“There is a good reason why them angels in the good book yell ‘Fear not’ when they come a calling,” Buxtan said darkly, as the cell swung open. “My advice? Don’t be there when they wake it up again…”

Keen grabbed Buxtan’s arm as he made to leave. “What are you doing? We have to get out of here,” the former prisoner pleaded.

The bounty hunter ran a hand through his beard, before replacing his hat upon his balding head. “Not yet. Not…yet,” Keen replied ominously.

Buxtan’s eye widened. Keen was putting on a solid, grim visage, but he could feel the tremor in his grip. The bounty hunter was terrified and confused. Before Buxtan could protest, Keen hauled him off.

***

Irvan prowled back towards the jail. His hollow sockets took in no light, but he needed no petty vision to see. He had something greater now. The doors were locked shut, but they were no obstacle; Irvan pounded the doorframe to splinters, before ripping away the panels. He cocked his revolver silently as he drew it from its leather holster at his side.

“Pastor Bartholomew has been informed of your stubbornness, friends old and new. He’ll be coming.” He called out in the gloom of the jail; every lamp had been extinguished, but again, this meant nothing to the prowler. He searched the place slowly, almost on all fours like a hound as he sniffed and licked at the air. “Do not worry. Once your sight is gone, we can fill you up with something far better. Won’t that be nice?”

There was a flash in the darkness and Irvan’s head snapped back; a single, neat bullet hole between his sockets dribbled with blood; blood which began to fizz and froth with black foam. Irvan squealed, firing into the darkness frantically, even as his head began to collapse in upon itself; the alien blood consuming his frail human flesh like a necrotising phage. Finally, he collapsed into a molten heap of formless, mewling man-parts, gurgling and wailing pathetically as it finally died.

“Are you sure this is the work of a damn angel?” Keen cursed, as he stepped over the mess and out into the town.

Thankfully, Keen’s horse yet lived and the bounty hunter silently whispered in the beast’s ear as Buxtan followed him out into the town.

The houses were empty. The townspeople had abandoned their homes in a single great mass; Keen could see their tracks in the dirt track that served as a road through Solitude.

“Where are they going? The church?” Keen asked.

Buxtan closed his remaining eye. “No…no, somewhere…under it. I can feel it moving. It is waking Keen! Its eyes are open!”

Keen breathed slowly. His hand was quivering as it gripped his gore-slicked Winchester. “Get on the horse Buxtan.”

The one-eyed man was stubborn and followed Keen, as he marched over to the saloon, which stood alone in the town, boarded up like a derelict’s house. “They keep their alcohol here?” Keen asked, as he began to rip away planks from the bar’s doors.

“Now ain’t the time for drinking yourself into a stupor Abel! We have to leave! They’re waking it Keen; feeding it notions and prayers and Lord knows what!”

Keen shrugged, as he began to rummage through the dusty barrels that sat stacked on the bar room floor, rolling them out one by one. “This isn’t for my consumption, mister Buxtan,” Keen corrected his temporary ally. “I intend to burn this town to the ground, and burn out whatever rot has taken hold!”

Buxtan shook his head, shivering. “No good can come of this. Please, we can go now...”

“Not on my horse you ain’t. Not till this is done,” Keen interjected harshly. Buxtan swallowed, eyeing the abandoned town with a fearful gaze; any moment, he expected one of the eyeless loons to gut him with their wicked knives, or finish the job of blinding him.

Yet, there was no one. Bartholomew had evidently summoned all his faithful to the angelic messenger’s side. With the town deserted, it was a simple task for Keen to roll barrels through every door he could find. Once inside, he used whatever heavy tools he had to hand to smash the barrels open, spilling thick, pungent liquor across the floorboards and flammables of the cult’s dwellings. Finally, he tossed in whiskey bottles stoppered with burning rags to complete his grim task. Keen was methodical. He was thorough, and he was merciless.

The fire took quickly, roaring as it flashed between buildings like some great fiery wyrm. The barrels spilled their flammable contents like blood, easily spreading the building inferno from building to building. The furnace heat burst from windows, each shattered pane going off like a firecracker on a pyre. Keen watched the place burn around him, his stern features splitting into a smile.

“Now we go…” he nodded to himself.

But as he turned around, the air was split by a far keener cry that overshadowed the crackle and hiss of the spreading fire. Louder than a thunder clap, the cry forced Keen to one knee; he screamed in pain. It was like the braying of a horse, merged with the hideous cries of a burning man.

Keen’s horse reared in bestial terror.

“I have to Keen! I have to!” screamed Buxtan. The one-eyed fiend lurched for his black charger, hauling himself up onto the beast. The outlaw grabbed the horse’s reins, wrestling with the bucking animal as the flames writhed on the breeze, spitting embers into the cold night’s sky.

A shadow; brief amidst the dancing light of Solitude’s inferno, swept over them for a moment.

“You aren’t taking the horse! Buxtan you ol’ coward! Get here!” Keen bellowed, drawing his repeater to his shoulder. Buxtan was weeping openly, shaking his head as he turned the horse away from Keen.

“They’ve let it out now. I can see it now. Sorry Keen!” he wailed before digging the stirrups into the beast’s flanks.

But Buxtan and his stolen horse did not get far. It descended through the gathering clouds of smoke like a falling stone, billowing with ash and steam. The horse buckled and burst like a pigskin of water as it struck. Buxtan shrieked, but was soon lost amidst the confusion of talons and screeching. It was as if a choir of songbirds were burning in oil, flinging their charcoal feathers in all directions as they screamed their last, agonised ballads.

Keen staggered backwards, his rifle falling from his hands as he fell to the floor in shock.

It was massive, but it moved so fast, with jerking motions of a bird. He could not see the creature through the profusion of its many wings, which folded and flapped about its form like some demented funeral shroud. It was true. It was all true. He saw the blinking of its many eyes, set into its festering wings; jewels in a crown of feathers and thorns.

Keen rose to his feet. He could not look away from this creature. He watched as its long limbs raised Buxtan overhead. He watched it peel him like an orange, even as he still lived. His screaming turned a wet, guttural thing, as his flesh looped about the bony talons of the angel of Solitude. Slowly, its many wings unfurled, revealing the awful thing beneath.