Shadow Falls: Badlands (20 page)

But this time, it seemed as if his gaze lingered on him longer than it had in any of his other visions. This time he stared knowingly back into Galen’s eyes—revealing a very distinct glimmer of recognition before the vision faded into nothingness.

Dozens of ruddy faces peered up at him as he stood above them on the gallows, their voices calling out for his neck. In the moment the noose was being slipped over his head, he saw the man—standing unnoticed among the angry crowd. The remains of two burnt wings protruded from his back, just as Galen remembered—just as he couldn’t help but remember. This man’s lips silently moved, and his dark, piercing eyes entered Galen before drawing the two together. He could see those eyes as he saw them before, in the church as the man cackled “Brother Thomas, do something!”

“Father?” Galen’s voice croaked out loud, suddenly back on the Majestyk.

No answer.

He blinked, back on the gallows with the rope around his neck, the cheering faces of Sagebrush’s poor calling out for his death.

“Father?” he asked again. When the trapdoor opened under his feet and his head jerked upwards, he was vaulted back into consciousness by someone yanking a handful of his hair.

Galen wanted to cry out but was silenced, his mind fully stifled by the face of the hooded woman staring directly into his eyes. Nena cocked her head at Galen, trying to read his face. Here in the daylight, he could finally make out her pupils, which appeared like two cut pieces of raw jade.

“What did you see?” she asked.

Galen let out no answer, save for a low grunt.

“I asked, ‘What did you see?’” Nena bellowed.

Again Galen held his tongue, angering Nena to the point of violence. She yanked hard on the fistful of hair—hard enough to extract some by its roots.

“Let him out,” she hissed.

The pockmarked man produced a set of iron keys on a ring. He opened the pillory lock and, with a grunt, lifted the heavy upper half of the stock off its frame. Immediately, Galen fell backward, slipping through the neck and wrist cutouts before collapsing on the ground.

As he lay there, he could smell his own stench. Nena must have as well, because she turned her head and ordered bucket boy to douse him with water from head to toe. The splash caught Galen; he gasped for air, inhaling the chilled water into his lungs. He began coughing.

I'm going to drown on bare land
, he thought. “
The irony.
” He laughed and a chortle escaped his mouth.

“What is so funny?” demanded Nena.

Galen couldn't help himself; what had started as an unintentional slip had now grown into full gales of laughter.

“I said, ‘What is so funny?’” Nena roared this time, obviously losing patience.

Enraged, the man with the pockmarked face grabbed the wooden bucket from the boy's hand and, with one swing, smashed it across Galen’s face. The boy turned his head as to not be hit with flying shrapnel.

“Shut yer god-damned mouth!” he shouted at Galen, who had been dazed and nearly knocked unconscious by the blow.

Galen groaned and tried to rub his head, but his arms were so weakened by his confinement that lifting them was near impossible. Although was free, days locked in the pillory made his limbs feel as if they were still imprisoned.

The pockmarked man threw aside what was left of the bucket, grabbed Galen by one of his arms, and began dragging him across the grass. The force caused Galen to yelp, as he feared his enfeebled arm would be dislocated. When he looked up, he saw he was being dragged into a circle of about two-dozen men. The men parted to allow them inside. Galen immediately spotted the pole, which had been secured in the ground. Galen's eyes widened in horror as he thought of what they had done to Maria; weakly he tried to fight and pull away. He desperately willed for his physical strength to return and, with one swift movement, pulled away from his surprised captor.

Get up, damnit,
his mind screamed. As he felt his legs begin to respond, dozens of hands were already on him. The men from the circle had descended upon Galen and were pulling him upwards toward the pole. In moments he was pinned; one man lashed his hands above his head to the pole while another used a knife to cut his clothes away, stripping him naked.

“Burn them,” Nena motioned toward Galen’s fetid shirt and pants. They were the clothes that originally belonged to Maria's dead husband; they were now ruined by Galen’s blood, sweat, and waste while being confined in the confines.

Galen tried to eye Nena, but the blow from the bucket had opened a cut over his left eye, essentially half-blinding him.

She has something in her hand,
he thought.
What is it? A torch?

He tried to squint but still could not make it out through his veiled vision. When she got closer and raised her hand, Galen could clearly see the whip.

The leather cracked as the lash snapped against Galen’s chest, forcing his pent-up scream to birth itself from his upturned mouth.

Before the sound of Galen's wail could die down, Nena's whip once more hissed through the air, cutting a line across Galen's stomach so deep that crimson droplets surfaced from his raised and reddened flesh.

Again Galen screamed, his neck arching back, its skin straining against the bulging veins within. From Nena's other hand came something that she shoved in Galen's face. Flinching, he turned away. But something, a force beyond his control, pulled his gaze toward it again. Although blood covered vision, he saw it and recoiled in horror.

In Nena's hand was the eye—the same cursed thing he had left behind after fleeing Kansas City. But as she held it up to his face, Galen could see it was different. Whereas the eye he had killed the Gypsy crone for was perfectly preserved, the one in Nena’s hand appeared to be chipped and yellowed with age.

He was pulled into the singular gaze of the eyeball, and once more his mind flashed to a vision. Columns of demons marched up from the depths of the abyss, their front lines clashing headlong with winged warrior angels. The earth was left scorched—a scarred battlefield.

The vision was torn from his mind as Nena pulled away the eye.

“What did you see?” she demanded. As Galen’s gaze fell to the ground, she seemed to intuit the answer.

“Where did you get that evil thing?” grunted Galen weakly.

“This eye, and its twin, were carved out of the skull of my father after he put a bullet in his skull and left us in the woods to die. This eye belonged to William Lawton. I began life as his daughter, Alyson, and if I am not mistaken, you are my older brother Thomas.”

*****

CHAPTER 19

I
don’t believe you,
Galen's mind screamed. He looked into Nena’s face, searching with every hope on earth that this news just wasn't possible. His mind ran through any memory, any single thought his brain could muster, to find some kind of recollection—of her, of a sister, of a family—but there was nothing, not even a glimmer. He had been lied to by countless charlatans, con men and crooks looking to rook him—people like the Gypsy who would mislead their own mothers if it meant getting what they wanted. He'd ducked their oily advances time and again based upon his intuition. However, it was impossible for Galen to admit that there wasn’t a part of him hidden deep down inside his soul that believed her.

“It's true,” Nena told him. “You are my brother—and you left us.” She held the petrified eye of William Lawton up to Galen's face. “You have witnessed that which our father saw: death; destruction for many; the most devastating war this world has ever seen. It is coming. And your arrival can only mean a great many wheels are in motion.”

“If I am your departed brother, then why imprison me? Why do you whip me as if I am your mortal enemy?”

“Because, dear Thomas, in whatever form you currently inhabit, you represent much less my brother than something else. You may have been precisely him at one time, but now you are much more dangerous.

“How am I a danger?” Galen croaked.

“Because there is absolutely no chance that brother Miles does not know that you are alive and here. He likely intends to use you for something that I, and the rest of the Magus, should fear because your sudden arrival here means it has started again.”

“He doesn’t know,” the pockmarked man said. Galen’s rage flared; if there was any way out of this, he promised himself he would kill the bastard.

“Ah, I sense rage,” Nena said holding out her hand, palm toward Galen. “That is a good thing, but I fear the part of you that is any use to me is too deeply buried inside a man who has become nothing but a killer.”

Momentarily, she lowered the whip, her hand relaxing.

“I know where you are headed. It's calling to you. What do you know about the town of Shadow Falls?” she asked.

“Shadow Falls?” he responded, his mind drifting.
That had to be it,
he thought. Galen realized Nena's utterance had been the first time he had heard the name of the place he'd seen so clearly in his mind all these weeks. “What can you tell me?” he finally inquired.

***

He had been walking for close to an hour, carrying Alyson in his arms. Miles cursed the souls of those who made this happen.

Following several feet behind him was Elsibeth, the seven-year-old daughter from another family aboard the Majestyk. Along with himself and Alyson, she was the only other survivor of the attack.

“Why?” Elsibeth cried out as she sobbed. She was inconsolable. Her parents had been eviscerated in front of her—torn apart before her very eyes. It had taken Miles hours of begging to get Elsibeth to leave the scene of the massacre. She had refused, clutching hopelessly to her mother's severed torso, clinging to her bosom as if she were just an infant.

He finally convinced Elsibeth to leave when he told her he was going without her and that she would be forced to stay here all night, all alone. Finally she agreed and, almost immediately, he regretted choosing to save her life.

And now, with the non-stop crying, Miles had begun to wish the predators had taken her as well, for he was afraid she would upset baby Alyson.

“How much farther?” whined Elsibeth as Miles trudged west into the setting sun.

“I don't know,” he grumbled.

“Speak up,” mewed Elsibeth “I can't hear—”

“I said I don't bloody well know!” he turned and screamed. The sudden shriek of his voice caused Alyson to wail, scaring Elsibeth enough to make her once again burst into tears.

“Now look what you've done!” shouted Miles, putting Alyson down and trying to stop her bawling.

“Shhhh, shhhh. There, there,” he whispered into his sister's face. “Don't cry.”

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” Elsibeth sobbed.

Miles looked up at her; her eyes were red and puffy from crying all day. He thought of how terrified she must have been while the attacking beasts circled her parents' wagon before dragging them out with their fangs.

And as he gazed at Elsibeth's face, he realized there had been a terrible mistake.

She should not have survived the attack,
the voice in his head told him.
It’s wrong.
She had no part in what was to come and would only get in the way. Alyson began to bawl louder, and Miles started to wonder how he was going to feed her.

“I want to go home!” Elsibeth cried out. “I don’t want to go any further.” She plopped down on the ground cried.

It’s wrong,
the voice told him.
She doesn’t belong here: in our house. In our name.

“It’s going to be okay,” Miles told Elsibeth, approaching her. “I promise.”

The reach of his hands across her neck surprised Elsibeth, but he had caught her between sobs, so there was no air in her lungs for her to cry out. He pushed her onto the ground, squeezing tighter. Elsibeth’s mouth gaped like that of a dying fish. Her arms flailed wildly as her brain was running out of oxygen.

All around him, the sounds of the woods faded away into silence. Using his thumbs, Miles applied pressure on her windpipe, crushing it under his fingers. Her small body bucked once, then again, and afterwards Miles could feel Elsibeth fading away. Even as her movement stopped and her gaze glassed over into a frozen stare, he held onto her neck for several more minutes, ensuring she was dead.

Very good,
the voice in his head told him.
Very good indeed.

And with a whoosh the sound all around him rushed back in like a crashing tide, and Alyson’s braying tears cut through the air like a blade.

Miles turned to her—a small bundle of life, helpless in this world. She would be his responsibility and he resented it. There was already too much to do without the burden of a baby to deal with.

He looked down at his hands—the same ones he had just used to kill the only other person left from the Majestyk other than himself and his sister.

His hands were rock steady. He was prepared to use them for whatever was needed to accomplish his intended goals.

And with these hands he picked up baby Alyson and cradled her against his chest.