Wordsushi Blog

CHAPTER 21

Miles’ body convulsed, his eyes rolling backwards into his skull as he shook.

“Miles!” cried Alyson. “Miles!”

Tears began to stream down her cheeks as his body temperature rose so high his skin was scorching hot to the touch. A choking sound escaped from his mouth and Alyson stuck her fingers inside to keep him from swallowing his tongue.

Over and over she called out his name, but inside Miles’ head his sister’s voice was nowhere to be heard, for he was now quite far away from that plane of existence.

When he opened his eyes, the rain was beating down on him, falling in thick sheets that soaked him instantly to the bone. Miles stood and looked down at the rocky ground upon which he was standing. He gazed down at his arms. They seemed longer, thicker. He squeezed his hands into fists, hearing his joints crackle like dry firewood. They felt stiff, as did all of his body. From the bottom of his peripheral vision, he saw something on his face, just above his lip and quickly tried to brush it away. But what his fingers found where the bristles of whiskers. He reached again, more carefully this time, to find a full moustache under his nose and then a thick beard upon his face.

Instinctively, his hand went toward his hair where he found a soaking wet mop of it hanging just below his shoulder. Though he had no way to see his face with his eyes, his fingertips could feel the creases in his damp skin. He had grown older somehow, the exact amount was a mystery.

Ten years? Twenty years? Inside his head were none of the memories that would allow his mind to fill that gap. It was as if he had only aged physically.

And as he marveled at his own body, he heard neither the footsteps coming up behind him in the pouring rain nor the massive fist that hissed through the air toward the back of his head.

But it was the voice in his mind—Move! Now!—that saved him. Quickly, he bent forward at the waist as the hammer-like blow missed him by less than an inch.

And as Miles twisted around to his left, in the opposite direction from where the fist came, he saw his attacker, the same darkened figure that had approached him inside the killing field of his youth. The beast with the silhouette of a man but eyes that appeared as if all that were behind them were orange flames, like looking through a portal of a furnace door.

The heat that radiated from the dark figure’s body was so intense it caused the rain to turn instantly into sheets of steam coming from his ruddy flesh. And though Miles had moved fast enough to avoid the first blow, he wasn’t so lucky with the second. The other fist of the dark figure crashed into Miles’ chest, hitting him with the force of a boulder and he flew backwards through the air, landing on his neck and shoulders, skidding across the wet and hardened ground until he came to a stop twenty feet away.

An intense pain radiated through his chest where he’d been struck and Miles rushed to catch his breath. As he looked up he could see the dark figure, coming toward him, its body looming as large as an oak tree, its piercing and orange eyes glaring down at him meaning to…

Obliterate me, Miles thought. With each step the hulking dark figure took, the ground literally shook. And as Miles tried to scramble backwards, he felt the cut open on his hand. He held it up and the very knife cut his father had made all those years ago had split again and from inside the wound, as it did before his father’s death, came a blinding light. One growing from a point into a glowing ball.

And again, as it had then, the vision came to Miles, endless images flashing by his eyes as if time were rocketing past him while he was standing still. There was flame and smoke. An Earth scorched. The sky opening. A battle of darkness and light.

And there before him was his father in the moments before his death standing before Miles with the pistol pressed to his temple.

“I’m not the Coyote,” William said “You are. And you will be victorious.”

And with a steady hand, William Lawton pulled the trigger.

“NOOOO!” screamed Miles and from the bloodied cut in his hand came the light emanating brighter than a thousand candles, illuminating the ground they were standing upon as if it were day and not this seemingly endless night.

And as it shone on him, the darkened figure stopped and turned its head away as if struck, but Miles did not notice for he was looking at what was just on the light’s periphery.

Hundreds and hundreds of yellow eyes, deep-set pairs surrounding him in a giant circle. Watching every move. Watching this…

Battle, Miles thought. For that’s what it was. And from the edge of the light came the voices in a cacophony of whispers and instantly Miles understood.

They were the voices of the dead.

And it took no longer than the firing of a single synapse for all the pieces to fall into place in Miles’ mind.

The images of those thousands of Native Americans sacrificing their captives and young, the slaughter of the entire traveling party of the Majestyk including his mother and brother.

Their blood, which had soaked into the ground, called out to him because it was their battle he was being summoned to fight.

Over who controls Death itself, the voices told him.

Death had never been an independent entity but had always served at the whim of its master, taking as few or as many from the mortal plane as the master saw fit. Satiating that hunger only so much as the master needed. And for centuries, the Indians knew the fight for control over the realm of death had fallen between the spirit of the Wolf and the spirit of the Coyote. That every so many decades they would come together to renew their blood feud.

And though Miles was unsure how this fit into the apocalyptic visions his father had suffered from, he was certain they indeed did and what was to become of him on this battleground in the pouring rain would potentially be another step towards the end of mankind.

The blinding light faded from his hand, plunging the yellow-eyed observers back into eternal night and the darkened figure came toward Miles once again.

“I’m the Coyote. I will be victorious,” he said in a whisper under his breath, feeling the ground shake with each coming step of The Wolf.

“Miles! Miles!” Alyson called out as she cradled Miles’ seemingly lifeless body and sobbed.

And suddenly she saw it.

On the ground, no more than a foot away, was the eye of their father which Miles kept with him at all times. The twin to the one that she shunned because she could see what was within the cursed orb.

And as she reached down and closed her fingers around it, the feeling in her chest was like the massive eruption of a clap of thunder. Immediately she could feel the energy coming from his body, like balls of heat lightning erupting all around them. Tremors began in Miles’ legs, turning from spasm to fullblown shakes but Alyson held his body as tightly as possible for fear that he would hurt himself.

“Miles!” she called again, but he seemed not to hear her voice at all.

However, though his mind and spirit were far away on a distant plane, he was aware of her presence even as the darkened figure approached. And he knew she would be his only chance. Using all of his concentration, he was able to summon his body and all at once he broke from Alyson’s grip and sat bolt upright, his eyeballs rolled back showing nothing but shock white.

And from within his throat came his voice as if telegraphed to this location.

“Take the eye to Father Henri. Run!” Miles spoke before his body fell completely limp again.

And run she did, through the woods along the pathways that darkened before her as the sun slipped from the sky.

She ran until it felt like her heart would explode and each breath seared her lungs, and still she was too far away from the settlement to believe she could reach it in time. As her legs started to cramp, she could feel the presence of something behind her, trailing not too far behind in the woods.

Something that Alyson knew had hungry, sharp teeth.

Even as the pain grew inside her chest and in her legs, she kept moving.

It burns, she thought, quickly acknowledging it would be much worse if whatever was following on her heels actually caught up to her.

Run! Don’t stop! Her mind cried out as she thought of her brother Miles and the danger he had put himself into.

And up ahead there was a rustling in the woods and Alyson stopped dead in her tracks.

Surrounded, she thought, trying to figure out if there was a chance to outrun whatever was out there. And just then, stepping out where she could be seen, was a familiar figure.

“Odile!” Alyson shrieked, running toward her friend. But as Odile saw her she froze.

Behind Alyson, she could clearly see the presence looming behind the little girl.

And the literally hundreds of yellow eyes gleaming in the darkness rushing toward her.

The fear overcame Odile, no longer could her brain process that it was Alyson standing in front of her needing help, the same dear friend who she had run into the woods to find. Instead all that remained was the most primal urge to flee as she turned on her heels.

But the charging creatures came swiftly. The coyotes emerged from the woods, rushing past Alyson as if she was a rock in the middle of a stream, and they descended upon Odile.

There was no scream as their teeth quickly silenced her and flayed the flesh from Odile’s body.

As a shriek arose in Alyson’s throat, she cupped both hands over her mouth for fear that the beasts would turn their attention towards her. But as quickly as they came, the coyotes were gone into the woods at a run, leaving behind practically nothing of Odile other than bloodied bone, hair and gristle.

And as the murderous beasts fled, the last to leave turned back and looked at Alyson, meeting her gaze with its yellow eyes before following the rest of the pack into the woods.

Oh no, thought Alyson with great horror. They’re heading toward the settlement.

Miles lay beaten with his head over the edge of a crack in the earth, a crevasse going down into a bottomless void. The heel of the Wolf pressed down on his throat, choking the very life out of him. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth, down his cheek, falling into the pit and there was nothing he could do to stop his impending death.

Until a feeling arose inside his body, an energy welling up inside that hit him like a jolt of electricity. All at once, Miles felt the strength come back into his arms as he grabbed the Wolf’s foot with both hands and reveled in the surprise on the face of his attacker.

As he sat at the one table in his room, lit only by a single candle, Father Henri paged through his thumbworn copy of the Bible. Though not anything he was willing to share with the others, he had been sowing the seeds of concern for longer now than he could remember. He had first felt it when they had arrived here and then more so as it increased dramatically upon the unexpected arrival of the boy and his sister some seven years ago.

He had never expected to live out his days with a grey beard until old age took him, but over the past few hours Father Henri felt that what he ultimately feared was finally upon him, catching him very unprepared. He had to warn the others immediately, but how do you provision someone for something like this?

And there, as he turned the page, he found it: Revelation 18:08

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.

Suddenly he felt a chill run through his entire body. He closed the book and laid it before him. Coming from the woods outside was the pounding of hundreds of feet getting closer

As he arose, he took his crucifix from around his neck and kissed it before opening the door. Outside, he could see them rushing toward him, toward the settlement, their yellow eyes and sharp teeth visible in the moonlight.

And in the air it was there growing louder, the last sound he would ever hear as they bore down on him, the sound of countless voices hushed into a whisper.

We shall live in His house…

We shall live in His name…

CHAPTER 20

Miles stood at the edge of the settlement for hours, staring into the woods until his eyes went vacant and glassy. What he told nobody was that he was listening as the woods talked to him. Not a single person questioned the strange behavior. Miles had done the same thing nearly every day for seven years, ever since he had arrived here with Alyson.

Nearly everyone paid no mind to Miles because of the circumstances which had brought him here—the brutal death of his family and the four dozen members of their traveling party. Nonetheless it did not prevent most others in the settlement to consider Miles to be a bit strange. When called upon, Miles was a hard worker, often toiling in the vegetable fields for hours without a single complaint, but it was when they were in his company that many spoke in hushed voices that there was something about him that essentially gave them the creeps.

One man remarked to his wife that Miles had cried once for his slain parents, the day he arrived, but never did again afterwards.

In fact Miles had shunned closeness with anyone at the settlement, including Father Henri who made every attempt to be a surrogate father to the boy. Miles, however, chose to be distant, even refusing to learn the native language of his hosts. In this way he ensured that the only ones there who could communicate with him were Father Henri and his now nearly eight year-old sister Alyson.

And now that Miles had reached the age of seventeen, he had grown into a strapping young man and when he chose to go off into the woods for days by himself, nobody stopped him.

On these occasions, Father Henri would sit at night, sipping wine with a watchful eye to the woods for Miles’ return. Though he was unsure what the boy was doing, he was concerned. He had imagined on several occasions that Miles had been journeying back through the woods to the scene of the massacre. And though he himself had not ever gone, it was the day after Miles arrived that a small party of the men from the settlement made the trek to the spot Miles described in an attempt to find any other survivors.

What they had found were bodies torn to bits and a field full of four-legged and winged scavengers eager to fill their bellies with the flesh of the dead.

The clouds of blowflies that had accumulated and the decay of the corpses had made it difficult in some cases to tell man from woman. As they went from wagon to wagon the results were the same, appearing just as Miles had described.

They had even found the single victim who had died not by animal attack but by his own hand. Maggots crawled from the self-inflicted head wound and wriggled through the empty eye sockets in his skull.

Between them, the men could not decide if this one man had been lucky to take his own life or a coward for not trying to save the others.

Later they returned to the settlement and reported their findings to Father Henri. The priest asked the three men to never speak of what they had seen, certainly not to Miles. They all agreed it best be left to fade into memory.

But fade it did not, Father Henri feared. The strange boy he had partially raised was returning time and again to somehow commune with the spirits that the priest suspected haunted the boy to this day.

And even if he had known he had been even partially right, Father Henri still would not have been able to do anything to stop what was about to happen.

Once again, Miles stepped through the thicket and walked across the overgrown grass to the remains of his parents’ wagon. The seasons had ravaged it until all that remained was a rusted and rotted hulk sitting in the tall weeds.

There was no illusion in Miles’ mind. He looked out at the skeletal remains of the other wagons in the Majestyk’s party and did not see the vibrant faces that rode them when they were almost new. He saw the wrecks for what they were, splintered remnants of the past that would continue to fade with time until they were nothing but dust.

There was no nostalgia for this place, none whatsoever, for it was not the memories that brought Miles here, but the blood in the ground that had given it power. The bones of the dead had long since been dragged away, the flesh consumed but the blood of the innocent that had been spilled here in sacrifice acted like a magnet to Miles’ soul.

And over the years, as he grew older, that pull to this land grew stronger until it became the ever-consuming force of his life.

The face he wore around Father Henri and the others was a mask. They had proven very useful during a period of time when he had needed the food and shelter they could provide, but that time was soon coming to an end. He had chosen early on to not develop close relationships with those who he was certain would not live long enough to warrant the necessity.

And as dusk began to set, he stood in the field and could only imagine the thousands of lives before his family’s that had been taken here going back hundreds of years. People who had been held down onto the ground while their still beating hearts were carved out of their chests by high priests wielding razor sharp obsidian knives. Those who had been buried and burned alive, including children. The young were especially valued as sacrifices because they were thought to be pure and unspoiled and it was thought that the more they cried and wailed during their slow torturous death, the better the omen.

From his pocket he took his father’s kerchief, now slightly yellowed and wrinkled from age. What he had kept inside however, seemed as pristine as the day he’d obtained it. Gently, he picked up the single eye of his father, the one he had kept. He had given the second one to Alyson, who had shunned it for reasons Miles still did not understand.

He gazed into the eye, willing his mind to enter into the same visual pathways enchanted in the orb, to see that which his father had seen during the years preceding the journey to the new world—the same visions, Miles was convinced, contained the keys to unlock not only his destiny but that of every man, woman and child in the mortal world.

But hard as he tried, he could not bring forth the visions from the long-dead eye. The images his father had seen, that he knew his sister Alyson had seen as well, were eluding him now as they had his entire life. Frustrated, he wrapped his fingers around the eye and took a deep breath. Again he pulled every ounce of inner strength from within his body until his arms shook and his legs caved under him. Miles fell, the eye slipping from his hands onto the ground just inches away from where he lay, breathing heavily, his heart pounding with furious intensity inside his chest.

And it was there that he sobbed in the grass. The draw of this land was so great, like a giant magnet pulling upon every cell inside his body but the one thing that he felt lay behind destiny’s door continued to elude him. Inside his father’s eye was the portent of what was to come, the very thing he sacrificed his family and the families of those he brought with him on the Majestyk.

With the knife he had used all those years ago to remove those eyes from his dead father’s skull, the same knife that his father had used on him to slit the palm of his hand, Miles drew a pentagram in the dirt and placed himself inside. Again he focused his mind on the orb until the ache in his brain pounded so hard it forced him to his knees. There he stayed with his head hung low.

There had never been a moment in Miles; life quite like this, one where the feeling of utter failure washed over him with such totality.

“I’ve failed you,” he spoke out loud. Cupped in his hands, the eye rolled to its side so that only the veiny backside pointed toward Miles.

“Why do you cry?” the voice asked, startling Miles. He looked up. Silhouetted against the setting sun was the figure of what appeared to be a man coming toward him.

In the woods, Alyson carried a basket of freshly washed laundry as she walked the path back from the creek toward the settlement. Behind her rose the tuneful voice of Odile, the French girl who had found both her and Miles seven years ago in the woods. Over the years Alyson and Odile had become close friends. It was Odile who had taught Alyson her native language, though Miles did his best to make sure she learned her fair share of English, and it was Alyson whom Odile had grown to confide in and visa versa.

From Odile’s mouth came an old folk song, one about the plight of a washerwoman who ran off with a man who didn’t love her and Alyson began to laugh.

But no sooner did she start than her chuckle caught in her throat.

Miles is in danger! Go! Now! A voice in her head told her.

Before she could give it any thought she let the basket of clean wash fall to the ground and was running into the woods.

“Alyson!” Odile called after her, a little bit confused and very much concerned.

As the figure approached, Miles felt a sense of utter fear in the pit of his stomach unlike anything else he’d felt since that night his father dragged him away from the camp and into the woods.

The night of his trancendence, he often thought of it in his mind. He had never forgotten the feeling of being trapped inside the pentagram while his father chanted.

But now he again faced the unknown.

In the last seven years the voices, the ones that spoke to him from the woods, always seemed to guide him, to assure him that he would soon take his place in the changing of the world.

And as he remained frozen, on his knees, those very same voices seemed to all at once abandon him.

As did his breath for the air around him suddenly turned dry and hot, pushing toward him as if a furnace door had just been opened in his face. Each attempt Miles made to inhale seemed to burn his throat and nostrils, and it became quickly apparent that with each step the darkened figure took, the heated air Miles was breathing in was radiating from the dark figure’s body.

Miles tried to get up but his legs felt weak and useless. And suddenly, his hands began to shake as the dark figure stood over him, blocking out all the light from the sky.

“Do you kneel before me out of respect? Or do you kneel out of fear?” The figure spoke as it reached down for Miles.

Alyson ran as hard as she could until it felt as if her heart would explode. The path toward the field she had left behind as a baby seemed to open up for her guiding her way. Though she had only ventured back here once in the intervening years, it was as if something were pulling her to her brother’s side.

And as she broke through the woods into the clearing, she could see the overgrown patches of weeds that now mostly hid the skeletal remains of the rotting wooden wagons that had been left behind. But as her eyes darted back and forth, Miles was nowhere to be seen.

But she could sense him. He was here. She pushed through the weeds, feeling his presence stronger and stronger until she found him, lying bleeding and badly hurt on the ground.

“Miles!” she cried out as she went to him, pulling him to her chest to comfort him. “Who did this?”

It was hard for Miles to answer for at first he could not speak and when he finally could what came out of his mouth was a warning.

“He’s here,” Miles revealed. “The Wolf.”

PART 3

CHAPTER 18

She was swept up in the air, her body as limp as a rag doll. Even in the dead of night he could see it all perfectly. Her bare feet swinging back and forth slightly, toes pointed downward toward the Majestyk’s wooden deck. He kept waiting for her to open her eyes, to see the peril in front of her, but it never happened as she was lifted higher until the man holding Anne Walsh tipped her over the starboard side rail where she fell wordlessly and was swallowed whole by the churning black waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

The deed was done. As her body tumbled lifelessly into the abyss the man in the frock coat turned without so much as spotting him.

Galen came to just as the sunrise brought with it the sound of birds in flight, taking off toward the sky on their way to warmer climes. One, a single black crow had stayed behind and cawed angrily at Galen from the top of a nearby tree. From which direction Galen was not sure for this marked his third dawn in the pillory and he was unable to raise his head due to the agonizing strain that being confined in this posture had caused on his neck.

One thing for sure was Galen had been certain that crow was the same that had shown up yesterday and sat in the trees incessantly mocking him and constantly drawing closer. The bird, Galen reckoned, had already identified him as a trapped and tasty morsel and was sitting back just biding its time until Galen died and it could sup on his body.

Or perhaps if it grew impatient enough it would realize its prey was powerless to fight back and would swoop down to greedily take Galen’s eyes.

In a few hours the boy would arrive with the bucket to splash water in Galen’s face and place a palmful of wet gruel into his open mouth. The bucket boy had no fear of Galen trying to bite off his fingertips in the process for Galen was too weak to put up any kind of fight. If they had intended to squelch his bravado then they had done so quite effectively. He was currently using whatever physical strength he had left to keep himself on his feet no matter how much the muscles in his legs burned and cried out for relief. If they were to give out, his body weight against the wooden stock would surely strangle him. And with the distinct possibility that his subsequent death would only be temporary, such a hellish scenario could indeed repeat itself over and over again without end.

While his body fought desperately to remain upright, Galen’s mind battled its own demons. When darkness fell, the nightmarish visions would creep in to haunt him. He struggled to keep his eyes open, to overcome the exhaustion of it all but even so they came in the form some horrible waking dream he could not escape. His mind vacillated between moments of mental twilight and complete delirium. It was here the scene of the burning church replayed itself again and again—the screams and helpless cries.

Quickly they moved, the ones still alive. Feet shuffling down the rickety steps, their panicked voices muffled by hands and sleeves over their mouths to block the smoke from their lungs.

“Hurry!” Galen yelled and blindly they followed his every word and threw themselves into the dark, round hole in the ground desperately trying a last ditch escape from the fate that awaited in the conflagration upstairs. In their terrified voices they screamed as their bodies thudded against each other, the thick wet sounds of flesh on bone and bone on rock as they hit bottom.

That sound, Galen’s mind cried because his voice could not. That maddening sound!

Men and women falling down a well turned into the image of the body of Anne Walsh tumbling into the ocean and the man in the frock coat, his face completely visible.

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

And as Galen’s mind cried for the images appearing before him to stop, the scene faded back into a dusty sun-beaten haze. Dozens of ruddy, red faces peered up at him as he stood above them on the gallows, their voices calling out for his neck. And in the moment the noose was being slipped over his head he saw the man standing unnoticed among the angry crowd. The man with the remains of two burnt wings protruding from his back. And Galen could only watch the man’s lips silently move but it was the man’s eyes, his dark and piercing eyes that bore into Galen’s brain, drawing the two of them together. He could see those eyes as he saw them before, turning toward him and now they were back in the church as the man cackled “Brother Thomas, do something!”

And with a whoosh, again it was all gone—the fire, the church and once more he was on the deck of the Majestyk

“Father?” Galen’s voice croaked out loud.

But there was no answer. Instead, as he blinked, he found himself again standing 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. But as the trapdoor opened under his feet and his head jerked upwards, this time he was vaulted back into consciousness by way of someone holding a handful of his hair.

Galen wanted to cry out but couldn’t for his mind was still trying to process the face of the hooded woman leaning forward to stare 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, which angered Nena to the point of violence. She yanked hard on the handful of hair again, hard enough to pull a good portion of it out by the roots.

“Let him out,” she hissed.

The pock-marked 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 the reek coming from him. Nena did too because she turned her head away from him and ordered bucket boy to douse him with water from head to toe. The splash caught Galen as he gasped for air and he inhaled it into his lungs and 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; that which started as an innocuous 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 pock-marked face grabbed the wooden bucket from the boy’s hand and, with one swing, smashed it over Galen’s head. The boy turned his head as to not be hit with flying pieces of his former vessel.

“Shut yer goddamned mouth!” he shouted down at Galen who had been dazed and nearly knocked unconscious by the blow.

Galen groaned and tried to reach up to touch his head but his arms were so weakened by his confinement that even lifting them was impossible. Days locked in the pillory made his limbs feel as if they were now encased in stone.

All that was left of the bucket in the pock-marked man’s grip was the steel handle and he tossed that aside and grabbed Galen by one of his arms and began dragging him across the grass. Galen tried to cry out in agony as it felt as if his arm would be dislocated from its socket but when he looked up he saw he was being dragged to a circle of about two dozen men. The circle opened and the men parted to allow them inside and immediately Galen spotted the pole, which had been erected in the ground. Galen’s eyes opened wide in horror as he thought of what they had done to Maria and weakly he tried to fight and pull away. Stubbornly, he dug his heels into the dirt refusing to be moved. In his mind, he willed for his physical strength to return and with one swift movement, pulled away from his surprised captor.

Get up, dammit, his mind screamed at him and as he could feel his legs start to respond, dozens of hands were on him. The men from the circle had descended upon Galen and were pulling him upwards toward the pole. In moments he was pinned as one man lashed his hands to the pole above his head and another used a knife to cut his clothes away and stripped him naked.

“Burn them,” Nena motioned toward Galen’s stinking and fetid shirt and pants. Clothes that originally belonged to Maria’s dead husband but were now ruined by Galen’s blood, sweat and waste from being confined in them.

Galen turned his head toward Nena but the cut that had been opened up over his left eye by the bucket was oozing blood and he could not see through it.

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

He tried to squint but could not make it out through his clouded vision. But as she got closer and raised her hand Galen could clearly see the whip.

Crack! The leather sounded 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 hissed through the air, cutting a line across Galen’s stomach so deep that crimson droplets surfaced from the now raised and reddened flesh.

Again Galen screamed into the air, his head arching back straining against the veins bulging in his neck. From Nena’s other hand came something and she shoved it in Galen’s face. Flinching, he turned away. But something, a force beyond his control, pulled his gaze toward it again. Through the blood covering his vision he could see 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. One of columns of demons marching up from the depths of the abyss, their legions clashing headlong with winged warrior angels. The scorched earth left only as 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 own gaze fell to the ground, she seemed to register the answer she was looking for.

“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 for I began life as his daughter Alyson and if I am not mistaken, you are my older brother Thomas.”