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CHAPTER 22

Nena grabbed Galen by the hair and stared deeply into his eyes. And though she held it back as much as possible, the tears welled up inside began to flow down her cheeks as she continued to tell the tale from over a lifetime ago when she used to be Alyson Lawton.

“I huddled under a fallen tree and spent the night in the woods, trembling with unbelievable fear, terrified of what was waiting for me out there, terrified of what would find me if I even made a sound.” She swallowed hard, her breath hitching slightly. “And when daybreak came, I had to know if anyone was left. I walked the path back to the settlement in a complete daze. When I got there, my worst fears had been realized. Every single person there was…” her voice trailed off.

“Slaughtered,” Galen whispered as his mind flashed upon the terrible images of the aftermath at Sagebrush.

“Not just slaughtered,” Nena said angrily. She could see it now as clear as if it were yesterday. “Ripped to pieces!”

As Alyson stepped into the clearing where she could see the church the scent in the air had struck her. Into her nostrils flowed the pungent fragrance of decay and death, of blood and rotting flesh. Tentatively, she moved forward step by step, willing herself to continue even though every fiber in her body cried out for her to run screaming back into the woods, as far away from this place as possible.

But continue she did, trying to find someone alive, anyone. In her mind she clung onto this hope.

But all at once she felt that hope shatter inside of her the moment she stumbled upon Father Henri. The priest had been dragged, his legs and head removed. Around his neck was his white collar, bloodied and ragged and still clutched in his cold, dead fingers was his crucifix.

From the massive bite wounds it appeared that the beasts that had attacked the Father had tried to pry the tiny cross from his hands, but it was the one thing Henri had not given up.

There had been others, all the people Alyson grew up with—the women who had helped raise her lay eviscerated, their innards left dragging behind. She turned over body after body, looking for any signs of life, and found none. Some were barely recognizable given what little flesh the coyotes had left behind.

She turned away, only to see the young man.

Karle had been the boy who had found both her and Miles in the woods all those years ago. He had been Odile’s secret boyfriend, a romance they had kept hidden for fear of what their parents would think. The only person who Odile had confided in about her relationship with Karle was Alyson and it had only been recently since they had both come of age that they were willing to reveal their secret love.

Alyson looked down at Karle, his throat slashed so deeply that she was certain his end came quickly as did Odile’s.

At least that’s what Alyson hoped, that they didn’t suffer much, and that somehow they would now be together, forever walking hand in hand into the setting sun.

And as she collapsed and fell to the ground sobbing Alyson felt the wail of inconsolable loss come from the deepest parts of her soul.

I failed, she thought to herself. She had come all the way back here to find Father Henri as Miles had asked her to do.

“Miles,” she whispered. Something had taken control of his body and was killing him from the inside and now without Father Henri to help, Alyson feared the worst for her brother.

I’m all alone, she thought. Her family, her friends, had all been killed.

They all had been murdered by beasts Alyson knew in her heart were creatures of supernatural intent and not beings of God’s making.

And there was a good chance, at least in her mind, that they could possibly come back looking for her.

But they had seen her. She recalled the moment they killed Odile and not so much as even touched her. And by way of the one that had looked back at her before rushing off with the pack toward the settlement, they had acknowledged her. Deep inside Alyson knew that if she chose to run, they could find her if they so wanted.

However, she would still do it. If they were to come for her it would be at her back.

With the palms of her hands she wiped the tears from her eyes and got to her knees. The wind shifted slightly and the smell of death and decay filled her nostrils again. Above, crows began to light in the trees around the clearing and their incessant cawing grew louder to the point of being maddening.

I have to go now, Alyson thought. I can’t watch these birds pick apart my friends for their dinner.

Entering the house of one of the women who had helped take care of her, Alyson found a wicker basket with a handle. From their kitchen she took half a loaf of bread and a towel. On her way out, she saw a waterskin hanging on a nail by the door. She considered it for a moment before taking that as well. Given how light it was, there was no surprise when she removed the cork to find it empty. She would go to fill it and then leave this place forever.

As she approached the well, her mind started playing tricks on her, imagining that as she neared, one of the beasts would spring out from within and attack her. With each step her chest tightened and as she stood at the edge looking down she almost expected to find a pair of those glowing yellow eyes staring back at her.

But all that was there was complete darkness.

Alyson took the wooden bucket and made sure the rope was attached to the handle before dropping it down into the well where it vanished for a brief moment before she heard it splash into the water below.

Wrapping the line around her small hands she began pulling up the rope. The bucket indeed felt full and she strained from the extra weight. She brought in the rope hand over hand the way Father Henri had taught her but with each passing moment the bucket seemed heavier than the last.

Again, she peered over the edge, wondering if the bucket or the line had caught on anything and for a moment she shuddered thinking of the possibility that one of the settlers had tried to escape the coyotes by jumping down the well and the resistance she felt on the line was from their dead weight.

But there was nothing to be seen other than the rope disappearing into the darkness.

Alyson continued pulling up the bucket, pushing the morbid thoughts from her mind while trying to figure out where she would attempt to go. The Father had mentioned another settlement far off to the west but Alyson couldn’t remember which direction that was.

Is it where the sun rises or the sun sets? She wondered and then suddenly she felt the push on her back.

Instantly, she was off her feet and tumbling headfirst into the darkness of the well, falling for what seemed like minutes before crashing down into the water below. Beneath the surface her head smashed against the stone lining the well and as she cried out, her mouth filled with water.

Struggling, she made it to the surface, gasping for breath and coughing from the water that she had painfully sucked into her lungs.

Her head buzzed and her ears rang from the blow and it was moments before her eyes came back into focus.

And then she saw him.

“Miles?” she called out, recognizing him.

Standing more than twenty feet above her, looking down from the edge was her brother. But he made no movement or effort to do anything to help her.

“Miles!” she called out again. Even with the light behind his head and his face in shadow, she could tell it was him, the sibling she’d spent her whole life with.

“They’re all dead,” Miles said.

“Help me, Miles!” Alyson called out, frantically treading in the deep water.

“And they died so that I shall live,” he told her. His voice echoing down upon her, falling as cold as winter rain. “For the selfless sacrifice of their lives helped me survive to fight again.”

“Selfless?” cried Alyson. “They were murdered!”

“They were fulfilling their purpose, dear sister. Why do you think God in all his infinite wisdom chose to put them here?” Miles mocked. “They were like seedlings that had been sown to be reaped at my needing.”

Just then, a horrifying thought came to Alyson at the very same moment Miles verbalized it in his own words.

“And it was you, dear sister, who I asked them to follow in order to find this place. You led them here.”

Tears fell down Alyson’s cheeks as his words cut into her like knives. She knew every bit of it was true.

“I asked them to spare you,” he continued. “I was going to let you live, but I have been badly injured and I fear that it will take one more sacrifice to give me the strength I need to keep going.”

Her breath caught in her throat as she tried to speak. The cold water had begun to numb her arms and legs.

“This is my sacrifice, too, Alyson. For I do love you,” he said and then he was gone.

“Miles!” Alyson whispered as her teeth began to chatter.

The hypothermia was setting in quickly. She could barely kick her legs.

Moments later she could sense the shadow from above and looked up. Once again Miles peered over the edge.

“I don’t want you to be alone down there. I brought you some company,” he called down to her.

From below she could see him lift something over the edge of the well before dropping it down. Momentarily, it blocked the light from above as it fell, splashing violently into the water just next to her causing her to jump back against the wet stone inside of the well.

The object Miles dropped bobbed once before righting itself and in the dim light Alyson could see the bloodied face belonging to the limbless torso floating next to her.

Her sudden shriek filled the well, echoing upwards into the sky where it floated ignored into the heavens.

Again Miles pushed something over the edge and another corpse of a sacrifice victim plummeted down toward her. Gathering her strength, she screamed for him to stop but her pleas were ignored.

Still another body came down and with nowhere to go at the bottom of the well, Alyson could only close her eyes and wait for the impact.

Miles whistled as one by one he gathered up the shredded bodies of those who had been sacrificed in his name and tossed what was left of them down into the well.

Within minutes he couldn’t hear her voice anymore from inside the pitch-black darkness and sometime before nightfall he had neatly disposed of the remains of everyone in the settlement before leaving.

Nena’s eyes were full of anger and what Galen could see were tears welled up inside that she was using all of her will to hold back.

“So you see, if it is that land, the cursed killing fields of Shadow Falls that are calling out to you, summoning you to return, then the only thing you will leave in your wake is death and suffering.”

And with her words, she withdrew a dagger from underneath her cloak and pulled back on Galen’s hair as she held the blade to his throat.

“And there is no way I can allow that to happen again,” she told him.

Galen shut his eyes. At her hands, his deliverance would be swift and merciful. His journey would end here.

But as she brought the knife back to plunge into his throat, the pock-marked man called out frantically.

“Someone’s coming down the road! Someone’s coming down the road!”

And as if it were in the air, Nena froze in sudden fear and looked directly at Galen for he sensed it to.

Miles had found them.

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.”

Previous chapters of Badlands can be found here

CHAPTER 16

Hovering barely a foot above the ground the two yellow beads came swiftly toward Galen and for the second time that day, he reached for one of the Colts. The thin quality of the moonlight angling through the tops of the trees lining the road was playing tricks on Galen’s eyes, causing a strobing effect as the yellow beads vanished then reappeared, but this time closer still.

Galen cocked back the hammer on the gun. His heart raced thinking that the loud report of a single gunshot could bring God knows what else from the woods. His finger tensed on the trigger.

And as he squinted to see, the shape of the four-legged creature became clear to him in the shadow. He raised the pistol and aimed it dead between its eyes and steadied his hand. But something, a bit of instinct, told him to hold off a second until it came closer.

Because as the animal trotted into the light of the moon he could see it clearly and watched as it padded toward him without even glancing in his direction. He chuckled to himself it was nothing more than a vagabond mutt walking down the road, carrying a bone.

But as it passed, a chill ran down Galen’s spine because he could now see that what was in the dog’s mouth was not a bone, but instead a severed human hand.

Galen rubbed his eyes. Can’t be, he thought. The little voice in his head told him to turn around and avoid the camp ahead but it was so close, and to do so would be like signing Maria’s death warrant.

He pushed the horses forward to the end of road, which opened into an acre-wide clearing. Galen could see dozens of tents all facing a single cabin placed on the rise of a small hill. He headed in the direction of a campfire around which he could see several men standing. Quickly he gained their attention because as the wagon drew closer, the men broke from the fire and came toward him. One of them, the closest to him, raised a hand for Galen to stop.

“Who are you?” the man asked. His pock-marked face carefully examining the stranger before him.

Instead of answering his question, Galen went into a quickly worded explanation of Maria’s condition.

“Is there a doctor in camp?” Galen asked.

“Nena!” the man called out over his shoulder.

Moments later, Galen could see the front door of the cabin open. Briefly silhouetted in the light coming from inside was the figure of a woman. She shut the door and came down the hill toward the wagon. But even as she drew closer, Galen could not see her face. It was not until she approached that he realized she was wearing a hooded cloak.

“This fella says he has a dying woman in the back,” the man told her.

Not even glancing at Galen, the hooded Nena went to the back of the wagon and looked inside. She then turned back to the man who had summoned her and whispered something in his ear.

Suddenly, he drew his pistol and pointed it at Galen. The other men who had accompanied him from the fire did the same, raising their guns.

“Get out of the wagon, Mister.” His voice was deadly serious.

“What’s going on here?” Galen demanded, raising his hands.

But instead of an answer, the man with the pock-marked face grabbed Galen by his arm and yanked him out of the driver’s seat and onto the ground. “Don’t you move!” he yelled.

And as Galen looked up, he could see the outline of Nena’s face as she pulled the hood from her head.

She pointed to the back of the wagon and the unconscious Maria lying there. “This woman…” she shouted. “Is a witch!”

“What are you talking about?” screamed Galen as the men pulled open the rear gate of the wagon, but instead of an answer what he received was the butt of a rifle delivered to his skull with stunning force. Instantly his head filled with stars and he felt his arms grow rubbery and weak. As they gave out under him he fell face first into the ground.

Through the ringing now braying in his ears, Galen could hear the men as they dragged Maria out of the wagon. He tried to get up, to help her, but was too woozy to even move.

With all the strength he could muster he tried again to get to his feet but his body was unresponsive to the desires of his mind.

“Stop,” he shouted but it only came out of his mouth as a whisper. His head felt as if stuffed with cotton.

Two more men yanked him to his feet, holding him up under his arms. Weakly, Galen lifted his head to find himself staring right into the face of Nena, her dark, handsome eyes gazing directly into his dilating pupils. She reached out with a finger and ran a nail along his cheek down to his chin and cocked her head as she examined his face.

“Restrain him,” she said to the men holding Galen up.

“What about her?” the man with the pock-marked face shouted as he and another man held up the unconscious Maria.

“Burn her,” Nena said coldly. She turned to Galen who was fading into unconsciousness. “And make sure he sees everything.”

The splash of water in his face brought him around. His vision was hazy at first. The blow to his head still rung in his skull as he took a moment to resurface to consciousness.

Immediately, Galen was aware of the crippling pain in his neck and back and that he was locked in a bent over position. As the fog in his brain cleared even more he realized his hands were immobilized and as he tried to turn his head he could now sense the block of wood locking him in place by his neck and wrists.

“Quit fighting, yer not going anywhere,” the beady-eyed boy said as he threw another bucket of water into Galen’s face. As Galen struggled to see what kind of infernal contraption they had locked him into it occurred to him what they had done to him. He’d heard that the pilgrims had used the pillory to restrain and punish criminals and now could fully understand why. From here there was no chance of escape. Bent at the waist like that, it was difficult for Galen to breathe and when the boy threw another bucket in his face he coughed until it felt like his ribs would snap. As his lungs stopped seizing and he caught his breath, the bucket boy grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head up where he could see.

Ahead, no more than a hundred feet away, Maria had been tied to a stake atop a large mound of wood and dried bramble. At the nod of Nena’s head the man with the pock-marked face touched the tip of a flaming torch to the bramble causing it to ignite like kindling. Within mere seconds the fire spread to the whole pile.

“No!” Galen tried to call out but the compression of his lungs caused the words to only spill out of his mouth. And even as the smoke began to rise, to his horror, Galen could see that not only was she still alive but indeed fully conscious as well. She struggled against the ropes that bound her to the pyre, her mouth silently crying out for help or mercy to no avail.

“Witch!” bellowed Nena. “Dost thou ask for His forgiveness? We can spare you the agony of a slow death in the flame.” She nodded to a man a few feet away who raised his rifle and took aim at Maria’s head.

Galen tried to open his mouth to tell the bucket boy but when he did was instead greeted by another onslaught of dirty water.

The wood under Maria’s feet had ignited. Through the choking smoke Galen could see Maria’s head thrash around wildly as the fire consumed her legs.

“Witch, hear me,” Nena bellowed again. “I can release you but you must ask for His forgiveness.”

Again Galen tried to speak and forced his cracking voice out as loud as he could. “She cannot talk! She has no tongue!” But even so, the roar of the fire drowned out his plea, for no one heard it.

Maria’s mouth opened again as the flames now rose to her waist, licking at her chest and back. Her thick black hair began to curl and ball up on the ends from the heat.

And when no cries of forgiveness were heard, Nena motioned the man with the rifle to lower his gun. “Suit yourself,” she said.

From his location, Galen could see Nena’s face was placid as she watched the flames.

Maria’s head whipped back again as the fire rose to face level. Her mouth drew open as she struggled for breath inside the burning ring of superheated air. Tears streamed down Galen’s cheeks and he lowered his eyes as to not watch but the boy with the bucket grabbed his hair once more and yanked his head up, forcing him to see everything. Maria tried to turn her face away from the orange monster consuming her, roasting her flesh, and as she did her eyes met his, if only briefly, and Galen could see they were full of hate. The contempt she felt for him was more than apparent on her charred and blistering visage as it vanished moments later in the growing wall of smoke and flame.

And as Galen tried once more to avert his eyes, he saw them reveling in a small circle by the fire, their naked bodies swaying to a rhythm only audible in their minds. A circle of undressed men, their hands joined, chanted in low voices as they watched the ritual taking place inside the ring. There crouched Nena in the nude, up on all fours as if she were imitating the attack stance of an animal. Behind her stood a man holding her by the hips, thrusting into her as the other men watched and continued to chant.

By this time they were oblivious to the pyre, whose flames had entirely consumed their witch. Its greedy orange fingers reaching ten feet into the sky. The bucket boy refused to let Galen look away so he watched, and he wept.

The nearly primitive ritual went on for what seemed like hours as each naked man in the circle had his way with Nena, though not once did it ever seem as if she were submitting to them. It ended as the flames died, the fire leaving behind what was left of the slumped and roasted figure still lashed to the pole, its mouth still open in a never-ending cry of unspeakable pain. The boy finally let Galen’s head drop down as he picked up his bucket and walked away.

Hours later as a group of men cleared the pyre, and Maria’s charred bones along with it, Galen was surprised by a visitor. It was Nena, once again dressed in her red cloak, she reached down and raised Galen’s head by using just her fingertips to lift his chin.

Galen could not even bear to look at her.

“She had no tongue!” he screamed. “How could she have asked for mercy with no ability to speak?”

She ran a finger along his cheek and asked how he knew such a thing and Galen told an abbreviated version of how he’d come upon Maria in the woods, leaving out the part about his death and resurrection.

Before he could go on, Nena stopped him. “Why do you think they cut her tongue out?” she asked. “A witch cannot cast a spell if she cannot speak.”

“You’re crazy,” Galen told her, his voice full of contempt. Though now something in her words bothered him. “Where am I?” he demanded.

“You’re in the camp of the Magus. This is our settlement and you intruded. And I will decide what will be done with you.”

“Lady, I have no fucking idea what you’re talking about. I mean, what state are we in? Arkansas? Tennessee?”

Nena looked at him, her dark eyes examining him closely.  Then suddenly she broke out into a braying laugh. “What makes you think, dear stranger, that you are still in the mortal world?”

Previous chapters of BADLANDS can be found here

CHAPTER 14

Cyril rode until the mid-afternoon sun vanished behind the dark grey storm heads that had been threatening since morning. The road from Kansas City had been swift and he fixated upon his task with all the focus his renewed energy could muster. There was little doubt in his mind the master he served would indeed reward him for completing the work he had begun so long ago. For as far as Cyril knew, the master’s dawn had finally arisen. Ending Galen Altos was what was now standing in the way.

Cyril tried not to be frustrated over all of the times he had been so close to Altos all those years ago in the war, within arm’s reach in fact. All the times he could have easily killed Galen but had been prevented from doing so by the one he served.

However, the reason still perplexed Cyril for it was the master who had originally given him the word that he was to only observe Galen for it was not known how strong Altos’ powers truly were. And during all that time he had observed, Cyril had not once seen a single hint at all that Galen even had any powers whatsoever. It was only by way of Dunburton’s surprise correspondence that Cyril realized Galen had somehow survived the conflagration at the church in Juarez. And now, in Cyril’s mind, it had sunk in that he’d made a grave mistake in underestimating Altos and letting him get away.

Cyril shuddered at the thought of what the master would do to him if he found out Altos was still alive—though it seemed highly unlikely he wouldn’t already know for the master obviously knew plenty about Galen.

But why wouldn’t he have said something? Cyril wondered.

It was not his place to question, but there had always been something about the master’s handling of Altos that seemed puzzling.

A carefulness, he thought as he bedded down for the night.

Even so, Altos’ survival was worrisome. Though Cyril had successfully hunted down and dispatched several men and women at the behest of his master, never once questioning his orders, it was this single failure he feared would not only lead to his being held back from his final reward but to his facing unspeakable and merciless retribution at his master’s own hands. The mere thought was enough to make Cyril get back upon his horse in the rain to continue pushing forward.

Within an hour the feeling he’d been seeking since leaving Kansas City had begun to sprout inside him like a compass needle finding its bearing. There was no doubt. He was definitely on Galen’s trail once more. He could sense it.

As Cyril came down the road toward the abandoned farmhouse, he felt the sense of Galen’s proximity grow with each step his steed carried him.

The very moment he entered the long-abandoned dwelling, Cyril knew Galen had been here shortly after fleeing from Kansas City. The scene he could see in his mind was clear as day. Altos had spent the night here huddled in front of the hearth trying to keep warm.

No, Cyril thought. That wasn’t it. He held his hands out trying to further divine what the room was attempting to tell him.

Galen’s imprint by the hearth was indeed quite strong. With his bare hand, Cyril fished through the cold ash in the hearth unsure of what he was looking for but when his fingers closed around the hard orb, a feeling like daggers of ice stabbed through his body. Cyril pulled his hand from the hearth and found himself trembling at what was in his fingers.

There in his hand was the petrified eye-the same one Cyril knew had come from some ancient creature that roamed the earth long before he had.

As Cyril’s gaze fell into the unavoidable pull of the eye’s milky white iris he was suddenly aware of the other connection this horrid object had between Galen Altos and Major Dunburton.

That old fool, thought Cyril. It pained him to think Dunburton had no idea of the true cursed nature of the eye. Like most mortal men who had heard of it and attempted to possess it, the Major had no real idea of its province.

Quickly, the vision changed to show someone Cyril could only identify as a gypsy. Though it seemed highly unlikely, she had knowledge of Galen. Through the actions he could se that she had made, Cyril was certain this old woman somehow understood exactly what Galen was.

And then as he saw in the eye how Galen crudely killed her, Cyril was dumbstruck because it was obvious Galen himself was still completely oblivious to his own identity.

Which would explain certain things, Cyril finally reckoned. Especially why the master himself had been led to doubt Altos was even a threat.

How could the master be deceived? Cyril puzzled. And as he tried to pry his gaze from the eye the cursed object began to show him something, a flash of what could only be an event in the future. What he was seeing sent a wave of terror through Cyril’s body. From his shaking hand fell the eye where it hit the floor and stopped without a single bounce. Without a moment’s hesitation, Cyril left the abandoned house, and the eye, behind as quickly as his feet could carry him.

He was no more than a few yards out the front door when, from behind him, came the voice.

“You disappoint me,” it said coldly.

Cyril turned slowly as to not provoke. There, standing before him in the house’s ramshackle doorway was Miles Lawton. And though the appearance he always took in front of Cyril was that of a young boy, the Coyote was no less dangerous now than in his natural form.

Cyril dared not show hesitation in his submission to the boy. He lowered his eyes as Miles Lawton approached.

“The way you held that wretched thing,” the boy said with an air of disgust. “You stood there trembling like a scared girl.”

Cyril made a great deal of effort to choose his words very carefully. “The eye is cursed. It’s a fool’s toy of madness and folly.”

The boy stooped down to pick up a small stone that he rolled in his hand. “They’ve said similar things about that petrified relic for…” his voice momentarily trailed off. “For longer than you can imagine,” he finally finished. The boy arced his arm back and threw the small stone away from the house. “Tell me Cyril,” he said. “What exactly did you see in the eye? What truths did it reveal to you?”

“I saw Altos,” answered Cyril. He focused his mind on the part of the vision he dared talk about and tried, at least for now, to block out what he’d seen concerning the boy who stood in front of him. He told Miles about the Gypsy’s fatal encounter with Galen and of his suspicion that Altos seemingly still had little idea of who he was or where he’d come from.

“Of course not,” hissed miles. “Which is why we must find him before he finally wakes up to the truth.”

That would be easier said than done, thought Cyril. Galen had a head start consisting of several weeks.

“Why did you not tell me that Altos was still alive?” asked the boy.

“I didn’t even know until…” Cyril said, realizing any answer would appear as just an excuse, as a sign of weakness. “Because I didn’t know,” he finally said. It was an admission he believed would draw the least of the master’s ire.

“I’m pretty certain I can track him from here,” Cyril said quickly. “If my gut tells me correctly, Altos headed to Mexico. He’s got a soft spot for those people.”

“I would say that’s a pretty good guess,” Miles responded. “For not too long ago a man was hanged in a small Texas town who fit the description of the man you are looking for.”

“But he’s not dead.”

“What do you think?” barked the boy. He picked up another small stone and tossed it against the side of the house. “The town was dealt with.”

“And Altos?”

“He’s gone east. Now you must find him.”

“And then?”

“Follow him,” said Miles. “You’ll get instructions how to deal with him later.”

Cyril nodded, trying his best to hide the uncertainty he was feeling for the first time. He had served solely at the boy’s pleasure, hunting down the enemies of the Coyote and taking care of them. On many an occasion his duties included extracting information using methods suggested by Miles himself. Methods using sharp implements and fire on soft flesh. Tasks he found himself quite good at due to his ability to tune out the screams of his victims.

Before the war he had personally taken a family away at gunpoint because Miles had told him of his wish to do so. He had taken the mother and father, both bound and gagged, and forced them to watch in utter horror as he slew their two young daughters, his knife cutting into the young girls’ flesh slowly and methodically. Afterwards the man and woman had willingly given up their secrets before suffering the same slowly drawn out fate as their children.

They were but one example of the tool of death Cyril had become in the name of the Coyote. A task he had taken on with the ultimate hope that his loyalty and service would eventually win him his release.

But it was the strange treatment of Galen Altos that Cyril now questioned. During the war, it had only been after Galen had gone AWOL that he’d been given Miles’ blessing to hunt him down with whatever force necessary. Though it now occurred to Cyril that it was possible the boy had only done so to test both of them.

At first Cyril had thought the boy was just being cautious of an unknown enemy, but now with the news that Miles had taken vengeance on the townsfolk who had hanged Altos, it seemed like the boy was protecting Galen for some unknown reason.

And given the last vision the eye had shared with him, Cyril’s unwavering belief in the beast who chose to appear to him as this innocent young boy was not the same as it once was.

“Altos was delayed for three weeks in that wretched town while awaiting his execution. Then spent the next month on foot. With a stout horse you can catch up to him in a week’s time,” Miles said assuredly. “He is headed east.”

Cyril felt a familiar shudder.

“He is headed to Shadow Falls where he will meet his destiny,” said Miles before turning and walking away from the house.

Cyril mounted his horse and rode south. He’d head to Texas, to this small town where the Coyote had brought his own brand of death. There he’d pick up Galen’s trail again and if Miles had been correct that Altos had been on foot, he would catch up to him in a short time indeed.

The day grew long as Cyril rode, but his mind never wandered once from the thoughts needling him from deep inside. He had blindly followed the master ever since Miles had resurrected his forgotten bones from the woods—bones that on some cold nights could still feel the teeth of those yellow-eyed beasts gnawing on them.

He will never release you, Cyril’s mind told him. It was true he had begun to question the master. He thought of the eye, now hidden in his saddlebag and the apparent truth of what the cursed object had revealed to him.

“He is headed to Shadow Falls where he will meet his destiny,” he heard Miles’voice echo in his head.

And apparently, boy, Cyril thought to himself, where you will meet yours.

Previous chapters of Badlands can be found here

CHAPTER 8

An orange ball of fire hung in the sky, having just risen only hours earlier. Galen scratched his beard. The growth on his face itched like mad. He’d let the beard sprout over the last two months for no other reason than he’d come to consider himself a different person. Truth was he had begun the exile from himself a long time ago. As he had sat in that cramped and fetid cell in a small town whose name he could now no longer remember, he recalled being repeatedly referred to as “The Stranger”. It was a moniker that had stuck even though at the time of his arrest he had given his name as something even different than his previous alias of “Tom Holt”. That false name also escaped him as well because as the townsfolk came by to gawk at the condemned man, Galen decided to begin referring to himself as the Stranger as well. His true name and identity would die on the gallows, he reckoned. And that would ultimately be fine with him.

Blue followed closely behind as Blue tended to do, wandering no further than a half dozen paces back and often bumping his wet nose disgustingly against Galen’s left hand.

Galen had come to accept this somewhat bothersome behavior as the aged burro’s direction finding system given that it had become apparent Blue’s failing eyes were going the way of its useless ears.

A month back it was obvious Blue was going blind when, while taking a turn through a wooded pass, he trundled headfirst into a tree.

“Time has not been kind to either of us,” Galen said out loud to the burro.

Galen had begun to think the pathetic beast didn’t have too much longer. The idea worried him because Blue had quietly accepted the heavy burden laid upon him. Without the burro Galen would be forced to stay closer to towns where he could replenish supplies more often. He preferred the route he was taking, through more desolate terrain.

So desolate in fact, Galen had not seen another human being for nearly a month, the last being a group of families headed west along this trail to satiate their lust for gold. His contact with them was brief, lasting but a few hours while they swapped traveling conditions. Galen had liitle to tell since he himself had only been on this particular trail since leaving Texas. The traveling group’s leader, a stout man named Lindstrom, had inquired about conditions west of the Rockies and the passability of the land come the later months of the year. Galen had responded that he was not familiar and then wondered moments later why he had lied to Lindstrom about it. They shared a meal together before going their respective ways and as the Lindstrom party departed Galen watched the sullen and haggard faces on some of the women and children who had no idea how much more trying their journey would become in the weeks and months ahead.

The story Galen had not shared with the Lindstroms was the tale of the Donner party. The Donners, another family caught up in the ‘westering fever’ of the last decade had been snowbound in the Sierra Nevadas and resorted to cannibalism to survive. Galen had made the decision at the moment not to tell the grisly tale for fear of terrifying the already weary travelers. Galen had served with several men who had been part of the army rescue team that had been sent out to the Donner’s campsite. Men who told stories of finding piles of gnawed boned cut with human teeth marks and staring into the eyes of survivors who had consumed the human flesh of their own family members in order to stay alive.

Galen often wondered about the Lindstroms and hoped they were still surviving their journey, though the conditions of the trail often worked against larger groups moving slowly. Groups who were easy prey for the many predators on the path. Predators who spent their waking hours laying in wait for throats to slit be it man, woman or child—often just for the sheer sport of it.

Shortly after the sun reached its peak in the midday sky, Galen came upon a wooded bluff, making extra careful to yank on the rope around Blue’s neck to keep the nearly blind burro from going over the edge.

“Whoa there,” Galen told Blue as he stared out over the hilly terrain below the rim. He unslung his waterskin and took a sip. The view was magnificent but from this elevation the path seemed to wind on forever without end. The thought disheartened Galen. His journey had barely begun and he could feel the toll it was taking on his body. His feet especially, which ached with each step. He needed a horse but dared not consider trying to steal another given the last time he ended up rotting in a Texas jail for weeks awaiting a date with the gallows.

Perhaps there are worse things than dying, he thought to himself. Given the choice between the gallows and what he feared lay ahead, Galen wasn’t quite sure which was preferable.

The road broke off in the woods sometime late in the day. The Lindstroms had mentioned the possibility due to the heavy rains that had fallen this year and the routes other travelers had broken off towards, all in search for that elusive shortcut. Galen sighed and pulled Blue along with him as he looked for another fresh trailhead. He spotted fairly recent ruts in the dirt from another wagon.

“What do you think?” he asked Blue who, as usual, gave no response.

Now you have yourself talking to a deaf burro, Galen thought.

From the look of the tracks in the ground there had been at least more than one wagon. Galen knelt down and ran his hand over the ruts. Though not a tracker he reckoned they were indeed very fresh. He began to relish the possibility of catching up with whoever it was. Human conversation would be nice, as would a cup of fresh, hot coffee.

By sunset, Galen still hadn’t found where the trail picked up, nor had he any sign of the travelers whose wagon tracks he’d been following through the woods. His feet ached and Galen sat on a rock to take off his boots. He was paying the price for the weeks of walking as they were easily starting to fall apart. At some point they’d have to be replaced which meant going into a town somewhere. Which meant making the decision whether or not to drink whiskey as the itch would certainly be upon him once the opportunity to imbibe presented itself. He couldn’t even remember the last time the thought of a drink had even crossed his mind. But cross his mind it did as he sat there looking at his worn out boot. He took the other boot off and placed them on the ground before walking barefoot back to where he’d left Blue standing. He unstrapped the saddlebags from Blue’s back. Even without the bags, the curvature of the ancient burro’s back made old Blue look as if he was still carrying a heavy burden. Galen hunted around inside his bag. He pulled out a hunk of jerky which Blue noisily began eating.

Running low on food, too, Galen thought as he dug for one of the last pieces of jerky. He’d have to do something about that as well. From what he could see, hear and smell, there was definitely plenty of game in these woods.

Galen crept through the woods looking for jackrabbit. The thought of one roasting over a small fire made his mouth water. If he was lucky enough to get two, he’d treat Blue to something other than jerky. He crouched behind the trunk of a fallen tree and waited.

He saw the white jack enter the small clearing, completely unaware it was being hunted. With a steady hand, Galen lined up the rabbit in the sights of one of the Colt Dragoon pistols he’d been carrying. Galen waited, took a quiet inhale and started to squeeze the trigger when he heard the scream of a woman coming from what seemed like not too far away.

Galen began running toward the sound, at first unsure where it was coming from until he heard the scream again, this time coming from just over a rise above him. Quietly, he scrambled up the hill, pistol in hand. Once more came the horrible noise, this time cut off in mid-scream. Now Galen could hear other voices, that of men, yelling.

“I tole you to shet up!” yelled one.

Galen crawled on his belly to the top of the hill and peered over into the clearing. Standing fifty feet away, with his hair-covered back to Galen was a shirtless hillbilly, his gut hanging over the top of his pants, one hand holding a knife, the other clutching a bloody pink nubbin of flesh. Below him on the ground lay a fragile-faced, brown-skinned woman, her dress torn open and hiked up past her thighs while being viciously raped by a second fat and hairy hillbilly—his large pale white ass pumping back and forth with every grunt he made.

Galen turned away, unsure of what to do. He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed the barrel of the Colt against his right temple.

Dammit, he thought. From this distance he could hear the knife-wielding hillbilly egging on the one committing the rape. “Do it! Do it!” he was braying, his voice taking an excitedly high pitch.

Galen took a deep breath. He thought of the promise he’d made to himself and to a god he wasn’t quite sure he believed in. A promise made after leaving Sagebrush to never take another human life.

He gazed toward the sky. “I’m sorry,” he muttered under his breath before turning and dashing toward the hillbillies, Colt blazing. The hillbillies looked up, stunned. Galen’s heart pounded wildly as his first two shots went far wide. The third and fourth found their mark in the ribcage of the fat hillbilly lying on top of the woman. The one with the knife found his feet fast enough to begin running as his accomplice lay dying, not even once thinking to stop and save him. Galen emptied his revolver at the escaping hillbilly. Half-heartedly firing in his direction without actually aiming.

He holstered the weapon and turned back to the woman but as he took his first step he saw it on the ground, the pink nubbin of flesh the now escaped hillbilly had been holding. Galen stopped in his tracks because he recognized instantly what it was.

A tongue.

Now shriveled and lying in the dirt. Immediately Galen understood why her last cry for help had cut off in mid-scream.

He looked toward the woman, sure she was dead until she turned her head toward him and coughed up a large, messy mouthful of blood. Her face was turning purple.

She was suffocating under the weight of the dying fat hillbilly rapist.

Galen rushed to her side. With his boot, he rolled the fat hillbilly off her and she immediately gulped for air to fill her lungs. The hillbilly moaned. Hillbilly blood pumped from the two holes in his side. He looked up at Galen, eyes wide in terror.

“Help me,” he gasped.

Galen looked down at the rapist, his dirty dungarees pulled down below his knees, his filthy, pathetic and tiny prick shriveled up. Galen reached into the small leather ammo bag slung around his neck and withdrew a percussion cap and placed it on the cylinder nipple of the only unfired chamber of the Colt. As a precaution he’d been taught to leave one uncapped to prevent accidental discharges. There would be nothing accidental about this. Galen aimed the gun between the dying hillbilly’s eyes and fired the round into his skull.

Galen holstered the now empty Colt and knelt down next to the woman. Her mouth was filling up with blood and she was choking on it so Galen turned her head. He looked back toward where he had found her severed tongue on the ground and wondered if she was going to die.

She was obviously Mexican or at least of Mexican decent from her features and Galen tried to brush away the tears streaming from her eyes.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said, fairly certain it wasn’t.

From her mouth came a series of sounds as she tried to speak. Without a tongue, her words were unintelligible at best.

“Shhh,” Galen told her. “Don’t try to talk.” He wanted her to conserve her strength, but she began pointing back to the woods in the direction the escaped hillbilly had run towards. She spat out another mouthful of blood and hysterically gestured again at the woods.

“I… I can’t understand you,” Galen said, frustrated.

But what she was trying to communicate became very clear the moment the gunshots rang out from the woods and the bullets began flying in their direction.

The rider had come a long way to Kansas City. He had endured quite a bit to get here but as he entered the town he suddenly felt refreshed, invigorated. He had memorized the address of his destination and found it without trouble. He stopped his horse in front of the house along the waterfront and dismounted. Squaring his shoulders, he approached the mansion’s front door and knocked loudly.

And when Dunburton opened the door, he was only slightly surprised to see his old charge standing before him.

“Major Dunburton,” Cyril spoke, clicking his heels together and saluting.

Dunburton returned the salute and smiled.

“Please, come in,” the banker said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

Previous chapters of Badlands can be found here

CHAPTER 6

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

Again there was a sudden flash followed by a clap of thunder rumbling from 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, as 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 right at the front door of the gypsy’s fortune telling parlor. And as he looked up from his place on the ground, Galen had no recollection of crawling across the street to get there. There was a click of the lock being thrown and a creak of the door opening. Galen looked up to find the Gypsy Crone standing before him, her body outlined in 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 which he could not have changed if he had tried.

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

“As long as you understand everything that is to follow is your destiny at work and any attempt to fight it will only result in grave consequences.”

“Please,” Galen pleaded, and the crone stood and stared at him for a long time. 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 mug. What was inside was bitter but he kept drinking because the warmth of the liquid easing down his throat felt good and also because something in his mind told him he could not have 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 to near-standing.

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.”

“When 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 and that’s when Galen started to smell it—the crone’s breath stank of disease. Her sallow skin pulled tightly across her skull made him see her for the first time as a corpse. 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 again but the drowsiness overwhelmed him. 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 that covered only a couple of inches of the torn and yellowed parlor paper. Its nose wrinkled and its tiny red eyes stared back at him momentarily as if examining him as much as he were examining it.

“Hi,” Galen whispered but cut himself off, startled in half breath when the shoe heel came down upon the white mouse, smashing it into the floor.

Daisy stood there nude, save for the 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, getting under the covers while straddling Galen’s naked frame.

“Let’s guh-guh-go again?” she whispered into his ear. Daisy stared into his eyes and the wisps of thought Galen was having concerning 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 her he looked up into her face to find it had changed to the ugly visage of the old Gypsy Crone, her skin pulled tightly around her skull, baring her stained and crooked teeth at him.

“No!” he screamed.

His heart pulsing with fright, he roughly shoved her off him 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 to put his boots on. With her duties obviously over, Daisy got up and put on a dirty and tattered silk robe.

He picked up his second boot and pulled his foot out when he felt something hard inside. He turned the boot over and falling to the floor was a small nickel-plated two shot Derringer. Daisy paid no mind, too busy washing herself from a small bowl of water. Galen picked up the gun, holding the rosewood grip in his hand.

The flash in his mind 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 across the table to him.

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

And then with a flash he was back in Daisy’s shabby room holding the Derringer in his shaking hand.

It had been just before daybreak that 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 again, trying to spot any familiar landmarks. The first time he had visited that bar he had been mere blocks from his boardinghouse. 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 fortuneteller?”

Looking at him like he was crazy, the man guffawed heartily before going back 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 as he passed.

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

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

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

“When is the date of your birth?”

He rubbed his eyes, watching as the candle-lit room disappeared and the river faded back into view. Finally, Galen stood from the rock. He faced the great roaring river, 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 his eyes in a whirlwind of images speeding toward him, random snippets of moments and places long ago buried. Inside his head, synapses fired a hundred times their normal rate causing his entire conscious mind to overload in an overwhelming flood of forgotten thoughts he was helpless to hold back.

And as if landing with a thud, he was there, in 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.

“No, no…” he gasped and in one big whoosh 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.

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

He stood in the cold for hours watching the front of the bank, waiting. In his pocket he held the Derringer in his grip. His mind had been made up. He would go through with it.

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

As Dunburton turned toward the waterfront, Galen saw his chance. Picking up his pace he caught up to the banker’s stride and 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 Dunburton’s house the banker seemed shaken as his hand 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 to be turning grey. 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 pocket where he knew Dunburton kept it.

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 ebony box. Galen picked it up and couldn’t take his eyes off it. Finally he could make out the design he’d noticed before from afar. 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 trancelike 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 right down the barrel of the Derringer 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 crashing 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.

And as he was about to exit the study, 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 about to be on the receiving end of a Derringer bullet.

And without a sound, Galen exited 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 and placed it down on her table. In the flickering lamplight of the parlor, the engraved snakes seemed to dance and slither in their own shadow. The gypsy’s stare was transfixed on the fabulous object sitting there, her eyes opened wide and her mouth pulled taut with delight.

“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 there, stone-faced. Unmoved by her dire pleas.

“You don’t understand. You do not possess what you think you have. You do not 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, making the sign of the cross. “And I know that Galen Altos isn’t even your true name.”

Roughly, 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. And as she labored to bring it down upon the back of Galen’s head, he spun, Derringer in hand and fired a single shot—the bullet shattering her teeth before going into her open mouth and exiting 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 with her last breath before dying.

*****