Another glance to the trees, yes, they were getting closer, their moon-like faces bobbing in the dark as they approached. At least eight now, that he could quickly count.
He tore himself away and concentrated on the door. Somehow, he managed to get the key in the padlock first time, which won an involuntary yelp of relief, and he turned the key.
He pulled off the padlock and let it fall to the ground, and then pulled the door open. The proximity light at his
back cast a paltry amount of brightness into the shed at this distance, couple with him standing in the doorway. But there was enough light for Kyle to see a row of six twenty litre green army fuel cans.
“Yes!” he exclaimed in relief.
He would only be able to carry two back to the bunker but judging by the size of them they would fill the generator several times over and if he rationed the power, it would last him a week or so. Then he would always have the option to come back out for more later. When surely, he mused grimly, everyone would be dead.
He stepped into the shed and grabbed the handles of the first two cans and bracing himself against their weight he lifted them and stepped back.
They were empty.
“The fuck?”
He staggered back comically in shock and let them clatter to the ground. He looked down at the cans almost accusingly, then moved back into the shed and grabbed the next two.
Empty.
A mixture of panic and rage welled up inside him. He tossed the empty cans aside and kicked at the remaining two.
They toppled over, filled with nothing but air.
He tried to speak but the utter shock of it had robbed him of his voice. He staggered out of the shed and glanced back across the clearing to the bunker in despair. The building had once been his saviour, but soon if he went back inside. It would be his tomb.
Now he knew how those poor souls out here had felt. So close, yet so far. He let out a strangled sob.
“It’s not fair,” he said finally finding his voice.
“Someone’s gonna get fired for that,” a familiar if horribly mangled voice said from behind him. “If I told them once, I told them a hundred times to get those refilled.”
Masie.
Kyle’s heart seemed to stop as the shock hit him. He glanced down at there the rifle was propped against the shed. He slowly turned on his heel to face her.
It was Maise, but only just. She had the look of a wild animal about her and was grinning wider than he thought was humanly possible, her exposed teeth flecked with black blood.
Like Parsons her eyes fair glowed a deep red, all natural colour gone they were so blood shot. Her matted hair, usually so meticulously kempt, stuck up in all directions.
Kyle didn’t really know what a banshee was, some witch like creature he vaguely thought. But whatever one was, he was sure he was looking at one right now. Black blood and spittle were oozing through her clenched teeth, as she hissed with each ragged breath. Her chest rising and falling in rapid faltering motions as if she had been sprinting to get her.
Kyle couldn’t move, and he was so transfixed by the monster in front of him, he barely registered the fact she was raising the pistol in her blood-soaked hand. Behind her a group of perhaps nine or ten were emerging from the woods close by. Fleeting glimpses of more off to one side, all descending on the clearing now. Perhaps to enjoy the show.
“It was too late for you,” Kyle managed to say in mitigation of his crimes against them.
His fear and drug addled brain set of a rant in his head at the injustice here. After all, what could they possibly gain from the bunker now? They were all as good as dead and it wasn’t as if the bunker could magically cure them. Only he had a chance, he had the suit, and with it the possibility of escape. Why couldn’t they give him that? It wasn’t his fault, he didn’t start any of this. He would have let them in if it would have saved them.
Kyle focus on the thing that had once been Maise again, you most of all. He had loved her, in his way and he would have liked nothing more than for them to be together again, safe, just like it was supposed to have been.
“You loved me?” Maise said with a tilt of the head. The contempt was all too clear even through her garbled voice.
Kyle looked at her dumbly, then came the dawning realisation that he had been saying all that out loud and not in his head. Ranting like a lunatic.
Maise’s face twisted in a horrendous sneer.
“You never loved anything in your vacuous, self-obsessed life. Except yourself.”
It was surreal hearing such articulation from such a grotesque creature.
Maise pointed the pistol at his forehead.
“At least it will be quick for you,” she said with an unexpected hint of compassion.
The thought of imminent death snapped Kyle out of his fugue. His clouded mind cleared to crystal clarify.
Yes, she was a solider and he was just a male model. But she was all but dead and he was still very much alive, and very much wanted to stay that way. He was fast, she was slow.
Kyle lunged forwards and knocked the pistol to one side with his left arm, just as she fired. He was glad for the protection the heavy rubber mask as the gun went off an inch from his ear.
Then he shoulder charged her in the chest, black blood splashed the front of his white suit as she had the wind knocked out of her and she went staggering backwards with a grunt and fell over.
He set off running towards the safety, albeit fleeting, of the bunker. He heard a muffled shot and a bullet sparked off the bunker’s steel façade to his right.
“Jesus!”
He just kept running, then as he reached the door he looked back. Maise was laid on her side aiming in his direction. He braced himself as she fired again, but the bullet went high and missed the bunker and thankfully him completely. She fired again and dirt kicked up close to his feet. Even in her dishevelled state, she was getting her eye in.
“Fuck!”
As he turned to the keypad, he caught a glimpse of several figures coming out of the woods. At least two of them were half staggering, half running.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” he had to ignore them and concentrate on punching in the door code.
Three... Eight...
Even through the mask he could hear shrieking behind him, and getting closer.
Another bullet sparked off the door directly over his right shoulder and he heard shrapnel pepper the mask. A foot to the left and that would have been that. But it wasn’t!
Just keep fucking going! He urged himself.
Two... Five.
The door mechanism seemed to take forever to kick in, until he was finally rewarded with that familiar, ‘clunk,’ as the lock released, and the door drifted open.
Kyle chanced a look back over his shoulder, the two runners were just one now and he was close. Kyle knew in an instant he wouldn’t get inside and get the door shut before the maniac was upon him. So, he turned to face his assailant with fists raised.
“Come on!” he screamed in muffled defiance.
The man was flagging badly as he approached and was threatening to topple over. But despite this Kyle could see to his horror, he was a massive unit. It was like bracing yourself for a hit from a rabid wrestler. He was going to dodge but realised that would send the man careering through the door and into the bunker. He would have to somehow knock him away.
A muzzle flash lit up way over the other side of the clearing as Maise, now on her feet. fired again.
The front of the charging man’s head exploded covering Kyle in gore and he pitched forwards landing in a crumbled heap at his feet.
Kyle froze in horror, stunned. Then Maise’s scream of frustration followed by another shot which hit just to his left snapped him right out of it, and he toppled back into the bunker.
Silly cow just saved my life! Kyle thought maniacally.
His relief was short lived as she aimed again and a group of others came barrelling out of the woods, stronger and faster than the previous two.
“Bollocks!”
Kyle shoved the door closed and it locked. He stood there panting in the meagre light coming off the monitor and
waited. His head pounding along with his rapid heartbeats, and his head was once again filling with cotton wool. If they got in somehow, he wouldn’t have strength enough to scream when they were ripping him apart.
The battery indicator was still showing one bar, but he knew with those damn proximity lights constantly burning through it. It wouldn’t last long.
“I’m fucked,” he stated plainly. And hit the floor before he realised he was falling.
Kyle felt a shooting pain at the back of his skull, it was as if someone was stabbing him there to the rhythm of his heart.
He opened his eyes and there was nothing but black. He cried out and blindly flailed his arms defensively. But this just brought more pain and nausea.
He could feel blood sloshing around at the back of the hood as he moved, and the smell of it filled his nostrils. He grunted in effort and rolled onto his side. As he did so he was rewarded with the sight of the bunker’s grey concrete floor. The mask must have shifted when he fell blocking his vision, he felt it slip into place once more, giving him a slightly better view through the eye pieces.
He gave a fatalistic laugh, he was still alone, the hoard outside weren’t in here bashing his brains in just yet.
As his thought process cleared a little, he figured he must have passed out and hit his head hard, and he was bleeding. Blood poured across his face as he moved. It wasn’t too much, but it made him gag as some went into his mouth, and with that came panic.
Somehow, he managed to push himself up into a sitting position and now the blood tricked down his neck and into the suit itself. The stench of blood made him gag again and he was finding it harder and harder to breath within the confines of the mask. He had a flash of fear as he imagined the whole airtight suit filling up with blood and him drowning in it.
“God...”
His head lolled forwards and the bunker took on a blurry red tint as the blood washed over the eye pieces. He instinctively tried to wipe the Perspex lenses. Panic set in afresh as he blindly thrashed around, he began clawing at the mask in a desperate attempt to clear his vision.
Hyperventilating now in the claustrophobic constrains of the mask, he swallowed a mouthful of blood which flooded his lungs. His stomach cramped and before he could react, he vomited. All thought of contamination disappeared as he gasped for air, which just made things ten times worse.
He tried pulling at the mask as he choked, but those fucking Micky Mouse gloves made it impossible to get a decent
hold. He fell onto his back again as he struggled and hit his already damaged skull hard on the concrete floor.
He saw stars and for a moment lost all sight and feeling.
He was teetering on the edge of consciousness, when strangely in the midst of all this hysteria he hit a pocket of absolute calm. He flashed back to a memory from his old, charmed life several years before.
He had been at a party to celebrate his first six figure modelling contract with Dior. He had gotten so drunk, that he and a friend had passed out in his agent’s pool house. When he had come around the next morning, Kyle had been covered in puke. He had thrown up in his sleep and could have quite easily choked on it.
Full of the immortality and arrogance of youth, they had joked that it would have been the classic rock star death.
Oh, how they had laughed as he had been contemplating a recording career at the time.
It didn’t seem so funny now.
Kyle came back around and somehow managed to grip the seal, he pulled at the mask, but it was alarmingly well attached, he pulled again. It held firm and he cursed his, up until then, unknown talent for air tightening NBC suits.
He screamed in terror as his stomach threatened again.
What a way for him to go! Not choking, but drowning in his
own blood and vomit, and in the very device that was supposed to keep him safe. He would have laughed at the irony of it all, if he wasn’t crying.
The mask gave a little and spurred on by his impending death, Kyle pulled harder and managed to get his rubber fingers between the suit and mask. He tore at it, and it came away with an audible sucking sound. He threw it across the bunker and curled up in a ball, sobbing and gasping for air.
As he laid there, he became vaguely aware that a truck was backing up somewhere close by.
Beep, beep, beep.
Strange that.
Jesus! Was it the army coming to save the day? Backing up to the door so as not to contaminate the bunker when he opened it?
Beep, beep, beep.
It was an insane thought, but one he could fully get behind.
The bunker plunged into absolute darkness, and Kyle held his breath. But there was no dramatic military entrance, just the sound of the air filtration unit faltering, then grinding to a halt.
Oh, well, Kyle thought as all reason fled like a coward.
At least I have my health.
He began to laugh. It was a good joke, and it actually lifted his spirits somewhat. But still, despite this, there was a nagging doubt at the back of his mind. All this meant something was terribly wrong, but for the life of him he couldn’t think what. Maybe it was just his pounding head and mild concussion, he mused. That’s enough to sour anybody’s mood.
Thinking about it though. Weren’t there three things that happened when the power went out? Kyle tried his best to remember.
Lights... Air filtration...
‘Clunk.’
The vague outlines of furniture within the bunker began to slowly take shape as his eyes adjusted to the merest hint of a new light source coming from somewhere.
A table, a chair, the bank of now sightless monitors.
All gradually coming into hazy detail around him.
Then he was hit by a rotting, sickly sweet odour, so bad it even cut through the smell of his own blood and vomit. It was coming from somewhere close by on a cool foul-smelling breeze.
The smell was awful, but the breeze was nice.
Kyle shifted his aching body around so the breeze could caress his face.
“Oh.”
The open doorway to the bunker was filled with a seething mass of steaming silhouettes, back lit by the bright moonlight outside. One of them stepped forwards, it was an outline he knew all too well.
“Hello lover.”
Kyle Easterbrook was handsome as hell, beautiful really. He had been dealt a full house in the genetic card game.
Or at least he had been until his girlfriend and her newfound allies tore him to shreds.
Some said the tale was an apocryphal one. The small Caribbean island’s very own urban legend. A tale of woe and sea spirits to be told around the campfire in hushed tones on the very sand and soil it had said to have taken place decades before.
And it was true that the story had spawned its very own cottage industry the islanders were more than happy to profit from. It was something of a selling point to the many tourists that came to their home.
‘Come for the sun, sea and seclusion. Stay for the spine-tingling myth of unexplained death and disappearance!’
There was a book detailing the whole sorry affair, which revelled in the more sensational aspects. There was even one for the kids compete with pictures, but one that sanitised the more salacious and downright gory aspects of the case.
Then there was the ever-popular replica reed doll, that featured so prominently in the story, which you could buy in any number of gift shops dotted around the island. However, this particular souvenir caused no end of controversy within the community itself. As many of the older islanders truly believed in the power such totems can possess.
Indeed, some still had their own variations of the creation, hand made by great grandfathers or grandmothers
years ago, and handed down from generation to generation. And they thanked God that they, unlike the poor unfortunate in the story, had never needed to unleash its mythic power.
Depending on who you asked, it had been eighty to one hundred years since it had happened. The story at been passed down from one generation to the next, where it would inevitably take on subtle changes with each storyteller or the listener.
One diligent researcher from main island of Jamacia, had actually obtained a copy of the original police report, such that it was. But even his account of what he read had become just as mythic and maligned as the more fanciful renditions of what had happened. And the reason for this was a simple one.
Because, even taken word for word as written, the police report at the time couldn’t bear up to even the briefest of amateur, let alone professional scrutiny.
This just fuelled the legend.
However, everyone could though agree on the protagonists to a greater or lesser extent.
A former American gangster, who had fled to the island from police and vengeful mobsters alike. With his trusted bodyguard and assorted goons.
And of course, there was the gangster’s unfortunate much younger English wife and her lover, an island local, who had only been guilty of one thing. Falling in love.
The truth, not that anyone really cared. Was sadder and stranger than most could imagine.
The old fisherman stood on the high cliff and stared out over the glacial Caribbean Sea.
The sun, blood red and fading was already half obscured by the horizon as the day gradually gave way to the night.
Despite the on coming chill off the ocean, the old man refused to go back to his small house. On any other day he would have retreated back to the fire there to warm his bones.
A task that was harder and harder these days.
But this wasn’t simply any other day.
Once a year on this same date he would climb the steep meandering path which led from the beach and up to this secluded spot on the cliff’s edge, so he could be alone with his thoughts.
Like warming his bones, the trip up here was getting harder each year. His legs weren’t quite as strong as they used to be, and he had to use a stick these days. But as long as he drew breath, the old man would make his yearly
pilgrimage. Same time, same place. Because he knew, one year he would see his son again and he would give his beloved boy back the old reed doll he had left behind decades before.
The one the old man had made with his own hands, sitting in front of the fire, his son watching him weave every strand.
Then once it was completed, they had bound the spell together in its very fibres using blood, spit and old magic. Just as his father had done with him when he was a child. And his father before him.
Like many, the old man had thankfully never needed to use the power of his own doll, few did. Never needed to call upon its ancient enchantments in a time of extremis. And oh, how he would have given anything for that to have been true of his son.
He turned his son’s doll, over and over him his calloused aging hands. It’s spark of magic long gone. Used on that rainy summer night, fifty years ago to the day.
In the years that passed, many had asked him what had happened that night. It was a tale of woe? Yes. Of magic?
For sure.
But mostly it was the tale of a son, lost to the sea, for nothing more than following his heart.
The rowboat made its way through dark, choppy waters. Inside, three men out in a storm, each of them knew only two would return.
The youngest of the three, Jacob was on his knees, battered and bruised from the beating dealt out by his would-be executioners. His hands, tied with rough rope, lay in his lap.
Jacob was born and bred on the island so the storm lashing the boat was like a mother’s lullaby to him and as such, it soothed him as they went.
This was in stark contrast to his two companions, Issacs and Peterson. Foreigners from America and the architects of Jacob’s current condition. They cursed the weather and their boss for making them take this perilous journey. There were many easier ways to dispose of an irritant like the kid. That didn’t involve the threat of drowning in some God forsaken sea, so far from home.
This was no night to be out in such a flimsy craft, but they had work to do. And they both knew, even in the dark, Crawford would be watching.
And so he was. Milo Crawford stood on the balcony of his palatial colonial beachfront house and watched through his binoculars as the little boat moved further out to sea. Even above the driving rain he himself paid little attention to, he
could hear his wife sobbing through the open French windows at his back.
He knew her heart was broken, but that meant nothing to him. Crawford was a cold man, dead inside some would say.
And he had long forgotten the meaning of love, if he had even known such a thing in the first place.
The whole incident, discovering Rebecca’s infidelity and the swift retribution that now followed. Was simply a matter of pride. She was his and that was an end to it. Love, jealousy, those things meant nothing. Empty emotions he had never felt.
On they rowed in silence, pulling the boat out into deeper waters.
Neither Issacs nor Peterson had any idea what the need for all the theatrics was. Better just to shoot the kid in the back of the head and dump the body somewhere in the hills.
It was a small island, but they were skilled body stashers. A skill you needed working for someone like Crawford.
Jacob felt the boat drifting to a stop and one of the men struggling with the oars. He knew his fate, but he was not afraid. Even now, in the middle of nowhere he could feel her close. He closed his eyes and pictured her perfect face.
Those dark brown eyes and flawless features. He knew those stolen moments they had shared together would comfort him.
Issacs got unsteadily to his feet, with a curse, and then once the damn boat had stopped rocking too much, he dragged the kid to is feet, eager to be done with this and back on dry land. He held onto him tightly, more for his own equilibrium than security, after all where could the poor bastard go? But still, years of doing this kind of dirty work had taught him that folks about to die could do some pretty crazy things.
He watched as Peterson tied the anchor to the kid’s leg and not for the first time since arriving on the island, he wondered just how the hell he had gone from New York to the ass end of the Caribbean. It never failed to amaze him just how quickly life in this supposed tropical paradise had worn thin and he had wished for the cold, trash filled streets of Brooklyn.
Finally, Peterson gave the rope a good tug and nodded in satisfaction. It was going to take both of them to heave the anchor over the side, after that, gravity would do the rest.
Yet still the kid just stood there, his face turned up to the sky, letting the rain wash away the blood. He couldn’t be certain, but watching him, Issacs thought the kid was actually smiling.
Peterson stood up and with great effort, both men picked up the anchor and set it to rest on the edge of the boat.
They exchanged a glance, the kid must have been concussed or something because as they stood there, waiting for the end.
He was definitely smiling now.
Jacob reached inside his torn shirt with his bound hands and felt the reed doll he always carried there. It was warm and running his fingers over the textured belly of the effigy made the storm and the pain melt away. He ran his finger over the smooth surface of its simple face, like he had done a hundred times before, then grasped it tightly in his hands.
Jacob didn’t hear the anchor as it hit the water, but he felt the tug as its weight sent him over the side and dragged him down beneath the surface.
Issacs lent over the side and watched as the poor bastard disappeared into the black. Something about the whole episode had unnerved him and he was glad it was done. Both men took an oar each and began the long row back to dry land, each rowing a little faster than they had before.
It’s done.
Crawford got the call from his right-hand man, Meeks just a little after eleven as he was settling down in a chair nursing his third whiskey of the night.
Meeks had co-ordinated the whole thing with his customary efficiency. Just like he had done back in the old days. As far as Crawford knew, Meeks had never actually killed anyone in his life, he was always too smart to do the deed himself.
After all, these days that’s what Peterson and Issacs were for. Crawford had wanted to leave the two of them back in New York when he had fled the city. But Meeks had persuaded him otherwise.
‘You never know,’ he’d said and of course he had been right. Besides they were as much pariahs by association as he was back home. And he had to admit they reminded him of more exciting, dangerous times.
‘Retirement’ didn’t suit Milo Crawford at all.
The news made Rebecca sob all the more. She had pleaded with him to spare the kid, swore blind to be an obedient wife once more. She had even offered her life for his.
All that just proved to Crawford that she didn’t know him at all. And in truth how could she? Although they had been married three years now, he had never let her into his world.
Their marriage, like so much in his life was a contractual transaction. She needed a green card, he a trophy wife.
Their worlds could not have been more different, let alone the age gap. He was pushing sixty and she was still in her twenties. She had, in the beginning, been attracted by his money and the rumours of past cruelties. In the early days, he had to admit he enjoyed regaling her with tales of his rise to infamy and those he had crushed on the way.
Before things had turned sour and the ghosts of past crimes had come back to haunt him. It was all such a long way from this dull, dull life on the island. Despite the palm trees and sunshine, it often left like a prison by any other name.
Crawford looked across the bedroom to were Rebecca sobbed into her expensive silk pillow, her normally immaculate auburn hair a tangled mess obscuring her face. In time she would once again accept her place in things. Forget this folly and any thoughts of escape with a clandestine lover.
He left her to her misery and went downstairs for a bite to eat. Murder always made him peckish.
As the anchor pulled him down, Jacob could feel his young life slipping away.
As he fell, he remembered what had seemed like an endless summer’s day that had been his childhood. He could see, in his mind’s eye his beloved father, sitting by the fire of
their small but welcoming house working on the doll thathe held as he drifted downwards into the dark depths below.
His father had spent seemingly unending nights crafting the doll after he returned from work. Binding one reed after the other into its evolving form, watching as it began to take shape in his expert hands. Jacob had lost count of the number he had used, but he vividly remembered the hours spent as a young boy hunting the island of suitable reeds for his father to use.
Only the most robust reeds would do, his father had told him. The doll must be strong, like you. Like the bond between father and son. Even now, in his last moment, Jacob remembered the pride he had felt if his father used only one or two of the scores he had collected on any given day. The doll was a symbol of his life, and of his father’s love.
And of the sea which had been the source of his family’s livelihood for generations. The sea would watch over him when his father could not. Long after his father was gone if needs be, the sea would protect. And if it could not protect, if his life were to slip from its grasp as it did now. Then the sea would avenge.
Jacob let the doll slip from his grasp, and it drifted away. This was the first time since its creation that they had been so far apart. And so, with this final gesture, Jacob
gave himself up to the sea. Content that it would do, what it would do.
As he died, Jacob thought of her, of his beloved Rebecca.
Of those perfect stolen moments they had spent together, wrapped in each other’s arms, oblivious to the world and the risk they were taking. Blind to everything but each other.
There being together had been inevitable ever since their first meeting, neither had any control over what would follow.
All they could do was surrender to fate and let it do with them as it would.
He could feel her close, even now in his final moments, in spirit if not in body. And he knew, as darkness took him, they would be together again.
Lost in a fitful sleep, Rebecca heard someone close whisper her name. And with it came a sense of absolute serenity.
She awoke, half expecting Jacob to be laid beside her.
But although she knew that he was gone, and she was physically alone in the bed. The realisation did not sour her mood, her grief had now given way to purpose.
She rose and drifted over to the French windows in a trance like state. She opened them and the wind and rain came flooding into the bedroom. Although the storm lashed all around her, tugging at her nightdress making her long hair
thrash around her ashen face, she was oblivious to its attentions. A moment later she was out on the balcony in its very midst. She climbed up onto the stone balustrade and balanced there in bare feet and let the rain soak her through.
Johnathan Meeks stood in the doorway to Crawford’s vast study.
His employer was sitting on a couch with his back to him, silhouetted by the bright beam of the whirring film projector as it cut through the dusty air.
He was watching the clandestine film footage Meeks himself had taken of Rebecca and the local young gardener engaged in energetic love making in Crawford’s own bedroom.
The old man had watched it many times over the last few days, but never Meeks had noted, out of lust, or even masochistic jealously. A detached curiosity perhaps.
Meeks had set up three such cameras behind two-way mirrors in the house at Crawford’s request when he had first become suspicious, and it hadn’t taken long to catch the lovers in the act.
Meeks had suggested giving the kid a beating and calling it quits. After all Crawford didn’t love his young wife. She was for show, and it wasn’t like the affair would make Crawford look like a cuckold fool with the locals the way it
would have done back home. If this had happened in New York, they would both have been clipped.
So, it was a shock when Crawford had ordered him to kill the kid. Meeks had tried to talk him out of it, this was a small island, and a local disappearing would raise eyebrows and cause them unwanted heat.
Meeks was one of the few people prepared to stand up to the boss, and he knew Crawford had a begrudging respect for that given his years of loyal service and getting him out of many a scrape and of course spiriting him away here when things got dicey in New York.
But still all that counted for nothing when he recognised the murderous look from the old days in Crawford’s pale eyes.
So much for retirement, Meek mused grimly.
The whole scenario had trouble written all over it, they had lived here for a year without any problems, just growing older and browner in the Caribbean sun. But this was different, this was reckless.
Maybe that was why Meeks had purchased a one way open dated air ticket from the Jamaican mainland to Cuba. Better safe than sorry he always said. This life of mischief had taught him that if nothing else.
Meeks left the old man to obsess over the footage. Due to all of the homicidal activity tonight, he had yet to do his
normal end of day security checks, now that things had died down, he decided to run through the procedure, more for need of distraction than any security concerns.
Issacs and Peterson were drying off in the boat house, where they would undoubtedly spend the night. The place was decked out like a summer house so they would have all the comforts they needed. Plus, he had made sure they were well stocked with liquor as a thanks for their nightly nautical jaunt.
The main house itself, which dated back to British colonial times, had eight bedrooms and numerous studies and rooms. The kitchen was large enough to feed a small army and would normally have been the hub for the three full time servants Crawford insisted on employing, but they were all back at home in the village and not due to return until six in the morning.
With the downstairs sweep complete, Meeks made his way up the impressive staircase to the first floor. He stopped outside Crawford and Rebecca’s bedroom. The door was vibrating on its hinges, buffeted by wind coming from inside. He held up his hand, palm out and could feel the wind blowing through the gap between the door and the frame.
He cursed to himself. The woman had probably passed out from the Valium she had taken earlier to calm her hysterics and left the French windows open.
He opened the door and peered inside the dimly lit room.
And sure enough, the windows were open at the far end of the room. He took a step inside and something white against the angry night sky on the balcony beyond, caught his eye and he offered up a curse.
Rebecca was standing on the balcony balustrade, arms stretched out from her sides, Christ like with her face turned up to the driving rain.
Meeks moved quicky but cautiously into the room and over to the windows, not wanting to startle the woman. He knew once he reached her, he would need to act fast, pull her back inside before she knew he was there, drag her by the hair if needs be, anything to stop her jumping.
The gusting wind filled the room, perfect cover as he approached her. Then, when he was only five strides away, she tilted her head, listening. Meeks froze, racked with indecision. Then she turned slightly and looked over her shoulder at him.
Their eyes locked for the briefest of moments, but where Meeks expected to find desolation he saw only utter peace.
Then she smiled, actually smiled contentedly, and was gone, over the edge in one graceful motion.
Meeks stood there for what seemed like an age, staring at the empty space she had occupied a heartbeat before. That look in her eyes, that smile, had chilled him to his very core, and he would have stood there for longer, dumbstruck had the wind not suddenly picked up and rain splashed his face, dragging him out of his stupor.
He moved out onto the balcony and peered over the edge to the courtyard below. He had half expected to see her flying majestically off into the night sky, borne on the wind. But there she was, sprawled face down on the hard stone courtyard dark blood flowing from her head in rivulets mixing with the rain.
Deep out to sea, and working against every natural instinct, every screaming nerve ending of its being. The leviathan swam away from the thrashing, wounded fish it had been tracking.
Although it could taste its prey’s blood in the water, the sheer primeval power it felt flooding its keen senses pulled the great fish away from the kill.
With one sweep of its massive tail, it glided effortlessly away, off into the gloom and down to towards the seabed. It was soon upon the supernatural source that drew it
here. A tiny speck drifting in the current, but with a power a thousand times its physical form.
Moving swiftly the shark took Jacob’s doll in his mouth and held it there with a lightness of touch that belied its massive bulk. The spark of magic bound in its fibres seeped through into the shark’s body like a powerful poison and as it coursed through its intricate nervous system it awoke an ancient purpose within it.
The shark swam on, guided by the growing magic that rippled through its great body. Its already preternatural senses keener now than ever before. After a short time, a shape melted out of the darkness ahead and it slowed to a near stop. And with one final thrash of its tail, it glided effortlessly forwards until it came to a stop, inches from the face of the dead human who was floating above an anchor embedded in the sandy bed, tethered by a length of rope tied to his ankle.
The dark water around them began to shimmer with flecks of bright blue light. Softly at first but growing in strength with each passing second. The energy flowed through the shark and out into the surrounding sea itself, enveloping Jacob’s lifeless body. The water becoming agitated almost alive with a kind of electricity, emanating from the doll in the vast creature’s mouth. Its power binding together human and shark spirits alike.
Now it worked its enchantments on their flesh. Stripping meat from muscle and muscle from bone and cartilage reconstructing their separate bodies, merging them into one being amidst the maelstrom of power around them.
The shark’s great body was finally undone, and its remaining bulk faded into the darkness of the sea beyond the luminescent throbbing power. But its life essence remained, bound in human form by the now dying embers of the doll’s ancient magic.
Until finally, that spark, held so tenaciously with its very fibres passed to the body of its creation. And the doll, now just a hollow shell, began to float away into the void.
The transformation was complete. At first glance a man, a perfect facsimile of the son of its creator. But with a predator’s soul.
This new being, working on pure instinct, blindly stretched out a hand and with lightning speed caught the drifting effigy before the current could take it away. Its power was gone, its significance was not.
A moment later its once vibrant fibres merged with this new creation its now spent power had fuelled. As much a part of this new wonder as the man and beast it had once been.
Jacob took his first deep watery breaths and opened his eyes.
His vision cut through the gloom of the ocean as if it were a shallow clear pool and his senses tingled, he could feel every ripple in the water, could see in his mind’s eye the electrical currents from fish swimming miles away. Could taste the blood from a wounded yellow fin tuna as it thrashed through the water in a desperate attempt to flee a closing hammerhead shark.
His first thought after this new life, this aquatic resurrection was to swim away. Off into the depths, to be free of his earthly memories and what they inevitably meant he had to do.
It was hard, that dream of being human. And almost every part of this magnificent creature he had become, wanted so desperately to explore the limitless freedom the sea had to offer. The thought of having to walk on hard unforgiving land again, breathing polluted stale air instead of the pure water that tasted so sweet to him now, sickened him.
He reluctantly let himself begin to drift upwards towards the dreaded surface. As he drifted the image of Rebecca came to him, but it was indistinct, like a blurred photograph he had once briefly glimpsed years before.
Once though he seemed to remember, he had only to close his eyes to effortlessly picture her every pore, every freckle and slight blemish on her otherwise perfect face. Hadn’t he?
He glided to a halt with the slightest movement of his body and let the sensations of the ocean wash over him. And with it he was calm again, all thought of the surface fading with each new aquatic wonderment. And with it he began to wonder if that life on land, with all its pain and strife.
Perhaps it had all been just a bad dream of the horror of humanity.
Soon as he drifted, he could not remember for the life of him why he had wanted to go back there in the first place.
Although his wife was dead. Crawford hadn’t reacted at all when Meek had broken the news to him.
In truth Meek hadn’t known what to expect, certainly not histrionics that was for sure. But the old man hadn’t even battered an eyelid. There was nothing, no trace of emotion at all.
Crawford had simply asked Meeks to carry her body back up into their bedroom and lay her on the bed. Which he had done, then Crawford had asked him to leave them alone.
Once his duties were done Meeks had the need to get the hell out of the house. It had nothing really to do with the body now laying in state upstairs or the fact that he had witnessed a suicide.
If anything, he wished that it were. But no, he had been driven to stay away from the house for the night by that look in Rebecca’s eyes just before she had jumped.
It haunted him, even as he lay in his modest room at the island’s only hotel, half a bottle of local rum later. He could still see that look of bliss. Bliss! It seemed obscene to him and the only thing that gave him any comfort was that he reasoned she must have been drugged up to the eyeballs. He tried anyway to believe that, but the crystal clarity in her eyes made a lie of the theory, and he knew it.
Crawford gently brushed aside the blood matted hair from the face of his dead wife.
Even with the trauma inflicted by the fall, she was still stunning, even in death. And it was now that he only truly realised just how beautiful she had been. Her porcelain skin was battered and bruised of course, but the rain had washed away most of the blood and she looked to him like she could almost be sleeping.
She looked at peace, almost serene and he couldn’t quite remember when he had seen her look so contented. Then it came to him, this was how she had looked on Meeks’ film, sleeping in the arms of her lover. And with that revelation, he knew deep down, it was that look, that look of total happiness she
had found with another, was the real reason he had wanted the kid dead and gone.
The realisation perplexed Crawford but it was still true, nevertheless. He had thought he felt nothing of her infidelity. But now? Had he loved her after all?
The shark who had once dreamt it was a man, tried yet again to swim away from the place of his re-birth.
But the sheer magnetic pull of the location dragged him back for what must have been a fifth time. Pulled it back to the true purpose of its existence.
As it drew closer, it was the anchor, half buried in the sandy seabed and the length of rope swaying in the current above that called so relentlessly. It drifted closer until it could smell the rust in the water. A strangely familiar odour that somehow reminded it of a time, above the waves. Of gliding on the surface in a boat propelled by two others, others with murder on their minds and blood on their hands.
It could smell that blood now and with it came images of a forgotten life, of a life out of its beloved ocean. The memory frightened the creature for a moment. The surface.
The surface and what lay above the waves, a slow agonising, gasping death.
If that were so, then why did it suddenly yearn to see the night sky? Why did it feel the surface’s irresistible draw?
Just as it had to return to this very spot.
A spark of memory, now as if to ignite its renewed purpose. A face, looking up, eyes locked in passion, a smile that could melt your heart. It knew, although it could mean its end that the surface and what lay beyond held something dear to it.
The creature kicked its legs and made for the surface.
It wanted the blood of those murderous puppets who had sent its human form to the depths, mindless of its pain and suffering. But mostly it wanted the blood of the puppeteer who pulled the strings.
It was close to the surface now and could see the moon through the water. Clear and full. It was a sight it remembered sharing with another, that face looking up at him in bliss. Vivid and alive now in its mind’s eye. And with it came the name of a Goddess. Rebecca.
Jacob broke the surface and took in a huge lungful of air. He half expected to choke on it, but it wasn’t as toxic as he anticipated. An unwelcome substitute to be sure, but acceptable in its way. He didn’t like the way it felt in his
lungs, it was harsher somehow, the water flowed so effortlessly through him, but he knew he could survive in it.
It was a small discomfort he was willing to endure until he would be able to return to his beloved ocean. He could tolerate its bitterness because he knew it would lead to sweet bloody vengeance, and her.
It hadn’t taken Issacs and Peterson long to drink most of the crate of beer Meeks had left then as a thank you for a job well done.
That coupled with the bottle of local rum had made Peterson go out like a light and he was now sprawled asleep snoring loudly on one of the plush couches the boat house had to offer.
Issacs watched him as he slept and not for the first time, marvelled at just how opulent the furniture in here was.
It was an afterthought to the estate, tucked away here at the water’s edge but it was still worth more than Issacs could ever hope to earn.
Maybe that was why he enjoyed nights like these when he was allowed to sleep here instead of his sparce little room at the back of the main house. At least out here he could dream he had made something of his life.
He had spent most of the night in a fitful sleep, despite the alcohol, Isaacs had been unable to wash away the half-remembered dreams of the look on the kid’s face as they had sent him to his death.
Issacs dozed in his chair having been awoken by the sound of waves crashing against the side of the boat house. The storm was still in full force and the walls rattled intermittently with each gust of wind.
He examined his bruised knuckles, in the past he had always enjoyed the rush brought on by violence. And initially when he and Peterson had jumped the kid on his way back home after his latest tryst with Crawford’s wife, he had felt that familiar buzz.
It was more the anticipation of the fight. Both he and Peterson where in their forties and had seen better days, and the kid was twenty at most and in very good shape. They expected one hell of a fight but, just like when they had sent him over the edge of the boat. He hadn’t put up the least bit of resistance. Now that he thought about it, the kid hadn’t even thrown a punch.
Lost in thought, Issacs didn’t notice the dim strangely coloured light outside or that the storm had faded away. Then the light flashed bright blue, like lightening but did not fade away, nor was it followed by thunder. It grew in
intensity shimmering like sunlight off water and came streaming through the window.
Drunk and groggy, Issacs first took it as sunlight, he assumed he had been up all night, but he glanced back to the other side of the boathouse which faced the sea. There was a large window in front of the speed boat they kept covered up inside which was bobbing gently in the water. It was pitch black outside. He could see that the rain was still battering the glass, but it made no sound at all.
Spooked, Issacs lent across to the wicker table by his chair and pick up his pistol. Peterson suddenly sat bolt upright as the dancing light hit his face. He glanced around, disorientated and shielded his eyes. He saw that Issacs had his gun so fumbled around on the floor by the couch and grabbed his own revolver.
Both men were on their feet now, they aimed at the ever-brightening light coming from outside. It flooded through the gaps in the door frame and wood panelling of the walls in harsh pulsating shafts, filling the boathouse with dancing shadows.
Then, as if hit by a massive wave, the whole side of the boathouse shook violently, the impact was so fierce it splintered and cracked the door and surrounding wooden wall panels.
Gripped by blind panic, Issacs fired his automatic into the door. Round after round slammed into the wood leaving smoking holes where the light shone through in shimmering blue beams.
An instant later the light died like at the flick of a switch, and they were plunged into total black. Issacs continued pulling the trigger in the darkness long after his gun was empty.
It took him ten full seconds to register his gun was no longer firing. He ducked back towards his jacket with was hung on the back of a chair and cursing fumbled in the inside pocket for his spare mag.
Issacs didn’t see the door ripped off its hinges and tossed away like a child’s plaything. But he heard the scream from Peterson followed by gunshots.
All hell broke loose as he was thrown headlong into a cyclone of nightmarish violence. The light filled storm came flooding into the boat house from every side. Issacs dropped to his knees and steadied himself as best he could against the onslaught. He just managed to retrieve his spare mag when the coat was wrenched out of his grasp by the wind and away.
He gritted his teeth, all the while being battered on all sides by stinging ice cold wind and rain, and more out of luck and muscle memory finally replaced the empty mag.
The air was filled with tumbling debris and blinding blue light as the furniture was reduced to kindling in the blink of an eye. Something spun out of the tempest lightning fast and clipped him on the side of the head, stunning him for a moment.
An instant later, he was on his hands and knees with blood in his mouth. He spat and just about managed to drag himself to his feet, he gripped the pistol tightly and aimed as best he could through slitted eyes. He shouted to Peterson who was little more than a shadow in the maelstrom, but he couldn’t even hear his own voice above the din.
Issacs screamed blue murder at Peterson, who was still standing, bracing himself with remarkable strength against the storm as he aimed through the open doorway to whatever was causing this assault. But something was wrong, there was something about the way he stood. The ice-cold rain lashing Issacs’ face was suddenly warm for a moment and he tasted blood, but he instinctively knew it wasn’t his own.
It all came into horrific focus in a split-second lull in the storm as a bright blue flash illuminated his partner.
Peterson had been decapitated but still he stood there aiming stiffly even in death.
Issacs screamed as the storm resumed in with increased ferocity. He caught a blur of movement to his left as a
misshapen shadow, moving incredibly fast darted through the boathouse. One moment it was there the next it was gone.
Issacs aimed left and right, another flash of something blurring by and then the shadow slammed into Peterson’s body, and it was catapulted up in the air, it spun wildly sending up a fountain of blood and flesh, some of which hit Issacs in the face and he spat out a mouthful before collapsing in a heap retching.
He looked up through tears and blinding rain to see the shape was leant over Peterson’s body at the far end of the boathouse, its head buried in his chest thrashing from side to side as it tore off chunks of flesh.
It was at once human but something much, much worse, his fear addled brain could not make out its twisted unnatural features, which he subconsciously took as a blessing, he was tiptoeing on the edge of madness as it was.
More by instinct than anything, Issacs raised his pistol and took aim at the nightmare devouring Peterson. But before he could will his trigger finger into action, the thing whipped around and sprang at him. It seemed to almost swim through the air, which was rippling as if they were underwater. He could do little but marvel at the graceful way it glided towards him.
Then there was a blur of bright ragged teeth and white-hot pain as he felt a sharp tug at his arm and then it was gone, ripped off at the elbow in a cloud of red mist. Issacs watch it slowly drift away still holding the pistol as shock took a hold of what was left of his senses.
The shape darked off and around the boathouse, then it came at him again, faster, sleeker than ever. And this time for the kill.
After the blissful slaughter of the boathouse, Jacob hadn’t taken the relatively short path up to Crawford’s mansion straight away.
Although the pull he felt towards it was almost physical.
Something deep within him had taken him on a different journey. He walked through a familiar wood, it was not far, but it awoke a dizzying array of memories with each step, and it wasn’t until he came to the very edge that his destination became clear.
His father’s small house came into view through the trees and the sight clear broke his heart. It was in darkness, his father would be asleep and would not rise until dawn. When he did wake, Jacob could picture him pottering around the house preparing for the day ahead. ‘You have to get up early,’ he had always told Jacob when he complained about the hour as a
child. ‘Fish don’t wait for lazy bones to roll on out of bed.’
He had to fight the urge to go closer, this was not why he was back. He knew there would be no goodbyes, tearful or otherwise.
This had always been about Rebecca and the wrongs done to them both. Since his transformation and the clarity that brought, he had thought of nothing else but the two of them being together once more. Somehow, he knew she was already dead, that was inevitable. It was just all part of the tapestry they were all woven into.
But what of his father? Jacob had accepted his fate the moment he had been attacked, almost embraced it as a part of his and Rebecca’s narrative. The classic star-crossed lovers, or some such tragedy, but he had done so without a thought for him. A parent should never have to outlive their child. What in the world could be worse?
The man who had raised him after his mother’s death in childbirth, the man who had given him the very power that now coursed through his veins. Would be left all alone by a selfish son who thought of nothing but his heart’s desire.
Jacob bite back a sob and again he had to stop himself from crossing the clearing and slipping into the house through the back porch. Like he had done a hundred times in life. He
so desperately wanted to see his father one last time, but what could he say? He could only imagine what he looked like, naked and drenched as he was in murderer’s blood, let alone the physical changes wrought by the doll’s magic.
He looked down at himself. This was only a memory of his former body, a chimera of the spirit of shark and human made flesh. Normal enough to a certain extent but in constant flux between the two. He ran his tongue across the layers of razor-sharp teeth in his mouth. No wonder his killers had screamed.
Jacob hopped over the back garden fence and moved over to the back door. It would be so easy to go inside, to watch his father sleep for a short while, but he knew that was a torture he did not need.
So, without knowing such a thing were possible, he reached into the flesh and bone of his chest, which split open painlessly like a fresh wound, and pulled out the doll from within his body and placed it on the doorstep. This would be the first thing his father saw when he left for work. Then he would know his son’s fate. Then he would be able to start to mourn.
Jacob hoped it wouldn’t be too painful.
He pulled himself away and back into the wood. Better his father remembered him as he was and hopefully one day be
content in the knowledge that his son was at peace, and with the only other person in this world and the next that he truly loved.
In time Jacob knew the guilt would fade. Even now, as his open chest knitted seamlessly together again, he could feel the remorse for his former life dissipate as the beast within tipped the balance of power, calling him on once more to carnage.
Crawford awoke to the sound of the ocean, although the house was a thousand yards from the sea, he could have sworn the waves were crashing against his bedroom door.
He dismissed it as the residue of some forgotten dream.
He turned on his side to Rebecca who was a dark lifeless shape on the bed next to him. She could almost have been alive, laid there in the darkness, her arms by her side. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep in the bed next to her, but it seemed apt somehow, being this was the last night they would ever spent together before he would have Meeks ‘disappear’ her body in the morning.
He moved to touch her cold cheek when the sound came again. This time downstairs, though just as loud and accompanied by splintering wood.
Crawford got out of bed and crept over to his desk and took out his old revolver from one of the draws. He checked the barrel to make sure it was still loaded and moved over to the door. He opened it a notch and peered through the gap.
From where he was, he could see the spacious landing and the top of the opulent stone staircase which led down to the vast entrance hall directly below him.
He came out onto the landing, his first thought was that the ground floor had been flooded somehow, shimmering blue light cast dancing shadows on the walls and was slowly creeping up the staircase to the first floor.
And could hear water lapping against the stone steps. He moved closer to the balustrade at the end of the landing where it met the banister and looked down to the entrance hall below.
It took Crawford a moment to realise what he was seeing, although it didn’t make any sense despite the evidence of his own eyes. It was as if the entrance hall was rapidly filling with water, but water he could not see, only the effect of it on the debris swirling in its midst.
Objects kept downstairs, furniture, ornaments, the coat stand he kept by the door, which was shedding flailing coats and jackets like drowning men. Even the priceless paintings
from the entrance hall walls were tumbling, rippling and floating upwards as if under water.
A dark ominous shape appeared in the gloom at the very bottom of the long staircase and began to drift menacingly upwards. Its features masked by the detritus in the air and the increasingly agitated flecks of bright blue light swarming around it. Its outline was oddly human but off somehow.
Crawford didn’t wait for it to get any closer and ran back to his room, he slammed the door shut and locked it. He backed away as the phantom water began lapping at the bottom of the door which rattled in protest at the growing pressure behind it.
Crawford braced himself, half expecting the door to burst inwards, but for now it held, the strange blue rippling light teasing under the door frame, but nothing more.
He aimed at the door and waited for that shadow on the stairs to come knocking. At first there was nothing, just that odd lapping sound like waves against the wood outside.
Then as the seconds ticked on Crawford began to feel the blood throbbing in his temples. His head was pounding, and he could sense the air pressure in the room, changing, his ears popped like dull gunshots.
It was as if he were in an air pocket deep under water and getting deeper as the pressure built. His breathing
became laboured as it weighed heavy on his chest, and he had to physically fight for even the shallowest of breaths.
Then the door exploded inwards, and Crawford was flung backwards against the French windows by what felt like a tidal wave of freezing cold water. He hit his head hard on the glass, which cracked, but it did not break.
He slid down onto his backside in a daze. He spluttered and gasped for breath tasting sea water in his mouth. He looked down at himself, expecting to be drenched but his clothes were dry.
The shape that had ascended the staircase was standing in the open doorway now, silhouetted against the shimmering bright blue light at its back. Crawford saw his revolver had fallen close by and he scooped it up and aimed at the monstrosity with both shaking hands.
He moved to cock the hammer and fire, but the moment he did the shimmering blue light flooded into the room, half blinding him. He tried to scream but shock had taken his voice. He threw his hands up to his face covering his eyes as best he could. He could see fleeting glimpses of the thing before him in flashes of hideous detail as the lights danced around it.
It was Rebecca’s lover of course, but now a nightmarish perversion of the human form. His once dark ebony skin now a
mottled grey. His eyes large, black and lifeless. He tilted its misshapen head, clearly enjoying Crawford’s distress.
Then it smiled and Crawford screamed. A cruel grin cracked its face and spread literally from ear to ear, threatening to split its head in two. The harsh blue light flashed against row upon row of deformed jagged teeth.
The scream caught in Crawford’s throat as he began to gasp for breath, he could inexplicably feel water rising up past his legs, but still he was bone dry. Then, like the staircase everything in the room began to float and bob, but again they were floating on the light flooding the room.
He could feel the icy phantom water moving up his knees and lapping against his chest as he sat there. In a panic he braced himself against the cracked window and pulled himself unsteadily to his feet.
Crawford’s pyjamas were moving as if in water and he could feel it ebbing and flowing against his body as if filled the room. He instinctively pushed outwards with his palms in an attempt to push the water away. But despite everything he could see and hear. There was no water!
On the bed, Rebecca’s body slowly began to rise, her long auburn hair and night dress moving as if submerged. Her monstrous lover held out a hand and gently touched her
shoulder. His touch made the light around her ripple, which in turn ran through her body.
The undulating light and its accompanying aquatic illusions were up to Crawford’s neck now. His limbs felt heavy as his entire body was being buffeted and crushed by the imaginary currents swirling around the room.
He desperately craned his head back trying to somehow keep it above the rising light. But it washed over his face making him gag, he could taste and smell the harsh salt water as it lapped over him. He began choking on it as his body floated helplessly up towards the ceiling.
Jacob watched Crawford gasping and flailing in the air as he slowly drown. The old man clawed at his throat, drawing blood as if trying to stop the inevitable filling of his lungs. But to no avail.
Logic was a nonsense here, he was dying, choking on sea water that was at once suffocating him and not there at all.
Jacob could have struck, torn the man limb from limb as he had the others in the boathouse. But that would be too quick. A man like Crawford who had caused so much pain and suffering in life, should die in terror. Feel his life slowly slipping away, just as Jacob had done.
It was strange, he had expected to feel elation when Crawford finally died. But in truth as he watched his
lifeless body floating there, he felt nothing. He was already forgetting the injustices of this mortal life on land and was once again filled with a longing to be back in the ocean. He could see it through the French windows, just visible beyond the grounds of the estate.
Even the thought of leaving one of his tormentors alive held no meaning anymore. Let him live out his miserable life in fear of what he would find here in the morning.
He decided he would leave Crawford’s body there, on the balcony, facing the sea where he and Rebecca would be forever together beneath the waves. Free to wander the depths without a thought for the surface world and all its woes. Yes, there was a certain poetry in that.
Jacob took Rebecca in his arms and caried her back towards the beach. The storm, the one not of his making, had blown itself out and the sky was beginning to redden with the approaching sun. He knew instinctively as they reached the water’s edge that there was enough power left in him for the both of them.
One kiss would start her metamorphosis. Then when she was perfection in her new state, he would show her the vastness of their new home. The size of which would only be dwarfed by the future they had together.
The first thing Meeks noticed when he arrived back at the estate the following morning was that the door to the boathouse was missing. He had decided to drop in on Issacs and Peterson first before checking in with Crawford. His boss had asked him to get here before the servants arrived at six so that he and the other two could dispose of Rebecca’s body.
He checked his watch as he went down the path leading to the boathouse. It was five twenty, plenty of time to rouse the pair and set about losing the body before anyone arrived.
As he got closer, Meek noticed that in addition to the door, the wooden walls were bowed and cracked and the windows facing him were all shattered. Had the storm really been that bad last night?
He didn’t know why, but as he approached, he felt the need to draw his pistol. Maybe it was the New Yorker in him, or maybe it was the odd smell drifting on the air towards him.
By the time he reached the doorway and stepped inside, the smell was unbearable, and he was hit with a wave of nausea. He cursed to himself and took out his handkerchief to cover his nose and mouth before stepping inside to the sound of buzzing flies.
He reeled in shock as his eyes adjusted to the gloom.
The place was a slaughterhouse, it was as if a bomb had gone off. What was left of the furniture and the speedboat which
was half sunk had been reduced to kindling. Worst still, what remained of the two men was splattered all over the decimated interior.
He could only manage a cursory glance around at the festering carnage strewn around the place before he was driven back outside into the fresh air. An instant later he was on his knees vomiting up his breakfast all over his new shirt.
One through came to mind after he had gradually pulled himself together somewhat. The house.
Meeks ran, pistol at the ready up to the main house, like the boathouse the heavy front door was missing. Bracing himself for more horrors, he went inside.
The house place had been turned upside down, the entrance hall was littered with debris and smelt oddly like low tide.
He had to pick his way through the shattered furniture and smashed ornaments and once he reached the staircase, he was able to move faster. He ran upstairs taking them two at a time and quickly made his way to the old man’s room.
He paused in the open doorway and could see the room was in the same decimated state as the rest of the house. He levelled his gun and stepped inside expecting to see the same horrors he had witnessed at the boathouse.
The bed was on its side and there was no immediate sign of Rebecca’s body, but it could have quite easily been buried in the clutter and destroyed furniture he had to navigate.
The billowing lace curtains leading to the French windows caught his eye. The windows were half open, and he could see Crawford sitting on a chair with his back to him on the balcony looking off into the garden and the coastline beyond.
He called Crawford’s name, but the man didn’t move. But even as he reached the old man, Meeks knew that he was dead.
But still as he eased through the gap in the windows he wasn’t prepared for the look of absolute terror on his face.
Meeks knelt in front of him and studied the body which was sat bolt upright in the chair. Apart from some vicious looking scratch marks on the old man’s neck there didn’t seem to be a mark on him. But Meeks had no doubt from the look on his face that Crawford had died horribly.
He checked his watch again. The staff would be arriving soon, then all hell would break loose. Three dead, two of them eviscerated. It was no place for a known crook like Meeks to get caught in.
He packed what little possessions he had into two suitcase and took them to one of the cars parked in the garage to the side of the house. He knew Crawford had a couple of grand in cash stashed in a shoe box in the desk in his study,
so he reluctantly went back into the house and after a panicked five minutes of searching the trashed room, he found the box and took it with him back out to the car.
He gunned the engine as he waited for the automatic garage doors to open, then sped away in a cloud of burning rubber.
He would be off the island on the first ferry to Jamacia long before the cops had stopped looking for him in amongst the decimation of the house not to mention the abattoir that was the boathouse.
Then he would be on the first plane he could get to Cuba.
And then? As far away from the Caribbean as was possible and away from this nightmare once and for all.
As he drove, he knew he should have felt relief, he had survived whatever had attacked the estate. But he couldn’t shift that look on Crawford’s face, a face that had witnessed horrors beyond his simple imagination and wondered if he ever would.
And with that came the realisation that although he was in one piece, something deep within Meeks told him his would be a life lived in fear and that the events of this small nondescript island would haunt him forever.
And so, the legend began. Crawford’s body was taken to the mainland for an autopsy.
As there was very little damage the initial thought was that the old man had died of a heart attack. Brought on by the strange assault on his estate. But it wasn’t until he was opened up that the true nature of his death revealed itself to the coroner.
His lungs were filled with sea water, so it was officially reported as a drowning. The coroner’s report failed to mention however that not a trace of sea water residue was found on his clothes, body or even in his mouth.
Apparently, he had drowned on dry land and a thousand yards from the sea.
And the others? Of Crawford’s three known foreign employees, one had disappeared completely. Along it was suggested with Mrs. Crawford who was also missing. There had been rumours in the village of an affair between Rebecca Crawford and an employee, so in that particular instance the authorities were happy one and one did indeed make two.
Then there was the case of the other two unfortunates.
Details of their demise was sketchy at best and in the end the authorities had agreed that both men had been the victims of a vicious shark attack, which in truth matched their considerable wounds and missing parts.
This was the first recorded incident of this nature in fifty years. The head of the case and the Jamaican chief medical examiner thought it wise to leave the investigation at that. No need, it was privately agreed, to probe too deeply into just how two men had been torn to shreds by a shark, in a boathouse next to, but definitely not in the water.
Over the months and now years that had followed that night, the legend of the ‘Crawford killings’ had grown.
Everyone laid claim to a theory. From mob hit to witchcraft. It was only the older folk who knew of course.
Jacob’s father had not been the only one to have fashioned a doll using the old ways. But as time went on fewer and fewer of the younger islanders truly believed in its power and like most traditions, this hidden craft would fade in time.
Even if its idol of reeds lived on, albeit without much meaning in the many gift shops which stocked its likeness throughout the island.
As daybreak came, the old fisherman reluctantly abandoned his vigil for another year.
He would be back, health allowing, same time, same place next year, hoping for a glimpse of his lost son. Although deep down he knew his son, Jacob was out there in the vast
ocean lost to the sea with no memory of being a man and what it was like to once walk on the land.
It was a price his son had gladly paid all those decades ago, to be reunited with his beloved. And that thought had always comforted the old man and tempered his yearly disappointment. After all, any parent only wants for their child to be happy, and deep down he knew his son was.
Perhaps next year Jacob would remember that forgotten life, perhaps in a dream of what once was. And would wish to visit it again. If only for a short while and meet with the old man who sits on the cliff’s edge year after year.
The old man he used to call father.
Showdown At Little Rock The town of Little Rock was dying long before the shadows came out of the dust that night.
Its ever-dwindling population (now a mere one hundred and two,) were testament to that. Even if those hardy, or foolhardy folks who so stubbornly remained there would never admit it, at least out loud. The town was fading away, slowly but surely returning to the barren desert from which it had risen no more than forty years before.
If anyone would have cared enough to ask the dwindling residents, why Little Rock ailed so, they would have, to a soul blamed the railway. Or more precisely the lack of it.
Little Rock was situated on the very edge of the blistering Mojave Desert and was so remote many map makers had failed to notice it. And so, there it sat as history and the new burgeoning United States of America passed it by.
Untouched by the war between the blues and the greys, now ten years past. Its remoteness had then seemed like a blessing, but soon after became a curse. When the long-promised railway station had, like the war and history in general passed them by. Fifty miles away to be precise.
Little Rock was now the type of place that if you’d had the misfortune to be born there, you moved away as soon as age
or circumstance allowed. Then once you were away you could quite happily lie about where you came from in the first place.
Those left behind, whether it be by reason of poverty or down right apathy, were mostly a bitter and twisted bunch. So little was there to recommend the town to outsiders that the stagecoach company had reduced their once twice weekly run to and from the town to just two a month. Hoping perhaps that this would hasten the place’s demise and then they wouldn’t have to bother at all.
Little Rock was the very definition of ‘out of sight, out of mind.’ Although without doubt a haven of misery, not all of its ill-fated population were strangers to bliss.
Ever since he had made the journey to the new world from his home country of the Netherlands as a wide eyed nineteen-year-old, Skylar Haaland had a recurring dream of flying over a cool blue ocean.
Drifting effortlessly to a never reached horizon, close enough to the water to dip his hand in as he flew. His only companion on this much travelled dream jaunt was a soothing sense of wellbeing.
Lately thought, the dream had changed, he was still flying, but over sand now which burnt and scratched his hand
when he touched it. And that once familiar feeling of serenity replaced by an oppressive yet unseen presence close by.
Even in sleep, Haaland was a bright man. He knew the oppressive feeling was Little Rock, always threatening to smother its inhabitant’s futile hopes. The sand was the merciless Mojave Desert it so desperately tried to keep at bay.
The metaphor was as clear as a stampede. That journey of hope and expectation he had taken over the sea to America had, over the eight years he had been here, been smothered under an ocean of sand and the harsh realities of misanthropic places like Little Rock and its citizens.
But tonight, it was the cool blue water again and the faintest feeling of hope. As he dozed, he could hear the soft breathing of his lover next to him. He could feel her heart beating against his chest as she held him as she slept.
So, this was bliss Haaland thought with a faint smile.
Entwined in May’s embrace as they lay in bed, safely tucked away from the harsh realities of the town. Not in love, no it was too early for that, and he had no illusions about how fickle May was when it came to affairs of the heart.
It was lust certainly, fuelled no doubt by the illicitness of their relationship. But also, in a kind of
belonging, they were two kindred souls who had found each other quite out of the blue amongst all this despair.
He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so safe as he did in that moment, not since before the death of his parents, the event that had driven him from his homeland to the promised land of America.
Soon he had promised, he would take May away from all this and they would start a new life together. Somewhere where he could dream of the ocean every night until it washed away the sand forever.
Something made May shift beside him, and her breath quickened.
A nightmare perhaps and he held her a little closer, not wanting to break the spell of contentment, to keep Little fucking Rock at bay for a little while longer.
But despite himself, this brought him to the edge of sleep, and then he heard it. A harsh sound invading this warm cocoon. Wood creaking, rusting door hinges complaining at their use. A definite footfall now, close by, followed by hushed voices.
Haaland opened his eyes, and the world came flooding back, he sat bolt upright, disorientated from being ripped from sleep so abruptly. It took him a precious few seconds to
realize where he was, still groggy, he through he saw three out of place shadows in the gloom of the room.
May’s scream next to him dragged him back to reality in all its ugly glory.
“Jess’!!” May shrieked in panic close to his ear, and one of the shadows stepped forwards were a shaft of sunlight coming through the window shutter hit his sneering face.
Jesse, May’s sometime boyfriend was standing over him, his face like murderous thunder. Over at the door behind him, Haaland caught sight of his two ever present cronies. Cutter and that skinny kid, Billy.
“Yer fucker!” Jesse sneered.
Shock and the need for self-preservation slapped Haaland wide awake. He lunged across to the bedside table to his right and grabbed his holster. To his horror it was empty.
“Lookin’ for this?” Jesse snapped in triumph and spun Halaand’s own pistol on his finger.
“Jess, wait...” Was all Haaland could get out before the big man pistol whipped him hard across the face.
Sharp pain and blinding light overloaded his senses. He though he heard May scream again, then silenced from what might have been a slap. Then before he knew it, he was being dragged out of bed by his hair and onto the wooden floor. The
first kick caught him on his forearm as he tried to protect his head. But the second caught him square in the face and then there was nothing.
His hearing came back first, shouts and laugher from his attackers filled his ringing ears.
Then the sensation of being dragged and kicked. Finally, his vision came next just in time to see himself being thrown head first through the Hotel’s front door. He rolled off the decking, down the three steps and into the dusty street.
He rolled as best he could and managed to get to his knees. He felt the stock of a rifle in his chest and looked up to see Cutter’s ugly face looming over him.
“Not so fast, lover boy,” the man spat out. And pushed him down onto his hands and knees.
Jesse was a blur of motion out of the corner of his eye and before Haaland could react, Jesse kicked him hard in the ribs, and he felt something snap, and the wind was knocked right out of him. He crumbled into a heap and tried sucking in air but got a lung full of dust for his efforts.
He rolled onto his side, coughing and spluttering which sent stabbing pains through him, and he knew that kick had broken his ribs. This earned a chorus of mocking laughter
from Cutter and Billy who were holding him by the arms between them.
“Leave him alone, Jesse,” she pleaded and tried to wrench her arms free but the held her tight.
“Shut up,” Jesse snapped back, never taking his eyes off Haaland laid in the dirt.
He pulled him by the front of his night shirt and punched him once, twice in the face. Followed by a flurry of kicks and punches as he fell onto his back, trying in vain to protect himself.
“Jess’, you’re killing him!” May cried out through tears. “Please, leave him alone.”
Breathing and sweating hard from the exertion of the beating, Jesse ignored her and leant over Haaland, who was now in the foetal position clutching at his damaged ribs.
“You can’t say I didn’t warn you, yer fucker,” Jesse spat and dragged Haaland to his feet and turned away.
For one fleeting moment as he tottered on the edge of collapse, his senses dulled by the assault. Haaland actually thought that maybe that was it. Lesson learnt, beating over.
But Jesse wheeled back around and punched him again, hard in the stomach. The next moment he was face down in the dirt again, staring at his own splattered blood on the ground in front of him.
“Cutter,” he vaguely heard Jesse say through the bells ringing in his head. “Gimmie the pistol, yer Fucker.”
Haaland cursed to himself and somehow managed to haul himself up to a sitting position. He looked through a mist of pain and tears as Jesse reached out a hand to his idiot lacky.
The imbecile pulled out Haaland’s pistol from out of his belt and spun it on his finger with a whoop of delight, mimicking his boss’ display from earlier. However, Jesse was good with a gun, Cutter was not. The pistol spun up and over his shoulder, barely missing his left ear and clattered onto the hotel’s porch behind him.
“Jess’, come on...” Haaland said through blooded teeth.
But if his assailant heard, he did not turn around.
“Christ Cutter!” Jesse exclaimed and sneered at the man.
“Next time I hope you shoot your fucking balls off. Yer fucker.”
‘ Yer fucker.’ That was how Jesse addressed everyone, man, woman or child, regardless of if he were mad at them or not.
Haaland had often wondered if he spoke to his momma like that at dinner. ‘Pass the potatoes, ma. Yer fucker.’
The thought must have inadvertently brought a smile to his battered face because it earned him a stinging back hander from Jesse, who then turned back to Cutter. He stared at the man expectantly but got nothing but a vacant look in response.
“Well, pick it up then you stupid bastard!” He ordered.
Cutter scurried over to the weapon and picked it up. He threw it to Jesse who caught it then tossed it into the dirt in front of Haaland.
Although he was dazed from the beating, Haaland knew this was a new twist on Jesse’s normal bullying routine. Before there had always been kicks and punches, when he was in a rage with someone, and he had even seen Jesse use a bull whip on one unfortunate once.
But the pistol in front of him spoke of a new game.
Jesse finally seemed to think he was more than just a one-horse town bully boy. Jesse was now ready to see just how grown up he really was. Perhaps he had read one too many of those dime novels the general store stocked every now and then. The ones with the gunslingers and outlaws.
Perhaps he fancied himself on the cover of one.
“Shit,” Haaland said, and the word came out with a chaser of blood.
He was aware of hushed voices around him now. He looked up to see grey, black shapes gathering close by. The commotion had attracted a sizable crowd. Drawn out of their collective lethargy to bear witness to yet another beating dished out by the thug Jesse and his hangers on. It was a scene as familiar to them as it was to the victim.
Most had not been surprised to see it was the Dutchman, his affair with May had been an open secret to all but Jesse himself. This was a beating Haaland had coming.
But all Haaland saw with a growing sense of relief were witnesses. Not even a lunatic like Jesse would gun a man down in the street in front of everyone. All he had to do was go nowhere near that pistol.
A glint of metal caught his eye, the tin star worn by Jameson the town’s one and only law man.
“Oh, thank Christ,” Haaland breathed.
“Thank who?” Jesse asked incredulously. “Ain’t no Christ here, Dutch. Just us sinners.”
He tapped Haaland on the side of his head with the toe of his boot.
“Ain’t that right, sheriff?”
Jameson visibly tensed at this and shifted his gaze, suddenly aware that he was now the centre of Jesse’s attention. Several of the onlookers watched him with a kind of ghoulish delight. Thankful Jesse had not singled them out.
Jameson glanced around at his unwanted audience as they hung on his response. He knew, as did everyone there, that he wouldn’t get shit in the way of support from any of them. He
then looked down at the prone Dutchman but winced as the man gazed up at him in anticipation of salvation.
“I, er,” Jameson mumbled, then cleared his throat but his voice was weak. So, he shut up.
Afterall, he reasoned to himself. Who was he kidding?
He was fifty-eight years old, a lousy shot at the best of times, which was a moot point anyway since he had left his gun back at the saloon where he had been propping up the bar all morning.
“I, I er, think the Dutchman has had enough, Jesse,” he managed to croak out. “Whadda ya say?”
The only response from Jesse was a well-practiced, very effective dead-eyed stare. That and letting his right hand gently brush past his gun holster. It was subtle, especially for him, but it was effective. The sheriff dropped his head and studied his boots.
“That’s what I thought,” Jesse said with distain.
He turned to take in his audience which had doubled in size, drawn to the scene thanks to the appearance of the gun still laid in front of Haaland and the prospect of real bloodshed.
Jesse made and expansive gesture with his arms and addressed the crowd.
“Now everyone here knows that I am a reasonable man.” He paused for any dissenting voices but was met with silence.
“And Christ knows,” he continued. “I have given this Dutch piece of shit enough fuckin’ warnings to stay away from my May.”
He leant over the prone Haaland who was still looking at the sheriff in disbelief. He shifted his gaze to his attacker as Jesse’s considerable shadow fell over his face.
“Jess...” It was barely more than a grunt.
“But you just couldn’t help yourself. Could you lover boy?”
“Jesse, please...” His voice was paper thin, and he tried to suck in more air, but his broken ribs had a stranglehold on his lungs.
The only other sound was May who had started sobbing.
“Jess’,” she pleaded through the tears. “Jess’, please he’s had enough, can’t you see he’s hurt bad? He’s sorry...
I’m sorry. C’mon, he’s no match for you, he never was.”
In all honestly Haaland had to admit he wasn’t sure just how May would react to all this. She could, if the situation called on it, flip from one side to the next depending on her needs. She’d done it before, hell she’d done it to him in the past.
But he couldn’t deny she was trying to help, at least for now. Appealing to Jesse’s ego was a good ploy, making him out to be the tougher guy. He would love that. And Haaland was more than happy to double down on that if it put an end to the pain. Humiliation was a small price to pay for self-preservation.
“We are sorry, Jesse,” he said softly. “You’re right to be angry.”
“Well shit,” Jesse snorted. “She’s sorry, you’re sorry.
Trouble is, I ain’t! You’ve had this coming for years, Dutchman.”
Jesse stood up straight and puffed out his chest. From Haaland’s vantage point he looked double his six feet as he towered over him. Then he took several deliberate paces away and the crowd backed off to give him space. He stopped, turned and faced Haaland once more.
“Get up and draw,” he said coldly, and moved his hand to his holster.
This won an audible gasp from the crowd, and they fanned out to give both men plenty of room. Sheriff Jameson winced visibly but back off as well all the same.
Although he had never actually seen Jesse kill a man.
Haaland was in no doubt he could. Again, he looked at the Sheriff for any sign of help, but the useless old bastard
wouldn’t even meet his gaze. Then he looked imploringly to the crowd around him. He didn’t care how pathetic he appeared, shit he would lick Jesse’s boots in front of the whole God forsaken town if it saved his life.
Some looked away as his eyes met theirs, others, clearly glad it was him and not them, were openly grinning.
This fucking town, Haaland thought bitterly.
“Shoot him, Jess!” Someone at the back of the crowd shouted.
Haaland thought it was that runt Billy, but he couldn’t be sure. Whoever it was, it won nods and murmurs of approval from several folks around him.
“Get-Up-And-Draw,” Jesse said emphasizing every word.
“I, I can’t,” Haaland tried to give his voice some weight, but the words came out as a hoarse whisper.
“You broke my ribs,” he continued. “I can’t fuckin’
breathe... Jess’, please stop this.”
He was suddenly scared, hearing the way his voice cracked, he sounded like a frightened child, felt like it too.
Despite the beating, which he would gladly take. He finally realised this had gone way beyond that. Jesse was going to flat out kill him here, in the street like a half-dead dog.
The tears snuck up on him and before he knew it, he was sobbing.
This caused Cutter and Billy great amusement.
“Christ, look at him!” Billy cried. “He’s fuckin’
bawling like a babe in arms.”
He jumped up and down on the spot, looking ten years younger than his mere eighteen.
Jesse’s face was a stone.
“I said, get up and draw.”
“No!” Haaland sobbed, tears mixed with snot, blood and sweat on his face. He felt pathetic but he couldn’t control himself.
“Jess’, stop this,” he pleaded. The words blurted out without any thought of self-respect.
He had never felt so pitiful. He looked around and caught May’s eyes, her expression was now one of disgust and embarrassment. But still, he couldn’t stop himself.
“I was always faster than you, Haaland,” Jesse taunted.
“Always was, always will be. Now get up and draw or I’ll shoot you where you lay.”
His voice was thick with contempt. He pushed aside his coat away from his pistol.
Cutter was suddenly in May’s face.
“You chose that over a man like Jesse?” He mocked.
“It ain’t like that,” she said and pulled away
“Both of you, shut up,” Jesse ordered. “Haaland, get up, or die like a dog.”
It was more due to the look of contempt now on May’s face as she watched him grovelling in the dirt, than Jesse’s demands, that stung Haaland into movement.
Slowly, painfully, with his ribs shooting needles into his lungs, Haaland dragged himself to his feet. He swayed as unconsciousness beckoned, but just about managed to stay upright long enough to see the sea of eager faces all around him.
“Please, someone, stop this.”
But to man, woman and child they all turned away. Many he recognised who yesterday would have called him friend, but those bonds had been well and truly severed by Jesse’s malevolence. He caught the Sheriff’s eye, but he too looked away. At least the man had the decency to look ashamed, Haaland saw. That was something at least.
“Nobody’s listening,” Jesse told him with a grin. “Now pick up your gun.”
Haaland looked down at the pistol at his feet, he did his best to wipe his face with his sleeve. Thankfully he had stopped blubbering, but the tears refused to stop completely.
He had a choice to make. Not that in the end it was any choice at all he knew.
“I can’t beat you, Jesse,” he finally said to the ground.
“Why?” Jesse asked.
The pistol seemed a mile away at his feet, and it may as well have been for all the good it could do him. Why? He knew why, it was his last humiliation. And it was true, always had been. But at least voicing it, may win him a reprieve.
“I said, Why?”
“I can’t beat you,” he barely heard the words himself.
Neither it seemed could Jesse.
“Louder. Why can’t you beat me? Is it yer busted ribs?”
The shake of the head was slight, but it made Haaland’s head swim all the same. He staggered a little like a drunkard. Someone laughed.
“Come on Jess’,” Cutter called out. “Put the poor bastard out of his misery.”
“Why Dutchman?” Jesse asked again, this time his voice was low, a whisper almost.
“Because...” Haaland’s voice cracked again, he cleared his throat as if he was about to make a speech.
And in a way, he supposed he was, and his last one to the folks of Little Rock. Win or lose here today he knew he was done with the town and oddly that rallied him a touch. He just needed to get through the next few minutes and be left breathing at the end.
“Because I can’t beat you, Jesse, you’re faster, you’re stronger than me. You always have been.” He finally said.
May pushed past Billy and Cutter and came to Jesse’s side.
“You can’t shoot him, Jesse...”
He pushed her away and shot her a look of such venom it was hasher than any bullet.
“I’ll deal with you later,” he said.
“Jess’ you can’t kill him, not in cold blood,” she continued.
The fear was clear in her voice, but she had a resolve Haaland hadn’t thought possible in the young woman. And it shamed him probably more than this public humiliation.
“That would be murder,” she said addressing those around her now. Then she leant into Jesse. “They will hang you for sure. Just let him go, you can see he’s beat. He’s got no more fight in him.”
“To hell with her,” Cutter said to Jesse. “Shoot him!
The bastard’s been asking for it. You forget what he did?
She don’t want you to hurt him, just so he can bang her some more.”
Billy exploded in a fit of childish giggles at this, followed by some of the crowd.
Haaland and May’s eyes met, she was frowning, seeing the utter defeat in his. And he knew in that moment any half-formed fantasy he had that maybe she would leave town with him was lost forever.
Not because Jesse had won her back, no it was as clear in her face as if she had screamed it into his. She thought he was a coward and that crushing disappointment in her eyes hit him harder than any punch.
Out of nowhere came an unexpected spark of rage deep down in his guts. It must had registered on his face because he actually saw Jesse frown a little. Haaland’s head was screaming at him ‘NO!’ But the fire in his belly pulsed up inside him, making his fingers itch. Itch to hold the familiar cold metal of his pistol.
It was in his legs, heart, balls, willing him on to be a man. Not for May, certainly not for those sons of bitches watching on. But for himself.
All he had to do was drop to one knee, pick up the pistol and put a bullet in Jesse’s smug face.
Alas, if only Haaland had been a better poker player, he might have actually gotten the drop on Jesse. But the big man saw it in his face a full two seconds before the command to move left Haaland’s brain. And that was more than enough time.
One moment, Jesse’s hand was a blur of motion, the next his pistol leapt into his hand. He drew back the hammer and all Haaland had time to do was close his eyes and wait for death.
Fear made a nonsense of time, Haaland heard the audible
‘click’ of the hammer coming down as Jesse pulled the trigger and an instant later, May’s scream.
The crowd gasped as one, but it seemed like an age for the shot to come. In that infinite moment between life and death, Haaland felt as if he could somehow dodge the bullet when it came, swat it away like a bothersome fly. All these sounds and thoughts washed over him in the space between two rapid heartbeats, and still no shot rang out.
And then they came, three shots in rapid succession, impossibly loud. Two hit close to his bare feet, he felt them slam into the dirt an inch from his toes. The third was
closer still. He screamed as it blew off the big toe of his right foot. He finally opened his eyes to see his ruined foot. Before he knew it, he was hopping comically around like some demented court jester. The initial gasps of shock from the crowd gave way to nervous then riotous laughter.
“Dance yer fucker!” Jesse goaded and emptied the three remaining bullets at Haaland’s feet.
“Cutter,” he ordered. “Gimme the Winchester.”
He holstered his pistol and held out his hand and Cutter threw the weapon which he caught deftly and at once began shooting at Haaland’s feet. Forcing him to do a desperate jig to avoid further injury.
Pain shot up Haaland’s leg every time his wounded foot hit the ground. Then another bullet clipped the heel of his left foot sending him sprawling flat on his face as his legs gave way.
“Jesus! Jesus!” Haaland cried.
He clutched at his wounded feet and screamed in pain.
The crowd seemed to be all around him now, closing in to get a better look at the spectacle.
His pain addled brain started to go into shock, and they seemed to be spinning and darting around him like phantoms, their laughter deafening, pounding into his head like a
physical assault. He could feel himself drifting towards unconsciousness again.
Now he was on his back, looking up at the mocking faces above him, it was like they were somehow weighing down upon his chest so he could hardly breathe. Like they were sucking the very air from his lungs. He tried to make a desperate plea to their rapidly vanishing humanity, but he couldn’t force out a single coherent word.
Their faces were barely recognisable now, just swirling images blurred out of all recognition. Their mouths huge black gaping maws, spinning faster and faster until they were just a whirlpool of growing darkness.
Finally, a disembodied face seemed to form out of the mass bearing down on him. It was Jesse’s face floating closer still, his features a grotesque parody of the one he had loathed all these years. His mouth opened so wide it seemed to dislocate his jaw and he was speaking, but it took an age for the words to reach Haaland’s ringing ears.
Then they did the hideous face had already melted back into the approaching darkness overhead.
“Haw, haw, haw...” They were unnaturally deep and slow, almost cavernous. “Don’t worry,” they boomed. “I ain’t gonna kill ya... I’ll let the desert do that.”
Death, when it came, felt like a warm embrace to Haaland.
Almost cosy, like being wrapped in a soft blanket on a winter’s night. Death was not cold or harsh as he had always imagined it would be. After the trauma and humiliation of the end to his life, this felt like heaven. He was wrapped in a blanket of darkness, being rocked gently back and forth like a babe in its mother’s arms. A warm safe place.
It carried on like this for what seemed like hours but could just have easily been decades for all dead Haaland knew.
But as time passed the once soothing motion changed. The soothing rhythm was now disjointed, harsher somehow. He felt almost like he was on a boat, borne up on choppy waves of nothingness on his final journey.
An image came to his mind’s eye, a picture he had seen in a book, years ago. A solitary sailboat under a stormy black and blood red sky. A skeletal figure piloting a body wrapped in a shroud across the river Styx. Yes, that made sense to him now. This was his finally journey to the afterlife, whatever form that took.
If so, it was a journey he willingly took. He was leaving behind the torment and hopelessness of his life in Little Rock and to hell with the lot of them. Even May, more
so perhaps as he could still see that look of contempt in her eyes. That had been worse than any beating Jesse or life itself could meet out. Her normally beautiful, warm, emerald eyes turned to twin pools of ice.
Haaland shuddered at the memory, but the boat soon rocked away the feeling and he was content once more. Little Rock was long gone, along with all it stood for. Drown beneath the dark waters on which he now sailed.
His thoughts drifted back to his journey to the new world and all its false promises of paradise. That had been a harsh and hazardous crossing, but like this final one he had taken it willingly. So, it was fitting to him that a journey that had started on a boat, would end that way. Death was taking him home, and it couldn’t come soon enough.
The boat suddenly lurched to one side, then the other and for one heart stopping moment Haaland thought he was going to be pitched over the side and into the river itself.
The warm comforting embrace which had surrounded him thus far, was now stifling. And Haaland felt a stab of panic as the boat dropped from under him, making his guts churn.
Surely the dead don’t puke.
He was aware of more sensations building throughout his body. A dull ache in both feet, the feeling he was somehow
suffocating rose up and with it came the dawning realisation that he was in pain, and unbearably hot. His head was throbbing in time with his heartbeat as it pounded in his skull, threatening to burst it wide open.
The panic grew as his whole body seemed to burst into flames, the heat was washing over him like an ocean of fire.
Haaland tasted blood in his mouth which fuelled his distress all the more. Then his whole body shifted violently to one side.
If he had been walking, which surely he wasn’t, he would have sworn he had just stumbled. He instinctively tried to hold out his arms to balance himself but to his horror they were dead, paralysed beyond use.
He let out a low rasping moan which scratched the back of his cracked, dry throat. Close by, of all things a horse snorted, and he could make out the soft clump, clump of horse’s hooves. And he gradually became aware that the sounds all around him were no longer in his head. The pitch black he had been floating in began to give way to a murky grey.
I’m on a horse! It was the first coherent thought he’d had since death had claimed him. And close on the heels of that revelation came the fact that the dead don’t ride horses.
Haaland took as deep a breath as he could, the dead don’t do that either, pal, he told himself. But he could only
manage the shallowest of breaths. It wasn’t his busted ribs though, they hardly hurt at all. He shifted in the saddle that he could definitely feel underneath him now. The rhythm of the rocking boat was the lolloping gait of a horse trudging through sand.
“Shit,” he wasn’t sure if he had said it out loud, but with it came a growing sense of where he was.
His eyesight was beginning to clear, the grey smudge now white but still featureless as his eyes tried to adjust to not being blind or indeed, dead. But why couldn’t he move?
Haaland struggled to move his arms, but they still refused the instruction.
The darkness was all but gone now, burnt away by what could only be the sun. He screwed his eyes tight shut then opened them again.
He winced, he was staring right into the mid-day sun, he cried out and closed them again. Fireworks went off under his eye lids which took an age to fade. When he opened them again, he narrowed his eyes to slits and slowly opened them more and more until his eyes fully adjusted to the assault of bright light.
He was looking out over a sea of never-ending sand stretching out in front of him, to the horizon and no doubt beyond.
The horse below him snorted and stumbled again. Haaland cursed and gripped on tightly to its sweating flanks with his knees.
So, he wasn’t dead after all. He squinted down to his labouring mount. They had tied him to a flea-bitten mule, which by the looks of things had been at death’s door long before it had been sent out into the desert. Haaland’s arms had been tightly bound with a length of coarse rope.
Jesse’s final words to him echoed in his addled brain.
‘Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna kill you... I’ll let the desert do that.’
Haaland threw back his head and let out a howl of anguish, which was instantly swallowed up by the high dunes around him.
The mule was spooked by the outburst but had no energy left to do anything but wheeze in protest.
The bastards had dressed him in a long heavy overcoat, and to top it off they had put a winter hat on his head. Then sent him off into the endless desert on this poor beast.
He tried to look around to see if he could get his bearings, but the motion almost made him fall. He steadied himself and took in his surroundings, but he didn’t recognise
anything. Little Rock was nowhere in sight. North, east, south or west of him.
The mid-day sun beat down mercilessly on him. As the mule, now more dead than alive, trudged blindly on.
Its legs growing ever weaker with each agonising step, weight down by the poor soul on its back. Both slowly cooking and at any moment one or both of them would fall and be claimed by the sea of sand they were wading through.
Oh, how Haaland wished he had drawn on the son of a bitch. There was no doubt in Haaland’s mind that Jesse would have beaten him cold, but at least the end would have been quick. Not like this slow miserable death.
The mule faltered and its legs finally buckled underneath it. It fell and rolled onto its side, dead before it hit the sand. Haaland went with it, and he rolled helplessly down the steep banking of a dried-up riverbed where he came to a stop halfway down as the sand clogged around him.
He cursed the animal for its demise but a moment later the creature came rolling after him. He managed a strangled cry of alarm, which caught in his parched throat, as its massive bulk bore down on him. He tried to gain purchase enough to stand as the sand shifted under his knees, but this
coupled with his arms still being bound by the blanket he could not regain his balance even to get to his knees.
He braced himself as best he could as the animal hit him, it rolled straight over his body causing his body to twist alarmingly and his breath was knocked right out of his lungs.
The mule carried on rolling down to the bottom of the banking and Haaland slid down the rest of the way behind it where he landed awkwardly face down on the hardened sand of the riverbed.
As he lay face down unable to move, Haaland wondered just what he had done to offend death so. He had been beaten, shot twice! The sent wandering out into the unforgiving desert on an already half dead mule. A mule which had then died and rolled right over him for good measure. That alone should have surely broken every bone in his body.
But still death did not want him. ‘What has a fella got to do to expire around here?’ The thought made him smile despite himself. And as he laid there slowly cooking in the unrelenting sun a strange sense of calm came over him. Which must have meant, he reasoned, that death was in fact close now. He wasn’t in pain anymore and he had to admit even the sun wasn’t that bad down here at the bottom of the long since dried up riverbed.
And so, Skylar Haaland gave himself over to the fates.
He would wait here (After all what else could he do?) Until the grim reaper had forgiven him for whatever offence he had caused it and come and claim him.
In the end it didn’t take long, or so it seemed.
Haaland couldn’t move much more than raise his chin out of the dirt and stare off along the riverbed which snaked off into infinity. As he did so, what looked like a black wisp of smoke dissolved out of the blistering heat haze ahead of him, some half mile off.
The smoke gradually began to take on a vague solid form to reveal it was in fact a shimmering black shape drifting slowly down the riverbed towards him. About fucking time, Haaland thought.
As it drew closer, Haaland managed to roll onto his side and using his shoulder and butt to push against the hard floor and managed to somehow push himself up until he was kneeling.
Arms still pinned uselessly to his sides, he watched the approaching phantom. At first it seemed to be gliding above the sand, but as it got closer it took on a more solid, and unexpected form.
On any other day, Haaland would have dismissed his eyes as liars and shook his head until they agreed to tell him the
banal truth of things. But he knew this was as far from any normal day as it were possible to get.
A small boy, of all things, riding a rickety old tricycle, rode along the shimmering riverbed towards him. A tatty black umbrella was attached to the handlebars by a long cream ivory shaft, so it hovered above his head, shielding him from the harsh sun.
Haaland couldn’t help but laugh at the approaching illusion, for that was surely what his was. What did they call it? A mirage. The sun had finally cooked his brains. He had heard death came as a rider on a pale horse. But a child on a tricycle?
The boy stopped peddling some way off and let the gentle slope of the riverbed take him the rest of the way. Haaland could now get a better look at him now that he coasted to a stop no more than five paces away.
He was perhaps eight at most and impossibly gaunt, with thin strands of hair plastered to his otherwise bald head.
His features were plain to the point of blankness, and he doubted if he would recognise him again even given their surreal meeting. The boy was wearing grubby long johns, no shoes and the biggest grin Haaland had ever seen.
The lad didn’t seem at all surprised to see a trussed up, half dead cowboy on his knees in front of him in the middle of
nowhere. He rested his bony elbows on the tricycle’s handlebars and studied Haaland from under the shade of his umbrella which was fluttering in a breeze the Dutchman could not feel.
Although he was still grinning with glee at the sight before him, tears suddenly came to the boy’s deep-set eyes.
“Papa said you would come,” he said softly in an accent Haaland could not place.
The boy turned in his seat and looked back the way he had come. Haaland shifted on his knees and followed the boy’s gaze off down the riverbed. He squinted against the glare bouncing off the hard impacted sand. And although there wasn’t a cloud in the sky around him, he could see some kind of dark angry storm brewing on the blistering horizon.
Haaland blinked sweat out of his eyes and in that brief instant the storm was suddenly miles closer. The boy’s umbrella fluttered wildly now as it approached but still Haaland couldn’t feel so much as a breath of air in the sheering heat around him.
The boy glanced back at Haaland, and he could see he now had an almost maniacal glee in his hollow eyes. He turned back and began to drum impatiently on his stick like thighs and was whispering to himself excitedly. But try as he might, Haaland couldn’t make out any words.
The storm was moving at an impossible rate towards them, and he only now realised that the path of the storm was inexplicably keeping to the meandering route of the riverbed, following the very route the boy had taken.
It was no more than a hundred yards from him, closing all the time. Haaland peered as best he could into the maelstrom, it was like no other storm he had ever seen before. He could make out fleeting glimpses of dark shapes twisting and turning deep within the heart of the thing. And now what looked for all the world like a large, covered wagon deep in the centre.
“What is that?” Haaland asked unable to tear his eyes from it.
“Home,” the boy replied plainly.
The storm was almost upon them, and he was suddenly hit with a blast of ice-cold air which knocked him off his knees and onto his backside. The ropes binding his arms loosened as if they had been cut by an unseen knife and fell to the ground in front of him.
Haaland got stiffly to his feet. He could definitely make out people in the midst of it now, a dozen or more spectral figures walking alongside the wagon. He wondered absently, as it wheeled towards him, if some were behind pushing the heavy contraption as there were no horses in front.
Then he was hit with the full force of the tempest that came with it. The noise was deafening, almost as violent an assault as the freezing wind and scouring sand it whipped up.
And Haaland was in no doubt it would tear him to shreds. And for what must have been the third time that day, Haaland prepared to die.
Suddenly he thought of the boy, he would be caught up in the murderous onslaught as well. He tried to shout a warning, even though he knew it was too late for both of them. But he could hear the boy laughing close by. He could just see him, little more than a shadow against the assault. He had his arms out wide, welcoming the thing with an ecstatic holler of delight.
“Weeee!!” The boy squealed as the wave of swirling darkness and sand washed over him.
Then to Haaland’s utter disbelief, the boy crumbled before his very eyes becoming a part of the storm, but he could still hear him laughing.
“Jesus,” was all Haaland could muster, and the storm hit him in turn. Its impact knocked him back a few paces, but he remained on his feet. He looked down at his body half expecting it to disappear like the boy, but he was still solid enough and the storm oddly didn’t seem so harsh now that he
was in it. And more over he could see despite it battering his eyes and face.
The ghostly figures were all around him now, no more than shadows really, but not in the storm, but somehow a part of it, just like the boy had become. He no sooner managed to make out a vague human shape, when it was gone, spinning off into the blur of darkness.
He could hear their voices, some whispering, some screaming so loudly they were almost indistinguishable from the deafening roar of the sand whistling past his ears. But these weren’t screams of pain or anguish, they were, at least to Haaland’s dizzying consciousness, cries of ecstasy and exaltation.
Then through the darkness at the heart of it all, the wagon came into view. Haaland half expected it to disappear as it was caught up in the whirling nightmare just like the boy and shifting shadows he had thus far encountered here.
But it seemed to be the only true constant besides himself.
Solid enough for it to cut wheel marks into the dirt of the riverbed, which he found somewhat comforting in its reality.
It stopped ten feet from where he was standing and the moment it did so, Haaland was plunged into an eerie silence as the wind and the voices faded away to nothing. The maelstrom
was still all around him, but it no longer touched him as if called off by some unheard command.
So, this was the eye of the storm.
Now that he had chance to take in his surroundings unmolested. He could see that the wagon was the source of the darkness itself. It came oozing up through the top of the canvas roof like some black shaft of inverted light. He had to fight the urge to step up to the thing and rip aside the cover to see what could possibly causing such a phenomenon from within that was bleeding darkness like this.
He was about to take the first step towards it when two spectral figures melted out of the darkness close by. The moment they came into the meagre light they took on the seemingly solid forms of a man and a woman.
The man was in his late thirties whilst the young woman looked to Haaland to be perhaps twenty at most. They were both dressed plainly enough and Haaland could have easily mistaken them for simple farmers, were it not for their entrance.
The young woman smiled. A perfectly normal action perfectly well executed and were it not for the fact that he had seen her literally form out of the storm itself, he could have said she was quite attractive in a plain sort of a way.
It was mostly in her eyes which seemed to alternate between green and an icy blue depending on the motion of her head.
“We knew someone would come,” she said. Her voice was light with that hint of the unknown accent the boy had.
He was about to speak when a blur of movement to his right caught his eye and he turned to see the boy stepping out of the murk. He grinned that same grin.
“Don’t be scared,” he said. “No one will hurt you here.”
“I’m not scared,” Haaland lied.
“You are disorientated,” the young woman told him. “This is only natural. You have had quite the day, my friend.”
She took a step towards Haaland, and he caught the briefest flash of panic in her ever-changing eyes. She glanced back at the wagon as if scared of being away from it and the darkness it was spewing to the heavens.
She whispered something to herself, perhaps an encouragement as she then walked over to where Haaland was standing.
“What are you people?” He asked as she approached.
There was a sound of soft movement to his side like a breath of wind through autumn leaves and he saw the boy was gone returning to wherever he had come from. His impish giggle faded a moment later.
“You must forgive him,” the woman said. “Some of us doubted...”
She paused and her brow furrowed slightly as she seemed to search for the next words.
“Doubted?” Haaland prompted.
“You,” she replied.
She took another step, so she was within a yard of him, and still the illusion of flesh and bone was flawless so close up.
“What are you?” Haaland asked. “You, you look real enough. Then you disappear like your made of sand and whatever that is.”
He gestured to the mass of swirling darkness emitting from the wagon.
She slowly raised her hand to his face and gently touched his stubbly cheek. Her hand was warm, he didn’t know why, but that surprised him. She was inches from his face and Haaland studied her features, searching for any flaw in the façade, but there was none. Just like the boy she was real enough, even if every fibre of his being screamed that it was impossible.
“You need a shave,” she said with a hint of mischief in her voice.
“That’s the least of my troubles, lady.”
She laughed and the impromptu sound had such music in it that Haaland felt tears sting his eyes. Another strange thing on such a strange day. He felt the urge to break down, just to let himself go. Maybe it was the look of compassion, love perhaps in her eyes and the purity of her voice, but he just knew she would comfort him, make everything go away, make everything better. He knew all this with an odd certainly even though he had only just met her. Whatever she was.
“Strange, strange day,” he said to no one in particular.
“You asked what we are,” it was the older man who had remained silently in the background up until now.
Haaland had to force himself to look away from the woman’s eyes and over to where he was standing by the wagon.
“Ghosts,” Haaland stated plainly. What else?
“No, not ghosts, as such,” he replied. “We are like you.
We are the lost.”
“You’re made of sand and darkness.” It was a statement not a question.
The man made an expansive gesture with his arms.
“In a way, yes. This storm, this is just one of the many places we can hide.”
“Papa keeps us safe,” the woman said. “He created this haven, this storm as you call it, to protect us. But he is growing weak. Soon he will be too weak, and we will be lost forever.”
“Papa?”
The man beckoned Haaland over to the wagon.
“Papa,” he patted the side of the wagon. “He’s inside, please come, take a look. He told us we would find you here.”
Haaland moved tentatively over to the wagon, the voices in the storm all around rose and fell excitedly as he approached.
Now that he was close, he could see the wheels were made from metal, they looked somewhat like those from a railway carriage, only smaller.
Two figures appeared from out of the swirling mass next to the man and help him pull back the heavy canvas covering to one side.
Inside was what looked to Haaland like a highly polished metal lidless coffin, but the sides were cylindrical like someone had taken a locomotive engine and sliced off the top.
At first it seemed smooth, but as he looked on, strange, caved shapes and symbols ebbed and flowed through the metal as if it were liquid, only to disappear again an instant later.
Haaland gently touched the side, but it was solid and cool to the touch. When he brought his hand away, it rippled again, giving a brief glimpse of the ornate fluctuating designs once more. Until, again, they were gone.
An ancient looking man was laid asleep inside, amongst piles of heavy blankets and cushions. He was impossibly thin, his arms no thicker than brittle sticks. He was flanked on either side by two young children, both girls who could have been triplets with the boy on the tricycle. Their saucer like eyes wide with shock, seeing him standing there.
The old man was clearly the source of the of the storm, the column of black light that he had seen coming through the wagons roof and up into the swirling mass above, was emanating from his hollow bare chest like thick black smoke. It gave off a low hum which set Haaland’s teeth on edge.
The two girls clutched at the old man’s hands which despite their young age dwarfed his own.
“Papa?” One of them whispered in his ear, her lip trembling in fear.
“I ain’t gonna hurt ya,” Haaland said suddenly guilty at their reaction.
The old man’s eyes opened at Haaland’s voice. And the two girls helped him sit up slightly. They propped a pillow under his back for support. The moment his deep-set eyes fell
upon him, Haaland felt a shudder of power run down his spine and could feel it begin to course through his veins like a sudden shot of strong alcohol making his whole body feel more alive than he could ever remember.
The old man pointed a bony finger at him.
“Sotiras,” there was an unexpected strength to his voice that belied his frail appearance.
The fear seemed to drain from the two girls face at the word.
“Papa?” One asked.
The old man nodded in response, and they removed the pillow and gently set him back down again. He closed his eyes with a look of contentment on his pallid face.
The audience with ‘papa’ was it seemed over.
Haaland moved back and the canvas cover was pulled closed once more.
“What did he say?” Haaland asked.
He could feel the power pulsing through his body, stronger than ever, and it felt good.
“Sotiras,” the young woman said as he came away from the wagon.
He looked at her, none the wiser. She could see his confusion. She frowned and screwed her eyes shut.
“Sotiras,” she repeated and paused clearly looking for the right word.
Her face brightened and she looked at him once more.
“Saviour.”
She smiled and before he could reply she was swept back up into the storm. Haaland frantically looked around, but he was alone with the wagon.
“We have travelled too long,” A voice from the storm, one of seemingly hundreds, fighting to be heard in the swirling darkness around him, which was closing in.
“We need a sanctuary, somewhere away from the light,” it was a dozen voices all at once each with a slightly different cadence.
Haaland spun around, disorientated, the storm was spiralling violently now and within it, dozens of figures were shifting and churning in its depths. Here and there faces appeared near the surface, shaping from the sand and darkness only to be swallowed again. Then moment later they were replaced by a dozen more until they too were gone.
Their voices were deafening and Haaland had to put his hands over his ears to try and stem the assault that was threatening to shatter his skull.
“What do you want!?” He screamed back at them.
“Help us,” they replied in unison.
“How?”
The young woman’s face appeared out of the darkness in front of him, suspended in the air.
“We need a home, we need somewhere safe,” she said. “We have wandered so long, but papa has grown weak. Too weak to protect us.”
“We need a home, Sotiras, saviour,” the travellers said, their voices legion.
Sotiras, the word rung in Haaland’s ears. Saviour.
Surely, they were mistaken. Saviour, him? The coward of Little Rock. What could he do to help these phantoms? He was nothing.
“We need a home.”
Home, that long forgotten place across the sea. He cursed himself silently for ever leaving that place, and for what? The hope of a better life in the new world.
That hope had turned to a nightmare soon enough and had left him, wandering alone in the desert, like these impossible things.
“We need a home, Sotiras,” they repeated.
Don’t we all? Haaland thought bitterly.
“Don’t we all,” he said it out loud now.
Somewhere as forgotten as his dreams of a new life.
Somewhere people such as himself and his new companions could live without fear.
Somewhere like Little Rock. A place no one would miss, if they had heard of it at all.
“Little Rock,” he said softly.
His whipped the storm around him into even more of a frenzy.
Little fucking Rock. Hadn’t he often thought that the whole Godforsaken town could get swallowed up by the desert and no one would ever know or care? He had never truly thought of the place of home, not really. It was a dumping place for the dregs of the west. Those too dumb or lazy to just get up and leave.
He thought of all their laughing, mocking faces as he had been humiliated in the street. Crushing his spirit just as Jesse had crushed his body under his boots.
The voices rose in volume spurred on by this, but he became aware of just how frenzied the once benign creatures were becoming in their excitement. Many too loud and too close for comfort, like a mob on the verge of riot. He felt them brushing past him, through him almost, as they danced and cavorted.
“Hold on,” he warned as genuine fear gripped him. “Calm down.”
But if they heard him over their own howls they didn’t care.
“Wait...”
A dark shape thudded into his chest and knocked him backwards. He teetered on the edge of falling but just about kept his footing.
“Stop this! Just hold calm down!” He urged to no avail.
They were buzzing around him like deranged hornets, a wild frenzy of movement and sound. He had to duck and weave as several of the more manic flew straight at him. Finally, he fell to his knees under the assault and covered his head with his arms as best he could.
The onslaught went on and on without pause, battering him from every side, without and within. The voices screamed over
and over, one bleeding into the next. Mostly it was a garbled mess, but as he knelt there for what seemed like hours, recognisable words and phrases began to cut through the cacophony.
“Show us the way, Sotiras, Papa said you would come, so sorry, join with us, show us the way, help us, we will help you, so glad we found you, Sotiras, saviour, so, so sorry, we know what they did, we know what you are, so sorry, papa’s weak, we are strong, with you, sanctuary, a place we can all call home, so sorry...”
On and on it went with one cryptic phrase slowly dominating the rest. Until in the end all others faded away and he could hear nothing else.
“So sorry, it was the fall, help us, we will help you, so sorry, it was the fall from the horse, so sorry you are dead, the horse Sotiras, saviour, it was the fall from the horse, give us Little Rock, let go, so sorry, the horse, you are dead, it was the fall, so sorry, they can’t hurt you anymore, you are dead. So sorry you are dead, so sorry you are dead...
So sorry you are dead, so sorry you are dead...”
“Stop!!!” Haaland screamed.
He heard the sound of forming sand and looked up to see the young woman had appeared knelt on the ground just in front of him. As she did so the voices began to fade.
“Oh, thank Christ,” Haaland uttered in relief.
“We are so sorry,” she whispered with genuine emotion.
“No,” Haaland snapped not wanting to hear. “I’m right here,” he touched his chest. “I’m alive.”
She reached out and touched his face and smiled forlornly.
“No, it was the fall, from the horse,” she said with a slight shake of the head. The sadness crystal clear in her strange ever-changing eyes.
She gently closed his eyes using the palm of her hand like you might do for a dead man.
“Remember,” she whispered.
And he did.
He was back in the harsh blank desert in an instant.
But this time he was standing on at the top of the banking which led down into the riverbed. He could see himself on the mule as it took its final shuffling steps, and its front legs gave out.
Haaland had been half dead already, he pitched forwards and having no way to break his fall he landed awkwardly onto the sand and slid down.
Then came the mule rolling after him. And from his unique vantage point Haaland could see as the mule rolled over him his head had snapped back with an audible ‘crack’ which turned his stomach.
The mule rolled on as did Haaland until his body slid to a stop on the riverbed with his head at an odd angle to his trussed-up body.
The scene played over and over again as he stood there watching, unable to look away as it hammered home his quite unspectacular demise.
So sorry you are dead.
“No,” Haaland’s vision failed and for a moment there was nothing but black.
Then he felt the young woman take her hand away from his eyes. And she came back into focus.
He was back in the eye of the storm. And the tears came in floods.
“No,” he sobbed.
“It was the fall, and the mule,” she said softly. “It broke your neck.
She took his face in her warm hands and Haaland felt a slight jolt of energy in his cheeks.
“We are so sorry, there was nothing we could do. It was papa, he did his best to keep death at bay. But you have to accept it now. Only then can we truly help you, and you us.”
The phrase ‘keep death at bay,’ stung him. And it was only now he realised he had no pain in his battered body. His ribs didn’t hurt anymore, neither did his feet. Was he even breathing at all he wondered?
He still felt, he knew that much, the woman’s touch, the sand as it hit his face. But there was no pain.
“No!” He dismissed the thought as madness and drew in a lungful of air. So what if his ribs didn’t scream at the act any longer?
“This is madness,” he told her and pulled away from her touch.
“Seems to be the day for it,” she replied. “Wouldn’t you say?”
The young woman was so real, he couldn’t deny the evidence of his own eyes. Her face a picture of sorrow before
him. Yet he had seen that same face made and unmade before those same eyes.
She moved to touch him again, but Haaland struggled to his feet.
“This can’t be,” he sobbed. All thought of composure long gone.
Watching himself falling and being crushed by the mule played over again in his mind’s eye. Neck twisting, surely snapping as the heavy beast rolled over his body.
“No!” It was as if the word would somehow make this insanity disappear like the magic word from a child’s picture book.
The voices in the storm rose again, their mantra the same.
“So sorry you are dead, so sorry you are dead.”
“I’m not!” He screamed hoarsely, pulling at his hair in frustration. “I’m, not, dead!”
Tears and snot streamed down his grubby face. This had not been a day for dignity it seemed.
He rubbed the back of his supposedly broken neck and recoiled in horror as it felt jagged just below the base of his skull.
“Christ! Jesus Christ!” He screamed.
The young woman was crying now, still knelt at his feet.
Real tears down real cheeks. A perfect illusion Haaland could almost believe in. She got to her feet and tried to hold out a hand to him, but he moved away, fearful of what that touch might bring.
The storm was closing in again, the voices indistinct but loud within it.
“Please,” the young woman pleaded. “You have to let go.
Papa cannot keep this up much longer. But we...” She made an expansive gesture. “We can make it better, make it all go away. You just need to let it happen. I know it’s hard, but you must accept what has happened to you.”
There was a sudden unexpected note of empathy in her voice. Echoed, more of a feeling than words, but there nonetheless by those in the storm around him.
Had they, like him, been through this exact dilemma?
Madness!!
“Let go,” a voice from behind him said. He turned but the speaker was gone, returning to the seething mass around him.
“No!” The magical word was losing its power by the second.
“Join us,” the young woman urged. “Take us to Little Rock, give us a home. All of us.”
The boy suddenly appeared, still on his ever-present tricycle and began riding around and around him.
“Take us home, Sotiras!” He cried with glee. “We’ll show ‘em!”
“Yes,” the young woman said. “We will show them all, they will pay for what they did to you. But you must let go!”
”No!!” He screamed it in her face, and she lowered her gaze, despondent.
“I don’t know what else to do,” she sobbed. More to those around her than to Haaland himself.
Haaland felt and unexpected twinge of guilt at her distress.
“He won’t let go,” someone called out with resignation.
“I’m sorry I failed you,” the young woman said and let out a deep soulful sigh.
Haaland thought it was addressed to the storm, but it could have quite easily been to him.
“He cannot accept it,” it was some ten or so voices from within the flickering forms around him. All in perfect unison. Men, woman, and children. “It is no one’s fault. He needs to let go... He needs a grand gesture.”
The young woman seemed to brighten a little at this.
“Yes,” she said.
Haaland dragged his gaze away from her and around at the ever-changing faces and forms around him. He recognised the Boy’s as it flowed past for an instant then was gone, tricycle and all, lost in the throng once more.
He absently reached out a hand and touched the storm. It was cool to the touch and not at all abrasive. He made a fist and pulled his hand back out but all he got was a handful of seething darkness and hints of sand, which he let run through his fingers.
“Haaland?” It was the young woman now at his back.
But he didn’t turn around and just watched as the strange mixture in his hand drain away.
“Haaland, turn around!” Her voice was firm, like a mother talking to an errant child.
Haaland brushed the last of the substance from his hands and finally turned to face her. He wanted to tell her that he was ready to let go. But he just didn’t know how. Then he saw the ‘grand gesture’ they had spoken of.
She was pointing a pistol at his head.
“We love you, Haaland,” she said, and he knew she meant it.
He didn’t hear the shot but felt the relief it brought.
Hank Jameson the duly elected sheriff of Little Rock, took another swig of whiskey and settled back in his chair on the porch outside the jailhouse. It complained under his bulk but held out just fine.
Although it had been a couple of days now, he still felt bad about what had happened to the Dutchman, but the whiskey was helping. He tipped back in his chair, so the back rested against the wall, and he looked out from the porch and into the approaching darkness. The sun had gone down a little early this evening and it felt like thunder was in the air.
Sure, he had to admit, Jesse and his mob were out of control. But what did this miserable place expect one man such as he to do? He took another hit of whisky straight from the bottle and let it warm away his guilt, at least until the morning.
Maybe, he thought as the alcohol took a hold, that he should go see the state Marshall about what happened but that would just bring up awkward questions. After all, he was the law here, so they would have wanted to know why he hadn’t done anything to stop, what for all intents and purposes was a lynching. At least that’s what they would call it up state.
No, he would just let it go. The lad had no family, no one to miss him. Even that fickle bitch May, who as far as Jameson was concerned was the cause of the whole ruckus, had gone crawling back to Jesse, now lover boy was gone. Well, at least she knew what side of her bread was buttered on, he had to admit.
In fact, the more he thought about it the easier it was to justify the whole thing. The Dutchman had gone sniffing around Jesse’s woman, so he had got what he deserved. And the drunker he got, the more sheriff Jameson believe it.
A chilly wind blew across the desert surrounding Little Rock and through the town’s main street.
Jameson looked up at the now pitch-black sky and shuddered. The oil lamp hanging from the porch roof was swinging wildly so he figured he had better take it down. The last thing he needed was a fire after the last few days he had endured. His joints complained as he pushed himself out of the chair and walked across the creaking boards to retrieve the lamp.
The distant sound of spurs drifted out of the night on the ever-increasing wind. Jameson frowned. Who the hell was walking around at this time with a storm on the way?
He took down the lamp and walked out into the dirt road.
The wind was worse out here as it travelled down the natural funnel of the houses on either side of the street. He could see the beginnings of what looked like a sandstorm on the outskirts of town and cursed to himself.
He had been meaning to get someone to fix the rickety shutters on the jailhouse windows for weeks. He’d just have to hope they stayed on one last time.
He held up the lamp, he could definitely hear the
‘ching,’ ‘ching’ of someone’s spurs now and they were getting closer. But he couldn’t see anyone in the street yet by the lamp’s meagre light.
“Who’s out there?” He called out into the wind.
Of all things he got a childish giggle in response.
“Hey, I’m not kiddin’ around. Get out here or...”
Before he could finish a scrawny looking kid, Jameson didn’t recognise, wearing a man’s cowboy hat and riding, of all things a tricycle came peddling out of the darkness. The boy then stopped in the middle of the street and looked around, gawping.
“Hey kid,” Jameson said. “You should get inside, there’s a storm comin’.”
The boy finally looked at the sheriff as if just noticing him.
“I’ll say,” he replied with an impish grin.
Then Skylar Haaland strode out of the night behind the boy with a blistering sandstorm right on his spurred heels. All Jameson could do was stare at the man in disbelief.
As Haaland passed the boy on the tricycle he took off the hat the kid was wearing and placed it on his own head.
“Sheriff,” Haaland said with a polite tip of that hat and just walked on past like it was the most natural thing in the world and was swallowed up by the night.
The storm and its legion of occupants hit Jameson like a steam train, and he was ripped to shreds an instant later.
As he walked on Haaland couldn’t help but smile as he heard Jameson’s strangled cry followed by the boy’s mischievous laughter.
Death came quickly to Sheriff Jameson, as it did for the majority of Little Rock’s beleaguered population. Most were taken quickly and painlessly in their sleep. After all, although their present circumstances made them murderers.
The travellers in the storm, whatever they might be, were not cruel souls. Far from it, they took no pleasure in the slaughter, and would, in time each mourn the loss of life.
But not tonight, tonight was all about survival and deliverance from the unforgiving sun.
But for all their show of mercy to those they had to despatch, as the killing came to a close. The four remaining survivors of the onslaught, all holed up in the town’s saloon, would see none of it. They didn’t know it then, but they had been shepherded there for one final showdown.
Cutter winced in horror as he was hit full in the face by a jet of Billy’s blood. The man was being torn apart right in front of him and he couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
“Help me!!!” Billy screamed, but the words were soon drowned as a torrent of blood gushed from his mouth.
Cutter staggered back as the demons from hell ripped and pulled at the teenagers beleaguered body. His right arm was pulled right out of its socket and was bourn up by the storm like a trophy and then disappeared in its midst.
And Cutter just had time to see Billy’s head come away from his neck as it twisted off by a dozen half formed hands and what was left of his body was dragged out of the saloon’s swing doors and into the swirling nightmare that had them trapped here.
Another scream, but this one of defiance as Jesse shouldered past Cutter and fired shot after shot from his Winchester at the darting shapes all around him.
“Yer fuckers!” Jesse hissed through blooded and broken teeth and dropped to one knee to reload.
“Whadda we do? Whadda we do?” Cutter babbled in terror.
Something clawed at his face, and he felt blood coming in streams like tears down his cheeks.
“How the hell should I know!?” Jesse replied. “Just keep fucking shooting!”
Even though they were only three feet apart, they had to shout above the unearthly din coming from the storm.
May tucked her knees under her chin as she hid behind the bar. For whatever reason she had remained untouched by the attack. Still, the sheer overwhelming horror of it all threatened to rob her of her already slipping sanity.
She heard Jesse scream out a curse to the monsters and fire.
She knew deep down it was useless, they were being punished, although May was not a religious woman the reason for all this was quite clear to her fear addled brain. This was the end of days.
“It’s the rapture!!” She screamed. “We have been judged! We are damned!”
“May!” Jesse shouted from what seemed like miles away.
“Get out here and help!”
She was about to tell him all was lost and all that was left was prayer when a succession of screaming banshees crashed into the shelves at the back of the bar sending shattered glass and liquor raining down all around her.
She caught a glimpse of the most horrific face as the demons flew past and she hit with a blast of feted air. The face, more screaming mouth than anything with deep set black eyes, stopped dead as the others disappeared into the storm raging all around.
Its soulless eyes caught hers.
“May,” it hissed, and the mouth turned into a hideous grin.
For the briefest of moments, the face became solid. The disembodied head of a young woman. Then it was none to merge once more with its fellow creatures.
Hearing her own name from such an abomination drove May screaming from behind the bar.
Jesse and Cutter were desperately trying to fend off the demons that swooped and spun around the saloon. There was no
sign of Billy. But the sheer volume of blood splattered on the front of the bar and the floor gave testament to his fate.
One they would all surely soon suffer.
“Jess’!”
She saw that a group of the things had gathered up on the balcony above them. As if massing for a more organised attack, it would only take a moment for them to come flooding down the stairs and overwhelm them.
Jesse turned to her, and she pointed up to the writhing forms.
“Up there!” She warned.
Jesse followed the gesture and his blooded face filled with horror.
“Cutter, up there!” He shouted and aimed.
Cutter followed his lead and both men fired into the squall of nightmares.
Jesse emptied his Winchester and tossed it aside. Then drew his revolver and emptied that in an instant. It took him several more pulls of the trigger to realise the weapon wasn’t kicking anymore.
“Fuck!” He backed away and began to pull shells from the loops in his gun belt and frantically reload.
Cutter holstered his own pistol and fired both barrels of his shotgun. And to his amazement the spectral figures retreated back through an upstairs doorway leading to the hotel upstairs.
“Jesse, it’s working,” he shouted triumphantly.
Jesse pushed in the final shell and aimed back up the stairs. Cutter was right, the things were all but gone.
Something burst through the swing doors to his right, and he spun to see two of the things edging inside, dark misshapen things within the storm.
He fired once and the storm and the demons within retreated back outside. He kept his aim on the door but no more came through.
“It worked,” he uttered in disbelief. Then bellowed.
“It’s working!!”
Cutter gave a whoop of delight then remembered his shotgun was empty.
“Shit,” he cursed and fumbled to reload.
“It’s a miracle!” May said in awe as she came to Jesse’s side.
Although the storm was still raging all bloody hell outside, it was little more than a breeze of thin drifting sand inside the saloon.
“Thank Jesus,” May said and took Jesse’s arm for comfort.
“They’re going,” he assured her. “They’re going.”
“What the fuck were those things?” Cutter asked, clutching his loaded shotgun like a lover.
Jesse just shook his head. The three survivors had their eyes glued to the rattling saloon doors. Bracing themselves for a renewed attack. But a full minute past and the storm gradually began to fade away. They could hear it in the distance as it retreated, then nothing but their own ragged breaths.
“Cutter,” Jesse whispered as if fearful of re-awakening the storm. “Take a look outside.”
Now Cutter had been afraid of Jesse ever since he had met the man, despite being five years older and a lot bigger. But he wasn’t that afraid enough to obey that lunatic order.
“Fuck that.”
Jesse turned and sneered at the man, but after everything his heart wasn’t in it, and he wondered if Cutter would ever listen to him again.
For his part Cutter held Jesse’s gaze as steadily as Jesse had ever seen him do before. And for the first time in ten years, he noticed the man had the greenest eyes he had ever seen.
The sound of approaching spurs snapped Jesse back to reality. He aimed back into the night just beyond the top of the swing doors and Cutter did the same with his shotgun.
“Who is that?” May whispered.
She was gripping his arm so tightly Jesse could feel her nails break the skin under his shirt. But he barely registered the pain. Just more cuts and bruises to add to the battering his body had taken tonight.
The storm outside suddenly surged up and the swing doors blew open where they stayed as if held by unseen hands. Then after what seemed like an age a shadowy figure emerged from the darkness and stepped into the saloon.
A beat later the storm came with him and spread throughout the saloon, encircling Jesse, Cutter and May but at a distance, where it hovered teeming with shadows within.
But none of the three noticed. Their attention was on the figure in the doorway.
It was May who spoke first.
“Haaland?”
The Sotiras took a moment to let his entrance sink in.
He could feel the fear emanating from the three and let it wash over him like a warm mid-day breeze.
He looked up at the trio from under the brim of his hat, the one Jesse himself had placed upon his head not so long ago. But he did not speak. Those within the storm grew agitated as it hung back. Desperate to be the instrument of their saviours’ tormentors deaths. But Haaland, the Sotiras had other ideas.
There was a long pause as no one moved or spoke and Haaland could feel the frustration building from within his new kin, but they held back, out of respect if not desire.
Haaland finally locked eyes with Jesse, who flinched ever so slightly at his attention, then Haaland slowly, deliberately moved his long thick coat away from his side, revealing his holster.
“Whoa, hold on there, Dutch,” Jesse said. “Just hold on.”
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Haaland asked.
He was instantly aware his voice was different somehow and the looks on the three confirmed this. It was his voice, but deeper, harsher. Like he was speaking from the bottom of a well.
As if for dramatic effect, a hush descended over the storm. Jesse frantically looked around him as if just realising he was surrounded once more. Faces, eager for more slaughter formed then melted away in its midst.
“Don’t worry about them,” Haaland said. “You kill me, you can go. All of you.”
Jesse cocked his head with suspicion. He glanced at Cutter who shrugged. ‘Like we have a choice?’
Jesse pushed May to one side and deftly spun his pistol and let it slide into his holster. That old familiar look of confidence melted across his face once more.
“You never where too bright, Haaland,” he said. And with that let his hand fall to his side in line with his holster.
“Take your best shot,” Haaland said, a man without fear.
The pistol was in Jesse’s hand in a split second, and he had fired twice before Haaland even thought to reach for his own. Both bullets hit their mark, slamming within an inch of each other into Haaland’s chest and he went down in an instant.
There was an audible ungodly gasp from the shadows within the storm and Jesse screwed his eyes tight shut expecting them to tear into him anyway. He braced himself, but the onslaught never came.
“Yes!!” Cutter yelped breaking the spell.
He began to dance a jig.
“You did it! Jesse, you shot him dead. You always was faster than him.”
Jesse nodded, he had always beaten the Dutchman at everything, ever since he had arrived in Little Rock. And whatever strength and speed he figure he had gotten from these Godforsaken phantoms hadn’t helped him for shit.
“Oh, yeah. You are the best, Jesse,” Cutter rambled on.
May was giggling in sheer relief, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“We’re safe now,” Jesse told her.
Then there was a tangible shift within the writhing figures. They began flitting and darting, dark agitated shadows whispering mischief to one another.
“Shit!” Cutter swung his shot gun left and right as they ebbed and flowed around the saloon.
“Fuck,” Jesse spat and cocked his pistol. So much for the deal.
“Whoa, wait, wait!!” Cutter said. All bravado at Jesse’s victory had fled.
He let out a strangled sob. As some figures formed out of the sand and darkness. All too real, all too hungry for blood.
“You heard him!” Cutter pleaded. “You heard Haaland.
Jess’ beat him fair and square. He said we could go if he