Earl had rewritten his past. He didn’t say it aloud, though, dropping Daelin at Charming’s with four bags of groceries. Certainly he atoned for Dante with the gesture. Yet he still felt like he had gas.
At the ranch, he sent his employees home and put stuff away, setting the new prepaid phone in his safe. Leftovers abounded in the fridge. Some he added to fresh veggies and whisked a dressing to pour over the top. He ate his tasty salad facing west, enjoying the colors the slipping sun sent spilling across the sky. It’d be dark soon, and he hoped to be welcoming Charming home.
Meal finished, he cleaned up then went to his bedroom, the only room on the third floor. He changed into outdoor work pants and a flannel shirt, hanging his cowboy hat on a peg beside the closet. Hats in different colors made an artful arrangement on the wall. The only other wall decor came from the scenery outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.
Since his first trip out west in 1852 as a young man, he’d been awed by the panoramas. The lack of striking gold had hid some of the glory then. Luck had a lot to do with how the world and he got along. It had been bad so long, he thought luck and color had gone for good from his life.
“Only took a trip through a portal and a friend from another world to turn things around.” He laughed, striding down the granite staircase past striking paintings and grand sculptures. Finery he claimed as his.
His fingers brushed over the bronze mustang in the lobby. It ran with others in front of the waterfall cascading down the back window. The richest man he had known in the 1880s didn’t possess such extravagance. A smile dislodged the guilt he had harbored over Daelin. His home had that effect.
Returning to his office filled with more fine things, he grabbed worn ones: a backpack, a wool cap, and a heavy long coat that matched his tan pants. Life in the wilderness had a very different set of rules than civilized life. A pattern from his former century he couldn’t change. Savagery didn’t belong in town.
He took the trail leading to the obsidian pillars and veered off the path to climb up onto the overhang. Orange streaks in the west flamed to reds, blues, and violets, the sparse clouds giving the dusk its soul-inspiring pigments. When all hint of the sun disappeared, the wind kicked. Earl zipped his coat and put on his hat.
Out of his pack, he took a pair of binoculars. For now, Earl could only assist Charming by observing the otherworldly door from his perch. If she came through with trouble, he’d do more.
He glanced toward town. No beams of light moved in his direction. The early opening of the portal last night hadn’t attracted the Rifters, the people in town who guarded the gate, to sit vigil tonight. Culver’s earlier investigation must have satisfied their questions. Earl went back to staring at the obsidian columns.
A hint of silver broke in the east. The moon rose higher, washing out most of the stars. The pillars awoke. The posts hissed in a flash of blue, fingers of lightning caressing their reaches into the sky. The energy built in intensity until it burst. Glowing in yellow and blue, the portal pulsed then settled. Shadows flickered in its brilliance, dancing and looming.
Earl’s vigil ended. His girl came home. It had to be her. He stood, ready to run down into the clearing and embrace her, but the angle of the head gave him pause. Silhouetted by the blue energy, the arrival had a long beak. Yes, a beak. Definitely not Charming.
“No.” Earl slumped to the ground and scrambled behind a boulder. Once concealed from the visitor below, he raised his binoculars.
The figure came into focus illuminated by the moon and the rift. It wore a mask with goggles over its beak. Green mist poured out of it in a breathing rhythm, and it had the tail of an eel. The thing stood like a human with two arms and two legs in the usual places. It set down a gyroscope, a metal orb of rings, some full rings, some partial, before the gateway. The gyroscope spun, siphoning energy from the pillars, energy reaching for a crystal in its center. It spun faster, faster, faster until the crystal began to glow. A disturbing shade of green.
The beaked thing from the rift shrieked, which came out as a bubbly burp, an odd sound to go with an odd sight. It kept burping, stopping periodically to sniff at the wind. It continued with its strange behavior until the moon started to set, which deepened the shadows of night, stretching them to distorted patches.
Green mists slinked out from the trees, bowing before the birdman thing. It laid a hand on every mist, dunking its head into the globs of vapor one at a time. The beaked thing bobbed, burped, and snorted, prancing in and out of the fog gathered around it. Finally, it chose one, adding its green breath to the selected mist. At the others, it flapped its arms, sending them away.
Earl inched closer, engrossed, his elbows slipping off the edge before he realized he verged on going over. What was the birdman doing, and what exactly were the green cloud things? His scalp prickled, and he glanced toward town, checking for Culver or one of the other guardians of this world. The forest lay unnaturally quiet. No rustles of branches. No whispers of crickets. It was up to Earl to protect the town.
Alone with the chosen mist, birdman stepped into it, pulling it on as a second skin. This had a horrid effect. The vapor took form, the form of a headless man. In his hands, he held his head. The lips parted, and he howled. A strange sort of phantom with the beaked thing’s head where a human one should be.
Together, birdman and the phantom plucked the crystal from the center of the gyroscope. Birdman put the ghostly head on over its beaked one and together they swallowed the glowing stone. The jewel sat in the phantom’s throat pulsing. The birdman sank fully into its ghostly skin, disappearing into the gossamer form.
The phantom lumbered away from the pillars, and the rift shut down. The ghost’s head jounced, threatening to tumble to the ground. The mouth twisted into an awful laugh, and the hollow eyes peered directly at Earl.
hapter 