The shadows in Earl’s prison cell deepened, darkening blacker than the deepest mineshaft, stretching into a stain of horror with two heads. Instinct had Earl inching to the opposite corner. The shadow slinked after him across the floor.
“Haw, haw,” it whispered. An unholy laugh erupted from its blackest core. “Told you, you’d pay. I’ve got more planned for you. Haw, haw.”
Standing tall was never a bad policy when squaring off. Earl had learned the lesson in the 1800s. It applied in any time. “You’re a stupid puppet without any brain matter.” He stepped on it, and in a shuddering agony his leg went numb.
“What does that make you? You’re my puppet. I could spring you. I’ve got special talents, ‘cause I been resurrected. You’d like to be sprung, wouldn’t you? Bart and Haw Shot on the prowl together. We’d be invincible. Although, they don’t have stagecoaches anymore. Did you know that?”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. My name will be cleared, I’ll be let out, then I’m coming for you, George Hawley.”
“No, it doesn’t work that way. You’ll do what I make you do.”
Ghosts didn’t have the powers Haw Shot displayed. The beaked thing from the rift had to wield them. Did Earl talk to it or Haw Shot? He’d have to keep the ghost jabbering to find out. “Which is?”
“I need another head.” The shadow of a second head on his shoulder jiggled indecently, twisted at an unnatural angle. “Susan has pretty hair, but pretty isn’t everything in the Afterlife.”
The day the army had released him from service, Earl had sworn he’d never kill again. What did that thing need with heads anyway? “I’m not going to help you.” He hopped up on the cot. Black followed, marring the blanket. There was no getting away from Hawley.
“Sure as the desert is dry, you will. Unless…” Haw Shot dangled unless like an unguarded shipment of gold.
Earl had to ask, “Unless what?”
“Apparently your freedom can be bought.”
Earl had sold a piece of himself to stoop to robbing stagecoaches. He wasn’t that man anymore, and if the ghost couldn’t offer redemption, Earl had nothing to sell. It didn’t hurt to find out what he could, though. “At what price?”
“Dante and Charming. You know where they are.” It wasn’t a question. His ghostly mouth lightened when he spoke.
His girl was in trouble with the things in the rift, just as Earl feared. He sucked in a slow breath. “Why do you hate me so much? I don’t recall ever meeting you.”
“We didn’t. I watched you rob a stagecoach and copied you the next day. With a very different result.” Haw Shot pointed at a gash of light running through his shadowy neck. “They hung me. Why didn’t they ever hang you?”
Maybe if Haw Shot had satisfaction on this subject, he’d slink off and leave Earl in peace. “Was there a rider on the wagon?”
“Two.”
Like most other stagecoach robbers, Hawley was an idiot. He deserved what he had earned. “See, I was careful to never stickup a coach with a rider,” Earl said. “That’ll get you shot.”
“It did.”
Shot and hung. Dead two ways. Luck worse than Earl ever had, and he had a really bad streak of it prior to his days of highway robbery. “Why is your idiocy my fault?”
“You could have learned me better.”
The pout in the thing’s voice came off as comical. The argument was stupider. Yet continuing to antagonize Hawley didn’t seem wise. Earl feigned an empathetic frown. “I didn’t know you, brother. How could I teach you if I didn’t know you existed?”
“That’s my other issue with you. Everyone knew your name. You left no immortality for the rest of us.”
“Not my doing. A pain-in-the-ass lawman used me as an example to the rest of you. I never wanted fame. Seems to me, you found your immortality anyway.” Earl shrugged at the lumpy shadow then wondered at his sanity. He conversed with a spook like it had reason.
“By end of the week, the world will whisper my name before yours, and you will burn.” A green glow brightened in the shadow’s throat then dimmed. The crystal, the source of the phantom’s existence. Since none of the town’s protectors, the ones who guarded what came out of the rift, came running, the crystal’s energy had to hide the birdman. Interesting. Dante and Charming could use the same technique to hide. If Earl found the chance to tell them.
However this went, he had to figure out how to get the crystal out of Haw Shot’s throat. Earl had no idea how, only knew it was the way to take this vile creature down. “You delivered your message. You can go now.” Yeah, go and fall into a mineshaft to the other side of the globe.
“I didn’t get what I came for. The whereabouts of Charming and Dante. I will know where they are. If you tell me, I’ll spring you and share my special talents. You’re going to like them, Bart. You can walk into any vault without detection. You’ll be richer than the moon.”
The offer didn’t at all appeal to Earl. It wouldn’t change him into a better man. “I think you’re speaking Chinese.”
“Haw, haw. Quit playing the dumbass. The woman you treasure, the broken cog in the rift, she was brought here by you. So, it’ll be your fault when Charming dies. She is going to die. And Dante. Like Wells Fargo made an example of you, the Governors of the rift will make one of them.”
Not if Earl had anything to do with it. Problem was, he needed Dante to put up a decent fight. Yet, he couldn’t contact Dante without leading Hawley straight to him. Earl would have to use Daelin as a messenger. He’d have to get her to the gate, so she remembered the conversation in the sandwich shop. Earl had no better chance to save his girl. “Charming is out with the Paleo Institute digging fossils, and Dante retired. He said he was going to Arizona. You ever been there? I think it’d suit you.”
“We’ll see how your courage serves you after sundown. Haw, haw.”
The shadows lightened, leaving Earl alone, but not for long.
hapter 