Five Days Dead (26 page)

Excerpt

Off the Shelf

The Gray Walker sat on the rickety swing next to Harley Nearwater and threw his boots up on the banister, his long legs crossing comfortably. He looked sideways at Harley, smiling softly, his gray eyes a swarm of other colors, some darker, some lighter than the gray which contained them.

“Nice view.”

“Ahhyep.”  Harley rasped, trying very hard not to let his voice, his hands, his soul, shake in fear and hatred and longing.

“Been some time, hasn’t it, since last we met?” The gray man seemed quite pleased and, truth be told, he was.

“Ten years or so.”

“That long? Wow. Well, I’ve been busy. You?”

Harley gritted his teeth. “Not so much.”

The Gray Walker chortled and jumped to his feet, slapped his hands together and turned to face Harley Nearwater.

“It’s nice to see that your talent for stimulating conversation is just as it ever was Harley. It truly is. But I wonder if you might do me a favor?”

Harley looked up, met the Gray Walker’s gaze and managed to hold it. “Favor?”

“Favor.” The man with the gray eyes flashed his hands and where they had a moment before been empty they now held items Harley recognized. In his left, the Gray Walker held Harley’s old Stetson, and he plopped it on Harley’s head quite happily and gave it a friendly tap. In his right, the gray man held Harley’s holster and blaster.

“Ten years is quite long enough.”

A storm seemed to be brewing around Harley as his strange visitor talked, a raging wind that blinded his vision to everything but the blaster in the gray man’s hand, deafened his hearing to everything but a roar of hatred and desire and need, sharpened his will to nothing more than a longing to reach out and take the weapon from the hand that held it.

“What?” Harley finally managed, realizing the gray man had been talking, but he had not heard.

“I said, things are about to get intrestin. There is a little old Shepherd who has stirred from his sorrow and dared to peek out of his orchard. A man and his children who are what you made them are returning to the Wilderness. Yes, indeed, intrestin developments are on the horizon. There will come a time not too long from now when I might be of a mind to make you an offer, an offer of simple direction for the chaos in your veins. An offer fitting of your talents.”

He held out the blaster and holster. “But for now…feel free to run amok.”

Harley stood and met the outstretched hand with his own, and his hands did not shake when he took the holster and strapped it around his waist, did not shake when he took the blaster and slid it home.

The Gray Walker nodded and with a blink he turned to dust and blew away in the morning breeze.

Harley straightened the hat on his head and looked to the south and his eyes stormed. His mother was dead at the teeth and claw of the Wrynd. He had failed her in the end, after all. But now he was free of the Gray Walker.

He had been taken off the shelf.

What that meant was for some there was going to be hell to pay.

“Good enough,” he said.

About the Author

James L. Davis lives with his wife in Spanish Fork, UT., in a home infested with children and animals, where he is very happy and not altogether sane.

When he is not being harassed by the people who live in his head and scream at his brain, he enjoys running (not very fast, more like wobbling really), reading, anything involving a boat going fast, and confusing his family. He also plans to jump out of a perfectly good airplane fairly soon.

He promised his wife that when he turned 50 he would turn into a cowboy. Since that has now happened, he has asked for an extension until he was 60 and has been granted no reprieve.

So howdy!