The Best of Penny Dread Tales (10 page)

“Badly wounded and expiring of thirst, the holy man prayed to his Savior. He swooned, and in his dream he saw a vision of the Savior weeping over a lame lamb. The monk awoke to find a fountain of purest holy water at his feet. He bathed and his wounds were healed—he drank and was thirsty no more. He emerged from the mountain with new life.”

The Smith did not respond. Countless times he’d tried to quit the vice of hope. Against the warnings in his head, infected by Rosalina’s inexhaustible vigor, the Smith nodded.

“Yes.” The word was a magical incantation, transubstantiating the Smith into pure hope. “Yes.” He felt centuries of weight being lifted from his body with each repetition until he felt he would quit the dreary Earth forever. “Yes,” he whispered, “yes.”

VII

Claire huffed, uneasy hooves dancing in place over the dark earth. The cloud-mottled night camouflaged all but the white lozenge on her muzzle and the glint of her queer metal boots. She moved in uneasy bursts, apprehensive of the steel grafted to her legs.

The Smith sat bareback. One hand on her neck, he made a final once over of the machinery strapped to Claire’s flank. The cylindrical water tanks were full, the metal box over her tail secure—waiting. Most important, two thick glass bottles—carefully wrapped and wrapped again—lay nestled in the luggage pack behind his seat. His rifle, scope extended and ready, lay across Claire’s neck.

“So I follow the mountains south?” He asked the dark.

“Sí,” the dark answered. “Take the east fork when the ridge splits in two. The volcano is at the southern end of that ridge, north and east of Santa Fe.”

“Claire and I will return no later than sundown tomorrow. It would be in your best interest to stay in the shop until then. There’s food and water in the cabinets.”

“¿Mañana?” the shadow retorted. “Gringo, it’s a day and a half just to get there.”

“You don’t worry about that.” Mischief put a smile on the Smith’s face. “I work in horseshoes the same I do hearts, señorita.”

He spurred Claire, shooting horse and rider into the unfathomable dark. Steam hissed from Claire’s horseshoes with each step, shooting them into the southern wilds like a bullet from a rifle. As the city melted into earth behind him, the Smith heard a valediction whispered from the dark:

“Adíos.”

Claire’s satisfied breaths fell into the rhythm of hissing steam and drumming earth, and the darkness swallowed them whole. Without landmarks to measure time, it seemed horse and rider floated through a vast black nothing. Regrets and fears materialized from the black and orbited his aching head, night’s aether a superconductor for the old scars.

He had vowed long ago to quit hope. Hope was a child’s story, a fairy tale, something he’d long outgrown—a wretched invention, hope, always fungible, never dried up, photosynthesized with the slightest glimmer of sunshine. He most despised the pious hopeful, yet there he was, riding into hope’s waiting trap.

A dome of sun soon lazed over the horizon, reluctant to quit dewy sleep. A cone of earth cut through its pink glow. Claire, sensing their proximity, pushed to a sprint. Morning’s full bouquet—the sky all hyacinth, rose, and dandelion—found horse and Rider at the volcano’s base. The Rider shielded his eyes and surveyed for a route to the top. The steam boots, far too dangerous on fragile volcanic soil, he toggled off.

“Well chica, what do you think?”

Claire toed the mountain’s skirt, neck craning to the apex. Having made the appropriate triangulations, she leapt to the volcano’s face. The monk’s myth proved popular—a few yards up the west face, Claire and the Smith found a trampled footpath. The trail spiraled to the volcano’s cone.

Following the feet of countless pilgrims, horse and rider crested the mountain at noon. On their heavenly pedestal, the world seemed a child’s toy below. Black earth yawned to his left, a downward path catching glints of noonday gold. Claire pawed the rock, testing its composition and hardness.

“Well, Claire, that’s enough sight-seeing. Let’s begin the end.”

With a pat to her neck, Claire started forward. Her forehoof jerked, hesitant to contact the inner face of the volcano. The Rider, impatient with the prize so close, spurred Claire downward. She lurched into the volcano, front hooves exploding the loam. Desperate for a foothold, Claire bucked, throwing the Rider into the Earth’s bowels.

The volcano buffeted the Rider with bone crunching blows as he fell. He flailed his arms, desperate to stall his descent, but the volcano gave no quarter. His falling dream came to crescendo with a sonorous crunch as his skull split like a summer melon. He tasted iron, smelled roasting almonds and his consciousness hemorrhaged blackness.

VIII

He woke to perfect black, roused by the dirge of midnight crickets. The Rider turned his head—burning pain!—and met Claire’s unblinking eye. She lay breathless beside him, flies diving like falcons to the blood curdling from her deformed rear knee.

“Oh, chica,” he rasped. His body prickled, molten needles darning his tattered flesh.

Pushing to hands and knees, he saw the silver pool ahead. Palms squished wet earth as he crawled forward. He inhaled, smelling only the iron tang of water and dirt. Cupping the liquid in trembling hands, the Rider drank and waited. He pressed a hand to his heart, anticipating.

Nothing.

Fooled again by hope.

“Just dew in a crater.” He stroked Claire’s muzzle with a dripping hand. “My apologies, girl.” The dew sunk into her hide, trickled into her open mouth.

Claire flickered like a firefly, skin slick with luminescence. Her flesh melted to pure electricity, illuminating a shattered skeleton. The Rider shielded his face; Claire burned to rival the noonday sun. Light coursed through her body, eroding the fractures to nothing. With a sucking gasp, Claire whinnied. As if ordered by the horse, the heat and light dissipated, leaving only the cold night.

A horse stood before him, alive and well, both Claire and not Claire. The same white lozenge covered her face, but now her hide was the light brown of coffee with cream.

“Claire?” He stared at the familiar and foreign creature. The horse splashed muddy earth, rebelling against her old name.

“Okay.” He searched for a name befitting one stubborn enough to spurn the reaper. “How about … Rosie?”

The horse turned to profile, presenting mount. Rosie it was.

He reached into the pack strapped to Rosie-née-Claire and found the two glass bottles miraculously intact. He baptized them in the pool and gathered the blessed water.

He held a bottle to the night sky, saw the universe dancing in its waters. Retrieving his rifle from the ground, he strode to Rosie, and careful to pack the bottles in layers of cloth, saddled for the journey home.

IX

The Rider’s return to Denver City seemed instantaneous. Excitement and hope shrunk miles to meters. It was as if he traversed a tabletop map: the Sangre de Cristo Volcano and Denver City pinched together by a Titan’s fingers. His mind ran the improved experiment; a thousand times he watched aqua vita goad life from his steel heart.

When Denver City broke the horizon near midnight, his stomach dropped. Onyx tendrils of heat rippled into the dark. Buildings stood in silhouette, outlined in a blood-red flicker. The Rider reached back to the box on Rosie’s flank and spurred her on. He passed his shop, smoke and fire belching from its open door. Bloodlust echoed from the town square ahead.

A stumbling drunk confirmed the Rider’s fear. “The whore is deaaaaaaaaad!” he sloshed an empty bottle of Bourbon, took a slug and kissed the ground.

Without thought, the Rider unlatched the box. Spring-loaded, its metal sides blossomed like a mechanized flower. Two Gatling guns, each the size of a forearm, flipped out and clipped into stays at Rosie’s hip. They spun with a sound like rattlesnakes ready to strike, driven by the rods pushing Rosie’s gallop. For good measure, his free hand cradled the rifle, ready to damn Denver City to the Hell he knew so well.

The square opened before him, lit by makeshift bonfires, drunks and puritans dancing like Pagans. Their false idol hung from the gallows at center, her head bowed and feet dangling.

Rosalina.

The woman—the one thing connecting him to the living world—was dead. Damn that sheriff. The Rider’s last stores of pity evaporated in the searing heat. Teeth gnashed against his tongue, desperate for any feeling at all, the Rider toggled the safety.

The machine roared, spitting death and hellfire without aim. A cloudburst of blood and brain rained from the heavens. Man, woman, or child—the Rider didn’t give a damn who crossed his path. The mob’s drunken song morphed into panic. Revelers fled for their worthless lives, splashing through rapids of their kinfolks’ blood.

He leapt from Rosie at the gallows, rifle in one hand and knife in the other. The horse ran laps around the square, pumping hot lead into those too drunk or stupid to run. Amidst a chorus of moans and blood slick breaths, the Rider stepped to his fallen angel, knife ready.

“Stop.” The voice behind him was strengthened by the click-clack of a shotgun cocked. “I knew you were hiding that filthy whore. Your noose is nex—”

The Rider spun and gagged the sheriff with three rifle hits. His torn jugular a fountain, his shit-for-brains exploded out the back of his skull, and a poppy blooming over his heart, the law staggered back. He opened his mouth to speak, but his dying words drowned in a sea of blood and bile. Another shot blew off what was left of his head, and the sheriff folded over his knees and fell.

With the workman attitude of one driving railroad spikes, the Smith strode to the corpse and fired. The Smith shot his breech empty, reloaded, shot empty, reloaded, and shot empty again. The Sheriff’s blood ran dry, his body perforated and torn like used paper. Ammunition exhausted, the Smith threw his gun and ran to his dangling compañera.

He sawed the rope until Rosalina’s weight fell to his cradled arms. Her body against his, the Smith leapt from the gallows, and a bottle of liquid pulled from his horse’s flank, sprinted from the square.

Will-’o-the-wisp fires roamed his shop, seeking mischief in dark corners. Kicking dust and ash, the Smith carried Rosalina to the waiting machine. He swept away the false heart and lay his idol in its place. The Smith plunged a filament through Rosalina’s breast, giving electricity a direct line to her heart.

“For hope.” Pulling cork from vial with his teeth, he dribbled the liquid over her bosom and into her mouth, swilling the dregs. The push of a button fired the boiler, and shovels of coal stoked it to fury.

Machine roaring, the Smith ran to his sideboard and impaled himself with a second filament. He lay next to his love, watching electricity twist down the filaments like ivy down a signpost. Each spark pulled him piano wire tight. He burned from inside out, his guts a desert. Blackness closing around him, he turned for one final glimpse of Rosalina. In the flash before total black, the Smith saw her glowing heart, its beat strong and steady.

Part Three: History & Myth

1913

I

The two-story house sat centered in his rifle scope. A whitewashed picket fence guarded its verdant yard from the surrounding plain. He swung his scope left and saw three horses in an adjacent corral. The one colored like coffee with cream turned its white-lozenge face to the scope and whinnied.

Farther, maybe a mile past the house, stood a gnarled Joshua Tree, its tarantula shadow long in the setting sun. From a low branch swung a lifeless form. Little more than a smudge in his sights, the Rider snorted to see the greasy bandito’s Karma paid out.

He lowered the rifle and approached, watching three girls bounce through the yard. Sweat and dirt splotched their chestnut skin, their white dresses matted with play.

Grandchildren
, he thought.

His approach pulsed a wave of excitement through their game. Like magnets to iron they crowded the front gate, waiting in silent expectation. Damn if their chocolate eyes didn’t look familiar.

With a forced smile slashing his skin, he pulled the small string-bound book from his back pocket. “I’m looking for the author of this story. Miss de los Santos.”

He held a thin collection of parchment pages, folded lengthwise and bound with loops of twine. A flowery border bloomed over the cover curled and yellow with age, title and attribution printed in ornate text:

American Vampire

By Rosa de los Santos

The tallest of the three girls, upon seeing the tract, turned to the farmhouse behind. “¡Mama! Un visitor! ¡Tiene tu novella!”

The door swung open, dark save a ruby ember and feathers of smoke

“¿Que quiera, visitor?” Her voice had changed, gravelly with a patina of age, but the notes were unmistakable.

The Visitor crossed the threshold into the yard, scattering the girls back to their game. He held the book, his history, in outstretched hands. “I have something I’d like you to sign.”

“Let me see.” She strode from the darkness and took the tract. The Visitor gasped. Sixty years had only managed to age her twenty. The thin lines in her face only highlighted her beauty, traced her laugh, pointed to her chocolate eyes. As she turned the pages in her hands, the Visitor saw the hangman’s necklace scarring her jaw line.

“You’ve torn the last chapter from my book.” She spoke without looking to him, voice steady. “You’ve redacted poor, stupid Rosalina waking alone—hunted like a dog for more than a decade for a massacre she had no part in. You’ve torn out the epilogue where she outlives her children, her grandchildren. She ends up a filthy monster in the end, just like that bastard Blacksmith.”

The Visitor took her shaking hands, put them over his still heart. “Rosalina.” He dared touch her chest. Her rebellious heartbeat made him shiver. “Rosalina—”

“No.” She stepped back, disengaging the Visitor’s icy grip. “Anymore, Rosalina is just a character in a book.”

The woman produced a pencil from the folds of her wrap and scribbled the book’s cover. She finished with a flourish and threw it back to her Visitor.