The Shotgun Arcana (12 page)

Joseph Smith, the prophet and founder of the Mormon faith, had been a friend to Harry’s late father. Smith had commissioned Josiah with a great task to seek out and protect the mythical relics of the faith—divine treasure of Heaven. They found the impossible trove in a cave here in Golgotha, and the Pratt family built a mansion over it.

Last year, the sacred golden plates given to Smith by an angel had revealed themselves to the most unlikely of readers—Harry. Armed with some of the divine items, Harry had been instrumental in saving Golgotha and the world from destruction. Slaughter and others believed that Harry was the fulfillment of the Prophesy of One Mighty and Strong—a great hero and leader who would guide the faith in its hour of greatest need.

Pratt looked at the stack of letters in his hand. They felt much heavier than they should. He leafed through them and shook his head.

“Requests for help with bad crops, range wars, poor business, sick children, religious intolerance and bigotry. Ghouls?
Ghouls?
And what on earth is a ‘skin-walker’? What do these people expect me to do? Ride in on a unicorn and smite their troubles with the Sword of Laban? What do they want from me?”

“Hope,” Slaughter said. “Hope that the future is bright and good. That tomorrow will be better.”

“I can hardly get myself reelected to this one-horse town,” Harry said. “How can I give anyone hope?”

Slaughter saw the stress in the younger man’s face, and the darkness in his eyes. He rested a hand on Harry’s shoulder and patted his back gently.

“I believe in you, Harry,” Slaughter said. “Even if you don’t.”

*   *   *

It was after dark by the time he finished for the day. Harry was exhausted. He rode his horse Knight, a sorrel Morgan stallion, slowly up Rose Hill toward his mansion. He didn’t want to but he needed to clean up and change clothes before he headed back to the mayor’s office and the couch.

There were lamps lit when he entered the main hall.

“Lamarr!” he called out to his servant, but there was no answer. For second a trickle of fear fluttered in Harry’s chest at the thought that Holly, bleeding darkness, would turn the corner and rush toward him eager to wring his neck.

Instead there was the thump of boots and James Ringo stepped into view. The dusky-skinned piano player’s hair was brown, shot through with coppery strands and worn long like the Indian men wore theirs. Ringo was clean-shaven, but a shadow of a dark beard remained on his face. He was wearing only trousers and boots. His muscular frame was wiry and lean. His bare chest was scarred with the looping trails of knife wounds and the puckered craters of bullet wounds—a history in flesh of his youth in the Barbary Coast of San Francisco, but he was still beautiful to Harry. Ringo held a glass in each hand. He offered one to Harry.

“Welcome home,” Ringo said. “I was beginning to think I was going to be drinking alone. I was thinking a drink, then I drag you upstairs and give you a bath. I’ll do your back. Hell, I’ll do your front.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” Harry said. “Where is Lamarr? What if someone sees you?”

Ringo set Harry’s drink on the hall table and took a long draw on his own. “I see,” he said. “We’re back to this place. Understandable, but still disappointing.”

“What are you talking about?” Harry said. “I came home to grab clothes and clean up. I need to get back to work. What do you mean—‘back to this place,’ exactly?”

“You, back to the old pattern we had when Holly was alive. You love me, you spend time with me, you hate yourself for it, you run away and try to hide in your responsibilities and deny who you are, and I get to hold us together until you get sick of pretending again, start hating your duty again and run back to me. You haven’t been to see me in over three months. It gets old, Harry, and all that running must exhaust you.”

“Not so old that you can’t make your way to San Francisco and spend a hell of a lot of my money there,” Harry said. “You find yourself a new ‘one true love’?”

Ringo walked past Harry into the parlor. Harry picked up his drink and followed.

“Fuck you, Harry,” Ringo said. “I had debts, very old debts, and the people I owed caught up to me and shook me down. Not all of us were born into fucking nobility. I’ll pay you back.”

Pratt snorted and sipped his drink. “Don’t let it concern you. I always told you to use the money if you need it. Look, I’m sorry you are feeling neglected,” Harry said, “but I have so much coming at me and I have so much more responsibility now. I don’t have the time to…”

“To be in love with me,” Ringo said. “To let me help you carry the burden?”

“You can’t understand this.” Harry sat back in one of the French-made upholstered chairs. “I can’t afford to make mistakes. Too many people are counting on me.”

“Am I a mistake to you now, Harry?” Ringo asked. He sat cross-legged on the oriental carpet on the floor, a few feet from Harry’s chair. He fished his makings out of his pocket and began to roll a cigarette, setting his drink next to him. “Harry, not too long ago you said you wanted to run away to San Francisco. You loathed your responsibility, your duties, now they’re killing you. When was the last time you slept all night? When did you eat a proper meal?”

“I’m … more than I used to be,” Harry said. “I had a little boy walk up to me today on the street and thank me for saving his life during the insanity last year. I don’t remember him, don’t remember saving him. James, people’s lives depend on me here—especially here—and I have to be focused on that or people will die.”

“Like Holly died,” Ringo said.

“Don’t,” Harry said, and drained his glass. “You weren’t even there, so don’t you dare.”

“You’re right, I wasn’t, but I would have been if you let me,” Ringo said. “Harry, I would stand with you at the gates of Hell. Holly is dead, and I know you blame yourself for her dying.…”

“I ran her through with a goddammed magic sword, like out of a fucking fairy tale,” Harry said, snarling. He smashed the glass in his hand. Ringo jumped and crawled toward his lover. “I killed her, and maybe if I had knocked her out, or done something different—something some real hero, like Jon Highfather, or the real fucking One Mighty and Strong, would have done, maybe if I had talked sweet to her the last time I saw her instead of being a selfish, evil-hearted bastard, she would have been safe at home and not out where those sick bastards got her. I…”

It all came rushing out: all the sadness, all the regret and the anger, the fear and self-doubt. Harry wept and Ringo knelt before him, took his bleeding hand and gently removed the broken glass as best he could, kissing Harry’s wrist and the uncut places on the back of his hand.

“Shhh,” Ringo said, taking a doily off an end table and wiping away the blood as best he could. “You hush now, love. I got you.”

“I’ve lived here most of my life,” Harry said. “I’ve seen some terrible things, but there was just so much death, so much dying and I was the one doing the killing. And…” The sobs rose again in him. “And they all think I’m some kind of hero now, some damned prophecy, me! I have to be good enough for their damned holy books; I can’t afford mistakes, or weakness. I can’t let anyone die anymore. I can’t afford to be…”

“Human?” Ringo said, and pulled Harry to him. He kissed the mayor on his wet eyes in an attempt to banish the tears, then kissed Harry’s forehead. “Harry, you are one of the most caring men I ever met, and you are a hero. You were afraid and you set that aside and did what needed to be done. Holly understood. She would never have wanted that thing walking around claiming to be her. You freed her. You saved the town, you saved all of us.”

Ringo kissed Harry softly, tasting the tears and feeling his ragged sobs with each breath. “And I love you, and you can always be human with me. I love you.”

Ringo kissed him again and Harry joined the kiss. Harry ran his good hand through Ringo’s hair and Ringo cupped Harry’s face. The kiss grew deeper, hungrier. They were on the carpeted floor, knocking over Ringo’s drink and scattering his tobacco and papers. Harry kissed the tips of Ringo’s fingers, then his palm and then his wrist. Ringo’s hand slid along Harry’s chest, teasing, then slid lower. Both of them wrestled with their clothes, both too hungry for the other to relent from touching, kissing, long enough to remove them.

“I love you, Harry,” Ringo said, panting. “I missed you.”

“I love you too,” Harry said, trying to catch his breath. The words were true, but it was still an alien feeling to him to hear them come out of his mouth. “I feel very lost right now, like every step could be a mistake that ends me, ends everything.”

“It’s going to be okay, Harry,” Ringo said, kissing him, deeply. “It’s going to be all right, as long as we’re together.”

Harry froze for a second, the words from his dream echoing in the present. Something old and savage and hungry was coming, maybe already here. Its silent, terrible roar bleeding over into his dreams.

Ringo felt him tense and pulled him closer. “Let it go, Harry,” he said. “I have you. Let it be till tomorrow.”

Their mouths, their bodies, their hearts became one. They devoured each other, worshiped each other, and healed each other. They collapsed exhausted on the parlor floor, holding one another tight. And for the first time in memory, Harry Pratt slept a deep and, mercifully, dreamless sleep.

The Moon (Reversed)

Sheriff Jon Highfather, newly returned from Louisiana, leaned back in his chair and rested his boots on his desk, his hand folded across his chest. He had arrived home to Golgotha this morning and was trying to untangle the events of last night.

“Okay, now this weird goat-eating thing, you were chasing it across the roof and it was…”

“Ugly,” Jim said, looking at Mutt. The Indian nodded, looking straight at the sheriff.

“Make-yer-eyes-itch ugly,” Mutt said.

Jon slid his feet to the floor and leaned forward, elbows on his desk. He was a lanky, handsome man with sandy hair. The only feature that marred his good looks was the trio of rope burns that looped around his neck. Jon usually covered the scars with a kerchief, but their existence was well known and part of the reason many thought Golgotha was protected by a dead man.

“And this critter is the reason I have a baby goat, eating the blankets in the clink,” Highfather said, nodding toward the goat kid, who was contentedly munching on the mattress in one of the jail’s cells.

“Billy,” Jim said. “His name is Billy, Sheriff.”

“Can we keep him?” Mutt said.

Highfather sighed. “Can I go back to Creole zombies trying to kill me, please?”

The iron door groaned, opened, and Clay Turlough entered, carrying a large leather bag.

“Good to see you, Clay,” Highfather said. “How are you?”

“Jon,” Clay nodded. “Jim, Mutt.” He paused and watched the goat eating the fabric with gusto. “Whose goat is that destroying your jail cell?”

“Technically, it’s Harry’s,” Mutt said with a wide smile.

“I see,” Clay said, blandly. He sat the leather bag on the floor next to Highfather’s desk, opened it and removed an odd, lamp-like apparatus. He pushed aside papers and a few books from Highfather’s desk to set the device flat and even on the surface. Jon grinned and moved to get out of Clay’s way.

“Make yourself at home, Clay,” Highfather said. “Thanks for helping us on this.”

The device had a wide, rounded column and above it, almost like a lampshade, was a ring of wide barrel-like protrusions of differing lengths, pointing in all directions. The barrels seemed to be made of metal with glass lenses. The whole contraption reminded Highfather of a magic lantern—a device that could produce images off glass slides, projected onto a screen. He had seen one in a playhouse in Philadelphia shortly after the war.

“What is that thing, Clay?” Mutt asked.

“This is my occuscope,” Clay said. He opened a door in the column to reveal a glass cylinder full of amber liquid and eyeballs. Highfather blinked and Mutt leaned in to the sheriff, smiling.

“I told you I wasn’t joshing,” Mutt whispered. Clay continued his explanation, unperturbed.

“I got some very good images from the occustereograph in the alley last night and I harvested the eyeballs that provided the best visual representations of the event.…”

“You mean, ‘murder,’ Mr. Turlough,” Jim said.

“Yes, yes, Jim,” Clay said, nodding as he raised the inner chamber of the column and struck a match to ignite the projector’s lamp-like wick. “Murder, as you say, and quite a clever one at that. As I was saying, the eyeballs that held the best images are combined here and once I adjust the focus … Jonathan, Mutt, could you please see to the windows?”

Highfather and Mutt closed the heavy interior wooden shudders and the jail was plunged into deep darkness. Shadows jumped and shivered in the tiny flame of Clay’s match. The wide cloth wick ignited and Clay shook the match to snuff it. He slid the column on the device back into place with a metallic click, hiding the flame. The room was pitch black for a moment, then Clay twisted several knobs, like adjusting a microscope, and suddenly the alleyway of the Dove’s Roost and the horribly mutilated body of Sweet Molly were all around them. On every wall, every surface. Unlike a regular photograph, the eyeballs seemed to capture details to a depth where it felt as if you were there, as if it were happening right now. It was unnerving and miraculous all at the same time.

“Clay…,” Highfather said, shaking his head in wonder.

“White man’s magic,” Mutt said, and whistled. “Could make a king’s ransom on this, Clay. They’d line up down the street to see a picture show like this.”

“Would they?” Clay said, clearly having never considered the prospect of making money off his invention. “I’ve cogitated building a circular room to provide a better immersive experience. The proper chemical hallucinogens would also enhance the verisimilitude considerably, of course. Perhaps dispersed via a nebulizer-like medium.”

Highfather tried to bring Clay out of his musings and back to the present. The effort was background noise to Jim. The odd amber-colored light of the device played across Jim’s face. Any other time he would have been amazed and delighted at Clay’s wondrous achievement, but now all he could see was the dead woman and the things this unknown beast had done to her.