The Shotgun Arcana (19 page)

The Hierophant

“Sheriff’s in trouble!” Jim shouted to Mutt as he threw open the door to the jail. It was almost dark and Jim had run to Clay’s livery to fetch his horse, Promise, and Mutt’s Muha.

“Up on Argent?” Mutt said. Jim nodded.

“Got word that this Vellas bushwhacker may be more trouble than we thought,” Jim said. “Golgotha-style trouble.”

Mutt stood and unlocked the gun cage behind Jon’s desk that held rifles, shotguns, pistols, ammo and other, less conventional items. There were charms—Indian, African and Chinese—wooden stakes, white candles and chalk, silver bullets, a bag of rock salt, a crucifix, a sealed glass jar full of rattlesnake rattles, a bundle of sage held together by twine, a cold iron knife, holy water blessed in Rome, a small dream catcher made out of bones and feathers, a Ba Gua mirror and a collection of tattered tomes.

“Any idea what he is? What can take him out?” Mutt asked as he pulled down a rifle and grabbed a box of shells.

“No,” Jim said. “Mrs. Warren just said he was in serious trouble.”

“Mrs. who?” Mutt asked, pausing. Jim waved a hand in frantic dismissal.

“Never mind, never mind. I’ll tell you later! We got to go help—”

The iron door creaked open. Father Whitley Thorne, the sole priest of Golgotha’s small Catholic congregation, entered. The father was in his sixties, raw-boned, with a face deeply lined with wrinkles and scars. There were prominent scars on his knuckles too. The father’s nose had clearly been smashed a few times in his life. His short hair was the color of snow and his piercing blue eyes almost seemed to burn out of the darkness. He wore a battered black hat and a long black coat. He always presented an aura of serenity and power to Jim. Now he seemed agitated, maybe even afraid.

“Deputy Mutt,” Thorne said. “Deputy Jim, there’s been a break-in at the church. Someone is in there. They sound mad as a hatter! I saw them up at the altar. I called out to them and they said something in Latin. I decided I should get you.”

“What did they say, padre?” Mutt said.

“He … he said he was leaving a tithe for ‘the boss,’” Thorne said softly.

Jim and Mutt looked at each other.

“Go look after the sheriff,” Jim said to Mutt. “I’ll help the father. Muha is tied up outside.”

Mutt nodded. “All right. Watch yourself. You shoot whoever this is if they come at you. Don’t try to bring him in, just kill ’em. You hear me, boy?”

“Gotcha,” Jim said. “Go save the sheriff. I’ll be okay.”

*   *   *

Saint Cyprian of Antioch’s Catholic Church was one of the older buildings in Golgotha, having once been a small stone fortress built by unknown inhabitants of the region, perhaps part of the Bick family. It squatted on the southern rise of Methuselah Hill like a silent gray gargoyle.

Jim rode ahead while the father walked back. He didn’t know much about Catholics, except what the folks back home said. They were not thought well of in Southern Baptist country like his home in Albright, West Virginia, he knew that. However, more than rants about papal control, false prophets, graven images and the Whore of Babylon, Jim remembered what Pa had said once while they were fishing and talking about a Catholic family that had just moved into Albright. “Don’t make me no never mind, son,” Billy Negrey had said. “When we faced the elephant in the war, it didn’t matter much how the Jonathan next to you talked to God, or if he did at all. We were in it together, and that was all that mattered. I remember really well an Irish Catholic named Leary saving my backside, more than once. Don’t judge someone by anything other than what they do, Jim. It will always guide you straight.”

Jim tied Promise to the hitching post outside the stone stairs and double doors that led to the chapel and drew Pa’s Colt .44. He moved cautiously up the stairs and reached for the handle to one of the doors. The handle was wet. When Jim pulled his hand back and looked at it, it was black in the moonlight with fresh blood.

He pulled open the massive oak reinforced door, causing it to groan audibly, and wiped his hand dry on his pants. The bitter November wind rushed into the cathedral, swirling desert dust with it, like an angry ghost. The massive candles near the doors fluttered in the wind as Jim walked in, silhouetted in the bright moonlight. The chapel was silent and empty.

There had only been about thirty or forty Catholics in Golgotha when Jim had arrived a year ago, and now with the boom there were probably close to a hundred and fifty. Father Thorne was the only clergy at the church, though Catholic clergy and monks often visited St. Cyprian’s to do research in the massive catacomb of a library underneath the old fortress. Jim had heard Highfather say that this tiny little church out on the edge of nowhere had an occult archive only rivaled by the Holy City of Rome, itself. But tonight, there were no visiting scholars, no congregation and no priest. Just Jim, the invading wind and the shadows.

Jim walked slowly down the main aisle toward the huge, heavy, wooden crucifix, which hung by wires at the front of the chapel. Hundreds of white votive candles, held in rows by metal racks on both sides of the main altar, were lit and struggled to endure against the desert’s cold breath. Paintings and statues of the Virgin Mother sat among the walls of trembling light.

Jim thought the main altar was alight with prayer candles, too, but as he stepped into the island of illumination at the front of the chapel the terrible realization came upon him. A woman’s body, in tattered clothing and wet with fresh blood, was draped across the altar. Her abdomen had been opened and her intestines arranged around her on the altar, spilling out. Some had slid onto the floor, staining the wood. The stench of opened bowels fought for dominance over the perfume of lingering incense

Jim sighed and steeled himself. He tried to replace the nausea and fear with anger and resolve. The woman’s eyes had been removed from her skull. Two tall, red tapers had been jammed into her eye sockets and burned strongly. Her ears had been hacked off. Another, thicker red candle, also burning bright, had been jammed into her mouth, blood trickling from the edges of her torn lips, mixing with the red wax. Small red votives had been placed over both of her nipples; the flame from them flickered and danced. The red, hardened wax had solidified around them and left frozen tracks down the sides of her breasts and onto the polished wood of the altar. A gold basin, normally used to hold holy water, sat on the floor before the altar surrounded by, and covered in, blood, excrement, wax and bile. The woman’s eyes, ears and tongue had been carefully placed in the bowl.

Something Clay had said suddenly pierced the fog of numb horror that had enveloped Jim’s mind.
He likes to show his craft.
Jim spun, and peered into the inky darkness of the chapel.

Suddenly, Jim had an idea. He quickly pulled his father’s jade eye from the pouch about his neck and held it up with his bloodstained hand. The moonlight through the open doors caught the milky white orb, with its ring of frosted jade, etched with tiny Chinese symbols.

The eye had resided in the skull of Jim’s father, Billy Negrey, after he lost his own eye in the war. The jade eye had been given to Billy and implanted in the dead of night by a group of Chinese monks for still dubious reasons.

The eye seemed to drink in the moonlight, greedily, then began to glow, surrounded by tiny, fiery motes of brilliant emerald light-blazing green fireflies.

“I know you’re still here!” Jim shouted out, his voice echoing through the cold dark chapel. “You’re not gonna get away this time! Not from me, you sumbitch! Show yourself!”

The flame of every candle burning in the chapel suddenly erupted in green brilliance, illuminating the whole room. In the back of the chapel, near the last few rows of pews, a black-cloaked figure in a floppy brimmed Stetson and long military-style coat suddenly became visible as the shadows were driven back by the unearthly candlelight. A red scarf covered most of the killer’s face. The murderer looked about, startled and surprised.

Jim raised his pistol and fired even as the dark-garbed murderer bolted for the open doors, keeping low between the rows of pews. A section of one of the wooden benches exploded as the .44 ball struck it, narrowly missing the cloaked figure racing by. Jim fired again as the killer cleared the pews and was silhouetted against the doors. If the bullet struck him, the killer did not seem to react, disappearing from sight. Already the flames were settling down and resuming their ordinary color and radiance. The room fell back into shadow as Jim raced down the aisle after the murderer. He reached the front doors and stood at the top of the stone stairs, scanning in all directions for any hint of movement, any sign of where the murderer had fled. There was nothing. Then, suddenly, the crack of a whip and response of two horses to their impatient master. A wagon clattered into view, the cloaked killer whipping the horses into a galloping frenzy. Jim fired again as the wagon passed, but once more there was no indication of a hit as the wagon and its unknown driver vanished around the bend of the hill out into the scrubland and then the deep desert.

“The hell you do!” Jim shouted, and leapt half the steps down to where Promise was reined. He grabbed the saddle horn fiercely to pull himself up onto his horse. The whole rig slid off his horse’s back, knocking him to the ground. He examined the cinch strap and saw it had been cleanly cut. Jim grabbed his horse blanket and threw it on this loyal, willful, little brown mustang. He holstered his pistol and pulled himself up onto Promise, taking the reins.

“Come on, girl!” He snapped the reins and gave her a gentle prompt by squeezing his legs. Promise snorted and galloped off after the wagon into the desert darkness. Jim felt Promise open up and run for all she was worth, as if she knew whom they pursued, and why he had to be stopped. The boy and his horse raced across the scrubland as thousands of stars burned above them in the indigo night. He saw Molly James in the alley, the woman in the chapel. Jim squeezed his legs, urging Promise on, and leaned forward, willing them to catch up, coaxing a little more speed out of her. A little more …

Ahead in the darkness, Jim saw the shape of the wagon clattering along past the southern road onto Main Street, a cloud of dust behind them. Jim had suspected the killer would try to double back and head into town on the southern road. But the wagon had passed it and was off the road, bouncing dangerously, threatening to overturn or break a wheel. The wagon was beginning to slow and Jim and Promise were overtaking it. Jim drew his gun and pulled on Promise’s reins to cut off the horses. The wagon horses slowed, then stopped and the wagon with them. Jim stayed on Promise and slowly circled the wagon, pistol at the ready. It was empty. No driver, no one hiding in the bed. The cloaked killer had bailed out in the darkness and used the runaway wagon as a diversion.

Jim slumped. He holstered his gun and wiped the trail dust off his face. He looked out into the fathomless darkness.

“Damn,” he said. “I’m sorry, Molly.”

The Star

Highfather, staring into the cold eyes of the rattler, heard shouting outside, Mitchell calling for his men to hold their fire.

“I think I hit him!” someone shouted.

“I’m bleeding like a stuck pig over here, goddammit!” another voice cried out, tinged with panic.

“Clement’s dead!” a third voice yelled.

“Can’t kill him, sumbitch is a haint … ain’t really alive! Been hung three times already.…”

“All of you shut the hell up!” It was Mitchell. “Hush.”

The rattler was ready to strike. Mitchell’s men were forming up. Jon’s eyes locked on the rattler.

“Go on,” he said to the snake’s merciless eyes. “Do it.”

“Hey, the bastard’s right here in the dirt,” a voice extremely close to Highfather said. It was one of the men who had been on horseback. He was a shadow in the doorway, rifle in his hands. Highfather grabbed the edge of the plank the snake was on with both hands. Ignoring the pain in his left arm, he rolled and flipped the snake in the direction of the gunman in the open doorway. The man screamed and dropped his rifle as he fell back, the rattler hitting his chest, dropping to the dust in front of him, striking again and again in terror all the way down.

Highfather scrambled and grabbed the rifle; he slid it aside and drew the shotgun from his back. He emptied both barrels of 12-gauge buckshot into the gunman’s chest. He flew backward and laid still in the moonlight. The snake slithered toward the high grass and disappeared. Mitchell and his two remaining men opened fire on the shack. Highfather dived back for cover out of the doorway. Holes exploded in the crumbling walls of the shack, bullets whined and ricocheted all around him

Highfather snapped open the breach of the shotgun and pulled the hot empty shells out. He fumbled in the pocket of his barn jacket, fishing out two fresh cartridges. He loaded them and returned the shotgun to his back sheath. His left arm was wet with blood and throbbing with pain, but he could still use it—a good sign. Another rain of bullets ripped through the shed. Jon ducked and felt the air scorch inches from his face. He popped up a second after the barrage and returned fire with his rifle. One round and he was out. He ducked and dropped the empty gun, grabbing the dead gunman’s rifle as more bullets ripped apart the shack and bounced around inside. For a second he was back in the war, pinned down with Larson ten feet away, screaming and bleeding, his brother’s arms and legs reduced to bloody mist. The cannons exploding.…

No. No, he was here, now, and he would be dead if he let his mind slip. He popped back up off the dirt floor and aimed the dead man’s gun into the darkness. The shattered lantern had done its job: the wagon was burning now in the crossroads of Backtrail Road. Mitchell was smart enough to get his boys away from it, out of the light. They were in the high grass, where he had been, and they would move up on him, quiet. He grabbed a handful of bullets from his pocket and quickly loaded both rifles. He was a little dizzy from losing blood and shivering from what he hoped was cold, not shock. He ignored it as best he could by focusing on the task of pushing the cartridges into the gun.