Beneath Ceaseless Skies #132 Read online

  Issue #132 • Oct. 17, 2013

  “A Feast for Dust,” by Gemma Files

  “The Adventure of the Pyramid of Bacconyus,” by Caleb Wilson

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  http://beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/

  A FEAST FOR DUST

  by Gemma Files

  All that summer so far there had been no real hint of precipitation, just drought, flame, and the ash it left behind, cut with intermittent rumors of blood falling from the air.

  As the place he’d started off from fell further behind, in every new township that Sheriff Jenkins added to his hastily drafted map of the surrounding territories, he found men and women who prayed for rain ever more desperately, berating first the Injuns who no longer occupied their lands, then whatever strangers were unlucky enough to wander by, then God and the Devil in turn, before finally turning—only at the last—on themselves.

  Storm’s coming, he’d tell them, once he’d done enough to grab their attention—then find himself constrained to add, after they inevitably greeted such a prediction with hopeful pleasure: No, not that sort, sad to say; what it’s bringin’ is something you in no wise want, let alone him who brings it. Which is why you need to look to your sins and own your secret guilts right now, folks, this very instant, ‘fore the curse of self-deception all but assures the bulk of you end up the way we did, back home....

  They cursed him for a false prophet, mostly, and tried to run him off. Sometimes it came to blows, or even bullets, while other times he got off with a few harsh words, weathering them stone-faced, same as the horse-apples they chucked after him. In the end, it was enough to’ve given his speech, Jenkins reckoned; they were warned now, if nothing else, no matter what-all they might yet choose to do (or not do) with that same grim intelligence. And that least—the very least, sparse as it might be—was, frankly, the best he could probably aspire to do, given the circumstances.

  Those were the good days. Bad days were when he made a sweep elsewhere, spanning as many compass-directions as he might around his target’s last legitimate stopping-point, and found nothing but ruin: homesteads denuded, gore-soaked not from affray but from above, as though some wounded behemoth had floated overhead spraying grue every-which-way; graves exploded outwards and empty. All the now sadly predictable detritus, roster of attendant destruction tabled ever-upwards, with no apparent sort of end—easy, or otherwise—in sight.

  For this was the trail of Sartain Stannard Reese which Jenkins followed, as he had since what was left of the man had passed through his own home, sowing similar awfulness in his wake. Sartain Reese, known as “One-Shot”, with his Bushwhacker locks and his odd-angled pale eyes; Reese, who had ridden with Bartram Haugh in Lincoln and elsewhere, leaving enough far more natural devastation behind them both to sow broadsheets emblazoned with their linked images from here back to Missouri.

  Reese, who Jenkins’s predecessor Sheriff Marten had failed to prevent his citizenry-flock from hanging off their single still-viable tree, only to see him come striding back up Main Street a night and a day later, trousers stiff with dirt and piss, to demand the guns Haugh had once gifted him with as a seal on their marriage of sorts—Satan-approved and God-decried, just like in Sodom-town of old—before shooting Reese straight through the heart, treacherously self-loving as always, and leaving him in the desert to die.

  That other Sheriff was gone from this world for sure, now; Jenkins had seen full proof of it, more than enough, before prying the man’s tin star free and taking on that charge. But as for Reese, driven hither and yon to do what Jenkins could only assume was God’s judgment on every other blooded creature in his way, while truly seeking retribution on one faithless companion only... though he certainly bore his fair share of a corpse’s qualities, Jenkins somewhat suspected that one could neither call Reese dead nor alive, at this very moment, and hope to be entirely correct in the verdict. He was a revenant, a harbinger, and where his steps took him blood followed, literally—down from the heavens first, then back up from the earth borne on a tide of hungry ghosts; a fatal crop seeded and brought to sudden bloom by Reese’s own execution.

  Whose blood was that you had on you, Reese? He remembered asking as they’d sat together in the jailhouse, recalling the sticky red coat Reese had worn on first entrance, before the doctor had cleaned him up enough for Marten to place his face. To which Reese replied, not even looking up, apparently too tired by far to bother being properly sociable: Oh, somebody from round here’s, I expect. Didn’t you recognize it?

  Because, as Reese went on to point out—you and yours seem good people, on the whole, from what I’ve seen. But there’s always a reason I run across places, and you have been unlucky, so might be that’s ‘cause there’s other people here, ones that’s just like me.

  I’d know, if there was, Jenkins had maintained, steadfast-foolish, not knowing any better. And Reese had simply laughed, torn mouth bleeding enough to paint his lips, before asking: Would you? How, exactly....

  (...excepting the Word of God?)

  For himself, Jenkins had listened mightily hard for that Word these many weeks since, both daily and nightly, catching not the barest syllable of a reply. Indeed, he almost began to feel that all his former prayers had been in vain, seeing how the only true miracles he’d ever witnessed were of Reese’s pitch-black variety.

  Yet still he came on, ever farther from the vales he’d known, plagued by heat and thirst, sore in both heart and belly; he stopped only to rest, to pick stones from his horse’s hooves and then walk a while, for what else was he to do? Someone had to warn them Reese was coming, giving them at least that slightest of chances in the face of impartial and awful justice, this sanguine Second Deluge. To protect the guilty from their guilt, the sinners from their sins, the weak from the consequence of their own weaknesses...

  ...thus doing, apparently, what the same absent Lord which Jenkins had been raised to praise no longer cared to.

  * * *

  The next “town” Jenkins reached, by nightfall, was so small it hadn’t found itself a name yet: No farms as such, no real homesteads, just a combined whistle-stop and trading post which specialized in whatever the last transaction’d left behind. The fellow manning it was of origins so indeterminate it almost seemed a puzzle set for unwary travelers by a vaguely amused and un-benign Nature. He was dressed in badly-cured hides which haloed him with stench and currently deep engaged in cleaning one of a brace of lizards for immediate jerkyfication.

  Jenkins introduced himself, while the counter-tender regarded him with disinterested distrust, slopping lizard-guts up over his shirt-cuffs. He allowed as how he was hoping to meet up with a specific local someone, if possible, a concept the man either didn’t appear to’ve ever heard of, or saw to little to approve in.

  “Willicks, that was the name they gave me, back at Shortfall. Said he’s your Marshal, or close enough.”

  “Y’huh.”

  “But you wouldn’t know him to look at, I’m takin’ it. Or where-all he might best be found at.”

  “N’huh.”

  “‘Cause I’ve been traveling a piece, sir, and when I told my story up Shortfall way, they said Fred Willicks was him I should make my case to, in these parts....”

  “Uh,” the man behind the counter put in, with some force, like he maybe meant to follow it up with more—but didn’t. Jenkins stood there a long moment, waiting for elaboration before sighing and touching his hat.

  Then he turned, only to be confronted by another man entirely, abruptly conjured from nothing: Cat-footed and far more elegant in his motions than his clothes’ drab cut would suggest, a luxuriant beard b
lurring his face, one hand on his gun-butt and the other shading his eyes, themselves hazel with just a light touch of rain-grey.

  “Poor Mahershalalhashbaz here’s only got half a tongue to work with, sir, thanks to bad Injuns, and that cut sideways,” the man—whose lapel, Jenkins now saw, bore a tin star as well—told him, gaze held steady. “Makes him tough to put questions to, let alone get any useful answers from. But you’re in luck nonetheless, turns out: Fred Willicks is my name, as it happens. Which makes you?”

  “Clarke Jenkins, Mister Willicks. I’m... well, I was from Esther, before. Not that there’s much left there now.”

  “Which wouldn’t make you much of a Sheriff at all, then, given you lack a town to watch over.”

  Jenkins shrugged, hands held carefully wide and empty, letting his full body allow as how when considered that-a-way, Willicks might have himself a point.

  “You want my star, I’ll gladly hand it over,” he said, “‘long as you do me the honor of listening to what I’ve got to say.”

  Willicks contemplated this. “Hell,” he said, at last, “it can wait ‘til I’ve heard out the latter to decide on the former, surely; my wife does like to entertain, not that she gets much cause for it. I’ll tell her to set one place more.”

  Jenkins felt himself start to relax, as Willicks said it—where he was from, men didn’t invite one another to guest if they planned on doing ‘em ill, after. But then again, One-Shot Reese had been a guest too, in a way, and the “good” people of Jenkins’s home had swung him from a tree; bad manners at best, even if not quite worthy of what’d followed, at least under non-Divine law....

  I do need food, though, he thought. And rest.

  So: “Lead on,” he told Willicks, allowing his lips to shape what was probably a singularly unconvincing smile, considering how long he’d fallen out of the habit. To which Willicks merely raised a brow, and did.

  * * *

  Where Willicks lived, it turned out, was up above the area’s sole wilting tree-line, in a cabin that was ramshackle without but snug-made within. His Missus was young, pink-pricked and crumpled like a late rose, with every part of her swelled up tight in anticipation of a second child; their first was a spry little boy of perhaps three years, changeable-eyed like Willicks yet cheerful-industrious as his dam, without even a hint of his father’s hidden depths. The meal was salt pork, beans and a slab of flat-bread, which Jenkins—who hadn’t eaten well in almost a week—set to with grateful pleasure.

  After, with the boy dispatched to bed, Jenkins leaned close to Willicks by the fire and told his tale, in quiet measured tones. Willicks listened without comment, up ‘til almost the end.

  “This ‘companion’ Reese spoke of,” he began, then. “This man Haugh....”

  “Bartram Haugh, yes, sir. Bewelcome’s chief architect.”

  “They were in it together, shoulder to shoulder, is what I heard.”

  “Maybe so,” Jenkins allowed. “I only have what Reese told me to go on, after all. And his testimony’s—suspect, at best.”

  Willicks sat back, sighing. “Well, any rate. You’ve been tracking Reese a while now: what is it you think he’s after, exactly?”

  “You’ve already named him, Mister Willicks,” Jenkins replied. “Was Haugh who set this off, far as I can figure—Reese bears the mark of proof right over his heart, or rather through it. He won’t stop ‘til he finds this false ‘friend’ of his, and visits the same judgment on Haugh for breaking their... pact as he has on every Haugh-less place he’s sojourned in thus far.”

  “Then if you really want to stop him, Sheriff, it’d seem you’re going in the wrong direction entirely. Following Reese won’t help, or even hinder—it’s Haugh you need.”

  Such a simple conclusion! The second Willicks let it drop, Jenkins saw his own errors at once laid bare, hideous in their utter inaccuracy. It was a slap to the face that set his ears ringing so, he barely heard what the man said next. “Sorry, again?”

  “Do you know where this-all happened—the original shooting?”

  “Not as such. But....” Rummaging in a waistcoat pocket, Jenkins withdrew the map he’d annotated, its modifications all shaky lead-pencil scribblings done mostly by firelight. “Here,” he said, pointing; “this came before Esther, by near a month, or so them that was left told me—found it on my initial sweep, when I was still bothering to go backwards, having no clear impression which way Reese might’ve left town by after the storm. Granted, there’s no assurance this was where he reached first, after whatever happened between ‘em... happened, but—”

  “—it’s a good enough place to start.” Willicks nodded, gaze immediately drawn to where his wife sat quiet, to all appearances deep-engaged with her knitting, though her own eyes skipped hither and yon whenever she seemed to think they weren’t looking. “How long a ride, you figure?”

  Jenkins made calculation. “Ten days’ hard slog, justabout. I’ve been moving slower myself, but that’s on account of fanning to cover the most ground and knowin’ what I tracked went on foot; go straight and we’ll get there quick as weather allows, if the horses don’t wear out.”

  Later still, as he sat dozing by the fire, heaped with rugs, Jenkins listened to Willicks cozying the Missus around. Given the few words she’d let drop at table, the two of ‘em had met by correspondence with her an old maid already (though she hardly looked it) and Willicks well aware that his choice of job made for slim feminine pickings, entering into alliance long-distance with little hope of much more than mutual compromise. Yet by what he’d witnessed, their gamble seemed to have paid off, in spades. He hated to part such a meeting of true minds, ‘specially with Willicks’s wife in her gravid state and no doctor handy. So he’d all but made his mind up to beg off my morning, only to have Missus W. herself shake her head no at him, adamant—hair high-piled yet sleek, brown as Willicks’s own, with only a thread here and there of silver.

  “I knew what Fred took on before I met him, Sheriff,” she said, packing both their bags with tucker. “Sacrifice is sweet to my Lord, so the Good Book says; if Jeptha gave his own daughter over for righteousness’s sake, who am I to retain my man, when similarly called upon?”

  “You’re a strong woman, Missus.”

  “It’s God’s strength only, Sheriff, as all true strength is. And I’ll look to see you later, both of you, when this charge of yours is fulfilled.”

  Jenkins tipped his hat to her prediction, sending up a brief sketch of a prayer himself—perhaps useful, perhaps not, depending on who might be listening—that the next few days wouldn’t disprove it.

  * * *

  What might’ve been Reese’s first foothold out the grave had already been mostly dead when Jenkins surveyed it, those months past. Now it was entirely empty, broken like eggshell, a slack rind of itself sucked dry and left open to the wind; dust and weeds had made the streets their home, sand blowing in through shattered shop-windows and doors left careless-open in its few surviving residents’ headlong scramble to vacate the premises, to eddy ‘cross the floors in an aimless devils’ dance.

  Jenkins slipped down and went to tether his horse, expecting Willicks to follow him. But the Marshal-by-self-election stayed obdurately mounted, hands slipping to hips as he swung his head, eyeing the place up and down. “Where-all’d they hang this One-Shot Reese of yours, exactly?” he inquired. “Don’t see any trees handy....”

  Jenkins wracked his brain. “Uh... from the saloon’s roof-tree, if I recall a’right. Had to haul him up with five volunteers pulling, then wait for him to go slack before the doc had the town smith jerk on his legs a few times, make sure his neck was good and broke.”

  “He must’ve complained though, surely, when he realized what they had in mind as regards his ending—raved some, or cursed, or both. Maybe tried to turn tail, to flee? For it’s a truly heartbreaking sight, when the gallows you’re being drawn to is made by amateurs.”

  “No,” Jenkins said, not thinking to wonder how Willicks
came by this particular intelligence. “I don’t think so; never heard Sartain Reese to’ve acted the coward, neither behind a gun or in front of one. They told me they found him stone, mostly, right up to the drop... same as in every other place.”

  He had his back to Willicks now, still looking up at the building in question, head cocked in memory. Which is why he couldn’t know exactly what might’ve accompanied the little sigh Willicks gave in answer, be it shrug or grimace, contempt or sorrow—an admixture of both, perhaps, those hazel eyes taking on a momentary shine. Yet he did hear the sound of iron clearing leather, if too late, half-turning on the hammer’s cock, so the bullet took him not neatly in the spine (as must’ve been Willicks’s intention) but messily in the side, punching through and through with such force it spun him to fall at his own mount’s hooves. The pain was ferocious, so bad he could barely breathe, let alone speak; he lay there looking up, and saw his traveling companion—

  (friend, my dearest)

  (never thought to see you here, sergeant)

  —slip from the saddle at last, graceful as sin, to stand there reloading, unhurriedly, with the sun behind him dimming his face to a merest silhouette: Pleasant, well-spoken Fred Willicks simply all at once gone, his wife’s joy and his young son’s pride extinguished, with nothing left behind but a ruthless, calculating liar, thief, and murderer—candle-snuffed as though he’d never existed, though Jenkins could only assume he had, at least up ‘til this son-of-a-bitch had played much the same trick on him.

  “That does sound like him,” the man who’d taken Willicks’s place at some point admitted, clicking onto the spent chamber to reload it, before spinning the replenished cylinder with a showman’s flair. “For Sartain’s a gentleman first and foremost, you see, immured through long tradition with the idea of striking honor’s pose under even the severest sort of duress—to stand fast and take your medicine, setting an example for the rest, no matter how fools around you rage and squall, or let their stupidity-aiding hatred present you with opportunities of escape. Not like me, sad to say.”