Derecho- Part Three- Silverheels
I should have steered clear-
I should have run away.
I thought of my journal. I thought of the last time I checked my coordinates, my place in the world- Why here? Why now?
Why Colorado?
That’s when I realized, I’d been careless since Kansas. Ever since the gas station. Something about the girl I’d killed-
I looked down at Coyote. “Speak,” I said, “say something. You couldn’t shut up in the desert.”
Saul looked at me like I’d lost my mind.
I turned to the boy, “So, you think this ‘veiled woman’, this Fancy Lady, did this?” He shook his head. “Doesn’t make sense. There’s no proof-
“All the proof I need is up here,” he says, voice rising, tapping the side of his head. “I’ve seen things, mister.”
“So, you keep saying.”
Saul fell silent; only then did I realize the piano had too.
The saloon had fallen into darkness.
In the distance, the forlorn wail of a wolf caused Coyote to lift her head. She wanted to howl.
I pushed her nose down- Coyote snapped, teeth just missing my hand.
“Thought you said she wouldn’t bite,” Saul said, eyes wide.
“Guess I was wrong,” I replied.
****
I scanned the rooftops, all around. Seeing no one, I motioned for the boy to stay.
Saul refused.
“Then if you can’t stay, at least be like the wind,” I said.
He gave me a grubby thumbs up.
Saul mentioned the main floor was mainly tavern and saloon, with a few rooms in the back. I asked him about the Fancy Lady. He said upstairs. I asked him ‘why upstairs?’
“Cause the Boss is always upstairs,” he told me.
“You read too many books,” I said, ‘watch too many picture shows.” He looked at me dumbly. As before, there hadn’t been any books or television his entire lifetime.
I needed to get out more.
The closer I drew to the saloon, the worse the smell got. I stopped long enough to wrap a handkerchief around my nose and mouth.
To Saul, the smell didn’t seem to matter.
Continuing, the sky began to strobe as lightning flared. A storm was brewing.
Saul was right, I could taste it, there was a storm on the way- electric in the air.
I stopped before the entryway, eyes scanning the interior- a few familiar shapes; a handful of tables surrounded by chairs. The space stank of stale cigarettes, cheap whisky, and beer.
I eased in. The room immediately opened, wider than it was deep.
Still, it felt claustrophobically small.
The boy went to move past me. I placed a hand against his chest. “Easy,” I said, “We need to be cautious.”
Saul looked up at me with enormous eyes. “But I’m being careful,” he said.
I shook my head. “You play with lightning, boy.”
“Mom used to say I could catch lightning,” came the reply.
Layers of dust and debris coated everything. Piles of trash, yellowed newspapers, all had been blown into corners, wrapped around chair legs, or lay scattered across tables. What the dust and trash missed; cobwebs claimed.
Across the room from us, ran the bar, its dark chocolate surface worn smooth by countless arms. Behind it, an enormous mirror that spanned the length of the bar, at last, sixty feet in length. It’s surface cloudy and marred by time. Stacked in front of the mirror stood bottles of every conceivable design. There were square bottles, round bottles, tall bottles, squat bottles. Most were still full, ambers, darks, and clears.
Suspended from the ceiling, what looked to be enormous wagon wheels heavy with glass jars, each jar containing what appeared to be lights.
On the far right, tucked up next to an enormous fireplace, stood a piano, its fall board up, keys exposed. The piano’s bench lay on its side.
So, how does one explain the recent light and sound we’d both just seen and heard?
No clue.
A slight tug on my jeans. Saul’s pointing at the piano, what’s been painted on the side, an ochre star, the size of a handprint.
They are here!
Outside, the sounds of the approaching storm continue to grow, wind blowing, breezes tugging. The doors of the saloon creak back and forth, adding to the cacophony. Off to my right, pieces of paper began to play ring-around-the-posy, chasing each other fitfully-
I keep my pistol up.
Like many places as of late, I feel like I’ve been here before, sometime in the distant past- maybe in the future. I’m not sure.
My mind drifts back to the gas station, the ruins in Arizona- So many paths before me, so much history behind.
There is a line from a series of books I read years ago while crossing the Mississippi. The author, one Caitlin Kiernan, had titled it, Alabaster. It was about an albino angel trapped in a dystopian nightmare:
This is the ravenous stone face that Dancy’s dreamt of so many times, the same yawning, toothless mouth and…vacant, hollow eyes. Face of the thing that killed her mother…face of the smiling man from the Greyhound bus and the auburn-haired woman in Waycross with stubby, writhing tentacles where her breasts should have been, the pretty boy in Savannah who showed her a corked amber bottle that held three thousand ways to suffer, three thousand ways to hurt, before she killed him. All of them dead because that’s what the angel said…because this is where the angel said she had to go.
That last passage struck me, as sure as a physical punch- because this is where the angel said she had to go!
Were angels directing me?
My mind turned back along distant lines. I remembered the coal mines in Pennsylvania, the darkness that had called after me. I remembered the ‘witches’ of Appalachia- and the trials that followed.
I remembered the horrors of the Smokey Mountains… I stopped, shook my head. The last thing I needed was to be distracted. The past was full of traps, I needed to remember that.
This wasn’t the past.
Overhead, the entire length of the mirror, ran a second-story railing. A wide set of stairs wound from the floor to meet it, the baluster at its base, a Roman pillar topped by a Cherub taking flight.
The Cherub’s wings had been clipped.
“Perhaps you should stay here,” I said, grabbing the boy.
Saul shook away my hand. “Hey, mister,” he said.
I looked down.
“Your dog’s gone.”
My what? He was right, Coyote was gone. One minute there, the next gone.
“Don’t look at me,” Saul said, guessing my unasked question. “I didn’t see anything.”
For a moment I stood there- heaving a sigh, no use crying over spilled milk, I began taking the stairs two at a time.
I stopped at the top.
The smell up here was worse than it was downstairs.
Saul sidled up next to me. I could feel the boy trembling.
Ahead of us ran a walkway, railing on one side, doors on the other. Halfway down, I could see another hallway, splitting off and cutting back towards the depths of the saloon. Gas lamps gripped in metal brackets, hung on the walls.
I tried the first door on the left, gently wiggling the knob- nothing. The next three were the same.
Arriving at the cutback hallway, I drew up short and peeked around the corner- darkness. An inky blackness that seemed to cling to everything.
At the end of the hall, I thought I could see light.
Window perhaps?
I could hear the kid’s heart beating- maybe it was mine.
I took a moment to check lex, pulled the trigger back.
A sudden whickering of light lit the hall before us, caused me to start, and Saul cry out. An enormous boom followed the light. Skylights lined the hallway, beveled glass inserts in thick wooden frames.
Large splats of rain began peppering overhead.
A second tug at my sleeve. “I think I’ll head back,” Saul whispered.
“You do that,” I replied. “Holler if you see anything.”
He nodded and moved out. It would be the last time I would see him alive.
He nodded and moved out. It would be the last time I would see him alive.
Part Four following…
