Merkabah Rider: High Planes Drifter Read online

  The storm assailed him with another gust, pleading with him to turn aside from his course. He shrugged it off as he would an entreating woman clinging to his greatcoat.

  There was killing to be done.

  * * * *

  “Who is Medgar Tooms?” The Rider asked. He felt cold suddenly, although it was warm enough in the little cabin, and fever sweat trickled down between his shoulders.

  “I heard you before I saw you,” the old man smiled faintly. “All them doodads you got on. The clinkin’. I thought it was him. Medgar Tooms,” said the old man, wistful, as he ladled more broth.

  He looked up at the ceiling then, and closed his eyes.

  “And they went into the country of the Gadarenes,” the old man recited. “And when He came up out of the ship, immediately there met Him out of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit.”

  The Rider put his elbows on the rickety table. He ran the back of his hand across his sweating forehead. He was not overly familiar with the Christian Gospel, though he had read it.

  Still the old man intoned, blind in the blissful trance of recall, or so it seemed to The Rider, for he sighed pleasantly between passages;

  “And no man could bind him, no, not with chains. Because that, he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken into pieces.”

  The old man looked over at him from the stove.

  “You’re an Israelite, aren’t you, son?”

  The Rider nodded slowly.

  “Then you’re not saved?”

  The Rider’s eyes fluttered, and his forehead began to blossom with sweat. He tried to answer, but forgot the question. Something slurred and unintelligible stumbled from his dry lips, like the yammering of an excessive imbiber.

  The old man looked at the Hebrew at his table. The stranger was flushed with the fever, and his slight shoulders shivered beneath the blanket. His eyes fell to the leather belt curled like a black serpent in repose on his table. Here was a man of violence, with a gun and with the mark of the gun upon his pale flesh.

  ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ said the Lord’s Holy Law, and the old man said a low ‘amen’ to that. The Bible spoke of those who lived by the sword dying in a similar manner, and the old man nodded a solemn ‘hallelujah’ to that, too.

  Seized with the impulse, he got down on his old knees, though they cracked like busting twigs, and clasped his twisted hands fiercely together, as if to generate the power of his prayer between his two palms until he could no longer stop it from soaring up to Heaven. It pained him, but he squeezed.

  “But Lord,” said the old man, “when Joshua led the Israelites into Jericho, surely there was slaughter, and when Samson confronted the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass at Ramath-lehi, it’s written that he slew a thousand men.

  “Lord, now I can tell from the look of this fella he’s a killer. I knowed it the minute I seen him leadin’ that donkey through the snow. But You led him to me for a reason, Lord. Now I believe, and You can go ahead and give me a sign if my thinkin’ be otherwise, I believe that reason is to stop Medgar Tooms and cleanse me of the sin I have born these many long years.”

  He stopped in his prayer and opened his eyes and listened for a while, but there was no sound save the popping of the wood in the stove, the howl of the wind, and the raspy breathing of the stranger, whose head lay on the table.

  The old man closed his eyes and continued.

  “Now, I don’t know if the way is to be by the sword or by the Good Book, but You know in Your heavenly wisdom that I ain’t hardly a keen enough sword to be wielded in Your Blessed Hand. If this man a’settin’ here, this killer Jew out of the wilderness, if he be the instrument You have prepared to set against Medgar Tooms in the comin’ conflict, then Good Lord, give me stay to save this man’s life. I’ve done all in my power, but by the look of this fella, it ain’t enough. The fever is upon him. I need Your touch, Blessed Jesus.”

  With that, he unclasped his hands and raised them high to the ceiling.

  “I need Your heavenly touch, praise Jesus, to heal this man,” the old man said loudly, making the Hebrew jump and blink his eyes. “Hear my prayer, O Lord. Give ear to my supplications: in Thy faithfulness answer me, and in Thy righteousness. Enter not into judgment with Thy servant: for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified.”

  His eyes still clenched tight, his arms still outstretched, he rose unsteadily, moving along the edge of the table with one hip for guidance, and came to stand over the stranger.

  The wind howled outside, but the old man was delirious. He had felt the Holy Ghost enter his fingertips, like lightning on an outstretched rod, and felt the tingling run down his arms. His hands began to shake. It was the old Power come upon him from high, as it had when he was but a boy skipping down the aisle of the little clapboard mountain church to the delight of his mother and the other parishioners, back when he was worthy of it.

  It made him feel like that bright eyed boy again, dancing in God’s light, loving Him, and wanting to do His will. He had not felt the Power since that night in Gadara when he had failed God and his neighbors so utterly. To him, it meant that God was once again looking his way, and what he suspected about the Hebrew was right; he was here to stop Medgar Tooms.

  “I stretch forth my hands.” He allowed himself a happy grin then, and ejaculated, “Praise Him! My soul thirsteth for Thee, as a thirsty land.”

  Sweat began to bead on his forehead, and his arms shook wildly, barely under control. He held them over the stranger, and he laughed once, like he was trying to hold a squirming, greased pig. He spoke quickly and excitedly now, barely able to contain himself.

  “Oh Glory! Glory! Hear me speedily, O Lord: my spirit...Oh Glory! Praise Jes-us! Hide not Thy face from me, lest I be like unto them that go down into the pit. Cause me to hear Thy loving kindness; for in Thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk, for I lift up my soul to thee.”

  He began to slowly force his madly trembling arms down toward the stranger, who shook feverishly, oblivious to what was happening.

  Then his hands fell on the stranger’s sweat plastered head, and the sickly man sat suddenly bolt upright, eyes wide and mouth agape.

  In that stretch of a moment, the old man, who was the Right Reverend Japheth Tubal Lessmoor, was assailed with visions. First he perceived a young Jewish boy with a thirst for knowledge like that of a man in the wasteland, and he felt the boy’s excitement at being selected by a body of bearded elders for instruction in mysteries most never perceived the existence of. He saw a kindly older man in the trappings of a Hebrew, offering the boy insight that even that venerable body of instructors didn’t, or wouldn’t, offer. This man was a mentor, a second father. A name, no, not a name; a title. Adon. And such things he showed the boy!

  The eye of Japheth’s mind was momentarily blinded by the sight of flocks of seraphim flitting busily through glorious, heavenly chambers. The ears of his soul filled with a music so beauteous and incomparable that his eyes flooded with tears.

  He saw and heard and felt what years of faith had taught his heart to only imagine, and he knew his years of devotion to the Lord were in that instant repaid. He saw the wheels of Ezekiel’s chariot, its four bronze bearers impossible to look upon. Though as he saw this, a great white hand rose up, barring the vision. It was the span of a continent from its thumb to little finger, and its meaning was plain.

  Then he was assailed by terrible sights, which he knew were of Hell. Hell, and perhaps something else. Dreadful visions of a ferocious twelve-winged serpent, the bunching, luminous black coils of incomprehensible, gargantuan entities suspended like terrible misshapen embryos in a cold womb of starless night. The mocking laughter of a blood-soaked bull god draped in pagan ornaments, grinding mewling babes between its bloody jaws. He saw vast armies whose ranks were the damned, murderous dead, and felt the burning of fetid breath and heard the fearful beating of giant wing
s. As much elation as had filled him at the sight of Heaven, now gave way to such dread, far more than even Medgar Tooms had ever inspired.

  He saw too the dark face of the boy’s (no, not a boy, a man now) mentor, Adon, twisted like a pine knot into a visage of evil, saw the bones of men splintered and burned and bearing the marks of teeth, and knew them to be the remains of the bearded old teachers. He felt betrayal, and an overwhelming guilt, a need to correct this Adon’s mistakes, and to punish him.

  As The Rider felt the fever drawn from his throbbing temples through the bony fingers of the old man, he saw the dark figure, Tooms.

  Tooms, with his long musket and Confederate coat, an escort of snuffling hogs tromping at his back. As he had found the monks of the mission, he now saw smoldering cabins and bullet riddled farmers in a similar state all across the land. He saw men lying dead in their fields under shining black coats of pecking ravens, women draped over hitching posts, their backs broken in two. He saw the pale, upturned faces of children stuffed into rain barrels brimming with blood, and bloated livestock kicking their last. He saw the spires of Christian churches tremble amid nests of shooting flames, before toppling.

  Always the dead were half-eaten; stomachs torn open and guts pulled across the prairie by the snuffling swine. He saw black smoke curling across the red sky and heard the screams and pleading cries of women, and another sound, like the beating of dozens of fists on a door. He felt fear. Overwhelming, crippling. And then…guilt as monumental as the terror.

  He fell back to unconsciousness.

  * * * *

  Medgar Tooms stared into the fire that curled out from beneath the door of the cabin. He listened to the woman screaming within. He leaned on his big Whitworth and narrowed his eyes as the dervish form exploded out into the snow, twisting and turning and shrieking; dancing strangely in her bright ball gown of flame.

  She was blind, her eyes boiled like eggs in her sockets, so she didn’t see the old wagon wheel half buried in the dirty snow. She stumbled over it, and though she rolled over a few times, she did not rise again. She wailed a little, till either the smoke of her own burning flesh choked her voice, or the searing heat sealed her throat forever. She twitched, and then was still. Smoke curled off her body, and the oil-fed flame continued to dance across her cotton dress. Her face and arms blackened, and the only other sound was the popping of the fire consuming her.

  A beam fell in the cabin with a crash, sending up a shimmer of glowing cinders briefly into the black smoke like a passel of damned souls scrambling up the shaft of Hell in a doomed bid for Heaven. They died quickly in the cold night, far short of refuge.

  The hogs squealed appreciatively around him. A few of the younger ones scurried to the burning body and jumped back at the heat, crying out like children meeting a hot stove for the first time. The older, wiser ones stayed at his side and waited patiently, with black, glowering eyes that reflected back the conflagration. These had been with Tooms from the start, and they knew what the flames meant. Cooked meat was a delicacy as yet unknown to the younger ones.

  The cold morning air did not bother Tooms, though not because of the warmth that left the blazing cabin in sheets. Like the cold, he didn’t feel the heat either. He felt nothing. Perhaps it was his own lack of feeling that made it so essential for him to force feeling onto others, to see children cry or the faces of men shriveled in pain or fear.

  A federale sergeant had blasted him with a short barreled shotgun once, and though he had stumbled back a bit, he hadn’t felt a thing. Nothing but a dull force like someone had pitched a bale of hay, or a fat down pillow at him.

  The sergeant had screamed long for that. He had begged for God, but no angel came to help him, so he had died cursing Him instead. That had pleased the Things inside Tooms immensely.

  Back when he had first made the acquaintance of the Things, he had felt wrath and sorrow. But it seemed like a long time ago. Now these things were just a dull ache; an old man’s creaky joint in a rainstorm or the imagined contraction of a phantom limb.

  When he had started, the faces of his wife and child had been so painfully clear in his mind. Now he could not call to mind their names. He had quite forgotten whether he’d had a son or a daughter.

  It seemed to him, as he leaned on his rifle, watching the young hogs slaver at the smoldering body, that he had been wronged once. He had been insulted or hurt somehow and had sought retribution. The Things had come to him to help him to get satisfaction.

  He called them Things for want of a better word. They hadn’t exactly had any kind of appearance he remembered. They weren’t some pack of horned, hoofed Things clambering from a fiery pit with flicking tongues and arrow-head tails and big bat wings. No, the Things hadn’t come to him that way. They hadn’t come as serpents spiraling up his legs, or a mysterious man in black beckoning from a crossroads like in the Hoodoo stories the mammies used to tell in the hot afternoons of his Savannah boyhood.

  It had been a mild summer day, with the grasshoppers gliding from blade to blade and the sun bleaching the tall grass, shimmering emerald through the leaves on the tree boughs. The Things had just been there in the corner of the room, hunched up in a cold spot on the floor. Unseen, but undeniable.

  He remembered the galaxies of dust swirling in the sunlight that poured through the dim, empty house, just as dreamy and blissful as the twittering of the finches nesting in the porch eaves. He remembered the gentle breeze stirring the leaves on the graves of his family, though his own mind had been as dark and tempestuous as a Gulfstream gale. He had been sitting in the rocking chair where he once held a baby but now held a loaded gun and an empty whiskey bottle.

  He had been afraid at first. It had scared him mightily to know he could have such Things in his house, way out in the middle of the sun-blessed meadow with the light of day streaming in the windows.

  At first.

  But that passed when the Things had shown him what they had to offer. The whole town of Gadara in flames. All those damned people dead in the streets, hogs glutting themselves on the bodies.

  That had pleased Medgar Tooms; that thought the Things pushed into his head. Because Gadara was to blame. He didn’t know why or what for anymore, but all of them were to blame. So he had accepted the Things. He was willing to do whatever they wanted as long as they could make Gadara suffer, as he suffered. However he had suffered.

  So the Things had made good on their word. In exchange, they had given him errands. Tasks. Years of work. He couldn’t recall exactly how much.

  They had taken him all over, these errands. He had killed many people, hunted down many a cowering priest and preacher. When he would get a shakiness, or think of putting a gun barrel in his mouth, the Things knew how to strengthen his resolve.

  They reminded him of the preacher, Lessmoor. One last cowering slave of a mean-hearted God that had seen fit to visit sorrow and pain on his household alone among all that goddamned town; a selfish old coward who had locked out his precious congregation and listened to their screams as Tooms had slaughtered them to the last bawling infant on the very steps of his goddamned church.

  In the Territories and in Mexico, they had called him El Hombre con los Cerdos Malos.

  At night the mestizos prayed to their house gods that he would not visit them, and the Comanche and the Apache and the Yaqui all had learned to turn aside when they struck his trail. He had walked the Llano at night under the moon, and where there was not already death on that barren plain, he had brought it. He had killed lonely travelers and weary camps of nighthawks, stampeding their herds. He had butchered buffalo hunters and left them like they had the buffalo, naked of skin and tongue, feasts for flies and varmints. He had burned out villages of Indians, sending droves of them running for their mountain strongholds. Where he crossed the stage lanes, the coaches never reached their destinations.

  A few times the law, whether it had been rangers, federales, troopers, or marshals, had tried to catch him. Some had even su
cceeded. But the broken chains around his wrists and the knee high stacks of old leg irons clanking on his legs attested to the outcome of his brief stays in little calabooses and one-room jails across the country. He became a rumor to be ignored, a telegraph best left unanswered.

  In Colorado he had burned out a Chinese mining camp. He had tied the coolies together by their pigtails and put their eyes out with bullets. At such times, he had watched them stumble about and fall over each other, and felt the Things chortling like giddy children. He himself felt nothing at all. In Colorado he had forgotten his wife’s name, and then in Sonora he had forgotten whether it was a son or a daughter he’d once had.

  It had gotten to where he couldn’t figure which part of him was the Things and which part of him was, or had once been, Medgar Tooms. He didn’t know any more if he did what he did because of the Things or because he wanted to. He didn’t care. The world became Gadara, and every holy man was Lessmoor. He killed them all, over and over again.

  Now, because of the Things, he could no more feel regret or love or even the wrath that had brought him to his state, any more than he could feel the sting of the bullets or knives or arrows or fire. They were all the same as the sun, or the cold, or the dancing of a tick on the back of his neck. He could only recall the dull memory of the hate that had called the Things to him. That, and the need to see blood and hear the screams of Gadara.

  One of the young hogs persistently poked his snout at the smoldering corpse and jumped back at the heat.