Shamus

This is meant to take place in the same world as the Tall Man story. It follows a different character, and I attempted to write it in a different style (based mostly on Faulkner, McCarthy, and pulp westerns).


A figure moves along a blood-red gorge, gazing at a river snaking like blue twine along the arroyo’s depths. He stares straight ahead, moving quickly under an endless, static colored sky. In such a wasteland the horizon is a visceral, explicit thing, a tourniquet tied off and held fast so that the earth may not bleed into the sky. But the wound was stemmed too late, and though the heavens remain dark the ground has long been stained all the way down to bedrock, witness to pogroms and murders and lynchings and the barbarity of those who rode in iniquity; all the fiendish marauders who moved under the color of law as soldiers and lawmen and peacemakers and those brigands and highwaymen acting in accordance with a more natural edict, the law of bones and those laid waste—all of them phantoms haunting the incarnadine landscape, pirates of all signs and none.

The figure refers to himself as Shamus, and he is the judge of a lawless land, a role he views through squinting, tobacco eyes. He brings with him a more appropriate justice, hammered out of the land’s feral propensity for the incompatible and irreconcilable, the absurd spattering of this-and-that—he brings the only law left, amoral and all encompassing, an accretion of smile and scream and everything in between. He is one of the numerous figures in this time who has assumed a role, and this apotheosis, this becoming of¸ has filled him with power and meaning. And so it is with all such avatars; when no holy warriors remain and good works dwindle replacements must be molded from the mud.

Periodically his right hand fingers a snakeskin pouch hanging from his side, plump with game pieces of ivory and bone. He makes every decision like a man whose cards are high and wild, and it is fitting that he worships gods of dice and chance. His left arm is obscured by the sleeve of a trench coat, but if unadorned one would gaze with wonder at the steel pistons of his bones, at the silver filaments coiling like tendons, at the clockwork gears whirling and the motors humming, eager to respond.

In the distance sprawl vermiculate mountains, their crags and promontories bleached with snow as if some ancient giant had spilt candlewax or semen from the sky. Shamus moves towards these distant peaks, passing the blooms of yuccas and wiry creosote and the mesquites digging deep for water and tufts of sagebrush, occasionally being harassed by hoards of coyotes and wild dogs, who sniff curiously at the outline of this itinerate wanderer, as if he might signify a welcome respite from the region’s long slumber.

He stumbles on a jagged piece of scoria, then holds it up for inspection. The rock is covered with small holes made from escaping gas, and it seems infested, hollowed from within by parasitic worms. After a moment he tosses it aside, and he carries on.

He talks with himself, pushing his voice into the emptiness. It has been fifteen years and three months since he knew a home, and he is well used to solitude and the silence it brings.

“You should not be so quick to throw such things away.”

He spits, and the arcing glob narrowly misses his calfskin boots, one of which shows a wound sown close with crossing skeins of thread.

“Just some damned rock,” he says.

“No rock is just a rock.”

He marches onwards.

***

In the distance rise spires of bone: men, woman, children, animals of all kinds; all who once came journeying, perhaps bundled in caravans and wagons, and all dying here, leaving no headstones to record their struggles—a bitter farewell, with no mourners to shed tears and no threnodies wailed. Bone skylines growing like teeth out of the ossifying land.

A calcified femur cracks underneath his feet, and staring at the ground he sees a skull, caved in near the left temple, through which a single flower has grown, peeking outwards from the jaw like a deformed tongue. He can almost see these doomed wanderers journeying still, their after-images flickering in the heat like old newsreel.

Wind blows like a fist, and his duster is kicked backwards. A brazen star gleams on his lapel, bearing words too abraded to be legible.

His face is hard as sculpture, smooth like unearthed marble, and though outlandish shapes cross the sky he feels no fear. He is a man who walks the between, caring nothing for the antipodean obscurities of firmament and soil. Two holstered pistols swing from a leather belt studded with brass, one above his hip and one below. A bandoleer angles across his chest, where another pair of revolvers wait, their barrels crossing. He carries additional arms: a repeating rifle slung across his back, three derringers, one in each boot and the third at his wrist, a garrote wire hidden in the brim of his hat, and knives too numerous to name.

His boots stamp towards the ever nascent horizon, and he dreams of the past: daylight; veiled beauty; church bells and dancing; a white and virginal moon; a blush as her slip slides to the floor; a honeyed voice, not wanting him to see her undress; small breasts that almost disappear when her back touches mattress; her teeth biting her bottom lip; a single tear; a rose petal stain on satin; a nighttime kiss; perfect hair haloed outwards on a pillow.

Night comes with jeweled teeth that drag his memories to darkness: a form crumpled in the corner; the hearth reflected in her sightless eyes; a wound torn across her bulging stomach; her scalped hair hanging from a saddle like a fresh pelt; a three month chase; sleeping on horseback; a confrontation in a dead end canyon; an orgasmic scream as his blade opens the villain's throat. The scream echoes still, hung at the crossroads of paean and lament.

And so it goes, he has continued his mission, never tiring, never failing, and death never came easily to anyone he judged guilty, priest and murderer alike.

In the early morning thunderclaps of gunshot ring forth, the muzzles flaring in the amniotic darkness like sparks spewed forth during creation’s forging. Based on volume and resonance he estimates the shot’s origin to be no more than a mile ahead. Sounds die quickly here. Drawing a weapon from his waist and placing his thumb on the hammer, he cocks the gun like a man taking the time.

Approaching, he hears the trampling of horses heading away, and the only sound left is the wailing of a voice, soft and high pitched like a child’s. The smell of copper reaches his nose, filling his mouth, and he spits, knowing what awaits him—more of the same, a sordid scene played out again and again. In such moments he would gouge his fingers into the sky and tear down the foundation of heaven itself.

He passes an overturned stagecoach, its lifeless contents spilling out onto the baked earth. An abatis of rusted metal marks the traveler’s failed defense; they must have seen death coming and made an attempt to stand it off. They didn’t of course, no one does. The only barriers worth a damn in this parched land are those of metal sheen and gunpowder scent. He follows the gasps and cries to a cluster of boulders, besides which lies a young boy. The child is twitching in a pool of blood, gutshot with cloudy eyes and straw colored hair. “I think I’ve been shot,” he says, but shakes his head as if he doesn’t believe it.

Shamus looks at the life wasting away, and he can find no reason behind it, no puzzle made complete by this missing piece, nothing but an ashen face, no sound but breath devolving into death rattle, just a single sullied moment with no antecedent and no hereafter, leaving no egress save one. “It’s okay,” he whispers, stroking the boy’s cheek, “This doesn’t look so bad, you’ll be fixed right up.” The boy attempts a smile, but it won’t come, and he coughs, pink froth foaming from his mouth. “Shh now, it’s okay it’s okay,” says Shamus, his left hand holding a coin and distracting the boy with sleight-of-hand while his right produces a knife as if from nowhere. He knows of only one type of mercy, and this he gives freely, selflessly even, the knife sliding into the boy’s thigh and severing the femoral artery, too sharp to be felt. It’s over within seconds, the boy bleeding out too fast to grasp his imminent leaving, spilling a scarlet torrent that bitterly mocks the legend of a flood that once washed these lands clean.