Webb's Weird Wild West Page 7

  In the twilight Mike cries out to the Lord, saying, “Lord, let me die!”

  “I HAVE A TREMENDOUS SENSE OF DEJA-VU ABOUT THIS”

  “Lord, why have you taken the shadow of the condo? Lord, why have you taken the food of the dumpster?

  “WHY DO YOU MOURN THE CONDO? THOU NEITHER INVESTED IN THE REAL ESTATE NOR WORKED ON ITS CONSTRUCTION”

  “Lord, why hast Thou abandoned me?”

  “I HAVE NOT. BEHOLD”

  And Mike’s mind is filled with visions of the great media coverage of the Repent! Movement.

  “But my flesh has been broken.”

  “THEN I SHALL GIVE YOU NEW FLESH. CHOSE THAT YOU WOULD BE MADE OF.”

  Mike looks around. He finds a sliver of mirror from the ceiling of the wrecked condo.

  “Of this.”

  “SO BE IT”

  And Mike is given mirror-flesh that neither hungers nor thirsts nor feels pain. He walks back to his hotel and changes into his friar’s robes. He walks to a teevee station and arranges for a press conference.

  Everyone who looks at Mike sees their own face. Because of this Sign a press conference is soon arranged. The Mirror Monk will speak at Dealey Plaza near the Eternal Flame.

  The next day the Mirror Monk walks to the bank of microphones. He says, “My brothers and sisters....”

  A sniper’s bullet strikes. Mike shatters into a thousand fragments.

  Two days later a freak meteor hits downtown Dallas. The Seven Years of Bad Luck begins.

  A RUNE FOR REBIRTH

  Paul O’Donnel’s one-man vendetta against certain Houston businessmen ended less than a month ago with his bloody death. His metamorphosis from a mild-mannered middle manager into an urban warrior seems to be a certain reversion to type. His grand-uncle John O’Donnel likewise had developed a homicidal mania in middle age under the influence of certain poetry or at least associating with certain artistic and scholarly groups. Conspiracy sites and paranoia-driven blogs have made much of the nature of his death and spread rumors about a statement found in his hotel room along with a priceless collection of weird literature from the 1930s. O’Donnel’s surviving son and daughter have allowed us to post his final statement here as well as links to the Adventures In Crime and Space bookstore, where the O’Donnel collection is for sale in the hopes of ending undue speculation about the “O’Donnel curse.”

  The Statement of Paul O’Donnel

  It began with the hope of money.

  When my father died, there was a very small estate. His house, his car and a few thousand in CDs. I hadn’t expected much. Frankly I had always done better than Dad at money. He had died suddenly, and I felt he had not taken care of everything that he meant to do. When I went to clean out the attic of Dad’s home I found the boxed magazines, Weird Tales, Startling Stories, Amazing Tales, Strange Tales, Fantasy Fiction Magazine, Tales of Wonder. All of these and titles yet more obscure had been the property of my father’s uncle John O’Donnel. Great Uncle John was never talked about because he was a murderer. He had killed a man named Ketrick, because he said the guy was a snake.

  Dad had mentioned Uncle John to me exactly twice. When I was twenty-one he told me that John had gone crazy in the summer of 1932. When I got my MBA he told me that “Crazy John” had left something for me that would be mine when he passed away. Dad wouldn’t say what it was, and hinted that he might even destroy it. I guess these magazines were it. I never told my kids about granduncle John, of course the divorce took them away from me when they were eight and ten. I didn’t know anything about pulp magazines—this could have been worth a fortune or be fodder for the recycling truck. I didn’t know Jack Shit about magazines, but like all Americans I have the fantasy of finding that cache in the closet, that bundle in the basement that some nut with more than brains will make one a millionaire. I grabbed a few boxes at random and went to Austin’s best SF bookstore, Adventures in Crime and Space.

  “Since the coming of eBay used magazines are not as lucrative as they once were, but there are always collectors of the weird pulps especially Weird Tales. Three of the writers in particular draw top dollar: H.P. Lovecraft, our fellow Texan, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. Your granduncle left you a nice chunk of change. Notice how well these have been cared for—the covers are still bright, the inside paper is white and staples are tight. What’s this?”

  This was a bundle of five magazines called The Cloven Hoof. Robert Clemants edited this small poetry magazine. It was illustrated by Austin Osman Spare and Hannes Bok

  The book dealer was clearly impressed. “You have all five of them. There’s a story about the fifth issue. It was destroyed or bought out of circulation or something. Can you give me a day or two to track down the story? The set may be very valuable.”

  Of course I was willing to give him a day or two. It was the great American dream, inheriting money from someone you don’t even know. It was better than the lottery. It might be my kids college fund. I drove to my small north Austin home full of warm sugar plums of cash...

  I took my cases of magazines inside. I carefully looked though the yellowing pages of Weird Tales savoring the acid tang of the old paper. I checked out some stories by the bog three and found them full of gibberish like Cthulhu, Yog Sothoth, Tsathoggua, Gol-goroth, and the like. I frankly couldn’t see the attraction. Then I stared at The Cloven Hoof No.5. It was smaller than the pulps, and had a glossy black and white cover. It clearly didn’t belong with low-brow thrillers. I resolved not to open it. After all it was going to bring me big bucks. Besides it proclaimed itself a poetry magazine and I don’t care for poetry.

  My parents had always forbidden fantasy to me as I grew up. Such things they said were bad for the brain. I had had no Tolkien, no C. S. Lewis, played no Dungeons and Dragons, had certain video games taken from my possession. As I stared at the little magazine, with its subtitle of “A Journal of Fantastic Poetry.” I wondered why my parents had erected such a barrier against the imagination. I wondered if it had anything to do with Uncle John. Had his brain simply rotted reading all this stuff and made him think Ketrick was a snake?

  I knew it was a silly impulse, but I really wanted to read the magazine. I’ve never felt that way about a book before or since. I could actually feel an itch in my fingers to feel the paper under them. My eyes ached to see the ink. I found that I was holding my breath as I stared at the little magazine.

  I opened it.

  On page 24 was a fourteen line poem—if I remember my High School English they’re called sonnets—by Granduncle John. It was called “A Rune for Rebirth.” As I read the words I had the distinct impression of typing them on an old manual typewriter, a device I have never used. I had a hard time focusing on the meaning of the poem, but I had never done well in Language Arts.

  My urge to read the magazine left as quickly as it had come. I changed into my pajamas and went to bed.

  I found myself in a dream forest near twilight. Water dripped from mistletoe and moss, and mud squelched beneath my bare feet. I wore skins and had many scars. My body hurt because I was an old man of three decades. I carried a bow, a fairly crude affair, and a quarrel with half a dozen flint tipped arrows. My name was Aryara. I wasn’t hunting for beasts.

  I wasn’t hunting for men. Not for the Picts or the Wolf People or the River People.

  I was hunting for something like men. Something that had no right to look so human. Something that should not walk on two legs, but had gained the power to do so through black sorcery. I was hunting for the Serpent People. They came forth by night. The cloak of darkness hid some of their deformity and kept them from being slain on sight. They had two goals. They killed our men and they impregnated our women. They knew their bloodline belonged to another age, an age without animals that grew fur. They wanted to hide in our blood—hide beneath the red tide until the time was right to rise again. We were engaged in a long fight with them. The powers of light had called us into being to kill them off. We had hunte
d them out of the desert, the cold hills, and the great forest and now on the island where we erected great stones. They were almost gone, almost driven into the earth. But they were crafty. They knew magic. They had invented magic. And when human went to learn magic they were tainted.

  I knew I would find some of them to slay this night. I had seen their serpent signs painted on stones and tree bark. The little people were preparing for a ceremony, a blood feast to the Moon. They would gather in a low place, a deep valley or around a well. There they would let blood fall deep into the earth. Then when the Moon vanished in fourteen days they would raid our villages trying to plant their seed. Only one child is enough for he may father ten and they one hundred and across time there could be more than we could count.

  I smelled fire. The old men say the Serpent People stole fire from us when we came out of the cold desert. They stole fire and music. But we stole their secret, we learned how to be reborn.

  I heard their drums and horns. They would be sacrificing. There. Ahead and to my left, the darkness grew darker still. The Children of the Night could call the darkness around them. I knew in the daytime a small valley law there. I notched an arrow and crept forward. The slope was slippery and I feared as I moved down into the magical dark that I might fall, tumbling onto their altar stone. I could smell the meat roasting and see the fire dim and darkly. Their figures swaying around it, their obscene pipes in their mouths. Two set drumming on each side of the altar stone and on the altar a deer gutted but not dead. Its entrails spread for the Serpent Mother. There were twelve of them altogether. If living was my only aim I would turn back. But I knew the secret. Die in the heat or battle and you will be reborn. If they killed me this night, I would kill them another night. I had sons. Into that line I would be born.

  I took ten more steps forward. My eyes had adjusted to the magical dark. They were striking themselves with sharpened flints, cutting their scaly skins to let blood. Their sibilant hissing chorused with the ever faster, ever-louder drum beats. I came in low letting the vegetation hide me, and trusting that their reptilian ecstasy blinded them to my scent. I drew bead on one of the drummers and with a clean swift shot sent him to join the Serpent Mother. I got the second drummer and one of the chanters before they even realized I was mowing them down. They screamed as their ritual had ended with the drummers’ death. They scanned the sides of the valley and I pressed myself behind and under a bush. I held myself still. I wanted to get a few more of them with arrows before having to engage hand to claw. One of them looked my way, and quickly I rose up and dispatched him. Then another met the same fate.

  But then a pair spotted me, and before I could kill both of them, one sounded the alarm, and they began running toward me. I rose up and picked off a couple of them with arrow shots. My arrows now exhausted I flung my bow away and drew my knife. Its flint edge would soon taste serpent blood.

  It is the custom of the serpent people to look you in the eyes as you kill them or they kill you. This way you will know each other when you meet again. I rejoiced at their slit eyes looking at me as I drove my knife into their throats. One. Two Three. But there were still left and their claws tore at me from all sides. The two behind me were able to sink both teeth and claws into me. I could feel one of their claws cutting around my spine. I reached behind me and stabbed that foe in the eye, then brought my knife forward and slashed off the head of a fellow that was clawing at my right side. I made two hits on my front most foe, but I could feel weakness stealing over me. The wounds on my back and sides had been too deep. All I could do was trust in the great god Il-marinen to Remanifest me. I swung one last great swing, gutting one of the little people. My last feeling was the blood and guts dripping down my right arm as my knees sunk to the forest floor.

  When I woke the next day, I was spent. Never in my thirty-eight years have I had a dream so vivid. My parents had always told me to disregard dreams. I remember once when I was four I had had a dream about large stone circles and drawing them with crayons. My Dad had taken my crayons away for a month and told me that “only little babies paid attention to their dreams and I didn’t want to be a little baby did I?”

  I did something that I had never done before. I called in sick to work. I wasn’t really sick. I was just overcome with the idea that maybe somehow the dream was real.

  I had never thought things like this in my life. My Dad always told me that he raised me to be a no-nonsense boy. I called Mr. Siros, the book dealer, but only got his answering machine.

  I decided to go to Town Lake, the lovely green park in the center of Austin. Nobody from work would see me and a long walk by the sparkling blue waters of the Colorado would clear the weird thoughts from my head.

  It was a beautiful February day as only a Central Texas February can be. Redbuds were in bloom. Eighty degree winds chased the few puffy white clouds in the sky. I walked along the paths of crushed pink granite past the bronze statue of Stevie Ray Vaughan, thinking maybe my parents were right maybe fantasy was a bad thing when I saw them. There were four of them. In outward appearance they were two black guys, an Hispanic girl and a white guy. A little short for their ages, which I guessed to be about eighteen. They wore baby blue bandanas, baby blue jerseys, blue jeans black shoes. My urban sense said they were Crips showing their true-blue selves, but my dream sense said that they were Serpent People. The same ones I had killed in my dreams just hours before. They looked at me. They smiled and then they hissed and I ran to my car.

  They didn’t give chase, and when I got to my car I was furious with myself. Was I not a warrior of Il-marinen? I had fought and killed many more of these people than this small handful. What had I become in this rebirth that I lacked courage? I would return and fight.

  I walked back to the statue and the Crips or Serpent People or whatever they were gone. I realized I was getting seriously loopy. I went home, and tried calling Mr. Siros again.

  “I’ve got weird news for you.” He said. Oh really I though there’s a shocker. “The reason that issue number five of The Cloven Hoof is rare is that your granduncle bought up all the copies.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. But I am seriously interested in either buying your collection or selling it on consignment.”

  “Thanks. I’ll get back you with really soon.” As soon as I’m not hallucinating that I am involved in a Neolithic grudge match with Jurassic sorcerers.

  I decided to try an experiment. No drugs had made me have my strange dreams or my little break down at the park. It certainly didn’t come from the ooga-booga names I perused in Weird Tales. It had to come from granduncle John’s sonnet. Now the sonnet did have two ooga-booga names: Bran Mak Morn and L’mur-Kathulos. Maybe these names had some effect on the psyche. I tried whispering them over and over as I went to bed.

  At first the experiment was dreadful. I couldn’t fall asleep, and I was irritated with myself for trying something so silly. But after about fifteen long minutes of effort the names began to take on their own rhythm My body started to feel warm and melty, and some part of my being seemed to stretch out into the void. Seamlessly I was in a dream. This body was more like my waking self. It wore a suit. It sat in front of a manual typewriter in a cold New England flat. It/I was typing “A Rune for Rebirth” from notes on a sketch pad. It/I was my granduncle.

  I said very slowly and deliberately, “I am mailing this tonight to my old friend Robert Clemants. If you know him it is probably because of his swashbuckling novels and not for his poems, which is a pity. If you read the poem you know you are me, and you know that we are Aryara and maybe you have found the dozen other names we have hunted the Serpent People under. I know that things are worse in your time. There are certain rays, certain sounds, certain chemicals that will let that which should not walk slither up the spiral staircase. In my time the Serpent People are few hiding among certain families from the British Islands. In your time they will be reborn everywhere. They will have their
drums and their horns and the cities will know their mark. They will steal more than fire. Do not give in to the weakness of your age. Stop as many as you can.”

  The dream ended and I found myself still repeating the names Bran Mak Morn and L’mur-Kathulos. The dream was more vivid than the dream of the night before, but it still meant nothing. So my mind could come up with a reincarnation-fantasy involving a dead granduncle. If I belonged to another culture such dream were to be expected, but that didn’t mean they were true. I would put fantasy aside and I would sell my magazines and that would be that. No nonsense.

  The next morning as I stepped out of my house I saw that they had tagged my car. They had spray painted blue snakes up and down the length of my silver PT Cruiser. There was also writing of a sort, a type of hieroglyphics that I recognized from my forest dream.

  I walked back in my house and checked the Internet for the current phase of the Moon. It would be full tonight. They would make sacrifice. It seems like a good time to visit the Ten Percent Plus Cost Gun Shop....

  This ends the statement of Paul O’Donnel. He had evidently written it at the beginning of his killing spree. It is unknown why he did not document the killings or provide us with more examples of his mania. It is widely supposed that he was killed in a gang shoot-out. In fact he met a more bizarre end. He was evidently attacked by rats whose bites covered his back, face and hands.

  SABBATH OF THE ZEPPELINS

  Malcolm MacKenzie was what we called a galvanized Yankee, which is to say that he had been a Confederate caught by the North then freed on the condition that he would soldier against the Indians on the Western frontier. That’s as good an introduction as any. It tells you that he was a hard-luck case and that he was in his 50s during the Phantom Airship Flap of 1897. And being an ex-Confederate, when he met a being that was pretty near God—and found out that he was a black man—he was pretty broke up about it.