Panic seized Lead’s heart. He reached into his shirt and gripped the Van Cleef.
“You no good! You no righteous! You be sand!” the old woman shrieked into the night sky.
The chanting villagers stepped away from the fire, into the darkness. Their eyes dazzled ruby red and fierce. The teeth in their grinning mouths grew with an unnatural speed. Front teeth grew past their bottom lips and chins, enormous and sharp like rats.
“Homme Jesus Lord Gob!” Lead screamed as the creatures lunged at him. Their legs turned pencil thin in the shadows of night, like crickets legs, yet they held the weight of their bodies inexplicably. Their teeth grew past their chests and swung like bone swords with each stride.
One of the beasts grabbed Lead’s shoulder with a clawed hand. Lead pulled the Van Cleef and fired into the creature’s chest. The beast clutched the wound and twisted into nothingness. It burst like a sack of sand. Lead swung his gun at the next nearest monster and pulled the trigger. The crack of pistol fire broke through the villagers’ chants a second time. The wounded beast put a hand to its neck and gurgled blood before falling to its knees.
Lead was engulfed by the horde of monsters. He screamed and whipped his pistol across the face of another beast. A glint of light reflected on teeth and blood as they showered the desert sand. Lead smashed his gun against the skull of another beast and twisted through clutching hands and gnashing teeth. He broke free bolted into the darkness beyond the fire. Behind him demons giggled and crashed through the brush.
Lead ran with the strength of fear. He desperately tried to remember the Church’s teachings on the Devil and demons, but his mind refused to focus on anything but blind panic. Lead glanced over his shoulder. His eyes adjusted to starlight. Formless demons pursued him, their shapes bobbing like drifts of smoke, their eyes glimmered red though they had no business illuminating the darkness.
Lead jumped to the left, a demon crashed face first in rubble and dust where he’d been running. Another demon tackled Lead to the ground. The beast glared fiercely at Lead with its ruby eyes. It spit a long tooth into its hand and raised it to strike. Lead pointed his Van Cleef, but the pistol clicked in misfire. The demon drove the tooth into Lead’s shoulder. Lead swung the Van Cleef across the demon’s face. One of the ruby eyes winked out and the demon recommitted to the sand. Lead ran on.
The night lived a life beyond its natural duration. Lead ran past the demons and past the brush and past the limitations of his weakened body and mind. The yells and laughter of the beasts drifted away, but Lead did not slow. His vision tightened to a small distant tunnel. He repeated prayers in his mind but could not force his tongue to speak them. He prayed for safety, he prayed for God to smite all the sin and devils of this land, and when the sun’s light returned to the earth Lead was still running, fueled by fear and panic. His lungs and legs burned deep.
In the dawn’s light Lead arrived onto a broken street which marked the entrance to Havasu Parish. Regular men in parishioner clothing stood in front a general use building waiting for morning bread. They saw Lead filthy and wounded and dismissed him as another desert crazy, another rag man.
Lead’s legs buckled with exhaustion. He breathed long and hot and looked for aid among the men of the bread line. If he could find words, he would demand sanctuary as a Preachers’ right. Tears streamed down his face. A gun cocked behind him, its barrel pressed against his head.
“Greetings,” Terence said.
Lead looked up to see the old man holding a four barrel pistol looped with a rawhide cord, a Van Cleef.
“Thought you might come here, you look worse for the travel,” the Old Preacher said.
Lead looked down at his chest. He’d lost his shirt and sombrero and his bare torso was painted with a concoction of blood and filth; a testament to the evening’s violence. His pants were torn and ragged. A wood- handled kitchen knife stood with its blade buried deep into his left shoulder. He clutched his pistol, at some point the rawhide loop had broken. It dangled from the butt of his gun. Lead raised his hands and gun into the air.
“I have no qualm with you, mark. Leave me be and continue your retreat,” he said.
Terence kept his pistol pressed against Lead’s head.
“I got the drop on you. Your life is but a decision between me and this pepper box.” Terence looked up to the men in the bread line. “You gentlemen mind to your business,” he hollered at them. The morning parishioners made no move to aid.
“I’ve taken life, young man. I know the feeling and price.” The Old Preacher released the pistol’s hammer and slipped it back into his shirt.
“You won’t die by my hands. Not today.”
Lead looked up at the Old Preacher’s face, a leather visage of dirty creases and grey beard and yellow-blue eyes that spoke of humanity.
“Why was I sent to apprehend you?”
The Old Preacher’s eyes moistened. He rubbed them in irritation and looked back to the rising sun.
“I was what you are; I preached the word of the Church. They sent you to me because of killing.”
“What killing?”
The Old Preacher looked into Lead’s eyes. “Killing doesn’t make me happy. Killing doesn’t make me good. I can’t kill anymore. That’s why you were sent to apprehend. I’m a rusty tool of new use or value. I need to be disposed of.”
Lead tried to regain his feet but instead lost consciousness in the Arizona sun.
IV. Eliphaz the Crusader comes to Havasu Parish
Lead woke in a comfortable bed with sheets that smelled of lilacs and bleach. His room was painted a shade of green he remembered as glow-in-the-dark. The Old Preacher watched him from a stool in the corner. On a wooden plank table lay the parts of Lead’s gun, dismantled and oiled. The Old Preacher smiled.
“What were you going to do with no ammunition?”
Lead mumbled about demons in the night. The sliver of metal left by Century’s knife was cold in his chest. In contrast, the knife wound in his shoulder was hot and puckered.
“Demons, boy, you should have given those Jimson eaters wide birth. That flower will make you blind or crazy as sure as it’ll make you high.”
Lead tried to sit up but his head was too heavy. Pain shot up his arms and legs. The air in the room was musty and hard to breath. He shifted his gaze to the old Preacher. Terence had shaved his beard and combed back his white hair into a thick main. His eyes flashed ruby red and then turned back to yellow-blue. Lead whispered a prayer.
“Preacher, you’re going to need a lot more than prayer, look at me. You’ve been poisoned. No demons. No smiting or plague. Your mind is not right and won’t be for awhile. You need to reckon this. You need to know that the wrong you’re seeing isn’t real. It’s the Jimson weed in your blood.”
Lead lifted his hand to his face. His fingers traced rainbow afterimages of themselves. He shook his arm and watched the images overlap, turn, and flex like wings of a bird with no feathers. Sweat streamed down his face. He closed his fist and felt the numbness across his palm. The old Preacher’s words were far away. Lead closed his eyes. His dreams brought him back to the demons in the desert and running blind into the night.
Terence examined Lead’s dismantled gun. The six-shooter was at least a hundred years old; a thirty-eight, maybe an old cop’s gun. Its barrel was scratched and pitted, the rubber grips were worn and showed metal patches. Terence reassembled the gun and slipped it into his knapsack. Somewhere outside, galloping hooves broke the silence of the day. Terence looked to the unconscious Preacher. He drew his Van Cleef and silently crept to the front door. The galloping stopped. Footsteps sounded on the front porch.
“Speak.” Terence yelled through the door. He pressed his gun barrels against the door just below head’s height. It was an old habit of his.
“It’s Philip, Philip Magenty, from the Dead. My news is urgent.”
“I know you Philip, are you alone?”
“Yes sir, I am.”
