Merkabah Rider: The Mensch With No Name (16 page)

The
Rider held up his hands and took a step back from the carcasses. He had of
course, buried the dead before, but always there had been a mikvah or else a
period of seclusion to cleanse the impurity of tumat met. The last grave he
filled had been Gershom’s. Whatever lay ahead, he would have need of all his
abilities.

“I’m
not supposed to handle the dead,” he explained.

“Convenient,”
said Doc.

“Look
at the mountain,” Mather said suddenly.

They
looked in the direction they had last seen the rising cap of stone. In the
pitch black it should have been invisible, but there was a cluster of glowing
red dots visible like campfires.

Someone
was alive up there.

After
they dragged away the bodies and sent them sliding down the mountain, the men
agreed on a watch. In the night the Rider said the
kaddish
over the dead man, but otherwise no further horrors shuffled out of the night.
The red lights on the mountainside remained until dawn.

* * *
*

They broke camp and set out at first light. The Rider took his blue
glass spectacles out and set them on his nose. He had taken to leaving the
mystically embossed lenses in their case as of late. They were designed to
reveal supernatural entities, but Lilith’s arming her denizens with his true
name had rendered them powerless against his most diligent enemies on the
spiritual plane. They did come in handy against non-demonic creatures though,
and he employed them now in case that was what they were up against.

Mather
and Doc took no notice of them. The sun was out and glinting
off
the peaks. It was substantially cool, being winter after all, and Doc’s cough
worsened exponentially the higher they went, reaching its apex when they could
see their breath. At some point they came upon the edge of a stand of trees
with frosted
branches, that
sprung from uneven ground
lightly powdered with snow.

The
Rider turned up the collar of his rekel coat to the chill wind, and shared the
warmth of the onager, who managed better among the rocks than his companion’s
horses did. By noon they were all three of them on foot and consulting the map,
and the Rider pointed out a thin trail of smoke rising above the tree line not
far away.

“I’d
guess that’s the cabin,” Mather said, squinting at the map and indicating a
dead tree whose crudely drawn twin leaned beside the path on the wrinkled
paper. “Yeah, should be right past here.”

“How
should we do this?” the Rider whispered.

“I
find the best way to break up a game is to walk right up and kick over the
table,” Doc said.

Mather
nodded. He slipped out of his saddle and looped the reins of his horse around
the dead tree a few times, then took out his pistols, cocking them under his
armpits to muffle the sound.

Doc
and the Rider did the same.

They
walked a ways through the woods, till they could smell the smoke and the low
talk ahead muffled their crunching boots. So they were alive. Had they skinned
Slap Jack and his horse and turned them loose as punishment for some
transgression? It didn’t seem likely.

They
came to a point where they could crouch among the trees unseen and observe a
clearing just ahead, where a single room shack nestled with its back to an
incline and leaked the thin stream of wood smoke they’d followed. Five horses
were tied to a tree beside the shack, and four men stood in the clearing,
looking down on what looked to be the body of a fifth. There was bright red
blood on the snow. Each of them seemed to be carrying lanterns, lit despite the
daylight.

Then
pain lanced suddenly in both the Rider’s eyes, causing them to immediately
stream tears. He winced and drove his thumb and forefinger under the Solomonic
lenses, furiously rubbing the corners of his eyes, but it was no use. When he
opened them again, there was the same pain, like he was snow blind, or like a
sudden light had been directed into his eyes in a dark room.

He
removed his spectacles to wipe away the tears, and the discomfort fled
instantly. Blinking, he looked around.

Doc
noticed his reaction and screwed his face up into a wordless question.

The
Rider shook his head and held the spectacles up to his face, gingerly. His eyes
spilled once more and there was a ringing ache.

He
had felt this once before. He looked all around, glancing now and then through
the lenses, until he spotted them.

Train
lanterns. They had been hung on the branches of the trees encircling the
clearing.
Red ones.
A few of them were lit, though
sputtering low. Most appeared to have consumed their fuel and hung dim, the
glass still warm.

Something
about the faltering light from the red lanterns was sending a backlash through
the Solomonic lenses, making it impossible for him to see through them. The
last time he experienced this phenomenon was outside of The Bird Nest, the
demon queen Lilith’s bordello in Tip Top. The red paper lanterns hung outside
her door and the red lamp inside her parlor had rendered the lenses useless.

There
was magic at work here, and it was the same sort Lilith and her succubi
employed.

The
Rider carefully folded his spectacles and stowed them in their case.

Doc
had seen the lanterns too now, and Mather. They looked at them querulously, for
they were all lit, although it was daylight.

“Lord,
what’d it do to him?” said one of the men in the clearing, a diminutive red
head with a ridiculous, half-crushed stovepipe hat.

“It’s
plain what it did,” said another, an Indian with a slouch hat and hair down
past his shoulders (probably this was Crazy Horse Bob). “The question is
,
how’d it get him?” The man looked over at a third
individual in a checkered hunter’s coat and derby.

“You said them lanterns would keep it back,
Professor.”

“He
obviously wasn’t killed here,” said the Professor. He was a slight man, rail
thin, excitable looking with buggy eyes and a thin mustache. “You heard the
sound. It must have thrown him into the clearing. Look at the ground. There are
no tracks.”

“He’s
right,” said a man in a palpable German accent. He was the biggest of them, his
buffalo coat made him seem bigger. “Christ, it’s got to be big to lift him up
like that.”

“Well,
obviously some of the lanterns have extinguished,” said the Professor. “I was
afraid of that. We’ve got to go out there and refill them.”

“Yeah
sure,” said the red head. “You go ahead, Professor.”

“We’re
runnin’ low on that fancy oil,” said the German.

Mather
and Doc stepped into the clearing abruptly.

“Let’s
see your hands, boys,” Mather said.

All
of them raised one palm, like men taking an oath, but not a one of them laid
aside their lanterns.

The
Rider stepped cautiously into the open behind them. His eyes passed over the
three armed men, looking for his pistol, not seeing it.

“You
can set the lanterns down too, boys, no sense in risking breaking them after
all the trouble you all went through,” Doc said.

“Doc
Holliday,” snarled the big German. His eyes went to Mather. “What the hell is
he doing here?”

“I’ve
been deputized, Dodgy,” Doc answered for him.

“That
sonofabitch Slap Jack must’ve sold us out,” hissed the short red head.

“Don’t
be stupid,” said Crazy Horse Bob. “He ain’t been gone that long.”

“You
can thank Dirty Dave Rudabaugh for telling us where you all were,” Doc said,
smiling and unfurling the map with a flourish.

“That
yellow scumbelly,” the red head remarked.
“Told you we
shouldn’t have brought him in.”

“We
shouldn’t
of
brought you in either, Bullshit,” said
Dodgy.

“As
to Slap Jack Bill,” Doc went on. “He won’t be telling much to anybody anymore.”

“So
you killed him,” Dodgy said, spitting a line of brown tobacco juice into the
snow. “You saved us the trouble.”

“We
didn’t kill him,” Mather said.

Dodgy,
the Indian, the Professor and Slap Jack all swapped glances.

“What
did?” the Professor asked.

What,
the Rider noted, not who.

“Somebody
skinned him,” said Mather.
“And his horse.”

“My
ampoules!” the Professor exclaimed. Without a word, he suddenly turned and went
for the cabin doorway.

“Hold
it!” Mather shouted
,
aiming for the slight man’s back.

The other three men tensed, backing away.

Doc
and the Rider covered them.

“Don’t
move!” Doc warned. “The next step back lands you in hell!”

Mather
cocked his pistol as the Professor continued hurrying toward the cabin.

Then
there came a horrendous sound from behind them, similar to the weird shrieking in
the dark that had preceded the appearance of the skinned man. This time there
was no human accompaniment. It was the horses.

The
Rider turned.

He
could hardly make out the animals tethered back in the trees. They were
thrashing wildly, and he saw a flash of blood spray into the air.

“What
the hell is that?” Doc said.

The
Professor had paused in the doorway of the cabin, and the Rider saw his breath
puff out in the cool air as he looked past them into the trees. There was no
fear on his face, only a wild exuberance.

He
ducked inside.

Mather
did not kill him. He had turned his attention to the horses.

The
little red head’s eyes shifted from the trees to Mather, then to the similarly
distracted Doc. The Rider read his intent, and his pistol cracked out as
Bullshit’s gun left its holster. The little man fell clutching his shoulder and
cursing.

Mather
waved his gun back at the other two, but they just held up their hands
reassuringly and stared into the woods.

“What’s
out there?” the Rider demanded.

Dodgy
and the Indian looked at him but just blinked.

The
screaming of the horses
continued,
and the Rider saw
one of the animals lifted bodily into the air. The kicking animal flew ten feet
and fell with a tremendous crash into a stand of trees. Then there was silence.

Everyone
stood in tense silence. The only sound was the groaning of Bullshit as he
rolled in the snow, and muffled sounds of pans clattering from the cabin.

Mather
remembered the Professor then, and shoved past Dodgy. He stalked up to the
cabin, both guns drawn.

“Come
on outta there, you little bastard!” he hollered.

The
Professor came out straightaway, but not in answer to the marshal’s call. He
looked flustered, and he bore in his hands an English saddlebag.

“Gone!”
he said
,
his face flushed in anger. “He must’ve taken
them in the night, the damned fool!” Seeing Mather’s twin pistols aiming at
him, he dropped the bags with a start, said, “Oh!” and raised his hands.

The
Rider glanced down and saw one of the red lanterns
laying
where Bullshit had dropped it. He snatched it up and stalked out of the
clearing, headed for the vague, still shapes
laying
where they’d left the horses.

“Rider!”
Doc called.

“I’ll
be right back!”

His
heart beat its way out of his chest and up into the back of his throat as he
made his way through the trees. Something was out there. Something had attacked
and probably killed the animals. His onager made no sound. The animal had been
with him since Jerusalem. He hated to think whatever was out there had
slaughtered it, after it had evaded pursuing demons, would-be thieves, and
infernal cannon fire among other dangers.

He
cocked his pistol as he got within sight of the spot where they’d left the
mounts and a disbelieving smile split his face when he saw the pale onager
standing a few feet from where it had been tied, its tether torn away. It did
not look at him as he approached, but stared into the trees, as if it saw
something. Its flanks trembled, and only when he stood beside it and touched its
neck did it shudder and glance at him before returning to its wary vigil.

At
first he thought he would have to put the animal down. It was covered in blood,
but true to its peerless luck, almost none of it was its own. Doc’s horse lay
where it had fallen, but its head hung still tied to the tree, black eyes
glazed. Whatever had set upon it had torn entirely through its thick neck in
nearly no time at all. There was blood everywhere. Mather’s horse had been the
one he’d seen fly through the air. Its carcass lay suspended in the interlaced
branches of the birches where it had been flung, its shimmering intestines
hanging down like garland.