Wraiths of the Broken Land (30 page)

“The dandy will help you.”

A void opened up within the gentleman, and his vision narrowed.

“C’mon.” Brent clasped Nathaniel’s right elbow, pulled him to the bound quartet, opened the toolbox, withdrew two pairs of steel shears (one of which had a curl of sheep’s wool in-between its heavy blades), knelt beside the captive who had earlier exclaimed, “¡Triunfo!” and clipped the jutting arrows.

“Pull off his shoes and pants,” the cowboy said to his reluctant accomplice.

Nathaniel got on his knees, grabbed the captive’s left boot, wrested it loose, claimed its sibling, undid four suspender tabs, unbuttoned the fellow’s waist band, clutched both hems and pulled. A brass compass and a monocle clinked upon the stone, and burgundy underclothes were revealed.

Brent handed Nathaniel the second pair of shears. “Cut through his sleeves and then we can pull the whole thing off o’ him.” The men applied their flashing blades and rent three layers of clothing. “That’ll work.” The duo set down their shears and pulled the cleft jacket, shirt and union suit off of the unconscious Mexican. Emanating from the man’s naked body were the smells of blood and excrement.

Stevie and Dolores furtively observed Brent.

A spool of barbed wire dropped to the ground beside the captive’s feet. “Bind his ankles together,” ordered Long Clay.

Nathaniel tasted cold dread.

“Hold his head good and tight,” Brent said as he donned thick gloves, “so that he don’t break his skull.” The cowboy unwound two yards of wire and clipped it with his shears.

Nathaniel leaned forward and braced the triumphant man’s head against the floor.

Brent pulled the gleaming wire around the captive’s flush ankles, and four barbs pierced the skin. The triumphant man screamed. Throughout Nathaniel’s body, the sound of another man’s agony reverberated.

Hastily, the cowboy pulled the line through four more circuits, twisted its ends secure, released the bound limbs and withdrew. The captive’s toes clutched the air like the webbed extremities of an amphibian.

“Don’t kill me.” The Midwestern captive began to sob. “Please. I have two young daughters back—”

Long Clay inserted a plum into the man’s mouth. “I’ll cut off your right hand if you spit that out.”

No more pleas emerged from the Midwesterner.

Brent pointed to the unconscious captive who had the handlebar mustache. “Let’s do him.”

Myopically focusing his thoughts on each assigned task, Nathaniel nodded his head. He knelt. The cowboy clipped arrows, and the gentleman removed the unconscious fellow’s shoes, green trousers and long john bottoms. Both men cut away the captive’s jacket and blood-stained white shirt.

“I know that one.” Dolores smoldered.

Brent’s face darkened.

Nathaniel leaned forward and braced the captive’s head.

“Hold it firm.”

The cowboy pulled barbed wire in a quick circuit, and the captive yelled. Nathaniel’s arms shook. Brent glanced at his sister and yanked the line. Barbs tore open the man’s shins and calves, and he shrieked.

“Go easy for now,” cautioned Long Clay.

Brent finished binding the man’s legs and dropped them to the floor, where they twitched and dripped blood. Nathaniel released the captive’s moaning head.

Dolores hobbled over and struck the captive’s face with her crutch. “Disgusting!”

Brent and Nathaniel stripped the bloody vaquero, who had been shot by four arrows. The man was dying and did not awaken when his feet were bound.

Presently, the duo knelt beside the redheaded Midwesterner. The man whimpered when his trousers were removed, fell unconscious when his arrows were clipped and reawakened when the remainder of his clothing was ripped from his body. Brent wrapped freckled ankles with barbed wire, and Nathaniel felt warm tears upon his palms.

“Is the horizon clear?” asked Long Clay.

“Yessir,” replied Stevie.

“It’s clear,” Deep Lakes said from outside.

Long Clay looked at Nathaniel and Brent. “Hang the captives from the stakes by their ankles.”

Nathaniel’s skin grew cold.

“Get ‘em by the feet and stay in front, so they can’t kick you,” Brent advised, as if he were discussing the best way to handle a roped steer. He grabbed the right big toe of the plump man with the handlebar mustache and dragged him across the floor, through the west door and out of view.

Nathaniel similarly trailed his burden, the Midwesterner. The nude captive’s back and buttocks sizzled across the ground.

“Wait until he comes back,” ordered Long Clay.

Nathaniel paused, watched Brent and Deep Lakes walk past the southern crenellations and heard the creak of the stepladder, followed by a couple of grunts and a gurgling yell.

Presently, the cowboy returned.

Clasping a freckled foot, Nathaniel walked outside. Deep Lakes accompanied the lumbering and draggling Midwesterners through the vast night to the front of the fort.

“Jesus Christ.” Nathaniel stared at previously hung captive, whose legs and inverted phallus were agleam with moonlit blood.

“Climb the stepladder,” Deep Lakes said to the glassy-eyed gentleman. “I’ll hand him up to you.”

Nathaniel narrowed his thoughts, ascended three rungs, received the legs of the Midwesterner and guided them toward the wall. An iron stake poked into the barbed wire, slid between the captive’s ankles and emerged on the near side of the metallic binding.

Deep Lakes released the man’s torso.

The inverted Midwesterner dropped. Wires snapped taut against the stake, and barbs revealed yellow tissue, pink muscle and white tendons. The captive shrieked, and the plum fell out of his mouth.

Nathaniel tumbled from the stepladder and onto the ground. With shaking hands, he picked up the fallen fruit and—to silence the terrible wailing—reinserted it inside the Midwesterner’s mouth. Covered with sweat and shaking, the gentleman hastened back inside the fort.

Trailing the Mexican vaquero, Brent departed.

Nathaniel could not stop trembling.

After an impossibly short period of time, Brent returned.

Nathaniel dragged the man who exclaimed, “¡Triunfo!” to the façade, where hung three nude hostages, bloody and inverted. The gentleman climbed the ladder, received the upended limbs from Deep Lakes, slid the wire binding along an iron stake and shut his eyes when the captive’s weight pulled his ankles into the cold sharp barbs.

After an upside-down human being made terrible animal sounds, the tall empty thing that looked like Nathaniel Stromler walked back into the fort.

Deep Lakes shut the door.

Long Clay looked at Brent and Nathaniel. “Get back to your slits.”

“Okay.”

After a tiny nod, the gentleman moved his legs.

Long Clay strode toward the potbelly stove, from which sprouted the long ends of five iron stakes. “Ready the messenger.”

Deep Lakes knelt beside the boyish Mexican, whose wrists were bound behind his back, and pulled a cord around his ankles.

Standing at the west wall, Nathaniel looked outside, over the mute tombstones and at the dark, empty horizon. The boy from Michigan who had traveled to Europe with his family, stayed in luxurious hotels and adventured was gone, as were the teenager who vowed never to turn a gun on another person, and the twenty-two-year-old gentleman who had fallen in love with Kathleen O’Corley. This current incarnation of Nathaniel Stromler was an unscrupulous animal that would do anything to preserve its own life—even torture innocent people. He was a corporeal shell that lived in the present, divorced from his former identity, obeying the threats of an evil gunfighter.

The gentleman from Michigan reviled what was left of himself—his spineless, quivering remainder.

Outside the fort, inverted hostages gargled and moaned like rheumatic haunts.

Nathaniel looked over his shoulder. In the southeast corner, Long Clay withdrew a stake from the molten potbelly stove. The luminous iron point traveled across the room like a fang pulled directly from the Devil’s mouth.

The boyish Mexican pleaded.

Although he doubted that the poor man’s words would change the gunfighter’s itinerary, Nathaniel translated. “He said that his name is Alberto Querrera and that—”

“I’m not interested.”

Deep Lakes tore open Alberto’s brown shirt. Catapulted buttons skittered across the stones, clicking.

Long Clay stepped upon the captive’s bound ankles and looked at Nathaniel. “How do you say, ‘I work for Gris’ in Spanish?”

“Yo trabajo para Gris,” replied the gentleman.

“Spell it one word at a time.”

“Y. O.”

Long Clay pressed the luminous tip of the iron stake into the skin above Alberto’s left pectoral muscle. Flesh sizzled.

The captive jerked and shrieked. “¡No! ¡Por favor! ¡No se nada!” Long Clay withdrew the iron stake. Upon Alberto’s chest sat a lone diagonal line, red and swollen.

With a steady hand, the gunfighter reapplied the glowing metal, elicited a scream and added the mirror image of the first mark (to create a V) and a vertical scar that dropped down from the connection of its antecedents. Long Clay lifted the luminous point, set it down, summoned a groan and inscribed a sizzling circle next to the first symbol. Alberto squirmed like a live fish dropped into a frying pan, but the native and the gunfighter held him firmly in place.

Upon the captive’s chest sat two bloody letters.

Yo

“Next word,” prompted Long Clay.

Nathaniel turned away from the shuddering canvas. “T. R. A. B. A. J. O.” Behind his back, skin sizzled, and the metallic smells of blood, urine and heated iron permeated the air.

“Por favor,” pleaded Alberto, “por favor…”

Nathaniel’s hands squeezed the barrel of his repeater rifle, and his heart raced. The cemetery outside his slit became blurry.

Alberto spoke of his crippled mother, Leticia, who was confined to her bed in Nueva Vida.

Long Clay set the red stake inside the potbelly stove, withdrew a bright orange replacement and returned. “Next word.”

“P. A. R. A.”

Skin sizzled. In between sobs, Alberto explained that he had taken the job with Gris so that he could buy Leticia new bedclothes.

The empty gentleman strangled his rifle.

Long Clay inquired, “G. R. I. S?”

Holding his breath, Nathaniel nodded.

Skin sizzled, but the Mexican made no sound.

“Did he pass out?” asked Brent.

“Yes.”

“Too bad,” remarked Stevie.

“Stromler,” prompted Long Clay. “Look at this.”

The gentleman turned around and looked down. Burned into the unconscious Mexican’s chest was the message.

Yo trabajo

para Gris

The gunfighter inquired, “This reads, ‘I work for Gris?’”

Unable to breath the tarnished air, Nathaniel nodded.

Long Clay walked to the potbelly stove, inserted his writing implement and withdrew an iron stake that had a bright white tip. Around the luminous fang, the night air warped.

Nathaniel’s pulse pounded violently within his temples. He momentarily forgot his fiancé’s name and the address of his mother’s empty candy store in Michigan and where his father was buried.

The gunfighter strode across the room and extended the radiant point toward the captive’s blindfold. Dolores and Brent turned away from the grim tableau.

“Please,” Nathaniel pleaded, “you do not have to—”

Long Clay plunged the stake into Alberto’s left eye.

The captive shrieked, but was held in place by the native.

As the gunfighter lifted the stake, Alberto’s left eyelid stuck to the radiant metal, stretched and tore loose. Clear fluid bubbled within the ruined socket, and the blindfold sloughed to the ground. The captive was no longer conscious.

“The man is a hired hand,” Nathaniel said, “you—”

Long Clay positioned the smoking iron above the captive’s remaining eye.

“Stop! You have done enough.” Nathaniel’s voice was strong and hard. “I will—”

Long Clay thrust the stake.

“No!”

The gunfighter pulled the iron from the man’s hissing eye socket and looked at the native. “Pull down his trousers.”

Nathaniel raised his rifle.

A black circle appeared and flashed brilliantly. Nathaniel flew west and impacted the stone wall. Unused, the repeater rifle fell from the gentleman’s hands and clattered upon the ground. Across the left side of his chest, a sharp and burning pain flared.

“You dumb idiot,” remarked Stevie.

Long Clay claimed the fallen repeater rifle.

Nathaniel felt warm fluid pour from the bullet hole and run down his abdomen. The walls of the fort elongated.

Appalled and speechless, Dolores watched the gentleman sink.

Nathaniel’s buttocks struck the floor. The world shook, and he keeled north. Suddenly, the back of his skull smacked against the stone, and he stared, glassy-eyed, at the ceiling.

Throughout the gentleman’s collapsed body spread a blue chill.

A silhouetted man appeared and knelt upon the stone. “I’m…I’m so, so sorry.” Nathaniel recognized the speaker as Brent. “You shouldn’t be here at all.” The cowboy pressed a cool cloth to the bullet hole.

“I t-told you that I should not…use a f-f-firearm.”

“You were right. One hundred percent.”

The narrow black wraith slid across the room, expanded and hissed.

“I hope that…most of you…survive.” Nathaniel tasted blood in his throat.

“Thanks.”

Deep Lakes removed Alberto’s trousers and long johns. The glowing tip of the iron stake shone upon the dark curl that was the blinded Mexican’s exposed phallus.

Blackness expanded before Nathaniel’s eyes.

Skin sizzled and hissed.

“Goddamn,” said Stevie. “Goddamn that’s terrible.”

Chapter III
The Torture Tactic

The circus dog growled meritorious accusations at Brent Plugford and his brother as they set the unconscious dandy upon the floor of the prisoners’ cell, beside the collection of bones that was Yvette. Stevie mumbled ungraciously and left the dark room.

“Say one for Mr. Stromler,” Brent whispered to his sleeping sister, “he don’t deserve any of this.” Troubled by guilt, the cowboy exited the dark, windowless chamber.

“Lock that door,” Long Clay ordered from his position along the south wall.

Brent slid the iron bolt and turned around. He glanced at the bunk upon which laid the inert bodies of Patch Up and John Lawrence Plugford and quickly looked away. Any ruminations upon these dead men—or the pregnant woman and unborn child Long Clay had murdered—grew the cowboy’s sadness and turned it into a debilitating, all-consuming despair. Now was not the time for self-recriminations or mourning.

“Hell.”

Deep Lakes dragged the blinded and inscribed messenger toward the west door. Brent felt a pang of nausea when he noticed the blackened nub between the Mexican’s legs.

“How’s Mr. Stromler?” asked Dolores.

“I stopped the bleeding, but…” Brent shook his head. “I don’t think he’s gonna make it.” He knew that Patch Up would have better tended the injury.

Dolores glared at Long Clay. “You shouldn’t’ve shot him.”

The remorseless gunfighter did not bother to defend himself.

Stevie said, “Who cares what happens to that dumb dandy.”

“You should,” barked Brent. “He helped us rescue our sisters and only got shot because he didn’t want to see no hired gun get mutilated.”

“He drew on Long Clay,” Stevie rebutted, “and deserves what he got.”

“I pray you ain’t as stupid as your mouth advertises.” The cowboy returned to the south wall, shouldered his repeater rifle and unscrewed his spyglass.

As if Long Clay were not in the room, the young man asked, “You wanted the dandy to win?”

The honest answer to that question was complicated. Brent knew that the gunfighter was the Plugfords’ only chance for survival, but on a personal level, the cowboy would have preferred to see the dandy win the exchange. “I wish it didn’t happen is all,” he stated, equitably.