South Mountain in the Catskills by Sanford Robinson Gifford
THE BROTHERS DOOM
A TALE OF WE THE IMMORTALS
written by
LUKE WARFIELD
​
SCRIBE IN BLACK PRESS
RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA
©Luke Warfield. All rights reserved.
A QUIET SCENE arises before us, though it shall soon be disturbed.
It begins with a cabin, which, under the white circle of the moon, stands upon a tract of earth where an otherwise sloping ground—abounding in diverse evergreen genera—suddenly planes into a cleared parcel. The parcel, measuring two acres to the square, is cut by human design, whereafter the land ascends sharply again in a succession of escarpments that, at length, terminate at the mountain’s snow-capped brow. The overall sight of the picture—that is, the moon, the stars, the mountain, its verdant grades and hoary vertex, as well as the selfsame cabin at the focal point of all thereof—gives the impression of a grand prostyle preceding some ancient fane now lost to history.
These were a few of the emergent notions Colt Doom considered as he pondered the collective elements of the abovementioned image. Mere moments ago, Colt had turned his big bay horse off the trail for the brush, where, from that furtive position among the thickets, he drew out the field glass stowed in his pistol belt and glassed the total structure of the mountainside, starting, and then returning, to the homestead of interest. The building stood out like a sore on a man’s face, and Colt held the glass to that landmark for a good measure without sound or signal.
Of what could be ascertained in the current climate, the cabin was engineered with a simple design: The builder had organized the structure’s walls with trunks of pine, stacked up to the height of a single story and beaver-tailed together at the corners. A chimney, mortared of numerous stone varieties, stood square and straight at the house’s left flank, but, insofar as Colt could see, no signs of smoke curled up from that imperative vent, and neither did he espy any lamps or tapers burning in the window spaces—of which there were two.
Colt filed that fact, especially the lack of hearth usage, as a peculiarity, and he wondered if the proprietor was indeed out of the home this night. There were other strange paraphernalia scattered about as well—queer rock assemblages, wooden statuettes, and a sweat lodge of some fashioning, but he was too far out to discern them clearly. The effects of the wizard’s brew faded. Soon, Colt would be as blind as any man to set foot in foreign woods at night, and he possessed only one more dose of the potion.
Colt set the field glass aside and drew out a cracked tintype photograph and pondered the faces looking back at him. The photograph rendered the likenesses of two young men, fit and at attention in military dress, the smaller of the pair a younger, crisper representation of Colt’s own person. But his gaze remained on the other man, the much larger specimen. Despite his immense size, the man unmistakably shared in the Doom family heredity. The man possessed a barbaric aspect, with big, round shoulders, a heavy chin, and a thick neck that arose one head height over young Colt. Only the eyes betrayed a soul abounding in mirth, and mirthful he was insofar as Colt remembered him. What was he like now? So many questions, so much time lost.
Colt put the photo away and re-glassed the house. Though he had never called to the residence before, Colt knew well the mountaineer to whom it belonged, for that one and the same fellow was no less than his own and only brother, the very gentle giant rendered in Colt’s beaten photograph—a man, to date, Colt had neither seen nor heard from at any point over the span of twelve years. Tonight, Colt Doom had climbed the mountain with the ambition to amend that issue, though not in the way their mother would have approved. For tonight, Colt Doom, age thirty-three, purposed to execute a different kind of reunion with his estranged sibling, so-named Jaith Doom, by striking a fatal blow against that brother and burying his deceased body under the ground once the enterprise was accomplished.
Colt shifted the field glass back to the cliffs and scanned them, settling on a ledge with sturdy, thick brush not unlike the species within which he currently concealed himself. Colt marked the position as his fighting ground, as the site offered a good view of the surrounding acreage and, what was more, formed a natural nest for a skilled rifleman to perform his deadly business unobserved.
Colt dismounted the bay and tethered the beast to a spruce branch without word or sound, then drew from the saddle scabbard a repeating rifle of an unusually long barrelage—an instrument Colt had obtained during his tenure as a cavalryman in the army of our good republic. Like Jaith, Colt had spent four years fightin’ the ‘grews, although childminding, as Jaith had once put it, was the more apt description. Much to the disappointment of the brothers, there was very little fightin’ the ‘grews to be done in the days succeeding the Prophet’s War, and of the minor skirmishes that seldom arose by the time they had sworn oaths to commander and country, to these events they were excluded.
The sharp, mountain air cut across Colt’s face, his neck, nose, and ears taking the brunt of the discomfort. He pulled the brim of his felt hat low over his eyes and latched up the topmost buttons of the Army-issue coat he wore. The coat was dyed the standard Free Green, spun of wool, and boasted a single row of brass buttons falling down the center. The insignia of the enlisted man, First Class, flashed on the ranking arm, but that noteworthy sigil, like the rest of Colt’s raiment, was weather-beaten and discolored from long hours on the trail and the decay of time. In truth, Colt had not worn the article in these twelve years estranged from Jaith, yet the stitching held up, and he was grateful for that fact given the circumstance.
By the calendar, spring proper had well fallen over the Western Theater, though it seemed that the fair season could not shed the icy tendrils of its predecessor. The angels had proclaimed the land was dying, an effect produced by separation from their idol god, but Colt Doom chalked these explanations up to nothing more than ’grew superstitions. Colt loathed the angels more than most. Four years posted in the so-called havens arbitrating their petty domestic conflicts, clipping wing feathers, and testing one’s patience instructing such a primitive lot in the ways of husbandry would do that.
‘N’ never ye mind their dark magics, backwards religion, ‘n’ queer proverbs! Colt thought.
But ain’t that why you come all this way? Another thought said back.
Colt shrugged the notion off with a sneer.
Opening his possibles pouch, Colt gathered a small, pewter flask and pulled the stopper free. A cone of golden light blushed from the receptacle’s mouth, and he squinted at the oozy fluid within through a single eye. Colt wondered how the elixir was made for the hundredth time, then reminded himself that he did not want to know. He flung back the flask and swallowed all that was left of the sludgy tonic, and it went down gruel-sour and glycerin-sharp.
Immediately, the effects began to take hold: the gloom of night became bright as day, muscles swelling with the thews of youth. No, it mattered not how the potion was made. That was for the wizards to know. For the wizards.
Keeping a good distance from the homestead, at least a mile between it and himself, Colt Doom marched over stone, around bush, and through copse. The rifle he slung across his back and the possibles swayed by a long cord about the chest. When the terrain acutely steepened, Colt huffed in the night’s cold, sweat gliding off his dusky features. Though the man had fallen out of conditioning long ago, the drink turned back the years a half score and two. Once, in the epoch of youth, when he had been full of gravel and hasty to prove himself, Colt had climbed many miles of suchlike earthworks without needing so much as a drop of the stuff. No longer was he that man, and Colt Doom released a silent boon to the gods that the elixir worked just as well on his aim as it did his—
Snap!
At first, the effect did not register with Colt Doom. But when the mind caught up with reality, the body followed suit, and pain flared speedily throughout his complete being with an intensity that sucked the breath from his lungs and the power from his soul. Colt expelled a cry that echoed up and down the mountain—a shout that might have set off an avalanche were the snowfall a particle heavier. He collapsed to the ground, grasping for what was quickly identified to be an iron-toothed bear trap clapped about his foot. Blood oozed in the same measure as pain felt, casting a dizzying hex on the faculties.
Colt pried frantically at the contraption’s jaws, hoping the potion might give him the strength needed to emancipate himself. But, if he had thought rationally in that desperate moment, Colt Doom may have determined this course of action would only compound his predicament. And compound the predicament it did, and the man delivered an encore of his previous moan when the heavy maw smacked down on his leg a second time.
D—n fool! Jaith’ll’ve heard! Jaith’ll come!
Colt glanced back at the cabin, though nothing bestirred there still. An oddity indeed, as Colt previously noted. Perhaps Jaith truly was away. Such a turn of fortune might afford Colt the spell needed to liberate himself undetected.
Naw, Jaith’s about... Jaith’s watchin’... Waitin’... Bidin’ his time... Git yerself out!
But how? Colt almost spoke the question aloud as he examined his predicament with a newfound prudence. The solution struck him like an arrow: The springs!
On either side of the trap’s maw, the spring mechanisms fanned out in two wings of bowed iron; the ardent trapper only needed to compress them simultaneously to disarm the device. Now, what complicated matters for Colt Doom was this: While the use of Colt’s free leg allowed him to compress one of the aforementioned springs, the other leg, obviously obstructed, prohibited his ability to complete the essential second spring compression. What made matters worse was that there seemed no viable means to substitute the use of his immobilized limb with that of another, like a hand, per se, for not enough leverage could be applied to both springs due to his very limited range of motion.
Figger it out! What kin ye do?
Another idea penetrated Colt’s thoughts, this time faster than before, and Colt removed the possibles pouch from about his neck and began scrutinizing the length of its strap. The strip was long, thick, and cut from rawhide, making it stronger than leather, and he wondered if such sturdiness was enough. He then drew forth his boot knife and cut the rawhide strap from the pouch and wound it about one of the springs as tightly as his muscles allowed. He kept one eye on the cabin as he worked, breath hot and smoky, the sour stench of sweat and the coppery stink of blood curling up his nostrils all the while.
Once the rawhide was twisted tight, Colt drew the big Locke pistol from his belt and employed its barrel as a winch, continuing to tighten the strap until the spring compressed and held. Then, using his free foot, Colt Doom compressed the second spring and removed the machine with a painful gasp.
The wound looked grave. The trap had bitten right through Colt’s boot, and upon removing the footwear, he was made privy to just how deep its teeth had sunk--practically to the bone! If Colt Doom had, by a bizarre wisdom, decidedly gone barefoot on this quest like some beast of the field; or, perhaps, had he refused the wizard’s potion hitherto consumed, undoubtedly the blow would have sliced the member clean off.
Colt unwound the rawhide from the spring and coiled it about his injury, sliding his boot back on with many curses. How could he have been so thoughtless? Of course Jaith Doom would have employed traps! Why, it’s just what he himself would have done were things the opposite. How could he have missed it?
Not thankin’, tha’s how!
Presently, Colt lacked the supplies to treat a perilous injury to his person; the medicinal kit he had left stowed with the bay, bringing along extra munitions alone. Nay, what Colt had done would have to do; for now, it was time to reclaim his ground.
Colt rolled prone and crawled uphill, using his knees, hands, and good foot to push himself along. Now and again, he stopped and checked the house and listened to the air. All a trick, he reminded his soul. Jaith was waiting for him, and if he failed to establish the advantageous position soon, no doubt that pernicious brother would prove the victor of all that was to come.
High—high, yer dog!
By and by, Colt Doom scrambled over the lip of that brushy overlook of choice, and he rolled onto his back and heaved when he reached the spot. And he would have lied there unto death were a quitting man, yielding to the exhaustion and pain of his catastrophic accident. Yet Colt did neither of those things, and, forcing himself prone again, he leveled the rifle and peered through the glass and scanned the entirety of the homestead from his fighting ground.
All was quiet yet.
Maybe he’s gon’ trappin’ after all...
Then it happened...
✦✦✦
IT CAME FROM behind, faster than a sparrow in flight and with a bodily force mightier than even the Western Theater Express at full steam. Ere Colt Doom could think, let alone decide on a course of action, the shadow of death was at hand and demanding its remittance.
Colt rolled into space as the deadfall broke through the tree line and smote the cliff, obliterating the elder Doom's choice ground down to the atoms. When he bridged the ten-foot gap to cold slope beneath—with nothing but his own body to absorb the blow!—the world whirred in a spool of shadows and dim tints, occasionally punctuated by sounds of snapping brush and cracking bones, as well as the ubiquitous companion of pain all throughout. Somewhere within the congress of sensations, a thunderclap pierced the din as if a violent squall had rushed over the land to heap insults atop his failings. And after gravity had had its way with him, leaving the man bloodied and aching among the fronds of a wild ivy bush, another thunderous belch shook the pine tops, adjoined by a flash of white fire, and Colt understood, at bearing witness to the phenomenon, this was no heckling storm but the report of an immense hunting rifle—the sort that leveled battle lines wholesale and sank greatbeasts to their chins.
Colt righted himself and skittered behind a belt of pine and sheltered there and listened to the wind. He knew, by now, that his enemy would have concluded the firearm’s necessary reloading cycle; to run was to play Three Kings with death. He surveyed his ground and swept the snow-blown grades for a path of retreat, and he counted thitherto the patches of cover among the quarter-mile sprint back to the cabin. An idea to employ his hat as a lure sprang up in-mind but when he reached for the article he found that it was gone. Lost, undoubtedly, during his tumble down the hillside. He reached for his rifle, but it, too, was gone, leaving him with the pistol alone. Colt cursed the gods with an oath.
“Everythin’s against me!”
“Colt?” a pneumatic voice called back. At first, the retort had seized Colt Doom to the pith, but when the voice called a second time—“Colt Doom?”—his nerves steadied, for he recognized the character of his kinsman within its wraithlike timbre.
“It be,” Colt said.
“Not tryin’ ter kill ye, Colt! I wanna help! I know yer wounded.”
“Why drop a rock on my head than?”
“Case it warn’t you! Warn’t tryin’ ter hit ye no how; if I was, yer’d be kilt already alright.”
Finding this statement ludicrous, Colt scoffed. “Ye never was that good, Jaith.”
“What?”
“Said ye never cud hit a dyin’ horse if he laid down in front of ye! Now why ain’t ye drop yer ordnance ‘n' come out. Talk-like.”
“Only if ye do samewise.”
“Sure. On the count of three we’ll jes throws our guns down ‘n' step out. What says ye?”
“I know yer just gon shoot at me, Colt…”
“Do ye now? Reck’n that be fer ye to me alike.”
“I said I ain’t tryin’ ter kill ye.”
“Sure, I’ll believe that...”
“Suit yerself.” After a moment of repose, the voice followed up with, “Wall, whatta we do than, brother?”
It was a pertinent question, one in need of prompt answering. Colt peeked through a slit in the tree cover but saw no trace of his tormentor flesh or specter, just a black hole in the space where the “nest” once jet forth and the vague, looming bodies of forestry yonder. He turned and eyed the cabin again and deliberated over his options. Returning to the structure was his surest gamble given the newly lost high ground; from there, he might, luck fairing, entrench himself within like a castle knight out of some fairy book romance of valiance and vigilance. On such ground, Colt Doom ought to make his brave and righteous stand unto victory.
Leastwise, if the cabin proved ill-suited for defense against the siege to come, the strategy offered an opportunity to resume his flight to the big bay horse and from the battlefield entire. No matter the scenario, be it fight or flee, each path presented the same, pressing conundrum: To regain some semblance of an advantage—and to succeed in as much undamaged—Colt Doom must wager body and being by incurring enemy fire upon his position, then withdraw down the mountainside while his oppressor underwent the pertinent reloading cycle aforesaid. Not merely once, but thrice need he execute the maneuverer, drawing, evading, and retreating among the patches of cover wounded foot withal.
Yer a d—ned fool, Colt Doom! Why cain’t ye’ve jes stayed home...
Colt pulled the revolver from his belt, unlatched the cylinder, and examined round and cap. All appeared in working order and so he closed the cylinder and stirred up his nerve for lethal action the way a soothsayer draws forth dark spirits to dark purpose. At once, and in like portion, the world grew and shrank—a process by which the parts of their sum were disassembled and inspected so that no furtive thing might go unobserved. A pronged wind gust bowed the pines with a doleful sigh. Loam crunched under boot. Breath smoked in whorls white and was gone. The redolence of gunpowder, of iron and something sour which may have been his own bathlessness for his clothes were wet with perspiration. The injury hammered on.
“Jaith?” Colt said, thinking of ways to distract his foe.
“Say now?” answered the voice.
“Why wasn’t ye home?”
“Don’t stay here no more. Keep the house fer appearances but I sleep up in them caves yon.”
“Dreams?”
“Every night.”
“Me too…”
“Say, how’d yer find me anyhow?” the voice said.
“Did same as ye. I broke the agreement…”
“What yer mean same as me? I ain’t come lookin’ fer ye...”
“Naw... Wall... ‘course not, ye wretch! What I’m meanin’ ter say is I went home. Sawr that letter yer writ Ma ‘n’ Pa couple years back. That, if I ain’t mistaken, was against the rules. Hells, didn’t know yer learnt yer letters! Thought it a ruse er somethin’.”
“I lernt. Wrote a note askin’ the postmaster ter read it ter Ma ‘n’ Pa. Take it they did?”
“Theys did. Three times. She had anyone who ken read at the county seat do it, too. Memorized the whole thing, our Ma—even ‘cited it ter me! Bragged it come all the way from Keoma.”
“‘N' how... Ah...” the voice cracked. “How is they?”
“Old. Ma’s got pains that keep her down most days. Pa seems strong enough. Mayhap a lil’ skinny. Theys thought we was dead. Done nearly kilt them ter see me ride up. Done kilt me ter ride off again...” Colt choked up at this and cleared his throat. “Hey, know what they tolt me?”
“Whas that?”
“One of the boys come lookin’ fer us.”
“Who?”
“Bull Fisher,” Colt said. “Ol’ Mush Mouth Fish. Gods strike me down fer lyin’ if he wern’t the best Three Kings player I’s ever sawr. Done took all my pay more than once. Tough ‘n’ clever sonofab—h for a Tollman. Don’t know nobody who had more sand though he was short as a melonhead.”
“Same, I reck’n...” the voice chuckled.
“What’s that he used ter call ye? Old Man Boy er somethin’? Said yer was too young ter be actin’ like the old soul ye was...” Colt laughed again, this time heartier, with tears pooling in the corners of his eyes. “Cud hardly understand a d—mn werd he ever said.”
“Good man, that Tullman.” The voice said. “Did ye tell Ma en Pa anythin’ about us? Yer know, about our treaty er why we don’t come home?”
“I ain’t tolt them nothin’. I jes’ promised to find ye, ‘n’ gave ‘em some plews. A good bit fer the trouble. They should be all took care of till they last days, I ‘spect. Find Ma a good doctor ter soothe them pains.
“What, ye a rich man now, Colt Doom?” The voice sounded genuinely surprised.
“Got lucky. Came up big in them shoals down in Big Water City. Took me a job as a lighthouse keeper, but when all those fellers were seekin’ out treasure on the reefs, I took my shot.”
“Hit the mark, did ye? That’s smart. I’m happy fer ye.”
“Thankee... Anyhow, I tracked yer postage to Keoma. Used that ol’ photograph we gave ter Ma n Pa ter identify ye. Found some folks who said ye was a woodcutter ‘n’ railroad man called Belt. Said ye took on with a troop of Tremblers after some time, so I tracked ye ter that bunch, and they pointed me here. Wall, yer wife did.”
The voice did not respond.
“Never took ye fer the marryin’ type, ner the religious one,” said Colt after a moment.
“Was hopin’ ter find a way ter break the spell… Them Tremblers is the ones who taught me readin’ ‘n' writin’. So I cud know the scriptures. That’s why I come up here. Seek the gods, invoke their power. Mayhap finds some redemption while I’m at it. I... I hate what we done, Colt...”
It was Colt’s turn to say nothing. He understood, at least, the curse-breaking venture. The rest was misplaced guilt, and he felt no such remorse for the villains who had received their due reward. Colt remembered himself. He had meant for the discussion to serve as a distraction while he finalized his escape route, but instead Colt had become the distracted one. It felt too good to talk to Old Man Boy, as their friend had knighted him, and he had lost his way in the experience. The realization made him fume. Why did things have to be this way? Why?
The voice seemed to echo this same line of thought, for it said, “Yer know we really ain’t gotta do this, Colt. We ain’t gotta give that ‘grew the last werd, deserve it as we might.”
Colt’s blood boiled—all the reasons for his calling here flooding in like a raging tide. The earlier feelings of nostalgia and longing suddenly burned up like paper on the face of the sun, and he shook with fists so tight the bones in his knuckles popped all at once.
“Speak fer yerself!” Colt said. “I ain’t deserve nothin’ like this! We did what Little Boots said. Orders, tha's how I see it! ‘Sides, them b—ds killed two of our kind. They got what was comin’ ter ‘em judged ‘n’ just!”
“I mean it, brother, we ken beat it. Go back ter where ye come from, and I’ll move somewheres else. Simple as that. The answers er out there.”
“Oh? Answers? Yer mean five years yon when yer hunt me down ‘n’ shoot me like a dog in my own bed? I’m through sleepin’ with the tapers lit. Through sittin’ in corners ‘n’ countin’ steps ‘n’ markin’ alleys from one door ter the next! I’m tired of dyin’ young bein’ the only thing on my mind from when I get up ter when I lay down. Tired of it hauntin’ my dreams. Tired of feelin’ like I got no future no matter what I do er how hard I try. No, ser, I’m gon live!”
The time had come! Colt spun and cut into the open and leveled the pistol and spammed its contents upon the great, high mountain. Something huge and hunched moved along the scarps to Colt’s left flank, but when he swung the Locke crosswise to strike the creature down, the entity had already vanished into the woods again—gone like some grotesque revenant back to its demesne of horrors. The sky broke with the report of a cannonade, and Colt threw himself down in defense against it. Drawing himself up by the scruff, Colt Doom ran for the cabin as fast as any mortal man’s dexterity would allow. Balls zipped overhead. Air whistled across the ears. Funnels of dust burst to the left and the right, and then fell to the ground like ash.
“D—ned ye, mountain devil!” he shouted.
Just then, an acute band of air glanced off Colt Doom’s right earlobe, and the man let out a shout of fright as he tumbled to the ground. On instinct, he reached for the appendage but found only blood, which glazed his fingers thick and dribbling, analogous to a dipstick drawn from a bucket of fresh paint. He felt about the side of his head and found nothing there, and the truth fell unto him like a night terror.
His ear... It was gone!
“Gods!” he yelled, and he looked to the mountain as one expecting the gods to answer.
What’re ye doing, fool?! Git up! Hide!
Colt cussed his fragility, for there he lay like a weeping child, meanwhile granting his foe room to prime the next volley when the house was nigh ten meters across the parcel. Should he lie his head upon the enemy’s lap, too? Where was his military bearing? Had he become so soft in his civilian life? So flaccid of mind? No longer! He must fight! He must live!
With that newfound vigor, Colt righted himself and rushed for the cabin, the pain in his foot and ear remote now, numbed by sheer wrath, his mind on nothing other than the roar of the mountain, the expected kill shot to inevitably follow, and making it to cover before either of those things could occur. But the shot was yet to come, and Colt dove behind the body of the house and curled into a ball only to be greeted with silence. He rolled against the cabin wall and sat there heaving, temples, chest, and ears thrashing like a drum and fife line on the field of battle. He spat, wiped the snot from his mouth, and spat again. He popped open the cylinder of his revolver and dumped the ash and began reloading the armament from powder to ball to cap.
“Gods d—n sonofab—h!” he huffed. He flicked the cylinder closed again and checked his position. For the first time, Colt saw up close that which he had merely speculated from afar: Jaith’s homestead was furnished with bizarre, if not obscene, relics and curios—a funhouse of painted cairns, stone circles, and alien calligraphies established and devoted to purposes and divinities beyond reckoning. Carved runes arced along the cabin’s surface in queer scrawls. Dream catchers hung from the eaves, swaying tandem with the wilted tails of trapped game, beaded with crystals and polished pebble stones that clinked and pinged on their hooks. There were animal skulls, bone-made figurines, stick effigies, and other handcrafted relics Colt knew no name for.
So, the rumors were true… Jaith, yer done lost yer mind up here!
Colt rallied. Now was the moment of decision: Entrench or flee. Stand or run. What was he to choose? There were wounds of the flesh to think about, and without treatment they might turn grave. Perhaps even interfere with his ability to withstand siege. But then again, Colt Doom might never have this opportunity again; to run would mean to lose the advantage forever. Moreover, it meant to live on the run until whatever end found him.
That ain’t no way...
Colt wiped the sweat from his forehead and began crawling.
​​​
✦✦✦
​
JAITH DOOM LEANED on his hunting rifle as one would a staff, a genuine fifty caliber Rawlins and brass trimmed, too, the man himself like some cloaked magus recalling an ancient and forbidden spell. In truth, he stood contemplating a stratagem, one prepared years aforetime.
And now befell the final step.
Initially, Jaith had hoped to destroy his rival with one of the many snares rigged about the property, for he did not wish to witness the killing as it happened. After all, Sadra, the Matron of Birthing, abhorred killing, and Jaith harbored no desire to engage in a battle with Colt Doom or watch the machines of his own devising fatally break the body of his older sibling. But now he had been forced to play an active role in the breaking, as Lady Thyatra, Matron of Chance, determined he drop sights and pull trigger on “Old Colt” like he would an ordinary beast of the field. Unlike such matters, he had not found the courage to aim true.
In another lifetime, Jaith Doom had been a poor shot indeed; his brother was right to say as much. However, that life was not this life, those times not these times, those days not these days. And yet, if there were any consolation to be found within the dreadful business of fratricide, at least the coming deathblow would be as sightless as it was swift, and what would be left of Colt Doom post hoc would bear no resemblance to the boy he had grown up with nor the man he once knew.
The house was the last ruse, his most dangerous and devastating trick, and he had, with some difficulty, managed to flush his brother down to that final play.
And what would Locidion, Patron of Justice, think of this ploy?
He sighed. From this state of mind, Jaith Doom watched the cabin, silent and pensive over his backwater kingdom. He observed it all perfectly, in night and light, for he had trained his eyes to pierce the darkness, to remember every bump and fold of his land should his eyes ever fail him, be they by natural or violent circumstances. Up here, he was like a god. How Colt had handled himself was a mystery, perhaps even blind luck, but now that luck had run out.
Jaith scratched the beard that blew out his face, a fleece so dense and tangled it might have been mistaken for bone. Combined with his colossal height, and in addition to the bearskin coat swathed about his person as a mantle, the man could just as easily have passed for a runaway Fouke slave in search of manumission among the mountain strongholds of its kind.
The house stood quiet, solemn, its back to the highland folds with the same indifference native to all things nonliving. Wind lashed. The smell of evergreens pervaded. A cloud crossed the moon, further dimming an already darkened panorama. All fell to a queer stillness as if the earth itself were waiting with expectancy. Jaith Doom marshaled the last of his strength, and he took aim at the solitary window facing his direction. Resting his finger on the trigger, he waited like a legionnaire anticipating the officer’s command.
Ready... Aim...
“Locidion, fergive me. Pargum, guide my eyes...”
Jaith had practiced the scenario a thousand times, imagined the explosion a thousandfold hence. But his imaginings had understated the blast that would be, for when he pulled that hairline trigger of Markish craft and the Rawlins belched and the muzzle spat flame, the entire mountain went up with it one thousandfold squared. The concussion was apocalypse, and all went white from it.
Then black.
Then quiet.
​
✦✦✦
​
FOR THAT FIRST moment superseding the blast, Jaith Doom wondered if he had been knocked out by its effect, and, if so, for how long. He sat configured in a spreadeagled position among the thickets, sans rifle and dignity. Not that he cared for abstract states like that anymore; he had shed such shames long ago. Concerning the discipline of the Trembling Hermit, pride was a hindrance to the acquisition of mystical experience, and mystical experience was imperative to the acquisition of Truth.
“For it is Truth that sets one free,” the parson had said. Jaith had spent much time seeking Truth.
Jaith drew himself back to his feet and recovered the rifle from a bush a few meters yon and wiped the soot from its machinery. The pong of fired blasting oil was as cogent as it was caustic, and his eyes burned like they had done throughout his tenure mixing the substance for the Western Theater Rail Co.—an employment tendered some nine years past. Those early days this side of the Grand Mountains were hard times for Jaith Doom, before he had met the parson and devoted himself to seeking spiritual enlightenment.
An enlightenment, he had hoped, would purchase him an opportunity to return home.
Mayhap yer ain’t so sworn off after all, son of Luisia!
Jaith clawed at his beard again and surveyed the mess that was formerly a hermitage. Ash and dust fell from the sky in gray scales, swirling about a fog that now covered the mountainside thick as bog water. The smoke was too dense to approximate any measurement of damage, and Jaith knew to risk venturing forth before the air had cleared was to commit a potentially fatal error.
‘Sides, ye really so eager ter see what yer done?
Gods, that smell... It was like burning blood, the taste of it on his tongue.
An eerie quiet settled over the land, somber and heavy, like that which befell the day he and Colt struck their now defunct pact. Jaith reloaded the rifle and listened to the air again and waited for the ash cloud to dissipate. As all soon became unveiled, a remorse blacker than the deepest grief suddenly overtook his person—an anguish beyond even the most talented orator’s skill for articulation. Jaith’s throat closed. His lips quivered.
Dead... Colt is... No, not for sure. Have ter be sure first.
Jaith choked these feelings back down with a gasp. He steeled his mind and straightened his body to attention. The task ahead would require all the soldierly bearing he could muster. Once he had confirmed the kill, confirmed the death of his elder brother, a man whom he had slain with five drums of blasting oil by his own concocting, then—and only then!—would he give himself over to all grief. And it would be a grief lasting him the rest of his life. After the murder of one’s own flesh and blood, it was the only right and proper thing to do. Ye, it was the only worthy penance.
Wall, let’s git on with it than!
Jaith Doom began his descent down the mountain.
✦✦✦
NOTHING REMAINED OF the cabin’s structure save its chimney and a load-bearing stud or two which, by some enigmatic work of force, stood black and smoking like cooked bones in a smoldering pit. The rest of the dwelling lay in pieces scattered about the parcel, rent thusly by the salvo that seemed in and of itself capable of splitting the very mountain in two. That was good; Jaith had designed it to be as much: the final effort of a last stand in the ultimate conflict.
Speaking of the man, Jaith Doom kept his rifle leveled, head and eyes on the swivel as he moved through what was left of his estate. He toed at piles of rubble, kicked over broken boards, and swept away sundered rock, rooting about the ruins for any signs of Colt Doom living or deceased. Occasionally, he stopped and listened to the forest air and sniffed about like a dog that had caught the wind of something it could not quite identify. At any moment, Jaith presumed to come upon Colt’s pulverized corpse, and the horror of how that grim discovery might arise played before his mind like some tragic yarn of Letian weaving.
At length, Jaith found nothing, although that did not prevent his pulse from pounding as if he had, or the palsied hands by which he held the fifty-caliber Rawlins. The smog had, at last, pulled back into the tree line, slowly working its way toward the valley and off the mountain completely. The condition of Jaith’s plat was almost entirely visible now, and the break in cloud cover produced an eerie incandescence over all as if this homestead were part of some remote sanctum devoted to its worship.
There, in that place, right at that exact moment in time, he found the first signs of his nightmare made manifest. Near the southern boundary of the homestead, where the upland folds swaddled the road about their rugged lineaments, Jaith happened upon a pile of clothing that had been blown to rags. There was a blouse, some fragments of boot, a spur, trousers torn to strips... But chief among these items was the green uniform coat of the Free Army enlisted man, split violently across the back, its brass buttons still fastened from collar to hem on the front side. Jaith had owned a jacket just like it, though he had not seen the article since his time cutting lumber in Keoma, during the early days of his exile.
And fer the better, he thought.
Jaith crouched and examined the fragments and lifted them and turned them about and put them back down again and contemplated their implications.
Blown clean off in the blast. But where’s the body? There ain’t no blood or nothin’ neither. No way he survived that...
He pawed through the pockets next, drew out a square of card paper and turned it over and grunted as if struck by a lance: The old photograph... The one they had gifted their mother a life age ago.
“Oh, gods... Please...”
Jaith wept without governance.
He remembered that red-letter day down to the tittle: The Brothers Doom had just finished graduation parade and were thence fully fledged fellows of the First Cavalry Dragoons—the “First of the First” of President Thoreau’s newly minted Third Cavalry Corps. The honor he had felt that morn, sitting for the lensman beside his older sibling and closest companion... Why, it was the proudest moment of Jaith Doom’s life! The second-most was the day they gifted the print to their mother; the look on her face was one Jaith would cherish for all the years to come.
“What am I ter do?” Jaith prayed. “Will the truth not break her heart? Guide me, O Great Host!”
The answer came as if by cue, and Jaith heard the sound of that reply before catching its vision, and he jumped to his feet to face the thing rushing up the southern bend.
It was... A mount! A rider!
Jaith Doom nearly turned to stone.
Ephus—the God of Death has come for me!
✦✦✦
THE RIDER EXPLODED through the thickets and into the yard, rushing past the flabbergasted Jaith who had lost all feeling in his arms and legs. All he could do was stand and watch as the rider spun his mount and whooped and drew the beast up into a terrifying rear—a hulking monster of red horseflesh with void-black eyes and a lacertine snout that spat tongues of fire with every exhalation.
The rider sat naked wholly, pale and glistening in the moonbeams. His hair sparkled as burnished gold, and the patrician face, the one Jaith remembered from all those years ago, glowered at him with the grim severity of a disapproving saint. The rider spun his mount again, this time showing off a set of sheared stalks where wings had once flourished, his back and sides now slathered in a sluice of golden ichor. The rider then issued an even greater cry than the one previous, and he put the reigns in his mouth and brandished a pair of pistols one in each hand and spurred his mount forward—yelling and thumbing and firing.
Death’s come! Death!
Jaith Doom reacted on instinct, his hands moving all by themselves. Jaith leveled the rifle and fired right as a gale of bullets pelted his own body all over. The head of the rider’s mount burst in a particle cloud of blood and viscera, and the steed collapsed chest-long to the dirt, throwing the rider through the air and down with it in demise.
Pain lanced through Jaith Doom’s body. He coughed and wheezed as he felt about his person in search of the wounds.
“S—t!”
The first of them he found located above his left collar bone, a small hole that cut clean through the fur coat as if it were made of vellum. The second had bitten into the underarm of that same side, dripping like an old waterskin with faulty stitching. His left leg throbbed, for it, too, had been punctured at the thigh, and there was also a burning sensation in his groin. When searched, Jaith confirmed yet another leak in the human hull. Jaith panicked, but before he could act on remedying the situation, movement bestirred across the yard. A dark body lurched upright with a gasp, the revenant’s face splattered with gore and grime.
It was Colt Doom—alive!
The elder Doom coughed and spat and glanced about as if he had forgotten where he was or why he was there. When he finally spotted Jaith nigh fifty meters across the plat, Colt Doom scrambled to his feet and rushed his younger sibling down, yelling the battle bellow of the First Cavalry dragoons. Jaith reached for his boot knife, but Colt was already on him by the time he drew it forth. Colt kicked Jaith’s hand and it snapped with a loud, branch-cracking noise, and the blade flung away.
In a half-breath, they were rolling about the parcel struggling to get at each other’s throats.
Jaith bit, clawed, and tore at his enemy’s naked hide, all pain gone now, a mere faint recollection as he entered that state of disembodiment the mystic Tremblers called ecstasy.
Jaith rolled on top of Colt and drew up his fists and smote his foe upon the brow. He did so again, and again and again, and again and again and again and again. It was pure blood lust now! A frenzy! Nothing could thwart him nor take him!
I will be free!
Jaith bore down on his enemy’s throat, linking his big, bloody fingers around Colt’s flabby tissue. He squeezed with all his strength until his adversary’s eyes bubbled in their sockets. Colt kicked, wiggled, and wrenched, but it was no use. Jaith was too big. Too strong. Too honed in.
Acute pain suddenly spiked through Jaith’s collar bone, and he screamed, releasing his foe immediately thereafter. In a strange turn, though Jaith knew not how, for it transpired that quickly, the enemy was sitting on his chest, fingers jammed deep into his wound, dug in like a hook through the gills of a fish. The pain made Jaith helpless as he yelled and writhed, striking out at the interloper, straining to throw him off like a wild ostrix.
No! no! no! no! no! no!
Something punched Jaith’s skull from the side. Blunt. Heavy. A popping noise. Fuzziness. He blinked. The enemy, a shadow figure now, a dark watcher, held something in its hand. The shadow man raised it high... then brought the thing down on Jaith’s head again—and again and again, and again and again and again and again.
In his mind, Jaith appealed once more to the gods, begging their intervention. This time, the boon was answered, for in that moment, Jaith Doom felt no more.
​
✦✦✦
​
COLT DOOM DROPPED the blood-slaked stone in his hand, and he stood and looked upon the mortis-bound figure that was once his own and only brother. In an act of startling fury, Colt beat his chest and let forth a war cry so piercing and awful that some claimed to have heard its peal as far away as Bishop’s Point, where credulous yeomen ascribed that dreadful stridency to some nameless evil of Perdition’s siring. Colt flung himself upon his brother’s corpse and sobbed, all wrath exorcised now. The terrible deed was accomplished; there could be no undoing it. The angel’s prophecy had come to pass. It was he, Colt Doom, the last brother standing: a victory bequeathed without honor and tendered at a price beyond the most unbearable of reckonings.
The sobs... not just tears of grief, but release.
“Jaith!” managed Colt, and he tore clumps of hair from his scalp with hard pulls. “Mother, fergive me...”
Colt Doom wept for a long time.
​
✦✦✦
​
IT WAS TO be a gray and smoky morn, a portent of pending rain for those on the flat, and further snow for the lone grave that lay freshly cut and filled upon the mountain. Colt Doom stood looking down at it, enrobed in his brother’s bearskin coat, the fur smattered with the blood of the man who now occupied that small rise of turned earth. The raiment smelled of bananas, a by-product of Jaith’s pastime alchemizing blasting oil, no doubt, and the odor reminded Colt of his arrival in New Migdad some twelve years ago.
Back then, the great North-South Railroad had just broken ground in Clayton County, positioned to carry the mass migration of hopeful husbandmen, wily carpet-baggers, and genteel plantationists to the sunny province respectively: men and women, all of whom, would try their hand at the difficult trade of citrus farming, for which the State Assembly offered one hundred acres free of cash-money to those with the mettle and industry to assume the venture.
Initially, Colt, too, had answered the assembly’s call, confident his upbringing on the family farm would bolster his chances of a successful proving up. But the only thing Colt’s tenure as a citrus farmer proved to be was a failure, lasting just three, brief years without viable yield. Like his late sibling, Colt had toiled in his fair share of odd jobs thereafter: longshoreman, lighthouse keeper, cashier... In contrast to Jaith, however, Colt had managed to find a modicum of success in the end, unexpected as though it was.
Colt sighed and wiped his face. He felt an odd sense of relief there and then, and he quietly hated himself for it. Twelve years of existential fear, paranoia, and despair did strange things to a body. Twelve years was a long time.
Colt turned his focus back to the grave and drew out the photograph and held it up. Moments ago, Colt had finished the toil of interring his kinsman, setting rocks about the perimeter of the mound. Once finished, he punctuated the tomb with a small cairn piled at the headspace for a marker, utilizing the very slag piece used to complete his awful deed for a capstone. The object was still smeared afresh with the blood of the dead. Colt wanted it that way; it was his silent confession to the world. By positioning the stone there, he gave himself permission to forget, to never dwell on these matters again. Nary a blink, nary a breath, as Ma Doom used to say.
Colt leaned on Jaith’s Rawlins gun as a crutch, his bum leg wrapped in rags and throbbing like damnation. The mangled ear burned both hot and cold simultaneously. The effects of the potion were nearly gone, all the aches and pains of mortal flesh returning, reminding him that he was, in point of fact, just a man. There were also shrapnel wounds from the cabin blast in need of attention. He ought not linger, lest he join his brother in death.
Colt hobbled forward and slid the tintype under the bloodied stone and returned to his position at the foot of the plot. He looked away and checked the cloudage, then turned back to the grave. A cold wind swept by and snapped at his hurts. This world was changing indeed, little by little, each and every year, proving less fertile, less tolerable. The ‘grews had said the planet was dying, and Colt hated the ‘grews more than most. Jaith Doom was dead, and it was the hand of the angels that drove it all to fruition. It was their dark magic. The Brothers Doom were merely pawns in an act of desperate revenge; that was the capital T truth, and it boiled Colt’s blood.
“I’ll kill ‘em all!” Colt heard himself. “I promise ye, brother, I’ll git every, last ‘grew sumb—h I git my hands on! I’ll join them wizards back home. I’ll cut their wings ‘n’ burn ‘em all fer what they did ter us! I swear on that! On my life I—”
The sound of foot patter tickled Colt’s ears, cutting through his oath. Something like claws on broken trail. Someone was riding up the path; he felt it.
Colt leveled the hunting rifle and turned to meet them.
​
✦✦✦
​
ON A TALL ostrix of piebald feathers there sat a man, clad in the same tattered uniform coat of the Free Army enlisted. He was a fat, grizzled fellow, with stubby arms and legs and a pan-flat nose that produced a boar-like aspect at first glance. Despite the grim patches of fur about the mouth, Colt Doom recognized the caller immediately.
“Bull?” he said, astonished. “Bull Fisher?”
“Wall, I’ll be... Colt Doom, darlin’!” ejaculated the rider with equal astonishment. “What good fortune is this? I ain’t set eyes on ya in, oh, what be it now... Why, o’er ten years!”
Bull’s face changed, shock giving way to shadow as he eyed the grave, then surveyed the surrounding parcel, taking in all there was about the scene. “What happened here? Where’s Ol’ Man Boy?”
“Blasting oil done it,” said Colt, lowering his head. “Jaith, he, ah...”
The big bob in Bull’s fleshy neck dunked. “Gods be d—ed, so that’s what it was. Herd the report. Thought a cannon went off er suchlike...”
Colt nodded, choking on a volley of grief that sought to rise up and strangle him.
“I’m so sorry, my dear brother... Took me all this time ta find him... The both of ya, I reck’n...”
Colt nodded. “Heard ye came by the farm.”
“Aye, a few years back...” Silence. Then: “Why’d ya run off fer? When ya disappeared, we all thought we done somethin’. When ya ne’er got home, thought the werst, I did.”
Colt opened his mouth to speak but closed it immediately without reply, and the two men lingered in still more silence for an extensive spell. Colt felt ashamed of himself; after everything they had been through together, to leave their comrades blindly grasping in a fog of conjecture, and without so much as a goodbye note, was truly unforgiveable. But what else were they to do? Would anyone have believed them? Would they have understood? Grief and longing fizzed up inside him again, and this time Colt Doom could do nothing to stop its outflow.
“Remember when them ‘grews escaped the Chayoti haven ‘n’ they sent our reg out ter catch ‘em?” Colt said. “The ones that kilt summa Silk’s boys that time.”
“I’ll ne’er ferget it,” said Bull, adjusting himself in the saddle. The ostrix squawked. “Little Boots pushed us day ‘n’ night fer a week, no respite. Thank our blessed Lady Thyatra them fairies’ wings was still clipped, otherwise we’d a ne’er caught up to ‘em. Little Boots woulda tramped us all o’er the Western Theater a-searchin’, and we wouldn’t a come back till they was found er Perdition took us. Ne’er one ta lose out on a pursuit, our Ol’ Rough ‘n’ Ready.”
“That he warn’t.” Colt loosed a wan smile.
“But we paid them primitives back, ain’t we? Whupped ‘em down ta their last, then took their wings ‘n’ left their corpses ta burn on The Stacks. Showed them sprites the right hand of Free Justice!”
“Wall... About that night, Bull...”
And so Colt Doom told his comrade everything: He began with how, after tracking down, battling, and subsequently destroying every member of that fugitive angel band aforementioned, a skirmish in which Bull Fisher was, admittedly, a participant, the task of procuring the slain chieftain’s wings fell unto Colt and Jaith jointly. At that very moment, in the darkness of the Chimney Stack Mountain caves, and before either brother’s blade could taste one particle of feather or bone, the silver-haired angel suddenly awakened, his gray, drifting eyes dim in death. Raising one bloodied hand, the angel proceeded to whisper in the language of his race, pronouncing over Colt and Jaith what they could only interpret to be the most terrible of curses.
Brother against brother... Who lives, who dies, the battle decides... Brother against brother...
Was it indeed a curse? A mere, whimsical proverb? Perhaps it was nothing more than a neutral foretelling, flashing before the eyes of a fading soul? Nevertheless, the interpretation was clear, even if the brothers knew not how they fully understood it: At an unknown time, and upon an undisclosed ground, Colt and Jaith Doom would take up pistol and saber, and in the same fashion they had made war against the Chayoti angels, so would they battle each other to the death. And when the last cold wind blew through the mountain caves on that fateful night in the great state of South Nebron, taking with it the soul of that immortal chieftain, the oracle was sealed in their hearts.
The Brothers Doom believed in the angel’s prophecy, through and through, mind to marrow, soul to soles. With every atom of their being, they believed.
Colt began to shake. He paced back and forth, sweat rolling down his sable visage. All those secrets locked away for so long, necrotizing like a gangrenous wound. He breathed heavily, shoulders palsying as a man possessed by unquenching laughter.
Next, he spoke of his pact with Jaith, an oath ratified with bloody palms the very morning of their discharge from military service.
“We aimed ter fight this curse by goin’ our separate ways,” Colt said. “We took vows never ter see each other again in all our lives. We was supposed ter change our names, cut off all past associations, ‘n’ we cud never write er visit home. Most importantly, we’d never tell a soul. We also agreed that whoever broke the pact was the one the curse would kill.”
Colt carried on, speaking of the twelve years of estrangement following—of their various pursuits to build lives for themselves in the southeast and northwest respectively. He emphasized their desperation, and how it drove them to eventually seeking out the help of wizards and Tremblers alike. He also unpacked, at length, the tortuous paranoia surrounding their afeared early deaths, and the constant barrage of endless nightmares in which they hunted down and killed each other in their own beds. By the end, the Brothers Doom had become hermits both, Colt shut up in his big city hotel room, and Jaith confined to his secluded mountain homestead—driven mad by visions of death lurking down every alley and under every rock.
It was a madness that ultimately spurred Colt to action.
To the mountain.
To Jaith.
When Colt had finished, he sighed a deep exculpation of air. It was done. His confession. His absolution, maybe. Bull Fisher watched him, an expression of astonishment splattered across the man’s flabby jowls. Were those tears welling in his eyes, too? Did he believe?
“Reck’n it sounds crazy, Bull,” Colt said, feeling suddenly self-conscious, “but I swears to ye... We ain’t never took no issue with ye er the boys. We ain’t mean ter insult any of ye. That’s the gods honest tr—"
Crack!
Something hot and wet burst through Colt’s throat. He coughed as he groped about his windpipe in an involuntary act of defense. Blood. It sluiced down his chest like a floodplain, the sudden revelation that he had been shot inundating his mind along with all its implications. Colt looked to Bull Fisher dumbfounded.
The fat man sat on his bird, a smoking pistol in his left hand, drawn faster than the speed of thought it seemed. Colt couldn’t believe the turn of events before him. That man, Bull Fisher, their friend... Yes, those were tears. The man was sobbing indeed.
“I’m sorry, Colt darlin’,” said Bull Fisher. “I couldn’t help it... I must confess it... I can’t live with it no more myself!”
Colt fell down, the world dimming away as the currency of life drained from its mortal strongroom.
“Ya told me so now I tell ya back,” Bull continued. “It all makes sense. I believe ya, see! Them infernal dreams, I been havin’ ‘em, too! Visions, they is! I sees them always! I sees the old boys from the reg, comin’ ta kill me! I didn’t believe it at ferst, but then, one day, five years ago, Deek Lent comes ta me. Deek, he tries ta kill me! But I held out ’n’ killed him ferst. Then I knew, I knew these wun’t jes’ dreams, Colt, darlin’. They was real! The boys, they was really comin’ fer me! So I rode out ta find ‘em ‘n’ get ‘em all ferst—get ‘em all before they get me!
“I found Felp Wheeler in New Fioren, shot him dead like I done ya now. I even got me Little Boots; he wun’t so easy, but I did it. I got him. That’s why I went ta visit ya ma ‘n’ pa’s place back then. I went not ta check up on ya, but ta kill ya! Finally caught up with ya in Keoma ‘n’ by luck it seems. Followed ya here, ‘n’, well, ya know the rest.
“I’m sorry, Colt! I’m so sorry! I believe ya; ya tale, it validates! Please forgive me! I promise ya, when it’s all o’er, I’ll make them ‘grews pay! I’ll make ‘em pay a hundred-fold fer every one o’ us lost!”
Colt Doom’s vision had already turned black. He heard the ostrix’s talons wheel and patter off down the trail, the sobs of the rider fading away like the world.
The last thing Colt Doom heard that morning, the final sound in the span of his lifetime, was the report of a distant gun. Not the pistol old Bull Fisher had leveled upon him, but a rifle shot of great power over great distance, superseded by the squeal of an ostrix.
