Grey had lived in a variety of climates all over the country, from the deep snows and biting cold of a Missouri winter to a swampy Florida summer, where the only thing that could move through the humidity were mosquitoes. But this desert was how he imagined the landscape of Hell must be. Nothing out here was friendly, nothing offered either comfort or ease, and everything seemed to want to kill everything else. They passed a tarantula locked in mortal combat with a scorpion, and perched above them on a rock was a horned lizard waiting to eat the winner.
The pace was monotonous, and after a while Grey drifted into a doze. But his dreams were haunted and strange.
In those dreams he walked naked across this desert, and no matter how many days or weeks passed, the horizon never got any closer. When he paused to weep or pick at the sun blisters on his skin, he’d hear a sound and turn to see a whole company of ghosts following behind. They were all broken and dismembered. Fresh wounds gaped on their skin and they left behind them a trail of bloody footprints that vanished into the far, far distance.
These were the same ghosts that had followed him for years, but now their company had grown. Riley Jones and Big Curley led the grotesque parade. Their eyes were as black as polished coal; their reaching hands as pale and mottled as mushrooms.
“Grey…,” they murmured. All of them, a chorus of spectral voices that sounded almost like empty wind drifting across the hot sands. “Grey … come with us. Come join us.”
“No!” screamed his dreaming self. “You’re dead. You can’t be here.”
“Come with us,” they cried. “Stop running. You can stop running now. It’s peaceful here. It’s quiet and cool. You don’t need to be afraid.”
The words were meant to soothe, to lull, but they were spoken by shattered mouths filled with jagged stumps of teeth. Pale tongues writhed like fat worms in those mouths, and it all conspired to tell the lie behind the soft words.
“No,” said Grey again, but each time he said it the power in his voice faded, faded …
They kept calling him.
“You’re not real!” he whispered. “You’re dead. For God’s sake stop following me. I’m sorry. God knows, I’m sorry. Leave me alone.”
“Never.”
“For the love of God, leave me in peace!”
Their voices faded as his panic pushed him up through the waters of sleep. As he broke the surface and came awake with a start, he could hear the last echoes of their ghostly chorus.
“There is no peace,” they said. “Not for you. Never for you…”
Chapter Thirteen
Looks Away snapped awake and cut a suspicious glance at Grey.
“Did you say something?”
Their horses were still moving forward with the implacable plodding gait that kept them all from dying, out in the relentless sun. Both men had slept.
Grey cleared his throat. “No. I was just studying the terrain.”
“Studying the terrain,” echoed Looks Away. “With your eyes closed?”
“How would you know? You’ve been snoring for the last three miles.”
“Sioux never fall asleep in the saddle,” said Looks Away, offended. “I was contemplating our problem and formulating various plans.”
“Sure,” said Grey. “While snoring.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of Zen meditation? That was a mantra.”
“I don’t know what that is, but it sounded like snoring.”
“You,” said Looks Away, “are welcome to kiss my ass.”
“And you are welcome to—.”
Grey stopped and suddenly stood up in the stirrups.
“What—?” began Looks Away, but then he turned as well.
They both squinted into the distance. There, so far away that it was nearly invisible in the heat shimmer, was something that glittered. Sparks of sunlight flew out from it like they would from fragments of a broken mirror, except these were above the ground.
“What is that?” murmured Looks Away.
“I don’t know. Something metal, maybe? Or glass…?”
Looks Away cupped his hands around his eyes and stared hard. “By Jove,” he exclaimed, “it’s a town.”
“A town? There’s no town way out here.”
“There is now, my dear chap. I can see buildings and one structure that looks for all the world like a theater. Or, perhaps a music hall.”
“A music hall? Out here in the middle of no-damn-where?”
“So it seems.”
Grey shielded his eyes and stared, too, but all he could see were indistinct lumps. And whatever it was that sparkled.
“You can actually see a town?” he asked.
“I can.”
“You have damn good eyes, then.”
“Well, my people didn’t name me ‘Looks Away’ because I was nearsighted.”
Grey thought about that, grunted, shrugged, and sat down in the saddle. “I know we’re on a kind of mission here,” he began slowly, “but—.”
“Oh, absolutely,” said Looks Away and kicked his horse in the direction of the town.
Grey smiled at his retreating back. “Well, okay then.”
He nudged Mrs. Pickles and followed.
Chapter Fourteen
The wooden sign across the town’s main—and only—arch had two words painted in bloodred letters.
FORTUNE CITY
They paused and looked up at the sign. All around those words someone had nailed hundreds of small hand mirrors to the wood, but the glass in every single mirror was cracked.
“Well,” said Looks Away, “I’m not a deeply superstitious chap, but that can’t be good.”
“Someone’s idea of a joke,” said Grey, but his tone didn’t sound convincing even to his own ears.
Beyond the sign, a single street of hard-packed dirt ran between two rows of buildings. There was a livery, a barbershop that also advertised tooth-pulling, a funeral home, a gun shop, a lawyer’s office, six separate taverns, and a brothel that rose like a shimmering tower above the others. The brothel was the only building that was more than a single story, and the top floors had long balconies that wrapped around both sides. There were girls in bright colors leaning on the rails. Down on the street level, hard-faced men and women walked or sat or stood in small groups. Maybe a hundred people. And every one of them was looking at the two strangers on horses.
“Friendly looking,” said Looks Away.
“Yeah,” said Grey, “like a nest of scorpions.”
“Nowhere near as charming as that.”
Grey couldn’t argue. No one was smiling. No one spoke or gestured. They all stood and looked their way.
“Well,” said Grey dubiously, “we’re here … might as well go on in.”
“Said the foolish pilgrim at the outer ring of hell.”
“Is that a quote?”
“No, merely an observation.”
They nudged their horses and entered the town of Fortune. The people on the streets, or up on porches, or standing in windows watched them with hostile and suspicious eyes. Except for the brothel, every store or business in town looked like it teetered on the edge of financial ruin. Windows were cracked, paint peeled from weathered boards, and in the streets there were unshoveled piles of horse dung that were thick with blowflies.
“Charming,” murmured Looks Away.
“Seen worse,” observed Grey.
“Where?”
Grey couldn’t come up with an easy reply and gave it up as a lie.
The people looked no more vital or healthy than the town. They were dirty, their clothes madly patched and mismatched. Warts and dark moles were common among them, and many had scabs or open sores. Several had limbs missing. Hands, arms, legs. Though Grey thought the missing limbs looked more like defective births than injuries. The stumps were smooth. The people were dressed in clothes of black and gray, of desert brown and dried salt. Dead colors for a lifeless town.
Only the whores on the balcony of the brothel looked
whole and healthy. They were dressed in frilled silks and satins. Grey and Looks Away stared up at them, seeing every color in the rainbow, from royal purples to soft blues of Pacific evenings to the shocking yellow of new-grown daffodils. Each of the brothel’s ladies smiled down at them. Red, red lips parted to reveal white, white teeth.
“Grey,” said Looks Away quietly, “do you see any children?”
Grey shook his head. “Not a one. Don’t see a schoolhouse, either.”
“I know I haven’t been to as many American towns as you have, but is that normal?”
“Son,” said Grey, “I think we left ‘normal’ behind somewhere out there in the desert.”
“Ah.”
“Keep your eyes open.”
“Yes,” drawled the Sioux. “Capital idea.”
They stopped outside of the brothel. There was a name painted on a silk banner draped elegantly above the big batwing double doors.
Madame Mircalla’s Palace of Comfort
Grey swung out of the saddle and tied Picky’s lead to a post over a water trough. The horse eyed the water cautiously for a moment, sniffed it, nickered in as close to a sound of disapproval as a horse could make, and reluctantly took a drink. The other horses joined her.
Looks Away lingered in the saddle for a moment longer, looking up at the smiling women. Grey followed his gaze. The women were all young, some barely out of their teens. They were all voluptuous, with soft half-moons of enticing flesh rising above the lace trim of their bodices. Their hair was pinned with flowers and feathers. Their skin was totally unmarked by disease or any imperfection.
A voice in Grey’s head whispered a warning.
Get out of here now.
But he ignored it. That voice had spoken too often in his life, and too often he’d listened. Sure, he’d survived … but that survival had always come at a cost.
Doing so took some effort, though, and if he wasn’t sunbaked, thirsty, and hungry for real food, he might have heeded the warning.
“You coming?” he asked the Sioux.
“With great reluctance and trepidation,” said Looks Away as he swung his leg over the horse’s rump and dropped to the ground.
Side by side they mounted the steps. It was cool on the porch. One of the women, a fiery redhead with emerald green eyes, rose from a rocking chair and stood between them and the door. She was a little older than the other girls. Maybe twenty-eight, Grey reckoned. Very pretty and she smelled of roses.
“By the queen’s garters,” murmured Looks Away.
“You fellows are new in town,” said the woman, making it a statement rather than a question.
“Brand new,” said Grey. “Passing through.”
“From where to where?”
Grey hooked a finger over his shoulder. “From back there to somewhere else.”
His answer seemed to kindle a light in the redhead’s eyes. She nodded, as if appreciating his caution. Then she swiveled her gaze toward Thomas Looks Away.
“Sioux,” she said, again not making it a question.
“Ugh,” he said. “Me heap big red savage.”
The redhead rolled her eyes. “That’s adorable. But I heard you talking a second ago. You sound like someone who’s traveled a bit.”
Looks Away paused, shrugged, nodded. “A bit.”
“Then you’ll feel right at home. All of us girls here have been around the block a time or two.”
It was so saucy a comment that the two men laughed. The woman laughed, but her laugh was a beat slower and, Grey thought, entirely false. Or, maybe it was that she was laughing at a different joke than the one he thought she’d made. The laugh had that kind of flavor to it.
She said, “My name is Mircalla and this place belongs to me and my sisters.” Her voice was soft and she had a faint German accent. “Would you like to come in?”
“If there’s cold beer, a hot bath, and a rare steak,” said Grey, “then we surely would.”
“A bath, a beer, and a bite?” laughed Mircalla. “And maybe a bed?”
“I haven’t slept in a bed in so long I forget what a pillow’s for.”
“Slept? Lordy-lord, gentlemen, surely you didn’t come here to sleep.”
Everyone laughed again. Same flavor as before. Once again Grey was sure there was some bottom layer to her joke that he wasn’t quite grasping.
“I think we can accommodate whatever pleases you,” said Mircalla. “If it’s your wish to enter, then come on in—we can provide everything a man could ever hope to want.”
Before he could comment on it, Mircalla turned, shimmied her way between them, hooked an arm in each of theirs, and began guiding them toward the batwing door.
As they stepped across the threshold Grey flinched. It was a strange feeling, but he did not know what he was reacting to. The brothel was well-lighted and cool, there were aromas of perfume and cooking meat, of beer and firewood. The women inside were all beautiful and they all smiled at the two men.
So, why, he wondered, did he suddenly feel that he wanted to run?
To go back outside.
Into the sunlight.
Mircalla’s arm was locked around his and he felt that he was not so much walking into the place as being pulled.
Behind him the batwing doors slapped shut with a loud, hollow crack.
Chapter Fifteen
Grey soon forgot his unease. Mircalla ushered them into an alcove furnished with gorgeous chairs decorated with red pillows. Chinese tapestries hung from the walls, their delicate floral patterns edged with gold fringe. Candles burned in silver sconces and there was a Turkish brass table laden with bowls of fresh fruits and tall glasses of amber beer.
Mircalla detached herself from the two men and pushed them down into chairs. She snapped her fingers and two women entered the alcove, both of them carrying ornately patterned plates heavy with steaks and vegetables from which steam rose like pale snakes.
Grey wanted to ask how the food could have been prepared so quickly, but before he could a crystal beer glass was pressed into his hand by a brunette with burning blue eyes.
“This will wash away that desert dust,” she said. “Drink … go on, drink deep.”
He did.
The beer was ice cold and it felt like liquid paradise as it slid down his parched throat. The woman touched the bottom of the glass and guided it so that he leaned back and drained it. She took it and refilled it. Suddenly he had a knife and fork in his hands—both heavy and ornate—and he was cutting into the tenderest piece of three-inch thick steak he’d ever seen. Blood oozed hot and red from the meat, and when he took his first bite he thought he would cry. It was perfect. Beyond perfect. So hot, so well cooked, so bloody and delicious.
“Oh, God…,” he moaned.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Looks Away with a blonde on his lap. She was cutting his steak for him and feeding him pieces she held between thumb and forefinger. Her nails were long and painted a dark and gleaming red.
He cut another piece of his own steak.
And drank more of the delicious beer.
He was so dehydrated that the alcohol went straight to his head. The alcove seemed to swirl around him as he ate and drank, ate and drank. Drunkenness came over him in waves, distorting everything. With each new glass of beer the colors around him changed. Became brighter, more garish. There was music somewhere and at first it was soft and subtle, but soon it became grating and harsh.
Off to his right, somewhere else, somewhere down a hole or on the other side of the world, he heard a voice. Looks Away. Laughing. Speaking nonsense words.
Then crying out.
In anger first.
Then in surprise.
And in …
Pain?
He felt pain, too, but Grey didn’t care. Probably a mosquito or a fly biting him on the neck.
Nothing to worry about.
Nothing to care about.
He bent forward to reach for his glass of beer, but something
jerked him backward.
Hands?
That was silly. There was no one here but a couple of girls and they weren’t strong enough.
He laughed at the thought of whorehouse girls manhandling someone as big as he was.
The pain in his neck became sharper.
Harder.
Worse.
Wrong.
He could feel heat on his throat. Wet and moving.
Running in lines from where those flies were biting. If they were flies.
He tried to speak, to protest, to ask what was happening. The room spun around him. All of the colors swirled and blended together.
“I don’t understand…,” he heard himself say.
And then he felt himself falling.
Not forward.
Down.
Down down down.
The colors melted into red and then into black.
And then everything was gone.
Chapter Sixteen
Grey Torrance sat in a chair in the middle of the desert.
The sun was high in the sky but the world was draped in shadows. The wind was cold and blew out of the east in long gusts, like the exhalations of some sleeping giant. In the darkness off to the north was a blighted tree and there were hundreds of crows standing silent vigil on the twisted limbs.
Grey stared at the birds and they stared back.
“Pick a card,” said a voice, and Grey jumped, startled. He whipped his head around and saw that he was now seated at a table. It was covered with a heavy brocade in red and gold, and the surface was covered with embroidered dragons locked in death struggles with saints and angels. A woman sat across from him. Mircalla. Or at least he thought it was. She wore a veil over her pretty face, so all he could see was the faint outline of her features.
Before her, on the top of the table, was a slender taper in a silver holder, the flame burning with no heat. And beside that was a deck of cards. They were larger than standard playing cards, and the design on the back showed the death mask of some ancient and beautiful queen. Her eyes were closed and blood ran from the corners of her mouth.