Manuel
I untethered Oscuro and watched from my hotel room window as Manuel approached her—gazing around to see if he was being watched—attempting to stroke her as she huffed and puffed. I closed my eyes and spoke softly to Oscuro, telling her that everything would be all right. She calmed down and Manuel eventually led her away to the stables.
“Good girl,” I said.
Oscuro was no regular horse. Manuel had no idea what sort of creature he was dealing with—what he’d let into his life.
I left the hotel and pursued Manuel, keeping to the morning shadows.
I went around to the side of the stable and heard him yelling at Oscuro.
“Damn beast! You will listen to me, and you will obey! I don’t care who your master was before me. That old, decrepit son of a bitch should have kept a closer eye on you. Obviously didn’t care about your welfare. I’m your master now. I’m the best damn horse master there is. You’ll regret ever disobeying me, and you will learn how to behave.”
The other horses in the stable started whinnying.
I crept around to the entrance and watched in anger as Manuel started whipping my horse, drawing blood on her rump. She cried, but I knew it was all an act. Nothing could make Oscuro cry. Especially not a pathetic little specimen like Manuel.
Oscuro shot up onto her back legs and towered over the little man. He jumped back in terror, but not far enough, as Oscuro brought her front hooves down on him and trampled him over and over again, crushing his bones into jelly as he screamed in agony.
I entered the stables. Manuel looked up at me with mad eyes. His head was but a bloated purple mass, and his skull was half-caved in.
“That’s no way to treat a beautiful animal,” I said.
Manuel tried to speak but could only muster a spittle-flecked whimper. He let out a great gasp when his lungs were punctured by his own split ribs after Oscuro descended for a final plunge. Manuel was still and silent after that.
Oscuro shook her head and stepped away from the body. I stroked her head and put mine against it, rubbing her rump as the bloody slashes started to heal by themselves.
She was as good as new again.
“I’m sorry, girl. But you’ll be alright.”
I led her into an enclosure. “Stay here until I come back for you. There’s plenty of hay to munch on. Be good.”
I dumped Manuel’s bloody body in another empty enclosure and went in search of the next soul who needed guiding into the beyond.
Flaco
The irony was that Flaco was not skinny at all, as his name suggested. He was grossly overweight. He’d just come out of one of the whore’s rooms licking his lips, either in pleasure at the carnal act he’d just committed, or at the prospect of the meal that awaited him. I hoped it was the latter, having bought a laxative for him from the pharmacist.
I went into the kitchen and waited. An order finally came through for Flaco. A plate of chilli. I slipped the Chinese chef two gold coins and told him to make the chilli as usual, but to empty the entire laxative vial into the mixture. He nodded rather nonchalantly and got on with making the dish.
I sat at the bar and ordered a whiskey, waiting for Flaco’s dish to be served. It arrived, and it wasn’t long before Flaco’s bowels started to writhe. I downed the whiskey as he rose to his feet, yelling abuse in Spanish directed at the kitchen staff that the meat in the chilli was off and that it was just too damn hot.
Gabriela winked at me from the balcony and watched as Flaco rushed out of the saloon.
I followed him and found him squatting between two adjacent buildings with his backside to me. He unleashed his bowels in a vile brown barrage that splattered down his legs and onto the ground. He cried out in anguish as I pulled out my Dragoon from its holster and put a bullet in his head—his cries drowning out the sound of the shot—dropping him instantly in his own mess.
I left him where he was to fester in the darkness of the alley. The others wouldn’t have the time to find him. What time they did have left was running out rapidly, and they’d have better be spending it wisely.
Lefty and Abel
I’d been watching Lefty and Abel far too long for my liking and I was growing tired—sat in a rocking chair on the hotel porch, wishing I was back home, in peace and quiet with nothing but the desert and the occasional majestic sound of distant eagles soaring overhead.
The boys had done little but run up and down the main street, knocking off passing men’s hats and kicking them away so that they couldn’t retrieve them, and pulling up women’s dresses, trying to cop a feel. The women tried in vain to pull their dresses back down again but were constantly thwarted by the rising wind.
Lefty was a little younger than the more handsome and strapping Abel—and shorter—covered in unsightly spots excreting pus. He had, indeed, been a victim of the mythical ugly tree. I figured a little envy would quite easily stoke his fire.
They stopped to catch their breath in front of the hotel and started giggling when they saw me and pointed.
“Who the hell are you?” Lefty asked.
“Hell just might be the right word, kid,” I replied.
“You don’t frighten us, old man,” Abel said.
“No?”
“Not one bit,” Lefty said.
“Fair enough,” I said.
Lefty eyed my holstered Colt Dragoon.
“That’s quite a piece you got there, mister,” he said.
“Yeah,” Abel said. “And you’re gonna give it to me.”
“Is that so?” I asked.
“Damn right it’s so,” Abel replied.
“Fine,” I said. “Have it.”
I unholstered the revolver and threw it underarm to a visibly shocked Abel. He grinned maniacally as he caressed the revolver with both hands. Like a kid on Christmas morning.
I looked at Lefty. Something sinister was stirring in him. Sinister and infantile in nature.
“You son of a bitch,” he said to Abel. “I saw that mighty fine piece first!”
“I’m older. Therefore, I’m in charge. Remember?”
I sat, crossed-legged, watching the drama unfold.
“Don’t mean a damn thing you being older. I saw it first, and I want it. It’s mine. It belongs to me!”
“I’m getting real sick and tired of you, boy.”
Abel raised the gun at his friend.
“Abel—what are you doing? We’re brothers. Blood brothers. We cut our hands and made a pact for life. Just this last week. What the hell is wrong with you?”
I spoke to Abel in his mind. “Kill him.”
Abel fired at Lefty’s chest. He fell to the ground and groaned. His eyes were wide in shock.
A look of horror filled Abel’s eyes. “What have I done?”
He ran over to his bleeding friend and held him in his arms and began to weep. “Someone get help! Please! Get help.”
But no one did. Everyone passed by or went indoors.
Whatever light remained in Lefty’s eyes faded away—a glimmer of once innocent, spritely youth—and perhaps that’s all it was. He was still.
I spoke again. This time through my mouth. “What’re you gonna do now, kid? You just gunned down one of Pincho’s crew. He won’t be happy about that. You’ll be punished. You’ll suffer. You may as well just kill yourself.”
Abel turned to face me, still on his knees, clutching his friend’s lifeless body.
“Who are you?”
“Someone you ought to listen to. There’s no way out now. Nowhere left to run. Time’s up, amigo.”
Abel appeared utterly hypnotised by that point. “I know. You’re right. I can’t live with myself now.”
He raised the revolver to his head and pulled the trigger. His brains shot out the side of his head and landed with a splat in the dirt.
I got up and walked over to the dead boys, retrieved my gun and holstered it, before making my way back inside the hotel.
Four down. Three to go.
Cesar
It was the next day, and Pincho was away on business as Gabriela said he might be, but he’d only taken one of his best men with him—Arturo. He’d left Cesar to protect the town until his return later that day, as he was on high alert after Flaco had gone missing—yet to be found—and since the deaths of the boys.
No one suspected me of a thing. I was practically a ghost, haunting the ghost town.
I noticed Cesar leave the saloon and make his way toward the sheriff’s office—Pincho’s new base of operations in the sheriff’s absence.
I stalked him until he went inside, and then I waited under a store canopy. He came back out holding a canvas bag. He threw it over his shoulder and looked around before making his way to the stables.
Damn it. He’d find Manuel’s body in the enclosure.
I pursued him to the stables.
He was in the process of mounting his horse and stopped to sniff the air. The body was starting to decompose, and no doubt covered in flies. He shrugged and continued. I let him leave, taking cover behind a wall, before I went inside and got on Oscuro.
Cesar was already quite far ahead in the distance, having left the town. But Oscuro was faster than any horse known to man—unnaturally fast.
I caught up to Cesar in the desert among scorched shrubs. He turned and drew his gun—a small revolver. He clutched the canvas bag tightly with his free hand. His horse seemed a little on edge, kicking its back legs out anxiously.
“Don’t move,” he said.
I didn’t.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“What’s in the bag, Cesar?”
“How do you know my name?”
“I know more than just your name. I know that you don’t have much time left to walk on this earth.”
“Screw you, pendejo!”
Cesar fired off a shot. I didn’t feel it, but I looked down to see a gaping hole in my chest.
Cesar’s horse bolted at the sound of the shot and Cesar was thrown from the horse, but he didn’t land clean. Instead, his right foot got caught in the stirrup. I heard his ankle break before he screamed. The horse took him with it.
I waited a moment and sighed before I followed.
I came to Cesar’s mangled body. The canvas bag had split open, and gold coins were strewn about the cracked earth. His horse was a few feet ahead, still as anything now that Cesar was gone. I approached it, gave it a pat, and removed the saddle. I gave it a light slap on its rear to get it moving.
“Go on. You’re free.”
I watched the horse go until it was but a tall, thin shape in the distance.
I collected the gold coins and put them back in the bag, holding it tight where it had split. I had no use for them, but I knew someone who would.
Arturo
Pincho and Arturo returned that night, side by side on horseback. They left their horses and tied them up outside the bodega where Pincho resided on the edge of town—Gabriela’s former family home.
They went inside.
I stood in the dark and listened. Nothing.
I looked up at the full moon—silver surrounded by drifts of charcoal clouds in a navy-blue sky.
Then the sound of a woman crying out after being struck came from within the bodega. From the second floor. Gabriela’s younger sister.
Two to go.
I entered without making a sound, moving like a mantis—slow and controlled.
The sister’s screams grew louder, and she began to wail and cry.
I closed the door behind me.
I heard a yawn coming from a long, dark corridor. I peeked around to look down it, my back flush against the wall.
It was Arturo. He was making his way to an open area, trying to stifle another yawn.
I waited until he was on the other side before creeping after him, keeping close to the wall.
Arturo was standing in the middle of the open area, a staircase ahead of him. He looked up and listened to Pincho cursing at the sister as he beat her.
Arturo chuckled and scratched his groin before smelling his fingers. He was wearing a hip holster which held a revolver. He removed it and placed it on a small table.
He wouldn’t be needing it whereever he was going.
He passed into another room. A vast lounge with a high ceiling and a chandelier hanging above. He sat down on a plush red couch below the chandelier and stretched his legs out in front of him, before throwing his head back and closing his eyes. He yawned again, and it didn’t take long before his mouth was gaping open and he was snoring.
I stepped further into the room and took out a small knife from the inside of my coat. I threw it at the chandelier’s cord, and it cascaded down, landing with a crash on Arturo’s head, splitting it open like ripe fruit. Dark gore poured from the cavernous wound.
The screaming continued above. As did Pincho’s yelling and cursing.
I retrieved the knife and made my way upstairs.
Pincho
I entered the bedroom where the noise had been coming from, but it had since ceased, replaced by Pincho’s grunting. He was on top of the sister, thrusting with a firm grip on the back of her bruised neck. She wasn’t making a sound.
I snuck up behind and held the knife to Pincho’s neck. I removed my face cloth with my free hand. Cold ooze from my mandibles dripped on to Pincho’s naked shoulder. He shivered. His skin was covered in goosebumps.
“Make a sound, and I’ll slit your throat,” I said.
I dragged Pincho off the bed. The sister turned around and fumbled to cover herself with the sheets.
“Now, this is what’s going to happen. Arturo’s dead. No one’s coming to help you now. The only soul who can do that is me. And it’s just your luck that I don’t have one. So, you’ve only got one place to go. Straight to hell. Far worse than the one you’ve created. I’m going to give this girl a choice, and you’re simply going to go along with it. You no longer have any choices. No agency. Your fate was decided several days ago.”
“Who—”
“What did I say? Hush now.”
I turned my attention to Gabriela’s sister. “Chica—what’s your name?”
She was shaking and said nothing.
“I know your sister. What’s your name, honey?”
“Lupe.”
“Lupe. Do you wish this man dead?”
Lupe nodded. Pincho gritted his teeth and scowled at her. I pressed the knife into his neck, drawing a line of blood.
“Lupe. Do you wish to kill this man?”
She nodded again.
“Do you wish to kill him yourself? And before you answer—know that to take a life is a heavy burden. It will stay with you until the end of your days. Understand that.”
Lupe didn’t move.
“Speak now or forever hold your peace, sweetheart.”
Lupe shook her head. No.
I cut slow and deep into Pincho’s throat, blood spraying across the room, showering the white sheets. Lupe leapt from the bed.
Pincho gurgled and tried to resist, but I held him close in death’s embrace.
“Shhh… Quiet now. Be still.”
Pincho eventually went still as the blood drained, and the life left him. I let him drop to the hard wooden floor like a sack of potatoes.
I held out my hand to Lupe. She was hesitant. Afraid.
“Take it.”
We left the bodega hand in hand. We must have looked a sight as we walked across the courtyard—the ghoul and the sun-kissed, tanned naked girl.
Beauty and the beast.
***
Gabriela held both of my hands. “Thank you. For everything. How can I ever repay you?”
“You don’t. That’s the end of it.”
“Are you sure?”
“That’s the deal, young lady. I left something for you in your old house. In a canvas bag. And it’s not Pincho. You’ll never see any of those men again.”
I got up to leave.
“Where are you going now?” she asked.
“Home.”
“Where’s that?”
“On the border between life and death.”
***
I gazed up at the cloudless sky, smoking a cigarette and rocking in my chair, back on my porch in peace and quiet again. At last.
An eagle was soaring high above. It called out. I took my hat off to it, before taking another bite of one of the limbs of the seven men—cut up and piled up in a bucket—whose souls had left their bodies in La Ventosa.
They were in Beelzebub’s black hands—or paws—now.
I was never hungry or thirsty. Desire had left me long ago. But those bodies had to go somewhere, and the way I saw it, the void was the best place for them.
Besides, I had a hibernation to prepare for.
I hoped this one would be longer than the last.
