9 Tales From Elsewhere 2 Read online

  9TALES FROM ELSEWHERE#2

  © Copyright 2015 Bride of Chaos/ All Rights Reserved to the Authors.

  First electronic edition 2015

  Edited by A.R. Jesse

  Cover by Turtle&Noise

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  9TALES FROM ELSEWHERE#2

  Table of Contents

  MAD GILLY AND THE WERE-BEAR by Ralph Sevush

  GAUNTLET by L Young

  MECHANICAL | CHEMICALS by Daniel J. Kirk

  HUSH, THE DOGS OF ACTAEON by James B. Pepe

  MIRROR, MIRROR by David Siegel Bernstein & Susanne Shay

  A PASSING INFINITY by Russ Bickerstaff

  IN VICTORY, NO JOY by Jim Lee

  FIGHTING FITZGERALD by Shawn P. Madison

  FLIGHT by C Griffin

  TALES

  FROM

  ELSEWHERE

  #2

  MAD GILLY AND THE WERE-BEAR by Ralph Sevush

  Prologue

  This here is the story of one Gilmore Gammesson, known as Mad Gilly Games… gambler, drunkard, killer and king, without peer in his time, who reckoned he could live forever. Now you might have already heard this yarn of the most famous son of Rockton, Colorado, but you likely didn’t hear it the way I tell it.

  Sure, its got yer gunfights and injun’ raids, miners and mountain men, a corrupt sheriff and a greedy tycoon, a pretty young thing and an old whore with a heart of gold, and, o’ course, a handsome gun-slinging hero. And it’s got t’other parts, too, but if you squint real hard, you can skip right past the demons, dragons and wizards--even the were-bear--if’n you’ve a mind to. You won’t hardly notice them a`tall, most likely. But those parts of the story need atellin’, too, even though they oft get left out by the pale, chinless ninnies hereabouts what ain’t got the stomach for such notions.

  Now don’t git me wrong. It’s not like I put much stock in such foolishness… after all, who could believe such things? I jes’ think you should hear the whole caboodle and then you can make up your own mind about it, one way or t’other. Besides, even if you don’t entertain such notions, you jes’ might find that such notions may entertain you.

  So, this is the story… complete and unabridged, as best as I can remember it, and nearly true… or near enough.

  But first, let ole Uncle Tim here take a swig from this jug o’ Mountain’s Blood to whet mah whistle… ah, that’s better. Now where were we?

  ><><

  The story begins

  Some folks like a story to start with blood, right in the middle o’ things, so lets begin on the day Gilmore Gammesson rode back into the town of Rockton, what was then called Rook, after a decade spent down in Texas making quite a disreputable name for hisself.

  Gammesson had become known as Mad Gilly Games, and since that was what they called him, then that was who he was. Mad Gilly rode back into the town of Rook on a day like any other, astride the legendary horse what Gilly called “Horse.” Though Gilly was older now, and dressed in the style of the Texicans of the time, it was not hard for the townsfolk to recognize the return of their golden child. “Gilly’s back! Gilly’s back!” was the loud whisper that traveled up and down the streets like a wild fire. The blaze burned a trail to the door of the sheriff’s office, and so Sheriff Jack “Bull” Evans stepped out into the middle of Main Street to see what set the flame.

  Bull Evans was a nasty feller, a former Pinkerton, monstrously tall, bald as an eagle, and with a scarred visage covered by a well-waxed handlebar `stache. Evans had taken a dislike to Gilly even upon the first day Gilly arrived in Rook, an infant swaddled in a cavalry blanket. When he growed some, Gilly got hisself into a dustup with Evans that would require the boy’s hasty departure from the only home he’d ever known. Because when you blow the top of a sheriff’s skull clean off, even a dislikable cuss like that Bull Evans, you best be making tracks afore a posse of Pinkertons makes your departure from the world their sole and solemn purpose.

  And now all these years later, here they were again, face to face, despite the unlikelihood of such a reunion. Gilly rode up to face Evans.

  “Mad Gilly, get down off that horse. You’re under arrest,” said the sheriff.

  “For what? Killin’ ya? Ya ain’t even dead!” snarled Gilly, angry and not a little confused by the effrontery of Evans’ continulating existence.

  “Not fer yer lack of tryin’, boy.”

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, Sheriff, I ain’t a boy no more.”

  Gilly was about to shoot off the top of Evans’ head again, when he noticed a great many rifles pointing toward him from a wide range of positions around the street. It appeared that Bull had accumulated some deputies over the years.

  “Step down now, Mr. Gammesson”, said Bull, with a hint of the sneer you knew he carried in his heart for every living thing. Truth be told, Bull did have a fair grudge agin’ Gilly, seeing as how the boy had once shot Bull right between his light blue eyes.

  Gilly climbed down offa Horse, slow and easy. Bull went to pull the Colt out of Gilly’s holster, but even as he reached over, Horse reared up fast and came down quick with his sharp hooves on the top of Bull’s skull, crushing his bald head into the dirt, even as the rest of Bull’s body took another moment or so to foller thereafter.

  As guns started blazing from everywhere, Gilly reached up to the horn on his saddle, put one foot in the stirrup, and held tight to Horse’s flank as Horse bolted down a side alley off the main street. Once they were out of shooting range, Gilly mounted up, circled back and waited in shadows, as the deputies formed a posse to follow him. As soon as they had gathered themselves together in the street, Gilly and Horse were in among `em, with his Colt flashing, and Horse’s hooves slashing the air, the both of `em moving and spinning and shooting like a cobra riding a dragon, spitting lead in all directions at once. Soon enough, all those fellers were down, and Gilly was shrieking a blood-curdling whoop. Some said they even saw Horse snort flames that day, but take that how you will.

  Gilly got down offa Horse and stood in the middle of the town, ankle deep in guts and glory. “I declare this town free of Bull Evans, and his master, Newton Starr!” he called out. “You folks is now under my protection!”

  Aww, wait a minute now. I think I done left out some things. Getting old has a way of changing the tellin’ of the tale, I s’pose. So lets jes’ take a breath, and step back a might.

  ><><

  Before the story began

  I heard tell that Gilmore Gammesson was born the son of a half-breed whore and the 3rd Cavalry. It was the year of our lord 1850-something or other when Gilly shot out of his mama’s worn cunny as she squatted in the woods near Fort Collins, Colorado. The child emerged with a full head of golden curls, and eyes so black they made the night sky burn dark with envy, and skin so bronze the boy gave off a golden glow when the morning sun hit him jes’ right.

  His mama died out there in the woods on that sad eve, but Gilly was rescued by a she-wolf what dragged the child back to her den and suckled him for many a night
. That unlikely pair was eventually come upon by a wild feller, one Timothy Dugan by name and a trapper by inclination. Trapper Dugan kilt that wolf, thinking he was saving the child from harm. He stripped the wolf’s fur, then cooked and ate her.

  The next day, he wrapped baby Gilly in a cavalry blanket he found in the wolf’s den, with the name “G. Gammes” scrawled along its ragged fringe. He took the child with him as he continued his journey south along the front ridge of the Rockies. But Trapper Dugan was a solitary sort that preferred to keep his own company. And, though the child was not a whiner, Dugan had his fill of the boy’s civilizing effect by the time they came upon a mining camp by the name of Rook, somewhere southwest of Boulder and northeast of Denver. Dugan abandoned little Gilly to the tender maternality of the local whores and hiked hisself up into the icy mountains to the west.

  You’ll hear more about Trapper Dugan later. As to the next chapter in young Gilly’s life, it, too, must be forestalled because I need to tell you this story before I tell you that story.

  ><><

  This story…

  The town of Rook squatted like a toad in the foothills of the Rockies, against the front range of the Colorado Piedmont. Backed up against the mountains to the west, with Pike’s Peak looming large in the southern sky, Rook sat in a valley surrounded by the deep forest of Humble’s Wood to the south and the Platte River to the north. The town could only be safely approached from the east, by a single trail across the High Plains of eastern Colorado, what used to be Nebraska.

  Of course “safe” was a relative term in that time and place. To cross the high plains, you had to cross injun territory. Some folks made it and some came up jes’ a hair short, so to speak. The traveling got a might easier though, after some tribes signed a treaty down at Fort Laramie, whereupon the injuns mostly ignored the settlers and prospectors criss-crossing their hunting grounds, as long as they didn’t make themselves too unsightly. Which, upon further consideration, was a hard thing for white folks to do… times being so much different then, a’course.

  Before the prospectors started showing up, Rook was home to the Humbaba. They called their home “Uruk”, and I can’t rightly say for sure what the name means, since I ain’t intimate with the Humbabian tongue. But I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it meant “git the hell outta here, ya white-skinned devils.” Or words to that affect.

  Treaty or no, the Hums made it mighty unwholesome for those prospectors and settlers what scurried about on their land. Until one day the Hums found themselves dispossessed of their village by Pinkerton guns hired by a craggy feller that went by the name of Starr... Andrew Newton Starr.

  Ole Newt Starr was a wealthy Scotsman what had made hisself a fortune in the new world as sole proprietor of the Starr Mining Company. He’d first brought his strange ways and handsome daughter, Isabelle, to Colorado during the gold rush of `59, and his ambitions left no room for those what had come before him. But his ambition was surely the only big thing about him. Ya see, Ole Newt suffered from a distinct smallness, of both body and soul.

  The Humbaba, on t’other hand, were a brave band, mighty in spirit, and fierce warriors, too. Still, there ain’t been a bow or spear ever devised by man that could stand up to a Gatling gun. And so the massacre of Rook came to be known as the “Battle of Humble’s Wood” in the history books. The Hums what survived fled south through the forest, settling on the other side of them woods, disappearing like ghosts into the mountains.

  So then, with peace having broke out like a rash, the town belonged to Starr… lock, stock and many a smoking barrel. And in the years that followed, Uruk became a populous, sprawling and rowdy town, mispronounced by visitors and locals alike as “Rook”. And since that was what they called it, then that was what it was.

  Starr set hisself up on a ranch north of town, on the shore of Lake Thannat, accompanied by his beautiful daughter, Isabelle. Izzie Starr was a piece of work, by all accounts. A tall, pale-skinned, white-haired, red-eyed, finely featured albino, she walked like her feet was too good to touch the ground, and carried herself like a fancy figurine what was spun from sugar. But Izzie was a carnivorous bitch in heat… more mantis than maiden, some said. And the opium-smoking Chinee in town, they called her “the white dragon.” Despite it all, ole Newt loved his daughter… she was the only thing either of them ever loved, most likely.

  But Newt and Izzie surely made an unlikely pair. When he walked down Main Street with her following close behind--him dwarfish, wrinkled and ruddy, and her tale, pale and slender--they appeared to form a chalk-white exclamation point with a gnarled dot at its base. Of course, one commented on their resemblance to such a freakishly comical punctuation mark at risk of great personal consequence.

  To keep the peace in his domain, Ole Newt made Bull Evans the sheriff of Rook. There were those who claimed that Bull was a demon of some sort, and that Starr was a wizard what had conjured him up from the bowels of Hell. But folks say all kinds of things.

  Whether wizard, demon or jes’ a mean little bastard, Ole Newt possessed a preternatural ability to smell out gold and silver ore and, having sniffed it out in the Colorado Piedmont, he made another fortune and turned Rook into a boomtown. The townsfolk either worked in Starr’s silver mines or on his timber claims, or they partook in the town’s other degrading enterprises, feeding off those what ate, drank, whored and gambled as they passed through on their way to someplace better. The lives of the folk residing in Rook were brutish and short... and that was the good news.

  And Bull Evans, he put the fear of Starr into every soul within his angry grasp. Or nearly every soul, anyways.

  ><><

  … That story

  So Trapper Dugan left baby Gilly at a whorehouse in Rook, and the infant was taken in by the house madam, a faded beauty by the name of Ninsun, called “Sunny” by friends and clientele. A half-breed herself, she was feeling a might tender after recently losing her own young`un to the pox, so she adopted the strange, golden child. Sunny was known to cast a spell or two in her time, but that boy… well, he surely cast a spell on her. His love jes’ lit her up from the tips of her stubby, reddish-brown toes to the frizzy ends of her wild black mane.

  Sunny once knew a feller by the name of Gilmore whom she recalled with a particular fondness, and, since the infant’s blanket was emblazoned with that “G. Gammes”, she named the child Gilmore, Gammes’ son. And that boy, Gilly Gammesson, he grew hisself up pretty quick amidst the tumult of Rook.

  At the age of 8, Gilly was standing in the middle of the road, chucking cow pies up into the wind, when a funeral procession came upon him. The mortician’s man came and shooed the boy out of the way, so the mourners could proceed. Irritated at the interruption, Gilly stood aside and, when the hearse came by, noted “I ain’t never gonna be shut in no box forever.” Sid Uhry, the saloon keeper, was standing nearby and said, “You don’t plan to be buried, young master Gammesson?” “No sir… in fact, I don’t plan to die a’tall!” Sid jes’ laughed. “You are a mad one, young Gilly!” And “Mad Gilly” the town took to calling him that day. And since that was what they called him, then that was who he was.

  By age 15, Mad Gilly already knew how to hold his liquor, deal from the bottom, fight dirty and shoot the eyes out of a buffalo nickel. Handsome and a charmer, he was liked by folks, but not well liked. Point of fact, he was more feared than fancied. After all, his mama was a witchy half-breed whore and he was as strong-headed as a mule on loco weed, and twice as dangerous, without the good sense to be afeard o’ fearful things.

  That’s when Gilly had his first showdown with Bull Evans, necessitating the boy’s leave-taking of Rook. Bull had tried to jail young Gilly for public drunkenness, conducting the arrest with his usual ill temper and bad manners, but Gilly expressed his objection to Bull’s demeanor by pulling his Colt and shooting Bull in the head. Looking back, I can see why some thought Gilly may have overreacted a bit, but he was a boy of high spirits.

  Afore Gilly lit out
of town, Sunny gave him a special stone necklace that she claimed had Humbabian powers. He guffawed, but put it on nonetheless. She told him to go to Humble’s Wood and find Trapper Dugan. He was the kind of a feller who could be helpful at a time like this. Gilly, not having anywhere else to go and, whatever else he was, still only a scared boy, took Sunny’s advice and disappeared into the woods afore Starr’s other gunmen could find him. Little did Gilly know what he would find waiting for him out in that forest.

  ><><

  The Coming of Inky Dugan

  By the time Gilly came strolling through the woods on that troubled day, Trapper Dugan had already moved on from the environs of Rook and was nowhere to be found. He had, though, left something behind him... a son, left in the care of a Humbabian squaw. Now whether she was the child’s birth mother or only his wet nurse no one knows for sure, but she was all the mama that boy would ever know. Before departing, Trapper Dugan had dubbed the boy “Inky”, for the jet black hair that covered most of the child’s body and the deep set eyes that sat in his head like bottomless blue-black pools of tar.

  And that boy, Inky Dugan, he was raised a Hum. At the ripe ole age of 12, he was left in the woods by his mama to fend for hisself, as was required by the Humbabian warrior’s rite of ascension. She let his hand drop and Inky walked into those woods without a backward glance, and he never returned to the tribe thereafter. Whether that filled the squaw’s heart with pain or relief is unknowable, but I’d be acknowledging the corn of it to guess it was both.

  So now here was Gilly, on the run, spotting a figure hightailing it across Humble’s Wood. At first he thought it was a grizz, but then he realized that it was a man what gamboled amongst the thickets, and so he hailed him. “Oyo, Mr. Dugan!” shouted Gilly, thinking the feller to be Trapper Dugan.

  Inky froze in his tracks, shocked to hear a human voice calling his name, especially one spouting English… a tongue that generally predicated all sorts of shecoonery. But it was a tongue Inky knowed well enough, as it was taught him by a preacher what had lived briefly among the Hums, before they ate his holy heart. Inky cast his keen eye toward the sound and saw Gilly, standing beside a brickleberry bush in and amongst the chaparral.