THE HALLELUJAH MAN

BY NOEL K HANNAN

A WEIRD WEST TALE

The Nightmare was the same for the three nights before the Stranger came.

Billy and Rags are playing in the dirt field out by the rusting bridge. Rags is playing hard-to-get with a scrap of wood that Billy keeps tossing for him, and won’t bring it back. Eventually, he has one of those strange mood swings that mutts get and drops the stick, sniffing the air. Ignoring Billy’s calls, he lopes off up the bridge.

Billy’s folks have told him to stay off the bridge. It’s as red as a freshly torn arm-bone with all the rust from the winter’s snows and the fall rains, and the menfolk in Crucifixia feel it may fall down at any time, maybe taking with it whoever’s fool enough to be on it at the time. Ten year old Billy would be so much pulp under all that red metal. They’ve been fixing to rip it down for five summers now, just never got ‘round to it. There’s voices in town that want it to stay, a reminder of the old times - it’s got a plaque that bears Crucifixia’s name, an ugly art-deco crucifix -naturally- and a sign that reads Population - 8,528. The old times. Nowadays, there’s maybe 120 people in Crucifixia. And Old Silas won’t see out this summer’s drought, according to the Widows.

By now Rags is on top of the bridge, a wide footway that once linked two fields and enabled a farmhand to move cattle across without having to play chicken on the Interstate. Rags is barking is hoarse, yapping bark, the kind of bark that makes Billy’s dad crazy-mad (especially late on a Saturday night, after Esmerelda’s has closed) and usually earns Rags a good beating.

“Fool dog!” Billy calls, standing at the foot of the bridge. The curve is so great he cannot see his dog. “You get right back down here this minute, you hear?”

But Rags is a fool dog and just keeps on barking his beat-me bark. And so Billy climbs the bridge, knowing it’s a dumb thing to do, knowing it could give way at any time and smash his puny body, and the bridge is so steep, so curved, it takes him an age to struggle to the top, sand and pebbles crunching underfoot, until he reaches Rags.

The accentuated curve of the bridge makes it seem like a mountaintop. Rags is stood on his hindlegs, paws on the guard rails, looking out over the old Interstate. Billy stops for breath, fighting a stitch he knows he shouldn’t have, and looks out over to the horizon. The desert floor sweeps away in all directions, to the hazy pink teeth of Devil’s Ridge to the north (where Billy broke his ankle rock-climbing with Uncle Jack last summer), Dragon’s Humps and Sawtooth to the south-east, and the endless stretch of the saltpan to the west. The west. Where the road now strikes out from under the bridge. A defiant artificial black ribbon staining the natural landscape. And that’s when Billy knows for sure it’s all a dream.

A dream? What happened to the Nightmare?

The Nightmare is yet to come. Billy still thinks it’s a dream because there hasn’t been a lick of blacktop to be seen on the Interstate since the desert storms of ‘69, the ones Old Silas likes to reminisce about. They happened twenty years before Billy was born of course, but he’s heard the stories so many times that he knows them by heart, as if he’d lived them himself.

Rags is still howling his kick-me howl, gazing down the stretch of devil-black hardtop that shouldn’t be there. Billy follows his gaze and sees it for the first time, and then the not-so-unpleasant dream (besides the stitch, and the disobedient Rags) turns squarely on a dime and irrevocably becomes the Nightmare.

Cars roar along the phantom Interstate. Shiny cars, rusty cars, desert-dusty cars, wet-washed cars. Convertibles, saloons, limousines, jeeps, station wagons, APVs. Winnebagos, Fords and Chevrolets, Lincolns and El Dorados. Toyotas, Chryslers, Subarus, Fiats, De Loreans and Fairlanes. All heading west. And to the west.....

Smack bag straight here right in the middle of the Interstate (which shouldn’t be there) is the biggest Goddamn (he’d like to say motherfuckin’ but he can’t even think it, not even in a dream, in case Reverend Blitzen finds out, and then there’d be Hell to pay) hole or crater or whatever, and all these cars, these foreign cars and American cars, these antique and factory-fresh, are all heading toward it, and they’re tumbling over the edge like lemmings. Rags’ bark checks off each plunging automobile like a counter. Billy watches with a dropped-open jaw, unable to scream. Some of the cars swerve and try to pull off into the emergency lane, but the hole seems to have a gravity all of its own, and they’re still sucked in sideways, backwards, whatever, pulled by the unseen force or simply bulldozed on by heavier cars speeding headlong into oblivion. Billy can’t see the bottom of the hole, but maybe a hundred cars have disappeared since he started looking. How deep can it be? To the centre of the Earth? Or just to Hell?

“Stop screaming, willya?” says Rags, who has stopped howling and is stood squarely on four legs, looking up at his young master. Rags talking is a small comfort - it reminds Billy that this is, after all, just a very realistic Nightmare.

“I wasn’t screaming,” Billy replies. He talks to Rags all the time, so this part is not that unusual. “You were.”

“I was trying to warn people,” Rags retorts haughtily. “You were screaming in such a high frequency, only I could hear it. I’m so glad you’ve stopped.” Rags drops himself down on his paws, like he does in front of the fire back home, or under the rocking chair on the porch, and starts to gnaw at his paws. Billy watches the cars again. A Greyhound bus seems to scrabble at the air like some great beast as its driver puts on a valiant burst of speed, trying to jump the hole. But it’s as wide as it is deep, and the Greyhound disappears with a howling engine, followed by a state trooper’s patrol car, a Japanese compact, and a white Ford Bronco.

“Stop screaming,” Rags insists. Billy looks down and sees that Rags has eaten away at his paws to the first joint.

The hole continues to swallow up automobiles. An orange glow licks from the edges, as if the mountain of cars is finally reaching the rim, and fires are starting to take hold. Or maybe it’s the fires of Hell itself, consuming the metal and flesh.

“Stop screaming,” says Rags. Billy looks down. There is nothing on the bridge but the bloody stump of a tail, thump-thump-thumping furiously and pathetically against the sand.

“Stop screaming-”

- said Old Silas, shaking Billy awake. Billy snapped out of the nightmare gasping like a drowning man hauled on to a boat.

“Rags-”

“Rags died in the night,” Old Silas said as gently as he could, gripping Billy’s strong young shoulders in his grizzled arthritic hands. He held Billy to him until he stopped sobbing.

“Come on, get yourself up and help me bury him. All us old dogs gotta go sometime.”

The smell of blood and gasoline hung in the desert air, the smell of the last great movie genre, the apocalypse western. He halted on the brow of the ridge overlooking the town, and shielding His eyes against the laser intensity of the morning sun, looked down through the heat haze.

The Greyhound lay on its side in the shallow ditch just off the hard packed dirt road. Smoke rose from its engine louvres. A small crowd was gathered around a number of bodies lying in the road off to the left, staying far too close to the bus should its smouldering engine decide to blow, but there was no sense of urgency at the scene. It was as if those who were dead were dead, those who survived were lucky, and it was all just God’s Mysterious Will.

He smiled at the thought, and shouldering his canvas pack, started to make His way down the ridge to the crash.

Myron Dobbs hunkered down over the body of his twin brother Bobby, his chest heaving in great grief-stricken sobs, and wondered just what the fuck he was going to tell their mother. The old woman was eighty-four, she had had the twins when she was in her fifty-ninth year. That and the toxic soup that passed for an environment out here in the west had conspired to give the Dobbs boys a less than auspicious start in life. They were, shall we say, of less than average height. Myron had often cursed his mother’s lack of self-control at their fateful moment of conception (a US Army Air Force Stealth pilot on R&R from the UFO research base at Dreamland being the fourth element in this sorry equation), usually as he struggled to make his presence known at the metre-high bar in Esmerelda’s. Well, he need curse her no more. Seeing Bobby like this, his head crushed and brains spilt like bad fruit, would surely kill her. Myron’s tears fell in fat droplets on to Bobby’s upturned, dusty face, smearing the drying blood. Bobby stared at the bright blue sky, his eyes glassy and sightless, focused on infinity. Myron closed the lids gently with his thumbs.

Myron twitched at the sudden presence of a hand on his shoulder. A Stranger was knelt by him, a solid-looking, ruddily desert-tanned man with sandy coloured hair in a pony-tail, a silver earring and a neat beard framing a square, purposeful chin. Myron remembered thinking later that He looked like a sailor, or the popular image of a sailor. And He had the most piercing blue eyes Myron had ever seen. Myron was no cornholer, oh no, but he recounted later, without a hint of shame, that he thought the Stranger was beautiful.

“He was my brother,” Myron found himself saying. He didn’t know who the Man was, didn’t care, and in shock over Bobby’s death, didn’t stop to think that he hadn’t seen hadn’t seen the Man on the Greyhound from Poverty Gulch to Crucifixia. The fact that he had just appeared out of 150km of bare desert didn’t register until much later, after many shots of Redeye in Esmerelda’s.

“He was my brother,” Myron repeated. “He was only small, but he was a big man.”

“He’s not dead,” the Stranger said softly. He was examining Bobby’s neck with two stiff fingers, probing along the angle of the jaw. Myron shook his head.

“His brain’s squashed,” Myron blurted. “I saw him fall from the bus and it rolled on him.”

“Look,” insisted the Stranger. “Look at him.”

Myron knuckled the tears from his eyes and looked down at Bobby. His face had reformed, back to the chubby Bobby with the slight double chin, not the deformed alien thing he had dragged from the ditch. There was no blood. Myron’s jaw was rigid with confusion.

“I.... I......”

The Stranger took Myron’s hand and held it against Bobby’s neck. The artery in the angle of his jaw pulsed once, twice, then picked up into a constant beat. Bobby’s eyelids fluttered and his chest heaved.

“Jesus!” Myron exclaimed. He turned to the Stranger, but he was gone. He saw his broad back among a gaggle of people stood over a body near by, a body that looked like Widow Blake’s youngster, Alistair. He had been thrown from the bus like Bobby, the heavy glass of the Greyhound’s side windows shredding his pale young body.

Bobby opened his eyes and blinked.

“What happened, Myron?” he asked, staring up into the bright blue.

“A fucking miracle,” Myron said, wiping the dust from his brother’s fat cheek.

“I was on my way,” Bobby said, his voice distant, dreamlike. “I was on my way down this tunnel, toward a light, brighter than the sun, and then a hand took me back, turned me around and sent me back.... Myron? Myron?”

Myron had turned from his brother and was distracted, unbelievably, from his description of the Other Side. He was too busy watching the Blake boy standing in the road, dusting bits of broken glass from his torn clothes while the crowd of adults around him watched in amazement.

“But I saw him,” Myron whispered, half to himself. “I saw him. His fucking head was hanging off his shoulders. I saw him!”

He looked around for the Stranger. He was nowhere to be seen among the people hugging each other or gathering up their belongings from the cases and bags strewn along the dirt road. It seemed as if no one had been killed after all. Then Myron saw the Stranger’s broad back, with His shouldered pack, striking off alone down the road, heading toward Crucifixia.

“A fucking miracle,” Myron decided.

“False gods!”

Reverend Zachariah X. Blitzen held fierce court in the clapboard chapel out to the east of the town, by the dried up creek. Crucifixia had one chapel and one preacher, and by the Holy Name of God, Reverend Blitzen took advantage of that fact. He tried to make the chapel the centre of the town’s business, both economically and socially, at least during daylight hours. It was one of the few vices that he tolerated in his flock, in that he was reasonably content in the knowledge that the nocturnal centre of Crucifixia’s universe was Esmerelda’s, the bar run by the old hunchback woman on the west side of the town. Reverend Blitzen was a Hell-fired Fundamentalist, but he wasn’t completely mad. He knew that if he tried to keep these sturdy, desert-parched men and women from their Saturday night liquor and dancin’, he’d be the next to be danglin’ from the gibbet tree in the town square.

Reverend Blitzen paced the floor of the chapel as the afternoon congregation (normally the more bleary-eyed souls - but souls no less worth savin’ - who had difficulty in attending the morning service), fidgeting in the dry airless heat, allowed themselves be lambasted by his sermon. He was a fearsome, ruddy-faced giant of a man, with a great block of fleshy granite for a head, topped with coarse salt-and-pepper hair, and a dense wrestler’s body. Indeed, in a past life he had actually been King Dynamite, Champion of the Four Sided Ring, and fought in circus contests from San Diego to Tulsa. His dog collar always looked uncomfortably tight on his non-existent neck, hidden away by three sweaty chins until he cast his eyes to Heaven, which he did with regularity. All the Bibles in the slots behind the wooden pews in his chapel were sturdy and leather bound, and had all the pages torn out apart from the Book of Deuteronomy, the most hellfire-and-damnation of the Old Testaments. This particular portion of the Good Book, Blitzen reasoned in a flash of Divine Inspiration one evening, contained all the Religion that any citizen of Crucifixia need ever know. And he had spent the rest of that memorably illuminated evening tearing the rest of the chapel’s Bibles to shreds. No one had ever questioned his decision. To the good townsfolk of Crucifixia, particularly on hungover, bleary-eyed, too-bright Sunday mornings, Reverend Zachariah X. Blitzen was the Voice of God himself.

“False gods!” Blitzen exploded in the face of Jed McCabe, who was sitting on the aisle seat closes to the front of the chapel. (No one but no one occupied the front three rows, not unless they wanted to be deafened and covered in foul spittle. Blitzen had gradually become puzzled by this reticence among his flock to get physically close to him and had taken to moving constantly among them.) Jed shrank back under the onslaught and held his breath. As rancid as the blast from Blitzen’s mouth was, Jed didn’t want him smelling the redeye he had sunk at Esmerelda’s last night. He shut his eyes and waited for Blitzen to move away before wiping the Reverend’s saliva from his face.

“Deuteronomy 5.5 - 5.7,” the Reverend intoned, and the mutilated Bibles rustled politely. “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the Land of Egypt out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me.”

The Reverend licked his salty top lip, moving among his flock, meeting eyes and invariably sending them casting to the floor. The Widows in their smart black Sunday outfits on the back row sat rigid-backed and returned his gaze without flinching, apparently content in their sanctimonious ways. “We are all guilty of the worship of false gods. Money. Power. Comfort.” He glanced over at Maybelene and Dolly, Esmerelda’s live-in teenage whores, who were already intently examining the scuffed wooden floor of the chapel. Blitzen sucked in breath. “Lust. All these things we worship, and all these things make us sinners in the Eyes of the Lord. They divert our attention from the worship of Him, Jesus Christ, Our One True Lord.”

The door of the chapel slammed open like a gunshot. Myron Dobbs, his face smeared with blood, stood in the doorway, a halo of dust shimmering around him in the blinding afternoon sun. The blast of light scattered the gloom of the chapel and spotlighted Reverend Blitzen in the aisle. He halted mid-rhetoric and shielded his eyes, squinting into the sun.

“What the - ? Myron? What is the meaning of this infernal interruption? This better be good boy, or I’ll whup -”

“The Greyhound’s arrived from Poverty Gulch,” said Myron breathlessly. “It’s a miracle.”

***

Esmerelda’s bar lay to the west of the town, a devilish counterweight to Reverend Blitzen’s shrine of sobriety. A good pilgrim leaving one of the Reverend’s napalm sermons on a summer’s eve would be treated to the sight of the sun setting through the intricate ironwork of the intermittently faulty neon sign mounted high on the bar’s corrugated roof. As the fireball dipped into the mountains, the sign would sometimes flicker into life, summoning the faithful as surely as the chapel’s rusty mission bell.

Esmerelda herself was somewhere between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and fifty years old, a compact hunchback creature with an alarmingly good appetite for her own nuclear chilli and the homebrewed redeye that bubbled and farted through a chemistry-lab of stills in the cellar of the bar. She had one reasonably good eye and a black silk patch over the other ragged orbit, and her cynicism was matched only by her razor-edged sarcasm. She kept an antique Spaz shotgun under her counter (although it hadn’t been fired in years, and was loaded with rice grain, and would probably blow up in her hands if she actually tried to fire it again), along with a hardwood English cricket bat that was still smeared with the blood of the last rowdy to cross her. Many a teenage drinker testing her patience for the first time found to their cost that a century and a half of desert wear and tear did not adversely affect the art of swinging a willow cricket bat.

Esmerelda had no bar staff as such. She lived in the loft above the bar with Dolly and Maybelene, and saw to Crucifixia’s alcoholic and carnal needs seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year, come shine or rain, not that there had been much of the latter in Crucifixia lately. Her devotion to the physical requirements of the townsfolk was as total as Reverend Blitzen’s was to their spiritual salvation.

Having no bar staff, Esmerelda was cleaning glasses and wiping down tables when the Stranger arrived that afternoon. Half the town was at the chapel, but not Esmerelda. A hundred and fifty years on Planet Earth, with fifty years in this godforsaken place, gave a person a healthy sense of immortality. If God wanted to talk to Esmerelda, or vice versa, he was going to have to wait in the queue with all the other drinkers. She figured he knew where she was by now.

He took his seat at a table of bleached pine scarred with cigar burns, and set His canvas pack down at His feet. She ignored Him at first, wiping down the remaining tables with agonisingly slow circular movements, her hunched back to Him. He coughed politely and she straightened a degree or two, her old back creaking, and wrung out her cloth into the iron bucket by her foot.

“Get you something, young man?” To Esmerelda, anyone under a hundred was a young man. Her voice sounded like a lame tortoise walking over sandpaper. He smiled at her.

“Ice water would be fine.”

“Pitcher?”

“Just a glass, thank you.”

She shuffled away behind the bar and disappeared into the gloom of the back room. The crunching and thundering of the ice machine could be heard. She returned with a grimy glass half full of ice and filled with water. She set it down on the table in front of Him and had turned away before he even had a chance to move His hand to His pocket for money.

“Don’t take money off no man for water in the desert,” she said, her back to Him as she returned to her cleaning. “Least, not on a hot afternoon. Enjoy, Stranger.”

He sipped at his ice water and watched her work. She moved with the deliberate slowness of the old, not through fear of pain or the stiffening of joints, but through time-worn patience. He thought she looked like a creature of the desert itself, hewn from rock and sand rather than flesh and blood.

A burst of giggling broke the quiet heat of the afternoon. Maybelene and Dolly tumbled through the swing doors, fresh from Reverend Blitzen’s sermon, and having chased each other across the town. Their blouses and faces were grimed with dust. They stopped in the doorway when they saw the Stranger and drew in breaths to halt their giggling.

“It’s Him!” whispered Dolly, the blond Monroe, and pushing aside the dark-haired Maybelene, approached the Stranger’s table. She turned the chair so that it’s back faced Him and straddled it saucily.

“My name is Dolly,” she said, extending a grimy hand and expecting Him to kiss it. Instead, He smiled and shook it politely. Dolly was startled.

“I’m seventeen years old,” she continued, retracting her hand cautiously as if from some unspecified danger. She was fixated on the Man’s deep blue eyes. “This is my friend Maybelene. She’s fifteen.”

“I am not!” Maybelene blurted, dropping herself into the chair next to Dolly. “I was sixteen last week and you know it, Dolly Bird.”

They punched each other playfully and the giggling recommenced. The Man noticed that they each kept one eye on Esmerelda’s back even during their horseplay. It was evident that nothing slipped Esmerelda’s attention, as far as her bar was concerned. She disappeared into the rear of the bar, carrying her bucket. The Man surmised that she worked these girls hard.

“What brings you to Crucifixia, Stranger?” Maybelene asked, shoving Dolly from her chair. Dolly squealed as she landed red-faced in a spill of skirts and cleavage, narrowly retaining her modesty. She regained her seat and sent Maybelene crashing to the floor as the Stranger answered.

“I’m looking for some work. I’m a carpenter.”

“A carpenter?” Dolly leaned forward and gently took the glass of ice water from His grip. She clasped one of His hands and examined the palm, tracing the callused skin with a sharp red painted nail.

“You have good hands, Mister Carpenter. Worker’s hands.”

The Man smiled. “Do you know where I might find work around here?”

“We heard you’d been at the ‘Hound,” Maybelene blurted. Dolly shot her a reproachful glance but Maybelene had started and fully intended to finish. “Marlon Dobbs told us you saved his brother Bobby’s life after the crash. He said it was-”

“Nothing,” said the Man. “It was nothing. The boy wasn’t even injured. His brother was upset, the shock of the crash, I think. No one had been hurt. They were very lucky.”

“But Marlon said-” Maybelene insisted, and earnt an elbow in the ribs from Dolly. She pushed herself back into her chair, admonished.

“There could be work out on Jack Bryson’s ranch,” Dolly suggested. “We had some bad sandstorms out here a few weeks back. Blew the snappers in from the badlands, kept us all indoors for three days. Old Widow Jensen’s youngest, Charlene, she got caught by a snapper-”

“A snapper?” the Man asked, puzzled.

“You don’t know what a snapper is?” Maybelene was incredulous. “Are you from the East? A snapper is a living tumbleweed, a mess of teeth and bones and stuff. They blow about in the storms, eating dogs and children and full-grown folk too if you ain’t strong enough to fight ‘em off.”

“The snapper got Charlene,” Dolly continued. “Twasn’t a pretty sight. Anyway, Jack Bryson’s ranch took the brunt of the storm and all his fences are down. Lost half of his herd. Don’t have much luck, old Jack, what with the mutilations and all. Still, could be some work at Jack’s ranch for a feller handy with his hands.” She finished with a saucy wink.

The Man drained the last of His ice water and stood up. He shouldered His pack.

“Could you point me in the direction of the Bryson ranch, ladies?”

“Head west on this road, you can’t miss it. Great steer skull on the gate over the road leading up to it. Tell Jack Dolly and Maybelene sent you. And give him our love.”

Dolly blew a kiss but the Man had already turned and walked out of the bar. They sat and mooned for a few moments until Esmerelda returned and shook them from their stupor.

“We’ll have customers here in an hour,” she told them, gauging the time from the light coming through the bar’s windows. “I’ve run you a bath. Go and get yourselves set.”

The girls gave Esmerelda an affectionate peck on each cheek and chased each other up the stairs. As they stripped for the bath and then played rude games with the soap and sponges, flooding the wooden floor and earning shouts from Esmerelda as it soaked through to the bar below, their sole topic of conversation was the handsome, gentleman Stranger.

“He is the most beautiful man I have ever met,” decided Dolly.

Jack Bryson tended fifty acres of the most arid, infertile land this side of the river Styx. For a crop to grow in this barren land, he often cursed to his brother Joe or his nephew Billy, it would take the blood of Christ himself to be spilt on this town. That was just about as religious as Jack Bryson ever got. Like Esmerelda, the desert had knocked all religion out of him. It was scarcely a wonder, as there were few places as far removed from the Garden of Eden as Crucifixia.

Jack was deep in thought, kneeling beside the body of the latest dead steer, when the Stranger appeared and startled him. Jack leapt to his feet, hand scrabbling for the revolver tucked in his waist band. He backed away until the Stranger’s slow smile and outstretched palm calmed him down.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” the Man said. “I’ve come to look for work. The girls in the saloon said you could do with the help of a carpenter.”

Jack eyed the Man with suspicion. Strangers were rare in Crucifixia. What could he possibly be here to visit? It had always been a remote place, long before the Feds had sealed off the region with their wire and berms and towers. Western towns like Crucifixia had been weird long before any government body made it official.

“Is she dead?” the Man asked, kneeling by the steer. Jack regained his composure and felt foolish. The Man, stranger to Crucifixia though he was, was open and friendly. Jack took the two or three steps back to his original place and knelt down.

“Mutilated,” he said. “See, the lower jaw and tongue are missing. Udder and reproductive organs too. Happens regular out this way. I lose maybe one every two weeks. Always the same story - bright lights and dogs restless the night before, find one like this the next morning.”

“I don’t know much about cattle,” the Man said, running his hands absently along the dead cow’s flank. Not a spot of blood marked the sand, despite the terrible injuries. “I’m a carpenter. I heard you have fences need fixin’, maybe a barn or two. I’m good.”

Jack stood up and wiped his hands down the front of his thighs. He put one hand up to shield his eyes and with the other swept the horizon in an arc.

“Got fences as far as the eye can see, friend,” he said, “‘bout a hundred miles at the last check. And every damn blast last one of ‘em down in the storm. My feed barn too. Work’s yours if you want it. Can’t pay too much, but I’ll feed and lodge you. What do you say?”

“It’s a deal,” said the Stranger, smiling and holding out a hand. Jack spat into his own palm and they sealed the deal with a grubby handshake.

Later, when the Stranger had dropped his things at the Jack’s ranch house and had begun surveying the feed barn, the mutilated cow got to its feet and joined the herd. Jack Bryson never noticed. He’d left the carcass for the carrion crows and snappers to take care of, and in the excitement that ensued in the following days, he forgot all about the head count.

Reverend Zachariah X. Blitzen, only son of Lazarus and Magdelene Blitzen of El Paso, strode Crucifixia’s Main Street with fire in his eyes and thunder in his heart. Size elevens clad in heavy work boots kicked up dust as he headed for the Widow Blake’s house. He moved with all the leaden grace and implacable inertia of a steamroller flattening blacktop, leaning forward at a slight angle from the waist as if his sense of purpose was more compelling than gravity, appearing to drive a wedge of compressed air in front of him. In a previous life, as King Dynamite, Champion of the Four-Sided Ring from Houston to Salt Lake, he had pursued wrestling crowns and belts with a religious zeal. Now he was the Lord’s Wrestler, and his opponents were devils and demons and sinners. And cast them from the ring he would, By God!

He mounted the steps to the porch of the Widow Blake’s modest clapboard house just off Main Street’s dusty boulevard. It was late afternoon and the bloody fireball of the desert sun was caught in the angle of the gibbet tree above the war memorial. The Reverend’s attention was held by it before he knocked once on the Widow’s front door. Not a double-rap, just a single thud of the black iron knocker shaped like a wolf’s head. It was his calling card.

I will have to speak to the good lady of this house about that knocker, Blitzen decided as he waited for the Widow Blake to answer the door. I will not have Indian animism in Crucifixia. Not even in ignorance.

He saw Widow Blake’s pinched features through the peephole, misted by the inner screen door. She smiled as she recognised him, revealing a row of tombstone teeth, and opened the doors.

“Reverend,” she crooned, “how nice of you to drop by. Oh, I’m so sorry I didn’t make morning service, only Alistair and I -”

“That’s quite alright,” Blitzen soothed, not waiting to be asked inside but stepping boldly over the threshold and placing his hand firmly on the Widow’s arm. “It’s about Alistair that I have come. Is the boy here?”

Widow Blake’s smile faded.

“He’s in the parlour. But why would you wish to see him, Reverend? He’s had a nasty accident this morning, and I -”

“I know,” Blitzen said, gently squeezing the Widow’s arm. “That’s why I’m here. Myron Dobbs came to the chapel and told us all about the accident. I’m just making sure that everyone is alright. Myron told us no one was hurt, but you know how Myron ain’t all there. It seemed as if a terrible crash had occurred, yet no one was injured. Were you there, Widow Blake?”

“Why, I was sat right next to Alistair,” said the Widow. She appeared bewildered with the Reverend’s interest in her son, but he was interpreting her worry with suspicion. Uninvited, he made his way through the cool interior of the house to the parlour, the Widow chattering in his wake.

“He really is fine, Reverend, not in the least hurt. Barely even shaken, really a strong boy....”

The Reverend found Alistair sitting cross-legged on the bleached wooden floor of the parlour, working with brow-furrowing concentration on a large jigsaw puzzle that appeared to be made up of the contents of several different boxes. Alistair didn’t even look up as the Reverend’s heavy footfalls announced his presence in the room, but concentrated on pressing together the mismatched pieces into a wild fractal pattern. In the corner of the room sat a hollowed out TV set, a flowering potted cactus in place of the tube.

The Reverend crouched by Alistair and put his hand on his shoulder. The boy turned to look at him slowly, unstartled by the gesture, as if he was being shouted from a distance. His mother squeezed through the door behind Blitzen and positioned herself to the side of her son. She was unconsciously wringing her hands in anguish.

“See? He’s fine, Reverend, just fine. Not a scratch, not a mark. Myron is not a stupid as he looks, Reverend, I’ve always said so. We should give the boy a little credit now and again.”

Blitzen said nothing. He gently took the boy’s chin in his hand and turned his head from left to right, examining his neck and jawline. Alistair, ten years old and completely trusting the gargantuan preacher, stared back with unblinking blue eyes.

A good looking boy, thought the Reverend. Strong jawline, just like his father, Tom Blake, God rest his soul. But strong enough to survive a headlong crash through the glass of a Greyhound’s side window?

“What happened this morning, Alistair?” asked Blitzen gently, using his best Big Buddy voice. “Can you tell me?”

“It was really nothing,” the Widow began to chatter. Blitzen cast her a stony glance that silenced her instantly. He wanted Alistair’s version of the events - he had already heard hers.

“We were taking the bus back from Poverty Gulch,” said Alistair evenly. The Reverend had released his jaw and he had returned his attention to the puzzle. He spoke without looking up. “We’d been to see Aunt Jane and Uncle Jim. I was sat by the window, reading my book, when the bus started making funny noises and then there was a big bang. The next thing I knew I was flying through the air-”

“That’s not true, Alistair,” the Widow interjected gently. She turned to the Reverend, smiling. “He has an overactive imagination, Reverend, you will have to excuse him.”

Blitzen did not look at her or even acknowledge her interruption. Instead, he put his hand on Alistair’s shoulder.

“Go on, son. Tell me more.”

Alistair looked up from his puzzle, his brow creased as if he was contemplating another puzzle, a harder one. He gazed into the space above the Reverend’s shoulder.

“I remember hitting the road. It didn’t hurt but I felt funny. I was kinda cold all over. I could see the backs of my legs. I shouldn’t be able to see the backs of my legs, should I, Reverend?”

A chill crept along Blitzen’s spine. The breathless report from Myron had said that Alistair’s head had been almost detached from his body, which had itself been torn and twisted. Myron was very specific on this point, breaking down several times during its telling. In the end, and to shield him from the incessant questioning of the rest of the congregation, he had taken him into his private quarters and thoroughly interrogated him. The Widow Blake was right about that - Myron Dobbs was not as stupid as everyone assumed him to be.

“He’s very tired, Reverend,” the Widow insisted, attempting to manoeuvre herself between her son and the preacher. But Blitzen was crouched inches from the boy and was immovable.

“It went very dark,” Alistair continued. “I saw a light and went to touch it. A hand grabbed me and I thought - I thought -” He stopped and his eyes glazed over.

“What did you think, Alistair?” Blitzen pressed, leaning forward. Widow Blake danced off to one side, agitated.

“Please, Reverend, he’s very tired, he’s had a shock, he doesn’t know what he’s saying. Please, Reverend-”

A great fat tear squeezed its way out of Alistair’s right eye and rolled hotly down his cheek.

“I thought it was my Pop. It sounded like my Pop, he spoke to me.”

“What did he say, Alistair? Do you remember?”

“Yes. He said I had to go back. He said I should go with the Man. The Man would take care of me. I said I would go. And then I felt warm and I woke up with lots of people around me. I saw my Mom. And a Stranger.”

“Did the Stranger touch you, Alistair?”

“The Stranger had hold of my hand.”

Alistair’s concentration appeared to slip as something occurred to him and he suddenly and unnervingly met Blitzen’s gaze. His face crumpled and tears rolled freely.

“I thought it was my Pop!”

The boy leaned forward, looking for comforting arms, and was intercepted by his mother. She knelt beside him and clutched him to her, glaring at the Reverend. Blitzen made no move to console the boy.

“Please, Reverend,” the Widow said, tears of her own now flowing. “He’s so upset. He really doesn’t know what he’s saying. Please don’t question him anymore. He’s not making any sense.”

Blitzen stood up, scratching his chin thoughtfully. The Widow hugged her son at his feet.

“I apologise for upsetting Alistair, Widow Blake, but I may have to come back and speak to you both again. Good day to you, and God’s blessing on this house this day.” He turned and walked to the door.

“And get rid of that door knocker, Widow Blake. Animism has no place in the house of the God-fearing.”

Billy saw the unfamiliar figure working out by the perimeter fencing when he called to tell Uncle Jack that Rags had died. Uncle Jack wasn’t in, so he decided to introduce himself to this Stranger that had all the town talking. He had barely been able to cross the town this morning without children and adults alike stopping him in his tracks and asking his opinion of the miracles that had taken place out on the road. As far as Billy could see, it was nothing more than the insane rantings of Myron and Bobby Dobbs. He had more faith in Old Silas’ sand divinations than in the idiot dwarf twins.

So he found himself walking alone out to the ridge where the solitary figure was driving fresh stakes into the hard earth with thunderous blows from a sledgehammer. Usually Rags would be running alongside him, chasing jackrabbits or just getting under his feet. But Rags was dead, Old Silas had found him the night before last and buried him yesterday. Rags and Billy had grown up together. Billy needed someone to talk to about all this. His father was no good - always drunk, and he had never liked Rags anyway, so he wouldn’t understand, and Old Silas, well, he was stone deaf and prone to speaking gibberish that some people took to be prophecy but Billy never understood. And now Uncle Jack, Billy’s soulmate, wasn’t here when he needed him.

The Stranger was shirtless and sweating in the morning sun, and didn’t turn around as Billy approached. He concentrated on positioning a new stake and driving it in with a heavy strike from the sledgehammer.

“Good day to you, son,” He said without turning. Billy stopped short of him, cautious.

“Good day, sir. Do you know where my Uncle Jack is?”

The Man put His sledgehammer on the ground and faced Billy, wiping his hands down on his jeans. He smiled and all apprehension melted away from the boy.

“You must be Billy,” the Man said. “Your Uncle Jack speaks very highly of you.”

Billy glowed. “Have you seen him, sir?”

“No, son. He was gone when I rose this morning. His truck wasn’t in the barn when I went to fetch my tools.”

“I need to see him,” Billy said glumly. “I need to tell him that my dog has died.”

“I’m sorry,” said the Man, stepping forward and placing His hand on Billy’s shoulder. A warmth seemed to radiate from his callused palm. “That’s too bad. Every boy should have a dog.”

“Rags was a good dog,” said Billy, suddenly tearful and ashamed of the fact in front of the Stranger. He knuckled the tears away.

“I have to get back to work,” the Stranger said, “or Uncle Jack will fire me. Nice to have met you, Billy.”

“You too, sir. If you see Uncle Jack, be sure and tell him about Rags, won’t you?”

The Man smiled and struck the fence post He had been holding. A splinter cut deeply into His hand and he bit it out and spat it the ground without a word. He bled a little from the wound, then it stopped. Billy walked away, a thousand questions spinning in his head. What was all this nonsense from Myron and Bobby? He decided to keep quiet about his meeting with the Stranger. If the gossips he had met on the way to Uncle Jack’s ranch knew he had talked with the Man and not asked all of their stupid questions for them, he would never hear the last of it.

That night Billy was woken from a fitful dream by shadows across the face of the moon that silvered the floor of his room. Trailing his nightshirt, he knelt by the window and looked out across the scrubby garden that Old Silas tended when his back wasn’t too painful.

A figure, a human figure, was kneeling in the patch down by the back fence where they had buried Rags, wrapped in his favourite blanket, two nights previous. The figure was plunging his hands into the earth. Not digging, not shifting spoil, just plunging as if into a basin or a bath. Billy watched with amazement. Even in the dark he could see the earth swell and ripple with a liquid movement. A shape struggled free of the dirt, a long thin snout and swept back ears, followed by a body and four legs. The figure helped it from the ground. The new thing stood there, on all fours, shaking itself down. A dog. It gave a weak experimental yelp and ran headlong for the house, trailing a soiled blanket behind it. The figure clambered over the back fence and, dusting Himself down, disappeared into the night.

Billy heard a noise in the corridor outside his room and leapt back into bed, pulling the thin covers up to his face, thinking his father or Old Silas had come to tell him off. Through the covers he saw the room brighten momentarily as the door opened a little. He risked a peep. He was rewarded with a single, salty lick from Rag’s wet tongue, then he watched as the dog, still dusty from the earth, made a nest from his favourite blanket at the foot of Billy’s bed, and curled up into a contented heap.

Billy closed his eyes, pulled the covers over his head, and smiled sadly at the bizarre dream, wishing it could all be true.

Rumours spread through Crucifixia like a plague virus. Billy was seen playing with Rags under the gibbet tree and Myron paraded Bobby around the town like a freakshow exhibit. The word went around that Alistair Blake had suffered a similar fate to Bobby and the Widow Blake had begun to receive a steady stream of visitors that had begun with Reverend Blitzen, much to her distress. Old Silas, under much pressure from the other Widows and the rest of the townsfolk, folded and admitted that he had buried Rags a few days earlier and that he had definitely been dead. No one doubted Old Silas’ opinion. There was only one word on the lips of Crucifixia that week:

“The Stranger!” said Pillory the undertaker, at an impromptu and somewhat alcohol-soaked town meeting that night in Esmerelda’s. He was mindful that his business could be threatened by these apparent impromptu resurrections. “All this has happened since that Stranger wandered into town. Wasn’t he seen at the bus crash? Isn’t he working out at Jack Bryson’s place? And isn’t Billy Bryson Jack Bryson’s nephew?”

Joe Bryson looked up from his permanent home at the end of the bleached bar, clutching the shot glass that had his name engraved on it.

“Keep my son out of this, Mister Pillory,” he slurred. There was threat in his voice but no one had taken Joe Bryson seriously for years. He was a drunkard, plain and simple.

Pillory, a small bald man with a big mouth, puffed out his chest in the knowledge that the bigger man was incapable of backing up his threat. “Your son is involved in this, Mister Bryson. He’s running around with a dog that his own grandfather - your father - buried the night before. Maybe if you spent a little more time at home and less in this-”

Joe Bryson slammed the shot glass down on the table with a bang. For a second Pillory quivered and thought that a moment of sobriety was going to be his downfall. Joe Bryson stared at the quiet room, people awaiting his next move. After a long moment, he averted his eyes and pushed the glass across the bar to Esmerelda, indicating he required a refill. He said nothing.

Pillory smiled at his small victory.

“Has anyone actually spoken to this man? Has anyone seen him outside of Jack Bryson’s ranch?”

Dolly and Maybelene were upstairs attending to customers. Other than Esmerelda, who didn’t feel inclined to add to the nonsense she was hearing here tonight, there were none who could say they had spoken to him.

“We should be careful about what allegations we make,” said Flanagan the general store owner, in a low voice. “If the Reverend gets wind of what we’re

saying-”

“I say the Reverend can go screw himself!” Pillory blurted, and a gasp spread through the bar. Even Esmerelda stopped cleaning glasses. Pillory was overstepping the mark, intoxicated on his own rhetoric. If Reverend Blitzen got to hear of this defamation..... it would make any drunken lunge of Joe Bryson look like a fairy tap. Blitzen had, after all, once been King Dynamite, the West’s most famous all-in wrestler. Biblical judgement would descend on Pillory like a lightning strike.

The meeting descended into a round of squabbles and insults with the town ending up polarised between superstitious awe and talk of apocalyptic omens, and those who snorted at the nonsense, although none could put forward a reasonable explanation for it all. In the corner of the bar, sat with the other Widows, no one noticed the quiet Widow Jensen, mother of the dearly-departed Charlene, drain her glass and slip out of the door. She had decided to meet this handsome Stranger of whom they spoke, and ask him for help.

She wanted her baby back.

Reverend Zachariah X. Blitzen’s mid-week evening sermons were rather better attended than his Sunday sessions. After all, what else was there to do in Crucifixia when the sun was going down and credit at Esmerelda’s was running low? So Blitzen’s clapboard chapel was filled to capacity with Crucifixia’s faithful this particular night, three days after the Stranger had arrived.

The atmosphere simmered in the chapel like the inside of a pressure cooker, partly due to the heat of the day, partly due to the fact that the Reverend had been sat behind his lectern with his back to his flock, unmoving, unspeaking, for the best part of thirty minutes as they had filed in and quietly taken up their seats. The back of his razor-cut head was ruddy with sunburn and the veins along his thick neck stood out. The sermon would be aggressive and uncompromising tonight, the worshippers suspected. Something had fired the Reverend up. And no one was in any doubt as to what that something was.

When he was satisfied that all his regulars were inside and the chapel doors bolted shut in spite of the heat, the Reverend rose and turned. He leaned on his lectern and gripped the edges with his shovel hands, knuckles turning bone white. He could hardly speak through his gritted teeth.

“Three days ago I spoke to you of false gods,” he intoned, “and the dangers of the worship of those false gods. Now I find that Crucifixia is awash with rumour and speculation that a Resurrector is in our midst. A Resurrector? There is only one Resurrector, as we all know, and that is Jesus Christ Our Lord.”

He spat out the words with utter conviction. The townsfolk lowered their collective eyes guiltily.

“Whoever this Stranger is,” Blitzen continued, beginning his stride through the chapel, “he is a charlatan and a trickster. He wants something from us and will try to make us believe he is a messiah in order to obtain whatever it is that he wants. He will go to great lengths to achieve this. Nothing will be too much trouble for him in order to fool us. We only have our faith and God’s teachings to protect us from such evil.”

To interrupt the Reverend in the middle of such flowing lambaste was unheard of. But this night Pillory, emboldened by his command of the town meeting, stood up and coughed discreetly. The Reverend turned, fire in his eyes, and the whole congregation turned to look in silent awe.

“As a concerned citizen of Crucifixia,” Pillory said, “I share the good Reverend’s apprehensions about this Stranger in our midst. I appreciate the Reverend’s insistence that he is merely a fraud intending to embezzle us in some way. However, I ask the Reverend, and the rest of you God-fearing people, how you explain this-”

Pillory reached forward into the pew directly to his front where the Widow Jensen was sat, head bowed. A cloaked girl sat beside her, hooded despite the heat. Pillory pulled the hood sharply from her head, uncovering her.

Crucifixia had last seen Charlene Jensen alive when she had skipped down Main Street in her Sunday best, never to return after a stray snapper, blown in by the desert wind, took her in the hundred yards between the chapel and her home. Pillory had last gazed upon her sweet, torn face when he had sealed the coffin lid over it and helped to carry her to her grave in Crucifixia’s tiny cemetery. And now here she was, alive, sat in the chapel, her frightened eyes darting around the room. But her face..... her face was still terribly disfigured, the flesh opened up in rips and tears from the snapper’s razor teeth. The wounds looked fresh and suppurating. She quickly pulled her hood back into place with a pale hand that was equally scarred. Widow Jensen pulled her to her breast protectively and cast aggressive looks around the chapel.

“It’s true,” she said, tears in her eyes. “I went to see him. He went away and came back with my baby. She’s not perfect, but she’s back. My Charlene. My baby’s back.”

A ripple spread through the chapel. People closed to Widow Jensen and her undead daughter moved away as quickly as they could, creating a circle of unoccupied space around the two women. A pew overturned noisily in the panic.

“Stop it!” the Reverend bellowed, holding up his hands. “Stop this nonsense at once. There is a rational explanation for all of this. Widow Jensen, take Charlene into my quarters. Mister Pillory, please accompany them, I wish to utilise your expertise and professional opinion. The service is over for tonight. Please go back to your homes. Do not speak of this Stranger. Do not seek him out. I will be meeting with this Man before the night is out. When I have spoken to him, I will report back to you. Now, go in peace. And remember what I have said.”

The congregation filed out of the chapel, someone stopping to upright the felled pew quietly and deliberately. Many could not take their eyes off Widow Jensen and the mercifully-covered thing she was clutching to her breast. As the last person left, the Reverend bolted the doors behind them. He paused, pressing his damp forehead to the wooden door, and muttered a prayer. Then he joined Pillory, Widow Jensen, and the newly-resurrected Charlene in his quarters.

Pillory and the Reverend gave Charlene a cursory examination while Widow Jensen looked on anxiously. Pillory, besides being Crucifixia’s undertaker, was the closest thing they had to a physician. Some said that he never altered his bedside manner whether it was a corpse or a cough he was dealing with. He had a stethoscope in the small bag he habitually carried, and he listened intently to various parts of Charlene’s anatomy. She watched silently, doe-eyed and fearful. Eventually, Pillory packed away his things and drew the Reverend to one side.

“She has no heartbeat,” he whispered. No pulse. The blood does not flow in her veins. That is why her wounds do not bleed. She is a golem.”

“A golem?”

“The clay man of Jewish myth. Animation without life. A zombie.”

The Reverend drew in a breath that expanded his chest to twice its normal size.

He expelled it all noisily through his nostrils, as if practising some calming exercise.

“Take the Widow and Charlene home, Mister Pillory,” he instructed, “then go and get some sleep if you can. I have a feeling tomorrow may be a busy day.”

***

Jack Bryson’s ranch was in darkness apart from a single lit window in the kitchen. When Reverend Blitzen knocked on the back door, Jack answered. He was surprised to see Blitzen - the two men had never spoken since the Reverend had come to the town where Jack had been born and raised. Ordinarily, Blitzen had no time for unbelievers.

“Reverend.”

“Bryson. May I speak with you?”

“Step inside, Reverend. My father and nephew are here, sharing supper with me. Can I interest you in joining us?”

Blitzen stepped through the door. Rags emerged from under the kitchen table, gave a single yap and darted back underneath again.

“No, thank you all the same. I have come to see the Stranger you have employed on your land. Is he here?”

“You’ve missed him, Reverend. He took a visitor, maybe an hour ago, and left with them.”

Blitzen’s eyes grew wide. “A visitor? Who was it? Someone from the town? A member of my congregation? Where did they go?”

Jack smiled and held up his hands. “Hold on, Reverend. I’m not this man’s keeper. I just employ him. What he does of an evening is his own business, not mine, and certainly not yours. I have no idea who called for him or where they went.”

The Reverend chewed his lip. “Do you know this man’s name, Bryson?”

Jack looked puzzled. “Now you mention it, I’ve never asked him.”

The Reverend made his goodbyes and left. Jack rejoined Old Silas and Billy at the kitchen table, and admonished Billy for feeding scraps to Rags. Billy did as he was told but sulked. The boy and his dog had been even more inseparable than usual since the dog had come back. Old Silas had told Jack that the dog had run away and returned - it seemed to the tired old man that this was an easier explanation than the one he had given the Widows. Billy’s contradictory and outlandish story fell on deaf ears. Indian blood, in whatever small amount, coursed through the old man’s veins, and it manifested itself in his mid fortune-telling and healing skills. He had lived his entire life in this harsh country, the last ten of which he had been sealed in by the federal government. A resurrected dog was possibly the least weird thing he had experienced in years.

***

The Four-Sided Ring is a pool of blinding light in an ocean of deepest, darkest blackness. King Dynamite, young and firm in star-spangled lycra, stands in a broad ready stance, hands on hips, freshly-shaved granite-chin jutting, awaiting his opponent.

A flash of fire and a whiff of acrid brimstone herald the arrival of the challenger, the pretender to the throne. He faces the champion across the ring, all horns and spiked tail and cloven hooves. Lucifer himself will do battle this night, and wrestle King Dynamite for the souls of the damned. The Devil lets out a hideous. mocking cackle. Of course.

There is a referee, who looks like Burgess Meredith, or maybe God, who brings them together in the centre of the ring with a hand on each of their shoulders. They square up, faces inches apart. The Devil’s breath is like the rancid odour of a hundred semen-stained whores’ tongues. He cackles again. Spittle flecks King Dynamite’s cheeks and burns like acid.

“A good clean fight,” Burgess Meredith - or is it God? - warns. “All of Mankind is watching. No biting. No punching.” He looks solemnly at Lucifer. “And no sorcery. To your corners!”

They retreat to their corners. A girl walks the ring with a ROUND ONE placard. King Dynamite knows her as Dolly, but she is inexplicably naked and instead of a vagina has a wicked gnashing orifice studded with razor teeth.

A bell sounds, like the tolling of Judgement Day. The fighters circle each other warily, feinting, lunging. King Dynamite grips Lucifer’s arm but his reptilian skin is waxy and the hold slips away. The Devil turns and uses the ropes to effect a horse-like kick, and King Dynamite is abruptly flat on his back. First point to the Forces of Evil!

King Dynamite is shaken but not stirred. He takes the fight to the Devil, feinting with a forearm smash and bringing Lucifer crashing to the canvas with a smartly executed scissor takedown. Hurrah for the Armies of the Light! King Dynamite is about to body slam the fallen Devil when the bell tolls again, and he is forced to retreat to his corner.

A Man awaits him there, towel and bucket in hand. The Man is strangely familiar, but King Dynamite is sure that he has never seen Him before. A handsome fellow. No, more than handsome.... He glances across at the Devil’s corner. There, the same Man is attending to the Devil’s needs. The same Man?

Maybelene struts the ring, her flowing locks now a nest of coiling vipers. She too is naked. The bell tolls for what King Dynamite knows will be the Final Round. Ever.

Lucifer knows this too. He attacks straight from his corner, grimacing a face that is a weapon all by itself, uglier than the ugliest gargoyle that ever squatted on a cathedral roof. It unnerves King Dynamite enough for the Devil to force him against the ropes, then grab hold and stomach throw him in a lazy somersault as he rebounds. The champion lands heavily, all the wind impacted from his chest. As he struggles for breath, the Devil squats on his chest, pushing the foulest arse in all Creation into his face. A count of three, with King Dynamite’s shoulders flat on the canvas, and it will all be over, the Forces of Darkness triumphing forever over the Forces of Light.

The referee is nowhere to be seen, so King Dynamite sinks his teeth into the Devil’s buttocks. The Devil screams and his tail goes stiff. King Dynamite rolls out from underneath and is on all fours before Lucifer can react. He grabs the stiff tail and begins to swing the Devil around and around the ring, faster and faster, until King Dynamite is the centre of a powerful centrifuge with the Devil a screaming red blur on the end, whipping past the ropes. Then King Dynamite lets go.

The Devils sails away into the darkness with a thankfully receding scream of foul, unspeakable curses. While these evil words hang in the air, Burgess Meredith/God - strangely absent throughout the bout - reappears and counts one - two - three on his fingers, and holds up King Dynamite’s right hand.

“The Winner! The Champion of the World! King Dynamite!”

Dolly and Maybelene enter the ring, still naked but now wholesomely human, carrying between them a huge heavy belt made from solid gold and finest leather. At its centre is a large crucifix. They strap it to the champion’s belly and secure it around his back. He receives a kiss on either cheek.

King Dynamite, Champion of the World, raises his fists to the darkness, laughing in the face of the defeated Devil, and lets the roar of the invisible billion-strong crowd wash over him, bathing in the glory. Tonight, he is God’s Champion.

The day dawned bright and the sun rose swiftly, burning away the last wisps of morning mist that hung around the town like wraiths. The Reverend left his bed before sunrise, as was his habit, and breakfasted on his porch before bathing and dressing in the uniform of his office. He left his house and headed for the town.

The Reverend’s usual route took him by Crucifixia’s small cemetery, situated on a grassy knoll accessed by a scrubby, overgrown path. This morning, the iron gates at the bottom of the path, usually bolted shut, hung open, creaking in the light, dry wind. With thoughts of grave desecrators on his mind, the Reverend strode up the path and into the cemetery.

The burial ground looked as if it was in a state of preparation for a mass funeral, the aftermath of a plague or some disaster. Graves lay open and yawning like sores on a leper. Rotting wooden caskets were strewn around, some intact, some barely held together by nails. Strands of grey shrouds tumbled around, catching on the arms of angel headstones and the dead trees that overhung the place.

The Reverend suddenly remembered to breath and spluttered noisily. He thought of the mutilated, undead Charlene, and ran like a bat out of hell for the town, knowing what he would find but determined, as Crucifixia’s sole Warrior of the Lord, to meet it head on.

***

“He doesn’t look so good,” said Mrs Blake to Mrs Bayley, as they sat drinking freshly-ground coffee on Mrs Blake’s back porch. Their husbands sat immobile in rocking chairs on the other end of the porch, staring blankly into the desert. Tom Blake, who had fallen into a wheat thresher three years earlier, turned slightly at the sound of his wife’s voice and attempted a smile. The muscles of his decayed face twitched in response and his lips drew back in a horrible rictus over his empty gums. He vibrated in his chair, his twisted body unresponsive to its owner’s commands. She had had to carry him here from the cemetery. Before she took him into the house, she had ordered Alistair out to play and he gone, protesting.

“My Daniel doesn’t look so healthy either,” said Mrs Bayley, sipping at the hot coffee. “Still, it’s nice to have them back, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Mrs Blake, unconvincingly. Dan Bayley, murdered seven years previously by sand bandits with a point-blank shotgun blast to the chest while protecting the store that Mister Flanagan had since taken over, made a lunge for the mug of coffee that had been placed on the small table between himself and Tom Blake. More mobile than Tom, he managed to grab the mug and lift it up. His face exploded in an idiot grin. Slowly, he guided the coffee to his mouth and emptied it in a single gulp. It would have burned the throat from a living man. He sat smiling mutely at the two women, blissfully unaware of the stain spreading across the front of the clean shirt his wife had dressed him in, as the coffee leaked out of the huge ragged hole left by the muzzle of the sand bandit’s shotgun all those years ago.

Mrs Bayley sighed and sipped at her coffee. “It may be a little while before they are better again, I think.”

“Yes,” said Mrs Blake, unconvincingly.

***

Reverend Zachariah X. Blitzen felt like the director of a horror movie as he contemplated, dumbstruck, the shambling zone of horror that his town - his town! - had become. He stood on the corner of Main Street, looking east toward his own chapel, where less than twelve hours earlier he warned his people of the danger in their midst. Now, the street was awash with those same townsfolk, trying desperately to justify the abominations they had unleashed.

He watched as Mrs Effra carried the truncated body of her husband Michael, who had lost his legs and finally his life after attempting to make an old biplane airworthy some years earlier. The smile on her face was fixed and immobile as she greeted passers-by in a bland, neighbourly manner that completely belied the horror she held in her arms. Her two young children trailed behind her, their faces a mix of terror and bewildered curiosity. Their father had returned, but why did he look so strange? And why could he not speak to them?

Elsewhere the undead had been abandoned by horrified relatives who regretted the disturbance of their loved ones as soon as they had seen the aberrations emerging from the cemetery gates. Zombies shambled along the street, tripping over the raised boardwalk or eating noisily from the stalls in front of Flanagan’s general store. Flanagan himself came out and shooed them away, only to have them drift back minutes later. In desperation, Flanagan emerged with a shotgun and blasted one of them to pieces, a shambling wreck that Blitzen recognised as Charlene’s father, Jonathan Jensen. Mrs Jensen had obviously reconsidered the wisdom of having two zombies around the house.

Blitzen had seen enough. Flanagan, red-faced with excitement, was gleefully taking down a second zombie fruit thief while stamping on the various body parts of the still-moving Jonathan Jensen. The Reverend went looking for Pillory, intending to put a stop to this heresy.

The Stranger was working side-by-side with Jack Bryson when the posse arrived, led by the Reverend and Pillory and Flanagan, still red-faced and with a smoking shotgun. Pauli, Flanagan’s store-boy, was already rigging the gibbet tree with a hemp rope, as instructed by the Reverend. He had decided that Biblical vengeance was the only answer to this situation.

Jack had been alerted to the arrival of the mob, which numbered twenty strong including some of the disillusioned Widows, by the barking of Rags. He had watched their approach up the long curving drive to his ranch and had gone inside to make sure that Billy stayed indoors - under protest - and to get his assault rifle. He could tell this was going to get ugly. He had no idea why they wanted the Stranger, but as His employer, no matter how temporary that relationship might be, He was under his protection. And this was his land, for Christ’s sake! Blitzen and his fundamentalist rabble couldn’t just come stamping over a man’s land, armed and angry, to do whatever their ancient book told them they had the Go-given right to do.

The Stranger seemed unperturbed by the threat. He continued to hammer nails into the fresh planks on the side of the feed barn while Jack got his gun. As Jack returned they were quickly surrounded on all sides. Jack pulled back the slide on the M16 with a noisy rasp and the mob took a collective step back, half a dozen weapons coming up. The Reverend stepped forward and held up his hands in a placatory gesture. Muzzles dropped, imperceptibly. The Stranger worked on with regular, monotonous hammer strikes, apparently oblivious to the situation around Him.

“We’ve come for him,” said Blitzen redundantly, pointing at the Stranger. “He’s a sorcerer, or worse. We have no quarrel with you, Bryson.”

Jack almost laughed. “Listen to yourself! You’ve all gone mad. In case you hadn’t noticed, this is my land, my ranch, and this man works for me. As such it is my duty to protect him. Now put your guns away, and get the fuck off my land.”

Unseen by Jack, one of the mob had moved up behind him, and with a nod from Blitzen used the butt of his shotgun to strike at the back of Jack’s knees, driving him into the ground with a cry. His finger convulsed on the trigger of the M16 and sent a burst shuddering into the dirt, throwing up a cloud of dust. The gunfire brought Billy running from the house, pushing his way through the mob. Someone grabbed him and held his arms.

The man who had struck Jack kicked the M16 out his reach and hovered over him, preparing to club him over the head if he attempted to rise from his knees. Blitzen indicated to the man he should step back. Another two men came forward and gripped the Stranger, who had barely glanced around during the brief fracas. They brought him before the Reverend.

Blitzen stared into the Stranger’s face for the first time. He was immediately and disturbingly struck by how handsome the Man was. No, not handsome, beautiful. He shuddered at the thought and cleared his throat.

“We hang men in these parts for lesser crimes than the abominations you have unleashed,” he said. “What have you to say in your defence?”

“I only gave them what they wanted,” said the Stranger. Blitzen jerked his head and the men took the Stranger away. Led by the Reverend, the mob followed.

Billy dashed to Jack’s side and helped him shakily to his feet. Supported by his nephew, Jack retrieved his rifle and limped back to the ranch house.

They put the Stranger in the lockable storeroom at the rear of Flanagan’s store. They intended to hang Him at sundown.

There was a single barred window high up on the rear wall. Through this window came a noise that caused the Stranger to stand and climb on a crate to look through it.

Billy was on the other side, clinging precariously to the bars. Rags yapped around his dangling feet.

“Are you really a sorcerer, sir?” asked Billy.

“No,” the Man said, smiling.

“Then what are you? How did you make the dead people come to life?”

“I’m just a traveller. Sometimes I can make wishes come true. Anyone can do that if they wish hard enough. But you must be very, very careful what you wish for.”

“Are they going to hang you, sir?”

The Man smiled again. “I think they are, yes. Don’t worry.”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“No, not scared. Just sad, and a little tired. I have another long journey to make.”

“Good luck, sir,” said Billy.

“Thank you, Billy. That’s a good dog you’ve got there. You take care of him, you hear me? Take real good care of him.”

“I will, sir.” There were tears in Billy’s eyes, and his voice cracked.

“You’d best go, Billy. Best not to be caught talking to a sorcerer, hey?”

Billy nodded tearfully and dropped from the wall. He looked back up but the Stranger had gone from the window. Rags led the way back home where Billy found his father drunk, as was the norm.

They hung the Stranger shortly after sundown that evening. The sunset was appropriately bloody. The Man went to the gibbet tree quietly and spoke no more. They dropped him from the flat bed of a cart with Pauli’s expert noose tight around his neck, and his body never even convulsed. After ten minutes Pillory clambered up and pronounced him dead. They left him hanging there all night, as was the custom in these parts, as a message to others who might consider such evil-doing.

The following morning the Stranger’s body was missing from the gallows. Reverend Blitzen ordered a search of the town but most folk were too busy reburying their resurrected loved ones, who littered the streets of Crucifixia like the husks of things blown in by the wind, all animation drained from them during the night as the Stranger had hung there. Blitzen examined the noose hanging from the gibbet tree, and looked around in the dust below for signs of footprints or of a body being dragged away. Of bodysnatchers, there was no sign. Blitzen presided over the second round of burials, assisted by a hopelessly overworked Pillory, sweating and harassed in his shirtsleeves. Slowly, the town of Crucifixia began to return to normal.

Three days later. Old Silas lay on his bed with the last of a lifetime’s billion breaths cycling through his old lungs. Billy knelt by his side, holding his hand. Jack smoked nervously in the corner. Of Joe there was no sign. Rags sat on the opposite side of the bed to Billy, whimpering softly in the presence of death in the way that only dogs know how to do, his chin flat on the bedspread. He was a good dog and Billy took real, real good care of him, just as the Stranger had told him. Sometimes, all you had to do was wish hard enough.

But it didn’t work all the time. Old Silas’ grip loosened on Billy’s hand.

“I’ve got to go now,” said Old Silas. “I wouldn’t like to go through this twice.” And he died. Bill buried his head in Old Silas’ motionless chest, and cried. Rags let out at an ear-splitting howl and pawed the bed covers. Jack ground out his cigarette on the floor, and went to look for his brother.

One week after they had dropped the Stranger from the gibbet tree, Jack Bryson was out on his land, examining the work the Stranger had done on his fences. It was good work, solid, workmanlike. He was sorry that that those crazy bastards in the town had hung him. He could still see the Stranger’s bootprints around the fence posts, where he had pushed hard against the poles as he straightened them up. Jack noticed a splash of colour in one of the bootprints. He bent down to examine it.

A tiny purple flower bloomed in the centre of the bootprint. Jack had never seen anything like it on this ranch - this was barren land, always had been. He reached to pluck it and bring it back to show Billy, then decided against it.

Far better, he thought, to let it grow.

FIN(c) NKH 2000