The Millstone
Weird West Horror
Through the darkness of the Witching Hour, I wandered barefooted and bare-chested. The thought of being named a deviant or madman for my state of undress within the narrow halls of the hotel was lost within the cool silence. All was silent save for the sloughing noises from yonder downstairs like a washwoman hard at work.
Curiosity despite experience telling me the outcome of this foray into the dark led me forward as I turned the banister and with all the blessings God gaveth to cats, my feet fell silently in my descent. Disrespect for the harshness of the frontier had turned a hotel built barely over a year prior into one that looked to soon celebrate its golden anniversary. Cheap paint chipped in blotchy patterns and layers of dust gathered in the corners. One good Sunday cleaning would see it shine like new. Hard times and wicked ways would end these walls and if what he expected awaited him ahead the hotel’s fate was sealed.
The Frontier had a duality both spiritual and physical expressed duly by the cool night air that belied how hot hot it had been the day previous. Yet it caressed my skin like warm fingers as the temperature within had dropped to a level that frosted the windows and made my labored breath visible.
Many a time back home in Father’s study had I sat in cushioned chairs and read some yellowed-page of beleaguered adventurers drawn forth by unseen forces to face unknown horrors and wondered quietly how it felt and what they thought. My skin burned in the freezing air. By body ached as it moved despite the protestations of my mind. I felt I was wrangling a stallion alone in a tug-o-war, and the stallion had taken a measure of my soul as it slowly pulled me close.
My head felt light, robbed of focused thought and the darkened hallways seemed to turn and twist with my guts. I steadied myself in the doorframe of the dining room where the guests were encouraged to take meal. Beams of silver from the grin of an evil moon lit the curtained window casting the room in mottled gray. The hotel staff had stacked the chairs on the tables when they had closed in the evening and showing no respect for their earnest work a beast of darkness had scattered the chairs and perched upon one table.
The sloughing reached its peak as it set to work separating the bones and organs of the hotel manager. The man had been a miserly business sort but no curator of greater sins, this was not a fate he deserved. An organized but messy thing, it took such great care to sort the bones and organs yet the blood had spilled over the edge and pooled on the pine floor, imported the manager had said.
Frilled shadows like feathers made up the bulk of the fiend cresting in a frock that hid its face. God, Gaia, Fate, someone failed me in a fashion most horrible as the beast became aware of my presence and turned on a pivot absent of sound. A circus kaleidoscope of bones made a frame for a shattered skull stitched together by black threads. A mouth of precious metal parted and let loose an ungodly screech that shook me from my haze.
The thing stretched to its full height of a man and a half before bounding towards me but I being very emotionally attached to my organs had long excused myself from the confrontation and was scrambling through the hotel like a squirrel in a madhouse.
I had ducked through the hall and skittered through the kitchen grabbing a carving knife along the way. Back past the main hall I circled to the front door as fast as my chicken legs could move me. With all the effort God afforded an enfeebled lamb I threw my weight against the doors only to be rebuked and sent to the floor. This worked to my favor as I watched outstretched claws of the bone-thing rake the air where I had been.
Pure instinct and fear pushed me to my feet scrambling in its icy presence. A shine in the darkness caught the eye of my vocation and I snatched a metal pitcher from an end table near the stairs. The thing had turned to face me and the pitcher struck it full force in the face. The musical ring of silver being struck offset the screech of pain that followed.
Good luck saved me, it detested silver. The thing slithered through the cracks in the front door with a muffled screech. Good luck is a transient thing and never sticks to the sloth. I stumbled up the stairs not under any illusion that my ordeal was over. If there were any other guests there was no time to wake them. I could not save them if they became the focus of the beast’s intent but somehow, I had the distinct impression that I was the sole focus of its ire.
A thousand times a thousand the masters impressed upon me the necessity to understand the enemy I was facing and yet I could identify a hundred different things that this beast was and was not. The old masters weren’t appraised of the new horrors of the New World. I had to find new masters and learn new magic. Exorcising the dark servants of evil was always a trek into the unknown depths of the human soul yet no master had ever shown me something like this.
In my room I unrolled my tools and started grabbing one thing after another. Chalk to draw a circle of protection. Purified salt to sanctify the ground. Shallow slashes with the carving knife, my own blood to bind the protection to me. The walls around me began to shake and creak. The beast can cast spells too it seemed. I find a page of devotions in my Bible and tear the page from its binding. I mark it with cross in my own blood and pin it to the wall with the knife. The walls shake harder knocking dust from the rafters.
Magic from the Eastern Mystics, magic from the Southern Dames, magic from the Old Testament, my own blood to tie it all together. Now, how am use it against that monster. What if my magic didn’t work? I am not so young to doubt myself or the powers above, I thought to myself, what if I purposely failed?
My skin felt tight against my frame and an icy chill ran up my spine. I was well aware the beast was behind me before I heard the rasp of its hoary breath. Of all the evil transgressions committed by such fiends, not using the front door truly irked me the most. I felt the clawed shadow rake against my protective circles. They were weak, and it knew. It would brush them aside and then tear me asunder. Or so it planned. As the darkness made contact, I started the millstone, my protective circles turning the flow of power but never connecting formulating a grindstone. Shock rippled across the beats frame as the threads of substance that bound it together were caught in the vacuum and began slowly tearing apart.
I turned to face my aggressor. To gloat, no to bestow pity and mercy upon this evil that stalked the land, soon to be no more. Realization, hate, I cannot describe the emotions that were conveyed to me from a fleshless face, and yet I felt them, I knew. With its untethered claw it severed the strands that ensnared it in my trap. It howled in agony as the severed strand dissipated around me. It faced me once more and screeched a defiant roar before hurtling through the window leaving behind frozen shards on the glass.
I felt myself losing consciousness, the wards would protect me from the dead, but not the living. I smeared the cross on my forehead and clutched my Bible to my chest as the darkness took me.
I woke up with a headache and cottonmouth. Felt like payday with the miners. The sun filtering in and the song of birds heralding the morning made for signs of a beautiful day. I was distracted from enjoying such small beauties of the world with the barrels of two pistols and a shotgun in my face.
“You got exactly one chance to explain yourself stranger,” said the Sheriff in a surly tone unbefitting of such a beautiful morning. His deputies made a show of coking the hammers in their irons.
“Was anyone besides the manager attacked?” I asked.
“Boy, you better-.”
I cut the deputy off before he got rolling, I was in no mood to handle what was coming, “Deputy, Sherriff, what happened to the man downstairs was an affront to God, so unless you think I’m capable of doing that then sleeping with the Good Book clutched to my chest, I suggest you put your guns away. Otherwise,” I tapped my forehead, “Make this headache go away.”
There was a tense moment as stared at me down the bridge of his nose and over the ridge of his mustache. The man appeared as a statue in my mind carved from driftwood and garbed in old leather, a monument to aged weathering. The Sheriff made his decision and put up his shotgun, the deputies sheathed their irons and the whole room breathed a sigh of relief. Not me, my headache pounded harder.
“Tell me what happened, boy,” the Sheriff inquired in a more gingerly voice. He offered his hand to me and I accepted. He pulled me to my feet with earthen strength that was not unexpected. I however was not prepared to stand and stumbled but one of the deputies thankfully caught me.
“Whatever happened, looks like you had a rough one boy.”
“I came down during the Darkening. Something woke me up, the sound of the beast at work, maybe. I saw it pulling the manager apart, organizing him.”
“What was it?” the Sheriff asked.
“I don’t know, it was many things, all stitched into one.”
“Damn,” the Sheriff said with a huff and stomped out.
Steady on my feet the deputies left me in my room, following behind him. I stood there a moment. The room’s basin had something approaching clean water and I wiped myself down before dressing. Outside the hotel I found the sheriff and his deputies in conversation with a priest. I finished the last buckle in tools as I approached.
“You, boy, tell the good priest what you saw,” ordered the sheriff.
I relayed my story in more detail this time. The priest kept a stony face the entire time, unmoved, yet I could tell he was sifting over every detail of my tale.
In a voice worthy of the Vatican oratory the priest spoke, “Thank you for your testimony boy. I wish you well in your travels and bid you never return here.”
“Excuse me,” I blurted, foregoing any pretense of cordial etiquette.
“There is no excuse for your kind, boy. Please, be on your way, the sooner the better.”
“My kind, is it?”
“Yes, your kind, boy. You are a peddler of the weird to madmen and brujas. You scavenge off the defiled to make your silver and sell snake oil and trinkets to the embittered. You are not a charlatan, you are in fact, a jackal, a graverobber, and a blight upon good honest living.”
I stood there taking in every envenomed word from the priest. It wasn’t that his accusations were unfounded, they weren’t, I was everything he said I was. What irked me was his dismissal of my capability. I was more than just a jackal, a coyote at least.
“I don’t deny what I am nor the truth of your words. But I just barely escaped being gutted like a pig and turned into bacon for some hoary blasphemy. The least I can get for my trouble is information as to what it was and why,” the words spilled forth from my mouth like a river and thankfully it took some of my headache with it.
I continued, “What was that thing? How is it able to cast spells like no undead can? And more importantly, how is it intelligent?”
This part seemed to throw the priest off, “Intelligent.”
“I managed to catch it in a grindstone of spells, the threads that bind it were unraveling. It cut itself off like a wolf in the trap. Then it stared at me, unfathomable hatred peered at my soul. Whatever that thing is, its mad, and I’m first on its list. Now tell me, what am I dealing with.”