Phantom Revolver

A Phantom Revolver Story

Eyes as black as midnight, with spurs that rattle the chimes of doom. Paler than a corpse left to rot under the sands, naked from the hips up except for his left arm, he wore leather trousers adorned with occultist charms. Strapped to his hip, a gun belt that held only one weapon, a six-shooter revolver, an ebony weapon etched with blood crimson etchings that throb with ghostly presence. 

Positioned on the side of his shooting hand, his left one, one could see he wore a gauntlet of black steel, running from the clawed fingertips, to where his arm met his shoulder. Jutting metal, and gnarled points, it looked as if he had the arm of the devil affixed to his form. 

Wearing no hat, his shroud about his head was formed by his long, jagged hair that was as prickly as a cactus, and would cut the finger of a woman that wanted to stroke his main of razor blades. 

Black and pale, he was a ghastly creature that went across the desert wasteland on his spindly horse of pale hair. Together rider and horse, they prowled the wastelands, oftentimes spotted in oases of civilization. Death often tagged along to wherever they went. 

***

The train hub community of Dusk Brook was a bustle of life, a kobold climb off the nine o’clock morning express, and had gotten the attention of his friend, Dr. Hugh Dowels. Doc Dowels as he was affectionately known in those parts, his notoriety soared when he gunned down the Treaton posse. Outlaws that murdered the sheriff and escaped the noose on more than one occasion, usually by flooding the ground with blood. 

Dusk Brook was a civilized growing city however, and outlaws and marauders were becoming a distant terror. That was until Gus Magus’s crew took over the Empty Glass Saloon. Gus was a gigantic man, wearing boots as high as his hips, and strapped around it was a gun belt that was well worn from his career as a gunfighter. 

“Doc!” the gigantic gut of a human, hollered out to the elf, who looked away from his kobold friend for a moment. “You should’ve watched left town!” Then before he could pull out his piece, Dr. Hugh Dowels was shot in the back by Gus’s right hand man. 

Mad Boar Randy, the man with a ten thousand mint bounty on his head, shot the Doc right through the back, piercing his heart. The thunderous crack of gunshot rivaled the engine's whistle, which confused the crowd on the platform. 

Running about, the sheriff, Erikstone was too late, and he watched as a pool of blood spread around the body. The kobold, obviously unfamiliar with the bloodletting in that territory, was caught off guard. Shaken, he fell on his bottom, and pushed himself away from the spreading blood. 

“Up with ya’” the sheriff roughly pulled him to his feet. “That won’t help him now, deputy get the doc—oh wait, shit!” The only doctor in town was dead. 

“Better get the gravedigger!” Gus bellowed out, callous words that had even the most fearful of Dusk Brook look at the saloon owner with contemptuous looks. 

“Your handy work Gus?” Erikstone was about to pull his gun, but Mad Boar the fiendish, brain addled moron killer, had his gun firmly planted on his back. 

Gus feigning a reasonable façade offered a meager defense. “The Doc was going to put me in the ground, couldn’t have that, so my friend Mr. Randy Marks shot him in my defense.” that flimsy justification didn’t even pass the spit test, for as far as it caught with the townsfolk. 

“Don’t act like this was anything but murder! His gun wasn’t even pulled out yet.” The sheriff watched as Gus sent out one of his weaselly underlings who went to the dead Doc, pulling out his revolver, and placing it in the lifeless elf’s hand. 

“You must be seeing things sheriff the suns had gotten to you. Why don’t you take a holiday? A permanent one.” Gus gestured to Randy who shoved him towards the train. “That train is leaving in ten minutes, if you don’t get on it now, you’ll spend your holiday in a pine box.” Gus didn’t make threats, he made predictions, he was the only psychic who was always right in his omens. 

“You can’t do this!” The kobold spoke up, but immediately regretted it, even before the squinting eyes of the murderous saloon owner turned in his direction. 

“Now whose that?” The train whistle blared as the platform was emptied, all except the sheriff, the mortician who was gathering the body, the kobold and Gus and his men. 

The deputies abandoned the sheriff, leaving him to the mercy of an incredibly cruel man, who had a plague placed at the graveyard entrance, to honor his generous contributions of bodies. 

“Speak up boy, I asked your name.” a shotgun stabbed into the kobolds back, as he began to shake from the inside out. “Answer me before I count to five or you’re dead.” as Gus spoke a shadow crept up on an adjacent alleyway, casting a shade of a reaper across the ground. 

The sun was burning down on the town, and people curiously watched from the windows, ready to duck if there were signs of shooting. Children, escaping their mothers watchful eyes, hid in alleys and under the sidewalk boards to get fuel for their limitless imaginations. 

A group of three children poked over the bend of Gus’s saloon from the alley, but felt a chill when a shadow came over them, blotting out the sun. 

Looking back, they saw a rider, a towering figure that looked as if he were a corpse sitting upon a horse. Screaming in fright they ran out of the alley, across the street back home interrupting Gus’s count at four. 

The rider rode out of the alley slowly, drawing everyone's attention, as they looked dumbfounded at the stranger in town. No one knew what to make of the man, he looked like a spook to them, a terrible undead creature that roamed in from the wastes, with skin seemingly bleached white by the harsh desert sun. 

Riding to a hitching post, he dismounted with the agility of a double jointed acrobat, who bent his back nearly full circle to dismount his beastly horse. Tying up his horse, the creature didn’t seem to need water, as it stood by the watering trough but didn’t bother drinking. Its milky white eyes stared out as if completely listless to anything but its master's desires. 

Spurs jangled and the sound they made made Gus and his men have a terrible feeling in their stomachs, and a hollowness in their hearts. 

“What do you want, stranger?” Gus said, trying not to cringe as his men did, as the despicable phantom of a man strode up to the front of the saloon where Gus stood. 

Mad Boar Randy whined like a puppy just wetting the floor, as he felt his stomach rumble, upset from some instinctual understanding that Death had come to town. The whistle of the train continued to blow, but the engineer was told not to leave till the Sheriff climbed aboard or he was dead. 

Bells from the church began to ring, the long vacant building stood on a nearby hill. The solitary structure, whose steeples began to ring out with bells that were left to gather dust and erode with time, when Gus ran the priest out of town. 

God seemed to have left Dusk Brook to the fallibility of corruptible men, but people began to think that God sent an angel to their town, one as terrible as the one cast down from heaven. 

Gus watched the stranger’s alien black eyes, they had no mortal sign of being of any race he knew, but his pointed ears were elf-like but none that ever he came across. The stranger stared back, his look was a dower gloom that didn’t ease or flinch to show signs of changing expression. 

“What do you want?!” Gus was irate now, as fear had cut through the anticipation of something bad happening. Feeling as if he was being stabbed Gus covered his chest with his hand, as his heart fought against the layers of gluttonous blubber to function. 

Slowly the stranger reached into his pocket, and produced a precisely folded piece of parchment, no bigger than a thumb. Then in his grasp he unfolded it, his gauntlet fingers clanging against one another as he did so, till finally he spread out the paper. 

On it, was an image as fresh as it was when it was taken off the notice board three towns back, through miles of desert wilderness. By a canyon filled with rattlesnakes, to savage controlled countryside, to finally reach the hands of Gus, who was handed it, which he took with trembling hands. 

Eyes livid, despite the oppressive fat around his eyes, Gus saw his death warrant. 

Wanted, Gus Gus Magus, wanted Dead or Alive. Rewards 10,000 Mints. 

The wanted poster he was handed was altered however, someone had drawn a fatal line across the word Alive. 

Looking up from the poster, he looked into the black eyes of the pale gunfighter. 

“Look, if you want to cash in this—” Gus started to laugh trying to hide the tremors in his throat. Wiping the sweat from his brow with the poster. “—if you need the money, I can offer you twice this, hell three times.” he turned to look at Mad Boar Randy who seemed to be swelling with a madman's courage. 

Slowly raising his gun towards the stranger, Gus tried not to betray his man's actions, but he couldn’t help making a obese lipped smile. 

Just as Mad Boar was taking aim, Sheriff Erikstone twisted Randy’s wrist, forcing him to drop his weapon, before he punched him in the nose as hard as he could, causing a downpour of blood from his nose. A struggle happened, and two of Gus’s crew were ready to give aid, but the pale gunslinger took the opportunity to show his appreciation for being saved from a rogue shot. 

Pulling out his gun, Gus tried to kill the bounty collector, but the stranger was faster, Gus felt his trigger finger twitch just as he was pulling free his gun, shooting himself in the hip. However his concern was to the growing crimson spot right over his heart, he was shot dead, as life was leaving him, he stumbled back, and collapsed through the swinging doors of his saloon, just as his killer had fired two more bullets at Gus’s henchmen. 

Swift and deadly, he spent three bullets, putting three wicked souls to their place in Hell, leaving only Randy who struggled to fight back against the Sheriff, who had subdued him, but Randy being a wily fighter, bit hard into Erikstone’s hand. 

Recoiling just enough for the Mad Board to break the grip, and toss the Sheriff aside, so he could pull out a leather cudgel from his boot. Raising it as high as the rock that Cain used to kill Abel, he was going to smash the others brains in, but a bullet tore through his guts, digging into his stomach. 

“Son of a bitch! I’ve been shot, oh momma they killed your little boy!” Randy squealed and writhed around, like a swine afflicted with rabies. Just as his vision started to blur, he got one moment of clarity in his eyes to see that the kobold took his own gun, and shot him in the guts. “Why you little—!” The rage boiled his blood so much, it put him into early death convulsions, he curled his limbs up, then softened as he fell down dead. 

Sheriff Erikstone climbed to his feet, cradling his bleeding hand. “Thank you.” he said, unable to offer a handshake as both hands were wet with his blood. Looking around he saw that most of the problems of Dusk Brook were solved in one eventful span of time. As the train started to pull out of the station, no longer bound by Gus’s orders. 

The people of the town also came out of hiding, to see up close the aftermath of the carnage. The deputies also came out, but as they went up smiling to the sheriff, their faces turned to glum dumbfounded looks, as he ripped the stars from their vest. 

“He’d make a better deputy!” he yelled at his former bumbling employees, and pinned the star on the kobolds vest. He pumped out his chest with pride, as he was hoping to find a job in Dusk Brook as his friend Doc Dowels was going to set him up with, sadly he wasn’t there to see his triumph. 

Just then all eyes were on the stranger, the mysterious, mute gunfighter whose lethal expertise freed their lives from tyranny. Many wanted to thank him, and maybe ask him to be their new sheriff, but he was so bizarre in his appearance and actions, they were too intimidated to even approach. 

Only two, the kobold and Sheriff Erikstone went up to him as he was dragging Gus’s body from the saloon, they came to him just as he was leashing the fat man’s corpse to his saddle by the ankles. 

“Hello there fella, sure know how to get a job done.'' The Sheriff said with a friendly tone and smile. 

“This wasn’t a job.” the stranger replied, his accent a very unfamiliar gruffness that sounded as if it struggled to utter the common tongue. 

“Please, you can stay, as sheriff I can process the bounty for you.” He wanted to enlist him as a deputy, in fear that the power vacuum in down would lead to more Gus’s vying for control. 

“Gus is wanted by someone else, don’t bother.” Before the sheriff could say anymore, the stranger handstand upright and fall onto his saddle, in a fashion that would make him a star in the circus. 

Having unleashed his horse, the pale stranger urged his horse to speed out of town, down the alleyway they came, leading to the open desert surrounding Dusk Brook. The people gathered to watch the stranger ride away, dragging the body of their former tormentor behind him, leaving a trail in the sand. 

Soon the fading silhouettes of the rider and horse were blinded by the sunlight. 

***

Doom canyon was filled with sulfur rich crevices, and gold filled crags. Formerly a home of a desert tribe that have long since died, their bones buried in barrows that littered the towering pillars of rocks. Totems of frightful beasts and demons rose up from the mounds of sand, as the pale rider and his horse had dragged the sun scorched body of Gus into its intimate insides, they came to overlook a deep valley. 

Inside were hundreds of yipping, bloodthirsty beasts, hideous spotted hybrids that looked as if they were a cross of jackals and hyenas. Bickering amongst themselves, gnawing on bones, and being snapped at by their wicked pups, all their glowing yellow eyes turned to the golden moon in the sky, as they sensed the coming of the pale rider. 

Standing over their valley, their jaws salivated with drools, as they yipped and called out for tribute. 

The pale man said nothing, as he dragged to the edge the body of Gus Magus, it's still barely cold body teetered over the edge. As the yips and howls of the beasts reached a ferocious pitch, he kicked over the body, as it fell, the hundreds of fangs rushed towards it, and as it hit the ground, the body was leapt upon, and torn to pieces. 

Blood and viscera offered to the Children Of Anubis was fought over and consumed, bellies growing fat for the stronger, as the weak still struggled to get a bone to gnaw on till it was whittled away to nothingness.