Mark Anthony - Last rune 01 - Beyond The Pale

For a thousand years the Pale King lay mantled in dark, enchanted

slumber, imprisoned in his desolate dominion of Imbrifale.

And then

2 The derelict school bus blew into town with the last midnight gale of

October.

Weary brakes whined in complaint as the vehicle pulled off a stretch of

Colorado mountain two-lane and into an open field. Beneath a patina of.

highway grime that spoke of countless days and countless miles, the

bus's slapdash jacket of white paint-a shade called Pearly Gates, just

five-ninetynine a gallon at the Ace Hardware in downtown Leavenworth,

Kansas-glowed like bones in the phantasmal light of the setting horned

moon. The bus's folding door squeaked open, and two painted-over stop

signs flopped out from the vehicle's sides like stunted angel wings. One

sign admonished Repent Your Sins Now, while the other advertised Two for

the Price of One.

A figure stepped from the bus. Wind hissed through dry grass around his

ankles and plucked with cold fingers at his black mortician's suit. He

reached up a quick, long hand to keep his broad-brimmed pastor's hat

planted on his head, then gazed into the darkness with dark eyes.

"Yes, this will do fine," he whispered in his steel-rasp and

Southern-honey-pecan voice. "This will do just fine."

Then the man-who had been called many names in the past, but who these

days went by the moniker of Brother

3

4

Cy-leaned his scarecrow frame toward the bus, like a lodgepole pine

bending before the storm, and called through the open door.

"We have arrived!"

A chorus of excited voices answered him. Someone flicked on the bus's

high beams, and two cones of light cut through the night. The rear

emergency door swung open, hinges creaking, and a dozen shadowy forms

leaped out. They dragged a heavy bundle into the field and unrolled it

with deft movements. More dim figures scurried from the back of the bus,

wrangling poles and rope, and hurried to join the others. Brother Cy

stalked to the center of the field and paced a wide circle, digging the

heel of his worn black boot into the turf at measured intervals. When

the circle was complete, he stood back and looked on in satisfaction.

Here would stand his fortress.

Canvas snapped like a sail.

"Blast and damnation, watch that pole!" Brother Cy shouted as his

workers strained to stand a length of wood as tall and thick as a tree

on end. A billowing shape rose up before him, like an elephant lumbering

to its feet. Brother Cy prowled around it: the hungry lion.

"Stake down that wall!" he roared. "Untangle those lines. Get a rope

through that tackle. Now pull! Pull, or you'll think the Dark One's

domain a sweet paradise compared to

the hell I'll show you!" Brother Cy thrust his lanky arms above his

head. "Pull!"

A score of dim forms strained. The mound heaved itself higher into the

air, and higher yet, like a mountain being birthed. At last its pointed

peak reached the top of the high pole. Ropes were lashed around wooden

posts and tied off, tray edges of canvas were skewered to the ground,

lengths of cord were tucked away. Where minutes before there had been

empty moonlight there now stood a tent. It was an oldfashioned circus

tent, what in days gone by had been called a big top, torn and patched

in so many places it looked as if it had been sewn from the trousers of

a hundred penniless clowns.

Brother Cy clapped his big hands together and laughed like thunder.

"Now, let the show begin!

5

Like wraiths in the half-light, the shadowy roustabouts bustled in and

out of the tent. Parti-colored banners were unfurled. Collapsible

bleachers were pulled from the back of the bus. Fire sprang to life in

dozens of punched-tin lanterns, carried inside in a glowing procession

until the tent shone gold in the night. Last of all a sign was planted

in the earth before the tent's entrance. It proclaimed in bold, Gothic

letters:

BROTHER CY'S APOCALYPTIC TRAVELING SALVATION SHOW

Ailments Cured-Faith Restored-Souls Redeemed

And below that, scrawled in crude script like an afterthought:

Come on in-we want to save you!

Brother Cy stepped back, crossed his arms, and surveyed his domain.

"Does all go well?" a clear voice asked behind him.

He whirled around, and a cadaverous grin split his gaunt face.

"Indeed it does, Sister Mirrim." He reached out to help a woman down the

steps of the bus. "Do you see? Our citadel stands once more."

Sister Mirrim gazed at the tent. Her visage was smooth, even beautiful,

but her old-fashioned garb was severe. She wore a tight-bodiced dress of

funereal black, as well as highbuttoned shoes, the kind that could still

be found to this day in the downtown five-and-dime of any number of

dusty Oklahoma towns-the kind that bespoke the unforgiving hardness of

another century. Yet, even in the pale light of the crescent moon,

Sister Mirrim's long hair shone flame red and flew about her on the wind.

A child followed Sister Mirrim down the steps, a small girl clad in a

black dress that was the older woman's in perfect miniature. Her hair,

however, was the color of the night, and she regarded Brother Cy with

wise purple eyes. He lifted her into his arms. She coiled a small, cool

hand around his neck and pressed her soft rosebud mouth against his cheek.

6

"I love you, too, Child Samanda," Brother Cy said in bemusement.

"But of course you do," she murmured.

He set her down, and hand in hand the trio approached the tent..The wind

whistled through the ropes and lines, conjuring a sorrowful hymn.

"Will they come, Brother Cy?" Sister Mirrim asked, her voice like the

call of a dove. "I have been looking, but I cannot see them yet."

He looked past the tent, down into the valley below, to a haphazard

collection of sparks that twinkled in the highcountry night. Castle

City. There they huddled in the warm light of their little houses,

unknowing of the darkness that approached. But it was so distant, this

darkness, so strange, and so terribly far away. How could they know? How

could they realize that their very souls hung in the balance? Yet

somehow they must. That was why the three had journeyed here.

"They have to come," Brother Cy said at last. "There are an manv who

have a nart to nhiv "

Sister Mirrim shook her head, her question unanswered. ut will they?"

It was Child Samanda who spoke this time.

"Oh, yes," she whispered. "They will come." She slipped her tiny doll

hands from the larger grips that enclosed them and took a step nearer

the lights below. "But there are two whose tasks will be far harder than

those of the others. We cannot know if they will have the strength to

bear their burdens."

Brother Cy gave a solemn nod. "Then we can pray, my little bird."

A chill gust rushed down from the high peaks, and the three looked up to

see the tent shake under the blast. Shadows played crazily across the

canvas walls, cast from within by lanterns dancing on their wires, as

the roustabouts scrambled to brace the tent against the gale. Some of

the silhouettes were squat as stumps, while others were oddly tall, with

fingers as slender as twigs. Some of them bore what seemed antlers,

branching like young saplings from their heads, while others looked as

if they walked on crooked legs, tails swishing in agitation behind them.

However, rippling

7

canvas could be a twister of shadows, and a player of tricks. The wind

blew itself into nothing, the tent grew still, the shadows slipped away

from the walls.

"Come, let us go inside," Brother Cy murmured. "To wait for them?"

Sister Mirrim asked.

Child Samanda nodded in conviction. "Yes, to wait." Hand in hand once

more, they turned their backs on the night, stepped into the tent, and

left the small mountain town to sleep alone in the night below.

8

9

10

11

Sometimes the wind blowing down from the mountains made Travis Wilder

feel like anything could happen.

He could always hear it coming, long before the first telltale wisps of

snow-clean air touched his face. It would begin as a distant roar far up

the canyon, nearly and yet not at all like the ancient voice of a

stormswept ocean. Before long he could see it, rushing in wave after

wave through the forest that mantled the granite-boned ranges that

encircled the valley. Lodgepole pines swayed in graceful rhythm, while

cloudlike aspen shivered green, then silver, then green again. Moments

later, in abandoned fields just outside of town, he could hear the

witchgrass rattle a final portent as it whirled around in wild pagan

circles.

Then the wind would strike.

It would race down Elk Street-Castle City's broad main avenue-like an

invisible ghost-herd of Indian ponies. Past McKay's General Store. Past

the Mosquito Cafe. Past the abandoned assay office, the Mine Shaft

Saloon, the Blue Summit Earth Shop, and the faded Victorian opera house.

Dogs would bark and snap at passing newspaper tumbleweeds. Strolling

tourists would turn their backs and shut their eyes to dust devils that

glittered with gum wrappers and cigarette-pack cellophane. Dude-ranch

cowboys would

12

hold on to black hats with turquoise-ringed hands while their dusters

flew out behind them like rawhide wings.

Maybe he was the only one in town crazy enough, but Travis loved the

wind. He always had. He would step outside the buckshot-speckled door of

the Mine Shaft Saloon, which he had the dubious distinction of owning

these days, and lean over the boardwalk rail to face the gale full-on.

There was no way to know from where the wind had journeyed, he reasoned,

or just what it might blow his way. He would breathe the quickening air,

sharp with the scents of cold mountain stone and sun-warmed pine, and

wonder whose lungs it had filled last-where they lived, what language

they spoke, what gods they courted, if they courted any at all, and what

dreams they dared dream behind eyes of a hundred different shapes and hues.

It was a feeling that had first struck him the day he stepped off a

mud-spattered bus-a flatland kid raised between the straight and hazy

horizons of Illinois-and drank in his virgin sight of Castle City. In

the seven years since, the sensation had come to him with surprising and

comforting regularity, never lessening in potency with time. Facing into

the wind always left him with an ache of wordless longing in his chest,

and a feeling that he didn't have to choose between anything, because

everything was possible.

Still, despite his many musings, there was no way Travis could have

imagined, on a chill evening caught in the gray time between the

gold-and-azure days of fall and the frozen purple of winter night, just

exactly what the wind would blow into Castle City, and into his life.

Later, looking back with the empty clarity of hindsight, he would sift

through all the strange and unexpected events to pinpoint the precise

moment when things began to change. It had been a small happening, so

small that he might not have remembered it had it not been for the fact

that afterward things would never-could never-be the same again.

It was when he heard bells.

13 Afternoon sunlight fell as heavy as gold into the mountain valley as

Travis Wilder piloted his battered pickup truck toward town. Faint music

crackled on the AM radio in time to the squawking dashboard. A paper air

freshener shaped like a pine tree bobbed on a string beneath the

rearview mirror, all the fake pine smell long since baked out of it by

years of the high-altitude sun. The engine growled as he downshifted and

swung around a curve at precisely twice the speed recommended by a

nearby road sign: a yellow diamond so full of shotgun holes it looked

like a chunk of Swiss cheese.

"You're late, Travis," he said to himself.'

He had spent most of the afternoon on the roof of the ramshackle hunting

lodge he called home, nailing on tar paper and replacing shingles torn

off by last night's windstorm. It was past time to be getting ready for

the snow that the fat, red-furred marmots foreshadowed. When he finally

thought to look up, the sun had been sinking toward the wall of

mountains that ringed the valley. Travis never had been good with time.

But then, he never had been good with a lot of things. That was why he

had come here, to Castle City.

The regulars would start straggling into the Mine Shaft Saloon by

sundown, and there were usually a few hapless tourists who had taken a

wrong turn off the highway and had ended up in Castle City by accident.

Legions of them cruised the twisting two-lanes this time of year, to

ogle the gold splendor of the mountain autumn from the heated comfort of

their rental cars. To make matters worse, Moira Larson's book club was

meeting in the back room of the saloon that evening. The topic:

Nineteenth-Century French Novels of Adultery. Travis shuddered at the

thought of facing a dozen book lovers thwarted in their hell-bent desire

to discuss implications of class structure in Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

A nervous whistle escaped his lips. "You are really, really late."

Of course, Max would be at the saloon.

14

Max Bayfield was Travis's one and only employee. Max was supposed to be

working the day shift today, although more likely he was poring over the

saloon's books, trying to find money between the lines. Travis supposed

that was what he got for hiring a refugee accountant from New York, but

at least there would be someone there to pour a drink if a customer

asked. Then again, it wasn't really a great idea to let Max wrangle the

bar on his own during busy hours, Travis could only hope Max wasn't

hovering around the jukebox again, telling customers that while

listening to classical music temporarily raised one's IQ,

country-western songs-with their simplistic melodic structure and

repetitive rhythmic schemes-did just the opposite.

His sense of urgency redoubled, Travis punched the accel. erator, and

the truck flew out of the curve like a rock out of a slingshot.

He was about a mile from town when a dilapidated shape flashed past the

truck's cracked windshield. Hulking beside the road were the remains of

a house. Although he had passed it countless times, like always, Travis

found his gaze drawn toward the ruin. The old place had burned years

ago, long before he had come to Castle City, yet somehow he knew that

even before it caught fire, this had been an ugly building. It was squat

and sprawling, with rows of small windows that stared like hateful eyes

at the beauty of the mountains. Now the structure was nothing more than

a shell, the husk of some gigantic beetle that had died next to the road.

According to the stories Travis had heard, the house had been an

orphanage once. Built during the days of the Great Depression, the

Beckett-Strange Home for Children had endured for decades as one of the

largest orphanages in central Colorado, but about twenty years ago the

place had burned. By then orphanages were well out of fashion, and the

Home was never rebuilt. Travis couldn't say he was sorry. There was

something ... wrong about the ruin. He wasn't sure what it was, but

often when he passed it he found himself thinking dark thoughts.

Thoughts about fear, or suffering, or mayhem. Maybe it was just that he

knew people had died in that fire. Not any of the children-they had all

escaped-but several of the Home's workers had been trapped in the'rooms,

and they had all been burned alive. At least, that w

15

what the rumors told. Travis didn't know if the stories were true, but

if there was ever a place for ghosts, it was the remains of the

Beckett-Strange Home for Children.

The old orphanage slipped out of view, and Travis fixed his gaze on the

road ahead. This was the time of day when deer were inexplicably

compelled to leap out and fling their bodies in front of moving cars. He

kept his eyes peeled. Except a moment later something caught his

attention, and it wasn't a deer. He downshifted, his hurry forgotten.

Gears rattling in protest, the pickup slowed to a crawl.

It was a billboard.

Tires ground on gravel, and the truck rolled to a halt on the shoulder

of the road. Travis peered out the driver's side window. Like so many

wooden artifacts in the high country, the billboard was bleached and

splintering but curiously intact. The thing had to have seen a good

sixty or seventy mountain winters in its existence, and even the most

recent advertisement plastered across its face was long faded. However,

he could still make out the ghostly shapes of people wearing clothes

that had been fashionable two decades ago, laughing as they sucked

smooth, delicious smoke out of white sticks propped between long fingers.

Hinges groaned, and the truck's heavy door swung open. Travis climbed

out. Cold air sighed through clumps of dry weeds, and he was glad for

his thick sheepskin coat. Beneath this he wore faded blue jeans and a

tan work shirt. Travis was a tall man, just on the lean side of big, but

he had an unconscious tendency to hunch his broad shoulders. At

thirty-three years his face was boyish, and when he smiled, his crooked

grin suggested a mischievousness that was not altogether misleading. His

hair was the exact color of dull yellow sandstone, but his beard, which

he sometimes let grow against the winter cold, or simply out of sheer

laziness, had sparks of copper and gold in it.

Travis adjusted the wire-rimmed spectacles that perched in front of his

pale eyes. Jack Graystone had given him the spectacles a few years back.

Jack owned the Magician's Attic, an antique store on the west side of

town, and he was one of Travis's oldest friends, maybe even his best.

The spectacles were over a hundred years old, and once they had belonged

to a young gunslinger named Tyler Caine. Jack

16

always said the best way to understand the here and now was to gaze at

it through the eyes of a distant time and place. Sometimes Travis

thought Jack was the wisest man he knew.

Travis approached the billboard, his scuffed boots crunching against the

hard ground. There-that was what had caught his eye. Last night's gale

had ripped away a piece of the old cigarette ad. He drew in a cold

lungful of air. Through the hole in the advertisement he could see what

appeared to be a painting of a rugged landscape. Only it didn't quite

look like a painting. It was too real, more like a photograph,

breathtaking in its perfect clarity. He could just see the edge of a

snow-covered peak, and beneath that the hint of an evergreen forest.

Without even thinking, Travis reached a hand toward the billboard, to

peel off more of the ad's colored paper.

That was when he heard them.

The bells were faint and distant, yet clear all the same, and

crystalline. The sound made him think of sleigh bells on a winter's

night. His hand fell to his side, and he cocked his head to listen. Now

all he heard was the low moan of wind over granite. He shivered and

remembered he needed to get to the saloon. Whatever the sound had been,

it was gone now, if he had ever really heard it in the first place. He

started back for the truck.

The wind shifted and brought with it, fleeting but clear, the chime of

music.

Travis spun back around. Once more the bells faded into silence, but

this time he could tell from which direction the sound had come. His

gaze traveled across a sere expanse of grass until it reached a dark

hulk a few hundred yards away. You don't have time for this, Travis. But

he was already walking across the field, hands jammed into the pockets

of his coat.

A minute later the orphanage loomed above him, taking a bite out of the

blue-quartz sky. He had never been this close to the ruin before. Now

the windows seemed more gaping mouths than staring eyes. Lichen clung to

scorched clapboards like some sort of disease. Even after all these

years a faint burnt smell emanated from the place, acrid and

17

vaguely menacing. Travis held his breath: the eerie voice of the wind,

and silence, that was all.

He pushed his way through a patch of dried thistles and walked around

the side of the house. Behind the place were a pair of outbuildings.

They were far enough away from the main house that the fire had not

gotten them. Dull paint peeled from their walls, and their doors were

sealed shut with rusted padlocks. Storage sheds of some sort. Between

the buildings was a narrow run, almost like an alley. Had something

moved there in the dimness?

He took a step into the space between the sheds, and in the murk he

glimpsed a pile of scrap metal and an old rain barrel. That was all. He

was about to turn away when he noticed a glint of light by his feet. He

squatted down and saw tracks in the ground. Water had seeped from the

earth to pool in the tracks and reflect the waning daylight. The prints

had been made by small, cloven hooves, probably a mule deer. They

wandered all over the valley. With a shrug, Travis stood and turned to

head back to the truck.

This time the bells were closer. Much closer.

Travis whirled around. There. Something had moved-a dim form by the rain

barrel.

"Who's there?" he called out. No answer. He took another step, deeper

in. Shadows closed behind him, and a new sound drifted on the air, a

sound almost like . . . laughter. It was high and trilling, the mirth of

a child, or that of an ancient woman. The rain barrel rocked back and

forth, then toppled. Water gushed onto the ground, dark as blood.

Travis's heart shriveled in his chest. He started to back out of the

alley. The mocking laughter rang out again. He bit his lip to stifle a

cry of fear, turned, tripped over his boots, and broke into a run.

He was brought up short by a tall, stiff object, and this time he did

cry out. He stumbled backward and looked up. "Can I help you with

something, son?"

The man standing before Travis looked like he was eighty years too late

for a funeral. His black suit of moth-eaten wool was archaic and oddly

cut, with a long hem and a high collar. The suit hung loosely on the

man's spare frame, while the shirt beneath had turned the yellow of old

bones, its neck bound with a limp string tie that flapped on the air.

18

The man snatched a hand up to keep his broad-brimmed hat from taking off

on a gust of wind.

"I said, can I help you, son? I mean, are you in need of some aid?

Forgive my saying, but you look as white as Lot after he slipped on out

of Sodom."

The man's voice was dry, like the rasp of a snake's belly against sand,

but coated with a sticky Southern sweetness. This was a voice to invoke

dread and devotion in one fell swoop. A grin split the man's face. His

teeth were the same dull yellow as his shirt, and his eyes glinted like

black marbles.

"You aren't simple, now are you, son? You can talk, can't you?"

Travis managed a nod. "I'm fine, really. It was nothing, just an animal

by the sheds."

Instinct told him to get out of here. The man gave Travis the creeps,

him and his papery skin and that skeletal smile. He had to be some sort

of vagrant, what with those thriftstore clothes. And there was something

foreboding about him. Not violent, but perilous all the same.

Travis swallowed hard. "Listen, I need to get going. I have . . . I have

something I need to do."

The man watched him with those black eyes, then gave a solemn nod.

"So you do, son. So you do."

Travis did not reply. He hurried past the other, kept his eyes fixed on

the ground, and hoofed it as fast as he could

across the field without looking like he was out and out

running. To his great relief, he made it back to the truck. He climbed

inside, then cast one last glance over his shoulder. The man in black

had not moved. He still stood in front of the ruined orphanage and

clutched his hat while waves of grass surged around him. He gazed at the

horizon, like those dark marble eyes of his could see something coming,

something other eyes could not.

Travis shivered, shut the truck's door, and cranked the key in the

ignition. With a spray of gravel the pickup launched itself down the road.

Travis laughed as the oddness of his encounter at the orphanage

evaporated in the mundane task of piloting the truck. Now that he

thought about what had happened, it no

19

longer seemed so strange. There had been some sort of animal between the

sheds, and the man in black was just a drifter, peculiar but harmless.

As for the sounds-he could chalk those up to wind and imagination.

Either that or he was going insane, and there was nothing at all special

about that. He hummed along with the radio as he drove.

A pointed shape came into view up ahead. As he drew closer, Travis saw

it was a big circus tent pitched in a field next to the road. Its canvas

roof was patched in countless places, and parked to the side was an old

school bus covered with a blotchy coat of white paint. He slowed down as

he passed the tent. In front was planted a crude sign. As always, it

took a moment of concentration to stop the words from roaming, then he

reined them in. The sign read:

BROTHER CY'S APOCALYPTIC TRAVELING SALVATION SHOW

Ailments Cured-Faith Restored-Souls Redeemed Come on in-we want to save you!

It was an old-fashioned revival. Travis hadn't thought these sorts of

things still existed. He shifted into fourth, and the tent vanished

behind him. At least now he knew where the strange man had come from,

and he had been right on one count. The old guy was a nut, although not

the kind he had thought.

The battered pickup cruised down the road, and he turned his attention

to everyday matters-how many kegs of beer he needed to order for the

bar, who he had to call to get rid of that skunk holed up under the

saloon, and when he was going to find time to patch the leak in the

storeroom's roof.

Yet all the way into town, Travis couldn't quite forget the far-off

music of bells.

Twilight was drifting from the sky like silver snow by the time Travis

turned onto Elk Street and brought the pickup to a halt in front of the

Mine Shaft Saloon. Only the summit of

20

Castle Peak rose high enough above the valley to be gilded by the last

of the sunlight. He stepped out and shut the vehicle's door without

bothering to lock it. Small-town living had its own little luxuries.

Elk Street hadn't changed much in the last hundred years. If cars could

be traded for wagons and potholed pavement for red mud, Castle City's

main drag wouldn't look much different than it had at the height of the

mining days. It ran broad and straight through the heart of town-unlike

the narrow, convoluted roads of Eastern cities, constructed by people

who were still accustomed to the cramped burgs of the Old World, before

they came to realize just how much elbow room this new continent truly

had to offer. Weathercorroded false fronts rose sharp and square against

the sky, and hitching rails stood in front of most buildings, although

these days they usually kept mountain bikes from wandering off instead

of horses.

Lights were coming on all along Elk Street against the deepening night.

People strolled the boardwalks, heading to the Mosquito Cafe for the

best cup of cappuccino in Castle County, or chatting in front of McKay's

General Store, or stopping to look at the smoky quartz crystals,

obsidian bolo ties, and hand-drawn tarot cards in the window of the Blue

Summit Earth Shop. At the end of the street, graceful as a ghost,

hovered Castle City's old opera house, with its Greek Revival columns

and baroque marble facade.

Travis hopped onto the boardwalk in front of the saloon just as the neon

sign above sizzled to red-and-blue life. He reached out to turn the

brass doorknob, then paused. He frowned and leaned toward the door to

peer at the upper left corner. There. It was so small and inconspicuous

he had nearly missed it. Something had been scratched into the door's

faded gray paint, an oval shape formed of two curved lines:

What it signified Travis couldn't say. Most likely it was just some

piece of graffiti. Castle City didn't have much of a vandalism problem,

but it did happen on occasion. Whatever

21

it was, he was certain it hadn't been there yesterday: The scratch marks

looked fresh. Travis let out a sigh. Well, he needed to repaint the door

anyway. He added that job to his growing list, then headed into the

saloon. The comforting rumble of conversation and the clink of beer

glasses told him that Max hadn't driven away all of the customers. At

least not yet.

Max stood behind the bar and pored over a mass of papers spread out

before him on the expanse of old wood. His long hair was tied back in a

ponytail, and a yellow pencil perched behind one ear. He stroked the

drooping black mustache he had copied a few months back from the local

ranch hands and slid a bowl of pretzels across the bar to a customer.

Mark Anthony - Last rune 01 - Beyond The Pale

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