I’m back with another entry into the Worth 1000 Words catalog. Delving into the horror of the west. Hope you enjoy it.
Artwork by David Jones
David’s ArtStation profile: https://www.artstation.com/drjones
Artwork: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/2EBvK
DISCLAIMER:This work has not been edited beyond what is done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time, and keep it as raw as possible. If I decide to publish later, all of these will go through formal editing.
The Story
The bones rang hollow. Hanging from eaves like teeth, they did, like the teeth of that crone who led Anton here.
A gust kicked up his duster before tickling those teeth into song once more. However, it didn’t have the energy to keep it up, just like him. The story that crone in nearby Clanston told proved to be more than a tall tale. And athough a half-day’s ride to get here, he was drained. As drained as these bones of marrow, not a tool mark nor a tooth mark to whisper their demise.
CAW.
“I’m thinking, god damn it,” he said without looking up to the raven perched on the carcass of Pueblo Pine Company.
The chapel called to him louder, though. With eyes, not voice. Eyes blacker than the raven’s. With a roof stripped of most of its shingles, replaced by a hide of another kind.
CAW.
The finger hooked around his revolver’s trigger itched. The raven’s talons clacked, urging him to look, or not to. A single round left, and he was never much of a good shot anyway.
Staying in the shadow of the building, he inspected the bone chimes further. Tied loose enough to clatter in the wind, leather cord spiraled around them before going back up through their bored-clean centers.
More ravens lined up on distant rooftops, as curious as to his next move as the one a dozen feet away from him, hell, as curious as he was. That son of a bitch cocked its head to the side like all birds do before resuming a posture of uncanny intelligence, black marble eyes reflecting a blacker sky.
CAW-WARD.
He set his jaw with clenched teeth, and he found he had drawn his weapon, scuffed barrel aimed between those damn devil eyes. The mostly-empty cylinder stared back at him, harder than the eyes of the raven, and with a long exhale, he holstered it back.
“You win,” he said and spit into the scrub.
The path was too smooth, smoother than old Jeb’s saloon floor he had paced far too many times from bar to rear table, always shadowed. He suddenly missed that floor, with the loose, creaking board up to the second level where ladies waited to satisfy any man with enough cash to buy a few drinks. That creak was music to their ears, the balcony empty until you set foot on that step just one past mid-flight, too far to go back.
One step past halfway he was, when he turned. The shadow of the Pueblo Pine Company building looked mighty refreshing, even with that damn curse of an animal still up there watching him.
The clouds decided to let the sun spear him to this spot for some reason, the surrounding sky clogged with gray. That spear turned into a battering ram, and he was propelled forward by a force not his own.
Those eyes, a darkness he hadn’t thought possible. He knew what it looked like in life, lazily walking the pasture, chewing, always chewing. Now it had a horror to it, mounted to the door, impossible to blink, taking him all in with that deep blackness.
He knew the brothers of the raven were above looking down at him, and he decided to step inside before they shit or made further mockery of his cowardice.
Beams of light looked to be the bulk of the load bearing architecture inside, crisscrossing each other with some otherworldly geometry. Pews were stocked with the dead, stripped as clean as their bovine companions oustide. Upright, all of them, faces forward, attentive, entranced, by …
A man on hands and knees, then just knees, raising and lowering himself in some perverse worship. What he worshiped looked to be the only thing containing moisture Anton had seen since he drained the last of his canteen. A bag of flesh, strung up, pinned, not unlike the flesh that provided this chapel with shelter from the elements. Then he noticed the hands. It took the man three prayers before he did. Glistening red, tendons linking bone, so damn white.
“Shit,” he breathed and unholsetered his weapon. “You there. Hands to whatever it is you’re praying to, and I hope it’s up. Either way, just make sure I can see them.”
The man kept his hands raised as instructed, remained erect on knees a moment before standing to his full height. It was a struggle for him, and his stance wasn’t much more than the death slouch of a man ready to expire.
“Now, tell me what is going on here. Who else you with?” He wasn’t much for interrogation or shooting. He really needed a partner.
“It is clean,” the robed man finally said. “We are clean.”
The words were slurred, each statement closing with a click of teeth.
The robed man turned. “I am clean.”
Anton almost loosed his last round by what he saw. He didn’t even stop the man from lowering his hands, which set his robe to slip off his body, his skinless body. Anton had known enough surgeons and artisans over his career to have seen what was displayed before him now, but no matter the skill of the artist or the detail of the illustration, nothing came close to this.
Living flesh, pulsing, dripping with what we all know runs beneath us in rivers, in torrents, sometimes in trickles, but never truly comprehend.
The once-robed man opened his mouth, but the words never left. He collapsed with the sound of wet meat.
“Jesus,” Anton said. Anton knew he wasn’t listening, even if he believed. Not in a place like this. Not ever.
He held his gun there, considering letting his final round punch through the skull of what this man had become. One fly landed, then a second, then a third. Not a flinch from the pile, not a whimper.
A sound to his left, and Anton spun, pulling the trigger. A coyote yelped and then darted into the beautiful outside.
