The more time you spend in the West, outside of shelter and wandering the wastes and the wild, you start to realize that all the tales and legends come from those places that survived.

  But for every thriving settlement like Revelation Springs, the truth is, there’s a sackful out here that didn’t. That shriveled up and died like a flower left out in the baking sun. Abandoned. Slaughtered. Or worse.

  We came upon one such place. Hard to call it a town, it was so small. Probably didn’t even have a name before the West took it. Came on slow like a migraine, then a few scattered farms and homes dotted a stretch of dry land beside a creek bed that looked like it hadn’t known water in a decade. It was a challenge to distinguish between walls and roofs, they were in such a state of wretched disrepair. Not every caravan of settlers coming out is stocked with the best builders and blacksmiths.

  And out here, well, getting by ain’t always so simple. A storm comes or a heavy wind, and they can all kiss that beautiful promise of a fresh new life goodbye. Couldn’t say if the people who once lived here made it out. I checked all the roofless homes and didn’t find a single sign of life. Not even a bone.

  They wouldn’t be much use for shelter when the rain started picking up, and we couldn’t risk a fire anyway. Funny thing about badlands like this is rain here comes as sparsely as riches, but when it does… oh boy, does it pour. Heavy, violent, and done with faster than a virgin in a whorehouse.

  Thunder cracked in the distance, and it seemed right to give everyone a rest even though I’d rather keep moving day and night. We barely made it under cover before it was like Noah’s ark being dumped out from the heavens. At the end of the village stood a church. I found myself reticent to enter before realizing that all the things that once might have made it a place of worship were stripped away.

  All it had left was a roof above and empty pews. Any windows were shattered, letting rain splatter in. Everything from sacraments to books and the altar itself had been picked clean.

  This was no church. Not anymore. This was a carcass scavenged by vultures, soon to be lost to wind and dust. But hell, it was sturdy enough to shield us for one night.

  Tough as it was to find a spot where the old roof wasn’t leaking, most of the skinwalkers huddled up under pew seats for warmth. Easy to do as dogs. I helped Rosa get comfortable on the dais where the pulpit should have been for some much-needed rest after exerting her new powers so drastically.

  Once everyone was settled, I stood vigil by the front windows, searching the darkness for any sign of Ace or werewolves or risen dead. The tunnel out of the Garden could have led in any direction, so we’d bought time. Ace always had a stroke of luck suiting his name, though.

  Rain pattered for a little while longer, then was gone. By the time it returned, all the soaked dirt would be arid again. All this land out west, and these settlers chose here. Couldn’t say why. Maybe God spoke to them and told their pastor that a church belonged here. Maybe one of them got sick and it was the only choice.

  Or maybe they just got tired.

  Tired of all the journeying and the dangers. Of watching the horizon for rightfully angry natives and outlaws, and the ground for snakes and coyotes. I’d spent so long hunting the unnatural, that it was strange to see this and remember how hellish it was here even without it. Able to transform back into a man or not, a wolf still has fangs.

  Old wood boards clattered in the wind. Broken shutters swung open and closed. There was a soothing melody to it, until some hours into the rest, a peculiar sound stood out. Footsteps, sliding through wet dirt.

  Pulling one freshly loaded Peacemaker, I pushed open the church door with my stub of a wrist and checked both directions. In the moist darkness, I barely made out something moving around the back of the church. No itch of a being near a Nephilim came to my chest, but there are plenty of dangerous things that would hide out in a forsaken town in the shit end of nowhere.

  Just look at my motley crew.

  I sidled up to the corner and peeked. Wind nearly whipped my Stetson off my head. Holding it in place with my useless appendage, I edged forward through the darkness. The clouds were thick as molasses, with a small break in them providing extra moonlight as I reached the back of the church. There, a path skirted farther up a hill, toward what seemed to be a lonely tree. A robed figure trudged upward, seeming to be in no hurry at all.

  Clouds filled in once more, and detail became scant. I kept my distance and followed. Most likely, it was a wanderer passing through. Still, I had to be certain if they’d seen anything. To most, a man and woman traveling with a couple of dozen dogs would be odd, but nothing worth thinking twice about. For someone in Ace’s employ, it would be a road map.

  I kept low along what was left of a fence so disheveled, it could barely keep out the invading brush anymore. Reaching the hill’s crest, the figure huddled over something. A flash of distant lightning revealed a tiny cemetery in the shadow of an old desert ironwood tree, only each of the graves had already been dug up by robbers.

  That made things simple. Whether they’d seen us or not, killing a grave robber wouldn’t cause me a second thought. Can’t imagine a thing more wretched than disturbing someone’s eternal slumber for nothing more than the treasures left behind. Life out here is hard enough.

  “Hands where I can see them,” I said, cocking my gun’s hammer to inform whoever this was that there were iron sights on them.

  Two hands went up slowly. I edged closer. Sure was strange to find a thief wearing robes, though strange and I were old bedfellows. What I found odder as I neared was the fact that the grave he or she kneeled by had long since been excavated. Within it grew tiny crops. I ain’t no farmer, so I don’t know what types, but something meant for eating. Decomposition of the body must’ve made the soil rich enough to yield.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  “You live here?” I asked.

  “I scrape by.” The voice was dry-sounding, like the desert. “If you’ve come to find riches, ain’t nothing here. Never was much anyway.”

  “Just seeking shelter from the storm.”

  “Ah. Well, storm’s over. Best move on. Good things don’t happen here.” He turned around, facing me with two gory, scarred-up holes where his eyes should be. Wild hair and a shaggy beard were in stark contrast to the cross hanging from his neck. And his robe—it was dirty, so I hadn’t been able to tell… A servant of God. The most dangerous thing to me imaginable.

  “You a priest?”

  “Was. Am. I ain’t sure no more. What’s a priest without a flock? Just a hermit, I reckon.” He cackled at his own joke and started to check the other side of his crops. “You can put the gun down,” he said even though he couldn’t see.

  “I’ll pass. Lots of men around these parts ain’t what they claim to be.”

  “What does that make you, then?”

  “A weary traveler passing through.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t need no eyes to see you’re lying. You have the scent on you. The edge in your voice.”

  “What the hell are you on about, Padre?”

  “You’re running from something. Ain’t no other reason anyone winds up here in Hangman’s Hollow. All the sins in your life have finally caught up to you.”

  I returned the chuckle, though mine held little humor. “Sins. Sure. Why don’t we head on down and I can confess them to you. Then all will be forgiven.”

  “You’d be confessing to a sinner himself. Ain’t much use in that.”

  “So, you ain’t a priest?”

  He picked something off a stem and gave it a long whiff. “I suppose God will tell me after I die.”

  “Sinners don’t go to Heaven by most accounts.”

  He grunted a response.

  I moved around to his side and kneeled so I could see him. A grin stretched across his weathered face. This strange priest wasn’t scared of me at all.

  “You won’t tell anybody we passed through?” I asked, low and stern.

  “As far as I know, you’re a ghost.”

  I sighed.

  I never was sure if the White Throne could see through its mortal servants… or hear, in his case. Those sorts of details were left a mystery by Shar, likely purposefully. But priest or not, I couldn’t kill some crazy, blind old codger. I wasn’t Ace. Rosa and the others had a few hours rest already, and he was right, the storm had passed. It was time to get moving.

  I rose, then stopped.

  “Everyone has moved on,” I said to the old priest. “You don’t even have a bed left. Why stay, Padre?”

  “It is my home.”

  “Who cares?” I scoffed. “Go find a tavern, and a drink, and the warm embrace of a lady while you’ve still got time.”

  “One sin does not beget others.”

  “God won’t give a damn, trust me.”

  He stood and I backed away slowly, raising my gun ever so slightly to my hip. For a priest, he was tall—almost threateningly so—and he stalked closer to me.

  “Says the nameless wanderer who does not want to be found,” he replied coldly.

  “Well, damn me for wanting to help.”

  “Help?” Now it was he who scoffed. “You came here to put me in an early grave.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Why else follow a stranger in the night?”

  “Just had to be sure. That’s all.”

  “And are you?”

  “No.” He got so close, the barrel of my Peacemaker pressed into his belly. He fixed his empty eye-sockets upon me and didn’t budge.

  “You ask why I stay. This is where my family is. My people. Friends.” He spread his arms and gestured to the headstones. “Here, they remain, looking up at those who put them in the ground!”

  His shout was punctuated by another flash of lightning painting the landscape white, one long finger pointing toward the tree. Only then did I notice what hung from it. Lynched bodies dangled high up in the gnarled boughs, at least a dozen of them. Like the reanimated dead from the tunnel.

  These were old bodies, dead for many years. Not even enough on them to attract ravens for an easy lunch. And each wore a matching military uniform. Time had dirtied them so much, I couldn’t tell if they’d belonged to the North or South.

  “At these soldiers who brought their war here to sate their bloodlust,” he continued. “Who took everything, down to the jewelry on the fingers in these caskets. So yes, stranger, I was a priest. And then I hunted down each and every one of them so they could spend eternity with the people they damned. So, I ask you, can a murderer still be a priest?”

  I stared. If they had even the smallest bits of flesh left on them, I could touch one and see exactly what he’d done through Divining, but what would it matter?

  “Exactly,” he said. “You may run from what you’ve done, but I will not, traveler. I will wait here in my home for God to answer.”

  I’m not sure why I didn’t walk away. Being alone for so long twists the mind. Makes you do crazy things like plant crops in a grave. Yet he refused to flee from the grisly truth all around him.

  “What if God stays quiet?” I asked.

  The old priest’s head fell back and aimed at the sky. “Then I’ll have my answer.”

  “Which is?”

  “Mine. Not yours.” He cackled again before spitting at the base of the tree “This fucking place. It makes sinners of us all. What a place to call home, eh?”

  All I could muster in response was a grunt.

  “Now, either kill me, traveler, or leave me be.”

  He returned to his crops as the decomposed bodies above swayed on creaking ropes like chandeliers in his home of the damned. I felt for the holy man. Revenge had twisted him into this wretched being of half-broken faith. It was hard not to commiserate.

  At least he’d known a home worth fighting for. I sure hadn’t. Constantly moving around from one job to the next, all I ever had were people. First, Davey and the Scuttlers. Then Shar, if that really counts. Now Rosa and Mutt. The first two hadn’t ended so well, and my current companions—that remained up in the air.

  For the first time, it felt like being around more than compatriots. It felt like family, and I reckon that made me at home more than anything else. Was this my fate, then? To face my demons and then suffer for time unknown?

  The voice of Wendigo echoed in my mind at that. “But a man must be warned that wherever a man goes, Death is his companion.”

  “Your eyes,” I said. “How’d you lose ’em? I don’t imagine a blind man hunted all of them down, so it must have happened after.”

  “I got tired of seeing what I’ve become, and burned them out,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Something like a chortle escaped my lips. So, he hadn’t run from his sins, he simply made himself blind to them. I suppose that’s what I get for trying to glean wisdom from batshit old coots who cling to the past.

  He was right about one thing, though. This place—his home—had known only horrors. Places like that, well, they attract things I’d rather not think about. A few hours’ rest would have to do. It was time to get everyone moving and leave this priest to hollow prayers.

  “I hope you find peace, Padre,” I said. “Truly.”

  “I’ll find peace just as sure as you’ll stop running.” His tone was sharp. Acerbic. Might as well have been a pot shot through my soul. All the thousands of folks I’d met in my way-too-long life, and this loner seemed to know my heart better than any ever had.

  I couldn’t stop, just as he couldn’t find anything, let alone peace. Our own personal purgatories. The only way out was a bullet through the brain—figuratively in my case—or a goddamn miracle. Stubborn as mules, we had that in common.

  Tipping my hat his way as if he could see, I said, “Here’s to trying,” then left him behind.