The Spaniard, Ep. 1
A dark fantasy Western
“The Spaniard” is a serialized novella.
Synopsis:
A lone gaucho traverses a barren landscape in a 1930s era alternate world, chasing a shade that took what he loved most from him. Joining him is the mysterious Gunslinger, a woman he has met only in dreams, and a trickster spirit, who may or may not have an agenda of his own.
This week’s episode:
Our hero, for now, is a man with no name, hunting the man, or thing, that took his family. Out here, the heat and the mirages fool you as much as the shadows that creep in the sands.
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The Spaniard awoke from the dream once more. He had dreamt of her again, her soft hair, the unwavering smile easily lighting her face. Throwing off the cheap sheet laying across him, the Spaniard stood and walked to the window, watching the empty street below the hotel, the gangplanks of the wooden decks creaking in the silent town of Tiburon; across the street a whore slinked from the shadows of one doorway to another, her henna colored hair flashing in the shafts of moonlight coming through the wooden shingles. The Spaniard closed the curtains and returned to the bed, staring at the ceiling.
The dream had been as real as anything. He’d been standing in a wasted desert, not unlike the desert that lay all around this scanty little town. Though the sky was the color of burnt orange as the sun went down, and the ground was scarred and broken, it remained alien and foreign. The taste of the air was wrong; it felt wet and humid, and though his rational mind told him the air should be arid and dry, it was not; such is the perplexity of dreams.
In the distance she had stood, her sun bleached hair whipping in a soundless wind, and yet the wind had roared all around him. Sheathed in only a white sheet, she had beckoned without moving, her hair and the sheet whipping around her body. He walked slowly to her, eyes narrowed, heart vibrating wildly within its bone enclosure. As he approached, he felt a sense of climax, that this was the right thing to do. He felt that if he did not go to her, he would be left with a foreboding blackness within him.
Arriving at the spot where she stood in his dream, the Spaniard stood and watched her face, gazing at him with incredible sureness of what she was about to do. The Spaniard took her into his arms and pressed his lips to hers. The air around them was powerfully hot, yet her lips were cool as they pressed against his. They stood like that, her sheet shifting and falling away from her as he pressed her soft flesh against his. He had not been naked before, but as dreams sometimes go, he now was. The Spaniard had awoken. What had disturbed his sleep he didn’t know. An ominous feeling had swept over him in the last moments of the dream as he had been pulled away from the woman.
Now staring at the ceiling, the Spaniard lay on his back and sighed, angry that the woman he dreamt of so many nights was not there. A sharp stab of guilt pierced through his rib cage as the thought of Imelda came into his mind. Conjuring his most horrible memory, the Spaniard closed his eyes, forcing himself to forget the face he had fallen in love with, focusing instead on the face of his wife. Opening them again, for he felt the air stir around him, the Spaniard pulled his gun from its holster and sat up, watching the shadows in the room. Nothing moved.
He sat still, listening, straining for any sound. The curtains stirred and he aimed the gun at the fabric fluttering in the wind. He’d left the widow open. Silly. The Spaniard clutched the gun in his hand, but he left his finger off the trigger. You could shoot something off stupidly if you weren’t careful about your trigger finger. Resting the revolver beside him, he exhaled and shut his eyes again, thinking of Imelda, of her hair, her face, her voice, now fading from his memories.
When he awoke the air was no longer cool. He cast off the sheets covering him and dressed quickly, passing back and forth across the window. Outside the town was barely more active than it had been last night. Crinkled brown tumble weeds drifted with abandon across the street, interested in hiding from the impending storm that the Spaniard sensed. He watched it coming, stirring up enormous clouds of dust on the horizon. Throwing the cotton shirt over his head and pulling on his jeans and chaps, he grabbed his hat from the hook as he cleared out of the room and strode warily down the stairs of the hotel.
Whores leaned against one another in the heat, fanning themselves with Da-Fei fans imported from Kerala, their red negligees and pinned hair unappealing even in the half light of the hotel. The Spaniard had never once paid for a prostitute; he found them tasteless and worthless; they were whores after all. Then again, he had never needed to.
The bartender polished a whiskey glass and set it down, watching the Spaniard. They were all suspicious of him; dark men usually had dark intentions. Tossing a few coins on the table, the Spaniard left the grim degradation and aged, gaudy wall hangings into the scorching sun of the desert. The town was still fairly empty. A boy and a girl of about six played with a dog in a shaded alley, wagging the gnarled stick in front of his snarling muzzle. The wasted dog stole the stick and ran off down the alley; he caught a glimpse of it, as the dog turned. The cream color and knobbed end was a femur. Where the children had found it he didn’t know; he wasn’t sure he wanted to, but he had a pretty good idea. That dog had looked very hungry.
Walking round to the stables where his horse was locked up, he felt a prickle along the back of his neck, and his insides tingled. The Spaniard was overwhelmed with the sense of something following him. He did not turn around, but the chills crept over his back and up his spine with increasing intensity. It wasn’t one of them; that he was sure of; something else was observing him, back near the sheriff’s door. The Spaniard continued forward, intent on riding out of town. He had no desire to stay any longer than he needed to. He was riding to Lobos; they were offering foreman’s jobs in the prospector mines and the Spaniard knew he could make good money. He was running short. Only a week’s worth of hotel fare was left in his pocket and that job would not wait for him.
In the back of the hotel were the stables, once white now a faded peeling grey, dust and grime a fine coat on the wood. The siding that had been attached, the wooden gates holding in the horses, merely added to the gloom. A man leaning against one of the support posts had his hat pulled over his eyes, his face cast in shadow in full sunlight.
“I’m here to collect my horse.”
“You want a parade or something to celebrate you collecting a horse?” the man drawled. He chewed a bit on the buckwheat stem in his mouth.
“I want to make sure he’s still where I left him.”
“Well, considerin’ no one’s collected or left any since you showed up, I’d say it’s prob’ly still there.” The man peered at the Spaniard from underneath the black brim and blinked slowly. “Ain’t nobody touched your horse. Not while I been standin’ here.” He chewed the grass stem some more and tilted his head back down, returning to his weary sleep.
The Spaniard entered the cool shade of the stable and noted with dismay that two of the horses in the ten stalls were dead. Neither of them were his. Napoleon stood stoically in his stall, regarding the Spaniard. He reared his head back, flaring his nostrils, and his rolling eyes seemed to say, “I can’t believe you left me here, with them.”
The Spaniard chuckled at Napoleon’s reaction and went to his stall, undoing the latch and leading the stallion out of that dismal place.
“Don’t worry,” he murmured. “The next place that sells them, I’ll buy a nice bag of carrots and oats.” He stroked Napoleon’s neck and led him from the stable.
“Careful out there,” said the man against the post. He hadn’t scarcely moved since the Spaniard had entered a few minutes ago. “There’s something nasty out there lookin’ for you.”
“Thanks,” the Spaniard replied. He didn’t need the black hat man to tell him that. The warning was not out of concern, but satisfaction that something big might go down. It was a dry, dying town. Everyone was looking for a bit of excitement, or mistook foolhardiness for excitement.
Swinging up onto the horse and holding fast to the reigns, he left the back alley and appeared on the street, staring down at the sheriff’s jail where that bastard thing was watching him. He stared at where he had sensed it earlier, and saw that there was nothing more than an empty doorway. There was only shadow and blackness, but he could feel it emanating from that black hole. There was more underneath the surface of this town, a darkness that had sapped all the goodness and light from the people and had left them empty, hateful husks; but it hadn’t paid any attention to him, until now. He turned Napoleon towards the west and trotted off, the wind blowing in a light, north western direction. The building storm he had seen in the distance earlier had settled; for whatever reason, it had made the decision to not blow the whole place into oblivion.
As he passed the street leading down to the railroad and the Western Union office, he noticed in the corner of his eye the same pervading sense of being stalked he’d sensed earlier. It was man shaped, that much he was sure of, hunching as it slunk slowly, watchfully, following the Spaniard as he trotted a decent pace out of town. The Spaniard stopped full on in the street and steered Napoleon to the side as a Bramble and Par car trundled past, the only noise in the whole town, aside from the empty creak of swinging doors. When the car had passed, that antique piece of junk even the Spaniard wouldn’t touch – he felt cars were more dangerous than unbroken horses – he turned full round and stared at the patch of shadows the darkness was watching him from.
What stalked from the shadows was something in the disguise of a man. Tall and gaunt, with hollow eyes, any other individual would have seen a weary, haunted man, underfed and unloved. What the Spaniard saw was something very different. It was something that had been a man, and might have fooled him, had it not been for the quicksilver glint in its eyes and red burn marks around its throat. Those eyes glowed silver at him from the hooded brow, black circles rimming them. Plodding gently from the shadows, it stopped a few feet in front of Napoleon, baring its teeth to him. The wide mouth boasted formidably sharp incisors; in between them he could see bits of meat from its last meal. The Spaniard didn’t know whether it was beef or something else.
“You leavin’ so soon?” it hissed.
“I am. I have no business here.”
“But I have business with you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You do if I say you do.”
“Not anymore,” the Spaniard replied coolly, and faster than it could follow, he drew his gun and shot it perfectly in the spot where its heart should have been. It was dead before it hit the ground. Smoking, the thing shriveled in on itself, like paper coiling up and burning, the edges embers.
The Spaniard turned Napoleon round and continued his simple plodding toward Lobos. The few people brave enough to have peered out their windows at the small altercation shivered with fear. The darkness that resided here, in their hearts and the shadows, would exact its fury on them; he was safe because he could fight it and leave. They did not have that luxury. They were fair game.
The Spaniard camped out that night in the desert, in a small cave he had found in a rock formation misshapen like a heart. Napoleon stood near the entrance, dozing lightly, warmed by the small fire the Spaniard had made. Wrapped in his blanket, the Spaniard watched the stars twinkle above him. The fire warmed him and the rough, grayish wool kept the heat in. Napoleon awoke and retreated into the cave to be nearer to the fire. He settled back into his own sleep and grumbled to his horse self about sleeping in caves.
This time, he found himself in the hotel room, the one he had just left. She was there, standing at the window, watching the street, the darkness creeping slowly at the bloody orb set slowly behind the distant mountain line. She was dressed differently this time, in a simple sundress, her bare arms shivering in the cold, the sunflower print glowing gently in the darkness of the room.
The Spaniard left the bed and stood next to the woman, who was neither young nor old, ageless and as powerful as the darkness he had killed today, youthful and as knowing of evil as he himself was. As he stood behind her and looked out the window with her, he saw the darkness as it truly was, how it flowed and ebbed, crept and overtook those individuals not already overtaken by it. He slowly wrapped his arms around her and held the woman, leaning his chin against her head. Her cool hands smoothed over his. She calmed him and his burning frenzy with her touch, and sighed.
“Tell me your name,” he murmured. Again, she sighed, refusing to speak.
He had dreamt of her for these past few months, always close to making love to the woman, but something always stopped him. He had never before spoken to her until now. He was afraid that because he had, she would disappear, but she opened her mouth and spoke very softly.
“I will not disappear, if that is what you are afraid of. I will be here when you dream again.” The Spaniard only held her tighter and kissed the back of her head. Together, for the rest of his dreaming, they stood like that, watching the sun creep over the tops of the roofs in that black little town, driving off the darkness.
He awoke from the dream with a nudge from Napoleon. It was time to go. The fire had died in the night and was still smoldering in the shade of the cave. The sun was peeking over the flat red dirt near the horizon. It would be another scorcher, as always. Packing his things away and saddling the horse, the Spaniard and Napoleon rode off in the direction of Lobos. Judging from what the man in Loro had said, the Spaniard had another day’s worth of travel. He had enough water to last him and Napoleon and so onward they trotted.
After the sun had moved directly over the Spaniard, he and the horse rested. He jumped off and pulling a metal tin from one of the bags, he poured some water in it.
Napoleon rolled his eyes and neighed softly. “That’s supposed to last me till tomorrow?” he seemed to say as the Spaniard recapped the canteen.
“Alright. Not only will I get you bag of oats and some tasty carrots, but some fresh hay and a trough of water just for you to drink. Deal?”
Napoleon whinnied in response.
“You are such a spoiled horse.”
Napoleon refused to respond as he drank the water from the tin. He was especially careful not to spill any onto the cracked red dirt. The dirt was more absorbent than a sponge, and every drop counted out here.
The Spaniard took a few sips of water himself and closed his eyes and recalled an image of Imelda, her mauve lips caught in a smile, her black hair braided loosely. Drawing his hat over his eyes and closing them, he remembered her walk, the way her hips would sway as she carried a basket of wet laundry to the line. He remembered the subtle scent of her skin, like cinnamon and cloves, its color a creamy reddish brown. He remembered the softness of her hands as they would play with his hair while he kissed her. He remembered loving Imelda. He remembered losing her.
The Spaniard’s eyes snapped open and he changed the angle of his hat. Napoleon was done, waiting for him to hoist himself onto his back. The Spaniard collected the water tin and put it back in the saddle bag. Pulling himself onto Napoleon’s back, he settled and flicked the reigns, driving Napoleon into a quicker pace then they’d been going at earlier. The horse obeyed.
The hours passed by slowly, the landscape remaining barren and dead. Here and there it was dotted with scruffy brown bushes that boasted a few green leaves, but were mostly skeletons. In the distance, low squatting cactus jutted their spiny prickles for a taste of rain, while saguaro and sage brush broke up the landscape in strange, twisted formations. Out here, the brush grew any way it pleased. If one was thirsty and tired enough, sometimes the saguaro looked more like people, more mirage and wishful thinking than reality. But it was a strange place, and as the Spaniard had found, these were strange times for them all.
When he and the horse stopped, it was in the middle of this barren wasteland. His fire had been hidden by the deepness of the cave; out here it would be seen for miles and could draw any kind of creature, and some of those creatures were nearly as bad as what he had faced in Tiburon.
Napoleon settled down as the moon scuttled against the starlit sky, the last vestiges of sunlight bursting from the earth, creating a vivid, painterly array of vibrant oranges, purples, reds, and blues against the sky. The Spaniard got the fire going and leaned against Napoleon’s bulk, warmed by the animal’s hide. He scratched Napoleon’s nose and in a little frying pan, warmed some canned beans. He chewed them with grim satisfaction, finding there was little flavor that cleansed the taste of dust from his mouth.
Napoleon shivered and shook in the cold, but it was more than that. The Spaniard sensed something out in the darkness, something watching, and he kept his eyes narrowed, listening for the rustle of the brush, the tread of threatening footsteps.
Out of the darkness crept a coyote, his russet fur laying flat against his hide, along with his ears. The Spaniard studied the creature as it stopped and stared at him, tongue lolling out one side of its mouth.
“Hello there,” he said pleasantly, setting the pan and beans down on the ground. His hand slowly slid along to the gun at his side, feeling for the familiar worn grip.
“Are you here for a bite to eat? Perhaps a nibble on me and my horse? You can tell your pack that I’m the kind of trouble they don’t want to provoke.”
The coyote stepped closer to the fire, staring at its depths. The the gold flames danced in its eyes and knew this was not a creature possessed by the darkness, but it was no ordinary coyote.
“I do not come to play games,” it said. Its lips did not move, but the voice came out of the coyote’s mouth nonetheless. Pulling its lips back to reveal its teeth, the coyote started to pace around the fire, eyes never leaving the Spaniard. “I come only to speak with one who has seen the night.”
“How do you know that I can see the night?”
“You smell strange from other humans, human. That alone makes you different.”
“But that doesn’t tell me how you knew.”
“I am spirit. I know many things.”
The Spaniard snorted. “So that’s why you can talk.”
“But of course. You only hear me because you see the night, those shadows.”
“I think I could hear you if you wanted me to, even if I couldn’t see shadows.” The Spaniard had not let down his guard, but he picked the pan up and went back to eating his beans. Napoleon had calmed down some, but he was still spooked by the spirit. It was a coyote, after all.
Coyote coughed and spit onto the ground, pawing with irritation.
“There is something after you human. It doesn’t like you, and it’s not like other shadows you may have dealt with.”
“I see. Why are you warning me?”
“Because it has come into my territory and has been feeding on the creatures in my care. Do not be smart with me human.” Coyote turned and stared into the Spaniard’s eyes, and as he did so he seemed to grow larger. He was now the size of a small pony. Napoleon whinnied and shifted uneasily.
“I may be a human. I may be something else, as you suggested. But if I can kill shadows, I can certainly kill you.”
Coyote laughed a very human laugh and settled onto the ground, its massive paws underneath its chin. The timbre of its laughter unsettled the Spaniard. “Very well. I’ll let you believe that delusion, but if you want to stay alive, you had better move quickly to the next town and take residence somewhere safe. What is coming for you is older and more powerful than anything you have likely seen. This particular shadow has a grudge against you; it has been asking for information on your whereabouts since you left that infected town.”
“Have you been following me since Tiburon?”
“No, but the vultures told me what they saw, and they saw a great dark shadow following you. When it has gathered enough strength, it will be able to follow you in the day, but for now, it travels in the night. That is why I have come. To ensure that you make it till the dawn.”
“Why?”
“You don’t need to know why,” it snapped, growling through its words. “Now go to sleep and rest until the dawn comes. You will need your strength.” Coyote switched his tail back and forth, content by the fire.
“I need a little more information than that, spirit.”
Sighing, Coyote replied, “You are special. That I can smell. You must live. Now sleep.”
Coyote said no more and remained settled where he was, eyes narrowed and staring into the fire.
The Spaniard didn’t trust the spirit, but he closed his eyes, sleeping lightly while the Coyote watched over him.
The air on top of the butte was cool and the ground under the Spaniard’s feet was red and dusty. Little clouds rose as Napoleon stamped the ground. The Spaniard looked at the horse he was riding on and realized it was not Napoleon, but a thoroughbred black, like the kind his father had ridden on the farm. Taking a second glance, he realized it was the same horse, but younger, stronger, and alive. He turned the horse towards the sunset and saw far below him on the plain a small herd of mammoths, traveling slowly past along the horizon. They were backlit by the sun, their tusks swaying gently to and fro as they trundled over a dry riverbed. Smaller, baby mammoths trotted behind, nudging and playing as their parents lead the herd south.
The Spaniard watched them crossing, thinking how long it had been since he’d seen a herd of mammoths in a desert. Most had migrated north after the weather had shifted too hot, despite their penchant for shedding their fur in the spring. He swung himself down from his father’s horse and walked to the edge of the butte, staring down at the long drop below him. The bottom was so distant that all he could see was a thick layer of cloud cover several hundred feet below. He wondered if he would fly if he jumped, forever soaring in the cloud bank.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” intoned a familiar voice.
The Spaniard turned away from the edge, expecting to see Coyote. He was remarkably surprised to see that Coyote was now a man, or at least, man-like.
Coyote was hairy, with shaggy brown hair that hung below his shoulders, streaks of red-brown and brown-gray running through it. His skin was a deep russet brown, his features narrow and harsh. He smiled wolfishly at the Spaniard, the reach of his smile wider than that of any normal human. Coyote sat cross-legged on the butte, his arms resting on his knees. He was dressed in ceremonial furs, bits of bone and feathers hung around his shoulders and his clothes. The Spaniard was impressed. The Coyote was a formidable looking spirit.
“I thought you were keeping watch,” the Spaniard said, curious and intrigued by the dream’s setting.
“I am,” Coyote answered through a yawn. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t talk to you in my true form.”
“You don’t masquerade as a coyote all the time?”
“This is the dream realm.” Coyote stood and spread his arms, looking all around the butte and surrounding plain. “You see me not only as I present myself to be, but as I really am. Here, in dreams, we all appear as we really are. You look less tired here, younger, less world-weary.”
Watching Coyote stand there on the butte explaining the dream world in a dream was surreal.
“What do I look like,” he asked, looking at the clothes he was dressed in. He was dressed in his father’s clothes, a gray-blue poncho and loose white shirt with dirty, close-fitting jeans. The black boots with silver inlay were as dusty as ever. He was as his father had been, the gaucho.
“Exactly what I said you looked like. Younger, less world weary. In dreams we can be at our best or our worst. All that matters is how you see yourself.”
The Spaniard turned away from Coyote to watch the mammoths continue their slow trot across the landscape. One of the adults trumpeted sorrowfully, his trunk stretching towards the sky.
“Are they real? I don’t remember wanting to see mammoths in my dream. What I want is…” The Spaniard had been ranting but now trailed off, conjuring an image of the woman.
“Is this who you wanted to see?” Coyote asked as she appeared on the butte, wearing the sundress the Spaniard had seen before.
“Yes,” he answered and walked towards the woman, but she turned to mist when he laid his hand on her shoulder.
“That was only the memory of a dream,” Coyote said quietly. The Spaniard sighed and sat down on the ground, watching the sun set. Coyote sat next to him, watching the Spaniard with wise eyes.
“Is she real?”
“The woman? That I don’t know. What you feel for her is very real though. Have you loved her long?”
“I feel as though I have all my life, like I had been asleep and upon waking remembered my love for her. But that’s impossible.”
“What, that you’ve loved her all your life?”
“Yes.”
“No, it’s not. Sometimes in dreams we meet the people who we are really meant for. Sometimes we live entire lifetimes in our dreams and it is upon waking that we find what we dreamed is not reality and leaves us with a sense of loss.”
Skeptically the Spaniard looked at Coyote and traced shapes in the dirt.
“I’ve only been dreaming of her for a few months.”
“And yet?”
“I love her more intensely than I ever loved Imelda.”
“Your wife.”
“Yes.”
“Do you really love this woman more than you loved your wife?”
“It feels that way.” The Spaniard wiped his face with his hand, yawning.
“Hmm,” Coyote answered. “Maybe you don’t. Maybe it just feels that way.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe. All dreams feel real.”
Coyote and the Spaniard watched the sun set for hours. They were silent, enjoying the temporary company.
“Why am I being hunted?”
“You’re special. You can spot one of them in a crowd. They feel threatened. It’s not everyday that humans can sense their kind. Most of you are oblivious. And then you shot one dead. If you were generally used to doing as you pleased, ignored and unnoticed, and suddenly your prey was able to hit back, wouldn’t you be interested?”
Coyote stood and walked to the edge of the butte. “Shall we depart? The sun will soon be rising in reality.”
The Spaniard stood and walked to where Coyote stood and gazed out over the edge to the distant cloud bank. Coyote grinned, looked down, and proceeded to step off. Shaking his head, knowing this was the way out – but not the way he would have chosen – the Spaniard stepped off, spreading his arms wide.
As he fell – he did not feel as though he were falling – the scenery around him changed, the sky now a vivid blue and the clouds had become solid and soft, like plush. As he plunged through, a deep calm overcame him and he closed his eyes, relishing the feeling. No longer dreaming, the Spaniard finally fell into a state of deep sleeping. He did not awaken for a time.
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Rachael Varca is a writer of more than fifteen years experience. She writes at Inking Out Loud, a collection of essays, poems, short stories, and home of the serialized novel, Heart of Stone. To see which books she’s working on for Commonplace Thoughts, visit her at Bookshop.org.
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Wow great start