Excerpt: Weird Trails

JOHNNY STRANGE STORY
THE LAST FIGHT OF THE TRANSYLVANIA KID

by

Don Lee

Chapter One

Johnny Strange faced down the Transylvania Kid at the stroke of midnight.
All around them, the town of Eldritch Creek lay silent and dark, but the street where the tall, trail-weary drifter with a curse faced the pale, black-eyed son of the bat was awash with light, the flickering and jumping light of dozens of torches held by the silent, vampire-ensnared citizenry of Eldritch Creek, men as well as women and children, who lined both sides of the street from one end to the other.
The tall false western store fronts and hitching posts danced crazy shadows in the eerie silence. A tethered horse, black as ink—Nightmare, Johnny Strange's ride--shook its head and snorted, its leather bridle jingling in the silence. Otherwise, only the sound of the nighttime wind wheezing over the rooftops all around.
"You've come to the end of the trail, Johnny Strange," drawled the Transylvania Kid. He stood almost casually, almost as if relaxed, his head tilted back slightly as he studied his opponent from beneath the brim of his black hat.
A curved incisor gleamed beneath his curled lip.
“I've heard o' you before,” said the Kid. “Haints, werecoyotes, gila men, you've seen it all. Bet this is the first time you've seen anything like me.”
Bats swirled and darted down into the torchlight and around the Kid's shoulders, then back up into the darkness.
But the cold right hand that hung loose by the Kid's hip, where his black shooting iron hung like a scorpion in its black holster, that hand twitched ever so slightly, almost invisible in the flickering torchlight.
Most would not have understood that hand was would tight as a watch spring, that it had become almost a separate and sentient entity apart from its owner, sensing the slightest gesture on the part of the other man, any excuse to rain hot lead down upon him.
Only another gunfighter would have noticed this.
Johnny Strange noticed.
Strange was neither as polished nor as hair-trigger ready as the vampire gunslinger who faced him in the middle of the latenight street. He was weary, after all, his boots and clothes gray with trail dust, his somber, eye-patched visage lined and grizzled by the trail.
He needed a hot bath and a shave, if he lived long enough.
"You shouldn't have meddled here in Eldritch Creek," said the Kid. He cast no shadow on the dusty street, nor would he have cast a reflection in the mirror, had one been handy.
Strange – his one eye sharp and blue, the other hidden behind a patch for half his life, when a false word and a witch's curse had started him down the slow path to Hell – said not a word.
"This is my town now, hoss," said the Transylvania Kid. He gestured with his head toward the silent, mesmerized townfolk silently lining the street, faces slack.
"You shouldn't have listened to the Widow Butler," the Kid went on. "All these people are mine now, caught in my web. Except for you and that damned woman." His voice rose. "Bring her out!"
Though his expression did not shift, the one-eyed drifter stiffened to see movement behind the line of people, to hear the sound of a scuffle.
They brought her forward, the former mayor and sheriff, now blank-eyed slaves. Between them, hands bound behind her, was a struggling woman. It was the Widow Butler. Madeline.

She had found Johnny Strange in the foothills west of town while riding her mare, found him half-conscious, out of his mind with fever from wounds he'd received from the claws of the dwellers beneath the Mesa of Lost Women, long forgotten by time in their savagery, ten days' ride to the south, near the Mexican border.
She had taken him first into her home to stitch and clos his wounds, to bath and bandage him, to salve his bruises.
Later she had taken him into her bed. He had gone willingly. It was there she had told him the strange fate of Eldritch Creek, there she had convinced him to save the townspeople there.
Now she stood before him in the torchlight, bound between these two mindless slaves, her face streaked with dirt, her mass of auburn hair tangled, her clothing disheveled.
The vampire's eyebrows lifted as he stared with his dead orbs at Johnny Strange.
"I see you have feelings for the lovely widow," he said. He smiled broadly, baring his fangs, his mirth horrible to see.
His pale left hand strayed slowly up the woman's body, pausing at her collar, before suddenly ripping the front of her dress open, baring her undergarments and the smooth white mounds of her breasts. The Kid traced a cold forefinger from her exposed bosom slowly up her neck, where he stopped and stroked the column of her fair throat.
His eyes never left his opponent.
"The moment I have put a bullet through your heart," the Kid said to Strange, "I will feast on her blood like a starving man at a banquet! I will lap her blood while yours soaks into the dust!"
Madeline, gagged with a dirty bandana, eyes wide with horror, tried to shrink away from the cold touch of the monster, her senses reeling with fear and the onslaught of the undead psyche still bent upon breaking her mind.
"You will make a lovely bride," the Kid said to her in a low voice, running his hand up to her chin. "Those lips will soon drink from the same fountain as mine, sweet one."
Johnny Strange spoke at last, his single eye burning cobalt blue, his face a weathered mask of iron.
"You talk too much, bloodsucker," he said. "Slap leather or die."
"You can't kill me!" cried the Transylvania Kid, drawing his gun.
The only conscious witness to what happened next was the Widow Butler, held upright by the two zombified citizens on either side of her.
What she remembered afterward was only a flicker of motion in the air around the gunfighters, an eyeblink of time, and suddenly the street was full of the roar and gunpowder stink of gunfire, and then it was over, just that quick.
The Transylvania Kid stood in a faint cloud of gunsmoke, looking down at the three bullet holes neatly arranged in the center of his chest. Then he looked up at Johnny Strange, a look of shock on his cold face.
"You shot me – " he said. "I – I can't –" and he dropped to his knees, his Colt revolver falling from lifeless fingers.
"I shot you with blessed bullets, bloodsucker," Strange said. He took a blazing torch from the hands of the stupefied saloonkeeper and stepped closer to the vampire, who attempted to rise but toppled backward.
He looked up at his one-eyed killer. "You're cursed, just like I am," he said weakly. "You carry the mark. Not of the undead, not of – ."
"See you in Hell, then, I guess," said Strange, and jammed the pointed torch handle deep into the vampire's chest, straight through his heart.
The undead gunslinger lay there, silent at last, the smoking torch still flickering where it stood up out of his chest.
Strange adjusted his hat and helped the Widow Butler to her feet. He removed her gag and untied her hands.
"You've saved us," she said breathlessly. She clung to him, smiling up into his battered face. "You've saved us all."
All around them, the mesmerized townsfolk of Eldritch Creek had began to stir and mutter, blinking with surprise at finding themselves out in the middle of the night fully dressed, audience to a gunfight they couldn't remember, looking around themselves in surprise as they awoke one by one.
"How can we every repay you?" Madeline asked with a smile on her lips.
Johnny looked down into her big brown eyes. "I'm sure you'll think of a way," he said. His eyes smiled at her.

It was the next night, lying in bed after a hot bath and shave and a meal cooked by Madeline on the cast iron stove in the kitchen, and making love to her fiercely on her feather bed beneath her handmade quilt, that a question occurred to him.