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Haunted
Author's note: Don't read this fanfic unless you've finished Red Dead Redemption: it takes place after the events of the game, so here be spoilers!
I love visiting Tumbleweed, especially in the rain, and I always knew I wanted to write a fic about it. It's just so wonderfully creepy. At first I disliked adult Jack, but the more I thought about it, the more interesting he became - and the more intrigued I was about how his life might unfold. I wanted to write something about him, and Tumbleweed seemed the perfect place for him to be reminded about his father as well as his past. This is just a short something that came to me one evening. Hope you enjoy!
The rain beat down like liquid sin, heavy and vengeful, as a lone rider sidled into Tumbleweed. His black horse looked like a furtive dream. It was slick with rain and its mane was matted to its thick neck. Both rider and steed were wilting, drenched to the bone, and yet they did not hurry their slinking pace through the dead town. It was as though the weight of some intangible gloom was hanging over this rider along with the very tangible storm.
Jack Marston had always believed Tumbleweed haunted. He had first come to believe this from the tales he was told as a young boy, about strange ghostly apparitions and unexplained noises which his own father had experienced. His favourite story was about the dark cloud of bats which would emerge from Tumbleweed mansion without fail every evening at six o'clock. His mother would tut disapprovingly if she overheard, but Jack's eyes would widen in fearful thrill as he lapped up everything he was told. He loved those stories. He had only a few childhood memories of his father: those were the times he remembered most.
Young Jack had been so enthralled that, once, in the dead of night, he had hoisted himself onto a horse with the intention of seeing the fabled Tumbleweed for himself. That had been in the days when he and his parents still rode in Dutch's gang. Luckily his father had found him before he managed his escape. He had been angry. The Tumbleweed stories mostly stopped after that.
That very same Jack Marston, though aged by several years, was now the black form skulking through the black wash of a lonely storm. What connection did he have to that boy from the past, whom he barely remembered? All those books he had read, all the stories he had been told, all the times he had dreamed of being a writer himself… no, it had been a stronger dream than that: more than that he had wanted to write his life like his father had done, write his story of adventure in something more permanent than ink. He had wanted to make a difference. Well, he had only been a child. It had not been long ago. He did not know now if that boy was unreal or only lost.
The lone rider was not so eager to visit Tumbleweed as he had once been. As he led his horse warily through the town he held an arm above his eyes and peered up through curtains of rain.
Your ma and pa are dead, Jack, he reminded himself.
Between lashings of water he could see the mansion standing like a solid shadow on the hill, keeping its eternal vigil over the town below. He had to blink the raindrops from his eyelashes. From somewhere came the indistinct yet clearly recognisable sound of a barking dog, above the rattle of rain and occasional groan of thunder. It was late and he needed shelter. Here would have to do.
The rider tried to make out the small church at the easternmost edge of the settlement, considering. He could have sworn he had seen candles in the windows as he rode in, although now the building looked as darkened as the black coat of his horse. Perhaps it had been a trick of the light in this terrible weather. He decided it would be best for him not to enter the church. Jack had no real liking for religious institutes, anyway.
Instead he headed for the saloon. Jack Marston might not pray to God, but he did at least place his trust in a fast gun and a good bottle of whiskey. It was funny - as his mount snorted and slunk towards the derelict building, it almost looked like the saloon doors were lit from behind, like a glow was emanating from within and spilling out into the darkness beyond, like the town had never been abandoned at all and the lights were still on as patrons happily drunk themselves to obscurity within those comforting confines. A flash of lightning tore through the sky, momentarily saturating the buildings in a veil of white. Jack blinked. No, he could be sure now. As the reverberations of thunder rolled above his head he saw: there was definitely light coming from the old saloon. It was a small, welcoming square of warmth against the dark backdrop of the thunderstorm, no less welcoming for its strangeness. There must be travellers like himself taking refuge inside.
For the first time in the town, Jack urged his steed on with something more than caution. Its hooves sunk into the sodden ground and sent spray flying into the air as they raced for the saloon, rider eager for shelter, the beast of burden eager to rest its tired legs. As they approached the building Jack saw a curtain flapping in a second-storey window, soaked by the rain and beating wetly against a wooden frame. He did not notice the curtain in the window beside it. It was still as a tombstone.
They reached the saloon doors. Jack dismounted and tied the horse roughly to a hitching post which still remained, the rope damp under his fingers, hard to knot with slippery hands. Rivers of rain ran down his back and across his arms. He stepped towards the doors and pushed them open with his palms. As he did so the light from inside dimmed, and suddenly with a crack of despair and confusion like the lightning he saw that the saloon was not lit after all: no, it was dim and shadowy, with only the aged stumps of candles sitting in the chandeliers and cobwebs clinging to the ceiling. Dark shapes fell across upturned pieces of furniture.
What he had thought full of life was actually decaying, actually a declaration of failure and inevitable decline, just like everything else in this forsaken place.
Jack tried to be angry. He kicked away a half-broken bottle and headed for the bar. There was no liquor left behind. He had not expected there to be. From outside his horse was whinnying. Looking back out through the doors now, at the rain falling askew out of the endless black and dampening a small area of flooring before the entrance, he wondered how the saloon could have looked so inviting from the outside. The thought came to him, suddenly, unwelcome: the Devil was supposed to appear in attractive form.
He no longer wanted to stay downstairs. With a hand on his gun Jack ascended the staircase, which creaked underfoot with every step. Behind the creaking he thought he could hear other noises, noises like footsteps close by or a quiet murmuring, but he could not distinguish them and as soon as the creaking stopped they would stop also. Even when he froze in mid-step, foot hovering above the stair, there was only the howl of wind from outside. Jack checked that his pistol was fully loaded.
On the landing there was more furniture, tattered and moth-eaten. Most had been piled into one corner. Through the windows a fine spray of rain had soaked everything within reach. There were a number of doors leading to separate rooms: Jack Marston peered round the first one, gun cocked, and saw there was nothing inside except a broken bed frame. When he turned back to the landing he thought he heard a voice from the next room. It seemed to be saying a word over and over, in an undertone, just low enough to blend into the deep blanket noise of the storm, but a word that could possibly be his name.
"Pa?" he called. He did not know why he thought to say that first, or why the word came so quickly and so unbidden to his lips.
He took one step towards the door, which was ajar. There was a black slice of darkness beyond. He had to go to it - it was calling to him. His hands were full of his gun. With his foot he eased the door open.
There was a shadow in the room. His eyes took a moment to adjust. The windows were boarded and there was no light, no light from anywhere, only the grey dimness of the rain from outside. The shadow wasn't his father. It couldn't be his father. But it was dark and tall, and Jack could see it piercing him with pinpoint eyes just as his father used to do. It stood motionless; it was a still presence; and all it did was stare, stare, stare, and nothing living nor dead had ever pierced Jack Marston like that shadow did. He was withering under its gaze. He held up his hands, found himself falling to his knees, trying to shield away the judgement of that cold stare which penetrated him so deeply, understood him so fully and so improbably in that broken building of a broken town, the tall shadow which made his father's voice ring in his ears, pounding and pounding, thrumming like the storm, but louder and more urgent, and it recalled every moment between them, every raw emotion he had felt, every promise he had made to him and to himself and each and every one he had broken.
Jack stumbled to his feet, crawling backwards out of the room. His soaking shoes had made a wet trail behind him and his hands slid against the floor. He threw himself down the stairs and out of the saloon, straight back into the rain, which flew in his face and chilled him to the core once again, the clothes which had just begun to dry instantly becoming sodden. A burst of lightning exploded over his head. Blinded by water, he yelled for his horse. The creature came and he had it untied in a second, and then he was riding away, out of Tumbleweed, before the thunder had even begun to crash overhead.
That night Jack rode for eight miles at full gallop. His horse nearly collapsed. He only slowed when he reached a small town, shimmering glaringly with light through the pouring rain. He paid an outrageous price for a bed and drank himself to sleep and did not care.
His fear of Tumbleweed had started with the ghost stories he was told as a child, but it had not been cemented until years later, until after his father's death, when Jack Marston learned that ghosts truly do exist.