***Maria thank you so much for reviewing the previous chapter. I am very grateful. And thank you to everyone for being so patient. I know this one took a long time. I've had some computer problems. Knock on wood, I think they're fixed. Thank you again. ~ S5M ***
The thick cloak of darkness seeped and spread throughout the woods. There was not a shimmer of light from moon, star, or torch. Sound ran rampant, coloring the pitch canvas of the area with life. Crickets roared in a chorus of sawing chirps, over the solitary hoot of a distanced horned owl. Trickling and lapping at the muddy bank and boulders the creek chimed as it lightly rushed down towards the town. Singular and unmoving was the sprawled desolate body of Randall McCoy.
His knees were embedded in the soggy muck and under the weight of his still body; Randall's chest and head had sunk. Mixing with the tawny twig strewn earth was the seepage of crimson life force, which had since stopped its flow from the jagged wound in the back of his head. Where once his crown was decked with fawn toe-headed tufts, the ruby liquid had stained and dyed it with sticky brownish rust. The air around him was filled with the metallic coppery stench of blood, and of flesh never meant to feel the cool breath of air.
Somewhere in the outer rim of the line of trees that circled clumsily around the small clearing, something moved. It ebbed and thrashed slowly about through the thorny bramble following the scent of raw flesh. There was a faint clink and chink as the large beast clomped in the mud, surveying closer and closer…Until its moist wide nostrils made fortuitous contact with the side of Randall's head. Flabby black lips vibrated over blown breath as Cin' smacked his muzzle hard against Randall's shoulder. The impact jolted his body just enough to sink his face down deeper into the airless sludge. Moments passed as Cin' tapped his charcoal hooves with impatience. His companion was down and there wasn't much the animal could do for him. The mud slid encasing the sides of Randall's face, slick with moisture, placid and smooth…and then. Pushing through the thick clay and breaking the surface along the side of his face was a small and growing round murky bubble. It widened and rose until it burst into the air. Then another much smaller than its predecessor, bringing with it clusters of tinier fellows, each bursting as it made contact with the surface.
Slowly the pale spindling fingers of his hands wriggled and came to life. They pressed down into the slop exerting every ounce of strength his muscle could muster, until…Randall lifted his head from the muddy ground inhaling air like a swimmer breaking the surface of the water. His chest heaved sucking in breath after breath filling his lungs near to burning with the quantity of oxygen. Now falling over on his back, Randall opened his mouth, extricating a blood-curdling roar up, and out to the pitch night sky!
His survival cry stayed, Randall once again dug his hands into the ground forcing himself up. "No…time…to heal." His voice was gravel and broken glass. Cin' moved his body close as Randall used him as leverage to get to his unsteady feet. One hand shakily reached up and gingerly touched the star split wound. Not being able to see his own hand in front of his face, Randall ran his thumb across his fingertips. Determining that the blood was dried and finding only crust and mud, he understood his wound to have ceased bleeding. Randall desperately wanted to shake the fog from his mind, but thinking the better of it, he painfully yanked himself up onto Cin's back.
"Hope you know your way outta here, Cin'," Randall grasp his reins pulling the horse back. Cin' knew. Within minutes, the midnight steed had broken through the line of bramble and oak, and was darting like a bullet down the open roads. Randall leaned high and close to Cin's dashing and bobbing head, feeling the wind beating against his throbbing mud spattered head. If he didn't know any better, he'd think his brains were spilling out of the back of his skull. But there was no time to stop and be sure of his paranoia. Those girls needed him. Ms. Teresa needed him. Randall McCoy was not going to let them down. Cin's hooves pounded the gravel worn paths, jumping any debris laid down in their way. There were times when Randall wasn't entirely positive they weren't flying.
Finally, breaking out of the untamed wilderness, they found themselves dashing down the open fields of the vast expanse of the meadow. It was still a marked dotted speck of light where the train station would be. Never allowing Cin' to slow, and Cin' seeming to understand the importance of this journey plowed onward. Though grassy vale and hill, watching that tiny pinprick of light grow into a glowing ball, they flashed. Finally, it showed the dim outline of the structure of the depot and the yet to depart train. Randall's teeth ground down hard as he strove to ignore the bursting explosion of agony in his head. He could feel the sweat trickling down his temples and breaking across his lined brow.
"Uh oh! Here we go!" Randall exclaimed bringing Cin' all the way up the depots steps onto the platform.
Turning he saw the beleaguered and astonished goggle eyed expression of the telegraph clerk. The man had frozen dumbfounded spilling his clipboard at his feet. Another much older man stood at his flank, just as awed.
"Mr. Bing," Randall sickly mimicked tipping an imaginary hat to Horace from on top of Cin's back. From this height on the platform, Randall had to remain ducked down by Cin's neck to avoid striking his injured crown on one of the open rafter beams. "Where might I find…" he gulped near to passing out. "The Slicker family…this late at night?"
"Wah why they're up at the barbershop!" Horace struggled to find his voice through the shock. "I–I–I was just tellin' Mr. Marrow here, that they're havin' some kinda a meetin' at the shop!"
Randall almost drowsily, eyed the elderly white haired man standing aloft. Unable to maintain his expressions, he pursed his lips to the side drawing his head back in thought. In his delirium, Randall had missed something in Horace's reply. "Where's the meeting?"
Bewildered, Horace pointed his long gangly finger towards the street. Randall, almost appearing drunk, followed this appendages direction. Only instead of finding the open street skirted by the usual sundry of buildings, he saw the NO. 2 train blocking his view. With a sealed smile tucked up into his cheek, the dim blue eye above it winked at Horace. "That's a train…"
"Mr. McCoy! You look like you'll be needin' Dr. Mike!" Horace stared up at Randall who had begun to sway.
Randall eyed Mr. Marrow suspiciously. He peered surreptitiously to either side before calling Horace closer with his beckoning finger. Nudging himself awkwardly closer he waited for the hurt man's confidence. "Did…You ….see that red haired beh—. " Catching himself he drew his head up, tucking his chin into his neck. "Miss. Marrow come back into town…on horse…or otherwise?"
Horace blushed, knowing the title Randall had wanted to use in place of Miss. Marrow. "No," was his answer.
"Sir!" the man beside Horace piped up. "If you're looking for my niece it wouldn't surprise me if she was the cause of that wound on your head!"
At hearing this Randall's face nearly folded in the middle. His lower lip arched up pushing under his nose as he fought to remain conscious. He shouldn't have stopped. He knew that now. Yet as he turned to charge forward once more, Cin' spooked regarding the wall of the train, blocking their path. The sudden shake up jostled Randall far too forcefully, rattling his head. Knowing he had to fight it, he slipped down from Cin' determined to battle forward on foot if he had to. As his heeled boots struck the planks of the platform, each step was like a boulder striking at his head all over again. Far off he could hear shouts of alarm and vaguely wondered what all the commotion was about. Suddenly his hands felt the damp misted solidness of the wooden floor. Some part of him was aware that he was crawling down the steps of the depot and that hands and arms were wrapping themselves around his waist. No! He had to help them! Had to save them!
"Help…" he muttered under the men's shouts. "Help them!"
But his pleas went unheard under the cries for, "Dr. Mike! Over here! Dr. Mike!"
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She remembered how it felt to hold that small child in her arms. Alexandra's child? No…her own. The babe did take to her quite well, after all. Amie's crimson hair twisted and curled around her chubby head, curling around her little white ears, and gathering at the nape of her neck. Celina was lost in the steely blue hue of the dainty girl's eyes, which were also Harris' eyes. Heart connecting instantly, Celina died a little every time she had to relinquish the baby into Harris' arms and leave. How could she have been such a fool? Why didn't she think to ask where Alexandra was? Or more importantly. Where Alexandra thought the child had been taken. It was all fated to collide that afternoon.
That horrible afternoon, after so much love and happiness had been spent. Their laughter vibrated and shocked the walls of the second floor. Their fun played out to the expense of the sound of someone entering the dental office below. Never hearing the clack of heeled boots on the wooden stairway, and never alarmed by the sound of the doors knob being turned, until it was too late—the world had stopped. Secrets were catapulting in every direction under the outraged screams of Harris' wife Alexandra.
"Again Harris! You'd do this to me again!" she flung at him, striking her petite hands at his chest. "With our child! Our child! You monster!"
Celina had bolted from her perch by the window with Amie in her arms, unsure of which avenue to take. About to sidestep the unbridled fury of the arguing couple, the fair beauty of Alexandra's eye focused squarely on her. "Take your hands off my daughter!"
"Alexandra please calm yourself," Harris pleaded with practiced complacency.
An odd thing happened then. Odder than the situation boiling over onto the fire. As Alexandra reached forward, as any mother would to snatch her child back from unworthy hands, Celina moved away. She swung the bundle that was Amie away from her mothers reaching embrace and glared at the woman. Deep down within the confines of Celina's mind she knew the baby was hers. That the child rightfully belonged in Alexandra's care. But a selfish and sadistic haze had wafted over her entire being. A sprout sprung up the seed of these vises, crawling and climbing like a vine around her brain. Harris loved her, not his wife. He could divorce Alexandra and take custody of Amie. She could have them both. However, seeing this intent Alexandra had struck out attempting to pry Amie from Celina's embrace.
The child screamed in the commotion, wriggling and nearly falling from the now combined grasps of either woman. They stumbled about with Celina using the open doorway as leverage, pulled the tug of despair out onto the landing. Harris who up to this moment had been watching in utter awe and confusion lanced forward placing himself between the two struggling women. Pulling Amie free, he'd just placed her into the stable arms of his wife, when a shaken look crossed his already wild face. In the struggle for position, Harris had found himself the party with his back to the stairs, his heels teetering over the dull round edge of the top step.
All Celina could remember was the look on his face. The final look. The slope of his auburn brows had risen in shock, almost like two draw bridges rising. His narrow almond shaped eyes stretched showing the gray clouding that overtook the usual blue hue of his eyes. The softly sculpted full shape of his lips parted before his chin rose up followed by his stretched throat and chest. The last thing she saw were his long white elegant fingers reaching out for help as he toppled backwards down the stairs to his instant death…It was an accident after all. No one pushed him. No one pulled him. And yet no one had reached out to save him. To avoid scandal, Celina had faded out and away, leaving Alexandra and Amie to grieve.
But fading did nothing to detour what was broken in her heart, or inside her mind. Over and over Celina watched as Harris fell step for step. The sound of his neck crunching against itself was the sound of the sanity within her snapping. And everyone knew it. Everyone said it behind their hands in whispers and snide glares. There goes Celina Marrow. She accidentally killed that father and husband in a jealous rage. Of course, it hadn't helped matters that she allowed herself to be seen, standing across the street from the Hemlock home. Watching and waiting for just a glimpse of Amie. A glimpse of what had been. A glimpse of what she wanted. Had she truly attempted it? Or had it all been a dream? A dream that had forced her to seek refuge elsewhere. And she had found it, in the form of an advertisement in the Denver paper seeking a seamstress.
Celina could start over fresh. That is until she saw him. Saw Jake standing on the train stations platform. Saw the back of his head and had been unable to tear her eyes off the near exact shape, form, and gesture of J.B. Harris Hemlock. And then she'd seen his face…that day at the mercantile. Seen the eyes that were so much like the sky, blue and cool, then storming and gray. Though his face was slightly more square and his shape much fuller, Jake was Harris in the flesh. Plus nestled in his arms, close to his chest like a treasure, was the very embodiment of Amie Hemlock within Izzy Slicker. Here was her second chance. And the one obstacle standing in her way was standing wide-eyed and shaken before her now.
Teresa's hands clutched the vine-clad rail behind her, unable to take her eyes off of the small crescent moon shaped blade in Celina's hands. Judging by the worn and ragged steel implement, she had obviously pilfered it from the Grain and Feed's open shed. As Celina brandished the sickle, she took a step closer and closer to Teresa, until the curved arch of the blade tucked up against the maroon fabric covering her ribcage. Her stomach sucked in, Teresa felt she was unable to breathe for fear she may feel the hooked point of the sickle, piercing through to her chilled skin.
The wind blew roughly against them then, casting Teresa's dusky tendrils over her shoulders to fly unfettered along her face. There was a musky sweet floral scent that swam from her hair up into Celina's nose. The scent of roses marched up into her nostrils, offending her. Twitching like the ticking second hand of a clock, her thin curl of a mouth parted. Her nose edged and scrunched as if attempting to flee Celina's face. It was the scent that he loved so much in this woman that Celina just couldn't stand. Yet, onward she thrust her exquisite face up so close to Teresa's that the fringed layers of her hair tickled at Celina's alabaster cheeks.
"I still don't see it," Celina huffed. Her reptilian hued eyes surveyed every inch of Teresa's face, scrutinizing her like a hyena sniffing out its prey. She took in that oval face and saw nothing. Discerning the gentle arch of her dark finely shaped brows over the amber brown color of her eyes, which peeked out beneath a thick-feathered frill of lashes, she saw nothing. Nothing in the light fawn hue of her skin. Nothing in the plump mauve palette of her lips. Nothing in the satin shine of midnight in her hair. "You are nothing…and yet he still wants you. As if he can't see that you and he aren't the same kind. He's my kind. Always was my kind."
"What are you talking about?" Teresa dared swallowing her dread. "What have you done with Mr. McCoy?"
"Much less…so much less than I'm about to do to you." Slowly she ran the sickle convex curl up along the curve of Teresa's breast, past her rising and falling chest, and twisted the blade. The needle end of the hook scratched along the bare skin of her throat coming to rest in the recess just under her chin. This action forced Teresa to look down her cheek at her tormentor.
"Truly," she fought back a sob. "Is he….dead?"
"Yes," her voice took on a mimicking tone echoing Teresa's accent. "Truly he is dead."
"You are insane!" Teresa winced as the point nudged painfully upward.
"I just want what life owes me," she snickered narrowing her round chestnut lashes over the glowing emerald fire in her eyes. "I just have to show Jake what you are. I just have to show him that you don't fit in the picture. You throw off the portrait. You….and that muddy little runt of yours."
This alarmed Teresa. She no lingered cared what happened to her as long as this woman never laid a finger on her children. "You will not touch my daughters!" She reached up wrapping her fingers around Celina's hand and the sickle blade. Yanking down with all her might, she felt the point scratch the soft flesh underneath her chin as she brought the weapon down to waist level. However fueled by rage, Celina turned her body like a wrecking hammer smashing into the side of Teresa's arms, loosening her hold. With swift and ascending speed, Celina brought her elbow down into an unsuspecting Teresa's stomach. All the air swooshed from her lungs bringing her down, crumpling to her knees.
Celina calmly brought her face down next to the woman she deemed her inferior. Taking full possession of the sickle she laughed. Her hands clawed into Teresa's hair, clutching it tightly in order to project her dominance over her adversary. "I'm going to take your husband…then I'm going to take your baby. If you don't do as I say," she jerked at the leash of her hair. "I'm gonna hurt that little mutt. If you just help me show him his rightful place is with me, you can keep her. If not, you're out two daughters instead of one."
Was there a word passed insane, Teresa wondered with every fiber of her being dowsed in fear. How could this monstrous woman think that any part of her mad fantasy would become a reality? But Lucy and Izzy. She couldn't let any harm come to them. In that instant, peering into the fiery viridian eyes of unadulterated insanity, Teresa knew she would die trying to protect them. Teresa would comply as long as she had to, to get her children into the safety of their father's arms. Heaving for air, Teresa attempted to nod her agreement.
"Right, then," Celina pulled on her hair again, ushering her to her feet. "Walk through that door like it's the most natural thing in the world."
Her hand felt heavy. Her fingers swollen with fear wrapped around the open edge of the door and pulled it back. It was almost eerie the way it didn't make a sound. Not a creak, not a moan, nothing to alert anyone downstairs. Slowly they entered the room. Teresa's eyes falling on her two sleeping darlings, completely oblivious to the venomous viper sliding in. It was then that Teresa noticed the lack of noise emanating from the barbershop below. The silence was deafening, causing an auditory ringing in her left ear. Closing her eyes, she could very vaguely feel the heavy thudding of Jake's boots climbing the stairs. Her lips trembled, her body quaked as Teresa forced herself to watched the bulbous brass knob turning. Turning and releasing the latch, opening the door. Opening the door….Opening the door…Teresa held her breath.