For a moment Ryan had an odd vision. He knelt naked in a shell hole between two masked men who passed a slim-bladed flensing knife back and forth in front of him, as though they waited for him to seize the bone handle and thrust it deep into his own chest.
“No,” Ryan said. “I won’t do it.”
“I will,” the hooded man stated, reaching to one side and throwing a long wooden lever.
Even as the trap jerked open and he started to fall, Ryan heard himself say, “I want to be a living man.”
There was a dreadful jarring sensation, as if his skull had been severed, the spinal cord snapping in two. Ryan heard a great roar from the crowd, but it quickly faded into silence, a silence so intense that he could hear the cold wind that blew between the worlds.
He knew that he still lived, that the gallows drop hadn’t been long enough to break his neck and give him a relatively merciful passing.
His body revolved very slowly, but he couldn’t breathe, his throat constricted, choking and strangling.
Ryan opened his eye.
Sheriff Nolan, the priest and the hooded executioner had all gone. The town, the saloon, the gaudy sluts and the watching throngall gone.
The gallows had become transmogrified into a crooked hanging tree, a lightning-blasted sycamore with a jagged branch sticking out, almost at a right angle. Ryan glanced down, seeing that the toes of his dusty combat boots were only a couple of inches from the stunted grass.
But it might as well have been a couple of miles.
Slowly and agonizingly, he was dying, his body twisting in the summery breeze. He could smell juniper and sagebrush, and the scent of an opened grave.
The tall black-clad figure of the hangman stood just in front of him, hands clasped together, head to one side, as he considered Ryan’s slow passing.
“Help,” the one-eyed man whispered, the word barely breathed, almost inaudible, even to himself.
“Did you ask for help, Ryan?” he heard the feathery voice of the executioner ask.
“Please”
“It pleases me not to please you but to please myself. And the memories of my family.”
Either the sun was setting, or death was closing down all of the lines.
Darkness was spreading across the high plains country where Ryan dangled from the hemp noose. Shadows were lengthening across the sun-baked turf. He could see his own elongated shape, still slowly twisting.
“Show you mercy,” the gloating hangman said. “I’ll speed your passing. Feel the life flee your corpse. Hang on to you, Ryan, my arms around your neck in a lover’s embrace.” The voice was as dry and dusty as an ancient papyrus.
Now he was doing what he’d said, the pressure on Ryan’s neck almost intolerable, as though a steel hand of fire was reaching up the inside of his spine and into his brain, squeezing out his immortal soul.
The hood was discarded, leaving a mane of snowy hair tumbling about the hangman’s face, writhing against his skin like coffin worms. Mad ruby eyes glared at him.
RYAN OPENED his eye.
And screamed.
Chapter Three
He was on his back on the floor of a gateway chamber as the armaglass walls changed from dark brown to the lightest and palest of pinks.
But Ryan could hardly see any of that, couldn’t see any of his companions.
His range of vision was blocked by a leering skull, scant inches from his. The face was long and angular, the sharp cheekbones honed like an Egyptian mummy’s, the skin dried and leathery. A mane of snowy hair tumbled across the high forehead, brushing against Ryan’s cheeks, feeling like the caress of a hundred tiny desiccated worms. And the eyes, wide and blankly staring, brimmed with fresh crimson blood that leaked from the tear ducts and spilled down onto Ryan’s face.
Ryan tried to scream again, but the creature had gripped him by the throat, iron fingers crushing his neck, making breathing impossible.
He knew who it was.
What it was.
“Melmoth.”
Ryan, dying, heard the name, knew that it was the right one. But he hadn’t spoken it and didn’t know who had.