Billy Brown watched the drunken man’s finger draw back around the trigger and the muzzle’s popping flash sent a ball through his right side. He wobbled and fell as the blood rushed. It turned the ground to crimson mud.

The drunk turned to his mare and rode like a man possessed. Billy watched with eyes agape and skittered and groaned in the dim lamplight. His fingers brushed at the hole in his chest. The mare rumbled away in the yellow gaslight and the passerby watched it disappear.

A sound seemed to slip from a hidden place at the back of his mind. It curled and groaned and twisted until it registered as a voice. It sharpened and the words slipped out in drawling velvet. Rise, my child. Your killer flees, and here you lie. There is no dignity to bodies in the street. The march of the minute hand is steady and you must mind it. Brush off your pain and follow.

The voice had a comfort to it, though it taunted in dangling on the cusp of recognition. Perhaps it was the whisper of some long-lost friend now come again. Though none of Billy’s friends dealt in vengeance. Little but the blood of vermin had he ever split. He got to his feet and swayed in the night air. His fingers twitched and would not settle.

Step forward, said the voice. You do not understand. You are a ranch hand and the good old boy mother always prayed for. You have never stepped beyond softness. Follow, if only to finally prove your own strength. You must.

Billy mounted his mare and made haste. He chased the shooter by the kerosene glow. Dio was a good mare. Billy had no concern for the breadth of her stride, nor the fire in her step. His matted blood looked a dark yellow in the shine. It was of little import now. The shadow before him flickered in the lamplight. Dio carried from the town to the open plains. The night beckoned as the skies began to sodden the dirt and chill the riders. Lightning cut the darkness. The shadow flew ahead off the road among the saguaro and the prickly pear. Hooves churned through the red dirt and tossed it to the sky.

It would mean things to catch the shadow. To raise a .45 between the eyes of a man who could hardly recall his own name. To hear the trigger pop to the sound of slurred and stupid pleas. To watch the blood run from the drunken body. 

You are so quaint in your forgiveness. Who should disparage you for striking down a beast such as this? There shall be no witnesses save the dead. Remember his filed teeth and his animal eyes. He shot for nothing. The Lord Himself said, do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with blood.

Billy recalled a glimmer of yellowed teeth. He had not seen clearly, yet perhaps there had been an angled shine around the edges. Surely light had reflected through those gaunt eyes, hollow as an animal’s.  He was not a man, so maybe it would not be so hard to fire. Then you will make him suffer.

Billy watched the pulsing shape in the dying light ahead. He squinted as dirt was cast into the air and fell upon his face. It was no longer possible to distinguish rider from steed, man from beast. Whatever the thing before him was, it now caused his side to burn and bleed, and that was enough to burn and bleed it the same. None would stop him on the empty plains.

The lights of the town had faded from the landscape and were lost in the distance. All that pierced the night’s blanket was the slim crescent moon, and Billy was left to follow only on the thunder of horse-step. A note like a laugh began to reach him in the wind. A sort of deep-throated warble that ran back from the beast and pounded in his ear. His spurs dug deeper into Dio’s side.

The voice had gained a new pitch to its whisper. Here is what to do when you catch it. And such came a list of darker things that had never before graced Billy’s imagination. He listened. The wound burned harder but it was only spurring now. He would bleed the beast as he bled now and he would laugh. Billy howled in the night to the monster who howled back.

Dio was nearing the demon ahead. The feeling was palpable in the rumble of the earth and the cries and the swell in Billy’s chest. The roar before him felt as though it were only just out of reach. Billy rode to a death without good company but it did not matter as he palmed his Colt. He raised his piece to the shapeless cacophony and fired twice.

Two bursts and a shriek echoed over the mud. Something fell to the ground and tumbled blindly away. The loose mare tore off and Dio came circling to a stop in the dead night air. Billy shook as he dismounted and crept with his pistol and blade outstretched toward the body on the ground. It lay with its face to the dirt and he felt the need so strongly to bring his blade in great carving arcs along its back.

It is yet alive and you know what you must do. The voice had readied him.

Billy trembled as he reached to turn the shallow-breathing face of the thing on the ground. He readied for the animal eyes and fanged teeth and pressed the muzzle of his Colt to its bloodied head. With a heave, he turned the shot-struck body over. He stared at the demon and a man stared back. Billy fell to the mud and his blade fell away. He clamored away in the grit and then came to his feet some distance from the dying man. All that could be heard were the sounds of rasping breath from many members. The stars glittered and smiled like they knew something he didn’t.

He cursed the voice. He fell to his knees and pleaded for an answer. The silence brought none.

Billy grinned like a man alone and without reason left to care. Answers had come, yet relief had not. The speaker did not sit on his shoulder. He stood with only a corpse and a mare in the pale moonlight. He laughed the condemned laugh of a man with clarity. And little but the sad realization of his darker mind.