The Cunning Man || ONC 2021

9: Revenant

An accusation of witchcraft can send one down a wonderful, dangerous path. My father's accusation had sent me running west. Nora's accusation had sent my carefully crafted life of normalcy spinning out of control. But the path that the two had set me on still had room for choice -- I could accept my magic and all the truth that came with it, or I could continue to lie to myself and to others.

Nora was stuck in the cabin with her wounded leg, per my order's, so I didn't have to explain the box I pulled out of the earth from between two thick oak roots. I sat back on my haunches once it was free and brushed loose dirt off the weathered top. The paints Theo had chosen were still vibrant, even after so much time has passed, and the circular pattern of eight bi-colored oak leaves brought tears to my eyes.

To date, I had lost everyone I had ever loved -- my mother and Theo to murder, Samantha and our daughter to childbirth. In order to cope with the loss of my mother, I had begged Theo to make me a charm that would suppress my magic. I coped with Theo's death all these years by suppressing the memory of him. I'd thought I'd worked through the loss of my first wife and child, but the thought that history could very well repeat itself with Nora scared me so much that I purposefully ignored it.

My knees sank into the soft, wet dirt at the base of that old oak as I very seriously contemplated taking Theo's box back to the cabin, tossing it onto the hearth, and lighting it on fire. I thought about divorcing Nora once we got back to Stalton Springs, and sending her back East on the first stagecoach that rolled through. I had made up my mind to do both, when a shadow fell over my shoulder.

"Whatcha' got there, Sheriff?" Harlan asked me in that chest-deep baritone of his.

I looked over my shoulder to find my wife -- still dressed in nothing more than my shirt -- slung unconscious over one of Harlan's massive shoulders, and the barrel of his revolver pointed at the space between my eyes.

"You don't want to do this, Harlan," I pleaded.

He thumbed the pistol's hammer and flashed me a smile that didn't feel human. "Yeah, I do."

There was no way I could pull my own revolver out of its holster before Harlan's bullet blew through my brains. I flung a hand out instinctively instead, and I wasn't prepared for the way his gun bucked in his grip the second my gaze fell back down onto it.

I was too scared to pause for more than a breath or two. The muscles in Harlan's hand flexed as he gathered his wits and moved the revolver back toward his intended target. I never took my eyes off the weapon as I slashed the open hand in front of me down toward the ground at my side.

The pistol didn't quite follow suite, since I was acting on pure magical instinct, and my power was unrefined at best and rudimentary at worst. But I compelled it to jerk forward just hard enough that Harlan lost his grip on it and it fell into the sun-bleached prairie grass at his feet.

My next move was the product of all the hard years I'd spent living as a cowboy and a lawman. I dove straight for the fallen pistol, then rolled over onto my back the instant my fingers wrapped around its wooden grip. Harlan hadn't been able to move much more than a single footstep, before I turned the tables on him and pointed his own revolver at his sizable center mass.

"Put down my wife," I ordered.

He curled his upper lip at me in a sneer, but did as I said. By which I mean, he pulled Nora off of his shoulder like a damn ragdoll and fucking tossed her limp body onto the ground without any visible concern about how or where she landed. I could only pray as I pulled the trigger, that he hadn't just broken her neck.

Harlan had lived a life just as hard as I had, and for about five years longer. He'd already lifted his foot off the ground before Nora's dead weight crumpled the grass beneath her. I had barely begun to squeeze the trigger then, before the tip of his unforgiving boot slammed into my right hand. The crunch of the comparatively fragile bones in the back of my hand was audible and instant.

He darted to the side in an attempt to grab the spinning pistol before it hit the ground for a second time. I lashed out with a foot even as I swallowed back a shout of pain and blinked dark spots of the same out of my vision. By the grace of Powers far greater than I, my foot hit Harlan in the knee and destabilized his momentum. There was a howl of anger and then a proverbial mountain of muscle fell on top of me.

I knew as soon as he reached for my throat, that our struggle was to the death. Horror and adrenaline gave me the strength to put up one hell of a fight. Chunks of dirt flew into the air as we grappled, rolled, kicked, and hit for dominance. The only shirt I'd taken with me to the cabin was on Nora, so I didn't have even that slight protection against the rocks and roots that Harlan scraped me over.

Neither of us paid attention to our technique -- this was a primal brawl for survival. So it was a bit of a shock when the dynamic changed with the forcible removal of my warding charm. The only warning I had was the sharp bite of leather around the back of my neck when Harlan swallowed the charm in his fist and hauled his arm back. The thong broke and I reached out in alarm as the painted disk spiraled in a high arch through the air and then disappeared in the tall grass well out of range. Harlan snapped my attention back to the fight with a fist against the side of my nose. I cried out and squinted through the pain up at him, determined to return the favor.

What I saw above me was not Harlan. Oh, it wore my best friend's skin as if it were, but without my charm, I could now see the revenant for what it was.

It was gaunt and pale, its gray skin stretched tight like old parchment over the sharp angles of a skeletal face. Its sunken eyes were pure black from corner to corner, just as Nora had described. Its mouth was inhumanly wide, its flat lips pulled back to reveal row upon row of half-rotted and bloodstained teeth. The sight of such a predatory gash from one ear to the other on an otherwise human face was certain fuel for future nightmares.

"Good to see you again, boy," the revenant spoke in its true voice, the sound of it like a saw against bone.

With one eye, I saw Harlan, whole and human. With the other, I saw the revenant's writhing form of smoke and shadow. With both, I saw double, the revenant superimposed over Harlan. So I was able to see when the two moved separately. Harlan wrapped his meaty fingers around my neck right as the revenant reared up, it's back arching up out of his own, and slammed it's claw-tipped and incorporeal fingers down through Harlan toward my chest.

My deputy screamed in anguish, and I screamed in incandescent rage. The self-imposed internal barrier on my magic broke wide open and power flooded through my body in much the same way as adrenaline, the sensation of it simultaneously icy and electric.

I slammed both of my palms flat against Harlan's chest and roared. "Out! Now!"

The revenant's inky darkness flew out of my deputy's body as if it had been physically shoved. It managed to gather itself together a few feet away, and it's maw dripped with malice as it hissed at me. The hand at my throat loosened the instant the revenant departed Harlan's body, but I was frozen in place when I realized that Harlan's corpse didn't fall forward and pin me to the ground. In fact, it flung itself away from me and then continued to scrabble backward across the ground.

I popped up into a sitting position and gawked at Harlan's wide eyes and heaving chest. Then his eyes snapped to the left, toward the revenant. He didn't look at me -- not until the revenant had entered him again -- but a single utterance of my name forced me to my feet and my hand to my holster.

"Cade --" Harlan pleaded.

His jaw moved as if to say more, but the revenant had shoved itself into his open mouth. I watched in horror as his throat began to bulge from the monster working itself down into him.

The revenant was vulnerable, halfway inside of Harlan and halfway out. I remembered the words of the man who shared my same magic, as clearly as when he had first instructed me.

"The truly dead cannot be animated. Magic creates many wonders and miracles, but the laws of nature and the limitations of mortality still bind it. A revenant can create a corpse by devouring the soul within, but it cannot enter a body that no longer bears its Fire in the Head."

My chin trembled as tears streamed down my face. But my left hand stayed steady as I drew one of my two revolvers, thumbed back the hammer, and shot him in the chest. Then I waited, a cold fury hardening my heart, for life to fade from my best friend's eyes.