To mark the (slightly over) one year of me submitting stories to this site, I thought I would do a Halloween special. The origins of this story began with a play on the High Plains Drifter / Pale Rider westerns, but as I began to write it up, I had a slightly better idea. So I stirred in a little sprinkle of Folk Lore and a song I was listening to on the radio, and put this together. I am not expecting this to be a bestseller, just a short story idea I had while chatting to a few friends from this site, but I am fairly pleased with the result. I hope everyone else enjoys it as well.
I would like to thank Valerie for adding a little depth to the main character, and also to thank Wax Philosophical for being there to bounce the ideas off.
***
Foreword.
Many centuries ago, the Celts celebrated a festival called
Samhain
. This marked the end of summer and the beginning of the darker days of winter, a time associated with death. It was believed that during the night of this festival, the barriers between the world of the living, and the world of the dead was at its thinnest, allowing the dead to cross from their world in to ours. To prevent the dead from returning to their family's homes, the living would leave offerings of honey and mead outside their houses, to keep the spirits occupied until morning, when they would have to return to their own world.
The living of present times celebrate a festival called Halloween, which has a very firm foothold in its origins of Samhain, but in some places the original tradition is still maintained, over two thousand years after its peak.
***
The evening breeze swept in off the Sonoran Desert, bringing with it the usual airborne dust that would cover the veranda of Val's Bar once again. With a sigh Valerie Moss pushed her broom across the warped, wooden boards that made up the porch of the bar, that had been her mothers, and her grandmothers before that. Of course back then the main highway had run right past the small plot of dirt it was built on, and nearly every night had been a busy night. Sadly, while Val was still a child, a new highway had been built and what had been a main road turned in to a dirt track inside a year. Now, the only custom Val got these days, were her few remaining regulars, and the occasional tourist who had wondered off the beaten track, and they only stayed long enough to look around the old place before leaving.
There was a part of her that was tempted to move on before she ended up like her mother, shackled to the desolate bar by fate. It wasn't like she hadn't had the opportunity, a local industrial company had been trying to buy the land the bar was on, but the price they had offered was a fraction of what it was worth, and the offer had been turned down more than once. The last few weeks however had gotten harder, especially since someone had been vandalising the outside of the building. The sign on the roof now stated the bar belonged to 'al' instead of 'Val' and several of the front windows had to be boarded up after the glass was broken.
As the Sun dipped below the horizon, two figures, as aged and dishevelled as the bar, shuffled across the dusty road and up to where Val was fighting a lost battle against the desert. The two friends had been coming to the bar every night as long as Val could remember. Both of them had white hair, one, whose tanned scalp showed through the strands of white, and couldn't manage a full sentence without using at least one swear word, and the other, a Native American who claimed the entire area had belonged to his tribal.
"Dullahan. Chief Muut." Val welcomed. "Go right in. I'll be there in a minute."
"Dunno, why you botherin' Val." Dullahan grumbled. "Fekkin dust'll come quicker than'y can move it."
"Some battles are worth fighting, even if you're losing them." Val replied with a short laugh. After all the years, she still had no idea where the two old guys lived. They just wandered in from the desert at the same time every day, no matter what the weather.
"Like the one with the white men from the City?" Muut asked. "The coyotes told me it was them that broke your windows."
A spark of anger flared inside Val. She had suspected the lawyers from StripeTech had been getting someone to cause problems around the bar, in an effort to encourage the sale of the land. Chief Muut's words just added a little salt, stoking her anger. It was times like this when she wished that she had kept in touch with her old school friends, at least that way she would have someone to call on for advice. As it was, Chief Muut would no doubt offer to take their scalps, and Dullahan would tell her to do something anatomically impossible for her.
Cursing the dust, Val propped the broom against the wall, giving up on that particular battle and went to serve the customers she still had.
"Ah your bloody cheatin' me again ag'in you'ld fox bastit." Dullahan's course accent was very audible over the music from the jukebox, a relic from the seventies, only had one playable record remaining, a track called 'Don't fear The Reaper', that was so well played, it was nearly worn out.
Val didn't even bother to lift her head from the book she was reading. She had heard the same words nearly every night. The two old timers sat at the same table every night, playing cards for pennies. Dullahan tossing back shots of rye, and Chief Muut sipping coffee that had gone cold hours before.
"Can I git 'nother bottle Val?" Dullahan shouted. "An' don't ye forget to put out an offerin'"
Val frowned as she dragged a fresh bottle of cheap booze from under the counter. "Offering?" She asked.
"Yea, an offerin'." Dullahan muttered. "Tis Samhain. We dinna wan any deed comin'."
Nodding, Val remembered it was Halloween, or as Dullahan called it Samhain. She assumed that was what is was called from where ever he had originated from. Although she didn't know where that was, just as she had no idea where they disappeared to in the early hours when they left the bar.
Halloween had meant a steady stream of customers on their way to parties in various costumes. Now it just meant that Val would step outside and place a shot glass of rye on the window ledge. Admittedly, the glass was always empty in the morning. Val suspected that Dullahan drank it on his way out, but as the old fellow paid for it she didn't care either way.
Sighing, Val returned to her stool and her book, taking a swig from a bottle of beer.
The window next to the door exploded inwards, scattering glass across the floor, as a fist sized rock bounced on the dusty boards.
Cursing, Val snatched the cut down twelve gauge from under the bar and ran to the door, but the darkness of the night hid everything more than a few yards from her veranda.
More annoyed that the last surviving window had been smashed, than anything else, Val cursed and snatched the broom from where she had left it earlier, and began to sweep up the glass fragments, the broken shot glass amongst them.
As she contemplated tacking a canvas sheet over the broken window, Val wondered if it was worth getting a glazier to come out and replace the glass, or would they just get broken again the next night. Deciding to not bother, she returned to her book, only to stop half way as she heard a deep throated thudding noise approach from out of the dark night. It wasn't unknown to get a vehicle travelling down their road. Most of them passed straight by as they continued their journey to their destination, but this one seemed to be slowing as it approached. Sure enough the light from a motorcycle eased past the open door and halted. The rumbling continued for a second or two, then cut off suddenly, making the scratchy music seem louder.
Three pairs of eyes fixated on the doorway as footsteps scuffed the wooden steps and a figure appeared in the doorway.
She was tall. That was Val's first thought. Dusty was the second. If it hadn't been for the motorcycle, Val would have said the woman in the doorway had stepped out of a western. She was dressed as a cowboy, from her boots to the unbelievable Stetson jammed firmly on her head. Every item of clothing was coated in a later of dust, from the leather jeans to the long duster coat that hung to mid-calf. The lower half of her face was obscured by a neckerchief, no doubt to filter the road dust out of her mouth and nose.
"Come in." Val greeted. "Please don't worry about the dust, it gets everywhere anyhow."
The woman clumped across the floor, unbuttoning the coat as she walked, and Val was slightly disappointed to see there wasn't a holstered colt on her hip.
With the coat unbuttoned, the woman tugged the scarf from around her neck, revealing pale skin underneath. The upper half of her face was encrusted with the same yellow dust, apart from rings around both light grey eyes, where Val assumed she had worn some protection.
"Do you have a cold beer?" She asked. Her voice, while deep and husky, had a soft and light accent. Her lips looked dry and parched, which wasn't surprising, as it looked as though she had crossed the desert, not travelled along a road.
"Sure." Val smiled warmly, popping the cap off a bottle straight from the cooler, and placing it on the bar.
The bottle left the bar and touched thin lips. A moment later the empty bottle returned to the bar, and a pink tongue snaked out, leaving a clean patch around her mouth.
"Another?" Val asked, holding up and second bottle.
"Thanks." The stranger said taking a long pull from the second bottle. "That's better." She gasped, her voice a little less husky, but still fairly deep. Half turning, she touched her fingers to the brim of the Stetson, acknowledging the two card players, who had been staring ever since she had entered the bar. "Gentlemen."
Dullahan and Chief Muut returned to their game, throwing occasional sideways glances and the newcomer. Which wasn't surprising, Val surmised. She was very good looking, even with the layer of dust coating her clothing.
"Do you have a washroom?" The stranger asked. "I can't remember the last time I washed."
A feeling that Val hadn't had in many years fluttered through her chest. Something she hadn't felt since she quite collage to help run the bar, ending the brief relationship she had been in. The face of Susanna jumped painfully in to her memory. She had been tall, blonde and her family had owned a ranch where they bred horses. And she had been Val's only real love interest.
