The Makeshift Noose

This is the next chapter in The ShambElla Saga, which I hope drops like a Halloween treat into a bag filled with many others! Here's the Table of Contents with an intro by Yours Ghouly:

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The Makeshift Noose

The bullet came so close to Sam’s right ear that he heard it whizz by and felt the heat of its passage. The second shot would surely have hit home if a goon hadn’t jumped in front of him and taken it in the skull instead. He ducked as two other goons linked up with the first and formed a shield for him to crouch behind.

Ella was also the beneficiary of a tripartite goon wall, but Sam wasn’t sure this cover was adequate. “Stay close to their backs, Ella!” he yelled. “The shooter’s on the railroad overpass ahead of us!”

“There’s no way we can hit him from here, Sam! We’ve either got to move in closer or find some better cover. Where’s Colt?”

More shots were fired, but not in Sam and Ella’s direction. The lead goon was running toward the overpass at greater than human speed, zigzagging so as to make itself a harder target. The mystery shooter was indeed missing the mark, as evidenced by the debris flying up in those places where Colt had just been. In a short time, Colt was lost in the trees on the hill beside the overpass and the shots stopped.

The shooter stood up, rifle pointed in the direction from which the goon would presumably appear.

“I’LL BLOW YOU TO PIECES, YOU COME ANY CLOSER!”

Ella felt a buzz in her pocket, and a very loud and quite familiar string arrangement filled the air. Two notes, brief, then silence.

“IS THAT THE FUCKING THEME FROM JAWS? HOW THE HELL—”

DUH-NUH!

“WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS? IT’S NOT POSSIBLE, DAMMIT, FUCKING THEME FROM JAWS PLAYING OUT IN THE MIDD—”

DUH-NUH!

“STOP IT, DAMN YOU, STOP—”

DUHNUHDUHNUHDUHNUHDUHNUH—

“—AHHHHHHHHHRGH!”

The man fired but Colt didn’t come from the expected direction. The shifty goon jumped down from a tree behind the aggressor and smashed his face into the gravel as the theme from Spielberg’s iconic film hit its maddening crescendo. One last shot fired from the rifle as it flew from the guy’s hands.

Colt planted its bony ass on the fella’s back and grabbed both of his hands at the wrist, pinning them to the ground above his head.

When the music stopped, Sam was laughing hard, wiping tears from his eyes. “Oh my God!” He took a deep breath, laughed some more. “Oh dear Lord!”

Ella was stunned, but Sam’s laughter was contagious, and she was off on her own jag until her sides hurt.

The goon-shields disbanded and pointed simultaneously up at Colt.

Wiping tears from her own eyes, Ella said, “I think we’re being beckoned.”

Ella reached out a hand to help Sam to his feet. They holstered their guns and walked toward the overpass to meet their neutralized enemy.

“Thanks for taking that bullet for me,” Sam said to the goon with a hole in its skull. It gave him two thumbs-up, and stuck one of the thumbs in the bullet hole, covering it with the fist. When it pulled it free, the hole was gone, and the skull was whole again. “Neat trick!” Sam said. “Ella, I don’t think we know what we got on our hands here. I mean, we don’t know the half of what these goons can do.”

“True enough, Sam, but they’ll show us. If they aren’t really on our side, there’s likely not much we can do, but I feel like they’d have killed us already if that were their aim. How should we handle this guy up here? He shot at us!”

“Maybe he was just scared. We are traveling with an undead gang, after all.”

The way up the hill and onto the overpass was a lot more work for Sam and Ella than the goons, but there was enough of a path to get up without trouble.

The rails were overgrown with weeds. The railroad went over the creek here and into the woods, while the road that passed under it diverged back to highway 65. This was the road they took into the park the previous night.

Sam unholstered his nine and pointed it at the man on the ground, whose right cheek was pressed into the rocks, head to the side. “Who are you and why did you shoot at us?” Sam asked.

The man rolled his eyes up to look at Sam and then across to Ella, then back to Sam. The eyes were wide, wild. He spoke with a drawl and a twang. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! I was about to hang myself when I saw you walking under the bridge here, then I heard the music from inside the park and I couldn’t believe it! Then the smiling rock told me I should kill you instead, and I’d have the power of the music for myself! Oh, God, to hear music again, and Joe Cocker at that! My gramma loved that show! Never did like it myself, but I sure did love Gram!”

Sam put the nine away and looked into the wild eyes. “The song reminded me of that show too. My wife loved it.”

“Gram was the best, especially seeing as my pa was in and outta jail and my ma had to work all the time. She took care of us, me and my sisters. Look, mister, I know I shouldna shot at ya, but the smiling rock gets in my head, tells me things. Told me to hang myself! Changed its mind when you come along, and I thought I was saved! I can’t resist it! It won’t let me leave! Please, mister—lady!—” He looked again up at Ella. “Really, lady, I just do what the rock says.” He started crying, weeping uncontrollably like a fallen child who’s just scraped his knee. “But now that you’re here,” insert racking sob, “I feel its hold a-slippin’! Please help me!”

“What’s your name?” Ella asked the man.

“Siris.” He sniffled. “Short for Osiris. Please, ma’am, I won’t shoot at ya again, just let me go.”

“First, tell us about the smiling rock.”

“It’s over there, other side of the overpass, down by the creek, left of my makeshift noose. Ever since I camped up here, it talks at me, but it tells me I ain’t never supposed to go down there. I can only talk to it from here. It said if I killed myself, I could be free, but when you all come along, it changed its mind. Like I said before! Go look! Go look if ya doan believe me!”

Ella and Sam went to the other side of the bridge. They saw the noose Siris made tied to the railing. They peered over in the direction he indicated and there it was, a chunk of stone lying in the dirt with a red smiley face spray-painted on it.

Sam and Ella gave each other a look that said: this guy is crazy. Hearing voices.

“I know whatcher thinkin!” Siris yelled. “Yer thinkin I’m just nutso, gone over the edge! Well, I ain’t too bright, but I’m not crazy. I know it’s just a rock with a smiley face painted on it, dammit! That’s not what’s talking to me, but it’s the focus point somehow, like a tally’s man! I swear! I ain’t crazy!”

“You mean a talisman?” Ella said.

“Yeah, sure, something like that. When a thing has something else in it, ya know. Like a cursed object or something!”

“All things considered, Sam, he might be telling the truth. I mean—we have goons.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “Should we go down there?”

“I’m damn curious now. We’re not on a schedule or anything.”

She was right, Sam figured. He picked up Siris’ rifle. “I’ll be holding onto this. He got anything else we gotta worry about, Colt?”

Colt stood and pulled Siris up to a standing position by his wrists, holding him there. Another goon came over and patted him down. The goon found a pocketknife and threw it to Ella, who caught it and stowed it in her backpack.

“My pa gave me that knife, miss. Please don’t lose it,” Siris said. “He wasn’t the greatest pa, but it’s all I got left of ‘im.”

Colt let go of his wrists, grabbed his shoulders, and turned him around. Colt put its hand on its hips and Siris gulped. Then the lead goon wagged a bony finger at him.

“I promise I won’t do nothing, Colt! I’ll even go down there with ya! All of us together! I still wanna know how you get that music to play everywhere! I heard y’all laughing down there. I was mad and embarrassed at first, but now that I think about it, I’da laughed too if I was watching me.” Siris chuckled, then frowned and looked down at his shoes. “Thanks for not killing me, Colt.”

Colt raised its hands, palms to the sky, and shrugged its shoulder blades. The air filled with Steve Miller’s The Joker; and then, as if the teller of this story can’t help but torment the reader with awful cliches, raucous laughter followed from the three humans, and even the goons, who made no sound, shook as if they too found this moment sweetly hilarious.

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