Blood In The Soil Terror On The Wind – Kenneth W Cain

The .44 calibre round skittered away as Bowler Hat leapt awake, the hat tumbling off his head and onto John. “Wha— What is…?” Bowler Hat started. “Sorry,” John said, climbing to his feet. He went to hand the hat back when something caught his eye—a flash of movement beneath the man’s bare scalp, like a vein protruding under pressure.

He dropped the hat on the man’s lap and tightened his grip on the rifle. “What the hell are you looking at?” Bowler Hat said, his bald pate red and smooth beneath the flickering kerosene light. The flesh rippled, and John watched as what looked like a hand floated across the man’s skull beneath the skin, vanishing as quickly as it came. He didn’t hesitate, levering a cartridge into the chamber and pressing the muzzle against Bowler Hat’s scalp in one fluid motion.

The trigger snapped, and Bowler Hat’s head exploded in a spray of blood and bone that painted the table and wall red as the gunshot rang out through the saloon like a canon. The body slumped over, and the chair went with it. Rook’s chair scraped against the hardwood, but the sound was muffled as John’s ears rang from the percussive blast. There was a shout from the bar behind him.

“He’s crazy,” Rook yelled, getting to his feet and backing against the wall. “You’re crazy. Get that gun from him.” John waited for the hands to climb out of Bowler Hat’s corpse as it drooled syrupy blood on the floor, but nothing happened. His stomach roiled, and his skin became gooseflesh as panic surged through his body. His vision blurred, and images of murder flashed through his mind.

The muscles in his right arm grew tired at the memory of smashing a broken whisky bottle against his mother-in-law’s head. He could feel the weight of his father-in-law’s body as he impaled it on the weathered picket fence. The claw hammer in Marlee’s skull. Her death, again and again. The wheezing sound of her last breath. A tear down her cheek. Dad…daddy… How could you? And each time he’d done it alone. Seen them alone. His mind teetered on the brink of madness as he waited for Bowler Hat’s flesh to ripple, for a sign that he hadn’t already tumbled into that fathomless abyss.

But the saloon was quiet save the bartender’s yell to seize John’s gun, and the cowboy’s heavy footsteps closing in behind him. But there was nothing more except the ringing in his ears and the deafening realization that he had been wrong.

“Brilliant stories that drag you screaming into the rotten, turbulent heart of the Old West.” – Coy Hall, author of The Hangman Feeds the Jackal and Grimoire of the Four Imposters. 1kitap1.com/en An Anthology Edited by Kenneth W. Cain 1kitap1.com/en BLOOD IN THE SOIL, TERROR ON THE WIND Copyright 2022 © Brigids Gate Press Individual works are copyright © 2022 by their respective authors and used by permission.

These stories are works of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in the fictional stories are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the express written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles.

Edited by Kenneth W. Cain. Cover illustration and design by Chad Lutzke. www.chadlutzke.com/cover-design.html Formatted by Kenneth W. Cain First Edition: August 2022 ISBN (paperback): 978-1-957537-33-7 ISBN (Kindle ebook): 978-1-957537-32-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2022943494 BRIGIDS GATE PRESS Bucyrus, Kansas www.brigidsgatepress.com Printed in the United States of America 1kitap1.com/en Content warnings are provided at the end of this book. 1kitap1.com/en Table of Contents Introduction by Ronald Kelly “Crimson Noon” by Antonia Rachel Ward “The Good Doctor” by Nick Kolakowski “Sundown Showdown” by Villimey Mist & Damascus Mincemeyer “The Werechrist” by Jonathan Kemmerer-Scovner “Ballad of the Overeager Gun” by Sean Eads & Joshua Viola “The Owl Witch of the Comancheria” by Craig E Sawyer “Ada” by Lana Elizabeth Gabris “Hands” by Joel McKay “As Long as You Feed” by David Niall Wilson “Costumed Mouth” by Ej Sidle “Trade Secrets” by Brennan LaFaro “I Have Seen the Elephant” by Michael Bailey “Boneweaver” by Amanda J Spedding “The Wound Is Covered” by Taylor Rae “Suffer No Harm” by P.L.

McMillan “Ghost Festival in the Desert” by Wen Wen Yang “The Patchwork Man” by Ben Monroe “Voodoo Higgies” by Chad Lutzke Afterword by Kenneth W. Cain 1kitap1.com/en For everyone losing sleep right now, worrying about their future, their rights, the world, our planet… This one is for you. We see you. We hear you. We stand with you.

May your candle shine brightly. 1kitap1.com/en Acknowledgements Thank you, first and foremost to my wife, Heather, who has been my rock, tethering me to reality and keeping me in this chair all these years, doing what I love most. And thank you to Brigids Gate Press, Heather and Steve and our slush readers, for making this project a reality, when it could have been left for dead on the side of this dusty trail.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: a9d7ee59cf24e91f
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 2,921,797 bytes (2.786 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781957537337, 9781957537320
• Pages: 270
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 414.85 minutes
• Total Words: 82,969
• Total Characters: 461,025
• Average Words per Page: 307.29
• Average Characters per Page: 1707.5

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