Prologue

 

            Joey slid his cell phone out of the pocket of his gray suit.  He sighed and pulled the lapels up, protecting his face from the gritty desert air.  He looked around the old cemetery, Tombstone’s popular Boot Hill.  He shook his head.  “They confirmed it, Troy.  This is the place.”  His partner was sitting on a pile of jagged stones, the grave of some poor soul at whose wooden marker he never glanced.  He was smoking, sucking in huge breaths of the sweet nicotine.  His doctor had given him six months: lung cancer.  He decided to enjoy them.

            “You’ve gotta be kiddin’ me.”  Joey shrugged.  “How the hell are we supposed to find one guy in all this?  There have to be fifty markers out here that say ‘Unknown.’  I’m not digging up corpses all night for nothin’.  Call ‘em back.  I want double for this one.”  Joey grinned and laughed dry little sighs.

            “Not gonna do that, Troy.  When they need stuff done, they call us.  They needed this done, so they called us.  Help me start pulling rocks off here.”  He strolled over to the nearest unnamed grave and began tossing rocks back over his shoulder.  He eyed the dirt caked onto his loafers and shook his head.  Maybe we should’a asked for double.  Troy remained perched on the rubble finishing his cigarette.  He watched his partner for a bit but found it none too amusing since he would be joining in quite soon.  He let his gaze drift over the rest of the graveyard, at least what he could see.  It was dark, the middle of the night.  A naked moon shone down on them through a black sprinkled with starlight.  They had placed three electric lanterns around themselves.  They were expensive little numbers, and they did their job well.

            “Hey, Joey, won’t somebody see all this light out here and come askin’ questions?  I hate to be wrist deep in dead bodies when the cops show up.”  Joey found something he didn’t like beneath a large jagged stone and let it fall back into place, dusting his hands as he turned away from the mound of death.

            “I paid the usual people this morning while you were finishing your coffee.  We have all night, the rest of the week’s nights if we need ‘em.  Put that out and help me, will ya?”  He grabbed a lantern and walked away from Troy to another “Unknown” grave.  Troy just ignored him.  With only six months of joyous life to go, he no longer found hurrying a task worthy of his attention.  He was going to finish his cigarette, and then he would help, time be damned.  Troy was a fan of the Old West.  He had watched more than his fair share of documentaries on the History Channel, some talking about this very town.  Tombstone, what a place!  He had promised himself a trip there for ages but had never gone: work had always gotten in the way.  Now, work had brought him there on a most mysterious mission.  He thought he would probably come back during the day with the rest of the tourists and check out the graves of Billy Clanton and Frank and Tom McLaury.  His thoughts began to drift to that fateful day at the O.K. Corral, and he wondered if he would have faired any better.  “Hurry up, Troy, or we’re splitting this thing seventy-thirty.  I’m fuckin’ up my shoes and pants and everything over here.”  Troy grinned.  Joey would have been dead in a second.  He was almost laughing when he grabbed the lantern and sauntered over to his partner.  “What are you smilin’ about?”

            He shrugged.  “Just happy to be here I guess.”  Joey gave him a stern look, checking really well for any sign of mockery.  He didn’t find any.

            “Yeah, you and this Western shit.  I figured this trip would get you out of this gloom you’ve been in, but you’ve done nothin’ but complain since we got here.”  Troy hadn’t told his partner about the prognosis.  They had worked together for twenty-something years and had never lied to each other as far as he knew.  Troy didn’t have any real family, just a sack of cash hidden in the ceiling of his apartment, a few thugs and bosses who added to that sack, and the guy who watched his back.  It just didn’t need to be told yet.  “Check that one over there.”

            Troy ambled over and tossed a few stones aside.  This was going to be a very long week if they didn’t find the corpse soon.  The job had supposedly come down from the Boss, the big boss, the one talked about but never to, the one who scared the shit out of the most fearless and bloodthirsty bastards Troy knew.  When the order came down from him, you better not question it; hell, you better not even hesitate.  Had Joey called and asked for more money, they would have been dead before the end of that week.  “What are we doing out here?  Digging up corpses?  There has to be more to it than that.”  Joey didn’t stop digging.

            “A guy heard from a guy that it was all about this Chicago stuff.  With the whole city in quarantine, business is in the gutter everywhere.  The Boss wants the man responsible and apparently this corpse is gonna help.  Fuck if I know for sure though.”  Troy knew what was going on in Chicago, or at least he thought he did: Terrorists, on our own fuckin’ soil.  They just don’t want to admit it and make us look bad.  His thoughts came back to the task at hand when his fingertips scraped across wood just beneath the earth.  He frowned and dusted away more of the sandy topsoil.

            “Hey, this seems weird.”  Joey, a little out of breath, walked over.  He added his lantern to the light.  “I think it’s wood.”  He rapped his knuckles on it a few times; it sounded slightly rotten but intact.  “Yep, that’s wood.  Did you see anything like that?”

            Joey shook his head.  “Nope.  They said we’d know when we found it.  I guess we found it.”  Together, they cleared away the rest of the rocks and dirt from the planks set perfectly into the ground.  The electric glow revealed an odd symbol painted in discolored blue atop it: a circle with a single line cut diagonally across it, a strange language written at each corner, runes they didn’t recognize from any movie or documentary about the Old West.  “This has to be it.”

            Troy noticed a small indention at the top and bottom in the right corners.  “I think those are handles.”  Joey followed his gaze and shook his head.  They pulled the doorway from the ground to reveal a set of clay steps leading down into a frightful darkness.  “Well, shit, I guess we better go down there.”  Troy had six months to live, but the thought of being trapped beneath the cemetery filled him with dread.

            “You go.  I’ll keep watch.”  Joey burst into laughter.  It was a sound almost as unpleasant as the feeling in Troy’s stomach.  It was nasally and screechy, and a bit of phlegm appeared on the gangster’s top lip.

            “If I go alone, we’re doing this thing eighty-twenty; otherwise, no deal.”  Troy thought for a moment, a long moment but finally took up his lantern to lead the way.  It wasn’t a long journey, just ten steps down and a crowded tunnel that twisted for a small two-minute walk.  It opened up a bit into a small chamber, tall enough to stand up straight, wide enough for five or six men to crowd up close to the coffin in the center.  They set their lanterns in opposite corners, dazzling the cavity with light.  The coffin itself was nothing impressive.  It was just a plain rectangle, no carvings or markings, no cross added to the lid; it had been created from thicker lumber than the doorway, a rich tan coloring spotted and here and there from age.

            “So, what do we do?” Troy asked.  The details had been all placed before him, a couple of times, but he had many other things on his mind.  Joey sighed.

            “They said take the body, nothing about the coffin.  Let’s drag him up top, and I’ll wrap him in those garbage bags.  He’s been down here since the ‘70s apparently, probably good and rotted out.”  Troy tossed the lid unceremoniously to the side, the loud crunch of it echoing back out the chamber.  Joey couldn’t have been more wrong.  The body was intact, perfectly so.  It could have been a man asleep.  “You know, one of the guys talked about this corpse like he was the baddest killer ever walked the earth.  I kinda built him up in my head to be bigger.”  Troy scowled over at him.

            “Bigger?  Look at his arms, for Christ’s sakes.  They’re as thick as paint cans.”

            “I know, I know, I just meant taller or somethin’.”  The body was altogether pretty impressive.  It wasn’t a giant, standing at about 5’10”, but it was bulky with muscle, thick veins visible just beneath the skin of his softball-sized biceps.  It was dressed not in the usual funeral attire but in a coarse black cotton t-shirt, dark denim jeans, a mean pair of large-soled army boots, and leather gloves that sat high on the forearm.  The most striking characteristic was the head, covered with a black sack, the executioner’s mask.  “I guess he’s pretty intimidating.”

            “That mask is.”  The both stared down at it, their stares drawn to the gloomy eyeholes where they hoped the lids would remain closed.  A thick coil of brown rope was looped around the corpse’s throat, pulled up and to the side so that the noose rested upon his shoulder, the length hidden in shadow.  “I wonder what he did.”  Joey shivered.

            “I don’t know.  Let’s just get him out of there.”  Both men paused, each afraid to make the first move.  Neither could take his eyes from the dim holes in the mask.  Joey summoned the courage and reached forward, but his hand wavered and failed to make contact.  An instant before fingertips met the fiber of the shirt, a movement in the head covering caused both men to suck in a breath, Troy’s all the more ragged.  As they watched transfixed on the movement, a yellow and brown spider that couldn’t easily fit into one’s palm came creeping from obscurity.  Little hairs stood out on its back and legs, two tiny fangs flickered in its mouth.

            Troy, slowly and quietly, removed the pistol from his shoulder holster.  He hesitated when the strap clicked open and nearly died when the arachnid turned in his direction.  “Smash that bastard, Troy,” his partner whispered, causing the spider to move that way.  He raised the gun and attempted to bring the handle down upon his prey, a dangerously close to madness look on his face.  It was that moment while the spider was most in danger, a mere second before impact, when the Hangman’s hand snaked forward to place a Herculean grip on Troy’s wrist.  The corpse’s eyes darted open, fixing the attacker in a reptilian stare that could melt steel.  The gangster let the pistol slip from his fingers to become lost in the coffin while he fought against the grip with both hands.  Joey slammed himself backwards against the dirty wall, a womanish scream erupting from his lips before he could stifle it.  He slid down into a sitting position where his own eyes glossed over, every second a fight against losing consciousness.

            “Why did you come here?” the Hangman asked.  His voice was deep, a quaking deep, and on the verge of demonic.  He released Troy, who instantly ran out of the chamber, slipping and sliding twice on his way up the mud steps.  The Hangman pressed against the side of his confines until they warped and exploded out, filling the room with even more dust and debris.  Joey, unable to do anything else, simply watched the scene unfold until the corpse was standing over him with dry ragged breaths stretching and unstretching his chest.  “Why did you come here?” he repeated, less pleasantly.

            When the gangster failed to answer a second time, the Hangman pulled him to his feet by his jacket, shoving him into a corner where he would find it more difficult to collapse.  He struck the man once, twice, and a final third time across the face with open-handed slaps.  The shock of the blows restored his wits.  “Wait, wait, wait, we’re here to help, okay?  We were sent, see?  From the Boss.”  The Hangman surveyed the speaker silently.  At last, he seemed to doubt.

            “I’ve been asleep for thirty years.  Why would he summon me now?  What could be so horrible?”  The man’s voice was devilish, a deep so booming it could only have been born in hellfire.  Joey stammered but finally put together an explanation.

            “Chicago has been nearly crippled.  Some guy did it.  His name is the Hunter.”  The words seemed to settle powerfully on the Hangman’s shoulders.  Could that have been a smile behind the thick black mask?

            “No, his name is Eric Mason, and I accept the contract.”