The Six Messiahs - Mark Frost [1]
The Preacher twisted his crooked, perpetually stiff neck in mock surprise at the sight.
"Why bless my soul," he whispered, "who would have thought there'd be so many of them out there?"
The swell of scorpions and spiders and snakes rose up and stopped cold an inch shy of the gambler, a wall outlining his body in the dirt. Swaying above him, the column obscured the sunset, but the man's reeling brain could make no sense of what he saw.
The Preacher pushed his hands out and his will flowed into the massed creatures; with one mind the vermin crawled forward and blanketed every square inch of the gambler's body. His feeble breath rasped as it filtered through a forest of busy, scuttling limbs. There the creatures froze, paralyzed as the man beneath them, obediently waiting their next instruction.
The Preacher Man stepped back, folded his arms, and stroked his chin, a parody of an artist admiring his canvas.
"A figure of a man, rendered in insect and reptile. Seems to me ... we are in need of a title for this fine work, wouldn't you agree, neighbor?" said the Preacher, then, snapping his fingers: "I've got it: Desert Still Life."
A wet laugh bubbled from his lips. Folding his hand around the gambler's thick bankroll in his pocket, the Preacher felt joy wash over him like warm seawater.
Yes. This was better than waking by the side of a road, cold and shaking, without a name, unable to speak, no past or future, a dumb beast trapped in a crevice of time. Resurrected. Born again in His image. Here to spread the Word and begin the Holy Work.
This was so much more . . .fulfilling.
The Preacher raised his hands dramatically, a conductor in command of his orchestra. The instruments responded; lifting tails, opening mandibles, baring fangs.
The gambler felt the change around him and what remained of his mind fled like a burglar.
Now.
Discharged, the still life instantly dissolved, scurrying back into the desert, mindless again, separate and fearful.
The Preacher tried to think of some appropriate remarks to say over the gambler's body but lost interest when his gaze slipped past the dead man to the cow town in the distance, its buildings black against the red-and-orange horizon: A lamp in the upper window of the saloon where they had played the poker game winked on.
What do they call this place again?
Texas.
Godforsaken provincial wilderness, this American West; no culture, no theater or coffeehouses. What a waste of perfectly good real estate.
But on the other hand, the people are so much more impressionable.
The Preacher Man tossed a handful of dirt onto the swollen, discolored corpse, turned on his heel, and headed back toward town, silver spurs jangling as his ruined leg trailed half a step behind.
I'm going to have to read the Bible, he realized. That's the very least these yokels will expect of me.
BOOK ONE
The Elbe
chapter 1
SEPTEMBER 19, 1894, 11:00 p.m.
WHAT A DAMNABLE NUISANCE ALL THIS HOLMES POPPY-cock has turned out to be. That such a cipher of a man, a walking talking calculating machine who displays no more humanity than a hobbyhorse, should inspire such passion in the bosom of the reading public is a greater mystery to me than any I ever dreamt up for him to solve.
Even as I write this entry, again, this evening at the Garrick Club—my farewell dinner—the subject of Sherlock's untimely death dominated conversation with the boorish, opinionated insistence of an American running for political office. Conceived at a moment when my only concern was putting food on my family's table, this Holm-unculus, this cerebral marionette has assumed a place in their lives more real to some of my readers than their own friends and relations. Shocking: but then if predictability in all God's creations was what the Man Upstairs was after He would have called it quits after putting up the Himalayas.
How naive of me to imagine that giving old Holmesy the heave-ho off Reichenbach Falls would