BEFORE THE MONSTER RETURNS

{FOR CLARIFICATION} :

Abigail Adams is leader of America's revenants {vampires}

because she is a revenant herself,

hence her ability to become mist in the bedroom of her dying husband.

I keep forgetting most of you don't read all my posts. Abigail as vampire can be seen in these two posts :

(1826) Quincy, Mass. -- In John Adams' bedroom the night before his death. {A FAREWELL TO LOVE}

http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2010/09/farewell-to-love.html

(2005) New Orleans, La. In the home of the undead daughter of Lord Byron {DEATH WEARS 3 FACES} :

http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2010/09/death-wears-three-faces.html

Little Lucy Wentworth can be seen in : THE DEVIL'S WIND --
http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2010/10/devils-windbad-news-blogfest.html

{It is the year 1857 in the port city of Mumbai, India.

"The Devils Wind" is the name the sepoys gave to the mutiny of Moslems against British rule,

a barbaric, uncontrollable fury that swept across the hot plains of India as if blown by the Devil.

To keep his word to a dying British Major, Samuel McCord has fought his way across all of India to save the man's tiny granddaughter,

Lucy Wentworth -- who is cousin to Alice Wentworth by the way.

Just within sight of the ship that could take Lucy to safety, Sam and Lucy are stopped by Abigail Adams herself with her best killers.}



Abigail Adams hadn't improved with age.

Her beauty had crystalized into cold porcelain flesh. Her wisdom had brittled into cleverness. And her hate for me had bittered like over-steeped tea.

Small Lucy Wentworth clung to my left leg, looking fearfully at the revenants who ringed us on the Mumbai dock. I studied them coldly. The ship that offered freedom was only a dozen feet away.

It might as well have been moored in the dust of the moon.

India hadn't been kind to me. But then, she was harsh even to her own children.

Though there wasn't a part of me that wasn't hurting or bleeding, I could still take the revenants. Abigail, being both genius and revenant, was another matter.

Abigail whispered, "I have traveled half the world to have you at my mercy."

Lucy chirped in her proper British accent. "Then, you have traveled a long way just to die."

Abigail flicked cold eyes to Lucy then back to me. "You are weak, wounded, and unarmed."

Lucy laughed with the confidence of innocence. "And still, Captain Sam shall kill you and your bullies."

"Madripoor," I said softly, and Lucy ducked down and hugged her knees as she had in that death-trap.

I slipped into the fighting stance taught me by the Shaolin priests, and Abigail regarded me with cool, appraising eyes.

She spoke low. "Yes, even after fighting your way across all of India, I do believe you would be unstoppable ... in defense of a child."

"I-If Abigail Adams were still alive and here, you'd be sorry," quavered Lucy, her beloved pith helmet dinged and battered.

The revenants around us jerked at Lucy's words and looked to Abigail. Lucy laughed.

"See? Even your killers know the name of Abigail Adams."

And death was on the night winds like the smell of ashes as the woman named murmured, "And where did you hear that name, child?"

Lucy raised her chin in defiance. "All through these many frightful nights Captain Sam would tell me stories of her ... of how she and her husband gave birth to America ... of how strong she was, of how smart she was, of how brave she was ... of how much she sacrificed for love."

Abigail husked, "Sacrificed for love."

"Yes, for love. Oh, I can see how you scare these leeches all around us. No doubt you are strong, brave, and perhaps even smart."

Lucy hugged my leg as if it were my chest. "But you will never be loved."

Abigail's eyes sank deep in her perfect face. "No. I shall never be loved ... again."

Lucy raised her chin in defiance. "Captain Sam said I could do no better than to model myself after Abigail Adams, that if she saw any Thuggee trying to kill me, she would box their ears for them."

Lucy giggled, "I would have quite liked to have seen that."

Lucy pulled out five dirty pages, folded neat in her torn jacket pocket. "I've copied some things Abigail said to memorize and live by."

The little girl closed her eyes and repeated by rote, "To be good, and do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in a few words."

Lucy glared at Abigail. "But to a monster like you I would wager those words mean nothing."

Abigail spoke thickly. "You would lose that wager, Lucy Wentworth."

She looked at me with eyes suddenly wet. "I was mist in the darkness, Samuel, when you promised my husband you would save me if you could."

Lucy frowned, "Your husband?"

Abigail rasped, "Yes, my beloved friend and husband ... President John Adams."

Lucy looked up stunned at me. "Captain Sam? Th-This is Abigail Adams?"

I nodded, "This is what has become of a hero who made choices she thought were right ... and was mistakened."

Lucy gave a look of horror at Abigail. "B-But you are a monster."

Abigail shook her head. "Not at the moment, child. Go to the ship, Lucy. Go now. Quicky. Before the monster returns."

The circle of revenants reluctantly opened for us.

I took Lucy up in my arms and limped fast to the ship and safety. Lucy looked wistfully and sad over my shoulder at the shrinking figure of Abigail Adams in the deepening mists.

Lucy gave a forlorn, childish wave to the tall, tormented leader of America's revenants. For a short moment my enemy was gone.

And the beloved Abigail of John Adams returned the same wave.

I know it was just a trick of my mind. But for a moment I thought I felt a hand squeeze my shoulder.

And I heard President John Adams whisper in my ear, "Thank you."
***

BEFORE THE MONSTER RETURNS_BAD NEWS BLOGFEST REDUX

For Francine and Tessa, both.
http://tgunwriter.blogspot.com/2010/08/bad-news-blogfest-october-2nd.html

{FOR CLARIFICATION} :

Abigail Adams is leader of America's revenants {vampires} because she is a revenant herself, hence her ability to become mist in the bedroom of her dying husband.

I keep forgetting most of you don't read all my posts. Abigail as vampire can be seen in these two recent posts :

(1826) Quincy, Mass. -- In John Adams' bedroom the night before his death. {A FAREWELL TO LOVE}

http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2010/09/farewell-to-love.html

(2005) New Orleans, La. In the home of the undead daughter of Lord Byron {DEATH WEARS 3 FACES} :

http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2010/09/death-wears-three-faces.html

Little Lucy Wentworth can be seen in my first BAD NEWS entry: THE DEVIL'S WIND --
http://rolandyeomans.blogspot.com/2010/10/devils-windbad-news-blogfest.html

AND NOW FOR MY BAD NEWS ENTRY REDUX :

{It is the year 1857 in the port city of Mumbai, India.

"The Devils Wind" is the name the sepoys gave to the mutiny of Moslems against British rule, a barbaric, uncontrollable fury that swept across the hot plains of India as if blown by the Devil.}


Abigail Adams hadn't improved with age.

Her beauty had crystalized into cold porcelain flesh. Her wisdom had brittled into cleverness. And her hate for me had bittered like over-steeped tea.

Small Lucy Wentworth clung to my left leg, looking fearfully at the revenants who ringed us on the Mumbai dock. I studied them coldly. The ship that offered freedom was only a dozen feet away.

It might as well have been moored in the dust of the moon.

India hadn't been kind to me. But then, she was harsh even to her own children.

Though there wasn't a part of me that wasn't hurting or bleeding, I could still take the revenants. Abigail, being both genius and revenant, was another matter.

Abigail whispered, "I have traveled half the world to have you at my mercy."

Lucy chirped in her proper British accent. "Then, you have traveled a long way just to die."

Abigail flicked cold eyes to Lucy then back to me. "You are weak, wounded, and unarmed."

Lucy laughed with the confidence of innocence. "And still, Captain Sam will kill you and your bullies."

"Madripoor," I said softly, and Lucy ducked down and hugged her knees as she had in that death-trap.

I slipped into the fighting stance taught me by the Shaolin priests, and Abigail regarded me with cool, appraising eyes.

She spoke low. "Yes, even after fighting your way across all of India, I do believe you would be unstoppable ... in defense of a child."

"I-If Abigail Adams were still alive and here, you'd be sorry," quavered Lucy, her beloved pith helmet dinged and battered.

The revenants around us jerked at Lucy's words and looked to Abigail. Lucy laughed.

"See? Even your killers know the name of Abigail Adams."

And death was on the night winds like the smell of ashes as the woman named murmured, "And where did you hear that name, child?"

Lucy raised her chin in defiance. "All through these many frightful nights Captain Sam would tell me stories of her ... of how she and her husband gave birth to America ... of how strong she was, of how smart she was, of how brave she was ... of how much she sacrificed for love."

Abigail husked, "Sacrificed for love."

"Yes, for love. Oh, I can see how you scare these leeches all around us. No doubt you are strong, brave, and perhaps even smart."

Lucy hugged my leg as if it were my chest. "But you will never be loved."

Abigail's eyes sank deep in her perfect face. "No. I shall never be loved ... again."

Lucy raised her chin in defiance. "Captain Sam said I could do no better than to model myself after Abigail Adams, that if she saw any Thuggee trying to kill me, she would box their ears for them."

Lucy giggled, "I would have quite liked to have seen that."

Lucy pulled out five dirty pages, folded neat in her torn jacket pocket. "I've copied some things Abigail said to memorize and live by."

The little girl closed her eyes and repeated by rote, "To be good, and do good, is the whole duty of man comprised in a few words."

Lucy glared at Abigail. "But to a monster like you I would wager those words mean nothing."

Abigail spoke thickly. "You would lose that wager, Lucy Wentworth."

She looked at me with eyes suddenly wet. "I was mist in the darkness, Samuel, when you promised my husband you would save me if you could."

Lucy frowned, "Your husband?"

Abigail rasped, "Yes, my beloved friend and husband ... President John Adams."

Lucy looked up stunned at me. "Captain Sam? Th-This is Abigail Adams?"

I nodded, "This is what has become of a hero who made choices she thought were right ... and was mistakened."

Lucy gave a look of horror at Abigail. "B-But you are a monster."

Abigail shook her head. "Not at the moment, child. Go to the ship, Lucy. Go now. Quicky. Before the monster returns."

The circle of revenants reluctantly opened for us.

I took Lucy up in my arms and limped fast to the ship and safety. Lucy looked wistfully and sad over my shoulder at the shrinking figure of Abigail Adams in the deepening mists.

Lucy gave a forlorn, chidish wave to the tall, tormented leader of America's revenants. For a short moment my enemy was gone.

And the beloved Abigail of John Adams returned the same wave.

I know it was just a trick of my mind. But for a moment I thought I felt a hand squeeze my shoulder.

And I heard President John Adams whisper in my ear, "Thank you."
***

THE DEVIL'S WIND_BAD NEWS BLOGFEST

For Francine's BAD NEWS BLOGFEST :

http://tgunwriter.blogspot.com/2010/08/bad-news-blogfest-october-2nd.html

In the short story, THE DEVIL'S WIND, I used the parallel of our current struggle with Moslem extremists to link to the time of British Colonial India where Moslem extremists in the British Army killed thousands.

At the beginning of my story, the uprising is just starting and McCord finds himself alone in a jail cell of a British outpost where every British citizen, civilian and soldier, is being murdered.

THE DEVIL’S WIND

“You will die, American. Slowly. Die as you starve to death in this cage.”

Your average man would have been scared. But I wasn’t your average man.

Hell, I wasn’t even a man. I was a monster.

More the pity for the murderers in front of my jail cell.

I noticed the fluid movement within the reflections in the polished tiles beneath the Sepoy’s boots. Then, I got scared.

Elu was hungry.

Elu? He was my Apache blood-brother. And his spirit was tied to mine.

It had followed me all the way from Sonora to British-held India. His soul was held captive somehow by the ritual of our bonding by blood. I could see him sometimes in mirrors. And when he got hungry enough, he could reach out of them to feed on the spirits of others.

One day I knew he would feed on mine.

Was this the day?

I tried not to hear the screams of the dying outside the window of my jail cell and glared at the threatening Sepoy. “Debjit, you took an oath to honor that British uniform you’re wearing.”

Sneering at me from the other side of the iron bars, he turned to the other three Sepoys in the same Bengal Army uniform and spat on the gleaming tile floor. “An oath to infidels means nothing. Nothing!”

My fingers aching to wrap around his damn scrawny neck, I took off my Stetson and laid it gentle on the cot I was sitting on. “Your word either means something, no matter who you give it to, or you are nothing.”

“You dare lecture me, American?”

“Texican.”

“Fool is the better word. You are the one behind bars not me. I told you how the Colonel would reward you for rescuing his granddaughter from the Thuggees. And he did exactly what I said. He threw you into this prison for both England and China to fight over.”

“A man does what he thinks best -- or he’s not a man.”

His eyes became like a snake’s but without as much warmth. “Last month you saved my life. For Allah’s sake, I will not kill you. But neither will I free you.”

I nodded to his uniform. “Honor The Great Mystery by either not making promises or by performing them once you have.”

His face screwed up. “It is the British Army that lies. They would have us defile ourselves by tasting the grease of pigs when we use their bullets.”

I jerked my head to the shooting and dying screams outside my cell’s window. “I notice you boys don’t mind all that much now when you can kill helpless white women and children with those bullets.”

The youngest Sepoy jerked his rifle up. “You will die for that!”

“Hakesh, no! He wants to die quick.”

Debjit turned back to me and smiled wide. “Rather we will bring the great Colonel’s granddaughter here and kill her slow in front of this pig.”

I saw the dried-apricot face of my blood-brother within the reflections glimmering within the polished floor tiles under his boots, and I said softly, “Those are mighty sad last words.”

Debjit spat on those shiny tiles. “I laugh to hear a dead man make --”

A blackness, thick and cold, swept up from the polished stone. Debjit stiffened. Then, like a thing alive, the blackness swirled around him and his three companions.

The living cloak of black mists tightened around the space where they stood. Screams, husky and muffled, fought to escape the darkness that boiled and rolled across the chamber.

I sighed. Although I couldn’t see inside the shadows, I knew what was going on. Knew all too well. I had seen clear too many times what was happening right then.

The screaming became wetter, shriller. I heard whimpered pleas for mercy. There was thrashing, groaning, mewing as if from animals being skinned alive.

Then, silence. Long, haunting moments of accusing silence. I looked at the darkness slowly flicker away like the light from dying embers.

The once polished floor was empty. Not one trace of the men who had been so full of comtempt and life just seconds before -- except for the steaming blood smeared across the tiles.

There was the stench of burnt flesh. I forced the bile back down my throat. I smiled bitter. I would bet that the British obsession with spit and polish had never killed before.

From somewhere left of Hell, and seemingly from everywhere and nowhere in particular, came a hollow chuckle. I shivered.

There had been a time when I thought I knew my blood-brother. That time had long since passed. Along with a lot of other things -- like peace of mind and untroubled sleep.

I sighed, “You boys really shouldn’t have threatened Lucy, but that’s the sorry nature of human nature. It always goes one step too far. Elu will happily let me rot here in this cell. But he’s taken a fancy to the little princess.”

A touseled head of unruly black hair popped out from under my cot. “Elu? Captain Sam, who’s Elu?”

I jumped to my feet. “Lucy? How the .... How did you get under my cot?”

A dirt-smeared pixie scrambled to her booted feet in front of me. She was six, though she looked seven, and dressed in a tiny copy of a Bengal Lancer uniform. She slapped a canvas helmet on her head.

“No times for questions, Captain Sam. I got to get you to Grandpapa.”

I kneeled and looked underneath my cot. Son of a bitch. An opening into musty shadows. A hidden passage.

Was this the reason the Colonel had been so insistent that I be put into this particular cell and no other? I caught faint echoes of shooting from down the tunnel. Fighting for time to think things through, I smiled up at Lucy.

Poor thing. She had been raised among rough men, been kidnapped by even rougher ones. She had heard things that no small child should.

But I could use that to distract her and give me time to get a handle on my thoughts.

“What’s that thing on your head?”

She frowned. “I have you know this is the finest pith helmet ever made, came straight from London. A birthday present from Grandpapa.”

I smiled crooked. “A what?”

“A pith helmet. You know, pith.”

I pretended a frown.

She rolled her eyes. “Pith!”

“Why in tarnation would you want to slap it on your head after you did that into it?”

She stamped her right foot. “Not that! Pith!”

She spelled it slowly, “P-I-T-H!”

I fought a smile. “Oh, that.”

She snatched it off her long, wild hair and glared at it. “I do not think I shall ever wear this in quite the same way ever again.”

This time I did smile. “Do tell?”

She looked up and stiffened, sucking in a sharp breath of outrage. “Oh, Captain Sam, you and your bad jokes!”

Alarm widened her china blue eyes. “Oh, my! Grandpapa wanted me to give you this this the moment I came here.”

She hurriedly reached inside her tunic. She pulled out a folded piece of paper. She handed it to me.

I sucked in a slow breath and took it. Standing a bit to the right so Elu could read it from inside the mirror over my shoulder, I looked down on the hastily written note.

Lucy peered outside my cell. “Ah, wherever are those Sepoy soldiers I heard from the tunnel?”

My face felt like it flinched. “They were -- invited to dinner.”

Lucy glared at me. “That’s another of your terrible jokes, is it not?”

There weren’t enough words in the dictionary to answer that right, so I just said nothing and read the Colonel’s note.


Captain McCord :
It would seem that the ill-conceived orders I was forced to obey have resulted in even worse consequences than I feared. It is a full
Mutiny.

For hundreds of miles there are nothing but fanatical
Hindu and Moslem former soldiers of Her Majesty, armed with the
best weapons that the British Army has to offer.

My Lucy is doomed unless ....

There are strange and terrible tales told of you, sir. I can scarse
believe many of them.

I know that in China you sank the British
flagship, Nemesis, and laid waste to the city of Ningbo to save a
British woman, Ann Noble, from being crucified by the Chinese.

Your own savages, Apaches I believe they are called, fear to step on
your shadow. Even your fellow Texas Rangers both fear and hate
you.

I do not know what to make of such tales. I only know that you
placed yourself in jeopardy to save my beloved granddaughter from
those Thuggee fanatics.

My reason tells me that alone and unarmed,
you haven’t a prayer of saving yourself, much less Lucy. Yet, my
soul tells me that you are her one hope.

Please, Captain McCord, save my Lucy.

And ask her forgiveness for my telling her that I would follow her.

I go now to join the ranks of my fathers, in whose presence I will not
feel shamed if you but get my Lucy to safety.

Colonel Lionel Wentworth.

I looked up, stared into my past, and whispered, “You got my word, Colonel.”
**********************
And no movie did the "Westerner Fish-Out-Of-Water" better than QUIGLY DOWN UNDER. And if I could pick anyone to play Sam McCord, it would be Tom Selleck.

DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING?

The jaundiced take on that question is that if you don't know where you are going, you will never know when you arrive. And for those 2012 doom sayers that pronounce that year's solar flares will do us in, the following link is enough to give even the most objective pause : http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/04/21/solar.observatory.images/index.html

But for a writer, the question has different implications. It is good to know where your tale is going so that you can interweave plot threads and foreshadowings. Still there is a danger to that knowing. If you know, then a long-time reader might possibly second-guess the destination correctly. And that is the kiss of death to a novel.

For me as a reader, the fun of a novel is that the tale takes me by surprise. I think the tale is headed one place, and it spins around to another destination entirely. The antagonist is even worse than I imagined or one that I empathize with more than is comfortable. The protagonist has more facets than it appeared at the start.

How does an author take the reader by surprise? If only I had a sure-fire answer to that question, I would make a mint from the likes of Stephen King or Dean Koontz who have to surprise readers who are well-versed in all their tricks. But I have a hunch. And sometimes a hunch is all we have in life. That and hope.

The hunch is that you can entertain readers with ironic twists and a protagonist who is a fish out of water in a well-known genre. The poet/scholar thrust into a profession that demands violent action. The individualist who is drafted into a militia that demands thoughtless obediance. The monster who finds himself having to fight monsters, in essence a wolf finding himself having to defend sheep.

That hunch led to my creating the legendary undead Texas Ranger, Captain Samuel McCord. He is all of the above and more. He is also the answer to the question of some of my blogger friends who have asked how to write of a foreign locale in the past.

Part of the answer is that you find a modern parallel in today's headlines to the times of which you write. In the short story, THE DEVIL'S WIND, I used the parallel of our current struggle with Moslem extremists to link to the time of British Colonial India where Moslem extremists in the British Army killed thousands. At the beginning of my story, the uprising is just starting and McCord finds himself alone in a jail cell of a British outpost where every British citizen, civilian and soldier, is being murdered.

THE DEVIL’S WIND

“You will die, American. Slowly. Die as you starve to death in this cage.”

Your average man would have been scared. But I wasn’t your average man. Hell, I wasn’t even a man. I was a monster. More the pity for the murderers in front of my jail cell.

I noticed the fluid movement within the reflections in the polished tiles beneath the Sepoy’s boots. Then, I got scared. Elu was hungry.

Elu? He was my Apache blood-brother. And his spirit was tied to mine. It had followed me all the way from Sonora to British-held India. His soul was held captive somehow by the ritual of our bonding by blood. I could see him sometimes in mirrors. And when he got hungry enough, he could reach out of them to feed on the spirits of others. One day I knew he would feed on mine.

Was this the day?

I tried not to hear the screams of the dying outside the window of my jail cell and glared at the threatening Sepoy. “Debjit, you took an oath to honor that British uniform you’re wearing.”

Sneering at me from the other side of the iron bars, he turned to the other three Sepoys in the same Bengal Army uniform and spat on the gleaming tile floor. “An oath to infidels means nothing. Nothing!”

My fingers aching to wrap around his damn scrawny neck, I took off my Stetson and laid it gentle on the cot I was sitting on. “Your word either means something, no matter who you give it to, or you are nothing.”

“You dare lecture me, American?”

“Texican.”

“Fool is the better word. You are the one behind bars not me. I told you how the Colonel would reward you for rescuing his granddaughter from the Thuggees. And he did exactly what I said. He threw you into this prison for both England and China to fight over.”

“A man does what he thinks best -- or he’s not a man.”

His eyes became like a snake’s but without as much warmth. “Last month you saved my life. For Allah’s sake, I will not kill you. But neither will I free you.”

I nodded to his uniform. “Honor The Great Mystery by either not making promises or by performing them once you have.”

His face screwed up. “It is the British Army that lies. They would have us defile ourselves by tasting the grease of pigs when we use their bullets.”

I jerked my head to the shooting and dying screams outside my cell’s window. “I notice you boys don’t mind all that much now when you can kill helpless white women and children with those bullets.”

The youngest Sepoy jerked his rifle up. “You will die for that!”

“Hakesh, no! He wants to die quick.”

Debjit turned back to me and smiled wide. “Rather we will bring the great Colonel’s granddaughter here and kill her slow in front of this pig.”

I saw the dried-apricot face of my blood-brother within the reflections glimmering within the polished floor tiles under his boots, and I said softly, “Those are mighty sad last words.”

Debjit spat on those shiny tiles. “I laugh to hear a dead man make --”

A blackness, thick and cold, swept up from the polished stone. Debjit stiffened. Then, like a thing alive, the blackness swirled around him and his three companions. The living cloak of black mists tightened around the space where they stood. Screams, husky and muffled, fought to escape the darkness that boiled and rolled across the chamber.

I sighed. Although I couldn’t see inside the shadows, I knew what was going on. Knew all too well. I had seen clear too many times what was happening right then.

The screaming became wetter, shriller. I heard whimpered pleas for mercy. There was thrashing, groaning, mewing as if from animals being skinned alive. Then, silence. Long, haunting moments of accusing silence. I looked at the darkness slowly flicker away like the light from dying embers.

The once polished floor was empty. Not one trace of the men who had been so full of comtempt and life just seconds before -- except for the steaming blood smeared across the tiles. There was the stench of burnt flesh. I forced the bile back down my throat. I smiled bitter. I would bet that the British obsession with spit and polish had never killed before.

From somewhere left of Hell, and seemingly from everywhere and nowhere in particular, came a hollow chuckle. I shivered. There had been a time when I thought I knew my blood-brother. That time had long since passed. Along with a lot of other things -- like peace of mind and untroubled sleep.

I sighed, “You boys really shouldn’t have threatened Lucy, but that’s the sorry nature of human nature. It always goes one step too far. Elu will happily let me rot here in this cell. But he’s taken a fancy to the little princess.”

A touseled head of unruly black hair popped out from under my cot. “Elu? Captain Sam, who’s Elu?”

I jumped to my feet. “Lucy? How the .... How did you get under my cot?”

A dirt-smeared pixie scrambled to her booted feet in front of me. She was six, though she looked seven, and dressed in a tiny copy of a Bengal Lancer uniform. She slapped a canvas helmet on her head.

“No times for questions, Captain Sam. I got to get you to Grandpapa.”

I kneeled and looked underneath my cot. Son of a bitch. An opening into musty shadows. A hidden passage. Was this the reason the Colonel had been so insistent that I be put into this particular cell and no other? I caught faint echoes of shooting from down the tunnel. Fighting for time to think things through, I smiled up at Lucy.

Poor thing. She had been raised among rough men, been kidnapped by even rougher ones. She had heard things that no small child should. But I could use that to distract her and give me time to get a handle on my thoughts.

“What’s that thing on your head?”

She frowned. “I have you know this is the finest pith helmet ever made, came straight from London. A birthday present from Grandpapa.”

I smiled crooked. “A what?”

“A pith helmet. You know, pith.”

I pretended a frown.

She rolled her eyes. “Pith!”

“Why in tarnation would you want to slap it on your head after you did that into it?”

She stamped her right foot. “Not that! Pith!”

She spelled it slowly, “P-I-T-H!”

I fought a smile. “Oh, that.”

She snatched it off her long, wild hair and glared at it. “I do not think I shall ever wear this in quite the same way ever again.”

This time I did smile. “Do tell?”

She looked up and stiffened, sucking in a sharp breath of outrage. “Oh, Captain Sam, you and your bad jokes!”

Alarm widened her china blue eyes. “Oh, my! Grandpapa wanted me to give you this this the moment I came here.”

She hurriedly reached inside her tunic. She pulled out a folded piece of paper. She handed it to me. I sucked in a slow breath and took it. Standing a bit to the right so Elu could read it from inside the mirror over my shoulder, I looked down on the hastily written note.

Lucy peered outside my cell. “Ah, wherever are those Sepoy soldiers I heard from the tunnel?”

My face felt like it flinched. “They were -- invited to dinner.”

Lucy glared at me. “That’s another of your terrible jokes, is it not?”

There weren’t enough words in the dictionary to answer that right, so I just said nothing and read the Colonel’s note.


Captain McCord :
It would seem that the ill-conceived orders I was forced to obey have resulted in even worse consequences than I feared. It is a full
Mutiny. For hundreds of miles there are nothing but fanatical
Hindu and Moslem former soldiers of Her Majesty, armed with the
best weapons that the British Army has to offer.

My Lucy is doomed unless ....

There are strange and terrible tales told of you, sir. I can scarse
believe many of them. I know that in China you sank the British
flagship, Nemesis, and laid waste to the city of Ningbo to save a
British woman, Ann Noble, from being crucified by the Chinese.
Your own savages, Apaches I believe they are called, fear to step on
your shadow. Even your fellow Texas Rangers both fear and hate
you.

I do not know what to make of such tales. I only know that you
placed yourself in jeopardy to save my beloved granddaughter from
those Thuggee fanatics. My reason tells me that alone and unarmed,
you haven’t a prayer of saving yourself, much less Lucy. Yet, my
soul tells me that you are her one hope.

Please, Captain McCord, save my Lucy.

And ask her forgiveness for my telling her that I would follow her. I
go now to join the ranks of my fathers, in whose presence I will not
feel shamed if you but get my Lucy to safety.

Colonel Lionel Wentworth.

I looked up, stared into my past, and whispered, “You got my word, Colonel.”
**********************
And no movie did the "Westerner Fish-Out-Of-Water" better than QUIGLY DOWN UNDER. And if I could pick anyone to play Sam McCord, it would be Tom Selleck.

And if you are curious what Elu might look like, here is John Two-Hawks along with Tarja of NIGHTWISH in the haunting, evocative "Creek Mary's Blood."

DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE GOING?

The jaundiced take on that question is that if you don't know where you are going, you will never know when you arrive.

But for a writer it is different. It is good to know where your tale is going so that you can interweave plot threads and foreshadowings. Still there is a danger to that knowing. If you know, then a long-time reader might possibly second-guess the destination correctly. And that is the kiss of death to a novel.

For me as a reader, the fun of a novel is that the tale takes me by surprise. I think the tale is headed one place, and it spins around to another destination entirely. The antagonist is even worse than I imagined or one that I empathize with more than is comfortable. The protagonist has more facets than it appeared at the start.

How does an author take the reader by surprise? If only I had a sure-fire answer to that question, I would make a mint from the likes of Stephen King or Dean Koontz who have to surprise readers who are well-versed in all their tricks. But I have a hunch. And sometimes a hunch is all we have in life. And hope.

The hunch is that you can entertain readers with ironic twists and a protagonist who is a fish out of water in a well-known genre. The poet/scholar thrust into a profession that demands violent action. The individualist who is drafted into a militia that demands thoughtless obediance. The monster who finds himself having to fight monsters, in essence a wolf finding himself having to defend sheep.

That hunch led to my creating the legendary undead Texas Ranger, Captain Samuel McCord. He is all of the above and more. He is also the answer to the question of some of my blogger friends who have asked how to write of a foreign locale in the past.

Part of the answer is that you find a modern parallel in today's headlines to the times of which you write. In the short story, THE DEVIL'S WIND, I used the parallel of our current struggle with Moslem extremists to link to the time of British Colonial India where Moslem extremists in the British Army killed thousands. At the beginning of my story, the uprising is just starting and McCord finds himself alone in a jail cell of a British outpost where every British citizen, civilian and soldier, is being murdered.

THE DEVIL’S WIND

“You will die, American. Slowly. Die as you starve to death in this cage.”

Your average man would have been scared. But I wasn’t a normal man. Hell, I wasn’t even a man. I was a monster.

I noticed the fluid movement within the reflections in the polished tiles beneath the Sepoy’s boots. Then, I got scared. Elu was hungry.

Elu? He was my Apache blood-brother. And his spirit was tied to mine. It had followed me all the way from Sonora to British-held India. His soul was held captive somehow by the ritual of our bonding by blood. I could see him sometimes in mirrors. And when he got hungry enough, he could reach out of them to feed on the spirits of others. One day I knew he would feed on mine. Was this the day?

I tried not to hear the screams of the dying outside the window of my jail cell and glared at the threatening Sepoy. “Debjit, you took an oath to honor that British uniform you’re wearing.”

Sneering at me from the other side of the iron bars, he turned to the other three Sepoys in the same Bengal Army uniform and spat on the gleaming tile floor. “An oath to infidels means nothing. Nothing!”

My fingers aching to wrap around his damn scrawny neck, I took off my Stetson and laid it gentle on the cot I was sitting on. “Your word either means something, no matter who you give it to, or you are nothing.”

“You dare lecture me, American?”

“Texican.”

“Fool is the better word. You are the one behind bars not me. I told you how the Colonel would reward you for rescuing his granddaughter from the Thuggees. And he did exactly what I said. He threw you into this prison for both England and China to fight over.”

“A man does what he thinks best -- or he’s not a man.”

His eyes became like a snake’s but without as much warmth. “Last month you saved my life. For Allah’s sake, I will not kill you. But neither will I free you.”

I nodded to his uniform. “Honor The Great Mystery by either not making promises or by performing them once you have.”

His face screwed up. “It is the British Army that lies. They would have us defile ourselves by tasting the grease of pigs when we use their bullets.”

I jerked my head to the shooting and dying screams outside my cell’s window. “I notice you boys don’t mind all that much now when you can kill helpless white women and children with those bullets.”

The youngest Sepoy jerked his rifle up. “You will die for that!”

“Hakesh, no! He wants to die quick.”

Debjit turned back to me and smiled wide. “Rather we will bring the great Colonel’s granddaughter here and kill her slow in front of this pig.”

I saw the dried-apricot face of my blood-brother within the reflections glimmering within the polished floor tiles under his boots, and I said softly, “Those are mighty sad last words.”

Debjit spat on those shiny tiles. “I laugh to hear a dead man make --”

A blackness, thick and cold, swept up from the polished stone. Debjit stiffened. Then, like a thing alive, the blackness swirled around him and his three companions. The living cloak of black mists tightened around the space where they stood. Screams, husky and muffled, fought to escape the darkness that boiled and rolled across the chamber.

I sighed. Although I couldn’t see inside the shadows, I knew what was going on. Knew all too well. I had seen clear too many times what was happening right then. The screaming became wetter, shriller. I heard whimpered pleas for mercy. There was thrashing, groaning, mewing as if from animals being skinned alive. Then, silence. Long, haunting moments of accusing silence. I looked at the darkness slowly flicker away like the light from dying embers.

The once polished floor was empty. Not one trace of the men who had been so full of comtempt and life just seconds before -- except for the steaming blood smeared across the tiles. There was the stench of burnt flesh. I forced the bile back down my throat. I smiled bitter. I would bet that the British obsession with spit and polish had never killed before.

From somewhere left of Hell, and seemingly from everywhere and nowhere in particular, came a hollow chuckle. I shivered. There had been a time when I thought I knew my blood-brother. That time had long since passed. Along with a lot of other things, like peace of mind and untroubled sleep.

I sighed, “You boys really shouldn’t have threatened Lucy, but that’s the sorry nature of human nature. It always goes one step too far. Elu will happily let me rot here in this cell. But he’s taken a fancy to the little princess.”

A touseled head of unruly black hair popped out from under my cot. “Elu? Captain Sam, who’s Elu?”

I jumped to my feet. “Lucy? How the .... How did you get under my cot?”

A dirt-smeared pixie scrambled to her booted feet in front of me. She was six, though she looked seven, and dressed in a tiny copy of a Bengal Lancer uniform. She slapped a canvas helmet on her head.

“No times for questions, Captain Sam. I got to get you to Grandpapa.”

I kneeled and looked underneath my cot. Son of a bitch. An opening into musty shadows. A hidden passage. Was this the reason the Colonel had been so insistent that I be put into this particular cell and no other? I caught faint echoes of shooting from down the tunnel. Fighting for time to think things through, I smiled up at Lucy.

Poor thing. She had been raised among rough men, been kidnapped by even rougher ones. She had heard things that no small child should. But I could use that to distract her and give me time to get a handle on my thoughts.

“What’s that thing on your head?”

She frowned. “I have you know this is the finest pith helmet ever made, came straight from London. A birthday present from Grandpapa.”

I smiled crooked. “A what?”

“A pith helmet. You know, pith.”

I pretended a frown.

She rolled her eyes. “Pith!”

“Why in tarnation would you want to slap it on your head after you did that into it?”

She stamped her right foot. “Not that! Pith!”

She spelled it slowly, “P-I-T-H!”

I fought a smile. “Oh, that.”

She snatched it off her long, wild hair and glared at it. “I do not think I shall ever wear this in quite the same way ever again.”

This time I did smile. “Do tell?”

She looked up and stiffened, sucking in a sharp breath of outrage. “Oh, Captain Sam, you and your bad jokes!”

Alarm widened her china blue eyes. “Oh, my! Grandpapa wanted me to give you this this the moment I came here.”

She hurriedly reached inside her tunic. She pulled out a folded piece of paper. She handed it to me. I sucked in a slow breath and took it. Standing a bit to the right so Elu could read it from inside the mirror over my shoulder, I looked down on the hastily written note.

Lucy peered outside my cell. “Ah, wherever are those Sepoy soldiers I heard from the tunnel?”

My face felt like it flinched. “They were -- invited to dinner.”

Lucy glared at me. “That’s another of your terrible jokes, is it not?”

There weren’t enough words in the dictionary to answer that right, so I just said nothing and read the Colonel’s note.


Captain McCord :
It would seem that the ill-conceived orders I was forced to obey have resulted in even worse consequences than I feared. It is a full
Mutiny. For hundreds of miles there are nothing but fanatical
Hindu and Moslem former soldiers of Her Majesty, armed with the
best weapons that the British Army has to offer.

My Lucy is doomed unless ....

There are strange and terrible tales told of you, sir. I can scarse
believe many of them. I know that in China you sank the British
flagship, Nemesis, and laid waste to the city of Ningbo to save a
British woman, Ann Noble, from being crucified by the Chinese.
Your own savages, Apaches I believe they are called, fear to step on
your shadow. Even your fellow Texas Rangers both fear and hate
you.

I do not know what to make of such tales. I only know that you
placed yourself in jeopardy to save my beloved granddaughter from
those Thuggee fanatics. My reason tells me that alone and unarmed,
you haven’t a prayer of saving yourself, much less Lucy. Yet, my
soul tells me that you are her one hope.

Please, Captain McCord, save my Lucy.

And ask her forgiveness for my telling her I would follow her. I
go now to join the ranks of my fathers, in whose presence I will not
feel shamed if you but get my Lucy to safety.

Colonel Lionel Wentworth.

I looked up, stared into my past, and whispered, “You got my word, Colonel.”
**********************
And no movie did the "Westerner Fish-Out-Of-Water" better than QUIGLY DOWN UNDER. And if I could pick anyone to play Sam McCord, it would be Tom Selleck.