This was written for Bradley Ramsey’s Flash Fiction February. This was for the Day 28 Prompt. The last one!
The house was dark and still when I arrived home from the cattle run. Usually, I’d see smoke coming from the chimney and lights in the windows. As I approached, I’d hear voices and laughter — warmth that meant I was home.
But not that night.
That night there was silence and a chill that raised the hair on my arms. The dogs didn’t even come out to greet me. The front door was closed, but not barred. I called out as I pushed it open, but there was no answer.
I swallowed hard and pushed into the shadowed front room. Everything was tidy, neatly put where it belonged. Everything but my family and the smell of the fresh bread my ma baked each day.
But as I opened the door of my parents’ bedroom, the mingled smells of copper and death hit me so hard I doubled over. I knew that smell — I’d smelled it at the slaughterhouses in St. Louis. The stink of rotten eggs hovered above it all like a layer of misery.
Closing my eyes, I swallowed convulsively, forcing down the vomit that was screaming to escape my throat. Not my family. Not ma and pa.
I pushed into the dark room and lit the kerosene lamp with the pretty flowers ma kept on her dresser. As the flame grew, the light spread across the room, revealing the still forms of my parents laid out together on the bed like they’d just fallen asleep atop the quilt. Their hands were clasped between them.
But they clearly hadn’t died there — both of them had bullet holes between their eyes. A small trickle of blood had soaked through the quilt into the mattress and had puddled on the floor. Whoever did this had put them here together.
I choked off my sob. My ma was the gentlest soul who ever lived, and my pa was an honorable man. What kind of animal could’ve done this? And where was Sally?
My sister was only seven years old — a miracle child my parents hadn’t expected, but loved with all their hearts. I rushed to her room and shoved open the door, but she wasn’t there. I checked under her bed and in the fancy armoire pa ordered from back east for her. No sign of her, but all of her dresses were missing.
I searched the rest of the house. I checked the outhouse. I looked in the barn and the shed. Sally wasn’t anywhere. But one of the horses was gone, too, along with the child-sized saddle they’d had made for her in town.
I closed my eyes and prayed. Please, Lord, let Sally be safe.
As the thought finished, I was on my horse and riding at a gallop to the Bishops’ — our nearest neighbors. Twenty minutes later, I leapt from my horse and was pounding on their front door, the same prayer still repeating in my head.
It took a few minutes for the door to open. When it did, Bishop held a shotgun pointed at me, clearly ready to fire. My hands went up even as my mouth spat the words, “Is Sally here? Is she okay? Do you know what happened?”
He stared at me long and hard, then slowly lowered the weapon and gestured for me to enter. “We got her,” he said quietly, nodding his head toward a door at the back of the room.
I was moving before I could think, pushing open that door to see Sally’s dark hair spread across a pillow, her little chest rising and falling as she slept peacefully. I fell to my knees and finally let the tears come.
I don’t know how long I knelt there, my tears soaking the cotton of my shirt, before Mr. Bishop’s hand came to rest on my shoulder. “Come on out and let’s talk, son,” he said quietly, careful not to wake my baby sister.
I nodded, rose and followed him out to the main room, where we sat in front of the fire. He told me what had happened to my parents, as Sally had told it to him.
A stranger had passed through, and my kindhearted parents — who never saw evil in anyone — allowed him to stay overnight in the barn. They invited him in for dinner, and that’s where they were when the second stranger came. A man wearing all black with hard eyes and a fast pistol.
He was there for the stranger, claimed he was a fugitive. But the man in black had no badge, so my parents tried to keep him out — tried to protect the guest they’d invited into their home.
The man shot my pa first, a single bullet fired between his eyes. My ma shrieked and rushed at him, and he shot her, too. The guest tried to flee, so the man shot him in the back, then finished him where he fell. Sally claimed some kind of fire came from the dead man’s head, but Mr. Bishop thought she was just scared so bad she couldn’t think straight.
The man in black had then gathered Sally’s dresses and underthings into a bag, saddled her horse, and he’d brought her to the Bishops’ home. He’d knocked and left. Sally was standing alone on the front stoop when Mr. Bishop opened the door.
Bishop had waited until morning, then taken his shotgun and headed to my house. When he arrived, he’d found it the same way I did — the front room cleaned of blood and my parents lying together in bed.
He’d sent word to the sheriff in town and left everything as he found it. Two days. The man had ridden away two days ago.
“Will you keep Sally safe?” I asked. Mr. Bishop looked to his wife, and she nodded.
“We love her like she was our own,” she answered me.
“Thank you,” I said simply. “I’ll come back if I can.”
Then I rose and went to brush Sally’s pale cheek. “I’ll get justice for ma and pa,” I whispered my promise to her sleeping face.
Mrs. Bishop hugged me. I shook Mr. Bishop’s hand. There was no need to explain. I headed for my horse.
I felt my eyes fill again, but I brushed the tears away angrily. I swung into the saddle and did not turn around.
I had work to do.
🐴 Interested in learning more? Find out what happens when Jameson meets the man in black in Two Hunts in Tucson.
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Oh this is so heart breaking....
Oh wow, this was so sad, but paced so well that I couldn't stop reading!