HEAD OFF ON THE VENGEANCE TRAIL!

HEAD OFF ON THE VENGEANCE TRAIL!

July 1870

By Dennis E. Power

            The Indian brave screamed in terror and threw his lance at me. My eyes honed in on the iron tip of the lance as it flew through the air, growing ever larger as it neared me. For a moment I felt helpless, like a deer transfixed on a rail line as the engine screams down the track with looming finality.

            Instinctively my hands twitched with the need to somehow deflect or catch the lance arcing towards me. Tied fast to my saddle my hands could not have reached the lance, even if they hadn’t been severed.

            The lance tip seemed the size of a mountain’s peak swooping down towards my face when I grabbed for the lance. Pain like having a heated bayonet ripping through your brain tore through my skull and the lance stopped a inch away from my head. It hung there motionless for a second before dropping like a stone to the desert floor.

            The group of three Indians gaped at me. After a second’s pause a middle aged member of the group shot at me with his rifle. As he fired his barrel jerked upward as if knocked aside by someone’s hand. His misfire had been accompanied by another flash of pain through my head. I had wished I could knock the barrel from his grasp. 

            One of the older Apache held up a calming hand and spoke to me. Although his talk was  gibberish after he spouted a few words I started understanding him. He asked why I had appeared to them. They thought I was some kind of spirit.

            Fear rose out of them like a dense humid cloud of steam rising from boiling pot. It astounded me that I could feel their emotions and that I could see myself through their eyes. I fully understood their terror, and to an extent, I shared it. I did not understand what I had become. Did I still live? Was I a ghost or had I become a demon?

            When they first spotted me, they thought I was the result of some great medicine jest. That some tribe had killed a bluecoat, strapped the body atop of a horse, severed the arms and head put them atop the body and set it a-wandering. It was funny to them even if it wasted a good horse.

            They planned to remedy the situation by taking the horse and dumping the bluecoat body on the dry earth. As the Apache moved closer they realized that the severed arms held pistols and that my head was not tied onto the saddle. Instead I held onto the reins by my teeth, my eyes held their gaze and my hands tracked their movement.

            My brain felt as though it were afire but I talked in a thin, whisper around the reins in my mouth, using Apache words churning about in my mind. I told them how I came to be in this fix.

            My name was Paul Crane, I guess I could use it still but it seems disrespectful to use the name of a dead man. Paul Crane died one spring night by knife, gunshot and fire. 

            When the War betwixt the States broke out I was a recent graduate of West Point stationed in St. Louis. My family was from the South. Where ain’t no one’s concern. I say where and everybody would be pestering what’s left of my family.

             I knew that Union wasn’t whipped straight on, the Confederacy it was doomed. As part of General Van Dorn’s Army of the West I was captured at Pea Ridge and sent to an internment camp. The horrors of the camp persuaded me to never again let my heart over rule my head. When offered the chance to get out the camp I jumped at it and became a “galvanized” Yankee to fight the Indians out west during the course of the war. After the South’s inevitable loss, I remained with the US Army for a time but left in late 1869 to seek my fortune in the silver strikes in Nevada.

            While passing through Cairn, Nevada I stopped in at the Lost Spur Saloon. After a few shots of demon rum, I agreed to join a search posse. Some dumb prospector had gotten lost in the Amargosa desert near Cairn.

            We searched for about a day and a half for that fool prospector but never found him. What we did find was a band of Comanche who killed off a goodly portion of our search party.

            The Comanche drove us into a valley between two shallow mountains. They refused to follow us into the pass between the two mountains. I figured that it was some sort of trap but figured it could not be worse than the fate we had behind us. I had no wish to be scalped alive or have burning splinters shoved into my tenders. However there proved to be no trap. In fact we found nothing dangerous inside the pass or in the small valley beyond it. The valley was an oasis with a lake in its center.

            Five of us rode into that valley. Bear Marks, a half-breed Injun said that the Comanche believed that these mountains were filled with evil spirits, that ghost lights often shined up from the mountains at night.

            Laughing this off as savage superstition, we made camp by the lake. After filling our canteens, we made preparations to leave in the morning.

            While searching for some firewood Donegal Ryan found a small cave no bigger than a man’s head. A glint caught his eyes. He pulled out a handful of glimmering dust, dirt with a few golden flecks.

           

            The other members of the search party had known each other from Cairn; they quickly made a pact to share the gold while giving me the stink eye. I told them that I had an engineering degree (which was true) with mining experience (which was not true). They reluctantly made me a full partner.

            Bear Marks insisted that we become blood brothers. He devised a bizarre, savage ritual where we all slashed our palms, drained a few drops into a cup and added a pinch of valley dust with gold sparkle to it. After being well mixed, the cup was passed and every man took a swallow. The taste was quite foul and a strange tingling sensation rushed through me as the blood and soil mixture hit my gullet.

            Each one of us experienced the same peculiar feeling. Bear Marks remarked that it was strong medicine.

            My new blood brothers were Bear Marks, Belar Davidovich, Donegal Ryan and Ross Irving. We were quite an odd assortment.

            Belar Davidovich was a grim, dour faced Russian with a bad foot. He claimed that he had been a member of the Ohkrana, the Tsar’s secret police. He had been exiled to Alaska after nearly beating a suspect to death. This particular suspect had powerful friends. When Aliaska had become an American territory, he had emigrated south. He was fast with his fists and his shotgun. His passion seemed to be games of chance.

            Donegal Ryan had been a printer by trade. He had tried to revolutionize the printing trade by creating mercury-based inks. Purportedly he had been driven out of the printing industry because of the jealousy of all the other printers. They were jealous because his ideas were ahead of their time and because God had set his mark upon Ryan to spread his word.

            Ryan spoke to God quite often, having long conversations with Him. Not being quite as devout as Ryan, it seemed to me as though he was talking to thin air. God’s Chosen Printer was subject to rapid changes in temperament; he had a fondness for practical jokes and he spoke in tongues although to me it sounded like he was prone to make animal noises at the oddest times.          

            Ross Irving was a short man of Negro, Cherokee, Irish and Scotch heritage. He was called the Snake because of his quick movements and generally foul disposition. You never knew when he could turn mean and strike at you and you generally never saw it coming until it was too late.

            Irving was an enthusiast of town ball and claimed to have played it professionally in the east. He could throw and catch ball fairly well and always carried a bat with him. However his bat was filled with lead and he used it as a weapon.

            Bear Marks was a half-breed Choctaw. His White father had raised him until the age of ten until he had been killed in a drunken fight. Bear Marks was then dumped on his Choctaw Mama.

            After having been raised among Whites for several years, Bear Marks was not well-versed in woodcraft. Yet to make friends quickly he claimed to have more knowledge than he actually did. This was to prove an almost fatal error. He and a few Choctaw boys went hunting and inadvertently roused a bear from its lair. The other boys had skinned up a tree. Bear Marks did not move fast enough and the bear had clawed his back, leaving a jagged, ragged V-shaped scar. Also a semicircular section of his scalp had been gouged out of the back of his head, leaving it permanently bald.

            Bear Marks had grown into a large man, well over six feet tall and built solidly built.

Yet he remained sensitive about his bald spot and always wore a small black derby to cover it. He was intelligent and read vociferously but wasted his time on dime novels. His favorite was about some Mexican vigilante named El Murceilago who dressed all in black and wore a silken black cape and hood.

            Our gold mine played out in three months. To be frank we were all relieved when the last of the gold was discovered. Clashes were frequent and some of the partners came to blows at times. I bore the brunt of much of their wrath, since they seemed to blame me for the small amount of gold that our mine produced. I learned to sleep with my guns nearby. Each of us had enough to fill two saddle bags.

            Personalities aside, we were all uneasy with each other because the valley itself made us edgy.

            There was indeed something eerie about the valley. Often the lake’s surface and the rocky ground glowed ever so slightly at night, suffusing the entire valley in a soft blue misty radiance. The longer we stayed in the valley the stranger we felt. Our appetites decreased and our natures became ever more belligerent and suspicious. For me, the prickling sensation that I had felt upon drinking the blood potion increased, my skin felt as if insects were continuously scurrying across my naked flesh.

            On our final night, in the valley we divided our shares and put them into mule bags. There was a slight celebration and two bottles of two-dollar whisky were used up.

            After the bottles were done I rose up to go to my bedroll.. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash but failed to move fast enough. Snake Irving clobbered me on the side of the head with the ball bat he always carried. A black void shot through with crimson pain filled my vision.

            I awoke shortly before noon on Friday. My head pounded and the sun blazed on my face like an open furnace door. All I could see was blazing white light. I could not move nor could I feel my arms and legs. Four dark silhouettes shaded my eyes from the burning sun for a moment. As my vision cleared I saw that I was tied to a cross made of mine timbers, my arms and legs were so tightly lashed that my circulation had stopped and my fingers were swelling like cooking sausages.

            My erstwhile partners all stood before me, wielding weapons and smiling evil grins.

            Seeing that I was awake, Donegal Ryan let loose with a coyote howl. Laughing, he asked, “Thought you were gonna cheat us, didn’t you?”

            “What?” came out of my throat in a hoarse croak.

            Davidovich limped over, pressed his forehead against mine and glared deep into my eyes. In his deep Slavic accent, he says, “We knowed you sabotage mine so all gold seem gone. Then you come back and get rest. We got enough now. Yours is ours now.”

            As he limped back to the others, Davidovich said, “We should leave him to birds but birds not never come to this damned valley.”

            Giggling wildly, Donegal Ryan raised his shotgun. He emptied one barrel against each of my shoulders, disintegrating muscle and bone, messily amputating my arms. The pain was excruciating and a thick mist of red agony clouded my vision. As my eyes stung, as my screaming mouth tasted coppery salty tang, I realized that the red mist was my own blood.

            Donegal Ryan and I had both been baptized, red droplets spotted our faces. Ryan licked his lips as my blood streamed into his mouth. A violent convulsion struck me and Ryan at the same time.

            The sky darkened as storm clouds slowly moved over the valley.

            Snake Irving ran up to the cross and smashed my kneecaps with his ball bat. The cartilage tore and bone cracked, jutting out of my skin in flowery explosions of red and white.

            His bat was coated with my blood. A thin crimson streamer coursed down the handle of his bat, when it touched his hand he screamed as if it were acid.

            Although half delirious, I was shocked to see blisters form on Irving’s hand.

            I wished for sweet oblivion but I remained awake and in anguish.

            Whooping like a stage Indian, Bear Marks moved towards me, his Bowie knife flashing at my throat. I almost smiled, knowing he would soon end my agony. Yet he did not. The blade bit deep into the flesh of my jaw and slashed upwards. With a wet sucking sound and a teeth-clacking rip, Bears Marks tore my bloody beard from my chin.

            Lifting his derby, he stuck the bloody mass of hair over the bald spot on the back of his head.

            As my scalped beard touched the smooth, scarred expanse of Bear Marks' skin, he moaned and dropped to his knees as if in great pain. Screaming, his large hands gripped the hair patch and yanked on it with all his might but it would not and could not be dislodged.

            Fear filled Davidovich’s eyes, muttering something in Russian, he stuck the muzzle of his shotgun against my Adam’s apple.

            The sun flashed briefly from behind a dark gray cloud. It was high noon.

            Thunder boomed across the sky as Davidovich slipped back the hammers.

            The gun muzzle felt strangely cool and comforting against my baking hot flesh. The first droplets of rain, so soft, wet and warm splashed off of the metal. We were both splashed with fragments of the same droplets. A grim, mad smile lit his face.

            Lightning crashed against an outcropping of rock behind us. Davidovich started.

            Blue-white explosion and then ? nothingness.

            It was just before dawn when I awoke and it took me a long time to get my bearings. The valley was cool and dark, still damp with morning mist. Taking a deep breath, I filled my nostrils with the sweet, harsh, gagging stench of rotting meat. Nausea tickled my throat, yet it was a distant, almost phantom sensation.

            Turning my head sent me tumbling a few feet across a wash. After recovering from the spinning sensation, I took in my surroundings. Although I seemed to be sitting up, the ground was only inches away from my eyes.

            Out of the corner of my eye I beheld a horrific sight. A headless body without arms and with bizarrely twisted legs lay near me. The chest of this body rose and fell in a normal breathing pattern. Next to it lay an arm which looked as if it had been torn from its socket yet the fingers wiggled ever so slightly.

            A scream ripped through my throat but the resulting sound was slightly more than a whisper. After my hysterics passed I steeled myself to look downwards. Below my chin trailed several strands of wet glistening muscle and a few inches of reddish white bone. These twitched and I learned what remained of my vocal apparatus, spine and vertebrae had become malleable and to some degree, prehensile.

            I pushed upwards and holding my  head  up  high,  I  crawled  like  a  snake,  the trachea, larynx, esophagus and vertebrae sinuously winding behind me. However the first bump I hit sent me face forwards into the sand.

            I spat out or rather tried to spit out a mouthful of sand. Since my mouth had no moisture it was more like trying to dryly blow the sand from my mouth. All I could do really was push the sand out of my mouth with my tongue. I flailed my “tail” behind as I attempted to right myself but the angle at which I lay was the wrong one for the tail to get leverage. I tried pushing against the ground with my lips but kissing Mother Earth proved unsuccessful. I grit my teeth and then began sinking them into the ground, grabbing large mouthfuls of the foul and gritty sand. Using my tongue and still functioning glottis I pushed the sand down my throat cavity until it passed out the jagged opening of my flesh. After a while I had swallowed enough sand to push me level once again.

            I carefully snaked up close to my body. The body’s skin was pale white with light blue highlights. The remnants of my uniform were sodden and the ground beneath the body was muddy.

            As I watched the chest rise and fall I wondered about the ghost lights of the valley. I had never been one to believe in the supernatural so believed that there was a scientific reason for the blue lights. I wondered if perhaps some substance, perhaps what the alchemists had called owls’ teeth, was responsible for the blue lights. According to some texts owl’s teeth had been the final secret ingredient that transformed lead into gold, and was a key ingredient in the elixir vitae.

            Perhaps the lake was permeated with this substance and a flash flood had covered my body shortly after I had been mutilated. This brought to mind Mary Shelly’s tale. Had some strange alchemical processes transformed my tissue making me, like Frankenstein’s monster a being, not living and not dead, existing in some strange half life.

            Determined to confront whatever obstacles had been placed in my life's path, I slowly slithered up to the lake and gazed upon my reflection. The sight that greeted me was hideous in the extreme.

            The shotgun blast had not decapitated me cleanly. The neck stump ended in a jigsaw configuration. Vertebra, muscle and flesh tissue trailed for about six inches below my neck stump. My skin was mummy dry and had taken on a paper white complexion with a hint of pale blue.

            Since I no longer salivated, dirt and grass coated the inside of my mouth but I did not consciously taste it. My once proud moustaches still remained but were caked with blood, mud and weeds. Since Bear Marks had scalped my chin my beard was gone, replaced by a clotted mass of blackish dried blood, dirt and sand at the end of my chin. My face was thoroughly inundated with grime and dried gore.

            My eyes still burnt bright with life, although there was a peculiar bluish tint to the whitish area. The most amazing thing was that despite my explosive beheading and subsequent travels, my old U.S. Cavalry hat still sat on my head. As it had healed, the wound on my throat had permanently sealed the chin cord into my flesh.

            I had no conception of how long I had been unconscious since my death, I later figured it to be three days, so I awoke early Sunday morning. Read into that what you will.

            After the initial revulsion and horror of my new existence had abated, a white-hot rage gripped me. With no thought as to the consequences, I slithered out of the valley and toward my murderers.

            When I had traveled some twenty feet from my body, I felt immediately fatigued, at twenty-five feet my spine stiffened and my vision had gone dim. These sensations ceased as I crawled back toward my body. There was some strange connection between my head and my carcass which prevented me from leaving it at any great distance.

            I sat in the sun for hours on end, I pondering on how I could leave this valley, take my body with me and how to do so without hands. Oddly enough I could feel my body and even feel my arms and fingers but they felt very distant. At first I believed I was experiencing ghost pains. The same sort of sensation some soldiers who had lost arms or legs experienced of still feeling their severed limbs. When I concentrated on the prickling feeling it left me dog tired but the feeling of having my arms somehow solidified. The more I thought about moving my arms the easier it became, although my brain ached as if it would split from the effort.

            I rested from working my severed hands and arms and I explored the valley. Slithering slowly over familiar territory I practiced my mobility and I catalogued what materials were available to me. My companions had left almost all our mining tools behind.

            What I needed, barring the most necessary item, was in the valley. I could only hope that whatever guardian angel or devil had given me a chance for revenge would provide me with this needed item at the opportune time.

            Although it took hours of often frustrating effort I learned to operate my hands once again. The more I used my arms and hands the stronger the linkages between them and my brain became. It was as if I was able to control them through invisible puppet strings over which I gained greater and greater mastery. Within a day one hand could hold a nail and the other could manipulate a hammer. The latter was rather strange I know since there weren’t any resisting muscles to provide force to the hammer blow, yet the force seemed to come from somewhere. Eventually I nailed a make-ship pulley made from a stirrup onto a ten-foot timber. Then my limbs, looking like bizarre white spider-snakes ran a rope through the pulley and then lashed another rope about halfway down the first rope’s length, giving it a forked end. On each of the forked ends I had my hands tie slip-knotted loops.

            My hands used trowels to dig a ten-foot long trench with the deepest end sloping some four feet deep. The hands never tired although they did become severely abraded. A dark reddish serum seeped up from the wounds. When night fell a slight blue radiance glowed from the wounded flesh. My limbs pushed the ten-foot timber into the trench and gradually filled the trench incrementally, the weight of the dirt pushing the timber upright until it slid into the deepest part of the trench. They then filled the hole around the timber and packed the dirt tightly around the timber.

            Despairing of divine intervention, I decided to provide me with transportation in the only manner I had open to me. I thought about it.

            I formed a clear picture of Brimstone, my horse, in my mind and coupled it with a picture of this valley and called his name, sending forth my thoughts in as wide a radius as I could. I did this day in and day out, until my eyes ached and my skull pounded with agony.

            After six days I was finally rewarded one morning with a whinny and the sound of hooves pounding on rock.

            Brimstone had not left the area but he had avoided me for several days.

            My vocal and mental commands to him had little effect until the day he grazed on a patch of grass near where I had been mutilated. As he ate this grass, I felt the same prickling sensation I had when my blood had been splattered on my so-called partners.

            Insight struck me like a thunderbolt. The bizarre substance in the air, earth and water in this valley had affected my blood.

            The prickling sensation I experienced was my mind deciphering my blood's movements just as a telegraph key deciphers the electrical impulses in a telegraph wire. It is an inaccurate description yet it is the closest analogy I can picture.

            When I extended my awareness, I felt the remnants of my blood in the grass, soil, water and air in this valley. Since the elements in nature were breaking down the structures of my blood cells I also experienced some small pinpricks of pain.

            I felt the desiccated blood cells in my body parts, dying and not dying, transforming into — something else. My body was rotting, albeit at an exceedingly slow pace.  Yet my head was not.  I wondered what would happen, when my body had disintegrated. Would this then be death for me or would my mind remained trapped in an unrotting shell of head.

            If I concentrated to the brink of unconsciousness, I sensed the living cells of my blood, still alive, still living in new hosts, those of my partners. With total concentration I could follow, eventually find them and wreak my vengeance.

            Having absorbed some of my living cells, I could influence Brimstone Unfortunately, I could not increase his intelligence nor could I alter his personality. He fought me at every turn and it was only through my superior intellect that I won out although at first I could only force him to follow simple commands.

            Through brain aching concentration I forced my hands to make the final preparations that would allow me to leave this accursed valley.

            My hands tied a rope around my body. After some painstaking hand measurements they also pounded a stake into the ground. They then tied the longest piece of rope attached to a pulley around my body.

            Then it was my turn. I grasped the longest piece of rope hanging from the pulley in my teeth, grasped the looped end with my vertebrae and began to work my way up the rope by chewing sideways inch by inch,  not allowing my jaws to open any wider than to chew further up the rope.

            It took me a day and a half to work myself up to a height above Brimstone's back. I tasted that tarred rope every inch of the way. Fortunately my sense of taste was a ghost of what it had been. Although several times I felt like retching, I knew this was only psychological.

I stopped my ascent directly over a deliberately weakened area of the rope.

           

            I never got hungry but I did grow quite tired and nearly passed out from exhaustion. When I could not go any further, I rested for a few hours, jaws clenched all the while, before trying to drop the loop onto the saddle horn. Yes, fortunately Brimstone was still saddled otherwise it might have been impossible for to have left the valley.

            I commanded Brimstone to stand stock-still underneath me. Taking a deep, and quite unnecessary, breath through my nose, I released my vertebrae's grip on the loop of rope. It swung in a low arc and missed the saddle horn. I closed my mouth and screamed through my teeth for it meant I would have to drop below and start all over. I was about to let go of the rope and fall to the ground when, on one of its swings the rope loop slipped over the saddle horn. Feeling it catch, Brimstone started forward as he had been previously trained and cinched it tight. He moved forward and as the rope pulled and raised my body.

            As Brimstone pulled the rope it lifted my body, it also brought the rope I had tied halfway up the pulling rope closer to the ground. When my body had been hoisted to a sufficient height to place it on Brimstone’s back, On cue, Brimstone stopped.. With a concentration that drove a spike of agony into my brain, I made my hands grasp the shorter rope and fasten its loop around the stake we had driven in the ground, thus securing the pull rope and keeping my body suspended in midair.

            Another command had Brimstone go stand directly under where my body was hanging. Here was another tricky part. I commanded my hands to hold fast to the staked rope. Shifting down the rope with my teeth, I allowed the weakened section of the rope to snap, clenching hard with my teeth I rode the rope down and smacked hard against Brimstone's hindquarters.

            Bouncing twice and swinging in a wide arc, I had to use all my concentration to keep Brimstone from bolting and to make sure my hands held onto the staked rope.

            Once Brimstone was positioned once more, my hands unfastened the staked rope. My broken torso fell a few inches and plopped square into Brimstone's saddle.

            I now compelled Brimstone into a deep slumber, standing in place. My eyes burned as thought they were on fire and my brain felt like mush. Yet I had to persevere. My arms scurried over to the horse and climbed up to the saddle, grasping the stirrups and working their way upwards.

            My right arm was the first to clamber atop the saddle so I made it wedge itself in a secure place and to grasp the other arm tightly. The other hand grabbed the rope from which I dangled and drew me up. This was not as easy as it sounds. The arm did not have sufficient reach or leverage to pull me all the way up to the saddle. I chewed my way up the rope once more.

            Now being fairly secure, I had my hands draw the reins up, so I could grasp them in my mouth. The hands pulled the piece of rope cinched to the saddle through my Calvary belt three times and looped it off.  This was probably the most agonizing and tedious of the operations thus far, since it required a level of manual dexterity I could barely muster with all my concentration.

            After a few hours my body was securely tied to the saddle. My arms tucked themselves into my shirt. I awoke Brimstone and allowed him to graze.

            As I positioned myself next to my body, I noticed that it was getting quite ripe. The stench was almost enough to make me choke, that is if it had been physically possible for me to do so.

            I wondered how long I had to fulfill my vengeance. How long had God given me to avenge my death? Somehow I knew that I could not or would not be allowed to die until I had achieved justice.

            Brimstone, my corpse and I exited the cursed valley near midnight, about two months after my demise, as I reckon. My body, I  and  to  some  extent  Brimstone  glowed  with  a ghostly blue radiance  illuminating  for  some  distance  the  black,  moonless desert night.

            My horse was named Brimstone before we were affected by the strangeness of the valley. His golden color and fiery spirit is why I named him Brimstone. The blue glow he acquired after the valley made the name appropriate.

            What strange force had turned me into a disembodied head and disassembled body I cannot in truth name. Be it God, Devil or some peculiar force of Nature, I only know that it has kept me alive and wrought other transformations on me, many of which I am still discovering.

            After hearing of my tale they conferred amongst themselves for a bit. The oldest one turned towards me and said. "The Great One has gifted you with so much powerful medicine we are like infants before your might. We will tell all we see about your medicine and soon every lodge will know of El Jefe Hombre, the Head Man. I can see that like Child of Water, you too will slay monsters and help the People.”

           

            I laughed at that. Even the brave Apache warriors were a bit tacked aback by that raspy, whispery sound.

            “Well, the men I seek are certainly monsters. I don’t know about helping folks but won’t hurt  them that don’t get in my way.”

            Relief showed on the youngest of the Apache. I guess he thought I might still be a mite stewed about him trying to skewer me. Truth to be told, I didn’t want to waste a bullet.

            For all my misfortune, I felt good at that particular moment. I winked back at the Apache and said, "I'm a head off on the vengeance trail”

            I laughed again and as I did a lightning bolt stabbed out of the clear blue sky and blew apart a small boulder between me and the Apaches. They wheeled their horses away and rode as if death were after them.  Although I had nothing to do with the lightning bolt its energy somehow amplified my whispery laugh into a great boom that echoed across the dry caked soil and reverberated through the stone outcroppings for miles and rang in my ears for hours.