Still working hard on my next sojourn into my Little Dixie universe, "Trade Yer Coffin for a Gun". After a few creative setbacks I am on the right track and going strong. About 65% done I would reckon.
This is just the intro, very brief, but sets the tone well I believe.
Intro:
The Haints
There were three of them. Unholy,
the three of them.
Two tall cowboys and a small woman. One of the
men was a fellow with a face so grave it looked ready to crack right down its
center. The countenance of a barroom brawler.
The other man was several years younger, tow headed and blue eyed with a
candy-sweet grin. A charmer of women who had rarely known a cold bed. Yet it
was the woman who cut the most striking figure, always shrouded in a dark hooded
cloak with a matching veil wound tightly across her face. Even her hands were
bound in swaths of cloth as if to deny the sunlight even the slightest commerce
with her flesh. Many strange tales had been spun about them. Half probably bullshit,
but the other half came from justifiable mouths which had nothing to gain from
buillshittery. Those stories were far scarier than the ones proven to be horsefeathers.
Awful things which couldn’t have been gospel, and if they were, Jesus help you
if you found yourself cowering in the long shadow of their horses.
Wherever they rode folks moved aside for them
as if they radiated something unnatural. Something that made you want to get
out of their way and mind your own affairs.
The trio wandered the length and breadth of
the South, killing for hire and charging a hefty fee for this killing. This was
in and of itself not an unusual profession in the days of blood and chaos
following hard upon the heels of the War Between the States. The Haints, as
they had come to be called, specialized in hounding down prey of a more
unnatural nature. Monsters, demons, fiends and other horrors which required
more than just a bullet to the brain or a blade across the throat to lay claim
to a bounty. It was whispered the woman herself was a formidable witch who had
a nose for seeking out such beings. Folks said she might not have been a
creature of this world. Most of the truly bloodcurdling rumors revolved around
her.
The origin of The Haints was buried in mystery
and balderdash, shaded by frightening truths and third-hand accounts of both
liars and preachers. One thing was certain, something old and mighty was on
their side. A thing orphaned from the cosmos that had outlived both God and The
Devil.
They moved through the world as if they were
not completely part of it.
Outside of time. Like ghosts.
