The Rot of Annie Dawson Part 1

A preacher man with a gun.

The summer of 1943

 

Stone Solomon stood in the doorway of his father's study, watching him load the revolver called Azazel. He took each bullet into his large hands, rub them between his fingers, and then slip them into the hole of the weapon. A little black hole filled with death waiting to blast some poor soul into the afterlife. Stone had never questioned why a Preacher, like his father, Josh Duke Solomon, carried a weapon with him almost all hours of the day.

               But then again, this was Texas, and Stone carried a gun most days, even at fifteen. Tonight, the young boy knew it was not like other nights. Josh had pulled down the black box from the top shelf brought out the golden key to open it. He grabs the specially made revolver from the box. Azazel, Josh had explained to his son, was like no other weapon on earth.

               He told his son the gun was made from seven halos, blessed with the power to beat the Night, and only a Solomon could will the weapon. It gave the family a unique blessing, unlike anything else in the world.

               Stone didn’t believe in the stories.

               He saw the gun as most people saw it, unique with its bright silver and gold inlays wrapping around the whole thing. The gold reached up to the barrel and then fell back to the handle. It was like nothing Stone had ever seen before, and he had never seen his father use it before.

               Josh glanced back at his son with a hard face. His father grew on the farms reading only the Good Word. His father was a hard man to live under and would beat his children with a whip like they were slaves. Josh’s back was covered in scars, scars only Stone had seen once in his life.

               His gray eyes stared hard at Stone. They shared those eyes along with their vast and powerful bodies. Their family was from the old Netherlands to close to being German now, but with the war going on, they didn’t say too much about where they came from right now.

               Josh nodded at his son, putting the gun into its holster. “Is your loaded?”

               “Yes, sir,” Stone said, putting his hand on the hilt of his weapon.

               “Good,” Josh said, rushing to his son. “You understand why we have to do this?”

               “I think so,” Stone said.

               “We can’t let this evil live in our town,” Josh said. “She will poison everything. She had already poisoned my mind once, but the Lord has allowed me to see the she-devil for what she is.”

               “Yes, sir,” Stone said.

               “Josh,” Stone’s mother said from behind them. They both looked at the tiny English women with her strawberry blonde hair falling over her shoulders in her nightgown. Stone had always thought his mother was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He told himself if he ever fell in love, it would be someone like her, but he feared, he guessed like all boys, that there no one like his mother in the whole world. All the women he would meet along his life would far short to his mother. A truth, he couldn’t bear to think about most nights, and this Night most of all.

               “Don’t take him,” Emily said, almost crying. “He just a boy. He is not ready.”

               “The world doesn’t wait for you to be ready,” Josh said, standing up and walking over to his wife. He went to kiss her, but she turned away from him. “He is a man now, rather we like it or not.”

               “If you don’t come back with my son,” Emily growled at him, “then don’t come back at all.” Stone’s father might run the fields, the church, and the shop, but in truth, Emily ran him. She was the boss in the house, Stone knew it, all the farmhands knew it, but most of all, Josh understood it.

               “Come on, boy,” He said in a dark tone, grabbing his black hat and heading for the door.

               Stone didn’t say a word. He followed his dad for the door, but his mother stopped him. Stone, like his father, was tall, almost a giant to most people around him. Where most tall folks were thin, weak looking, the Solomon’s were not. They all seem to be chiseled from marble.

               “You listen to your pa,” Emily said, looking her son dead in the eyes. “You come back; you hear me.”

               “Yes, ma’am.”

               “I love you,” Emily said, kissing him on the cheek. “The girls and I will be praying for you both.”

               “Thanks, mom, love you too,” Stone said. He broke away from his mother’s hands, picking up his black hat and stepping out into the Night. His father lite up a cigar let the smoke filled the air looking up at stars seen only from Texas as all the stars could be seen.

               “Son,” Josh said after a second of letting the night wash over them,” God is with us tonight.”

               “Yes, sir,” Stone said.

               A black car pulled up to the house and out stepped a man named Jeremiah Wolf, the foremen of the farmhands and a close friend to Josh. He always wore a golden bracelet around his wrist. Stone had never seen the man without it. He scared face looked up at them. Scars all the farmhands said he got from hunting bears and wolves in Canada. Stone had no idea if it was true, but he knew Jeremiah was a great hunter.

               “Let’s get this mess over with,” Jeremiah groaned.

Author's Note

If you had made it this far, then I appreciate it, and before you start to tear my work apart (which doesn’t bother me too much), let me explain something. The most common critique I see is about my spelling and grammar. It is an understandable critique, and I do not blame you for pointing it out. After all, spelling and grammar are the tools in which we use to craft our work, like a paintbrush or a chisel. The artist must know how to use these tools well, but like an artist who has a tremble in their hand's somethings will never be perfect.
My tremble in my hand is caused by my dyslexia. It is something, no matter how much I learn, study, or works on, it will never go away. It is the reason you will find a good bit of spelling and grammar mistakes in my work. I ask you to keep this fact in my when you are about to write your critique.
Also, I feel the need to point this out, this website is like a journal for me. A mess journal I used to work out problems in my stories or to simply warm up before digging into my novels. I do not hire an editor for the work here. I do not spend hours and days pouring over these stories to make them perfect, that energy is saved for the project I plan on taking to market. Everything on this website is my world-building exercise or sketches for other projects.
I do hope you enjoy my work, but this website is not a publishing house for me, and it shouldn’t be for you either. Something to keep in mind as you write your critique.