Colt Redhawk — The Hunger
The sky over the Kansas plains was the colour of a fresh bruise, a swirling mass of purple and angry grey. Below it, the prairie grass hissed, bowing low as if in prayer to the coming storm. Colt Redhawk urged his horse, a powerful black stallion named Shadowspur, into a faster canter. The air was thick, charged with the taste of dust and lightning, and Colt felt it not just on his skin, but deep in his bones—an old, familiar thrum of wrongness.
His psychic intuition was a current that ran beneath the surface of his thoughts, a river of feeling that guided him more surely than any map. Right now, that river was pulling him hard towards a dark shape on the horizon: a derelict farmstead, stark and lonely against the tumultuous sky.
As he drew closer, the details sharpened into a portrait of decay. A farmhouse, its windows like vacant eyes, sagged in on itself. A barn, listing to one side, looked like the splintered ribs of a long-dead beast. Only a single rocking chair on the porch seemed to defy the rot, sitting pristine and still amidst the chaos, untouched by the dust that coated everything else.
Shadowspur stamped a hoof, his ears twitching nervously. "Easy, boy," Colt murmured, his voice a low rumble. He swung down from the saddle, his worn leather duster settling around his tall frame. The silver inlay on the handle of his Colt revolver glinted, a stark contrast to the tarnished brass of the old Winchester rifle sheathed by his saddle.
He felt a familiar coolness settle beside him, a presence only he could see. "The air here is heavy, Atsá," spoke the spirit of Greyfeather. The Navajo guide appeared as he always did, a shimmering form in buckskins, his face a mask of ancient wisdom and sorrow. "Heavy with a story that has not been allowed to end."
Colt nodded, his gaze fixed on the house. "They're still here." It wasn't a question.
He walked towards the porch, his spurs a lonely chime in the charged silence. He reached out a hand, hesitating just inches from the rocking chair. Closing his eyes, he let the river of intuition flow. It brought him images, fragmented and cold: a woman’s hands, raw and chapped, gripping the arms of this very chair; the faint sound of a lullaby hummed through tears; a man’s voice, sharp and brittle as sun-baked earth.
The front door creaked open on its own, an invitation into the gloom. Inside, the air was frigid, a cold that had teeth. The smell was of dust, dry rot, and something else... the cloying, metallic scent of old fear. A child's wooden horse lay on its side in the centre of the room, one of its painted eyes staring up at the ceiling.
"They starved," Colt said, running a hand over his jaw. "The land turned on them."
"The land did not act alone," Greyfeather corrected softly. "It was given a reason. A price was paid."
Colt moved through the house like a wraith himself. In the kitchen, he found a family bible on a rickety table, its leather cover cracked and peeling. He opened it. The spidery script of a woman's hand detailed the births and marriages of the Miller family. The last entry was stark: April 1876. The rains have not come. The boy is sick. Jedediah prays day and night. He prays for a miracle.
Suddenly, a piercing wail echoed from upstairs. It was a sound of pure terror, a woman's shriek that was swallowed by a guttural, inhuman roar. Colt was moving before the echo faded, taking the stairs two at a time, his revolver now in his hand.
The bedroom was a maelstrom of spiritual energy. The spectral forms of a woman and a small boy flickered in the corner, their faces masks of terror. The woman, Elspeth, clutched her son, Thomas, trying to shield him from a hulking shape that dominated the room. It was the ghost of the father, Jedediah, but he was twisted, his form distended and monstrous, his eyes burning with an unholy light. He wasn't just a spirit; he was a jailer, an anchor for something far worse.
"He made a pact," Greyfeather's voice was grim in Colt's mind. "He offered their lives to a hunger spirit of the earth, in exchange for prosperity. He drowned them in the well, a sacrifice of water for water."
As the storm outside broke, lashing the farmhouse with rain, the spectral scene replayed its ghastly finale. Jedediah's form lunged, not at the ghostly figures of his family, but at Colt. The air crackled. The entity wanted new prey, and it tasted the darkness in Colt—the deep, cold stone of his own grief and rage.
For a second, an image flashed in Colt's mind: his own mother, her beautiful Navajo face streaked with tears, screaming his name as rough, laughing men dragged her away. The familiar fire of his hatred surged, and Jedediah's ghost seemed to grow stronger, feeding on it.
"No," Colt gritted his teeth, shoving the memory back into its cage. He was a conflicted man, torn between a desire to heal the world of its spiritual poisons and the personal vendetta that burned within him. But he would not let his poison feed this monster. He raised his revolver. "This debt is paid."
He fired. The silver-inlaid bullet passed through Jedediah's form, and the ghost recoiled with a scream of burning agony. Silver, the metal of purification, was anathema to its corrupt essence.
"The anchor, Colt!" Greyfeather urged. "The well! It is where the circle began!"
Colt turned and burst out of the house, back into the driving rain. Jedediah’s furious spirit pursued him, a shrieking vortex of dust and rage. Colt ignored the grasping, spectral hands that tore at his duster and raced to the old stone well in the yard.
He stared down into the blackness. The water below was not water; it was a void, a hungry mouth. This was the heart of the entity, the nexus of the pact. He knew what he had to do. He couldn't kill the dead, but he could sever the chain.
He ejected the spent casing and loaded another round. He held the Colt revolver steady, aiming into the abyss of the well. He didn't fire at a ghost, but at the idea of the bargain itself, at the lingering pain that poisoned the land. As he pulled the trigger, he spoke a single Navajo word Greyfeather had taught him for such moments: "Hózhó," a word for balance, for beauty, for release.
The silver bullet hit the dark water with a flash of brilliant white light. A terrible, earth-shaking scream erupted from the well, not of a man, but of something ancient and elemental being torn from its anchor. The spectral form of Jedediah Miller was pulled apart, dissolving into the tempest like smoke in the wind.
The storm ceased as if a switch had been thrown. The rain softened to a drizzle.
Near the well, the translucent figures of Elspeth and Thomas stood. The terror was gone from their faces, replaced by a profound, silent gratitude. They looked at Colt, a woman and a child finally free. They gave a single, solemn nod, then faded into the gentle morning light that was beginning to break through the clouds.
Colt stood over the well, the smell of ozone and old sorrow filling his lungs. He felt the familiar emptiness that followed such encounters. He had brought peace to this family, but it only served as a stark reminder of the peace he could not find for himself.
His eyes fell upon the silver inlay of his revolver, tracing the intricate patterns. The image of his mother’s face, her final, desperate look, returned to him, sharp and clear. He had sent these spirits to their rest, but the ones who had wronged him, the laughing cowboys who had created the ghost hunter, still walked the earth.
He holstered his weapon, the click echoing in the sudden quiet of the new day.
"Their story is over," Greyfeather said, his form beginning to fade with the rising sun.
"Mine isn't," Colt replied, turning his back on the now-silent farmstead. He walked to Shadowspur, swung into the saddle, and rode west, a solitary figure chasing a justice the world of the living had denied him, and the world of the dead could not provide.
