The Visitor Chapter 6

This is Chapter 6, scroll down for the previous chapters.  Leave some feedback please and let me know if you find any mistakes.  I wrote this years ago and am going to finish it up as I go.  After going to sleep, Kate dreams.

Kate stood in the street of the old frontier town.  She felt as if she could hardly breathe.  She looked down to see herself in an old fashioned, long dress and dirty lace up boots.  She felt her waist.  A corset squeezed at her torso.

She looked across the dusty dirt road to the bare wood buildings as the rider came in.  In this western setting she expected to see a horse, but it was not.  It had the body of a haggard camel.  Its huge feet slowly drug through the dirt as it walked down the dusty street toward her.  The beast was covered in wart like welts.  Its snout was hard and pointed, resembling that of a crow. 

Its rider was wearing a black duster and hat.  From the side she could only see dirty dark hair flowing from underneath the hat.  The beast stopped and the rider dismounted away from her.  Her heart was pounding in her chest.  She felt as if it might burst through the corset.  A sense of worry came over her as he was standing on the other side of the beast.  Heart pounding, she could hear it, she began breathing through her mouth, the corset squeezed her so tightly.  What is she going to do?

The visitor stepped in front of the beast and faced Kate.  Even with the full sun shining, from the distance Kate only saw darkness from her clothes to her hair to the dark glasses on her fat face.  The looked directly at Kate and spoke, “Believe me now?” then turned, looking back from where she rode in. 

Kate turned and faced that direction.  Although she could not see anything in the desert beyond, she knew something was out there.  She felt something bad had happened.

She turned and grabbed a horse that was behind her, jumped on and rode as fast as she could toward the edge of the small town.  Following a dirt path, she rode harder, out into the deserted prarie and after a few moments she saw several people lying on the ground ahead.

She stopped the horse at the first person she came to. She dismounted and stood over the man lying on the ground.  His face and hands were covered in blood from several cuts.  His face was ashen from the blood as it gathered dust from the desert winds.  A horrified look was frozen on his lifeless face.

Out of the corner of her eye she caught movement from another man. She ran over to see about him.  He was sitting up, his back against a large rock.  As she approached him she noticed he was severely beaten and bleeding, but still alive.  His eyes followed her as she came closer.  She locked her gaze upon his face.  As he drew his last breaths from his open, drooling mouth, his eyes were focused completely on her.

When she got closer she could see his right hand clutching a pistol.  She showed no fear; he appeared too weak to do anything threatening to her. 

Suddenly he held his breath and heaved his pistol, aiming it shakily at her.  He winced as he pulled back on the hammer.  Her eyes slowly watched the movement of his hand.  She noticed another cut across the back of hand as he struggled with the pistol.  What little blood he had left slowly ran from the cut and dripped from the grip of the gun.  His hand shook slightly, weak from holding up the gun, as it clicked on an empty round.  His arm dropped.

“I shot you.”  He moaned.  “I shot you, I killed you.  Why aren’t you dead?”  His voice faded to a whisper and he grew weaker with each word.  Finally his head slumped down and he moved no more.

Several steps ahead lay the last person.  She could tell from the long hair and dress it was a woman.  She was laying flat on her back and did not appear to move.  Slowly, Kate made her way over to the woman.  The first thing she noticed was the lower portion of her dress was ripped to shreds.  Bloodstains covered what was left of her dress, between her legs and coagulated in the dirt she lay in.  She saw the woman’s torso moving, she was breathing.  Kate moved closer to see the wounded woman’s face.

She wasn’t prepared to be looking down on her own self.  Her eyes were open and fixed in a stare up into the sky above.  Kate moved her face into her line of vision.  After a few seconds her eyes shifted and focused on her own face standing above her.  She looked at herself looking at herself.  She didn’t speak, she figured she was in shock.  Suddenly she recognized herself standing there…and screamed