Administrative Error

He did not tell them his name.

And he would not tell them his name.

The name was power and the power was all his, and his alone.

He was a man of few words, never speaking, never introducing himself, nor commenting on the quality of the day. For he was taciturn, sparing the world of needless speech. This was noise that he could do without, so he did not create it, there was already too much noise in the world. Senseless and meaningless words that amounted to lacklustre wails and lamentations rising up from the pain of a tawdry and misspent existence.

Perhaps his reticence when it came to the spoken word was in part driven by his desire not to tell them his name. Easier to avoid any awkwardness by skipping conversations altogether. They asked their questions and he did not grace them with a reply. But still they asked as though there would be a different outcome the next time. There was not.

Now, he was sat in a small cell that baked in the heat of a relentless sun. Whoever had built the jailhouse was either oblivious to that unforgiving sun, or they were sadistic beyond measure, in league with a sun that bleached the colour from the land and made living a strength sapping and pointless struggle.

The man with no name did not seem to sweat, though his lips were prone to chapping after several days in the saddle. But that only added to the rugged foreboding that the man carried around with him wherever he roamed. 

There was a sparseness to his frame, but he was far from skinny. His movements were lithe and yet asynchronous, betraying a purpose that was both terrible and fearsome. He was tall and his eyes burned from beneath the rim of his hat. A hat that never left his head. Even when he had reclined on the uncomfortable bunk in the jail cell, the hat had been angled so it covered his face. It were as though he had been born with that hat, if indeed a man like that was born or wasted any of the span of his existence with childhood.

When he was brought before the judge there was some degree of unpleasantness.

“What do you mean he has no name!?” the judge had cried, “don’t waste my time with this nonsense! Scan him!”

The sheriff had looked crestfallen, devastated even. He’d shuffled from foot to foot and could not look the judge in the eye, “now, see… there’s the thing.”

“What thing?” asked the judge, “spit it out, man!”

The sheriff looked even more uneasy, “we tried to scan him, but we couldn’t.”

The judge guffawed, then he gave the sheriff a sideways glance. Then he guffawed again before checking the sheriff over to see what kind of joke this was. The sheriff wasn’t joking though, he could see that now, “you’re serious?”

The sheriff nodded pitifully.

“Fetch a scanner,” the judge commanded.

The sheriff nodded to his deputy and the deputy, a man who was skinny and would always be skinny thanks to a rampant metabolism and a nervous disposition, shot out of the court on a mission to retrieve the scanner from the jailhouse. Relieved to be gifted brief respite from the judges chagrin and to be away from the presence of that awful stranger. There was something unreal about that man. Something that made the skin crawl with bugs that were under the very flesh itself and hungry, awful hungry. The deputy scratched at his arms unselfconsciously as he ran across to the jailhouse.

In the intervening few minutes of his absence, the judge eyed the prisoner in the dock. The man with no name felt the judge’s eyes upon him but he did not react. He kept his head tilted downwards and this obscured his eyes. The bowed head was far from an act of submission. There was a power in this man. He simmered with it and the hot air of the courthouse sizzled around him.

The judge found the man in the dock to be of concern. He was a mystery, but mostly he was a cause of a discomfort that made the judge want to move him on as quickly as he possibly could. The courthouse didn’t seem right with this man in it. It were as though he had invaded this space and made it his own. There was something broken and destructive about this stranger. He did not belong and it was clear to the judge that he should not be kept in check. His natural state was movement and whilst he sat there, he seemed to be winding up more and more unspent energy. All that energy was building and soon enough there would be a devastating explosion. The judge needed to avoid the carnage this man threatened to bring to the town. The judge had to avoid the threat the stranger presented to him personally, he could feel it and it went deep, deeper than he could fathom.

The deputy returned, bringing the scanner and his own brand of awkwardness to the court. The judge was glad of the distraction. The gawky deputy usually annoyed the judge, but right now he was a piece of normality. A salve for the edges of a deep and ugly wound. 

“Stand,” said the sheriff and the man with no name duly obliged, pausing just long enough to let everyone know that he was standing of his own accord and that no man would ever tell him what to do. That was the order of things around here. That was how it was, however those present may dream of a different order to their claustrophobic little world.

The deputy stepped up into the dock and waved the scanner at the back of the tall man’s neck. He looked at the scanner, then turned the screen towards the judge and shrugged.

Nothing.

In an unprecedented development, the judge got to his feet and lumbered around to the dock so that he could see for himself.

“Get him to sit down will you?” he told the sheriff as he craned his neck up at the stranger.

The sheriff obeyed the judge’s command, “sit,” he told the stranger, and the man sat on the small wooden chair in the dock, almost smiling as he did so. 

Taking care not to touch the stranger himself, the judge pulled the back of the collar of his shirt this way and that, declaring, “well I never!” as he ascertained the complete lack of a mark on the man’s neck.

Slowly, the judge made his way back to his seat. Sat down and wiped his forehead with a big red handkerchief that he seemed to carry for this very purpose. 

He looked at the few gathered men in his courtroom and then took a long, lingering look at the stranger, “case dismissed!” he blared in the general direction of the sheriff.

The sheriff was visibly taken aback and then he mustered enough of his senses to be nonplussed, “you can’t…!” he managed to say with some indignation.

“I very well can!” shouted the judge.

“But!” said the sheriff, more as a place marker than a coherent argument.

The judge took some degree of pity on him, “in the eyes of the law, this man does not exist,” he explained.

“I see him clear as day,” the sheriff countered.

“You see something clear as day,” stated the judge, “but it ain’t no man.”

“Sure does look like a man,” said the sheriff, “and he fights like a man too. Laid out three of John Mac’s men in the saloon bar of Beryl’s last night so he did.”

The judge beckoned the sheriff over and spoke to him quietly and earnestly, “look, I know he did wrong,” he glanced over at the man, “and he sure does look like a wrong un to me, but we’ll have the devil’s own job trying to process a man with no name. Sheesh! He ain’t even got a mark! How in the blazes did he even get this far without his mark?”

The sheriff shrugged, the judge had a point. The stranger in the dock was an enigma and in this case he was a pain in the nether regions of a problem. Still, it didn’t sit right with him. But the judge was a higher power and what the judge wanted, the judge got. He made a habit of it and it didn’t do to cross the man. He had a nasty side. More nasty than most, and the sheriff knew all about how people had a darkness to them. He saw things most others didn’t. That was why the stranger worried him. That man had more darkness in him than anyone the sheriff had ever encountered.

With an accompanying sigh, the sheriff nodded a reluctant acknowledgement of his capitulation.

“Ride him out of town Samuel,” the judge spoke warmly and with a familiarity scarce heard between the walls of the court, “see him on his way. Let him be someone else’s problem.”

“Sure thing Abe,” the Sheriff said quietly, “I was sorry to hear about Shirl,” he said before stepping down and attending to the stranger.

The sheriff didn’t see the pained expression on the judge’s face, he’d actively avoided it, turning as he spoke his last to his friend. Shirl had been due to pass in the last month. Her time was up and she had no more living left to her. The judge wouldn’t be far behind her. The mark on the back of his neck was testament to that. They had all the time in the world and suddenly they had none, but that was death for you, taking life a day at a time until there were no more days left.

“Wait a minute,” the judge said as the sheriff was about to lead his prisoner away, “you may not have a name, but maybe you know how old you are. Tell me, what’s your age?”

The man with no name looked up at the judge and Abe saw his eyes for the very first time. Pools of darkness and fire and so much more than that. The judge thought he could lose himself in those eyes, or rather lose his mind were he to look upon them and into them for any longer.

“Oh, I am older than I look,” said the stranger.

“Just how old is that?” said the judge, persevering with his line of questioning even as his mind screamed at him to stop and to see this man leave the court and the town, if indeed he was a man.

“Older than the age of man,” said the man with no name, “certainly older than the soul you would deprive me of.”

The judge’s face was instantly transformed by the strangers words, the colour draining from it, then anger roiled up within him and it contorted into something nasty and inhuman, “get him out of here! Get him out!”

The sheriff pushed the man in the back, shoving him forward. The stranger barely moved even though the sheriff was a big man and wasn’t holding back, “I’ll be seein’ you. To collect what is mine.” That was the stranger’s parting shot before he stepped forth and left the court of his own volition.

*

The sheriff wasted no time in riding the stranger out of town. He did so on his own. There was something disconcerting about the man with no name, but the sheriff didn’t think he presented any danger to him personally. Not right now, anyway. He thought he’d know if that were the case. He thought he’d know and more than that, he would know there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. This man was elemental and then some.

He rode the man out of town on his own because he didn’t want his deputy there. He was curious and he had a question he wanted to ask before they parted ways.

He handed the man his side arm and nodded, “what was that about back there?” he asked.

The stranger raised his head, revealing those intense, burning eyes of his, “I came to collect what I am due.”

“What do you mean by that?” asked the sheriff. He needed to know. It was his duty to know. He was all this town had and he wanted to understand whether this man was going to double back and cause trouble for anyone. Besides, Abe was a friend. All the townsfolk were his friends to one extent or another. That was why he’d taken Barney on as his deputy, he wasn’t much use as anything else and so he’d done the man a favour. That was how it worked in these parts. You looked out for each other because there was precious little else left to any of them.

“Your mark…” the stranger said, letting the words hang.

“What of it?” asked the sheriff.

“Ever wonder how it got there?” asked the man with no name.

“It’s always been there,” replied the sheriff.

The stranger’s eyes bored into him and a question hung between them.

“Ever wonder what the symbols are under the mark?” asked the man.

There were three identical squiggles. Everyone had them. Like tadpoles they were. There was a familiarity to them, but at the same time they didn’t mean anything. They were just a mark. That was all there was to it. Lots of straight lines in a row, like fence posts, and under those posts there were three tadpoles swimming alongside each other. All three heading downwards. Always down.

The sheriff shook his head, but the movement stuttered to a halt because it was a lie and the sheriff didn’t feel comfortable in that lie, not in front of this man. It was a lie he told himself, not ever a lie he shared with others. They were the worst of the lies. Hidden and deceitful, they made up a part of a person. The dark part. 

“I have those symbols,” said the man with no name, “they are mine. All of them are mine”

He lifted his hat then and bowed his head. The sheriff didn’t want to look. There was something terrible about the stranger removing that hat of his. It was the same as if he’d removed the top of his skull and revealed his brain. But try as he might, the sheriff couldn’t look away, the gravity of his terror held him fast.

There on the stranger’s scalp, through thinning and decaying strands of hair, were the three symbols. They went around in a circle and as the sheriff gazed upon them, they seemed alive, dancing in the fierce light of the unforgiving sun.

“This is my dominion,” the stranger told the sheriff as he placed his hat back on his head and straightened up, “and you are all mine.”

“Then we are all in hell,” the sheriff muttered under his breath.

“You said it,” the man with no name said as he dug his spurs into his horse and left the old sheriff on his own, a solitary witness to the stranger disappearing into the shimmering heat haze of the desolate desert. 

Like branded cattle, the sheriff thought to himself as he took himself back to town and to the news of the tragic demise of the judge. Burned to nothing but dust and ashes where he sat on his porch. Strange though, there was no damage to the chair he’d been sitting in or the wood of the porch around it. Inside the judge’s house, there was the dark silhouette of the body of a woman. 

They never did find out who she was, but the sheriff knew well enough. Samuel knew that were he to dig up the grave of Abe’s wife, Shirl, there would be no body in that plot. He knew, try as they may, no one could cheat death. He knew that with a terrible certainty now that he’d met with death himself. The sheriff stood on the judge’s porch and looked out across the parched land, rubbing the back of his neck absently as though he wanted to erase the mark upon it, but that mark was more than skin deep. It went all the way through the sheriff. His heart was marked and his very soul was tainted with an awful darkness, and he thought he knew why that might be. He had felt a dark echo of a time before this place and the bad things he’d done. He’d caught a glimpse of them when he’d looked into the stranger’s burning eyes. 

He'd thought the stranger was death, but he was far worse than death, more terrible than that certainty. There was a chaos to the stranger that promised endless pain and torment.

“Not death, no,” he said quietly to himself.

A fat self-piteous tear leaked from his eye as he gave a silent prayer for the oblivion of death, for there were worse things than death. There were far worse fates than the ending that death promised, and he reckoned Abe knew all about that right now.