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I've had the idea for this one for a while, so I figured I'd just sit down and jam it out and see what happens. This was wholly inspired by a song with the same name by a band called The Church.
"The Disillusionist" was first published at Would That It Were, reprinted at Fictionwise, and named an Honorable Mention story in the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthology, volume 17. The story is also available for adding to a print-on-demand anthology at AnthologyBuilder.
| The Disillusionist I was a day behind him, riding west as fast as my horse would allow. He held my future in his rotting, trembling hands, though neither of us knew it then. Until my deputization just fifteen days ago, I had been flailing and floundering with the direction of my life like a tired man in deep water. I left Kentucky years ago, traveling to Orleans and Illinois, searching for something more from life, knowing I needed to do my part for my country. This nomadic life came hard on the heels of my defeat for the Illinois General Assembly, which in its turn followed the nightmare of the Black Hawk War. It was the summer of 1834, and I was twenty-five. I rode west, followed hard by spirits. Everywhere I looked, I could still see their faces--not those of my political opponents, but those of the dying redskins. To be honest, I had no qualms about volunteering to help with the Indian troubles in my adopted state of Illinois. I was elected captain of my company, though we did little fighting, and my men reminded me to duck to avoid making such a large target. I would respond that, despite my height, I was too thin to hit. The sudden appearance of Chief Black Hawk leading his hungry people across the Mississippi back to their ancestral lands near Rock Island to plant their corn created a panic. The Indians were driven by the militia into Wisconsin and slaughtered like wild animals. I could hear the gunshots in my head, as if my skull was empty and the bullets still reverberated inside it. Since that battle, I'd been rootless. As spring drifted into summer, I again considered running again for the legislature. Part of me knew that if I brought in the killer with the strange nickname, I would have an easier time of being elected. I pushed those prideful thoughts out of my head as I read about the him, spreading madness and death across the Great Plains: he would enter a town in the morning, plant posters at noon, and perform in the evening. By midnight he was gone again, leaving most of the townspeople dead in his wake. I decided that my future in civil service could be put on hold until this madman could be stopped. I volunteered to bring in the disillusionist.
Continued... |
First published in: What the critics said about "The Disillusionist": "'I rode west, followed hard by spirits.' It's that 'hard' that hooks itself tightly into my skull, yanking me into this story. The writing is so strong, the imagery so powerful; this particular juxtaposition of the weird and the transcendent brought Tim Powers to mind -- which turns out to be not so far off the mark, I discovered when reading the afterward. An unnamed loner is deputized to go after and bring down a mysterious man who is going from town to town leaving dead and dying in his wake. It seems this weird figure sets up to give an entertainment, promises to strip away lies and leave people only with the truth. The protagonist considers the grim truths of his own life until this moment, which includes standing by at a massacre of Indians who tried to surrender, but perseveres, eventually facing this weird figure. About three quarters of the way along I realized I was picking up hints about the identity of the deputy, which caused my interest in an already creepy, thoughtful, sensorily complex story to zing. My favorite of the collection." |
