The First Annual Hedlund Summer Steampunk Festival
Come to Hedlund for a riveting good time. Arrive in style using your personal
steamcoach. Don’t forget to wear your
finest attire and top it all off with a shot of absinthe.
Hedlund is home to Clark Treasure, the rogue star of
TREASURE DARKLY, a young adult romance set in a steampunk Wild West world. Join him here in Hedlund while wearing your
best cowboy boots and goggles. For three
days only (July 1st, 2nd, and 3rd), TREASURE
DARKLY is on sale as an Amazon ebook for just 99 cents. That’s a quite a steal, and Clark knows a lot
about stealing, having swiped a bottle of what he thought was absinthe, but the
green liquid actually gave him the ability to save the already deceased.
TREASURE DARKLY picks up when Clark finds the father he
never knew – a millionaire rancher meeting his illegitimate son? Ut oh – but what happens while Clark is on
the run from the army and its captain who seeks to use him for his newfound power? Check out the following short story for an
adventure featuring Clark Treasure in all his bad boy glory.
###
A Treasure Tale
By Jordan Elizabeth
Clark extended his
hand for a shake, but the manager of Arvay Ranch shook his head. Not a good
sign, that. Clark pulled off his glove, the leather worn almost clear through
in the knuckles, and stretched out again, but the manager rocked back on his
boot heels.
“You’re an honest
looking kid. I like that about you.” The manager turned his head to spit
tobacco juice into the dirt. “We’re just mighty filled up here for the time
being.”
“I’m willing to do
any job, sir. I can wrangle and rope. Work the fields. I know my way with a
saw.” Brass glass, he’d be eager to muck out the outhouse if it came to that. His
pockets didn’t jingle with coins as loudly as they used to. He’d had to leave
his last job at a ranch further south –
a good position where he looked after horses,
when the army sniffed too close, and he hadn’t dared stop until now. “I can do
housework too. I’ve trained with butlers.” He’d seen them, in the fancy ranch
houses. That sort of work seemed to mean politeness and servitude, and not much
else.
The manager jammed
his hands into the pockets of his denim slacks and narrowed his gaze at the
Arvay Ranch. The Bromi woman who’d fetched him from the “Big House,” as she’d
called it, stood by a fence with her head bowed.
“Good lookin’
ranch,” Clark said. “Smaller than some I’ve seen, but hearty. A fellow can tell
you folk love the land here.” Managers didn’t appreciate sugar-coating. If a
man told it like it was, he got further with those who loved work, and Arvay
Ranch shone with crisp paint and clean yards. “Place looks run well. Looks like your crop is peaches?”
The manager
nodded, tugging at the red bandana at his throat. “We are pretty booked here. Don’t
really hire a lot of outside folk. You know what, though. My brother’s the
doctor in town and I’m certain he could use help.”
The image of a
physician’s saw biting through a man’s gangrene-ridden leg pierced Clark’s mind
and he forced his lips to remain in a line. He’d done worse in life. Brass
glass, he’d helped the midwife back in Tangled Wire for spare pennies. Maybe
he’d be able to use his ability to save a few lives.
“I’d be grateful,
sir. I can’t stay forever, just passing through, but I’d appreciate the job for
the time being.”
“I’ll write you a
letter and some directions. Feel free to get yourself a drink at the well.”
Clark pulled his
glove back on and headed toward the pump near the shed. Sunlight beat against
his neck, the skin bared by his ponytail, as he worked the brass handle. Water
flowed out in clear spurts into a bucket on the grass. He used the hanging
ladle to scoop out the liquid, frigid from the earth, and sighed. Nothing beat
fresh water from a pump, not canteens or streams. Streams were good, but the
water had a grittiness to it that stuck in his teeth.
When his stomach
felt thick with water, he sidled back toward his steamcycle, wiping the back of
his mouth on the sleeve of his leather jacket. The Bromi woman stared at him
while she plucked at the stained apron tied over her calico dress.
Clark lifted his
hand in a wave. If he spoke to her in her tongue and the manager returned, he
might not be so willing to get him the job.
“I know who you
are,” she said.
Talking in her
tongue might not be so devastating then. Some ranches treated their Bromi with
humanity. “I’m looking for work—”
“Those who die
live again for you.”
She meant it in
that way then. Ice crept over Clark’s skin and he folded his arms to appear
nonchalant as he glanced at the ranch house. A dog barked in the distant
fields. “That’s something that’s not talked about.”
“A new Bromi is
here. He knew you from the desert. He spoke of you to us. You saved his father
from the dark sleep.”
Clark kept his
facial muscles slack to avoid looking suspicious. “Glad I could help him, but
there are people who don’t like that part of me.”
She nodded so hard
her bonnet slipped down her broad forehead. “We never harm our own and you are
one of us now. Be careful with Mr. Parker’s brother.”
“How’s that?” Clark
leaned his back against the fence beside her, drooping his arms over the top
and hooking one of his boot heels into the wood. If anyone looked over, the
individual might not realize they carried on a conversation.
“Manager Parker
has a brother who’s crazy. Doctor is crazy.” The woman wiggled her fingers in a
jagged pattern in front of her face, the Bromi sign for mentally unsafe.
“What’s he do?” The
doctors could be cruel to Bromis; not many would treat the natives.
“You smell it on
him,” she hissed.
The Bromi relied
on spirits and herbs; the woman might be uncomfortable around modern medicine. “Thank
you for the warning.”
“Not even you, who
befriends the dead, can protect against crazy.”
The brick house’s
side door slammed and the manager swaggered across the lawn with a paper in his
hand. “You can read, can’t you, kid? You seem like a bright one.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you know your
sums, point that out too.” Mr. Parker slapped the note into Clark’s palm and at
last shook his hand.
#
Clark parked his
steamcycle along the dirt road through town. The doctor’s house, a three-story
white clapboard with a veranda and four chimneys, had to be the nicest place
for miles, at least the nicest place he’d seen all day. Trimmed bushes lined
the porch and walkway, and a wrought-iron gate blocked off the property. The
doctors Clark had known in the past kept shacks; they didn’t have time to build
up a fancy life.
He slung his leg
off the ride and hung his helmet off the handlebars. A buggy rattled by in the
road and two little boys stood across the street outside the general store. When
he looked at them, they darted behind a rain barrel. He’d been like that once,
Clark and Mabel, pretending the world was out to get them and hiding in near
plain sight would save them.
The world was
after them and hiding didn’t help a lost soul.
Clark tested the
gate and it swung open – halleluiah for that, he wouldn’t have to try to call
for attention from the road – so he shut it behind him and headed to the front
door. A brass plaque read: Doctor of Ailments, Lionel Parker. Clark whistled;
what other kind of doctor existed?
He lifted the
brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head – how fitting with the name Lionel –
and let it smack the mahogany door. Clark stepped back and wiped his hands on
his denim pants.
No gloves. He
pulled them off and stuck them into his jacket pockets. His hair would have to
do with a quick brushing of his fingers through the shoulder-length yellow
strands.
The little boys
laughed from the rain barrel. A cowboy on a horse clopped past.
Clark knocked
again. Brass glass, the doctor might not be home. How long would he stay around
before he headed out to find the next ranch? Ranches were safe. Drifters
wandered through on a regular basis, but workers in stores tended to stick
around. People asked questions about folk they saw every day. Hired ranch hands
stuck to themselves in the fields or barns. For sure, Mr. Parker wouldn’t have
sent him if he’d known the doctor was out, but living miles apart,
communication might be sparse between them.
The door opened to
an elderly Bromi woman in a black dress. “You need Doc Parker, suh?”
“Um, yes. Thanks.”
Clark cleared his throat. “His brother sent me.”
Her dark eyes
widened before she nodded. “Come, please. I get him for you.”
Clark stepped into
a hallway of red walls and polished wood. No pictures or mirrors offered
decoration. She opened a left-hand door and slid aside for him to enter. He
wondered how she could move so soundlessly until he looked down, noticing her
bare feet beneath her skirt.
Potpourri scented
the room to a degree that made his throat clench. Like the hallway, naught
adorned the room, apart from the smelly balls hanging from brass hooks in the
ceiling. Two velveteen sofas faced each other.
He wasn’t a
patient or someone sent to fetch the doctor. Clark had no spare money for
medicine, if he’d needed any. He hovered near the window, with its crimson
curtains, to avoid touching anything he could dirty with filth from the road.
What did the
potpourri serve to hide?
The door opened to
a tall, thin man in a black suit…and a ghost with a missing leg. Clark bit back
a groan. He should have known a doctor’s office would be riddled with the kind
of dead who didn’t want to pass on.
“My brother sent
you?” A smooth accent toyed with his words.
Clark held out his
hand, but the doctor made no move to shake it. Not a shaking family, the two
men. Clark dropped his arm down to his side. “I was looking for work out at the
ranch and Manager Parker sent me here. He said you might have something for me
to do. I know my words and sums.” He removed the letter from his jacket and
held it out; the doctor did accept that. “I don’t plan on staying long, a month
at the most.”
The doctor flared
his nostrils in his long nose as he read the note. “My brother enjoys the
richness of life and the joys of people. I, unfortunately, do not share his
feelings. I have seen too many men harm their brethren.”
Clark licked his
lips. Doctors had to want to help people. Why else would they invest in
learning cures? “Sorry to waste your time, sir. I’ll get off.” On to the next
town then. He might find a farm that would give him food for a few hours of
work.
Doctor Parker
breathed through his lips. “Have you ever helped a physician? Do you know how
to measure vials and sterilize instruments?”
Hope lodged in
Clark’s throat. “I can sterilize, sure, and if you show me with the vials, I
can do that too.”
“Those vials,” the
ghost hooted from the doorway. “They’re tainted. Don’t get near those vials.”
Clark caught
himself before he could frown. Ghosts tended to struggle with truths.
“I’ll keep you for
a day or two,” said Doctor Parker. “I can pay you two cents an hour for odd
jobs. If you work out, we can extend that period. I do amputations, son. I need
strong hands to hold down the patient.”
It would be lost
limbs then. Clark forced himself to nod. “Is there a place I can hunker down? I
normally stick to ranches, and they offer food and a roof.”
The doctor
snorted, crumpling the paper into his pocket. “I can’t offer you any rooms in
here. I keep them for patients to stay in. You know what a hospital is, son?”
“He thinks this
place is a hospital,” the ghost hollered.
“I’ve heard of
army hospitals.” Clark nodded. Those places he avoided. Besides, he wasn’t
salaried by the government. Only soldiers could go there.
“The east has one
in each main city. I want to bring the safety of the east out here. That’s
where I’m from.”
The ghost drew a
line across his throat. “He came out here to torture us stragglers.”
Whatever operation
the doctor had done must have failed. Clark had seen it before, men who lost
limbs in hopes of saving their lives, but passing on anyway. It had happened to
a Tarnished Silver who had worked with his mother. She’d cut her hand on a
razor, the wound had festered, and even though the doctor had removed it, she’d
grown sicker and left the world in a week.
“I can stay in a
barn.” If Clark had to find lodging elsewhere, it would eat up his money like a
brushfire.
Doctor Parker
touched his goatee, drawing the graying hairs into a tighter point. “My Bromi
girl can get you some bedding. Stay in the stable if you want. I have scraps in
the kitchen; eat that if you like, but if not, you’re buying your own.”
“Thank you.” He’d
lived on worse than scraps.
“If it comes to
you being my assistant, you’ll have to wear black. Hides the blood. I see
you’re mostly in that now. If we get anyone staying here, I have a no shoes
policy. Keeps things quiet for them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Come on with me
to the back room where I mix my medicines. I’ll get you to that and we’ll see
how it goes.”
#
The ghost of a
woman with no arms joined the one-legged ghost in the backroom. Clark bent over
a table using eyedroppers and glass beakers to fill vials. Doctor Parker had
scribbled the recipe on the back of his brother’s note, wrinkles and all.
“Bad man,” the
female shrieked. “Look at what he did to me arms!”
Clark glanced
toward the door. Doctor Parker had shut it, saying, “If a patient comes, you’re
to stay out of sight.”
“Sometimes
operations are necessary,” Clark said. The green and blue liquids created a
murky purple shade.
“Not this one! Me
husband called me an adulteress and off went me arms.”
Clark looked up. “That
can’t be the reason.”
“Doc Parker’s
known for taking the man’s side. Ask him.” She glared at the other ghost.
The male scowled. “Sure,
you got a problem and you pay enough, Doc Parker will help.”
Clark clenched his
hand around the glass vial. That couldn’t be true. Anyone in the west knew some
doctors wanted money for medicine, then didn’t deliver more than dyed water or
sugar cubes, but he’d never heard tell of one amputating limbs for perversion.
“Doc’s crazy,” the female ghost continued. “He has his
own daughter locked up. Real bright girl. Sad state.”
Clark pictured a shed with a girl pounding against a
padlocked door, and his skin crawled. “What do you mean?”
“The room upstairs, end of the hall,” she exclaimed. “He
won’t let her out. He’ll probably experiment on her next. See if she grows back
a tongue.”
#
Clark crouched outside the room
indicated by the one-legged ghost. He held his breath as he worked his tools
into the lock. If anyone came, the ghosts had better warn him. If it weren’t
for their nagging, he wouldn’t have bothered skulking around the house. A girl
locked in a shed was one thing; a girl locked in a room was another. She might
have a disease. Clark chuckled under his breath; his abilities had better keep
him from catching it.
The lock clicked and he slid the
toolkit back into his jacket pocket. Easing the door open enough to peer
through, he studied a white wall and plain table with a single chair. Not
really girl friendly, from what he’d seen. Sure, he knew more about men on the
run, but the soiled doves who’d worked with his mother had treasured
knick-knacks. His mother would have had a table cloth, a candlestick, maybe a
cushion on that chair. He’d drawn a picture for her once with a hunk of
charcoal and a meat paper. She’d stuck it to her wall on an old nail and never
taken it down, even though neither of them could remember after a few years
what the blob was meant to be.
Clark pushed the door open a bit
more, and froze. Against the opposite wall, a young girl sat on a cot beside a
window, paper taped over the glass as if to obscure the image. Lank brown hair
hung down her back, oily and matted, and she wore a shapeless gray shift.
He glanced back into the hallway
before he darted inside and shut the door, in case the Bromi slave or doctor
wandered by. “Um, hullo.” He cleared his throat and shifted his stance. “Are
you… the doctor’s daughter?”
She nodded. “I’m Brenda. Father
didn’t send you, did he?” Dark circles lined her eyes a shade grayer than her
linen shift.
“A fella your pa worked on told me
to find you here.” She didn’t need to know the fella was dead, or that he’d
only discovered her after haunting the halls. “I can help you leave. We can go
now.” So much for having a good job for a day or two.
“No, I can’t.” An Eastern accent
tinged her voice. “I’m sorry, but I can’t, sir.”
The “sir” title didn’t really fit
with him, made his skin crawl.
“Are you sick?” He fought to keep
from wrinkling his nose.
“I’m not sick. Father said if I
tried to leave, he’d never let me find my sister. As long as he’s got me, he’ll
keep her safe.”
Clark almost growled. Doctor Parker
was the monster the ghosts had hinted at. “We’ll go find your sister then. I
can’t leave you locked in here.”
She stood and wobbled; the arms and
legs poking from her clothes showed skin and bones, as malnourished as some of
the thieves he’d run across in the desert. “If he finds me gone, he’ll hurt
her. I know he will.” Her lower lip trembled. She couldn’t be more than
fourteen-years-old at the most.
“Brass glass,” Clark swore. Brenda
had a point in that. “I’ll find out where your sister is. We’ll get both of you
away.”
“He’ll lock you up, too,” she said.
“The man’s crazy. I’m safer in here. It’s better to be safe.”
#
Clark spread the new leather cover
over the medical text and glanced at Doctor Parker from the corners of his
eyes. The doctor scribbled into a notebook, a gaslamp illuminating his work.
Clark set the tome back on the
bookshelf. “Have you been in the west long, sir?”
The doctor hesitated, his stylus
hovering above the paper. “Long enough. I am needed here. People need
medicine.”
People who wanted their enemies to suffer.
“Thanks for doing the good deeds.” The words swelled in Clark’s throat as if to
choke him.
Doctor Parker nodded as he returned
to his notebook.
Clark pulled down another tome to
cover it in the new binding. “Before I got here, I heard you had a daughter. I
haven’t seen her around. A little girl,” he added, in case the doctor thought
he liked to sniff around pretty skirts.
Doctor Parker set down his stylus,
the movements slow and deliberate, his gaze on the office’s only window. “I
have no children.” Liar. “That’s enough work for today. It’s getting late and
I’ve already sent the slave off for the night.” He turned in his chair to face
Clark. “Don’t ask questions here, boy, or this arrangement won’t work out.”
#
Something shook Clark awake; he clamped his hands down on
the offender and he shoved. Maybe he should have opted for the shed, but he’d
taken the doctor up on his offer of a pallet in the kitchen. A female gasped; a
single candle sent a yellow glow around her shape.
“Brenda?” Clark reached for the pistol he’d left on his
belt. When he’d first started sleeping with it out in the desert, it had jammed
into his side each time he’d moved, but he’d grown used to slumber in one
position.
“I did it, sir. I snuck out. The lock on my door’s faulty
and Father never fixed it. Did you know she’s here? My sister’s here.” Brenda’s
eyes seemed to glow in the dark of the kitchen. “He’s got her locked in too and
he told her the same thing, about behaving so nothing happens to me.” Her voice
rose with each word and Clark cringed.
“Hush!” If she didn’t keep quiet—
The door to the kitchen smacked into the wall and Doctor
Parker stormed inside, his robe flapping around his legs.
Brenda screamed and yanked at Clark’s hands as though to
pull him up, but her father caught her around the waist and shoved her back
against him, slapping a cloth over her mouth. She screamed against the rag,
slashing at him with her fingernails and kicking with her bare heels.
The doctor muttered as he dragged her into the hallway,
her shrieks growing quieter.
Clark gripped the pallet of old linens, his heart
pounding. He’d seen something he shouldn’t have. Doctor Parker would have to
explain it away and send Clark off before he witnessed more.
“You.” Brenda
Parker appeared beside the stove with hollow, black eyes, and marks around her
mouth and neck.
“You’re dead.” Clark
stood, kicking off a blanket, before Doctor Parker could return.
She touched her
lips. “Chloroform can do that, you know.” Brenda lowered her hand to her belly.
“Go get my sister. My father’s crazy. Don’t let him hurt Maura, please.”
Clark’s muscles
tightened; Doctor Parker knew what he was about. Brenda wouldn’t have been an
accident. The doctor would return to deal with Clark.
“That’s how you
found out about me. Ghosts told you.” She floated higher before sinking back to
the kitchen floor. “Send Maura east. Our grandparents are there and Mother.”
How calm she acted
for a ghost. Usually the newly dead screamed at him until they realized he
worked better when he understood. “I’ll get Maura.” She’d been alive in front
of him, but he hadn’t managed to save her. “You can be with your Mother now.”
Brenda recoiled. “Mother’s
not dead. Father made her work as his assistant and she threatened to tell on
him for what he did to his patients. He put her up in Wade Asylum and whisked
the two of us out here.”
“Does your uncle
over at the ranch know about all this?”
“They’re grave
diggers together. My uncle used to send parts to my father when we lived in the
east.”
Bile rose in
Clark’s throat. Sure, that earned a few dollars and he’d seen people decimating
graves for an eyeball or brain, but he had enough of the dead on a daily basis
without dealing with them in the dirt at night.
The kitchen door
swung again – that thing was going to tear off its hinges if the doctor wasn’t
careful. Lionel Parker barreled through with his hands clenched into fists.
“Get out. You’re not needed.” He fumbled in his jacket pocket, the item thrown
on over a thin nightshirt, and threw coins at Clark’s feet.
Clark pulled the pistol from his holster and aimed it at
Lionel’s chest. “You killed your daughter.”
The doctor swore as he patted his body, as if searching
for a weapon. “I would never do that. Get out of here, you and your lies!”
Clark pulled the trigger and a hole blossomed with blood
in the center of his chest. The doctor gulped as she stumbled backwards into
the wall and slumped.
“You killed him,” Brenda said.
“Yup.” Maybe his ghost would appear for the other spirits
to tear into him.
Clark glanced at the door leading to the backyard, but no
shouts came from outside. Someone would find the doctor and Clark didn’t want
to be arrested for murder, no matter how warranted. If the men in town liked
the doctor to take care of their troubles, including upset wives, then they
wouldn’t care about a deceased daughter.
Clark fastened his pistol into his holster. “We’ll free
the Bromi so she can get a head start, and then we’ll nab your sister.”
#
“This one.” Brenda
slapped her hand against the door, but it slid through and she grimaced. “Did
you see my body down there on the parlor table? What do you suppose he wanted
to do with me?”
Clark shrugged;
his tongue seemed to have thickened past speech. He worked his picking kit into
the lock and waited until it clicked to turn the knob.
“She should be in
here,” Brenda said. “I called to her through the door and she answered. She was
crying. That’s when I got you.”
That would also be
when Lionel Parker overheard Brenda’s escape.
Clark stood, his gas
lamp in hand, and entered the bedroom that reeked of mothballs. A little girl
huddled on a cot similar to Brenda’s.
“That’s her!” Brenda
soared over to the child, whose black hair hung loose.
“Maura?” Clark
lifted the lamp higher so she could see him. “We need to leave, Maura.”
The little girl
rubbed the back of her hand across her nose. “Where’s Brenda?”
“I’m right here,
sweetie!”
Clark licked his
dry lips. The child had lived through imprisonment; she couldn’t be reduced to
lies. “Brenda’s gone. Your father got her.” If she were Mabel, he would have
hugged her and she would have wept, made up some statements about feeling
strong. Maura was a stranger, though.
She pressed a
pillow against her face and her shoulders trembled.
“Brenda gave me directions
to your grandparents in the east,” Clark said. “I’ll send you to them. They’ll
take care of you.”
“Mama?” She lifted
her face, tears on her cheeks.
“Right. She’ll be
there too.”
“But not Brenda.”
“Not Brenda.” The
poor chit had to be only seven or eight.
“I’ll be with her
the whole way,” Brenda interjected.
“She’ll be with
you in spirit.” Clark eased the pillow away from her. “Do you have anything to
take with you?”
Maura shook her
head, lips parted. Like Brenda, she wore a sack dress, minus the corset.
“We’ll find your
father’s money,” Clark said. “Then we can get you a train ticket and something
warm to wear. Some food. I’ll wire ahead if we can find the address for your
grandparents.”
“I remember the
address.” Brenda floated in front of him. “I want you to take some of the money
by way of thanks.
It would be the first time a ghost paid him for help.
Usually they screamed and vanished. Brass glass, maybe it would be the last
time he had to help a ghost. Clark laughed. Nah, his curse wouldn’t let him go
that easily.
###
What’s a festival without games and prizes? You can win this awesome spyglass necklace
and be able to see across the desert, in case a rival gang is hot on your
trail.
Check out my website for contests related to my books, and
you can read the first three chapters of TREASURE DARKLY: http://www.jordanelizabethmierek.com/
Craving more steampunk?
The clockwork adventures continue with GEARS OF BRASS, a steampunk
anthology featuring TREASURE DARKLY’s own Amethyst Treasure.
The Summer Steampunk Festival might end soon, but you can
return to Hedlund in September for the release of BORN OF TREASURE, the sequel
to TREASURE DARKLY. Twice the romance,
thrice the ghosts, and a heap of clockwork inventions.
As a special addition to the summer steampunk festival,
TREASURE DARKLY is on sale for 99 cents this week only!
Check out
Amazon
for the deal.
