The Last Magician

Tombstone

He was walking through Tombstone. A lone ranger carried onwards by weary legs. Above him burned the blazing desert sun, signifying the arrival of High Noon.

It was a queer notion, but neither unjustified or in any way inappropriate.

Jack limped down Front Street, once the main road that ran through the centre of the village. The tarmac had lost all sign of the black surface that should have shone in the midday sun. Its place had been taken by a heavy, if not complete, layer of arid dust.

He had seen no indication of life since his awakening into the nightmare of reality, and Hope was about to desert him in his hour of need He was coming to realise that somehow, incredulously, he could be the only living person in the village, maybe even beyond.

There was a sense of expectancy in the air that did little to alleviate the darkness of his mood. It was eerie, and the paled complexion of the street only served to add to the haunting ambience that oozed from the village itself. It was like a tangible manifestation of dread and foreboding; the sense that something bad had happened but the possibility that it was only just beginning.

Derelict houses passed by as he walked on, their resemblance to the occasional snapshots his memory provided minimal to say the least. For all he knew, the frozen images in his head could have been true in another lifetime. He could not discard any idea outright no matter how improbably or inexplicable it seemed; he did not even know what day it was let alone what year. The tall, proud, upmarket buildings in his head stood mournfully around him as decrepit ruins and abandoned shacks; chilling monuments to what had been beautiful and picturesque. Unique features of varying architectural design, purchased by homeowners with the intent of upgrading their residence to higher standards than their like-minded neighbours, held a strange vigil over the dilapidated structures they had once improved the appearance of. Now they served as only hideous reminders of what had been.

Barren, sun-scorched gardens surrounded withered bird-tables, which leaned close to the point of collapse; water fountains, long dried up and overrun by yellow weed and the alien fungus he had already encountered; topiary animals, mutated into deformed abominations that loomed as starved menaces and bore no resemblance to the creature their owners had once intended.

Boarded up windows faced the street from both sides, though they were few and far between in comparison to those simply eaten away by rot. Glinting shards of glass flashed occasionally, some in the shattered fragments still attached to a frame, others in untidy piles beneath the boards and voids.

This was Tombstone after the mother of all gunfights; the one which ended with the entire population dead and the town stricken from the map and confined into rotting obscurity. Welcome to Tombstone, Engand.

It did not have the same ring to it as Tombstone, Arizona, but the fantasy was transcending the boundaries of reality. At any moment he expected to feel a Smith & Wesson at his side, or possibly even to see Wyatt Erp stalking towards him, sheriff badge gleaming in the burning light of the sun. If it did happen, Jack would have asked the good sheriff if he wouldn’t mind pointing that big old gun he was carrying right at his forehead and...

‘Forget it,’ Jack told himself, his low voice a thunder-crack in the deathly silence of the street.

The only good thing to come from his little flight of suicidal fantasy was the knowledge that his memories were still continuing to return from the dark recesses that had held them captive. Recollections of the Wild West were not entirely what he had expected but it was still welcome.

He walked on, his feet crunching on sand and stone, occasionally scuffing a pebble into the gutter. The sun beat down on him, a baking heat accompanying the glare, the likes of which he had never known. He wondered if the heat could be a vague indicator of the time of year, or could it be nothing more than another of the innumerable peculiarities that awaited his every breath? For now, he could not tell either way.

He came to the end of Front Street and looked around, hopeful of something that appeared slightly familiar to him. The faded name plates of the adjoining streets offered themselves to his need.

Camborne Street and Ashbrooke Road.

It was a choice that had to be made, and Ashbrooke was somehow the most appealing. He couldn’t convince himself that the name brought a dawning to his mind, but under the circumstances a bright moment of instinct was worth holding onto. Ashbrooke had called to him in a way he could not explain, and that was good enough for him.

After only a few steps Jack felt the sweeping sensation of deja-vu creeping into his mind as he looked down the street that looked identical to the one he had just left. Deserted, desolate buildings that had once thrived with life, and a lonely, empty road that could easily have ran forever, even though it was no longer than one hundred metres. A rogue memory told him that Linford Christie could have run from one end to the other in under ten seconds. Gazing down its length, Jack thought it could take days. His legs were becoming heavy, dead weight almost, with every step he took, and his energy seemed to be draining from him at a frightening rate.

Jack ran his tongue around his mouth. He was not surprised to find it as dry as the road he trod upon, and his tongue itself was nothing more than a sheet of sandpaper grating against his gums.

He walked on down Ashbrooke, the air unchanged yet somehow easier to breathe the longer he was forced to do so. It was certainly a long way from the choking sensation he had felt earlier, from the moment he awakened — How long ago was that now? — to the moment he was now standing in the clutches of.

Jack glanced at his wrist. His watch lay on his wrist like a coiled snake, deceptively innocent in appearance. It should have been the answer to at least a question of time, but as he had expected it was not as simple as that. The watch hands sat frozen in some hour long passed. It was a waste to take a good look at what hour the frozen hands indicated. There was an odd finality that came with the sight. Time would have given him something normal to hold onto, something to defy the alien world he knew had once been his England. Now even that small hope had gone.

With a heavy heart, he walked on.