The Nightmare
Colonel Ethan Pendleton Has a Disturbing Dream
He rode a pale horse, cadaverous and bald.
Derrick G. Jeter
In this special edition of Y’allogy, the protagonist in my literary western, Blood Touching Blood, has a nightmare. Other special editions of the newsletter announcing the novel will include additional previews of chapters and an offer for autograph copies for paid subscribers.
Blood Touching Blood will be available on December 1, 2024.
In the Colonel’s fitful sleep a vision formed in his mind. He rode a pale horse, cadaverous and bald. Bareback, its spindle shanked spine was boney and dreadful under its irregular gait. Heavy hooved, it stepped here . . . and there . . . some short, some long, some fast . . . some slow, each falling with a jolt—and soundless. They rode down a steep slope—stumbling, sliding, halting, shying, cantering. Deeper, darker—on they rode, through a windless, lifeless forest of scorched trees blackened and ashen-gray. Spectral forms watched eyeless as the Colonel and his bloodless mount rode through the noiseless woodland. Corporal Chevalier appeared and blew his bugle, halting the wheyfaced nag, and gazed upon the Colonel with demised eyes. In a hand made of shadow he held out a lemon and the Colonel took it. Wormeaten. He ate his belly full of it and disgorged it and the worms became ghosts of men lost, honeycombed with bullets and pincushioned with arrows, and apparitions of enemies killed, bloodied and tonsured. They cried to him through the deafening silence. He sobbed and begged them for mercy and grace and forgiveness. But their earless souls heard nothing but their own mournful wails. And the nag carried on its footslog, its asymmetrical canter plodding further into an abyss of who-knows-what. They rode over an expanse of broken barrial shimmering under a comfortless sun. Alkaline puddles taunted and teased the Colonel’s firescorched throat. The horse would not halt. The Colonel could not unhorse. On they rode, through mountain passes, over caprock, and into canyon lands. They rode by a dead river that in its long forgotten past had cut its way through the sediment and carved out a quebrada of vibrant colors. The horse came to rest and somewhere in his memory the Colonel remembered this place—of bright sunshine and clear blue water, of a green-eyed woman with raven-colored hair who glistened in the light. And in the distance he heard the coo of a mourning dove.
Derrick G. Jeter, Blood Touching Blood (McKinney: Y’allogyPress, 2024), 185–6.
Texan spoken here, y’all.
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