Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Gagged at the Gallows Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

GAGGED AT THE GALLOWS

The walls of Henry Waller’s home ate the fired shots, disappearing them, leaving behind only shadowy scars like little puckered mouths silently moaning “Owww.” The sheriff, his deputy, and two men from the clergy were outside, sitting on the backs of excited horses that danced circles around the building.

“Hold ya fire,” Sheriff Mosley said, waving his emptied revolver over his head.

By and by, the shots ceased, and the sheriff filled the chambers of his revolver anew. The men from the clergy held primitive rifles and had been refilling the chambers after every wasted shot as it was.

“Henry Lee Waller, now you just come on out and face what’s coming to ya,” Mosely said.

“He ain’t here.” This was the voice of Waller’s fiancé, Rebecca Jameson. Folks called her Becky.

“You ain’t fooling nobody!” Pastor Finn said before firing a shot at one of the wooden shutters.

Mosely looked at the man, frowning. “You cut that out for now.”

From the far side of the adobe, four quick shots rang out.

“Hold ya damned fire!” Mosely took a red kerchief from his saddle and wiped his brow. “There’s no way out of this but my way, so how about—”

From a crack in one of the windows, a round blew out and nicked the corner of the sheriff’s right ear. He bent forward, groaning and growling, hand staunching the minor flow of blood. This time, he didn’t tell the party to quit firing after they’d opened up on the home. Within thirty seconds, a silence reigned and the pungent afterburn scent of cordite hung around like a fog.

“We’re going in after his next shot,” Mosely said to his deputy, Pete Scruggs. Scruggs then passed the information on down the line.

They waited. And waited. And waited. No shot came. The sheriff glanced up at the midday sun, touched gently at his ear, and then came to a decision. He waved the men in as he road to the porch railing. He hopped down and tied his reins. The others followed silently, doing the same.

“Everybody loaded and ready?” Mosely whispered. Heads nodded as they huddled in close. “You, Billy, you creep open that door then we’ll bust through the windows.”

Billy Cheap swallowed a lump of fear but nodded. He was the junior pastor, training to take his own show on the road, for when the time came.

The pastor spied Mosely with something like anger but said nothing. When Henry Waller rolled himself and his wagon into Sunspur some nine months earlier, everyone took to him. He was a man easy to talk to, especially when he covered the bar tab and rarely interrupted. When he spoke, it was typically in the form of questions. He wanted to know everything about the valley and hills and all the war stories of repelling the Kickapoos—on that account they’d mostly fibbed, there’d been no tribes of any sort on that particular swatch of land. What seemed to peak Waller’s interest was the local religion and holy grounds. Dutifully, the locals had clammed up, no matter how drunk they got. But that damned Waller was handsome and compelling and he found a crack and wiggled a finger into it, into her.

Becky Jameson was the schoolteacher and Waller’s knowledge of science and math and literature and philosophy and art floated her heart right to the dock of his whims. The clever sonofabitch found the chink in their armor and exploited it, now he thought he’d get away with it.

Cheap had the long rifle in his left hand, virtually useless. He pushed gently against the door and paused, awaiting a shot that did not come. He shrugged, glancing back to Mosely and the pastor. He faced the door, took a deep breath, and then kicked it wide, bringing up his rifle in a flash. The door rebounded long before fully opening and Cheap’s eyes immediately went to the rope tied to the backside of the handle. He did not get a chance to see the splitting axe swung downward at him, cleaving his skull, making a blood valley, pink and green accents clinging like ooze nuggets about the flesh and bone. Cheap stumbled in reverse, the others watching wordlessly, motionlessly.

“Cheap?” Pastor Finn said.

Black tendrils reached up through the devastated skull and slapped a wet tune upon the ruined flesh. A scree sound played free like an eagle’s war cry, stretched to hold.

The men covered their ears and Mosely shouted, “Pastor, take your boy back to the church before there’s hell for his rider!”

The pastor grabbed onto Cheap and directed his stiffening body toward the pastor’s horse. “Give me a hand!” Finn said as he attempted to put Cheap and his writhing, panicking rider up front of the saddle.

All told, this took about a minute, and once the squeal of Cheap’s rider played back toward town, the sheriff and his deputy realized neither Waller nor Jameson was likely to be inside anymore, they’d had ample opportunity to run out the back—just as much opportunity to fire upon the stunned hunting party.

Scruggs seemed to make the realization all at once, and in a physical way. He jumped as if zapped by lightning. “Oh, hell! They’ll be long gone.”

Mosely squinted his eyes and clucked his tongue. “Maybe, or maybe that’s what they want us to think. Look sharp, deputy.”

Mosely led the two-man parade in through the door, careful of any additional boobytraps. The adobe was plain. There was nowhere to hide. There weren’t even any bedrooms or separating walls. Shine played pin lights through the bullet holes, revealing a heaping pile of empty.

“Ah, shit, they done rode off,” Scruggs said and started toward the door.

“Hold up,” Mosely said. The dining table had been pushed aside and a ruffled rug centered the space. The sheriff knelt and looked beneath the rug. “You remember how hellbent that Waller was to get this house from old Rita Johnson?”

“What’s that got to—” Scruggs began but ate the rest of the question as Mosely flopped back the rug, revealing a trapdoor. “He knew all along?”

 “He knew something.” Mosely said and flipped the door wide open to reveal a rough wooden ladder.

—

When the shooting began, Waller set to boobytrapping the door while Jameson tied ropes to the sack full of shimmering relics. Jameson was seventeen and had snuck into the basement of the church the night her sister became a vessel for the Blessed Ones, or as the locals had come to call them, riders. Using so regular a term was done to play down the importance of the Blessed Ones until all were mature enough to become vessels and turn the prophecy into reality. Jameson had watched her sister take this on, watched her become a vessel and nearly vomited from the image. Despite all that the Blessed Ones offered—prosperity, happiness, sexual gratification—this was wrong, monstrous. When Waller showed up and took her into confidence, she was all for stealing the golden relics of the subterranean cathedral.

What she hadn’t told him was that those were no false idols down there.

She couldn’t. She loved him too much to admit that kind of stain on her lineage.

Waller took up the sack and she helped him tie it around his shoulders. Mosely was shouting at them from outside. Jameson knelt and lifted the trapdoor.

“Lead the way,” she said and then shouted over her shoulder, “He ain’t here!”

They had two options: get shot immediately or face the paths that led to the cathedral and look for a way out from there. Jameson liked neither, but Waller’s enthusiasm infected her with hope. Before he descended the ladder, he pulled her tight in for a kiss. Jameson reached without aiming and fired through a window shutter across the room. A second later, Mosely whined and shots peppered the adobe. The fleeing pair got busy scurrying into the darkness.

At the bottom of the ladder was an oil lamp. Jameson took the small packet of potentially useful items from the pocket of her cleavage and found a match. She struck it and lit the lamp before stowing the packet. Wordlessly, they reloaded their revolvers. Jameson nodded at Waller, her bangs matted against her sweat-damp forehead.

Many of the homes in town had shafts down to the cathedral, this one hadn’t existed beforehand, but was the nearest property to the church that acted as a false face for the worshippers. Waller had dug out the shaft down over a series of weeks. The tunnel toward the cathedral had taken much longer, and he’d only had a notion of moving in a straight line. He had no idea of what he’d actually find. A gravedigger had sold him a book retrieved from a resting place not twenty miles south of the little town called Sunspur that promised golden relics of an archaic god.

The tunnel was plenty big enough to crawl through but having the pack on his back made things tricky. Jameson spurred him on. Unfortunately, she knew very little about the tunnels or the underground cathedral, having only snuck down once. They’d have to guess upon reaching the open cavern and incandescent pools of jellied water. Waller had been to the cathedral only once himself and hadn’t investigated the pools while there. Had he done so, he might’ve changed his mind concerning the theft.

They reached the opening and the false rock he’d crafted from papier-mâché and paint. Jameson held her lamp forward and Waller pushed aside the faux rock. He spilled out with a rattle and Jameson trailed behind him, cautious and quiet. She spied the pools that surrounded and lay beneath the cathedral. They seemed lifeless, but she knew better than to assume anything about the Blessed Ones. She pulled her revolver from her holster once to her feet.

“You see someone?” Waller said.

“Shh,” Jameson said and led the charge to one of the great pillars surrounding the cathedral that held away the earth some thirty feet above.

Waller crept up behind her, his pack clanging gently. “Any idea which tunnel?”

Jameson wasn’t thinking much about the tunnels, her eyes were on the cathedral. Her parents both had riders in them when she was conceived, it gave her a sixth sense when it came to her kin, whether she wanted it or not—was part of the reason she’d fallen so hard for this strange, exotic man. That lack of connection.

“Shh, let me get my bearings.”

The blue water shined, as did the yellow rocks. The space glowed unto itself, as if revealing its divinity. Her focus remained on the shadows, and then she heard it and saw it. The pastor pushing along behind Billy Cheap’s mostly dead but still mobile corpse.

“Dear Jesus Christ,” Waller said.

Jameson tossed her elbow into his ribs.

Pastor Finn walked Cheap to the edge of the pool. The stiff body dropped to its knees before flopping forward. Blackness bunched at the skull gulley, silky and slimy like inky satin. Fat tendrils wiggled free, slapping blindly until a bulbous form plopped out and slipped into the pool.

Pastor Finn watched it and then lifted his face, as if spoken to, as if warned. He looked dead in the direction where Waller and Jameson crouched before spinning and bolting away. Jameson fired twice, missing both times.

“Dammit!” Jameson shouted, breaking from the hiding spot, Waller hot behind her, his sack clanging and banging on his back.

Behind them, from Waller’s tunnel, came voices. The sheriff and his deputy. Jameson and Waller were making for the nearest tunnel through the rock walls when two black forms oozed up from the blue waters. Waller screamed a string of nonsense vowels while Jameson opened fire. She put two rounds into one and a single shot into the other. In unison, the pair squealed matching horrid, eardrum-piercing cries. They dropped back into the water and two more rose to take their place.

“Shoot!” Jameson said.

Waller snapped far enough from shock to empty his revolver in the general direction of the pair while Jameson reloaded. He did plenty of damage to one. The other slithered on its bulbous end, waggling its fat tendrils at Waller. They wrapped around his throat and squeezed. He gagged and swung his arms, his revolver leaving his grip and plopping into the water.

“Let him go!”

Jameson had reloaded and now rang off, plugging the thing at close range with three shots. It dropped Waller and coughed, holding his neck with eyes wide enough to eclipse baseballs. Jameson grabbed his arm.

“Come on!”

He shuffled up to his feet. He labored under injury as well as the weight of the artifacts in his sack. Jameson kept pulling, leading to that tunnel opening.

According to a bit of logistical math, that hole should pop up somewhere near the Dusty Path Saloon or possibly the Woods’ house. Either option was better than the current locale.

The original tunnels were all much larger than the one Waller had dug. They still had to crouch but could remain otherwise upright until they reached the ladder that would take them to freedom.

“Sonofabitch!” Waller said a moment after a gunshot echoed through the cavern.

More shots pelted into the dirt around the tunnel and Jameson ducked sideways next to the ladder. “Climb,” she said, almost hissing it.

Waller started up the tall ladder. While Jameson waited, revolver cocked and ready. Scruggs’ face appeared first, and Jameson wasted not a breath. The shot was true and slapped into the man’s forehead, just below the brim of his dusty hat. He stumbled backward, hands spread wide enough to catch hold of the wall and hold himself upright.

“Scruggs?” Mosely said, the man himself was beyond view.

It happened quickly. Scruggs’ face broke into weepy red puzzle pieces a moment before blasting outward on a gore shower that birthed the inky black blob. It charged down the tunnel, using its tendrils like paddles against the walls.

Jameson emptied her revolver. The rider began squealing and the sheriff began cursing. Jameson broke up the ladder. Waller was already above. She heard the sheriff getting closer, but that light was upon her like a kiss from her beloved. She basked in it, arms and legs working pell-mell, as if apart from her mind. Hands gripped and pulled her up and she began to smile, assuming it had been Waller who’d grabbed her.

—

The gallows platform was sturdy beneath their feet. The ropes around their necks were stiff. The matured townsfolk had gathered in the mouth of the cathedral to observe. Though they had a few dents, the stolen relics were back in their rightful places. Waller was accepting his fate with grace, while Jameson simply shook her head at it all.

“I’ve been to many a hangings and never saw one quite like this,” Waller said. He was looking up at the rope coiling around an ovular beam. On the far end of his rope was a big man, no hood, no mask, identity out in the open: James Worth, a man who’d served Waller several dozen drinks over the last nine months.

“It’s not really a hanging, my love.” The same setup reached up from Jameson’s noose, though Clint Benedict, the local blacksmith had hold of her rope.

“Oh?” Waller said, a tear slipping down his cheek.

Becky Jameson opened her mouth to explain, but the blacksmith unceremoniously reefed her rope, lifting her several inches from the platform. Her toes danced without touching and Waller gawked in horror.

“This is downright—”

A great splash ate his words as one of the Blessed Ones leapt from the pool and latched its tendrils around her legs and abdomen. Like a mouse through a floor crack, the bulbous end began squeezing itself through Jameson’s jaws, dislocating the hinges with a horrid crack. Waller watched in sheer horror as her neck expanded while the creature oozed down.

Henry Waller began shaking his head a moment before the barkeep yanked his rope. Within seconds, he was feeling exactly what he’d seen happen to his fiancé.

—

Mrs. Becky Waller sat behind her desk flipping through the copy of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court when a shadow darkened the schoolhouse doorway. She turned and smiled up at her husband.

“Does teacher need her slates washed?” Henry Waller said.

Becky Waller laughed and swatted at the air. “If you mean that literally, the answer is always.”

Henry Waller leered at her, sporting his most lecherous grin. “Is the madame being a naughty little girl?” He leaned down.

“Henry, don’t be—”

He planted his mouth over her mouth. Their tongues waltzed while their tendrils entwined in a dance older than the human race.

XX