Chapter 7
The hooves of the lone horse kicked up plumes of thick, choking dust as the rider drew closer to the steps of the Lucky Star Saloon. Caleb stood in the shadowed threshold, one hand gripping the doorframe to keep from collapsing, his chest still throbbing where the blood-soaked star was branded into his flesh. The rider pulled back on the reins, and the lathered horse came to a restless stop.
The man in the saddle tipped back his black cowboy hat. He had a thick, unkempt beard, dark circles under his eyes, and a face that looked hauntingly familiar—it was the exact face Caleb saw in the mirror every single morning.
Caleb’s breath hitched. He blinked hard, thinking it was a hallucination brought on by the desert heat and the trauma of the submerged floorboards, but the rider swung down from the saddle with a heavy thud, his boots hitting the dirt street with agonizing familiarity.
The rider looked up at the two little girls standing near the wooden barrel, then slowly shifted his gaze to the man standing in the doorway of the saloon.
“Where are your mother and father?” the rider asked, his voice cracking with exhaustion.
Caleb felt the ground tilt beneath his feet. The words weren't just similar; they were the exact cadence, the exact tone, the exact desperate softness he had used hours—or had it been years?—ago when he first arrived in this forsaken town.
The older sister turned her head, looking up at the newly arrived traveler with a look of practiced, weary indifference.
“We don't got none,” she recited, her voice echoing in Caleb’s mind like a broken phonograph record.
Caleb tried to shout a warning—tried to scream at the rider to turn his horse around, to ride back into the desert and never look back—but no sound came out of his throat. His mouth opened and closed like a dying fish, while his limbs refused to obey his commands. He was trapped inside his own skin, forced to watch the past replay itself with inescapable precision.
The rider frowned, his hand drifting toward the brim of his hat just as Caleb’s had done.
“Where do you sleep?” the rider asked, stepping closer to the children.
The younger sister pointed a trembling, dirt-smudged finger directly past the rider and straight toward Caleb standing in the doorway.
“Underneath,” the little girl whispered, her voice carrying an unnatural chill. “In the dark with the new man.”
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The rider slowly turned his head, his eyes widening in horror as he locked gazes with Caleb. For a terrifying second, Caleb looked into his own eyes—eyes full of fear, regret, and the heavy burden of a badge that could never be removed.
“No,” the rider whispered, backing away from the girls. “I just got here. This isn't real.”
