Death Whispers In The Wind

Chapter 4

The quiet, wonderfully quaint, humble and
sparsely-populated town of Huxebee Creek, Texas is currently in the hardened clutches of a raging inferno, thrust into a very dire situation where most of the town is burning to the ground. The dozen handful of buildings that makes up the town have largely been consumed by a group of fierce burning fires, forcing most of Huxebee Creek's citizens to retreat to safety, racing out of their homes and into the streets whereupon they stood,
only to then bare witness to the fires destroying almost everything near and dear to them. The town was being ravaged and quickly eaten alive by the fires and aside from the small overburdened church, all but a scant few homes and a horse stable were spared the destruction.

As the citizens watched powerlessly as the town, along with their homes and more than a dozen of its buildings fed the hungry and ferocious fire like it was so much fuel, the flames of the fire were increasingly growing double their size and it was clearly evident that eventually the town would wind up in a waft of thick dark smoke and burning embers, as Huxebee Creek continued to suffer at the hands of this incredibly ravenous and altogether merciless, angry raging inferno.

Lying face down in the dirt of loose gravel and in a pool of his own blood had been Sheriff Castor's lifeless body, he lay unconscious for several hours, lying slightly beneath the town's looming iron-framed clock tower, built in the center of town on Huxebee Creek's main street, which was a long stretching street that reached from one end of town to the other and ran through the center of town. Castor would slowly regain consciousness, as he rustled himself awake in the middle of the street, discovering he'd been beaten to a horridly bloody mess and he felt truly like he was seemingly near death.

"Why ....am I not dead??" Castor thought to himself.

The Bannister gang, low and behold, as much as they tried, couldn't kill Castor Jennings Feenix, their biggest mistake would be their naive assumption that the Sheriff of Huxebee Creek would surely bleed out on the street and die that night, all from the wounds the gang had inflicted on him. They were certain he'd die alongside his wife and the towns pastor, dreadfully which both of whom lay dead in the street, their bodies lie just a couple of feet apart from where Castor's was.

Castor had struggled, clutching his bleeding stomach while he slowly sat up, only to feel an excruciating amount of pain in doing so. He grimaced as he gazed down at his wet, blood-covered button shirt, which had once been white, only now the shirt had become mostly stained a deep dark and crimson red. He felt around his stomach with his hands and discovered using his fingers, 4 separate knife wounds and then Castor noticed the bullet wound in his left shoulder.

He rubbed his weary and blurry eyes until they were wide open, his vision no longer muddled, giving Castor a welcome reprieve from his waning eyesight, which luckily now had become vividly clear. But then, what he saw as clear as day, truly horrified him as he witnessed the bodies of the pastor and his wife, both victims of an apparent lynching or hanging. He dutifully fought back the tears that started to well up in his eyes. Only then, did Castor notice the numerous fires that surrounded him and were nearly finished in the process of burning the entire town, his town, of Huxebee Creek to the ground.

He sat helplessly and watched while the town he helped protect, for nearly 30 long years, burn ferociously to the ground, leaving hovering clouds of dense dark smoke and large flakes of grey ash fluttering in the hot night air.

There seemed to be a respite as the fires began to dissipate and a break in the clouds of smoke started to clear for a brief stretch. Castor could plainly see the destruction the fires had left in its wake and his beloved town was left in a steaming heap of charred debris and glowing embers with a thick blanket of ash which covered the entire town. From the looks of it, the place was just short of complete devastation and yet, it didn't matter if a couple of homes and a horse stable were salvaged. The truth was Huxebee Creek would have a tough hill to climb in rebuilding, it were very likely that Huxebee Creek would be no more.

The once quaint, prosperous and peaceful town of Huxebee Creek was all but gone now. The town that had been built on the border of Texas and Oklahoma almost 75 years ago, had withstood many things and survived. But now, the town had met its demise at the hands of a group of savage killers.

The Bannister gang had set out to do this and they'd gotten their revenge, done what they said they were going to do, which was to decimate Huxebee Creek, leaving it in tatters.

The renowned Sheriff of Huxebee Creek, Texas had been left for dead, left to bleed out alongside his dead wife and the town pastor, left to die on the street alone and left to witness the destruction of the town he loved and cherished so much, only to slowly die a horrible death along with it.

During his 30 illustrious years as the town's Sheriff, he never once failed to protect the town or the people who lived there, the townsfolk of Huxebee Creek he came to know as his neighbors and friends. These were people he loved and cared about deeply and now most of them were gone, taken from their families as they were trapped within the handful of burning buildings. The fires would claim the lives of dozens of Huxebee Creek's families, lives that Castor had sworn to protect, with every fiber in his being and at any cost.

"No, no, no, no.... oh please no!" Castor pleaded, upon seeing his wife, Ellie's lifeless body.

His emotions were running high and Castor slowly wept uncontrollably, crying for the first time in what seems like ages. Castor spiralled into an emotional breakdown as he crawled over and sat beside Ellie's body in the middle of the street, he pulled his wife's body up into his arms while still bleeding from his wounds, still in an incredible amount of pain, but none of this mattered. None of this had flooded his mind in that very moment, the only thing that occupied his thoughts would be his feeling of tremendous guilt and sorrow. Although that feeling of tremendous guilt, soon turned to tremendous anger. His failure to keep those that he loved safe, to keep his family from any danger or harm and to protect the town he grew to cherish so much. He'd failed them all.

"How could I let this happen? I'm so sorry, Ellie! Oh sweetheart.... oh god, look at you! What have they done to you?!! Come back to me, Ellie! I can't live without you, baby!!!" Castor said in a loud and strained voice, as he wept and sobbed abundantly.

They should've made damn sure that they'd finished him off. They should've taken the time and made sure that he was good and dead, but they didn't. Now the Bannister gang had left Castor feeling inadequate, made him feel like a man with nothing to lose. They made him feel that he should've listened to his dearly departed wife, damn it!! And he should've done so a long time ago, before any of this came to pass. They made him realize his reality now and the truth was that he could no longer do what he'd always done for so many years and that was to uphold the law. They made Castor feel like an old man, past his prime, a has-been, a joke and a failure and it pissed him the fuck off.

He wanted them to feel his anguish and sorrow. He wanted them to feel his anger and he wanted them to especially feel his pain.

What were he to do now? Castor's blood was boiling now and he planned on using that fury to his advantage. It would be time to enact his revenge, for it was all that he had left.