The Odd Fellow's Champion

By Patrick Dorn

When a clever clairvoyant and the ghost of a murdered Indian girl ask a wandering warrior priest and his remarkable mule for help with a burial, resistance from the locals threatens to make them all permanent residents of the cemetery in 1880 Santa Cruz.

 

"The Odd Fellow's Champion" is a standalone weird western tale set in the "Holy Heretics" universe.  Rated PG-13 for violence and language. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patrick Dorn
• Release date: Apr 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393610793

Patrick Dorn

Patrick Dorn used to write weird westerns set in Old California, New Mexico, and Colorado, but then he visited Ireland. Now his supernatural fiction alternates between The West and The Emerald Isle, but is always, always weird. He's also an Anglican priest and a full-time chaplain. Check out Patrick's blog, stories, plays, musicals, children's books, and more at www.PatrickDorn.com. You can reach him at [e-mail]

Book preview

The Odd Fellow’s Champion

THE ODD FELLOW’S CHAMPION

A Holy Heretics Weird Western

PATRICK DORN

Copyright © 2020 by Patrick Dorn

All rights reserved.

Cover image by Foto-Rabe from Pixabay.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

DESCRIPTION

When a clever clairvoyant and the ghost of a murdered Indian girl ask a wandering warrior priest and his remarkable mule for help with a burial, resistance from the locals threatens to make them all permanent residents of the cemetery in 1880 Santa Cruz.

The Odd Fellow’s Champion is a standalone weird western tale set in the Holy Heretics universe. Rated PG-13 for violence and language. Approximately 8,300 words.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Also by Patrick Dorn

About the Author

Afterword

CHAPTER ONE

Santa Cruz, California 1880

Jesuit Father Lukas Murbach leaned against the rough-hewn redwood timber wall in the back of Holy Cross Mission chapel, thinking this was one of the most godforsaken Masses he’d ever attended.

Worse than the countless showy ceremonies he’d stood through years back when he served in the Vatican’s Swiss Guard.

He could only imagine how the Lord felt, having to listen to a vain, pompous little fart like Father Denis La Fouine vomit forth inane platitudes from the pulpit.

The only thing that made it tolerable was the sad, buxom ghost hovering at the chapel’s entrance by the marble and copper baptismal font. He wondered what her story was.

She had the look of the recent dead about her. Her pale white face was tinged gray with rouge and still fairly distinct. Her eyes were closed as if she was dreaming she still lived. Her low cut dress, and the voluptuous body that once filled it, retained depth, volume, and the unconsciously provocative stance of someone with a saucy history.

After three days, once the lingering vitality had moved on, most shades became bleached, limp, and tattered, like moldering and torn lace curtains hanging in an abandoned house. But the newly-dead, and those who’d suffered violent and emotional passings sometimes retained enough energy to appear almost lifelike to those with the Sight.