Note From A Writer’s Voice: Any relation to actual people or events in this story are purely coincidental and should not be taken seriously.
In The city of Eden, crime runs rampant. The people cry for a savior. God sent them The White Rose, a dark avenger with a mysterious past, who is tasked with cleansing evil from the land. In his first story, Heaven's champion will duel with a sadistic child killer called The Puppet Man.
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Photo by Manny Rodriguez
The grave had been dug in bad earth.
Hard earth. Black beneath the first few inches and wet farther down. Somebody had worked at it for a while. Shovel marks ran along the walls. The blade had struck stone in several places. Whoever dug it had taken his time.
The White Rose crouched at the edge.
His enormous hat hid what little moon there was. Flat brim. Black felt ruined by rain and travel. Beneath it his head was covered entirely in white cloth, pulled smooth across the face and tucked beneath the high collar of his riding coat. There were no holes cut for eyes or mouth. The blank cloth gave nothing back.
The rest of him was black.
Fitted leather worn pale at the seams. Armored shoulders scarred from old blows. Gloves. Tall riding boots sunk halfway into the mud. A cape fell from his shoulders and spread across the ground behind him, long enough that its hem had collected burrs and grave dirt and pieces of the forest.
A ruby crucifix rested against his chest.
On his back was a sword too large for most men to carry comfortably. The scabbard had been reinforced with iron bands. Scripture had been engraved along the guard in Latin. Years of use had nearly worn the letters smooth.
Under his cape were guns.
Two compact automatic weapons in shoulder rigs. Silvered where silver mattered. Blessed where blessing mattered.
At his right hip hung the old one.
Six chambers.
Six silver rounds.
He preferred that one.
It made a man consider every shot.
He looked into the grave.
There were eleven children.
He counted twice.
Eleven.
The youngest could not have been more than five.
Their bodies had gone hollow with time. Skin drawn tight in places, gone entirely in others. Clothes remained on some of them. A little blue coat. Brown trousers. One girl still had a ribbon tied around what remained of her hair.
The smell sat low in the hole.
Rot.
Wet cloth.
Old blood.
Something sweet underneath.
He knew that smell.
He hated that he knew it.
He climbed down.
His boots settled among the dead.
There were marks on them.
Deep punctures through shoulders and ribs. Torn flesh around the wounds. Some had broken bone beneath them. He examined one child, then another.
Hooks.
The same marks appeared on all of them.
He followed the pattern.
His eyes stopped on the smallest.
They had been hung.
Alive.
The White Rose remained crouched for a long time.
Rain began falling through the trees.
It tapped against the brim of his hat.
One drop struck the white cloth over his cheek and spread slowly into the fabric.
He raised his right hand.
Forehead.
Chest.
Left shoulder.
Right.
“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”
His voice was low beneath the cloth. Older than his body had any right to sound.
He looked down at the children.
“Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, for it is written. Vengeance is mine. I shall repay, saith the Lord.”
His gloved fingers touched the forehead of the little girl with the ribbon.
Pain tore through his hand.
He ripped it back.
Smoke curled from the leather.
The White Rose stared at his palm.
The glove had blackened across three fingers.
Something moved beneath the skin of his hand.
He clenched his fist.
It stopped.
For several seconds he remained perfectly still.
Then he whispered:
“How could you have created such evil?”
The woods gave no answer.
He removed the glove.
His palm was burned.
There was a shape in the burn.
Three crooked lines.
He had seen them before.
His breathing changed.
The grave disappeared.
Mud became snow.
Rain became ash.
He was riding.
A black horse beneath him. Iron shoes hammering frozen ground. The animal’s breath rolling white through the morning. Church bells rang somewhere far behind him.
He remembered those.
He remembered everything.
He was younger.
No hat.
No cloth.
No scars.
His hair was dark and tied behind his head. His face belonged to another life. Handsome, people had called him. His wife had called him vain.
He had laughed.
There had been sunlight that morning.
She stood outside the house holding the child against her hip.
The child reached for him.
Small fingers opening and closing.
He bent from the saddle and kissed those fingers.
His wife said something.
He could no longer remember the words.
That was the cruelty of it.
Centuries later he could remember the color of her dress.
He could remember the flour on her wrist.
He could remember the little wooden horse the child carried everywhere, one wheel missing because he’d promised to fix it and never had.
Her last words were gone.
He remembered answering her.
He remembered smiling.
Then the column moved.
Soldiers around him.
Steel.
Horses.
Banners snapping above the road.
He turned once.
She was still there.
The child waved the wooden horse.
He raised one hand.
Then the road bent.
They vanished.
War took months.
Men killed each other over a strip of land neither side could have named correctly.
He came home in winter.
There were crows on the roof.
He knew something had happened before he reached the house.
The village stood empty.
Doors hung open.
A cart lay overturned in the road.
Chimneys sat cold.
His horse stopped fifty yards from the house.
The animal refused another step.
He dismounted.
Walked.
Sword drawn.
Blood had frozen beneath the snow.
He found the wooden horse first.
One wheel missing.
He picked it up.
The door of the house was open.
He stepped inside.
His hand tightened around the little wooden horse.
The memory fought him.
A small body on the floor.
His wife’s hair across the boards.
Her hand.
The wedding band.
Blood dried black in the grooves of the wood.
He remembered dropping to his knees.
He remembered touching her.
Cold.
He remembered crawling toward the child.
He remembered saying the child’s name.
Again.
Again.
Again.
He remembered waiting for an answer long after he understood there would never be one.
A sound came out of him.
He had carried that sound for centuries.
The memory broke.
The grave returned.
Eleven children.
Rain.
Rot.
Mud.
The White Rose was kneeling among them with his bare hand clenched hard enough that his nails had opened the palm.
Blood ran between his fingers.
He breathed once.
Twice.
Again.
He loosened his fist.
Control.
After enough years, a man learned to keep his grief on a short leash.
He wrapped the burned hand in a strip of cloth torn from beneath his sleeve and stood.
Eleven children lay around him.
He climbed from the grave.
At the top he stopped and looked back.
“I cannot promise you Heaven.”
His voice was barely audible beneath the rain.
“I have never seen it.”
He pulled the old six shooter from its holster.
The revolver was heavy and silver and ugly from use. Small crosses had been engraved into the cylinder. A priest in Prague had blessed it. Another in Rome had blessed it again after Prague failed to keep the priest alive.
The White Rose opened the cylinder.
Six silver rounds.
Each had been dipped in holy water.
Each bore a tiny cross cut into its nose.
He closed it.
“But I can promise Hell to the creature who did this.”
The cylinder locked.
He looked toward the trees.
Whoever buried the children had left tracks.
Faint.
Old.
Still there.
Boots.
Something had been dragged.
Beside those marks were narrow holes pressed deep into the earth at regular intervals.
The ends of hooks.
The White Rose followed them with his eyes until darkness swallowed the trail.
His burned hand began hurting again.
Good.
Pain kept his thoughts where they belonged.
He holstered the revolver.
Adjusted the sword across his back.
Pulled the white cloth tighter beneath his collar.
For one moment he stood over the grave. Rain rolled from the enormous brim of his hat. His cape dragged through the mud. Silver rested against black leather. The blank white face stared toward the woods.
Then he remembered the wooden horse.
The missing wheel.
The promise he’d made.
I’ll fix it when I come home.
His jaw tightened beneath the cloth.
He turned toward the tracks.
There would be time to mourn when the work was finished.
Eleven children lay behind him.
He walked into the woods before there could be twelve.
To be concluded in part 2….
Coming August 20th, 2026.
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