Smoke in a Bottle by Kristoph Kosicki

Smoke in a Bottle by Kristoph Kosicki

The saloon

When a man goes missing out here, you can be almost sure he’s as good as dead. But that doesn’t mean a man’s dead body isn’t still valuable to someone. For most, it’s just a sense of closure, the sun set on a hard lived life. I suppose that’s all Mr. Pierce was after when he hired me to locate his estranged father. Peace of mind, that the old man was put down for good.

His last known location was barely on the map. Porterville, Utah. About a half day’s ride from the saloon I was drinking in, a grimey outlaw joint in the middle of Salt Lake City.

Mr.Pierce tipped his hat towards me, as I spun the last drops of alcohol around the bottom of my bottle. He spoke proper, gentlemanly. I had him fixed for an educated southerner boy.

“Excuse me, sir.” He spoke. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Finding me was free son, but who I find for you isn’t going to be cheap”. I informed him of my fee and he didn’t buckle. So I implored him to tell me about exactly who it was he was looking for.

“The man I’m looking for is my father, Dr. Pierce. My understanding is he came out this way, after the war had been lost, to continue his experiments and to work on his inventions.” He informed me.

Now I must admit, my interest peaked. His tone wasn’t that of someone who seemed to be making a proud admission. “Your old man, one of those jack pots that sews pretty ladies to giant fish?”.

“Tell me, Mr. Crieghton. Do you think much about death?”

I swallowed the last bit of amber fluid in the bottom of my glass, and I placed my hat on the top of my head in one single motion and headed for the door, leaving my coins behind on the saloon counter, gesturing for him to follow me to the stables.

“Mr.Pierce. In my profession, there is no thought that I tend to more”.

“Well, my father was working on something. Something that would have won the South the war. So he claimed, but he was dying. He came out here, to continue his work in the dry air. I never read his letters, but I kept them all. It wasn’t until they stopped arriving, that I found the gumption to unseal them. I reckon, if we find my father’s laboratory, then we might ride off into the sunset as wealthy men.”

“I’m not an arms dealer, son. But I can’t deny that my curiosity weighs heavier than my sense of greed.”

“As does mine, Mr. Crieghton.”

Porterville was just under a day’s ride but the sun was already setting on Salt Lake. Mr. Pierce was eager to reach his destination, but I advised him to hold his horse, in a literal sense. But I agreed to get him halfway that night, to taper his excitement.

“We can go half way before we lose daylight, the mountain is passable through the canyon, it’s faster than going the long way around but not as easy riding, i’d like to set up a campsite before nightfall, the terrain is rough on the horses already.”

He smirked as he saddled his horse, and handed me a cigar from a leather pouch in his breast pocket. A real fine tobacco too.

“A little bit of Carolina for you, for when we get to the campsite.”

The campfire

There’s something about a campfire that beckons to an ancient part of a man’s soul. The part that looks up at the stars and wonders if they are looking back. When that Gamble Oak smoke fills your nostrils, it does something to you. No man is immune to it and when that flickering light gleamed in Mr.Pierce’s eyes I could tell something weighed heavy up on his mind, and that the fire was drawing it nearer to the surface.

“Where do you suppose we go when we die?”

It is probably the first question a child asks when they first learn to waggle their tongues, and yet no answer is truly satisfactory. When I looked at Mr.Pierce, that’s all I could see really, was a young boy. I sensed in him a directionless angst that all young men carry. And when they can’t figure who they themselves are, they start trying to piece together who their fathers were.

“Oh, I don’t pretend to know” I said “but I suppose it might be something like when this fire goes out, it’ll smoulder for a while, and then the last of the smoke will rise up in the air, and beyond that. Well beyond that I don’t know.”

“Suppose you could capture the smoke?”

“Like in a bottle?” I asked.

“Yes, precisely.”

“Well, I reckon if you could, what you capture in that bottle would just be a fragment of the fire that used to burn, but no matter what you do with it, It’ll never be the fire it used to be.”

“Suppose I hadn’t thought of that.” He replied.

“Why would you have?” I wondered. I Layed back on the soil and looked up to the stars again. I could sense him wrestling with the question, and I didn’t need to see him to know he was holding something back. “A friend of mine once said, you gotta be okay just living with the question.”

“I’m afraid as much as I would like to adopt that philosophy, I find it rather difficult.” I turned to face him as he carved out his own spot to retire by the fire. “Knowing what I know now”.

“Yeah, and what’s that.”

“I think my father may have discovered how to capture the smoke.”

He popped the top off a whiskey bottle and I watched a little vapor rise up into the air and disappear and I wondered frankly, what the hell that meant.

Later, I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of that young boy saying a prayer and even though I could not hear his words, I was sure that God would not answer them. With sleep still in my eyes I rolled over to the dying fire, and I spoke my mind. “I’ve dug enough holes boy, to know people don’t crawl back out of them. Best to let the dead rest.”

The trail

The birds have a tendency to sing their songs just before the light of the sun reaches your eyes, when the sleep is the deepest. I always felt that was nature’s way of making sure you didn’t wander too far away from your own body in the night. I laid there trying to identify the different types of birds by their sounds, but I’d never had the ear for it.

So I rose, and tended the horses, and prepared myself for the short but no less dangerous ride ahead. Mr.Pierce was still asleep and I figured I’d let him rest, after all I was on his dime.

When he finally came to, we drank coffee and I warned him of the dangers ahead. The canyon was not for riders who didn’t know their way around a horse. He assured me of his experience, but still I felt inclined to demand we ride slowly, for the sake of the horses if not our own. “This canyon has put down enough horses that they ought to make a law against riding through it,” I added.

We talked about history, philosophy, and war. But whenever we got too close to the topic of death, he would pause. I intended to let the perils of the trail bleed from him what the campfire could not. I pressed him for answers.

“Mind telling me why your old man came out all this way, to work on his inventions despite already having lost the war?”

“I told you, he was sickly in the lungs when he departed the South. Perhaps he thought he might buy himself enough time to finish his work.”

“How many years did he send you letters?” I inquired.

“Years?!” He replied “I don’t know, it seemed like they would never stop.”

“If it was more than one he didn’t come out here because he was dying, son. He wouldn’t have made it through his first winter any better than the settlers who came out this way before him. Now either he lied to you, or you’re lying to me”.

His horse seemed to mimic his slumpy posture, one of shame. “Well I don’t proudly admit to being my father’s son, you see, he”. He paused and sighed “he was hired by the Confederate army to build a weapon to turn the tide of war. A mechanical machine of sorts, a single unit, capable of killing a hundred soldiers.”

“Have you ever seen it?” I asked.

“No.” He replied “but the foundation of my father’s mechanical brilliance can not be understated. He was to be the next Thomas Newcomen or James Watt! It was his other work that saw him banished, so to speak. Laughed out of the Confederacy by his peers.” 

“So, he was sewing pretty ladies to fish after all?” I kept myself from laughing so as not to be offensive, but by now I had the distinction he had probably heard it all.

“It was his obsession with matters of the occult, if you must know.” he said matter of factly.

“Ah, capture the smoke. Where do we go when we die? I suppose he found out one way or the other.” I smiled.

He was quiet after that and I respected him for telling me the truth. It’s hard being ashamed of your father. Your instincts tell you to stand up for him, even if he was no good. But sometimes it’s best we not learn the whole truth about the ones we love. Who they really are when no one’s looking.  It’s the ones that are the same on the inside as they are on the outside that we cast out. They remind us of the ugly bits we try to hide.

“How much further?” He asked.

“Were nearly there, you rode good and steady, don’t get anxious now and spook your horse on the last leg of the trail. Unless your father invented a horseless carriage that can fly over this mountain, you’re gonna want to keep your ride alive”.

The closer we came to our destination, the more withdrawn Mr.Pierce became. Surely in the inner recesses of his mind he toiled with a heavy burden, I recognized in him an agony that sings the songs of sorrow. He began to whistle a somber tune and I felt compelled to whistle it too.

It was near the end of the trail, just outside of Porterville when Mr.Pierce fetched a map from another one of his fancy leather pouches. His eyes widened as if he knew where he was. I grew suspicious of his need for me at all, and I felt for my revolver on my hip without actually reaching for it. My horse seemed to sense it too, as he became uneasy and restless. But as we turned the last bend, it became clear to me why.

Mr. Pierce had found a hidden nook in the canyon’s Rocky walls and indicated for me to follow. It was off course, and the passage became narrower and narrower, to the point I feared the horses may become lodged. I ran my hands along the stoney walls as the path descended.

I disturbed earth as we rode and my fingers traced a shape in the rock wall that gave me pause, “Pierce” I whispered, uneasy.

“Is that?”. He asked, turning back to look at me .

“fraid’ so.” I said. Removing my hand from a human skull that was protruding through the wall. “Lots of them.” It became clear to me that we were in some type of  catacombs, where the bodies had been buried into the rock face.

“Did you know about this?” I asked, as Mr.Pierce continued forward.

“I had hoped it wasn’t true.” He said.

The laboratory – part 1

We pressed our way through the tight crevasse in the canyon and when we emerged we came to what appeared to be some type of fortress. Its construction smelled of paranoia, and whoever built it must have believed that heaven itself was coming down.

The outer perimeter was entrenched, and makeshift booby traps littered the land. We sought an entrance that would be safe to pass, but with no one to man the encampments’ defenses, it was as simple as pushing open the main gate.

Within the compound a metal structure stood, its design was one of pure utility. “This must be it, my father’s lab” said Mr.Pierce.

“Son, this is a prison”. I countered. I inhaled the air around me, it was stagnant and still, but more importantly there was something rotten in it. However faint, it was surely there. My curiosity began to wane, and my instincts won out.

“We should leave, boy. There ain’t nothing in that building you wanna see. I promise you.” I pleaded. More for his sake than my own. He was young, and whatever darkness lurked in him had not yet grown ripe, and it didn’t need to.  

“You can turn back, Thank you, Mr.Crieghton for getting me this far.” He spoke without inflection.

“You start digging up the past, son, then you don’t get to bury it again. If you must go, I am coming with you.”

We entered the structure, the door was already ajar. A stench waved over me like I had never smelt before and it made my knees buckle. Mr.Pierce began to cough and retch, but in a pure testament of his will to continue, he did not vomit. As to not be out done I swallowed the bile that was burning my throat. I looked up from the floor and there we saw it.

Before us was a table, on one side was a decaying skeletal figure. The insects had already had their fill, and stripped the flesh from the bones. Across from him, was a large shape, shrouded in an army issued wool blanket.

Between the two, was a board of some kind, and a planchette. I recognized it, as one of those devices that rich folks in ghost clubs like to use to attempt to commune with the dead. But I was raised with the good sense of the bible, and it says that the dead know nothing, so there ain’t no sense in asking them anything. I looked at Mr.Pierce and was surprised to find him indifferent.

I assumed the corpse at the table was what remained of his father, and perhaps it was just too hard for Mr.Pierce to look at. Instead he picked up a book off the shelf behind the shrouded shape. His face was drained of color when he opened it.

“Sweet Jesus, forgive me.” He said. “Forgive me.” He dropped to the ground and started to whimper with his hands clasped in prayer. I took the book myself, and opened it. Within it were torn out incantations in a language I could not read, and a photographic record of the nature of Dr.Pierce’s work.

From what I could piece together, the Doctor was using human subjects in his experiments. From the looks of it, his subjects were unwilling and tied to chairs, one at a time. All types of people, men, women and children of all races. The pages were full of these photographs. It struck me that bodies buried in the rocks were all that was left of the people pictured in this book.

“But why?” I asked. “Why was he doing this?” I asked again. I picked the boy up from the ground, and shook him around. I needed him to control himself. “for what purpose, boy?”

“I suspect, there. There, is your answer.” He pointed to the cloaked shape at the other side of the table. My fingers trembled at the notion of uncovering it, but I pulled the cloth back slowly.

What stood before us was some kind of mechanical monstrosity, a technological Frankenstein. A machine with gears, and treads used for locomotion, and two arms. One arm, had a hand and digits with articulated points. The other arm was a cylinder, with multiple barrels inside, a rotating rapid fire weapon.

Its face, though, was the most curious point. “Why does a weapon need a face? Mr.Pierce?” I asked him.

“This is the machine he promised would turn the tide of war. The early versions were wound up, and set loose. But they would turn every witch way and present more danger to the operator than the enemy.” He explained.

“And the later version?” I asked.

“I don’t know, he was laughed at, because he was convinced he could find a way to make the machine think. To give it a soul.”

“Son, you don’t think?” The words barely left my tongue.

“Yes, I do. I believe he was attempting to use magic, or witchcraft, or any means he could find to transplant one’s consciousness into this, stupid metal box on wheels. He was exactly what they said he was. A madman.” His confession carried with it the weight of a disappoint i feared he would never have to discover.

“From the looks of it boy, his last attempt was on himself.” I observed. As Dr.Pierce’s body rested in a position that suggested he had not died of natural causes, but rather, as if somehow his soul had been sucked out of his body.

“I can’t deny the astuteness of your observation.” He said.

We inspected the machine more closely, and Mr.Pierce discovered a tank with the words Kerosene only written on it, and above that was an ignition switch.

The Laboratory part two – Retribution

Mr.pierces fingers hovered around the ignition switch, and I could not blame him for wanting to know if his father’s last attempt was successful.  But it didn’t feel right, it felt unnatural, and evil to even consider it. And yet, I understood the overwhelming compulsion to explore the unknown. But no amount of answers was going to lift the legacy of guilt his father had left for him.

“You don’t have to flip the switch, son.” I pleaded. “There ain’t no one that’s ever risen from the dead but Christ and Lazurus!”

“This may be the only chance I have to say goodbye, you don’t need to stay.” He said.

But I did stay, whatever that boy needed, I was the closest thing to it.  He flipped the switch, and a fire formed in the Machine’s eyes. Burning like lamps, they seemed to fix their gaze upon Mr.Pierce, who was seemingly crushed by the weight of familiarity that they cast upon him. There seemed little doubt in his mind or mine, that the mechanical beast whirred to life, was indeed alive. A Thinking Machine.

“Father, what have you done!” The machine turned to face him, its treads squeaking loudly as they chewed up the floor. “How am I supposed to live with our name, knowing what you’ve done?”

I watched the smoke escape the exhaust port and wonder how much of Dr.Pierce was really in there, controlling the machine.

“You don’t have to seek forgiveness for the sins of your father, boy. You take that last name of yours and you make it mean something else!’ I shouted, and I reached for my side arm. I was going to put an end to this abomination. “Get out of here, boy”.

The machine turned to me now, and rolled forward crushing the table. I fired upon it, but the metal shell was impervious to damage.  I could hear the sounds of chains and pulleys starting to turn, and I knew it intended to return fire. I looked it in the eyes, and I was certain they were more than just alive, there was a soul trapped inside.

“Come on then,” I taunted it “show that boy whatever trace of humanity is left in there ain’t worth saving.”

But the boy hatched a plan of his own while the machine was distracted with me. He opened the fuel cap while the machine’s back was turned and lit one of those fancy cigars of his and put the match in the fuel tank.

The machine went up in flames, the heat causing its components to weld themselves together and smoke us out of the bunker. We retreated back to our horses, as we watched the bunker burn to the ground. I briefly wondered if Dr.Pierce’s soul would be trapped in the fused together hunk of metal scrap we left behind, or if it did indeed wisp away like campfire smoke.

I’m not sure how Mr.Pierce would ever find it in himself to live with the weight of his father’s sins, but I hoped he would try. He was a bright young man.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I said. “But we are not our father’s. When they become monsters, we mustn’t become them too.”

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Kristoph Kosicki 2025