The Wild Wild West ~ The Night of the Phantasmagoria
by Dash O'Pepper

Author's Notes: Based on the second season episode "The Night of the Lord of Limbo" (#2.15) by Henry Sharp.
• Where necessary, some original dialogue has been included.
• Verbiage is consistent for the time period.
• Written as an Id Pro Quo 2022 gift for NervousAsexual.
• This story may also be found on AO3.

James West folded the paper he was reading and swung his legs onto the settee in the drawing room of The Wanderer. Nothing interesting, he mused. Then again, The Birmingham Sun wasn't The Washington Star, either. He stole a quick glance at the other occupant in the compartment, his partner Artemus Gordon.

His friend stared blankly out the train's window, his mind seemingly a million miles from the just-budding maples and magnolias that populated this section of the Mississippi Central Railroad line, and that whizzed past at nearly forty-miles-per-hour.

Neither of them had ever disobeyed a direct order from the head of the Secret Service, and this was the first time West ever wanted to. It wasn't that this case was difficult or even dangerous. As a matter of fact, this was probably one of the simplest and most straightforward assignments they'd ever been given: returning to the scene of one of their previous cases.

Not much he could do about the way Artie felt about this mission, though Jim wished he could. Colonel Richmond had given them this assignment to help his partner's mental state of late. While their past several cases had been successful, Artie had taken some daring—almost suicidal—risks, which were completely out-of-character for his more deliberate and judicious partner. And despite the massaging he'd done to their mission reports to minimise those events, it was clear even to a deskbound bureaucrat like Richmond that something was assuredly wrong with one of his top agents.

As the senior-ranked member of the team, it was West who had been called on the carpet to explain the actions of his partner. Though Jim sensed that his friend's disquiet stemmed from their encounter with the late Col. Noel Bartley Vautrain and their passage into a strange realm—for want of a better term, the fourth dimension, where Artie not only led a different life but also died—he couldn't explain that to Richmond. Their mission report for the thirty-six-hour disappearance of his partner was blamed on a mild concussion, which subsequently caused amnesia. Thus, he was left to concoct an asinine story conflating Gordon's uncharacteristic behaviour over the last eight months to a non-existent event.

A Washington doctor on the Secret Service payroll had cobbled together some of the research of Spinoza and Schopenhauer into a far-fetched theory that Artie's mind held a hidden trauma from having amnesia, and that were he to return to whence he was found, his melancholia would disappear. Even if the whole loss of memory story wasn't a fabrication to begin with, West didn't buy it. He believed that if everyone—himself included—would leave Artie to work through this on his own, his partner would soon be his old self.

"Want to talk?"

He turned towards his friend, a slight smile on his face, a small reminder of the Artie of old. "Yeah, sure."

"I tried to fight Col. Richmond on this one, you know."

"The President told me: you even went over his head."

"I thought I had Mrs. Grant won over."

"You always did."

They laughed.

"You're worried about me, Jim, aren't you?"

"Should I be? You're old enough to take care of yourself." He attempted to make his voice sound light-hearted; he failed…miserably.

"Just what I thought. Well, don't be." He got up and walked to the cellarette to pour himself a glass of whisky. "See, my hand didn't shake once." Artemus sat down on the settee opposite him, placing his glass on the low table that separated them. "I hope you don't believe what that quack said."

"Who? Me?" he asked with feigned innocence. "You know I don't believe a damned thing doctors say."

Artie reached into his vest pocket and removed what appeared to be a well-folded piece of telegraphic stationery. He handed his partner the paper. "Shortly after we returned to Washington, I telegraphed Sir Nigel Scott⁽¹⁾ to make some inquiries on one Jack Maitland. That was his reply."

Jim knew he couldn't mask the bewilderment on his face; he struggled to keep his own hand from trembling, as he took the proffered note. He unfolded the well-worn paper to read its contents:

ARTEMUS GORDON – WASHINGTON, DC

JOHN 'JACK' MAITLAND II

BORN – 21 DEC 1797 – MAITLAND MANOR – WALMINGTON-ON-SEA⁽²⁾ – KENT

DIED – 16 JUL 1825

CAUSE OF DEATH – HIGHWAYMEN – ROBBERY

WIFE – CATHRYN MAITLAND-GREVILLE (NÉE BLACKWOOD) – STILL LIVING

CHILDREN – JOHN III, BORN 5 JUL 1816 – BERYL, BORN 19 SEP 1818 – EDMUND, BORN 15 DEC 1821 – ALL LIVING

NIGEL SCOTT – BARONET – CHALFORT-ST-GILES⁽³⁾

West tried to keep his tone neutral when he replied: "Someone named Jack Maitland died nearly fifty years ago—"

"Not someone…me." Reaching across the table, he snatched the telegram from his partner.

"I think I'd know by now if you were a ghost, Artie." He leaned against the back of the settee, attempting to strike a flippant pose.

"Don't patronise me, Jim!" He stood; the rage in his voice mirrored by the tautness of his features.

West weighed each word with care: "I was with you in that fourth dimension, and while you cut a dashing figure, Artie, the Jack Maitland I met wasn't twenty-eight-years-old."

He continued, "And what made you think that it all happened nearly fifty years ago in England? Or that it was even real in the first place, and not some legerdemain by Vautrain?"

Artemis closed his eyes, struggling to hold back tears. "You don't understand, do you?" His voice was hoarse from the torment he must have been suffering.

Jim had never seen his partner—hell, my best friend—like this. Whatever Vautrain had done to Artie in the short time he was the late Confederate Colonel's captive, had shaken him to his core. Until that moment, he hadn't realised how deep and severe those wounds were because they had no physical presence; yet they cut far deeper than any torture either of them had ever endured.

Standing, he went to his friend and guided him back to the settee; then seated himself beside him.

"You want to tell me why you think as you do?" There was no judgement in his tone. "Can't say I'll succeed, but I'll try to keep an open mind."

Artie attempted to match his badinage with a jape of his own; "That's more than you usually do."

Verbal sparring and quips were such a part of their friendship, that Jim had to hold his tongue to keep from replying with a cutting riposte. Instead, he replied, "I'm ready to listen."

His friend turned the tables on him by asking: "What do you remember from your encounter with Jack Maitland?"

Except for a brief conversation prior to the Secret Service stenographer, Miss Susan Unger, writing up their fabricated mission report, they'd avoided discussing the incident. He'd assumed that the reason had as much to do with Artie-as-Jack's death in that fourth dimension as that any attempt to put the events into words made little sense. This time, his friend seemed desperate to know his answer.

Jim summoned every detail he could recall before replying: "I didn't know what to expect when I walked through that door at Live Oak Manor, but it wasn't that."

He inhaled deeply before continuing: "The air smelled of ozone and the temperature was at least forty-degrees cooler than the sultry weather of Vicksburg in July. I can't tell you whether I walked ten feet or ten miles, because I'd lost all sense of time, direction and distance through that bleak, foggy landscape."

Artie was hanging on every word, as though they were a lifeline.

"Somewhere, I must have lost consciousness, because I don't remember anything until I found myself standing in that clearing with Lavering—"

"Levering," Artie corrected.

"Levering," he acknowledged, "and the others. I didn't know that I was there to participate in a duel with the as-yet-to-arrive Jack Maitland, nor was I expecting him to be you."

Jim remembered the relief he felt upon seeing Artie astride that bay, only for it to be dashed by his stinging words and lack of recognition.

"You were determined to duel and left me no recourse but to pick up the épée and fight. I had a hell of a time trying not to hurt you, and not to be run through by you."

Jim hadn't realised how difficult recounting the incident would be, nor how much he had tried to supress it in the intervening months, until he uttered the words: "I really think you would have killed me had those bandits not arrived."

Artemus averted his eyes, as he replied, "Have no doubt, I would have tried."

Though unsurprised by his friend's confession, the admission still stung; "You've always been a decent fencer, but I'd never known you to be that good with a sword. Those moves didn't come from any of our training sessions."

Artie picked up his glass from the table and fingered it, before replying, "Jack Maitland was a champion fencer at Eton and Cambridge."

Jim started: "That wasn't in Sir Nigel's telegram. Where did you learn that?"

"Because, Jim, I am—or rather was—Jack Maitland." He downed the last of his whisky.

"I said I'd try to keep an open mind…" Jim stood and went to the cellarette for a drink; he didn't think he could handle where this conversation was leading without one. "Artie, according to Sir Nigel, Jack Maitland died nearly fifty years ago. Even if the man I met—who you believed yourself to be at the time—was a Jack Maitland; he wasn't twenty-eight-years-old. So, you couldn't have been him."

He filled his glass and drank it quickly. "Besides, how could all this have happened in England nearly a half-century ago, when Vautrain himself could only manage to cause a…how the hell did he put it," he fumbled to remember the late Colonel's words, "a warp in the fabric of space of only seven years in the same location. If he held that much power, then why didn't he use it to avert the war completely, allowing the South to secede without a single shot being fired?"

Artie stood to refill his own glass, and joined him at the cellarette. "Vautrain was warped and twisted by hate; he was so focused on his objectives—to recover his amputated legs and somehow kill General Grant—that he couldn't fathom other possibilities. His mind tapped into something: something he neither understood nor controlled. When he ensnared me on 'King Solomon's Throne' in that theatre, he thought I'd materialise with him and Amanda in Vicksburg. Instead, I went elsewhere: another place; another time."

"You keep saying that." Jim poured himself a second drink and swallowed it faster than the last, before continuing. "But you don't say how you know that?"

His hand poised over the whisky decanter, Artemus stopped and said, "You've never asked me what I remember."

Jim knew he'd been avoiding that question; frankly, he didn't want to know. It was all too fantastic to believe, but that horse had long since left the barn, leaving him with only one option. "OK, what do you recall?"

Dark brown eyes met light blue ones. "I remember awaking in my bed from a most unusual dream that seemed to slip further away the more I tried to recall it. Cathryn was asleep beside me; the scent of lavender still fresh in her hair."

Artie poured himself another drink, as he continued almost wistfully, "We were different from most married couples in our station in that we shared our bed. I was still angry over a minor quarrel I had with the son of one of our tenants the night before outside The Six Bells Tavern; I intended to put the jackanape in his place later that morning."

He took a small sip from his glass. "Of course, I didn't know the jackanape was you."

Jim wanted to yell that it wasn't him, that he had no knowledge of the quarrel that led to the duel, that his only thoughts upon entering the field of honour were of finding Artie and returning him to Vicksburg, but he was transfixed by the tale his friend was relating.

"I shaved and dressed. The face in the mirror, Jim, was very familiar, but it wasn't this one. It was a man in his late twenties with cobalt blue eyes and light blond hair that was almost silver. Before leaving for our encounter, I wrote Cathryn a note, and looked on the children, who the governess and nurse had already roused. The coachman saddled my horse, and I rode from the Manor."

He paused to take another sip. "Can't say what caused it, but I felt uneasy as I rode past the gates. It was the reason why I stopped at the tavern for a small libation before meeting you."

"They say dreams create their own reality," said Jim, though he wasn't certain he believed it.

Artie closed his eyes—Jim didn't know if it was to recall the events or banish them—before replying, "Jim, you're a professional: a highly trained observer of humans and human nature. If it was a dream, then you were experiencing the same reality I was."

"I wasn't at that tavern, Artie."

"No," he agreed, "James Tiberius West wasn't. Yet, it was you who awoke on the duelling field."

"Even if that is what happened, I didn't awake in 1825. It was still 1870."

"Are you certain?" Artie snapped.

The tone in which the question was asked startled him; it was almost that of a stranger. "Of course, I'm certain," he said.

"Didn't you notice how I, Levering and the others were dressed?"

West wanted to end the damned conversation now. Since he'd coaxed Artie into finally talking about the events, his friend had switched from discussing Jack Maitland in the third person to speaking of him in the first, as though the longer he spoke of Maitland the more he was becoming him. But he'd promised to keep an open mind: "Between trying to find you and keep myself from being killed by you, it wasn't high on my list of priorities." He put as much sarcasm into the words as he could muster to jar his partner to his senses.

"The clothes we were wearing haven't been fashionable in forty years. The highwaymen carried cutlasses and flintlocks—not revolvers. By their dress, they were also most likely seaman who were involved in the illegal liquor trade between England and France."

Jim had held his temper in check to allow Artie the opportunity to work through what he'd experienced, but the more his friend talked, the more absurd his conclusions. "It wasn't real, damn it! It was an illusion; a trick by Vautrain."

"You say it, but you don't believe it. In fact, you're right now attempting to rationalise to yourself how to explain Vautrain's legs and our junket back in time to the Siege of Vicksburg⁽⁴⁾ to convince yourself that what occurred prior to that wasn't real. Yet, you can't." Artemus shook his head, and gave his partner a slight smile. "You've never been as good a liar as you presume…at least not with me."

"And you're trying to convince me that I am somehow now speaking to Jack Maitland, a man who died nearly a half-century ago!"

"No," he replied. "I'm trying to make you understand that the person you encountered on that field of honour was Jack Maitland, who did indeed die in 1825."

West was about to reply, but Artemus stopped him by walking to the library wall, removing a weighty tome, and handing it to him.

"This will probably explain things better than I."

Jim read the title aloud: "Ten Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative Theology⁽⁵⁾?" He thumbed quickly to the most worn, dog-eared pages that Artie had marked, and skimmed them.

"I found it in a small metaphysical shop in an alley off Decatur during our assignment in New Orleans."

He nodded, recalling that it was their first case after the incident with Vautrain. It was during that mission when Artie's behaviour had become erratic.

"Artie, you're not a Brahmist⁽⁶⁾ or Buddhist." He looked up from the pages he was reading.

"No, but you've seen it. You've experienced it—" There was an incandescence dancing in the depths of Artie's soulful eyes that was indescribable…and unfamiliar. It felt as if he were peering into the eyes of a stranger wearing his friend's form.

"You're asking me to accept that somehow you're the reincarnation of Jack Maitland?" West threw the book onto the settee in disgust. "I can't. I won't accept it."

"Do you remember my words to you?"

How could I forget them? thought Jim. The grief he felt watching Artie's life slip away from blood loss had been almost too much to bear. "Yes."

"You and I have done all this before…and we'll do it again."

"Even if that were true, there's nothing in there," he pointed at the book, "that mentions people remembering their former lives. Just that the soul is reborn into another life."

"Whatever happened to me in that fourth dimension removed the mental barrier that prevents us from remembering those previous existences. I do recall my past lives—marching into Egypt with Alexander's army; crossing the Rubicon with Caesar; freezing my ass off sailing with Erik the Red. I've always hated the cold; now, I know why."

The offhand comment felt obscenely incongruant, and Artie must have reacted to his expression, because he continued in a more serious tone: "We've been together for many of them, Jim: partners; lovers; brothers; father and son; leader and subordinate—"

"Is that why you've been playing Russian roulette with your life?"

"It's not Russian roulette when you already know when and how you die."

Jim was horrified that somehow Artie truly believed what he was saying.

"I don't die until—"

He cut him off. "I don't give a damn! I don't want to know."

"The closer we get to Vicksburg, the clearer things are becoming. Not just the past, but the future as well." He closed his eyes, as though trying to pluck thoughts from the ether. Opening them, he began, "Quantum physics. Nuclear fission. Chaos theory. Moon landings. Parallel universes. Starships. It's as though if I were to step forward, I could leap into any of those lives. Those other existences."

Until now, the rhythmic sounds of The Wanderer had been so much background noise. Now, they took on a life of their own, as each rumble of the wheels on the tracks seemed to increase in intensity and screech a warning the nearer Vicksburg loomed.

"Even if you and I have led multiple lives," began Jim in desperation, "we still only have this one to be James West and Artemus Gordon. Artie, you'd cease to exist in those other lives, just as you did as Jack Maitland."

He smiled. "You believe me, then."

Jim nodded. What other answer could he give?

"This time, though, I'd know where and when I'm supposed to be. The journey wouldn't be blind."

"You don't know that!"

Artie sighed. "I can't explain it, Jim. These last eight months, I've felt out of place and out of time, as though I shouldn't exist here. It's been beckoning me to return since we left Live Oak."

West was afraid to ask what it was; afraid, because he already sensed the answer. "Damn it! There's only one Artemus Gordon," he said in desperation.

"Maybe you returned with the wrong one?" he mused. "We're friends, Jim, good friends. But try as I might to fit into your world, I feel in my soul that I'm an interloper here. This is Artemus Gordon's life; not mine. I'm from a different place and time. And that's where I'm meant to be."

"I've already watched you die once…" Jim croaked.

"You don't think you'll get rid of me that easily?" Artie smiled. "We'll meet again. Have no doubt about that." The amiable smile faded, replaced by the same expression Jim remembered on Jack Maitland's face before he died. "It was fun while it lasted, wasn't it, James?"

The words seemed suspended in air; Jim could feel them reverberate in The Wanderer's cadence, as Artemus Gordon faded from existence, leaving him the compartment's sole occupant.

*.*.*.*.*

Jim pushed his steed as hard and as fast as the gelding would go. If Artie somehow had crossed into the fourth dimension, the only place he knew for entering it himself would be in the charred remains of Live Oak Manor outside of Vicksburg.

While Artie had all of eternity, West only had the present from which to begin his search, and he doubted that time or the fourth dimension were on his side.

As he approached the deserted plantation, his horse balked, refusing to pass through the main gate. Patting its flank, he tried to reassure the animal that everything was well, but its laid-back ears and stubborn refusal to go further told a different story.

West got down from his mount, as the words from Pope echoed in his head: Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

His horse swung 'round, attempting to stop him from continuing on foot. "Easy, fella." Reaching into his vest pocket he removed a couple of sugar cubes by way of a bribe. This time, he wouldn't secure the animal: if he managed to enter the fourth dimension but couldn't escape, he wanted it to be able to return to civilisation, rather than dying alone in the middle of nowhere.

And Live Oak Manor certainly had become the middle of nowhere since the last time he'd been there. Spanish moss hung like a shroud from the majestic oaks that adorned the former plantation's drive, and Dutchman's pipe had coiled its way around every still-standing structure, as though Mother Nature herself was seeking to eradicate the memory of this place from mortal existence.

The further he walked up the drive to the main house, the more certain he was that he was walking through a tomb. The air was foetid, even the heady, aromatic scents from magnolias and sweet acacia smelled soured and decayed.

Making his way through the front gardens, he noted that the lawn sculptures had been swallowed by Dutchman's pipe, but all plant life stopped at the edge of the charred skeleton of the mansion house, as though, like his horse, it knew better than to cross that threshold.

Artie and he had combed the wreckage after it had cooled, looking for the remains of Vautrain and the three⁽⁷⁾ soldiers, but nothing had been found. Neither of them, though, had been looking for a warp in the fabric of space, both believing at the time that it had been destroyed with the death of the Confederate Colonel. Now, its existence remained the only hope Jim had of locating his friend and returning him to their shared existence.

He stepped from the overgrown brush onto the dead soil of the fallen timbres of the house. The air suddenly smelled of ozone and there was a noticeable drop in temperature. He stepped back to verify it wasn't his imagination summoning an illusion into reality. Satisfied, he crossed the divide again.

*.*.*.*.*

The sun had been shining brightly only seconds before. Now, Jim was standing in a realm of eternal night, with its bleak, fog-enshrouded landscape. The ground felt level, but he walked through it like he was making his way through a vat of molasses.

He removed his watch and compass from his vest pocket, and struck a match. It was as he thought: the compass was unable to locate true North, and kept spinning wildly in a futile effort to find it. His watch was stopped, as though where he stood was outside of time itself.

"Artie!" he yelled into the void, only half-heartedly expecting a response.

Out of desperation, he tried calling, "Jack!"

Silence remained his only answer.

He'd run out of names for his friend. If Artie was now with Alexander's army marching into Egypt or somewhere on a starship in the far future, then he might have no way ever to reach him. Certainly, he had no name by which to call him.

Had there been a wall at hand, he'd have slammed his fist into it. "Damn you, Artemus Gordon!" he cursed. "You've got only one life, don't throw it away!"

"Jim," the voice seemed to come from all directions, and none.

"Artie," he shouted in response.

"Jim?" It was that same lost and confused plea he remembered hearing after Artie's disappearance at that Washington theatre.

"Jim?" Artie still seemed unaware of his presence.

"I'm here, Artie," he called. "I'm here to bring you home."

*.*.*.*.*

Jim awoke to Amanda Vautrain hovering over him, pleading with him to find her uncle.

"He's in the library," he responded automatically to her, without being fully aware of where or when he was.

Her pulling away from him and running towards the conflagration was what brought him fully around, as he charged after her to keep her from the inferno. He hugged her tight, as she sobbed; the war had claimed her father, her estate, and now her uncle.

Sensing his presence before he entered his periphery, Artie was dressed in the same evening attire when he disappeared on 'King Solomon's Throne' that night that seemed a lifetime ago; West breathed a grateful sigh of relief. The nightmare wasn't finally over, it had never begun.

*.*.*.*.*

"There's not much to tell," said Artemus in answer to his question. "I don't remember anything that occurred between entering the theatre and waking up on the grounds of that plantation."

West smiled. "Amnesia does that."

"How the hell did I get from Washington to Vicksburg is what I want to know?"

Sidestepping the question, Jim asked, "Are you ready to make our report to Col. Falk?"

Artemus walked over to the cellarette to pour himself a drink. "Some mission statement: a slight concussion caused a thirty-six-hour lapse in my memory."

"Believe me," began Jim, "it's more than enough."

Artie looked puzzled by the strange expression on his partner's face. "Jim, are you certain that you're all right? You look like someone who—I don't know—almost lost his best friend."

"Well, I couldn't have done that, Artie, now could I?" he asked innocently. "Jeremy Pike⁽⁸⁾ is in Washington."

Artemus made a sour expression, as he took his drink and went to sit on the settee. "What the—?" he pulled a hardcover volume from under him, reading the title aloud, "Ten Great Religions: An Essay in Comparative Theology by James Freeman Clarke?"

West practically leapt for the book to snatch it from his hands. "That's mine," he said. That shouldn't be here.

Artie handed it to him. "That's not your usual reading material." He sipped at his whisky. "Sounds interesting. Mind if I read it after you're through with it."

"Uh, sure." He'd throw it out The Wanderer's window the first chance he had. Placing it on the desk in the compartment, the book opened to the copyright page: 1871⁽⁹⁾. What the hell? It's still 1870, isn't it?

"Artie, what's today's date?" he asked unsteadily.

"Is this part of some test to see if I have my memory back?"

"Just humour me."

"Friday, July 15th, 1870. Do I win a prize?"

"That's what I thought." Toss it? I'll burn the damned book.

James West couldn't say how he knew it, but for the briefest moment he had the distinct impression that the universe spoke to him: There are more things in Heaven and Earth, James West, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

~ Finis ~

© 2022 by Dash O'Pepper

Footnotes: ⁽¹⁾ Sir Nigel Scott was introduced in "The Night of the Bleak Island" (#4.21) written by Robert E. Kent. It's stated in that episode that he is a freelance criminologist who had worked with James West in the past.
⁽²⁾ Walmington-on-Sea is a fictional seaside town in Kent from the BBC programme Dad's Army.
⁽³⁾ A tip and a wink: Chalfort-St.-Giles is where John Williams, who played Sir Nigel Scott, was born.
⁽⁴⁾ Episode dialogue calls it the Battle of Vicksburg, but historically it's known as the Siege of Vicksburg.
⁽⁵⁾ Written by James Freeman Clarke, a Unitarian minister.
⁽⁶⁾ In the 19th century, Western theologians and scholars used the term Brahmanism rather than Hinduism and didn't make a distinction between the Vedic traditions. No disrespect is intended.
⁽⁷⁾ Episode dialogue says four, but there were only three Confederate soldiers (in addition to Vautrain) shown in the episode.
⁽⁸⁾ Secret Service agent Jeremy Pike was first introduced in "The Night of the Camera" (#4.10) written by Ken Pettus, but it can be inferred he must have been an already known, top-level agent to be partnered with James West.
⁽⁹⁾ The book was indeed published in 1871.

Disclaimers: The Wild Wild West is a registered trademark of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. and CBS/Paramount. All rights reserved. This work of fanfiction is not meant in any way to infringe on copyrights already held by these companies and/or their subsidiaries.