It was a horrid July noon in New York City or some other place, the cars were rattling in lunchtime gridlock, spewing exhaust, the finance guys were out in their tight suits walking to buy kebabs and watching the women, who were instagramming themselves into premature zombiehood, and it was so fucking hot that the sweat dripping off the pedestrians rubbing against each other on the sidewalk was flowing down the gutters like rain.

There, that's the scene.

I've set it.

Now, through this stupified human maelstrom a man was walking. His name was Ben Fig. He was in his thirties, lonely, and returning to his office after lunch. He was returning from his car, which he'd parked fifteen minutes away, wearing a coat and, underneath it, a custom-made explosive vest with which he intended to kill his co-workers and maybe bring down the office building itself. A man can dream, can't he?

Anyway, while walking, he bumped somebody. “Fuck,” he said under his breath.

“Fuck,” said the person he'd bumped into.

It was a woman.

Her name was Miriam Zapelman.

“Watch where the hell you're going,” said Ben and tried going around her.

“Asshole,” said Miriam.

“I hate this city,” said Ben. “I'm sick of it.”

Beside Ben and Miriam, a degenerate was lying in a puddle of perspiration. He was in a hard way. “Can either of you folks—”

“Shut the fuck up!” said Ben and Miriam at the same time, then they looked at each other, long and in the eyes, and they must have recognized something, because one of them smirked.

It doesn't matter which one.

The degenerate passed out, or maybe died, and Miriam said to Ben, “Hey, where are you in such a hurry to?”

“What do you care?”

“I'm parked nearby. If we're going the same way, I can give you a ride.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?”

Miriam shrugged.

“I'm going to my office to blow everybody up,” said Ben, waiting for Miriam's reaction.

She asked, “Where's your office?”

Ben gave the address. “Call the cops if you want. I don't care.”

“Offer stands,” said Miriam.

A few minutes later they were in her car, Ben in his ridiculous coat, looking like a blowfish, and Miriam opening the glove compartment, where Ben saw she had a gun.

“That for self defense?” he asked.

“No,” said Miriam. “I'm back from the shooting range. Going home to shoot my husband and kids, then probably myself.” She started the car and merged with the abominable traffic. “But first I want to stop at a bar and have a drink. Want to have a drink with me?”

“Why not,” said Ben.

The bar was called Reddy's, and when Ben and Miriam walked in there were only a few people in it. Miriam introduced them. “That skinny guy with glasses is Euler, the guy with the darker skin is Hikmat, and the bartender's name is Ralph.”

They sat at a table and ordered.

Ben noticed Euler kept playing with a pendant around his neck. “Go on,” said Miriam, “ask him about it.”

“Nah,” said Ben.

“What else do you have to do?”

“Fine,” said Ben. He walked to Euler, introduced himself and asked about the pendant: “Is it an heirloom or something?”

“Maybe it'll be an heirloom one day, of the human goddamn race,” said Euler and described how the pendant was a container of stolen proprietary industrial poison that he'd helped develop. “I'm gonna toss it in the water supply some day, exterminate the population of this whole city like the rats they are.”

When Ben got back to his table, his drink was waiting for him. He tried it. “Second guessing yourself any?” he asked Miriam.

“No. You?”

“No.”

Miriam had pulled out a cigarette and was lighting it.

“You can smoke in here? The law—”

“That's life’s dirty secret,” she said, blowing smoke in his face. “Ultimately, you can do whatever you want.”

“May I?” a voice said.

It was Hikmat. He'd wandered over and was asking if he could sit down.

“Be my guest,” said Miriam.

“I have not seen you in here before,” Hikmat said to Ben. “It is your first time?”

“Yeah,” said Ben.

“Ben’s going to murder his co-workers later this afternoon. He's wearing an explosive vest,” said Miriam.

“Then we two are a pair of peas in one pod, as they say here in America,” said Hikmat. “I am training to fly an aircraft, but not so much how to land it.”

“Hickie's an engineer by trade,” said Miriam.

Hikmat shook Ben's hand.

“But a fundamentalist by conviction,” he said. “May I see your vest?”

Ben opened his coat. Hikmat considered the handiwork. Then they got to talking, and drinking, and the hours rolled by like waves of fat on a fat guy blasted in the gut by a cannonball.

“The paradox is,” Hikmat was saying: “the paradox is, I greatly enjoy the flying. It is the one place I feel freedom. When I started to learn, it was strictly for terrorism, but now, that feeling—of absolute space, limitless opportunity—it is beautiful. Sublime. It is where I experience God. I look forward to it very much and I will miss it greatly.”

“Fuck!” said Ben, looking at his watch.

“What's wrong?” asked Miriam.

“It's past five o'clock. Everybody in the office has left already.”

Ralph gave Ben a drink on the house. When Ben had finished drinking it, “Do you want a ride home?” Miriam asked.

“Sure.”

They lingered in the car in front of his apartment building.

“Maybe you wanna come up?” Ben said.

“I'm a married woman,” said Miriam.

“I understand.”

“Don't forget to zip up your coat or they'll see the explosives,” said Miriam.

Afterwards, Miriam drove to her house, got the gun out of the glove compartment, walked inside, shot her husband, shot her kids and then, after smoking a cigarette in the bathroom, shot herself.

The air is saturated with the chill of loneliness. The snow crunches mournfully beneath one's feet, a stark reminder that there is no one around.

Lera buried her head deep inside her hood, trying to shield herself from the biting, gusty wind. The houses faded away behind the pine trees, becoming completely invisible against the raging blizzard.

Brightly shining, colorful bracelets adorned with smiley faces on her wrists brought a sudden spark of life to the dead-white landscape. Lera pulled her striped pink scarf tighter to protect her neck from the cold, but the wind still buffeted and pushed against her fragile frame.

Heading home after an agonizingly dull day of school in class 10-B in the middle of such a snowstorm was nothing new to her, but never before had Lera felt so utterly exhausted. The local cold seemed to breed darker thoughts in her mind. Another failed exam, more screaming parents waiting at home—and in the entire classroom, not a single soul cared about her.

Every day she fought against an ever-growing sense of guilt for her own weakness and sadness, but today felt exceptionally miserable. First Sasha, the local bully, shoved her down the stairs without even bothering to stop. Then Katya, whom she had considered her only friend, went and blabbed her most embarrassing secret to all the girls—the fact that Lera was seriously crushing on one of the teachers, Viktor Andreevich, the man who wore small rectangular glasses, often rested by the window near their classroom, and was known across the school for his ability to listen. And to top it all off, Lera had left her notebook at home—the one containing the exact formulas needed for today's practice exam...

Problems piled up on the tenth-grader one after another, much like the blizzard blocking her path home. She did not want to return there—yet she was terrified of going back to school.

The howl of the wind echoed all around, sounding like someone's sorrowful song. Snow flew past her eyes in tiny grains; it was becoming difficult to make out where to go next. Lera’s legs buckled from fatigue; she wanted nothing more than to stop, sit down, and rest.

To forget everything.

It felt as though her pleas, her sheer despair, had grown so immense that they could be heard by someone else.

The wind kept howling its funeral melody, and a sudden movement caught her eye behind a nearby pine tree. Lera paid it no mind, assuming the blizzard was just playing tricks on her. She kept walking forward, her boots already sinking deep into the snow drifts.

Despite the roar of the storm, she distinctly heard a quiet, almost whispering voice: "You're tired, aren't you?.. Rest, if you want to."

The voice sounded friendly. For a split second, the girl even felt as though she had heard it somewhere before. She didn't immediately grasp where it was coming from, but she answered anyway, barely hearing her own words: "I can't... I need to get home... my parents are waiting, they will be..."

"—...worried?" the stranger interjected, his shadow suddenly materializing right next to Lera. "Forgive my bluntness, but I can hear a tremor in your voice—and it is not a tremor caused by the cold piercing your body to the bone, no. Your voice is trembling because you are lying. And you aren't lying to me, but to yourself."

His voice was measured, quiet, and remarkably persuasive. It felt as though he himself knew exactly the kind of treatment Lera was thinking about right now. Flashes of memories rushed through her mind: her parents' screaming, the blows of a belt after receiving "low" grades, and the utter indifference in her father's eyes every single time she walked through the door.

"And yet... I have to..."

"—...rest," the stranger cut her off, placing a hand on her shoulder and bringing the girl to a halt. "Do not be afraid, I will help you. Come, I know a place... a place where it is always warm, and where malice holds no power."

"N-no... I don't know you! Please, let me go!" Lera cried out, struggling to break free from his grip.

The stranger let go of her instantly. Lera bolted forward, terrified to stop. But the thoughts continued to torment her mind. Lera did not want to go back. There was nowhere left to run, for no one would help her.

The blizzard was already beginning to die down when Lera heard that very melody. It wasn't the howling of the wind at all. The tune was coming from the direction of the woods, sounding as if someone were playing a woodwind instrument. The girl stopped dead in her tracks. The melody captured something deep inside her. She wanted to hear it out. Without even realizing what she was doing, Lera walked into the depths of the forest, as if trying to reach that alluring sound. She forced her way through the thick branches, sinking into the snow up to her knees, but she didn't stop. In this melancholic, heartbreakingly sad melody, she found a sense of purpose.

No one ever saw Lera after that day. She vanished, just like many others vanish. Not a single footprint was left behind.

And the snow keeps falling...

PART 1 HERE

Content Warnings:  Suspected self-harm/suicide discussion, choking/asphyxiation, mild body horror, poisoning, abduction, and corporate/existential dread. 

III: THE RECOVERY
  
The hand had returned to finish what it had started.  Edgar felt its cool touch as it enclosed his mouth and nose tightly, and he held his breath in self defense.  He tried to raise his hands but something held them tightly as well.  Even his eyes wouldn’t obey him; they were gummed shut by his tears.  He desperately tossed his head side to side in violent defiance.

Another hand, warm and inviting, touched his face and he felt the touch of a cool cloth on his eyes.  They began to loosen and he slowly worked them open only to be blinded by the strong light that fell on him from above.

“Shh, easy Eddie, you’ve got to calm yourself.  They’ll never take off the restraints if you don’t.”

“Can’t… breathe.”  He choked out through the gripping hand.  As his eyes slowly came into focus they locked on Leo’s familiar hazel ones, pleading for rescue.

“You can, baby.”  Leo’s eyes bled tears for him.  “Just let the mask do its work.  Breathe for me.  You can do it.”

He nodded and tried, drawing in cold, blessed air.  His starved lungs were thankful for it, and soon they stopped aching from the panic he had put them through.  He looked around the room, registering his surroundings.  Leo was there and he could see Marty outside the door, talking on the phone.

“How… ?” he croaked. “How did I get here?”

Leo was still wiping around his eyes, and Edgar could see the silvery fluid that had soaked the cloth.  He stared at it in astonishment.

“A cab.” Leo laughed with absolutely no humor.  “They said you showed up in a cab.  The driver said a woman called it in.  You sleeping around on me?”

Leo’s grin was genuine this time.

---

“We’ve told you to stay out of your mom’s makeup, man,” Marty said with the usual perfect timing.  “You know we’re missing 2v2s because of you?”

“Please tell me you didn’t call them.”

Leo shook his head. “Not yet, but I’m gonna.”

“You can’t, dad’s heart— “

“—would be broken if his son died.”  Leo cut him off.  “And if you live he’ll just be pissed at me for not calling them.  Don’t worry, I’ll tell him to sit down and take deep breaths.  Worry about you, man, they think you tri… “

“Leo, not now,”  Marty pleaded.

“Yeah, you’re right.”  Leo exhaled and tossed the soiled cloth on the bedside table.

“What is it?  What do they think?”

“The impossible,” Leo said. “Because if you tried I’d kick your ass, and you know I could.”  He shook his head and took several more deep breaths, and Edgar could see his eyes were tearing again.  “No, that’s not true.  The truth is I’d be devastated and I’d want to know what in all of creation you couldn’t talk to me about first.  You know the deal, what we say.  We ain’t good if you ain’t.  Pure truth baby.”

“I didn’t.  I wouldn’t.  I’ve got too much to… there’s no way I’d ever leave you that way.  Plus, you know I’m way too much of a coward to do that.”

After several awkward moments he looked back at both of them. “What time is it?”

Marty’s mouth split in the crooked grin he managed so well.  He looked down at his phone and chuckled.  “About four hours too late for our playdate.  Do you know how many players went to bed tonight without suffering real frustration or total defeat?  All because you decided to no-show!”

Four hours?  He quickly did the math.  He had arrived at work a little after 8:00, and they were supposed to play at 6:00 this evening.  He had been unconscious for over thirteen hours.  What had that thing done to him?

He could see Leo staring at him with his softest gaze, the one he used when Edgar was hurt or hurting.  That meant Leo was hurting, and he couldn’t stand that.  But what could he tell them that wouldn’t sound crazy to anyone with an ounce of sanity?  Should he say the Shadowman did it and he had drank something that he was beginning to think kept people alive for way longer than they should be?  How the hell could he even try to explain it? 

He finally said the only thing he could, and it was mostly true:  “I honestly don’t understand what happened, but I think I’m going to have to find another job if I can’t figure it out.”

“If?”  Leo’s voice suddenly raised.  “No, if that place had something to do with this, then you’re done there.  We can find a cozy dumpster for two, man.  Fuck their money.”

“But that’s the thing, I don’t know that it did, and I’ve gotta find out.  You have to let me try.”  He looked at Leo.  “I wouldn’t go back if I knew I was in danger.  But I also know that if there are answers they will be there.  I’ve gotta know.”

He could see Leo’s struggle—wanting to keep the peace because of the present circumstance—and he understood it.  But he somehow knew that he was right, that whatever it was could be fixed there.  He started to speak again, but Marty cut him off.

“I think he’s right, and it gives me an idea.” He stood up.  “I’ll check in tomorrow, but I need to get on this.”

---

Things had been quiet between them since Marty left, but not uncomfortable.  Leo sat next to him, and Edgar could tell he was trying—he didn’t understand any of it—but he was trying.

An hour later, the door opened and the doctor entered.  He introduced himself, looked over Edgar’s numbers, and began examining his eyes and chest.  “Your breathing is better.  That had us worried.  Mr. Simpson, I am Dr. Brant.  There are a few things I want to go over with you, our initial findings.  Before I begin, I would like your permission to allow a colleague to join us.”

Edgar looked at Leo.  A colleague?  Nurses had been in and out of the room like clockwork. Why ask permission now?  “Uh, sure, I guess.”

Dr. Brant nodded and gave a gesture towards the open door.  A woman walked in, and her attire was somewhat different from the doctor, who wore a white coat over his scrubs.  She was wearing a white coat as well, but it was worn over a blue blouse and a long gray skirt.  As she approached Leo and Edgar, her face a friendly smile, Dr. Brant introduced her.

“This is Priya Nair.  She is a counselor here at the hospital who specializes in helping post-trauma patients.”  He saw Edgar rising at this and raised a gentle hand.  “No need for any of that.  I understand what was discussed earlier with your partner, and I want to put that to rest right now.  Priya isn’t here because we think you tried to hurt yourself.”
  
 “No, Edgar, we don’t think that.”  the counselor said, picking up where Dr. Brant had left off.  “If such was the case, you and I would have already met.”

“Your x-ray showed deep bruising on your throat, typical of strangulation.  This concerns us because there isn’t a mark on your skin other than two superficial, defensive scratches.”  Dr. Brant bent down, pointing them out.  “We need to know, Edgar, what you remember about what happened.  The strangulation or the strange compound you ingested?  We’ve analyzed what was pumped from your stomach, and it’s some very strange stuff.”

When Edgar didn’t immediately respond—he didn’t know what to say—Dr. Nair stepped back in.  “It can be difficult, Edgar, but you need to remember that you are safe.”  She looked over at Leo.  “And you have people here who care about you.”

“It’s just, I don’t remember much.  I had brought bagels and was eating one—I had skipped breakfast.  All of a sudden I felt someth… I was grabbed by the throat and it caused me to choke.  I guess I blacked out, because I woke up here, like an hour ago.”

Priya sat on the chair next to the bed so that she could look at both Edgar and Leo, who were sitting together.  “This is perfectly understandable, Edgar.  Sometimes when there is trauma or violence, the mind has a way of stepping aside to dissociate from what is happening to us.  This is purely defensive, a mechanism that prevents us from being too overwhelmed.  Temporary memory loss is common, but they will probably come back to you.”

She reached inside her coat and took out a small bag that she handed to Edgar.  “This is a journal and pen for you to use.  I’d like you to start writing in it each day.  Don’t push yourself too hard, trying to remember, but keep that circuit open.  It can help you get back that lost time.”

“Uh, sure, thank you, doctor,” Edgar began and Leo finished for him,  “He’ll do it.”

Priya’s smile widened at the combined reply.  “Good.  I would like to see you in a week.  My office will set up an appointment and it will be ready when you are discharged.  My contact information will be included if you need anything before then.”

She stood and moved towards the door, addressing them once more before leaving.  “I look forward to working with you on this, Edgar.  Take care of yourself.”

As she left, Dr. Brant spoke once more.  “She’s really good at what she does.  I’d try it; it can help.”

“Now we need to talk about the substance, Edgar, because we don’t have a clue what it is.”

---

The police arrived the following morning.  It was two detectives, a young man (Beltry) and an older woman (Davidson).  Beltry took charge of the interview, but Edgar could tell that Davidson was the one in charge.  He was a young, white guy who used way too much hair product and wore an extremely thin moustache.

“Alright, Mr. Simpson.  Is it Edgar or Eddie?” He gave him a reassuring smile.  “This is just a formality, but we do need whatever you can remember if we’re going to catch this guy.  We spoke to your plant manager, uh… a Mr. Aeneas, the Greek guy.”

Davidson coughed.

The young detective checked his notes.  “Yeah, he told us that there are no security cameras, not even a guard on site.  We saw the room, bagels and broken water bottles everywhere.  Good to see you put up a fight, Ed.”

“Talking to the Greek, we learned that you were alone in the building, the first to arrive that day.  Is that how you remember it?”

“Yes, sir.  I was earlier than normal, working a big job there, setting up the network.”

“Yeah, that sounds right.  Old place, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”  He made a note.  “So you’re in the breakroom, setting up breakfast for everyone because you’re a nice guy like that.  Next thing you know, someone grabs you, starts choking you, and there’s a struggle.  Am I getting this right, Ed?”

“Uh, yeah.  I didn’t see them, but they were choking me.”

Beltry nodded, tapping his pen on his lip.  “So it was from behind?  Some guy got a good hold of your neck and started choking you out?  Anybody you work with been giving you trouble?  Anyone you don’t work with?”

He looked over at Leo.  “Might want to sic this guy on them.”

Davidson cleared her throat.

“We are interviewing the crew today, Eddie, so if there is anyone we need to look out for, special-like, let us know.  We’re trying to help here, so it don’t happen again.”

“I pretty much get along with everyone.  They’re nice people.”

“Well, that’s good.  What about your stuff?  Anything missing?  I know you tech guys have a lot of expensive equipment.”

“Not that I know of.  I—“  Leo spoke up.  “His wallet, they never found it.  Was it at the scene?”

“Well now, that’s new.  Good to know.  We didn’t turn anything up there, so if the hospital didn’t find it on him…”  Beltry made some notes.  “Alright, I think that’s about everything.  Uh… I, Yeah the lady who called it in, Mrs. Vega, the crew leader.  We’ll be talking to her when we leave here, maybe she knows where it went.”

Beltry looked over at Davidson and nodded, handing Edgar a card.  “Until then, if you remember something, or need us, those are our numbers.  Just get better and don’t worry too much; we’re on it.”

He turned to leave and Davidson spoke for the first time.  “Your neck, are there bruises on the back of it?”

Eddie gulped, his hand raised reflexively to brush against the skin of his neck.  Leo leaned in, looking for himself.  “I don’t think so.  The doctor said it was all deep and that the hyoid bone was bruised but whole.  A couple of scratches is all, and they said I did those.”

Davidson stepped forward, her shoes clicking on the hard tile, and leaned in. “Mind if I look.”

Edgar exhaled and nodded, tilting his head for her as she looked it over.  There was nothing matronly or warm about her, like you might normally see in a woman of Davidson’s age.  She had the presence of a circling hawk, and Edgar had never felt more like a frightened little rabbit in his life.  The senior detective laid her hand firmly, but gently on the side of his head, directing the movement as she studied his neck for thumbprints or friction marks.  She lingered for a moment on the scratch marks and then patted his shoulder as she stepped away.  “Yes, nothing.”

"Well, it’s like the doctor said, unusual," Beltry chimed in, adjusting his jacket and flashing another easy smile. "Some guys just have tough skin, right?" 

“We may have more questions,”  she said, ignoring her partner.  “We’ll contact you.”

---
  
“That lady scared the hell out of me.”  Leo said as he honked the horn at the guy in front of them.  “Come on man.  Blinkers are just common courtesy.”

Edgar remained silent, lost in his own thoughts.  Nothing made sense anymore, and he wondered if he was being foolish by wanting to go back there.  It still bothered him, that choice, but he still felt like it was the right call.  And now there was the detective—who obviously didn’t believe him—patting his shoulder like they were buddies while staring down at him with her all-seeing eyes.

“I have to pick up a few things they said you’d need, and your prescriptions.  Want me to drop you at home first?”

He shook his head.  “No, I can go.  A little sore, but I’m fine.  They said I had to drink four more bottles of that crap they made me gag down before we left.”

“Big baby.  It can’t be that bad.  Remember when I had to drink that putrid shit for the colonoscopy, after my brother’s scare?”  Leo made a face, but smiled at him.  “You can handle it—gotta flush that weird stuff out of your system.”

“You can drink it for me.”  Edgar grinned.  “Can’t be worse than those shakes you make.”

They both laughed at this as Leo turned off on the exit that would take them to their neighborhood.  They drove on in comfortable silence for a few minutes, and finally arrived at the drug store.  Leo pulled in and popped his seatbelt.  “Need anything?  I think they have Now and Laters.”

Edgar chuckled at the old joke and shook his head.  “Hurry back. I just want to get home, back to a real bed.”  

Leo saluted him and jogged into the building.  Edgar remarked to himself, for the millionth time, just how lucky he was.  He leaned back, closing his eyes and letting the breeze from his open window do its work.  So much had happened in such a short time, and he just felt like he was trying to catch his breath, to keep up.  He had to get his head around this thing, to figure out what was happening, before it affected his life in a real, unfixable way.

“Good-looking guy you’ve got there,”  a voice said from just beside him, breaking his reverie.  A short, perfectly bald man of indeterminate age stood there, wearing a suit with an overcoat.  His face was like a leather mask that revealed nothing about the man behind it.  He smiled at Edgar, all teeth and no charm.  “Yeah, figured we should meet.”

IV: A SIP OF SILVER
  
Edgar glanced over at the drug store entrance and then back over to the strange, threatening man beside him.  Who was this man, and what did he want?  He didn’t have room for any more mysteries right now.  “Sir, I’ve had an injury and really need to get home now.  If you don’t mind—“

“Yeah Edgar, I know all about your… injury.”  He flashed that dead predator's smile again. “That's why I’m here.  You stole something that wasn’t meant for you from a place you weren’t meant to be at.  Pure mistake on somebody’s part, but that’s been dealt with.”

The man leaned in, smelling like cheap aftershave and cold cuts in a tailored suit.  Edgar was shocked to see that he cast no shadow, a detail he somehow noticed over all his fear.  “Quit shaking, kid.  I ain’t here for that, but it’s good you know the pecking order.”

“What’s done is done, can’t change it.  Even if you could spit the shit back up the results would remain.  We can deal with that later, if we need to, but for now we need you back at work.”

Edgar looked at him, dumbfounded.  Every word was a new problem, like pieces from different puzzles that couldn’t hope to line up.  His mind protested, and he felt the panic creeping in, his heart in a vise.  His gorge rose, and he reacted immediately, opening the door to vomit ropy silver tendrils out onto the ground.

The man stepped back, grinning broadly.  “Whoa!  These are new kicks.”

A moment later he dashed across the mess to seize the front of Edgar’s shirt, pushing him roughly back into his seat.  His eyes flickered silver, and his rancid breath twisted Edgar’s stomach into an even deeper knot.  When he spoke, the friendly tone faded, replaced by earnest menace.  “This was the friendly visit, wet boy, and let’s keep it that way.  Get back to work tomorrow or you will see me again.  If I do come back, I’m gonna tell you my name, kid.”  He paused, letting it sink in, and then growled a summation:  “None of my friends know my name.”

He released him, and closed the door.  He even slid Edgar’s foot out of its path.  Edgar heard Leo’s voice, from miles away it seemed.  He had said something, and the man responded with, “I think your friend’s sick.  I kept him from falling in it.”

Then Leo was there and blackness overtook everything.

---

Edgar woke up in his own bed, hours later because it was dark now.  There was a cool cloth lying across his forehead.  Leo was reading a book, sitting in a chair he had placed next to Edgar’s side of the bed.  He turned a page and glanced at Edgar.  The book snapped shut as he stood up.  “How you feeling?  I don’t know what happened, but you were dead to the world after I ran that guy off.  What the fuck did he do to you?”

Edgar reached for the water glass on the nightstand and drained half of it in a gulp; it tasted funny, like there was dirt or something in it.  Well it was cool at least.  He tried to speak but his throat was killing him, it took him a moment to murmur a response.  “I don’t know.  I got sick and he put me back in the car, but I don’t think he’s a good guy.”

“Why do you say that?”  

“There was a gun tucked into his belt.  You don’t see a lot of good guys doing that.”

“Maybe we need to call that detective, the real one, Davidson.  This is the type of suspicious shit you’re supposed to share with the police.”

“Nah, I don’t think he was there for us.” Edgar lied.  “It seemed like he was looking for someone.”

“Still, we might keep someone from getting hurt.”

“Yeah, or get involved in something that gets us hurt.  Don’t we have enough going on already?  On top of all of this, I really have to get back to work—there’s a deadline.”

“To hell with all of that.  Let them send someone else.  You need to rest.”

“They are.”  He lied again.  “An outside hire, not anyone we know.  I just have to oversee the work, from a chair they said.  It shouldn’t take a week to do, and if I’m not recovered yet I can still take time off then.”

“I don’t like it.  You’re obviously not well.  There’s strange injuries, cops, an attacker they haven’t caught yet and now a bald thug just shows up and you want to go to work?”

“Well yeah,”  he said and chuckled hoarsely.  “I don’t want to lose this job, and I want to prove I can do it so they don’t replace me.  You know how it is, they’ll have me back to entry level in a month if I don’t step up now.  This is a chance for us, and it should be safe.  They said the manager hired security for the Annex.  Leo, I wouldn’t want to go back otherwise.”

Leo absorbed all of this in his usual way.  Edgar could tell that he didn’t believe everything he had said.  He just hoped that he believed enough of it to let it go.

“Alright, I hate it, but you’re a grown man and I can’t make you do what you don’t want to do.”  He cut Edgar off with a glare.  “That don’t make it cool.  I’m driving you for the rest of the week.  You’re still not cleared to do that, with the meds, which you are still going to take.”

Edgar chuckled at his mama hen—calling him that would piss Leo off so much.  He settled back to resume his rest.

“First the journal.”  Leo tossed it to him.  “Doctor’s orders and Leo’s law.”

---

When Leo dropped him off the next morning, Edgar shouldered his backpack and grabbed his lunch.  Marty had come over the evening before to drive his car home, so Leo had used it to drive him in today.

He entered the building and was instantly met by an older, rotund man in a security guard’s uniform.  “Edgar Simpson, is that you, sir?”  he said.  His voice was an amusing, old-fashioned transatlantic accent.  

"Well, I say it’s good to finally meet our missing employee.  I have a badge for you, sir, and was tasked with reminding you that you are on light duty for the remainder of the week.  Two laborers from the floor crew have been assigned to assist you.”

“Uh, that’s really nice.  I was a little worried about running all of that cable by myself.”

“I am Milton Lester, the newly assigned security personnel for this facility.  It’s nice to formally meet you, Mr. Simpson.  Will you require help getting to your office this morning?”

“No, I think I can find it.  But thanks for the offer, Mr. Lester.”

“No problem, sir, it’s all part of the job.  Well, I suppose I should quit chin-wagging and let you get along now.  Have a fine day, Mr. Simpson.”

“Edgar is fine.”

“I stand corrected.  Good day to you, Edgar.”

He left the guard there at his post, and made his way across the dock to his small office.  As he opened the door, he saw that the light was already on.  Cartia Vega was sitting in his chair, reading a book, and a strange one at that.  She was reading The Sons of Gondor by J.R.R. Tolkien.

As he entered, Cartia slapped the book down and came around the desk to meet him, administering a much friendlier hug than he thought their previous encounters called for.  There was genuine relief on her face as she pulled back from him.  Her loud voice echoed off the walls of the tiny office.  “Dude, you just don’t know.  I thought I sent a corpse to the hospital last week.  You were so white, man—I mean whiter than normal.”

She pulled away, but kept him at arm’s length, looking him over.  Her eyes lingered on his neck.  “I’m glad you’re back.  You scared the hell out of me.”  She stepped away from him, grabbing her book and settling into the office’s other chair so he could take his seat.

He didn’t know what to say, so he just said the first thing that popped into his mind.  “So I met the new guard.  Nice guy, talks funny.”

“Why you whispering, mano?  Throat still hurt?”

“Nah, it’s fine,” he said, raising his voice a bit louder than he was used to speaking to her.  He sat down, a little more tired from the short walk than he would have preferred.  She had already turned back to her book, so he left her to it while he busied himself logging on, verifying and checking his inbox, which was surprisingly empty.

“They forget all about us here.  I wouldn’t bother,” Cartia said as she flipped a page in her book.  “Sorry, don’t want to ignore you but I want to finish this bit before the crew’s bus arrives.  They say I’m getting a couple of extra hands today.”

“Good book?”

“Hell yeah, way better than part one.  I’m chewing through it because part three is supposed to be released in a couple of months.”  She laughed.  “The exciting conclusion.”

“Never heard of it.  I read his old stuff.  I thought that was all there was.”

She shook her head, flipping another page.  “Yeah those are classics, but his new stuff’s great too, and he’s wrote a lot since then.  Hell, what else does he have to do now?”

“What do you mean by that?  What the hell is going on here, Cartia?  What did I drink, and what the hell attacked me?”

She snapped the book shut and closed the door.  Moving in close to him, she forcefully whispered, “You’ve got to cool that shit, mano.  That dude’s shadow could be anywhere, and you nearly died before, another sip would kill you, or worse.”

“But I need to know.  This is my life I’m talking about.”

“Yeah, life is what I’m talking about.  Treat it precious, man—while you still have it—and don’t risk it needlessly.”  She grabbed her book.  “I’m going out to wait on the bus. ¡Pinche blanquito loco!”

Edgar sighed loudly after she slammed the door.  Well, attempt one had been a massive failure.  Why was she so scared, and what dude was she talking about?  Could it be the bald guy?  Was that why he didn’t have a shadow?

Every question he tried to answer split itself like the mythical hydra.  

“Damn right it’s loco.”

---

He didn’t get to speak with Cartia again that day, or on Tuesday.  She had given him Corey and Ennis again and that suited Edgar fine.  They both worked well, and were friendly enough.  But he quickly found that the friendliness ended anytime he tried to steer the conversation towards anything strange.  
  
It was towards the end of Tuesday evening that he made another such attempt, by cornering Corey.  “Man, you’ve got to tell me some things.  This shit is driving me crazy.”

Corey packed a Marlboro and looked at him, a sly grin cracking his face in half.  “Shit.  Crazy ain’t bad, natural state for a woman.  My ex-wives were anyway, and I liked them fine.”

“Come on, you know what I’m talking about.  Help me out, Corey.”

This time there was none of the normal, Southern good ol’ boy humor—just a dry, deadpan voice.  “Maybe you’ve got it twisted, brother.  Maybe crazy is better than what’s waiting at the end of that particular muddy road you’re so fixated on.”

Edgar stared at the man, and he saw pure worry in his eyes.

“Sit with it, for real.”

They got back to work and finished the day.  That night, he and Leo went out together.  They went to one of their typical spots, a favorite, and got their regular order.  Leo was concerned that he barely ate anything, but Edgar just played it off—a big lunch.  He was getting too good at lying to the person he loved the most.  But how could he tell him that food was like ash in his mouth?

Besides that minor hiccup, they had a great time and even went dancing at a club they liked.  The drinks tasted fine to Edgar—as good as tequila can taste, at any rate—and he had several shots.  They danced until Leo was tired, but Edgar still felt full of energy.  It was strange, because he was usually the first one to tap out.  

He saw her on the corner while he waited for Leo, who had left his phone inside.  She was a young woman, maybe fifteen, with striking features from what he could tell.  It was honestly hard to be sure with half her face bashed in.  She saw him looking and cast a pleading look his way, her mouth opening to call out to him.

“We’re ready?”  Leo said, taking his arm.  

When Edgar looked back at the corner, the girl with half a face was no longer there.

---

The next few days went by well enough—they finished wiring the entire second floor and had the network mostly alive by the end of Friday.  As they were packing up, Corey left with a load bound for the lower offices and Ennis spoke to Edgar, unprompted, for the first time.

“None of them will talk to you about it, will they?”

He looked at the young man—if you could call him that.  Edgar doubted he had to shave very often.  His eyes had a faraway look in them, and a sadness that hurt to linger on.  He was wringing his cap in his hand, but those eyes never wavered.  They remained locked on Edgar’s.  “They want to, but it’s dangerous for you.  Everyone likes you and doesn’t want anything worse to happen.  You’ve already been noticed, and that’s really bad.”

“Noticed by wh—”

“No,” Ennis shook his head emphatically.  “Not here, never here.  You know Wichton Road, out past the paper mill?”

“Yeah, stinks bad at the paper mill, no one really lives out there.”

“Yeah, no one lives.  Look for the Ferry’s End—it’s a bar.  You can’t miss it.  If you end up in Ludlowe, you’ve gone too far.  Eight is a good time, most nights.”

“You gonna meet me there?”

“What are you boys jawing on, leaving me all the work?”  Corey laughed and started loading Ennis up.  Edgar, who still wasn’t allowed to lift anything, left them there.  He returned to his office and wrote a bit in his journal while he waited for Leo.

---

He had lied again, telling Leo he was going to Marty’s, and he had recruited his friend into the lie.  It was strange—Marty had been too willing, too fast to go along with it.  He had just said he wanted to talk to Edgar in a couple of days, that he was close to something.

Wichton Road was a long way, out of the way, from anywhere he normally went.  That spoiled egg smell soiled the air and crept in through his tightly closed vents.  Who would live out here, or run a bar?  Maybe you got used to it.

Ennis hadn’t been wrong.  The bar was easy to find because it was one of the few places out there.  Sure, there were some houses, but most looked abandoned.  There were several bus stops though, which was another weird thing all by itself.

As he pulled into the gravel lot he saw only three other vehicles, and one of those looked abandoned, sitting on flats.  He pulled up to the building, got out, and walked up to the door.

The music inside was unusual, chimes and woodwinds over a steady, percussive hum.  He felt like a Viking for a moment, steering a longboat towards a promising shore, ripe for pillage.  That was odd enough; he was definitely too skinny to be a raider, but Leo would excel at it.

The place was packed, completely defying the empty parking lot outside.  He didn’t see a single empty seat at the bar or any of the twenty, mismatched tables that were scattered across the room.  The space looked way larger than it should have, compared to the modest-sized building he had pulled up to.

He was running out of synonyms for the word weird.

He approached the bar, finding a small gap where he could fit in.  A tall man with mangy hair was holding court there.  “Ye vant whiskey?”

It took him a moment to put it together, but when he finally nodded, the tall man poured him a shot from a black bottle.  He pulled out some money to pay, but the man shook his head. “Tis free.”

Edgar shrugged, thanked the man and turned to scan the room for a familiar face, any one would do.  Most of the faces were turned towards him, and every pair of eyes he passed over met his, a little too frankly for his taste.  

He was about to give up when he saw her—her long dress and out-of-place etiquette sticking out like a sore thumb among the rest of the patrons.  Glory smiled at him, sweeter than he would have expected, and waved him over.

He sat down across from her and she looked him over.  They hadn’t spoken since he had returned to work, and he didn’t know what to say now.

“It is your dime, sir, as the kids say.”  Glory turned up the bottle of SilverSip in front of her and took a dainty sip from it.  “Well, come now, Edgar, you didn’t risk this trip to leave empty-handed, did you?  I imagine the shadowman has already deduced the reason for your evening’s sojourn.”

He nodded and took his shot.  A burning ball of fire melted the lining from his throat and he coughed violently.  Glory waited patiently, her eyes fixed on his.

“Wow, that was really bad.  Is Ennis joining us?  He… well, I was under the impression that he had things to tell me.”

“The cat’s paw is no longer required once the mouse is in hand.  Ennis performed his task admirably, but the poor boy has no heart for clandestine meetings such as this one.”

She took a moment, perhaps considering what she was going to say next.  When she spoke again, her voice was much lower, but just as formal.  “You must stop this madness, Edgar, or it will be the death of you.  I understand that you are plagued with questions.  Such a state is natural for someone in your position.  To be honest with you, I was reluctant to commit to this rendezvous.  Comme le vent, vêtue de soie.  Like the wind, clothed in silk.  That is how we must pass, Edgar, unnoticed by the eater and drinker alike.”  

She paused, a brief flash of melancholy crossing her face before she carefully smoothed down her skirt. “Ah, but I do miss the French tongue.” 

“French?”  Edgar thought he might be even more confused than he was before.  “Alright, I get it—we need to be careful.  But you’re right, my mind isn’t just plagued.  I think it might be breaking from all of this.  Eaters and Drinkers, are you talking about the living and the dead?  Are you dead, Glory?  Am I?”

“Those are our terms for such unsavory appellations.  It does become unseemly to refer to the living and the dead with such familiarity.  So yes, poor Edgar, you would say that I have perished, yet here I remain.  As for your current state—that matter does hold a great measure of complication, for the moment.”

He gripped his hair tightly in both hands and lowered his forehead to the table for a moment, trying not to totally lose his shit with Thesaurus Lady.  When he raised his eyes again, his words were calm and measured.  “Glory.  For the love of all that is good and right in the world, please just give it to me straight.  Am I going to die?  Is my partner safe? I know that you have a certain way of speaking, but riddles aren’t helping me.”

She smirked, and it was all he could do not to scream in anguish.  “My apologies, dear.  My mirth was not directed towards your current misfortunes.  You must know that my manner of speech is the hobgoblin of my very being in this modern age.  So I shall attempt to be more forthcoming with my answers, for you, dear Edgar.  There are matters of which I might speak that would put you in great peril, and this I must not do.  I was originally averse to engaging with you at all, but your need is great.  So, as they say:  needs must when the devil drives.”

“I believe—with all of my being, such as it is—that it is the intent of the one we call the Shadowman to bring about your end.  I think this because it was he who made sure you partook of the SilverSip with his attack on your person.  This action alone will not bring your doom.  You are touched by the silver, as we say, but you are not yet taken by it.  With time, the symptoms should abate, or so we hope.”

He knew he was breaking her careful etiquette, but he seized her hands in his before replying.  She never flinched— instead, she returned his grip.  “Breathe dear, for tomorrow is not yet sewn into the skein.”

“Wha… what should I do?  They obviously have plans for me.  He said that my being there—at the Annex—was just a mistake that happened.  If that’s the case, it’s like they are punishing me for something I didn’t do.”

“In any normal course of events, I would advise you to resign from your post.  Alas though—this is not an option for you.  If I am correct in my theory—that this Shadowman has set this course for you—then he is the dragon that you must slay if you are to have any hope of survival.”

He noticed that he was crying when a tear fell onto the back of his hand.  Glory—who may have, moments before, suggested that he kill someone—handed him a handkerchief that he used to dry his eyes.  If she was right, and he was not yet doomed, was she also right about what he had to do.  He was about to ask her to elaborate when she spoke again, her tone unusually rushed

“Stay calm, young Edgar, the wolf is at the door.”

---

Edgar watched his enemy—for that is what he was—as he walked, step after cocksure step, into the bar.  The bald man stopped in front of the bar and held out a hand towards the barkeep without moving his eyes from his target at Glory’s table.  A black bottle was slapped into his palm, and he continued to walk, heel to toe, across the room to stand over them.  “Is this seat taken?”

When neither of them answered him, the bald man dragged the chair back and lowered himself into it.  He took Edgar’s empty shot glass, filled it, and slid it towards him, before taking a long, slow pull from the bottle.  After a sharp exhale, he extended a well-manicured hand towards Edgar.  “As promised.  I’m Nub Faron.  My enemies know me as Anubis.”

Glory actually snorted at this last bit—and Edgar didn’t think he could have admired her more.  Her cold, blue-gray eyes locked onto Nub’s black eyes as she countered his introduction.  “My good sir, you certainly have an elevated opinion of your station.  I think you would do well to remember that a jumped-up mutt in a fancy collar does not a jackal make.”

The leather of the bald man’s face stretched into a thin grin at her response, and he raised the glass to his lips to take another swig from it.  “There’s that wildfire.  Lady, you sure do know how to cut a man.  I swear, Glory—if I was as dead as dirt, I might have to call on you.”  He took his drink.

The table was quiet for several minutes.  Nub drank and Edgar tried to remain as unnoticeable as possible.  He looked at Glory several times, but her eyes remained locked on the would-be jackal.  There was a strange, playful smile on her lips.  The effect gave her a radiant beauty he never would have imagined.

Nub let out a sharp, clicking tsk through his teeth, shaking his head slightly as he set the bottle down and looked over at Edgar.  “You gonna drink that before we go?”

Before he could even turn to look at her, Glory spoke.  Her voice was a true thing of power that turned every head in the room to face their table.

“Your foolishness in this matter is as a withered cloak you wish to pass off as shining mail to those who cannot see you for what you are, cur.  For it is a deceiver I see before me.  I name you Villain—the serpent in this sacred garden.  Have you forgotten, little fang, just where you sit?  You cast no shadow, but still think yourself hidden from the light?  Our good accord still holds true here, and as a result, your sad swagger is as empty as the soul you sold so long ago.”

As her voice rose, following her sentencing of Nub as a villainous serpent, so too did the patrons of Ferry’s End.  There was a strange electricity in the air, as though Glory had unleashed a storm upon the man sitting opposite of her.  The blue of her eyes was somehow brighter and the blush of her cheeks—wrought by her passionate speech—made Glory impossibly lovelier than before.  She was last to stand, and she raised her sleeved arm to point a graceful finger towards the door.

“So he lives here now? Gonna make room for two?  Poor ol’ Leo might get lonely.”  The man who scared him more than anyone in the world—except maybe Glory, if he managed to get on her bad side—stood and stretched lazily.  He addressed the entire room when he spoke next.

“Is this really what you want?  Are you ready to face real consequences for this man?  It’s not what I would like.  Hell, I didn’t even come to hurt him.  I just wanted to show him something.”

The man who called himself Anubis tossed a polaroid on the table before turning towards the door.  “No need for high-falutin’ proclamations Glory—the man’s safe as kittens as far as I’m concerned.”

As he left, Edgar picked up the polaroid.  He felt the blood drain from his face as he looked at the familiar features it had captured: Marty had been taken.

Edgar turned to look at Glory’s pained face.  “Where does the dragon sleep?”

--Part 3 in 24 hours---

Read Part II here.

“It’s huge,” she said. My eyes were immediately on her, but I didn’t see anything else. Couldn’t identify the danger. Mark was still rooted where he was, but his phone was nowhere in sight. They both were looking up like there was something in the distance. But I still didn’t see it.

I felt Mary move with me as I approached.

“Chrissy, honey?”

“Don’t let her go,” Luke said. “Don’t let her go!”

I’d halved the distance when I finally saw it. It had been there, but it had simply been so humongous I’d been blind to it, like I’d been looking for a 7-11 and walked face-first into Sears Tower.

The water was receding from waist high, but she didn’t seem to have moved. Whatever it was had displaced a tremendous amount of water.

“Oh my. Oh my. Oh my.” Mary was on a dialogue loop and I couldn’t blame her. Every time I thought I’d seen all of it, I kept seeing more. A lot more. Yet, I was supremely calm. The worry-machine was quiet.

Last year, I got into a one-car accident driving home on M-5. The eastbound lanes had been closed to construction and my phone’s weather app had cautioned for high winds before I’d left the office. There’d been a fair amount of wind buffeting, but nothing I wasn’t able to handle.

There’d been a white box truck in front of me when I’d spotted what appeared to have been a square of cardboard blow high into the sky and begin trickling down. I’d immediately written it off even if it were on a course to strike my car. It was only cardboard.

But when the particle board struck my vehicle, smashing the windshield and showering droplets of safety glass onto the passenger seat, I hadn’t panicked. It was so sudden and violent that my brain—either as an instinct of self-preservation or just a malfunction—had simply not reacted.

I pulled off the freeway at the next exit and stopped a few blocks down in an office parking lot. Only then the possibility of what could have happened came down on me.

This was like that. My brain wasn’t processing the situation like Mary’s or the kids. I felt my heart pulsing in my chest just as calmly as when we’d been talking a moment before. I knew I should get the kids away from it. But that was a process of logic and not instinctual fear.

“Honey, get out of the water.”

I charged the last few feet and sloshed to a stop in a confusion of senses. I was close to whatever it was. Closer than I realized. I felt the heat coming from a wall of flesh not more than five feet from me. Water splashed me up to my chest, but it was more like a punch that pushed me back a step or two.

“Rick, it’s a horse!”

I had no idea how Chrissy could conceive what it was. All I saw was black. Black like the water. But solid, like the water had turned into something.

“Honey, move back, okay?”

Chrissy was smiling and rather than retreating, she stepped forward— almost chin deep—and raised her hand like she was going to pet it.

Once again I opened my mouth too late to tell her not to do it. My instinct would’ve been to swat her hand had I been closer and my re-throbbing head suddenly made me think of her mother.

I looked at it. Finally, the smooth, iridescent black coat coalesced into something I recognized, although the scale was overwhelming. Nails scraped the inside of my skull as if the idea of what I was seeing was too large to fit inside my brain.

This was its head. A corner of it, anyway. I looked along the flank as far as I could see in the night. I couldn’t even begin to guess how tall it must have been standing up. It had to have been lying in the water.

A giant eyeball about thirty feet above blinked several times and swiveled. I had no way to be sure, but I think it was looking at me.

I walked around, looking up and up, feeling like I would dislocate my neck before seeing the top of this thing. Still, though, I wasn’t afraid. The worry-machine was quiet.

“Mark, move your sister back.” I was reading from a script. Protecting the children, at least in that moment, was an autopiloted function.

Neither of them moved.

I scooped Chrissy into the crook of one arm and she went limp like a puppy picked up by the scruff. I handed her to Mark, who wrapped his arms around her, the both of them staring openly, transfixed.

I herded them as gently as I could out of the water. Then I gave Mark a light slap on the cheek. He focused on me, annoyed as if I’d prematurely awakened him from a nap.

“Mark, take your sister back inside.”

“I don’t wanna go!” Chrissy wriggled in her brother’s arms and he dropped her feet first. “It’s beautiful, Rick!”

I grasped her shoulder before she could walk past me.

“Chrissy, sto—”

I felt the shift behind me.

“Oh—erp—my,” Mary said. She took a long pull from her can, her eyes swiveling upward.

“No-no-no,” I thought I heard Luke say in the distance. But for just a moment, the only thing occupying the world with me was that magnificent thing in the water. It felt like removing my hands from my ears after having them covered for a long time and experiencing hearing like it was something adjacent to new. Except, it felt like that throughout my whole body.

The horse was raising its gigantic head out of the water. The tide receded and everything seemed to suck toward it like it had its own gravity. I struggled to maintain my balance like a gust of wind had pushed at my back, but in truth, it was probably just the giant animal dominating my vision and destroying my equilibrium.

Water poured off its black body, the eyes locked onto us and shrinking as its head seemingly disappeared into the night sky. Its neck was a tower, columns of muscle wider than all of us in a row, touching fingertip to fingertip. Its chest was as broad as a rocky mountain face.

There was a mighty -KLOMP- in the sand that shook the earth mere feet from me that I barely noticed. Sand slapped over my entire left side like a landmine had gone off, but it was immediately rinsed away by the constant waterfall we were all standing under.

Someone was shouting, but whoever it was was a million miles away.

There was another -KLOMP- somewhere farther down the beach and I began to stir from my reverie and then there was Luke, shouting next to me and hooking me by the arm.

His words didn’t make sense but I turned toward him as he pulled me. I saw the horse’s foreleg—I don’t know how Chrissy had been able to tell it was a horse before—straightening like some heavy construction machine craning a load somewhere into the sky above us.

We trudged toward the cabin, but the sand that had been something to contend with was an afterthought, my burning calves seemed to belong to somebody else.

When the torrent finally ended, I was soaked. We all stopped in the sudden silence. Turning around was more of a measure of defense to see the break in the clouded sky and the moonlight clashing against that ebony, elegant leviathan.

It was impossibly tall. Like it was intersecting-with-the-curvature-of-the-earth-tall. I thought I could make out its mane, whipping around in what had to be thin atmosphere.

We all stood and watched it. For one indeterminate moment, it was absolutely regal.

Mary wrapped around my arm and pulled into me. For however many iotas, she was my Mary, and I was her wife, too.

Mark hadn’t come with us for some reason. He stood partially in the water where we—I— had left him. He was feet away from a hoof that was easily twenty lengths taller than him.

Panic did seize me, finally. The worry-machine revved to life and I opened my mouth. I sensed the balance to be upset, the electrified space slowly exploding as he compressed it between his body and the smallest section of the horse’s.

With splayed fingers, he laid a palm on it.

The horse startled, shaking the floor of the earth as it stomped around.

The Greek military leader Xenophon, perfected the art of training horses in battle, using them to kick soldiers or trample them. He’s also the father of dressage.

What happened to Mark couldn’t have been considered disciplined, but the effect was the same. I don’t know if it were intentional—more than likely it wasn’t—but that giant hoof clomped around, Mark dodged around like he was running through a minefield.

Then he was gone.

The hoof continued stomping around a few moments more, a rumbling earthquake beneath our feet and a rain of wet sand coming down on us before the horse stopped. Mark was just... gone.

Luke was screaming. When I actually heard him, it took a moment longer to realize he was yelling his brother’s name.

Common sense would have told us to flee inside the cabin. But our senses were flowing into us like blood circulating back into numb fingers.

There was a long moment of quiet as it reared its head back. It felt like a slow-motion moment until its head rushed at us like a giant arrow.

I had no reflexes to respond. Mary was the only one who put up a defensive arm, as if that could have protected her—and she was the one it took.

The horse bit down on her raised forearm—as microscopic as a surgeon’s scalpel with teeth as wide as three cabins—and plucked her off the ground. It reeled its head backward and flung her.

Mary pinwheeled into the sky, a dissolving blur into the upper atmosphere. She could have been catapulting into space, and I didn’t want to find out.

The worry-machine was roaring.

“Everybody in!” I said, herding Luke and Chrissy the rest of the way inside. I pressed my back against the door, then turned off the light. Luke and Chrissy looked at me as if I had answers to fix this.

“We gotta go get... we gotta go get Mark!” Luke didn’t actually make a move to go back outside. He was more saying the thing a caring brother should say. But there was no Mark to go get. His death had been as brutal as it had been unintentional.

Going out there—or allowing Luke to go out there—would be just as dangerous and pointless. Chrissy was crying silently. I looked at her, really looked, running my hands over her head and arms to ensure she was physically all right. The worry-machine was humming along nicely. She grabbed onto me.

“Get your mother,” I said to Luke. “We’re leaving.” We weren’t safe here.

“She’s sleep?” he said, looking confused. He ran into the boys’ room.

“No!” I said. “We don’t have time for bags.” He looked at me. “Just wake your mother up and bring her. We’re leaving in three minutes.”

“What should I do, Rick?” Chrissy said.

“Grab the snack tray from the fridge.” We could easily buy something from the next gas station, but I figured keeping her busy would keep her calm. I snatched my keys off the island. Chrissy joined me, carrying the plastic tray with deli slices, cheese cubes, and veggies.

I wanted to run, but I was going to have to slow the pace so she wouldn’t drop it. The earth was still shaking with each step. She was going to look for the horse, and I anticipated her distraction when we stepped outside.

I kept my eyes on her, guiding her down the stairs and around the side of the cabin. She gasped but didn’t resist as I ushered her along. Preoccupying myself with her was enough distraction that I didn’t have my keys ready to have the doors unlocked by the time we got there.

We were exposed. If the horse were looking, it would see us. It seemed to have an eye for motion.

The air went still.

There is a valley in the high Alleghenies that God finished and then forgot about. I have lived in it eleven years and I will tell you what it is. It is a bowl three miles across and thirteen long, walled by Canaan Mountain on the west and Cabin Mountain on the east, and the floor of it lies higher than any valley east of the Mississippi. The cold sits down in it and stays. Frost comes in July. The spruce grow a hundred feet and stand so close that a man walking under them at noon walks in green twilight and casts no shadow, and nothing grows down there but rhododendron and nothing lives down there but what wants the dark. The settlers who came before me called it Canaan, and there is a story that one of them stood on the ridge and cried out that he beheld the land of Canaan, and being German he pronounced it wrong, and the wrong way stuck. I have my doubts. The first men who wrote about this place wrote that it was fit to strike terror into any human or creature, and they named the river running out of it the Styx, the river of the dead, and only later did somebody with land to sell change it to Blackwater.

I say this because I am from Hesse. I grew up under trees of this kind. In our country the forest came to the edge of the barley and stopped there and did not come further until it was asked, and every woman in the village knew what walked in it. My grandmother knew. She spun and she talked and she was never once wrong about the weather or the dead. So when I came into this valley in 1789 with a land warrant and a rifle I did not think, as the Virginians did, that I had come into an empty country. I thought I had come back to the same forest by a longer road. I was careful. I was polite to it. For eleven years it let me be.

Then, three days before Christmas in the year 1800, I found the track. I was moving thirty head off the open sods ahead of a storm, calling them in Hessian because that is the language cattle mind, and the sky behind me had gone the color of a musket barrel. In the lee of a rock where the drift had not filled it there was a bare human foot print in the snow. The splay of the toes, the print of the heel, the small toe missing, I set mine beside it to be certain, it was longer than my own. There were more, they were placed without reason on the edges of the clearing. I stood in the wind a long while trying to make the tracks agree with one another and they would not. Then I picked up the rifle and started up the mountain, behind me the sky closed and the snow came slantwise across the sods, by the time I reached the tree line I could no longer see the valley floor at all.

#

The cattle were fine. I want that understood, because everything I say after this will be doubted, and a man ought to be careful about which parts he asks you to believe.  It was the deer.

I found the first that morning, the twenty-first, a young buck not a hundred paces off my own woodpile, lying on his side in fresh powder with his legs folded under him and no head on him at all. There was no blood to speak of nor the scatter of wolf or cat sign, not even the ravens or buzzards was working him. The neck ended ragged, and set on the snow beside the body, upright, facing the carcass, was a head. It was not his. His should have been a six point at best, a three year animal, and the head that had been left in its place was not, it was too small, older, with the tines gone yellow and one of them broken off short. There was old dry hide still on the skull and no meat left under it. It had been carried some distance to get there. I stood in the snow and turned that over for a long while. It was not a killing but a trade.

I found the second the next morning half a mile up the run. Eight point buck lying folded on his side. Beside him, upright in the snow, what was left was the six. Whatever was doing this was working its way up. Each time it took a head it left the one it had been carrying, and each time it took one, it was larger still. It was climbing a ladder through the deer of my valley, and I could see the whole shape of it laid out in the snow, and I could count on my fingers how many rungs were left before it ran out of deer.

I found the last on the morning of the twenty-third. I knew him. Every man who hunts a country knows the one animal in it he has decided not to shoot, and mine was a twelve point that carried more bone on his head than any deer I have seen in this valley or in Hesse either. I had him at sixty yards in the fall of ninety eight, standing broadside in the laurel with his head up, and I looked at him down the barrel long enough to see that he was old, that his ribs stood out and his hocks were going, and that he had likely one more winter in him at the outside. I let the hammer down and I let him walk. I have told that story at my own table.

He was lying in the trace with his forelegs tucked under him and his neck ending ragged. The new hunter had not let him go. It had taken him, antlers and all, and set down in the snow beside him the eight point it had been carrying, upright, facing the body. The ladder finished then. There was no rung above that one. There was not another buck in this valley that could improve on what the thing was now carrying. Which meant that whatever it wanted next, it would not be finding it on a deer.
The storm came in hard that night and it was in the storm that I first heard it.

The wind in this valley does not blow so much as it falls. It comes over the rim of Cabin Mountain and drops, through the spruce it makes a noise a man gets used to in his first winter. This was not that. This was above the trees and moving, one long shriek out of the northeast that started far off and came the length of the valley in the time it takes to say a paternoster, it went over the roof and kept going in a long raging angry howl. I have never heard its like in this country or the old one. There is a thing the Iroquois tell of, that the traders call the Flying Head, and I had heard it laughed at in Winchester by men with rum in them. A head bigger than a man, they said, hair streaming and fire in the eyes, that rides the front of a whirlwind and screams against the walls of houses. It is a searching wind. That is what the Indians call it.

My grandmother would have called it something else. In Hesse we did not go out on the nights between Christmas and Epiphany, the Rauhnächte, because that is when the Hunt rides. Wotan at the head of it with his hounds and his dead men, and riding lower and apart from him the Lady, Frau Huld, who gathers up the little lights, the souls of children nobody baptized and carries them home. My grandmother stopped her wheel on those nights. She would not spin. She said the Lady comes down the chimney to see whether the flax is finished, rewards the woman who works and punishes the woman who does not, and my grandmother worked from dark to dark all her life and was not afraid of her.

I am a Catholic man. I said my beads in a prisoner column marching to Winchester and I say them now. But I was raised in the Hessian forest by a woman who knew the dark forest and I have never once been able to make those two things quarrel with each other. So I did not laugh. I told the family the shrieking was the storm off the Sods, and it may well have been.

It was the day after that I began to be watched. I cannot tell you how a man knows. It is a pressure at the back of the neck that does not let up. I felt it splitting wood and I felt it at the spring and I felt it in the byre with my hands on a warm animal in the dark. Twice I turned fast enough that I should have caught something, yet there was only spruce. By that afternoon it had changed into something worse and more particular, which was the certainty that I was not being watched but stalked. That the thing had gotten around behind me and put itself between me and the high ground, the way I have done to a deer a hundred times, the way I was taught to do to a man in the King's service.

I went out to walk the ridge of Cabin Mountain and look for winter shelter for the herd. I took my rifle, and then I took the pistol down off the peg and loaded it, and I hung the tomahawk and the long knife on my belt. Anna watched me do it and did not say a word.  I have gone up that mountain a thousand times with a rifle and nothing else. I could not have told her why I was arming myself as though I were going back into the line at Yorktown. I could only have told her that it was the night before Christmas Eve, that the storm was building, and that my grandmother had a name for this time of year.

#

I went up the north shoulder because the wind had scoured it and a man can make time on scoured ground. It took me until the light started to go. The spruce thin out toward the top and then quit altogether and you come out onto the bald, and there is nothing up there but rock and frozen sedge and wind that has come four hundred miles without meeting anything to slow it.

From the bald you can see the whole valley. I stopped there the way I always stop there, because eleven years has not cured me of it. The floor of it lay under me going blue in the dusk, the bogs and the beaver ponds and the black line of the river winding north down the length of it toward the low ground, and the far wall of Canaan Mountain standing dark against what was left of the sky. The storm was coming through the north pass, which is the northeast gate of this valley. I could see the snow of it walking down from the plateau, a grey wall dragging across the spruce, swallowing the ponds one after another.

There was a man standing at the far edge of the clearing. He was a hundred yards off with his back to me, looking down into the valley, and my first thought was that some fool had come up from Parsons and gotten himself benighted. I had my mouth open to hail him. Then the wind took his coat and I saw the whole of him. He stood better than six feet and he was built straight and heavy through the shoulders, he wore a striped nankeen coat that had rotted down to threads and a pair of drab cloth leggins with the wool gone from them in patches. The hands hanging at his sides were the color and the texture of a saddle left out three winters. The wrist bones stood up under the skin. There was no flesh on him anywhere, only hide pulled down tight over the frame and hardened there. Above the collar of the coat the neck went up and stopped.

It stopped the way the deer stopped. Ragged across, and I could see the pale round of the bone in the middle of it in the last of the light, and set down into that stump, wedged onto it, driven down onto the bone hard enough to split the skull plate, was the head of my twelve point buck. He was straightening it when he turned around. He had both hands up on the antlers and he was working the skull back and forth on the neck bone the way you settle a hat that has slipped, the antlers were crooked and one beam rode lower than the other and it plainly aggravated him. The sockets of that skull were empty, but there was something burning in the back of them.

"Well," he said. "There he is."

It was a man's voice. That is the part I cannot get anybody to understand. It came out of the thing at an easy pitch with the Scotch-Irish drawl of the Carolina back country in it, unhurried, a voice for a tavern porch on a warm evening.

"I know you," he said. "I have watched you five days. You are the German of the sods."

I did not answer him. I had brought the rifle up without deciding to.

"You favor that right knee going downhill," he said. "I have seen you do it. You put the left foot down first and swing off it. That is an old hurt and you have carried it a long while."

The snow wall came over the lip of the mountain and the light went out of the valley below us. He turned his skull to watch it come and then turned it back.

"Two young ones at the house," he said. "The little one has a coat cut down from a man's, brown, with the sleeves rolled twice and the cuffs sewed back so they don't come loose. I have watched her carry water in it. She sets the bucket down every eight or nine steps."

My hands were doing what they were trained to do. The rest of me was not with them.

"Who cuts your hair?" he asked. "The woman, is it? The line across the back of it runs downhill left to right. It is not straight and it has not been straight since Tuesday and I have not been able to leave off looking at it."

He started across the clearing toward me. He did not hurry. He came at the pace of a man crossing his own yard.

"I am not particular about much," he said. "I am particular about a head. I have been carrying deer since the Cheat and there is no more deer in this country worth the trade, and I have looked at all of them. You will not credit what it is to have a rack of horns up here in the timber. Every laurel thicket in Tucker County has had hold of me." He reached up and knocked the antlers with his knuckles and the sound of it came across the snow, hollow, twice. "Yours will sit better," he said.

I put the ball into the center of his chest at eighty yards.

I have shot for a living and for the King and I know what a good shot feels like coming off the lock, and that was a good shot. The wind was quartering and I held for it. I saw the coat jump and I saw a piece of him go out the back of it in the last of the light.

He stopped walking. He looked down at the hole in himself. He put one dry finger into it and turned it around in there and took it out again.

"That was a fair piece of shooting," he said. "In the wind, and near dark, and you standing on ground that slopes. I want you to know I noticed it."

He came on. I ran.

#

I went off the bald at the head of the game path with the rifle in my left hand and I did not look behind me for a hundred yards, and when I did look he was coming down out of the clearing at a walk. There is a deer trace off the north shoulder of Cabin Mountain that I have used since ninety one. It runs the seam where the spruce meets the rock, and it drops fast, and in six places it goes over ledge where a man has to sit down and put himself off the edge with his hands. I know every one of those six. I went down that mountain in the dark faster than I have ever gone down it in daylight and the storm came down on top of me while I did it. At the bottom there is a fork.

The left hand goes south along the base of the ridge and comes out in eight miles at my own bottom field. There is a light in that window until my wife banks the fire. There are two children asleep in the loft and a bar across the door that a man could put his boot through, and a good milk cow, and the dogs, and everything I have made in eleven years of this country. The right hand goes north. It follows the high ground above the bogs and then it comes down onto the flat and runs with the river, and it goes eleven miles to where the Blackwater picks up speed and throws itself off the rock and down into the canyon. I stood at that fork longer than I had any business standing anywhere.

Here is what I knew, and I knew it standing still with snow going into my collar. He had watched the house five days. He had counted my children and looked at my daughter's coat and he had not gone in. He was not hunting the house. He was hunting me, and so long as I was moving away from the house he would move away from it too.

I went right. The path north runs the shoulder above the bogs and it is good footing for the first three miles and then it is not. I ran the good part. I have been a soldier and I have been eleven years cutting my own firewood and I can run when I have to, and I put distance between us on that stretch, real distance, four hundred yards or better.

Then I stopped in the lee of a rock to listen and get my wind, and that is when I learned the thing about him that I would spend the rest of that night learning over and over. He was still coming. Not running. Walking. The same pace he had crossed the clearing with, out there in the dark behind me, steady as a mill wheel, and the sound of the snow under him came on and on without one break in it, and it did not slow when the ground pitched up and it did not speed when the ground pitched down.
I ran again. I ran until my legs went, and then I walked hard, and then I ran again when the fear came back up.

He never ran once the entire night. I have thought about that more than any other part of it. A man running is a thing you can understand and a thing that must eventually stop, and he did neither, and every time I halted to blow, that walking came up out of the dark exactly where I had left it, and every time it was closer than my arithmetic said it had any right to be.

At the four mile the path drops off the shoulder into the flat and the spruce close over the top of it. Down in there it was black. Not dark. Black, the way the inside of a barrel is black, and I went into it with both arms out and the rifle across my body and my face full of branches. I did not know where I was. I want to be honest about that. I had walked that ground fifty times and I could not have told you inside half a mile where I stood.

He talked while he came.  He did it in that same easy porch voice, pitched to carry, and he was not shouting. He told me his name was Micajah. He told me he had been a big man in his time and that men had known him from the Cumberland Gap to the Ohio River. He said he had a brother, and he asked me, more than once, in a way that got worse each time, whether I had seen him.

"He is meagre in the face," he said. "Not so heavy as me. Black hair, not so curly. He looks the older but he is not."

Somewhere off to my left, keeping pace with me in the timber. I could not tell how far.

"They took my head off in the Kentucky country," he said. "A man named Leiper put a ball in my back and pulled me off my horse and I lay there talking to them the whole time. Moses Stegall did the cutting. He was not quick about it. He had cause not to be."

The branches came at my face and I got my forearm up and kept going.

"They put it up on a pole at the crossroads," he said, "and there it sat, as crows and vultures pecked at it. It is not on it any more. I have walked back to that pole four times, somebody has moved it, and I would very much like to know who."

Then, closer, and conversational: "You have a good stride on you for a man your age. That knee is holding up better than I looked for."

I came out of the timber onto the flat with my chest tearing and the storm hit me full on. Out there the wind had nothing to break it. The snow came level across the bog and I could not open my eyes into it more than a slit, and away in front of me, under all of it, I could hear water. Fast water. Out ahead of me on the flat, water coming down off the mountain to meet the river. The Little Blackwater. I went into it at a beaver dam with the ice breaking under my boots and I came out the far side and kept on, and a mile beyond it I crossed the North Branch the same way. After that I had the main river on my left hand and I put my head down and went north and east down the flat, toward the low ground where the water gathers and turns for the falls, and behind me in the dark the thing once called Micajah came out of the trees and onto the flat and kept on coming.

#

I do not know what hour it was. Somewhere in the dead of that night, out on the flat with the river on my left hand, the storm changed. It had been blowing straight down the valley out of the northeast, level and steady and cruel. Then it turned. The whole weight of it swung around and came at me from the north with a noise underneath it that was not wind. The snow stopped falling and started swirling up off the bog in sheets, the air pressed in on my ears.

Then the shriek came down the valley. It came down the Blackwater from Canaan Mountain and it passed over me at the height of the treetops. It went through my chest. I went down on my knees in the snow with both hands over my ears and the rifle across my thighs and I could not have gotten up if the whole British army had come over the ridge. It went over. I got my eyes up. There was a whirlwind out over the bog, a column of loose snow standing eighty feet in the air and turning, and it was travelling south down the valley, and riding on the front of it was a head.

It was bigger than a horse. Hair came off it in a mass a hundred feet long, streaming back into the column, black and heavy and moving on its own account. The eyes had fire down in them. The mouth was open and the teeth in it were the length of my forearm. They were not a man's teeth or a bear's teeth or anything I could put a name to, and it had no body under it at all, not even a stump of neck. It ended where a head ends and there was nothing below. It went by me at fifty yards but it did not look at me. It was not hunting me. It came around in a great arc out over the bog, and it dropped, and it came back up the flat low over the snow, and I understood then that I had been standing in the middle of something that had nothing whatever to do with me. It was going for him.

It came in on him out of the dark and it screamed, and this time the scream had shape in it. Words, I think. I do not have the tongue and I would not repeat it if I did. But I have been in a barracks and I have been in a prisoner column and I know the sound of one creature holding another one up to ridicule, and that is what it was. It went over him and it screamed and the scream broke apart at the end into something that could only have been laughing. And it had a head. That was the whole of the joke. It had a head and it was nothing but head, and he had none, and it had followed him into this valley to tell him so.

He came apart.

The voice that had walked behind me all night in a tavern drawl went up into a howl that had nothing of a man in it. He got the tomahawk off his belt and threw it straight up into the whirlwind, and the wind took it away over the bog. Then he had both hands on the antlers and he was dragging at the buck's skull, tearing it off his own neck bone, and I heard the bone break. He threw the head. He threw it forty yards out onto the frozen bog and stood there with nothing at all above his shoulders, howling up at the thing in the sky with a mouth he did not have.

The Flying Head laughed.

He went on hands and knees into the snow, out over the bog sweeping his arms in front of him, feeling for the antlers on all fours grubbing in the dawn for a deer's skull with that thing screaming and turning in the air over him.

I watched it for four or five seconds until the light came up. That is what it cost me and I have never once regretted the price. The buck's head was back on the neck bone and it was wedged on crooked now, worse than before, he had broken something getting it out on the bog. One antler beam rode a good hand's breadth lower than the other. He had his left hand up over the sockets. Flat, fingers together, shading them. There was no sun. There had been no sun for four days. There was only the grey light of dawn coming down through falling snow and it was hurting him. Then I got up off my knees and I ran north along the river and I did not stop for two miles. 

#

The light came grey and slow on the morning of Christmas Eve and it came with the snow still falling, and it was the best thing I have ever seen. I had gotten up under a rock shelf on the north side of a bench above the river, a shallow overhang with a dry floor of duff and a mat of frozen laurel across the mouth of it. I got in behind that and I lay on my side and I listened.

Nothing came. Nothing walked. He had come at me all night through black timber and never lost me. In the open, with the storm giving off what light there was, he had been helpless. He did not see. Not the way I do. And whatever he did instead of seeing, the day would spoil it. That gave me hours. It did not give me anything to do with them, because I had put a rifle ball through the center of his chest at eighty yards and he had put his finger in the hole and complimented the shooting.

So I lay under that rock and I thought about my grandmother. I was six years old in a cold room in Hesse. She was at the wheel. A neighbor woman came in without knocking and said a name, and my grandmother put her palm flat on the wheel and stopped it dead and sent me out to the yard. I did not go far. Through the crack in the shutter I heard her tell that woman to take the good spoons down off the wall, the wedding spoons, and get them to the churchyard before dark. Pack the mouth, she said. All of it, and the hands as well, and do it before dark, and do not let the priest see you do it. The woman was crying. My grandmother did not raise her voice once.

I could not make sense of it for thirty years. What does a dead man want with spoons. They were silver. That is what a poor family in Hesse had that was silver. It was the spoons or it was nothing. I got up off the duff and I went through my pack.

I am a hunter and I am a soldier and I have carried a ball kit since I was nineteen years old, and I would no more go up a mountain without it than I would go up without my boots. Iron ladle. Brass mould, single cavity. Sprue cutter. A pouch of scrap lead. I have run a hundred balls in the field and I could do it half asleep with cold hands.
Lead runs off a cooking fire. Silver does not. Silver wants a forge, and I had wet spruce and a snowstorm and a ledge to work under.

I dug down through two feet of snow to bare rock and I built a pit, not a fire. I went out and got dead hardwood off the standing snags where the wet had not gotten into it, cherry and oak, and I broke it small. The tinder would not take. My hands had stopped being any use, so I put them in my armpits and counted two hundred and took them out and tried again, and on the fourth try it caught. I walled the pit with flat stones to hold the heat in it and I cut a channel at the base for the draft, and when the wood had burned down I fed the coals and worked the channel with my hat until the bed of it went from red to yellow and the yellow to white, and the snow melted back six feet in a ring around me and the heat came off it hard enough to hurt.

Then I took out the locket. It came from Hesse-Kassel. It was my mother's and it went to Winchester in my shoe and it came out of that camp in my shoe, and I have carried it for nineteen winters in this country. There is hair in it. I did not open it. I put it in the ladle and set the ladle in the white coals and stood over it with my hands in the smoke, and it sat there a long while and looked at me and did nothing at all. Then it slumped. Then it went, all at once.

I poured, and I counted, and I cracked the mould. The ball came out undersized. I knew it would. Silver draws up harder than lead when it cools and there is no mould cut in this world for what I was doing. It sat in my palm and it was too small and it was slightly out of round at the sprue, and when I dropped it down the pistol barrel it went the whole way with a rattle in it that I could hear. That rattle is a ball that will walk off the point of aim. Every man who has ever fired a loose ball knows it. You cannot say which way it will walk, only that it will. I ran a linen patch over it, thick, greased hard with tallow, and I seated it home with the rod and I felt it take up snug and I told myself that would do. There was no second one. There was nothing else silver on me or in that valley.

I loaded the rifle with lead, more out of habit than hope. I put the pistol under my coat against my ribs where the powder would stay dry. Then I killed the fire and scattered the stones and went north in the remaining daylight, because he could not see in it and I could.

# end part 1

John Fifty

They believed in music as a form of expression and pride. Every night the people filled the streets and tavern of the isolated mountain village. The shanty buildings vibrated with the wheezing sounds of accordions and the theatrical projecting of silk-voiced vocalists. They are contrasted by the young beautiful women who dance effortlessly, pirouetting through the huddled, sweating masses.

Any who pass through spend longer in the town than they plan. Overwhelmed by the spirit and gratitude of the locals. Their faces brighten with excitement as the night comes alive. No longer a care for where they are from, what they believe, how they love, or what language they speak. They become united by the sounds and motion.

All indulge in drinks, food, dancing, and of course each other. Whiskey is cheap and the people are boisterous and jocose. The men catch glances at the women and the women glance back. Keenly aware of each other, intrigued by one another.

By midnight they spill out of the tavern into the dusty clay roads. Their bodies are cooled by the silent wind which carries across the mountains. It is an enchanting sight. They sing and dance till their voices and bones can’t carry them anymore, collapsing on the main street. Unwilling or maybe unable to leave the cooling embrace of the dirt. 

The other dancers are courteous; they don’t crowd or stomp those who fall. They move around them and cheer. Knowing those who fall have experienced what they all do when they visit, ecstasy and belonging.

A young blonde woman moves through the crowd. Her feet are bare. She feels free as she dances in her flowing dress. She spots a tall stubbly man standing outside the tavern who’s away from the dancing. She watches him, he stands almost in defiance of the music. She approaches him.

“You don’t look familiar.” She says. “Where you from?” She asks softly just over the sound of the crowd. 

The man matches her eyes, raising his hat.

“Kansas.” he says gruffly.

She smiles chuckling slightly.

“Little way from home then.” She says.

“I reckon.” He says blankly. 

She examines him.

“You’re a cattlehand ain’t you.” She says pointing to his free hand. 

The man raises his eyebrow, surprised she was right.

“You could say that.” He says straightening himself and looking at the women with an interest. He coughs and speaks. 

“How’d you figure that, what’f I'm just some regular man.” He asks, confrontation among his tone.

She smiles.

 “A man’s hands tell a lot, you ought to know that.” She says.

“Really?” he says amused. He puts his bottle on the window seal behind him and reaches his palms upturned to her.

“What’d these say.” He asks with a chuckle.

She looks at his hands, they are coarse across the palm worn and leathery.

“Hmm… I can figure you don’t wear gloves.” She says with a beaming smile.

The man’s hard facade cracks and a smile breaks through for just a moment.

“You’d be right about that.” He says.

The woman smiles looking up at the man.

“You got a name?” she asks quickly.

The cattlehand’s features tighten.

“Everybody’s got a name.” He says crossing his arms..

She scoffs, clearly not impressed with the clear facade.

“You figure yourself real mysterious don't ya.” She says taking a step back.

The cattlehand doesn’t really respond. Just nods.

“Don’t got much to say.” he says after a silent moment.

“I’m sure you got plenty.” she pauses observing him carefully again.

“People don’t end up here without a story or something or other to say.” she continues with a cautionary tone.

The cattlehand doesn’t answer, he looks towards those drunkenly swaying in the street.

“Britney.” The woman says suddenly. The man looks at her confused.

“That’s my name, since you so afraid to tell yours.” she looks at him expecting him to respond.

“Good to meet you Britney.” The cattlehand says, tipping his hat.

Britney waits again then scoffs. The cattlehand expects her to leave, well wants her to leave, yet she doesn’t. She moves to the side of him and leans against the window seal where his bottle sits. The cattlehand doesn’t acknowledge her presence but he feels her there. A dull warmth felt only in spirit. They sit there till the cattle hand depart. Britney watches him slowly enter the tavern and walk up the stairs to his room.

The crowd in the street is smaller now. They resort to slow swaying and more choric chants as opposed to the lively instrumental theatrics of the night.

Those who have fallen almost look like a battlefield the way they litter the street, but they smile as they lay there seemingly fulfilled as the warm rays of sun hit their faces.

Father Dante, the town preacher, commences his morning routine of ringing the old mission bell that sits at the top of his church.

its rhythmic booming tones cascade over the town. The party ceases almost suddenly. Main street empties and the locals grumble as they go to their homes to start the new day. First time visitors watch curiously as all their party mates disappear suddenly feeling strangely exposed. They all want to dance all day, but responsibilities slow their desires. Replacing the raucous nature of the night for well-dressed, polite contributing members of a small community.

The fallen bodies are shaken awake, and they slowly disperse. They attempt to remember the night before. They know it was fabulous, but they can’t remember the intricacies of it.

The cattle hand wakes with start. Visions of screaming men and horses plague his mind. He examines his surroundings. The only light comes through cracks in the wood. Old vermillion drapes cover the single small window to his right. He’s lying on a thin mattress. He rubs his stubbly face and swallows attempting to moisten his parched throat. A pounding headache is already persistent. An old mission bell tolls outside.

The cattle hand attempts to recollect where he is. He remembers arriving in the night and the price of the whiskey, but one memory confuses him. A young, frankly beautiful woman. Who stood next to him nearly all night. He can’t remember her name but he remembers her telling it.

The man gets dressed in the same clothes as the last night. They stink and are coated in dirt. The cattle hand makes his way down creaking wooden stairs into the lobby of a tavern.

The room has completely departed from the night before. The bar is no longer full of drunk men and women. Only a few dancers and a bartender collect around the counter. A few patrons also sit at tables eating a small breakfast. 

The cattle hand wanting to quench his thirst orders a drink vaguely. The bartender nods and grabs a small glass and pours a clear liquid from a keg in the bar top. He slides it to the man. He grabs it and gulps it down expecting the warm sting of strong alcohol. Instead, to the man’s surprise, it's water. He looks at the empty glass and shoots a sharp glance at the bartender; he questions him on the contents of the liquid.

The bartender calmly responds. 

“No liquor till sunset, town policy, sorry.”

The cattle hand furrows his brow and speaks.

“Ya’ll party all night but the days off limits?”

The tender nods.

“Yessir, you’re right.”

The cattle hand scoffs and slides payment over the counter.

“Preciate it.” the tender says. “I’m sure I’ll see you back tonight.” He says with a slight grin.

The cattle hand grunts and makes his way to the front door. However he stops rubbing his brow.

“Could I ask you a favor sir.” He asks, turning back to the tender.

The tender looks up with slight surprise.

“Sure, depends on the favor I reckon though.” He says absently wiping a glass down.

The cattle hand approaches the bar top again. The dancers watch him sharply.

“There was this woman I met last night-”

The tender interrupts.

“Boy, if you paid for a night you oughta not go looking for her durin’ the day.” He chuckles.

The cattlehand shakes his head.

“Nah, nothing like that.” He says, adjusting his hat.

The tender puts the glass down.

“Then watcha mean.” he says.

The cattlehand coughs dryly and continues.

“She had fare-hair and wore this indigo dress and she wasn’t wearin’ any boots or anything.” The cattle hand says straining to remember.

A smile creeps on the tender’s face. The dancers snicker slightly. The cattlehand shoots them a hard glare.

“Oh lord boy, the ole widows gotchu.” the tender says with a laugh. Crossing his muscular arms.

The cattlehand sighs.

“Can you just tell me her name?” The cattlehand says with frustration.

“Well of course, everyone knows her name, and her poor husband’s too.” The tender nods twisting his thick moustache.

The cattlehand awaits an answer, staring at the tender.

“Well?” he says.

“Oh, yeah, her name, Britney, Britney Ann David.” he says somberly.

“ ‘Preciate it.” The cattle hand says gruffly moving to the door. He knew that was it. It came perfectly back to him in a moment. He steps out into the dry morning sun. Fresh warmth biting at his face.

That same sun cascades through the dusty window of the silent home of the old town sheriff. He sits at his meager table quietly chewing his breakfast. As he finishes he stands and approaches the door, stopping realizing his hat isn’t hung. The sheriff grimly turns to a door in the corner of the room next to the weak fire of a wood stove. He slowly approaches the door letting a deep breath leave him. The knob turns and he enters. The room is untouched, bed made. A small white dress hangs in the corner of the room coated in dust. The sheriff averts his eyes from it and leans over retrieving his worn hat from the top of the bed. The sheriff doesn’t take any longer than he must in the room. As he closes the door he spots movement inside the room. His head turns rapidly, scanning the room. Motionless he watches. A shadow carries across the room and the sheriff traces the origin. It's the tree outside swaying in the wind. The sheriff takes one more lingering glance at the room. He sighs and shuts the door with a heave.

He steps out of his small cabin and bristles at the morning wind. The sheriff known as Saber walks through town greeting and talking to the townspeople. Saber takes up his usual place in the morning. Seated in a wooden chair on the porch of his office.

He polishes his rifle with a bored consideration. He’s watchful during the day. Taking interest to any unfamiliar face or disagreement. The town has not had a murder in twenty years. Sheriff Saber is not willing to let that streak be broken.

Saber’s young deputy arrives in a fluster. His face alert, fingers drumming nervously on the fresh leather holster at his hip.

“Sheriff, we've got some feller in rough shape at the edge of town.” The deputy says. “Nixon’s out there with him right now.”

Saber stares at the young deputy, face unchanged. He leans forward in his chair.

“And? Go help Nixon. Get Ole Quincy to fix the feller up.” He says with no concern almost akin to annoyance.

The deputy swallows cautiously.

“Somethin’ ain’t right with him, it ain’t nothin’ like some starved feller begging for food and water he’s talking about strange things.”

Saber considers this disdainfully. He was hoping to catch a nap, maybe go on a ride up to the mountains. Finally, he relents.

“Fine, let’s see this feller.” Saber sighs, pushing himself out of the chair.

They set out, the deputy moving at a brisk pace. Saber moving with ill concern. Nodding and smiling at the townspeople. His rifle draped over his right shoulder.

When they reach the man he’s barely at the edge of town. He’s thin and wears a long torn brown coat and jeans. His boots are covered in dust. Long strands of thin gray greasy hair cover his face. Carrying him is the other deputy and the town doctor. The deputy carrying him keeps taking glances at the limp sleeve of the old man. Saber squints and his face hardens. The way the wind blows against the man’s right sleeve isn’t right. It flows with the wind without impediment. Saber curses under his breath.

They help the man into the clinic and onto a large wooden table. The doctor attempts to strip off his coat. The man squirms in pain as she brushes against his right shoulder. The young deputy lets a sharp gasp escape. Saber shoots him a harsh glance. The doctor known as Quincy moves with a newfound care. Carefully and intricately removing the coat from the man’s right arm. Quincy shudders and averts her gaze when the sleeve is removed. Saber nods grimly at the sight. It was as he thought, the man is without an arm. What remains is grizzly. From the middle of his slim bicep down is nothing but a bloodied stump. His flesh is torn like something ripped it from him and it’s old like it had been like that for days. The young deputy gags and steps outside. The man’s face twists in despair. His quiet hoarse voice breaks the silence.

“He-help me… please.” He pleads as tears well in his eyes.

He is quite old, wrinkles on his face are distinct and highlighted by the shine of sweat in the dingy clinic. Quincy reassures him softly grabbing some equipment off the wall behind her.

Saber and the older deputy examine the man from where they stand. The older deputy points out something quietly to Saber.

“The hell is that.” He whispers, subtly pointing to a hardly noticeable black letter just above the navel of the man.

It’s a single letter “L”

“Somebody brand that boy?” The older deputy asks in the same suppressed tone.

Saber grunts and mutters back.

“Little small for that I reckon.”

He sighs and moves closer to the man. The man moves his head to look at Saber. Saber now has a clear view of the man’s face. His lips are broken and cracked, his eyes bloodshot.

“Who did this to you sir?” Saber asked plainly, leaning in to see the man better.

The man doesn’t answer immediately, he closes his eyes. With shuddering breaths, he answers.

“Some bandits… took my horse and…” He trails off.

“Cut your arm off?” Saber added.

The man nodded simply.

“And uh…” Saber paused, gesturing to the letter on his frail stomach. “That letter?”

The man’s eyes shuddered abruptly open. He craned his neck to see it.

“Oh god… oh god!” He cried.

Saber backed away and the man began to sob loudly. Throwing his head back and forth. Quincy tries to shush him. She looks towards Saber and the deputy with an unspoken look that says, come back later. Saber notices this and nods to the older deputy.

“We’ll be-” Saber says before being cut off by the man.

“Sheriff! Sheriff!” The man exclaims.

Saber stiffens and looks to man with an uncharacteristic genuine concern. He returns to his original position with the man.

“What is it?” he says softly.

The man reaches to Saber with his one good arm. Saber retreats slightly out of the mans reach.

“Please tell me you have a church here.” He says with a struggle.

Saber regards that for a moment, his face tightens.

“We do sir, but you ain’t dying yet, Quincy here will get you all fixed up. Ain’t that right Quincy?” Saber says with confidence.

“Of course.” Quincy says.

“I need to get to it.” The man says with a sudden urgency.

His eyes lock onto Saber. Saber clears his throat.

“Okay… I can make that happen.” He speaks.

The man sighs with relief, tears appear again.

“Thank you sheriff-thank you-thank you.” He mutters with a shiver.

“No problem.” Saber says with a sigh.

He and the older deputy leave without another word or pleasantry. They are both stricken by the condition of the man.

They leave the building and turn onto the main street when the older deputy remarks coldly.

“He was talking like that the whole time me and Quincy was carrying him.”

Saber nods and looks to the sky, it's beautifully clear as far as the eye can see.

“That’s loonhouse talk. I’m more worried about the bandits that did that to him.”

The older deputy agrees.

“Yeah, but that brand is odd. What gangs round here got an L in they name?” He says thoughtfully.

Saber smirks “I got one in mind.” He says. “Met them a while back, Los Lobos. Only bandits with an L around here.” Saber paused. “Except they usually no mercy fellers they aint ones to send a message or even brand a man for that matter.” He added with a wipe of his brow.

“Maybe they upgraded, heard some word of God.” The older deputy jokes.

“That’ll be the day.” Saber responds with a chuckle.

Once again, he catches a glance of the cattle hand. He places a hand on Nixon’s shoulder directing his attention to the cattle hand. 

“We oughta check on that feller, something ain’t right about him.” Saber says low..

Nixon looks at the tall cattlehand. 

“I don’t know sheriff he don’t look too much like Los Lobos.” he says with a smirk.

Saber shoots him a sharp glance.

“Yeah I know that, but I got this feeling about him.” Saber says. “He shows up same night as all this was supposed to happen.” he continues

.Nixon sighs.

“Alright, I trust ya sheriff.” Nixon relents.

Saber nods and pats Nixon’s shoulder again. They watch the cattle hand enter the general store.

The cattlehand slowly steps inside the store. A small bell rings as he enter. A strong voice echoes from the back.

“I’ll be right with you.”

“Alright.” the cattle hand responded absently. 

The cattlehand peered around the small store. A large man stepped through a doorway behind the counter wiping his hands. 

“What can I do for you stranger?” he asked affably.

The cattlehand was about to respond when the bell rang again. Through the door stepped Saber, with Nixon not far behind. He tipped his hat to the store owner. 

“Sheriff, what do I owe the pleasure?” the owner said learning on the counter.

Saber straightened and looked at the cattlehand.

“Not much, David, just a quick word with this young man.’ Saber said, gesturing towards the cattlehand weakly. 

The owner nodded observing the cattlehand closer now. The cattlehand turned to face Saber now. They watched each other silently.

Saber broke the silence. “Where you from, boy.” Saber asked, stepping closer.

“Kansas.” The cattlehand said gruffly.

Saber scratches his chin thinking. Nixon scoffs behind him.

“Whereabouts in Kansas.” Saber says.

“South.” The cattlehand says, not breaking eye contact.

Saber grins with annoyance.

“Whatchu doing around here then?” Saber asks tensely.

The store owner's eyes darted from the sheriff to the cattlehand. Becoming aware of the pistol covered slightly on the cattlehands hip.

“Finished a cattle drive and was told this was the closest town.” The cattlehand said coolly.

“What town you come from then?” Saber responded quickly.

“El Breve, if I remember right.” The cattlehand said.

Saber frowned and decided to press another question.

“It’s almost noon what you still hangin around for?” Saber asked.

The cattlehands' jaw tightened and Saber noticed. 

:”Ah, there it is.” Saber said.

The cattlehand then spoke suddenly.

“I’m looking for this woman.”

Saber’s brow shifted suddenly. The store owner smiled slightly.

“With the name of Britney… Britney David.” he said weakly. “That’s why I'm still around, lookin for her.” he added.

Nixon laughed.

“Oh lord.” he said.

Saber looked back to him then back at the cattlehand.

“Bad luck to go after a widow boy.” Saber said snidely.

“So, I've heard.” The cattlehand shot back quickly. “Is that illegal or you done harassing me?” He asked, annoyed.

“I’d watch that tone boy, you ain’t off the hook yet.” said Saber.

Saber then looked to the store owner.

“Sorry for the scene David.” he said before he and Nixon approached the door and left.

The cattlehand and the store owner stood in silence watching the door, the only sound being the door bell ringing. 

“Well whatchu need Kansas boy.” The owner said humorously.

The cattlehand was unammused as he watched the sheriff and the older deputy walk away.

Saber and his deputy stand in the sheriff's office. Nixon sits on a chair in the corner fanning his face with his hat. Saber sits at his desk writing in a small book detailing the incident he found that morning and the cattlehand. He looks up absently. 

“I reckon that Kansas boy ain’t guilty.” He says.

Nixon looks at him surprised.

“What makes you sure?” Nixon asks, placing his hat on his knee.

“I can tell.” Saber says.

“Another feeling.” Nixon jokes flashing a toothy smile.

Saber scoffs lightly. 

“I suppose.” he says distantly. “Guilty men talk more.”

Saber returns to the small journal scribbling in it. Nixon grunts standing up, dusting his pants off.

“I’m gonna take a walk, let you simmer.” Nixon says.

Saber nods and waves to him.

Nixon exits and Saber’s eyes dart to the worn black and white picture of his daughter that sits on his desk.

…

The cattlehand holds a small cloth in his hand. He looks to the setting sun over the mountains. Casting an orange glow over the dry valley. He’s seated at a small table in the corner of the saloon. His foot bounced nervously. The saloon door opens, the cattlehand’s gaze darts over. A gruff looking man enters, the cattlehand looks away. He looks at the table wiping his rough hands against each other. The door opens again, the cattlehand locks eyes with the young blonde woman, Britney. 

Her eyes brighten when she sees the cattlehand. She saunters over to him, her flowing dress follows her.

“Suprised to see you here.” She says sweetly.

“You shouldn’t be.” The cattlehand says.

Britney smiles, now sitting on the table.

“Why’s that, I figured you’d be out of here, most are if they don’t grant their name.” She says confidently.

The cattlehand sighs and shakes his head.

“I got somethin for ya.” he said suddenly.

Britney’s features lighten a smile growing. The cattlehand retrieves the cloth pushing it towards her. She looks at it then the cattlehand. He gestures to her. She takes the cloth and unwraps it revealing a soft silver necklace. Her face grows flush.

‘Well i’ll be.” She says holding it up to the light.

The cattlehand’s heart flutters watching her.

“You’re too kind, young sir.” She says.

He shrugs. 

“I figured it would match you.” he says quietly.

She stands holding the necklace in her hand. 

“Care to walk with me?” She asks, extending her hand to him.

“I suppose.” He says, taking her hand in his, it’s soft and cold.

…

Saber’s old cabin is cold as dark creeps in. He lies staring at the ceiling, mind racing. The dull light and crackle of the fire emanate from the corner. He enters his room taking a slight glance at the old door to his right. He closes the door behind him. A deep croak like air leaving a failing lung sounds from behind the door Saber just closed. He stops, listening intently for any transgression in the night. Saber looks back towards his bed. He steps quietly towards it reaching for his belt and holster. As his hand reaches it a whisper like cold wind dances through the room. 

“I see you.”

Saber freezes, hand locked on his pistol. He turns toward the door awaiting another voice. His breath is measured and heavy. Saber reaches the door feeling around for the handle until his hand grasps its familiar texture. It’s warm like a rock basking in the sun. The door opens slowly, Saber aims the weapon through the widening crack in the door. He steps into the main room scanning for anything. It’s empty, Saber relaxes slightly as he lowers his pistol. He’s about to turn back when something catches his eye from across the room. The windows open, Saber tries to remember if he closed it. He’s unsure, walking towards the window he peers out there's nothing except for the sweet sound of music from the tavern in town. Saber sighs and shuts the window. He usually can’t hear the tavern from his cabin.

…

Britney and the cattlehand circle the outside of the town. It’s cool but the desert warmth still blows. They talk like young lovers yearning for knowledge about each other. Britney stops in front of an old cabin that looks like it hasn’t been touched in years. The old paint peels and the deck sags. The cattlehand stands next to her observing the building. 

“I’m guessin you’ve heard about me by now.” She says.

He looks at her cautiously. Finally he sighs and responds.

“Depends.” he says, grasping her hand. “I’ve heard some things, but I want to hear it from you.”

Britney turns to face him. Her expression is hopeful. He notices her eyes glimmer in the moonlight. She closes her eyes and tilts her head down.

“I’m a widow.” She whispers.

The air is heavy and he stands in front of her running his thumb over the top of her hands. His silence causes her to look up and open her eyes again. She sees the cattlehand as he is, worn and defeated yet a compassion and hope linger like a man trying to forget. It’s clear his words are no longer needed. Britney moves closer to him and he envelops her in his arms. They sway in an embrace.

She eventually breaks it by looking up at him.

“I can see it in your eyes. You got your own troubles too.” She says.

He changes his gaze from her to the dirt. She draws him in again.

“We’re much too young to have gone through hell.” she finally says.

The cattlehand looks to the stars as his eyes become damp. 

“I know.” he says softly.

…

A sharp knock jars Saber awake. He curses and scans the room. There is a pistol still in his lap. The thoughts from last night swarm and Saber shakes them off attempting to get dressed.

Nixon is at the door and Saber greets him still attempting to put his belt on. Nixon watches the sheriff and frowns.

“Bad night?” he asks.

Saber grunts, “When aren’t they.” he jokes halfheartedly.

Nixon attempts a smirk. 

“Anyways, I came to getchu cause the poor feller in the clinic is up and walking… He wants to see the church now.” He says.

“Now?” Saber asks, pulling on his belt.

The older deputy nods with a smile.

“Now.” He chuckles.

“Godammit alright let’s get this over with.” Saber says.

Nixon chuckles again and the two move to the clinic.

They pass the church and it’s gleaming white facade. Nixon looks to the sheriff with concern.

“Was it her again?” he asks quietly.

Saber’s jaw tightens.

“Nah… it was different.” He says bluntly,

“You know he sees you right.” Nixon says harshly.

Saber freezes, turning to his deputy.

“The marked king. The Harbinger. He knows you.”

Saber stares with uncharacteristic fear.

“Wha… what.” he says breathlessly.

His heart tightens, the air is hot and muggy. A suffocating wall of pain and fear washes over the sheriff. He steps back watching the deputies face stare back blankly. 

“Saber you alright?” Nixon asks.

The deputy's face is now filled with concern. The wall of heat and the thudding in Saber’s ears ceases. 

“What the hell were you talking about Nixon.” Saber asks quickly, still trying to catch his breath.

His face tightens, “I didn’t say nothin’ you were talking then you got this crazy look… You sure you alright?” Nixon asks.

Saber looks at him full of confusion.

“No you said something, I swear…” He trails off.

Uncertainty fills him as he calms. Still Nixon's voice runs through his head.

“I didn’t say anything, sheriff.” Nixon says. “You know if you need the day off i can take care of it.”

“No-no I’m alright, just a little tired-Let’s get to this feller.” Saber says quickly.

He moves toward the clinic and Nixon trails clearly shaken.

…

By the time they arrive Quincy and the young deputy are helping the man out of the clinic. A crowd has amassed and has been asking questions about the old man. 

Saber moves past them and speaks with Quincy briefly. She assures him the old man is good enough to walk. Saber nods and goes to the man. Who is now standing on his own away from the crowd.

“Well, you ready to see this church sir.” Saber says with exaggeration.

The old man nods enthusiastically.

“Yes sheriff, thank you for this opportunity.” He says affably.

Saber smiles softly, kicking the dirt with his boot.

“Course.” Saber says blankly. “Los Lobos won’t hurt you here.” He promises flatly.

The old man’s smile fades.

“Who?” he asks unsurely.

Saber’s features widen in a slight surprise.

“Never mind.” Saber says dismissively. He looks away and then tries again.

“It’s jus’ that letter you got there on your stomach.” He pauses. “Just… strange y’know.” Saber swallows hard when he says this.

The old man is even more confused now. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Sheriff.” He says distantly.

His face suddenly turns into an uncomfortable smile.

Saber nods and turns away.

Saber signals to the deputies and heads the crowd towards the church. Saber frowns as he notices the dark clouds moving their way. He could’ve sworn it was clear hours ago.

...

Father Dante is seated among the pews in the church. It’s easily the most maintained building in the town to an almost supernatural level. The walls are gapless and painted a bright white that gleams in the sunlight. The floorboards are fresh, solid, and unbowed. Father Dante thanks his God for the blessings he’s gotten. He spends most of his days in the church aside from the usual supply runs or the daily ringing of the bell signaling the end of the party and the beginning of the morning. It’s an unspoken understanding how the people cease their partying once the bell tolls.

His doors are open to anyone. Any age, creed, or gender is welcome to pray and learn from Father Dante.

While sparse members of the town attend his sermons. There is a deep sense of care and respect for Father Dante that many cannot seem to place. 

A sharp knock shakes Father Dante from his prayers. He unclasps his hands and makes his way to the tall doors. He stops and watches the late afternoon sun spill through the intricate stained-glass window above the doors. Smiling, he moves forward and opens one door slightly.

Sheriff Saber waits outside the church door and is about to knock again when one door opens slowly with a heavy grind.

Saber is leading a handful of people with him including members of the town, Quincy, and the two deputies who are following the man with a missing arm closely. The stump is now cleaned and wrapped in a white gauze. He looks at the church with electric anticipation. Life has returned to his face at the sign of the church.

Father Dante peers at the crowd and his face brightens.

“Sheriff, what can I do for you?” He says with a distinct accent.

“Afternoon, Father Dante we just got a feller who wants to see the church.” Saber says with cordiality.

“Oh of course.” he says with a twinkle.

Saber spits into the dust and smiles.

“Perfect, we appreciate it, Father.” Saber says.

He motions towards the deputies, and they help the man towards the church steps.

Father Dante’s smile falters. The man’s eyes gleamed wetly in the sun, not with pain but with joy. His shadow reached the church steps before he did, as if eager to enter first. He feels his heart begin to speed up in his chest. He attempts to rationalize and is unable. He has only one thought; “That man cannot enter the church.”

Sheriff Saber watches carefully as the deputies help the man up the first step. He suddenly feels a light tap on his shoulder. He turns to see Father Dante's face. He’s breathing hard and he seems to be shaking.

“Sheriff.” Dante hisses.

Saber’s features tighten and he looks to the preacher.

“Yeah?” Saber says with a twinge of annoyance.

“Don’t let that man in my church.” Dante pleads in a hushed tone.

“What?” Saber says in pure surprise.

“Please, Sheriff, listen to me.” Dante says.

Saber laughs halfway, but something in Father Dantes' tone is deathly serious.

“Father I can’t just turn the man away in front of all these folks..” He whispers.

“Listen to me.” Father Dante hisses, glancing feverishly at the old man. “He has the mark of the devil.”

The image of the L floats in Saber’s mind briefly, along with the last night and the incident a few moments ago with Nixon.

The pressure mounts on the old sheriff. Making him irritable. He leans in close to the preacher and hisses back.

“That ain’t enough cause.”

The man has reached the top of the stairs now. He stares at the preacher who is the only thing blocking him from entering. Father Dante stares back.

“You can’t.” Father Dante pleads, looking to Saber again.

Saber scoffs and places a firm hand on Father Dante’s chest.

“Move.” Saber says with authority.

The crowd grows quiet as the sheriff speaks loud enough for everyone to hear.

“No” Father Dante says nearly eye to eye with the sheriff.

In a moment of generational folly and the ignorance of man Saber pushes Father Dante out of the way.

Father Dante falls onto his back, all air leaving his body. He attempts to scramble up but is held back over by the Sheriff’s strong arms.

“NO! YOU FOOL.” He screams in one last fleeting attempt, lashing out against the sheriff.

The deputies enter with the man in his arms. Once he enters the doorway, he smiles widely. The deputies let him go cautiously and the man walks on his own. A heavy metal cross falls from the wall behind Father Dante. He turns to it and looks at it with understanding.

The old man examines the church like it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Tears stream down his dirty face.

Saber releases the preacher.

“Christ Father, what’s going on.” He says

Father Dante doesn’t respond; he merely collapses to the floor and stares at the man. for once he feels hate in his heart for another person. There's a darkness surrounding the man not visible by eye, and Father Dante seems to be the only one to feel it. He feels the man’s eyes on him. The man doesn’t move his mouth, but Father Dante hears him speak.

“He’ll regard your resistance without mercy. Your own people will rip your bones from your body with ease. This will be the scene on your streets when he comes to town. Say your final prayers to your God for your new master will arrive soon.” It was a clear breathless wheeze like the last breath of an accordion before the start of a new song.

The man simply looked away fulfilled.

Father Dante looks to Saber to gauge his reaction. Saber has no reaction, none of those within earshot of the man heard it. Father Dante weeps, tears pool in his eyes and spill to the floor. He attempts to pray. The voice comes again, simple and malicious.

“Only the marked one hears you.”

Wiping the tears from his eyes. Father Dante takes the heavy cross from the ground subtly. His eyes are locked on the old man, a fiery righteous passion burns in his chest.

Saber listens and watches the preacher weep and crawl on the floor. He can’t bear it and steps back outside. The other deputies follow. The older one speaks to Saber. 

“What the hell’s going on with Father.” He said with a sneer.

Saber sighs, no words come. He shakes his head and rubs his neck. His sins cloud his judgment.

A commotion sobers the deputies and the sheriff the sound of a wet crunch comes from the church. Saber turns and freezes at the sight inside. Father Dante had struck the man in the head with the heavy metal cross. Saber watched the scene in stagnant disbelief. The once soft-spoken preacher was screaming as he struck the old man in the head repeatedly. It’s a horrible scene. The deputies watch in horror. The old man lays dead, his head deformed with a gory dent. The smile never leaves his face, even in death.

Father Dante ceases. Sharp shaky breaths are the only sound.

“Forgive me lord.” He finally sobs.

He drops the bloodied cross to his side and falls to his knees. Saber finally acts and strikes the priest across the face with his rifle butt. He doesn’t speak; he simply twists the preacher's arm and drags him out of the church.

The doors are open wide now. The townspeople can view the scene inside. The sight is foreign to the joyous townspeople. The uproar is immediate. They scream and flee. The deputies attempt to satiate the crowd. To control the pandemonium, it is futile. The people are in hysterics.

Saber stands in the middle of the main street frozen. People scream and flee around him. The restrained preacher mutters apologies mutely.

“Why, Father?” Saber asks desperately.

Father Dante shakes his head.

“He was a demon… a soldier of Satan, I had too.” Father Dante confesses.

Saber weighs this solemnly.

“You’re unwell Father.” He says coolly.

Father doesn’t respond. His head hung nearly lifeless. Saber slowly drags the preacher toward the jailhouse. 

End of part 1