The ashblasted wastes stretched low and level all the way to the scorched horizon, punctuated only by serpentine drifts of pumice that danced in the cemeterial wind as if charmed by the flute of Satan. Each step upon the congealed sands of the late earth sucked away a little more warmth from Rilk’s weary body, as though his scaly soles were siphons by which to drain the precious scintilla of heat left within him on the eve of the third week since the sun abandoned his world to fire and smoke.

That cloaked brigand whose name is Night swiftly overtook Rilk and the boy staggered to a halt, turning west to face the rapidly clotting afterlight before darkness curtained the bleak terrain. His nictitating membranes wappered once over his eyes to slough off a nettlesome dusting of soot. Then he gazed out at what lay before him-

Ashen ruin as far as he could see. Charred logs looming out of the slag like the finned backs of sea dragons. The smoke clouds raw and black against the fuming sunset, as though the sky itself were bleeding to death.

Ragged of breath, Rilk leaned against the fishing spear he’d taken to using as a walking stick like he were a score of annuals older than his mere seventeen. He sighed heavily, a sigh that spluttered out into a wheezing, blood-flecked cough as he half-fell before catching himself on the spearshaft, driving it deeper into the pliant ashes to hold his weight. The ghost of his tortured breath eddying to oblivion in the crimson twilight before him. An omen, he thought, of what was to become of his own ghost not too long from now. Not too long at all…

He was tempted to rest awhile upon one of the fireblackened stumps that rose from the cinereous ground like rotting teeth, but he knew that if he sat he would not be able to rise again and so he stood tottering against his fishing spear like a hatchling taking its first doubtful steps. Coughing pitifully into the cold, shivering all over as the gales howled mercilessly past. He could barely feel his fingers wrapped around the shaft. Not a scrap of clothing adorned Rilk’s body but for the leather toolbelt at his waist. When one lived all one’s life in a balmy jungle, what would have been the point of garments except mere ceremony? He thought of his father’s feather cape, the woven symbol of the Tarak. Then, quickly, almost frantically, he pushed the memory from his mind. Unworthy, you are, unworthy to even contemplate such a thing. Father was right about you. About everything.

After awhile he mustered the strength to go on.

The level sands stretched to infinity. In an odd sort of way, Rilk was thankful he’d been forced to abandon his sledge as he fled for his life from the firestorms; it would have been impossible to drag through the ashfall. He’d been fishing on the day the world ended. The sledge was to transport coelocanths back to the village, for the Feast of the Planting Sun… and his father.

He needed shelter for the night but there was none to be had on this scabbed playa. Nor was there any wood for a fire. The forest had long since been incinerated down to the last twig and the crozzled bark of the fallen trees crumbled at a touch, leaving sticky black residue on Rilk’s fingers as he stumbled along like a blind man in the devil’s hall of mirrors. All he had was the trackway before him, and what smoldering hope he yet carried in his own heart.

He could scarcely feel his toes as he meggled through the frigid wastes, leaving slushpan tracks in his wake as if he were stamping missives into the ash for others to follow. Many animals had come this way before him, the great saurians who first tread this sedimentary highway across the fern prairie- the foliate prints of thornfaces and broadbills, the lacustrine roundels of long-necks pressed into the sludge like wax seals, even the ominous tridactyl marks of a lone dreadfang. The dragged smears of their tails left in their wakes. None of the smaller tracks of his own kind led either way down the path, but he knew that it was the right road, the road back to the village.

All of the footprints on the trail were fringed with thin sheets of an odd, white substance that Rilk had never seen before. It was thin as any leaf but it crackled underfoot. He bent down over the huge pond-print of a longneck that was covered in the anomalous material to inspect it himself. Curious, how even at this ultimate end there were still new things to be discovered, as if the death of the old world were the beginnings of a new, one in which Rilk was both prisoner and pioneer, serving a sentence of ostracism from all that was remotely familiar til he repented for sins unknown.

He skated the sharp point of his claw over the slick, transparent surface, tracing a thin line upon it before the brittle stuff shattered with just a tap. A wheezing laugh escaped his lips, at the absurdity of it all, both his amusement and the object thereof’s mere existence in such a charnel horror house. Then his laugh again sputtered off into a hacking cough, worsened by his proximity to the fine ash carpeting the ground that rose up like accursed pollen to torment his throat and his lungs, and he sat back on his haunches and then fell over on his side and he kept coughing and choking til his chest burned and ached and it seemed hours went by before he was finally able to draw a pathetic breath. He remained on his side for a long time, curled in upon himself like an eggling, hissing feebly as a broken flute.

When he finally rolled over to rise, he placed his hand unwittingly on the center of the slickness, in the deepest trough of the longneck’s track. All warmth was sucked from his arm in an instant. It was cold, as white and cold as a burial shroud. Rilk exhaled sharply and withdrew his arm, cradling it close, trying to knead some warmth back into it with his good hand while all about it was cold to cleave the ground and he lay there whimpering in the cold ashes for many hours til at last a gray dawn gelled upon the land and he struggled to rise from his mummied torpor, leaning back against a trunk that had fallen alongside the path.

When he looked out upon the land the ground was green. He blinked. No, it really was green. Green but faintly. Like a kiss of emerald upon the ash. He looked down and saw a fern sprout poking from the scourged ground between his legs. Then another, and another, they and their brethren peppering the whole rolling hillside as if Rilk were seated in a virgin garden. Precious little fiddleheads curled in upon themselves, not yet ready to spread their fronds to meet the day. Rilk stared at them with heart aflutter, afraid to believe, afraid that if he accepted the reality of their green hope they would dissolve, a mere mirage to be promptly banished from this dim Asphodel. He stared as one of the fiddleheads unfurled to meet the sun’s embrace, so like an eggling breaking free of its shell. And still he stared even as those green shoots obeyed his fears and began to fade one by one to white, and their baby fronds fell brittle and dead to the ground when no sun dawned to nourish them. By noon, the green hallucination had vanished like the last brief synapse of a dying world.

Shivering nakedly, unsure of what to make of this brief farce of hope, Rilk held his breath and reached out to rake a blanket of ashes over his body, cloaking himself in the dead world while his chilled brain wound back the tape of his memory to the last conversation he’d had with another of his kind. An argument. Of course. With his father. Of course.

“Rilk, my son. Your catch is a disgrace.”

This he said after examining the coelocanths Rilk had brought back from the lake. Five small fish, scarcely three feet long, one of them bearing grievous scars from some past injury.

Rilk sighed at his father’s admonition. He’d been at the lake all morning and these were the only five that would bite. Yes, yes he had missed a mighty eight-footer whose tailfin flashed a sapphire wake in the glittering dawn, but could he really be blamed for that when Naoma was teasing him from the shore, batting her turquoise eyes at him and tossing her dainty head side to side while she foraged for magnolia flowers and fiddleheads? There would be plenty of days to fish, but rare was a morning when Naoma appeared so lovely…

Rilk looked at his father again, and knew what his answer to such a juvenile inquiry would be. He carefully avoided looking into the old chieftain’s drab amber eyes. His pupils were constricted to the point of being nearly invisible, just faint lines scarcely distinguishable from the soul-squiggles of his irises. He wore the magisterial mitre and cape of sicklewing feathers that were the vestments of his position as Tarak. Clutching in one knobby hand his gingkowood scepter with its polished amber tip. His spiny crest bristled like so many knives, and his normally green-brindled skin was flushed a fuming, arterial crimson. No orange shew on his dewlap, thankfully- that would mean he intended battle. This was just unfocused rage.

“They are fine fish-” Rilk began to protest, before the slam of his father’s fist upon the tabletop cut off his sentence as if it had been rammed by a thornface.

“They are not fit to feed a hatchling!” his father hissed. “Least of all the whole tribe of the Skaeras on the Feast of the Planting Sun! You are the son of Irano, are you not?”

“Yes, I am,” Rilk replied submissively. Inwardly he groaned, for whenever his father began referring to himself in the third person it meant a lecture was forthcoming. Outside, the sun shone bright and the wind toyed with the ferns. He could hear the glacking cries of dactyls rising from the bristling conifer canopies, and he yearned only to be back outside, by the lakeshore with Naoma. The air in his father’s wigwam was clotted with incense, lit each morning when he arose. Good for the lungs, Woota, the shamaness, said. Rilk felt he was being smothered.

“Is Irano not the Tarak of the Skaeras?”

“He is.”

“And therefore, you yourself are a future Tarak, are you not?”

“I am.”

“The Tarak is responsible for upholding the honor of the tribe, yes?”

“He is.”

“Do you think these… these fingerlings bring honor to your tribe?”

Rilk huffed heavily. “No, Father. But the others-”

Again Irano spent his fury upon the table. “The others are as mere dust to you, my son! Have I taught you nothing? The Tarak is the light of the tribe! It is by his will that the Hunt is partaken, that the Law is dispensed, that the Mating is consummated. It is upon his action that the future of the tribe rests, and even the strongest of tribes may be brought to ruin by a weak Tarak!”

At this last proclamation, Irano slammed the heel of his scepter loudly upon the ground and jabbed an accusatory claw at Rilk. Rilk’s mouth fell open in stunned silence. The world continued on outside- the shrill cries of dactyls down by the lake, the haunting moans of long-necks up to their bellies in the swamps, the hustle and bustle of the village- but inside the wigwam all sound was muffled, and the lake suddenly seemed very, very far away.

Rilk sensed his skin flushing through a mottled rainbow maelstrom of emotion- red anger, bluish guilt, purple embarrassment. He felt like a scolded hatchling. Which, in point of fact, was exactly what his father intended.

Irano heaved out a frustrated sigh and stared down at the table for a long time, letting the stifling silence drag out into awkwardness. His amber gaze scrutinizing the tree-ring grain as if it were some sacred scroll containing all the answers to his dilemma, only in a language he could not yet decipher. Gradually, his skin faded from scarlet to a drab, dried blood brown. Then, he sighed once more, this time in deep contemplation. When he finally spoke his words were carefully measured.

“Rilk, my son. I desire only what is best for you, and our tribe. But you in turn must always choose to do what is best. This you must do, for the survival of our tribe, for the honor of your forefathers, and most of all for yourself! You have brought shame upon your father, and all his fathers before him, by your actions today. How, Rilk my son, am I to pass my cape on to you when you cannot even catch a fish worth mentioning?”

“I can hunt-” Rilk started resolutely, which he immediately regretted when his father hissed and once again flushed carmine.

“No! You cannot hunt until you can fish! Have I raised a rotten egg as my heir? A thornface is a far more formidable adversary than a coelocanth!”

“I could catch a coelocanth if I-”

“If you wanted to succeed!” Irano interrupted. “Rilk, my son, this is your undoing, a curse upon you, and thus upon me as well- laziness! If you only tried to fish, by the Spirit of Ashemu, all the bounty of the sea would lay at your feet. This I know! I know it in here-” he said, rapping a claw against his chest, hard enough to draw a bead of blood. He did not flinch as the crimson rivulet ran down the slope of his chest before dripping onto the table. He stared deep into Rilk’s eyes, forcing Rilk to hold his gaze despite the obvious discomfort it caused him. To stare was to challenge, and in spite of his frustration Rilk had no desire to do battle with his father. Not because he thought he would lose, but because a fight would shred whatever threads of affection were left between them.

“You must be strong, my son. For your tribe. For me.” Irano sighed again, and for the first time ever in his life, Rilk realized his father looked old. Irano’s skin faded back to its natural drab green, and he turned away from his son. He sounded very tired as he raised a dismissing hand. “You may go.”

Rilk flushed blue in shame, trying to think of something to say. Some way to beg his father for forgiveness, for a chance to redeem himself. But no words came to his tongue.

He whirled with a huff and exited the wigwam, charging hunch-shouldered back out into the village where life went on as normal. A group of nestlings betting cowries on a fight between two green-scaled littleclaws. Jakapi, the herdsman, was carrying two of his prized sicklewings in wooden cages to have their iridescently feathered tail plumes plucked to make headdresses for the Feast of the Planting Sun. It was less than a half lunar away now. Rilk was supposed to have provided the fish for smoking, but upon his recent failure Irano had delegated the task to Horuk, the great fisher. There wasn’t any reason he couldn’t still get the fish, though… fish bigger than any Horuk could ever hope to catch in the lake…

He mulled it over as he continued through the village, the seed of an idea blooming like the crops on the terraces above the lake were soon to do. Perhaps, perhaps this was how he could finally please his father. Their endless bickering was intolerable, and the worst of it was Rilk couldn’t comprehend why his father always wished to fight. It had only begun these past two years, as Rilk’s bristle of spines grew in, signaling his ascent to manhood. Before then, his father had been, well, his father. Now he seemed as a stranger, constantly critical and disappointed in everything Rilk did or tried to do.

Rilk stopped to let a trio of womenfolk pass by, earthen jars of water balanced atop their heads. Naoma was bringing up the rear. Rilk straightened in her presence, struggling to force a smile her way when she fluttered her hypnotic turquoise eyes at him again. The sight of her now bittersweet. She was the reason he’d gotten into this mess… but then, he knew that wasn’t true. He couldn’t blame her for his failure. Wasn’t it his duty, as future Tarak, to resist such silly temptations as girls?

They passed each other wordlessly. In her wake her sweet scent lingered enticingly on the breeze but Rilk did not look back after her.

He reached the lake at midday. The sunkissed sands were pleasantly hot beneath his scaly soles as he sat back against an aged cypress draped in hagmoss. He took a deep draught of the clean, misty air and gazed out to where the far shore blurred into the waterline. The skyline consisted in the main of hundred-handed araucarias and the titanic bulks of long-necks half-submerged like boulders in the middle of the lake while they dipped their heads down to feast on water lilies. Nearer to shore swam teeming herds of crested broadbills, grazing their way slowly across one bladderwort buffet to the next, while the blood bay humps of lone thornfaces and stonebacks were strung out like garnets on the hillslope beyond. He wondered if any of them were infected by the blight, that dread sickness that thickened the lungs of saurians and had thinned their herds to such a dire degree that the hunting of them had been forbidden by Woota for two seasons, that they might replenish their numbers. Hence the need for coelocanths for the Feast of the Planting Sun. Yet those herds yonder across the lake seemed healthy enough. Their bellows echoed faintly across the still waters, a stillness punctured occasionally by a screeing dactyl diving to snatch a lungfish. No dreadfangs were in sight but they rarely were, preferring to remain in the trees to hide their titanic bulks, their tooth-filled heads which were as big as a wigwam.

On the nearer shore, just beyond where the village ramparts met the water’s edge, Rilk spied a lonesome dreadclaw in the midst of fishing. It had more prowess at the trade than Rilk. A huge old female, her scaly hide brindled shades of yellow and brown, hauling an eight-foot titan out of the lake by her hacksaw teeth. She pinioned the coelocanth’s thrashing tail under one of her namesake toe-claws and put an end to its struggles with a quick snap of her jaws. As she did so, she locked eyes briefly with Rilk, as if measuring the future Tarak as a potential rival. Then she vanished speedily back into the treeline, hauling her sapphire kill after her.

Rilk watched the proceeding and wondered if that hadn’t been the same coelocanth who’d evaded him while he was busy staring after Naoma. It wasn’t his fault she was so seductive. It wasn’t his fault the fish didn’t bite… his father’s anger seemed so irrational. He sat there on the shore for a long while, brooding over his father’s words. Lazy. Weak link. Rotten egg. That’s what his father had called him, in tongues more suited to their blood-enemies the Iquala. But had he been wrong? No- he had been. Rilk was more than his father thought, he knew. His catch that morning was… it was just a mistake. He’d made a simple mistake and had been verbally scourged for it. Why couldn’t his father see that? Did he enjoy making him miserable?

Oh, he understood his father’s expectations, certainly. Soon, Rilk would take his place as Tarak of the Skaeras. But he didn’t see why this had to make every minute mistake the destruction of the village! His father doled out advice upon the most menial of matters, and no matter what task Rilk undertook, there was always a better way to accomplish it than the one he had chosen. Each needling little incident mounted up into one long, endless argument. He couldn’t wrap his tail around it. He was not lazy. He felt no envy or disdain towards his father. All he wanted to do was please him. And yes, yes he made his fair share of mistakes- but was his father so much more perfect?

Rilk sighed and hurled a stone far across the lake, watching it skip over the hitherto still waters. Well, he would please the old lizard, alright. He’d redeem himself in Irano’s old, bigoted eyes. He thought of Jakapi the herdsman and his sicklewings. He thought of the dreadclaw, hauling out the coelocanth that had eluded Rilk in the midst of his fantasies. The Feast of the Planting Sun was only half a lunar away…

The sun warmed Rilk’s scaly hide and flushed him with energy, and it was there, staring out across the lake, that he made up his mind. He would prove his worth. Oh, he would prove it, and he would make his father proud and they would finally stop arguing and go back to the way things were.

His skin bloomed bright emerald green. His plan was, as most overconfident, spur-of-the-moment plans wrought in the minds of boys are wont to be, quite simple. The great Ford of Sooma was only a three-day journey away, and the coelocanths of the sea- which were far larger and mightier than those residing in the lake- had to cross it on their annual spawning run. And yes, it was forbidden to leave the village alone, but for such a prize…

He told no one. He simply strode back through the village to his wigwam to retrieve his sledge and fishing spears, then headed by an alley-trail between dwellings for the tall sequoia ramparts ringing the settlement.

Furtively he snuck along the wall’s interior perimeter and stole out through one of its carefully hidden, thorn-fronted gates, and pulled it quietly closed behind him. He even tried to smooth back over the clinging ivy weeds that had festooned the gate in the weeks since it was last used. Such leafy plants were newcomers to Rilk’s village, of late constantly threatening to choke out their crops. They grew faster and spread quicker than any of the native ferns and conifers, and their only respite was in the dry season when they inexplicably withered and died, they and the other new plants whose leaves grew in shades of pinks and blues and whites for a few short months before shriveling away. One of several strange new curses being wrought upon his people in these latter days of woe, ivy and blight alike in their smothering of the world.

Turning round to face the wilderness, Rilk was surprised to see Woota, the shamaness, standing just beyond the ramparts. She was wrinkled and old, hunched over in her colorful feather cape, similar to Irano’s but even brighter for as the shamaness she was the heart of the tribe as he was its fist. Her eyes were glazed with cataracts and Rilk had no idea how she had gotten outside the village, or even if she knew she was, in fact, beyond the safety of the walls and facing the howling jungle.

He didn’t think she had seen him, and so he hoisted the sledge upon his back, slow as he dared so none of his tools might jangle, and made a wide berth skirting round her, hoping she would not hear his footfalls on the pine duff coating the forest floor. She made no reaction, save closing her futile eyes and inhaling a deep draught of the earthy forest air. But right when Rilk thought he was in the clear, Woota began to chuckle. Rilk froze, almost reverted to playing dead as nestlings were wont to do, so total was his surprise.

“Son of Irano, you need not fear my betrayal,” Woota said softly, still staring sightlessly into the whimpling ferns. Rilk turned slowly to face her, and when she perceived his attentions were undividedly upon her, she continued. “I am told a new star has been born in the northern sky… it is a great adversary of the Spirit, which threatens the end of all things.”

Rilk said nothing, for none spoke to the shamaness unless she directly asked one’s reply. To speak without invitation was to bring many curses down upon your blood. So he stood, and waited, and then the shamaness inhaled deeply, sadly, as the songs of birds echoed across the ancient woods.

“Gaze well, son of Irano, upon the Road of Stars these next several nights, for ye shall not see the likes of it evermore. There is to be great sorrow upon this realm, and after the dawn of this neverending dark, you and I shall both be going home by a road we do not know.”

Rilk swallowed tightly. He stared back at the shamaness and she seemed, somehow, to hold his gaze even through her cloudy, unseeing eyes. Not in challenge, but in the sad sort of compassion that only comes with a great, weighty knowledge. She sighed sadly. Then her thin lips curled into a smile, and she held up an old, gnarled palm to him, the yellowed and worn claws of her twin thumbs knocking against each other in blessing. Without another word she turned back to pass through the gate and closed it silent as an eye behind her, leaving Rilk to wonder just what in the Spirit’s name her prophecy had meant.

There was no time to dwell on it. He had to move fast to avoid being spotted by a wall-guard and recalled by his father, scolded again before he could secure his triumph… and approval.

Sledge in tow, Rilk traveled all through the night and well into the next day, refusing sleep and stopping but briefly to bask at dawn to recover his strength. All the time he feared an attack by dreadclaws or Iquala raiders, but none came to harry him.

He reached the Ford of Sooma by the second moondown, and was rewarded for his efforts with a warm, brilliant dawn over the shimmering eastern sea, and the sight of hundreds of coelocanths thrashing their way up the ford. Breathing in that glorious, seasalt morn, he speared five of the biggest fishes of the run, and soon his sledge was so heavily laden it was difficult to drag off the beach back into the uplands. But his skin was flushed bright green with pride, and he thought nothing of his aching muscles as he hauled the fine catch after him. He was compelled to defend it once, from a pack of littleclaws, which slinked away in hissing defeat when their leader lunged at Rilk and was rewarded by catching the tip of his fishing spear in its gullet.

It was on the first night of his journey home, when he was thinking of how proud his father would be, and how they could finally go back to the way things were before their long argument began, when the world ended.

One moment, Rilk was enjoying the feel of the cool prairie ferns neath his scrinching toes, the satisfying weight of the sledge dragging behind him. His ears full of katydids and crickets and the whispering breeze and the endless roar of the distant sea. Call me a rotten egg now, Father! Five mighty coelocanths! I have acted as a Tarak ought- have I not? You will be proud. I know you will be proud.

He saw in the dirt beside him the three-toed tracks of a mighty dreadfang, heading in the opposite direction. The bleeding Moon arose full and wan, silvering the sea beneath its beams, while ammonites and belemnites glew their eerie greens and blues in the surf at the bottom of the hillside.

Then, a second sun bloomed upon the horizon. A dread sphere of searing light erupting out of the waters, wide as the world itself. Night changed to blinding day, banishing Moon and star alike. Rilk shielded his eyes and stood watching as the light dimmed to ominous orange, boiling away the sea before him.

It was the last time any light would play across the land before endless night descended upon it like a curtain, drawing a close to the play of life.

“Nearly there,” Rilk whispered, trying to force the memory back into its coffin. His voice a strange, alien sound ringing out across the desolate waste. As if he no longer belonged to this world which seemed to be slowly disassembling itself back down to its constituent atoms. The great reptiles shriveling in over their ribs as they starved. Trees spilling into ash. Mountains disgorging their fiery innards. Sun and Moon each banished from their respective halves of the sky. Everything at last coming untethered from its moorings, spiraling forth into an endless gyre of chaos, yet still Rilk spoke. There was something hollowly defiant in croaking out such missives to no one at all. As if he could be reassured by the fact that he still drew breath, and could always count himself his own steadfast ally even as all else faded to oblivion.

When he ceased to speak the winds devoured his words as the sea consumes the drowned, leaving behind only the same indifferent cold and silence that had come before. He looked down, partly to shield his eyes from the gritty wind and partly because there was nothing to see ahead but more charcoal forest, more hillsides laid raw and bare. The only other living things he’d seen were fuzzy black didels, scurrying about in the ashes, greedily stuffing their cheeks with grubs and nuts. They were disease-ridden vermin, detestable egg thieves, but Rilk was almost starved enough to try his hand at trapping them. He had twine, and should he need to take another detour he would have to begin setting snares.

The carbon night enveloped him. He squinted into the murk one more time to check his bearings. Yes. The low scarp of hills to the west, he recognized. Nothing else remained to judge his location but the game trail, sans game.

He was confident they were all dead now, the great saurians. He hadn’t heard any of their starved cries in over a week. Once in the early nights he’d encountered a dreadfang. He’d heard it stamping along through the infernally luminous smoke and left his sledge on the trail to dive into a firewarm tree hollow right as the beast emerged from the ember haze. A great, slobbering mountain of muscle and scale. Its entire left side was seared blackraw and it dragged itself along miserably through the ingle-light, blind in one eye. Occasionally shaking its head as if to briefly exorcise the agony.

Its nostrils dilated as it sniffed round keenly for Rilk, and found him with ease. The whole tree groaned and skewed as the beast leaned upon it, scraping at its trunk with its small, two-clawed hands. It tried to force its huge boulder of a head into the black hollow without success, and Rilk pressed himself as deep into the soot at its bottom as he could. The dreadfang’s tongue lolled aslobber at the prospect of a fresh meal, and Rilk took his knife from his belt and flailed at the beast like an andabate while it pressed its whole weight against the tree, trying to doze its prey’s little haven aside. Rilk got in a swipe or two at its tongue, its probing hands, but to a grizzled and starving beast such pricks meant little. It wanted to eat him but simply couldn’t reach.

Eventually it sniffled and groaned, and withdrew its head from the hollow. Rilk poked his head out warily to watch the dreadfang leave and what he saw was its body slumped low in anguish and its tail dragging in the ash like the pennon of a defeated army, and not once did it turn back. The lunting smoke consumed the dreadfang in silence and in greed as it marched off with earthquake tread, excusing itself to oblivion.

Slumping down against a windfall at the edge of the trail, Rilk perversely hoped he was right about the beast’s extinction. He was dying, and should any predator still live to hunt him he would not be able to fend off an attack. It was a risk, sleeping in the trail, but so long as he felt the bumples of the trackway under his toes he had his bearings, and he knew that if he wandered off it in the night he would never find it again.

This night he was warm. He’d chanced upon a gnetum bush, blackened and dead, just before the last gray ember of the day was whisked away into the haunted dark. Three quick strikes of his flint and it was ablaze, providing a feeble sort of warmth to at least one half of his body. He curled about the bush like an eggling round its yolk, cherishing the flickering warmth upon his face. Even the errant sparks striking his body like shrapnel were welcome in that blinding cold. The ashpile he’d heaped around him quickly grew pleasantly hot under the flames. In those early nights when the world still burned he’d slept in several such firewarmed ashheaps, watching pagan flames devouring the tinderbox woods far away while he listened to the mournful death-dirges of the saurians as their herds were devoured by the infernos. Blackened trees jabbed out of the flames like accusing fingers, demanding recompense for their own annihilation.

It had taken three weeks for him to weave a torturous route back amidst the destruction while the fires steadily burned themselves out. His journey had taken him across the border into Iquala lands. They were blood enemies by tradition, but there did not seem to be any left to oppose Rilk’s advance. He could only pray that his own people had fared better.

Now the whole world seemed to be sinking into the grim sleep of death, and he found himself missing the perils of the dancing flames. The fire could kill, oh so easily could it kill, but that searing heat was delicious compared to the present torment of the cold. He shivered convulsively as he stared into the blazing bush. Watching the brown leaves crinkle and dissolve into carbon effigies, he thought- Yes. Here the destruction continues, in its own small way. I, too, am a destroyer of worlds.

Dawn congealed upon the land as gray and bleak as the one that came before. Rilk sat up sluggishly and stared off into a leaden east where there should have been a mellow canvas of violets and pinks. Shivering, clutching at himself midst the cold ashes. The gnetum bush had burned out sometime in the night and he felt as one of the living dead, his mind working in slow motion, his body slower still. Once he tipped his frigid head back and cried out for the choked sky to return the stolen sun. In reply the earth offered only a banshee wind which carried upon it whole powdered forests.

It wasn’t until noon that he was finally able to force himself to rise and continue down the trail. A low skew of stone looming out of the chary distance. Beyond this, the village. Home, at last. He could just barely make out the log ramparts atop the hill and he breathed a silent prayer to Ashemu that all would be well, that his father and the tribe would still be there, still living, and warm, and well-fed, and everything Rilk was not.

The dead trees reared up like a thicket of snastes, and Rilk was surprised to see the ground carpeted in the skullcap bulbs of mushrooms, gorging themselves on a final feast of the dead. Poison, all, and Rilk had to resist the temptation to eat of them, not just to fill his empty stomach but to end his long train of miseries.

He thought he would reach the village by sundown. Not that the sun set so much as faded, anymore. Thrice he thought he would not make it, but each time his mind flashed an image of his father standing proudly, arms crossed, scepter in hand, feather cape plumed behind him. Casting a judgmental gaze upon Rilk. Between falls his delirious mind crafted faux images of Naoma out of the ashen ether. She pranced ahead of him on the sepulchral wind. Just far enough for her bounding figure to be distinguished from the swirling soot, compelling him to stagger on towards her siren mirage.

“Wait,” he called after her, “Wait for me. I’m coming. I’m here.”

The hallucination, or ghost, or whatever she was, merely batted her eyes coyly and beckoned to him with an outstretched claw.

“Wait, Naoma,” Rilk wheezed. He tried to pick up his pace but he was already moving as fast as he could in his moribund condition. He fell to his hands and knees and crawled forward like one of the lower lizards, hacking bloody phlegm onto the ash as he desperately clambered on. When he looked up again he saw his father looming over him, nodding in understanding, but the wraith held his eye for only a second before dissolving into ash. Before him lay the hill.

From its base the hill seemed to Rilk’s bechilled mind as tall as one of the western mountains, though it couldn’t have been more than a hundred feet of gentle slope. The firestorms had passed through here same as everywhere else, reducing what once was a vast jungle of ferns and cycads to a loose scree of black ash. The picked bones of a thornface laying askance halfway up the slope. Stamped round by multiple sizes of tridactyl footprints where starving predators had been at it like a pharaoh’s embalmers. Upon the crest Rilk could see the log ramparts still looming out of the soot. The dead trees were a charcoal frieze but the village… the village had to be there, just on the other side, safe and sound.

Rilk began scrabbling up over the mine tailings of the dead world, dragging himself forward only under the power of his own yearning for home. His sluggish mind shuttering through still images of memory. The broad, blue lake, limned by gingkos and soft-needled conifers. Broadbills wading in the shallows. The songs of birds. Reclining in the shade of a cycad. Warmth of the sun filtering through the fronds. His father handing him his first fishing spear. So proud, so proud of him when he hooked his first lungfish. Much later, Naoma at his side, pointing and naming the dactyls as they flapped past. Snacking on delectable gingko nuts while they sat on the beach, scrinching their toes in the water’s edge. Her smile… radiant as the sun.

The village…

At last he crested that slag heap hill, wheezing deep draughts of the ash-ladden air. It didn’t matter anymore. He was home, home at the village which never in all the long memory of the Skaeras had been touched by even the worst of disasters. Crisp, clean air. Dactyls in their millions nesting in the horsetails. One particularly grumpy stoneback laying claim to the north shore of the lake. He shoved through one of the charred gates and…

His memory ran out of film and in an instant he was staring down into an annihilated ruin. Most of the wigwams reduced to bare ribbing. Blackened beams jutting out of the gritty loess like ribcages. Improbably, Irano’s wigwam stood intact midst the rubble, stout as a boulder on a shore swept by storm. Between the rubbled huts the ground was littered with the charred bodies of his kinfolk. Nothing moved. No smoke. No sign of life.

Beyond the village was the cracked and fissured lakebed, a dried playa flecked with patches of the odd, transparent slickness Rilk had observed before. Dusted by a recent fall of ash that squegged over the mud like tortured worms. At the center of the mudcaked bed was a dim wet spot surrounded by the bleached bones of saurians. Three broadbills. A flock of strytas. A young thornface. All waiting in the silent sleep of the dead for a dawn that would never come.

Drymouthed, Rilk stumbled downslope into the village. Everything flammable had been scoured to its component ashes. White bones shew through the soot, the one splash of color in all that grey despair. A heap of the dead down by the lakeshore where his kin had tried and failed to find refuge from the inferno. They were half mired in the vitrified sands. Skins seared black and stretched taut over their bones. Those whose hands weren’t clutching at themselves had arms outstretched towards the vanished waters, forever yearning to join the mummied saurians at the dead lake’s core.

They were all the same. The same scorched skins, the same howling mouths. Gone off to the same fate with their collective ends duly noted by the same indifferent world. Naoma was somewhere among them. Perhaps even Woota the shamaness.

Old Irano was not. He’d remained in his wigwam to the end. The place a silent tomb. Rilk entered hesitantly, as if he thought his father might still be living, that it might yet be possible to embrace him.

He sat crosslegged on the floor before his son. His skin black and crisp, face cold and hard as a stone, the scaly lips drawn back taut as wire over the whites of his denticled teeth. The amber scepter lay across his chest, its wooden handle scorched black, as though in his final moments before the flames swept over him he had assumed the poise of a mummy to prepare his soul for travel to the afterworld.

Rilk fell to his knees and stared at his father. What was left of his father. The bogfolk shell. The eyes sightless and shut. The eternal grimace of pain and unyielding determination to meet death with dignity. And Rilk wept.

“I did not leave you, Father,” he cried. His tears the first true warmth he had felt in weeks. “I did not leave you in anger. I left only to please you. I left to make you proud. I… I have come home, Father…”

The nightmare would have been made bearable had Irano’s mummied mouth gasped to life, had his scorched throat croaked back some ghostly reply. But in the unending waking torment of this burnt, benighted world death was final and Rilk could only gaze upon his dead father and sob. All of his ambitions, all the hopes and dreams he had ever entertained for himself or his son, forever under lock and key behind the firesealed lids of his eyes.

The vanished sun was clotting in the west by the time Rilk ran out of tears to weep. The hot runnels began to freeze on his cheeks as the skies darkened around him and he knew he needed fire but there was nothing left in the village to burn.

When he exited his father’s wigwam he did not look back. He made his way torpidly down to the former shore of the lake, staring across the dried bed at the cairn of saurian bones. His hunger and thirst were great but he no longer cared to slake them. Nor did he care to find warmth, to insult himself trying to make charcoaled branches burn again. He no longer had the will to even speak to himself. Not even to whisper. All remaining energy he had was focused solely on keeping his heart and brain active, the embers of warmth retreating headlong from his extremities, from his core, from his very blood, surrendering them all to the unyielding cold to keep him alive for still another moment. Another precious moment.

He took a feeble step forward. Then another. And then he could walk no more. His feet had no feeling in them at all. Not even pain. He slumped down onto a rock near the edge of what had once been the waterline, and stared out at the cauterized wastes beyond.

Am I the last? his chilled mind wondered, as it slowly wound down. If I am, how could I know?

Father should have been the last. He would have been a noble end to us. I am but a beetle in his shadow.

Yet, I am the last…

He sat there for a long time nestled in his own arms, until a squeaking sound near his feet roused him. He looked down glazedly at the source of the sound and saw two small, black shapes covering his feet. He kicked weakly and the shapes scurried off.

He heard the squeaking again and slowly craned his head to face it. Two didels, seated a few tails away. They seemed immune to the cold. Their fur black as the night, their snouts narrow and weaselly, flashing greedy fangs. They sat back on their haunches, staring at him through eerie yellow eyes that shone brightly even in the darkling dregs of the evening. As if the sun had been imprisoned in their pupils.

Groggily, he realized something wet was touching his foot. Rilk looked down and saw that the didels had been nibbling at his toes. The wetness he felt was some of his own blood oozing from their incisions. He looked back at the furballs.

“Wait awhile longer, fuzzy ones!” Rilk called weakly. “I am not yet cured!”

So saying, he contented himself to slouch forward, crossing his arms over his knees and resting his head in the little nest they provided.

Nest. He remembered the warmth of his own, when he first hatched seventeen seasons ago. The mosses and feathers and leaves and furs warm as a hearth. A green canopy overhead. Sunlight toying with the pine needles above. His father’s scent strong as he lowered morsels of flesh into Rilk’s eager mouth.

Rilk nestled his head even deeper into his arms, as if he were trying to fit back inside his egg.

I will make you proud, Father. I just need to rest for awhile…

Just… awhile…

“I certainly wouldn’t dare to gainsay that assessment, PAM,” Addison replied as properly as her frayed nerves allowed. Nervous was an understatement. She wanted to jump out of the station’s airlock rather than face what was awaiting her just down the corridor.

She swallowed tersely and glanced out the tiny porthole window, where the bow of the Earth curved gently away like a great blue willow plate, haloed by a thin ribbon of ozone airglow. It seemed terribly fragile when viewed from within the cramped confines of Station 7. Such a stark contrast to the endless black infinity it floated upon. She wondered if Tondra would present nearly as pretty a view.

Addison shook her head and turned back to PAM. “You’re certain it won’t hurt? I’m afraid I must admit to being a bit of a coward when it comes to pain.”

“AFFIRMATIVE, LADY ADDISON. THE SEGATO PROCEDURE NEUTRALIZES NERVE ENDINGS IMMEDIATELY PRIOR TO PERMINERALIZATION, MAKING THE EXPERIENCE OF PAIN IMPOSSIBLE. TEST SUBJECTS HAVE, HOWEVER, REPORTED FEELING COLDNESS AND NUMBNESS. SELF-REPORTED EMOTIONAL SENSATIONS INCLUDE AWE, EXCITEMENT, FEAR, AND SURPRISE.”

Addison ignored the robot. She continued to talk, quickly, flightily, more to assure herself than to communicate with PAM. “I can handle fear, you know. Fear, grief, anxiety, dread… these never really bothered me much, because they’re all inside. They’re only as real as I let them be, in my head. But pain? Pain is visceral. It comes from outside. When you’re scared, it’s only your body trying to protect itself. But pain is something inflicted, something with the singular intention to hurt you. Am I stating myself clearly, PAM?”

“TRANSPARENTLY,” the robot replied. Addison whirled to face it, a smile fluttering across her pale face. The Probabilistic Artificial Mind wasn’t actually conscious- no machine could ever be conscious- but sometimes its programmed sense of humor was good enough to fool her into thinking it might be. The hardbody it was installed in looked like the forsaken lovechild of a KitchenAid and a couple of trashcans, but it did what it was supposed to. The visor-like display slit on its head flashed a pair of friendly green 8-bit eyes at her. One of them winked, and Addison laughed.

“Thank you, PAM. I needed that. Really, thank you.” Addison said. She exhaled heavily, trying to flush out her trepidation on a shuddering breath. “Is everything ready, then?”

The robot’s body remained motionless, but its visor screen lit up with a wavy green line as it answered. The line oscillated up and down, matching the robot’s cadence. “THE LITHOSLEEP BAY IS FULLY PREPARED, AND ONLY AWAITS YOUR ENTRY, MY LADY.”

Lady Addison rose up to her full height of five feet nine inches and leaned back in a deep, relaxing stretch. Then she smoothed down her sky blue leotard- comfortwear in the cramped confines of the space station- and exhaled pertly. “Well, don’t let’s prolong the agony then. Lead on, PAM.”

The robot turned, and with a herky-jerky gait led Lady Addison out of her private stateroom down the long, whitewashed corridor that terminated at the Lithosleep Bay. It was like any other corridor on any space station ever built- a sanitized white so glaring one’s eyes needed a moment to adjust to it, with pipes running along the ceiling and anonymous button panels mounted to the walls. The only thing distinguishing it from any of a hundred such halls was where it led.

As they walked, PAM began asking a litany of questions regarding Addison’s preferences for lithosleep. They’d been over it before but she but she was glad PAM was running through the list again. Less likely for it to screw up, if it checked its work.

“DO YOU HAVE ANY MISSIVES TO DELIVER BEFORE THE PROCEDURE?”

“No,” Addison started. Then she smiled mischievously, biting her lip. She wheeled round on her heel to face PAM. “Actually, yes. Tell my brother that he’d be better off marrying a smelly Holstein than that hussy from Utah.”

A little red light appeared on the top of PAM’s cookie mixer head, which rapidly sprouted into a little antenna. “AFFIRMATIVE. PREPARING TO TRANSMIT MISSIVE.”

“PAM, wait!” Addison blurted, “I didn’t mean it!”

“DO YOU WISH TO CANCEL TRANSMISSION?”

“Yes, yes I wish to cancel transmission,” she said quickly. She scraped her hand back through her long chestnut hair. “You really think I would wish to send something so hurtful as that for my last missive?”

“I AM ONLY A MACHINE, AND SO I CANNOT THINK.”

Addison shook her head in wry bemusement. PAM always did exactly what you asked it to do, and no more and no less. Jokes always fell flat with it, because it wasn’t intellectually capable of taking one. It was just a machine, after all. A damn clever machine, but a machine nonetheless.

“Well, don’t send it anyhow.”

“AFFIRMATIVE. CANCELING TRANSMISSION.” The little antenna resleeved itself in PAM’s head and the machine stood stock still for a moment, so all Addison could hear was the whirring of its servos. “DO YOU WISH TO STAND OR RECLINE?”

Addison thought about that. One of the perks of being the Lady of the House- while everyone else’s lithosleep pod was set directly into the hull horizontally, hers was in the dead center of the room and she had the option of having hers stand up vertically. It didn’t matter much either way- she’d be knocked out for the duration. The only reason to stand would be to assert status, but everyone else was already unconscious, so there wasn’t anyone to lord over. Besides, lording wasn’t much in Addison’s nature to begin with. Her brother and sister would probably have chosen to stand, if their roles had been reversed, if that little ploy with the Speaker had gone differently…

But more than the pointlessness of peacocking to a mausoleum, Addison feared that she might panic when the procedure began, when the cold ray started creeping up her ankles. Panic, and then she’d fall over and shatter into a million pieces. The End. Just the idea of it sent a chill walking up the ladder of her spine.

“Recline. Just like taking a nap, you know? I’ll simply lie back and think of Alleghan…”

“AFFIRMATIVE. THINK OF ALLEGHAN,” PAM parroted. “DO YOU WISH FOR ENTERTAINMENT?”

Addison stiffened. Why would PAM ask her that, knowing she was to be unconscious for the duration of the journey? Had the system hallucinated? PAM units were known to do that sometimes, the inner machinations of their algorithms wandering wildly off-script. That’s why one always, always, always had to check the machine’s work. They could never be trusted to just run things by themselves. “That would seem rather irrelevant, don’t you think?”

“I AM ONLY A MACHINE AND-”

“- and so you cannot think,” Addison finished, holding up her hand. “Yes, I know. You needn’t say it again. No, I don’t need any entertainment in lithosleep.”

“AFFIRMATIVE. NO ENTERTAINMENT.”

PAM stopped in front of a porcelain white bulkhead door and held up a hand that looked to be wearing a pair of purple, rubberized oven gloves. The first joint of its index finger flipped up, revealing a copper-and-plastic connector nub which the robot proceeded to stick into a receptor port in the wall panel. The bulkhead door hissed open, and Addison found herself staring into the Lithosleep Bay.

It was the biggest room on the ship. More of a vault, in fact- a circular chamber whose walls were stacked high with hibernation pods recessed into the station’s hull, excepting the open one situated on a little plinth in the middle of the room. That was the one Addison would be entering shortly. The lights were respectfully dim, though none of the occupants would have known or cared if they were as searingly white as the rest of the ship’s. They had all been turned to stone.

Discovered accidentally, the Segato Procedure had immediately been hailed as the solution to the main problem plaguing the concept of interstellar travel- namely, how to get anyone to another star system alive. Space was terribly, inconceivably vast, and the transit times were far beyond the scope of human imagining. If the Earth was a period at the end of a sentence in a book at the Library of Congress, then Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun, would be perched atop Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square. Tondra, the world Addison was being sent to govern, would be halfway to the Moon.

Writers and scientists alike had dreamed of workarounds to the problem for centuries, none of them practical. Generation ships were patently inhumane, consigning whole generations to live and die in the cramped confines of a starship in the hope that their distant grandchildren might one day make landfall on a virgin world. Faster than light travel remained total fantasy, though the advent of the first relativistic drives had carried the vision of a bridge between the stars somewhat within reach. This brought Tondra to within two hundred years of travel time, as opposed to a thousand, but even with the most radical life extension technologies, no one born on Earth would ever see Tondra.

Cryogenics seemed promising at first, but while useful for preserving embryos and seed banks, it had proven fruitless when it came to mature individuals. The cold always won, piercing the heart and lungs and tissues with a thousand needles of ice. It was therefore only an unanticipated breakthrough at Segato Laboratories that made manned interstellar missions a practical reality. Forget deep freeze- Segato’s procedure used direct molecular carbonate bombardment and pressure recrystallization to metamorphosize the living flesh of a human subject into pure, white marble. No need to keep the organs and tissues alive when they were reduced to inanimate stone. The process was reversible via another mechanism already pioneered at Segato, laser crystal foliation, by which the whole body could be quite instantly restored back to flesh and blood via carbon cancellation.

The mind, as always, was a mystery, and though no one could describe the mechanism by which it occurred, it was known that the Segato Procedure could be applied to either render the recipient unconscious, or leave them fully aware of their petrified state. The technology had a plethora of benefits for scientific research, but also in more practical realities. Malignant tumors whose surgical removal might endanger the life of a patient could be simply chiseled away. Most dramatically, prisons had been abolished, with convicts simply being turned to stone for the duration of their sentences, giving them a good long time to think about their actions. And, more pertinently to Lady Addison, it made interstellar flight possible. A body changed to marble did not age or freeze or decay.

So there they were, four hundred people, all members of Lady Addison’s household, the servants and guards and waitstaff and their families, all being sent along with her to the little colony on Tondra, resting peacefully in their lithosleep pods. She couldn’t see into any of them, but the occupants were each marked coffinlike by a ceramic nameplate. At the bottommost level of the chamber were a series of smaller recesses, where pets of the crew had been stowed away, cats and dogs and parrots and a ferret that belonged to one of the maids. They, too, enjoyed the sleep of stone, and when they were all awakened after what would seem to be only a moment, it would be on a new world.

Addison paused, thinking again about what PAM had asked her. Do you wish for entertainment? It was a question that only made sense if PAM thought she was supposed to be conscious for the trip. Sometimes people did that, for short jaunts to the Moon or Mars; a baker’s dozen of odd self-help Eastern meditation philosophies had sprouted up among those who wished to try short spells of conscious lithosleep for themselves. Crazy people, Addison thought- what sort of lunatic would want to be stuck in total rigid immobility for any length of time? But all interstellar crews were supposed to be unconscious for the duration of the voyage. Otherwise… otherwise they would be trapped in a waking hell for years, centuries on end, totally unable to move, trapped in their own stone skins. Just the idea of it made Addison’s flesh crawl, as if she were staring down over the edge of a cliff. Did PAM somehow mess up the parameters?

She turned to the robot. “PAM, all other members of my household are in unconscious lithosleep, correct?”

“CORRECT, LADY ADDISON.” PAM replied. The robot was now walking jerkily over to the control desk, where it would sit and enmesh itself with the ship’s primary interface, to apply the Segato Procedure to her directly.

“Confidence level in that statement?” she asked, peering uncertainly into the open pod. Its lid was a sheet of semi-transparent green glass, hinged open vertically from the top, perhaps to evade the impression of a casket. But in this very evasion, the comparison was to be made. Addison leaned into the pod and touched the squishy green gel-foam that would keep her stone body safe for the duration of the journey from any jostling the ship might undergo due to the gravitational effects of the outer planets, or micrometeoric impacts.

“ABOVE SIX SIGMA THRESHOLD. THAT IS, NINETY-NINE POINT NINE NINE NINE NINE NINE NINE NINE NINE…”

“Okay, PAM, you can stop now,” Addison replied. Some days she wanted to curse Gödel and his incompleteness theorems- no machine could ever be 100% sure of anything, and PAM wasn’t programmed for rounding. She rose back up and blew an unruly brown wisp of hair out of her eyes. “And I am to be unconscious as well, correct?”

“NEGATIVE, LADY ADDISON. PARAMETERS WERE ALTERED TO CONSCIOUS LITHOSLEEP.”

Addison felt the floor dropping out from under her. She pulled her hand away from the gel-foam bed like it were a hot stove. Then her fear hitched upon a sudden burst of shrill laughter, and she caught herself. She reached up and raked back a sheaf of her hair, gently tugging at a lock of it to soothe herself from her nervous outrage. Presently, she shook her head and cleared her throat. “No, PAM, no. No, no, no. Reset that parameter to default- unconscious lithosleep, if you please.”

“AFFIRMATIVE. RESETTING PARAMETERS TO UNCONSCIOUS LITHOSLEEP.”

“Confirm reset,” Addison ordered. She looked back at the yawning pod. There was no way she was climbing into that thing without absolute assurance that she wouldn’t be snared in her own skin.

“RESET CONFIRMED. LADY ADDISON WILL BE PLACED IN UNCONSCIOUS LITHOSLEEP.”

Addison looked over to where PAM sat immobile at the control desk. The endearing green line on its visor had gone out- it wasn’t “in” the hardbody anymore, it was distributed through every terminal in the station. She pursed her lips. PAM’s errors had always mostly been restricted to minor annoyances- mayonnaise instead of ketchup on her fries, or accidentally altering the shower pressure to a drizzle. This, though, this was a far more serious mistake, and now she didn’t know if she could trust PAM at all. Maybe it would be better to call for a technician to take a look at it. Maybe she could delay their departure, just for that. But then her siblings might get suspicious. The Speaker might get suspicious. Things had happened before to ships that outstayed their welcome in orbit…

She gazed back into the open pod and bit her lip, weighing her options. “PAM, run full diagnostic and confirm to Six Sigma that lithosleep parameters are set to unconscious.”

“AFFIRMATIVE. RUNNING FULL DIAGNOSTIC.”

Addison leaned back against the control terminal and waited. PAM’s visor lit up with a green loading bar- more for her own benefit rather than any system requirement, she knew- and it ticked slowly upward to completion. She wished she’d brought something to read, but then what would have been the point? So she daydreamed about Tondra, that little world of which she’d heard much but knew very little. The sky there was supposed to be periwinkle, owing to its mother star’s wavelength. Like an eternal evening. That’s how it got its name, Tondra. It meant nap, in a long-extinct language called Bengali. A world forever on the precipice of a long, evening nap…

“DIAGNOSTIC COMPLETE.”

PAM’s voice startled Addison from her reverie. She wasn’t sure how long it had been- twenty minutes, maybe? There was a lot of code to diagnose.

“Results?”

“LITHOSLEEP PARAMETERS SET TO UNCONSCIOUS. SIX SIGMA CONFIDENCE ACHIEVED.”

Addison breathed out a deep sigh of relief. She felt like a thing of air, as frenetic as a leaf tossed about in a stiff wind. God that was close. Too close. She wondered when and how the parameters had been altered. It must have been a hallucination by PAM, since the machine was positive- well, as positive as it could be- that all members of her household were, indeed, unconscious. Or, a dread thought whispered from the back of her mind, perhaps PAM was hacked?

She tried to push the thought from her mind as she started to ready herself to enter the lithosleep pod, finally confident she wasn’t really stepping into her grave. It didn’t matter now, anyhow, whether PAM had been hacked or not. The parameters had been reset, and when she awoke an eyeblink later she would be in the orbit of Tondra, forever beyond the reach of any of her old enemies. Nevertheless, she wondered. It might have been one of any number of lovers she’d snubbed after her father moved the family to the capital in Denver. Or might it have been one of her own waitstaff, irate at being exiled off-world with her? Of course, the most parsimonious explanation was that it was one of her petulant siblings, trying to get in one last jab before she was sent off to Tondra, safely away from their own claims to the Senatorship and, perhaps, the Speakership itself.

That, really, was the point of sending her away. Ever since the Missileers Revolt, six generations ago, the firstborn children of Senators inherited their parents’ offices, while all their siblings were sent off-world to govern their own colonies among the stars, so they would not cause mischief on Earth. Addison was the third of three children, so while Gawain, the eldest, was heir to the Senatorship of Alleghan, and Giselle, the second eldest, was Mayoress of Cydonia, she was being sent off to serve as Governess of Tondra, a rocky world one-hundred and fifty nine light years from Earth. It wasn’t supposed to be that way- she’d been wooing the Speaker’s son, had been maneuvering to be allowed to remain on Earth, til her jealous sister got wind of it…

Addison slipped out of her leotard and shivered slightly as she folded it and placed it on the desk in front of PAM. The robot would take it back to her stateroom later, after she was stone. Or maybe not, maybe it would sit right there on that desk for the next two centuries. It didn’t matter. The room was rapidly cooling, the ship’s life support systems already switching over to a reduced operational status since technically there wouldn’t be any lifeforms aboard for a long time to come.

Addison tried not to think about that as she slid as comfortably as she could into the pod, leaning back with a nervous sigh and letting her body sink into the gel-foam. The gel-pillow was raised up slightly, indeed the whole bed was tilted at a slight obtuse angle, so Addison could view the transformation as it swept up the lithesome length of her body. She shuffled herself into the most comfortable position she could find and folded her hands over her bare belly like she were a princess under a spell.

“ARE YOU ARE READY FOR THE PROCEDURE?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Addison chuffed. She stared up at the pipes running along the ceiling and readjusted herself slightly. Finally she felt snug. “Just gotta lie back and think of Alleghan…”

“AFFIRMATIVE. THINK OF ALLEGHAN. INITIATING SEGATO PROCEDURE.”

Addison drew in a deep breath and stared straight up to where a port had opened in the ceiling, lowering down a wand-shaped fixture on a pantograph arm that halted just a few inches above her naked body. It slew down towards her feet and glew bright blue as it started up. Then the ray began to bathe her in its ion light.

PAM was right. It didn’t hurt, thank God. It actually tickled a bit, as the ray walked steadily up the length of her legs. The carbonate spray felt more like a cold mist than anything that was actively altering the chemical composition of her body, and it was only when she tried to wiggle her toes in protest of the tickling sensation that she realized she could no longer move them.

“BIOMETRIC SCANS INDICATE YOU ARE NERVOUS, LADY ADDISON.”

“I am,” she said, a clipped chuff of laughter hanging on to the edge of her reply. “I am very, very nervous.”

“THERE IS NO NEED TO BE NERVOUS, MY LADY,” PAM consoled her. “ALL PARAMETERS ARE IN ORDER. PROCEDURE IS GOING EXACTLY ACCORDING TO YOUR PREFERENCES.”

Addison didn’t bother replying to that. Her actual preference would have been to stay on Earth, but that wasn’t an option. So she craned her head up ever so slightly to watch the transformation progress. Nearly at her crotch now… she gasped as the sheet of mist swept over her mound, and thanked the stars that everyone else in the room was already deep in lithosleep so they couldn’t laugh later at her odd, sluttish arousal from the sensation. PAM didn’t take any notice of it, and the Segato Ray simply proceeded at its slow, steady pace up her belly, crystallizing her skin and everything beneath into solid stone as it went.

Solid. She thought about that. Her legs were completely solid pillars of rock now. She tried to move them, as if to test the efficacy of what was happening before her eyes, but she couldn’t. Her hips were already locked rigidly into place and she squirmed just a bit uncomfortably as the tide of white marble swept toward her breasts. Her arms were stone below the wrist, too heavy to even attempt moving, as though her hands had been changed to cannonballs.

“LADY ADDISON, PLEASE CEASE MOVEMENT, AS IT INCREASES RISK OF FRACTURE DEVELOPMENT.”

It was the sternest she’d ever heard PAM, and for good reason. A fracture might not hurt now, if it were small enough, but when she was restored it would be excruciating. And if it were large enough… well, amputation at best, death at worst. The ship’s medical bay was good, but not “stitch together a cleaved torso” good. Addison quickly slumped back down in the gel-bed and shifted her shoulders ever so slightly to approximate the perfectly comfortable position she’d been in before her imprudent stunt. Stupid, stupid. This isn’t a game, you know, she scolded herself.

She looked away from the misty ray right before it crested the swell of her breasts, the sensation once more making her inhale sharply. She bit her lip and tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, that her breeding wasn’t really so lowly as that.

She was aware of her heart pulsing more sluggishly as it slowly changed to stone. By the time it stopped pumping for good the ray would have already passed over her head. As the ion beam began sweeping up her neck, she retreated to wry introspection. Tondra means nap… that’s all this is. Just a long, long nap. So enjoy the view it while it lasts. You are now experiencing the first-person perspective of the Venus de Milo…

The cold tingle crept its way up Addison’s chin and swelled over her cheeks. In her last moment, she considered closing her eyes to truly complete the illusion of falling asleep, but curiosity compelled her to keep them open even as the ionic ray passed directly over her. She wasn’t sure what she expected- a solid curtain of anesthetic black falling over her, to be washed away an instant later by the light of a new sun?

It didn’t happen that way.

Instead, Addison simply continued staring unblinkingly, her gaze affixed upon the ceiling.

Oh God! her mind screamed, I’m still awake!

Raw, acid panic washed over Addison from head to toe, rocketing right back down the course the Segato Ray had just taken. She writhed futilely within herself, trying desperately to sit back up, to move, to squirm, to draw a breath- anything to let PAM know she was still awake. But she couldn’t. All of her muscles had been turned into sculpted swells of stone. The only thing she could do was stare straight up and watch the Segato Ray draw itself back into the ceiling.

No, no no no. This isn’t happening! This isn’t real! PAM! PAM help!

PAM didn’t answer her silent pleas. There was nothing to respond to. Consciousness wasn’t measurable. It did not exist in neurons and brain waves- these were just the interface it made itself known by. And now Addison didn’t have any neurons or brain waves. They’d all been turned to stone. But her mind remained, perfectly intact, imprisoned in solid marble.

“PROCEDURE COMPLETE,” PAM said to no one. “PREPARING SHIP FOR ALCUBIERRE JUMP.”

God, God, please PAM, for God’s sake help me! Please don’t leave me like this! This can’t be real. This isn’t happening. I don’t want to be a statue!

She knew even as she thought it that she didn’t have a choice. The pod’s lid closed over top of her, leaving her staring up at the semi-transparent jade green cover, and then the pod hissed as all air was flushed out to prevent bacterial growth. The lights in the Lithosleep Bay went out completely, and the only source of light remaining was the life support indicator within her pod which continued blinking with the steady, reassuring rhythm of a cricket. Every ten seconds it flashed, giving Addison a brief, peripheral view of her own petrified body lying perfectly motionless in the gel-foam. She wanted to cry, to scream, to howl her fear and panic at PAM and beg the machine to release her, to make even a peep, but her lips were sealed in stone.

Lie back and think of Alleghan. That’s what you said.

The realization dropped like an anchor down to the blackest pit of her stone stomach.

PAM always did exactly what you asked it to. No more, and no less.

There would be no pain. Of that she was sure. Nothing, not a single thing would physically harm her during the ship’s voyage. Her stone body was perfectly safe in its coffin. Fear, grief, anxiety, dread… these had never troubled her much, because they were all in her head. And now, what was in her head was the only company she had, would ever have for decades to come.

The green life support light’s regular blinking was starting to become irksome, and as she was tormented by its incessant flashing, Addison realized that there were demons of pain lurking within her as well, those gnashing beasts of the id, and she realized too that she was about to receive a long, long crash course in the agonies of boredom and despair.

No, no, please, please God no!

Addison thought this to herself over and over again as the ship’s rockets fired and it began its centuries-long voyage across the stars.

Howdy! This is just a little behind-the-scenes essay about my latest short story, The Hide-Hunter- here I’ll cover the research, inspirations, the cover art, writing process, and a bunch of other stuff that went into the story.

Obviously spoilers abound, so if you haven’t read it already you can do so below:

Research & Inspirations

This story came to me in the shower. It was completely, fully-formed in a single instant as I lathered my hair in shampoo while thinking about passages from two books- the chapter on the senseless slaughter of the American Bison related in Dan Flores’ Wild New World, and the American Indian traditions of “stinging men” and “buffalo calling stones” reported by Adrienne Mayor in Fossil Legends of the First Americans.

The story was born in that chance criticality event where I wondered- “what if a former hide hunter was cursed to be killed by a ghost herd of the same buffaloes he so greedily consigned to extinction?” Even before I climbed out of the shower and dried myself, the creative gears where already spinning at full speed, and I wrote down a quick plot outline which rapidly matured into the story you’ve just finished reading.

From that point, all I had to do was reread the relevant passages from those books, as well as a chapter of Flores’ preceding book American Serengeti, and certain chapters of Charles Hazelius Sternberg’s autobiography The Life of a Fossil Hunter. Below, I will recount in brief the main historical elements of the story.

Fossil Hunters

The most natural protagonist for a story involving cursed fossils is of course a paleontologist; indeed, this might be the only sort of individual on the planet capable of delivering such a curse’s dramatic consequences upon its victim, no matter how accidentally this was accomplished.

The character of the fossil collector Joseph Yarnall was largely based on Charles Hazelius Sternberg, a Kansan fossil collector whose career spanned from 1876 to 1928. For brevity’s sake I must limit my remarks, because I could wax for many lines on what a remarkable man he was. Suffice to say, Sternberg was the sort of man whom you instantly recognize as your better, in the best possible way. One is almost tempted to put aside his voluminous scientific discoveries- and without him, many of the prehistoric creatures we know and love today might never have become as justly famous as they are now- just to admire him as a man. He was brave, he was kind, and he was deeply passionate about his love for the wonders of Creation and all the worlds that came before us, even at considerable risk to his own health and safety.

I highly recommend reading his autobiography, The Life Of A Fossil Hunter. Perhaps the most remarkable incident of heroism recounted in those pages is when he and his team were caught in the crossfire of the Bannock War in 1878, an Indian uprising in Idaho. Sternberg, in an odd, paleontological twist on Horatius’s defense of Rome from the Etruscans, valiantly insisted on dragging his heavy crates of fossils to safety even when the Red Man was bearing down upon his camp, because he believed preserving that wealth of the ages for the benefit of future generations was more important than saving his own hide. He was an incredible man and a total badass.

I found the strong biophilia Sternberg evinces throughout his autobiography not only deeply commendable, but also a perfect contrast to the greed of Hedgepeth and the real-life hide hunters who inspired him, which I tried to adapt somewhat into Yarnall’s character-

If I ever had any feelings of disgust or fear toward any of God's creatures, I lost them upon a knowledge of the animals as revealed to me by this master naturalist, who saw beauty even in lizards and snakes. He believed, and taught me to believe, that it is a crime to destroy life wantonly, any life. Of course the first law of nature is self-preservation; we must, in order to live, kill our enemies and protect our friends; but this superstitious fear which men and, even more, women have of snakes, lizards, and bugs, how cruel it is! Why should they rejoice when some poor little garter-snake, which has gone as a friend into the cellar walls to destroy rats and mice, is dragged out and cut to pieces? My heart bleeds when I think of the brutal way in which people take life, something they can never give back, and with the great Cope, I cry out against this crime, which is exterminating some of our most beautiful and useful friends. No man can say he loves us, when he wantonly destroys our work; no man loves God who wantonly destroys His creatures.

Another relevant passage-

What is it that urges a man to risk his life in these precipitous fossil beds? I can answer only for myself, but with me there were two motives, the desire to add to human knowledge, which has been the great motive of my life, and the hunting instinct, which is deeply planted in my heart. Not the desire to destroy life, but to see it. The man whose love for wild animals is most deeply developed is not he who ruthlessly takes their lives, but he who follows them with the camera, studies them with loving sympathy, and pictures them in their various haunts. It is thus that I love creatures of other ages, and that I want to become acquainted with them in their natural environments. They are never dead to me; my imagination breathes life into "the valley of dry bones," and not only do the living forms of the animals stand before me, but the countries which they inhabited rise for me through the mists of the ages.

What a beautiful mindset. Sternberg’s profound appreciation for the gorgeous, unfathomable scale and complexity of Creation is deeply inspiring, and it is this sort of spirit which I wanted to bestow upon my character of Yarnall.

I must admit here that do not think I achieved this goal, and for that I am regretful. There was a lot more I could have done with Yarnall, but he remained a rather simplistic narrator figure throughout. In that role he is serviceable, but I feel I could have “worked” the character so much more. I held back mainly because I didn’t want Yarnall to come off as an ideological mouthpiece, and wanted more for Hedgepeth’s words and deeds to speak for themselves in the mind of the reader. Still, think I could’ve done a lot better.

Aside from this, the details of Yarnall’s expedition to the Red Beds were also inspired by Sternberg’s narrative. He was there several times. The Red Beds are real, they are of Permian vintage, and they really are that inhospitable to life. The descriptions of the detestable clay-water requiring boiling in cacti to be remotely palatable, and the cows attempting to eat cacti for moisture, are all real details gleaned from Sternberg’s narrative, as is the terrible intensity of the norther, one such of which Sternberg suffered with only a tent over his head.

Hide Hunters

The antagonist of the story, of course, is Hedgepeth. Hedgepeth was written to be as unlikeable as possible even apart from his former occupation; yet, he’s also a tragic figure. You’re not really supposed to root for him- though, if you do, I as the author am dead and have no say over that- but you can kind of see the confluence of events that led him to where he was.

This leads us directly to the real-life inspiration for Hedgepeth, Frank H. Mayer. He wrote a short autobiographical pamphlet titled The Buffalo Harvest, which you can read here.

If ever there were a contrast to Charles H. Sternberg, it would be Frank H. Mayer. Like Hedgepeth, he was a Civil War veteran- Union, not Confederate- who went out west to seek his fortune in hunting, as he had no other marketable skills.

Mayer was the kind of caricature of a ruthless hunter you’d see in old Disney movies; the furthest possible thing from the generally more conservation-aware hunters in America today, who desire to preserve game populations from season to season. Mayer- and all the other hide hunters- just killed as many buffalo as they possibly could with gleeful abandon, solely for their personal enrichment. Every word Hedgepeth utters about the buffalo being “gold pieces” and “what was good for me was good for America” is true to how these men felt and wrote in their own words. I encourage you to read The Buffalo Harvest- it’s a rare glimpse into the mind of a disgustingly greedy man who didn’t care a fig about posterity. He died two months short of his 104th birthday in 1954, outliving the market hunt by 71 years, but the bison thus far have outlived him by 72 years, and may they continue to do so for many more.

Unlike Hedgepeth, and even many real hide hunters, Mayer evinced absolutely zero remorse for his actions-

It wasn't long after I got into the game that I began to realize that the end for the buffalo was in sight. I resolved to get my share. I went into the business right. I invested every cent I owned in an outfit. I have no apologies for my participation in the slaughter. I hope that answers the question.

One thing about Mayer’s narrative that inspired Hedgepeth’s speech is that it is chock-full of contradictory justifications for his role in the demise of the bison. I don’t know that he was ever remorseful for it in his heart of hearts, or if he was only trying to deceitfully convince others that he did the right thing. I think his concluding remark is correct, however-

Maybe we runners served our purpose in helping abolish the buffalo; maybe it was our ruthless harvesting of him which telescoped the control of the Indian by a decade or maybe more. Or maybe I am just rationalizing. Maybe we were just a greedy lot who wanted to get ours, and to hell with posterity, the buffalo, and anyone else, just so we kept our scalps on and our money pouches filled. I think maybe that is the way it was.

He was a truly repulsive man, but perhaps not as repulsive as John Cook, another former hide hunter who crafted an elaborate and enduring lie to justify his part in the murder of America’s most charismatic mammal- he is the one who first claimed the army was secretly behind the slaughter, out of a desire to destroy the Indian commissary. He claimed the US military was so invested in this goal they would hand out free ammunition to hide hunters, a claim repeated by Mayer, and, in the story, Hedgepeth.

There’s just one small problem with this- it’s complete fiction, about as real as my own story.

The goofiest part of it is that Cook claimed the Texas legislature, of all governing bodies, was contemplating a bill to outlaw bison hunting, only to by thwarted by an impassioned speech by General Philip Sheridan arguing for the extermination of the bison. The real Sheridan was an early proponent of bison conservation, specifically cabling Washington in 1879 to try to stop the slaughter, in order to prevent starvation and uprisings on the reservations occupied by friendly Indian tribes. His exact words were- “I consider it important that this wholesale slaughter of the Buffalo should be stopped.”

So, no, the hide hunters really were just a lot of greedy barbarians who didn’t care one iota about preserving the bison for the future. The government did nothing to stop them, of course, but this inaction does not have any relevance to the moral dimension of their own individual choices. They still made the choice to consign an entire species to extinction solely for personal financial gain. It was only thanks to the dedicated efforts of a handful of people1 that any bison are left alive at all today.

As for the actual hide hunting experience as described by Hedgepeth, I kept it as close to reality as possible- buffalo running outfits really were mostly after cows and yearlings2, they would only kill as many as their skinners could handle in a day, they would leave the meat to rot3, and it was really quite profitable compared to the living one could back “back East” for the meager handful of years it lasted.

Quoting Dan Flores, whose opinion on the matter I fully endorse-

There are two perfect words for their kind of callous disregard for life, for an attitude that regarded two or three years of returns worth leaving behind a putrid desert of rotting carcasses and blowflies and a deprived posterity.

Fucking pathetic.

Stinging Men

Gnaski, aka Crazy Buffalo, is a real, highly malevolent figure from Lakota folklore. He was supposedly the son of Unktehi, the Water Monster who ruled the world before our present age, and he is where the tradition of “stinging men” originated. Quoting from Fossil Legends of the First Americans-

Long ago, goes the story, Gnaski came upon a band of the First People traveling west along the Niobrara River to the springs. As they passed Carnegie Hill, Gnaski “grabbed up a piece of bone from the long-dead Unkte’gi monsters that laid buried there” and magically projected it into the body of a young man. Then he showed the man how to use the fossils to make powerful medicine.

Back among his people, the young man stung by the fossil bone began behaving frantically and violently, like a crazed bull. The first Lakota medicine man, Wata, managed to cure him and removed the fossil splinter from his body. Wata warned the people not to follow Gnaski’s stinging ceremony, in which a wizard could “enchant, bewitch, or cause sickness” by ritually shooting a sliver of fossil bone into another person.

If you’re unable to procure a copy of this book- which I highly recommend you do- this article from Distinctly Montana magazine is a decent summary of Plains Indian fossil traditions, also drawing from the book.4

Just like The Bone Baby, this story heavily features “fossilomancy”- a word I just made up to describe global traditions of magic revolving around fossils. The Lakota were no strangers to this sort of magic, but their traditions were a bit unusual in that they included evil fossil magic. How precisely such magic works is wisely left unstated by the Plains Indian elders, and even if I did know I wouldn’t tell you.

The location where Hedgepeth is cursed is also a reference to this legend- the Agate Springs fossil beds, preserving rich deposits of Miocene mammals, are located on the Niobrara River. The Lakota knew it as A’bekiya Wama’kaskan s’e, or “Animal Bones Brutally Scattered About” and they studiously avoided the place because the fossils there were considered wakan sica- bad medicine- to the point that they erected stone tumuli specifically to mark the boundaries of this forbidden zone. The only ones who would venture into this dark place were the H'munga Wicasa- Stinging Men- so they could go on their own malignant vision quests and gather fossils to “sting” their enemies. Even in modern times, the place supposedly retains something of a sinister energy.

In my narrative, I of course portrayed Gnaski as something more of a vengeful spirit figure. He’s not a “good guy,” per se, but while he does place a curse upon Hedgepeth, he’s not outwardly villainous either. Here, he personifies the Plains Indian zeitgeist as the bison herds vanished and the species orbited perilously close to an extinction spiral- they viewed it as the complete end of history, a nearly eschatological event with the caveat being that no one was anointed or saved. Everything just stopped when the bison died. As Crow leader Plenty Coups put it- “After that, nothing happened.”

I mean, imagine a sin so hideously evil that even the most reviled figure from your religion slithers out to lay down a curse upon its perpetrators. That’s how I wanted to portray Gnaski here. He may well have been an evil man, but he was also a Sioux, who lived by the bison, and would have missed them had they been so cruelly murdered in his own time.

Calling Stones

The fateful calling stone is a real part of Plains Indian folklore, and they really are little fossils, as you can see above. The description of them as impressions of the internal core of a baculite- really a subtype of ammonite- is accurate.

Quoting again from Fossil Legends of the First Americans-

Because the internal structure and patterns of these cephalopod marine fossils sometimes resemble bison shapes, the Blackfeet, Cheyenne, and other Plains tribes invested baculites with an ability to summon buffalo herds. Buffalo-calling stones, known as Iniskim among the Blackfeet bands of northern Montana and Alberta, have also turned up in archaeological sites across the Dakotas, Montana, and Canada, indicating that the Iniskim tradition goes back at least a thousand years (fig. 69).

According to Blackfeet legend, the sacred power of the fossil with the form of a buffalo was first discovered long ago by Weasel Woman, who was picking berries at a constantly eroding cut bank called "Falling off without Excuse," probably the big fossil deposition the Bow River in Alberta now known to rock hounds as "Baculite Beach." After she taught the ritual of the curiously shaped stone to her husband, Chief Speaking, Blackfeet and other northern tribes began to collect the fossils, which they rubbed with red ocher and placed in medicine bundles. Iniskim were used to draw buffalo herds over cliffs before the arrival of horses. As Chandler Good Strike—a Gros Ventre artist at Fort Belknap Reservation, Montana—told me later that summer, "We used to collect the fossils to call the buffalo each spring." People also kept personal Iniskim fossils for luck, healing, and other powers. Charlie Crow Eagle, a Piegan (Blackfeet band of Canada), owned an interesting buffalo-skin medicine pouch in about 188 0 (fig. 70). It originally held nine Iniskim: two Baculites compressus, four Placenticeras ammonites, an Acanthoscaphites ammonite, a Paleozoic coral, and a Corbicula clamshell, all coated in red pigment.

I offer no comment on the efficacy of using fossils to try to summon a herd of bison to your location. However, just looking at the shape of the Iniskim, I certainly understand why they believed it would work.

Cover Art

The cover art for the story is a cropped portion of this magnificent painting by Dutch artist Eveline Kolijn, showing the full process from ammonite to iniskim to living, breathing bison. It’s beautiful, I love it. My only regret about using it as the cover art is that Substack’s autocropping prevented me from using the full painting for the cover.

The piece depicts Iniskim as originating from a coiled ammonite, rather than the straight-shelled baculite from my story. This isn’t incorrect- ammonites share the same sutured chambers as baculites, and many other types of fossils such as corals, shells, and even dinosaur bones could be considered Iniskim.

Writing Process & Analysis

This story was written at a fair clip. I started writing it on December 22, and finished it February 15. I don’t think the story actually took more than a week and a half to complete, excluding all the days I ignored the manuscript to work on other projects. Over half of it was finished before January 1st, with the most outstanding element remaining being the bulk of Hedgepeth’s speech recounting his life as a buffalo hunter. This naturally took longer due to the need to properly convey the gravity of what he had done, and his own inability to confront his wrongdoing despite his deeper awareness of it. It was tricky to write.

I’m still not quite sure if I conveyed it correctly. Hedgepeth’s ranting was supposed to come off as nearly bipolar coping- “I needed money, but also the army wanted the bison gone to fight the Indians, but also the bison had to go anyway because of civilization, but also… I really, really needed money!”- to smooth over his true recognition that he did something he knows was deeply wrong. I’m mostly satisfied with the rest of the story, but as this is the scene on which the entire narrative hinges, if it fails the rest of the story would as well.

As is, I think it’s a serviceable short story. It may have benefited from another couple hundred words or so words, expanding on Yarnall’s and maybe even Gnaski’s character and perhaps giving Hedgepeth some more breathing room to tell his backstory. But for what it is, it’s alright. Someday I may return to this one and write that little expansion, and republish it in its proper perfection. We’ll see.

Overall, I find the story sort of wishful thinking. It’s something I think we all would like to have happened- the bad guys who robbed us before we were even born get their supernatural comeuppance. But, ultimately, out here in the real world, they didn’t, and the outcome was the same even in the story. Regardless of whether the hide hunters were punished, the bison are still gone. We are still deprived forever of the vast herds that drove John James Audubon to exultant conniptions when he first explored the Great Plains- “In fact, it is impossible to describe or even conceive the vast multitudes of these animals that exist even now, and feed on these oceanlike prairies.”

In one respect, Hedgepeth may have been right- the bison’s time is gone. They aren’t coming back, at least not while any of us draw breath. Nearly all of their former grazing grounds are either under the plow or occupied by cattle. Progress, as defined by that repugnant painting by John Gast, came, and saw, and conquered, and in its wake left behind a wasteland of corn and cows, built upon the bones of those nobler creatures who came before.

I hope- for those of you who made it this far- that this wasn’t too boring a read, or that it felt overly indulgent. I always enjoy when other writers and artists discuss their own techniques and inspirations, so I figure there’s a small chance you guys might enjoy hearing a bit about mine.

That’s all. You can go home now.

Minor Shopkeeping Note- I used to post these “writing of” essays over on my other blog, Poquessian, however I’ve decided to switch to publishing them here on my main blog. The first few of these will be free “taste-testers” but I am planning to eventually paywall such behind-the-scenes content, while the stories themselves remain free to read by all. Cheers!

Howdy! This is just a little behind-the-scenes essay about my latest1 short story, The Bone Baby- here I’ll cover the research, inspirations, the cover art, writing process, and a bunch of other stuff that went into writing this.

Obviously spoilers abound, so if you haven’t read the story already you can do so below:

Inspirations

The Bone Baby was directly inspired by the Twitter post below-

My immediate response to this, aside from “That’s awful” was “This is the start of a horrible old-timey fairy tale.” Because I’m a writer whose Muse went mad long ago, and I can’t help but see story potential in even the worst real-world tragedies.

I followed up this initial thought by writing the following one-sentence horror story:

"- and after the Bone Baby burst out of his mother's belly, he traveled all over the countryside, peeking into all the cradles in all the cottages, looking for more baby bones to steal."

The story crystallized instantly from this into the tale you’ve just read.

Setting

The Bone Baby is my second attempt at writing an “American fairy tale”, with my first try at this being The Severed Head. Similar to The Severed Head, The Bone Baby is set during the pre-Revolution colonial era in Pennsylvania, this time in the Philadelphia region, where I was able to blend all kinds of local geography, history, and folklore into the tale you’ve just read.

The story starts out in the southern environs of Philadelphia, specifically in the region once known as “the Neck”. This was the swampy, southernmost part of the Philadelphia peninsula back in the day, and remained a very poor, rural area focused on raising pigs right up until the 1920s. I won’t get all into the history of the region here for brevity’s sake, but Hidden City Philadelphia had a fantastic series on it some years ago, which provided the backbone of my description.

Today, it’s mostly a sea of parking lots, warehouses, and railyards, and is home to all of Philadelphia’s sports teams. So nothing’s really changed I suppose.

The bulk of the action in The Bone Baby, however, occurs in a place known as “the Timber Swamp”, in what is today Northeast Philadelphia. This is also a real location, described briefly in the book A History of the Townships of Byberry and Moreland, written in 1867 by Joseph C. Martindale-

Timber Swamp. This is a large tract of wood land reaching from the west corner of Byberry near Andrew Ervein’s, northeast along the Moreland line almost to the Somerton road. This was formerly one vast tract of woodland, the largest in the vicinity, and was a noted hunting ground. Raccoons, opossums, squirrels, and birds were found there in abundance, and even bears were sometimes seen. The last Bruin found there was in 1780, and was shot by Jersey Billy Walton. It was formerly a great place for ghosts, &c., and many marvellous tales have been narrated as occurring in the “timber swamp.” Much of the timber has been cleared off within a few years, and its limits thereby greatly contracted.

The Timber Swamp, at least some fraction of it, still exists today, not terribly far from my own home. Only about 93 acres of it are left, but it is some of the “wildest’ land left in Philadelphia, with no neatly paved park trails to navigate by. It’s a fun- and somewhat dangerous2- place to explore, being hemmed in by a residential neighborhood, the terribly congested Byberry Road, and the CSX tracks running like a spine through the northeastern half of the city.

While the Timber Swamp itself may survive for now3, to my knowledge tragically none of the tantalizingly alluded “marvellous tales” are still extant. The Bone Baby thus is my attempt to, in some small way, revive this old, hyperlocal ghost-tale tradition.

Today, I can lay claim to the dubious title of being the most recent person to tell a “marvellous tale” set in the Timber Swamp, and perhaps I am also the most recent person- possibly only person in the 21st century- to even think about the marvellous tales of the Timber Swamp.

Research

Very little original research was required for this story, which expedited the writing process considerably. Mostly I just had to brush up on stuff I’d already read a long time ago, as an avid fan of local history and folklore.

We’ll go over the research which went into some of the individual characters first, before going on to the origins of the magical items in the story, and finally the Bone Baby itself.

Ape Boy

The Ape Boy in the first third of the story is a real character from Philadelphia-region legend. I hesitate to call him a “cryptid” due to his supernatural origins, but he is still seen occasionally to this day. I’ve written about him at length before in the essay linked below, and this probably won’t be the last time he shows up in one of my stories.

Mellow Brick Road

The Ape Boy of Tinicum and Red Dog Fox

Chester, Pennsylvania is the spot where William Penn first landed in North America, disembarking from his ship the Welcome on October 28, 1682. At the time, the town was known as Upland, and it was the most populous town in the new Pennsylvania colony by virtue of being the…

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4 years ago · 5 likes · ❄️ Pongo ❄️

tl;dr this gangly redheaded boy was bullied so viciously that he ran away into the swamps and turned into a Bigfoot. The End4.

For storytelling purposes, I transplanted his “habitat” a bit eastward into the Neck, which as stated was still really swampy at the time the story is set. Assuming the Ape Boy existed, I could see him having ventured over into South Philly at least occasionally, but from a purist folkloric standpoint this was a bit of artistic license on my part.

The main divergence from the real-life tale of the Ape Boy is he did not have a witch mother and is not known to have romanced any poor country girls. He just ran off into the woods and mutated into a Bigfoot-esque monsterman. I added all of that in as tragic backstory for the Bone Baby’s accursed existence.

The Ape Boy’s mother is just a typical fairy-tale witch, though Philadelphia does have a couple of real witch-stories- Mom Rinker, Margaret Mattson- which helped to lend a level of verisimilitude to this unnamed fictitious one.

Nathan and Samuel

Nathan was very straightforward to write- he’s just the typical, plucky child protagonist of folk and fairy tales the world over. A bit unsure of himself, but by the end of the story he’s confident and skilled enough to face the Bone Baby one-on-one.

Samuel required a bit of research into childrearing in early America. Firstly, this was set long before baby formula existed, so it was a bit of a hassle trying to figure out how he would be fed on the multi-day journey to Bristol without mother’s milk. The solution turned out to be pap.

Pap was formula-before-formula- a soft mush made out of bread or flour soaked in either milk or water, sometimes flavored with honey. It was delivered to the baby via a pap boat, which was basically just a gravy boat meant to be tipped directly into the baby’s mouth. Usually these were made of pewter or bone china, but wealthier families could have their cast from sterling silver. Nathan’s family, being on a lower rung of the socioeconomic ladder, likely would have used a pewter one, similar to the ones below:

Some further reading on pap and pap boats can be found here and here.

I was also uncertain about how colonial Americans carried babies around over long distances, and had to research this a bit. Apparently the English tradition brought over was swaddling, carrying the baby over one’s back in a grubby looking cloth sack or sling.

I much preferred the American Indian style papoose over such haphazard-looking sackcloths, and chose to have Samuel carried around in one of those instead. It made for a somewhat tighter narrative, with the papoose being an easily removable backpack rather than a complicated sling, and it also fit well with Nathan’s mother being in contact with the Lenape, whom she could conceivably have picked up the idea from. I don’t know if any real colonial American women ever did this- it seems improbable that none ever did- but it fit within the framework of the story.

Rattlesnake Joe

Rattlesnake Joe was based on several historical figures- chief among them being… Rattlesnake Joe, whom I read about in a book titled Forgotten Tales of Philadelphia, by Thomas & Edward White.

Joseph Martin, nicknamed Rattlesnake Joe, was a hermit who lived in the rugged ridge-country of Cameron County, Pennsylvania in the mid- to late-1800s, where he trapped the region’s abundant rattlesnakes to render them into snakeoil, which was used for medicinal purposes and as a mechanical lubricant. This mysterious old man would only ever come out of his mountain abode on rare occasions to sell his much-renowned snakeoil. We only have record of his existence due to one such trip he took to Philadelphia in 1882, disembarking a train at Broad Street Station looking to all the world like an antebellum version of Rip Van Winkle- his clothes thirty years out of date, his long white hair and beard all disheveled, and carrying nothing but an old tin can full of vials of amber rattlesnake oil.

The real Rattlesnake Joe was a teetotaler, and was also rumored to have once been very rich due to the profitability of his snakeoil business, only to lose it all when his sweetheart absconded with all his hard-earned treasure. I considered including a lost fortune and lost lover in the story to flesh out my fictional Rattle, but there simply wasn’t room for such backstory without interrupting the narrative flow.

Oddly, while following up on the blurb from Forgotten Tales of Philadelphia, I came across another Rattlesnake Joe- or maybe the same one, and one of the reporters just got his facts wrong? This one, identified as Joseph Hoffman of Jefferson County, Pennsylvania, was reported in November of 1882 as having visited the then-new Philadelphia Zoo, to donate a bunch of rattlesnakes he had captured over the years.

This Joe was not as much of a hermit as Martin, collecting the rattlesnakes with the aid of his brothers and a neighbor, and prior to this visit to Philadelphia had made his money not from the snakes’ oil, but by playing with them as a sideshow at county fairs. He was reported to have had iron nerve while handling them, and that’s all he said is needed to manage the reptiles- maintaining a cool confidence so as to not provoke their own fear. He did, however, say the sport might eventually result in his own death, and since there’s no followup article we’ll probably never know how things turned out for him.

Another rattlesnake-wrangler from Pennsylvania- it seems to have been something of a national pastime- was Rattlesnake Pete, from Erwinna, Bucks County. I learned about him from a blurb in Forgotten Tales of Pennsylvania, also by Thomas White. Pete was also an old hermit, who lived in a shack in the hills above Erwinna, alone save for his dog and a bunch of pet rattlesnakes which roamed freely around his shack.

According to an article in the New York Times, as a child Pete lived in Sussex County, New Jersey, where the rattlesnakes were “thicker than bees in honeytime,” so he had to learn real quick how to read their body language and kill them if necessary. He lost a friend to a snakebite, and nearly lost his sister and his own life in one hair-raising encounter where the pair had to contend with half a dozen rattlers at once while they were out picking berries. Later in life he learned how to tame rattlers, and had no fear whatsoever of his scaly pets, which he loved as dearly as his dog.

Followup research on Pete mostly led to dead-ends. Apparently he made a bit of business out of two caves he’d discovered on his property, one containing white clay and the other a big clot of ice- priceless in a time before refrigeration- but beyond this there were only two articles from the New York Times locked away behind paywalls.

One final Pennsylvania rattlesnake-wrangler was… another Rattlesnake Pete, this one from Oil City. His overall life story wasn’t that relevant to Rattle’s character- he became internationally famous running two very successful dime museums in Oil City and Rochester, New York- but his origin story inspired how I wound up introducing Rattlesnake Joe in my own tale:

He would later claim, that, while a boy hiking in the local hills, he had come upon an old Indian woman from the Seneca reservation. Dragging behind her on a rope a big dead rattlesnake, she explained to Pete how she would extract the fatty oil, which was used to treat rheumatism, stiff joints, even earache—among other afflictions. Impressed by the boy’s interest, she even gave him the snake’s skin. Pete later learned from the Indians how to capture the rattlers, and from the medicine men how to use them for various folk remedies.

- The Story of “Rattlesnake Pete” by Joe Nickell

These four figures composed the main “brew” of Rattle’s character. Aside from these real men of history, the characters of Puddleglum from Narnia and the Shaggy Man from The Road to Oz also were of notable influence in developing Rattle’s character, with his introduction containing a shoutout to the Shaggy Man specifically. Both of these odd, kindly loners are my favorite characters from their respective series, and it was a lot of fun writing my own version of such a character.

In hindsight, I do wish I had been able to include more backstory for the character, but regrettably there wasn’t anywhere to put it.

Magic & Talismans

The magic and talismans present in the story are all rooted in real legends and traditions.

Rattlesnake Joe mentions his rifle being “blest” by a powwower- this was not a reference to American Indian powwows, but rather to the Pennsylvania Dutch folk magic system of braucherei, also confusingly referred to in local vernacular as powwow. Among the Pennsylvania Dutch, the use of magic was highly structured and wasn’t considered always evil like in most other parts of Europe and America. There were good magic users, the braucherei/powwowers, while hexerei/witches were evil magic users. Brauchers regularly gave battle to hexers with… mixed results. I’ll certainly be returning to this magic system in future stories, as it’s criminally underexplored in fiction.

The idea of Rattlesnake Joe’s bullets being enchanted is also a real component of traditional American magical lore. There are at least two stories I’m aware of where blessed silver bullets were used in an attempt to destroy a witch- one by Loop Hill Ike up in northern Pennsylvania was successful, while another by Webb White in Crisfield, Maryland comically wasn’t. Both of these stories involved killing witches directly, but I figured it wouldn’t be that great a stretch to use enchanted bullets to destroy a monster created via a witch’s magic.

The biggest difference between my narrative and these two is that the real witch stories involved shooting an effigy of the witch first- Loop Hill Ike shot a voodoo doll fashioned after the witch’s likeness, while Web White shot a drawing of her. In my story, Nathan just shoots the Bone Baby directly. This was artistic license on my part.

Parenthetically, this was also my attempt to introduce firearms into a fantasy setting- I don’t understand why we still have basically no fantasy whatsoever with guns. There are plenty of ways to work firearms into a fantasy setting without removing one iota of magic, as I hope I’ve successfully demonstrated here.

Each of the three talismans Nathan’s mother5 gives him were inspired by real magical artifacts.

The Blue Bottle was based off of a real enchanted bottle carried around by an Irish “cunning woman” named Biddy Early. This bottle, which really was blue, was purportedly used to observe far-away events, almost to the point of comedy- it was said that if a traveler had come to meet Biddy, she would spy his approach in the bottle and go out to meet him halfway. The bottle had many other powers too, but for The Bone Baby’s purposes only one was necessary to the plot. The whole “and the bottle can only be used once by a muggle” thing was artistic license on my part.

The real Blue Bottle was never seen again after Biddy’s death, and a few different legends have sprung up around this- one version says that the bottle was on loan from the faeries, who took it back upon Biddy’s demise, while another claims that an irate priest hurled the “bewitched” bottle into a lake, where it waits to this day for someone to find it.

The Snakestone Amulet was an ammonite. Ammonite fossils were commonly unearthed in medieval Europe, and were called snakestones because they were believed to be proof of the actions of saints- for instance, Saint Patrick, or Saint Hilda of Whitby who allegedly turned a bunch of snakes to stone.

Ammonites were also used as talismans by North American Indian tribes, most commonly out in the “old west” region, which once was the shallow Western Interior Seaway. They went by many names- bacoritse to the Crow, kaittcolcooko to the Hopi, iniskim to the Blackfeet, etc.- and were used extensively in magical rituals and as talismans. Many of the chiefs at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, for instance, wore ammonite talismans to protect them from their enemies.

I’m not aware of any specific fossil-lore regarding ammonites among eastern Indian tribes, but you can find ammonites in Pennsylvania and New Jersey if you look in the right places, so it’s certainly not impossible for there to have been a legend or two about them. My thinking was that the ammonite talisman came from out west via long-distance trade networks- such a rare and unusual item would obviously be of high value, and it would make sense for Nathan’s superstitious English mother to trade for one. I considered this a cool way to “link” European and Amerindian fossil lore together.

Rattle’s knowledge of the true identity of the snakestone was artistic license on my part- I very much doubt any living person at the time had an inkling of how vastly ancient fossils truly were. I put that scene in there as a deconstruction-cum-reconstruction of magic. No, the ammonite is not magical because it was once a snake that was petrified by God in the Flood. Yes, the ammonite is magical because it is the sacred ghost of a created being that existed in this world long, long before us, preserved for us “as perfect[ly] as if a Divine hand had stamped [it] in yielding wax.”6

Finally, chalk is of course well-known for its “sealant” properties in magical lore and has appeared in a plethora of other media for the exact reason Nathan uses it. Smearing the circle ruining the enchantment is also something that appears in the lore, and that detail made for a delightfully tense climax.

Chalk is also technically a fossil- it is composed entirely of prehistoric marine microorganisms like plankton and diatoms that sank down to the bottom of the sea and were crushed over the ensuing eons into something we can use to draw on sidewalks or blackboards. I considered this another neat way of linking prehistory to folklore.

Ultimately, the tools Nathan uses to defeat the Bone Baby are also the bones of things, and his weapons prevail partly because they are an older and deeper and purer magic than what the witch used to create the Bone Baby.

All in all, this was the most fun part of the story to write- setting up specific rules for the usage of magic and then working within these confines was a riot, really enjoyed that challenge and think it turned out swell.

Real Bone Babies & Other Skeletal Horrors

Finally, the Bone Baby itself was inspired by a couple of grotesque medical conditions, the first of these being the aforementioned CT scan of the ossified fetus. That isn’t the first time such a thing happened- it’s common enough that such “stone babies” have their own medical term, lithopedions. The most recent one on record, per Wikipedia, was in 2020. The oldest known lithopedion was dated back to 1,100BC, and was discovered during an archaeological dig at a sinkhole in Texas7.

The condition is quite rare- only three hundred cases are known over the past four centuries of medical research. It requires several “just right” conditions to occur. One, lithopedions can only form during an abdominal pregnancy. This rare subtype of ectopic pregnancy- wherein the baby develops in the abdominal cavity completely outside of the uterus- has a roughly 1 in 11,000 chance of occurring. Then of these already small odds, less than 2% of these are predicted to result in lithopedion formation, because the fetus has to develop enough in this hostile environment that it is too large to simply be resorbed into the mother’s own body.

The lithopedion itself is the calcified remains of the fetus. The mother’s immune system reacts to it as a foreign intruder and basically transforms the deceased baby’s body into bone, to protect her from any septic infection that might be wrought by the decaying baby’s tissue.

What’s really creepy is women usually aren’t aware of having a lithopedion inside them for years to decades after. They’re often only detected accidentally, usually during X-ray or CT scans after complaints of persistent abdominal pain. On average, women carry lithopedions for 22 years before realizing something isn’t right, with a mean diagnosis age of 55. The oldest woman to have a confirmed lithopedion was a centenarian; nine women carried their calcified babies for over fifty years. There certainly have been many others which went completely undiagnosed, so there are caskets in cemeteries right now which, unbeknownst to any but God, contain two skeletons.

Also, several women with lithopedions went on to have several successful pregnancies too, after the lithopedion formed! That’s incredibly creepy! Imagine growing in the womb, listening to your mother’s heartbeat, learning her laugh before your eyes even opened, and the whole time you are blissfully unaware of the ossified grimace of your elder sibling leering at you through the thin uterine wall, envying the safety and comfort which they were so cruelly denied…

Another condition which inspired my description of the Bone Baby’s appearance is fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva. This absolutely dreadful genetic disease causes all connective tissues in a person- that’s the muscles, tendons, and ligaments- to slowly ossify. Your muscles and joints fuse into bone. It’s a terrifying and heartbreaking illness- life expectancy for victims is usually only around 40, and the victims will often try to find comfortable positions to spend the rest of their lives in once the disease reaches its dreadful conclusion.

The most famous victim of FOP is probably Harry Raymond Eastlack, who died of the disease when he was 39. He donated his skeleton to the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. I was regrettably unable to visit the museum in preparation for this story, but there are plenty of photos of him online which were very helpful to the visual design of the Bone Baby.

I didn’t want the Bone Baby to just be a menacing skeleton, like the ones so excellently portrayed by Ray Harryhausen in Jason and the Argonauts. I wanted the Bone Baby to be truly monstrous, and the disconcertingly ossified muscles and tendons of FOP was perfect to this end. It also enabled me to show what exactly the Bone Baby was doing with the baby bones it was stealing- growing more bone for itself!

Some other visual references for the Bone Baby’s design included the skeletonized witch Roleil from Fire & Ice, the Pale Man from Pan’s Labyrinth, and the Fair-Haired Child from Masters of Horror.

With all this in mind, this is how I imagined the Bone Baby looking:

The circumstances of the Bone Baby’s birth are of course reminiscent of another famous local legend, the Jersey Devil, with both originating in curses, both being born monstrous, and both immediately going on killing sprees.

The main difference is that the Jersey Devil’s curse was self-inflicted by his mother- he was her thirteenth child and, according to who’s telling the story, either when she found out she was pregnant again or in the midst of her labor pains she exclaimed “let this one be a devil!”, and that’s all she wrote. The Jersey Devil also, depending on the telling, either did or did not kill his mother8, but he most definitely did kill all of his siblings before flying up the chimney. Just his siblings though; he did not then go on a rampage against all the children of the region as my Bone Baby did.

And no, I have no interest in describing how the Bone Baby steals baby bones. I know you were dying to know the entire story, and the answer is no. I have my own idea of it, but whatever you’ve imagined is surely far worse.

Analysis

I loved writing this story. It was honestly the most fun I’ve had writing a story in a long time. Combining so many aspects of local history and folklore- both deeply passionate interests of mine- was a romp, and even though the finished story is far from the greatest thing I’ve ever written, I like it for what it is.

Specifically regarding its fairy tale style, I think in certain ways it’s an improvement upon The Severed Head, and in others a regression. I don’t know; it’s a very difficult style to pull off properly. It transitions from more traditional fairy tale prose at the beginning, with Patience and the Ape Boy, into more of a folk-tale style for the main action, and concludes in almost Baumian fashion at the celebration. That’s three different styles throughout. I’m not entirely satisfied that I blended them effectively, but the story stands well enough.

Most likely, I will not write another fairy tale for some time. None of my currently planned projects are fairy tales, but we’ll see. This one came to me all of the sudden, and so may another.

I hope- for those of you who made it this far- that this wasn’t too boring a read, or that it felt overly indulgent. I always enjoy when other writers and artists discuss their own techniques and inspirations, so I figure there’s a small chance you guys might enjoy hearing a bit about mine.

That’s all. You can go home now.

It was just after the conclusion of the hardest season in my career as a fossil collector, that being the summer of 1906, when my team conducted excavations in the Permian Red Beds of north-central Texas on behalf of Professor Skinner of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. The briefest summary of our efforts that thirsty summer is in order-

After an initial struggle simply to locate the beds- all the locals knew was that “old bones” were to be found “over in the brakes”- we were rewarded after many days of fruitless search with a wealth of remains from the great pelycosaurs and batrachians which populated the world in that bygone era. The bones were mostly weathered and broken, like everything else in that redrock hell, but it was a blessing to recover a nearly complete skeleton of the sail-backed carnivore Dimetrodon, sans a few of the caudal vertebrae which the chance intersection of a wagon had deigned to pulverize long before our arrival. The skull and forequarters of the giant batrachian Eryops were also recovered in fair condition. Under the conditions which we labored, it beggared belief that the Red Beds had ever been able to support such semiaquatic beasts, and the sedimentary ghosts of that vanished swamp seemed to rear up to taunt us wearing ragged gowns of whorled gypsum and chains of banded sandstone. That summer the mercury often rose to 113 even in shade, and there was nary a dewdrop to be found in all that hopeless searing land. In the evening, the fuming rays of the sun made the plains appear as though they were being blasted by fire in the oven of some wrathful ogre who wished to wring us out of our every last bead of sweat.

When the season was mercifully through, we had catalogued over two hundred specimens, though of these perhaps only thirty or so were fit for any sort of public display at the Academy. The remainder, it is my understanding, are now sequestered down in those vast archival halls of the museum’s cellars, to be studied by generations of paleontologists yet unborn. For this, the suffering of that season was a worthwhile sacrifice. I and the other diggers endured much, but whatever losses we may have incurred will have been paid in full by the benefits our discoveries shall bestow upon the future.

After seeing our precious cargo off at the station in Seymour, the digging team at once disbanded. Some of the diggers remained in Seymour to drink away their earnings; others scattered to the four winds, back to their farms and families. Moorehead, the other Academy collector in attendance, decided to take the next train to Fort Worth to visit a martial brother of his who lately had been promoted to Colonel.

As for myself, I decided to “hitch-hike” my way up to Omaha, to see some of the recently closed frontier which had hitherto remained unknown to me. The only possessions I carried were a canteen, a soldier’s ruck of food and bedding, and an old Lakota medicine pouch I had purchased at one of the agencies during a dig in Kansas some years back, which was stitched together from buffalo hide and small enough to be worn comfortably as a necklace, indeed to fit comfortably in the palm of one’s hand. The ruck was ragged, the pouch tasseled in sinews, and the canteen in perpetual need of filling.

Alas, for all the romantic descriptions I had heard as a boy, I found the prairie to be decidedly lacking in character, unless one were to interpret its own desolate emptiness as its genius loci. The sights of interest were limited in the main to rudely constructed fenceposts and errant masses of tumbleweeds which had of late replaced the swelling herds of bison and pronghorn.

Indeed, my journey offered no evidence of these latter beasts ever having existed. The buffaloes’ great migration trails had been rubbed smooth after decades of dust driven by the amnestic winds; though here and there I suspected a well-worn wagon rut might have been an appropriated path once trod by the rough, sharp, cleansing clip of quaternion hooves in their millions. Their legendary wallows, where they rubbed themselves clean of flies, and the stage upon which so many of the great last stands of the Indian Wars had played out, had likewise been infilled by sand and sharp-leafed gourds which had long since shriveled and blown away in the drought, leaving behind only shallow, plowed-over bowls to rumple the plains, as though the place had been ravaged by some titanic artillery barrage and then settled by a steady fall of snow. Nor were any of the fabled tzompantli skull-pyramids left behind from when the great hunt was through- those had all been picked clean years before and sold to factories to be rendered into fertilizer.

Indeed, the Red Beds, always sparse, were revealed during that first nighttime stroll to be as desolate as the maria of the risen Moon, invoking mirrors of Imbrium, Crisium, Nubium, but not Tranquillitatis, not ever again on this broken side of the sky; and those worldly plains I trod were infinitely more unsettling in their silence. The drought which by day burnt the land raw at night rendered it a frigid tundra, and it was with lonely consternation that I pitched a humble hobo-tent upon the roadside to rest for the night. To the west lay the Caprock, to the east the Brazos. And somewhere in all that deserted scrub was a speck known as Joseph Yarnall, huddling round a fire dim as any of the pennycandle stars stippling the black canvas above.

I was cursed with insomnia that night, and so to pass the time between stokings and rekindlings, I took the medicine pouch from my neck and examined its contents by touch alone, as if reading the brailled missives of worlds long dead. It contained, like most medicine pouches, a plethora of biotic and geologic odds and ends- the downy “breath feathers” of an indeterminate bird, a pair of contour feathers from a prairie falcon, a riversmooth moss agate which seemed to encrystal its own secret vegetal world, a fox’s tooth, and, most relevant to my own profession, a smattering of fossils. The Indians, in their simple way, considered fossils to be magical talismans, and this pouch held three- a horn coral of Carboniferous vintage, a near-pristine Rhaeboceras ammonite no bigger than a thumb’s nail, and one of the isolated sections of a Baculites compressus which tend to calve off as the shell erodes.

All of these pulverized bits were scientifically useless, yet I held onto them in the knowledge that, though they were but the scraps of worlds long vanished, they nevertheless were each and all unique fingerprints of our Creator. No matter how broken a nub the coral was, or how shattered the Baculites might be, there will never again be another made upon this Earth. For this, they are as blessed to me as any of the saintly relics venerated among Catholics, and provided me with comfort on many a lonely night in the wilderness.

In the morning, I set out into the denuded country with the sere sun glowing on my back like a desk lamp while the winds carried on their wings clouds of dust. As I walked, my trained eye could scarcely help but notice the geology of the bloodbay hills surrounding me, the wrinkled strata faulted and turned up at all angles like the building blocks of a Titan child. The prevailing color was Indian red, though many of the outcrops were capped by greenish sandstones and white ledges of gypsum. None of them were decent localities for fossils. These observations, I believe, were what kept me from going mad during those long hours of the morning, as the ground began to burn through my shoes, and the cooler dawn breeze changed to the Devil’s own breath.

By midday I was coming to the dregs of my canteen, and I prayed I could keep apace to the town of Fulcher seven miles ahead. A dense patch of prickly pears bloomed from the gulch beside the road, sucking up red mud puddled long ago by buffalo, lately cattle. The cattle in that country had it very hard that season- many of them, for moisture, were forced to subsist on the prickly pear, leaving their mouths and tongues pocked by putrefying, pus-filled sores from where the spines had stitched them. During our excavations, we’d often been forced to share with cattle the foul water that collected in artificial basins made by ranchers, for in the red beds there is no natural surface water, nor any wells or springs of any kind, owing to the porous nature of the soil. Any water collected in tanks is immediately fouled by windblown clay, becoming thick as cream with the stuff, and of course it is made all the fouler by virtue of the beasts who will drink and wallow in it in turns. It made me long dearly for the clear wells of the East, but alas, si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more; si fueris alibi, vivito sicut ibi. And in that country, the common wisdom was to drink your water first, and taste it afterwards.

Fresh water was certainly on its way, though. Texan weather is a fickle thing, and one may become attuned to its whims by the dizzying changes in air pressure preceding a storm. Sure enough, when I turned back down the road towards the wallow-cratered country I had just transited, I could see the dread beginnings of a norther rumbling in over the low hills. Lightning flared deep within that leaden front like some dread foetus stirring in a charcoal womb, but the clouds were still twenty miles behind me yet, so I perceived I would have more than enough time to reach Fulcher if I traveled at a brisk pace. The fitful gusts even aided me in this, for the wind was both at my back and much cooler than the day had hitherto been.

About five miles outside the town I came upon a shack, situated atop a low rise some half mile back away from the road. The place seemed abandoned, the walls visibly brindled by dryrot even from a distance, yet what first drew my attention to it was the thin coil of smoke rising from its chimney like a phantom’s pennon. As I drew nearer, I could see that the place should by all rights have been abandoned, as numerous clapboards hung askance and the sheetbark roof sagged ominously, such that the dwelling appeared to have a broken back. A few thick branches bleached white as ribs held up a porch awning, under which was situated a broken rocking chair, a spare wagon wheel, and other miscellaneous rubbish. But my approach revealed more hints of habitation- the laundry was hung out to dry on the line, and a well-used wagon was tied to those skeletal porch posts.

It still did not make an inviting place to take sanctuary, and I was intending to press on to Fulcher until a blast of ice-chipped air stung my back, and the noonday sun was snuffed like a candle under a bell of blackness. I spun slowly round to see the vast norther cloud now hanging almost directly over me, having advanced with far more rapidity than I’d imagined in my dreadest nightmare. As that chill walked the ladder of my spine, I understood then why the people of the southlands speak of them as they do, and dread their coming. Almost as soon as my eyes met upon that ponderous ellipsone, my arms were flecked with the first heavy spittles of rain, and I took off running towards the shack. I was a much younger man then, and had sprinted in college, so the half mile journey was made in scarcely more than two minutes of leg-pounding. Had I been racing a horse, I am confident I could have overtaken it.

The tumbleweeds skeltered before me like frightened animals as I reached the shack, and there I was confronted with the hermit who resided therein. He was a mummy of a man, the flesh drawn taut round his bones and sinews, with skin as gray and papery as a wasp nidus and rheumy blue eyes pooled in rims of halfmad scarlet. He hobbled about in a frenzy, attempting to remove his clothes from the line, cursing the storm and every other storm like it and the One who made them all from the first. His right leg had a pronounced limp, and his fingers were stiffened with arthritis. When he first took notice of me, it was merely to jab a knobby finger and bark a command- “Well don’t jes stand there, boy! Help me get me britches down offa’ this rope!”

I obliged him at once, throwing his laundry- which was, despite being on the line, still quite soiled- into an ancient wicker basket, whereupon I began hastily introducing myself while hoisting up the load to carry it inside for the old man. Before I could get out a sentence, however, the old anchorite cut me off-

“I s’pose you’ve come to beg my kinderness to take shelter from the norther?”

I bristled somewhat at his rude frankness, but held my temper at bay long enough to meekly admit that this was indeed so.

The man spat a putrid wad of tobacco juice onto the dirt before us, not quite in my direction and yet not quite away from me either, adding his own small contribution to the storm whose drops grew bigger and wetter with each ticking second. He looked up at the fulgurous sky for a spell, then addressed me while seeming yet to speak to some loftier being midst the churning clouds- “Ah, poppycock. Well, seein’s to how I doubt you’ll reach Fulcher ‘fore the storm breaks, I reckon the good Lord would want me to take you in. C’mon in, I was jes about to fix supper.”

So saying, he spat again onto the ground before us, and turned back to his dwelling. I thanked him profusely, then asked- “Have you lived here long?”

“‘Bout fifteen years now,” he replied, already hobbling up the porch steps and into the shack. “Name’s Hedgepeth.”

“A pleasure,” I replied, introducing myself properly and, after cradling the laundry basket securely in one arm, offering my hand. Hedgepeth had the firm shake of a man who seemed like he’d rather have his hands wrapped round your neck. “And is Hedgepeth your first name, or your last?”

“Hedgepeth ain’t enough?” he asked crossly.

So much for our introduction. I shall not bore the reader with the trivialities of how this gaffe was repaired, and how we resumed our cordiality enough for the old man to invite me to eat at his table with him. Nor shall I dwell upon the ramshackle construction or spartan furnishings of his abode. Suffice to say, they would not have been enough to outfit a priory. His main amenities were a dry stone fireplace, over which was suspended a simmering, weatherbeaten cauldron of hunter’s stew, and a kitchen counter which wrapped round in an L-bend the back quarter of his shack, covered in anonymous old cutlery and kitchenware.

Instead, I shall take the liberty of advancing the narrative roughly one hour ahead, to the time when we had seated ourselves to a supper of jackrabbit stew. The norther by this time had well broken over us, and the wind shrieked and wailed and the thunder growled and gnashed and the rain fell hard upon the empty plains. The drops must each have been the size of golfballs to make the sound they did as they landed, else Hedgepeth’s scoliotic roof- revealed upon entering to be composed only of mud and woven limbs- was even flimsier than my worst fears. Nevertheless, he seemed untroubled by the pluvial racket which threatened to drown us at any moment. He was a singularly coarse man who kept an old tin watering pail as a spittoon beside his chair, and if ever he was bothered or unbothered by some turn of events, he would merely grumble- “Poppycock.”

Despite the peril of the storm and the claustrophobic confines of the shack- Hedgepeth shuffled with his head bowed to clear the ceiling, and I had to bend nearly double to fit in the room- we soon got to talking, over water served in beaten pewter cups which was not as foul with mud as I had become begrudgingly accustomed to in the previous months, owing to Hedgepeth collecting rainwater in a cistern- the most modern infrastructure apparent in his dwelling place. Nevertheless, the infernal red clay had infiltrated it, necessitating boiling it with pulped cactus leaves. This acidly sour liquid is not a tempting drink despite being clarified, yet it was all that was on offer and I drank it with vigor. My canteen I had the foresight to leave out upon the porch with the lid open to fill directly from the generous sky.

As we dined, the roof creaked and groaned like the hull of a ship in a tempest. Hedgepeth coughed as he drank the water, perhaps himself not used to it even after all the lonely years he’d spent in that shack. He cleared his throat loudly and asked me- “What’s brung you out to Texas, boy?”

“I am a fossil collector, for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia,” I replied proudly. “Our season has just concluded, and I’ve decided to travel the country over winter rather than returning directly to the east.”

“Ah, poppycock. Are you one of them fellers who goes round picking up rocks fer’ a livin’?” Hedgepeth asked in his crude way, though this particular question had a note of concern in its delivery. He’d leaned forward slightly in his chair- not aggressively, and yet there was an unmistakable sort of anxious alertness to his posture, a willingness to spring up and fight or flee at an instant’s notice.

“Well, yes, but not just any rocks,” I chuckled, “Fossils. That is, the bones and shells and other such remains of prehistoric lifeforms.”

“I see,” Hedgepeth said, in a tone that conveyed he wouldn’t have cared if I were collecting individual grains of sand. He leaned his elbows upon the table and clasped his hands together, and looked down at them for a long while, kneading his rimpled thumbs against each other. When he looked back at me, his countenance had changed completely- there was genuine curiosity in those old eyes of his, along with a half-concealed worry peering out just behind it. “You ever heard of a calling stone?”

I confessed that I had not.

“Ah,” the old man replied, disappointed. “It’s a redskin term. Blackfeet, mostly. They’d pick up these bits of stone- queer little bits, ain’t no bigger than a pair of dice but shaped jes’ like a buffalo- and named ‘em calling stones. Said they could summon the buffalo with them, if ever they was thin on the ground and the tribe was wantin’ for game.”

I replied that I had never heard of any such stone, though my geological purview was rather limited to what was strictly necessary to the pursuit of paleontology. Hedgepeth sighed, at first sounding disappointed, but then he leaned back comfortably in his seat once more.

“The reason I ask,” he said, “is I had a run-in with some of them callin’ stones when I was a youth, and I ain’t too keen on ever seeing another one, if you fancy my lingo.”

I did not, in truth, fancy his lingo, and begged him to elaborate. “I’ve never heard of such a stone, but surely you must have a reason for detesting them so?”

“Detest ain’t the word,” Hedgepeth replied. “I fear ‘em, boy. I fear ‘em as any man ought to fear God Hisself. Let me back up aways for you. It was back in December of ‘85. December the eighth, to be precise about my dates. It don’t matter none in the end, but you’re the first and most probably the last person I’ll ever be tellin’ this tale to, so I want to tell it right. I know to you it’ll all sound as phony as a fish climbing a tree on the thirtieth of February, but I’ll swear on a tower of Bibles it’s the dyin’ truth.”

“I understand completely,” I replied, making at this point a conscious effort to commit every detail of his tale to memory. There was something in his tone, even at the very outset of his story, that told me Hedgepeth considered it a matter of great import, perhaps the only thing he considered more important than himself, and this alone made it noteworthy.

“Well, let me back up quite a few years, cause it all really was fated at Appomattox. See, when Lee laid down his sword and the war was over, I had nothing left and nowheres to go. Sherman had burnt up my family’s farm, and I was never too keen on a’hoein’ nohow. But I knowed how to use a gun. So I set out west to claim my little share of that ‘manifest destiny’ all the top bananas in the government was talkin’ about at the time. At Saint Louis, I fell in with a group of buffalo runners heading off into Blackfeet country and that was the whole start of it.

“See, them buffaloes was walkin, bellerin’ sacks of gold. An individual hide in good condition would fetch you around three dollars and a half, at any of the Missouri agencies. We tried to stay in those areas cause they was closer to the herds, but you could fetch five dollars a hide in Saint Louis. Took the steamboats down there more than a few times, when we was feelin’ particularly proud of ourselves. In the best years right after the war, we never took fewer than a hundred a day, so our skinners would be carving out twenty-five robes a day each.”

“You shot a hundred a day?” I asked incredulously. It seemed impossible that the empty lands I had traversed ever supported so many animals that such slaughter was feasible.

“That’s what I said,” Hedgepeth, who was not in the habit of repeating himself, replied, “Could’ve shot more, but that would’ve been a waste of buff, and ammunition, which was more important. And it didn’t even make a dent in the herds. The ground was carpeted in buffaloes out there. It was like God planted them instead of grass. We was after cows and yearlings, mostly. Had the softest robes. Split between all of us, I was rakin’ in about six thousand dollars a month. Now, after expenses my net came down a mighty discount, but still, that’s more than I could make in a year back east, boy. That’s more than the President was makin’.”

“That’s more than I make in a year right now,” I replied wryly.

He chuffed indignantly. “Anyhow, it was easy money. Buffaloes was pretty stupid, at least for those first years. So long as you snuck up on ‘em alright, they’d jes stand there waitin’ for you to line up on ‘em, almost willingly. Shootin’ them was the easiest thing in the world, no different than shootin’ a beef critter in the barnyard. All you had to do was wound the herd leader and the rest would start millin’ around her waitin’ to be shot, like there was really a lamb inside their beastly heads. All we really had to worry about was other hide runners and sometimes the redskins. We got into quite a few fights with other runners, over who had the right to a herd, especially at the height of things when the whole country went buffalo-wild. It was like a gold rush- men left their jobs, businesses, wives and children to get into buffalo runnin’, over ten thousand men of all walks, savory and unsavory alike. Lost a few boys in those tussles; I took an ounce of lead in my shoulder once, but I made that bastard eat an ounce in the gut so I consider us even now.”

I held my tongue, but Hedgepeth must have seen the consternation on my face, for he waved his hand flippantly and leaned back in his chair.

“Ah, poppycock. It was a slay or be slain sorter business. And for ten good, long years we jes kept shootin’. Every year between November and March, for that’s when the furs were in their prime. Nobody ever thought they’d run out, cause there was so many of ‘em. We’d shoot till our rifle barrels was so hot the cleanin’ patches sizzled in the bore and more’n once I burnt my fingerprints off from just touchin’ the steel. We was just carvin’ our way through the herds. My shooting shoulder is still yellow and blue from all that, right down to the elbow. But I didn’t mind it none. It was fun, and I was good at it. I was good at takin’ life, whether it be Yankees or buffaloes.”

Here he stopped and coughed, checking his own excitement at recounting his memories before continuing- “Had their hides pegged out over the ground so thick that if you flew over in a balloon you’d think you were near a town. We shipped ‘em out in huge caravans, tons and tons of ‘em on ox wagons. It was like an ancient system of barter for in exchange we received our own wagon trains of lead to keep the slaughter going. The meat we left to rot. Drew in the wolves and the bears and the coyotes and the magpies and the eagles all. At night, the sounds… it reminded me of that line in Isaiah, the one about the wild beasts of the desert gnashing and snarling in the ruins of the nations. I shot at them from our campfire, to keep my aimin’ sharp and for something to do. Got bounties off them, too. They scarce noticed, so hogwild were they for the meat.

“It didn’t last, though. That’s the darndest thing about it. It jes didn’t last. Let me tell you something, boy- when I first set out there, I crested a ridge and laid out before me was an ocean of buffaloes, all surgin’ and swayin’ jes like waves, just a sea of black shaggy beasts rollin’ like breakers at our feet. Seven years later I crested that same hill and they was all gone. Nothing but bones left, painting the prairies white to the limit of my sight, and my eyes were a good deal better back in those days. I don’t know how many hides reached the railhead in total. I heard there was thirty million of ‘em once. They’re all gone now. There’s nothing left. Not a robe, not a bone. Nothin’ but a memory in the mind of God. Even their trails and wallows is all turned under the plow, now. The babes born into tomorrow’s world won’t even believe there ever was such a thing as a buffalo. I can see it even in your eyes- part of you can’t believe it either. But nobody will miss them. How can you miss what you never done knew?”

He stopped here and sighed heavily. He folded his hands once more and looked at them for a long while, as if by some arcane palmistry he might be able to glean what twenty-one years of reflection had not granted him.

“I want you to understand somethin’ boy. We done all that for a reason. I know a lot of folks back east are gettin’ all sappy now about the plight of the buffaloes. But you have to understand that it had to be done. Them buffalo hides, they went to good use- they made leather belts, miles and miles of ‘em, for use in factories and wagon suspensions. All the things needed for civilization to move forward, to conquer the west. And it made that possible in other ways, too. It’s been said the Army wanted the redskins’ commissary destroyed. Every buffalo we killed, that was one more buffalo the Indians couldn’t eat and make their tools and clothes out of. So it was either the buffaloes went, or the redskins went. See?”

“Did the Army pay you to kill the buffalo?” I asked, for in the papers I had read claims to this effect and now had the chance to get an affirmative answer.

“Never saw a dime from ‘em,” Hedgepeth said bitterly. “We wasn’t always on speakin’ terms with the soldiery. That damned fool Sheridan even wanted to keep some buffaloes around for them Injuns on the reservations. Poppycock, every last syllable of it. No, no, the Army never paid us. But I’d’ve done it for free. Any one of them families killed by the Comanches was worth more to civilization than all the millions of buffalo that ever roamed from the Pecos to the Platte. They had to die, them buffaloes. They had to.”

“Money was no object to you then, I presume?” I asked.

He sighed frustratedly. “Sure, I needed money. Sure I shot ‘em up and made a handsome buck for it. But what was good for me was good for America.”

“America, at present, seems to differ quite markedly with your viewpoint,” I said.

Hedgepeth grunted, his eyes leveling on mine with icy hatred. “That’s easy for America to say now, now that all the bleedin’s dispensed with. Now that there ain’t no damned Comanches runnin’ loose on the plains. Now that there ain’t no more buffalo fightin’ with cattle for pasture.”

“Oh, come now,” I said, “This is a big continent. Surely there’s room for-”

“Boy, them buffaloes done served their destiny. Even if we’d left some, then what? His pasture would all have been plowed up for corn and wheat and oats and schoolhouses and grange halls. His home is gone. His time is gone. He gave the Indians everything they needed, but he don’t fit in no more with civilization. The minute the Pilgrim fathers touched that rock up yonder in Plymouth he was a misfit. So he had to go.”

“Granted,” I replied, at this point taking it upon myself to play attorney for the vanished race, “But could it not be argued that the world has been left bereft by their absence? After all, it was God, not man, who put them here- they were His creatures, not ours… they and the pigeon and the elk and the egret.”

“God made us master of ‘em,” Hedgepeth spat, “Says right there, Genesis chapter one page one- let Man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and the fowl of the air and over all the beasts of the earth. Dominion, boy. We were a’fixed here to be kings, don’t you see? It was always to be whatever we made of it.”

“Kings, perhaps,” I replied, “But if the beasts are to be our subjects, then isn’t it true we owe some responsibility to them as well? Or do you seriously believe we have no duties whatsoever in our governance of Creation?”

“None beyond those strictly required to make a harvest and a dime, boy,” Hedgepeth replied. “Poppycock. Oh, sure, you miss the buffaloes, but would you’ve given up the west for ‘em? Would any of you have given up your wagons and blankets and coats to keep ‘em here on God’s earth? Would you have done any different, if you had been in my place? Out of work and strapped for cash and with no skill in this life other than what wisdom you could bestow from the barrel of a gun? Three dollars and a half a hide was a pretty bargain to fetch this entire continent for you! It’s cause of me that you can dig up your rocks in peace without havin’ to worry about catchin’ an arrow in the lung! Hell, boy, I deserve medals for what I done, not this damned hovel!”

He banged his fist on the table at this last remark, and was quiet for awhile while the storm outside keened over the empty plains. When he spoke again, his voice was much quieter, and I struggled to hear him over the racket of the storm-

“Maybe some. Maybe some, we should’ve left. I wanted to live a little higher on the hog. That’s God’s truth, and I won’t deny it. And when that money started coming in, I just kept hog-climbin’ until I made it to the top. And when I finally got there, I suppose there wasn’t anything left no-how, for anyone who might’ve wanted to climb up after me. I suppose maybe that’s the way it was.”

I looked around the shack Hedgepeth claimed as his kingdom, and thought back to the desolate, cratered land I had transited to arrive here. I cleared my throat. “It certainly is quite a top you’ve made for yourself.”

My remark sailed over his head. He replied with greater animation, “Oh, it was great while it lasted. All that money meant two things- women and booze, and not in that order neither. You might see an old man before ye’ now, but once upon a time I was known in every cathouse and saloon from Billings to Sheridan, and was banned outright from even enterin’ the town of Forsyth. That’s how infamous my name was, back in those days. Back in the good days, before that last hunt…”

His mood again became somber. “That last hunt is what all I’ve been building up to here. This was in December of 1885, as I mentioned, near Carnegie Hill, right off the Niobrara in Nebraska. All the buffaloes north and south of that point was gone, gone like God never spoke ‘em out of the ground. But we had a hunch there might be a few left in the pine scrub out in that country, and we wanted to go git our five dollars worth of each hide.

“Sure enough we found ‘em- a herd of ten; nine cows and one big grizzled old bull who was in charge. They was wild, them buffaloes, and cunnin’ like foxes. They knowed we was after them and once we started chasin’ ‘em they led us down the Niobrara for damn near fifteen, twenty miles, tryin’ every trick they had to git away. Led us into damn near every draw and canebrake up the Niobrara. They knowed where every mire and scree-slope was precisely, and each time one of us got bogged down we’d all have to stop and that little herd would get farther away. Bill Winston lost his horse entirely, fell and broke its neck in a prairie dog hole, and poor Bill looked as if he’d been run through an accordian factory. Had to waste on near half an hour getting’ him resaddled on a fresh horse. By that time the herd was more than five miles off. But we was tenacious as bulldogs and got back on ‘em real quick. They was our ticket, see, to liquor and women. Thirty hides were waitin’ for us like sacks of silver and we jes didn’t wanna cut ‘em loose. Besides, catchin’ up was no issue- buffaloes had short legs and top-heavy bodies, so they could only run two-thirds as fast as a good horse; givin’ him a quarter-mile start, you could catch a buffalo before your horse had to call on its second wind. So it was only a matter of time til we caught up with ‘em.

“Finally, I hollered out that we needed to be more strategic about this. Up to that point we’d been pursuing them more or less in a straight line, but now them buffaloes was leading us into some badlands, a real hardscrabble valley. So I hollered out that I’d move up to the rim of the valley and try to head them off, and for the rest to drive the herd hard as they could to exhaust them. That did the trick.

“I found a good spot at a fork in the gulch, where the buffalo would have to slow down a pace to decide which way they was a’goin’. First buffalo came round the bend, I put a round twixt between her eyes and she bowled right over like a train wreckin’ itself. That worked to our advantage, cause then all the rest of the buffaloes started trippin’ over her when they came round the bend. That was how I shot my last ten buffalo. For all I know they was the last buffalo any man will ever shoot.”

He heaved out another sigh, and stared long into the stovefire.

“One of ‘em was the bull. Big boy, the biggest I’d ever seen. Found out later from one of the skinners that he’d been shot twice before, which accounts for how he was so darned clever. The dust from the rest of the herd stung my eyes and threatened to botch my aim, but nonetheless I drilled him in the lung from about a hundred yards. But he kept a’comin, so I shot him again. I swear I hit him that time in the shoulder, but he kept chuggin’ on as indomitable as a locomotive. He charged right past me, so close I could’ve reached out and touched him if I weren’t so busy tumblin’ out of his way.

“I wanted to go right on after him, but the boys was already busy puttin’ down the last of the cows and we all agreed that my shot would do him in sooner or later, so we’d jes go and pick him up in the mornin’. It was gettin’ dark around this time anyhow, so we pitched our tents up on top of the gulch and fixed our fire and fell fast asleep, tryin’ to ignore the reek of buffalo musk that fumed out of the draw. The skinners worked for a few hours longer then they joined us and fell asleep too.”

Here, Hedgepeth paused to take a swig of the bitter cactus-water. He swished it round his mouth like a wash, and then unapologetically spit into his pail.

“I woke up before dawn. I don’t to this day know what it was. Normally I was one of the last ones up, and only got up at all due to receivin’ a boot in the belly. But that mornin’ was cold, and I woke up with a shiver on my skin… and in my soul. When I opened my eyes to that blue mornin’ right there before me was a red Indian. Squattin’ down, just starin’ at me. He looked kinder like a statue. Natcherly I jumped up out of my skin like a cricket, but as soon as I’d thrown my blanket aside that Injun had a blowgun up to his mouth and he shot me right in the leg. Well I was fixin’ to start cussin’ up a storm cause, in the first place, it stung like a sonofagun, and in the second place I thought he’d poisoned me. Well, he did sorter, but I’ll get into all that. Anyhow, before I could get a swear out that Injun had his one hand coverin’ over my mouth and the other pressin’ me into the ground, like he wanted to shove me into the maw of the earth. Then he started talkin’.

“Said his name was Gnaski. Said some other stuff too- I don’t in truth remember all of it verbatim. But the gist of it was he’d come to avenge that buffalo herd. He said there was no use in fighting him no-how, cause he’d already done it. That blowgun, he said he’d used it to sting me with the bone of what he called an unk-teg-ee. I asked about that later, it’s supposed to be some kind of monster that lived way back yonder in time, when all that land was underwater. I don’t know that I believe that, even now, but I don’t know that I don’t believe in it neither. There was a lot of strange bones on them plains, constantly poking and crumbling out of the draws and coulees. I suppose they was all left over from the Flood.”

I did not reply that what he’d witnessed were the remains of a far older world than he knew. Hedgepeth shook his head and spat another wad into his pail.

“He said he’d put a curse on me, for what I done. That the whole ground cried out in pain when I done shot that bull, and to appease the bull’s spirit, my life from then on would be cursed. Every penny I earned would be dust in my hands, and I’d be stricken down with every affliction a man can suffer. I’d toil for nothin’ and have all my riches changed back into rags, that I’d be an outlaw unto God. Them’s all his words. He said- and I recall this distinctly- that he never knew me. For a long time I thought he meant hisself, but I realized not too long ago- bout five year back- that he didn’t. He meant God. He meant God never knowed me.

“He finished all this with the rest of his curse. He reached into the medicine pouch he kept round his neck, and pulled out a handful of callin’ stones. He held them right up to my eyes so I could get a good look at them. Then he told me what they was, and said to me that when I next laid eyes on such a callin’ stone, the spirit of the buffalo would come for me. They’d come to claim their vengeance for all those of ‘em that I’d shot and skinned over the years. Then he done threw down the callin’ stones onto me, and they hit my chest and belly all over and wheresoever they landed it felt like I got pelted by buckshot. Then he let go of my mouth, stood up, and turned to go.”

“Natcherly, I was madder than a hornet in a pickle jar at this point, and I immediately rolled over to grab my Sharps. I was good with a Sharps, real good. I’d already slid the bolt and had it ready by the time I finished rolling back to a sitting stance, but when I leveled my sights on that Injun, he was gone. Gone like he’d never existed. I started hollerin’ to wake up the camp and we looked for him for about half the mornin’, me limpin’ like a lame dog on account of my leg. We never found so much as a hair of him. We did find the bull, though. What was left of ‘im, anyhow. All that was left was the great big head, with blood clotted round the nose and mouth. It were painted red on one side and yellow on the other, with a red and yeller rag tied onto one horn, and four notches carved into the other. Laid up before it was one fresh-boiled shoulder blade, which is how we knew he’d been shot before. All about that head were moccasin tracks; we could tell it was from jes one Injun, but the trail went away real quick, like he’d disappeared mid-step.”

Again Hedgepeth shook his head, only this time, he heaved out a deep, sorrowful sigh. I perceived it was becoming a habit of his.

“After that, my life pretty much ended. None of the Injun scouts wanted anything to do with me. Kiowa, Crow, Arikara, didn’t matter. They all steered well clear. Said I was bad medicine. Without guides it was next to impossible to find any buffalo. There were so few left, by then… Once the buffalo dried up, I tried turning my hand to other pursuits- first I tried shooting pronghorn, but the bastards was too fast for me. Them buggers don’t even run, they float. Second they get a whiff of you, they’re gone. What else? No luck at prospecting; all it got me was this here scar on my cheek, from a man who’d staked his claim and was willing to assert it at knifepoint. Couldn’t ride a horse, thanks to the leg. That wrote off ropin’ and cow-punchin’. Gold pannin’ in the Gila went alright for awhile, til the Clooney gang came in and pushed us freelancers out of the business. I even tried wolf-baiting, but they were already real thin on the ground by the time I started at that. And then there just weren’t anything left for me to try. Found my way out here and bought this place with my last dollar, and been here ever since.”

“All by yourself?” I asked, feeling a twinge of sympathy twisting itself in my heart, even despite my utter distaste for the life this man had led.

“Out here, yes. Had a girl, once. I mean a real, refined lady, not some cathouse lay. Name was Rebecca and I done loved her. She was always what I had in mind, for what lay at the end of my huntin’ days- a beautiful girl, a big house, and me in my silken britches. Met her in St. Louis and told her to wait for me, and we wrote letters back and forth for a few months like we was little kiddies in love. I still went to the cathouses, but my mind was always a’fixed on her. After that last hunt though, I didn’t write her back for awhile. Figured she’d be understandin’, and she was for a couple of letters. When I finally got back to St. Louis that April she’d forgot all about me. Had shacked up with some feller from the east. After that I moved across the country, makin’ what work I could make. Last few years I’ve been repairin’ shoes for a dime apiece.” With a sad sort of wit, he added, “Sometimes I take my money outta the jar and rub them dimes together tryin’ to make ‘em produce quarters, but I ain’t had no such luck yet.”

I was unsure what to say in response to this remarkable, rather improbable sounding tale. If it were meant to be an entertaining yarn, the old hunter certainly did not show it. He’d told it all in total sincerity, and his somber mood afterwards reflected that Hedgepeth at least believed it to be true.

“I’m sorry,” I replied, not knowing what else to say. I cleared my throat. “You believe this curse to be genuine?”

“With all my soul, boy.” Hedgepeth replied. “How could I not? It sure left me with a string of bad luck, when the day before all had been smooth sailing.”

“Many a man has fallen far from what he perceived as his zenith,” I replied, trying to assuage him of his superstitions. It did not have the intended impact.

“You don’t believe me.” he spat, staring long across the table with a gaze as withering as acid.

“I never meant to imply…”

“No, no. It’s alright,” he said, in a tone that made it clear he thought it was anything but alright, “Here, lookit that there.”

As he spoke, he hoisted his leg up onto the table with a pained grunt and rolled up the tattered right leg of his jeans to show me the old wound left by Gnaski. I expected the deathly pallor of an ancient scar. Instead, what confronted me on the inset of his thigh was a midnight corruption of the flesh. A long, jagged line running lengthwise down his leg roughly along the course of the sartorius muscle. Black was that scar, black as a tiger’s stripe, and still there seemed to be some putrescence lurking just below the skin, for round the main line of it ominous threads of ink petered off into veins and capillaries. It reeked of pus and decay, a scent which had hitherto been wholly hidden by his pantleg.

“That’s my curse,” Hedgepeth said plainly. “Plain as day for all the world to see. Now do you believe me, boy?”

“I suppose I must,” I replied, shaking my head in lingering disbelief. It might yet have been a yarn. Perhaps the wound was of recent vintage, a fetid splinter or the envenomed bite of some desert reptile. But I could not deny Hedgepeth’s sincerity, nor could I account for his apparent health despite having so odious a wound. I was thankful when he removed his leg from the table and rolled back down his pantleg. My supper churned in my stomach at the lingering odor, and for a nauseous moment I feared the jackrabbit stew would hop itself back into my bowl.

“That’s what I’ve been walkin’ with for twenty-one odd years now. It’s not gonna kill me. It’s a mark, like the one what God gave to Cain.”

Hedgepeth harrumphed and folded his arms across his chest, picking at one of his gnarled cuticles, leaving me to reflect in silence on what I’d just witnessed. What was there to say to this impossible, yet ineffaceably true, tale?

“Whatcha got in that pouch of yers?” Hedgepeth asked after awhile, breaking me from the immersion of my thoughts. “It’s a medicine pouch, ain’t it?”

“Oh, this?” I replied, holding up the fossil pouch. “Yes. Lakota, I believe. I purchased it at Fort Riley several years ago. It was taken from the body of a warrior slain at Wounded Knee.”

“I recall that,” Hedgepeth nodded. “They was upset about the buffalo goin’ away.”

“Indeed,” I replied.

“Well, what’s in it?”

“In what?”

“The pouch, boy. Ain’t God screwed your ears on right? Or did you never open it to take a peep?”

I smiled. “Oh. The contents are mostly uninteresting; there are a few fossils, which is what garnered my interest. Seashells, mostly.”

“Been a long spell since I’ve been by the sea,” Hedgepeth said, a thin smile folding up the corners of his papery lips as he reminisced. “As a boy in Savannah I’d go down to the beach to collect shells. They was real purdy-like, y’know. All shiny like gold.”

I smiled at the thought- I myself had often enough collected shells in Cape May as a boy, and perceived showing off these more ancient forms would be a perfect way to repair the mood of the evening after Hedgepeth’s dire tale. I even thought, somewhat delusionally, of perhaps of educating the roughneck as to their great age.

“Well,” I said, removing the pouch from my neck and placing it gently on the table, “Let’s go to the beach.”

As I began to untie the pouch’s sinew thread, a sudden peal of thunder stayed my hand for a moment. Hedgepeth was stunned by it as well, and he gazed fitfully up at the leaky roof of his hovel. I presumed in the moment that he was merely worried for the structural integrity of his home, but what commanded my own attention was the anomalous auditory character of this thunder. I am no ceraunophobe, yet I must admit that never before nor since has a tumult in the heavens chilled me so thoroughly. For this thunder did not merely crack or clap over our heads, but rather came as a continuous, galloping clip, as if a herd of animals were stampeding by. And as those rhythmic hoofbeats of thunder reached their crescendo, I swear upon the altar of God I heard emanating from the nearest heavens a deep, throaty growl which gave the planks of the cabin’s roof a good shaking.

When once the eldritch sound had passed, the shack settled back at once into the characteristic amniotic vulnerability of any flimsy building being pummeled by a storm. The rain beat down hard upon the rooftop, and the tonitrual orchestra resumed its normal rolling pace at a healthier distance. I swallowed my own consternation, and turned back to my comrade, who stared at me nearly bug-eyed in fear.

“I’m not so sure I want to know what’s in yer pouch there no more’s,” he quavered uncertainly.

“Nonsense, lad,” I replied, trying to recover my own nerve, now bothered more by the fact that I had been so shaken up than by the queer thunder which had done the shaking. “Nonsense. Please, permit me. I promise not to lecture.”

That earned a bark of laughter out of the old hunter, who thanked me for “havin’ the decency to condescend to the common tongue.” Yet, nevertheless, his voice retained a wary tone, and he kneaded his knuckles together fitfully.

I opened the pouch and began my lesson, removing the fragments one by one. I shall refrain from describing Hedgepeth’s response to each individual relic- suffice to say, he was not a learned man, and his queries were as naive as those of a grammar school student. He understood what the feathers were, but beyond these he was utterly ignorant. I do not wish to sound pretentious- overall, this was the most delightful part of the evening, for Hedgepeth’s ignorance was more than compensated for by his curiosity to know the nature of these fragments. The moss agate in particular captivated him, and he questioned me for a long time as to how the little plants had become trapped in the stone. Unfortunately for each of us, the evening soon took a sharp and irrevocable turn for the worse.

I had just finished showing him the Rhaeboceras ammonite, which he examined with delightful curiosity, and held my last fossil, the fragment of the Baculites shell, in my hand. I expressed to the man that this was not a complete shell, as such specimens are very rare owing to their fragility, and that what I held was indeed only a mold of the inner shell left behind after all the original conch had been dissolved in the kiln of the earth. Then, I held out the fragment for the wonderment of his eyes.

Words may never adequately describe the grimace of abject horror which swept over my hitherto gruff, rough-and-tumble host’s face when his gaze settled upon the baculite fragment I had placed before him. All color drained from his complexion with such rapidity that I feared he had taken a stroke. Midst this exsanguinated pallor, his cataracted eyes appeared clear as sky, his gaze riveted with perfect clarity upon the fossil. His long fingers clutched at the grain of the table with rigor mortis strength, yet at the same time arched as if recoiling from the touch of this ghost of another life.

All of this lasted but one dreadful moment, a single instant of silence between my placement of the baculite upon the table, and Hedgepeth’s mouth opening wide as a grave to emit a bloodcurdling scream.

He sprang up and away from the table like a cat from water, knocking his chair aside in his desperation to flee. Then the demented soul pressed himself into the corner of his kitchen wall as though he thought my fossils might rear up at any moment to bite him. He pressed his body tighter and tighter into that corner until it seemed he was trying to compress himself into a singular point to hide from whatever horror had so thoroughly mortified him.

“You fool… you fool…” he muttered, over and over, shaking his head with increasing violence but never once taking his eyes from the apparently offensive shell.

Finally he turned his head, as slowly and deliberately as an owl, and I cannot in truth deny the tingle of fear that frosted my spine as I saw the wild, harried look in his eyes, his knobby old hands groping about on the countertop til his fingers curled white-knuckle round the hilt of a knife.

“You fool… you’ve damned me, you damn bloody fool!”

Naturally, I had begun to back away slowly from the man as his chants grew increasingly deranged, and so when he lunged for me, I was not by any means unprepared. Rather, I pivoted back onto my right foot and, in the same motion, drew my six-shooter.

Samuel Colt, in my estimation, ought to be posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for the silver sight of the gun had an instantaneous calming effect upon Hedgepeth which words alone could never have achieved.

“Drop the knife,” I commanded as coolly as I could. Despite having the clear command of the situation, on account of my wielding lead against steel, my voice trembled in both fear and confusion at this sudden downward turn of events. Hedgepeth obeyed me without question, and the blade clattered to the kitchen floor.

“Pull a gun on me… on my own property…” he spat, but his voice rang hollow. The deflated hunter continued- “Go on. Go on and shoot. You’ll be doing me a favor, compared to what’s a’comin’ now. You’ve damned me. You’ve damned me…”

At this last statement, he heaved out a rattling breath, trying to suppress tears, and fell against the counter, burying his head in his hands and rubbing at his temples as if trying to soothe a massive headache.

“Hedgepeth, have you gone mad? What is the meaning of this?” I demanded, not yet lowering my pistol from its alert bead upon his chest even as he fell ragdoll slack against the wall and began to cry. “Explain yourself, damn you!”

“It’s the stone… it’s the callin’ stone!” he wept. “It’s the callin’ stone. I can hear it, oh God, I can hear it callin’ to them, hollerin’ at thems up there on the other side of the sky, beckoning them down unto me! To kill me!”

I perceived that the man had lost all sanity, and began backing away slowly to reassess my situation. This was quite an unsatisfactory turn of events, you may accurately gather. The norther gales still howled beyond the flimsy walls of the cabin, and I was thoroughly trapped with an apparent lunatic.

“I’d like ya’ to leave,” Hedgepeth said. His voice was perfectly flat and unemotional. It was the voice of a man who had lost all hope, and saw nothing but oblivion bearing oppressively close upon him, looming above his head as low and dark as the norther howling just over his roof.

“Leave?” I asked weakly. “But the norther…”

“You won’t want to be here when they show up.” he replied flatly, evincing no sympathy for my plight. “You keep walkin’ five miles up the road you was on when you came in. That’ll getcha to Fulcher.”

“Hedgepeth…”

“Go on!” he ejaculated, suddenly thrashing to his feet in a fit of rage. “Go on and git! Git out of here! You’ve doomed me to die and I’d like to face that by my God-damned self! Now git!”

He’d picked up the only weapon available to him in that corner of the kitchen, a tea kettle, and hurled it so hard and so near to my head that had I not ducked I likely would still bear its imprint on my forehead. Having had quite enough, I decided that the norther might prove more hospitable than Hedgepeth, and, forcing the door open against the wind, I tumbled out into the gales.

Five miles through the storm. I dogtrotted through the withering hail til at last, blessedly, I came to the town of Fulcher. Soaked to the marrow, I tumbled into the town’s hotel and begged accommodation. I would even take a spot on their floor so long as it was dry. Thankfully, this was not necessary, and the innkeeper placed a room at my disposal.

As I wrung out my clothes over the sink and prepared to sleep in the buff, I recall fleetingly writing off my poor little fossil collection as lost. I was wholly unwilling to return to the shack of that crazed old man to reclaim the pouch, and indeed considering that the fossils had incited him to such frothing rage, he more than likely had destroyed them once I left his premises. This grieved me, for as I stated earlier, although ammonites and baculites are among the most common fossils one may find, they are nevertheless each and every one a gift from our Lord, who maketh all things, and for all the numbered days of the earth never shall another identical impression of His Mind be made.

The norther continued to rage for three days and three nights, and not once in all that time did I venture beyond the four sturdy walls of the hotel. When the sun finally shone again on that fourth morning, my clothes had dried and I was ready to depart. I went across the street, where the mud was still clarifying itself back into dust, to procure a late breakfast at the saloon. Much to my consternation, I overhead two cowpunchers at the bar discuss the following-

“Did’ya hear about Hedgepeth?”

“What about ‘im?”

“He got trampled by cows in that norther.”

“Cows?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Ain’t nobody got no cows left to trample. Drought done kill’d ‘em all.”

“Well, it was cows alright. I found him there, trampled to paste. Was jes comin’ back from a stint up in the Caprock. Figure it was the Copper Breaks herd, come down from the chaparral.”

“Copper Breaks, eh?”

“That’s what I said.”

“And they trampled him?”

“Sheriff says so, yeah. Poor Hedgepeth was in his kitchen a’fixin’ some tea when they broke in.”

“Cows breakin’ into a man’s kitchen, what kind of fool do you take me for?”

“It’s the dyin’ truth.”

Upon hearing of Hedgepeth’s demise, I endeavored to return to his shack to see what kernel of truth might be gleaned from that cowpoke’s tall tale. Hedgepeth was such a recluse that it would not have surprised me if he had been rumored dead several times before, only to spring Lazarus-like back to life. The apparent word of a sheriff meant little in this instance- every good yarn is embellished with some seal of authority. Returning to him, perhaps I might extract an apology for his behavior during the height of the storm, or at least negotiate the return of my medicine pouch. Of course, in the event that he really were dead, I certainly was the last person to speak to him before his untimely demise, and so, sentimental though it may seem, I felt compelled to return to find out for myself.

Immediately I discerned that whatever else might be said of the improbable story, a large herd of bovids had indeed visited Hedgepeth’s hovel. And in no way can the word ‘visited’ be considered an accurate descriptor of the interlopers’ actions. The place was thoroughly trampled. Wet, muddy hoofprints were stamped across every square inch of the property. I surrendered my attempt at counting them when I reached two hundred without moving from where I stood near the clothesline. Yet, queerly, I could find no origin point for this romping herd- there was no track, no path which it might have taken from the chaparral. Nor was there any trail marking their exit from the poor man’s homestead. It was as though they had simply appeared round Hedgepeth’s cabin, transported on wings of lightning and gale, to wreak their havoc before being blown away once more by the norther’s cruel winds.

The door of the cabin had been splintered in half inward, with many matchwood fragments scattered about the immediate interior of the house, plainly driven in by the blunt force of some immense head. Oddly enough, there were no marks on the walls to denote the horns of a steer, which surely would have been snagged if the animal attempted to push its head through the narrow frame. No- I could not escape the sense that, whatever sort of beasts had destroyed Hedgepeth’s home, they were not cattle.

The interior of the place was just as thoroughly eviscerated as the exterior. Several of the floorboards had buckled under the weight of the immense animals. The table where not four days previous I had sat by candlelight listening to the old hide hunter’s tale was now shorn of two of its legs, appearing like a sinking ship with one end of the smashed table pointing at an angle towards the ceiling, with a beamling of the day shining down upon it. The roof had finally surrendered and collapsed in on itself, leaving several large skylights, though whether this was due to the storm or beasts I could not tell. The ladderback chairs had been reduced to matchwood, and the firepit bore many chipped wounds where horn had sheared against stone, and the pokers and ashes were scattered all about the little room. As for Hedgepeth himself, his body had mercifully been removed, and all that remained of his presence was a thick red blot smeared across the floor of the kitchen, in the corner behind the table. Discarded upon the floor near here was one Colt revolver, and one knife. The former was empty of shells, and appeared to have been hurled in desperation. The latter was destroyed, the hilt broken and stomped upon.

I found too the casings of several revolver shells, where Hedgepeth had no doubt made a stand to deter the invaders. This presented me with a tangible part of the mystery to grapple with. I immediately crouched into the rubble and combed through to recover the spent brass- one, two, three… six. He had fired off all six rounds in his weapon, and none of his shots had been misfired into the floor, for there was no trace of the splintered gouges they would doubtless have drilled into the dried wood. In fact, as I examined the whole of the house with the scrutiny of a consulting detective, I could find no trace of any bullet holes whatsoever. The windows were shattered, so that left the possibility that they had been fired outward in that direction, but if they had been there was certainly no way to tell. Nor had I seen the glint of any spent lead out on the property.

The only other place the expended rounds could be was in the body or bodies of those bovines at whom Hedgepeth had aimed. But if he had wounded one, or even several of them, with six shots- six shots certainly well-placed from so expert a marksman, and in the confines of the little hovel, six shots that had torn into the animal’s flesh and not passed through, there should have been blood everywhere. Yet there was nary a drop on the floorboards, save for what was obviously Hedgepeth’s own.

It made me wonder if Hedgepeth had not been shooting at ghosts, at some phantom whim of the storm- and yet, it was certainly no fireside ghoul which had stampeded across his property.

Though the incident had occurred four days previous, the room was still thick with the sharp tang of black powder, and the unmistakable musky scent of animals. Indeed, the scent was far muskier than any cattle I had ever known of. As I finished my examination of the shell casings, I abruptly had occasion to crouch once more at the sight of a tuft of hair snagged on the broken leg of one of the chairs. It was a coarse, curly clump of black wool which- impossible as it may seem- could only have come from the hide of an American bison. No cattle, nor any other creature on the continent, produces such ragged wool. This left me with a singular conclusion as to the culprit in Hedgepeth’s untimely demise, despite the nearest herd of bison being the harried survivors of the market hunt residing in the National Park nearly a thousand miles to the north.

One final anomaly to add to this heap of anomalies is the recovery of my fossils. Much to my shock, they had not been pulverized, as I had feared. Rather, I found my medicine pouch positioned neatly atop the counter, as full as a coinpurse with its wealth of the ages, save for one artifact-

That singular baculite, the so-called ‘buffalo calling-stone’ which had caused Hedgepeth such woe, had been placed with quite deliberate care atop the leather pouch.

The cover art for this story is by Eveline Kolijn

Once Earth and Moon were one,
Til Theia came and did them part.
Many forgot but the Wolf did not,
And howled his psalm after lost Luna’s heart.

Her name was Theia.
‘Twas a yearling she was.
Her coat white and gray,
A stray tutelary of Selene.
She coursed with her pack,
Over the hills and back,
‘Neath an ice-chipped sky more sacred
      than the Sistine.

How it happened, I don’t know.
‘Twas February ‘neath a waning Snow Moon,
When Earth did her best to change her dress,
And match her sister’s regal regolith dunes.

As she spied the buck,
The ranchman spied her too,
Over the icy glades he gave her chase,
And whacked her in the shade of Cora Butte.

Her name was Theia.
‘Twas a yearling she was,
When the tape was twisted round her snout,
Imprisoned in cruel Cernunnos' name.
The ranchman dragged her back to town,
Upon the barfloor he threw her down,
While he shocked her neck and smooched her nose
      bereft of manly shame.

The rude crowd scorned her,
While her captor shouted the bar,
In the corner she lay while the ranchman brayed,
Awaiting her judgment from Man’s envenomed heart.

Her name was Theia.
‘Twas a yearling she was,
When the ranchman posed her for a picture,
To capture her soul on Polaroid roll.
She knew not why,
He wouldn't let her die,
And kept her broken legs bound 
      in pained ligature.

Out the window she saw the maria-
Imbrium, Crisium, Nectaris, Frigoris,
In her eyes the goddess shined,
And cast back a doleful Mare Doloris.

When the night was at its end,
He took her out again,
To an alley rank with beer and piss.
The gunmetal shined, but old Luna outshined,
And the ranchman finally gave her the leaden gift.

Her name was Theia.
‘Twas a yearling she was,
When the ranchman spied her too...

Postscript: This poem was written in gut-reaction to the slaying of a young wolf named Theia on February 29, 2024 by a Wyoming trucker named Cody Roberts. Roberts found Theia in the wild and ran her over with his snowmobile- a wolf-killing practice known as “whacking” which is entirely legal in the state of Wyoming- before proceeding to tape her mouth shut, tie a shock collar round her neck, and drive her to the Green River Bar in the town of Daniel for the amusement of the bar patrons while she slowly bled to death internally. After he had his fun, Roberts took Theia behind the bar and shot her.

For this sin, which was documented in numerous videos and photographs, including several of Roberts gleefully posing with his “catch”, Roberts paid a $250 fine for “unlawful possession of wildlife”. Presently he has been indicted for felony animal cruelty and is awaiting trial. More information can be found here, here, and here.

May Theia’s soul bay eternally to her beloved Moon from the high hills of Heaven.

A.I. Disclaimer: This poem was entirely human-written. However, the cover art is a collage of stock photos with an A.I. effect blended into the final composition.

Obviously spoilers abound, so if you haven’t read the story already you can do so below:

Research & Inspirations

Dead Rabbit, Listverse, et al

As stated in the postscript, the primary source which inspired me to write this story was an episode of Dead Rabbit Radio- Episode 119- The Guytrash: The Shape-shifting Horror of Britain!

A brief aside- this is now the third story I’ve written based on something I learned from Dead Rabbit Radio, the first two being Proriger and The Severed Head, and I assure you it will not be the last. Once again I am compelled to state what an inspiration the show has been to me, both in matter of content and the pure creative drive of Jason, the show’s host. I’ve been listening to Dead Rabbit Radio since the show started way back in 2018 and he’s never skipped a beat. Truly the best paranormal, conspiracy, and true crime podcast out there, and I cannot recommend it enough. If you enjoy my writing, by extension you enjoy Dead Rabbit Radio.1

Episode 119 is where I first heard of the creature known as the Gytrash, one of the many, many iterations of the “black dog” phenomena, and in my view the most interesting. I’ll get into the details of the Gytrash as a creature a bit more below, but my most important takeaway was that it is a creature of crossroads, of borderlands. This features heavily in The Gytrash. They were also very commonly sighted across England at least into the 1880s, which brings me to the next and most immediate inspiration for the story.

While foreknowledge of what a Gytrash is was essential, the most immediate source that kicked off my creative drive to write this story was an article on Listverse- 10 Paranormal Mysteries That Are Not Paranormal Mysteries by Garth C Haslam.

Entry #4, Heaven Help Us, was what got my imagination rolling. Here the author recounts some faxlore where a young woman walking home at night decides to take a shortcut through an alley, and to her despair she sees a sinister-looking man standing at the other end. She prays to God to protect her from harm and, suddenly, a strong sense of comfort and safety washed over her. She didn’t feel like she was walking alone at all, and managed to get past the man without incident. The next day in the newspaper the girl read that another woman was raped in the same alley not half an hour after she herself passed through. Of course the girl goes to the police and is able to point out the suspicious man from a suspect lineup. She points out the guy from the alley, he breaks down and confesses, and when asked why he didn’t bother our protagonist, he replies that she wasn’t alone and had two “tall men” walking on either side of her. These “tall men” are suggested to be angels, sent by God to protect the girl from the rapist.

I first heard this story YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEARS ago, it is a very old urban legend. So imagine my shock at finding out this story is true… with a canine twist.

Haslam did some exemplary detective work and managed to connect this tale back to turn-of-the-century England, where the following event was reported:

Early in the 20th century, a lady [the mother of an acquaintance of Ms Rudkin] had walked from her home in Old Crosby towards the nearby village of Scunthorpe to do some shopping. All of that went normally, but when she was returning alone much later in the day, a large black dog suddenly trotted up to her and began walking alongside. Very shortly she came to a place on the road where some roughian laborers were standing around. They made little attempt to conceal their feelings and the lady heard them say that if she didn't have that @#%#(@ dog with her, they could think of a few things to do with her. The dog accompanied her all the way to her home gate, and she called to her husband to come see the fine companion --- but it had disappeared.

This is a great story in its own right. I much prefer it over the angel faxlore one, for the simple reason that it addresses the glaring question of why didn’t the other girl get an angelic bodyguard? Did she not pray hard enough? In this version, there is no other girl, and the dog arrives for this specific situation. It’s also a bit more up in the air if it was really a paranormal phenomena- it could have just been a particularly friendly stray who was aware of the danger that lay ahead. I enjoy that sort of “maybe magic, maybe mundane” vagueness in stories.

But, though great on its own, this one simple paragraph BEGGED to be turned into a proper story, and soon became the 12,000 word saga of The Gytrash.

Adapting The Story

With all of this in mind, I decided to include a bit of both versions in my own telling. The tension was ratcheted up considerably by making the hooligans a known rape gang with several prior victims, and the reason the Gytrash didn’t intervene in those other cases is simply because they occurred outside of his territory. He’s just a dog- a paranormal dog, to be sure, but not an angel, and he isn’t able to be everywhere to help everyone. He helps Denali specifically because she wandered onto his turf and he chose to aide her.

The police part of the faxlore story, where the rapist is identified directly by the protagonist, was also modified quite a bit. Instead of a police lineup, the rape gang is busted by one of their number being bitten by the Gytrash. Part of the lore of the Gytrash is that if you are bitten by one, the wound will never heal, so he just keeps bleeding and is readily identified from the bite. Not patting myself on the back necessarily, but I thought that was a pretty clever way to weave folklore into detective work, small though that part of the story may be.

Other Inspiring Tales

Before we get into what exactly a Gytrash is, I do want to briefly go over some other inspirations for the story. H.P. Lovecraft’s short story The Street was hugely influential. It’s one of my favorite short stories, and its core concept of a place itself having a soul and being able to embrace or reject changes imposed upon it is plainly echoed in my own tale. The Gytrash is far more personalized than The Street, of course, being an individual paranormal guardian as opposed to Lovecraft’s more distributed genius loci, but they are otherwise quite similar.

The tone of the piece was also hugely inspired by The Street, especially the scene where the Gytrash rakes his memory to recall what the hell exactly happened to his home. If I’m being perfectly honest, The Gytrash might best be considered an homage to The Street, and there are a plethora of references to this great story in The Gytrash. Highly recommend it.

The Taking by Dean Koontz was another influential work. Two particular elements were on my mind while writing this story- the claustrophobic fog that smothers the town and conceals all manner of threats from the heroes, and the character of the dog Virgil. Without spoiling anything, Virgil and dogs in general play a major role in The Taking and are strongly implied to have a sort of connection to the unsettling phenomena at the center of the plot. This higher awareness of the situation was something I wanted to instill in the Gytrash, though their roles are totally reversed- Virgil is a normal animal up against very alien forces, whereas the Gytrash is an explicitly paranormal entity going toe-to-toe with normal criminals.

Finally, the novels Thor by Wayne Smith and Snow Dog by Jim Kjelgaard were great inspirations as well, specifically with the scenes from the Gytrash’s point-of-view. These authors both excelled at getting inside a dog’s head, writing the world as a dog would actually see it, and that’s something I’ve always wanted to try my hand at in my own writing.

Temple University

The story takes place in and around Temple University’s campus, in North Philadelphia. I attended Temple for a short stint, so I was able to impart a little bit of my geographical knowledge of the area into the story.

One thing Denali alludes to in the story is her father taking her for “The Drive.” That’s something my father took me on, and many other Temple students from the Philly region- more specifically those of us in police families- went through as well. Basically, he took me for a drive around Temple’s immediate environs. Sounds simple enough, until you realize Temple University is a nice school in the middle of one of the most crime-ridden urban areas in the United States. The whole thing is basically meant to ask “are you sure about this?” and to make you aware of the perils of going off-campus.

The Gang

The rapist-killer gang which the Gytrash knows as “The Hurting Men” were largely inspired by the Central Park Five and the Zebra Killers. The first of these were just opportunistic savages- who WERE guilty beyond reasonable doubt, despite that ridiculous, politically motivated miscarriage of justice by the New York court- and the second was a vicious gang of serial killers who targeted white people specifically and killed at least fifteen people, possibly over seventy.

The gang was initially written to be far more explicitly racially motivated- see the deleted scene below- and I still envision them this way. They specifically targeted white female students, and would have gotten Denali too had it not been for the Gytrash’s timely arrival.

All The Pretty Gytrashes

So what is a Gytrash, exactly?

Well, they were a kind of supernatural dog described most commonly in English folklore, but could also be found in other parts of Europe and, naturally, transplanted to America by European settlers. They were usually very large, associated with storms, and live in desolate, liminal spaces like crossroads, gateways, ruins, churchyards, bridges, wilderness regions, or county lines.

They really did make a weird sound when they walked- variously described as like stepping on wet pebbles, jangling coins, and dragging a chain- and they really were purported to have used puddles and other bodies of water to instantaneously teleport between locations2. The very name “Gytrash” is supposedly an onomatopoeia of the sound they’d make when diving into or emerging from a body of water, supposedly similar to dropping a rock into a pond- Gy-trashhhhhh!

It also had a strange relationship with humans. Firstly, they were extremely common- nearly every town in England had its own local Gytrash. Unlike many other types of ghosts or faeries or cryptids3, it didn’t really harm people, but rather was simply a mischievous trickster spirit, following lone travelers from the shadows and sometimes teasing them by running directly at them and then performing its signature disappearing act right at their feet. It was often associated with bad luck, but also counterintuitively, as we’ve seen, occasionally protected people, acting almost like a sort of guardian angel.

The most famous depictions of a Gytrash, and similar such black dogs, are found in Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles. Notably, in neither of these stories does a real Gytrash actually make an appearance- Jane mistakes in quick succession a horse and a dog for a Gytrash, and Holmes’s Hound is (spoiler alert) a normal dog broken into bloodlust by a cruel master. It is largely thanks to these two works that the memory of the Gytrash was preserved at all.

You may have noticed by now that I’ve been referring to these spectral dogs in the past-tense, and that’s because the Gytrash is one of the rare instances of a spirit/cryptid which has- probably- gone extinct. And due to anthropogenic causes no less! As England became more densely populated during the Industrial Revolution, and towns and cities spread further and further out into the countryside, the Gytrash’s preferred liminal haunts were subsumed by the urban sprawl. Additionally, they were highly intolerant of the new electric lighting. These two factors led to a near-total cessation of spectral black dog sightings in England. They were creatures of a much older world of Faerie, and couldn’t persist in this new order of copper and silicon, so they vanished4.

Every ounce of this made it into my story’s depiction of the animal. It is, as near as I can tell, 100% true to folklore.

I scattered little hints throughout the story that the Gytrash’s power was unusually strong on the night of the story. The journey includes multiple successive thresholds- it’s near midnight when Denali meets him, right after a storm, they’re in a particularly forlorn area with plenty of crossroads and ruins, and the neighborhood is on the border between the university and the ghetto, which is not only a boundary between knowledge and learning, but also wealth and poverty. And let us not forget too that Denali herself is at a crossroads in life, slowly moving out of her grief and back into some kind of normalcy. This confluence of events all helped to keep the Gytrash’s power from waning despite the sprawl and electricity ruining his home. Not sure if it carried through in the actual telling, but that’s what I was going for.

One exceedingly odd bit of trivia I learned as I was writing the story is that the Gytrash’s place of origin- that is, the location where spectral black dogs were actually called Gytrash- was the West Riding of Yorkshire. Completely coincidental to this, the British Midlands region of which Yorkshire is a part also had the highest concentration of Quakers in England, and was the preeminent source of settlers in Pennsylvania. The Gytrash being born in the West Riding and hitching a ride to Philadelphia completely fits both the region’s history and folklore. This was a total accident, I did not structure the plot around this in any way and only learned it after the story was mostly complete.

The actual appearance of the Gytrash is a bit vague, besides being a large, black dog. In a way this makes sense- dog breeds as we recognize them today did not properly exist when the Gytrash was running around, and dogs were instead categorized by their role. So, there were herding dogs, coursing dogs like greyhounds, mastiffs, scenthounds, and lapdogs… and that was about it. It wasn’t until the Victorian era that distinctive dog breeds like Yorkies and Alsatians and Dalmatians really came into being.

With a rather wide canvas open to me, I decided to mix a few different dog breeds into my Gytrash. The main one was the Irish Wolfhound. This is a rather old type of dog- the Romans reference them, and they feature rather prominently in Celtic mythology, so they are no stranger to supernatural associations.

It was a bit ironic to give the wolfhound a wolf’s eyes, since they were bred specifically to hunt wolves, but the Gytrash is a bundle of contradictions so it fits in an odd sort of way. This yin-yang synthesis of wolfhound and wolf also oddly fits the breed’s history. When the last wolf in Ireland was killed in 1786, the wolfhound was instantly rendered obsolete and soon descended into an extinction spiral from which it only barely recovered- and not quite in its original form- thanks to the efforts of Royal Army officer George Augustus Graham. Not only does this fit with the Gytrash’s own sad apparent extinction, but it also shows the necessity of preserving both dark and light, wild and tame forces in the order of the world. The wolfhound needs the wolf to live. The Gytrash is a synthesis of the two, a personification of this exact balance which has been thrown out of whack by the cancer-like march of civilization across all the wilderness of the world.

Getting back to the actual appearance of the animal, real wolfhounds tend to have very thin, ropy tails- some indeed appear nearly hairless. This look didn’t really appeal to me, so I gave my Gytrash a far bushier, “featherduster” tail like that of a Newfoundland. Finally, I gave him far larger paws, more akin to a Great Dane’s, which seemed more able to cause such a jangling gait.

Also, the description of the Gytrash’s immense size was not any sort of exaggeration, to either the folkloric dog or the real wolfhound. Irish Wolfhounds really do get big enough for a mite of a girl like Denali to look one in the eye.

Writing Process

This story was a complete mess to write, even though I am generally pleased with the final result. Despite seeming rather straightforward- girl walks home alone at night, meets strange dog, dog protects her from rapists- this story unfortunately took many moons to write and was a lot more work than I’d anticipated. I actually started it way back in March, when the story is set, and was expecting it to take maybe two weeks to write? In reality, it didn’t wind up being ready until mid-July, whereupon it was shelved for several months to age before hauling it out to make some final revisions taking place the day before publication.

The main issue with it was simple character motivation. Why was Denali out and about despite being aware of the imminent danger of the rape-gang? Why did the Gytrash decide to help her? These were issues that I didn’t resolve until almost the final draft- the story has been mostly written with these elephants still lingering in the room.

The Gytrash’s motivation was easier to solve. Being a paranormal entity, he basically soulgazed Denali and found her worthy of salvation. More than this, though, he saw in her shades of the world he’d lost, and hope for its eventual restoration in the future. This tugged at some very deep, precious philosophical concepts of mine which I don’t have space to elaborate on here, and they’re better left up in the air anyhow.

It seems like such a simple thing in the story you’ve just finished reading, but it really troubled me coming up with a motivation for Denali. Obviously she would be a complete idiot to just wander around that neighborhood for no reason, which is more or less what she did in the initial draft, and this idiocy had the effect of making her a rather unlikable character. Rereading the initial drafts, I thought that as a reader I would not care what happened to her.

I went through a few variants of motivation for her, none of them very compelling- the one I kept coming back to was that she had just gone through a bad breakup and wanted to walk home so she could mope to herself. This wasn’t terrible, but neither was it a good story. It did not account for the insane danger Denali was willing to subject herself to on that walk, and it was only by the inclusion of loss into Denali’s character that the story finally fit together. The whole rest of the story is defined by losses of various degrees- the loss of the Gytrash’s world to the tide of progress, the loss of innocent lives to Selim’s gang, the loss of old Philadelphia to both of these, and now, finally, the personal loss of Denali’s sister.

Here now Denali and the Gytrash’s motives were at last in concordance- Denali had lost her beloved sister, while the Gytrash had lost his entire world. Of course they would find each other and work together.

As for the rest of the story, the basic plot beats were easy enough to write. I must confess that I may have overindulged in one of my decadences- ornate scenery descriptions- but I did at least try to make it all serve the story in setting the mood and building tension.

Deleted Scenes

Being so long in the shipyard, The Gytrash went through many drafts before publication, and there were quite a few deleted scenes. This was another thing about the story I regret- many hours wound up being wasted tidying up these scenes that just didn’t work and wouldn’t make it into the finished cut. So, to perhaps gain something back for the effort which went into writing them, I include them here for your enjoyment/amusement.

As stated, one of the issues I had was with character motivations for Denali and the Gytrash, and several scenes related to this were deleted from the final cut. One such scene was an introduction showing Denali in class, her mind wandering in a depressed fugue due to her recent breakup with her boyfriend-

Up on the tenth floor of Gladfelter Hall, Denali Brinton watched such a storm roll over the city from where she sat by a broad window facing the Delaware River. Her calculus professor’s words were as formless in her ears as the chaotic patter of rain upon the glass. It was a scene from Lenape legend- the forces of the sky waging war upon the broad, glassy sheet of the river- and it seemed a perfect match to the melancholy maelstrom roiling about in her own heart.

“Denali, how would you denote this derivative?”

The professor’s voice skewered her ruminations and she jolted up and away from the window. One of her classmates stifled a giggle, like this were third grade and not a college course. Denali glared at her. It was Nicole. She didn’t dislike the girl but she had the same stupid hairstyle as stupid Brynley, a stupid dirty blonde ponytail with stupid curtain bangs. Denali’s narrowed eyes only made her giggle more. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Denali brushed a loose chestnut wisp away from her face and glanced discreetly down at her notes. What did he ask? Something about derivatives? Define? No, denote. There, that’s it- how do you denote a derivative?

“Well, under Leibniz’s notation,” she answered rotely, twirling her hand and sprinkling in random bits of emphasis to make it seem less canned. Later on she wouldn’t recall the rest of her answer, only that somehow she arrived at the conclusion of three over five.

“Very good,” her tutor nodded. He turned towards the giggler, “Now, Nicole, how would you calculate the slopes of the secant lines?”

“I- uhmmm…”

Denali sighed. With the spotlight off her, she rested her chin in her hand and once more stared out into the fury of the storm, indistinct as it was through the rainspattered window. She should’ve paid attention. Her grades had been in the gutter all semester. But in her heart she knew the true cause of her academic cliff-dive, and it wasn’t any inability to understand the material. It was Justin. She thought back to their last date together. Hand in hand, prancing around the Christmas Village at Dilworth Plaza. They’d gone ice skating together. Rode the ferris wheel. She’d dropped her bratwurst right out of her mouth when it was too hot, and he’d given her his without a second thought and gone back to get another. She couldn’t understand it. She thought he’d loved her. Well, maybe he had, but his camera roll showed he was busy loving Brynley too. She’d thrown him out and he’d left her only with the eternal why- why could boys break hearts?

I am not a romance writer- nor, for that matter, a mathematician- and I think that is very apparent in this excerpt. The last paragraph is painfully cringeworthy- I managed to salvage a few sentences about her academic decline in the final draft, but the rest about her boyfriend deserved to be scrapped even if I had managed to fit it into the narrative somehow.

My main issue with writing romance and breakups, in my estimation, is that I have thankfully never experienced the heartbreak of a relationship ending on awful terms, while I have had more than my share of bereavement. With that in mind, I decided to venture back to more familiar waters and change Denali into a grieving sister- this had the twin benefits of a) being far cleaner to write, and b) finally giving Denali an understandable reason to be skipping curfew and sneaking around through such an insanely dangerous “hood.”

Another, shorter scene outlined Denali’s relationship to her friend Angie, who in the final cut is only alluded to briefly, and included a description of her neighborhood-

She cursed herself once more for not staying the night at Angie’s. Angie, one of her fellow night owls taking remedial calculus, lived in a swanky two-bedroom apartment on the twenty-third floor of Morgan Hall. Her father was a banker. Denali’s father was an auto mechanic, so she lived in a rented rowhome seven blocks off campus that she could afford by waitressing at a Center City steakhouse. It was a nice home in a slag vat neighborhood that teemed with all the wretched refuse of humanity. All of North Philly was like that, a sea of darkness only occasionally broken up by gentrified atolls, little white islets sometimes composed of but a half block of houses. The rent was cheap, the danger high. Her four roommates were pleasant, but they had the common sense to be home before dark.

Well, you should’ve known better, she thought, Dad gave you The Drive before you enrolled. Everyone told you Temple is in a dangerous neighborhood, even before all this started. You take your life into your hands every time you go off campus. Well, here it is. In your hands.

Again, this interrupted the story’s flow and was superfluous to the other lavish descriptions of the decay in North Philadelphia. I’d already shown the rot, I didn’t need to tell you again that she lived in a crummy neighborhood.

There was also a lengthy scene immediately following this, after Denali mentally notes- “You take your life into your hands every time you go off campus. Well, here it is. In your hands” in which I, as the narrator, explained at length the background of the rape-gang running amok in North Philadelphia-

The great terror started back in October. That was when they found Tiffany Carvallo dead in a gutter the morning after a Halloween party- beaten, then worse. Fists and kicks and at least one lead pipe, per the coroner’s report. She was dressed as Catwoman and her blood alcohol content was point-two-eight. Grainy security footage showed her staggering down West Norris Street, eight blocks off campus, closely tailed by five masked and hooded jackals. The police investigated, the campus mourned, and the funeral was held. Life went on, or at least it was supposed to. But it didn’t.

In quick succession, three others were killed- Jill Pevensey, Erica Gaines, and Amelia Deane. All slaughtered in the same appalling fashion, all by night, all by the same five men, per the DNA and camera footage. They were bold as hyenas, black of skin and blacker of soul.

After Erica was killed, the police had swarmed upon Temple like a nest of angry hornets. Their blinking sirens a new, incessant feature of campus life, as regular as the rhythm of chirping crickets. Anyone who looking remotely suspicious was stopped and questioned, and a drone overwatch was established over an eight-block perimeter around the university, with the aim of giving police ample alert to any groups of young men prowling after dark.

Of the constellation of gangs surrounding Temple- the 6ixers, J Street Crew, Zoo Gang, Da Jungle, Reezyworld, et al- the law said much but could prove little. There were many tips given and warrants served and nighttime raids; once a gunfight in the wee hours had awoken Denali from a fitful, pre-exam slumber. But the gangs were great in number, and whenever one of their ranks was detained, he invariably professed no knowledge of the slayings, beyond what had already been heard on the news.

For its part, the school organized safety convoys for girls who had to venture off campus, while strongly encouraging them not to do so for any nonessential reason. It brought sneers from some of the students- how patronizing, the big strong men with their guns coming to defend the helpless, naive girls! And let’s not even talk about the racial angle of it all!- but nevertheless, not even the most vociferous of the deriders strayed out past dark. Denali herself didn’t hold any strong opinions on the matter, so preoccupied was she with exams and her deteriorating relationship with Justin. She only hoped the police would catch whoever was responsible quickly so campus life could return to normal.

There was a dry spell over winter, but then like clockwork the killings resumed on March 14, during a fierce snow squall that grounded the drones and confined even the most diligent policemen to their squad cars. That morning, Kelly Byrne’s body was found in a vacant lot at 10^th and Oxford, and spring break ended with a bleak lockdown of the campus. The police went back to on-foot beat patrols like it was the 1890s. Young women were told not to wander after dark for any reason unless in a group, and rape whistles were provided free of charge by the university. Denali had picked one up and had it dangling round her neck now, next to her Rosary, but she doubted it would do her any good.

Here again you can plainly see the influence of The Street upon the narrative, basically to the point of aping it. Despite rather liking it even unpolished, it had to go because it interrupted the story’s flow and felt far too preachy. Even if there is often a political undertone to my stories, I never want them to come off as lecturing the reader. First of all, it’s not enjoyable for readers, and secondly it’s patronizing when authors try to tell you what to think, rather than nudging you a certain direction and letting you figure it out for yourself. I think the final version of the story avoided these issues.

What I replaced this TED Talk with were more “showing, not telling” scenes, such as when Denali meets the policemen, her mention of the curfews and drone overwatch, her having a rape whistle, the newspaper being sucked down the gutter, Denali’s own mounting terror of the Hurting Men, and of course the men listening to insidious antiwhite gangster rap and outright mentioning Denali’s race being a factor in their targeting of her. This made them into far more ominous villains, rather than just splurging all info about them in one go. I do kind of wish I had been able to include a little more info about them, but there are enough clues there for the reader to figure it out.

One other oddity that wound up not making it into the final draft was toying with the idea of making the Gytrash’s scenes first-person; ultimately decided against this because the whiplash of changing perspectives in such a manner seemed too much, and for a story such as this I preferred the third-person anyway.

Cover Art

To help ground my descriptions of the creature, I actually made the Gytrash in Gimp, taking a stock photo of an Irish Wolfhound and giving it a wolf’s eyes. Also fiddled with the brightness and contrast to make the coat darker than the actual dog’s. The result was a pretty cool, eerie looking animal. I then took the dog out of the original photo background and fitted it over a stock image of a Philadelphia alley scene. Then, for the final touch, I fed the image into Grok and prompted it to transform the image into a “dark charcoal sketch.” I then layered this AI edited version on top of my original Gimp composition and turned down its opacity until the dog had this weird, half-illustrated half-photographed look to him.

Th AI version included a cool effect, with the Gytrash’s body kind of fading out into sketched lines at the bottom, which I kept in the final composition. I did not specifically prompt it to do that, but it fits with the notion of the Gytrash having only one paw in our world at any given time, while he really dwells someplace more transcendent.

I’m not overall happy with this. The final result is visually pleasing, sure, but I don’t like that the key component that makes it work was AI-generated. Even though it was mostly my own effort in Gimp, relying any amount on AI just doesn’t sit right with me. Would much rather have had a proper illustration for the cover, but my drawing skills just aren’t there yet to achieve the kind of creative self-sufficiency I crave. Someday soon they will be, but not yet.

I hope- for those of you who made it this far- that this wasn’t too boring a read, or that it felt overly indulgent. I always enjoy when other writers and artists discuss their own techniques and inspirations, so I figure there’s a small chance you guys might enjoy hearing a bit about mine.

That’s all. You can go home now.

She swallowed tightly. The door’s computerized lock mechanism had beeped its farewell behind her and it was too late to go running back inside, to tell Angie that actually she changed her mind and would love to stay the night at her dorm. Not that she would have, given the choice. There was work to be done. Sad, sorrowful work. So there she stood, alone in the forecourt, staring off into an opaque nothingness like she were on the precipice of a deep sea trench.

Well, here goes… she thought, taking a deep breath before descending the steps onto the rainslick pavement, her platform boots clicking like hooves as she went.

The postdiluvian cityscape evinced the aftermath of a ferocious battle between the gods of earth and storm. Dribbles of water seep-sobbing off car fenders and cornices while the last brown dregs of yesteryear’s leaves swirled past her feet on the boreal gusts, leaving her feeling like a fish at the bottom of a turbid sea. Stout buildings loomed up on either side of Denali and disappeared into the brume, briefly illuminated in full by a violet jag of lightning whose thunder was muted by the fog. In other locales, the mountains and the seashore, such storms tended to scour the air clean. In Philadelphia, they only seemed to smear the city’s muck around, loosing a sordid, undefinable stench upon the streets, the reek of three centuries of corruption and pollution and every iniquity concealed within man’s treacherous heart.

A parked police car materialized out of the murk, its hood gilt in dew. Denali nodded politely to the officers inside as she trotted briskly by, hoping against hope they were too busy eating donuts to notice her. No such luck- she heard the passenger window squeak open, and turning back she saw one of the policemen stick his head out.

“Where ya headed, sweetheart?” the officer asked in his best Andy Griffith impression, his voice ringing flat as a stone in the fog.

“Home,” Denali replied. Mentally she flailed for an excuse to be out and about. Night class. That was it. There was a curfew exception for night students. Hastily, she added- “I just got out of class.”

“Where’s home?”

“Seventh Street.”

The officer stuck his head out a bit more and looked pointlessly up and down the bleak, shrouded road. “You all by yourself, honey?”

“No. I mean, right now I am. I’m meeting some friends up at Diamond. We’re walking home together.”

It was a bold-faced lie, concealed behind a pouty smile and a shake of the head that tossed her bangs and melted hearts; her patented “get out of jail free” smile.

The policeman looked back at her skeptically. Even at such close range his expression was blurred by the fog, like a half-remembered face from a dream, but she thought she saw him purse his lips. “You want a ride?”

She shook her head again. “No, no, I’ll be okay. It’s only a block.”

“You’re not in trouble, you know.” he offered, but the way he said it carried the dreadful implication of- Yet.

“I’m okay, honest,” she replied, her voice quavering from cold and nervousness alike.

The policeman sighed. He couldn’t force her to get in the car. “Alright, hon. You be real careful, okay?”

“I will be. Thank you.”

Denali waved lamely at him and continued on, the murg devouring the squad car in her wake. There had been little chance of it, but she was thankful they hadn’t frisked her. The contents of her backpack might have raised some questions she wasn’t in the mood to answer.

She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her black biker jacket and tried to pretend it warmed them while the wolfwhistle wind made her stockinged legs quiver like reeds. She cursed herself for not dressing warmer, for not bringing her gloves or a scarf. March was a fickle season, existing on the blurry threshold between winter and spring, and whether the city would receive rain or snow was up to a weather god’s cointoss. It was almost cold enough to make her forget the lurking perils of the street. Almost.

Her legs switched over to autopilot as mentally she drifted off down memory lane. A summer’s day long ago in the misty realm of youth, out in the yard with Madge. Blowing bubbles and chasing butterflies, infinitely grateful to be out of school and the cruel clutches of their teachers, though they never really did escape it. Denali certainly hadn’t- here she was, still in school over a decade later. Barely, she thought ruefully. Her grades had been in the gutter all semester. She’d been sleeping in, missing classes, and even when she could be bothered to show up she just couldn’t focus. There was nothing to be done for it. It was simply something she’d come to accept over the past four years; the depression rolled round in February as reliable as the first frost, as the phases of the moon. After tonight it would lessen. Not go away. It would never go away not ever, so long as there was breath in her lungs. It simply ebbed and flowed.

She sighed, her heart heavy as the fog. At her feet, a fast-flowing gutter current dragged an unwilling copy of the Inquirer into the maw of a storm drain. Front page, backdated three days- TEMPLE UNIVERSITY NIGHTMARE — FIFTH STUDENT DEAD AFTER SAVAGE ATTACK BY ROVING TEENS — ‘MONSTERS!’ SAYS MAYOR SHIPPEN

Denali had just enough time to read the headline before the paper was sucked down into the drain’s inky abyss. Quite instantly she was wrenched back to sober reality. Three days since the last attack. They’d found the girl’s body in the gutter at 8^th and Norris, killed the same as all the others- fists and kicks and a lead pipe coup de grâce, after they got through “playing” with her.

Three days. The pattern so far had been that the gang waited a week or more before striking again, but such probabilistic analysis was little comfort to Denali. She cast a wary gaze all about her, though visibility was essentially zero. The other side of the rainslick road might have been the far shore of the Atlantic so far as she was concerned, but she didn’t think anyone was on her side of the street. No chance of the drone patrols spotting her or anyone else in this dreck, if they were even flying so soon after the storm. At least the beat cops were around. If something did happen, if she hollered in time-

Between crisp breaths she murmured half-formed prayers that the savages weren’t out tonight, that she wouldn’t be their next victim. The rape whistle round her neck knocked against the silver crucifix of her grandmother’s Rosary, and she clutched at them both like amulets, precious tinder for her hope.

Could be worse, she thought, It could still be raining. Besides, the fog is good cover. If they’re out there, they’ll have a hard time seeing you… and you them. God, why did it have to be this night, of all nights? Any night of the year and it had to be this one. Well, you can’t say I don’t love you, sis…

As Denali exited the campus and ventured into the wilderness of North Philadelphia, she clutched at the straps of her backpack like a turtle retreating into its shell. Her wide hazel eyes peering out from under a sheaf of chocolate brown bangs, darting to and fro, trying to descry potential dangers in the all-smothering fog. The late night cityscape pulsed womblike in her ears, everything from the distant slamming of car doors to the coyote howl of police sirens simultaneously muffled and magnified by the mist, echoing weakly through the sluttish murk.

Near to her, Denali heard nothing. Just her heels click-clacking far below like the gait of a ghost, and the rhythm of her own heart pulsing tensely in her ears. Occasionally the cemeterial wind kicked up, rattling through the bare branches of the sidewalk trees and icing the marrow of her legs. The vagrants and panhandlers weren’t out yet, still sheltering wherever they hid during such dire weather. Maybe the same place the birds went. Not even the alley cats had ventured back out onto the postdiluvian streets. No one was out. Not after such a storm as this. You don’t need to worry, Denali. Not on this night.

In the deep dark of the cellar, the Dog’s limpid eyes slowly blinkered open.

He gazed out upon a cold, cavernous ruin. The mildewed ceiling sagging ominously, sprouting a bumper crop of plaster stalactites. Rich, rotting pine beams floating aimlessly in black water that rose nearly up to the cushions of the damp couch he slept upon. A rusted metal boxspring looming out of the pool like pier pilings. Nothing moved in that dreary darkness.

Groggily, the Dog tried to recall why he’d awoken and struggled to do so. He’d been dreaming, and his perception of the border between the waking and the somnial was as blurred as the bounds of his own habitation. It had been a scent, he knew. A wispy trace of something… but what? It was too faint to recall in detail. Not any of the usual culprits- not the acrid gasoline of dirt bikes tearing down the street, nor the faint reek of ozone from the lights outside that burned his eyes behind their lids. It had smelled… nice.

He sniffled sleepily, about to dismiss the mystery odor as mere fantasy and drift back off into the realm of dreams. Then the same sweet scent once again brushed the wet tip of his nose like a feather, and he lurched upright. It was a new scent… and yet, very old. One which he had not expected to ever encounter again. Familiar, but nearly forgotten, buried beneath the dust and verdigris of the long ages of his life.

Lifting his vast, shaggy head off the ragged arm of the sofa, the Dog tested the air to see if the scent would return, or if it would yet prove to be a mere phantom teasing him from the recesses of his subconscious. He snuffled deeply to flood his nose with the ever-present reek of damp and decay so they would fade into the background, allowing for fainter, more subtle scents to be detected and matched against those already filed away within the vast halls of his memory. Then he sniffed again, lighter this time, his nostrils wrinkling daintily as he scried the air for the mystery odor.

Yes. Not dream. Real. A human girl, he knew at once. Smelling fresh and clean, and it was easy to discriminate this scent from all others, for he had not smelled anything fresh and clean in a long, long time. More than clean, though, she was terribly frightened. Effusing a brew of nervous sweat and perfume that saturated the air around him. Imploring someone, anyone, for succor.

The Dog rose with a yawn and stretched his long, shaggy legs over the sofa. He knew not how long he had slumbered. Days and nights. Weeks. He remembered only drifting off to the seep-sob lullaby of water dripping from the mold-stippled ceiling like the tolling hands of a clock, while man’s streetlamp simulacra of the sun scorched the night. His intended awakening would simply have been whenever his empty belly groaned for sustenance and compelled him to stalk the darkened streets for food in rote, mind-numbing routine.

But now a shiver of excitement ran through him from snout to shaggy tail as he shook himself off. He stepped into stagnant black water that rose up to his stifles, and waded over to the rotten stairs to go and see what stranger had come his way.

It was impossible, but never in his long life had he forgotten a scent.

The girl smelled like one of the Old People.

Turning north off Diamond Street, the streets reverted to mere horsecoach width. As she continued pushing through the cloying miasma, Denali slowed her pace to try to muffle the clicking of her boots. She needed to hear and, more importantly, did not wish to be heard. She was almost tempted to take off her heels entirely to silence their click-clack racket, but the thought of stepping into broken glass or a stray needle stayed that thought.

All about her the city reared up like an alien ecology composed in the main of moldering concrete and rusted metal. Streetlamps glew like cold, gloomveiled suns, while in the deep, undefinable chasms of shadow between their amber radiances, shapes familiar by day took on baleful new forms. She thought of jungles, of tropical plants and Mayan ruins. Mailboxes and bollards and fire hydrants sprouting like cycads. Wallowing humps of ivy-festooned trash strewn across vacant lots, slivers of glass glinting on the pavement like a field of siren’s jewels. Even the familiar trees, the elms and gingkos and beeches in their quartered pavement plots, seemed to be the flora of another world, erupting out of the sidewalk like sodden tumors. Overlooking all, decrepit rowhomes loomed like catacombs behind the curtains of fog, dancing in and out of reality. It all made Denali feel as though she were some hunted thing wandering down an urban game trail. It made her feel like prey.

Well, you’re not out here for you, she thought bleakly, You’re here for her. You are doing this for her. None of this is new. Temple’s always been in a dangerous neighborhood, even before this all started. You knew that when Dad took you for The Drive. You take your life into your hands every time you go off campus. Well, here it is. In your hands.

She swallowed tightly and tried to clear her head. No one else was on the street. At least, not on her side of it. She checked twice, thrice, and more, her eyes wide as a doe’s as she scanned the murk for invisible enemies. There wasn’t so very far left to go. Just another block and a half. It seemed further than the invisible moon.

“What the hell was I thinking, Madge?” she muttered to herself. She meant to soothe her frayed nerves with the sound of her own voice, but her question pierced through the street’s amniotic silence like a knife and she was startled in spite of herself. Like she were an animal seeing its reflection for the first time, scarcely recognizing the voice as her own. Her whisper seemed magnified by the fog, reverberating off each clotted bank of brume, and she looked around in a wild flutter of fear, as if she’d just given away her position, had rung a dinner bell for the whole sordid neighborhood.

Denali stood tensely, not daring to move, not daring to let the clipped sonar pings of her boots betray her location any further. The empty windows and doorways of condemned rowhomes on either side of the street leered out of the fogbanks black as snake holes. Anyone could be stalking her from such shadowed recesses. Anyone could suddenly lurch out from one of those stygian portals and grab her, and…

The Dog watched the girl in furtive silence from a yawning black doorway, staring down the bare, trash-strewn cement yard where once had been a dewy rose garden. Remaining hidden in the darkness just out of her own field of view, only his eyes glew dimly through the murk to betray his presence, to those who yet had the spirit to see.

He’d heard her coming from a block and a half away. Her nervous trotting gait and the loud clip of her boots on the pavement did not aid her in remaining undetected, but even had she come in silence, her scent would still have foretold her arrival. Many were the smells that danced into the dog’s nostrils on that forlorn street- the wastes of cats and squirrels, leaves dead and new, the acrid reek of burnt rubber, of oily human skins- but midst this sea of odors, her sweet aroma overpowered all else.

The girl paused directly in front of the doorway, looking around cautiously. She felt his eyes upon her but knew not whence he surveilled. That was good. She was not blind to him, like so many of the Old People had been, in the end. The fog clouded the Dog’s view as much as hers, but his eyes were keen, the soul behind them keener still, and in just a moment he’d made an honest appraisal of the girl.

She was young and pretty. Her features were like those of the Old People, even if her clothing was not. The clothes of new were confusing. The clothes and the scents. Hardly any odor from the body, as if they were ashamed to smell as themselves. This one could not hide hers, however. Fear rolled off her hide like rain sloughing off eaves. Fear and something more. The Dog couldn’t place it properly. The fear scent overwhelmed all else. Her eyes were wide with it, but swimming in their amber depths was something deeper, sadder.

But he was satisfied at last, for now up close he received her full odor instead of just tantalizing hints. Smelling is knowing. The girl was no doubt one of the Old People, who had once dwelt upon this street, and left long ago.

The Dog leafed through the long archives of his memory, trying to remember why the Old People had gone away, but what had happened was far beyond his meager abilities to understand-

The Old People had come from the islands across the sea. This the Dog knew, for he had come along with them, stowing away in the hold of a ship. When the ship made landfall in the greene country towne, the Dog had run to the city’s outskirts where it bordered a great forest of oak and ash and elm, and here he ran with the wolves and panthers and bruins, and taunted the dockyard cutthroats and red light bandits. It was not very long until those first of the Old People began building their city outward, and the Dog moved out with them and their great tide of progress, ever a faithful guardian of the hazy boundary between Man and Nature, living the happy and free life of a pariah.

Then the blood and spirit of the place changed for ill. The Old People scorned the Dog, and claimed every bit of his borderland home for themselves. They tore open the fields and cobbled streets to lay down tunnels and pipes, and cut down the trees to string up weird wires which blared forth harsh lights that hurt the Dog’s eyes and buzzed discordantly in his ears. Soon it was only in the deadest hours of night that the Dog was able to be outside at all. And as they chopped down the forests and routed the creeks into dark sewers, the Old People made a still mightier city of the Dog’s former home, and seemed to forget that there ever was such a thing as a Dog, which they had once known by many names- Barghest, Freybug, Black Shuck, the Padfoot, the Gytrash, and many others.

Something had changed, perhaps in their minds, perhaps deep in their souls. The Dog knew only that one day, most of the Old People could no longer see him, nor did they even wonder where he had gone. And his heart was sad at being forgotten and abandoned so, for though he was obedient to no men, he belonged to Man.

Then the Old People themselves went away, leaving behind their stately houses and their rose gardens and their sewers and their wire-poles to fall into decay, as if they had never cared for such things at all, and had raised them up solely to ruin the Dog’s home before leaving him forever. New people came to take their place, but these new people were quite different from the Old- their scents were strange, and their faces dark, and the Dog could not feel their minds as he could the Old People’s. The new people, too, knew not the spirit of the Dog, whom the Old People had both respected and feared as a watchful guardian.

And so the Dog, not knowing why the Old People had left him so, descended into the cellar ruins to sleep away these troubled times, and fell away into sweet dreams of yesteryear- of cool forest nights kissed by pure river breezes, and dewy rosebuds glistening in moonlight.

Now, he had arisen from his long slumber, and found himself watching this girl, one of the Old People, she of the seashell-skin, trotting nervously up a street teeming with unseen enemies. What was she doing here?

The Dog lifted a padded foot and slouched into the doorway.

By some queer instinct, Denali’s eyes fixated on the empty doorway in front of her. She couldn’t say exactly how, but she sensed something lurking in that impenetrable darkness. Something soundless, yet faintly audible; spectral, yet solid; invisible, but tangible. Her heart cantered against her ribs as she stared deep into the doorway, looking for any trace of movement.

Nothing. Nothing but the skeletal branches rattling in the gusting wind. The house was deserted. But she felt in her bones that someone was there, someone who even now was looking right back at her. As if she were being hailed by a ghost. Then a cold tingle of fear crept up the ladder of her spine, for she could just scarcely see the faint yellow glow of a pair of eyes peering back at her from that inky abyss.

A cry caught in her throat, her breath hitching on half a whimper. She stared and stared unblinkingly into the doorway, rigid as stone, scarcely able to wrench her gaze from the door. Praying that the dull amber eyes would reveal themselves to be a mere fata morgana, some cruel trick of light and fog.

A clot of brume drifted sluggishly between her and the doorway, and she stood statue-still waiting for it to pass. Not daring to move lest the figure in the doorway lurch out and give chase. When the fog finally dissolved back into the ether, the eyes had vanished along with it as if carried into eternity on wings of mist, and the doorway was once again a vantablack portal, as inviting as the entrance to a tomb.

Denali swallowed. She looked cautiously from side to side. Still nobody in sight, but with so many abandoned homes that meant nothing. She shook her head.

“I’m seeing ghosts,” she muttered to no one. Still, she thought, better ghosts than men…

She walked tersely onward, alert to every shadow. The sidewalk felt like it was falling out from under her into some bottomless black chasm as she finally realized how truly alone she was. Even her memories fled from her sight- her grades sequestering themselves back into their crisp manila envelopes, Madge politely closing the lid of her own casket behind her. Each step of that lonesome way she tried to convince herself that the dim yellow “eyes” she saw in the doorway were just a cruel trick of the light, some sort of shadow puppetry perpetrated by fog and lamp.

But though she desperately wanted to believe this, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being followed.

The Dog trailed her through the shadowed recesses of the house as she trotted across the empty street, looking all about her like a frightened deer, and again he wondered what was scaring her so. She was behaving like a hunted animal, not one of the ladies who once walked these same streets in crinolined skirts, sheltering under dainty lacework parasols. The neighborhood was teeming with besotted predators, but these were all still skulking indoors, away from the postdiluvian damp. If any did come out, he would know it long before she.

Coming to the end of the house, the Dog leapt gracefully out the empty windowframe to continue trailing the girl from the shade of the vacant lot beside. Ragweed grew between the heaps of bricks and rotting spars of wood where once had stood another rowhome. He had no fear of being seen, for even one so astute as she could not view him in plain unless he willed it, and he did not will it. Not yet.

She stopped suddenly. Clutching at the straps of her backpack, as if by shrinking in on herself she might present a smaller target. She glanced warily around the dark street, scrutinizing each blackened window as if it might be the one hiding a hitherto unseen foe. Her gaze slowly veered towards him, until she looked directly at where he stood invisibly before her in the weedlot.

The Dog froze, not daring to move a muscle as her gaze lingered over him, just long enough that he wondered if perhaps she did see him after all- a few of the Old People had been perceptive enough to sense even that which did not want to be seen. Then the girl chuffed, a quiet, reassuring chuckle to herself, and shook her head before continuing on her way.

He followed her for another half block, flowing like mercury midst the piles of refuse and weeds, lifting his paws where necessary over the rubbled foundations. Then she stopped in front of one of the blaring lightpoles. The one with the flowers placed before it. The Dog knew it well; it had become a landmark on his usual route around the blighted neighborhood.

The Dog shied into the shadows, away from the lamp’s scorching radiance, and continued watching the girl. She stood stock-still at the foot of the lightpole, her hair and skirt gusting about her impassive form. Her fear dissipated now, scoured away on the wind, and finally he understood why her eyes had seemed so somber in spite of her earlier terror.

Then the girl did something the Dog hadn’t expected. She dropped like a stone down to her knees, and knelt silently in front of the lamp…

All at once, there it was. Just like any other anonymous telephone pole in the world, save for the withered wreath at its base. Rain and damp had infiltrated the laminated placard at its center, making the photo of the smiling girl run and blur, but the cursive text below was still legible-

MARJORIE BRINTON. SEPTEMBER 4, 1997 – MARCH 8, 2022. GONE BUT NEVER FORGOTTEN.

Denali looked down at the descanso and sighed heavily. Then she stooped down to begin her work. She did everything quickly and efficiently, trying to work faster than her grief could catch up. First she reached into her pocket for the padlock key and undid the chain tethering the little memorial to the pole. Then she picked up the old wreath and brushed the wilted lily petals beneath into the gutter. Her backpack’s zipper yowled open and she reached in and carefully withdrew the fresh wreath and a new photo placard she’d made in the university’s print shop. This wreath was different, roses instead of lilies. She tried to vary it each year; roses this year, lilies the last, before that carnations…

She tied the new wreath to the pole with zipties and redid the chain for good measure, then spent a minute grooming the roses. She’d placed it in her backpack as carefully as she could, but during the walk some of the flowers had been frazzled and she set them back into more pleasing positions, fluffing their petals like pillows and raking her fingers through the ferns surrounding them until the wreath was as perfect a tribute as it could be.

Satisfied with the wreath’s appearance, she reached into her backpack and pulled out the new photo placard from the protection of her calculus folder. It was the same photo as in the old descanso, of Madge smiling radiantly over a birthday cake. She’d just turned twenty-one and moments after that photograph was taken Denali had smeared an aluminum pie dish full of whip cream into Madge’s face, as joking payback for a similar incident on Denali’s sixth birthday. Dissolving into laughter without end, she’d helped clean Madge’s hair and then they’d gone down to the river pier and gotten quite drunk together, reminiscing about all the good times of their mutually concluded childhoods. Madge was attending Temple at the time, just entering her sophomore year. The coroner said she probably never even saw the speeding Hyundai that ended her life.

When her work was finished Denali knelt there for a long while. Her breath quavering as she was embattled by a storm of memories. She’d refused to let herself feel anything while she worked, but now she had nothing to focus her, nothing to keep the tears at bay. They welled like hot springs, and she tried futilely to blink them away before giving up and letting the dam burst.

It wasn’t just for Madge. It was for the callous transience of it all. Life had conspired to commence dragging her away from the deep pool of her bereavement and she resisted it like a stubborn mule because it felt wrong, dreadfully wrong, to feel okay again while Madge was still so irretrievably dead. Her grief was slipping away like sand through her fingers while smiles returned unto her like the disaster taxa ferns which bloom in the barren wake of volcanic eruptions, and she didn’t know what to do about that. Perhaps there was nothing to be done but wait for the dust of eternity to completely envelope in its all-erasing embrace her grief, her memories, the very name of Madge. This wreath, too, would rot, and need replacing, and Denali knew there would soon come a day when she would lay down a new wreath for the last time and she didn’t know what she would do when that came to pass. She understood that people had to die, that it was part of life, part of the order of the world. She just didn’t understand why God had to choose such a heartbreaking medium as Time to stage it all upon.

When her grief had run as far as it could and she was ready to depart, she stood up abruptly with a sniffle and inspected her handiwork once more. She knew Madge, her soul, wasn’t really there in the wreath, but it focused her, gave her something to speak directly to, instead of just sobbing her sister’s name to the wind.

“I love you, sis,” Denali choked, as quietly as she could. Her voice echoed back off the banks of fog as if she were standing in a mausoleum. “I love you. I love you.”

She hadn’t counted the seconds or the minutes or the hours and had no clue how much time had passed, nor did she care. Totally forgotten was the danger of the streets; it was as if she were the only being in the world, she and her grief. She wiped her eyes on the back of her wrist and, with one more heavy, tear-laden sigh, set back off down the street, toward home. She let the brume to envelope her and she did not look back.

The Dog waited until she had vanished into the fog to inspect her handiwork. Treading gingerly round the descanso, his nose brushing the roses just so. Fresh roses. It was the first thing he’d smelled in a long time that stirred him. Once this street was full of them, rosebuds glinting in dew ‘neath the light of the moon…

He thought that was all. She’d come here to place the flowers, and to cry and grieve her loss. An aberrant daughter of the Old People, passing through his territory on a quest to recall a love that had died long ago. Perhaps he would see her again, perhaps not. He wished her well and knew he would cherish her memory always- the precious knowledge that not all of the Old People had forgotten him, that some were yet able to see.

Then a new scent entered the Dog’s nose- rank smoke, mixed with the terribly familiar stench of lust and rage. The scruff on the back of the Dog’s neck rose involuntarily to attention, and he raised his whole head into the wind, standing absolutely rigid, one paw held slightly aloft from the ground. He smelled the air without sniffing it, simply letting it waft unfiltered into his nose. Yes. Exactly what he’d feared. The Bad Scent. The Bad Scent of the Hurting Men. It was Bad. Very, very Bad. And they were very, very close.

The Dog was not present when the others were slain, but he knew of it. He’d heard the struggles beyond the bounds of his territory, had smelled the grim aftermath as it was carried to him on the sepulchral wind. He knew, too, the men who had done it, had picked up their foul scents when they fled past him, fiendish delight leaking off their hides as they ran back to their wretched spider-holes, impressing them forever in the Dog’s mind as the Bad Men, the Hurting Men, the Terror Men.

The Dog looked back down the street to where the girl was fading into the murk. She knew. She must know. All the policemen of the city had been here, patrolling up and down the streets for weeks in their restless hunt for the Hurting Men. Their lights… so terribly bright, consigning the Dog to the basement for even longer than he normally would have spent down there.

Yet this girl was here now, all by herself, walking directly into an ambush. Was she mad? But then, were the Old People not mad altogether to so ruin the Dog’s home? To paste over the perfect edge of town with still more town, and then to paste over the living town itself with dead asphalt and concrete, and throbbing wires and posts of iron and steel? Resentment throbbed dimly through his veins. What did he owe them, after all? They had left him behind…

But then, this girl had very little to do with that. She was born long after the Old People left, and perhaps she knew not of their misdeeds, or did know, and reproved of them. The fact remained- the rose-bringer was walking to her doom. If none would help her now, she would surely die. The policemen were too far. None of the residents knew or cared of her life. That left him alone to guard this sojourner through his land.

The Dog listened to the girl’s footsteps fade away into the fog like a ghost, and made his decision. He trotted back up the porchsteps of his ruinous haunt, and returned to the flooded basement. The waters beckoned to him as ink beseeches a quill.

He would protect this girl.

Her eyes still damp and her heart still sore, Denali came to a large, dark puddle pooled up in a spot where the sidewalk had buckled and cracked, one slab of pavement subsiding under another like a clash of continental plates. She skirted around it on the verge, not wishing to step into the street on the chance that some wild speedster would suddenly appear out of the brume and mow her down. You could never be too careful in Philadelphia, even at night. Especially at night.

She put the puddle behind her and continued trudging into the fog, too sad to care when or whether she made it home, whether the gang was out there or not. Every shrouded shape seemed a potential enemy, but-

Gy-trashhhh!

Denali’s blood iced at the sound. A cacophonous splash behind her, like a heavy stone being dropped into a pond. Her breath snagged on a startled gasp and she whirled about on her heels, heart vaulting into her throat on a single, jagged beat. Acid terror clawed up her spine right after it. They were behind her. Right behind. She knew it. She could feel their presence with every fiber of her being even before she had completed a half-turn to face them. Oh God. Oh God. Forgotten was her grief, her sorrow. She didn’t want to die. Not here. Not now. Not like this. Her mind ran in hypersonic, as if each clipped synapse might be her last transmission to a callous world. At the last instant of her turn, she yanked her hands out of her pockets to defend herself.

A dog stood on the pavement before her.

All at once, the tension fizzled out of her like a deflating balloon. She exhaled heavily, almost laughing in relief. She’d been expecting death, death and worse. She got a dog.

And what a dog! her still-frazzled mind thought. Indeed, it was the biggest dog Denali had ever seen. Eyes level to her own, set deep back in a big, shaggy, hatchet-shaped head with a muzzle terminating in a walrus’s mustache of whiskers. His chest was deep and narrow, held aloft on lanky colt legs and too-big paws, and his withers were high enough that she thought it might be more proper to count his height in hands, like a horse. He looked like Winn-Dixie with gigantism, covered in long, shaggy fur the color of a well-used dishrag. His tail was thick and plumed like a featherduster, his raggedy ears were carried alertly forward, and every fiber of him looked to be hewn of muscle and bone and sinew.

But it was the dog’s eyes which most commanded Denali’s attention. There was something very off about them. Not wrong, but off. Fierce pools of amber, blazing under the animal’s soot-gray brow like hearths. A wilderness dwelt in those eyes, a wilderness and a secret, for they were the sort of eyes that coursed with ease over the deep abysses of time, and would have been as at home in a pineland thirty thousand years ago as on the ruined streets of North Philadelphia in the current. The realization soughed through Denali’s bones like the wind through the bare sidewalk trees. A dog may have stood before her, but he had the eyes of a wolf.

Denali swallowed tersely. There was no sign of aggression in the dog’s body language. No bristling hackles or bared teeth or snarling jowls. Indeed, he seemed to be more wary of her, though he could certainly have killed her in an instant if he so desired. He leaned forward without moving, his nose wrinkling ever so slightly as he inhaled to take another measure of her, without ever averting his eerie golden eyes from hers. Smelling perhaps for treats, perhaps for something far more special, something beyond reckoning.

Then, as if to rouse her from her dreamlike stupor at his sudden appearance, the dog shook himself dry.

Denali threw her arms up to shield herself from the spray of water. The dog was soaked through, like he’d just emerged kelpie-like from the puddle. Of course it could only mean he’d been out in the rain the whole storm, and she laughed despite herself, a merriment unsuited for the dismalness of the street.

“You’re lost, boy?” she asked, catching a fraidy-cat tremble in her voice. She didn’t care. Maybe she would’ve been embarrassed in front of her friends, but not a dog. There was something about dogs that demanded innocence in kind. “You were the one in that house back there, weren’t you?”

The dog cocked his head quizzically, and Denali smiled. “What’s your name, boy?”

She squatted down slowly to inspect the dog’s collar, keeping her hands cupped nonthreateningly over her knees. The dog took a wary step backward, into the puddle, never taking his wild amber eyes off her. He raised his head just enough for Denali to see her efforts to learn his name were for naught.

“No collar?” she frowned, staring at the matted mass of fur where a tag should have jingled before her. She looked up and met the dog’s eyes. “You’re a stray?”

The dog, quite naturally, did not answer Denali’s question. But there was a spark in his wolfish eyes, conveying an odd sense of urgency- for what?

“I don’t have any food, boy,” Denali said apologetically. She pulled out her jacket pockets to emphasize her point.

The dog didn’t budge. He just continued staring at her, his gaze remarkably intense, almost judgmental, compelling her to… to something.

“I’m sorry. I really don’t have anything for you.”

She tentatively held an empty palm out to the dog, ready to withdraw it at the first sign of aggression. The dog simply sniffed gingerly at her palm, from an almost equally cautious distance, all the while keeping his big, beseeching eyes upon her. Well, mutual wariness is good, she thought. At least you know where you stand with each other.

She pursed her lips.

“Well, look, I’ve really got to get home,” she explained gently, soothingly, just like if the dog were a person. As she spoke, she rose ever so slowly to her feet, turning her hands down nonthreateningly and holding her eyes on the dog’s scruffy, trashtruck toy face. “It was nice meeting you. You take care, alright?”

She was back on her feet and the dog hadn’t shown any sign of hostility. He still stood half in the puddle, watching her. With her eyes bolted onto him for the least warning of bite, Denali took one step backwards. Then she slowly turned, first her body and then at last her head, and began walking away back along her intended route.

She stopped after a few paces at what sounded like a metal chain being draggled across the pavement behind her. She turned to face the jangling sound, and saw the dog following her. She swallowed. What was that sound? She looked at the dog’s neck again, then his legs, to see if perhaps he was trailing some scrap of doghouse lead he’d broken free of long before. Nothing. He took another step towards her and she heard the sound again. The metallic sound was coming, inscrutably, directly from his paws.

Denali said nothing. What was there to say to that? She stared at the dog. The dog stared back. She chuffed in nervous amusement- “I don’t have anything for you, I’m sorry.”

She pivoted tersely away and started walking again, but as soon as she took a step, the dog’s paws immediately jangled on after her. She stopped and turned to face him once more, more nervously now. But the dog’s eyes seemed devoid of any kind of predatory intent. There was just that intense, blazing urgency.

“You’re kind of weirding me out,” Denali said. By a cock of his head, the wolfhound seemed to profess his own confusion at her- I’m weirding you out? Well, what’s a white girl like you doing in a hood like this?

Denali didn’t have an answer for that. The dog sat back on his haunches and waited, an amber glint in his eyes seeming to convey bewilderment that the girl found it difficult to grasp his purpose. He watched, and waited, and then his jowls curled back into a panting smile.

“You want to come with me?” she asked, in sudden a flash of inspiration.

The dog pricked his ears up and again cocked his head at her, as if he’d understood her and was trying to reply in the affirmative. His yellow eyes grew just a bit wider, and a slight whine rose from his throat.

“Well,” Denali said, thinking. It was still a few blocks home through that desolate slum, and the dog was friendly. And large. “Alright. I’ll be glad for some company. Come here, boy.”

The mutt swished his featherduster tail happily. Then he rose back to his big jangling paws and heeled alongside her with all the discipline of a show-dog.

They went like that for four forsaken blocks, Denali speechless at the hound’s good manners. It was as if she’d raised him from a pup, and the wretched neighborhood seemed far less sinister with this huge, apparently loyal animal at her side.

Soon they came upon the alley. It wasn’t really an alleyway in the proper sense, but that’s what everyone called it. Just a vacant weedlot, cutting straight through two blocks where long ago several rowhomes had been demolished, leaving only a few scattered bricks embalmed under wrappings of ragweed and stiltgrass. It was a shortcut through the urban ruins. On the other side, her house was but four doors down. The alternative was continuing straight up Franklin Street and turning onto Susquehanna, a far more likely locale to meet unsavories than the desolate weedlots hollowed out of the once-mighty city like a blight spreading through an elm. And yet, shrouded in that pervasive fog, the corridor was bound up in a stillness infinitely more hostile than mere silence.

She’d been through the alley many times before, but the place hadn’t seemed half so sinister by day. Again Denali felt she was being watched. This time she knew for sure it was the dog, who met her gaze imploringly, as if sharing her hesitation. She took a deep breath.

“Well, are you ready?” she asked. A flutter of nervous fear tickled her tummy as she watched clots of mist coiling under the dim, distant glow of the streetlights. The dog mewled anxiously at her, and looked up the street, the other path she could take. She sighed. “No, no. That way’s too long. I live over this way,” she said, pointing down the alley for emphasis. As if he knows what you’re saying… And yet she felt compelled to explain herself. “It’s quicker. Trust me.”

The dog just stared intently at her. She scoffed. Not to be mean or dismissive; more to bolster her own courage which was being steadily sapped by leeches of doubt the longer she hesitated. She pursed her lips.

“Well, you don’t have to come, but I’m going.”

And, so saying, she took a big step onto the unmown, dandelion-carpeted lot, and began trudging on towards home.

She’d meant what she said. The dog was totally free to depart and go his own way. She could not possibly force such a large animal to obey her. But she sincerely hoped…

A few short moments later, she heard the curious coin-purse padding of the dog’s paws. She breathed a blessed sigh of relief, looking to her left to see the dog alongside her once more, a skeptical but committed look in his eyes. Then they walked on together into the waste of weeds.

Any lingering skepticism Denali had about the dog evaporated when she took note of his calm alertness. Sniffing tentatively at the weeds, sometimes lifting his head to test the air. Leashless, he trotted along at a pace she could readily match, his body a smudge of graphite against the brume. At times the fog was so dense he faded completely into it, and Denali’s only indication of his continued presence was the soft metallic padding of his feet, and the overwhelming, calming reassurance she felt that he was, in fact, still by her side.

They came to the end of the first lot, and at the curb Denali heard the distant, unmistakable din of rap music. The harsh, discordant beat resounded like war drums, ribald lyrics muted by the mist. The dog stopped suddenly, ears pricked forward. He and Denali each scanned the gloom, but it was either too far or too fogmuffled to tell what direction it was coming from. She glanced at the dog. He stared intently into the murk, seemingly as confounded as she about the source of the music. His ears twitched slightly, like satellite dishes recalibrating. When he looked up at her his gaze was hard and solemn as iron. Then, reassuringly, a wag of the tail.

The Dog knew where they were. They, multiple. His ears were of little help, his nose far more. Even an ordinary dog’s sense of smell was many thousands of times better than a human’s, and he was no ordinary dog. He could find and follow a week old scent trail, if he must, his nose able to discern even the faintest traces of a creature’s passing.

In this case, the trail was straightforward. Five of the Hurting Men were directly ahead of them, seated on a crumbling porch at the end of the next weedlot. He knew them instantly. Never in a thousand years would he forget their oils, the pungent sweats and sebums oozing from their pores; nor would he ever forget the fouler memories he associated with their reeking hides. Screams for mercy piercing the night, met only with cruel laughter, the spilling of innocent blood upon pavement. In a crowd of hundreds he would pick them out as easily as if their heads were aflame. Each of them was a marked man, so far as he was concerned, and despite himself, the Dog felt a territorial growl rumbling deep within his chest.

A sixth Hurting Man, the one with the music, approached them quickly from the north, cutting off that avenue of escape and funneling them towards the pack on the porch. The Dog grasped their strategy instantly, and regretted that the girl had not heeded his earlier warning to turn up the street.

He looked over at her. His eyes wide and urgent. Trying with all his wordless tongue to persuade her to change direction, to veer away from the doom at the end of the alley. Down the street, the other way- they would be followed still, but only by one. One he could handle. He whined. Had he been a mere pet, curbed and leashed, he would have tugged and dragged her away from the peril whether she wanted or not, but as a pariah he could only implore as her equal.

The girl shook her head and jabbed a nervous finger at the alley. “This way,” she whispered sharply.

Again the Dog whined. If he were dealing with another of his kind, or any normal beast, he would expect it to behave rationally, to detect the threat and know to avoid it. But the senses of humans were pitifully dull. She probably didn’t know the Hurting Men were even there, awaiting her at the end of the alley. Too, her fear was heightened a hundredfold by the fact that the Hurting Men desired to harm her, specifically, and this same fear only made her behave ever more foolishly.

But the Dog was at her left hand. It felt right to be. He had always been a guardian of the crossroads, of the world’s most liminal boundaries. If ever he’d wrought mischief, he’d always made up for it by being a stalwart protector of the innocent, the lone traveler, even unto the day the Old People had been on the verge of forgetting him forever. What was this but his most ancient calling? Guarding a somber wisp of a girl, she who bore roses in her arms and innocence in her heart, on her journey through a dark ghetto…

And so, he resolved, as long as there was breath in his lungs and a bite behind his bark, no harm would come to her.

Despite the muffling effect of the fog, Denali could tell that the music was getting closer. Not that she was walking towards it, as if it were playing from a stationary speaker. It was moving towards her as well. Which could only mean one thing- someone was heading her way. Gauging the distance was nigh impossible in such dreck, but she knew it was coming from up the street, not in the alley. If she hurried…

The dog whined, again trying to urge her down the street, in the opposite direction as the music. She shot him an annoyed glance- they were so close!- and then crossed the street herself, waiting for the dog to follow. She had a feeling he would, and sure enough when she made it to the other side he was only a few paces behind her.

The next and final alley yawned before them as dark and sinister as one of the gates of Hell. The dog stared long into the blackness, then lowered his head. His matted hackles rose like a mountain ridge down the length of his back and he growled softly, more to caution Denali than to challenge whatever threat he sensed lurking in the abyssal corridor ahead.

Denali tensed in response to the dog’s hesitation. What if they’re in the alley? There’d be no escape. But then, who’s playing the music behind us? Just some guy ignoring curfew? That’s stupid. Maybe we should go down the street, after all. Just loop back up around the bottom of the block… but if they’re heading toward me now they’ll just chase me. This is it, you can give them the slip here or not at all. Your choice.

The lurid, hateful lyrics crept ever closer, piercing the fog, and Denali knew she had to make a decision. She turned to the dog. He was still holding himself taut as a wire. His nose wrinkled as he tested the air. No snarl on his face, but the stout-hearted defiance was plain in his eyes. The dog glanced back at her, begging pools of amber made numinous in the murk.

“It’ll be okay,” Denali whispered. Maybe it’s just an alley cat that’s got him worked up, she told herself. Yeah, and maybe it’s a Pegasus...

She stepped into the weedlot and let herself be cloaked in the pitch darkness, her black biker jacket absorbing the night like the hull of a stealth fighter. The huge dog followed at her side, solemn and wagless.

In the alley the fog was even more opaque than out on the street, funneled through it like sand in a slipstream. She couldn’t see the other end. Could barely see her fingers in front of her face. All about her the walls seemed to enclose like the fingers of a grasping hand. Dank crates and stacks of wooden pallets. The dog hemmed close to her side out of necessity, brushing against her legs, but she nevertheless felt comforted by his presence. Even more so a moment later, when she heard the rap music finally reach the entrance to the alley.

Denali stopped walking. The dog halted too, and looked back. A low growl rippled up from the bowels of his throat. For a moment the music seemed suspended in the air, growing neither closer nor further. Then the beat began growing louder, echoing as it bounced off the walls. Accompanying it was the unmistakable sound of shoes crunching on broken glass. Whoever was playing the music was now following them down the alleyway.

Denali swallowed tightly on nothing and looked at the dog. His huge ignis fatui eyes- still bright and gold as lightning bugs even in the smothering fog- urged caution, but underneath she could see the bedrock of the animal’s soul. Trust dwelt there. Trust and pure, simple honesty. The yearning to bestow comfort, in return for only the same. There was loyalty without flattery, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man with none of his vices. There was, in a word, a dog in those eyes, and if Denali had at any point during her fearful walk home wondered why she’d placed such full and complete trust in an animal she’d never met before, any such misgivings were resolved in an instant by an unbreakable bond which echoed across the abyss of forty thousand years.

Denali exhaled tightly, and she and the dog continued apace down the alley, each acutely aware of the echoing footsteps closing in behind them. As the unwelcome DJ got closer, the words of the song finally resolved into clarity through the fog-

Lead to the head,
A cracka’s gon’ be dead-
A fight, a fight,
It’s a nigga on a white,
If the nigga don’t win then we all jump in!

Kill that devil, kill, kill, kill ‘im now,
Slit his throat an’ burn his house,
Take his bitch an’ tear her blouse,
Uh, yeah, grab that white ass, have her roll-over-roll,
Make hoes eat dirt while we fuck shit outta ev’ry hole.

Denali bristled at the hateful lyrics. Her hands went clammy, her mouth dry and sour. She drew a slow, ragged breath, and reached a trembling hand out to stroke the dog’s scruffy neck for reassurance. It was their first physical contact, and the dog tensed as if unused to such affections. Denali felt his whole body quaver uncertainly under her, but he did not pull away and neither did she, each drawing strength and courage from the other. The girl’s fingers moved slowly up the dog’s sore-covered neck, scratching behind his ragged, flopsy ears and gently toying with the palm fronds of matted fur on his scalp. Finally she withdrew her hand. The dog looked at her for a moment, then sighed and got back to business, pointing his nose ahead into the fog like a radar dish.

Shapes leered out of the brume and Denali jumped at each indistinct apparition. The stacks of crates and lines of garbage cans each, for a moment, presenting the crouched forms of sinister men. The fog thickened so much so that even the dog, though scarcely a footstep away, blurred out like smoke, and only the comfort of his bulk and the incessant padding of his feet reminded her that he was still in fact there to guide her. As they pressed on, the baleful song continued-

Kill the devil’s dog an’ kill they wives,
Kill all the lil’ devils while they sleep tonight!
‘Cuz it’s our time now, we settlin’ the score-
Kill all the devils dead as the dinosaur!

Suddenly the dog growled, his body tense. Denali followed his gaze to the end of the alley. Someone was slouched against the wall, backlit in a fog turned phosphorescent by the streetlamps.

In grade school, Denali had read a book on paranormal phenomena. It was mostly the typical dreck about the Bermuda Triangle and the chupacabra, but one entry, on a Scottish monster known as the Fear Liath Mor- the Big Grey Man- had given Denali nightmares for years after. The Fear Liath Mor was said to be a horrible giant made entirely of mist and shadow, who stalked lone travelers across the moors. Next to a terrifying pencil sketch of a giant, shaggy figure slouching after a frightened hiker, the book calmly assured that the Fear Liath Mor was nothing more than a peculiar trick of the light, the sun casting back the hiker’s own shadow onto the mist, giving the illusion of a darkling pursuer.

This Fear Liath Mor was real. She knew it was real because the shadow man slowly turned his head to face her, then pushed coolly off the wall with a long, leering whistle and began swaggering towards her.

“We-e-ell, lookie ‘ere,” the man drawled as he slouched her way. “Selim brough’ us some more of that white meat, brothas.”

Heart pounding against the bars of her ribcage like a madeyed prisoner, Denali stared in naked horror as a black hand leered out of the fog, knobby fingers spread wide, jaundiced nails clutching for her pale throat.

Behind her, the rap music suddenly was punctuated by a booming voice- “Selim always brings the white meat.”

The dog barked. A short, ferocious snarl erupting out of his throat, warning of far deadlier force behind it.

“Oh, shit!”

The black hand recoiled as if scalded, retreating back into the fog like one of the heads of Scylla.

There was a commotion on the porchsteps as the man reeled back, and Denali realized there was more than just the one man before her and his ally behind. It was difficult to estimate, in the dark and the fog, but it sounded like there were four or five of them. Her stomach contracted into a singular pit of despair. There was no way, no chance of escaping from so many. Then, the still-snarling dog’s coarse side brushed against her legs. The touch invigorated her. She drew in a breath of courage, and continued walking, as slow and calm as her stuttering pulse allowed. To stop now was suicide.

A voice called out from the porch steps. “Selim, watch out yo! She got a dog!”

“Dog shmog,” the one behind her said coolly. “I’m all bricked up, let’s do this.”

“Stop playin’ man. You see the size of that dog?”

“I don’t give a fuck ‘bout no dog, Ty. Let’s go. Bitch need some meat under her belt.”

“Man you wrong as hell…”

Denali turned just in time to see Selim’s hand lurching out of the fog, aiming for her shoulder.

The Dog cast a quick glance behind him to see exactly where the Hurting Man’s incoming hand was. Then, with a savage bark and the fury of a tornado, he whirled round to face his enemy.

He heard the girl yelped as his bulk shoved her back into the brick alley wall like a featherweight. She caught herself on a stack of wooden pallets but the Dog wasn’t paying attention to her anymore.

The Dog lunged up and snapped at the Hurting Man’s hand. His aim was true, white fangs sinking into black flesh. The bite was calculated to just barely break the man’s skin, enough to draw blood without clamping down and inflicting real damage. If he’d wanted, he could have shorn the man’s arm clean of its socket. And oh, he’d wanted to, so very badly. But he knew that would invite battle, and while he could defend himself quite capably, he could not defend himself and the girl at the same time. So, this paltry snap would have to suffice for the time being.

The Hurting Man shrieked and snatched his hand back in a storm of cusses.

The Dog landed on all four paws and lowered his head, hackles bristling. He snarled viciously. Blood scent was in the air, intoxicating ichor overpowering everything, even the girl’s sweet aroma. It was so hard to not finish the task here and now, to not indulge in that eldritch power to kill which he possessed in such abundance. But the girl needed him still, and so he held himself back on the taut leash of his own will.

The Hurting Man lurched back from him, leaking splashes of blood in his wake. His hand was sticky and red. Four puncture wounds from each of the dog’s canines, crimson springwells that never seemed to cease. He squeezed his hand to slow the bleeding and chanted “Oh shit! Oh shit!” over and over again.

When Denali scrabbled to her feet the skirmish was already over. She’d nearly bashed her head into the wall, skinning her palms on the rough bricks as she caught her fall. She turned back just in time to see the dog’s fangs glinting in the air like daggers as he recalled his bite, while the bitten hand writhed back into the fog, its owner clutching at it like a doll.

“Ah sheeit,” one of the men called ahead of her. “Selim got bit.”

“Goddamn bitch and her goddamn dog!” Selim cursed.

Denali looked around. The fog had cleared enough for her to make out five men clustered on the porch, their legs hiked up like they were hiding from a torrent of lava. The huge dog returned to her side and locked eyes with her. His snarl was gone but the will to fight was not. He whined urgently, as if to say- We need to go NOW.

“Okay, okay,” she whispered to him. Her heels clattered upon broken glass as she trotted past the viper’s nest of the porch. The steadfast dog, alert to the possibility of another attack from the rear or the left flank, hemmed close alongside her, herding Denali like a lamb and forcing her to make a wide berth around the men, and she couldn’t help but admire his perfect grasp of the situation. The men, still too afraid of the dog to approach, catcalled as she passed.

“Come back, babycakes, shimmy yo’ tight ass over here!”

“Pretty legs, pretty legs!”

“‘Ey sweetie, I can do you better than that mutt can!”

Denali straightened her spine and walked past without acknowledging them. A calm pace, like the men weren’t even there, like this odd stray hound really were her dog and they were simply out for a normal evening stroll in the park. Even as they taunted her, the men’s sunken yellow eyes darted to check the huge dog, like nervous squirrels peering out of a tree. It was working so far, both the dog’s confidence and her own keeping them at bay. If she broke, if she ran, or worse- unlikely though it seemed- if the dog left her, it would only invite a wild pursuit.

“I’ll gut you, you little bitch!”

That was Selim. Denali turned back to see him keeled over on his knees, still clutching his bleeding hand. His face was twisted into a hateful mask of rage that contained all the enmity of the world. She said nothing.

“You hear me, cunt? I’ll gut you fo’ this!”

His words resounded through the sluttish murk, but in the presence of her wyrd guardian they fell impotently upon Denali’s ears. The dog barked gruffly, as if to say- Move it! She was only too happy to oblige, and began trotting away.

“Motherfuckin’ bitch, get yo ass back here!”

“Forget it man,” one of the other men piped up, “She wasn’t nothin’.”

“Go suck a cat’s dick, Tyqueace!”

“The fuck you jes’ say to me, nigga?”

“I said go suck a cat’s dick!”

Denali and the dog went on, leaving the geckering catcallers on their porch to be consumed by the fog.

The alley’s exit loomed ahead, heralded by the slightly more luminous fog under the streetlamps. Denali kept walking, praying that there would be no pursuit, that the dog would keep his head for a few more moments. One bite was enough. She didn’t think the dog, huge and strong though he was, could hold six grown men at bay.

Dutifully, the dog stayed at her side as they finally came out into the street. Denali almost melted in relief. The dog halted for just a moment, one forepaw off the ground. He looked back behind them and tested the air. Then he turned back to Denali and let his tongue loll out, as if to say- All clear.

Trusting from the dog’s relaxed demeanor that no pursuit was forthcoming, Denali lowered her own guard a bit. Just a bit. She didn’t pull out her phone. Not yet. Not until she was safe indoors.

The dog continued to accompany her as she walked down the last half-block to her house.

“You’re a good boy,” she said. Not in any cute, cooing babytalk tone. She meant it very seriously.

She looked down at her shoes. It was silly, but here she was, struggling for the right words to thank this strange, improbable dog for saving her life.

“I… you know, I’m sorry, but even at home I don’t have any treats for you. I… hmmm.” She huffed in frustration. The dog shivered in his soot-gray coat beneath the glow of a streetlamp. Denali sighed. “Thank you.”

The dog looked up at her. Set back under his scruffy brows, his eyes twinkled like gold dust. Not for the first time that night, a wordless understanding passed between them, the dog seeming to reply- Don’t mention it.

Ahead, Denali’s destination loomed out of the fog. The corner house, lights all on, cutting through the brume like the prow of a ship.

“Well, this is me,” she said lamely. Then, she asked- “You want to come in for the night? The house is too small for you to stay forever, but it’s warm. Warmer than wherever you were staying before, anyway. I could brush you, at least- you look like you need to be reupholstered.”

The dog, naturally, did not answer, but followed Denali across the street to the rowhome.

He knew well of what she spoke, and had he been any ordinary dog, he would have obliged her offer of food and shelter and warmth. But alas, this Dog was not an ordinary dog. His home was in the liminal. He could sleep on her porchstep, certainly. By her bedstead, never. It had been this way for all the long years of his life, in Philadelphia and back in that hazy, dismal place they called the West Riding, where he was whelped. He was a creature of the crossroads, a guardian of travelers, and tonight he had fulfilled his ancient covenant with the Old People.

The dark alley had renewed his strength, but now, under the fierce glow of the lamps and wires, he could feel it waning quickly. He was far from the cellar now, in its odd, comforting zone between the knowledge of the University and the ignorance of the ghettos.

It was time for him to depart. In another buckled section of pavement, water had pooled into a broad and shimmering expanse, and it beckoned to the Dog in ancient song…

Denali fumbled with her keys but needn’t have worried herself. The door swung inward, revealing the shocked face of Jackie, one of her flatmates.

“Oh my God, Denali!” she exclaimed. “You walked home alone?”

“No,” Denali smiled, shaking her head. “Not alone.”

“What do you mean?” Jackie asked, poking her head just enough out of the jamb to look around the porchsteps. Wide-eyed, like a mouse peering out of its burrow. “There’s no one here.”

“Wha-” Denali started, before turning abruptly at the sound of a large splash on her left.

The dog was gone but the ripples lingered, spreading slowly out to the edges of the puddle before it settled back into a glassy sheet.

Denali looked around the empty street in bewilderment, wondering what had become of her furry guardian, but all traces of him vanished with the last ripple of bestilled puddle water.

“Denali?” Jackie asked.

“I…” she started, but she didn’t know where to begin.

“Just come inside,” Jackie insisted, “I’m getting nervous with the door wide open.”

Denali nodded. Then, suddenly, she came back to her senses. “Oh my God,” she stammered, jabbing her fingers into her pocket for her phone.

“What?”

“I have to call the police.”

One week later, Denali strolled down Pollett Walk on her way home from the party. Equal parts somber and joyous, the arrests of all six of the suspected rapist-killers was well worth celebrating. The details were still under tight wraps for the upcoming trial, but apparently a girl had phoned the police claiming she’d nearly been attacked by the men until her dog bit one of them. Three days later, one Selim Brown had checked himself in to an UrgentCare clinic, complaining of a dog bite that refused to stop bleeding.

She walked confidently with her chin held high. The streets were still a dangerous place after dark. They always would be, and one needed to be always vigilant. But the great terror had ended, and Denali felt no fear whatsoever as she strode home.

A splashing sound to her left shook her from her reverie. She smiled and turned to face the maker of the noise. Skulking just beyond the reach of the streetlamps was a huge, woolly, soot-gray hound, whose eyes shined a blaze of amber in the incandescent glare as he watched and followed her from the shadows.

Denali held up a waving hand in greeting, then looked away, a knowing smirk spreading across her face as she did so. Another puddle lay before the dog.

When the next splash sounded and she looked back once more, the Dog was gone. The street was quiet, the puddle settling, and the cool night breeze whispered its secrets to those with the ears to listen.

POSTSCRIPT: This story was inspired by the legend of the Gytrash, which the author first heard about on Dead Rabbit Radio- a daily paranormal, conspiracy, and true crime podcast- in Episode 199, titled “The Guytrash: The Shape-shifting Horror of Britain!” The author is indebted to Dead Rabbit Radio for providing the creative inspiration needed to write the tale you have just read. If you enjoyed this story or the show description interests you, please consider giving it a listen!

I have also published a “WRITING OF” essay to accompany this story, for any readers who might be interested in the research and process behind the story, including an explanation of what exactly a Gytrash is, and several deleted scenes:

A.I. Disclaimer: This story was entirely human-written. However, the cover art is a collage of stock photos which includes an A.I. effect blended into the final composition.

On one such trip to the market, Patience stopped for a moment’s rest on a fallen chestnut log which blocked the road before her. While she rested and wondered how she would be able to drive the pigs around the fallen tree, little did she realize that from the other side of the log she was being spied upon by the Ape Boy.

Now, the Ape Boy was a most pitiful creature. He was tall and gangly and covered in a thick pelt of drab orange fur, and he was called the Ape Boy because he had the snout and fangs of a baboon. So unspeakably hideous was he that none could bear to look at him. He ate beetles and worms with glee, but what he really liked to eat was raw meat from any animal he could catch with his bare hands. Knowing his ugliness, the Ape Boy always wore a waistcoat and breeches and a tricorne, which he thought made him appear very distinguished, but actually made him look much sillier.

The Ape Boy watched Patience while she rested and was captivated by her beauty- her skin as white as shell, her lips red as the rose, and her hair rich as chestnut. To his eyes, the grit and stains upon her arms and face were as a princess’s blush, and her ragged, patchwork dress seemed more lovely than the most elegant ballgown. The Ape Boy watched her and watched her until he could bear to look at her no longer, for he had fallen hopelessly in love with young Patience Newlin.

Smitten, the Ape Boy clambered discreetly up the log to try to get a better view of the maiden, but he slipped and fell with a loud crash that startled Patience. When she turned to see what had made such an awful racket behind her, she saw the Ape Boy rubbing the top of his furry orange head where he had hit the ground.

“Who are you?” asked Patience frightfully.

“I am the Ape Boy,” he declared proudly, recovering from his fall and leaping up onto the log to sit at Patience’s side. “And I rule these swamps! From Carcus Creek to Greenwich Point, every muddy hole and thorofare is my domain. And who, may I ask, are you?”

“I am Patience Newlin, and I rule nothing,” the girl replied. Then she gestured to the swine gathered around the tree trunk. “These are my pigs, which I mean to drive to market. But this log has blocked my path, and it will be much trouble to get the pigs around it and back onto the road.”

“That I can take care of,” said the Ape Boy, leaping from the log with a mighty roar. The pigs were terrified to have such an appalling beast in their midst, and ran hither and yon to escape, but the nimble Ape Boy headed them off at every turn, so that in but a short moment the pigs had formed into a single-file line, trotting around the log and back onto the road.

“There,” said the Ape Boy, “Now you may continue on your way.”

“Thank you very much,” Patience beamed, truly grateful to the strange and ugly Ape Boy for solving her problem. She curtsied to him before continuing on her way, and the Ape Boy was well and truly smitten.

Over the following weeks, the Ape Boy courted Patience, and tried wooing her with many gifts. When she was bringing cabbages to the market and her cart broke its axle, the Ape Boy whittled a new one out of a hemlock bough and soon had Patience on her way. And when Patience stopped in the road wanting for water, the Ape Boy appeared with a fresh jug from the Sipehon Spring for her to drink. He began to follow Patience’s every move, so he could always anticipate what she would need, and when, and he thought himself quite a romantic for all his effort.

The Ape Boy’s mother, who happened to be a witch, soon took notice of this, and suggested her own gifts to charm the girl.

“My dear son,” the witch would say, after plucking a citrus from a grove she kept by means of magic, “Take this orange and offer it to the girl, for ladies enjoy sweet fruits above all else.”

And the Ape Boy would find Patience walking up the road to market, and offer her the orange, which she would accept with gracious glee.

“My dear son,” the witch would say, after finishing an eiderdown duvet, “Take this eiderdown and offer it to the girl, for winter is coming and ladies enjoy warm blankets above all else.”

And the Ape Boy would find Patience coming back down the road from market, and offered her the eiderdown, which she would accept with a kind smile and a word of sincere thanks.

“My dear son,” the witch would say, after breaking a fresh pony with switches of oak and alder, “Take this pony and offer it to the girl, for there is nothing in the world ladies enjoy more than a strong pony to serve at their will.”

And the Ape Boy would find Patience pushing her cabbage-cart up the road, and hitched up the pony to pull it for her the rest of the way. And Patience thanked the Ape Boy for his kindness and continued on her journey.

Gradually, the Ape Boy’s gifts became less and less becoming of what a young lady might find desirable, and more and more befitting the expectations of an ape. He brought Patience faggots of bird feathers, and a necklace of mouse ears, and a cape of untanned doe’s hide. And all of these Patience also accepted, for she was too sweet and kind to refuse even such grotesqueries when they were gifted so sincerely.

Eventually, the Ape Boy came to truly believe that Patience was in love with him as well, and grew confident enough to offer her his clawed, warty hand in marriage. Now, Patience had been expecting this for some time, with growing dread in her heart, for though she considered the Ape Boy one of her fondest friends, she did not love him. So when he bent down upon one knee and offered her a ring cast of bog iron, she could only clasp her hands over her face and cry, and the Ape Boy knew he had been spurned once more.

So saddened was the Ape Boy’s heart by this turn of events, that he withdrew back into his swamps, and finding a tall oak tree with sturdy boughs, hung himself by the neck until he died.

When the Ape Boy’s mother found him, her cry sundered the heavens, and a great storm lashed down upon the county for three days and three nights.

When the storm broke and Patience again had occasion to travel to the market, the witch appeared on the road before her in a cloud of sulfur and brimstone-

“Ye hath brought death upon my son and ruin to me, Patience Newlin!” the witch cried. “My son did everything he could to seek thy affections, and was a perfect gentleman to thee. What doth he receiveth for his chivalry? He was spurned, rejected like a runt or a monster!”

This upset Patience’s soul greatly, for she knew not that the Ape Boy had ended his life for her rejection. The witch, however, gave her no chance to repent or apologize, and went on to cast three curses upon the girl-

“For this foul deed, I curse the ground ye tread upon, to bear naught but thistle and thorn for all the days of your life!” the witch cried. And, so saying, she threw ten liths of an orange upon the ground before Patience, whereupon they instantly shriveled and rotted, and even as they did the cabbages in Patience’s cart also shriveled and rotted before her eyes.

“I curse all the animals ye shall meet in all your years, to suffer distemper and lameness, and to perish one and all the instant ye set your heart upon them!” the witch cried. And, so saying, she jabbed her wand at Patience’s pony, whereupon the animal whinnied but once and fell over dead.

“And this above all- I curse thee and thy womb, Patience Newlin! This I vow by the sun and the stars, that ye shall not be with child until the day you are as wrinkled as the branch of the oak my son tied his noose upon, and when your babe finally is born, it shall be a devil!”

Then, her curses cast, the witch disappeared forever in a cackling bloom of flame, and was never heard from again. But Patience could not deny the evil that had been done, for as she left behind the dead pony and rotten cabbages, the grasses and flowers before her shriveled as she walked back home.

Eventually, though greatly saddened by the curses laid upon her, Patience fell in love with a woodsman, who cared not a bit about the fate which had befallen her-

“So much the better that the trees be already dead when my axe striketh against them!” said he. “And so much the better that we can keep no animals, for feed and fodder are expensive in these times. And as for your womb, well, I do not believe one so pretty as thee could be made barren by all the curses thrown by all the devils of Hell!”

But alas, Patience was indeed barren, though she and her husband never gave up trying to conceive the children they each so dearly desired. The witch’s curse seemed complete until, in her forty-fifth year, Patience finally found herself with child. Scarcely could the woman contain her joy at this unexpected turn of events, but her joy soon turned to despair, for the baby was not born, and she believed she had miscarried. But this, too, was part of the wicked witch’s curse, and for the next thirty-nine years Patience carried the seed of evil within her womb.

It was in Patience’s eighty-fourth year, on the sixty-sixth anniversary of the Ape Boy’s death, that her baby was finally born. While tending to supper late one summer’s night, Patience fell to the ground in the travails of labour. The child was not cradled within its mother’s womb as it ought to be, and so it tried with all its might to claw its way out of her belly, and Patience’s soul soon departed for pain.

Finally, covered in blood and with a wretched cry, the baby’s head arose from its mother’s belly. No one was there to welcome the child into the world, but had a single soul been present, most assuredly they would have fled in terror, and been right to do so. For the child of Patience Newlin was a devil indeed. The baby was made entirely of bone, having no flesh or muscle of any kind. Wheresoever upon the infant’s body there ought to have been flesh or sinew, there was naught but bone upon bone, such that it resembled a skeleton wearing the rags of a stiff cloak, or bands of armour.

The Bone Baby cried, for like all infants it was terribly hungry, but not for mother’s milk. It was hungry for bones, because, being made of bone itself, it could only ever grow by eating more bones. And so the Bone Baby slouched away from its mother’s burst belly and crawled out the door, and began traveling all over the countryside, peeking into all the cradles in all the cottages, looking for more baby bones to steal.

And wheresoever the Bone Baby found a tender babe in its cradle, when later that child’s mother came to rock or nurse her babe, a scream would escape her lips. For she would find that what once was her dear child was no longer, and every one of its bones had been taken away.

Soon the militia was called up to try to capture or destroy the terrible Bone Baby, but it was cunning in stratagem and outwitted the militias at every turn, dodging their patrols and sneaking through their picket lines, and stealing more and more baby bones all the while. And though a great bounty had been placed upon the Bone Baby’s head, none could collect it, and every mother and father was forced to remain on constant, frightful vigil to protect their children from the fiend.

One woman had recently given birth to a baby boy, whom she named Samuel. Fearing greatly that the Bone Baby would come to steal Samuel’s bones, the woman tasked her elder son Nathan with taking the child out of the city to their grand-aunt’s house far upriver. The journey would be long and dangerous, taking the boys through many miles of wild forest, so the woman packed a basket for Nathan with food for himself, and a pap-boat and two jars of pap for Samuel.

Nathan’s mother knelt to button his shirt and check the straps on Samuel’s papoose, and as she did this she smiled sadly, and spake thus-

“Now, my dear son, you must travel light as the hawk, and swift as the doe, and be cunning as the fox, for the Bone Baby will come after you if it learns of the precious cargo you carry. And so to help you, I have three gifts to give. The first of these is the Blue Bottle, which once belonged to a witch. If you uncork the Bottle and peer down its neck, you will be able to see any dangers that may be lurking near you. But, remember this- you may only use the Blue Bottle once, for its enchantment must be renewed each time it is used, and I am no witch.”

She then handed Nathan the enchanted Blue Bottle, which shone like sapphire, and was capped tightly with a cork to keep its magic contained within. Inside swirled a dark blue liquid, which Nathan thought to be a potion or brew. And he placed the Blue Bottle carefully in his haversack, nestling it upon a bed of straw.

“Next, to both you and Samuel, I give this blessed snakestone, which I purchased from a Lenape medicine man, who found it on the plains far, far to the west, well beyond the mountains and forests. Once it was one of the accursed brood of Eden, turned to stone by the Flood, and now it is a charm against all evil things. Wear it round Samuel’s papoose, that it might protect you both alike. It will not stop the Bone Baby, for its evil is stronger than the glimmer of good contained in the snakestone, but it will weaken the wretched fiend.”

She then held the amulet out over Nathan, to tie it round the papoose, and Nathan saw it- a thin spiral coil glistening like no other rock he had ever seen, and it felt very special indeed just to look upon the snakestone.

“Finally, I have for you this stick of chalk. For if the Bone Baby catches up to you, you may use it to draw a circle of enchantment round you and Samuel, to keep you safe from all evil things until either nightfall, if you draw the circle while the sun is up, or until dawn, if the sun be down. But be warned- you mustn’t let the circle you draw be touched or smeared in any way, else the enchantment will be broken, and it will be of no help to you or anyone else.”

And Nathan’s mother handed him the chalk, which he placed in the haversack beside the Blue Bottle. Nathan thanked his mother for the precious gifts, and she again wished him well, and then the two brothers set out from the house as quietly as they could. It was well past nightfall, and Nathan carried with him a pewter candleholder to light their grim way through the dark streets.

The boys left the city and Nathan’s feet were soon sore from walking so terribly far, when luck ordained that a farmer should be passing by on his haycart, returning to his fields before the bustle of dawn. Thinking quickly, Nathan hid in the ditch and then stole aboard as quietly as he could. In this way, the boys soon reached the great Timber Swamp, where they hopped off the haycart. Nathan stopped to rest a moment, and to feed Samuel his pap and change him, for the baby had begun to cry soon after they departed from the haycart.

After feeding Samuel, Nathan put him snugly back in his papoose, and took special care to ensure the snakestone amulet was bound tightly round the baby’s bundle. Then he broke from the road and went on down the trail straight into the Timber Swamp, for it promised to be a shorter path to his grand-aunt’s house.

Now, the Timber Swamp was a vast stretch of wildwoods on which no man ever dared set foot, for it was dotted in mires and crisscrossed by creeks and known to be the dwelling place of witches and ghosts and many fierce beasts. Nathan had heard many tales of the perilous Timber Swamp, yet he decided to brave them anyway for Samuel’s sake, to get him as far away from the Bone Baby as possible before nightfall.

“And anyway,” the boy said to Samuel, “When night does overtake us, we shall be surrounded by so many creeping and bumping things that surely we won’t have time to worry much about the Bone Baby in particular.”

The boys wandered through the Timber Swamp for many hours of the morning, and were wandering still when Nathan spied an approaching woodsman, who was dragging along a freshly killed rattlesnake by its tail while toting a rifle over his shoulder. Fearing that the woodsman might indeed turn out to be a bandit, Nathan hid behind the nearest stump and clutched for the snakestone to protect himself and his brother. But of course at that very moment Samuel began to cry, for he was hungry and in want of changing.

Nathan glanced around the stump and spied the woodsman as he neared. He was tall and wiry, wearing buckskin breeches and snakeskin boots. He had a face drawn like jerky and scruffy whiskers that looked like they’d been coming in since the days of Abram, and his brow was furrowed beneath a coonskin cap. Nathan hid again behind the stump and tried in vain to shush Samuel, praying that the woodsman mightn’t discover them.

The hand that fell on his shoulder a moment later shattered the boy’s hopes. He whirled round like a startled animal and wanted dearly to run away, but there was nowhere to run, so he simply looked up at the woodsman and put on as brave a face as he could. He was scruffy alright, that woodsman, and his eyes were dire as river ice, yet there was a twinkle in them which seemed pleasant.

With a smile, the woodsman stooped down over Nathan and asked- “Please, lad, can you tell me the road to Philadelphia?”

“Oh, yes,” Nathan replied, and he was quite relieved that the woodsman meant no harm, “I can tell you. I’ve just come from there, myself. But you’re a long ways off.”

“I am?”

“You have to get to the Bustleton Turnpike,” said Nathan. He rose to his feet and spun round to see which way he had come, but the forest was thick and dark and the trail had forked many a time since he first entered the Timber Swamp, “You walk back down this trail about a quarter mile, then you follow the deer path on the left- or was it the right? Let me see-”

“To be sure, lad, see as far as Philadelphia, if you like,” said the woodsman.

“Well, you must take the right path to get to Philadelphia, and that’s precisely what I can’t see just now,” Nathan said. Then he paused and looked back at the woodsman. “Why should you wish to go to Philadelphia, anyhow?”

“I’m a’huntin’ for that awful Bone Baby that’s been giving folks trouble down in the city,” replied the woodsman.

“Why, the Bone Baby is the reason we’ve just left the city,” said Nathan.

“To be sure,” the woodsman nodded. “It would be a sad day indeed if the Bone Baby were to harm a hair on the head of such a fine young sprout as you’ve got yonder on your back there. Though I can’t figure why he’s bawlin’ so- the Bone Baby ain’t found him just yet!”

“He is hungry,” Nathan replied, sitting on the stump and opening his haversack to mix some pap for Samuel.

“Ain’t got any milk on me,” said the woodsman. Then, remembering his manners, he took a flask from his belt and offered it to Nathan. “Got whiskey though.”

“Babies can’t drink whiskey!” Nathan scoffed.

“They can’t?”

“‘Course not, woodsman. Babies need milk or pap.”

The woodsman shrugged. “Ah, more for me then,” and so saying he tipped his flask back and drained it in one gulp. “He’s your brother, I reckon?”

“Yes. His name is Samuel,” said Nathan. Once the pap was mixed he put it aside so it might settle, then he shrugged off the papoose and lifted little Samuel out of it and laid him on the stump to change him. As he did this, he pointed to the dead rattlesnake. “And is that your brother, woodsman?”

“Oh, him? Ho-ho! Fine spes-ee-men, ain’t he? Fifteen rattles, if you can believe it- he’ll make a right fine oil for the rheumatism once I get back home. Til then, I mean to skin him and sell it. I hunt rattlers for a livin’, see, so most everyone calls me Rattlesnake Joe.”

“Rattlesnake Joe?”

“That’s what I said,” Rattlesnake Joe replied. Once Samuel had been changed and Nathan took him into the crook of his arm to feed him, Rattle gestured to the stump. “May I sit, lad?”

“‘Course you may, Rattle. Be my guest.” Nathan replied, for it was a large stump with plenty of room for two or even three people to sit beside one another comfortably.

Rattlesnake Joe pulled up his belt, which had drooped low under the weight of many pouches and purses and a glistening tomahawk, then sat on the stump beside Nathan. “And you, lad? What is your name?”

“Nathan.”

“And why might you’uns be out all by your lonesome in this here Timber Swamp?”

“My mother has sent us away to our grand-aunt’s home in Bristol ‘til the Bone Baby is gone,” Nathan replied sadly, “But I fear that may be a long while yet.”

“Not so long at all, boy!” Rattle replied haughtily, hefting his rifle a bit to adjust its seating on his shoulder. “Not so long at all, now that I am here!”

“The Bone Baby has made mockery of all the huntsmen and militias in the county for weeks. What makes you think you can defeat it?”

“Cause I knows how to track down sly critters like that. That’s what rattlers are, you know- real sly. And I reckon that theys ain’t too different from the Bone Baby- from what the papers read, it makes a sound mighty like a rattler when it’s poisin’ to strike.”

“How do you mean to defeat it?” Nathan asked skeptically.

Rattlesnake Joe took the rifle from his shoulder and held it out for Nathan to inspect. It was a beautiful weapon, with a stock of polished tiger maple, a barrel of cold gray iron, and a trigger of hardy blister steel. On the patch box was an engraving of a knight slaying a dragon.

“This here rifle was blest by a powwower. He blest it so that if I ever load it up with a silver bullet, any evil thing I shoot will keel over dead as dirt. And I have me three silver bullets to shoot, and I mean to shoot ‘em.”

“Oh, my mother gave me some charms, too, before I left,” Nathan replied, and he told Rattle all about the Blue Bottle and the snakestone and the chalk. Rattle listened attentively and when Nathan finished he whistled long and low.

“Your mother must be a re-fined darlin’ to see after you’uns that way, lad,” said he. Then he tapped the barrel of his rifle. “Course, charms is nice, but I prefer mine to be a bit more directly effective.”

They were both quiet for awhile, and soon Rattlesnake Joe pulled a knife from his belt to set about skinning the rattlesnake he had captured. Said he- “I intended to do this in the city, but since we’ve stopped for a bit, I s’ppose now’s as good a time as any.”

When he finished skinning the snake, he pulled out a tin from his satchel and stuck the snake’s body into it, sealing the lid tightly so no stench would leak out and ruin the air. Then he put the tin back in his satchel and swapped it for a rod of chestnut, and taking a knife from his belt he began whittling the rod into a flute, which he blew into occasionally to check his progress.

Nathan watched Rattle work while he fed Samuel, carefully tipping the pap boat to the baby’s mouth while stealing glances at the woodsman. Evening was not long off, and as he did not fancy being left alone in the Timber Swamp, he began to think of how to convince Rattlesnake Joe to stay with them.

“Night is coming fast, Rattle,” said Nathan, once he finished feeding Samuel, “Might you prefer to remain with us for the night, before continuing to Philadelphia in the morning?”

“I can’t do that, lad,” said Rattle. “The Bone Baby will be lurkin’ tonight, and the longer I wait the more poor babies he’ll git. I shouldn’t even have stopped this long, but I was kinder curious about your snakestone there.”

“I’m afraid it’s not for sale,” said Nathan, trembling even worse at the thought of being alone and without the amulet’s protection during the night.

“I didn’t suspect that it was,” said Rattle. “But I would like to know where to find one, for myself. See, up where I come from in the Allegheny country, we’re plagued by witches and hoop-snakes and giwoggles, and I sure could use such a charm for my crops and cottage.”

Nathan thought about that, and about his mother’s story of the amulet, and how it had come from the plains far, far to the west. Finally, he asked- “Might we make a bet?”

“A bet?”

“If you win, I will tell you where to get such an amulet. If I win, you will remain the night with Samuel and I, and I shall give you the amulet anyway. Does that sound fair?”

Rattlesnake Joe rubbed his scruffy chin for a moment, then smiled broadly. “Alright. Yer’ on. What sorter bet did you have in mind?”

“Well, I…” Nathan stuttered and fumbled, and then looked down to his shoes as if they might render aid, for he really hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“How about,” Rattle supplied, “A shootin’ match?”

Nathan blanched, for he had never fired a gun before, but his fear of being left alone compelled him to nod dumbly, and when he spoke the words seemed scarcely his own. “Okay. A shooting match it is.”

“I’ve got some regular leadshot on my belt here- we’ll hang up a parchment on that ‘thar tulip tree and we’ll go with the best two shots out of three. Sound like a good deal?”

“Sure thing, Rattle,” Nathan replied. Then, finally, he said- “Just one thing- can you teach me how to shoot?”

“Ho-ho!” Rattle laughed, tipping his head back in a great guffaw, “Of course, laddie. Of course I’ll teach you. You’ll probably shoot smarter’n me before the day’s over, too.”

And so Rattle tacked a parchment onto the trunk of a nearby tulip tree, and showed the boy all the workings of the gun- how to measure the powder he needed to pour into the breech, and how to ram the ball down, and how to work the cock and frizzen. Then he gave Nathan permission to heft the rifle to his shoulder and showed him how to hold the weapon, and how to peer down the irons to line up his target.

“You want to try to hit the parchment as dead-near to center as you can, got it?” said Rattle, before taking the gun from the boy once more. “I’ll shoot first, so you can watch how I line ‘er up, okay?”

So Nathan stepped aside and watched Rattle line up his shot as expertly as one would expect for a man who had lived his whole life in the deep woods. He held the stock to his shoulder so naturally that the gun seemed a part of his own two arms, and then he squinted carefully down the irons til his shot was lined up on the center of the parchment. Then, he fired.

The gun cracked with such a thunderous bang that Samuel, who had fallen asleep while his brother was given his lessons, instantly awoke with a cry, while Nathan coughed away the rich gunsmoke that had erupted from the weapon and made hazy the whole clearing.

It seemed a perfect shot, but when the smoke cleared away, Nathan and Rattle both saw that the parchment was untouched!

Rattlesnake Joe grumbled unhappily and reloaded his rifle, and fired again at the parchment. Again the rifle cracked loudly. Again, Samuel cried. And again, when the smoke cleared the parchment was untouched.

“Now wait just a pie-pickin’ minute!” said Rattle. “I suspect something’s wrong with my gun here.”

And, so saying, Rattlesnake Joe sat down on a stump and set about inspecting his weapon. He tightened the screws of the cock and frizzen, he scrubbed clean the muzzle and pan, and he even replaced the flint. When he was finished, he squinted long and hard down the sights to make sure the barrel wasn’t bent in any way. Then he turned to Nathan.

“We’ll start over again, okay?”

But sure enough, each of Rattlesnake Joe’s shots again failed to so much as touch the parchment hanging upon the tree, leaving both him and Nathan baffled, and Rattle concerned about his weapon.

“I jes’ can’t wrap my mind around it,” Rattle said, looking at the gun as if it had betrayed him, “I sure can’t hunt the Bone Baby with a defective rifle.”

“Maybe you’ve just lost your knack for it,” Nathan suggested.

Rattle at first glared crossly at the boy, but then he laughed jovially. “P’rhaps I have, lad. P’rhaps I done have. You take the gun and let’s see how a younger pair of eyes manages.”

Nathan handed Samuel over to Rattle, so that the baby would not be struck deaf by the gunshots. Then he hefted the gun up to his shoulder as Rattle had shown him- “A little higher, lad,” said Rattle- and he squinted down the irons towards the distant parchment tacked to the tulip tree. He took a great nervous breath, then fired.

The gun bucked back into Nathan’s shoulder like a startled horse, so hard that Nathan was certain he’d missed, but when the smoke cleared away, both he and Rattle were surprised to see a big round hole drilled right through the center of the parchment.

“Ho-ho! A fine shot, lad! It was a fine shot!” said Rattle, jumping up and down mirthfully.

“Let’s just see if I can do it again,” Nathan replied. He tried to reload the weapon as Rattle had shown him, only he forgot to lower the frizzen over the flashpan and Rattle had to fix it for him. Then he raised the gun to his shoulder- “A little lower, lad!”- and fired.

Again the rifle kicked back, and again the boy waited for the smoke to clear, and when it did, again the parchment was pierced near to the center, just above where the first shot had struck home.

“Well, I’ll be jiggered,” Rattle said with a low whistle, as he bounced baby Samuel on his knobby knee, “I may or mayn’t’ve lost my knack, but you sure as shoot’s are a natural at this, lad.”

“That was two,” Nathan said, “But since you fired five times, counting the two before you cleaned the rifle, I shall shoot once more, and we may call it three out of five.”

So saying, Nathan reloaded the gun- properly, this time around- and took aim once more. Again the parchment was pierced clean through the middle, this third shot landing just below the first one.

“Well, you’ve got me fixed,” Rattle congratulated, arising from the stump to shake Nathan’s hand. “I’ll stay the night with you boys, and keep a watch out for that Bone Baby. Besides, I think I’ve taken a likin’ to this little feller anyhow.”

Nathan’s chest swelled with pride, and then he traded Rattlesnake Joe his rifle for Samuel, and secured the papooose once more after checking that the snakestone amulet was still attached tightly.

“Jes one more thing, before we fix about settling’ down,” said Rattle, reloading his rifle and aiming at the parchment. He fired, and when the smoke cleared there was a fourth hole drilled right through the center of the paper, only a little to the left of where Nathan’s first shot had hit. And Rattle scratched at his whiskers and wondered if perhaps the silvers weren’t the only enchanted bullets he carried.

The trio wandered the lonely Timber Swamp for a long while searching for a safe place to bed down for the night, for the woods teemed with rattlesnakes, and there were also still many panthers and bruins and wolves to be found in those days. Rattlesnake Joe told Nathan not to fear the snakes at all, for he knew how to charm them, and club them if necessary, but they looked warily about for any signs of the bigger beasts.

As the sun began to sink low in the sky they came across a stone cottage which was so old and ruinous that a mighty chestnut tree had grown up through where its chimney once stood. But the walls were still stout and the roof yet sturdy, so the trio decided to take shelter inside for the night. And it was well that they did, for by this time black clouds had begun rolling in over the dusk, and all the trees of the Timber Swamp quivered from the hissing winds of the approaching storm.

Rattle struck up a fire on the stone floor of what once had been the kitchen, and Nathan sat down to feed Samuel while Rattle fixed a little dinner of salt pork.

“Oh, Rattle,” Nathan said, reaching for the amulet round his neck, “I nearly forgot to give you my snakestone. Mother said it was from-”

“It’s not really a snakestone, y’know,” Rattle said suddenly, scarcely looking up from the sizzling salt pork that filled the old cottage with a rich and smoky haze.

“What?”

“That amulet of yer’s. Ain’t no snake. It’s a shell.”

“Mother said it was turned to stone by the Flood.”

“That it may well have been. But all the same it’s a shell. A shell with a whole bushel of secrets. Put it up to yer ear, you’ll hear ‘em.”

“Hear what?” Nathan asked skeptically, even as he raised the snakestone up to his ear. And before Rattle could reply, he heard them- the whispers, the echoes, the secrets, all murmuring right into his ear, swirling round and round. And though Nathan strained to hear just what they were saying, he could not quite make out the words; that they were saying something he was sure, but he knew not what. Only that it sounded magical, and somehow quite important, whether he could understand it or not.

“Them’s years, boy,” said Rattle, “All the thousands an’ millions of ‘em, shut up in that thar shell like bees in a hive, jes buzzing to get loose again. All eternity’s trapped in there, from Genesis chapter one verse one til right this moment.”

Nathan listened. He listened for a long time, and he smiled, and Rattle smiled back.

“I don’t want yer amulet, whether it’s a snake or a shell,” said Rattle, “I want you to hold onto that, ‘cause that thar’s special. Real special. And yer momma was right- it is magic, sure as shootin’.”

“Well, all the same, I did promise-”

“Where’d yer momma get it from?”

“From an old Indian medicine man, who found it far, far to the west, over the mountains.”

Rattle nodded. “Thanks be to you, boy. I know jes where to go now. Now you keep what’s yours there, and don’t worry none about me. A thing like that’s better off found than given, anyhow.”

Nathan nodded and, having finished feeding Samuel, left Rattle to the fire so that he could go explore the cottage and sing hymns to his brother to lull him to sleep before the storm broke upon them. The stairway to the second floor had long since rotted and crumbled away, but the stout ladder down to the cellar remained sturdy.

One of the cottage’s windows still held a dusty pane of glass, and Nathan stopped there to look out at the flashes of lightning as rain began to fall upon the Timber Swamp. The lightning flared, the thunder cracked, and in one of those brief flashes the Bone Baby filled the window with its dread countenance, peering in at Nathan and Samuel. The black sockets of its eyes were empty and leering, and its too-many teeth sharp and hungry.

Terrified, Nathan staggered back from the window and braced himself for whatever was to come. He jabbed one hand to his breast and clutched for the snakestone, then called loudly to Rattlesnake Joe.

“What’s the matter, boy?” Rattle called back gruffly, for he was frustrated with the dampness of the wood he had gathered and the thick smoke it was effusing.

“The Bone Baby is upon us!” cried Nathan.

Faster than thought, Rattlesnake Joe was in the room with his rifle, loading it as quickly as he could with one of the blessed silver bullets. Hardly had Nathan finished speaking, scarcely had Rattle jammed the ramrod down the muzzle, when each and every window left in the cottage shattered at once. Into the ruin blew a frigid storm gale, swelling and swelling till the fire was smudged out to its very coals, and a thick cloak of darkness enveloped the trio while the earth swayed and shook beneath their feet.

“Are you afraid?” asked Rattle, over the sough of pouring powder as he continued to load his rifle in the dark.

“Not yet,” replied Nathan stoutly, though cold shivers ran down his back. “What must come will come.”

“Don’t be afraid,” said Rattle calmly, handing Nathan the tomahawk from his belt, “I will help you. Take this tommy’hawk and get to the cellar, and leave the Bone Baby to me.”

The words were hardly spoken, and Nathan had no time to take even a single step back, before the Bone Baby burst through the window with a wretched cry. It landed on all fours like an ape, and Nathan could scarcely bear to look, so horrible was the beast-

It had a huge white skull, yet with leering sockets black as snakeholes. There was not an ounce of flesh upon it, yet its body was draped with bone like a beetle’s carapace. It had the thick laddered ribs of a horse, a knobby ridge of a spine like a whale, and antlers and horns growing every which way from every part of its body. And that was the Bone Baby.

When the Bone Baby lifted its head it saw Nathan, and saw Samuel, and a hiss rattled forth from its bone-dry mouth. Nathan planted his feet firmly upon the floor and braced for whatever was to come. The beast gathered itself to spring upon the boys, and was just about to do so when the room lit up with a mighty flash as Rattlesnake Joe fired his rifle at the awful fiend.

The Bone Baby cowered before the gunfire, but when the harsh light faded Nathan and Rattle were both mortified to see the Bone Baby gone!

“Flash in the pan!” Rattle despaired, as he opened the frizzen and uncorked his powder horn for a second try.

Nathan looked around wildly for the Bone Baby. There he saw it crawling across the ceiling, clinging on like a spider by the tips of its bony fingers. When it was directly over top of him, it turned its head backward to face the boy and leapt upon him. Without a second’s thought, Rattlesnake Joe laid into the brute with the butt of his rifle.

The rifle struck the Bone Baby with a loud crack that left it hissing in pain and rage, and Nathan heard the blessed silver ball fall out of the gun’s barrel and roll like a marble across the floor. He meant to retrieve it when Rattle called out- “The cellar, boy! Get to the cellar!”

And so, as Rattle raised his weapon to menace the Bone Baby further, Nathan raced to the door of the cellar and fairly flew down the stout ladder, Samuel crying and crying all the way.

It was dark in the cellar, far darker than the night outside, for not even lightning could shine into that inky hole in the ground, and Nathan stumbled as he ran to the far corner of the room. He picked himself up and tread more carefully, for Samuel was on his back crying up a storm of his own, and he had to be careful not to fall and crush the infant by mistake. Nor could he afford to risk crushing the stick of chalk, or shattering the precious Blue Bottle. He picked his way slowly across the floor and when he finally felt the corner walls he took out the chalk, and round himself and Samuel he drew a great circle upon the stone floor.

There the boys waited for what was only a few minutes, but seemed like many hours. Upstairs Nathan could hear the sounds of struggle, as Rattle did his best to fend off the Bone Baby. What exactly happened up there, I cannot tell you. Nathan heard shouts, and grunts, and the scuffing of feet on the old creaking floorboards. Then, silence.

Nathan was very tempted to use the Blue Bottle to see how the fight had concluded, or, failing that, at least to learn where the Bone Baby was now, but as he was about to uncork it he thought better, and decided to preserve the Bottle for later. He tried to calm Samuel but it was little use, for the baby was frightened by the noise and the dark and hadn’t the slightest clue what was going on.

The boy waited for a good long time before his curiosity and worry for his new friend finally got the better of him. He relieved himself of Samuel’s papoose and left the baby lying in the center of the chalk circle. Then he stepped over the border of the circle, taking care not to smudge it, and ascended the cellar ladder.

He lifted the hatch slowly and peered just over the edge of the floor, like a turtle peeking from its shell. Rattlesnake Joe lay slumped against the wall in a daze, but the Bone Baby was nowhere to be seen. Nathan summoned his courage to poke his head up further, to look round for the dread creature, when suddenly the Bone Baby’s knobby, clawed fingers took a swipe at him from where it was perched atop the cellar hatch.

Nathan fell back down the ladder with a cry and hit his head, and that was all he remembered for a good while. When he came around, he groaned and rubbed at the egg which had grown upon the back of his head. Then he gasped at the sight of the Bone Baby just ahead of him.

The dread creature was pacing back and forth in front of Samuel, hissing in frustration, for it could not reach him through the circle of chalk. Nathan watched in fearful silence as the Bone Baby stalked on its knuckles from one side of the circle to the other, and with nary a swish the boy withdrew the tomahawk from his belt. He waited until the Bone Baby was close enough to him, yet far enough away from Samuel, that he felt sure he couldn’t miss. Then, quiet as an owl, he threw the blade.

A fine throw it was! The axehead lodged in between two plates of bone girdling the Bone Baby’s back, and the fiend shrieked in pain, bounding off into the darkness.

Nathan approached the circle and stepped gingerly inside, taking special care now not to smudge it with the Bone Baby so terribly near. Samuel was silent and this worried Nathan, until he put his ear to his brother’s mouth and heard him breathing softly, sound asleep despite the terror and danger lurking all about him. And Nathan wanted nothing more than to stay in the circle with him all night until morning broke and the Bone Baby was forced to slink away to whatever dark places it hid in during the day. But Rattle was upstairs, injured or worse, and Nathan’s compassion for his new friend triumphed over concern for his own safety. And so the brave lad, not trusting Samuel to not somehow accidentally roll out of the protective circle, scooped up the babe into his arms and strapped on his papoose. Then he picked up his haversack and, unsure if the Bone Baby was still in the cellar, made a quick dash for the ladder.

Nathan climbed the ladder as if a pack of hounds were nipping after his heels, and when he made it to the top he shut the hatch after him to lock away whatever might be down there. Then, quickly, he stepped away from the cellar door, and with the chalk he drew another circle on the floor round himself and Samuel. After that, he looked across the dark kitchen for Rattlesnake Joe.

Rattle lay on the ground near where the fire had been doused by the cyclone winds. He didn’t move at all, and Nathan feared the worst, only then the woodsman groaned and rolled upon his side. Nathan left Samuel in the circle again and stepped carefully outside of it, taking care not to even touch the chalk with the tip of his shoe. Then he tiptoed over to Rattle, trying to remain as quiet as possible so as not to alert the Bone Baby.

When he reached Rattle, Nathan tried to shake him awake, but nothing the boy said or did had any effect on the woodsman. No soothing words, nor gentle shakes, nor even a slap to the face stirred him the slightest from his groggy mumblings. Then Nathan looked down and saw a flask on Rattlesnake Joe’s belt. When he picked it off the belt, Nathan saw it was labeled-

RATTLER OIL

~~~

FOR MEDICINAL USE ONLY

With no other options at hand, Nathan uncorked the bottle, put it to Rattle’s lips, and tipped it back. No sooner had he done this, Rattlesnake Joe coughed and sprang back to his feet, as sprightly as if he’d just awoken from a pleasant dream.

“Where is that wretched thing?” asked Rattle. He looked around the cottage but it was darker than a pot of ink with no fire and no moon and no stars to light the way.

“I don’t know. It came into the cellar with us. I threw the tomahawk at it, and then it disappeared.”

Rattle hunched down and rubbed his head. “We are in quite a fix, then. Where is Samuel?”

“In the circle of chalk. The Bone Baby cannot get inside.”

“Good. Good.”

They sat for a moment, deliberating about what to do next, when Nathan had an idea. Said he- “I think it is time to use the Blue Bottle.”

“A right fine idea, boy,” said Rattle, “You go back inside the circle and look into the Bottle, while I load my rifle. Then tell me where the Bone Baby is.”

Nathan nodded and stepped carefully back inside the chalk circle. He strapped Samuel’s papoose to his back once more, then reached into his pack for the Blue Bottle. It still shone bright as sapphire even in the dark, and when Nathan popped the cork off the Bottle filled the room with an ethereal blue glow, as if from devil lightning or witchfire. And when he held the lip of the bottle up to his eye and peered in, he could see the terrible form of the Bone Baby, wreathed in blue fog. He saw it in perfect detail, as if he were looking at it himself- there were its leering black eye sockets, and its pale knobby bones, and even the silver tomahawk still stuck in its back. As he stared the fog began to clear, and the Bone Baby was revealed to be hiding up in the ceiling corner, near where the crumbled stairs fell away from the cottage’s second story. Nathan told this to Rattle, and the woodsman nodded and stalked away to renew his hunt for the Bone Baby.

As soon as he took his eye away from the Blue Bottle, the magical light was abruptly sucked all back into the bottle, and the bottle itself lost its sapphire sheen, and became as any other apothecary glass. And Nathan wished sorely for the comfort of its light, but when he held it up to his eye again it was exactly as his mother had foretold- the magic was all gone, and the bottle would never be enchanted again.

Rattle stalked first into the parlor, then back into the kitchen, pretending not to know where the Bone Baby was. Then, with the cunning of a wildcat, he raised the rifle right to the corner where Nathan said the creature was and fired in the same moment. The ball missed by a hairsbreadth, drilling a hole in the ceiling. The Bone Baby hissed and leapt upon Rattle in the same motion, and Rattle was knocked back with a grunt, stumbling into the chalk circle.

“No!” Nathan shouted, for Rattle had stepped upon the chalk, smudging it with his boot. And in that same instant the enchantment was broken, and the Bone Baby was within the circle. It knew Samuel was there, and wanted very badly to steal his tender baby bones, and so with a vicious swipe it knocked Rattle into the wall and leapt for Nathan. Nathan caught the Bone Baby in his arms and held it there, even as it tried to clamber over his head to get at Samuel, nestled in his papoose on Nathan’s back. Then its terrible bony fingers brushed against the snakestone amulet, and the hissing fiend withdrew its hand as if it had been burnt. But its agony lasted only a moment before it redoubled its efforts to push Nathan aside so it might steal Samuel’s bones.

Nathan felt for a moment as if he were wrapped in a garment of fear, and he thought he would surely die. But Samuel’s innocent cries made iron his resolve, and the boy took heart, and stood his ground and fought as he had never fought before. Luck ordained that Nathan had caught the Bone Baby within reach of the tomahawk still lodged in its back, and with a quick lunge he drew it from its scabbard of bone and slashed fury back at the fiend.

As the fight wore on Nathan’s strength began to fail, yet while the Bone Baby’s remained ever waxing. Its claws were sharp, and its teeth gnashing, and its powers immense. And then true disaster struck, for in one last lash the tomahawk struck upon the Bone Baby’s shoulder, and the blade ground and shattered, leaving Nathan holding only the useless hilt.

The Bone Baby’s mouth opened in a wide, contemptuous sneer as it realized its triumph was at hand. But Nathan didn’t waste a second. He loosened his grip on the Bone Baby for one perilous moment and grabbed for the snakestone amulet, and pressed it into the Bone Baby’s skull.

White flame erupted from the fiend’s head as if it were hot metal, and the enfant pealed a cry so loud that Nathan thought he would be struck deaf. The Bone Baby leapt away from Nathan and collapsed in a clattering heap onto the floor, clawing at its face and hissing in agony. And Nathan fell to the ground as well, causing Samuel to wail in fear and shock. The boy reached into his haversack for the chalk, only to find it had been ground to dust under the weight of his fall, and there was now no way to stop the Bone Baby from reaching Samuel.

Then, in that moment of despair, a glash of lightning illuminated the room, and Nathan saw where Rattle’s rifle lay on the floor. The boy wiped the sweat from his brow and with a desperate effort rose to his feet. And while the Bone Baby thrashed and writhed and banged its head against the stony ground trying to make the pain go away, Nathan made a dash for the rifle. He picked it up. The ball- where was it? He looked to fallen Rattle. Silver glinted in his hand. Nathan ran over to him and pried the blessed ball from his knobby fingers, and, with his own hands shaking, placed it as gingerly as he could into the muzzle. Then he used the ramrod to shove it and its charge down the barrel’s gullet, and picked up the powder horn from Rattle’s belt. Hands shaking, he spilt some powder upon the cold stone floor, but soon the flash pan was filled and Nathan closed the frizzen and leveled the gun on the writhing form of the Bone Baby.

The wounded Bone Baby looked up just in time to see the boy aiming the gun, and then, though it too was nearly spent, threw itself upon Nathan in one final lunge. But Nathan was on the watch, and squeezed the trigger as the Bone Baby’s terrible head filled the irons. The gun roared like thunder. It kicked back like a stallion. Its barrel belched smoke like a volcano. And when the smoke cleared, before Nathan lay a heap of sizzling, disjointed bones. The Bone Baby was no more.

Nathan fell to his knees, panting for breath. Samuel cried and cried and cried, and needed a changing quite badly, but Nathan had no strength left but to sit and breathe. He sat for a long while, and then when he’d caught his breath he began to laugh, and laughed and laughed until his joyous guffaws roused Rattlesnake Joe.

“What? What happened?” asked Rattle, at whom Nathan just continued to laugh.

Rattle looked to where Nathan was kneeling with the gun in his lap and the crying baby on his back. Then he looked just ahead and saw the heap of bones that the Bone Baby had become, and he too began to laugh.

“Good show, lad! Good show!” Rattle said. He would have leapt up to pat the boy on the back, but he had no strength left either and as soon as the words were out of his mouth he fell down again and laughed while staring at the ceiling.

When morning came, Nathan and Rattle were surprised to see that where the Bone Baby’s skeleton had lain was naught but a pile of dust, with only the fiend’s awful skull remaining. Nathan picked this up and put it in his pack, and since they had no more reason for continuing to Bristol, Nathan and Samuel and Rattlesnake Joe all returned to Philadelphia to spread the joyous news that the Bone Baby had been defeated.

The grateful Mayor hosted a banquet attended by all the gentry of the city, and there Nathan and Rattle were received with all the revelry of kings, and Samuel received his pap from a silver spoon. Rattle had never been surrounded by such splendor and magnificence before, and at first felt sadly out of place, but when he was asked to tell of how he and Nathan had come to meet and how they had jointly defeated the Bone Baby, he fell into spinning a fine mountain yarn and was soon right at home even midst the fancy people of the city. When he told of how his famous snake oil had revived him in the heat of the fight, he sold so much of it that he ran out and made still more sales on promise of future delivery.

And Nathan was received not as a mere boy but as a hero, much to the delight of his dear mother, and a toast was held for him after he presented the Bone Baby’s skull to the Mayor. He asked the Mayor if he could give the skull to the University so it could be studied, and the Mayor said that would be alright. Then Nathan was asked to tell his version of the fight, which was mostly in accord with Rattle’s yarn, and at the end Nathan blushed mightily when the Mayor’s pretty daughter planted a kiss on his cheek for his bravery.

True to his word, the Mayor allowed Nathan to bestow the Bone Baby’s skull to a craniologist at the University, where it supposedly remains to this day. And plenty of babies were soon born to parents who had no more to fear from the terrible Bone Baby, and they all lived happily ever after.

The End.

POSTSCRIPT: I have published a “WRITING OF” essay to accompany this story, for any readers who might be interested in the research and writing process behind the story, including a detailed explanation of all of the magical items, an examination of the medical anomalies that inspired the Bone Baby, and an overview of all the real local folklore that went into this. Enjoy!

Minor Shopkeeping Note- I used to post these “writing of” essays over on my other blog, Poquessian, however I’ve decided to switch to publishing them here on my main blog. The first few of these will be free “taste-testers” but I am planning to eventually paywall such behind-the-scenes content, while the stories themselves remain free to read by all. Cheers!

Howdy! This is just a short little behind-the-scenes essay about my latest short story, In Bride’s Clothing- here I’ll cover the research, inspirations, the cover art, writing process, and a bunch of other stuff that went into writing this. And squids. Lots and lots of squids.

Obviously spoilers abound, so if you haven’t read the story already you can do so below:

Inspirations & Research

Very little research was required for this story. Mostly it was just taking stuff I already knew and found cool or interesting, and throwing it all together into a blender.

The most immediate inspiration for the Brides was the biological concept of aggressive mimicry, the specifics of which will be discussed a bit further down in the Jorite Biology section. Suffice to say for now, aggressive mimicry is ubiquitous across the whole spectrum of life- most famously in the anglerfish and Venus flytrap. The very title of the story is a reference to the innumerable parables and fables warning of this deceptive evolutionary and social strategy, the wolf in sheep’s clothing. The story’s original working title “Mimicry” was a bit more blatant about its origins in this creepy strategy.

Old Celtic faerie lore was also a huge influence- I mean the Brides are outright referred to as Changelings1, and their reproductive strategy, while not identical to Celtic changelings, does resemble it a good deal.

As far as fictional references, the Jorite ranks of Jemark and Jella were inspired by the Tharks and their Jeddaks from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series. Tars was actually named after Tars-Tarkas himself, though it is precisely here that any similarities between the proud warrior Tharks and deceptive predatory Jorites ends. Jellia, one of the Brides, was named after Jellia Jamb from L. Frank Baum’s Oz series- and I should note that Jamb is really a sweet girl and nothing at all like the monstrous predator in my story… I just liked the name.

One minor detail from later on in the story which I deliberately fudged was the inclusion of a Spanish mission as the spot where poor Joey meets his end. There is not and to my knowledge never has been any Spanish mission in Phoenix, Arizona. The closest one is San Xavier, in Tucson. It’s a tiny detail but I thought it worth noting, it is not factually accurate and was just a bit of artistic flair on my part.

The Jorite Homeworld

The Brides’ home planet of Jora was named after Jor-El, Superman’s father from Man of Steel.

The very brief environmental descriptions of Jora, having seas pooled in craters and purple vegetation and green skies, are all plausible descriptors of an alien environment, specifically a sparse, toxic world revolving around a red dwarf star-

• Mars once had big “tubs” of water filling its craters, and these were likely some of the last places on the planet which had liquid water. Thus we can infer that Jora is a small, dry world whose remaining water is confined to large- when compared to the planet’s surface area- craters.

• Purple vegetation would likely thrive better under the lower light conditions present around a red dwarf compared to green ones. There’s also a theory that the Earth’s own photosynthesizers were originally purple, and our current green plants only exist because they exploited the only part of the light spectrum not in use before the purple photosynthesizers went extinct. All fascinating stuff, possibly deserving of its own essay…

• The planet’s green sky would be the result of a high concentration of hydrogen sulfide- this compound has caused hideous mass extinctions on Earth in the past, but there’s no reason an alien biosphere couldn’t be better adapted to it.

These details are of basically no relevance at all to the story, but it’s little stuff like this which in my view lends some verisimilitude to the otherwise silly premise of alien beings coming to Earth to digest its inhabitants as part of their breeding cycle. Which brings us to…

Jorite Biology

The biology of the Jorites was specifically modeled after three types of animals- spiders, cephalopods, and gastric-brooding frogs.

The references to spiders were pretty sparse, limited to the face, dentition, and genitalia (“palpal bulbs”), but cephalopods and the frogs were very influential to their designs.

Regarding octopi, the Jorites have tentacles obviously, but also their ability to change color depending on their emotions, and the plot-central ability of the Brides to so thoroughly mimic human females, were both directly inspired by octopi.

Octopi in general are extraordinarily good at camouflaging themselves from predators, but the mimic octopus specifically is the Earth’s indisputable master of disguise.

Here are some pretending to be, variously, a piece of coral, a sea snake, a stonefish, a lionfish, and a skate:

It’s scary how well they can blend in, and how intelligently and consciously they manipulate their forms.

Now these are all examples of defensive mimicry, adaptations to confuse or hide from potential predators. But it wasn’t a far leap at all to turn this into something very predatory, and from this the Brides were born.

The idea of the Brides having hypnotic eyes was taken from another cephalopod, the cuttlefish, which really do change their skin color in rapid succession in order to effectively hypnotize their prey.

I was at a loss for words when I learned they could do this- it’s so creepy and terrifying and ingenious; a beautiful testament to the unfathomable creativity of our Maker.

Since in humans the eyes are the main focus of attention and the windows to the soul, I thought it would be more fitting to limit the crazy color changes just to there. This was one of the key elements to making the story work, since it’s how the Bride lines up for the attack after carefully deceiving her prey.

The concept of the Brides having toxic skin was borrowed from the blue-ringed octopus, as well as poison dart frogs. The difference of course is that while these animals use their toxins to kill potential predators, the Brides use them to dull the wits of potential victims.

Mostly this element was inspired by legends of succubi and other supernatural temptresses, as well as just the general lust of men. I think most guys with a long enough “report card” have a story of that one girl who was able to completely disarm him- without neurotoxins!- and then proceeded to screw him over royally. The Brides are just that on steroids.

The Jorites’ very bizarre reproduction method, using an upper stomach chamber as a brooding pond for larval “tadfries”, is actually a real method used by certain frogs. Or at least, it was until the 1980s. Both species of gastric-brooding frog, native to Australia, are now extinct, likely due to habitat destruction via pollution. These bizarre amphibians really did carry their young in their stomachs until they were ready to hop out of their momma’s mouths and face the world. They had a chemical in their egg gelatin which turned off production of the mother’s stomach acid, turning the organ into a safe little “kiddie pool” for the babies. The mother would not eat while the young developed in her stomach, but would still move around at least a little bit to avoid predators and such.2

One thing I changed pretty late in the game was the descripton of the Jorite Bride’s mouth- the line “Her ghastly tallow mouth opening wider and wider, til it seemed her jaws were splitting apart at the seams” was initially “Her mouth opening wider and wider til it seemed her jaws were hinged like a treasure chest.”

This much better edit came about thanks to the following AI-generated tiktok video, posted by a friend of mine on Twitter, who used it to make the high-probability claim that LLMs are going to completely destroy the iPad generation’s perception of reality via disturbing and unreal imagery which will haunt them long into adulthood.

(And yeah that Heads Up in the intro was for this video, final warning)

As far as my friend’s point is concerned, I think another friend put it best- “I very much did not like seeing this, yet nothing could illustrate your point better.”

As far as I was concerned, however, this was almost precisely what I was thinking of with the biology of a Jorite female, and immediately went in and altered that one sentence to include her sickeningly pale mouth splitting open. This was the only “major” edit to be made to the story after completion of the first draft.

With all of this in mind…

These very rough and not-to-scale sketches, taken professionally from my phone3 are what I had in mind with the Jorites. Note that they do technically have eight tentacles, just like real octopi- two of them are intertwined to form a columnar leg, with snail-esque “diplopods” upon which they ooze along. The Brides use their uppermost set of tentacles as their arms, while the others are kept hidden and used to enhance the disguise’s bust and hips, making them that much more enticing to any poor saps who encounter them. The entire face is pure disguise, with eye and lip spots, and the whole head is considerably squished in to mimic the dainty nose and cheek and bone structure that men go crazy for.

Some of this biology didn’t make it into the final story- it was too short and tight to include everything- but I had a lot of fun designing these repulsive buggers.

Cover Art

This excellent- and oddly untitled- painting by John Brosio is what initially inspired the story. I saw it in the galleries on his site and immediately began wondering “Why would a bunch of brides be disembarking a flying saucer?”

Naturally, it became the cover art.

There are two other great “paranormal bride” paintings by John in the gallery which do have titles. The first is titled The Seed, the second Bride in Headlights. As of now I have no intention of writing a sequel to In Bride’s Clothing, but if I ever do get an idea decent enough to warrant one, at least I won’t be wanting for more cover art.

Writing Process & Analysis

This story was so efficiently written it makes me feel bad about my other projects. I began on April 17 with a very loose plot outline, which read as follows:

• aliens skinsuit as human women dressed in bridal gowns because this is the “mating garb/garment” of humans, and they need human seed to replenish their race.

• the aliens actually look like disgusting crosses between frogs and cuttlefish

• one of the alien women approaches a young man in Phoenix and uses hypnotic cuttlefish eyes to seduce him

Almost immediately the premise was altered from the female Jorites seducing human males to feeding upon them instead. Per the draft history, I began writing the story at 8:11AM on April 18, and was finished the first draft by 12:18PM. That first draft was about 90% of what actually wound up being published; very little editing was required, as it wasn’t the usual “first draft dreck” we writers all love to complain about.

Around 200 more words were added the next day, mostly at the front end of the story to add a bit more to Coll and Tars’ father-son relationship, anthropomorphizing them to make what was coming seem even more awful. The goal was to initially present the aliens as, while suspicous, nonthreatening, only for the audience to be confronted quite suddenly with the disgusting reality of their mission.

I then proceeded to sit on the story for months, as part of my effort to build up a backlog of finished works which I can publish at leisure while working on other projects. This was the first of them to be released. I hauled it out of the archive the day before publication, made a few minor edits during the final onceover, and published. Presto. Would that I were able to write all of them as neatly as this…

I hope- for those of you who made it this far- that this wasn’t too boring a read, or that it felt overly indulgent. I always enjoy when other writers and artists discuss their own techniques and inspirations, so I figure there’s a small chance you guys might enjoy hearing a bit about mine.

That’s all. You can go home now.

Minor Shopkeeping Note- I used to post these “writing of” essays over on my secondary blog, Poquessian, however I’ve decided to switch to publishing them here on my main site. The first few will be free “taste-testers” but I am planning to eventually paywall such behind-the-scenes content, while the stories themselves remain free to read by all.

The blue seas and white clouds of K-19C swirled below the saucer like a painting of some hallucinogenic wonderland. Coll, the Jemark of Vessel 247, always thought it looked far too chaotic compared to the peaceful landscape of Jora, where the seas had the decency to pool in round craters, and clouds were flecked sparingly across the green sky like flocks of skrips.

“We are now slave to K-19C’s gravity well, Jemark-Coll.”

“Is the Eighth Ray activated?”

“Since we passed the orbit of K-19C-A, yes.”

“Excellent work, Jella-Tars,” Jemark-Coll stated laconically, working hard to suppress his sincerity. Tars was his own son, after all, and thus in line to inherit if not this ship directly, then one of his own. “Are the Brides prepared?”

“I received word from the Changeling Room that they were ready for insertion, but have not yet inspected them personally.”

“Understood,” Jemark-Coll replied. Jella-Tars had his pedipalps stuffed trying to avoid the vast clouds of junk K-19C’s natives had thrown into their inner orbits. Vessel 247’s hull was rated for all micrometeoric impacts, but some of the debris clotting K-19C’s orbitals was anything but micro in nature. The smaller-bodied individuals of the technician caste had nearly bitten off their own tentacles trying to execute an emergency Soja Weave when an entire dessicated space station barreled towards them like a kalokarp in heat!

But the brides were ready. That was what mattered. Jemark-Coll intended to inspect them for himself once they made landfall, with Jella-Tars. The tadfry Jemark-Coll had played catch with so many times back in the purple fields of Jora had emerged from his pupae a man, and part of the duties of manhood for any member of the soldier caste was to witness the essential means by which his species propagated.

He glanced at the holodeck again. They were going at something better than twenty-four thousand antens a minute, but when Jella-Tars fired their graviton thruster right about…

… now…

…. they would slow to a mere twelve antens a minute, letting Vessel 247 alight like a bubble onto the desert plateau they had selected as their landing zone.

There was no sensation of rapid deceleration. The ship was built to sustain this g-force times fifty, and Jemark-Coll was a seasoned admiral. Some fresh tadfry right out of his mother’s belly-pond might get spacesick, but not one who had gone on over seven hundred such voyages across the stars. Jemark-Coll glanced at Jella-Tars to see if he was getting ill, and was pleased to note that there were no signs of nausea on his son’s face.

The ship landed precisely one-half anten off target, nearer the edge of the plateau, and Jella-Tars’s headfins briefly flashed a pulse of crimson in annoyance. Jemark-Coll sighed, wiping off the lenses of his eyes with his antennae. He would address Jella-Tars about this in private, once they returned to Jora. It was only a minor navigational error, and there was no sense in scolding him now on the cusp of his first triumph as Jella.

“Let us go to the Changeling Room,” Jemark-Coll said, once Jella-Tars finished his post-landing checks- yes, systems were all in order; yes the Eighth Ray had been shut down; yes, all crew were well and accounted for- and even as he said it, he noted a trace of his old spacesalt Jella voice creeping in. Just a bit, perhaps unnoticeable even to Tars, but it was something he made note to get under control. This was Tars’s show; he was merely here as an observer.

Satisfied that the ship was intact, Jemark-Coll pushed a tentacle against a button on one of the wall panels, which disgorged the case containing the Jella’s ceremonial staff. Jemark-Coll held it out to his son with much pomp, and Jella-Tars took it into tentacles that trembled with pride and anticipation. Then Jemark-Coll and Jella-Tars, father and son, glided upon their diplopods downstairs to the Changeling Room.

“Rather hideous, isn’t it?” Jemark-Coll laughed.

Jella-Tars looked like he was going to be sick. “Stars preserve me, do their females really look like that?”

He pointed an accusatory antennae in the direction of one of the brides. Her disguise was excellent; had she worn the more regular clothing of a K-19C female, he would have thought her a stowaway. But she wore a pale bridal gown and veil, the mating garb of K-19C, and so he knew at once that she was a Changeling. The stark white walls of the Changeling Room only made her dreadful appearance stand out more to his confounded eyes.

“It’s quite different to see it firsthand, rather than just reading about it in nudie holozines, isn’t it?” Jemark-Coll said.

“What’s the matter, big boy?” the Changeling teased, smiling a broad, mammalian smile at Jella-Tars. Her name was Jellia, and this was her first breeding tour as well. “Tarkin got your tongue?”

Her smiled remained broad and white as Jella-Tars’s headfins flashed rings of mottled blue in boyish embarrassment. Jellia’s “lips” were in fact a slight rearrangement of her pedipalps, and she’d had to change her skin color in this spot specifically to be a bright splash of red. Only here, and no other part of her, else the disguise would have been utterly ruined. The rest of her skin, formerly a lovely brindled green, was now pale as the shells of Cytherea, and she had somehow managed to arrange her headfins and cilia into a sheaf of bright yellow “hair” atop her head. Somehow too, she managed to hold her entire figure in the slight build of a K-19C female, resembling one of the time-turner toys Jella-Tars had played with in his youth, the one full of sands from Vulcan. She had two large, globular masses upon her upper torso, which he was given to understand was a prominent sexual display feature in K-19C females. In her hands, with fingers- even the nails!- carefully and seamlessly formed from the fringes of her tentacles, she held a yellow bridal bouquet picked from special flowers grown on the ship.

It was truly a magnificent disguise, and Jella-Tars couldn’t help but be impressed by her craftsmanship even despite his utter revulsion. That was natural, he told himself. It was how he was supposed to feel in the face of such mastery of disguise. The effectiveness of a female’s disguise was intensely arousing, and even though the beings they were mimicking were repulsive, Jella-Tars was grotesquely enthralled by Jellia’s mastery of deception.

“You understand, of course, why this is necessary?” Jemark-Coll asked, rhetorically. Every tadfry knew the female of the species needs to gorge herself on flesh before laying her eggs. Brooding her offspring in her upper-stomach chamber, nourishing both them and herself on her last large meal, she is rendered completely torpid until the young are developed enough to hop out of her mouth under their own power.

Jella-Tars nodded dumbly. He looked around the Changeling Room, feeling like a young tadfry just discovering his palpal bulbs. The other six brides were camouflaged just as expertly, and his own bulbs certainly asserted their existence, swelling almost unbearably at the sight. The whole pregnancy process had been thoroughly fetishized by the Jorites eons ago, and the mere thought of females preparing to feast was intensely erotic. Well, here they were in front of him, actually preparing to feast, their eyes wide with hunger and lust. He would have to choose one of these females as his own mate, on their return trip, and though they all seemed lovely, Jellia thoroughly commanded his attention. Flashing her dusky blue eyes at him- blue eyes, where an hour ago had been the nightblack lenses of a Jorite! He looked at her again and in his gills his choice was made.

Jella-Tars swallowed tightly. It was time for the brides to disembark. The ship would need to take off soon, reactivating the Eighth Ray to cloak itself from the detectors of the K-19C militaries. They were near several of their bases right now- a rather perilous position, but the size of the nearest settlement made the risk worthwhile. It also enhanced Jella-Tars’s own standing among the females- just as the males of Jora were entranced by the witchery of a female’s disguise, so too did Jorite females appreciate boldness in the male.

He cleared his throat. “Are the Ladies of Jora ready to disembark?”

“Yes, Jella!” a chorus of lovely, teuthidane voices replied.

“Then let us waste no further time,” he said. He meant to address the whole room, but couldn’t help looking specifically at bold young Jellia, “Here you embark upon a sacred mission, to carry out the propagation of our blood and the survival of our race. Go forth, and dine well, Ladies of Jora, for each bite you take sustains the hopes and dreams of all future generations.”

He tapped his staff thrice upon the floor of Vessel 247, and watched raptly as the ramp opened below him. It was twilight in the desert, the lights of the city scintillating far below them. A feast was to be had there, for sure. Jella-Tars watched after each of the females as she strutted down the ramp on diplopods reformed into the shape of human feet, and his palpal bulbs swelled once more as Jellia winked at him before she, too, exited the ship.

Once the females had all departed, he turned back to Jemark-Coll. His father’s pedipalps were twisted in wry amusement, and he whimpled his headfins contentedly at his son.

“Come, Jella-Tars. The bridge is reporting K-19C military aircraft converging on our position. We must take off and reactivate the Eighth Ray to evade them.”

Joey Mars leaned back against the bar’s brick wall and huffed his Marlboro. He’d stayed at O’Mare’s til last call, and his booze-clouded mind felt somewhere between the bliss of angels and an elephant in musth. He took another deep drag of the cigarette, savoring the smoke as it swirled round and round in his lungs, before fuming it out like dragon’s breath. It had been a long week, and like everyone else in Phoenix he was grateful Friday night had finally rolled around.

He’d been hoping to get lucky, but pussy at the bar that night was dryer than the Mojave. All old married couples out for dinner dates. Ah well. It happened. He still had Cheryl’s number on a crumpled paper somewhere in his wallet… maybe if she didn’t have another customer already he’d take her for a spin…

He was just starting to feel his jeans constricting at the memory of Cheryl bent over his kitchen table when he saw her. Not Cheryl. Some blonde lady in a wedding dress, walking down the deserted street towards him. He gave her a quick, approving lookdown. Damn but that dress was tight. Her tits seemed to be spilling right out of it, even bigger than Cheryl’s if such a thing were possible. Enticing tresses of gold cascaded down her shoulders, and one impudent corkscrew tendril hung low over her eyes, begging for a man’s hand to brush it aside. He couldn’t get a good look at her face because it was half-concealed by a bridal veil, but he thought he felt her gaze upon him. He nodded and smiled at her but she didn’t seem to notice. What the hell was a newlywed bride doing out on the street at this hour?

She stopped under the streetlight a few feet away from him. Looking around as if in a daze, but then her eyes settled on Joey and she smiled warmly.

“Excuse me, sir,” the bride asked, and her voice was sweet and innocent as a churchbell, “I’m a bit lost. Could you help me find my way back to the chapel?”

Joey looked her down again. She didn’t sound drunk. She sounded… he couldn’t put his finger on it. Needy, he thought, but that wasn’t quite right. Whatever it was, he didn’t like it. Her voice was honey, and he’d known enough women in his life to never, ever trust the honey. Still, she was a lady in need, and even though he used women like tissues he still possessed an atavistic, heavily atrophied sense of chivalry. Especially when he could use it to his advantage… maybe, just maybe, he could hit a homer with another man’s wife, right on her wedding night.

“Sure thing, sweets,” he said coolly, scratching the back of his neck to soothe the hairs that had stood up at the queer tone of her voice, “What church are you looking for?”

“Oh, it was, hmm,” she said, her voice trailing off as if confused. “I don’t remember the name. It was a few blocks that a’way. Do you have a map?”

Joey’s neck hairs stood on end again. What broad didn’t remember the name of the church she was getting hitched at? But then, what was the con? He cast a glanced sidelong into the alley beside him. No, no one was there, so she wasn’t a decoy for a mugging. Cop, maybe? He had a couple percs on him but it was all prescribed… at least, that’s what the note said. He shook his head. Bitch was probably just kooky. Fine. He’d walk her to the nearest church and dump her there. Or maybe try to convince her he was her groom. St. Gabriel’s was on the way back to his apartment, after all.

“Nah, I don’t got a map, sorry,” he replied, putting on his best faux-concerned voice, so as not to startle her, “I think I know which one you’re talking about though. C’mon, I’ll take you there, hon.”

“Oh, thank you! Thank you so very much!” the bride said. “They’ll be so grateful to you. So, so grateful.”

Yeah, whatever toots, Joey thought. Man why are the hot ones always completely fucking bonkers?

“Okay, let’s go.”

They started walking the three blocks to St. Gabriel’s. To Joey’s surprise, as they set out the girl took his hand into hers. It felt… nice. Warm and pleasant. As her toxins leeched through his skin, he started to forget his earlier misgivings and could only think of how dearly he wished to see her to her destination. At the sound of a coyote yipping somewhere off in a far-flung alley, she clung to him like a frightened child and the warmth of her breasts pressing against his arm was a thousand times intoxicating than the liquor that thrummed through his veins like jet fuel.

The church loomed ahead on the dark street like a medieval fortress. An old Spanish mission, built back in the days when Apache raiders meant your church had to be able to withstand sieges.

“Well, here we are, sweets,” Joey said, and he didn’t think it odd at all that the church was completely closed up for the night and not a soul was on the street.

“Oh, thank you! Thank you so dearly!” the girl said imploringly, throwing her arms round Joey’s neck and hugging him tightly. Another, much higher dosage of neurotoxins percolated his skin, making him feel giddy and aroused. “What can I ever do to thank you?”

“I- uhh,” Joey stammered. His copilot could think of a few things, but upstairs he was too overwhelmed by booze and alien poisons to think straight anymore.

“I have an idea,” the girl replied coyly, biting her lip and tugging at Joey’s motorcycle jacket. She took a step back and cast her bridal veil back over her head like a fishing net. For the first time, Joey got a full look at her face.

Her eyes were… so bright and blue, Joey thought. But then, they changed. Right before his own startled gaze, they changed to a vivid shamrock. Then amber. Then tangerine. Then periwinkle. Then crimson. And then they swirled and pulsed rings of every color in the rainbow, and even more wondrous shades he had never, ever seen before. Joey stared deep into the eldritch seas of the bride’s kaleidoscopic eyes, unable to resist.

It felt good. So very, very good. So good that he didn’t notice the bride’s hands gripping at his wrists. He smiled dumbly, only vaguely aware of her warm grip changing to something cold and slimy, something that slithered up the length of his arms to his elbows and pinioned them at his sides in an iron vise.

Nor did he notice, as he gazed into the bride’s pulsating eyes, the rest of her face contorting. Her pretty red lips coming undone, the upper and lower bows swinging out each to one side and unsheathing a pair of black fangs. Her ghastly tallow mouth opening wider and wider, til it seemed her jaws were splitting apart at the seams. When her yard-long tongue shot out lassolike to coil tightly round Joey’s chest it knocked the wind out of him, but all he could think was how pretty her eyes were, how good it felt to look at them.

That intoxicating goodness continued to saturate him even after her eyes fell out of view, leaving a hallucinogenic afterglow seared into his corneas; as he was lifted into the air and her tongue began to reel his yielding body into her pallid maw, shoving him down her gullet and into a warm, wet chamber that he fit into snugly, curled up like a fetus, returning him to his natural end in yet another womb.

Blearily, he blinked away the afterglow of her eyes, and it was only there, in wet, musky darkness, that he realized what had happened to him, what was happening to him.

It didn’t hurt. Not at first.

One misty morn in a Cretaceous wood
Two brothers at a trailhead stood-
One path led to the prair’
The other toward the trees.
Down the latter the younger repaired,
“I shall see you later,” said his sibling to he.

The older brother went to the plains,
Where his legs grew long midst the grains-
With a nose as keen as mustard,
And big batty ears, and eyes by night to see.
He loped after antelope and bison and bustard,
“A mighty hunter thou art,” said he himself to he.

His younger sibling remained in his trees,
Til one morn a dare was on the breeze-
He came down and stood upon two feet alone,
Hairless and tall, with a mind by light to work.
Endeavoring to learn all things known and unknown,
“Anointed thou art,” said he to himself with a smirk.

Long were the brothers parted in their ways,
No longer did they share any common gaze-
One life under the sky, the other indoor,
The younger brother saw a god in a stone,
While the older, with great-tusked Tantor,
In the Moon found his Own.

The younger brother fought his wars for gold,
The elder for his Pack, in the hunt of the buffalo-
Cain killing only when he had need,
Abel though he knew it was wrong,
The latter toiled midst the thistle and weed,
Whilst the former from the hills bayed out his sad moonsong.

Later, much later, the two brothers were again to meet,
Not long after the younger ate of an apple 
        and suffered his worst defeat.
With a wag of a tail, and ears flattened along his back,
Marveling at how much his sibling knew, how he had grown,
The older of the pair came back,
Bearing a stick for his brother to throw.

The cover art for this poem is a collage of stock photos, made by the author.

That little urchin with the nut-brown hair,
Playing in the park with her Sister young and fair,
Watches warily the Strangers ‘ere they approach-
All swart of skin with sinister eyes,
Souls of lust and hearts a’teem with lies.

Her kith and kin flee bleating,
As the policeman turns his coat retreating,
The Strangers steal in like honeytongue jackals-
“Have a fag, here’s a drink, mind some Turkish Delight?”
“Don’t be shy, come along, we’ll have such fun tonight!”

She swallows her fear down tight,
Young heart wild with pulse to flight,
She knows their tricks-
By bitter pain has learnt every lie,
She knows what fate awaits her and her dear Sister- God, she’d rather die.

When the Lion charges baring tooth and claw,
The Zebra Mare back-lashes hoof against jaw,
‘Ere the Nighthawk unsheathes her talons,
Mother Owl brandishes her wings,
So too now the Young Queen of Scots draws weapons from their slings.

Her dolls collect dust, toys and ribbons and all things girlie,
Hate tramps wild through her blood, infused far too early,
For Sister’s sake she joins the battle,
Broken at ten, a warrior by twelve,
Terror-stricken yet bravely to the fight doth she delve!

In one hand the knife to cut, to slash, or to throw,
The other- a hatchet of iron made to sunder bone.
For Sister’s sake she’ll fight tooth and nail,
Torpedoes be damned, the Law be darned!
Not one hair of her head shall they harm!

Hack away one! Hack away all!
For her, let every kingdom crumble and fall!
For her, may every prince and potentate bend his knee!
And each and every soul be forever warned-
That not one hair of her head shall be harmed!

The coverart for this poem is by .

Synopsis: While out walking her dog, down-on-her-luck Kylie McKenna has the misfortune of looking a gorgon in the eye. As the consequences of this act catch up, Kylie tries to rationalize away what is happening to her even as her sense of reality gradually begins to unravel…

NOTE: the thumbnail images for each chapter of Stheno are by EliseEnchanted and Kizuna-Chan, on DeviantArt.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: A Rocky Start - Kylie McKenna takes her dog Tig for a pre-work walk and on a secluded path runs into a mysterious Muslim lady named Stheno. They talk congenially about each other’s respective pasts, but when Tig begins acting aggressively, Kylie accidentally gets a glimpse of Stheno’s face through her burqa…

Chapter Two: Light And Local, On The Rocks - Despite feeling extremely ill, rent anxieties force Kylie to attend her job as a dive bar waitress. Customers and coworkers alike express concern for her, and she soon realizes that her malady is like nothing she’s ever suffered before…

Chapter Three: Scared Stiff - Kylie endures a tense walk home, and her illness progresses until she can no longer escape the reality she’s been hiding from all day…

Chapter Four: Taken For Granite - Stheno returns to taunt Kylie, and the latter is forced to endure a humiliating cocktail party where she is very much the center of attention…

Chapter Five: Stone Cold Killer - A friend arrives to crash the party, and the grand finale ensues.

When the rexling awoke in the slate grey dawn, he shivered and snuggled close to his brother beside him. It had rained hard overnight and though they’d found shelter under a fallen araucaria their peach fuzz feathers were still soaked in ashen paste. His sibling yawned, blue eyes fluttering open from what dreams his brother knew not. His own were grey, as grey as the world he had hatched into.

Three months had passed since the Earth died, but the rexlings knew nothing of this. When they hatched it was already over and they knew only the ash and the cold and the hunger in their bellies. Itinerant brothers wandering the cauterized land with nothing to their names except their teeth, their claws, and each other.

They rose and shook themselves of the wet ash as best they could. Some of the slurry had frozen in beads to the tips of their feathers and they clinked like pearls when the hatchlings sloughed them off onto the greyscale soil.

The grey-eyed one hopped atop their log shelter and faced east to where a dim bruise on the horizon commenced another transit of the vanished sun. Their log was but one of a legion of fallen trees whose charred trunks had been painted grey by the unending ashfall. Everything varying shades of grey and black, as if the world were the canvas of a monochromatic madman.

The rexling stretched his young muscles and looked around for signs of food or danger in the scablands sprawled out before him. Nothing moved. Nothing but flurries of ash carried on the skirling wind.

He shivered against the gale and leapt back off the log to his brother’s side. Another morning would pass in hunger. Game was scarce beyond all reckoning. They knew what they had to hunt- frogs and lizards and mammals and the hatchlings of other dinosaurs. And they had chased after many a quickly glimpsed tail, or followed vainly after a faint squeal carried on the sepulchral winds. But their quarry almost always eluded them, and their confused instincts whispered to them that this was wrong, all so terribly wrong. It was the only world they had ever known, but it wasn’t the right world. Something had been broken, something they had no part in causing and could not fix.

They wandered the dead forest for weeks like a pair of ants trapped in a crematoria. Scavenging on beetles and such anonymous carrion as presented itself. A putrescent bird here. An incinerate carcass there. Occasionally they chanced upon the more substantial remains of a duckbill or three-horn, but these always had been ransacked long ago by adults of their own kind, leaving only cagmag crumbs to sate their growling bellies. Once, the grey-eyed one caught a snake. Dragging it out of its burrow by the tip of its tail and holding it in his jaws as if it were some exotic delicacy. He shared the prize reluctantly with his brother and the hollow emptiness inside each of them was filled in a small way for the night.

Late in the day as evening congealed upon the shrouded world like the slow draw of a curtain the blue-eyed rexling perked up at the stench of carrion on the west wind. Faint but rich. Irresistible. His brother smelt it too and mewled in yearning for the promise of meat. They should have sought shelter against the onset of the night’s blinding cold. But they were starving and the hunger in their bellies won over their dread of the icy dark.

They stole furtively through the silent deadfalls as if each charcoal trunk were a sleeping ogre which would groan to its feet and gobble them up if awoken. It was cold. Cold to kill. The rexlings shivered convulsively. Icy needles boring into them until they could scarcely feel their own hearts beating.

They followed the scent until they couldn’t feel their toes anymore and then they relented from the trail and curled up into the burnt hollow of a stump. Only by snuggling close together and sharing their meager warmth did they live to see the frostbitten sun rise again though the cinereous haze, as indifferent to their plight as a heart of stone. After that dreary dawn, they trudged onward through the ash.

At last they came to where their noses spoke of food. A broad valley where a vast herd of duckbills had laid down and died all at once like the consummation of a suicide pact. The waterhole they’d come to visit reduced to a frozen playa. They had outlasted the tyrants, for their bodies were as untouched by predators as if they were the holy relics of saints. Their skin dried and drawn, ligaments taut as wires. Heads thrown back like antediluvian swans. But their flesh was still rich and red beneath their icetanned hides and the brothers began trotting down the hillslope to feast on the mummied herd.

A few blackened witchfinger trees still stood askew from the shockwave. Splashes of mud and ice rearing up at intervals where they had coagulated in place, bursting out of the ashen lakebed like inlapidated trolls. The charnel vale reeked of decay but it was the most blessed sight the young tyrants had ever seen. They staggered down the hill half-dead. Gaunt, exhausted trellises of their kind. Their ribs laddered, hollow eyes sunk deep into their skulls. Covered in ash and grime, their soft down soaked through like so many rags.

Yards away from the excarnate potter’s field, the blue-eyed rexling stumbled beside a frozen puddle and could not rise again. Didn’t even whine. He only lifted his little head and looked beseechingly at his sibling who paced before him mewling pitifully for his brother and himself and all the sorrows of the silenced world.

The grey-eyed one remained with his stricken brother for three days. Wandering the midden of titans and carrying back hardtack morsels of frozen jerky to nurse his comrade. Trying by whines and gentle nuzzles to encourage him to move.

When another alien dawn broke on the fourth day, he was dead and the grey-eyed one could only whine at the pitiless sky. He nuzzled against his sibling that night as all the nights before but his warmth had gone away with all the rest of the world.

Two barrows of ash lay on the gray valley floor. The drifts pile high in efficient silence until the graves are thoroughly concealed, and then the chthonic soot sets impassively about infilling the rest of the valley to resign it to the tomes of the Earth. It leaves no missive to tell that hearts could be as broken as worlds and ash and hunger and flame were not the only instruments of murder in that bleak year.

Blood Tide

Sulphur evening. The tide a quivering crimson that dully cast back the balefires still raging on the seashore cliffs as darkness descended upon the land.

It began with a pod of plesiosaurs. Driven mad by the underwater concussions that had pealed through all the seas of the world after impact. Earsplitting rumbles that bounced off seamounts and trench walls and rang and rang inside their heads. When first one beached another followed and then another and another. Their love for each other was deeper than their love of life and so long as any one of them possessed the labored breath to cry for help they would not abandon him, would throw themselves onto the beach to die at his side rather than allow him to go into the darkness alone.

After these first martyrs came legions of others. The sea-dragons and giant turtles. Their own distant kin the pliosaurs and polycotylids. Each hurling itself ashore after its own kind in mass ritual suicide. The wrackline but a demarcation between two provinces of Hell. One vast mortuary wrapping round every island and continent. The sea soon to be an ashen vat below which swam only the hardiest bottom feeders who waited with hungry bellies for the next sun to bleed through and deliver them from the leaden sky.

A wounded azhdarchid was drawn to the smell of death. His wing membranes had been immolated by meteoric buckshot. He needed red meat to heal and the crescent sweep of the shore was a buffet stretching as far as the eye could see.

He did not spurn the carrion. But a dim instinct ticking deep within his skull warned of the terrible wrongness of the seaside morgue sprawled out before him. Some hideous truth he could not comprehend. His bill pierced the hide of one of the plesiosaurs, spilling its salty guts upon the sand, and the disorienting sensation went away. For awhile.

Choosers of the Slain

The exiled sun had not shone for five days but though the skies were black as coal the world was still brightly illuminated by glashes of hellfire. The colors of all things reduced down to a deadly palette of two- the black of night, the orange of flame.

Stalking among the many tongues of the firestorm were three stilt-legged Angels of Death. Improbable chimeras of stork and bat, never again to perform in the theater of life once the ashes settled. To be dimly remembered later as fossil embossments on shale folios, christened with the arcane title of Hatzegopteryx. But tonight they were alive, acting out the dénouement to their hundred-and-sixty million year saga.

A duckbill hatchling darted across the clearing, fleeing from a treacherous upwelling of molten rock bleeding out of the Medean Earth as she tore herself open in grief.

The hatchling wept. The Angel gnashed her bill.

The dread sisters had lived like this since the evening the comet struck. Making victims yet of the survivors, exploiting the recursive layers of suffering ubiquitous to life. Yet even these mishmash Valkyries had their expiry stamped indelibly upon them on that selfsame day.

When all is burnt and there are none left to choose, whither shall the Angels of Death go?

Seedling

The death song of the tyrant reverberated mournfully across the lake where the ducks had taken refuge from the all-consuming blaze. Here, floating atop a calm crescent of water, they were safe.

But safety for any living thing is always a relative thing. A startled quack- one of the ducks was pulled under by an alligator who was bothered not the slightest bit by the flames or the rapidly encroaching darkness. When the still black water of the lake froze in the coming weeks, the gator would simply stick his round snout just above the iceline so breath could yet be drawn into his slow-pumping lungs while he slept soundly through the long winter to follow.

Elsewhere on the pond, a standing stone held a bale of turtles that basked in the rich warmth of the wildfire. They, too, would sleep through the deadly winter, burying themselves beneath a blanket of lakebed silt, to wake when the world was reborn.

Above, the trees burned and from them were disgorged vast quantities of moths and beetles, to be snatched on the wing by the greedy fliers of four widely divergent lineages. The largest and oldest of these, the pterosaurs, would not live through the descending night, nor would the feathered birds who had stubbornly kept their teeth and claws. It was only the birds that had given up their fangs for bills and surrendered their clawed hands which would see the next dawn; they and the newest comers to the aerial menagerie. Bats flitted about the flickering flames with the same agility as pterosaurs, but their infrasonic radars would allow them to go on ruthlessly pursuing insects long after the last of the great flying reptiles passed on.

Ashore, more lilliputian creatures scurried between the raging flames. The earliest ancestors of rodents and primates and everything with paws and hooves all fled from the bursting trees to quiver in the burrows of tortoises, whilst the precursors of owls stole silently through the smoke to reap their share of souls even amidst the apocalypse.

As the old world sang its requiem, the seedstock of the new was already taking advantage of what ashes remained.

Firebird

High on the North Slope of Alaska, the end was late in coming. It wasn’t until after midnight that the tephra finally rained back down upon the boreal woodlands and turned the green shoots of the Arctic spring into so many matchsticks. The forests and fern prairies here burned as easily as they already had in the lower latitudes.

Troodon did not know what caused the forest to suddenly burst into flames. He knew only that it was an opportunity. As the fire spread, it flushed out game which normally would have remained elusive, and soon his lithe legs were pumping, hot on the trail of a beaver-sized mammal, a cimolodont.

They raced through the blazing woods. Predator and prey. Leaping over and ducking under the charred, fallen trees as they always had before, as if the world was not coming to a conflagratory around them. Each creature’s heart pumping enginelike in his chest, the urgency of the chase swelling with every strumming beat. At last, with a mighty pounce, Troodon scooped up the squealing cimolodont in his jaws. One swift bite to the neck and the frantic squeaks cut off abruptly.

The dinosaur turned his back to the encroaching fire, trying to recall the way back to his nest. His hatchlings were hungry, and he thought the slain fuzzball might keep them fed through the night, a night which would be far, far longer than he anticipated.

The cimolodont’s own children, left hidden in a deep burrow where the flames could lick them not, would outlive his by thirty-five million years.

I’d Rather Die Fighting!

Grunt. Rasp. Shove. Forward. Roar. Back. Forward again.

The two Triceratops bulls had been engaged in battle for three hours. Their casus belli was mating rights over the herd of cows their keen noses had led both of them to simultaneously.

The older male snorted and stamped his feet, puffing out his scarlet nasal sacs to assert his dominance, his will to fight.

His young challenger’s frill was flushed a vermiculate turquoise in the heat of musth. His eyes blazed hatefully and wept oily rivulets of testosterone. He, too, stamped his feet and inflated his nose sacs. Then he lowered his head and shook it vigorously from side to side, brandishing his mighty horns. The display was pure affrontery and the older male grunted back his fury and frustration.

They circled each other in the clearing. Each combatant sizing up his rival like a pair of boxers. The youngster handily outweighed the old bull; the old bull’s horns were longer, and whetted with the scars of a hundred skirmishes.

The youngster charged first. The old bull obliged him, and the battle was joined.

Blood pulsing in their ears muffled the sound of the sky splitting in two. The youngster buried his twin lances in the older bull’s frill. Their horns shielded their eyes from the white flash far to the south. The old buck pushed back like a bulldozer and shoved the youngster aside. And since their herd resided high in the hill country, they were unaware and unperturbed by the successive tsunamis destroying the coasts while they waged war on each other.

Their first and only sign that something was amiss was the forest suddenly bursting into flames around them as the comet’s ejecta reentered the atmosphere in a billion incendiary fragments. Both sensing the heat of the flames but neither willing to back down, the two bulls simply yielded ground in tandem, slowly carrying their rut further up the fuming hillside. Neither heeded the fact that the contested cows had fled long ago. The battle had become its own force of nature, a self-perpetuating gyre of rage as fierce as the fire that crept ever closer.

Now they were at the summit and there was nowhere to go. The forest burned in all directions and their ears were filled with the crackling of wood and the screams of the immolated. Still they fought. With a titanic shove, the older bull pushed his challenger off and roared in triumph. He was still roaring when the youngster bore back in with bruised fury.

The youngster rammed into his rival’s skull with the force of a dreadnought and locked horns with the old bull once more. For a moment, the collision of horn upon horn cracked louder than any of the exploding trees, and the belted snorts of the combatants were a dissonant bridge to the orchestra of destruction sounding across the world.

When the old bull shoved back in kind, their horns grated ominously, and then each realized with a surge of confused anger that they were stuck. The curvature of their blades aligned just right to hook each other in an unbreakable knot. Fury quickly devolved into panic as they realized how trapped they were, how dangerous the wildfire around them was. The two bulls could only circle each other, futilely shaking their heads and trying in turns with all their herculean might to pull free of the deadly entanglement.

The acrid smoke stung their eyes and nostrils, and the fire skulked ever nearer. The flames were very hot.

“… And the Flood Gates of Heaven Were Opened.”

The dark emerald cycads were just tall enough to conceal Tyrannosaurus rex as he watched the mottled green hide of his quarry. An enormous Edmontosaurus, grazing on the ferns and grasses of the prairie. Every bit as bulky as the tyrant but the duckbill lacked teeth or claws with which to defend herself. She’d wandered far from her herd further down the vale, and had walked right into the tyrant’s ambush. He patiently watched her amble towards him. His massive muscles were all wound up tight as springs. Just another moment…

A long shear of light, far to the south. The duckbill reared up and stared at the new sun for as long as her eyes could tolerate it. She bleated fearfully at the sight and trotted away as the light began to fade. The tyrant looked up too, in annoyance, for now his prey had been startled out of the killzone and giving chase was futile.

He huffed his disappointment and left the cover of the cycads. Started marching silently after the duckbill, sticking to her trail like a bloodhound in the hope of gaining another chance to ambush her. For ten minutes, his life went on in this fashion. Much as it had for his entire adulthood, with the fading flash only a mild aberration to the normal running of the world.

The ground trembled below the tyrant. An icy tingle of fear pulsed through his veins, the first time he had ever felt such a dread sensation. His disquietude intensified into raw terror as the tremors rushed towards him, thundering through the earth like a subway train. To the west the infant Elkhorn Mountains shook like ferns in a stiff breeze. The tyrant tried retreating uphill but there was no sanctuary from the treacherous terrain and the ground continued to quake as if the world had been shorn of its foundation.

The tremors went on for three minutes and when the tyrant finally stumbled to the summit of a tall hill he sat squarely upon its crest to try to find some stability against the dreidelspin of the unmoored earth. He felt helpless as a hatchling. After a long concussive outro the quake finally faded and he rose cautiously, shakily, worried that the ground would betray his footing once again.

He looked to the east and saw the herd of duckbills he’d been shadowing running inland as fast as they could, snorting and bleating in naked terror. A few dozen meters beyond he saw the frothing foam of the first seiche wave smashing into the green shore. The Western Interior Seaway had been sloshed around like bathwater by the megaquake, rearing back and piling high into an unending procession of storm surges.

The tyrant knew nothing of the process. He only knew that the waves were coming. First thirty feet tall, then ninety, then three-hundred. He was just far enough inland to be spared these initial strikes but he fled anyway, fled as fast as his still-wobbly legs could carry him up into the hillcountry. He’d never experienced anything like it but by some innate instinct he knew what he needed to do- get to higher ground at any cost.

Behind him the coast bore the assault with the stalwart fortitude of a defending army, even as the waves washed right over the rampart breakers and shredded everything in their path. The tyrant was not alone in his departure from the lowlands. There was an ongoing exodus of every animal big enough to flee. He could see groups of Triceratops and Torosaurus stampeding his way as well, unmindful or uncaring of his presence. The invading sea nipping at their heels was a more dangerous adversary by far than ten tons of muscle and teeth and bone. A waddling pair of Ankylosaurus, a bash of domeheaded pachycephalosaurs, a lapis lazuli flash of feathers from the odd, delicious oviraptoran Anzu- all the beasts of Hell Creek were racing headlong towards him as if they had been summoned directly to his dinner plate. But he wasn’t the slightest bit hungry and as the next seiche crashed into the shore and swept away still more of the treeline he turned back to continue his speedy withdrawal.

While he cantered inland his brindled hide was stung when incendiary hail began raining from the sky. Smoldering tektites equal parts earth and alien arced down from space and struck the rich forest like matches to so much tinder and the trees burst into white-hot flames all around. He roared in pain and panic, picking up speed and running faster, mighty legs pounding like the pistons of a freight train.

Ahead of him a flock of ornithomimids were also fleeing madly from the advancing cataclysm. One of them suddenly keeled over and faceplanted in the dirt, its head smashed by a tephra bomb. Hot skystones continued to pelt the tyrant’s own body but he was large enough to bear the pins and needles assault.

He looked back over his shoulder towards the sea and his heart sank deep into the bowels of his empty stomach. The ocean was rushing towards him. A skyscraper wall of water heralded by the streaks of falling stars and flocks of panicked gulls. As the wrathful tide swept over the land, the burning trees were extinguished one by one. Water chasing flame, candlestick canopies snuffed almost as soon as they were lit.

The tyrant lizard king sprinted for his life. Lungs throbbing in his chest. Every breath a precious thing. His spirit flickered forth in intense clarity from the deep white meat of his muscles and the gray matter of his brain. Yearning for more. One more day under the sun. One more day of resting on beds of softly colored flowers, listening to the songs of birds. One more day of running free across the prairies, of wooing mates and besting rivals. The love of life cried out from deep within his heart and rippled out of his throat as a desperate, defiant roar.

When the water reached his heels he was swept away as if he were but a grain of sand. His body was commended to the sea, and his soul unto the stars.

Titanomachy

On the north shore of Texas, the world was ripped apart around Alamosaurus. She had been fortunate enough to be facing north at the instant of the flash, and so she was still sighted when the shockwave struck five minutes later.

She sensed it coming. Her keen ears and the pads in her feet picking up the concussive death-groans of the stricken Earth. Knew there was nowhere to flee even as the lilliputian dinosaurs far below her scattered in blind panic, so she simply stood her ground and braced.

It came down upon her as a hailstorm of ash and debris. Rocks and trees and the charred, eviscerated remains of dinosaurs hurtling past like the ruffling tirl of pages as the book of the Mesozoic rapidly closed itself. The dying scream of the Earth was beyond comprehension, a roaring howl of rage and remorse as if pealed forth from the throat of Ba’al.

She was strong enough to defy the wind, but not the shrapnel of her swiftly ending world. Lightning sizzled all about while meteoric tephra rained down upon her gray hide. Her neck and flanks were pelted by a fusillade of rocks and branches whipped up to supersonic speeds, boulders and bones thrown as effortlessly as leaves in a tempest. Her jaw cracked under the slingshot strike of an anonymous stone. Even as she was torn to pieces, she held her ground in defiance of Death and darkness.

Eighty tons of her stood alone against the storm.

You Have To Live.

The bird’s lungs were thickened with smoke. Acrid and foul. He looked down at the flames as they licked hungrily at the trunk of the gingko he’d taken refuge in. It would not be safe here for much longer.

But the need for safety was only one of many passions he held within his breast. Every creature is multitudes. To fight or flee, to hi de or hunt. The world was broken but his heart was not, and the flame that burnt within equaled the intensity of the all-consuming inferno without.

He had neither seen nor heard another of his kind since this unending hell was wrought upon the land. The smoke obscured, the fire killed. It was unlikely he would be heard over the cacophonous crackling of the blaze. Unlikelier still that any were left alive to hear even if they could.

But it was Spring.

And so he sang.

Coda

Once there were oceans in Kansas. Dark shallows teeming with great serpents and sea dragons. If you saw their bones in a museum you could remember everything but what mattered. How they looked. Their scent. The songs they sang. Their passions and their loves. The maps etched into their brindled hides, of a world that had reached its proper perfection and could not be prolonged.

Stop. Freeze this frame. Tylosaurus. Tee-hol-tso-de. Tenocouny. Uktena. The zenith of a world which will end in moments. When she breached the inkwell sea the comet was falling and its long searing flash illuminated her. Warm water sloughing off her polished hide like a cascade of diamonds. Her sleek fins raked back behind her. The silhouetted epitome of primeval Earth, backlit in all her majesty by the very agent of her destruction.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Her father, since the death of his wife, had nothing in the world he cared for so much as his dear pretty daughter, and he doted on her whenever he was at home. Yet he feared greatly for Sarah’s upbringing, since he had to be away for such long spans. And so, although he was as devoted a father as he could be, for Sarah’s sake he married again, so she might grow up surrounded by a mother’s love.

The woman he married was beautiful, so beautiful that many men thought her the most lovely being they had ever seen. But behind her smiling blue eyes and tresses of gold, she was arrogant and cruel, though she hid this well from Sarah’s father. It was only when his duties took him away from home that she revealed her true nature, and inflicted her cruelest deeds upon poor little Sarah.

Her Stepmother could scarcely bear the sight of sight a pretty creature, and Sarah’s kind heart and sweet temper only enraged her ever so more. Sarah at first tried to get her Stepmother to play and dance and draw with her, but she would do nothing of the sort, and because Sarah was so cheerful, the cruel woman set about trying to make the girl’s life as miserable as her own.

Soon she had reserved all the meanest chores of the house for Sarah. The little girl was made to clean all of the dishes, scour all of the floors, wash all of the laundry, and sweep and dust every room of the house, most especially her Stepmother’s chamber, which needed to be completely spotless, lest Sarah receive a beating. And, so wicked and evil was her Stepmother, that when Sarah finished her chores she would make the girl stand to the side and then inspect everything she had done, searching solely for an excuse to bring harm to her.

“Sarah, this cup still has a ring at its bottom!” cried her Stepmother, slapping Sarah’s rosy cheek. And Sarah would be made to clean all the dishes once more.

“Sarah, this towel’s corner is creased!” screamed her Stepmother, yanking Sarah’s ebony hair. And Sarah would be made to do the whole load of laundry once more.

“Sarah, this drape has dust beneath it!” shouted her Stepmother, twisting Sarah’s porcelain arm. And Sarah would be made to dust every nook and cranny of the house once more.

Gradually, her Stepmother piled on more and more chores for Sarah to complete each day, until the poor girl had no time at all between the rising and setting of the sun to play or draw or enjoy her youth. But Sarah bore all her sufferings patiently, for she knew that whensoever her father returned home, her load would be lightened, and she would be able to return to her toys and sketchpads, and her Stepmother would dare not slap her, or spank her, or bring harm to her in any way. In this manner, her travails was made bearable, and she performed all of her duties without complaint. This perfect, meek compliance only enraged her Stepmother more, and caused the wicked woman to continually think of new cruelties to inflict upon little Sarah.

One day, her Stepmother summoned Sarah with a lengthy list of arduous new chores for the young girl to complete, and she grinned evilly as Sarah stood at attention before her awaiting instruction.

“Sarah dear, the chimney needs cleaning,” said the Stepmother. “Scrub the firebrick and then wriggle yourself up the flue and sweep it well.”

“Yes, Stepmother,” Sarah replied, already spinning on her heels to fetch her brush, for though she dreaded the claustrophobic task of climbing the chimney, she was an obedient child.

“What did you call me?” cried her Stepmother, whose voice was brittle as ice. Sarah froze in her tracks and turned back fearfully to face her Stepmother.

“Mother. I said Mother,” Sarah lied despite herself, her little lips trembling at the scowl smeared across her Stepmother’s face.

“Do not speak lies to me, young lady!” her Stepmother hissed, reaching out and grabbing Sarah’s wrist tightly. “How many times must I tell you? Never, ever call me ‘Stepmother’! I am your mother, and am only to ever be addressed as such! Is that clear?”

Sarah nodded quickly. Her eyes were wide in fear and pain, for her Stepmother’s grip on her wrist was terribly tight, and her long nails dug into Sarah’s skin.

“Answer me!” commanded her Stepmother, in a terrible voice, “Is that clear? Yes or no?”

“Y-es! Y-Yes!” cried Sarah.

“Yes who?”

“Yes mother!” said Sarah, her little voice cracking in fear.

“Good!” her Stepmother harumphed, finally releasing Sarah’s arm. “Now, I was going to have you clean the chimney, and this you shall still do later, but right now I am so displeased with you that I simply want you out of my sight. Go and fetch me a pail of water.”

Sarah rubbed her sore wrist and when she looked down at it she knew that it would bruise, and she would be compelled to lie to her father as to its cause, lest her Stepmother beat her even more cruelly when he next left home. For this reason, her Stepmother usually beat her on her back or behind, so the welts and bruises she left would be concealed by Sarah’s garments.

“Yes, mother,” Sarah replied, curtsying and turning to fetch the pail. The task would be accomplished easily enough, for there was a stone well right in the yard; perhaps she would even be long in drawing the water to avoid returning to her Stepmother.

“Sarah,” her Stepmother called. “I do not want you to fetch water from the well in the yard, for lately its taste has become pungent, and dragonflies have taken to laying their eggs in it.”

“Where else am I to fetch water, mother?” Sarah asked sincerely, for she genuinely knew of no other place.

Her Stepmother grinned wickedly once more. “The river,” she said, “Fetch me a pail of water from the river, five miles yonder. There is a path through the forest leading from our house straight to it. Follow the path, and do not return without a full bucket of water. A full bucket, Sarah. Is that understood?”

“Yes, mother,” Sarah answered, though she trembled at the thought of traveling through the dark forest where prowled many bears and panthers and wolves.

“When you arrive at the river, you mustn’t drink any water, not even a drop,” her Stepmother continued, “You are simply to fill the bucket and return to the house. On your journey home, you are not to set the bucket down or stop to rest for any reason, nor are you to drink any water from the bucket, and you most especially must not spill even a single drop of water. And I will know if you spill or drink a drop, Sarah, because the Head will tell me.”

“The Head?” Sarah asked.

Her Stepmother smiled cruelly. “There is a Severed Head hidden away in the house, which I speak to sometimes. It tells me secrets, Sarah, for it is very wise. The Head sees everything, it hears everything, and it knows everything there is to know. If you should ever speak lies to me, or break any of the good, sensible rules I have laid out for you to follow, the Severed Head will tell of it, and I will punish you accordingly.”

Sarah nodded, equal parts terrified and curious, for she wondered howsoever her Stepmother might have acquired such a morbid thing as a Severed Head to speak to.

She went and fetched the metal pail from beside the well, and stared long into the dark forest before her, which seemed the most dismal and haunted place upon the face of the earth. The chestnuts and hemlocks stood like the turrets of a castle, growing so thick and close together that they presented an impenetrable wall of green. But her Stepmother had spoken true, for Sarah could see a thin, needle-strewn path threading its way through the woods ahead. She looked back at the little cottage, only to see her Stepmother staring at her through the kitchen window, as if to make sure she would actually enter the deep forest and did not discreetly draw water from the well. And so Sarah sucked in a deep breath and set off bravely down the needle-strewn trail.

The forest was dark and her walk was long. At first, Sarah could scarcely think, for she feared every sound coming from the dense underbrush around her. Every chipmunk’s pattering and grouse’s ruffling wings seemed a harbinger of a bear, or a panther, or a pack of wolves. Her fear of these beasts and other imaginary creatures far fiercer kept her head on a fair swivel, and her eyes wide and alert, and her heart thrumming steadily in her chest, such that she was scarcely able to enjoy exploring the forest, to which she had never been before.

It was mid-morning when Sarah first began her journey, and though she knew it would take some hours to go through the forest, her fear made her so anxious to reach the river that she pressed on as quick as her feet could carry her. Not a house was to be seen in all that lonesome way, only the vast and ancient woods carpeting the hills in green. It was not until well after noon that Sarah finally arrived at the river’s roaring banks. Her relief was great when she finally saw the water looming ahead of her, for she had walked long and was desperately thirsty, and her legs and little feet were quite sore.

“I shall sit for only a minute,” said she, “For even if my Stepmother does have a Severed Head to which she speaks, how could it possibly know what I am doing this far from home?”

And so, disobedient to her Stepmother, she sat upon one of the great boulders strewn along the riverbank, and rubbed her sore feet, and cupped some water in her hands to slake her thirst.

“There probably is no Severed Head,” Sarah said to herself, “Stepmother probably only told that story to try to scare me. I will go home and not spill a drop, as she asked, and when I return she will be none the wiser that I stopped to rest a spell.”

Sarah filled the bucket with fresh water from the river, and, emboldened by her disobedience, her return through the forest was not quite so fearful as her initial journey, though she still looked this way and that for bears and panthers and wolves.

When she arrived home and stepped into the cottage clearing, she found her Stepmother distraught, pacing back and forth in front of the well whilst muttering to herself. When her Stepmother saw Sarah exiting the woods, she rushed over to the girl and slapped her across the face. This stunned Sarah so much that she dropped the pail to the ground with a loud clatter, spilling the water she had carried all this way without losing even a drop.

“You naughty little girl!” screamed her Stepmother, “You deliberately disobeyed me!”

“I didn’t! I didn’t!” pleaded Sarah, cowering under the wicked woman’s blows.

“You disobey me, you spill my water, and now you lie to me, too!” shouted her Stepmother, slapping the girl again even as Sarah tried to shield her face with her hands. “I know you stopped at the river to drink and rub your feet! The Severed Head told me what you did, Sarah!”

“I didn’t, I really didn’t!” Sarah cried, and now she lied despite herself, so terrified was she of her Stepmother hurting her again.

“Liar!” screamed her Stepmother, hitting Sarah so hard that the girl fell to the ground weeping, and her Stepmother continued kicking her back with the points of her boots. “Don’t! You! Ever! Lie! To! Me!”

“I won’t! I won’t! I promise I won’t!” cried Sarah, and she sincerely meant it.

The evil Stepmother left Sarah weeping in the grass to think about what she had done, and from that day on Sarah did all of her chores tirelessly, and obeyed her Stepmother’s every command, for the Severed Head held her life in torment. Whenever her Stepmother even suspected a lie or disobedience, or thought Sarah may have made a mistake in her work, she would say- “I will ask the Severed Head if you have obeyed my instructions completely, and if he tells me you have lied, you will be punished severely!”

When silence was demanded, Sarah’s mouth was zippered shut, and she would only be slapped or beaten if the Severed Head revealed she had sniffled or sneezed. When Sarah was instructed to mend or patch her Stepmother’s fine garments, she did so, and would only be slapped or beaten if the Severed Head told her Stepmother of a loose hanging thread. And when Sarah was sent to the river to fetch a pail of water every other day, she did not stop to rest or drink, and took special care not to spill even a drop, for fear of the Severed Head. And her Stepmother would only slap or beat her if the Head spoke of how Sarah had hesitated at the sight of a bobcat, or spilled some water while climbing over a fallen trunk.

The Severed Head did indeed see all, and hear all, and know every little thing that Sarah did wrong, and every minute of the girl’s life she felt the crushing weight of being watched by the evil Head’s undead eyes.

Journeying deep into the forest every other day to fetch water, Sarah quickly outgrew her fears and became acquainted with the denizens of the deep woods. She learned that the odd little noises which initially had made her leap with terror were almost always only chipmunks or squirrels foraging in the ferns. And she came to know the songs of many birds, and the trails of foxes and rabbits and deer. Other creatures were more secretive. She glimpsed but once the badger as he stole silently through the brush alongside her. Once a vast herd of elk passed the trail in front of her, and she was compelled to stop and stare in wonder as the great deer ambled by. She even heard, though never saw, the far-distant howling of wolves, for this was back when many wolves could yet be found in that part of the country.

She came, too, to learn all the landmarks along the path, just as well as the sight of her own hand. Here was the great rock heap where the sly red fox made his den; there was the meadow of fair wildflowers which Sarah longed to stop and pick, but dared not lest the Severed Head tell of it; and lo stands the hollow oak tree with a mighty fork in its branches. This tree she knew well, for it was exactly halfway between her home and the river. She knew too that a hawk had made its nest in the tree, in the cleft between the branches.

It was one morning after a terrific storm had darkened the skies and made the winds howl all through the day and night when Sarah passed by the hollow oak and found that another tree beside it had been struck by lightning, and its large branches had splintered and fallen into the hawk’s nest. Much to her surprise, she saw the hawk walking in the path, its right wing dragging on the ground.

Sarah knew at once that the poor bird must have broken its wing, and without any help would surely die. And though she greatly feared what her Stepmother would do when the Severed Head told of her stopping, her pity for the wounded creature was greater still. So she set down her pail in the path and crouched low to slowly approach the hawk. When the hawk screeched a warning at her, she whispered soothing assurances to the nervous bird to try to calm it. Then the hawk tried to raise its wings to appear bigger than it really was, but its broken wing would not obey, and it mewled in pain.

Sarah crouched a respectful distance from the hurt hawk, and thought about what to do next. She could not approach the frightened bird without the risk of being hurt, and in trying to hurt her the hawk might indeed hurt itself even more. She knew she needed a peace offering, and so she reached into her pocket and took slices of ham from the sandwich she had made to eat while she walked. When she approached again the hawk screeched once more, but it had not eaten for three days and the smell of ham was intoxicating. Soon Sarah was seated beside the injured bird, feeding it ham out of one hand while she inspected its wing with the other. It was a beautiful bird, its soft feathers shades of mahogany and cinnamon, its bill a blade of obsidian, and its eyes like pools of chocolate. Innocent eyes, rich and brown, much like Sarah’s own.

She lifted up the hawk’s wing and extended it just enough to see where it was broken. No bone protruded, thankfully, and she thought that if the wing could just be set, the hawk might yet heal from its injury. When she began to set the broken wing in place, the hawk winced and screeched, and Sarah ran her fingers soothingly down its head. She set the wing right, and then wondered about how she might wrap it. Her wool skirt, an itchy gift from her Stepmother, was all she had, and she tore fabric from its hem to wrap the bird’s wing.

She wrapped the wing tightly against the bird’s side, but not so tightly that it would be unable to breathe. Then she held the bird under one arm and climbed the tree to place it back in its nest, after cleaning out the debris from the lightning strike as best she was able. She left the bird the rest of the ham from her sandwich and climbed out of the tree to continue on her way to the river, resolving to come back the very next day to feed the hawk and redress its wound.

When Sarah returned home, to her dread she saw her Stepmother pacing in front of the well, her eyes wide and harried.

“You tore your wool skirt!” the wicked Stepmother shrieked, before Sarah had even fully left the trees.

“I’m sorry!” Sarah pleaded, cowering as her Stepmother bore down upon her.

“Liar! That skirt was a gift, you know! I spent many hours at my spinning wheel crafting it just for you, and you tore it all up!”

Sarah knew well that the wool skirt had been a gift, for her Stepmother had made great airs about presenting it to her one summer morning when the sun was blistering and the air was soup to breathe. The wicked woman insisted she had expended so much effort in crafting the wool skirt that Sarah must wear it from then on any time she went to the river, for simply no other garment would do. The fabric was thick and itchy, and Sarah hated it, but she knew that if she dared wear anything else, the Severed Head would tell of it, and she would be beaten.

“You hateful little wretch!” her Stepmother continued, “You always despise the good things I do for you, all the very good and nice and kindly deeds I do, just for you, like preparing your soup when you were taken with the flu, or when I so nicely rearranged your pens and papers, or made you this skirt!”

Sarah remembered all of these incidents just as well- the single bowl of watery, lukewarm soup her Stepmother had brought to her and slammed down on her nightstand when she had been taken with the flu, and when upon returning from a trip to the river she found her Stepmother had broken the tips of all the fine colored pencils her father had gifted her on her birthday, and cast all her wonderful sketchbooks into the fire for they were “full, and surely you must be in want of fresh paper instead.”

And to Sarah’s surprise, her Stepmother began to cry. She cried and cried through gritted teeth, and when Sarah- for she was a kindhearted child- tried to comfort her and tell her how truly sorry she was for ripping her skirt, her Stepmother started hitting her even as she continued to cry.

Sarah went to bed that night bruised all over, and her cheeks stung both from the pain of being slapped so many times and from the tears which lulled her finally to sleep.

The next day, after cleaning the chicken coop and hanging out the laundry- of which there was much, for her Stepmother would sometimes change her outfit twice or thrice a day, just to make more work for Sarah- she headed directly to the woods without informing her Stepmother, bringing with her slivers of ham and two boiled eggs. When she reached the hollow oak tree with the cleft in its branches, she found the hawk still seated in its nest, looking down at her as if it had been expecting her. Sarah climbed the tree and sat upon one of the forked branches, and shared the ham with the hawk, and gave it one egg while she enjoyed the other.

“I shall call you Rain,” Sarah said, scratching the hawk’s feathers just below its chin, much to the bird’s delight, “For I rescued you after the storm.”

Sarah left the hawk after spending some time in the tree with it, scratching and playing with it, and teaching it not to fear her. When she arrived home, her Stepmother was not by the well, and Sarah breathed a sigh of relief for she knew her absence had not been noticed, and no beating was forthcoming.

Over the coming days, Sarah journeyed back to the tree many times, and the thought of visiting her new friend gave her much solace as she diligently attended to her many chores. After a week, she became so excited that she would leave her chores half finished, so she could go and visit the hawk, and feed it, and tend to its wing. She thought the bird was healing well, and looked forward to the day when she could remove the tourniquet and see it fly once more, for the hawk was strong and belonged to the wind.

And though Sarah watched her time carefully and always finished her chores properly upon returning from visiting Rain, her giddy neglect did not go unnoticed by her Stepmother. The wicked woman watched the girl from the kitchen window as she hung out half the laundry to dry, then disappeared furtively into the forest for an hour or so, before returning to finish hanging the laundry. And as the cruel Stepmother watched Sarah become more brazen in her neglect of her chores, she plotted an evil scheme.

Sarah had just finished cleaning the chicken coop and sauntered happily down the needle-strewn trail, for it was the day she meant to remove the hawk’s bandage and see it fly once more. But when she arrived at the base of the old hollow oak, it was desolate. The ground was strewn with straw and twigs and downy white feathers, and when Sarah looked up at the fork in the oak’s branches, she saw that the hawk’s nest had been destroyed, as if some mighty gale had come along and blown it right from the tree.

“Rain?” Sarah called nervously, hoping that her friend was okay, perhaps still in the branches somewhere. She climbed the tree and continued calling the bird’s name- “Rain? Where are you, Rain?”

When she finally ascended to the top of the trunk where the nest had been, Rain was nowhere to be found. All Sarah saw was a single brown feather sticking straight up from a clump of moss that remained from the nest, and at the sight of it her heart sank, for wrapped around the shaft of the feather was one long, blonde hair.

Sarah stared at the rubbish of the nest for a long time, and then she left the tree and turned to walk home and she did not look back. When she got home, she went up to her bedroom and pulled out one of her sketchbooks, and filled its pages with drawings of a happy little girl with hair of ebony and skin of snow holding out her arm, whereupon a beautiful, red-feathered hawk winged down to alight upon it. And she cried and cried for the memory of her friend.

Her Stepmother called to her late in the evening, “Sarah, dear, dinner is ready!”

Though Sarah was not hungry in the slightest, she knew her Stepmother would be enraged if she did not come down to eat, and so she gathered up her broken heart and went downstairs.

There was only one dish of food at the table- a platter upon which sat the tiniest chicken Sarah had ever seen. She looked at it and thought to herself, “There are no chickens in our coop so small as that.”

Her Stepmother smiled broadly at her, and twirled a lock of her golden hair round her finger, and Sarah’s heart sank as she realized what was on the dinner plate.

“Come and eat,” her Stepmother cooed.

Sarah walked woodenly to the table, staring all the while at the little bird on the platter. She pulled out her chair and sat, and looked down at her plate.

“Go on,” her Stepmother encouraged, “Have some. I spent all day cooking it, just for you.”

“I’m not hungry,” said Sarah, scarcely able to whisper. She wanted to die. She wished only that she could just shrivel up and die.

“What did you say?” said her Stepmother, her sweet voice suddenly changing to a terrible hiss.

Sarah did not reply. Her Stepmother was on her feet in a moment, and the next thing Sarah felt was her Stepmother’s cold hand wrapping around the back of her neck, shaking her violently. “Listen, little missy! I spent all day cooking this bird for you! I poured my heart and soul into preparing it and seasoning it just for you to enjoy, and you are going to eat of it!”

“I’m not hungry!” Sarah cried, her own voice choked in fear and anger and remorse. “I won’t eat it! I won’t! Not ever!”

“Little wretch! The Severed Head told me about that bird of yours!”

“He was my friend!” cried Sarah.

“It was disgusting vermin! It would have gone after our hens, and then what, Sarah? Then what would we eat?”

“Not him!”

Her Stepmother continued shaking her, and her shouts grew more and more twisted and guttural until it seemed the wicked woman would change into some ferocious beast.

“I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” Sarah screamed, wrenching herself free of her Stepmother’s grasp and racing up the stairs while her Stepmother’s enraged shouts chased her back to her bedroom.

She collapsed onto her bed and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. For Rain and for herself and for all the cruelty in the world.

Later that night, after Sarah had cried all the tears she could cry and was laying glumly beneath her blankets, her bedroom door creaked open. In slouched her cruel Stepmother, who quietly closed the door behind her as she entered. She asked- “Would you like to know how I got the Severed Head, Sarah?”

Sarah turned over in bed to meet her Stepmother’s gaze. She dabbed her still-wet eyes with the edge of her blanket and sniffled.

“Yes, I would,” Sarah nodded, for she was a curious girl and she thought that if she knew more about the mysterious Severed Head, it might be made less frightening, and perhaps she would even learn how to best it.

Her Stepmother seated herself upon the foot of Sarah’s bed, and spake thus-

“Just as your father was married once before, so too was I, to a tall, strapping lumberman who would fell mighty hemlocks with but one chop of his axe. One dark winter night, our home was attacked by Seneca warriors. As they set about pillaging our farmstead, they slit my husband’s throat while he slept. I awoke to the feeling of his warm, wet blood spilling out onto the bedsheets, just as they were about to slit my own throat as well. But I fought back, and I got these-” she said, rolling up her sleeves and holding out her arms so Sarah could see the dozens of long, white scars crisscrossing her flesh, “- and I only just barely managed to escape. I ran out barefoot into the snow, my arms bleeding, and raced all the way to the army fort seven miles away. The soldiers came back with me to try to catch the warriors, and they burnt down one of the nearest Seneca villages in retribution. But they were never able to find the ones who attacked us. Because, in truth, Sarah, there were no warriors. That night, I slit my husband’s throat while he slept, and watched the life drain from his eyes when he awoke to his blood gushing out upon our bedsheets. Then I took this same razor to my own arms, to make it seem as if I had been attacked. I cut myself deep all over, and told the soldiers and the militiamen that the Seneca had attacked us, and the fools believed me. And after the village was burned and the funeral had been held, I waited until the full moon to dig up my husband’s corpse and cut off his head with a silver blade. That is the Severed Head to which I speak, Sarah, the Severed Head which sees all, and hears all, and knows all there is to know. I charmed it so that it would be able to speak, and I keep it hidden away in a safe place, where it can always watch you. And if you are not very obedient to me, Sarah, I will do the same thing to your father. When next he returns from the border, I will slit his throat while he sleeps, and take off his head. And perhaps-” she said, with a cruel laugh, “I shall take your head, as well.”

Sarah leaped up from her bed and ran out of the bedroom, down the stairs, and out of the house, tears streaming down her face as her wicked Stepmother’s laughter echoed behind her. In a blind panic, she ran across the field, past the well, and into the dark forest, and she ran and ran until she fell down beside the hollow oak where Rain had once dwelt. She laid against the rough bark of its trunk and cried in fear and despair, until finally she cried herself to sleep.

There, she had troubled dreams of her Stepmother chasing her through the house with a butcher knife, of her father’s headless body lying in bed beside her Stepmother, of her own throat being slit by a razor. She dreamed she had died and was floating down a tunnel of brilliant light towards beckoning angels, only for the tunnel to suddenly shrink down to a mere pinpoint in a sea of black at the overbearing sound of her Stepmother’s voice chanting in strange, harsh tongues. Then Sarah felt nothing but cold and rough wooden panels about her, and heard nothing but the wind howling outside. She could neither speak, nor open her eyes, nor move in any way. When she tried to cry out for help, naught but a low mumble escaped her cold, dead lips. She felt only the deepest sorrow, for she knew that she was now just another Severed Head in her Stepmother’s collection, imprisoned in a dreadful state between death and life, enslaved to this wicked, evil woman by black magic.

Sarah awoke many hours later, in the middle of the night. Her neck was stiff and she felt not the slightest bit rested. The forest was darker than it had ever been before, for there was no moon by which to light the path, and clouds covered even the brightest of stars. Sarah trembled in fear, not of the forest, which she knew now as thoroughly as she knew her own home, but of her Stepmother, for she knew that when she returned to the house a cruel beating was awaiting her, in retribution for disappearing for so long- if her Stepmother hadn’t already gone to bed herself.

“Perhaps I can sneak back home,” Sarah said to herself, “and my Stepmother will never even know I had gone.”

And so Sarah stepped back onto the path, knowing even in the inky darkness where to avoid every sharp stone and upbraided root, and when she had passed the rock heap where the fox had his den, and when she was finally reaching the forest’s end. When the cottage finally came into view, she saw the last candles still glowing dim orange in its windows, and her heart sank for this could only mean her Stepmother was still awake.

As Sarah came right to the treeline, her breath froze in her lungs. For she saw ahead the cloaked figure of her Stepmother, standing beside the well. And Sarah’s despair was great, for whenever her Stepmother stood by the well, it was only because the Severed Head told her that Sarah had disobeyed her in some way, and she was ready to cruelly beat Sarah. She hesitated, and then she watched, for on this night her Stepmother was behaving unusually. Instead of pacing back and forth in agitation, waiting for Sarah to return, she simply stood beside the well, as if gazing into its waters. And as Sarah watched, it seemed more and more like her Stepmother was holding something in her hands.

Then a chill tickled Sarah’s spine, for she heard her Stepmother speaking, and another voice answered her.

Sarah ducked behind a bush and watched as her Stepmother spoke aloud to nobody, for there was no one else in sight. But as soon as her Stepmother stopped talking, a very deep, very gravelly voice slowly answered:

“When fishes fly and stones speak, whence shall come the lamb?” asked her Stepmother.

“From… the… Indian… trail…”

The questions and answers made very little sense, but Sarah knew at once that her Stepmother must have been speaking to the Severed Head, and her terror was great. “The Head,” Sarah reflected fearfully, “knows all. Even though my Stepmother can’t see me, the Head can. It knows I am here, and it will tell my Stepmother.”

Sarah lay hidden like a fawn in the bush, scarcely breathing as she listened to her Stepmother ask arcane questions of the Severed Head, and her heart stammered each time the Head slowly croaked out its reply. She waited in dread for her Stepmother to look towards the bush, her eyes searching the darkness for Sarah’s little figure huddled against the leaves. But her Stepmother never did look her way, nor did the Head seem to tell of her presence.

Safely hidden as she spied on her Stepmother’s conversation, her fear began to be replaced by curiosity. The Severed Head’s deep voice rang tantalizingly in her ears, and she thought, “I must see the Head. It has tormented me for years. I need to know if it is real, or just a fable of my Stepmother.”

Thus resolved, Sarah began to inch closer to the well. Her father kept a small cornfield at the edge of the clearing, and Sarah pressed herself down onto her belly and crawled between the tall stalks, trying to get close enough to glimpse the Head without herself being seen. She was aided by the moonless dark of the night, but all she could see was the well and her Stepmother standing beside it. And when she next heard the Head speak, her blood turned to ice-

“Someone… is… watching…”

Sarah froze in place. She remained still as a statue, watching with wide eyes and a quick-beating heart as her Stepmother quickly ducked behind the well. Scarcely could she breathe as she waited for her Stepmother to reappear, to rush after her and beat her, or perhaps to make good on her word and take off her head.

After a few dreadfully long moments, Sarah saw her Stepmother’s head pop back up and look around, scanning the field and forest for any sign of movement. Whatever she had been holding, she held it no longer. Then, she rose to her feet and hurried away towards the cottage, where Sarah feared that she would be on the lookout from the kitchen window, or any of the other windows in the little cottage, to spy her approach. But her fear was tempered by curiosity, for she realized that her Stepmother had left the Severed Head behind at the well.

Sarah stayed perfectly still for a long, long time, until the night grew cold and the clouds finally drifted away just enough for the brightest stars to shine through them. Still she watched the cottage, and it was only when the candles in the windows were finally burnt out that she left the haven of the cornstalks and began to crawl ever so slowly across the clearing towards the well. She feared to bend even a single stalk of grass out of worry that her Stepmother would hear it and come bursting out of the cottage to beat her, or perhaps even to kill her. But the cottage was quiet, and the field was quiet too save for the sound of Sarah’s own quick breathing.

When Sarah finally reached the well, she pressed herself against its stone sides and exhaled heavily in relief. Then she began to skirt around the side of the well to where her Stepmother had been, until her hand touched upon a pile of leaves and dead grass. Brushing these away as quietly as she could, Sarah felt a handle. This she tugged at, and a little wooden door opened up, revealing a secret chamber hidden beside the well. The chamber was two feet in depth, and at its bottom was a wooden box.

“This is what she keeps the Head in,” Sarah thought. And even though just moments ago she had been possessed by a desperate compulsion to see the Severed Head, now that it was there before her she could not bring herself to open the box. She was afraid to even touch it, so powerful and evil was it in her mind, but still she summoned the courage to grab its handle and lift it out of the secret chamber. It was heavier than she thought it would be, and made a dull thud as she hoisted it onto the grass.

“Hello?” whispered Sarah, thinking that perhaps the Severed Head might answer her from within the box. But the box, and whatever was held within it, remained silent.

Sarah knew she must rid herself of this evil artifact, but she could do nothing beside the well, in full view of the cottage and its many windows, any one of which her wicked Stepmother may have been peering out from at that very moment.

And so Sarah took the box by its handle and began crawling back to the cover of the trees, dragging the box after her. She went back around the well to where she had initially approached, so that the well might cover at least some of her retreat back to the forest. Stopping only when the box snagged on a root and she had to sit up perilously to unsnare it, she crawled across the cool grass, through the cornrows, and back into the forest.

Once she was hidden safely in the trees, she stood and hefted the box up to carry it down the dark path. She ran back through the woods the same way she had gone innumerable times before, knowing every sharp stone and every upbraided root, until finally she came back to the hollow oak tree where Rain had made his nest, and for a brief moment she had been happy for the first time in her life. The hollow in the oak’s trunk was just big enough to fit the box, and Sarah stood on her tippy-toes and hoisted the box over her head to deposit it in the hollow, where it would be safe until she figured out what to do with it.

When she finally returned to the house, she found her Stepmother was still awake, sitting in her rocking chair in the dark parlor, with a troubled look upon her face.

“Where have you been?” asked her Stepmother.

“I ran away and fell asleep in the forest.” replied Sarah truthfully.

Her Stepmother scowled. “Go to your room.”

Sarah nodded obediently and headed for the stairs, but noted how oddly her Stepmother was behaving, for usually she would fly into a rage and threaten to ask the Severed Head if Sarah was lying.

The next day passed without incident. Sarah performed all her chores as diligently as she ever had before, and completed them, oddly, without so much as a whisper of snide mockery from her Stepmother, nor any threats of her consulting the Severed Head and its great knowledge. When night fell and the waxing new moon began to rise, Sarah waited until her Stepmother blew out all the candles and went to sleep, and then she tiptoed out of her bedroom and down the stairs. She trotted quickly across the clearing and back into the forest, down the path all the way to the hollow tree, where she found the wooden box exactly as she had left it.

Sarah inspected the box again, and ran her fingers along its grainy wood, thinking about opening it. But once more, this she could not bring herself to do. She reached into her apron and withdrew a box of matches she had pilfered from a kitchen drawer. Striking one of the matches, she watched its feeble flame glowing in the dark woods, and then she tossed it into the hollow to set the tree alight.

Sarah stood back and watched as the flames began to consume the hollow oak tree. Its firewreathed branches turned crisp black, and the last remnants of Rain’s nest fell into the ever-growing inferno. Sarah stood in front of the tree through the night, basking in the rich warmth of the flames and watching as the box was burned to a cinder along with the rest of the tree. The fire died slowly, until only charcoal and embers remained, and when the ashes had cooled in the blue dawn, Sarah sifted through them and found not a trace of bone or teeth, nor any other signs that a Severed Head might have been held within the box.

The girl crept back home as the sun began to rise, and she climbed into bed to rest. When she awoke at midmorning, her Stepmother had not yet risen. Sarah cautiously ventured to enter her Stepmother’s room, and found the wicked woman bedridden. She was sick, and frail, and her mouth hung open slackly.

“Are you well, Stepmother?” Sarah asked.

At the very word, her Stepmother’s sickly face scrunched into an evil scowl, and she lurched out of the bed and began advancing on Sarah.

“I shall be, once I procure myself a new Severed Head!” said her Stepmother.

Sarah backed away from the door in terror and slammed it in her Stepmother’s face. She ran down the stairs and into the kitchen and quickly retrieved a blade from the kitchen drawer. Upstairs, she heard her Stepmother still fumbling with the doorknob, as though her hand would not fully obey her will. For a moment, she thought her Stepmother might have been trapped in the bedroom, but then the knob turned and she heard her Stepmother’s shrill screams of rage descending the stairs after her.

Sarah raced out the back of the house, her heart galloping in wild fear, and ran down to the well. As she fled for her life, she grew reckless, and tripped on the hole where the Severed Head had been buried. She fell with a pained cry, and when she tried to pull herself back to her feet she found that her ankle was sprained and she could run no more. Her wicked Stepmother rushed out of the house, holding an equally wicked butcher’s knife with which to chop off Sarah’s little head.

Sarah thought of all the beatings she had endured ever since her father had married this evil woman. She thought of poor Rain, her only friend in the world. She knew that at this moment, the end of her life, she had run as far as she could. And so she held up her knife bravely, and turned to defend herself.

Two shots rang out across the clearing. One moment her Stepmother was running at full speed towards Sarah, knife in hand, her face twisted in pain and hatred. The next, her Stepmother twirled, and her blonde hair flew about her like straw thrown from a bale of hay.

Sarah turned in the direction of the shots and saw her father standing tall in the clearing, holding out his pistol. He’d come home at last.

For many years, long after Sarah had grown into a fine young woman and married and had many children, she thought of the Severed Head and how it had held her life in misery.

Her Stepmother told her it had belonged to her first husband, a strapping lumberman, who more than likely was a decent man who only had the misfortune of marrying a witch. For this mistake, he’d suffered a fate worse than death- his throat slit in his sleep, and his soul trapped within his own shriveled head by black magic, imprisoned in a tiny coffin and buried beside a well under a bed of dirt and leaves, forced by an evil woman to spy on the sins of a young girl.

But then this selfsame girl had released him from his hellish fate.

Sarah never spoke to the Severed Head, herself, but she was quite sure that if it could say anything to her, it would say-

“Thank… you...”

POSTSCRIPT: This tale is a dramatic adaptation of an allegedly true story, originally reported on Dead Rabbit Radio- a daily paranormal, conspiracy, and true crime podcast- in Episode 871, titled “The Severed Head Knows Your Sins”. Several creative liberties were taken for the sake of the narrative. The author is indebted to Dead Rabbit Radio for providing the creative inspiration needed to write the tale you have just read. If you enjoyed this story or the show description interests you, please consider giving it a listen!

The cover art is by Trina Schart Hyman.

I am in the hospital right now with a broken hip. Slipped and fell while I was decorating the Christmas tree with my grandkids. The doc says it’s clotting in all the wrong places. I know the score. When I lie awake at night, trying to ignore the pain, I can hear the angels playing their harps just beyond the door. They’re close about me now, even as I write this. Very close. I sure hope they are angels, anyway. I’ve done my best to square my life to His word, after that night…

That’s part of why I’m telling this story now. To make things right, at least in one small way. Because my friends didn’t drown on the night of October 7, 1949, despite what the Coast Guard and the State Police said, and I know exactly where their bodies are.

There were six of us- Jack Ingersoll, Shirley Meigs, Joan Brinton, Cliff Berwind, Josie McKean, and myself. Jack and Shirley were going steady; Joan and Cliff weren’t yet, but they had the hots for each other and we were all thinking they’d formalize it real soon. And Josie… Josie was my girl.

We were young, just starting our senior year at Cardinal Dougherty High School, and we all decided on a whim to go down to Cape May for the weekend. We decided that on Thursday, after class got out and we were all hanging around in the parking lot by Jack’s blue Hudson Commodore before heading home. That conversation went something like this-

“I wanna go out this weekend.” That was Shirley. It was kind of a dumb statement- we went out every weekend- but it got the conversation rolling about where exactly we would go.

“Where to?” Joan asked, looking up from the book she’d been perusing. She was the bookworm of our group; every free period she lingered in the library, reading… well, anything. Today’s book was called Wonder Creatures Of The Sea.

Shirley looked down at the book- it was open to a big, two-page spread of a 19th century engraving depicting a whale being harpooned by men in boats who circled it like so many staghounds nipping at the legs of an elk. A jet of water spouted from the whale’s blowhole as it floundered on the surface, looking up from the pages with one big, sad eye as if beseeching the reader to help.

Shirley smirked. We loved it when she did that- the guys, I mean- because it made her look like a Hollywood actress, like a blend of Ava Gardner and Myrna Loy. Just a perfect mixture of seductive and coy. “How about the beach?”

“The beach.” Joan repeated skeptically. “In October.”

“Yeah, why not?” Shirley said, “We could all drive down to Cape May for the weekend. The weather’s nice and my parents have a place down there. It’d be such a shame not to visit one more time before winter.”

“I think it’s a swell idea,” Jack agreed. Every friend group has its own kind of unelected leader who everyone else gravitates around- Jack was ours. He was the tallest and fittest among us, captain of the football team, and the only one with a car. He tapped the blue hood of the Commodore appreciatively. “I’ll drive.”

“The water’s going to be freezing though,” Josie warned. As if anticipating the chilliness, she clutched her arms close to her chest and rubbed them up and down. She was… beautiful. Even now I can see her leaning back against the car, wearing that long pleated skirt and white sweater. She had big blue eyes and cupid lips and wonderfully plain brown hair, tied back in a high ponytail that bobbed after her whenever she moved even a bit.

“Ah it’ll be fine, Josie,” I said, putting my arm around her and rubbing her shoulder, “I’ll keep you nice and warm.”

She rolled her eyes in mock annoyance. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I certainly would,” I snickered. I looked around our little group. “We can all keep each other warm. I’m in.”

“Fine,” Josie sighed, “Fine. I’ll go.”

“I guess I can skip football practice for one day. Coach is pretty tough, though,” Cliff said, somewhat halfheartedly. He loved football, but just as a game. His dad was training him to be a mechanic to take over his auto shop when the old man retired. I think that was what he was more worried about, missing working with his dad. He loved tinkering with cars.

“Ah, don’t worry about it man,” Jack replied, “Coach is friends with my dad; we’ll work it out no problem.”

“I don’t know,” Cliff wavered.

“It’ll be fine, man,” Jack insisted, “If anyone asks we’ll just say we kidnapped you.”

Cliff laughed. “Alright, alright. I’m in.”

“What about you, Joan?” Shirley asked.

Joan looked up again from the book of sea life and regarded us all quietly, like she were weighing how much time she’d lose reading if she hung out with us for the weekend. She was a tiny girl but her eyes were enormous, like a fawn’s, and her pageboy hair was jet black. She glanced at Cliff, just a brief glimpse but I caught it. I’m not sure if any of the others did. “Alright, I’ll go.”

That was how we decided it.

We drove down the next day, right after the bell rang. We thought we’d get to the beach by six o’clock at the latest, but of course it didn’t work out that way. We stopped at a diner on the way down, which ate up an hour, and then we got a flat out in the sticks by a one-horse town called Manumuskin. Looking back, I wish up and down that Jack hadn’t had a spare tire in his trunk. Maybe we would’ve walked to the nearest farmhouse and asked to use the phone to call for a tow back to Philadelphia, and laughed about what a dumb idea it had been to try going down the shore in October, how the ocean would have been so cold anyway. It might have been…

As it was, we got the flat fixed and made it to Shirley’s place at around quarter after eight.

Cape May was mighty different back in 1949. This was over a decade before the Doo Wop boom that came with the construction of the Garden State Parkway. The shore towns back then were still sleepy fishing villages most of the year- they drew big crowds in the summertime, but were dead quiet in autumn and winter. Cape May was the only one of particular note with vacationers, and it was an old money town.

Well, Shirley’s family was old money. They had a huge, rambling Victorian manor over by Lake Lily, just half a mile from Sunset Beach. It was a short walk and a shorter drive- as soon as we unpacked our things at Shirley’s place, we zoomed over to go for a late night dip.

Sunset Beach is so named because it faces due west, making it a perfect spot to watch the sun dip down and sink into the bay. We got there well after dark, of course, so all we got to see was the light of the rising moon dancing upon the sea and casting its wan beams onto the wreck of the S.S. Atlantus.

The Atlantus is corroded almost to the waterline today, but back in 1949 the great moldering bulk of the two-hundred-fifty foot ship was still largely above water. She was an experimental vessel built during the First World War- steel was in short supply, so they made her entirely out of concrete. The only metal she had on her was rebar and rusty railings, the mere sight of which made one think about getting a tetanus shot. After the war she was due to be sunk as part of a slip for a ferry dock, but while she was being towed north, a heavy storm hit and she broke loose from her mooring line. She ran aground about a hundred yards offshore and no effort to free her had ever succeeded.

There she sat, listing like a drunkard, while we got ourselves situated.

Jack left his headlights on to illuminate the beach while Cliff and I gathered driftwood for a fire. There’d been a storm recently, so it wasn’t a hard job. We gathered a great brushpile of bleached branches to see us through a few hours of the night; whenever we were tired or drunk enough to go home. Did I mention that yet? One of my specialties- I was the rumrunner of the group. “Rumrunner Ron,” they called me. If there ever was a keg held between Fern Rock and Tacony Creek, from VJ Day until 1950, odds were pretty decent I supplied it. So we had a nice little stash in Jack’s trunk.

Once we got the fire going, we just sat on the beach wrapped up in our blankets, drinking and telling stories and watching the embers rush up to join the axle of the galaxy while the wind whiffled through the dunegrass, carrying with it a chill warning of the winter yet to come. I told a spooky story about the Jersey Devil that left Josie and Joan both looking over their shoulders back at the tall dunes and into the pinewoods beyond, and then Cliff started on about how he couldn’t wait to start really working with his dad, after high school was over. None of us could believe graduation was that close, but it was coming faster than we’d thought possible. Just a few short months away…

It wasn’t long before Shirley was crooning Doris Day and doing an admirable job of it- her voice was a tad too deep to pull the high notes, but Josie and Joan carried her as impromptu backup singers, while us guys just sat back and listened to them sing. There was something prehistoric about our comfort- warm around a campfire, a little buzzed, listening to the sweet voices of our girls ring out over the quiet beach while the sea sparkled in the moonwake. Perhaps this exact, primordial atmosphere should have been our warning sign to run, to run like hell and never return. But we didn’t.

Jack stretched contentedly and threw his arm around Shirley. He’d always had a thing for beguiling, Myrna Loy-esque vamps. You know the type- dusky, husky, and lusty. Shirley fit this archetype snugly. Likewise, Cliff and Joan had gotten sweet on each other during the ride down and must’ve been thinking of getting sweeter still because when I looked over at them, he had his arm around her and they were sharing a blanket. They looked happy. I mean happy, the kind of contented joy where you start to wonder why God had to make the world any different. I know I was that kind of happy, with my own arm wrapped around Josie, her head resting on my shoulder.

I suddenly felt a queer sensation of being watched, but when I looked around it was just Josie looking up at me.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she purred, “Nothing at all.”

And nothing was. We were happy as a Christmas tree. Just sitting on the cool sand in front of the warm fire, sipping our beers and listening to Jack tell about how he and Cliff were singularly responsible for winning the championship game against Northeast High last year.

I suddenly sat up straight, forcing a pained expression onto my face.

“Are you okay?” Josie asked. Her lips pursed in worry and she reached out her hand to touch my arm while I continued the faux spasm.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I grunted, reaching under my leg. “I just… I think I sat on something.”

Her blue eyes danced in the firelight as I held up the object I’d hidden under my leg. “Oh, Ron, it’s… it’s beautiful!”

I grinned. It was beautiful. I offered it to her. “It’s a Cape May diamond.”

“Oh…” Josie mouthed as I placed the gem into her cupped hands. She stared at it in undisguised wonder. It was perfectly translucent, as clear as glass, bouncing the firelight off its smooth crystal sides. “Ron, where did you…?”

“Ah, I’m a bit of a beachcomber,” I replied. That wasn’t true. I’d discovered it by accident while Cliff and I were gathering firewood. It wasn’t really a diamond either- that’s just what people call them. Cape May diamonds are river quartz that washes up right before the current can empty it into the sea. Still looks real pretty though.

“Thank you,” she smiled, “Oh Ron, thank you.”

She kissed me then, and I considered that little sphere of quartz a worthy trade.

Eventually my blood was half liquor, and in that stupor the Atlantus looked very enticing. Enticing in a mocking sort of way, like the old, elephantine hulk was teasing us for not having conquered her yet. She was leering at us from out there on the sandbar, the breakers lapping around her concrete hull. Her windows yawned pitch black out of the empty bridge, her single smokestack jutting up into the air like a beckoning finger. Her prow curved up mischievously, daring some brave soul to board her.

“You know what,” I said, rising unsteadily to my feet, “I’m going sailing.”

“With what?” Jack asked. His voice was slurred too, partly from booze and partly from being buried in Shirley’s neck, underneath a thicket of her curly black hair.

“That-” I said, pointing out to the Atlantus, “I’m going sailing in that.”

“It’s a wreck, you idiot,” Cliff murmured. He was lying on his back in the sand, looking up at the stars. Joan was on her back, too; they’d been pointing out constellations to each other. “Can’t drive that.”

“You watch me,” I replied defiantly, “I’m going to swim out there and dive right off her deck. Just like a swan.”

“Ron, that water’s going to be freezing,” Josie warned as I shook off my pants. She sounded annoyed but I think it was more at the fact that I’d taken my body-warmth with me when I stood up. She drew the blanket tightly around her like a shawl. “You might catch pneumonia. You might have a heart attack.”

“I’m a track star, I’ve got the heart of a racehorse,” I retorted, starting for the water. I turned back and puffed up my chest and held my arms out wide, “And if you’re all too chicken to come in with me, I guess you can just stay on the beach and wait for the Jersey Devil to come and get you!”

It was a direct challenge, mostly to Jack and Cliff, and it worked. They looked at each other, then rose from their blankets, took off their pants and shirts, and headed for the water. Joan, surprisingly, came right with them. She took off her clothes to reveal a shockingly frilly little bikini, all dark blue with white frills around the cups and hips. It was the absolute last thing anyone would ever have expected her to wear, but there it was. She giggled at the slackjawed lookdown Cliff gave her, and after he recovered he led her by the hand like a puppydog and they ran eagerly to the surf.

“Come on, Shirley!” Jack called back. Shirley was staring down the beach at us; she glanced at Josie and they both shook their heads, probably thinking of how stupid we all were. Then she stood up and shrugged off her jacket, leaving her in a black, one-piece swimsuit. It was… magnificent.

“Josie, you’re gonna be aaaaall alooooone up there!” I taunted. I’d run down well past the wrackline. The sand was cold and wet under my feet. The surf lay just a few tempting yards ahead.

I was too far away to hear her grumble any discontent at my antics, but I saw her get to her feet and- I’ll never forget this sight unto my last breath- she reached up and took her clothes off, revealing a striped, two-piece bikini. We were more modest in the forties, so the bottoms were like a pair of shorts. The top was held in place by a ribbon around her neck that seemed to me to be far stronger than Atlas, for it held up two globes. She didn’t run like the others. She pulled her hair back to make sure it was out of the way, and smirked at me as she languidly stepped down towards the surf.

Josie was right- the water was freezing.

As soon as my toes touched it I felt like they were turning to ice. I hesitated a moment- most of my body was still firewarm, and looking back, the mellow, dancing flames seemed so wonderfully friendly. But with Jack and Cliff and the girls all coming at full steam right towards me, I couldn’t back out now. So, foolishly, I ran headlong into the cold water, cursing myself every step of the way as the frigid waves lapped up my legs. Once I got out to my waist I dove under to get it over with, and the shock washed me right out of my drunkenness. Clearheaded, I surfaced and heard the others gasping at their first feel of the surf. Then I began swimming out to the Atlantus.

It was high tide, and the wreck lay about three hundred feet offshore. The water was deep, deeper than I thought it would be, judging by how much of the ship was still above water. She must have stranded on a sandbar, the weight of her stabilizing the muck below, but not to her sides, and a deep gully had been carved out of the seafloor alongside her. I would wager the water was about thirty feet deep where we were swimming, but it could’ve been even deeper.

Boarding the ship was easy enough- there was a tall wooden ladder propped up against her starboard side, placed there by past swimmers. I clambered up it- God, the air was even colder than the water- right as Cliff and Joan were getting up to their waists. Jack had gone under completely and then went back to the beach, where he scooped up Shirley in his arms and carried her out to waist-depth before dropping her in, despite her kicking and screaming protests.

The ship had a pronounced list to port, so when I finally boarded I almost immediately lost my balance and had to struggle for a foothold on the concrete deck. There wasn’t any railing on the port side- it must have corroded or broken away during the years of relentless assault from the sea- and all that would have prevented me or anyone else from tumbling overboard into the dark water below was a little concrete lip.

I headed right to the prow, leaning forward into the steep deck like I were a mountain climber, while everyone else swam out. From up there, I saw Josie surface after diving. She shook her head like a dog, trying to dry her hair in some small way as the night air bit into her. It really was a dumb idea- I didn’t think we’d be in the water for very long.

As the others finally reached the side of the ship, I leaned over the railing at the prow and looked down at them as if they were my royal subjects.

“Salute your monarch!” I shouted.

“Ah stuff it,” Jack replied. He was starting up the ladder, and I knew the second he got up on deck he’d toss me into the sea just like Shirley, so I decided to go out on my own terms. Long ago, some enterprising visitors had pried away a section of the iron railing on the Atlantus’s starboard side to accommodate the exact stunt I now performed. I trotted carefully down to the port side, then ran back up the sloping deck and swan-dived headfirst into the deep, dark water below.

It wasn’t as cold the second time around. Downright warm, in fact, compared to the chilly night air. I rolled under the water like a seal, paddling instinctively to the surface with my eyes still shut tight to keep the saltwater out. As soon as I came up, I was immediately deluged as Jack and Cliff cannonballed into the sea simultaneously.

“Whoo! Just like going under again, eh Ron?” Jack laughed as I gasped for air.

“More like going into an icebox again,” Cliff said, his teeth chattering. “It’s freezing.”

“Ah, paddle around a bit,” I chided, even though I was just as cold, “You’ll warm up.”

“Should’ve drank more, Cliff old boy,” Jack said, floating on his back.

“Hey booooooys,” Shirley called. All our heads whipped over in the same instant to see a trio of sea nymphs atop the crested bow of the ship. Shirley in front, Joan on the left, and my Josie on the right. Their swimwear was soaked, and clung to their figures like odalisques.

“You having fun down there?” Josie called.

I nodded dumbly, my eyes affixed to her chest. I assume Jack and Cliff were in the same trance but at that moment I’d forgotten they even existed.

“Well, see how you like this!” she called again, diving into the water with the svelte grace of an otter. She made an enormous splash for such a seemingly small girl, soaking me once again and releasing me from the enchantment of her bikini-clad body. Shirley followed her a moment later, and then Joan squeaked in dreadful anticipation of the cold before taking her own leap.

As soon as Josie came up I was at her side, my hands around her. Something purely animal took control of me at the sight of her in that dripping wet bikini. I needed her, right there, right then. Needed to hold her, to kiss her, to…

She gasped as my hand found her breast, and then she pursed her lips indignantly and pushed my head under the water.

Underwater is an eerie place at night.

I took a deep breath as I went down, and then opened my eyes. It only stung for a moment, and when I looked up I was close enough to the surface to see all of my friends silhouetted starkly against the moonwake above me. Diving down a bit deeper to avoid their kicking legs, I could just barely make out rippling sand far below. The gully was wide and deep, and the Atlantus was perched precariously at its edge.

I swam down deeper. I had the idea to shoot back up and scare Josie by grabbing her legs. But when I twirled around to start ascending, my head hit against something hard.

I looked up and all was darkness.

My friends were no longer in sight. The Moon no longer danced on the surface of the sea.

All that lay around me was an abyss of inky blackness.

A wave of acid panic washed over me. I gasped in spite of myself, blowing out a column of bubbles like a train whistle. Then I kicked my feet and rocketed upwards.

I smacked my head against that hard, unyielding barrier again. I was trapped underwater and I really didn’t want to die. Not like that. Alone, surrounded by nothing but dark water. My heart was trying to pound its way out of my chest, both from terror and yearning for oxygen.

I tried swimming up again with my arms outstretched, clawing at the barrier, and this time it moved. It undulated from side to side, revealing the moonwake once more as it swished by. The object tapered down to a tall, pointy fin, and I realized with a start that it was the tail of some enormous sea creature. I estimated it- the tail, I mean- to be roughly fifteen or sixteen feet long, from when it first began to move until it passed completely over me. As it slithered through the water, I stared after it and saw that the flukes were vertical, like a shark’s, but upside down- the longer fluke was on the bottom, while the one on top, though still three feet tall, was only a third the length of its southerly counterpart. The creature moved away quickly, far too quickly for something so large, and disappeared into the black abyss.

As the leviathan passed overhead, I could again see my friends’ legs dangling in the quicksilver water, so close above me. My lungs burned for air, and my pulse sizzled painfully through my veins. My head felt as though it were being crushed by a hydraulic press. I was consumed by an overriding need to open my mouth, to suck in great gales of anything at all. My legs kicked frantically upward.

I breached like a dolphin, coming almost completely out of the water, sputtering and gasping and coughing as I filled my starved lungs. In the moment I was so single-mindedly focused on breathing I almost forgot how to swim, and flailed for a moment before I was able to tread water.

“Ron?” Josie asked. Her impudent tone had vanished. She just looked concerned. “Are you alright?”

I stared dumbly at her. Then I looked around. Everyone was scattered around the Atlantus. Jack and Shirley were the furthest afield, fifty feet from the ship, treading water as they clung to each other. There must have been a riptide in the gully, yanking us away from the safety of the boat.

“Where were you?” Josie asked.

“Big fish,” I stammered.

“What?”

“There’s a big fish or something down there.”

“You alright, Ron?” Cliff called out. He was with Joan, twenty or so feet away.

“Ron said he saw a big fish,” Josie answered on my behalf when the words refused to leave my tongue.

I looked her in the eyes long and hard until she again asked- “Ron, seriously, what’s wrong?”

My breath had finally returned, but my thoughts were still muddled by what I had seen down there. Images of marine creatures flashed in my head, each more vicious than the last, as my mind raced through the possibilities of what that tail might have belonged to. Whale. Dolphin. Striper. Orca. Octopus. Squid. Grouper. Barracuda. Shark. I was not zoologically inclined. All I knew was that whatever it was, it was big. And suddenly, the water below me seemed very, very deep indeed.

“I think we should get back to the boat,” I said.

“What? Why?”

“Swim,” I said, forcefully. I felt as if I were dangling over the gaping maw of death itself. “Just swim.”

“Ron, you’re scaring me,” she replied.

I didn’t let her argue. I grabbed her wrist and started pulling her with me as I made for the Atlantus. When she started protesting, I said firmly- “We’re going back to the boat.”

“Did you see the Loch Ness Monster or something, Ron?” Jack called, laughing. Shirley laughed too, a high, husky giggle. Jack pulled her in closer and raised his one arm up high, cupping his fingers over his thumb in pantomime of some great waterlogged dinosaur. He brought his hand down on Shirley’s shoulder like his shadow-puppet-osaurus was biting her. She laughed and laughed as he started tickling her. “Watch out, girls! Nessie’s in New Jersey, and she’s gonna getcha!”

I ignored him. Kept swimming. Josie broke free of my grip and swore at me for hurting her wrist, but my obvious alarm must have sufficed to convince her because she continued following me anyway.

“If there is a big fish right under us…” Joan started. I looked back at her and even at that distance I could see the mouse-like caution in her huge eyes.

“Oh, come on, Joan,” Jack laughed, “There’s no fish. Ron’s just spinning another yarn, that’s all.”

“I’m dead serious this time!” I snapped back.

“You wanna go back?” Cliff asked, still holding onto Joan. She nodded. He called out- “Alright Jack, you and Shirley can stay in the tub with Nessie. We’re going back to the boat.”

They started paddling our way. It was reassuring, but everyone seemed to be moving far, far too slowly. The water… it felt like molasses to my panicking limbs. I thought- if the tail was sixteen feet, imagine how big the rest of it must be. And I did. Oh did I imagine it. A hundred imaginary mouths full of gnashing, needlelike teeth threatening to engulf me from below, not one of them as terrible as what actually came out of the abyss. I looked back to make sure Josie was still there, still following me, that one of those figmented maws- or the very real one attached to that giant tail- hadn’t sucked her down without so much as a yelp.

She was there, paddling after me; Cliff and Joan weren’t far behind. I kept swimming. The Atlantus crept closer, inch by agonizing inch, as I felt the crushing pressure of a thousand seas roaring inside my head.

“Alright, fine!” Jack called. “It’s getting cold in here anyway. C’mon, Shirley. Let’s join the fraidy cats.”

The algae-rimed hull of the Atlantus loomed large dead ahead. Just one breaststroke away now. As I got closer to the safety of the wreck, the big tail seemed less and less real, and more and more silly. Some skeptical corner of my mind, silenced by the onrush of abyssal terror, began lecturing me- the “tail” was probably just a dense cloud of sand drifting overhead. Or maybe a school of much smaller fish moving in such a way that they seemed like a solid object. You’re being silly. They’re all going to make fun of you for this.

But no matter what my skeptical ego had to say, the most primitive, reptilian fear-locus of my brain whispered back a sepulchral reminder that I had in fact bumped my head on something solid. That wasn’t imaginary, nor any optical illusion brought on by the moonlit murk of the sea. Something was down there.

We made it to the ship. I reached out and pressed my palm against its concrete hull, my fear instantly dissolving at the touch. Almost felt like hugging the damn wreck even though it was coated in barnacles and brown algae below the highwater mark. I looked back and saw Josie swimming up right behind me. The others were coming slowly towards the ship in a staggered line- first Joan, then Cliff, then Jack, and finally Shirley.

“Josie, you go first,” I commanded. She looked at me, and then grabbed onto the ladder to start climbing.

She hesitated on the second rung, and looked back down at me. She chided me- “This is really silly Ron.”

I didn’t want to hear it. I reached up and pushed her butt to prod her along. “Go on, get up there!”

At this time, I was thinking we’d all probably climb back onto the ship, wait a few minutes- maybe explore its decks a bit, the pitch black interior- and then swim back to the beach and have a good laugh at how silly old Ron was so drunk he thought he saw a sea monster. I looked up. Josie was halfway up the ladder. The way her wet swim bottoms clung to her as she ascended put my mind far away from the thought of sea monsters. Right next to the boat, just a quick ladder’s climb from the dark water, the notion seemed as silly as unicorns or little green men from Mars.

A shrill yelp sounded across the water.

My head whipped toward the sound. It was Shirley. She’d stopped swimming. She was floating in place, looking around wildly. Then she jerked in the water. Like she’d snagged on a rock. Like something was trying to yank her down. She gasped.

“You okay, Shirley?” Jack called. We’d all stopped when she yelped and turned to look at her. We all saw it happen.

Before she could reply, she got jerked again. This time she let out a startled cry and went completely under.

We stared at the spot where she’d been. Just… waiting. Waiting for her to pop back up, to shout “Boo!”, to give us some sign she was okay. Nothing. The sea had closed silently as an eye over where she’d just been.

“Shirley?” Jack called. Loudly. I could hear a twinge of anxiety in his voice, something I’d never ever heard from him before. He started paddling back over to her last position. “Shirley? Shirley? Come on, this isn’t funny!”

“Shirley? Shirley!” That was Josie. She’d made it to the top of the ladder, was hanging onto it still with one foot up on the deck, and from this high vantage point she looked around as frantically as the rest of us. We all called her name to no avail.

When Shirley came up again, it was a few yards to Jack’s right. A frothing explosion of white water and rending screams.

“OH GOD HELP ME! PLEASE!”

She was being dragged through the water. No- not dragged. Pushed. Whatever had her was pushing her forward. I could see the bow wave the thing made as it trundled ahead just below the surface. It had her by the legs, lifting her almost completely out of the water. Like an undersea express train it chugged inexorably forward while Shirley screamed and slapped her hands down impotently at it.

“Shirley!” Jack shouted. He turned in an instant and propelled himself over to where Shirley was being shoved ahead. She reached out desperately for him across the water.

“GOD IT HURTS! JACK! JACK! PLEASE! PLEASE HELP ME!”

“I’m coming! I’ve got you, Shirley! Hang on!”

Jack caught her outstretched hand, but the moment he made contact he too was dragged through the water, as effortlessly as if he were a piece of paper caught on a locomotive’s cowcatcher. He held fast and with his free hand began punching at the creature’s snout. He looked back at me and Cliff and screamed- “For God’s sake, help me!”

I yelled at Josie to get onto the deck and began swimming back out towards Jack and Shirley to try to head off the unstoppable force that was dragging them through the water. I swam past Joan where Cliff had left her- she was treading water, staring in blank, gaping horror- and then I passed Cliff. Without a word, we started working in tandem, like it was a dreadful sort of football game. Cliff went to the right, I to the left. The creature was carrying Jack and Shirley directly towards me, fast as a jet plane. I braced for the strike.

Right before ramming into my waiting hands, whatever was dragging them turned sharply away, giving me a lateral, moonlit view of the creature.

It was big. Forty feet, at least. I could see the pointed, triangular head rearing out of the water almost four feet, the jaws clamped down like a vise on Shirley’ legs. The water welled slightly over its long, finless back. That’s how I knew it wasn’t a shark. There was no fin. The closest it had to a fin was a little nub at the very back end of the creature, barely protruding above the frothing wake made by the thrashing tail. The tail was long and swished powerfully from side to side, like an eel or a snake. The front of the body didn’t move much, it was the tail carrying the animal forward.

Shirley’s screams were horrible. A sputtering slur of prayers and pleas and sobs.

“IT HURTS! GOD! PLEASE! PLEASE NO, GOD! PLEASE!”

I swam as hard as I could to keep up but it was futile. Shirley coughed blood. Jack held her tightly, grunting and screaming, trying at the same time to kick the creature’s snout and pull Shirley free of its grasp. I kept swimming towards them. They were just a few feet ahead now, turning back towards me…

The creature dove underwater. Shirley and Jack were both sucked down with it, mid-scream, disappearing in the blink of an eye. I stared at the dark, lapping waters where they had just been. Silent. Silent as if life had never been, and the world was always cloaked under an eternal night divided only into sea and sky.

After awhile I was aware of someone else screaming. It sounded very far away and it took me a moment to recognize the source. Josie. Joan, too. Crying. Yelling for me and Cliff to get back to the boat. I could barely hear them. It was like listening to someone crying out from another dimension.

Jack surfaced a moment later. Gasping, sputtering for breath. He looked around wildly and locked eyes with me. Wide, red eyes. Red from the burning of saltwater and his own tears.

Shirley hadn’t come up with him.

“Jack…” I started. I didn’t finish. Didn’t know what to say. He just stared back hollow-eyed at me.

“Where’s Shirley?” Josie cried across the water. She was leaning over the boat’s railing. “Where’s Shirley?”

“She’s gone,” Cliff shouted, sounding like he didn’t quite believe what he was saying. “She’s… she’s just gone!”

“What got her?” Joan shouted hoarsely, “Cliff, what was that thing?”

Cliff screamed. Sharp and shrill, then suddenly silenced.

My head whipped over to where he had been a moment ago, and I saw only a slight ripple where he’d been swimming, scintillating in the moonlight.

I looked at Jack, and he looked at me, and we just started swimming. There wasn’t any time to grieve. We had to get back to the boat or die.

Joan was still just looking back in shock. She must not have seen him go down, just heard the strangled cry.

“Cliff?” she called.

“SWIM FOR THE BOAT!” Jack and I both shouted hoarsely.

Cliff came up again a moment later, right in front of us. Half of him. Everything from the chest down was gone. His eyes stared up glassily at the Moon, a thin smear of blood dripping from his open mouth.

Joan screamed. A sharp, piercing wail. She hid her face in her hands and just screamed.

Cliff bobbed on the moonlit surface, lifeless as driftwood, and slid beneath the waves once more. Pulled. He was pulled. The narrow, triangular snout poked out of the water again just enough to clamp down on his right shoulder. There was an awful wet noise as its teeth bit into what was left of him, and it exhaled contentedly. Two little puffs of vapor blew from nostrils placed far back on its head, like a dolphin’s blowhole. Then the creature slid back under the waves, taking Cliff with it.

“OH GOD OH MY GOD OH JESUS GOD OH JESUS!” Joan shrieked.

She was completely hysterical. Hands clasped over her eyes as she screamed and cried and tried to pray but just started crying again instead, all the while floating perfectly still in the water. A sitting duck.

“Joan, come on!” I shouted. I grabbed her arm and started pulling her and she wailed and fought my grip.

“Cliff! It got Cliff!” she cried, bashing her fist into my arm.

“I saw it! Now stop- stop it Joan! I’ll leave you here! I swear to God I’ll leave you! Knock it off! Come on! Swim for the boat!”

She stopped hitting me and went mute. Or maybe my brain just didn’t register her continued sobbing anymore. I just swam. Harder than I’d ever swam before. I didn’t know where Jack was, how far he’d fallen behind or if it had gotten him too. I just kept swimming. The Atlantus was horrifyingly far away and the monster’s teeth seemed to be nipping at my heels. Monster. It was the only word I could think of to describe the creature. It was no animal. It was evil incarnate.

Josie waved frantically at us from the upper deck, pointing to our left. I didn’t turn to look. It would have slowed me down and if she was pointing to the left it could only mean the creature was coming from that way so I just swam faster and Josie was leaning too far over the railing as she pointed and suddenly she was flapping her arms and…

She fell in. Into the water, right on her back. A titanic splash.

All I can remember thinking is- God please please please don’t let it get Josie, God please, please please PLEASE get Josie back up there safe.

She came up a moment later, gasping, and immediately scrambled for the ladder like she’d fallen into a boiling pot. Joan and I were coming up on it now…

I let Joan go and started pushing Josie up the ladder, grabbing her and lifting her back out of the water with an electric surge of terror-induced strength, while she scrabbled for a foothold. I held onto the ladder myself to support her.

Joan got yanked back.

“IT’S GOT ME!” she screamed shrilly.

“No!” I shouted. She reached out a plaintive hand towards me and I lunged for it and grabbed as tight as I could and started pulling her out of the water. The creature had her by her right foot. I could see the blood leaking from her calf where its teeth had raked over her.

“RON! RON! PLEASE! DON’T LET IT TAKE ME!” she sobbed.

The gray snout stuck out of the water mockingly, tugging at her leg while I pulled with all my might on her arm. I heard a dreadful pop and Joan screamed even louder. I’d dislocated her shoulder. Didn’t dare loosen my grip. The creature tugged again, more lightly than before. I thought it was losing its hold on her, but when I tugged harder and started pulling Joan back towards me, it halted my progress by tugging back just as hard.

It hit me then. Some corner of my mind that had remained perfectly calm and collected throughout the whole horror suddenly spoke up crisply- It’s playing with you. It’s enjoying this.

A deep, guttural roar of anguish and rage shook me from that dread realization. Jack had finally reached us, and launched himself almost fully out of the water and onto the creature’s back. He started beating his fists into the beast as hard as he could, jackhammering it like its hide were one vast punching bag. I’m not sure if it was wounded by his punches, but it must have at least been annoyed because it began pulling Joan again, and this time it put some thrust into it. Joan’s hand started to slip from my grasp even as she lunged for me with her other arm. Her leg spurted blood and she sobbed in agony.

“RON! PLEASE!”

“I got you!” I said through gritted teeth. The beast was pulling hard and Joan’s arm was wet and slippery. “I won’t let go. I won’t let go.”

And I didn’t. But it didn’t matter. Her hand slipped out of my grasp, and in an instant her screams were choked and muffled by the water. Jack punched down one more time and hit only open water and then he was floating again.

“Christ. Christ. Christ.”

That was Josie. Sobbing, collapsed to her knees on the deck.

I tried to collect myself. She was there… she was just there… Joan… I- I’d had her in my arms…

“Ron, let’s go!” Jack shouted. “Up the ladder! Get out of the water!”

I climbed. Mechanically. My arms barely had enough strength left to hold the rungs, but somehow I climbed and made it to the deck. I stopped once halfway up and looked back down at where the struggle had taken place and saw Jack coming up right behind me.

“Go on, climb!” he shouted. His voice was shaking. Enraged. Not at me, I know. But enraged all the same.

When I reached the top I fell to my knees and right into Josie’s arms. She fell into mine in kind and we just knelt there hugging each other tightly, and she sobbed her heart out and I tried not to spill my own. I wanted to fall to pieces too but we couldn’t afford it. I needed to be strong for her, for all of us. A maelstrom swirled within me- shock, grief, terror, relief that we were both safe and alive.

I recovered before Josie did. She heaved out a disgusting, racking sob and I held her head against my chest, running my fingers through her hair and trying to soothe her- “It’s okay, it’s okay now. It can’t get us. We’re safe. It’s okay.”

I looked back out over the water, just in time to see the creature surface, about twenty feet off the Atlantus’s starboard. Its head stuck completely out of the water then and it it just sat there perfectly still, basking in the moonlight. It sighed contentedly, blowing a little puff of vapor into the frigid night air from its blowhole. Its head was a full five feet long, dark gray on the top and white on the bottom. The tip of its snout was marked by alternating bands of gray and white, and its throat pouch was deeply ribbed like a whale’s. The throat bulged ominously. I didn’t want to think about it but I knew- that was Joan.

I didn’t want to watch, but I did. My mind was hijacked by some ghoulish fascination with the creature across the water, watching it as if it were merely a photo from the National Geographic magazine. The creature’s jaws seemed to distend, as if it needed to widen its throat to accommodate Joan’s dainty body. The head turned towards me slightly, and for a moment I thought it was sticking its tongue out. It wasn’t. Joan’s foot was sticking out of its mouth. First the right jaw popped wider, then the left, and her foot disappeared into that dreadful maw.

Her leg kicked.

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it. Joan’s tiny foot kicked out, making a faint but distinct impression in the ribbed gullet.

Joan was dead. She had to be.

It must have just been a reflex, some last muscular synapse firing, causing her leg to spasm and kick at the inside of the animal’s throat.

Her leg kicked again.

As if it had been waiting just for this, the monster’s jaws snapped back into place. It gulped twice. When it was done, it opened its mouth wide to yawn at the far-distant Moon. Joan was gone.

I looked down at the rough concrete deck. It was spinning round and round and round.

“Ron, you’re hurting me,” Josie sobbed. I couldn’t let her go. Couldn’t do anything but stare at the ground, replaying what I’d just witnessed over and over again in my head. Joan’s leg… kicking feebly at the inside of the animal’s mouth...

I let Josie go and collapsed to my knees and vomited. The beer, the late lunch from the diner. It all came up and spilled down the listing concrete deck of the Atlantus, down into the dark water on her port side. Even after I’d given up breakfasts from days ago I continued to dry-heave for a long, long time.

It was unbelievable. What had just happened was not, could not have been real. But it was. I was not drunk anymore. The alcoholic buzz had been sucked away from me by the ice cold water. I wasn’t drunk and I wasn’t dreaming and I wasn’t hallucinating. It was real. It was all real. The concrete deck below me, the rusty railing I gripped for support, the bile at the back of my throat, the ringing echoes of Cliff’s and Shirley’s and Joan’s screams… all of it was terribly, ineffaceably real.

When I finally got my stomach back and my knees stopped wobbling just enough for me to sit up, I saw Josie kneeling on the deck sobbing. She had her arm draped around the railing so as not to slide down the side of the ship, and she just cried and cried and cried. Another streak of bile running down the deck told me she’d thrown up too. Jack was standing, leaning over the side of the boat and staring into the lapping sea. His jaw was set and his knuckles were white as he gripped the railing.

“What the hell is that thing?” Josie wept.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I don’t know. It’s not a shark.”

“How can you tell?” she asked.

“It didn’t have a fin,” I replied. “And it’s too damn big to be a shark.”

“It didn’t have gills either,” Jack said.

“What?”

“When I jumped on its back… it didn’t have any gills. It had a blowhole, like a whale.”

“O-Okay, so it’s a whale?” Josie said.

“Maybe,” Jack said. “The skin was scaly though. I thought whales were supposed to be smooth. I think it’s… it’s like a lizard or something.”

“I don’t know,” I repeated. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, God,” Josie broke down, “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “No it isn’t.”

“Yes it is,” she wept, “If- if I hadn’t fallen in, Joan would’ve made it…”

“Josie,” I started, but I trailed off. I bit my lip. She was probably right. Because if she hadn’t fallen in, I would’ve sent Joan up the ladder first. And then it would have been me kicking at the inside of the monster’s mouth. And- God strike me down- I felt a shameful spike of relief drive into the pit of my stomach, that it had been her and not me. I swallowed tightly. “Josie… it’s not your fault.”

Josie curled up into a ball and stared down the port side of the ship, resting her head on her knees. “If I had swam faster…”

“It’s not your fault.”

Jack bashed his fist on the railing. “God dammit!”

He paced the slanted deck purposefully. Gathering his thoughts while me and Josie sat there miserably, trying to hold onto our empty stomachs.

“Blaming ourselves isn’t going to help,” he fumed. “We need to think about getting back to the damn beach, so we can go get the Coast Guard to come out and kill this thing.”

“How?” Josie asked between sobs. “We can’t swim…”

“Alright, alright,” Jack said- I couldn’t tell if he was addressing us or talking more to himself- “This… this thing, whatever it is, it lives in the water, right? Can’t get us up here.”

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“So we’ll wait for it to go away,” Jack continued, “It saw us in the water, but we’re not in the water anymore, so… it’ll go away, right?”

“Maybe,” I replied.

“Maybe? What do you mean maybe?”

“Well, what if it’s…” I heard Shirley’s screams echoing in my ears again. I heard Cliff’s choked yelp and Joan pleading for help. I felt my gorge rising again. “What if it’s not… full yet?”

“How would it know we’re up here?” Josie asked quietly. She must have cried herself out because her voice was bereft of sobs now. Just very quiet and dead. She sat curled into a ball, leaning back against the railing.

I thought- It saw us climb up the ladder. But I didn’t know if it would remember that action, or consciously associate climbing the ladder with us now, presently, being on the ship. I didn’t know how smart it might have been. If Jack was right and it was a lizard, well, lizards are dumb, right? I thought of Joan again. How long it took the creature to resurface with her in its mouth. Was it… watching us?

“I don’t know,” I said. No use scaring her even more. We were safe for the time being.

“Well we can’t stay here,” Jack replied. “We’re soaked and we don’t have any clothes. If we don’t get back to the beach the cold will kill us before morning.”

“If we go in the water again that thing will kill us before the cold can,” I said bleakly.

“Well…” Jack started, then trailed off. He cleared his throat. “Let’s just wait awhile and see what happens.”

We did. The three of us huddled together for warmth and stared out at the water, waiting for the creature to show itself. I’m not sure how long we waited. None of us had a watch, and in our wet, shivering misery, minutes seemed to stretch into hours.

“There!” Josie stammered, pointing out to sea. Jack and I whipped our heads around just in time to see it- yes, right there. A low hump on the moonwake, puffing a jet of misty exhalation before diving again. It seemed pretty far away.

“How far would you say that is?” Jack asked.

“About two-thousand feet, give or take a hundred,” I wagered. It was far and the sea was dark.

“I reckon about the same,” Jack replied. He took a deep breath. “I’m going to swim.”

“What?” Josie blurted.

“I’m going to try for the beach,” Jack repeated. “It’s only three hundred feet back to shore. I’ve got a good chance.”

“Jack, wait,” Josie said. “We don’t know how fast it is.”

That wasn’t entirely true. When it was pushing Shirley through the water… it was damn fast. Too fast for something so huge. I swallowed tightly and thought of the book of sea creatures that first inspired Shirley to suggest this awful mess of a trip. Joan might have known how fast it was, what it was.

Jack stretched and swung his arms back and forth. “Well, I’ll give it a run for its money and find out.”

“Jack, she’s got a point,” I warned. “We should wait a bit longer.”

“Ron, how long do you think it’ll stay over there?” Jack snapped, “It’s far away now.”

“But it might be swimming away,” Josie protested. “Maybe it’s all done, maybe it’s calling it quits.”

“Or maybe the next time we see it, it’ll be right next to the boat,” Jack said, “This might be the only shot we get.”

“But…” I started.

“Ron,” Jack looked me dead in the eye and his were watery, his voice low and quavering, “I’m the one who didn’t believe you.”

I sighed. He was right.

“Alright,” I conceded. “Make it count.”

I stood up shakily and followed him to the gap in the railing. I slapped him on the back. “Swim like the Devil’s on your ass. Cause he will be.”

Jack laughed. Not happily. Just a weak smile, a little chuff at the gallows humor. He turned to me. “I’ll dive in and push off the ship. That’ll give me a bit of a boost. Soon as I get to shore, I’ll drive right to the Coast Guard station. Shouldn’t be more than forty minutes before they get out here.”

I nodded. I hoped to God he was right. That he would make it. I just said- “Godspeed.”

He dove in. After the splashdown he resurfaced about ten feet away. Breaststroking hard. His form was perfect, like a machine designed to swim. I looked back over to where we’d seen the beast surface, but it had gone back under.

Josie and I just stared unblinking as Jack swam that stretch of perilous open water. He was far away now, his splashes almost indistinguishable from other waves.

“I think he’s going to make it!” Josie said, a twinge of excitement in her voice.

“I think so too,” I replied. I was excited too, and trying not to show it. He would make it. I knew he would. He was already halfway across…

The sea erupted as if an artillery shell had burst just below the surface. One moment we saw Jack swimming forward. The next, he disappeared in the froth.

Rising out of the eruption of seafoam was a vast, sleek creature bred to swim. As it breached, I was able to descry details I hadn’t been able to before. It was long and serpentine. A full forty feet, from tip to tail. It twirled in the air, showing off both its gray back and white belly as it spun. Its flippers were broad and leaf-shaped, unlike the bladed ones of a shark or whale, and it had two pairs of them, one set near the head and the other much further back by its tail. Its long, undulating tail had the same gray-and-white striping pattern as its snout, like some dreadful marine zebra. The tail came whipping out of the water with the rest of the animal, again showing the downturned fluke.

In its jaws we saw Jack. His arms and legs flailing back limply like a ragdoll’s. Giving no resistance at all. He must have been killed the moment the creature rammed him. No warning, just a sudden strike from below. Powerful enough to break his spine, to shatter his ribs, or maybe every bone in his body all at once before it even bit him.

The creature came completely out of the water and splashed back down, disappearing with just a swish of its tail. Only a vat of white foam was left in its wake.

Josie threw up again. I would have too but I didn’t have anything left in me. I just stared in naked horror at the churning sea. It was over in less than three seconds. One moment, Jack… the next, no Jack.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” Josie wept as she wiped spittle from her lips. “Ron, Ron what the hell do we do now?”

I couldn’t answer her because I didn’t know. Four of our friends were just gone. This creature, if it had really been two thousand feet away, closed that gap faster than an eyeblink and killed Jack before he even knew what hit him. Just rammed him right out of the water, forty feet straight up in its jaws.

“Ron,” Josie repeated, weeping. “Ron, what are we going to do?”

I tried to speak but choked up. Jack… my best friend…

“We…” I sighed heavily and shuddered in another breath. “We are going to stay on the boat until morning. Then we’ll… we’ll see.”

It was the longest night of my life.

Josie and I didn’t talk. We huddled close together, seated on the sloped deck with our legs pulled up to our chests, arms wrapped around our knees. I don’t know what the temperature was. Fifty? Forty-five? I was in my underwear and Josie was in her bikini and we were both drip-drying. My teeth started chattering after fifteen minutes and I pulled Josie in close but her hair was still a wet mop and it only made me even colder.

We looked out over the water, dreading if the monster was still there. About an hour and a half into the night, I was startled to hear a splash below us. My head whipped around to look down the sloping port side and my heart leaped into my throat.

It was there. It was staring at me.

Its vast, triangular head jutted completely out of the water. Not like a crocodile, which sits flat on the surface. This thing was holding its head erect, completely out of the water, staring up the deck at us. I could see the scales Jack mentioned- rows of little bumps along the top of its head, and lining the sides of its closed mouth. It looked old and ragged and eternally hungry. Its giant eyes glew like lanterns in the moonlight, regarding us with the kind of piercing gaze that only a thinking being can wield. I knew- I just knew- it was watching us. Hoping we would fall in.

When Josie saw it she let out a strangled yelp. “Oh God!”

“It’s okay,” I said, putting my arm around her. “It’s okay. It can’t get us. We’re too far up, see?”

“What’s it doing?” Josie asked breathlessly. Her head was buried in my chest; she couldn’t bear to look. I was a long time replying, for I could barely believe what I was seeing myself.

“It’s just looking at us,” I assured her. Both her and myself. I prayed the monster wouldn’t try lunging up onto the deck. The ship had a heavy list but the port side didn’t dip all the way into the water. If it jumped onto the deck, it would get stuck; it might hurt itself or even die.

“Oh, Ron,” she moaned.

She hid her head in my shoulder and I felt a surge of protective adrenaline pumping through my veins. I leaned forward and shouted at the creature- “Yeah, bozo! You big ugly bastard! Can’t get us up here, can you? We beat you! Stupid fucking fish! Go on and get out of here, we’re not coming down for dinner!”

The creature’s only response was to flick its tongue out at me. It had a long, forked tongue, like a snake. That was when it finally clicked- reptile. Jack was right. It was a reptile. Some type of massive sea lizard or snake. It held its tongue out, testing the air, as if it wished to confirm by taste what its eyes already knew. Then it slowly sank back into the black water and the sea closed over it like a stage curtain.

“It’s okay,” I said, running my fingers through Josie’s sopping wet hair. “It’s gone now. It’s okay.”

“Oh, Ron,” Josie sobbed.

“It’s okay, it’s gone,” I repeated. I held her tightly, and that’s the only reason she survived what happened next.

The boat rocked violently to one side. Josie screamed. My hand shot out like a jag of lightning, groping for the railing, and I heard someone else screaming too. It took a moment before I realized it was me.

“Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” Josie screamed. She clawed at me, trying to climb on top of me to put even a tiny bit more distance between herself and the deadly waters below.

“Josie, you’re hurting me! Josie, stop! Cut it out, Josie!” I screamed, trying to keep my own deathgrip on the railing. If I let go, we’d tumble down the deck and right into the water…

The rocking stopped as suddenly as it had begun. I heaved out a sigh of relief, and Josie continued weeping into my shoulder, clutching my arms like they were her favorite teddy bear.

I looked down to see the lizard staring at us again. Its eyes betrayed no emotion, but the quick flick of the tongue made me think it was disappointed.

It was trying to knock us off the boat. It understands it can get us if we’re in the water. If it can just get us in there.

That’s about what I was thinking, right before the lizard sank back under the water again. Seconds passed, perhaps a minute, and then the boat began rocking violently once more.

“Oh Jesus, oh God, oh Jesus, oh God!” Josie cried, clawing at me and the railing again.

“Josie, it’s fine! It’s okay!” I shouted, trying to console her while keeping my grip on the railing. It was really difficult not to lose my temper on her. I knew she was scared, but dammit, so was I, and I was keeping us both alive by holding onto her and the railing. If I lost my grip on either…

The rocking ceased and the lizard reared its ugly, pointed head again. Just staring at us. I wondered if it could hear us- Josie’s sobs muffled against my chest, my own heavy breathing. Or was it just seeing our heat signatures shining in bright infrared against the cold background of the concrete deck? It flicked its tongue out again, testing the air. Probably that was how it was detecting us, its sense of taste far stronger than its eyesight. Tasting the little hormonal particles of fear that must have been leaking off of our warm mammalian bodies. It could do that all night- pop its head up, confirm we were still there, and go back under to wait.

I looked around desperately. Our position was untenable. I couldn’t white-knuckle the railing all night. The Atlantus was only about three hundred feet from the beach. But the shore might well have been as far away as the silent Moon that watched over our plight with neither compassion nor remorse. The darkened windows of the ship’s cabin looked very enticing- as enticing to our stranded souls as the first cave must have seemed to the first beleaguered Cro-Magnon harried by a pride of sabertooths. It was far- about a hundred feet- but I didn’t see what other choice we had.

“Josie, get up,” I said. “Come on.”

“W-What?”

“We’re going to move slowly towards the cabin. We’ll be safe in there.”

She lifted her head. Her eyes were red from crying so much. She looked back at the cabin and then back at me and her eyes went wide and she shook her head. “It’s too far. It’s too far.”

“We can’t stay here.” I replied. “We’ll lose our grip and fall in.”

As if to punctuate to this warning, the lizard surfaced again a few yards away from the ship- just the back of it, coming up briefly to breathe, spouting a fume of mist before submerging again.

“Come on,” I whispered. I didn’t know if our voices carried over the water, or under it. The creature knew we were there, but I had an unshakeable dread that this was no ordinary sea creature. It could think. It was intelligent. Trying to knock us off the boat like that… that was smart. Scary smart.

We moved slowly across the deck. Inch by inch. I kept my left hand firmly around the railing, only sliding it forward without letting go so I could tighten my grip at a moment’s notice if need be. My other arm was firmly around Josie’s waist, and she clutched at it like it were a lifejacket, her pale hand tucked firmly into my right fist. She winced occasionally. I did too. The rough concrete deck chafed our soles. The deck took a considerable dip from the prow to amidship, and we had to scoot sideways down a set of stairs. We were halfway across…

The head came up again. That wicked forked tongue flicked at the air, and the animal opened its jaws and hissed at us- a deep, throaty growl. I’ve never heard a sound before or since that so thoroughly iced my blood. Not even the wailing of a MiG dive-bombing our lines in Korea approached this monstrosity on the soundboard of terror.

It splashed back under the waves, and almost immediately the ship began shaking again. Far more violently than before. Josie screamed. I thought- It’s trying to push the ship into the gully!

A dreadful cracking sound filled the air. It came from everywhere all at once- above us, below us, ahead of us, behind us- and I knew at once that the ship’s hull had buckled under the creature’s brute strength. How it didn’t give itself a concussion ramming its head into poured concrete, I don’t know. But it broke the ship in two. Cracks appeared in the concrete deck ahead, ominously snaking out towards us while the whole vessel groaned as if she were in her final death throes. I thought- This is it, Ron! It’s all over!

I was wrong. The lizard had indeed cracked the ship in two, but the Atlantus was a strong lady, and the parts of her stayed together. We couldn’t get to the bridge anymore though. The cracks between us and it were too big, too ominous.

The head came up again, directly in front of us. I held the railing tightly and gritted my teeth. It was a monster. It showed no more mercy towards us than a cat would show to an injured dove. I stared down at it in seething hatred and wished I had a gun to shoot that smugly flicking tongue right out of its mouth.

After this third attempt, it didn’t try to rock the boat anymore. Maybe it did give itself a concussion. I don’t know. Its head sank back down into the sea and came up again at intervals, on either side of the ship, like a housewife checking on her pot roast. Josie and I didn’t dare move. I white-knuckled the railing, my arm growing more tired and sore as the night dragged on. I couldn’t risk switching arms- with our luck, in the moment between grips, the creature would come bashing into the boat and knock me or Josie into the water. The muscle soreness continued to build until I couldn’t stand it anymore, but I did.

We were both exhausted. Terror and anguish and fear and grief all brewed into a terrible potion that demanded only one cure- sleep. I felt Josie’s grip on my arm slacking a few times throughout the night, and I jostled her- hey, c’mon, wake up sleepyhead. There’s a monster under the bed, except the bed is a boat. Haha.

I struggled not to doze myself. At one point, I let my eyes droop half closed and my chin nodded down onto my chest. I suddenly felt like I was falling a million feet straight down and gasped, clutching the railing in a surge of white-hot adrenaline. Josie gasped too. We’d both fallen asleep.

I looked down at the water and stared right into the face of the lizard.

It was uglier in the early light. Two white bands on its long snout. Its eyes, no longer casting back the moonlight, were revealed to be a very light, electric sort of blue, like glacier ice. They didn’t have an exact pupil- rather, the center was a rough rectangle of black that seemed to spill out diffusely across the rest of the eye like ink, blotching the blue portion with black swirls and spots. They lacked anything resembling warmth or compassion or mercy. All I saw in them was cold, reptilian cunning. Yes, no heart to them, but the mind was undeniable.

Josie gasped. I just stared. I was more angry than scared now- angry at being bested by a lizard. My friends dead, my girlfriend terrified, my arm sore, my mind dogtired- all because of a stupid lizard.

“Why don’t you splash some water up here to wake us up, asshole?” I called down.

The lizard considered my remark impassively, then slid back into the water.

I stretched my sore muscles and best I could and looked around- the sky was lightening in the east, over the dunes. We could finally see the shoreline again- the sand appearing bluish in the predawn murk. The dunegrass waved merrily at us in the breeze, as far away as the Moon which had long since sunken into the sea. It must have been just a bit after six. Maybe a bit before. I’m still not sure.

But I realized something else then. The Moon, as it disappeared below the horizon, had taken the sea with it. It was low tide. The shoreline, three hundred feet away at the start of this nightmare, was only a scant hundred and fifty feet away now. Maybe… just maybe…

Josie was looking across the foreshortened stretch of sea, too.

“I can’t…” she mumbled. “I can’t.”

“We’re not going to,” I assured her. I meant it, too, even though it was damn tempting to give it a try. My mind replayed the dreadful memory of Jack, swimming… swimming… caught.

“I can’t…” she repeated, over and over, like a broken record.

“Josie, it’s okay. We’re not going to,” I repeated. I rubbed her shoulders trying to calm her. She scrabbled to her feet in a flurry of kicking arms and legs.

“I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!” she screamed, and ran to the prow.

“Josie!” I screamed. “No, Josie wait!”

She was gone by the time I got to my feet. I groaned in agony. My knees locked out on me, and I could only do a half-squat to move towards the prow. Trying to keep my grip on the railing the whole time- I turned and grasped for it with my right hand, and never did my left arm thank me so heartily.

When I finally made it to the prow I looked out for her. Josie. She was there, in the water, swimming as fast as she could. I don’t know how she did it, how her muscles were able to perform like that, having been curled up all night. Adrenaline is an amazing thing.

I watched her go in morbid fascination, wondering when the lizard would come surging out to grab her. But it didn’t show itself. She paddled, her legs kicking and her arms stroking powerfully at the water, fighting the tide that was still going out, trying to shepherd her back to the safety of the ship, but she swam on.

She swam, and swam, until finally… she stood! The water was only up to her waist! I couldn’t breathe. She was going to make it! She did make it! She staggered through the surf, the waves lapping at her ankles. She didn’t turn back to wave- she seemed to have forgotten me completely and must have just been elated to have made it to the beach at all.

There was a blur of motion to my right. At first I thought it was just another breaker rolling in, but it came at an angle nearly parallel to the rest of the waves. The water curved queerly, as if flowing over a vast log…

Josie yelped as the lizard slammed headlong into her, knocking her legs out from under her. I blinked, and when my eyes opened again, she was gone.

In her place was the lizard. It had surged completely onto the beach. Its broad, paddle-like flippers flopped on the sand, and its long tail swished powerfully at the surf, trying to turn to get back into the sea. As it veered laterally on itself, I saw Josie in its mouth. She was bashing her fists uselessly against its snout. It had already half-swallowed her; only the top of her chest protruded from its gaping maw. She screamed and cried and punched and clawed at the animal, and then she coughed a spray of blood and went limp. It must have bitten down and crushed her spine, her ribcage. Her head lolled and got smashed by a wave as the lizard turned back into the water. With another strong swish of its tail, it was gone.

I was all alone. I shook with fear and rage. I let go of the railing and balled my fists and smeared them against my forehead. My entire being seemed to compress into just that terrible sight- Josie, my sweetheart, coughing blood. The whole attack was over in an instant. The tears ran hotly down my face. I felt like a volcano, ready to explode.

When I looked up, the lizard was staring at me again. The white underside of its mouth was stained a faint pinkish red. It flickered out its tongue.

“HAVEN’T YOU HAD ENOUGH TO EAT?” I screamed. I couldn’t think. I just screamed at it. Some primal instinct consumed me. I looked around the deck- there was nothing I could use as a weapon. I balled my fists and stood up, taking an aggressive stride towards the beast.

Then I heard it. The most wonderful, amazing, precious sound of a foghorn from a passing ship. I stopped in my tracks and turned to look over the Atlantus’s starboard side. It was a trawler, coming down the Bay, heading out towards the sea. I just started jumping and waving and screaming, heedless of the monster behind me. When I did remember it, my left hand shot down to clutch the railing in a panicked flash, but I kept jumping, kept shouting- “HEY! HEY! OVER HERE! HELP! I NEED HELP! OVER HERE!”

The trawler- she was so close I could read her name, the Evangeline- her captain looked at me with the most confounded expression on his face. Then, the ship slowly, majestically, began to veer towards the Atlantus.

I looked back down the tilted deck as the trawler started to turn my way, and the lizard was gone. Not gone off a distance to breathe, or to try one more time at ramming the ship into the gully. Gone as in gone.

I don’t know how I managed to clamber across the rope line they threw me. I had nothing left. My muscles were deadweights, my energy all spent. But, somehow, I used my very last juice to get across, and collapsed onto the deck. A sobbing, sputtering wreck.

The trawler’s old seadog captain asked me- “Why didn’t you swim for shore? It’s not so very far…”

It was a long time before I could reply. I couldn’t tell him the truth. He wouldn’t have believed me. No one would have. They’d have had me committed. So, shamefully, I made up the lie right then and there, with Josie’s body still warm in the monster’s stomach.

“I swam out here with my friends last night, and…”

“You got stuck?” the captain supplied.

I nodded dumbly. “Riptide.”

“Where are the others? Your friends?”

I saw them all in my head again. Shirley, being dragged through the water. Cliff’s strangled yelp. Joan, kicking at the inside of its mouth. Jack getting punched straight up into the air. Josie, coughing blood. Tears ran hotly down my cheeks. I shook my head.

“Drowned, then,” the captain said softly. He crossed himself, and I looked out over the choppy waters of the Delaware Bay as the sun finally rose in earnest and kissed the waves, and I wished with all my heart that he had been right.

I told the Coast Guard and State Police the same story. My friends had drowned, and that was that. I knew what would happen if I spoke the truth of that terrible night. I couldn’t bear to relive it, to be mocked and reviled and called insane for daring to speak about what had really happened to them.

No bodies were ever found. That greedy, flippered serpent devoured them whole, leaving not a trace behind to wash ashore. The investigation came to roughly the same conclusion- after they drowned, my friends had been washed out to sea, where their bodies were most likely devoured by sharks or other fishes.

I attended the funeral services, all five of them. Each time I could scarcely bear to look into their parents’ eyes as I extended my sincere condolences. How could I, knowing that their child… ? But wasn’t it better that way? For them, I mean? To believe your child drowned at sea? An almost peaceful way to go, in contrast to the reality. No blood, no screaming, no choking, no desperate begging for help. Just an outstretched hand, sliding beneath the waves…

That night was not the last I ever saw of the creature, for it haunted my nightmares for years after. It still does, even now as I lay dying in this cot. I drift off to sleep to the low, eerie thrumming of harps, unsure if I will ever wake… in the next moment, I see those blue, inkspill eyes staring at me, a black maw full of jagged teeth lurching up to engulf me…

Two years later when I deployed to Korea, I met an Australian soldier who had a pet goanna. What madness possessed him to give such a cold-blooded horror the honored title of pet, I know not. But I damn near shot through the ceiling at the sight of it. Its head looked exactly like the sea-lizard’s. The shape, the scales… even something of the coloration was the same. I refused to sleep in its presence. Whenever its tongue flicked out at me, I was back on the Atlantus. More than once, I was tempted to cave in its skull with my trenchtool while its owner slept. I refrained only due to my camaraderie with the Aussie, who had saved my life on several occasions.

Much, much later, I came face to face with the creature once again, when I took my grandkids to the Academy of Natural Sciences. In the great hall of dinosaur bones, alongside the duckbills and three-horns and that mightiest of all meat-eaters, I saw it. A sleek, serpentine skeleton, the bones worn to a drab brown after baking in the kiln of the earth for untold eons. It had four broad flippers, scaffolded by five thin, knobby fingers that beckoned to me like the hand of the Reaper. Its skull was a massive, five-foot arrowhead with rows of curved, deeply rooted teeth as big as bananas. Sockets which hadn’t held eyes since before Noah let loose his raven over the flooded world regarded me with the cold neutrality of the dead, and I was immediately sick to my stomach. I needed to sit, my grandchildren rallying around me trying to comfort me and asking me what was the matter. I felt certain I would vomit but thankfully managed to hold down the dread nausea that had overtaken me. The beast had reared up again to haunt me, this time not from the sea but from the murky depths of prehistory.

When I recovered enough to stand, I took my grandsons and granddaughter over to read the placard in front of the skeleton. I had to steel myself with the assurance that the creature was, in fact, a skeleton, just the remains of a creature which had been dead so long its bones had been changed into stone. Trembling, I read the placard to my grandson- the creature was called Tylosaurus proriger. It was not a dinosaur, but a type of marine reptile called a mosasaur, most closely related to monitor lizards. It had lived in what is today Kansas during the Cretaceous period, until it went extinct along with the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago.

But the placard was wrong. It didn’t go extinct.

That selfsame creature, I swear upon the altar of God, was what attacked me and my friends.

I don’t know how such a massive beast could have persisted in secrecy for so long, avoiding detection even by the most dedicated whalers and fishermen. But it must have. In some dread refugia of forlorn atolls and scabrous reefs, its kind long outstayed their time in the world, until they bred that last fell specimen, which grew slowly and swam steadily, roaming the deep dark wastes of the world until one autumn night found it lurking in the waters off Cape May…

Despite it all, I still have the Cape May diamond I gave to Josie. I found it at our campsite on the beach when I led the police there. Our fire burned down to the charcoals. It was still wrapped up in the blanket she’d been wearing. Sparkling in the morning sun. I picked it up and held it, and I just cried and cried and cried, right in front of the policemen.

As I finish telling you of that dreadful night, I hold it in my hand. I kept it on my desk all these years, and asked my son to bring it to the hospital for me.

It… it brings me comfort. When I hold it, the harps of the angels seem to play just a little bit louder, and I can feel her near me, just a little bit closer…

POSTSCRIPT: This story was very loosely based upon an allegedly true sea serpent encounter reported by Edward Brian McCleary and published by Fate Magazine, in May 1965.

The author first heard this story reported on Dead Rabbit Radio- a daily paranormal, conspiracy, and true crime podcast- in Episode 419, titled “The Pensacola Monster Needs Human Flesh”. The author is indebted to Dead Rabbit Radio for providing the creative inspiration needed to write the tale you have just read. If you enjoyed this story or the show description interests you, please consider giving it a listen!

Additionally, there is a lengthy deleted scene to this story which I had to cut for the sake of flow. I have elected to publish this deleted scene here, for any interested readers.

I have also published a “WRITING OF” essay to accompany this story, for any readers who might be interested in the real historical and paleontological research that went into it:

Poquessian

WRITING OF: Proriger

Howdy! This is just a short little behind-the-scenes essay about my latest short story, Proriger- here I’ll cover the research, inspirations, the cover art, writing process, and a bunch of other stuff that went into writing this. Obviously spoilers abound, so if you haven’t read the story already you can do so below…

Read more

a year ago · 2 likes · ❄️ Pongo ❄️

DUE TO THE HIGHLY UNUSUAL AND UNCONVENTIONAL NATURE OF THIS CALL, NOTES AND ADDENDA FROM POLICE ANALYSTS ARE SCATTERED THROUGHOUT THE TRANSCRIPT.

THIS TRANSCRIPT IS NOT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE.

DISPATCHER: 911, what’s your emergency?

CALLER: My- my boyfriend… he’s- he’s trying to kill me.

DISPATCHER: Okay, keep calm. What’s your location?

CALLER: I’m hiding… in the upstairs bathroom.

DISPATCHER: I didn’t catch that, could you repeat please?

CALLER: I said I’m hiding in the upstairs bathroom.

DISPATCHER: Okay. Where are you right now? Your address?

CALLER: I- I don’t know. I’m in this huge old mansion, in Tioga.

DISPATCHER: Tioga?

CALLER: Yes. A big mansion. Victorian era. It looks like Dracula’s castle.

DISPATCHER: Okay. Do you know what street you’re on?

CALLER: Uhh, Atlantic, I think? I don’t know. I know we drove west down Allegheny for awhile to get here. Please send the police.

DISPATCHER: We’re going to, sweetheart. We need to find out where you are first, okay? I have to know where to send the police.

CALLER: Can’t you just ping my phone? H-Hello?

DISPATCHER: I’m here, sweetheart. Had to type up your info so we can get an exigency warrant.

CALLER: A what?

DISPATCHER: The phone company won’t just give us your location on request. We need an exigency warrant so they know you’re in trouble and we need to know where you are right now.

CALLER: Okay. How… how long will that take?

DISPATCHER: Should only be a few minutes. Are you safe in your present location?

CALLER: I- I don’t know. I don’t know where he is right now. The door doesn’t seem very strong.

DISPATCHER: Is the door locked?

CALLER: Yes.

DISPATCHER: Are there any windows you can look out of, to see a street sign or some sort of landmark? Or that you could maybe climb out?

CALLER: No. Please just ping my phone. Please.

DISPATCHER: We’re still trying to contact your phone carrier, honey.

CALLER: Oh God…

DISPATCHER: Just keep calm. It’s okay.

CALLER: It’s not okay. It’s dark and I’m scared.

DISPATCHER: Is your boyfriend armed?

CALLER: Yes. He was chasing me with a knife.

DISPATCHER: Okay. What’s your name, sweetie?

CALLER: Charlotte. Charlotte Keating.

DISPATCHER: Okay, Charlotte, just sit tight for a minute, alright? I’m going to talk to my supervisor and see where we’re at with your phone carrier.

CALLER: Please hurry.

AT 2 MINUTES, 27 SECONDS INTO CALL, CPL. RAY MUTED HIS LINE TO CALLER AND CONTACTED HIS SUPERVISOR, SGT. O'NEILL, MICHAEL.

CALLER REMAINED ON THE LINE, AND CAN BE HEARD BREATHING HEAVILY.

AN UNIDENTIFIED CREAKING SOUND IS AUDIBLE IN BACKGROUND OF CALLER'S LINE.

DISPATCHER: Mike, you got her location yet?

SUPERVISOR: Talking to Verizon now. They’re saying her phone isn’t on.

DISPATCHER: What? That’s impossible. I’ve got her on hold right now.

SUPERVISOR: She’s calling on her cell, right?

DISPATCHER: Yeah, shows up as a cell on the screen. She asked me to ping it herself.

SUPERVISOR: Weird. I’ll tell them to try again.

DISPATCHER: Okay, I’ll tell her that.

SUPERVISOR: I’ll let you know when we get the ping.

AT 2 MINUTES, 53 SECONDS INTO CALL, CPL. RAY UNMUTED HIS LINE AND RESUMED CONTACT WITH CALLER.

DISPATCHER: Okay, Charlotte? They’re having some technical issues on your carrier’s end. Your phone’s not pinging.

CALLER: What? How?

DISPATCHER: I don’t know. They’re going to try again, so just sit tight, okay?

CALLER: Okay. It’s really dark in here.

DISPATCHER: You don’t have any lights on?

CALLER: N-No. They all went out. Even the streetlights.

DISPATCHER: The streetlights are out, too?

CALLER: Yes. They all went out after Tyler… after he screamed.

DISPATCHER: Your boyfriend’s name is Tyler?

CALLER: Mmhmm.

DISPATCHER: You said he screamed. Was he hurt?

CALLER: No. He- it… it wasn’t a scream. It was… it was more like a roar.

DISPATCHER: A roar?

CALLER: Y-Yeah. Like… like a Velociraptor, y’know? Just this really loud, angry roar.

DISPATCHER: Why did he roar?

CALLER: I- I don’t know. We were… well…

DISPATCHER: What?

CALLER: Wait… I hear him. He’s in the hallway…

DISPATCHER: He’s there right now?

CALLER: [whimpering] Yes. Right outside the door. I can hear his footsteps. Oh God…

DISPATCHER: Okay. Be very quiet and listen to me. Don’t answer, just listen. I want you to look around the bathroom, as quietly as you can, and see if there’s anything you can use to defend yourself. Use your phone light. Not the flashlight, just the screen. Alright?

CALLER IS HEARD OPENING DRAWERS, CABINETS. ONE CABINET DOOR OPENS WITH A CREAK, QUICKLY SILENCED, ACCOMPANIED BY CALLER INHALING SHARPLY.

CALLER: T-There’s nothing.

DISPATCHER: Nothing?

CALLER: All the drawers are empty.

DISPATCHER: Keep your voice down.

CALLER: I’m whispering.

AT 5 MINUTES, 43 SECONDS INTO CALL, A MALE VOICE BEGINS SPEAKING IN BACKGROUND OF CALLER'S LINE.

BACKGROUND: [rasping] Charlotte… Charlotte…

DISPATCHER: That’s him?

CALLER: Mmhmm…

BACKGROUND: Charlotte… I know you’re there. I can hear… the echoes of the Earth in your hand. They ring like chimes in my ears.

CALLER: Oh God…

DISPATCHER: Charlotte. Don’t speak.

CALLER: Please just send the police…

DISPATCHER: We’re still trying to get a ping.

CALLER'S LINE IS QUIET FOR 20 SECONDS. ONLY CALLER'S BREATHING IS AUDIBLE.

BACKGROUND: You think you know fear. You… do not realize how little you know of fear. I fear, Charlotte. I have lived in fear of oblivion… for as long as I have breathed. I never understood… [unintelligible]… never could see how people went on living, not knowing what comes when we die. Do we go on? Or do we simply cease with a final, rending scream echoing into the abyss? How do you do it, Charlotte?

CALLER: [barely audible] God… God, please help me…

BACKGROUND: [clipped laughter] He cannot help you, Charlotte. He will do nothing for you. He would not even save himself. Of all the symbols that I [unintelligible] are for this, always. But I have learned… I have studied, and have been taught, by a still mightier force. The answer is pain, Charlotte. Only pain can set my soul free. That is the lesson he teaches. He demands sanctification by blood. The blood of an innocent. That is your whole purpose for being born, Charlotte. To die, by our hand. To die, for our incarnation.

CALLER: I- I need light.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, keep your voice down.

CALLER: I… I’m gonna put my phone light on, so I can see.

DISPATCHER: Is he still outside?

CALLER: Mhmmm…

DISPATCHER: Okay. Hang on. Leave your light off for just a minute. I wanna see where we’re at with the ping, okay?

CALLER: Okay. Okay.

LINE IS QUIET FOR 47 SECONDS. ONLY SOUNDS ARE CALLER'S BREATHING, AND OCCASIONAL CREAKING OF FLOORBOARDS IN BACKGROUND.

DISPATCHER: Mike, where are we with the phone?

SUPERVISOR: Well they got it to ping, finally. Problem is, it gave back six different locations across Tioga. Two of them are on Bailey Street, at uh… 3254. 3254 Bailey. So send first responders there first, I guess.

DISPATCHER: Alright. That’s bizarre.

SUPERVISOR: Yeah.

DISPATCHER: By the way, do me a favor and check for power outages around West Allegheny. She said the power went out right before she called; could narrow down her location.

SUPERVISOR: 10-4, Ray.

CPL. RAY HAILED FIRST RESPONDERS AT 22:45. OFFICER DOHERTY, CALVIN (#6264) AND PARTNER OFFICER CONNELLY, MATTHEW (#8045), ON PATROL OUTSIDE HUNTING PARK, RESPONDED TO CALL AT 22:46.

DISPATCHER: All units, 911 Dispatch. Have a… domestic violence incident, possible 302, at 3254 Bailey. Need officer assistance ASAP.

OFFICER: Dispatch, this is Car 6, we’ll take it.

DISPATCHER: Roger, Car 6. Caller’s a young lady, she’s hiding in a bathroom saying her boyfriend’s trying to kill her. Boyfriend’s name is Tyler. He is behaving erratically; he’s armed with a knife and attacked my caller with it. Consider him armed and dangerous.

OFFICER: 10-4, Dispatch. On our way.

AT 22:47, OFFICERS DOHERTY AND CONNELLY TURNED ON THEIR SIRENS AND PROCEEDED TO 3254 BAILEY.

AFTER DISPATCHING FIRST RESPONDERS, CPL. RAY RETURNED TO CALLER. DEAD AIR FOR 10 SECONDS. CALLER IS HEARD BREATHING, WHILE UNINTELLIGIBLE SPEECH IS AUDIBLE IN BACKGROUND.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, if he’s still out there don’t say anything. They got a ping. Police are on their way right now.

BACKGROUND: Charlotte… You cannot escape us, Charlotte. Tonight, you shall die by the blade. By the right hand of my father. I am… his liegeman. His faithful servant. I wait for you, my dear. Together, we shall bring forth a new world… by my hand, and your blood.

CALLER: [sobbing] I can’t… I can’t do this…

BACKGROUND: [unintelligible]

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, stay with me now.

CALLER: I… I need light. I need a light.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte-

CALLER IS HEARD FUMBLING WITH PHONE, HYPERVENTILATING. SHE GASPS AND BEGINS SCREAMING. DOORKNOB JANGLES LOUDLY. DOOR IS HEARD SLAMMING OPEN, FOLLOWED BY A PIERCING, ANIMALISTIC ROAR OF UNKNOWN ORIGIN.

CALLER IS HEARD SPRINTING DOWN HALLWAY, PANTING AND SCREAMING.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte? Charlotte are you there?

CALLER: [inarticulate]

DISPATCHER: What’s going on Charlotte? Charlotte, I need you to talk to me.

CALLER: HE’S CHASING ME! HE’S RIGHT BEHIND ME!

FOR 23 SECONDS, NO WORDS ARE SPOKEN ON EITHER LINE. CALLER IS HEARD CRYING, PANTING HEAVILY. HEAVY FOOTSTEPS FOLLOW IN BACKGROUND, ACCOMPANIED BY UNIDENTIFIED, ANIMALISTIC SQUEALING.

CALLER: NO! GET AWAY FROM ME! LEAVE! ME! ALOOOOOOONE!!!

DISPATCHER: Charlotte? Charlotte are you there? Are you alright?

CALLER: Oh Christ, Oh Christ…

DISPATCHER: Charlotte?

CALLER: I’m okay… I’m okay… He didn’t get me.

DISPATCHER: What the hell happened?

CALLER: I- I put my phone light on, and I looked in the mirror and… oh, God…

DISPATCHER: What? What happened?

CALLER: I- I- I saw myself, my reflection. But it- it was all… wrong. My eyes were… they were gone, and there was blood pouring down my cheeks, and I just… I looked dead.

DISPATCHER: You’re okay though, right? Not cut or anything?

CALLER: Yeah. No. He didn’t cut me. He was trying to but he didn’t. He still has the knife.

DISPATCHER: Where are you now?

CALLER: I-In the library. I locked the door behind me. It’s a heavier door than the bathroom.

DISPATCHER: Okay. Stay there, and stay on the line. I’m going to tell the police to step on it.

CALLER: Okay. I don’t think he knows where I went. I turned a bunch of corners to confuse him. I… I don’t know what I saw, in the mirror…

DISPATCHER: Car 6, need you to pedal to the metal.

OFFICER: We’re about twelve minutes out.

DISPATCHER: Okay, I’ll let her know.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, the police are about twelve minutes away, okay?

CALLER: Okay. I looked around the room. There’s another door leading in here. The lock doesn’t work on that one.

DISPATCHER: Okay. Just stay real quiet. It’s a big house, right?

CALLER: Yeah. It’s an old mansion.

DISPATCHER: So that means he’s got a lot of ground to cover if he wants to find you. Odds are he won’t look there before the police arrive.

CALLER: I hope so.

DISPATCHER: [laughing] I hope so too, sweetie. You’re gonna be okay.

CALLER: He owns it, you know. The mansion. It looks real beat up now, like a haunted castle or something, but he’s trying to repair it. He told me he was starting with the basement, to shore up the foundation.

DISPATCHER: Well, he’ll have a long time to think about what repairs he wants to make while he’s in prison.

CALLER: [laughing] Yeah, yeah I suppose he will… God, this is not how I imagined this night going. He… he invited me over ‘cause I like ghosts, and he said the house is super haunted. It’s been in his family for over a hundred years, so he was going to show me around the place. All the spooky spots. And he did. But then he surprised me, ‘cause he said we were going to do a summoning ritual…

DISPATCHER: What’s that?

CALLER: Like, trying to talk to spirits. I know you probably think it sounds silly.

DISPATCHER: I mean, I don’t know that I believe in ghosts.

CALLER: Well, I do. He set up a whole summoning circle in the dining room. Well, what was the dining room; it’s all empty now. Not even any wallpaper left, just bare wood paneling. He told me how he’d been researching a lot of paranormal stuff. Like, heavy research- he bought a bunch of really old books about it and combed through them- and he said he’d figured out a surefire way to call upon ghosts. And he dared me to summon them with him. ‘Cause it’s Halloween, and the border between the spirit world and ours is supposed to be thinner tonight.

DISPATCHER: Did you? Summon the ghosts, I mean?

CALLER: Well, sort of. At first I kind of tried to shoo him away from the idea, cause it’s… well, bad things can happen, if you don’t do it right. But he was very insistent. Kind of mean about it, honestly. He called me a chicken. I didn’t wanna ruin our date, so I agreed to it. He had a really complex circle laid out. Like, chalk on the floorboards and lit candles and all. I… I didn’t quite recognize the sigil he was using, though.

DISPATCHER: Sigil?

CALLER: Yeah. The chalk pattern on the floor, and the way the candles are arranged. It’s supposed to summon a specific spirit. There’s a lot of different ones, for different types of spirits. It depends on what you want to summon. Troubled ghosts, ghosts of deceased loved ones, angels, demons… I never dabbled in it myself, ‘cause it seemed too risky. If you mess up you might summon the wrong thing. But Tyler had it all set up already, and he really wanted to try it…

DISPATCHER: About when did Tyler start trying to hurt you, then?

CALLER: Right after we started the ritual. Everything went wrong so quickly. He sat down in the center of the circle, which isn’t the normal way to do it. You’re supposed to be outside the circle, and the spirit you’re summoning appears in the circle. But he told me it was a different method he’d learned, from the books. He had a little red bowl in front of him, with water in it. I… I think it was water. And on one side of the bowl he put a really old, fancy-looking knife, and on the other a sprig of nightshade. He sat down cross-legged and put his palms out, and then he shut his eyes and started reciting an incantation… in Latin, I think? It sounded like Latin at first, but then it just became gibberish, and then he stopped talking entirely. The whole time I felt like the room was getting colder, so I buttoned up my jacket, and when I looked back at him, something… something was wrong. His neck… the veins looked like they were bulging out, and his skin looked… I- I don’t even know, it looked like it was changing color. Then he… he just leaned his head back and roared at the ceiling. It hurt my ears, it was so loud. And then the lights went out, all at once. The candles blew out. The chandelier bulbs in the other room burst… even the streetlights outside winked off. It was pitch black. I was kind of frozen for a second, then I fumbled for my phone and thank God that still worked.

DISPATCHER: What happened then?

CALLER: Well, I pointed the flashlight at Tyler. He just stared at the ceiling for awhile, breathing really heavily. When he tilted his head back normal and opened his eyes he had this… this look. He didn’t look like himself, I guess. I… I could just tell he wasn’t all there. Kind of like if you’re ever seen someone with dementia, I guess? But this was worse. More sinister. He looked… he looked wrong. And then he smiled, and again it just… it didn’t look right. It didn’t look like him, like Tyler’s smile. It looked like… like if a shark dressed up as Tyler. I know it might’ve just been the lighting, but everything about him seemed darker. His gums and his eyes… they looked black, like ink. I asked him if he was okay, and he just looked around for a minute, like he didn’t hear me. Then he reached out and grabbed the nightshade and sniffed it, and I asked again if he was okay because he was acting so weird… I-I told him he was scaring me. And he just looked at me and grabbed the knife and roared again. Then… then he lunged at me, with the knife…

CALLER'S BREATH HITCHES. IN BACKGROUND, A WAILING SCREAM IS HEARD, ACCOMPANIED BY LOUD, RAPID FOOTSTEPS.

DISPATCHER: You okay, Charlotte?

CALLER: Yeah. Yeah. He just ran down the hallway.

DISPATCHER: Sounds like Dawn of the Dead in there.

CALLER: It kind of is… how far away are the police?

DISPATCHER: Let me find out.

DISPATCHER: Car 6, what’s your location?

OFFICER: Dispatch, we’re about five minutes away, turning onto Tioga now. If she opens a window she might hear our sirens.

DISPATCHER: 10-4, I’ll let her know.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, the police are five minutes away. If you’re near a window you might be able to hear their sirens. Charlotte, are you there? Charlotte?

BACKGROUND: [white noise]

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, can you hear me? […] Hello?

ADDENDUM 1: AT THIS POINT- STARTING AT 22:58- THE CALL BECOMES QUITE JUMBLED. FOR 15 SECONDS THE LINE IS OPEN, BUT SILENT. CPL. RAY LATER DESCRIBED SENSING THAT THERE WAS SOMEONE LISTENING ON THE OTHER END, THOUGH HE STATES FORCEFULLY THAT THIS INDIVIDUAL WAS NOT HIS CALLER. HE FURTHER STATES THAT HIS QUESTION "HELLO?" WAS DIRECTED AT THIS THIRD PARTY.

AFTER 15 SECONDS, THE LINE ERUPTED WITH A LOUD NOISE, CALCULATED TO BE 135dB. THE SOUND WAS DESCRIBED BY ANALYSTS AS A MIXTURE OF HISSING ELECTRIC STATIC, A FIGHTER JET ENGINE, AN ALARM KLAXON, AND A WOMAN SCREAMING IN PAIN. SURPRISED AND HURT BY THE NOISE, CPL. RAY REMOVED HIS HEADSET, BEFORE HASTILY PUTTING IT BACK ON. HE THEN DESCRIBED HEARING A SUCCESSION OF SOUNDS.

THE FIRST SOUND, A YOUNG WOMAN WEEPING QUIETLY, LASTED APPROXIMATELY TEN SECONDS. THIS EARNED A RESPONSE FROM CPL. RAY.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte? Are you alright?

ADDENDUM 2: UPON THIS QUERY, THE WEEPING IMMEDIATELY CHANGED TO THE SOUNDS OF MANY SNAKES HISSING SIMULTANEOUSLY. THIS LASTED APPROXIMATELY 6 SECONDS, BEFORE ABRUPTLY CHANGING TO A BABY CRYING.

SUBSEQUENT SOUNDS ARE LISTED IN SEQUENTIAL ORDER, EACH LASTING APPROXIMATELY 6 SECONDS BEFORE ABRUPTLY SWITCHING TO A NEW SOUND: A HORSE BRAYING IN FEAR, A REVVING CAR ENGINE, A LONELY BIRD CALL ECHOING IN A FOREST, A MAN COUGHING VIOLENTLY, INDECIPHERABLE WHISPERS FROM AT LEAST FOUR INDIVIDUALS, A PIG SQUEALING IN PAIN, AND A CLIPPED RADIO TRANSMISSION LATER IDENTIFIED AS PART OF THE BLACKBOX RECORDING FROM ATLANTIC AIRLINES FLIGHT 187, WHICH SUFFERED A CATASTROPHIC COMPRESSOR STALL AND CRASHED EN ROUTE TO MADRID, WITH NO SURVIVORS.

CPL. RAY BECAME INCREASINGLY UNNERVED BY THIS SERIES OF SOUNDS, AND BEGAN TRYING TO REESTABLISH CONTACT WITH CALLER. CPL. RAY INSISTS THAT HE IMMEDIATELY UNDERSTOOD HIS CALLER WAS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SERIES OF SOUNDS, AS PART OF SOME CRUEL PRANK. HE STATES HE DOES NOT KNOW HOW HE KNEW THIS.

AFTER ATTEMPTING TO REESTABLISH CONTACT WITH CALLER, AN UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE, HEREAFTER REFERRED TO AS 'THIRD SPEAKER', ADDRESSED CPL. RAY DIRECTLY.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, if you can hear me I need you to speak to me right now.

THIRD SPEAKER: She is no longer yours to save.

DISPATCHER: Who is this?

THIRD SPEAKER: I am that will be. I am the unborn Prince.

DISPATCHER: Sir, you are interfering with an active 911 dispatch call and need to hang up immediately.

THIRD SPEAKER: [laughter] You know not the forces with which you now reckon, Brandon Ray.

DISPATCHER: How did you…?

THIRD SPEAKER: She is no longer yours to save. Not all the knights of all the castles can spare her now. Her sweetwater blood shall be the fount of my incarnation. It is her destiny. And yours.

DISPATCHER: Who are you?

THIRD SPEAKER: None shall ever know the truth of this night. None shall even remember she ever breathed… without the eyes to see it, or the ears to hear it, or the tongue to speak it…

DISPATCHER: What do you want?

ADDENDUM 3: IMMEDIATELY UPON ASKING THIS QUESTION, CALLER'S LINE CHANGED TO A RAGGED, AGONIZED FEMALE SCREAM. CPL. RAY DESCRIBED THE SCREAM AS "LIKE A WOMAN IN THE MIDDLE OF BEING MURDERED" AND STATES THAT HE IMMEDIATELY, INTUITIVELY KNEW IT WAS HIS ORIGINAL CALLER SCREAMING. THE SCREAM LASTED FOR 33 SECONDS, CHANGING IN PITCH AND INTENSITY WHILE CPL. RAY FRANTICALLY ATTEMPTED TO REESTABLISH CONTACT WITH CALLER.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte? Charlotte, talk to me. CHARLOTTE!

CALLER: Yeah, yeah. I’m here. Sorry. I put the phone down so I wouldn’t hang up accidentally.

DISPATCHER: Oh thank Christ.

CALLER: I’m sorry.

DISPATCHER: It’s okay. Just, ah, just was a bit worried when you didn’t pick up at first.

CALLER: I’m really sorry.

DISPATCHER: It’s okay. It really is. I’m glad you’re alright. I… uh, just wanted to let you know the police are about… ah, three minutes away. If you go to the window you might be able to hear them.

CALLER: Okay. I’ll go look now.

[…]

CALLER: I don’t see them yet but I can hear the sirens.

DISPATCHER: Okay. Good. Just stay right where you are and they’ll be there soon.

CALLER: You know, when I put the phone down I looked at some of the books in here… he’s got some scary ones.

DISPATCHER: What do you mean?

CALLER: Well there’s only a few books. Just one shelf, and it’s only half full. Half of it is really occult stuff… stuff about demons and witchcraft and stuff like that. They’re all really, really old, too- some of them were printed in the 1700s. The pages are so brittle. He’s got The Lesser Key of Solomon, the Cytherix, The Book of Abra- uh, Abramelin, The Seal of Jannes, The Tome of Balak, The Grand Grimoire…

DISPATCHER: Pretty spooky.

CALLER: Yeah. But the other books are all heavy duty chemistry stuff. About how to assemble lab equipment, and mix chemicals safely. I don’t get it. He’s majoring in cardiology.

DISPATCHER: Well, maybe he’s doing some moonlighting for DuPont to pay off his student loans.

CALLER: [laughter] Maybe. God. Thank you. I needed that.

DISPATCHER: No problem, kid.

CALLER: The thing is, I found the sigil. The one that Tyler drew on the floor. Just happened to open one of the books to that page… it was in the Cytherix. It’s not supposed to call on ghosts. It’s… it’s to summon demons. One specific demon.

DISPATCHER: Huh. Which one?

CALLER: I- I don’t want to say its name.

DISPATCHER: Why not?

CALLER: Because… I just… I don’t know. I feel like something bad will happen if I say it.

DISPATCHER: Well, don’t say it then. [clears throat] Are you still safe where you’re at?

CALLER: I think so. I… wait.

DISPATCHER: What?

CALLER: The sirens. They’re coming up the street!

DISPATCHER: Awesome. That’s awesome. Stay on the line with me until the police come to you, okay?

CALLER: I’m gonna go over to the window.

DISPATCHER: Sounds good. If you can open it, try to wave to them so they know exactly where you are in the building.

CALLER: [in background] Hey! Hey, over here! No, no! Over here! Hey! No! Come back! Where are you going? Come back!

[…]

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, what’s going on? Charlotte?

CALLER: T-They didn’t stop.

DISPATCHER: What?

CALLER: They drove right past me! I was waving out the window and they just kept driving!

DISPATCHER: Hang on, I’ll tell them to turn around.

DISPATCHER: Car 6, where are you right now?

OFFICER: Dispatch, we’re still on Tioga, turning north onto Crowell Street now. About a minute and a half out.

DISPATCHER: My caller’s saying a squad car just drove by her, sirens on, and didn’t stop.

OFFICER: Wasn’t us, Dispatch. We’re not there yet.

DISPATCHER: What the hell… are there any other cars in the area?

OFFICER: No, just us.

DISPATCHER: Alright. I’ll tell her.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, I just talked to the officers, they said they’re still a minute away from your location.

CALLER: B-But they just drove past! You-You’ve gotta tell them to turn ba-

CALLER IS SUDDENLY CUT OFF. THE LINE IS OVERWHELMED BY SOUND OF LOUD, FORCEFUL BANGING AND WOOD SPLINTERING. A GUTTURAL ROAR IS HEARD. CALLER SCREAMS.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte?

CALLER: HE’S BREAKING DOWN THE DOOR!

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, get out of there! Get out now!

CALLER: FUCK! FUCK! FUUUUUCK!

BACKGROUND: THE TIME HAS COME, CHARLOTTE, FOR THE DOE TO BE QUARTERED! FOR THE WING TO BE CLIPPED FROM THE BIRD! AND FOR YOUR BLOOD! TO! FLOW!

FOR 57 SECONDS NO WORDS ARE SPOKEN ON EITHER LINE. CALLER IS HEARD HYPERVENTILATING. CALLER SEEMS TO DROP HER PHONE, SWEARS AND FUMBLES TRYING TO PICK IT UP. DOOR SLAMS AND CALLER SCREAMS AGAIN. AN APPARENT SCUFFLE ENSUES.

BACKGROUND: NO FORCE UNDER HEAVEN CAN STOP WHAT IS COMING FOR YOU! LET THE BLADE PURIFY YOUR SOUL!

CALLER: NO!

CALLER IS HEARD FALLING TO FLOOR, AND A SERIES OF THREE "THUNKS" ARE HEARD, INTERPRETED AS A KNIFE BEING STABBED INTO HARDWOOD FLOOR. CALLER'S SCREAMS ARE SUDDENLY MUFFLED, FOLLOWED BY A MALE VOICE SCREAMING IN PAIN. CALLER GASPS, SCRAMBLES BACK TO HER FEET. DOOR SLAMS OPEN. CALLER IS THEN HEARD SPRINTING DOWN HALLWAY, HYPERVENTILATING. HEAVY FOOTSTEPS FOLLOW IN BACKGROUND, ACCOMPANIED BY FURTHER ANIMALISTIC ROARS.

BACKGROUND: I’M GOING TO DIE! I’M GOING TO DIE TONIGHT! HE’S GOING TO KILL ME IF I DON’T KILL YOU! GET BACK HERE CHARLOTTE!

CALLER: FUCK OFF!

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, just run. Just run.

CALLER CONTINUES RUNNING. AFTER 12 SECONDS SHE IS HEARD PANTING, SOBBING. JANGLING OF DOORKNOB HEARD IN BACKGROUND. ANIMALISTIC SNARL IS THEN HEARD, FOLLOWED BY CALLER GASPING. THERE IS A LOUD CRASH CONSISTENT WITH SMASHING FURNITURE.

CALLER: WHAT THE FUCK?

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, what’s going on?

CALLER DOES NOT RESPOND TO HAIL. A SERIES OF DOORS IS HEARD SLAMMING SEQUENTIALLY, AS CALLER CONTINUES RUNNING. ONE DOOR CLOSES MUCH QUIETER THAN THE OTHERS, THEN ALL IS SILENT SAVE FOR CALLER WEEPING.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte? Charlotte are you there? Are you alright?

CALLER: N-No… he-h-he cut me…

DISPATCHER: He cut you?

CALLER: [whimpering] Mmhmmm…

DISPATCHER: Where did he cut you?

CALLER: M-My arm. He slashed my arm.

DISPATCHER: Is the cut deep?

CALLER: N-No, but it’s-it’s b-bleeding a lot.

DISPATCHER: Okay. Hold on. I’m going to tell them to send medical too.

DISPATCHER: Fireboard, this is PPRR.

FIREBOARD: Go ahead, PPRR.

DISPATCHER: Gonna need EMS at 3254 Bailey. Caller’s sustained a stab wound from a kitchen knife, consider this urgent.

FIREBOARD: 10-4. Sending out an ambulance now.

DISPATCHER: Great. Pair the ambulance up with Car 6, they’re already en route.

FIREBOARD: Roger.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, are you there?

CALLER: Mhhmmm.

DISPATCHER: Where are you now, honey?

CALLER: I’m… in a closet… on the ground floor… God, I was almost out of here…

DISPATCHER: What happened?

CALLER: H-He threw a goddamn china cabinet at me! I was right at the front door and-and h-he just picked it up and threw it, the whole cabinet, l-like it was a paperweight!

DISPATCHER: Keep your voice down.

CALLER: I’m sorry… I just… I was so close…

DISPATCHER: It’s okay. The police are almost there. You said he cut your arm?

CALLER: My left arm. He slashed me. He came in right when I was t-trying to open the other door, to get out. He threw me to the floor and- and he started stabbing at my head, but I- I was thrashing around so much he couldn’t get me. He put his hand over my mouth, to hold me still, and I bit him.

DISPATCHER: Good show, kid.

CALLER: Thanks. I- I got loose but when I was running away he slashed my arm… I’m bleeding pretty bad…

DISPATCHER: Okay. We’re sending medical too.

CALLER: When?

DISPATCHER: They’re on their way right now. You just need to sit tight for a few more minutes. Are there any clothes in the closet? Jackets? Scarves?

CALLER: Yes.

DISPATCHER: Okay. I want you to look for a scarf. We need to tie up that cut until the ambulance gets there.

CALLER: What about a sleeve? I’m wearing a cardigan… I could tear one of the sleeves off.

DISPATCHER: No, no, it might be too loud. Could alert him.

CALLER: Okay.

[…]

CALLER: I found a scarf. How tight should I make it?

DISPATCHER: Tight as you can. We need to stop the bleeding.

CALLER: Okay.

DISPATCHER: I heard a lot of doors slamming back there.

CALLER: Yeah. I was running down a hallway and slammed a bunch of them. To try to confuse him.

DISPATCHER: Good thinking. That was smart. You didn’t slam the closet door, did you?

CALLER: No. Hang on, I’m gonna put you down so I can tie this.

DISPATCHER: Okay. Don’t hang up now.

[…]

DISPATCHER: Got it?

CALLER: Tight as I can. My arm feels tingly.

DISPATCHER: Good. That’s good. That means it’s tight enough. Oh… hang on, Charlotte. I got the police on the line. Don’t hang up.

CALLER: Okay…

DISPATCHER: Go ahead, Car 6.

OFFICER: Dispatch, we’re at the address you gave us… there’s nothing wrong here.

DISPATCHER: What?

OFFICER: We knocked on the door and interrupted a family movie night.

DISPATCHER: Oh, Christ. We sent you to the wrong address…

OFFICER: What do you want us to do, Dispatch?

DISPATCHER: Alright. Alright. She said you drove by her. Tell me the exact route you took to get there.

OFFICER: Well, we were at Hunting Park when we responded to your call. Drove down Broad, turned onto West Erie… down 17^th, then we turned west onto Tioga… north on Crowell, down Hunting Park Ave, south down 29^th, then east onto Allegheny until we got to Bailey.

DISPATCHER: Alright. I want you to start retracing that exact route. I’m gonna take a look at the phone pings.

OFFICER: Roger, Dispatch.

DISPATCHER: Mike, I need to know every location where my caller’s phone pinged. It was the wrong fucking address.

SUPERVISOR: Christ.

DISPATCHER: I’m gonna have our guys retrace their steps. She said they passed her on their way to Bailey, when they were still on Tioga.

SUPERVISOR: Alright, I’ll read ‘em off to you.

DISPATCHER: Shoot.

SUPERVISOR: Alright, I’ve got 2600 West Westmoreland, 2217 West Venango, 3418 West Estaugh, and 2138 West Ontario.

DISPATCHER: Shit. It doesn’t make sense…

SUPERVISOR: I’ll get the phone company, try another ping.

DISPATCHER: Okay. I’ll tell them 2600 Westmoreland first in the meantime.

SUPERVISOR: 10-4.

DISPATCHER: Car 6, I need you to head to 2600 West Westmoreland ASAP.

OFFICER: 10-4, Dispatch, on our way.

DISPATCHER: Be advised, caller’s been slashed with a knife. EMS will be joining you shortly. I’m redirecting them to follow your lead.

OFFICER: 10-4.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, are you there?

CALLER: Yeah.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, there’s… there’s been a mistake. It’s going to take a little bit longer for the police to get there.

CALLER: What?

DISPATCHER: When your phone pinged, it gave back the wrong address.

CALLER: How- how did that happen? How- you, you guys are still coming, right?

DISPATCHER: Yes. Yes, we’re still coming, sweetheart. It’s just going to take a few more minutes, that’s all. Listen to me- is there anything in the closet you can use to defend yourself?

CALLER: N-No.

DISPATCHER: Look around for me, okay?

CALLER: O-Okay…

[…]

CALLER: I… I found an umbrella.

DISPATCHER: That’s great. Now Charlotte, I need you to listen closely. You might have to fight him again if he finds you before the police get there.

CALLER: But you said they’re…

DISPATCHER: They are on their way. I swear to you, they’re coming. But you might need to fight. Now listen. Do you play any sports?

CALLER: I-I took fencing in high school.

DISPATCHER: Fuckin’ A, kid. My daughter does too. Now, you’re going to use that umbrella just like a fencing sword. You’re in an enclosed space, so you’ll be en garde, but your flanks are perfectly secure. With me so far?

CALLER: Jesus.

DISPATCHER: Calm down. Settle your breathing. You’re gonna be fine. How tall are you, Charlotte?

CALLER: Five foot five.

DISPATCHER: And how tall’s Tyler?

CALLER: He’s six-three.

DISPATCHER: Okay. You can hold him off. It’ll be tough, but you can hold him. Keep him out of the closet, and you’ll be fine. You have the edge right now.

CALLER: I do?

DISPATCHER: Yes. You do. Your flanks are secure and your first thrust will be a total surprise. He thought he had you. He thought he was a B-movie monster chasing some helpless girl around a haunted house. Didn’t know he was walking headfirst into an expert umbrella fencer. He’s had you on the back foot all night, but you’re gonna be ready for him this time. He’s also completely zooted on something, which is another point in your favor. You’re fully cognizant, and he isn’t.

CALLER: Is this your idea of a pep-talk?

DISPATCHER: Trying to get you to calm down.

CALLER: Sorry. I’m really scared.

DISPATCHER: It’s okay. You have every reason to be.

CALLER: What the fuck should I do? What do you want me to do?

DISPATCHER: If he comes through that door, I want you to beat his ass with the umbrella.

CALLER: Okay. How far away are the police?

DISPATCHER: They’re only a few blocks away. Now, as quietly as you can, I want you to barricade the door.

CALLER: It won’t matter. The door swings out.

DISPATCHER: It’ll slow him down if he tries to get in.

CALLER: Okay.

A GRATING SOUND IS HEARD ON CALLER'S LINE.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, quiet down a little. I can hear you moving the boxes.

CALLER: Sorry.

DISPATCHER: You don’t have to apologize.

CALLER: They’re heavy.

DISPATCHER: Don’t hurt yourself now.

CALLER: Okay.

CALLER'S LINE IS SILENT FOR 60 SECONDS, INTERRUPTED ONLY BY SOUND OF BOXES SCRAPING, CALLER GRUNTING.

CALLER: Okay. I moved the boxes.

DISPATCHER: Is the door barricaded?

CALLER: Best I could.

DISPATCHER: Okay. Great. Now, what I want you to do is-

CALLER: There’s another door.

DISPATCHER: What?

CALLER: There’s a trapdoor in here. It was behind the boxes.

DISPATCHER: Huh. Interesting.

CALLER: I’m going to see if it’s unlocked.

DISPATCHER: Careful. If it opens it might creak.

CALLER: It’s not locked. I- I think it’s been opened recently. There’s no dust on it and the hinges are oiled.

DISPATCHER: Can you see where it leads?

CALLER: Let me put my flashlight on.

DISPATCHER: Careful.

CALLER: Don’t worry; the boxes are covering the door frame.

[…]

CALLER: It’s a staircase.

DISPATCHER: Like a ladder?

CALLER: No. A stone stairwell. It curves off, I can’t see the bottom.

DISPATCHER: What are you thinking?

CALLER: I’m thinking of going down there.

DISPATCHER: I’m going to advise that you don’t.

CALLER: Why not?

DISPATCHER: For one, you might lose reception. The police are just a few minutes away, and until they get there we want you to stay on the line.

CALLER: They’ve been a few minutes away, for half an hour!

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, we’re-

CALLER: You guys drove right by here! You went to the wrong address! It’s gotta be safer down there than up here, with him right outside!

DISPATCHER: Calm down, keep your voice down […] Alright. You have to do whatever you think is safest.

CALLER: I’m just going to go down a little bit. If I start to lose reception I’ll come right back up.

DISPATCHER: Okay. Sounds good.

AT 23:18, CALLER IS HEARD BREATHING, AT ONE POINT WINCES, MUTTERS ABOUT SPLINTERS. RECEPTION IS LOST AFTER THIS.

DISPATCHER: Car 6, what’s your location?

OFFICER: We just left Westmoreland… nothing happening there either, just some oldhead watching the game.

DISPATCHER: Alright. Alright. She said she was in a mansion, a big, old mansion. Did you guys drive by anything like that on your way to Bailey?

OFFICER: Yeah. A big old place on Tioga. Hard to see cause the streetlights were all out. Looked like Dracula’s castle.

DISPATCHER: That’s exactly what she said! Get over there straight away!

OFFICER: 10-4, Dispatch.

SUPERVISOR: Ray, we got another ping- 2224 West Tioga.

DISPATCHER: Fuckin’ A man. Already have first responders en route, I’ll tell them it’s a definite now.

SUPERVISOR: 10-4.

DISPATCHER: Car 6, we’ve got a ping from Dracula’s castle- 2224 West Tioga. Pedal to the medal and get your asses over there!

OFFICER: Roger, Dispatch, about three minutes out.

AT 23:25, A NEW CALL REACHED CPL. RAY'S DESK.

DISPATCHER: 911 what’s your-

CALLER: [sobbing] Oh my God, oh my God!

DISPATCHER: Charlotte? Charlotte, what’s going on?

CALLER: I- I went downstairs and… and… oh, God.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte, calm down. Calm down. Where are you right now?

CALLER: I’m… I’m still in the closet. I came back up, I’m half on the stairs…

DISPATCHER: Okay. You gotta keep quiet or else Tyler is going to hear you.

CALLER: Okay… okay… where are the police?

DISPATCHER: They’re only three minutes away now. We pinged your phone again. We know exactly where you are. Dracula’s castle, right?

CALLER: R-Right.

DISPATCHER: Tell me what you saw down there, sweetie.

CALLER: W-Well, I- I couldn’t see very well, because it’s so dark. I lost reception halfway down the stairs, so I turned on my phone light to see. It’s… it’s like a cave down there. Like a chamber, I guess. There’s a big fireplace and cabinets carved right out of the rock, and a huge summoning circle etched into the floor, with glyphs and runes carved into it. And… and there’s an altar…

DISPATCHER: An altar?

CALLER: Yes. An altar. It’s on a platform in the middle of the room, between the circle and the fireplace. I- I walked over to it, because I saw some stuff on top of it. There was a dagger, a little glass vial full of some dark liquid, and a white cloth. And the altar… it looked darker than everything else. Oh God, it… it was stained darker. Big, dark splashes running down its sides…

DISPATCHER: Christ.

CALLER: And then… and then I looked over to the fireplace, and it was glowing. But there wasn’t any fire in it. No embers or coals. Not even wood. It was just glowing a dim red. When I looked at it I thought I heard something. Like there was someone else in the room, whispering. And there was… there was this thing there, next to the fireplace. I thought it was just a shadow at first, but… it wasn’t. It turned its head really slow and looked at me. It… it looked like a man… sort of. I think it had wings, like a bat, but folded really close around it. It looked at me and then it just flew into the fireplace, and I ran back upstairs.

DISPATCHER: Is… is it still down there?

CALLER: I- I don’t know. I don’t want to go back down there. But I don’t want to come back up all the way, either. In case Tyler comes back…

DISPATCHER: Did you pick up the dagger? From the altar, I mean?

CALLER: N-No. I was scared to touch it. I looked at it and… I just couldn’t…

DISPATCHER: What about the umbrella?

CALLER: Yeah. I’ve got it right here.

DISPATCHER: Alright. Just sit tight, and don’t go back downstairs unless you don’t have any other choice. The police are only a few blocks away. Two minutes. Just hang on for two more minutes.

CALLER: O-Okay. I’ll stay right here.

DISPATCHER: Good. Let me know as soon as they get there.

CALLER: Okay.

THE LINE IS SILENT FOR 72 SECONDS, SAVE FOR CALLER'S BREATHING.

CALLER: Thank you.

DISPATCHER: For what?

CALLER: Just… thank you. I- it’s just, you’ve been trying to save my life all night, and I don’t even know your name.

DISPATCHER: Brandon. Brandon Ray.

CALLER: Thank you, Brandon. I- wait…

DISPATCHER: Charlotte? You alright?

CALLER: No- no- NONONONONONO!

AT 23:29, A HOWLING WAIL IS HEARD IN BACKGROUND, SEEMINGLY BELOW CALLER. CALLER SCREAMS. CLOSER IN BACKGROUND, AN ANIMALISTIC ROAR IS HEARD AS WAILING AND CALLER'S SCREAMING CONTINUES.

23:30- SOUND OF DOOR BEING BROKEN OPEN.

SOUND OF STRUGGLE, WITH CALLER'S VOICE DISTINGUISHED, REPEATING "NO! NO! PLEASE DON'T! PLEASE!" WHILE GROWING MORE DISTANT.

23:31- CALLER BEGINS SCREAMING INARTICULATELY.

A FINAL LOUD SHRIEK IS HEARD, IDENTIFIED AS CALLER. TRANSMISSION IS CUT.

CPL. RAY ATTEMPTED FOR ADDITIONAL TWO MINUTES TO REESTABLISH CONTACT WITH CALLER, TO NO AVAIL.

AT 23:33, A MALE VOICE, IDENTIFIED AS VAUCLAIN, TYLER, PICKED UP PHONE AND ADDRESSED CPL. RAY.

DISPATCHER: Charlotte? Charlotte, can you hear me? Charlotte?

CALLER: The deed is done.

DISPATCHER: Who is this?

CALLER: I am… restored… to serve no one…

DISPATCHER: Tyler? Is that you?

CALLER: [laughter] Tyler… Tyler has received his reward, for bringing me the bloodmaiden…

DISPATCHER: The police are on their way. If you’ve hurt Charlotte in any way…

CALLER: Charlotte is beyond your help, Brandon Ray. Her soul… is in the hands… OF THE ENEMY.

ADDENDUM 4: AT THIS POINT IN THE CALL, CPL. RAY WAS FORCED TO REMOVE HIS HEADSET ONCE MORE AS CALLER'S LINE ERUPTED IN A 10 SECOND ROAR CALCULATED AT 140dB. DUE TO THE IMPROBABILITY OF THIS ROAR ORIGINATING FROM A HUMAN LARYNX, THE SOUND BITE WAS CHECKED BY A ZOOLOGIST AGAINST RECORDINGS OF MULTIPLE MAMMALIAN SPECIES AND MATCHED NONE OF THEM. AT CONCLUSION OF ROAR, CPL. RAY PUT HIS HEADSET BACK ON AND RESUMED CONVERSATION WITH VAUCLAIN, TYLER.

CALLER: He thinks He can free mortals… He thinks He can save them from us… you pitiful creatures of dust… I shall never understand what He sees in you.

OFFICER: Dispatch, this is Car 6, we’re pulling up now. Had to take a detour around a downed tree.

DISPATCHER: Ah, r-roger, Car 6. Get in there as soon as you can. You’re gonna have to break down the door, caller told me there’s furniture blocking it.

OFFICER: 10-4.

DISPATCHER: Tyler, the police are coming in right now.

CALLER: ANSWER ME! WHO IS HE TO BECOME FLESH AND BLOOD FOR YOUR SAKE? WHO IS HE TO CONSIDER MY BEING LESS THAN THAT OF A DOG? A BIRD? A GIRL?

CPL. RAY WAS AGAIN FORCED TO REMOVE HIS HEADSET AT THE LOUDNESS OF SHOUTS. HE RETURNED IT IN TIME TO HEAR SOUND OF OFFICERS BREAKING DOWN DOOR IN BACKGROUND.

CALLER: No matter. He shall not deter us. None shall ever know the truth of this night… none except Our Lord Below, and the Enemy Above.

DISPATCHER: Tyler, it’s all over… surrender to the police right now before things get any worse for you.

CALLER: No, Brandon Ray. Your heroes mean nothing to me. Her blood has slaked my thirst. She… is my genesis…

DISPATCHER: Tyler? Tyler, are you there? Tyler, pick up the phone. Tyler!

CPL. RAY CONTINUED TRYING TO REESTABLISH CONTACT FOR ADDITIONAL 15 SECONDS. AT 23:37, THE LINE WENT DEAD.

POSTSCRIPT

OFFICERS DOHERTY AND CONNELLY ENTERED 2224 WEST TIOGA AT 23:46, AFTER A CONSIDERABLE EFFORT TO GET THROUGH OBSTRUCTION AT FRONT DOOR ENTRANCE.

THE OFFICERS PROCEEDED UNDER DIRECTION OF CPL. RAY TO THE GROUND FLOOR CLOSET, WHERE THEY LOCATED THE TRAPDOOR DESCRIBED BY CALLER. THE TRAPDOOR WAS OPEN, AND THE OFFICERS DREW THEIR FIREARMS BEFORE PROCEEDING DOWN THE STAIRS. OFFICER CONNELLY STOOD ON GUARD AT TOP OF THE STAIRS, WHILE OFFICER DOHERTY ENTERED THE BASEMENT ALONE.

OFFICER DOHERTY'S DESCRIPTION OF THE BASEMENT (SEE INCIDENT REPORT C-3-41387) LARGELY CORROBORATES THE DESCRIPTION PROVIDED BY CALLER:

• SEVEN SHELVES WERE CARVED INTO THE BEDROCK WALLS. THESE SHELVES CONTAINED A NUMBER OF JARS AND VIALS FULL OF UNIDENTIFIED CHEMICAL SUBSTANCES. LABORATORY ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS STILL PENDING.

• A LARGE FIREPLACE WAS LOCATED AGAINST FAR WALL. DIFFERING FROM CALLER'S DESCRIPTION, THE FIREPLACE WAS FOUND TO CONTAIN A FULL BUT UNBURNT WOODPILE, AND AN EMPTY CAST IRON CAULDRON.

• A LARGE CIRCULAR DEPRESSION TOOK UP MOST OF THE FLOOR, WITH GROOVES RUNNING FROM ITS OUTER RIM INWARD TO A SMALL CENTRAL BASIN LIKE THE SPOKES OF A WHEEL. THESE GROOVES SEGMENTED THE CIRCLE INTO SEVEN TRIANGULAR SECTIONS. WITHIN EACH OF THE SEVEN SECTIONS, SYMBOLS WERE CHISELED DIRECTLY INTO THE STONE FLOOR. THESE SYMBOLS WERE LATER EXAMINED BY A LINGUIST, AND FOUND TO BE FROM SEVEN DISTINCT LANGUAGES- ARABIC, CYRILLIC, CHALDEE, DEMOTIC, TOCHARIAN, PUNIC, AND SUMERIAN.

• ON A RAISED PLATFORM BETWEEN THE CIRCLE AND THE FIREPLACE WAS A STONE ALTAR. GROOVES RAN FROM THE ALTAR DOWN INTO THE GROOVES OF THE STONE CIRCLE, CLEARLY AS LIQUID DRAINAGE CONDUITS.

OFFICER DOHERTY REPORTED THAT THE ALTAR WAS DRENCHED IN BLOOD, WITH RUNNELS OF BLOOD FLOWING FREELY DOWN THE AFOREMENTIONED GROOVES INTO THE STONE CIRCLE, WHERE IT HAD BEGUN TO POOL IN THE CENTER RING.

OFFICER DOHERTY NOTED A BLOODSMEAR ON THE FLOOR LEADING AWAY FROM THE ALTAR, AND FOLLOWED IT TO A SMALL DOOR. THIS DOOR LED TO ANOTHER CHAMBER OF THE BASEMENT. OFFICER DOHERTY REPORTED THAT THIS CHAMBER TERMINATED IN A FAST-FLOWING SEWER LINE. ON THE EDGES OF THE SEWER HE OBSERVED THE SKELETAL REMAINS OF SEVERAL CATS, DOGS, AND RODENTS, DISPLAYING SIGNS OF HAVING BEEN BUTCHERED.

OFFICER DOHERTY HYPOTHESIZED IN HIS INCIDENT REPORT THAT THE SEWER- POSSIBLY A CULVERTED STREAM- DRAINS INTO THE SCHUYLKILL RIVER, AND THAT VAUCLAIN, TYLER HAD STORED A SMALL BOAT INSIDE, ESCAPING VIA THIS UNDERGROUND CANAL WITH THE BODY OF KEATING, CHARLOTTE.

THIS INITIAL DESCRIPTION OF THE SCENE BY FIRST RESPONDERS DOHERTY AND CONNELLY CONTRASTS SHARPLY WITH THE FOLLOWING REPORT BY CRIME SCENE UNIT (SEE REPORT OF INVESTIGATION 021287), WHICH ARRIVED ON SCENE AT 12:47.

WHILE CONCURRING IN ALL RESPECTS WITH THE PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BASEMENT CHAMBER, THE CRIME SCENE UNIT REPORT CONTRADICTS BOTH FIRST RESPONDER REPORTS AND REPORT BY CALLER IN FAILING TO LOCATE ANY BLOOD IN BASEMENT. ALTAR WAS FOUND TO BE CLEAN, PRISTINE MARBLE WITH NO TRACES OF BLOOD, FRESH OR OTHERWISE. NO BLOOD WAS FOUND WITHIN THE STONE CIRCLE, AND NO BLOOD SMEAR WAS LOCATED.

DIFFERING FROM FIRST RESPONDER REPORTS, WHILE ANOTHER DOOR WAS LOCATED LEADING TO THE SEWER, THIS OUTER CHAMBER WAS FOUND TO BE COLLAPSED AND IN NEED OF IMMEDIATE REPAIR BY PHILADELPHIA WATER DEPARTMENT TO PREVENT SEWER OVERFLOW. NO ANIMAL SKELETAL REMAINS WERE LOCATED DURING REPAIR EFFORTS. THE WATER DEPARTMENT WAS UNCLEAR IF THE SEWER DRAINED INTO THE SCHUYLKILL RIVER, AS OFFICER DOHERTY HYPOTHESIZED. FURTHER INVESTIGATION IS WARRANTED.

ADDITIONALLY, THE RITUAL CIRCLE IN THE DINING ROOM AS DESCRIBED BY CALLER WAS NOT LOCATED BY EITHER FIRST RESPONDERS OR THE CRIME SCENE UNIT. THE DINING ROOM WAS INVESTIGATED AND PHOTOGRAPHED, AND FOUND TO BE COMPLETELY EMPTY. BARE FLOORBOARDS AND WOOD PANELING OTHERWISE FIT CALLER'S DESCRIPTION.

THE EGREGIOUS DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THESE THREE RECORDS HAVE YET TO BE SATISFACTORILY EXPLAINED.

THE BODY OF KEATING, CHARLOTTE WAS DISCOVERED BY A KAYAKER IN THE HESSIAN CREEK IN RED BANK, NEW JERSEY ON 11-7, ONE WEEK AFTER HER APPARENT DEATH ON 10-31. THIS LOCATION, DIRECTLY ACROSS FROM THE CONFLUENCE OF THE SCHUYLKILL AND DELAWARE RIVERS, IS OF POTENTIAL SIGNIFICANCE TO OFFICER DOHERTY'S CANAL THEORY.

THE CORONER REPORTS THE CAUSE OF DEATH AS "HOMICIDE BY MULTIPLE STAB WOUNDS."

VICTIM WAS FOUND TO HAVE BEEN STABBED 33 TIMES. THE STAB WOUNDS APPEAR TO HAVE BEEN INFLICTED IN A DISTINCT PATTERN, VAGUELY RESEMBLING CERTAIN GLYPHS FROM THE STONE CIRCLE, THOUGH HOMICIDE INVESTIGATORS HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO DISCERN ANY PARTICULAR MEANING TO THIS PATTERN.

VICTIM'S EYES, EARS, AND TONGUE WERE ALL REMOVED.

ADDENDUM 5: CPL. RAY REQUESTED A TRANSFER TO THE NARCOTICS DIVISION SHORTLY AFTER THIS INCIDENT- TRANSFER REQUEST FILED 11-05-2021. REQUEST WAS GRANTED 11-08-2021.

ADDENDUM 6: VAUCLAIN, TYLER HAS NOT BEEN SEEN SINCE 10-31-2021. HIS WHEREABOUTS REMAIN UNKNOWN.

ADDENDUM 7: AGAINST PROTESTS OF THE KEATING FAMILY, THIS CASE (M-21-547) HAS BEEN TRANSFERRED TO THE COLD CASES DIVISION, PENDING DISCOVERY OF NEW EVIDENCE.

POSTSCRIPT: This story was based upon a nightmare the author had, and loosely influenced by a real-life murder mystery which occurred in New York City in 1979.

The author first heard this real case reported on Dead Rabbit Radio- a daily paranormal, conspiracy, and true crime podcast- in Episode 373, titled “The Satanic Slayings”. The author is indebted to Dead Rabbit Radio for providing the creative inspiration needed to write the tale you have just read. If you enjoyed this story or the show description interests you, please consider giving it a listen!