by Abe Moss
“Hello?” he asked.
There was nothing at first, though he knew someone was there. They were standing up there in the grass somewhere, waiting. Watching, too. After all, how could they have shot the creature if they couldn’t see it? They could see him just as well…
“Is someone there?”
He stood, brushed dirt and mud from his worn shirt and shorts. Hesitant, he climbed toward the bridge. Over the rush of the river he heard very little, but as he climbed higher, he heard what sounded like footsteps moving toward him.
“I know you’re there. I can hear you.”
The voice that came was low, a growl, but in it he deciphered amusement.
“Hmmmmmmm…” the voice said. “I can see you.”
Lewis’s legs shook under him, and he shifted his weight to try and steady himself, to hide the jitters. He didn’t dare move any closer. He kept his ears alert. No sudden movements if he could help it.
“Who are you?” he asked.
The footsteps, heavy in what sounded like boots, ventured down the slope toward him, swish-swish-swishing through the grass. Lewis took a single step back.
“Don’t come any closer.”
He screamed as a hand touched his arm, already as close as they could get.
“It is all right,” the voice said. He heard the smile on their lips. “Come with me up to the bridge and we can talk, if you would like. It is not safe here next to the river.”
Lewis only nodded—a pointless mannerism to anyone else, but apparently this man could see him in the lightlessness. A hand touched his shoulder, an arm around his back, and the man guided him up. Once he felt the bridge’s smooth stone underfoot, he found the sidewall and rested against it, away from the deep-voiced stranger.
“You must be a newcomer,” the man said. “Most who have been here long enough know better than to run off into the darkness’s wilderness like that. There will always be something out there waiting to claim you.”
“Who are you?” Lewis asked a second time.
“What were you doing down there by the river, anyhow?”
“I slipped and… Hey! Answer my question first.”
The man laughed, a hearty belly laugh, and Lewis felt greatly unsettled by the sound of it—simultaneously warm and cruel.
“I am just a man, like yourself. Though… you are so young…”
“No. You can see, somehow. You’re different.”
The man produced a sound from his throat, a consideration, and he drifted closer next to Lewis. Brought with him was a strong musk, rich and earthy, like opening an old chest full of dust.
“Not so different.”
Something sizzled, crackled. Hovering in the darkness, two sparks ignited, orange and swirling. Illuminated beneath them were a sharp nose and a grinning, bearded mouth. Lewis’s stomach clenched frozen. He retreated away along the stone wall.
“Do not be afraid,” the man said, still grinning. The lights in his eyes faded and cooled and Lewis caught a whiff of smoke in the still air. “I am not like those creatures in the woods, in the river.”
“What are you?”
“Ahh… now that is the better question.” A moment of thought. “You see, I used to have a name but I’ve forgotten it. Something like Mark, or Michael, or Monty…”
“What are you, then?”
They faced each other several feet apart, without word, until the man made another sound, distracted.
“Oh, he has returned! Do you see?”
Lewis looked and saw nothing. He cast his eyes higher toward the sky. He still saw nothing at first, but then it appeared for him, like a star one can only see in their peripherals but not directly, fading in and out. A light hung in the sky, bobbed and rose as it traveled across the invisible countryside.
“That’s mine!” Lewis cried. “That’s my lantern!”
He startled as the man gave a shrill, siren whistle next to him. He looked confusedly between where the man stood and the light in the distance, and watched as the light changed course. It grew larger and brighter.
“Ahhhh…”
Soon a flutter of wings dropped over them, the glass lantern close enough to touch. Lewis opened his hands for it, eager to take it back. The bird, gray like clay, wrapped its talons over the thick, dusty arm of the man’s overcoat. The man took the lantern from its hooked beak.
“This is yours, you say?”
“Yes, it is.”
“You stick out like a sore thumb running around with this, you know.”
“The things in the woods are afraid of it…”
“Yes, they are.” The man offered the jar to him and Lewis took it gratefully, held it to his eyes and absorbed its warmth on his face. “But there are people much worse, who will not be afraid.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Where are you headed?”
Lewis lowered the lantern, held it between them so he could see just the faintest parts of the man’s form and the bird on his arm, both of them, their eyes black pits, looking in his direction.
“I don’t know. Anywhere. I don’t know.”
Hating this man and his bird, both their scrutinizing, criticizing gazes upon him, Lewis continued toward the other end of the bridge. As he passed them, the man said in a soft voice, “Travel safe, Lewis.”
A chill worked its way down the backs of his arms and legs. He didn’t look back or say goodbye. He couldn’t get away fast enough.
✽ ✽ ✽
As he walked the countryside, he heard the sounds of crickets in the grass, and other noises in the distant trees which may have been owls or some other bird. It was familiar, and in that familiarity he felt a sense of comfort, as if despite all the alien, nightmarish things which existed in this place, there were still some parts he recognized, things that indicated to him that not everything was malevolent, or served no other purpose than to perpetuate his misery. Some things, as they were in the living, breathing world, just were.
He thought of the man with the fiery eyes, and wondered who he’d been. Was he dangerous? Something told him so. How did he know his name? There had been something about him, Lewis thought. He wasn’t like him. He wasn’t like the old man, either. Lewis couldn’t know it for sure, as he didn’t know the intricacies of this world through and through, but he thought it safe to assume the man with the bird wasn’t cursed like they were. He wasn’t human.
…people much worse, who aren’t afraid…
Lewis held his lantern closer.
✽ ✽ ✽
✽ ✽ ✽
He’d lost his sense of time. He was following the road when he realized. It winded and fell and lifted over the countryside abyss, never changing in any substantial way, never leading anywhere. He wondered how long he’d been following it for, and his inability to estimate the time was…unsettling. He felt another punch to what little hope remained. How many hours had he spent walking this road since the inn? Were there such things as hours? How many days had passed since he pushed himself up off the shore the very first time? Had it even been a day? Had it been a week? He remembered the forest path, and how it’d felt like an eternity walking it alone. Like it would never end. He tried to guess, to quantify it in some way, perhaps by an estimate of how many steps he thought he’d taken, or how tired he’d become. There was nothing to judge it by. He was always walking and always tired. How tired the old man must feel by now in all his years of dark and misery…
He wondered if time could stretch so far that it felt like no time at all. Wasn’t that the way it always was?
It was lightning that saved him from his spiraling thoughts—erased them from his mind like chalk in a rainstorm.
A rainstorm.
The lightning happened as it usually does, silent and distant, and in that instant the world was lit. An intake of breath. The countryside throbbed into existence, opened up, glowing, blinding like a car’s headlight, and the horizon was framed inside—alien mountaintops etched in black,
their peaks like bent fingers grasping at the silver-sparkler sky. The fields beneath them were a silvery brushstroke, uninterrupted waves of grass in every direction. All of it vanished as quickly as it appeared once the lightning diffused, but still it burned against his vision.
Then thunder, deep and brooding, rolled overhead like a gentle warning.
He kept walking, a new anxious spring in his step. Lightning struck again. A silver web in the clouds. Once again he glimpsed the land, and saw trees scattered across the valley. They were thick and tall, and their branches…
Lightning flashed a third time, opening the sky as the second strike’s thunder traveled across it. In its light, eyes still fixed on the nearest tree, he swore he saw movement. Not something around the tree, or behind it, but the tree itself. In the momentary light, its branches stretched skyward, curled like narrow, wooden hands begging for something, anything. And then they were gone.
The third blanket of thunder lay over the valley, and as it growled from one end to the other the scent of rain blew with it, humid and fresh on Lewis’s cheeks.
The jar, he thought. The fire must be kept safe.
He tried to tuck his fire under the thinning rags hanging from his body. He wondered how far back the small house had been. Bypassing the snake might be worth it, he thought, if just to keep his fire out of the rain. Himself too…
But that’d been a long time ago. How long, of course, he couldn’t say for sure, but the chance to turn around had passed. And judging by the brief glimpses of the landscape he saw, there wasn’t going to be another structure to take refuge beneath for some time.
Lightning struck again and again, never too near. He scurried, hunched like an old woman determined to make it to Sunday Mass no matter the weather, all the while the heat of the glass jar pinched at the flesh on his side. He had nowhere else to hide it. He only prayed that whatever rain came down was just that—rain. Nothing sinister or surprising. He imagined lobsters falling from the clouds, claws greedy. Or even worse, venomous lobsters. Or giant ones. It could be anything, really. Why he was stuck on sky-borne lobsters he wasn’t sure. Anything to ruin his day.
And what a wonderful day it’s been so far.
He felt it, a drop just next to the corner of his eye. It wasn’t a lobster. Just rain. Just normal rain, cool and fresh and wet. First a drop on his brow, then on his lip, then his arms and hands. A light sprinkle. And it terrified him. He needed to find someplace to stay dry until it was over. Or at the very least, a place to keep his fire safe and burning.
The storm thickened. His shirt and shorts were soon soaked through. His hair dripped down his forehead. He turned the jar sideways, trying to balance it so that the opening wasn’t letting water in, but also careful not to let the wood chunk slide out. Trying to keep it out of the elements lessened its usefulness as a light source, so that he found himself relying on the inconsistent flashes of lightning instead to follow the course of the road. He passed a handful of trees, leafy and full and… wriggling, and passed them by. He would find something eventually. Something that wouldn’t tear him limb from limb if given the chance.
Or, he wondered, was it possible this storm was meant for him? The darkness was trying to strip him of his safeguards. He peered at the sky and feared the lightning.
It struck again, and in the flash he caught sight of something he could have sworn wasn’t there a moment ago. Something a short distance from the road, off in the field. Big and glistening and dark. Another flash revealed it clearer to him and he was dumbfounded he hadn’t seen it before. An old passenger train, derailed and derelict, sat abandoned, lopsided in the field. In another flash of lightning, he counted three passenger coaches behind the engine. One of them, the very rear, was turned on its side. He looked both ways up and down the road, checked for possible onlookers between the lightning flashes, before crossing into the grass to investigate. At the very least, it might serve as a temporary shelter from the rain.
He slowed as he neared the engine. He moved past, continued along the first passenger car. Lightning. It was quiet, far as he could tell. Empty. Using his firelight, he climbed up the shallow steps at the end of the first car, held the rusted railing to guide himself up. Gentle thunder rolled overhead. He felt his way to the door, which was already open for him. He stepped inside. It was immediately more comfortable and drier. The muffled rain thrummed on the roof. He bounced from one side of the aisle to the other, shuffling his feet, grasping at one support to the next. When he felt it was safe, that he was alone and hidden, he swung himself down into a seat, lantern burning beside him, and rested.
What a strange thing to find, he thought. Had he seen any tracks? He hadn’t noticed. Wherever it had come from, he was grateful. And that gratitude also worried him.
A few minutes passed. Lightning flashed again and again. Once, on the tail end of its thunder, another sound could be heard, distinctly out of place, masked under the storm. Lewis perked up. Taking up his lantern, he turned in his seat. It happened once more, that sound. He stood partially, leaned out into the aisle, his lantern revealing nothing beside him.
Flash!
A ray of silver light through every window, rows of dagger shadows from all the broken glass. At the end of the car, crouched in the center of the aisle, he saw it. It peered back at him with tiny, dewy eyes. A small, furry, brown dog. In an instant it was vanished, back to darkness. After a hesitant pause, Lewis gently made his way in the dog’s direction. Another flash. There it was again, head cocked. Lewis thought he saw its butt shimmying excitedly. The train plunged into darkness again. The dog barked for him.
Something about it felt familiar but he couldn’t say what.
The closer he came the slower he went. In the next burst of light he realized he was only eight or so steps away. It waited patiently, despite the excitement the waggle of its tail suggested. And for some strange reason, Lewis felt a certain eagerness as well.
Lightning lit the train once more and the dog was gone. Lewis stopped. The sky plunged him back into darkness. He took a step forward, lantern extended, and then another step, and another. Before long he reached the end of the car and found nothing.
The dog barked again.
“Huh…?”
It barked again and he stumbled back the way he came, spun in a circle. He held his lantern toward it, to the spot where it previously waited, now empty… and it barked again. The hair on his neck prickled. He stepped back. His eagerness was drained from him, replaced by the surreal sensation that something was wrong and was about to get worse. As the feeling mounted, raised the hairs on his arms, the urge to depart the train overwhelmed him. He turned back. He hurried along the aisle toward the other end where he’d first entered. The disembodied barking followed.
The train lit up like a gray day and Lewis screamed. The seats filled with passengers. Their grave faces were turned to him, eyes moving to watch him go by. His shoulders hunched around his neck as he fled for the door. Flash! Flash! The lightning glinted off their smooth scalps.
“Shit!”
The passengers lolled back in their seats. Their clothes lay flat and slack over their bones. The barking was louder than ever, agitated now, nipping at his heels. He slammed his shoulder against the doorway on his way out, spun himself around and fell. Lantern gripped tightly, he picked himself up. He tripped down the metal grate steps into the grass, pumped his arms as he ran. He prayed the lightning wouldn’t flash again, not until he was far away, not until the train was shrunken behind him. He chased through the field back toward the road. The rain pelted him angrily and he was drenched again in seconds.
Eventually his feet slapped the muddy path. He slowed, bent, heaving with his hands on his knees, the glass jar dotted with rain. The rain ran down his eyes, dripped from his open mouth as he sucked in air. The barking was gone.
When he looked back, and the lightning flashed again, he only saw the endless field.
✽ ✽ ✽
The mount
ain range in the distance was drawing near. Every other lightning strike brought it looming closer and closer overhead. The mud under his feet was slick. He moved faster, legs scissoring, toes skating. He checked on his jar, saw the fire still bright within. The closer he came to the mountain, the more he made out the canyon hidden through it, presumably where the road led. The lightning was much closer here. The thunder reached him almost instantly. He jolted at each whip crack, doused in silver fire.
Soon the foothills were in reach. The mountain split open ahead, a chasm of narrow dark. Not even the lightning could reveal its details. Surely he’d find a WELCOME mat at its entrance.
Just let it be dry, he thought. Let there be a nook or a cranny he could take shelter. And let there not be anything waiting for him inside said nook or cranny.
He came to the gap. The road narrowed slightly as it entered, the canyon walls straight and smooth on either side running up, up, up into the downpour. He stood at the opening and rested, holding his sideways jar to his eyes to examine the burning wood chunk. It would be okay. The storm would end sometime, and he’d find a safe place to wait.
A safe place.
There wasn’t such a thing. Not here.
He entered the canyon.
✽ ✽ ✽
Like everything else he’d encountered so far, the suffocating canyon path stretched on seemingly forever. The sheer rock faces on both sides never gave or allowed him any pockets of refuge. In fact, the canyon acted almost as a sort of funnel, so that the rain washed down and gathered on the path. His feet gulped in mud. The longer it rained, the worse the mud became. He struggled in it, trudged through it, sinking up to his ankles in places.
Now would be the perfect time for a lobster flood, he thought.
He lost his balance and slipped. He fell on his side, and his jar escaped his hands. It landed crooked in the mud. He crawled after it, plucked it out. A tiny bit of rainwater had splashed inside, though not enough to put out the fire. Breathing heavily, he clutched it to his chest. As he got to his feet lightning flashed overhead, blue and white streams down the canyon walls, and he thought he saw movement ahead just as the darkness reclaimed him. He clutched the jar tighter, a mild burn against his chest. Through the pattering rain he imagined he could hear another’s footsteps sloshing toward him. He braced himself.