“I…I don’t remember this place,” Blake said. Although the statement was true, the words tasted like a lie.
“Nonsense,” the old man said. “How could you have come so far and found your sight once again if not for memory?”
Blake thought back to the foul speech that had saved him from the creatures on the mud fields and the strange words that had restored his sight.
“Why have you returned?” the old man asked.
“I’m looking for someone,” Blake said. “A friend.”
“The girl?”
Blake nodded hesitantly. The old man’s knowledge made him uneasy.
“That is why you’ve returned? For her?”
“I saw her on the other side,” Blake said. “She asked me to help her.”
“Interesting,” the old man said. “Perhaps she’s stronger than he thought.”
“Stronger than who thought?”
The crucified figure did not answer immediately, continuing only after a long pause.
“It is not my place to say.”
Blake sighed.
“Can you tell me where I can find her?”
The old man looked at him strangely.
“In the tower, of course.”
“The tower?”
“Can you not see it for yourself, boy?” the old man asked, craning his neck over his shoulder.
Blake gazed beyond the crucified figure to the distant, dark horizon and there he saw the tower. Much like the old man himself, Blake was sure that it had not been there a few minutes ago. He was astonished that it could even stand erect, tumbling upward as if the stone blocks that formed its walls had collapsed from the ground and come to rest in the sky. The sight was disorienting and Blake staggered back, his legs wobbling and arms swinging to restore his balance.
But it was a rush of memories that helped him reclaim his equilibrium. He saw a cascade of twisted, disjointed stairs that led to a massive courtyard overlooking an endless plain of darkness. There was an ornate throne of carved, pitted bone and rusty iron encrusted with dried blood, standing before a procession of hooded creatures that stood like men, but were clearly as monstrous as anything he’d yet encountered. Next to the throne was a pool of black liquid, its surface still as earthen grave.
It was not the hideous nature of the recollections that made him want to cry out. It was the fact he was not repulsed by the image that horrified him.
He turned again to the ancient man nailed to the even more ancient tree. A black tear fell from his eye and Blake’s hands shuddered at the sudden, unpleasant thought of iron spikes being driven through bone and muscle.
“You must go now, boy,” the old man said.
He stared at his shaking hands and then looked into the old man’s eyes.
“Did I…?”
“I do not ask forgiveness of you, boy,” the old man said, his gnarled lips quivering.
He said nothing more. A dim memory told Blake that he should not spare pity for the old man, that the terrible punishment ascribed to him was well deserved.
Without another word, he turned his back on the old man and headed towards the tower.
The journey was not difficult and the ghastly structure seemed to loom larger on the horizon with each step he took. Blake wondered if perhaps it had been searching that barren land for him as well. As he drew closer to the inverted fortress, the memories sliding into his consciousness came into focus. He recalled the fear that paralyzed him as he was hauled through the tower’s gates in chains, remembered the indignity of a lifetime of servitude.
When he reached the gate, the spell required to open it sprang from his lips without thought. Inside, he found the stairs from his memory and immediately recognized the path that would take him skyward. Foul things emerged from the shadows to block his path, but they cowered aside at the wave of his hand. It would have been possible, he knew, to ascend the tower in seconds with the proper invocation, but he felt it better to climb the long stairs that took him through every section of the disjointed tower. He encountered more of the fortress’s inhuman occupants and their snarls quickly changed to whimpers as he passed them.
Countless times, Blake knew, he had traversed those very same stairs in service of the tower’s master. Memories of those long days of labor and longer nights of abuse filled his mind. But the tower was no longer as it was in those distant recollections; someone had changed it, stricken from sight every trace of its deposed lord. As he climbed higher, the memories of pain and loathing gave way to a sense of peace unlike anything he had felt since he fell into the shadow so many years ago.
Somehow, he knew, he was home again.
When he reached the courtyard atop the tower, his arrival was expected. The dreadful, hooded creatures lay prostrate at his approach, their long talons clattering against the stone floor. On the throne sat an emaciated figure, a man with nervous eyes and slumping shoulders who could not meet the hard stare of his guest. Blake felt a hatred born of many hard years well into his breast at the sight of him. He remembered enough of the man to recognize with some pleasure that he was but a dim shadow of the fearsome tyrant who frequented so many of his nightmares.
Beside the throne was the pool of brackish water, but it no longer stood empty as he remembered it. A set of chains ran from the stone rim of the pool into its center, where they were fastened to the metal collar around the neck of a young woman. She alone failed to acknowledge Blake’s presence, her blank gaze floating to some safe haven inside her mind where her sanity was delicately preserved.
Blake easily recognized the girl of his childhood in the woman’s hollow, bony features.
“You’ve returned,” the man on the throne said.
Blake turned towards him, but the man’s skittish eyes avoided his own. “I hadn’t expected to see you again.”
Blake glanced around the courtyard. Like the interior of the tower itself, everything was not as he’d left it.
He found that displeasing.
“Yes,” he said, “I can see that.”
“How did you find your way back across the threshold?”
Blake gestured to Mallory. The thin man’s lips drew back to reveal his crooked sneer.
“A strong spirit, this one,” he said. “Not unlike you when we first met.”
“She doesn’t belong here, Nazgrin,” Blake said, at last recalling the fiend’s name. “Why did you take her?”
Was this ploy to cast me out of the shadows with your witchcraft not enough of an insult to me?”
“Your passage beyond the darkness left you with echoes of your time here,” Nazgrin said. “If you spoke of them to anyone, they might have become clearer and led you back here. I couldn’t take that chance.”
Blake took a step towards the throne. The thin man cowered at his approach.
“How small you’ve become, Nazgrin,” Blake said. “To think that I once trembled in your presence. This scheme to reclaim your throne was…amusing, if inconvenient.”
“What is to become of me?” Nazgrin’s feeble voice cracked as he spoke. Blake could now recall a time when it had thundered through the darkness, a time when he was but a blind and helpless child alone in the unceasing night.
A simple gesture brought the hooded creatures around him to their feet. Two of them stepped forward and seized Nazgrin by the arms.
“An example must be made of you; another reminder of the fate that lies in store for those who raise their hand against their true master. Remove his tongue, his feet, and his hands. When that bloody work is done, strip him and cast him into the mud flats where the sightless ones dwell. There his bloody stumps will avail him little and his empty mouth will invoke no magic to secure his safety.”
Black tears fell from Nazgrin’s eyes and his body trembled.
“This is my justice,” Blake said, his voice carrying across the courtyard. He nodded to the creatures holding the prisoner fast. “See that it is done.”
The hooded things pulled Nazg
rin to his feet and dragged him away. The dejected usurper did not resist.
Blake stepped over to the pool of liquid and at the touch of his hand, the iron collar around Mallory’s neck crumbled to bits of rust. It took a moment for her to rouse from her stupor, but when she regained her senses she could only stare at Blake.
“Blake?” she asked. “Is…is that really you? I saw you…in a dream.”
“You are mistaken,” he said. “Blake was consumed by the misbegotten shadows of this land long before you arrived. I am Shalador, lord of all that is encompassed by the darkness and the terror of the eternal night. A craven treachery cast me beyond the bounds of this realm and shattered memories long held me in exile, but now I return to exact my vengeance.
“You do not belong in this place, Mallory Owens. I shall return you now to your proper time and place so that your years of torment here will be remembered as but broken pieces of an unpleasant dream. Sleep now…sleep and know peace once more.”
Shalador placed his hand on Mallory’s forehead and she flickered for an instant before disappearing completely. His task completed, the lord of darkness seated himself upon his grim throne, pleased by the knowledge that order had been restored to his world at last. A faint, nagging voice in his mind that screamed out in horror at his satisfaction, but it was easily ignored and forgotten along with the memories of that dreadful world of light in which he had spent so many years in exile.
Mallory was swallowed by a shadow when she was nine years old and never quite got over the experience. As with so much else in the blur of youth, it happened quickly and without warning when she got into bed and noticed that the silhouette of the old banyan tree in Market Street Park could be seen upon her window even in the darkness of night.
She remembered seeing her friend Blake playing near the tree the day before. It was the last time she, or anyone, saw him before he vanished. His parents worried that he’d been kidnapped on his way home from school that day, but Mallory knew better. She knew that his disappearance had something to do with the shadow of that hideous tree, though something told her that it was unwise to speak of it to anyone.
“Now, then, Ms. Owens, where did we leave off?”
Doctor Lambert started every session with the same question. Mallory wondered if someone actually took the time to teach him that in medical school school. Probably so; the question was just a trap to get her talking.
“Ah, yes, of course,” Lambert said, pretending to find the proper place in his notes as if he hadn’t read them a dozen times over since last week. “You were telling me about your friend Blake, the one who disappeared in elementary school.”
Mallory nodded.
“The two of you were inseparable, according to your parents.”
She shrugged.
“We were friends.”
“Would you like to talk about his disappearance?”
Mallory had only recently been introduced to Doctor Lambert, who seemed determined to unearth things that she knew were best left forgotten.
She already hated him.
“Mallory?”
Mallory avoided looking at him, her eyes glancing casually around the room until they came to rest on one of the ceiling lights. It had been flickering for days and just as she looked up it died. A thin shadow fell upon Doctor Lambert and at a brief glance Mallory swore that the shadow bore a distinctive and familiar shape.
“Well, Doctor,” she said, “why don’t I tell you about what happened to me the night after Blake disappeared?”
“By all means, Mallory,” he said, his pen nearly leaping out of his hand as he gave her his full attention.
The shadow covering Doctor Lambert darkened slightly and, for a brief instant, Mallory thought she saw him flicker out of sight for a moment.
A familiar presence entered the room, a presence she had not felt for what seemed like a lifetime.
“First,” she said, “there was the darkness…”
A Stranger in Sandyridge
Previously unpublished
One of the very first short stories I ever wrote, “A Stranger in Sandyridge” dates back to either 2003 or 2004. Greatly inspired by Stephen King’s The Gunslinger, the story has undergone a great deal of change and revision over the years. Although never published, it’s been accepted for publication on three different occasions only to have the publisher either fold or go on hiatus before release. Those several near misses, however, resulted in multiple story revisions that addressed most of the original version’s problems. The final version of the story is therefore something of a hybrid, combining elements from every period of my writing career. I’m disappointed that it never saw publication, but I’m glad to finally share it here for the first time.
Jed Adams hoped the rain would let up soon; bad weather was bad for business. The rain had discouraged any travelers from setting out for the last few days and the locals still frequented the saloon, it was the folks passing through who put the most money in his pockets. Sandyridge didn’t look like much, but it was the last town on the road heading westward. If the prospectors and transients heading for the frontier didn’t resupply in Sandyridge, they usually didn’t last too long.
Three straight days of rain had transformed the town’s dirt street into a mud pit, and if the downpour didn’t let up soon it would turn into a small river. It was quite peculiar to get so much rain at that time of year and even the driest soil could only soak up so much water.
Jed looked at his pocket watch. Nine o’clock: far too early to close. The steady drone of raindrops on the saloon’s roof was already lulling him to sleep.
“Hey, Jed, come here and fill me up again, eh?”
Jed turned to see old Dale Johnson hunched over the bar waving a glass over his head.
“Alright, you old booze hound, give me a minute.”
He should have cut the rancher off an hour ago, but Jed was too tired to pick a fight with him tonight.
“Another whiskey, Dale?”
“Yeah, that’d be good.”
Jed fetched a bottle and filled his glass. The old rancher looked and smelled like he hadn’t bathed in at least a month. He reminded himself to wash Dale’s glass twice.
“Jesus, Dale, you look like shit.”
Dale raised his head just enough to look Jed in the eye.
“You ain’t tried to send me home yet.”
“No, I ain’t.”
“Why not?”
“Well, it ain’t always easy to send you home, Dale. Don’t got the strength to fight about it tonight.”
“That so?”
Jed nodded and backed away from the counter.
“You been tired a lot lately, Jed?”
“Yeah, I reckon.”
The rancher grunted. “Lotta folks round here been tired.”
“Yeah,” Jed said, “the Reverend says it’s probably a cold or something.”
Dale sneered.
“Don’t much care for him; ain’t of the right sort. Don’t preach nothing but poison. Got this town all worn out with his carryin’ on.”
Jed glanced over to the back corner of the room where Sheriff Burkes sat alone. He didn’t take kindly to folks speaking ill of the Reverend.
“Maybe you’ve had too much tonight, Dale. You ain’t talking sense.”
Jed reached for Dale’s glass, but the old man pulled it away.
“Stop being a fool, son,” he said. “We’ve all been getting sicker and sicker every week since that preacher showed up and you know it.”
The sharp clinking of boot spurs caught Jed’s attention and his stomach seized at the sight of Sheriff Burkes striding towards them. Burkes used to be a good-natured man, but after the Reverend’s arrival, his methods grew more extreme and his judgment unyielding. Now, he even looked mean. Jed saw no sign of pity in those beady, coal black eyes, and his skin looked deathly pale. A strange odor he couldn’t quite place emanated from the lawman’s body and his once jovial voice sounded like something
being dragged across hard, broken gravel.
“What’s the problem here, Jed?”
The question scared him. Not because Dale had said things that could get them in trouble, but because the sheriff might think Jed agreed with him.
“Oh, nothing, Sheriff. Old Dale here’s just had a little too much whiskey today, you know how he gets.”
“That so?” Burkes looked down at Dale, who stared intently at his empty glass.
Before Jed could respond, the front door opened and a man he didn’t know strode into the saloon. He wore a dark, long riding coat and a wide brimmed hat that covered little of the brown hair hanging down to his shoulders. His face was young and his skin much smoother than that of the weather beaten travelers Jed was used to seeing. Everyone in the saloon turned to look at him as the doors closed. The stranger eyed the sheriff from head to toe as he strode past him and sat down at the bar.
“Evening,” he said. Jed couldn’t quite place the man’s accent. “Can I get a drink? Damn weather finally gotten the better of me tonight.”
Sheriff Burkes backed away, his face twisted queerly as if being close to the man caused him discomfort. He slowly made his way to the door and, taking his hat and coat from the rack, stepped out into the rain.
Jed suddenly wondered if he should be more afraid of Burkes or the stranger at his bar.
“Charming fellow,” the man said.
Unsure of what to do, Jed pushed a glass towards the newcomer.
“What’ll it be, stranger?”
“Scotch,” the man said, “if you’ve got it.”
“Bad night to be traveling,” Dale said. “Worst place to stop if you ask me.”
“Well, he didn’t ask you, now did he?” Jed said as he filled the man’s glass.
Dale slapped the stranger’s arm.
“Don’t mind Jed, here, fella. He ain’t been himself lately. I’m Dale, Dale Johnson.”
The stranger shook Dale’s extended hand.
“Name’s Korvin,” he said.
Distant Worlds Volume 1 Page 17