The Shriek from Below the Chipper

June 10, 2026May 31, 2026 ~ TheDamned ~ Leave a comment

I know exactly why Tench Belmont didn’t come to work at the veneer plant on that terrible night, and I had nothing to do with it. That’s what I told Kal M. when he said, “You probably pushed him into the machine.”

I was leaning over the chipper at the time, pushing more scrap wood down into the grinders, just before Foreman Ellis put me on forklift duty. Young twitchy Kal came up behind me, like he always did, and shoved my shoulders. I ignored that.

“Can’t you hear the voice?” I shouted. “It’s screaming “Let me Out!”

“You’re going to end up in the nuthouse,” Kal answered. “Not me. One day I’m going to be President of the United States.”

Talk about nuts. Bury Tench alive? All I did was hear his voice, from the dimensions beyond and below the roar of the machine. And Kal’s presidential ambitions? Seemed weird coming from a guy who spent his off-job time picking up pop cans from the ditch.

Tench Belmont was the forklift driver who delivered scrap wood for the chip machine. Tench: Like me, worked midnight shift at the veneer mill. Burly, always moving, took uppers to stay awake, raced around with his forklift, purposely banging into walls for excitement. He poured warm tea down Kal’s neck as the young fella descended the lunchroom stairs. I shouldn’t have laughed but I needed monotony relief.

“Even you !” Kal pointed, his crooked teeth bared. “Even you!” He repeated as his huge halo of yellow hair puffed out the sides of his orange hardhat.

Then he screamed at Tench. “When I become President of the United States you will pay for this!”

Tench laughed then, exactly as I heard his laugh beneath the grinder.

I figured Kal and Tench fed off each other. Kal: always angry. Tench: always bored.

I worked the midnight shift outside in the mill yard. I liked turning my head to see the moon rise and fall. To stay awake, I moved fast, throwing in the scrap wood and tamping it down with my sturdy iron pole, over and over. Reality faded with repetition as the grinder tore the wood to shreds.

“Keep your head up, you don’t want to fall in,” said our religious fanatic foreman, Ellis. “Watch the stars, lift up your eyes to the heavens towards God, not to the devil in the chipper.”

“What do you mean, there’s a devil in the chipper?” I asked as Ellis walked away repeating “read your Bible, Leon.”

But yes, I often hung my head over the lip of the machine, because of what I heard down there, behind the grinding roar of splitting wood. It became clearer than the sky around me.

“Let me out!”

Yes, from below the spinning augers, as they ripped and tore, like a new world opened, and from below them a shout, a scream, a bloodcurdling yell “Reach in! Reach in for me!”

It seemed more like an echo, then mocking and cruel, like Tench.

Tench liked to take breaks from his forklift deliveries to stick pieces of bread on the end of fish hooks, and cast out in the darkness for seagulls. He snagged Kal’s ear as the irritable skinny 18 year old pushed his clean-up cart past us. Tench’s reel unwound as Kal screeched and slapped his hand to his face. “Aaaaaa!”

Tench snipped the fishline with his jackknife. “Looks like I gotcha there little buddy.”

“F… you!” Kal shoved his clean up cart ahead of him and scooted away, holding his wound with one hand. Later, he sat eating in the lunch room, blood dripping from his earlobe, Tench stepped up behind him clapped two slabs of sourdough bread on either side of the boy’s wooly head and yelled to everyone “That’s cannibal filling!”

Kal screamed loud and long, grabbing out at Tench, who twisted the boy’s thumb, held it as the kid shrieked.. Nobody said or did anything. Tench held Kal’s thumb until the kid yelled “O. K, I give!”

“Why don’t you tell Foreman Ellis?” I asked the boy later.

“Why didn’t you try and help me?” he snarled up, throwing the bandaid I gave him into the chipper. “I don’t rat.”

In the mill the rule was “Mind your own business.”

Nobody wanted to be part of any work drama.

Besides, Foreman Ellis was stoned over his Bible most of the time, carrying it around open wide, hanging his head to read and walking right into walls.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor!” he called out.

I thought about Tench snagging Kal’s ear, couldn’t sleep because of it.

After work I hitchhiked a ride into town, Tench and two girls picked me up, we all crunched into the front seat. I saw Kal staggering in the ditch carrying a garbage bag, “I’d huck a beer bottle out the window for him to pick up, but I’m on the wrong side of the truck,” Tench told us.

“Why do you hate him so much?” I asked, and the two young ladies laughed.

“I don’t hate anyone!” Tench roared. “The guy gives me a rush, man. His reaction, trying to fight me last night with his arms all up like a girl’s. He’s such a joke!”

Tench’s face went all blurry and blotchy for a second. I rubbed my eyes. Must be lack of sleep. But in that moment his devil voice pierced right into my mind, I couldn’t forget the tone as he disparaged Kal. Like everything was a prank, and he was the King of Gags. The two girls in the cab with him ate it up, giggling and wriggling around in their seats.

At the chipper that night I heard his voice louder, that voice screaming “I’m suffocating! Get me out!”

I turned off the machine and stared down through the augers. Something grabbed my shoulder and pulled me up. It was Kal.

“You see?” He said. “When you’re in trouble, I help you!”

“The machine is off,” I said.

“I could’ve turned it back on when you were leaning,” Kal said. “That’s what that bastard Tench would’ve done.”

“Don’t you hear the voice?” I asked.

“Nothing there, Leon,” said Kal. “Except your own hollow brain.”

That morning Tench didn’t come into work. Foreman Ellis said “I tried to call him but he’s not answering. Do any of you guys know where in the name of God he’s at?”

As usual, nobody knew anything.

At around 3 am Ellis came around to the lunchroom and announced.

“Leon, I’m going to substitute you on forklift. Kal’s going to relieve on the chipper.”

“If you hear the voices,” I told Kal, “Don’t reach in. It’s Tench. That’s why he’s not here. He’s in the world behind the machine.”

“The insides of your head are talking back, KooKoo Leon,’ Kal told me. “And I won’t do anything that will stop my rise to be President of the United States.”

I jumped onto the forklift, an hour later was rolling by the railway tracks when Foreman Ellis came running.

“Everyone get out and look for Kal! God yelled out and told me something bad happened!”

I raced towards the chipper machine. The moon shimmered bright and the stars lit up over it.

Foreman Ellis had already turned off the power. He held a huge flashlight towards the grinder. I pushed my head forward into the machine, saw red all over the metal maw inside, and what looked like a pair of boot laces wrapped up in the augers.

I couldn’t figure it out. Kal hated Tench. Why would he reach in with the machine running? Was the voice that strong? He said he hadn’t heard it before.

The company shut the whole mill down for the investigation.

“His tamping pole dropped, and he leaned over to reach it,” Ellis told me when the plant opened up two days later. “The machine pulled him in.”

Tench stood with us, staring into the grinder.

“Why were you away that day?” I asked him.

“Because of my nightmare,” Tench said. His voice trembled as he spoke. “Kal was screaming how much he hated me. I reached out like I did in the lunchroom and grabbed his thumb. He was trying to wriggle away and I wouldn’t let go.” He turned to me. “It was a hangover dream, Leon. It wasn’t real, was it?”

“The devil’s voice travels far,” Foreman Ellis stated. “For those fated to hear.”

Now, in the wee hours, Tench slumps in the lunchroom with his face forward, trying to rest on the table. He’s taken his fishing rod home. “No more jokes,” he tells me.

The voice in the grinder hasn’t gone away.

“Let me out of here. Reach in and pull me out!” Kal screams.

This is what I tell myself: I don’t know why the boy still yells like this, because all they found were his boot laces. The pole slipped, and he reached too far in.

∼ Harrison Kim

Blue Sky Somewhere

June 3, 2026May 31, 2026 ~ Marge Simon ~ 5 Comments

Thea parts the curtains on the day ahead, then quickly ducks away. Sunlight unfurls from the window panes sparkling an unused coffee cup and a basket of imaginary rolls. She knows it’s make-believe, a tableau laid out by habit. Useless to pretend she’s one of them beyond her home, but it is all she’s had for centuries.

On the floor, the shadow of a leafy oak reminds her how life struggles on outside. She’d love a glimpse of cobalt sky, a sight she treasured on the shores of Attica. Those sweet days, a memory from centuries ago when she was young, unaware her mortality was soon to change. But now the blood of cities bleeds into a wounded sky; the atmosphere so thick with toxic fumes, few mortals dare to walk the streets without a mask.

It seems unfair that she must bear the situation, knowing it was never her intention. But worse, the shrinking population bodes her ultimate demise. She wanders darkened rooms, touching surfaces, feeling the measure of textures, the contrast of cloth and stone, glass and polished wood. Things in her small world she knows so well. Inside things, held dearly but dearer still the feel of sun on skin. A blue sky, there must be a glimpse of it somewhere.

Why wait any longer?

A twist of latch, an open door. She steps into the light.

∼ Marge Simon

Choices

May 20, 2026May 9, 2026 ~ afstewart ~ 6 Comments

My portrait hung on the wall in the library.
Covered in dust, housed inside a tarnished frame; a sad reminder of better days. A hint of mold drifted in the air, the corners of the patterned wallpaper peeling and brittle, and cold ashes sat in the neglected fireplace. Some claimed the house was haunted. I always smiled at that notion.
Yet, I could see why its reputation turned. My home had fallen into disrepute, chased by rumours and scandal.
My fault.
My choices brought us all to ruin.
I should never have married Robert, that weak-willed philandering fool.
I should never have invited my cousin Angelique to live with us.
Such a coquette, Angelique. Sweet, polite, outwardly a lady, inside a heartless scheming shrew. Flirting with my husband, under the guise of innocence. That woman never knew the meaning of the word. Robert, of course, fell for her charms. Never a smart or discerning man, but a rich one. The appeal for both myself and Angelique, I suspect. They dallied under my roof, thinking I didn’t know, didn’t see what they were doing. Not everything, but enough to be disgusted with their behavior. I challenged Robert and gave him an ultimatum. Not that he heeded anything I said. I regretted that confrontation, but I suppose it doesn’t matter now.
Both of them ignored me and made their own plans. Plans that didn’t include me.
They thought they had won.
They never counted on my spiteful nature.
I made them pay for their sins.
Whispering in Robert’s ear at night, I berated him, accused him, tormented him in his sleep. Angelique I harassed daily, reminding her she was not the mistress of this house. I hid her things, played cruel pranks, and made her life a misery. Their passion turned to resentment, and they sniped at each other, arguing constantly.
Ah, the sound of their discord was such a delight.
After months of constant strife and unhappiness, my horror of a husband broke, his will eroded with melancholy. I followed him that day, as he walked out onto the third-floor balcony of the music room, and watched him jump. Rushing forward, I saw his fall, laughing as he hit the ground with a satisfying thud. I was still there watching as Angelique found his body. Her screaming soothed my soul.
In the days after, things changed. Robert’s will was read, and Angelique found her fortunes reversed, her impertinent, scheming self thrown out of the house without a penny. I remained, still the mistress of my home.
No matter what happens, this house will always be mine.
For my portrait still hangs in the library.
And my murdered bones are buried beneath the wine cellar floor.

~ A. F. Stewart

All Flavors

May 13, 2026May 9, 2026 ~ Nina D'Arcangela ~ 3 Comments

You wouldn’t think such a thing of me, but that doesn’t make it untrue. You don’t want to believe I would do such as this, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. You, of what you perceive to be a higher nature, claim you wouldn’t commit the atrocities I have, but that doesn’t make you better than me.

What would you do to save your own? Would you debase that moral turpitude you carry so pretentiously? Would you lower yourself to any level necessary to ensure your survival? Of course you would, don’t posture and preen while I get my hands dirty. You are no different…

Well, maybe you are a bit different. You see, you hear, you feel. You can scent a fragrance on the air, taste its tang on your tongue. But you cannot see past the smaller task, hear the pleas of our ancestors, throb with the wail of babes unborn. You can’t stand the smell of the offal, nor ingest the entrails to read a true intent – I can. I can do these things and more.

Don’t worry, your failed gratitude won’t stop me from performing as I must. A wolf in sheep’s clothing? Nay, a warrior from time immemorial hiding in plain sight, that’s what I am. And I will conquer our enemies to keep your hands clean. What do I ask in return? When the fight is over, the battle won, do not burn me as I burn those who have affronted us; I will not tolerate that again.

∼ Nina D’Arcangela

For Blood

May 8, 2026 ~ Miriam H. Harrison ~ 4 Comments

It did not start as a hunger for blood. No, it started as a far more familiar appetite, the usual set of needs. The need to be held. The need to be comforted. The need to have all other needs seen, noticed, met.

She started, then, as we all do. She started hungry. But unfortunately, she stayed hungry.

It was not enough to live on just enough. To live in a body just fed enough, just warm enough, just noticed enough. Just enough did not satisfy her hunger.

And so, unnoticed, her hunger grew. It was a need that whimpered, that paced, that howled to be noticed. Needy, she was called. As though she was wrong to need. As though it was her fault that those needs squirmed inside her, looking to be seen.

And as that hunger grew, there was less of her and more of it. A body too small, a hunger too great. Growing strong in her weakness, it was only a matter of time.

By the time they noticed the full force of her hunger, it was too late. Too late to satisfy her with anything else. Too late to realize that it didn’t have to be this way.

After all, it did not start as a hunger for blood.

∼ Miriam H. Harrison

Conspiracy

April 29, 2026April 18, 2026 ~ Richard Meldrum ~ 4 Comments

It was their weekly coffee. Two middle-aged ladies, meeting for a drink and a chat in their local café. They’d been friends for decades, ever since university. Amanda often wondered why they’d stayed so close; they didn’t really have any shared interests. Maybe it was because they lived in the same town. Maybe it was because they were both single; Amanda had been widowed in her thirties, Linda had never married. No matter the reason, their weekly meetings had become routine.

Linda had always been a little odd, but as the years passed, she’d become downright eccentric. She was always coming up with new, crackpot theories. Today it was about doctors. Amanda patiently listened without comment.

“It’s the doctors that give you cancer and those horrible diseases. How many times have you heard about a perfectly healthy person dying a few weeks after a routine checkup? They walk in, healthy and fit, and then the doctor diagnoses some dreadful disease!”

“Well, yes, I’ve heard that a couple of times. But I don’t understand why you think it’s the doctors causing it. Those people were just ill without knowing it.”

Linda gave her friend a condescending look.

“Oh, Amanda, you’re so naive. I’ll tell you why. It’s the doctors, they have special toxins, poisons. Bacteria. They’re paid by the drug companies to infect you, so they can make more money! It’s a global conspiracy.”

The conversation was getting a little too much, even by Linda’s standards. Amanda spoke, trying to inject some sanity into the topic.

“Linda, you know I work at a doctor’s surgery. You think I wouldn’t have noticed a little thing like that?”

“Of course not! You’re not in the loop, the doctors keep it to themselves.”

“I handle all the orders, including the drugs. I would have noticed.”

“Don’t be silly, Amanda. The poisons aren’t going to be sent through the normal routes.”

Amanda sighed inside. It was aliens last month, now this. She wondered for the umpteenth time if she could simply stop talking to her friend. Would Linda let her?

The next day at work, Amanda thought it would be funny to mention Linda’s theory to her boss, Dr. Lansing. His eyes flashed in annoyance and some other emotion Amanda couldn’t quite identify. It almost looked like fear.

“How ridiculous!” he snorted.

“That’s what I told her.”

“I hate hearing nonsense like that.”

“I know Dr. Lansing. I tried to tell her. She’s always getting these silly ideas, she spends too much time on the internet. She believes all that silly nonsense and then insists on spreading it around. It was aliens last month.”

He picked up a piece of paper from Amanda’s desk.

“She is clearly delusional. Disturbed. Write her name and address. She needs help.”

Amanda hesitated. Lansing detected her reluctance.

“Amanda, anyone who believes such nonsense is obviously mentally ill. She needs some intervention before it gets worse. Don’t you want to help your friend?”

Amanda wrote down the required information, with a sense of disquiet. Linda wasn’t ill, just eccentric, but she supposed Dr. Lansing knew best.

Linda didn’t answer when Amanda phoned the next week to arrange coffee. That was worrying. Amanda went round to her house, but there was no response. Had Linda decided on a spur of the moment trip? Surely, she would have let Amanda know. Amanda briefly thought about phoning the police, but decided she didn’t want to make a food of herself. Linda would turn up.

It wasn’t until the next week that Amanda saw the headline in the local newspaper.

‘Local woman, Linda Evans, found drowned’

Amanda felt an overwhelming sense of grief. Only now, after this, did Amanda realize how much her silly friend had meant to her. But amidst her tears, Amanda sensed something wasn’t right. The article reported that Linda had died while swimming in a nearby lake. Her clothes had been found at the scene, indicating she’d decided to take a dip. The weather had been unusually warm. There had been no suicide note; nothing to suggest it was anything other than a tragic accident.

“Well, that can’t be right,” she said to herself.

Amanda knew something about Linda that no one else knew. She’d discovered it by accident at university, when Linda had been hysterical after being pushed into a swimming pool by some of their classmates. Linda had told her that she’d always been terrified of water; she’d never even learnt to swim. Linda would never have decided to go swimming in the lake, not in a million years. Amanda was reminded of the note she’d written for Dr. Lansing. There couldn’t be a connection, could there? Surely the timing was a coincidence. It had to be. She thought back to the expressions that had flashed across Dr. Lansing’s face. Anger, then fear. Despite herself, she began to wonder.

∼ RJ Meldrum

The Transfer

April 22, 2026March 14, 2026 ~ Elaine Pascale ~ 6 Comments

Tater tots.

Tuesdays are always tater tots. Jax swore that if he ever developed dementia, he could always be confident of the day of the week due to the smells from the prison cafeteria.

Tater tots were also what put him in his current situation. At least, they placed him on the path. Snot nosed Bryson Russo had stolen Jax’s tots in the second grade. Bryson knew, as did everyone, that the warm school lunch was the only meal Jax tended to get and those tots were meant to sustain him as he tried to sleep while his dad wailed on his mother.

Jax hadn’t reacted while Bryson had smiled, tots tucked between teeth like a demented jack-o-lantern. Instead, he had waited until after school where he introduced Bryson’s teeth to a brick he had found at a neighboring construction site.

At Midian Penitentiary, no one messed with Jax’s tots.

No one messed with him at all.

Thus, Jax couldn’t believe his luck when, after looking at the same walls for years, he was told he was being transferred.

Transferred was a term that was whispered like a prayer within the confines of Midian. Midian specialized in ignoring basic human rights, and very few ever found themselves walking away from a sentence. Most died in their cells, even if they were to serve for a short amount of time. There were no investigations; there were no Netflix documentaries made about the plight of those serving time at Midian and the atrocities they faced while receiving correction.

As his behavior had been far from “good” while serving time, Jax was not sure why he was receiving this heavenly reprieve.

Perhaps his family had sent letters on his behalf. This seemed unlikely as no one had visited him in his decade and a half behind bars nor had they accepted his phone calls. His father had been long dead (and there had been no words of thanks given to Jax from his father’s victims) and his mother had tired of bailing him out of trouble, especially when very real bail was required.

When the day arrived, the guards ushered Jax to the holding area where he was strip searched, given a new uniform, and shackled to the point that he was more chains than man. He was placed in the back of a van; two guards were sent to watch him during the drive.

Hours passed and Jax had no idea where he was being sent. As he had no family or friends to notify of his whereabouts, he simply accepted the idea of the transfer. One cell was as good as another, as he suffered no delusions of ever living outside of a cell again.

Eventually the van stopped and Jax was ushered into a small building. There were adjustable chairs and arm rests and trays of tools, such as those found in a tattoo parlor. Jax had lots of ink so that was more intriguing than daunting.

The guards led him to a chair and placed him on his back. He had a good view of the ceiling that had traces of spatter. That was daunting.

A needle was inserted into Jax’s neck and he began to feel tired and dizzy.

“He’ll be under soon,” a voice said.

“Maybe give him another dose?” one of the guards suggested.

“You want to kill him?” the original voice asked.

“Absolutely not,” the other guard replied, “we need him very much alive. You know what you’re doing though. You’re the artist.”

Jax had no idea why an artist would be putting him to sleep.

As the artist began removing Jax’s chains and clothing, Jax realized he had not taken well to the anesthesia. He was too drugged to move or give any indication of his consciousness. And that was the problem, he retained consciousness.

He heard the guards talking to the artist, talking about him.

“We want him 5’8”, darker skin tone, and no visible tattoos.

“Y’all come up with more and more challenges for me…” The artist sounded tired.

“We have no choice. The perp died, guard went too hard on him.” The guard sighed. “We had promised the boys. They said they would behave if they just had the chance to turn out the ped.”

“Aren’t you all a bunch of Santa’s delivering a present?” the artist snickered.

“We maintain compliance. Nothing more, nothing less. So, we’re giving them the ped. We need you to make the transfer.”

As the anesthesia finally took effect, Jax realized that he was being transferred in more ways than one.

∼ Elaine Pascale

Harlequin God

April 15, 2026April 11, 2026 ~ Charles Gramlich ~ 6 Comments

The wind uses the forest to voice its thoughts. It uses the pinions of owls. I hear the words, though I don’t know the language. The dragonflies understand. The geckos do, with their flanks working like bellows. Sitting on my deck, I listen to the clack of wooden wind chimes, the tink-tink of copper ones. Something caws in the distance. I think it’s a crow. Or something mimicking a crow. My ears keep me grounded but my eyes are lost in greenery.

Twenty yards from my chair, the woods rise. Pines. Oaks. Magnolias. Cyrilla. Spanish moss twists along their limbs like the beards of old men. Blackberry brambles fill the underbrush, gravid with unripened fruit. Things hide among the green. Shadows sweep across the world with wings. Perhaps there are birds high in the air casting them. But I don’t see them; I cannot swear they are there. And the shadows are large. Perhaps they are fossil shadows, leftovers from the time of pteranodons and pterodactyls.

But the living things that fill the woods are not fossils. A moment ago, a long silken blackness raced down the bare trunk of a pine, an animal shape three feet long with a sleek head and long tail. My mind told me I’d seen the shadow of one pine swaying past another in the wind. But I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it because of the god who conceals himself below that spot in the bushes. He is painted many shades of green and black, and blends so well with his surroundings that I cannot tell where he ends and the world begins. Sometimes I see only his eyes, like specks of sun reflected in tear drops. Sometimes I see his torn cloak and the ratty top hat he wears. I have never seen his mouth. I don’t know if he smiles. I wonder if he has teeth, and if they are long.

The god watches me, very quietly watches me. I suspect the silk-black animal is really one of his angels. I’m sure there are more. The hide from me, even as the god tries to hide. He has planted the forest on his back as camouflage. But the wind reveals him. The voices in the breeze are prayers coming in from worshippers all over the world.

I wonder if the god would join me if I invited him for a drink. My mind is divided. My human part suggests that he will not leave the woods, that without the glory of his surroundings he would appear only shabby and small. He could not tolerate that. The animal part of me, though, says he’s already here, hunched over and dripping behind me.

Should I turn my head? Should I show him my own teeth? I don’t want to scare him off. I’m very hungry, and it has been a long time since I’ve eaten a meal as fine as a god.

∼ Charles Gramlich

Bones and All

April 8, 2026February 21, 2026 ~ Lee Andrew Forman ~ 4 Comments

No one saw her the way I did. Her beauty inspired a reverence within me that not even the word of God could outshine. I gazed into hallowed eyes, ran my fingers up her long legs. I cradled her in an embrace that made our bodies one. She was my love in life, and so would be in death. She was the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things.

Despite her body ravaged by plague, I still found her beautiful. Nothing could stray my heart from seeing her soul, brilliant and pure—like the stars in the sky, spread vast and endless. I held her thin remnants, cold, pale, hard to the touch, and even after my vessel failed to move and fell to decay, I’d join her eternally on this Earth and beyond.

∼ Lee Andrew Forman

The Ash Riders

April 1, 2026March 28, 2026 ~ TheDamned ~ 2 Comments

The first rider did not emerge from the dark so much as separate from it, the outline of horse and man moving undeniably slow as though the night itself was reluctant to release them. At a distance, there was nothing immediately unnatural about the shape. Just a mounted soldier moving at an unhurried pace. But the longer Elias, the night watchman, watched the more the details refused to settle on anything living. The horse’s gait was steady, too steady, each step placed with certainty and there was no sound of breath, no shift of muscle under the skin, no life in the movement beyond the function of moving.

When it passed into what light remained, the truth of it came forward all at once.

The horse was dead.

Not freshly fallen, not blood soaked or torn, but long gone to ruin. Its hide had dried and tightened over its frame, pulling back in places where the flesh had receded entirely, exposing bone along the ribs in pale, splintered ridges. Its eyes were gone, the sockets hollow and dark. They were packed with the same dry ash that covered the ground and with each step the ash lifted slightly, spilling in faint, silent drifts down the length of its face. Its lips had shrunk back from its teeth, leaving them exposed in a permanent stiffness that was not quite a snarl and not quite empty.

The rider sat in the saddle. Back straight.

His uniform had once been gray, though now it hung in strips and stiffened folds. The fabric was eaten through in places where time and fire had taken their toll. What remained clung to him as though it had fused there, not by heat but by years of stillness. Beneath it, there was no proper flesh left, only the suggestion of it. It was dried down against bone so tightly that the shape of his ribs pressed visibly through the remnants of cloth. His gloves were still on his hands, though the fingers inside them had long since withered, leaving the leather collapsed and empty in places yet still wrapped around the reins as if nothing would ever loosen his grip.

His head turned.

The movement was slow, deliberate. It was accompanied by a faint, brittle sound like wood flexing right before splintering. When his face came full into view, Elias felt cold settle into his chest.

There was almost nothing left of it. The skin had receded unevenly, drawn tight across parts and peeling away in others, leaving exposed bone with dark stains that at one time may have been blood. One eye remained, sunken deep into its socket, clouded and dry. It was fixed in a stare that did not quite land on anything but felt deliberate. The other side of his face had collapsed inward, the cheek gone. The teeth beneath it were bared in a silent, permanent grimace.

Ash clung to him.

Not resting on him, but caught in him. Packed into the hollows of his eyes, settled in places where flesh had eroded away and threaded through tatters of uniform. When he moved, it shifted slightly as though something inside of him had been reduced to the same fine dust that stirred with every motion.

He did not stop. He did not acknowledge Elias.

But as he passed the air changed, carrying with it a dry suffocating stench and Elias became aware of a new sound beneath the slow rhythm of hooves. A faint, intermitted rattle – bones.

More riders followed, each with the illusion of order stripped away. Some were little more than skeletons draped in the remains of a uniform. Their skulls were tilted at odd angles, jaws hanging slack as if whatever held them together had long forgotten the proper shape of a man. Others remained more of themselves, though not in any way that made them seem alive. Patches of blackened flesh clung stubbornly to bone, stretched thin and tight, splitting at the edges with each subtle movement. In places, it had pulled away altogether, leaving it too dry, curling into strips that brushed against the saddle or the horse’s flank they rode upon.

The horses were no better.

They came in a steady line. Elias did not step out of the doorway of the old saloon. He remained where he was, half shadowed in the doorway. The beam of his flashlight fixed outward as figures entered its reach, one by one. The light caught them gradually, intermittently, revealing fragments that settled into something whole only when passing him. A horse’s head, a slope of a shoulder beneath a gray uniform that no longer moved like fabric.

None of them looked at him.

None of them seemed aware of anything but the path in front of them. The street around them no longer matched the one from their lives, but it made no difference. They rode as if it existed in its original form, as though the buildings were lit and occupied. As though the night offered something other than loneliness.

Their line did not break and it stretched longer than it should have. They simply rode past him and continued down the street.

The last of them emerged more slowly than the others, the darkness behind him seemed to have taken longer to give him shape. Elias followed with his light, watching as they moved farther away. There was no clear point where they disappeared. Their forms faded gradually, losing definition with each step until they became little more than movement, then shadow, then nothing at all.

Elias stood there, still half in the doorway of the old saloon, slack jawed. His flashlight fixed on the darkness long after they had gone. The buildings around him, false fronts and carefully restored interiors, sat unchanged. By morning the streets would be filled with visitors walking the street, stepping in and out of the saloon, the general store, the chapel, treating it like a preserved piece of history.

A town left for people to look at. A version of the past, arranged and maintained, cleaned up and toured.

∼ Kathleen McCluskey