Arsenal Pulse

The Delacorte keeps the cadence
of the day’s march.
Ten million trudging strangers
drum the hollow ground.
The native stones remain,
etched and weathered
like my determined heart.
We will go unnoticed together,
a family of sighs.
It’s too dark in these oaken shadows
to distinguish blood from thirst.
Our closest star,
and most dangerous of friends
burns a path across my skin.
Hot wind scours canyon walls,
stripped sweat clings
to paint peeled halls,
thick with piss and nicotine.
The press, the urgent impulse,
the raging human river
I will not join.
Wisdom whispers acquiescence,
and I know better.
I have fought the current,
have suffered her thorns.
She is too strong to defeat,
but it is my nature to defy.
If only there could come a time
when our interests and desperations
were so aligned
that we moved as uniformly
as a thought,
for one redeemable purpose,
before we scatter and pile
like autumn leaves,
to wither, crack,
and fall to dust.

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Hello, Dear Reader! I know I’ve been quiet of late, but it’s with good reason. Firstly, I have retrieved one of my novel WIPs from the trunk and recommenced the work of completing it, with a personal deadline to have a first draft written by mid-September. It’s an exciting endeavor that has been nibbling at the back of my brain for the last few months, so I have put the short stories aside, for now. Secondly, I am in the organizational phase of assembling a poetry collection to print, with a goal of having tangible copies for sale before year’s end. It will be a poetry book unlike any you’ve ever seen, and I’m excited to reveal more as it comes to fruition. Thirdly, but certainly not the least important, after a year of hunting and two years of work and planning, we’ve finally found a new home and are under contract, with a closing date within the next month. This will be a time-consuming and arduous task, but the outcome will be the resolution of significant labor and an opportunity to fully focus on our work. I appreciate your patience (even if the algorithm has none), and I vow to continue posting as I am able.

Stalk that radiant horizon.

-Jake

But the story was missing something. A history and purpose would give the terror weight. So I did some research, to create a throughline and some lore to anchor it. But, as is often the case, the research unearthed things more sinister than I’d envisioned. The lore became the real story.

So, dear reader, I present to you my first attempt at historical horror. It’s based upon an actual place and actual events. Because it’s currently sitting at about nine thousand words, and longer stories have an unfortunate tendency to die on the vine around these parts, this post is Part One, and the links to the rest of the story have been added at the bottom for your convenience. I sincerely hope you enjoy!

The Hart of the Gray Wood - Part One

Late May, 1864

He spits every time he sees that goddamn house. And considering it looks down on everyone in the valley, Sylvester Cullin’s mouth gets awful dry. Fuggin Thad Beaumont up on his shining hill, gloating over the whole town what all their toil’s done earned him with that garish mansion. It galls to no end. Cullin knows he ain’t alone. There’s plenty of hardworking folk in Pendleton breaking their backs just to put food in their families’ bellies, sick of scraping by while Beaumont sits up there with all his fineries. Even the lady of the manor got tired of him. Some folks say she took them ugly daughters and run off to Charleston. Others say even worse. Now it’s just Thad and his hired men, up there doing God knows what. Shivers a man to think.

Ain’t no secret it’s cotton money built that house. A pampered life earned from the scarred shoulders of them what’s got no say in their own. He come up here from the low country, looking for refuge from the cost of war, hoping to hide from retribution for his transgressions. Never once weighing that mountain folk don’t hold much truck with those who don’t do for themselves.

Through some dubious legal devilry, ol’ Thad managed to buy up land what weren’t for sale, some thousand acres, pushing people off their farms, taking their homes and livelihoods. Building his godforsaken obscenity on that old bald knob everyone who ever shared smoke with a native knows full well ain’t no place for a man to tread, much less dwell. That surrounding timber’s cold and twisted with ancient evils, what they call bad medicine. And Beaumont’s thumbing his nose at them, too. It’d serve him right to get his comeuppance.

That thought gets Sylvester to thinking, which leads to drinking, then to stewing, and on to scheming. He calls on Joe Martin, the local farrier, stumbling up onto Joe’s porch in the late hours of night with a stammering plot on his numb tongue. He knows Joe’s tended the Beaumont horses and, like most who do business with Thad, he was shortchanged. Rich bastard threatened to take him to court, knowing full well Joe had never met a lawyer, much less hired one. Paid him a tenth what he was owed, which didn’t even cover the cost of the iron. Suffice it to say, Joe weren’t fond of Thad Beaumont, and despite being a bit of a gentle giant was a formidable man. Useful for what Sylvester was proposing.

“I’m tulling ya, Joe,” he slurs, gripping Joe’s shoulder to steady himself, “that sumbitch’s got somethin’ up there worth having.”

“Might be,” Joe nods, “might be.”

“Ain’t no might about it,” Sylvester says. “The man thinks he can just sit up there and take and take and nobody ever gonna do nothin ‘bout it’.”

“And you reckon you’re gonna do something,” Joe says.

“We’re gonna do something, Joe,” Sylvester says, leaning close, tankard mouth flecked with spittle, squint gleaming blue moon. “We’re gonna go take back what he stolt from us.”

“Just me and you,” Joe shakes his head, “’gainst him an’ his hired boys, at least. Ain’t no tellin’ how many more men he’s got besides Del and Clint. Don’t seem like a particularly good plan, Syl.”

“Naw, Joe, it won’t be just us. I reckon we oughtta be able to find a few more boys willin’ and able,” Sylvester says. “Don’t need no army, just a respectable posse.”

“More like a raiding party,” Joe spits a brown glob of chaw juice off the porch. “Bushwackers.”

“Bushwackers,” Sylvester grins.

Click the links below to keep reading!

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five- Conclusion

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Beaumont’s skin crawls and shifts, inky blotches swimming across his face like storm clouds. Long, spindly fingers with sharp black nails make the big gun look paradoxically small and unwieldy. His suit bulges at the buttons, cuffs creeping towards his elbows and knees as he elongates, bones crackling like damp firewood. His fine brown hair’s gone coarse black, tufts of it sprouting down his forearms and shins.

“Y’all best just stay awhile,” he says, his voice a guttural dirge.

“Look, Thad,” Joe says, propping his shotgun against the railing, raising his hands, “we don’t want no trouble.”

“You don’t, eh?” he says. “You came looking for it but didn’t like what you found.”

“These boys are fools,” Joe says, “and drunks. Can’t blame ‘em for wanting what you got. It’s hard livin’.”

“Well, now they have what I got,” Beaumont says. “And you killed my men. My friends. Brothers.”

“Ain’t nobody done no killin’ ‘cept me,” Briggs says, leaning out from behind Woody Morten with his pistol bared, “and I reckon you don’t clear out the way I’ll just have to keep on workin’.”

Beaumont smiles, but it ain’t a man’s smile. Too sharp. Too wide. Something trembles in his hairline; twiggy sprouts twist up and out, branching, antlers like a dead hawthorn.

“So,” the thing that used to be Beaumont snarls, “that yella streak washes off for the right price.”

Briggs’s bullet tears off the side of Beaumont’s head from the nose over, throwing him backward, the gun going off as he tumbles down the stairs. Sylvester eats both barrels from the over-under, the blast shredding him from breastbone to bellybutton, hurling what remains of him through the lead glass doors and across the foyer.

“Syl!” Joe screams.

He stands in the gunsmoke, mouth agape, fingers curled, blinking.

“C’mon y’all,” Briggs yells. “Let’s get the fuck outta here!”

The men pile off the porch and down the walkway, taking care to swing wide of Beaumont’s twitching body, leaving Joe standing wordlessly, staring at the pile of gore that was only seconds ago his stupid, drunk friend.

Briggs yells from halfway down the walkway, “Hey, you big sumbitch, move your ass!”

But it isn’t Briggs that Joe hears. It’s the wheezing gurgle coming from the bottom of the steps. His stomach clinches as Beaumont sits up, ragged chunks of skull clinging to the flesh that dangles against his jaw. His smiling jaw. Sharp teeth glistening black with blood.

“Mr. Martin,” it’s Mahtun again, “I do so look forward to our time together. I apologize that this has been so awkward.”

“What are you, Thad?” Joe says, leveling his shotgun, clicking both hammers back.

“What are we,” Beaumont says.

“Talk straight, Beamont,” Joe says.

“Consume the hart of the gray wood, and you are bound to its shadows,” Beaumont says. “You, all of you, my dinner guests, bound to this place now, like me. We’re brothers, of a sort.”

“What are you saying?” Joe steps down a stair.

“The things. In the woods. It’s the curse of this place. What you consume, consumes you,” Beaumont says, skin flapping against his cheek. “It takes a very long time, though, if you don’t go in the woods. They can’t come up here.”

“What can’t come up here?” Joe takes the next stair.

“Them. The wood spirits. The grave dancers,” Beaumont says. “It’s the reason their trees won’t grow on this hill. A shaman, many, many generations ago, found himself in the beast’s forest, was waylaid at this very spot. This ground we’re on is still under the protective spell he cast all those eons ago.”

Jim Pickett shouts and waves at Joe from down the hill, the boys hustling toward the shadowy wood, stopping to pick up the items tumbling from their overfilled arms.

“You really must stop them, Josiah,” Beaumont says, turning to watch them run. “They’re not protected in there. The transformation is inevitable, of course, but in this place, it will take decades. Down there, though, in that gray hollow, the change will be brutally quick.”

“You mean, I’m,” Joe says, grabbing a handful of his own shirt, looking toward the men running down the hill. “They’re. We’re.”

“Cursed, I’m afraid,” Beaumont says, “The moment you stepped foot on their land. They are very territorial, as I said.”

“The meat,” Joe says, taking the last step down as Beaumont struggles to his knees. “Why would you feed us if you knew. It was a trap. You tricked us.”

“It was the only way you’d live the night,” Beaumont says. “You were dead already. I just prolonged it awhile. A very long while, if you’re smart.”

“By turning us into them,” Joe screams.

“To them,” Thad says, “you are either kin or prey. I made you kin. Please, convince your friends to return. They mustn’t go into the woods. One spirit wasn’t strong enough to break this spell. Once there were four of them, they began to, to test the perimeter. I fear what ten might be capable of. Please, Joe.”

“Goddamn you, Thad.”

“I’m afraid so, Josiah.”

Joe takes off running, yelling for them to stop, screaming, “Wait, boys! Hold up!”

The fastest of the group, the young Moody boys, are almost to the treeline, hoofing hard and not looking back. Briggs ain’t far behind, leaving the elderly and overburdened to straggle behind. Joe slows his pace, fires a round at the sky. That slows them down, gets Donny to turn around.

“Y’all just hold still a goddamn minute,” Joe yells, winded from running.

Behind them, a few yards into the inky tangle, the treetops sway. There is no wind.

Joe trundles up to the group at a half-jog, huffing and puffing, face beet red.

“Y’all don’t wanna go in them woods,” he huffs.

“What the hell are you talkin’ about, mister?” Briggs bristles.

“Somethin’s in there,” Joe says. “Somethin’ bad. Thad says –”

“I don’t believe a word that hifalutin sumbitch says,” Briggs grouses.

“I don’t think you gotta look at anythin’ other than the fact he’s still talkin’ to know somethin’ ain’t right here,” Joe says. “Since you done blowed the side of his head off.”

“I seen men missing most of ‘em don’t know they’s a thing wrong in the world,” Briggs spits. “That there’s a house full o’ dead men and I aim to get as far from it as possible, posthaste. Y’all wanna linger ‘bout to see what happens to murderous bandits, be my guest. Cain’t say it’s been nice knowin’ ya.”

Briggs sprints into the yawning black wood, leaving the men standing in befuddlement. The Moody boys, with a quick look at each other, turn and follow. Morten’s not far behind them. Pickett and the moonshiner look like gophers come up on a spring day, turning first to the woods, then back to the house, then back again.

“I’m telling you, boys,” Joe says, “you don’t wanna do this. Just come on back to the house and let’s think this through.”

“I don’t know, Joe,” Pickett warbles, pointing up the hill.

Something stands silhouetted at the bottom of the porch steps, taller than Joe, like a deer on its hind legs with long, sharp arms. It raises its head and bugles into the night. The forest responds.

Pickett drops the bundle he’s tied around the barrel of Briggs’ repeater and plods downhill, the hermit trailing after holding his blunderbuss out in front of him like a spear.

Jim sighs deep through his nose, shakes his head, and tromps off after them.

The forest seethes. There’d been no such inclement warnings in the ice-clear skies above the mansion, but a storm keens through the wood. Branches whip at them, all around the cracking of trunks and the timbered thud of unforgiving ground. Joe tries to yell above the gale, the wind snatching his words, twisting them away into the scuttling valley. Something stirs among the swaying boughs, pacing, chasing. Somewhere close, a peeling cry that shivers up his sweaty, aching limbs. He overtakes Pickett and Whitmire, waving them back, too winded for words. His weight is with the slope now, and it’s all he can do to keep his feet under him. Seconds later, Pickett screams, followed by the thunderclap of Alister’s spreadgun, and a fire spreads up Joe’s back, sending him sprawling across the carriageway. The herringboned pavers dig into his hands and elbows, tear both pantlegs, hammering his heavy old bones.

He pushes himself to his knees, blood clouding one eye from a gash in his forehead. Up the hill, two monstrous, antlered beasts stoop over his friends. They cup the boys’ straggly skulls in huge, spindly hands, holding their jaws open, vomiting black ichor into their mouths.

“Hey,” he says, shouldering his shotgun. But they don’t stop, don’t pay him no mind.

“Hey,” he says, louder this time. “Hey, I said!”

Not a hint of regard. It’s too far to take the shot. The spread at this distance will put a world of hurt on Jim and Alister. He clambers to his feet, moving toward them with his eye down the bead sight. He keeps yelling, but the brutes pay him no mind until he’s within a few paces. Dangerously close. Sure the buckshot will punch tight like a steel fist. He clicks both hammers back. They notice that.

The one holding Whitmire drops him like a sack of grain, standing full upright, turning to face the approaching farrier. Joe pulls both triggers, the big gun kicking like an angry colt, bursting the thing’s head like a rotted pumpkin. The other one, the larger of the two, screams, flinging Jim’s limp body into the overgrowth, crouching on all fours, readying to pounce.

Joe breaks the breach, ejecting the spent and smoking shells, backing away, fumbling in his pocket for fresh loads, cursing under his breath for not picking up the repeating rifle Pickett left behind. He only gets one in the pipe before the thing leaps, nightmare fast, smacking the gun away as it lands on him, pawing, kicking, its lipless, eyeless face biting and gnashing. Joe gets his feet under it and kicks it off, the thing landing like a cat. It stands, walking slowly toward him again. He reaches, fingers finding the stock of the shotgun, pulling the weapon close. The thing bends over him, reaching, and he pulls the trigger.

What explodes from its back is a tiny ice storm, like throwing a pot of boiling water into the January air. It shrinks, shrivels, skin paling as it becomes the remains of a woman – Martha Beaumont, from Joe’s recollection of her.

Somewhere in the forest, several voices scream. Some of them are human.

Joe tosses the spent round and reloads, snapping the breach closed and notching the hammers back. Up the hill a few paces, Alister Whitmire’s body lies unmoving beside that of the headless beast, whose limbs still claw and kick convulsively. Jim Pickett is nowhere to be seen, no sign of him to either side of the road. Joe calls out his name, but no answer comes. He kneels over the moonshiner’s body, placing a hand on his chest, feeling for pulse or breath. Neither exists. But his hands, they twitch, as dead hands sometimes do. His eyes, too, like bugs beneath the lids.

“Alister,” Joe yells, shaking the feeble old body, “Alister! Wake up!”

He peels one of the old man’s eyes open and recoils, falling back on his butt, kicking and scrambling away. Where Alister Whitmire’s cool blue eyes once were are now smooth black marbles.

Joe gets to his feet and picks up his shotgun. All around him is screaming, like the trees have taken voice. But some of the voices are human. Something crosses the carriageway down the hill from him, near the next bend. Something large, moving fatally fast. Too big to mistake in the swirl of shadow and noise. Joe charges, ignoring the shooting pains in his knees, his stinging hands, the blood in his eyes, trying to shut out the sight of those horrible black orbs.

A ripple of gunfire tears through the tempest, and Joe quickens his pace, clearing the creek bridge in equine strides, pressing with hitching breaths up the hill to the gate. He catches up with the Moody boys at the last bend, both struggling with pillowcases full of clattering housewares. When he grabs Danny by the shoulder, the young man screams, turning fear-wide eyes to him, his face stricken and wild. Donny turns as well, pickaxe poised to swing.

“Woody,” Joe rasps, but the boys don’t respond.

“Morten, where is he?” Joe screams, slapping Danny.

The boys’ eyes go to ground.

“Got caught up on the bridge,” Donny says. “Weren’t nothing we could do, Joe. I swear.”

“Briggs,” Joe says.

“Done run ahead of us,” Danny says, “on account of packing so much lighter. Smart, I reckon. Stuffed his pockets full of coin and that’s that. What are we gonna do, Joe? What are those things?”

“Y’all just go on back to the Beaumont,” he says. “We can figure out something from there.”

“Ta’ hell with that,” Donny yells, “we ain’t going back there. Shoulda never come here nohow.”

They come like a winter wind, like screaming shadows erupting from the maw of night, flashing claws and eyes and teeth, leaving Joe standing breathless, drenched in the Moody boys’ blood, nary a hint of scream lingering in the space they stood only a blink beforehand. A sobbing howl boils up from his guts, breaks him wide open and empties him out, trailing off into sputtering and dribbling, the taste of his insides and theirs mingling in the corners of his mouth.

Up the hill, a lone gunshot rings out. Joe grunts his body back into motion, slogging for the gate.

One of the doors stands open a few feet, the chain dangling and the lock blown to pieces. A few paces beyond, Briggs stands, reloading his pistol.

“Briggs,” Joe says, but the man doesn’t look his way.

“Briggs, you can’t be out there,” he says. “It ain’t safe.”

“What ain’t safe,” Briggs responds cooly, snapping the freshly loaded cylinder closed, “is where you’re standing, big man. I never shoulda fallen in with that ol’ drunk and you lot of fools to begin with, even if he had the heart to put me up for a spell. But I aim to put as many miles between me and this place ‘fore sunup as I can, then keep a walkin’ on ‘til the next nightfall. To hell with this town and each and every one of you.”

“You don’t understand, Briggs,” Joe says. “They ain’t gonna let you outta here.”

“Got a handful of lead and steel says otherwise,” Briggs says.

He turns and sidles off, easy as a spring day, whistling into the cool night air, strangely untouched by the tumult inside the gates, gun swinging in his hand.

He only makes it a few paces before one of the creatures steps into the road, blocking his way. Briggs raises his weapon calmly, cocking the hammer, doesn’t notice the one emerging from the trees behind him. It swipes at his legs as he fires, knocking him down, the slug going errant, skyward. They circle as he scrambles to a crouch, sweeping the leafy ground wildly, searching for his gun. He finds it, cocks it again, raising it, but he doesn’t get the shot off. The beasts pounce, lifting the man screaming from the ground, tearing at him like two dogs with a rib bone. His shrieks gain a high, feminine quality that coalesces into a choking gurgle as they pull off one of his arms, then a leg, before spilling his bowels on the dusty road. They fling his clothing into the trees and the creek that winds along beside the road, coins spilling from his pockets, flashing in the moonlight, clinking against the stones; a metallic counterpoint to their ravenous gnawing of flesh and bone, a sickening, soggy crunching and popping.

It all happens so fast, and Joe watches in horror. When the beasts are done, they turn, looking straight at him. One of them points a bony finger. He turns and runs, each breath, every step a fresh nightmare of pain.

But his return is unhampered and unharried. He sees them moving in his periphery, blood-rushed ears track heavy stirring in the overgrowth, but nothing impedes or attacks. As he tops the rise into the clearing, breaking free of the treeline, Beaumont is there to greet him, standing at the base of the carriageway stairs, wholly human in form and proper as ever, straightening his torn and bloodied suit jacket.

“Josiah,” he spreads his arms, smiling, “welcome home.”

Joe says nothing as he approaches, Thad’s face never changing from that magnanimous grin until Joe stuffs the gun square into his chest, pouring both barrels straight through him. He collapses in a crystalline tinkling.

From the woods behind him rise many screams. None of them are human.

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The group skunks from the shadows nervously, heads swiveling like deer in a baited field. They stick close together, bumping shoulders, with Joe a few paces ahead and Briggs lagging behind, walking backwards, hand on his belt as he peers into the choke of forest.

“This is a pleasant surprise,” Beaumont says, arms wide, as they approach. His accent is low-country effete, propah southuhn.

“Joe? Joe Martin?” Mahtun is how he says it. “It is you! Clint said he thought it might be, but I had to see it with my own eyes to believe it. Who’s that with you? Mr. Pickett, how are you? Why, it’s a whole gaggle of neighbors come calling. Clint, Del! Our guests have arrived! Come greet them!”

Beaumont’s hired hands emerge from the trees about a hundred yards apart, on each side of the carriageway, quiet as ghosts, carrying long, heavy-barreled rifles.

“It’s a pinch,” Briggs cries, yanking his pistol.

“Now, now,” Beaumont holds his palm out, still smiling casually, “there’s no need for any of that, I assure you. My men have merely been keeping watch, after informing me of your unexpected visit. I have prepared an exquisite meal for you. Surely your trek has earned you an appetite. Perhaps a thirst, Mister Cullin? I have several bottles of a wonderful vintage that will pair perfectly with dinner.”

The group acquiesces with wary shrugs, following Beaumont up the walkway. Briggs tucks his pistol in his belt and produces a small leather tobacco pouch and cherrywood pipe from his coat pocket.

“Y’all go ahead,” he says, leaning against the porch railing. “I’m gonna have me a puff of jack.”

Clint Barrow sidles quietly to the other end of the porch and busies himself rolling a cigarette while the group shuffles through the French doors, followed closely by Thad’s other man, the hatchet-faced Del Mangram. Briggs and Barrow say nothing to each other, staring out at the star-rimed horizon, lazy clouds drifting from their nostrils.

“If you please,” Beaumont says to the tatty group bunched nervously in his foyer, motioning to an area of vacant beadboard while Del closes the intricate lead glass doors behind them, “deposit your, um, implements here, my good men.”

The men look to each other confusedly, seemingly unsure of what’s being asked of them. Joe nods, reluctantly leaning his shotgun against the wall. He straightens his back, a wordless reminder of his enormity in the enclosed space. Beaumont backpedals reflexively, maintaining the magnanimous hospitality of his composure, smiling and blinking as Joe’s cohorts comply in kind.

Disarmed and ineffectual, the men stand dumbstruck as schoolboys, taking in the opulence of mansion’s interior. A monstrous scrolling staircase twists upward from the far end of the foyer into towering heights of architectural elegance, the likes of which none have beheld in their impoverished lives.

“Hand-carved,” Beaumont says, observing their slack-jawed reverence. “American chestnut, mostly. Black locust. Walnut. Cherry and red oak. The library is imported mahogany. The marble is Italian. Would y’all care to accompany me to the dining room?”

The slender, well-dressed man guides them through arched halls with painstakingly carved ceilings, their dirty boots clunking on the blood-black cherry floors. Before the light hits them, they are assailed by delectable wafts, drawing a low moan from their malnourished mouths. Filing into the dining room, they blink in the radiance of a magnificent crystal chandelier and dozens of candelabras. The room is bigger than Joe’s house, the monumental pedestal table, surrounded by throne-sized high-backed chairs, is too large to have been brought into the home in one piece. Steam writhes from soup tureens, bowls of beans, greens, glazed carrots, mashed potatoes, loaves of bread, pans of sweetcakes, cobblers, puddings, and a glorious side-sized roast, dripping with juices.

“Sit, please,” Beaumont croons, slipping gracefully to take his place at the head of the table. The men noisily scoot their thrones belly up to the table, licking lips and sucking cheeks, testing the weight of the real silverware, flicking fingernails on the crystal glasses, sniffing deeply through raised noses and half-lidded eyes. Joe selects the seat at the foot of the table, never taking his eyes from Beaumont or his lackey, Mangram, who stands before the roast in a leather apron, a long, two-tined meat fork in one hand and a dazzling bone handled carving knife in the other.

“Would anyone care to say grace,” Beaumont asks, eyes roaming from man to man.

After a long silence, Joe volunteers.

“Splendid,” Beaumont cheers, reaching to take the hands of the men on each side of him, Cullin and Morton, before quickly retracting them to his lap.

Joe bows his head, but his eyes remain open, fixed on the flashing blade in Del’s hand.

“Lord,” he says, “may your wisdom find us all tonight. Amen.”

“Amen,” they reply.

“Short and sweet,” says the popinjay, raising his glass. “The prayer, not the man, of course.”

Mangram carves the meat with surgical precision, doling out huge, dripping portions, first for Beaumont, then onto the men’s plates as they scoop heaps of every other offering to flank the meaty gobs. The room quickly descends into a hog trough of snorts and lipsmacks, scraping forks, gulps, and belches. Joe waits, watching Beaumont and his man until they both take a bite of meat, doesn’t drink until he sees them tip their glasses. No looks, subtle or otherwise, pass between the two.

The meat slices with the lightest press of the fork, falls into fragrant, succulent morsels that dissolve like butter on the tongue. The marauders goggle and groan at each other, lost in the decadence of meal unlike anything they’d dreamt of. They bump and jostle, slurping the rich wine and stuffing their cheeks with warm, savory bread. Joe chews slowly, paying his degenerate cohorts little mind, studying his hosts and the room around them.

Del eats with a novice propriety, likely gained from his time with Beaumont, who dines with all the pretense of an English lord. While the hand keeps his eyes on his business, the master of the house gloats proudly over his guests and their enjoyment, grinning as he chews. When his gaze meets Joe’s, he lingers, eyebrow canted. Sips his wine. Dabs his lips with a snow-white linen napkin. Brings his spoon to his glass, tink-tink-tink.

“Gentlemen,” he says, waiting for their attention before continuing. “It is an absolute pleasure to host you in my home tonight. We don’t often receive guests these days, do we Del?”

The hand nods.

“So, when Clint informed me a group of neighbors and townsfolk were here for a visit, I was ecstatic. Wasn’t I, Del?”

The hand nods.

“He doesn’t say much, but he and Clint were both as excited as I was. Weren’t you, Del?”

The hand nods.

“But in this unexpected revelry,” Beaumont says, leaning on his elbows, “it has escaped me to ask. To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit, at such a late hour?”

The scruffy interlopers gawp and wriggle, seeming to have forgotten their unfriendly intentions. Sheepishly, they pass shrugging glances like a hot potato. Finally, Sylvester leans forward in his chair.

“Well, Mr. Beaumont,” he says, pausing to clear his throat, “we been talkin’, see, and well–”

“We come to rob you, Thad,” Joe declares through a mouthful of food.

Del looks up from his meal, reaching for the carving knife. Beaumont shoots him a look with a curt headshake, and the man relaxes, returning his attention to his plate.

“Yes, I see,” says Beaumont, steepling his hands penitently beneath his clean-shaved chin. “I appreciate your honesty, Josiah. You have always struck me as a man of character.”

“That why you bilked me on them horses?” Joe says, stone-faced, palms flat on the table.

“Ain’t paid your tab in goin’ on two years,” pipes in Jim Pickett.

A flood of grievances erupts, a clamorous finger wagging procession of entitlement. Beaumont nods, smiling, saying nothing until it seems the men have had their say. As the rabble dies down, he holds up his hands, palms out, in contrition.

“Gentlemen,” he says, “I do so apologize that my behavior has caused you to feel so slighted. Such ill will was never my intention. I am merely a businessman trading commerce in the manner I was trained. ‘A penny saved is a penny earned’ was the cornerstone of my financial upbringing, and it appears to have made me something of a skinflint. Allow me to reconcile, please. You are hereby entitled everything here, everything I own, for as long you shall live.”

The men hoot and holler, scattering from the table with pockets full of dirty forks and spoons, yipping through the house like a pack of coyotes, thudding and shattering. Beaumont and his hand remain seated at the table with Joe. Wordless. Listening.

The thump of boots nearing, and Briggs bursts into the room, pistol in hand, Clint heavy on his heels with a Tennessee toothpick.

“Hell’s goin’ on in here?” the Reb yells.

“It would seem,” Beaumont replies, “that I am in arrears. I believe they are attaining their recompense.”

“Hot damn,” Briggs howls, stuffing the pistol in his belt. “You’re alright, mister! Didn’t even have to get into a scuff-up or nothing!”

He claps Joe on the back, then stomps off into the house rubbing his hands like an aching arthritic, eyes greedy wide.

“I don’t believe I know that gentleman,” Beaumont says.

“Me neither,” says Joe. “Claims his name’s Andrew Briggs. Says he’s passing through on the way home. Reckon Syl gave him a roof to sleep under and a bellyful. Likely an earful, too.”

“Likely, yes,” Beaumont chuckles. “And where does he hail from?”

“Says Virginia,” Joe says.

“And he’s passing through from?”

“Georgia, by the sound of it.”

“I see,” Beaumont says, steepling his hands again.

They sit quietly, watching the candles drip, listening to the clumsy ransacking. The hands, Clint and Del, fill their plates with meat, potatoes, gravy, and bread, neither speaking nor looking up from their plates as they eat. Slowly, after quite a spell, the men sift back into the room, toting lockers and pillowcases sowbellied with clanking objects, their pockets stuffed. Sylvester arrives in a stylish pair of veal boots. Briggs returns seemingly emptyhanded.

“Welp,” Joe says, leaning forward, “I guess it’s time you out with it, Beaumont.”

“I beg your pardon,” he says, one eyebrow running towards his hairline again.

“The ‘but’ part,” Joe says, “the caveat.”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” Beaumont says.

“I mean you’re just gonna let a bunch of scalawags loot you as they like,” Joe says, “with no cost or consequence?”

“Of course,” Beaumont beams. “From this day forth all of this is as much yours as mine, my friends!”

Briggs nods happily, reaching for a piece of roast. Within a heartbeat, terrible fast, Beaumont is on him, seizing his wrist, shaking the food from his hand.

“I think not,” he says, his voice dark and deep, no longer floating with low-country lilt.

Briggs scowls, bringing his nose close to Beaumont’s.

“You’d best unhand me, dandy,” Briggs says.

“I’ll not succor a deserter at my table, nor shelter him beneath my roof,” Beaumont snarls.

Briggs draws, stuffing the pistol under Beaumont’s chin, clicking the hammer back.

“You’d best mind the next words come outta your mouth, mister,” he says, “lest they be your last.”

Del and Clint slowly rise from their seats, Del grabbing the carving knife and Clint unsheathing his Bowie. Joe remains seated, watching with interest. Beaumont, for his part, appears unfazed, eyes hard and glinting, coldly addressing the young soldier.

“Mr. Martin,” Beaumont says to Joe, the r a hard consonant this time, “it seems your friend here misunderstands the situation.”

“Done said he ain’t my friend,” Joe says, sitting back, taking a sip of wine.

“Be that as it may,” Beaumont says, “he has spoken of the end of my days as if today were not his own.”

Briggs catches sight of Del inching closer, the carving knife clotted with fat. Quick as a cat he spins, slipping his arm around Beaumont’s neck, pressing the pistol barrel into his temple. Sylvester and the boys step back, still holding their wares, inconvenienced by what violence may soon commence. The hired hands pause, but do not give ground.

“You see, Mr. Briggs,” Beaumont says, sliding his hands casually into his trouser pockets, “you will never leave this property alive.”

“And what,” growls Briggs, “makes you so sure about that?”

“Because no one ever does,” Beaumont smiles, looking Joe dead in the eye.

“There’s the but,” Joe says, pressing down on the table to stand.

“Mr. Briggs,” Thad says, “have you ever heard of a creature called the Wendigo?”

A few of the boys nod, wide-eyed and slack jawed. Briggs is not one of them.

“Fascinating creature,” Beaumont continues. “Though Wendigo is merely a name the natives have given it. Its real name is much older. More ancient than the land. The Cherokee believe the Wendigo are powerful witches, transformed by the darkness of their practice. The Catawba say they are wood spirits, denizens of lonely, inhospitable places. But we know them differently, don’t we boys?”

The hands nod.

“Because there are things in this world that are not of this world. Things that swam the primordial ooze, that dwelt in the darkness before the light. Things that counterbalance the stars.”

“You best get to talkin’ plainly, mister,” Briggs says, jamming the barrel harder into Beaumont’s temple, enough so he winces.

“Yes, well,” Beaumont shrugs, “perhaps it’s best I explain your situation, as it pertains to them. They are territorial. They do not suffer trespass in their realm. The places they dwell, they occupy, the Wendigo did not claim these places any more than did the ground they walk give birth to them. They are one in the same, these dark cankers on the earth.”

As Beaumont speaks, Joe notices something unusual about his hired men, Del and Clint. Though the candles have burned down significantly, it is still quite bright in the room. Despite this, Del and Clint appear to stand in shadow, like they’re wreathed in smoke. The skin beneath their clothes writhes.

“The forest that surrounds us,” Thad goes on, “is one such place. I’m sure any one of these men you’ve joined could tell you stories they’ve heard. And given Mr. Cullins’ reputation for stuporous loquacity, it surprises me that you haven’t heard them all, as well as some born of his own wet tongue. But the thing is, rumors and myths are born of truth, disparate though it may be. And for many generations, those who inhabit these parts have passed on the cautionary guidance to avoid this place at all costs. But the Wendigo are very cunning hunters. They entice the innocent and unsuspecting. The one who lured us here is very powerful. Big medicine, as they say. Only one. Now… Martha, the girls.”

Thad’s eyes wander wistfully, before sadness washes the look away.

“And they are always hungry, Mr. Briggs. So hungry”

“What they hell’s he going on about?” Briggs yells at the huddled bandits and their armloads of treasure.

Del lunges, swiping at Briggs with his knife. But Briggs is faster, sidestepping, firing point blank into the hired man’s chest. Del collapses with an odd tinkling crash, like icicles falling, as Beaumont flees. Clint leaps to stab the Reb, but an enormous hand grabs his wrist before he can strike. Joe squeezes and twists, a grip built on years of harboring anxious hooves, until Clint screams, dropping the knife. The big man wraps his free hand around the hired hand’s throat, lifting him off his feet, carrying him three long steps to pin him against the wall. Beneath Joe’s hands, the man’s bones squirm like snakes.

“It’s too late now,” Clint gutters, “I’m sorry.”

“What the hell are you on about, Barrow?” Joe roars into his face.

“Brothers, brothers now. ‘Cept you,” he chokes, bulging eyes darting to Briggs. “Not worthy.”

“What’d you say?” Briggs yells, slamming the pistol into Barrow’s ribs and pulling the hammer back.

“Consume hart. Gray wood. Bound. Shadows,” Clint says, looking now at Joe. “That’s why. The meat. Beaumont. Deserter.”

Briggs’ bullet tears into the man with a whoomp, like dynamite in a pond. He tenses, blood bubbling from his lips. His eyes soften, and he smiles at Joe.

“Thank you,” he says, then gives out. The squirming stops, ash gray blooming across the hired hand’s skin.

The men stand silent, ears ringing, in the sulfurous haze. Joe drops the dangling Barrow, his body crashing to the floor with the same icy jangle. Without a word, Joe turns, charging down hallway, twisting and turning through the labyrinthine home, the boys clamoring and clattering with their plunder, struggling to keep up.

After wrong turns and backtracking, they find the foyer with the towering staircase, but as they tumble through the French doors onto the porch, Joe freezes. The men behind him collide in a thunderous racket. Standing halfway up the stairs to the walkway with an opulent over-under scattergun pointed right at them is Thad Beaumont, in a manner of speaking.

Immeasurable

One month
and five days passed.
It should be your birthday.
And the rest of us,
what’s left of us,
we’re here without you,
still unsure what we’re to do
with all this silence.
We bathe and shave,
eat on time,
and read our mail.
Broken acts of normal things.
When joy bereft
is habit led,
our hopeful hours
linger sweet,
then flutter past.
Five thousand,
four hundred
and forty-four days.
A honeysuckle breeze.
A rainbow shower.
A hawkwing flash.
An autumn kiss.
How fleeting,
the extraordinary.
How eternal,
your tender peace.
Such love’s time
deserves to be
immeasurable.

Happy Birthday, baby girl. We miss you.

The moon pools shadows at their feet by the hour they reach the entrance to the estate. A thick chain with a heavy iron lock secures the gate from the inside. Sylvester reaches through and pulls the lock up over a crossbar, beckoning to Donny Moody.

“Lemme see that, Donny,” he says, nodding to the pick in the man’s hands.

Sylvester wedges the pick through the shackle against the crossbar, snugging it in tight before leaning on the handle with all his weight. He grunts and bounces, heaving his chest against it, face purple with strain, before letting off with a wet exhale.

“Joe,” Sylvester gasps, “you wanna have a go at it?”

Joe shrugs, leaning his shotgun against a column, wringing his hands to warm them up. Squaring his grip on the handle, he shoulders over it, pressing down until the wood creaks. He pulls the pick out and inspects the lock. Barely a nick.

“Reckon we’re gonna have to climb over, boys,” Joe says.

“Hell,” says Andrew, reaching for the pistol in his belt.

“Don’t be a fool,” Joe seethes through his teeth. “You want everybody in this valley knowin’ we’re out here?”

Briggs doesn’t draw the pistol but rests his palm on the butt.

“Don’t call me a fool,” he mutters.

“Can’t we just use the pick on that chain,” Jim Pickett asks.

“Be ‘bout as loud,” Joe says. “And it’ll take a hell of a lot longer.”

Joe grabs his shotgun, slipping it through the bars, laying it gently on the ground, and starts to climb.

He freezes as a yell ruptures the darkness.

“You there,” someone barks. “Whatchall doin’?”

Joe drops to the ground and retrieves his gun, dashing into the nearby brush at the approach of beating hooves. The rest of the boys scatter into the night, except Briggs. Joe hisses at him from his hiding place, watching the Reb raise his weapon and sight in. He rushes from the shadows, snatching the weapon from Briggs’s hands, knocking him to the ground. Briggs reaches for his pistol, teeth bared. Joe levels the repeater at him, and there they stay, listening to the rider closing in.

Joe lowers the rifle and extends a hand, yanking Briggs to his feet. They hotfoot into the tree line and crouch down in the broad oak shadows.

The rider reaches the gate, dismounting with pistol drawn. He moves close, knees bent, to inspect the lock. It’s tough for Joe to say for sure, but it looks to be Clint Barrow, Thad’s hired hardcase from Sumter. He lets the lock fall clanging against the gate.

“I don’t know who you are or what your aim is,” Clint yells into the dark, “but I can promise you, trespassing on this property will be the worst mistake you ever make. Y’all best just go on home now and forget you even thought about coming here. Go on, now, ya hear? Git!”

He stands at the gate for a time, nose raised like he’s bloodhounding them, before mounting up quick as a cat and galloping off.

Behind him, Joe hears the click-click of a revolver hammer. Cold steel presses into his neck.

“Give me my gun back,” Briggs growls.

“Or what, boy,” Joe says. “You gonna plug me?”

“If’n you don’t unhand that iron, hoss,” the Reb says, breath hot in Joe’s ear.

“And then what, you gonna kill Sylvester? Jim? Got a lot of witnesses. Seven lives on your head,” Joe says.

“Got plenty more’n that already,” Briggs pushes the pistol barrel hard against Joe’s skull. “Now you hand over my goddamn rifle.”

From the shadow of a tall sycamore, the slender figure of Alister Whitmire emerges, cocking the hammer back on that old cannon, the flared barrel pointed at Briggs.

‘Don’t seem he’s too keen on relinquishin’ that there weapon to you, young buck,” he says, creeping toward them, that blunderbuss barrel steady as a gravestone.

“Ain’t his to be decidin’,” Briggs says.

But the cold metallic pressure on the back of Joe’s head relents, and the two men shuffle to their feet as the shiner sidles closer.

“He sighted in, Alister,” Joe says.

“I seen him,” the old man nods.

“So what,” Briggs says, “I heard a rider bearin’ down and I took aim. Force of habit. I didn’t shoot nobody. Now give me back my gun.”

“I think we’ll let Jim hold onto it for now,” Joe says, holding it out to the podgy clerk approaching from across the road. “Seems to me, if we’re aiming to scare ‘em, more guns in more hands would be wise. You can carry your grapeshot, and I can attest it scares just fine.”

“Who are you to say–”

“Let’s get movin’,” Joe says, pointing at the gate.

“Don’t you put a scratch on that Henry,” Briggs stabs a finger at the gormless storehand. “I’ll be having that back when this is done.”

Briggs moves skeptically, reluctantly, but Joe waits him out, keeping the Reb a few paces ahead. He grabs Pickett by back of the shirt as he passes, cocking his head at Briggs. Jim winks and nods. Damned fool.

The Moody boys go first over the gate, making it look as easy as two born and raised climbers can. One by one, the men hand their weapons through and scale the heavy bars, Joe going last, keeping a close eye on Briggs.

Joe takes it slowly, his tree-climbing days long past, resting at the top before shimmying down the other side. Danny hands him his shotgun and the group stands quietly, looking at him as though waiting for orders.

Sylvester rests his axe on his boot, blowing into his hands and rubbing them together.

“Night’s gone cool all a sudden,” he says. “Might oughtta brought a coat.”

They set off, following the serpentine drive, winding back and forth down the hill, crouching and creeping, sure that Clint Barrow and company are hiding in the dark waiting to ambush them. The forest is utterly silent, dark as a cave, the moon cuttin’ tiny slivers in the dense canopy. Their boots scuff the stone pavers, but the noise dies in the still air.

“Y’all smell that?” Woody whispers.

A few of the boys nod.

“It’s terrible foul, whatever it is,” says Sylvester.

“I smelt it before,” Briggs says. “Chickamauga. The day after Rosecrans retreated to Chattanooga. A cold rain blew down off the Cumberland. Thirty-thousand bodies rotting in the mud.”

“Jesus wept,” Jim murmurs.

Joe pulls his bandana up over his nose, smoothing the fabric down over his beard. The rest follow suit. The scroungy bandits press on into the stifling darkness. The path takes them down and down, into a rankled hollow where a wagon bridge fords a stony creek. On the other side the path turns steeply uphill, and before long most of the men are puffing and sweaty, weapons sagging in their hands.

By the time they reach the edge of the acres-wide clearing and the massive house at its peak shines down upon them, their shoulders are heaving, the older boys wheezing and coughing.

The home is a thing to behold. Still several hundred yards away, it towers into the night sky, expansive as a castle to the eyes of poor mountaineers. Every window is lit with dancing candleflame, the painted railings shining slick and fresh.

“Goddamn Beaumont,” Sylvester mutters. “’S a sin for one man to have so much.”

Before anyone can speak a word of agreement or otherwise, the ornate French doors of the mansion swing open, and out steps Thaddeus Beaumont in a slim tailored suit, lifting a lit lantern high.

“Gentlemen,” he hails loudly, striding down the walkway to the drive, “please do come up out of the darkness. You’ve no need to crouch there like vagabonds. You are guests, and welcome in my home. Won’t you join me?”

When he reaches the end of the walkway, he lights the lanterns atop the pedestals to each side before descending the low stairs to the carriageway, where he halts; Standing serenely, waving and smiling, not a care in the world.

The would-be marauders eye each other, perplexed and abashed. Of the many scenarios they’d imagined would confront them, this was not one.

“Well, if this don’t beat the goddamn band,” Joe whispers, the bandana muffling his words.

“Whatchoo figure he’s playin’ at, Joe?” Sylvester huffs, still winded from the climb.

“Ain’t no tellin’,” Joe says.

“That there,” Briggs snarls, “is a trap.”

“Reckon it has been since we jumped the fence,” Joe says. He stands, pulling his bandana down around his neck. The smell is worse than ever, like an overused outhouse.

“Let’s go see how it plays out, boys,” he says. “This is what you wanted, ain’t it?”

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Author’s note: I sincerely hope you’re enjoying this story, and I look forward to presenting the continuation soon. If you like this and any of my other stories, poems, or essays, I hope you’ll support my work by selecting a paid subscription. Your contribution is greatly appreciated!

Fortunate disaster

Blind shovel bends
to the creek’s edge.
Hard quarry kneels
to the sift dredge.
We’re on the hunt.
Though it’s the smell of blood
that leads us best.
We’ll only eat the crow
when our starving bellies growl.
And strain to recall
what truth
could make the lie so clean.
Capture a spark,
and hope it’s enough
to make the shift
from should to is.
How could we have discerned,
from the bricks and mortar
we were shown,
that it was hedged in,
stifled,
overmastered.
I accuse everyone.
I blame no one.
I will own my share of misery
and extract my battered fingers
from the levee.
The flood cures what the fire can’t.
Something always grows
from the alluvium.

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Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

Days pass uneventful, and Joe’s grown a hope Sylvester Cullin’s done slept that whiskey fever off and left it be. It’s for the best. He dislikes Beaumont as much as anybody, but stone-cold robbery ain’t exactly Christian behavior. Not that Joe’s ever been accused of such. Still, he sags his head in dismay when, on a muggy firefly evening at the split of dark, he spies Sylvester wobblin’ up the lane with a passel of sad sacks in dirty dungarees, carrying axes and picks, a couple of ‘em totin’ rusty long guns. Familiar faces like the Moody brothers, Donny and Danny, orchard boys from the east hills, oldest of Bill Moody’s brood. Jim Pickett, who runs the general. Alister Whitmire, a hermit souse who rarely rambles out of the high country unless it’s to sell his latest batch or buy copper and corn meal. The blunderbuss the shiner’s toting looks more likely to kill the one behind it than the one in front. There’s Woody Morton, who works at the Calvert mill up north by the riverbend, shouldering his daddy’s flintlock likes he’s on full dress parade.

It’s the one Joe don’t know, the pallid man in dusty Grays skulking behind the shabby group, what twists a knot in his stomach. He prowls, wolfish and lean, gripping a pricey-looking Henry repeater like he can still hear the cannons, like he’s ushered enough men to death’s door he’s found a taste for it.

“Hey Joe,” Sylvester yells, waving his dull old chop axe over his head, “lookee what we got here! Told you I’d rustle us up some help!”

Joe pulls his cap off and rubs his head, stuffing the hat in the back pocket of his overalls.

“Figured you’d let this notion go, Syl,” Joe says as the group gathers in the road before his fence gate. “You boys really aimin’ to do this?”

“Ain’t fair, Beaumont sittin’ up there with all that money, while we’re down here scrapin’ the pail,” says Jim.

“Plenty ain’t fair,” Joe says. “Don’t mean we’re entitled to nuthin’ ain’t given nor earnt. Reckon two wrongs don’t make a right.”

“Aw, c’mon, Joe,” Sylvester says, “you gonna stand here and tell me it don’t boil your goddamn blood how he done you? You gotta want what’s owed you. That’s all we want. What’s owed us.”

“And you,” Joe juts his chin at the uniformed man standing quietly at a distance, “I never seen your face before. What’s your stake in this?”

The man don’t move, dark eyes peering from beneath the tattered leather brim of his forage cap, its blue infantry band barely distinguishable in the fading light.

“This is Andrew. Andrew Briggs, of the twenty-first infantry,” Sylvester says, waving a presenting hand.

“He can talk for hisself, can’t he?” Joe says.

“Briggs is fine,” the Reb gruffs, “And you ain’t seen me before ‘cuz I ain’t been here but two days. Passin’ through on my way back home to Roanoke. Mr. Cullin’s showed me kindness on my route, and I’s raised obliged to repay such hospitality in what manner avails.”

“Mm-hmm,” Joe nods, saying nothing else. He’s heard the rumblings of Sherman moving on Atlanta, a merciless march leaving bloody miles of dead boys. If you’re an able-bodied Gray who ain’t on the lines, there’s only one reason. Desertion.

Not that them strategic goings-on have much bearing on the lives of Pendletonians. Wars are fought for the rich by the naïve, and these mountains are too hard to harbor either. Don’t matter what color their uniform is, they only come to take.

This Briggs boy, he may’ve come to his senses. May have had his fill of loss and woe. None of that matters to Joe. He just don’t like the idea of taking up arms alongside a man with no allegiance. A stranger. And a dangerous one, by the look.

“So ya’ll aim to just trudge on up there and rob ol’ Beaumont, barefaced and half-bagged, the lot of you,” Joe says to no one in particular. “And you don’t figure Thad’ll have every one o’ you in chains ‘fore the week’s through? Or do you plan to kill him? That’s a surefire path to the gallows if the law catches wind, ‘specially for you, Briggs.”

“I don’t reckon I follow,” Briggs says, leaning forward, fingers tightening on the Henry.

“Nope,” Joe spits tobacco in the gravel, “it don’t appear you do.”

“Now Joe,” Sylvester throws his palms up, “ain’t nobody gonna get kilt here. We’ve got scarves and the cover of night. All we gonna do is brace him, at worst maybe knock ‘em around. It ain’t about hurtin’ nobody, Joe. It’s just about giving back to this community what’s been took from ‘em. Promise.”

“The community, eh,” Joe raises an eyebrow. “You fancy yourself a Robin Hood, Syl? That’s awful rich. So what, you just gonna ride through town thowin’ money at folks? You ain’t thought a damn bit of this through.”

“We can sort the distributin’ out when we’ve got somethin’ to sort,” Syl says. “Now, are you gonna be yella or you gonna buck up and do the right thing, Joe?”

“You and I both know it ain’t the right thing, but yeah, yeah I’m coming,” Joe says, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “For none other reason than to keep you mutts off the noose.”

After minutes of clamoring around in his shack he joins them on the road, a bright red bandana tied around his neck, a double-barrel crooked in his elbow, his chest pocket bulging with shells. Lightning bugs spark across the fields and in the whispering boughs, a crown of moon peeking above the valley edge. Joe heaves a sigh through his nostrils, and the marauders turn their faces to the mansion, shining high in the distant dark.

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Author’s note: I sincerely hope you’re enjoying this story, and I look forward to presenting the continuation soon. If you like this and any of my other stories, poems, or essays, I hope you’ll support my work by selecting a paid subscription. Your contribution is greatly appreciated!

It’s Magick

If I can make it real with words,
then I will make it this:
A large house to hold our dreams,
with tall shade trees
and a garden to bury her in.
Where we’ll dress the walls and windows
in our adorations
and crank the music loud.
Swim naked while the dogs bark,
laughing at the neighbors,
not a single fuck given
for what they hear.
Not kids again,
it’s too late for that.
But blazing,
like our poorer years, only
clearer, more resistant
to the tears.
Because it’s hell
that forged our mettle,
and love that ground the bellows.
Let jealous ears
hear your singsong,
and all their blank pages
moulder from our burdened shelves
where griefs we write grow lighter
and, one by one,
take flight.

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But the story was missing something. A history and purpose would give the terror weight. So I did some research, to create a throughline and some lore to anchor it. But, as is often the case, the research unearthed things more sinister than I’d envisioned. The lore became the real story.

So, dear reader, I present to you my first attempt at historical horror. It’s based upon an actual place and actual events. Because it’s currently sitting at about nine thousand words, and longer stories have an unfortunate tendency to die on the vine around these parts, I’m going to release it one scene at a time. I hope you enjoy, and stay tuned for more!

The Hart of the Gray Wood - Part One

Late May, 1864

He spits every time he sees that goddamn house. And considering it looks down on everyone in the valley, Sylvester Cullin’s mouth gets awful dry. Fuggin Thad Beaumont up on his shining hill, gloating over the whole town what all their toil’s done earned him with that garish mansion. It galls to no end. Cullin knows he ain’t alone. There’s plenty of hardworking folk in Pendleton breaking their backs just to put food in their families’ bellies, sick of scraping by while Beaumont sits up there with all his fineries. Even the lady of the manor got tired of him. Some folks say she took them ugly daughters and run off to Charleston. Others say even worse. Now it’s just Thad and his hired men, up there doing God knows what. Shivers a man to think.

Ain’t no secret it’s cotton money built that house. A pampered life earned from the scarred shoulders of them what’s got no say in their own. He come up here from the low country, looking for refuge from the cost of war, hoping to hide from retribution for his transgressions. Never once weighing that mountain folk don’t hold much truck with those who don’t do for themselves.

Through some dubious legal devilry, ol’ Thad managed to buy up land what weren’t for sale, some thousand acres, pushing people off their farms, taking their homes and livelihoods. Building his godforsaken obscenity on that old bald knob everyone who ever shared smoke with a native knows full well ain’t no place for a man to tread, much less dwell. That surrounding timber’s cold and twisted with ancient evils, what they call bad medicine. And Beaumont’s thumbing his nose at them, too. It’d serve him right to get his comeuppance.

That thought gets Sylvester to thinking, which leads to drinking, then to stewing, and on to scheming. He calls on Joe Martin, the local farrier, stumbling up onto Joe’s porch in the late hours of night with a stammering plot on his numb tongue. He knows Joe’s tended the Beaumont horses and, like most who do business with Thad, he was shortchanged. Rich bastard threatened to take him to court, knowing full well Joe had never met a lawyer, much less hired one. Paid him a tenth what he was owed, which didn’t even cover the cost of the iron. Suffice it to say, Joe weren’t fond of Thad Beaumont, and despite being a bit of a gentle giant was a formidable man. Useful for what Sylvester was proposing.

“I’m tulling ya, Joe,” he slurs, gripping Joe’s shoulder to steady himself, “that sumbitch’s got somethin’ up there worth having.”

“Might be,” Joe nods, “might be.”

“Ain’t no might about it,” Sylvester says. “The man thinks he can just sit up there and take and take and nobody ever gonna do nothin ‘bout it’.”

“And you reckon you’re gonna do something,” Joe says.

“We’re gonna do something, Joe,” Sylvester says, leaning close, tankard mouth flecked with spittle, squint gleaming blue moon. “We’re gonna go take back what he stolt from us.”

“Just me and you,” Joe shakes his head, “’gainst him an’ his hired boys, at least. Ain’t no tellin’ how many more men he’s got besides Del and Clint. Don’t seem like a particularly good plan, Syl.”

“Naw, Joe, it won’t be just us. I reckon we oughtta be able to find a few more boys willin’ and able,” Sylvester says. “Don’t need no army, just a respectable posse.”

“More like a raiding party,” Joe spits a brown glob of chaw juice off the porch. “Bushwackers.”

“Bushwackers,” Sylvester grins.

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Alluvium

Trinity when the advent comes,
but under moon and sun
only two of one.
A gift of wings
when the division bell breaks,
when the hand creates,
when the heart escapes
to take its place among the stars.
When we’ve flown too far-
too high to stay aloft-
and we spiral in,
tumbling effigies
of strings and paint and skin,
whose cradled arms will catch us,
will reassemble us with care,
caress and praise our holy arrogance
and return us to the air?
Spit out the ash and reawaken,
our bodies one with loam and light.
The thrones are cold,
but not forgotten.
Let’s ascend to them tonight.
This moment is a pebble dropped
in the water of our lives.
Though the stone has vanished,
the waves, they still abide.
The river is the river,
as cloud,
as rain,
as you and I.

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Bury My Heart with Her

What tragedy
to love
with no such luxury
as time.
To sing loud,
windows down,
forgetting how
the years have wrung us dry.
Still children
whose followed stars
have faded,
holding hope
that they might reignite.
We watch our hearts die
with the failing flesh
of those we keep inside.
What justice can there be
in scattered ash
and cold clay graves?
Tight bones unwarmed,
no faithful touch
can keep us safe.
A moment drunk
to slake the pain
of the hours we await
when, unerring, unswerving,
relentless in its pace,
comes our fate.
I cannot, for today
look up,
my eyes too tear-stained
for the empty sun
to taste.
We mourn not
what is lost, but
the absence in its place.

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Black Butterfly

Oh, dear little one,
you’ve set before me
an impossible task.
What words to find,
to assemble for the dawn
you’ve wrought us.
No eloquence or graceful turn
will paint with honest colors,
will describe the loving light.
These callused hands
can pen facsimiles,
chasing sunbeams
and sable wings
with empty adjectives.
But, for you,
my darling sunshine,
I’ll bend my life to it,
will shape my heart
to fit your impression.
And I’ll stalk
the radiant horizon
until it leads me
to the perfect phrase,
or back to you,
though it may be
they are the same.

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I scrapped the first draft of this, because it was about me. How angry I was. How heartbroken and empty I felt. How utterly destroyed my wife and I were from losing her. That’s not fair to her, because what she wanted, and what she put her whole heart into every day of her life, even as she lay dying, was our happiness. She was joy incarnate. Waking up the first morning after we had to say goodbye to her, I wasn’t sure how I could be in a world without her. But as the sun rose, and the most beautiful Rothko brilliance we’d ever seen splashed upward from the horizon, we knew in our hearts she was smiling over us. She never wanted our tears, our woes, and she was always there like a warm blanket to soothe and comfort us.

So let me tell you about her.

I found her on a Craigslist ad. A couple in Burnsville, NC had an unintentional litter from their female Aussie and male Golden Retriever. Free to a good home, with the caveat that anyone who wanted a puppy had to come hang out with them for a few hours so they could be sure of the home they were sending them to. I made the drive in my hopped-up Prelude with a laundry basket in the passenger seat lined with towels. Her sire was a big, silly Golden who immediately attacked me with love, slamming his blocky head into my hip and almost pushing me over. Mom circled me warily, watchfully, knowing I was there to take one of her children, tracking me even when we went inside, watching through the windows. Sizing me up. The couple only had three left from a litter of seven, two girls and a boy. They’d built a puppy pen in their basement and had already weaned the pups and given them their first round of vaccinations. They were mostly black, with little points of white. The male and the other female were rambunctious, noisy, bitey, fighting constantly. But she just lay on her own, perfectly sable except the white socks on her back feet. A pool of sable calm, staring at me with those shiny star eyes. My phone camera was so crappy and cloudy that the first picture I sent to my wife was me holding up a shadow, an amorphous blob of black with no discernable features. She stared at me the whole ride home, peeking up over the basket and drooling on my armrest. She hated cars. Turned her stomach. But she was always happy to get in, because being with us was all she ever needed.

She learned everything quickly. Built habits. Schedules. Very Aussie in her compulsions. She learned her boundaries, and kept them fastidiously. Her favorite place was at the back of our property, on a hill, so she could watch over us. I could walk through the house and watch her watching me through every window. She never needed a leash. Just open the door and let her out, even without a fenced yard. She loved the sunrise, would stand and sniff the cool air, blinking at the light creeping over the mountains. One morning, when I went to call her in for breakfast, I found her nose-to-nose with an adolescent doe, wagging softly. Butterflies followed her as if she had flowers in her hair. This is not hyperbole. The world sensed the peace that coursed through her.

When we were sad, she turned on the charm, smiling a big goofy smile and licking our faces until we laughed. When we were sick, she would climb on top of us and warm us like an eighty-pound blanket. She was immeasurably strong, in a way you couldn’t see unless you tried to swerve her from her course. She was so smart, we had to spell out her favorite words so she wouldn’t lock onto them, but then she learned the spellings. Oh-you-tee became the word for outside. She was fixated on frisbees, and would force you to play for hours without tiring. She helped with everything, went everywhere without guidance or command. Even in her later years, when her hearing failed, she understood hand signs, body language. She maintained sightlines to know what we needed or wanted. She never failed in her duties, and was always there to help.

So yesterday’s sunrise, when I awoke to a world without her and wasn’t sure how to pick my head up off the pillow, told me what I’m supposed to do. I want to lay in bed and cry. I want to drink until the pain numbs. I want to burn the world down. I want to give up. But what she saw in me was strength, safety, wisdom, love. She saw a better man in me than I know how to be on my own. She trusted me implicitly. She expects me to be this man for our little family: my wife and her sister, our kitchen-sink mix she helped raise from a pup and watched over as diligently as she watched over us. She doesn’t want tears. She wants me to prove her right. She wants me to stand up and face the day with that sense of wonder and joy she taught me to have. These fifteen years were a blessing, because she raised us to be our best.

Thank you so much, little one. You’ll always be our best good girl.

We Did This

Our better angels, fallen.
Wings stripped to flesh
and shorn from bone.
We fan the flames
not to illuminate,
but to destroy.
It seems the day is lost.
For the animals of justice
become the meat we choke on,
clog our guts with decay.
Because blind is blind
and deaf is deaf.
We will neither see nor hear
the anguished howls
of truth,
caged in starving darkness.
Unclaimed.
Unloved.
Let those without mouths to speak
be ground into the fallow,
arid earth.
Leathered skin to crack and bleed.
Milk-white cataracts upturned,
straining through clotted clouds,
to glimpse a sun they cannot feel.
The warmth retreated
to the safe distance of posterity
to view extinction’s inexorable return.

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No Stranger

There is a man
amid this worried flesh
into whose arms
you fall with careless ease.
He breathes the air of you
with lips pressed
to your head.
He yearns and strives
to build the charge
that crackles on your skin
Holds his tongue
until it forms the words
that tremble down your back.
He’ll eat the sun
if it dares to burn you.
Will steal the night
if it brings you dread.
He fears nothing
but your silence,
hates nothing
but your tears.
He’s borne aloft
by your laughter.
Sees the cosmos
in your smile.
He nurtures
every good in him
to show you better
each passing day
that he is here
amongst these sorrows,
he is alive
to gain your faith.
He isn’t hiding.
He isn’t gone.
He’s made of lightning,
a bolt of blazing dream.
Of running through the storm with you,
roaring at the waves and wind.
Of gathering you up
like a thunderhead,
to loose your ecstatic howls
upon a quiet world.
Your entwined power
coalescing, as you rise,
fervent as a ground swell.
He’ll be there when
you spread your wings.
Will climb to join you
in the sky.
Because he’s always longed
to see you happy,
and he ever aches
to see your smile.
But this man,
he is no stranger.
You know him well.

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“Happy Birthday, Lorraine.”

The little Porsche bounds eager as a terrier through the lemon bright pine above Sidewinder. Disco ball sunlight flashes through the branches as the car leaps, wags, growls, nips at the tarmac, squealing and barking. The buzzy motor goads Lorriane’s Ferragamo-clad toe to the floor, despite the steep drops and absence of guardrails, her Gucci bags tumbling across the scant backseat. She pictures the gleaming convertible, a birthday present to herself, parked outside the hotel, rubber bumper grin panting beneath playful, goggly headlights, and her mirrored cat eye Versace shades conspire with the rearview to render an endless tunneling reflection of a smile she’d forgotten she could wear. Those infinite crimson lips singing along with Janis on the radio, ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.’

The boy in the passenger seat, Chuck, a surprise birthday gift, quit talking a few miles back, white-knuckling the door handle, sporting a shaky nonchalance he’d better never try to sell at a poker table. His quiet’s nice, though. A good change of pace from the constant yammering she’d been subjected to since she picked him up on the high plains road outside Denver.

Chuck’s cute, but not handsome yet. Long, smooth hair and ruddy lambchops. Tall and skinny, broad-shouldered. Gawky, but he’ll fill out in his twenties. Says his last name is Palance, like the actor. No relation. He’s heading out to California. Wants to get into showbiz, too. Plans to call himself Jake on his SAG card, hoping for gigs from clerical errors, or that the rumor mill assumes shared genealogy. From the bulge testing the zipper of his too-tight jeans, Lorraine knows what kind of films he’ll likely be doing. There’s a resemblance to the movie star in his chiseled squint, though still too soft with youth to be a hardcase cowboy. But ol’ Jack had once been a young, pretty thing, too. From the look (and odor) of him, Chuck’s been hitching for a while, and sleeping outdoors, his denim jacket sporting a grimy patina. Lorraine hopes the earthy funk doesn’t seep into her spanking new seats. She stopped a few towns back and bought him some decent clothes, so the first order of business once they’re checked in is to clean him up. Can’t be her arm candy at the Colorado in his current state, looking like one of the Eagles.

“Take it easy, dear,” she pats his thigh. “Don’t break my birthday present.”

“Sorry,” he says through clinched teeth, never taking his eyes off the road.

Tallying all the times she’s been to the Overlook would put a number on her age, so she doesn’t do it. It’s her favorite place in the world. Paris, Milan, Venice, Zurich, Berlin, of all the glamorous places she’d been, none tug at her heart with quite the same allure. It haunts her dreams like homesickness. Albert first brought her here on their honeymoon, and she’d fallen as in love with the place as she was with him. They resolved to come back every year. Make it a tradition. They imagined together gracing the ballroom in their twilight, being the sweet old couple who showed the world a life best lived; maybe even haunting the place when they’re gone, an echo of their devotion. And for decades they kept that promise. But promises, like young love, go forgotten with time. Life supersedes commitments. The hotel closed for several years. He brought her back when the new management held the grand reopening, but she’s been making the long drive from New York by herself ever since. Bert’s too busy, too serious, too worrisome, too old. That’s the whole purpose of this trip, and the flashy sportscar. Lorraine Massey, firecracker red and hellbent, is gonna burn her fuse from coast to coast and back again, living it up along the way. Because she’s not old yet. Not dead yet.

The valet she tosses the keys to is older than the boy stepping out of the passenger seat. The bellhop, too. She checks his furtive glance sharply, and he snaps his eyes away, busying himself with her bags, cheerily toting them to the front desk. He stares quietly out the lobby’s towering windows while she speaks with the front desk girl. After check-in, he’s all bows and downturned eyes. Good boy.

“Right this way, ma’am – and, uh, sir,” he says, carrying her luggage and the shopping bag with Chuck’s new duds to the elevator, the same squeaky old birdcage lift that’s served the hotel since it was built. She huffs through her nose that they haven’t installed modern elevators yet; smooth, spacious ones that don’t feel like they’re going to plummet you into the grimy basement. Their room is on the second floor, which also irks Lorraine a touch. She’d hoped for a top-floor suite, she always stayed on the third, but the Overlook is in mid-season hop and all those rooms are booked. The girl who checked them in promised she would not be disappointed.

“Rest assured, madam,” she’d said, “The Overlook prides itself on unmatched elegance and top-notch service. Your suite will offer every luxury amenity you’ve come to expect from us. Nonetheless, given your favored status, it would be my pleasure to have a bottle of champagne delivered to you, every day of your stay, free of charge.”

Lorraine enjoys the favored status bit. Nice touch. Wise to appreciate who butters your bread. That girl will go far. She’s sure it won’t be their top-shelf bubbly, but even their mid-tier is of French vintage. There is no cheap hooch at the Overlook.

“Here we are, Room 217,” the bellhop says, waving them into the suite. He waits quietly at the door with his hands behind his back, smiling professionally, until she shoos him away with a fresh five-spot.

The tennis court-sized suite is lit by a brilliant wall-to-wall mountain panorama. That view makes Lorraine’s heart flutter, like looking out an airplane window. So vast, it reminds her how small, how insignificant people are. Pointillist dots on a god-sized canvas.

The look on Chuck’s slack-jawed face is one of reverent awe. His eyes roam the room, regarding the chandeliers, canopy king bed, opulent wingbacks arranged on each side of an ornate mahogany table in front of the windows, Italian paintings adorning the walls, the intricately scrolled headboard, oversized nightstands with tall, silver filigree lamps. He pulls his dirty boots off and squishes his filthy feet in the bruise-colored deep pile carpet, padding off to the bathroom.

“Holy cow,” his voice echoes into the room. The bathroom’s as deep as the suite and half as wide, refined as a Pullman car, with gilded art deco fixtures, white hexagonal tile floors, and a bay window over a deep clawfoot tub. Standing behind him in the doorway, Lorraine takes in his sweet face reflected in the mirror, his boyish incredulity, and it reminds her of her first time at the Overlook. How, to her young eyes, it had been the most glamorous place she’d ever seen. In ways, it still is. He casts an odd shadow over her, and for a blink her reflection looks cadaverous gray, her eyes milky, hair like seaweed. But the boy moves, and in the vanity’s halo all she sees is Lorraine Massey, bottle-red bouffant with lips to match. Not old yet. Not dead yet.

“Get yourself cleaned up,” she says, setting the shopping bag down on the counter. “It’s almost happy hour.”

A few minutes before five and the Colorado Lounge is already hopping, abuzz with conversation, the tinkling clatter of silverware and bone china, crystal and popping corks. The check-in girl was good on her word and Lorraine can already feel the flush of the champagne in her cheeks and bosom. Her satin chiffon Chanel evening dress’s neckline plunges so deep it’s little more than two thin strips of fabric. The Tiffany bib draping her decolletage hangs cool and weighty against her tingling flesh.

Chuck is as spiffed up as he has any right to be, clean hair pulled back, the slacks and button-up not fitting quite as deliciously as his dirty jeans and tee but far more befitting the atmosphere. Lorraine slips the bartender a few bills to get the drinks flowing and ensure they stay that way. Chuck says he doesn’t really drink, but she orders him a bottle of Olympia and herself a Singapore Sling. He still hasn’t sipped his beer down past the neck by the time she orders her next round. He’s suddenly quiet, not the chatterbox she drove in with, as if the drive had run all the thoughts from his pretty little head, but he smiles and laughs at all her jokes, and if he can dance well enough to stay off her toes, he’ll fit her needs just fine for now. She prays that chatty streak doesn’t return when the lights go out. Nothing wrong with a little pillow talk, but it takes a good man to know when to shut up and get to work.

The leather wingback squeaks when she crosses her naked legs. Lorraine pulls a long drag off her cigarette, staring out at the incalculable spread of the heavens, the jagged peaks to the west silhouetted by the Milky Way. Behind her, in the dark, Chuck snores softly. She wants to believe she wore him out, but it’s just as likely he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in a real bed in a very long time, and probably never in a bed this nice. He’s adorable. The girl in her, the fiery redhead who never totally forgot young love, knows she could love this boy – feels the twinges of possessiveness, and maybe jealousy. But the cold reality of her present flesh is that her marriage is more than twice this man-child’s age. He’s tender, giving, enthusiastic but unskilled, and his blessings make up for his shortcomings. He’s handsome, too, in a dim, shaggy way. He’ll grow to be a fine-looking man. She shakes her head and squeezes her eyes tight, banishing such foolish thoughts from her stupid brain. He’s here for one thing and one thing only. She stubs the cigarette out and pulls herself from the creaky, suctioning chair, determined to find out if that thing still works while he’s sleeping.

It’s hard to say how long it’s been. A week, maybe more. Love drunk. The days all burn together. She’d intended to be in L.A. by now, or cruising up the PCH to Seattle. But here she is, guzzling cocktails in the Rockies and trying desperately not to fixate on her precious hitchhiker. He’s sweet, thoughtful, and the quiet she’d mistaken for stupidity is genuine curiosity. She’s felt things with him she’s never felt with anyone before. Chuck’s not her first dalliance. She’s had a go at half the Overlook’s staff, and the Waldorf Astoria’s, and several of the Biltmore’s, among others. She knows she’s not a good wife. Not faithful. It’s never been about not loving Albert. It’s always been about needing more than he can give. He grew up. Got boring. She refused. Her blood still seethes and simmers with amorous heat. Her body might wear its age; her soul never would. But Chuck is getting bored with her, with this place. He’s grown tired of her pawing neediness. He’s ready to grab hold of all that future he has laying out in front of him. She sees the way he looks at the waitresses and the young, attractive guests – debutante daughters of tycoons and dignitaries. Lorrain Massey is no fool. She sees the winks, the pats, the pinches, the smiles. Last night, he didn’t come to bed with her when she retired, saying he wanted to stay for one more drink. He snuck in late, and she pretended to be asleep.

She wakes up determined to tell Chuck how she feels. All the ramifications of her infidelity, a messy divorce, the massive age gap between them, the fact she’s only known him a little more than a week, none of it matters. She wants love, passion. He makes her feel young again, like the sparkly-eyed girl who first came here in the years after the war. Hell, even if Bert takes her to the cleaners (and he will, divorce law is his niche), she’ll still be well-off. Comfortably wealthy. They could find somewhere new. Maybe spend a few years traveling. She could show Chuck the world.

Over eggs Benedict and Mimosas, she pours her heart out to him. Tells him she wants to run away with him. She says she loves him, but he doesn’t repeat it. She’s nervous, giddy. Her fingers tremble, and she’s wet like she hasn’t been in years. Her eyes are misty when she tells him her plan. She reaches for him, tries to lace her fingers into his, just to still their shaking, but he doesn’t respond, leaves his hand limp on the table. His smile is just as flaccid, distant and disingenuous. She tells him she can make him happy. Promises it will all work out.

“Spend one more night here,” she says. “Think about it.”

He says he will, his voice quiet and flat.

That evening, Lorraine pulls out all the stops. Really sweetens the pot. She’s done her hair, bright red pin-up tresses framing her face. A smoky eye and a bold, red lip. Black lingerie. Thigh high silk stockings and garters. Stilettos. She gives him a show. Striptease. Dancing in the bathroom doorway to candlelight, swaying as she sings, “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” softly, insistently bringing herself to climax, trying to read his face, trying to see love reflected in his eyes. She eases to her knees and crawls, as sexily as her aged bones will allow, to the bedside, but when she reaches for him, he bolts to his feet, stepping past her towards the door. He says he needs some fresh air, tugging on his dirty jacket. She’s hurt but doesn’t show it. Won’t let this child see he’s gotten the better of her emotions. She’s a grown woman with a lifetime of accomplishments. She doesn’t ask him to stay. She doesn’t tell him she can make it better, that she can be what he needs. Before she can bring herself to say anything at all, she’s alone, on her knees, tears welling, the door clicking shut as his boots thud down the hall.

The sun warms her eyelids, brushes rays across her exposed arm above the covers. She inhales deeply through her nose and lets it out in a soft sigh. Rolling over to touch her plaything, her smooth-skinned toy, her heart breaks when her fingers find only empty pillow, fluffed and undented. She fumbles with her clothing, trying to shake the sleep fog from her head. Think. She’s tense, frantic, shaking with fear as she checks the Colorado, the banquet hall, the porch, the roque court. She worries he may have gone for a hike and gotten hurt. There are bears and big cats out here. Rattlesnakes. Loose rocks and fatal falls. She maintains her best impression of nonchalance, asking the bellhops, the bartender, the waitresses, the maids. She finally gets an answer from the desk clerk. He’s just arrived for his shift when she intercepts him in the lobby.

“Yes, ma’am,” the young man says, “saw him last night. He came down just before eleven. Said you were indisposed, not feeling well. He said he was going to run out and get some stomach medicine. I had the valet bring the car around. Is everything okay?”

“Yes, it’s fine,” she lied. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon.”

It can’t be. He wouldn’t do this, her beautiful manling. He loves her, or could, if he tried. Maybe he’s just getting supplies for the drive. Getting the car topped off and cleaned. He’ll be back. She gnaws on the knuckle of her index finger, standing at the lobby window, looking out at that view that now seems surreal, false. A painting on the glass. The ghost of her frazzled reflection leers over it all.

“Mrs. Massey, yes?” says a voice from behind her, “I understand you may need some assistance.”

She snaps her head around and the doughy little man recoils, taking a step back.

“My name is Stuart Ullman. I’m the manager of the Overlook. Is there something I might do to help?”

“No,” she says, shaking her head, “thank you, though.”

“James says your, um, companion has gone missing.”

“No, no,” she waves a breezy hand, puts on a smile, “nothing like that. He’s gone to get some things from town.”

“Such as?” He doesn’t even try to hide his incredulousness.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” she says, remembering herself.

“I apologize,” he says, “what I mean is the Overlook is fully stocked to ensure our guests’ requirements are met, likely far better than all of Sidewinder. Was there some need we could not fulfill? I’ll be happy to address it with the owner.”

“I was ill. He went to find some medicine,” she says, hoping she doesn’t sound as foolish as she feels.

“Yes, I see,” Ullman replies, his piggish face disgustingly piteous. “When do you expect his return?”

“I’m not sure,” she finally says something true. “He left late last night. It could be he had to go farther than Sidewinder.”

“Yes, it is a very small town, as I said,” he nods, his jowls jiggling, “Perhaps he’s had car trouble. God forbid there’s been an accident. The mountain roads can be very treacherous. Would you like me to put in a call for the state police? They can be on the lookout for him. I’d hate to think –”

“No, really,” she dismisses him with a wave, “He’s a fine driver. I’m sure everything’s okay. Thank you anyway.”

Her room, with its breathtaking view, feels wrong now. A gilded cage. She can’t stay here, fretting like some war wife. Sitting down at the vanity, she stares at the stupid old woman looking back at her. The reflection she sees cannot be hers, haggard and desperate. Heavy lines radiate from teary eyes and droopy frown. Her heart thuds as the light fades, bulbs dimming like a generator dying, and the face in the mirror bloats, eyes curdling to milky silver, skin clouding wet gray, jowls sagging, thick clumps of hair falling from the scalp, black blood, flecked with teeth, pouring from the hideous, gaping mouth. She screams, and it screams back at her, reaching, as though its craggy fingers might slip past the bezel and pull her in. She clamps her eyes shut, waiting for hands to grab her, to feel herself pulled down and down, into those cavernous jaws. But when she opens them, the face in the mirror is hers. She watches her reflection pat its cheeks, smooth its hair, smile a big red smile full of clean white teeth. Her hands look normal, even if they are shaking so badly her bracelets sound like a clock unspringing.

“What the hell is wrong with you, Lorraine,” she accuses the stupid reflection.

She’s never been this weak, this pathetic. She’s sharp and determined. Lorraine Massey gets what she wants, because she’s got the guts to go after it. But what is someone who always gets what they want to do when all they want is to be wanted?

Outside in the hall, the razz of a party horn, the bustle and laughter of a celebration. She’d not heard of any festivities planned, but it was exactly what she needed to take her mind off everything.

On the blue-black rug outside her door, she finds an elegant cat mask, black as obsidian, sequined and fringed. It’s a beautiful mask that someone would miss if lost. Unless it’s an invitation. She smiles and pulls the mask down over her eyes, sauntering to the elevator. Not old yet. Not dead yet.

An old foxtrot tune, Midnight, the Stars and You, wafts through the batwing doors of the Colorado. Laughter and the tinkle of glass on glass rides the cool blue notes to Lorraine’s ears. She’s already feeling more herself by the time she sidles up to the bar and orders a double bourbon, Hirsch Reserve, neat. It’s like fire sliding down her throat, cleansing her of her transgressions and silly fantasies. A swig of salvation. It goes down easy, and the bartender, his nametag says GENE, pours another before she asks. She pushes a twenty across the bar, raising her glass to him.

“Keep ‘em coming, Gene,” she says. Gene nods and touches two fingers to his brow, smiling.

“What’s the celebration,” she asks, hooking a thumb over her shoulder.

“Figured you’d know,” Gene waves his hand across his face. “What with the costume.”

She eyes her reflection in the foreground of the bar mirror, the mask, similar to those worn by the group behind her.

They gather round a large table in the corner, two couples and another man, a fifth wheel who seems obliged to be the entertainment. They’re all young, vivacious, boisterous, laughing like the world has never been cruel, like they’ll live forever, like their lithe and handsome bodies will never sag, fail, and rot away. Their skin is flawlessly smooth, tits perky, hair thick and lustrous, lips full.

It reminds her of Albert, of their first time here. They’d been so in love with each other, with the Overlook. Bert was handsome, charming, always lavishing her with loving words, always attentive. And the heartbreaking truth of it is, Bert’s still a good husband. He works hard to keep her comfortable, to ensure she’s well-provided for. His hair’s thin and his waist thick, but he’s kind, protective, caring, thoughtful. Oh, what a fool she is! What an utterly irredeemable piece of shit. She sees her reflection in the bar mirror, swollen eyes, hunched shoulders, and she hates that woman.

She sips the last of her bourbon and wiggles the empty glass at Gene.

“Gene,” she says, “have you ever done somebody wrong?”

“More than I care to say, ma’am,” he says.

“Don’t call me ma’am, please. My name’s Lorraine.”

“My apologies. Another bourbon, Lorraine?”

“You bet your ass, Gene. You ever cheat on anyone?”

“Shame to say, but yeah, coupla times,” he says, eyes down.

“Couple of times, or a couple of lovers?” Lorraine asks.

He stands quietly, thinking carefully about his answer.

“Both,” he says, “regrettably.”

“Did you love them?” she asks.

“I did. S’pose I still do,” he says.

“Did they ever forgive you?” she says.

“Can’t say I’ve asked,” he says. “But no, probably not.”

“No, I didn’t think so. Do you think people deserve forgiveness, Gene?”

He thinks about it for awhile, chews on it, as they say, little dimples sinking into his cheeks, his eyes drifting to the ceiling. His face is soft and round, childish, like one of the Little Rascals, and Lorraine can’t help but imagine him as a friendly boy on the playground. Probably a real cute kid, she thinks. When his eyes come back down to meet hers, they’re shiny wet.

“I don’t know if anybody deserves anything better than what they give out, Lorraine.”

“If that’s true, Gene, I fear I may be doomed.”

“You and me both,” he says.

Another, larger group of young folks surge through the batwings. It’s immediately clear they’re friends of the first group, as both parties raise a cheer upon seeing one another. Oh, to have friends, true and honest friends. To love and be loved. How could she be so stupid? She’d been so preoccupied with her need to feel loved that she destroyed everything that made it possible. She watched them in the bar mirror, this happy group, shaking hands, hugging, holding each other close. Loving touch. She longed for loving touch. To feel the electric exchange of warm, caring hands, affection the only transaction. Can one live without it? She tries to remember the last time someone held her because they wanted to, without obligation or compensation. The only thing more awful than being alone is being surrounded by those who aren’t.

The clock hands move with horrible speed toward the top of the dial, toward tomorrow, and Lorraine’s darkness grows with every lost moment, with every masked face that filters into the Colorado. Their laughter and singing land on her like hammer blows, falling and falling, driving her downward into lonesome madness. The booze doesn’t numb the pain, only fuels her need. She wants to sing, to laugh, to dance, to fuck with unabashed joy. She wants to join the youthful revelers with their loud voices and so much of their lives still ahead of them, to belong with them, but they don’t notice her at all. Just an old woman drinking by herself. This place she used to love, the hotel and all its alpine grandeur, is her prison. Nowhere to run. No way to run. But Room 217 isn’t the cage, her life is.

Looking up from her jewel encrusted hands, wrapped around a near empty highball, the bourbon rises in her throat when she catches sight of the bar mirror, bereft of any face but hers. Tables empty, settings untouched. She turns around, the barstool creaking softly in the awful hush, and a horrible cold runs down her back. The room is not empty. There are more people in the Colorado than Lorraine’s ever seen before. Everyone is on their feet, standing silently, drinks in hand, the heat of their gaze raising a flush on her cheeks.

“Happy Birthday, Lorraine,” he says. “Whore.”

A girl in a blue satin evening dress raises her glass, her peacock mask flapping softly.

“Happy Birthday, old bag,” the girl says.

One by one, they raise their glasses.

“Happy Birthday, slut.”

“Happy Birthday, cheat.”

“Happy Birthday, loser.”

“Happy Birthday, pedophile.”

She turns to Gene, who gives her a wink as he pulls a fleshy pig mask down over his face.

“Happy Birthday, unworthy.”

“Happy Birthday, harlot.”

“Happy Birthday, fool.”

Their jeers grow louder, angrier. They laugh, chant, roar, vomit every horrible truth at her. She covers her ears with her hands, shaking her head, tears blurring her vision. Someone hurls a glass, and it explodes against the railing, only feet away. Another glass misses by inches. The next smacks against her shoulder, the pain of it blossoming like heartache. She’s on her feet, pushing toward the batwing doors, but they close in, spitting and tearing at her hair, her dress, nails scratching her face and arms, screaming though bared teeth, flinging glassware and hatred. She squeezes past the pressing throng, bursting through the doors into the lobby, tattered and bloody, stumbling, wailing, screaming for someone to help, to save her from the horde at her heels. The few people in the lobby, around the hearth and by the front desk, turn in her direction, but their faces are awful masks of insects and wolves. She runs past them and up the stairs, tall heels snapping, twisting her ankles, sending her sprawling. Bodies pour from the Colorado, filling the lobby, hurling curses and objects, surging toward her. She pulls herself up and runs, bouncing painfully off hallway walls, tripping on the deep, blue-black carpet. She can hear them on the stairs, hear the creaking of the elevator under the weight of bodies, their shrieks and curses echoing behind her.

She locks the door of Room 217 behind her, flipping the slide lock into place. The sudden quiet is terrifying. The screaming stops, the sound of her pursuing tormentors no longer present, though they must be right outside. The bathroom light is on, and she’s sure she turned it off when she left. A slow curl of steam twists up over the jamb.

The bathtub is full, the air so thick with steam that the mirrors and window are blessedly opaque. On the vanity is a note, rippling from the moisture, tucked under a highball of clear liquid and a brown bottle full of bright red pills. Her hand trembles as she pulls the note from beneath the glass, the bottle of pills tipping over. The handwriting on the note is a gorgeous calligraphic swirl that reads:

This one’s on the house.
We hope you enjoy every moment at The Outlook.
You’ deserve this.
Happy Birthday, Mrs. Massey.
-The Management

She slips one strap of her tattered dress off her shoulder, then the other, letting it fall, sequins clicking against the tiles. She takes a sip from the highball. Gin. Top shelf. Juniper and angelica. No cheap hooch at the Overlook. Draining the pill bottle down her throat and washing it back with the gin, she pulls her stockings off, takes off her earrings and her bracelets, her beautiful Tiffany necklace, leaving them in a pile on the vanity. Her arms and legs are growing heavy as she eases into the tub, the water almost unbearably hot. The fear of the murderous horde drains from her as the memory becomes faint, meaningless, taking with it the week with Chuck, the drive from Rochester, the doldrum years of her dying marriage, everything except the Outlook. Her childish wonder at its sheer magnitude. It’s the only place she’s ever wanted to be. Never old. Never dead. Somewhere – far away and growing fainter, like a train rumbling away in the dark – a clock chimes midnight. Her last tomorrow. Her lids weigh more with every bell ring, as she slides farther down into the water, into the vast, painless depths.

A distant, celebrant voice, a hail across a valley on a crystal-clear mountain morning, calls out, “The hour is at hand! Unmask! Unmask!”

A smile, the one she’d forgotten, spreads across her lips. She’s always loved a masquerade.

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Vernal Velvet

Elk frost fingertips
on the new day’s dew.
Shadows stretched
in diamond lines
across the emerald earth
that cleaves to the bulwarks
a wingspan away.
A wish to run and leap
and launch into the air.
Watch the Earth drop free
with all its gravity and entropy.
So long have I stacked
the stones of my redoubt,
that I’ve neglected
the precious life it defends.
A comforting prison
of my own misguided design.
But I won’t discard this edifice,
nor forsake its ramparts
for the liberty of the wind.
Instead, I will fill this vessel
with fire and light,
to give the weary what I’ve made.
Invite them in to warm themselves,
to breathe and rest,
to know me as a friend.
I will grow fresh kindness
to climb the walls
and flower in the gazing sun.
It was never theirs to forget me,
only mine to remain unsung.
So I will sing to them
of metamorphosis and redemption.
Will coax their lowered eyes to heaven.
Because I can’t be unforgiven.
I can only be the way.

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It begins

Turn off the radio.
Roll down the windows
and bathe in the roar.
The air is fog and fuel,
so cold it must be real.
The lowbeams burn a blastwall
a few yards out,
punching a hole
through the blood-black shroud
of the last American dawn.
She said sing to it,
so I will crow
with boyish rage and bliss.
Stoke the fire
to consume the fear,
to remember my name.
I am spirit,
perennial and entwined,
made breath but for a moment.
I may falter, but I will not fail.
Slam the headlights onward
until the sun meets their gaze.
Bend the day to suit me.
Don’t blink.
Focus.
Turn the streetlight strobe
to trails of light,
the dotted line a single strand.
This is the only thing that ever was.
Scorch it, eat it, fuck it.
You can’t get it back.
You can’t get it back.

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Look it in the eyes

Where is the pearl
within this storm?
For grace or fortune sought,
to soothe the agony
of unrelenting cannonades,
balm the windburned flesh
and still the roiling sea.
If it is me, I will become it.
But if it is us, then what is left?
Because we say the things
we can do,
and the things we will
remain undone, unsaid.
So here,
watch me slip o’er the gunwale,
lower my feet to glassy gray.
We’ll never see it
with our eyes closed.
If we don’t speak,
we’ll never say its name.
And it must be roared,
must be wept,
must be spat with loathful shame.
Fill your lungs with the fear,
and the sorrow,
and the ticking, ticking rage,
and scream until it hears you.
Wake it before you kill it.
It has to see your face.

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