The Nightwalkers

“Yeah. Yeah, mom. No. No we’re coming home tonight,” Gabe said, his phone palmed to his face. He swiped his hair from his eyes only for it to fall back. “No! No! No. We’ll be fine. Honest.” He threw Travis a smile. “No I’m not driving.”

Travis nodded. People shuffled passed them in true Chicago fashion, which was to say Midwest polite but big-city rude. A warm breeze sent garbage rattling along the sidewalks, and speeding cars competed with foot traffic to see who could be the most annoying. Downtown smothered itself in movement. It was like being in the world’s biggest crowd while also being invisible at the same time.

“The concert went late.” Gabe shook his head. Then he nodded again. “No, I’m not lying. It went late. We’re at Soldier Field now.”

It was a lie. Taylor Swift finished singing “Love Story” three hours ago, because concerts no longer got out late. Not even in Chicago, which slept as poorly as NYC did. It was a rule. They had just spent the last two and a half hours eating, window shopping, and being lovesick idiots instead of watching the clock. Now it was 10:43 and they were looking at a three hour ride home in the dark.

In their defense, it was hard to tell what time it was when the city beat out the sun. Travis looked up, following familiar skyscrapers. Bright lights forced midnight all the way back to the stratosphere. Not a single star shined in the heavens. They weren’t strong enough.

Lights kept the Nightwalkers away.

“We’ll be fine, mom. Honest. There are light stops every 25 miles now.”

“And lights along the electrical lines,” Travis put in. Gabe repeated this fact, and both heard his mother beg them to just find a place to stay. It wasn’t worth it. She even offered to pay.

“Travis has to work. And I got homework to finish, and—”

“Don’t Travis’s parents live in Chicago? Can’t you stay with them?”

“Uh,” Gabe said.

Travis shook his head. That was absolutely, never-in-a-million-years, not an option.

“It’s complicated,” Gabe tried.

“I don’t want you two to die over a concert!” Gabe’s mom yelled so loud the little phone speaker distorted. Everyone within ear shot turned to look at them. Gabe blushed. Travis held his hand out.

“Give me the phone,” he said. Gabe handed it over.

“Hey Liz! We’ll be home in a few hours, and Gabe will make you breakfast tomorrow,” Travis promised. “In bed if you want. Eggs and waffles and bacon.”

“Travis? Travis please—”

Travis hung up the call. He handed the phone back.

“Dude!”

To Gabe’s credit, he looked pissed off: hands-on-hips, eyebrows furrowed, dyed black hair all pop-punk moody. But his teeth poked through his frown in that way they always did when he was trying to hide a smile. He purchased the tickets promising an adventure, a true odyssey of music and love, something they would remember this for the rest of their lives! It wasn’t an adventure if his mother approved. At 21 and still living at home, Gabe tended to need her approval more often than not.

“It’s mother’s day tomorrow,” Travis said. He gave the phone back. “Besides, I told you not to call her.”

The phone rang. Gabe silenced it. “I told you, man. I can’t not call her. She’s my mom!”

Travis smiled. It didn’t quite fit his face, which was a boyish 24 with blonde hair and a crooked nose from a fist fight eight years in the past. Because he was happy—actually happy—but he was envious, too. His parents hadn’t given him the luxury of living at home and going to college. Maybe they would have, if their son had been more normal, more straight. But he wasn’t. Instead he had come out of the closet and into a room filled with nails.

“Let’s go.”

His phone barked with notifications, which Travis ignored. He was good at that. An actual pro. Yet his heart jolted him with little shocks of pain. He almost reconsidered.

But for every good memory he had of Chicago, there were two bad ones lurking around the corner. Most involved the midnight hours. He got in his car and waited while Gabe struggled with the door. Travis drove an old Ford Focus, not beat to hell by any means, but in need of work. One of those little projects he kept meaning to start but then always found something else to fix. Last weekend it had been a lawnmower. The weekend before that, an air conditioner, one of those window ones. The weekend before that … well, he and Gabe had smoked enough pot to travel all the way to the end of time. In the future, his car still had a busted door.

“You need to fix your car,” Gabe said when he finally got in. “It makes you look like a bad mechanic.”

“Na, dude. I’m like a chef. Don’t cook good meals for myself, only for people with money.”

“I don’t have any money.”

Travis laughed. “No shit.”

Gabe stuck his phone to the dashboard and synced it to the car. Gabe liked playlists. Gabe kept dozens of playlists! Most of them were mediocre, but no relationship was perfect.

True to his nature, Gabe found something comprised almost entirely of loud, annoying sounds.

“We won’t fall asleep with this on,” he insisted.

Travis put the car in reverse and slid out of the parking garage. His phone took care of the work stuff while Gabe’s conducted the tunes. Chicago traffic kept them at a modest pace, and the skyline gave them something nice to look at. Despite it all, there were things Travis missed about the windy city. The slow, smoothness to nighttime driving, the colors, the way concrete tunnels glowed a faint gold from all the car lights. The city didn’t sleep, but it did slow down to a casual walk, and when it did, the sights came alive.

“Can’t believe you used to live here,” Gabe said, staring out the window, one hand holding up his chin. He yawned. “It’s too big.”

“It is,” Travis agreed. “But sometimes that’s nice.”

“I feel like the buildings are trying to squish me. And I haven’t seen a tree since we got here. No squirrels, either.”

“There are parks.”

 Gabe shook his head. “Not good enough.”

Traffic thinned the closer they got to the outskirts of Chicago, and the buildings shrank in size. The lights, however, only brightened. Travis flipped his brights on. A cop might not pull him over for speeding, but he’d damn well give him a ticket for driving this close to the city limits without some extra light. When they left the city, he’d activate all the other lights on his car, the LEDs stuck to his roof and doors. They wouldn’t help him if a Nightwalker showed up, but they made him feel better all the same.

That and it was another one of those new rules. Every car had to look like a glowstick when driving outside the city. Most people stuck with white because the insurance companies insisted it worked the best, but Travis liked blue and orange. Bears colors.

With the sun set, the once bumper-to-bumper traffic stretched almost empty. But only almost. Semi trucks gift-wrapped in LEDs still made their interstate journeys, only now the driving was done by a computer—the night belonged to the Nightwalkers. And the drones.

“Maybe we should stay,” Gabe said. He reached over to scroll through his playlists. His face was pale. “I mean, if you want to.”

“I don’t,” Travis said. “I’ve made this drive before. It’s not bad.”

“Shouldn’t have wasted so much time looking for food.”

“Nope.”

“Or making out.”

Travis laughed. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

Gabe found another playlist. “I don’t like making my mom worry,” he said, nodding along to some dubstep drop. “She’s my mom.”

What Travis wanted to say was, “It won’t kill her.” What he said instead was, “You can apologize over breakfast.”

Gabe laughed. “What’s with you and breakfast?”

“Most important meal of the day.”

“And why am I cooking it?”

“Because you’re better at it.” Travis toggled his LEDs on. “And because it’s mother’s day. Holidays start in the morning, when the sun’s up.”

Gabe fiddled with his phone. “Didn’t know you cared about mother’s day.”

Travis didn’t, at least not normally. Liz cared though. It was nice having someone who cared.

He eased his car outside of Chicago protection, into a world as grey-black as a storm cloud. Finding true darkness was hard now, even in Midwestern fields. Lights looped everywhere, hung on power lines to keep them safe and stuck in the ground to search for danger. Glowing beams zipped across the sky, more drones carrying things that people needed and wanted. The world didn’t stop just because the Nightwalkers showed up.

Except that first year. That had been fun. Terror everywhere, curfews that started at sunset or else. Every man, woman, and child went out to buy guns and toiletpaper and canned soup. The world was ending. Had to be. The nephilim were here. Travis got hauled to church more than normal in that first month, where his preacher blamed God’s wrath on everyone but God. Mostly it was the gay’s fault. The military blamed Russia and China for all of six days until they realized that was dumb as hell. It took another six months and half a billion dollars to realize the Nightwalkers weren’t killable, at least not by bullets or bombs.

Light though. That kept them back. And the more lights there were, the less places they walked.

Travis spent the bulk of his hours as a junior auto mechanic installing, fixing, or selling high-powered lights as car accessories. Every bitter, terrified customer wanted to be brighter than his neighbor. Sports cars were out; light bulbs with wheels were in.

“Can you shut that off,” Travis asked. “And turn it to the Nightwalker Channel.”

“Sure,” Gabe said. He scowled when flavorless soft rock floated out the speakers. Since everyone used the channel, it had to appeal to everyone. Which meant it appealed to no one.

The song ended, and the Nightwalker report came on. “Please stay off roads and away from doors and windows until sunrise,” An AI voice said. She sounded calm. “Doppler RADAR has indicated a Nightwalker disturbance six miles south of Chicago and moving East.”

“We’re going North, right?” Gabe asked. He fidgeted in his seat. “God, this is kind of freaky, isn’t it?”

“Na,” Travis said. “More likely to hit a deer.”

“You ever done that?”

“Nope!” Travis poked at Gabe’s phone, hoping for music. He found Ed Sheeran. “But I lived in the world’s shittiest Toyota for about six months. Hit plenty of other stuff.”

“Oh.”

Travis shrugged. “We’ll be fine. They move slow.”

“Yeah but,” Gabe said, talking with his hands. He always did that when he was nervous. It was cute. Like he was acting. “Like. I know people who know people who died from Nightwalkers, or lost their cars or homes or whatever, but I don’t know anyone personally.”

“So?”

“So!” Gabe leaned over his seat to look out the back window. The horizon glowed warm with Chicago lights. “I dunno. It’s just weird. Lots of people die from Nightwalkers.”

“Not enough to close the roads at night.”

“Maybe they should.”

Travis nodded. Maybe they should.

Gabe didn’t relax, but he did fall silent, and Travis turned up the volume. He liked Ed Sheeran. They drove on, towards a small town west of Madison. One with lots of trees and big lawns and a perimeter of light to keep the monsters at bay.

The government called it “America’s New Normal,” because it was easier to live with them figure out how to get rid of them. Build lights, use glow in the dark paints. The things couldn’t be killed or reasoned with, and once Congress figured that out, they stopped trying. The Nightwalkers went from the worst hazard in the country to a political nuisance, one for Youtube personalities and TikTok stars to chase around and try to film. For everyone else, it became another routine:

Buy Nightwalker insurance.

Keep your lights on.

Be home before dark.

Work five hour shifts in the winter and ten in the summer to make up for the lost time. Don’t do the math on that, because you’ll realize you’re being screwed.

Only about a thousand people died from Nightwalkers every year now. The flu took ten times that.

“I feel shitty,” Gabe mumbled as they zoomed past their first light stop. “I mean, I feel great. We saw Taylor Swift!” He sighed. “But I feel shitty.”

“I told you,” Travis tried.

“I know.” Gabe smiled. Frowned. “I’m just not used to it.”

“Thought you wanted an adventure.”

“I guess I want everyone to be happy more.”

Ed Sheeran gave way to Illeneum who gave way to Halsey who gave way to Nena. Gabe kept strange playlists. Travis let it slide into the background. His eyes crackled with the want for sleep. At some point he switched back to the Nightwalker Channel, and the AI lady said the coast was clear. Bad music played between announcements.

They saw their first Nightwalker a few miles outside of Racine. It marched on two legs thicker than houses, with a gangly torso and an awkward sphere for a head. Nightwalkers didn’t have faces. Its hands were balled into fists, like it might be mad, but it moved slowly, like it might be bored. This far from a city and a light stop, Travis saw the night sky and the stars beyond. The Nightwalker was blacker.

“Oh my god,” Gabe whispered. Without thinking, he reached for Travis’s hand. “Oh wow.”

“Yup,” Travis said. He squeezed.

For a brief moment, faster than a pang of guilt, the Nightwalker turned towards them. It didn’t have eyes, and it probably didn’t have a brain, but it followed their car with its blank head anyways. It watched. Travis took his foot off the gas. Gabe shrank into his seat.

The Nightwalker resumed its march, heading north towards Lake Geneva where it would stomp through the water and create ocean waves.

Gabe held Travis’s hand until they hit the outskirts of Kenosha, where the lights and people lulled him into a restless doze. Travis got behind three drones, each bright enough to turn the grass day-time green, and followed them until they were about 45 minutes outside of Milwaukee. The drones kept north; Travis turned west for Madison.

The Nightwalker channel said to keep going.

Gabe slept through the second Nightwalker, who stepped out of thin air a few miles off the interstate. One second the coast was clear; the next it was blocked full. The creature walked with a stoop, each foot big enough to stomp trees into twigs and buildings into rubble. Its head lulled forward on its shadow neck, and its arms barely swayed. At one point, it stopped to look over its shoulder.

Travis wondered if the things could be depressed. Or sad. Or guilty. Or nervous. This one shuffled like all of the above, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was just a monster.

The Nightwalker stomped along the road, not following Travis but moving in the same general direction. It had no purpose, no language or mind. At least that’s what the people in charge of the country said. It just walked and destroyed, but mostly it walked. This one found its destination in the span of a few minutes, stepping through another invisible door and outside of the Earth. Maybe forever. They all looked the same.

“Good luck,” Travis whispered. His heart thudded so loud he was surprised Gabe could sleep at all.

Twenty five miles outside of Waukesha, Travis pulled into a light stop. He needed to pee, and he needed caffeine. That was its own branch of fun when driving at night though, something he missed more than he hated. His nerves fried in strange ways. Little electric shocks that played with his vision, sometimes creating ghosts, sometimes memories. He tended to prefer the ghosts. Pleasant memories never showed themselves this late at night.

Gabe woke up as Travis found a parking spot. The building was shaped like a gem, covered in military-grade LEDs and reflective foil. It sent a pillar of light all the way to the clouds like some kind of alien artifact. The government called them a marvel of engineering and safety, but to everyone else they were glorified gas stations surrounded by a field of concrete. This one sat empty.

“Sorry,” Gabe said. He stretched. “Don’t even know how I nodded off. That thing was scary.”

“It’s fine,” Travis said. “Smooth sailing.”

“Any monsters?”

“Just us.”

“Liar.” Gabe frowned. “You’re actually a terrible liar, you know.”

Travis shrugged. His face flushed with embarrassment. “We passed one about twenty minutes back. It wasn’t that close.” He rubbed at his eyes. Fuck he was tired. “Like a mirage.”

“That’s also a lie.” Gabe shook his head. “You don’t have to do everything on your own, you know. Not anymore.”

“I know.” Travis smiled. “I got you now.”

Gabe laughed. “And my mom! She likes you.”

Travis felt his face quiver, stuck somewhere between a smile and tears. The guilt was back again, different than the normal kind and worse for it. His parents made it so easy to deal with, to forget and forget but never quite forgive. Gabe and Liz didn’t work that way.

“You know, sometimes things were easier before I met you,” Travis said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Gabe leaned in for a quick kiss, just a brush of the lips, but it was enough to warm the car. His lip gloss smelled like cherry Pop tarts.

“Well Sometimes you’re a dork, you know?”

Travis laughed. “Great. Just great.”

They  marched into the light stop, the inside of which looked like any normal gas station save it had a small section of stuff for camping in the parking lot. Cheap t-shirts, packages of underwear, and socks hung on wire racks. Pillows so flat they might as well be rocks lay in boxes next to them. Most of the food strayed towards the snack variety, though there were fridges and microwaves for the brave. Travis wandered over and grabbed a hotdog, complete with bun and ketchup, in a sleeve of plastic. He also snagged a bag of chips and a Mt. Dew.

“Want anything?” he asked Gabe.

“Bathroom!”

Travis headed to the self checkout. There was a little wire rack of Hallmark cards. Most were for mother’s day, because it was now 1:00 in the morning on mother’s day. Liz was probably still awake. Gabe said she would be. She’d sit up all night and worry about the both of them, too, and when they got home, she’d yell and call them stupid because they were. But then she’d hug them. She gave good hugs.

She deserved better. The whole fucking world did, but she deserved better first. Travis set his food down. He rifled through the cards. There had to be one for her, one that said he was sorry.

He felt like a stranger, looking through those cheesy cards with their cartoon fonts and pictures of things moms apparently liked, like chocolate and hearts, flowers and teddy bears. He hadn’t celebrated mother’s day in almost a decade. The last time he had spoken to his own mother, he had lied. He couldn’t remember about what, only that he had.

“This one,” he decided. It was pink with gold writing. Inside it read a simple, “To my mom. I love you.” He sucked in a breath, because if he didn’t, he might cry.

“You coming?” Gabe asked.

“Yeah.”

Gabe cocked an eyebrow. “Are you getting my mom a mother’s day card?”

Travis cocked one back. His was fake sarcastic. “Are you not?”

“Fuck.”

Travis laughed, and Gabe grabbed his hand. “Next light stop,” Travis said. “Or the one after. This is the only good one here.”

“I could just sign it too.”

“Hell no!” Travis squeezed Gabe’s hand. “Pick your own out, you weirdo.”

They returned to the car, and Travis laughed as Gabe struggled with the door. Gabe flashed him a sheepish grin, one that said he was embarrassed but also kind of annoyed too. Then he fired up another song from another playlist, and Travis pulled out of the safety of the light and into the Nightwalker night.

Fishing for Ghosts

“Who’s a good boy? You are! Yes you are!” I whisper into the lure. It’s a homemade hook, a bit of joy mixed with a bit of glass that looks sort of like a stuffed squirrel at a distance. The joy is pink; the glass is sharper than a silver bullet. I attach it to my tip down and let the rod do its thing. I then repeat this process with a second tip down, though I bait this lure with, “I love you, yes I do! Yes I do!”

I say the words in an exaggerated voice. I’ve never met a dog that didn’t love that voice.

Their ghosts love that voice, too.

The rest is a game of waiting. It’s peaceful waiting though. The aether laps beneath my feet, and the graveyard earth shifts in pleasant ways. It smells like autumn and feels like spider webs. My rods dangle from their bramble puppets, each weighted with just the right amount of exorcise to tip down and snag a biting ghost. It’s more engineering than magic, but it is magic. Anything that does 90% of the work without help is magic, at least in my opinion.

My shack is a haphazard warm. There is beer—of course—and there is a little radio spitting static and the voices that live just beneath the static. It’s a home-made structure, mostly built of grainy wooden planks decorated with knotholes. Nothing special, but it keeps the frost at bay. Bent nails pockmark the walls, acting as cheap hooks for jars and tools that threaten to fall but only threaten. Nothing actually falls in my shack. Spirits drift up, but never down.

Well, some drift down, but I don’t fish for those anymore.

I only have the two tip downs, so for my third grave, I use a bog-standard fishing pole. It’s also homemade, a gift from dear-ol’ dad. May you rest in peace, pops.

“I’ll love you forever, little man,” I whisper into my final lure. A little piece of my heart breaks away and attaches to the glass point. It glistens red like a drop of blood.

The fishing pole is a brackish piece of corpsewood, yellow at the bottom like a femur but bleach-white everywhere else. Well, except the very middle. That bit’s made of stainless steel from when I first broke it some thirty five years ago. Caught me a nasty haunt, one of them drift-down types. “Never again!” I said, but time and beer have a way of making “never again” turn into “eh what the heck?” which is why there are two pieces of stainless steel holding pop’s old fishing pole together.

He’d shake his head and sigh. Goddamn do I miss him.

I cast, and my lure plips through the dirt, and into the aether. The smell of apples cuts through my shack before turning back into old leaves. I smile, because that’s how you know its prime dog season. They like to play in the leaves. Like to chase after squirrels and bark at birds and get in the way when it’s time to set the table. Always a good scrap or two for the dogs during autumn. It’s the best time to grill in the backyard.

Static hisses through the radio. The dead grumble, and Her flute leads them on. It’s a faint sound, the melody so distorted that it’s less a song and more a part of the wind. She’s far, and as long as She’s far, I’m safe.

So I settle back, place my rod within reach, and pop a beer. I close my eyes and let the sounds of the aether do their thing. I’m in no rush. I’m much too alive for that.

*

A tip down jingles with a catch, and I set my rod aside to yank the bramble puppet up. Hooked, line, and sinker is a wriggling dog snout, fluorescent purple and yipping loud enough to wake the rest of the dead. It’s eyeless and more ooze than form, like turned yogurt stuck to the bottom of a quart, but I can make out enough details to know it was a Yorkshire terrier. I smudge its jaws aside to work the lure out of its mouth. Once free, its little barks turn into whines, which are quieter yet more annoying.

“Oh hush you,” I say. It does not hush. They never do.

In my cooler, next to the beer, is a round-bottom flask. Its neck is about an inch in diameter, but it bottoms out to something closer to six inches. It’s clear, heavy, and sound proof. I bring the complaining ghost to the edge, and it sucks the little Yorkie in without a second thought. Perfect fishing silence returns to my shack.

I add more bait to the tip down, set it back up, and return to my spot, my dad’s fishing pole between my legs and a beer to my right. The radio spits more static. Her flute is almost impossible to hear.

*

It takes another beer before my tip downs jingle, one right after the other. I plod over to them, yanking first a well-worn mutt with a blue glow, then a golden retriever with an orange shine. Both are prime catches, the kind of dogs with easy attitudes and wagging tails. Neither fights back as I bring them to my flask. The Yorkie tries to escape, but he’s too small to get out, and with the other two, they form a makeshift pack. Three is always better than one when it comes to dogs.

The goal is thirteen. It’s a prime number, and one that distills down to the perfect mason jar. The kind us backwater moonshiners call our, “special elixir.” We can thank the Morrison Sisters for that. What kind of moonshine depends on the dogs—Happy dogs skew towards rum while bitter little ankle-biters like the Yorki make a good whiskey. Real big dogs ferment into scotch. A mix of anything and everything blends into a kind of flavorless vodka, which I enjoy with orange juice on Sunday mornings. Praise God. One of these days I’ll figure out how to make brandy.

Not today though.

*

Something yanks at my pole with enough force to tear it from my hands.

“Jesus Fuck!”

I manage to catch it before it falls into the aether. The handle is death-cold, and whatever’s got hold tears back and forth like a wolf trying to break a deer’s neck. I pull, and it pulls right back, almost putting me off balance. Dirt flies everywhere. My beer falls to the ground with a thunk and a glub-glub noise. Half my trinkets crash to the ground, and one of my tip downs tips right the hell over. The radio spits static mixed with bad flute.

“Fuckin’ fuck!”

Panic takes hold, because this feels like one of them drift-down type spirits. Somethin’ real bad, like a bear or a mountain lion. Or worse, a human. My skin threatens to crawl off as I reach for a knife. The ground cracks apart. I can hear the aether twisting like a tornado, a violent swirl sucking at all life. Dirt spills in, and the smell is mold. I’ve never fallen into the aether before. Not sure anyone has and lived to tell the tale. It’s cold and black, and the dirt that sits between this world and the next doesn’t like to be disturbed. It wants to close in, wants to become a still grave. It wants me to scream and drown and die, and then it wants Her to find what’s left.

Before I can cut the line, it slackens. Everything stops with it. The fear, the screams, even the hope. My beer dribbles its last while my radio cuts out.

“Easy now,” I whisper. “Easy now.”

My dad’s old fishing pole jerks in my hand.

I slide the knife up, ready to cut the line and whatever bad spirit has hold, and find myself giving the reel a gentle wind instead. Just a few turns. The gears click like rattling teeth. Whatever I’ve caught doesn’t fight back, so I keep going. Up and up, with just a little play here and there. Sometimes the big dogs fight a bit—not the wolves, but the German Shepherds and Rottweiler’s. Once caught a Husky that threw a real howling fit, so bad it almost knocked the shack over. Most dogs are good, worth a pet and a smile, but not all. The bad dogs bite, and the spirits they distill into bite as well.

“Come on,” I say, and already I can tell the ghost is at the edge, ready to spill over. My heart quickens. I mouth a quick prayer.

I yank up not a dog but a crow.

“What in the hell?”

It’s a dark ghost, like if black could glow, and it doesn’t ooze or droop but spirits around with wings that rotate like a windmill. It caws as it flies, loud bleats that dig into my ears, through my skull, and into my forehead. Little headaches explode behind my eyes. I stumble around, one hand on my pole, another flailing with the knife. I can see my lure in the crow’s mouth, not snagged but bitten. The ghost took hold on its own. It can let go at any time.

I cut the line. The magic fades from the string in a burst of silver. Now it’s just fabric and glass.

Instead of dropping the lure and returning to the afterlife, the crow flutters to the tallest corner of my shack. It finds an empty nail and perches. Or rather, it hovers right above it. Ghosts can’t stand, but this one floats and hops like if it were alive. It gives my lure another playful yank, and the line swishes into the wall. It doesn’t even make a sound.

“Caw!” the ghost shrieks. Pain follows.

“No,” I say. I point at the hole. “Go back down there.”

“Caw!”

I stare at the crow. It stares back. Even as a ghost, it holds its form, with piercing green eyes and wings so dark they shimmer. Most ghosts don’t get so lucky. Most fade as soon as they die, turning into clumps of jelly. Dogs lose their tails and eyes first, then their ears and paws. Rodents jumble into puddles so fast it’s almost scary, yet they retain their noses and whiskers for a long, long time. Deer shrink. A deer ghost will look like a Christmas tree ornament for years before it melts into something that’s more antler than form, and even the doe grow a few points in death. Birds tend to look like eggs made of runny yogurt. Taste like it too.

Cats reincarnate like the cheating bastards that they are.

Humans—but I shake that thought away. I don’t fish for drift-down ghosts no more.

The crow makes like its preening its feathers, which is a strange sight as its beak is more thought than shape. Its feathers ooze around it, through it.

“Caw!” it shrieks when I raise my knife. Pain blossoms behind my eyes.

“You’re supposed to be dead!” I say.

“Caw!”

I look into my cooler. There are two beers left, and my flask, which is nowhere near its thirteen ghosts. If the crow won’t go back to hell, maybe it’ll distill into a spirit or two. I don’t like mixing animals—never been a fan of what the kids call a WOP—but I don’t trust this ghost as far as I can throw it. It smells like a drift-down type.

“Nice and easy,” I say. I pocket the knife and hold my hands out. The crow jerks its head in a way that could pass as a nod. I, meanwhile, stand there like a scarecrow. I look like one too, with faded jeans and a torn sweatshirt over an old button-up. I smell a bit better though. Fishing clothes last longer than farm decorations, but only a little.

“Nice. And. Easy.”

The crow lets me reach into the cooler without screaming more headaches at me. It’s wary though, alert and thinking in ways ghosts aren’t. I snag the flask, and because I’ve earned it, I reach for another beer too.

“Not sure if I should drink you,” I say to the crow. “Not supposed to catch your types, whatever you are.”

“Caw,” the crow says, but it isn’t a shriek. The headache it sends my way is light. The ghost hops from one nail to another. One of its eyes changes colors from green to blue. “Caw.”

“Shut up.”

I pop my beer. It hisses, and the crow darts towards it. I offer my own headache-inducing yelp. The ghost flaps around my hand with its windmill feathers, a freezing ball of jelly and claws sharp as needles. I bat at it while I try to run and hide. Every tap with its beak, every brush of its wings, causes my shirt to freeze and crack. Beer spills down my sleeve, and what doesn’t turn into blonde ice drips onto my pants.

“Fuck!”

“Caw!”

I drop the beer to put my hands over my ears. The crow flaps a circle around the shack, kicking up dirt and knocking my second tip down over. The lights turn off, on, off, on. And then the ghost heads for my beer. It pecks at it. When that doesn’t work, it tries to stand on it, though it can’t because it’s a ghost.

“Caw!”  It screams. It looks at me, all huddled on the ground and feeling like I just lost a fight. My arms hurt. My head pounds. I’m bleeding, though I’m not sure from where. “Caw?”

I’ll be goddamned. It sounds like a question.

“What?”

The crow rubs its head against the beer bottle. Instead of moving the glass, it drifts through it, turning it to ice.

“Caw?”

“You can’t be serious.”

It takes a bit of will, but I stand and brush myself off. The crow watches me with eyes that keep changing color. Blue and green then blue and orange then red and white then teal and purple. One minute it looks like a living bird, the next a ghost orb, the kind you’d see at a cemetery. I check myself for cuts and bruises and find half a dozen, but nothing I can’t fix. Ain’t the first time a ghost bit me.

The crow waits patiently for me to regain my senses, and when it sees that I am ready, it offers another chirp. This one doesn’t hurt.

“You can’t have any,” I say. I shake my head. “Sorry. Ghosts don’t eat or drink. That’s for the living. You should know that.”

“Caw?”

The crow oozes at the bottle. When that doesn’t work, it floats around it, approaching the glass from every direction. The glass doesn’t budge though. An angry ghost can knock things over and make stuff move, but a confused one can’t do nothin’ more than be confused. Or sad. Or dead. The crow blinks. It is crying.

“You gotta go back,” I say. My voice trembles. I’ve been fishin’ for ghosts for decades. Learned it from my father who learned it from his. You can do a lot with a ghost, though we always just drank ‘em. Kick back, relax, and as long as you mind Her, what more could anyone want on a Sunday morning? Then once you’re done, head to church to purify. God forgives the sorry. Then wink and do it again next week.

But seeing this crow sulk around my beer bottle makes me feel worse than dirt. Worse than the aether, which churns beneath the dirt, smelling like autumn leaves and feeling like spider webs.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” I tell it. It flutters to my chair. If I sat down, it would be at my shoulder. I bet it used to sit on its owners shoulder when it was alive, and they’d share a beer and a story. I bet someone loved it once. I bet someone loved it forev—

“I’LL LOVE YOU FOREVER, LITTLE MAN.”

The voice is flutes and death and infinity all rolled in one. I am trapped in the aether, and it is trapped around me. Everything is cold. Everything is tornadoes and drowning. I scream a soundless sound, and I blink a lightless blink. Up and down merge together while the crow caws headaches into my skull. Some part of me curses for not fixing the radio, for not listening for Her, but the rest turns into panic. The rest falls.

The rest dies.

“THAT WAS YOUR TRAP. THAT WAS YOUR LIE.”

She appears in front of me. Her face is a patchwork of skin sewn together with pink thread. There is no light in her eyes. Her hair flows around her face like weeds, and her nose threatens to fall off. Only her lips are complete, contorted into the most gorgeous frown I have ever seen. She could kiss the life from an angel. The rest of her shimmers in and out of existence as flutes play terrible sounds around us.

I cannot see her army of the dead, but I can feel it. I know it is there, and I know I am doomed to become part of it.

“YOU PREY, AND NOW YOU ARE PREY.”

“I’m sorry.”

“YOU ARE NOT.”

“I—”

“YOU ARE NOT!” Her voice is a rage so thick it could end the universe.

“Caw!”

A headache rips through my head. For a split second, I can see the inside of my shack. It’s hazy and dark, and the ghost of a crow rests near my head, staring into my face with eyes that burn bright with red fever.

“YOU DID NOT LOVE HIM FOREVER, AND YOU ARE NOT LOVED FOREVER.”

I’m crying. I have no form, and I have no voice, but I am crying. She’s lying to me. Her song is lying to me. I did love him, and I am sorry. Everything else is gone, but those two things are not.

“YOU WILL NOT FIND HIM HERE! YOU WILL NEVER SEE HIM EVER AGAIN!”

“Please.”

“Caw!”

The world returns. The ghost is screaming at me. My mouth tastes like copper. I try to raise my hand, but it’s heavy with sleep. My shack reeks of autumn. I can hear flutes outside.

“I—”

“THE DEAD MARCH, BUT YOU WILL CRAWL. THE BETRAYERS CRAWL.”

“No,” I plead. I am a ball of sobs and excuses, and my voice is a whisper. “I did love him. I still do.”

“LIAR!”

“Caw!”

I’m sitting with a knife in one hand and a trowel in the other. They’re both bad blades, one made of bone and coffin wood, the other glass and empty words. They’re strong magic though, the kinds of things that let me go searching for ghosts. Because there’s one ghost I want to find, one I’d do anything to see again, even if just for a moment.

“HE SCREAMS AT WHAT YOU DID TO HIM. YOU WERE THERE, AND HE REMEMBERS. EVEN NOW HE REMEMBERS. HE DOES NOT LOVE YOU, NOT ANYMORE.”

“He was sick,” I say. And he was sick. His kidneys were so busted he could hardly control himself, and he growled if you touched his belly. We had to keep him outside that last month. We had to do a lot of things we didn’t want to. But I miss him. It’s why I use that spell when I go fishing. Because maybe he’ll bite hold, and maybe I can tell him I’m sorry.

“YOU GREW SICK OF HIM.”

“No!”

“Caw!”

I’m standing in my shack, one foot on the ground, the other in the aether. Pain explodes through my head. I’m bleeding from my ears. The crow hovers at my shoulder, flapping and cawing and sending waves of cold death through my body. Everything hurts. My fingers are white with frostbite. I’m holding my knife in one hand and pressing its blade into my wrist. All I need is a little more pressure, and I can go back. I can tell Her she’s wrong. I can—

“Caw!”

“Stop.” The word is a whisper.

“Caw!”

I look at the crow. It has three eyes now, each as red as blood. Its form shifts. Its beak melts into a mouth, one filled with fangs.

“Help me,” I say.

“Say it,” the crow says. Its voice is feminine and far away, and I understand what I’ve caught and what I’ve done. “Say the spell.”

“You’re a witch’s familiar.”

“Caw!” The crow shrieks a headache at me, and I press my knife into my wrist. Blood spills. “Say her words! Make her come here! Tell me you love me because I miss her like you miss your dog.”

Through tears I do as the ghost asks: “I love you forever, little man.” My voice cracks, and I fall to the ground.

I look into the aether, and for the first time, I see my own reflection in it. I’m tired and hurt, with sixty years of wrinkles swimming through my face. I was thirty when I put Bailey down. He was eight. Only eight. The good died young, and I stayed living and searching, fishing and drinking. I am dirt, and the best I can manage is sorry.

The crow caws a headache. I grip my knife. It’s a different color in the aether, black instead of silver. The dirt shifts beneath me. It wants to close up, it wants to cover bodies.

“Goodbye,” the ghost says. It hops from my shoulder to the ground. It shakes its head and raises its wings. “When you said her words, you looked like her.”

I let the knife go. It hits the dirt, sinks, and is no more.

“I didn’t mean to,” I say.

“And when you said you were sorry, I believed you.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“If I see your companion, I will let him know. I think he will believe you, too.”

“His name was Bailey.”

The crow nods. “I will find him.”

The crow’s mouth disappears, replaced with a black beak. It blinks its third eye away. It’s a ghost, and it’s dead, and I watch it fly back to Her. The graveyard earth shifts and pours until the hole to hell is no more.

My radio spits static.

Detective Top Hat and the Man Made of Spiders

The warehouse lived on the no-good side of the dock, the one with shadows sharper than a sarcastic tongue. It was a large, open building, filled with pallets of stuff labeled “Fragile” or “Careful, Glass” which were lies as far as drugs, weapons, and devices belonging to super villains went. A table sat in the middle of the clutter, and a dusty fluorescent bulb swung above it on a chain, offering the perfect amount of light to cheat at poker or make shady deals.

Outside, a tugboat grunted a barge towards into place. The air smelled like two-day old chum.

 Five men sat around this table, dressed in navy-blue suits and bowler hats that could best be described as, “mobster.” All of them wore pistols shoved into the waistbands of their pants.

“The next shipment is about to arrive, Boss,” the shortest mobster said. He had a scar on his cheek, though it looked more like a shaving cut than a product of his chosen line of work. “Enough goo to fill a cement truck.”

“But not the shoe kind,” the second mobster said with a grin. The Boss gave him a look that told him to never open his mouth again.

 “Good,” the Boss said. He was a giant of a person, one with a twisted nose that had seen more fights than the average man’s fist. His hair was black, his eyes emerald green. At present, he wore two hats, one a bowler, the other a black top hat with a blue band.

“Rules are the same as last time. Micky, have the goo unloaded by 2:00, and then turn the lights off. The Spidered Man will do the rest.”

“And he’ll continue to spare us?” the third mobster asked. He tried to make the question sound casual but failed. He was scared.

The Boss nodded.

“Hey Boss?” Micky leaned forward, elbows on the table. “What’s the Spidered Man look like?”

“His money looks green.”

Everyone laughed.

“Er, Boss,” Now Micky blushed. “I got one more question for yer.”

“Go on.”

“Why you wearin’ two hats?”

The Boss frowned, because a man of his stature would never wear two hats. Organized crime demanded a very particular fashion sense, and the Boss was the Louis Vuitton of criminals.

He reached up and felt the top hat. He then reached for his gun. “It’s that no-good Detective Top Hat!”

“Oh no!” the second mobster shouted. “That means you’re wearin’ a wire!”

“Find him!”

The mobsters grabbed their guns. Three of them fanned out, but the one who would be better seen and not heard took aim at the Boss’s head. His first two shots missed by a remarkable margin, but the third struck the top hat and sent it tumbling. Before it hit the ground, it vanished.

Detective Top Hat felt a familiar weight return to his head. He smiled, hopped off his step stool, and took off running. His hat vanished again, appearing on the nearest mobster who shrieked, “Get it off! Get it off!”

More gunshots echoed throughout the warehouse. Detective Top Hat ran in the opposite direction.

His hat would catch up. It always did.

Like with all mobster warehouses, getting out was harder than getting in. Detective Top Hat bobbed and weaved, crouched and crawled, his hat bouncing from head to head. The wire inside recorded every shocked scream and random gunshot. It was good for that sort of thing, his magical hat. It belonged to the Detective, was scalp-bound to his cranium with a tailor’s whisper and an ex-cop’s spite, but it yearned to be on the tallest person in the room. This yearning extended in a 30’ radius from Detective Top Hat. And because even the shortest mobster was at least 6’ tall, that meant it had plenty of choices to cause mayhem.

Detective Top Hat kept to the shadows, his ears searching for footsteps, his eyes for clues. When he hit that part of the warehouse that smelled like a sewer and held nothing but man-sized gallon drums, he knew he was on the right track.

“Goo,” he whispered. “Enough to fill a truck.”

But what was the goo, and who was this mysterious Spidered Man? Because Detective Top Hat was looking for flies, not spiders.

His hat returned, vanished, and then returned again. Detective Top Hat got to work. He couldn’t find a barrel opener, but he did spy a pair of pliers in a nearby toolbox. They made short work of the plug. Sewer smell overtook the room.

“What are you?” the Detective asked. The goo roiled and rocked. It was the color of old socks mixed with the innards of a lava lamp.

His hat didn’t respond.

Micky did: “Found you.”

Detective Top Hat flinched. His hat was magic, but it was also just a hat. That being said….

“You’re only 5’10. Short for a criminal in this city.”

“Step away from the stuff.”

Detective Top Hat peered inside the barrel. His pliers would fit with room to spare. “What is it?”

“None of your business.”

That was a lie of the highest order. Everything about this was the Detective’s business. Someone had to solve the fly problem. And the spider one, apparently.

“We can both go our separate ways if you tell me what this is.”

The mobster laughed. “You’re in no position to make threats.”

“That’s the second lie you’ve told me tonight.”

Detective Top Hat dunked the tip of his pliers into the goo. Micky pulled the hammer back on his pistol. Criminals like him loved their cowboy guns—they were just as big, mean, and stupid as themselves. Micky wasn’t very big though.

In a motion that was smoother than a samurai drawing his sword, Detective Top Hat took his hat off, put the goo-covered pliers inside, and placed it on his head. He crouched. His hat vanished. It appeared on Micky’s head, out of place yet distinguished all the same. A good top hat would do that for anyone.

The pliers thunked onto the mobster, heavy enough to leave a bruise but nothing more than that. The goo however, had other plans. It burned through his mobster hat, his hair, and into his skull. It melted his brain. It contorted his DNA, causing it to buzz with fly wings. Micky gasped, and then he exploded into a swarm of bugs. Their bodies were fuzzy, their wings iridescent. The goo-covered pliers fell to the ground.

Detective Top Hat stood. His hat returned to his head, right where it belonged.

*

Disarray and detective work went hand-in-hand, and that extended to Detective Top Hat’s entire life. His office, for example, was a mess of the highest order. A week’s worth of newspapers lay scattered about, most with sweat rings from coffee cups or whiskey glasses depending on the time of day. Tonight was a whiskey night. His floor had never seen a broom, and an inch of dust covered his file cabinet, which had a broken lock and was not good for keeping anything important. The Detective liked to use it as a foot rest. Whiskey tasted better with his feet up.

The entire room smelled like if cigarettes had a baby with a liquor store.

Outside, the soft yellow glow of a searchlight projected at the clouds, displaying Crow Bro’s distorted bird symbol. The great city of Found Angeles needed its greatest hero to come to the docks right away! The Spidered Man was afoot!

“Miss the clowns and the werewolves,” the Detective said. “They got vaccines for that now.”

He pushed play on his wire. He drank. The mobster conversation from two hours ago crackled through the little speaker, the Boss giving orders, and his lackeys obeying them with only a few questions asked. The questions were a clue, though not a good one. Mobsters like the Boss bent over backwards for the super types, especially if their money was good. But even if it wasn’t, clout went a long way in Found Angeles. Guaranteed safety did, too.

The Detective wrote down, “They’re afraid,” in one of his little notebooks.

“So am I,” he said.

People were exploding into swarms of flies. No rhyme, no reason, just thousands of bugs and dozens of dead. Now there were spiders. The entire city felt like a web.

The screaming and gunshot bits were more fun but less useful. Sometimes his hat found itself a talkative sort though, so the Detective did his due diligence, his ears hunting for clues, his pen ready to write.

“Get it off, get it off!” one mobster pleaded through the wire. He sounded like the hat was melting his ears and not simply resting on his head.

“Help!” another screamed so loud his voice cracked.

“Should just leave this to Crow Bro,” Detective Top Hat muttered.

But that bird superhero was just as stumped as the rest of them, always one step behind. The police were freaking out. Their guns and tickets couldn’t arrest a swarm of flies. Yesterday it was an entire coffee shop, and today it was a warehouse of goo. Whatever the Spidered Man was after, his plans were escalating. If someone didn’t—

“Hi, Detective,” a sultry voice spoke through the wire. The Detective bristled. He could hear the speaker wearing red lipstick. “I know something you don’t know.”

Then the hat was elsewhere, recording more gunshots and cries for help.

The Detective finished the rest of his whiskey in one quick wince. “Damezilla,” he said to the empty glass. He said the name like a curse.

*

The first thing his hat did was teleport to her head. She grabbed the brim and gave it a slight tip. Streetlights flickered, and a thin layer of clouds covered the moon. The tabloids called her Found Angeles’ official woman in red, the only truth they ever published: Her lips were ruby, her coat crimson fire. She carried a red purse filled with enough odds-and-ends to take over the world. There was even an unnatural tint to her hair, though she swore she never dyed it. The rest of her was brown and black—smartly dressed for business. She stood 6’3” without shoes.

“Damezilla,” Detective Top Hat said.

“Brad,” Damezilla returned. She laughed. “Still haven’t figured out my name, I see.”

Detective Top Hat—real name Brad Law—shrugged and blushed all in one go. He then lied through his teeth: “It’s not important.”

Damezilla took off the top hat and gave it a spin. “Wish the band was red instead of blue. Red’s a better color.”

“I didn’t wire it.”

“I know.” She put the hat back on.

They stood in an empty park, under the warm glow of an old street light. The sky had an orange tint from city light pollution, and the grassy field screamed summer green despite the late hour. A swing set stood some feet away, abandoned until the morning. Assuming parents were letting their kids out and about these days. It only took a drop of goo to become a swarm of flies.

The ground was flat, and the nearest bench wasn’t close enough. Damezilla controlled the hat. The Detective could have it back, but only if she ducked.

“What do you got for me?” The Detective asked.

“A thousand words.”

Damezilla reached into her purse and pulled out a photograph. She slid it under the brim of the hat, made a little bow, and just like that, the little cardstock image was resting on the Detective’s scalp. He reached for it. Damezilla stood straight, and the hat returned to her head.

“Your bald spot is getting worse. I can see it from here.”

When it came to Damezilla, the only way to win was to not play. She never made that seem like an option, though.

“Still got your lipstick on it from the first time we met.”

“Well, a good detective never forgets a kiss.”

Detective Top Hat flicked the picture. It was a grainy Polaroid of a man walking into an old, worn-down building with an old, worn-down yard. He was dressed for business, but he wore his clothes strangely, like his limbs weren’t quite attached. His left shoulder flopped two inches lower than his right. Bandages covered his head, face, and neck, hiding clues yet giving them out, too. His shoes did not match.

“Who is this?”

“The Spidered Man.”

Detective Top Hat looked up. “You’re sure?”

“I’m hard to lie to.”

The Detective flipped the photo over, hoping to find a note or a date, but it came up blank. He frowned; she laughed.

“Truly you are the world’s greatest detective.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“A little birdie told me.”

So Crow Bro was stumped. He was one of those “I work alone” types, a man not of feathers but gravel. If he was looking for help, then Found Angeles was in real trouble.

“Where’d he get it?”

Damezilla made a show of shrugging her shoulders. “Who knows? Probably saw something shiny and couldn’t resist.”

Detective Top Hat nodded. “I got someone that I think can help find this here building.”

“Good. I got one more clue for you, Brad, and then you can have your hat back.”

“Shoot.”

Damezilla grinned. She was good at that sorta thing. “The goo is mostly spider webs and sewer filth. Dunno what the mystery ingredient is.”

“Does Crow Bro?”

“No.”

“You think it matters?”

Damezilla reached into her purse and pulled out two cigarettes. She put one in the hat, bowed, and sent it to the Detective. She then made a show of lighting hers, using a ruby-red lighter with a ruby-red flame.

“Does it ever?”

The Detective rolled the cigarette between his fingers. He had given up the act years ago, a tougher battle than his go with the werewolf. He still carried a lighter with him though, just in case.

“No. No I suppose not.

*

To the Detective, Khalil Falls kept a strange office. His papers weren’t scattered about, and his bulletin board of names, dates, and numbers listed construction jobs instead criminals or clues. Even his file cabinet locked! Scented candles flicked throughout the room, making it smell like a forest, and a framed picture of a full moon rested against the back wall. A piece of wall part with Arabic writing adorned the front wall.

Detective Top Hat couldn’t read it, but he knew what it said: Masha’Allah. What God Has Willed Has Happened.

It did happen, and it was not the Detective’s fault, though good luck convincing anyone else that.

“Everyone is taller than me tonight,” Detective Top Hat said as his hat materialized on Khalil’s head.

The dark-skinned man wore a white button-up shirt with the top two buttons missing, a mix of distinguished and danger. His eyes gleamed yellow. His teeth were just a little too pointy for their own good.

“My friend!” Khalil said, pulling Detective Top Hat into an embrace that would make a wrestler jealous. He lifted the Detective until his head was the tallest one in the room. “It hasn’t been long enough, you know.”

“Hat looks better on you.”

Khalil obliged. The hat returned to his head. He was a man of many worlds, and on every one of them, he stood 6’5”.

“Have you come to curse me again?” He took his seat, but even sitting he was still taller. “Or maybe you are here to give me this fine piece of headwear?”

Detective Top Hat grabbed a chair. It was not dusty. “Here for a favor.”

Khalil steepled his fingers. His mouth smiled, yet his eyes were wary. Detective Top Hat couldn’t blame him. “You know, one of these days I’m going to cash in on all your favors.”

“I know.”

“Will you be able to pay?”

“I said I was sorry!”

Khalil glanced at his front wall. He nodded. “And I believe you. But I will still want cash. Or perhaps … something else.”

Detective Top Hat ignored the threat. Threats were for pleasure, and this was a business trip. He dug into his pocket for Damezilla’s picture while Khalil sniffed the air.

“You aren’t smoking again are you? It’ll kill you, you know.”

“Nose is as sharp as ever.”

“Detective—”

“I’m not smoking!” Detective Top Hat handed over the Polaroid. “Gift from another friend. And none of your business.”

Khalil rotated the hat on his head. “You coming here makes it my business.”

Detective Top Hat tapped the picture. “You recognize this place? I know you got your eyes and nose on every broken building in the city.”

It was, Khalil liked to say, a way of showing Found Angeles that nothing was irreparable. Even the most condemned piece of property could be made new with a bit of work and care. God knows the politicians and police weren’t going to clean up after Crow Bro and his villains.

“Hmm.” Khalil gave the picture his own tap. “Fourth and Madera Ave. It was a hotel, I believe. One with a tree out front. Ran afoul of Crow Bro and this or that criminal. I tried to find the owner last year but came up empty.” He handed the picture back. “Guess you found the owner.”

“More like a spider,” Detective Top Hat said. He stowed the picture back in his pocket. “But thank you.”

Detective Top Hat stood, and Khalil mimicked the gesture. The hat stayed on the werewolf’s head. “Are you in danger?”

The Detective grinned. “Have you ever known me to not be in danger?”

“Inshallah.”

“Amen.”

*

The Polaroid did as much justice to the building as a corrupt judge, which was to say it looked worse in person and deserved to be in prison. The door was so warped it couldn’t close, the windows were shattered glass on the ground, and the roof had a slight skew to it, like the entire building wasn’t level. An uncaring sun had bleached the blue paint to grey, and an uncaring city had left the place to rot. The only way to fix it was to burn it to the ground and start over.

Silence shuddered across the yard. Not a single bird rested in the lone tree, and the only signs of life were spider webs.

“Found you,” Detective Top Hat said. He gave his hat a poke. It didn’t jump to anything strange, which meant he was alone…. Or his foe was shorter than him.

He approached the door slowly, his hands in his pockets, his fingers dancing around the cigarette Damezilla gave him last night. Muscle memory demanded he stick it in his mouth and give it a light. He fought the urge away.

When he hit the front door, Detective Top Hat got down on one knee and pretended to tie his shoe. He let his hat do the searching. Unless this Spidered Man was the size of a toddler, he was safe.

“Gone then.”

Detective Top Hat gave the door a knock, one with his shoulder and full weight behind it. The door burst open. Light cut into the entryway, and puffs of dust flew around like bats looking for a place to hide. Hundreds of spiders scurried towards the deepest shadows.

Found Angeles housed villains, heroes, and ordinary people trying to live their lives. There was madness, but there was order, too, something Detective Top Hat had figured out long ago. Start with the bottom, and work your way to the top. Normally he’d just start at the top, but super villains never made that easy—too many owned helicopters. Spiders though? They couldn’t fly. Detective Top Hat skipped the first floor and climbed to the second. That’s where the biggest web would be.

He found his clue in room 408: a discarded jacket, a roll of used bandages, and a pair of worn slacks. The clothes were wrinkled and old, stained with blood, and so threadbare they might as well just fall apart and get it over with.

Dead flies covered the ground, each as crunchy as a pebble. They snapped and popped as Detective Top Hat walked the perimeter, looking for more clues and his elusive Spidered Man. Nothing about the room screamed, “lived in”—no furniture, no dirty dishes or cigarette butts—yet there were splashes of dried goo on the ground. Blood, too. The two mixed together like spoilsed peppermints.

Detective Top Hat saw the shadow before he felt the hand on his shoulder.

The shadow was shaped like a man. A tall man.

His hat never left his head.

“What—”

The Spidered Man both pushed and fell into Detective Top Hat, a clumsy attack that sent him sprawling. He crashed to the floor. Dead flies bounced every which way, and crusty goo cracked like old toothpaste. Detective Top Hat did not want to touch that goo.

“You’re not supposed to be here!” the Spidered Man whispered. His voice sounded like a newspaper blowing in the wind.

The Spidered Man pounced, but for all his size and bulk, he wasn’t very heavy. Detective Top Hat shoved himself up, his hands forming fists long before he was ready to punch. He regained his balance; the Spidered Man found his footing. Face to face, he was a head taller than Detective Top Hat, but in a wavy way. His body seemed to shimmer in the dark room, like it was made of jelly. Yet despite his size, the Detective’s hat wanted nothing to do with the villain.

“What are you?”

“Hungry!”

Detective Top Hat swung first. His fist connected with the Spidered Man’s face and blew through it, sending a shower of spiders to the ground. They sped around his feet, biting at his shoes and ankles.

“Ah!” Detective Top Hat screamed.

The Spidered Man fell into him again, a wave of skittering, biting bugs. A few were fuzzy, but most attacked with sharp legs and even sharper teeth. Detective Top Hat choked as he struggled to get them away from his eyes, face, and neck. He slapped and stomped, but for every spider he killed, two more climbed aboard. He needed a rag or a newspaper. All he had was a hat.

The Detective yanked his hat off and used it like a broom, swiping the spiders away in troves. When they were all on the floor or dead, he placed his hat back where it belonged.

The Spidered Man reformed. He looked a little smaller, but not by much. There were still thousands of spiders left to kill.

“What do you want?” Detective Top Hat asked.

“To eat,” the Spidered Man hissed. “To eat flies.”

Detective Top Hat reached into his pocket. He pulled out Damezilla’s cigarette. “All of this for a lunch, huh?”

“I will turn you into flies.”

“Yeah.” Detective Top Hat lit the cigarette and put it in his mouth. The Spidered Man flinched. “That about sums up this city, doesn’t it? You smoke?”

The Spidered Man waved a threatening arm. Spiders spilled from his coat. “Your powers will not work on me!”

Detective Top Hat gave his cigarette a puff. He hadn’t had one of those in two years. It tasted good—like cancer, but good.

“Don’t need a magic hat to kill some spiders.”

He flicked his cigarette at the Spidered Man. It landed somewhere in his coat, and while his hat refused to go anywhere near the creature made of bugs, good ol’ fire had no such issues. The Spidered Man burst into a flailing plume. He managed one good step before his clothes fell in a heap onto the floor.

Detective Top Hat went over and stomped out the rest of the flames before they could get carried away.

“Yeah. That about sums up this city, doesn’t it.”

He gave his hat a twist, turned for the door, and walked out the room. He left his cigarette butt on the ground.

Why Cats are Good at Jumping

The event of the century brought out the best and worst in everyone. Humans made a mess of things of course, but even the trees and insects grew rowdy with their questions and line-pushing. Birds of every species blocked out the sun, trolls got drunk on fairy wine, and fairy’s got drunk on all the flowers that uprooted themselves to make the long trek to Illinois. The state swelled with magic…. And noise…. And refuse. Meanwhile, not a single garbage can in the Midwestern hemisphere went un-raided by bears, raccoons, or orks, who are quite fond of bread crusts but not the bread itself.

Humans and elves built the stadium, with the elves working half as hard but taking twice the credit. Neither party was actually allowed inside. The Titans had had enough of elves and humans to last an infinity.

 There were dragons too (with and without wings), goblins, dogs, weeds, spiders, gnomes, dwarves, a half-dozen centaurs dressed in fancy suits, a swarm of fourth-generation mayflies who couldn’t understand why everyone was so goddamn excited, two naga who looked hopelessly out of place, and a mermaid in a wheelchair being pushed around by an emperor penguin. His name was Slippy.

There were no cats. Cats were banned from the entire state.

They know what they did.

Correction.

There was one cat. His name was Chesh, and his ears were so flat against his tabby-stripped head he looked like a baby seal. Orange fur covered him from nose to tail, complete with brown stripes and sock-white paws. His eyes were blue. He wore a blue bandana around his neck, which had the effect of making him look like a handsome little man, and also let him carry a permanent marker. A silverback gorilla smoking a joint was kind enough to help him with that.

“Not supposed to be here,” the gorilla said.

“Just want to ask a question,” Chesh replied while giving his front paw a lick. “Just the one. That’s all.”

The gorilla snorted. “You’ll take more than that. I’ve met a few cats in my day.”

“I’m not—”

A shadow fell over Chesh, one with big leaves and even bigger branches. His  tail floofed into something resembling a traffic cone. An oak tree stumbled at him, not looking where it was going and swinging its squirrel-laden branches like swords. Chesh jumped onto the tree; the gorilla stumbled back a few steps.

“Excuse me,” the tree bellowed in its slow language. The squirrels cursed and threw rocks.

“Hey!” the gorilla said. “Get to the back of the line!”

“I didn’t mean too.” The tree waved its branches. Before Chesh could blink, a maple tree cut in line. It was also filled with squirrels.

The gorilla roared so loud a dwarf spilled his beer.

“Fuck yer both!” the dwarf demanded, his shirt soaked through with drink. He dropped his stein and put up his hands. “And fuck yer mothers!”

“Well I never!” the oak gasped.

It should be noted that there were no weapons allowed in or around the stadium, a rule enforced as staunchly as the no-cat one, which is to say quite well but not with absolute perfection. If only a dozen people died during a Titan visit, well, that would be fantastic. The typical death count for an event of the century landed in the quadruple digits—the leading cause of death being dehydration.

Regardless, the dwarf had nothing to swing but his fists. These proved ineffective against a tree.

Chesh scampered to the newly-arrived maple, dodging a nest of hornets and an apple who claimed to be poisoned. He had places to be and Titans to meet. This close, the stadium took up most of the horizon, flourished with vines and flower patterns courtesy of the elves. Chesh knew that if he got closer, he’d see murals dedicated to each of the Titans. He also knew that the Titan he wanted to see would be somewhere in the middle.

Mistress Gravity was the most important, so of course she got to be the center of attention.

The closer Chesh got, the more the crowd cramped together, everyone and everything fighting for a better look. Cameras flashed and food wrappers wrinkled the ground. Flyers with “No Cats Allowed!” floated in the breeze. Chesh did his best to prowl through it all, his head low, his belly even lower, but at some point in the evening—and it was apt to happen—someone noticed him.

“Cat!” a voice screamed, possibly a gryphon’s.

“Where?” everyone said, shouted, roared, and otherwise panicked at once.

“Over here!” a grasshopper called. He chirped his wings.

“Shut up!” Chesh pleaded. “I’m just—”

“He’s right here!”

A wolf stepped on the grasshopper, her nose to the ground. Chesh ran. Flies buzzed in his ears, and fairies followed overhead, their wings lighting like glow sticks. Chesh howled for them to please go away. Humans tried to grab him, and elves tried to be-spell him. A little girl in a black dress with a pink sash gave a high-pitched cry of “Kitty!” and reached, her arms already mid hug.

Her mother smacked her on the hands and scolded, “No honey. Cats have germs.”

A dragon cocked an eyebrow.

A gnome turned himself invisible.

“One of you lot just cast a spell!” a man wearing a very shiny black tie demanded. He looked like the sort of person who made demands all day every day and got very sour when they were not met. “Turn him to ice or whatever!”

An elf made to do just that, his fingers already wiggling, when the grasshopper-squishing wolf bumped into him. The elf said the wrong word, slipped, and transformed the demanding man into a ceramic swan.

“Oops.” His voice sounded like air escaping a balloon.

Chesh leaped the newly-made lawn ornament, his tail spinning like a tornado to keep him balanced. He landed on the ground, darted left, right, and then ran smack-dab into an outstretched hand. Claws grabbed him by the bandanna. They lifted. Chesh gave a mew, his ears back, his tail curved between his legs. His permanent marker fell to the ground.

“You’re not supposed to be here!” the woman hissed. Her teeth were pointed like a vampire’s. “You’ll chase them away.”

Chesh gulped. Or he tried to. The bandanna was choking little stars behind his eyes.

“Paid too much for this spot to be cheated by a thief.”

The crowd stepped just a bit closer at that. Even the moon grew bigger in the sky, eager for a look. The Titans would soon be here, but until they showed up, there was still a hierarchy. Elves and humans stood at the top, mountains of power, and cats wandered somewhere near the bottom. They belonged with the raccoons and dogs and trolls. The strange woman gave Chesh another shake, her lips mumbling both curse words and magic. Flames shuffled behind her teeth.

Then the bandanna ripped.

Her spell made a popping flash above Chesh’s head, one that would have burned him into something so inedible even a goblin would have turned down the meal. Instead, it blinded everyone within eyesight and sent a dragon into a coughing fit. A gunshot split the air. A woman with more sense than most bellowed, “George you put that fucking thing away right now!”

“But—”

Chesh was already running when he hit the ground. Everyone tried to grab him at once, which led to a collision of body parts, mostly heads bonking into other heads, and the spilling of more drinks. The vampire woman cursed, not a real but a bad word, and the dragon coughed a wad of sticky spit onto her back. She fell over. Chesh decided to leave his marker and bandanna. His life was worth more than an autograph.

He still wanted to meet Mistress Gravity though.

Instead of running away, he continued on, causing mayhem with each step. Witches cackled and orks gnashed their teeth. A snake asked him if he’d like some help, but Chesh didn’t trust the rattling sound behind the offer. Best not to risk it. The closer he got to the stadium, the wilder the humans and elves became, fighting each other over the best spots and swapping money for trinkets neither were supposed to own. It wouldn’t be the event of the century if at least one elf didn’t wander back to his home with a pipe bomb or can opener.

The Titans arrived around the time Chesh was trying to navigate a dragon, one whose wings were attached to his arms. He had a stubby neck and was reaching for a better look when Chesh stepped on his tail. The dragon spun about, Chesh went flying, and then the air froze in place. The moon blinked. Every law binding nature to Earth wavered, and if you wished upon a star at this very second, your wish would come true.

There were no shooting stars. Chesh wished everyone would stop trying to kill him.

Nothing happened.

The great titan Conservation arrived first, appearing as a spinning symbol that no one could quite make out. Sometimes they looked like an infinity; sometimes they looked like a series of interconnected loops. Lighting crackled inside their shifting shapes, and everyone clapped—even those that didn’t understand the laws of conservation.

Chesh dodged the dragon by running between his back legs and jumping onto a pine tree adorned with Christmas ornaments.

Thermodynamics appeared next, arriving as three burning wings without a body, head, or legs. More people clapped. The dwarves went wild. One reached over the velvet rope for a handshake, and when he melted his finger down to the bone, smiled so wide he looked like he might cry. It was a story for his kids and his kid’s kids!

Chesh leapt off the pine tree, scattering a handful of glass orbs to the floor, and ran across the back of an alligator. The gator paid him no mind.

Photonics appeared third, and in her usual manor, disappeared soon after. She was a shy Titan.

Gravity came after her, wearing the guise of a bipedal creature draped in a dress blacker than space itself. She did not walk but floated, and every thing that looked at her hovered off the ground. This proved quite useful to Chesh, who was too small to see her but quite good at running under feet. He bolted towards the stadium while everyone clapped, cheered, drank, or did bumps of coke.

“Mistress!” he mewed, his tail high. He wished he had time to give himself a quick bath so he could look his best. “Mistress! Over here!”

Someone shouted, “Stop that cat!” Someone else shouted, “Look! It’s Radiation!” No one was sure what to do, so everyone tried a little bit of everything. Fireworks lit up the sky.

“Mistress Gravity!” Chesh called. The stadium was right there! He could see the velvet rope, magically enhanced so no one could hop over it.

Unless you were a cat.

Chesh made the impossible leap as hands, claws, and in the case of one wolf, a jaw filled with teeth, reached for him. He landed panting, his eyes huge pools of black, his tail just a little poofy. Still, he felt dignified.

“Mistress Gravity!”

“Hello? What is this?” Chesh let out a purr. She was right there! The hem of her dress jerked like clean bed sheets, perfect for playing with, and though her hands were just a little too long to be human, they looked like they gave good pets. Her face was the color of concrete at night, but her eyes sparkled like rainbows. A river of hair swirled around her face.

“Mistress Gravity! I made it!” Chesh chirped. The crowd around him glowered. An elf pulled out a ceremonial sword, not sharp at all, but heavy enough to club a small creature to death.

The Titan knelt, though her body never touched the ground. Rocks and pieces of grass floated around her knees. “Little one, you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Can I have your autograph?”

“Excuse me?” Her voice was soft like the warmest blanket yet powerful enough to hold planets in their orbits. Everything about her was beautiful.

Chesh swished his tail. “I brought a bandanna and a marker because I wanted an autograph. I’m a big fan.” He hunkered low. “But I lost them.”

Another Titan arrived, this one to do with chemistry, but Chesh didn’t care. He only wanted this moment to last just a bit longer. He had worked so hard to get here.

“Little one,” Mistress Gravity said, her tone both amused and annoyed. She waved her hand, and Chesh floated towards her. “You’re … You’re ….” She gave Chesh’s cheek bone a rub. “Too cute for your own good, I suppose.”

“I—”

“But you’re not supposed to be here.” She looked him over. “The last time a cat got too close, he stole something from me.” She smiled. Her smile was warm. “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”

“Can you make it so when I knock stuff off the counter, it falls faster?”

Mistress Gravity laughed. “No.”

“Oh.”

“And I cannot make it so you fall softer or jump higher or fly.”

Chesh swished his tail. He didn’t mean to. Honestly, he didn’t, but he also didn’t like being told no. “Why not?”

“Because you cats already do those things.” She set him down. “My laws barely apply to you already.”

Another Titan arrived. The crowd behaved like a crowd. Chesh reached up and rubbed at Mistress Gravity’s legs, marking her with his scent. She offered him one last pet.

“I’m sorry about your marker. But you do have to go.”

“Thank you.”

Mistress Gravity smiled. “For what?”

But Chesh was already walking away, a newer spring in his step, his paws just a little lighter than they were before. He couldn’t help himself. He was a cat.

Project T

We only had the machine for a week. It was not enough time. I don’t believe the Black Coats are real people.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

We arrived at the warehouse a little nervous and a little excited, too. The government had promised much, and after another hard semester of PHD lectures, this almost seemed like a paid vacation. Project T. It’s what Agent John had called it in our initial meeting. Project Time Travel. We dropped our belongings off at the door and stepped into a building of polished metal, opaque glass, and dark acrylic. “This place belongs in a science fiction movie,” Jen had said. “Maybe even a good one.”

I agreed. Howard sighed. He was the first to express doubts, but that is always the case with Howard.

We were each given a computer station, one without any USB ports or internet capabilities. The desktops were all navy blue save for one tiny icon in the upper left, a white T. The program’s name read simply: Project.

“I don’t understand,” Jen said when she opened it. Howard and I crowded over her shoulders. “It’s a search bar.”

“But there’s no internet,” Howard said. “That’s what John the Black Coat said.”

“What should I type?”

“Ask it who will win the Patriots game,” I offered. “I feel like gambling tonight.”

Jen typed in the question, and almost instantly a dozen pages of text appeared on the screen. I skimmed them, my mouth falling ever more open.

“This is an entire play-by-play of the game tonight,” I said with a laugh. “Down to the bad calls.”

“So it can see the future?” Jen asked.

Howard shook his head. “Probably runs on a thousand pounds of math and AI learning. I can’t believe it’s this fast though.”

“Hmm,” Jen said, before typing in her own questions.

I must admit, we played with the strange computer program all throughout the week. It was fun, but the more we stayed inside that warehouse, acquainting ourselves with its quirks and equipment, the more jittery and surreal the job became. Project felt like a grounding toy, a Magic 8 Ball with real insight. I recall asking it about the meaning of life and the big bang and getting answers I found satisfactory, if not a little thin. As the hours became days and the days a week, we relied on it heavily for its amazing set of raw data, engineering prowess, and predictive abilities. We could not have finished Project T without it.

That being said, its play-by-play of the Patriots game was flawed. They did win, but Project got the calls wrong. It did not turn me into a millionaire. True time travel, of seeing the future or the past, would come later.

If the warehouse was a science fiction movie, Project T was its monolith. It was a black box about the size of a small bedroom, so smooth and polished its surfaces doubled as a mirror. Its single door sealed so tightly it hid the seam. Its interior was equally bare-bones, much smaller than its exterior with two chairs and one computer station equipped with Project. It fit two people, but barely.

“I’m not getting in there,” Howard said when we first opened it. “Not in a million years.”

He never did, and it’s funny in a way, because I wish we had been able to turn his statement into some form of irony or prophecy. What is a million years when you can travel time? What is ten million years? The Earth is over four billion years old, the universe even older!

A week was not enough time.

“Don’t be lame,” Jen said. She was the first to hop inside, boot up the computer, and begin asking it questions.

I followed her inside, my frame not much bigger than hers but still too big for the cramped machine. When the door closed on us, we both let out little screams. My skin felt clammy, and her eyes turned into saucers. The wall appeared blank, not a closed door but a melted piece of something. I tapped on it with my hand.

“What are you?” I asked.

“How do we open it?” Jen asked, though the question wasn’t for me but Project.

Project told us how to open the door.

Fear and curiosity are interesting things. I crawled out of Project T prepared to leave and never look back, yet I marched to my computer terminal and began inputting commands. Project complied, and two hours passed in the blink of an eye.

Agent John—John the Black Coat—promised us a puzzle, one 90% completed. His agency needed help with the final 10%. We, he believed, could do it. At that moment, I believed we could do it, too.

“Well,” Howard said, a blue dry-erase marker in one hand and a wall-sized equation scribbled onto the nearest glass wall. “What do you think we should do?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think we can do it.

“Same,” Howard said. “But?”

“But it’s a game,” Jen smirked. “I’ve never not finished a game.”

“That doesn’t mean we should play it,” Howard returned.

We debated. We asked Project more questions, some silly just to see what it might say. I asked it about the ethical ramifications of time travel; Jen asked it its favorite time travel movie. Howard asked the most interesting question though, which was this: Who chose us and why?

“I chose you,” Project wrote. “Because I know you will.”

That was when Howard walked out. I followed suit not long after, but Jen stayed behind. She worked all night, in fact. When I came in the next morning, tired from tossing and turning, she was still in front of the computer, her fingers a blur, more of the cloudy windows covered in marker equations. The smell of coffee hung heavy about her head, and Jurassic Park played on my computer terminal. She was grinning at something.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Coffee machine is working on another pot,” she said. “The fridge is well stocked, mostly with garbage. John the Black Coat did his homework.”

I approached her computer and once again found myself looking over her shoulder. She was playing chess with Project and losing soundly.

“It can’t read the future,” she said, moving her pawn one square forward. It was a bad move, and Project quickly countered with a rook. “But it knows so much it might as well be.”

“I don’t think you’re good enough at chess to really say that.”

“It got me in Checkers, Monopoly, Sorry, Candyland, and Connect Four.” She moved her queen next. Project took it with the rook from its previous move.

“I don’t think that means anything.”

Jen shrugged. “I think it’s cheating.”

“The only way to beat a cheater is to not play.”

“Or to cheat,” she said, but she took the hint well enough and we got to work.

She looked exhausted, but in her typical fashion, had more energy than me. She had more energy than Howard, who showed up a half hour later grumbling about bad ideas and the solution to yesterday’s giant equation.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he yawned. “So I worked.”

The next four days became a routine of sorts, with all of us showing up at random hours, working on Project T in long stretches, and playing with Project. Jen kept us supplied with coffee, and the fridge kept us supplied with the kinds of food I used to live on in college and grad school. In a way, we all traveled back in time, to twenty years prior when our bodies could survive on sleepless nights and carbs. I gained ten pounds.

I cannot explicitly say what we worked on or how, but it did take all three of us. Howard did the most heavy lifting, much to his chagrin. We couldn’t have done it without him.

And this is less important, but we played almost 40 different games with Project over the course of that week, some quick, others long. We lost 39 of them. Jen is the only one who beat the supercomputer, and her chosen sport wasn’t Candyland but Halo. She won by four kills.

The final day found us too tired to celebrate our victory. We spent the first hour fighting with the computer. Project didn’t want us to test the machine. That was for John the Black Coat and the United States of America. We were to wait for their arrival and proceed from there. It wouldn’t tell us if we would be part of the test or simply escorted away.

 Jen and Howard are physicists on the cutting edge of their fields. I am too. It’s why, I believe, Project chose us. But I am also a software engineer, and while I don’t know how Project works in the slightest, I do know how to cheat. Jen and myself broke into the cramped monolith and took our seats.

Howard begged us to stop.

“When should we go,” Jen asked. “And where?”

Truthfully, we had discussed it at length. History is filled with mysteries, both big and small, but most are out of the realm of even time travel. We cannot change the past or alter the future. Project T as a craft is also not easily hidden, meaning visiting, say, Kennedy’s assassination would cause more problems than it would solve. Then there’s the danger involved in Earth’s past. All of our favorite destinations were ruled out by either our own rules, the laws of nature, or simple fear of what might happen.

I did, however, come with an idea.

There is a series of landmasses in the Bismarck Sea called the Vitu Islands. They are small and scattered, and based on ancient writings, missing one. We know this from a single text found in Papua New Guinea that dates back almost 3,000 years. It mentions an eruption, but there are no volcanoes in that area.

“Let’s find out what happened to it,” I offered. “It’s far back enough, and isolated enough, that we won’t change history at all.”

“You sure?” Jen asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “If that works, then I get to pick.”

I told Project our preferred date, time, and location, and while it didn’t want to send us there, it couldn’t stop us. HAL it was not.

Project T filled with the strange smells of brimstone and gasoline. I cocked an eyebrow, but before we could cancel our trip, we were already there. Jen yelped. I did too.

The door slid open to a sky of the purest blue I have ever seen. The air smelled so clean it almost hurt my nose. Everything was brighter. Even the clouds appeared fluffier, lighter, not weighed down with pollution. Beneath us, an island missing from history sprawled, overgrown with lush jungles and the sounds of colorful birds. Patches of missing tree growth marked villages and cities.

“My god,” I whispered.

What I should have said is: Why are we flying? Even now I don’t know. Nothing about the machine or our schematics gave it the ability to fly, yet we were high up, perhaps 300 meters. I should have also asked why it smelled even stronger of gasoline.

The fireballs appeared out of nowhere. One minute the sky was clear, the next it was a hellscape of red and orange lights. They formed small at first, about the size of my fist, but quickly grew to the size of cars and trucks. I watched in horror while Jen screamed in my ear as they rained down. Each exploded upon impact, spreading fire and death from one end of the island to the next. Birds flew, their wings aflame, and trees crackled and sparked. Smoke filled the air, my lungs, Project T.

And then we were back in the secret government warehouse. John the Black Coat helped us out. He thanked us for our service, for helping the United States of America. He ignored Jen’s sobs and my frustrated demands. Unlike Project which always wanted to play, John refused. His hands were ice, his grip iron.

“You can’t,” I howled while Howard, fear in his eyes, demanded to know what was going on. “You have to listen to me!”

John led us out. He did not openly threaten us, yet the threat was there. I could see it in his body language, in the little glimpse I got of his eyes when Jen shoved him and his sunglasses slipped. He had yellow eyes. Like a lizard’s.

He closed the door on us, and a week later, a paycheck larger than any I have ever seen showed up in my checking account. I got a letter the next day from John the Black Coat. It read, “On Behalf of the United States of America, we thank you.”

A Dragon’s Treasure

There are only two good reasons for an adventurer to kill a dragon, and while Rig doesn’t fancy himself a good adventurer, he respects the trade enough to follow the rules. He even has a copy of the handbook! He cannot read said copy of the handbook, which was penned over three hundred years ago by Sir Clemonce E. F. Telken (Slayer of Roth the Mighty, six-times Tourney Champ for seven years in a row (one year had to be skipped due to every horse coming down with a rash), Medallion Winner, and author of the best-selling The Adventurer’s Handbook: How to Avoid Troll Tolls).

Per Sir Telken, the only two good reasons to kill a dragon are:

1. To stop it from terrorizing the good people of Lottingham
2. To take its treasure

Now, the only dragon within walking distance is a medium-sized beast named Libre, a green wyrm not known for her terror, murder, fire, or fiendery. However it is said that all dragons hoard treasure like a pig mud, and Rig knows a thing or two about pigs. His father was a farmer; his grandfather was a farmer. Rig meanwhile, is a butcher. He fancies himself quite good with a cleaver too, and when you get right down it, a halberd is just a long cleaver with a better handle. Pigs, meanwhile, are very easy to rob. If a dragon is like a pig, then there isn’t a more suited man for the task than Rig Greenhill!

And it is the perfect day for an adventure. The sky is a pure, cloudless blue, and the trees are all aquiver with green. The temperature is warm—but not too warm. Why, even the road has a perfect layer of dust atop it. The birds chirp. The crickets sing. Rig hums along with them, an old lullaby his mother used to sing back when he was a babe. It’s the only song he knows that doesn’t involve drinking, whoring, or both.

“The drinking and whoring can come tomorrow.”

He grins to the open road. His halberd wavers with his stride, a little heavy when strapped across the back, but handsome too. It cost him his ass, but once he has the dragon’s treasure, he plans on buying another.

It should be noted that what adventurers consider “walking distance” and what butchers consider “walking distance” are two very different lengths. It takes Rig six hours to find the weedy trail that leads to Libre’s meadow and another two to cross it. By this point he is tired, hungry, and cold. He reaches into his pack for a skin of beer. He did not think to bring water.

“Boy howdy, Rig,” Rig says to no one. “You sure screwed this one up.”

The sky is still cloudless, but the blue of it has darkened. A breeze blows from the north, just chilly enough to make Rig scowl. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote laughs.

“Screwed this one up real big,” he says.

Footsore and ready for more beer, Rig finds a comfortable patch of grass. He opens his copy of The Adventurer’s Handbook. The words snake about the pages like bugs, and a few jump out: Pig, fire, the, dragon, cook, troll, and some others. He can’t string a sentence together to save his life, but he can admire the pictures and make educated guesses.

“Should start a fire and cook a troll,” he says.

Rig looks around. There are twigs and grasses aplenty, and he knows how to make a fire. He doesn’t see any trolls though. He’s never had one, and isn’t sure they’d taste very good besides. Maybe it’s for the smell? To drive his spirits high! Or to drive the local wildlife away. The last thing he needs is for a band of coyotes to come sniffing around.

Well, that’s what the halberd is for.

In the end, Rig finishes his beer, pees into a bush, and continues on. His map says Libre’s Hollow is just ahead.

Libre’s Hollow lives in Libre’s Gulch, an unnatural chunk of land carved by dragon magic and spite. Rocks bounce about, slippery with dust, and small bushes grow here and there, nettle-covered and bored. At the end, not a cave but more a hut, is Libre’s home. It too is not natural. It is, however, pleasant to look upon, softly rounded and lit with yellow dots of faerie fire. Its mouth—its door—is inviting. In fact, it is downright cozy. It reminds Rig of his grandfather’s farm, of sneaking out of the house at night when he was a child to watch the stars and wonder what might live on the moon.

“Hmm,” Rig says to himself. This is his thinking sound, which has lost him more arguments than won and generally puts him on the bad side of an idea. “Hmm, hmm.”

Because Rig would be the first to admit he isn’t known for having deep thoughts. He’s not a wizard or an intellectual. He has one now though, and that thought is this: All the dragons in the old tales can talk, and it isn’t right to kill something that can talk. Not without the law saying it’s okay. Libre isn’t a wanted lizard. She’s never terrorized nobody as far as Rig knows.

He opens his Adventurer’s Handbook and flips to page 12. Telken is quite clear on his two rules. Rig can’t read most of the writing, but “Kill” he does know. “Treasure” as well.

“Hmm,” he says again. “Hmm, hmm.”

What ultimately pushes Rig into Libre’s home isn’t the complexity of law but the ice in the wind and the sharpness in the rocks. He is too tired to walk back up the hill. Thus, his only option is to enter the dreaded lair before him, slay the dragon, and take her treasure.

He at least has the decency to feel like a damn fool for it, because he is.

The temperature warms the closer he gets, until he’s through the door and standing in front of what feels like a blazing fire. The aches in his shoulders lesson, and either his vision adjusts to the night, or the cave is bright with yellow lights, because everything is easy to see. It’s a soft place, with a dirt-covered floor and smooth walls that swoop up to a ceiling filled with little torches. They don’t flicker like normal torches but stay constant, almost like the sun itself.

Shelves are everywhere. Wooden, smooth, and chewed about the edges from use, they cover every wall Rig can see, and all the walls he cannot. More act as furniture, if furniture was measured in rows and not chairs or stools. The shelves are about a wagon’s width apart. Each is twice as tall as Rig and many times longer. They do not contain treasure.

They contain books.

Anxiety plays at Rig’s heels. Anger does too, though that emotion is a few steps behind, where it belongs. The thing about dragons is that they aren’t small. Libre is a medium-sized one as far as magical lizards go, but she is still bigger than three oxen in a row and weighs twice as much. Her jaws are capable of snapping said oxen with a single bite. If Rig were to stand on his tiptoes, stretch his arms all the way up, he still wouldn’t be able to grab a book from the highest shelf. There are no ladders or stools to stand on, because Libre doesn’t need them.

Yet what comes out of his mouth isn’t a whimper but a curse, “There ain’t no damn treasure here!”

The book—his, not Libre’s—says dragons collect treasure. Rig can’t read the words between “dragon” or “treasure,” but he isn’t a complete buffoon. He knows what he knows! There’s supposed to be gold and gems and magical artifacts, not … not books! Not a single thing worth taking glimmers in the room. There isn’t even a chair to sit on.

Rig sighs. He marches to the closest shelf and puts his back against it. It’s sturdy enough, and warm enough, and he slides down until he’s sitting on the floor. His halberd falls from his back. The blacksmith promised him it was a good weapon, the perfect tool for a daring adventure.

“Damn thing’s not even good for a walking stick,” Rig says.

Believe it or not, there is a chapter in The Adventurer’s Handbook: How to Avoid Troll Tolls about not falling asleep in a dragon’s cave. It’s actually quite common for weary adventurers to plop down for a sit, doze off, and wake up to being devoured. Dragon magic exudes tranquility as a byproduct of their collecting and shaping. They feel at home in their homes, and thus, everyone that enters also feels at home. It makes them exceptional dinner party hosts, with the caveat that the dinner is typically the guest.

It should be no surprise then that when Rig wakes up, he is not alone. Two reptile orbs stare at him from behind a muzzle of emerald scales and sharp teeth the size of kitchen knives. Libre’s head is a head larger than Rig, and her body is many times that, snaking out behind her and supporting thousands of pounds of muscle and scaly hide. Spikes run across the spine of her back. A pair of green wings fold about her flank like leathery covers. She is the most beautiful and most terrifying thing Rig has ever seen in his life.

She also looks absolutely nothing like a pig.

“Hello human,” Libre says. Her voice is gruffer than a callous, yet quiet too. “What are you doing in my home?”

Rig gulps.

“And why have you brought that wicked looking weapon with you?”

Rig gulps again. He doesn’t know what else to do.

“Yet,” and here Libre sniffs. “You have a book with you. I can smell it on your person.” Her dragon snout breaks into a toothy smile that flashes with fire and brimstone. “It is well read. The spine is bent, and the pages are earmarked. I can smell your fingerprints on it.”

“It’s not right to kill something that can talk,” Rig yelps. The words come out like a squeak. “Not unless the law says so.”

Libre cocks her head. Her tongue snakes out of her mouth, and she wipes her eye with it.  “Sometimes the law is wrong, human.” The dragon leans back on her haunches, peering at Rig not like a lizard but a great jungle cat. He sees her exposed belly and thinks for just a moment about using his halberd. It won’t work though. Her scales are too thick, and his arms are like noodles.

And it wouldn’t be right besides.

“More often,” the dragon continues, “I think, the law is wrong. But are you a philosopher? Or a scholar? I have a great many books that might interest you.”

Rig shakes his head.

“Historian?”

“No,” Rig gulps.

The dragon scratches at her chin. “Do you like fiction? I mostly have fiction, if I’m being honest. I love the romances, even if half the people that show up here are knights thinking I have gold.”

“I,” Rig blushes, and Libre narrows her eyes. He tries to find more words, but they spit about his feet, useless. Instead he hums the lullaby his mother used to sing him. It lets him see her face, and he’d rather look at her than the dragon about to eat him.

“Hmm,” Libre says. She motions with one clawed hand for Rig to follow. And then she’s gone, slither-walking down a row of books. Her tail swishes behind her, its tip a giant, boney spike.

Rig follows her. He doesn’t know what else to do.

He leaves his halberd on the floor.

“I have songbooks down here … somewhere.” The dragon’s head darts this way and that, and she sniffs more than she looks. Her tongue dances along one shelf, tasting the claw marks on it. “Yes. This way.”

“I,” Rig tries, but the thought leaves him. He hums the lullaby again.

The dragon nods. “I recognize it. It’s a Rabe, composed about four hundred years ago, I expect. She liked that kind of soft trill.”

Libre leads, and Rig follows, and soon they’re deep within her lair, lost as far as Rig can tell, and still with no treasure to be found. At some point, Libre stops by a shelf, rears herself up, and plucks a pair of thick glasses from behind a dusty book. The rims are made of copper with little flowers along the sides. She balances them on her snout and looks through them crosseyed.

“I can’t read sheet music without help. Had a wizard make these about a century ago now.”

“You can read music?” Rig asks. He only ever heard it played or sang. Mostly off key.

“Of course, human.” She cocks her head. “Are you not a musician?”

“No.”

“No matter. This way.”

They travel one more shelf over, where the books are a much taller. Telken would advise any would-be adventurer in this situation to take notes, to find all the little details for survival and use them without mercy. Telken would also demand you slay the dragon. Rig does none of these things, because Rig cannot read.

He wishes he could though. It’s the first time he’s ever wished that.

Libre is massive and sharp, yet she browses her books with the delicate hand of a jeweler, careful not to tear or mark any of them.

“Here,” she says after a few more minutes of sniffing, poking, and prodding. “Carianne Rabe. This is her complete works.” Libre hands the book to Rig. It’s thinner than most, yet heavier than it looks. The cover is a vibrant, blue leather that smells strongly of dye despite its age.

“She’s best known for her Symphony on Magic, a rousing piece on the wonders of alchemy.” Libre smiles. “If you know how to listen. But she also composed many lullabies too. Yours is in there, somewhere.”

Speechless, Rig opens the book. He expects to find more insect-like words shifting across the page and instead sees lines, dots, and more lines. There are numbers too, the kind he knows from coins and from counting on his fingers. It’s almost like a map.

“This is how music is written?”

“Yes, human. It is.”

“Huh.”

Rig hands the book back, and while Libre flips through it, he once again hums his mother’s lullaby. The dragon nods a few times, finds her page, and then flips back and forth between it and the next one.

Finally she says, “It’s this one. ‘Rising Star, Falling Star.’ You’ve been humming a mix of the first and fourth verses. There’s quite a bit more than that.”

“Wow!”

“Where did you hear it?”

For the first time since entering the dragon’s home, Rig smiles. “My mother. She used to sing it to me.”

With careful claws, Libre puts the book back on her shelf. “Very good. She had good taste. You could learn the rest, if you want.”

Rig almost jumps. “You think so?” He never really thought he could learn much of anything. Butchering? Sure. Adventuring? Clearly not. He’s weaponless in front of a dragon and too afraid to do anything but listen to her. Telken would be furious.

As if she’s reading his mind, the dragon asks “So, what book do you have on you?” Her eyes sparkle.

Shame drags Rig’s attention to his feet at that. He knows nothing of books, only that whatever he has can’t be very good in comparison to everything around him. Libre clicks her tongue against her fangs, and Rig reaches into his pack and brings out the Adventuring Handbook. He hands it over, and even though it’s no good, Libre is careful when she picks it up.

“Ah,” she says as soon as she sees the title. “It’s this one.”

“Sorry,” Rig mumbles.

“Human,” Libre sighs. “How many words do you know?”

Rig blushes so hard even his feet turn red.

“And are some of those words, ‘treasure,’ ‘dragon,’ ‘and hunt?’”

“I don’t know ‘hunt.’”

“What about ‘kill?’”

Rig nods. He squeezes his hands into fists.

There is so much human disappointment in the way Libre moves that Rig is reminded of his grandparents. She plucks her glasses from her snout and drums at the ground with her claws, digging little trenches into the dirt. She glares, not like a monster but like his grandmother when she would catch him sneaking out at night to look at the moon and stars and think, on rare occasions, of doing something bigger than living his life in Lottingham.

She wasn’t allowed to have big dreams, so why should he?

“Well,” Libre says, “At least you know more words than the last human.”

Rig gulps.

“And I liked your mother’s rendition of ‘Rising Star, Falling Star.’”

“Are you gonna let me live?” Rig shakes as he asks the question. The dragon gives him his book back, and he clutches it so hard he almost drops it.

Libre replaces her glasses. “Yes human, I am. I let most humans live that wander in here.”

“Oh.” Relief floods Rig. He even manages another smile.

“I don’t want blood on my books.”

Rig drops his book at that. He’s too stiff to bend over to grab it, so Libre does it for him.

“It’s a bad book with bad advice,” she says. “But it is a book. Take care of it, please.”

“Is it treasure?”

Libre nods. “Yes. All books are treasure. Even the bad ones.” Libre holds up a claw. “Gold can buy you much, human, but it cannot buy you empathy. It cannot clean your soul. Those are for books and songs and love.”

“I wish I could read.”

“Good.” Libre smiles, and it is a genuine smile, one that reaches her eyes. Brimstone flashes behind her teeth. “The world needs more scholars and historians, not adventurers.”

Libre motions for Rig to step aside, and he does. She walks, and he follows, and soon they are at the entrance to her home. Light shines through. The sun is high, and the soft chirping of birds and crickets swirls about. He stops to grab his halberd.

“I will not teach you to read,” Libre says. “But if you learn, you may come back. My home is a library, not a hoard.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I only ask that you treat them like treasure.”

Rig nods. He can do that.

“Farewell, human. And next time you decide to go on an adventure, may you take a quill instead of a sword. It will do the world more good.”

With that, Libre retreats into her home. Rig dusts himself off, stretches, and begins the long trek back to Lottingham. He is hungry, and he is thirsty, and his pockets are poorer than when he started, but he has a story to tell now.

He’s excited to share it.

Man in a Hurry

The store stank of gunpowder and cat litter. Four bodies lay on the ground, each torn apart and soaking into a growing pile of Tidy Cat. The 45mm bullets hit bodies and just kept going. Whispers filtered in from outside. Someone pounded on the door. A window shattered, and a large brick slid across the floor followed by a river of glass. And the worst part was, nothing made sense anymore! Nothing. Guy was in a hodunk town in Iowa called Frankfurt—population 4,000 on the dot—holding a SCAR L military rifle and wondering how the absolute fuck he was going to get out of here alive.

He had 196 rounds. That left 3,996 people.

The pounding intensified, angry fists competing with Guy’s makeshift barricade of charcoal bags heaped onto a small shopping cart. It would hold for another ten minutes if Guy was lucky. He did not feel lucky.

“Essentials,” he said. “Pretend it’s a ruck march.” The rifle had a strap, and he let it dangle as he ran deeper into the store, looking for a backpack. He could fill it with water and energy bars. After that, well … he wasn’t sure what came next. Des Moines was 140 miles away, and that was a hellova trip on foot. It didn’t help that his phone had stopped working as soon as he entered the town.

His CO had joked when he said he would take the scenic route. “Scenic? Ain’t nothin’ to see in Iowa, rockchewer. Just corn and rednecks.”

“Fucking bullshit,” Guy muttered.

Jake’s Convenience Locker lived up to its name. Guy grabbed a hiking backpack on his way to the grocery section, where he found a wall of glass-door fridges stocked with energy drinks. He popped the local brand called Sprintfurt. It tasted like cherries boiled in piss, but it had a 100mg of caffeine. He dumped another dozen of the things into his bag. Guy didn’t plan on sleeping anytime soon.

Backpack fit to burst, Guy ran for the exit. He wasn’t good, but he was in control. That mattered more. It was how he lived through Iraq, and it was how he’d live through this.

He put two bullets through the door.

He stepped over two bodies.

*

It all started with red and blue lights, a siren, and a short deputy officer with a uniform so primed and pressed it looked like a costume. “Documentation,” the cop asked. He chewed on the word like it was gum. He rested his hand on the butt of his pistol, either a sign of insecurity or paranoia. Or racism. Guy didn’t think there were many black folk around here.

“Sorry,” Guy said. “Got my wallet in my pocket, and the paperwork in the glove. Gonna reach for ‘em.”

“Come on, come on. Let me see your documentation.”

To be fair to the cop, Guy had been going 20 over. However, the roads were empty. No trucks or cars or people walking along the side. He hadn’t even seen a bird fly overhead in the last hour. It was like he had entered some ghost road, one so peaceful it made his skin jittery. It wasn’t right. Guy shoved his hand into his pocket, and the cop shuffled on his feet. Maybe he was high. Not like there was anything else to do around here.

“Here,” Guy said, handing over the license.

“This is expired,” the cop said.

“Bullshit.”

“See, it says right here. Expired February 20^th, 2018. What day is it? Well? Do you know what day it is, because I know what day it is.”

“April 20^th.” Guy took his license back. There was no way it was bad. But when he looked again, it was. “This doesn’t—”

“Come on, come on. Out of the car and hands were I can see ‘em.”

“Fuck.”

*

Guy kept his shots short and sweet. The gun responded to the slightest press of his finger, almost eager to go off, and the residents of Frankfurt crumpled around him. Many were carrying knives or bats, though a few had their own weapons, mostly hunting rifles. They were strangely bad shots. Guy had met his fair share of rednecks, both in the army and out, and most could hit a bulls eye from a hundred feet once they had a few beers in them. These ones though, they couldn’t hit dirt if they were aiming at the ground.

“Just one more thing that don’t make sense,” Guy said. He reached down to loot a corpse of her pistol. It was a cheap 9mm, and it fit comfortably in the waistband of his jeans.

The woman was pretty, or had been. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Pale skin. She was wearing a yellow sundress with two big red stains on it. Guy sucked in a breath. He had only shot her once. He was sure of that, because he had to be careful with his ammo. Yet she had two wounds, and big ones too: One in her chest, where the SCAR had done its work, and one in her gut. Guy didn’t do gut shots. He had a scar from one, and even these batshit rednecks didn’t deserve that kind of misery.

“What is goin’ on!?”

Well. Shoot first, questions later. It wasn’t ideal, but it was either that or die. Guy was not going to die in Iowa.

“Well Golly!” the town’s only mechanic shouted from somewhere behind. “I found him! I found him over here!”

Guy ran. That mechanic had come to visit him in the jail with bad news about his car. He had been wearing someone else’s face.

The worst part about Frankfurt was that it looked like a perfect little town. Idyllic. The houses were modest with big yards, and half the trees had tire swings hanging from them. On his trip in, Guy swore he smelled pies cooling on windowsills. The place was clean, the church big, and everyone smiled. But the smiles were wrong, too wide, too distended, like everyone was secretly a snake. Everyone’s breath smelt like stale meat.

Guy cut through a yard, stopping just long enough to watch an old man light a cigarette. When he smiled, his grin went all the way to his ears.

“Good luck, son.” The man said. “No one ever makes it to tha road, but youa almos’ there. ‘Bout two miles lef’.”

“What the fuck is going on?”

“Shouldn’ cuss,” The man shook his head and reached for a bucket hanging by his side. Guy leveled his gun. He didn’t want to waste the ammo, but he didn’t want to leave this one alive, either. “Frankfurt’s a ni’ place. No one cusses here. Not ‘till you shauw’d up.”

The man dumped the bucket over himself. It was brown and red, and it stank like a sewer.

“Two mile,” he shouted. “Watch fer deer!”

“Golly!” the mechanic called again.

Guy ran.

*

Guy hadn’t been surprised that the jail stank. All jails stink. This one though, it smelled like ten-week old death. And like all bad things, it reminded him of being in Iraq. Guy shivered. He knew it was funny in its own way, because he had come to Iowa to escape this shit, not get dragged back in. His CO would laugh at the irony.

“Just corn and rednecks,” he said to himself.

“Yeah, yeah,” the cop said. He opened the jail door and shoved Guy in. The door closed with a heavy clank and the rumble of rusted tumblers.

“You didn’t even read me any rights,” Guy said. “This whole thing is bullshit. Just charge me a fine or—”

“Rights?” The cop demanded. “I know your rights. Got ‘em memorized from the book. You want ‘em? Well, go ahead and sit down. Just go ahead. I’ll recite ‘em to you word for word. Right from the book down to the punctuation mark.”

Guy looked at the cot. It looked clean enough, yet it was where most of the bad smell was coming from. He decided to remain standing.

“You’re supposed to read them while you arrest me, not after.”

“Don’t you tell me how to do my job!”

The cop moved further into the jail, towards a desk. He twirled his keys on his hands. Guy told himself he was being paranoid, that this would work itself out—it was PTSD and concussions and every other bad thing that had happened to him overseas. The smell wasn’t real.

Except it was. It burned, and his eyes watered. The cop sat behind his desk, propped himself up, and began to read the paper. The major headline read, “Headless Deer Found Outside Cuddle Family Property.”

*

The SCAR burned; the barrel smoked. It was eager to shoot. Guy ejected another clip and loaded his last one. 50 rounds left, and then he’d have to switch to the 9mm. Nothing still made sense, but he had passed that two mile road and was now deep in an Iowa forest and heading east. If he kept going, he was sure to find a road or a farm or something. At the very least, that mechanic was now dead. He had dogged Guy for three full miles, screaming “Golly!” at the top of his lungs until Guy put a bullet in his throat.

“Okay,” Guy said. He stared into the dark woods. “Ruck march.”

In a way, it wasn’t much different than the swamps of Louisiana. Big trees, big dirt, and paths worn down by animals. Guy could march for hours in this. No alligators, muck, or mosquitoes the size of his fist, either. A cool breeze filtered through the trees, rustling leaves and the beads of sweat running down his face.

He felt safe.

“Ain’t safe though,” he reminded himself.  He opened his bag and grabbed an energy drink. “Not by a long shot.”

Guy marched deeper into the forest. If he got out of this alive, no one would believe him. Pleasantville meets Cannibal Holocaust in the middle of fucking nowhere, and then the only cop was so stupid he left the keys hanging on a hook outside the cell door. It was the town drunk who had let him out, a fat man reeking of gasoline and slurring the word, “goat” as he fought with the buttons on his jacket. Guy had slipped passed him and found the SCAR in the jail’s weapons locker.

It was all too good to be true, yet Guy was still alive, still whole. He was in control.

He marched for what felt like another mile before the quiet forest gurgled with noise. At first it sounded like the whoops of a coyote, but knew coyotes from his time in Louisiana. These weren’t right. They were too slow, almost giggly. He leveled his gun. The sounds were out front and getting closer, heading in a straight line. Whatever they were, they wouldn’t be happy once they got here.

The trees rustled again, not with breeze but with people. The family stepped out of the leaves as a single unit, each naked from the waist down and wearing a shredded flannel shirt, except the lone woman who wore a faded crop top. She cradled a baby and wiggled her fingers at it. Then she wiggled them at Guy. Mud covered them in thick patches, like they had been sleeping in it, and each wore a severed deer head as a kind of helmet. It hid the tops of their faces but left their hanging jaws visible. Their tongues were long and swollen purple. They whooped and jumped, and one strummed a chord on his guitar.

Guy shot him through the right lung.

The rest charged. They didn’t carry weapons, yet they scared Guy more than anyone else. These people passed batshit long ago. They laughed as bullets blew pop-can sized holes in their chests, their blood bouncing through the air, their legs carrying them forward. They moved like people on PCP. Or zombies. A man with a thick beard stretched his grimy arms out wide in a bad imitation of a hug.

“Get the fuck back!” Guy shouted as the man tried to bury him. Guy scrambled back and swung the SCAR like a baseball bat. It hit the man in the jaw and took it clean off, spraying blood and yellow teeth onto the ground.

“Oh tha’s good,” the man slurred as he fell to the ground. “He’s a real—” Guy stomped his face into pulp.

The man’s family clapped. Guy returned to shooting, terror overtaking fineness. They kept coming, and the bullets kept flying. Lead tore apart the forest, turning dirt and bark into little brown fireworks that fizzled out into pools of blood. The gunshots rang loud, only now they sounded like church bells. Everyone died with a too-big smile on his face.

When the SCAR clicked empty, the forest was stained crimson and smelled like gunpowder and vomit.

Guy dropped the rifle and reached for the 9mm. Only the woman still stood, clutching her baby close and surveying her dead family. She shook her head, and the dead deer covering her face twisted about until it faced backwards. Guy took aim.

“Reminds me of a song,” she said. “Sad song. Always makes my daddy cry.”

“Turn around,” Guy said. “Turn around, and go home.”

“You want to hear it?”

“Turn the fuck around or I’ll kill you!”

“It’s called ‘No One Dies Here.’”

The woman began to hum, and Guy ran passed, torn between shooting her in the back or simply putting a round into his own skull and calling it quits. The forest became a blur of stinging branches and large tree roots that threatened to trip him every other step. Sweat ran down his face and into his eyes. When his sides burned and his breathing labored, he forced himself to stop and drink another energy drink. His eyes felt like sandpaper, and his nerves twitched in ways he didn’t like. He was one bad cough away from falling to the ground or losing his mind. For all he knew, both had already happened.

It took most of the night, but Guy eventually found the edge of the forest. He stepped out, the ground going from dirt to gravel to concrete, and stopped. He screamed.

*

Frankfurt waited for him. The entire town clapped while church bells rang and the faint smell of an apple pie carried on the breeze, cooling in some windowsill in the middle of the night. A coyote that wasn’t a coyote whooped from deep in the forest. The entire town had come to see, their jaws hanging wide and clothing stained with blood. Chunks of flesh dangled where the SCAR had done its work, but no one acted hurt. Their too-large mouths cheered like Guy had just won some kind of prize.

Guy took aim with the 9mm. His hand shook. Sweat smeared his vision.

The crowd parted. A man Guy did not recognize parted the crowd, followed by the deputy from before. This new man also wore a police uniform, though his came with a shiny, golden badge. An empty holster dangled from his right hip. Guy took a step back. The man took another step forward.

“I told ya, Atii, I told ya he’d make it. Well, didn’t I tell you? Well didn’t I?” the deputy said. He grinned like this was all his idea.

“Boy howdy, you sure did, Barry!” Atti said through a wide smile. “Mhmm, mhmm!”

Atti was tall, well over six feet and too skinny to be real. The closer he got, the more he looked like a walking skeleton. The skin on his face clung so tightly to his skull that he had no wrinkles, and his eyes and mouth looked like they were made of plastic. He held out his hand for a shake.

“Stay back,” Guy whispered. “Get the fuck away from me, or I’ll—”

“Now calm down, sir. Calm down. I think there’s been a misunderstanding.” Atti made an awkward gesture with his hands. “See, this here’s Frankfurt Iowa. Why, we’re the most pleasant town around!”

“I’ll kill you.”

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

Barry laughed. “You hear that, Atti? He thinks he can kill you! Do you believe it? Funniest thing I ever heard.”

Guy continued to fall back, and the sheriff continued to march at him. He smiled. Guy waved his pistol.

“Sir, if you’d just put that down and listen, we could be on our way home.”

“Go away!”

The sheriff shook his head. “Afraid I can’t do that, either.”

Soon they were back in the forest, with thick trees blocking the sky and fake coyotes shuffling in the bushes. Leaves crunched beneath Guy’s feet. He tried not to trip over tree roots or loose stones, and he tried to keep in control, but everything was spiraling away. He waved his gun, going from the sheriff to the deputy. Would it even work? He had six bullets. He took aim at the deputy. The sheriff was the bigger threat, but he hated the stupid cop. This was his fault.

A hand gripped Guy’s shoulder. He stopped. His blood turned to ice. He could smell the dead deer on her head and the filth on her body, and he could feel her infant squirming against his back.

“Thankya, Clara,” Atti said. His hand fell towards his holster. Up close it wasn’t empty; it carried some kind of thin stick or twig. “My name is Atticus. Atticus God, and we got a place here in Frankfurt just for you.”

Guy’s voice caught in his throat. A shot rang out, thin and weak. He twitched. His finger was on the trigger, and a small hole smoked in the tree trunk to the right of Barry’s neck. The sheriff smiled, and his stupid deputy laughed. Guy took aim, but the woman grabbed his wrist and forced the gun to the ground. Her hands were cold. Her baby squalled into his back.

“Did you like my song?” she whispered.

“I’ll forgive that,” Atticus said. “Because we’re a forgiving lot here in Frankfurt. But first you gotta do something for me. See,” he pulled the stick from his holster. It was made of wood and looked gnarled and old. Someone had spent a long time sharpening it into a knife. “I need you to smile.”

“No,” Guy whispered, or maybe he mouthed. He stared at the knife that couldn’t be a knife, because it looked like a wand. All around him, the people of Frankfurt clapped. He was back in the town again. Blood leaked down the right half of his face.

“You want to hear another song?” Clara asked.

She let his hand go, and Guy put the gun to his chin. The barrel was cold. He closed his eyes.

“This one’s called, ‘Now You Live Here Too’.”

Guy pulled the trigger.

He did not die.

The Museum of Curses

The event of a century appeared as fast as its sign: One Night Only. The building it overtook was small and falling apart, one of those on-again, off-again restaurants with six different names and just as many owners, making The Museum of Curses lucky number seven. The first—and only—tour started at 8:00 p.m. and went until Midnight. No pets or children allowed, and the easily scared need not apply. $6.66 to enter. Cash only.

Since I am neither child nor cat, I found myself near the front of the line around 7:30, standing under a stranger’s umbrella with three other people crowded beside us. The rain fell in a constant drizzle of cold, cheerless drops, but the light from our four phones kept our spirits high. Or at least amused. It was, after all, the event of a century.

“Can’t find anything about this place online,” a man to my left said. He was young and wiry, perhaps 25 or 26 with a wild mane of blonde hair. He looked like he belonged in a band. “Weird.”

“Spooky,” another would-be patron agreed, shivering with his hands in his pockets. His skin had a grey color to it, and water beaded off him in careful streams.

I nodded. The woman we were sharing the umbrella with did as well. Her face was hardened with wrinkles and age, but her eyes beamed with amusement. I put my phone away, eager to continue talking now that our silence had been broken, and almost jumped when it clinked against something foreign. Puzzled, I pulled out a small, wooden spoon. The wood was coarse and warped, like it was whittled by someone new to the craft.

“Huh,” I said to everyone.

“Why do you have a spoon?” the woman with the umbrella asked.

“I don’t know.” I looked around hoping someone would fess up to the joke, but all I saw were confused, wet people.

Without being told, everyone checked their own pockets, though I was the only one with a souvenir.

We talked the remaining half hour away. When it was time to enter, oily lights appeared behind the museum’s windows, and a small woman in dark clothing stepped out. Like most of us, she wore a hoodie, though unlike us, hers was black and embroidered with golden symbols. Black, dressy pants completed her uniform.

“None of you should come in,” she said, her voice a chirp, her face a glower. It was a good act. “This is not a place for mortals.”

I shrugged. The woman offered a polite clap. When none of us turned to leave, the actress sighed and said, “Tickets please.”

Our huddle of bodies formed a coherent line, and the actress-turned-clerk took our money, though she refused to make change. The grey man spent $10 to enter, and the woman with the umbrella $20. She grumbled, as did the rest of us, but we paid the fee one way or another.

“Here,” the actress said, handing me a ticket. Up close, her features were soft yet squished, her eyes large and her ears larger. Freckles dotted her cheeks.

“Thanks,” I said. Like the grey man, the ticket cost me $10. No one brought exact change.

She smiled, and as I walked by, I glanced over my shoulder. She was cute. She gave me half a wave, and it was then that I noticed she had a large, fleshy tail jutting from the waist of her pants. It fell to her upper calves and looked like it belonged on a rat. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, so I said nothing, but I think she saw me looking, because she made it curl around her leg. I’m not sure how she controlled it.

The lighting in the Museum of Curses was predictably dark, though the space appeared oddly huge. I had never been to any of the original six restaurants, but the building was small, barely capable of holding two dozen tables let alone winding, brick corridors or carefully marked doors. A silver chandelier hung above us, candlelight flickering at the shadows.

“I don’t know if I like this,” the older woman said, folding up her umbrella. She stowed it in her bag. “This is really weird.”

“I dunno,” the man who looked like he belonged in a band said. He was taking pictures with his phone. “It’s kinda cool. Like one of those escape rooms or something.”

We spent a few minutes gawking at the doors, reading the different plaques which promised themes like “Magic,” “Jewelry,” “Prosthetics,” “Places,” and “Mystics.” No one came to give us a tour, and the cute actress with the freckles didn’t make another appearance.

“Do you think she’s coming back?” I asked. I wanted to know her name.

“Who?”

“The lady that took our tickets.” I shrugged. “Never mind.”

The woman with the umbrella grinned, my cheeks flushed, and in the end, we opted for the closest door marked “Magic.” There were so few of us that splitting up seemed unnecessary. And though no one said it openly, it felt safer to stick together. The place was spooky.

The “Magic” door opened with an oily squeak, and we funneled into a dark room that truly did resemble a museum, albeit one with most of the lights off. Artwork—curses—sat on banisters or hung on walls, some encased in glass, others with velvet ropes around them. As soon as I stepped inside, something crunched beneath my feet.

I bent down and picked up another wooden spoon.

“I don’t get the joke,” I said. The spoon looked like the first one, though splintered down the middle. When no one offered to take it, I set it back.

We approached the first exhibit and gasped and cringed in equal measure. A large jar of perhaps ten gallons sat atop a marble banister and held dozens of severed, bloody hands. Crimson ooze pooled at the bottom, and despite most of the hands being gnarled and old, the blood was still wet.

“How is this a curse?” the band member asked. “It’s just kind of gross.”

“There’s a plaque,” the grey man said, pointing. “But I can’t read it.”

“You can’t?” the woman said. “I can.”

“It’s in like Chinese or something.”

The woman shook her head. “No. It’s in English.”

“Bullshit.”

I approached, leaned over, and read:

The cursed hand is cast aside
to wither and die every time
a new spell is cast in this life.

“That’s stupid,” the band member said. No one disagreed with him.

The grey man pulled out his phone and skimmed through it. His face puzzled as he looked between his phone and the plaque until he shrugged and visibly relaxed. “Don’t get it,” he said. “Phone has English, and that ain’t English.”

“It’s English,” the woman insisted.

“Bullshit.”

The next curse was similar to the first, a severed arm sitting on a long table. It looked goopy, almost melted, and its plaque said it contained no bones. Its fingers sagged to one side, like they would fall off if the skin wasn’t keeping them attached.

“Can’t believe you guys can read that writing,” the grey man said.

“Can’t believe this cost me $20,” the woman muttered.

The final two curses were a witch’s broom and a necromancer’s staff, both behind velvet ropes with, “No Touching!” signs next to them. The witch’s broom had a wooden spoon tucked into its bristles.

Bored, and a little unnerved, we left the Magic wing and returned to the main hallway. I spotted the actress pushing a cart into the room labeled, “Animals” and decided that should be our next destination. The older woman shook her head, and the band member nudged me in the ribs. They grey man grumbled that the room was probably filled with black cats.

“I like cats,” the band member said.

“Me too,” the woman agreed.

I pushed the door open and stepped on another wooden spoon. Inside, the lighting was once again dark, though instead of banisters and plaques, there stood a single cage made of bronze wires. The cage rested on a thick, oak table and was perhaps 5’ tall. Inside stood a large bird with a red-scab head and a hooked beak. A golden, square bell was strapped around its neck with a leather collar.

“That’s it?” the band member said. “It’s just a vulture.”

“Where’d that girl go?” I asked. The room was small, and I didn’t see any other doors. “I saw her walk in here.”

The woman chuckled. “Maybe she’s the real curse.”

“Ooooh!” the band member taunted. He waved his hands like a ghost.

The grey man marched over to the bird and stuck his finger into the cage, between the bars. The vulture looked at him with the fiercest, “you’re an idiot” face I’ve ever seen before squawking loud enough to raise the dead. Its voice was horrible, and the bell around its neck clanked and clattered like someone rummaging through a bag of nails.

“Says its bad luck,” the woman said. She grabbed the grey man and pulled him away from the bird. “He’s the angel of death. Also, his name is Risky.”

“Cute,” the band member said.

“Stupid,” the grey man said.

We left the exhibit, though not before I found another wooden spoon, and returned to the main hall. I checked my phone. The time read 10:00, and my heart skipped a beat because that wasn’t possible. We had only been in the Museum for perhaps 20 minutes.

I explained this to everyone, and they all voted we should leave at once. I agreed.

We headed for the door, and the grey man walked through first. As soon as he was out, he turned around and closed the door.

“What the hell?” I heard him shout from behind. “Why’d I just do that?”

“Because you’re rude?” the woman asked.

She reached for the knob and gave it a twist, but it wouldn’t open. The grey man tried from the other end, banging the door loudly against its frame. It wouldn’t budge.

“They can’t just lock us in here,” the band member said. “That’s like, I dunno, kidnapping or something.”

He kicked at the door, and half the candles in the chandelier went out. The woman let out a little scream, and I bent down to pick up yet another wooden spoon. This one felt hot to the touch.

“We should call the police,” I said, though the band member was one step ahead of me. He thumbed through his phone to make the call, and we waited for it to go through.

On the second ring, his phone died.

The woman tried next, and her phone repeated the process. Another candle burnt out. The shadows grew thick, and the brick corridors sighed a cold temperature. It was like being in a dungeon.

“I’ll get help,” the grey man shouted from the other side of the door. We could hear his footsteps as he ran off. It was the last time any of us would ever see him.

We waited for what felt like an hour, though my phone flashed 10:10. In an effort to do something, anything, the woman suggested we try another door. Because the Museum was once a restaurant, it had to have multiple exits for bringing in food and drink.

“Let’s try the ‘Places’ one,” I said.

The band member shook his head. “You see that girl go in there?”

I scowled, though part of me still hoped I’d run into her. I wanted to know what was going on. And what her name was.

I stepped through the door first and once again my foot landed on a wooden spoon. I kicked it aside. The woman entered next and immediately started screaming. Fear swallowed everyone. In truth, I wasn’t sure what to be afraid of; the room itself consisted of another dark hallway with candles to light its path. More doors marked the walls, each glinting with a gold plaque.

“Don’t you see it!” the woman shrieked. “It’s right there!”

I followed her gaze to an empty part of the hallway, and the band member marched forward. The woman only screamed all the louder.

“It’s right there!”

“There’s nothing there,” the band member said. He waved his hands around and kicked at the ground, sending clacking echoes up and down the hallway. “See?”

“It looks like a demon.” The woman shook, and I put an arm around her to steady her. I could hear her heartbeat.

“It’ll be okay,” I said. “Let’s just find the back door, and everything will be alright.”

“Yeah,” the band member agreed. His face was white with fear, but he put on a smile for all our benefits. “It’s all smoke and mirrors. Like a movie set.”

The woman sobbed but nodded, and we set off down the hallway, the band member out front. When we hit the first door, he leaned over and read the plaque.

“Cursed House,” he said. “It doesn’t say what the curse is.”

“I can guess,” I said.

The woman shook and clutched at my hand. She looked sick. “It’s following us,” she hissed. “The demon.”

I looked over my shoulder but couldn’t see anything.

The door swung open without our help, and we stepped inside, hoping for a way out but knowing there wasn’t one. The Museum of Curses was its own curse.

Dungeon floor turned into choppy grass and dying weeds. A crescent moon hung in the sky, casting dim light onto an old, decrepit two-story house that wouldn’t fit in the small building if it were torn down and brought in piece by piece. It was half a mansion, though uncared for and covered in rot. Green mildew practically glowed in the strange light. A wolf howled in the distance.

“What is this?” the band member asked. He waved at the air again. “It can’t be real.”

“I bet it’s filled with wooden spoons,” I said.

There was another plaque in front of the house, affixed to a moldy piece of fence with rusted hinges, but we turned and left. The curse wasn’t important.

The next door was labeled, “Cursed Cave,” and we entered that to similar results. The ground changed from worn brick to gravel, and the candle-lit ceiling turned into a dark starscape. The moon, however, was different, no longer waning but waxing. A cave mouth the size of a semi truck sat before us, heaving and wheezing stale, misty air.

 “Do you think they’re using mirrors?” the band member asked. “Like, is it a prop? A miniature?”

The woman shook her head. I could see her looking at something out of the corner of her eye. The demon. “It’s real,” she said. “I don’t think we’re in Milwaukee anymore.”

I walked to the plaque and read:

Unnamed Cave in northern Oregon
Find the gold and find the light
wander the dark and never sight
the clock is ticking, ticking right
then left and left and never life.

“It has to be a miniature,” the band member said. “Can’t fit a cave in this tiny building.”

I shook my head. “You can’t fit most of this Museum in this tiny building. I don’t get it.”

“What time is it?” the woman asked.

The band member checked his phone, but it was still broken. I checked mine and found another wooden spoon. “It’s 11:00. I think each exhibit takes an hour.”

“So we have one left,” the woman said. “And then the demon will go away?”

“Sounds like it,” the band member agreed.

We left the room, and the band member ran down to the next door. He laughed and hollered, “It says, ‘Haunted Planet coming soon.’”

“I believe it,” the woman whispered.

I did too.

The main corridor was darker when we returned, though not completely black. Two candles still flickered, and the shadows stabbed and thrust about the floor, almost like they were trying to kill us. The woman shook so hard I thought she might need a doctor, and the band member’s face grew pale, like he had just seen a ghost. Given we were just at a haunted house, he probably did.

Seven doors remained, though “Jewelry” and “Prosthetics” were closest. I wasn’t in the mood for either.

“I’m going to wait here,” I said. To punctuate the point, I sat on the ground. The shadows inched towards my hands, but when they touched them, nothing happened. They were just regular shadows.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” the band member said. “We should stick together.”

The woman nodded. Tears glistened in her eyes, and sweat beaded her forehead. “Please,” she said. “Just pick a door, and we’ll go.”

I shook my head. “I’m sick of whatever game this place is playing.” I didn’t mean to shout the words, but I couldn’t help it. I was confused and scared, but mostly I was angry. I clenched my hands into fists and snapped another wooden spoon that hadn’t been there a moment before. “The place can’t make me scared if I sit in this spot and wait until midnight.”

The woman opened her mouth to argue but the band member stopped her with a curt, “Fine.” He marched to the door marked “Jewelry” and threw it open. I couldn’t see what was inside, but it was apparently interesting, because his face changed, and he leaned in closer for a better look. “Huh,” he said, his voice barely making it out the door.

“Here,” the woman said. She reached into her bag and pulled out her umbrella.

“What’s this for?”

“Protection?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. It was nice standing under it though. It felt safe.”

“Thanks.” I took the umbrella and opened it. She winced, because that was supposed to be bad luck, but we were already cursed. A little more couldn’t hurt. “The demon can’t get you under here,” I said. “Because it isn’t real.”

The woman smiled. “And no more wooden spoons.”

I nodded.

My nameless friends entered the next room, and the door shut with a thundering slam, like I was hearing them die. Another candle in the chandelier went out. I shivered, and the shadows attempted another round of stabbing. Time passed in starts and stops, my phone not making sense of the numbers or the surroundings. Eyes watched me from somewhere in the distance. As it turned out, the place could make me scared if I sat in this one spot and waited.

When the door opened, I stood, ready to apologize and rush us all to safety. Instead, the actress walked out. She looked back and forth, her beady eyes wide, her ears twitching underneath her black hoodie. Her rat tail swept out behind her, curling at the tip from some mechanism I still don’t understand.

“It’s you,” I said with a blush. I didn’t know what else to say.

“Oh,” she said. She reached into her front pocket and pulled out a golden watch on a golden chain. It looked like it might be older than everything in Milwaukee. Maybe even the entire state. “You still have 40 minutes left in the tour. It’ll go faster if you check out the exhibits.”

“What’s your name,” I asked.

She put her watch away and gave me a strange look, like I might not be real. Or maybe she wasn’t real.

“Triss,” she said. “Why?”

I shrugged. I wanted to tell her she was cute; I wanted to ask her what the fuck was going on. I am easily scared though, so instead I looked at the dusty, dungeon floor and said, “I just wanted to know your name.”

“It’ll go faster if you look at the exhibits,” she repeated.

She fumbled with something in her pockets, some ugly piece of bronze, or maybe flesh, and her tail flicked back and forth like a cat’s.

“Am I cursed?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. She wouldn’t meet my gaze. “We all are though.”

“I keep finding spoons.”

The actress—Triss—brushed a lock of hair underneath her hoodie and winced. “That’s a shame.” Her tail flicked. Her mouth almost curved into a grin. “I hope you don’t like soup.”

“I love soup.” I almost asked her if she wanted to go get soup.

“That’s too bad. It’ll be really hard to eat from here on out.”

“Oh.”

She stood in the middle of the darkening corridor clutching her darkening object, and I stood a few feet away, trying to find the right question. I wanted to leave. I wanted to rewind time to when I was safe. I wanted to know more about this museum. I wanted to know more about her.

Instead my phone ticked 11:30. Triss’s golden watch did too, because she looked at it, muttered a curse, and ran to the door marked “Animals.” Maybe it was time to feed the buzzard.

“Wait,” I shouted. My hands formed fists, and butterflies ruined my stomach. “What’s … what’s your curse?”

Triss laughed. Her voice sounded like music. “No one listens to me.”

She left, and two hours later, my clock struck 12:00. The older woman and band member fell out of the “Jewelry” room with a thousand stories on their lips, all of which entered one ear and left the other. It didn’t matter. They were done, and the tour was over. We were safe.

“Come here,” I said, and the woman stepped underneath my umbrella. The band member squeezed in beside us. “I think we can go home now.”

“I still see the demon,” the woman said.

I bent over and picked up a wooden spoon. “Huh.”

“Fuck,” the band member said. “I wonder what my curse is.”

We left through the front door, stepping out into the rain and the streets glistening with lamplight. The world felt clean, yet I felt dirty. The band member shivered. The woman sobbed. I looked over my shoulder, hoping for one more picture of Triss. She was cute. She was cursed, but so was everyone.

“You get her name?” the band member asked.

“Yup,” I said.

“She cursed too?”

I nodded. “But I think she lied to me. She said no one would believe her, but I do.”

The band member kicked at the ground. Sirens sounded in the distance, but not for us.

“Love is a curse,” the woman said. “A blessing too, but also a curse.” She glowered at a spot in the road. “The demon is still here.”

“I think I love you both,” I said. I blushed so hard I thought I might melt, but it was true. Something about this tour changed me. Cursed me. But it was true, and it still is. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not,” the woman said.

“Me either,” the band member said.

We shook hands then. We introduced each other.

His name is Jean-luc.

Her name is Emily.

My name is Alex.

Ghost in the Rain

Word on the street said the ghost was back! Well, if by “street” you meant Discord and “said” you meant grainy images of the old Williamson bench in front of The Cande Shoppe. Skye gave their phone a quick flick and watched more pictures slide by. Out of focus. Filtered. Grainy. Dark. Ugly. Every picture was awful. It was drizzling out—had been for the past week—which explained some of the roughness, but only some. Even a novice photographer could work around a bit of rain. And of all the photographers in the group, Skye was the only novice. The rest knew their stuff. They had the equipment to back it up, too.

The ghost was back!

Skye loaded up a small shoulder bag with the usual going-out essentials plus camera and slung it in place. It was time to get to work! Or party. Did ghosts work, or did they party? Were they even real? Probably not, but it was nice to do a photo challenge for the group and not be the worst by default.

“Be back in an hour, Boo-Chan,” Skye hollered to their cat before heading out the door.

Their cat did not holler back.

*

Rockland Massachusetts sat somewhere between “big town” and “small city,” a.k.a. too small to have good public transit but too big to travel by foot. The Williamson bench was three miles away, and while the drizzle was only that, the clouds threatened more. Skye ruled out the bus right away. Being on that thing felt like being trapped in a corner. Foot was also out because of the rain. So was biking, what with today’s outfit consisting of a rather long, heavy skirt that wouldn’t play nice with gears or pedals. Uber meant spending money. No good adventure started with Uber anyhow.

“Skateboard it is.”

Skye waltzed to their parent’s empty garage to retrieve their old longboard, a full 41” of pressed wood, pink skulls, and peeling unicorn stickers. It had been years since Skye had skated, but “skaterboi” muscle memory was forever. Hopefully. Skye kicked off. The board accepted their weight without complaint, and the wheels glided over the concrete. Skye’s skirt fluttered about their ankles, almost a trip hazard, but only almost.

Strangers and neighbors alike offered waves as they tended their yards or walked their dogs, though most were more confused than friendly. Still, Skye waved back. A wave was better than a scowl. In a perfect world, everyone would be happy for them—because Skye was happy for the first time in what felt like forever—and in a really perfect world, everything confusing and stupid would have clicked into place the moment Skye bought the only pink skateboard in the mall 14 years ago. But, well, no one lived in that world. “It’s the journey, dear” Skye’s mother liked to say. “Not the destination.”

Of course, a truly perfect world could have its journeys and destinations without all the pain in between.

But a truly perfect world wouldn’t have ghosts.

*

With luck being a flighty creature and prone to illness, Skye found themself sitting in The Cande Shoppe with a cup of coffee in one hand and a sea-salt truffle in the other. They took a drink. They ate. The world, meanwhile, hissed like sizzling bacon as thick drops soaked everyone unlucky enough to not be stuck in a gourmet candy store. Skye watched the rain run down the windows and picked two drops. The one on the left looked like a winner, and when it reached the bottom first, Skye ate a piece of candy to celebrate. They repeated this game over and over, sometimes substituting candy for a drink of coffee until all the candy was gone. As far as adventures went, this one was relaxing.

Outside, perhaps 20 feet away, sat the Williamson bench. It accepted the falling water like a good piece of furniture made of stone and metal, not collecting it but letting it drain to the ground where it formed a large puddle. Its stone was white, its metal black. The phrase, “To my loving father, Doug Williams: We miss you everyday” was etched into the front in silver letters.

Skye pulled out their camera. It was an old Sony Cybershot, an antique compared to the cameras used in the photography discord, but what it lacked in megapixils and lighting options it made up for in being only $30 at the pawn shop. In many ways, Skye’s phone was better, but it just wasn’t the same.

They put the camera to their eye, watched the bench grow into focus and then quickly shift out, and took a picture.

“Huh.”

Skye repeated the process, doing what they could to make the camera behave. The bench refused to cooperate though, always turning grainy or distorted at the last second, as if someone was running a dirty thumb over the camera’s lens.

Or a ghost was getting in the way.

“You want a refill?” The barista behind the counter asked. She was young and cute, with a short nose, big eyes, and even bigger hair. An old timey ice-cream man hat embroidered with “The Cande Shoppe” in cursive letters sat atop her head.

“Sure,” Skye said, still focused on their camera. Maybe if they jacked the exposure to some obscene level…

The barista topped Skye’s cup off. “I like your hair.”

“Thanks!” Skye grinned. It was cut boyishly short and dyed dark fuschia. The same red-purple adorned their lips. “Was a home-brew job a few days ago. Got worried the rain might make it run, but so far so good.”

“They won’t let me dye my hair here.”

“That sucks.” Now that Skye knew they had options, their normal blonde was never coming back.

“Yeah.” The barista laughed. “Least I get this neat hat though.” She gave the small store a bored look and continued with: “What’s with the camera?”

Skye handed it over. “Trying to get a picture of the bench. It keeps going out of focus.”

“From the rain?” The barista turned the camera around and held it to her face. She snapped a picture and jumped at the loud shutter noise. “Did it work?”

“Lemme see.”

If Skye’s picture was smeared with a dirty thumb, the barista’s was covered with a palm. It was like the bench had vanished from sight.

“That’s … really creepy,” she said.

Skye nodded. “The bench is haunted. Or that’s what everyone’s been telling me since I was a kid. The Williamson ghost.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“Me either.”

The rain continued its game, and Skye took another drink of coffee. The barista hovered around, either bored or curious or both. Skye offered to buy her something since there was no one else in the store, but the barista shook her head no.

“Not supposed to accept gifts from customers.”

“Your loss.”

“I can give you a gift though.”

Skye cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

The barista ran behind the counter, rummaged for something, and brought out a canary-yellow umbrella. She gave Skye a dangerous smile.

“I dare you to touch the ghost.”

*

Rain pattered against the umbrella. Skye walked slowly, their camera dangling around their neck, their heart fluttering in their chest. It had all seemed like a fun game an hour ago, a dumb art challenge for a dumb art group, but now that they were here…. Skye looked back. The barista offered a wave and a, “go on, go!” gesture.

“Better than a scowl,” Skye muttered.

The puddle around the bench pooled into a perfect circle, preferring to go large instead of deep. The bench, meanwhile, looked completely free of water. It was as dry as the inside of The Cande Shoppe. Skye tapped at the water with their shoe, not sure what to expect, and felt something move. The bench was empty. So was the street. They looked back, and even the barista was gone, no longer outside but peering through the glass in the door.

“Uh oh,” Skye said.

“Uh oh,” a voice repeated.

Skye jumped. The camera snapped from its lanyard and fell. They reached to catch it, but a pale hand found it first. Claws jutted from the fingernails, not black or white but seashell pink. Skye blinked. The arm was attached to a woman, equally pale in color with tints of blue about her face, chest, and shoulders. She sat on the bench with her legs crossed, naked save for turquoise scales that ran around her torso in waving patterns. The same scales wound around her wrists like bracelets.

She smiled. She held out Skye’s camera. Her face was both pretty yet otherworldly, made to be seen at a glance. Her lips were pure white, her eyes pure black. Blue hair fell over her shoulders like a waterfall.

“You’re not Mr. Williamson,” Skye said.

“I am not.” Her voice was both high pitched yet husky.

“You’re not a ghost, either.”

The woman shook her head. “I am not.”

Skye grabbed their camera. “I’m uh, sorry to have bothered you?” They took a step back. Bits and pieces of folklore wound their way through their head, none ending well. If it wasn’t a ghost, that meant it was something else. Something elses weren’t usually known for their altruism. Or not-commit-murderism.

The not-a-ghost shrugged. She gave the puddle a kick, and a torrent of water blew high into the air, like a river running up instead of down. The water hovered.

Skye took another step back.

“More of you came this week, with your strange devices.” She reached over and tapped at Skye’s camera. Her arms were impossibly long. “I don’t know why.”

 “Uh….”

 “I appreciate the company though.”

“Huh….”

With a wave, the pale woman brought the hovering droplets back to the ground. Fog shifted around them, forming a ring that blocked the outside world. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” Skye tried to back away again, but when they hit the fog, they stopped. It was like pushing against glass. Their heart fluttered into their throat.

“What lengths would you … how far would you go to be happy? To which end of the Earth?”

“All the way,” Skye said without hesitation. “I went to one end, and then the other.”

“And are you happy?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” The woman stepped into the water, and instead of a splash, sunk to her knees, putting her face-to-face with Skye. Up close, her eyes were like black pits. Or maybe black holes. “I have been to the ends of the earth. They are scary places. Sharp. Filled with ghosts.”

Skye swallowed at that, and the woman tugged at the spit in their throat. She could control all water.

“But so is being here.” The woman shrugged at the rain, swirling and twisting it together into first a mirror, and then a window.

Instead of Rockland Massachusetts, Skye looked out at a wide lake, one with playful currents and weed-infested beaches. Strange birds flew through the air, and elk with antlers as wide as cars nibbled at the grass. The clouds were so thick it was like Skye could reach up and squish them.

“This was once a lake,” the woman said. “My lake.” She shrugged again, and the mirror cracked into falling water. “Now it is … this.”

Skye nodded. They didn’t know what else to do.

“But when it rains, I can pretend. I can sit, and I can see it just like it used to be. But only when it rains.”

“And you don’t want to do that anymore.”

The woman shook her head. “I am tired of pretending. It made me happy once, but now it is like eating air. I cannot continue this existence.”

Skye brushed their skirt out of the way and sat on the bench. The hem drooped into the water and darkened. “Well, what do you want to do?”

“I can change.” The woman hugged herself and submerged further into the water, until it covered her nose. She stared at Skye with tired, black hole eyes. “But I am afraid. What if changing makes me more unhappy? What if I miss being a water nymph?”

“Okay,” Skye said. They reached out a hand, and the nymph took it. Her fingers were smooth and wet, almost dainty, yet their grip was impossibly strong. Like iron. Or magic. “That makes sense.”

“It does?”

Skye nodded. “Yeah. Yeah it does.”

With Skye’s help, the nymph stepped out of her pool and sat on the bench. Water did not fall from her but instead clung to her like a second skin. Together, they stared at the rain-drenched city. Birds chirped and bathed in the dripping water, and squirrels darted from tree to tree looking for food. Two buildings over, a dog pressed its smiling face against the glass and barked. Skye waved, and the dog’s tail burst into wagging.

Yet trash soaked in puddles, and instead of meadow there were roads and cars and plastic. Tired people fled the falling water; the place hummed with city noises. Concrete spread further than any grass could hope to do.

“I want to continue living here,” the nymph said. “Even if my home is gone, it is still here. In the dirt. In the ghosts. And I can change, but what if I cease to be? My lake vanished. I can too.”

“You won’t,” Skye said.

“How—”

“Because you define you. Be happy and be comfortable, and go no further. You won’t need to.” Skye smiled. “You’ll know when you get it right, too.”

The nymph shook her head. “I am of nature. There are no city nymphs.”

“Liar,” Skye said. “I’m looking at one.”        

*

When Skye got home, soaking wet but in good spirits, they logged into their computer and dragged the two lousy images of the Williamson bench over. Four seconds later, and they were being admired in Rockland’s photography Discord, just as grainy and out of focus as all the others. It was, everyone agreed, the strangest set of pictures any of them had ever seen. A ghost without a ghost, and that made it undeniable proof that ghosts existed.

Skye smiled.

*

The next day, with the sun beating overhead and afternoon traffic clogging the streets, Skye grabbed their skateboard and headed back to The Cande Shoppe. Their bag played home to a folded up umbrella in need of being returned, one bottle of water for Skye, and a second for the nymph. The forecast was for six straight days of sun and heat, and it wasn’t fair that she only got to see her lake when it rained.

20oz of water wasn’t much, but the nymph only needed a few drops to make her window. This would work. At least until she got used to being a city nymph.