Tag: wetinkgames

Nigel: Part 2

February 23rd, 2024

Photo by Angel Luciano

Nigel sat alone in a room small room with a bunk, a bucket, a small window near the ceiling, and a metal door which had been locked from the outside. The single light bulb overhead was flickering. It was twilight, and he could hear the noises of night creatures beginning to stir. He leaned back against the wall, fidgeting with the dice they had given him.

               “To occupy you,” they had said, as they shut him inside.

               He looked at the dice in his hand. Two six-sided dice. He rolled them onto his lap, counted the pips. Four on one. Four on the other. He rolled again. It was the same.

               Why was it always the same?

               He tucked the dice into the pocket of his pants. He’d been given this set of fatigues by the men who had found him in the trenches outside of Armentiéres. He still did not know how he had managed to travel the 20 kilometers from Ypres to Armentiéres without knowing. He wasn’t sure what had happened to him either. He looked at the backs of his hands again, but there was no sign of the fur that had sprouted there earlier. He rubbed a hand over his face and his neck, feeling the familiar coarseness of his beard.

               He couldn’t have imagined it. He was haunted by Cobb’s terror and the taste of his blood.

               A knock at the door, followed by the sound of the lock clicking open drew his eyes upwards. Two men, prominently displaying arms filled the doorway. Nigel scrambled to his feet in anticipation.

               “Anders will see you now,” one of the men said.

               Nigel took the shirt he had laid across the foot of the bed, donning and buttoning it quickly as the two men led him from the small room—the cell—where they had placed him. They went past a row of similar rooms as they moved down the hallway. At the end of the corridor, they took a left, then a right, and then they were standing in what looked like a surgery room. There was a metal table in the middle of the room, another one against the wall, with trays of instruments. There were gloves on the table as well, and smocks hanging on hooks on the wall. There was a bright light staring down at the table in the center of the room. A row of windows let Nigel glimpse the courtyard between this building, a barracks, an office and a mess hall. Nigel swallowed the bile climbing his throat as he looked around. He clenched and unclenched his fists slowly, giving his nerves something to do.

               “You’ll wait here for Anders,” the first man said. He exited the surgery. The second man did not. He did not speak either. He held his gun where Nigel could see it.

               A few tense minutes ticked by, as Nigel watched the clock’s second hand move in its circular path. The door of the surgery opened, and he slowly turned to meet who he assumed was Anders.

               He was a slim man, mid-forties, white just beginning to creep into his otherwise blonde beard. He wore small rimmed glasses, and his uniform was neat as a pin. He was shorter than Nigel. He held his hands behind his back as he took stock of him.

               “You saw a light in the trench?” Anders asked. His voice was rustic.

               “More like a sparkle,” Nigel said.

               Anders nodded. “You touched it?” he asked.

               Nigel nodded.

               “Get up on the table,” he instructed. As soon as he said it, three other men came into the surgery, one wearing doctor’s scrubs, the other two dressed as if to assist. The man with the gun took a step towards him and that was all the encouragement that Nigel needed to comply. He moved towards the table, hopped onto the cool metal top, and waited for further instructions.

               “I’m Dr. Greenberg,” the doctor said. Nigel almost said, “pleased to meet you,” but the doctor continued swiftly, leaving no time for pleasantries. “How many times have you transformed?”

               “Eh…one?” Nigel said.

               “Take off that shirt, if you please,” Dr. Greenberg said. Nigel did as asked, and one of the assistants whisked it away from him. Anders was watching from his place near the door, arms crossed.

               Nigel hesitated, but the sudden sternness of the doctor’s expression made him reconsider. Nigel tried not to sigh. He removed his shirt, and it was immediately whisked away from him by one of the assistants. He laid back, the cool metal sending shivers through his limbs, closing his eyes against the glaring light overhead.

               “You can sit,” Dr Greenberg said after an awkward moment of waiting.

               He sat up gladly, swung his feet down, letting them dangle like a child in a too tall chair. The doctor and his assistant walked around behind him.

               “Ah, yes,” Dr. Greenberg said. The assistant muttered a few words. Nigel looked across the room at Anders. His hand was over his mouth now and his eyes had grown wide. “We’ve seen this before,” the doctor said.

               “Like patient 12,” the assistant said.

               “Indeed.” The doctor—he assumed it was the doctor—was feeling along his spine. “He has a malformation right here,” he said, his fingers pausing near the base of Nigel’s neck. “Here, have a feel. Right there.” A second hand poked him now. Nigel stiffened, feeling like a specimen. He tried to shrug them away, but that only made the fingers press harder against him.

               “Dr. Greenberg,” the assistant said, “He’s got an extra one.”

               “An extra what?” Nigel asked. They ignored him.

               “Let’s see now,” Dr. Greenberg said. More fingers pressing on him now. “Oh, yes. Yes you’re right.”

               Nigel tried to move away from them. “What are you feeling for?”

               “Bones,” Dr. Greenberg said. “Bones that you shouldn’t have.”

               “What do you mean? What’s happening to me? What is this place? Who is patient 12?” Nigel could feel himself growing. His face felt too long. He looked at his hands. The fur that had sprouted before was growing back. He hungered inhumanely.

               “Oh, I’m afraid we’ve set him off,” Dr. Greenberg said.

               Nigel watched the men shrink as they came forward with nets and guns to restrain him. Except for Anders. He watched from the door with a calculating frown.

               “Nigel,” the voice called.

               Nigel opened his eyes. He couldn’t move. His vision was blurred. He searched for the source of the voice, and found someone standing to his right. He blinked. No, three people. Anders, and two soldiers. He blinked again, then looked down at himself. He was wearing only his shorts and undershirt. He’d been put into a straight jacket, and tied to the wall. Looked up again, as Anders came forward. He was holding a glass of water, offering it with a strange tenderness.

               “Here, have some of this,” Anders said. He helped Nigel drink, and the cool water was a balm. Nigel let it run down his chin. He was hot. His forehead was dripping with sweat.

               “What happened?” he grunted.

               Anders gave the glass to one of the soldiers who passed it to a man just outside the room, who in turn whisked it away. Nigel was in the same room he’d been in before the exam. His room. He snorted at the thought.

               “Oh, it’s not funny, Nigel. It’s not funny at all,” Anders said. Nigel could smell him, a mixture of stale sweat and canned beans and the kind of fatigue that comes when you know you’re losing a war.

               “Well, I wasn’t laughing at…” he tried to gesture at himself, then remembered he couldn’t. “What am I?”

               “You’ve been touched by something from another world, Nigel,” Anders said. “And we could use it, if you would let us help you control it.”

               “Control it?” Nigel asked, skeptical.

               “We’ve trained several others,” Anders said.

               “To do what? Hunt down Germans?”

               Anders nodded. “In part,” he said. “But mainly, to fight off the other things that come into the battle.”

               “Other things?” Nigel asked. “What…tanks?” He’d heard of tanks, but he’d not yet seen one.

               “No, Nigel,” Anders said quietly. “Things like…you.”

               “You mean people who’ve transformed?” he asked.

               “And the things that have transformed you.”

               A stream of sweat ran down Nigel’s back. “You have any more water?”

               The man outside the room was off, presumably to fulfill the request, as soon as Anders turned his head to look that direction.

               “We are good at this,” Anders said. “And we will take good care of you, Nigel, while we train you.”

               “To be your hound,” he said, his teeth grinding.

               “To win the war,” Anders said. He smiled. “Can you think of something better than that?”

Nigel was a soldier. He knew that his desires barely mattered. “Is there another choice?”

“We could cure you of the ailment,” Anders said, and at the rising hopefulness that Nigel knew was spread across his face, Anders only frowned. “Through euthanasia,” he said.

Nigel wasn’t sure if he had heard correctly. But Anders’ hard stare eliminated his need to have the man repeat himself.

“So, I am a dog,” Nigel said.

“Afraid so,” Anders said.

The second glass of water was passed across the room, and Anders tipped it to his lips. Nigel swallowed all of it down. “Do you want to think it over?”

What was there to think about? Do as he wanted, or die. That wasn’t a real choice.

“I just have one question,” Nigel said. Anders nodded, an indication for him to continue. “Who is patient 12?”

“Oh! Patient 12 is one of our best…eh, dogs, as you say,” Anders said. His smile was saccharine. Nigel felt the water he swallowed coming back up. “We perfected the training program with him, I’m sure.”

“And what’s my number?” Nigel asked.

“You’re patient 13,” Anders said.

Nigel snickered. “That’s unlucky.”

Anders shrugged. “Well, the world has been upside down, hasn’t it? Who knows? Maybe you’re the luckiest.” He gave Nigel a wink, and then moved towards the door. “Untie him,” he said to the soldiers. He turned to look at Nigel, a softness in his eyes as he hovered at the door. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

They left the water. They brought a tray of food. He laid down and slept like a good dog.
Nigel: Part 1

February 16th, 2024

Photo courtesy of the British Library

This story will appear in the upcoming campaign books for the popular table top RPG Never Going Home, published by Wet Ink Games.

Nigel woke from a dead sleep. His ears were ringing, but not in the way that made him think something was wrong. He felt completely peaceful, like the ringing was his body’s way of soothing him. All else around him was quiet. No one was moving along the trench. No rats were scurrying and chattering. He didn’t even hear any snoring.

Sitting up, he let the coat which he’d been using as a blanket slip from his body to land in his lap. He stretched, rubbing his muscles of his jaw. They weren’t tight. That must not be the reason for the ear ringing. He looked up and down the trench. Where was everyone? He put his coat on properly and stood, the mud sucking at his boots.

He moved along in silence, the ringing in his ears growing louder as he moved walked. His unit was a in a reserve trench, not near the front. There was lesser risk of them being bombed here. They could even look out over the top without fear of machines guns. This should have given him comfort, but the longer he went without seeing anyone, the more uneasy he grew.

The ringing in his ears began to change into a haunted tune. He couldn’t tell if it was a voice or a flute he was hearing. He rounded a bend in the trench and there he saw…well, he wasn’t sure what he saw. It was sparkling, and drifting down like confetti, but it was infinite. It was dazzling, and he realized this was the origin of the song. This glittering entity was singing to him.

He reached out a hand, and watched in amazement as his fingers disappeared. He pressed his whole hand into the shining sparkling mass, dancing with energy. He smiled to himself, overcome with excitement. He stepped forward into the glittering light.

Nigel woke from a dead sleep. Someone was shaking him awake. “Get up, won’t ya?” It was Cobb. “Come on, Barrister. We gotta move on!”

Nigel rubbed his eyes as he stood up, his coat slipping from his form. He caught it with one hand, donning is hastily as Cobb shoved his pack at him. “What’s happening?”

“Reprieve’s over. Moving to the front,” Cobb answered, sloshing on down the trench. He called to the next sleeping man.

Nigel put his arm through the strap of his pack, and took a second look at his hand. It was covered in hair, almost like a dog. Or a wolf. His heart thumped harder as pulled up his sleeves. Thick arm, all the way up his forearm. He touched his face, wondering how much beard he’d grown since his last shave.

“Barrister!” Cobb called.

“Coming!” Nigel said, hastily falling in line with the other soldiers as they moved through the trench.

At the front, the rats were worse. He wondered how that could be. Maybe it was all the bodies. The mud was worse too. It covered everything. If the thin layer ever dried, it would provide another layer of protection from the cold. But the mud never dried. They had dug too far down, hit the water table. He’d known too many who were sent to convalesce from their trench foot. He wiggled his stiff, wet toes in his boots, keeping his circulation going. He wondered if those poor chaps with their feet rotting off thought they were getting the better end of the deal.

The air stunk with decay, with fear, with vermin and waste. It was too thick with the smells; it made him sick. It was worse than before, but no one else seemed to be complaining of it. He wiped his face, rubbing the weariness from his eyes. His beard was full again. He wouldn’t bother shaving it. It has snowed last night. The beard, though growing freakishly quickly, was a welcome cover from the cold.

“Barrister!” Cobb called. “You daydreaming again?”

“What’s that?” Nigel said, turning his attention to his fellow soldier.

“I asked if you’re gonna drink any coffee,” Cobb said. Nigel saw the kettle sitting atop a small fire at Cobb’s feet. Cobb frowned at him. “Did you have that beard yesterday?”

Nigel stroked the hair on his face, thinking it felt more like fur than whiskers. “Yeah, of course. Can’t grow a beard like this in a day.”

“Huh,” Cobb said, sounding unconvinced. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

“Nothing,” Nigel said, though a tingling feeling was creeping along his spine the longer Cobb stared.

“No, there’s something…They’re all yellow.”

“Yellow?” Nigel gasped. “What do you mean they’re yellow?”

“Yellow, Barrister! Yellow! Like a wolf.” Cobb’s frown was slowing morphing into a look of terror.

Nigel dug in his pack, looking for his mug. “Don’t worry about it,” he muttered.

“Oh no, I think it’s something we all should be worried about,” Cobb said over his head.

Nigel looked up, and now the look Cobb wore was one of mistrust. “I’m fine,” he said.

“You’re…tainted,” Cobb hissed.

Nigel stood up, a rush of animalistic anger pumping through him. “I’m what?” he said. He felt like he was seven feet tall. Cobb seemed to shrunk before him. He watched in glee as Cobb screamed, cowered, covered his face with his hands. Nigel lunged down, barely conscious of his snapping teeth. Cobb’s blood had a metallic tang. Nigel ran.

Nigel woke from a dead sleep. Every part of him was cold. His ears were ringing. He opened his eyes, but couldn’t see anything. It was too bright. She squinched them closed. His head ached. He felt wet all over. He rolled onto his side, squelching into the mud. He realized her was naked. That’s why he was so cold.

“He’s awake,” someone said.

Nigel tried to open his eyes again, but his head hurt too much. “C..c…c…cold,” he choked.

“Nigel Barrister,” that same voice said. “Can you understand me?”

Why would they be asking him that? What had happened to him? “I can understand,” he said. His mouth tastes like dust. “Can I have some water?”

Someone was hoisting him from the mud, now placing a coat around his shoulders. He shivered as someone pressed a canteen into his hand. His head felt lighter. He chanced opening his eyes again.

He didn’t recognize any of the men surrounding him. They were all looking at him worriedly, as if he wasn’t real. As if he wasn’t human. He glanced down at his hands. There was no sign of the fur that had covered them before. He took another drink from the canteen, then pulled the coat tighter around him. “Where am I?” he asked.

The two men standing directly before him looked at one another for support, as if deciding which one of them should say something. “Where were you before?” one of them finally asked.

“At the front,” Nigel said. “We’d just been moved from reserve. Trying to put the enemy on the run at Ypres.”

There was a long silence, the two men standing above him looking at him pityingly, then at each other, almost as if they were communicating telepathically. The same one who spoke before finally broke the silence by turning over his shoulder and telling one of the men behind him, “Get him some clothes.” As that fellow moved off to follow the order, the man (who Nigel now recognized as Lieutenant) squatted low and looked him right in the eyes. “Well, Nigel Barrister, you’re a long way from Ypres now. Do you know what happened to you?”

Nigel wet his lip even though his mouth was still sticky. He struggled with the truth. He knew if would sound unbelievable, but wasn’t all of this unbelievable? What part of the last 3 years was believable? He decided not to hide anything. Perhaps they could help him discover what was happening to him.

“I had a dream about a glittering light, and when I woke, I was covered in fur. I lost my temper at a friend, and…” His eyes grew wide as he recalled the look on Cobb’s face. “Oh God… I think I killed him.” He swallowed noisily. “But after that, I don’t know,” he said. He looked up into the Lieutenant’s eyes, pleading, though for what he did not know. “I don’t know how I got here.”

The Lieutenant rose and looked to the other man he had previously regarded. “That’s what I was afraid of when we saw him,” he said. He fell silent.

The second man was nodding to himself. “I’ll let Anders know,” he said.

Together, the two men hoisted Nigel from the ground. “Do you know what’s happened then? Is there someone else like…like this?” he asked.

But they didn’t say anything as they ushered him along.
The Messengers: Part 5

December 1st, 2023

Photo by Artin Bakhan

They were not called for another three days. The letter Frank was given was thick. As he tucked it into his pocket, he heard whispers in an unknown tongue. Corrupted. He tried not to think of it, but that only made me think of the words that had been seared onto his eyelids. Daag glash naag abaat glaag blan. He shivered as he tucked the letter into his breast pocket.

               Fred drove. About halfway into their journey, Frank took the letter from his pocket, and read. The paper did not have words; it was more like impressions. It was like falling down a darkened hole. He lost himself for a moment, and blinked back the darkness only to find that it had infected him. He could hear the voice of someone else in his head. The letter lay in his lap. He refolded it, hid it in his pocket. Frank looked up and Fred, who was singularly focused on driving. His helmet and goggles hid all his expressions, and masked all his thoughts. Frank closed his eyes, seeing the strange the words.

               At the shack, they did not find Madame Joile. Her encampment looked to have been abandoned for years. She had left paper and pencil though, as well as an oil lamp, with a bit of oil in it. Everything was covered in dust, as if she had never been there at all.

               “What do you think happened to her?” Frank asked.

               Fred trailed a finger through the dust on the desk. “I don’t know, but I don’t like this at all.”

               Frank could feel that slow creeping darkness sliding through him. He tasted it, the smell of it filled his nose. “Corruption,” he said. His voice was like sandpaper.

               Fred glanced at him, the concern plain in his eyes. “What did you do?” he asked.

               “I read the letter,” Frank said. He was bubbling, like a boiling pot. His whole being felt like water dripping through rocks. “I couldn’t help it.”

               “Let’s get out of here,” Fred said, reaching for his arm. He pulled him towards the door, but Frank’s feet grew heavy. Fred’s eyes were wild with confusion, with fear that he was barely containing. Then Frank felt the presence around him. The klumskaag. What had Reiner said? It had been trying to call him. It lived here and it wanted him here too. He thought back to Madame Joile’s skeletal smile, trying to remember what she had said. She would ascend. That’s it. Frank laughed to himself, aloud, and Fred dropped his arm in horror. The klumskaag was helping them; that’s what Reiner thought. It was helping them ascend.

               “Go, Fred,” Frank said. He hesitated. “Go home.”

               “Frank!” Fred tried to argue, but Frank hushed him.

               “Don’t you want to go home?” he asked.

               Fred backed away from him, the fear beading on his forehead, and then he ran towards the motorbike. Frank watched him speed away, the dust cloud of the raid rising behind the vehicle. Frank watched for a long time, until the dust was gone from the air, and the night had settled over him. Then he shut the door of the shack and sat down at the desk.

               He never saw Fred again.
The Messengers: Part 4

November 24th, 2023

Photo by Kay Dittner

Frank handed the letter with the strange markings to the captain once they got back to the camp. He tucked it into a folder without comment, then shooed him away, as he waited to the collect the next letter from the next soldier. Frank moved off slowly, wondering about what he had seen. He could still make out the markings if he closed his eyes. They still didn’t make any sense, but if he tried hard enough, he could see how all the markings were connected. Maybe there was an order to it after all.

               Frank and Fred stood in line in the mess hall, waiting for their stewed potatoes and beans, or whatever other meager meal was being dished out today. The hall seemed emptier than it had the first week. Frank looked around, studying the face. Several notable people were missing tonight. He nudged Fred. “Hey,” he whispered, and Fred dipped his face closer to him. “What happened to everyone else?”

               Fred looked around the mess hall too. The wooden walls and dark floor seemed to swallow all the light that came in through the windows. Frank scratched his head, wondering why it felt dark, even though the sun was still out. Chatter was sparse tonight. An uneasy nervousness buzzed in the air.

               “Did Jack and Peter go out today?” Fred asked, still eyeing the room.

               They had almost made it to the front of the line, where a man everyone called Kitchen Joe was dishing out the stew. “I think so,” Frank said.

               “Where are they?” Fred asked.

               As soon as he asked, their friend stumbled into the mess hall, looking haggard, like the dead. Harry was with them, and he too looked almost gray with fatigue. Or fear. Or something else, Frank thought, the idea sliding up from the dark parts of his heart. Something other, like the script.

               They found each other at the table. “You look bad,” Frank said to Harry.

               “I think I’m sick,” he said.

               “Go to the medic,” Fred offered. He chewed on a potato.

               “No, I think I’m sick in my mind,” Harry said.

               Fred stopped eating, looking hard at Harry from across the table. “So, go to the medic,” he said again.

               But Harry didn’t go to the medic. He went outside in the middle of that night and he never came back.

               It was another five days of waiting before they were given a letter to take to Madame Joile. This time Frank drove the motorbike. Fred carried the letter, and argued with Madame Joile, who looked older than the last time they had seen her by several decades. Her smile was almost skeletal as she handed them the reply they had forced from her. Fred tucked it into his breast pocket without even glancing down at the paper.

               “We are nearly completed,” Madame Joile said. “That is my final reply. I will not be hear when you return.”

               “Why? Where are you going?” Frank asked.

               Fred nudged him hard. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked.

               “Why do you ask? You want to go with me?” she said. Her lips peeled back into an awkward grin. There were too many teeth.

               “No,” he said, even though yes was the first word that came to mind.

               “You can learn how to ascend if you follow the maps through the tree,” Madame Joile said.

               “What?” Frank asked. His chest felt tight with anticipation. He swallowed the lump growing in his throat.

               “No thanks,” Fred said, steering him away from the woman, who stood in front of the shack watching them go. He could feel her eyes on him, like twin beacons of fire at his back.

               “You drive,” he said to Fred, as he climbed into the sidecar. “Let me carry the reply.”

               “Why?” Fred asked, looking hard at him, all but saying that was a terrible idea.

               “Because…I’ve already seen it, and this way, you won’t be tempted to look…”

               “I don’t want to look,” Fred said.

               Frank’s hands shook as he thought about the script in the letter he had opened the previous week, and the letter that was in Fred’s pocket. “You don’t?” he asked.

               Fred looked at him as if he was out of his mind. “No,” he said with disgust. “Why would I?” Frank didn’t have an answer, and Fred continued to stare at him, his expression morphing to one of concern. “You shouldn’t either,” he said.

               “Why?” Frank asked, though he knew why, and now it was beginning to make sense why they had needed so many messengers.

               “Don’t you want to go home?” Fred asked.

               He nodded. He did. He wanted to go home more than anything. But whatever had taken hold of Harry, of the others who had gone missing, he suspected was already rooted in him. “I shouldn’t have looked at the script,” he said.

               “Nope,” Fred said. He started the bike, and rolled off down the road, away from Madame Joile and her strange, other-worldly smile.

               Peter had not come back with Jack. Frank, Fred and Jack all stood around the burn barrel that night, silent to their companions, through Frank was internally screaming. The markings he had seen where still on the backs of his eye lids. When he looked, he could almost read them now, but he didn’t understand the language. It wasn’t French or German. It didn’t sound like Russian or Polish. He wondered if it was an invented language, something the army created just to send letter back and forth to informants. He watched the fire, closing his eyes for just a minute, to get another glimpse, another taste. Daag glash naag abaat glaag blan. He didn’t understand what it meant but it felt wonderful sliding around his mind.

               “We followed a girl into the house,” Jack said. “The one that looked wrong, like a rotten apple in a bag of perfectly crisp ones.”

               “I don’t want to know,” Fred said. He stomped out his cigarette and walked away without another word.

               Jack looked at Frank, and Frank could almost hear a whisper in the air, the words in his mind on the wind. “Tell me about her,” he said to his companion.

               Jack scrubbed a hand through his hair, scratched the back of his head before he launched into the tale. “She was gaunt, and looked sickly, but in a sort of nice kind of way, you know? I followed her up those stairs ‘cause I thought…well you know, a girl invites you inside and you think…you know? So I went, but Peter was ahead of me, and he seemed crazed over her.” Jack’s eyes had grown wide. “And he said he’d go first and then I could go in after he was done, but he never came out. Something just…I don’t know, I think I came to my senses, and I remembered I was supposed to wait five minutes and then leave.”

               “Was her smile all wrong? Too many teeth? Too big for her face?” Frank asked. His mouth had gone dry and his fingers tingled. He wiped the sweat from his face.

               “What do you think she is?” Jack asked.

               “Klumskaag,” he said, the word coming to his lips without a thought.

               “What is that?” Jack said, his voice shaking. “German?”

               But Frank didn’t know, so he just shook his head.

               A crunch behind them alerted them to the presence of someone in the shadows. “Reeves,” the voice said, using Frank’s last name.

               “Sir?” he asked, turning towards the voice, which he was pretty sure was the German captain. He had learned his name was Reiner.

               “Come with me,” he said.

               He took a long, desperate look at Jack before peeling away. Jack couldn’t save him from whatever it was he had gotten mixed up in. He turned from the light of the fire, and followed Reiner across the green behind the barracks, to the building where the officers worked. Reiner said nothing until they had moved all the way into the building, and the door was shut behind them. There was an oil lamp on a desk. Reiner sat at the desk and pointed to the chair on the opposite side. “Sit,” he said.

               He sank slowly into the chair, waiting for revelation, for reprimand, for release. He wasn’t sure. He fidgeted nervously as Reiner folded his hands in front of him, elbows resting on the desktop. The captain stared at him for what felt like half the night. Then he cleared his throat and asked, “How did you know about the klumskaag?”

               “What?” he asked, surprised by the question. He tried to think of anything to say that wasn’t the truth—that he had no idea how he knew about the klumskaag, whatever that was. “I…well, I think…I don’t…”

               “Did you read it in a letter?” Reiner asked.

               “No,” Frank said forcefully. He was sweating under Reiner’s stare.

               “But you read other things in the letter?” Reiner asked.

               His mouth worked against his will. “Daag glash naag abaat glaag blan” he said mechanically.

               Reiner nodded. “Yes, that’s what I thought.”

               “What does it mean?” Frank asked.

               “It means the klumskaag is trying to find you,” he said.

               “What is the klumskaag?” Frank said, his anxiety rising. His heart was racing like he was climbing a hill with a full kit strapped to his back.

               “We don’t know,” Reiner said. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.” He stood and moved across the room, to another desk, where he picked up a piece of paper. He turned slowly, held it out for Frank to take.

               Frank hesitated, but then, snatched up the paper, reading through it as rapidly as his eyes could move. He inhaled sharply when he had finished. “So that’s why we’re all here? That’s what we’re doing?”

               Reiner nodded. “We’re messengers to the Others,” he said.

               “But…why?” Frank asked, the word burning on his tongue.

               “Don’t you want the war to end, Reeves? Don’t you want to go home?” Reiner asked, folding his arms over himself.

               Frank suddenly wanted to go home more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. “Yes, of course I want to go home.”

               Reiner seemed pleased. “Then let the klumskaag have you. It is trying to help us.”

               “Why would it want to help us?”

               Reiner shrugged. “We are also trying to discover why that is.”

               Did he have a choice? “What are people like Madame Joile?” he asked. Reiner raised an eyebrow, and he elaborated. “What is she?”

               “Corrupted,” Reiner said.

               The answer satisfied him for the moment. He imagined how many others there were in the world—people who used to be people, but were now something else. “So what do you want me to do now?”

               “Now you will write messages,” Reiner said. He took a fresh sheet of paper from the desk, and handed it to him. From the desk drawer, he fished out a pencil. He sat, then passed the pencil over to Frank.

               “What messages?” Frank asked.

               “Any message that you think will help us solve this puzzle,” Reiner said.

               Frank looked down at the sheet of paper in his hand, laid it on the desk gently. ‘I don’t know if I should,” he said.

               Reiner leaned forward in the chair. “This is why you were brought here. You are a messenger now,” Reiner said. “Most will only deliver the messages, and return the replies. But some of you will write the messages.”

               Reiner had a desperate expression, as if his future depended on Frank picking up that pencil. Frank wondered how Reiner got to be a captain of the French army, managing an American encampment. None of this made any sense. “Can you write to the klumskaag?” he asked. “Does it speak with you?”

               Reiner smiled. “No,” he said.

               So they were being used. They’d been drawn into a war that wasn’t their own, to fight a fiend they couldn’t see so that the French could protect what men they had left. And they’d drawn this defected German into the picture as well, and he seemed happy enough that he wasn’t the one risking his neck. “I’m not doing it,” Frank said.

               Reiner raised his eyebrow, then thought to himself before pointing to the door. “Then you’re free to go.”

               The words crawled through his head again—those odd words that didn’t mean anything, and yet held all the answers he had ever searched for. “That’s it?” he asked, skeptical.

               “That’s it,” Reiner said. “You can go. Next time I need a messenger, you and Kilpatrick and go back out on your motorbike.”

               It was too easy. It unsettled him. “Okay,” he said. He stood, watching Reiner suspiciously. He looked expectant, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t even rise from his chair.

               “Okay,” Frank said again, before he began moving to the door. He paused, looked over his shoulder at the captain. He was calm, waiting patiently for an exit, or an argument. Frank shook his head in bafflement. He yanked open the door and left the building.
The Messengers: Part 3

November 17th, 2023

Harry was eating in silence that evening while the others chatted idly about the things they had seen that day while delivering letters. No one had believed Frank when he told the story about the woman eating his letter, until Fred piped in that he had seen it too. Peter and Jack had gone somewhere called Aubigny-en-Artois, which Jack had pronounced very poorly.

               “Our delivery was in an actual town,” Jack said, speaking of the events of the day. “It had a church in the center, and a main road that went past shops, though most of ‘em were closed. And I saw moms walking ‘round with their kids, almost like there wasn’t a war going on at all.” He paused, then shook away a thought, or a memory, with a way of his head. “Anyway, we roll up to this townhouse…I guess that’s what it was. Looks real old and run down, not at all like the other building on the street. They’d all been painted recently I think. Can you imagine painting the town when there’s a war in your backyard?”

               Peter laughed, as Jack rambled on about the experience. Frank and Fred both listened too, but Frank’s eyes kept sliding over to Harry. He wasn’t eating anything now, and he had a terrible look about him, like he hadn’t slept in days.

               “Hey, Harry, you alright?” Frank asked, interrupting Jack’s story about some young woman he’d chatted with on the way out of Aubigny-en-Artois.

               The table went quiet as everyone turned their attention to Harry. He had his head in his hands, staring straight down into his soul bowl.

               “Come on, man,” Peter said, slapping him on the shoulder. “Was it that bad?”

               Harry dropped his hands from his face. “Bill didn’t come back with me,” he said.

               Fred leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

               “You know how they told us to leave if the letter carrier was gone for more than 5 minutes?” he asked. They all nodded. The captains in charge of this unit had been very clear about this direction. 5 minutes, that’s it. Wait any longer and you might be dead too. “Well,” Harry said, letting the story hang unfinished. They were all smart enough to fill in the details.

               “Where did you go?” Fred asked.

               “Well it wasn’t a row of sheds like where they sent you, but it wasn’t much better,” Harry said. “We could tell that it used to be…community of some sort. There were actual houses there, maybe 12 or so, packed not too tight, but still close enough that it seemed like it was a village. There was a huge crater just on the outskirts of what I’d say was the village boundary. Big hole in the ground. Couldn’t see the bottom of it as we drove by.”

               The men all looked around the table at each other, each wondering if they should ask a question or let Harry continue in his own time. The dining hall was emptying out. Mess was almost over, and they had to be in their bunks in one hour. An hour didn’t feel like enough time to talk about everything Frank wanted to talk about.

               “Anyway, we went to the house. They said it would be marked with a red circle on the door. Bill knocked, and somebody answered, and next thing I know Bill is walking into the house. I waited 5 minutes, and then…” He was choking on the words. “I left him,” he said. “I left him behind.”

               Frank could see the guilt was eating Harry alive. “Hey, Harry, man, you don’t know what happened. For all we know, he’s with some nice family getting a home cooked meal.”

               Harry’s eyes were hard. “Now you know just as well as I, that isn’t true,” he said. “And I left him there, to face whatever it was alone.”

               “You followed orders,” Fred said.

               “Doesn’t mean it was the right thing,” Harry said, clearly on the verge of a breakdown. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, and looked away from the other men at the table with him.

               “You’re right,” Frank said. “But, it’s the reason you’re alive right now.”

               Harry got up from the table, leaving the mess hall without another word, his soup uneaten.

               There was no assignment the next day for Frank and Fred, so they hung around the barracks, and the village where they had been built. There was a tiny church, and what Frank thought of a park near the center of the village. There were a few women and kids there that day. None wanted to chat. They all kept their eyes averted, downcast. Frank smoked about half of his cigarettes, thinking about home and his mom. Fred didn’t say much at all, but he was good company. They wandered back to the barracks, looking for lunch, when the sun rose high. Bread, butter and beans. He couldn’t complain. It was better than 8 hours in a sidecar.

               The next day there was no assignment. And the day after that they did a whole lot of nothing too. But on the fourth morning as they were standing in queue, the captain handed Frank a letter, tri-folded and stamped with wax just like the other one had been. This captain was someone he hadn’t seen before. He was tall and looked distinctly unhappy.

               “Get a reply from Madame Joile this time,” he said. His accent was different than the other French captains. He could never remember any of their names. They didn’t all look the same, but they all sounded the same. Except this one. He spoke English like he was shooting a machine gun.

               “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to go back to her,” Frank said, not sure why he had let it slip.

               The captain stared at him, scowling fiercely. Frank felt like a puppy about to be scolded. “Madame Joile is doing important reconnaissance,” he said.

               “Yessir!” Frank said, saluting robotically before stepping out of line with the letter, Fred on his heels. When they were far enough away from the officer, Frank leaned his head towards his companion. “What’s with that guy?” he asked.

               “He sounds like a German,” Fred said. Fred was smart like that. He had taught school or something. Or maybe he’d just been to school. Frank couldn’t remember.

               “A German!” Frank whispered in disgust, nearly scandalized. “What’s he doing here?! Did he defect?”

               “Beats me,” Fred said.

               They made the drive again, nearly four hours stuffed into the side car, slipping past wastes and pastures and those funny, cold places that felt like death. Back to the little hill with the five sheds. One of them had lost a door since the last time they’d come. When Fred killed the engine on the bike, Madame Joile burst from the house, running towards them with frantically wild eyes. She took the letter from Frank before he could get himself up out of the sidecar. She turned her back to them, and began pacing as she read. Her cap was gone, and her whitening hair was in disarray. They waited.

               Madame Joile turned around, and wet her lips before she said very smoothly, as if she hadn’t been frazzled at all. “No reply today.” Then she began to tear the letter.

               “Oh, no, we need to take a reply today,” Frank said. He was out of the sidecar now, and Fred had hopped off the bike as well. They stood side by side, and he assumed the most threatening posture he could.

               Madame Joile stuffed parts of the letter into her mouth. “No reply,” she said around the paper.

               Frank drew his pistol and pointed it at her. The fear was getting ahead of him. He tried to settle himself as Madame Joile drew a pistol of her own. They stood there, a game of chicken that neither one would win. Frank swallowed his nerves. His hand was shaking. “We need a reply,” he said.

               Madame Joile swallowed the lump of letter shreds in her mouth. “Fine,” she said. “Come here.”

               She returned her pistol to its harness and stomped back across the short yard to the shed. Frank looked at Fred, and then they both slowly followed, keeping their distance. Madame Joile huffed her way into the shed, but neither entered with her. For one, it was too small for all three of them. For another, Frank had an itching sensation crawling up his back that she was dangerous. He thought about Bill disappearing into the house where Harry had driven him. He didn’t even step up to the door. Fred hung back even further than that. They could hear her in the shed, shuffling around, scratching out a reply, folding paper. When she emerged from the darkened structure, she pressed the note into Frank’s hand. She was like ice, too hard and too cold.

               “Your reply,” she said huffily. Then she returned to the shed and slammed the door.

               The letter was not sealed. Frank’s curiosity overcame him and he unfolded the letter. The script was like nothing he had ever seen, all scratched out without any apparent order. Was it even an alphabet? Was it a map? Was it a joke? He passed the letter to Fred, but he turned his head, averting his eyes.

               “I don’t want to see,” he said.

               Frank knew that Fred had better sense than him, and he regretted looking at the paper. He refolded it and put it in his breast pocket. The markings were on the backs of his eyelids when he blinked, like when you stare at a light too long. He rubbed his eyes, trying to rid himself of the view of them.

               “Let’s get out of here,” Fred said, dragging him back to the motorbike.
The Messengers: Part 2

November 10th, 2023

Photo by Alvaro Serrano

They went out in pairs the next day. One was the driver, the other was the carrier. The letters were hand written, tri-folded then sealed shut with wax. They looked like something from a by-gone time. Peter went with Jack, hopping into the sidecar of the motorcycle before Jack sped off down the dirt road that led away from the town and the barracks. They didn’t know where Frank and Jack were headed. They had been instructed to tell no one. Harry had gone with another guy named Bill who they had met on the boat over. He was a nice fella, one of those classically handsome American guys that could turn the head of any woman on the street. The French girls they’d seen in town had all noticed him first, whispering behind their hands and giggled the way women do, pointing to him sitting at the bar as if no one could see what they were doing. Bill was an alright guy, Frank though, but he was only here because he’d been too stupid to get into law school. He had to do something to make his dad proud.

               That left Frank to go with Fred, and Fred wanted to drive. Frank had wanted to drive too, but he lost the staring match that Fred started when he said so. Frank just sighed instead and hunkered down in the sidecar, feeling like a tag along, or a sister, as he folded his arms across his chest. Fred handed him the letter. He resisted snatching it and stuffing it into his breast pocket. Instead, Frank soothed his blistering pride by pulling his cap down over his eyes, pretending to need a nap, even though it was 8 in the morning. Fred kicked the motorcycle into gear and they were off down the dirt road.

               They couldn’t talk on the drive, the machine was too noisy, and the wind stole any of the words he would have said. Frank watched the countryside roll along in the distance. There were whole sections that look burnt to a crisp, pocked with muddy pits and fallen trees and crisscrossing wires. Then there were other patches which looked untouched. Sometimes they passed a house or a farm. Not a single one of them looked inhabited. Perhaps the people who lived there were just good at hiding. He couldn’t imagine living this close to some of the terrain he’d seen. What had these people had to endure?

               There were other places that he couldn’t quite describe, places that gave him unspeakable chills in his blood, places that didn’t feel like they were part of the whole. He’d heard about these places, the places where the horrors spilled through. If the stories were true, that is. Frank wasn’t sure, but he could imagine why someone would invent a story about those places even if it wasn’t. It was like walking through a ghost, like trespassing into a tomb. The whole sky seemed to darkened when they came upon one, and the menacing feeling seems to lift like a cloud as soon as they passed through. That made him think about the book of Exodus, and he nearly laughed, thinking how proud his mom would be that he’d been thinking of the Bible. But that cloud that descended in the Bible was holy. These places, whatever they were, were the opposite.

               They drove until the sun was sailing directly above them, to a little encampment at the base of a hill. The hill had single tree left standing on it. There were at least 5 stumps that he counted around the tree, the trunks of in splinters all down the hillside. There were five buildings here, shoddy, looking as if they’d blow over in a stiff breeze. As they pulled up, and Fred killed the motor of the bike, a door opened on one of the buildings. A women in French uniform dress emerged, shielding her eyes from the sunlight.

               “Hello?” she called, her accent heavy.

               Frank slowly rose from the seat, legs stiff, taking care with climbing out onto the gravel. “Madame Joile?” he asked. He held up the letter so she could see.

               She came forward, and he was surprised to see how old she was. She walked with a stiff leg, as if she couldn’t quite bend her knee. Under her cap he could see that her hair was starting to gray. She was wrinkled all around her eyes and the lines around her mouth were deepening into grooves. “Americans?” she asked. Frank nodded, stretching out his arm, the letter dangling from his fingers.

               She snatched up the paper, tearing open the seal. Her eyes sped back and forth across the page. She nodded, closing her eyes in what looked like pain when she came to the end of the message. She began tearing the paper into tiny pieces and then she ate it.

               She ate it.

               Frank stared at her, not believing his own eyes, as she balled each strip in her first and stuffed it into her mouth. His mouth was hanging open by the time she was finished. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, and laughed at his expression of horror. “We need to be sure,” she said.

               “Sure of what?” Frank croaked.

               “No one else reads them,” she said. Then brushed her hands on her uniform and waved them away. “No message to return today,” she said. Then she turned around and marched back to the run-down shed from which she had emerged.

               Frank turned his eyes to Fred, who was clicking his tongue against his teeth, staring after the French woman with narrowed eyes. He slid his eyes over to his companion when he noticed him staring. “You wanna drive back?” he asked.

               Frank waved the question away, and sunk down into the side car. They’d spent half a day to deliver a letter to a woman who had eaten it and then sent them away as if they were annoying kids on her lawn. What kind of farcical, mind-numbingly banal assignment had they been seated with? He pulled his cap down over his eyes as Frank drove. This time, he did take a nap.
The Messengers: Part 1

November 3rd, 2023

The Messengers is a piece of fiction set in the world of Never Going Home, the flagship TTRPG of Wet Ink Games about eldrich horrors in the trenches of the first World War. I have the honor of being the fiction writer for the game line and the forthcoming campaign books allowed me to write more narrative fiction. This story will appear in supplemental materials after the books are released.

They stood in a circle around the fire that burned in the barrel behind the barracks. It was not a nice evening—nippy, he thought, like winter just couldn’t let go—which made him think of his mom, back home in Ohio. She would be wondering where he was, and looking for a letter in the mail. He’d sent one a few days ago, letting her know he had arrived safely, with a slew of other men from American, on the shores of France. From the docks along that northern coast they’d gone inland, not quite as far as the front lines that crisscrossed Europe. He was glad they’d never make it to those trenches. Nope, not this battalion. They were brought over for something else entirely.

               He took a swig from the bottle that the other doughboys were passing around. One of them declined. He was a quiet fella from somewhere in east Michigan named Jack. Then there was Harry, he was from Ohio too, and Peter. He’d come from Pennsylvania. And the last man standing around the barrel that night was Fred. He was from Indiana. They’d only met earlier that day, but the five had taken a liking to each other fast, which is why they were all standing around the meager fire that burned, smoking cigarettes while their toes froze in the not quite spring weather.

               “I think I’ve glad to be on this assignment, Frank,” Jack said. “I know I signed up to help end this mess, but I was afraid I’d end up in one of those trenches.”

               He spit in the dirt. “I heard they aren’t even fighting in the trenches anymore. There’s nothing left of Belgium. There’s not much left of France.”

               “Except this place,” Peter said. The bottle had passed to him, and he knocked it back, gritting his teeth at the end of the swig. He passed the bottle.

               “I wondered about that,” Jack said. “These barracks seem new, don’t they? Why are they building new barracks just for Americans?”

               “You want to be in a mud hole like the French?” Harry asked.

               “No!” Jack said. The end of his cigarette glowed orange as he took a drag, like a setting sun all to himself. The fire lit his features, a lurid sight, before the hastening evening obscured him in darkness again. “This assignment though,” he said.

               Sometime did feel off about it, if he was honest with himself. Delivering messages by hand. They were going to be gloried mail carriers. They’d been told it was to prevent the information from falling into the wrong hands. But the messages were going to other encampments in France; who on this side of the front would intercept them for harm? Did the Germans have double agents? Was someone being double-crossed?

               “What about it?” Peter asked.

               “I don’t know,” Jack said. Now he had the bottle. “It just seems like they could…use a telegram I guess.”

               “Anyone could be listening on the wires,” Fred said. It was the first time he had spoken since they lit the fire.

               “Don’t they know how to send messages in code?” Jack argued.

               Fred smiled to himself, dark humor floating from him. “You haven’t heard what happened to the coders?” he asked.

               Now Frank was on alert. He and the other four men leaned in. Fred cleared his throat, his eyes drifting to each other pair of eyes in the circle before he said, “Something got them.” His voice was a velvet whisper. “They all went mad.”

               The fire popped and Frank jumped, then tried to disguise it with a stretch and a cough.

               “What do you mean, they went mad?” Peter asked.

               Fred just laughed, this time heartily. All the mystery and gloom was gone from him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just heard some guys talking about it on the boat over here. You know, telling tall tales, is all.”

               “You think?” Frank asked. “I mean, they French broads we met in the last town—they were talking some weird things. Monsters and magic, and…what did they say, Jack? Faeries?”

               “Yes,” Jack said, nearly rolling his eyes. “Faeries,” he said mockingly, then laughed.

               “The only monsters over here are the Germans, man,” Peter said. “And there’s nothing killing men in the trenches but Germans.”

               “Well,” Frank said, watching the hot coals in the barrel. “I guess it’s good that we volunteered for duty then. Can’t win a war if you got no men.” His words felt hollow, and he could see from the faces of his companions that they had fallen flat. They had all wanted to come here, to serve. But now that they were here…

               “It’s not like I thought it would be,” said Jack. He drank from the bottle.

               “What were you expecting, a vacation?” Harry teased.

               Jack just shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, passed the bottle.

               “I tell you what I was expecting,” Harry said. “I was expecting to be met by some French men, eh?” He gestured around their camp. “Instead, they stuck us here in these brand new barracks, and tell us we’re gonna be delivering messages. There’s about a hundred of here, you know. How many messengers do they need?”

               “We go in pairs,” Fred said. “Safer that way.”

               “I still say something is off about this,” Jack said.

               And Frank could feel it too, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
It’s Not the Craziest Thing

June 7th, 2022

Photo by Jens Aber

Sometimes I have a thought based on one line, and I run with the idea. My brother Matt, who is a co-owner of Wet Ink Games, gave me a suggestion to look at the elves described in Into the Wyrd and Wild, to generate a piece of fiction to include in the second edition of the book. During the course of the conversation, the idea of an elf stuffing men into a tree and leaving them there was mentioned as a joke. As I thought more about it though, it seemed like a good starting place for story. Why would an elf want to stuff a man into a tree? Sometimes, when I run with an idea, it takes me into a direction I did not anticipate. That’s what happened when writing this short story. I had thought to write a story about the interplay between humans and one of the elf clans, but it turned out to be a story about mentorship.

The four men moved lightly through the trees, the youngest of them, Olwen, glancing around nervously. It was his first time. The other three hunters, hardened by their experiences, moved more easily. Olwen wondered if he would ever be as confident as his companions. He wondered if he would ever come back into the Wilds with them after this was over.

Garvin looked over his shoulder, smiling at Olwen’s nervous expression. “Almost there, lad!” he said, as if they were on a jaunt through the meadow. “We’ll take one if we can, and then camp in our usual place.” The party was hunting cindershams. They’d been promised three times their normal rate if they could also find an ether rat.

“We have to stay the night in here?” Olwen asked. He couldn’t judge how far the sun had sunk towards the horizon. The thick canopy blocked nearly all the light.

Behind Olwen, Manford laughed at his cowardice. “You don’t want to be moving through these woods at night if you can avoid it,” he explained. “Especially not if you’re hunting cindershams.”

“Right,” Garvin agreed. “Better to stay put and wait out the nasty things that come creeping.”

“Nasty things?” Olwen squeaked.

At the back of the line of men, the fourth companion, Bran, chortled.

“Easy to find a cindersham at night, Olwen,” Garvin said. “But you wouldn’t want to. Better to hunt them during the day, while they rest. You come upon one in the darkness and you’re likely to end up a torch.”

“I didn’t realize that we’d have to go so far to find them, that we wouldn’t have time to get back out of the…”

Garvin halted, causing the line of men behind him to stop short. Olwen nearly bumped into his solid back. He held up a hand, stilling any questions. After a moment, he said, “Hear that?”

A soft scuttering sound rolled out of the underbrush. Olwen whispered, “Is that a cindersham?”

Garvin readied his bow and Olwen unsheathed the skinning knife at his side. Sweat dripping down the young man’s face. He wiped his arm across his forehead.

“On three,” Garvin said. “One…two…”

The brush parted and out stepped a creature, like a human and not. Great horns sprouted from her head and shoulders. She was clothed only in vines, which hardly covered any of her body. Her eyes were like pools of darkness and she flashed a wicked, toothy smile of fangs. She smelled like rot and dead wood. Olwen covered his nose at her stink.

“You wouldn’t want to shoot me,” she said, coming forward out of the underbrush. All four of the men stepped back from her as she moved. Her smiled widened at their fear. “Especially not since I can help you find the cindershams you seek.”

“We can hunt them on our own, elf,” Garvin growled.

“Not here,” she said lazily, as if it didn’t matter. “They’ve all gone away.”

“You scared them off?” Garvin asked. He lowered his bow. “Why would you do that?”

“So you’d ask for my help,” she said. Olwen couldn’t read any expression in her eyes.

Garvin grumbled to himself before replying, “But why would you want to help us?”

“I need one of you,” she said, taking another step closer. This time the four men stayed rooted where they stood. “To make a child,” she added.

Olwen nearly choked at her admission. Bran huffed and Manford sucked his teeth. Garvin rubbed his beard in thought. “What’s the matter? You don’t fancy stealing one for yourself like the rest of your kind do?”

She hissed at them, her sharp teeth seeming too big for her mouth. Her dark eyes sparkled with something sinister. “I don’t want to wait for one of them to mature,” she sneered.

Garvin looked at his three companions, all wide eyed at the horrid suggestion. “I don’t think you’ll get one of us to agree,” he explained.

“I suppose I could just take the little one off your hands,” she said, pointing at Olwen. “He doesn’t look like he’d put up much of a fight.”

“Me?!” Olwen exclaimed, his voice as high pitched as a whistle.

“Now hold on here…” Manford began, before he was interrupted by the elf.

“Or I could stuff all four of you into the nice, hollow tree I found back there until one of you volunteers,” the elf said, gesturing behind her with a smirk.

Garvin sighed heavily. “Oh, all right,” he said. “I’ll help you…get a child if that’s what you want. But we get the pelts first.”

“Hmmm…” the elf mused. “And how do I know that you won’t desert me before you can fulfill your promise?”

“You really think any of us wants to get stuffed into a tree?” Manford suggested.

She laughed. “Very well, men. I’ll help you get your pelts first.” She turned her back to them, moving back into the thicket from which she had emerged. “This way,” she called.

Olwen’s teeth chattered as they moved through the woods. He felt they would shake right out of his skull. “Are you really going to…to…with that?” he asked Garvin in a hushed tone.

Garvin shushed him. “Trust me, she can hear you,” he whispered.

Olwen squirmed in his own skin. “But Garvin! You can’t just…”

“It’s not the craziest thing I’ve ever done in here,” Garvin answered. Before Olwen could answer, he reluctantly added, “Besides. I’ve done it before.”

“You have?!” Olwen hissed.

“There’s a couple of clans who’ve decided it’s easier to take men and women who venture in here than to snatch children from the outside,” Garvin explained.

“Why do they need humans?” Olwen asked, his horror only multiplying as the moved through the woods.

“We can’t breed on our own,” the elf answered. “We need you to survive.”

Garvin smiled grimly at his companion. “I told you she could hear us.”

A little time passed in silence before the elf finally stopped. “There are three cindershams hiding just on the other side of these trees, behind a fallen log,” she said, pointing to a stand of pines.

Garvin motioned to his companions. Manford and Bran moved off to the left. Garvin pulled Olwen to the right. Together, they flanked the stand of pines, closing in on the cindershams. Olwen could hear them moving lazily. There was barely enough daylight left to see them well as they came around the log. Olwen readied his knife and Garvin raised his bow.

Garvin’s arrow hit one of them in the side. It roared in pain, the fire of its tail flickering to life. Manford had managed to hit a second one and it flopped to its side, dead. The third one belched out a gust of flame at Manford and Bran. The two men screamed, rushing from the jet of fire and dropping to the forest floor. Olwen watched them frantically rolling to put out the flames burning through their clothes.

Garvin shot another arrow at the roaring beast. He missed as the cindersham turned, skittering into the trees. Olwen watched its tail light flickering into the distance. He felt entranced by it. He swayed on his feet.

“Don’t look at its light, lad,” Garvin said, shaking him by the shoulders.

Olwen blinked stupidly, then came back to his own wits. He looked to the other two cindershams, one dead, one still thrashing from the pain of its wound. Manford, hair signed, cheek reddened from burns, stood close to it, watching it struggle. He waited until the creature’s movements began to slow, then thumped it hard on the head with the end of his knife. The cindersham stilled, dead.

“Alright, Olwen,” Garvin said. “Get to skinning.”

Olwen, Bran and Garvin worked quickly to strip the cindershams of their pelts, while Manford sat on the log, rubbing salve over his burned face and arms. Olwen tried not to stare at his companion, but couldn’t keep his eyes from wandering. “Hazard of the job, Olwen,” Manford said, as if it didn’t bother him. “I’ve known men who were burned worse than this trying to hunt down the beasts.”

“Is that salve going to be enough?” Olwen asked. “The burns look bad, Manford.”

The older man shrugged. “I’ll live,” he said, as if it didn’t matter.

The sun set as they finished with the carcasses. Manford worked on building a fire and by its light, set to butchering one of the animals.

Olwen swallowed noisily. “Are you eating that?”

Manford looked at him questioningly. “It’s good meat,” he answered.

Olwen wasn’t sure. “It smells like ash,” he said.

“I won’t make you eat it if you don’t want any,” Manford replied.

Garvin had carefully scraped the hides and was busy stretching them over the log to dry. “It’s not so bad, Olwen. A little chewy, but better than an empty belly.”

“If you can stand the taste of it,” the elf said. At the sound of her voice, the four men jumped. They hadn’t seen her since she had showed them the cindershams’ hiding place.

Garvin stood, awkwardly toying with his hands at his sides. “You come back for your…eh, payment, I suppose?”

The completely wicked smile that spread across her features sent a shiver through Olwen.

Garvin nodded to Manford. “Set up camp. You know what to do to survive the night.” Manford nodded as Garvin moved towards the elf. She seemed to slither through the trees with him. She made Olwen think of a cat toying with a mouse.

The night deepened. Manford kept the fire burning. Bran was snoring within minutes of laying down. Olwen tried to sleep, but the sounds of the woods kept him awake. At every call, croak or whistle, he startled, his heart racing. Strange laughter, moaning, whispering and hissing invaded his ears. He tried not to think if any of the sounds were coming from Garvin and the elf.

When the sun rose, Olwen was surprised to find himself blinking sleepily. He didn’t feel that he had slept at all, but as he rubbed his eyes, he knew that he must have nodded off at some point. Manford was lying down now, and it was Bran who tended the fire. Olwen was surprised to see Garvin back, sitting on the log, eating some of the leftover meat from the previous night. He was rubbing his hand over one of the pelts. Olwen shifted and the noise drew Bran and Garvin’s attention to him.

“You slept?” Garvin teased. “I couldn’t sleep my first night in this place.”

The admission brought a smile to Olwen’s face. “And here I thought I was just a coward,” he joked. It was the first thing he had been able to say since entering the woods that wasn’t filled with fear.

Garvin smiled back. “This place isn’t for the weak-hearted, lad,” Garvin said. “You’ve survived one night. You can survive again.”

The words didn’t bring much comfort to him, but Olwen was still appreciative.

On the way out of the woods, the pelts strapped tightly to his back, Garvin walked beside Olwen. “Not every job will be like this,” he said quietly. “This one was easy.” In light of what had passed in the last day, Olwen wondered what Garvin would consider difficult. “We lose people in here, Olwen. Sometimes they come out and they’re never the same. And sometimes…well, sometimes they never come out at all.”

“Why do you keep going back?” Olwen dared to ask.

Garvin tried to hide a secretive smile from him, but Olwen noticed nonetheless. “It’s not all bad,” Garvin explained. “Lots of rare and marvelous stuff in these woods, isn’t there?”

Olwen thought about the pelts Garvin carried, and the stories of treasure, rare artifacts and magic he had heard from other adventurers. “Is it worth it though?” he asked. “Is it worth…what you have to do sometimes?”

Garvin gave him a shy smile. “Haven’t found a reason yet to quit.”

Olwen nodded, looking ahead to the edge of the trees, where the sun light was hitting the meadows that lay just beyond the boundary. “Well, then I guess I’ll come back with you. See if I can come to appreciate it as much as you have.”

Garvin clapped him on the back as they moved out of the boundary of the wood.
The Night We Lost Abel

June 3rd, 2022

Photo by Aron Visuals

My development as a horror writer continued in 2021, when I had the opportunity to write two pieces of fiction for the second edition of Into the Wyrd and Wild, published by Wet Ink Games in collaboration with Feral Indie Studio. The stories I wrote for the game line presented a new kind of challenge for me. For previous projects, I had been given the setting and the scenery. Into the Wyrd and Wild is designed to be used with any other game world or system, and thus the players and story tellers create the setting. At the time, I had been listening to The Bookwoman of Troublesome Creek, written by Kim Michele Richardson, and Appalachia was on my mind. When writing this story, I wanted to capture the feel of people who live on the outskirts. The tale hinges on a concept from Into the Wyrd and Wild called Lunar Madness, and draws on the idea that terrible things can happen when you go into places you don’t belong.

“Pull that curtain shut,” Mama said.

Janna did as she was told, shutting out the bright light of the full moon. She glanced across the room to her grandfather, asleep in the chair next to the fire. He didn’t like the full moon. Janna wondered why.

Mama went into the tiny kitchen and Janna could hear her scraping clean the pan from supper into the dog’s bowl. The big dog, Buck, was scratching at the back door, whining and barking to be let in to eat. Janna stole another glance at Grandpa. He was stirring at the noise.

“What’s he yapping at?” Papa asked, coming into the main living room from one of the tiny bedrooms on the east side of the house.

“Hungry,” Janna said.

Papa called out to Mama. “Irelle! Get the dog!” He grumbled to himself as Mama called back an indistinct answer. She opened the back room and Janna heard Buck scramble into the house.

The sound of his collar clicking against the bowl as he ate drowned out any other sounds in the cabin. When he was finished eating, Janna heard Buck’s nails clicking across the wooden planks of the floor. He came around the corner of the kitchen, looking for her. She patted her lap, calling to him. The big dog bounded to her, licking her face and her hands as she scratched his ears and rubbed his back.

“Get that animal out of here,” Papa said coldly. He was stuffing his pipe with tobacco.

Janna rose from her seat at the window, “Come on, boy,” she said, tugging at Buck’s collar. He followed her outside to the yard where she tied him to his rope again. She sat down in the cool grass and leaned against Buck after he sank down next to her. The wind blew a warm summer breeze over her. She sighed as she stroked Buck’s broad, dark shoulders.

From her place atop the hill, she looked out over the valley. A stream separated her hilltop cabin from the next hill over and Janna could see, even in the pale darkness, the line of trees that started at the base of that hill, running up and down and up again all the way into the low mountains. The night creatures were quiet. Just a few chirps and hums from a cricket or two broke the silence of the night. She gazed up at the full moon, again wondering why Grandpa hated it so much. Janna thought it was lovely. It cast everything in the most beautiful silver glow. She looked down the hill to the stream, where the water sparkled like jewels. Buck was snoring beside her. She patted his head and rose from her spot on the ground, heading off down the hill to the stream.

She didn’t get far before she heard footsteps. She turned to see who was following her and was surprised to see Grandpa standing there. “What in the hell are you doing, girl?” he asked. His eyes were wild with fright. He grabbed her arm and began dragging her back up the hill before she could fully answer. “Get yourself killed out here, you will! You can’t be going around under the moon like that!”

“Grandpa!” Janna called. “Let go!” But he didn’t release her. “I was just going down to the water!”

“Too close,” he muttered. “Too close. You’d never be safe.”

Mama was waiting for them in the doorway. Buck was standing at attention, watching as Grandpa dragged her into the house. He barked once and tried to follow them, but Mama shut the door on him. His barking only intensified, and he scratched at the door. “Mama! Get Buck! Let him know I’m okay,” Janna said, as Grandpa pushed her down into a chair at the table.

His eyes were still wild. He came very close to her face. “Never ever go out when there’s a full moon, Janna,” he hissed.

“Now, Pa, don’t you think you’re being a little hard on her?” Papa asked Grandpa from his chair by the fire. His tobacco smoke had already filled the small room and Janna wrinkled her nose at the smell.

“No!” Grandpa argued, glaring at his son-in-law. “You can’t know how horrible it might be, Jed. You weren’t there.”

Janna looked from her Grandpa to her Papa. Both the men had fallen silent as stone. “What was horrible?” Janna dared to ask.

“Hush,” Mama said. “Go get scrubbed up for bed,” she instructed.

Janna gave a Grandpa lingering, pleading look, silently hoping he would tell her what made him so afraid. He lowered his eyes from hers, turning his head towards the fire. “Do what your Mama tells you girl,” he said stoically.

Janna felt a heaviness on her that she’d never felt before. Seemed like everyone but her was in on some dark secret. It made her feel small and scared. What could be so bad that they couldn’t tell her? “Grandpa?” she asked, reaching for his hand.

“Ah!” he gasped when she touched him. He was shaking and Janna saw tears brimming his eyes. “The madness of it!” he whispered, not looking at her. “The madness,” he said, scrubbing at his face. His features twisted, screwed up tight like he couldn’t breathe. Janna clutched his hand tighter. “Grandpa?” she whispered. “Are you alright?”

“Janna, you’re upsetting your Grandpa. Run on, now. Get to bed!” Mama came around behind her, pulling her up from the chair. Janna tried to argue but Mama had a firm grip on her as she hauled her towards the door of her tiny bedroom. Mama shoved her inside then shut the door tight behind her.

Angry and embarrassed, Janna thought about barging straight out her room and confronting them about what they were hiding. As her hand came to the handle, she thought better of it. Someone was wailing, and she could hear low arguing. The fighting grew louder and after a few minutes she could make out the words Mama and Papa were saying.

“You can’t hide it from her now, Irelle!” Papa yelled.

“What good would it do?” There was a pause. “Just look at him! What good does it do to drag it up out of the past? Would it stop these fits he has at the sight of the moon? At the thought of the woods?” Grandpa’s moaning and wailing had continued through the arguing.

“She won’t forget this, Irelle, and she’ll wonder,” Papa said, his voice angry and hard.

“She’s a good girl, Jed! She won’t want to send him into a fit!”

There was a scuffling sound, and Janna wondered what was happening. She heard a chair scooting across the floor and outside Buck was barking again. But the arguing was done and so was the wailing. She pressed her ear to the door, holding her breath. She could hear low murmuring but nothing else.

She flew across the room at the sounds of footsteps approaching her door. She hopped into her bed and ducked under the covers to hide the fact that she hadn’t changed into her nightgown yet. Her door creaked open and Mama stood there in the doorway, looking as hard and bitter as the ice on a pond. “Bed,” she said, sounding like ice too. Mama wiped a hand across her face. “Don’t you ask about things you don’t know about again,” she said. She quickly shut the door.

In the morning, Grandpa seemed his usual self, though Janna kept a close eye on him at breakfast to satisfy herself that he hadn’t lost his wits. Despite her scrutiny, there was no sign of the wildness she had seen in him last night. Whatever had disturbed him had vanished like the moon in the face of the sun.

When dusk came, she made sure to close the curtain before Mama asked. She sat outside with Buck after he’d eaten just like she normally did, but she made sure to stay close to the house. There were clouds in the sky tonight, but she didn’t think clouds would prevent her Grandpa from fearing for her if she wandered too far away again. The air was full of sound tonight, not like last night, when it had been unnaturally quiet. Janna wondered about that too, gazing down the hill, across the stream into the woods.

               “Janna!” Mama called from the doorway.

               She gave Buck a scratch behind his ears, hugging his neck before she rose from her place beside him. Brushing off her skirts, she went to the house, sure that Mama would instruct her to head straight for bed. She’d pass Grandpa, nodding off in the chair by the fire, and Papa, silently smoking his pipe, just as she always did at night time when she was sent to bed. She’d lay awake for a time listening to the night sounds of the summer.

               When she passed into the house, she frowned at what she saw. Papa and Grandpa were sitting at the kitchen table, stiff backed and stern. Mama shut the door behind her and gave her a little nudge forward. “Sit down, girl,” she said, before she joined the men at the table. Janna swallowed nervously. She tried to think what she might have done that would get her into trouble. The only thing she could think of was what had happened last night.

               She slowly slunk into her chair at the table, trying to make herself small. “Am I in trouble?” she asked timidly.

               Grandpa smiled, then reached for her. She gladly took his hand as she met his gaze. “No, girl. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

               “Then why do you all look so stern?” she asked. She sat a little taller in the chair.

               “Do you want to tell her?” Papa asked. Janna wasn’t sure who he was asking.

               Mama cleared her throat. “Janna, something bad happened to Grandpa,” she began.

               Fear clutched her. “Are you hurt?” she asked, her eyes feeling too wet.

               “It was a long time ago,” Grandpa said. His face twisted with grief for just a moment before he continued. “It’s why I was afraid for you last night. When I saw you, going down the hill…” He broke, his sentence ending in a rasping gasp.

               “Grandpa, you don’t have to say if you don’t want,” Janna offered.

               He shook his head, dismissing her concern. “Not even your Mama knows all of it,” he continued, composing himself. “But, I think maybe I should tell you what really happened the night we lost Abel.”

               Abel. Her uncle she’d never met. Something bad had happened to him. Mama didn’t talk about it and neither did Grandpa. Janna’s thoughts raced. Could it have something to do with the strange way Grandpa acted about the moon? Could it have something to do with the woods?

               Grandpa squeezed her hand. “I can’t talk about without going a little…strange…” he struggled to say. “It’s like something is in me that doesn’t want to come out. Like something cast a spell over me to keep my tongue behind my teeth.”

               Janna’s heart was hammering now. She tried slow steady breaths to calm herself, but it didn’t work. Still her heart thudded against her ribs like it meant to burst from her. “Did you go into the woods, Grandpa? Did something happen?” she asked. If Janna could ask him questions, then maybe he wouldn’t have to talk. Maybe they could understand without him having to say any words at all.

               Grandpa nodded, his face twisted with pain. He made a noise like he was choking and clutched at his throat. Breathing rapidly, raggedly, he squeezed her hand tighter, until it hurt. Fear was slithering through her, like a cold, creeping spell. She shivered.

               “Stop!” Mama called. “Pap, please. Don’t talk of it. You know you can’t!”

               Janna’s fear for Grandpa overpowered her curiosity. “I don’t need to know, Grandpa,” she whispered. “Whatever it was, it doesn’t matter. I promise I won’t go near the woods again.”

               He nodded again, and the terrifying purple color began to drain from his face. “Can’t say. She won’t let me say,” Grandpa gasped.

               Janna couldn’t help herself. “Who?” she asked softly.

               Grandpa only shook his head, rubbing his throat as if it pained him.

               “The woman who took Abel,” Mama said softly.

               Janna’s eyes flew to Mama. “What do you know?” she asked.

               “That’s all we know,” Papa said. Grandpa got up from the table, slowly moving across the room to his chair by the fire. “That’s all we need to know,” Papa added.

               Janna watched Grandpa for a time, rubbing his throat and his face, before falling asleep in the chair like it was any other night. Outside Buck was scratching at the door like he always did. Janna wondered if he was afraid of the woods too.
It’s Too Dark

May 31st, 2022

Photo by Marc Schaefer

Writing short fiction for an RPG always takes a thorough perusal of the game materials. You have to understand not only the setting and the mood that the game is trying to impart, but also the potential threats and experiences the players of the game might have. Whenever I’ve asked to write game fiction, I pick out something in particular from the game handbook and craft a story around it. This story was written for the (upcoming) game Dark Places and Demogorgans, which will be published by Wet Ink Games in collaboration with Bloat Games (no release date at the time of this writing). The setting is the 1980s as we remember them, except for there are strange creatures that lurk in our world, some of them just out of sight.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

            The sounds of the ball on the pavement echoed across the empty school yard. Alan was hogging the ball. Harry looked across the soccer fields to where the sun was hanging low in the sky. On the other side of the court, Jacob was stripping off his shirt, not paying attention to the game. Evan was trying to reach in, making a steal attempt for what seemed like the hundredth time that evening. Harry looked back to the sun, red as a rose and deepening.

            “Come on!” he called. “My mom wants me home before dark!”

            Alan dribbled the ball, laughing as he faked Evan, running up the court and making a lay-up. He missed.

            Jacob came back to the game. “Your mom still makes you follow that rule? What are you, a baby?”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “I’m walking home if you don’t finish this game now. Come on, Alan! Just make a shot already!”

            Alan had managed to collect his own rebound and was dribbling towards the goal again, Evan on his heels. They jumped, colliding in the air as Alan released the ball. Harry and Jacob watched its perfect arc.

            Swish.

            “That’s game,” Evan called, disappointment in his tone.

            The sound of an engine came rolling into the parking lot. The boys squinted in the beams of the headlights. The car pulled in right next to Jacob’s. Alan watched excitedly as two girls got out of the car.

            “Hey,” Megan said, swinging her dark hair over her shoulder. The other girl, Annie, didn’t even look up from her magazine as she walked towards the court. She smacked her gum loudly, blowing little bubbles and popping them with a crunch. The lengthening shadows cast an eerie darkness over her face.

            “Hey,” Jacob responded, picking up his discarded shirt and heading towards the girls. Megan whispered something in his ear. Smiling, he turned back to his friends. “Give me a minute, will ya?”

            Harry huffed loudly. “Come on! Don’t make me walk home!” Darkness was fast enveloping the school grounds. The streetlights around them flickered on one by one. “My mom’s gonna kill me,” he muttered, sinking down onto a bench by the court, watching Jacob walk towards the school with Megan. They turned the corner of the building, disappearing out of sight.

            Annie leaned against the trunk of Megan’s car. She didn’t pay the boys any mind, absorbed in whatever she was reading in her Tiger Beat. Evan smirked at Alan, as Alan took another shot with the ball. It bounced off the rim. Evan sauntered towards the girl. Harry watched with amusement as he leaned against the car with her. Annie didn’t even look up.

            “Watcha reading?” Evan asked, leaning over her shoulder.

            Annie paused, sliding her eyes up slowly before meeting his gaze. “You really interested?” she asked.

            Evan tried not to fumble through his next words. “Well, if it’s interesting to you, maybe it’ll be interesting to me.”

            Harry snickered. Evan was never going to convince Annie that he was worth her time. He looked towards the school, watching for Jacob and Megan to return. A shadow moved across the light above the doors that led to the gymnasium.

            “Was that a bat?” he asked, standing up. Evan and Annie were staring in the direction of the school. They seemed nervous. Harry realized Alan was no longer dribbling the ball. He looked over his shoulder, back to the court, but Alan was gone. The ball rolled slowly across the court, coming to rest in the grass. It was quiet enough to hear the soft scratch of the blades against the rubber.

            “Alan?” Harry called.

            Evan and Annie had left their place at Megan’s car, moving towards him with widened eyes. “Something weird is going on here,” Annie said.

            The sun had fully set now. There was just a touch of hazy blue on the horizon. The air was still; too still. Harry didn’t even hear a cricket chirping. “Alan!” Harry called again. Not even the sound of the wind returned to him.

            “I’m getting Megan and getting out of here. This is creeping me out,” Annie said, clutching her magazine to her chest. Evan tried to snake an arm around her, but she dodged out of his way.

            With a pop, the light above the gymnasium doors went out.

            Annie screamed, grabbing Evan’s arm to steady her. Harry drew a deep breath and called again for his friend. “Alan!” He turned, trying to peer across the soccer fields in the darkness. “Jacob?” He called, his nerves rising.

            “Shhhh!” Evan chastised. Lowering his voice, he hissed, “Do you hear that?”

            The three listened closely, drawing near to each other in concern. Annie’s eyes were wide with fright. Evan squinted as he strained to hear the soft scritch, scritch, scritch that had caught his ear.

            “What is that?” Annie asked, frantic.

            Harry kept this gaze on the field. There was a figure moving out there in the darkness. It seemed to waver as it moved. “Is that Alan?” he asked quietly.

            A rustling in the bushes released another scream from Annie. She clapped her hands over her mouth as soon as it began, stifling the sound.

            “Will you stop that?” Evan snipped.

            Harry stood very still. He could almost sense something around them, just out of his range of vision. A darkness streaked across the corner of his eye. He glanced, but it was gone. It happened again; and again, he turned. There was nothing there.

            Scritch. Scritch. Scritch.

            “I’m waiting in the car,” Annie whispered. She walked fast, stiff-backed across the court, opening the door of Megan’s car. She let loose a third scream.

            Evan and Harry went running for her. She slammed the door before they could reach her. “There’s something…it was…what is it?”

            Evan peered into the car. “There’s nothing there Annie.”

            “There was! It went away when I looked at it.”

            Harry froze. He could still see the thing that hovered in the corner of his eye, right out of his sight. “What’s behind me?” he asked slowly.

            Annie and Evan both shook their heads. “Nothing,” Evan whispered.

            Annie was shaking with fright. She shook her hands at her sides and shifted her weight from foot to foot. “One of you get Jacob and Megan.”

            Evan and Harry looked at each other. “Not it,” said Evan.

            Harry sighed, and then turned from his friend. Alan stood behind him with the ball in his hands. Startled, Harry gasped, then slugged the other boy on the arm. “Alan! What the hell?!”

            “Something funny is going on,” Alan said. “It’s too dark.”

            “Where did you go?” Harry asked, hoping that it was Alan he had seen in the dark. “Was that you out on the field?”

            “I had to take a leak,” Alan said defensively. “But something was out there. Creeped me out.”

            “What was out there?” Annie asked.

            “I don’t know. I couldn’t get a look at it.”

            The four of them stood still and silent for a moment. Another light on the school building went out. No one so much as breathed.

            “Where is Jacob?” Harry hissed.

            “Go get them!” Annie prodded. “We have to get out of here.”

            Screaming broke the silence. Annie started to cry, blubbering for one of the boys to find Megan and Jacob. Harry sighed, stilling his racing heart, then headed for the school.

            He turned the corner where Megan and Jacob had gone. It was unnaturally dark. “Jacob!” he called. “Megan!” His voice died in that mass of blackness before him. He could hear Megan talking. “Megan?” he called again.

            There was movement in the darkness. Two shapes began to emerge. He took a step forward but stopped when he recognized his friends. Megan was crying, and Jacob was pulling her along by the arm.

            “Turn around, Harry. We’re getting out of here,” Jacob said, blowing past him.

            Jacob drug Megan to her car, ignoring all the questions being asked of him. He stuffed her into the driver seat. “Go to my house if you want,” he told her. She was shaking and crying as she turned the key in the ignition. Annie slumped into shotgun, looking pale. She patted her friend on the arm. Jacob kissed her forehead. “I gotta take Alan and Harry home first,” he explained.

            Harry was going to be in so much trouble, and his mom would never believe him about the weird darkness just out of sight.

            The boys piled into the car after the girls pulled out of the parking lot. Jacob didn’t even turn on the radio as they drove away. Harry snuck a glance out the rearview mirror. The school yard was darker than it should be. He wondered if he would still see the darkness when he was home. Would it still be hanging just out of sight?

            They drove for a time in silence before Jacob finally asked the question they were all thinking. “What the hell was that?”