Dark Train Passing

The town was built because we anticipated the train, but as its odd-angled edges, blacker than all the sin in hell, forced their way over the unfamiliar tracks, all of us except our young men fled into our homes.

We did not see a hint of its smoke last month, as the months-long blizzard slowed, and the flat ground beyond our noses emerged from the white fog to reveal a landscape blanketed, swamped, immersed in the refuse of a frozen cloud.

We did see the shadow of the drunk prophet, which was as good as seeing the shadow of the smoke of the train’s seething engine. He came to us as a dark hulk of a pile of skins, creatures shot and stripped in his Westward progress, their limp flanks steaming at his shoulders.

The human shape within did not unfold to us for quite some time. We watched him from noon, staggering through the fields, seeming to sway without drawing nearer. Then, as dusk fell over the glowing land in the mid-afternoon, he was upon us.

“Pray the sun don’t come out,” he told us through jagged, sunworn lips which seemed about to fall off. He stood in the street, knee-deep in snow, swaying the same as when he walked to us from the horizon. His crooked jaw continued moving in a slow rotation after he finished speaking.

“You don’t look like a man to say much about prayer,” we replied.

He sneered, then said, “You might be right. Anyway, the sun will come, pray or not, and I hope to be drunk when it does.”

With that, he trudged on toward the saloon, seeming to know exactly where it was, despite the fact that the sign had been whitewashed in the blizzard. He spotted it like a buzzard spots a carcass before it even dies.

We watched him go. The proprietor of the saloon followed him in, ready to sell, beginning a weeklong transaction begun which would bring a small fortune into our town, right before we lost our sons.

“Train’s coming thisaway,” he said, throwing a satchel of money onto the bar, “reckon this’ll keep me drinking until then?”

“Track’s been built a hundred miles south,” said the bartender, taking the satchel in his hand and peering in, wide-eyed, at its contents, “but I reckon this’ll keep you drinking until hell freezes over.”

“Looks like hell already did,” the prophet replied, throwing his thumb over his shoulder, gesturing toward the town outside.

He took his first drink on Wednesday, and by Friday we were all drinking on the fruits of his satchel. The money was enough for him to buy the whole town, which in a way was what he did.

As we fell drunk, he began a warning, which sounded to our drink-fuzzed ears like a rhapsody, “when the sun comes with its warmth, when the snow falls from your streets, there will be a set of tracks waiting for the train, and when the train comes, the town will be a town of old men.”

One of our young men, under the influence of the prophet’s gifts, brought a guitar and began playing a stark tune, and the prophet sang an ode to the train which would come.

The proprietor leaned on the bar, watching, worried. The words of the song danced through the saloon, twisting in the air, growing, echoing, turning the horrific image of the locomotive into a romantic notion, and the young men joined the song, and it expanded and repeated until its nightmarish words resounded throughout the town.

By noon the next Tuesday, the sun crackled through the winter atmosphere, and the snow turned to water and fled the town, and a rusted pair of metal tracks emerged along the street, and their genesis lay beyond the view of our eyes, way out east, far past the horizon where they converged. The snow remained to our West, obscuring their destination.

Wednesday morning. A distant clatter. The steady chug-chug of the furnace fires. The metallic twist of the wheels. The pillar of smoke and fire from the engine. The train roared our way from the East at a blistering speed, sprinting across the prairie, its dark pounding form closer and closer. Its searing coal heart thumping, grinding, raging our way. Then it was upon us. The mothers fled. The fathers with their rifles waited behind shuttered windows. Children under beds.

There was a rush to the street from the saloon, where the boots of our young men trampled into mud the last traces of the blizzard. We knew this because we heard their slurred, boisterous chatter from behind our doors, saw their shadows flit across the strips of sunlight on our floors, heard the slosh of steps and then, when we fathers could bear it no longer, we burst into the street.

Our doors flew open and we charged out to follow our young men, but the only sure trace of them lay in the swirled, blended sludge between the saloon doors and the middle of the street. The train was gone, along with its tracks, along with the prophet, along with our sons, along with the sunshine.

Then it started to snow again, and, under the cover of icy black clouds, a cold wind rushed in, and the town began to die.

Story by Ian North

Volcano Springs

The old prognosticators do what they always do. They ache and talk about what it means.

Lazarus McGinty starts off about his knee, The sucker feels like it’s gonna blow, the man says, like it’s on fire.

Elijah Blart replies, and my elbow’s flatfooting to some tune I cain’t hear.

And they sit on the porch and look across the town. In late fall, heat waves drift across the street, cutting everything into a mosaic.

Some storm brewin somewhere, says Lazarus.

Yessir, replies Elijah.

The earth shifts a little under them. A fart squeaks out from under Elijah. He cackles, Sounds like it’s done been brewed.

Lazarus, who does not smell nor hear nor see much, does not laugh.

Some time passes. Lazarus sees his knee explode. Well I reckon it weren’t doin me no good nohow.

Elijah’s arm falls off at the elbow. yessiree, I reckon the weather’s bout to do somethin wild, he concludes.

The ground shifts underneath them again, then cracks open. Fire spits up from the depths. Molten rock bubbles and advances.

Time does not allow them further comment. The old men watch a volcano rise from the earth, and they feel wonder as their pain takes its meaning, then consumes them.

Story by Ian North

Jonah’s Dog

You are dry and your skin feels like parchment against this wind that blows hot against your left shoulder. You have been walking for days and this neverending breeze, comfortingly warm at first, has been taking all your moisture away. What is the term for when the sweat dries as it is formed? Perhaps wicking or just evaporation. You are unable to concentrate enough to remember.

You are travelling on foot, rhythmically stepping in time to old songs in your head, hymns and drinking songs blending into one another. You carry a canvas duffel bag and wear the faded black clothes still smelling of the tobacco that ran out three nights ago. There is a dog that is always somewhere on the periphery of sight. He has been eating the food scraps you leave, but you do not trust each other enough to get close.

You are following the telegraph poles. There is no road, just smoother dirt, and no trees. Rocks large and small stand all around, oblivious to the desert wind. Patches of low, tangled scrub stretch everywhere. You think the telegraph poles might be ash, from the mountains you came from, each made from a whole tree.

The dog begins to bark from somewhere up ahead, and the noise furrows your brow. It is not yet noon and your neck feels like deer pelts, curing. The telegraph poles seem to dip and vanish in the distance, from about where the sound drifts to you. In under an hour, you reach the dog, and he stops barking.

You are standing at the edge of an abrupt break in the desert; a canyon. The telegraph wires stretch directly down, dipping onto a roof amongst stores and homesteads. This town, your destination, nestles tightly between the cliffs. You zigzag down the rugged path, and the dog does not follow, preferring to hunt for lizards and scavenge away from people.

When you reach the canyon bed, you step onto soil and see that the land down here is good. A shame, you think. You walk amongst the buildings ignoring the stares as wives pause from sweeping their porches and children break away from games. You walk until you reach the gate of the largest building. You do not have to wait or knock as the mayor steps out swiftly.

“Weell, this must be im-por-tant in-deed.” He scans the crowd that has been forming behind you. His voice is like an unoiled hinge. “It takes three days by horse and you seem to have per-am-bu-lated alone.” You let his statement sit in the air for a beat or two before you answer, softly, with the only message you have been given.
“In twelve hours, this town will be destroyed.” A flicker of annoyance crumples his forehead as he thinks of a response, but you turn away to face the townspeople. With your voice raised so each word reverberates from the cliffs, you repeat yourself.
“In TWELVE HOURS your TOWN will be DESTROYED.”

Now that you face them, they see your dusty clothes for what they are. They notice the pale presence of your once-white preacher-collar. You walk back through the town, silent as the crowd jostles and questions and accuses. You climb the jagged path and, at the top, you sit on a smooth rock, watching the town, waiting to see the people follow you out. Below, your shadow stretches unnaturally large.

Your message is heavy, as messages go, and all afternoon and into the evening, you hear fragments of worried arguments and scorning laughter. It seems only a handful understood the fervour in your voice. Three families and an elderly couple started down the track, following the wires to the next town. Then the blacksmith with all the tools his cart could hold, after that four children, dirty and some bearing bruises. The townspeople that reached the top had asked questions, and you answered with what you knew. Most of them had seen the look in your eyes and known enough.

The stars come out in the cloudless sky and the moon rises, waning. The time has almost come. The desert wind fades to cool stillness. Without moving your head, you see the dog is nearby, sitting and watching. The taverns are filled to the balconies with people pretending it is just another day. Lanterns and fires sparkle defiantly in the street. A figure about the size and shape of the mayor steps away from the festivity and seems to look at you and raise something shiny; a glass, perhaps. You can feel his unheard curses amidst the shouting and the songs.

You listen now and a noise like a steady wind begins to drown the sounds of revelry. The noise rises, but the bushes do not move and the dust is not stirred. The sound gets louder. This is how the message is fulfilled, how the words that were spoken are made real. The sound is coming from one end of the canyon. It does not stop getting louder. You do not feel any great emotion as the dark water begins its work of destruction, its cleansing.

You and the dog watch as the fires are extinguished and a dark shadow takes their place. The fast-flowing river does not reflect a single star. The roaring of the flood is the only sound. You feel no pity and no hatred. You are Jonah. You are Noah. At first light you will leave.

Story by Chris Knight

At the End of that Cord

At the End of that Cord (right click to save file)

At dawn tomorrow
The snap steals my sorrow
Oh lordy lord
At the end of that cord

I loved my dear lady
She gone yesterday
I played by the rules
Cheater took her away

May justice be swift
And God take me quick
Oh lordy lord
At the end of that cord

I followed her there
With a blade in my pants
I laid her to rest
In the dust and the ants

May the earth have its way
When they take me away
Oh lordy lord
At the end of that cord

I went to my preacher
For some kind of help
He called the sherriff
Said I’s going to hell

May the Lord hide his face
When I meet my disgrace
Oh Lordy Lord
At the end of that cord

If I meet my maker
When my neck finds its place
I’ll tell him she killed me
And the noose gave me grace

Oh lordy lord
At the end of that cord
I met my grace
At the end of that cord

Music by Jonathan Kotulski
Words by Ian North

The Dust and The Ants

Exactly the opposite of Jesus, the prisoner lived in limbo for three days, then they strung him up there and he died for his own sins, and permanently.

He had lived in a neighboring town, and came to us tied up and surrounded by an escort of lawmen. They had the dirt of several days’ long ride mixing with sun-cracked skin on their faces, and seemed bored. Lyle himself swayed on his horse, head drooping to the side, snot oozing out of his nose.

“No wonder they ain’t lookin at im,” one of us said.

“He looks like he’s dead already,” another replied.

“What a sad sack,” said another.

“What an uninteresting fellow,” concluded yet another.

Still, despite all our disinterest, we watched him all the way to the sherriff’s office, where he was checked in and locked up. We only had a few chances left to learn anything about him, since he was to be executed at dawn. So Carl meandered over to the jail to strike up a conversation with the deputy.

“Well howdy, deputy.”

“Howdy.”

“Howdy do?”

“Not too bad.”

It went on like this for some time, Carl trying a soft approach, which the deputy did not catch on to. Finally, Carl tipped his hat and moseyed off. The deputy paid no mind when Carl rounded the side of the building and headed toward the back window.

He saw the prisoner sideways on the cot, heels planted on the floor, head leaning against the wall, hat tipped low over his eyes.

“Howdy, there,” said Carl.

“hmm?” no movement accompanied the grunt.

Carl picked up a stone and pitched it at the prisoner’s head. It struck him on the cheek. He didn’t move until the rock stopped wobbling on the floor. Finally, he tipped his hat up. He was bleeding a bit. Carl didn’t mind.

“Can I do something for you, sir?”

“Yeah,” said Carl, “you gotta pay for the use of our gallows.”

“What?”

“You can’t hang there for free.”

The prisoner placed his hat back on his head. Carl tossed another stone, which was quite a bit larger. This time, the prisoner grunted when hit, and sunk deeper into the cot. Realizing that he had just knocked the man out, Carl left the window quickly and came back to the saloon with his report.

The next morning, seeing his wound and the fact that he was unconscious, the sherriff postponed the hanging for a day. Lyle came to that afternoon, a little groggy. Carl meandered back around to him.

“Howdy there.”

“You. Get the Hell out of here.”

“Easy. You’d be dead if it weren’t for me.”

“Rather be dead.”

“Hm. Hey, stranger, what’d you do to get landed in here?”

“Confessed my sins.”

“To a lawman?”

“What do you care?”

“Just bein friendly.”

The prisoner looked up at Carl. The blood had been cleaned from his face, but there was no feeling in his expression except fatigue.

“Who’d you confess to?”

“To a preacher. He embellished for a lawman.”

“Shoot.”

“Yeah. Now let me be.”

“What’d you tell the preacher?”

“Nothing I aim to repeat to you.”

The prisoner put on his hat and reclined again, hoping to be knocked out so he could rest. Carl looked around for stones, but decided against it and, seeing that he was getting no further, he sauntered off.

That night, as we tried to sleep, a dust storm howled into town. It pelted our houses, whipped against our windows, and rattled every roof. The gallows creaked, moaned, and, after screaming like a dying woman, collapsed.

The next morning, the prisoner looked relieved to see Carl at the window.

“Howdy,” he said, before Carl had a chance to speak.

“Howdy,” Carl replied.

“Hey, stranger, you mind finding another stone to pitch at my head?”

“Uh, I ain’t sure…”

“There are stones out there, right? I heard ‘em rattling in the wind last night.”

Carl, realizing that the prisoner suddenly needed his services, used this strange leverage to try for some information.

“Yeah, but I don’t gotta throw one. I mean, I can, but I need some facts first.”

“What facts?”

“What’d you do?”

“Confessed my sins to a preacher.”

“What sins, in particular?”

The prisoner put his hat on, laid his head back and rested. Carl waited for more, and he finally drifted from the window, unsatisfied.

We worked on the gallows all day, and finished the repairs just as night fell. We heard a rumbling in the distance, but we paid it no mind. It sounded like a trick of some far-off wind. As we found our way home, the mountains seemed to grow blacker than the clear night warranted. We blinked, rubbed our eyes, and kept walking.

Back in our homes, it was easier to ignore the black stain crawling toward us, and we went to sleep without hearing the growing clatter.

The front line of ants hit around two that morning. They clambered over and through everything. Their movement built into a cacophony of tiny feet upon the walls and the dirt and our floorboards and we added to it with our screams. We all swatted and ran around, but the ants moved under us like water, not biting nor minding us at all.

When their line reached the prisoner’s cell, we heard a scream like that of a woman. It erupted amid all our cries, but it rose above them, splitting through every other sound, bathing the town in its horror before it gurgled and ceased. As the ants cleared out, we rushed to see what had happened to him.

Through the window, illuminated in moonlight, the prisoner curled like an armadillo on his cot. His whole form was trembling. We couldn’t see any marks or bites on him. After shouting a few inquiries at him, we saw that he was in no condition to respond and went back to our homes.

The next morning, when they tried to bring him out to be hung, they couldn’t pull the prisoner out of the knot he had made of himself. His fingers gripped his ankles like they were welded together, and it quickly
became clear that he was in no condition to die.

He didn’t respond to any sound all day. He left his lunch untouched. By the late afternoon, he began to unwind, but we were no longer in any mood to execute this poor fellow.

Carl, however, felt that this might be the time to make an inquiry, so he headed over to the window at dusk.

The prisoner’s face was at the bars when Carl arrived, and it surprised Carl so much that he almost fell over.

“Whaddya do that fer?” asked Carl, regaining his balance.

“Will I be hanged today?” the prisoner replied.

“Today’s almost over,” Carl replied, “it’s too late for a hanging.”

“I want to tell you something, since last night my wife finally left,” the prisoner said, wobbling on his feet.

Carl tried to look like a concerned friend, but his eyes twinkled like a thief as he said, “Go ahead.”

The prisoner confessed to Carl, who hovered over him like a priest, memorizing details to report to us as we waited in the saloon. Carl buckled and fell a few times, pulling himself back up to the window.

Toward the end of his speech, the prisoner broke off, “so, after last night, it is finished. Nothing more will happen. She screamed and broke something inside of me, and her spirit is now gone.”

When it was over, Carl said nothing to the prisoner. He wobbled his way back to the saloon. We sat him down, gave him a drink, and gathered around.

“What’d he say?”

Carl threw back his drink, looked around, and repeated the prisoner’s story to us.

Story by Ian North

Weather Report

Weather Report (right click to save file)

Weather Report: Today
the sun peeks once, twice
leaving us a silver veil of ice,
a silver veil of ice,
the breezes are gray,
the clouds shiver away

The Breezes are Gray,
the clouds shiver away,           
and chill the leafless limbs,                                   
chill the leafless, leaving the people,
with broken jokes
and sultry whims

Weather Report: Later This Week
it will rain, it will rain, it will rain
judgment fire, judgment fire,
blood will spill,
blood will gel,
o bloody hell

Judgment Fire, Blood Will Spill
burnt blood will turn silver gray ash
and flake away, and flake away,
silver blood ash
will flake away
like the snowflakes today

Song by Jonathan Kotulski

The Weatherman Wakes

The first morning, Samuel woke up on the barroom floor. He couldn’t remember how many drinks he had, but he felt pretty good for a man waking up on a barroom floor. Just a little sore in the neck.

His Ford waited for him in a parking lot where grass was seeping up through the concrete. Despite waking up on a barroom floor, the brightness of the sun did not hurt his eyes, nor did our friendly greetings make his head ache.

He got into the vehicle, drove out, and thought that was that.

“Sunny skies ahead,” he said to himself in his weatherman voice, “no chance of rain.”

When he started feeling tired, he found himself a motel in a small town and got a room.

“Welcome back,” the young woman said as she reached for his key.

“Back?”

“Mmmhmm. Room 301.”

She handed him a key, and he headed out.

The next morning, he woke up, looked through the blinds out the window, and saw the bar where he had woken up the morning before. In the grass-peppered parking lot to the side sat his car. He gathered his things, shook his head, and walked over to the office.

“Checking out?” asked a pale, forty-something woman from behind the desk.

“Sure.”

“Where you headed?”

“San Fransisco. New job.”

“Whaddya do?”

“Weatherman.”

“hm.”

He drove faster that day, pushing the pedal to the floor and earning himself two speeding tickets. He was to be well paid when he made it to San Francisco, so the tickets only bothered him because they slowed him down.

He did not stop when he felt tired, but pushed on across the desert, on the small, straight roads that stretch across the vacant parts of this land. Finally, long after the sun set, when he could no longer keep the car on the road, he pulled over. Without even leaning his seat back, he placed his head against the headrest and dozed.

As the heads of sleeping men do, his rolled to the side, then forward, and when his neck started to hurt, he awoke with a start.

An old woman in a pillbox hat clucked and shook her head in the pew across from him. A preacher stood at the front of the chapel, reading from the book of Isaiah. Samuel looked down to see that he was wearing a suit. A few other churchgoers glanced over to see that he had woken up.

Samuel waited it out. He even shook the preacher’s hand and told Mrs. McLarty to have a great week and inquired about her husband, who was sick. How did I know that? He thought.

“Oh he’s got good days and bad days. Thank you for asking, Samuel.”

Three buildings down, he saw his car sitting next to the bar. He waved at Earl and said hi. He went in for a quick drink, then got into his car and drove out. He woke up the next morning in a stable, sleeping near some of Earl’s horses, who didn’t seem to mind the company.

Not knowing where he was in relation to the town, he simply walked out of the stable into a field of grass.

The way things are going, he thought, there’s only one place I can end up.

Late in the afternoon, he staggered into town to find his car parked next to the bar. He knew all of us by name now, and greeted whoever he saw, asking things about our lives and relatives. He got into his car and drove away, and was back the next day and the next and the next and the next until winter had fallen upon us with its deep chill.

Each day awoke in a different place knowing more and more about the town. When he knew everything about all of us, he began waking up with knowledge about our past, and he’d sit at the diner some mornings before driving away and tell us things about our history which we didn’t know.

It wasn’t until an icy day in mid-January that his car got covered in snow and he did not try to leave. He shivered when he stepped out of the grocery store that morning, and went back inside. He bought some granola bars and had them for breakfast.

That evening, he found his way to the bar, finally resigned to the fact that he would not get out of town. He ordered a whiskey neat, make that a double, please, and sat down across from Earl.

“I’m staying,” he told Earl.

Earl chuckled.

“This town need a weatherman? I know what’s coming,” Samuel said.

“Ain’t got a TV station for a hundred miles,” Earl told him.

“Don’t matter. I can tell you what’s coming and you can spread the word.”

That morning, Samuel had woken up with the final piece of information about the town: how it would end, and when. Taking a sip from his drink, he looked straight at Earl and gave him the weather.

Story by Ian North

Upon a Stone

Upon a Stone (right click to save file)

Upon a stone I’ll rest my head
Until I find that death is dead
I’ll rest my head upon a stone

Amanda left a mark in glass
Twenty five years in a moment passed
I’ll rest my head upon a stone

She flees our grip in memory
We groan until we too are free
I’ll rest my head upon a stone

I will never claim a home
Until my love unthreatened grows
I’ll rest my head upon a stone

Lyrics and Music by Ian North
Instruments and Recording by Eric North

A Greater Love

Anthony could put them back faster than any of us, and most days he did.

He had a charm that took us all in, and he told endless stories which were all false and filled with inconsistencies, but nonetheless had us enthralled. Though he came to us later on in life from a town he never spoke of, he was pretty much the only eloquent man in the town, and we sort of adopted him as a spokesperson when something needed to be said.

When our sheriff got drunk and killed a boy of 12, Anthony went in to talk to him. No one knows what he said, but they walked out with their arms over one another’s shoulders, laughing. The next day, the sheriff hanged himself, and that was the end of it.

When the lady in white strolled through the wall of the saloon, with pure white eyes blazing at us, hollow and enraged, we sort of expected Anthony to do the talking. Turns out, she was the first and last thing to leave him speechless. He dropped his drink on the floor when he saw her, and it shattered and the glass flew through her, but nothing broke.

She shook her head sadly, hovered for a minute, and left through the opposite wall. He watched her go, and when she had gone for a long while, he lined them up and put them back until he was on the floor, where he slept for two days before waking up and drinking more.

The second woman was a dark form, and she entered seven months later. Pure rage. She came in the same place, but not in the same sad, spent way. This one was on a warpath. She flashed from one table to another, knocking drinks and cards and chairs and men in every direction. When she made it to Anthony where he sat at the bar, she stood nose to nose with him, yellow smoke shooting from her nostrils.

“You don’t scare me,” he told her, flat and convincingly unimpressed.

“Ain’t no one in here ain’t skeered bu’choo,” she howled, in twelve different voices at once.

“That may be true, my dear,” he said, tilting his hat to the side, “but these men would be scared if you came crawling in as a rat or an ant. These,” he said, gesturing at our trembling presence, “are not bold men. And even if I was as scared as you were when I killed you, I would not apologize.”

The ghost flew into a rage. She whirled around the room, her features momentarily emerging in red from the deep shadow as she drove table legs into men’s throats, cards through their hearts, and coins through their eyes. He threw another one back while she did, placed it on the bar, and sighed.

“It’s a shame,” he said as she impaled one of us on the saloon doors, “that you can’t direct that energy into something useful. You’re nothing but a waste of fury.”

She flashed from view and reappeared at his stool, five time larger, with flashes of red sparking from her edges.

“You got something to say?”

She didn’t. It was clear she couldn’t touch him. Instead, she grew and grew until her darkness filled the room, suffocating the twelve of us who had survived the first rampage. As we gasped and fought to no avail, he raised his glass and told her to go to hell.

“No woman lived ‘nywheres near you that din’t git a free pass to heaven,” she told him.

“Glad to hear I redeemed you,” he joked. We didn’t find it all that funny considering we were almost dead.

She raged and expanded and burned and we felt her fire consuming what was left of our skin, and then she was gone in a burst, and he was left alone with his drink.

Shaking his head, he looked out over our charred corpses, and began to sing the sad song of the love that destroyed every woman and man who ever got near him.

Story by Ian North

Looney and the Naked Trees

When he was still a child, Looney was given his name by a nameless seaman who passed through town. The sailor heard his strange cry and after listening carefully, declared the sound Looney, meaning “loon-like,” and then the stranger was off again toward the West coast.

We all felt that the characterization was apt for the child as well as the sound, and the levity of it suited us. Looney was mostly our fault.  When his parents died, none of us took the child in, leaving him to develop as an animal would.

He ran around naked most of the time in the woods out past McGarty’s fields. Something ought to have been done, perhaps, but to punish the boy would be to punish a problem of our own making.  So, ill at ease with our culpability, we let him roam.

McGarty caught Looney in the fields one morning, leaning in to hear the gossip passing between McGarty and a neighbor who happened by.  We assume, although no one is sure, that this is how he learned to speak. 

About sixteen years had passed since the death of his parents when Looney got sociable all of a sudden.  We recognized his father’s duds when he appeared clothed for the first time, wandering across the road without direction, trying to join the swell of people that milled around during that time.

He kept at it for about two minutes, then disappeared down an alleyway.  He was back the next day, milling around, and after two weeks, he stayed among us for the better part of the day before retreating to his primal state.

Then one day, he broke from the throng, climbed to the roof of the saloon, and spoke:

“The naked trees have given me food, and I see through this town.”

Then, seemingly startled by something on a neighboring roof, which none of us could see, he scrambled to the street and fled.

He took to climbing like this, once a day, and speaking odd things to us until some unseen terror threatened him and he fled.  He claimed that our beards connected to strings that played like guitars when we slept.  He said that our wives stitched together five-legged serpents at home when we were in the saloon.  He fiercely denounced the way we painted ourselves white and floated around, although none of us had done any such thing.

Whether he was a prophet or a madman was a subject of much debate.  No one could figure any sort of explanation for the things he said.  Then McGarty mentioned something that gave us all pause.

“That thar yung ‘un been eatin mushrooms off dead trees. He done snatched all a em off one a mine.”

No one had eaten mushrooms from the woods before, so we had no idea what effects they might have on a young mind.  We discussed this at great length, and came to no conclusions.  Did the mushrooms possess some magic? Were they intoxicating?  Were they evil?  Even if we knew that the mushrooms caused the speeches, how would we know what they meant, if they meant anything?

It was finally settled that Ed, who was known for doing just about anything that any of us suggested, would find a tree with some mushrooms and partake. 

We all accompanied him to the tree at McGarty’s place, and found a clump of mushroom at the base that Looney had missed.  It was the size of a marble.  Ed rolled it around in his hand, then, with a final lucid look at his friends, he threw it to the back of his throat and swallowed.

“Nuthin.”

Then suddenly, a kind of terror swept over him. His fingers locked up and his eyes spun around, searching for something.  Without warning, he leapt from us and ran back toward town.

We followed him as well as we could, but he got a lead on us, and by the time we caught up with him, he was standing on a rooftop across from Looney, screaming competing prophecies.

“Your maidens carry the dust of the Western plains upon the soles of their feet!” cried Ed.

“Pigs escape from your daughter’s lungs when they sing,” replied Looney.

They went back and forth like this for some time, then looked simultaneously at the same spot in the air between them.  Looney scrambled from his perch, and Ed fell from his and died.

We heartily agreed that the experiment had been a failure, and held a wake for poor Ed that weekend.  In the house of mourning, Ed’s wife refused to speak with any of us. We understood and kept our distance, chewing on the food that she had prepared.  We weren’t aware that she had collected some mushrooms and mixed them in to our meal so that all of us might share in the affliction that did Ed in.

One of the last things we remembered before the end, after the meal took effect and we started seeing the things which Ed and Looney had warned us about, was that someone had knocked over Ed’s coffin, and the body lay sprawled and stiff among us.  As we slipped into the visions which would claim our lives, we saw Looney suddenly standing by the body, enraged. 

Then, under the spell of God-knows-what, as we all careened toward our own fates, he began to sing like a bird about how to deal with the burial, but it was too late by then. We would all be gone by sunset.

Story by Ian North