It's dark here. Moonlight slides over white-washed wooden
gravemarkers like quicksilver, the breeze unnaturally cool and damp.
The posts are bent and crosspieces hang askew like an old man's teeth,
the flesh below putrid and blackened. The boy hides deep in this
place where the holy and unholy meet, where life and death intertwine
as one. It shouldn't be this cold, he thinks, not in California, even
if it is near the coast. But he is from the north, so what does he
know? He reads the markers nearby in the moon's faint glow.
ROGER SEMINOLE 1930-1991 BELOVED HUSBAND
CODY MACKINTOSH 1970-1981 REST IN PEACE
KAITLIN O'MALLEY 1980-1985 WE PRAYED FOR YOUR RETURN
He shudders and turns away. He wonders how the children died.
Disease, abduction. He has seen faded posters all over the Santa
Clara boardwalk for missing persons. Some are many years old, nearly
all are at least 3 years past. He doubts those people will come back.
Yet somehow, he doesn't care.
A footstep startles him, and he turns. A shadow against a
hundred other shadows slips by like black lightning. He hears
something like soft chirping, a sound he has heard before when
visiting his uncle in Texas near the caves. It is the sound of bats.
Strange that he had not seen any around before, but then, he had been
on the boardwalk and bats cannot hunt easily amid the tall stands of
lights and shifting objects. Here it is wilder, safer for creatures
to find their prey.
Another footstep, the crack of a twig like a gunshot in this
empty place.
"Who's there?" He asks more boldly than he feels.
Silence but for ragged breathing and the dragging footsteps of
a bipedal. He stands, looking in the direction of a too-black shadow.
Eyes like blue ice glint brightly. He smells a stench like boiled
blood and stale sweat.
A gaunt, young-looking man steps out from the shadows. His
face cannot be more than twenty, but his brow creases with the weight
of centuries. He wears a heavy, long coat, and is dressed like the
typical California punk--white-blonde hair and one dangling earring.
"I am here."
gravemarkers like quicksilver, the breeze unnaturally cool and damp.
The posts are bent and crosspieces hang askew like an old man's teeth,
the flesh below putrid and blackened. The boy hides deep in this
place where the holy and unholy meet, where life and death intertwine
as one. It shouldn't be this cold, he thinks, not in California, even
if it is near the coast. But he is from the north, so what does he
know? He reads the markers nearby in the moon's faint glow.
ROGER SEMINOLE 1930-1991 BELOVED HUSBAND
CODY MACKINTOSH 1970-1981 REST IN PEACE
KAITLIN O'MALLEY 1980-1985 WE PRAYED FOR YOUR RETURN
He shudders and turns away. He wonders how the children died.
Disease, abduction. He has seen faded posters all over the Santa
Clara boardwalk for missing persons. Some are many years old, nearly
all are at least 3 years past. He doubts those people will come back.
Yet somehow, he doesn't care.
A footstep startles him, and he turns. A shadow against a
hundred other shadows slips by like black lightning. He hears
something like soft chirping, a sound he has heard before when
visiting his uncle in Texas near the caves. It is the sound of bats.
Strange that he had not seen any around before, but then, he had been
on the boardwalk and bats cannot hunt easily amid the tall stands of
lights and shifting objects. Here it is wilder, safer for creatures
to find their prey.
Another footstep, the crack of a twig like a gunshot in this
empty place.
"Who's there?" He asks more boldly than he feels.
Silence but for ragged breathing and the dragging footsteps of
a bipedal. He stands, looking in the direction of a too-black shadow.
Eyes like blue ice glint brightly. He smells a stench like boiled
blood and stale sweat.
A gaunt, young-looking man steps out from the shadows. His
face cannot be more than twenty, but his brow creases with the weight
of centuries. He wears a heavy, long coat, and is dressed like the
typical California punk--white-blonde hair and one dangling earring.
"I am here."