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Chapter One: The Disappearance of Clyde Needles

“Don't care where it goes, it ain't gone stay here that's for damn sure! Money is already tight enough without some peckerhead from up north busting my legs. Take it down the road and dump it somewhere ain't nobody gone find it.”

Following the orders came a rarity, a two dollar bill. Faded green, crumbled, but solid cash all the same in this dying town.

Big money these days, bigger message.

The teenager it was thrust towards was poor like everyone else, admittedly poor and dumb, but drawn to money like a fly to shit. Laws didn't make a damn to him, to Clyde Needle, and the cow that paid him didn't seem to care much about laws either. Curiosity couldn't outpace simplicity though, and Clyde had only one question.

The fat man winced at the backwoods drawl, he had to clench his teeth not to cuss at the ensuing bastardization of English language, nearly bit his cigar in half.

“Wut innahell is it enem crates?”

Annoyed, the fat man took a deep breath before he addressed the hick, it wasn't that he himself didn't possess an accent, but it wasn't white trash like this cretin.

“It's none of your concern, don't matter if it was rubbing alcohol or shrunken heads, I paid for disposal not for inquiry.”

“En-kwai-er-ee?” Clyde spoke the word like a toothless man chewing on rocks.

“Get in that goddamn thing and be off before I change my mind and take my two dollars back!”

Cigar smoke followed behind the fat man as he turned and angrily waddled away from the loaded truck, it did little to hide the smell of sweat and cheap whiskey. For a minute Clyde hawked the crates in the truck with high suspicion, shrunken heads? He began to test a lid when he remembered the money in his right hand, that hog paid big to get it gone, not be nosy. Clyde didn't care about what was in them crates anymore, the fat man could stink like skunk spray and rot for all he cared, Clyde Needles just made two dollars! It almost seemed like he floated to the front of the truck, nearly tore the crank handle off the chassis getting his jalopy cranked up, and if not for the slow take off he'd probably have slammed into the wall. But it didn't matter, Clyde Needles just made two dollars! He thought of all the things he could buy, what he could get, and then a thought entered his feeble mind that lit a fire where his overalls creased.

Dottie Harlow.

Hair dark as coal, eyes like pools of water, and a sleek body like what he saw in one of them stag films at the carnival. A time or two he'd snuck out where she lived towards dark and watched her take down clothes off the wash line, she didn't wear anything but a nightgown to do it, it's a wonder she didn't catch him as bad as he shook and sweat over the sight.

So what she wouldn't court him, and so what she was too proud to be seen with the son of a pig farmer, but two dollars could buy a lot right now.

Might could buy her out of that nightgown…

Clyde felt his ears get red hot as his attention dissolved into his fantasies, the truck whined on down the dirt road like a worn out mule. He'd driven this route many a time to run liquor for Mr. Donahue, there was a lot of places where the road was cut off to the side to stage the wagons back when labor was done with mules and hand tools. His pop spoke about them days like he was trying to paint the scene for Clyde, but imagining things like that took hard focus, it was easier to think of all them curves on Dottie, to hell with the field work. The road went straight for fifteen miles then split in two directions around a huge charred stump, he was far away from anything even remotely considered civilization now. The right lane took you northeast towards Birmingham, the left was into a failed logging project. Clyde figured this was about where that fat man would want these boxes, it was about twenty miles shy of Dottie’s place though….

She came back to his focus easily, and lord how she danced across his mind. He felt a tightness in his groin, soon growing into a relentless throb. Shifting any amount caused waves of sensitivity to grab him, it was almost like it was screaming at him. She was in that field where the clothes line stood, her nightgown open enough to show where the curves of her breasts began, sweat made the cloth cling to her waist and thighs. She was feeling herself, her cheeks blushed red and her eyes narrowed as her hand explored her slender figure. Tugging at her sticky gown, she teased a glistening thigh towards him. He didn't know when his hand had found its way to his crotch, but now it was feverishly clenching and tugging as best it could through the stained denim overalls. Dottie had a hold on him, some black haired witch swaying in the fescue grass, and he was gone have her under him if it was the last god forsaken thing he did.

Heat surged in his neck, his ears, and across his brow, Clyde liked to hold his breath during these moments. He liked how it felt to get light headed and then let it rush back in, made the finish all the more delicious.

He was nearly where he wanted to be, thoughts raced somewhere between what she'd smell like up close and what her tongue would taste like when a set of eyes flashed in the yellow truck lights.

Clyde didn't see what it was, nor would it matter anyhow. The weight in the back of the truck was too great for the jerk-turn Clyde attempted, the front right tire burst underneath the weight in a deafening roar and the wheel itself folded under the truck. Clyde had never heard of such a god awful noise in all his life, the sound of rending steel was new to him. He thought he'd heard the worst when his pa missed a shot on a hog, the screech it made as he fired round after round into her sounded like a woman getting killed in that pen. This was different, things that were never meant to tear and shatter now were, screams of a thousand metallic agonies filled his ears and hummed within his yellowed teeth. Clyde didn't get to think about much after that, the road seemed to come out from under him then, somehow got up and changed places with the sky.

The air was warm, the moon was bright and full, and the trees stood silent when Clyde Needles was thrown through the front windshield of a 1926 Model T Ford into the side ditch. The shape his body was twisted into no longer resembled the lanky teenager that sat behind the wheel, too many jagged bones broke through his pale skin, dark blood poured out of countless orifices. His last thought, if to say anything of his attention span, was of Dottie standing over him, teasing her body beneath the pale moonlight…

Except…

Clyde Needles didn't exactly just die. Clyde Needles wasn't aware that the truck, now a smoldering wreckage fifty yards down the dirt road, was loaded with a substance all but alien to the sleepy backwoods town it'd been driven away from. It wouldn't have been something he understood even if it had gotten explained in nauseating detail, let alone would it have even mattered.

What used to be securely nailed beneath the lid of lead-lined oak storage boxes was cast out and upwards around the truck and Clyde, and the air seemed to shimmer as it began to breathe and spread its silent poison.

Radium.

Clyde wasn't really in a state to feel the deadly touches of radiation, what with his brains oozing out of his shattered head, but he was aware of his situation enough to let out a haggard moan before pissing himself for the second time. Some of the Radium had settled in his hair, some across his face, and a large amount settled and collected inside the gaping hole in his head. If anyone could stand to look upon the macabre scene, they'd see Clyde's skull just barely illuminated in eerie green light behind his eyeballs. Irradiated tears flowed down into trails of blood, and those mixed with drool and leaking spinal fluid at the corner of his destroyed mouth. What may have been most peculiar, if anything ever was, is what this unholy mess fell into. What used to sit in the spot that Clyde now laid was the corpse of a dead boar, long reduced to distingrated bone matter. The boar in question had fallen too sick to move after drinking from water tainted with kerosene and weed killer, a byproduct of the failed logging project. A simple mushroom colony took root there to do what nature had designed it to do, decompose and consume. If Clyde could still think, the teenager might have found the series of events funny in some sick sense, or more likely have thought more of Dottie.

—

Things take time. The mighty oak doesn't become a behemoth without growing many years under the sun, nor does the proud buck become a hunted trophy without first owning a tiny set of horns. The natural state of life and all things within it do not see beginning or end without time first allowing it.

The mycelium beneath Clyde was aware something had fallen onto it, it could feel the distress signals from every sprouting mushroom connected to the root system. It was like the great bolts of lightning in storm clouds, as one became thousands and spread across the air, so too did the signals spread across the fungus bed. But this was different, it could feel itself changing with each delivery of information, something was wrong.

Food.

Fire.

Blood.

Food.

Heat.

Heat around.

No fire.

Heat without fire.

Heat.

Glowing dirt.

Dirt with heat.

Fire dirt.

Growth.

Blood.

Special dirt?

Special blood.

Growth.

As a seizure rocked Clyde's body, a glob of glowing viscera leaked from his head into the dirt, and if one could listen hard enough they'd hear a sound close to what a dry sponge makes when it finds water. The fungus felt itself splinter, countless tiny lacerations spread across impossibly small roots, and from them grew more roots until they pushed against the very top of the soil itself. Growth like this went against the laws of time, this was far too fast and uncontrollable, but it did not hurt.

The fungus became aware of light, but nothing close to the one that stayed within the sky once the pale one hid away.

It was warm, and it was beautiful.

This felt natural.

Small glowing tendrils began to sprout from the dirt, like the hairs off a head, millions of them waved in the night breeze around Clyde. More of his fluids found the eager tendrils, they grew taller as they soaked up the irradiated gore. This went on until a thick grey tendril managed to latch onto Clyde's head.

Lightning bolts.

The fungus spread through the singular tendril into lattice patterns across Clyde's face, curling up his nostrils and in the corners of his eyes. It flooded into his skull, weaving between the folds of his remaining brains and twisted into the lacerations on his spinal cord. The fungus drank whatever fluids it came into contact with, raging growth shot ahead like fire chasing a trail of gasoline. To this end, the green iridescence that lined the inside of Clyde's head began to ooze down his body with the rushing wave of fungal growth.

He began to thrash in the clutches of his attacker, some pitiful animalistic attempt from his broken body to defend itself, but it only served to strengthen the onslaught. It winded down his spinal cord until it found his hips, from there it grew around his bones until it found where they were broken, then it rushed into his marrow.

The fungus felt satisfaction at this find, immeasurable amounts of food to consume for weeks on end, all the nutrients and sustenance its children would need to survive and reproduce…

No.

No, this could make a whole colony.

Tendrils reached Clyde's heart, and wound into each artery until no empty place remained. All of Clyde was covered and infested with grey-white fungal growth and a horrid blanket of glowing radium dust.

It was then that Clyde died, but began the start of something new.

The fungus felt a wave rush through it, a crackling jolt of energy, it hurt. It came again. This time twice as hard, twice as painful. The fungus, doing what it always did at the sign of danger, pulled into itself.

Clyde's right hand closed shut.

Electricity spread across the fungus, frying the ends of the mycelium well below ground, from where it entered came the worst of the pain. Had it been found? Had something come to attack it during its feeding? It pulled into itself harder.

Clyde's other hand closed.

Agony splintered across the fungus, every possible cell of its being was surging with electric energy, if it could cry, it would have weeped.

Give out, the fungus stopped fighting and waited for whatever had found it to devour it.

Clyde’s hands unfurled.

The pain stopped.

These things take time.

—

Twenty five miles back inside the town Clyde had left from, Willow Ridge, the morning was off to a sour start.

Thunder growled in the darkening skies, breezes became gusts and flung themselves against whatever stood in the way. Green leaves across the pecan trees that lined the edges of Willow Ridge turned over and exposed their pale bellies. Every nose in the county could smell the metallic-earthy musk that hung in the air.

Rain was coming.

From under his white-painted porch, the sheriff looked at the coming storm with disdain. The next town hall meeting would be nothing but upset farmers and annoyed school teachers, Mrs Avery would no doubt complain about the dirt roads turning to muck, it did no amount of good trying to explain the burden on the county budget that paved roads would bring. She'd shake her head and spit tobacco juice on the floor like an automated machine. Her wrinkled face didn't soften the razor blade contempt in her old brown eyes, he could hear her hoarse voice now:

“Ahd-damn chain-gang ort to do it then, gravel is jest as good.”

Ornery old bat, the sheriff thought, but she was sweet as ripe persimmons when she wasn't so uptight. Guess when you've lived through as many years as she did you get to be like that. The sheriff took a moment to soak up a lukewarm breeze as pondered what kind of old man he'd be.

A whistle-wind voice snuck through his mind

��Old? Was a time we didn't think we was gone get old, funny how things work out huh Butch?”

Blood dripped from those words, they came from somewhere far away from here, from an entirely different man. At first the sheriff tried to let the words soak in, it only felt uncomfortable. It was like dry sand on wet skin and he could handle that if he just focused hard and breathed deep, that's how this usually went, just brace up and let it wash over him like a warm shower. Every dog has his day, and today was not the Sheriff's. His breath caught as the hairs on his neck started to rise and his shoulders stiffened up.

It didn't feel so safe to be outside suddenly, too much noise, too much movement. Cold sweat began to bead down his back, breath ran from his lungs as if an invisible hand were clenching around his throat. His eyes flickered between hiding spots, dark corners, and windows like searchlights, chasing after things he wasn't sure of. Faint shadows were starting to dance in the alleys and behind trees, but he couldn't catch them no matter how fast he tried to look. His mind was beginning to scream at him, pressure swelled behind his eyes and heat churned in his ears. The sheriff took a step backwards, one hand desperately searching for the door knob, the other searched for the pistol on his hip. He wasn’t even aware that he'd started to snap the buttons open on his holster…

“Sheriff Fowler!”

He was back on the front porch, the wind wafted over him like a reassuring pat on the back after a mean prank, it ain't that serious silly! His eyes swung wildly to find where the voice came from, and it took longer than he'd care to admit to finally see where.

Annie Taylor.

Curly blonde hair, sky blue eyes, and a missing front tooth smile, barely the height of an axe handle.

Thunder rumbled overhead again, but it did little to stifle the beam of sunshine Annie was. She was in a yellow dress, likely one her mama May Taylor made for her. It was made with love, care, and effort, it was also made from dyed flour sacks. The textile mill a county over had been a godsend for the women around Willow Ridge when money started drying up, if it had scraps left over the working men would take time to trim them into neat squares for the women folk to sew. On the same note, Pritchard’s general store had begun ordering specific sacks of flour and grain, it was a gesture of kindness from the distant factories they came from to use softer cloth, sometimes they even made colored sacks. It was a huge deal when this occurred, women would visit one at a time to look over the rarity, careful not to be caught by another woman doing the same thing. Mr and Mrs Pritchard would watch silently as this game of cat and mouse blossomed across the women of the Willow Ridge, and they could expect one of them to stop in just before closing with their hats pulled low to their brows and a few silver dollars to fetch out of their coin-purses. Children got the majority of the leftovers, women got theirs next, and men could expect a patch or two left to repair their work clothes if they needed it. Some folks called Willow Ridge “the hand-me-down town,” and at first the populace took offense, now in the hard times it was a mark of ingenuity and pride.

“Good morning Sheriff Fowler!” Annie beamed again.

“G-Goodmornin’ back to ya’ Annie,” Fowler stammered, there was a weariness to his words he wished he had the power to hide from her.

She looked at him the way a child does, any number of questions or statements behind her sky-blue eyes. He still felt a tingle of anxiety across his neck, hairs hadn't yet settled. Dear god, the sheriff thought, how long had she been there?

“Ms. Janice said we should head home early on account of the rain, but I came here to get you cause there's an emergency!”

Sheriff Fowler straightened himself, concern blossoming on his brow.

“What's this emergency honey, and where at?”

She looked at her shoes as her cheeks blushed red, embarrassed over something.

“Well, I don't know where to tell you to go, but I came here cause of what Mrs Avery said about the rain.”

The sheriff felt all focus dissolve like a castle wall crumbling under a blow from a catapult.

“And what, pray tell, did she say was an emergency?” He braced for the response.

“When I was walking home it started raining a little bit near the general store, but the sun was still out and I went under the porch there. Mrs Avery was sitting in her rocking chair, except it was a dis-play chair but she said she didn't give a dern about it when I said it was a dis-play. Then she told me that when it rains and the sun is still out the Devil is beating his wife, and I told her I thought that was just awful so she said I should go get you to help.”

Any notion of panic he'd felt beforehand dissipated behind her last word, and it took a great heap of effort to keep his bearing. God bless you honey, Fowler thought, I wish everyone was as innocent and pure as you are.

“You run on home Annie, I'll head over to the general store and sort out what I can. You did your part as a citizen today to stop a crime, and for that you have my thanks.”

A million dollar grin spread across her freckled face. If smiles could shine she'd blind someone. She skipped away humming some schoolyard rhyme and cut down a side street towards home, he wondered if her mama knew she was walking home today, normally May would come get her from school and walk with her. Another pressing thought entered his head, Mrs Avery. It had always been a lighthearted game of cat and mouse with her antics, and while most of the time it was funny today wasn't the day for it.

Fowler didn't feel angry towards her, truthfully he liked her, but he couldn't have her putting Annie Taylor up to mischief. Her mama would raise immortal hell over her for just the slightest thing, especially since her husband passed away some years ago. It didn't take much to put May on the warpath, it's how Donnie handled things in the house. If something bothered May, especially if it bothered Annie, Donnie turned into a wall of rage and muscle and “handled it” as May tearfully put it at his service. Fowler adjusted his stetson and looked down towards the general store.

“I needa walk anyhow,” he sighed to himself.

The sheriff's office sat at the end of the road on the left side of a storage building, formerly the dedicated jailhouse, across the road from a closed down insurance office. There were only two roads inside Willow Ridge, one that came from the south and headed north which was the only road in and out for as long as most could remember. The other one came from the west and headed east, a lot of folks said the only reason it really got made was so the governor could suck up to the hydroelectric dam people, like some sort of incentive for them to come out and build. The roads met, converging in a crossroads in the heart of the town. This was how Willow Ridge was formed, at first all that sat there was the general store itself and a few scattered farm houses, a true geological oddity. Most of the folks of Willow Ridge lived out in the woods, on old plots of land passed down through generations in some wood shack or cabin their ancestors had built, just repaired and dolled up through the years. Traffic began to pass more often through Willow Ridge with the creation of the crossroads, and with it came a church that doubled as a school on the weekdays, a post office, an insurance office, a doctor's office, and finally a sheriff's office. The last and newest addition was the Langford apartments built on the northernmost part of the town, and it got filled quickly with holler-dwellers who wanted to experience what they figured “big city living” felt like, then the depression locked them into their rent agreements after they sold their family homes for pennies on the dollar. Life went from commodity to constraint in the span of weeks, folks got hard nosed about anything that could cost them, and things slowed down to a bitter quietness that everybody felt and had no need or desire to speak on. The Langfords themselves wanted to close down, but they couldn't escape their bank loans, and the renters couldn't go anywhere else except the streets. A few of the renters would joke they were all crabs in a bucket, nobody was gonna get out without pulling the other one down.

All Fowler had to do was turn left off his porch and walk down the road, which he did, and he wound up in front of none other than Mrs Avery.

“Mrs Avery, how are you today?”

She bunched her saggy mouth up into a half-snarl and spit out black juice just a few inches short of Fowler's boots.

“Doing better than some, worse than others, Sheriff. If I could give any less of a shit I'd owe, and now you're here blocking my view.”

Fowler turned and looked over his shoulders, the street was devoid of people, so she wasn't here crowd watching, she was just waiting for someone to come by. The men were out working, the women at home tending the house, and the kids…well he guessed the kids were already home too. The voice returned, honey dripped words covered in thorns, though he managed to ignore whatever it said this go round, too much to attend to without getting riled up now. Fowler snapped his head around to look at Mrs Avery again, hurrying to get back to the conversation. She raised an eyebrow full of curled skin.

“You gone talk or just stand there till I whistle dixie Sheriff?”

“N-naw I ain't gone stand here Mrs Avery, matter of factly me and you got business to talk about.”

“Oh? What you got to talk about? You wanna court me, take me on a walk in the moonlight?”

Fowler felt heat rise under his collar, she had seen through his poker face even if she wasn't aware of what truly threw him off, and that aggravated him to no end. He took off his hat and stepped one foot onto the pine-board porch, placing the hat on the bend of his knee. He did this to level with people, it was something he'd had done to him by his father when the difference between listening to and hearing him needed to be made clear.

“Mrs Avery I'm here cause of Annie Taylor. I don't mind you on any given day being the way that you are, heck I truthfully enjoy the chance of speed whenever you pop up, but don't spread no foolish ideas to her. You know she came to me cause of what you said? Now what am I gonna do if her mama finds out?”

The old woman chewed on his words with silence, the scowl on her face didn't falter. Mrs Avery was a woman of many many things, easy to read was not one of them. The gentle yet deliberate rise of her chest and weary-sounded sigh was all she let go from her deck of cards.

“Ain't nothing I wasn't told when I was her age, and it ain't nothing that'll ever hurt her in any sort of way, but if it's bringing you trouble I'll hesh up next time I see her nearby. I don't need my fine day hustled by a man in uniform what come up here to my sitting spot and blocking my fine view.”

She whipped her head to the side like a scolded cat, almost a pout, and shut her eyes. Fowler knew that was as far as he'd get with her.

As he sauntered away from Mrs Avery and her throne on the porch once more the voice came, and this time it wouldn't be shut out.

“Where'd our old uniforms get off to Butch? Where'd you put em?”

Thunder rumbled once more, and the storm began proper. It was only a short walk back, but Fowler watched as the road stretched out miles ahead, each step felt like his boots were made of lead.

Rain found him before he found his office, and Fowler came through the door soaked from the shoulders down like a wet tomcat.

The front of the office was empty of human life, but filled with all the things that marked it once being there. Two empty office desks, wooden swivel chairs, banker’s lamps, and old mugs full of odd lengthed pencils. Two secretaries, kind hearted sisters from the church, used to come down and budget for the police department as well as the church.

They were also a lot more proficient at writing up warrants, reports, and other correspondence, so Fowler saw fit to let them sit-in. When the hard times began, as with many places, Fowler couldn't afford to keep them on. They took it in grace however, Sister Crocker and Sister Beatrice, but Fowler knew losing the ability to gossip about the latest arrest must've been a crushing blow for the other women of Willow Ridge. The “Wednesday Night Women's Only Bible Study” was more like a french salon of yore, the women wore nice perfume and donned sparing but appealing amounts of makeup, if one of them knew how to do it they'd wear a new hairstyle to spark envy, and it wouldn't be uncommon to see the titular “nice dress I kept put up” make an appearance on each woman.

The Preacher didn't attend out of politeness to the female congregation, so he wasn't an issue, and the women all knew how to spin excuses and reasons to their man at home. Fowler had a suspicion the men just turned the other cheek to start with, Nut’s bar was full on Friday night and packed solid on Saturday night. If the Baptist men of Willow Ridge were able to drink and raise a ruckus on the weekend, then the womenfolk enjoying a night with each other's finest hearsay wasn't up for debate. People needed a distraction from things, it kept peace in the mind and at home.

“You'd know about distractions huh Butch?”

Fowler shook the words off his thoughts and went towards the door leading to the back office, his little fortress of solitude from all else. It was familiar here, he had a nice wooden desk he kept all his things in under lock and key. He had a radio to catch a song or baseball game, a phone connected to the party line, he had a separate room with a toilet and sink basin to shave and clean up in. Hell he even had a fold up bed in the corner to use when the rain made the roads too bad to drive on, wasn't much reason to rush home anyhow. No kids, no wife, not even a mutt to throw a bone to, all them things was past Fowler.

“Except me…”

Sweat wanted to bead down his head, annoyance started to rise up in his chest like heavy machinery spooling up for a blast of work. This was the added benefit of being here in this office, he could handle these little hiccups on his own terms and time.

Fowler scowled and cleared his throat as he plopped down in his chair, the motions of an ancient ritual at this point. To anyone else, Fowler was talking to an empty chair across from his desk, but to Fowler someone was sitting there. Someone just as real as the air in his lungs.

“You done bothering me? Huh? You been a real pain in the ass today you know that?”

The young man across from him leaned forward, his yellowish teeth accentuated his unshaven jawline, greasy short hair reflected the little light that found the back office, and sunken brown eyes looked upon Fowler with the uncanny focus an attack dog gives a threat. His clothes were worn-out but fitted to his lanky frame. A dark blue over-shirt tucked into faded khaki trousers, traveling beneath tattered canvas shin covers and ending in mud-splattered hobnail boots. Fowler knew the uniform well, and the man in front of him never changed out of it. He kept his hands on his knees and sat straight as an arrow, never once breaking eye-contact. Words flowed from his mouth like warm molasses, almost filled with something that sounded like hurt.

“Now that ain't no way to talk to me, hell I been good about the things I say, like we worked on see? I don't cuss too bad. I don't crack too many jokes, I just sit back and cast a few words your way, what you do after the fact ain't none of my doing.”

Fowler clenched down on his teeth, the muscles in the young man's jaw flexed.

“Bout pulled my revolver out in the middle of the day cause of you, would've scared Annie to death, might have cost me my job! If this all goes up, ain't nowhere for me to go, ain't got no way to make money, I'll starve to death.”

The man cocked his gaunt face to the side, a switchblade smile cracked across his face.

“We've starved before, and we've done without money and a place to sleep, remember?”

Fowler felt heat starting to rise over his button up collar, blood pressure rising like building steam.

“And them days is done with! We're home now dammit! I can't hardly even remember back that far as it is…”

A snarl of disgust rung out as the man jumped upwards, rage burning in his eyes. It used to scare Fowler once upon a time, he knew now it was all just hot air. Jabbing his thumb into his chest like a miner trying to shatter stone, he threw his words at Fowler now.

“YOU might of forgot them days, got real comfy since then, but I ain't! I got us through it, I got us back home, to this big ole lie YOU wanna play pretend in! YOU the one who put me away when it was all over, THREW ME IN THE CLOSET WITH THE GODDAMN SEABAGS DIDN'T YOU!”

Sighing to himself, Fowler shook his grayed head and shut his tired eyes, the office was empty again. A clock somewhere on the wall kept the pace with a metallic knock, and Fowler could almost feel each tick in his aching head.

The rain grew into a dull roar as lightning flashed across the sky. Fowler sported the idea of taking a nap when a hard rasp shook the front door.

“Dammit all” he sighed.

It took a bit for him to get up and stroll the length of the building, tiredness hung off his shoulders and weighed him down.

The door opened to a man in tattered overalls and a beaten down flap hat. His face pulled into his toothless mouth and the stubble on his maw looked more like gray porcupine quills than it did facial hair. He was gaunt, bent, and thin; a man used to little in the way of most comforts. A set of steely sly brown eyes met Fowler, like ones on a red fox.

Delmond Needles.

He didn't wait for formalities.

“Y’seen mah boy sher-if? Ain't heard nary a peep or spied him all mornin’ an’ it ain't like ‘im.”

Backwoods drawl like a summer night breeze, it reminded Fowler of his own dad. It wasn't talking like folks do these days, it was humming like a slow song, or a fine painting. It wasn't scribbles on paper, it was smooth brush strokes on canvas. Pleasant as it was, it was clippy, Delmond didn’t like having to talk to the law.

Fowler thought hard about where or what Clyde could have gotten into, that boy stayed in trouble; always one step behind mischief and first to throw himself into it when it began. He’d just as soon find teeth in a rooster than he would figure out where that boy could be, but Delmond stared into him and the silence was dancing on too long.

“Naw,” Fowler sighed, “ain’t seen him since you came to get him last month after he got out of line over at Nut’s place.”

Delmond’s face dropped low at the reminder, and pale red rushed to his withered cheeks. Thunder shook overhead, lightning flashed miles out, probably in Hustace’s fields.

“Haint no call fer reminders like ‘at right now, he ain’t been home in a few days and trouble or not he’s all I got left since Pearl passed on. Please Sher-if all I’m asking ya is that if’n he comes through jest send ‘im on home to me.”

Fowler gave Delmond a solemn nod and watched quietly as the stick of a man straightened himself up, nodded back, and made towards his truck as quickly as his tired body could manage, like a scarecrow taking its first few steps after it came to life and fell off the pole. There didn’t have to be much more than those nods, both men understood words could transcend speech, and it was about as good as a promise now. If he did somehow miss Clyde, it could be years before Delmond simmered down enough to ever speak to Fowler again for anything, even a greeting. It was odd though, Delmond normally drove his box truck that he hauled wood and god knows what else in, but this was someone else’s sitting in the road.

#historic fiction #horror #scifi #writing #unfinished

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